Weblog of a Christian philosophy student

Weblog of a Christian philosophy student. Please feel free to comment. All of my posts are public domain. Subscribe to posts [Atom]. Email me at countaltair [at] yahoo.com.au. I also run a Chinese to English translation business at www.willfanyi.com.

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Location: Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Monday, January 10, 2011

Who deserves the credit when Christians become better people?

When someone has been a Christian for a while they should show signs of moral improvement, they should get better at 'Doing unto others.' But does this imply that Christians rather than God deserve the credit for improving themselves morally?

Philippians 2:13 says, "for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure."

A way of illustrating how God can deserve all the credit comes from the 'objective'-'subjective' distinction.

The objective is what is outside someone's mind, and the subjective is what is going on inside someone's mind.

To put it abstractly, if an objective force changes a person's subjective mind, then you can always say there are two causes to the change. Objectively, the force has changed the person. Subjectively, the person who has been changed will need to see how they rationally ought to be different, or they've been changed into a crazy person who doesn't have rational reasons for doing things. The person seeing how they rationally ought to act differently is the subjective cause of the change.

When it comes to Christianity, once someone accepts Christ then God will start changing that person, as per the Philippians quote, objectively. But who experiences those changes? The Christian subjectively does. So God's objective changes are going to be experienced subjectively as that person looking closer at how they relate to other people and then making e.g. more kind decisions. But the cause of those changes wouldn't, in that case, ultimately come from the subjective. It would come from what God is doing, the objective.

So any time that God affects someone it can always be 'read' as that person becoming better through their own efforts, because God's work will lead to subjective changes within someone's mind. And that person will wake up and suddenly see things they hadn't noticed before, look more at things from other people's perspective, etc. But, actually, the subjective changes that are experienced in those cases are caused by an objective process occurring outside that person's mind, that is, God's grace.

So this is how God can deserve all the credit for improving Christians morally rather than them despite, possibly, no evidence that this is through anything other than that Christian waking up one day and deciding to be more responsible, more kind, etc.

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3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Page not found
Sorry, the page you were looking for in the blog Weblog of a Christian philosophy student does not exist.

this is what appears when I click on your essay @ CADRE

"When it comes to Christianity, once someone accepts Christ then God will start changing that person"
if a christian experiences "objective" criticism and types of mind control how then does one "subjectively" change? If a Christian does not change for the better because of out side forces but wants too but cannot seem to manage it even with Gods help...then what is to be said about Phil.2:13?"For God is at work in you"...

1/17/2011  
Blogger Will G said...

Hey Anonymous, thanks for commenting,

What has happened with that link is that I ended up deleting that essay about divine hiddenness and nonbelief because I decided I disagreed with it in some important way (not sure I remember clearly) and how it was presented. A replacement for it would be the essay 'One way of interpreting hell', and 'Divine hiddenness and nonbelief' from the sidebar.

"if a christian experiences "objective" criticism and types of mind control how then does one "subjectively" change?"

I believe it is a danger with this distinction that God's grace could be seen as mind control if it is done completely by God, but I believe that although works cannot be involved, free will is involved in someone receiving God's grace in a mysterious way, so in that way it is not mind control although if this step is left out it would certainly seem like it.

"If a Christian does not change for the better because of out side forces but wants too but cannot seem to manage it even with Gods help...then what is to be said about Phil.2:13?"For God is at work in you".."

I believe that, possibly, the most fundamental change that happens in a Christian when they accept Christ is actually, strangely enough, just caring about certain things they didn't care about before. Even if they don't solve the source of concern. For instance, after I became a Christian I began to care about certain character traits, about my shortcomings in them and that it would be good to develop them, that I hadn't really reflected on before I became a Christian. Now, one would hope that after caring about these issues, people will progress on them. And I think it has to happen eventually if you do care as a psychological inevitability, but if progress is very slow, that's OK in terms of salvation...

1/17/2011  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

thank you for answering my questions...I will go to the essay 'One way of interpreting hell', and 'Divine hiddenness and nonbelief'
Tee

1/21/2011  

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