“We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man. We have all seen this when doing arithmetic.”
C.S. Lewis (in Mere Christianity)
Before going on with our study, we must begin, as Lewis did, with the clear understanding that that our purpose here is not to be–what he would call–a “religionist.” Our purpose–as always–is to think clearly and accurately (about history, current events, and the world we live in).
Our underlying, foundational method (algorithm, if you will), has been to look for an epistemology, ontology, and cosmology we can accept without reservation and build a worldview through which we can understand life.
algorithm = "a process or set of rules to be followed in calculations or other problem-solving operations..." (Bing)
Now when we talk about Christianity, we must first recognize that it was founded by Jews (similarly to the founding of Buddhism by Hindus). Let’s start, then, with the Hebrew Scriptures (what Christians call the Old Testament).
” Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah; not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; forasmuch as they broke My covenant, although I was a lord over them, saith the LORD. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the LORD, I will put My law in their inward parts, and in their heart will I write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people; and they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying: ‘Know the LORD’; for they shall all know Me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin will I remember no more.”
Jeremiah 31:30-33
But let us quickly depart from the theological and religious aspects of all this, and try to keep to our previous course.
I found an interesting paper which says the following:
“Epistemology is one’s view or theory of knowledge, and as a discipline, it seeks to respond to the following kinds of questions. What is the nature, or what are the features of knowledge? What can we know? Are there things we cannot know? What are the sources of knowledge? How is knowledge justified? What are the limits in attempting to justify knowledge? And so on…
“…In accordance with the biblical view of humanity as a differentiated totality rather than as a being composed of body and soul, knowledge is an activity in which the whole person—intellect, emotion, will—participates. The heart and all its faculties as the defining element of a person are central to the knowing process as a totality.”
“What is Knowledge? Biblical/Hebraic Epistemology” (Dr. Davey Naugle, Dallas Baptist University)
That seems to be right in line with Judaism’s emphasis on the tzaddick (see our earlier blogpost).
So, let us take it as a working theory that Judaism is the base–the “foundation” upon which the “house” of Christianity is built.
working theory = "A working theory is a theory in the works/in the making: a theory that's being tested." (UsingEnglish.com)
Let’s take a look then, at comparisons between Old and New Testament ontologies.
- “(Judaism) proclaims that there is only one God, whose name is Yahweh, and He is the creator and ruler of the universe. He revealed His law, the Torah, to the Jewish people (who were known as Hebrews at that time) and He chose them to be a light for all humanity.
- “A very important concept in Judaism is that of the Messiah. Originally the Jews believed that God would send a powerful messenger (the Messiah) who would deliver Israel from her oppressors and usher in a reign of peace and prosperity. Today many Jews no longer hold to a personal messiah, but hope for a messianic age of justice and truth. For the Jews the coming of the Messiah or the messianic age still lies in the future.
- “Christians also accept the (Hebrew Scriptures, though they call them the ‘Old Testament’) and all its teachings as inspired.
- “Among the basic truths accepted by both faiths are the perfect creation of the world out of nothing by an infinite God, the entrance of sin into this world via the temptation of another transcendent being called Satan, the judgement of God on sin, and the necessity of atonement for sin.
- “In Judaism this atonement is accomplished through sacrifices, prayer, righteous acts, and God’s mercy.
- “Christianity has received from Judaism its basic understanding of God, his covenant relationship with His people, and assembling together for worship. There is a divine plan for history and it is moving toward a wonderful goal when Yahweh will be the King not only of the Jews but of all the earth. Separation from the corrupting influences of the pagan world is important, but Judaism is not a religion that focuses on a spiritual world somewhere down the road. Its focus is on this present world, where life is meant to be rich and full.”
Based on this, it seems that the Hebrew house might be thought of as being one story, while the Christian house might be thought of being a second-story addition to the house.
But that seems like an over-simplification. New Testament ontology is different in several distinct ways. To begin with, Christians not only believe that Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah (“Christos” or “Christ” in Greek) of Judaism. They believe that He was God Himself.
