Purpose

Divine Sovereignty: A Philosophical Defense

Introduction

Let’s suppose you missed a flight. This almost happened to me a few days ago, but as that entire event was unfolding, I thought to myself: How should we interpret this in light of God’s overall purposes for us? There are three possibilities – it is a blessing, a curse, or a trial. Now some may suggest that it simply happened without any divine purpose at all, but I cannot accept that. The biblical account of God’s sovereignty presents his control over every particular thing (e.g, Matt. 6:30, James 4:13–15, Acts 17:26), as well as His purposing of all things for His glory (Colossians 1:16). A Thomistic perspective entails this position as well, so it as at least rationally defensible. Unfortunately, I think our society despises God’s intricate involvement in their lives because they prefer to be left alone, or somehow think the notion itself is absurd. Why think that God is involved at all if a missed flight could be explained as a simple mistake on our parts? How does this situation benefit me, one could ask, or how could God do this to me? I do not presume to be capable of extensively answering each of these issues in a single post, for each of these questions have book length treatments in philosophy and theology. However, I do hope to illuminate and apply these principles in a way that could be insightful for our daily lives.

The Nature of God’s Power

Let’s address the first question: Why think that this is the direct work of God at all? Actually, I would qualify that question because I do not think that it is the “direct” work of God at all. This is to avoid the error of occasionalism, which is the philosophical doctrine that every created substance is of itself incapable of being an efficient cause. Every effect in creation is therefore directly caused by God. In other words, the sun that vaporizes the water does not do so of its own nature, but because God determined that this is what the effect would be. But if He so pleased, He could cause an effect to do whatever He wanted – e.g, the sun would appear to turn the water into dinosaurs for no intrinsic reason. While I’d love to refute this, I think most people would already recognize this as absurd. If that’s the case though, how could God possibly be involved? Either nature does it or God does it, right? That’s a false dilemma. It’s possible for God to cause and purpose things through nature, just as a chess player works through the rules of chess for the purpose of checkmating his opponent. Every move can be anticipated and planned accordingly without sacrificing the nature of the game.

Similarly, God perfectly anticipates every event and plans accordingly, without sacrificing the nature of things. Though this is slightly incomplete, since He decided to actualize this world with all its particularities before the foundations of the world. It’s not as if God finds Himself with a world and is forced to work with what He has. Furthermore, not only does He work before and through the nature of things, He works in the nature of things as well. By becoming a man to die on the cross, He worked in the world to shape the course of history. He does all of this for His glory and purpose, but does so without fail. Now one could ask, “How do I know that God had a specific purpose for that event? Perhaps it is not essential to His plan?”. There are indeed some aspects of reality that you could consider accidental (i.e, it’s not essential to something, not that it’s outside God’s control). For example, it would be difficult to see how a blue colored ball would thwart the entire purpose of God unless it was orange. But Scripture tells us that even the hairs on a person’s head are known by God. So the least we could say is that God knows certain “trivial facts”, but how does this lead us to purpose?

His Universal Plan

First we need to understand that not every feature in the world needs to be “essential” to God’s plan in order to have a purpose. It is possible that the blue ball is a child’s favorite color such that it is a blessing to him. This is obviously extrinsic to the ball, however, as it is not as if that specific ball itself intended to be picked up by that particular child. So extrinsic purposes are possible for particular things with accidental features, without necessarily being essential to God’s plan. Though it’s not inconceivable that something accidental could work to be at least partly essential for something like Jesus’s death – e.g, Judas could have had a silver coin as child, you never know. But even if it had no essential purpose, it could still participate in God’s plan if it fulfilled some good. For example, the Christian worldview entails the idea that God desires our flourishing as creatures (Jeremiah 29:11). Part of flourishing as creatures is experiencing joy. Thus God could work through the ball to provide that child with joy, and by consequence would be fulfilling a infinitesimal part of His greater purpose. I only say infinitesimal because it is Christ that essentially fulfills this joy in us, not the ball. That does not make the ball bad, it just makes it a lesser good.

Second, I think we’re limiting our understanding of “purpose” to either whatever is good for a person or whatever is in accord to God’s plan. This is incorrect, because it just begs the question: What if the ball was never used? What purpose would that possibly serve? This question could not be answered if we did not have a Thomistic account of purposes that will hereby be called final causes or teleology. Since the ball is a human artifact, it derives its purpose from us to be used for a child’s amusement, but of itself it would not necessarily possess that feature. We are interested in what teleology the ball has of itself, not what purpose we assign to it. By final cause then, I just mean that a ball is of its own nature directed toward a certain range of effect/s as its final cause or end just as an arrow points toward the target as its final end or goal. One of the effects that the ball is directed to is the potential to be melted into goo. This effect is present within the ball regardless of whether it gets actualized. Understood this way, all created objects would have some potential to be directed toward a certain end.

