8 - The Rhetorical Strategy of Hebrews

The journey through Hebrews continues:

1 -- The Setting of Hebrews
2 -- The Cast of Characters
3 -- The Context at Corinth/Ephesus (13:22-25)
4 -- Closing Clues (13:1-19)
5 -- The Main Takeaway (4:14-16; 10:25-31)
6 -- Remember the Good Times (5:11-6:2; 10:32-39)
7 -- The Impossibility of Repentance (6:3-8; 10:26-31)

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1. "So how will you 'inspire' them to keep going in their faith?" Tertius asked Apollos.

"We'll both reinforce their faith and warn them about the consequences of turning away. We'll alternate between examples and admonitions, between teaching and preaching, as it were."

"What will be your central argument?" Tertius added.

"Since they are worried about how they will get ongoing atonement now -- because the temple has been destroyed -- we will hit that hardest. They believe that Christ died for the sins of Israel, but most Christians up till now haven't realized the full power of his death. They haven't realized that his death has atoned for all sins in all times."

"Yes, I never even heard Paul make such a sweeping claim. He did talk about the Corinthian church as a temple of God, but he still always assumed that the temple would be there to cover our ongoing sins," Tertius said.

"Indeed," Apollos agreed, "he was arrested in Jerusalem on the charge of taking a Gentile into the temple precincts. It was denied that he did it, but it would have totally fit with his thinking. He saw you Gentiles as full participants in Israel. And he saw you as full participants in the ongoing activity of the temple."

"So, you will argue that Jesus' death was a full replacement for the temple?" Tertius asked.

"Far beyond that, Tertius. We will show that the offering of Christ is that toward which the entire Levitical sacrificial system of all time was pointing to. Jesus' offering is the reality of which all the sacrifices of all history were shadowy illustrations."

"A little like Philo's shadows and the ideal reality?" 

"I might use a little of that language from my youth in Alexandria," Apollos said. "But this is not just about ideas. Christ didn't just think about atonement. He actually ascended through the layers of the skies into the highest sky where the throne of God is. If the universe is a cosmic tabernacle, Jesus entered the Most Holy Place of the universe."

2. "So how will you lay out your argument?" Tertius said, getting out a piece of papyrus to map out the sermon in the form of a letter.

"Let us start with a celebration of Christ's enthronement and a brief reminder of the story," Apollos said.

"A narratio?" Tertius asked.

"Yes," Apollos said with a smile. "I can see you've had some rhetorical training. We will begin with just a little bit of the story, focusing on the exaltation of Jesus as the Son of God at God's right hand."

"Then we will alternate 'teaching and preaching,' as you said."

"Yes, we will give them examples and arguments for faith. Then we will warn them about the consequences of not continuing in faith."

"And when will you get to the central argument?" Tertius asked.

"I would like to ease into it. We'll give the key proposition at the end of the introduction. Jesus is a merciful and faithful high priest (2:17-18). He was made just like us so he could identify with our struggles and temptations."

"I think it would be effective to have your strongest warning right before you get into your thickest argument," Tertius added.

"That sounds effective," Apollos said. "We will start our high priestly argument (5:1-10) but then suddenly interrupt it with our strongest warning about the impossibility of repentance if they fall away (5:11-6:12). Then we will dive deep into the argument (7:1ff)."

3. "And how will that argument go?" Tertius asked.

"We will argue that Christ is a superior priest who offered a superior sacrifice in a superior temple."

"I love it!" Tertius exclaimed. "So they need not worry about the destruction of the temple. Christ has their sins -- and ours -- covered!"

"Absolutely. And now, they should not sin going forward until Christ soon returns."

"Do you plan to lay it out in that threefold way -- priest, sacrifice, sanctuary?"

"I think the last two will probably intertwine a bit, but yes. We will give a significant time to the fact that Christ's priesthood is the truly effective one, a heavenly one (Heb. 7). We will show that the early priests were always only symbolic of him. I'm thinking we will use the image of Melchizedek from Genesis and the psalm that prophesied Jesus enthronement."

"I love it. What next?"

"Then we might talk about the new covenant Christ has made in the true, heavenly tabernacle (Heb. 8). I don't want to mention the temple explicitly. I want to talk about the wilderness tabernacle to get to the very foundation of atonement. The tabernacle shows us the reality that has always been underlying the earthly temple."

"And then you'll get to Christ's offering in a heavenly sanctuary?"

"Yes, the climax of the argument will be Christ's heavenly offering in a heavenly sanctuary (9:1-10:18). We will use the cosmos as the true temple. The earth and the lower heavens are like the outer room and courts of the heavenly tabernacle."

"But the highest heaven is the true Most Holy Place?" Tertius asked.

"Yes. And ultimately it will be everything when this created realm is shaken and destroyed, then recreated in perfection. At that point only the unshakeable will remain and everything will be part of God's throne room."

"Heaven will come to earth!"

"Yes, just as John has seen in his vision (Rev. 21)."

4. "So, how will you then proceed when your argument is finished?"

"The final part of the sermon letter will then warm down, if you would. We'll put a direct warning on both sides of the central argument (4:14-16; 10:19-31). So, after the main argument is over, we will have another direct warning."

"And then?" Tertius continued, all the while taking notes on his piece of papyrus.

"I would like to give them an exemplum, a catalog of examples of faith" (Heb. 11).

"Wonderful. Then how will you come to the close?"

"I'm thinking another warning, but in a more conciliatory mode. Perhaps I shall use the topos of training or discipline (Heb. 12). Perhaps we could draw on the proverb about how the the Lord disciplines those whom he loves like a father does his sons."

"And perhaps end with a closing something like a letter's end?" (Heb. 13).

"Yes, perhaps with some of the miscellaneous admonitions we have mentioned."

"This is going to be far more eloquent than any letter I have ever helped write," Tertius finally said.

7. The Canceling Game

After what seemed like a very long moment moving in slow motion, the children suddently found themselves in a great hallway. Except, the vast majority of them seemed to have doubled.

"Hey, there are two of me," Ervin said.

"Me too!" said Elise.

There were two of Shayna and two of Vanessa (which was quite worrying). There were even two of Sherlock, who was still in cubical form.

"But where is my double?" Stefanie asked.

"In this game, you will perhaps be glad that you are the only one of your type," Tom answered.

"Hey, I thought we were going to a party," Shayna said.

"There are games at parties, aren't there?" Tom replied.

"Yes, yes," Shayna said, her excitement returning.

"OK, find your pair," Tom said, and the group excitedly went about finding their equivalent, like two animals of a kind about to board the ark.

"Except we're not boy and girl versions," the Vanessas said in unison to the narrator. "We're not like the animals about to board the ark."

That's fair, the narrator answered.

When they had all found their match, Tom continued.

"I need one of you to go up those stairs on the left and the other to stay down here and go over to the right."

"Is that stage left or audience left?" both Vanessas said.

"From the audience's point of view," Tom answered. "After all, we're trying to teach them chemistry. It's their left and their right."

"So stage right and stage left," the Vanessas said.

"Shh, you'll confuse them," Tom said.

So one set of Vanessa, Shayna, Elise, Ervin, and Sherwood went upstairs to the audience's left, and another went to the opposite side downstairs.

"Where do I go?" Stefanie asked Tom.

"Good question. Let's have you go to the top left, although we could make it would work either way."

So Stefanie dutifully made her way up the stairs to the top left.

In the center of the stage was an elevator like shaft. It was glass and see through, like many elevators in big city hotels with lobbies that are open to the top of the building. But there were only two stories here.

"OK, Shayna 1, I want you to run toward the elevator from your side on the second floor. And Shayna 2, I want you to run toward the elevator from your side on the first floor. Then, when you get to the middle, go inside the elevator."

"Fun!" both Shaynas exclaimed, and they began running at full speed toward the elevator. In almost no time, they jumped inside the elevator on their respective floors.

Then a voice came seemingly from out of nowhere, loud enough for everyone to hear clearly. "Shayna divided by Shayna equals one."

And with that both Shayna's turned into a ball of energy and disappeared.

"What happened to her?" Elise exclaimed with a hint of fear.

"Anything divided by itself is one!" the Vanessas said. "Except for zero," they continued. "You're not allowed to divide by zero, which makes me really want to do it."

"Quite right," Tom said to Elise. Shayna has simply become one and has gone back home. This is the way to disappear from this place and go home.

Before he had finished talking, the two Ervin's started running unannounced from each slide. And when they reached the elevator, they both also turned to energy and disappeared.

The voice returned. "Ervin divided by Ervin equals one."

"Hey, what about me?" cubical Sherlock said. "How am I supposed to reach the elevator without Ervin to carry me?"

"Oh, that's no problem," both Vanessas said on cue. At the same time, they picked him up and hurled him toward the elevator with suprising accuracy. When both cubes entered the elevator, they simultaneously turned into energy and disappeared. 

"Sherlock divided by Sherlock equals one," came the voice again.

But as they left, you could hear the ever distant sound of Sherlock's voice, "GOODbyeeeeee."

"How am I supposed to teach the lesson when everyone keeps disappearing!" Tom said in frustration.

"There's a lesson?" Elise said excitedly.

"Yay. There's a lesson," Stefanie said with much less excitement.

"I have sweatshirts for you all," Tom said.

"A sweatshirt, a sweatshirt!" the Vanessas said, jumping up and down with glee.

