Nominalism vs. Realism

I have come across a new podcast, The Nathan Jacobs Podcast (also on YouTube here).  For those of you who have followed (and remain interested in) the discussion here regarding objective truth, natural law, the Enlightenment, the limits of man’s reason without some higher, controlling metaphysic, I think this podcast might be right down your alley.

Some backstory: while I had heard of, and listened to, Jacobs in the past, it was this recent discussion between him and Jonathan Pageau that caught my attention: Embrace Realism: It's All Mystical!  From the video description:

Dr. Nathan Jacobs is an academic, artist, and filmmaker. In this conversation we discuss where reason, rationality, and discernment fit into the mystical experience and how the modern world has mistakenly divorced reason and mysticism.

Take a look at Jacobs’ personal website: the description of him as an academic, artist, and filmmaker, is no exaggeration or overstatement.

Although beginning in Protestant (I think Reformed) Christianity, he found aspects of this lacking in terms of explaining / understanding God, God’s actions, etc.  He has since converted to Eastern Orthodoxy.  What is interesting about this, at least to me: he embraces the role that Plato and Aristotle have played in the development of the understanding of God.  He also speaks positively of the idea of a natural law ethic.

Why do I find this interesting?  I see both embrace of this and pushback on this from Orthodox Christians.  Especially pushback on the idea of natural law (with one glaring and wonderful exception, which I have written about here).

I am about four podcasts in (out of fourteen at the time of this writing).  They appear to come out about once a week, and almost all are between 1-2 hours long.

Why the title to my post?  In his first podcast, Jacobs describes the question of nominalism vs. realism as the single most important question in our time!

Demonstrating Authority

 

I am going to stumble through this one a bit…

John 4: 7 A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.”

We know the scene.  Jesus came with His disciples, passing through Samaria.  The disciples went away to buy food; Jesus asked this woman for a drink from the well.  It was mid-day.  How is it that a Jew is asking a drink from a Samaritan?  Jews have nothing to do with them.  Jesus replied with His living water.

15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”

Jesus said to her to have her husband come.  She said she had no husband.

17(b): Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; 18 for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.” 19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet.”

Now it is clear as to why the woman was at the well mid-day.  Water is drawn in the morning and in the evening, and there would be several women at the well at these times.  She was there mid-day, and alone.  She was an outcast, having gone through many husbands – and now, with one not her husband.

The disciples, having returned, marveled that Jesus was talking to a woman, although no one asked Him why He was doing so.

28 So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people, 29 “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” 30 They went out of the town and were coming to him.

Then, something truly amazing:

39 Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony, “He told me all that I ever did.”

Why would they believe anything this woman said? A woman with such poor standing that she would go to the well when no one else was there?  She was an outcast, a woman of poor reputation.  Especially, why would men believe her?  Yet, they did.

40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. 41 And many more believed because of his word. 42 They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.”

They did believe because of her, but now they believe because of Him.

What do I take from this episode?  A demonstration of God’s power and authority to work even through corruption.  I will try to explain.  In this town, this woman presented as the lowest of the low, the most corrupt, the outcast.  Violating every norm and custom, breaking tradition and law.  We wouldn’t think twice about these men in the town believing if Jesus just walked into the town council and spoke.

But He didn’t do this; He spoke though this woman.  He demonstrated that He had the power and authority to even overcome her reputation, that even one like her – who no one ever would have reason to believe – would be believed.

Who are the Wolves?

Matthew 7: 15 Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. 16 Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?

 Forgive the mixed metaphor.... There is a new book out: “Shepherds for Sale,” by Megan Basham, a journalist for the Daily Wire.  From what I gather, it is a book dedicated to exposing those Christian shepherds who are dedicated to or otherwise advancing leftist political agendas as opposed to focusing on what might be considered a traditional, or conservative, or even a “true” understanding of the gospel.

Normally, a book like this and on this topic would be right down my alley.  I have written occasionally about this issue and how it strikes me that we may be living through a time of testing in the Church – separating the wheat from the chaff when it comes to Christian leaders and Christians in general.

Apparently, this book has been much anticipated.  I, not being on X-twitter or any social media, knew nothing of it until Gavin Ortlund did a video about it.  Then a second.  Each is at thirty minutes or a bit less.  He did the videos because he found himself right in the opening chapter – a prominent shepherd for sale apparently.

The topic of the opening chapter is global warming and man’s effect (if any) on climate change.  In some earlier video some time ago, Ortlund said he has studied the issues and basically agrees with the scientific consensus (although, in truth, there isn’t a consensus – but that isn’t really important here). 

