Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Apologetic Tuesday: The Longing for Perfection

This is not a fully fleshed-out argument, so please bear with me on this one. I have noticed, as have many others, that we tend to require perfection of people to whom we look up. We want our politicians to be perfect, we want perfection from our sports heroes, and we want our favorite theologians, philosophers, and writers to be perfect. We don’t tolerate any mistakes, and, as a result, we defend everything our heroes do to the death.


What if that human longing for perfection is due to a recognition of something more—something that can only be divinely fulfilled? Perhaps we desire perfection so greatly because we recognize that perfection describes a state of affairs that is exactly the way things ought to be. That might be a strong modal intuition that we think such a thing is possible (misplaced as that belief may be toward our politicians). Perhaps instead of idealizing human persons, we should idealize the one who created us all. Perhaps the human longing for perfection is our innate desire for God Himself. In that case, the only ultimate hope we can have is God. Just something to think about!

7 comments:

  1. Thanks for dropping by. :) I wonder if anyone has a fleshed-out version of this type of argument, such that "God is the best explanation of the longing for perfection." Sounds like something C.S. Lewis probably did. :)

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    1. Not sure if this is quite the same thing as you're asking for, but I got a book for Christmas called 'New Proofs For God's Existence' by Robert Spitzer. The final chapter (which I've only skimmed through) of the book is called "Five Yearnings For The Ultimate" - those five being the yearning for perfect truth, perfect love, perfect goodness, perfect beauty and perfect home. As I say, only skimmed through it as yet (might be a bit over my head anyway judging my some of the other stuff in the book)

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    2. That sounds good! Yes, I figured people had done this before. It's certainly not to be overlooked as an apologetic approach, because it speaks to the condition of man.

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    3. This may not help much but just to note that you can read the first 4 pages of that chapter in Spitzer's book if you go to the "google books" website (starts on p259)

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  2. I haven't read over this article, but its opening paragraph is strikingly similar, and very well thought out. http://cainaweb.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/The_Fulfillment_of_All_Desire.pdf

    Though, since I haven't read it, I can't vouch for the rest of it.

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    1. Ah, just skimmed through that link you gave and saw the author cites Spitzer's book a number of times in it.

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