Author Archive
Genesis
Chapter summaries in Genesis.
Genesis 1 – God creates all from nothing, by His spoken word, and all very good; man as image-bearer; man’s mandate.
Genesis 2 – God rests; formation of Adam and Eve; Eden; covenant of life.
Genesis 3 – Man’s temptation, sin, fall, curse, judgment, banishment, and hope.
Genesis 4 – Abel’s offering accepted; Abel’s murder; Cain’s judgment; Cain’s offspring; Seth’s birth.
Genesis 5 – The line of Adam through Seth to Noah and his sons; Enoch translated.
Genesis 6 – Wickedness multiplies; God is grieved and plans to destroy and to save; Noah obeys.
Genesis 7 – The ark is entered and the earth is flooded; every living thing is blotted out.
Genesis 8 – The water subsides, the earth dries, and the ark is exited; Noah worships God; God’s promise.
Genesis 9 – God blesses Noah and establishes covenant with all living creatures; Ham’s sin and Noah’s curse on Canaan.
Genesis 10 – Genealogies of Noah’s sons.
Genesis 11 – Tower built; God confuses language; genealogy from Shem to Abram; Terah journeys from Ur to Canaan but settles in Haran.
Genesis 12 – God’s promise to Abram; journey to Canaan; deceit in Egypt over Sarai.
Genesis 13 – Abram and Lot separate; God promises land to Abram forever.
Genesis 14 – Abram recues Lot, tithes to Melchizedek, and refuses reward from Sodom.
Genesis 15 – God promises innumerable offspring; Abram believes; prophecy of captivity in Egypt; Abram sacrifices.
Genesis 16 – Offspring through Hagar, who flees but returns after God’s instruction and blessing.
Genesis 17 – Covenant to bless and multiply ”Abraham” and ”Sarah”; promise of land; circumcision as sign of covenant.
Genesis 18 – Three men visit; Sarah laughs at prophecy; Abraham intercedes for Sodom and Gomorrah.
Genesis 19 – Sodom and Gomorrah destroyed; Lot rescued; Lot’s incest.
Genesis 20 – Deceit in Negev over Sarah.
Genesis 21 – Isaac is born and circumcised; Hagar is sent out; Abraham covenants with Abimelech.
Genesis 22 – God tests Abraham, provides a sacrificial ram, and promises to bless Abraham.
Genesis 23 – Sarah dies in Hebron; Abraham buys a field and buries her in a cave.
Genesis 24 – God guides Abraham’s servant to find Rebekah as a wife for Isaac.
Genesis 25 – Abraham dies; Ishmael’s offspring; Jacob and Esau born; Esau sells birthright.
Genesis 26 – God blesses and prospers Isaac; deceit over Rebekah; conflict over wells; Esau grieves parents.
Genesis 27 – Jacob steals Esau’s blessing.
Genesis 28 – Jacob journeys to Haran, is blessed by God in a dream, and builds an altar.
Genesis 29 – Jacob serves Laban for Rachel and Leah. Leah is fruitful but Rachel barren.
Genesis 30 – Jacob’s children; Rachel conceives; Jacob schemes for the best of Laban’s flocks.
Genesis 31 – Jacob flees toward Canaan; Laban pursues, searches for idols Rachel stole; Jacob and Laban covenant together.
Genesis 32 – Jacob seeks to appease Esau, and wrestles with God for a blessing; Jacob called Israel.
Genesis 33 – Jacob and Esau meet; Jacob builds an altar in Shechem.
Genesis 34 – Shechem rapes Jacob’s daughter Dinah; Simon and Levi deceive and kill every man in the city.
Genesis 35 – Jacob builds altar at Bethel; Jacob blessed and called Israel; Rachel dies in labor; Isaac dies.
Genesis 36 – The line of Esau; Esau journeys to Edom.
Genesis 37 – Joseph is favored; Joseph’s dreams; Joseph sold into Egyptian slavery.
Genesis 38 – Judah’s sons killed by God; Judah commits adultery.
Genesis 39 – Joseph finds favor with Potiphar, is tested by Potiphar’s wife, is imprisoned, and finds favor with jailer.
Genesis 40 – Joseph interprets Pharaoh’s servants’ dreams.
Genesis 41 – Joseph interprets Pharaoh’s dreams; Joseph exalted and given authority to prepare for famine.
Genesis 42 – Joseph’s brothers visit him; he imprisons Simeon so they will bring Benjamin.
Genesis 43 – Joseph’s brothers bring Benjamin and dine with Joseph.
