OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
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User ID: 359
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
8mo ago
The one thing that I'm fairly certain of is that existence cannot be simply explained by an infinite casual chain. Lets say there was an infinite line of people, each has their hands by their side. They all have the command that when the person to the left of them raises their hands, they will raise their hand. If no one has their hands raised, then no one ever will raise their hands. It doesn't matter if they're standing in a circle. It doesn't matter how many infinities of people there are.
(Edit: This doesn't mean that there can't be a infinite causal chain, just that by itself it doesn't answer the question at hand.)
The question of "why something, instead of nothing?" does not rely on the universe having a beginning. It begins with the attempt to explain the existence of a single thing, here and now, that has the potential to be many other things, and going on from there.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1yr ago
I don't extend it to novels where a protagonist harms another, has sex, or does any specific immoral action. I would extend it to a form of fiction where the sole point was to dwell/glorify violence, sex, or a specific immoral action. Most forms of fiction provide some sort of philosophical evaluation of right/wrong, and utilizes immoral actions to demonstrate this. Or they provide a psychological snapshot of someone else's viewpoint, which broadens the mind of the reader. Or they provide a glimpse into another way of life.
Something like Agony in Pink, on the other hand, takes a little something away from everyone who reads it, be it time or a tiny amount of psychological well-being.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
4mo ago
I don't want to discuss metaphysics, you are the one who started this conversation. You are the one who made the bold claim that the Cosmological Argument was debunked decades ago and then linked to a source that clearly doesn't understand what the word 'cause' even is. It's not a hard word to understand!
Then after I demonstrated that I knew more on the topic than you, you still linked to the Wikipedia article on God of the Gaps, like I wouldn't have ever encountered that phrase before. You keep setting yourself up as an expert, but when I get in the weeds with you, you back out. Stop setting yourself up as an expert in the Cosmological Argument.
All I was doing before you started this topic was demonstrating that Bishop Robert Barron was a public intellectual given the criteria provided.
A huge problem is that you are wading into a discussion that has a lot of back and forth. It's not the same as a Holocaust denier that is talking only to Holocaust deniers. Loke is formulating a response, referencing well-known models and terms, to atheistic philosophers of religion (there are many, such as Linford who is referenced throughout Loke's argument.) Unlike the disdain that people who argue with Holocaust deniers might express, atheistic philosophers of religion find the whole topic of great enough importance to devote a lifetime to, and support the position that "it is possible to rationally believe in God."
The Ekyroptic universe is a physics theory you might have heard popularized as "The Big Bounce." It was proposed by some pretty important theoretical physicists, Burt Ovrut, Paul Steinhardt and Neil Turok. Using the accurate scientific term to refer to a theory is not a knock against the argument.
The cosmological argument is explicitly not a God of the Gaps argument. It is not pointing out a gap in scientific knowledge. It is not:
- We don't know what started the universe
- Therefore God.
The above would be a God of the Gaps argument. Instead, the Cosmological argument is a logical argument based on the same metaphysical assumptions required to conduct scientific inquiry in the first place.
Edit: I don't really want to argue for the First Cause here. I realize I end up presenting a lot of arguments for the first cause in order to support my point, but I am not going to "make my point legibly" because my point is not that God exists.
The point that I am arguing for is that your arguments are incredibly outdated, and were wrong even back when you formed them. But despite this, you are completely, irrationally, confident in your belief that the cosmological argues for something it does not.
It would be like if I said, "I closed the tab once your scientist started talking about evolution. Don't you know that was debunked a century ago?" and then I link to an old web page that asks where the missing link is. Then I say, "If your scientist believes in evolution as the origin of living species, explain how non-living viruses can cross between species?"
It's fine to not follow this debate in detail, everyone has their own bandwith. But you never understood what theists ever meant by the cosmological argument. That is my point I am trying to make legibly.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
4mo ago
“No one has given any reason to think that the First Cause is all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good, etc.” is not a serious objection to the argument.
People who make this claim – like, again, Dawkins in The God Delusion – show thereby that they haven’t actually read the writers they are criticizing. They are typically relying on what other uninformed people have said about the argument, or at most relying on excerpts ripped from context and stuck into some anthology (as Aquinas’s Five Ways so often are). Aquinas in fact devotes hundreds of pages across various works to showing that a First Cause of things would have to be all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good, and so on and so forth. Other Scholastic writers and modern writers like Leibniz and Samuel Clarke also devote detailed argumentation to establishing that the First Cause would have to have the various divine attributes.
