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Statement of Confession and Intent 1. The Society of Latitudinarian Evangelicals shall be constituted and maintained by them upon the following confession: The Evangelical Alliance’s Basis of Faith and the National Association of Evangelical’s Statement of Faith ; 2.1.2 to 2.1.5 and 2.1.8 of the Constitution of the Church of England Evangelical Council ; That “the doctrine of their Churches is grounded in the Holy Scriptures, and in such teachings of the ancient Fathers and Councils of the Church as are agreeable to the said Scriptures.” (Covenantal Structure of the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches). 2. To the following ends: To revive and continue the spirit of the Latitudinarians in articulating the Christian faith under the supremacy of Christ as revealed by the Bible. To promote and foster the common spiritual fellowship all Christians have in the Gospel especially as can be found in 1. To defend the faith with the best insights of humanity, both past and present, ever conscious of its limits in the light of our fallen nature and the necessity of the regeneration of the Holy Spirit who works as and where He pleases. To “analyze this present time” (Luke 12:56) and discern the will of God for their present circumstance. To prop ose and contribute future projects, plans, and policies for the advancement of the Kingdom of God. ​ And these members do commend this Society unto the care of the Almighty Incarnate, and pray that He may be pleased to use it to comfort the saints, strengthen the fellowship, rebuke the recalcitrant, and above all, to expand the Kingdom of God.

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About Us A Society of Evangelicals working out the Faith in the Latitudinarian Spirit, appropriating the best insights and philosophy of humanity under the Aegis of Jesus Christ Learn More The Discussion Forum Dominic Foo Aug 08 Conceptual Instruments and Guides for Perceiving the Existence of God Like Reactions 0 0 comments 0 Views Dominic Foo Mar 30 Reflections on Holy Saturday: Christ's Descent to Hades and Prayers for the Dead Like Reactions 0 0 comments 0 Views Dominic Foo Mar 29 "Say my name when you pray to the skies"; On the Phenomenology of Praying towards Heaven Like Reactions 0 0 comments 0 Views Dominic Foo Mar 23 Why it is Intuitively Plausible that the Meaning of Laws and Words are Found in the Author's Intentions Like Reactions 0 0 comments 0 Views Dominic Foo Mar 17 On the Utility of Customs and Mores Like Reactions 0 0 comments 0 Views Dominic Foo Mar 09 Non-Euclidean Geometry and the "Real World" Like Reactions 0 0 comments 0 Views The Podcasts/Streams

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New Posts Dominic Foo Aug 08 Conceptual Instruments and Guides for Perceiving the Existence of God Apologetics ...for what can be clearer and more obvious, when we have lifted our eyes to the sky, and have gazed upon the heavenly bodies, than that there exists some divine power of exalted intelligence by which these are ruled? Cicero: On the Nature of the Gods “What are you looking at?” she asks. What am I looking at? My future wife? The mother of my children? The person I was put on this earth to find? Yes.” Peter Wentz: Gray I decided to compile and organise in one essay my years of reflections on theistic apologetics, the topic of "proving" the existence of God, and the approach I've settled on today. These reflections meanders through all kinds and fields of philosophical and theological topics, epistemology, psychology, philosophy of mind, nature, even Taoism, but over the years I've found my views here more or less settled and stable and don't feel the need to revisit or substantially revise them. That said, the title of my essay, conceptual instruments and guides for perceiving the existence of God, may raise some eyebrows, and is very different from the usual "evidence" or "proofs" for the existence of God. To understand this approach we will need to lay some epistemic groundwork and foundation for this discussion. Epistemic Standards? It is usual to speak of standards of evidence and of proof, as if there were a measurable yardstick for determining the amount and weight of evidence, which then passes some sort of threshold to pass as "knowledge" before you can be said to be justified or know something. These are of course physical metaphors, if you ask how hot water needs to be before it boils, there is a definite number, 100 degrees Celsius. How much energy would be enough to lift or move this object, etc. Yet how can we translate these physical measurable metaphors into epistemic normative terms? How can we determine what constitutes "enough" evidence? These are weighty (!) epistemological questions, but which I do not intend to enter. I will simply state my own position outright: these standards are a complete fiction summoned entirely out of the thin air, I am generally against the idea of epistemic normativity, as if there were some invisible ruler or measure of "amount" or "weight" of evidence with even more ethereal "thresholds" for evidence, we should not be misled by metaphors we cannot cash in in literal terms. I am more of an epistemic naturalist or view knowing as a causative affair, certain perceptions, arguments, or ideas cause you or motivate you to accept a proposition as true. Although I do not intend to enter into a meta-epistemic argument about my position, to motivate (!) my position I would simply use a parallel field. We are familiar with the phrase "proof beyond a reasonable doubt" as a standard of evidence and proof in criminal trials. Before a jury can convict a person of a crime, potentially committing a person to a lifetime in prison or even death, the prosecutor has to prove his guilt "beyond a reasonable doubt". It is of interest that of late his formula has fallen into disfavour in English courts. The following is taken from a law of evidence textbook: This formulation [beyond reasonable doubt] fell into some disfavour for a time because of supposed difficulties of explaining to juries the nature of reasonable doubt, if they experienced problems of understanding. Expressions intended to be helpful, but of questionable value, such as, ‘a reasonable doubt is one for which you could give reasons if asked’ found disfavour in the higher courts and led to some successful appeals against conviction. As a result, a second formulation gained wide favour. (b) ‘Satisfied so that you feel sure’ (or more simply ‘sure of guilt’). This formulation was advocated by Lord Goddard CJ in Summers, when he said: If a jury is told that it is their duty to regard the evidence and see that it satisfies them so that they can feel sure when they return a verdict of guilty, that is much better than using the expression ‘reasonable doubt’ and I hope in future that that will be done. Richard Glover, Peter Murphy: Murphy on Evidence, Thirteenth Edition (2013) This would be my approach. I would not be approaching this question of perceiving God's existence in terms of some ephemeral "standards" of reasonableness floating "out there", rather, in my discussions I would mention and refer to various ideas, concepts, suggestions, etc, which serve as pointers, telescopes and microscopes to guide you to see and perceive the reality of God for yourself, but they are not the thing itself to be seen, they merely point to the thing. It is then my hope that my pointing or demonstrative would so help you see the point I am trying to make such that it subjectively satisfies you and make you feel sure to "return a verdict" and accept the claim. If this method is "good enough" for the criminal law courts, where a person can be deprived of his or her freedom and even life, I believe that it should be good enough for our topic where the perception of the existence of God may very well lead to life-long changes to ourselves. Here's another picture to help you see (!) the epistemic method here. Suppose we were in a forest or jungle searching for an obscure animal, or playing a game of Where's Wally, and then suppose I spot the animal or Wally and say, there it is! And then you ask where? All I can do is to point or guide your perception to where the animal or Wally's at. "The animal is under the tree with some yellow leaves, besides the blueberry shrubs." My discussion here would be highly analogous to pointing out where the animal is, I will help direct and focus your attention to aid you perceive and find the animal, but in the end, you have to look and see for yourself. My pointing and guides are not evidence of the existence of the animal in the sense of satisfying some standard, they are just tools and instruments to help you see. Galileo before complained that some of the philosophers who opposed him refused to look into the telescope to see his claims for themselves. I can provide the "telescope", the guide and "conceptual instruments" to help you see, but in the end, you have to look into the telescope yourself, and you would be right that the mere telescope or tool doesn't by itself constitute "evidence" for my claims. Different Instruments for Different Things As the issue of epistemology and methods are so deeply entangled with traditional theistic apologetics, I believe it necessary to continue clearing away from the epistemic assumptions we will have in approaching this question before we actually enter into it proper. If we continue the metaphor of telescopes, we have no problems understanding that different entities require different instruments for perception. We use telescopes for the stars and microscopes for organisms. It is obvious then that the method for perceiving and understanding a claim depends on the contents and nature of the claim. To establish that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line in geometry would be very different from establishing that water boils at 100 degrees, the existence of electrons, and that of Napoleon. It would be in vain to attempt to establish mathematical propositions by attempting to measure every straight line in existence to determine that they are the shortest, or to conduct a repeatable experiment to verify that Napoleon once existed, it is not like we can create a parallel earth and run the history and see if Napoleon pops up, like performing a chemical reaction to see if a compound is produced. So before we can provide the tools for perceiving the divine existence, we have to know what we are looking for in the first place, and what sort of thing God is. Beginning with the Basics: God as a Cosmic Mind Most traditional apologetics would begin with a definition of God which ascribes various omni-properties to Him, e.g. omnipotence, omnibenevolence, omniscience, eternality, infinite, etc, etc. Then having defined God as the whole package, there is the difficulty of how any evidence can possibly prove the whole package, along with substantive problems with the consistency of any individual property or with the package itself. What I would propose here is something a lot more modest, and slower paced. I do not wish to embroil myself into substantive and controversial theses, say, concerning God's omnibenevolence, because "what is goodness?" itself is a landmine of philosophical controversies which I think it would be unwise to make as a precondition to settle before we can discuss God. (And in the interest of full disclosure, I am myself a theistic moral nihilist, so I would probably not accept 95% of most refined conceptions of omnibenevolence.) Let's instead start with something a lot more basic: God is a mind, a "mind behind nature" or a mind "behind" the universe and cosmos, something along the lines of Cicero's quote at the start. This definition will be agnostic as to whether this mind is "benevolent", "evil", omnipotent, etc. We will attempt to bracket and segment as many questions and issues as possible. Okay, so