The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Notes on the Foothills

Theology Philosophical
#1

“Two people on the foothills sharing notes in private are all very well.” CS Lewis

For anyone interested, I have posted a work I’ve made of Christian Philosophy online (link at very bottom). See below the table of contents to see if you’re interested in reading it over.

Table of Contents

God’s Existence
Idiots or Mystics?
Pascal’s Possibility
A Return to the Ancient Worldview

Sin
Sin: Fact or Fiction?
A Mystery That Angels Desire to Look Into
Bloodied Hands Before the Foundation of the World
A Quick Note

Foreknowledge and Providence
Determinism’s Difficulties
Opening a Can of Worms
Slight of Hand Does Not a Theory Make
Looking at the Causal Joint
The Silmarillion: Helping Solve the Predestination Free Will Paradox
Extra-Temporal Foreknowledge
Time and Before Time

Freedom
What Freedom Isn’t
Two Kinds of Personal Causation
Free Will More than Feeling Free

Pain and Evil
Setting up the Question: The Deeper Self
Turning Finite Creatures (with Free Wills) Into Gods
The Master’s Theodicy
Animal Pain

Hell
A Self Rectifying Mechanism
Two Greek Words
Justice vs…?
Psychological Inconsistencies

Scripture
Tightrope Walking
A Modern Ancient Oracle
Puzzled But Not Worried

Christ
Making Up Jesus
There is a Time to Feast

The work can be found here: notesonthefoothills.wordpress.com

#2

I’ll take a look Chris! Interesting. :smiley:

Eek - the link did not work for me.

#3

So according to the article, is order for us to exist temporally, we must exist eternally somehow. For that to true, we also must exist 'before the world began". That’s an argument for the pre-existence of souls. In a way, this makes sense. especially when factoring the concept of evil. perhaps evil only exists in the temporal world, but is absent from the eternal. How this can be, I do not know, but it does allow evil to exist without thwarting the overall plan and dishonoring God by saying H is the source of moral evil. It also supposes that we are even now existing in eternity right now as we speak, which is mind-boggling to imagine.

#4

Dondi,

Yes, I do believe in the pre-temporal existence of souls. And you condense the argument nicely: in order to be connected in time, there must be a “non-temporal” substance which unifies the soul within time which itself is not constantly undergoing change in time. I also think pre-temporal existence is the only way to harmonize predestination and free will and can explain how the entire human race cannot help but sin (once they reach moral maturity) and still be blame worthy for these sins.

Dave,

Try the link again by copying and pasting. It should work.

#5

It came up today with no problem! I’ll get a chance to read later on today, I hope.