Of course, an atheist might try to rebut these various arguments. But to pretend that they don’t exist – that is to say, to pretend, as so many do, that defenders of the cosmological argument typically make an undefended leap from “There is a First Cause” to “There is a cause of the world that is all-powerful, all-knowing, etc.” – is, once again, simply to show that one doesn’t know what one is talking about.
To give these arguments takes pages and pages, here is a very hasty version missing all the background for the purpose of fitting into a comment. Chapter 6 of Five Proofs of the Existence of God provides a much more detailed argument.
Several attributes seem to follow immediately and obviously from God’s being Pure Act. Since to change is to be reduced from potency to act, that which is Pure Act, devoid of all potency, must be immutable or incapable of change (ST I.9.1). Since material things are of their nature compounds of act and potency, that which is Pure Act must be immaterial and thus incorporeal or without any sort of body (ST I.3.1–2). Since such a being is immutable and time (as Aquinas argues) cannot exist apart from change, that which is Pure Act must also be eternal, outside time altogether, without beginning or end (ST I.10.1–2).
As the cause of the world, God obviously has power, for “all operation proceeds from power” (QDP 1.1; cf. ST I.25.1). Moreover, “the more actual a thing is the more it abounds in active power,” so that as Pure Act, God must be infinite in power (QDP 1.2; cf. ST I.25.2). In line with the mainstream classical theistic tradition, Aquinas holds that since there is no sense to be made of doing what is intrinsically impossible (e.g. making a round square or something else involving a self-contradiction), to say that God is omnipotent does not entail that he can do such things, but only that he can do whatever is intrinsically possible (ST I.25.3).
The Fifth Way, if successful, establishes by itself that God has intellect. Furthermore, intelligent beings are distinguished from non-intelligent ones in that the latter, but not the former, possess only their own forms. For an “intelligent being is naturally adapted to have also the form of some other thing; for the idea of the thing known is in the knower” (ST I.14.1). That is to say, to understand some thing is for that thing’s essence to exist in some sense in one’s own intellect. Now the reason non-intelligent things lack this ability to have the form of another thing is that they are wholly material, and material things can only possess one form at a time, as it were. Hence immaterial beings can possess the forms of other things precisely because they are immaterial; and the further a thing is from materiality, the more powerful its intellect is bound to be. Thus human beings, which, though they have immaterial intellects are also embodied, are less intelligent than angels, which are incorporeal. “Since therefore God is in the highest degree of immateriality … it follows that He occupies the highest place in knowledge” (ST I.14.1). This argument presupposes a number of theses in the philosophy of mind and cannot be evaluated, or even properly understood, unless those theses are first understood. We will explore these theses in chapter 4.
We can also conclude, in Aquinas’s view, that “there is will in God, as there is intellect: since will follows upon intellect” (ST I.19.1). Why do will and intellect necessarily go together? For Aquinas, things naturally are inclined or tend towards their natural forms, and will not of themselves rest, as it were, until that form is perfectly realized; hence the acorn, for example, has a built-in tendency towards realizing the form of an oak, and will naturally realize that form unless somehow prevented by something outside it. What we are describing in this example is of course the goal-directedness of the acorn as something having a final cause. But other sorts of thing have final causes too. In sentient beings, namely animals, this inclination towards the perfection of their forms is what we call appetite. And in beings with intellect it is what we call will. Thus anything having an intellect must have will. (We will return to this topic in the next chapter.) Of course, since God does not have the limitations we have, he does not have any ends he needs to fulfill, any more than he needs to acquire any knowledge. Thus, as with our attribution of power, intellect, and other attributes to God, our attribution of will to him is intended in an analogous rather than a univocal sense.
Since something is perfect to the degree it is in act or actual, God as Pure Act must be perfect (ST I.4.1). Given the convertibility of being and goodness, God as Pure Act and Being Itself must also be good, indeed the highest good (ST I.6).
Feser, Edward. Aquinas: A Beginner's Guide (Beginner's Guides) (pp. 95-96).
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
8mo ago
The changeless thing exists out of time and knows all its actions before, during, and after them. It is without emotion. If that is incompatible with your understanding of the Judeo-Christian God then I don't know why that matters to this conversation.
