Dear Father, firstly, thank you for your grace and charity in your presentation of my work and character! I cannot tell you how much vitriol I have received by Christians online since publishing some of my critiques, so its much appreciated to have someone respond in kindness. I hope I can respond in the same manner. I don't have a rebuttal per se as a homily is not an argument that succeeds or fails on its reasoning, but rather a pastoral reflection. That said, I do have some thoughts;
1. I'm glad you mentioned St Justin Martyr otherwise I would've brought him up!
2. I think your point regarding the Hebraic understanding is excellent, and something I also pointed out within my article on the problem of evil (which I saw you commented on). I completely agree that any hard distinction between God's active and permissive will ultimately collapses.
3. I agree that philosophy, and human reasoning in general, especially when talking about God, is necessarily limited. I think this is part of the reason that I feel so strongly that God should make his existence and his will as explicit as possible to all human beings, such that they can respond in a way that allows them to make an informed choice to either follow him, or ignore him.
So nice to see my offering so graciously received! A few thoughts on your thoughts:
1. I love St. Justin the Martyr and Philosopher, so I bring him up regularly. As I was beginning to seriously engage with my own childhood faith, I was encouraged by its intersection with philosophy: I loved the idea that Jesus was the Logos with which the philosophers engaged and that He, as the incarnate Creator, is the Truth we all seek. And I love apologetics, so when I encountered St. Justin on my journey to Orthodoxy, I immediately felt I had found a “kindred spirit“.
2. Yes, it was fascinating to find that we had actually come to similar conclusions on this point.
3. My first response to this is do we really want God’s Final Message to His Creation to become a tourist trap? (Sorry, but my mind immediately goes to my favourite atheist author Douglas Adams’ comic send-up of the subject, where God’s Final Message, “Sorry for the inconvenience”, is written in letters of fire thirty feet high on the side of the Quentulus Quazgar Mountains, with the path to the site lined with booths selling souvenirs, postcards, and devotional tracts with little meditations on the meaning of the Message.)
My second, more serious response is that the Apostle Paul thought that God had already been pretty explicit, given that “his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.” And that even those “who do not have the law” show, as they “by nature do what the law requires”, that the law is “written on their hearts” (i.e., conscience). Personally, I think this is superior to the tourist trap approach. (Although, to be fair to God, it is obviously we humans who turn the Final Message into a tourist trap!)
Thank you for your thoughtful response! My only disagreement here would be, with all due respect to St Paul, that I don't think God's existence is so obvious that those that deny it are without excuse. Whilst most people throughout history have believed in some sort of diety, this seems to be more influenced by cultural and material factors rather than direct experience or philosophical reasoning (I'm over generalising of course). This continues today where materialism and scientism are the dominant intellectual forces and so God's existence is by no means taken for granted. Even the fact that a committed Christian like me could ultimately leave because I felt like I never truly "met" God, shows us that revelation is by no means clear cut.
Well, I have to admit that, besides the Hitchhiker’s Guide reference being the first response that genuinely occurred to me, I included it here partly as a reduction ad absurdum counterpart to Paul’s point. The question that occurs to me here is how much evidence does a man need? One reflection here that I’ve thought of with regards to my own struggles with this question is Ebenezer Scrooge’s response to Marley’s ghost (possibly because I played Scrooge in our school’s Grade 7 production of A Christmas Carol), which seems to me to accurately represent what would likely be my own response to being presented with even more “incontrovertible” evidence:
"You don't believe in me," observed the Ghost.
"I don't," said Scrooge.
"What evidence would you have of my reality, beyond that of your senses?"
"I don't know," said Scrooge.
"Why do you doubt your senses?"
"Because," said Scrooge, "a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potatoe. There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!"
Well the quote from A Christmas Carol demonstrates an important point I think, which is we have a tendency to dismiss experiences that do not cohere with our day-to-day reality. This is why someone may see a ghost but dismiss it as the "shadows playing tricks on you". If ghosts were walking around everywhere and were a normal part of our reality then it no one reasonable would doubt their existence.
What this means is that God showing up as a booming voice or stars rearranging themselves in the sky only seems absurd because we don't experience God in our daily reality. If God did it exist, it seems to me that his existence should be as obvious as the existence of my Dad or my partner. You ask what evidence would suffice, and I would reply that God showing up consistently, in a personal manner, in ways that make sense to me, and that are easily identifiable, would convince me beyond reasonable doubt.
Well, there's a pretty standard answer to this within the Christian tradition, but perhaps you won't consider it to meet your criterion.
The archetype of "God showing up as a booming voice" that you cite is a reasonable stand-in for the standard Old Testament (and, to some extent, New Testament) human experience of an encounter with God: it's terrifying, so that even when angels appear to men, the first words they always seem to have to say are "fear not!" Perhaps the most common response to having seen God in the Old Testament is something like Manoah's "We've seen God! We're gonna die!" And, of course, even Moses (as you note in one of your Substack posts) was only able to see the "back" of God. So it would seem that your preference for "God showing up consistently, in a personal manner" isn't feasible, and hasn't been feasible since the Fall. He's too awesome and too holy (I mean, He *is* the Creator and sustainer of the entire universe, after all - not to mention the source of our very idea of Good) and we're too limited and too fallen.
