“Pope John Paul II” Photographed in his Underwear With a Woman

The year Karol Cardinal Wojtyla became "Pope John Paul II"

Hundreds of letters and photographs that tell the story of Pope John Paul II's close relationship with a married woman, which lasted more than 30 years, have been shown to the BBC.

The letters to Polish-born American philosopher Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka had been kept away from public view in the National Library of Poland for years.

The documents reveal a rarely seen side of the pontiff, who died in 2005.

There is no suggestion the Pope broke his vow of celibacy.

Of course, he never married. But that bolded statement doesn’t mean he never had sex.

There is a frequent misunderstanding about how the word “celibacy” is used in the Roman Catholic Church. The “vow of celibacy” is not a vow not to have sex; it is a vow not to marry. The old Catholic Encyclopedia makes the distinction this way:

The vow of chastity forbids all voluntary sexual pleasure, whether interior or exterior: thus its object is identical with the obligations which the virtue of chastity imposes outside the marriage state.

Strictly speaking, it differs (though in ordinary language the expressions may be synonymous) from the vow of celibacy (or abstinence from marriage), …

The violation of the vow of chastity is always a sin against religion; it constitutes also a sacrilege in a person who has received Holy orders, or in a religious, because each of these persons has been consecrated to God by his vow: his vow forms part of the public worship of the Church.

A person who, in defiance of his solemn vow, attempts to contract marriage, incurs the excommunication reserved to the bishop by the Constitution "Apostolicae Sedis".

That is a big difference. “Secular” priests (contrasted with those who join religious orders) don’t take vows of “poverty, chastity, and obedience”. They do however take vows of “celibacy”. A priest who has sex with a woman, or sodomy with a man, can confess the incident and be done with it. A priest who marries is in a whole different world of legal trouble with “the Church”.

Enter this story about Karol Cardinal Wojtyla, who later became known as “Pope John Paul II”.

“Pope John Paul letters reveal ‘intense’ friendship with woman”. The folks at Rorate Caeli tweeted that link with the message “The IMMENSE dangers of Express-Canonization”.

Of course, we all know that “Pope John Paul II”, who died in 2005, was “fast-tracked” into Sainthood, and was canonized by “Pope Francis” in 2014.

The Rorate folks are suggesting that the “fast track” was just simply too fast, and some important things were missed. Such as this “friendship”, for which there is now hard evidence in the form of letters and photographs.

Of course, the canonization committee provided the usual Roman Catholic explanation for the failure to incorporate these letters and photos into the process: “It’s not our fault”. They said:

The process of saint-making is usually long and very costly, but John Paul II was fast-tracked to sainthood in just nine years.

Normally the Vatican asks to see all public and private writings when considering a candidate for sainthood, but the BBC has not been able to confirm whether the letters were seen.

The Congregation for the Causes of Saints said it is up to individual Catholics to decide whether to send in documents.

"All our duties were done," it told the BBC in a statement. "All private documents, sent by faithful as a response to the edict, and documents found in important archives were studied."

The article concludes, “The National Library of Poland disputes that this was a unique relationship. It says it was one of many warm friendships the Pope enjoyed throughout his life.”

Senate Should Refuse to Confirm Any Obama Nominee

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/431319/antonin-scalia-supreme-court-successor-obama-nomination-senate

Supreme Court sweep stakes

A few observations on the court crisis:

i) Historical precedent is obsolete because the role of the judiciary has changed dramatically since the Warren Court. Nowadays, judges often act as super-legislators, self-appointed national policymakers. Since judges changed the rules by unilaterally rewriting their job description, the Senate is entitled to change the rules regarding the judicial nomination process. 

ii) This is about whether we have a Bill of Rights. Whether we have separation of powers. Whether we have Federalism. Whether we have representative democracy. Whether we have popular sovereignty. Whenever we have consent of the governed. 

iii) With only 8 justices, in case of tie votes the lower court ruling prevails. Whichever party won in the lower court.

That's bad insofar as Obama has had 7 years to pad the Federal judiciary with liberal appointees. However, that's still far better than confirming an Obama nominee to the Supreme Court. That would shift the balance of power on the Court for a generation or more.

In addition, lower court rulings don't set national precedent, unlike Supreme Court rulings. And bad lower court rulings–during the vacancy–can be appealed and overruled if we are able to replace Scalia and other retirees with conservatives. 

iv) In addition, I believe the Supreme Court could stay lower court proceedings–at least in some high profile cases–until a new Justice is sworn in. Or hold over a case until next year.

v) Of course, this is a strategy to play out the clock until Obama leaves office. And it buys time for Cruz or Rubio, if one of them is elected.

If, on the other hand, Trump, Bernie, or Hillary is elected, then Senate Republicans will be in a much weaker position. But we can only cross one bridge at a time. And there may not be a second bridge.

vi) If Senate Republicans have no intention of confirming an Obama nominee, it would be dumb for them to hold hearings. That would be a wedge for the nominee. Moreover, the Senate has no Constitutional duty to hold hearings on a nominee. 

vii) It might be objected that if Republicans use this tactic, Democrats will return the favor when the situation is reversed. But it's not as if Democrats believe in fair play. Indeed, Senate Republicans have been rolled by the Senate Democrats in the past due to naive notions of fair play that are not reciprocated. 

viii) There's the question of political jeopardy. Do Republicans risk losing control of the Senate if they leave the seat vacant until next year, by snubbing Obama's nominee?

I suppose that's possible. I don't have a crystal ball. But to begin with, sometimes you have to take a political risk. There's no point having power if you're afraid to use it. Moreover, there's the risk of losing your power if you're too timid to use it. 

ix) But it isn't clear to me that this is politically hazardous. It poses a dilemma for Democrats. Sure, they can try to make the Supreme Court vacancy the centerpiece of the national campaign. But that cuts both ways. The more they elevate this issue, the more they remind Republicans and libertarians of what's at stake. 