now we know what we are looking for, how can we go about looking for it? Minds behind Bodies: Animals, Humans, and Nature If we are talking about looking for a mind behind the body of the universe or nature, this highly suggests that the correct approach would be to see how we determine whether minds exists behind bodies in general. There are as such 2 issues at play here: (1) What exactly is a mind in the first place and (2) How can we tell that there is a mind behind a body? Do crabs, oysters, or trees have minds? How about ants, monkeys or fishes? Is there "the mind of the People" in some collective sense? Do A.I. or computers have minds? These are again substantive philosophical questions, which we obviously cannot enter into comprehensively, we will touch on certain points of them to move the discussion along, as long as it aids our perception, but we obviously cannot go into them in depth. We will however begin with an extreme thought experiment to establish the "lower limits" of the discussion: there are two philosophical thought experiments of interest here: solipsism and the philosophical zombie. Solipsism is the thesis that only you have a mind, and no one else has it because you are literally incapable of telepathy and can't hear the thoughts of others. There is only your mind and that's it. (In the game Darktide, one of the psykers believes that he is in a dream and he is all alone, and everyone is simply part of his dream and have no minds.) A philosophical zombie is the idea that people are just meat machines, they have biologies and chemical reactions in their brains, but there is no consciousness or feeling or mind behind those eyes, they are mere zombies. A pure meat machine with no mind. The following quotes from Tim Bayne's Philosophy of Mind: An Introduction and from the chapter "Chapter 11: Other Minds" would be particularly instructive. Bayne in the following quote addresses the "sceptical problem of other minds" which we just raised earlier: We ordinarily assume that the individuals with whom we interact on a daily basis have minds, and that we know quite a bit about their mental lives. The sceptic, however, argues that these assumptions are unjustified, and that we know little (if anything) about the minds of others. Mindreading, according to the sceptic, is not a source of knowledge. Indeed, the radical sceptic argues that we don’t even have the capacity to form warranted beliefs about other minds. [...] There are two ways of engaging with the sceptical problem of other minds. The first aims to prove the sceptic wrong, and to demonstrate to the sceptic’s satisfaction that our ordinary mindreading methods deliver knowledge. In my view, this position is misguided, for it seems to me that we are justified in assuming that the sceptic is wrong. To my mind, a better way of engaging with the sceptical problem is to treat it as issuing a challenge regarding the nature of our knowledge of other minds. The aim, then, is not to prove that we have knowledge of the minds of our follow human beings, but to identify the basis of this knowledge. His position and approach is directly isomorphic to the approach we will take here in how to perceive the divine mind. He refuses to start from the position of agnosticism of other minds and then proceed to justify our knowledge of it. He wants to just start from the assumption or presupposition that they are wrong, and his task isn't to justify the existence of other minds to the sceptic in the sense of providing "enough" evidence for their existence, but to simply explore what is the basis for claiming such a knowledge. We likewise approach the sceptical problem as merely a challenge to describe, not justify, how we come to know God, it is "not to prove that we have knowledge" of God by providing "enough" evidence, "but to identify the basis of this knowledge" and the methods for perceiving other minds, whether behind human bodies, monkeys, ants, trees or the whole universe. The chapter's first main point is to discuss three different theories of "mindreading" or theories for how we come to know what other people are thinking. They are the "perceptual", that we can "see" the pain of others or "hear" their anger, "theory-theory", where we form a theory based on various data to explain their behaviour and postulate mental states, and finally, the "simulation" account, where we create a model of other people's mental states within our own minds and simulate in ourselves what the other person might be feeling. Thus, we imagine, "what would it be like to be such and such person under such and such scenario" and investigate in the "laboratory" of our own mind. He discusses the strengths and weaknesses of each account which I won't go into, however, there is no doubt that in reality we use all these three different methods for "knowing" what another person is thinking and feeling, none of them will be "decisive" or provide "enough evidence" of what another person is feeling or thinking, if at all. We do after all misunderstand people. But once more, the more instruments and methods we have for perceiving another mind, the larger our conceptual toolbox is for perceiving the divine mind. Let's now relate each of these methods to the divine mind. The first is "perceptual" and that we can just directly "see" or "hear" people's feelings and emotions. If we assume that we can directly perceive people's emotions then clearly we have direct knowledge of other people's minds. However this parallels the religious experience/intuition claim of the theists. Some religious believers simply claim to directly perceive God in our hearts, their minds, or via ineffable prophetic visions. In our daily lives we often are so busy and interact with each other shallowly that we often do not spare a thought for how they are feeling or how their day have went, but when we focus our empathic perceptions as it were, we suddenly feel and see what other people are feeling, how tired