The Greek myth of Seleme being burned to ashes when she asks Zeus to reveal himself to her in all his glory would be a pagan parallel here.
Of course, from the Christian perspective, all of this changes when Christ comes: it's pretty much the first time when the Creator appears to His Creation that He doesn't have to say "fear not", and can have the sort of consistent personal relationship that would meet your criteria. Of course, the understanding is also that a good many who encountered him personally rejected the idea that He was God.
Given all this, I think it significant that Jesus' teaching is that *we* are (in a sense) gods, and that the basic criterion in the Last Judgement will be how we interacted with one another, particularly in our times of need, because in so doing we are interacting with *Him* - and the Beloved Disciple, John, says something similar when he says that "he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen." In other words, your Dad and your partner are, essentially, manifestations of God to you, in that your relationship and interactions with them are, in the grandest scheme of things, your relationship and interactions with God - which means the whole of our experience of life and relationship in this world is preparing us for and making possible the consistent, personal relationship with God that you are looking for. But, more than that, looking backwards from eternity into time - as Lewis suggests we do in The Great Divorce - your Dad and your partner showing up consistently, in a personal manner, is actually God doing so.
So there are two things here and I'll take them in turn;
1. I've addressed this idea in an article of mine where I said:
"The first is to say that the presence of God can actually be dangerous for human beings, due to our sinful state. This is an ontological principle we see repeatedly in the Bible. God is constantly presented in a veiled manner, and we are lead to believe that this is to protect the humans in question. The idea is that God must distance Himself from us, lest we are destroyed by His presence.
I think this would work as a justification if it weren’t for the fact that God is omni-present, and necessarily immanent to His creation. As a popular Orthodox prayer says, God is “everywhere present and fills all things”. Thus, it seems that depictions of God’s distance or closeness in the scriptures and other Christian writings, should be taken to be phenomenological, not ontological. This seems to imply that God chooses to do this, not that He must do it this way."
2. The idea that my Dad and my partner are actually, in some sense, God showing up for me, faces several problems- a) it's an unfalsifiable assertion without evidence, b) it works better within a pantheistic framework, and c) it doesn't account for why God can't show up himself.
Dear Father, firstly, thank you for your grace and charity in your presentation of my work and character! I cannot tell you how much vitriol I have received by Christians online since publishing some of my critiques, so its much appreciated to have someone respond in kindness. I hope I can respond in the same manner. I don't have a rebuttal per se as a homily is not an argument that succeeds or fails on its reasoning, but rather a pastoral reflection. That said, I do have some thoughts;
1. I'm glad you mentioned St Justin Martyr otherwise I would've brought him up!
2. I think your point regarding the Hebraic understanding is excellent, and something I also pointed out within my article on the problem of evil (which I saw you commented on). I completely agree that any hard distinction between God's active and permissive will ultimately collapses.
3. I agree that philosophy, and human reasoning in general, especially when talking about God, is necessarily limited. I think this is part of the reason that I feel so strongly that God should make his existence and his will as explicit as possible to all human beings, such that they can respond in a way that allows them to make an informed choice to either follow him, or ignore him.
So nice to see my offering so graciously received! A few thoughts on your thoughts:
1. I love St. Justin the Martyr and Philosopher, so I bring him up regularly. As I was beginning to seriously engage with my own childhood faith, I was encouraged by its intersection with philosophy: I loved the idea that Jesus was the Logos with which the philosophers engaged and that He, as the incarnate Creator, is the Truth we all seek. And I love apologetics, so when I encountered St. Justin on my journey to Orthodoxy, I immediately felt I had found a “kindred spirit“.
2. Yes, it was fascinating to find that we had actually come to similar conclusions on this point.
3. My first response to this is do we really want God’s Final Message to His Creation to become a tourist trap? (Sorry, but my mind immediately goes to my favourite atheist author Douglas Adams’ comic send-up of the subject, where God’s Final Message, “Sorry for the inconvenience”, is written in letters of fire thirty feet high on the side of the Quentulus Quazgar Mountains, with the path to the site lined with booths selling souvenirs, postcards, and devotional tracts with little meditations on the meaning of the Message.)
My second, more serious response is that the Apostle Paul thought that God had already been pretty explicit, given that “his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.” And that even those “who do not have the law” show, as they “by nature do what the law requires”, that the law is “written on their hearts” (i.e., conscience). Personally, I think this is superior to the tourist trap approach. (Although, to be fair to God, it is obviously we humans who turn the Final Message into a tourist trap!)
