Instrumentality and Learning

Here is an analogy I use to think about our recognition and use of axioms or basic truths.

In our experience, something is incorporated into our awareness through practice (and my use here is not limited to only the wood-shedding practice of shooting 100 3-pointers a day, but also the sort of practice as opposed to theory) of that something. Consider musical instruments (if you have no experience playing any sort of musical instruments, then you’ll get what I mean with the next few examples); when you first started playing, the instrument itself was foreign to you, performing the requisite actions to get the right result took conscious thought at first, and every note you attempted to play was a torturous process of remembering the right fingering, keeping beat, playing the right rhythm, keeping the right form (for wind players, this would be called embouchure), reading the music on the page, blowing the precise amount of air to control note, pitch, and volume, etc. However, as one practices more with their instrument, they get the music “under their fingers,” being able to bend their mind towards not just getting the right note and rhythm, but to playing the piece dynamically, employing vibrato, precisely tuning the note in key with the chord.

In the beginning, the instrument was something outside your experience, outside of who you were. But, with practice, the instrument starts to become ‘centered’ within you, a part of you just as your limbs are. The mark of a master of any sort of instrument, be it musical, aesthetic (drawing, handwriting), motor (weapons, tools, cutlery, sports, etc) is that their trade has become nothing more than an extension of themselves. An ad-libbing musician thinks the tune in their mind and their body performs all the requisite functions from memory, because the foreignness of the instrument has been removed. Rafael Mendez, a masterful trumpeter, has a few wonderful things to say about musical instruments becoming second nature here.

To bring the idea more in relation to your experience, consider these experiences you’re probably familiar with.

Baseball; at first, utilizing your arm to its full potential and power feels awkward, but through repetition muscle memory develops until catching and throwing the ball in an efficient and powerful manner can happen without thought, becoming part of one smooth aesthetic enterprise of coordination, as demonstrated here.

Driving; how much give there is between the road and your tires in different conditions takes experience to be able to garner an expectation of how the entire car will react to your steering, accelerating, and braking. To have the car at your command is to feel a unity between mind and machine, as is needed for this.

Soccer; the bounce and arc of the soccer ball, the feel of your legs and feet, the pacing and precision needed to kick, dribble, and juggle, are gained through experiential practice with the soccer ball. The ability to “feel” where the ball is just through repeatedly kicking a ball in the same way and kick it up again is in juggling is something that almost seems like it shouldn’t be able to be achieved, yet it quite obviously can.

Now, what is my point in all of this? I wish to draw a line between experience of reality and our fundamental connection with reality, because I believe the same sort of experience that we draw can be trusted due to our ability to precisely interact and gain more precision through more practical experience of this reality. There are certain axioms that we grasp through repeated experience of; for instance, the effect of gravity and motion together that is needed to be able to juggle a soccer ball, the effect of friction and resistance to be understood not mentally but practically to drive, the feeling of motion and coordination in baseball.

If there can be drawn a direct connection between ourselves and reality, then it should be obvious that the laws of logic as basic truths necessarily follow and cannot in any circumstance be circumvented or denied. While we do gain our ability to think by experience of reality, reality appears to have no intention of lying to us, and we seem suited to grasp reality. Thus, axioms can and should be drawn and utilized in thinking about any thing, because we cannot actually imagine any thing that is not under some sort of relation to these axioms (i.e. logicality, rationality, truthfulness, order, etc).

A square circle or a blue white are understood to be logical impossibilities by merely understanding them in relation to the basic truths of logic, and require no further argument to be disproved.

Interesting consequences occur for naturalism and theism, and I obviously believe that theism is suited towards the existence of logic whereas naturalism is unable to explain axioms in nature.

The Problem of the Damned, Part 3

The Problem of the Damned goes like this; why did God create a world that will have people who will experience eternal damnation when He theoretically could’ve created a world in which there were no people who rejected Him and had free will, per His omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence?

