Dr Greg Bahnsen - Philosophy of Christianity: Philosophical Anthropology (Part 21)

Our last class hour ended fairly abruptly on the question of evil. And I think it'd be appropriate to give you the opportunity to ask questions about that, Pursue it for a few moments here before we begin our discussion of philosophical anthropology. What questions do you have on the problem of evil or my resolution of the problem of evil? What is it that's required of the Christian if he's going to see that the problem of evil is not a philosophical problem? What kind of attitude must he have toward God? Skeptical, Critical? I think. Well, number one, you have to approach God in faith. And secondly, you have to say that evil has somehow moral sufficiency. Yes, a Christian must have faith, must have a trusting attitude toward God. That when God says he does all things well, that let God be true, though every man's a liar, that God's moral standards are beyond question, that the pot doesn't say to the potter, you know, why do you do things the way you do? And that calls for trusting God's word over and above our own values, over and above our own reasons, over and above our own way of thinking. So if the believer has that kind of an attitude that whatever God does is right, and therefore there is a morally sufficient reason, if God is decreed or allowed evil, then what we're saying is he has to have a very trusting attitude in God. Now, the unbeliever to formulate the problem of evil must have a very trusting attitude in God too. You see, if he doesn't trust or have faith in God, then I question whether he's going to be able to give philosophical preconditions for any absolute moral standard. Can there be any absolute value if there is no absolute God that backs up this absolute value? And if there's no absolute value, if there is no standard of the good, then there's really no absolute evil. There's only the relativistic evil that each one of us feels or thinks that we discern on the basis of our own shifting systems of evaluation. And so the believer must have a trusting attitude in God if he's going to overcome the problem of evil. Philosophically, the unbeliever to formulate the problem of evil should, in a sense, have to trust God, have to have faith in God, and therefore there is no problem of evil. Because whether you're a believer or an unbeliever, you have to have God, the Christian conception of God, in order to deal with the situation at all. Now, where did the problem of evil originate historically, Man's free will has got to be the conditioning Circumstance under which evil could enter the world. Man freely chose to do the evil. But why did man choose to do the evil? Why did Adam fall? How would you characterize the fall of Adam? Is it at all credible to you to read the Genesis account of man's fall as saying that evil entered the world precisely because men would not trust God above all else? God put man into a situation where he was under probation, where he could fall, where he didn't have to fall. Now the temptation comes. And what is the nature of the temptation to question the goodness of God? The tempter says that God, you see, is very jealous about these special insights and attributes that he has. And although God says that you will die, Satan says, you surely will not die. Okay? Now, at that point, Adam and Eve in reverse order historically, but both of them had to make the decision as to whether they would trust the word of the tempter or trust the word of God. You see, the word of God was at stake. What was at stake was whether they would, a priori, trust God's word above all else, against all the challenge of their senses, all the challenge of their society, their environment, against the tempter's word. Would they trust God above that? Now, I find this. I don't know exactly how to tie it all together, but almost too coincidental for words, that the problem of evil is settled for us philosophically today in a trusting attitude toward God. Saying, you say you do all things well. My senses tell me there's a lot that's amiss in the world. But I trust that there's a morally sufficient reason for the evil, because I trust God a priori. I trust him as my presupposition. I trust him above all. That's what Adam failed to do. The problem of evil originated historically in man's failure to have that attitude toward God. And I dare say the problem of evil is perpetuated philosophically today by our continuing to have that attitude toward God. And so, ironically, it turns out that by our very failure to answer the problem of evil or to respond to the problem of evil properly, we are perpetuating the problem of evil. And I don't know from my own philosophical development and theological reflection, that is one of the strongest indications of how important the Christian presupposition is. Because when all is said and done, we want to tell the unbeliever. Far from satisfying you rationally as to why evil exists, you have to recognize that evil continues to exist. And it's just the problem that it is because you fail to let God be true, though all men are liars. That is just your desire to demand of God. Such a reason is why evil came into existence and continues to exist. The answer to the problem of evil is not to let the problem of evil be problematic. And you come as close there, I guess, to kind of a dogmatic a priori faith commitment as one could ask. What we're saying is the very nature of the problem indicates the solution for it, and that's that we don't challenge God. If Adam hadn't challenged God, if Eve hadn't challenged the word of God, there wouldn't be any evil to worry about. And we continue to have difficulty because we are assuming the attitude of a fallen man rather than the attitude of a man that is trusting God's word above all a regenerated man or man as he originally was. Okay, so the problem of evil finally comes down to a question of faith, it seems to me. But that isn't to say that it's blind faith. You see, if you were to, if somebody says, no, look, here's this child that's suffering this terrible disease, child's not done anything to deserve this. Here's this problem of evil. What do you Christians say about that? If you were to answer immediately, just kind of blunt, well, it's just a question of faith, then you would certainly give the impression it's a matter of a blind leap. Well, we just trust, you know, because we have to trust. That's all there is to it. But as it turns out, the more you analyze the problem, the more it turns out that the. That is the only resolution of it. And the unbeliever can't escape that. He's got to have faith in some absolute personality in order to generate the difficulty to begin with. So we can at least tell him you can't even generate the problem on your world and life view. And within our world and life view, we are called upon to trust God above all else. And therefore, if he says he does all things well, and we believe that even the fall of man was according to his plan, according to his, and he did it well, he did it for our good.

So essentially what you're saying, you're making this equation, the problem of evil is.