If Democrats make the Supreme Court a big issue in elections, they hand that issue to Republican candidates. By making the case for why it's all-important to have the Supreme Court in Democrat hands, they are simultaneously broadcasting to Republican and libertarians voters why it's all-important to keep the Supreme Court out of their clutches.  

x) There's an ironic sense in which both Bernie and Hillary ought to support the Republican stalling tactic. After all, both of them are vying to replace Obama. They'd rather nominate Scalia's successor than have Obama do it. 

Reporting Sex Abuse is Again Not Required for Bishops

I’ve said multiple times, what the official Roman Catholic Church gives with one fork of its tongue, it takes away with the other. Here’s a clear case of that with respect to the Roman Catholic sex abuse scandal.

As Ronald Reagan might have said, “here you go again”:

What new Catholic bishops are, and aren’t, being told on sex abuse

Given what a cancer the clerical sexual abuse scandals have been for the Catholic Church, one would imagine the Vatican would want new bishops to get a state-of-the-art presentation on best practices in terms of preventing such meltdowns in the future.

The Vatican has been running just such a training course since 2001 for newly appointed bishops around the world, and almost 30 percent of the Catholic prelates in the world today have taken it.

It’s more than a bit surprising, therefore, to discover that at least last year, the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, the body created by Pope Francis to identify “best practices” in the fight against child abuse, was not involved in the training.

How And Why Non-Christians Corroborated The Empty Tomb

One of the best arguments for the empty tomb is its corroboration by non-Christian sources (e.g., Matthew 28:11-5). Critics often try to get around that line of evidence by arguing that the corroboration was fabricated by Christians or that the corroboration was too late, apathetic, uninformed, or faulty in some other way. Maybe only some Jewish opponents of Christianity corroborated the empty tomb, whereas most didn't. Or maybe those who corroborated it were so apathetic about Christianity that they didn't put much effort into researching what they were corroborating. And so on. What I want to do in this post is look at three early sources on non-Christian corroboration of the empty tomb and see what those sources suggest about the nature of that corroboration. The sources are Matthew 28:11-5, section 108 of Justin Martyr's Dialogue With Trypho, and section 30 of Tertullian's The Shows (De Spectaculis).

Art of the puerile

While there are notable exceptions on both sides, my impression is in general the tendency is for conservatives to focus on the issues in debates and arguments, whereas in general the tendency is for liberals to focus on individuals in debates and arguments. Generally speaking, conservatives tend to focus on debating the pros/cons or merits/demerits of an issue, whereas liberals tend to focus on the morality/immorality of an individual.

For example, if someone disagrees with tax hikes, then they hate the poor. If someone disagrees with abortion, then they hate women. If someone disagrees with Pres. Obama, then they hate African-Americans. If someone disagrees with illegal immigration and amnesty, then they hate Hispanics. If someone disagrees with same-sex marriage, then they hate homosexuals.

At its most crass, it's nothing short of bullying. Name-calling, insults, shaming.

Yet, ironically, this is not only exactly what Trump the supposed bona fide conservative engages in, but this is the address where Trump lives and thrives. Simply witness his performance in the latest GOP debate in South Carolina.

A much-needed message for our day: Time for Truth: Living Free in a World of Lies, Hype, and Spin - The Veritas Forum

Several years old, but worth watching all the way through:



HT: Luis Dizon

Cleansing the temple

1. A basic issue in Gospel harmonization is whether Jesus "cleansed" the temple once or twice. 

(Some contemporary scholars call it the "clearing" of the temple, which might be more accurate, but for convenience I'll stick with the traditional designation.)

2. Let's block out the theoretical options, then assess them.

A. Some scholars think it never happened at all. They think the account is legendary of fictional. They take that position because they think it would be impossible for Jesus to singlehandedly empty the courtyard. That's not a one-man job. If, moreover, he did so, that would figure in the charges at his trial.

B. Some scholars simply combine John and the Synoptics. This is called additive harmonization. They think Jesus cleansed the temple twice: first at the beginning of his public ministry (John), second at the end of his public ministry (Synoptics).

C. Some scholars think this was a one-time event. There are variations on that position:

i) Jesus cleansed the temple at the end of his public ministry. The Synoptic chronology is accurate. John relocates the incident at the beginning of Christ's public ministry.

ii) Jesus cleansed the temple at the beginning of his public ministry. The Johannine chronology is accurate. The Synoptics relocate the incident at the end of his ministry.

3. Regarding A, I will say three things: two now and one later (under #4). 

i) A number of scholars argue that the incident is on a smaller scale. It probably took place in the South portico. Given the vast size of the courtyard, most folks present wouldn't even notice what Jesus did. This was an emblematic action.

ii) Disrupting the market place wouldn't be a capital offense. So even if the incident had many witnesses, that's irrelevant to the trial. 

4. Regarding B, it's certainly possible that Jesus did it twice. That can't be ruled out. However:

i) John records one cleansing and the Synoptics record one cleansing. There's no reason to automatically assume these must refer to separate events. You only get that by comparing John with the Synoptics. Nothing wrong with that. But it's not as if John says there were two, or the Synoptics say there were two. 

ii) There are conflicting intuitions on which is more implausible. Some scholars think it's more implausible to suppose Jesus "repeated precisely the same action at the same location with the same attendant question concerning his authority" (Ridderbos). Others think it's more implausible that John would relocate the incident. 

An argument against two cleansings is that the authorities wouldn't let Jesus get away with pulling the same stunt twice. However, I think that's a fairly weak objection:

i) The authorities couldn't anticipate that Jesus was going to stage a repeat performance. That was unexpected.

ii) Unless they had minders following him around, they couldn't prevent it in time. 

iii) As the Son of God, nobody can stop Jesus from doing whatever he sets his mind to. I'm sure Jesus could be very intimidating or even terrifying if it served his purpose. He's quite capable of staring down opponents. 

One argument for B is that an earlier cleansing synchronizes Jn 2:20 with what Josephus says about the terminus ad quo for the rebuilding of the temple. 