The changless thing is allowed to casually affect things, in fact, that is it's nature entirely. The changeless thing's nature is entirely, wholly, and simply to act, to bring into existence. You would need to present a really good argument for why this would imply the universe is part of God. It is contingent on God, and is possibly inevitable based on God's nature, but has a different nature.
Edit: One classical theist described God as an "omnipotence trope," if that helps conceptualize what theists are talking about.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
3mo ago
I vaguely remember that he wasn't allowed to talk after Jan 6th. He lost Twitter, I don't remember any press conferences, there was the impeachment, but I don't think he was permitted to talk to the public or sign anything.
Legally he should have been able to issue pardons up until his last day, that is a power the president has. But I don't know if he was allowed near a pen.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
4mo ago
These are words of art that require precise definitions and examples to understand what is even being said here. For example your rebuttal of "quantum superposition" doesn't work on what is meant by the word "form." Without writing a hundred pages on what is meant by the terms Act, Potency, Perfection, etc I cannot defend this argument, and so I will not be defending these arguments in a forum post (or at all, dozens of better people have written these books already.) But please desist from claiming that theists do not give arguments that go from First Cause to the Divine Attributes.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
4mo ago
I am very disheartened to hear that you have deemed the Cosmological argument 'trounced... for decades." I have seen atheists like Dawkins completely misunderstand the Cosmological argument and refute caricatures of it. I have seen some philosophers provide interesting propositions that make supporters of the Cosmological argument need to add details and rebuttals. This is not a stagnant field, and no side has won (though there are several theist arguments that have no good rebuttals yet.)
In your link, rebuttal 1 shows that the author does not understand what is meant by "Cause," because radioactive decay absolutely has a cause. I don't like Craig's argument because the premise "The Universe Had a Beginning" is harder to defend than other premises, and I will not defend WLC's Cosmological argument. A flaw with Rebuttal 2 is that not every event needs to be separated from its cause in time, there are many causes that occur concurrently with the event it causes, like all Essentially Ordered Causes. My ire for Rebuttal 3 increases every time I see it. Just going to quote Feser on this one:
“What caused God?” is not a serious objection to the argument.
Part of the reason this is not a serious objection is that it usually rests on the assumption that the cosmological argument is committed to the premise that “Everything has a cause,” and as I’ve just said, this is simply not the case. But there is another and perhaps deeper reason.
The cosmological argument in its historically most influential versions is not concerned to show that there is a cause of things which just happens not to have a cause. It is not interested in “brute facts” – if it were, then yes, positing the world as the ultimate brute fact might arguably be as defensible as taking God to be. On the contrary, the cosmological argument – again, at least as its most prominent defenders (Aristotle, Aquinas, Leibniz, et al.) present it – is concerned with trying to show that not everything can be a “brute fact.” What it seeks to show is that if there is to be an ultimate explanation of things, then there must be a cause of everything else which not only happens to exist, but which could not even in principle have failed to exist. And that is why it is said to be uncaused – not because it is an arbitrary exception to a general rule, not because it merely happens to be uncaused, but rather because it is not the sort of thing that can even in principle be said to have had a cause, precisely because it could not even in principle have failed to exist in the first place. And the argument doesn’t merely assume or stipulate that the first cause is like this; on the contrary, the whole point of the argument is to try to show that there must be something like this.
It is not special pleading, it's basic logic. The Causal Principle is defined as "whatever begins to exist has a cause." This is a good defense of the Causal Principle. If someone can give a very good argument that A)There exists a series of causes and effects and changes, B) It is not the case that the series has an infinite regress, and C) It is not the case that its members are joined together like a closed loop, then they have given a very good argument that D) Therefore, the series has a First Cause and a first change. And many people have indeed made very good arguments on this, here is one of the latest
If there is a first, uncaused-Cause, and whatever begins to exist has a cause, then the first uncaused-Cause did not begin to exist. If the First Cause did not begin to exist it is not some sort of special pleading to say that it has no cause.
If you then go on to say, "The Universe didn't begin to exist, therefore it does not need a cause," the universe is a set of things that change, and this provides a good defense of "It is not the case that the series has an infinite regress."