Lastly, all physical beings have final causes, but not all final causes are physical beings. The intellect is capable of final causality precisely because it is intentional by nature. Anything that intends a certain end is already exemplifying a form of teleology, except in a much different way than physical things do. At this point though, I think I’m adventuring too far into purposes that do not matter to us. Or so it seems! In reality, the purposes that are most relevant to us are those that are intrinsic to our nature. For example, it is good for us to eat food but this could not be unless it was our nature to eat. Because of the different natures of things, I think God’s purposes work in different ways for all things. A human has different ends that a ball does not have. So it becomes meaningless to ask, “Does God have a plan of salvation for balls?” because they’re simply not in need of such things. Nevertheless, I do think there is a hierarchy of purposes where the lowest forms of final causes are there to serve the higher forms. A clear example of this is water serving the plant’s need for water, and the plant serving the animal’s need for nutrition.

Conclusion

In this way, I think God works through each thing to accomplish good for beings like us. But if there so happened to be a “ball” that did not have a purpose for the greater good of rational agents, then I do not think that threatens the sovereignty of God in any way. It’s not as if every physical thing must work for our own good in order to have a purpose at all, that’s just absurd. Just by virtue of being anything at all, the ball is said to have a degree of goodness that God at every instant of its existence actualizes. Since God is goodness, every thing that has being must be analogous to this goodness in different ways. Even Satan, who has been regarded as evil personified, must have some sort of goodness insofar as he has being. The more perfect we are in relation to our natures, the more we reflect the glory of God’s being. This is why I reject the Calvinistic notion that God is most glorified when we are most damned. Or for the elect, when we are most satisfied in Him. God’s glory is not increased or diminished by any state of man, but only our reflection of His glory within our being can be increased or decreased. Now that some objections have been removed, I’ll be focusing on the practical side in my next post. Forgive me if that bored you, this post ended up being much longer than I had intended.

J. Budziszewski on Naturalistic Evolution

“We are to think of a mindless process as using technique to put things in place. Though it has no intentions, we are to conceive it as enforcing its edicts by fobbing things off on us and using ploys. Though it is incapable of purposes, we are to suppose that it designed us. And though it is insusceptible to moral judgement, we are to be scandalized by its shamelessness [...] And so the very idiom these thinkers choose to tell that God is nonexistent and nature devoid of purpose insinuates, at another level, that nature is full of wily purposes and rules as a crafty, shameless god.” – J. Budziszewski in The Line Through the Heart: Natural Law as Fact, Theory, and Sign of Contradiction page 81.

Christwire.org and Christianity

For some time now I’ve been hopping in and out of Christwire.org and reading some of their stuff. I’m pretty sure this is a satire site, and honestly, some of the stuff is funny. But on the other hand, there is something really sad about the type of material on this site, namely, that there are Christians who are really like this.

First of all, I do not want to come off as an arrogant know it all (trust me, I don’t know a lot), and I don’t wanna be a jerk to other Christians who genuinely believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and who believe that he is, indeed, the “way, the truth, and the life.” But, from time to time I just want to bang my head against the wall because of the way some Christians have denigrated Christianity to a superstition and emotional roller-coaster. So, what type of Christians am I referring to here? The ones that Christwire portrays: The Christian that believes that Satan is in every single bad thing that happens (like getting a flat tire or diarrhea); the Christian that thinks that if you study philosophy you have become a pagan; the Christian who thinks faith means you leave your brain at the door.

I love these people. But it’s so hard to see some Christians act like this and represent Christianity as some sort of superstitious soap opera. These sorts of errors need to be corrected because it gives off the wrong message to other people that misinforms them about what the Christian worldview really is. If we are to be effective ambassadors for Christ, we need to inform people, not misinform. We need to give the right message and show people that the Christian worldview is the picture of reality.

The prosperity gospels, the therapeutic Jesus movement (oh, don’t get me started there), and the superstitiousness and emotionalism that is just running rampant all over the Christian culture really doesn’t help in reaching out to other people and informing them.

Ok, I’m going to comment on what I call the therapeutic Jesus movement. I just couldn’t resist. So prepare for an aside. Plus, I think this fits in perfectly with the idea that we must inform other people and not misinform them. The idea is basically that if you give your life to Christ and surrender it to Him, your life will be a bundle of roses, Jesus will take your problems away, Jesus will take your addictions away and make you into a new person. No doubt Christ is in the business of changing lives and healing people. I don’t disagree with this one bit. And yes he will make you into a new person. BUT, Jesus’s entire goal is not to make you into Mary Poppins and let you run through the rose fields. Jesus came to save those who were lost. Jesus came to restore the broken relationship between God and man that came as a result of us our sin and rebellion. In the process, does God change our character? Yes! But he doesn’t do so so that you can just live life nice and dandy, but so that you can be transformed more into his image and so you can fulfill your purpose on this earth.

