You Have To Move From Theory To Fact

Critics of religion and the paranormal are often overly focused on hypotheticals. Too much time in the abstract, too little time in the concrete. They claim a certain prior improbability for miracles, go on and on about how unreliable human memory supposedly is, the problem of bias, the potential for hallucinations, how an overactive imagination often misleads people, etc. That sort of consideration is valid up to a point. But there's also a point where it becomes suspicious, if the facts involved in a particular situation aren't being addressed adequately.

Why am I citing minor historical figures against baptismal regeneration?

An objection that some readers might have to posts like the two I put up earlier this week is that they involve relatively minor individuals in the historical record, people whose names we don't even know. If baptismal regeneration is false, shouldn't that have been known to more significant figures as well? Sometimes that sort of objection will be put in terms of asking for church fathers, church leaders, or some other such group instead of the sort of lesser individuals my recent posts have discussed.

Evaluating Arguments From Silence

Lydia McGrew recently produced a few videos that make some good points on the subject: here, here, and here.

Is Jesus' resurrection appearance being doubted in Matthew 28:17?

Matthew doesn't explicitly tell us what was being doubted. But we get an indication of the most likely answer by reading what follows. Jesus' comments in verses 18-20 don't make sense as an attempt to persuade the people who are present that he had risen from the dead or that they were seeing the risen Jesus. Those subjects don't come up. But his comments do make sense as an encouragement to people who were doubting in the sense of lacking the confidence in him that they needed to proceed as they had to in that context. He reassures them about his authority and that he'll be with them. In other words, the doubt is about the implications of the resurrection, not the resurrection itself or this particular resurrection appearance. Jesus had just been put to death by his enemies, by means of a crucifixion arranged by the Jewish authorities and the Roman empire. He had risen from the dead, but a death, and a horrible one, was part of the process, along with a lot of other suffering. The people Jesus was addressing knew they were going out into a hostile world. In fact, the disciples' abandoning of Jesus in the face of such persecution at the time of Gethsemane is connected to this resurrection appearance in 26:31-32. It would make sense, then, for Jesus to address that sort of doubt in the context of the resurrection appearance anticipated in chapter 26. The worship mentioned in 28:17 and the activities of the Great Commission mentioned in the verses that follow were some of the appropriate ways to proceed, and they should have proceeded with confidence, "but some doubted". The doubt isn't about whether Jesus rose from the dead or whether he was appearing before them on this occasion, but, instead, was about how to proceed. He was removing their doubts and building up their confidence in verses 18-20. Those closing verses make less sense if the doubt in question was about whether Jesus rose from the dead or whether he was appearing to them.

Medievalism as “Source”

Just by way of clarification, I wanted to illustrate what I was thinking when I said that “Roman Catholicism is the source of damage in our culture today”. I did not intend to say that it was the Roman Catholic religion that is causing all of the problems.

My intention was to talk about the “history of ideas”, and in that sense, in the illustration nearby, you can see that in the flow and history of ideas, especially in talking about western Europe, that there was a very long time when Roman Catholicism was the only game in town.

On 4 September 476, one hundred years after the Goths crossed the Danube, the last Roman emperor in the west, Romulus Augustulus, was deposed, and it was the descendants of those Gothic refugees who provided the military core of one of the main successor states to the Empire: the Visigothic kingdom. … (Heather, Peter. The Fall of the Roman Empire (p. xi). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.)

The papacy after that point held to a “two-swords” theory of power and authority. In 494 AD, not long after the city of Rome was sacked, “Pope Gelasius” wrote to the then-emperor Anastasius “on the superiority of the spiritual over temporal power”:

There are two powers, august Emperor, by which this world is chiefly ruled, namely, the sacred authority of the priests and the royal power. Of these that of the priests is the more weighty, since they have to render an account for even the kings of men in the divine judgment.

You are also aware, dear son, that while you are permitted honorably to rule over human kind, yet in things divine you bow your head humbly before the leaders of the clergy and await from their hands the means of your salvation.

In the reception and proper disposition of the heavenly mysteries you recognize that you should be subordinate rather than superior to the religious order, and that in these matters you depend on their judgment rather than wish to force them to follow your will.

