Yours for Mine - Call Me Distant

Some artists and songs have more memories attached to them than others. One of those bands for me is Yours for Mine, an indie rock/post-hardcore outfit that released their debut full-length, Dear Children, on Blood and Ink Records in 2008.

My first memory of Yours for Mine is seeing their CD at a local Christian bookstore, Scott's Parable (which has since relocated and been rebranded as Kennedy's Parable) around the time their album was released. I would have probably been in grade nine.

I did not begin listening to Yours for Mine until I graduated high school, however. What motivated this was that Blood and Ink Records had everything available for free on Bandcamp around Christmastime in 2012. Not only was that the year I graduated high school, as 2012 also marked my first year away from home, in which I packed my bags for Thetis Island, BC to attend a programme at Capernwray Harbour Bible School that lasted from September 2012 to April 2013.

Christmas of 2012 was pretty awesome. In addition to being reunited with family and friends after a few months of separation, my parents spoiled me with a 160 GB silver iPod Classic. (In fact, I have the replacement sitting beside me as I type this. One of my roommates from bible school tinkered with the original and unintentionally caused it to malfunction, due to my leaving it behind in our cabin on spring break, when I left for Seattle, hence the replacement.) I loved music back then, perhaps more than I even do now, as I did not take a liking to books at that time in my life.

Returning to the topic of this post, Yours for Mine, I remember including "Absence in Elegance" in a playlist I made for a yearbook committee meeting at Capernwray. That jazzy outro! Dear Children is also the album I listened to when I hopped aboard the wrong bus after a psychology lecture as a first-year student at the University of Saskatchewan in 2014. I probably spent an hour and a half on the bus, instead of the usual half an hour. In 2019, Yours for Mine also made it onto a couple of monthly playlists I created in Windows Media Player with their tracks "The Angry End" and "My Tomorrow."

And here I am, in 2024, still getting this band's music stuck in my head. The singing on Dear Children can be rather pitchy, but there is something captivating about Yours for Mine that encourages me to look beyond that part of their music. "Call Me Distant," the song I have decided to share here, takes inspiration from 1 John 2:12.

Structural Functionalism and Scripture

A paragraph from Sociology Through the Eyes of Faith by David A. Fraser and Tony Campolo:

In this tradition [structural functionalism], inequality is natural. People are born with innate differences in gifts, motivation, and capabilities. This shows up in variations in social worth. Because humans are by nature inclined to disorder, strong social bonds are essential. The nature of society is that of interdependent institutions with a supportive set of norms and values that bind people together into a cohesive whole. The most common metaphors for this vision of society are those of the living organism and the system. In either case, the images stress the unity of the social whole and the self-correcting functioning of the social organism when its parts properly interrelate. A stable but dynamic equilibrium is created when every part or element contributes to the survival and health on the whole.¹

George Ritzer associates structural functionalism with consensus theories, which "see shared norms and values as fundamental to society, focus on social order based on tacit agreements, and view social change as occurring in a slow and orderly fashion."²

James Farganis writes the following about structural functionalism:

Rules and regulations are understood, by the functionalist, as codes and enactments designed to benefit the totality rather than the expressions of a dominant class or particular interest with privileged access to decision-making power. Functionalism in this respect is set apart from Marxian explanations of social order, in which coercion is seen as the ultimate reason people obey rules and abide by codes and laws.³

Certain passages in Scripture, in my estimation, square well with the ideas of structural functionalism.

Romans 12:4-8 not only speaks about inequality in terms of gifts, but uses the human body as a metaphor for the Church:

For as in one body we have many members and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; the encourager, in encouragement; the giver, in sincerity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness.

Similar to how structural functionalism suggests that humans have a proclivity for disorder, Ephesians 2:3 describes humans as being "children of wrath" by nature.

1 Corinthians 1:10-12 also affirms that it is important for Christians to have shared norms and values: "Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you but that you be knit together in the same mind and the same purpose." As this summary by BibleProject notes, the book addresses issues of "sexual misconduct, confusion about food and worship practices, and controversy surrounding Jesus’ resurrection."

