Relationships

Note: Last Updated 7/29/2024.

N. T. Wright:

Of course, being by yourself is often very desirable. If you work in a noisy factory, or even if you live in a crowded home, getting away, perhaps out into the countryside, can be a blessed relief. Even those of us who like being with lots of other people can sometimes have enough of it and enjoy curling up with a book, or going for a long walk and thinking about things without other voices intruding. Differences of temperament, upbringing, and other circumstances have a large part to play in this.

     But most people don’t want complete, long-term solitariness. In fact, most people, even those who are naturally shy and introverted, don’t normally choose to be alone all the time. Of those who opt for a solitary life, some do so for religious reasons, becoming hermits. Others do so to escape danger, as when a convicted criminal chooses solitary confinement rather than face prison violence. But even those who make such choices are usually conscious that what they’re doing is abnormal. Indeed, sometimes when people are locked up by themselves they quite literally go mad. Without human society, they don’t know who they are anymore. It seems that we humans were designed to find our purpose and meaning not simply in ourselves and our own inner lives, but in one another and in the shared meanings and purposes of a family, a street, a workplace, a community, a town, a nation. When we describe someone as a “loner,” we’re not necessarily saying the person is bad, simply that he or she is unusual.

(N. T. Wright, Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense, [San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2006], pp. 30-32.)

N. T. Wright:

We search for justice, but we often find that it eludes us. We hunger for spirituality, but we often live as though one-dimensional materialism were the obvious truth. In the same way, the finest and best of our relationships will eventually end in death. The laughter will end in tears. We know it; we fear it; but there’s nothing we can do about it.

     If this is paradoxical—we’re meant for relationship, but all relationships come to an end—we find in both parts an echoing voice that reminds us of the echoes we have heard in the first two chapters. Those faith-systems which are rooted in the scriptures we call the Old Testament speak of human beings as made, irreducibly, for relationship: for relationship with one another within the human family (and especially within the male-female complementarity); for relationship with the rest of the created order; and for relationship, above all, with the Creator. And yet, within the story of creation which remains foundational for Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, all things within the present world are transient. They are not designed to be permanent.

     That impermanence—the fact of death, in other words—has now attained the dark note of tragedy. It is bound up with human rebellion against the Creator, with a rejection of that deepest of relationships and a consequent souring of the other two (with one another and with the created order). But the motifs of relationship and impermanence are part of the very structure of what, in the great monotheistic religions, it means to be human. We shouldn’t be surprised that, when we think of human relationships, we find ourselves hearing the echo of a voice, even if, as in Genesis, the voice is asking “Where are you?”

(N. T. Wright, Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense, [San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2006], pp. 35-36.)

καὶ αὐτός ἐστιν πρὸ πάντων καὶ τὰ πάντα ἐν αὐτῷ συνέστηκεν ~ Soli Deo Gloria

Purpose

Note: Last Updated 7/29/2024.

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche:

If we possess our why of life we can put up with almost any how.

(Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols: Or How to Philosophize with a Hammer, §. Maxims and Arrows, #12; In: Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols; and The Anti-Christ, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, [Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1979], p. 23.)

Viktor E. Frankl:

     To be sure, man’s search for meaning may arouse inner tension rather than inner equilibrium. However, precisely such tension is an indispensable prerequisite of mental health. There is nothing in the world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one’s life. There is much wisdom in the words of Nietzsche: “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” I can see in these words a motto which holds true for any psychotherapy. In the Nazi concentration camps, one could have witnessed that those who knew that there was a task waiting for them to fulfill were most apt to survive. 

(Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning, [London: Rider, 2004], Part II: Logotherapy in a Nutshell, §. Noö-Dynamics, p. 109.)

Viktor E. Frankl:

…this striving to find a meaning in one’s life is the primary motivational force in man. 

(Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning, [London: Rider, 2004], Part II: Logotherapy in a Nutshell, paragraph 5, p. 104.)

John R. W. Stott:

Existentialism has the effect of diminishing people’s sense of significance. Radical existentialists may be said to differ from humanists in general by their resolve to take their atheism seriously and to face its terrible consequences. As we saw in chapter four, because (in their view) God is dead, everything else has died with him. Because there is no God, there are no values or ideals either, no moral laws or standards, no purposes or meanings. And, although I exist, there is yet nothing that gives me or my existence any significance, except perhaps my decision to seek the courage to be. Meaning is found only in despising my own meaninglessness. There is no other way to authenticate myself. 