However, that appeal suffers from complications. Josephus gives conflicting chronological indicators. So there's the question of how reliable Josephus is in that regard. 

And there's the additional question of what his terminology denotes. Is he using hieron and naos synonymously, or do they have different referents? 

John's own usage is inconclusive inasmuch as we need to distinguish between the narrator's voice and the speakers he quotes. 

There's the further question of what the aorist passive verb (oikodomethe) means in 2:20.

There's an undesigned coincidence between the trial of Christ and the cleansing in John. In the Synoptics, his accusers allege that he threatened to tear down the temple. But the Synoptics don't report Jesus ever saying that. Yet Jesus says something like that in Jn 2, although his accusers twist his words. 

However, that's consistent with a single cleansing if the Johannine account reflects narrative sequence rather than chronological sequence. 

5. Regarding C-i, there's not just a question of synchronizing John with the Synoptics but synchronizing the Synoptics with each other. Mark explicitly says the cleansing took place a day after Jesus first arrived in Jerusalem. Because it was late afternoon, Jesus decided to retire to a suburb (Bethany) for the night, then returned to Jerusalem a day later to cleans the temple.

By contrast, Matthew and Luke simplify Mark's chronology. To a casual reader, the cleansing happens on the same day Jesus arrives in Jerusalem.

It's unclear why defenders of the two-cleansings view think it's okay for Matthew and John to give the reader the impression that it happened on a different date than Mark, but misleading for John to give the reader the impression that it happened on a different date than the Synoptics. 

Since Mark is the only one of the four whose explicit about the chronology, while Matthew, Luke, and John are all ambiguous on the chronological connections, consistency demands that we have the same standard for all concerned. 

6. Regarding C-ii:

i) In general, John has a more precise and detailed chronology than the Synoptics. So there's no presumption that in case of real or apparent conflict, we give the Synoptics the nod. 

ii) Apropos (i), Synoptic chronology is generally simpler. They only record Jesus making one trip to Jerusalem, so that's the only place they could put the incident. By contrast, John has Jesus making three trips to Jerusalem. 

iii) However, it's logical that this takes place at the end of his ministry, as the culmination of his challenge to the religious status quo. And the authorities would regard this as the last straw, the final affront. 

7. I incline to the view that there was a single temple cleansing, although I don't have a firm position on that. 

That doesn't necessarily mean, that John relocated the incident to advance his theological agenda. That interpretation may well be too literary. Rather, he may put it there simply because that's what he was thinking about on the day he dictated that section of his Gospel. 

Or, assuming that this is more deliberate, it could be a flashforward, like we have in movies. 

Trump's evolution

BY BARBARA A. RES  NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Updated: Tuesday, February 9, 2016, 3:43 PM

I worked with and for Trump over a period of about 18 years, from 1978 to 1996. I started out as an employee of the company that built the Hyatt Hotel, then served as his vice president in charge of construction of Trump Tower, later as his executive vice president in charge of development and finally as a consultant.

In 18 years, Trump changed as much as he stayed the same, and we went from being almost friends to total strangers. I think of Trump now as a celebrity. He is best known as a TV star, not a builder. They call him a developer, but mostly he just licenses his name. He no longer gets involved in looking at plans or talking to contractors as he did in my day.

When I worked for Donald, especially in the early days, you could just walk into his office. At least, I could. I spent time with him every single day when we did Trump Tower. Not so much after that project, although we did spend a lot of time together when I was doing the Plaza. When I started with Trump there were eight or nine people in his office. He used to answer the phone in the morning when no one was there. We walked to meetings together. There were no bodyguards. He was totally approachable and accessible. When he hired his long-time assistant, that all started to change. In time, she became his gatekeeper; later she became a vice president and had her own gatekeeper.

Now he has an entourage. But in the beginning, Donald was a very rich but otherwise ordinary man.

Later, he would hire and promote many people with questionable qualifications. I could see, over time, his growing need to be coddled and agreed with, the kind of need that leads to being surrounded by yes-sayers. Now, one only has to watch his public appearances to know that Trump is not getting professional advice as to how to conduct himself. He is not being handled by anyone.

While wanting to be liked was a vice in me, Trump will tell you that everyone likes him. This is not the case. He can be very charming and ingratiating, but he is not nice. In my experience, he is nasty to the people who work for him. He can be very abusive and curt. He has an incredible temper and he lashes out at everyone, including Ivana.

Of all the people I know who worked for or with Trump, including contractors, lawyers, architects, employees, only a very few actually like him. Some respect him, some don't. Many hate his guts.

What about the way Trump talks about women? Well, I can tell you this kind of behavior wasn't prevalent until the time he became involved with Marla Maples. He started talking a lot about all the women he was intimate with, bragging about being with top models, movie stars. Then he began talking about women, in public, in terms of their physical attributes. He became very macho. 

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/barbara-res-donald-trump-boss-article-1.2525669

Political shapeshifter

http://therightscoop.com/trump-im-very-capable-of-changing-to-anything-i-want-to-change-to/

Supreme Court to hear WTS case

http://www.wts.edu/stayinformed/view.html?id=2038

How To Damage Trump

Something I just posted in a thread at National Review:

Here are a few of the points I'd like to see made against Trump in tonight's debate (and others):

- No other Republican candidate has as close a relationship with the Clintons as Trump does. The Clinton campaign would be able to run ads featuring Trump's previous endorsements of Clinton. There's general agreement among Republicans, including Trump's supporters and self-identified liberals and moderates, that we want to defeat Clinton. Trump's lengthy and explicit record of supporting the Clintons would make him uniquely weak as a Republican nominee.

- Nobody has worse general election numbers than Trump. Rubio would be the best one to highlight this point, since his numbers are among the best. (Carson has some good numbers as well, sometimes even better than Rubio's, but he's not as good of a communicator and has shown so little interest in going after Trump, so Rubio would be better at bringing up this issue.)