However, Ortlund does not make this a faith issue or anything of the sort.  He does say Christians should be concerned about the environment, and this is quite correct.  God put this responsibility there, right in the beginning of His book:

Genesis 1: 26 Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

Genesis 2: 15 Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it.

For Ortlund, his main point was that we should study the issue of climate change before pushing any strong opinion. 

Basham has included Ortlund in the book – in the first chapter – because of this.  Not via a steelman of his argument, but a strawman.  Ortlund addresses this in the two videos – the second of which was prompted by the social media commentary that followed his first video.

There is a very thorough article that walks through just how careless Basham is in her work on Ortlund and this topic.  The author (it appears anonymously) isn’t shy about his conclusion: “In Defense of Gavin Ortlund.”  His summary, which he defends very well (emphasis in original):

I think [Ortlund] is correct in his complaint that Basham badly misrepresented and mischaracterized his original video on climate change and, given the highly controversial nature of the book in which it appears, I think he has a right to be upset about it. 

The book is entitled Shepherds FOR SALE.  It is not a soft charge to be included in a book with such a title.  One should be quite careful about who is included in such a book, and that the charges are accurate.  In any case, if it is meaningful to you, take a quick read of this author’s defense of Ortlund.

Now, why am I going through all of this?  As noted, it is a subject important to me and one that I have written about occasionally.  Most recently here.  Looking at just the last decade or so: the embrace of pride, the reaction to covid, and now the genocide in Palestine.  In each case, many Christian leaders have failed.  In many cases, those who were strong on the first two failed and continue to fail at the third.

And this comes to my point.  When one wants to write about shepherds for sale in the Christian church, I would expect that the first several chapters are dedicated to those well-known Christian Zionists, especially those who head up or are involved in Zionist or Zionist-adjacent organizations.  If there is any group that might be considered “for sale,” it is this one, and it is a group that is supporting the most immediate violence against innocents.

Nothing is as It Seems…

Interesting times… I have stayed away from commenting on immediate events, so I will not comment on these while commenting on them.

Trump’s Assassination Attempt

There are so many aspects to this.  “Now he is guaranteed to win in November.”  This is one of the funnier lines I have heard in the days since the attempt.  That’s over three months away.  Who knows the news cycle by then, who knows what will be important to voters.  Who knows what shenanigans will be pulled.

“There is no way they can rig the vote now; the gap is too wide.”  Another funny one.  What happened four years ago was blatant, and we know that blatant only opens the door to something even more blatant.  Power doesn’t give up so easily (and settle down, I don’t find Trump to be an antidote to power.  He just is a representative of one of the many factions of power fighting for control). 

In other words, those who want Trump out aren’t going to take the next three months off.

Oh, yeah.  “Trump faked the whole thing.”  Look, anything is possible, and I have given up believing the first story about any significant event.  But if he faked it, wouldn’t November 3 or so have been a better time to do so? 

Meet the Hillbilly

All I know about J.D. Vance is he is considered an outsider, and some rather unpleasant characters are behind him financially.  One of these things is not like the other, and in such a case I know which one of these things wins.

Who Is in Charge Here?

This question is being asked often, since Biden has disappeared for several days.  But why is it being asked now?  And I don’t just mean since his election four years ago.  No president has been “in charge” since at least November 22, 1963.

There are many culprits we can point to as the answer to this question, and, likely, the ones we can point to aren’t even the ones in charge. Further, there isn’t such a thing as someone “in charge” – as if there is some hierarchy of deviants.  Instead, we have multiple factions each vying for some area of control or vying for a share of the spoils.

Who is in charge of what we refer to as the West, nominally led by the United States?  The CIA? The merchants of death?  Zionists?  The Chinese?  Whoever controls the Epstein client list?  Klaus Schwab?  The World Health Organization?  The Bank for International Settlements?  The list of suspects is endless.

All of these are, and none of these are.  But one thing is for sure: the president hasn’t been in charge, not for decades.  If it was the president, would we have had Obama or Biden?  Would Kamala be the next heir apparent?  Are any of these comparable to the leaders in other major countries today, or presidents from our past?  These are jokes foisted on us just to demonstrate that presidents are not in charge – and the plebes can go on fighting about who wins…as if it matters.

Conclusion

On November 6, we are going to wake up to a certainty: whoever wins the election (laughably, we will refer to it in this term), war wins, central banking wins, increased control wins.  This will continue to be true until the weight of the system comes crashing down on itself.

Somewhere in the back of our mind, we will remember a line from a song from over fifty years ago: “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”

A Time of Testing

 But when isn’t it such a time….

As we watch institutions of every type failing in the West, the same is true of the Christian Church.  Not to get into denominational particulars, but we have recently gone through – and continue to go through – some very meaningful failures in Christian institutions and by Christian leaders.

