42

Steve Hays and his buddy David Houston are the Black Nights of Van Tilism. They have no complete theory of philosophy, they have no explanation of God, no explanation with reference to participation in God, no explanation of the Trinity, and no explanation of how humanity and divinity unite in Christ.

Actually, that's not true. David and I collaborated on a research programme to discover the Theory of Everything. Turns out, the answer is 42. Since there wasn't much else worth saying after that, David and I now pass the time by thumbing through back issues of Bikini magazine.

Here we see Steve’s Personal Black Night Ecclesiocracy at work. He has no developed theory of much of anything and he thinks he can fight with no arms and legs.

What can I say? The magnitude of Drake's genius is such that his pioneering insights will never be appreciated in his own lifetime. He's too advanced. He's condemned to labor in undeserved obscurity. It's like a time-traveler from the future who goes back in time. It will take our finest scientists centuries to catch up with Drake. So I'd plead with Drake to be patient with us.

If you want to call that a discussion it’s your business but I can’t see how that half paragraph explanation cuts it in the history of biblical interpretation.

As usual, Drake can’t keep up with the argument. I wasn't discussing the history of biblical interpretation. Rather, I was discussing the implications of a timeless, immaterial God.

I am trying to see how you can be “supportive not necessarily commitive” (ambigiously-Black Night-ish-LOL!) of Van Tillian view of knowledge  and deny the scholastic doctrine of divine simplicity. The analogogy of proportionality is seated in that doctrine as Clark proved.

i) Drake has given me no reason to accept the way he frames the alternatives in the first place.

ii) Is the classic theory of analogy seated in divine simplicity? Not according to James F. Ross, in his standard monograph–Portraying Analogy. Moreover, as another scholar notes:

Despite the vast modern literature devoted to Aquinas's theory of analogy, he has very little to say about analogy as such.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/analogy-medieval/#6

Still looking for your support for the essence = existence premise which is the foundations of Scholastic and Van Tillian epistemology. What else is there Steve? Are you seriously going to admit that you have no worked out theory and you truly are the black night groveling on the ground yet insistently insultive of your opponent?

i) Since I wasn't arguing for (or against) that premise, or arguing for (or against) Scholastic/Van Tilian epistemology, that's a red herring.

ii) It also depends on what you mean by "essence = existence" For instance, that can be a way of stating that God is a necessary being. His nature is such that he cannot not exist. His nonexistence is essentially impossible. That's because God is not a decomposable compound of essence and existence.

So are you saying that the Mandelbrot set proves that essence=existence? If so then you admit that your original limit to exegetical theology was wrong or do you admit that you have no basis for essence = existence? Either way, you’re black night is impaled like a shish kebob.

Per the norm, Drake is unable to keep up with the argument. As I explained at the time, I'm using the Mandelbrot set to illustrate the sense in which the same thing can be both simple and complex–in different respects.

Bavinck is a child of the Thomistic Dionysian tradition and it you seriously think that you do not have pseudo-dionysius in your head you need to read Paul Rorem’s Pseaudo Dionysius and watch Dionysius’s system creep through medieval scholasticism and up into Protestant Scholasticism.

i) As I already explained to Drake, I used that terminology in an effort to characterize what Craig French was trying to say. That doesn't commit me to the same framework.

ii) Moreover, the use of theological metaphors in Scripture does involve an archetype/ectype relation. That doesn't require a Dionysian backdrop. We could use other paired synonyms to denominate the analogy.

Yopu speak as if analogy is the starting place of a theory. This is laughable.

Only if you laugh at sola Scriptura.

The starting point is your metaphysical explanation of your ultimate principle and then discern how all lower agents relate to it. As I proved from Clark and Aquinas analogy of proportionality is a direct logical implication of ADS. Without ADS, AoProportionality falls."

I'm Protestant. My theological method is based on the Protestant rule of faith (sola Scriptura). I don't begin with a theory. I begin with revelation. The Bible contains many analogies between God and the world. If you take the inspiration of Scripture seriously, then that's a legitimate point of departure.

It depends on what kind of analogy steve. Herman Reith showed four different kinds in his exposition of Aquinas if memory serves me right.

A red herring. I was responding to Drake's position (in his reply to me).

I know you don’t like the subject of the history of ideas Steve but I just find your scriptural “humility” to be quite arrogant as if you are so infallible as to not repeat the mistakes of history.

It’s unnecessary for me to repeat the mistakes of history when I can delegate the exercise to Drake. It would be redundant of me to repeat the mistakes of history when Drake is doing such a fine job of that himself.

Keep typing Steve, please. I’m rooted even deeper in my rejection of you by every letter.

I'll try my best to cope with his rejection.

So then you admit that Turretin was wrong? For a child of Protestant Scholasticism admitting that Francis Turretin was wrong on the ultimate principle of the entire Protestant Scholastic tradition, is like a Nazi admitting that the Aryan race is of the same value as the Jewish. If so, thank you for the admission.

i) "The ultimate principle of the entire Protestant Scholastic tradition?" Hmm. In his 2,046 page Institutes of Elenctic Theology, Turretin devotes a staggering (brace yourself) 3 pages to divine simplicity. Compare that to the explanatory power that Aquinas ascribes to divine simplicity in his system.

ii) In addition, it's not an all-or-nothing proposition. Turretin makes a number of reasonable observations in his brief section on divine simplicity. It's not as if we have to accept or reject in toto what he says there.