Coming soon!
It's no longer the NPP. It's the NPPR (not be confused with NPR). What's next, the Even Newer New Perspective on Paul or the Extremely New Recently Revised New Perspective on Paul - Subjectively Speaking of Course?
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Kerussocharis
In response to a question which came up on Wade Burleson’s excellent blog:
http://kerussocharis.blogspot.com/2007/08/origens-of-quirky-religious-traditions.html
Scott Gordon said...
“Gene, theological competition is important, because in our pomo world we can't afford to assert convictions of a doctrinal nature based upon biblical authority...we need to argue vociferously based upon our personal preferences.”
The first thing I’d say is that if I’m a postmodernist, then postmodernism has gotten a bum rap.
Seriously, Gordon’s comment is unresponsive to either the original post or Gene’s gloss on the original post (which I second).
Hence, I have to conclude that Gordon is riding a hobbyhorse which he trots out at every horse and pony show, and then tries to redirect the course of the conversation to reflect his hobbyhorse.
As Gene already explained, the context of the original post was in relation a stock objection to the Protestant rule of faith, customarily leveled by Catholic apologists, but also gaining ground among Orthodox apologists.
Defending sola Scriptura is hardly an expression of postmodernism.
Moreover, the value of competition lies, not in competition as an end in itself, by as a means to an end. It makes it easier for us to correct for false developments.
Historically, denominations have taken the form of national churches. The reigning monarch decided in favor of a particular religion, usually based on which religion was politically expedient in forming military alliances. This, in turn, entailed mass conversion on the part of his subjects. His faith was their faith.
This gave the state religion a legal monopoly, be it Orthodoxy, Catholicism—or, for that matter—Islam, Buddhism, &c.
So you end up with a closed religious society in which criticism of the religious status quo is an act of sedition. In this situation, it’s impossible to reform religious corruptions.
Heresy is defined, not by what is false, but by what is treasonous according to the political establishment, to which the church is subordinate.
Because of this monopoly, many primitive theological errors were frozen in place, and—what is more—became the basis of ever worse theology inasmuch as they supplied the unquestioned premise for further deleterious developments.
I already gave a number of specific examples. Gene gave some other examples (in the combox of the original post)—examples which I second.
Far from endorsing pomo relativism, the value of theological competition is to winnow truth from error and challenge illegitimate attenuations of dogma, even—where necessary—to challenge the underlying premise. For some aggravated theological errors merely take a primitive error to its logical, albeit pernicious, extreme.
So I would advise Gordon to withhold his reflexive reaction and actually listen to the stated position before he pounces.
Let’s take a few more examples to illustrate my point. Take Tetzel, Peter Pence, and the indulgence racket.
This is a textbook example of theology gone to seed, and it’s the outgrowth of several poisonous plants, including the merit system and apostolic succession.
Or, take the question of whether Moscow is the Third Rome. How would a Protestant answer that question?
Well, the problem is with the entire framework. It’s really the wrong question, because the question makes so many faulty assumptions.
The basal error is apostolic succession. This is then identified with Rome as the original locus of apostolic succession. Then, when the capital moves from Rome to Constantinople, Constantinople becomes the Second Rome. Then, based on the outreach to Russia and the fall of Constantinople, Moscow becomes the Third Rome.
And this can be taken a step further. After the October Revolution, when many Russian Orthodox fled to France and the United States, what was the “true” Moscow? The puppet church in Russia? Or the exiled church of the Russian émigrés?
These are logical questions to ask if you buy into the operating premise. And trying to sort out the “true” succession becomes a very vexed historical and theological question. It’s bound up with notions of apostolic succession, valid ordination, royal marriages, the Tsar as the successor to Constantine, and so on.
But a Protestant would frankly lay an ax to the tree, which is rotten to the core and cut it down root and branch. When dealing with theological errors of this depth, a slash-and-burn policy is the only effective remedy, for the whole outgrowth is erroneous from start to finish. A bad seed blossomed into poisonous fruitage.
In cases like this, theological competition allows us to solve the problem, not by answering the problem in the way the question was cast, but by questioning the question itself and applying a flamethrower to the tares. Only a scorched earth policy will enable us to clear the underbrush and start afresh with fertile soil and good seed.
Or take a different example: fencing the table. Unlike the first two examples, this enjoys a measure of Scriptural support.
Since communion is a covenant sign, the only communicants should (ideally) be members of the covenant community. It would therefore be wrong for a pastor to knowingly administer communion to an open unbeliever.
However, one can easily get carried away with policing the communion rail. Various denominations begin to practice closed communion, as if each denomination held the patent to the Lord’s Supper.
And some of them become so petrified at the prospect of administering communion to the wrong person that they rarely perform communion, and put members through a screening process every time communion is scheduled. The pastor has to interview every member and issue a communion token to show that this member is preapproved to partake of communion.
All of this is well-intentioned, but it’s also an exercise in control-freakery. An otherwise valid principle as been overrefined to the point of absurdity, under the assumption that it’s better if no one rightly takes communion for fear one person will slip through the barricade and wrongly take communion.
It also assumes a very paternalistic polity, in which the elders are the official grown-ups while the laity is reduced to the rank of perpetual minors, in a state of diminished responsibility. The laity is no longer answerable for its actions. Rather, laymen are kept under curfew. They can only go outside with an ecclesiastical chaperon to escort them and keep them out of trouble.
Yet the true job of pastors is to equip the laity, and not to keep them under house arrest. Not only does this attitude keep the laity in a state of arrested spiritual and intellectual development, but it also has a corrupting influence on the clergy, for the clergy are by no means impeccable or infallible. Accountability is a two-way street.
Now, this is the sort of thing that can develop when certain trends are allowed to elaborate and degenerate unchecked, in the absence of theological competition.
Theological competition is not a failsafe. You get the good with the bad. But it’s better than issuing an exclusive license to decadent dogma while outlawing sound theology.
http://kerussocharis.blogspot.com/2007/08/origens-of-quirky-religious-traditions.html
Scott Gordon said...
“Gene, theological competition is important, because in our pomo world we can't afford to assert convictions of a doctrinal nature based upon biblical authority...we need to argue vociferously based upon our personal preferences.”
The first thing I’d say is that if I’m a postmodernist, then postmodernism has gotten a bum rap.
Seriously, Gordon’s comment is unresponsive to either the original post or Gene’s gloss on the original post (which I second).
Hence, I have to conclude that Gordon is riding a hobbyhorse which he trots out at every horse and pony show, and then tries to redirect the course of the conversation to reflect his hobbyhorse.
As Gene already explained, the context of the original post was in relation a stock objection to the Protestant rule of faith, customarily leveled by Catholic apologists, but also gaining ground among Orthodox apologists.
Defending sola Scriptura is hardly an expression of postmodernism.
Moreover, the value of competition lies, not in competition as an end in itself, by as a means to an end. It makes it easier for us to correct for false developments.
Historically, denominations have taken the form of national churches. The reigning monarch decided in favor of a particular religion, usually based on which religion was politically expedient in forming military alliances. This, in turn, entailed mass conversion on the part of his subjects. His faith was their faith.
This gave the state religion a legal monopoly, be it Orthodoxy, Catholicism—or, for that matter—Islam, Buddhism, &c.
So you end up with a closed religious society in which criticism of the religious status quo is an act of sedition. In this situation, it’s impossible to reform religious corruptions.
Heresy is defined, not by what is false, but by what is treasonous according to the political establishment, to which the church is subordinate.
Because of this monopoly, many primitive theological errors were frozen in place, and—what is more—became the basis of ever worse theology inasmuch as they supplied the unquestioned premise for further deleterious developments.
I already gave a number of specific examples. Gene gave some other examples (in the combox of the original post)—examples which I second.
Far from endorsing pomo relativism, the value of theological competition is to winnow truth from error and challenge illegitimate attenuations of dogma, even—where necessary—to challenge the underlying premise. For some aggravated theological errors merely take a primitive error to its logical, albeit pernicious, extreme.
So I would advise Gordon to withhold his reflexive reaction and actually listen to the stated position before he pounces.
Let’s take a few more examples to illustrate my point. Take Tetzel, Peter Pence, and the indulgence racket.
This is a textbook example of theology gone to seed, and it’s the outgrowth of several poisonous plants, including the merit system and apostolic succession.
Or, take the question of whether Moscow is the Third Rome. How would a Protestant answer that question?
Well, the problem is with the entire framework. It’s really the wrong question, because the question makes so many faulty assumptions.
The basal error is apostolic succession. This is then identified with Rome as the original locus of apostolic succession. Then, when the capital moves from Rome to Constantinople, Constantinople becomes the Second Rome. Then, based on the outreach to Russia and the fall of Constantinople, Moscow becomes the Third Rome.
And this can be taken a step further. After the October Revolution, when many Russian Orthodox fled to France and the United States, what was the “true” Moscow? The puppet church in Russia? Or the exiled church of the Russian émigrés?
These are logical questions to ask if you buy into the operating premise. And trying to sort out the “true” succession becomes a very vexed historical and theological question. It’s bound up with notions of apostolic succession, valid ordination, royal marriages, the Tsar as the successor to Constantine, and so on.
But a Protestant would frankly lay an ax to the tree, which is rotten to the core and cut it down root and branch. When dealing with theological errors of this depth, a slash-and-burn policy is the only effective remedy, for the whole outgrowth is erroneous from start to finish. A bad seed blossomed into poisonous fruitage.
In cases like this, theological competition allows us to solve the problem, not by answering the problem in the way the question was cast, but by questioning the question itself and applying a flamethrower to the tares. Only a scorched earth policy will enable us to clear the underbrush and start afresh with fertile soil and good seed.
Or take a different example: fencing the table. Unlike the first two examples, this enjoys a measure of Scriptural support.
Since communion is a covenant sign, the only communicants should (ideally) be members of the covenant community. It would therefore be wrong for a pastor to knowingly administer communion to an open unbeliever.
However, one can easily get carried away with policing the communion rail. Various denominations begin to practice closed communion, as if each denomination held the patent to the Lord’s Supper.
And some of them become so petrified at the prospect of administering communion to the wrong person that they rarely perform communion, and put members through a screening process every time communion is scheduled. The pastor has to interview every member and issue a communion token to show that this member is preapproved to partake of communion.
All of this is well-intentioned, but it’s also an exercise in control-freakery. An otherwise valid principle as been overrefined to the point of absurdity, under the assumption that it’s better if no one rightly takes communion for fear one person will slip through the barricade and wrongly take communion.
It also assumes a very paternalistic polity, in which the elders are the official grown-ups while the laity is reduced to the rank of perpetual minors, in a state of diminished responsibility. The laity is no longer answerable for its actions. Rather, laymen are kept under curfew. They can only go outside with an ecclesiastical chaperon to escort them and keep them out of trouble.
Yet the true job of pastors is to equip the laity, and not to keep them under house arrest. Not only does this attitude keep the laity in a state of arrested spiritual and intellectual development, but it also has a corrupting influence on the clergy, for the clergy are by no means impeccable or infallible. Accountability is a two-way street.
Now, this is the sort of thing that can develop when certain trends are allowed to elaborate and degenerate unchecked, in the absence of theological competition.
Theological competition is not a failsafe. You get the good with the bad. But it’s better than issuing an exclusive license to decadent dogma while outlawing sound theology.
Doubting Thomas
Anonymous said:_Hi there, Steve. I am a Christian, but I could relate to Teresa's experience. Is it possible that a true Christian can sometimes have the "dark night," where God doesn't seem real to him or near to him ... or are such "dark nighters" always reprobate non-christians?
i ask because i struggle with assurance of salvation some times for months...and the struggle itself seems to confirm my fears.
******************************************
An important question, but difficult to answer in a vacuum. Christians can entertain religious doubts for a variety of reasons:
1.In apologetics, we focus on intellectual impediments to faith.
i) Some people have doubts because they don’t have enough conscious evidence at their fingertips.
ii) Or there may be plenty of evidence, but they fail to recognize the evidence staring them in the face because they have a faulty preconception of what counts as evidence or where to find the evidence.
iii) In case of (i) or (ii), this is due to a real or perceived lack of available evidence.
But doubt may also arise through apparent evidence to the contrary. And yet, the counterevidence is only apparent because they have false expectations or flawed models of what the truth is supposed to look like.
2.Then there are also theological impediments. These are not so much impediments to saving faith, but impediments to the assurance of salvation.
i) Some people doubt their salvation because they place the burden of proof in the wrong place. They fail to distinguish between rational and irrational doubt.
The imaginative ability to question your salvation is no reason to actually question your salvation. That’s an abuse of your imagination.
ii) Some people have a theological belief-system that positively robs them of the assurance of salvation. They may subscribe to a merit system of salvation. So they never know if they have earned enough points to make the cut. And do their bad dees cancel out their good deeds?
iii) Falling into grave sin can be a reason to doubt your salvation. But struggling with sin is not a reason to doubt your salvation. Indeed, if you were dead in sin, you wouldn’t put up a fight.
iv) Falling into imaginary sin can also eclipse your assurance of salvation. Some Christians feel guilty for violating legalistic dos and don’ts that have no basis in Scripture.
v) What does it mean to be a true believer? It doesn’t mean you believe in yourself. Don’t confuse saving faith with self-assurance.
And you don’t achieve the assurance of salvation by starting with the assurance of salvation. Assurance is an effect of something else. Focus on the source of assurance, not the effect.
vi) Are you an orthodox, Bible-believing Christian? That’s a start.
vii) Assuming that you answer (v) in the affirmative, suppose you still have doubts about your own salvation?
Ironically, the combination of (v) and (vi) is a reason not to doubt your salvation. You wouldn’t worry about you lack of assurance unless you cared about salvation in the first place.
So there’s more to your faith than merely believing all the right things. They mean something to you at a personal level.
If you can answer (v) in the affirmative, and if you suffer from self-doubts, then that’s a reason to put your self-doubts to rest. The combination of (v) and (vi) testifies to spiritual life. You have a vital faith. You have a personal and emotional investment in the truth of what you believe.
If you think about it this way, then your self-doubts are actually evidence that your faith is genuine. Your doubts are reason not to doubt.
viii) Remember, I’m distinguishing between doubt and self-doubt. Doubting yourself and doubting the faith are not the same thing.
ix) We also need to foster a realistic expectation of how we experience God in this life. God isn’t close to us or real to us in the same way as your wife or best friend.
And yet this cuts both ways. Time and space can separate us from our loved ones. But time and space pose no barrier to prayer.
3.Finally, there are existential impediments.
i) Some people are temperamentally prone to self-doubt. They second-guess their actions. They question their motives.
And this can spill over into their faith. It’s important to remember, though, that this doesn’t have anything to do with the integrity of their faith. It’s just a side-effect of their personality-type.
And it’s not necessarily a character-flaw. The opposite extreme is the sociopath. He has no conscience.
The church needs a mix of personality-types. Extroverted, self-confident types are natural leaders. Good organizers. Great at open air evangelism.
They’re not so good at the hospital bed. They lack empathy.
Likewise, they tend to be men of action rather than men of ideas. But the church needs both. It won’t do to have creedless deeds or deedless creeds.
ii) Some people are prone to self-doubt because of their upbringing. For example, there are sons who could never please their fathers. So they lack self-confidence.
They are shy. They feel like underachievers because their father never made them feel successful.
Or maybe they were bullied at school. Lousy at sports. The classic nerd syndrome.
Of course, some nerds grown up to be Bill Gates. If they can’t be an all-star, they can buy an all-star team!