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
8mo ago
I'm going to start referring to the philosopher's God as pGod, to disambiguate and maybe help distinguish the idea in your mind from any religious upbringing you might have had.
I have no idea what the difference between "God knows all its actions" and "God does not know its actions" are. What does it actually mean for an unchanging system to "know" a thing?
I think it can only be discussed analogously, and determined negatively. Meaning, we can be certain of what pGod isn't, and use all those "isn'ts" to develop an "is." It is so far outside our realm of experience as temporal, complex creatures.
When we know something, we are grasping its form and holding the form somewhere inside our self. As the originator and grounds of all forms, pGod grasps these forms in their most perfect way. That is what is meant by pGod knowing everything.
Also, is there any particular reason that we would expect that the universe we live in is one that is causally downstream of an instance of this specific type of god?
What specific type of god? pGod, the First Cause God? The arguments from casualty, rationality, motion, essence, etc all point to the same type of pGod. They are all arguments for the same God that Is, Existence itself, formulated differently to avoid different objections as they arise, to try to express the idea more clearly.
Or do you mean the omniscient, omnipotent, divinely simple God? The same arguments that make the case for pGod are then continued to require such things. As you can see above, the omniscience follows from the nature of the pGod as the ground of all things, that which is "proved" (philosophically, proof just means a logically coherent argument given certain starting positions) in the argument for pGod.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
8mo ago
It doesn't seem you're responding to what I'm actually saying so I'm not sure what productive conversation can be had here. I'm not arguing from contingency or motion. I'm not even making an argument for God. I did not say a particular actual infinity of contingent things is impossible - in fact I explicitly said it's possible and how ("brute fact")!
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
8mo ago
That there are real relationships within the universe itself, without which it would be something substantively different, indicates that this is not the answer. Classical Theism requires that God be "divinely simple," composed of no parts that could even be conceptually taken away.
But I will admit we are coming up to the edge of which arguments I remember comfortably. There are lots of distinctions made between types of relationships, causal, change, etc and I have forgotten more here than I remember.
Needless to say, if presented with the box described in the OP, I would open it in a heart beat! I have spent a decent percentage of my life trying to answer the question with the tools I have, and will undoubtedly spend a lot of time in the future on the matter (I have Gaven Kerr's "De Ente et Essentia" on my desk and am trying to psyche myself up for what some have called the best proof for God's existence yet.)
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
8mo ago
I'm not saying "I can't imagine." I said, with the starting position of no contingent things, having an infinite amount of no contingent things does not equal a contingent thing. An infinite series of contingent things that don't exist cannot explain existence. That is what I said, that is what I meant.
Your example relies on a "brute fact:" at least one contingent thing exists. And that is an argument that some philosophers make! It may be true. It is a possible solution. The implications of accepting a "brute fact" haven't been fully unpacked yet but from what I understand it is a possible solution.
I see two possible solutions to the problem of existence: classical theism (at least one non-contingent thing exists) or acceptance of brute facts.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
8mo ago
The other alternative theory is that some things just are "brute fact", but that this "brute fact" does not have the features of God in classical theism for whatever reason the philosopher favors.
The question, "Why something, instead of nothing?" isn't at all an easy question, and is not solved by an infinite universe. I don't mean to imply God is an easy answer to the question. Just that there is a differentiation being made by classical theists between God and the universe, and that distinction is "change."
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1yr ago
Can we split the difference and say female temperament in a male body?
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1yr ago
You still didn't call out a single stance that I hold which can be gleaned by the tagline. "Reactionary" just means someone who believes that, for at least one topic, some group in the past did things slightly better than they way they are now. The definition of the word itself is anodyne.
For example, the thing I am most reactionary about is that I believe we did a lot of child-rearing better in the past. We've slaughtered nature and kept kids in an electronic bubble, preventing them from calming down or encountering something transcendent. More kids have never existed due to car seat regulations than lives saved by car seat regulations.. Parents used to be able to send small children to be entertained by groups of other small children, playfully existing outside while the mother did economically useful tasks, such as textile production and food processing. Instead, we have created a system that maximally stresses out parents while preventing kids from thriving.
Were you able to guess any of that by my tagline? Meanwhile, the username with 1488 in it tells me the poster is arguing when creating their username some variation of "the Holocaust didn't really happen the way people think, but the Jews deserved it anyways." There isn't really a wide range of possibilities there.
