41,000 denominations

My side of a recent Facebook exchange:

Why don't we drop the 41K denominations figure. That's highly misleading. Most Christians belong to handful of major denominations, viz. Baptist, Presbyterian, Anglican, Lutheran, Wesleyan, Pentecostal. You might say there are different Baptist or Presbyterian denominations, but these are families of denominations. They often have identical theology. The substantive distinction is between confessional/conservative and progressive Baptists, Presbyterians, &c. Most Christians belong to a handful of larger denominations that represent a historically stable package of theological beliefs. Even independent churches are apt to have a doctrinal stance identical to one of the standard denominations. These distinctions are necessary to correct a Catholic apologetic trope against sola scriptura and "pervasive interpretive pluralism".

This trades on equivocal usage regarding what constitutes a denomination. Do we count all Baptist denominations as separate denominations or as representatives of the same faith tradition? It's really a species/subspecies distinction.

Once again, I already anticipated the distinction between confessional/conservative denominations and progressive denominations, so you're objection is behind the curve. While local Baptist churches are technically autonomous, what makes them Baptist is affiliation with a particular faith-tradition.

I also don't know what you mean by "this is how chaos happens". Denominations that don't have autonomous local churches, denominations that are technically confessional and have a degree of hierarchy (e.g. Anglican, Lutheran, Presbyterian) can also liberalize. There's nothing about Baptist polity that makes it more susceptible to theological drift. That's easily paralleled in denominations with a more authoritarian polity.

Once more, the doctrinal requirements for elders are naturally stricter than for laymen since elders are the primary teachers and doctrinal enforcement officers. How is that germane to the rubbery 41K figure?

"I am not the one counting, I am simply using sources. So you will have to take it up with them."

I don't concede your fallacious argument from authority. We're discussing a substantive issue, and not how a reference work happens to list churches or denominations.

No denomination has a more elaborate authority structure and accountability system than Roman Catholicism, but that hasn't preserved it from "chaos" over the centuries.

You've now made clear that you have an antagonistic agenda regarding autonomous churches. That's your prerogative. You then use that to prop up a standard talking-point used by Catholic apologists. That may not be your intention but that's the effect.

But the attack on autonomous churches is invalid since there are parallel problems in churches with a more structured polity. So your objection is inconsistent. 

There is no "simple fact". There's no one criterion or set of criteria to classify denominations and faith traditions. You have chosen to focus on the most superficial. 

Yes, Baptists split. So do Anglicans, Lutherans, Presbyterians, &c. A particular polity is not a safeguard against schism or institutional apostasy. 

i) Your response is confused. I wasn't commenting on your post but your statement to Vlad about 41K denominations. You are undeniably antagonistic towards "autonomous" denominations.

ii) It's hardly frivolous to point out that your arguments in that regard are inconsistent. "Autonomous" denominations split and/or liberalize, but so do more hierarchal denominations. The UMC is about to split over homosexuality, and it split in the 19C over slavery. Yet it has bishops.

iii) It's not frivolous to point out that there are different ways to count Protestant affiliations. For instance, you can count them by faith traditions or denominations. Denominations typically exemplify particular faith traditions. It's a one-to-many relation. So do you count Baptists (or Methodists, or Presbyterians, or Lutherans, or Pentecostals, or Anglicans) as one each, according to the faith tradition they share in common, or do you count them as so many separate denominations? Likewise, if denominations group into theological families, do you count them as individuals or families?

That's not frivolous. Rather, that's a theologically and philosophically discriminating analysis. And it's not asking too much that an apologetics forum operate according to high standards of rational analysis.

What does Rome stand for?

Some Catholics defend the orthodoxy of their denomination by pointing to "official" statements of Catholic doctrine and ethics like the Catechism. Putting aside the officially heterodox teaching of Rome, does that prove their point?

Consider a college with an officially Christian statement of faith. And the same college has a handful of Christian faculty whose teaching matches the statement of faith. A few orthodox professors. 

