1 John, Assurance, and Eisegetical Assertions

Yesterday I addressed Antonio da Rosa on the issue of assurance in my post “True Assurance: Reformation Theology vs. the ‘Free Grace’ Movement.” He has since responded via the comments section. When it comes to this issue, Antonio continues to make the same mistakes. First, he starts with the assumption that Reformed theology does not offer certainty concerning the matter of assurance. Reformed theology unequivocally disagrees. He has also shown that he does not understand the Reformed doctrine of perseverance. But Antonio’s error is worse than this. The mistake that Antonio continually makes is to start with his position on assurance and eisegete it into the texts addressed. While he does not state these words, his unspoken principle is “John simply cannot mean that.” We will see this permeate his response. Rather than addressing the text, he speculates against what is explicitly presented and concludes with the assumptions he had in the first place. His error is undeniable.

***QUOTE***

Your tests cannot give you a certain assurance that you are saved. 1) You cannot pass those tests with flying colors. You may contend that you can, I contend greatly that you can’t. 2) Even if you delude yourself to pass with flying colors, there is no assurance that you will pass with flying colors anytime in the future.

***END-QUOTE***

It is evident that Antonio misunderstands the nature of the test. In my last post, I stated, “The true Christian either passes the test, or repents if he is in sin.” This has nothing to do with “flying colors.” This has to do with how we deal with our sin. This is the test.

***QUOTE***

I am very confused that you can say that you can have absolute assurance in Reformed theology. You cannot. You may have some measure of assurance based on your works, but what kind of assurance is that?

***END-QUOTE***

This is the assurance that John gives us. Note that Antonio fails to address the passages that have been presented. John wrote that we might know that we are saved; and as I have shown in my last post, he gave us a means of knowing. But Antonio chooses to stand in the face of John and ask him, “What kind of assurance is that?” Why, Antonio, do you disagree with John? Why is your opinion more important that the God-breathed words of Scripture?

***QUOTE***

Your number seven for those who are not Christians: will keep on sinning. I don’t know, have you reached sinless perfection? Do you not have to keep confessing your sins day in and day out? You must not be a Christian!

***END-QUOTE***

My point number seven for the category of those who are not Christians came straight from the words of John as he stated, “No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he is born of God” (1 John 3:9). What is Antonio’s response? His unspoken principle is “John simply can’t mean that!” Rather than making the slightest attempt to address the passage from which the point was taken, Antonio simply speculates the point. His error is unmistakable.

However, his questions reveal his misunderstanding of the point in the first place. Neither John nor I am talking about “sinlessness.” Rather, we are talking about the lifestyle of sin. The ESV renders this verse, “No one born of God makes a practice of sinning.” And John earlier stated in his book, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8). Antonio’s speculations, therefore, are simply distractions.

***QUOTE***

Do you understand what fellowship is? It is participation with God. Any time you sin, you are not walking in fellowship with God. God is only in the light. If you are not participating with Him in the light, guess where you are? You are walking in darkness. Anytime that you sin, you are walking in darkness. You don’t get caught up in any of the sins of the world? When you sin against God, prefering that which comes from the world over Him, you are loving the world and not loving God at that time. Can you say that you are loving God at the same time that you are sinning against Him succumbing to the temptations of the world? Frankly I do not have to go on. If your conscience does not affend you with any of those tests, then there is something wrong.

***END-QUOTE***

Why is Antonio rambling on in this manner? What does this have to do with the information I have presented? Where does this address the principles put forth in 1 John? The only conclusion that I can make from this is that Antonio continues with the error that I am advocating sinlessness as a means of proving one is a Christian. But I have nowhere said this, and Antonio does not have anything relevant to say.

***QUOTE***

You are either sinless or self-righteous. Any sincere look of instrospection using your tests will betray that you are not fulfilling all of those requirements you give for assurance. You can’t have assurance that way! Calvin knew it and Luther knew it and I know it, and you know it. Certain assurance of salvation will never come from looking to works, or from fulfilling your tests.

***END-QUOTE***

Once again, Antonio takes everything that John has to say in his book and throws it in the garbage. Why does he have such little concern for the Word of God? Antonio “claims Calvin.” It is a classic move when enemies of the Reformed position seek to convince their audience via irrelevant argumentation. But Antonio, I have one request: see what Calvin has to say about 1 John. See if he agrees with you there. See if he chucks John’s statements to the ground in speculation.

I have presented assurance from a Biblical perspective. Antonio denies this. But what assurance does he have? His confession of faith? The emotions he experienced as he responded to an altar call? John states, “If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth” (John 1:6). Ignoring for the moment that Antonio will respond with his unspoken principle of “John simply can’t mean that” accompanied with speculation of the phrase “walk in darkness,” we notice that John states that a confession in itself is meaningless unless it is married with “walking in the light.” Obedience demonstrates the veracity of faith. Faith is the means of justification. But obedience demonstrates faith. If faith is not accompanied by obedience, then it is simply not saving faith (James 2:14). John has taken the time to write a letter to us that we might know that we have eternal life. But for some reason, Antonio wishes to disagree with the “these things” that John wrote in order that we might know we are saved. Why someone would wish to do that is beyond me.

Antonio later writes:

***QUOTE***

How do you do that in Reformed theology? Only by persevering in faith. Can you find out that your faith is genuine after one day of believing in Christ? How about a week, a month, a year, 10 years, 3 decades?

…You may only have a spurious faith! Don’t be so presumptuous to assume that your faith is genuine. You haven’t persevered enough, you haven’t passed the tests, your consciousness may be fooling you.

***END-QUOTE***

And thus Antonio misunderstands perseverance. The elect will persevere to the end. But perseverance isn’t the basis of assurance. Faith that saves is. What is the basis of my assurance? My confession of faith. But how do I know that my faith is genuine, saving faith? Via James, John, and the New Testament as a whole, I know that obedience demonstrates the veracity of my confession of faith. How do you know that you have faith that saves verses faith that doesn’t save? Is all faith saving faith in your theology? James asks, “Can that faith save him?” (James 2:14). There is obviously faith that is genuine saving faith and faith that is based upon subjective emotions. Which one do you have, and how do you know it? The unanswered questions stack high.

***QUOTE***

Well, enough of this. I am going to go pray. The notion that a Calvinist can be SURE and CERTAIN of his salvation is, unfortunately, laughable, when the evidence is considered.

***END-QUOTE***

No, what is laughable is that you use the word “evidence” yet have not even made an attempt at addressing the evidence! Until Antonio will address the Biblical texts rather than speculating the Reformed conclusions and eisegeting his assumptions into the texts, he is to be ignored.

Evan May.

Whither Witherington?

Ben Witherington has written a favorable review of Spielberg’s new movie “Munich.” This leads Witherington to venture some comments on warfare generally, and the “war on terror” in particular:

“Secondly, clearly enough the intention of much terrorism is simply to create terror in the heart of one's enemy, so they will enormously over-react, spending money, time, energy, manpower in defensive maneuvers to try and protect one's self from further acts of terror. When one responds in fear like this, the terrorists have already won. It is a good question whether this describes the American response to 9-11. Are we really that much safer with all the billions we have spent since 2001 on airport security and the like? Or would we have been better served pouring the money into eliminating the root causes of terrorism-- injustice, poverty, disenfranchisement, lack of a safe homeland in the Middle East, and the like? There are no easy answers to these questions. And what about a Biblical perspective on terrorism in general and vengeance taking in particular? I will leave you with one thought.”

i) I’m all for a Biblical perspective on terrorism. But what Witherington has written could have been torn from the pages of the New York Times. How does it reflect a Biblical perspective on terrorism to parrot the way in which the liberal secular news media has chosen to frame the debate?

ii) Have we overreacted? Maybe, maybe not. But in what sense have the terrorists won if we fight back?

Does he apply this same reasoning to, say, medical science? If my body is attacked by cancer, and I fight back by undergoing cancer therapy, has the cancer won?

If a region is prone to flooding, and residents combat the problem by taking flood-control measures (e.g., dikes and drainage systems), has the flood won?

This mindless mouthing of other men’s slogans hardly represents a prophetic voice.

iii) The reason airport security is still a joke is because men like Witherington resort to pop sociological theories rather than taking the enemy at his word.

iv) In general, it is arguable that we are safer. When you drive terrorist networks out of their safe havens, pick off high-ranking members of their command structure, dry up their sources of funding, and monitor their communications, surely that does make us safer than if we were doing none of the above.

v) Why does Witherington assume that the root-cause of terrorism is “injustice, poverty, disenfranchisement, lack of a safe homeland in the Middle East, and the like?”

Are those the reasons the terrorists give? Witherington is one of those men who writes about people, and presumes to speak on behalf of others, without bothering to listen to what they themselves are telling us.

vi) Why should American workers be forking over their hard-earned wages to Arabs? Does Witherington think that the paycheck of a middle class American is just play money? That he doesn’t need this to live on and provide for his family?

“I was busy writing a commentary on Matthew when I got to the famous passage in Matthew 18 when Peter asks Jesus how many times must he forgive someone who sins against him. Peter doubtless saw himself as being generous when he said--- seven times, which in Hebrew numerology stands for completion or perfection. Jesus responds by saying not seven times but seven times 70 (or possibly 77 times)-- in other words, continually, as many times as it takes.”

For a skilled commentator, this is remarkably poor exegesis:

i) Peter didn’t ask Jesus how many times he must forgive “someone” who sins against him. Rather, he asked him about a “brother.” A fellow believer.

ii) Moreover, Mt 18 doesn’t teach unconditional forgiveness. It explicitly distinguishes between the treatment accorded to a penitent offender and an impenitent offender.

iii) It is not authorizing third-party forgiveness. Rather, the offended party has the obligation, assuming other conditions are met (a penitent fellow believer), to forgive the offender.

This doesn’t mean that I have the right, much less the obligation, to forgive the killers of the 9/11 victims, or the killers of our soldiers in Iraq. They didn’t wrong me personally. I’m not the injured party. I’m not a surviving family member.