My tagline is not, "Repeal Car Seat Regulations." That would be myself making a provocative argument in a place people wouldn't be able to counter-argue.
I don't think the Mods said exactly that they are "asserting their aesthetic preference." That is not in the mod chain I can see at least. Ctrl+F "aesthetic" doesn't come up with any hits. Instead, it looks like you are badly misinterpreting them.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1yr ago
In A Brave New World there is a comment about encouraging kids to play sexual games with each other as a normal part of schooling. Would you consider this grooming, even though the adults performing the encouragement are not the ones getting sexual pleasure? Would an adult standing over two five year olds, helping them get undressed, telling them where to put their hands on the other, be grooming?
I think most people regard any outside encouragement for kids to have more and riskier sex to be a Bad Thing, and the more severe and direct examples ought to be criminal. Absent any other criminal terminology, people use the word Grooming, regardless of who is getting sexual pleasure.
And yes, technically any adult helping any kid gain access to porn is grooming. Even the cool grandpa and the old fashioned magazines. It is illegal to show porn to minors. Do people forget this?
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
15hr ago
The difficulty with meta-studies on saturated fat vs unsaturated fat is that studies use lard or chicken fat as their example of saturated fat, when in reality those two fats are highly unsaturated. This leads to farces like "Learning and Memory Impairment in Rats Fed a High Saturated Fat Diet" They analyze the fatty acid composition of their lard and it is only 30% saturated. Despite this, the study uses lard as their Saturated fat intervention.
Specific to Hooper et al. (2020) that your linked article uses for it's argument, I am looking at their studies and am having trouble finding which showed a benefit from substituting polyunsaturated fat with saturated fats. At the most, I see some that show benefits from reducing fat entirely, which I would agree with. Reducing all fat will reduce the amount of total linoleic acid and a High Carb, low fat diet would be good from my understanding. (Low fat means < 15% calories from fat, most low fat studies have 30% of calories from fat, which is practically the normal amount of fat intake in a SAD, but that's another story.)
Hooper's results don't seem really indicative of anything. Your link extols the results of this figure, but outside the couple tails where they got the Saturated fat intake really low, there doesn't seem to be a clear correlation between increasing Sat Fat and disease. Under 9% of Sat fat only has data on a few risk events, which makes me think that there are only a handful of studies with that amount of sat fat. I'm trying to figure out if this data point reflects the studies that went with High carb, low fat.
However, the figure in question still shows that when dietary saturated fat reaches >12% of calories, markers improve! Risk of Stroke goes way down. CVD goes down.
Weight isn't studied in the Meta-analysis at all.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
18d ago
It supports the narrative that most Israelis can just "go back where they came from."
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
18d ago
But for every person like me, there's someone living at their parent's house (parental support), that their parents own (home ownership), with a long term girlfriend. There isn't a material difference between them and the requirements you list. The things keeping them from having kids are attitude and perception.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1mo ago
Yes, I am in favor of more palliative care options and honest counseling. But the question isn't whether you would let the child die but rather would you let the parents kill the child? Maybe the distinction is meaningless to your ethical system, but it is not to many people's ethical systems.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1mo ago
Let's say a child was missed in screening and was born alive with Trisomy 18. Is it ok to kill the child then and there?
If the argument jeroboam is making is that after the first trimester the child is old enough to resemble what we value in a human, and therefore should have a basic right to life, then why would the presence of a disease change that?
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1mo ago
I'm assuming you're treating the covenant referred to here as roughly the same as the Mosaic one? That one definitely does promise life: "the one who does these things shall live by them," which Paul quotes in Galatians.
Do you believe that Jews who followed the Law went to Heaven without Jesus's death, and in fact would have made it to Heaven without Jesus' death? I never heard that position before, but Paul's quote in Galatians does not support it. Galatians 3:11-12: "Clearly no one who relies on the law is justified before God, because “the righteous will live by faith.” The law is not based on faith; on the contrary, it says, “The person who does these things will live by them.”" The full quote is clear, the law is based on "living by" i.e. performing actions. It's not saying the law provides eternal life.