Notes

1. David A. Fraser and Tony Campolo, Sociology Through the Eyes of Faith (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992), 112.

2. George Ritzer, Sociological Theory (8^th edition, New York: McGraw Hill, 2011), 236.

3. James Farganis, Readings in Social Theory: The Classic Tradition to Post-Modernism (6^th edition, New York: McGraw Hill, 2011), 157.

Emanon - What Can I Do

"Utopia's a joke if you think it can really happen"

Questioning the Gender-Affirming Paradigm

Recently, I came across a series of pictures from Our Landing Place, a mental health service, on Instagram. The pictures intend to debunk "myths" about gender-affirming care, which can be defined as "medical, social, and psychological approaches and therapies that aim to affirm a transgender patient's identity or align their physical characteristics more closely with their gender." In addition to insults like "extremist" and "anti-trans" being used to describe those with a different social philosophy than that of Our Landing Place, the post fails to direct the reader to any resources that would support its claims.

The certainty with which these claims are made, however, is not necessarily justified. I know this because I have come across information that does not cohere with the gender-affirming paradigm.

Here is the response to the first "myth," that gender-affirming care is too accessible: "Experts are reporting that gender affirming (sic) care is extremely hard for youths to access in Canada, which is putting trans and non-binary youth at risk of mental health challenges, including suicide."

This is an oft-repeated idea: either provide gender-affirming care, or the mental health of youth will be jeopardized, perhaps even to the point of suicide. However, Leor Sapir, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, has written a thorough article where he argues to the contrary. Sapir claims, for instance, that teenagers who experience rapid-onset gender dysphoria (ROGD) "are known to have very high rates of anxiety, depression, history of sexual trauma, anorexia, and eating disorders, all of which typically precede their gender-related distress." It is possible (and even likely) that these factors would contribute to making someone suicidal, quite apart from them not receiving gender-affirming care.

Unfortunately, while Sapir includes many links to research in this article, the sentence that the above quotation is taken from does not include any. However, I was able to find this article (albeit retracted) by Suzanna Diaz and J. Michael Bailey that supports Sapir's claim. Parents of 1,655 adolescents and young adults experiencing gender dysphoria were surveyed. "On average, mental health problems . . .  preceded gender dysphoria by 3.8 years."

Now, to explain ROGD in more detail, it refers to a condition in which adolescents (especially females) "who showed no signs of gender dysphoria before puberty" experience an abrupt change in gender identity. As David Ludden notes in the article just linked to, however, it is a controversial concept in terms of causation. This is especially true of the social contagion hypothesis, which posits that ROGD is a misdiagnosis of gender dysphoria caused by social influence. While there is no shortage of activists who dismiss the concept entirely (see Wikipedia's article on it for an astounding example of ideological bias), I do not wish to take it off the table.

Returning to Sapir's article, this paragraph also caught my attention:

Many countries, including the United States, have media guidelines on how to report on suicide so as not to inadvertently encourage people to engage in the behavior. Among the things that the CDC has warned not to do is “[p]resenting simplistic explanations for suicide.” As the agency explains, “Suicide is never the result of a single factor or event, but rather results from a complex interaction of many factors and usually involves a history of psychosocial problems.” It's difficult to imagine a more “simplistic explanation” than “kids will kill themselves if their gender identity is not affirmed.”

Moving onto another "myth," concerning the likeliness of regret, Our Landing Place responds: "The regret rate of transitioning, scientifically, is below 1%. The regret rate of knee surgery is up to 30%."

However, a special report has been published by Reuters that renders this statement questionable. The authors—Robin Respaut, Chad Terhune, and Michelle Conlin—write: "Ever since the first clinic to offer gender care to minors in the United States opened in Boston 15 years ago, none of the leading providers have published any systematic, long-term studies tracking outcomes for all patients."