‘This is of course an ethic for the followers of Jesus, not for governments, but still it is a remarkable ethic since the OT is famous for saying "an eye for eye....". It is even more remarkable when one realizes that Jesus is deliberately inverting Gen. 4.24 when Lamech says that if Cain was avenged seven times, he would be avenged 77 times. Jesus' ethic involves stopping the cycle of violence and revenge by forgiveness. Instead of payback, it is a matter of paying it forward, and trying to build a new healed situation. This, unfortunately is not an ethic "Munich" mentions even in passing. Instead, the movie ends with Avner with his family but always looking over his shoulder, and deeply troubled by what he has done. Rightly so--- as the Bible says "vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord, I will repay". Those humans who sow the wind, will one day reep the whirlwind. Let us all ponder these things.’

i) Why does Witherington cast the issue in terms of revenge? The war on terror is not an act of revenge? Rather, it is an act of national self-defense.

ii) How would forgiveness break the “cycle of violence”? If we forgave all the jihadis, would they lay down their arms?

iii) Is Witherington so ignorant of history as to suppose that the use of force never breaks the cycle of violence? To take a stock example, WWII broke the cycle of violence, did it not? No more Third Reich. No more imperial Japan.

“I can conceive of seeing a war like WWII as a lesser of several evils, though I do not think war should ever be glorified. There have however been no wars of this sort in my lifetime so far as I can see, that meet the criteria of 'just war' theory.”

It may be that no war in our lifetime fully satisfies just war criteria. Let us remember that just war criteria were formulated by theologians, not by generals. Maybe we need to revise just-war criteria.

“I have however been on record as saying there are many things worth dying for, but few if anything worth killing for when you are a follower of Jesus. After all, love your enemies can't be construed to ever mean 'love them to death at the point of a gun'. "Thou shalt not kill/murder" is after all a commandment even in the OT.”

This is an amazingly inept argument:

i) Witherington is an Arminian. He believes that God loves everyone. Indeed, that God loves everyone equally. Yet God kills people all the time.

ii) The Mosaic Law had provisions for holy war as well as 18 capital offenses.

iii) The problem is that you can’t be equally loving to everyone. You can’t be equally loving to the child and the child rapist. If you love the child, you must protect the child from the child-rapist.

“ I agree with Merton that I personally would much rather suffer violence than being guilty of the sin of perpetrating it.”

This begs the question of whether an act of violence is always a sin.

“And to Q, I understand the distinction you want to make in regard to counter-terrorism. You may want to call it a lesser evil, but it is still evil.”

This is very confused. When we talk about the lesser of two evils, that doesn’t mean the lesser of two wrongs or the lesser of two sins.

“I think what Jesus requires of his disciples is one thing, public policy another. The individual Christian will have to decide then whether being a soldier or a policeman is compatible with being a follower of someone who instituted an ethic of non-violence and forgiveness. In my case, I don't think it is compatible. Furthermore, I don't believe there is such a thing as a just war, just more and less injustice.”

i) A Christian shouldn’t be a policeman or own a gun? How is it loving to my family to let a rapist break into my home and stand by as he forces himself upon my wife and kids?

ii) Is a military intervention to prevent genocide or a war of liberation to free a brutalized populace an act of injustice?

“Three things--- in the case of the response to Munich, the Israelis first killed 200 innocent Palestinians in a refuge camp in Lebanon BEFORE they went after the terrorists. There is no way you can justify this, even with a proportional response theory.

If I recall the historical allusion, it was Lebanese Christians, not Israeli soldiers, who killed the refugees.

“Thirdly, it is by now clear that Iraq had nothing to do with what happened on 9-11. Remember Osama ben Laden? He does not reside in Iraq. And by the way we found no weapons of mass destruction or any of the perpetrators of 9-11 in Iraq.”

i) Can Witherington quote any member of Bush’s war cabinet who predicated the Iraq war on a direct connection with 9/11? Was WMD the sole reason for going to war?

All you have to do is Google the Congressional war resolution to learn about the official causus belli. Witherington does a lot of research for his commentaries. Is it asking too much that he mouse over to the White House website and familiarize himself with the primary source documents, available online, before he forms his opinions?

ii) BTW, the fact that we didn’t find WMD doesn’t mean they weren’t there before the war. Saddam had 4 months’ lead time to spirit the incriminating evidence out of the country. Were we looking in the right place? What about across the border?

iii) This is not a personal vendetta against bin Laden. Rather, this is a counteroffensive against global jihad.

iv) One of the arguments for war was to drain the swamp, to dry up state sponsors of terrorism. It’s a preemptive war, remember? To prevent the next 9/11.

Witherington may or may not agree with that strategy, but he could at least address himself to the real argument instead of burning down straw men.

It is really inexcusable for intellectuals like Witherington to be so clueless.

This is a developing story which we are seeing in real time. We enjoy saturation coverage. Moreover, every public speech and news story has been archived. You can pull up the record at the click of a mouse.

If Witherington is that ignorant about public events unfolding before his very eyes, for which we have an abundance of documentation, it does make you wonder how reliable he is at reconstructing the past from the scanty state of the evidence.

I say this as someone who is not a big time fan of the Iraq war. But let us at least get our facts straight.

Uncivil liberties

I see that the “Blue Raja” has included a negative allusion to something I wrote. The Blue Raja is an interesting guy with an interesting mind. He’s always worth listening to.

And he’s fully within his rights to take issue with anything I say, or with me personally. But as long as we’re on the subject of civility, it would be more civil of him to be more forthright in what he finds objectionable about what I wrote rather than resorting to coy innuendo.

The Lost Discipline of the Christian Faith: Bible Verse Memorization

by Alan Kurschner

“Excuse me a moment as I look up that verse in my Bible.” Familiar experience? We have been there many times, and the most embarrassing moments have been when they were verses that we should have known by memory. Paradoxically, as accessibility to the Scriptures becomes quicker via Bible software, internet, and PDAs, our mental ability has become more lethargic. But there is hope!

Here is my personal (simple) suggested system for Bible Verse Memorization:

Most people use one standard Bible version for their memorization; I am a bit different in that I like to have two or three versions to use. Every time I come across a verse or a passage that I would like to memorize I copy and paste it to my Word Document by placing it in 14pt Arial font at the top of the page so that all the other previous verses rotate down. Then when I find another verse that I want to memorize I simply copy and paste it and place it at the top of the document above the previous one, and so on. That way the verses at the top of the document are the most recent ones I have memorized.

Now take five or ten minutes in the morning with your devotions and memorize a new verse and/or review the previous ones to keep them fresh on your mind and quick on your tongue. It takes so little effort and in my opinion, it’s fun and fruitful. The important thing is to keep it simple—and do it! So my system is a simple suggestion to start with, in which you may want to modify for your own tastes and purposes overtime.

Recently, I have even began memorizing theologically significant verses from the Greek Bible. I do this not because I want to “show off," but rather I recognize that there are many apologetic and theological issues that are best dealt with on the technical level of the original languages. (One certainly has an edge with Jehovah Witnesses, Muslims, Roman Catholics--and, yes, even Arminians--with a command of the original languages.)

At any rate, the reality is that there may be days that you did not review or learn a new verse. What’s important though is let that be an exception but continue to stay consistent and just make it a habit with your devotions and prayer (memorizing verses, I believe, works best in the morning when the mind is fresh). If you are going to be away from your computer for a few days, then go ahead and print off the whole or a portion of the document and take it with you to review. Remind yourself often why you are memorizing God’s breathed Words:

To savor them in your heart during the day
God commands us
Our own devotional and spiritual benefit
Apologetic sharpness
Setting an example for our children and new believers
And many more reasons that you can discover for yourself…

So after reading this post (with no excuses!) take just two minutes and create a “Bible Verse Memorization” document on your computer and copy and paste your first verse that you want to memorize. And make it a good habit by spending your five or ten minutes memorization exercise as part of your devotions in the morning.

You will be able to delight and savor that God’s Word is in your heart, not just on black and white.

True Assurance: Reformation Theology vs. the "Free Grace" Movement

I was considering responding to the comments of Antonio da Rosa on Jonathan Moorhead’s post “Quote of the Week: Zane Hodges.” However, there were many comments on that post, and it would be difficult to pick one or two that was substantial enough to respond to. In addition, Steve Hays has already taken time to respond to Antonio on a number of issues. Instead, therefore, I am going to respond to Antonio da Rosa’s newer article, “Why Sacrifice for God if You Can’t be Certain that Christ Sacrificed for You?” But more than that, I wish to present assurance from a Biblical perspective. I believe a word that would fairly represent Antonio and his position would be “Antinomian.” Basically, Moorhead had posted a brief critique of the “free grace” movement, and Antonio made noise about it in the comments on that post to such a degree that this particular post has now been passed around in the blogosphere just so that others may read Antonio’s comments! Antonio’s position is Antinomian in the sense that he does not believe in the possibility of false faith; he is against the Christian’s basing his assurance on testing the fruit of his faith. Another word that I would naturally use to describe Antonio’s position is “unbiblical.” Let’s look at what he has to say:

***QUOTE***

Why would anyone want to do works in the name of the blessed Lord Jesus Christ who does not have certain, absolute convinced assurance of eternal life, his right-standing before God, and his salvation? (Pause for you to actually consider this and give a good answer)…

The Calvinist cannot know for certain that he is saved! Why?

1) Due to the fact of their Perseverance theology. Only true believers will persevere in faith and obedient works until the end; so unless he is on his death bed (and not even then will it be certain because of their sins), he cannot have any certain assurance that he is saved.

***END-QUOTE***

This is not only ridiculous, but it is simply a misrepresentation. Calvinists do not base assurance on perseverance. Rather, they base perseverance on assurance. If the faith is genuine, then it will continue to the end, without question. Therefore, the first thing to discover is whether or not the faith is genuine, not whether or not you will persevere to the end.

