Why personal knowledge is beyond third-person control.

The Enlightenment, Don Quixote, and John Locke’s Cartesian dream

“Why you fool, it’s the educated reader who can be gulled. All our difficulty comes with the others. When did you meet a workman who believes the papers? He takes it for granted that they’re all propaganda and skips the leading articles… He is our problem. We have to recondition him. But the educated public, the people who read the high-brow weeklies, don’t need reconditioning. They’re all right already. They’ll believe anything.”
— Miss Hardcastle, in C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength

The Counter Strain of Utopian and Dystopian Theology

Evil has never needed good men to do nothing.

The Name of the Forbidden Tree was the Knowledge That Preceded the Fall

 What if...
We stopped trying to avoid the bad?

The Old Testament Roots of Paul’s Prayer Instructions in Philippians 4:6–7

Covenantal Self-Binding and Eternal Relational Order

Author’s note

In this paper, and my book The Subjective God, I am not reframing holiness, I am recovering holiness; restoring holiness to its covenantal and participatory meaning within the biblical narrative. This is crucial for the church because, in Revelation 4 and 5 we see our God in heaven moving through the definition of “holy” to the definition of “worthy” by the sacrificial service of the Lamb that was slain. Why is He worthy? “for you were slain…” (Revelation 5:9).
We see Christ making the church also “worthy” in 2 Thessalonians 1:11 from her starting position of holy; dedicated to a single purpose, even at enormous cost.

I Think, Therefore Thou Art

A Relational Overthrow of the Cartesian Subject: Non-Cartesian Cartography in the Mesotopia

Reclaiming a Foundational Word from the Root Up

Modern discussions of gender often begin with identity, expression, or social role. These thoughts begin elsewhere—at generation. My claim is simple but far-reaching: gender is not a social effect layered onto biology; it is a causal biological reality grounded in the unavoidable binary structure of human reproduction, and this reality underlies not only culture and language, but the very logic by which we think.

“I do not admire the excess of a virtue like courage unless I see at the same time the excess of the opposite virtue, like caution. A man does not prove his greatness by being at one extreme, but by touching both extremes and filling all the space between.” —Blaise Pascal, Pensées

In a world shepherded into extremes—utopian dreams of perfection or dystopian fears of collapse—there’s a quieter, more grounded path: the radical middle. I call it the Mesotopia, a worldview rooted in a Biblical ethic that embraces incremental progress, rejects the fantasies of utopia and dystopia, and trusts in the qualitative superiority of good over evil. Nowhere is this clearer than in the story of artificial intelligence (AI), brimming with both enormous potential and festering with profound risks. As we navigate its contradictions, we find a timeless truth: good is better at being good than evil is at being evil.

Author: Alan R. Jones
Date: June 17, 2025

Abstract

This paper argues that Jesus’ use of hyperbole, particularly in the Sermon on the Mount and select parables, serves a diagnostic function, exposing the depth of human sinfulness, while much of the epistolary teachings are prescriptive, offering practical guidance for redeemed living.

Author: Alan R Jones

Date: June 4, 2025

Abstract

This paper proposes that the “sons of God” (bene ha’Elohim) of Genesis 6, Deuteronomy 32, and Job, also known as the “watchers” (‘irin) in Daniel 4, underwent a divine restriction following their pre- and post-flood rebellions.

We are not called to look longingly at heaven from earth;
we are called to look lovingly at earth from heaven.

2 Peter 3:11 says: "Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness," This is an ethics question, it is not rhetorical; and it's based on an eschatological assertion. Peter isn't theorising about the end, he is basing current ethic on how the whole material universe will end! Our eschatology matters!
Paul answers Peter in Galatians 6:10: “So then, while we have opportunity, let us do good to all people…” We won't always have this opportunity, doing good will eventually be default, indistinguishable from doing anything, but now we have opportunity to shine in the darkness, to go against our animal instincts to grab, hoard, lie, steal, manipulate, and murder.