Category: New Testament

Once More on Romans 1: 18-20 and Whether Atheism is Morally Culpable

Brian writes,

In Van Til and Romans 1: 18-20 you accused Paul of begging the question in Romans 1 when he characterizes the natural world as ‘created’. The question you have in mind – the one presumably being begged by Paul – is whether the world is a divine creation.

BV: That's right, but let's back up a step.

Paul is concerned to show the moral culpability of unbelief.  He assumes something I don't question, namely, that some beliefs are such that, if a person holds them, then he is morally culpable or morally blameworthy for holding them. We can call them morally culpable beliefs as long  we understand that it is the holding of the belief, not its content, that is morally culpable.  I would even go so far as to say that some beliefs are morally culpable whether or not one acts on them. 

So I don't question whether there are morally culpable beliefs. What I question is whether atheism is a  morally culpable belief, where atheism in this context is the thesis that there is no God as Paul and those in his tradition conceive him.

So why does Paul think atheism is morally culpable? The gist of it is as follows. Men are godless and wicked and suppress the truth. What may be known about God is plain to them because God has made it plain to them. Human beings have no excuse for their unbelief. "For since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities — his eternal power and divine nature — have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made . . . ."

We can argue over whether there is an argument here or just some dogmatic statements dressed up as an argument. (The word 'for' can reasonably be taken as signaling argumentative intent.)  Suppose we take Paul to be giving an argument. What is the argument? It looks to be something like the following:

1) It is morally inexcusable to refuse to acknowledge what is known to be the truth.

2) That God exists is known to be the truth from the plain evidence of creation.

Therefore

3) It is morally inexcusable to refuse to acknowledge that God exists.

This argument is only as good as its minor premise, (2). But right here is where Paul begs the question.  If the natural world is a divine creation, it follows analytically that God exists and that God created the world.  Paul begs the question by assuming that the natural world is a divine creation.  Paul is of course free to do that. He is free to presuppose the existence of God, not that he, in full critical self-awareness, presupposes the existence of God; given his upbringing he probably never seriously questioned the existence of God and always took his existence for granted.

And having presupposed — or taken for granted — the existence of God, it makes sense for him to think of us as having been created by God with an innate  sense of the divine — Calvin's sensus divinitatis — that our sinful rebelliousness suppresses. And it makes sense for him to think  that the wrath of God is upon us for our sinful self-will and refusal to acknowledge God's reality and sovereignty.

For him to have begged the question here, wouldn’t Paul’s burden of  proof have to be that the world is a divine creation? This does not seem to be his burden in Romans 1. It seems to me that Paul is accounting for why people are under the wrath of God. His answer is that: (1) they know God; and (2) they fail to honor Him as God. If (1) and (2) are the case, then this accounts for why they are under God’s wrath.

Your talk of burden of proof is unclear. You seem to think that the burden of proof is the proposition one aims to prove.  But that's not right. So let's not muddy the waters with 'burden of proof.' 

We may be at cross purposes.  What interests me is the question whether atheist belief is morally blameworthy. I read the passage in question as containing an argument that it is. I presented the argument above, and I explained why it is a bad argument: it commits the informal fallacy of petitio principii.  To answer my own question: it is not in general morally blameworthy to hold characteristic atheist beliefs, although it may in some cases be morally blameworthy.  

What interests Brian about the passage in question is the explanation it contains as to why the wrath of God is upon us.  Well, if you assume that God exists and that venereal disease and the other bad things Paul mentions are the effects of divine wrath, then, within the presupposed framework, one can ask what accounts for God's wrath. It would then make sense to say that people know that God exists but willfully suppress this knowledge and fail to honor God.  Therefore, God, to punish man for his willful refusal to acknowledge God's reality and sovereignty, sends down such scourges as AIDS.

I have no problem with this interpretation.

So far so good. But, this is not all that Paul says. The key section for our purposes is how Paul argues for (1), the proposition that people know God. Paul claims that they all know God because He made Himself evident to them through creation. Is Paul now be begging the question because of his use of ‘creation’? Again, I do not think so. Here is the pertinent passage:

For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made…(Rom. 1:20 NASB).

But now I do have a problem. Brian has not appreciated the point that, to me, is blindingly evident.  What is MADE by God is of course made by GOD.  But this analytic proposition give us no reason to think that nature is MADE, i.e., created by a divine being that is transcendent of nature. It ought to be obvious that one cannot straightaway infer from the intelligibility, order, beauty, and existence of nature that 'behind' nature there is a supernatural personal being that is supremely intelligent, the source of all beauty, and the first cause of all existing things apart from itself.  One cannot 'read off' the being instantiated of the divine attributes from contemplation of nature.

Suppose I see a woman. I am certain that if she is a wife, then there is a person who is her husband. Can I correctly infer from those two propositions that the woman I see is a wife?  Can I 'read off' from my perception of the woman that she is a wife?

“Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread”

This is another topic that it would have been great to discuss with Dale Tuggy during his visit thereby bringing my supposed 'gnosticism' into collision with his supposed 'spiritual materialism.'  The problems are very difficult and I do not claim to have the answers.  The first thing and the main thing, as it seems to me, is to cultivate a deep appreciation of the issues and their difficulty.

………………………………………….

I tend to look askance at petitionary prayer for material benefits. In such prayer one asks for mundane benefits whether for oneself, or for another, as in the case of intercessory prayer. In many of its forms petitionary prayer borders on idolatry and superstition, and in its crassest forms it crosses over. A skier who prays for snow, for example, makes of God a supplier of mundane benefits, as does the person who prays to win the lottery.  Worse still is one who prays for the death of a business rival.  When Paul Tibbets, Jr. took off in the Enola Gay on his mission to Hiroshima in August of 1945, a Catholic priest blessed his mission, petitioning God for its success.  I'll leave you to think about that.

Perhaps not all petitionary prayer for mundane benefits is objectionable.  Some of it simply reflects, excusably,  our misery and indigence.  Did not Christ himself engage in it at Gethsemane?  But much of it is objectionable.  What then should I say about the "Our Father," which, in the fourth of its six petitions, appears precisely to endorse petitionary prayer for material  benefits?