Not only is there a dearth of long-term studies on patient outcomes, which is surely important to consider if you are going to attach a definitive percentage to regret rates, but statistics on detransition rates are also ambivalent. According to Respaut, Terhune, and Conlin, the available (and limited) studies suggest that it ranges between less than 1% and up to 25%. It strikes me as intuitive that regret is a reason for detransitioning, even if it is not the only reason. So, it is not certain that "scientifically" the regret rate is below 1%, in which the use of the word "scientifically" appears to be motivated by a desire on the part of Our Landing Place to insulate their beliefs from any evidence to the contrary.

I will content myself with commenting on just one more picture, which is the last one in the series. The "myth" it rejects is that "[p]arents have rights." Our Landing Place responds by saying, "This is a campaign for power, not rights. Parents have responsibilities. Children have rights."

It is convenient that this Nietzschean sentiment omits any mention of activists in fields like mental health and education. For those who advocate for gender-affirming care—such as Our Landing Place—could also be accused of wanting power, namely, over policymakers and parents who do not agree with their ideology.

If parents do not have rights over their children, why should mental health professionals and educators who have no familial bond whatsoever?

Really, power is a marginal issue; at the heart of the matter is values. It is easy to resort to the emotionalism of using cliché words like "power" when different values eclipse one's own, but this misses the point. The reason people are motivated to exercise power over others in the first place is that they believe they know what is true and proper, while others do not. Questions of truth and ethics should be at the forefront of the discussion on gender-affirming care.

Meanwhile, basic questions like "Is it true that someone's gender can be separated from their body?" are completely overlooked, as the radical dualism of the sex-gender distinction has become taken for granted so as to hardly be questionable, despite the fact that in contemporary discussions on the philosophy of mind substance dualism is not particularly popular. 

It also seems to me that the ethics of gender-affirming care, at least in popular discourse, is reduced to consent and desire on the part of the recipient, often discussed as a matter of "allowing the individual to be their true self." But these factors are superficial. Consent is obviously important, but it does not automatically make the thing being consented to good, for it is possible to consent to something bad. Here is one example: if a stuntman agrees to be set on fire and happens to pay the price for his risk-taking with first-degree burns, then he consented to something wrong, since his choice resulted in self-destruction (unless self-destruction is not wrong, which sounds preposterous). It may be objected that the stuntman did not consent to first-degree burns, but rather, to simply being set on fire. But surely it must be admitted that first-degree burns are a possible consequence of being set on fire. To make a primary agreement to the latter is to make a secondary agreement to the former.

Much of the same could be said about desire. But whereas consent merely agrees, desire wants. It is not out of the question that someone can want something that is not good. Indeed, basic human desires often produce appalling consequences. Sexual desire, when let loose from its proper restraints, results in debauchery. A desire like hunger, as well, is meant to motivate someone to nourish their body; yet the desire for food can easily move someone towards excess, resulting in gluttony. There is nothing about desire per se that is right or wrong, for it is morally neutral. What matters is the value of that which desire aims at.

It is time to bring this blog post to a close. I admit that I have a shtick just as much as those I argue against. However, based on the evidence before me and my own theoretical reflections, I find popular sentiments about gender-affirming care to be found wanting. This does not mean that I have the final word. But those who endorse the gender-affirming paradigm are not infallible either. 

Are sex and gender truly ontologically separate categories? Is it right for someone to identify in a way that does not correspond to their body, especially to the point of undergoing surgery? These are the questions anyone with an opinion on the topic must come to terms with, and they are not silly questions. This is a matter of parsing out what someone has a choice about and what they do not, for there are some things that humans are simply born with or situated in, such as one's parents and place of birth. Should the same be said about sex/gender or not?

Perhaps many gender-affirming advocates are motivated by compassion. But compassion, when separated from critical thinking, can quickly lead to irresponsible permissiveness. The highest good that liberalism offers is allowing people to do whatever they want so long as they consent to it and it is not "harmful." What is better is a society composed of citizens who take time to think about what is true and right, and to live those values out.

Taciturn Headphonetics Gets Reviewed!

