Did Paul Think Adam Was Literal?

 

Perhaps the strongest verse for keeping some Christians rooted in evolution-denying creationism is this one in Romans 5:

“Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way, death came to all people, because all sinned. To be sure, sin was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not charged against anyone’s account where there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who is a pattern of the one to come. But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many! Nor can the gift of God be compared with the result of one man’s sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification. For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ!”

The creationist logic is that Adam must be a literal person as Paul talks about him like he’s literal. But Paul doesn’t speak as though Adam is literal, and to think otherwise, I believe, misses the deeper meaning. Paul's use of Adam and Jesus serves as a theological motif to contrast the origins of sin and spiritual death with the gift of grace and eternal life offered through Christ. Paul's message about sin and death entering the world "through one man" symbolises the collective human failure to live according to God's will – it’s best thought of as a metaphorical archetype explaining how sin and fallenness are intrinsic to human experience. You can think of it as a typology; Adam is the "type" of fallen humanity, while Christ is the "type" of redeemed humanity – although, of course, Christ came in a literal Incarnation, and being God, He is THE type of all types.

Given our long evolutionary history - of which the writer of Genesis was, of course, unaware - the concept of "sin entering the world" can be understood as the moment when humans, as moral and spiritual beings, became capable of understanding themselves in relation to God and, ultimately, of the ability to accept a relationship with Him or turn away from Him. This cannot be tied to a single historical individual; rather, it represents a profound universal reality - the ability to be aware of God and to either reject or accept Him - which is a collective phenomenon of humanity, not an event tied to one person in history.  

You have to remember too that in the context of Judaism of the time, the story of Adam and Eve was commonly understood as the origin of humanity's fallen state. Paul explicitly calls Adam "a pattern of the one to come" (verse 14), which shows that Paul's focus is not on Adam as a historical person but as a representative figure for humanity's relationship with God. Adam is a symbol of humanity's fallen state, and Jesus is both the literal human and the Divine fulfilment of God's plan to restore creation. There is no contradiction between the way Paul speaks about Adam, and evolution being the instrument through which God brought about humans – just as there would be no contradiction between the plays of Shakespeare or the poetry of Blake and the laws of gravity or combustion. When language is used to convey different and non-contradictory truths, the person who chooses to impute contradiction is the one committing folly and misunderstanding the purpose of each.

Did Paul actually believe Adam was a literal figure?
I suppose it’s possible, although I have grave doubts about this. Paul was a first-century Jew who inherited the worldview of his time, and ancient Jewish and early Christian thought did not have access to modern archaeology, so they might have assumed Adam was a literal person. But the reason I don’t think he did is because it would have been so common to people of his time that ancient Biblical writings (and other writings too) are a traditional blend of history, theology, parable, allegory and archetypical symbolism that people simply wouldn’t have tried to neatly fit them into categories of literal and non-literal as we do now.

It really is important to understand that conveyance of deep truth usually happens at a level way above the overly-simplistic definitions of literal and non-literal. For example, the deepest truths of love, justice, mercy, forgiveness, courage, hope and sacrifice can’t be reduced to simple definitions or events, although individual events can be subset examples of their qualities. Religious texts, ancient myths, and oral traditions were often understood as conveying truth, but that truth not just wasn’t but couldn’t be tied to a strict historical or scientific framework. It was only in the period of the Scientific Revolution (1500s–1700s) and the rise of empiricism that the majority of humanity began to adopt a more evidence-based approach to knowledge, which led people to start distinguishing between literal and non-literal. And it was during the Enlightenment period (18^th century) that we began to sharply divide texts into either historical/literal truth or symbolic/mythological fiction – a fact that has gone on to be influential in religious fundamentalists taking a hard stance against some empirical methods.

In light of all this, I think Paul's use of Adam is best interpreted as a theological reflection on the universal human condition - our estrangement from God, and the grace made available through Christ.

The Irony of Dawkins

 

Richard Dawkins is probably the most influential atheist of the past few decades, with a huge fanbase and waves of adulation. The trouble is, Dawkins’ fans must miss this huge irony – he puts himself forward as a man who values knowledge, truth, evidence and understanding as the main pretext for his rejection and dismissal of religious belief, but when discussing religious belief he is almost entirely devoid of knowledge, truth, evidence and understanding of the subject. In discussing religion he displays the same ignorance that he rightly abhors in people ignorant of the subjects he values. If he ever got hit with the irony it would knock him flat on his backside.

Suppose I kept telling you that it’s important to acquire knowledge, truth, evidence and understanding of economics in order to make economic arguments. But then I joined a forum on Scottish whiskey – a subject I know virtually nothing about – and proceeded to criticise all the points inveterate whiskey drinkers were making. I kept telling them they were wrong, that they were foolish to believe what they do, and that my ill-thought-out whiskey ignorance was superior to their seasoned palates, honed over years of careful tasting and study. You’d rightly chide me, and tell me to get back in my box.

Similarly, anyone who has read execrable The God Delusion or heard Dawkins debate religion would see this as clear as day. He spends brief moments dismissing complex philosophical propositions from great theologians, without caring that he has no interest in understanding the intricacies of the arguments he critiques. He confidently dismisses the Bible, yet he knowingly has no grasp on even the basics of the reasoning that leads to such dismissals, or the historical, theological, moral or psychological context associated with the texts.

All this reflects badly on Dawkins, but easily the biggest charge against him is such a blatant hypocrisy and a ignoble lack of curiosity. Intellectual laziness and proud ignorance are traits that are the very opposite to the scientific principles he claims to value. I find him to be one of the most frustrating public thinkers on the subject of faith, not merely because he’s so wrong, but because he does not seem interested in what it means to think wisely and engage informatively.

It’s no surprise, then, that the wave of smug atheists that Dawkins-esque rhetoric has emboldened continues to flourish, parroting his brand of shallow dismissal rather than engaging in thoughtful critique. Due to his influence (and that of others like Hitchens), countless others have adopted this intellectually negligent approach - one that prioritises ridicule over honest reflection and substance. In doing so, they have not only weakened their own arguments but have also contributed to a broader culture in which the serious discussion of faith, philosophy, and meaning is replaced with facile mockery. I find it a regrettable irony that a man who so publicly championed reason for so many years has, during the same period, inspired so many to compromise or abandon it.