Before we continue to look at what Antonio has to say, I’d like to present assurance from a Biblical perspective. This way, when we see Antonio both misunderstand and misrepresent Biblical assurance, we can point it out with ease. A good book of the Bible for Antonio to read over and over again is the book of 1 John. And Antonio, don’t read it with the perspective of, “John simply can’t mean that.” Rather, let it say what it is saying. 1 John is a very interesting book. Books like Romans, Ephesians, or Galatians systematize the gospel. However, books like 1 John and James want us to make sure that we are applying the gospel to our daily lives. Ephesians tells us that we are saved by grace through faith. But 1 John has us question whether or not we truly possess that faith. And John tells us in his book that the purpose of his writing is assurance:

1 John 5:13 I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life.

John writes these things to us that we might have assurance. The question is, what are these things? John lays out two positions: those who are in the light, and those who aren’t. For him, there is no in between. You are either in the light or you are not. Consider the comparison:

Those who are not Christians:
1. Those who walk in darkness
2. Those who walk in darkness and deny it
3. Not just a liar, but a disobedient liar!
4. Those who hate others
5. Those who love the world
6. Those who do not believe that Jesus is the Son of God
7. Those who keep on sinning
8. Those who do not love

True believers:
1. Believers love the light
2. They love obeying
3. They love others
4. They love Jesus
5. They love righteousness
6. They love purity
7. Pure and simple: they love

John very frankly states, “No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him” (3:6) and “Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness” (2:9). But our response is “but John just can’t mean that!” Let’s not run to Galatians or Romans. Let’s make sure that the gospel is being applied to our lives. John knows that obedience demonstrates the veracity of our confession of faith. This is Biblical assurance. It isn’t just that we claim to have faith, for John states, “Whoever says ‘I know him’ but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him” (2:4). Our faith is demonstrated in obedience. Faith that is not accompanied with the fruit of faith is not saving faith. James asks the question concerning fruitless faith, “Can that faith save him?” (James 2:14). This is certainly not salvation by works (as I know that Antonio will claim). But it is Biblical faith and assurance thereof.

Having laid this foundation, we continue to respond to what Antonio has to say:

***QUOTE***

2) Calvinism grounds its own brand of uncertain assurance of salvation on 3 things, 2 of which are completely subjective. One is the inner witness of the Spirit. But I ask, how exactly are we to know that it is the Spirit, and not an agent of Satan, who transformed himself into a minister of light; or the mind playing tricks on us; or some bout of emotionalism; or even the pastrami sandwich eaten for lunch? The second subjective ground is the introspection of self: the looking to one’s works and present sanctification. My experience is that there are one of two results when looking at one’s self as a base for assurance: a) self-righteousness and b) despair caused by musing on one’s sins.

***END-QUOTE***

It is amazing how John emphatically disagrees with Antonio’s conclusions. John wrote that we might know that we are saved, and he gave us a means of testing our faith.

***QUOTE***

So why would a Calvinist work for God if he is not certain he is saved? Why else other than that they believe that they must persevere in faith and good works until the end of life to actually gain “final salvation”!? That this is works-salvation is evident, but this has been discussed in other posts of mine. Here we are talking about assurance, and I am going to keep it on track.

***END-QUOTE***

Why is it that Antonio persistently asserts that Calvinists cannot be certain on the matter of their salvation? I have not read a single Calvinist who has ever stated that he is not certain that he is saved. John wrote that we might know, that we might be certain. The fact that Biblical faith is accompanied by Biblical works does not mean that assurance is thrown out the window, and for some reason Antonio does not understand this. After Antonio quotes some Reformed theologians, he states:

***QUOTE***

These quotes betray the utter bankruptcy of the Reformed theology to:

1) Relate to its adherents a certainty that they have been accepted by God, justified, and given eternal life. Doubts necessarily must abound. Some authors even claim that doubts can be good so that they will motivate us to good works and perseverance (apparently by fear of hell).

***END-QUOTE***

A few of the statements that John makes would rightly cause someone to question his salvation. This is indeed a good thing. However, the true Christian either passes the test, or repents if he is in sin. Questioning salvation does not add uncertainty on the matter of assurance. Rather, John makes it clear: you are either in the light, or you are not in the light. There is no in-between. At the end of the examination, you either pass, or you fail; and you know your own score.

***QUOTE***

2) Provide one of the greatest motivators for godly living: certainty of salvation! What are we left with here? Reformed people’s motivation is to work hard enough in order to gain some shadow of assurance, and thus make some conjecture that they may be saved. Instead of working out of gratitude that God has certainly saved them, they must work for God and persevere until the end for final salvation to be theirs!

How can you work for God if you are not certain that your name is written in the Book of life? Is that not like investing in a company that may not be yours; tricking out a car that may be repossessed at any time; devoting to a woman who hasn’t affirmed that she is your wife?

***END-QUOTE***

Again Antonio makes at least two errors:

1. He continues to insist that the Calvinist has no certainty concerning his salvation. This is simply a lie.

2. He claims that “Reformed people’s motivation is to work hard enough in order to gain some shadow of assurance, and thus make some conjecture that they may be saved.” This is as well false. We work because we know we have been saved. We do not work in order to be saved, or even in order to know we are saved. Rather, genuine faith will produce genuine works.

The article continues a bit further, but I would merely be repeating myself over and over again. Antonio simply persists in committing the above two errors. I have already presented assurance from a Biblical perspective, and if Antonio wishes to respond to anything he can respond to that.

Evan May.

[HT:Gene Bridges]

Carnal security

A while back, Jonathan Moorehead invited me to interact with Antonio Rosa, an antinomian, who had been picking a fight with Moorehead over at his blog (http://jmoorhead.blogspot.com/).

I posted a comment, but for a couple of reasons I didn’t pursue the debate any further:

i) I had more pressing priorities at the time.

ii) As a rule, when I critique a position I generally prefer to comment on a distinguished representative of the opposing position.

Due, however, to Antonio’s ubiquity in the Reformed blogosphere, as well as the fact that there are no distinguished representatives of his position, and the further fact that he is, in any event, recycling the arguments of Zane Hodges he’s as good (or bad) a spokesman as any; so it may be worthwhile to briefly review and rebut his attacks on Calvinism.

From what I can tell, Antonio is a one-trick pony. He reiterates the same few arguments ad nauseum, so there’s really not much to say by way of reply.

I.CALVIN V. THE CALVINISTS

Antonio rehashes R. T. Kendall’s old discredited thesis that Calvin and the Puritans held opposing views of assurance. For three reasons, I’m not going to revisit that debate:

i) The first question we should be asking ourselves is not, “What does Calvin teach?’ but “What does Scripture teach?”

ii) Antonio feels free to disagree with Calvin whenever he chooses, so he’s hardly a model of consistency in his selective appeal to Calvin.

iii) Kendall’s thesis has been rebutted by the likes of Helm, Muller, and Nicole.

II.FAITH & WORKS

Antonio accuses Calvinism of teaching that we are saved by works. But on several grounds, this allegation is simple-minded.

i) Antonio’s accusation suffers from a basic equivocation of terms. He shifts back and forth between justification by faith and salvation by faith as if justification and salvation were interchangeable. But they are not. Salvation is a broader category than justification. Salvation is inclusive of justification, but salvation is not reducible to justification.

Calvinism affirms that we are justified by faith alone, but denies that we are saved by faith alone. Rather, the Reformed formulation is that we are justified by faith and saved by grace.

ii) The standard Pauline formula is that we are justified by faith, not that we are saved by faith. Grace is the source of faith and salvation alike.

A possible exception is Eph 2:8. However, O’Brien regards this as a subjective genitive construction, alluding to the faithfulness of Christ. Cf. The Letter to the Ephesians (Eerdmans 1999), 175.

Furthermore, Eph 2:10 says that believers were foreordained to do good works.

iii) Antonio doesn’t really believe that we are saved by faith alone. Rather, his position is that a one-time believer can become an unbeliever and still be saved in his state of impenitent unbelief. So, for Antonio, unbelievers can be saved as well.

iv) Antonio is a functional Unitarian. He confines the grace of God to the objective work of Christ. For Antonio, divine grace is limited to what God does for us, not in us.

By contrast, Calvinism denies that we are saved by the work of Christ alone. In Calvinism, the work of salvation involves a Trinitarian division of labor: those whom the Father chose the Son redeemed and the Spirit renews.

Antonio has no use for the work of the Father or the Spirit. All that matters to him is the objective work of Christ. The subjective work of the Spirit in regeneration and sanctification is optional and expendable.

v) In Calvinism, we are not saved by our own works. Rather, we are saved by the work of God. We are saved by the Father’s eternal work of election, by the Son’s historic work of redemption, and by the Spirit’s providential work of renewal. Unless the Spirit is working within us, we are unregenerate.

III. ASSURANCE

i) Antonio denies that a Calvinist can be sure of his own salvation. The flaw in his argument is the failure to distinguish between rational and irrational doubt.

Take the case of a husband who suspects that his wife is unfaithful to him. This can take two forms:

a) He may doubt his wife’s fidelity because she has been acting in a suspicious manner. She has become emotionally aloof. When he comes home unexpectedly, he doesn’t find her there. She has taken out a credit card without telling him. There are charges to a local motel. She has taken out a cell phone account without telling him. There are many calls to a number he hasn’t seen before. When he dials the number, a stange man answers the phone.

b) He may be insanely jealous. He has no concrete evidence that his wife is fooling around. She is affectionate. She can always account for her whereabouts, for her purchases, and so on.

But he’s consumed by the thought that she might be having an affair, and covering her tracks. He secretly hires a private detective to monitor her every word and move.

His behavior takes a toll on the marriage. It begins to alienate his wife. This he takes as confirmation of his original suspicions.

Now, because God has endowed us with a capacity for abstract reason, we can dream up all sorts of dubious scenarios.

But that’s a misuse of reason. To doubt yourself simply because it’s abstractly possible to imagine that you were wrong is not a rational basis for self-doubt. You need to have some positive evidence to justify your anxieties.

ii) Antonio’s objection either proves too much or too little. For the objection can be applied to his own position. Faith is a subjective state of mind. Belief admits degrees of certainty and uncertainty. Belief may be a temporary state of mind. It is possible to misinterpret the Bible.