Not really the problem of evil in itself at all. It's the problem of faith. Right. I think that's a good way of putting the psychological dynamics of it. That's right. The problem of evil is not a philosophical problem. Problem of evil is not problematic in terms of theistic belief. Because there couldn't be evil to discern if there weren't God to begin with. And so the problem has got to be, if you will, personal or psychological in nature. And at that point, what we want to say is evil originated and continues to be a problem mentally for us because of our own failure to have a right attitude toward God, if you will. Pressing the problem of evil is the very nature of evil in one sense, pressing the problem of evil, I.e. somebody says God, you've got to give me an answer for this difficulty. The very pressing of that attitude, you see, is the heart of evil, the attitude of rebellion against God, not submitting to him above all else. I repeat that if you were to say this to the unbeliever straight off, I'm sure he would not understand it. It would sound like you're making some kind of blind, arbitrary assertion, faith commitment to some kind of blind trust. But the analysis of the problem, when you get down to it, does show us that pressing the problem of evil in fact is the nature of the problem. But philosophically, there is no logical contradiction in saying that God is all good, God is all powerful, God is all knowing, and yet evil exists. And that's where we began our discussion. Is there a logical contradiction there? And I think the answer is no, there's not. In one sense we can almost conclude with Plantinga's words about the hypothesis that Satan is behind the physical evil of the world. He says, granted the belief in demons doesn't enjoy the reigning popularity, say of the theory of relativity. And it may very well be that the attitude we're talking about that one has to have toward God is not a popular attitude. But after all, not being popular and being contradictory are two different things. I'm willing to grant that this kind of I trust God above all else is not a popular attitude. I'm not willing to grant for the for even a moment that it's contradicted. So as I said at the end of last hour, I can't see that there is philosophically a problem of evil.

I'd like to make an observation and see if you would agree with it here. We're talking about the so called philosophical problem of evil with respect to the unbeliever. And we resolve this basically a personal or emotional problem. If I could come down to the problem of evil among Christians, we have Calvinistic, Arminian, this type of thing. Is it not safe to say that, emotionally speaking for most people, the problem of evil among Christians, that the Calvinistic stance that God has included Decrees for evil within his decrees is emotionally more difficult that that is emotionally more difficult to resolve with his good than is the Armenian stance, believer to believer.

Now, I'm afraid that the answer to that question is going to be culture relative, you know, at what period of history, what kind of education the general church enjoys and that sort of thing. I think it's undoubtedly true today the most Arminians think that they have an easier approach to the problem of evil than if they were Calvinists because it would only complicate things that God himself decreed the fall of man. However, I'm not sure that that is philosophically a very accurate way of looking at it. I'm not sure if we weren't in an age that was more theologically educated if the tables wouldn't be turned.

In other words, for someone who is aware of the philosophical liabilities of Arminianism. Yes, he would be very uncomfortable at that point, right?

Oh, yeah. To say, he would say that the problem of evil, the only solution is the sovereignty of God. You know, I can imagine somebody saying that and somebody saying, well, you know, I'm going to propose that God's not really in control. Then you say, boy, you really do have a problem of evil.

Then he could be very emotional at that point.

Yeah. So, I mean, I think the tables could be turned. But it's probably true today in the church as a whole. Most people think that Arminianism is an evil, easier approach to the problem of evil, less complicated. But of course it's not. Once you look at it, I really don't think it solves anything. It only adds further problems to the quandary. How could anything go on in God's world that God's not in control of? Is God all powerful? God isn't sovereign. And the, the whole point is that God could have stopped evil and intervened to do so, but didn't, which is the Arminian view, because he has his hands off policy toward creation. Then you've got to wonder, not only is he all powerful, but is he all good? I mean, that's really the only difference is that God just arbitrarily decided not to. I would tend to think that it's a lot easier to say God had a very good reason for not doing so. It isn't just that he stood back and kept himself. You know, you almost get the impression that God is being portrayed like the surgeon standing there at the table and he can save this man's life if he only picks up the scalpel and does his work, but he Decides not to do it after all, I don't tamper with people's bodies and so forth and so hands off. I mean, that's incredible. Philosophical problems in terms of what you think of the goodness of God. If you say he certainly could have and they, oh, since he doesn't have any plan for history anyway in any specific way that God could intervene at this point, at any point. But he doesn't. You're wondering why he doesn't. The Calvinist has a very, it seems to me, systematic answer to that when he says God has a better plan than you seem to be envisioning by having God step in at this point, God's going to accomplish something far better by, if you will, running the show the way he wants to run the show. And there are liabilities both ways, emotionally I'm sure. But for me, anybody caught on yet that I'm a Calvinist in this class, for me, I have real difficulties with the idea that God could have done better, but he just chose not to. I think it would be much easier for the Calvin to take that position because of his view of the sovereign from that point alone. Because I was thinking the same thing as he asked the question and I was going to ask you if he didn't, I guess. But I really see that Calvinist has less problems. Less problems? Yeah. It calls for, if you will, a greater measure of what is sometimes called the sacrifice of one's intellect. Just think of the problem of evil as it was presented to Abraham. Okay, God gave Abraham a promise. Abraham had real trouble believing that God was really going to give him a son after all. Abraham took it into his own hands to see to it that God's promise got fulfilled. God fulfilled the wrong way, created problems within his family and all the rest. And God said, no, Ishmael is not the son of promise, the son of the flesh. Okay, so where's the son of the promise? Well, after God explains what's going to happen, both Abraham and his wife have a real laughing fit over the situation. I mean, their minds just don't. I'm going to have the son. Okay, he does have the son. And then of all things, after this almost miraculous situation, God says to Abraham, I want you to sacrifice your son, the one and only son of promise. Sacrificing. Talk about the problem of evil and trusting God. That's where the phrase comes in Kierkegaard literature. Abraham had to sacrifice his intellect before he could sacrifice his son. Abraham had to say, I don't know how God's going to work it out. And I can't see empirically what the way out of this problem is going to be. But I'll sacrifice my intellect. I'll say, if God says it, so be it, I'll do it. And so in that sense, the Calvinist has to sacrifice his intellect. He has to say, God even decreed the plan of Adam. It'd be much easier to say, well, God stood back at least at one point and just said, everything's up for grabs in the universe now. Man's going to make one decision on his own. But the Calvinist says even the fall of Adam was decreed from God's good pleasure and to accomplish his ends. And nevertheless, Adam did it freely and responsibly in the same way that we've talked about previously. So I would continue to say there are liabilities both ways, but if I had my druthers, I guess I would personally choose the Calvinistic liabilities. But I don't think it's a matter of personal choice. In the end, you have to square your philosophy. If you're an evangelical, you have to square your philosophy with what the Bible teaches. Seems that if you structure your arguments perfectly, you can accuse both sides of making God out to be very arbitrary. And, oh, yeah, sure, prima facie. You could. You could, you could. You, you could put it in such a way as to make either position appear arbitrary. Neither one wants to claim that it's arbitrary. Okay, the end result then is where it is of origin. Well, could you rephrase the question, please? Yeah, the question is, what in the end then is the origin of evil? Where does evil come from? And to answer that question, I think we have to first get into our minds what we're thinking evil is. Are we reifying evil? Y' all know what reifying is?