The other five petitions in the Pater Noster are either clearly or arguably prayers for spiritual benefits.   In a spiritual petition one asks, not for physical bread and such, but for things like acceptance, equanimity, patience, courage, and the like in the face of the fact that one lacks bread or has cancer. "Thy Will be done." One asks for forgiveness and for the ability to forgive others. One prays for a lively sense of one's own manifold  shortcomings, for self-knowledge and freedom from self-deception. One prays, not to be cured of  cancer, but to bear it with courage. One prays for the ability to see one's tribulations under the aspect of eternity, or at least with the sort of detachment with which one contemplates the sufferings of others. 

The fourth petition, "Give us this day our daily bread," translates the Biblia Vulgata's Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie which occurs at Luke 11:3.

At Matthew 6:11, however, we find Panem nostrum supersubstantialem da nobis hodie, "Give us this day our supersubstantial bread." 'Supersubstantial' suggests a bread that is supernatural, beyond all sublunary substances, and beyond all creatures. To ask for this heavenly bread is to ask for a 'food' that will keeps us spiritually alive.

For a long time I perhaps naively thought that 'daily bread' had to refer to physical bread and the other necessities of our material existence.  So for a long time I thought that there was a tension, or even a contradiction, between 'daily bread' and 'supersubstantial bread.'  A tension between physical bread and meta-physical bread. 

Cassianus_portretBut one morning I stumbled upon what might be the right solution while reading St. John Cassian.  The same bread is referred to by both phrases, and that same bread is spiritual or supersubstantial, not physical.  'Supersubstantial' makes it clear that 'bread' is to be taken metaphorically, not literally, while 'daily' "points out the right manner of its beneficial use." (Selected Writings, p. 30)  What 'daily' thus conveys is that we need to feed upon spiritual bread every single day.  On this reading, the fourth petition is as spiritual as the others, and the whiff of superstition and idolatry that I found offensive is removed.*

This reading also has the virtue of cohering nicely with Matthew 4:4 according to which man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.  Man lives, not by physical bread, but by meta-physical 'bread.'

"Give us this day our daily bread" is thus a request that we be supplied on a daily basis with spiritual bread that we need every day.  And since we need it every day, we must ask for it every day. But who needs it?  Not the bodily man, but the "inner man" says Cassian.  The inner man is the true man. 'Inner man' is a metaphor but it indicates a literal truth: that man is more than an animal. Being more than an animal, he needs more than material sustenance. 

Addendum on the Literal and the Metaphorical

Here is a question that vexes me.  Are there literal truths that cannot be stated literally but can only stated or gotten at metaphorically?  Can we state literally what a man is if he is more than an animal? Or must we use metaphors?

"Man is spirit."  Isn't 'spirit' a metaphor?  "Man has a higher origin."  'Higher' is metaphorical.  "Man is made by God in his image and likeness."  Aren't 'made,' 'image,' and 'likeness' metaphors?

I once heard a crude and materialistic old man say that if man is made in God's image, then God must have a gastrointestinal tract.  I tried to explain to the man that 'image' is not to be taken in a physical sense but in a spiritual sense.  But I got nowhere as could have been expected:  anyone who doesn't understand right away the spiritual sense of 'made in God's image' displays by that failure to understand an incapacity for instruction.  It is like the student who doesn't get right away what it means to say that one proposition follows from another, and thinks that it refers to a temporal or a spatial relation. 

The question is whether the spiritual sense can be spelled out literally.

___________________

*  For Simone Weil, "Christ is our bread." We can have physical bread without eating it; we cannot have spiritual bread without  'eating' it: the having is the 'eating' and being nourished by it. This nourishing is the "union of Christ with the eternal part of the  soul." (Waiting for God, p. 146) The fourth petition of the Pater Noster, then, is the request for the union of Christ with the eternal part of the soul. It has nothing to do with a crass and infantile demand to be supplied with physical food via a supernatural means.

Is St. Paul an Anti-Natalist?

I wrote in Christian Anti-Natalism? (10 November 2017):

Without denying that there are anti-natalist tendencies in Christianity that surface in some of its exponents, the late Kierkegaard for  example, it cannot be maintained that orthodox Christianity, on balance, is anti-natalist.

Ask yourself: what is the central and characteristic Christian idea? It is the Incarnation, the idea that God became man in Jesus of Nazareth. Thus God, or rather the second person of the Trinity, entered into the material world by being born of a woman, entering into it in the most humble manner imaginable, inter faeces et urinam nascimur. 

The mystery of the Nativity of God in a humble manger in a second-rate desert outpost of the Roman empire would seem to put paid to the notion that Christianity is anti-natalist.

To sum it up aphoristically: Nativity is natalist.

I still consider what I wrote above to be basically correct: Christianity is not, or at least is not obviously, anti-natalist. But now I want to consider a much more specific question: Is Paul an anti-natalist? To narrow the question still further: Is Paul advocating an anti-natalist position at 1 Corinthians 7? My correspondent, Karl White, thinks so:

Paul promotes celibacy as the highest ideal, the logical outcome of which is an end to humanity. I simply cannot see how anyone can dispute this. 

I shall now dispute it.

We cannot sensibly discuss the question whether Paul is an anti-natalist without first answering the logically prior question: What is an anti-natalist? David Benatar, the premier contemporary spokesman for the view, summarizes his position when he writes, "all procreation is wrong." (Benatar and Wassermann, Debating Procreation: Is it Wrong to Reproduce? Oxford UP 2015, 12) He means, of course, that it is morally wrong or morally impermissible to reproduce.  The claim, then, is a normative one. It is therefore not a statement about what is factually the case or a prediction as to what is likely to happen.  It is a claim to the effect that we humans ought not reproduce.  (If you are curious about Benatar's reasons for his unpopular view, I refer you to my Benatar category.)

The question, then, is precisely this: Does Paul, at 1 Corinthians 7, maintain that all procreation is wrong and that we ought not reproduce?  I answer in the negative.

Karl White is certainly right that Paul "promotes celibacy as the highest ideal."  The passage begins, "It is good for a man not to marry," i.e., good for a man not to have sexual intercourse with a woman.  The issue here is not marriage as such, since there can be celibate marriages; the issue is sexual intercourse, and not just sexual intercourse between a man and a woman, but also homosexual and bestial intercourse. And let's not leave out sexual intracourse (to coin a word), i.e., masturbation. (There are Catholic priests who, horribile dictu, actually maintain that their vows of celibacy do not rule out sodomy and masturbation.)*

And there is no doubt that Paul wishes all men to be like him, celibate. (verse 7) But he goes on (verse 9) to say that each has his own gift from God, with different gifts for different men. His gift is the power to be celibate. But others are not so gifted as to be able to attain this lofty standard. For those lacking Pauline self-control  it is better to marry than to burn with lust and fall into a cesspool of immorality.