To say that we’re saved by faith alone does not remove the subjective dimension of assurance or the uncertainties and vicissitudes that can attach to that mental state.

iii) Where assurance is concerned, there is no arbitrary standard. Rather, we are entitled to no more or less a level of assurance than God has promised us.

Sometimes self-doubt is a good thing. It spares us from presumption and false assurance. At other times, self-doubt is a bad thing, bordering on paranoia and self-delusion.

There is no fact-free formula that applies to everyone all the time.

IV.PROOFTEXTING

Antonio is fond of quoting Jn 6:47 & 11:25-26. The fallacy lies with his willfully selective and lopsided appeal to Scripture. A sound belief-system must be able to integrate the total witness of Scripture. Isolated prooftexting can prove anything. Even the devil can quote Scripture.

The Calvinist parts company with the antinomian because the Calvinist also honors what the Bible has to say about sanctification and apostasy.

BTW, I’ve already read Kendall and Hodges, Stanley and Ryrie, &c. I know what passes for exegesis.

Revenge & retribution

"Munich" and revenge

Jan 10, 2006
by Dennis Prager

Nearly every review of the Steven Spielberg film "Munich," especially those that are sympathetic to the film's "stop the cycle of violence" message, describes the movie as a story about Israeli "revenge" for the Palestinian murder of the Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

In so doing they reveal their instinctive ambivalence, if not antagonism, toward what Israel did: sending out a hit team to kill those involved in the Munich massacre.

So let's deal with this whole question of revenge and the widespread assumption -- from the secular Left to the religious Right -- that revenge is by definition morally wrong.

Revenge is defined by the Cambridge University dictionary as "harm done to someone as a punishment for harm that they have done to you." Now, in general, especially in personal life, this is not a good policy. If someone steps on your toe, it is not wise or good to do the same to him.

However, the desire to see identical harm inflicted on the evildoer is not only not wrong, it is at the essence of an empathetic, moral and just heart and conscience. What sort of person reads what a torturer did to an innocent victim and doesn't want to see that torturer suffer? Those who have no desire to see such people suffer commensurate with the evil they have inflicted have blunted the natural human desire for justice.

And talking about justice, what sort of justice would it have been for Israel not to seek the death of the murderers of their athletes? Would the world be a finer, kinder, let alone more just, place if all those murderers had been allowed to live?

That argument is never advanced in the screenplay of "Munich." Instead, all the arguments put into the mouths of the Israeli hit team are about "Jewish blood is not cheap" and other nationalistic -- as opposed to moral -- defenses. This is because the chief writer, Tony Kushner, is a man of the Left; and the Left has lost its hatred of evil, its ability to recognize evil and, most of all, any desire to wage war against it.

That's why the movie is a paean to "stop the cycle of violence." Its leftist writers and well-intentioned but naive director reduce wars against perpetrators of evil to "seeking revenge" or becoming "no better than their enemies," and other cliches that literally demoralize wars fought by good societies. The same arguments are given by the same people against executing murderers: "When we kill murderers, we are no better than them." As if killing Timothy McVeigh was morally equivalent to his murder of innocents in Oklahoma City.

Of course, none of this means that all revenge is moral. When revenge is unjust -- if, for example, the Israelis had murdered a group of Palestinian athletes -- it is immoral.

But what could be more just, more moral, than Israel targeting only the murderers for death? Though the film attempts to portray the Israeli response as morally useless -- with "cycle of violence" and "it accomplishes nothing since they just substitute a new terrorist for the one last killed" arguments -- the film is nevertheless a tremendous compliment to the Israelis.

First, it shows how careful the Israelis were to kill only the murderers (though the Israeli hit team did in fact kill one innocent Moroccan in Norway, which is not shown in the film).

Second, while the Israelis are constantly asking themselves if they are doing what is right, there is not a hint of moral self-inquiry among the Palestinians. For good reason.

So while the film is dedicated to the proposition that men involved in killing murderers become themselves morally inferior beings and therefore pay a great personal price for their war on evil, the facts of the film, as opposed to the made-up dialogue, suggest quite the opposite: That the world is a better place when revenge and justice are the same.

http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/dennisprager/2006/01/10/181666.html

Evidence, Anachronisms, and John Salza

Awhile back I posted “Why RC Apologists Will Never Be Exegetes” which highlighted some of the assumptions in John Salza’s response to Randy Blackaby’s article, “Mary: Evolving Doctrine or Eternal Truth.” [For a similar post, check out “Sola Scriptura, the Early Church, and Some Blog Comments” for my interaction with commenter “Bob.”] Well, John Salza stopped by my blog yesterday and left this comment on that post:

***QUOTE***

Dear Mr. May:

I read your criticisms of my rebuttal to Mr. Blackaby’s article “The Evolving Doctrine of Mary.” You have revealed many prejudices in your treatment of my rebuttal.

For example, you say that I anachronistically read the Catholic Church back into history. Interesting. Tell me why the Church is referred to as “Catholic” as early as 107 A.D. by Ignatius? Why did the rest of the Fathers refer to the Church as One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic? Since I can prove that there is an unbroken lineage of successors to the chair of Peter which ends with the current Pope Benedict XVI, the burden is on you to prove that the Catholic Church of the first century is not the Catholic Church of today.

You say that I have not provided the slightest bit of evidence for Marian dogmas, and yet I provided quotes from the first five centuries of the Church to support my contentions (and with which Mr. Blackaby failed to interact). Again, Mr. May, the burden is on you to provide rebuttal evidence; otherwise, you are simply advancing your own unfounded opinions. Let’ all be honest in these dialogues, shall we?

John Salza

***END-QUOTE***

I certainly did not expect for Mr. Salza to 1) find my post 2) comment on my post. I am, of course, glad that he did. I do not wish to repeat what I have already said in two posts. I would, however, like to point out a few things in this comment by Salza:

I read your criticisms of my rebuttal to Mr. Blackaby’s article “The Evolving Doctrine of Mary.” You have revealed many prejudices in your treatment of my rebuttal.

I’m curious what Salza means by “prejudices.” Is he talking about presuppositions? Or is he talking about unjustified, or even hateful bias? The latter would simply be incorrect. The former would need to be necessarily justified. Let’s see how he follows this:

For example, you say that I anachronistically read the Catholic Church back into history. Interesting. Tell me why the Church is referred to as “Catholic” as early as 107 A.D. by Ignatius? Why did the rest of the Fathers refer to the Church as One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic?

What irony! As Mr. Salza claims that he has, in fact, not, anachronistically read the Roman church back into history, he does exactly that! Yes, the church is referred to as “Catholic” as early as 107 A.D. In fact, I would say that the true church is the Catholic church. But it is simply an anachronism to read back the modern Roman Church into the term “Catholic,” or into the term “mass” or the phrase “bishop of Rome.” Such type of argumentation is simply ridiculous. We could do the same thing with any term. A Mormon could anachronistically read the LDS church into the phrase “prophet.” Does Salza accept such argumentation from an LDS apologist? If not, then why does he utilize it?

The same is the case when it comes to “One” or “Apostolic.” Yes, the Nicene fathers affirmed an apostolic church in the since that it was built upon and conforming to the teachings of the Apostles as seen in Scripture. To read into the word “Apostolic” the concept of an apostolic succession is simply anachronistic.

Since I can prove that there is an unbroken lineage of successors to the chair of Peter which ends with the current Pope Benedict XVI, the burden is on you to prove that the Catholic Church of the first century is not the Catholic Church of today.

1. This is simply backwards logic. You can’t start with the assumption that the Roman Church equals the early Church. You must first look at the Scriptures, look at the early Church, and then conclude if the Roman Church matches up. In any case, such proof has already been provided. Both Scripture and the early Fathers emphatically disagree with your basis of authority. Any thing else flows from that, and that is where one needs to start.

2. You simply cannot prove that there is “an unbroken lineage of successors to the chair of Peter which ends with the current Pope Benedict XVI” without utilizing an anachronism. That is, you will no doubt read back the papacy into the concept of a bishop in the first few centuries. Unless you have evidence that no other RC Apologist has ever presented, you cannot prove what you claim to be able to prove. Additionally, could you provide me citation of the Ante-Nicene church affirming such doctrines as papal infallibility or the Imaculate Conception?

3. On the side of the negative,

Tertullian, Origen, and Cyprian all related Mt. 16 to Peter. They all disagree with Rome. Tertullian said Peter is the rock through his preaching. Origen said Peter is the rock because he allegorically represents all Christians, and all who follow Jesus are “rocks.” Cyprian said Peter is the rock, because he represents the entire episcopate, and, because of this, no single bishop has authority to interfere in the episcopate of another. Cyprian’s view is closest to Rome, but Rome, contrary to Cyprian, infers that the Bishop of Rome rules over all other bishops and all the sees are dependent on Rome. Cyprian says that all the bishops are independent of one another and Rome.In fact all of them unanimously disagree with Rome’s interpretation of Matt. 16 and the parallel passage in Luke. So is your lineage unbroken?

You say that I have not provided the slightest bit of evidence for Marian dogmas, and yet I provided quotes from the first five centuries of the Church to support my contentions (and with which Mr. Blackaby failed to interact). Again, Mr. May, the burden is on you to provide rebuttal evidence; otherwise, you are simply advancing your own unfounded opinions. Let’ all be honest in these dialogues, shall we?

I personally did not interact with your citations in my blog articles because I was more concerned with your authority. The utilization of both backwards logic and the anachronism permeated your response. For instance, you said, “If Mr. Blackaby disagrees, then have him produce just one quote from the first five centuries of the Church that denied Mary was sinless.” But this is simply backwards. We aren’t supposed to assume that Mary was sinless and then attempt to prove it wrong. Rather, it must first be established.

When it comes down to Scriptural authority, you utilize the same constantly-refuted prooftexts. Nothing is new. And when that Scriptural authority is questioned, you appeal to tradition. So this is indeed, as I pointed out in my last two articles, a matter of authority. And I have offered rebuttal evidence concerning this matter. So, Mr. Salza, Let’s be honest in these dialogues, shall we?

Evan May.

Judge Alito's opening statement

My father was brought to this country as an infant. He lost his mother as a teenager. He grew up in poverty.