My first answer was based on the idea of absolute contingency; no person exists in any other world except the world they are found in. For God to not create a world is for God to not create those beings in any other world, because they could only exist in that particular world.

My second answer is this; evil is a good because as it produces an evolving world. If there were no evil, there would be nothing for me to overcome, and so there would be nothing to strengthen my moral good, my moral resolve, my love for God, my unity with God, etc.

God is infinite, and everything created is finite. Nothing could be created infinite. Everything created then, no matter how “arbitrarily large” it was created is yet an infinite distance from God. This distance can only be bridged through growth. The growth will never produce an infinite, but this fact of growing produces the unity necessary for beings to resonate with the Absolute; to resonate with Life is to grow, to grow is to resonate with Life.

On the other hand, damnation is not an infinite loss, as one loses only what finite-life they have. They are bankrupt of growth, but they cannot “fall” farther away an infinite distance. Damnation places beings outside of any chance of harmony with the Absolute, and so places them outside the ability of this divine-like growth. Thus, they fall away from Absolute Being to non-being; however, the difference between non-being and a finite being is always only finite.

So, damnation is a finite loss while salvation is an infinite gain. The salvation of the saved weighs out the damnation of the damned in every instance.

A Reunion of Catholicism and Orthodoxy, Doctrinal Notes

There seems to be a common mistake made in differentiating between Catholicism and Orthodoxy as far as doctrine. It’s often stated that “Catholicism and Orthodoxy differ on a few doctrines,” which I think is an insufficient description.

All doctrines in Orthodoxy Catholicism accepts. Since the Great Schism, the Eastern Orthodox Church has held no ecumenical councils, while the Catholic Church has plowed on addressing the issues of the day and engaging culture. So, all ecumenical councils before the Great Schism the Catholic and Orthodox Churches are agreed on; the difference is that the Orthodox Church doesn’t believe that any ecumenical councils have been held.

The difference then lies in that Catholicism has developed its doctrines for the last 1000 years, whereas the Orthodox has effectively not. The Catholic Church has more doctrines than the Orthodox Church, such as the filioque, papal infallibility, and even counter-intuitively, the canon of Scripture.

So, if there is to be a reunion of the Catholic Church and Orthodox Churches (I fear it would not be the entirety of Orthodoxy at one time, but, like we see now, separate Churches), there cannot be any compromise per se; one Church will have been right whereas the other will have been wrong. The solutions thus are;

1) The Catholic Church has always been right (and the Orthodox Church accepts the doctrines developed since the Great Schism)

2) The Orthodox Church has always been right (and the Catholic Church abandons any doctrines developed since the Great Schism)

Of course, there seems to be a midway between (1) and (2), but only if (2) is first true, such that;

2′) The Orthodox Church has always been right, but the Orthodox Church would retro-define some of the same doctrines developed in the Catholic Church since the Great Schism

(2′) actually seems quite likely, since I’d think it most probably that the Orthodox Church would accept just about all doctrinal developments as expressed in the councils excluding the First Vatican Council (which defined papal infallibility). At the very least, it would seem certain that the Orthodox Church would accept the same canon of Scripture.

Now, my own theory of how a reunion could be affected would be to say this;

3) Both the Catholic and Orthodox Churches have been right; the Catholic Church will maintain the doctrines as she has, and the Orthodox Churches will ratify all new doctrines of the Catholic Church since the Great Schism

(3) would be possible under the possibly radical theses that both the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Churches have infallibility; we see the Catholic Church expressing this positively, whereas the Orthodox Church has expressed it by not defining any doctrines in contradiction to the Catholic Church. It amounts to saying that the sundering of formal unity was mistake, and formal unity can be continued after doctrinal unity has been asserted by the Orthodox Churches (because it is in their valid authority [the same kind of authority present in the Catholic Church] to do so).