     Bleakly heroic as this philosophy may sound, there must be very few people able to perform the conjuring trick of pretending to have significance when they know they have none. For significance is basic to survival.

(John Stott, Why I Am a Christian, [Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2004], p. 104.)

καὶ αὐτός ἐστιν πρὸ πάντων καὶ τὰ πάντα ἐν αὐτῷ συνέστηκεν ~ Soli Deo Gloria

Omnipotence

Note: Last Updated 7/29/2024.

Richard Swinburne:

A logically impossible action is not an action. It is what is described by a form of words which purport to describe an action, but do not describe anything which it is coherent to suppose could be done. It is no objection to A’s omnipotence that he cannot make a square circle. This is because ‘making a square circle’ does not describe anything which it is coherent to suppose could be done.

(Richard Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism: Revised Edition, [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993], pp. 153-154.)

C. S. Lewis:

Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think all nonsense questions are unanswerable. How many hours are in a mile? Is yellow square or round? Probably half the questions we ask―half our great theological and metaphysical problems―are like that.

( C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed, [London: Faber and Faber, 1966], pp. 58-59.)

 

Thomas Aquinas: 

     I answer that, All confess that God is omnipotent; but it seems difficult to explain in what His omnipotence precisely consists: for there may be doubt as to the precise meaning of the word “all” when we say that God can do all things. If, however, we consider the matter aright, since power is said in reference to possible things, this phrase, God can do all things, is rightly understood to mean that God can do all things that are possible; and for this reason He is said to be omnipotent. …Now God cannot be said to be omnipotent through being able to do all things that are possible to created nature; for the divine power extends farther than that. If, however, we were to say that God is omnipotent because He can do all things that are possible to His power, there would be a vicious circle in explaining the nature of His power. For this would be saying nothing else but that God is omnipotent, because He can do all that He is able to do. It remains therefore, that God is called omnipotent because He can do all things that are possible absolutely; which is the second way of saying a thing is possible. For a thing is said to be possible or impossible absolutely, according to the relation in which the very terms stand to one another, possible if the predicate is not incompatible with the subject, as that Socrates sits; and absolutely impossible when the predicate is altogether incompatible with the subject, as, for instance, that a man is a donkey. …Whence, whatsoever has or can have the nature of being, is numbered among the absolutely possible things, in respect of which God is called omnipotent. Now nothing is opposed to the idea of being except non-being. Therefore, that which implies being and non-being at the same time is repugnant to the idea of an absolutely possible thing, within the scope of the divine omnipotence. For such cannot come under the divine omnipotence, not because of any defect in the power of God, but because it has not the nature of a feasible or possible thing. Therefore, everything that does not imply a contradiction in terms, is numbered amongst those possible things, in respect of which God is called omnipotent: whereas whatever implies contradiction does not come within the scope of divine omnipotence, because it cannot have the aspect of possibility. Hence it is better to say that such things cannot be done, than that God cannot do them. 

(The “Summa Theologica” of St. Thomas Aquinas: Part I. QQ. I.-XXVI.: Second and Revised Edition, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, [London: Burns Oates & Washbourne Ltd., 1920], Pt. I, Q. 25, Art. 3, pp. 350, 350-351, 351-352.)

R. C. Sproul:

The answer is “No, God cannot build a rock so big that He cannot move it.”

     How can that be? Is there something God cannot do? To understand this answer we must first establish some foundations. First, it is important to note that the word omnipotent is an abstract theological term used by theologians in theological conversation. Most theologians do not use the term omnipotence in an absolute sense, which would mean that God could do anything, absolutely anything. God could die. God could lie. God could create a square circle. God could be God and not be God at the same time and in the same relationship. Here the concept of omnipotence is pushed to the level of absurdity.

     The normal meaning of omnipotence is that God has absolute power over His creation. He rules His creation; the creation does not rule Him. God has the entire universe under His control. There are no horses that run too fast for Him to catch them, no elephants too heavy for Him to lift, and no rocks too big for Him to move.

     Thus, the answer to the student’s question is God cannot build a rock too big for Him to move because God cannot stop being God. He cannot stop acting consistently with His nature. It is His nature to be omnipotent over what He creates.

(R. C. Sproul, One Holy Passion: The Consuming Thirst to Know God, [Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1987], pp. 125-126.)

καὶ αὐτός ἐστιν πρὸ πάντων καὶ τὰ πάντα ἐν αὐτῷ συνέστηκεν ~ Soli Deo Gloria

Nothing, Concept of

Note: Last Updated 7/31/2024.