Once again, though, it’s important not to confuse this with saving faith. It’s just a side-effect of one’s socialization. Never confound a lack of self-assurance with spiritual assurance. Although these may not feel very different, they are logically independent of each other.
iii) On a related note, if you suffer from, say, chronic pain or chronic fatigue, this will definitely affect your attitude. We are holistic creatures, not brains in a vat.
So how you feel physically will impact how you feel emotionally. And that, in turn, can overshadow your faith. If you’re depressed, you will be a depressed believer.
Likewise, climate can affect your emotional wellbeing. Or a sour love-life.
But don’t equate any of this with saving faith. The shadow is emotional, not spiritual. It doesn’t alter your objective and unbreakable relationship with Christ.
iv) Finally, self-doubt can feed on itself. You should try to break the cycle, where possible, by enriching your social, emotional, and spiritual experience.
i ask because i struggle with assurance of salvation some times for months...and the struggle itself seems to confirm my fears.
******************************************
An important question, but difficult to answer in a vacuum. Christians can entertain religious doubts for a variety of reasons:
1.In apologetics, we focus on intellectual impediments to faith.
i) Some people have doubts because they don’t have enough conscious evidence at their fingertips.
ii) Or there may be plenty of evidence, but they fail to recognize the evidence staring them in the face because they have a faulty preconception of what counts as evidence or where to find the evidence.
iii) In case of (i) or (ii), this is due to a real or perceived lack of available evidence.
But doubt may also arise through apparent evidence to the contrary. And yet, the counterevidence is only apparent because they have false expectations or flawed models of what the truth is supposed to look like.
2.Then there are also theological impediments. These are not so much impediments to saving faith, but impediments to the assurance of salvation.
i) Some people doubt their salvation because they place the burden of proof in the wrong place. They fail to distinguish between rational and irrational doubt.
The imaginative ability to question your salvation is no reason to actually question your salvation. That’s an abuse of your imagination.
ii) Some people have a theological belief-system that positively robs them of the assurance of salvation. They may subscribe to a merit system of salvation. So they never know if they have earned enough points to make the cut. And do their bad dees cancel out their good deeds?
iii) Falling into grave sin can be a reason to doubt your salvation. But struggling with sin is not a reason to doubt your salvation. Indeed, if you were dead in sin, you wouldn’t put up a fight.
iv) Falling into imaginary sin can also eclipse your assurance of salvation. Some Christians feel guilty for violating legalistic dos and don’ts that have no basis in Scripture.
v) What does it mean to be a true believer? It doesn’t mean you believe in yourself. Don’t confuse saving faith with self-assurance.
And you don’t achieve the assurance of salvation by starting with the assurance of salvation. Assurance is an effect of something else. Focus on the source of assurance, not the effect.
vi) Are you an orthodox, Bible-believing Christian? That’s a start.
vii) Assuming that you answer (v) in the affirmative, suppose you still have doubts about your own salvation?
Ironically, the combination of (v) and (vi) is a reason not to doubt your salvation. You wouldn’t worry about you lack of assurance unless you cared about salvation in the first place.
So there’s more to your faith than merely believing all the right things. They mean something to you at a personal level.
If you can answer (v) in the affirmative, and if you suffer from self-doubts, then that’s a reason to put your self-doubts to rest. The combination of (v) and (vi) testifies to spiritual life. You have a vital faith. You have a personal and emotional investment in the truth of what you believe.
If you think about it this way, then your self-doubts are actually evidence that your faith is genuine. Your doubts are reason not to doubt.
viii) Remember, I’m distinguishing between doubt and self-doubt. Doubting yourself and doubting the faith are not the same thing.
ix) We also need to foster a realistic expectation of how we experience God in this life. God isn’t close to us or real to us in the same way as your wife or best friend.
And yet this cuts both ways. Time and space can separate us from our loved ones. But time and space pose no barrier to prayer.
3.Finally, there are existential impediments.
i) Some people are temperamentally prone to self-doubt. They second-guess their actions. They question their motives.
And this can spill over into their faith. It’s important to remember, though, that this doesn’t have anything to do with the integrity of their faith. It’s just a side-effect of their personality-type.
And it’s not necessarily a character-flaw. The opposite extreme is the sociopath. He has no conscience.
The church needs a mix of personality-types. Extroverted, self-confident types are natural leaders. Good organizers. Great at open air evangelism.
They’re not so good at the hospital bed. They lack empathy.
Likewise, they tend to be men of action rather than men of ideas. But the church needs both. It won’t do to have creedless deeds or deedless creeds.
ii) Some people are prone to self-doubt because of their upbringing. For example, there are sons who could never please their fathers. So they lack self-confidence.
They are shy. They feel like underachievers because their father never made them feel successful.
Or maybe they were bullied at school. Lousy at sports. The classic nerd syndrome.
Of course, some nerds grown up to be Bill Gates. If they can’t be an all-star, they can buy an all-star team!
Once again, though, it’s important not to confuse this with saving faith. It’s just a side-effect of one’s socialization. Never confound a lack of self-assurance with spiritual assurance. Although these may not feel very different, they are logically independent of each other.
iii) On a related note, if you suffer from, say, chronic pain or chronic fatigue, this will definitely affect your attitude. We are holistic creatures, not brains in a vat.
So how you feel physically will impact how you feel emotionally. And that, in turn, can overshadow your faith. If you’re depressed, you will be a depressed believer.
Likewise, climate can affect your emotional wellbeing. Or a sour love-life.
But don’t equate any of this with saving faith. The shadow is emotional, not spiritual. It doesn’t alter your objective and unbreakable relationship with Christ.
iv) Finally, self-doubt can feed on itself. You should try to break the cycle, where possible, by enriching your social, emotional, and spiritual experience.
Mother Teresa
BLACKHAW SAID:
“Also what is wrong with equating our suffering with the suffering of Christ. That is we can maybe share in the fellowship of his sufferings? Didn't Paul say something like that in Phillipians 3. And while baptism might be a way that we share in his sufferings I think Paul also had in mind the real sufferings we have in this world as we live for Christ.”
She was referring to the Passion of Christ. You know, Calvary and all that good stuff.
In that context, the sufferings of Christ are redemptive. It’s call the Atonement.
Are you claiming that sinners can also make atonement for their sins? In that event, who even needs a divine and sinless Redeemer to atone for our sins if we can atone for our own sins?
“I do not think her going through the dark night of the soul means that she probably was not a Christian.”
i) And I didn’t say otherwise. As a student in grad school, it wouldn’t hurt you to cultivate the habit of reading what people actually write. Try again. I offered an 8-point analysis.
On the first point I offered an interpretation of her experience consistent with her being reprobate.
Then, on points 2-8, I offered an interpretation of her experience consistent with her being a genuine, but genuinely confused Christian. What part of that didn’t you get?
I regard both interpretations as live options—which is why I presented two alternative interpretations.
ii) We’re not talking about a temporary crisis of faith or lapse of faith. In Teresa’s case, this went on for 50 years.
A Christian is, among other things, a believer. He can backslide and be restored, but a Christian cannot be a lifelong unbeliever. I’m merely judging her by her professed lack of a credible profession of faith.
“I think it is part of our Christian pilgrimage as is loneliness. I am married but there is still loneliness. That is just a part of life.”
Which misses the point in a couple of fundamental respects:
i) Single, childless adults are more likely to be lonely that couples with children. She chose a lifestyle that was a recipe for loneliness.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with her choice. But it’s a choice with very predictable emotional consequences.
ii) But instead of placing the obvious, mundane interpretation on her sense of isolation, she placed a theological interpretation on her sense of isolation. This is her dark night of the soul. She is a participant at Calvary. That sort of thing.
There’s no justification for this theological interpretation. Not only is it bad theology, but it’s also bad psychology since the source of her loneliness and emptiness is far more down-to-earth. Her father died when she was eight, and she became a nun. So she suffered from emotional deprivation—to some extent self-imposed.
“So I think one should just be a little more charitable to Mother Theresa wihtout making her a saint above everyone else especially when many did not really even know her at all.”
That would be good and well except for the fact that people are making her into a saint. They are treating her as a spiritual role model, and using her experience to validate Catholic theology. And she, herself, contributed to that interpretation.
ANONYMOUS SAID:
“I'm not a Roman Catholic - in fact, I'm a minister in good standing in a Reformed federation, and a Ph.D. candidate in theology. I'm a Reformed minister and theologian. Yet, this post literally has nauseated me. It is harsh, presumptuous, simplistic, and in my opinion evidences a sad lack of acquaintance with virtue and charity.”
i) How is my post presumptuous? I’m evaluating her experience by her published letters, as well as commentary supplied by her spiritual confessors.
You yourself obviously have a far more favorable evaluation of Mother Teresa. Isn’t that equally presumptuous?
ii) How is my 8-point analysis simplistic? It seems to me that an 8-point analysis is fairly nuanced.
What parts of my 8-point analysis do you take issue with, exactly? If you can’t be more specific, then your own dismissal is pretty simplistic.
iii) You and I define “charity” quite differently. I regard it as uncharitable to promulgate a false and damnable gospel.
“I do not presume to know Mother Teresa's motives or eternal destiny. But I do know that before I would ever attempt to exegete her life and motives in any way, I'd spend the next 40 year of my life picking up my cross, denying myself, and devoting my life to raising the poor from the dust. I'd spend the rest of my life practicing true religion by visiting orphans and widows in their affliction.”
i) If that’s how you really feel, then why don’t you drop out of your PhD program and buy a one-way ticket to Calcutta? Seriously.
ii) Unlike you, I don’t reduce the Good News to the social gospel.
iii) There are also serious questions about how well her ministry provided for the poor and needy. Was the money actually getting to the poor, in terms of quality health care and other material support, or was it sitting in interest-bearing bank accounts while the poor and needy were receiving very substandard care from the Missionaries of Charity?
http://members.lycos.co.uk/bajuu/
http://www.newstatesman.com/200508220019
Or do you content yourself with empty gestures of good will, whether or not they actually do anyone any good?
“Also what is wrong with equating our suffering with the suffering of Christ. That is we can maybe share in the fellowship of his sufferings? Didn't Paul say something like that in Phillipians 3. And while baptism might be a way that we share in his sufferings I think Paul also had in mind the real sufferings we have in this world as we live for Christ.”
She was referring to the Passion of Christ. You know, Calvary and all that good stuff.
In that context, the sufferings of Christ are redemptive. It’s call the Atonement.
Are you claiming that sinners can also make atonement for their sins? In that event, who even needs a divine and sinless Redeemer to atone for our sins if we can atone for our own sins?
“I do not think her going through the dark night of the soul means that she probably was not a Christian.”
i) And I didn’t say otherwise. As a student in grad school, it wouldn’t hurt you to cultivate the habit of reading what people actually write. Try again. I offered an 8-point analysis.
On the first point I offered an interpretation of her experience consistent with her being reprobate.
Then, on points 2-8, I offered an interpretation of her experience consistent with her being a genuine, but genuinely confused Christian. What part of that didn’t you get?
I regard both interpretations as live options—which is why I presented two alternative interpretations.
ii) We’re not talking about a temporary crisis of faith or lapse of faith. In Teresa’s case, this went on for 50 years.
A Christian is, among other things, a believer. He can backslide and be restored, but a Christian cannot be a lifelong unbeliever. I’m merely judging her by her professed lack of a credible profession of faith.
“I think it is part of our Christian pilgrimage as is loneliness. I am married but there is still loneliness. That is just a part of life.”
Which misses the point in a couple of fundamental respects:
i) Single, childless adults are more likely to be lonely that couples with children. She chose a lifestyle that was a recipe for loneliness.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with her choice. But it’s a choice with very predictable emotional consequences.
ii) But instead of placing the obvious, mundane interpretation on her sense of isolation, she placed a theological interpretation on her sense of isolation. This is her dark night of the soul. She is a participant at Calvary. That sort of thing.
There’s no justification for this theological interpretation. Not only is it bad theology, but it’s also bad psychology since the source of her loneliness and emptiness is far more down-to-earth. Her father died when she was eight, and she became a nun. So she suffered from emotional deprivation—to some extent self-imposed.
“So I think one should just be a little more charitable to Mother Theresa wihtout making her a saint above everyone else especially when many did not really even know her at all.”
That would be good and well except for the fact that people are making her into a saint. They are treating her as a spiritual role model, and using her experience to validate Catholic theology. And she, herself, contributed to that interpretation.
ANONYMOUS SAID:
“I'm not a Roman Catholic - in fact, I'm a minister in good standing in a Reformed federation, and a Ph.D. candidate in theology. I'm a Reformed minister and theologian. Yet, this post literally has nauseated me. It is harsh, presumptuous, simplistic, and in my opinion evidences a sad lack of acquaintance with virtue and charity.”
i) How is my post presumptuous? I’m evaluating her experience by her published letters, as well as commentary supplied by her spiritual confessors.
You yourself obviously have a far more favorable evaluation of Mother Teresa. Isn’t that equally presumptuous?
ii) How is my 8-point analysis simplistic? It seems to me that an 8-point analysis is fairly nuanced.
What parts of my 8-point analysis do you take issue with, exactly? If you can’t be more specific, then your own dismissal is pretty simplistic.
iii) You and I define “charity” quite differently. I regard it as uncharitable to promulgate a false and damnable gospel.
“I do not presume to know Mother Teresa's motives or eternal destiny. But I do know that before I would ever attempt to exegete her life and motives in any way, I'd spend the next 40 year of my life picking up my cross, denying myself, and devoting my life to raising the poor from the dust. I'd spend the rest of my life practicing true religion by visiting orphans and widows in their affliction.”
i) If that’s how you really feel, then why don’t you drop out of your PhD program and buy a one-way ticket to Calcutta? Seriously.
ii) Unlike you, I don’t reduce the Good News to the social gospel.
iii) There are also serious questions about how well her ministry provided for the poor and needy. Was the money actually getting to the poor, in terms of quality health care and other material support, or was it sitting in interest-bearing bank accounts while the poor and needy were receiving very substandard care from the Missionaries of Charity?
http://members.lycos.co.uk/bajuu/
http://www.newstatesman.com/200508220019
Or do you content yourself with empty gestures of good will, whether or not they actually do anyone any good?
Natural theology
Here are Jonathan Prejean’s latest pearls of wisdom on sola Scriptura:
“It's hardly a coincidence that Mormons view Jewish anthropomorphism as philosophically normative; that appears to be what sola scriptura entails.”
http://crimsoncatholic.blogspot.com/2007/08/principles-of-catholic-apologetics.html#comments
i) This is a category mistake, since sola Scriptura doesn’t entail any particular interpretation of Scripture. Sola Scriptura is a rule of faith, not a hermeneutical prediction.
ii) Jews themselves don’t construe “Jewish anthropomorphism” as philosophically normative in the Mormon sense of taking these anthropomorphic passages literally. Simply put, Jewish theism is a world apart from Mormon theism.
iii) The Bible itself, in certain programmatic statements, distinguishes between a divine and human viewpoint (e.g. Num 23:19; 1 Sam 15:29). Therefore, since Scripture itself internalizes a distinction between literal and anthropomorphic depictions of the divine, one doesn’t need to ransack natural theology to draw this distinction—for Scripture already differentiates and prioritizes those alternating perspectives.