This pronouncement set the tone for political order in western Europe for the next 1000 years.
And so, when I say that Roman Catholicism was THE source for all of our cultural and political difficulties today, it is this event that I had in mind.

* * *
Just to give you a brief outline of the political history of Europe from that point, the pope, “Pope Leo”, crowned Charlemagne as emperor of the Holy Roman empire in 800 AD. By 1054, the eastern and western churches officially split (after much bickering prior), effectively severing the western from the eastern empire as well. The “high middle ages” represent almost a total “reconstruction” of the old Roman empire. Peter Heather cites a letter of Peter Damian, who was one of the Cardinals in the inner circle of the Roman hierarchy in the eleventh century:

Now the Roman Church, the see of the apostles, should imitate the ancient court of the Romans. Just as of old the earthly Senate strove to subdue the whole multitude of the peoples to the Roman Empire, so now the ministers of the apostolic see, the spiritual senators of the Church Universal, should make it their sole business by their laws to subdue the human race to God, the true emperor. (Heather, Peter. The Restoration of Rome (p. 388). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.)

This was a period of period of great accomplishment. Local church and monastic “schools” came together over time, eventually leading to the founding of the great universities of Bologna, Paris, and Oxford. New religious orders such as the Dominicans (teachers) and Franciscans (“friars minor”) formed and also developed “schools of thought”. Writers such as Anselm of Canterbury, Peter Lombard, Thomas Aquinas, and others worked greatly to synthesize what was known of Christian doctrine.

That period also offered many troubles. Thomas Aquinas wrote a long work, “Error of the Greeks”, which gave reasons that the eastern churches should submit to the papacy – it had to be retracted later, because its arguments were found to be heavily reliant on forged documents that were rampant during the prior centuries.

The “great schism” also developed during that time, when political infighting led to a time when there were two and even three “popes” in place. English kings realized that their land-owning allies would not necessarily fight every war without having some say-so, leading to the development of a bi-cameral parliament.

William of Ockham dared to write about “papal tyranny”. Marsellius of Padua wrote a treatise that led to the idea that government involvement of the citizenry that would provide for the best political systems.

* * *
During that 1000 year period, however, there was really only the one source of political power, and its “source” was the papacy. All political and religious thought was either an affirmation of or rejection of the thinking and institutions that were in place at the time.

With this kind of history in mind, it is hard for me to imagine that I “overreact” to Roman Catholicism, by the way. There is such a thing as specialization. Nobody ever said that Stephen Hawking (for example) spent too much of his life studying physics.

It seems to me that most people don’t pay enough attention to it, and in that way, they are missing a lot. The damage is not a surface kind of damage. It lies deeper, in the underlying thinking of things.

That kind of phenomenon is still in place today, although to a much lesser degree. It is the kind of thing I have in mind as I write this.

So, back to First Things. THEY SAY: “Culture is the root of politics, and religion is the root of culture.” For a 1000 year period of time, the papacy was at the root of religion AND politics. Perhaps there is some of that they would want you to stop thinking about. At the time of the Reformation, John Calvin was absolutely right to say that the papacy was the institution through which “satan has polluted every good thing that God has appointed for our salvation.” I did not think it would be controversial on a Reformed blog to repeat such a thing.

The historical papacy has polluted much else, too, and the effects are still with us today, either in the form of affirmations of, or rejections of, papal thinking and teaching.

I say all of this as background for some of the things I hope to discuss going forward. Perhaps I should have outlined it better before I got started. As I said in an earlier comment, I do appreciate your feedback and even your objections. If I’m going to be writing about this topic moving forward (as I hope to do), it is true that “iron sharpens iron”, and you all are helping me to better focus my thoughts.

The Mirror Or The Mask

Lydia McGrew's book on literary devices and the gospels, The Mirror Or The Mask (Tampa, Florida: DeWard, 2019), just came out. It makes some references to Steve Hays and Triablogue.