A Catch-22 results in the case of those Eastern Orthodox who reject a reunion in which (3) happens, meaning that those who didn’t enter into communion with the Catholic-Orthodox Church were those who have rejected the authority of the Church, while those who did enter into communion with the Catholic-Orthodox Church are those who are within the authority of the Church.

This sort of solution to the problem of the Great Schism would be saying that Catholics would now say they are both Catholic and Orthodox, and Orthodox would say they are both Orthodox and Catholic. One Church isn’t being subsumed into the other, dissolved to “make room” for the other to have total authority. Both Churches would be exercising authority, together. This reflects the notion of that the Catholic and Orthodox Church are both complementary lungs of the same body. “Europe has two lungs, it will never breathe easily until it uses both of them” (Pope John Paul II)

How to Understand Catholicism as a Protestant

As a former Protestant, I understand how hard it is to understand Catholicism for a Protestant now that I do have a keen appreciation for Catholicism as a Catholic. In fact, short of earnestly studying Catholicism as one’s own religion, the idea of Catholicism may not be able to be appreciated, and subsequently ecumenism on terms other than those that admit to radically different approaches to Scripture, doctrine, belief, and practice will be failures by nature.

Catholicism should not be attempted to be understood as just “another denomination,” like one would consider the Church of Christ or the Presbyterian denominations amidst, say, the Lutheran and Baptism denominations. Catholicism is distinct in history, origin, doctrine, belief, practice, liturgy, and teaching.

Protestants are fixated on Scripture. Catholics are not. Protestants demand Scripture for what Catholics believe, which is a problem, because it puts the sort of strictures on Catholicism that Catholicism doesn’t have on itself. Catholics don’t limit themselves to believing only what they can interpret out of the Bible. This isn’t Catholics turning their back on Scripture, it’s just that Catholics acknowledge that Christianity is more than what can be derived from Scripture. Catholicism is distilled not only through the Holy Writ, but through history, through philosophy, and through the authority of the Holy Mother Church. Catholicism can’t be learned about by only considering what Scriptural arguments can be made, but by understanding her history, her motivation, her understanding of herself.

To put it very bluntly, of necessity the Church does not depend on only Scripture. If the Church were to make the claim it held fast Scripture as its only authority, then the Church must abandon Scripture itself because the Church only believes there is Scripture because the Church had the authority to say what is and isn’t Scriptural! Protestants in this way leech on the history of the Catholic Church by effectively subsuming the Scriptures of the Church with their sola Scriptura; they stole one thing, added another element, and bam-shabang, there is a whole new branch of Christianity which is justified because of the new concept that someone can interpret Scripture for themselves apart from the Church!

Understanding the history of Catholicism next to Protestantism is to see the depth and breadth of the Catholic Church’s theology, but to see the history of Protestantism next to Catholicism is to see how radically different Protestantism is by reversing the role of the Church and Scripture and of believer and doctrine.

In summary, a Protestant cannot understand Catholicism by attempting to extrapolate it from what they know about other denominations within Protestantism. Attempting to refute Catholicism on Protestant terms of sola Scriptura is to not even be talking about Catholicism in the first place. Catholicism, to be understood by the Protestant, must be learned about as they first learned about Christianity, and never attempt to place it within the concepts of Protestantism. Catholicism may as well be learned about as one learns about a different religion for the first time. Catholics and Protestants might use some of the same words, some of the same texts, some of the same beliefs, but they use these words in totally separate ways.

Catholicism cannot be framed as a part of Protestantism. The Church must be understood as she understands herself, or else one shall never be able to understand her.

Should God Create when there would be Damned?

Let us suppose, at least for the theory at least one of these propositions is true;

God is just to create a world where there are damned because

1) of the absolute contingency of a person (as considered here)

2) this is the best of all possible worlds (Liebniz)

3) There is no other possible world (I think this one unlikely)

Now, how is the joy of the Father and Saved to be explained when one considers the reality of the loss of the damned?

I think it can be understand using this story.