“I can't say that I see much merit in the more general suggestion of how Catholics should argue with Protestants. The primary refutation of sola scriptura is that it is absurd as a matter of natural theology and that its conclusions deny certain conclusions of natural theology.”
i) So he doesn’t even entertain the self-witness of Scripture as a relevant consideration.
ii) How does he identify natural theology? Strictly speaking, there’s no such thing as natural theology. What we have, rather, is a bewildering variety of natural theologies.
Outside of Christianity, there are different versions of natural theology in Greek philosophy, Indian philosophy, Islamic philosophy, process theology, and so on.
There are heretical forms of natural theology, like Erigena’s synthesis.
Within Catholicism, there are different versions of natural theology in Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Scotus, and so on.
There are also varieties of Thomism, such as Neothomism, transcendental Thomism, existential Thomism, analytical Thomism, &c.
So, before Prejean can deploy natural theology as an interpretive grid through which to filter and validate the propositions of Scripture, he needs to isolate, identify, and defend the one true version of natural theology he is using. We look forward to his detailed argument.
“That is a good and sufficient reason for presuming that ANY form of divine revelation also includes the appointment of definite individuals with the power to resolve these matters.”
This is a purely a priori postulate. And one problem with this stipulation is that we find no precedent for his armchair postulate in the life of the old covenant community. God did not endow a definite set of individuals with the power to resolve doctrinal disputes. So why should we take Prejean’s dicta seriously?
“My argument was essentially that, for anything to function as a binding authority, it must actually be able to bindingly resolve every dispute coming under the auspices of the formal system. That means, ultimately, that if any interpretation of any material authority can be disputed, there has to be some human authority that has the power to finally resolve it, even if that power isn't exercised. Otherwise, in the end, all you have is persuasive authority, and the hope that there is actually an answer to be had if reasonable people simply exercise their God-given reason.”
i) Once again, since no such authority existed in God’s constitution of the old covenant community, why should we intuit the necessity of such an institution in the life of the new covenant community?
ii) And it won’t do to invoke a dispensational disjunction along the lines of Isa 54:13, Jer 31:33, Ezk 36:27, for—at most—that would signal a decentralization of religious authority rather than a concentration of authority in a single individual or subset of elite individuals.
“The problem I see with sola scriptura in that regard is that there is no good cause for granting authority to Scripture in the first place, so there is never more than merely probable and rebuttable warrant for any particular conclusion drawn.”
Well, I suppose we should at least commend Jonathan for his candid infidelity. For him, the Word of God has no intrinsic authority. For him, the Word of God has no inherent credibility. Whatever authority we credit to Scripture is a purely secondary and derivative authority which is conferred on Scripture by some extrinsic locus of authority.
How is Prejean’s view of Scripture any different than 18C Deism, a la Collins, Toland, Tindal, et al.?
“And unlike the case of science, there's no good cause for thinking that exegesis of Scripture produces knowledge in the first place, because unlike science, its normative standards aren't justified by first principles.”
So when the OT prophets interpret the Pentateuch, this exercise doesn’t yield knowledge. And when Jesus or the Apostles interpret the OT, this exercise doesn’t yield knowledge.
Likewise, when the church fathers or Aquinas exegete Scripture, this exercise doesn’t yield knowledge.
“I don't see any reason to think that Scripture can function even as a persuasive authority.”
Once again, I deeply appreciate Prejean’s frank admission that Catholicism and infidelity are synonymous.
“One can do what conservative Evangelicals do, which is a bare, unjustified assertion of properties like inerrancy, wholeness, etc., of Scripture, which is effectively to conjure a normative authority out of nowhere.”
Yes, to agree with God’s self-estimate regarding the divine authority of his word is “effectively to conjure a normative authority out of nowhere.”
“Every allegedly divinely revealed conclusion is only as good as its weakest normative link, and there is not even a coherent way of defining what the normative principles are. Unless God has invested some definite class of people with formal divine authority (and there might be legitimate disputes of judgment as to who those people are, but one has to at least think that there are such people), the situation for arriving at theological truth outside of natural theology is hopeless.”
Assuming, for the sake of argument, that “God has invested some definite class of people with formal divine authority,” are there no weak links in the chain of transmission? Isn’t the dissemination of Catholic dogma a trickle down process?
Even if the chain of transmission is hooked into the extraordinary Magisterium at one end, as soon as the chain of transmission drops below the extraordinary Magisterium, then we’re back to a series of weak links. So, by Prejean’s own yardstick, the case for Catholic dogma is hopeless.
“It's hardly a coincidence that Mormons view Jewish anthropomorphism as philosophically normative; that appears to be what sola scriptura entails.”
http://crimsoncatholic.blogspot.com/2007/08/principles-of-catholic-apologetics.html#comments
i) This is a category mistake, since sola Scriptura doesn’t entail any particular interpretation of Scripture. Sola Scriptura is a rule of faith, not a hermeneutical prediction.
ii) Jews themselves don’t construe “Jewish anthropomorphism” as philosophically normative in the Mormon sense of taking these anthropomorphic passages literally. Simply put, Jewish theism is a world apart from Mormon theism.
iii) The Bible itself, in certain programmatic statements, distinguishes between a divine and human viewpoint (e.g. Num 23:19; 1 Sam 15:29). Therefore, since Scripture itself internalizes a distinction between literal and anthropomorphic depictions of the divine, one doesn’t need to ransack natural theology to draw this distinction—for Scripture already differentiates and prioritizes those alternating perspectives.
“I can't say that I see much merit in the more general suggestion of how Catholics should argue with Protestants. The primary refutation of sola scriptura is that it is absurd as a matter of natural theology and that its conclusions deny certain conclusions of natural theology.”
i) So he doesn’t even entertain the self-witness of Scripture as a relevant consideration.
ii) How does he identify natural theology? Strictly speaking, there’s no such thing as natural theology. What we have, rather, is a bewildering variety of natural theologies.
Outside of Christianity, there are different versions of natural theology in Greek philosophy, Indian philosophy, Islamic philosophy, process theology, and so on.
There are heretical forms of natural theology, like Erigena’s synthesis.
Within Catholicism, there are different versions of natural theology in Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Scotus, and so on.
There are also varieties of Thomism, such as Neothomism, transcendental Thomism, existential Thomism, analytical Thomism, &c.
So, before Prejean can deploy natural theology as an interpretive grid through which to filter and validate the propositions of Scripture, he needs to isolate, identify, and defend the one true version of natural theology he is using. We look forward to his detailed argument.
“That is a good and sufficient reason for presuming that ANY form of divine revelation also includes the appointment of definite individuals with the power to resolve these matters.”
This is a purely a priori postulate. And one problem with this stipulation is that we find no precedent for his armchair postulate in the life of the old covenant community. God did not endow a definite set of individuals with the power to resolve doctrinal disputes. So why should we take Prejean’s dicta seriously?
“My argument was essentially that, for anything to function as a binding authority, it must actually be able to bindingly resolve every dispute coming under the auspices of the formal system. That means, ultimately, that if any interpretation of any material authority can be disputed, there has to be some human authority that has the power to finally resolve it, even if that power isn't exercised. Otherwise, in the end, all you have is persuasive authority, and the hope that there is actually an answer to be had if reasonable people simply exercise their God-given reason.”
i) Once again, since no such authority existed in God’s constitution of the old covenant community, why should we intuit the necessity of such an institution in the life of the new covenant community?
ii) And it won’t do to invoke a dispensational disjunction along the lines of Isa 54:13, Jer 31:33, Ezk 36:27, for—at most—that would signal a decentralization of religious authority rather than a concentration of authority in a single individual or subset of elite individuals.
“The problem I see with sola scriptura in that regard is that there is no good cause for granting authority to Scripture in the first place, so there is never more than merely probable and rebuttable warrant for any particular conclusion drawn.”
Well, I suppose we should at least commend Jonathan for his candid infidelity. For him, the Word of God has no intrinsic authority. For him, the Word of God has no inherent credibility. Whatever authority we credit to Scripture is a purely secondary and derivative authority which is conferred on Scripture by some extrinsic locus of authority.
How is Prejean’s view of Scripture any different than 18C Deism, a la Collins, Toland, Tindal, et al.?
“And unlike the case of science, there's no good cause for thinking that exegesis of Scripture produces knowledge in the first place, because unlike science, its normative standards aren't justified by first principles.”
So when the OT prophets interpret the Pentateuch, this exercise doesn’t yield knowledge. And when Jesus or the Apostles interpret the OT, this exercise doesn’t yield knowledge.
Likewise, when the church fathers or Aquinas exegete Scripture, this exercise doesn’t yield knowledge.
“I don't see any reason to think that Scripture can function even as a persuasive authority.”
Once again, I deeply appreciate Prejean’s frank admission that Catholicism and infidelity are synonymous.
“One can do what conservative Evangelicals do, which is a bare, unjustified assertion of properties like inerrancy, wholeness, etc., of Scripture, which is effectively to conjure a normative authority out of nowhere.”
Yes, to agree with God’s self-estimate regarding the divine authority of his word is “effectively to conjure a normative authority out of nowhere.”
“Every allegedly divinely revealed conclusion is only as good as its weakest normative link, and there is not even a coherent way of defining what the normative principles are. Unless God has invested some definite class of people with formal divine authority (and there might be legitimate disputes of judgment as to who those people are, but one has to at least think that there are such people), the situation for arriving at theological truth outside of natural theology is hopeless.”
Assuming, for the sake of argument, that “God has invested some definite class of people with formal divine authority,” are there no weak links in the chain of transmission? Isn’t the dissemination of Catholic dogma a trickle down process?
Even if the chain of transmission is hooked into the extraordinary Magisterium at one end, as soon as the chain of transmission drops below the extraordinary Magisterium, then we’re back to a series of weak links. So, by Prejean’s own yardstick, the case for Catholic dogma is hopeless.
The Dark Night of the Soul
Anonymous on this post asks:
To answer the question, a “dark night of the soul” can be, and in fact has many times been, experienced by Christians. It is not an indication that one is reprobate if one has struggled with such a position. Indeed, the assurance of salvation is quite often the most common battlefield upon which a Christian will test his faith, and that battle can last months, years, and even to varying degrees unto the end.
Before I continue further, it is helpful to note that what Steve said of Teresa was not that she was reprobate—in fact, he specifically said he didn’t know if that was the case. If Steve’s post had intended to make the connection that “experiencing a dark night of the soul is proof you are reprobate” he would not have needed to qualify this statement with his uncertainty of Teresa’s salvific status. However, as Steve noted, feeling that God has abandoned you may be an indication that you are unsaved, but it is by no means a certainty.
I also note that I do speak from personal experience regarding “dark nights of the soul.” I have mentioned in many places before that I was once diagnosed with severe depression. In fact, one doctor told me that my case was the worst he had ever seen (this isn’t exactly what you want to hear from you doctor, in case you were wondering). In my case, the depression was linked to a specific physical cause. But this was not something that I discovered immediately. Instead, I spent two years gradually getting worse and worse psychologically, until my boss where I worked pulled me aside and ordered me to see a doctor because of the changes in my personality that my coworkers had noticed. At that time, I started several different types of medication in greater and greater doses, but I never seemed to get better.
Eventually I switched doctors (for reasons unrelated to my treatment at the time). My new doctor gave me a physical and said my blood was too thick. He had me do a pulse/ox test (which is used to indicate your sleeping pulse rate and the oxygen saturation level in your blood stream). The results of that test indicated that several times during the night, oxygen levels dropped and my heart began to race—an indication that I had sleep apnea. I had a sleep test scheduled and the results came back positive. Not only did I have sleep apnea, but the entire time I was tested I never entered REM sleep. In all likelihood, I had not gotten much (or possibly any) REM sleep for over two years. It is no wonder that this would demonstrate itself in the form of depression!
For me there was a simple cure. I got a CPAP machine (which uses air pressure to keep the airways from collapsing while you sleep). About a month after I started with the CPAP machine, I had finished with all medication that I had been taking for depression. And I’ve never been prescribed any depression medication since then. All my problems were apparently due to sleep deprivation.
Now during the time I was at my worst in depression, I had no desire to do anything. I was physically, emotionally, and spiritually exhausted. Many times, I would not go to church because I simply didn’t feel like getting out of bed on Sunday. Now, I’ve never been the type of person who has had problems with assurance of salvation…but that is not necessarily a good thing. You see, there were times during my depression that I literally hated God. But because I have always believed in eternal security, I knew that I could never escape from Him. He would always be there (and while I know that is true in a positive sense, back then I viewed it in the negative sense—like the schoolyard bully who will always be there to pick on you).
Because of my own depression, I have been able to talk to many other people who have gone through depression too. The pain of depression is something that is difficult to describe to people who have never experienced it. The doctor who told me that I had the worst case of depression he had ever seen also told me that he had a patient who was suffering from depression and had also been diagnosed with cancer. This patient claimed to prefer the pain of the cancer to the pain of depression. It is not difficult to understand why. When pain is caused by a physical source, our body has means to cope with it. We can go into shock, for instance. Likewise, we are able to treat (or at least attempt to treat) the physical ailments.
But depression takes place completely in the mind (even if it is caused by physical sources). It creates its own physical pain as well, but this physical pain doesn’t become dulled by shock. If depression gives you a stomach ache, causes you to vomit after every meal, makes you nauseous at the slightest scent, well taking Pepto Bismal isn’t going to help one bit. The stomach ailments are not caused by a stomach problem—they are caused by a mental problem, and only curing the mental aspect will change that.
Because of the Christians I’ve talked with, I know that one of the most common effects of depression is a struggle with faith and assurance. It is easy for us to fake how much we love God when things are going well. But add the overwhelming pain of depression, and suddenly it’s difficult to know where in the raging storm you can find dry land. I know many Christian brothers and sisters who struggle at times of depression with whether or not God has abandoned them. They struggle with this, yet I know as much as humanly possible that they have a genuine faith in God.
We do not need to take my personal testimony and my own witness for evidence, however. The Bible also shows many of these same people. If those who have never experienced it would like a glimpse of what depression is like, I suggest reading Psalm 88. Some excerpts follow:
While David did not write the above Psalm (it was written by the Sons of Korah), David also had his share of similar Psalms. For instance we read:
David’s examples could easily be multiplied, but we can also include several of the prophets. Jeremiah is known as the “weeping prophet” because of what he endured (watching the destruction of Jerusalem, recording it in the book of Lamentations). There were many dark nights experienced by many of the saints.
And we know from Paul why this is the case: “But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies” (2 Corinthians 4:7-10). And further: “For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:10).
This brings us to the paradoxical nature of the Christian walk. Despite the televangelist’s claims, Christianity is not about health, wealth, and happiness. It is about weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. It is about being crushed, perplexed, struck down. It is about being a jar of clay, not a steel container. All the more so that God’s strength is revealed more fully.
David was a man after God’s own heart. We know this, in part, because of the anguish he went through. He might be knocked down a dozen times, but he would get up thirteen times. And it was not due to his own abilities—he always acknowledged that it was God alone who could save him, and it was God alone who could deliver him.
Because we are time-bound creatures, we do not have the eternal aspect to measure whether someone going through a “dark night of the soul” will ultimately stand or fall. We only have the immediate temporal vantage point. Because of that, we cannot be dogmatic in determining what any particular person’s “dark night” means. But we do know that it is not automatic proof that said person is a reprobate.
However, as Steve’s post warned us, the existence of suffering is not itself proof that one is saved either. The wicked often suffer greatly in this life too—not all judgment is reserved for after death. Indeed, much persecution can be found between reprobates who are unrestrained in their hatred of other reprobates.