- Trump is remarkably self-contradictory. Cruz could use Trump's flip-flops on whether Cruz is eligible for the presidency as an example, then cite other examples. I'd suggest making the criticism as forceful as possible, such as by saying that Trump is the most self-contradictory candidate to ever run for the presidency. In addition to "self-contradictory", I'd use the term "unstable". That has broader implications, and it's an accurate description of Trump.

- Mention at least twice (to make sure it gets remembered) that Trump openly boasts about committing adultery with many women. That's another way in which Trump is uniquely corrupt. As bad as Bill Clinton is, at least he didn't brag about his adulteries in a book he published. Bringing up this aspect of Trump's character should be especially helpful in states with large religious populations, like South Carolina and other states coming up soon. People want to like the president at a personal level, probably more so than with any other office in our nation. Trust is important. How much will people trust somebody who publishes a book bragging about damaging so many lives through adultery? (I'd recommend that the people criticizing Trump even refer to how he "destroyed homes", "wrecked lives", "ruined marriages", etc.)

Dispatches from the Gaystapo

http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2016/02/fight-over-trans-kids-got-a-researcher-fired.html?mid=fb-share-scienceofus

Adam and Eve: An Evangelical Impasse?

http://www.csreview.org/Sample_Issue.pdf

Scroll down to p165:

Hans Madueme, Adam and Eve: An Evangelical Impasse?

The Pope and the Patriarch

The main point of discussion was, “how far have fashions
in clerical garb diverged in 1000 years?”

It’s been a historical day folks. “Pope Francis” met Patriarch Kirill (head of the Russian Orthodox church) at the airport in Havana, Cuba as the two religious superstars were headed for different points on the globe. Bergoglio was on his way to Mexico, and Kirill was headed for parts unknown.

The Russian Orthodox church is the largest now among a number of “autocephalous”, or “independent” Orthodox bodies, which are descended from the eastern churches when Rome split with them in 1054 AD. Today, the individual “Orthodox” church bodies in each country, while professing the same “faith”, and claiming the same “apostolic succession” of bishops, are functionally and governmentally independent from one another.

After the meeting, “Pope Francis” 

proposed replacing the papal skullcap with 

a Mexican Sombrero for all state meetings.

Anecdotally, Constantinople has been considered to be “second Rome”, but after the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453, Moscow, where the Russian Orthodox church is centered, has been popularly considered to be “third Rome”.

One major point of discussion was how far fashion in clerical vestments had diverged since the eleventh century. After the meeting, exhibiting how “development of doctrine” works in real life, “Pope Francis”, exhibiting a bit of headgear-envy, proposed that the papal skullcap be replaced at State meetings with the Mexican Sombrero.

Inspiration, evidentialism, and harmonization

1. Lydia McGrew posted a critique of how Michael Licona approaches the issue of Gospel harmonization. I posted a response. She commented on my response. 

It challenging to find an entry point into this discussion, because it's so complicated. There's the specific question of Michael Licona's position.

Then there's the question of how inerrantist Bible scholars harmonize the Gospels. I have in mind representative scholars like Poythress, Stein, Block, and Blomberg–although Blomberg is less reliable than he used to be. Of late he's been exploring loopholes. 

2. Then there's Lydia's own position regarding what's a permissible or impermissible harmonization. That's illustrated by stock examples, viz. was Jesus crucified on Passover?, the anointing of Jesus, the temple cleansing, the centurion's servant, cursing the fig tree, raising Jairus's daughter.  

I have a problem with her set-up. She draws a number of significant conceptual distinctions. She deploys her distinctions to say there's a crucial difference between Matthew doing X with Mark and Matthew doing Y with Mark. X is acceptable but Y is not. Same thing with John doing something to Mark, or Luke doing something to Mark.

But that's too abstract and premature. It attempts to predetermine what they could or couldn't do before we even crack open the pages of Scripture to see what in fact they did. That's the wrong starting-point.

For me, we need to begin by looking at what they actually did. What's the most plausible interpretation?  

3. Lydia uses evidentialism as a frame of reference, in contrast to Licona's position. That's an old debate, and there are different ways to block this out.

i) Historically, Aquinas represents a tradition in which you stress the role of proof. Certain beliefs are demonstrable. Knowledge or scientia is grounded in what you can prove. 

But for Aquinas, that high standard already begins to break down at the very point where you'd like it to hold. Although the truths of natural revelation are said to be demonstrable, the "mysteries of faith" are strictly indemonstrable. 

ii) Writers like Thomas Reid, Bishop Butler, and John Locke represent a different tradition, a different paradigm. They lower the bar. For them, it's not about proving Christianity, but the rationality of Christian faith. Providing reasonable grounds for faith, rather than demonstrative arguments. To recast this in modern terms, what kind of evidence is necessary for justified or warranted belief. 

iii) Writers like Calvin and Owen represent yet another tradition or paradigm. For them, it's not primarily about criteria or corroborative evidence, but self-authenticating Scripture and the witness of the Spirit. 

4. Another way to block this out is to evoke Chisolm's distinction between methodism and particularism. I think Lydia's evidentialism is clearly in the methodist corner. On this view, you begin with criteria, which you use to sort out true religious claimants from false religious claimants. In one respect, this is a top-down approach. It begins with criteria rather than phenomena or experience. 

By contrast, the approach of Calvin, Owen et al. represents particularism, by taking paradigm-cases (Scripture) and paradigm examples of religious experience (the witness of the Spirit) as the starting-point. That's a bottom-up approach in the sense that it begins with particular instances rather than general criteria. But in a different respect, it's a top-down approach by treating the Bible as the criterion. On this view, inspiration is a presupposition rather than a conclusion. 

5. This goes to another distinction. Evidentialism tends to treat the Bible as a source of information about supernatural events, whereas writers like Calvin and Owen regard the Bible as a supernatural event in its own right. Are the Scriptures a supernatural product? 

6. Let's begin with a crude version of evidentialism. Initially, we should approach the NT documents as primary source materials. Historical sources. 

