Neglected Evidence For The Authorship Of The Fourth Gospel

A neglected line of evidence for the fourth gospel's authorship is how closely John 19:35, 20:31, and 21:24 align with what Jesus said about the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the work of the apostles, and other issues in John 14-17. What the author of the document says in the passages I cited from John 19-21 seems to allude to Jesus' earlier comments in chapters 14-17. The implication is that the author of the fourth gospel is fulfilling what Jesus predicted. He's suggesting that he's one of the apostles Jesus was addressing in chapters 14-17.

Truth, Faith, And Confidence

"And faith is produced by the truth; for faith rests on things that truly are. For in things that are, as they are, we believe; and believing in things that are, as they ever are, we keep firm our confidence in them." (Irenaeus, The Demonstration Of The Apostolic Preaching 3)

The Worrying State of Medicine

I spent about four hours today at a local Urgent Care facility. Without going into too much detail, the reason I had to do this was because the doctor's appointment I had scheduled for yesterday got canceled because my doctor got sent to cover ER shifts because of labor shortages in the medical industry. The immediate problem I was seeing her for is that my oxygen saturation levels, especially early in the morning, were getting worryingly low, and after starting a new medication I had gained six pounds in a single week, which could be seen as visible swelling in my legs. Since I was measuring my O2 levels with my own pulse/ox, I used the patient portal to say, “This is what I'm measuring. What should I do for the next two weeks before our rescheduled appointment?” Thus, today, I received a call where my doctor informed me I should go to the Urgent Care facility to get examined to make sure there wasn't anything major going on.

Now the fact that my primary doctor wasn't available for a scheduled appointment due to workplace shortages of medical professionals isn't the main focus here. It is certainly worrisome, but I think what might even be more so is the exchange I had with the doctor at the Urgent Care clinic. Since I wasn't getting enough oxygen and had obvious fluid retention from swelling, he ran a litany of tests on me including EKG and a chest X-Ray, even the universal COVID test, all of which came back as “good news” (thank God). But after he got the results back and he was explaining them to me, the doctor mentioned at one point that they'd had a little difficulty with one of the tests because my chest is so large. He then immediately said, “Not that I'm saying there's anything bad about being so large.”

And this is the point I want to bring up. I actually immediately said, “No, I know it's bad. In fact, the increased weight is precisely one of the very things I pointed out to you that had me so concerned.” I immediately saw his demeanor change, as if he was relieved to be able to speak honestly instead of being terrified of offending me, and he said, “Yes, if we could get rid of that weight, it would almost certainly help across the board with everything else here.”

So why did I find this exchange so problematic that I decided to write a blog post about it, especially given that it means I had to divulge (albeit obscurely) some health details I'd rather not talk about? Because I just experienced a doctor telling me something we both knew was a lie because he was afraid that I might be offended had he told me the truth.

There's real danger in this, though. I could have easily come away from that conversation telling everyone, “I went to Urgent Care and the doctor said my weight is fine” when the reality is the exact opposite. If he was so unwilling to state the objective fact that being overweight is detrimental to one's health, then what else are doctors afraid to tell patients? It's extremely worrisome if doctors will lie for the sake of one's ego instead of telling the truth for the sake of one's life.

In the meantime, I still have a case of “We Don't Know”, but at least I know my heart and lungs are sound right now, and I don't have Wuhan Bat Lung either. Prayers would be appreciated that someone in the medical field discovers what the proximate cause is. Or, God could just zap me. I'm fine with that too.

Duty

In Steve’s memoir, he said “most of what I post on my blog is written from a sense of duty rather than personal interest” (page 74).  Steve and I had a couple of email exchanges along that topic over the years.  A lot of what drove that feeling is the difference between writing about what interests you and writing about what people need to hear.  For example, if I wrote about what interest me, I would write about Chaos Theory, mathematics, logic, music theory, and trying to become a polyglot.   Yet these topics would not be very useful for the church as a whole.

Indeed, I remember something my father once told me about a complaint R.C. Sproul made around the time when I was in high school.  It’s so long ago, I don’t have a way to verify the quote, but it seems accurate enough.  Essentially, Sproul’s complaint was that publishers kept having him dumb-down his books for a wider audience, so he was never able to talk about the things he wanted to talk about in the detail he wanted to express it.

But there’s another aspect to Steve’s quote that does need to be examined as well.  In using his quote as my launch pad, I should clarify that I do not believe what I’m going to discuss was Steve’s primary reasoning in the slightest—but it’s also not completely alien, given our conversations behind the scenes.  And that is the dichotomy that arises from writing about what you know to be true at times when you do not feel it to be true.

There is a reason that I use the distinction between knowing and feeling here.  Steve mentioned how for him it was a no brainer that God exists, but that the emotional problem of evil was far more difficult to tackle (see page 43 of his memoir).  This is something that I have also struggled with.  I’ve never doubted the existence of God—logic makes no sense unless theism is true.  But given theism, the question of God’s goodness definitely still remains one that can be struggled with.