We likewise cannot ignore various other points that Steve brought up: the fact that the Roman Catholic system is non-Scriptural, that it teaches a false gospel, that it glorifies masochism and not just the natural toils and persecutions that will arise as we contend for the faith, all must bring some doubt as to what Teresa’s suffering meant about her spirituality. Ultimately, we do not know if she was regenerate or not; but we do know that the Roman system is not what we find in the Gospel.
And that brings us to the final point: evaluating our own personal experience. If you are currently going through a “dark night of the soul” what should you do? How do you make your “calling and election sure” in order to know whether what you experience is God demonstrating His power through your weakness or whether it is the bare fact of evil that even the unregenerate must deal with? Obviously, the first part of the question gives us some indication: does your “dark night of the soul” make God’s power shine though more fully? If so, then you have every reason to believe that your faith is genuine.
Often, however, this is a position that we cannot evaluate ourselves. When you are in the midst of depression, your perception of reality is affected. I know from my own experience that logic itself was different when I was depressed. For instance, when depressed, it logically makes sense that I should not waste the effort it takes to pay my bills on time. After all, having a phone is pointless; having electricity is meaningless; even having a place to live is worthless. In a world of pain, there’s not much point to anything.
But as soon as the depression lifts, we realize that our previous views were irrational. The logic that we couldn’t see in the depression is so obvious when the depression lifts that one feels stupid for having fallen for it while depressed.
So if you are going through a “dark night of the soul” you are the last person you should ask for an honest opinion of your spiritual state. You are the last person qualified to tell whether God is making Himself known through your weakness. For that, you need other believers.
And that is why God has given us the Church. When depressed, it’s probably the last place you want to be, but it is the very place you ought to be. Only in the company of other Godly men and women can you get an honest answer of whether they can see God working in your life. And if they can see God working in your life, then you know that you can take heart—you are a jar of clay with a great treasure inside.
Finally, remember to also stay in the Word of God. Again, it may be difficult to concentrate on Scripture when you are feeling down, and there are many passages that you will not be able to think clearly on. For instance, when depressed Ecclesiastes is probably the last book you will want to read. But Scripture was given for our benefit, and even if you do not immediately feel anything from it, just being in the habit can sometimes be enough to help pull you through a “dark night of the soul.”
To wrap it all up, then: No, having a “dark night of the soul” does not in itself mean you are reprobate. It does not mean you are saved either, though. Just because you go through a dark night does not mean you are pious; but it doesn’t mean you’re the spawn of Satan either. When you are going through one of those dark nights, you need to have at least one other believer who you can lean on (and preferably more than one other believer—there is a reason we are told not to forsake the assembly!). If you know they are Godly men and women, trust in their judgment because they are going to be in a far more objective position to evaluate your spiritual walk than you will be.
Is it possible that a true Christian can sometimes have the "dark night," where God doesn't seem real to him or near to him ... or are such "dark nighters" always reprobate non-christians?It appears to me that this question might have roots due to a misunderstanding of Steve’s original post. Even if that is the case, the question is still legitimate and deserves to be looked at with a Biblical mindset.
i ask because i struggle with assurance of salvation some times for months...and the struggle itself seems to confirm my fears.
To answer the question, a “dark night of the soul” can be, and in fact has many times been, experienced by Christians. It is not an indication that one is reprobate if one has struggled with such a position. Indeed, the assurance of salvation is quite often the most common battlefield upon which a Christian will test his faith, and that battle can last months, years, and even to varying degrees unto the end.
Before I continue further, it is helpful to note that what Steve said of Teresa was not that she was reprobate—in fact, he specifically said he didn’t know if that was the case. If Steve’s post had intended to make the connection that “experiencing a dark night of the soul is proof you are reprobate” he would not have needed to qualify this statement with his uncertainty of Teresa’s salvific status. However, as Steve noted, feeling that God has abandoned you may be an indication that you are unsaved, but it is by no means a certainty.
I also note that I do speak from personal experience regarding “dark nights of the soul.” I have mentioned in many places before that I was once diagnosed with severe depression. In fact, one doctor told me that my case was the worst he had ever seen (this isn’t exactly what you want to hear from you doctor, in case you were wondering). In my case, the depression was linked to a specific physical cause. But this was not something that I discovered immediately. Instead, I spent two years gradually getting worse and worse psychologically, until my boss where I worked pulled me aside and ordered me to see a doctor because of the changes in my personality that my coworkers had noticed. At that time, I started several different types of medication in greater and greater doses, but I never seemed to get better.
Eventually I switched doctors (for reasons unrelated to my treatment at the time). My new doctor gave me a physical and said my blood was too thick. He had me do a pulse/ox test (which is used to indicate your sleeping pulse rate and the oxygen saturation level in your blood stream). The results of that test indicated that several times during the night, oxygen levels dropped and my heart began to race—an indication that I had sleep apnea. I had a sleep test scheduled and the results came back positive. Not only did I have sleep apnea, but the entire time I was tested I never entered REM sleep. In all likelihood, I had not gotten much (or possibly any) REM sleep for over two years. It is no wonder that this would demonstrate itself in the form of depression!
For me there was a simple cure. I got a CPAP machine (which uses air pressure to keep the airways from collapsing while you sleep). About a month after I started with the CPAP machine, I had finished with all medication that I had been taking for depression. And I’ve never been prescribed any depression medication since then. All my problems were apparently due to sleep deprivation.
Now during the time I was at my worst in depression, I had no desire to do anything. I was physically, emotionally, and spiritually exhausted. Many times, I would not go to church because I simply didn’t feel like getting out of bed on Sunday. Now, I’ve never been the type of person who has had problems with assurance of salvation…but that is not necessarily a good thing. You see, there were times during my depression that I literally hated God. But because I have always believed in eternal security, I knew that I could never escape from Him. He would always be there (and while I know that is true in a positive sense, back then I viewed it in the negative sense—like the schoolyard bully who will always be there to pick on you).
Because of my own depression, I have been able to talk to many other people who have gone through depression too. The pain of depression is something that is difficult to describe to people who have never experienced it. The doctor who told me that I had the worst case of depression he had ever seen also told me that he had a patient who was suffering from depression and had also been diagnosed with cancer. This patient claimed to prefer the pain of the cancer to the pain of depression. It is not difficult to understand why. When pain is caused by a physical source, our body has means to cope with it. We can go into shock, for instance. Likewise, we are able to treat (or at least attempt to treat) the physical ailments.
But depression takes place completely in the mind (even if it is caused by physical sources). It creates its own physical pain as well, but this physical pain doesn’t become dulled by shock. If depression gives you a stomach ache, causes you to vomit after every meal, makes you nauseous at the slightest scent, well taking Pepto Bismal isn’t going to help one bit. The stomach ailments are not caused by a stomach problem—they are caused by a mental problem, and only curing the mental aspect will change that.
Because of the Christians I’ve talked with, I know that one of the most common effects of depression is a struggle with faith and assurance. It is easy for us to fake how much we love God when things are going well. But add the overwhelming pain of depression, and suddenly it’s difficult to know where in the raging storm you can find dry land. I know many Christian brothers and sisters who struggle at times of depression with whether or not God has abandoned them. They struggle with this, yet I know as much as humanly possible that they have a genuine faith in God.
We do not need to take my personal testimony and my own witness for evidence, however. The Bible also shows many of these same people. If those who have never experienced it would like a glimpse of what depression is like, I suggest reading Psalm 88. Some excerpts follow:
I am counted among those who go down to the pit;The NIV translates the final clause in a way that is even more poignant than the above ESV: “the darkness is my closest friend.”
I am a man who has no strength,
like one set loose among the dead,
like the slain that lie in the grave,
like those whom you remember no more,
for they are cut off from your hand.
You have put me in the depths of the pit,
in the regions dark and deep.
Your wrath lies heavy upon me,
and you overwhelm me with all your waves.
O LORD, why do you cast my soul away?
Why do you hide your face from me?
Afflicted and close to death from my youth up,
I suffer your terrors; I am helpless.
Your wrath has swept over me;
your dreadful assaults destroy me.
They surround me like a flood all day long;
they close in on me together.
You have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me;
my companions have become darkness.
While David did not write the above Psalm (it was written by the Sons of Korah), David also had his share of similar Psalms. For instance we read:
Because of all my adversaries I have become a reproach,And:
especially to my neighbors,
and an object of dread to my acquaintances;
those who see me in the street flee from me.
I have been forgotten like one who is dead;
I have become like a broken vessel.
For I hear the whispering of many—
terror on every side!—
as they scheme together against me,
as they plot to take my life. (Psalm 31:11-13)
Why are you cast down, O my soul,David was called “a man after God’s own heart,” yet also in this Psalm he wrote: “I say to God, my rock: ‘Why have you forgotten me?’” (vs. 9).
and why are you in turmoil within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my salvation and my God. (Psalm 42:11)
David’s examples could easily be multiplied, but we can also include several of the prophets. Jeremiah is known as the “weeping prophet” because of what he endured (watching the destruction of Jerusalem, recording it in the book of Lamentations). There were many dark nights experienced by many of the saints.
And we know from Paul why this is the case: “But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies” (2 Corinthians 4:7-10). And further: “For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:10).
This brings us to the paradoxical nature of the Christian walk. Despite the televangelist’s claims, Christianity is not about health, wealth, and happiness. It is about weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. It is about being crushed, perplexed, struck down. It is about being a jar of clay, not a steel container. All the more so that God’s strength is revealed more fully.
David was a man after God’s own heart. We know this, in part, because of the anguish he went through. He might be knocked down a dozen times, but he would get up thirteen times. And it was not due to his own abilities—he always acknowledged that it was God alone who could save him, and it was God alone who could deliver him.
Because we are time-bound creatures, we do not have the eternal aspect to measure whether someone going through a “dark night of the soul” will ultimately stand or fall. We only have the immediate temporal vantage point. Because of that, we cannot be dogmatic in determining what any particular person’s “dark night” means. But we do know that it is not automatic proof that said person is a reprobate.
However, as Steve’s post warned us, the existence of suffering is not itself proof that one is saved either. The wicked often suffer greatly in this life too—not all judgment is reserved for after death. Indeed, much persecution can be found between reprobates who are unrestrained in their hatred of other reprobates.
We likewise cannot ignore various other points that Steve brought up: the fact that the Roman Catholic system is non-Scriptural, that it teaches a false gospel, that it glorifies masochism and not just the natural toils and persecutions that will arise as we contend for the faith, all must bring some doubt as to what Teresa’s suffering meant about her spirituality. Ultimately, we do not know if she was regenerate or not; but we do know that the Roman system is not what we find in the Gospel.
And that brings us to the final point: evaluating our own personal experience. If you are currently going through a “dark night of the soul” what should you do? How do you make your “calling and election sure” in order to know whether what you experience is God demonstrating His power through your weakness or whether it is the bare fact of evil that even the unregenerate must deal with? Obviously, the first part of the question gives us some indication: does your “dark night of the soul” make God’s power shine though more fully? If so, then you have every reason to believe that your faith is genuine.
Often, however, this is a position that we cannot evaluate ourselves. When you are in the midst of depression, your perception of reality is affected. I know from my own experience that logic itself was different when I was depressed. For instance, when depressed, it logically makes sense that I should not waste the effort it takes to pay my bills on time. After all, having a phone is pointless; having electricity is meaningless; even having a place to live is worthless. In a world of pain, there’s not much point to anything.
But as soon as the depression lifts, we realize that our previous views were irrational. The logic that we couldn’t see in the depression is so obvious when the depression lifts that one feels stupid for having fallen for it while depressed.
So if you are going through a “dark night of the soul” you are the last person you should ask for an honest opinion of your spiritual state. You are the last person qualified to tell whether God is making Himself known through your weakness. For that, you need other believers.
And that is why God has given us the Church. When depressed, it’s probably the last place you want to be, but it is the very place you ought to be. Only in the company of other Godly men and women can you get an honest answer of whether they can see God working in your life. And if they can see God working in your life, then you know that you can take heart—you are a jar of clay with a great treasure inside.
Finally, remember to also stay in the Word of God. Again, it may be difficult to concentrate on Scripture when you are feeling down, and there are many passages that you will not be able to think clearly on. For instance, when depressed Ecclesiastes is probably the last book you will want to read. But Scripture was given for our benefit, and even if you do not immediately feel anything from it, just being in the habit can sometimes be enough to help pull you through a “dark night of the soul.”
To wrap it all up, then: No, having a “dark night of the soul” does not in itself mean you are reprobate. It does not mean you are saved either, though. Just because you go through a dark night does not mean you are pious; but it doesn’t mean you’re the spawn of Satan either. When you are going through one of those dark nights, you need to have at least one other believer who you can lean on (and preferably more than one other believer—there is a reason we are told not to forsake the assembly!). If you know they are Godly men and women, trust in their judgment because they are going to be in a far more objective position to evaluate your spiritual walk than you will be.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Getting the goods on Goode
Here are some classic, online resources about Romanism:
A disputation on Holy Scripture by William Whitaker 1548-1595
The infallibility of the church by George Salmon, 1819-1904
The divine rule of faith and practice, V. I by William Goode, 1801-1868
The divine rule of faith and practice, V. II by William Goode, 1801-1868
The divine rule of faith and practice, V. III by William Goode, 1801-1868
A disputation on Holy Scripture by William Whitaker 1548-1595
The infallibility of the church by George Salmon, 1819-1904
The divine rule of faith and practice, V. I by William Goode, 1801-1868
The divine rule of faith and practice, V. II by William Goode, 1801-1868
The divine rule of faith and practice, V. III by William Goode, 1801-1868
Actus Formalis Defectionis Ab Ecclesia Baptista
Continuing our series on integrity in church membership in Baptist churches...
I found this post quite interesting. Why? I'm glad you asked! Because the first few paragraphs could easily be reworded to read:
- Just one more way the SBC these days resembles Rome at times. I'd add that this isn't an SBC problem. The independent Baptists can be just as bad - and don't get me started on the way the Hylesite churches count numbers. Baptists talk a lot about Baptist tradition these days. May we correct this problem and leave a big honkin' HUGE post-it note on the frig for our children and children's children that this is something they should not repeat themselves.
HT: James White
I found this post quite interesting. Why? I'm glad you asked! Because the first few paragraphs could easily be reworded to read:
According to the 2007 Southern Baptist statistics, there are 16. 4 million Southern Baptists in the United States.
... however, this is likely an inflated number due to the way that Nashville determines membership statistics. The numbers do not adequately account for members who are double-counted, die or just drift off into who-knows-what. If you were baptized Southern Baptist, then you are most likely still on the list; and I've met many ex-Southern Baptists in the evangelical world.
I'm one of that number that has likely been considered merely lapsed or inactive. But it has irked me for years that I didn't have a means to formally separate myself from Nashville. As it turns out, as of last year there is now a procedure in place for removing oneself from membership in the Southern Baptist Convention. While this procedure essentially results in the defector being regarded as "apostate" rather than an "ex-Southern Baptist," it is the most forceful way to formally declare one's voluntary separation from Nashville.
- Just one more way the SBC these days resembles Rome at times. I'd add that this isn't an SBC problem. The independent Baptists can be just as bad - and don't get me started on the way the Hylesite churches count numbers. Baptists talk a lot about Baptist tradition these days. May we correct this problem and leave a big honkin' HUGE post-it note on the frig for our children and children's children that this is something they should not repeat themselves.