they are, etc. Again, if we assume that people can directly perceive other people's emotions/the divine mind, then we have no problem on knowledge of minds, human and divine, in general. There are moments when we look at the sunset, or at the glory of nature and we focus, and somehow there is an ineffable perception of the divine mind behind it. We shall move straight to the simulationist account because that's where he concentrates the weight of his arguments. Recall that the simulationist account argues that we "read" the minds of others by imagining or constructing a model of their mind in our own minds and simulating the results. By the simulationist account, we can know the existence of other minds by analogy and this has passed into the philosophical literature as the "analogical account". Thus, we infer the existence of other minds by analogy with our own, we argue that certain kinds of outward behaviour by other people should be associated with certain kinds of mental states because certain kinds of behaviour in our case are associated with certain kinds of mental states, etc. So my behaviour-mind connection should be analogous to yours. He proceeds to spend some time discussing various objections to this account and the counter arguments, etc. However, at this stage, it should be pretty obvious that this is directly isomorphic to the "Watchmaker Analogy" argument for the divine design, that nature's order bears the marks of intelligence analogous to the ordering of certain materials into artefacts bearing the marks of human intelligence. So, in the philosophy of mind case, our own ordering of behaviour and outward actions bear the marks of certain mental states and emotions, ergo, by analogy, we can infer that other people's ordering of their actions and behaviour bears the marks of their mental states and emotion. Before we go into the "theory-theory" account, I think here it would be useful to discuss the nature of this "organisation" and how it relates to "mind-like" qualities so that we know what we are theorising about. The Mathematical Laws of Physics, Organisation and Minds So far we have been discussing how to know or perceive other minds, but we have yet to address a much more fundamental question: what is a mind or consciousness? This is a philosophical mire which if we step into we will get sucked in pretty quickly. What I will instead do is to mention and discuss several theories of mind, which will illuminate the way towards perceiving the divine mind behind nature, regardless of which conceptual tool we in the end chose to accept as a true or proper account of the mind. According to Daniel Dennett and other functionalists and reductionists about the mind, there is nothing so qualitatively special about human consciousness or human subjectivity, the mind just is a set of certain objective functional features, e.g. information processing system, cognitive capabilities, etc, which can be applied to anything which “performs the same functions” or “exhibits the same objective traits”, e.g. A.I. any other system which exhibits the same traits. Thus, consciousness is not a qualitative binary, yes or no, which someone, or something, possesses, it comes in various degrees and types which resembles each other in their complexity, extent, etc. Functionalists use the term “multiple-realisability” to describe the idea that the same “mind-like” features or cognitive system can be “realised” or applied to many other different mediums or entities, other than humans. Thus, any information processing system which performs similar functions could be said to be a mind, they wouldn't be exactly like human minds (then again is any human mind exactly alike each other?), minds comes in various complexities, organisations and systems, but any sort of organised information processing would be a mind or at the very least, mind-like. Now, does nature in fact exhibit such "organisation"? The very existence of mathematical laws of physics or laws of nature themselves are the informational organisation of nature. That the universe fits mathematical formulas itself seems to point or indicate a mind behind nature organising nature. In the words of Newton: This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being. This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all; and on account of his dominion he is wont to be called Lord God παντοκράτωρ, or Universal Ruler This of course will lead down the next rabbit hole: what is mathematics and the nature of mathematical organisation, such that it points to a mind? Again, this is another mire we can only touch lightly without allowing ourselves to be dragged too deeply. The first thing to note that any application of mathematics to physics is a contingent application, that is, it merely happens that a certain aspect of mathematics is applicable to some aspect of physical reality, but there is no real reason or necessity for the universe to so neatly conform to mathematical deduction. If we view mathematics as the creation and organisation of a mind (human or computer), then that the physical universe exhibit behaviour directly isomorphic to categories and organisations of the human mind is directly a mind-like quality. There is an objection which may occur to this account. The objection goes, if mathematics is a product of the human mind, and if the human mind is a product of nature, then doesn't it stand to reason that it would make perfect sense for nature itself to evolve beings which would encodes its own mathematical structure into their minds and capable of grasping the mathematical structure of the universe? But this "objection" merely explains how we came to have the capacity to create mathematical structures, it still wouldn't explain how the universe itself came to bear these structures. Even if no humans evolved, and nature did not birth beings who could grasp its own structure, the laws of physics would still be what they were and there would