"Elise, you are going to be hours," and Tom tossed both of them a sweatshirt that said "HOURS" on the front.

"Vanessa," he continued, "you are going to be minutes." And he tossed them both a sweatshirt that said "MINUTES" on the front.

"And Stefanie," you'll be seconds. And he tossed her a sweatshirt with "SECONDS" on the front. Then they all put on their shirts.

"OK, pay attention. This is going to be a little tricky," Tom said. "When there are HOURS in the elevator upstairs over HOURS in thr elevator downstairs, HOURS will disappear."

"You mean me!" the Elises said, sporting their new sweatshirts.

"Yes," Tom answered. "Upstairs Elise, pick a number. Make it a small number just to make it easy." 

"Three!" she said with unexpected excitement.

"Great. So you are three hours," Tom said to upstairs Elise, and with that, she tripled into three Elises.

"That's not fair," downstairs Elise said. "Why does she get to be three Elises and I have to stay one?"

Tom ignored her. 

"So we have three HOURS upstairs," Tom said. "Now. Vanessa. How many minutes are in an hour.

"Sixty," she exclaimed.

"Right you are!" Tom said. "It would take 60 Vanessas (minutes) on top to even out one Elise (hour) on the bottom."

"Yes! Yes!" upstairs Vanessa said and promptly began to multiply until there were sixty of her upstairs.

"Now run, Elises and upstairs Vanessas!" Tom said.

"What is going on?" Stefanie muttered to herself. 

But the Elises ran mindlessly anyway, as did the upstairs Vanessas. The elevator seemed to get bigger and bigger as each Elise and Vanessa entered until they were all in the tube.

"Wait for it," Tom said, as all the Elises looked on a bit anxiously and all the Vanessas excitedly. Immediately, the Elises began to turn into energy and the Vanessas multiplied accordingly. 

When all the flashing had stopped, all the Elises had disappeared, and there were 180 Vanessas on the second floor.

"Elise divided by Elise equals one," came the voice again.

"What just happened?" Stefanie asked in confusion.

"Well," Tom said. We had Elise both on the top and the bottom. That is, we had HOURS on the top and bottom, so they canceled and all the Elise's disappeared. But 3 times 60 is 180, so we were left with 180 MINUTES. Er, Vanessas."

"I still don't get it."

"It's really much simpler than all this," Vanessa said. "There are 60 minutes in an hour. So if you have three hours, you have 3 x 60 minutes or 180 minutes. He's just making it seem complicated by trying to make it into game."

"What I'm trying to show you," Tom said, "is that labels like 'hours' and 'minutes' can cancel each other out if you have them on the top and the bottom."

"Top and bottom cancel out! Top and bottom cancel 

"Right," Tom said. "If you have meters per second (m/s) and you multiply by seconds (s), you have seconds on the top and the bottom and they cancel out, leaving just meters."

"Top and bottom cancel out! Top and bottom cancel out!" Vanessa chered again.

"So," he continued, "right now we have 180 minutes (Vanessas) on the top. And how many seconds are there per minute?"

"60," Stefanie said. "No, wait. You're not going to multiply me are you?"

A fiendish grin came over Tom's face, and Stefanie did indeed begin to multiply until there were sixty of her.

"Now we have 60 SECONDS on top per one MINUTE on the bottom (Vanessa)."

"And we have 180 Vanessas (MINUTES) up here," upper Vanessa said, and with that all 180 Vanessas on top and the one Vanessa on the bottom started running toward the elevator.

"Top and bottom cancel out! Top and bottom cancel out!" all the Vanessas said as they ran toward the elevator.

"I'm not running," Stefanie said.

But it didn't matter. The elevator enlarged to fit all the Vanessas and they all began to multiply into Stefanies until there were 10,800 Stefanies on the second floor.

"Vanessa divided by Vanessa equals one," came the loud voice for the last time. 

"Let me say it in ordinary language again," Tom said. "3 hours times 60 minutes/hour equals 180 minutes -- the hours cancel out. 180 minutes times 60 seconds per minute equals 10,800 seconds -- the minutes cancel out."

"I do like myself, but this is a little extreme, don't you think?" all the 10,800 Stefanies said in unison. "And is this floor strong enough to hold all of us?"

"Probably not," Tom said. And with that, the floor began to give way. All the Stefanies closed their eyes as a sinking feeling came over them all.

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1. A Mole in the Lab
2. The Nuclear Cafe
3. Mr. Tom's Mild Ride
4. March of the Centipedes
5. A Thick Little Boy 

6. Bubbles in Space

3.2 How can we know that God exists?

1. As many as 80% of individuals in the United States would claim to believe in God or a higher power of some sort. We at least qualify for Paul's words in Acts 17:22 -- "I see that in every way you are very religious." What that number doesn't tell us is how many of us believe God is a person (or three), whether our concepts of him are at least in the ballpark, and whether we give our allegiance to him.

From a Christian standpoint, God is three persons (although one God). God is the almighty Creator of everything that exists, seen and unseen. He is all-powerful, all-knowing, all-present, all-loving. He is self-sufficient and sovereign -- the only, exclusive self-standing authority. Any other authority in this universe is by his allowance.

2. But how do we know this? That is both a theological and potentially a philosophical question. Here is where philosophy can get a little sticky for some -- what right do we have to question whether God exists?

We've already asked this question. My basic answer is that it depends on how you ask the question. The primary determinant of morality is intention. Do you ask the question to challenge God or to oppose him? Do you ask the question honestly as a truth-seeker? That is where the answer to this question lies. Let's assume we are asking it as truth-seekers.

How can we know that God exists?

3. One answer is that we only know if he tells us. We cannot find our way to him. He only brings us to him.

To some extent, this is the Christian answer. Officially, Christians believe that we cannot come to God unless he draws us to himself.

Yet there are at least two camps here. There are those who believe that our will does not really have anything to do with this "draw-ing." This is the Calvinist position. It is God's work alone -- monergism or "one work" done by God. Either God chooses you or he doesn't. If he choses you, you will believe and know that he exists.

In my opinion, however, this position leads to unsolvable problems with regard to evil. If God predetermines everything, then God predetermines evil. God commands rapists, serial killers, and child molesters. In short, it empties the biblical claims regarding God's love to ridiculousness and absurdity. God becomes the author of evil in a more or less direct way.

The other camp are those who believe God empowers our wills to participate in a movement toward him. It is a dual work or "synergism" of God's will and our wills. God draws us, but we must respond, empowered by his Spirit.

We return to the original question: how can we know that God exists? The first part of the answer is that he draws us to him. He reaches out to us so that we can come to him.

4. How does he reach out to us? 

He reaches out through his Spirit. The form this takes can vary with each individual. It is rarely a matter of apologetic reasoning, but it can be. There are the C. S. Lewises, the Josh McDowells, and the Francis Collinses. However, we should not think that reason was the ultimate basis. The Spirit was the ultimate basis using reason in their instances.

For far more people, the pathway is affective. "You ask me how I know he lives," the hymn says, "he lives within my heart." Yes, in itself this may seem a flimsy basis for faith. I had a professor in seminary who hated this line to the hymn. "No," Dr. Robert Lyon insisted, "we know because of the testimony of the apostles."

But faith is in part subjective. We believe it is objective too -- God exists whether I believe in him or not. But it is not my faith unless I believe. And the Spirit can lead me to faith on the basis of my feelings just as well has he can do so using my reason as the path.

The answer to the question, "How does God reach out to us?" is thus "in many and various ways." The sine qua non is God's reaching. Our response is also a requisite. But how God connects with our choice can be cognitive, affective, relational, or as many pathways as exist.

Nevertheless, it has often been the nature of philosophy to focus on the rational arguments. The next few articles will look at the primary arguments used in favor of God's existence: 1) arguments from cause, 2) arguments from order, 3) arguments from being and necessity, 4) arguments from morality, and 5) arguments from miracles. In this latter category, we will include arguments for the resurrection as well as personal experience.

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Introduction
1.1 What is philosophy?
1.2 Is philosophy Christian?
1.3 Unexamined assumptions
1.4 Socrates and the Unexamined Life

Logic
2.1 The Structure of Thinking 
2.2 When Thinking Goes Wrong
2.3 Three Tests for Truth
2.4 Knowing the Bible
2.5 Plato and Aristotle
2.6 The Story of Logic 

Philosophy of Religion
3.1 Faith and Reason
3.2 God as First Cause

2.1 The Structure of Thinking

My philosophy meetings are done for the semester, but in honor of Thursday night, here is another post on my philosophical journey.
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1. There is a structure to the way we reason, a structure whose basic contours have been discussed at least since Aristotle in the 300s BC.

From one point of view, there are three basic components of reasoning. 

• There are assumptions. 
• There are relationships between assumptions. 
• And there are conclusions.

2. The relationships between assumptions are logic. There are no exceptions in this universe to the way logic works. Yes, it can take different forms. For example, logic can be expressed in stories. But the analysis that Aristotle and others abstracted always works as an analysis of good reasoning.

I want to emphasize this point because the late twentieth century had its share of detractors from logic as it historically has been used. I do not wish to argue that logic must be expressed in an Aristotelian way. However, I know of no approach that is as precise and reliable in its analysis of human reasoning. Other forms are far more prone to misdirection. They are, as it were, less mathematical.

Meanwhile, propositional logic -- as we might call it -- is always correct when it is formulated according to the rules. This makes it one of the most certain aspects of creation, closely related to math.