Thingifying.

Thingifying it. That's right. Is evil a thing? Has anybody ever run into Mother Nature? Had a good talk with Mother Nature this morning. But we all talk about nature all the time, don't we? What usually happens? And you find this often, especially in romantic philosophy of the 18th century, you'll find nature reified. You know, we're talking about the way things usually happen as though that were a thing. You know, it becomes a generalization that takes on the qualities of a living being. Maybe not necessarily living, but some actual existence of some sort. Well, now, is evil like nature in that sense? Is it a thing? You can ask me, where did this apple come from? Okay, where did this house come from? Where did this small child come from? And Then you can say where did evil come from? And there's something that changes in that question, isn't there? Because of the nature of what you're asking about. When you say where did evil come from? If you don't mean where did it come from, like where did the apple come from? Then you have to. Then you say, well, what is evil? Well, evil is disobeying God. So how did it come about that Adam disobeyed God? Becomes the question, it seems to me, and in one sense the conditioning answer or context is going to be free will. He had the ability to do that. God gave him the ability to act independently of him in the sense that he would act independently of God's desires. Now does that mean it gave him the ability to act outside of the plan of God? I think in the nature of the case, God can't give any creature that ability because he would deny himself. Ask God if he did that. But he did give Adam free will and that Adam could act contrary to God's desires. We can push a little bit further. How could Adam, who was good, positively good, not simply neutral, how could a good man have ever gotten into his heart to do an evil thing? That is to say, what was the motivation for evil? Or what was the motivation for disobeying God, for rebelling against the voice of God? And I have no idea. I have difficulty enough analyzing motivation in a fallen man, but especially in Adam's situation. I'm not sure how to answer that question. By the way, just for those of you who are still thinking about this Calvinist Arminian situation, Arminian is no better position on that, is he? I mean, this is not a matter of whether God decrees it or not. It's a question of how did this good man make an evil decision. If I were an Arminian, I had the same quandary. I just don't know how a good man can make an evil decision. I know it was irrational on his part and maybe that by looking for a rational explanation for an irrational event that I'm committed to defeat in advance, but I just don't know. I don't know how a good man can make an evil decision. I know that a neutral man couldn't have made any decision when Adam didn't have any character at all. He wouldn't have done anything. And so there doesn't seem to. And to say that he was evil created evil is obviously to say that God doesn't make good creatures. He didn't make all things good. And so all evangelicals are faced with that. That's a real mystery.

Yet it's not unique because in the second Adam we have the second same phenomenon in Christ is my understanding of the New Testament. Jesus could have sinned if he wanted to, but he did not. He also was under probation. So the first and the second Adam share this idea, this, this mystery that given the motivation they could have sinned. But whence would the motivation come?

Well, but there is this difference in that Jesus did what was good and had a good character. And so he did according to his character. Adam had a good character, but did what was evil, did contrary to his character. And that's what I think raises the difficulty in Christ's case there is no contra character behavior in Adam there is.

But I was focusing on motivation. If Satan were to successful and to turn that probation into a temptation, as he did, and Christ not yield, he had to appeal to an evil motive in a good man. And Satan did the same thing. For the first act he appealed to an evil motive and a good man which wasn't there yet the results came about. So the mystery, it seems to me.

Metaphysically is the same in that sense. I understand what you're getting at. How could Satan have hope to accomplish anything? Yeah.

Christ could have fallen, so could have Adam. Oh sure, perfect man may fall.

