BBC Radio 4 aired a new program on the Enfield case earlier today. You can listen to it for free on the page I just linked. (Click the play button in the lower left of the photograph.) They interviewed a few of the eyewitnesses (Rosalind Morris, Graham Morris, Richard Grosse), played some recent comments from Janet and Margaret Hodgson (apparently comments made around the time when The Conjuring 2 came out in 2016), and played some older clips of other eyewitnesses discussing the case.
Here are some of my thoughts on the program:
- Something subtle that people often overlook should be noted at the outset. As far as I know, none of the Enfield witnesses have recanted. We're now a little more than forty years past the start of the case, and all of the dozens of individuals who claimed to have seen one or more of the paranormal phenomena have stood by those claims.
- The initial disinterest and skepticism of so many of the witnesses is striking. In this BBC program, Graham Morris repeats what he's said before about how reluctant he and his colleagues at the Daily Mirror were to get involved in the case to begin with (6:34-7:30) and how skeptical he generally is about the paranormal (8:27-8:39, 39:29-39:40). He still thinks a scientific explanation will eventually be found for the Enfield phenomena, but he acknowledges that science has no explanation at this point. He's said, and repeats in this program, that he wouldn't have believed in the phenomena if he hadn't witnessed them himself, and he goes as far as to suggest that nobody should believe in such events without having witnessed them (27:39-27:50). Despite that excessive skepticism, he acknowledges that paranormal events occurred in the Enfield case. He also refers to other skeptics who came to the Hodgson house, witnessed paranormal events there, and left believing in the authenticity of the case (27:51-27:57). Rosalind Morris also refers to her initial skepticism (9:12-9:17), and she seems to express agreement with Graham Morris' comments about expecting a scientific explanation to eventually be found for what happened at Enfield (39:40-39:45). Think of how significant it is that people who are so (overly) skeptical of the paranormal have spent the last forty years maintaining that they witnessed paranormal events in the Enfield case.
- Richard Grosse isn't as skeptical as the Morrises, but he does refer to how reluctant he was to get involved in Enfield and how he told his father he wouldn't visit the Hodgson house unless more significant events started occurring (10:57-11:36). He was eventually convinced that the reported events were significant enough to warrant a visit, and here (until 44:06) you can get a brief description of what he experienced at the house.
- Since Grosse hasn't gotten much attention as an Enfield witness, despite being the son of the chief investigator of the case, his comments during this recent BBC program were especially significant. He discusses what it was like to interact with his father about the case while it was going on. I don't recall hearing this much from Grosse about these subjects in any other interview, documentary, or anywhere else.
- There's a lot of discussion of the poltergeist voice during the program. Most of what's said about the subject is just a repeat of what's been said many times before. But from 24:57 to 25:45, Rosalind Morris and Grosse comment on how the voice wasn't traceable to anybody in the room and can't be explained by ventriloquism. It's significant to get that sort of testimony from witnesses who were present when the voice was speaking. In some ways, they're in a better position to judge the voice than we are. They may have picked up on details that we can't reconstruct.
- Like so much other coverage of Enfield, this program significantly underestimates the evidence supporting the authenticity of the case. They give too low an estimate of the number of witnesses involved, wrongly refer to the events stopping in 1979, say nothing about the scientific tests done on Janet's paranormal abilities, say nothing about the poltergeist voice coming from people other than Janet and Margaret and from non-human sources, understate the number of witnesses to Janet's levitation on December 15, 1977, etc. See my previous posts on Enfield for a better idea of how substantial the evidence for the case is.