Now at this point, I want to speak solely for myself.  While Steve and I did discuss the topic, as I mentioned, it’s in the midst of some emails that I am unable to dig through at the moment, given the nature of the events that were going on in my life during the time we had these exchanges.  So while I’m fairly confident I can accurately reproduce from memory what we discussed, I don’t want to inadvertently put words in Steve’s mouth that he would never have actually said simply because I mis-remembered the conversation.

So to my point.  There can be a radical difference between what you intellectually know to be true and what you feel at any given time.  My personal struggle arose from a time when I felt God had betrayed me.  This feeling of betrayal was a real feeling, but even a cursory logical look at the circumstances indicated that there was no such betrayal.  While confidentiality requires that I not give too many specifics, it involved the fact that at one point while I was in prayer and fasting, I believed God answered my prayers by affirming that I should remain faithful to my word and continue to pursue something that all my reason told me was impossible to achieve.  What I concluded from this was that God had told me, “If you remain faithful to your word, I will work out the details so you will get the result you want.”  But the truth was that never was the “message” that I got from the prayer—it was a simple command to be faithful without any indication that God was promising to do anything further.

The net result was, of course, that not only did I not get the ultimate desire I was hoping to achieve from my prayers, but it turned out that by remaining faithful to my word I ended up in a far worse position than I would have been in had I ceased my efforts when I knew it was hopeless.

Now here’s the rub.  The feeling of the betrayal was a real feeling, but it was not a reasonable feeling.  I could logically tell myself repeatedly all the facts.  I knew God had never promised to give me the end result I wanted, contingent upon my following through on my word.  For that matter, the affirmation to be faithful to my word was merely the bare minimum of what God wants us to do anyway!  In short, had I broken my word, that itself would have been sinful, and God is not obligated to bless you simply because in one instance you avoided sinning.

But reason doesn’t enter into matters of the heart.  I felt pained.  I felt betrayed.  I felt that God was unjust.

But I still knew God was just.  And here is where this ties back into the topic of this post.  At the time that I was struggling with this dichotomy between what I felt and what I knew, a former friend of mine who had apostatized to atheism started to engage me in debates on Facebook.  He would consistently make arguments about how if God existed, He would be nothing more than a moral monster.  That God was actually evil, not good.  Etc.

I engaged with this friend by arguing from reason.  I would object to his claims by showing the flawed logical assumptions and presuppositions underlying the claims, and how they had no teeth in an atheistic universe.  I used every bit of my intellect to focus on the reason his claims were false.

Yet the reality was, as soon as I hit “Submit” and turned off my computer and went to bed, my prayers would be accusing God of the very things the atheist had accused Him of, and which I had just spent so much time to refute.  And I was well aware that those emotions were genuinely felt, even though irrational.  I knew I had answered all my own questions, but it wasn’t an intellectual issue.  It was the emotional pain driving everything.

Why did I bother debating my atheist friend on logical grounds when emotionally I felt the same way he did?  Because I had a duty to do so.  I know that God is real and good and just.  And I know that my emotions, while genuine emotions, are not reality, nor can they be used to condemn God.  I can’t jettison what I know on the basis of what I feel.  As a result, I would write what I knew to be true despite how I felt.

I believe there is a sense where some (by no means all!) of Steve’s writing was based on that same balance sheet.  That some of what he wrote he did so because he knew it was true, and the sense of duty that compelled him to write it was required because the reality of evil in this world had hurt him in the same way it had hurt me. 

It’s easy to throw in the towel and let emotions rule the day.  It’s easy to vent, to rage, to cry out, to despair, to throw a tantrum against God.  It’s much harder to acknowledge that those emotions aren’t truth, and the truth still needs to be said.

"The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?" (Jeremiah 17:9).

"And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free" (John 8:32).

The point of this somewhat lengthy meandering post is thus to assert a simple claim: To write the truth despite how one feels is actually a very good thing.

Christian Life As Springtime And Joy

"Our childhood [in Christ] again brings the freshness of morning, and we live in perpetual springtime, always young, always mild, always new, but always growing in maturity. We are the children carried on the shoulders of God. [quoting Clement of Alexandria] 'Our life is a perpetual springtime; because the truth within us cannot be touched by old age, and our whole way of living is saturated by this truth' (paed 1.5.20.4). Our relation to God as children in Christ is one of joy, of divine or mystic sport….For Clement, man is, by definition, a rational laughing animal (8.6.21), Christ has turned all sunsets into sunrises and Christian life is a season of ever-renewed springtime. A fragment of his instructions to the newly baptized exhorts them to cheerfulness: 'show always that you are a partner and partaker of Christ, who shines the light of God from heaven. Let Christ be to you continuous and unceasing joy.'" (Eric Osborn, Clement Of Alexandria [New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008], 245, 276)

Yes, You Can Correct People Who Are Grieving

Justin Taylor recently put up a post about the Charleston shooting. Among other things, he posted the popular video of people associated with the victims pronouncing forgiveness to the shooter. Below is a response I just wrote in the comments section of the thread. You can read the thread to get the context I'm addressing:

“Everything That Rises Must Converge”

My actual statement was, "The more that more Christians live [and are taught] according to God's word, the more they converge".

