Hating the hateful

This is a sequel to an earlier post:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2012/01/singing-psalms.html

Before responding to the particulars of Rauser’s latest tirade, I’ll make a couple of general observations. Rauser attributes certain positions to David Houston, but I don’t think Rauser has a very good track-record of accurately representing the position of Rauser’s opponents.

Second, it’s important to know what makes Rauser tick. Something about his background:

What I didn’t realize at the time was the extent to which my conservative Christian upbringing was a contributing factor to my interest in cryptozoology. The interest arose naturally from my denial of biological evolution and acceptance of a young (e.g. 10,000 year old) earth.

http://randalrauser.com/2011/10/conservative-christians-and-cryptozoology/

So Rauser is a reactionary. His leftwing theology is the expression of his arrested adolescent rebellion. He exemplifies the stereotypical narrative of the boy who was raised in a conservative church, and is now trying to strike a compromise.

Although Rauser is attacking Calvinism, he is also shadowboxing with his past. Calvinism is something of a surrogate foil.

A disclaimer: This article actually explores the implications of David Houston’s Calvinism. However, David’s Calvinism is, so far as I can see, a consistent and historically mainstream articulation of the tradition.

 

David Houston: “I believe in the doctrine of original sin so I believe that all children are born with a depraved nature and are thereby made liable to eternal damnation. Whether infants go on to maturity and are allowed to manifest their wickedness more fully as adults is irrelevant.”

Although Rauser frames the issue in terms of Calvinism, original sin and eternal damnation are not unique to Calvinism. These are Reformed essentials, but these are not Reformed distinctives. Rather, these are traditional articles of faith which Calvinism shares in common with Latin theology, Lutherans, Anglicans, classical Arminians, historic Baptists, and so on.

The Atheist Missionary (indignantly): “First, go visit a childens’ cancer ward – take some time to speak with the kids and play with them.”

This is a typically idiotic statement by TAM. David specifically said wickedness is less manifest in children.

David Houston (defensively): “I cry for them because they were born in the image of God and are, therefore, beautiful but have been ravaged by the effects of sin. It is a great tragedy.”

 

In this recent exchange excerpted from the blog The Atheist Missionary appears to be charging David Houston with having a theology which undermines his compassion for very sick and terminally ill children. David in turn rejects the charge. He believes that “beautiful” children stricken with cancer is “a great tragedy”. Is that a consistent response for David to make? I submit that it is not. And when we recognize that it is not then we will see yet another reason to reject Calvinism: it has intolerable pastoral consequences.

 

If you accept David Houston’s Calvinism then we live in a world like “They Live”. And the imprecatory psalmist apparently had access to a pair of Roddy Piper’s glasses, at least temporarily.

i) This criticism reflects Rauser’s low view of Scripture. But inerrancy is not unique to Calvinism. That’s a Reformed essential, but not a Reformed distinctive.

ii) In any case, Rauser is lumping Calvinists in with the writers of Scripture. So he’s admitting that our position is Scriptural. The worst thing he can say about us is that we believe the Bible, and our theology squares with Scripture. I, for one, can live with that indictment.

And when he put them on he saw that Babylonian babies were alien. Thus when they get hit by the proverbial city bus, it is not a cause for horror but rather for joy. Needless to say, had those Babylonian babies been stricken by another ailment – for example, cancer — it would have been equally a cause of joy for the imprecatory psalmist.

i) One problem is that Rauser continues to piggyback on his misinterpretation of Ps 137:9. Just as “Mother Babylon” or “daughter of Babylon” (v8) personifies Assyria, her “children” (v9) personify the ruling dynasty. Rauser doesn’t understand poetic figures of speech.

This isn’t discussing the psalmist’s attitude towards actual children. Rather, the psalmist is using biological metaphors to express his hope that God will judge Assyria and terminate its reign of terror.

ii) In addition, is Ps 137 a “joyful” psalm? Where does the psalmist express “joy” at the fate of Babylon?

“Blessed” doesn’t mean “joyful.” Rather, that’s a stock benediction which pronounces good fortune on whoever puts an end to the Assyrian regime. “How fortunate!” “How rewarding!” Cf. B. Waltke & D Houston, The Psalms in Christian Worship: A Historical Commentary (Eerdmans 2010, 128-29.