Thank you for your thoughtful response! My only disagreement here would be, with all due respect to St Paul, that I don't think God's existence is so obvious that those that deny it are without excuse. Whilst most people throughout history have believed in some sort of diety, this seems to be more influenced by cultural and material factors rather than direct experience or philosophical reasoning (I'm over generalising of course). This continues today where materialism and scientism are the dominant intellectual forces and so God's existence is by no means taken for granted. Even the fact that a committed Christian like me could ultimately leave because I felt like I never truly "met" God, shows us that revelation is by no means clear cut.
Well, I have to admit that, besides the Hitchhiker’s Guide reference being the first response that genuinely occurred to me, I included it here partly as a reduction ad absurdum counterpart to Paul’s point. The question that occurs to me here is how much evidence does a man need? One reflection here that I’ve thought of with regards to my own struggles with this question is Ebenezer Scrooge’s response to Marley’s ghost (possibly because I played Scrooge in our school’s Grade 7 production of A Christmas Carol), which seems to me to accurately represent what would likely be my own response to being presented with even more “incontrovertible” evidence:
"You don't believe in me," observed the Ghost.
"I don't," said Scrooge.
"What evidence would you have of my reality, beyond that of your senses?"
"I don't know," said Scrooge.
"Why do you doubt your senses?"
"Because," said Scrooge, "a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potatoe. There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!"
Well the quote from A Christmas Carol demonstrates an important point I think, which is we have a tendency to dismiss experiences that do not cohere with our day-to-day reality. This is why someone may see a ghost but dismiss it as the "shadows playing tricks on you". If ghosts were walking around everywhere and were a normal part of our reality then it no one reasonable would doubt their existence.
What this means is that God showing up as a booming voice or stars rearranging themselves in the sky only seems absurd because we don't experience God in our daily reality. If God did it exist, it seems to me that his existence should be as obvious as the existence of my Dad or my partner. You ask what evidence would suffice, and I would reply that God showing up consistently, in a personal manner, in ways that make sense to me, and that are easily identifiable, would convince me beyond reasonable doubt.
Well, there's a pretty standard answer to this within the Christian tradition, but perhaps you won't consider it to meet your criterion.
The archetype of "God showing up as a booming voice" that you cite is a reasonable stand-in for the standard Old Testament (and, to some extent, New Testament) human experience of an encounter with God: it's terrifying, so that even when angels appear to men, the first words they always seem to have to say are "fear not!" Perhaps the most common response to having seen God in the Old Testament is something like Manoah's "We've seen God! We're gonna die!" And, of course, even Moses (as you note in one of your Substack posts) was only able to see the "back" of God. So it would seem that your preference for "God showing up consistently, in a personal manner" isn't feasible, and hasn't been feasible since the Fall. He's too awesome and too holy (I mean, He *is* the Creator and sustainer of the entire universe, after all - not to mention the source of our very idea of Good) and we're too limited and too fallen.
The Greek myth of Seleme being burned to ashes when she asks Zeus to reveal himself to her in all his glory would be a pagan parallel here.
Of course, from the Christian perspective, all of this changes when Christ comes: it's pretty much the first time when the Creator appears to His Creation that He doesn't have to say "fear not", and can have the sort of consistent personal relationship that would meet your criteria. Of course, the understanding is also that a good many who encountered him personally rejected the idea that He was God.
Given all this, I think it significant that Jesus' teaching is that *we* are (in a sense) gods, and that the basic criterion in the Last Judgement will be how we interacted with one another, particularly in our times of need, because in so doing we are interacting with *Him* - and the Beloved Disciple, John, says something similar when he says that "he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen." In other words, your Dad and your partner are, essentially, manifestations of God to you, in that your relationship and interactions with them are, in the grandest scheme of things, your relationship and interactions with God - which means the whole of our experience of life and relationship in this world is preparing us for and making possible the consistent, personal relationship with God that you are looking for. But, more than that, looking backwards from eternity into time - as Lewis suggests we do in The Great Divorce - your Dad and your partner showing up consistently, in a personal manner, is actually God doing so.
So there are two things here and I'll take them in turn;
1. I've addressed this idea in an article of mine where I said:
"The first is to say that the presence of God can actually be dangerous for human beings, due to our sinful state. This is an ontological principle we see repeatedly in the Bible. God is constantly presented in a veiled manner, and we are lead to believe that this is to protect the humans in question. The idea is that God must distance Himself from us, lest we are destroyed by His presence.
I think this would work as a justification if it weren’t for the fact that God is omni-present, and necessarily immanent to His creation. As a popular Orthodox prayer says, God is “everywhere present and fills all things”. Thus, it seems that depictions of God’s distance or closeness in the scriptures and other Christian writings, should be taken to be phenomenological, not ontological. This seems to imply that God chooses to do this, not that He must do it this way."
2. The idea that my Dad and my partner are actually, in some sense, God showing up for me, faces several problems- a) it's an unfalsifiable assertion without evidence, b) it works better within a pantheistic framework, and c) it doesn't account for why God can't show up himself.
Forgot to add the Scripture references:
- John 9:1-38
- Acts 16:16-34
- Matthew 11:2-15
- II Corinthians 4:6-15, 12:7-10