Genre of the Gospels

From Craig Blomberg (Jesus and the Gospels: An Introduction and Survey, 2nd ed., pp 121-2):

What, then, is encoded in the texts of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John to help us know how to interpret them on the "macro-scale"? Are they unadorned works of history or biography? Are they extended myths? historical fiction? In short, how do we assess the genre or literary form of an entire "gospel"?

Ancient Israel's history

http://www.denverseminary.edu/resources/news-and-articles/the-rbl-review-of-arnold-and-hess-ancient-israels-history/

A Response To Annette Merz On The Infancy Narratives (Part 2)

(Part 1 can be read here.)

She writes:

As a general rule, we encounter more legendary material in ancient biographical texts in those parts of the narrative that are devoted to the hero's nativity and youth….

When Jesus was born - far more probably in Nazareth than in Bethlehem, though his place of birth ultimately remains uncertain - no one among his family or fellow villagers expected anything special from him, and thus nobody paid any special attention to him. No historically reliable traditions of Jesus' childhood have survived, nor would one expect that an ordinary craftsman's family in a collectivist society (even if it claimed Davidic provenance, which is doubtful) would engage in collecting memories of a family member's individual development….We must not confuse the world of high-ranking persons who documented their important lives with the world of nobodies from which Jesus originated. Of course, things changed when Jesus' career as a prophet of the kingdom of God and a successful healer unfolded….In the first decades after the resurrection, several concepts coexisted in the Christ-believing communities. Memories were refracted, and where no memory was extant - as was probably the case with the birth of the one who was now believed to be the Messiah and thus the Son of David - traditions were invented to meet the requirements of the beliefs that had developed. (466, 491-2)

A Response To Annette Merz On The Infancy Narratives (Part 1)

As I mentioned in my Amazon review of The Star Of Bethlehem And The Magi (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2015), I want to respond to one of the chapters here at Triablogue. The second-to-last chapter in the book was written by Annette Merz, a prominent New Testament scholar. Some of you may recognize her as the co-author, with Gerd Theissen, of an influential book, The Historical Jesus (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress Press, 1998). Merz's chapter in the star of Bethlehem book provides an overview of the historicity of the infancy narratives. Her conclusions aren't just skeptical. They're radically skeptical, to the point of claiming that the infancy narratives have "totally different stories" that are "impossible" to reconcile (478), with "huge discrepancies" (487), that Nazareth is "far more" probable than Bethlehem as Jesus' birthplace, that "no one among his family or fellow villagers expected anything special from him", that we have "no historically reliable traditions of Jesus' childhood" (491), etc.

I don't know how many posts I'll be writing in response to Merz or when I'll finish them. But once they're completed, I'll put up a post linking all of them in one place.

Quest for nihilism

Later on in life, I would experience a few more crises of faith. The most painful one occurred during my doctoral studies. I came to realize that all of my previous bouts with doubt ended when I found the answers I was looking for. In other words, I had been looking for ways to confirm the truth of my Christian faith. This time, I wanted to engage in a most sincere quest for truth, no matter where it led. I wanted to take a thorough look at whether Jesus rose from the dead. I would not avoid any difficult question or troubling issue. And I would, in a sense, document my journey for others to view and criticize. That’s why the book that resulted ended up being so large. 

http://www.thebestschools.org/blog/2012/05/02/michael-licona-interview/

The notion of embarking on a quest for truth, "no matter where it leads," is a popular axiom. But that's a dubious way of framing the issue.

To begin with, it doesn't surprise me that Licona is a cradle Christian. The notion that we have a duty to pursue truth wherever it leads is very idealistic, and many people raised in the faith share that idealistic outlook.

That, however, can be very ironic. What if your idealistic quest for truth terminates in nihilism? What if you begin with idealism but end with nihilism?

Suppose that pursuing truth no matter where it takes you eventually leads you to atheism. And what, in turn, if atheism leads to moral and existential nihilism? Indeed, that's not just hypothetical. A number of secular thinkers candidly admit that implication.

Logically, that's not a two-way street. For a nihilist has no obligation or motivation to pursue truth no matter where it leads. 