Oh yeah. If you hold to the, to the communicatio idiomatum. Am I making sense to everybody? You know, the Lutheran, Calvinist, it's probably the biggest controversy between Lutherans and Calvinists in the history of the church and accounts for the rest of the them, for the rest of the differences, I believe. But the communicatio idiomatum, the Lutheran doctrine is that you have the divine nature and the human nature. And the Lutheran view of the communication of attributes, communicatio idiomatum in Latin is that what is true of the divine nature can be attributed to the human. What is true of the human can be attributed to the divine. The Calvinist doctrine. Is that what's true of the divine and human natures can both be attributed to the person of Christ. So the Lutheran says, for instance, that if Christ is a human body and God is omnipresent, that necessarily the human body of Jesus is omnipresent because he's God. In man there's a communication of attributes and the communication is between the natures. What is true the human nature is true the divine. So if the divine nature is omnipresent, then the physical human nature is omnipresent. Which explains of course, the difference between Calvinists and Lutherans and the Lord's Supper. The Lutheran believes the body of Christ is what with under and in the element? Calvin says, no, it's not. Christ is present only by his spirit. The element is only a corporeal sign. So the Lutheran believes that Christ's body is omnipresent. Whereas the Calvinist says that what is true of the divine can be said of the person of Christ. What is true, true of the human can be said of the person of Christ. Okay, so we would say that Christ in his person is omnipresent and Christ in his person has a physical body, but we don't say the physical body is omnipresent. Now this comes to a real head when you get to the patro potion controversy in the Christian church. How could God die? Did God die upon the cross? Good Lutheran answer, yes, God died upon the cross. Calvinist says Jesus Christ died upon the cross. He died with respect to his human nature. The divine nature couldn't have died. Consequently, it was the person of Jesus Christ that went to the cross and he died with respect to his human nature. But he didn't die in his divine nature. The idea that the one in whom life is to be found died is contradictory. So you have these two different approaches to Christology. And with respect to the temptation of Christ, not all Calvinists have lived up to their own version of the communicatio idiomatum. But you have to say, could Christ have sinned? The answer is yes. No with respect to his divine nature, no with respect to his human nature, yes. And then there will be people who say, but since the divine nature takes precedent over the human nature, then the answer, and we're all said and done, is no. Recall Hodge does that in the systematic theology. But that isn't fair. I mean, Calvinists have always said the answer is yes and no. Is Christ omnipresent? How do you answer that? Is Christ right now omnipresent? The answer is yes and no. I certainly believe Christ is with us in this classroom, but I think that his body is somewhere in heaven. The right hand of God. And so anyway, I think the Calvinist approach to the communication of attributes, they're communicated to the person rather than to each other. And so I agree Christ could have sinned. Has there ever been a theological debate in question two, the aspect of previous knowledge in Christ concerning heaven, its glories, his presence there as absent in Adam, who only knew of an earthly existence, no heavenly type of existence, Outside of maybe his walk and talk with God, has anyone ever taken up that controversy? And in that sense? Well, there is a controversy over what Jesus did know. I mean, Jesus claims not to know the day of his second coming. He says only the Father in heaven knows that. Well, I mean, I want to stick close to the text and I want to, you know, be fair to that. But there is a sense in which Jesus knows the day of his second coming too, with respect to his divine nature. He knows everything. He's omniscient. There's a real mystery in the Incarnation, isn't there? He's ignorant and yet he's all knowing. He's ignorant like a human being. No human being knows the day of the second coming. Neither does he. He says only the Father in heaven knows that, and yet I am the Father, are one, and so he knows it too. What do you think about Jesus praying in the garden? You know, about this cup passing from him? Well, Jesus knew very well the cup was not going to pass from him in terms of his divine nature. He knew the outcome of the story, and yet as a human being, he could pray and legitimately pray. If it be your will, Father, have it passed. So since then, you're saying there is the division again of the divine and.

The human in the sense of the.

Divine, as we don't want to say division, we want to say distinction. Distinction that within the divinity, within him, yes, there is that aspect of previous knowledge, but within the humanity of Christ that did not enter into right with respect to his humanity. Now with respect to his deity. Yes, but we don't want, you know, the Chalcedonian formula says there is no confusion, division, mixture, or separations between the two natures. A lot of philosophical problems are going to be, I think, played out on the whole area of Christology over the next few years. I'm not a prophet, so don't, you know, nail me down if I'm wrong on this. But my guess is, you know, you pick up this book. Book Brody's put together articles, and not from an evangelical motivation as far as I can see. He's put together all these articles dealing with our, the, you know, these are the things we've been debating for centuries as Christians. Maybe not with all the logical precision we should, but nevertheless, I mean, these are really old problems to us. And my guess is some of these same things will, from a philosophical standpoint, begin to arise with the Christological questions, too. Did you have. Go ahead. Back to my question. One added thing. Do you mystery part With Adam, why he did have motivations. Can that also be applied to Satan or Lucifer himself? Yes. I was going on to say that we, we've been covering a lot of things. I was going to say in one sense we have to ask how could. How could a good angel have fallen? And the only hint we have to that, and it's barely that is at one point in the New Testament where the qualifications for church office are given. An overseer is not to be a novice lest he be puffed up and fall into the snare of Satan. And the implication seems to be that this is the very thing that led Satan to his fall. Was thinking too highly of himself, if you will. Pride is at the heart of it. And of course he's a liar from the beginning. Seems to be a reference to lying to men from the beginning. I don't think Satan's fall was based on a lie, but somehow an overweening pride. Again, not recognizing one's place before God. I suppose we can go one step further and say that God made Satan as well as Adam free to do contrary to his desires. In there may very well be a misconception of one's freedom in the person of Adam and Satan where the freedom to do contrary to God's desires might be taken as the metaphysical ability to become God himself. To actually, if you will, play upon the backdrop of history independently of God. And that is to conceive of one's freedom as something more than it really is. There's Satan's pride. Okay, I can disobey God. I have the freedom to disobey God. I can actually become a God myself. It's interesting. That's what Satan tempts man with. Right? And you will become as God. Perhaps that's what Satan thought he was doing too. A misconception of the nature of his freedom. Now that's only a hint. Because then natural question is what? How could an unfallen creature have such a misconception? How could he have fallen into such a mistaken way of thinking about himself which led to pride and in Adam's case, to disobedience. Well, the origin of evil in a good man. I don't know. I do know that he had the freedom to do that. Where he got the motivation to do it, not sure.

And we, I think we can safely.

