Michael Kruger's review of Peter Enns new book was posted both at his own blog and cross posted at TGC. I'm going to remark on some of the comments left at the latter site. Some commenters rehash the same issues I dealt with in response to Lydia McGrew, so I'm ignoring those comments.
Context is important. But some actions are immoral no matter the context.
True.
A man forcing a woman to have sex with him is rape even if it occurs in the context of marriage.
Since marriage implies a general consent to conjugal activities, that's not the best example. I'm not saying there's no such thing as spousal rape, but that's not a clear comparison.
Is there any context where killing infants and children is morally justified? I say, "No." In every other situation, you (I hope) would agree.
No, I don't agree.
Can you say that God directly wipes out a civilization with a natural disaster?
Well, by definition, if God does it through a natural medium, then that's indirect.
Did God send the current Ebola outbreak on the West Africans? That seems quite presumptuous.
That deliberately obfuscates two distinct issues: are some natural disasters divine judgments? Yes. Apart from divine revelation, are we in a position to say a natural disaster is divine judgment? No.
If you were to agree that God did directly send a natural disaster, than it would seem to be fighting against God to clean up afterwards. Why would we want to find against God, if God sent that tsunami?
Once again, that would be a case of mediate rather than immediate divine action. More to the point, Caleb seems to be riffing off of the false dilemma in Camus's The Plague. The alleged dilemma is that if a natural disaster (like contagion) represents divine judgment, then it would be impious to aid the victims. However, that's a false dilemma:
i) Apart from revelation, we don't know that any particular natural evil is divine judgment.
ii) Even collective judgment doesn't assume every victim is guilty.
iii) If we are able to counteract the natural disaster, then it was never God's intention to kill the people we save. Unless you think God is incompetent. We can't thwart God even if we tried.
iv) Natural evils can also function as a God-given opportunity for God's people to minister to victims. Model God's grace and mercy. Be at our best when times are at their worst.
Only giving me these 2 options is a false dichotomy. Scripture could be accurate, but it could be accurately reporting what the ancient Israelites believed God was telling them to do.
That's the secular explanation. God doesn't speak to man. Rather, man speaks about God. That simply denies the fundamental status of Judeo-Christian faith as a revealed religion. It amounts to pious atheism.
Or as Adam has mentioned elsewhere in this thread, I could follow Origin and other early Church Fathers and allegorical [sic] these passages. They believed the Scripture is accurate, but it must be interpreted properly.
Allegorizing passages you find offensive is a transparently makeshift solution.
Evangelical questions [sic] often condemn abortion as inherently immoral.
Prolifers often allow some exceptions.
If that is indeed the case, then one should also condemn the killing of infants and toddlers as inherently immoral.
Unless there is divine authorization.
But this is just what these passages have YHWH commanding the Israelites to do. If the the killing of infants is always wrong, then what the Israelites did (or are portrayed as doing) is also wrong.
Taking a false premise to a logical conclusion.
Someone who would argue that there are situations when the killing of infants is justified, in my mind, has lost all ethical credibility.
As if his approval is the standard of comparison.
All ancient civilizations were barbaric and corrupt compared to societies today.
I don't think modern societies are less barbaric than ancient societies. Especially modern societies that secularize.
My question for Kruger is this, "Is genocide ever morally justified?" If his response is a qualified yes, (i.e. Yes, if God commanded it) as appears from this review, than he has lost all moral credibility to speak.
Lost all credibility to whom? To people like Caleb? Who made Caleb the arbiter of right and wrong?
I encourage all readers to check out Randel Rauser's essays on this issue. Rauser is himself a Christian apologist, so you cannot accuse him of trying to undermine Christianity.
Rauser's a flaming liberal.
Adam Omelianchuk
"I suppose Enns could say he doesn’t need to justify why “genocide” is wrong—it’s just obvious to everyone (which is also Dawkins’s argument). But why should Enns get a philosophical “pass” on such a fundamental issue like the foundation for ethics, especially if his main argument is an ethical one?"I wouldn't think he gets a "pass" on the "foundation for ethics"--but one doesn't need that to have a justified belief that genocide is wrong. That much is a moral datum, and if your moral theory can't explain why its wrong, then so much the worse for the moral theory.
Ah, yes, truth by definition. Just call your own position a "moral datum."