At this stage of the argument, we don't treat them as inspired sources. Rather, we assess them like we'd assess any ostensible historical testimony. 

Using criteria which historians typically use, we judge the NT documents, or a subset thereof (e.g. Gospels, Acts, 1 Corinthians), to be generally reliable.

On that basis, we conclude that the Resurrection probably happened. If so, that has far-reaching implications. To some degree, that circles back around to retroactively validate other core historical events in the life of Christ.

One objection to this approach is that reported miracles greatly lower the likelihood that the account is true. By definition, miracles are highly improbable events. 

The McGrews are aware of this objection. So they supplement evidentialism with a case for miracles.

In addition, although a miracle presumes the existence of God, it doesn't presume belief in God. It isn't necessary to prove God's existence before you can credit the occurrence of a miracle. 

Lydia can correct me if that's inaccurate. 

7. How should we assess these competing paradigms? Are they contradictory or complementary?

Apologetics, especially offensive apologetics, is undeniably methodist. It uses criteria and rules of evidence to broker religious claims and historical claims. To be persuasive, to avoid begging the question, it seeks common ground in methods and assumptions which Christians and reasonable unbelievers share in common. 

This also has some value in defensive apologetics. Believers can benefit from having evidence they can point to, and reasons they can give. 

8. However, evidentialism has weaknesses:

i) There's a circular relationship between your criteria and your worldview. What you think is possible or probable is contingent on the kind of world you think we inhabit. Whether a rule of evideence is reasonable or unreasonable is contingent on what you think reality is like. They need to match up.

ii) Most Christians, at most times and places, lack the intellectual aptitude or access to corroborative evidence to make a philosophically solid case for what they believe. But if, in fact, Christianity is true, that means the truth of Christianity must be accessible at a different level.

This doesn't necessarily mean reason and evidence are dispensable. It might still be important say that, at least in principle, the Christian faith is rationally defensible. Moreover, that some Christians have risen to the challenge. 

iii) Another problem is that I don't see where inspiration figures in Lydia's position. If the Bible is inerrant (or infallible), that's the result of plenary, verbal inspiration. If the Bible is fallible, that's because it's uninspired, or intermittently inspired.

I don't see where inspiration has a role to play in evidentialism. Where does it come into the argument? Where does it ever merge with the traffic? I don't see a logical place for inspiration to break into the flow of argument. 

9. What about the alternative?

i) On the face of it, it might seem like the position of Calvin, Owen et al. is specially pleading. An ad hoc position to preempt appeal to ecclesiastical authority. 

Another complication is the relationship between self-authenticating Scripture and the witness of the Spirit. Are these two different principles? How do they interact? 

ii) I don't Calvin's appeal is just a makeshift apologetic maneuver. He describes self-authenticating Scripture and the witness of the Spirit in very autobiographical terms, as if that's how he did, in fact, experience Scripture. 

iii) We should treat things the way they are. If the Bible is the word of God, then that's how it ought to be treated. It should not be treated as something it is not. Something less or lesser than what it truly is. 

iv) I'd say there are affinities between Calvin's epistemology and Newman's illative sense and Polanyi's tacit knowledge. It's not an idiosyncratic position, but reflects a model of knowledge that's more subliminal. 

Take voice recognition. For most of us, that's intuitive. We simply recognize the person on the other end of the receiver. It's not something we could prove.

On the other hand, that's not purely subjective. Every voice has a distinctive timbre. That's subject to scientific analysis. 

On this view, regeneration restores our native ability to perceive religious truth. It doesn't add new evidence, or add a new faculty. Rather, the repairs a natural faculty. 

10. But even if the Bible is self-authenticating, where do we break into that charmed circle? After all, there are rival revelatory claimants.

i) It depends. If you experience the Bible in a certain way, then it's direct. An immediate, veridical experience. 

Moreover, this isn't just subjective, for many Christians have the same experience. So you have that intersubjectival confirmation. 

Even sensory perception has an ineluctably private dimension. I don't know what's going on in your mind when you see a tree. I can't tap into your experience. I can't tap into your mental state. 

We can compare notes. You can tell me what you perceive, and I can tell you what I perceive. Same thing with intellectual apprehension. 

ii) However, this doesn't preclude appeal to external evidence. These are not in tension. It can be complemented by theistic proofs, the argument from prophecy, the argument from miracles, answered prayer, historical evidence, &c. 

Jesus and Romulus

Richard Carrier published a book in which he argues that Jesus never existed. I was reading a review:

http://jamesbradfordpate.blogspot.com/2016/02/book-write-up-on-historicity-of-jesus.html

The reviewer picks out key items in Carrier's case for mythicism. I'm going to comment on those items. 

Carrier does ask good questions.  Why do so many first century extrabiblical sources fail to mention Jesus or Christianity, if Jesus existed in the first century?  

i) Jesus was a local celebrity. He wasn't widely known. This wasn't the television era. He was well-known in pockets of Palestine, but completely unknown in most of the Roman Empire. Most folks in the Roman Empire would have no occasion to be aware of a short-lived Palestinian celebrity. It would take time for that information to disseminate.

ii) Our sources of information for that time and place are sparse and spotty. 

Why does Paul so often fail to mention aspects of Jesus’ life and teaching?  

That's an old canard:

i) There's the difference in genre. Paul is a letter-writer, not a biographer.

ii) Paul had less direct knowledge of Jesus than people who accompanied Jesus during his public ministry.

iii) Since Luke was Paul's friend and traveling companion, assuming Paul had firsthand and/or secondhand knowledge of Jesus, he probably shared that with Luke. Paul needn't write a separate account concerning the life of Christ if what he knew fed into Luke's Gospel. In that event, Luke's Gospel includes whatever Paul had to contribute. 

iv) That isn't pure speculation. For instance, Luke's account of the Last Supper is more like Paul's account in 1 Corinthians than Matthew or Mark. So there may well be cross-pollination between Luke's knowledge of the historical Jesus and Paul's, or vice versa. 