Say that superior knowledge, whether it be Adamic in the sense of having perfection essence or angelic in the sense of Lucifer, does not guarantee perfectly doing the little God. Well, you can go two ways on that. You could Say that a person who disobeys God's will doesn't really have that superior knowledge. I don't think I follow that. Okay, let's say I'm speaking to a Christian brother and I say, do you know what it means to control, to control your anger or lust? Lust in terms of spirit given attitudes? He says, yeah, I know what that means. I said, I don't mean do you know how to answer questions on an ethics exam, how to fill in the blanks. We walk by the spirit rather than by the flesh, so forth and so on. I mean, do you know what that means? And the guy says, well, yeah, I do. But then you see, the next day you find that he's showing this anger or demonstrating this lust. You would want to say, you say, you know. But as a matter of fact, without the ability to do it or without actually doing it, one doesn't know. That is, there is a broader sense to knowledge in the Bible whereby those who are disobeying God don't truly know his will. Of course, there's also a sense in which those who disobey know what they're supposed to do and don't do it. That's the agony of Romans 7, right? That which I would do, I don't do and vice versa. So I think it really is going to depend on what you're getting at. When you say knowledge, superior knowledge. Well, I was thinking in terms of Adam, in terms of Satan. Certainly there is a superior knowledge unto man in those two respects causes fallen creatures and such who fall short of God's glory earth, and realizing that they, in the very presence of God, who had fellowship, communing with God, obviously sharing in Satan's sense, the glories that God himself had in his breath, that did not guarantee that they could continue in a sinless state, that they could perfectly in a sense obey God's commands. Superior knowledge. Oh no, you know the answer to that question. However you categorize the knowledge that didn't nothing guaranteed that Adam would not fall. So we can't say there may be a sense. Let me try this out. It may be heretical, you know, throw it out if it doesn't, if it doesn't wash when you look at the Bible. But isn't there a sense in which the man who learns to control his anger by the power of God's spirit, a redeemed, regenerate man who is being sanctified, knows God in a superior way to what Adam knew even before he fell? Isn't there Something more God glorifying and closer to God in obedience than in what Adam experienced. I don't know. I'm proposing that as a possible value scheme and that may come close to explaining why God allowed the fall. Because what we will know is redemption, redeemed, confirmed righteous creatures is even more glorious than what we would have known as confirmed righteous creatures who had never known the redemptive love of God. There's something superior in that. Sir, is that not utilitarian? God's utilitarian, isn't he? Doesn't he do what's best for the most people? God's such a great utilitarian that he never has to sacrifice anybody's well being for it. Yeah, I agree. However, it seems that some of the arguments of evil or explanations of evil that we rejected, relying on those definitions, however, not from a Christian view necessarily in the sense that greater good, he maximizes good this way, and therefore if we take away evil, we're taking away good. Well now of course that doesn't follow on the Christian conception of maximizing good because what we say is God is making the best of a bad situation and therefore he wants us to take away the bad situation too. And that's precisely part of the good that's involved. But no, we're not saying that God is simply doing something because the means justifies. I mean, the end justifies the means. But we are saying, however, that there is going to be a more glorious end in his plan. You go again over Pennyhug's response to pike when pike says that really you have no way of showing that there is no morally sufficient grounds reason for evil. Yeah, Penelope says that within a particular theistic system you do have a way of doing that, because within a particular conception of theism you have a moral code. And to say that man is good is to say he keeps this moral code. To say that God is good is to say that he's like man in that respect. And therefore this moral code may be used to evaluate the available rationales that God may have had for allowing evil. And if it turns out that the kind of evil you're looking at, say the suffering of a child or a cancer patient or something like that, that none of these available rationales, given the moral system, given the ethical views of this theistic system, will justify God, that there may be a way of saying that God has no morally sufficient reason given Christian ethics. Maybe God doesn't have a morally sufficient reason because whatever reason he would have, would have to be like a morally sufficient reason for a man. And the system does dictate a limit to what those morally sufficient reasons are for a man. And so you have to carry it out. Now in Brody's introduction he says it might be a challenge to the student to try to carry out Penelope's criticism on just one particular instance. Just try to carry it out. What are the morally sufficient reasons that Christianity lays down for men to do things of this nature and then try applying them to God in some particular instance? Although he doesn't say what the conclusion is, he suggests that it really can't be done. That Penelom has claimed in theory there is a limit to what rationales might be invoked, but that in practice you never know which one to invoke and that there's always different interpretations of the evil. And so you really couldn't carry out the criticism. Go ahead. How does moral evil influence physical evil if it does? Is there any fluid in the evil? Is there any fluidity between the two? Explain your metaphor to me. Is there any connection, result, conceptual, causal? Yes, I think there's some causal result. I don't think that Mount St. Helens would have erupted if man hadn't fallen into sin. I don't believe that God would have flooded the world if man hadn't been sinful in excess. So yeah, there's some connection between the moral realm and the physical realm that way. Now the question is, is there a one to one or is there some formula so that you can say so much evil produces this kind of physical effect? There also seems to be some. Well, not seems to be some, but certainly in all ways God is in control of what's happening in the physical cosmos about us. We can say that had it not been for the sinfulness of man, there wouldn't have been these natural disasters. But that isn't to say that God has a formula or at least one discernible to human beings whereby natural disasters come under certain circumstances of evil. So is there relevance? Yes. Is there a causal connection in a formalized way? I don't believe so. I don't think the Bible gives us any reason to think so. I certainly do not believe that all the physical evil in the world comes from Satan. That was cue to plan to pull that in his article. But as a matter of fact, that isn't biblical. God does send some of these things himself. Is there fluidity between them then? I'm not even sure it's a good idea to call physical evil. I tend to think of the problem of pain and the problem of evil. Okay, I'm just giving you my own personal insight. If I talk to people and they want to talk about pain, why are there painful things in the world? Earthquakes, tidal waves, that sort of thing, then we can talk about why God does this sort of thing, or we can talk about evil. Why is it that men do wicked, nasty things to each other? Why are there wars? Why is there cheating? Why is this, that and the other happen? I think they are different problems. Yes.

When you say that God does send.

Evil, or whatever the words were used.

Then you're also using that, the same kind of mystery with free will that we talked about earlier, aren't you? The whole idea, just as we talked about, not necessarily that it comes directly.