Sunday, April 08, 2018
Saturday, April 07, 2018
Domestic violence and Calvinism
This article:
Jankowski, P. J., Sandage, S. J., Cornell, M. W., Bissonette, C., Johnson, A. J., Crabtree, S. A., & Jensen, M. L. (2018, March 22). Religious Beliefs and Domestic Violence Myths. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality. Advance online publication. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/rel0000154
makes the following claim:
We examined select tradition-specific religious beliefs (i.e., beliefs, informed by and consistent with the Calvinist tradition within Christianity) and beliefs about hierarchical relating, complementarian gender ideology, and specialness and certainty, and their association with DVMA [Domestic violence myth acceptance]. Findings suggested that DVMs are defined by nonacceptance of out-group members, hierarchical relationships, and gender inequality. Furthermore, given construct validation evidence for the DVMA scale, the scale may be used as a measure of the extent to which an individual holds stereotypes and prejudicial attitudes that blame the female victims of male perpetrated family violence. As such, the DVMA scale may be used to assess intolerant beliefs, which could then permit practitioners to tailor prevention and intervention strategies to target specific religious beliefs that support violence myth adherence.
It was plugged by Arminian Scot McKnight and SEA:
Unless they actually read the article rather than the abstract, it says something about their ethics that McKnight and SEA promote an article without knowing the arguments used in the body of the article to support the defamatory conclusion. Let's examine the article:
Friday, April 06, 2018
Did Jesus call himself God?
It is sometime said that while NT writers attribute deity to Jesus, Jesus never explicitly calls himself "God".
i) People who say this would generally reject the deity of Christ even if Jesus explicitly called himself "God" in the Gospels. They'd say that was the narrator writing a script. Inventing a speech and putting that on Jesus' lips. Or they'd say that Roman emperors called themselves "god", so there's nothing that special about calling yourself "God" in the NT era. The designation could be used in a watered down or honorific sense.
ii) Before Jesus begins making divine claims, it's necessary for him to lay the groundwork. Imagine, at the outset of his ministry, if he went around claiming to be the Deity. Most folks would either regard him as a blasphemer or madman. So he first needs to do things that will lend credibility to that claim. So often he says things that remind the observer of Yahweh, and that's backed up by doing things that remind the observer of Yahweh. By a later stage in his ministry, there's something "about" Jesus that now makes that comparison eerily and irresistibly plausible.
iii) From a tactical and psychological standpoint, implicit claims can be more effective than explicit claims. In the Gospels, Jesus says and does things that invite comparison with things Yahweh says and does.
Instead of just coming out and saying, "I am Yahweh", he resorts to insinuations that leave it up to the listener to complete the thought. That's more effective because it draws the listener into the dialectic, forcing him to publicly recognize and affirm the implications of what Jesus said.
That shifts the emphasis from what Jesus says to what the listener discerns. A tactic that involves and implicates the listener in the flow of argument, so that Jesus doesn't have to say that about himself because they say it about him, in response to broad hints and clues. Even hostile accusers draw that conclusion. It puts it on the listener, including the accuser, to articulate it. Even to accuse him of blasphemy, they must unwittingly cooperate with Jesus, play on his turf, by verbalizing and explicating the thrust of what he says and does. They confess that they caught the drift.
So they complete the trajectory, the train of thought, that he initiated–which puts them at a psychological disadvantage if they then wish to extricate themselves from complicity in the conclusion. It's a tactic that throws his accusers off balance because they have to play his game. They have to enter the game and make a move or countermove. To engage Jesus they must take the bait. Accept that coercive dilemma. Now they're on the hook.
If he said it all himself, they'd be able to maintain their distance, but to press the charge, they must finish his sentences (as it were). In the process, they become unintended evangelists.
iv) In addition, it's more effective in winning converts. There's a cumulative impact to his words and deeds, where it gradually dawns on the observer that God is in their midst. Not just something they hear Jesus say about himself, but something they themselves perceive, as the evidence piles up. That's more powerful than just telling someone what to believe.
The alt white
There's been an interesting evolution in this issue. On the one hand, the cultural elites have deliberately marginalized white men through reverse discrimination (e.g. Bakke case), check your privilege, &c. It's both anti-male and anti-white. White men rightly resent that.