Finally, people like Dawkins have a subsidiary problem applicable to those who are all-but inextricably rooted to a viewpoint. We know how hard it is generally for people to change their mind, even in light of new evidence that should prompt them - and that barrier is exacerbated when the individual in question is a public figure whose status, reputation and income depends on holding the views for which they are famous. Once you’re in this position, it makes it hard to revise your view on the basis of new evidence, because doing so requires you to admit not only that you were mistaken about the fact but that you were misjudged about how you arrived at it. The second is that, if you do admit you were wrong, you fear people who trusted you on this may not be able to trust you on other things on which you express confidence. The third is that if you change your view you may alienate your supporters and invite more criticism from those who always thought differently to you. And the fourth - and perhaps most damning of all - is that the cognitive dissonance of reversing course is often too uncomfortable to contemplate, let alone bear if undertaken.

The Soul's Dark Nights

 

I responded to a friend about God's apparent silence sometimes when things are at their lowest, and thought I’d share for encouragement.

I was struck by this passage while re-reading C.S. Lewis' A Grief Observed: 

"You can't see anything properly while your eyes are blurred with tears. You can't, in most things, get what you want if you want it too desperately: anyway, you can't get the best out of it. "Now! Let's have a good talk," reduces everyone to silence, "I must get a good sleep tonight" ushers in hours of wakefulness. Delicious drinks are wasted on a really ravenous thirst. Is it similarly the very intensity of the longing that draws the iron curtain. And so, perhaps, with God. I have gradually come to feel that the door is no longer shut and bolted. Was it my own frantic need that slammed it in my face? The time when there is nothing at all in your soul except a cry for help may be just the time when God can't give it: you are like the drowning man who can't be helped because he clutches and grabs. Perhaps your own reiterated cries deafen you to the voice you hoped to hear. On the other hand, 'Knock and it shall be opened.' But does knocking mean hammering and kicking the door like a maniac? And there's also 'To him that hath shall be given.' After all, you must have a capacity to receive, or even Omnipotence can't give."

This perhaps taps into John of the Cross and his "Dark Night of the Soul", where we've sometimes felt that God has been silent throughout the ordeal. With my own sufferings, I have never felt He's been silent or absent, or not speaking into the situation - it may simply be that, as Lewis suggests above, the time to hear Him most clearly comes after the soul's journey towards deeper communion with God, where He knows He has to step back and allow the temporary detachment for surrender, humility, faith and perseverance.

And then, as I was editing recently I came across this passage in my book The Genius of the Invisible God, which I'd not read for a while, but it really spoke to me again:

"I remember reading a profound insight from John of the cross in his Dark Night of the Soul. He says that when God occupies the core of our being with the intention of purifying us, the cleansing process thrusts all the impurities to the surface - where those bad elements of our heart and mind that lie undisturbed in the subductions of our innermost being are lifted to the surface, as God begins to help us expunge them from our being. In order to see light, we have to expunge darkness; in order to be Christ-like, we have to be less viscerally human - and this transformation process, much like how detox removes impurities from our blood, is going to provide us with an honest appraisal of the worst that is in us as well as the best. We'll see ignoble elements to the self that we had grossly underestimated or overlooked altogether, and it will make us feel ashamed. And yet it is at this point that we can feel God working in us with the highest intensity, like precious metal that's put in the fire to be refined, when the detritus burns off, what's left is the radiant presence of Christ. As St. Peter says in his first epistle:

"Do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when His glory is revealed."

To truly understand ourselves, we have to truly know ourselves, and that involves facing up to the demons in us as well as the Divine. In other words, part of our spiritual wisdom is in understanding that the painful and hideous processes we endure are opportunities to embrace the work that God is doing in us - and that we wouldn't notice many of these ugly elements of our humanity so intensely if God wasn't doing great things in us. Imagine having the wisdom to know ourselves well enough to consider our suffering, insecurity, shame and regret to be 'pure joy' because we understand what God is inviting us into if we are brave enough to accept. As the 'belly of the whale' reminds us, we have to identify the true essence of an unhelpful thing before we can work on its eradication. It is through allowing God in, in this way, that our pain becomes joy, that our falsehoods become truth, that our ignorance becomes understanding. Just as God saved us by enduring the horror and desolation of being a tortured human, we cannot attain real earthly blessedness without being courageous enough to detoxify the impurities within us. Imagine being so close to God that you begin to understand that He is doing the necessary purification to make you more like Him.

Private Vs. Political Markets

 

If every individual (or firm) makes decisions based on the total net benefit to everyone - not just themselves - then outcomes would be socially optimal. Obviously the market contains negative externalities and public goods issues that can be mitigated or solved by top down central intelligence (a role usually performed by the state), but if you can align private incentives with social net benefits, you get the most efficient outcomes, and the market does that best in most areas of society. Or to put it another way, market failure is the exception in the free market, but is it the rule in the political market?

You may wonder why I’m using ‘market’ for the political landscapes too, so let me explain. Think of society like a whole interconnected market, where that market is a mix of private goods and public goods. We said that outcomes would be socially optimal when decisions are based on the total net benefit to everyone. In a free market, it’s easy to see why failure is the exception not the rule.

Imagine I set up a stall on Norwich Market called The Halloumi Hut, serving the obviously gorgeous freshly cooked halloumi dishes that a character like me would serve up. To run this business, I need to bring together various resources - workers, ingredients, cooking equipment, and my own time and effort. To hire someone, I must offer at least as much as their next best alternative - whether another job or their own leisure - so their cost is passed on to me through wages. When I buy halloumi or other inputs, I either outbid others who want them or pay suppliers enough to cover their production costs. The price system ensures these costs to others are reflected in what I pay. I collect the value of my cooking when customers buy it - their willingness to pay reflects how much they benefit. Any personal effort or time I put in is a cost I bear directly. So, all costs and benefits - to me and to others - are transmitted back to me through prices and wages. If the total benefit outweighs the cost, I open up the shop. If not, I don’t. That’s how markets push us toward choices that are efficient for everyone involved.

I frequently point out the ways in which market failure is rare in the free market and commonplace in political markets - and I do it with such rigour and charisma that I’m always amazed that everyone doesn’t just drop what they are doing and agree with me. Given that this is econ 101, and repeatedly demonstrated empirically throughout history, why do people habitually place too much confidence in governments and not enough in markets? (Read this IEA paper of mine if you can’t see the dangers of that).

I’ve laid this out a lot more comprehensively in my economics book, but my answers in brief would be:

1) Markets work subtly, and governments act more visibly and bombastically. Market coordination happens decentrally and quietly: prices shift, resources reallocate, and innovation happens gradually. Government action, by contrast, is immediate, dramatic and usually at the front of the news - so it feels more responsive, even if it's less efficient.

2) Market failures - rare as they are - often hit the headlines in a dramatic way, reinforcing the left’s incentive to distrust the system.

3) Self-organising systems make people feel intuitively uncomfortable - they prefer to think of top down agents in control.