From when we're talking about moral evil. Yes. Okay, let's say that. Let's just presume, kind of like a wild guess that our country is suffering for its sins right now in the socio political, economic arena, nobody ever would have thought that sort of thing. So it's obviously a wild guess. Let's say that's happening. God is punishing our waywardness with our waywardness. Our wickedness is becoming its own punishment. In one sense. Okay, I think that the wicked things that are happening in our country today, let's say in the law courts, in terms of racial tension or what have you, these things are being done by men freely choosing to do them. And nevertheless they're doing it according to the decree of God. God is decreeing these things to happen, but he's decreeing that men freely engage in them. They do so because they want to do so. So the people who were involved in the riots in Miami this last week were doing according to their own pleasure. But they're also doing God's pleasure in the sense that God decreed it, that they're doing according to the decree of God and yet freely choosing to do so. But now physical evil, and that's why I was suggesting to Terry a second ago, is not quite the same thing. Because there's really no choice of man involved there in any direct causal sense. And consequently, I don't think the problem of free will enters there. I think we simply have to say that God in his sovereignty, in his moral excellence and transcendence, has the right to send earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and all the rest. So those are different questions depending on whether you're dealing with physical or moral evil. The evil about us does involve the free will of man. No man is coerced to do evil. I mean, after all, God doesn't even tempt men to do evil, much less coerce them to do it according to the Bible. Well, we've taken a little bit more time than I thought on the problem of evil, but we're getting used to going a little over time. I'd like to talk about philosophical anthropology. We're going to clear the register now to. We need to take a five minute break so you can all be thinking on a new subject. Okay. Psalm 8. What is man that thou art mindful of him? The Bible answers. The psalmist answers that man is created temporarily lower than the angels. That's what man is created for the time being, lower than the angels. Alexander Pope said that man was the glory, jest and riddle of the world. Karl Marx said that the real nature of man is the totality of social relations. As Jean Paul Sarkre says, man is condemned to be free, that man is the whole and being, which is his way of explaining man's freedom. What is man? Philosophical anthropology is a immense practical importance as well as being quite philosophically engaging. Today we have a number of philosophical problems about the nature of man, the problems of man, as well as the cure for man's problems. And these of course, have immense practical importance. For instance, how do you analyze. How you analyze man himself in his nature is going to determine what you think man ought to do and what man can do and how man can do it when it comes to a cure for his problems. Christianity says that man must call upon God for help. Marxism says we must transform society because society makes men what they are. Existentialism says men must become fully aware of their freedom if they're going to be cured of their problems. And the nature of man, the nature of man's problem and the cure of man's problems are all going to affect the views that are held in terms of political, economic, educational practices, just to mention a few. If you do any study of educational theory today, you'll find out that educational theory is completely dependent upon what theory of man is being assumed by the educational theorist. That's also true in economics. There are some people whose economic theory is built upon the idea that men are naturally greedy and the only way to restrain the greed of men is to put them in a free market situation where greed will control greed. There are other views that say that men are naturally good and benevolent and consequently the government can tax us for the sake of welfare programs and that we'll have no difficulty with that. There are some educational and social theories that say that if we put black and white young people in the same classroom, even though their parents are against the whole idea that naturally, because of that environmental change, they will grow up having better racial views. Okay? You see how educational, social, economic, political views are dependent upon what somebody thinks of man, of man's nature, his problem and the correction of his problems. Modern philosophy and modern psychology, sociology, economics, biology, and we could go on and on. Virtually all the departments of the university foster diverse theories of human nature. When I was a graduate student, it was sometimes amusing to me to speak with undergraduates who would go from one area of the university, say the philosophy department, to another area of the university, the sociology department, and then to another area of the university, the psychology department, and get radically contradictory theories of man and yet not even know that they're being given all these different theories. As far as they know, they can just put all these things together, some kind of motley collection, you know, a patchwork view of man. Of course, it just won't work. What are we to think of man? Philosophical anthropology raises basic questions of metaphysics, for instance. Is man free? Basic questions of epistemology. How do we know that this theory or that theory is correct about man? What, what evidence do we use? Questions of ethics? What should man do? Now, our author, Leslie Stevenson, tells us that we would do well to distinguish between a theory, an ideology, And a closed system. Somebody tell me, what's the difference between a theory and an ideology? Anybody? Theory is something that is postponed hypothesis, not necessarily taken as commitment to or carried out in action or fully believed upon. Okay, let's put it this way. What's the difference between holding a theory and holding an ideology, where a theory is something that's believed? Well, doesn't the ideology entail a deep.

Faith commitment to that view, whereas the.