3. Aristotle laid out the fundamental pattern of logic in terms of what is called the syllogism. A syllogism has the form of 1) premise, 2) premise, 3) conclusion. The logic of a syllogism is valid if it works -- if the relationships between premises and conclusions work.

For example, take the following syllogism:

• All unmarried individuals are single.
• Jill is unmarried.
• Therefore, Jill is single.

Here we have 1) a general statement, 2) a subset of that general statement, 3) a connecting of the general statement with one example of it. The logic of this argument is valid. The conclusion must follow.

This is an example of deductive reasoning. The conclusion, as it were, is contained in the premises. You might think of deductive reasoning as an upside down V. It starts with an assumption and expands to the conclusions that follow from it.

The other kind of reasoning is inductive reasoning. It's like a regular V. With it, you start with evidence and then draw a conclusion from there. We will look at inductive reasoning in a later section.

4. It's important to note that, just because the logic of a syllogism is valid doesn't mean it's true. It is true only if both of the premises are true.

For example, it is true by definition that "All unmarried individuals are single." But what if Jill is actually married? Then the conclusion is false even though the logic of the argument works. 

5. As mentioned, the assumptions in logic are called premises. If the premises of an argument are true and the logic of an argument is "valid," then the conclusion of the argument is certainly true, without exception, and without any valid counter-argument. 

Why then do we diagree? The primary weak point of our arguments comes from faulty or debatable premises. That is, debatable assumptions. 

So there are two places where an argument may fail. It may fail because its logic isn't valid. And it may fail because one or more of its premises are false.

6. Where do our assumptions come from? First, sometimes they are wrong. Sometimes they come because we haven't interpreted the evidence correctly, as we will see. Perhaps we don't have all the evidence -- we rarely do. Perhaps we make a "hasty generalization" because we don't have all the evidence or we "connect the dots" in the wrong way.

Some of our assumptions are "unexamined," as we have seen. You may have heard the colorful saying that, "When we ASSUME, we make an A** out of U and ME." Jumping to conclusions when we don't have the facts or seeing what we want to see are major causes of bad thinking and faulty conclusions.

And here let me agree with some of the voices that have pushed back on logic in recent years. Mastery of logical reasoning does not guarantee moral clarity or correct conclusions. You can be an outstanding logician and hold troubling moral views or ridiculous perspectives. 

For example, Gottlob Frege (1848–1925), as we will see, was a brilliant logician. He is one of the most important figures in the history of logic. Yet in his later writings he expressed horrible views about Jews. Logical rigor doesn't mean your conclusions are correct -- especially if your premises are off. 

7. You no doubt have experienced or heard of the child that continues to ask "But why" until the parent finally responds in frustration, "Because I said so." This is a parable of all logic. 

Let's say we have a premise in an argument. We might support that premise with other premises. We might have an assumption that is a conclusion from another argument. And so on, and so on.

Eventually, however, all thinking comes down to what we might call axioms or assumptions that are not provable or disprovable. They are necessary for us to make any arguments. In geometry, you might remember that "two points make a line." This isn't something to prove. It's an assumption. 

In what is called Euclidean geometry, an assumption is that two parallel lines never meet. There are other geometries that don't make this assumption, but in everyday geometry, this is an assumption that is never proved. It's just assumed.

Later on our journey, we'll talk about some of our core assumptions. They might include premises like "The world outside me is real and distinct from me." How about "When an event would not have happened without the event before it, we say that the one event caused the other event"? What about "Time is the succession of one moment after another" and "Space is the potential for my movement beyond the extension of my body"?

The philosopher Alvin Plantinga (b.1932) has spoken of warranted and properly basic belief. He would argue that belief in God is "properly basic," meaning that it is foundational enough to our reality that God's existence doesn't necessarily have to be argued for. It is a reasonable assumption. Interestingly, he has also offered many arguments for the existence of God. [1]  

8. Another word for an assumption in logic is a presupposition. In particular, a presupposition tends to be an assumption that more foundational or significant. Some schools of thought relate presuppositions to what they might call a worldview. Sometimes, worldviews are seen as large systems of assumptions.

I would argue that there are more and less helpful ways of thinking about worldviews, as we will see eventually. If a worldview is seen as a collection of related perspectives, it can be a useful construct. However, some treat worldviews as inevitable systems. Or, worse, they might see an element of a worldview and conclude a person then has a host of other positions they may not actually have.

We will explore this "bad logic" later on.

9. I've mentioned that logic has had its detractors in recent decades. I had a student once -- now a professor himself -- who went to Princeton Seminary, which has a fair amount of what might be called "post-liberal" thinking. Post-liberal thinking tends to be anti-evidentiary thinking.

We had an interesting conversation after his first year. Clearly, the significance of Reason was being called into question. In Christian circles, we often find faith and reason pitted against each other.

I remember making a distinction between what we might call "macro-reason" -- that is, large systems of assumptions and conclusions -- and what I called "micro-reason." In that conversation, micro-reason referred to the simple logic that we have been exploring in this post.

You cannot avoid this logic if you have any thoughts at all. You cannot argue against Reason without using logic. You cannot interpret the Bible without logic. Let that sink in.

The concept of the Wesleyan Quadrilateral has reason as one of the four sides. But in reality, it is unavoidable at the center. We use reason to interpret Scripture, experience, and tradition.

We cannot escape it. As soon as we form a sentence, we have used reason. Reason thus is the unescapable foundation of all truth, at least in this universe.

[1] Captured in the book by Jerry Walls and Trent Dougherty, Two Dozen (or so) Arguments for God (Oxford University, 2018). 

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Introduction
1.1 What is philosophy?
1.2 Is philosophy Christian?
1.3 Unexamined assumptions
1.4 Socrates and the Unexamined Life

Logic
2.1 The Structure of Thinking (this post)
2.2 When Thinking Goes Wrong
2.3 Three Tests for Truth
2.4 Knowing the Bible
2.5 Plato and Aristotle
2.6 The Story of Logic

Notes Along the Way -- Asbury Year 1.5

I've been trying to capture the highlights of my earthly pilgrimage here. I've written a number of posts on my first year at Asbury. The previous bread crumb was here. Here's a last post on Year 1.
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1. For the most part, my first year of seminary was quite stimulating. I've mentioned my first encounter with David Bauer's (FM) English Bible and Bob Lyon for textual criticism. [1]

I had a class with Bob Muholland in J-term on Roman Hellenism and tried a final paper on Stoicism. Man, if Google or ChatGPT had been around, I'd have learned so much more. It would have helped me input so much more.

You see, I have a hard time inputing raw details into my brain. I have to have a file to put them in. I have to be able to connect individual facts to some scaffolding I have. And I really didn't have much scaffolding, it seemed to me. I could have pestered the bejeebers out of ChatGPT if it had been around. 

In those days, I felt like an engine revving full speed in neutral -- wanting to crank out thoughts but not connected to all the needed information inputs to come up with significant results.

To this day, I look at F. H. Sandbach's little book on The Stoics and think, "What a mountain of little disconnected details!" I'm looking forward to reading Timothy Brookins' recent Greek and Roman Philosophy. I've always envied the scholars who can input so much with so much greater ease than I can. The tools have helped even the playing field. :-)

2. I had Cathy Stonehouse (FM) for "Pastor as Teacher" and Don Boyd for "Pastor as Liturgist." I was increasingly doing better at paying attention in class. If I slept my way through Central, I at least was awake at Asbury. All I remember from Stonehouse's class is that people have different learning styles (Kolb). I'm not sure she figured out mine.

In general, the fact that people are different was certainly one of the top takeaways of my first year. Part of orientation was taking the Myers-Briggs test. It seemed to explain so much about my strengths and weaknesses. In college, I had discovered the old Sanguine-Choleric-Melancholy-Phlegmatic schema by way of Tim LaHaye, of all people. It was helpful too, but Myers-Briggs was more professional. [2]

When we designed the curriculum for Wesley Seminary, we made sure they didn't have a "one-size-fits-all" sense of Christian spirituality. Keith Drury had them read Sacred Pathways in the second spiritual formation course.

3. Don Boyd was a curious fellow to me. His worship class generally aimed at United Methodists and I was a fish out of water. He had us grade each other's worship portfolio and of course mine was grossly inadequate from a UM perspective. This low church holiness fellow had never heard terms like Eucharist or the Great Thanksgiving. I had serious questions about corporate confession. 

To be honest, I still grimace a little in corporate confession. It seems so pessimistic. Isn't it possible that everyone in a congregation might not have intentionally sinned during the week? "Ah, Ken, but there is such a thing as unintentional wrongdoing. And there is always more good we could have good." What does the confession say? "We have done that which we ought not to have done, and we have left undone what we ought to have done."

To be frank, while I definitely think God is concerned with any unintentional wrongs we might cause others, I don't think God is particularly worried about the fact that we are not infinitely perfect. I say the confession. I still don't like it. It has all sorts of potential neurosis written all over it.

And to think Boyd was a Wesleyan! In fact, he was the DS of the Alleghany district when they pulled out of the Wesleyan Methodist church. It amazed me to think that this once ultra-conservative guy was now going hyper-liturgical with the United Methodists -- at least he seemed hyper-liturgical from my inexperienced perspective.