On the other hand, the alt-right seemed to be fueled in large part by festering resentment against Third World immigrants who are more competitive and successful than the natives. So it's as if alt-right Caucasians want quotas and affirmative action for white men. We've come full circle.
And while their reaction is psychologically understandable, America has always been a highly competitive society. Colonial American had an aristocracy. Royalty and noblemen. That's ascribed status. The best slots are reserved for the upper class as a birthright.
But when we cast off the monarchy, that shifted the emphasis to achieved status. That means, for instance, that if, on average, Asian immigrants, first-generation Asian-Americans (second gen/third gen), East Indians, &c, outperform other ethnic groups scholastically, they ought to be represented in college admissions commensurate with their superior performance. That's the nature of a competitive system. It's like sports, which Americans worship.
Of course, that raises the issue of a social net for those who can't compete at the same level. Not everyone can be a winner, however hard they try.
From a Christian standpoint, it shouldn't be a pure sink-or-swim system in the sense that if you don't make the cut, you die, a la The Hunger Games.
That's where the Christian principle of private charity comes in. Those with more ability should help those with less ability.
But ironically, that's the "slave religion" mentality that Nietzsche and his alt-right epigones despise.
Atheism and white nationalism
I don't agree with everything in this article. But it highlights an irony. You have atheists attacking evangelical Trump voters as "hypocrites", yet many alt-right Trump supporters are rabid atheists:
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/3k7jx8/too-many-atheists-are-veering-dangerously-toward-the-alt-right
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/3k7jx8/too-many-atheists-are-veering-dangerously-toward-the-alt-right
Thursday, April 05, 2018
Mixed nuts
I recently read The Lost World of the Flood (IVP 2018) by Tremper Longman & John Walton. It's like a can of mixed nuts.
It's noteworthy that the two main collaborators, as well as one contributor, are all affiliated with the BioLogos Foundation, which is the flagship of theistic evolution.
1. This is part of an ongoing series: The Lost World of Genesis One, The Lost World of Adam and Eve, The Lost World of the Israelite Conquest, The Lost World of Scripture.
Although it's not entirely fair to judge a book by its title, since a title is simpler than the content of a book, it is, nevertheless, misleading to frame the issue in terms of a "lost world" of Scripture, as if the Bible was a complete cipher until the advent of biblical archeology.
The invention of writing
Christopher Hitchens had a stock objection to Christianity. He recycled this objection in multiple debates. He'd rehearse the antiquity of man on conventional dating schemes, then point out that for most of human history, God did nothing to prevent human suffering, and then, 2000 years ago, he intervenes in a Third World backwater.
As I've pointed out before, that objection reflects his theological ignorance. The purpose of the atonement was never to eliminate suffering, but to make it possible for God to justly forgive sinners.
But there's another issue. According to current archeological information, writing was only invented about 5000 years ago, in the ancient Near East. Suppose the atonement took place 70,000 years ago. There'd be no written record to copy and disseminate knowledge about that event. Writing is a medium of mass communication. Until the advent of writing, it would be impossible to accurately preserve and widely disseminate a public record of the atonement. And not coincidentally, the site of the atonement is also the site where written languages first evolved. Moreover, pictograms are ambiguous. It took longer to develop alphabetic writing systems.
Wednesday, April 04, 2018
Broken truce
Here's one reason I think Pope Francis is so controversial within the hierarchy. Originally, the papacy condemned modernism, which drove it underground. But in the 20C it began to tunnel into the hierarchy. What you then had was an armistice between liberal and conservative factions. Popes, whatever their personal predilections, would appoint liberals and conservatives alike to positions of authority in the hierarchy. It was a win/win policy to forestall an ugly civil war. Throw a sop to both sides. Bribe the opposition with preferments. Both sides would gripe and vie for dominance, but both factions were represented in the Magisterium. They got their wings and epaulettes.