Why did Epiphanius (Panarion 29.3) and rabbinic sources (Carrier cites BT Sanhedrin 107b; Sotah 47a; JT Hagigah 2.2; Sanhedrin 23c) mention a view that Jesus lived during the time of Alexander Jannaeus, which was a century before the historical Jesus supposedly lived?  For Carrier, this is an indication that early Christians differed on where to put Jesus in history, which would be odd, had Jesus been historical.  

i) For Carrier to cite the Talmud is a double-edged sword. After all, the Talmud bears witness to Jesus, albeit with a polemical slant:

Jesus was hanged on Passover Eve. Forty days previously the herald had cried, “He is being led out for stoning, because he has practiced sorcery and led Israel astray and enticed them into apostasy. Whosoever has anything to say in his defense, let him come and declare it.” As nothing was brought forward in his defense, he was hanged on Passover Eve.Tractate Sanhedrin (43a).

This bears witness, not only to Jesus' existence, but his reputation as a miracle-worker. And it's more impressive because it represents a hostile witness. 

ii) In addition, there's evidence that the Talmud was censored to suppress historical references to Jesus:

http://www.tyndale.cam.ac.uk/Tyndale/staff/Instone-Brewer/prepub/Sanhedrin%2043a%20censored.pdf

iii) The Talmud is a mishmash of legend and historical traditions. It isn't easy sift the material. 

iv) If, moreover, Jesus never existed, then why didn't Jews capitalize on that damning fact? Why wasn't that a fixture of the Jewish polemic against Christianity? Surely Jews were in a uniquely qualified position to challenge the existence of Jesus–if, in fact, he was purely a figure of myth and legend.  

v) It's easy to overlook the fact that many people know very little about the past, have a very shaky grasp of relative chronology. Let's take two examples, beginning with the Pilgrimage of Etheria, about a 4C nun who made a trek to the Holy Land. It's clear from her account that she has, at best only the sketchiest grasp of how to correlate Biblical events and place-names to locations in the Holy Land. She's entirely dependent on local traditions and ecclesiastical traditions. 

To take another example: Cotten Mather's commentary on Genesis (Biblia Americana: Genesis). Mather is often completely at sea regarding historical identifications, regarding when and where people lived and events occurred, in the text of Genesis. 

For all its limitations, archeology has given us a far more accurate relative chronology of ancient history. More so than many ancient people enjoyed. 

vi) As one scholar notes: 

The garbled, muddled nature of the Babylonian version [i.e. Babylonian Talmud] is evident in the strange story of Ben Pnrahia's rebellious pupil. The anonymous fool of the Jerusalem Talmud's legend is identified with Jesus of Nazareth. Because of a silly slip of the tongue, his rabbi bans him, and because of an accidental difficulty, he is not pardoned, and therefore abandons his faith. Joshua b. Perahia proclaims a ban with the blowing of four hundred rams' horns according to the Babylonian Talmud model…The insertion of the Christian Messiah's name and the peculiar identification with the dissident pupil in Ben Perahia's company led to a confusion of chronological conceptions and great difficulties for medieval defenders of Judaism, who were obliged to refute hostile accusations and disown the talmudic vilifications of the Christian savior.  

Nevertheless, there was no lack of modern attempts to uncover an ancient core in that report that identifies Jesus of Nazareth with Joshua b. Perhia's pupil, relying on the support of Epiphanius, who sets the birth of Jesus in the reign of Alexander (Jannaeus) and Alexandra, that is, in the time of Ben Perhia or Ben Tabai. All these attempts, however, are based on pure delusion. Epiphanius does not contradict the doctrine of the Church and does not, in opposition to deep-seated belief, bring forward the birth of Jesus (the Christian Messiah or some other Jesus). He simply reiterates the claim made by the Church Fathers (e.g. Hippolytus, Eusebius, Jerome) that after the decline of the Hasmonean kingdom, Jacob's blessing of Judah was fulfilled ("The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come"; Gen 49:10) as was the count of "seventy weeks" of years according to Daniel (9:24ff.). In their view the redeeming mission of Jesus was thus confirmed. 

For Epiphanius, Jannaeus represents the last appearance of a Jewish prince, a true independent ruler wearing a double crown of kingship and priesthood. Upon his death the single rule was divided, quarrels and disturbances split the country until the rise of Herod, who was not of Jewish descent, that is, until the realization of the vision in biblical prophecies. According to this viewpoint, Jerome, too, sees Jannaeus as the priest king, the last legally anointed head of the Jewish people, before "the scepter" departs "from Judah" and the Christian salvation comes, at the end of the "seventy weeks" as foreseen by Daniel. Intending to stress the theological notion, Epiphanius skips the period between the death of Jannaeus and the gospel of Jesus, in order to connect Jannaeus and his offspring with the Herondian era. His entire exegesis contains no trace of a tradition, Jewish or Christian, regarding an unknown Jesus at the time of Joshua b. Perahia. Joshua Efrón, Studies on the Hasmonean Period (E. J. Brill: Leiden, 1987), 158-59.

Back to the review:

Carrier says that there are parallels between Christ and mystery cults, and also between Christ and Romulus (for which Carrier cites Plutarch, Romulus 27-28).  One can perhaps quibble on details: there is debate about how or whether Romulus even died, and thus it may be hasty to say that he was resurrected.  At the same time, there are parallels: Romulus does ascend to heaven, appear to people thereafter, and talk about a kingdom. 

i) What you have in the case of Romulus is not a resurrection but apotheosis. A mortal who's elevated to the pantheon. It's a category mistake to compare the two. These belong to different thought worlds. 

ii) Romulus is the legendary founder of Rome. This is national mythology. Political propaganda to retroactively validate the claims of Rome. Romulus was never anything other than a mythological figure. 

Feel the Bern

HT: Maul.