Isn't Omelianchuk a lapsed Calvinist? Striking how often, when people leave Calvinism behind, that's not all they leave behind.
What does he even mean by "bludgeoning babies"? Does the OT contain a divine command to bludgeon babies?
Perhaps he's alluding to Ps 137:9. If so, even liberal commentators like Goldingay regard that imagery as figurative.
Sure, it gets " more complex," alright, especially when you have to claim that bludgeoning babies, who are made in the image of God (as Scripture claims), is not necessarily or even intrinsically wrong, and that your best evidence for that claim are a few Ancient Near Eastern conquest narratives (for which there is no archaeological backing).
i) So, like Enns, he denies the historicity of Biblical narratives.
ii) Why think we need archeological corroboration for every event in Scripture? Why think that's a reasonable expectation?
iii) What's the archeological backing for the Incarnation or Resurrection?
It gets even more complex when you have to claim that loving one's enemies, a command Christ clearly endorsed, is supposed to be compatible with that sort of thing.
i) Loving one's enemies is not the only command that Christ clearly endorsed. And keep in mind that Christ is the eschatological judge of God's enemies.
ii) Death is not inherently unloving. Moreover, if God intended to save Canaanites babies, that would be the retroactive effect of Christ's life and death. But if the Israelites were unable to defend themselves, Jesus would never come on the scene.
Of course, it is doubtful that any such account could undermine our justification for believing genocide (in which baby-bludgeoning occurs) is always wrong and for placing a heavy burden of proof on those who would say otherwise.
Once again, notice the tactic. He stipulates that the burden of proof is on his opponents. Pure sophistry.
Here's the problem: If you are right, then the belief that bludgeoning babies is not intrinsically wrong is a matter of Christian commitment…
What about babies who die of natural causes (e.g. malaria)? God is the ultimate cause of their demise.
…and that to follow Christ is to view such an act as morally neutral in itself; it is wrong (or right) only when God says something about it. Do you really believe that?
I don't really believe it because it's a malicious caricature.
Funny how he spurns divine command theory, yet he himself presumes to dictate what is good and evil.
In any case, I cannot believe that genocide is not intrinsically wrong and if that is what is required of me to gain the whole Bible, then I will have to forfeit my soul by forcing myself to believe something I surely don't. That is just dishonest, and I doubt God would be honored by that.
God is dishonored by his false dichotomy.
Believe me I would love to reconcile this problem, but I will follow Origen and go allegorical before I ever entertain the belief that genocide is not intrinsically wrong.
He's just being willful. And while he's at is, why not allegorize the miracles of Christ? Why not allegorize the Incarnation, Crucifixion, Resurrection, Ascension, and Parousia.
I'm struck by the compartmentalized faith of people like Omelianchuk. They want to reduce the Bible to the sugar-plum tree by the lollipop sea. A sweet, inoffensive book.
Yet the moment they put the book down and step outside, the real world doesn't look anything like the sugar-plum tree by the lollipop sea.
I've always wondered how a person like Omelianchuck could respond to a Christian who asserted that homosexual practice was acceptable as a moral datum and that anyone who disagreed destroyed their moral credibility. Or what about someone who asserted the wrongness of penal substitutionary atonement as a moral datum, and anyone who disagreed automatically destroyed their moral credibility?
ReplyDeleteI'm sure Omelianchuck is sophisticated enough to recognize, at the theoretical level, that our moral intuitions aren't infallible... But it seems like he (and other Christian apologists who says similar things) treat their moral intuitions as infallible in regard to some issues. "Sure, my moral intuitions could be mistaken... but not about *that*!" And since it's just a "datum" there is nothing to offer as to why *that* and not *this*.
Yet I don't see how we can have piecemeal infallibility.
So that first commenter thinks abortion is a grave evil. Cool.
ReplyDeleteProlifers often allow some exceptions
That's why it's better to be an abolitionist.
My point was not to evaluate the exceptions, but to respond to the commenter on his own terms. Moreover, there's no reason to think that Caleb is a social conservative. He's just using that as a wedge tactic.
DeleteI think abortion is morally permissible in the case of ectopic pregnancies. The alternative is for both mother and child to die.
Keep in mind that to be an abolitionist may be a psychologically comforting way of maintaining one's ideological purity, but it's a theoretical purity. By itself, an abolitionist philosophy doesn't decrease the number of abortions, for whatever reason.