Although he graduated at the top of his high school class, he had no money for college. And he was set to work in a factory but, at the last minute, a kind person in the Trenton area arranged for him to receive a $50 scholarship and that was enough in those days for him to pay the tuition at a local college and buy one used suit. And that made the difference between his working in a factory and going to college.

After he graduated from college in 1935, in the midst of the Depression, he found that teaching jobs for Italian-Americans were not easy to come by and he had to find other work for a while.

But eventually he became a teacher and he served in the Pacific during World War II. And he worked, as has been mentioned, for many years in a nonpartisan position for the New Jersey legislature, which was an institution that he revered.

His story is a story that is typical of a lot of Americans both back in his day and today. And it is a story, as far as I can see it, about the opportunities that our country offers, and also about the need for fairness and about hard work and perseverance and the power of a small good deed.

My mother is a first-generation American. Her father worked in the Roebling Steel Mill in Trenton, New Jersey. Her mother came from a culture in which women generally didn't even leave the house alone, and yet my mother became the first person in her family to get a college degree.

She worked for more than a decade before marrying. She went to New York City to get a master's degree. And she continued to work as a teacher and a principal until she was forced to retire.

Both she and my father instilled in my sister and me a deep love of learning.

I got here in part because of the community in which I grew up. It was a warm, but definitely an unpretentious, down-to-earth community. Most of the adults in the neighborhood were not college graduates. I attended the public schools. In my spare time, I played baseball and other sports with my friends.

And I have happy memories and strong memories of those days and good memories of the good sense and the decency of my friends and my neighbors.

And after I graduated from high school, I went a full 12 miles down the road, but really to a different world when I entered Princeton University. A generation earlier, I think that somebody from my background probably would not have felt fully comfortable at a college like Princeton. But, by the time I graduated from high school, things had changed.

And this was a time of great intellectual excitement for me. Both college and law school opened up new worlds of ideas. But this was back in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

It was a time of turmoil at colleges and universities. And I saw some very smart people and very privileged people behaving irresponsibly. And I couldn't help making a contrast between some of the worst of what I saw on the campus and the good sense and the decency of the people back in my own community.

The role of a practicing attorney is to achieve a desirable result for the client in the particular case at hand. But a judge can't think that way. A judge can't have any agenda, a judge can't have any preferred outcome in any particular case and a judge certainly doesn't have a client.

The judge's only obligation _ and it's a solemn obligation _ is to the rule of law. And what that means is that in every single case, the judge has to do what the law requires.

Good judges develop certain habits of mind. One of those habits of mind is the habit of delaying reaching conclusions until everything has been considered.

Good judges are always open to the possibility of changing their minds based on the next brief that they read, or the next argument that's made by an attorney who's appearing before them, or a comment that is made by a colleague during the conference on the case when the judges privately discuss the case.

Saddam's Terror Training Camps

Saddam's Terror Training Camps

by Stephen F. Hayes
01/16/2006, Volume 011, Issue 17


THE FORMER IRAQI REGIME OF Saddam Hussein trained thousands of radical Islamic terrorists from the region at camps in Iraq over the four years immediately preceding the U.S. invasion, according to documents and photographs recovered by the U.S. military in postwar Iraq. The existence and character of these documents has been confirmed to THE WEEKLY STANDARD by eleven U.S. government officials.

The secret training took place primarily at three camps--in Samarra, Ramadi, and Salman Pak--and was directed by elite Iraqi military units. Interviews by U.S. government interrogators with Iraqi regime officials and military leaders corroborate the documentary evidence. Many of the fighters were drawn from terrorist groups in northern Africa with close ties to al Qaeda, chief among them Algeria's GSPC and the Sudanese Islamic Army. Some 2,000 terrorists were trained at these Iraqi camps each year from 1999 to 2002, putting the total number at or above 8,000. Intelligence officials believe that some of these terrorists returned to Iraq and are responsible for attacks against Americans and Iraqis. According to three officials with knowledge of the intelligence on Iraqi training camps, White House and National Security Council officials were briefed on these findings in May 2005; senior Defense Department officials subsequently received the same briefing.

The photographs and documents on Iraqi training camps come from a collection of some 2 million "exploitable items" captured in postwar Iraq and Afghanistan. They include handwritten notes, typed documents, audiotapes, videotapes, compact discs, floppy discs, and computer hard drives. Taken together, this collection could give U.S. intelligence officials and policymakers an inside look at the activities of the former Iraqi regime in the months and years before the Iraq war.

The discovery of the information on jihadist training camps in Iraq would seem to have two major consequences: It exposes the flawed assumptions of the experts and U.S. intelligence officials who told us for years that a secularist like Saddam Hussein would never work with Islamic radicals, any more than such jihadists would work with an infidel like the Iraqi dictator. It also reminds us that valuable information remains buried in the mountain of documents recovered in Afghanistan and Iraq over the past four years.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/006/550kmbzd.asp

Crime, Punishment, and the Insane Suppression of the Truth

Richard Dawkins, in an embarrassing attempt to respond to the death penalty or prolonged punishment for criminals in general, has shown that God has truly made *mincemeat* out of the thinking of the world:

***QUOTE***

Ask people why they support the death penalty or prolonged incarceration for serious crimes, and the reasons they give will usually involve retribution. There may be passing mention of deterrence or rehabilitation, but the surrounding rhetoric gives the game away. People want to kill a criminal as payback for the horrible things he did. Or they want to give “satisfaction” to the victims of the crime or their relatives. An especially warped and disgusting application of the flawed concept of retribution is Christian crucifixion as “atonement” for “sin.”

***END-QUOTE***

The definition of justice is, “Giving every man what he is due.” The principle of justice is based upon balance: when someone wrongs another, he has created a moral imbalance and is due punishment. Therefore, even from a secular perspective (or from the founding fathers or any book with the title Crime and Punishment), the concept of justice (on which the whole system of the courts is based) emphatically disagrees with Dawkins’ position.

The Christian, however, has a much more objective basis for crime and punishment. The one who bears “the sword” is “the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer” (Romans 13:4). This is, of course, an issue of worldviews; and when it comes down to presuppositions, the frank conclusion is that Dawkins has absolutely no rational basis for his utilization of the judicial system. But the least he could do is represent the Christian position accurately, that is, if he is going to randomly attack it in his response to punishment.

***QUOTE***

Retribution as a moral principle is incompatible with a scientific view of human behaviour. As scientists, we believe that human brains, though they may not work in the same way as man-made computers, are as surely governed by the laws of physics. When a computer malfunctions, we do not punish it. We track down the problem and fix it, usually by replacing a damaged component, either in hardware or software.

***END-QUOTE***

The amount of presuppositions in this single paragraph should be noted:

1. Dawkins considers humans and machines to be on the same moral level
2. Dawkins believes that wrongdoing is simply a malfunction in the “computer” of the mind
3. Dawkins believes that the judicial system is meant to “fix a problem” rather than punish crime

But Dawkins fails to justify any of these presuppositions. Rather, he continues to assert these presuppositions throughout this entire article.

***QUOTE***

Basil Fawlty, British television’s hotelier from hell created by the immortal John Cleese, was at the end of his tether when his car broke down and wouldn’t start. He gave it fair warning, counted to three, gave it one more chance, and then acted. “Right! I warned you. You’ve had this coming to you!” He got out of the car, seized a tree branch and set about thrashing the car within an inch of its life. Of course we laugh at his irrationality. Instead of beating the car, we would investigate the problem. Is the carburettor flooded? Are the sparking plugs or distributor points damp? Has it simply run out of gas? Why do we not react in the same way to a defective man: a murderer, say, or a rapist? Why don’t we laugh at a judge who punishes a criminal, just as heartily as we laugh at Basil Fawlty? Or at King Xerxes who, in 480 BC, sentenced the rough sea to 300 lashes for wrecking his bridge of ships? Isn’t the murderer or the rapist just a machine with a defective component? Or a defective upbringing? Defective education? Defective genes?

***END-QUOTE***

Well, as Dawkins asserts his presuppositions, he shows his irrationality. To Dawkins, the mechanical make up of a car is equal to the mind of a human. But there are many things that we punish humans for that we don’t punish cars for.

In any case, I am fine with “correcting the problem.” But let’s not make that our basis for the judicial system. The fact is that all humans have been diagnosed with the problem called indwelling sin. Government exists because it knows that man possesses this problem. The purpose of government is to both punish wrongdoing and reward good. Yes, government seeks to make life peaceful. But ultimately, government is based upon morality. Any other conclusion would not be rationally based. Dawkins later states:

***QUOTE***

Why is it that we humans find it almost impossible to accept such conclusions? Why do we vent such visceral hatred on child murderers, or on thuggish vandals, when we should simply regard them as faulty units that need fixing or replacing? Presumably because mental constructs like blame and responsibility, indeed evil and good, are built into our brains by millennia of Darwinian evolution. Assigning blame and responsibility is an aspect of the useful fiction of intentional agents that we construct in our brains as a means of short-cutting a truer analysis of what is going on in the world in which we have to live. My dangerous idea is that we shall eventually grow out of all this and even learn to laugh at it, just as we laugh at Basil Fawlty when he beats his car. But I fear it is unlikely that I shall ever reach that level of enlightenment.

***END-QUOTE***

Dawkins asks, “Why do we vent such visceral hatred on child murderers, or on thuggish vandals, when we should simply regard them as faulty units that need fixing or replacing?” The rational mind responds with, “Why should we?” He has not told us why we should “simply regard them as faulty units that need fixing or replacing.” He has merely assumed it, and from that principle based his entire position. The whole thing crumbles because of this one unjustified assumption.

Evan May.

[HT: James White]

Art imitates life

Christians regularly assail the media for defaming the Christian faith in movies and TV shows. NBC’s “The Book of Daniel” is a case in point.

But the painful irony of this particular show is that TV producers and screenwriters did not have to distort or caricature the facts to create this show. For those of us who have been charting the death throes of the Anglican Communion, this show is unfortunately all too representative of the Episcopal Church.

