Arcing is a very useful tool, and arcing in Greek is even better. Please visit www.biblearc.com

Here is an example:

Philippians 2:1-11 (KJV…modified)
V1-V4 (If…then…)
1If there be therefore any consolation in Christ,

2Fulfil ye my joy, that ye be likeminded(subjunctive),

V6-V8 the progressive humbling of Christ, V10-V11 his being exalted by God the Father

5Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:

6Who thought it not robbery to be equal with God:

7But made himself of no reputation, (that is by taking upon him the form of a servant,…) ……………the kenosis theory errs here (the participles define the term kenosis

he humbled himself, (that is by being obedient unto death,…)

9Wherefore

God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name:

10That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow(subjunctive), …

11And that every tongue should confess(subjunctive) that Jesus Christ is Lord,

to the glory of God the Father.

By
Tiantang Peng

AP11 The History of Philosophy
Professor Elkin

INTRODUCTION
“Thought, in short, made itself a power in the real world, and exercised enormous influence.” Hegel wrote in his Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, after he evaluated the ancients’ attitude toward thinking. He wrote: for they thought freely and fearlessly, though they meant no harm, the societies, religions, and others principal ordinances of life were subverted. He might not realize how enormous and destructive influence his thought exercised over the cause of human history.

I. HEGELIAN DIALECTIC IS PERVASIVE
Hegel’s concept of pervasive and continuous evolution dialectically is the central thesis of his philosophy. In his Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, after criticizing Kant’s failure of enumerating only four Antinomies, he wrote:
Here it will be sufficient to say that the Antinomies are not confined to the four special objects taken from Cosmology: they appear in all objects of every kind, in all conceptions, notions, and Ideas. To be aware of this and to know objects in this property of theirs makes a vital part in a philosophical theory. For the property thus indicated is what we shall afterwards describe as the Dialectical influence in logic.

What Kant advanced was only describing the limitation of reason in comprehending the nature of the world, that is, the antinomies in Understanding, as Hegel stated:
In other words it maintains two opposite propositions about the same object, and in such a way that each of them has to be maintained with equal necessity. From this it follows that the body of cosmical fact, the specific statements descriptive of which run into contradiction, cannot be a self-subsistent reality, but only an appearance. The explanation offered by Kant alleges that the contradiction does not affect the object in its own proper essence, but attaches only to the Reason which seeks to comprehend it.

However, Hegel didn’t content with this observation, and criticized Kant for not being thorough in his study of antinomies. He called Kant’s antinomies phenomena the Dialectical movement of thought, that is, the nature of thought has intrinsically antinomies. Thus, against Kant’s proposal he had no problem to think that the world, the object of the Understanding, not the reason, the instrument of the Understanding, is the seat of Kant’s antinomies. Here is what Hegel wrote:
That true and positive meaning of the antinomies is this: that every actual thing involves a coexistence of opposed elements. Consequently to know, or, in other words, to comprehend an object is equivalent to being conscious of it as a concrete unity of opposed determinations.

He continued his writing:
It is of the highest importance to ascertain and understand rightly the nature of Dialectics. Wherever there is movement, wherever there is life, wherever anything is carried into effect in the actual world, there Dialectic is at work. It is also the soul of all knowledge which is truly scientific…. we find that the limitations of the finite do not merely come from without; that its own nature is the cause of its abrogation, and that by its own nature is the cause of its abrogation, and that by its own act it passes into its counterpart.

In other word, Dialectic phenomena are the result of finitude, so everything finite has innate Dialectics movement in action. To prove his points, he gave some dialectical examples: Man with both vitality and mortality; the motions of heavenly bodies; the process of meteorological action; in ethics, pride comes before a fall; in political life, extreme anarchy and extreme despotism naturally lead to one another. And he stated, Even feeling, bodily as well as mental, has its dialectics.

II. HEGELIAN DIALECTIC IS A PERPETUAL MOVEMENT OF A TRIAD: THESIS-ANTITHESIS-SYNTHESIS
Here, according to standard definition of the terms, the thesis is an intellectual proposition; the antithesis is simply the negation of the thesis, a reaction to the proposition; and the synthesis solves the conflict between the thesis and antithesis by reconciling their common truths, and forming a new proposition.
This three-step process is often used to describe Hegelian dialectic, but Hegel attributed the terminology to Kant. These terminologies and presentations are not into the heart of Hegelian dialectic. Hegel didn’t want to follow Kant to limit these antimonies phenomena inside the discussion of thought. He considered them the very nature of things, and Hegel used an entirely different terminology for dialectical triads. To think this triad is the whole or central thesis of Hegelian dialectics would be a mistake, as McTaggart implied in his Studies in the Hegelian dialectic. Nevertheless, the following discussion was based on Chapter IV of this book.
Abstract-Negative-Concrete (in Hegel’s phenomenology of mind in 1807)
Hegel explained his change of terminology in 1807. The first term, ‘thesis,’ deserves its anti-thesis simply because it is too abstract. The third term, ‘synthesis,’ has completed the triad, making it concrete and no longer abstract, by absorbing the negative.
Immediate-Mediated-Concrete (in his Science of Logic in 1812)
Later Hegel used immediate-mediate-concrete to describe his triads in 1812. The most abstract concepts are those that present themselves to our consciousness immediately. For example, the notion of Pure Being for Hegel was the most abstract concept of all. The negative of this infinite abstraction would require an entire Encyclopedia, building category by category, dialectically, until it culminated in the category of Absolute Mind or Spirit.
Knowing much broad senses Hegel had in his dialectic triad we will continue using Kantian triad for the sake of simplicity of our discussion.
Hegelian dialectic is a continuing process of transitions from first to second then to third triad…and the cycle starts again…the end of the process is Absolute or God
Again I think that McTaggart was mistaken because in his heart he is a Kantian based on his writing in “Studies of Hegelian dialects,” there he insisted that the essence of Hegelian dialectic process was due to the incomplete insight of the Understanding:
The essence of the whole dialectic process lies in the assertion that the various pairs of contrary categories are only produced by abstraction from the fuller category in which they are synthesized already. We are not to fabricate some idea to reconcile two unrelated and contradictory ideas. We are merely restoring the unity from which those ideas originally came since the creation of the contradiction was artificial and subjective. The transitions of Hegelian dialectic process are to overcome mistake about the nature of reality due to the incomplete insight of the Understanding.

In Hegel dialectic process there are three steps. We go from thesis to antithesis, from thesis and antithesis to synthesis, and from synthesis again to a fresh thesis.
Within this context it is easy to see that every finite proposition in a finite category is not absolute truth. It invariably incurs a reaction to arise antithesis sooner or later. The valid antithesis indicates that thesis is untrue in absolute sense. This encourages us to seek reconciliation of both thesis and antithesis in higher category, and this process of seeking reconciliation is called overcoming.
A satisfactory reconciliation of thesis and antithesis gives rise to synthesis, which is a better and higher understanding, nonetheless, a finite proposition of a finite category, and we should expect that this proposition causes reaction and gives rise to antithesis, and antithesis calls for overcoming…the cycle or progression continues.
However, we need to remember that Hegel took this kind of dialectic as the dialectic nature of thought, or dialectical movement of thought, a mere starting point of his pervasive dialectics.

III. HEGELIAN DIALECTIC TRANSITIONS HAS DIFFERENT CHARACTERISTIC IN DIFFERENT CATEGORY
In the heart of Hegelian dialectic movement is his positive understanding of the concept of negation. In his science of Logic, he wrote:
It is the negative, that which constitutes the quality alike of dialectical reason and of understanding; it negates what is simple, thus positing the specific difference of the understanding; it equally resolves it and is thus dialectical.
But it does not stay in the nothing of this result but in the result is no less positive, and in this way it has restored what was at first simple, but as a universal which is within itself concrete; a given particular is not subsumed under this universal but in this determining, this positing of a difference, and the resolving of it, the particular has at the same time already determined itself. This spiritual movement which, in its simple undifferentiatedness, gives itself its own determinateness and in its determinateness its equality with itself, which therefore is the immanent development of the Notion, this movement is the absolute method of knowing and at the same time is the immanent soul of the content itself.

Again, I suspect that McTaggart was mistaken in his understanding of Hegelian dialectics, but I have no more time to spend with Hegel’s writing, so I will content to summarize Taggart’s writing, knowing his Kantian biases:
The abstract form of the advance is,
• In Being, an other and transition into an other. When somewhat becomes another, the somewhat has vanished. Transition into something else is the dialectical process within the range of Being; and the reference of one term to another is only implicit.
• In Essence, showing a reflection in the opposite… one category does not pass into another, but refers to another merely. The transition of Essence is at the same time no transition; for in the passage of different into different, the different does not vanish: the different terms remain in their relation. The transition is mere reflection (bringing something else into light): here there is no real other, but only diversity, and the reference of the one to its other is explicit…
• In Notion…
• In Nature…
• In Spirit…
………….
• In Being each category appears, taken by itself, to be permanent and exclusive of all others, and to have no principle of transition in it. It is only outside reflection which examines and breaks down this presence of stability, and shows us that the dialectic process is inevitable.
• In Essence each category by its own import refers to that which follows it, and the transition is seen to be inherent in its nature. But it is still felt to be, as it were, only an external effect of that nature. The categories have still an inner nature, as contrasted with the outer relations which they have with other categories. So far as they have this inner nature, they are still conceived as independent and self-centred.
• In Notion…
• In Nature…
• In Spirit…
…………………
• In Being the typical form is a transition from a thesis to an antithesis which is merely complementary to it, and is in no way superior to it in value or comprehensiveness. Only when these two extremes are taken together is there for the first time any advance to a higher notion. This advance is a transition to a synthesis which comes as a consequence of the thesis and antithesis jointly. It would be impossible to obtain the synthesis, or to make any advance, from either of the two complementary terms without the other. Neither is in any respect more advanced than the other, and neither of them can be said to be more closely connected than the other with the synthesis, in which both of them alike find their explanation and reconciliation.
• In Essence the matter is changed. Here the transition from thesis to antithesis is still indeed from positive to negative, but it is more than merely this. The antithesis is not merely complementary to the thesis, but is a correction of it. It is consequently more concrete and true than the thesis, and represents a real advance. And the transition to the synthesis is not now made so much from the comparison of the other two terms as from the antithesis alone. For the antithesis does not now merely oppose a contrary defect to the original defect of the thesis. It corrects, to some degree, that original mistake, and therefore has “the truth” of the thesis more or less within itself. As the action of the synthesis is to reconcile the thesis and the antithesis it can only be deduced from the comparison of the two. But if the antithesis has – as it has in Essence – the thesis as part of its own significance, it will present the whole of the data which the synthesis requires, and it will not be necessary to recur to the thesis, before the step to the synthesis is taken.
• In Notion…
• In Nature…
• In Spirit…

McTaggart didn’t discuss dialectics in Nature and Spirit as Hegel discussed in his Encyclopedia. It is odd that I didn’t see his Hegelian dialectics in Notion. Probably Kant wouldn’t discuss dialectics in those areas either. But I inserted the bullets to show his lacking.
However, the quoting, I assume McTaggart got them right in his limited view of Hegelian dialects, clearly showed that both the negation and unification took or advances within Hegelian dialectic movement have different forms in different areas. They have drastically different characteristic, and it is obvious that mixing up in these concepts can be disastrous, as history surely shows when people think freely and misguidedly.

IV. HEGELIAN DIALECTIC PROCESS HAS BEEN SEEN IN HISTORY, SOCIETY, AND NATURE
“Thought, in short, made itself a power in the real world, and exercised enormous influence.”
I quote Hegel again. I suspect that some advocates of Hegelian dialectics were mistaken in either their understanding of him or their applications of his dialectics, and the critics of Hegelian dialectics were much off the targets also.
Hegel was not a pagan (I do not remember where I read) though his faith was definitely unorthodox by reading his interpretation of the Fall in his Encyclopedia. But based on this belief I think Hegelian dialectics has a definite and perfect destination in his perpetual dialectic movement, to reach to the maturity of finitude in the Mind of infinite Creator God.
Without this overarching understanding of Hegelian dialectics movement thinking dialectically can be terribly destructive: in the negation we have destruction, in the unification we have no direction.
Even we have this overarching understanding of Hegelian dialectic movement; we can be mistaken in the specific characteristic of negation in the subject matter and cause destruction or ineffective in our undertaking.

