Alasdair MacIntyre rejects the idea that God knows what we do until we have done it.  Because, he says, we are free agents.  What we choose cannot perfectly be predicted.

Until the agent finally makes her or his decision her or his future action is undetermined. There is no fact of the matter about what she or he is going to decide or to do, nothing to make any statement about, true or false. Not only does she or he not know what she or he is going to do, no one else can be said to know this either, including God. . . . So, even if an omniscient God does exist, there have been and will be numerous occasions on which he cannot be said to know what will be done or happen, until it is done or happens.

Lecture video here.  A Catholic argument against MacIntyre from where I borrowed the above text transcription here.

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It is striking to read thoughtful cultural commentators from the 1950s-70s, who are confident that The System – based on materialism and motivated by Leftism – will certainly collapse due to its incoherence and contradictions.

. . .

Of course, The System did not collapse – but instead expanded in power and scope; and has now taken-over the world. Yet The System is indeed incoherent and self-contradictory – so how was this survival possible? . . .

The short answer is that The System captured the procedures and dissemination of evaluation: it captured the ‘knowledge-making’ processes. Therefore, The System now conceals from itself its own incoherence – and its own colossal failures.

-thus Bruce Charlton

The scriptures tell us a few things about knowing that a collapse is about to happen.

There will be signs of the times.

People will continue marrying and giving in marriage (in other words, life will go on, routines will keep happening, normalcy bias)

If it were possible, even the very elect could be deceived.

I believe that the median response from decent people when the collapse happens will be surprise but also a feeling that they should have seen it coming.

When Dr. Bruce Charleton receives the Nobel for Haircuttery, we will be proud to say we knew him when.

For haute barbery, sport the big hair flap,

but not the flap in back, you sap.

Over your ears

lest you bore us to tears.

Side flaps are fashion forward, chap.

I still recall a dream on the eve of my conversion (this would probably be in 2008) in which I saw a globe being covered by darkness; with the darkness being added like black pieces of jigsaw to cover the nations and oceans.

(I knew what was implied by this darkness from my own life and work.)

I saw that Good and evil are sides in a war. And I realized that I had to choose one side or the other: either that Life which was valuable, or incrementally-expanding darkness and spiritual-death.

At last I recognized that the we either take the side of Good – or else we are evil.

And I knew that I personally wanted to take the side of Good.

A long time ago, I dreamed about a sword. The dream was strange. It was told by the sword.

There was an Arthurian, elven style court. Noble knights and fair ladies who went forth from their shining walls into the happy green land to the sound of music. The king had a magic sword which narrated (?) the dream. They jousted, they chased the deer among the huge boles of the stout old trees. They may have had some foes scattered around that they could fight. (I have it all written down somewhere, but at this time do not recall.)

At one point there was a crack. A kind of restlessness set in. I think it was adultery but it may have been a personal affront. A quarrel. It made people angry. It didn’t really get patched up. The anger and bitterness widened. The knights and ladies started in on each other. There were killings. They fought little wars. The land was ravaged. Eventually the king turned into an orgy of destruction as did everyone who still left alive, destroying just to destroy. The magic sword could unmake things and raging the king unmade. It was the Jaredite end of the Arthurian legend. (more…)

A great post from Bruce Charlton from anyone who is interested in revelation and the Light of Christ and the inward promptings of the soul.

Bruce Charlton says we are experiencing

This dullest, seediest, most mundane of apocalypses/ revolutions

And Wm. Jas T.  says

I had not been prepared for just how stupid the apocalypse would be

That is one of the key insights of the Screwtape Letters.  Evil is not interesting.  Urbane, witty evil is just a tactic that evil can only sustain for a little while.  The show doesn’t go on.

(Note:  I don’t think we are literally currently experiencing the apocalypse.  It can get duller, seedier, and stupider yet.)

Bruce Charlton has a wonderful post on God’s purpose.

For me, now, this is the key to the specifically Christian concern with love; it is by love that unique individuals are able-to choose-to cooperate in harmony (as we can imagine would happen in an ideal family).

Culminating in this vision of eternity,

My favoured analogy for Heaven is with an idealised wholly-loving extended family of immortals; continually being added-to by new and unique people – by descent, marriage, adoption, and true-friendship; but always – because of their mutual love – working together, and cohering in their work; because they each work for each other, as-well-as for themselves.

As above, so below. Because that is also the ideal vision for this life. Penhurst the poem.

Ever larger, ever-loving, that is the formula.

but you should also read Bruce Charlton post for the intellectual tool of reverse causality. It is a potent form of inquiry.

The most powerful image of covenant in the scriptures for me is the image of marriage. Israel, we are told, is like the (often faithless) spouse of God.

A marriage is a relationship that is defined by reciprocal promises, but it isn’t just defined by reciprocal promises. It is also defined by love, passion, and what I think of as habits of affection. We often think of love as a kind of Dionysian force that assaults us, but married love is more than simply Dionysian. It is also agricultural, something that one treasures, cultivates, and seeks to protect. I think it suggestive that in English “husband” can denote both a spouse and a farmer.

-thus Nate Oman.

Coincidentally, or perhaps not coincidentally, my poppets, I was thinking on the same subject this morning.  (more…)

Bruce Charlton is thinking deeply about the Atonement. He is working out alternatives to the customary belief that Christ took on the punitive consequences of sin for us and to the customary liberal notion that the atonement was fundamentally an act of symbolic engineering to excise our retrograde belief in sin and guilt. Charlton thinks he’s found one. (more…)

Love is not best considered as a feeling, it is not necessarily something at the forefront of consciousness. For many people, their deepest love is something which structures their life, rather than being at the front of our conscious deliberations for most of the time. Some (I am one of them) are very expressive of love – but this is not a necessity; and some very loving cultures and families and marriages do not go in for statements, hugs or tears.

*

My understanding of the absolute necessity of loving God above all else is metaphysical rather than psychological – that without this, all other loves (including the love of Jesus) lose their meaning and function.

The supremacy of our love for God is that it makes all other loves possible – it makes other loves a matter of eternal significance.

-thus Bruce Charlton.

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One kind of creativity is making unexpected connections. Wodehouse excelled at this kind of creativity. I just read where Fink-Nottle, on a vegan diet, started weeping at a sunset, because the color reminded him of a nice, underdone slice of beef.

Most of my creativity comes to me second hand. Providence makes the connections for me. “Look on this picture, and on this,” Providence says, and all I have to do is look, and think. (more…)

The past with the clarity and beauty of a Bruegel landscape

Why is living in the past so popular a pastime?
. . . .

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The heavens declare the glory of God.

It is an old truth that becomes new every time you go out in the twilight, or see the sky on a clear night, or witness the dawn.

I am half-persuaded that urbanization and the indoor life tracks with the rise of atheism.