If we focus too much on what the text explicitly states and less on the influence of God that created this God fearing woman, then we potentially uphold an unbalanced ideal for womanhood.

Shema’s offered some wisdom here from her first installment of Biblical Womanhood. She’s promised future articles to develop the discipline and concept of biblical womanhood further, and the Areopagus is hoping she will condescend to other quest appearances as well.

I’d like to piggyback off this thought, and expand it to the Christian walk in general. There’s often a false dilemma offered to Christians, an either/or set of alternatives that shouldn’t be thought so. This either/or set delivers what Shema termed an unbalanced ideal. Sometimes we’re instructed that doctrine is the most important thing to the success of the Christian life; other times, we’re told that obedience is the indispensable key to the Christian life. I’d like to suggest that a third, and more balanced, approach is actually correct.

The simple truth is that they’re both prerequisites to any successful Christian walk, and your walk will suffer without both of them. I think it’s reasonable to set forth the following four possibilities, a Christian walk possibility square, if you will:

• there are those who know, and don’t do.
• there are those who don’t know, and do.
• there are those who don’t know, and don’t do.
• there are those who know, and do.

Obviously, the last category represents the ideal Christian walk. Who or what do you think might be represented by the other three categories?

Three cheers for my web/blog designer. Her skill is evident, the site is striking, and a link is provided along the right hand side of this blog for anyone who wishes to contact her. My initial impression of this site was favorable, and it has only increased since. Nevertheless, I cringed when I first beheld the prominent blood spatter on the header. A Christian blog with such a potentially morbid theme conspicuously displayed?

For the squeamish among us, The Dark Man is not a bloody book, nor is it gratuitously violent. Those of a sensitive constitution should have no trouble reading and enjoying it. What blood is in the book is mostly found in the opening chapter, which may be previewed at www.marcherlordpress.com

However, let’s call it like it is: the Bible is an extremely bloody book. There’s no sense in denying this readily apparent observation. It’s replete with violence to the degree that I don’t need to support this naked assertion with citations. A moment or two of honest reflection from anyone who has read it is all that’s required. Come on, admit it, my fellow Christians….

Perhaps, then, blood is not a foreign element to a Christian site. In fact, I intend to argue that blood is a central element of the Christian faith, and I intend to argue that we as Christians should embrace the elements of our religion, rather from retreating from them. This should, God willing, be the first in a series of posts encouraging Christians to refrain from denying the tenets of our faith that currently swim against the stream of prevailing culture. Twentieth century theology, and Christian thought in general during that period, has largely aimed its efforts at the exact opposite target, in a wrongheaded attempt to make Christianity compatible with culture. This practice must end, not only because it’s disastrous for the church, but because hath not God said “Thou shalt not lie?”

And the attempt to persuade the skeptic, the objector, another Christian, yourself, or anyone else that the Bible is not a violent or bloody book is simply that: a lie, or at best an unconscious deceit borne of a desire to protect God. This mealy-mouthedness has got to end. It’s no news flash that God as revealed in the Bible is able to defend himself, and that He requires His followers to be truth tellers. Therefore, it’s time to revert to a time when Christians embosomed their beliefs–Christianity in its brashest supernatural form as delineated in Scripture–or abandon it altogether.Why, then, would some attempt to conceal the fact that the Bible relates account after account of violence and bloodshed? I think there’s several reasons, none of which are satisfactory.

The zeitgeist, or spirit of the age, in which we find ourselves is constantly preaching that the world is progressing toward some rational utopia in which an enlightened humanity basks in an Edenic paradise ushered in through technology, science, education, and economics. Mankind shall overcome his baser instinct, and presumably the drive of natural selection. As your own poets have said, “Come on people now, smile on your brother, everybody get together try to love one another right now,” or, “You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us. And the world will live as one.” It’s a noble sentiment, to be sure, and one we should all strive toward.

In this context, the Bible is conceived of as a relic of past generations mired in war, hatred, bloodshed, and violence–an unenlightened, savage, Bronze aged, beastly humanity. Many Christians react to the weight of this accusation by denying the Bible’s violence, or by softening its depiction of violence through a sharp contrast between the Old and New Testaments, as if He who has no shadow of turning, suddenly turned. This simply will not do. The Bible unequivocally declares from beginning to end that mankind has a sin problem. The violence contained throughout the Bible is an honest reporting of Man’s nature. It would be ridiculous if the Bible posited man’s sinful nature and then reported nothing but good things about him, or glossed over his horrid comportment. It would be as if a 20th century history reported the moon landing, the cure for polio, and Habitat for Humanity without reference to the Holocaust, WWII, WWI, and Serbian genocide.