Crossposting this from the Silent Music Records blog:

John Underdown of Jesusfreakhideout.com has written a review for Taciturn Headphonetics. I am thankful for the well-written and thoughtful review.

Taciturn Headphonetics is now available on Bandcamp and BeatsUnion for $5.

Roger Scruton on Several Political Topics

In August, 2023 I decided to start reading The Meaning of Conservatism by Roger Scruton. I was lucky to find a copy of the first-edition paperback (published by Penguin Books in 1980) at Westgate Books here in Saskatoon. I bought it in 2017, so after having it lay neglected on the shelf for six years, I decided to see what it was all about.

I have still not finished the book, as the bookmark is placed at chapter eight. There are only two chapters left (approximately 30 pages altogether), but I might not bother finishing it. The Meaning of Conservatism is very profound at some points, but also quite boring at others. Having said that, after spending time with this book, I can see why Scruton has a good reputation as a political philosopher. There is something sublime and intuitive about the way he thinks and writes.

Here are some passages from the book that I enjoy:

Even an institution like the Catholic Church has become afflicted with the fashion for reform, and being unable to take Christ's words to Simon Peter in their egoistic Lutheran meaning, has partially forgotten the tradition of custom, ceremony and judicious manoeuvre that enabled it to stand seemingly unshifting in the midst of worldly change, calling to every man with a voice of immutable authority. The Church, an institution with an aim that is not of this world, but only in this world, sells itself as a 'social cause'! It is hardly surprising if the result is not only empty moralism but also ludicrous theology. (22)

Conservatism presupposes the existence of a social organism. Its politics is concerned with sustaining the life of that organism, through sickness and health, change and decay. (25)

Of course there are good states and bad states, tyrannies and peaceful communities; and the conservative will be ready to judge between them. . . . But to think that the whole difference can be summed up in terms of a simple body of abstract rights, which can be specified for all men, independently of their origin and station, is neither feasible politics nor plausible doctrine. (49)

As I have already suggested, the liberal view is individualistic. It sees the individual as potentially complete in himself, and possessed of reason, which he can use either well or ill. To use it well is to use it freely – to live one's life according to the precepts of 'autonomous' (or even 'authentic') choice. (72)

The liberal is the one to ask 'why?' of every institution, never the one to doubt the premise from which the possibility of such a question springs, the premise of unbelief. (78)

But am I harmed by something purely because I do not consent to it? (78)

Just as Islamic law recognizes the conflict between the outlook which it expresses and the consumption of wine, so does our law recognize a conflict between the foetid banter of the public house and the menacing gentleness of 'grass'. (80)

To replace punishment by 'reform' is to separate the law from its unspoken moral base; it is also to assume a right of forgiveness which lies with the victim of crime alone. This reinforces the sense, either that crime is 'subjective', so that acts are criminal only by convention, or else that the objectivity of crime goes unnoticed by the powers of state. The first of those thoughts spells the decline in the standards of moral conduct, while the second fosters the desire for personal, rather than institutional revenge. (83)

It is the home, therefore, that is the principal sphere of property, and the principal locus of the gift. (Hospitality is the only form of gift that imposes itself as an obligation: for it arises when another has been invited into the sphere which defines one's own.) (100)

For sociology, containing no agreed theoretical structure, and having all but eliminated from its content the reflections of those perceptive men who founded it (men like Durkheim and Weber, whose style was the historical style, of elevated critical insight), may exist largely as a vehicle for mindless statistics and political prejudice. (150–151)

Oh my—ten quotations! I probably went overboard here. I treat books as both a resource and decoration, however, and so refuse to highlight or adorn them with Post-it notes. This makes quotations I come across that I find particularly interesting not readily available. Recording memorable quotations here may well be a good place to keep them within reach.

Taciturn Headphonetics

My new album, Taciturn Headphonetics, has been published. You can find it on Bandcamp and BeatsUnion. Mixing elements of ambient, breakbeat, chillout, hip-hop, leftfield electronica, and trip-hop, there is much here to potentially interest fans of experimental music.