David C. Downing:

     In Surprised by Joy Lewis notes that his reading of Henri Bergson in 1918 was an important first step in moving away from Schopenhauer. Bergson, says Lewis, showed him “the snares that lurk about the word Nothing” and helped him get past Schopenhauer’s “haunting idea . . . that the universe might not have existed.” The book Lewis has in mind here is Creative Evolution, first published in 1907. In it Bergson critiques the notion that the physical universe is a cosmic fluke, that it was preceded at some time eons ago by a pure Void, and that it need not have existed at all.

     Bergson argues that we can conceive of an empty glass, as opposed to a full one, by retaining the idea of the glass. And we can conceive of an empty universe, as opposed to one with galaxies, worlds and life forms, only by retaining the idea of a universe, something which exists. To posit the existence of nonexistence is, for Bergson, a logical impossibility. One might assert that a chalk circle is present or absent from a blackboard, but one cannot argue that the idea of a circle does not exist, for it is independent of, and logically prior to, any particular physical circle. In the same way, there are logical principles, such as that A = A, which are eternal, self-existing and have no meaningful logical opposites. To Bergson, existence itself is such a term, an object necessary for any contemplating subject, regardless of how dark and empty one might try to imagine the universe. For him a nonexistent universe is like a square circle, “a self-destructing idea, a pseudo-idea, a mere word.”

(David C. Downing, The Most Reluctant Convert: C. S. Lewis’s Journey to Faith, [Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2004], pp. 93-94.)

Henri Bergson:

…Existence appears to me like a conquest over nought. I say to myself that there might be, that indeed there ought to be, nothing, and I then wonder that there is something. Or I represent all reality extended on nothing as on a carpet: at first was nothing, and being has come by superaddition to it. Or, yet again, if something has always existed, nothing must always have served as its substratum or receptacle, and is therefore eternally prior. A glass may have always been full, but the liquid it contains nevertheless fills a void. In the same way, being may have always been there, but the nought which is filled and, as it were, stopped up by it, pre-exists for it none the less, if not in fact at least in right. In short, I cannot get rid of the idea that the full is an embroidery on the canvas of the void, that being is superimposed on nothing, and that in the idea of “nothing” there is less than in that of “something.” Hence all the mystery.

     It is necessary that this mystery should be cleared up. It is more especially necessary, if we put duration and free choice at the base of things. For the disdain of metaphysics for all reality that endures comes precisely from this, that it reaches being only by passing through “not-being,” and that an existence which endures seems to it not strong enough to conquer non-existence and itself posit itself. It is for this reason especially that it is inclined to endow true being with a logical, and not a psychological nor a physical existence. For the nature of a purely logical existence is such that it seems to be self-sufficient and to posit itself by the effect alone of the force immanent in truth. If I ask myself why bodies or minds exist rather than nothing, I find no answer; but that a logical principle, such as A = A, should have the power of creating itself, triumphing over the nought throughout eternity, seems to me natural. A circle drawn with chalk on a blackboard is a thing which needs explanation: this entirely physical existence has not by itself wherewith to vanquish non-existence. But the “logical essence” of the circle, that is to say, the possibility of drawing it according to a certain law—in short, its definition—is a thing which appears to me eternal: it has neither place nor date; for nowhere, at no moment, has the drawing of a circle begun to be possible. Suppose, then, that the principle on which all things rest, and which all things manifest possesses an existence of the same nature as that of the definition of the circle, or as that of the axiom A = A: the mystery of existence vanishes, for the being that is at the base of everything posits itself then in eternity, as logic itself does.

(Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution, trans. Arthur Mitchell, [London: Macmillan and Co., 1911], pp. 291-292.)

καὶ αὐτός ἐστιν πρὸ πάντων καὶ τὰ πάντα ἐν αὐτῷ συνέστηκεν ~ Soli Deo Gloria

Myths, Pagan

Note: Last Updated 7/29/2024.

Michael J. Christensen:

Myths are only shadows of the light of God. We walk in the light by faith, not by sight or exhaustive understanding.

(Michael J. Christensen, C. S. Lewis on Scripture: His Thoughts on the Nature of Biblical Inspiration, the Role of Revelation, and the Question of Inerrancy, [Waco: Word Books, 1979], p. 63.)