4) Many people are not exposed to basic economic thinking - price theory, seen and unseen, opportunity cost, incentives, trade-offs, etc - so they are more likely to hold ideological views that override empirical evidence.

5) People are genetically predisposed to favour socialism over markets (see my side bar on Socialism)

6) Politicians lie and distort the truth so readily that they are trusted far more than they deserve to be.

But there is a seventh reason that needs more fleshing out, because I think it might be the primary mistake that leads to overconfidence in governments. When people think of a government, I suspect that (consciously or subconsciously) they think of it as a little like a benevolent uncle who stands firm in the family and has the wisdom and sagacity to organise society according to its superior knowledge. But just as one can see the folly of corporation tax by seeing that corporations are really just a collection of individuals, similarly one can see the folly of overconfidence in government by seeing that governments are really just a bunch of people, acting with their own interests first and with a woefully incomplete and inadequate understanding of the interconnected market. Try this; when you think of the concept of government in the future, don’t think of an abstract wise uncle, think of concrete individuals like Boris Johnson, Ed Miliband, Dianne Abbott, Liz Truss, Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell, Ed Davey, Keir Starmer, Caroline Lucas, David Lammy, Angela Raynor, Kwasi Kwarteng, Rachel Reeves, Michael Gove, and so on – they are the typical politician who have put themselves forward and asked you to trust them to manage our complex society. The paradox of government is that most people wouldn’t trust the competence or motives of most individual politicians to act in their interests to engender socially optimal outcomes, yet when they come together as a cluster called a ‘political party’ the confidence increases.

I know that people work collectively better in ways they cannot as individuals, but they don’t work collectively better in the same way that the free market enables us to work collectively better because, as we saw above with my Halloumi Hut sketch, the market most consistently aligns private incentives with social net benefits to produce most efficient outcomes, where failures are the exception, and the political market shows the opposite. This is because they operate under fundamentally different systems and with different incentives at the heart. Free markets increase total aggregate value, where each individual agent bears the net costs of his action, making his interest the same as our interest. The free market does that imperfectly, the political market much more imperfectly. Politicians bear virtually none of the costs of their bad policies, and the electorate is not privy to the full extent of politicians’ short-term, selfish incentives.

The most efficient systems are systems that align local knowledge with personal responsibility, that reward value creation, and penalise waste. The free market, for all its imperfections, is the only mechanism we’ve discovered that does this consistently and organically. It harnesses dispersed information and decentralised decision-making to produce outcomes that, more often than not, benefit everyone involved. Government, by contrast, operates in a fog of incomplete information, distorted incentives, and absent accountability. That people place too much faith in the one system that persistently divorces power from consequence is regrettable. Because the most fundamental difference between markets and politics lies in who bears the costs of failure. In a free market, bad decisions are punished - swiftly and impersonally. If I overpay for ingredients for my Halloumi Hut, if I hire the wrong staff, if no one wants my halloumi, I lose money. I feel the cost. But politicians operate in a system where the feedback loops are weak or broken entirely. They spend other people’s money on behalf of other people and are rarely held accountable for the unintended consequences. When policies fail, the costs are dispersed across millions of people, and the connection between action and outcome is easily obscured.

Look, none of this is to suggest that government has no role to play. There are domains - especially the provision of certain public goods - where collective action through central intelligence is essential, and where market mechanisms alone fall short. But central authority can rarely outperform decentralised incentives, personal responsibility and local knowledge. No, I’m afraid the reality is, through government, incentives are frequently misaligned with the public interest - because they are aligned with appearing virtuous, furthering the career and reputation of politicians, and helping the party stay in power by saying whatever it takes to secure votes. The market is not perfect - but it is the best we have for most societal transactions, and as a result of an aggregation of revealed preferences, it is profoundly more honest and reliable than the fiction of a wise and benevolent state.

It remains one of the strangest and most unfortunate things, that I doubt I've ever met anyone who would endorse the outcomes I know political market failure produces when it occurs, yet the world is replete with people who habitually endorse its mechanisms and repeatedly trust its architects in prospect. The typical voter who trusts these politicians time and time again is a bit like someone who cheers for a magician when he saws the wrong person in half, and then asks for an encore.

Good Science, In Good Faith

It's always struck me as absurd that so many people think there is incompatibility between good science and good Christianity. By 'good science', I mean science that does not believe it has anything to say about the truth of Christianity, and by 'good Christianity' I mean a Christian faith that does not seek to distort or deny scientific facts. This wisdom follows a logical path, which says that if x has no bearing on the truth of y, then one (from either side of the argument) cannot use x as an attempt to deny the truth of y. We do not need to refer to arthritis when studying geoengineering, but being an expert in geoengineering doesn't undermine people's experiences of arthritis. We do not need to refer to psychotherapy when studying calculus, but being a mathematician doesn't undermine the qualities of psychotherapy. Similarly, we do not need to refer to the Christian faith when doing science, but nothing we do in science undermines the probability that Christianity is true. How can it? Christianity is true, and science is the most useful experimental tool we have - both are perfectly compatible when engaged with properly.

Unfortunately, many of the most prominent spokespeople for atheism and for Christianity are under the assumption that they have to defend their science against religious faith, or that they have to defend their religious faith against scientism (the mistaken belief that science is only way to render truth about reality). Of course, if you are riddled with the mistaken assumption that science is the only way to render truth about reality, then you are likely to infer the absence of evidence for Christianity; just as if Jack is riddled with the mistaken assumption about the connection between arthritis and geoengineering, he is likely to infer from his studies of geoengineering that claims about arthritis are dubious.

A proper analysis of the situation would reveal that both science and Christianity are underpinned by four primary qualities; truth, mental cognition, mathematics and logic - all of which are instantiated in the person of God. Even if you don't yet believe in God, you should at least attest to the fact that science and Christianity are both underwritten by truth, mental cognition, mathematics and logic, and that science is inadequate for the matter of attempting to supersede or replace religious faith. Scientism's arguments against the existence of God (from Dawkins, Hitchens, Krauss, etc) are like those of a crazed chef, who tries to cook a luxury banquet with only bread and water as ingredients, and then when he hears from the guests that their meal wasn't very tasty, concludes that banquets are not really very luxurious after all.

 

Cloaked and Framed: The Twin Tactics of Deception

 

Let me ask you a question, first associated with the brilliant mathematician John von Neumann. This question is easy, and you should get it right in seconds. But it sounds harder than it is, and therefore many of you probably won’t get it right in seconds. Here it is:

Two trains are 20 miles apart, moving steadily toward one another on the same track. At the very front of one engine, a fly takes off and begins darting toward the other train. As soon as it reaches it, the fly instantly turns around and heads back to the first train - repeating this back-and-forth dash again and again. The little fly keeps this up without rest until the trains finally collide, crushing it in between. The fly maintains a speed of 15 miles per hour, while each train chugs forward at 10 miles per hour. How much ground does the fly cover before meeting its unfortunate end?