To which an interlocutor said:

And it is glaringly false to say that people who sincerely study God's Word tend to converge. They just don't. The only way you can get that conclusion is to start with the assumption that your particular theological tradition is the only result anyone can get when they study God's Word, and that the many people who disagree do so because at some level they are insincere or inattentive or don't really accept the authority of God's Word. And that's a far bigger and more incredible assumption than any made by RC apologists.

The way to come to this conclusion is to make the presupposition that God is the author of the Scriptures; that God intends to present "truth", and that "truth" has a content that, if people are diligent to understand it, people (created by God, with an ability to understand also created by God) will agree. This is a basic, fundamental thing if God exists and if he reveals himself.

F.F. Bruce has some comments along these lines:

To many it seems safer and more comfortable to stay within familiar and old-established boundaries (which he had earlier identified as both written traditions such as the WCF and unwritten traditions that simply develop around various communities). The admission of more light (meaning clearer understanding of what the Scriptures say) may show up inadequacies in cherished traditions -- inadequacies that would otherwise have remained hidden -- and they may be disposed to question whether what is claimed to be "more light" is in fact light.

But light by its nature is self-evidencing, and John Robinson's choice of this figure (metaphor) for the further truth that might be learned from Scripture was apt. There are those who demand authority for truth, forgetting that truth is itself the highest authority. Where the Holy Spirit guides the people of Christ into further truth, that guidance (though meeting with some initial resistance) tends in the long run to commend itself to their general acceptance.

It will not conflict with truth already learned and established, even if it shows that some things previously reckoned to be truth were only imperfectly so, or not so at all It will be acknowledged to be in harmony with the mind of Christ, as His mind is revealed in Scripture and progressively appreciated in the church" ("Tradition Old and New", Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan 1970, 18).

This is not "a far bigger and more incredible assumption than any made by RC apologists". Actually, RC apologists make a whole different set of assumptions:

1. God has revealed himself, but people can't understand him.
2. Therefore God has appointed a mediator to "authoritatively interpret" what God has said.
3. This mediator is the Roman Catholic magisterium

Should Christians circle the wagons? Or engage the culture?

Sure, we’re ticked off about the “marriage equality” laws. And a lot of other things, to be sure. But in our culture now, there are two ways to go: hunker down? Or go and have conversations?

Two articles came across the social media yesterday. First there was a Rod Dreher article from “The American Conservative entitled “Christianity, Collapse, & The Benedict Option”. Then Darrell Bock posted a link to an article where he was interviewed, one that dealt with the same sort of topic, but offering a different solution: “Are Young Christians ‘Embarrassingly Ignorant’ of Their Faith? Professor Has a Plan to Fix That”.

Both described the same problem: a lack of understanding among younger generations particularly. First Dreher:

Bad news for the future of Catholicism in America, according to the Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith, and his colleagues. In their new book Young Catholic America, they build on social science data showing the following about young Catholic adults:

·        They don’t understand their faith well enough to pass it on to any children they may have

·        They believe that their own subjective beliefs and experiences are a more important arbiter of truth than the Church

·        They pick and choose what they want to believe, discarding the parts that they dislike (e.g., in particular, teaching on sexuality)

·        They are less involved with the Church as an institution (e.g., don’t go to mass as often), and feel more loosely tied to it than previous Catholic generations

·        They tend to believe that the Catholic Church is just one church among others, with no special claim to the truth

·        They affirm a Catholic identity, but reserve the right to define that as they want to; plus, they see their Catholicism not as being at the center of their identity, but one facet among others

·        They are unable to articulate a coherent case for what it means to be Catholic

I don’t have a copy of the book in hand, but reading the excerpt available on Amazon, the authors say that the collapse of Catholic identity in the US had a lot to do with the collapse of catechesis after the Second Vatican Council; with a determination among leaders of Catholic universities, which had been important custodians of Catholic identity, to assimilate into the mainstream; and the widespread rejection of Humanae Vitae, the encyclical in which Paul VI reaffirmed the Church’s historic teaching outlawing contraception. The authors are careful not to blame HV for this, but simply to say that once American Catholics decided that they didn’t have to obey the Church on this teaching, a cultural and psychological Rubicon was crossed.

The authors say that the hinge of modern American Catholic history was the generation born in the 1950s and 1960s — the first one to be raised in postconciliar Catholicism. Generally speaking, they were poorly taught, and poorly formed in the habits of Catholicism. They have proven to be terrible at passing on Catholicism to their children. According to Smith et al., social science studies have repeatedly shown that the most important factor in passing on religious faith to the next generation is the practices of parents. This is even more important than one’s pastor. If parents don’t know and live out the faith, it is unlikely that their children will. It takes only a generation to greatly increase the likelihood that the faith will be lost to all subsequent generations. In the past, when there were cultural constructs that were recognizably Christians, parents could at least theoretically afford to be less vigilant, trusting that their kids would be more or less catechized by the ambient Christianity in the culture. Those days are long gone, though.

