Some Problems for the Ontological Argument: Metaphysical, Epistemic and Theological

May 7, 2011 5 Comments

 

The great chain of being.

By: Jay

(c) copyright 

The ontological argument of Anselm of Canterbury has long since captivated the minds of many philosophers and apologists. Not long after Anselm published his Proslogion, his devotional apologetic was criticized by Gaunilo, yet Anselm’s argument was taken up by many of the West’s most prominent thinkers, such as Descartes and Leibniz, both giving their own versions. One of the strongest arguments against Anselm would be Immanuel Kant’s, who centered his objection around the notion that “being” is not a predicate.1 The purpose of this paper will be to analyze other problems, particularly theological, metaphysical and epistemological problems in the classical Anselmian formulation.

Anselm’s argument simply stated is as follows:

And certainly this being so truly exists that it cannot even be thought not to exist. For something can be thought to exist that cannot be thought not to exist, and this is greater than that which cannot be thought not to exist. Hence, if that-than-which-nothing-greater-can-be-thought can be thought not to exist, then that-than-which-nothing-greater-can-be-thought is not the same as that-than-which-nothing-greater-can-be-thought, which is absurd. Something-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought exists so truly then, that it cannot be even thought not to exist. And you, Lord our God, are this being.2

 

Plantinga gives the form of the argument as follows, arguing it is best formulated as a reductio ad absurdum argument:

 

  1. God exists in the understanding, but not in reality. (assumption for reductio)

  2. Existence in reality is greater than existence in the understanding alone. (premise)

  3. A being having all of God’s properties plus existence in reality can be conceived. (premise)

  4. A being having all of God’s properties plus existence in reality is greater than God. (from 1 and 2)

  5. A being greater than God cannot be conceived. (3,4)

  6. It is false that a being greater than God can be conceived. (by definition of ‘God.’)

  7. Hence it is false that God exists in the understanding but not in reality. (1-6 reductio ad absurdum).3 Read more of this post

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Spenser’s Use of Symbolism in The Visions of Petrarch

March 5, 2011 2 Comments

I saw a Phoenix in the wood alone...

By: Jay

(c) Copyright, All Rights Reserved.

The Visions of Petrarch, published in 1569 by J. Van der Noordt with woodcuts and titled The Theatre of the Worldlings, is one of the lesser known early works of Elizabethan epic poet, Edmund Spenser (1552-99). Prior to the publication of his masterpiece, The Faerie Queen, Spenser wrote this smaller work titled the Visions of Petrarch wherein he combines elements of Calvinistic and Protestant theology and morality, with classical mythological imagery. The purpose of this paper will be to analyze the seven poems of the Visions, analyzing the allegorical and tropological lessons intended to be gained thereby, as meditations in preparation for death.

The first of the visions concerns a doe attacked by two wild dogs. The poem is as follows:

Being one day at my window all alone,
So many strange things happened me to see,
As much it grieueth me to thinke thereon.
At my right hand a Hynde appear’d to me,
So faire as mote the greatest God delite;
Two eager dogs did her pursue in chace,
Of which the one was black, the other white:
With deadly force so in their cruell race
They pincht the haunches of that gentle beast,
That at the last, and in short time I spide,
Vnder a Rocke where she alas opprest,
Fell to the ground, and there vntimely dide.
Cruell death vanquishing so noble beautie,
Oft makes me waile so hard a destinie.1

 

The first vision shows the poet alone, solitary in contemplation looking out upon the world as if disconnected. The young poetic Spenser appears to view himself as separated from nature, viewing through a window as an allegorical scene drawn from the natural world unfolds before him. While the natural world goes about its usual concourse, fulfilling its laws, the writer or poet is in his own world, acting as a narrator. The event that unfolds is unpleasant; grievous for him to behold: a beautiful young doe is torn to pieces as it seeks shelter from two ravenous dogs.

One of the dogs is black, the other white, which suggests that appearances can be deceptive, inasmuch as white is often associated with purity and black with insidiousness. In the case of the natural world’s rapacity and carnality, such symbolic meanings do not always obtain. Indeed, just as in the natural realm a white dog may be as ravenous as a black, so in the world of men, of which this is a tropological and allegorical image, men may appear to be good, yet have the potentiality to be as ravenous as an openly evil man. If the seven (technically six) visions are loosely affiliated with the tradition of the “seven deadly sins,” we have here a representation of either lust or greed. The power of lust or greed is such that it rules those subject to baser passions. Spenser catalogs those so ruled as a “cruell race.” The delicate hind “dies,” but the death could signal the loss of virginity before due time, as a result of violent sexual encounters, or it might also suggest actual murder on a literal level. Read more of this post

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Fr. Count von Frankensteen of the Holy Gothic Latin Traditional Rite

December 21, 2010 2 Comments

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On the Feminized Novus Ordo: Local Controversy

September 27, 2010 16 Comments

A college girl tells us to pray to communist deities that "God end class warfare..."