The answer is 15 miles. If it wasn’t immediately obvious to you, once I elaborate, you’ll see why it might have been. Each train is moving toward the other at 10 miles per hour, so their combined closing speed is 20 miles per hour. Since they start 20 miles apart, they will collide in 1 hour. That’s an easy calculation. An even easier one is that if the fly is constantly flying at 15 miles per hour, and the trains take 1 hour to collide, then the fly will have travelled a total distance of 15 miles before it gets squashed.

The answer being 15 miles is not tricky. But what interests me here is how an easy question can appear hard due to the way it is worded, where those considering the question become overwhelmed by the extraneous information, by how the question is phrased, and by how the style of the question appears to be asking the reader to sum the converging series of fly movements back and forth rather than just asking a simple mathematics question (see my blog post on the Wason selection task for a similar example).

I believe this observation - and its converse - has practical application in many areas of public discourse. It’s what I observe as cloaking in overcomplexity, and its converse, framing in oversimplicity.

Cloaked in overcomplexity
When people want to deceive you, they often cloak a narrative with unnecessary (but enticing) detail, encouraging the public to reach for a complex approach (e.g., summing an infinite series of fly trips) rather than recognising the simplicity of the situation. The ever-increasing bureaucracies (taxation, regulation, risk, health and safety, etc) are classic political examples of this. The media and its employment of propaganda is another; overwhelming people with irrelevant data, half-truths, or emotionally provocative content, are tools used to obscure what’s often actually a more straightforward set of truths. Likewise, in some branches of philosophy - especially moral philosophy and epistemology - people sometimes get bogged down in edge cases at the expense of a clearer conception of the fundamentals.

And, I think, by far the most harmful cases of this are when it comes to the Christian gospel - where the most straightforward message of God’s love and grace is frequently overcomplicated by intellectual gatekeeping and analytical abstraction. Don’t get me wrong, these deep dives into theological complexity can be fun and informative, but they are best understood when one has got a grip on the basics first, and accepted Christ as Lord, not as an in prospect game of mental gymnastics that seeks to undermine or obfuscate the faith.

At its core, the gospel is breathtakingly straightforward: God loves you. Jesus died and rose again to reconcile you to God. Trust in Him, and you are forgiven, free, and fully loved. We’re not called to dumb down the gospel - just to remove the unnecessary fog and let the light shine clearly. Like Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 2:2, “I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” Ideally, the best gospel communication comes in simple, accessible and gentle form, before it gets so deep, profound and bold.

Framed in oversimplicity
Just as complexity can be fabricated through cloaking, oversimplicity can be misleading too. Over-simplification is perhaps in the top few human follies, where folk oversimplify intricate systems and lead to poorly thought-out policies or public reactions. And this is not only an interesting dynamic in relation to the cloaking in overcomplexity problem, it actually means that the public is getting misled at both ends. On the one hand, bad agents habitually cloak a narrative with unnecessary but enticing detail to ensure you miss the simplicity of what’s faulty about their claim. Yet often in the same speech, debate article or policy, they get you in the opposite way by using oversimplicity to mislead you in other direction. This means some propositions simultaneously sound logical on the surface, but fail under scrutiny, and sound reasonable under a cloaked narrative, but defective when the rhetorical smoke clears and the proposition is examined in the light of clear reasoning.

The upshot is, being aware of how presentation affects perception helps us evaluate arguments based on content, not just style. And it gives us the language - and hopefully the courage - to pull people up when they’re guilty of cloaking in overcomplexity and/or framing in oversimplicity. Once you recognise the pattern - whether it's unnecessary complication or deceptive simplification - you're harder to mislead.

Greatest Gift, Greatest Gratitude

Consider the question of how grateful we should be for things. Consider 4 events for which I’d be grateful: 

A)    A chap walking in front of me holds the door open a little longer so I can get through.

B)    A neighbour lends me his wood splitter so I can cut my biggest logs.

C)    A neighbour gifts me his wood splitter so I can continue to cut my biggest logs.

D)    A friend saves my life by rescuing me from a burning building.

Clearly, if I should be more grateful for D than B, or C than A, then as a rule, how grateful x should be to y for z depends on the relationship between the intentions of both agents, the expected and actual benefits to the recipient, and the expected and actual costs of the giver. This holds that the costlier the gift to the giver, the more gratitude is appropriate from the beneficiary, providing both individuals partake in a mutually willing exchange. A neighbour who gifts me his wood splitter purely to bless me more than him incurs more costs than a neighbour who has bought a better wood splitter, and just wants to get rid of his old one.

Given the foregoing equation, then, the greatest debt of gratitude in the world is one of such abundance that it’s astonishing how many people alive today pay little or no regard to it. I’m talking, of course, about Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. If a neighbour gave you his wood splitter and you showed no gratitude, that would be bad - and most people would feel uncomfortable in withholding their thanks and gratitude. But even such a generous act is almost nothing compared to the cross, which stands as the greatest act of self-giving in all history. It’s the greatest Being doing the absolute most with the greatest gift at the greatest cost for the greatest good for the greatest number of people.

God becoming human and giving His life on the cross is the not just the greatest act, necessitating the greatest gratitude, it is the ultimate benchmark for all human gratitude - not merely because the benefit to us is eternal life, peace with God, and adoption as His children, but because the cost to Christ was beyond human measure. He bore the wrath of sin, the shame of crucifixion, and the abandonment of the Father - all willingly, because of His love for us. Therefore, whether we are aware of it or not, the greatest Being doing the absolute most with the greatest gift at the greatest cost for the greatest good for the greatest number of people underpins all good acts we bestow upon each other, because all good acts are reflections of the greatest of all good acts.

On Whether There Really Is A 'Climate Crisis'

 

The term ‘Climate crisis’ is uttered at will these days, and the danger is that young people brought up in this normalised Overton Window period won’t even question it. Let’s try to explore what we are dealing with here. The concept of a "crisis" is not straightforward, and different people interpret it in different ways depending on their perspective, values, and epistemic standards. Some friends of mine think there is a climate crisis, and they would take it to mean that we are reaching a catastrophic threshold; a tipping point where irreversible and extreme damage is inevitable, such as runaway global warming, mass species extinction, or the collapse of major ecosystems. Some other friends of mine think climate change is already causing widespread harm and demand immediate large-scale action to prevent worsening consequences. Others I know concede that there are urgent climate problems that need solving, but would only call it a moderate crisis. Perhaps you could call these interpretations of a crisis red hot, hot and warm (pun intended). 