However, the same college also has Mormon, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Wiccan, and atheistic professors. Would it be correct to say the college teaches Christian theology and ethics?

Well, that's one of the things it teaches, but it also teaches the negation of Christian theology and ethics. It has faculty who teach rival positions. Who teach contrary to the statement of faith. Christianity theology is one of the positions that's represented in the curriculum and classroom, but along with various competitors. 

I don't simply mean they educate students about what these alternative viewpoints represent. Rather, these professors attack Christianity and promote positions contrary to the Christian faith. 

But suppose someone says, Ah, but that's just their private opinion. That's not official. The college officially has a Christian statement of faith.

But the official statement of faith is just a charade. For the collage tolerates faculty who openly repudiate the official statement of faith. The college knowingly hires and promotes such faculty.

That's the situation we have in the contemporary church of Rome. In practice, and to some degree in theory, Rome has become very pluralistic. 

Another round on the same God controversy

http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2016/01/same-god-more-from-francis-beckwith.html

http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2016/01/edward-feser-on-christians-muslims-and-the-reference-of-god.html

http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2016/01/a-searle-y-objection-to-the-causal-theory-of-names.html

Is Obama a Christian?

Here’s recent exchange I had at the Secular Outpost:

steve hays

Jeff, that's not mind-reading. That's Driscoll judging Obama both by his theological statements as well as his political policies. Judging Obama by his public persona, not his inaccessible mental states. That would be no different than, say, Albert Mohler denying that John Spong is a genuine Christian.

Jeffery Jay Lowder

I was wondering if I would get this response.

I'll go ahead and bite. Without even asking you to supply any sources (yet :) ), can you summarize the theological statements and political policies which you take to be evidence that Obama is not a Christian?

steve hays

There's his interview with Cathleen Falsani, where he positions himself on the far left of the theological spectrum. There's the fact that he was comfortable with the James Cone brand of theology espoused by Jeremiah Wright. Then you have his position on issues like abortion and homosexuality, which are at odds with Christian ethics. Those are some examples.

steve hays

Jeffery Jay Lowder

“I have some questions. As I write this post, I recognize that these questions may seem stupid to someone who has studied theology as much as you, so I'll understand if you decide that answering them is not worth your time. Or, if you want to provide links for each question, that's fine with me.’

Thanks Jeff. Those are intelligent, reasonable questions. I’m going to answer (3) last because that demands a more detailed answer.

“1. I'm not familiar with the interview with Falsani. Without looking it up, I can't tell why "he positions himself on the far left of the theological spectrum" means (or makes probable) that Obama is not a Christian. Why do you believe that?”

Here’s the interview:

http://blog.beliefnet.com/stevenwaldman/2008/11/obamas-interview-with-cathleen.html

Among other things, Obama says: “I believe that there are many paths to the same place, and that is a belief that there is a higher power, a belief that we are connected as a people.”

That’s classic religious pluralism. At best, that would make Jesus one Savior among many. Jesus is a Savior, Buddha is a Savior, Krishna is a Savior, &c.

Obama also says: “Jesus is an historical figure for me, and he’s also a bridge between God and man, in the Christian faith, and one that I think is powerful precisely because he serves as that means of us reaching something higher.”

i) He says Jesus is a historical figure “for me,” as if historicity is relative. Historical for me, but not for you.

ii) He reduces Jesus to a bridge or means of reaching something higher. But in orthodox Christology, Jesus is God the Son Incarnate. As such, there’s nothing or no one higher than Christ.

Obama also says: “And he’s also a wonderful teacher. I think it’s important for all of us, of whatever faith, to have teachers in the flesh and also teachers in history.”

This puts Jesus on the same level of other spiritual guides. Classic religious syncretism or pluralism.

“2. Why is the James Cone brand of theology incompatible with Christianity?”