Against Poetry

Do angels need to hide in the cupboard for my tea to taste good? Keep your chit chat—I have a bull's eye to hit. Perhaps these scenes are matryoshka dolls of hierarchical values, ranging from biology to culture. Metaphors and similes? Such devices are an impediment to my travels. I want language that is direct, taking me to fundamental reality. Why would I take the bus that runs late and stops at every other street corner, when I could take one that faces no interruption?

J. R. Lucas on God's Vulnerability

I came across this passage in the summer of 2022 while reading Philosophy of Religion: Selected Readings, edited by Michael Peterson, William Hasker, Bruce Reichenbach, and David Basinger. The original source is J. R. Lucas's book The Future: An Essay on God, Temporality, and Truth.

Love is not only creative, but vulnerable. If I care for somebody I can be hurt. God, on the Christian view, is highly passible and was hurt. Instead of the impassive Buddha untroubled by the tribulations of mortal existence, the Christians see God on a cross: instead of the Aristotelian ideal of a self-sufficient God who devotes His time to enjoying the contemplation of His own excellence, the Christians worship a God who shared the human condition and came among us.

Learning about Epistemology

I just finished reading A Confession by Leo Tolstoy (Jane Kentish translation) this afternoon. It is the first book I have read from him (though a short work, at only 60 pages).

I was first introduced to Tolstoy in Alexandre Christoyannopoulos's Christian Anarchism: A Political Commentary on the Gospel, which I read in 2020. I was not left with a particularly positive impression of Tolstoy—let us just say that he is, well, a little bit iconoclastic.

But then, in 2022, I came across some quotations from A Confession in Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief by Jordan B. Peterson and knew that I had to read this book at some point in my life. William Barrett also mentions A Confession in Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy, another book I read later that year.

A Confession is autobiographical, depicting Tolstoy's struggle with finding meaning in life, as well as his difficulty accepting the theology of the Russian Orthodox Church. This work certainly gets my recommendation; here is just one passage that caught my attention: "I realized that my question as to what my life is, and the answer that it is an evil, was quite correct. The only mistake was that I had extended an answer that related only to myself to life as a whole."

Up next on my reading list is Theory of Knowledge by Keith Lehrer, which I acquired last April by using some in-store credit at Peryton Books. I never took a course in epistemology when I was an undergraduate student, so I am looking forward to being introduced to this branch of philosophy. Personally, I appreciate the retro cover of this 1990 publication. Some of the other interesting-looking titles from the Dimensions of Philosophy Series include Metaphysics by Peter van Inwagen and Philosophy of Mind by Jaegwon Kim.

A Speculative Schema for Describing God's Nature

What is God like?

God exists necessarily. Although a Bible verse like "I am who I am" (Exodus 3:14) has been interpreted by some, such as Huldrych Zwingli,¹ to refer to God's necessary existence, Clark Pinnock says that this way of thinking misses the point: "What God is saying to Moses in this verse is not 'I exist' or even 'I will be present.' God is saying that he will be a faithful God for his people."² Faithfulness is an aspect of God's character, and the way Exodus 3:14 is worded makes it sound necessary. So, in addition to God's necessary existence, we may say that he has a necessary character.

What else can be said about what God is like? Not only does God exist and have a character, but he acts. These can be pictured as different qualities that God has. Existence is primary, character is secondary, and acts are tertiary.

Christians who accept classical theism will take issue with the schema presented here. A couple aspects of classical theism include that God is timeless and simple (divine simplicity). To say that God is timeless is to say that he "dwells in an eternal present that lacks a before and after."³ Divine simplicity is the idea that "God's essential attributes are both identical to one another, and identical to God's nature and existence."⁴ On this view, "God does not possess any properties."⁵

What I have suggested, on the contrary, is that God is composed of properties: existence, character, and acts. God has a prioritized existence, since he exists without being caused to do so. Having a character is impossible without first existing. One's acts also have a certain character to them, being either good or evil. Existence, character, and acts work quite naturally in relation to each other.