still be the question as to why would the universe conform to these mental structures independently of the existence of anybody around to create those structures for them to grasp. Remember, we are not operating on the premise that there is something magically or qualitatively special about human minds, our premise is that anything at an abstract level with similar structures, organisations, information processing systems, etc, would be a mind, whether we are talking about squids, computers, nature or humans. Thus, even if there were no humans, these organised mind-like qualities would still be there. Laws of Nature and Systems Here is another philosophical angle to look at this issue: what is a law of nature? What does it mean to speak of a law of nature, as if nature were organised into laws, rules and regulations? If you look at the Stanford philosophy entry there are several accounts of what constitutes a law of nature. The account which is of interest here is what is known as the “systems” account, where laws of nature are nothing more than deductive systems. To quote from them: Deductive systems are individuated by their axioms. The logical consequences of the axioms are the theorems. Some true deductive systems will be stronger than others; some will be simpler than others. These two virtues, strength and simplicity, compete. (It is easy to make a system stronger by sacrificing simplicity: include all the truths as axioms. It is easy to make a system simple by sacrificing strength: have just the axiom that 2 + 2 = 4.) According to Lewis (1973, 73), the laws of nature belong to all the true deductive systems with a best combination of simplicity and strength. So, for example, the thought is that it is a law that all uranium spheres are less than a mile in diameter because it is, arguably, part of the best deductive systems; quantum theory is an excellent theory of our universe and might be part of the best systems, and it is plausible to think that quantum theory plus truths describing the nature of uranium would logically entail that there are no uranium spheres of that size (Loewer 1996, 112). It is doubtful that the generalization that all gold spheres are less than a mile in diameter would be part of the best systems. It could be added as an axiom to any system, but it would bring little or nothing of interest in terms of strength and adding it would sacrifice something in terms of simplicity. I won’t go into the pros and cons of this account in detail except to note two points: One supposed strength of this account is that it keeps within Humean constrains in not postulating mysterious metaphysical entities like universals or causation, etc, and it also keeps within the limits of Humean supervenience ““the doctrine that all there is in the world is a vast mosaic of local matters of particular fact, just one little thing and then another”. However it is one core objection to this account which is of interest to us: Some argue that this approach will have the untoward consequence that laws are inappropriately mind-dependent in virtue of the account’s appeal to the concepts of simplicity, strength and best balance, concepts whose instantiation seems to depend on cognitive abilities, interests, and purposes. The appeal to simplicity raises further questions stemming from the apparent need for a regimented language to permit reasonable comparisons of the systems (Lewis 1983, 367.) The objection here as such seems to be that the systems view of the laws of nature makes them look like “mind-dependent” or cognitive-shaped entities. However, instead of viewing this as a modus tollens, we can see this as a modus ponens instead. Since the laws of nature are mind-dependent and cognitive-shaped entities, therefore we can infer that the universe is maintained by mind-dependent or cognitive-shaped universal mind. As such, any law of nature, physics, or information system in general, which conforms to mathematical system, would be "mind-like" or cognitively shaped, they are themselves the acts of a mind. Degrees of Minds One could object that all these are merely mind like and not literally a mind or otherwise one would be guilty of anthropomorphism, etc, etc, then we can push Dennett’s argument that a mind just is this ordered structure or system without any special remainder or qualitatively exotic extra “qualia” needed to make something a mind. This of course is not a novel argument. The mathematician and philosopher Raymond M. Smullyan, as well as Asian philosophers, has already noted a similar point. In Smullyan fictional dialogue, Is God a Taoist? one merely needs to substitute “personal” for “mind-like” to see that more or less the same point is being made. Mortal: There is one thing about your self-description which is somewhat disturbing. You describe yourself essentially as a process. This puts you in such an impersonal light, and so many people have a need for a personal God. God: So because they need a personal God, it follows that I am one? Mortal: Of course not. But to be acceptable to a mortal a religion must satisfy his needs. God: I realize that. But the so-called “personality” of a being is really more in the eyes of the beholder than in the being itself. The controversies which have raged, about whether I am a personal or an impersonal being are rather silly because neither side is right or wrong. From one point of view, I am personal, from another, I am not. It is the same with a human being. A creature from another planet may look at him purely impersonally as a mere collection of atomic particles behaving according to strictly prescribed physical laws. He may have no more feeling for the personality of a human than the average human has for an ant. Yet an ant has just as much individual personality as a human to beings like myself who really know the ant. To look at something impersonally is no more correct or incorrect than to look at it personally, but in general, the better you