Short answer: because it’s Marxism with a Biblical veneer:

http://www.acton.org/pub/commentary/2008/04/02/marxist-roots-black-liberation-theology

“4. Regarding homosexuality, I agree that the Bible, when interpreted literally, condemns homosexuality. Why can't someone be a Christian and not interpret the Bible literally?”

i) What’s the alternative to taking those condemnations literally? Treating them allegorically? Do they stand for something else? What would that be?

Take this passage: 

“9 Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, 10 nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Cor 6:9-10).

Logically, we’d interpret the statement about homosexuality the same way we’d interpret the statements about other vices. If we take the other statements literally, why not the statement about homosexuality?

ii) Many atheists take those condemnations literally. They say the Bible is “homophobic,” “transphobic,” &c.

iii) Apropos (ii), one doesn’t have to believe the Bible to believe the Bible condemns homosexuality. For instance, Luke Timothy Johnson is a leading Catholic NT scholar who admits the NT condemns homosexuality, but denies that we are bound by NT teaching. For Johnson, this is not a question of Biblical interpretation, but Biblical authority:

“That challenge is to take our tradition and the Scripture with at least as much seriousness as those who use the Bible as a buttress for rejecting forms of sexual love they fear or cannot understand. The task demands intellectual honesty. I have little patience with efforts to make Scripture say something other than what it says, through appeals to linguistic or cultural subtleties. The exegetical situation is straightforward: we know what the text says. But what are we to do with what the text says? We must state our grounds for standing in tension with the clear commands of Scripture, and include in those grounds some basis in Scripture itself. To avoid this task is to put ourselves in the very position that others insist we already occupy—that of liberal despisers of the tradition and of the church’s sacred writings, people who have no care for the shared symbols that define us as Christian. If we see ourselves as liberal, then we must be liberal in the name of the gospel, and not, as so often has been the case, liberal despite the gospel. I think it important to state clearly that we do, in fact, reject the straightforward commands of Scripture, and appeal instead to another authority when we declare that same-sex unions can be holy and good. And what exactly is that authority?”

http://commonwealmagazine.org/homosexuality-church-1

iv) For a detailed defense of the view that Scripture condemns homosexuality, see Robert Gagnon:

http://www.robgagnon.net/

“3. I'm well aware that many (most?) Christians believe that human life and personhood begins at conception. What I don't understand is why can't someone consistently believe that Jesus is their lord and savior and believe that personhood begins after conception but before birth? For example, why can't a Christian believe that a soul is "attached" (if that is the right word) to the unborn child once the brain reaches a certain stage of development?”

i) The personhood or cognitive development of the unborn is not a necessary precondition of the Christian prolife argument.

ii) There are exegetical arguments for the prolife position:

http://www.opc.org/GA/abortion.html

iii) There are philosophical arguments for the prolife position:

http://www.uffl.org/vol12/pruss12.pdf

http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/ap85/papers/IWasAFetus-short.html

iv) More generally, Obama’s attitude towards the unborn is antithetical to the Christian principle of neighbor-love. It’s like a man climbing a ladder who kicks someone else off the ladder. The man higher up the ladder kicks a man in the head who’s just below him to knock him off.

Obama’s attitude is murderously ungenerous. Because he got a head start, he doesn’t grant others behind him the same opportunity he had. To take a few comparisons:

a) Suppose you have a race in which one runner prevents the other runner from having a fair chance to win by cheating. Suppose the cheater spikes the drinking water of his competitor, so that his competitor becomes sick. We consider that contemptible, yet that’s trivial compared to abortion, where the baby has far more to lose.

b) Take fictional stories in which a character has discovered the secret of immortality. He regenerates by sapping the youth of teenagers. They die so that he can live. We’d consider that immoral. He had a normal lifespan, yet he denies to others the chance to enjoy what he had.

v) For reasons I’ve given elsewhere, Obama’s position is hypocritical:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2012/12/they-had-their-entire-lives-ahead-of.html

vi) He treats children as a burden or “punishment” rather than a blessing or gift, contrary to Biblical values.

vii) He defies the special parental duty that mothers and fathers have to protect and provide for their children. Parents have a Christian obligation to risk their lives to protect their kids, rather than risking their kid’s life to protect themselves.