Knowing the nature of the British public, I might even go so far as to say that the majority of people in the UK think there is a climate crisis. But for a nation, this is problematic politically and economically because these conditions are complex, multi-faceted, and difficult to conceptualise in a single framework like ‘crisis’. Most of the population as individuals do not fully understand all the interconnected elements of climate science, economics, and geopolitics that would justifiably define what a crisis is, yet there is widespread consensus that there is a crisis.

The trouble is, when you look at the majority of reported crises in socio-political history, we tend to only be able to recognise them as crises retrospectively, once their consequences became clear. As Hegel famously said, “The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk”. The difficulty, then, of claiming we are in a climate crisis before it has happened, where our margin of error increases with every year of future projection, means that if the conditions for a crisis can be claimed to be consensual but not individually understood, it’s harder to epistemologically justify the claim that the crisis is real, especially if you understand that there are a lot of bad and corrupt agents in society in whose interests it is to peddle the narrative that there is a climate crisis. It is highly likely that almost all the individual agents pushing the climate crisis agenda hardest could not explain to you with reason, evidence and logic why there is a crisis. And yet they exist in society as influencers who can push it to the point where most people will believe there is one.

What would ordinarily be matters of empirical fact, economic reasoning, scientific evaluation, and right and wrong are now so routinely politicised and monetised - where most have a tribal stance to defend, or a political or financial incentive - that it’s now prohibitively difficult to track reliable appropriate expertise and rigid interpretive frameworks for large and complex matters like this.

If we think of the value of knowledge as the total benefit it provides to human understanding and decision-making, then wrongly declaring a crisis of this magnitude is one of the costliest errors that can be wrought on society – and is already proving to be one of the most financially costly errors we’ve ever made as a species.

In terms of wholesale epistemic prudence and utility – that is, what we know, and what we know we know - the only responsible conclusion to reach at this point is, in my estimation, roughly as follows. Fossil fuels have been the principal driver of our climb out of poverty, into a decent standard of living in the past 150 years. We are undergoing more technological advances than any individual can keep up with, and solving problems at a rate that far exceeds the climate issues about which the fundies are hysterical. The ideological error the eco-hysterics make is similar to the Malthusian one - it is stuck in arithmetical ratios and not geometrical ratios. Energy is not a zero-sum game. Prematurely limiting the use of fossil fuels while demonising the very energy sources that have transformed the human population is not only short-sighted and ungrateful, it's a toxic message to send to our young. 

The eco-vandals are not 'prophets'; they are the entitled, uninformed narcissists of society who have no sense of perspective, very little gratitude for humanity's past struggles and current achievements – and they are too uninformed to understand that progression is mostly combinatorial, as various technologies and ideas build on one another to create exponential benefits.

I have written a book on this subject, where I have spent a long time carefully researching everything from both sides - whereupon I concluded that there is not a climate crisis, and there is every reason to believe that collective human ingenuity and increased personal responsibility are tools that make solving climate problems well within our grasp. If only more people had reached more carefully thought out conclusions, and been much more circumspect in their reactionary decision-making and short-sighted profligate spending, the current climate debacle wouldn’t look quite so grim, and be quite so costly to members of the public.

Alas, I believe the pervasiveness of the ‘climate crisis’ consensus is primarily driven by two things: 

1) People are very gullible

2) There are a lot of bad agents in society willing to exploit widespread gullibility

Virtue Disguised In False Light

 

In case you haven’t noticed what’s been happening in the past few decades, regarding some of the most toxic things in society right now, I’ve developed a handy checklist: 

1) Victimhood ideology disguised as compassion 

2) Tyrannical ideology disguised as social justice 

3) Nanny-state ideology disguised as responsibility 

4) Authoritarian ideology disguised as leadership 

5) Censorship ideology disguised as safeguarding 

6) Conformist ideology disguised as unity 

7) Groupthink ideology disguised as empathy 

8) Intolerance ideology disguised as inclusivity 

9) Disintegration ideology disguised as tolerance 

All connected to and underpinned by the worst and most pervasive one: 

10) Anti-Christ ideologies disguised as virtue.

Remember, the term antichrist literally means something or someone that is "against Christ" or "opposed to Christ" - not to be confused with the specific figure of The Antichrist prophesied in scripture (although they are related, of course)

I hope you thought about each one carefully, and didn’t just whizz past them. These are a great many of the fundamental assaults on UK society right now. 

Now, I’m not one for conspiracy theories - because most things that sound like a conspiracy theory usually are. But what I’m now going to say might sound like a bit like conspiracy to the uninitiated, but it really isn’t. These ideologies are, in part, a deliberate, orchestrated attempt to undermine Christian truths and influences by people who seek to acquire or protect the self-serving power, authority and influence they have attained. And they are, in part, the results of a scrambled bottom-up attempt of individuals to present themselves as solutions to societal problems, but are in reality, distortions and dismantlement of the values that Christianity upholds.

The promotion of division, control, conformity, intolerance and the disintegration of the family unit under the guise of compassion and tolerance, is a combined deliberate and accidental attempt to undermine Christian principles of individual freedom, personal responsibility, and the sanctity of the family unit. Christianity teaches the importance of personal accountability, love, and truth, while these ideologies distort those virtues to elevate the state, the collective or the powerful individuals in society over God.

In many of the bottom-up cases, this erosion is a passive shift, but in the top-down attempts, it is a deliberate Promethean re-engineering of societal norms aimed at replacing the Divine standards. And for those who study God’s word, the Bible gives many prophecies about this, and in addition to antichrist influences (especially in the letters of John), the Bible presents a vivid and alarming picture of the rise of The Antichrist; a deceptive end-times ruler who emerges onto the world stage through political cunningness and spiritual deceit.

For example, in Daniel 7 and 8, he is symbolised as a "little horn" who arises among ten kings, speaking boastfully and waging war against God’s people. Daniel 8 elaborates that this figure will be skilled in manipulation, will cause deceit to prosper, and will consider himself superior to others. These passages point to a political ascent marked by strategic conquest, rising from a coalition of nations - perhaps something that simulates a revived modern day version of the Roman Empire in the shape of a global alliance. The Antichrist is more than just one person, of course, it’s a form of dominance that is deeply political, and one which has the power to subdue others to consolidate its own authority.