CONCLUSION
I will end with a list of questions with focus on the necessary correct use of negation; after all, it is the understanding of the nature of negation that controls our handling of antinomies:
• Doctrinally: Christian orthodox and unorthodox doctrines conflictions…………In Being or in Essence or in Spirit?
• Practically: Conflictions within churches, families……In Essence or In Being?
• Scientifically: Thomas Kuhn’s Paradigms of Science……In Essence or In Being or In Nature?
• Socially: Marxism……………………..In Being or In Essence or In Spirit?
• Naturally: Darwinism………………In Nature or In Spirit?
• Politically: Democrats and Republicans; party and nation; ideology and economy……In Being or In Essence or In Notion or In Nature or In Spirit?
• Philosophically: Descartes in Being, Kant in Essence……
• Blind men and one elephant…………..In Essence, in Being, in Notion, in Nature, or in Spirit?

By
Tiantang Peng

A Term paper for AP21 Introduction to Apologetics

Professor Dr. Curto

Selected relevant Scriptures

Titus 2: 9Holding fast the faithful word as he hath been taught, that he may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and to convince the gainsayers. 10For there are many unruly and vain talkers and deceivers, specially they of the circumcision: 11Whose mouths must be stopped,

2 Corinthians 10:4(For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;) 5Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;

Romans 3:4b let God be true, but every man a liar;
Isaiah 8:20To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.

Matthew 15: 14Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.

INTRODUCTION

Apologetics is an imperative for the prosperity of the Christianity, especially the negative side task-to stop the mouths of the gainsayers. It is precisely because of those gainsayers who gain up hand in their contradictions against the fundamental teachings of Christianity that the culture of the society is accelerating in their path of anti-Christianity. Their victories in governments, higher educations, and popular media, including Movies, TVs, books, and other publishing will only make next generation Christians worse than us in their struggle of faith.

However, we have His promise in Isaiah 59:19b When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the LORD shall lift up a standard against him. And we ask ourselves: Where are those Christians-repented their sins of intellect and offered their minds as well as their bodies to the risen Lord as weapons of righteousness-who can stand up against the tides?

There are many pitfalls in doing apologetics. First and foremost, we can easily and unknowingly adopt the crooked weapons out of ungodly enemies of God in our warfare, and rely on the power of the corrupted flesh. Second, we don’t take good defense before we take offense, thus are wounded easily and bring shame to the name of the Lord in the warfare. Third, we can easily focus on the outcomes and be discouraged. Fourth, we lack a concerted and focused effort with an agreed, clear, effective, and biblical attacking strategy within the Christianity. And the few attempts of cooperation can easily fall into inner fighting from iron sharpen iron and forget our common enemies.

The following reflections are the result of reading the textbooks and hearing Dr. Curto’s lectures of Introduction to Apologetics.

WHAT IS APOLOGETICS

Van Til’s view of apologetics: a summary from the second edition of Van Til’s Christian Apologetics

In his first paragraph of the first chapter, we have the definition:

Apologetics is the vindication of the Christian philosophy of life against the various forms of the non-Christian philosophy of life.

He immediately showed that Christianity and theism is a unit, and stated that apologetics is defined as the vindication of Christian theism, and the weapon available to the apologist is philosophical and factual argument.

He went on to state the contents the apologist to defend: Theological encyclopedia, namely, the various theological disciplines which are all centered on Bible. In his discussion of Systematic Theology, which, he stated, is more closely related to apologetics than any other disciplines, he applied the weapon he mentioned, the philosophical argument through the division of metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics, to build up the Christian views and use them against non-Christian views in each division.

In Chapter two he dealt with the relationship between theology and philosophy, then the relationship between theology and science, and the defects of non-reformed understandings, and the nature of the natural revelation.

In chapter three and chapter four, he taught us the general principles of defending and vindicating the Christian theism. In chapter three, he addressed the issue of starting point, or the point of contact: the suppressed sense of deity in man, and showed the problem of non-reformed approaches of apologetics: man instead of God as the final reference in their ultimate presupposition of their understandings. In chapter four he moved to the issue of the method of apologetics: the indirect method of reasoning by presupposition, or, the place of the Scripture in Christian apologetics as authoritative over human reason, which he dealt with in chapter five. As a matter of fact, he stated as follows:

In fact it then appears that the argument for the Scripture as the infallible revelation of God is, to all intents and purposes, the same as the argument for the existence of God. Protestants are required by the most basic principles of their system to vindicate the existence of no other God than the one who has spoken in the Scripture.

The views of the authors of “Five views on apologetics”: a summary from each author’s writing

Craig: Classical apologetics

Craig recounted his encountering and solving the age-old issue of the relationship between faith and reason, his early victory of faith over reason: “…If my reason turned against Christ, I’d still believe. My faith is too real.” And he also mentioned the influence of Carnell: Reason might be used to show the systematic consistency of Christian faith without thereby becoming the basis of that faith. He presented a scheme to solve the problem between faith and reason: the distinction between knowing and showing Christianity to be true.

This is his main thesis: The reason in the form of rational arguments and evidence play an essential role in showing Christianity to be true, whereas reason in this form plays a contingent and secondary role in our personally knowing Christianity to be true. This way of showing Christianity to be true is called classical apologetics. It comprised of natural theology and Christian evidences.

He defined the task of apologetics as showing Christianity to be true. Showing Christianity to be true will involve both defensive and offensive apologetics.
We shall be engaged not only in refuting objections that our view is incoherent or implausible in light of certain facts, but also in providing arguments and evidence that show that our view best explains the data.

His method was first to present arguments for theism-the kalam cosmological argument, then to present Christian evidences for God’s revelation in Christ-the historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus.

He believes that Kalam argument is a good deductive argument; and the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus is a sound inductive argument based on a model known as inference to the best explanation.

Craig has an orthodox view of the role of the Holy Spirit in apologetics, but didn’t show us what the role of the Scripture is in his method. He didn’t follow his early conviction with Carnell to focus on showing the consistency of faith using reason. Instead, he moved further with Josh McDowell in his over-estimation of the power of reason. If he did content with the limit power of reason with Carnell, he would need the presupposition of the Scripture as the revelation of God, he would have to be a presuppostionalist.

Habermas: Evidential apologetics

Habermas’ main theses are as follows: The evidential method is a “one-step” classical method, using historical evidences as argument for God. The evidential method recognized the necessity of careful historical principles in the interpretation of historical events, the negative and positive applications, and the role of the Holy Spirit. It also emphasized an enough ontological and epistemological common ground to speak meaningfully to an unbeliever.

His method is also two steps in different ways: First establishing the trustworthiness of Scripture by evidences, then moving on to the tenets of Christian theism.

His minimal facts strategy is quite sober: He focused on the distinct teachings of Jesus about Himself first, then the historicity of the death and resurrection of Jesus, and last, the confirmation of Jesus’ claims.

He believes that the minimal facts approach which argues on more limited grounds to show that the basis is exceptionally firm is a good approach; and also the approach is actually presenting the gospel, which can be used to strengthen believers and convert unbelievers by the Holy Spirit

His main thrust was the trustworthiness of Scripture, that is good, but he was overly confident with the power of his method, though using minimal facts strategy as a way of remediation. He apparently disagreed with Calvin: (Calvin’s Institute: Book one Chapter 8 section 1) .
In vain was the authority of Scripture fortified by argument, or supported by the consent of the Church, or confirmed by any other helps, if unaccompanied by an assurance higher and stronger than human Judgment can give.

This is likely due to his inadequate estimation of the noetic effect of sin.

He did recognize the role of the Holy Spirit and the power of the gospel. Unfortunately he had limited the role of the Spirit, thus seeking minimal facts strategy instead of the self-authorization of the Holy Spirit in fortified the authenticity of the Scripture. If he did, he would follow Calvin to put limit value on his method and accept the Scripture as presupposition. With this overhaul his method can be a good factual argument to presuppositional apologetics.

His minimal facts strategy does give us a powerful reminder when we do apologetics: to show our basis is exceptionally firm. As Dabney advised to preachers in Lecture XIV of his “Evangelical Eloquence” :

…the preacher should see to it that his proof is unanswerable. Nothing should be advanced which is not solid……We should restrain ourselves within those solid grounds where we can be certain of our correctness.

Feinberg: Cumulative case apologetics

Feinberg recognized the difficulties of formal arguments: For a demonstrably/deductively sound argument, non-theist will not accept one or more essential premises of the argument. For a probability/inductive argument, non-theist can come up an entirely acceptable alternative explanation other than the existence of God

To bypass this difficult Feinberg treated Christian theism as an informal system of belief based on the model known as inference to the best explanation. His argument for Christian theism in this system is informal, thus without the problem of premises he recognized in traditional arguments.

To make his strategy solid he established his so-called testing for truth, and tried to build the validity through the witness of the Holy Spirit. However, he will have the same kind of problem in establishing his testing of truth as establishing premises in traditional arguments. Besides, the necessity of the witness of the Holy Spirit is essential in his method…but the work of the Holy Spirit is to witness the Scripture, not a man-made system.

He did have at least three good points: His informal approach can be one way to bring credibility to the Scripture; his understanding of demonstrably arguments as arguments only not as proof can avoid the sense of failure; his turning the table by requesting the burden of proof from gainsayer, that is, insisting that non-theist who gives alternative explanation to the probability arguments to prove what he advanced is more plausible, is a good defense strategy.

Frame: Presuppositional apologetics

Frame based his apologetics on the biblical epistemology-thinking God’s thoughts after Him, that is, looking in Scripture for teachings about knowledge, reasoning, proof, evidence, and logic. He also stressed the noetic effects of sin: unbelief distorts human thought.

Next he spelled out the value and method of Apologetics: Three elements of apologetics are proof, defense, and offense. He proposed the indirect argument by presuppositions, as Van Til taught, that is, the transcendental argument of presuppositional method: the biblical God is not the conclusion to an argument, but the only possible source of all meaningful communication.

He also tries to address the charges of circularity in his using of the transcendental argument. I am not aware of circularity charge (I have not studied western philosophy except taking our AP11, so I might be wrong) to Kant when he employed the transcendental argument. I am guessing there is something missing in this approach. I am all for the presuppositional method, and will present my preliminary thoughts in later section.

Other than this seemly inadequacy I am edified much in his many godly and biblical teachings in the presentations.
Clark: Reformed epistemology apologetics

Clark did understand well that reasoning must start somewhere: rational people may rationally believe in God without evidence or argument. But I wonder why he didn’t become a presuppositionlist, instead, he settled with warranty. I feel that he had a very inadequate view of Scripture and obvious sympathy with post-modern thinking, maybe those are the reasons that he was not committing himself to presuppositional approach. He did give us some good warnings: Apologetists ought to do their homework when dealing with difficult problems, and understand the limits of arguments

The barriers of effective apologetics: the noetic effects of sin

Except Clark every author showed his awareness of the noetic effects of sin. Clark painted himself through his presentation more as a secular philosopher than as a Christian. Frame was doctrinally most reformed in this aspect. We will review Calvin’s teachings in this area.

A summary of Calvin’s Institute Book II. i-ii
The original sin and its effect (Book II i):
The inherited corruption we bear from our mother’s womb never ceases in us, but continually bears new fruits-the work of the flesh-just as a burning furnace gives forth flame and sparks…whatever is in man, from the understanding to the will, from the soul even to the flesh, has been defiled and crammed with this concupiscence, or original sin.

The bondage of will (Book II ii): The will is bound to wicked desire, it can’t long for the good without the Holy Spirit.

The partial lose of understanding (Book II ii):
The supernatural gifts destroyed; natural gifts corrupted but enough of reason remains due to the kindness of God: the power of the understanding with respect to earthly things and the form of the human community, that is, governments, household management, all mechanical skills, and liberal arts, are not without effect.

The spiritual discernment, consisting in knowing God, knowing his fatherly favor, and knowing how to frame our life according to the rue of his law, is wholly lost. Though the work of the law written in their hearts to make them inexcusable but procures for them no right knowledge.

The nature of apologetics: explicating the implicit
The nature of reasoning
Proving deductively based on the presuppositions: all the definitions are from Antony Flew’s Dictionary of Philosophy

Definitions:
Proof in non-formal context is a valid argument from true premises. A formal system is a set of axioms and/or rules of inference. A proof in a formal system is a sequences of wffs (wff: well-formed-formula) such that the conclusion is followed either by a series of axioms of the system or by the rules of inference of the system.

By examining the definition of proof in both non-formal context and formal system we see that the true premises and the axioms as given without proof, that is, proof always has a starting point, a set of presuppositions. The phrases valid argument and rules of inferences show us not only where to start but how to proceed.