Miracles And Christian Exclusivism

Earlier in this series of posts on miracles, I addressed how we ought to judge competing miracle claims. In this series and elsewhere, I've argued for the superiority of the Christian system of miracles over its competitors. I want to close this series by considering how much further we can narrow the field. For example, do Christian miracles suggest that God is favoring one denomination or movement within professing Christianity? To what extent do miracles seem to support one particular view of God or system of doctrine?

The Moral Dimension Of Near-Death Experiences

In a previous post, I discussed the research done by Nancy Evans Bush on negative (hellish) near-death experiences (NDEs). Her blog has a lot of valuable information on the subject. She recently posted a few articles on the history of research into negative NDEs and possible reasons why those experiences haven't been more prominent in some studies: here, here, and here. She makes too many significant points for me to repeat all of them here. Among other things, she addresses some common misconceptions about negative NDEs. For example, in the third post linked above, she comments, "The Gallup study reported 1% hellish NDEs but as many as 28% in some way unpleasant." As I've mentioned before, NDEs are more complex than they're often made out to be. Sometimes an NDE will be mostly positive, but have some negative elements. People often think of Heaven as entirely positive, involving an absence of things like pain and fear, yet NDEs that involve such negative elements sometimes are classified as heavenly because positive elements are judged to be more prominent. In a recent post, Evans Bush makes another point I've mentioned in the past:

Unitarian ecumenism

Dunn’s presentation seemed to me to focus on concerns that devotion to, and beliefs about, Jesus should not be at the expense of the primacy of God, and that Christian faith ought to be genuinely “monotheistic”.  These are entirely understandable theological concerns about Christian faith today (with which I am sympathetic), but I was a bit surprised that they seemed to play such a role in a discussion that was to be focused mainly on the evidence of Jesus-devotion in the first-century Christian circles reflected in the NT writings.

http://larryhurtado.wordpress.com/2011/09/19/the-dunnhurtado-dialogue-on-jesus-veneration/

I didn’t hear Dunn’s presentation, but Hurtado’s summary raises a question: to what extent is modern anti-trinitarianism driven by interfaith dialogue?

This figures in the debate between inclusivism and exclusivism, as well as ecumenism and religious pluralism. The exclusive claims of Christ are a hurdle to this agenda. In principle, there are two ways for the inclusivist/ecumenist/pluralist to eliminate the hurdle:

1. He can pursue an epistemological strategy, where he redefines the terms of salvation. This, in turn, can involve one of two different approaches:

i) He can simply deny the necessity of faith in Christ

ii) He can affirm the necessity of faith in Christ, but posit postmortem evangelism.

2. He can pursue an ontological strategy be redefining the nature of the Savior. Deny the Trinity. Deny the deity of Christ. Affirm generic monotheism.

It’s possible that Dunn is motivated by the same concerns as John Hick.

One with Krishna: Yoga & syncretism

Michael Sudduth is a very useful philosopher of religion. But I’m going to comment on a few of his recent statements:

I accept the orthodox formulation of the Trinity as a pragmatically efficacious human representation of the inner life of the Divine being. I don’t thereby exclude there being other pragmatically efficacious representations of the divine. I want to allow “knowledge of God” to arise from many different sources, conditioned in a variety of ways by aspects of our personality and the culture and time in which we are embedded. Again, I allow the possibility that certain representations of the divine are superior to others in some particular way.

This sounds like John Hick’s neo-Kantian pluralism. Or perhaps Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces. If that’s the sort of thing Michael has in mind, then not only is this syncretistic perspective antithetical to Biblical Christianity, but it’s also self-refuting. For we can only judge the accuracy of a theological representation to the extent that we have access to the standard of comparison.

The working title of my next book:

One with Christ: Yoga and Christian Theism

This will be a popular book that examines the extent to which yoga and Christian theism are logically compatible. This is part of my broader exploration of continuities and discontinuities between the western and eastern religious traditions. Prepare for a shocking conclusion.