Jesus remembered

Sometimes the Gospels have explicit time-markers. Sometimes they have particles that simply indicate a transition from one scene to the next–without indicating the duration of the interval, or whether that even comes later. 

Sometimes there's an intrinsic temporal sequence. The arrest of Jesus precedes his trial, which precedes his crucifixion, which precedes his burial, which precedes his resurrection, which precedes his ascension. Even if there were no time-markers to indicate what's sooner in relation to what's later, it would be self-evident.

But in many cases, all we have is a narrative sequence, which may or may not track a chronological sequence. So what should the reader expect?

One issue is how we envision the process of composition. For instance, do we think the author sat down and manually wrote out the Gospel? If so, that would be a somewhat laborious process. How much would he write at a sitting? Would he write a scene, take a break, then pick up where he left off a day or so later?

Another question is whether he had a mental outline of what he intended to include, and in what order. How much did he have planned out in advance? 

But here's a different consideration: suppose, instead of writing it out by hand, he dictated his Gospel to a scribe. That involves a different psychological process. When you tell one or more anecdotes about your life, you generally relay them in the order that you remember them rather than the order in which they occurred. 

Think about how old folks reminisce. If you ask them what it was like growing up, they don't proceed in a linear fashion. Rather, they string together the most memorable events growing up–often in no particular order. I daresay we have many memories that we can't place in a relative chronology. 

Indeed, this tends to be free association, where one memory triggers a related memory. Commentators often talk about narrative strategy and topical arrangement. But how much of that is actually mnemonic rather than literary? 

Suppose John dictated his Gospel to a scribe. Suppose that took place over the course of several weeks. Presumably, John thinks about what he's going to tell the scribe today. He consciously summons his memories of Jesus. Mental images of things that happened at a particular time and place. 

No doubt John wants his memoir of Jesus to have some structure and directionality. Have a beginning, middle, and end. 

Still, if the Fourth Gospel is a transcript of his recollections of Jesus, there's no antecedent reason we'd expect it to be rigorously chronological. Memories of people you knew pop into your awareness without any temporal sequence. 

If the Fourth Gospel is oral history committed to writing, I doubt John was chronologically self-conscious as he tells an anecdote. Presumably, he's not thinking about where the next anecdote should go at the time he's recalling something Jesus said or did. Unlike writing, it's easier to lose your train of thought when dictating unless you concentrate on one thing at a time. If you interrupt an older person who's telling an anecdote, they may well forget where they were. They lose the thread. 

Incidentally, this may explain the "epilogue" to John's Gospel. His Gospel seems to have two endings. It apparently ends with chap. 20. Yet that's followed by chap. 21. If, however, John was dictating his Gospel, then that "afterthought" is very understandable. That's how people remember things. They don't have everything before their eyes. Rather, their mind jumps from one recollection to another. 

Likewise, that may explain the temple cleansing in Jn 2. Jesus either cleansed the temple once or twice. We can't say for sure. All we have to go by are the Gospels, and they don't number the temple cleansing(s). It's possible that he did so twice. Or it's possible that this was one event, which John's Gospel records in chap 2 because he remembered it on the day he dictated that section of the Gospel. 

Gospel harmonization

1. Gospel harmonization may sometimes seem to be an exercise in special pleading. Inerrantists indulge in face-saving harmonizations. Liberals say the real explanation is due to different Gospels using divergent, independent traditions. 

2. However, there are problems with the liberal explanation even on its own terms. For one thing, the mainstream view of the Synoptic problem is that Matthew and Luke use Mark as a source. When that's the case, you can't chalk the differences up to independent divergent traditions. Moreover, this isn't a conservative view of the Synoptic problem. Rather, most NT scholars all along the theological spectrum think Matthew and Luke are indebted to Mark.

3. Apropos (ii), scholars often use redaction criticism to account for Synoptic variants. But on that explanation, the difference isn't due to independent divergent traditions, but editorial activity, such as audience adaptation or narrative strategy.

4. Among other things, William F. Buckley was a novelist. He once said that in every novel he wrote he included one major coincidence. Although a coincidence is unlikely, unlikely events happen in real life, so it would be unrealistic if nothing unlikely, nothing coincidental, happened in his plots. 

By the same token, it's unlikely that Jesus was anointed twice. But that doesn't mean it didn't happen. Indeed, that doesn't mean there's a presumption against it. 

It's not special pleading to think the Lukan anointing is a different event from a somewhat similar event reported in Matthew, Mark, and John. That would be a striking coincidence, but that sort of thing happens in real life.

5. I think it's a worthwhile exercise to produce a chronological life of Christ based on the Gospels. However, I don't view the four Gospels as raw material for reconstructing the life of Christ. These aren't packages which were meant to be torn apart. These were written to be read as integral wholes. 

The notion of going behind the text to determine what really happened is invidious. Since, moreover, the Gospels are generally our only source of information, there are inherent limits to harmonization. We can't automatically use one Gospel as the benchmark that controls the direction of harmonization. If we have different accounts of the same event, we can't necessary say which one tells when or where it really took place, while the other represents a topical rearrangement. Sometimes there are narrative clues, but sometimes not. And it doesn't bother me if we can't always sort this out. 

6. My general position is different from both Licona's and Lydia's. On the one hand, I don't think Licona is a terribly competent exponent of the position he's promoting. And I don't like how he frames the issue, in terms of Roman bioi as a standard of comparison. In addition, his whole approach is rather flippant.

That said, there's an a priori character to Lydia's position, in terms of how she defines historicity. Essentially dictating to the Gospel authors how they are allowed to narrate history. I don't agree with Lydia's stipulative criteria. Ironically, Lydia's evidentialism is quite presuppositional in its own way. 

We need to accept Biblical history as it comes to us. Moreover, the reason the issue of Gospel harmonization crops up in the first place is because we do have variant accounts in the Gospels. It isn't based on comparing the Gospels to Roman bioi. 

The very examples that provoke these debates give us reason to make allowance for certain narrative strategies. Furthermore, we have OT counterparts. We have "synoptic" OT accounts. Parallel reports with variants. 