If we want to give a proof of any statement we have to first of all spell out our presuppositions, that is, draw a boundary, and then spell out the rules of inferences so that we can qualify an argument as a valid argument. Only after finishing these ground works we can argue meaningfully.

The history of science is the history of exposing and redrawing the boundary and reformulating rules of inferences. Whenever a new theory is established within assumed boundary through both rational inferences and experimental confirmations, scholars tend to take a pragmatical approach and rest on the theory, and the lesser scholarly ones take it as axiom instead of as approved statement.

Of course, it is easy to confuse axiom which has no boundary with a proved theory which always has boundary. Only when a contradiction happens, that is, someone ventures outside the boundary of the theory and try to apply it, people start to realize its boundary, and they set out to rectify what they perceive wrong of the theory-when the reality is that the theory is correct with an “if” missed at the beginning…And the cycle starts over again

If scientists behave so ignorantly, how much more will the general public do in their thinking, especially the contradictions of gainsaying we know it is wrong with certainty? It seems that insisting on tracing back their presuppositions until we reach to absurdities has some promise of success…The question is how to trace back? We know we need to ask why, but how can we formulate the necessary absurdities when gainsayer fails or refuses to answer the why?
For example, let us consider briefly Darwin’s theory of Evolution. I never read a book refuting that theory, but I know that its central proposition is contradicting to the Scripture, thus it is certainly wrong. However, it must have many rational and good arguments mixing with errors to be able to survive for so long. To refute it effectively we need to study it carefully based on our training and find the specific backbone and break it so that the whole theory collapses.
To me the young age of the earth will collapse the Evolution, and the old earth theory is a fraud. Whatever method those folks came up to do their calculation of the age of the earth, they had to build a mathematical model based on limited observation, then extrapolate their number back to millions even billions years. To believe this kind of reasoning is evidence of their ignorance of the basics of mathematical system. They made a huge and improbable presupposition: The earth in last millions or billions years as they imaged was just like it was as they observed in last some years. It was probably not true even by pure speculation; and we know that the presupposition is definitely not correct because we found the Great Deluge in the Scripture, and the climate most likely changed drastically during that event. All of the so-called scientific theories making claims of distance past using a mathematical model have the same defect.

Mathematical proposition is always in the form of if…then…. Even 1 + 1 is not necessarily 2 though everyone takes it for granted. It is true if we stay outside the boundary of a binary system, there is a huge “if” presupposition to warranty its truthfulness. Take another example: the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to 180°, we learned it from primary school. But we were not told the necessary presupposition to guarantee its truthfulness. As a matter of fact, the sum of the angles of a triangle is not necessarily equal to 180° if we are outside the boundary of Euclidean geometry. Outside its boundary we also have a consistent and useful mathematical system called non-Euclidean geometry.
On another note, the exegetical attempts of building a gap theory or period instead day theory from Genesis chapter one is not a profitable undertaking if the motive is to accommodate either old earth “scientific” theory or Darwin’s Evolution.
The problem of arguing inductively and the hidden transcendental argument

The inductive argument can’t give any proposition the certainty we need. If people really understand its problems, and the only thing they have for their belief is certain degree of probability or analogy, and the gravity of the consequences of persisting in their unbelief are spelled out before their eyes, they have good reason to pause in their contradictions.

However, that is not the case. In the face of the problems of inductive arguments they persist in their unbelief. I think it is because they strengthen themselves with an unspecified transcendental argument. They might rest with certain explanation and mistake it with the power of transcendental argument.

When we deal with this situation, we should extend the logical consequences to raise the stakes of their unbelief, and expose the lies they hide themselves so that they can’t take easy with their contradictions.
The necessity and universality of both presuppositions and transcendental argument

The analysis of proof and argument shows that every reasonable reasoner is a presuppositionalist, he is also a transcendentalist in that he has to convince himself through a sort of explanation or transcendental argument that the presuppositions he takes for granted are, in fact, trustworthy.
The nature of apologetics
Positively

If we do want to use transcendental argument, and forever get ride of the charge of circularity, which I think we should, we need to change to argue for the divine authority of the Scripture instead argue for the existence of God. After all, Van Til stated that arguing for the existence of God is the same as arguing for the divine authority of the Scripture.

But there is a difference between the two propositions, and it seems clear to see that the Christian ontological Trinity is the only possible answer to the existence/authority of the Scripture.

Based on our reviews, if we are arguing for the divine authority of the Scripture, any classical argument, evidential argument, warrant, even argument for credibility or inerrancy of the Scripture, and other apologetical argument can be a candidate of making it into a transcendental argument.

The Christian world view now is a good and necessity deduce of the Scripture. We can still develop biblical metaphysics, epistemology, and ethic to exposing the contradictions of other belief.

One more word regarding our doing apologetics: Given the limitations of human reasoning it is clear that if God doesn’t reveal Himself through the Scripture we can know nothing about Him with certainty. The Scripture should be our final reference in both what to argue and how to argue for the Christian philosophy of life.
Negatively

I will briefly state the following four points: First, tracing to absurdities of gainsaying by exposing its hidden presuppositions; second, reducing to absurdities by extending its logical conclusions; third exposing the absurdities of the hidden transcendental assumptions or explanations; fourth, exposing their contradictions with the Scriptures to give their suppressed sense of deity opportunity to do its work.

The practical considerations of apologetics
The mighty fortress: the Holy Scripture

We ought to be strong in the Scripture. We should be able to instantly spot a gainsaying, and whenever it is advanced, we can confident say to ourselves: here goes another liar! And we ought to be certain that this liar has no light within him because what he says is not according to the Scripture.
The solid footing: understanding the Scripture

It is a lamentable spiritual condition of both us and our churches; we are so slow in believing the Scripture and lacking the evidence as being taught by God. Every Christian ought to work hard in his own field, redeem the time to equip himself for the good work which God calls him to do.
The focused battlefield: detecting and limiting on defending the attacks on Scriptures

Every Apologetist should avoid bringing shame to Christianity while trying to defend Christianity. There is nothing we can be certain in absolute sense except the truthfulness of the Scripture. Avoid arguing any secondary issue.
The aggressive proclamation: using God’s ordained means of preaching to advance HIS Kingdom instead of methods from the worldly wisdom

In the end, proclaiming the word of God, thus building up His saints as intelligent believers and expanding His Kingdom, is the best way of both offense and defense.
Conclusion: an arrow in the hand of the Holy Spirit

Psalm 45: 5Thine arrows are sharp in the heart of the king’s enemies; whereby the people fall under thee. Apologetics has the task and potential power to turn the tides of the society. To be an arrow in God’s hand to accomplish His will for his life, if God does call him in this stupendous task, is the highest glory of a mortal man.

Greenville Seminary has many excellent features:

First, Greenville Seminary has classical curriculum: that is, rhetoric/grammar, logic; three years of Greek, Greek as the pre-requirement of studying both Systematic theology and Church history, and four years, in addition to the typical courses seen in other seminaries. This is very uncommon among seminaries.

Greenville seminary teaches her students the tools and systems dealing with instead of information of the word of God: this is extremely important given the fact that pastors are not intellectual leaders of the society as they were in the past. Many godly believers are ad hoc in their approaching of both their faith and their living; as a result they see very little advancement in both their spiritual understanding and lives even though they work hard. The foundational skills taught in Greenville Seminary will enable her graduates to become competent workers in their subject domain and instruments to help those who love the Lord to be more profitable in their pursue of spiritual advancement.

Second, Greenville Seminary has a pre-requirement for every incoming student to study before the orientation and attend seminars during orientation of how to read and how to teach. This will help her students to have a solid foundation for their future seminary study.

Third, Greenville Seminary subscribes one of the most conservative and orthodox doctrines of Christianity: the Westminster Standards. This is so valuable for everyone who loves the Lord since the correct doctrine is both glorifying the Lord and building up God’s people for this generation, which also leads next generation both to uphold the orthodox faith and to enable them to glorify the Lord in their lives.

Fourth, Greenville Seminary emphasizes preaching: knowing and believing that the Lord saves and edifies his people through preaching the Word. Every full time student is required to attend the three preaching sessions during the week.

Fifth, Greenville Seminary adopts presuppostional approach in apologetics. This line of thinking is so important and so godly in defending the truth that no other method can even come close. The emphasis of God himslef, his providence, and his revealed word as ultimatums is both building up our faith and destroying the gainsaying of infidels. Every fact is interpreted fact, every statement has its own ultimate presuppositions. The exposing of those presuppositions is the best way both to correct the errors of God’s people and to refute the enemies of Christianity.

Greenville has many other excellent features; I will just state them summarily.

Sixth, Greenville Seminary has very affordable fee.

Seventh, Greenville Seminary has excellent distance program that enable many students who can’t relocate to Greenville to receive the excellent theological training.

Eighth, Greenville Seminary has some very reputable scholars.

Ninth, Greenville Seminary has very high ethic standard as it is known through her student handbook.

Tenth, Greenville Seminary understands her role in God’s Kingdom: a handmaid of God’s Church. The emphasis of church mentoring program is so to the point that everyone who sees the failures of typical seminary graduates will appreciate her insight.

Eleventh, Greenville Seminary assigns each student an advisor and require students meet their advisor weekly to share and to pray together.

I am sure that Greenville Seminary has many other excellent features which I don’t know since I am only a first year student there. Given what I do know I earnestly appeal to everyone who is considering seminary education to explore Greenville Seminary.

I sit before the bright screen of my computer meditating on what I wrote about taking action, realizing that what a blessing I just received from the Lord when I saw myself also hiding behind the so-called conviction instead of facing nakedly with the naked and objective word of God and submitting to His commands by acting accordingly.

I never wrote such a prose: having multiple turnings of meanings in one prose. I have the best system I know to write super proses last 15 years but I never systematically acted on it. My prose is poor though I worked hard and did act on it on and off for quite sometime. This is the same problem in my spiritual life as Hebrews 5:12 says. It is time to repent, starting with learning to write better proses using the system I made out of a few books:
Classical Rhetoric for modern Student
Writer’s inc
Why Johnny can’t write
Elements of grammar
……

Recommendations from experts:
20 hours spreading across at least one month with daily 20 minutes minimal (starting on 9/28):

Sentence expanding……………
The cumulative sentence is a main idea that is expanded by modifying words, phrases, or clauses. Each new modifier adds another level of meaning, is set off by a comma. 7 ways to expand with details:
SE1 individual words;
SE2 prepositional phrases;
SE3 absolute phrases;
SE4 participial (-ing, -ed) phrases;
SE5 infiniteive phrases;
SE6 subordinate clauses (while,…); and
SE7 relative clauses (who…).

Sentence combining………………..
Reducing the model sentence to its kernel sentences reveal how the deep structure was transformed into surface structure. Varying the sentence pattern as Erasmus’s 150 ways suggested

10 guidelines for combining sentences: series, relative pronoun, introductory phrase or clause, participial phrase, semicolon, key word, dash, correlative conjunction, colon, and appositive.

SC1 Use a series to combine three or more similar ideas
SC2 Use a relative pronoun (who, whose, which, that) to introduce the subordinate (less important) ideas
SC3 Use an introductory phrase or clause for the less important ideas
SC4 Using a participial phrase (-ing, -ed) at the beginning or end of a sentence
SC5 Use a semicolon (Use a conjunctive adverb with the semicolon when appropriate)
SC6 Use a correlative conjunction (either, or; not only, but also) to compare or contrast two ideas in a sentence
SC7 Use a dash to set off a key word(s) or phrase at the beginning or the end of the sentence
SC8 Repeat a key word or phrase to emphasis an idea
SC9 Use a colon to emphasize an important idea
SC10 Use an appositive (a word or phrase which renames) to emphasize an idea

When you speak, you pause at the end of each sentence. The pause shows that you are ending one idea and starting another one. When you write, you put a period at the end of each sentence.
A period means stop while a comma means slow down.
People are accustomed to finding a period at the end of a sentence. When they come to a comma, they expect the next group of words to continue the same sentence.
If two sentences contain closely related ideas, you can separate them with a semicolon. Think of a semicolon as a weak period.
Colon:
To introduce a list; to introduce formally a statement, an enumeration, or an illustration; to introduce a formal or long quotation; to precede a restatement of an idea; to precede an extended explanation (not capital if it introduce one logically dependent passages, otherwise, capital)
Dash:
To indicate an abrupt change in a sentence; to set off interpolated explanatory matter; to indicate a sudden break; to set off a long phrase in apposition; to replace parentheses.