Is he talking about yoga as a physical discipline, mental discipline, or spiritual discipline?

Yes, yoga aims at an altered state of consciousness. So does prayer.

I have no idea why he thinks prayer is aiming for an altered state of consciousness. Jews and Christians normally pray in an ordinary state of consciousness. The purpose of prayer is to confess sin, praise God for his goodness, thank God for his many blessings, ask God to supply our needs, and intercede on behalf of others. None of this requires an altered state of consciousness.

Michael seems to be redefining prayer as a form of mysticism, as if the supplicant is using prayer to cultivate a trance.

Our consciousness, steeped as it is in sense experience, needs to be altered to perceive divine realities, for God is spirit, and those who worship him must do in spirit and in truth.

That is, indeed, the classic mystical view, according to which the sensible world is barrier to perceiving God. But the reference to Jn 4:24 is completely out of context, and actually undercuts the mystical view:

i) Just in general, the Fourth Gospel is replete with subtextual allusions to the OT. There’s a regular interplay or alternation between the past and the present, because OT events frequently prefigure the life of Christ. So OT history is revelatory. Visible, tangible events are signs encoding God’s nature, existence, and purpose.

ii) Likewise, the miracles of Christ meaningful signs, pointing to divine realities.

So the sensible world is not a barrier to perceiving God. To the contrary, God sometimes uses the sensible world as a type of sign language to communicate his nature, existence, and intentions.

iii) In the Fourth Gospel, God is supremely revealed in the physical presence of the Son. So sensory experience is a way of perceiving God in the person of his Son–whose audible words and visible deeds disclose the reality of the invisible, intangible God.

iv) The point of Jn 4:23-24 is that we participate in the life of God insofar as we share in the Trinitarian fellowship. The Father sends the Son while the Son sends the Spirit. Each bears witness to the other. Each contributes to the salvation of sinners.

True worship is not about blocking out the senses, for God has come to us through the senses. God made the senses. God made the sensible world. That’s the theater in which God enacts redemption. We truly worship God, not by introspection or negation, but by living and believing the testimony which he has given us through his revelatory words and his emblematic deeds.

v) Jn 4:23-24 stands in polar contrast to pluralism or syncretism, for the Samaritan faith was the next best thing to Judaism, yet Jesus in this very dialogue repudiates the Samaritan alternative.

The Vitality of Division

Critiques of Protestant division by Catholic apologists, that denominationalism is a hindrance to faith, seem to be built on or informed by (inasmuch as they carry any sophistication at all) older sociological theories. The more recent supply-side theory of religious expression argues that competition between religious bodies increases faith, while uniform adherence limits it:

The earlier prevailing view was that pluralism eroded religious faith. The Protestant Reformation led to the fragmentation of Western Christendom, with diverse sects and denominations emphasizing alternative beliefs and doctrines. For Durkheim this process destroyed the hegemonic power of a single pervasive theological faith, sowing the seeds of skepticism and doubt. Drawing heavily upon the analogy of firms struggling for customers in the economic market, supply-side theory assumes the exact opposite. The core proposition in the religious market approach is the notion that vigorous competition between religious denominations has a positive effect on religious involvement. The explanation why religion flourishes in some places while languishing in others rests upon the energies and activities of religious leaders and organizations. The more churches, denominations, creeds and sects compete in a local community, the theory assumes, the harder rival leaders need to strive to maintain their congregations. Proponents argue that the continued vitality of religious beliefs and practices in the United States can plausibly be explained by the sheer diversity of American faithbased organizations, strong pluralistic competition among religious institutions, freedom of religion, and the constitutional division of church and state. Older mainstream denominations in America, such as Catholics, Episcopalians and Lutherans, have been challenged by rival evangelical churches which demand more time and energies, but also offer a more vigorous religious experience.