By contrast, Francis has broken the truce. He openly and aggressively promotes his own faction while openly snubbing or demoting the conservative faction. Now you have real winners and losers.
Quantum Catholicism
Some Catholics cope with Pope Francis by taking the position that even if he's a heretic, that's not too big of a deal so long as his heretical views are just his private option rather than dogma.
But of course, that poses a dilemma. What if Francis makes his heresies official? Then they cease to be heretical. Yesterday's heresy can be tomorrow's orthodoxy while yesterday's orthodoxy can be tomorrow's heresy.
Catholicism is akin to theological voluntarism in that respect. According to voluntarism, nothing is intrinsically right or wrong. It depends on God's arbitrary fiat.
In Catholicism, something isn't heretical unless it's officially heretical. It's heretical if an ecumenical council condemns it.
Catholicism is like Schrödinger's cat, suspended in a state of superposition where it's both dead and alive until someone opens the box and peers inside.
Francis is a heretic until he make it official, at which point it becomes dogma.
Why me?
About that time Herod the king laid violent hands on some who belonged to the church. 2 He killed James the brother of John with the sword, 3 and when he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded to arrest Peter also. This was during the days of Unleavened Bread. 4 And when he had seized him, he put him in prison, delivering him over to four squads of soldiers to guard him, intending after the Passover to bring him out to the people. 5 So Peter was kept in prison, but earnest prayer for him was made to God by the church.
6 Now when Herod was about to bring him out, on that very night, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains, and sentries before the door were guarding the prison. 7 And behold, an angel of the Lord stood next to him, and a light shone in the cell. He struck Peter on the side and woke him, saying, “Get up quickly.” And the chains fell off his hands. 8 And the angel said to him, “Dress yourself and put on your sandals.” And he did so. And he said to him, “Wrap your cloak around you and follow me.” 9 And he went out and followed him. He did not know that what was being done by the angel was real, but thought he was seeing a vision. 10 When they had passed the first and the second guard, they came to the iron gate leading into the city. It opened for them of its own accord, and they went out and went along one street, and immediately the angel left him. 11 When Peter came to himself, he said, “Now I am sure that the Lord has sent his angel and rescued me from the hand of Herod and from all that the Jewish people were expecting.”
12 When he realized this, he went to the house of Mary, the mother of John whose other name was Mark, where many were gathered together and were praying (Acts 12:1-12).
This illustrates the mystery of providence. Two apostles are arrested. God lets one be martyred while he miraculously liberates the other. No doubt the church prayed for both to be delivered, but God only answered one prayer and not the other. It's not because Peter was worthier than James Bar-Zebedee.
Answered prayer is grounds for hope while unanswered prayer guards against presumption. Sometimes Christians ask "Why me?" when they endure some ordeal while others are spared. That's a natural question. But even apostles had the same inscrutable experience.
Dark skies
For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep (1 Thes 4:14, ESV).
This is a fascinating little verse. Because it's rather elliptical, and the syntax is ambiguous, we need to be cautious about erecting a huge theological edifice on this slender foundation. That said, it's worth exploring what the passage may well mean.
The ESV gives a highly defensible rendering. Perhaps the best rendering.
Assuming that's a good translation, several implications seem to follow:
i) Dead Christians (the "saints") are currently in the presence of Christ, wherever he is. We might say heaven, although Christ has a physical existence. Is it a state or a place?
ii) Be that as it may, the verse indicates that when Jesus comes back to earth, he will bring the saints back with him. The saints will accompany him from heaven to earth. They will be his entourage or retinue.
iii) Assuming that's the correct interpretation, let's try to visualize that scene. First, you have the "mechanics" of transporting them from heaven to earth. Maybe they just appear out of thin air. Instant teleportation.
iv) If they descend from the sky, we're talking about–what?–billions of the saints suddenly appearing overhead. If they're between the sun and the earth, they'd darken the sky. Likewise, if they're between the moon and the earth, on a full moon. So the sky might be black with the crowded figures of the saints, casting a vast shadow over the earth.