HT: James White
Dr. D. James Kennedy retires
In case you haven't already heard, Dr. D. James Kennedy has retired.
Also, peeps might like to check out this D. James Kennedy tribute website.
HT: Practically every Reformed blogger.
Also, peeps might like to check out this D. James Kennedy tribute website.
HT: Practically every Reformed blogger.
What Logic Requires Us To Believe About The Existence of God Part 2
Existence
The title of this series is What Logic Requires Us To Believe About The Existence of God. In our first post, we defined what we meant by “Logic.” Now we must look at what is meant by the word “Existence.”
In the first post, we were introduced to the philosophical differences between Parmenides (“Whatever is, is”) and Heraclitus (“Whatever is, is changing”). As I stated then, this can be seen as the difference between “actuality” and “potentiality” and is often characterized by the philosophical terms “being” and “becoming.”
The differences between the two positions of “being” and “becoming” are not to be understated. As R.C. Sproul notes:
In philosophy, the terms “existence”, “being”, “becoming”, “essence”, and “substance” have historically been argued over a great deal and it is difficult to find a consensus on the matter. The difficulties extend into language too. For instance, when we consider “Whatever is, is”—the very word “is” implies some form of existence. What does it mean to say “Something is” if you are not saying “Something exists”?
When used outside of formal philosophical discussions, the word “exists” is usually synonymous with the idea “is real.” If we say “Adam exists” we commonly mean by this that “Adam is real.” Interestingly, as pointed out in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, when used this way the idea of “existence” really gives us a negative definition. That is, when we say “Adam exists” in the “Adam is real” sense, we mean “Adam is not imaginary.” We are not attributing anything positive about Adam (since, after all, it is so difficult to give a positive definition of “existence” in the first place.) But, of course, part of what we are affirming when we include the “nots” that Adam is not is the idea: “Adam is not nonexistent” which would require us to know what existence is in order to know what nonexistence is. And because that idea is included, we are still left in our quandary.
So what is existence? Under the circumstances, it is tempting to respond with the old quip: “I know what it is until you ask me to define it, and then I don’t know what it is anymore.” In my opinion, this actually does move us toward an understanding of what is meant by existence. This can be seen if we simply ask: “Why is it so difficult to define what existence is?”
It is difficult because of the way existence is grasped or known. I know that I exist because I have direct, immediate knowledge of my existence (through the form of perception). I do not know that anyone else exists however, because I do not have direct knowledge of other people’s experiences. While I have experienced perception on my end, I have never seen “through another person’s eyes” (and despite the over use of this trite cliché, no one else has either).
Since I have access to my own perceptions, I know that I exist in some manner. Think of it this way: Let us take on the mantle of the radical skeptic for a moment and assume that everything we perceive is an illusion. The world does not actually exist—it is a mental projection. I am not even stipulating a brain-in-a-vat situation here; there is no brain and there is no vat.
Still, no matter what else I deny, it is impossible for me to deny that I do perceive something. For instance, right now I perceive the computer monitor that I am writing this post at. I see words appear in the shape of black letters on a white background. I see the desk my computer sits upon, the pile of books next to it, etc. None of these things must exist—they could all be delusions. Yet even if they are, something must exist to experience these delusions.
Because I personally have direct access to what I “see” (even if what I see is really an illusion), I know for a fact, due to direct acquaintance with my perception, that something exists. I do not know from this experience whether that something that exists is physical, or whether what I perceive corresponds in any way to reality, or if other people that I see are experiencing their own perceptions, just as I am. I do not know this of those people—but I do know it for me.
As a result, existence is (foundationally) something we have direct knowledge of (I use the editorially “we” here, and it should not be taken as an argument that I have “proven” anyone else exists). The knowledge is little more than the idea that there is something instead of nothing. There is a level of ignorance that immediate intrudes beyond that. We know that we personally exist, but we cannot know that others exist in the same manner. We can assume it, of course. It may be a very good assumption to make. But we cannot say that what we perceive exists in the same way that we can see that we, ourselves, exist. We have direct knowledge of the latter, and can only assume the former.
Now it is certainly possible to further flesh out the implications of existence at this point, and many philosophers have done so through the years. However, for the subject of my argument for the existence of God, we need not go into that detail. All that is essential for the argument to work is for us to grant the undeniable fact that because we perceive something, there must be some form of existence (i.e., there must exist a perceiving being, even if the perceiving being is perceiving an illusion). This is existence can be as simple as the concept that there exists something rather than nothing, and we do not need to dwell on the particular attributes of that "something" that is not nothing.
In the next post in this series, we will look at what we logically must accept due to any form of existence, including this very simplistic concept of it.
The title of this series is What Logic Requires Us To Believe About The Existence of God. In our first post, we defined what we meant by “Logic.” Now we must look at what is meant by the word “Existence.”
In the first post, we were introduced to the philosophical differences between Parmenides (“Whatever is, is”) and Heraclitus (“Whatever is, is changing”). As I stated then, this can be seen as the difference between “actuality” and “potentiality” and is often characterized by the philosophical terms “being” and “becoming.”
The differences between the two positions of “being” and “becoming” are not to be understated. As R.C. Sproul notes:
The problem of being and becoming may be stated this way: “If all is being, then being is actually everything and potentially nothing.” Pure being has no becoming, no change, no potential.Spoul argues that the word existence comes from the Latin meaning “to stand out from” and it is his contention that something exists when it “stands out from” being and becoming. That is, something exists when it has one foot in being and one foot in becoming (ibid, p. 115-116). This may very well fit with the Latin definition, but I maintain that it is difficult to grasp this definition conceptually.
On the other hand pure becoming would be potentially anything but actually nothing. This conundrum leads some philosophers to assert that if everything is changing, then nothing exists.
(Not A Chance. 1994. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books. p. 115)
In philosophy, the terms “existence”, “being”, “becoming”, “essence”, and “substance” have historically been argued over a great deal and it is difficult to find a consensus on the matter. The difficulties extend into language too. For instance, when we consider “Whatever is, is”—the very word “is” implies some form of existence. What does it mean to say “Something is” if you are not saying “Something exists”?
When used outside of formal philosophical discussions, the word “exists” is usually synonymous with the idea “is real.” If we say “Adam exists” we commonly mean by this that “Adam is real.” Interestingly, as pointed out in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, when used this way the idea of “existence” really gives us a negative definition. That is, when we say “Adam exists” in the “Adam is real” sense, we mean “Adam is not imaginary.” We are not attributing anything positive about Adam (since, after all, it is so difficult to give a positive definition of “existence” in the first place.) But, of course, part of what we are affirming when we include the “nots” that Adam is not is the idea: “Adam is not nonexistent” which would require us to know what existence is in order to know what nonexistence is. And because that idea is included, we are still left in our quandary.
So what is existence? Under the circumstances, it is tempting to respond with the old quip: “I know what it is until you ask me to define it, and then I don’t know what it is anymore.” In my opinion, this actually does move us toward an understanding of what is meant by existence. This can be seen if we simply ask: “Why is it so difficult to define what existence is?”
It is difficult because of the way existence is grasped or known. I know that I exist because I have direct, immediate knowledge of my existence (through the form of perception). I do not know that anyone else exists however, because I do not have direct knowledge of other people’s experiences. While I have experienced perception on my end, I have never seen “through another person’s eyes” (and despite the over use of this trite cliché, no one else has either).
Since I have access to my own perceptions, I know that I exist in some manner. Think of it this way: Let us take on the mantle of the radical skeptic for a moment and assume that everything we perceive is an illusion. The world does not actually exist—it is a mental projection. I am not even stipulating a brain-in-a-vat situation here; there is no brain and there is no vat.
Still, no matter what else I deny, it is impossible for me to deny that I do perceive something. For instance, right now I perceive the computer monitor that I am writing this post at. I see words appear in the shape of black letters on a white background. I see the desk my computer sits upon, the pile of books next to it, etc. None of these things must exist—they could all be delusions. Yet even if they are, something must exist to experience these delusions.
Because I personally have direct access to what I “see” (even if what I see is really an illusion), I know for a fact, due to direct acquaintance with my perception, that something exists. I do not know from this experience whether that something that exists is physical, or whether what I perceive corresponds in any way to reality, or if other people that I see are experiencing their own perceptions, just as I am. I do not know this of those people—but I do know it for me.
As a result, existence is (foundationally) something we have direct knowledge of (I use the editorially “we” here, and it should not be taken as an argument that I have “proven” anyone else exists). The knowledge is little more than the idea that there is something instead of nothing. There is a level of ignorance that immediate intrudes beyond that. We know that we personally exist, but we cannot know that others exist in the same manner. We can assume it, of course. It may be a very good assumption to make. But we cannot say that what we perceive exists in the same way that we can see that we, ourselves, exist. We have direct knowledge of the latter, and can only assume the former.
Now it is certainly possible to further flesh out the implications of existence at this point, and many philosophers have done so through the years. However, for the subject of my argument for the existence of God, we need not go into that detail. All that is essential for the argument to work is for us to grant the undeniable fact that because we perceive something, there must be some form of existence (i.e., there must exist a perceiving being, even if the perceiving being is perceiving an illusion). This is existence can be as simple as the concept that there exists something rather than nothing, and we do not need to dwell on the particular attributes of that "something" that is not nothing.
In the next post in this series, we will look at what we logically must accept due to any form of existence, including this very simplistic concept of it.
Monday, August 27, 2007
This Is Because Christian Fundamentalists Don't Detonate
I just saw this post: Washington Post, Other Newspapers Won't Run 'Opus' Cartoon Mocking Radical Islam. This comes a week after they did publish an "Opus" cartoon mocking Jerry Falwell.
Here's the interesting little tidbit. The Washington Post Writers Group is the syndicate for Berkeley Breathed, the author of "Opus." When they sent out the cartoon to the local papers, they warned that Muslims might find the cartoon offensive. Amy Lago said she flagged the strip and, of course, also claims she "do[es] that fairly regularly with materials that might pose issues for local areas."
Of course, Ms. Lago did not send out such an alert regarding the Falwell cartoon. Perhaps this is because, as much as they are vilified in the press, Christian fundamentalists don't detonate.
The Christian riot consists of people boycotting Disney for a month.
The Muslim riot consists of lots of burning objects and dead people.
The article of course ends with what can only be described as "a keen sense of the obvious":
In any case, it would be nice of certain individuals *coughcoughRichardDawkinscoughcough* would own up to the fact that not all religions are equal, and, in fact, mocking Christians is a much less successful method of suicide than mocking Muslims. But when your template is "All religions are evil" you can't even see that which is labled under the "keen sense of the obvious."
Here's the interesting little tidbit. The Washington Post Writers Group is the syndicate for Berkeley Breathed, the author of "Opus." When they sent out the cartoon to the local papers, they warned that Muslims might find the cartoon offensive. Amy Lago said she flagged the strip and, of course, also claims she "do[es] that fairly regularly with materials that might pose issues for local areas."
Of course, Ms. Lago did not send out such an alert regarding the Falwell cartoon. Perhaps this is because, as much as they are vilified in the press, Christian fundamentalists don't detonate.
The Christian riot consists of people boycotting Disney for a month.
The Muslim riot consists of lots of burning objects and dead people.
The article of course ends with what can only be described as "a keen sense of the obvious":
As far as whether the Post and the Post Writers Group syndicate treated content about conservative Christians differently than it did content about conservative Muslims, it certainly could be taken that way.(Of course, I cannot resist the temptation: "The climate of the world" informs editorial decisions? That Global Warming is so pesky!!!!)
"It appears on the surface to be a double standard," Burford said, "but at the same time, the climate of the world probably informs their decision with how to go forward with it."
In any case, it would be nice of certain individuals *coughcoughRichardDawkinscoughcough* would own up to the fact that not all religions are equal, and, in fact, mocking Christians is a much less successful method of suicide than mocking Muslims. But when your template is "All religions are evil" you can't even see that which is labled under the "keen sense of the obvious."
Apolonio Says
Apolonio Says:
August 27th, 2007 at 7:09 pm
Mr. White isn’t a reputable scholar as Perry already said. He is a popular apologist and the public moderated debates seem to be just for show sometimes. Notice that he always wants things public, either his radio, CA’s radio, moderated debates, etc as if having dinner and debating these things are not enough. I used to be into those Catholic/Protestant and Craig debates in high school when I thought it was cool. Until, of course, I encountered a more rigorous way of interacting with ideas. Being in a prominent university with a top philosophy department will do that to you. Plus, I have learned to read actual scholars, not those who quote Athanasius in a debate as if that reveals anything, but those who actually spent a lot of their life studying the Fathers, Scripture, etc.
And the whole notion that just because you can’t answer a question in a debate, therefore you lose, is ridiculous. If you don’t think it is, just go to a conference or a seminar. There will be times when you simply don’t know the answer. That doesn’t mean anything. There are so many Protestant ideas around that White’s arguments would be the least thing I am concerned about. First, again, he isn’t a reputable scholar. I’d rather go to actual scholars. If I want to read about Paul, I’d go to Schriener [sic], Dunn, Wright, Boyarin, Roo, Sanders, etc. If I wanna see what kind of argument White would present I’d rather see what Carson has to say. Second, he doesn’t have the philosophical sophistication that is needed to do theology. As Perry already noted, he doesn’t know a lot about philosophy of language. You can also look at his response to Beckwith’s conversion and you will see his arguments about Beckwith reading Trent laughable. Those are the types of arguments you would like give an example of a bad argumentation in a logic and reasoning 101 course. Third, what has he really contributed in theology? Nothing. His dissertation is crappy. Yeah, it may be good for the pew but I don’t think he defended his thesis and his thesis doesn’t have anything new to add in the debate. That’s the type of work you should see in an undergraduate course. I mean, if he sends that to a reputable peer-reviewed journal and they accepted it, I might change my mind. But he doesn’t have any contribution at all. Yeah he debated Spong and Crossan. But those are dead horses. Wright already beat the crap out of Crossan. And Spong..well, who the heck takes him seriously nowadays? Sungenis is terrible in theology. Fr. Pacwa isn’t a Schindler, Scola, Schonborn, etc. On and on.
http://energeticprocession.wordpress.com/2007/08/25/an-apologetic-two-fer/#comments
Apolonio ben Shlomo Says:
August 27th, 64 AD at 7:09 pm
Jesus isn’t a reputable scholar—as Caiaphas already said. He’s a popular apologist, and the public debates with the scribes and Pharisees seem to be just for show sometimes. Notice that he always wants things public, as if having dinner and debating these things are not enough. He's just a carpenter.
I used to be into those Jesus/Sadducees and St. Peter debates at the yeshiva when I thought it was cool. Until, of course, I encountered a more rigorous way of interacting with ideas. Being at the Academy will do that to you. Plus, I have learned to read actual scholars, not those who quote the OT in a debate as if that reveals anything, but those who actually spent a lot of their life studying the Torah, Nichomachean Ethics, and Prior Analytics,
And the whole notion that just because the Pharisees and Sadducees can’t answer a question Jesus sprung on them in public debate, therefore they lose, is ridiculous. If you don’t think it is, just go to a conference or a seminar. There will be times when you simply don’t know the answer. That doesn’t mean anything.
Same thing with St. Peter. First off, he isn’t a reputable scholar. I’d rather go to actual scholars like Philo, Aristotle, and Hillel.
Second, St. Peter doesn’t have the philosophical sophistication that is needed to do theology. As Pliny already noted, he doesn’t know a lot about philosophy of language. He's just a fisherman.