Just consider the last ten years or so.  The embrace of pride, of every alphabet soup, of every challenge to God’s creation of man and woman.  Countless churches and congregations openly embrace this culture.  A striking position given that man and woman were both made in God’s image; to consider that God was somehow mistaken in that which He made in His image is foundationally prideful.

Then we went through covid.  Again, countless churches – and certainly the large, institutional / hierarchical traditions – almost joyously embraced the closure of churches for months and years.  They embraced every made-up rule, every restriction. Accepting made-up rules in order to prevent the proper gathering together of the faithful.  What kind of Christian leadership is this?

There were men who stood tall during these times.  We know them either directly, or indirectly through an online presence.  Now we come to a third recent episode, and even these men are not immune to contagion.

The state of Israel is slaughtering Palestinians.  This based on the pretext of October 7 last year – an event that, while prompted by Hamas, now has been openly exposed by Haaretz as an execution of Israel’s Hannibal directive (those paying attention knew this nine months ago).  Large portions, if not the majority of those deaths that day were caused by the IDF, not by Hamas.

The Israeli army did deploy its so-called Hannibal Directive, which allows the military to use all necessary force to prevent the capture of soldiers, during the October 7 Hamas-led attacks on Israel, resulting in the loss of both civilian and military lives, an investigation by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz has found.

Further, while the official death count has remained almost stagnant at just under 40,000, a new study places the likely number as something that will approach 200,000 – far more likely given the continual bombing for ten months.

The study pointed out that the death toll is higher because the official toll does not take into account thousands of dead buried under rubble and indirect deaths due to destruction of health facilities, food distribution systems and other public infrastructure.

The study said the death toll is expected to be far larger given that much of Gaza’s infrastructure has been destroyed; there are shortages of food, water and shelter; and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees has seen its funding cut.

But now, we have Christian leaders who stood tall under woke pressure and covidiocy crumbling under the weight of ethical (and, I would say Biblical) confusion.  This is present primarily, if not solely, in what is known as evangelical churches.

At my other blog, I recently wrote about the idea of reading the apostle Paul (and the rest of the Bible) through the lens of Jesus Christ in the gospels. 

So, let’s try it this way; read this:

An Alternate Possibility

 

“All warfare is based on deception.”

Elements in the United States, both within and outside of the federal government, see the current events in Gaza as the opportunity to free itself from the stranglehold that is Zionism and the state of Israel.

There is no doubt that, instead of being the United States’ most important ally, the state of Israel is its single biggest foreign policy liability.  Not that the United States can’t find ways to create liabilities on its own, but no other state so wags this dog and costs the United States a loss of international credibility as does the state of Israel.

“Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak.”

Have we seen more pathetic actors in foreign policy that those in the current administration, starting with Biden, and including Blinken, Austin, and Sullivan?  No, I don’t believe they are acting.  They are perfect for the role of appearing weak; they are playing the role perfectly because it is what they are, and the aforementioned elements may just be taking advantage of this by letting nature take its course.

“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”

The United States is not fighting the state of Israel or the Israel lobby at all.  Yet this current conflict can and will only weaken the hold by the state of Israel on the United States.

“To know your Enemy, you must become your Enemy.”

It is easy to know this enemy.  The lobby has now had to come out in the open, completely visible to all.  Individual actors speak boldly and openly about not hiring students from various universities, withdrawing funding and grants, etc. 

Individuals in the highest positions of authority in the Israeli government are not shy about their intent – they speak openly and directly about it.  Israeli soldiers are proud of the most criminal behavior, posting videos online where they glory in their corruption.

The US government knowns this enemy because it is this enemy.  Listen to words from any one of hundreds of current and former US officials, ranging from Lindsey Graham to Mike Pompeo to Donald Trump.  No less shameless than those in the lobby or in the Israeli government.

And this is, if my alternate possibility holds any water, is easily used against Israel.

“The whole secret lies in confusing the enemy, so that he cannot fathom our real intent.”

There is no doubt that if my alternate possibility is true, that the enemy – both within the United States and in the state of Israel – cannot fathom the intent.  Even if they could, I don’t think they would know how to stop.  Which, again, is a “know your enemy” thing.

“Ultimate excellence lies not in winning every battle, but in defeating the enemy without ever fighting.”

There is no way to fight the lobby and the US government head-on on this topic.  Using this approach, it is a battle that cannot be won.  Therefore, win without fighting.  Allow the enemy to do what it cannot help but do, and the entire edifice will come crashing down.

Whether or not I am correct, I think the end result is inevitable – distance created between the United States and Israel.  The only question is, will that end result come with or without the use of nuclear weapons by the state of Israel.

 

All quotes from Sun Tzu, The Art of War