get to know something, the more personal it becomes. To illustrate my point, do you think of me as a personal or impersonal being? Mortal: Well, I’m talking to you, am I not? God: Exactly! From that point of view, your attitude toward me might be described as a personal one. And yet, from another point of view — no less valid — I can also be looked at impersonally. Again, we are not drawing a bright or clear line between human minds and all other minds, nor dependent on theories which argues the same. Our conception of a mind just needs be "rich" enough to encompass a range of phenomena to include the organisation which we do perceive in nature. Concluding Thoughts: Will and Belief I hope that this discourse has given enough tools and materials for perceiving the divine existence. One must be clear that by no means have these discussions established that the mind perceived is the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob, or the God of the Bible. Those have to do with special revelation and how God specially intervenes in history and nature to reveal his will. It does not establish other qualities of God like that He is infinite, omnipotent, benevolent, etc. We will probably need to discuss the ontological argument for that as well as the nature and limits of logic. In the words of the Archbishop Cranmer: For if we did only know, what God were, and did know nothing of his will toward us, whether he were our friend or foe, favourable or angry, pleased or displeased with us, then our conscience being other wavering and doubtful, should be destitute and void of comfort. Thus, Cranmer understood that there was a difference between knowing merely "what God were" and knowing "of his will towards us". The conceptual instruments here furnish tools for perceiving that God were, they are not empowered to guide us to know his will towards us. There might however be a much more basic philosophical problem: I have been arguing about using these conceptual tools to aid oneself to see or perceive God, aren't I implicitly already assuming that there is something to be seen in the first place? Again, I can appeal back to our previous discussion on the problems of other minds, I assume that there are other minds, I only describe how and the methods for perceiving them, I don't purport to justify their existence or that there is anything for the methods to perceive. In philosophy this is related to the theory that belief in the existence of God is properly basic. It is just "obvious" like how 1+1=2 or that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, and doesn't need justifying. You simply need to frame and describe the method for grasping it and they will "see" that it is true. If God is supposed to be an object of worship and praise for everyone, it would hardly do that He can only be grasped by those willing to wade through extensive philosophical discussions like this one. It has to be obvious even to a child. This doesn't mean that it can't be proven, there are set theoretic proofs for 1+1=2 and advanced calculus arguments for the shortest distance between two points being a straight line. But a person who unironically really doubts that 1+1=2 isn't going to be persuaded by a very complicated argument from advanced set theory. Likewise, the discussions here are meant to provide additional tools and instruments to focus our attention to perceive God, but if you refuse to look into the telescope, no one can help you, just as there are some who actually unironically today reject basic arithmetic propositions. In the end, accepting a belief is not just a matter of perception and experience, there is ultimately an element of subjective will and decision to believe, which goes back to the initial discussion on English law court "standards of proof": subjective satisfaction. Like 0 comments 0 Dominic Foo Mar 30 Reflections on Holy Saturday: Christ's Descent to Hades and Prayers for the Dead Christian Theology Since today is Holy Saturday, the time between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, I thought it would be good to write some reflections on this day which has traditionally been commemorated as the "Harrowing of Hell". It seems from the Bible that after Christ gave up his Spirit, he descended to the dead, stormed the gates of Hades and liberated the captives of Death. Traditionally it is held that this begun with Adam and all the Old Testament patriarchs. This is the outworking of the victory of Christ whereby he brings the life-saving words of the Gospel down to the very lowest depths of Satan's domain and Death's power and "preached to the spirits in prison", proclaiming deliverance from Satan's and Death powers and leading them to freedom from their literal death grip. The implications of this of course is that there is simply absolutely nowhere where Christ's life and victory is not present, nowhere where Christ's saving power cannot be applied. As Romans 8:38-39 put is, "neither death, nor life" can separate us from the love of God. So death itself is no barrier to the love of God in Jesus Christ. Hades, Death and Judgement There has been some conceptual confusion with regards to Hades which rarely has been clarified. In the Hebrew, the word "Sheol" and in the Greek, "Hades", has been used to refer to "the place of the dead". It is technically not "Hell", if by "Hell" we mean the place of everlasting damnation. We have to remember that the sentence to "Hell" or the everlasting fires only occurs at the Last Judgement, at the consumation of all things. This is a little difficult to understand because we cannot help but think of "Hades", "Heaven and Hell" as space-time events or locations, and attempt to square them with our own temporal world and our historical space-time. Here is an analogy which might help. When we do our mathematical proofs, we reason step by step, from this equation to the next equation to the next. This is essentially a sequence of deductions. But this