Or if they're not between the sun and the moon, they'd appear to form a vast black cloud or flock of birds in formation flight.
That alone will make the Second Coming a highly visible event. Imagine living on earth at the time. Imagine an unbeliever watching this unfold.
v) Assuming this interpretation is correct, it's at odds with preterism. Some preterists think Jesus already returned, symbolically, in the Fall of Jerusalem. But of course, there was nothing corresponding to billions of saints suspended in midair, descending to earth.
Tuesday, April 03, 2018
Glass men
https://daily.jstor.org/french-king-who-believed-made-glass/
The transgenderism of its time, and just as silly. Imagine speech codes based on glassy nouns and pronouns for humans who self-identify as glass.
The transgenderism of its time, and just as silly. Imagine speech codes based on glassy nouns and pronouns for humans who self-identify as glass.
O Magnum Mysterium
Mystery is a standard category in Christian theology, although different theological traditions have different theories regarding the relationship between faith and reason.
Typically, what's mysterious and what's understandable are treated as opposites. Insofar as something is mysterious, it's incomprehensible–and insofar as it's incomprehensible, it's mysterious. And there are examples where that dichotomy applies. On that view, what's mysterious defies human reason.
However, sometimes mystery and comprehensibility are reciprocally connected. Sometimes the same thing can simultaneously be both more and less mysterious. Let's start with a mundane example. Suppose I'm hiking on a scenic trail. I never did that trail before. I don't know what to expect, beyond it's scenic reputation. At the outset the journey is mysterious.
As I hike along the trail, I don't know what lies beyond the next bend or over the next hill. Once I get over the next hill and see it from the other side, it ceases to be mysterious in that regard. What lies behind is known, while what lies ahead is unknown.
However, resolving each mystery creates new mystery. When I started out, I had no notion of what lay along the trail. No inkling how many hills I had to scale.
Suppose the trail has ten hills. Thus far I had to climb three hills. So I now know the trail has at least three hills, and I now know what's on the other side. From that vantage point I see a fourth hill. But I couldn't see the second hill until I got over the first hill, I couldn't see the third hill until I got over the second hill, and so forth.
Suppose I approach the fourth hill. What lies over the fourth hill is a new mystery, because I didn't know before I got to that point that there even was a fourth hill. S the known creates the background for the unknown. What I now know creates the context for a new mystery. It's because of where I am, in relation to what lies ahead and behind, that each discovery resolves one mystery while it opens up new vistas of mystery. More unexplored terrain.
Or suppose I began my hike at the other end of the trail, moving in reverse direction. In that event, mysteries unfold in a different order. And the view is different.
Or take reading a novel. Initially, you may have no idea what to expect. The more you read, the more you understand, in terms of plot and characters up to that point in the story, but the less you understand because you don't know where it's heading. That sparks curiosity about what happens next. There are no surprises in terms of what you already read, but that's the setup for new surprises when you turn the page. So mystery and perception play off of each other in a dialectical arrangement.
If something is a discrete, finite object of knowledge, then it may be possible to exhaust everything that can be known about it, since there's only so much to be known. In that case, understanding nullifies mystery. The better I understand, the less mysterious the topic.
But in many cases, answers to old questions raise new questions. There are some questions we don't think to ask because, at that stage of inquiry, we don't know enough to ask them. Questions imply ignorance, but by the same token, they require some background knowledge. You have to know something to know what to ask.When you learn something, that may resolve an old mystery, but it may also raise new questions that weren't possible before you knew more about the subject.
In addition, even if something is a finite object of knowledge, yet in a world where everything is directly or indirectly interrelated, even finite topics may be inexhaustible when you begin to consider how they fan out into other topics. In the study of nature, understanding one thing is a never-ending journey, because each thing is interwoven with other things in a vast tapestry that's continuously woven.