Example……………………..
The longest and largest construction project in history was the Great Wall of China
The project took 1700 years to complete
The Great Wall of China is 1400 miles long
It is between 18 and 30 feet high
It is up to 32 feet thick

Use series to combine the three or more similar ideas:
The Great Wall of China is 1400 mile long, between 18 and 30 feet high, and up to 32 feet thick.
Use a relative pronoun to introduce subordinate ideas:
The Great Wall of China, which is 1400 miles long and between 18 to 30 feet high, took 1700 years to complete.
Use an introductory phrase or clause:
Having taken 1700 years to complete, the Great Wall of China was the longest construction project in history
Use a semicolon (and/or a conjunctive adverb):
The Great Wall of China took 1700 years to complete; it is 1400 miles long and up to 30 feet high and 32 feet thick.
Repeat a key word or phrase to emphasize an idea:
The Great Wall of China was the longest construction project in history, a project that took 1700 years to complete.
Use correlative conjunctions (either…or, not only…but also):
The Great Wall of China is not only up to 30 feet high and 32 feet thick, but also 1400 miles long.
Use an appositive (a word or phrase that renames) to emphasize an idea:
The Great Wall of China-the largest construction project in history-is 1400 miles long, 32 feet thick, and up to 30 feet high.

Sentence modeling………..
Study each sentence so you know how it is put together. Look for phrases and clauses set off by commas. Focus on word endings and on the location of articles and prepositions. Observe the same kind, number, and order of clauses and phrases

SM1 Write your own version of a sentence by imitating it part by part. Try to use the same word endings, articles, and prepositions, but work in your own nouns, verbs, and modifiers.

He has a thin face with sharp features and a couple of eyes burning with true oil.
He has an athletic body with a sinewy contour and a couple of arms bulging with weight-room dedication.

SM2 Not a word-for-word correspondence but an awareness of the variety of sentence structure (syntactical resources)
……..The more practice you have had in writing, the better will be your one-draft prose

Example……………………………………
The gallows stood in a small yard, separate from the main grounds of the prison and overgrown with tall prickly weeds.

(1) Imitating:
The dog shivered in the background, wet from nosing his way through the early-morning grasses and covered with damp cockle-spurs.
(2) Varying:
In a small yard, separate from the main grounds and overgrown with tall prickly weeds, stood the gallows.
(3) Altering:
Sentence diagramming/Kernel sentences:
The gallows stood in a yard.
The yard was small.
The yard (or the gallows) was separate from the main grounds.
The yard (or the gallows) was overgrown with weeds.
The weeds were tall.
The weeds were prickly.
Sentence combining:
Located in a small yard, which was overgrown with tall prickly weeds, the gallows was separated from the main grounds.
The gallows was situated outside the main grounds, in a small yard that was overgrown with tall prickly weeds.

Exercise……………………………….
He went through the narrow alley of Temple Bar quickly,
muttering to himself
that they could all go to hell
because he was going to have a good night of it.

To regain the stage in its own character,
not as a mere emulation of prose,
poetry must find its own way to the mastery the stage demands—the mastery of action.

If one must worship a bully, it is better that he should be a policeman than a gangster.

I went to the woods
because I wished
to live deliberately,
to front only the essential facts of life, and
see if I could learn what it had to teach, and
not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

To have even a portion of this illuminated reason and true philosophy is the highest state to which nature can aspire, in the way of intellect.

As most of these old Custom House officers had good traits and
as my position in reference to them, being paternal and protective, was favorable to the growth of friendly sentiments,
I soon grew to like them all.

The real art that dealt with life directly was that of the first mean who told their stories round the savage camp-fire.

The most important Indian grouping on the continent, north of Mexico, from the very beginning of European conquest on through and after the American Revolution was the Confederacy of the Iroquois.

This brings us to that growing army of “publicity men” and women
who sometimes do not-but frequently do-give the best of their years and their vitality
to pushing causes in which they have no faith and
to becoming personalities
whom privately they designate as stuffed shirt.

I returned and saw under the sun that
the race is not to the swift,
nor the battle to the strong,
neither yet bread to the wise,
nor yet riches to men of understanding,
nor yet favor to men of skill;
but time and chance happen to them all.

For man also knows not his time:
as the fishes that are taken in an evil net, and
as the birds that caught in the snare;
so are the sons of men snared in an evil time,
when it falls suddenly upon them.

As virtual civil war raged between Azerbaijanis and Armenians,
the Kremlin on Monday declared a state of emergency and
sent units of the Soviet army, navy and KGB security service to the troubled southern region,
where the Kremlin said attempts were being made “to overthrow Soviet power.”

The gray clouds marched brokenly in from the ocean and
over the high coast mountains, and
over the valleys, in puffs, in folds, in high crags, and
they piled in together and
they settled low over the west.

It (our sight) fills the mind with the largest variety of idea,
converses with its objects at the greatest distance, and
continues the longest in action,
without being tired or satiated with its proper enjoyments.

Our sight seems designed to supply all these defects, and
may be considered as a more delicate and diffusive kind of touch,
that spreads itself over an infinite multitude of bodies,
comprehends the largest figures, and
brings into our reach some of the most remote parts of the universe.

The pleasures of the imagination, taken in their full extent, are not so gross as those of sense, nor so refined as those of the understanding.

A beautiful prospect delights the soul as much as a demonstration; and a description in Homer has charmed more readers than a chapter in Aristotle.

There are, indeed, but very few who know how to be idle and innocent, or have a relish of any pleasures that are not criminal; every diversion they take is at the expense of some one virtue or another, and their very first step out of business is into vice or folly.

Taking action prescribed by a sound principle is indispensable if we want to obtain the results promised by that principle

A focused thesis based on commonplace: “An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.”

Intro (ethos, borrowing authority from others)
It is often said, “An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.” “Nothing happens until something moves” is a favorite quotation among motivational speakers. They love to say that the quotation was from Albert Einstein when it was actually from a remote and relatively unknown English poet: Sir John Denham. Even Chairman Mao said, stressing the importance of taking action when he mentioned the class struggle in China, “……if you do not hit it, it will not fall. This is also like sweeping the floor; as a rule, where the broom does not reach, the dust will not vanish of itself.” Indeed, taking appropriate action is indispensable if we want to obtain certain results.

Main Argument (logos)
Nothing happens until something moves. If you don’t hit it, it will not fall. If broom doesn’t reach, the dust will not vanish. These statements are so ordinary, so obvious, so trivial, and so true. But why folks quoting them as though these are some profound and powerful arguments for their purposes?

It turns out that people in general don’t take action to do obvious. As a matter of fact, taking obvious action is such a rare commodity among humanity we have a saying: “an ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.” Apparently, contemplating, speculating, and theorizing are the norm of society and purposeful acting is as rare as gold. Here, notice that we are saying purposeful acting. We don’t mean that people don’t take any action. The society is crazily busy with actions. There are lots of actions every moment, but very few are taking purposeful action prescribed by a sound principle. We act because everyone else acts; we act because we feel like; we act because we think we ought to; we act as we do because we were influenced by someone sometime somewhere. As our Pragmatist William James said: “……that invention and imitation, taken together, form, one may say, the entire warp and woof of human life, in so far as it is social.” Most of the time, we act as a result of imitation. When someone has an invention that dictating a new way of acting before he gain the tide of imitation, he has to teach the obvious: Taking action!!!

Society is filled up with examples that people don’t take obvious actions. Even folks in churches, sitting in their pews week after week year after year listening to the Word of God, don’t take obvious actions. I will discuss a few examples.

First, money: According to genrousgiving.org statistics that American church goers as a whole are managing finance as bad as society:
Overspending: Forty percent of church members say they overspend monthly; also, 40 percent of church members pay more than $2,000 a year in interest, not including their mortgage.
Credit Cards: “About 10 percent of credit card holders had total card balances in excess of $10,000.”

40% of church goers are too busy in their action of spending that they act themselves into desperation, as the same statistics quoted: “Debt: Thirty-three percent of U.S. born-again Christians say it is impossible for them to get ahead in life because of the financial debt they have incurred.”

What happens to the many Bible teachings about money they bound to hear from pulpits? What about the sound principle of “positive cash flow” they learned from college accounting course? Surely, if those 40% church members take another kind of actions prescribed by those sound principles they would depart from their debts. However, they are imitating the world and busily acting as the confused cultures taught them.

It is time for someone with open eyes preaching the sound money management principles and exhorting them to act, that is, to maintain positive cash flow in their personal finance in the fear of God with stewardship attitude remembering the day of reckoning of every penny. When he does, he will inevitably cry out: Take action! Taking action prescribed by the sound principle is indispensable! Nothing happens until something moves!

Next, emotion: “Born Again Christians Just As Likely to Divorce As Are Non-Christians” is a title of Barna Group research in 2004. In their research report, it stated: “Among married born again Christians, 35% have experienced a divorce. That figure is identical to the outcome among married adults who are not born again: 35%.”

You would expect that church members ought to do better than non-church goers given the many noble and wonderful teachings of marriage in Bible. You would expect that we would act as the Bible teaches in our dealing with each other in marriage, thus have a better marriage than non-church goers. Not so! But why? I read from somewhere that number one reason of divorce is related to money. That maybe so, but I would venture to say that emotion was the direct and final cause of divorce.

We come to our friend, Pragmatist William James, again:
Action and feeling go together and by regulating the action which is under the more direct control of the will, we can regulate the feeling, which is not.

This, actually, is one of the greatest secrets of Christianity per C. S. Lewis:
The worldly man treats certain people kindly because he “likes” them. The Christian, trying to treat everyone kindly, finds himself liking more and more people as he goes—including people he could not have imagined himself liking at the beginning. The rule then for all of us is perfectly simple. Do not waste time bothering whether you “love” your neighbor, act as if you do. And soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you love someone, you will presently come to love him.

Mrs. Hannah Whitall Smith, struggling and overcoming her own spiritual depression, taught us that it is vital to understand that the teachings of Bible are declarative statements. Believe them, then act on them by faith: (As quoted by William James)
It is your purpose God looks at, not your feelings about that purpose; and your purpose, or will, is therefore the only thing you need attend to. . . . Let your emotions come or let them go, just as God pleases, and make no account of them either way. . . . They really have nothing to do with the matter. They are not the indicators of your spiritual state, but are merely the indicators of your temperament or of your present physical condition.

Your emotions are merely the indicators of your temperament or of your present physical condition. I think Selwyn Hughes was always harping on this theme in his powerful and insightful book “Christ Empowered Living: Celebrating Your Significance in God.”

However, if we ask many church members who are struggling with unhealthy emotions in their relationship to act kindly toward each other as God commands, what answer you will get? “I don’t feel like to do that.” That is, God’s command or not, no matter to me, I am acting according to my emotion. Hello! Take obvious action!!!

Third, rational: We will not dwell on this for long. When we see folks acting contrary to Bible teaching and ask them to act as Bible teaches, we will get typical answer. Simply put, it is like this: God’s command or not, no matter, I have to understand and agree that God’s command is reasonable and applicable and profitable at my present situation and I have to be in the mood to obey, then, and only then I will act as God commands.

Conclusion (pathos)
Faith of Bible demands unreserved action of obedience according to the truth, but we church goers often make human emotion, reason, and other one thousand fancies of human imagination as final and decisive reference for action of obedience, we often keep acting contrary to biblical teachings. Though we sit in our pews week after week, year after year, and decade after decade, we are still who we were and we will be who we are. Nothing happens until something moves! The day of revival is at hand when we church goers are taking action of obedience prescribed by sound biblical teachings whenever we hear them! Indeed, one ounce of action of obedience is worthy ton of Bible studying and thousands typical church activities. No! One ounce of action of obedience according to Bible teaching is worthy infinitely more than bible studying and other thousands typical church activities without acting on the truth. Bothers, take obvious action!!!

I. Stasis to sharply define thesis from broad and vague to limited and precise

Commonplace: “An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.”