is not a temporal sequence of deductions. No "time" has elapsed from one deduction to another, although time has elapsed in our in time understanding of the flow of deductions, but the deduction itself is "timeless". It is essentially an atemporal sequence of deductions which doesn't take any "time", the sequence of deduction is eternally what it is. Thus, we must think of the relationship between "Hades", "Judgement", "Heaven and Hell" this way too. There is the space-time world, our world, of flowing events in historic time. But "Hades", "Judgement", "Heaven and Hell" are entities which are not part of our historical space-time. They are more like different states which people "enter" into once they depart from our space-time temporal world into these realms out of our time. In the Old Testament, "Hades" or "Sheol" is simply the "place" of the dead. Of course it isn't a literal physical location, it is more like the state of a person. As the Lutheran theologian Peter Burfeind puts it, ...Sheol is revealed in the Old Testament with more nuance than the wooden translation “hell” would indicate. Far from being the place of final, fiery, and eternal punishment traditionally assigned to hell, Sheol must be seen as a place flexible enough to embrace meanings such as pit, grave, punishment, sorrow, guilt, and even depression. In other words, it is the place where sin, death, and the power of the devil reign supreme. Jacob repeatedly mentions Sheol as the destination for his “gray hair” (Gn 37:35; 42:38; 44:29–31). Solomon speaks without qualification when he writes, “Whatever your hand hands to do, do it with your might; for there is no work or device or knowledge or wisdom in [Sheol] where you are going” (Eccl 9:10). Job even identified Sheol as a place of repose from his sufferings (Job 14:13). Of course, the psalmist and prophets anticipate the curse of Sheol also for the wicked, even if in several contexts it is not so much punishments in Sheol which are anticipated, but death itself which will bring to naught the self-aggrandizing plans of the wicked (Ps 9:17; 55:15; Is 5:14; 14:9; and others). Yet, in the end the effects of the fall and its curse are upon all people. The difference between the righteous and the wicked is not so much of place, as it is of hope. The righteous, while going to Sheol, hope for a restoration to life. The psalmist demonstrates this truth poignantly when he writes of this restoration as a “morning”: "This is the way of those who are foolish, And of their posterity who approve their sayings. Like sheep they are laid in [Sheol]; Death shall feed on them; The upright shall have dominion over them in the morning; And their beauty shall be consumed in the grave, far from their dwelling. But God will redeem my soul from the power of [Sheol], For he shall receive me. (Ps 49:13–15) Thus, Hades or Sheol is the state of man whereby Sin and Satan's power has overcome and have dominion over him. In other words, it is the state of man who has died and fallen into sin and death's power. So when it is said that "It is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes the Judgement", this is not a statement of linear temporality, as if in the next "split second" or "instant", a person from death "immediately" goes to the Judgement according to our linear time. We're dealing with entities and events here which occur outside of our own historic space-time. Thus, it simply speaks of an ordering of events, not the amount of "time" it takes to go from one event to another. Thus, we die first, thereby entering into the state of Hades or Sheol, and from that state we go to the Last Judgement. As we can see in Revelations 20:11-13, Then I saw a great white throne and him who sat upon it; from his presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Also another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, by what they had done. And the sea gave up the dead in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead in them, and all were judged by what they had done. Thus, at the Last Judgement, the dead will leave Death and Hades and enter into God's judgement. This event occurs at the final consummation, at the end of time itself. Preaching to the Dead Thus, given the fact that all of us live in actual linear time, therefore all the persons who have died, from our temporal perspective, are still in the region of "Hades" or the Dead, and from our perspective, the return of Christ in glory, the General Resurrection, the Last Judgement and Final Consummation has not occurred. It cannot be emphasized enough that for the dead themselves, they are essentially in a region outside of our own space-time, they would not experience time or the flow of events as we do, thus, it is not as if they are feeling every moment or second in Hades after they die in the same way as we are experience time in this world. Therefore we must likewise understand the concept of the "preaching to the dead" by Christ. It is not a "one-time" event, occurring two thousand years ago when Christ died. It is an event which occurs outside of our own space-time. The preaching of the Gospel to the dead reverberates for all time until the Death and Hades itself are "thrown in the lake of fire" (Rev 20:14) at the Last Judgement. Thus, the dead who depart from our temporal world into Hades will hear that single thunder of Christ's preaching and command of liberation which continues to resound until the end of time, and hearing those words of life and receiving it, they shall be resurrected unto everlasting life. As the contemporary Russian Orthodox theologian, Archbishop Hilarion Alfeyev, explores all this in his recent book, Christ the Conqueror of Hell (2009), Christ’s saving of the dead and the exodus from Hades were not one-time events that occurred in the past without significance for the present. These are events that transcend time, whose fruits were reaped not only by those who were imprisoned in hell before