Definition of a Christian Revisited

Allow me to step back from the project for a bit and look at what is foundational to it.

The believer in the Christian faith is primarily a believer in a particular cosmology. It is characterized by a Triune God, invisible/non-corporeal beings (primarily angels and demons), humans (that is, corporeal beings with a soul… halfway between spirits and beasts), beasts, and inanimate created things. It is in examining the relationships one has with each of these beings or created things and that each has with every other that we come to understand morality, etc.

Now, the primary relationship anything has is with the Triune God, who created all things, and is therefore the source of every relationship. That is, all other relationships flow from and are necessarily related to every thing’s relationship to the Triune God. If one’s relationship to God is correct, one’s relationship to all other things will also generally be correct, plus or minus a few degrees of error. Thus, it makes sense that the definition of a Christian should outline who their God is, how he interacts with men and how men should interact with him.

Definition of a Christian Defined

The thoughts in this post are incomplete without its sequel, Definition of a Christian Revisited.

In a past post, I offered the following definition for a Christian:

To be a Christian is to be in communion with the God who revealed Himself through His Scriptures and through His incarnation in the person of Jesus in the context of the Church striving toward personal and universal salvation.

It prompted so much dialogue that I promised a post defining the terms I used in the definition for the sake of clarity and better conversation. This is that post. I plan to do two things: first, in this post, I will work through this definition piece by piece, explaining the thoughts behind it as thoroughly as I can. This will be in order to allow the previous post’s conversation to be continued at least in that I directly respond to it. Second, in a post to follow I will, as I hinted in the last post, offer a slightly revised definition and summarize my understanding of the entire discussion.

Moving on

My next sentiments post is not getting anywhere currently, and in light of that, I’ve decided to begin posting again on other topics rather than waiting for a project that looks like it will take a little longer in the making than I had anticipated. Unless I hear cries of horror and petitions for a renewed effort in that direction, therefore, I shall consider this blog debogged from the mire of that series.

I promised an elaborative post on the definition of a Christian that I suggested a few posts back, and I plan on fulfilling that promise. It will be the next post of great substance that you will find on this blog. Expect to see the definition revised from its original phrasing in this iteration as a result of thoughts produced or encountered in my class on the Trinity this semester under the illustrious Dr. Fred Sanders.

In the meantime, I offer you these succinct scrap paper scribblings I’ve unearthed from the miscellaneous writing I worked on over the past year or two. It’s interesting and somewhat humorous to see which thoughts I considered most worthy of being scrawled out. There’s no method to the madness, at least no intentional method, so don’t spend much time looking for connections. I simply picked out the shortest and most stylistically correct blurbs I could find. It’s like eating jelly beans… small, and you’re not sure which flavor is coming next. Enjoy!

Torna da Roma

Buongiorno!

I’m glad to be back from a fantastic trip. Hopefully I’ll get the next sentiments post up in the coming week or so, but until then, I figured that some photos would be in order…

In partenza per Roma…

I get the chance to travel to the Eternal City with a group of students from the Torrey Honors Institute at Biola University. We’ll be studying art, architecture, and aesthetics as a general philosophical category. Needless to say, I am most determinedly not bringing my computer with me. I return on the 24th of this month, and will continue posting sometime in that general temporal vicinity.

For the trip, we read a great number of great books, but two in particular stand out so completely that I feel all but compelled to recommend them. These are Leo Tolstoy’s What is Art?, which, like most of Tolstoy, is beautiful, compelling, and deeply flawed, and Dorothy Sayers’ article Toward a Christian Aesthetic, a very intriguing exploration of the relationship between Trinitarian/Incarnational theology and aesthetic theory… the result is a beautiful vision of a Christian aesthetic. Consider them Grossly recommended.

With that, therefore, I bid you, by the power of the Google Language Translator, addio.

Sentiments: What are the standards for choosing one theory over another?

The first question to be addressed in this series on the extent that questions of correctness and incorrectness apply in the realm of the sentiments was expressed in the introductory post like this:

1. What are the standards by which one properly chooses between two or more plausible theories? What tools should be used, what questions should be asked, what things ought to be examined in order to make a valid judgment?

This is an admittedly cerebral subject for a series on the sentiments. I choose to include it not because it is particularly suited to this conversation, but because it is a general prerequisite for any philosophical conversation. If it is well written, I should be able to refer to it in future posts about widely varying topics. However, since it is showing up here first, all of the examples and demonstrations will be crafted to complement and lead into the more specific discussion on the sentiments.

In the introduction I said, referring to this topic, “This is one of the most difficult, most important questions that could possibly be asked. For reason of that latter descriptor, I will address it. For reason of the former, I have little hope of answering it here and now.” Nothing has changed; I do not expect to solve the world’s philosophical problems in a half-baked blog post. If any of the posts in this series will need reformation through the critique of its readers, I expect it will be this one. Proceed with me, therefore, lightly.

Definition of a Christian

This is not one of the promised three sentiment posts; it is an interjection. For better or for worse, I am one of those who is plagued with a curiosity about the definitions of things, and last night, I was playing with “Christian.” This is what came to me:

To be a Christian is to be in communion with the God who revealed Himself through the Bible in the context of the Church striving toward personal and universal salvation.

The biggest hole in it is an explanation of what “personal and universal salvation” is. I’m working on it. For now, the former may be thought of as holiness, while the latter may be thought of as the kingdom of God (or something along those lines).

I have elaborated on this post here and offer a different look at the subject here. The former link leads you to a close explication of this wording. The latter link leads you to my ultimate thoughts about the project generally.

Sentiments: the Introduction

Allow me to assume that it is true that we can have right and wrong sentiments about things. CS Lewis does a very good job of arguing for this in his book The Abolition of Man, and since any chance of my doing better is in the category of the miraculous, I will rather only refer you to him. If you have not yet read The Abolition of Man, do. You could hardly spend a better couple of hours.

So, assuming that our sentiments (by sentiment I mean something like emotional reaction or interaction to/with something) can be right or wrong, my question is whether or not our sentiments can be right or wrong about all things or merely about some things?

Lewis’ primary example in his section on the sentiments, which I will borrow, is one that he borrowed from Coleridge. It recounts how that famous poet overheard two tourists describing the waterfall they were visiting. One called it “pretty” and the other called it “sublime.” Coleridge pronounced the former in error and the latter in the right.

I bring this up only because it seems like his pronouncement is one that is easy to agree with as it refers to something as obviously magnificent as a waterfall. When more obviously mundane objects come into question, however, the subject gets a little more difficult. Is it true of an apple as well as a waterfall that one may call it one thing or another and be right in the one case and wrong in the other?

It Occurred to Me…

Most of our thoughts “occur to us” rather than being constructed by us. That is to say, we do not generally have an active role in the formulation of the epiphanies, theories, postulates, and ponderings that show up in our minds. At least, I don’t. Yet, if we do not construct some of our thoughts, then from whence cometh they? I can think of three possible answers:

1. It’s possible to say that their construction goes on subconsciously.

2. It’s also possible to say that thoughts are given to us.

3. And it’s a yet further possibility to say that thoughts are things in themselves that our minds somehow perceive, like our eyes do with color.

And there may be however many more explanations as well. Even with just these, I don’t know how to pick between the three. At the very least, the realization that even my thoughts are not my own (I can hardy call the subconscious me) should lead me to greater humility, but what more can I say?

Poem for Semester Crunch Time