The problem I see is that our focus becomes fixated on God’s meeting our every need and want. We’re essentially telling people that God is here to take all their problems away, make them perfect people, and send them on their way. This might not be the intention, but this is the way it’s packaged and sold. What the therapeutic Jesus movement does is it makes the change and good itself (the feeling of elation and happiness, the drug free life) the   the object of fulfillment. The ultimate end becomes becoming like that guy who is good, or being the good guy I wanna be, or reaching my “potential as a Christian,” or being “blessed” financially, spiritually, and what have you. Being drug free, doing good, etc. are goods, don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be blessed. But these things are lesser goods, and they should not be the object of our desire. These things will to fulfill us and they are not our ultimate end.

I think this brings us nicely to the question of “what exactly is our purpose then?” What is our ultimate end? The westminster confession sums it up nicely: Man’s chief end is to glorify God, [a] and to enjoy him for ever. [1]. In making God, who is the supreme good, the object of our desires, happiness comes as an inevitable by-product. In other words, happiness comes with the package. That’s when God changes us, takes away our unhealthy and bad addictions, and He uses us and brings forth happiness as we fulfill our ultimate end. Our human nature is ordered so that we fulfill our ends, and this is ultimately and perfectly fulfilled by God alone. So all these things that a lot of Christians in this thereupetuic movement focus on are distractions. We shouldn’t focus on being like this or being like that, but focus on Christ. In doing so and in orienting ourselves to Him, we begin to make changes and God begins to make changes, and things start happening inevitably.

It’s a slight change of perspective that makes all the difference

Yeah, that was a long aside, but I felt like it was an important discussion. Anyways, I’m huge on critical thinking and logic, and I think this should play a monumental role in the Christian life. It shouldn’t be the only role, but it should play a major role nonetheless. God gave us brains and reason, after all. Yet, I look around and see a lot of Christians just going with the emotional flow of the Christian sub-culture and this goes out the window. I love my Christian brothers and sisters dearly. It just bothers me that I look around and see that everything in the Christian circle is dominated by emotion. Emotion per se is not a bad thing. We need it and it’s something that is a part of our human essence. But that’s not all that Christianity is about. Yes, there is a great deal of emotion involved when I think of Christ and what He’s done, but there’s a lot a great deal of intellectual work and philosophy, and a great deal more with regard to walking the Christian path. We need to be well rounded and we need more critical thinking to offset the emotionalism that’s just gripped Christianity. We need to get back to the basics and fundamentals of Christianity (and NO I am not saying we need to be a fundamentalist in the way that secularism has defined the word, that is, the crazy-psycho pathic Christians who blow up abortion clinics). We need to get back to what the Gospel is and who God is and why He came. We need to show people that reason and faith do not contradict each other, and that Christianity is not anti-science. We need to articulate our views precisely and strongly, and we need to have a heart of servant. Have the heart of a servant and the will of a soldier. It can be done; it just needs to be balanced.

If we’re going to make a difference and win this culture, we have to act like we actually live in this world. Too many times Christians take the whole “be separate from the world” literally to another level. They fabricate their own reality amongst themselves and just live amongst themselves, isolated from the real world. You know, the kind of world we share with other people? The kind of world in which we all experience pain and suffering together? So, why don’t we work with our fellow human beings and show them what Christianity really is. Let’s really reach out, defend, and proclaim the name of Christ. That means we meet people where they’re at.

There’s so much that can be said and I really hope I wasn’t all over the place. There’s just SO much to say and so much I see. I think we can do it. With the rise of even more Christian philosophers and apologetics, we’re starting to see more and more Christians critically reflecting over their faith and bringing this into the market place of ideas. It starts with leaders. People who are willing to study scripture hard, really seek God in prayer and in the scriptures, studying philosophy, getting an education and really seeking truth. If we emphasize an overall approach, because I believe God permeates every avenue of life, we can really turn this thing around and show how Christianity really is vibrant in all areas of life: Spiritually, intellectually, and emotionally. And most importantly, we’d demonstrate how Christianity is reality.

 

Purpose Without God?

This is a post I did about a year and a half ago when Gil and I were blogging at Rational Thoughts/Rational Theism. Figured I’d publish it in the mean time since I don’t have any posts in the making. 

“There’s no escaping reason, no evading purpose, because we both know, that without purpose there is no reason to exist. It is purpose that created us, purpose that connects us, purpose that pulls us, that guides us, that drives us, that binds us, it is purpose that defines. We are here because of you, Mr. Anderson. We’re here to take from you what you tried to take from us. Purpose.”