A father chooses to give each of his children a gift. For whatever reason, some of the children reject their gifts. The loss of this gift places them apart from the father, not through his own design, but through the choice of the children. However, there are some children who accept the gift, and find great joy in the gift, and the father finds great joy in the joy of his children.

Should the children not feel joy because some of the other children rejected their gift that would’ve brought them a joy commensurate with their own? I think not, because the children chose of their own free will to reject the gift, and so they are getting exactly what they chose. Their loss is by their own choice. For the children who accepted the gift to refuse joy would be granting the children who rejected the gift a power to veto joy; joy can’t be had because they refuse themselves to have joy. This is of course wrong; they don’t have the right to deny someone the joy of their choosing because they had an equal chance of choosing joy. I would think the same follows to the father’s joy.

The reality is that we are these children, and the father of this story is God. He offers us the gift of eternal life, which brings unending and incomprehensible joy. Should I not feel joy in God because you choose not to? Do you have a right to denying people joy in God? If not, then what should stop God creating people who will be damned when they cannot prevent the joy the saved shall have?

How to Understand the Religious Worldview

Caricatures are damaging. Misrepresentation is poisonous not only to those who drink it but especially to those who espouse it. Atheists and agnostics who don’t understand the worldview that religious adherents have are essentially incapable of understanding the motivations the person has for their beliefs. Seeing this problem, I wish to present my own worldview insofar of its religious element, which, I suppose I should confess, is the entirety of it, for a reason that will make sense should you get to the end of this post.

The first thing to understand about my religious beliefs (i.e. the existence of God, the divinity of Christ, that man is Fallen) is NOT

1) derived from some psychological fear of death

2) superstitious belief in some sort of magic

3) delusions about a wizard in the sky who will save me.

If you are going to understand anything that I talk about, you will have to shed these ideas about what I believe. The reason for my believing something is not motivated by any of those things, and, in fact, I would argue against their reasonableness for believing in something.

So why do I believe something? I think the strongest argument is simply for the reason that it is true. I believe there is a God because I believe it is true that there is a God. Yes, I know, it is a rather insignificant statement, but notice what my motivations aren’t.

So, religious worldviews should be held because they are honestly believed to explain “life, the universe, and everything else.” I believe there is a God because I don’t see the coherency of atheism (where did being come from?), I believe Christ really did rise again because it doesn’t make sense that the Apostles would’ve gone to their deaths teaching it unless it happened, I believe the Catholic Church is the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church because the history of the Church doesn’t make sense otherwise. These are, of course, not arguments, I’m only trying to show the motivation for my beliefs.

If you wish to understand why people are religious, you must see their beliefs as an act of their seeking of the truth. While this doesn’t mean we must believe they have found the truth, that they have been totally honest about their search for the truth, or that they’ve been diligent and anxious about what they commit themselves to as the truth, you must still see their beliefs held because they believe them. If you say they believe something because of something they have expressly denied, you have disengaged from an honest discussion on what they believe.

The Immaculate Conception

Today is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, a Holy Day of Obligation in the Catholic Church. Seeing as its the occasion, I figured I may as well present a short analysis of the doctrine and present a precursory defense of the doctrine.

What does the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception mean? In short, it says that Mary was conceived without Original Sin, unlike all the rest of humanity who is born under this taint.

The reasoning is that, seeing as Jesus is supposed to be God-Man, the one qualified to die on behalf of humanity for the forgiveness of sins, He must be totally free of sin such that 1) He was restored to Original Justice and 2) He did not sin. Protestants would agree to both (Original Justice is the “original condition” of man before the Fall). However, what Protestants do disagree with is the particular means.

Catholics say the condition of (1) had to be fulfilled through His mother; a mother void of any actual or original sin (they are distinct). This way Jesus could be born without any problems ensuing (such as the person of God inheriting not only humanity but the inherent separation from God that is the result of Original Sin).