Christ’s descent but also by future generations. This is why in 1 Peter 4:6 it speaks of "why the gospel was preached even to the dead, that though judged in the flesh like men, they might live in the spirit like God." Some church fathers even postulated that after the apostle's death they are sent into Hades to continue preaching the Gospel there to the dead! Hope for the Dead The importance and significance of Christ's descend into hell has vast implications, as a Barthian theologian puts it, ...it means that even hell itself is no longer a place of separation from God. Christ has penetrated into the depths of hell, flooding its darkness with the light of love. Hell has become a site of divine activity, a venue of divine love. ‘If I make my bed in Hades, you are there’ (Psalm 139:8). Thus, as Christ broke the power of Hades and Death and overcome it with his divine presence, so likewise we on earth should take heart and never despair for those who have died, especially for those who have died without faith. For their deaths most certainly do not put them beyond and outside the power of Christ, who came precisely to overcome the power of death! Their death are not beyond hope, it is not some kind of finishing line which puts them outside the power of Christ. No, the Harrowing of Hell precisely demonstrates that the dead are not outside the salvic power of Christ, that his preaching there has overcomes death itself. As St Paul declares confidently in Romans 8:38-39, For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Christ's love for mankind cannot be separated by death. It is not as if the person who has died without faith is forever beyond Christ's love and however separated from Christ's love. Death cannot separate us from Christ's love, only persistent and perpetual unbelief. Conclusion: Prayers for the Dead Therefore even as we reflect on the significance of the Harrowing of Hell, let us take heart in this glorious victory of Christ over the dead, and let us hope in Christ's love for all mankind, and the power of his preached Gospel to the dead, and in that faith, let us offer up prayers for those who have died, that truly the preaching of Christ's Gospel shall raise them from the dead and liberate them from Hades, into the glorious presence of God our Father, whose love has appeared in his Son Jesus Christ, who has conquered Hades itself. And therefore, in that light, I put forward the following prayer that we might join together with the dead to be "partakers of thy heavenly kingdom", taken from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer: And we also bless thy holy Name for all thy servants departed this life in thy faith and fear; beseeching thee to give us grace so to follow their good examples, that with them we may be partakers of thy heavenly kingdom: Grant this, O Father, for Jesus Christ's sake, our only Mediator and Advocate. Amen. Like 0 comments 0 Dominic Foo Mar 29 "Say my name when you pray to the skies"; On the Phenomenology of Praying towards Heaven Christian Theology I want to discuss here a little of the phenomenology of praying towards heaven and what it means. But a preliminary qualifier, I think it is appropriate to bow one's head when confessing sins and praying for forgiveness, after the example of the tax collector who would not even look up to heaven when he confessed his sin, as opposed to the Pharisee. But I think for other petitions and worship, the default posture is to face heaven. In fact the early Christians were thought to be sky worshippers because they kept facing heaven whenever they prayed. First, biblically we not only have Jesus’s own example of facing heaven when he prayed, but fundamentally it is God's own title: our Father in heaven, and Jesus himself has ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of God in heaven. Now it maybe argued that this isn't literally at the sky but a sort of aspatial location (paradoxically!), but again, Jesus’s own example of facing heaven suggests that it is not that simple. In facing heaven we are confronted with a vast expense, and with modern cosmology, when we look up to the sky we are really looking towards an almost boundless space beyond the earth. We acknowledge an infinite God not only beyond the earth beyond the near infinity of space, but also a God over the earth, as the vast heavens cover and govern the whole earth. I suggest that the phenomenology of a literal heavenly Father who is infinite and governs the whole earth when one gazes at the sky and beyond is very different from the experience of praying eyes closed and looking inwards towards oneself. Again, bowing one's head in penitence and shame when confessing sins is fine, but I think the default posture of forgiven saints is standing upwards and looking upwards towards heaven in triumph. I remember when the Egyptian Anglican Archbishop visited Singapore and was about to give the benediction, he was surprised that we knelt for it and asked us to stand to receive it. I suppose this is Coptic influence but I suggest, the right posture. As such, I think there is much to commend not only Jesus’s own example, but that also that of natural theology where in Chinese folk religion, one does literally refer to Sky Father or heaven as God. So I've started changing my prayer practice by praying towards the window and looking towards the sky, but old habits die hard. But it is phenomenologically different, it's less introspective and looking inward to one's feeling and more "confrontational" as it were, looking into the sky, and the space beyond, and then into the Infinite Being beyond who commands all. I think this posture is different, confront and face your Judge and God in the "eye", and in open and honest heart before the Almighty, uncloak all your affectations and pray with full assurance and good conscience with Christ standing between in Heaven interceding for you. Basically my argument in meme format: Like 0 comments 0 Forum - Frameless