Smith and his co-authors say this is a rule of thumb for all parents with regard to religious education of their kids: “We will get what we are.” That is, the faith of our children will not be determined by what we profess to believe, or what idealize, but by what we live out every day in our families and communities.

Here’s the important, not-to-be-missed point from Smith’s work: everything that has gone wrong with American Catholicism and its young adults is pretty much equally true of other Christian churches…. (emphasis in original).

Now here is a selection from the Bock interview:

“We believe the church has done a very poor job of helping teens prepare for what they need on the university campus,” Bock said. “And we felt like pastors and youth leaders, not to mention students and parents, needed this basic help and orientation.”

Bock and his co-authors believe that many young people have been ill-prepared to deal with the scrutiny and tough questions they are sure to face — and that a shallow faith hasn’t enabled them to think deeply about Christianity’s more intricate elements.

“They are embarrassingly ignorant of our faith,” proclaims the book’s description, referencing experts’ analysis on young Christians.

Ignorance often leads to doubt, which led Bock to describe why so many young people simply aren’t prepared to handle these ideological and theological battles.

“There’s just a lot more information out there. There’s a lot more happening in terms of documentaries and specials,” he said. “It’s been happening really since the end of the 1990s … you’ve got a lot more niche channels … most of these shows are done through university settings.”

The author said that university experts presenting these projects tend to be more secular in nature and less likely to understand Christian theology. But that’s not the only factor at play.

Bock also said there are many Christians who aren’t attending church today and who are thus not receiving the theological training they need to form solid ideas about the faith.

So, the descriptions of the problems seem to be somewhat parallel. But the two solutions are very different.

First, Dreher:

And so we come to what I’ve been calling the Benedict Option. When I write about it, people have this idea that I’m talking about everybody running away to a compound in Idaho to wait out the deluge. I’m not, not at all. True, I am talking about the possibility of doing things like that, though not so radical — I wrote a TAC story about it last year – but for the great majority of us, that’s not possible, or even desirable. It must not be forgotten that the early Benedictines did not bunker away behind monastery walls, with no contact at all with the outside world. Rather, they constructed a way of life for themselves — a habitus, but one that in their case required a particular material structure (the monastery) — that allowed them to live out the faith and to carry on with the moral life in community, passing it on vertically, to future generations of Benedictines, and horizontally to the peasants to whom they ministered over the centuries and the generations. Without knowing what they were doing, they laid the groundwork for the rebirth of civilized life in Europe.

For Christians living through the current collapse, this is our most important task. It will necessarily have many facets, but it’s the kind of thing that all of us — Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox — have to be working toward, together. I was so thrilled to see on Monday afternoon how excited Jamie Smith was to learn about what Dante had to say to us about this, and thrilled to learn last night how much work Smith, as one of the leading Protestant theologians of his generation, has done to show his people why habitus is so critically important to us all, and why worship, which he says includes “forming us in ways that elude conscious awareness,” is more important than intellection.

Then Bock:

When asked how believers can be sure Christianity is “true,” the author highlighted the faith’s historical narrative.

“I think if you just look at the roots of how improbable the emergence of Christianity was historically — think about its origins,” Bock said. “It was tucked away in a tiny corner of the Roman Empire … involved people who had no political power whatsoever.”

He added, “If you just look at its emergence, that in itself is almost a supernatural story.”

Bock also discussed some of Christianity’s central figures — people he says were radically changed by the faith. Paul, who had previously persecuted Christians, is perhaps the most prevalent example of the sort of evolution he says belief in Jesus yields.

According to Bock, other faiths are “more of an ethic than they are a movement,” but that, in Christianity, “God fixes the problem for us,” whereas every other religion urges human beings to “fix the problem for ourselves” (emphasis added).

Dreher’s solution, “the habitus”, is in reality the circling of the wagons to preserve what he considers to be “our way of life”, to hand it on, while remaining untainted by the world.

Bock’s way is rather, to continue to trust God, while we gird up ourselves and our young people to face what needs to be faced in the world, and to have intelligent conversations with the people in the world around us, to defend the truths of the Scriptures, and to understand that it’s God who fixes the problems for us.

Especially in the United States, it seems to me, we have the opportunity to influence the world for the better. I’m not advocating a new group, a “moral majority”, or a new movement, or a political action committee. I’m not advocating “transformationism”. What I’m advocating is that each Christian live boldly in the world – understand what it takes to do that, to be sure.

We don’t live in the second century or the fifth century or the middle ages. We live in our world, today, with technology and rampant immorality. Augustine and Dante lived and wrote in times that are radically different from ours. We may or may not find some wisdom for our age in what they wrote.

But the fact is, we are living in our age, today, with its own challenges, its own resources. Remember the past, to be sure. Learn from it. But live boldly, today, as Christians in a hostile world, and the Lord may yet grant us to be pleasantly surprised by the results. 