Protestants propose a different solution to this problem, being that rather than there being any necessity of Mary being sinless or the Immaculate Conception, Jesus could be born Himself as the Immaculate Conception, protected from Original Sin that would be present to Him ordinarily through Mary’s actual or original sin.

The problem with the Protestant position is that there is an absurdity that results, that can be more clearly seen when the Catholic justification for Mary being the Immaculate Conception is understood.

Mary calls Jesus her “savior,” which Catholics agree with; not that was saved from sin in the idea that she was pulled out of an abyss, but rather that she was saved from ever falling into the abyss of sin in the first place via Christ’s saving work on the Cross. Obviously, Time for God is not an issue, so issues of chronological justice aren’t necessary (and even if one wanted to do this, then how does one see how Abraham’s bosom was justified except through the future of Christ’s sacrifice?).

The way I explain how exactly this happens is this;

It was understood by God that the Son could not be conceived of Mary unless He could be protected from inheriting original sin. This act of protection could only be accomplished by the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross. This protection then was “loaned” from the Holy Spirit per the pending event of the Crucifixion, at which point the “debt” would be paid in whole.

This protection couldn’t be applied to Christ, because then the absurdity of Christ dying for Christ results, which I don’t need to argue for. A Savior is not a Savior if he needs a Savior, because then the Savior is the ‘original’ Savior; further, a Savior could not be the Savior by being saved by the Savior who is himself. I hope that the illogicality is seen, just as one would see the problem of a square circle.

Thus, the protection must be applied to one prior to the Savior; this would be the mother of the Son, as Christ inherited His humanity en toto from no one but Mary; He must have, or otherwise problems would ensue, being that Christ would be a half-breed human, part of the race of Adam and part newly created race, and not sufficient to die on behalf of mankind.

A Protestant might reply that I have done nothing but make the circle larger, that the end result is the same; the Savior dies for the Savior, even if mediated by a mother. I say no, because the original source of the protection is through the Holy Spirit, and the debt is paid. The protection must necessarily be paid for by the sacrifice, but the act of protection is not immediately resultant of the sacrifice itself; see this sketch;

1) Protection <– paid for by sacrifice

2) sacrifice –> protection –> sacrifice –> protection…

Obviously, I am not saying (2 )happened, or even could happen. (1) happened; the act of protection is not caused by the sacrifice, though purchased by the sacrifice.

Complex, but it should be understood that God reuniting man to Himself could hardly be simpler than the plight man caused himself to be in.

Now, a Protestant is naturally curious to see whether there is Scripture to back up such an idea, and I will demonstrate that yes, there is a heck of a lot of Scripture to back up the Immaculate Conception.

First, bring us back to Genesis;

“I [God] will put enmity between you [the serpent] and the woman.” (Genesis 3:15a)

Notice how God doesn’t say He will place enmity between Satan and the Savior, but between Satan and the woman. The Immaculate Conception is an act, and God here is saying He will act to put this enmity in place; there is thus a concordance between the doctrine and Scripture, because the Immaculate Conception does precisely this; put enmity between Satan and the woman. Satan is entirely unable to claim the woman to be his in anyway, as she is set totally apart from sin, totally set against Satan and his offspring, sin.

Second, there is the choice of words that the author of the Gospel of Luke places on the lips of the Angel who brings the Annunciation to Mary. His particular words are

“Hail, full of grace!” or alternately “Greetings, favored one!” (admittedly, it seems to me that the latter is a de-neutered version made for Protestants by Protestants, as I’ll explain)

The Greek is specifically “χαιρε κεχαριτωμενη” or “Chaire, kecharitomene!” The invented word here is very interesting.

First, chaire is a greeting or salutation, which I think is more properly translated to “hail,” as it conveys more formal interest than the rather boring and un-dynamic “greetings.”

The next word, “kecharitomene,” is the interesting word, because it is made up of a root (charitoo), a prefix (ke-), and a suffix      (-mene).