4. I suppose he had all but left the Wesleyan Church by then. He had once attended Stonewall Wesleyan before the pastor drove him away. Maybe in fact he had already transfered his credentials to the UM church. At least he did eventually.

Asbury was an interesting place for Wesleyans. If most UM students were there because it was conservative and orthodox, the Wesleyans there in general were on a broadening path. I've often said that, while the UM and Wesleyan students typically had the same beliefs, they were headed in different directions. They had different flavors. 

The Wesleyan students were broadening. Some of the UM students were contracting. This is one reason why I'm not sure if the Global Methodist Church and the Wesleyans would turn out to be a good match. The jury is still out, in my opinion. 

Our theology is roughly the same. But a group coming off of a split has a certain flavor, and we won't know where it stabilizes for a bit. Indeed, there are some "taking bets" on whether the GMC will continue to support women in ministry over the long haul. It is headed in the opposite direction culturally.

Some Wesleyan students went to Asbury and found themselves leaving the Wesleyan Church. Some of this was a sense of how little they had known about God and Christian faith before they came. 

Some became fascinated with liturgy -- something they were not likely to encounter in a Wesleyan church. Boyd himself seemed an example of this. Indeed, preaching from a sermon manuscript would have had a generally negative reaction in most Wesleyan churches.  

I often chuckle to myself at College Wesleyan Church at how unWesleyan it generally is in flavor. Houghton Wesleyan Church was also quite unusual, pipe organ and all. I personally am glad that they are within the liturgical bounds of the church, even if on the edges.

For some Asbury students, it was down the Canterbury trail, go ye. That is to say, some even became Episcopalian. I know one UM student who became Roman Catholic.

For students like me, it was a realization of how little I had really known about the Bible before I went to Asbury -- frankly, how little your typical Wesleyan understands about the Bible. Whole new vistas were about to unfold for me. To be honest, God kept me in the Wesleyan Church... but it might not have been so.

5. We are not just talking about a quantum leap in understanding here. We are talking about a cultural shift. I have a hypothesis. Most Wesleyan churches are, for lack of a better word, small and blue collar-ish. Asbury had a white collar gravitational pull. When it spit out students the other side, they didn't always fit the Wesleyan Church anymore.

[In much of what follows, I am giving my impressions of stories I've heard. Actual participants in events may have a different perspective.]

There was an infamous incident before I came to Asbury where a foolish Wesleyan pastor, as I heard it, more or less told the Asbury students attending Stonewall not to go to Asbury. And he did this with several tithe-giving Wesleyan professors in the congregation.

By the time I got there, those professors had (unsurprisingly) largely left. I think the pastor had preached from Acts 17 and 1 Corinthians 2. "Look," he said. "Paul tried to preach all intellectual at Athens and it was a failure. So when he got to Corinth, he determined to only preach Christ crucified." 

The moral of this story? Shoot your brain and be stupid like me. Then you'll be a real Christian.

Of course, nowhere does the text say this. Acts doesn't say it. 1 Corinthians doesn't say it. I do think Paul was pushing back on those who thought Apollos was more educated and sophisticated than him. But Apollos was a true Christian and may even have written the book of Hebrews.

It's an oh-so-familiar American script that views education with suspicion. [3] It's good old American anti-intellectualism. Scholars are often wrong about stuff. As one of them, I'm allowed to say I often find us annoying. But experts are usually wrong four or five steps ahead of where a person who knows nothing about a subject is wrong. Not always, but more often than not if they're actually a scholar.

I knew this same pastor in another context (he's passed). I think he truly meant well. But although he could quote the Bible left and right, I don't think he had a very deep understanding of it. He came from the same background that I did. So it's no wonder that he found the Asbury professors threatening.

6. I want to mention three more classes I had my first year at Asbury. One was "Study of Selective Passages" with Ron Crown (FM). It was basically Greek exegesis. You had to have passed the Greek exam to take it -- and you had to take it.

Asbury had two exegetical tracks that ran alongside each other. Frankly, it was a little weird, and I think Joel Green tried to integrate them when he was there. But you see, these were political artifacts. As hard to change as the color of the carpet in the sanctuary.

When the Jeff Greenway presidential crisis happened there in the mid-2000s, my big mouth got me involved (in fact, I might have gone to teach there if that crisis hadn't happened). But two things stood out to me. First, the key players were geniuses. And second, they were crazy good at political maneuvering. It was an encounter with next-level power dynamics for me.

So, it's going to be hard to change such things until some people retire or pass. You had the English Bible exegetical path. And you had the Greek/Hebrew exegesis exegetical path. Both were in the curriculum, each with distinct personalities. Both taught similar skills but with different origin stories involving key personalities.

7. Finally, a bit of philosophy. I was quite keen to take Jerry Walls' philosophy of theism class. I wish ChatGPT had been around to explain some of the arguments to me. We read Richard Swinburne and a compilation of essays. I made a pitch for the Trinity as a metaphysical modalism in a paper printed with my new dot matrix printer. 

I'm pretty sure it was a light heresy. In those days, Wesleyans didn't talk or worry as much about the Trinity as we do now. We prayed "in Jesus' name," like the book of Acts. To pray "in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit" still feels a little Catholic to me (following Matthew 28).

[You should keep in mind that I led a Book-of-Common-Prayer-based liturgical service for College Wesleyan Church for several years, starting in the old church and continuing in the new building until venues were deemed incorrect theology.]

I'll share my "metaphysical modalism" heresy from that paper. The thesis was that the Trinity was a by-product of the one God spanning different metaphysical spaces. God the Father refers primarily to God in his transcendence, beyond the creation. God the Holy Spirit refers primarily to God in his immanence, within the creation. God the Son is the Logos who stands not only at the intersection of the two realities but centered in the incarnate person of Jesus.

I don't need Chris Bounds to tell me that's almost certainly heresy. But the Trinity is a difficult concept.

8. Finally, I did an independent study on Aquinas with David Bundy (FM), who was the librarian at the time. Even the librarians at Asbury were geniuses.

[One way to have a killer school is to have a killer faculty each with different superpowers.]

I knew a little Latin from high school, so that was a chance to brush up. I focused on his De Ente et Essentia, "On Being and Existence." My proposal on simplicity was that it was what happens when God is viewed from the standpoint of this universe -- he reduces to a point. What he is outside this universe is something beyond our comprehension or reference point.

No one is interested, but I had the musings of a not-too-informed teenage brain going on here. I was fascinated with the concept of ex nihilo creation. A diagram in Henry Morris' Scientific Creationism -- joined with a beginner's sense of Einstein's relativity -- had sparked the thought that God not only created the stuff in space but the emptiness of space itself. I'm sure I wasn't the first person to think this. It likely was thought 60 years earlier by individuals like Georges Lemaître.

I was fascinated by Aquinas' sense of God as other -- soon the early Barth would stimulate similar thoughts. I was fascinated by the idea of only knowing God qua God by analogy. I was fascinated by the notion of a via negativa and apophatic theology -- that we really only know what God is not in his essence rather than what he is. 

If you have endured this far into the post, you deserve a prize of some sort. But all I have to give is the end of the post. Here you go.

[1] FM above means "Free Methodist." The president at that time, David McKenna, was Free Methodist, and obviously many of the faculty were too. These individuals no doubt left me with the impression that the Free Methodist Church, in general, is a more educated church than the Wesleyans.

I don't know if that's true, but I would say that the FM church at that time had far more scholars. When I first went to SBL in the late 90s, Keith Reeves was surprised to find a Wesleyan from IWU at the scholarly convention. He was at Azusa, and let's just say that, at that time, there weren't that many Wesleyans doing biblical scholarship.

[2] A girl I was dating in college didn't like the test. Similarly, I had a friend in seminary that hated Myers-Briggs. I think it's because they were both -NTPs.

[3] See Mark Noll's, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind.

7 -- The Impossibility of Repentance (Heb. 6:3-8; 10:26-31)

The journey through Hebrews continues:

1 -- The Setting of Hebrews
2 -- The Cast of Characters
3 -- The Context at Corinth/Ephesus (13:22-25)
4 -- Closing Clues (13:1-19)
5 -- The Main Takeaway (4:14-16; 10:25-31)
6 -- Remember the Good Times (5:11-6:2; 10:32-39)

______________________
"What if they don't turn around?" Tertius said.

"I believe they will," Apollos responded. "They've been so faithful in the past (6:9). They did so well during persecution before (10:32-34). God's not going to just let them throw that away (6:10)."

"But what if they do?" Tertius insisted.

1. "Well, you know what happened to Israel in the wilderness."

"Yes."

"God had given them the hope of the Promised Land. They all left Egypt (3:16), which represents the way these Roman Christians left their life in paganism to start to serve the living God, the God of Israel," Apollos said.

"Yes."

"But they didn't make it," Apollos continued. "Their corpses fell in the desert (3:17). They didn't enter the land because of their disbelief. They did not persist in faith or faithfulness."

"In fact, God forbade them to enter, right?" Tertius added. "It's not only that they didn't. After throwing their faith away, they couldn't."

"It's true," Apollos said. "And we need to make sure our brothers and sisters in Rome know this stark reality. It is God's mercy that even makes us capable of repentance (Rom. 2:4)."

"That's a truly scarcy thought," Tertius said.

2. "Yes, think of the example of Esau."

"How so?" Tertius followed.

"He had the birthright (12:16)," Apollos answered. "He was bound to receive his father's blessing. But he lost them both."

"And how?"