(I'm going to start using the Lattrimore translation, because I'm noticing a lot of theological language smuggled in when I switch between NRSV and NIV. Lattrimore was a secular Greek translator who is most famous for his excellent translation of the Iliad. He did become Episcopalian towards the end of his life, but this conversion was after he translated the New Testament. I think we're both trying to figure out the words as Paul wrote them, and short of studying Greek this is the best resource I can get.)
Let's go back to Romans. Paul starts Romans off with discussion of Pagan wickedness. Then he broadens it to discuss everyone's (even Jewish) sinfulness.
Romans 2:6-8: Through your hardness and your unrepentant heart you are storing up for yourself anger on the day of anger and the revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who will give to each according to his actions: to those who, through steadfastness in doing good, strive for glory and honor and incorruptibility, he will give everlasting life
This doesn't sound like sole fide.
Then we have Romans 2:12-15 "For those who sinned outside the law will also perish outside the law: and those who sinned while within the law will be judged according to the law. For it is not those who listen to the law who are righteous in the sight of God, but it is those who do what is in the law who will be justified. For when Gentiles who do not have the law do by nature what is in the law, they, without having the law, are their own law; and they display the work of the law engraved on their hearts;"
So from the beginning, Paul is referencing the Law as referred to Torah observance. Gentiles "do not have the Law", but "display the work of the law engraved on their hearts." Paul seems really concerned with telling Roman Jews that Gentiles are able to do good without being Jewish. Because they are Gentiles they aren't participating in the nation-building or ceremonial aspects of the Jewish law, but rather the natural law or the moral law.
Throughout this, Paul is admonishing the Jewish people in Rome to not boast. They are just as sinful as the Gentile populace.
Now we move to Romans 4. So that I am not accused of ignoring any detail, I will go through section by section and explain how it makes perfect sense from a Catholic view:
1-5: What then shall we say of Abraham, our forefather in the way of the flesh? If Abraham was justified because of his actions, he has reason for glorying; but not before God, since what does the scripture say? Abraham believed God, and it was counted as righteousness in him. For one who does something, repayment is counted not as grace but as his due; but for one who does nothing, but believes in him who justifies the impious man, his faith is counted as righteousness.
Abraham is the patriarch, the father of the Jewish people. Abraham cannot boast because he had no power in himself to justify himself. Instead, God reaches out to Abraham and (despite some shakiness on Abraham's part) Abraham responds with faith. It is Abraham's response that counts as righteousness. Abraham believing God would give him descendants was a good/just/righteous action - it counts as righteous. It doesn't count as neutral or evil.
God singling Abraham out is a huge grace that Abraham received. Abraham did not deserve God's offer of a covenant. It is Abraham's faith in God that was considered the righteous action.
6-12 So David also says of the blessedness of the man whom God counts as righteous, apart from his actions: Blessed are they whose lawless acts have been forgiven and whose sins have been hidden away. Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord does not count. Now, is this blessedness for the circumcised or also for the uncircumcised? Since we say the faith of Abraham was counted as righteousness. How then was it counted? In his circumcised or uncircumcised state? It was when he was not yet circumcised, but still uncircumcised. And he received the mark of circumcision, the seal upon the righteousness of that faith he had when he was still uncircumcised; to be the father of all those who are believers through their uncircumcised state so that righteousness could be counted for them, and also to be the father of the circumcised for those who not only have been circumcised but also walk in his footsteps through the faith, which our father Abraham had when he was still uncircumcised.
Abraham was able to achieve one canonically righteous action (his faith in God's promise) before being circumcised. Therefore, the uncircumcised Gentiles can also consider Abraham their Father in Faith (see that this is contrasted to verse 1, Abraham as the forefather in the way of the flesh.) And the circumcised are also supposed to walk in faith just like Abraham.
13-15 For the promise to Abraham, or his seed, that he should be the inheritor of the world, was not on account of the law, but of the righteousness of his faith. For if the inheritors are those who belong to the law, then the faith is made void and the promise is gone; for the law causes anger, but where there is no law there is no lawbreaking.
God told Abraham that the his descendants would inherit before the Torah existed. Abraham's faith was righteous (not imputed righteousness, but unqualified righteous.) It cannot be that only those who follow the Law of Moses will inherit the world, because the law by itself does not justify. "The law causes anger." This ties back to Chapter 3 verse 20: "since through the law comes consciousness of sin." The law only reveals human weakness. No one was ever going to follow the Torah all the way to Heaven.