I don’t deny that this show is yet another attack on the Christian faith. And I don’t deny that there are many God-fearing Episcopalians.

But, to be honest, the screenwriters could have lifted their lines and storylines verbatim from the lips and lives of many liberal Episcopal prelates. The show is painfully true to faith and practice of the mainline denominations. In this case, art imitates life.

And in its own way, TBN, with preachers who dress like pimps and gigolos, and women who dress like Bette Davis as Baby Jane, is just as bad as anything as anything Norman Lear could ever dream up.

***QUOTE***

Two Stations Won't Air 'Book of Daniel' By RACHEL ZOLL, AP Religion Writer
Fri Jan 6, 7:20 AM ET

NEW YORK - Two television stations are refusing to broadcast a new NBC series about an Episcopal priest who abuses painkillers, has a gay son, a promiscuous straight son, a daughter who deals marijuana, and a wife who drinks too much.

Conservative Christian groups have condemned the depiction of Jesus as blasphemous, accusing the writers of portraying Christ as tolerant of sin in talks with the priest.

NBC affiliates KARK in Little Rock, Ark., and WTWO in Terre Haute, Ind., said sensitivity to viewers led them not to air "The Book of Daniel," which debuts Friday. In Little Rock, the WB affiliate has arranged to show the drama instead.

"If my action causes people in our community to pay more attention to what they watch on television, I have accomplished my mission," Duane Lammers, WTWO's general manager, said in a statement on his station's Web site.

The series stars Aidan Quinn as the Rev. Daniel Webster, who discusses his many troubles in regular chats with a robe-wearing, bearded Jesus. The American Family Association, in Tupelo, Miss., and Focus on the Family, the Colorado Springs group led by James Dobson, are asking supporters to lobby their local NBC affiliate to drop the show.

In a statement Thursday, NBC said, "We're confident that once audiences view this quality drama themselves, they'll appreciate this thought-provoking examination of one American family."

But the American Family Association said the series was another sign of NBC's "anti-Christian bigotry." Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, an anti-defamation group, called the series the "work of an embittered ex-Catholic homosexual."

The show's creator and executive producer, Jack Kenny, said he drew on the emotionally guarded family of his male partner for the series. He said his goal was to depict how "humor and grace" help a flawed man struggle with his faith and family. He said the writers never meant to mock religion or Jesus.

However, Bob Waliszewski, of Focus on the Family's teen ministries, said the show portrayed Christ as a "namby-pamby frat boy who basically winks at every sin and perversity under the sun."

"When the pastor's teen son is sexually active and having many romps with his 15-year-old girlfriend, this Jesus says, `A kid has to be a kid,'" Waliszewski said. "I don't think NBC would have portrayed a Muslim cleric or a Buddhist monk, the Dalai Lama, in a show this way. Why? Because they know to do so would be mean-spirited and insensitive."

James Naughton, a spokesman for the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, D.C., said a California Episcopal church is advising the series.

Naughton has read scripts for eight episodes and acknowledged that viewers could take away a troubling message about people of faith, instead of a positive one about overcoming temptation. Still, he said it was "a tremendous opportunity for evangelism for Episcopalians." The Washington Diocese has started a blog to comment on the show and invite discussion.

"To me, this is good for us no matter how it comes out because if people are talking about what Episcopalians are like, it creates tremendous opportunities for us to say, `Here's what we actually are like,'" Naughton said.

***END-QUOTE***

The sky is falling!

Ian Plimer: Global warming a damp squib

January 05, 2006

HEAT, bushfires. Just another Australian summer, some hotter, some wetter, some cooler, some drier. As per usual, the northern hemisphere freezes and the blame game is in overdrive. At the 2005 UN Climate Change Conference in Montreal, Greenpeace's Steven Guilbeault stated: "Global warming can mean colder, it can mean drier, it can mean wetter, that's what we're dealing with."

It is that simple! If it's hot, it's global warming; if it's cold, it's global warming. Demonstrators in frigid temperatures in Montreal chanted: "It's hot in here! There's too much carbon in the atmosphere!" The same apocalyptic Guilbeault says: "Time is running out to deal with climate change. Ten years ago, we thought we had a lot of time, five years ago we thought we had a lot of time, but now science is telling us that we don't have a lot of time." Really.

In 1992, Greenpeace's Henry Kendall gave us the Chicken Little quote, "Time is running out"; in 1994, The Irish Times tried to frighten the leprechauns with "Time running out for action on global warming, Greenpeace claims"; and in 1997 Chris Rose of Greenpeace maintained the religious mantra with "Time is running out for the climate". We've heard such failed catastrophist predictions before. The Club of Rome on resources, Paul Erlich on population, Y2K, and now Greenpeace on global warming.

During the past 30 years, the US economy grew by 50 per cent, car numbers grew by 143 per cent, energy consumption grew by 45 per cent and air pollutants declined by 29 per cent, toxic emissions by 48.5 per cent, sulphur dioxide levels by 65.3 per cent and airborne lead by 97.3 per cent. Most European signatories to the Kyoto Protocol had greenhouse gas emissions increase since 2001, whereas in the US emissions fell by nearly 1per cent. Furthermore, carbon credits rewarded Russia, (east) Germany and Britain, which had technically and economically backward energy production in 1990.

By the end of this century, the demographically doomed French, Italians and Spaniards may have too few environmentalists to fund Greenpeace's business. So what really does Greenpeace want? A habitable environment with no humans left to inhabit it? Destruction of the major economies for .07C change?


Does it matter if sea level rises a few metres or global temperatures rise a few degrees? No. Sea level changes by up to 400m, atmospheric temperatures by about 20C, carbon dioxide can vary from 20 per cent to 0.03 per cent, and our dynamic planet just keeps evolving. Greenpeace, contrary to scientific data, implies a static planet. Even if the sea level rises by metres, it is probably cheaper to address this change than reconstruct the world's economies.

For about 80 per cent of the time since its formation, Earth has been a warm, wet, greenhouse planet with no icecaps. When Earth had icecaps, the climate was far more variable, disease depopulated human settlements and extinction rates of other complex organisms were higher. Thriving of life and economic strength occurs during warm times. Could Greenpeace please explain why there was a pre-Industrial Revolution global warming from AD900 to 1300? Why was the sea level higher 6000 years ago than it is at present? Which part of the 120m sea-level rise over the past 15,000 years is human-induced? To attribute a multicomponent, variable natural process such as climate change to human-induced carbon emissions is pseudo-science.

There is no debate about climate change, only dogma and misinformation. For example, is there a link between hurricanes Katrina and Rita and global warming? Two hurricanes hit the US Gulf Coast six weeks apart in 1915, mimicking Katrina and Rita. If global warming caused recent storms, there should have been more hurricanes in the Pacific and Indian oceans since 1995. Instead, there has been a slight decrease at a time when China and India have increased greenhouse gas emissions. The impact of hurricanes might seem more severe because of the blanket instantaneous news coverage and because more people now live in hurricane-prone areas, hence there is more property damage and loss of life.

Only a strong economy can produce the well fed who have the luxury of espousing with religious fervour their uncosted, impractical, impoverishing policies. By such policies, Greenpeace continues to exacerbate grinding poverty in the Third World. The planet's best friend is human resourcefulness with a supportive, strong economy and reduced release of toxins. The greenhouse gases - nitrous oxide, carbon dioxide and methane - have been recycled for billions of years without the intervention of human politics.

Ian Plimer is a professor of geology at the University of Adelaide and former head of the school of earth sciences at the University of Melbourne.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,17729019%255E7583,00.html

HT to Eric Vestrup for drawing my attention to this article.

The sawdust trail

Dear old Dave is thinking about taking his show on the road, and he’s soliciting advice.

***QUOTE***

Do you think such an approach would succeed?

Is it something that would personally interest you?

Do you like the more personal, interactive approach?

For my female readers in particular (I'm curious): does this format appeal more to you than the lecture format?

***END-QUOTE***

I can’t speak for the fairer sex. What I will say is that when Bob Hope used to tour with the USO to entertain our troops abroad, he’d bring along Raquel Welch and Marilyn Monroe.

That would definitely enhance the personal interest-level and interactive appeal of Mr. Armstrong’s traveling “apostolate”—although it might not work as well in mixed company.

Blue funk

The time has come for me to comment on the Turkoman’s Wooden Nickel award for the meanest Calvinist of 2005.

You may be wondering why it took me so long. This is old news. He passed out his awards on Tuesday, and here it’s already Saturday.

Well, truth is, this is the first time since that ill-fated day that I’ve been able to drag myself out of bed. I’ve been on Prozac all week. Up until that ill-fated day, I used to think I had the hide of an African Honey Badger. But his award drove me into a deep blue funk.

It’s not just that I didn’t win first place. I mean, Dr. White is a worthy contender. I could settle for second place.

No, it’s worse than that—much worse. I was not even a nominee! How could things have gone so wrong? Have I lost my killer instinct?

Sometimes innuendo is more hurtful that outright slander. The fact that I wasn’t even in the running for the meanest Calvinist award borders on defamation of character.

The unspoken, but unmistakable, wink-wink insinuation is that if I’m not mean, then I must be almost…nice! How could the Turkoman stab me in the back like that? I guess it bears out the old Italian proverb: “Save me from my friends, and I’ll take care of my enemies.”

That was my first reaction. But, after popping a few Prozac and washing them down with a fifth of Jack Daniels, it occurred to me that the process was really outside of his control. He wasn’t responsible for the nominations. All he did was to tabulate the votes.

Clearly, then, there was an orchestrated campaign to besmirch my hard-earned reputation by unfounded rumors that, appearances notwithstanding, I was really a nice guy after all.

I can see it now. One or more of my enemies hired a private detective, who dropped off compromising photos in an unmarked Manila envelopment.

After sending his young children out of the store, the Turkoman thumbed through incriminating pictures of a cheesy look-alike caught flagrante delicto in random acts of kindness—buying Girl Scout cookies, patting dogs on the head, and driving the speed limit in the school zone. I had been framed!