Christ = anointed; (e.g., the 'Messiah')
“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about (Jesus): I’m ready to accept (Him) as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
Another thing that Christians believe, is that Christ, after being crucified by the Romans, was resurrected–that is raised from the dead, and that He is no longer dead but alive, where He sits in a throne in heaven, at the right hand of God.
” The LORD said to my Lord, Sit you at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool. “
Psalm 110:1
So, from an ontological point of view, heaven is like a throne room, where God sits as a King, and Jesus sits in a favored place–like the “right-hand man.”
This idea is actually corroborated throughout both the Old and New Testaments in several places:
“In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple.”
Isaiah 6:1
“I watched till thrones were put in place,
And the Ancient of Days was seated…A thousand thousands ministered to Him;
Daniel 7:9-10
Ten thousand times ten thousand stood before Him.”
“At once I was in the Spirit, and behold, a throne stood in heaven, with one seated on the throne.”
Revelation 4:2
So there is a God. But Jesus is also God. This is part of what Christians call the Trinity.
Trinity = "In Christian doctrine, the unity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as three persons in one Godhead." (Britannica.com)
In the New Testament, we are told:
“Everything was created by Him (meaning Christ), in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible…”
Colossians 1:16
We are also told:
“In the beginning was the Word (again referring to Christ), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning (God’s right hand man?). All things were created through Him, and apart from Him not one thing was created…”
John 1:1-3
So, as difficult as any of this may be to believe, these are the New Testament’s propositions.
“Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse…”
C.S.Lewis
I ran across something, though, by someone named John Stuart Mill, a critic of Christianity, whom the “Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy” says: “profoundly influenced the shape of nineteenth century British thought and political discourse… His substantial corpus of works includes texts in logic, epistemology, economics, social and political philosophy, ethics, metaphysics, religion, and current affairs.”
“But about the life and sayings of Jesus there is a stamp of personal originality combined with profundity of insight….in the very first rank of men of sublime genius of whom our species can boast. When this pre-eminent genius is combined with the qualities of probably the greatest moral reformer, and martyr to that mission, who ever existed upon earth, religion cannot be said to have made a bad choice in pitching on this man as the ideal representative and guide of humanity; nor, even now, would it be easy, even for an unbeliever, to find a better translation of the rule of virtue from the abstract into the concrete, than to endeavor so to live that Christ would approve our life.”
John Stuart Mill
So belief in Jesus Christ as the Jewish Messiah seems to be the apparent linchpin of Christianity’s epistemological and ontological system of propositions.
What about cosmology?
Well, here, my thinking was inspired by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , specifically their site called Cosmology and Theology. There they raise an interesting idea:
“According to traditional Christian theism, creation ex nihilo is miraculous—something which the laws of nature cannot explain. But then why should a theist expect to be able to derive creation ex nihilo from the laws of nature? Compare with other supposed miracles, e.g., within Christianity the claim that Jesus changed water into wine. Do Christian theists claim that chemistry should predict that water can transform into wine?”
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(Cosmology and Theology)
In this they refer to John 2:1-11, which records Jesus’ first miracle.
miracle = "an extraordinary event manifesting divine intervention in human affairs" (Mirriam-Webster)
The idea, then, is that Jesus created the wine with the appearance and properties of real wine, to such an extent that:
” When the master of the feast tasted the water now become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the master of the feast called the bridegroom and said to him, ‘Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now.'”
John 2:9-10
So, this dude–this “master of the feast” (the Maitre d’ ?) tastes the wine and (presumably based on the skills and experience that landed him the gig) thinks the stuff is ‘the good wine’?
Wait one moment… Let’s pause here and think about this…
Is that suggesting a possibility that a guy like Charles Lyell might look at the striated layers of the geologic column, and (mistakenly) assume that it was laid down through natural processes over millions of years?
And… so… may that also mean that a fellow like Charles Darwin (as sincere as he might have been) may have been mistaken, when in the Galapagos, Darwin first postulated the idea that animals and humans shared a common ancestry.
And… may that also imply that the Belgian priest named Georges Lemaître may also have made an error when he first suggested the big bang theory in the 1920s?
“It is a mistake to confound strangeness with mystery.”
Sherlock Holmes (A Study in Scarlet)
