Theology Quiz Revisited

Since the theological quiz went around here, I took it again to see where I stand now that I know something about the issues. The results, as compared to last year's, were:

Then

Now

You scored as Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan. You are an evangelical in the Wesleyan tradition. You believe that God's grace enables you to choose to believe in him, even though you yourself are totally depraved. The gift of the Holy Spirit gives you assurance of your salvation, and he also enables you to live the life of obedience to which God has called us. You are influenced heavly by John Wesley and the Methodists. Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan - 79% Roman Catholic - 75% Neo orthodox - 71% Reformed Evangelical - 61% Classical Liberal - 57% Emergent/Postmodern - 54% Fundamentalist - 39% Charismatic/Pentecostal - 21% Modern Liberal - 18%

You scored as Neo orthodox. You are neo-orthodox. You reject the human-centredness and scepticism of liberal theology, but neither do you go to the other extreme and make the Bible the central issue for faith. You believe that Christ is God's most important revelation to humanity, and the Trinity is hugely important in your theology. The Bible is also important because it points us to the revelation of Christ. You are influenced by Karl Barth and P T Forsyth. Neo orthodox - 93% Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan - 86% Emergent/Postmodern - 79% Roman Catholic - 75% Reformed Evangelical - 68% Fundamentalist - 32% Classical Liberal - 32% Modern Liberal - 18% Charismatic/Pentecostal - 18%

Am I the only Taylorite that is not an Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan any more? Though at the same time, I actually seem to have become more convinced of the view and of the importance of holy living through God's power (figures that out of a school of almost entirely Calvinistic professors, the most influential one on me would be the lone Wesleyan; I guess the truth makes itself known, eh, Scott?), though even more convinced of the centrality of Christ and the importance of the Trinity.

Omniscience and Cantor

I found an interesting debate between Plantinga and Grim, a mathematician on the possibility of omniscience (or anything else that would entail a quantification over all propositions): http://www.sunysb.edu/philosophy/faculty/pgrim/exchange.html. I'm working on a couple of ways around Grim's argument. One is Plantinga's approach, which I think merely leads to the idea that the set of valid properties is, at best, recursively enumerable (that it, there is no decision procedure for determining falsehood); an altogether unremarkable claim. Another is what is called the Skolem paradox, which some think show that levels of infinity are really relative, and as such a universal set I think could be exempt from a Cantorian argument; in fact, such a set could even be defined as one which cannot be put into correspondence with itself. However, I need to do some research as it could be possible that this interpretation of the Lowenheim-Skolem theorem has already been laid to rest. A third way is through an anti-Wittgensteinian maneuver: the world is made up of things, not facts. Fourthly, while Grim shows that there's a set of properties which cannot be put into one-to-one correpspondence with propositions, thereby entailing a new proposition, I think an argument can be made that there are at the same time at least as many propositions as properties, and even as many as their power set, their power set's power set, and so on, so there must be more propositions than powers. This doesn't solve the problem, but shows that there must be one somewhere within the argument. Finally, I guess one could resort to a form of nominalism, though I am hestitant to be a nominalist about abstract objects (physical objects I am ok with). I might buy TCR (theistic creative realism), which states that reality for God is nominalistic (though as opposed to theistic activism, he doesn't create logical laws - I need to see how this fits), which leads to a realism from our perspective.

Retraction, Sickness, and Philosophy

Currently reading:

Depth of the Riches: A Trinitarian Theology of Religious Ends
by S. Mark Heim
Till We Have Faces
by C. S. Lewis

Probably should put retractions first, so I will say that I was a bit unfair to Cragg in my previous post. I still don't agree with his approach, I think that it does lead to a confusion of the gospel message, but I have discovered that I misread him; most of what he says is not incompatible with Niceno-Constantinopoletan orthodoxy, but sidesteps that issue in order to not alientate Muslims, while at the same time Cragg is trying to get them to ask themselves the pertinent questions. So I may have to read the book again, but in the meantime I was wrong with my criticisms.

I've been recovering for a the past couple weeks from illness. About half a week to a week into the 2-week class on Christian Encounters with World Religions, I caught a nasty flu. I was better for a day (it was a Tuesday), then I got throat problems. First, I was just feeling tired, demotivated, and had an itchy, scratchy throat. I went to the doctor Friday, who thought I had strep (which I had been beginning to suspect). Friday night it really hit hard, and I was out of comission the entire weekend and most of the following week. For it wasn't strep that I had; that would have been bad enough. I had full-blown tonsilitis, and the type that takes its time to go away. Finally, after being down and out for a week and a half, I was better, though I'm still constantly tired and finding it hard to sit down and concentrate on a book.

In the meantime, I've decided that I'm not sure that I really want to go into comparative religions. The subject material does interest me somewhat, but I'm finding that the discussions I really enjoy are in more analytic stuff, and religious studies programs are tending more and more towards continental philosophy. I want to be conversant with the continentals, but I don't think that I could be doing my main work in it. Thus, my current prognosis of what I want to do is philosophy of religion, maybe working with modal logic and philosophical theology. I think that it would be cool to work under Thomas Flint at Notre Dame, though I don't know that I could actually get in there.