Apologetics on Twitter?

I had the following conversation on Twitter last week:

“True truth” vs “infallible, epistemological certainty”

Addressing Benjamin Keil’s comment #296:

I’m glad to see you admit what I suspected was implicit in your position all along: That you aren’t 100% certain of any given theological doctrine (including, one imagines, trinitarianism, two sacraments vs. seven, sola scriptura, etc). You are, as you put it, 99.999% certain of these things, and if being 99.999% certain that James is part of the canon cuts the mustard for you, well, at least we know where you stand….

I’ll leave to others to dispute the other more substantive claims you make, but I did want to point out that it’s absolutely nothing like “Protestantism gives you 99.999% confidence as a theological methodology and Catholicism offers 100% certainty, so why strain at gnats over that last .0001%?” (my summary, not a direct quote). Instead, it’s going to be more like “Catholicism, if true, offers 100% confidence in the correctness of its theological doctrines and if false offers 0% confidence. Protestantism, if true, always must offer less than 100% confidence and probably a lot less, and if false also offers 0% confidence”. Once you look at the math like we did above (we hit ~77% probability with only 3 propositions, each of which we assigned at least a 90% probability of being true), the probability of correctness that Protestantism can offer to a systematic theology, even if Protestantism is true, is a heckuva lot smaller than you were making it out to be.

I’ve described in my previous comment, or, if it didn’t get published, here, and here, why I think the 99.999% [or whatever that number becomes] is far more sufficient than your “100% confidence” level.

Certainly, based on conservative Protestant methodologies, our knowledge level will never, ever fall to 0% [which is a danger if Rome is “false”, but because we know “true truth”, will always have value.]

As I described it in a private email:

What Michael Liccione’s “IP” enables him to do set up a chain of deductions by which, if any one premise can’t be “ruled out by logical deduction”, then they can say X is “not inconsistent with Roman Catholic Doctrine”. This is how their argument for “authority” works.

You remember “must-see TV” – Roman Catholic dogma has a long string of “must have” things happen in order for the Roman Catholic authority structure to be true (Peter as first pope, recognized authority through the lineage that they give). If the probability that any one of them (or even most of them) is .001%, but if you haven't ruled it out by logical deduction (which can’t be done in a historical context, just as you can’t completely rule out the existence of Blue Men on Mars by logical deduction), then they claim, “It’s true because Rome says it’s true”.

I’ve argued strenuously from an analysis of leadership structures in first century Palestine and the Roman “household” community and Clement and Hermas relating how “presbyters” and “episcopoi” were interchangeable, how Hermas chided a council of elders that presided over the church of 2nd century Rome – all that, and others – that more than confirm that the story they present just absolutely cannot have been true, from a historical perspective.

However, there is no way to totally exclude any of these “must-have” points. If you do, they’ll say “it’s an argument from silence”. (What went un-responded to was my citation of R.P.C. Hanson citing Tertullian to the effect that the Assumption of Mary never occurred because if it did, Tertullian would certainly have known about it.

All they need is that .001% possibility, occasioned by the fact that “you can’t rule it out 100%”, and thus, because Rome made it a dogma, and because it hasn't been ruled out by logical deduction, “it must be the way Rome says it was” (see Bryan's comments about why “apparent contradictions” are never “actual contradictions” according to the Catholic “IP”).

This strain of thought, by which they claim their authority, is totally separate from the historical doctrinal efforts in councils, such as the Trinity, Christology, etc.

There are really two kinds of development, and these have been thoroughly documented.

First, no doubt there are historical “developments” such as the increase in understanding that led to the doctrines of the Trinity. Even though there was historical development, YOU CAN prove the Trinity from the Scriptures. Steve Hays has done so. He never contends for anything that's not Scriptural, and the Trinity is a cornerstone of his (“Biblicist” – or “solo Scriptura) theology.

The line of thinking on Roman authority, however, from the first century through the definitions of 1854, 1870, and 1950, however, were all done in a both a biblical and historical vacuum. [Actually, we know how “papal infallibility” developed]. But YOU CAN NOT prove any of these three things from the Scriptures. That is what I mean by “vacuum”.

But they conflate the two. Roman Catholics will say “development occurred with the Trinity, it must have occurred in the same way with the papacy”. in an exercise of logical fallacy, they conflate the two types of development.

This is “the shape” of what they stand on. The authority is invisible and non-existent, but you can’t rule any step out by logical deduction, and so they take credit for the whole thing.

The Protestant hermeneutic, the “grammatical historical method”, seeks to start at the beginning, to understand who the people are (the writers, the various audiences) – to understand “what they knew and when they knew it”, and yes, to build an inductive case, which never claims 100% perfection, but as I said above, I will hold with that 99.999% figure. There is no “epistemological crisis”.

So the churches of the Reformation build their case from actual Scripture and history, this practice, not being “logical deduction”, does not give the ability to claim “100% certainty”. But I say, “so what”?

We know what we know with a great deal of certainty, and we know it from based on the “hermeneutical methods” provided by the various disciplines, whether from historical studies or language or other forms of Old and New Testament scholarship.