Theory might not necessarily. That's one way you can put it. But you have to explain what you mean by, quote, a deep faith commitment. In the first place, theory involves perhaps just a particular view. Say you believe in economic determinism. That's a theory, a theory of economic determinism. But economic determinism doesn't become an ideology until that theory becomes systematic, incorporated into a way of life for a community of believers. Okay, so Marxism is an ideology because there's a community, okay, the Marxist party, let's say a community that has systematic views. That is, they don't have simply a particular view, but that particular view integrated into a system, system of thought about man. And the best way I can put it is it's a way of life. It involves a certain way of responding to intellectual problems, a way of acting in the world, a certain game plan, certain values held in common. It's an entire way of life. And so deep faith in that sense that involves the whole of man integrating views systematically put into a practical context of a way of life and held by a community. And what's the difference between an ideology and a closed system? According to Stevenson, A theory becomes an ideology when you add these things to it. When does an ideology become a closed system? Anybody? Yeah, I can't get into the whole thing of verificationism on the. Reminds me of clues discussion. Yes, that's. That's good. I'm going to bring that up in just a second. What is it that makes something closed? It's the way it's defended beyond verification or falsification. Defended by having no conceivable falsification. Okay, So all counter evidence is explained away. All counter evidence, because there's no conceivable grounds for. For disputing with the theory. And it's defended not only by having no conceivable falsification, but by impugning the motives of the critic. Okay, so a Marxist or Marxism is a closed system, a closed system of ideology, because any conceivable evidence brought against Marxism has built right into the system an explanation for it. You can always explain away any counter evidence to Marxism. And anybody who is criticizing Marxism is impugned as being what, sold out to a particular economic class or duped by the particular stage in the historical dialectic in which one is found. It almost amounts to saying anybody who criticizes it couldn't understand it, because if you understood it, you'd never criticize it. Okay, so that's a closed system of ideology. And our author says that impugning somebody's motivation is really philosophically irrelevant. And I think his words are very well taken. He says if we are primarily concerned with the truth or falsity of what is said and with whether there are any good reasons for believing it, then motivation is irrelevant. Let us assume that the man has a bad motivation. We still have to deal with the content of what he brings up critically, don't we? The fact that his motivation is poor doesn't mean that his criticism is false. Okay, you all follow that motivation is irrelevant. To use motivation to impugn the motivation of a critic as a way of dealing with his criticism is basically irrational. Okay, so I want to give him this, but now how about this? A closed system is something defended by having no conceivable falsification. This is where our Flu discussion comes in. You remember how we went over that. And Flew gives the impression as he looks at non falsifiable theories, that anything that's held in a non falsifiable attitude is meaningless. What was the difficulty with saying that?

Well, we all by nature have pre theoretical prejudices and they by definition are unfalsifiable.

We all have basic presuppositions, okay? So it turns out to say that these are meaningless because they're the things you hold most tenaciously is an odd way of reasoning, isn't it? The thing that is most meaningful to a person becomes meaningless just because it is most meaningful. That is, he holds it more tenaciously than anything else. That's his fundamental commitment. Remember we talked about the mammon worshiper? Here's this materialist, right? Okay. The thing that is most important to him, the highest value, is money. Well, what could challenge that commitment? Well, in one sense, nothing could challenge that commitment. If anything challenged his ultimate commitment to money, money would not be his ultimate commitment. You see, by making it his ultimate commitment, it must be the judge of everything else. And so it turns out that everybody holds to some kind of presupposition that is inconceivably, I mean, that it's inconceivable to falsify it. Everybody holds to some ultimate concern. Everybody has some religious conviction, even if it's irreligious, even if it's his atheism that he is most committed to. So our author says. Well, at one point he says, why do people have this kind of tenacity with respect to their anthropological theories or ideologies? On page, he says, page 12 he says, why should people maintain a belief in the face of difficulties? Why is it that when these problems like the problem of evil, he uses that as his illustration. I thought it was very timely our reading if you did it this week. After all, we've read flu, we've read the Problem of Evil. So all this stuff is old hat to you, right? I mean, you're able to handle all this now. And he looks at it and he says, here the Christians have this problem of evil and they're always rationalizing it away, okay? I'm trusting that by God's grace, something's been accomplished in this class and you can better handle that one. An atheistic writer starts saying these things now, but he says, why should people maintain a belief in the face of difficulties? Marxists, Christians, Platonists, Sartreans, Skinnerians, Freudians, what have you. Why should people maintain their beliefs when There are difficulties with them. Well, inertia. What's inertia?

The opposite of momentum.