"He sold them both over food (12:16), just like some of the Roman believers are worried about not being able to participate in synagogue meals (13:9-10)," Apollos said.

"Then later," Apollos continued. "He realized what he had done, and he tried to find a place of repentance" (12:17).

"Yes," Tertius added. "He tried to find his way back."

"But he couldn't," Apollos said soberly. "He knew with his head that he needed to repent, but his heart was hardened. The Holy Spirit had departed, and he had no power in his own will to truly turn back to God."

3. "When does a person reach that point?" Tertius added.

"I suspect that most of the time, it's not as clear cut a moment as the decision of Israel was in the desert. I do hope that it's not too late for the Roman believers (6:3). I'm going to share these new insights into the depth of Christ's atonement in hope that there is still time for them to turn around... or rather to make it into the Promised Land."

"It's almost like they're in danger of using up Christ's great sacrifice for sins" (10:26), Tertius said.

"Yes," Apollos answered. "If they keep sinning with their lack of faith, there will be no more sacrificial atonement left for them" (10:26).

"The only thing left will be a fearful expectation of judgment, the certainty of God's wrath" (10:27).

"Yes," Apollos said. "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God!" (10:31).

"And it's not like they are still trying to decide whether to follow the one true God," Tertius added.

4. "No, they've left Egypt. They have received the Holy Spirit and crossed from death to life (6:4). They have been enlightened after starting out as ignorant pagans without knowledge of the true God."

"They have experienced the heavenly gift of God, the Spirit!" (6:4), Tertius agreed. "They know what powers we will experience in the coming age, the goodness of God!" (6:5).

"If they cross that line of unbelief," Apollos continued, "it will be impossible to bring themselves to repent, just like Esau (6:6). It's like if a farmer puts all this effort into cultivating a field, like God has invested so much in them."

"Indeed he has," Tertius agreed.

"A good field takes in the rain, which is like the grace God gives us so repeatedly, and it brings forth fruit and wonderful vegetation (6:7). But if after repeated rain and cultivation, a field only brings forth thorns and thistles (6:8), the farmer's going to burn that field and start all over again."

"Our God is a consuming fire indeed," Tertius added (10:19). "So how will you shaply set the choice in frtont of them?"

5. "God has already shown us the way," Apollos answered, "in Psalm 40."

He continued. "God used David in Psalm 40 to warn us in this moment. God tells us not to be like the wilderness generation. They hardened their hearts in unbelief" (Heb. 3:8; 4:7).

"Ah, I remember that psalm," Tertius mused.

"Yes, I want to quote a large portion of the psalm. In fact, I want to quote a lot of Scripture to reinforce the fact that we Jews who follow Jesus are the ones who are being true to Scripture. Hopefully, that will also bolster their confidence."

"And so they will hopefully have faith to enter the promised land," Tertius added.

"Indeed. They need to enter into God's rest, into the Promised Land, as the psalm says" (Heb. 4:4).

"Joshua wasn't the end of that story, I guess."

"No he wasn't," Apollos agreed. "If Joshua had led Israel into final rest, then God wouldn't have inspired David to tell us to enter God's rest too today" (4:8).

"And we will all finally rest when Christ returns a second time, and the kingdom is finally established."

"In a sense," Apollos reflected, "there are two entrances into rest. Every day, we choose faith and we choose to enter into God's rest" (4:13).

"Every day is called 'today,'" Tertius chuckled, "just like the psalm says."

"Yes, so there is the daily entrance into God's rest. But there is also, if you would, a sabbath rest that we will enter when we finally enter the Promised Land, that heavenly homeland we are waiting for" (4:9).

"Then we'll rest for good," Tertius agreed, "just like God rested on the seventh day."

"One day, our striving here will be over" (4:10), Apollos said. "We must put in great effort to persist in faith now. But someday, our troubles will be o'er."

6. "We are only part of God's household if we hold fast our confidence in faith" (3:6), Apollos said.

"Yes," Tertius agreed, "if we hold that beginning of faith firm until the end" (3:14).

6. Bubbles in Space

Previous chapters at bottom. The chemistry novel continues.
_________________________
"Here we go!" Tom said from the side of the water track, both hands wrapped around a large lever that looked far too important to ignore.

"Wait!" Stefanie said urgently. "Aren't you coming with us?"

"Don't worry," Tom said. "I'll be right along."

"One last thing," he continued. "We need to make sure you have the glass top on."

"Why is that?" Elise asked, her voice doing its best to remain calm.

"I thought this was a splash ride," Ervin also objected, holding the cubical Sherlock in his lap. "Isn't getting wet part of the point?" 

"You'll see," Tom said, which was not particularly helpful. "Buckle up everyone!"

He did not have to say it twice. There was enough apprension for everyone except Vanessa to feverishly reach for the shoulder straps and seat belt in each log.

"Let's go!" Tom said and pressed a red button beside the lever. Immediately, a glass covering emerged straight up from the back of each log and came snapping down into place like a decision already made. A look of concern spread across the riders’ faces -- except Vanessa’s. She wore a grin not unlike the Cheshire Cat’s, the sort that seemed to arrive before the joke.

And with that, the logs lurched forward. One by one, they slipped into the tunnel. Shouts and screams echoed back, cheerful or terrified -- it was difficult to tell which. Each went happily gliding down the water track toward the cave-like opening at the end of the hall, which appeared to be waiting for them.

"This is going to be fun!" Shayna said.

Finally, when they had all disappeared, Tom himself stepped into the last log, pressed a button to cover the top and pulled a smaller version of the lever inside the log car.

And he was off, following the others as if this had always been the plan.

Stefanie was not entirely surprised at the sudden drop that happened as her log plunged into the darkness of the tunnel. What was much more a surprise was to find her and the other logs in space as she emerged from what seemed to be a light cloud of stardust.

Below her, Earth hovered at a distance that felt impolite. Then also was the moon, a bit straight ahead. She glanced at the other log-ships to see a rather horrified look on everyone's face. 

That is, except for Vanessa, who was quite enjoying herself. She had not buckled herself in, apparently deciding that gravity was more of a suggestion than a rule. 

The cubical Sherlock was also floating in Ervin's log. He had apparently forgotten completely about him in the strangeness of the situation.

Soon Tom's log-ship emerged from the cloud behind them.

"OK, class."

"We're not a class," Stefanie objected, but Tom paid her no mind.

"Unbuckle yourselves. You're only a meter high, so you should have at least a smidge of room to float, like Vanessa."

Slowly they did as he said, one by one.

"Now, press the green button on the dashboard," Tom continued.

"What does it do?" Elise asked.

"Nothing much, really," Tom said. "It will just help you to get a better feel for the space."

Before she could further express her concerns, Vanessa pushed her palm quickly on the button, disconnecting her glass container from the log into something like a bubble. It also doubled in size, giving her more space to float freely about the bubble.

"Wow!" she said.

Seeing that Vanessa had come to no apparent harm, Ervin, Shayna, Stefanie, and finally Elise also pressed the button. Sherlock now floated in the bubble as free as a cube could be, as did all the others.

"Can we get out of the bubble?" Vanessa asked excitedly.

"NO," Stefanie practically shouted. "Haven't you seen that movie where the guy is out in space without a suit and he almost freezes to death?"

"What movie?" Shayna asked.

"I don't remember, but it was horrifying," Stefanie responded.

"See, there's no such thing," Vanessa said, looking all over the bubble for something like a door.

"She's actually quite right," Tom said. "You would quickly freeze to death. Well, except for Sherlock, because I think he's sealed."

"Arh, arh, arh, arh," Elisa said, making a seal noise and giggling to herself. Tom made an annoyed glance in her direction.

"Space is pretty much at absolute zero, as far as temperature is concerned," Tom said.

"I've been outside in Indiana when it's zero," Ervin said. "I can take it!"

"It's not that kind of zero," Stefanie said knowingly. "He said absolute zero."

"What's that?" Sherlock said, bouncing quite happily around the bubble.

"It's minus 273.14 degrees Celsius," Tom said.

"None of this Celsius stuff," came a voice from the direction of the cloud of stardust in the distances. "We only use Fahrenheit around here!"

"Is that you, Lane?" Elise called to the cloud.

"Yes, Ervin, when you were thinking of zero degrees, you were thinking Fahrenheit. That's the temperature scale we use most of the time in America."

"As it should be!" came Lane's voice again from off in the distance.

"Do any of you know any other common temperatures in Fahrenheit?" Tom asked.

"I know that my temperature is 98.6 degrees when I don't have a fever," Elise said.

"And we sometimes get off school if there's ice rain, which happens around 32ᣞ," Ervin said. 

"That's neat," Vanessa said. "You managed to speak the degree symbol!"

"Yes," Tom said, "a small circle elevated a little is the symbol for a degree. Water freezes at 32ᣞ Fahrenheit."

"The freezing rain was so much fun!" Ervin said, ignoring them. "We slid right into someone's mailbox one time last year. The road was like a sheet of ice."

"But the Celsius or Centigrade scale is much more convenient for doing science than the Fahrenheit scale," Tom continued.

"Is NOT," came Lane's voice echoing again. "It's unamerican and we won't stand for it!"

"Just ignore him," Tom said. "The Celsius scale is zero at the point where water freezes..."

"You mean where it turns to ice, right?" Shayna asked.

"Yes, and the Celsius scale is 100 degrees where water boils."