Roman Catholics know things (a) that cannot be falsified, and (b) on the basis of an assertion of authority from Rome.

So far as I remember, that “appeal to authority” is a logical fallacy, is it not?

It's safe to cross against a red light if everyone does it together

The following is an excerpt from D.A. Carson's article, "Contrarian Reflections on Individualism":

[W]e need to reflect a little more on the bearing of truth on [individualism]. Begin with an essay by Phil Myles, "Of Truth, Tolerance and Tyranny." Miles begins by outlining one of the central myths of our time. According to this myth, a society is likely to be most tolerant if it holds to flexible, non-dogmatic, even multivalent notions of truth; conversely, a society is likely to be most intolerant where it holds to absolute truths, truths that are inflexible, unbending. In other words, tyranny and tolerance find themselves in a perennial battle, and which pole triumphs is largely tied to the conception of truth that we sustain.

But does this myth capture reality? Is the myth true? Miles sets forth his thesis:

The reality of the situation is just the opposite of what we have been led to believe. Put simply, tyranny is not the inevitable outcome of an absolutist view of truth, but is, rather, the direct product of relativism. Likewise, tolerance arises not from relativism but from the very thing that our society anathematizes—the belief in absolutes.

It would take too long to lay out the details of Miles’s argument. Suffice it to say that he holds that many of our categories for thinking about these things are inappropriate. In part, he argues by case study. He begins with Japan, a country where he lived for many years. In most Western cultures, we live in the shadow of the Enlightenment, which taught us to classify our experience into two categories: the one, full of non-absolutes, is characterized by emotion, aesthetics, the arts; the other is characterized by absolutes, objectivity, science, logical thought, and truth. These two categories are mutually exclusive. The second category is the domain of both tyranny and objective truth. By contrast, Japan brings the two categories together in ways that would be judged incompatible in most of the Western world: on the one hand, haiku poetry and delicate paintings of enchanting cherry blossoms, and on the other, ruthless business corporations and political machinations. The fact that these two categories co-exist and interpenetrate each other in Japan is part of what makes Japan seem so "mysterious" to the Western observer. In reality, Miles argues, what is often called the “iron triangle"—"the triad of elected government, big business and the bureaucracy"—exerts enormous power in a frankly oppressive manner. "There is no need to picture this in terms of dictators and jack-boots. Things are done a lot more subtly in Japan, but the salient fact is that those who hold power use it to control the lives of those beneath them.” There is little tradition of elected officials being “servants of the people"; in fact, the people exist to serve the state and culture, not to mention the company to which a person belongs. In Japanese culture, there is little notion of "right" and "wrong" in absolute terms; it is well known that there is no Japanese word for "sin." In this sense, Japanese society is relativisitic—i.e., what is "right" depends on the situation in which you find yourself, determined by the social expectations of your position in the power structure. Miles writes,

Japanese are very adept at assessing what is required in a situation and acting accordingly. This is often misunderstood by Westerners as duplicity, but it is simply the way life must be lived where all is relative. Truth itself becomes merely a social construct. If everybody believes something to be true, or if the powers that be say that it is, then for the practical purposes of daily life, it is true. As the Japanese say, it’s safe to cross against a red light if everyone does it together.

In other words, Japan is a case study in which a kind of relativism opens up the door to a kind of social tyranny that massively discounts the significance of the individual and therefore squashes individualism. Miles argues that in this sort of culture, if there were, say, unambiguous and objective moral law to which individuals could appeal, there could be a critique of the unfettered deployment of social and political power. It is the absence of such objective standards that make the oppressiveness of the culture possible.

Though it is not part of Miles's argument, one might observe that in the twentieth century the greatest political crushing of individualism occurred under Marxism and Fascism. Both deployed not only brute force but massive propaganda machines to keep people safely in line with the party dogma. Truth was what Joseph Goebbels (for instance) said it was.

In the light of such case studies, one becomes aware that individualism that can become personally tyrannical (everyone does what is right in their own eyes) may, in this broken world, alternatively serve as a bulwark standing athwart massive social and political tyrannies crying, "Enough!" But it is hard to see whence the moral fortitude for such a stance will come if we systemically lose the category of objective truth. Martyrs are not made of sponge.

But I Want To Know How

In the comments of my previous post, Arminianism in Time, drwyaman, J.C. Thibodaux, Brennon (Bossmanham), and ἐΚΚΛΗΣίΑ have all weighed in to give Arminian or Molinist responses. (And to give the other side, Dominic Bnonn Tennant has also responded against some of those comments.) Now not all of the Arminians/Molinists listed above have contributed equally, and this post is not a direct response to any of them per se. Instead, this post is making a general response as well as pointing out certain things that I believe have been missed in the discussion. So I’m using them more as a launching pad then a foil.

Once again, I want to examine the counterfactual argument. As I originally put it:

“God knows what a man will freely choose. If the man chooses X, God knows that the man will choose X. But if the man would have chosen Y, then God would have known that the man chose Y instead. Therefore, the man’s choice is still free and self-determined, despite the fact that God knows what it will be.”