I propose that we work for good, let the chips fall where they may, and embrace the outcome. It appears we have somewhat of an objective, measurable criterion on our hands that discriminates between Christianity and other thought forms. At any rate, the revulsion I suspect many may feel at this article is a prime indicator of just how much the spirit of the age has inculcated our thinking, convincing us that the world’s a rosy place where nothing bad is ever supposed to happen. If you’re repulsed at me, all I can say is look around you. The world today looks no different than that portrayed in the Bible. We’ve got to deal with what is, not what we dream. Fairy tales belong in the nursery.

Secondly, I suppose that many well-meaning Christians desire to defend God. In their view, the Bible’s depiction of violence somehow mars the good name of God. Their God could never order the conquest of Canaan, take human life through a flood, gamble with Job’s welfare, subject Joseph and the Israelites to slavery, approve of Sisera’s head being nailed to the ground with a spike, strike down Uzzah, or a hundred of other like claims, although no Christian appears expeditious in denying perhaps the most violent act in the entirety of Scripture: the crucifixion. These Christians deny in some form or fashion the biblical accounts, or attempt to ameliorate God’s connection with them. This genre of blood denial will require a separate post to treat, but in the end, even a cursory perusal of scripture reveals that God is intimately involved in all the actions above. Denying them is tantamount to denying the Bible itself, or at best the inerrancy of Scripture. Both are unacceptable, in my view, because the text plainly declares what it declares. Acceptance or rejection appear the only viable, rational options.

A third difficulty presents itself within Christianity, and is of little interest to non-Christians. Many who name the name of Christ deny the Biblical portrait of God simply because He’s not their God. These are the “my God is a God of love and wouldn’t judge anyone” folks who distort the Biblical descriptions of God to suit their own preconceptions. Other forms of this heresy are the bellhop god who does whatever you ask of him, and the hand-wringing god who’s incapable of doing most things the Bible claims He does.

But isn’t blood central to the Christian faith? It’s central to saving faith, from the types and shadows offered through animal sacrifice to the once and for all efficacious sacrifice offered by the unblemished Christ on the cross. It’s central to the communion of the saints: Do this in remembrance of me. He who will not partake of his body and blood has no place in Him. It’s central in the blood of the martyrs that watered the seeds of the Church. It’s central in the establishment of covenants. It’s central to the earliest chapters of Genesis where Abel’s blood cries out from the ground, to the end of Revelation where the rider on the white horse is dressed in a robe dipped in blood. It’s central to atonement, justification, redemption, reconciliation, and adoption. It’s central because, according to Scripture, the life’s in the blood. And despite what the spirit of the age claims, it’s central in judgment. For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. 1 Pet 1:18-19

There’s no way around it. Either we fully embrace the Bible’s claims, or we deny them and abandon the faith. But let’s not make excuses, be mealy-mouthed, or deny that 1+1=2. Wrestle with God like Jacob, or sell your birthright like Esau. In subsequent posts, I’ll grapple with these accounts, in order that we might wrestle.

Some things follow like night follows day. Or does day follow night, or do they follow each other? Quixote makes writing difficult sometimes, in case you haven’t noticed previously:

Christian:                     Ontological Argument.

Elite Atheist:                 Existence is not a predicate.

Wydyd Atheist:             What?

Atheist:                         Naturalism.

Christian:                      Meaning, morality, consciousness, and purpose.

Christian:                      Bible

Elite Atheist:                 Contradictions, atrocities, higher criticism.

Wydyd Atheist:             You’re an idiot for believing that.

Atheist:                        Science

Christian:                     Science is good, mostly, but cannot prove or disprove God.

                                   Quit referencing Galileo and flat earths.

Christian:                      Objective morality

Elite Atheist:                 Euthyphro dilemma

Wydyd Atheist:              Huh?