Are God's essential attributes identical to his nature and existence? This is tricky to evaluate. While I would be comfortable saying that God's existence and essential attributes (or "character," as I would put it) are both necessary (which could be taken to mean "identical"), some of the expressions of his character do not seem to be. For example, it is intuitive to believe that a personal God loves people individually. Love is certainly an essential attribute of God, but his loving me is not because I exist contingently rather than necessarily. It seems at least possible that I could not have existed. If I did not exist, God could not have loved me, but this would pose no threat to his essential attribute of love, which God could express in other ways. On the one hand, it sounds like I am agreeing with this aspect of divine simplicity because God's love seems to exist without it being expressed in particular contingent ways. On the other, God's existence is necessary, yet his essential attributes are capable of being expressed in contingent ways. If one is necessary and the other is contingent (at least, in part), the two cannot be identical.

As for timelessness, it is problematic if we are to also believe that God has accurate knowledge about our world, which is temporal. Richard Swinburne writes persuasively on this point:

And, how could God 'simultaneously' be aware of a temporal event 'as it happens', unless his awareness of it is simultaneous with it happening, and so how could he be aware at his one timeless moment of two events happening at different times, unless the two awareness are simultaneous with each other, and so the two events happening at different times would have to happen at the same time—which is logically impossible. How could God be aware of the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 587 BCE as it happens, and of its destruction by the Romans in 70 CE as it happens, when these two times are not simultaneous with each other?⁶

This has implications for God's character and acts. God's omniscience can be thought of as an aspect of his character. Furthermore, God's knowledge about the world informs how he acts. Not only is the notion that God has timeless knowledge confusing, but it looks as though it could not produce historical acts. This is puzzling if we are to believe that God acts in history, which is what would be happening if he genuinely interacted with a temporal world.

The three properties I have discussed in this post—existence, character, and acts—are the most basic ones I can think of at the moment, so I will stick to them. I am willing to change my mind about the accuracy of this schema should any objections come my way that I find convincing. The value of this schema is that it offers an alternative to some of the questionable elements of the classical theist model. I believe it also has the potential to offer an interesting way of conceptualizing the God-world relation. That, however, is a topic for another time.

Notes

1. Steven Nemes, Theology of the Manifest: Christianity Without Metaphysics (Lanham: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, 2023), 58.

2. Clark Pinnock, Richard Rice, John Sanders, William Hasker, and David Basinger, The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1994), 106.

3. R. T. Mullins, God and Emotion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 16.

4. Ibid., 17.

5. Ibid.

6. Richard Swinburne, "Causation, Time, and God's Omniscience," Topoi (2017), 36:682.

Qualified Monism and the Problem of Evil

Last year I read Theology of the Manifest: Christianity Without Metaphysics by Steven Nemes. It was a treat to read, and I recommend it to anyone who enjoys philosophical theology. I appreciate Nemes's creative thinking and clear writing; as far as I can tell, he seems to be doing some of the more interesting work in this field.

One of my motivations for reading this work was to learn more about panentheism (or as Nemes puts it, "qualified monism"). His version of this perspective on the God-World relationship is as follows: God is the "absolute Life whose 'body' or visible exterior image of his inner life is the phenomenological World."¹ (Since Nemes capitalizes "World" in his book, I will do the same throughout this post for the sake of consistency. An exception is made in a quotation from another author, who does not capitalize the word.)

The term I wish to zero in on here is "phenomenological." The philosophical tools Nemes is working with here are those of phenomenology, which is a tradition that maintains there is "a strict correlation between appearance and being."² As well, the "phenomenological World" mentioned in the above definition for qualified monism refers to something different than the Earth or the entire cosmos; it instead refers to "the total 'environment' in which objects present themselves."³ The phenomenological World is not only made up of physical objects, but also ideas like geometric truths and possibilities such as danger.⁴

Having defined qualified monism, it is worth considering the implications this view has for the problem of evil, which is addressed in endnote 28 and section 9 of chapter 3. If the phenomenological World reflects God's inner life, and God is good, how are we to make sense of the evil that appears?