Paul does not say that it is morally impermissible to reproduce or that it is morally obligatory to refrain from sexual intercourse. In fact, he is saying the opposite: it is morally permissible for a man to marry and have sex with a woman.  It is also a prudent thing to do inasmuch as it forces a man who takes his vows seriously to channel his sexual energy in a way which, even if not productive of offspring, keeps him from immoral behavior.

Paul does not affirm anti-natalism as defined above. He can be plausibly read as saying that sexual intercourse for the purpose of procreation (and presumably only for this purpose)  is morally permissible, but that there is a higher calling, celibacy, one which is not demanded of all.  (It can't be demanded of all, because it is not possible for all: 'Ought' implies 'can.' Only some have been granted Pauline self-control.)

Karl White said, "Paul promotes celibacy as the highest ideal, the logical outcome of which is an end to humanity." But it is not a logical consequence of Paul's preaching that either a) procreation will cease — no chance of that! — or b) that procreation ought to cease.  For he is not saying that all ought to be celibate. He is saying that celibacy is supererogatory, above and beyond the call of duty or the demands of moral obligation.  It is only for those we are specially called to it.

Paul is not an anti-natalist in the Benatar sense. He is not maintaining that procreation is morally wrong. But I grant to Karl that there is a sort of anti-natalist flavor to Paul's preaching, perhaps along the following lines.

Procreation is not immoral, contra Benatar. But it nevertheless would be better if people did not engage in it.  This is an ideal that is unattainable except in rare cases and so cannot be prescribed as a moral requirement for all of humanity.  But if it is an ideal, then ideally it would be better if procreation cease and the human race come to an end.

_________________________

*Well, we are all given to self-deception. The weight of concupiscence makes it hard to avoid. Raw desire suborns intellect and conscience.  As a young man, before I was married, I rationalized an affair I had with a married woman by telling myself that I was not committing adultery; she was. It is extremely important for the moral life to observe carefully, and in one's own case, how reason in its infirmity can be so easily suborned by the passions.  Is reason then a whore, as Luther said? No, that goes too far. She's more like a wayward wife. Reason is weak, but not utterly infirm or utterly depraved. If she were either of these, the reasoning of this weblog entry could not be correct when, as it seems to me, it is!

ADDENDUM (3/4/19)

Karl White responds:

To clarify, I should have been more precise in my wording.
 
What I meant to say was something along the lines of "If everyone became celibate, then humanity would end within a generation. Presumably if celibacy is the highest ideal, then Paul could not morally protest at this outcome."
 
Also, Paul is not for a total end of humanity. He believes its highest manifestation is in the guise of the 'spiritual bodies' he describes in his one of his letters and to which he desires all humans will come.
 
So I agree that Paul is not an anti-natalist in the Benatarian sense, but that he would have little problem with humanity in its current manifestation coming to an end seems fairly clear to me.
 
BV:  Now we agree!
 
Dave Bagwill writes,
Some thoughts on Paul and celibacy. I think it is probably the case that Paul thinks of celibacy not as the highest ideal at all, but rather as a vocation, a calling. To contend otherwise would be to ignore Paul's saturation in Jewish thought and worldview. That worldview, shaped by the Jewish scriptures, encourages, admonishes, and praises married life from the very beginning, and children are part and parcel of that state. I think that any interpretation of Paul that disregards this fundamental imperative must be suspect; conversely, his statements are most fruitfully understood in the over-arching Creation imperatives.
 
The case can also be made that biblically, man + woman = Man. Certainly, from experience, married life is the only way (excepting a special call to celibacy) that I could be 'complete', to the extent that I am. The 'classroom' of marriage is where I've learned and am learning that "Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person's ultimate good as far as it can be obtained." – C.S. Lewis
 
It is also prudent to consider not just the words that Paul spoke, but , as Miles Coverdale advised: "“It shall greatly help ye to understand the Scriptures if thou mark not only what is spoken or written, but of whom and to whom, with what words, at what time, where, to what intent, with what circumstances, considering what goeth before and what followeth after. ” "At what time, to what intent, with what circumstances" – if I were a competent exegete, I think an investigation into Paul's writing about celibacy would clear up any notion of a 'higher life' to be had as a result of celibacy alone. I in fact tend to distrust any purported 'spiritual' or 'higher-life' proponent that begins with a disparagement of the married estate.
 
ADDENDUM (3/5/19) Karl White responds to Dave Bagwill:
 
. . . I politely disagree with Dave Bagwill's comments. Paul is famous/infamous for his breaking with Jewish thought – in many ways that is the essence of Paul and why he is credited as the 'founder' of Christianity. His placing of celibacy as the highest ideal seems fairly uncontroversial to me. Also, merely because an individual has found personal contentment in marriage does not somehow invalidate Paul's espousal of celibacy – many have found contentment in celibacy and solitude and Jesus seemed to have little time for the family as an institution.

Van Til and Romans 1:18-20

I tip my hat to David Bagwill for recommending that I read Cornelius Van Til. So I sprang for the fourth edition of The Defense of the Faith, with Oliphint's annotations, P & R Publishing, 2008. Van Til's presuppositionalism is intriguing even if in places preposterous. Having discussed Romans 1:18 a couple of time before in these pages, I looked to see what Van Til had to say about it. But first my take, one that Van Til & Co. might dismiss as 'Romanist' or worse.

Rather than quote the whole of the Pauline passage at Romans 1: 18-20, I'll summarize it. Men are godless and wicked and suppress the truth. What may be known about God is plain to them because God has made it plain to them. Human beings have no excuse for their unbelief. "For since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities — his eternal power and divine nature — have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made . . . ."

Paul's claim here is that the existence and nature of God are evident from creation and that unbelief is a result of a willful turning away from the truth.   There is no excuse for unbelief because it is a plain fact that the natural world is divine handiwork.  Now I am a theist and I am sympathetic to Christianity. But although I have one foot in Jerusalem, the other is  planted firmly in Athens. It therefore strikes me that to characterize the natural world as 'made' or 'created' begs the question in favor of theism. As begging the question, the Pauline claim about the evidentness of the world's being created offers no support for theism.  It is an analytic proposition that there is no creation without a creator. So if the heavens and the earth are a creation, then it follows straightaway that a creator exists.

