On God's Love -- A Quote from George F. Thomas

George F. Thomas says, concerning the point of Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son,

[...] The older brother represents the principle of merit and justice and quite properly complains that his younger brother’s reckless conduct has not deserved the love shown him by his father. [Citation omitted] Thus, God’s love is not measured out according to the value of the person loved, as human love is; rather, God is the Creator and His love is creative of worth. Even the sinner has some worth as a creature made in the image of God; and God’s love is “creative,” not in the sense that it gives value to a being that is wholly without value, but that it brings to fulfillment possibilities of value that were present but frustrated.

            Though God’s love is given us irrespective of our actual worth, it is effective in our lives only when we respond to it in the right way. For example, Jesus makes it clear that the forgiveness of our sins is conditional upon our willingness to forgive others. Moreover, we are commanded in the Gospels to love our neighbor and are told in the First Epistle of John that the test of our love of God is our love of our neighbor. In other words, God’s love is given to us whether we deserve it or not; but it is given with the purpose of awakening in us the desire and capacity to love Him and our neighbor. Hence, we must regard ourselves not as passive recipients of God’s love but as active and responsible beings called by God to cooperate with Him in the achievement of His purpose of love in our own lives and in the lives of others.

            Thus, God does not love us from the need of anything we can give Him in return; but He loves us with the purpose that we should return His love and thus enter into communion with Him by giving ourselves to Him. His agape-love moves downward to us, but it seeks to start in us a reciprocal movement upwards towards Him. Similarly, we are to love our neighbor without regard to his worth or his return of our love; but we are to strive through our love to awaken in him the capacity to give as well as receive love and thus to help him realize his potential worth. The result may be that our giving to him will be met by his giving to us, and a fellowship of mutual giving and receiving will be established between us.

--George F. Thomas, pp. 51-2 of Christian Ethics and Moral Philosophy, Charles Scribner’s Sons New York, 1955.

A Primer on Logic Part 3 (A New Scholardarity.com Article)

I've posted a new article, A Primer on Logic: Part 3, my new Scholardarity piece in which I give a brief introduction to Aristotelian logic. It's the latest entry in my introduction to formal logic.

Also, in case you missed Parts 1 and 2, which respectively cover logical preliminaries and propositional logic, you can check them out here:

Part 1


Part 2


If you have any comments / criticism, by all means share it!

A Primer on Logic: Part 2 (A New Scholardarity.com Article)

Check out "A Primer on Logic: Part 2", my new Scholardarity.com article which is essentially a crash-course in propositional logic. It's the latest entry in my introduction to formal logic. (Also available as a PDF.)

Also, in case you missed Part 1, which covers logical preliminaries and vocabulary, you can check it out here. (Also as a PDF.)

If anyone has any comments / criticism, by all means share it!

A Dilemma for Dialetheism

I've just published a revised version of my article "A Dilemma for Dialetheism" on Scholardarity.com, which was originally published in the Spring 2010 edition of the Stanford undergraduate philosophy journal The Dualist (vol. 15). In the article I argue that dialetheists, who believe that some sentences are both true and false, either cannot express the notion that some sentences are not both true and false, or else that their accounts suffer from "revenge" liar paradoxes that not even they can regard as being both true and false. If you like logic and paradoxes as much as I do, please check it out and let me know what you think.

My Review of "The God Delusion"

Check out my review of Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion  here on Scholardarity.com .

Launching a new website: Scholardarity.com

A friend and I are launching a new website Scholardarity.com to help out scholars in the humanities.

 

Our website is still a work in progress and subscriptions are still free. Readers will not need to subscribe. Our motto is “Free to read, but pay to publish!”

Scholardarity, in order to promote solidarity among scholars, is a new site for scholars in the humanities and all students interested in History, Philosophy, and Theology.

It is for all of us who have a degree that hasn’t opened any doors.  But all scholars, even with faculty positions are, of course, welcome. So many teachers, graduates, and academics are having trouble finding work or getting articles published. How could scholarly work bring an online income? We are working on that kind of support.

We want to give scholars access to the cutting edge of research in their fields via peer review and criticism. See our Conferences and Societies and consider presenting papers in your field. We want to find ways to help and support students interested in the humanities. Lately we hear that only science, math, and technology are in demand.

Our goal in Scholardarity is to create a community of scholars who help each other and push ahead the frontiers of knowledge for our readers.

Unlike many academic journals, both online and off, our articles will be available for all, free to read. Scholars will subscribe to have the benefits of having their profiles on the site, communicating on the message board, sharing their writing, e-publishing their manuscripts and books, and being able to advertise and sell their work through this site.

Subscribe to Scholardarity

Future Features:

• Find new faculty position openings
• Advertise your books and writings
• Sell your books online
• Make unpublished manuscripts available
• Receive peer critique and review
• Online introductory video lectures for students
• Online conferences
• Message boards to share ideas and coordinate research projects
• Downloadable podcasts and pdfs for e-readers
• Intra-site newsletter with editorials, book reviews, and interviews with scholars
• E-Publishing…and more!

Biblical Passages, Nice and Not-So-Nice: Jeremiah 18:5-11 and Jonah 3:4-10

5 Then the word of the Lord came to me: ⁶Can I not do with you, O house of Israel, just as this potter has done? says the Lord. Just like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel. ⁷At one moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, ⁸but if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will change my mind about the disaster that I intended to bring on it. ⁹And at another moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it, ¹⁰but if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will change my mind about the good that I had intended to do to it. ¹¹Now, therefore, say to the people of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem: Thus says the Lord: Look, I am a potter shaping evil against you and devising a plan against you. Turn now, all of you from your evil way, and amend your ways and your doings. --Jeremiah 18:5-11 NRSV http://bible.oremus.org/?passage=Jeremiah+18

⁴Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s walk. And he cried out, ‘Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!’ ⁵And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.

6 When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. ⁷Then he had a proclamation made in Nineveh: ‘By the decree of the king and his nobles: No human being or animal, no herd or flock, shall taste anything. They shall not feed, nor shall they drink water. ⁸Human beings and animals shall be covered with sackcloth, and they shall cry mightily to God. All shall turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands. ⁹Who knows? God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish.’

10 When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it. --Jonah 3: 4-10 NRSV http://bible.oremus.org/?passage=Jonah+3