You can also look at his response to the Sanhedrin in Acts 4 and you will see his arguments about OT messianic prophecy are laughable. Those are the types of arguments you would like give an example of a bad argumentation in a logic and reasoning 101 course.
Third, what has he really contributed in theology? Nothing. 2 Peter is crappy. Yeah, it may be good for the pew but I don’t think he defended his thesis and his thesis doesn’t have anything new to add in the debate. That’s the type of work you should see in an undergraduate course. I mean, if he sends 2 Peter that to a reputable peer-reviewed journal and they accepted it, I might change my mind. But he doesn’t have any contribution at all. Yeah, he debated Gamaliel. But that’s beating a dead horse. Who the heck takes him seriously nowadays?
August 27th, 2007 at 7:09 pm
Mr. White isn’t a reputable scholar as Perry already said. He is a popular apologist and the public moderated debates seem to be just for show sometimes. Notice that he always wants things public, either his radio, CA’s radio, moderated debates, etc as if having dinner and debating these things are not enough. I used to be into those Catholic/Protestant and Craig debates in high school when I thought it was cool. Until, of course, I encountered a more rigorous way of interacting with ideas. Being in a prominent university with a top philosophy department will do that to you. Plus, I have learned to read actual scholars, not those who quote Athanasius in a debate as if that reveals anything, but those who actually spent a lot of their life studying the Fathers, Scripture, etc.
And the whole notion that just because you can’t answer a question in a debate, therefore you lose, is ridiculous. If you don’t think it is, just go to a conference or a seminar. There will be times when you simply don’t know the answer. That doesn’t mean anything. There are so many Protestant ideas around that White’s arguments would be the least thing I am concerned about. First, again, he isn’t a reputable scholar. I’d rather go to actual scholars. If I want to read about Paul, I’d go to Schriener [sic], Dunn, Wright, Boyarin, Roo, Sanders, etc. If I wanna see what kind of argument White would present I’d rather see what Carson has to say. Second, he doesn’t have the philosophical sophistication that is needed to do theology. As Perry already noted, he doesn’t know a lot about philosophy of language. You can also look at his response to Beckwith’s conversion and you will see his arguments about Beckwith reading Trent laughable. Those are the types of arguments you would like give an example of a bad argumentation in a logic and reasoning 101 course. Third, what has he really contributed in theology? Nothing. His dissertation is crappy. Yeah, it may be good for the pew but I don’t think he defended his thesis and his thesis doesn’t have anything new to add in the debate. That’s the type of work you should see in an undergraduate course. I mean, if he sends that to a reputable peer-reviewed journal and they accepted it, I might change my mind. But he doesn’t have any contribution at all. Yeah he debated Spong and Crossan. But those are dead horses. Wright already beat the crap out of Crossan. And Spong..well, who the heck takes him seriously nowadays? Sungenis is terrible in theology. Fr. Pacwa isn’t a Schindler, Scola, Schonborn, etc. On and on.
http://energeticprocession.wordpress.com/2007/08/25/an-apologetic-two-fer/#comments
Apolonio ben Shlomo Says:
August 27th, 64 AD at 7:09 pm
Jesus isn’t a reputable scholar—as Caiaphas already said. He’s a popular apologist, and the public debates with the scribes and Pharisees seem to be just for show sometimes. Notice that he always wants things public, as if having dinner and debating these things are not enough. He's just a carpenter.
I used to be into those Jesus/Sadducees and St. Peter debates at the yeshiva when I thought it was cool. Until, of course, I encountered a more rigorous way of interacting with ideas. Being at the Academy will do that to you. Plus, I have learned to read actual scholars, not those who quote the OT in a debate as if that reveals anything, but those who actually spent a lot of their life studying the Torah, Nichomachean Ethics, and Prior Analytics,
And the whole notion that just because the Pharisees and Sadducees can’t answer a question Jesus sprung on them in public debate, therefore they lose, is ridiculous. If you don’t think it is, just go to a conference or a seminar. There will be times when you simply don’t know the answer. That doesn’t mean anything.
Same thing with St. Peter. First off, he isn’t a reputable scholar. I’d rather go to actual scholars like Philo, Aristotle, and Hillel.
Second, St. Peter doesn’t have the philosophical sophistication that is needed to do theology. As Pliny already noted, he doesn’t know a lot about philosophy of language. He's just a fisherman.
You can also look at his response to the Sanhedrin in Acts 4 and you will see his arguments about OT messianic prophecy are laughable. Those are the types of arguments you would like give an example of a bad argumentation in a logic and reasoning 101 course.
Third, what has he really contributed in theology? Nothing. 2 Peter is crappy. Yeah, it may be good for the pew but I don’t think he defended his thesis and his thesis doesn’t have anything new to add in the debate. That’s the type of work you should see in an undergraduate course. I mean, if he sends 2 Peter that to a reputable peer-reviewed journal and they accepted it, I might change my mind. But he doesn’t have any contribution at all. Yeah, he debated Gamaliel. But that’s beating a dead horse. Who the heck takes him seriously nowadays?
Losing Faith in Shangri-La
Gee, Ed. Thanks a bunch.
This was a real eye-opener for me. Indeed, it left my faith in shambles.
You see, I grew up in Shangri-La. Indeed, every Christian I know grew up in Shangri-La.
I attended Shangri-La preschool, kindergarten, grade school, and junior high. After I graduated from Shangri-La high school, I attended Shangri-La College.
I never knew until now that there was a whole other world beyond the western edge of the Kunlun Mountains.
So you can imagine my shock when I saw these horrible pictures. We don’t have any sharks or cobras in Shangri-La. In fact, we don’t even have a word for “shark” or “cobra” in our language. This was the very first time I ever ran across those scary names.
Here in Shangri-La we have deer and butterflies, puppy-dogs and bunny-rabbits. Plus acres of daisies. Yes, acres and acres of daisies.
We also have some snakes, but they eject perfume instead of venom. Some species eject Chanel no. 5 while others eject Arpège.
No one gets cavities in Shangri-La. No one ever gets a tummy-ache. No one ages past the age of 21.
We have a Bible, too. We call it the Lost Horizon. When you read it you won’t find anyone ever getting sick or dying. And you won’t find any wild animals.
So, when I began to compare my life in Shangri-La with the world on the other side of the valley, I lost my faith in the Lost Horizon.
-----Original Message-----
From: EDWARD BABINSKI
Sent: Mon, Aug 27 12:53 AM
Subject: 1st chapt. of new book, Malevolent Design
The author sent me a link to the first chapt. of his new book:
http://www.malevolentdesign.org/
Reminds me of my own online piece, "Why We Believe in a Designer":
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/ce/4/part2.html
This was a real eye-opener for me. Indeed, it left my faith in shambles.
You see, I grew up in Shangri-La. Indeed, every Christian I know grew up in Shangri-La.
I attended Shangri-La preschool, kindergarten, grade school, and junior high. After I graduated from Shangri-La high school, I attended Shangri-La College.
I never knew until now that there was a whole other world beyond the western edge of the Kunlun Mountains.
So you can imagine my shock when I saw these horrible pictures. We don’t have any sharks or cobras in Shangri-La. In fact, we don’t even have a word for “shark” or “cobra” in our language. This was the very first time I ever ran across those scary names.
Here in Shangri-La we have deer and butterflies, puppy-dogs and bunny-rabbits. Plus acres of daisies. Yes, acres and acres of daisies.
We also have some snakes, but they eject perfume instead of venom. Some species eject Chanel no. 5 while others eject Arpège.
No one gets cavities in Shangri-La. No one ever gets a tummy-ache. No one ages past the age of 21.
We have a Bible, too. We call it the Lost Horizon. When you read it you won’t find anyone ever getting sick or dying. And you won’t find any wild animals.
So, when I began to compare my life in Shangri-La with the world on the other side of the valley, I lost my faith in the Lost Horizon.
-----Original Message-----
From: EDWARD BABINSKI
Sent: Mon, Aug 27 12:53 AM
Subject: 1st chapt. of new book, Malevolent Design
The author sent me a link to the first chapt. of his new book:
http://www.malevolentdesign.org/
Reminds me of my own online piece, "Why We Believe in a Designer":
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/ce/4/part2.html
"Myth, History, and Inspiration" by G.K. Beale
In an article entitled "Myth, History, and Inspiration," G.K. Beale reviews Peter Enns' Inspiration and Incarnation.
"Corporate and Individual Election in Romans 9" by Thomas Schreiner
Thomas Schreiner responds to Brian Abasciano in an article entitled "Corporate and Individual Election in Romans 9."
September Dawn
Mormons like to play the victim card as a persecuted minority group. This new movie dramatizes the other side of the coin.
Jesus is my boyfriend
Mother Teresa’s dark night of the soul has been getting a lot of buzz lately, due to published excerpts of her private correspondence:
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1655415,00.html
These revelations will hardly tarnish her reputation as a popular saint. To the contrary, I’m sure they will enhance her reputation.
Her devotees will react in the same way that theological liberals responded to The Last Temptation of Christ. They will read about her turmoil and exclaim, “I can relate to her! She’s one of us! Better than us, but still one of us. She may be a saint, but she’s not a plaster saint!”
It will make them feel saintly just to have something in common with Mother Teresa.
In addition, they will feel that her ubiquitous doubts are downright meritorious. She was faithfully faithless to the bitter end. How noble! How selfless!
Now, the way many people feel about Mother Teresa is interchangeable from the way many other people feel about Elvis Presley or Princess Diana. They bond with celebrities as if these strangers were their very own mothers or brothers or sisters.
Indeed, there’s a sense in which celebrities are better than family because you don’t actually have to live with them day in and day out. The charm would wear off rather quickly if their teary-eyed fantasies came into direct contact with the hot pavement of reality.
But for those of us who are not caught up in the cult of celebrity or the cult of the saints (a distinction without a difference), how should we evaluate Mother Teresa’s experience?
1.Some men and women lack a sense of God’s presence in their lives for the rather straightforward reason that God is, in one important sense, absent from their lives. They don’t sense his presence because they are dead in their sins. They remain strangers to grace.
I’m not saying for a fact that Mother Teresa was unregenerate. But if she keeps telling us that God wasn’t real to her, maybe we should take her at her word. Maybe she didn’t experience God—in the way his sheep know their Shepherd.
You can be very devout, and still be very dead in your sins. A pious Hindu or Muslim is very dead in his sins.
2.However, that’s not the only interpretation. One thing that leaps off the page as you read about her complaints is the practical impact of bad theology. And this operates at several levels.
Human beings are holistic creatures. Faith does not exist in an airtight compartment. Rather, it’s integrated into our whole psychological make-up.
This means that if you’re emotionally dry, you will be spiritually dry. If you’re miserable, this will depress your faith.
For your faith is not something other than you. It’s a part of you. You are a believer. You are also a human being. Whatever affects you as a human being affects you as a believer.
3.One of Mother Teresa’s problems was the lack of a normal family life. Her father died when she was 8 years old. And, of course, she never married.
It is any wonder that she was lonely? Isn’t there a fairly obvious and humdrum explanation for her loneliness?
When you lose a parent, you lose someone irreplaceable—at least in this life. And this cuts deeper if you lose a parent during your formative years.
But, ordinarily, life does afford some emotional compensations for the loss of a parent or grandparent or sibling. For you develop other relationships, in terms of friendship and especially a family of your own—which compensate for your loss. They don’t make up for the loss, but at least there’s more to life than one loss after another. There are gains as well as losses. Not a chronic hemorrhage without transfusions.
4.By contrast, Catholic piety makes a virtue of misery. A woman like Mother Teresa goes out of her way to make herself miserable by denying herself the natural blessings of life. She then bemoans her self-inflicted misery.
There’s a sadistic side and viciously ingrown quality to Catholic piety. Make yourself miserable. Convince yourself that you’re doing this for God. Then pat yourself on the back for your praiseworthy unworthiness.
5.This spiritual conceit is ratcheted up several notches by imagining that you can share in the Passion of Christ. You literally identify with his agony on the cross. Your dark night of the soul mirrors his dark night of the soul on Good Friday and Holy Saturday. You recapitulate Holy Week in your own heart and soul.
6.She also suffers from a false expectation. In a fallen world, God does, in some measure, maintain radio silence. Sin does, indeed, alienate us from God. Up to a point, the silence of God is part and parcel of the Fall—although God’s silence is by no means unbroken.
7.Never having had a husband or boyfriend, Jesus becomes her boyfriend. After all, she’s a nun, and a nun is literally married to Christ.
But Jesus proves to be a very neglectful and distracted boyfriend. He can’t make time for her. She makes a lunch date, but he stands her up. He doesn’t return her phone calls. Or send her birthday cards. Or a dozen roses on Valentine’s Day.
And because Mother Teresa lived and died within the warped world of Rome, no one ever pointed out to her that perhaps, just perhaps, her problem was not with an illusory Jesus, but with an illusory image of Jesus.
8.Finally she has a very unrealistic grasp of what it means to experience the reality of God. For her, God is absent unless he’s present in some extraordinary way. A mystical encounter. Signs and wonders. Visions and auditions. Trumpets and fireworks.
She doesn’t perceive the existence of God because of where she’s looking for God. She isn’t looking for God in the ordinary and the mundane, so she ends up overlooking God as she stumbles over God every step of the way.
Mother Teresa is like a tourist who bought a ticket to the Museo Picasso. By purchasing a ticket, she was hoping to meet Picasso in person. Have a private audience with the artist.
But as she wanders the galleries, lined with Picassos, she can’t find Picasso. “Where is Picasso?” she asks, as she stands behind a row of Picassos, facing another row of Picassos, with Picassos on either side.
Wall-to-wall Picassos. Every surface covered by Picassos. But even though the paintings are staring her in the face, she’s utter blind to the existence of the painter.
She leaves the Museo Picasso deeply disillusioned. Now she doubts the existence of Picasso. If Picasso is real, why wasn’t he there?
Mother Teresa could never see the light because she was searching for a candle at noonday. Surrounded by light, she lived in darkness. Tunnel vision, created by the cardboard blinkers she wore.
Her powers of recognition were distorted by her pious expectations. Sunshine didn’t count. Unless the light could take the form of some portent or prodigy—a solar eclipse or comet—then all was darkness and night.
How could Jesus give her the silent treatment? It doesn’t even occur to her that you can hear Jesus speaking in the four gospels or the seven letters to the churches of Asia Minor. She can’t hear the voice of Christ because she’s tuned him out. Her radio is set to a different frequency.
That’s because Catholicism is not a Word-centered faith. It is geared to the eyes rather than the ears. To the sacraments and the Beatific Vision. And, from that standpoint, even the sacraments become a wall rather than a window.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1655415,00.html
These revelations will hardly tarnish her reputation as a popular saint. To the contrary, I’m sure they will enhance her reputation.
Her devotees will react in the same way that theological liberals responded to The Last Temptation of Christ. They will read about her turmoil and exclaim, “I can relate to her! She’s one of us! Better than us, but still one of us. She may be a saint, but she’s not a plaster saint!”
It will make them feel saintly just to have something in common with Mother Teresa.
In addition, they will feel that her ubiquitous doubts are downright meritorious. She was faithfully faithless to the bitter end. How noble! How selfless!
Now, the way many people feel about Mother Teresa is interchangeable from the way many other people feel about Elvis Presley or Princess Diana. They bond with celebrities as if these strangers were their very own mothers or brothers or sisters.