"You mean turns to steam, right?" Elise chipped in.

"Yes. These are the three phases of matter -- solid, liquid, and gas."

"Or ice, liquid water, and steam, right?" Sherlock said.

"Correct, Mr. Cube," Tom answered.

"But what's absolute zero again?" Ervin asked.

"Absolute zero is negative 273.13 degrees," Tom replied.

"That sounds really cold," Ervin said reflectively, looking down into the stars.

"Yes, it's yet another scale, the Kelvin scale. It was named after a scientist named Lord Kelvin."

"I've never heard of it, but I DON'T like it," came Lane's voice. "I only have one Lord."

"He wasn't that kind of Lord," Tom clarified. "The Kelvin scale starts at the absolute coldest temperature things are allowed to be and starts counting up from there. The size of a degree, though, is the size of a Celsius degree."

"Who says we're not allowed to go colder?" Vanessa said. "I'm going colder. I refuse to be told not to go colder."

"It's just not possible," Tom said.

"Wait," Stefanie jumped in. "At what Fahrenheit temperature does water boil? You said water boils at 100ᣞ on the Celsius scale. But what's that in Fahrenheit?"

"GREAT question," came Lane's voice. "Make America Fahrenheit again!"

"212 degrees is the Fahrenheit version of where water boils," Tom answered.

"That's pretty big," Elise said. "So if Celsius goes from 0 to 100 from freezing to boiliing, Fahrenheit goes from 32 to 212, right?"

"Excellent," Tom said. "You're getting it. And you can see why it's easier to use Celsius than Fahrenheit in science -- the numbers are less random."

"Are not!" Lane yelled from the distance.

"I guess a Fahrenheit degree must be smaller than a Celsius degree," Stefanie said, "because it takes a lot more of them to get to the boiling point of water."

"Truly a sharp observation!" Tom answered.

"So are you going to tell them the secret formulas?" Vanessa asked.

"What secret formulas," Shayna asked, now more interested in the subject. "Can we put the secret formula on chicken and start a restaurant?"

"It's not secret," Tom said. "And it's not that kind of formula."

"Don't you all want to know how to convert back and forth between Fahrenheit and Celsius and back?" Vanessa continued.

"NO, we DON'T," came Lane's voice emphatically from the void. "We are perfectly content not knowing things!"

"Ooh, I want to know," Elise said.

"You can just look it up," Stefanie said. "Or better yet, Google or ChatGPT it."

"I'd just ask Alexa," Sherlock said.

"Yes, you can look it up. But if you must know," Tom started.

"We don't want to know," Lane's voice came.

"We don't need to know," Stefanie's said.

"If you must know," Tom continued like a train that can't stop, "it's quite intuitive. You know that there's 32 degrees between where water freezes on the Fahrenheit scale (32) and where it freezes on the Celsius scale (0). And you know that there are 100 degrees between freezing and boiling on the Celsius scale..."

"Wait," Elise blurted out, "I can figure the difference out on the Fahrenheit scale. 212 - 32 is..." There was a long pause when no one was really listening. "... 180 degrees! There's 180 degrees between boiling and freezing on the Fahrenheit scale."

"Yes," Tom said, "so if you compare the two scales, it takes 180 Fahrenheit degrees to get from freezing to boiling."

"And 100 degrees on the Celsius scale to do the same," Ervin chimed in, not quite sure where the conversation was going but glad to contribute information that had already been shared.

"Divide the two and you get that a Fahrenheit degree is 9/5 of a Celsius degree," Tom said.

"Or a Celsius degree is 5/9 of a Fahrenheit degree," Elise said, quite proud of herself.

"Voila," Vanessa said. "F equals 9/5C + 32."

"Or (F - 32) times 5/9 = C," Sherlock said.

"Did you get that?" Shayna asked Stefanie.

"Kind of, but I'm just going to ask Google," she answered.

"I think that went very well," Tom said, congratulating himself. "OK, everyone, time for the black hole."

"What?" Elise said.

"No worries," it will just shrink us to a point with infinite mass and we'll go to the Briefing Party."

"That sounds rather small," Sherlock said.

"I've already shrunk dramatically once," Stefanie said. "It's not too bad."

"And I'm up for a party!" Shayna said.

With that, Tom pushed another button in his log-ship, and a swirling hole of darkness opened up.

"No need to do anything," he said. "We're already within its event horizon. It's gravity is inescapable."

Their bodies began to stretch uncontrollably in the direction of the hole as if being sucked into a drain. Ervin looked like he was trying to run in his bubble in the opposite direction. But it was no use.

The quantum extraction was inevitable.  

_________________________
1. A Mole in the Lab
2. The Nuclear Cafe
3. Mr. Tom's Mild Ride
4. March of the Centipedes
5. A Thick Little Boy

4.1 What is a human being?

Last night I had a final meeting with another group of philosophy students. We were filling in some gaps. We principally talked about what a human being is. Here are my own musings, going beyond the class to what I think.
______________________
1. What is a human being? There are a couple obvious answers, I think, as a Christian.

First, I involve a body. Whatever else I am, I have a material component. Some of course would say that a body is all we are.

We are, at the very least, highly complex animals. I hear that my DNA is about 98% the same as the DNA of a chimpanzee (yours too -- it's not just me). It's alarmingly 60% the same as a chicken's -- again, not just me. Yours too.

The behaviorist B. F. Skinner (1904-1990) famously pointed out that humans can be manipulated using the same techniques as you can use to train a dog. [1] "Chocolate?" Sheldon asks Penny on Big Bang Theory as he "conditions" her not to talk when he gives her sweets. 

Nevertheless, Skinner assumed that we were only animals. I don't think a Christian should have a problem with a sense that we are animals. [2] It seems undeniable from any objective point of view. The question is whether that is only what we are. 

Are we just roadkill waiting to happen? Christianity says a resounding "NO!"

2. There is a second answer that Christians give to this question, and it is more important, I think. Maybe it is more important because it has deep implications for how we treat other people. It is a distinguishing belief -- or at least should be.

That is the belief that humans are created in the image of God (Gen. 1:26-27). I have found that it is very easy to say this. It is much harder to parse its implications. I don't think it should be hard. It just is because a large number of people -- including people who call themselves Christians -- don't want to follow its implications out in society and the world.

There is an "egalitarianism" of sorts that follows from this belief because there are no gradations in the image of God. Egalitarianism in this context means that you and I are equally valuable qua human beings. [3] You are not "more" of the image of God than I am, and I am not "more" of the image of God than you are. It is a statement of "ontology" or "being." That is, it is a statement of who we are.

The Declaration of Indepedence put it in a secular way: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men [and women] are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights." We'll talk about rights (vs. graces or privileges) at another time. The point is that, no matter what an individual human being's instrumental value might be -- our usefulness. All human beings as human beings have intrinsic value.

3. It's worth expanding a little on this point. If you have to choose between saving my life and saving the life of a president, you should save the president. He or she plays an immensely important role in the world. Me? I'm a blogger. The instrumental or useful value of a president is immensely greater than my instrumental value.

When we say that a human being is intrinsically valuable, we are saying that human beings have worth whether they do anything or not. We will get into the details of when human existence begins in a person life and when if ever it ends. But assuming a body is a human being -- a "person," as it were -- that individual has intrinsic value and worth.

This was the great offense to humanity that was Joseph Mengele, who experimented on those who were in the concentration camps of the Nazi regime. He did not consider Jews to be human beings. For that reason, he did not consider it immoral to cause them great pain by experimenting on them. Ironically, his experiments intrinsically assumed that they were of the same species as he was -- he was experimenting on them to learn about the human body, I presume.

4. When we get to the fifth section of this journey, we will pick up this train of thought as we launch a discussion of ethics. Although ethics is bigger than human to human interaction, it is understable that we focus mostly on how we should treat other human beings when we think of ethics. 

From a biblical and Christian standpoint, we have a responsibility to give all human beings a certain dignity as bearers of the image of God. The image of God is not conditional. It is a fundamental aspect of human identity. This is why, from a Christian perspective, even a serial killer should be treated with some fundamental dignity -- indeed, the nature of their crime is that they did not treat their victims in that way. To treat them as they treated others is to come down to their level. [4]

We should emphasize again that, as a fundamental value, human dignity is not dependent on what a person does. In the current debates over immigration, human dignity is not dependent on whether a person is "legal" or "illegal." This is true even from a secular, Constitutional perspective -- the Constitution ascribes certain core rights to people regardless of what they have done. And it is even moreso the case from a Christian perspective.

Disregard for the "rights" (or privileges, if you would prefer) of a human being is thus anti-Christian and anti-American.

5. Human value is thus part of our "ontology" -- it is part of who every human being. Even the dead should be treated with respect. 

I suppose that there is a sense in which human value is derivative. To speak of the "image" of God suggests that we mirror God. We reflect God. If God did not exist, our value would cease to exist.

However, God's not going anywhere. In fact, God is a necessary Being. All existence is contingent on God's existence. In that sense, the value of all creation is derivative from God.

For this reason, while our value (and existence) is derivative from God, it is "inalienable." We can go ahead and say that it is intrinsic to our ontology. It is part of who we are and cannot be removed or detatched from us.

6. Throughout the centuries, there have been varied perspectives on what the image of God might be. I find almost all the suggestions to capture a truth about who we are as humans.

