One beneficial part of social media is that you can ask for prayer and almost instantly the body of Christ across the globe can pray for you.
Christian Platonism: A History (a review)
I understand Platonism to be a field of study. Platonism studies metaphysical objects like causes, numbers, purpose, evenness, oddness, angels, mind, justice, love, and so on. Now, I recognize that I am being reductive here. Plato and platonists have spoken about a great deal many things. But I find this basic and simple definition helpful because it names what Platonism is in a way accessible to most today.
A brain surgeon studies the technique of brain surgery. A biologist studies biology. A platonist studies intellectual objects like love and numbers. It is easy to see why Christians might adopt platonic concepts. Theology—the study of the invisible, unseen God and his works—speaks about a divine Being whose existence lies outside of regular sense experience (sight, smell, etc.). An angel, heaven, a demon, a power, a throne, and more besides generally are understood to exist in a way that differs from a dog, person, or house.
Christian Platonism, in my view, uses appropriate language to talk about intellectual (i.e. non-material objects). Christianity adopted that language to organize their thinking around God and his works. Particularly, to conceive of one God who Paul calls “invisible” (1 Tim 1:17) or to conceive of how the invisible Logos becomes flesh (John 1:14) takes careful thinking. Platonism or philosophical language in general provides the tools for the job, just as physics can describe how the world works.
Alexander J. B. Hampton and John Peter Kenney appear to say something somewhat similar in their introduction to Christian Platonism: A History when they say, “At various times, Platonigms has constituted an essential philosophical and theological resource, furnishing Christianity with a fundamental intellectual framework that has played a key role in its early development, and in subsequent periods of renewal” (3). [Read more…] about Christian Platonism: A History (a review)
God’s Simplicity Means God Is His Attributes
Over the past while, some Christians have disagreed about how to talk about God’s nature. The disagreement centres on how to talk about God’s attributes. Everyone agrees that the Bible says God is just, merciful, and holy.
Yet some conclude that each attribute of God can be distinguished in God because the Bible says God is each of these things. Others say that each attribute of God cannot be distinguished in God but only in our minds.
At the heart of the debate then is this: in God, are his attributes distinct, or is God One and we perceive his attributes as distinct things?
I affirm that all that is in God is God because it better matches God’s revelation in Scripture and accords with reason. [Read more…] about God’s Simplicity Means God Is His Attributes
Eternal Submission? Not Arianism, but still Wrong
In 2016 Evangelicals debated about the best way to affirm that God is one and yet Father and Son. The old answer is: the Father begets the Son eternally; the Son is eternally begotten. Beget and begotten are old words to describe how fathers generate children. A mother births them; a father begets.
In recent years, evangelicals attempted to find a new way to talk about Father and Son. They said that the Father relates to the Son because he has paternal authority; the Son relates to the Father in a mode of submission. Authority and submission distinguish Father and Son.
For the most part, people found the new approach insufficient. It implied eternal inferiority of the Son, implied two wills, and inserted the human life of Jesus where he obeyed the Father into God. It unintentionally implied a creaturely characteristic in God since Jesus’s creaturely obedience to the Father gets imported into how God is eternally!
Recently, however, a theologian reaffirmed that the Father eternally has authority over the eternally submissive Son. Interestingly, the theologian cited Augustine and Hilary of Poitiers as proponents of his position. [Read more…] about Eternal Submission? Not Arianism, but still Wrong
Mesmerized by The Phone, Missed My Daughter
Today, I took my daughter to swimming lessons. With five other parents, I observed the class. I should say: I observed. At one point during the class, I looked around and saw every parent—all five—mesmerized by their phones. No parent watched their child. All watched their phones.
I am not uniquely virtuous. Last week, I was mesmerized by my phone. I missed my daughter when she dunked her head under water. She told me, don’t look at your phone! I mostly obeyed. I looked at my phone, but not for long. The compulsion to look took over, and I fell into a mania of technology. But I held on to my sanity. I stopped, and here is what I saw.
I saw a young boy tell my daughter, You are doing great! I watched my daughter swim in the deep end with a life jacket. I walked near her and told her she did great. She looked at me with glee, a smile broken across her face, saying something like, That is my daddy!
Whatever moment we had, we had because I was not memorized by the screen but by her. She knows I saw. I know I saw. We know that we love each other. [Read more…] about Mesmerized by The Phone, Missed My Daughter
Online Media Should Lead to Reading Books
Do not exclusively read articles online. Think of online articles as portals to books. Articles may answer an important question, give insight into an issue, and help us to know what to seek and to know.
But books deliver the contemplative ruminations that thinking requires. Online articles are an appetizer. Both are important. And the media of books and the internet are here to stay.
But there is an ordering. First the short article. Then the book. [Read more…] about Online Media Should Lead to Reading Books