I should have seen it coming all along. We’ve all heard lurid stories about the politics of personal destruction. About soccer moms who hire a hit man to create a vacancy on the team so that her daughter can be a cheerleader. But you know how goes: you never think it’ll happen to you. It’s always the next guy.
But I hadn’t hit bottom. My dark night of the soul came when the thought crossed my mind that maybe, just maybe, this wasn’t a put-up job after all. What if I really had lost touch with my inner warrior?

That triggered an identity crisis the likes of which I haven’t had since my midlife crisis, when I maxed out my Visa card on trips to Vegas. (The iMonk and I used to share a hotel room to save money.)

After popping a few more Prozac and washing them down with another fifth of Jack Daniels, I dialed the psychic hotline to have a conference call with Urban II, John Knox, and J. Gresham Machen. Das Machen was even considerate enough to give me his cell phone number so that I could call him anytime, day or night.

They counseled me to undergo a rigorous regime in order to recover my fighting trim. I was to take a Berlitz course in conversational Klingon, followed by immersion therapy by watching Charles Bronson, Chuck Norris, and Clint Eastwood flicks. Oh, and I should also buy tickets to UFC Unleashed.

After that I ought to head to the hill country and hunt me some wild boar. I’ll hire Fide-O to be my trackers.

Finally, I was instructed to have the "horrible decree" tatooed on both arms.

Come next year I’ll be ready for a rematch!

Church or parachurch?

Parachurch ministries operate outside the command structure of the local church and cut across denominational lines.

Parachurch ministries are a fixture of contemporary evangelical life. They do most of the heavy-lifting in Christian outreach.

Parachurch organizations are involved in mass evangelism, campus evangelism, urban mission, Christian education (K-12, college, seminary), political activism, legal aid, Christian media (print, radio, TV, film, music), crisis counseling, apologetic blogs, jail and prison outreach, drug rehab, Bible societies, home-schooling, home Bible study, &c.

Although they often cooperate with various churches, they are self-governing. This autonomy has made them controversial in some Evangelical circles where they are viewed as encroaching upon or usurping the Scriptural prerogatives of the church. They drain away resources. They’re rogue elephants. They dilute doctrinal purity.

These allegations raise a number of questions for which there is no uniform answer.

1.How do we define a church? One traditional way is to isolate and identify the “marks” of the church. In Reformed circles, the marks of the church are word, sacrament, and discipline.

But it isn’t clear how this would transgress on the jurisdiction of the church. If, on the one hand, a parachurch ministry doesn’t duplicate these activities, then it isn’t taking over the functions of the church; if, on the other hand, a parachurch ministry does duplicate these activities, then what distinguishes it from a church? If a church is what it does, and a parachurch ministry does the work of the church, then a parachurch ministry is a church. At that point they coincide.

2.The definition can, however, be amended. Not just anyone is authorized to preach or administer the sacraments. That is reserved for an ordained minister. Seminary professors are often ordained ministers.

But there are problems with this redefinition:

i) Some church polities are more formal than others. So it becomes a difference of degree. Depending on your theory of church government, there is no principled distinction.

ii) Apropos (i), the NT doesn’t assign the administration of the sacraments to the pastor. And ordination, in the modern sense, is not a NT qualification for teaching and preaching.

This is not necessarily to object to these extra-Scriptural developments, but if the accusation is that parachurch ministry is unscriptural, then the charge cannot be sustained.

3.Indeed, the rise of parachurch ministries is a logical outgrowth of the Protestant Reformation. In Catholicism, there is a principled distinction between the laity and the clergy. Valid communion presupposes valid holy orders. Valid holy orders presuppose apostolic succession. But you don’t have this is Evangelical theology.

4.What is more, the Protestant Reformation regarded the lay state as no less of a divine calling than the pastoral vocation. And many parachurch ministries draw upon the expertise of the laity.

5.Another way of amending the definition is to distinguish between independent organizations and organizations formally affiliated with a particular denomination. As such, they are under the supervision and control of the sponsoring denomination.

But there are problems with this redefinition as well:

i) Now we are redefining the church. A denomination is not a church. A denomination is a set of local churches. Indeed, as John Frame has said, "denominations themselves are parachurch organizations."

ii) In addition, differences in polity reassert themselves at the denominational level. If your theory of local church government is more hierarchical, then that will carry over to your denominational structure. But if your theory of local church government is more informal, then that, too, will carry over to your denominational structure.

So it’s hard to find any principled objections to parachurch ministry. If so, then this leaves us with the pragmatic objections:

6. They drain away resources.

That’s possible. However, parachurch ministries arise to fill a vacuum. If the church were already assuming these responsibilities, then there’d be no need for parachurch ministry.

7.They are rogue elephants.

That, too, is possible. Of course, churches and denominations can also revert to the wild. We’ve all seen liberal prelates who hijack a denomination over the protest of the faithful

8.They dilute doctrinal purity.

It’s true that some parachurch organizations evince a considerable degree of doctrinal indifference.

i) But is this a cause or a consequence of doctrinal indifference? As free associations, parachurch organizations attract like-minded volunteers. If you’re a Calvinist, you’ll gravitate to a Reformed organization. If you’re an ecumenist, you’ll gravitate to an interfaith organization.

ii) In addition, not all parachurch organizations are into indoctrination, per se. For example, a Christian legal aid society may be staffed by lawyers of various persuasions who are generally concerned with the civil rights of Christians.

iii) It is also possible to overemphasize the difference between Christians at the expense of their spiritual unity in Christ. We can so accentuate the doctrine of the local church that we lose the doctrine of the universal church.

All said, I don’t see parachurch ministry in competition with the church. And even where it is, a little competition can be a good thing.

Prophetic improbabilities

It’s easy to take the present for granted. Since we live in the present, the present carries an air of inevitability. After all, we’re here, aren’t we? So it was bound to turn out this way, right?

This can numb us to the full force of Bible prophecy. We need to make an effort to assume the historical horizon of the prophet and his original audience.

Take Isa 19:16-25, in which Isaiah, back in the 8C BC, foresaw the conversion of Egypt and Assyria to the truth faith.

From the standpoint of an 8C observer, this prediction is perfectly absurd. Both Egypt and Assyria were paradigms of pagan idolatry. They were implacable enemies of each other, as well as perennial foes of Israel. They were the superpowers of their day. When one was up, the other was down, but the balance of power always tipped in one direction or the other, with Egypt on one side of the scale as Assyria or Babylon on the other.

Between them, the kingdoms of Egypt and Mesopotamia represented the utter antithesis of the true faith. And the idea of their subordination to the faith of Israel was pretty preposterous.

It’s as if Isaiah went out of his way to choose the most unlikely and intractable examples to illustrate the overruling purpose and power of God. Nothing could be more counterintuitive. No outcome could be farther removed from any sense of inevitability, probability, or plausibility.

And yet, in the early centuries of the church, the Middle East and the Levant did, indeed, embrace the faith of OT Israel and its Jewish counterpart in the NT.

From the vantage-point of a fifth-generation Christian living in Alexandria or Baghdad or North Africa, Isaiah’s ancient oracle might well have held an air of inevitability.

It is also a mistake to assume that all prophecies are punctiliar. Certain prophecies can be fulfilled over time, rather than at one time only. The last chapter of history has yet to be written—except in the mind of the Lord.

Until the ink is dry, we watch and wait. You know it when you see it—and not before. You know it when it happens. For prophecy is prospective, but its recognition is retrospective.

Why I Can't Stand Pat

Pat Robertson’s recent statement that Ariel Sharon’s stroke reflects the judgment of God for Sharon’s withdrawal from Gaza has supplied yet more fodder for the enemies of the faith to mock the gospel.

This is a pity. Robertson has done a lot of good in the course of his career. He’s a man of great entrepreneurial and administrative abilities, having founded such diverse and useful organizations as the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), the Christian Coalition, the Flying Hospital, International Family Entertainment, Operation Blessing International Relief and Development Corporation, and Regent University.

He is a Marine with a Yale law degree and an MDiv. Clearly a man of considerable talent and accomplishment.

Unfortunately he has a habit of putting a match to his own achievements by his incendiary rhetoric.

There are several underlying causes of this condition. To begin with, Robertson has never been able to make up his mind what he wants to be.

For example, if you want to be a political power-broker, then you have to avoid impolitic statements. You can’t afford to say everything that comes to mind. Even if what you say is true, it may be divisive, and if your objective is to forge a political alliance, you can’t get away with say everything you think. You can be a pundit, or you can be player, but you can’t be both.

Second, as an independently wealthy business mogul with his own news network, Robertson is answerable to no one—and it shows.

Third, his lack of accountability is reinforced by his charismatic theology, which leads his to assume an oracular tone when making his public pronouncements. He doesn’t merely speak for himself; no, he speaks for God: God is whispering in his ear.

Fourth, he has, from what I can tell, a pretty eclectic belief-system, consisting in snips and snails and puppy dog tails stitched together from Pentecostalism, dispensationalism, and dominion theology.

His most recent statement reflects the dispensational side of his theology. And in this respect it’s no different than the outlook of the Left Behind series. As such, it can’t be dismissed as a mere idiosyncrasy.

The presupposition of Robertson’s remarks is that the modern state of Israel represents the fulfillment of the prophetic land-promises. Hence, Sharon is guilty of flouting God’s law by returning Gaza to the Arabs.

BTW, there’s no such thing as a “Palestinian.” We’re talking about garden-variety Arabs.

For the record, I’m a default amil with a soft spot for postmillennialism.

But, for the sake of argument, let’s stipulate to Robertson’s eschatology. Even so, one of the problems with Robertson’s statement is that if fails to distinguish between principle and process.

To my knowledge, Sharon is not trying to give land away in order to appease the Arabs. He is not doing this as a good-faith gesture to jump-start the “roadmap to peace” (is this a euphemism or an oxymoron?).

Rather, he doesn’t think that it’s possible, at this point, to make peace with the Arabs, and so he is unilaterally drawing the borders of Israel in a way favorable to Israel. Gen. Sharon is attempting to draw defensible borders.

This is not a concession to the enemy, but a purely pragmatic and hardnosed policy driven by Israel’s national security interests.

