The Christian Vanguard

 A common question you might hear from Muslims is, "Does Jesus have a God?" The answer is Yes, of course He does. He says this repeatedly in scripture. Romans 15:6, 2 Cor 1:3, Ephesians 1:3;7. Now where this goes from here is usually with a follow up question: How is this possible? I've listened to many Christians stumble in trying to answer this question and get steamrolled by Muslims. And I've seen it happen enough to motivate me to write down an answer.  How is possible that God have a God? There are a couple ways to answer this. The first is to analyze what "to have a God" means. Because this could be interpreted in a few different ways, I suspect that Muslim apologists get a lot of mileage out of not defining this relation. What it means to "have" a God is commonly meant as something like creator. We commonly understand the Christian God to be our Creator and Sustainer. So, to say that Jesus has a God would mean that Jesus is also a created be...

 When one looks around the world, we see that animals are sexed. Dogs, cats, chickens, and humans. And we are able to pick out what it means to be sexed, which is basically the mode of reproduction. Male dogs, cats, and humans are all male in a univocal way. But need this be so? Could it be that an animal could be of no sex whatsoever? This is difficult to maintain for the simple reason that to be non-sexed is to be able to reproduce. And to be of the kind that does not reproduce means you will not exist. So, it seems like all animals must be sexed.  I mention this because I've come across an interesting passage from St. Thomas on whether Christ needed to be sexed. He says, "Yes." In Volume 3 of his commentary on the Sentences , distinction 12, question 3, he writes, "Christ came to restore (or redeem) human nature by his very assumption; and for this reason it was necessary that he assume everything following upon human nature, namely, all the properties and parts o...

My philosophy of religion professor posed this challenge to me. Professor says the arguments for God's existence don't prove uniqueness (that is, these arguments do not prove one single God is responsible), including Aquinas. I said, appealing to Aquinas First Way, that there can't be more than one thing that is Pure Act because if there were, there would be some potential to distinguish between them. Professor replied that assumes the indiscernibility of identicals, which is by no means obvious. Consider a sphere with equidistant points on the surface. They have no distinguishing features to differentiate between one and the other, yet they are not all the same.  The tempting answer is to appeal to space and relation, but it seems every space point has the same relation. My friend Christopher shared with me his thoughts and I thought they were worth sharing here so that I can reference it in the future.  You don't have to argue from the identity of indiscernib...

The following is a study guide I typed out for my philosophy of religion class. The Problem of Evil A. “Evil and Omnipotence” J.L. Mackie (1) Explain the problem of evil. The problem of evil states there is a contradiction within this set of statements: God is omnipotent, God is wholly good, and evil exists. Since God is omnibenevolent, God wishes to abolish evil, and since God is omnipotent, then God could abolish evil. If an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God exists, then evil does not exist. But since evil exists, then an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God does not exist. (2) Explain the problems with the four fallacious solutions Mackie considers. 1. “Good cannot exist without evil” or “Evil is a necessary counterpart to good” The main problem with this response is that it restricts God’s omnipotence, if not outright rejects it. If God and evil are necessary counterparts, then God cannot eliminate evil. This would also make “good” and “evil” similar to being “great” and “small”, but ...

Probably the most well known objection to St. Anselm's Ontological argument, usually attributed to Kant, says that existence is not a predicate. When we inquire into the nature of things, we say that it is this shape and that color, and these statements have some meaningful content to them because we are able to predicate something to them. They tell us something about the object. However, saying that X exists tells us nothing about the nature of the object. So being is not a predicate.  This is not the view of the scholastics, and definitely not the view of St. Thomas Aquinas, who does say being (or existence) is a predicate. So how then do we deal with the above objection? Let's look at the mode of inquiry. When we ask what something is, we answer by giving a more common term to which we add a specific difference. So when we ask what a cat is, we say it is a mammal that has this or that distinguishing feature. We may ask what this more common thing is as well, and we ...

In the last few weeks, my social media accounts have been abuzz with the topic of abortion. One common defense of it has been something like, "Since unwanted children will not be aborted, they will most likely end up in the foster care system, where they will probably be abused and raped. So abortion is a better option." After I asked whether they would apply this logic to a two year old, they said they would. In the eyes of my interlocutors, death was a better option. This isn't an uncommon view. I would think most, if not all, persons who committed suicide thought the exact same thing and this motivated their suicide. So, is death better an abused life? In light of the convertibility thesis, it is not.  The convertibility thesis states that "being" and "good" are basically the same thing, just considered differently. Where there is being, there is goodness coextensive with it. If being alive is participating in being, and death is not participat...

Legal positivism is the view that whatever is posited as law is truly law. To help understand this, consider first the Nuremberg Trials, in which Nazi war criminals were prosecuted. The common defense for the Nazis was that they were obeying the law, and laws are supposed to be obeyed. So they obeyed them, and you can't blame them for doing what they were supposed to do. As Martin Luther King Jr. reminds us in his Letter From A Birmingham Jail, what they did was legal. That doesn't seem to be contested. So, if we wish to prosecute Nazis, on what grounds should we do it? Do we want to say that laws do not need to be obeyed? That seems like too much to say. I like it when everyone obeys the law and drives on the right side of the road. It keeps me, and everyone else, safe. So laws do need to be obeyed. Does Nazi law count as real law then? According to legal positivism, yes it does. Legal positivists will disagree on what is the mechanism for positing a law, whether it is the c...

Today was my debate with Professor Garcia at LBCC. It went really well. I went in a bit worried, which is not normal for me when I do debates. Why was I worried? I was worried because Garcia had requested that I specifically do a medieval argument, and then he later requested I do only Aquinas. I've not defended Aquinas or scholastic metaphysics in any depth as I have done with arguments like the Kalam or Liebnizian Cosmological arguments, so, not only did I have to defend it, but I had to defend it from someone who has at least a Masters in Philosophy (I'm unsure if he has a PhD). It would be a challenge, but I suppose philosophy isn't worth doing if it's not challenging.  I had tried to email him so we could collaborate on some slides, but it just didn't happen for a number of reasons. There was some comfort that I took in thinking that I would be able to see his presentation so I could prepare some remarks, but that didn't happen and I had to think on my...

I have a small debate on the existence of God coming up with one of the philosophy professors at LBCC for our Philosophy Club. It's short, and only an hour, so, my statement is about ten minutes. Nothing original, just what Edward Feser has been saying for a while. I figure it might be a good idea just to put up here for future reference. Prayers appreciated for my debate coming up Thursday!