Then you have domains like pure mathematics, which are infinite in all directions. If you have mathematical aptitude, as you study problems in math, you may solve them, but progressive understanding eliminates some mysteries by advancing you into ever deeper stages of mystery. You have to know enough to appreciate new problems in math.
To the extent that we grasp God's nature and ways, our understanding opens doors into new corridors of mystery. There's less mystery insofar as we know more than when we began, but there's more mystery insofar as our comprehension at any given stage makes us aware of things that are perplexing in relation to what we now know. As we gain understanding, that changes the frame of reference, which, in turn, exposes us to new puzzles and brain teasers. That process gets going in this life but carries over into the next life. And everlasting safari of exploration into the undiscovered country of God's fathomless nature and imagination.
To be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant
To be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant
Cardinal Newman's catchy one-liner is a popular slogan among Catholic apologists and evangelical converts to Rome. But I'd like to consider that slogan in context.
1. The oft-quoted slogan comes from his celebrated Essay On the Development of Christian Doctrine. That, however, was issued in two different editions (1845; 1878), 33 years apart. Newman revised his original essay, and it can be instructive to compare the two different editions. It would be a useful exercise for someone to display both editions in parallel columns, to facilitate comparison. For instance, unless I missed it, the slogan doesn't appear in the original edition of Newman's essay, but only in the revised edition.
"Ecclesial deism"
I'm going to revisit an old argument by Bryan Cross:
Ecclesial deism is the notion that Christ founded His Church, but then withdrew, not protecting His Church’s Magisterium (i.e., the Apostles and/or their successors in the teaching office of the Church) from falling into heresy or apostasy. Ecclesial deism is not the belief that individual members of the Magisterium could fall into heresy or apostasy. It is the belief that the Magisterium itself could lose or corrupt some essential of the deposit of faith, or add something to the deposit of faith, as, according to Protestants, allegedly occurred in the fifth, sixth, and seventh ecumenical councils.
i) Bryan begins by coining an ominous sounding label, but when he defines it, "ecclesial deism" is just a fancy, misleading label for the belief that God doesn't protect the pope from heresy/apostasy, or "ecumenical councils" from heresy/apostasy. Of course, when you put it that way, when you spell it out, there's nothing disturbing about that denial for anyone who's not a member of Bryan's sect. It just means non-Catholics don't believe God protects his denomination from heresy or apostasy. But that's hardly "deistic". Does Bryan think it's deistic that God doesn't protect Baptists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Anglicans et al. from falling into heresy or apostasy?
So "ecclesial deism" is at best "papal deism" or "prelatial deism". But even that's silly. It's hardly deistic to deny that God protects Bryan's preferred denomination.
ii) Apropos (i), Protestants don't believe Christ founded the Roman Catholic church, but then withdrew, not protecting the Roman Magisterum from falling into heresy or apostasy–since we don't believe the premise. We don't believe Christ founded the Roman Catholic church in the first place. So it's not as if he first founded the Roman church, then subsequently withdrew, not protecting the papacy or Catholic church councils from falling into heresy or apostasy. Once you recast Bryan's claim from the viewpoint of an outsider (non-Catholic), his prejudicial characterization becomes manifest.
iii) Notice the bait-n-switch, where he begins with Christ's church, then substitutes the Roman Magisterium. Of course, Protestants don't classify the Apostolate as a Magisterium. There never was a continuous teaching "office" in that sense.
iv) Bryan is a selective "deist". He's deistic about everything except the Magisterium.
v) Protestants like me don't believe that God withdrew his protection of his people from apostasy. To the contrary, God preserves the elect from apostasy.
From a Reformed perspective, there's a sense in which the church is indefectible. Not in reference to a teaching office, but in the sense that God preserves his elect from damnable heresy. The Spirit is active in the life of his people. Of course, individual Christians can and do fall into error, but God doesn't allow the Christian faith to be extinguished. It continues from one generation to the next until Jesus returns.
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