A brief history of ED

What follows is an informal treatment of the Euthyphro Dilemma, intended to be non-technical, and readily accessible to non-philosophic readers. The eponymic Euthyphro dilemma comes from Plato’s Euthyphro dialogue, written somewhere circa 380 BC, featuring a conversation between Socrates and Euthyphro. The dialogue commences with Socrates and Euthyphro discussing their respective prosecutions: Socrates being prosecuted for impiety, Euthyphro prosecuting his own father for murder. To this end, Euthyphro claims exact knowledge of piety and impiety. Socrates, customarily, seizes the opportunity to engage in Socratic dialogue, resulting in one of the most storied dilemmas of Western culture. Depending on the translation, the basic dilemma goes as follows:

            Is piety loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved

            by the gods.

Plato cast this argument beneath a polytheistic framework containing gods that were finite, humanlike, and morally questionable. Because of the obvious disconnect of this framework, the dilemma has been reformulated with regard to monotheism and has been stated in several different ways, all generally meaning something close to the following:

             Is good willed by God because it is good, or is it good because it is willed by God?

The first horn of the dilemma—Is good willed by God because it is good—locates the good independently of God. The good is conceived of as some standard or other that God recognizes in determining what is good. If this state of affairs obtains, God is subservient to standard independent of his eternal being; there is at least one entity He is not sovereign over. Moreover, he becomes the mere messenger of goodness. Admittedly, this position is untenable for Christian theists.

The second horn of the dilemma—or is it good because it is willed by God—tends to render the commands of God arbitrary. The ED proponent argues with this horn that God could have just as well commanded rape and murder as goods, and that they are evils is only at the whim of God’s command. Furthermore, under the second horn, often referred to as Divine Command Ethics (DCT), it is difficult to make informative claims about Gods goodness, if goodness is solely based upon what God says it is. What does it then mean to say that God is good?

In fairness, the debate over ED has continued to the present day, with skeptics generally holding that ED is unsolvable, and theists claiming that ED is solved. Since we’ll likely fare no better with this brief treatment of ED, it’s fair to ask “what’s the point?” This is best answered by claiming that the theist reading this article heretofore unfamiliar with the ED, may leave confident not only that the ED is solvable, but that the ED itself argues for theism as the best known grounding for objective morality. Skeptics will probably remain unconvinced, and though I will ultimately disagree with them, I will not be trying to force the claim that they must conclude as I do.

How a dilemma functions & the false dilemma

Dilemmas usually offer two options: one is either alive or dead, one is pregnant or not. For argumentative purposes, dilemmas are often constructed to force opponents into logically undesirable conclusions, or to reduce the logical consequences of an opponent’s position to conclusions that contradict or provide strong evidence against a claim. This is customarily referred to as being caught on the horns of a dilemma, invoking a bullish metaphor.

Sometimes, but rarely, it is possible to rebut a dilemma by positing a counter dilemma. If you are able to produce a counter dilemma in the heat of debate, you are truly a master rhetorician. Here’s a classic example of counter dilemma:

If you say what is just, men will hate you, and if you say what is unjust, the gods will hate you. But you must say one or the other; therefore, you will be hated.

Counter dilemma: If I say what is just, the gods will love me, and if I say what is unjust, men will love me. I must say either one or the other. Therefore, I will be loved.

Another nemesis of the dilemma is the tertium quid, the third option. If a viable third option is presented, the dilemma is rightly deemed a false dilemma. The dilemmas above appear to be true dilemmas; there do not appear to be other alternatives to dead/alive and pregnant/not pregnant. However, if a dilemma states that children like either football or baseball, it is rather simple to provide other options, say, basketball. Thus, the dilemma is defeated. This is commonly referred to as “passing through the horns of the dilemma.”

Lastly, one may “grasp the horns of the dilemma.” If it may be shown that one or both of the premises of a dilemma is false, the dilemma is successfully defeated. With ED, the theist is able to both pass through the horns and grasp them.

ED as false dilemma

The first philosophic move of the theist is to pass through the horns of the ED by locating the Good as the nature of God. In effect, the theist answers the dilemma by saying “neither.” Hence, the theist claims that the good is not independent of God, as posited by horn one, nor is the good commanded by God, as claimed by horn two. In effect, a tertium quid is presented: God’s nature is the paradigm of goodness. God’s nature is the good.

As far as I know, this move is universally accepted by all thinkers of all stripes and biases, therefore rendering the standard formulation of ED a false dilemma.

