Life

Time Does not Exist (It Has no Substance)

May 30, 2019 by wagraham 3 Comments

Time measures movement. It describes one rotation of the earth on its axis with the sun as a fixed point and defines that movement as 24 hours. Time points to the earth rotating around the sun over 365 single rotations with respect to the sun and calls that one year. While the earth makes its rotating orbit around the sun, its tilt creates temperature shifts across the world, which we call seasons.

When our bodies grow matter and develop, we call this age. When our bodies atrophy and begin to shut down, we too call this age. We define our own age on the basis of the earth’s rotation and orbit around the sun. One orbit of the earth around the sun, one year we gain.

Everything that has a beginning has motion. God created the earth, and so it began to spin and orbit a star we call the sun. The stars and celestial beings exist for the very sake of measuring motion: “And God said, ‘Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years’” (Gen 1:14).

Time has no substance, or matter of its own. Like a measuring tape expands across a board and defines the board’s length by inches and feet, so do days and years measure the distance the earth moves.

We define inches and feet and metres and yards to describe lengths. We define minutes and hours and days and years and centuries and millennia to describe movements.

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Does My Gender Define Me?

April 19, 2019 by wagraham 1 Comment

In the mid-nineteenth century, European legislators invented a taxonomy of gender to identify various sexual disorders (Blank 2012: 15–21). In this way, legal scholars created the idea of orientation, and new words like heterosexual and homosexual came into use.

As Michael Hannon explains, “Heterosexuals, like typewriters and urinals (also, obviously, for gentlemen), were an invention of the 1860s.” And according to Hanne Blank, “It has, in point of actual fact, only been possible to be a heterosexual since 1869” (2012: xiv). It would take about 60 years until these theories made their way into North America.

The straight truth is: heterosexuality is an invention of European legal philosophy. It is neither good nor bad for this reason. And yet we seriously need to question the validity of such gendered-identities. Especially now, since gendered categories have made their way into popular social paradigms.

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Marriage and Family Existed before All Time

April 14, 2019 by wagraham 1 Comment

Christians often maintain that marriage and family constitute foundations for society. From a biblical point of view, the argument goes like this. God created humanity. He instituted marriage through Adam and Eve. And through marriage, God founds the institution of the family that make up the backbone of society.

While true, this summary omits key realities that lie behind the two institutions. It tells us of the history of marriage and family but not the thing to which these institutions point nor their origin. Marriage and family are not originally human institutions. They belong to God by essence (family) and by promise (marriage) from before all time.

Families have their origin in the Father. Since he is Father, we have families (Eph 3:15). And the idea of marriage existed before the world’s founding because God promised to marry divinity to humanity in Christ and by the Spirit before the world’s foundation (Eph 5).

Here is what I mean.

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When Does Temptation Become Sin?

April 13, 2019 by wagraham 1 Comment

In John Owen’s well-known work on sin and temptation, he defines two kinds of temptation: ones that come from without and others that come from within (Works, 6:194). The first kind of temptation works like this. I am hungry. And someone offers me stolen food. This temptation comes from without and is morally neutral.

The second kind of temptation works like this. From within me, I propose a desire to steal food for the pleasure of eating. According to Owen, “the very proposal from within, it being the soul’s own act, is its sin” (Works, 6:194).

Although this taxonomy of temptation may seem overly detailed, it becomes important when we ask the question: when does temptation become sinful? Or more specifically, when does sexual or romantic desire become sinful?

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What Is The Disagreement on Same-Sex Attraction about?

April 11, 2019 by wagraham 3 Comments

Evangelical Christians are currently debating how to think about same-sex orientation. Within this debate, one particular subject has come to the front: same-sex attraction (SSA). There are at least four different positions:

First, some define SSA as sexual desire and therefore always sinful (Burk, Lambert, Strachan).
Second, others see SSA as a pattern of temptation, which should be resisted (Allberry, Shaw, Butterfield with some nuance).
Third, another group defines SSA as a condition that can be transformed into something good (Hill, Collins).
Fourth and lastly, one group affirms the goodness of gay identity (Vines).

Of these four views, the first three views overlap so much that it would be helpful to define each of these positions to understand where and why they differ.

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3 Clarifications on Desire and Same-sex Attraction

March 28, 2019 by wagraham 2 Comments

Recently, I wrote an article concerning both desire and same-sex attraction. The idea for the article came by way of reading Maximos the Confessor (d. 7th ce) on the topic of desire. In the article, I also discussed the NT’s use of the nouns desire and passion. What I did not realize was that a number of articles had been released recently online on similar topics.

In light of this, my article was (likely) understood to be engaging with this online debate. It was not. So I want to clarify three of the phrases and ideas that I had used to avoid further misunderstanding.

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