In Genesis, it is a political image. God rules over the creation; humanity "rules" over the creation. The image of God in Genesis has to do thus with our position or status in relation to the world.

However, theologians have also spoken of the "natural" and "moral" image of God. [5] To use these terms in my own way, we can reason at least analogously to God reasoning. And we can make moral decisions analogously to God making moral judgments.

There is some level of reasoning in a chicken or chimpanzee, but it does not come close to the capacity of an average human being. So Christians believe that God is supreme intelligence. Our ability to think comes nowhere close to God's, but there is a meaningful resemblance all the same.

I would suggest that humans are the only species that makes moral judgments. Perhaps I would almost make this claim by definition, although I hope there is an empirical basis for the claim as well. 

To put it another way, killer whales and vicious dogs don't sin even though they can seem quite "mean" from an anthropomorphic perspective. But we are simply ascribing human characteristics to them. [6]

That is to say, we might suggest that humans have a moral image of God that an orangutan does not.

7. I suppose from a non-theist perspective, some of these latter claims might seem disputable. Is human rationality and moral thinking simply a more developed version of the capacities of less complex animals? Perhaps such debates are not outside the bounds of Christian debate as well.

The core point is what seems essential, namely, that all human beings should be given a fundamental dignity and value qua human beings. From a secular standpoint, such value can be seen as part of a social contract -- I agree to assign value to other human beings under the agreement that they will assign such value to me.

Hopefully, we will be able to convince AGI to respect us under some similar agreement. But that's a topic for another time.

[1] B. F. Skinner, The Behavior of Organisms: An Experimental Analysis (Cambridge, 1938).

[2] Although I seem to remember my mother resisting this idea in some random conversation we had.

[3] I thought I'd work in the Latin qua for fun here. It means "as." We are equally valuable as human beings. What's philosophy without a little Latin here and there?

[4] Many in the modern world -- Christians and non-Christians alike -- take this principle to imply that the death penalty should not be a punishment. The question becomes whether it can be administered humanely, in my opinion, and under what circumstances.

[5] John Wesley's classic treatment of the image of God can be found in his sermon on "The New Birth." Of course, Wesley was largely premodern and didn't interpret biblical texts in context. That doesn't mean, however, that his theology was necessarily wrong at those points. The truth of an inference is not dependent on the strength of one's exegesis (a.k.a. the genetic fallacy).

[6] We have brainstormed the thought experiment in a Science and Scripture class I have taught whether it would make sense to hypothesize that homo sapiens before Adam and Eve did not sin because they were not yet fully "human" in a moral sense. What do you think?

___________________________

1.1 What is philosophy?
1.2 Is philosophy Christian?
1.3 Unexamined assumptions
1.4 Socrates and the Unexamined Life

2.1 The Structure of Thinking
2.2 Three Tests for Truth
2.3 Plato and Aristotle

3.1 Faith and Reason
3.2 Arguments for God's Existence
3.3 Suffering and Evil
3.4 Augustine and Aquinas

4.2 Beginnings and Endings
4.3 Free or Fated?
4.4 The Soul
4.5 Existentialism

5.1 Human Value (graces)

1.4 Socrates and the Unexamined Life

I had a brief philosophy meetup tonight as the last one for one group. I'll use it as an excuse to plug up the last hole in my introductory unit.

1.1 What is philosophy?
1.2 Is philosophy Christian?
1.3 Unexamined assumptions
1.4 Socrates and the Unexamined Life (this post)
____________________
1. If I were to lead you on a journey through the primary sources of philosophy, I would probably start by having you read Plato's Apology. I always feel a little guilty about this because Socrates stands at the heart of the so-called "Western canon" of philosophical thought. What about China? For that matter, what about Proverbs?

Then again, the ancient Greeks were not Europeans. That's a historical paradigm of much later making. To me, Socrates is a great place to begin because of what he said at the time of his trial, not because he was Greek or "Western."

2. You may know the story. For decades, Socrates had made enemies of the rich and powerful in Athens. How? By embarrassing them in public. And how did he do that? By asking them questions they couldn't seem to answer and making them look like fools.

He was accused of subverting the youth by questioning the gods. In fact, he questioned everything. To be honest, I'm not sure his arguments were actually very good much of the time. He often committed the fallacy of equivocation by changing the meaning of words mid-argument. 

His philosophy was that there actually weren't answers to most of the questions he asked. [1] He reminds me of a friend I had in high school who always took the opposite side of any argument. I don't think it was always because they disagreed. They just liked to argue.

Socrates strikes me that way sometimes.

3. It is also difficult for me not to hear arrogance disguised as false humility in Socrates. It seems all too familiar. A friend goes to the Oracle at Delphi. She was the prophetess that everyone in Greece went to in order to get insight into the present and future. His friend asks, "Is Socrates the wisest man alive?"

It seems like a safe enough question for her. She often gave ambiguous answers like "Go to war and a nation will be overthrown." Of course, in a sense that would be true no matter who won. It reminds me of my parents' generation trying to follow a movie. "Who's that?" "What's happening there?" In the old days, they had to show a plane traveling on a map for the viewers to understand a change of setting, as the Indiana Jones movies mimic.

Socrates' response has always struck me as "What? Little ol' me? The wisest man? I'd better find out if this is true."

So, without really believing in the gods -- at least not the conventional gods of Athens -- he now considers himself to have a divinely-given directive to embarass all the leaders in Athens by showing them they're not really as smart as they think they are.

They probably had it coming to them. But it does make Socrates look like, well, let's say a very annoying person.

In the end, he says, "Well, what do you know? I must be the wisest person in town because I at least know that I'm not wise."

Despite questions over Socrates' sincerity, that is a key takeaway from The Apology -- true wisdom usually involves what I might call epistemic humility, a great awareness of what you don't know, not a strong sense of what you think you know.

4. Plato's Apology is also a great place to start a philosophical journey because of Socrates' great dictum that "The unexamined life is not worth living." I think that's a little bit much. There's also truth in the saying that "Ignorance is bliss." I suspect I would be a lot happier person if my life wasn't so self-examined.

However, all the same, I wouldn't trade my supposed self-awareness for obliviousness. So two caveats. I think it's acceptable for someone to say, "I'm not sure I could handle complete awareness. I think I'll just keep doing my thing over here." However, maybe don't try to make any important decisions for others, and don't post your opinions on Facebook. "The unexamined life is not worth posting."

The second is that I think I would rather live all the same, even if my life were unexamined. Socrates was found guilty of corrupting the youth and not believing in the gods. His enemies proposed death. He was allowed to offer a counter-proposal. The stubborn old git, did he counter-propose a fine? No. He proposed they give him a stipend to keep doing the very thing he was found guilty of. Idiot.

Of course, his proposal was rejected. So he has friends who offer to smuggle him out of Athens. "No, he stubbornly says. I've been found guilty. I must obey the law." He drinks the hemlock. It is sometimes said that he becomes the first martyr of philosophy. Nevermind that it's really his own fault in the end. It nevertheless secures his place in the pantheon of human philosophy -- with a lot of help from Plato.

5. Nevertheless, the unexamined life is often harmful to yourself and others. It can be very harmful if you live in a place where you get to vote on your country's future. In the end, I want to believe that a life oriented around the truth is a better life than one centered in ignorance. I want to believe that a life of self-awareness is a better life for those around you than obliviousness. Perhaps there are exceptions, but I would like to think that they are exactly that -- exceptions.

If you disagree, stop reading now. Go watch that entertaining Tic Tok or YouTube short. But try not to make any decisions that affect anyone but yourself.

[1] Like Jesus, Socrates never wrote anything down. We only know his teaching through the eyes of his followers. In The Apology, we probably come close to hearing the real Socrates. But we should also keep in mind that we are hearing Socrates through Plato's eyes. The further we go into Plato's writings, the more we are likely hearing Plato's ideas rather than Socrates'.
___________________________
1.1 What is philosophy?
1.2 Is philosophy Christian?
1.3 Unexamined assumptions
1.4 Socrates and the Unexamined Life (this post)

Notes Along the Way -- Asbury 1.4: Evidence and Reason

Here's the previous bread crumb.

1. I hit a small crisis of faith at the end of my first year at Asbury. I was learning to read the text of the Bible in context. It felt very familiar because it was basically the application of the scientific method to interpretation. Given the literary and historical evidence, what is the most likely meaning of the text?

I have taught this method for the last thirty years at IWU and elsewhere. David Smith now travels around teaching it from church to church. People who love the Bible usually love it because it so obviously does its best to listen to the Bible and let it say what it says.

For me, it came with a problem. The more I listened to the text, the more it unraveled the biblical interpretations of my childhood. Indeed, the more it called into question some of the core assumptions I had about the Bible.

2. What day is the Sabbath? It’s clearly Saturday in the Old and New Testaments. I heard an ingenious interpretation once of the idiom, “the first of sabbaths” in Mark 16:2 and Matthew 28:1. The phase basically means the first day of the week. But one of the professors at Frankfort Bible College suggested it meant that these verses were declaring that Sunday—the first day of the week—was now the Sabbath. In other words, that Sunday after the resurrection was the “first of sabbaths” for Christians, switching the Sabbath day from Saturday to Sunday.

Ingenious!

Many of my former students will know that when I call something “ingenious” like this, it is a backhanded compliment. I’m really complimenting a person’s ability to take their intellect and use it to wiggle out of a clear interpretation of the text.