Let us begin with the endnote, where Nemes entertains the idea that God is the source of both good and evil. This is based on Isaiah 45:7–8,⁵ which says:

I form light and create darkness, I make weal and create woe; I the Lord do all these things. Shower, O heavens, from above, and let the skies rain down righteousness; let the earth open, that salvation may spring up, and let it cause righteousness to sprout up also; I the Lord have created it.

However, this interpretation is questionable. As Gregory Boyd observes, "The context of this passage (see 45:1–6) is specifically about the future deliverance of the children of Israel out of Babylon; it is not concerned with God's cosmic creative activity."⁶

Moving on to section 9, here Nemes addresses the evidential problem of evil, which is concerned with gratuitous evil. This includes cases of evil that are alleged to have either no purpose whatsoever or where the evil outweighs the good purpose that the former is intended to serve. The idea of a perfectly good God, so the argument goes, does not seem to cohere with the existence of gratuitous evil, thus supporting the belief that God does not exist.⁷

Nemes makes a forceful point against this argument: "To say that an evil is gratuitous is to say that it is not justified by anything that comes before it, simultaneously with it, or after it in time,"⁸ which is an impossible perspective to obtain given a person's embodied nature in history.⁹ He then goes on to suggest that the reasons that God permits evil are a mystery because God's way of thinking are of a higher quality than that of a human. Furthermore, these "gratuitous" evils appear in the phenomenological World (which, remember, is God's body that reflects his inner life), so there is actually reason to doubt that any evil is gratuitous.¹⁰ It is not surprising that other minds with a penchant for monism come to similar conclusions. I think here of Spinoza, who wagered that evil is a byproduct of man's finite perspective; if he could see the World in its totality, the apparent evils would disappear, and man would realize that they serve a higher purpose in the final analysis.¹¹

While I appreciate the first point, I find the second unconvincing. Would it not be less hasty to remain agnostic as to whether or not any evils are gratuitous? If we cannot know that evils are gratuitous based on the fact that we do not have God's capacities for knowing such, we should not be able to know that there are no gratuitous evils either, as this knowledge would also seem to require a God's-eye perspective. The limitations of a temporal and embodied existence cut both ways.

It could also be argued that the main ingredient of phenomenology—that appearance and being are strongly correlated—also casts doubt on the notion that there is no such thing as gratuitous evil. Who can read "Rebellion" from The Brothers Karamazov, for example, and not be moved by Ivan's pathos as he speaks about the suffering of children? Some evils appear completely unnecessary and strike at the core of our being with their wickedness. Yet the higher-harmony metaphysics that Nemes advocates does not seem to be sensitive to this.

In his own words, "Despite all evil, the reality of God as the source of everything seen and unseen is never doubted or called into question in the Bible . . . [God's] inner life is constantly making itself manifest under the image of what appears in the World."¹²

Some material in Scripture renders this metaphysic suspect. Of course, the Bible contains tensions on several issues, but that does not mean that the parts that support monism should run roughshod over the sections that support dualism or pluralism. Take, for example, Matthew 12:22–28:

Then they brought to him [Jesus] a demoniac who was blind and mute; and he cured him, so that the one who had been mute could speak and see. All the crowds were amazed and said, ‘Can this be the Son of David?’ But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, ‘It is only by Beelzebul, the ruler of the demons, that this fellow casts out the demons.’ He knew what they were thinking and said to them, ‘Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and no city or house divided against itself will stand. If Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself; how then will his kingdom stand? If I cast out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your own exorcists cast them out? Therefore they will be your judges. But if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come to you.