In 2 Thessalonians 2:3-12, St. Paul echoes this warning, describing the Antichrist as the “man of lawlessness.” - which I take to mean someone who can exalt himself above all that is called God and will sit in the temple of God proclaiming himself to be divine. In a way that Nietzsche forewarned (although with a different perspective), he will use false signs and deceptive wonders to mislead those who have rejected the truth, blending political control with religious dominance. I know that tyrants who act as a counterfeit Messiah, and elicit spiritual/political/economic deception to unify and control the masses under his rule, are nothing new - but I think what’s more compelling about these prophecies is a matter of scale.

We now live in times in which mass global connectivity and worldwide attention is possible, and I think that is going to be one of the key elements in the fulfilment of these prophecies (this globalised factor is also true of prophecies like in Matthew 24:14, Revelation 11:9-10, Revelation 13:7, Revelation 13:14-18, Revelation 16:14-16, Revelation 18:11-17). For the Antichrist to appear as the beast from the sea, empowered by Satan, and rule over every tribe, language, and nation, we need a globalised world, and this is symbolised as a modern day fall of Babylon – which is a symbol of the world’s corrupt political and economic systems.

I’m not saying we live in the final part of end times (although I know many Christians who believe we do) - but it should be plain to see that at the heart of this contemporary transformation is a rejection of God’s authority, and a push to place ultimate power in human hands, whether through state control, ideological conformity, social engineering or simply masses of individuals acting on their own whims and desires unaware of the bigger picture or influence this is having. And it should also be plain to see that these are the same mechanisms that are foretold in those prophecies. They all work not only to undermine the individual’s relationship with God, but also to replace the Divine order with a gradual collapse of the moral and spiritual values that lead us all the way up to God’s Truth in Christ.

A Reflection

By and large, I don’t get heavily involved in much politics (and certainly not party politics) or mainstream media narratives. For years, I’ve got a strong sense of how things really work, with the narrative cartel’s hands behind the curtain, and that has only enhanced as I’ve got older, and the world has become even more under their thrall (see my blog The Maze and the Watchtower: Seeing Beyond the Illusion for an initial eye-opener). The world, for all its top-down pretences, is steered not by democracy, the perceived good for the electorate, or the supposed will of the people, but by a quiet, calculating network of manipulators who understand that the easiest way to control a population is not through overt tyranny, but through the careful engineering of ideas, beliefs and perception. I think the more we delve into it together, the clearer you’d see how things really are.

I understand how, for some, this can sound like conspiracy theory, but I can assure you it’s not. This narrative cartel really do understand that fear, anxiety and division are the most potent political currencies, and they mint them in national, and sometimes global quantities, with the primary aim of keeping the masses unapprised, disoriented, alienated, and perpetually in need of interventions that just happen to consolidate more power in the hands of the very people who either caused the problems or pretend they have the solutions to them.

And without being too much of a Cassandra figure (I prefer Jeremiah), I’ve long since come to conclude, often reluctantly, that with the continual acquiescence of the people, there is no realistic way to significantly change things or thwart the aims of this cabal of puppet masters. As well as seizing control of the narrative, they’ve convinced most people that they should be begging for more of it. They are doing the devil’s work for him. And like quicksand, I believe the more people struggle to get out of it through some opposing ideology, tribal loyalty, or even some well-meaning solutions, the more they are dragged under, and the faster they’re pulled into the suffocating depths - because division is a key part of the deception.

Consequently, I’ve resolved to live in a way that tries as best as I can to detach myself from it, knowing that the best life I can live is one that centres itself on God, scripture, on my loved ones, friends, family, private learning, and being servant-hearted in church.

Increasingly, detachment from the above has enabled even more devoted Christian living, and has enhanced my well-being even more, because the above merely distracts and draws us into situations that take the attention off the most valuable things. For me, detachment is not mere resignation - it is a conscious act of preserving my soul’s clarity - actively disassociating myself from the endless spectacle of the superficial maze-running narratives. I believe it’s the only way to find real exhilaration, freedom and peace.

Sure, I do partake in commentary on these matters, in the hope that it might help others detect the cheat and the sheer amount of emotional and intellectual resources it drains from the preoccupants, but I endeavour to not let it steal my gaze from the things of eternal value. 

We Can See God At Work Here If We Pay Close Attention

 

Christianity, when interpreted properly, gets everything right. Here’s one of those profound things it gets right that virtually everyone would know if asked and were honest about it, but to which few pay attention. Picture a staircase, with humans near the bottom. Imagine this staircase represents an upward journey, where each step takes you to higher moral truths and more elevated standards. Moral standards ascend in accordance with God’s goodness and ultimate standard, similar to how true facts are objective imperatives that supersede all falsehoods in accordance with God’s Truth found in Christ.

From this we can recognise 3 key things: 1) All humans can keep tapping into higher standards than the ones in which they are currently operating. 2) However high we climb on the staircase of improvement, we can never reach a point at which there is no further improvement we can make. 3) These imperatives point beyond human ability to God’s holy and perfect nature, where God is at the very top of the staircase (Matthew 5:48: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect”).

What this means is that we continuously recognise higher standards, but cannot fully attain them in our own power - and we can always go higher, but we can never reach the top of the staircase, because that is where God alone is. It’s the strongest indication that the highest standards cannot rest in human construction alone. If humans are the highest minds in the known universe, as atheists believe, then it’s extraordinary that every individual recognises the need for superseding imperatives but cannot ever reach them, and that the only consistent grounding we can conceive is idealised, perfect, transcendent standards. The situation makes sense with God’s nature (perfectly good, holy, just, and loving) providing the highest and ultimate imperatives, but it makes far less sense if we are just naturalistic beings. The true picture is this: 

1)    Human attempts (limited). 

2)    Human ideals (recognised but unattainable). 

3)    God’s perfection (the true grounding). 

Where the staircase illustrates our conception of the hypothetical climb.

The naturalistic, evolutionary reason alone only explains it in part, but like a house of cards, it falls down the higher we try to build it. The correct part is that, yes, humans evolved as social animals, and groups that developed shared rules and expectations (fairness, loyalty, prohibitions on murder, etc) survived better than groups without them. Over time, these moral instincts became deeply ingrained because they helped with cooperation, trust, and long-term survival. And because of this adaptive instinct, and the importance of cooperation and fairness, evolution may have “over-engineered” our sense of duty and obligation, making it feel more absolute and universal than it actually is.

But I think it shows itself to be inadequate, similar to the way that those who think we merely invented mathematics are inadequate – there is no way to construct something that high that is both a) based on ultimate, absolute truth, and b) an ever-ascending staircase of standards that is impossible to keep climbing without sensing further steps still to climb.