The angle I want to approach this issue is slightly different from last time. I want to look into the mechanics of how God knows what He knows. The counterfactual argument is actually making an argument about omniscience, and so looking into this is important. How is it that God knows what He knows?

ἐΚΚΛΗΣίΑ said (although from the way the comment was structured, this may actually be a quote from William Lane Craig—I couldn’t tell):

The point is, that just because something is known to be true, doesn't mean that knowledge itself, makes it true.

Now it is certainly true that just because something is known to be true, that does not mean that knowledge of the thing is what makes it true. However, this type of response is only relevant to time-bound creatures. That is, we understand the truth of this statement because we learn. And we know that how we know something is independent of the veracity of the thing itself.

But this is disanalogous from the way God knows what He knows. First of all, in classical Christian philosophy, God is eternal and omniscient, which means He never learns anything at all. He has eternally known everything that is possible to be known (my preferred definition of “omniscience”). Therefore, right off the bat we’re running into problems with the above argument, as stated by ἐΚΚΛΗΣίΑ.

Suppose that you know a specific fact, but that you never learned that fact. You’ve always known that fact. By what basis do you know that fact? You cannot appeal to “I learned this fact” or “I saw this fact as it occurred” because you’ve always known the fact. Indeed, your knowledge of the fact, in such a structure, must be independent of any manner of learning.

So let’s give a more specific example. Suppose I say, “I have always known, since the instant I became aware of anything, that on September 25, 2010 [tomorrow, at the time I write this] I will eat chocolate chip cookies after dinner.” How would you examine that claim? How would you verify whether what I have said constitutes knowledge or not? I daresay everyone would deny that my statement actually is knowledge, because none of us has the experience of knowing something without having learned it.

But let’s suppose this is a genuine occurrence. How would it be possible? The only way that it would be possible for me to have always known that I would eat cookies after dinner tomorrow is if the basis of my knowledge is coextensive with my own existence. To use truth-maker terminology (although I’m not completely sold on truth-maker metaphysics), the truth-maker that determines my knowledge of eating chocolate cookies tomorrow must exist at least as long as the entire duration of my existence, in order for me to have always known this fact.

The same thing would be true of God. If God knows that I will eat chocolate chip cookies tomorrow (and, if that is a true statement, then God’s omniscience requires that He does know this), then the truth-maker for that statement must be eternal. Why? Because God doesn’t learn. And therefore, the truth-maker for this knowledge must be eternal like God is eternal.

This immediately rules out any created thing or action as being a truth-maker for God’s knowledge. The only option that remains is that God Himself is the truth-maker. Which ultimately is saying, “God knows that X will occur because God is the truth-maker for X occur.”
How could that happen? Well, Biblically we know that God decrees what will happen. He foreordains whatsoever comes to pass. He has declared what will happen, and then He does it. In other words, it seems that Calvinism is the inevitable result of a belief in the eternal omniscience of God. The only way to avoid determinism or compatibilism is to assert that God is capable of learning—a denial of omniscience.

A Disingenuous Orthodoxy: Why I Am Everything But a Calvinist Unless Calvinist Means Any Ole Christian

Mclaren offers some words of wisdom to help out those making the church uncool in his blog post Calling All Calvinists.

The terms Calvinist and Reformed can have wildly different meanings, depending on who uses them.

Of course, this is entirely uninteresting. So can the term, 'Christian'.

For example, some of the most misogynist and some of the most feminist folks I know would see their views as being inherently Reformed.

Just like some of the most polytheistic or unipersonalistic folks I know would see their views as being inherently Christian.

So, when people tell me they're Calvinist or Reformed, I generally ask them what they mean.

Does Mclaren ask this while rubbing his chin with his finger and thumb, pretending he has just asked something profound? Or does he ask arms akimbo?

One line of response goes to TULIP (an acronym for five points of a type of deterministic Calvinism) and the Westminster Confession and a list of things they're against. Folks in this camp seem eager to repeat and redo faithfully in the 21st century exactly what Calvin said and did in the 16th.

1. A type of "deterministic Calvinism?" As opposed to, what, an indeterministic Calvinism? Well then, isn't this risible; jejune too. With these kinds of Procrustean dismemberments of basic units of language, postmodernism seems downright rote, rigid, determinate, and modern. Boorish too. On this analysis, if indeterminists count as Calvinists, then monopersonal modalists count as Christians. And why not allow polytheists too? Indeed, I could see a Unitarian write something similar: "I often wrap my fingers around my chin after someone tells me they are a Christian, let out a sigh, ponder it for a bit, and then ask, while letting out a lot of air, slowly and semi-confused, 'What do you mean by that?' One line of response goes to the trinity (an fancy way of saying polytheism) and certain creeds of the early, oppressionistic Church and a list of things they are against and an even larger list of things they're for so as to show that church and God is cool--Jehovah is my homeboy."