Local Novus Ordo Priest has Communist Prayers and Genderless Creed 

By: Jay 

It is a bad thing to be a red-blooded male and attend a Novus Ordo liturgy locally. Before the mass began, it was asked of the crowd if anyone would like to do the readings that has been trained. I am familiar with how to conduct a traditional Latin Mass as well as how to operate in the Novus Ordo as a server and reader. I offered, but was turned down, because a college girl had offered her skills. I protested that the Catholic theological norm was that the altar role of serving and reading was ideally for men. This met with a fury of protest as I would later discover, but the priest assured me that the bishop here had set the norms that it was okay to allow women to run every aspect of the service. So not only was my overall point rejected (that it is more consistent and traditionally correct to choose male lectors, should they offer), I was told to go away and ask the bishop.  So rather than make a sensible response to my point about tradition in general as regards male authority, Fr. Jason McClure (his email is  frjason@stleoky.org if you would like to send him some of your own thoughts) preferred I go elsewhere. He made it clear that this is of no immediate concern to him, since the local bishop has given permission to do many things in the liturgy. Well, let’s see what this ends up meaning. 

Not only was the mass basically ugly, it included several offensive elements to any who have a love of the reverent and holy. After our beautiful evangelical serenade of praise and worship songs, the all-girl guitar band rested and I decided I was not going to let Fr. McClure scare me away from confronting him on an ugly liturgy as well the local Newman House director of religious education’s consideration of instituting a Catholics Going Green Bible Study. In fact, a month ago I met with the girl who runs the Newman House and showed her documentation through facebook that the Green Movement is a movement of fraud geared towards depopulation. This is completely in contrast to Catholic Dogma which teaches that human life is sacred.  I went to snatch a few photos of this hideous mass to make sure I had evidence.   Read more of this post

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How Ridiculous Can Modern Churches Get?

June 12, 2010 3 Comments

And this applies to “Catholic” freaks as well. The churches have become circuses. This is some of the gayest, most bizarre stuff imaginable. Peruse the collage of absurdity below.

Read more of this post

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Taking the Law and Prophets Seriously: Judgments

June 10, 2010 7 Comments

The Prophet Samuel Hacks Up King Agag

By: Jay

I am sick and tired of the Law and the Prophets being a joke. This past year I’ve seen several Orthodox priests/prelates openly say they do not accept the “God” as presented in the Old Testament, as well as not a few Roman Catholics. Textual liberalism and rejecting “that kind of God” often go hand in hand, or are at least kissing cousins. One need only look at the history of Luther’s “reformation” and the explosion of textual liberalism that followed a few hundred years later in German higher criticism to see where these views lead.

Higher criticism and modern rejections of Moses may not have the same motivations, but they arrive at the same endpoint – the rejection of “that kind of God.” By that, what is meant is the God who condones exterminations of cities, is providential within all historical events, and punishes (even if remedially) descendants based on the actions of fathers and forebears. The simple question that arises is this – how do these people expect anyone to take them seriously as proponents of a religion which comes from the Law and the Prophets? Seriously? I am supposed to accept that you have the truth, and you tell me all these instances are “allegory” or at least not historical. Anyone with basic logic and an elementary knowledge of the Bible need only think for about 5 minutes about how implausible this is. Were I a serious Jew, I would not accept such ridiculous claims, and justly so. You prelates have told me that the very Book you accept is a-historical in crucial events, when all along it’s been viewed as historical – even amongst the various Christian groups, prior to higher criticism. In fact, in places where the New Testament views incidents in the Law and Prophets as historical, I have been told they are not – and that the New Testament writers are in error. What arrogance. 

I am always bitched at for “not being practical.” Well, ok, here we go – let’s be practical. Let me examine the stories I was told emulate in Sunday School as a young boy – arguably the most simplistic and practial stories imaginable, and let’s see if these religionists persuade me to be practical according to their conceptions. Read more of this post

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Christ United to All Men: What “Traditionalists” Need to Understand

June 5, 2010 4 Comments

St. Irenaeus: Early Bishop & Teacher of the Recapitulation

What Latin Traditionalists Need to Understand

By: Jay

My purpose here is to correct a tendency and misconception, which sometimes leads to an error.  Debating the status of this document’s authority is also not in view, either.  The Vatican II document, Gaudium et Spes, stated (with the relevant citations of Constantinople II and III):

“22. The truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light. For Adam, the first man, was a figure of Him Who was to come,(20) namely Christ the Lord. Christ, the final Adam, by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and His love, fully reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling clear. It is not surprising, then, that in Him all the aforementioned truths find their root and attain their crown.

He Who is “the image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15),(21) is Himself the perfect man. To the sons of Adam He restores the divine likeness which had been disfigured from the first sin onward. Since human nature as He assumed it was not annulled,(22) by that very fact it has been raised up to a divine dignity in our respect too. For by His incarnation the Son of God has united Himself in some fashion with every man. He worked with human hands, He thought with a human mind, acted by human choice(23) and loved with a human heart. Born of the Virgin Mary, He has truly been made one of us, like us in all things except sin.(24)”

And the references are:

20. Cf. Rom. 5: 14. Cf. Tertullian, De carnis resurrectione 6: “The shape that the slime of the earth was given was intended with a view to Christ, the future man.”: P. 2, 282; CSEL 47, p. 33, 1. 12-13. Read more of this post

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There is No Such Thing as Calvinism

June 5, 2010 1 Comment

John Calvin's Beautiful (Purported) Grave

(Back by popular demand. -Jay  ;)

By M. B.