So what’s all the fuss then….

Proponents of the dilemma argue that this only relocates the dilemma back a logical step. ED is re-erected around the theist’s contention that God’s nature is the good: Is God’s goodness good in relation to some independent standard, or it is good because God’s character is good? The former presents the same problem as the first horn of the original dilemma, the latter, the same problem as the second horn of the original dilemma which again seems arbitrary or whimsical. After all, God’s character could have been anything.

The theist response

Theists generally consider the reformulation of the dilemma a clear indicator that the ED supporter has misunderstood the theist contention that God’s nature is the good. Note, the theist objection does not say that God’s nature is good; it says that God’s nature is the good.

The ED supporter has attempted to establish an infinite regress with the reformulation of the dilemma; however, the theist response precludes this outcome by positing God’s nature as a metaphysical ultimate, a brute fact of existence. Brute facts are explanatory propositions that require or admit no explanation themselves. In ontology, they exist necessarily as an explanation for contingent or non-necessary beings, but themselves have no explanation for their being—they simply are. Atheists, skeptics, and theists all agree that some things simply are brute facts. Bertrand Russell, for example, claimed that the universe just exists, that’s all.

Does God’s nature seem like an appropriate brute fact candidate for the good? By definition, this appears obvious. St. Anselm described God as “a being than which nothing greater can be conceived.” The concept of God is understood almost universally, if not universally, in this fashion. God is the maximally great being of all possible worlds. As the greatest conceivable being imaginable, it is greater to be the paradigm of goodness than to conform to it. By definition, God appears to be the foremost and premier stopping point. God is metaphysically ultimate.

Hence, good finds grounding in God necessarily by definition, and the reformulated dilemma fails.

Grabbing the first horn of the reformulated dilemma

It gets worse for the ED, though. The first horn of the reformulated dilemma, is God’s goodness good in relation to some independent standard, results in unintended logical consequences for the ED proponent. Without God’s nature as an ultimate grounding for the good, moral nihilism appears to be the only other alternative. The theist may successfully apply the ED to naturalist ethical systems as follows.

The theist wonders if the naturalist’s good is based on an independent standard, or is it good because the naturalist is good or commands it? Apparently, few naturalists claim the latter, but the former fares no better. What standard independent of the naturalist determines the good? But then, if one is suggested, reason or human goodness perhaps, what independent standard determines that independent standard to be the good? Here the infinite regress is firmly established, and moral nihilism naturally ensues.

But perhaps the naturalist locates an independent standard within the brute fact of the universe, a logically tenable position. It is difficult to conceive of what this could mean. Is it a property of atoms or subatomic particles? Presumably not. Maybe it exists as an abstract object, perhaps as Plato suggested the Good as a form.

Abstract objects, however, do not possess the requisite properties to ground the good. Abstract objects cannot yield, possess, render, or sustain the good. Abstract objects do not stand in causal relationships—they are distinguished by their causal inefficacy. The number thirteen cannot cause bad luck, for instance. If the good were an abstract object, then, it doesn’t appear that it would be very good, not to us at least. Moral values must be grounded in a concrete object, if at all. The best conceivable concrete object available to ground the good, is God. Hence, it appears that the ED favors theism over naturalism.

Grabbing the second horn

Paradoxically, the first horn of the reformulated dilemma both misunderstands the theist objection to the original dilemma, and provides evidence for moral grounding in God’s nature. Likewise, the second horn of the reformulation is valuable to theism.

Since God’s nature is definitive of the good, God may then pass moral values to us through divine commands. So then how do we know we are not deceived? In truth, total skepticism is generally impossible to disprove. Nevertheless, total skepticism regarding the good finds itself within the same boat as total skepticism regarding the senses. In one sense, we have to trust our senses to distrust them. Our morality or knowledge of the good is no different, and for the very argument against valid sensory experience, an identical claim can be set forth for the good. We are rational for trusting our experience and knowledge of the good in the same manner as we are with our senses. In this manner, our observation of the good is informative, and allows us to present a meaningful statement when we say “God is good.”

Much ado over nothing?

I predict so. In fact, my prediction is as follows: the skeptic or ED supporter remains convinced that the ED deprives theism of morality. The theist embraces God’s nature as the good like a loved one, obviously true, obviously faithful. Where did the impassable gulf between us arise? What’s the cause of this breach?