This does not sound like a World that perfectly represents God's inner life. Here Jesus makes a distinction between the Spirit of God and the kingdom of God on the one hand, and Satan and demons on the other. Passages about spiritual warfare, such as this one, make more sense on a dualistic or pluralistic basis than a monistic one. The scenery of the World does not mirror God's intentions with complete precision. As Gregory Boyd puts it,

While no orthodox first-century Jew or Christian ever doubted that there existed only one Creator, or that this Creator would reign supreme in the eschaton, it seems equally clear that the New Testament authors also never doubted that in this present world the Creator's will was not the only will that was being carried out. Wills, human and angelic, oppose God, and he must fight against them.¹³

As I compare Nemes's conception of the God-World relationship to Boyd's, I come away thinking that the latter is more cogent. Perhaps I will someday encounter a version of panentheism that I find compelling, but I am not ready to accept the "solution" to the problem of evil that qualified monism offers, nor the determinism that follows from it. Instead, I find the emphasis that a model for God like open theism places on spiritual conflict, free will, and the give-and-take relationship between God and the World to be more attractive.

Notes

1. Steven Nemes, Theology of the Manifest: Christianity Without Metaphysics (Lanham: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, 2023), 53.

2. Ibid., 15.

3. Ibid., 36.

4. Ibid., 36–37.

5. Ibid., 74–75.

6. Gregory A. Boyd, God At War: The Bible & Spiritual Conflict (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1997), 149.

7. Nemes, Theology of the Manifest, 69.

8. Ibid., 70–71.

9. Ibid., 71.

10. Ibid., 72.

11. William Mander, "Pantheism," The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2023, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pantheism/.

12. Nemes, Theology of the Manifest, 69.

13. Boyd, God At War, 185.

Becoming a Christian, as Understood from Its Endpoint

Theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg proposes that the meaning of history in its entirety must be understood from its endpoint, when God and the world are reconciled to one another. This meaning has yet to be revealed, as it awaits in the future, but it has been hinted at in the past through Jesus Christ, who acted in history as the Savior of the world.¹

Let us call this perspective the "end-of-history theory." If this is correct, might it help explain why some of Jesus's demands for his followers are so difficult?

Consider Luke 14:33: "So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions." I must admit that my constitution rails against such ascetism. I enjoy material things, especially music and books. Now, it could be argued that the class structure of the Roman Empire basically consisted of the rich and the poor and did not include a middle class,² thus making the text irrelevant to a middle-class person. But surely it cannot only be apparent to me that such a verse as this is worded quite strongly and contains no qualifications whatsoever. I think here of Kierkegaard: "Yes, it seems as if all this research and pondering and scrutinizing would draw God’s Word very close to us. Yet this interpreting and re-interpreting and scholarly research and new scholarly research is but a defense against it."³

Kierkegaard also writes: "For my part I do not call myself a 'Christian.'"⁴ He is not speaking here as an atheist; rather, Kierkegaard is placing more of an emphasis on becoming a Christian than being one. Being a Christian is an arduous goal that the individual strives toward and often fails to achieve, so it is more accurate to say that one is becoming a Christian than that one is one.

Back to Pannenberg's end-of-history theory and Jesus's strict demands. Maybe Christ's words so often sound coarse because we overlook the fact that he is anticipatory of the end. That is to say, Christ's demands are truly for the end and not the present. It is at the Final Judgement that the Christian will give up all their possessions, and in the meantime, they will become progressively less attached to their belongings.

Is this interpretation helpful, or does it lead one to the "cheap grace" that Bonhoeffer warned against and "the crowd" that Kierkegaard opposed?

Notes

1. For helpful summaries of Pannenberg's thought, see Alister E. McGrath, Historical Theology: An Introduction to the History of Christian Thought (1^st edition, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1998), 302–305 and Steffen Losel, "Wolfhart Pannenberg's Response to the Challenge of Religious Pluralism: The Anticipation of Divine Absoluteness.," Journal of Ecumenical Studies (1997), https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Wolfhart+Pannenberg%27s+response+to+the+challenge+of+religious...-a020513754.

2. Mark Allan Powell, Introducing the New Testament: A Historical, Literary, and Theological Survey (2^nd edition, Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2018), 31–32.

3. Søren Kierkegaard and Charles E. Moore (Editor), Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard (Walden: Plough Publishing House, 2014), 84.

4. Ibid., xii.