By contrast, communities where a single religious organization predominates through government regulation and subsidies, for example establishment churches, are conditions thought to encourage a complacent clergy and moribund congregations, stultifying ecclesiastical life in the same way that state-owned industries, corporate monopolies, and business cartels are believed to generate inefficiencies, structural rigidities, and lack of innovation in the economic market. Stark and Finke suggest that Northern Europe is dominated by ‘socialized religion’, where state regulations favor established churches, through fiscal subsidies or restrictions on rival churches. This process, they suggest, reinforces religious monopolies, and complacent and apathetic clergy, leading to indifferent publics and the half-empty pews evident in Scandinavia.

While useful in that religious pluralism can produce an increased effort on the part of Christians to work harder in the promotion of the Gospel, the supply-side theory is not without its methodological difficulties, and, most critically, Scripture speaks to division largely on negative terms. But just what is meant by the concept of division in Scripture isn't generally elucidated by Catholic bloggers, aside from a simplistic, even crass, appeal to the existence of denominations. I would suggest that while unity on all correct beliefs is the Scriptural ideal, organizational unity is a different beast altogether (Luke 9:49-50 seems to suggest great latitude in this area), with the latter having, at best, a loose influence on the former.

We live in a fallen world, and so questions of division are subject to serious qualifications, disappointments and complexities of every sort. Gathering all Christians into one denomination with one hierarchy will solve few of our problems while creating its own set of difficulties; the rise of the Papacy in the middle ages should be sufficient evidence of that. Given the sinfulness of humanity, there will be cases when certain kinds of division are better than certain kinds of unity (e.g., increased doctrinal disunity with Mormons is a generally positive, rather than negative, development). Church organization is somewhat like politics in this regard: given human nature, no system is ideal; the question is which of several poor systems we will choose to implement, knowing that the individuals utilizing the selected system will find multiple ways to corrupt, and ultimately ruin, its function.

Christianity has taken various organizational forms, each with inherent benefits and limitations. Whether the house church model of China or the hierarchical form of Vatican City, the critical question is not whether these structural adaptations need to be replaced or reformed, even if such a question is both valid and important on its own terms, but whether the members of each structure are holding to and joyfully living out the tenants of the Gospel. Sin is the pivotal factor, which plays no role in modern sociological theories, and an insufficient one in the absolute demand that Protestants return to a monarchical episcopate.

The Last Battle

Bell does say it is okay to “long for” universal salvation.  So did Pope John Paul II!...Chapter 6 is about what is usually called inclusivism–that salvation through Jesus Christ is not limited to those who hear his name.  (I’ve discussed problems with restrictivism here before.)  I find nothing in that chapter that Billy Graham has not said.  (Go to youtube.com and look up Graham’s responses to questions from Robert Schuler.)

 

While reading Love Wins I kept thinking “This sounds like C. S. Lewis!”  In his Acknowledgments Bell thanks someone for “suggesting when I was in high school that I read C. S. Lewis.”

http://rogereolson.com/2011/03/25/the-promised-response-to-bells-love-wins/

This belies a fundamentally muddleheaded approach to theological questions. Merely quoting the opinion of a famous religious figure is irrelevant. Religious truth is not decided by committee. It’s not an opinion survey. It’s not about who has the most votes. Or someone we admire.

The first question we always need to ask ourselves is whether the speaker was in a position to know what he’s talking about. What’s his source of information?

Here we’re dealing with the question of what ultimately happens to you when you die. And the only reliable source of information to answer a question like that is divine revelation. This isn’t something you can determine by armchair speculation or empirical observation.

Personal experience is a poor way to discover what happens to you after you die, for if you wait until you find out the hard way, then it’s too late to make preparations for the afterlife before you die. If you find out what happens to you after you die…after you die, then you can’t go back and make a midcourse correction. You’re stuck with the outcome.

Billy Graham is a saintly man, but he’s not a great Bible scholar or theologian. C. S. Lewis was a gifted fiction writer, but The Great Divorce or The Last Battle is hardly a trustworthy way of finding out what awaits us when we die. The pope is not a prophet.

Olson is a blind guide.