tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4104012373258339565.post7059919133020524004..comments2023-10-31T12:10:39.067-04:00Comments on Ladder on Wheels: Know Thyself, Pt. 2Michial Farmerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10062071425935524922noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4104012373258339565.post-5604801073523117842009-01-26T20:36:00.000-05:002009-01-26T20:36:00.000-05:00Thank you for your kind remarks! My existentialism...Thank you for your kind remarks! <BR/><BR/>My existentialism and my Calvinism can be traced back to a single source, which is the theology of Karl Barth. <BR/><BR/>In combining the two, I probably dilute both of them--as you note, they are on the surface incompatible, although I think my "Know Thyself" series of posts explains to some extent how they mesh together.<BR/><BR/>I do believe in the absolute sovereignty of God, and I believe in double predestination and the other points of Calvinism. (I, like Barth, am at least an emotional universalist, but I think most people are.) <BR/><BR/>But I also believe that predestination and free will are a terrible mystery of sorts, an odd combination that somehow works anyway. God controls everything, but we're also given free will, and that free will is valid only in as much as we recognize and submit to God's predestination.<BR/><BR/>I'm still an existentialist because I believe that existence precedes essence, though I would modify Sartre to say that there <I>is</I> a meaning to life--but it's not set out to us. We discover it through a Buberian I-Thou encounter with God.<BR/><BR/>I realize all of this is self-contradictory to some extent; I'm still processing how to put existentialism and Calvinism together in my life. But that's what I've got so far.<BR/><BR/>Thanks for reading. The dream of every blogger, best I can tell, is to get real discussion from people he does not know.Michial Farmerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10062071425935524922noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4104012373258339565.post-441273748911046612009-01-26T11:58:00.000-05:002009-01-26T11:58:00.000-05:00So what I have been able to gather from my brief t...So what I have been able to gather from my brief time perusing your excellent blog is that you are a Calvinist and an existentialist. I’d love to hear you talk about how these two interact. Existentialism puts ultimate premium on personal responsibility (‘condemned to be free’) while Calvinism puts ultimate premium on God’s sovereign, unilateral, will. I’ve been interested in this since I caught wiffs of Luther’s ‘Bondage of the Will’ in Kierkegaard’s ‘Practice in Christianity.’<BR/><BR/>Anyway, great blog (and interesting comments Nathan).stanfordhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07591716618038804118noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4104012373258339565.post-57379915239961813912009-01-26T09:22:00.000-05:002009-01-26T09:22:00.000-05:00To a Calvinist, I'm sure it does. ;)I've got no pr...To a Calvinist, I'm sure it does. ;)<BR/><BR/>I've got no problem with grace's showing up in Isaiah--after all, Deutero-Isaiah (chs. 40-55) are nothing if not an anthem to divine grace on a sinful and destroyed nation. But to invent connotations for that conjunction for no good reason strikes me as sqirrelly.Nathan P. Gilmourhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00731491771737922242noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4104012373258339565.post-77331589296544039472009-01-24T10:02:00.000-05:002009-01-24T10:02:00.000-05:00I had no idea it was a mistranslation. The way it'...I had no idea it was a mistranslation. The way it's normally rendered sounds much better, doesn't it?Michial Farmerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10062071425935524922noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4104012373258339565.post-28437514637596748342009-01-23T13:25:00.000-05:002009-01-23T13:25:00.000-05:00Calvin thus collapses knowledge about God into sub...<I>Calvin thus collapses knowledge about God into submission to Him; in the end, knowledge and submission become the same thing, since knowledge without submission gets corrupted due to human stupidity--which "is caused not only by vain curiosity but by an inordinate desire to know more than is fitting" (I.iv.1).</I><BR/><BR/>I'm surprised you resisted the temptation to quote Augustine's answer when someone asked him what God was doing before God created time.<BR/><BR/>The translation traditions on that Isaiah passage have always baffled me--after all, the conditional particles on all those clauses are identical, yet King James (and most translations that follow) render the first two as concessional ("even though your sins...") and the rest as more straightforwardly contingent ("if you do good..." "if you do evil..."). <BR/><BR/>I know that the "though your sins be as red..." is a popular hymnal riff and a nice Protestant sentiment, but the passage should read like straight Deuteronomic threats and promises--after all, in those days, to be "white as snow" meant to have leprosy.<BR/><BR/>I know, I know. Not your main point. I should get to your main point.<BR/><BR/>Certainly you're right that covenant always involves one party surrendering to another, and you note well that the implications of that surrender all involve treating God as Lord rather than as Aristotelian friend. Obviously that gets mucked up in the more mystical bits of the gospel of John, but Paul shows up straightway to keep souls from wandering too far down that path. ;)Nathan P. Gilmourhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00731491771737922242noreply@blogger.com