30 August 2016
One of my favorite philosophers asks, and answers, "If man is made in God's image and likeness, does it follow that God is essentially embodied?"

"[The] ‘reasoning’ [goes] along these lines:

        1. Man is made in God’s image.
        2. Man is a physical being with a digestive tract, etc.
    Therefore
        3. God is a physical being with a digestive tract, etc.

"But that’s like arguing:

        1. This statue is made in Lincoln’s image.
        2. This statue is composed of marble.
    Therefore
        3. Lincoln is composed of marble.

"[The] mistake...is to take a spiritual saying in a materialistic way. The point is not that God must be physical because man is, but that man is a spiritual being just like God, potentially if not actually. The idea is not that God is a big man...but that man is a little god, a proto-god, a temporally and temporarily debased god who has open to him the possibility of a Higher Life with God, a possibility whose actualization requires both creaturely effort and divine grace.

"[The] point of imago dei is not that God is an anthropomorphic projection whereby man alienates his best attributes from himself and assigns them to an imaginary being external to himself, but that man is a theomorphic projection whereby God shares some of his attributes, such as free will,  with real beings external to him though dependent on him." ~ Bill Vallicella

29 August 2016

An interesting question, answered by David Galernter


Why should a Jew care whether Christianity lives or dies?

It comes down to this: Christianity is the Jews’ gift to mankind; the most important gift mankind has ever received. That so many modern leftists would say to themselves, 'All the more reason to hate the Jews,' merely underlines the point. The natural enemy of the Jew is the natural enemy of the Christian, too—the conscience-hater, the man who wants no witnesses. Why should a Jew care whether Christianity lives or dies? Because he must care whether the message of Judaism lives or dies, whether the mission of Judaism fails or succeeds.In the end, that hardly matters. The important question is not why a Jew, but why a human being should care about the fate of Christianity.
And the answer is exactly the same.

About Me

James Frank Solís
Former soldier (USA). Graduate-level educated. Married 26 years. Texas ex-patriate. Ruling elder in the Presbyterian Church in America.
View my complete profile

Blog Archive