But is the world a divine creation? This is the question, and the answer is not obvious. That the natural world is a divine artifact is not evident to the senses, or to the heart, or to reason. Of course, one can argue for the existence of God from the existence and order of the natural world. I have done it myself. But those who reject theistic arguments, and construct anti-theistic arguments, have their reasons too, and it cannot fairly be said that what animates the best of them is a stubborn and prideful refusal to submit to a truth that is evident.  It is simply not objectively evident to the senses or the intellect or the heart that the natural world is a divine artifact. If it were objectively evident, then there would be no explanation of the existence of so many intellectually penetrating, morally upright, and sincere atheists.  Even if the atheisms of Nietzsche, Russell, Sartre, and Hitchens could be dismissed as originating  in pride, stubborness, and a willful refusal to recognize any power or authority beyond oneself, or beyond the human, as may well be the case with the foregoing luminaries, it does not follow that the atheism of all has this origin.

I am moved to marvel at "the starry skies above me."  This was one of two things that filled Kant with wonder, the other being "the moral law within me."  But  seeing as is not seeing.  If you see the starry skies as divine handiwork, then this is an interpretation from within a theistic framework.  But the datum seen can just as easily be given a non-theistic interpretation.

It is all-too-human to suspect in our opponents moral depravity when we cannot convince them. The Pauline passage smacks of that all-too-humanity. There are sincere and decent atheists, and they have plenty of excuse for their unbelief.  The fact of evil being perhaps the best excuse. The best of them, if wrong in the end, are excusably wrong.

Or so I tend to think. But I am open to a change of view and a change of heart (metanoia).

I suppose I will be told that I am falsely assuming that there are some neutral data that we can access via reason unaided by revelation, data that will supply premises for arguments to the existence of God, arguments that would constitute a philosophically neutral, theologically uncommitted preambulum fidei in Thomas's sense, when such a neutral method can only in the end issue in the conclusion that Christian theism is not true. The correct method, I will be told, is to start with and adhere to the presupposition that Christianity is true, lock, stock, and barrel, and to see everything in its light:

Roman Catholics and Arminians, appealing to the 'reason' of the natural man as the natural man himself interprets his reason, namely as autonomous, are bound to use the direct method of approach to the natural man, the method that assumes the essential correctness of a non-Christian and nontheistic conception of reality. The Reformed apologist, on the other hand, appealing to that knowledge of the true God in the natural man which the natural man suppresses by means of his assumption of ultimacy, will also appeal to the knowledge of the true method which the natural man knows but suppresses. The natural man at bottom knows that he is the creature of God. He knows also that he is responsible to God. He knows that  he should live to the glory of God. He knows that in all that he does he should stress that the field of reality which he investigates has the stamp of God's ownership upon it. But he suppresses his knowledge of himself as he truly is. (123-124)

At this point in the text comes a footnote referencing Romans 1: 18 ff.

Above I suggested that Paul begs the question. Now to beg a question is to assume what one needs to prove.  But there is no need to prove what one presupposes.  So one who presupposes the truth of Christian theism cannot be accused of begging the question. There just is no question that can be neutrally engaged by the reason of the natural man if the truth of Christian theism is presupposed.

The ultimate principle of all proof is the Law of Non-Contradiction. It therefore cannot be proved, but only presupposed.  One who affirms it cannot therefore be reasonably accused of begging the question: there simply is no question here that can reasonably be disputed.

But this leaves unanswered the question why we ought to presuppose the truth of Christian theism. For the latter, with all of its very specific claims about Trinity, Incarnation, etc. is rather unlike the logical law just mentioned — to put it in the form of an understatement.  Why not presuppose atheism as many today do? They too can and do make claims about what we 'know' and what we 'suppress.'  We all know deep down that we are nothing but clever land mammals slated for extinction, with no higher origin or higher destiny, but we suppress this ugly truth because we are unwilling to face the dreadful facts.

If a gratuitous assertion can be met with a gratuitous counter assertion, the same goes for a gratuitous presupposition.

More later.

“Lead Us Not into Temptation”

I have said some rather unkind things about Pope Francis, but when he called for a modification of the traditional English rendering of the Greek, I felt some sympathy for him. For it has long struck me as very strange that we should ask God not to lead us into temptation. For what the request implies is that God is disposed to tempt us. But a good God would harbor no such evil disposition . . . .

On the other hand, as a good solid conservative on all fronts (social, political, economic, linguistic . . .) I hold that that there is a defeasible presumption in favor of the traditional and the time-tested. Note the word 'defeasible.' Conservatives are not opposed to change; we are opposed to change for the sake of change. We understand that 'change' and 'change for the better' are not coextensive terms. Obama and his acolytes take note.

So I would prefer to retain the traditional formulation if possible. Anthony Esolen explains how in a First Things article.  Roughly, what we are praying for is that we be spared moral tests that we might not pass.  We are praying, not that God not tempt us, but that we be spared entrance into situations where we will be tempted.

Related: The Pope is a Buffoon When it Comes to Economics

UPDATE (1/4).  Claude Boisson comments:

For me (I was born  in 1942), the real “traditional” rendering in my native language, French, is in fact “Ne nous laissez pas succomber à la tentation”.

Even as a child, not very sophisticated theologically and ignorant of Aramaic grammar, it was clear to me that God did not “lead us into temptation”. I asked God to help me resist temptation, certainly not to refrain from directly tempting me. 
 
In the post-conciliar period, this was then changed to a highly problematic innovation, which has been recently modified again by the French bishops, even before the pope’s call, in order to revert to a more satisfactory version. 
 
Related articles
Pope Francis calls for Lord's Prayer to be altered as current wording suggests God is capable of leading people 'into temptation'

A Note on Vox Clamantis in Deserto

This just over the transom from London Ed:

Pedantic, but I think you will secretly enjoy it.

Matt. 3:3 quoting Isaiah 40:3. The Vulgate has Vox clamantis in deserto: parate viam Domini. [Right, I checked both quotations in my Biblia Vulgata.] There has always been a question about the parsing of this. Is it

A voice of one calling in the wilderness, “prepare the way for the LORD; make straight in the desert a highway for our God”,

 as your quotation implies. Or is it

A voice of one calling: “In the wilderness prepare the way for the LORD; make straight in the desert a highway for our God”.

Different translations differ. Of course the ancient Hebrew/Greek may be ambiguous, as they were not cursed with the quotation mark. I shall investigate further.