That's right. It's what it's sometimes hard to have when it comes time to get to this class. Inertia. Right. Oh, got to get up and go to class. If you don't. If you just, you know, you just can't get yourself to do it, you haven't got the inertia. Okay. Why should people maintain beliefs? Inertia. People don't like changing their minds. I mean, I have children at home that don't like changing their clothes. I have plenty of adult friends who don't like changing their minds. It's just too much work. Inertia, Unwillingness to admit that one is wrong. Okay. There's a personal pride matter that enters in, too. Okay. Inertia and unwillingness to admit that one is wrong must play some part here. If one has been brought up in a certain belief and way of life, or if one has been converted to it and then followed it, it takes courage to abandon one's past. When a belief is an ideology giving rise to the way of life of a social group, it will always be difficult for the members of the group to consider it objectively. If you ever want to convince a group of Baptists that it is biblically legitimate to baptize infants, you will always do much better to talk to the Baptist one on one than to go to the American Baptist Convention and try to get the group to listen to you. You see, there's this inherent, if you will, conservatism. Stick to itness, tenacity of the ideological group. By the way, that's true also of Presbyterians. I just happened to put the shoe on that foot. You probably wouldn't do well if you went to the OPCGA and tried to convince them that you shouldn't baptize infants. But you might get one individual Presbyterian to consider your arguments. He says it's difficult for the members of the group to consider it objectively. There will be strong social pressures to continue to acknowledge the belief, and it will be natural for believers to maintain it as a closed system. People will feel that their belief, even if open to objections, contains some vital insight, some vision of essential truth. To abandon it may be to abandon what gives meaning, purpose and hope to one's life. Now, what I'm trying to point out is that he says he wants to distinguish between theories of man that are closed ideologies, closed system ideologies, and those which are not. I don't believe There is such a distinction. I believe they're all closed. Now. There are some people who may be floundering. There may be some people who are wavering. There may be some people who are not sure what to think anymore. But in the nature of the case, a Marxist or a Freudian or a Skinnerian or a Christian, they all hold closed systems of belief with respect to man. For to question their views of man is to question something which is systematically basic to their philosophy. The nature of man, the nature of his problem, the nature of his solution. Those are systematically basic issues in philosophy of man. The author gets into a discussion. He says, what kind of statement is being used in anthropological systems? What kind of statement do we find that? He breaks statements down into the following classes. He has one group of factual, sometimes he calls them synthetic. And then finally on page 16, he labels this empirical statements. Okay, so there's one group. If I said there are 16 cars in the parking lot, that's an empirical statement. It's the sort of thing you can go out and objectively check against your senses, the evidence of your senses. And then he says there's also analytic statements, if you will, things that are true by definition. All bachelors are unmarried men. All the research in the world will not disconfirm that theory because it's true by definition. And then there are valuational statements, matters of evaluation, if you will, putting some kind of. Some kind of ethical grading or categorization on something. So he says, here are these three different kinds of statements. And then he suggests that anything that doesn't fall into one of these classes is what's called a metaphysical statement. Seems to be making a factual claim about the world that goes beyond what's true by definition. And yet it seems to be describing, not simply evaluating things. It's a very odd category. What about these metaphysical type statements that don't fall into the top three categories? Now, we've gone over all this, haven't we? Who does this look like? You have these three kinds of statements, okay, Synthetic, analytic and ethical. And then of course, modeling metaphysical statements. What school of philosophy held to that? Somebody said it. Logical positivism. Exactly. Okay? And logical positivism gives rise to the verification principle. Something is meaningful only if it is empirically verifiable. And we went through all the tortures of the verification principle and how it's self defeating. And so then the log positivists come up with the falsification principle, something that's meaningful only if you can conceive of some way of falsifying it. We went through the difficulties of falsificationism. The fact of the matter is we cannot get away from what are called metaphysical type statements. And the Theory of Man deals for the most part with metaphysical type statements. They are non verifiable and non falsifiable in the scientific sense, but they are not meaningless. And you'll Notice on page 17 of your reading, the author says as much. He says it's really too much to say that they are meaningless, but we will say they are not scientific. Okay? At that point you would say, well, now look, Bonson, apologist, isn't that good enough? I mean, the guy is screaming uncle, right? He's not going to push logical positivism. Well, I guess, you know, nothing's ever good enough for us apologists. The only difficulty I have with that is that it suggests that science is somehow in a little bit better epistemic position than those of us who are doing philosophy. Science is a little more objective, a little more tied down to the facts, a little more, if you will, verifiable and falsifiable and somehow closer to the truth. Therefore not as arbitrary, ethereal. And my own feeling is that science itself is committed to its own nonverifiable presuppositions. And that science only gets as far as it does get because it's using presuppositions which Christianity alone can supply for it. An ordered world, a good world, a meaningful world, and that sort of thing. But anyway, the author of our book does point out then that the philosophy of man, the theory of human nature, is basically a metaphysical discussion. It's dealing with presuppositions. And on page seven, he points out that if you look at the systems for the philosophy of man, you'll see that there's a similar structure to just about all of the philosophical anthropologies. I'm going to give you my own way of putting this because I think it's easier to remember he has a fourfold breakdown. He says there's a view of the world, a view of the nature of man, a view of man's problem or diagnosis, and then the prescription for man. That's easy enough to remember. View of the world, nature of man, diagnosis, prescription, the view of the world. I take as the conditioning metaphysical context for the view of man. Technically, there are three breakdowns within the theory of man. There are views of man's dignity, man's dilemma, and man's deliverance. That alliteration will help you any. As you're reading through, you want to say, now what, according to Plato, gives man dignity? What is it that makes man man? Okay, but what's the dilemma that man has gotten into? And then what kind of deliverance is available for man? Let me give you the Christian translation now of these three categories. Creation, fall and redemption. Okay? The dignity of man created as God's image. But his dilemma, he's a fallen man. His deliverance, God's redemption, creation, fall and redemption. Now, I'm pointing out that these systems of philosophical anthropology have similar structures. The dignity, dilemma, deliverance of man are all matters that are addressed in various philosophical anthropologies. Because I think there's something reflecting, if you will, the fact that we all know our maker, we all know the Christian story in our heart of hearts. And so Marx eventually gives what? A counterfeit of a Christian view of creation, fall and redemption? Freud gives eventually a counterfeit of the Christian view of creation, fall and redemption. Now, the author doesn't say that with good reason. He's not committed to that point of view. But I'm suggesting that that similar structure is to be accounted for by the fact that we all know that we, in the image of God, we're fallen creatures and God's got to provide a way of escape. Yeah. Seems to me, looking through this, that aren't they all closed systems? Yes. Didn't I say that at one point, that the author thinks that he distinguishes between closed and open systems of anthropology? And my own conviction is that they all ultimately are closed. That while there are people who may not have made up their mind, so people aren't closed, the systems themselves are all closed systems within his writing when he recounted them. Closed systems, seven, closed systems. Or does he claim that some of these are open? He claims that some of them are more open to criticism than others. Christianity and Marxism are the epitome of closed systems for him, but I happen to think that he's just doing a little worse on Marxism and Christianity, that all of them are closed systems. When all said and done, when the chips are down, the ultimate presuppositions are going to be defended, because if they're not defended, then they're surrendered and the system is changed. Okay, it's time for us to quit. If you want an example of two conflicting systems, I was going to go over with you pages 4, 5, and 6. He has a nice little discussion of how Christianity and Marxism line up. And that's very illustrative of what's going on in philosophical anthropology. While we only have two hours left, I think you're going to find the discussion and the reading here somewhat easier than the more logically precise, tough going, analytical stuff that Brody was giving you. And so that's nice that God gives us a break at the end of our class. You enjoy the reading, so I'll see you on Wednesday.

Would you care to suggest a bibliographical source for us to investigate? That communicatio ideomatum on the Lutheran reform.

Controversy, Systematic Theology by Hodges. Hodges.

His discussion of it would be adequate to does he also bring out that that also affects the Supper as well as Christology and other things?

As far as I know, yeah. It's been a few years since I've read it, but.