1. Whether a thing is?-a question of fact

2. What is it?-a question of definition

3. What kind is it?-a question of quality

II. Topics of invention to develop the subject

Common Topics:
Definition
Genus / Species

Division
Whole / Parts

Subject / Adjuncts

Comparison
Similarity / Difference

Degree

Relationship
Cause / Effect

Antecedent / Consequence

Contraries

Contradictions

Circumstances
Possible / Impossible

Past Fact / Future Fact

Testimony
Authorities
Witnesses
Maxims or Proverbs
Rumors
Oaths
Documents
Law
Precedent
The supernatural

Notation and Conjugates

Special Topics:
Judicial
Justice (right)

Injustice (wrong)

Deliberative
The good

The unworthy

The advantageous

The disadvantageous

Ceremonial
Virtue (the noble)

Vice (the base)

III. Arrangement of a classical rhetoric to develop the arguments
1. Introduction: ethos
Announce the subject and purpose of the discourse
2. Main arguments: logos
Appeal to logical arguments (using epanodos to repeat the main terms of an argument in the course of presenting it; or return to the main theme after a digression; or returning to and providing additional detail for items mentioned previously—often using parallelism. Or epiphonema to give an epigrammatic summary which gathers into a pithy sentence what has preceeded. A striking, summarizing reflection. Or symperasma to give a conclusion that includes a brief summary of the foregoing.)
2a. Statement of Facts: Provide a narrative account to explain the nature of the case, followed by a kind of summary of the issues or a statement of the charge
2b. Division: Outline what will follow
2c. Proof: offer logical arguments as proof
2d. Refutation: Answer the counterarguments
3. Conclusion: pathos
Appeal to action with a summing up (using accumulation: bringing together again various points made in a forceful way or anacephalaeosis: a recapitulation of the facts)
OK, an ounce of action is worth a ton of theory. Use this framework to write a commonplace: “An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.”

Here is my narrative (key points: using descriptive language and dialogue to describe episodes; using scanty words to describe connection threads; starting with “action” moment and using flashbacks to give background…)

A whitewater rafting family trip

About 2 PM on last August 13 standing next to a raft I was urged to step into the water by our guide from French Broad River white water rafting company near Ashville NC. It surprised me that I might have to wet my sneakers during my rafting trip. I protested that my socks and shoes would be wet and resisted to step into the water even though half of our raft and half of our crews were in the water. Our guide told me that I would be wet anyway, not only socks and shoes but clothes also. I stepped into the water and helped to push the raft into the water regretting the trip.

My family didn’t have vacation for two years and my wife was teaching a summer course in her college and desired to have a vacation after finishing her class. I was just accepted by Greenville Seminary and planned to attend the mandatory Orientation. It was a good combination so we started to plan our family vocation in the area near Greenville, SC. However I had hard time to manage the trip since my wife likes to see nature and to hike and dislikes city but my younger daughter likes city and dislikes nature especially hiking. Knowing that my daughter loves water very much I arranged this whitewater rafting as the last stop of our vacation before I drove to Greenville to take one week intensive class before Orientation. After two nights camping in Great Smoky Mountain both my wife and daughter were happy to stand beside the river and ready for the rafting trip. Now adding insult to injury I spent $40+ to get a wet socks and shoes with a sport I had no interest.

In addition to my family of three we had three other girls in our raft. It was immediately obvious to us that our guide was quite skillful though he was from an East European country. French Broad River white water company had ten rafts grouped into two teams. Our raft was leading the second team. Quickly our raft caught on the last raft of first team, so we had to move sideway to give room for them. For some reason the first team was pretty slow our guide eventually had to guide raft to rest near a stone and my eleven years old daughter who sit left of front row had to stretch out her hand to fix our raft in the water! I was sitting there thinking the ingenuity of human being inventing way making money: the river is wide and shallow, full of rocks, large and small, erecting out of the surface of water; moreover, it is not even and full of rapids. What uses it can have? Yet, here we are, handing out near $150 for this thing. I was busy with my mathematics while our guide commanded my daughter to left go of our raft: there are six persons in each raft, French Broad River Rafting has ten rafts, that is amount to over $2,500, and this is a four hour trip, so the company rakes into $5,000 daily and maybe seven months a year, and ten guides, one bus driver, all these life vests, and…. Looking back where we just left I saw many more rafts coming down the river and again thought how much money this seemingly useless river produces to people in this area. By this time forgetting my wet shoes and socks I was deep in my thought of this amazing ability of men.

“Peng! Move forward to help the girls!” Our guide shouted to me. Suddenly I was awaken from my calculation and mechanical rowing. Our raft was heading toward a large rock. I was in last row, to move quickly I didn’t ask one of the girls in front to switch with me, instead I was kneeling on the floor of raft to stable myself while pushing the raft off the rock our raft is hitting. Boy, I found out that the bottom of an inflatable raft is soft!

My knee hit stone underneath our raft and it was hurt! The good thing is that our raft was moving away from the rock. During the rest of the trip I was aware acutely one thing, that is, my right knee cap was burning hurt. With wet socks and shoes, sitting on the edge of raft with two feet stretching out fixing my body, I was wondering how anyone could enjoy the sport! But both my wife and my daughter had mighty smile on their faces and were apparently enjoying their time. I sighed in my heart, with all these misery and my $40+ I could at least see their satisfaction.

The scenic view of both sides of the river was beautiful. But that was pretty much I could tell. I felt ashamed while trying to enjoy the scenery. I didn’t know how to observe, what to observe, why it was pleasing to my sights. All I could come up was beautiful, without knowing what beautiful was. The various shapes of mountains, the green of various trees, even the small trails along the river and the rail road, and the siren and noise of passing train were pleasing to my feeling. The various kinds of rapids our raft ride over, the dropping, the successful entering and leaving of more advanced rapids did give me a little gratification. But how I longed for the end of the adventure! I couldn’t believe my ear when I heard my daughter kept saying that she wished to have the all day trip. Money aside, how can anyone endure eight hours of rafting?

Rafting company probably knows that I am not the only kind that has hard time to endure even a four hours trip. In the middle of the trip we stopped at a place so that anyone who was willing could jump from a rock to the water. My daughter eagerly went with the other three college girls while my wife and I sit in the raft. One of the college girls was standing at the edge of the rock and was afraid to drop herself into the water. No matter water one of the guides was saying to her feverously with exaggerated gestures, even finally dropping himself into the water, she withdrew. When she came back to raft she was apparently embarrassed. She told her other two friends, maybe the rest of us also, “ I am sorry I am still a little girl.” I was interested in how they interacted with each other dealing with this episode but I forgot now what the other two girls said to comfort her.

About one hour later, our raft arrived a place with very little rapid. Folks before our raft were all jumped into water and swam, it was quite a sight. While wondering I heard our guide to tell everyone to jump and swim. The girl who failed to jump from rock was very excited, saying now it is time to vindicate. She was the first to jump into the water to swim. My daughter went into the water also. I persuaded my wife to swim since she was a good swimmer. Seeing them swimming in the water against the tide was very pleasing. After a few minutes everyone was commanded to come back to raft. The guide from each raft hold the tops of the life vest and pull each one like pull a fish into the boat, he or she pull half of the body into raft and left to pull another. It was quite an amusement to me.

After seeming long hours we got to our destination. The rafting company bus brought us back to parking place. We changed to dry cloth but had no spare shoes, with wet shoes and socks we drove a few hours to a hotel in Greenville, SC.

Next morning we bought shoes for my wife and daughter before worshipping hour so that they could have appropriate shoes to worship the Lord. Needless to say they were happy that they finally had clean and dry shoes, for my daughter, new shoe.

Chapter 12: Triads of powers, habits, and acts
Power of mind is called its “faculties.” Powers are potentialities.
A habit is the first actualization of a power, determining the direction in which it is disposed to act, when the habit is operative in particular acts we have an even more determinate actualization of the power to act.
Habits are formed by the repetition of particular acts.

It is a nature power of mind if it is common to all
It is an acquired habit if not all can do it

Chapter 13 Cognitive power and its acts: conception, judgment, and reasoning
Two basic powers of human intellect
The appetitive (desire) and the cognitive (know).
Each power has two characters: The sensitive (shared with animal) and the intellectual.

Appetitive sensual power: passion
Appetitive intellectual power: will

Cognitive sensitive power: perception, memory, and imagination
Cognitive intellectual power has two kinds: speculative intellectual and practical intellectual powers

Cognitive activities of speculative intellect power involve three levels:
First level: conception. This is intuitive power, related to understanding
Second level: judgment based on conceptions produced by first level. This is assertive, to making true/false certainty or probable statements, related to knowing.
Third level: reasoning. This is discursive or internecine, related to thinking.

Knowledge is about facts; understanding is of ideas.

Cognitive activities of practical intellect power also involve three levels:
First level: conception. This is the understanding of intelligible goals: good/evil, desired(as means or ends)/avoid
Second level has two kinds of judgments: judgment based on facts is descriptive judgment, which corresponds to reality; judgment based on “ought” (what ought to be desired? What ends ought to be desired? What means to be chosen?), which deals with right desire
Third level: the practical reasoning process has three levels deliberations of what ought to be desired.
Highest: universal prescriptive principles: judgment of “ought.”
Intermediate: prescriptive rules: general, not universal, applicability
Lowest: prescriptive decision about what ought to be desired/done in this or that particular case here and now

A practical syllogism on all 3 levels:
Major premise: a prescriptive judgment about what ought to be desired/done
Minor premise: a descriptive judgment about facts relevant to our “ought.”
Conclusion: a prescriptive judgment

Decision making process:
Highest level:
Major: universal true prescriptive principles
Minor: descriptive judgment about the relevant facts
Conclusion: universally true prescriptive principle through reasoning

Intermediate level:
Major: universally prescriptive principle established by highest level
Minor: a descriptive judgment of relevant facts
Conclusion: a true general rule

Lowest level:
Major: a true general rule established in intermediate level
Minor: a descriptive judgment about the facts of particular cases
Conclusion: sound practical decisions about what ought to be desired and done in the particular case.

Chapter 14 Appetitive power and its acts: willing and choosing
Will is an intellectual power, or intellect functioning appetitively.
The intellect in its appetitive dimension cooperates with sensual desires and emotional drives/urges just as the intellect in its cognitive dimension cooperates with sense-perception, memory, and imagination.

Human voluntary behavior is motivated in only one way: always by a cognition of the object to be desired.

Acts of will as acts of the intellect’s appetitive power presuppose acts on the part of intellect’s cognitive power—acts of the practical intellect that are prescriptive judgments about what ought to be sought as ends and what ought to be sought as means; after such judgment are made by the practical intellect it still remains for the will to carry those judgments into execution by acts of intention WRT ends and acts of choice WRT means.

All objects desired are either ends or means.

The only acts of the will are intention and choice; both are preceded by prescriptive judgment on the part of practical intellect, but in neither case do the prescriptive judgments necessitate the act of will.

If passion put will out of operation, the ensuing behavior is nonvoluntary.

The degree of freedom vary with the degree to which rational judgment of practical intellect solicit the will’s choice, the reason which strengthens the freedom of choice; and the degree to which sensual desires and bodily urges, the passion which diminishes the freedom of choice

Reasons controls habits formed by voluntary acts, we have virtues
Passion, the uncontrolled sensual impulses, dominates habits, we have vices.

Sensual desires for bodily pleasure aiming at good produce ordinate/moderate habits when reason puts limits on them; and inordinate/immoderate sensual indulgence when reasons doesn’t put limit on them, and we have vices of gluttony, insobriety, and lust.

3 cardinal moral virtues (only analytical distinguishable):
Justice (purely a habit of the will)
Courage and fortitude (both are habits of passion/sensual desires as well as of the will)

“Emotion” is a passion that the body suffers: anger/rage and fear

Aristotle 5 intellectual virtues:
3 speculative virtues: understanding (nous), knowledge (episteme), and speculative wisdom (sophia)
2 practical virtues: art/skill (techne), and prudence/practical wisdom (phronesis)

The most fundamental of all intellectual vices is the habitual tendency to think emotionally-with his hips or his guts-instead of thinking rationally.

It is the expression of one’s convictions NOT in the thinking that emotion plays a useful role.