Agent Smith, alongside his army of clones, expresses what I felt was one of the most memorable quotes from the Matrix trilogy. This statement encapsulates the answer to the most profound question pondered by humanity, what is the purpose of our existence? This question all depends on whether we are the product of a random, cosmic accident or from a creator God. However, the goal of this post is not on proving the existence of God but rather taking the former idea and asking the following question: can there be purpose in a Godless universe?

Purpose, as defined by the Oxford Dictionary, is “the reason for which something is done or created or for which something exists”. Keeping this definition in mind, purpose could be placed into two categories: subjective and objective. It is this matter that brings division between theist’s and atheists. While theism affirms objective purpose, atheism rejects it on the account that we are the product of a random, purposeless, cosmic accident (assuming the atheist is also a naturalist). As a result, there is no objective purpose and one is left to fabricate a subjective purpose and meaning in life in the midst of an absurd world.

This philosophical train of thought mirrors absurdism, an idea Albert Camus held. Camus observed the apparent disharmony between attempting to find meaning and purpose in a meaningless world. Consequently, he proposed three solutions to the issue: suicide, religious belief (constructing a religion or god), or accepting the absurdity and constructing meaning in the process of struggling with it. Living life devoid of purpose, whether it be subjective or objective, is impossible; one must have a purpose or reason to continue, otherwise living without a reason is absurd.

Nevertheless, the issue arises when one believes that purpose, particularly subjective purpose, can be constructed or formed out of purposelessness. That is not to say that one cannot create subjective purpose (since this is evident in our lives), but rather purpose doesn’t exist in a purposeless universe. Keep in mind the following presuppositions: If this is a purposeless universe, purpose does not exist; if this universe has a purpose, then purpose exists. On the first presupposition, many (if not all) naturalists hold that one can create subjective purpose but objective purpose does not exist. However, the issue with this finds its way back to my first point: purpose cannot be constructed or formed out of purposelessness.  At best, purpose would be an illusion, a fabrication constructed from inner desires, which also are not real.

Although, one may argue that the brain constructs purpose. As a result, purpose is the product of the brain, which is simply a meaningless structure carrying out its meaningless process. This idea poses a problem, which could be demonstrated by our understanding of human logic and reason. Consider the notion that human logic and reason is simply a human fabrication that arose out of the functions in our brains through the evolutionary process. Reason and logic would be nothing more than subjective tools molded and shaped by each human being and their own brain function given to them, at random, by evolution. Geneticist J. B. S. Haldan commented on this concern saying, “If all my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to choose that my beliefs are true and hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms.” The idea that purpose is a product of our brain cannot hold for the reason that this idea must also be attributed to our capacity for human logic and reason. Hence, one cannot be blamed or held accountable for being fallacious or for posing a sound argument, for both would be nothing more than a subjective product of one’s brain.

Furthermore, C.S. Lewis argued that “if the whole universe [had] no meaning, we should never have found out that it [had] no meaning.” If we were the product of a cosmic accident, the remnants of aged stardust, there would be no question about our lives and human meaning. Such a question would never arise and we would never know such an immaterial concept never existed. We would live life as zombies, dictated by the atoms that structure us, while being oblivious to the state of our pointless being. Absurdity wouldn’t be a dilemma that we had to face. The silly “why question”, as Richard Dawkins put it, wouldn’t have to be asked–it wouldn’t exist.

Why does it matter?

Consider once more the context and story of The Matrix and how the protagonist Neo was entirely oblivious to the fact that reality was an illusion–an artificial program created by machines in the real world. Neo’s situation mirrors Lewis’ argument for the reason that Neo similarly would have never known that his world was an illusion. It was only when Morpheus unplugged Neo and revealed the world to him that he understood that his former life was all an artificial program known as the Matrix.

Richard Dawkins, during a debate in Mexico on the purpose of the universe, remarked that “we humans are obsessed with purpose.” Although Dawkins was using this to illustrate that humans are naturally inclined to think there is purpose, his statement perfectly highlights my very point: purpose, as Agent Smith put it, is inescapable and imperative to human life. The price tag is high considering that to deny purpose is to accept that one is living a lie and that everything in life is simply an illusion and a fabrication of one’s brain. If atheism were true, however, it would not matter if one were living an illusion or not. Yet, the issue of purpose remains and tugs at every human being as Camus observed. Agent smith recognized this truth and he concluded that “there’s no escaping reason” and “no evading purpose”.

On the other hand, theism (more specifically belief in the Judaeo-Christian God) offers a more plausible and reasonable explanation of purpose and human meaning. The Westminster Catechism states “Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever.”[1] Whether this is through music, artwork, philosophy, love, assisting others, or some other subjective duty, man’s subjective purpose best reflects and makes sense under an objective purpose.  Camus dilemma is done away with entirely and one could find purpose in life that reflects the fact that purpose is not an illusion, but an inevitable reality.

Sources

[1] http://www.reformed.org/documents/WSC.html

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