The root charitoo means “to grace.”

The prefix ke- means the word is in perfect present tense.

The suffix -mene means the object (Mary here) is passive.

So, the phrase “χαιρε κεχαριτωμενη” can thus be more adequately translated as “Hail, you who have been graced and still perfectly retain this grace.”

The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is the only doctrine that fulfills the entire meaning of the phrase that the author of Luke chose to use for the angel’s greeting.

One may of course wonder why there is so much emphasis on Mary at all; the answer is that the emphasis on Mary is emphasis on Christ; it is because of who Christ is that we recognize and understand who Mary is. The early Church Fathers said that the defense of the doctrines the Catholic Church holds about Mary are defenses of the divinity of Christ; the idea is that Mariology insulates and protects Christology. Consider, for instance, how much more certain it should seem that the birth of Christ really was of Mary as a Virgin if we consider that Mary was both Ever-Virgin and without sin; there’s no holes for an opponent to conclude it possible that Mary wasn’t really a virgin.

Now, of course, the Marian doctrines do not stand apart from the Christological doctrines, remember. An attack of Mariological doctrines must be based on a Christology, since the Mariological doctrines are nothing but extensions of Christology. The Marian doctrines are at their heart Christocentric, and an understanding of Mary that isn’t Christocentric is an understanding that cannot understand Mary because it doesn’t understand Christ.

I have, of course, covered this topic several other times, so for more explanation and defense of the doctrine see these links;

The Necessity of Mary’s Immaculate Conception in Scripture

On Mary’s Sinlessness

On Mary’s Sinlessness and Immaculate Conception, a Reply

Christianity, Religion of the Church

Islam calls Christianity a “religion of the book,” alongside Judaism, emphasizing Judaism’s, Christianity’s, and Islam’s common (claimed) heritage via the Patriarch Abraham.

I think this is a fundamental misunderstanding of Christianity, actually. Christianity in its conception was the religion of the disciples of Christ; it was the term given for the system of beliefs and practices of the community that proclaimed Jesus Christ God Incarnate and Savior of Man. This community, the ecclesia, or Church, was determined by nothing other than the leaders of the Church, originally being the Apostles, with this ministry being inherited and succeeded by the Bishops. Always has the Church been ultimately under the guidance of the episcopate, or college of bishops. It is the episcopate that has defined for the Church the “fundamentals” of faith, such as Christ’s divinity, saving work on the Cross, the Trinitarian nature of God, and etc.

The “Religion of the Book” idea is actually a later novelty in comparison to the Church’s ecclesiastical nature. While it isn’t (relatively speaking) that much later that the canon of the Bible was defined (late 4th century), there is still the 350 years or so that the Church was without a set canon of Scripture. Based on this history, the idea of Christianity being a “Religion of the Book” is a strange bastard child in comparison with the history of Christianity.

With the Protestant Formation and the “discovery” of Scripture (in reality, Scripture had always had a place in the Church’s theology, liturgy, and practice) and the novel idea of “Scripture alone,” of necessity the Scripture became the only guiding feature of the Protestant Christian movement. Since the “Reformers” lacked any valid claims to the succession that the Catholic Church had maintained for 1500 years by that point, the only offense that could be lodged against the established Church was a claim of the Bible’s ultimate authority, which in history was quite a novelty, and turned Christianity entirely upside down.

Now all of a sudden instead of the Bible being at the behest of the Church, the Church was supposedly at the behest of the Bible. Of course, what the Bible meant by “Church” was a controversial issue, since which Reformer properly inherited the Church was indeterminate; was it Luther? Calvin? Zwingli? King Henry? It shouldn’t be any surprise that this novel reversal of which-established-which produced a great amount of discord in the newly established ecclesiastical communities, and in fact it still does (there are, for instance, over 200 “Anglican” communions in existence at the moment, and I would bet a new one will be formed in Los Angeles due to the election of an openly lesbian ‘bishop’). The problem of this reversal I have elsewhere discussed, so I won’t follow the tack further along this line.