The vocabulary of thought:

THE 103 GREAT IDEAS:A Syntopical Approach
By Category
TRANSCENDENTAL
Beauty Being Good and Evil
Same and Other Truth

ETHICS
Beauty Being Courage
Desire Duty Equality
Good and Evil Happiness Honor
Justice Prudence Same and Other
Sin Temperance Truth
Virtue and Vice Wealth Wisdom

POLITICS
Aristocracy Citizen Constitution
Custom and Convention Democracy Equality
Family Government Justice
Labor Liberty Monarchy
Oligarchy Progress Punishment
Revolution Slavery State
Tyranny And Despotism War and Peace

LIBERAL ARTS
Definition Dialectic Hypothesis
Idea Induction Language
Logic Mathematics Reasoning
Rhetoric

METAPHYSICS
Angel Being Cause
Chance Change Equality
Eternity Fate Form
God Infinity Matter
Metaphysics Nature Necessity and Contingency
One And Many Opposition Principle
Quality Quantity Relation
Same and Other Space Time
Universal and Particular World

ANTHROPOLOGY AND PSYCHOLOGY
Animal Desire Emotion
Experience Habit Immortality
Judgment Knowledge Life and Death
Love Man Memory and Imagination
Mind Opinion Pleasure And Pain
Prophecy Sense Sign and Symbol
Soul Will

PHYSICS
Astronomy and Cosmology Cause Chance
Element Infinity Mathematics
Matter Mechanics Nature
Quality Quantity Relation
Space Time World

SUBJECTS
Art Education Evolution
History Language Law
Logic Mathematics Mechanics
Medicine Metaphysics Philosophy
Physics Poetry Religion
Rhetoric Science Theology

Part II Serious mistakes
Chapter 7: Philosophy and common sense: all human beings live in the same world, and our experience of that world is the same in character and operations.
Chapter 8: What exists independently of the mind? Mind and reality
Chapter 9: the reality and our experience of the reality
Chapter 10: Influence of language on the operation of mind
Chapter 11: Cultures and mind

Chapter 1 Coming to terms
Intellect is man’s highest power. In Christian theology, intellect and free will are not only the foundation of human personality, but the possession of an immaterial intellect is also the one characteristic of human beings that explains the passage in the opening of Genesis in which it is said that man and man alone is made in God’s image.

The word “intellect” has clarity and precision up until 17th century when Spinoza writes of intellect love of God as man’s highest good. The mind takes its place since.

Essays about the human “understanding” ( Greek nous, the word for intellect) refers mainly to the operation of our sensitive faculties, not to the processes of our intellectual life.

Mind now refers to what is operative in all forms of intelligent and learned behavior. It also always refers to the power and action of the sense, the imagination, and the memory, and almost never to faculty that is solely a power of conceptual thought.

Some synonyms: consciousness, intelligence, experience, sense, intellect, thought, soul, spirit
Some antonyms: matter, physical

Sense is sensitive powers, and other abilities which depend on the operation of our senses—namely, sense-perception, sensitive memory, and imagination
Intellect is the ability to conceive or understand; the ability to make judgments; and the ability to reason or make inferences.

Problems:
Are the sensitive and intellectual powers distinct?
Do mental and physical constitute two distinct realms?

Introspection other than sense-perception: only last 2 of 5 objects of observation: mind, its power, its habits, mental acts, mental products of mental acts.
The only method available in our dealings with human mind, apart from the reflexive awareness, comes to us by inference.

Chapter 2, rejection of introspective psychology that had its beginnings with Thomas Hobbes and John Locke
Mistake: Introspective psychologists suppose they could look into the mind and examine its contents.
Mistake of Descartes and Locke regarded the ideas in each person’s mind as its primary objects-in fact, the only objects with which that person had direct acquaintance.
Two kinds of mental processes: cognitive and affective. The affects are directly experienced bodily feelings and emotions, they are always THAT WHICH we experience something. In sharp contrast, cognitions-perceptions, memories, imaginations, and thoughts-are always THAT BY WHICH we experience the objects they make present to our minds.

Chapter 3, the uniqueness of human mind by virtue of its having an intellect
Because of its intellectual powers-conceptual thought and free choice
Error of nominalists: denying the existence of universal objects of thought—and the use of general terms in the sense of universal

Chapter 4, intellect is not brain
Mind and brain:
First extreme pair of opposed views: dualism (Plato and Descartes) and monism (reductive materialist monism)
Second moderate pair of contrary views regarding dependence of mental on physical:
Materialism: The activation of the brain and of other nervous processes is both the necessary and the sufficient condition for the occurrence of all mental states and acts and processes
Non-materialistic view: brain action is only a necessary, but not a sufficient condition—that is, an immaterial factor must be added for conceptual thought and such (Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas)

Chapter 5, intelligent machine
Erroneousness of technologists: matter can be made to think in all the ways that human beings think
Conceptual and perceptual processes are different

Chapter 6, other intelligent creatures
Angelistic fallacy of Plato and Descartes: misconceived the human intellect as functionally independent of a body.

Part II Serious mistakes
Chapter 7: common sense: all human beings live in the same world, and our experience of that world is the same in character and operations.
Idealism is a peculiarly modern philosophical malady. One of the two main strains in modern thoughts (the other is materialism which results in the denial of an intellectual power distinct from and superior to the senses that are embodied in physical organs, beginning with Thomas Hobbes).
Subjective idealism as in Bishop Berkeley
Objective idealism as in Immanuel Kant
They are:
1. Denial that there is an independent reality, which is the object of our knowledge and understanding, or the denial of a reality that is the same for all
2. Assertion that the structure and features of the world in which we live and the shape of our experience of it are determined by the ideas we employ to think about it
3. Assertion that the innate structure of our minds-senses, imagination, intellect-is itself constitutive of the world we experience
4. Belief that experienced world is not the same as an unknowable independent reality if that unknowable, independent reality does in fact exist
5. view that there is a variety among our experienced worlds, varying with the ideas that diverse persons employ in thinking about them
6. doctrine that our own ideas are the only objects with which we can have acquaintance
Two fundamental errors:
One is that our own ideas are that which we know, not that whereby we know. The other is the denial of the intellect as a cognitive power quite distinct from the sensitive power of our senses, sensitive memory, and imaginations.
Only in antiquity and in Middle Ages are there philosophers who are both realists and immaterialists (regarding to intellect)

Hume (following error of Locke and Berkeley who asserted that ideas were the objects of our experience and we only had immediate acquaintance with our ideas) challenged Newtonian mechanics as knowledge that had certitude. Kant was agitated by this, and developed a theory of the human mind that attributed to it an innate structure that in turn enabled it to determine the structure and features of all possible experience. Kant replaced Aristotle metaphysics with epistemology

Chapter 8: mind and reality
Chapter 8 and chapter 9: There is one and the same reality for all of us and human experience may have a common core.

Chapter 9: the reality and our experience of the reality
Locke and his predecessors regarded the human mind as a blank but impressible tablet
Kant introduced the opposite view, that human mind has innate structure prior to all experience-forms of intuition and categories of the understanding-that shaped experience so definitely that our mind-determined experience became an obstacle to our knowing the reality.

Chapter 10: Influence of language on the operation of mind
Is the intellect of all human beings essentially the same? Yes for realist, no for idealism

Chapter 11: Culture and mind

What should I do?
What is there?
How do we know, or if we don’t know how should we set about finding out?

Ethical consequentialism: How good or bad something is has to be judged by looking at its consequences.
A consequentialist thus (reason backward) must be willing to recommend certain things as being good in themselves……eventually, he has to allow only one thing that is good. Thus the diversity of this theory.
Epicurus (341-271 BC): pleasure (for individual)-absence of pain, both physical and mental.
John Stuart Mill the Utilitarian(1806-73): happiness (for everybody)-pleasure and the absence of pain

Socrates in Crito: integrity

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) contact theory of political authority
Plato The republic

Epistemology:Evidence and rationality:
Powers of rationality…………….
Hume: denying the power of reason
Kant: affirming the power of reason

Self:
Hume

Metaphysics
Dualism (mind and matter):
Descartes
Materialism (matter only):
Greece Democritus-atom
Epicureans
Marx: dialectical materialism-the most important cause is material
Idealism (mind only):
Berkeley (1685-1752)
Hegel (1770-1931)
Marx (1818-83), wasn’t an idealist, but extremely Hegelian
Epistemology:
Empiricism: perceiving over thinking
Rationalism: thinking over perceiving (Plato, Kant, Hegel)
Skepticism: Pyrrho (365-275), Descartes
Relativism: Moral, intellectual

……You may remember the fond and unbroken tenacity with which your heart has often recurred to pursuits, over the utter frivolity of which it sighed and wept but yesterday. The arithmetic of your short-lived days may on Sabbath make the clearest impression upon your understanding—and from his fancied bed of death, may the preacher cause a voice to descend in rebuke and mockery on all the pursuits of earthliness—and as he pictures before you the fleeting generations of men, with the absorbing grave, whither all the joys and interests of the world hasten to their sure and speedy oblivion, may you, touched and solemnized by his argument, feel for a moment as if on the eve of a practical and permanent emancipation from a scene of so much vanity. But the morrow comes, and the business of the world, and the objects of the world, and the moving forces of the world come along with it—and the machinery of the heart, in virtue of which it must have something to grasp, or something to adhere to, brings it under a kind of moral necessity to be actuated just as before—and in utter repulsion towards a state so unkindly as that of being frozen out both of delight and of desire, does it feel all the warmth and the urgency of its wonted solicitations—nor in the habit and history of the whole man, can we detect so much as one symptom of the new creature—so that the church, instead of being to him a school of obedience, has been a mere sauntering place for the luxury of a passing and theatrical emotion; and the preaching which is mighty to compel the attendance of multitudes, which is mighty to still and to solemnize the hearers into a kind of tragic sensibility, which is mighty in the play of variety and vigor that it can keep up around the imagination, is not mighty to the pulling down of strong holds.

I have been lamenting on this exact spiritual condition of myself for years, only recently I start to pay attention to the singleness of our personality. According to Chalmers this is not something new to me or our fellow believers in this specific culture. This was an universal struggle of past Christians too. And the fault? It is bad preaching. And the solution? Be a faithful expounder of Gospel! Gospel is not just for nonbelievers, it is not just for others. A believer should strive to be a faithful expounder of Gospel to himself!

Why it is so? Lets hear from Chalmers again:
It is not enough then to argue the folly of an existing affection. It is not enough, in the terms of a forcible or an affecting demonstration, to make good the evanescence of its object. It may not even be enough to associate the threats and the terrors of some coming vengeance with the indulgence of it. The heart may still resist the every application, by obedience to which, it would finally be conducted to a state so much at war with all its appetites as that of downright inanition. So to tear away an affection from the heart as to leave it bare of all its regards and of all its preferences, were a hard and hopeless undertaking—and it would appear, as if the alone powerful engine of dispossession were to bring the mastery of another affection to bear upon it.

…it is not by exposing the worthlessness of the former, but by addressing to the mental eye the worth and excellence of the latter, that all old things are to be done away and all things are to become new.

…the only way to dispossess it of all old affection, is by the expulsive power of a new one. Nothing can exceed the magnitude of the required change in a man’s character—when bidden as he is in the New Testament, to love not the world; no, nor any of the things that are in the world—for this so comprehends all that is dear to him in existence, as to be equivalent to a command of self-annihilation. But the same revelation which dictates so mighty an obedience, places within our reach as mighty an instrument of obedience. It brings for admittance to the very door of our heart an affection which, once seated upon its throne, will either subordinate every previous inmate, or bid it away. Beside the world, it places before the eye of the mind Him who made the world, and with this peculiarity which is all its own: that in the Gospel do we so behold God, as that we may love God. It is there, and there only, where God stands revealed as an object of confidence to sinners—and where our desire after Him is not chilled into apathy by that barrier of human guilt which intercepts every approach that is not made to Him through the appointed Mediator. It is the bringing in of this better hope, whereby we draw nigh unto God—and to live without hope is to live without God; and if the heart be without God, the world will then have all the ascendancy. It is God apprehended by the believer as God in Christ, who alone can dispost it from this ascendancy. It is when He stands dismantled of the terrors which belong to Him as an offended lawgiver and when we are enabled by faith, which is His own gift, to see His glory in the face of Jesus Christ, and to hear His beseeching voice as it protests good will to men, and entreats the return of all who will to a full pardon and a gracious acceptance—it is then, that a love paramount to the love of the world, and at length expulsive of it, first arises in the regenerated bosom. It is when released from the spirit of bondage with which love cannot dwell, and when admitted into the number of God’s children through the faith that is in Christ Jesus, the spirit of adoption is poured upon us—it is then that the heart, brought under the mastery of one great and predominant affection, is delivered from the tyranny of its former desires in the only way in which deliverance is possible. And that faith which is revealed to us from heaven, as indispensable to a sinner’s justification in the sight of God, is also the instrument of the greatest of all moral and spiritual achievements on a nature dead to the influence, and beyond the reach of every other application.