Indeed, there’s a sense in which celebrities are better than family because you don’t actually have to live with them day in and day out. The charm would wear off rather quickly if their teary-eyed fantasies came into direct contact with the hot pavement of reality.
But for those of us who are not caught up in the cult of celebrity or the cult of the saints (a distinction without a difference), how should we evaluate Mother Teresa’s experience?
1.Some men and women lack a sense of God’s presence in their lives for the rather straightforward reason that God is, in one important sense, absent from their lives. They don’t sense his presence because they are dead in their sins. They remain strangers to grace.
I’m not saying for a fact that Mother Teresa was unregenerate. But if she keeps telling us that God wasn’t real to her, maybe we should take her at her word. Maybe she didn’t experience God—in the way his sheep know their Shepherd.
You can be very devout, and still be very dead in your sins. A pious Hindu or Muslim is very dead in his sins.
2.However, that’s not the only interpretation. One thing that leaps off the page as you read about her complaints is the practical impact of bad theology. And this operates at several levels.
Human beings are holistic creatures. Faith does not exist in an airtight compartment. Rather, it’s integrated into our whole psychological make-up.
This means that if you’re emotionally dry, you will be spiritually dry. If you’re miserable, this will depress your faith.
For your faith is not something other than you. It’s a part of you. You are a believer. You are also a human being. Whatever affects you as a human being affects you as a believer.
3.One of Mother Teresa’s problems was the lack of a normal family life. Her father died when she was 8 years old. And, of course, she never married.
It is any wonder that she was lonely? Isn’t there a fairly obvious and humdrum explanation for her loneliness?
When you lose a parent, you lose someone irreplaceable—at least in this life. And this cuts deeper if you lose a parent during your formative years.
But, ordinarily, life does afford some emotional compensations for the loss of a parent or grandparent or sibling. For you develop other relationships, in terms of friendship and especially a family of your own—which compensate for your loss. They don’t make up for the loss, but at least there’s more to life than one loss after another. There are gains as well as losses. Not a chronic hemorrhage without transfusions.
4.By contrast, Catholic piety makes a virtue of misery. A woman like Mother Teresa goes out of her way to make herself miserable by denying herself the natural blessings of life. She then bemoans her self-inflicted misery.
There’s a sadistic side and viciously ingrown quality to Catholic piety. Make yourself miserable. Convince yourself that you’re doing this for God. Then pat yourself on the back for your praiseworthy unworthiness.
5.This spiritual conceit is ratcheted up several notches by imagining that you can share in the Passion of Christ. You literally identify with his agony on the cross. Your dark night of the soul mirrors his dark night of the soul on Good Friday and Holy Saturday. You recapitulate Holy Week in your own heart and soul.
6.She also suffers from a false expectation. In a fallen world, God does, in some measure, maintain radio silence. Sin does, indeed, alienate us from God. Up to a point, the silence of God is part and parcel of the Fall—although God’s silence is by no means unbroken.
7.Never having had a husband or boyfriend, Jesus becomes her boyfriend. After all, she’s a nun, and a nun is literally married to Christ.
But Jesus proves to be a very neglectful and distracted boyfriend. He can’t make time for her. She makes a lunch date, but he stands her up. He doesn’t return her phone calls. Or send her birthday cards. Or a dozen roses on Valentine’s Day.
And because Mother Teresa lived and died within the warped world of Rome, no one ever pointed out to her that perhaps, just perhaps, her problem was not with an illusory Jesus, but with an illusory image of Jesus.
8.Finally she has a very unrealistic grasp of what it means to experience the reality of God. For her, God is absent unless he’s present in some extraordinary way. A mystical encounter. Signs and wonders. Visions and auditions. Trumpets and fireworks.
She doesn’t perceive the existence of God because of where she’s looking for God. She isn’t looking for God in the ordinary and the mundane, so she ends up overlooking God as she stumbles over God every step of the way.
Mother Teresa is like a tourist who bought a ticket to the Museo Picasso. By purchasing a ticket, she was hoping to meet Picasso in person. Have a private audience with the artist.
But as she wanders the galleries, lined with Picassos, she can’t find Picasso. “Where is Picasso?” she asks, as she stands behind a row of Picassos, facing another row of Picassos, with Picassos on either side.
Wall-to-wall Picassos. Every surface covered by Picassos. But even though the paintings are staring her in the face, she’s utter blind to the existence of the painter.
She leaves the Museo Picasso deeply disillusioned. Now she doubts the existence of Picasso. If Picasso is real, why wasn’t he there?
Mother Teresa could never see the light because she was searching for a candle at noonday. Surrounded by light, she lived in darkness. Tunnel vision, created by the cardboard blinkers she wore.
Her powers of recognition were distorted by her pious expectations. Sunshine didn’t count. Unless the light could take the form of some portent or prodigy—a solar eclipse or comet—then all was darkness and night.
How could Jesus give her the silent treatment? It doesn’t even occur to her that you can hear Jesus speaking in the four gospels or the seven letters to the churches of Asia Minor. She can’t hear the voice of Christ because she’s tuned him out. Her radio is set to a different frequency.
That’s because Catholicism is not a Word-centered faith. It is geared to the eyes rather than the ears. To the sacraments and the Beatific Vision. And, from that standpoint, even the sacraments become a wall rather than a window.
What Logic Requires Us To Believe About The Existence of God--Part 1
Since one of my tactics when defending the existence of God has been to look at what accepting logic requires us to believe (most recently found in my critique of Russell’s teapot analogy), I have decided that it may be beneficial to go through this argument slower, step by step, so that it is easier to see exactly how the logical argument follows. One thing that should be noted right off the bat is, despite the fact that I like presuppositional approaches to argumentation a great deal and think ultimately they are the best approach to dealing with atheists in particular, this argument is not a presuppositional argument. As such, there are some places where this argument will be ineffective; then again, no one argument should be considered a “magic bullet” in the first place. The argument I present does not “prove beyond all doubt” that the Christian God exists (although I believe it does prove beyond all reasonable doubt that there must be some kind of deity, and I also allow that atheists can be as unreasonable as they desire to avoid this argument).
Since this will be a step-by-step look at the argument, I will not present the entire argument at one time as I have done in the past. Instead, I shall start with some basic bare-bones rules of logic that we can keep in mind as we examine the rest of the argument.
The Law of Identity
The logical law of identity is perhaps best represented by the Greek philosopher Parmenides’ statement: “Whatever is, is.” This statement can be symbolically represented in the logical format:
A is A.
In such a case, whatever A is, is (by definition) A. Because we are dealing with abstract levels of thought here, it does not concern us to actually flesh out what A is. We are concerned with seeing the relationships that go on between all objects, and therefore A can stand for any object—it could be an apple or it could be the entire universe (viewed as one lump sum), or it could be an immaterial thought (e.g. “love”); but whatever A is, that is what A is.
This is what is known as an analytically true statement (that is, it’s true by definition). Other examples of analytically true statements include: “A bachelor is an unmarried man” and “A square has four sides.” Analytically false statements, on the other hand, are statements that are false by definition: “A bachelor is a married man” would be analytically false, as would “A square has seven sides.” (Note that “A square has three sides” is still a true statement, since if an object has four sides it is also true that it has three sides; but a square cannot have more than four sides by definition.)
Since we will be discussing the difference between “being” and “becoming” in more detail later, it may be helpful to make a quick philosophical detour now. Parmenides’ statement, “Whatever is, is” was challenged by Heraclitus who stated, “Whatever is, is changing.” Heraclitus has given us some clichés that survive to this day based on this concept, such as: “You cannot step into the same river twice.” Because the river is moving, it is altered through time. The difference between Parmenides and Heraclitus boils down to the difference between “being” and “becoming”, which is often restated as the difference between “actuality” and “potentiality.” We will consider this in more detail in a later post (when we deal with existence), but I wanted to introduce it now so it won’t surprise you. For the moment, we can note that even Heraclitus’ statement can be reduced to “A is A.” If “whatever is, is changing” is valid, then we cannot define A without including the property of change. Thus, A is A remains valid because A includes within the definition of “A” the property of “becoming” if, in fact, A is becoming.
If we do not wish to include the changing aspect of A in the definition, there is another way to get around it. Since “becoming” carries with it a temporal aspect (that is, change can only happen through time) then we can also intentionally view A non-temporally to avoid that aspect. Thus, we can say “A is A” is a truth about A frozen in a specific time. Either way, the Law of Identity as expressed by “A is A” is analytically true.
The Law of Non-Contradiction
Immediately following the law of identity is the Law of Non-Contradiction. This is most simply put in the form:
A cannot be both A and ~A at the same time and in the same relationship.
To clarify, the tilde (~) represents the word “non”, and the “non” refers to the contrary of A. If A is “a horse” then ~A would be that which is not “a horse.” The Law of Non-Contradiction follows easily enough because if we know that A is A, then we know that A is not whatever A is not. A is not ~A immediately follows from A is A, because in defining A we are distinguishing A from everything else (~A). Whatever is not A, is not A.
I’ve always found the above definition of the Law of Non-Contradiction to be a bit misleading though. To demonstrate, let us define A as “A man” and restate the sentence: “A man cannot be both a man and not a man at the same time and in the same relationship.” This statement is still valid, to a point, but it can be simplified to: “A man cannot be not a man.” The rest of the sentence is ultimately superfluous because there will never be a case when a man might be not a man without violating the definition of the terms involved with ambiguity. Instead, I believe it is more precise to define the Law of Non-Contradiction as:
A cannot be (or “A cannot have the property of”) both B and ~B at the same time and in the same relationship.
Now if we substitute “A man” for A, we do not immediately run into definitional gibberish. We need to establish what B is, so let us define it as “a father.” Thus we can say: “A man (A) cannot be both a father (B) and not a father (~B) at the same time and in the same relationship.” This sentence now makes sense, because while there will never be a time when a man will be a non-man, there are times when a man may be a non-father, just as there are times a man may be a father.
In both definitions of the Law of Non-Contradiction (the classic definition and my tweaking of it), we see the temporal aspect come into play (“at the same time”), and there is also a relational aspect that we deal with (“in the same relationship”). To be sure, a man can be both a father and not a father at the same time, as long as it is not in the same relationship (indeed, this is the definition of every father: every father is the father to his own sons and daughters, but is not the father to anyone else’s children). Thus, the Law of Non-Contradiction automatically deals with the existence of multiple objects and temporal relationships—we do not need to create another law of logic when we expand out from single objects frozen in time.
These two laws of logic are the most important Laws of Logic, and from them we derive several other rules for rationality (for example, we say that circular reasoning is invalid because both sides of a contradiction can be “proven” with circular reasoning, thus resulting in a violation of the law of non-contradiction). However, we shall look at those rules of reason only as we need to in the following argument, in order to save on time.
Since this will be a step-by-step look at the argument, I will not present the entire argument at one time as I have done in the past. Instead, I shall start with some basic bare-bones rules of logic that we can keep in mind as we examine the rest of the argument.
The Law of Identity
The logical law of identity is perhaps best represented by the Greek philosopher Parmenides’ statement: “Whatever is, is.” This statement can be symbolically represented in the logical format:
A is A.
In such a case, whatever A is, is (by definition) A. Because we are dealing with abstract levels of thought here, it does not concern us to actually flesh out what A is. We are concerned with seeing the relationships that go on between all objects, and therefore A can stand for any object—it could be an apple or it could be the entire universe (viewed as one lump sum), or it could be an immaterial thought (e.g. “love”); but whatever A is, that is what A is.
This is what is known as an analytically true statement (that is, it’s true by definition). Other examples of analytically true statements include: “A bachelor is an unmarried man” and “A square has four sides.” Analytically false statements, on the other hand, are statements that are false by definition: “A bachelor is a married man” would be analytically false, as would “A square has seven sides.” (Note that “A square has three sides” is still a true statement, since if an object has four sides it is also true that it has three sides; but a square cannot have more than four sides by definition.)
Since we will be discussing the difference between “being” and “becoming” in more detail later, it may be helpful to make a quick philosophical detour now. Parmenides’ statement, “Whatever is, is” was challenged by Heraclitus who stated, “Whatever is, is changing.” Heraclitus has given us some clichés that survive to this day based on this concept, such as: “You cannot step into the same river twice.” Because the river is moving, it is altered through time. The difference between Parmenides and Heraclitus boils down to the difference between “being” and “becoming”, which is often restated as the difference between “actuality” and “potentiality.” We will consider this in more detail in a later post (when we deal with existence), but I wanted to introduce it now so it won’t surprise you. For the moment, we can note that even Heraclitus’ statement can be reduced to “A is A.” If “whatever is, is changing” is valid, then we cannot define A without including the property of change. Thus, A is A remains valid because A includes within the definition of “A” the property of “becoming” if, in fact, A is becoming.
If we do not wish to include the changing aspect of A in the definition, there is another way to get around it. Since “becoming” carries with it a temporal aspect (that is, change can only happen through time) then we can also intentionally view A non-temporally to avoid that aspect. Thus, we can say “A is A” is a truth about A frozen in a specific time. Either way, the Law of Identity as expressed by “A is A” is analytically true.
The Law of Non-Contradiction
Immediately following the law of identity is the Law of Non-Contradiction. This is most simply put in the form:
A cannot be both A and ~A at the same time and in the same relationship.
To clarify, the tilde (~) represents the word “non”, and the “non” refers to the contrary of A. If A is “a horse” then ~A would be that which is not “a horse.” The Law of Non-Contradiction follows easily enough because if we know that A is A, then we know that A is not whatever A is not. A is not ~A immediately follows from A is A, because in defining A we are distinguishing A from everything else (~A). Whatever is not A, is not A.
I’ve always found the above definition of the Law of Non-Contradiction to be a bit misleading though. To demonstrate, let us define A as “A man” and restate the sentence: “A man cannot be both a man and not a man at the same time and in the same relationship.” This statement is still valid, to a point, but it can be simplified to: “A man cannot be not a man.” The rest of the sentence is ultimately superfluous because there will never be a case when a man might be not a man without violating the definition of the terms involved with ambiguity. Instead, I believe it is more precise to define the Law of Non-Contradiction as:
A cannot be (or “A cannot have the property of”) both B and ~B at the same time and in the same relationship.
Now if we substitute “A man” for A, we do not immediately run into definitional gibberish. We need to establish what B is, so let us define it as “a father.” Thus we can say: “A man (A) cannot be both a father (B) and not a father (~B) at the same time and in the same relationship.” This sentence now makes sense, because while there will never be a time when a man will be a non-man, there are times when a man may be a non-father, just as there are times a man may be a father.
In both definitions of the Law of Non-Contradiction (the classic definition and my tweaking of it), we see the temporal aspect come into play (“at the same time”), and there is also a relational aspect that we deal with (“in the same relationship”). To be sure, a man can be both a father and not a father at the same time, as long as it is not in the same relationship (indeed, this is the definition of every father: every father is the father to his own sons and daughters, but is not the father to anyone else’s children). Thus, the Law of Non-Contradiction automatically deals with the existence of multiple objects and temporal relationships—we do not need to create another law of logic when we expand out from single objects frozen in time.
These two laws of logic are the most important Laws of Logic, and from them we derive several other rules for rationality (for example, we say that circular reasoning is invalid because both sides of a contradiction can be “proven” with circular reasoning, thus resulting in a violation of the law of non-contradiction). However, we shall look at those rules of reason only as we need to in the following argument, in order to save on time.
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Schlepping off
(Posted on behalf of Steve Hays.)