Let’s take something like justice as an example. In a Christian framework, the concept of justice can be seen as having an ever‑ascending trajectory, consistently moving from human approximations toward God’s perfect standard. We can start by recognising basic human justice, associated with honesty, keeping promises, treating others fairly, punishing theft, honouring contracts, that sort of thing. And then we can tap into higher standards of human justice, like deeper considerations of human needs, addressing systemic injustices, striving to reduce oppression, that sort of thing. And then, even with profound accomplishments in higher forms of human justice, we can still conceive of ideal aspirations that tap into both a quantitative and qualitative advance up the higher reaches of the staircase – a conceived radical transformation of the world in which full cosmic justice occurs (as per Romans 2:5-6, 2 Corinthians 5:10, and Revelation 20:12-13), but is beyond the scope of ordinary human achievement, however long our evolution carried on.

The whole staircase of justice finds its upper limit in God’s perfect justice, where the very best of our idealised human justice is fully integrated with His Divine love, grace, mercy, and holiness, bringing about perfect foresight of consequences, simultaneous mercy and righteousness, and eternal consistency in accordance with God’s love and goodness.

Consequently, what we have here is a profound sense of God at work in nature, both by what we conceive His ideals to be, and by how evident it is that we fall so short of those standards.

Giffen Beliefs

 

In economics, a Giffen good (popularised by economist Alfred Marshall, but named after the economist Robert Giffen) is something that people consume more of as its price rises, because it is a basic necessity and they can't afford alternatives. A classic illustration of a Giffen good is the humble potato, which served as the most affordable calorie source for impoverished Irish farmers in the mid-1800s. When the devastating potato famine struck, the price of potatoes soared. Ironically, instead of reducing consumption, this price hike forced people to abandon more expensive foods like meat and milk, leaving them even more reliant on potatoes. Whereas in economics, rising prices usually reduce demand - Giffen goods become an economic snare; the costlier the staple became, the fewer options remained beyond it.

On my bike ride this morning, I started thinking of Giffen goods analogically in terms of Giffen beliefs, which would constitute bad beliefs that are harmful in society. Imagine false or harmful beliefs as the psychological equivalent of cheap potatoes - accessible, familiar, and “necessary” to make sense of the world in a difficult or unstable situation. Cults play on these types of belief. As the cost of these beliefs rises - in terms of emotional investment, social alienation, cognitive dissonance, sacrifice, and what have you - the individual becomes more dependent on them.

Like the Irish farmers who had to give up meat and milk to buy more potatoes, the cult member may shed better beliefs (critical thinking, outside relationships, and so forth) to afford the escalating demands of the bad belief system. And, of course, the cult leaders play on this too, because the belief system becomes a psychological trap; the more costly it gets, the harder it becomes to leave, because you’ve sacrificed so much else to stay in it.

Giffen beliefs, like their economic analogue, capture the self-reinforcing nature of harmful outcomes, where the loss of alternatives pushes people deeper into a dire situation, and where the more it costs, the harder it is to abandon.

Why Greatness Produces The Highest & Lowest

 

Christians are fascinating in many ways. Here are two examples from my experience that I’ve mentioned before, but haven’t ever fleshed out beyond succinct epigrams. The first is that I think Christians are both some of the best and worst arguments for God’s existence. Some Christians come across so consistently badly – in their conduct, their thinking and their manners – that if they were the only Christians one ever encountered, then Christianity would seem no truer or more virtuous than communism. Other Christians come across so impressively, with such grace and wisdom, that in them one can sense glimpses of Heaven on earth, and get the strongest indication that Christianity is the truth.

This dovetails with the second observation; that the most prodigious minds I’ve ever encountered are Christians, but so are some of the least prodigious. In other words, humans at their most brilliant in terms of depth of mind, profundity, and creative, emotional expansiveness are Christian – individuals like St. Paul, St. John, and St. James, or in other fields, Pascal, Kierkegaard. Yet some woeful Christians frequently sink to depths of mind that are more intellectually hollow and pitiable than many atheists ever seem to reach.

Given that Christianity is true, and Christians have access to the Creator of the universe, and to a depth of relationship and revelation to which atheists are not privy, this might be one of the strangest things in the world. It’s no surprise that in the greatest minds Christianity amplifies the extremes of human conduct and intellect, but one might be justifiably surprised to find that some Christians descend into the lowest rungs of intellectual sophistication, even below some of the shallowest atheists.

If it’s obvious why Christians reach the great heights – and it should at least be obvious to Christians, who know its truth – then it might not be at all obvious why the Christians reaching the lowest depths of the mind do so. I suppose what we are asking is quite a profound question; why is it that the thing that can engender such astounding cognitive expression at its best can also precipitate the most cringeworthy cognitive failings at its worst? It might be partly a sense of relative expectation, like when a village committee would think it worse if their vicar stole a bicycle than an ordinary member of the community. I think that’s a good prima facie case; we just should expect better from Christians, as they know the Lord, and those sunken defects merely seem exacerbated or magnified on that basis. And we must also remember that the Christian faith, in which God invites anyone to know Him on the basis of the free gift of salvation under grace, is going to include both extremes; the saints and, at first, the wretches – which is another key factor.

But I think the full story is even deeper; I think there are near-paradoxes about the very best things in the world that amplify the very worst things too - like how, in Shakespeare’s sonnet, “Lilies that fester smell even worse than weeds”. Because Christianity is both true, and the enabler of the highest potential in humans, it can magnify both glory and failure because of the power of its truths. When lived faithfully, it produces greatness; but when tainted or neglected, it can produce worse distortions than ordinary unbelief. And perhaps that’s what we should expect; for many of the most egregious failures in society are betrayals of qualities which, at their best, produce the greatest good - like how love inspires some of the most wonderful acts, but in betrayal or loss brings about the worst pain; or like how freedom enables the best human flourishing, creativity, and dignity, yet in excess and without discipline it can descend into chaos and harm; or like how great wealth can be a vehicle for some of the greatest acts of good in the world, but when love of money turns it into selfish greed, it brings about avarice, corruption and chronic discontent. 

It's also similar to how those who live their life in the safe, unremarkable middling currents of destiny face none of the great joys or exhilarations, nor any of the worst tragedies or heartbreaks  - they neither rise to grandeur nor sink to catastrophe – just playing it safe every day of their lives, in a way that at some point, with some honest reflection, should leave them sad and regretful that they never seized life with the passionate truthseeking, courage and wonder that brings about a full life.