Thus may we come to perceive what it is that makes the most effective kind of preaching. ……

Placed here as a place holder……..This teaching may very well hold the key for my spiritual transformation…..however, it is still just a tool and a signpost to that glorious Christian character……..How can I love the Lord wholeheartedly? That is the heart of true Christianity!

Deuteronomy 6:4Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: 5And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.

Col 1: ⁹For this reason also, ^(U)since the day we heard of it, ^(V)we have not ceased to pray for you and to ask that

you may be filled with the ^(W)knowledge of His will in all spiritual ^(X)wisdom and understanding,

 ¹⁰so that you will ^(Y)walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, ^(Z)to please Him in all respects,

^(AA)bearing fruit in every good work and

increasing in the knowledge of God;

 ^11(AB)strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience; ^(AC)joyously

 ¹²giving thanks to ^(AD)the Father, who has qualified us to share in ^(AE)the inheritance of the saints in ^(AF)Light. ¹³For He rescued us from the ^(AG)domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of ^(AH)His beloved Son,  ^14(AI)in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

After Paul heard about the faith and love of saints in Colossians Paul explained to them the foundational hope, he started to pray for them to advance even more.  So he asked God for them what they needed:  that God may fill them with the knowledge of HIS will.  To accomplish what Paul desired in his prayer next he knew that they needed the very work of God HIMSELF.  And this knowledge has two aspects:  in all spiritual wisdom and understanding.  It was said, we don’t need to stretch it too far, that wisdom in Hellenistic sense is more general, abstract, and intellect, and understanding (root meaning is putting together) is more specific application, it is an ability to perceive the relationship between abstract principle and circumstance and to rightly apply the principle.  In other word, it is the ability to relate principle to life situation and then apply the principle to the situation.  It seems to me that this ability is vital to bring the invisible will of God into the reality of Christian live.  Keep in mind though, this ability is spiritual, NOT street-smart, though sounds similar.

The purpose of Paul’s prayer of this knowledge (he used infinitive to express his purpose) is NOT as we usually do, the end of itself, but a means to an end:  so that we walk worthily of the Lord.  That is, our Christian conduct should match with who the Lord is since we belong to HIM.  In Paul’s mind Christian conduct is very important.  However, his concern of Christian conduct (he used prepositional phrase of eis to express his purpose) was not for the reason of this or that we often hear that benefit ourselves, his concern of our conduct is that we will please the Lord.  As he confessed in other place: 2 cor 5:⁹Therefore we also have as our ambition, whether at home or absent, to be ^(N)pleasing to Him. 

That ought to be our motive for everything we do we think we plan we intend…to please the Lord.

Next Paul outlined the manners or means that we can please the Lord in our Christian conducts that will be worthy the Lord.  He used four participles for that:

1st, bearing fruit in every good work:  Christians are supposed to do good works, which is the purpose of being saved.  As instrument of raise Lord so that HE can do all manners of good work as HE did when HE walked on the earth.

2nd, increasing in the knowledge of God.  This is inevitable linked to the first one.  Actually, bearing fruit and increasing is the phrase used many times in Bible.  We are having difficult to link good work and knowing God using this phrase, so we spilt bearing food for good work and increasing for knowing God.  I am not sure if it is correct.  Anyhow we are supposed to manifest fruit in good work and know God more and more.

3rd, being strengthened by God’s power for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience.  Life can be very challenging, due to our own stupidity, oppositions from spiritual enemies, the sin and corruption of the flesh and the world, God’s grand design of molding us into the image of His Son…In all these we are to endure unwavering with God’s power, that is, to be full of hope and thanksgiving in all matters…

4th, giving thanks to ^(AD)the Father, who…This is the fourth component of Christian conduct that is worthy of the Lord and will please Him:  Thank HIM for what great things HE has done for us through Christ Jesus our Lord:  Inheritance, kingdom transferring, redemption, and forgiveness of sin.

……………….

1Pet 1:^3(O)Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who ^(P)according to His great mercy ^(Q)has caused us to be born again to ^(R)a living hope through the ^(S)resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,⁴to obtain an ^(T)inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and ^(U)will not fade away, ^(V)reserved in heaven for you, ⁵who are ^(W)protected by the power of God ^(X)through faith for ^(Y)a salvation ready ^(Z)to be revealed in the last time.

When I was studying Greek text of Colossians I noticed something very strange to my former understanding.  We know the triad in Pauline epistles: faith, hope, and love.  Though many years I tried to understand the meaning and role of hope in my Christian living I had little success in either my personal understanding or literature searching.  Seems to me there is not much teaching of Christian hope in literatures as far as I can find.  We have a lot teaching about faith, but many such teachings are about how to get stuff from God instead bring glory to HIM.  We also read much about love, but more about loving each other, though this is needed and true, as the second portion of great commandment shows:  YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND.  And YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.  But most of our teachings about loving God are still giving a ring of man-centered.  Yes, loving our neighbor as ourselves is the sure evidence of loving God?  Maybe, maybe not.  Though not loving our neighbor is surely not loving the Lord.  That is true.  Others are teaching that we obey the commandment of God as evidence of loving God, that is also true, more or less.  But men sincerely make effort to obey God’s commandment yet they don’t really love the Lord, they do that because they fear God, which is good if it is in filial sense.  But some fear God out of avoiding punishment, it is a self-preservation NOT pleasing God and revering HIS majesty.  I was searching teachings that show me how to love God as God because HE is God because HE is worthy of all my love because who HE IS…In one word, love HIM for HIS sake.  I am not succeeding so far…

According to Col 1 quoted here those illnesses of our Christian living come from wrong fountains.  The real fountain of our faith in Christ our Lord and love toward saints are from the hope restored for us in Heaven.  That living hope is reserved for us by God and sure since no power can touch it. 

What is exactly that hope?  How that hope can be felt?  Those were my prayers last night, I think they will be my prayer for a while until I can re-orient my faith and love through that true hope.  We are taught that the power of living hope is from the power of the Holy Spirit.

When this hope as right foundation of faith and love caught my eye, I find Apostle Peter was talking about the same thing in first Peter:  A sure and living hope that restored for us in Heaven, safe and secure, how shall this, though in future when Christ our Lord comes again to make it real for us, impact our faith and love and our Christian living now???

Remember the gospel is also called the gospel of hope.  How shall this living hope energize our daily living?

…………………..

This is just a place holder for future study.

I have an opinion that much of church teachings have the intrinsic inability to deal with real life in the trench.  This leaves many of our people in dark spiritual depression if they want to respond to life in godly way.  Many are in a quiet desperation of integrating faith into life; this can be seen through the wide gap between Christian profession and daily life in much population.  Many church people simply have the inability to relate Scripture truth to life and apply the truth to life through the power of the Holy Spirit.  So we substitute a Christian Culture with true Christian faith, Bible knowledge with wholeheartedly obedience, outward religious rituals with inward transformation, fleshly strength with the power of the Holy Spirit, worldly philosophy with true knowledge taught by the Holy Spirit……..well, I better stop here, otherwise, I will be called a gadfly of modern Christianity.

Hi, XXX

Reading your email I feel to share a few things. I was always lamented that no one taught me James 1 when I was a new believer and tested. I was in the same trajectory as YYY was proposing to herself only I made it an reality. Though the Lord preserved my faith but the damage done is never recovered after 15 years spiritual journey. I forsake my PhD study in China and came to USA in 1991 to continue my PhD program, I was kicked out by my professor after three months being a believer. That was my whole life, you can image my pride, my hope, my passion, my ambition, my security…all of them went up in smoke. I have been coping with that aftershock ever since. But the Lord is good! I mean it in every sense of that precious word!!!

Enough of that, YYY’s testing is not unusually. She should be encouraged since many of believers in the faith were tested as severely as she is now yet they gained victories gloriously by the power of our living Lord! Here are some lessons I learned since:

First she should count is all joy (James 1:2) and give praise and thanksgiving to the Lord.

Second she should ask for wisdom from the Lord (James 1:3) to deal with her situation.

Third, she should know all is past away soon as flower (James 1:10,11) though she lost her job and her opportunity to express her passion through the job, that, soon will be lost anyway when we leave this world, thought a little longer. She should put it in the perspective of eternity. It can also applied to her marriage.

Fourth, she should cheerfully endure it (James 1:12) and keep high hope in the Lord through the power of the Holy Spirit (Rom 15:13) and look for HIS uplifting by humbling herself under God’s might hands (1 Pet 5:6)

Fifth, learn from David (Psalm 119:23 and 1 Samuel 30:6) in dealing with people.

Sixth, learn from Job (Job 13:15) in dealing with spiritual darkness

Seventh, learn from Solomon (eccles 9:6) in dealing with her own negative passion.

Eighth, learn from others who walked on the same path as we are and prevailed the enemies by God’s grace: One pastor who depended on his church’s supply particularly resolved to fast when he had no food, and he thought it would be better if he fasted to death in case the Lord didn’t send food to him in that especially difficulty war time.

She needs a sister who is solid in faith and will stand with her in this troublesome time (Eccles 4:9-12). If you think this can be some help, please feel free to forward to her. Tiantang

part I:

Luke 18: ¹And he spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not to faint; ²Saying, There was in a city a judge, which feared not God, neither regarded man:…4 And he would not for a while: but afterward he said within himself, Though I fear not God, nor regard man;

Though this parable of our Lord is to encourage HIS disciples to be fervent in prayer I am interested in HIS describing of the unjust judge.  The unjust judge is described as neither fearing God nor regarding man.  Even by his own admission that unjust judge said to himself:  I fear not God, nor regard man.

The word translated as “regard” here is translated “respect” in NASB.  In other word, this man neither fears God nor respects man.  He is a judge, and has power in his hands, in a sense he has no constraints on him when he doesn’t fear God, especially when the person is a poor widow.  The manner of his treating this poor widow reveals a stunning fact in much of believers’ private lives.  Though the Lord doesn’t give us a cause and effect relationship between these two qualities of fearing God and respecting man, I think it is both fair and reasonable to say that there is a cause and effect.   The visible is a manifestation of invisible, and the invisible drives the visible.  The visible is the fruit and the invisible is the root.  In other word, how a man treats another fellow man when there is no constraints whatsoever outwardly is the best gauge of his attitude toward invisible God.

When a man doesn’t fear God in his heart, he has no regard to his fellow man.  He doesn’t respect another man.  He might be constrained by whatever reason and motive to show outward respect to another man, he doesn’t really respect another man.  This is most obvious when a man who has whatever power to prevail another person easily. 

There are many examples of these kind of relationship.  One example is the relationship between a father or mother and a stubborn young child.  How a father treats his stubborn child who is being disobedience?  Granted, there is a law or culture frown on physically punishing disobedient children among Americans, that is not much concern for Chinese families.  I have much to say about this very unwise thinking and practices.  I think it will lead American to the stage of eventual lawlessness.  Sure, there is a reason behind the “law” to protect children from battering, it also undermines the authority of parents and encourages the nature tendency of disobedience and lawlessness in every child.   It makes many parenting impossible to succeed when stern measures need to curb those wild children.  This measure is truly producing some despairing and helpless parents, and their failures are inevitable, that is, these families will produce more and more lawlessness adults, which in turn, reinforce and produce more lawlessness people.  It in effect usurps the parenting right of parents when the government should both restraints the parents’ bad manners and reinforce the divinely ordained authority of parents over their children.  In one word, if American society doesn’t correct this profound problem of wrong way of thinking, its families will be dissolved eventually, thus, the society.

Enough negativity of that let us come back to the root problem of parenting:  When a father or a mother doesn’t fear God, there is no restraining power to prevent them from evil behavior.  When children get into their ways they will show no restrain in manner dealing with young children, especially those stubborn and disobedience children who will surely escalate the conflict, though the manner have a lot to do with the ways how they are raised up, only treating their children worse than they were treated by their parents when they were young.  Indeed their children will be abused a lot more than they were when they were young.

How do we do when we reflect our manner and attitude when we deal with our children?  No excuse, if we disrespect our children when they kindle our anger, it shows that we lack fear of God.  Because if we do disrespect man who is the visible God-image bearer, we don’t have fear of God WHO is the INVISIBLE.

How about our relationship with our spouses?

How about our relationship with some of our church members, our coworkers, and poor widows?

Want to know if you have the fear of God?  Do not look another place; look at your attitude toward man, especially those “poor widows.”  This is the first place I start to look.  I have to confess that I lack the fear of God and need to repent.  My attempted thesis is two folds:

How we react to the visible is precisely how we treat God who is invisible.  And we need to bring the invisible good intentions of our hearts to fruition and kill the invisible evils in the womb since our outward manners matter as far as our faith concerns.  Will try to look other aspects, but I will end tonight with a verse:

Colossians 1:⁹For this reason also, since the day we heard of it, we have not ceased to pray for you and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding,  ¹⁰so that you will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord..