David thus sings the imprecatory psalmist’s curses against the Babylonian infants and shares his great pleasure at their destruction.

We reaffirm the psalmist’s malediction against wicked, oppressive regimes.

David believes there are non-elect enemies of God — including sinful babies — who walk (or crawl) among us.

i) David didn’t say anything about reprobation in the statement Rauser quoted. He didn’t talk about congenital reprobation, but congenital (i.e. original) sin.

ii) Calvinism has no official position on the fate of dying babies. That’s because Scripture has so little to say on the subject one way or the other. There’s a spectrum of opinion among Reformed theologians on that conjectural question.

iii) BTW, why does Rauser think God allows some children to die of cancer? Rauser doesn’t think they deserve it. So their premature demise is unjust. 

Yet God could prevent it. Rauser can’t invoke the freewill defense. Whose freewill is violated if God cures a young cancer patient? The child doesn’t wish to die. Cancer cells lack freewill.

And if David only had his own glasses he would extend that worshipful meditation to encompass the pain and suffering of infants in our midst that he sees to be alien invaders. Indeed, David has said that he looks forward to a future time when all those enemies, infants included, are in hell so that he can rejoice in their damnation without qualification.

Keep in mind that we don’t know most of the damned. We didn’t know most of them in this life, and we won’t know most of them in the afterlife. So it’s not like we’re gloating over the fate of the high school bully. It’s not as if there’s a heavenly tour bus that takes the saints on guided tours of hell.

Rather, it’s more generic. Taking moral satisfaction in the fact that the wicked, who eluded justice in this life, shall finally receive their just deserts in the next life.

If David can rejoice in alien infants being subjected eternally to the most unimaginable horrors because they are sinful enemies of God then surely he can rejoice in those same infants being struck with temporal punishments now, including cancer.

i) This piggybacks on a false premise (see above).

ii) Why equate hell with “the most unimaginable horrors”? That’s Rauser’s shtick, but he never defends that depiction.

For instance, imagine if you were trapped in a parking garage for all eternity. That would be a gloomy, dismal existence. But it wouldn’t be physically painful. 

For that reason, David’s response to The Atheist Missionary is completely inconsistent with his own position. David believes he lives in a world like that described in ”They Live”. And so were David to visit Ronald McDonald House his interaction with the terminally ill children may look the same as ours. But while a person without the burden of Reformed theology would have an unqualified compassion for those children, David’s compassion would have to be provisional pending a further insight (in this life or the next) as to their true identity. For all he knows, that child lying before him stricken with leukemia is a cause for great celebration as God takes down another enemy.

Fact is, if we could see the future, we might well view acquaintances differently than we do now. Maybe there’s a player on my high school football team. Seems to be a really likable guy. We hang out a lot after school.

But if I could foresee that he’s was going to rape, mutilate, and murder coeds when he got to college, I’d view him in a very different light–as well I ought.

Pol Pot started out life as a cute little baby. What if he’d been stricken with childhood leukemia? What if I was a Cambodian oncologist or pediatrician who did the rounds of the cancer ward. What if I foresaw the career of little Pol Pot if he recovered. If he grew up to be leader of the Khmer Rouge.

Wouldn’t I be entitled to feel ambivalent? Grateful that he was going to die young? Relieved to know that he wouldn’t live to murder my kids?

The real point of debate has been over the attitude the elect should have toward the reprobate. David has argued that the elect should hate the reprobate and hope for their destruction in keeping with the imprecatory psalms. On David’s view this includes infants.

i) David didn’t say that.

ii) The reprobate will be hateful in hell.

iii) “Hatred” is very personal. At most, you can only hate someone you knew or knew about. You can’t hate individuals you never heard of.  

I don’t believe the world is like that. My sorrow over the lost, and over the suffering that people experience generally, is absolutely unqualified. I argued that it is not like that for the Calvinist. And I argued carefully to that end.

But that’s amoral. It shouldn’t be unqualified. Even here and now, some people richly deserve to suffer.