This is what we are really reflecting back on when we observe that Christianity, in its vast and paradoxical scope, is not tame at its best or worst. It is the forge in which human greatness and human folly alike are tempered; the light that illuminates the loftiest heights of intellect, love, and virtue, yet casts equally deep shadows in the hearts that turn from its truth or taint it through raw human fault. And that is where some Christians can go astray in ways that those who don’t know God won’t in quite the same way. Like how faith-based deference to scriptural authority produces misinterpretations that cause them to reject established empirical facts about the world; or how binary thinking creates spiritual allegiance that oversimplifies the true complexity of God’s plan; or how, despite St. Paul’s warning in Romans, people under Christian grace can exhibit a haughtiness that puts even worldly pride to shame, as if proximity to divine favour heightens the hubris rather than humbles the heart.

Of course, the benefits of being a Christian far outweigh the alternative – in fact, not just outweigh, but illuminate and redeem every shadow of human existence in a way that false rejection cannot. But just as the Christian faith bears witness to the extraordinary potential of the transformed human soul, the taints and distortions become a testament to the magnitude of fallenness, like how fire, when left unchecked or misdirected out of control, soon razes forests and turns human habitats to dusty ash piles. 

Beliefs of Steel

 

Steel-manning is the opposite of straw-manning – it is the principle of presenting the strongest possible version of your opponent’s argument. I have frequently used steel-manning throughout my life, to understand opposing views more clearly, to sharpen my own reasoning, and to attempt to build the strongest arsenal of personal views and beliefs that I can. It’s an essential tool for intellectual honesty.

I have a theory that the harder it is to steelman a belief or proposition, the less likely that belief or proposition is to be true. It’s well within our ability to believe A over B - where if B has some merit or interesting tenets of consideration, but is still believed to be inferior to A – and yet still use the steel-manning technique to make a reasonable case for B. Out of Charlotte and Emily Bronte, I believe Charlotte is, by a small margin, the more accomplished novelist. But I could write a good steel-manning case for Emily being the better writer. I believe we have free will (to a certain degree), but I could write a steel-manning paper that convincingly argues that free will is not, in fact, built into the material substrate of a wholly deterministic universe. On interpretations of quantum theory, I believe that quantum collapse is an objective physical process, and that it occurs independently of human measurement. Still, I could steelman a defence of alternative interpretations - whether Copenhagen, decoherence, or many-worlds - and such an exercise would make for a stimulating discussion.

Now, when confronted with a belief or viewpoint that you find prohibitively difficult to steelman – where, even if you tried your very best, and made the most honest, rigorous attempt to argue for its case, you still found it’s not even possible to get off the ground - you probably have a very good reason to conclude that that idea is not just folly, but beyond even a reasonable defence of non-folly. For example, I find it prohibitively difficult to steelman young earth creationism – it is just so plain wrong that there isn’t a rational defence that can be made; the only defence occurs through lies, blatant falsehoods and misrepresentations of evidence. I know young earth creationism is wrong – not just because there is no evidence to believe it is right – but also because I find it impossible to steelman.

I find the same with Islam. While it isn’t built on the same kind of empirical lies, blatant falsehoods and misrepresentations of evidence as young earth creationism - as a Christian, I could steel man atheism a lot more easily than I could steelman Islam. There is just nothing about Islam that convinces me it’s anything other than a wholly man-made religion that has evolved into a very false dominant belief system through cultural contagion and hegemonic power structures. Where it speaks truths, its truths are already found in Judaism and Christianity, and where it speaks untruths or makes inaccurate deviations from better religions, it exposes itself as derivative and unreliable.

Sure, if you’re a Muslim young earth creationist you are probably not convinced (😊). But that’s only due to being wedded to the very falsities that steel-manning attempts to expose – it doesn’t undermine the efficacy of the proposition itself. Because you only need to pick something that does fall far from your intellectual purlieus – say, flat earth theory, holocaust denial, or astrology – and see why, to most people, they are just as un-steelmannable, because their claims have been tested and found wanting, and no rigorous defence can survive contact with empirical scrutiny.

So that’s my tip for today; the harder it is to steelman a belief or proposition, the less likely it is to be true. And if you are competent at steel-manning, and find something impossible to steelman, then that thing is almost certainly false.

Christ the Meta-Metalanguage: The Divine Ground of All Truth

 

Truth is told in propositional form. It is true that if all humans are mortal, and Socrates is a human, then Socrates is mortal. It is true that water boils at 100°C at standard atmospheric pressure. It is true that the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. True propositions like the above are true because they correspond to logical, scientific and historical reality. In John 14:6, Jesus tells us that He is the Truth – THE Truth in absolute form because He’s God, and in personal form because He is the Divine Person.

Here’s how I believe we should frame it. True propositions are true because they correspond to reality; and in the deepest sense, they correspond to the ultimate reality, which is grounded in the nature and revelation of God - fulfilled and made manifest in Jesus Christ, who is the Truth.

To consider this philosophically, recall that Tarski showed that truth in formal systems must be defined in a higher-level language - a metalanguage - because a system cannot fully define its own truth. For example, in propositional logic or formal arithmetic, Tarski’s concept of truth requires a distinction between the object language (the language being used to describe the world) and the metalanguage (the language used to describe and evaluate the object language). This mirrors the idea that to fully understand the truth of things, we need something greater than the system itself to provide the proper context and evaluation.

Given the foregoing, if Christ is THE Truth because He’s God and the Divine Person (along with the Father and Holy Spirit – three aspects of the same One God), then Christ’s Truth is a Divine meta-metalanguage. You can think of like this. A metalanguage tells the truth about a language; a meta-metalanguage tells the truth about metalanguages.

In the same way Tarski's theory requires a higher-level "metalanguage" to describe the truth of a system, Christ, as the ultimate Truth, is the Divine meta-metalanguage through which all truths are made meaningful and coherent. Just as no formal system can fully define its own truth without reference to a broader framework, no aspect of reality - whether logical, scientific, or historical - can be fully understood or defined apart from Christ, who is the source of all truth. He is the Divine context and the Word (Logos) through which all things are revealed, ordered, and understood, and He is the ultimate frame of reference by which all truths are grounded. This Divine meta-metalanguage is not merely a system of rules or language; it is a living Person in whom truth is both revealed and enacted.

I get why this is hard to swallow if you’re a non-Christian, because we are talking about a hyper-reality on which this higher truth sits. But the corollary is that we cannot know truly apart from Christ, and all human knowing, especially when it taps into deeper truths, is fragmentary and only enhanced by Divine revelation, because Christ is being itself, sustaining reality (as per Colossians 1:17).

That’s also why, when it comes to salvation, Christ is the only way into truth, as His life, death, and resurrection bring us into communion with the Truth, where such fullness of Divine truth cannot be contained within human language alone.