Discourses on the Philosophy of ReligionI. On the Creature Called Man

“There are two ways of getting home; and one of them is to stay there. The other is to walk round the whole world till we come back to the same place”We start at the beginnings of beginnings, moving back from all the strife and

pettiness to see this strange creature called man in all of his horror and awe. The farther we step away, the more we see the uniqueness of the creature called man. What we see are the echoes of the voice, a longing for something more, an intentionality, a being distinct from all others.

a. The echo of Justice"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not

willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?" It’s a feeling that shakes right to the core of mankind. It has occupied

philosophers, politicians, leaders, and children. It all begins with a “that’s not fair” uttered in the playground and the longing sense for justice we all sense is articulated into words. This moral obligation is unique to this bumbling and destructive creature. So much so that millions have died in attempts to create a world without evil. An attempt to rid the City of Man of evil results in more evil or a denial of the evil itself. The dilemma for the thinker is this: If a person can feel exquisite pleasure in the torturing of humans then you must either deny the existence of god, as all atheists do; or deny the union between God and man, as all Christians do. Whatever we make of the problem of evil, we must also make of the problem of good. If there is no God, no good and wise creator, why is there an impulse to justice and mercy so deep within us? Why is there beauty, love, laughter, and friendship, joy? If there is no good nor evil, then our attempts to administer justice and to make the world a better place is mere individualistic self-interested egoism that is no better than the interests of a killer, criminal, or Republican.

b. The Echo of Beauty Perhaps our greatest signature is art. The paintings, sculptures, great works of

literature show a deep longing for beauty, an intrinsic Aestheticism that trumps all practicality. We photograph the sunset, but all we get is the memory of the moment, not the moment itself. We buy the recording, but the symphony says something different when we listen to it at home. We climb the mountain, and though the view from the summit is indeed magnificent, it leaves us wanting more. The question then arises is where does this longing come from? From the modernism of Joyce to the sublime symphonies of Mozart and Beethoven, we are obsessed with beauty and its expression of the human condition.

II. The evolution of the man called Branden a. What is the nature of Branden? Does Branden exist? Does Branden have

any essential qualities? Branden was created to distract people and to make other people feel good about themselves. In reality, Branden is an illusion that should be abandoned for cold hard pragmatism and logical positivism. We could go the other route and say that Branden exists with us in the moment, and so he exists to us and allow Branden to lead us, after all we are post-modern. Both of these extremes leave us unsatisfied, and wanting. The solution is then to see Branden for who he really is, a being with a will, intentionality. Branden acts within time, within history,

to reveal himself. But if Branden acts in history to reveal a theology how do we reconcile the words of Branden in time to a Branden outside time? Some have tried to create an existentialist Branden, a Branden whose goal is to reveal timeless truths. This means that all reactions to Branden are essentially the same. This gives us a Branden who can conform to any person, and consequently a Branden we can shape to justify our actions. Diametrically, we can firmly put Branden within time and act what he said had no theological underpinnings since what he said was specific to a time and is no useless to us today. The ethics of Branden do not point to Branden, but were rules for a specific time and socioeconomic conditions. This gives us a Branden, which cannot speak to every person, a dead Branden. What we need is a Branden we can interact that acknowledges the reality of Branden as well the access to this reality is through the actions of Branden in history. Branden’s actions point to a specific worldview that gives us praxis, symbols, stories, and answers to our basic questions. Replace Branden with God and we have a framework to answering Branden.

b. Deism“You have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in

You.” (Confessions I, i, 1)Deism is primarily the concept of god in most people. It is clear that most Americans hold to a theology of the following:

A god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth.

God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.

The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.

God does not need to be particularly involved in one's life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.

Good people go to heaven when they die. The problem with this interpretation is that this god is distant from creation and is specifically Deistic in this manner. The Judeo-Christian God affirms a God present within creation, “On Earth as in Heaven”. This God created everything ex nihilo and with intentionality for humans. We create because we are created. Each of our lives are a volume in the collection of history, his story. The question of God here isn’t why God allows evil, but what he is going to do about it, This God has chosen to resolve evil by acting specifically within his creation. This theo-centric view of his story leads us to the point that divides all history.

c. Against heresies “Why does Jesus have to divide history, why not Socrates? Everything after Socrates should be A.S and everything before B.S”Many attempts have been made to construct a historical Jesus, separating history from theology. We have seen that this method is prone to failure as theology develops within history and therefore theology is influenced by history through mutations of preexisting worldviews.