My point is that there is a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of Christianity due to the novel concept of Scripture alone, purposed by the Protestants and diffused into culture’s understanding of Christianity. In other cultures where Protestantism has not dominated, there is typically not such confusion over precisely what Christianity is.

The idea that Christianity is a Religion of the Book is false in history. It is nowhere found in Scripture, nor was it ever taught by Christ or the Apostles. Christianity has been historically a Religion of the Church, and to conceive of it as anything else is to misunderstand its history and relation to the world as a whole.

Protestantism is a Christianity that is a Religion of the Book; Catholicism and Orthodoxy which have veritable historical ties to the Apostles and Christ are both Religions of the Church; thus can be seen the radical difference between Catholicism and Protestantism. It is such a radical difference I would wonder at whether the doctrines and Protestantism are by nature totally separate despite the seeming agreement, since they are reached by wholly different means; one by acknowledging the Church, one by acknowledging one’s own interpretation of Scripture.

The Problem of the Damned, Part 2

The first solution I have to the “Problem of the Damned” is that the reason God created this particular universe is because of our absolute contingency. What I mean by this is that the person known as me, who I am in essence doesn’t and couldn’t possibly exist in any other universe. There could be other persons like me, who seem like me in every regard, but they would not be me. I do not exist in any other possible world except the actual world.

I am not saying that we are made unique by our particular experiences, those are only accidental. I am speaking of our essence, that quite literally, unless God instantiated this particular possible world, I would not exist. If God had created any other possible world but not this one, there would be no I, no you, no anyone who we know in this world. We cannot exist in any possible world except the one that we find ourselves in.

So, my absolute contingency is valid enough reason to create this particular world despite there being damned people, because if God had created only those worlds in which there were no damned people, you and I would not exist to experience the beatific vision.

An unintended consequence is that this would make it seem that God would, or maybe even should, create all possible worlds in which there is at least one person who loves Him. I don’t think this is necessarily a bad consequence, and in fact I would already argue for such a type of multiverse on the basis of God’s infinite and unending love. So, this is in fact coherent and fits together as a whole with the character of God as He is known.

The only problem with this solution is that the idea of absolute contingency is a postulate. I wonder if I could say it is a conclusion based on the premises of a just, omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent God and the prospect of damned people, but I don’t think I can commit myself to its certainty, though at least its probability. Also, this isn’t my only solution, so it doesn’t need to be true for there to be a valid theodicy to the problem of the damned.

The Problem of the Damned, Part 1

Rather than calling it the problem of evil, I would call the “moral problem” of God existing the “Problem of the Damned.” First, why the problem of evil is not sufficient to deny the existence of God’s omnibenevolence.

Physical evils, such as earthquakes, illnesses, and other acts of nature that lack any purposeful design behind them, are great inconveniences, even to the point of death, but not to the point that they deny our ultimate end, which is the beatific vision. Quite simply, that I should be born with a defective heart is nothing against God, because I do not even deserve to live in the first place, and even with my defective heart “all shall be made right” ultimately. So, these sorts of temporal problems offer no difficulty, and I can’t imagine why we should expect God to suddenly go around healing amputees as if their existence threatened His existence.

First, the amputees in question are offered eternal life with the infinite pleasure found in the beatific vision. Second, God doesn’t exist to prove that He exists to us, anyways. So, its moot.

That has not anything to do with the problem of evil, but I believe it can be solved analogically. Simply, no man’s evil has any threat of denying my eternal life, so things are all good “in the end,” no matter what temporal problems there may be. No evil has the chance of threatening God or His intents, and to suggest that it does is to grossly misunderstand God.

The real problem would be put forward like this;

Why should God create a world in which He knew there would be people who rejected Him, and would be ultimately consigned to damnation?

It is my intent to answer this as I have found myself able to in the next couple of posts.