16-21 Thus (it is) because of faith, and thus by grace, that the promise should hold good for all his seed; not only for him who has the law but for him who has the faith of Abraham. He is the father of us all, as it is written: I have made you the father of many nations. It held good in the sight of God, in whom he believed, the God who puts life into the dead and summons into existence the things that do not exist. He against hope believed in the hope that he would become the father of many nations according to what had been said, that is: Thus shall your seed be. And Abraham, without weakening in his faith, knew that his own body was that of a dead man, since he was about a hundred years old, and he knew the dead state of Sarah’s womb, but he was not distracted with unbelief in God’s promise but was strengthened in his belief, giving glory to God and assured that God was able to do as he had promised.
Description of Abraham's act of faith. Restatement that faith is a gift, an unearned grace. Restatement that Abraham is the father of all those who have faith as well as the father of Jews in flesh. There is a little bit of a comparison between God bringing life from Abraham and Sarah's dead bodies and God bringing spiritual life from the spiritually dead Gentiles, but Paul doesn't really elaborate there.
22-25 Thus it was that faith counted as righteousness in him. But it was not written for him alone that it was so counted for him, but also for us for whom it is to be counted, for us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was betrayed for our sins and raised up again for our justification.
Abraham's faith was righteous. God made sure that this passage was included in Genesis so Paul could win this argument with the Romans that the uncircumcised can be saved. I see very clearly the Catholic view of God sending grace, Abraham accepting the grace, and then that action of accepting the grace counting as righteousness.
This whole process is about how Abraham was justified, not his becoming righteous with this as one step of a broader whole (note: an aorist in 4:2, meaning a simple past action.
Abraham was dead when Paul wrote his letter, so whether he was justified or not would have happened in the past, not as something ongoing. But 4:2 is an ironic negation - Abraham wasn't justified because of his action. Also, the aorist simply states the fact that an action has happened. It gives no information on how long it took, or whether the results are still in effect. An aorist could mean that the action took years. But however long it took, it's over now because Abraham is dead.
Chemnitz' examination of the council of Trent
All four volumes are $180, do you know which volume or page number you're thinking of?
Alister McGrath is a reputable Evangelical historian. His book on the history of justification - Iustitia Dei - is widely regarded as one of the most comprehensive treatments of the subject. McGrath writes, "[If] the nature of justification is to be defended, it is therefore necessary to investigate the possible existence of 'forerunners of the Reformation doctrines of justification...' [This approach] fail in relation to the specific question of the nature of justification and justifying righteousness... A fundamental discontinuity was introduced into the western theological tradition where not had ever existed, or ever been contemplated, before. The Reformation understanding of the nature of justification - as opposed to its mode - must therefore be regarded as a genuine theological novum."
One of the foremost Evangelical scholars on the topic could not find a historical belief in Forensic Justification or the imputed righteousness of Christ. I know that many Protestants believe in a great apostasy. But I personally expect that those who lived closest to Paul's time and spoke Greek in the same cultural context would best understand what Paul's message is. And no one in the Patristic age read Romans and thought, "Forensic Justification."
For example, St. Clement of Rome who was bishop of Rome from 88 AD to 99 AD wrote, "Let us clothe ourselves with concord and humility, ever exercising self-control, standing far off from all whispering and evil-speaking, being justified by our works and not our words." (1 Clement 30) This is someone who lived in Rome and likely read the first edition of the letter Paul wrote. This is someone who knew Peter and Paul - Paul references Clement in Philippians 4:3. If Paul was arguing sole fide, why was Luther the first one to understand it?
What would be the appropriate response from the courts if Obama tried to run for a third term? What if he was really popular?
The issue at hand, which I don't think most of the comments here are addressing, is that a significant number of politicians, lawyers, etc believe that President Trump is disqualified from being on the ballot in the same way that Obama is disqualified from the ballot. They mostly come to this conclusion by looking at the January 6th report.
The most significant thing is that the court ruled that the January 6th report could be admitted into evidence and is being used as fact. The Supreme Court of the United States cannot contest that as it is a state-level decision, and the USC decides matters of law, not fact.
The cries that this is anti-democratic is missing the point. Restrictions on our elections are intentionally anti-democratic, but our books are full of them. Term limits, age limits, etc. This suits me, as I much prefer to live in a Republic than a Democracy.
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