NON-CLASSICAL APOLOGETICS
MOSTLY IN TABULAR LAYOUT

© 2003 by Orchid Land Publications  

[20031006]

    For the greater part of a decade, the writer has contended (on this website and elsewhere) that the only way to talk across the gulf of different religious thought worlds--and particularly across the gulf of the four Christian thought worlds (see the table below) is to begin with the axioms of their paradigms.  These axioms both constitute a paradigm and define what the words read or written by one who has adopted the paradigm in question mean . . .  and what they cannot mean.  But first, let's characterize the terms axiom and define:  Like a definition, an axiom or presupposition is not truth-vulnerable; i.e. it is neither true nor falsifiable, since it is an act of the will, even though they may be unconscious rather than explicit.  An axiom contrasts with a truth-vulnerable statement, which can function as an argument.  Some writers offer definitions in the guise of a statement or argument.  (See R177 for 50 false arguments; see R191 for Orthodox terminology, which differs radically from Western terminology.)  The main point is that a given argument cannot be refuted satisfactorily with statements derived from the axioms of a thought world or paradigm other than the one in which such arguments are based.  One can only discuss whether the argument is consistent with the axioms of its own thought world (paradigm).

    Having distinguished an axiom/definition from a truth-vulnerable statement/argument, it behooves us for the sake of clarity to make a few more distinctions as clear as possible.   In Hellenistic Greek a dýnamis was a capacity or potential, while enérgeia is the energy that actualizes (makes real) the dýnamis that it is paired with.  (Much that is called "dynamic" in English would be "energetic" in St. Paul's Epistles [he uses energy terminology 26 times--twice in the crucial verse, Phlp. 2:13]; St. James uses the verb for "energize" once.)  One can think of a dogma as a potential--a field of inquiry, a question--while the teachings that energize (give meaning to) it are doctrines.  Slogans are like undefined dogmas.  "Jesus died for EGO" is a superstition unless Who/What Jesus is is defined (as God-human or God or human) and unless a doctrine says how someone's death can benefit another.   
     (One writer has proposed "all humans are totally depraved" as the presupposition of a paradigm, even though it really stands in lala land between an axiom or definition and a truth-vulnerable statement as some kind of slogan; it has little correlation with reality; moreover if God imputed Adam's sins to newborns or caused death as a punishment for sin, He would be the Cause of Evil--at least in a rational paradigm.)

    To talk across thought worlds--what an apologete or ecumenist presumably aims at--is impossible unless one explains one's paradigm and shows how one's statements are consistent with the axioms and depend on them in a coherent pattern.  

See R265 for paradigms and R28 for the Cordovan connection as well as R148.

     An example of the systematic pattern:  The place of Theotokos (God's Mother) depends on whether Salvation (which reverses the Fall) is ontological or juridical.  If all infants are born sinless (i.e. without being guilty of Adam's sinning0, then the Theotokos needs no special immaculate conception to live a sinless life; she does need at here conception the special Grace of the Assimilation to God.  If death is not a punishment for sin, then there is no contradiction in the Theotokos's dying like Jesus and ordinary humans.  

  THIS PAGE IS STILLUNDER CONSTRUCTION