7/30/2026 – A Note for Apologists: Epistemology and Its Limits
Use inductive reasoning. Start with observing the fruits: suffering with grace, consistent communal and virtuous practices, such as gratitude, forgiveness, and love. (Matthew 7:16, “by their fruits you will know them”; Joseph Butler, The Analogy of Religion, “probability is the very guide of life”)
Apply inference: the asymmetric evidence of fruits among believers lends weight to their attribution to God because their framework predicts the fruits while the alternative only explains them after the fact. (John Henry Newman, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, convergence of independent probabilities, the illative sense; Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God, the cumulative case; C.S. Peirce on abduction)
Complete empirical resolution is not possible: mystery, defined as what is intended by God to remain unknown, not what happens to be unsolved, prevents it. (Gabriel Marcel, Being and Having / The Mystery of Being, problem vs. mystery; Blaise Pascal, Pensées, the hidden God: “enough light for those who desire to see, enough darkness for those of a contrary disposition”)
The intended unknown is completed by God’s granting of free will. The epistemic gap (we cannot know him fully) and the volitional gap (he will not control us fully) are one design feature seen from both ends. The constraint is self-imposed in the choice to create persons rather than things. (the free-will defense from Irenaeus and Augustine to Alvin Plantinga, God, Freedom, and Evil; kenotic divine self-limitation, Philippians 2:7)
Neither gap is a defect: compelled assent would make God gravity and humans puppets, and love compelled from either side is not love. The gaps are the precondition of relationship. (Pascal, Pensées, “the heart has its reasons which reason does not know”; Newman’s cardinal motto, cor ad cor loquitur)
Love is the only motive that explains the structure as it is. All God wants from us is our love. (1 John 4:8, “God is love”; Matthew 22:37–40, the commandments on which everything hangs; 1 Corinthians 13)
The note started as a reflection on a Christian community and was derived from first principles based on Scriptural and general theological knowledge. AI was used to surface implicit steps, provide the references to aid readers, and stress-test the logic, with all judgments the author’s.
7/26/2026 – We’re not going to write about The Odyssey because everybody wants to fight about everything. Here is one take on it though: Odysseus’s Confession. Instead, we’re going to write about The Breakfast Club.
The end of the movie is as follows: “We see Vernon pick up Brian’s essay and begin to read. Dear Mr. Vernon, we accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was we did wrong. But we think you’re crazy to make us write an essay telling you who we think we are. You see us as you want to see us…in the simplest terms, the most convenient definitions…. But what we found out is that each one of us is a brain and an athlete and a basket case and a princess and a criminal. Does that answer your question? Sincerely yours, the Breakfast Club. We see Bender walking across the football field as he thrusts his fist into the air in a silent cheer and freezes there.”
One has to wonder, after the fog of love and war lifts, was that Odysseus’s Confession as well? The reason the Catholic faith requires confession of all its faithful is because we are all sinners, and we all have sins to confess, no matter which side of the war, the political divide, the economic divide, or any other divides, one is on. The confessional is where you are stuck in a room with your own conscience, and when you examine it, you might not just find your own sins, you might also find resemblances to the people who you had decided were the real sinners.