One thing that amazes me when I read Reformed people’s arguments against Rome is not so much what they say about us, but the gall and arrogance they have to even say anything at all.

The funny thing about the Calvinism vs. Arminianism debate is that there is no such thing. What? That’s right. Calvinism does not exist, at least not any more than the Ku Klux Klan does. Oh sure, there are still several groups that run around in rural communities in the South, calling themselves everything from “The Traditional Christian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan” to the “International Keystone Knights of the Ku Klux Klan”. But everyone knows what Nathan Bedford Forrest started over a century ago after the War Between the States has long since disbanded, only be revitalized by kooks, losers, and provocateurs trying to keep the torch aflame every other decade or so. And the ironic thing is that they’re trying to revitalize some thing that, any student of history knows, would not be blessed by the men who first established it to fight Yankees and carpetbaggers.

And it’s the same with Calvinism, with its “Reformed Presbyterian Church General Assembly” and “Reformed Presbyterian Church in the United States ”. These amounts to little more than malcontent American whites trying to revamp a failed experiment, some thing that has long since been swept away into the dustbin of history. Read more of this post

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Mainstream Historian on the Revolutionary Carbonari Conspiracy

June 4, 2010 Leave a comment

By: Jay

As with my article on the prevalence of the masonic-Illuminati in top, mainstream historians’ works, the truth is often uncovered even in scholarship opposed to the principle of “secret cabals” influencing history.  Cambridge historian David Thomson writes on the back cover of his Penguin Europe Since Napoleon that “The pattern of European development since 1789 can be understood only by study of those all-embracing forces that have affected the whole continent, from Britain to the Balkans.” [emphasis mine]

One of these dark forces was the Carbonari.  Thomson writes:

“The ultimate models for most secret societies were the Lodges of eighteenth century Freemasonry and from them was derived much of the ritual, ceremonies of initiation, secret signs, and passwords.  The more immediate models were the secret societies formed in Italy and Germany to resist the rule of Napoleon: especially the Tugenbund (League of Virtue) in Germany and the Carbonari (the charcoal burners) of Italy, both founded by 1810.  But a rich variety of similar organizations appeared throughout Europe: the Federati of Piedmont and the Adelphi in Lombardy, the Spanish liberal societies after 1815, the Philomathians of Poland modelled on the German students’ Bursenschaften, the Russian Union of Salvation of 1816 and the Republican Society of the South.” (pg. 140) Read more of this post

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The Importance of Biblical Inerrancy

May 27, 2010 4 Comments

Moses receives the Law from God

A Presuppositional Critique: It’s Inseparability from Faith
By: Jay

I shouldn’t have to go to my local church [!] and end up having to defend the accuracy and authenticity of the Biblical texts.  Unfortunately, this happened more than once.  In a casual conversation one Sunday with someone I assumed was a kindred spirit, a heated discussion erupted over the reliability of the biblical texts.  This prompted me to post some thoughts that hopefully illustrate the central importance of maintaining and defending, not just the accuracy and inerrancy of the texts, but also of the patristic and Traditional understanding of the texts as inerrant and historically reliable. 

This is not a strict “scientific” treatment.  This defense is more practical, patristic and presuppositional in nature.  So please, no comments about an “unscientific” approach.  I am familiar with different codices and their histories.  That is the subject of another blog post or a whole series.  And, on top of that, please, no comments about “fundamentalism.”  I know firsthand what fundamentalism is (having been raised a Baptist “fundamentalist”), and I’ve read liberal higher critics.  I’ve also read the Church Fathers, and conservative biblical scholars. I hope to show a couple presuppositional flaws that are apparent in the higher critical approaches, that it’s completely foreign to Tradition, and that the patristic tradition is unequivocally clear concerning inerrancy.

The first error made by my friend in conversation Sunday was the same error made by virtually all higher critics:  because there are similarities in pagan texts and rituals in comparison with Christianity, the various biblical authors must have borrowed from these pagan sources.  So, for example, the Gilgamesh Epic has a flood myth.  Other pagan narratives have a first man or woman, so, the argument runs, the biblical account must have been borrowed and redacted these Ancient Near Eastern traditions.  Note first of all that this rests on an obvious assumption—that the biblical authors borrowed from their pagan neighbors.  Why not the other way?  What if the devil inspired his minions to borrow from the true account and obscure it.  “Absurd,” you say—”unscholarly and unscientific.”  Beware, lest you come to find the hard way that “there is no wisdom or counsel against the Lord” (Prov. 21:30), and that “He overthrows the words of the faithless” (Prov. 22:12). Read more of this post

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