[Time passes]

OK I looked further. I always wondered if Matthew knew his scripture, but checking the Isa 40:3 in the Septuagint (the Jewish Alexandrian translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek), it is identical, i.e. Matthew’s Greek accurately reflects the Greek translation of Isaiah.

However, at least according to Pentiuc, the Septuagint Greek is a mis-translation of the Hebrew. 

According to the reading proposed by the Masoretes, this voice "cries" to the one called "to clear" the way in the wilderness (cf. Mal 3:1). Babylonian texts speak in similar terms of processional ways prepared for a god or a victorious king; this is the road by which Yahweh will lead his people through the desert in a new exodus. Quite contrary to this reading is the Septuagint's rendering, where the "voice is crying in the wilderness." This version indicates that the wilderness is the location of the mysterious voice, rather than the meeting place for God and his people returned from exile.

My emphasis. The Masoretes were the Jewish scribe-scholars who worked on the interpretation of the ancient texts.

BV: I am not competent to comment on the scholarly punctilios, , but I prefer the Septuagint reading for the (non)reason that I live in a desert. And I know Ed Abbey, the author of Vox Clamantis in Deserto, would agree for he too lived in the desert, in fact, in Oracle, Arizona, not far from here.

By the way, the preceding sentence is not good English by the lofty standards of MavPhil. Can you see why? Combox open.

More on the Question: Is Christianity Vain if not Historically True?

Just over the transom from Jacques:

Enjoying your posts as always!  Thanks for writing so regularly, at such a high level.  Reading your posts on Wittgenstein on religion I have a few quick thoughts about religion (or Christianity specifically).  When I first started reading Wittgenstein, I initially thought that he had in mind some very different reason for thinking that historical evidence or facts were irrelevant to religion.  Then I realized this was just what I wanted to think, for my own reasons; I think you've done a good job here of explaining what he and his followers probably have in mind, and why it seems so absurd.

Still, I have sympathy for his claim that it just wouldn't matter if it turned out that all the Gospels were fabrications (for example).  I'm not a Christian–at least, I don't think I am one?  But I have the strong intuition that the story of Christ is just true, in some ultimate sense, so that if it's not historically true that would only show that history is a superficial or irrelevant kind of truth–that it just doesn't matter what happened historically if we want to know about ultimate things like God, the soul, the afterlife.

If I learned that Christ never existed, for example, then I'd be inclined to interpret this "fiction" as some kind of intrusion of a higher reality into our lame little empirical world.  God might well pierce the Veil of Maya in a "fictional" story, right?  If this world is illusory or second-rate somehow, it wouldn't be that surprising if that's the way it works.  The prisoners in the Cave might first intuit the real world outside by seeing (similarly) "fictional" representations of the real world produced by the figures in front of the fire.

So I think Wittgenstein overlooks an important third possibility:  the truth of Christianity might be neither "historical" nor some set of "truths of reason" but instead some other truth that is just as "objective" (i.e., independent of any language games) but which is only grasped by means of a historically false narrative (or by means of participating in a certain language game for which questions of truth and falsity with respect to the empirical or historical world are irrelevant).  I realize this is kind of sketchy and vague!  Do you know what I mean? 

This is fascinating and I encourage Jacques to work out his ideas in detail and in depth.  

A comparison of Christianity with Buddhism suggests itself. As I understand Buddhism, its truth does not require the actual existence of a prince Siddartha who long ago attained Enlightenment by intense seated meditation under the Bodhi Tree and in so doing became Buddha. This is because one's own enlightenment does not depend on what some other person accomplished or failed to accomplish.  There is no Savior in Buddhism; or, if you will, one is one's own savior. Salvation is not vicarious, but individual. Buddhism is a religion of self-help, or 'own power': if one attains the salvific state one does so by one's own power and doing and not by the mediation or help of someone else. History, then, doesn't matter: there needn't have been someone in the past who did the work for us. The sutras might just be stories whose truth does not depend on past events, but is a function of their efficacy here and now in leading present persons to the salvific state (nibbana, nirvana).  Verification in the here and now is all that is needed.

Bodhi-tree-blueWhat Jacques is saying sounds similar to this. The Christian story is true, but not because it records historical facts such as the crucifixion, death, and Resurrection of one Jesus of Nazareth, who took the sins of the world upon himself, the sacrificial lamb of God who, by  taking the sins of mankind upon himself and expiating them on the cross, took away the sins: agnus dei qui tollit peccata mundi. Jacques is telling us that the Christian story is true whether or not it is historically true, and that its truth is therefore not the truth of an historical account.  And he agrees with Wittgenstein that the truths of Christianity are not propositions discernible by reason. I think Jacques is open to the idea that the truth of Christianity is revealed truth, a sort of revealed 'fiction' or 'myth' that illuminates our predicament.  But Jacques disagrees with Wittgenstein, and agrees with me, by denying that Christianity is a mere language game (Sprachspiel) and form of life (Lebensform).  That would subjectivize it, in contradiction to its being revealed truth. 

Jacques is proposing a fourth way: Christianity is the revelation by God of a sort of 'fictional' or 'mythical' truth that does not depend on what goes on "in our lame little empirical world."  To evaluate this one would have to know more about the sense in which Christianity is true on his reading. Buddhism doesn't need historical facts because its truth is a matter of the efficacy of its prescriptions and proscriptions in inducing in an individual an ever-deepening detachment from the samsaric world in the direction of an ultimate extinguishing of desire and the ego that feeds on it.  

I seem to recall Max Scheler saying somewhere that the Buddhist project is one of de-realizing the sensible world.  That is a good way of putting it. The Buddhist meditator aims to see through the world by penetrating its radical impermanence (anicca) which goes together with its total lack of self-nature or substantiality (anatta), the two together making it wholly 'ill' or 'unsatisfactory' (dukkha).

Christianity, however, is not life-denying in this sense. Christ says that he came so that we may have life and have it more abundantly.  This life is a transfigured life in which the self is not dissolved but transformed.  Christianity does not seek the eradication of desire, as does Buddhism, but its re-direction upon a worthy object.  