Genesis 44 – Joseph makes it appear Benjamin stole a cup; Judah pleads to be held as surety.
Genesis 45 – Joseph reveals himself; Pharaoh invites Jacob to Egypt.
Genesis 46 – Jacob and his family travel to Goshen.
Genesis 47 – Pharaoh greets Jacob; Pharaoh accrues money, livestock, and wealth during famine; Jacob to be buried in Canaan.
Genesis 48 – Jacob blesses Manasseh and Ephraim; Ephraim to be greater than his brother.
Genesis 49 – Jacob blesses his sons; Jacob dies and is to be buried with his fathers.
Genesis 50 – Egypt mourns; Joseph buries Jacob; Joseph’s bones to be carried to Canaan; Joseph dies.
Loftness on Work
John Loftness of Covenant Life Church gave a message on work which I listened to recently. Here’s my chicken-scratch notes:
- God gave work to bless us as we serve as His image-bearers. We exercise royal dominion over the earth as God’s representatives.
- “God hides himself at work, waiting for us to find Him there.”
“We sanctify our work by looking for God in our daily responsibilities.”
“Whenever we face a situation that is ‘not good’, we can believe that God is behind it and wants to meet us in it.”
Luther: work is God’s “mask”.
sin — seeking to find good apart from God. God creates lacks, prompts for us to seek Him.
- We sanctify work by embracing it as a place of suffering for God. The cross makes sense of the toil, and sometimes futility, of work. The world is under judgment; the kingdom has come, but not in full. Yet it has come to our hearts. The cross is to inform how we walk — in our own behavior and in our view of others.
I gotta have my orange juice. 
Ontological Argument
with one comment
Anselm’s Argument
pp. 87-88. Plantinga, Alvin. God, Freedom, and Evil. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1978.
Objections
Transitivity
Anselm makes the implicit assumption that his definition of greatness is transitive, without demonstrating this to be true. Without transitivity, a set does not necessarily possess a greatest element. Consider, for example, a chess club consisting of three players: A, B, and C; for which A consistently defeats B, B consistently defeats C, and C consistently defeats A. There is in this case no greatest chess player.
Upper Bound
Anselm also assumes that his set under consideration (all entities existent or conceivable) contains its upper bound, without demonstrating this to be true. Without an upper bound, one can always produce an element greater than any other element. Consider, for example, the set of natural numbers: 1, 2, 3, . . ., with the traditional greater-than metric. This set has no greatest element, because it does not contain its upper bound, which is infinity.
Reality as Greater than Thought
Anselm makes the assumption that an entity that exists in reality is implicitly greater than one that exists in thought. Though a plausible assumption, I believe Anselm should spend more time defending it. Consider, for example, the proposition that the greatest entity is a thought about a thought. (Or a thought about a meta-thought, . . . and once again we see the problem of upper bounds.) This, too, is a valid assumption, one that is also quite tempting to assert.
Anselm also fails to adequately define a metric for the differentiation between reality and thought. While he assumes a God in reality is greater than a God in the imagination, would a worm in reality also be greater than a God in the imagination?
Attributes of God
Anselm assumes, without any prior explanation, that the greatest entity must necessarily have those properties which he attributes to God, such as omnipotence and omniscience. This is an entirely arbitrary assumption.
By changing these assumed properties, one can manipulate this argument to say the exact opposite. Consider this reasoning:
Or consider the following “proof”:
Infinite versus Greatest
Anselm also assumes that, for each of the properties he attributes to God, the notion of greatest automatically entails total. His proof claims to demonstrate that God exists, possessing the greatest power, knowledge, etc.; but then he jumps to the conclusion that God possesses exhaustive power, knowledge, etc.
Time Invariance
Anselm’s argument assumes without prior cause that the greatest entity is itself invariant with respect to time, and is never superceded by some other greatest entity over time.
Conclusion
I believe that Anselm has at most succeeded in proving that the universe (as a whole greater than any portion thereof) exists.
I believe that his primary mistake is in trying to subject God to physical reality, rather than realizing that reality and logic are themselves reliant upon God for their existence. He assumes that God exists in reality, whereas reality, in a sense, exists in God. Thus, his argument fails in that it is circular; by assuming God’s existence, he has claimed to prove it. Sadly, though the God of his assumption is the glorious and transcendent God that is the author of reality, the God of his proof is a lesser God, subject to and entirely contained within material reality.
Written by Scott Moonen
May 24, 2004 at 5:18 pm
Posted in Commentary, Essays
Tagged with Anselm, ontological argument