That was the challenge I faced at the end of my first year at Asbury. Would I approach the text with the goal of making it say what my tradition wanted it to say? Or would I go with the most likely conclusion? Would I “cook the books”? Or would I go with the evidence? That sounds easy until you get into some of the choices.

3. As I’ve mentioned, a key issue for me was the way the New Testament interpreted the Old Testament. It didn’t seem to follow the rules of inductive Bible study. The New Testament didn’t seem to interpret the Old Testament in context. The evidence seemed to say clearly to me, “The New Testament read the Old Testament in a spiritual, more-than-literal way.” At least that’s how I would later put it.

Isaiah 7:14 was not originally a prediction about a virgin birth 700 years later. In context, it was a sign to King Ahaz in the 700s BC about a child who would be born as a sign that Judah would survive the Assyrian threat. If it were only about the virgin birth, it wasn’t a very good sign to the very person to whom Isaiah was giving it. In that case, a sign for him would come 700 years after he was dead.

I found this dynamic repeatedly. Applying the rules of inductive method to the text often yielded straightforward results... that were different from the way the New Testament read the verses. This created a bit of a problem for me in my early days at Asbury.

4. Take Psalm 110:1: “Yahweh says to my Lord, ‘Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.’” This psalm was likely about the king of Judah. The psalmist was referring to Yahweh—the LORD in all caps—telling the king (the “lord”) that he would win in battle against his enemies. No problem.

My problem was that this is not the way the New Testament reads the psalm. Indeed, this verse might have been the central passage to help the earliest Christians interpret the resurrection. They took this verse to mean that God had enthroned Jesus as Lord after he rose from the dead (e.g., Acts 2:34-35). Indeed, in Mark 12:35-37, Jesus himself uses this verse to befuddle his debaters.

The twentieth century Paul Ricoeur had a concept that has since been helpful to me in interpretation. He spoke of a “first naïveté” when you don’t even realize that your interpretation isn’t reading in context. [1] Then you undergo some cognitive dissonance, and you realize your first interpretation was "incorrect." You gain some “critical distance” in your understanding. You move from a pre-modern to a modern understanding.

But then, he spoke of a “second naïveté,” when you realize that you can re-adopt your initial interpretation—not as what the text originally meant but as a more-than-literal reading. The text itself is not bound by its original meaning, so it is not wrong to read it differently. And you can do so with eyes wide open rather than without knowing you are doing it.

Another example is the way Acts 2:27 interprets Psalm 16. In Acts, Peter takes Psalm 16:10 in relation to Jesus staying in the grave. “You will not leave me in Sheol.” Read in its original context, the psalmist was likely saying that Yahweh would not let him die. God would not abandon him to the grave but would save him from his enemies.

But you could argue that Acts 2 was reading the verse in a “fuller sense,” a sensus plenior, as we mentioned in the previous chapter. On the Day of Pentecost, Peter hears the words in relation to Jesus—God would not leave Jesus in the realm of the dead after he died. Acts 2 takes the verse as a prophecy of resurrection.

5. Key in both of these interpretations is the assumption that David was the author of these psalms. The headings of the psalms call them psalms of David. But these headings were added when the psalms were collected—not when they were written. David didn’t title his own psalms, “A Psalm of David.” The editor of the psalms did. And if Psalm 137 is any indication, the final collection took place over 500 years after David.

For this reason, evangelicals have often not seen the headings of the psalms as necessarily inspired. There is a strong impulse of tradition to accept them, and perhaps most evangelicals do. But I was trained to think they could be viewed with an objective eye. [2]

Take Psalm 51. The tradition is that this is David repenting for his sins in relation to Bathsheba. It is a very strong preaching tradition and well known across the church. But, inductively, you get to verse 18—“Build the walls of Jerusalem.” Weren’t the walls of Jerusalem already built at the time of David? Yes, they were.

So, it raises the question. Might this verse actually fit the time after the Jews returned from Babylon when the walls of Jerusalem needed to be rebuilt? The psalm can indeed be read in this way. That is probably the consensus of most Old Testament scholars.

Of course, you will tick off a lot of people—including a lot of pastors—if you suggest such a thing. The traditional reading of the psalm is so strong, so often preached, that it is practically dogma. This is indeed a dynamic I have observed often. Our traditions about the Bible are usually far more important to us than the Bible itself. We get VERY upset when they are undermined by scholars, even if the text itself is compelling.

(I have often felt like a great “party pooper” as a teacher, so much so that I have often—more frequently than I would like to admit it—pulled my punches. As a “feeling” personality in Myers-Briggs, leaving my students feeling good about their faith was more important to me than giving them “the cold hard facts.” Contrast the "thinking" Bud Bence who often provoked faith crises in his teaching. :-) )

6. To be fair, there are plenty of places where the New Testament itself reasons under the assumption that David wrote most of the psalms. This was the tradition and assumption of the day. So we get into the question of the difference between the point of biblical statements and any cultural framework those points may come in. What is in the envelope of revelation, and what is actually being revealed?

This is scary stuff, and it was once very scary to me. I could see where these lines of thinking were going, and it was very unsettling. At one point my mother thought I was rebellious for seeming to always pick the opposite side than the one she lobbied for. But I did not experience myself that way. I experience myself as being drug "kicking and screaming" by the evidence and reason. 

I often turn to 2 Corinthians 12:2 as an example of revelation coming within the ancient assumptions of the biblical world. Paul talks about being taken up into the third sky or third heaven. We have examples of Jewish cosmology from the time (e.g., the Testament of Levi) that picture the heavens as layers of sky with God in the third sky—the highest heaven.

So, what is the "envelope" that revelation comes in here, and what is the revelation itself? The point of Paul’s comment is that he was taken into the very presence of God. I would argue that the picture of the universe here is the envelope. The way the heavens are structured is not Paul’s point. It is the way he expresses the point within his ancient worldview. 

We see the same thing in Philippians 2 when he speaks of every knee bowing before Christ—above the earth, on the earth, under the earth. Here is another ancient picture of the universe that is not the point. The point is that everything in the universe will acknowledge Jesus as Lord.

You are seeing the origins of my “incarnational” sense of hermeneutics. God meets us where we are and takes us from there. I concluded that this is how revelation worked with the authors of Scripture. God revealed truths to them from within their own ancient cultural frameworks, and he took them from there. This approach allowed me to let the text be the text while preserving Christian orthodoxy.

7. You can also see in my reflections here my attempt to process an inductive reading of the Bible over the years with the concerns of my evangelical community in mind. How can I affirm the inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture and yet let the text speak for itself? 

To be frank, I have come to strongly dislike this question. What God thinks is what is true--not what a particular theological community insists must be true. I know that, at its best, the evangelical community is trying to guard the faith. But from a different point of view, it can be seen as resisting an honest search for truth, which is what God actually thinks. 

At the time, I didn’t find anyone to guide me through these questions. I’ve often wished I could go back in time to help myself at various points. There were those no doubt who could give me answers that didn’t ring true to the text. They tended to create more doubt in me than peace. There were probably those somewhat hidden voices who could have led me away from my faith community.

For me, the question was whether God wanted me to use my mind or not. Does God want me to be irrational as an act of obedience? Or is God a God of truth? Did God want me to exercise blind faith and reject what seemed to me to be the straightforward meanings of the text? Was it a test?

In the end, I decided that God was a God of truth. I decided that “all truth is God’s truth.” That doesn’t necessarily mean that all truths are obvious. Indeed, it is rational to decide, in a particular instance, to go against the evidence in one’s conclusion. The key, it seemed to me, was to be honest about it.

So many evangelical thinkers to me seemed to “cook the books.” They pretended to be following the evidence when in fact their (sometimes hidden) presuppositions were really steering the ship. They acted like the evidence demanded a verdict, but they were skewing the evidence in the direction they wanted it to go.

As I was heading into my second year at Asbury, I determined that I would let the most likely conclusion be my guiding star. Rather than use my intellect to see if it was possible to make the text say what my tradition wanted it to say, I would try to go with the most probable interpretations. I would become a scientist of the text and the truth, believing that God is truth and that the truth is what God believes—not what my tradition wants him to believe.

I have since come up with a twisted parable to illustrate the coherence between God and an evidentiary/logical approach to truth. Let’s say someone could sit down and prove to God that he did not exist. He is so aligned with the truth, he would say, “Fair enough,” and disappear.

Of course, this is a ridiculous thought experiment. But it is meant to show the complete alignment of God with rational and evidentiary truth. I know that is a controversial thought and some would no doubt argue that it places reason and evidence above God.

I disagree. The problem is not with God. It is with me. It is with me as a knower. God is not nervous about his own existence. The problem is my egocentric predicament, a concept I learned in Dr. Bross’ philosophy class at Central Wesleyan College. I am stuck inside my head. The world exists, but I see it “through a glass darkly” (1 Cor. 13:12, KJV).

I suppose that decision set me on a path of some deconstruction. Traditions were now open to critique. Everything was open to critique. Over the years, I have certainly not been the smartest of scholars. But I would like to think that I am one of the most honest of scholars. And that has perhaps made me seem smarter than I actually am at times. Because--at least in my heart of hearts--I try to let the chips fall where they may.

[1] Especially in his work, The Symbolism of Evil (Yale University, 1967).

[2] We will get into this sticky wicket more in a later chapter. What do we do with the fact that the New Testament authors seem to assume traditional authorship of the Old Testament books?