So this is not a point of principle. He is not guilty of a moral compromise. Rather, this is a prudential question. What is the most effective way to secure the survival of Israel?

In addition, there’s the demographic time bomb shaping the policy. To the extent that Israel clings to largely Arab occupied territory, she dilutes her Jewish identity and autonomy.

I would add, to greatly oversimplify, that the political landscape of Israel is riven between two opposing ideologies: Marxism and Zionism. Marxism is a Jewish ideology, and it retains a magnetic attraction to many of the Jewish intelligentsia.

Marxism has a utopian view of human nature. It believes that it’s possible to talk through our problems. Befriend our enemies. The Arabs are warlike because they are poor and disenfranchised.

At the other end of the spectrum is Zionism, represented by the Ultra-orthodox. In a sense, they are utopian too. But they see things in religious terms and dualistic terms.

In between you have a spectrum of opportunistic hawks and doves. That, combined with a parliamentary system of gov’t, makes it very difficult for Israel to take decisive action.

A further complication is that Israel is not economically self-sufficient. She has limited natural resources. Hence, the state of Israel is dependent on international trade and commerce. Yet most of the world is hostile to Israel.

So that, again, acts as a restraint on what Israel can do for fear of economic sanctions. As such, Israel must often resort to half-measures when dealing with her Arab (and Iranian) neighbors and enemies.

We need to make allowance for these prudential and practical exigencies when we comment on Israel’s foreign policy.

On a final note: there are several astute fundamentalists who frequent Triablogue. I would like to hear from them on these issues. Some of them know more about Israeli politics than do I. They also know more about the current state of dispensationalism than do I.

Do they agree with Robertson? If so, why? If not, why? Send me your comments. Or comment on your own blog and leave a hyperlink at mine.

The confutation of Atheism-13

Jason Engwer has responded to Dave Wave see comments in: http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2006/01/confutation-of-atheism-9.html

I am reproducing the text here:

Steve and Gene have responded well to this latest post from Dave, and I won't be addressing some of the subjects they've already covered. See http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2006/01/confutation-of-atheism-11.html and http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2006/01/confutation-of-atheism-12.html.

Dave writes:

"Justin also grounds the parallels in the pre-Jesus activity of demons, who
created the parallels retroactively through pagan poets, so when Jesus came
along, he'd look no more special than any other god man."

Justin repeatedly comments that Jesus is "more special", and he explains that Christians have evidence for their claims about Jesus, whereas pagans don't have evidence for their mythology. Justin mentions some vague parallels, mentions some differences, and distinguishes between Christian evidence and an absence of evidence for pagan mythology. See my documentation at http://ntrminblog.blogspot.com/2006/01/pagan-parallels-and-church-fathers.html.

Dave goes on:

"Sure, and I never said Jesus was a perfect mirror image of the pagans, either."

It's not just that Jesus isn't "a perfect mirror image". It's that there are many differences along with some vague parallels, and those parallels don't compel us to the conclusion that Christianity was derived from paganism. The New Testament is highly Jewish and highly anti-paganism. The earliest church fathers aren't as Jewish, but are highly anti-paganism. These background characteristics of early Christianity make Dave's theory initially unlikely. Again, see the documentation in my blog article linked above.

Dave writes:

"Common ground that includes specific parallels such as sons of gods being born
in unique fashion, virgin births, resurrections and ascensions."

You're being too vague. Birth is a significant event for all humans. The fact that religious figures would commonly be referred to as having a birth in some sort of "unique fashion" isn't specific enough to warrant the conclusion that one religion was derived from another. As I, Steve, and Gene have explained to you repeatedly, you have yet to document a pagan virgin birth account predating Christianity. The pattern we see in pagan mythology is birth by means of sex, which is the opposite of the Christian account. Opposites are not parallels. And what "resurrections" do you have in mind? Pagans not only didn't believe in the Jewish concept of resurrection, but even were repulsed by it and criticized it (Acts 17:32). The Christian message was "to Gentiles foolishness" (1 Corinthians 1:23). N.T. Wright comments:

"Christianity was born into a world where its central claim was known to be
false. Many believed that the dead were non-existent; outside Judaism, nobody
believed in resurrection....Lots of things could happen to the dead in the
beliefs of pagan antiquity, but resurrection was not among the available
options." (The Resurrection of the Son of God [Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress
Press, 2003], pp. 35, 38)

As far as "ascensions" are concerned, you're again being too vague. The concept of a figure departing from the earth is common and vague. The departure has to occur by means of the figure moving in some manner from one location to another. Nobody would need to get such a vague concept from another belief system. It's not specific enough to warrant an assumption of borrowing.

Dave continues:

"You can't just say it's mere coincidence that pre-Christian Greeks thought
Perseus was born of a virgin. Do you agree that virgin-birth was nothing unique
to Christianity, yes or no?"

Steve and Gene have already explained that you're wrong to claim that Perseus was born of a virgin. But even if you had been right, why would the existence of a prior virgin birth account prove borrowing? It wouldn't. A birth occurs either through sex or without it. If one group claims a virgin birth, then another group claims one, the second claim could be derived from the first, but not necessarily. And, as Steve explained, even if we were to assume that the New Testament account was influenced by a pre-Christian source, how do you know that the source was a pagan myth rather than the Septuagint rendering of Isaiah 7, for example? You're claiming to know things you can't possibly know. Where your theory lacks evidence, you substitute assertions.

Dave continues:

"The fact that Justin admits that there is no virgin-birth known in the race
of Abraham is irrelevant to the cites of virgin-births coming from the race of
the Greeks."

You haven't documented a single case, yet you're using the plural.

Dave writes:

"Irrelevant, the chances of two different savior gods being said to be born of
virgins, by sheer chance and without any borrowing from one to the other, given
Christianity's existence in the middle of such paganism, are almost zero."

You haven't documented any pagan virgin birth accounts. But even if you had documented one, why should we think that it would prove borrowing? You do realize that virginity is a common theme that wouldn't require borrowing from one source to another, don't you? You do realize that myth accounts often changed over time, don't you? Where's your documentation of a pagan account involving a virgin birth, your documentation that the account contained the virgin birth before New Testament times, and your documentation that the New Testament authors had to have borrowed from this pagan source? Why should we think that any borrowing would be necessary? And if it was necessary, why not consider the Septuagint version of Isaiah 7 a more likely source?

Dave goes on:

"Second, the whole idea of gods impregnating woman was known before
Christianity, and therefore, whether God the Father became flesh and took away
Mary's virginity so as to concieve Jesus, or some other way which left her
viginity intact, god's impregnating woman were a common motif."

A "common motif" doesn't require borrowing. People are born either naturally or supernaturally. The fact that both pagan mythology and the New Testament are in that second category doesn't prove that the New Testament accounts were derived from pagan mythology.

Dave continues:

"No coincidence...the gospel authors were making use of a commonly accepted
expectation of what a god-man would do, to make Jesus more palatable to
their first-century pagan audiences, born out absolutely perfectly by Justin
Martyr doing exactly that."

You haven't shown any pre-Christian pagan examples of virgin birth, nor have you given us any reason to think that paganism would have more of an influence on a Jewish religion than Jewish thought would.

Dave writes:

"again, it's either geneaological, or, sheer chance, that the Christians
propound a virgin born god-man in the middle of a historical context full of
virgin-born god men."

You're telling us that there was "a historical context full of virgin-born god men". Yet, as Richard Swinburne said in my earlier citation of him, pagans didn't believe in an incarnation of God, and you haven't given us even one example of a pagan virgin birth account. What we do see often is a being less powerful than God being born by means of sex. But since concepts such as birth and virginity are common to all humans, how could you assume borrowing from one religion to another even if the pagan accounts involved the virgin birth of God? You'd still have to examine the historical evidence surrounding the Christian claim.

Dave writes:

"Jews wouldn't, Greeks would"

And the earliest Christians were Jews living in Israel. Matthew's gospel, which reports the virgin birth, is written by a Jew and is highly Jewish in its content. Regarding Luke, Ben Witherington writes:

“The fact that Luke 1-2 abounds in Hebraisms in contrast to the classical Greek
prologue in Luke 1:1-4 speaks for the use of a Semitic narrative source(s) of
considerable proportions at least up to Luke 2:40 (Farris; see Languages of
Palestine)." (in Joel B. Green, et al., editors, Dictionary of Jesus and the
Gospels [Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1992], p. 61)

On issues of naturalism and historical evidence, Dave has again been incoherent and inconsistent. What he says in one post isn't consistent with what he's said elsewhere, and he sometimes argues for multiple views within a single post. You get the impression that he's trying to maintain the appearance of having a case without having one.

# posted by Jason Engwer : 1/05/2006 8:47 PM

Jurisimprudence

http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/

BY JAMES TARANTO
Thursday, January 5, 2006 4:28 p.m. EST

Thirty-four-year-old Mark Hulett of Williston, Vt., has been convicted on charges that he "raped a little girl many, many times over a four-year span starting when she was seven," reports Burlington's WCAX-TV. Prosecutors asked for a sentence of eight to 20 years, but the judge gave him . . . 60 days:

Judge Edward Cashman disagreed explaining that he no longer believes that punishment works.

"The one message I want to get through is that anger doesn't solve anything. It just corrodes your soul," said Judge Edward Cashman speaking to a packed Burlington courtroom. Most of the on-lookers were related to a young girl who was repeatedly raped by Mark Hulett who was in court to be sentenced. . . .

"I discovered it accomplishes nothing of value; it doesn't make anything better; it costs us a lot of money; we create a lot of expectation, and we feed on anger,"Cashman explained to the people in the court.

Nothing of value? Locking Hulett up for 20 years would keep him out of circulation, unable to rape more little girls, until 2026, when he would be 54 years old. That in itself seems sufficient reason to do so.

"Cashman explained that he is more concerned that Hulett receive sex offender treatment"--whatever that is--"as rehabilitation," according to the report. Bizarrely, "under Department of Corrections classification, Hulett is considered a low-risk for re-offense so he does not qualify for in-prison treatment." You almost have to wonder if the people who run Vermont are insane.