Orthodox — not majuscule but miniscule 'o' — Christianity is not susceptible to Jacques' reading. Christianity is a very strange religion blending as it does Platonic and Gnostic elements with Hebraic materialism and particularism.  (How odd of God to choose the Jews.) Although Gnosticism was rejected as heresy early on, Platonism is essential to Christianity as Joseph Ratzinger rightly argues in his Introduction to Christianity.  (Ratzinger was Pope before Bergoglio the Benighted. The German has a very good theological-philosophical head on his shoulders.) But Jewish materialism and particularism are also essential to Christianity.  No orthodox Christian can gainsay what Saul/Paul of Tarsus writes at 1 Corinthians 15:14: "And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain." (KJV)

How the mystical-Platonic-spiritual-universal  elements (Augustine, Pascal, Kierkegaard, et al.) can be made to fit with the material-historical- particularist elements is not easy to say.  There are a number of tensions.

But the main thing that speaks against Jacques' interpretation is that Christianity does not propose an escape from this material world of space, time, flux, and history.  This world is not illusory or the veil of Maya as on such Indian systems as Advaita Vedanta, nor is it anicca, anatta, and dukkha in the precise senses that those terms have in original, Pali Buddhism.  This world is not a product of ignorance or avidya, and the task is not to see through it.  The goal is not to pierce the veil of Original Ignorance, but to accept Jesus Christ as one's savior from Original Sin. The material world is real, albeit derivatively real, as a created world. 

Is this world "second-rate"? Well, it does not possess the plenary reality of its Source, God.  It has a different and lesser mode of Being than God's mode of Being. And it is a fallen world.  On Christianity, it is not just mankind that is fallen, but the whole of creation.  What Christianity proposes is not an escape from this world into a purely spiritual world, but a redemption of this world that somehow spiritualizes the gross matter with which we are all too familiar.

So on my understanding of Christianity, the problem with the material world is not that it is material, but that it has been corrupted by some Event far in the past the negative effects of which can only be undone by subsequent historical events such as the birth of Christ, his atonement, and the Second Coming. History is essential to Christianity.

Like Jacques, I too have Platonic tendencies. That may come with being a philosopher.  Hence I sympathize with his sketch.  Maybe the truth lies in that direction.  But if we are trying to understand orthodox Christianity, then Jacques' approach is as unacceptable as Wittgenstein's. 

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Can Love be Commanded?

And one of them, a doctor of the Law, putting him to the test, asked him, "Master, which is the great commandment in the Law?" Jesus said to him, "'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind.' This is the greatest and the first commandment. And the second is like it, 'Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.' On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets." (Matthew 22:35-40)

Can love be reasonably commanded?  Love is an emotion or feeling.  As such it is not under the control of the will. And yet we are commanded to love God and neighbor.  How is this possible?  An action can be commanded, but love is not an action. Love is an emotional response.  So how can love be commanded?

In the case of loving God, there is not only the problem of how love can be commanded, but also the problem of how one can love what one doesn't know.  Some people are such that to know them is to love them.  Their lovableness naturally elicits a loving response. But apart from the  mystical glimpses vouchsafed only to some and even to them only rarely and fitfully, God is not known but believed in.  He is an object of faith, not of knowledge.  (If you say that God is known by description via theistic 'proofs,' my response will be that such knowledge is not knowledge of God but knowledge that something or other satisfies the description in question.)  How can we love God if we are not acquainted with God?  Genuine love of God is love de re, not de dicto.

I won't be discussing the second problem in this entry, that of how one can love what one doesn't know, but only the first, namely: How can love be commanded, whether it be the love of God or the love of neighbor?

Here is quick little modus tollens.  If love can be commanded, then love is an action, something I can will myself to do;  love is not an action, not something I can will myself to do, but an emotional response; ergo, love cannot be commanded.

One way around the difficulty is by reinterpreting what is meant by 'love.'  While I cannot will myself to love you, I can will to act benevolently toward you.  And while it makes no sense to command love, it does make sense to command benevolent behavior. "You ought to love her" makes no sense; but "You ought to act as if you love her" does make sense.  There cannot be a duty to love, but there might be a duty to do the sorts of things to and for a person that one would do without a sense of duty if one were to love her.

The idea, then, is to construe "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" as "Thou shalt act towards everyone as one acts toward those few whom one loves" or perhaps "Thou shalt act toward one's neighbor as if one loved him."

The above is essentially Kant's view as reported by William E. Mann, God, Modality, and Morality, pp.236 ff.  It makes sense.  But how does it apply to love of God? 

Perhaps like this.  To love God with one's whole heart, mind, and soul is to to act as if one loves God with one's whole heart, mind, and soul.  But how does one do that?  One way is by acting as if one loves one's neighbor as oneself.  Another way, and this is my suggestion, is by living the quest for God via prayer, meditation, and philosophy. 

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In What Sense Does an Indefinite Noun Phrase Refer?

London Ed propounds a difficulty for our delectation and possible solution:

Clearly the difficulty with the intralinguistic theory is its apparent absurdity, but I am trying to turn this around. What can we say about extralinguistic reference?  What actually is the extralinguistic theory? You argue that the pronoun ‘he’ inherits a reference from its antecedent, so that the pronoun does refer extralinguistically, but only per alium, not per se.

Mark 14:51 And there followed him [Jesus] a certain young man (νεανίσκος τις) , having a linen cloth (σινδόνα) cast about his naked body; and the young men laid hold on him.  14:52 And he left the linen cloth, and fled from them naked.

So the pronoun ‘he’ inherits its reference through its antecedent. But the antecedent is the noun phrase ‘a certain young man’. On your theory, does this refer extralinguistically?  That’s a problem, because indefinite noun phrases traditionally do not refer, indeed that’s the whole point of them. ‘a certain young man’ translates the Latin ‘adulescens quidam’ which in turn translates the Greek ‘νεανίσκος τις’. Here ‘certain’ (Latin quidam, Greek τις) signifies that the speaker knows who he is talking about, but declines to tell the audience who this is. Many commentators have speculated that the man was Mark himself, the author of the gospel, which if true means that ‘a certain young man’ and the pronouns, could be replaced with ‘I’, salva veritate.  But Mark deliberately does not tell us.

So, question 1, in what sense does the indefinite noun phrase refer, given that, on the extralinguistic theory, it has to be the primary referring phrase, from which all subsequent back-reference inherits its reference?

A. First of all, it is not clear why Ed says, ". . . indefinite noun phrases traditionally do not refer, indeed that’s the whole point of them."  Following Fred Sommers, in traditional formal logic (TFL) as opposed to modern predicate logic (MPL), indefinite noun phrases do refer. (See Chapter 3, "Indefinite Reference" of The Logic of Natural Language.) Thus the subject terms in 'Some senator is a physician' and 'A physician is running for president' refer, traditionally, to some senator and to a physician.  This may be logically objectionable by Fregean lights but it is surely traditional.  That's one quibble.  A second is that it is not clear why Ed says "that's the whole point of them."