Look carefully “so that.” What we are doing in all those religions activities?  They are not the end themselves but means to an end!  Bring the invisible grace of God if you have into visible character of Christ-likeness.  This is the will of God, it should be ours also.  If we don’t have that grace, we ought to humble ourselves before HIM, confess our sins and pray fervently like that poor widow before that unjust judge.

Eph 5:¹Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children;

John 15:⁴Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me.  ⁵I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.We will have our last mini-study of gaining control of our tongue.  A few brothers and sisters will report their study. 

Email…..

I will briefly mention the three vital components of our Christian living to end our min-series:  The union with Christ; the offering of our body as living sacrifice; and living by faith alone

Union with Christ means our union with His cross, His death, His burial, His resurrection, and His sitting on the right hand of God the Father through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.  Without this union with Christ he is not a true Christian.  Without constantly coming to HIM in every breathe he is living Christian life by flesh—a modern Galatians in practice.  The flesh has to be crucified not reformed.

Offering our body as living sacrifice is the blessed entrance of sanctified Christian living.  It is by this act of faith that we will experience the ever-recurring theme of Israelites:  God’s faithfulness.  This faithfulness is God’s covenantal faithfulness that we will see first hand in our daily living.  Without this conscious offering our members which were instruments of unrighteousness as instruments of righteousness we can expect very little headway in our spiritual adventure.  It is watershed, a dividing point of spiritual life.  If you never do this, I pray that you will know its meaning and do it.  If you are not ready, I pray that you will ask the Lord to make you willing.  Otherwise, the Christian living by faith alone is dead in the water.

Living by faith alone through grace alone moment by moment:

As beloved children of God by imitating God (Remember WWJD?)

As branches abiding in the Vane, our Lord Jesus

As members of a body holding fast to the Head, Jesus Christ

………There are many vivid imageries to help us.  I stop; instead, I will address the framework of this living by faith alone.

As human being engaging in any meaningful thing we need a structured way of perceive, interpreting, and doing things, we need an “infrastructure” to help us penetrating surface varieties to get to the bottom of the thing—The laws that govern the outward varieties.

The similar laws also govern our approaches of Christian living.  Here is one of them:

First we need to learn to relate every life challenge to the Person Lord Jesus Christ through the Word of God (this is to understand situation according to the Mind of Christ which is in us, it is very important when we deal with complicated life challenges).  This is a life of always praying.  A life that prays at every breathe.

Second, we need to be taught by the Holy Spirit what is the Mind of God in this challenge.  This can become a reality only and only if we have the resolve to obey what we will find out in Bible.  Without this resolution of obedience we are mere bookish and hypocrisy, and won’t be taught by the omniscience Holy Spirit in our attempted religious activities.

Third, we will direct by faith our new divine life vitality to bring the Mind of God in this challenge into reality, that is, to obey/carry out His applicable command. (Remember the first and the greatest commandment?)  It is not what we do but what Christ does through us as branches bear fruits of the vane or as HIS instruments of righteousness.

Without applications (the 3^rd point) as the end of studying the Scriptures we have nothing to do with the reality of faith.  That might be why we have so much problems in our marriages, family lives, and church lives.  When people don’t care the will of God and the great terrible judgment of God for our behaviors no amount of church activities can be helpful.  But once we are sure that God is holding us accountable for everything and will punish transgressors according to their deeds, we might give a second thought to our words and deeds and start to care what God is thinking about our lives.

I am hoping that this mini-study

Raise up the awareness of our need of controlling tongue by God’s encouragements and warnings in this regard.

Walk into the path of blessed assurance of God’s covenantal faithfulness in daily living.

Get you to have self-examination with your current approaches of practical Christian living.

The end

We will continue our mini-study of gaining control of our tongue this Friday. We will have SSS and MMM to report their study. 

Do you start to teach yourself not to speak unprofitable thing even with your spouse and children since Eph 4:29b says: 只 要 随 事 说 造 就 人 的 好 话 ， 叫 听 见 的 人 得 益 处?  I hope you did.

We have seen the wonderful promise for those who desire to control tongue (能 勒 住 自 己 的 全 身) and awful ruins for those who negnect to control tongue(舌 头 就 是 火… 也 能 把 生 命 的 轮 子 点 起 来 ， 并 且 是 从 地 狱 里 点 着 的) James presents us in those vivid imageries. 

Next James shows us that tongue itself is not the root of our problem.  Here again we see vivid imageries: 

First, the tongue itself is an unruly evil living being having its own vitality, and no man can subdue it.  James 3:⁸ 惟 独 舌 头 没 有 人 能 制 伏 ， 是 不 止 息 的 恶 物 …

Next a few imageries tell us that there is a much more profound problem than evil tongue:  The heart problem or the original sin problem.

The tongue is just the mouth of a rotten fountain.  Without finding a way to dry up this rotten fountain all our effort of gaining control of tongue is an exercise of futility.  Now how to dry up this fountain?  James 3:⁹ 我 们 用 舌 头 颂 赞…又 用 舌 头 咒 诅…¹¹ 泉 源 从 一 个 眼 里 能 发 出 甜 苦 两 样 的 水 麽 ？  

Third imagery tells us that corrupted words are the fruits of a corrupted life.  We can’t stop speaking corrupted words without putting to death of this corrupted life.  Again, how to put to death of our corrupted live?  James 3:¹² …无 花 果 树 能 生 橄 榄 麽 ？ 葡 萄 树 能 结 无 花 果 麽 ？

 Along the same line one more imagery within the context of general sinful deeds from James:  We speak evil because there is a hungry and dummy fish inside our bosom which is eager to bite the bait (the temptation), then is forcefully dragged out of water by fisherman the devil(those fishermen know that).  That dummy and hungry fish is called evil concupiscence or lust.  How to starve the dummy fish and kill sin in its womb?  James 1:¹⁴ 但 各 人 被 试 探 ， 乃 是 被 自 己 的 私 欲 牵 引 诱 惑 的 。  ¹⁵ 私 欲 既 怀 了 胎 ， 就 生 出 罪 来 ； 罪 既 长 成 ， 就 生 出 死 来 。

I will end with last imagery typically used to describe the reason of a corrupted tongue.  There is a viper, an adder, a snake in their bosom.  Now, how to strike its vital spot precisely?   (Paul)Rom 3: 他 们 的 喉 咙 是 敞 开 的 坟 墓 ； 他 们 用 舌 头 弄 诡 诈 ， 嘴 唇 里 有 虺 蛇 的 毒 气.  (King David) Psalm 140: ³ 他 们 使 舌 头 尖 利 如 蛇 ， 嘴 里 有 虺 蛇 的 毒 气 。(Lord Jesus)Matt 12: ³⁴ 毒 蛇 的 种 类 ！ 你 们 既 是 恶 人 ， 怎 能 说 出 好 话 来 呢 ？ 因 为 心 里 所 充 满 的 ， 口 里 就 说 出 来 。

In conclusion, all these imageries tell us that the heart of man is his real problem. 

Now the gaining control of tongue is a two-front battle:  the heart and the tongue.

Next week we will see the two blessed truths dealing with each aspect:  Union with Christ to renovate our hearts and offering the members of our body as living sacrifice to subdue the members of our body including tongue.

We will continue our mini-study of gaining control of our tongue this Friday. We will have WWW to report his study.  We will still have 10 minutes for small group discussion.  Please review the following verses to prepare.  I hope reading James is benefiting you already.

James 1: ²⁶ 若 有 人 自 以 为 虔 诚 ， 却 不 勒 住 他 的 舌 头 ， …这 人 的 虔 诚 是 虚 的 。James 3: ² …若 有 人 在 话 语 上 没 有 过 失 ， 他 就 是 完 全 人 ， 也 能 勒 住 自 己 的 全 身 。

These two verses tells us that our true grace is identified and manifested by (almost) gaining control of our tongue.

To encourage those who desire to gain control of our whole body as holy instruments of righteousness to the Lord We are given two beautiful imageries of tongue/body: 嚼 环/马, and 舵/船.  James used these two imageries to help us make sense of the role of tongue in the taming/controlling of our whole body. 

If we can control our tongue, we can control our whole body so that it behaves according to God’s will; just as a rider can control a horse at his will as long as he held tight the rein (How to tame the horse by getting the rein on its mouth is another story for later study); just as the captain can direct the ship by holding tight the rudder in right direction even against contrary wind and tide.  Even so, a Christian can live a holy life against all odds by controlling the tongue thus the whole body.  What a promise holds out for all of us, what a bright future for all of us!

³ 我 们 若 把 嚼 环 放 在 马 嘴 里 ， 叫马顺 服 ， 就 能 调 动马的 全 身

⁴ 看 哪 ， 船 只 虽 然 甚 大 ， 又 被 大 风 催 逼 ， 只 用 小 小 的 舵 ， 就 随 着 掌 舵 的 意 思 转 动 。

However, for those who are careless and neglecting their controlling of tongue, James warned them the great evils on themselves and others around them. He used 5 imageries to help us make sense of its devastating consequences:

Tongue to a body is like fire to a forest, it will destroy the whole forest if it is not controlled

Tongue is a world of iniquity, a fountain bubbling and spreading iniquity, defiles the whole person, himself, and those around him

Tongue is a hell fire, ruled by hell, lights up his own body and the body of those who hear him with the fire of hell (do you see the rage of man caused by word?)

Tongue is restless evil, unruly; no man can tame it since it is ruled by the devil

Tongue is full of deadly poison, does harm and brings death to those who speak and those who hear

⁵ 这 样 ， 舌头 在 百体 里 也 是 最 小 的 ， 却 能 说 大 话 。 看 哪 ， 最 小 的 火 能 点 着 最 大 的 树 林 。

 ⁶ 舌 头 就 是 火 ， 在 我 们 百 体 中 ， 舌 头 是 个 罪 恶 的 世 界 ， 能 污 秽 全 身 ， 也 能 把 生 命 的 轮 子 点 起 来 ， 并 且 是 从 地 狱 里 点 着 的 。

 ⁷ 各 类 的 走 兽 、 飞 禽 、 昆 虫 ， 水 族 ， 本 来 都 可 以 制 伏 ， 也 已 经 被 人 制 伏 了 ；

 ⁸ 惟 独 舌 头 没 有 人 能 制 伏 ， 是 不 止 息 的 恶 物 ， 满 了 害 死 人 的 毒 气 。

We will continue our mini-study of gaining control of our tongue this Friday.

James 3 2 原 来 我 们 在 许 多 事 上 都 有 过 失 ； 若 有 人 在 话 语 上 没 有 过 失 ， 他 就 是 完 全 人 ， 也 能 勒 住 自 己 的 全 身 。 … 8 惟 独 舌 头 没 有 人 能 制 伏 ， 是 不 止 息 的 恶 物 ， 满 了 害 死 人 的 毒 气 。 … 10 颂 赞 和 咒 诅 从 一 个 口 里 出 来 ！ 我 的 弟 兄 们 ， 这 是 不 应 当 的 ！  11 泉 源 从 一 个 眼 里 能 发 出 甜 苦 两 样 的 水 麽 ？

James 3:2 tells us that the pathway or means of practical holiness starts with gaining control of tongue.  What is practical holiness but our whole body is under the control of the Holy Spirit acting according to God’s will in every life situation?  If we can gain control of tongue, here we are told we can gain control of whole body.

For those who start to enter this battle last week, how many times you lost and how many time you won?  If you lost, why?  If you won, why?

Gaining control of tongue is not a simple thing.  James 3: 11 tells us there is a fountain behind our problem, tongue is just a channel that pours out stuff from the fountain (路 加 福 音 6 :45 善 人 从 他 心 里 所 存 的 善 就 发 出 善 来 ； 恶 人 从 他 心 里 所 存 的 恶 就 发 出 恶 来 ； 因 为 心 里 所 充 满 的 ， 口 里 就 说 出 来 。)  Not only that, James 3:8 tells us that tongue itself is a problem beyond human power.

So, what are the biblical means to gain control of our tongue?  By human will and power as pagan philosophers taught?  By human effort strengthened through the Holy Spirit by the means of prayer and other spiritual exercises as popular evangelicals taught?  Can you guess what they are?  What means you used last week?