2. Ironically, Mclaren tells us that he is "against" this kind of Calvinist.

3. Can we have any names of these Calvinists? And, is Mclaren using hyperbole when he claims that "they" want to redo everything today in the exact same way as Calvin's day? Even the language? Long beard, 'n all? Or does Mclaren just mean the "theology?" But again, we must ask if he is being hyperbolic. I know some hard-core Reformed baptists who hold to Tulip, even call themselves Calvinists, and have most of the nasty stuff in their confession as is in the Westminster Confession. Yet they do not want to redo paedobaptism. Or, are you particularly nasty if and only if you baptize babies?

4. What if the Westminster Confession is true? How come that question doesn't even make it into consideration. Now, I'm not making any claims that it is true all and sundry, mind you. But what if it is? And, what if one believes that it is? Or, is this kind of talk just wrong-headed in today's world? Irrelevant? Well, okay, I guess if this claim is true I can accept it. Read that sentence again. And second time if need be, until you get it.

The other line of response refers to the Lordship of Christ over all of life, the priesthood of all believers, the absolute importance of God's grace, and the integration of faith with every dimension of human enterprise ... seeming more eager to imitate Calvin's general example, seeking to translate into our times what Calvin generally sought to do in his times, even when that means disagreeing with specific things Calvin - and many Calvinists - have said and done.

Since every Christian could affirm this, Mclaren wants to deny the Calvinist any demarcating feature. On Mclaren's warped use of language, 'Calvinism' turns out to be identical with 'Arminianism' as well as any ole hoi polloi version 'Christianity'. Basically, to be a Calvinist means you must deny anything that uniquely makes you Calvinist. Upon analysis, this turns out to be a veiled attack against Calvinists, arguing that the only way to be a cool Calvinist is to not be a Calvinist. Once you do this it's still okay to call yourself a Calvinist. Mclaren's calling all Calvinists to a Roman Christianity. A Roman Christianity says that you can call yourself whatever you want, worship whatever deity you want, so long as you don't claim your way is right to the exclusion of all others. See, the cool Calvinist is a 'Calvinist' who "denies specific things Calvin - and many Calvinists - have said and done. Read, who "denies all those offense things I dislike in Calvinism."

The TULIP/WC group tends to include my most passionate, persistent, and grandiloquent critics. I, of course, am not alone in finding myself in the polemical cross-hairs of these energetic folks who have rightly earned the nick-name "Machen's warrior children."

Yet the author of the piece to which Mclaren links holds to TULIP and much of the Westminster Confession of Faith.

It is doubtful Mclaren even read Frame's paper. One should not be too proud to identify with those in the cross-hairs of these energetic people considering it was "born in the controversy over liberal theology." Furthermore, those in the cross-hairs are fellow Reformed. Thus, Mclaren cites as relevant something irrelevant. Odds are he did it to seem cognoscente. He came off looking knavish. But perhaps the biggest problem is that the article makes clear that the critiques came because of the motto "truth before friendship." Putting aside questions of interaction and debate (though I have the feeling Jesus would agree with this sentiment), can't Mclaren see that to say Machen's Warrior Children have put you in their cross-hairs is to say that they think you are making false claims. Does all your jovialness and glad-handing even matter if you're flat-out wrong. As the emperor would say, they "believe you are mistaken, about a great many things." That's why Mclaren is in the cross-hairs. If Mclaren is wrong about a great many things, even important things, then what is his post supposed to accomplish? Well, it's meant to claim that they are wrong without having to do the hard work of showing it. Maligning and marginalizing those you disagree with, without showing where they are wrong, and without showing why you are right, is just to be uncivil. I mean this in the same sense as Os Guinness's book: The Case For Civility. You know, the one you wrote the praise blurb on the back for? Or, did you also not read that piece?

The other kind of Reformed Christians are much more irenic and include many of the wisest and most thoughtful Christians I've ever met. A great example of this tribe's Reformed thinking can be found here. I hope and pray many in the former camp will migrate to the latter camp in the years ahead.

We have seen that upon analysis this simply means that there are no uniquely irenic or wise Calvinist or Reformed. That's not nice. Hybels Warrior Children!

But the question to ask is, why does Brian get stingy rather than stay "generous"? Didn't he tell us: "The last thing I want is to get into nauseating arguments about why this or that form of theology (dispensational, covenant, charismatic, whatever) or methodology (cell church, megachurch, liturgical church, seeker church, blah, blah, blah) is right (meaning approaching or achieving timeless technical perfection)." But now he cares about the right way to be a Calvinist! Consistency is a will-o-the-wisp.

It turns out that Mclaren isn't really generous. Indeed, his title is disingenuous:

"Why I am a missional, evangelical, post/protestant, liberal/conservative, mystical/poetic, biblical, charismatic/contemplative, fundamentalist/Calvinist, anabaptist/anglican, methodist, catholic, green, incarnational, depressed-yet-hopeful, emergent, unfinished Christian."

doesn't mean what it looks like it means. Everyone makes it in besides the traditional Calvinist!