So the whole point of a tokening of 'a certain young man' is to avoid making an extralinguistic reference?  I don't understand.

B.  Ed says there is a problem on my view.  A lover of aporetic polyads, I shall try to massage it into one.  I submit for your solution the following inconsistent pentad:

a. There are only two kinds of extralinguistic reference: via logically proper names, including demonstratives and indexicals, and via definite descriptions.
b. The extralinguistic reference of a grammatical pronoun used pronominally (as opposed to quantificationally or indexically) piggy-backs on the extralinguistic reference of its antecedent. It is per alium not per se.
c. 'His,' 'him,' and 'he' in the verse from Mark are pronouns used pronominally the antecedent of which is 'a certain young man.'
d.  'A certain young man' in the verse from Mark is neither a logically proper name nor a definite description.
e.  'A certain young man' in the verse from Mark refers extralinguistically on pain of the sentence of which it is a part being not true.

The pentad is inconsistent.

The middle three limbs strike me as datanic.  So there are two possible solutions.

One is (a)-rejection.  Maintain as Sommers does that indefinite descriptions can refer.  This 'solution' bangs up against the critique of Peter Geach and other Fregeans.

The other is (e)-rejection.  Deny that there is any extralinguistic reference at all.  This, I think, is Ed's line.  Makes no sense to me, though.

I wonder: could Ed be toying with the idea of using the first four limbs as premises in an argument to the conclusion that all reference is intralinguistic?  I hope not.

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More on “Daily Bread”

From a reader:

Thank you for continuing to examine the important topic of "daily bread." I don't know of any other philosophy blog writer who combines depth, significance, and clarity like you do!

I agree that spiritual needs are primary, that our world is a vale of soul-making, and that there need not be a disjunction between the spiritual and physical aspects of human nature. Passages such as Mt. 4:4,  Jn. 4:10-14, Jn. 6:35, Prov. 4:7 and 16:16, and 2 Peter 1:4-15 seem to emphasize spiritual needs over material needs. Jn. 4:10-14 is particularly interesting.

Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water." "Sir," the woman said, "you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?" Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life." (Jn. 4:10-14)

Notice that Jesus states a counterfactual. The woman interprets the statement in material terms. Jesus responds by contrasting the transience of material water with the permanence of spiritual water.

Jesus goes on to say:

"A time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth." (verses 23 and 24) Meanwhile his disciples urged him, "Rabbi, eat something." But he said to them, "I have food to eat that you know nothing about." (verses 31 and 32)

These passages seem to prioritize spiritual development, and to support your spiritual interpretation of "daily bread."

Monokroussos on “Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread”

Dennis Monokroussos comments on my latest Pater Noster post (numbering added):

[1] The word generally translated “daily” is indeed an unusual one – epiousios, which is apparently found nowhere else in scripture or anywhere in Greek literature. [2] Even so, the idea that this is spiritual and not physical bread is very much a minority theory, one that’s generally not accepted by contemporary translators. [3] Maybe it isn’t impossible, but feeling compelled to accept such an interpretation to “purify” prayer seems mistaken to me. We are embodied beings, not angels, and God’s creation of the physical world was a good thing and not a Manichean mess to be overcome. Asking God to supply not only our spiritual needs but our physical needs as well seems appropriate. (If God cares about sparrows and the lilies of the field, it isn’t too much trouble for him to be concerned for our general physical well-being as well.)  Moreover, the act of praying for our daily “bread” is a way of acknowledging that even in that respect we are dependent on God. The God of the Bible is not the hands-off god of Plato, Aristotle, and the deists. God is not like the petty deities of the Greek pantheon, but to divest the biblical God of the sort of personal care and love expressed in books like Hosea and in passages like Luke 13:34 and good old John 3:16 misses something important – something literally crucial. Of course, my objections here don’t mean that we should view God as a cosmic ATM. That would be idolatrous. Even so, the possibility of going too far in one direction doesn’t mean that one can’t also go too far in the opposite direction as well.

My response:

Ad [1]. Agreed.  As I wrote a few years back:

The Greek word translated as quotidianum in the Luke passage and as supersubstantialem in the Matthew passage is epiousios. I am not competent to discuss the philology of this Greek word, which may be a hapax legomenon. (Nor am I competent to assess the correctness of the two Wikipedia entries to which I have just linked; so caveat lector!)

Ad [2]. Dennis may be right about this.  I don't know.  But if I'm right, then my being in the minority, the default position for a maverick, is no problem at all.

Ad [3].  Agreed, we are embodied beings, not angels.  (It may even be that we are essentially embodied, or if not essentially embodied, then incapable of a complete existence without a body.) But while we are not angels, we are not mere animals either.  The main point for present purposes, however, is simply that, as physically embodied beings, we need food and water and other material things for our maintenance if we wish to continue as physically embodied beings.

We are further agreed that matter is not evil, and Manicheanism is out.  A physical universe created by a good God is itself (derivatively) good.  (Of course, there are deep and vexing questions that lurk below the surface.  For example, if ens et bonum convertuntur, then evil is privatio boni, and that raises some serious questions.)

So Dennis and I agree on two key points: that (i) we are embodied (and thus in need of ongoing material sustenance) and that (ii) being embodied is not an evil condition as such.  How is it supposed to follow from these two premises that it is appropriate to ask God to supply our physical needs, needs that we have the power to supply for ourselves?

It doesn't follow. We can and must supply our physical needs as best we can by our own efforts.  That is our job, not God's.  God has a role to play, but it concerns our spiritual development.

Here is my take on the Christian message.  We are here below to achieve spiritual individuation.  Spiritual individuation, unlike physical individuation, is a task, not a given.  It is a task we freely undertake or fail to undertake.  We are here to spiritualize ourselves, to actualize ourselves as spiritual individuals. This is a process of theosis, of becoming god-like.  God is the Absolute Individual.  Our task is to become genuine spiritual individuals by participating in the divine Individuality.  This material world is a vale of soul-making (John Keats), a place where we either work at this spiritual individuation or fail to do so.   In this life we are always only 'on the road,' in statu viae.  We are not here to enjoy material goods as ends in themselves as if this world were our final destination. 