Perry Robinson is still on the warpath. Here’s the latest example:
I can’t speak for James White, but Perry’s objection has already been dealt with:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3817/is_199809/ai_n8814810/pg_1
Bray specifically discusses the relation between Sola Scriptura and Double Procession. And he’s critical of the EO position.
Continuing:
http://www.earlychurch.org.uk/article_exnihilo_copan.html
Evidently, Perry’s tactic is to scrape up whatever mud he can find and hurl it at sola Scriptura to see if anything sticks. And, in the process, he acts as if he’s leveling novel objections which would leave a Protestant speechless.
Why is Perry schlepping off? Why doesn’t he do his homework? Before he raises an objection, why doesn’t he bother to do a bit of research in order to see if his objection has already been addressed?
If there are preexisting answers in the public domain, shouldn’t he at least acknowledge the answers and interact with the answers? Or has he become too indolent and partisan to crack the books or even click his mouse to acquaint himself with the opposing literature?
Perry Robinson is still on the warpath. Here’s the latest example:
Now suppose further he [James White] is right, just for the sake of argument. Perhaps he is thinking that Sola Scriptura logically precludes these kinds of incidents and is therefore superior. So the idea is that Protestantism conceptually precludes these kinds of errors. But does it?http://energeticprocession.wordpress.com/2007/08/25/an-apologetic-two-fer/
Take the Filioque. It is enshrined in the vast majority of Protestant confessions as an article of faith/de fide. And yet I at least can’t see how it can be justified via Sola Scriptura. And yet laymen and clergy alike are required to some degree or another to subscribe to it. (For my Protestant readers, just imagine a candidate for ordination being in a conservative Protestant denomination and denying it upon examination. Watch the sparks fly.) If we let White’s argument on the Assumption, go through then he has some ’splainin’ to do for he is in relatively the same position as he charges Catholics.
Why doesn’t he howl and complain about the Filioque? Why is it part of the Confession he subscribes to and he requires his congregation to subscribe to? It will do no good to complain that it isn’t important. All the more reason to exclude it, especially when it is part of a core area of theology, namely the Trinity. The last time I checked, the Trinity was no ancillary doctrine and White doesn’t think papal supremacy is a sufficient basis for altering doctrinal statements.
Moreover, the Filioque was added to the Creed and suscribed by the force of papal perogatives alone. If ever there was a doctrine to set aflame the hearts of a Protestant, this seems like a good candidate. Either Sola Scriptura doesn’t logically preclude the innovation and codification of major theological error or very few if any Protestant bodies have been using it correctly in relation to the doctrine of God. So, why don’t Catholics go banging on White about the Filioque?
I can’t speak for James White, but Perry’s objection has already been dealt with:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3817/is_199809/ai_n8814810/pg_1
Bray specifically discusses the relation between Sola Scriptura and Double Procession. And he’s critical of the EO position.
Continuing:
But we can extend this to other doctrines. Take a look at the doctrine of Creation Ex Nihilo. Apart from the Apocrypha, there is in fact very little support for it and nothing explicit in Scripture. Sure plenty of passages say that God made all things but the surface grammar is compatible with a belief in eternal matter. And without an appeal to tradition to normatively fix its meaning White is up an exegetical creek. In fact, some significant scholarly literature on the matter indicates that it derives from Gnosticism and was appropriated by various post-Apostolic Fathers.Once again, though, Perry’s objection has already been dealt with:
http://www.earlychurch.org.uk/article_exnihilo_copan.html
Evidently, Perry’s tactic is to scrape up whatever mud he can find and hurl it at sola Scriptura to see if anything sticks. And, in the process, he acts as if he’s leveling novel objections which would leave a Protestant speechless.
Why is Perry schlepping off? Why doesn’t he do his homework? Before he raises an objection, why doesn’t he bother to do a bit of research in order to see if his objection has already been addressed?
If there are preexisting answers in the public domain, shouldn’t he at least acknowledge the answers and interact with the answers? Or has he become too indolent and partisan to crack the books or even click his mouse to acquaint himself with the opposing literature?
Scripture on Factious Men and Unprofitable Discussions
The staff having issued bans on particular individuals, this is as good a time as any to discuss dealing with unprofitable persons and discussions according to Scripture's instructions. When a discussion becomes unprofitable, where does one draw the line and break it off? What sorts of people does Paul have in mind when he speaks of "factious men?" Please note, this is , per the previous post, not the place to comment for or against the decision that has been made regarding the three individuals named in that post.
The Rules of Engagement now explicitly state:
Remember that, in Scripture, most false teachers are professing believers. So merely calling yourself a Christian doesn't immunize you from judgmental language where appropriate. It is our Christian duty to analogize from Biblical cases to contemporary cases.
"By the same token, we reserve the right to use harsh, judgmental language where appropriate. Invective is context-dependent. The Bible employs harsh, judgmental language for apostates, false teachers, and other enemies of the faith. The Bible is full of taunt-songs."
We've been over the latter many times on this blog. Here, we would like to take the opportunity to look at the former rule in the light of Scripture.
Triablogue is a ministry, not a shooting-gallery. It is necessary that we preserve the pastoral character of the blog. We have to consider our readership. Too many articles here recently have had to deal with these characters and these same issues. Now, we would like to take the opportunity to address what Scripture says with regard to dealing with these sorts of unprofitable discussions, for, as the rules say, we are to analogize from biblical cases to contemporary cases. Dusman has given us permission to post his teaching on this subject .
Unprofitable Activities
NAU Titus 3:9-11
But avoid foolish controversies and genealogies and strife and disputes about the Law, for they are unprofitable and worthless. 10 Reject a factious man after a first and second warning, 11 knowing that such a man is perverted and is sinning, being self-condemned.
Believers in the isle of
Nevertheless, they were causing great damage to Christ’s church and the gospel and as such, they were to be refuted (v. 9), silenced (v. 11), and reproved (v. 13). They professed “to know God,” Paul explained, “but by their deeds they deny Him, being detestable and disobedient, and worthless for any good deed” (v. 16). Like those about whom the apostle warned Timothy, these false teachers held “to a form of godliness, although [they] had denied its power” (2 Tim. 3:5). They were not disobedient believers; they were not believers at all! This is shown by the fact that they espoused ungodly doctrines, lived ungodly lives, and tried to justify it all in the name of love for Jesus. They were to be ejected from the churches immediately because they were corrupting the faith once for all handed down to the saints (Jude 3).
Paul was well acquainted with these fools, for he had been both dogged by their persistence in proclaiming their error over and against the true gospel. One of his encounters with them involved Titus, when some years earlier, Barnabas, Titus, and Paul had gone to
1. The command “avoid” translates a verb (periistemi) that means “to turn oneself around, to purposefully turn away from something or someone”. Titus, the elders in the churches, and the congregations on
2. In this single verse, Paul mentions four specific categories of errors these false teachers were espousing: "foolish controversies and geneologies and strife and disputes about the Law."
(A) The word "foolish" (moros) comes from the word that we get the English word "moron" from. The word "controversies" is a word (zetesis) that was used to describe debate and discussion that was both contentious and controversial. This word is always used in Paul's writings in a negative sense and is used to warn Christians to avoid engaging in silly arguments about vain philosophy and empty and deceptive theology – things that are is based upon human rationalism and imagination rather than the Bible.
Paul told Timothy to "instruct certain people not to teach strange doctrines, nor to pay attention to myths and endless genealogies, which give rise to mere speculation rather than furthering the administration of God" and which inevitably results in "fruitless discussion" (1 Tim. 1:3-6). Paul repeats a similar warning to Timothy, "If anyone advocates a different doctrine and does not agree with sound words, those of our Lord Jesus Christ, and with the doctrine conforming to godliness, 4 he is conceited and understands nothing; but he has a morbid interest in controversial questions and disputes about words, out of which arise envy, strife, abusive language, evil suspicions, 5 and constant friction between men of depraved mind and deprived of the truth, who suppose that godliness is a means of gain." (1 Tim. 6:3-5) In his second letter, Paul again instructs Timothy: "But refuse foolish and ignorant speculations, knowing that they produce quarrels." (2 Tim. 2:23)
False teachers replace sound teaching with newfangled ideas and unbiblical philosophies which end up confusing God's people. False doctrine is dangerous because it appeals to the natural man, is acceptable to unbelievers and worse yet, it appeals to the flesh of worldly Christians that are poorly taught in the word of God. This is why Paul instructed Timothy, "Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth. 16 But avoid worldly and empty chatter, for it will lead to further ungodliness, 17 and their talk will spread like gangrene. Among them are Hymenaeus and Philetus . . ." (2 Tim.
What's the point? The point is this: Do not waste hours and hours debating with heretics who espouse "foolish controversies" but instead disciple your family, your church, and your community. Wasting time debating and quarreling with apostates is "foolish" behavior because (a) it is a time and energy waster for God's people and (b) if you engage in continually answering and contending with a fool, you'll end up showing that you're just as stupid as he is (Prov. 26:4-5).
(B) Paul's warning against "genealogies" is not against the biblical genealogies found in Scripture which are ultimately designed to point to the God-man Jesus (Matt 1:1. cf. 2:1-7). Instead, Paul is speaking against the practice of making fanciful Jewish interpretations of genealogies and physical lineages found in the Scriptures, activities that were supposed to automatically place some Jews in a special spiritual status over and above other men, especially the Gentiles. This kind of practice was associated with the Judaizers when they were engaging in general controversies surrounding the relationship of the Law of Moses to the gospel. Paul said this was a waste of time, a practice only reserved for morons. This is why he told Timothy not to "pay attention to myths and endless genealogies, which give rise to mere speculation rather than furthering the administration of God which is by faith." (1 Tim. 1:4)
(C) The third error that Christians on
(D), which were continual "disputes about the [Mosaic] Law". These two words, "strife" and "disputes" (eris and mache) are combat terms that indicate the intensity of the spiritual battle faced by these Christians. These "strife and disputes" about the Mosaic Law probably included mythical legends added to Old Testament history, false ideas of the Judaizers that were leading to Gnosticism, and the tradition of the elders, which at the time of Jesus, was believed to have equal authority with the Old Testament Scriptures. This tradition of the elders, known as the Mishna and the Gemara, eventually became what is known today as the Talmud. Essentially, Paul and the apostles were battling the false teachings of the Jewish rabbinic schools that were creeping into the churches, and subsequently causing strife by creating a division and barrier between the Jewish and Gentile Christians (Eph. 2:11-16), something that Christ came to break down (Eph. 2:11-16) and something that the apostles fought against in Acts 15 at the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15:5, 10-11; 12:17; 21:18-19). The same assimilating of false ideas into the church occurs today and destroys the unity of the body. So it was with the Cretan churches, so it goes now with our American churches! This is thy Paul says that such things "are unprofitable and worthless."
Discussing and debating theology with false teachers who disregard and distort God’s word is an absolutely fruitless task. You are smarter by finding people who will listen to the truth rather than wasting your time quarreling with those who have no desire to receive divine truth. This is because such people are self deceived by “deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons” (1 Tim. 4:1). However, those who follow false teachers are many, and according to 2 Peter 2:2, “Many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of the truth will be maligned” and they will “not endure sound doctrine” because “wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires; and . . . turn away their ears from the truth, and . . . turn aside to myths.” (2 Tim. 4:3-4)
3. Reject Factious People – “Reject a factious man after a first and second warning, 11 knowing that such a man is perverted and is sinning, being self-condemned.” (Titus 3:10-11) Just as we are to “avoid” the ungodly, fruitless, and corrupting activities mentioned in verse 9, we are also to reject “factious” people. The word “reject” (paraiteomi) is also translated “have nothing to do with” in 1 Tim. 4:7 and “refuse” in 2 Tim.
A savior who restores us to our prefallen status is therefore pre-Darwinian superstition and post-Darwinian nonsense. A supernatural redeemer who enters our fallen world to restore creation is a theistic myth. So we must free Jesus from the rescuer role. Yet so totally has he been captured by this understanding that most of us know of no other way to speak of him except to reduce him to a good teacher or a good example. Had the Christ experience been more than that, I doubt seriously if it would have survived. Yet the Jesus portrayed in the creedal statement ‘as one who, for us and for our salvation, came down from heaven’ simply no longer communicates to our world. Those concepts must be uprooted and dismissed. If the Christ experience is real, then we must find a new way to talk about it.
Or how about this one?
The
Spong is the classic example of a heretic. A person like Spong refuses to listen to contrary views and so rejects the faith once for all handed down to the saints (Jude 3). Galatians 5:19-21 says that such people are associated with the following “deeds of the flesh” – “immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing”. And so, a “factious” person refuses to submit to the law of Christ, refuses to submit to godly leaders in the church, and is not concerned with spiritual unity or truth. He is the epitome of what it means to be autonomos, or a “law unto oneself”, and such a person is to be rejected because quarreling with such a one takes time away from family, ministry, and other necessary things. It is certain that Satan will always raise up a heretic to steal your time away from what really matters, thus we all would do well to heed Paul’s instruction to Titus in verse 10.
It is important to note that Paul is not dealing with false teachers only, but is including in his warning anyone in the broader church community that is divisive, disruptive, and breeds dissension. Because the consequences of insubordination, nonsubmission, and bickering can be so destructive of unity among the Lord’s people, the apostle commands that “factious” person be rejected by the church if they do not listen to “a first and second warning”. The reason they are to be rejected is because the issues they are debating may be silly, but their constant arguing and dissension is not! This is why Paul said in Romans 16:17-18, “Now I urge you, brethren, keep your eye on those who cause dissensions and hindrances contrary to the teaching which you learned, and turn away from them. 18 For such men are slaves, not of our Lord Christ but of their own appetites; and by their smooth and flattering speech they deceive the hearts of the unsuspecting . . .” and also in 2 Thessalonians 3:14-15, “If anyone does not obey our instruction in this letter, take special note of that person and do not associate with him, so that he will be put to shame. 15 Yet do not regard him as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother.” This is why church discipline must be done in a way that is loving, with a view toward the restoration of the sinning believer, for Paul says that we are to confront sinning people, “with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth . . .” (2 Tim. 2:25).
Unity and love grounded in God’s divine truth as seen in Christian fellowship is imperative for effective evangelism. It is testimony to the world, for Jesus said, “By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” He also said that the purpose of church leaders was to equip Christians for the work of the ministry, for “the building up of the body of Christ; 13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ” and he shows that his goal for all Christians was that we would all strive to be “made complete, be comforted, be like-minded, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you” (2 Cor. 13:11).
CONCLUSION
For Christians that are well grounded in the Scriptures, the errors and sinfulness of factious and divisive people in the church should be obvious, “knowing that” a person who persists in fighting for foolish and heretical ideas “is perverted and is sinning, being self-condemned.” This word “perverted” (ekstrepho) has the meaning of “turning inside out, or twisting”; and indicates that the factious person is twisted by his constant “sinning”. These types of people always continually manifest their wicked condition by their words and actions and like Bishop Spong, are “self-condemned.” Those people who teach ideas that are completely foreign to Scripture are usually never disciplined in modern evangelical churches and what is the result? They are given further opportunity and even praised for their doctrinal weirdness. May we turn to the profitable activities of verse 8, activities that strengthen the church, edify individual believers, and provide a strong testimony to our communities versus turning to the unprofitable and time-wasting quarreling associated with the likes of obvious heretics, infidels, and schismatics. May God have mercy on us all.
___________________(1) John Shelby Spong, Why Christianity Must Change or Die, (San Franciso, CA: Harper Collins, 1998), 99.
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