Michael J. Christensen:

     Myth, it must be remembered, does not mean lie, error, illusion or misunderstood history. The term has little to do with fact or history but transcends both. Properly understood, myth is a medium of divine revelation bringing a level of understanding superseding that which can be known through facts and history.

(Michael J. Christensen, C. S. Lewis on Scripture: His Thoughts on the Nature of Biblical Inspiration, the Role of Revelation, and the Question of Inerrancy, [Waco: Word Books, 1979], pp. 76-77.)

Michael J. Christensen:

    Good Dreams: Pagan Premonitions of Christ

     Pagan myths or “good dreams,” as Lewis refers to them in Mere Christianity, comprise yet another medium of divine revelation. Scattered throughout human history are archetypal patterns, stories, rituals, and religious motifs “about a god who dies and comes to life again and, by his death, has somehow given new life to men.”

     In Reflections on the Psalms, Lewis cites a passage from the Roman poet Virgil (70-19 B.C.), who wrote in one of his Eclogues: “The great procession of the ages begins anew. Now the Virgin returns, the reign of Saturn returns, and the new child is sent down from heaven.” The “reign of Saturn,” Lewis reminds us, is the great Roman age that roughly corresponds to the Garden of Eden before the Fall in Hebrew mythology. Virgil’s poem describes the new paradisal age which would emerge with this nativity. Apparently, Lewis surmises, some dim prophetic knowledge of Christ’s birth impressed the mind of the famous pagan poet.

     Plato was another, perhaps the greatest of all myth-makers. In his Republic, we are asked to imagine a perfectly righteous man, who “will be scourged, tortured, and imprisoned, his eyes will be put out, and after enduring every humiliation he will be crucified. . . .” Although Plato was clearly inspired by the death of Socrates, he is really depicting, according to Lewis, “the fate of goodness in a wicked and misunderstanding world.” The obvious similarity between Plato’s vision and the Passion of Christ was not one of coincidence but insight. “It is the very same thing of which that Passion is the supreme illustration.”

     “And what are we to say of those gods in various Pagan mythologies who are killed and rise again and who thereby renew or transform the life of their worshippers or of nature?” Lewis asks in Reflections on the Psalms, referring to the corn-kings in the nature religions who personify the annual death and resurrection of corn. He asks again, “Can one believe there was just nothing in that persistent motif of blood, death, and resurrection, which runs like a black and scarlet cord through all the greater myths—through Balder and Dionysus and Adonis and the Grail too?”

     How are Christians to understand the obvious similarities between pagan myths and Christianity? Either pagan mythology is essentially demonic and functions as counterfeit revelation for the purpose of confusing mankind, or else it is the dim foreshadowing of God’s supreme revelation in Christ. Lewis identifies with the latter view: “Surely the history of the human mind hangs together better if you suppose that all this was the first shadowy approach of something whose reality came with Christ.”

     The difference between pagan myths of redemption and the Divine Incarnation in history “is not the difference between falsehood and truth. It is the difference between a real event on the one hand and dim dreams or premonitions of that same event on the other.” As Lewis explains in Miracles, Christ is like the corn-kings of pagan mythology “because the Corn-King is a portrait of Him. The similarity is not in the least unreal or accidental. For the Corn-King is derived (through human imagination) from the facts of Nature, and the facts of Nature from her Creator; the Death and Re-birth pattern is in her because it was first in Him.”

     This archetypal pattern of redemption—birth, death, new life—is “a thing written all over the world.” Embedded in the natural processes of the sun rising and setting, the cycles of the seasons, the cycle of life, or a seed being planted in the ground and dying only to live again is the mythological truth that man must die to live: “In the sequence of night and day, in the annual death and rebirth of the crops, in the myths which these processes gave rise to, in the strong, if half-articulate, feeling . . . that man himself must undergo some sort of death if he would truly live, there is already a likeness permitted by God to that truth on which all depends.” One of the functions of the natural world, it seems, is to furnish symbols that point to spiritual reality. Nature supplies the substance for myth; God supplies the meaning.

(Michael J. Christensen, C. S. Lewis on Scripture: His Thoughts on the Nature of Biblical Inspiration, the Role of Revelation, and the Question of Inerrancy, [Waco: Word Books, 1979], pp. 73-75.)

Note: See further: Cosmology (As a Literary Genre—Myths/History).

καὶ αὐτός ἐστιν πρὸ πάντων καὶ τὰ πάντα ἐν αὐτῷ συνέστηκεν ~ Soli Deo Gloria