In this transient life we must work at supplying our material needs as best we can by our own individual and collective human efforts, not by praying for miracles.  I am not saying that miracles are impossible.  And I am not saying that anyone who, in extremis, a theist in a foxhole, for example, cries out to God for material assistance is doing something morally wrong. In my original entry I conceded that not all petitionary prayer for mundane benefits is objectionable, and that some of it simply reflects, excusably,  our misery and indigence.  My point is that, insofar as we can (individually and collectively) do for ourselves we must do for ourselves, relying on God not for our material needs (except insofar as he created the physical universe within which alone material needs can be felt and met) but for our spiritual needs.

And so I do not see that Monokroussos has given me good reason to alter my interpretation:

"Give us this day our daily bread" is thus a request that we be supplied on a daily basis with spiritual bread that we need every day.  And since we need it every day, we must ask for it every day. But who needs it?  Not the bodily man, but the "inner man" says Cassian.  The inner man is the true man. 'Inner man' is a metaphor but it indicates a literal truth: that man is more than an animal. Being more than an animal, he needs more than material sustenance. 

It is also worth noting that the materialist interpretation of the daily bread petition plays right into the hands of religion's detractors who see religion as a childish and superstitious thing.  There is also this to consider: are there any well-documented  cases of people who were miraculously supplied with physical food after they prayed for it?  But there are countless cases, some in my own direct experience, in which spiritual assistance was provided as a result of prayer.

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“Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread”

I tend to look askance at petitionary prayer for material benefits. In such prayer one asks for mundane benefits whether for oneself, or, as in the case of intercessory prayer, for another. In many of its forms   it borders on idolatry and superstition, and in its crassest forms it crosses over. A skier who prays for snow, for example, makes of God a supplier of petty, ego-enhancing benefits, a sort of Cosmic Candy Man, as does the nimrod who prays to win the lottery.  Worse still is one who prays for the death of a business rival.

Perhaps not all petitionary prayer for mundane benefits is objectionable.  Some of it simply reflects, excusably,  our misery and indigence.  (Did not Christ himself engage in it at Gethsemane?)  But much of it is.  What then should I say about the "Our Father," which, in the fourth of its six petitions, appears precisely to endorse petitionary prayer for material  benefits?

The other five petitions in the Pater Noster are either clearly or arguably prayers for spiritual benefits.   In a spiritual petition one asks, not for physical bread and such, but for things like acceptance, equanimity, patience, courage, and the like in the face of the fact that one lacks bread or has cancer. "Thy Will be done." One asks for forgiveness and for the ability to forgive  others. One prays for a lively sense of one's own manifold  shortcomings, for self-knowledge and freedom from self-deception. One prays, not so much to be cured of the cancer, but to bear it with courage. One prays for the ability to see one's tribulations under the aspect of eternity or with the sort of detachment with which one contemplates the sufferings of others.

The fourth petition, "Give us this day our daily bread," translates the Biblia Vulgata's Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie which occurs at Luke 11:3.

At Matthew 6:11, however, we find Panem nostrum supersubstantialem da nobis hodie, "Give us this day our supersubstantial bread." 'Supersubstantial' suggests a bread that is supernatural, beyond all sublunary substances, and beyond all creatures. To ask for this heavenly bread is to ask for a 'food' that will keeps us spiritually alive.

For a long time I perhaps naively thought that 'daily bread' had to refer to physical bread and the other necessities of our material existence.  So for a long time I thought that there was a tension, or even a contradiction, between 'daily bread' and 'supersubstantial bread.'  A tension between physical bread and meta-physical bread. 

Cassianus_portretBut this morning I stumbled upon what might be the right solution while reading St. John Cassian.  The same bread is referred to by both phrases, and that same bread is spiritual or supersubstantial, not physical.  'Supersubstantial' makes it clear that 'bread' is to be taken metaphorically, not literally, while 'daily' "points out the right manner of its beneficial use." (Selected Writings, p. 30)  What 'daily' thus conveys is that we need to feed upon spiritual bread every single day.  On this reading, the fourth petition is as spiritual as the others, and the whiff of superstition and idolatry that I found offensive is removed.*

This reading also has the virtue of cohering nicely with Matthew 4:4 according to which man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.  Not by physical bread, but by meta-physical bread.

"Give us this day our daily bread" is thus a request that we be supplied on a daily basis with spiritual bread that we need every day.  And since we need it every day, we must ask for it every day. But who needs it?  Not the bodily man, but the "inner man" says Cassian.  The inner man is the true man. 'Inner man' is a metaphor but it indicates a literal truth: that man is more than an animal. Being more than an animal, he needs more than material sustenance. 

Addendum on the Literal and the Metaphorical

Here is a question that vexes me.  Are there literal truths that cannot be stated literally but can only stated or gotten at metaphorically?  Can we state literally what a man is if he is more than an animal? Or must we use metaphors?

"Man is spirit."  Isn't 'spirit' a metaphor?  "Man has a higher origin."  'Higher' is metaphorical.  "Man is made by God in his image and likeness."  Aren't 'made,' 'image,' and 'likeness' metaphors?

I once heard a crude and materialistic old man say that if man is made in God's image, then God must have a gastrointestinal tract.  I tried to explain to the man that 'image' is not to be taken in a physical sense but in a spiritual sense.  But I got nowhere as could have been expected:  anyone who doesn't understand right away the spiritual sense of 'made in God's image' displays by that failure to understand an incapacity for instruction.  It is like the student who doesn't get right away what it means to say that one proposition follows from another, and thinks that it refers to a temporal or a spatial relation. 

The question is whether the spiritual sense can be spelled out literally.

___________________

*  For Simone Weil, "Christ is our bread." We can have physical bread without eating it; we cannot have spiritual bread without  'eating' it: the having is the 'eating' and being nourished by it. This nourishing is the "union of Christ with the eternal part of the  soul." (Waiting for God, p. 146) The fourth petition of the Pater Noster, then, is the request for the union of Christ with the eternal part of the soul. It has nothing to do with a crass and infantile demand to be supplied with physical food via a supernatural means.

After Socializing

After socializing I often feel vaguely annoyed with myself.  Why? Because I allowed myself to be drawn into pointless conversation that makes a mockery of true conversation. The New Testament has harsh words for idle words:

But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. (MT 12:36, King James)

A hard saying!  Somewhat softer is Will Rogers' advice:

Never miss an opportunity to keep your mouth shut.

The social lifts us from the animal, but in almost every case impedes individuation which is our main spiritual vocation. Individuation is not given, but to be achieved.  Its connection with theosis ought to be explored.