7. Lydia raises a valid question regarding the presence or absence of narrative clues that would indicate to the reader when the sequence is topical rather than chronological, when there's narrative compression, &c. That's a valid question, especially in reference to Licona's position. 

i) One clue involves parallel accounts. That, in itself, supplies a frame of reference. Comparing and contrasting Biblical accounts of the same events. That clues the reader to take these differences into consideration. The very phenomena that give rise to this discussion provides a backdrop.

ii) But there's also the question of what a reader was entitled to expect. It is reasonable for a 1C reader to presume the sequence is chronological unless there's some literary notice to the contrary? Is it reasonable for a 1C reader to presume the record is unabbreviated unless there's some literary notice to the contrary? I don't think so.

8. To judge by Lydia's discussion of Licona's video presentation (which I haven't watched), there appear to be some similarities between what he is saying and evangelical NT scholars say. In that respect it's not out in left field.

Take the cleansing of the temple. Both Keener, in his commentary on John (1:518), and Block, in his recent commentary on Mark (291n498), think this was a single event, which John transposes. Likewise, both Craig Blomberg, in The Historical Reliability of the Gospels (2nd ed., 216ff.), and Vern Poythress, in Inerrancy and the Gospels (133ff.), regard that a legitimate interpretive option. 

Likewise, in reference to the healing of the centurion's son, the explanation that Luke is more detailed, that it was emissaries who spoke on behalf of the centurion, whereas Matthew, through narrative compression, collapses that distinction, is a standard evangelical harmonization. That's defended by scholars like Bock ("Precision and Accuracy"), Blomberg (ibid. 176), and Poythress (ibid. 17ff.). That's the function of spokesmen. And 1C readers would be expected to share that cultural preunderstanding. 

I'm not using that as an argument from authority. The fact that I can cite conservative scholars who take that position doesn't make it correct. But I wonder how conversant Lydia is with the landscape of evangelical Biblical scholarship. 

Again, it's a good thing to have folks from a different discipline interact with Biblical scholarship. Biblical scholarship can become ingrown and hidebound. It's useful to have a fresh perspective. 

9) Regarding the withering of the fig tree, we need to distinguish between what Matthew actually says and what a reader imagines. It's natural for readers to form mental images of what they read. And I think that's a good practice.

So a reader might visualize the fig tree shriveling up right before the disciples' eyes in a matter of moments. That, however, is not what Matthew says. We need to differentiate how we picture the event from how Matthew depicts the event. Matthew's description is much vaguer.

10) Lydia says:

The difficulty is that apparently this same anointing, which John appears to place on the Saturday before the triumphal entry, is quite explicitly stated to have happened two days before the Passover in Mark 14, and Mark is extremely chronological in his telling of the events of Passion Week.

i) Assuming these are chronologically discordant accounts (of the same event), it would be a case of temporal transposition. I think Matthew, Mark, and John refer to the same event. Luke's anointing account refers to a different event. 

ii) Since John's account seems to be more firmly grounded in the setting, his would be the chronologically accurate version, while Matthew and Mark transposed it for thematic reasons–unless they didn't know when it actually happened. Events can be related in different ways. 

iii) However, as one scholar observes: 

The dinner during which Jesus was anointed (Jn 12:2-8) occurred in all probability on Saturday evening…It would be a mistake to conclude from Mt 26:2 ('after two days comes the Passover') and its parallel in Mk 14:1, that Jesus was anointed instead on Tuesday evening…For whereas the chronological marker of Jn 12:1 ('six days before…')is directly related to the anointing (12:2-8), that of Mt 26:2 ('after two days') is directly related to the plot to kill Jesus (26:3-5) and neither Mt 26:6-13 nor Mk 14:3-9 expressly relates the anointing to its context in chronological terms. K. Chamblin, Matthew: A Mentor Commentary (CFP 2010), 2:1270.

11) Lydia says:

For example, if John knowingly shifted Jesus' cleansing of the Temple by three years to the beginning of his ministry (which would seem to be precisely the sort of thing Licona means by "displacement") and no such cleansing took place then, that is a _serious_ failure of historical reliability, and frankly, if you or Licona or anybody else defines "reliability" differently, you can just have your concept, and I'll stick with mine.

But that confounds narrative sequence with chronological sequence. In the Synoptics, the cleansing of the temple is firmly grounded in the narrative setting. By contrast, it doesn't have those chronological connectives in John. It isn't linked to what precedes it or follows it. So readers don't have to right to presume that it must have taken place at that juncture. The narrative itself doesn't make that claim. 

12) Lydia says:

The question is just whether Jairus already knew, and said at the outset, that his daughter was dead, or whether he said that she was on the point of dying.

i) For starters, the notion that Matthew's account on the incident reflects narrative compression is a standard evangelical harmonization. That's not just Licona. 

ii) In addition, we need to distinguish between direct and indirect discourse. Between what the narrator says and what he quotes a character saying.

Inerrancy doesn't not entail that whatever a character says is true. Inerrancy primarily refers to the narrator.

Inerrancy doesn't mean Jairus is inerrant in how he expressed himself. Jairus wasn't speaking under divine inspiration.

This, in turn, raises the question of how a narrator should quote a speaker. There's a paradoxical sense in which, if someone makes an inaccurate statement, an accurate quote may preserve the inaccuracy. If you're quoting someone, you're not necessarily endorsing what they say. Rather, you're simply reporting what they said. If they made an inaccurate statement, that's what you report.

On the other hand, there might be occasions where, out of charity, a narrator will correct an incorrect statement when quoting a person based on what the person intended to say. Sometimes it's clear what a speaker meant to say, even if he misspoke or expressed himself poorly.

So, when quoting a character, there are occasions when it would be appropriate for the narrator to improve on the original statement. It's not a verbatim quote. Rather, it's what the speaker meant to say, but failed to say. A narrator might clarify what he meant by restating it. That's an editorial judgment call.