But if nihilism could never function as your starting-point (except for the sake of argument), then why should it function as your (potential) end-point? The quest for truth is self-defeating if the destination nullifies the very value of truth and truth-seekers. Why begin the journey if that's where the journey ends? It becomes a worthless intellectual exercise in which you have nothing to gain and everything to lose. 

This way of casting the issue is short-sighted and naive. It's foolhardy to imagine that intellectual honesty requires you to maintain that everything is up-for-grabs.

Moreover, that's not even possible. A quest for truth presupposes criteria. You can only question some things if you take other things for granted. Something must furnish a standard of comparison. Everything can't be questionable, for something can only be questionable in relation to something unquestionable or less questionable. 

Both in principle and practice, we should take atheism off the table. No position that conduces to moral and existential nihilism even merits consideration. And that greatly narrows the remaining options. 

It really comes down to religious options. And it's easy to narrow down the religious options. In Eastern religion, the divine is essentially unknowable. 

In the West, most religious traditions attempt to ground their claims in the Bible. It may be part of the Bible, or the Bible plus their supplements. But that provides a common standard of comparison. That provides a criterion. 

Regarding “Forerunners” of the Reformation: Oberman on Historical Method

In studying the “Post-Reformation” period, Richard Muller makes ample use of the writings of Medieval writers, among whom we may find various “forerunners” (Vol 2 pg 351) of the Reformation (as well as of the “post-Reformation” era). He does so in search of what he calls “continuities” across various disciplines.

He traces these “continuities” through the writings of the Reformers themselves (which he breaks roughly into “first generation” and “second generation”) as well as the works of the various “Reformed Orthodox” writers who came in the roughly the next 200 years.

Earlier, Heiko Oberman had also visited this concept of “forerunners”. According to Oberman, these “forerunners” did not necessarily have “causative” effects, but they did have ideas which were echoed at later times. Here is how he put it:

One of the reasons why a historian may be suspicious of the use of the term Forerunner, while operating freely and frequently with its Latin equivalent “antecedent,” is its possible causative connotation. It might seem to imply a concept of history which presupposes determination by a pre-established divine plan or by its secular equivalent, immanent historical laws.

To be sure, there is a divine plan for history. But we do not presume to say what God has in mind.

We do not feel that it should be the task of the historian of ideas to establish causal connections in the historical succession of these ideas. Rather, his goal should be, by drawing on these antecedents as illuminating parallels, to place ideas in their own context and point to their particular characteristics and their changing structures.

Accordingly the standard for a Forerunner cannot be that he “caused” the Reformation in one respect or another, for example, by exercising direct or indirect influence on Luther; the study of the Forerunner is determined rather by the wish to give Reformation thought its proper historical context.

The importance of the study of economic, political, social, and psychological factors is by no means denied by such a study.

On the contrary, the shift from a causal to a contextual reading of the history of thought has the advantage of not entering into competition with any of these approaches but provides instead a perspective for measuring the changes in the configuration of questions and answers.

Thus the use of the category of Forerunners does not function to establish the nature of the cause but to describe the structure of the change.

Heiko A. Oberman, “Forerunners of the Reformation”, New York, NY: Holt Rinehart and Winston, ©1965, pp. 38–39.

Luke's Use Of Sources

Critics of the gospels and Acts often object that the authors didn't cite any or enough sources. When they report something about John the Baptist, Jesus, or Paul, for example, they don't tell us where they got that information. Much could be said about Matthew, Mark, and John, but my focus here will be on Luke and Acts. Luke's lack of source citation is often contrasted to the citation of sources in the best ancient works of historiography. The suggestion is often made that Luke's not telling us where he got the information he's reporting diminishes his trustworthiness to a large degree.

“Low-information” Roman Catholic apologetics

In the recent Presidential election, we’ve seen the rise of what’s been called the “low-information” voter, who was perhaps characterized by the “Obama Phone” lady.

Now the Roman Catholic apologist K. Doran gives us a sample of “low-information” Roman Catholic apologetics in the following exchange:

Another writer had said this:

“The Church worldwide in the first 4 centuries hardly was conscious of Papal Infallibility (something one can only subscribe to with an accept despite the vagueness of the development of doctrine theories).”

To which K. Doran responded: