Dagood has written another long, rambling piece.
http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2006/08/are-marriage-vows-immoral.html
Cutting through the abundance of dead wood, this is more or less his core argument:
DS: And we are told that the times of the Tanakh were different, and God related to the people in a different manner, imposing a different morality. (Sounding like a morality based on relativism, not being absolute.)
SH: Who is telling him that God was imposing a different morality?
1.Dagood is indulging in fallacious all-or-nothing argument: either every precept is a moral absolute, or no precept is a moral absolute.
But that’s quite illogical. Some Mosaic injunctions exemplify moral absolutes, but others are social conventions.
In any society, to be a functioning society, certain rules must be put in place to regulate social interaction. Some of these rules are arbitrary, like stop signs and stop lights.
2.And even as far as moral absolutes are concerned, we need to distinguish between the abstract norm and the concrete ways in which the norm is enforced. There can be more than one way to enforce the same norm.
For example, the creation ordinances in Gen 1-2 are a set of moral norms, viz. labor, family, Sabbath-keeping, and the cultural mandate.
But there’s more than one way to implement a creation ordinance.
Marriage is a creation ordinance, but that doesn’t dictate one particular marriage ceremony.
Same thing with the Decalogue.
DS: Taking just one example--Why did God change His position on taking vows? Did He discover that there is some scale of morality which allows a vow-taker to supercede other moral laws?
SH:
1.Vows are not moral absolutes. They are not an end in themselves, but a means to an end.
The end is the point of principle, whereas the means are pragmatic.
A process is not a moral absolute. It is not a value in itself. Rather, a process is a means to an end.
This is not a question of morality, but prudence.
2.Even in the case of moral absolutes, in a fallen world we may often be confronted with conflicting obligations. In that event, a higher duty overrules a lower duty.
DS: Jephthah is bound by his oath, and sacrifices his daughter. Now, in our humanistic determination, we would find this act immoral. While breaking an oath is assuredly not encouraged, it can be remedied here without the necessary loss of life.
Somehow, in this absolute morality proposed by the Christian viewpoint, breaking an oath is MORE immoral than killing an innocent child. If I swear to God if He gives a good parking spot, I will break the arms of my son—is it a greater sin to not break his arms upon getting right next to the handicap spot?
Apologists typically argue that Jephthah did not actually kill his daughter, but rather devoted her to the Lord.
SH: As I said before, vows are not moral absolutes.
1.The Mosaic law distinguishes between lawful and unlawful vows (e.g. Num 30).
2.Dagood disregards the genre of Judges. This is historical narrative, not a law code.
In narrative theology, the narrator generally makes his points by showing rather than telling. You don’t expect the narrator to pipe in with editorial comments all the time.
Even so, we do have a few editorial asides planted at strategic locations (e.g. Jdg 17:6; 21:25) which make the editorial viewpoint unmistakably clear.
3.Far from approving of all the reported conduct, the purpose of the book is just the opposite. As the standard commentary explains:
“The them of the book is the Canaanization of the Israelite society during the period of settlement...The author’s agenda is evident not only in the individual units but in the broad structureof the book as a whole. The Prlogue (1:1-3:6) explaisn the underlying causes of the Canaanization of Israel: the tribes’ failure to fulfill the divine mandante in eliminating the native population (Deut 7:1-5). The major part, the ‘Book of Deliverers’ (3:7-16:31, describes the consequences of Israel’s Canaanization and Yahweh’s response. The collection of ‘hero-stories’ ahs its own specific prologue (3:1-6) in which the reader is reminded of the problematic historical and spiritual background for the following hero-stories. The sequence of six cycles of ‘apostasy-punishment-cry of pain-deliverance’ not only expresses the persistence of the issue; it demonstrates the increasing intensity of the nation’s depravity. The arrangement of the ‘hero-stories’ reflects this process so that in the end we are left with ‘antiheroes” rather than truly great men of God. In the Epilogue (17:1-21:25), which really is the climax of the presentation, the Danite and Benjamites tribes demonstrate the extent and intensity of the problem in the nation’s religious and social dysfunction,” D. Block, Judges, Ruth (B&H 1999), 58.
Dagood needs to learn a thing or two about narrative technique. Cf. R. Pratt, He Gave Us Stories: The Bible Student’s Guide to Interpreting Old Testament Narratives (P&R 1993).
DS: As I read the tale of Jephthah, I can’t help but reflect on King David’s similar situation. King David committed murder (perhaps) but certainly adultery—a crime punishable by death. Yet in this Christian morality scheme, there appears to be an out. An exception. Regardless of the immorality or morality of an action, God can impose mercy, and exempt the person from punishment.
SH:
1.Isn’t this wonderfully inept? He cites an OT account to illustrate the “Christian morality scheme.”
Well, I guess we can be grateful for the fact that Dagood continues to affirm the prophetic character of the OT.
2Yes, God pardoned David. But it wasn’t a plenary pardon. Cf. 2 Sam 12:10-12.
3.And as far as the “Christian morality scheme is concerned,” divine forgiveness is predicated on penal substitution.
There is no suspension of the moral law. Rather, justice is exacted on the Redeemer.
As usual, Dagood doesn’t understand because he doesn’t try to understand. He is a man self-condemned.
Thursday, August 31, 2006
Forgive & forget
Christian ethics ranges along a continuum, from theonomy, at one end of the spectrum—to Anabaptism, at the other.
In terms of confessional Calvinism, the Westminster longer and shorter catechisms take the Decalogue as their point of reference. The London Baptist Confession of Faith also upholds the Decalogue.
In practice, Calvinism often took in elements of the case law, including the penalties.
Some Christians reject OT ethics on theological grounds. In their view, OT ethics, in toto, is tied to the Mosaic Covenant, which is defunct.
Anabaptism is a classic expression of this viewpoint.
You also get this in traditional dispensationalism, although, with the advent of progressive dispensationalism, it’s harder to draw the lines.
For a mediating position, read Ethics for a Brave New World by the Feinberg brothers.
Whatever you think of these two positions, they are principled positions. They involve the larger question of how the OT is fulfilled in the NT.
However, many believers, as well as unbelievers, reject OT ethics, in whole or in part, for emotional rather than theological reasons.
They reject OT ethics simply because they regard it as excessively harsh, legalistic, and judgmental.
By contrast, Anabaptist ethics, with its turn-the-cheek docility, seems so much more loving and merciful.
ABC recently rebroadcast a special it had done on the Amish. Here’s a summary:
***QUOTE***
This week, "Primetime: The Outsiders - The Amish" looks at people who are radical believers. Elizabeth Vargas reports on a disturbing side of the Amish community and interviews Mary Byler, a woman who broke the Amish code by reporting sexual abuse to authorities. Byler became the center of the scandal that rocked her tight-knit Amish home in Wisconsin when she told the Sheriff's office that she was raped hundreds of times - by eight or nine men, including her own brothers, who did confess to the crime. According to sociologist Donald Kraybill, confessing in the Amish Church for wrongdoings is the key step to forgiveness, and the standard punishment for any infraction is banishment from church activities for six weeks. Byler, on the other hand, felt the punishment was not enough. "You're being grounded for six weeks," she says. "It's just really ridiculous punishment. The funny thing is that they view drinking alcohol until you puke as bad a sin as raping somebody." She also speaks out about what brought her to her final decision to go to the authorities and what life after leaving the Amish community is like. This report originally aired in December 2004.
http://wtnh.com/Global/story.asp?S=5281928
***END-QUOTE***
Here we see, in very stark terms, the limits of compassion. The more merciful you are to the perpetrator, the more merciless you are to the victim.
Under OT law, her brothers would have been executed. Simple as that.
But in Anabaptist ethics, her brothers got off with a slap on the wrist (until she reported them to the police) while she was ostracized by the community—and, indeed, excommunicated—for being unforgiving and bucking the system.
The kinder and gentler approach to the assailant was decidedly unkind and uncharitable to the victim.
Frequently, justice is the most merciful course of action. Nothing is crueler than misplaced compassion.
In terms of confessional Calvinism, the Westminster longer and shorter catechisms take the Decalogue as their point of reference. The London Baptist Confession of Faith also upholds the Decalogue.
In practice, Calvinism often took in elements of the case law, including the penalties.
Some Christians reject OT ethics on theological grounds. In their view, OT ethics, in toto, is tied to the Mosaic Covenant, which is defunct.
Anabaptism is a classic expression of this viewpoint.
You also get this in traditional dispensationalism, although, with the advent of progressive dispensationalism, it’s harder to draw the lines.
For a mediating position, read Ethics for a Brave New World by the Feinberg brothers.
Whatever you think of these two positions, they are principled positions. They involve the larger question of how the OT is fulfilled in the NT.
However, many believers, as well as unbelievers, reject OT ethics, in whole or in part, for emotional rather than theological reasons.
They reject OT ethics simply because they regard it as excessively harsh, legalistic, and judgmental.
By contrast, Anabaptist ethics, with its turn-the-cheek docility, seems so much more loving and merciful.
ABC recently rebroadcast a special it had done on the Amish. Here’s a summary:
***QUOTE***
This week, "Primetime: The Outsiders - The Amish" looks at people who are radical believers. Elizabeth Vargas reports on a disturbing side of the Amish community and interviews Mary Byler, a woman who broke the Amish code by reporting sexual abuse to authorities. Byler became the center of the scandal that rocked her tight-knit Amish home in Wisconsin when she told the Sheriff's office that she was raped hundreds of times - by eight or nine men, including her own brothers, who did confess to the crime. According to sociologist Donald Kraybill, confessing in the Amish Church for wrongdoings is the key step to forgiveness, and the standard punishment for any infraction is banishment from church activities for six weeks. Byler, on the other hand, felt the punishment was not enough. "You're being grounded for six weeks," she says. "It's just really ridiculous punishment. The funny thing is that they view drinking alcohol until you puke as bad a sin as raping somebody." She also speaks out about what brought her to her final decision to go to the authorities and what life after leaving the Amish community is like. This report originally aired in December 2004.
http://wtnh.com/Global/story.asp?S=5281928
***END-QUOTE***
Here we see, in very stark terms, the limits of compassion. The more merciful you are to the perpetrator, the more merciless you are to the victim.
Under OT law, her brothers would have been executed. Simple as that.
But in Anabaptist ethics, her brothers got off with a slap on the wrist (until she reported them to the police) while she was ostracized by the community—and, indeed, excommunicated—for being unforgiving and bucking the system.
The kinder and gentler approach to the assailant was decidedly unkind and uncharitable to the victim.
Frequently, justice is the most merciful course of action. Nothing is crueler than misplaced compassion.
The Nestorian canard
PR: I wasn’t aware that I bore any burden to inform people who presume to write on a topic of which they are not informed.
SH: If you accuse your opponent of being uninformed, then you bear a burden in making good on your claim.
It’s one thing to say something’s the case, quite another to show it.
PR: Perhaps it might be better to educate themselves before making claims.
SH: Once again, this assumes what it needs to prove.
PR: Secondly, there is no shortage of literature on Orthodoxy just as there is on Calvinism. Take up and read. The point is, you are hardly a reliable source for information about Orthodoxy. If people want to learn Calvinism, then they should Calvinist literature and not primarily or exclusively material from its critics or the popular media. The same goes for Orthodoxy. Got it Sparky?
SH: In other words, Robinson can be safely ignored. If you want reliable information on Orthodox theology, skip a low-level popularizer like Robinson and read John Meyendorff or Timothy Ware instead.
Thanks, Perry, for reminding everyone of how irrelevant you are to this debate. Now go home and take your own advice. Got it Sparky?
PR: There was no “tactic” of labeling, except with the stated goal of brining to mind to my readers the fact that you suffer from major theological problems even by your own standards.. And God forbid I should classify someone’s position. If you disagree with the classification, then give an argument rather than whine about it.
SH: To the contrary, it’s a very transparent tactic. Perry wants, at all cost, to avoid the bar of exegetical theology. So he tries to bait his opponent into making some allegedly heretical admission.
My rule of faith is divine revelation. Perry’s rule of faith is Cyril of Alexandria.
PR: How about human personhood?
SH: A rather broad question, don’t you think?
PR: Is Jesus a human person?
SH: A deceptively simple question:
Jesus is a theanthropic person, which makes him a complex person. So it would be misleading to discuss his personhood in atomistic fashion.
There is, in the person of Christ, a full set of human attributes along with a full set of divine attributes.
PR: Are human persons an instance of a nature?
SH:
1.Is this an exegetical question or a philosophical question?
To say that a human person is an instance of a nature is somewhat Platonic.
Human beings share certain attributes in common. That’s what makes them human.
So they exemplify certain properties.
2.What does this have to do with Chalcedon, anyway? Chalcedon doesn’t use the word “person.”
“Person” is an English translation of a Greek word, in tandem with a number of other Greek words, which carry a lot of conceptual baggage due to the early Christological controversies. So this is one of the systematic equivocations running through Perry’s interrogation.
3.All that matters, for me, is NT Christology, and whether the creeds are true to NT Christology.
Perry’s line of attack is a diversionary tactic, to distract attention away from the litmus test of NT Christology.
Perry’s problem is that he is dissatisfied with revelation. He wants to elevate a variety of speculative philosophical distinctions to the status of dogma.
PR: If Jesus is a divine person, do you think he has genuine human experiences and consciousness?
SH:
1.To say that Jesus is a divine person is simplistic. Jesus is a theanthropic person. His personhood is characterized by a full compliment of divine and human properties.
2.The divine nature qua divine does not experience the human nature qua human. But we can predicate genuine human experiences and consciousness of the unified subject.
3.The Incarnation is a unique event. Since the hypostatic union is sui generis, it is a fundamental mistake to extrapolate from the Incarnation to humanity in general.
PR: You seemed to have some reservations at the least, if not disagreements with an affirmation of those points in the past. This was your basis of dissent from the Chalcedonian position and you admitted that my position represented the historical position in question while yours did not.
SH:
1.I do not concede that your position represents the historical position. One would have to be a patrologist by training to offer an informed opinion on that question. And there is disagreement even among the pros, which suggests the absence of a uniform historical position.
2.You’re frustrated because I refuse to walk into an ambush. You set a trap, and I walk around it.
3.Do I dissent from the Chalcedonian position?
Here is what the creed of Chalcedon has to say:
“So, following the saintly fathers, we all with one voice teach the confession of one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ: the same perfect in divinity and perfect in humanity, the same truly God and truly man, of a rational soul and a body; consubstantial with the Father as regards his divinity, and the same consubstantial with us as regards his humanity; like us in all respects except for sin; begotten before the ages from the Father as regards his divinity, and in the last days the same for us and for our salvation from Mary, the virgin God-bearer as regards his humanity; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, only-begotten, acknowledged in two natures which undergo no confusion, no change, no division, no separation; at no point was the difference between the natures taken away through the union, but rather the property of both natures is preserved and comes together into a single person and a single subsistent being; he is not parted or divided into two persons, but is one and the same only-begotten Son, God, Word, Lord Jesus Christ, just as the prophets taught from the beginning about him, and as the Lord Jesus Christ himself instructed us, and as the creed of the fathers handed it down to us (http://www.ewtn.com/faith/teachings/incac2.htm).”
There is nothing in this statement from which I dissent.
Here is what the Westminster Confession has to say:
“The Son of God, the second person in the Trinity, being very and eternal God, of one substance and equal with the Father, did, when the fullness of time was come, take upon him man's nature, with all the essential properties, and common infirmities thereof, yet without sin; being conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost, in the womb of the virgin Mary, of her substance. So that two whole, perfect, and distinct natures, the Godhead and the manhood, were inseparably joined together in one person, without conversion, composition, or confusion. Which person is very God, and very man, yet one Christ, the only Mediator between God and man” (WCF 8:2).
There is nothing in this statement from which I dissent.
PR: If nature is not prior to person in the deity, then what exactly do you take the relation to be?
SH:
1.Revelation doesn’t say what “exactly” the relation amounts to. The point is not to state the “exact” relation, but to avoid reductionistic formulations.
2.”Nature” is a covering term.
PR: Are they identical?
SH: Identical in what respect?
i) The members of the Trinity share the same set of divine attributes.
ii) However, the members of the Trinity are not the same person. They are not identical with one another.
iii) If you’re looking for an analogy, the members of the Trinity are symmetrical rather than identical, using enantiomorphism as our model of the one-over-many.
PR: If you stand condemned by confessions of your own tradition, even confessions that you may profess subscription to, then I would think you would either undertake to change them in your own religious body, conform to them or remove yourself from them. Perhaps you have some other option handy such as blessed inconsistency though. In any case, I’d think you wouldn’t want to identify yourself with a false view of the Person of Christ.
SH:
1.Your conclusion is predicated on a false premise.
2.Even if I were to deviate from the Westminster Confession (or other suchlike) in some respect, contemporary Calvinism generally operates with system subscription rather than strict subscription.
It’s left to the discretion of the session, presbytery, and general assembly to determine the tolerable boundaries of licit dissent.
For example, the Westminster standards say that God made the world in the span of six days, but that is not enforced.
Likewise, when the (original) Westminster standards identify the Pope with the Antichrist, this presupposes a historicist interpretation of 2 Thessalonians and Revelation. But that is not enforced.
Along the same lines, the Westminster Directory of Worship, with its Puritan strictures, is simply ignored in the OPC and PCA.
PR: Moreover, those who read you should be aware of your dissent from Chalcedonian Christology, a Christology to which the Reformation professed fealty so that they are aware that you do not hold the same faith as they do. I would think that would be worth knowing. In fact, marking those out who do is something hardly limited to the Orthodox. Calvinists do it all the time.
SH: You continue to build on a false premise. But a delusional mindset has its own momentum.
PR: And I am just the least bit curious, why by confessional standards someone like yourself gets a pass on heterodox Christology from your co-bloggers but everyone else gets the third degree? Shouldn’t they be grilling you just as they do others, or is Christology just not that important? Is it non-essential in some way? I’d love to see how they square that with the Confessional status of said doctrine.
SH: Aside from your faulty operating assumption, I guess I “get a pass” is because my fellow bloggers are well aware of your devious methods. Indeed, some of them have been on the receiving end of your serpentine tactics.
PR: And if you are a “Biblicist” first and firmly believe your dissenting view, I would think that you’d be more than happy to announce it clearly rather than being defensive about it and having me pry it out of you. And I doubt that most people who read your blog know that you dissent from Chalcedonian Christology that is professed in numerous Reformed and Lutheran Confessions. Christology is hardly a “nook and crany” of Reformed theology, but then again, maybe it is! So much for being “Christ centered.”
SH: I’m not going to play the chump for your impersonation of Joseph Goebbels. You think that by repeating a lie long enough, it becomes the truth.
Perry likes to pose a string of trip-wire questions. He’s frustrated by the fact that I don’t accommodate him by marching through his sophistical minefield. I prefer to walk around it. I don’t let him frame the terms of the debate.
PR: So far I haven’t seen any denial on your part that my classification of you was off target.
SH: You must be suffering from glaucoma. Better get that treated.
PR: In any case, Steve, where is your clear denial of my classification? And where is the clear argument showing that I am wrong?
SH: Notice how Perry, in the grand tradition of a Stalinist prosecutor, likes to lead with a wife-beating question. The onus is then on the defendant in Perry’s little show trial to prove that he didn’t beat his wife.
PR: Guess I was right.
SH: Guess you were wrong.
SH: If you accuse your opponent of being uninformed, then you bear a burden in making good on your claim.
It’s one thing to say something’s the case, quite another to show it.
PR: Perhaps it might be better to educate themselves before making claims.
SH: Once again, this assumes what it needs to prove.
PR: Secondly, there is no shortage of literature on Orthodoxy just as there is on Calvinism. Take up and read. The point is, you are hardly a reliable source for information about Orthodoxy. If people want to learn Calvinism, then they should Calvinist literature and not primarily or exclusively material from its critics or the popular media. The same goes for Orthodoxy. Got it Sparky?
SH: In other words, Robinson can be safely ignored. If you want reliable information on Orthodox theology, skip a low-level popularizer like Robinson and read John Meyendorff or Timothy Ware instead.
Thanks, Perry, for reminding everyone of how irrelevant you are to this debate. Now go home and take your own advice. Got it Sparky?
PR: There was no “tactic” of labeling, except with the stated goal of brining to mind to my readers the fact that you suffer from major theological problems even by your own standards.. And God forbid I should classify someone’s position. If you disagree with the classification, then give an argument rather than whine about it.
SH: To the contrary, it’s a very transparent tactic. Perry wants, at all cost, to avoid the bar of exegetical theology. So he tries to bait his opponent into making some allegedly heretical admission.
My rule of faith is divine revelation. Perry’s rule of faith is Cyril of Alexandria.
PR: How about human personhood?
SH: A rather broad question, don’t you think?
PR: Is Jesus a human person?
SH: A deceptively simple question:
Jesus is a theanthropic person, which makes him a complex person. So it would be misleading to discuss his personhood in atomistic fashion.
There is, in the person of Christ, a full set of human attributes along with a full set of divine attributes.
PR: Are human persons an instance of a nature?
SH:
1.Is this an exegetical question or a philosophical question?
To say that a human person is an instance of a nature is somewhat Platonic.
Human beings share certain attributes in common. That’s what makes them human.
So they exemplify certain properties.
2.What does this have to do with Chalcedon, anyway? Chalcedon doesn’t use the word “person.”
“Person” is an English translation of a Greek word, in tandem with a number of other Greek words, which carry a lot of conceptual baggage due to the early Christological controversies. So this is one of the systematic equivocations running through Perry’s interrogation.
3.All that matters, for me, is NT Christology, and whether the creeds are true to NT Christology.
Perry’s line of attack is a diversionary tactic, to distract attention away from the litmus test of NT Christology.
Perry’s problem is that he is dissatisfied with revelation. He wants to elevate a variety of speculative philosophical distinctions to the status of dogma.
PR: If Jesus is a divine person, do you think he has genuine human experiences and consciousness?
SH:
1.To say that Jesus is a divine person is simplistic. Jesus is a theanthropic person. His personhood is characterized by a full compliment of divine and human properties.
2.The divine nature qua divine does not experience the human nature qua human. But we can predicate genuine human experiences and consciousness of the unified subject.
3.The Incarnation is a unique event. Since the hypostatic union is sui generis, it is a fundamental mistake to extrapolate from the Incarnation to humanity in general.
PR: You seemed to have some reservations at the least, if not disagreements with an affirmation of those points in the past. This was your basis of dissent from the Chalcedonian position and you admitted that my position represented the historical position in question while yours did not.
SH:
1.I do not concede that your position represents the historical position. One would have to be a patrologist by training to offer an informed opinion on that question. And there is disagreement even among the pros, which suggests the absence of a uniform historical position.
2.You’re frustrated because I refuse to walk into an ambush. You set a trap, and I walk around it.
3.Do I dissent from the Chalcedonian position?
Here is what the creed of Chalcedon has to say:
“So, following the saintly fathers, we all with one voice teach the confession of one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ: the same perfect in divinity and perfect in humanity, the same truly God and truly man, of a rational soul and a body; consubstantial with the Father as regards his divinity, and the same consubstantial with us as regards his humanity; like us in all respects except for sin; begotten before the ages from the Father as regards his divinity, and in the last days the same for us and for our salvation from Mary, the virgin God-bearer as regards his humanity; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, only-begotten, acknowledged in two natures which undergo no confusion, no change, no division, no separation; at no point was the difference between the natures taken away through the union, but rather the property of both natures is preserved and comes together into a single person and a single subsistent being; he is not parted or divided into two persons, but is one and the same only-begotten Son, God, Word, Lord Jesus Christ, just as the prophets taught from the beginning about him, and as the Lord Jesus Christ himself instructed us, and as the creed of the fathers handed it down to us (http://www.ewtn.com/faith/teachings/incac2.htm).”
There is nothing in this statement from which I dissent.
Here is what the Westminster Confession has to say:
“The Son of God, the second person in the Trinity, being very and eternal God, of one substance and equal with the Father, did, when the fullness of time was come, take upon him man's nature, with all the essential properties, and common infirmities thereof, yet without sin; being conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost, in the womb of the virgin Mary, of her substance. So that two whole, perfect, and distinct natures, the Godhead and the manhood, were inseparably joined together in one person, without conversion, composition, or confusion. Which person is very God, and very man, yet one Christ, the only Mediator between God and man” (WCF 8:2).
There is nothing in this statement from which I dissent.
PR: If nature is not prior to person in the deity, then what exactly do you take the relation to be?
SH:
1.Revelation doesn’t say what “exactly” the relation amounts to. The point is not to state the “exact” relation, but to avoid reductionistic formulations.
2.”Nature” is a covering term.
PR: Are they identical?
SH: Identical in what respect?
i) The members of the Trinity share the same set of divine attributes.
ii) However, the members of the Trinity are not the same person. They are not identical with one another.
iii) If you’re looking for an analogy, the members of the Trinity are symmetrical rather than identical, using enantiomorphism as our model of the one-over-many.
PR: If you stand condemned by confessions of your own tradition, even confessions that you may profess subscription to, then I would think you would either undertake to change them in your own religious body, conform to them or remove yourself from them. Perhaps you have some other option handy such as blessed inconsistency though. In any case, I’d think you wouldn’t want to identify yourself with a false view of the Person of Christ.
SH:
1.Your conclusion is predicated on a false premise.
2.Even if I were to deviate from the Westminster Confession (or other suchlike) in some respect, contemporary Calvinism generally operates with system subscription rather than strict subscription.
It’s left to the discretion of the session, presbytery, and general assembly to determine the tolerable boundaries of licit dissent.
For example, the Westminster standards say that God made the world in the span of six days, but that is not enforced.
Likewise, when the (original) Westminster standards identify the Pope with the Antichrist, this presupposes a historicist interpretation of 2 Thessalonians and Revelation. But that is not enforced.
Along the same lines, the Westminster Directory of Worship, with its Puritan strictures, is simply ignored in the OPC and PCA.
PR: Moreover, those who read you should be aware of your dissent from Chalcedonian Christology, a Christology to which the Reformation professed fealty so that they are aware that you do not hold the same faith as they do. I would think that would be worth knowing. In fact, marking those out who do is something hardly limited to the Orthodox. Calvinists do it all the time.
SH: You continue to build on a false premise. But a delusional mindset has its own momentum.
PR: And I am just the least bit curious, why by confessional standards someone like yourself gets a pass on heterodox Christology from your co-bloggers but everyone else gets the third degree? Shouldn’t they be grilling you just as they do others, or is Christology just not that important? Is it non-essential in some way? I’d love to see how they square that with the Confessional status of said doctrine.
SH: Aside from your faulty operating assumption, I guess I “get a pass” is because my fellow bloggers are well aware of your devious methods. Indeed, some of them have been on the receiving end of your serpentine tactics.
PR: And if you are a “Biblicist” first and firmly believe your dissenting view, I would think that you’d be more than happy to announce it clearly rather than being defensive about it and having me pry it out of you. And I doubt that most people who read your blog know that you dissent from Chalcedonian Christology that is professed in numerous Reformed and Lutheran Confessions. Christology is hardly a “nook and crany” of Reformed theology, but then again, maybe it is! So much for being “Christ centered.”
SH: I’m not going to play the chump for your impersonation of Joseph Goebbels. You think that by repeating a lie long enough, it becomes the truth.
Perry likes to pose a string of trip-wire questions. He’s frustrated by the fact that I don’t accommodate him by marching through his sophistical minefield. I prefer to walk around it. I don’t let him frame the terms of the debate.
PR: So far I haven’t seen any denial on your part that my classification of you was off target.
SH: You must be suffering from glaucoma. Better get that treated.
PR: In any case, Steve, where is your clear denial of my classification? And where is the clear argument showing that I am wrong?
SH: Notice how Perry, in the grand tradition of a Stalinist prosecutor, likes to lead with a wife-beating question. The onus is then on the defendant in Perry’s little show trial to prove that he didn’t beat his wife.
PR: Guess I was right.
SH: Guess you were wrong.
Goodbye, Dr. Corts
This past Tuesday evening, a dear friend, and my former pastor, C. Mark Corts of Calvary Baptist Church, Winston-Salem, NC, passed into that which is to come after a long struggle with kidney and heart diseases. He was a model of theological conviction, drive, determination, and cooperation with others of differing views (Memphis Declaration Signers, here’s the reason I signed the declaration), underwritten by a love for His Lord and a desire to teach His Word. I had the opportunity to serve on the staff of Calvary several years ago, and I can say that, while I somewhat lament the conditions there now, for the place isn’t what it once was, the church has, because he built it for His Lord not on Jesus Loves Me pabulum sermons but on expository preaching and teaching from both the pulpit and the Sunday School classes, fared far better than most SBC churches I know in these days of doctrinal and biblical illiteracy and struggles over biblical sufficiency.
This article appeared in my newspaper today. Please join me in both grieving and rejoicing with his family and his church. We have lost another soldier of the cross in the Southern Baptist Convention this year. Dr. Rogers and Mrs. Criswell recently joined the Church Triumphant. It looks like the Convention is moving out of Nashville and into Heaven these days, doesn’t it?
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
"Lutheran" Pietism
LK: This is all very interesting. To begin just let me say that the acusations of Protestants being their own Pope or having a paper Pope, while poetic and all are simply imflamatory and not really an argument.
However, I am struck Steve by the degree to which (at least in this thread of argument) you are in fact a rationalist. It is reason and argumentation that even trumps appeal to revelation.
SH: This cuts against the grain of my stated position. I do not subordinate revelation to reason. Just the contrary.
I believe in sticking to exegesis. What do you think that means if not submitting to revelation?
But reason is the organ by which we apprehend and assent to the truths of revelation.
Reason cannot submit to revelation if reason is unable to grasp revelation.
So I affirm the primacy of revelation rather than the primacy of reason. This should have been obvious from what I wrote.
Grano is the one who wants to go beyond the boundaries of revelation.
LK: This of course is necesary since you deny continuity.
SH: This is an overstatement. There are continuities as well as discontinuities.
And this is true, both in reference to Evangelicalism and contemporary Catholicism.
LK: As any Protestant does who wishes to claim that somehow Luther and Calvin discoevered the Truth of Scripture that either had been missed for several hundred years and or was never discoverd (as the Alister McGrath quotes so wonderfully shows a truely astounding bias against the church).
SH:
1.This is not an issue of being a particular kind of Protestant. Rather, it’s the difference between being a Catholic and a Protestant.
If you don’t think there’s anything distinctive about Protestant theology, reread the Council of Trent.
2.Alister McGrath is very much a product of the 20C. For example, is he not a theistic evolutionist.
And is this something the early church affirmed? Or is this a theological innovation?
What about his views on the role of women? Is he a traditionalist?
What about his views on the punishment of heretics?
LK: As a Lutheran Pietist I agree that at the time of the Reformation there were things wrong with the Roman church.
SH: Wrong in what sense? Corruption? Venality? Or unscriptural doctrines which gave rise to so much of the corruption?
LK: It is equally clear to me that Luther's and Calvins interpretations of Scripture are not closer to the truth than Patristics.
SH: Then you’re not a Lutheran. Why cling to the label?
LK: And Steve wheter you admit it or not it is clear you are traped in a system and can't get out, and your Orthodox dialogue partner is actually less systematic than you and thus can accept ambiguity and that God didn't drop a complete book that is the revelation of God, rather the church that produced the figures you are so skeptical about actually gave you the Revelation in Scripture you believe you are defending with your rationilistic system.
SH:
1.You are superimposing your Pietism onto Grano. Grano is not retreating into ambiguity. Rather, Grano is giving reasons for his position. And if he’s going to give reasons for his position, then his reasons are subject to rational scrutiny. I’m answering him on his own level.
2. The church didn’t write the Bible. The church didn’t write the OT.
And the church didn’t write the NT. Rather, individuals wrote the NT.
Books which were addressed to local churches.
LK: And I must say that if you follow the implicit argument in your three points , we leave oursleves open to needing to say the Gnostic thelogy, Arian Theology etc. all need to be considered as the theology of the church, and then the divinity of Christ, the doctrin of the Trinity etc. begin to slowly slip away.
SH:
1.That depends on how you define the church. If historical theology is your frame of reference, then Gnostic theology or Arian theology is just as historical as Nicene Orthodoxy.
2.If, however, you define the church according to exegetical theology, then Gnosticism and Arianism are not true to the true church.
LK: If you read Peters sermons in Early Acts, it is very difficult to see either that Jesus is supposed to be God, or get any sense that God is triune.
SH: Two problems with this:
1.Are you saying that traditional theology is underdetermined by Scripture? If so, then traditional theology goes beyond the scope of revelation.
In that event, you’re the one who’s a rationalist, not me.
2.Systematic theology is, or ought to be, a doctrinal construct which integrates the entirely of the NT witness (as well as the OT witness) to person of Christ as well as the Trinity.
LK: Actually as for the last point #1 I was not taking that Steve believes that Calvinism was arround from the beginning but that to not believe so as I assume Steve believes (If he believes otherwise there woudl be no point to conversing on this subject as he would clearly be out of touch) rather that Calvinism some how discoverd the actual truth of Christianity 1500 years after the church was founded. This I find astounding.
What I hear in Steve's arguments is that although he admits that Calvinism does not agree with the continuous interpretation of Scripture through the centuries in the church that it is the truest theology, even though it did not exist until at best 500 years ago (and that is possibly a highly dubious claim since 5 point calvinism may in fact misinterpret Calvin).
SH: There are several problems with this line of argument:
1.LK is mounting an argument for his position. Nothing wrong with that except that if he’s going to reason with us, then he forfeits the right to play the Pietist card and accuse us of rationalism.
2.Calvinism is an offshoot of the Augustinian tradition. So elements of this position were always represented in the church—at least from the time of Augustine.
Keep in mind, too, that things like Nicene Orthodoxy took time to develop as well.
3.More to the point, it’s a historical fiction to identify a “continuous interpretation of Scripture” with the “church.”
There is no Gallup poll of what all Christians or even most Christians believed in the year 500, or the year 1000.
What LK is pleased to call the “church” is a very elitist concept of the church.
How many Christians were literate after the fall of Rome? How many Christians had private copies of the Bible? How many Christians read the Bible in Greek and Hebrew?
What LK is pleased to call the “continuous interpretation” of the “church” is restricted to the extant writings of a handful of theologians.
Only a fraction of Christians were in a position to write about their beliefs, and publish their writings. And only a fraction of this material has survived.
What LK identifies with the “church” is, in fact, severely limited to a thin upper crust of the educated class.
What did the illiterate masses, or Christians who had no access to private copies of the Bible, believe?
Well, I assume they believed what they were taught.
So the idea that Luther and Calvin are coming up with newfangled interpretations which run contrary to what Christians always and everywhere believed is a historical fiction.
The vast majority of Christians were never in the interpretive business to begin with.
4. Catholics like to point to the “scandal” of Protestant denominationalism.
Actually, this phenomenon directly undercuts the argument of someone like LK.
As soon as you make the Bible widely available, differences of opinion emerge.
And that’s because, for the first time, the disenfranchised laity have been given the opportunity to actually read the Bible for themselves.
Far from Calvin and Luther opposing some mythical Christian consensus, theirs is the true populism.
As soon as you inform the masses and actually put it up for a vote, diversity surfaces.
They are discovering something in the Bible they never had a chance to see before because they never had a Bible before.
Indeed, this one was reason that, traditionally, the church of Rome was so opposed to putting the Bible in the hands of the rank-and-file. It would lose control over the message.
LK is the one operating with an ahistorical model of the “church.” With a church that never was. His church is all tip, and no iceberg.
However, I am struck Steve by the degree to which (at least in this thread of argument) you are in fact a rationalist. It is reason and argumentation that even trumps appeal to revelation.
SH: This cuts against the grain of my stated position. I do not subordinate revelation to reason. Just the contrary.
I believe in sticking to exegesis. What do you think that means if not submitting to revelation?
But reason is the organ by which we apprehend and assent to the truths of revelation.
Reason cannot submit to revelation if reason is unable to grasp revelation.
So I affirm the primacy of revelation rather than the primacy of reason. This should have been obvious from what I wrote.
Grano is the one who wants to go beyond the boundaries of revelation.
LK: This of course is necesary since you deny continuity.
SH: This is an overstatement. There are continuities as well as discontinuities.
And this is true, both in reference to Evangelicalism and contemporary Catholicism.
LK: As any Protestant does who wishes to claim that somehow Luther and Calvin discoevered the Truth of Scripture that either had been missed for several hundred years and or was never discoverd (as the Alister McGrath quotes so wonderfully shows a truely astounding bias against the church).
SH:
1.This is not an issue of being a particular kind of Protestant. Rather, it’s the difference between being a Catholic and a Protestant.
If you don’t think there’s anything distinctive about Protestant theology, reread the Council of Trent.
2.Alister McGrath is very much a product of the 20C. For example, is he not a theistic evolutionist.
And is this something the early church affirmed? Or is this a theological innovation?
What about his views on the role of women? Is he a traditionalist?
What about his views on the punishment of heretics?
LK: As a Lutheran Pietist I agree that at the time of the Reformation there were things wrong with the Roman church.
SH: Wrong in what sense? Corruption? Venality? Or unscriptural doctrines which gave rise to so much of the corruption?
LK: It is equally clear to me that Luther's and Calvins interpretations of Scripture are not closer to the truth than Patristics.
SH: Then you’re not a Lutheran. Why cling to the label?
LK: And Steve wheter you admit it or not it is clear you are traped in a system and can't get out, and your Orthodox dialogue partner is actually less systematic than you and thus can accept ambiguity and that God didn't drop a complete book that is the revelation of God, rather the church that produced the figures you are so skeptical about actually gave you the Revelation in Scripture you believe you are defending with your rationilistic system.
SH:
1.You are superimposing your Pietism onto Grano. Grano is not retreating into ambiguity. Rather, Grano is giving reasons for his position. And if he’s going to give reasons for his position, then his reasons are subject to rational scrutiny. I’m answering him on his own level.
2. The church didn’t write the Bible. The church didn’t write the OT.
And the church didn’t write the NT. Rather, individuals wrote the NT.
Books which were addressed to local churches.
LK: And I must say that if you follow the implicit argument in your three points , we leave oursleves open to needing to say the Gnostic thelogy, Arian Theology etc. all need to be considered as the theology of the church, and then the divinity of Christ, the doctrin of the Trinity etc. begin to slowly slip away.
SH:
1.That depends on how you define the church. If historical theology is your frame of reference, then Gnostic theology or Arian theology is just as historical as Nicene Orthodoxy.
2.If, however, you define the church according to exegetical theology, then Gnosticism and Arianism are not true to the true church.
LK: If you read Peters sermons in Early Acts, it is very difficult to see either that Jesus is supposed to be God, or get any sense that God is triune.
SH: Two problems with this:
1.Are you saying that traditional theology is underdetermined by Scripture? If so, then traditional theology goes beyond the scope of revelation.
In that event, you’re the one who’s a rationalist, not me.
2.Systematic theology is, or ought to be, a doctrinal construct which integrates the entirely of the NT witness (as well as the OT witness) to person of Christ as well as the Trinity.
LK: Actually as for the last point #1 I was not taking that Steve believes that Calvinism was arround from the beginning but that to not believe so as I assume Steve believes (If he believes otherwise there woudl be no point to conversing on this subject as he would clearly be out of touch) rather that Calvinism some how discoverd the actual truth of Christianity 1500 years after the church was founded. This I find astounding.
What I hear in Steve's arguments is that although he admits that Calvinism does not agree with the continuous interpretation of Scripture through the centuries in the church that it is the truest theology, even though it did not exist until at best 500 years ago (and that is possibly a highly dubious claim since 5 point calvinism may in fact misinterpret Calvin).
SH: There are several problems with this line of argument:
1.LK is mounting an argument for his position. Nothing wrong with that except that if he’s going to reason with us, then he forfeits the right to play the Pietist card and accuse us of rationalism.
2.Calvinism is an offshoot of the Augustinian tradition. So elements of this position were always represented in the church—at least from the time of Augustine.
Keep in mind, too, that things like Nicene Orthodoxy took time to develop as well.
3.More to the point, it’s a historical fiction to identify a “continuous interpretation of Scripture” with the “church.”
There is no Gallup poll of what all Christians or even most Christians believed in the year 500, or the year 1000.
What LK is pleased to call the “church” is a very elitist concept of the church.
How many Christians were literate after the fall of Rome? How many Christians had private copies of the Bible? How many Christians read the Bible in Greek and Hebrew?
What LK is pleased to call the “continuous interpretation” of the “church” is restricted to the extant writings of a handful of theologians.
Only a fraction of Christians were in a position to write about their beliefs, and publish their writings. And only a fraction of this material has survived.
What LK identifies with the “church” is, in fact, severely limited to a thin upper crust of the educated class.
What did the illiterate masses, or Christians who had no access to private copies of the Bible, believe?
Well, I assume they believed what they were taught.
So the idea that Luther and Calvin are coming up with newfangled interpretations which run contrary to what Christians always and everywhere believed is a historical fiction.
The vast majority of Christians were never in the interpretive business to begin with.
4. Catholics like to point to the “scandal” of Protestant denominationalism.
Actually, this phenomenon directly undercuts the argument of someone like LK.
As soon as you make the Bible widely available, differences of opinion emerge.
And that’s because, for the first time, the disenfranchised laity have been given the opportunity to actually read the Bible for themselves.
Far from Calvin and Luther opposing some mythical Christian consensus, theirs is the true populism.
As soon as you inform the masses and actually put it up for a vote, diversity surfaces.
They are discovering something in the Bible they never had a chance to see before because they never had a Bible before.
Indeed, this one was reason that, traditionally, the church of Rome was so opposed to putting the Bible in the hands of the rank-and-file. It would lose control over the message.
LK is the one operating with an ahistorical model of the “church.” With a church that never was. His church is all tip, and no iceberg.
Where No Man Has Gone Before
From Trektoday:
By Michelle
August 29, 2006 - 9:06 PM
By Michelle
August 29, 2006 - 9:06 PM
An Australian student has earned a PhD degree with a prize-winning thesis on the mythology of Star Trek.
The dissertation of Dr. Djoymi Baker, entitled Broadcast Space: TV Culture, Myth and Star Trek, has won a chancellor's prize for excellence at Melbourne University, according to The Age. For research, Baker watched 624 advertisement-free hours of Star Trek episodes dating from 1966 to 2005.
Baker's 90,000-word analysis of the series compares the characters and their adventures with stories from ancient mythology, including Homer's Odyssey. "I was interested in where myths turn up in less obvious forms, and there wasn't much work on the early years of television and its relation to myth," said Baker, who admitted to being a fan. "I don't think just because a study is serious and that I'm connecting Star Trek to a broader history of TV and ancient myths that it means there is not also a fun side - I can see the fun side as well."
She noted that while some of Kirk's monologues were inspired by John F. Kennedy's speeches exhorting humans to reach for the moon and deeper into space, the roles were reversed decades later when NASA scientists made guest appearances on Star Trek to gain support and funding. Baker is in the process of turning the thesis into a published book.
Now for some witty banter...
So this is what our friend the Pedantic Protestant has really been up to for the past year! :~)
I mean, did he really have to go to all this trouble to learn that Picard is superior to Kirk, but Spock is superior to Data? Everybody knows that Odo is much more interesting than Phlox, but by the same token, it's a toss-up as to whether or not Quark or Neelix is more annoying. DS9 is far superior to TOS, TNG, or Voyager, so I'm not so sure that'd make for great dissertation material. The less said about Enterprise the better. On the other hand, perhaps this would make for an interesting dissertation on the Femme Fatale motif. We all know Seven of Nine rescued Voyager, and who can argue that Lt. Uhura was ahead of her time? Take that T'Pol!
Whether I'm A Calvinist, Response To Perry Robinson, Etc.
I got home from work earlier this evening, and I just got done reading through the dozens of posts that resulted from my comments earlier today. Al Kimel referred to all of the Triablogue staff as Calvinists, and Steve Hays responded:
"Actually, I don’t know that Jason Engwer is a five-point Calvinist. I invited him to join the team for other reasons."
I've addressed this issue in a few forums in the past, although I haven't addressed it since joining Triablogue, as far as I recall. I did comment on it in a thread here last year, though, before I joined the Triablogue staff, and Steve might have gotten his impression from what I wrote in that thread. I'm not a Calvinist. I've attended an Evangelical Free church since around the age of four, and there are people in that denomination on both sides of the issue. I don't know enough about it to take a confident position. I have read some books, followed some debates, and such, but I still have a lot of unanswered questions, have heard of positions on the issue that I haven't studied yet, and don't consider it an essential, though it is important.
As far as I know, Steve has never said that only Calvinists would be on staff. I know that Eric Vestrup was on the staff for a while, and he isn't a Calvinist. Most of us are, though.
On his blog, Al Kimel wrote:
"The Church Fathers are only of interest to them to the degree that the Fathers confirm their exegetical conclusions. That the Church Fathers were not five-point TULIP Calvinists does not bother them."
I'm not sure how Al would know what's "of interest" to me in this area. I do think highly of the church fathers, and I've read thousands of pages of their writings. I've distanced myself from segments of Evangelicalism that ignore them or are highly dismissive of them. I do think that the fathers have some relevance to Biblical interpretation, especially the earlier fathers. They're also significant in a lot of other contexts. I don't consider Al's description above to be an accurate assessment of my view of the fathers.
Later in the thread, Perry Robinson made some comments about me, although he repeatedly misspelled my name as "Enweger". We've had discussions in the past, including at Al Kimel's blog, so I'm not sure why he'd misspell my name, unless the misspelling has some significance I'm not aware of. If it's a deliberate misspelling, I've missed the significance of it.
Perry writes:
"What Enweger needs to look at to present a significant problem for Orthodoxy is what the Bishops taught (1 Tim 3:16-17) since they are the principle teachers of the Faith."
There is no verse 17 in 1 Timothy 3, so I assume he meant to refer to 2 Timothy. And 2 Timothy 3:16-17 doesn't lead us to Perry's understanding of the significance of "what the Bishops taught".
I'm aware that Eastern Orthodox don't think that every church father was orthodox on every issue, that they don't consider the fathers infallible as individuals, etc. I'm also aware of the other issues Perry raises in his response. I've been over these issues with Perry before. In my original post, which Perry is responding to, I linked to one of my posts here earlier this year, in which I interacted with arguments like the ones Perry is raising. My comments were posted at Al Kimel's blog as well, and Perry, to my knowledge, never responded to me on those points in either forum.
I don't deny that Eastern Orthodox give explanations for why they reject patristic beliefs that they disagree with. But Grano1 suggested that there was a continuity of belief. Even if you think that the fathers were speaking fallibly when they opposed the veneration of images or opposed praying to the deceased, for example, the fact remains that they did hold such positions that aren't consistent with modern Eastern Orthodoxy. To go from not baptizing infants or baptizing them only when they're near death, on the one hand, to baptizing all infants without regard to nearness of death, on the other hand, is a change. To go from opposition to the veneration of images to venerating images is a change, not a continuous belief. To go from praying only to God to also praying to the deceased and angels is a change.
Perry can raise some qualifiers if he wants to, such as an Eastern Orthodox standard for "what the Bishops taught", but I think that most people would consider the contradictions between the church fathers and today's Eastern Orthodox more significant than Perry does. For Perry to act as if my post suggests that I'm unaware of the qualifications he discusses is misleading, especially when I addressed such issues in a discussion with Perry earlier this year.
On infant baptism, Perry writes:
"Enweger’s material on infant baptism has been discussed here before, but let me pick out one goof. One line of evidence against infant baptism is supposedly the belief that children were not guilty, and therefore had no need of baptism. The idea of children being guilty came later. Well this supposes that the function of baptism is primarily to remove guilt."
Perry doesn't tell us what "goof" in my comments he's responding to. Where did I make the argument he's objecting to?
I don't know what Perry has in mind, but I recommend that people compare my posts on infant baptism (the ones I linked to earlier today and the others available in the archives here) to Perry's claim that infant baptism has always been a teaching of the church. I've largely repeated the sentiments of the paedobaptist patristic scholar David Wright on this issue. Nothing Perry has written in response so far (today or earlier this year) overturns my position. The reason why Perry has to keep appealing to the fallibility of individual church fathers, what some people might have believed without leaving a record of their beliefs in the historical record, etc. is because the historical record doesn't support Perry on these issues.
"Actually, I don’t know that Jason Engwer is a five-point Calvinist. I invited him to join the team for other reasons."
I've addressed this issue in a few forums in the past, although I haven't addressed it since joining Triablogue, as far as I recall. I did comment on it in a thread here last year, though, before I joined the Triablogue staff, and Steve might have gotten his impression from what I wrote in that thread. I'm not a Calvinist. I've attended an Evangelical Free church since around the age of four, and there are people in that denomination on both sides of the issue. I don't know enough about it to take a confident position. I have read some books, followed some debates, and such, but I still have a lot of unanswered questions, have heard of positions on the issue that I haven't studied yet, and don't consider it an essential, though it is important.
As far as I know, Steve has never said that only Calvinists would be on staff. I know that Eric Vestrup was on the staff for a while, and he isn't a Calvinist. Most of us are, though.
On his blog, Al Kimel wrote:
"The Church Fathers are only of interest to them to the degree that the Fathers confirm their exegetical conclusions. That the Church Fathers were not five-point TULIP Calvinists does not bother them."
I'm not sure how Al would know what's "of interest" to me in this area. I do think highly of the church fathers, and I've read thousands of pages of their writings. I've distanced myself from segments of Evangelicalism that ignore them or are highly dismissive of them. I do think that the fathers have some relevance to Biblical interpretation, especially the earlier fathers. They're also significant in a lot of other contexts. I don't consider Al's description above to be an accurate assessment of my view of the fathers.
Later in the thread, Perry Robinson made some comments about me, although he repeatedly misspelled my name as "Enweger". We've had discussions in the past, including at Al Kimel's blog, so I'm not sure why he'd misspell my name, unless the misspelling has some significance I'm not aware of. If it's a deliberate misspelling, I've missed the significance of it.
Perry writes:
"What Enweger needs to look at to present a significant problem for Orthodoxy is what the Bishops taught (1 Tim 3:16-17) since they are the principle teachers of the Faith."
There is no verse 17 in 1 Timothy 3, so I assume he meant to refer to 2 Timothy. And 2 Timothy 3:16-17 doesn't lead us to Perry's understanding of the significance of "what the Bishops taught".
I'm aware that Eastern Orthodox don't think that every church father was orthodox on every issue, that they don't consider the fathers infallible as individuals, etc. I'm also aware of the other issues Perry raises in his response. I've been over these issues with Perry before. In my original post, which Perry is responding to, I linked to one of my posts here earlier this year, in which I interacted with arguments like the ones Perry is raising. My comments were posted at Al Kimel's blog as well, and Perry, to my knowledge, never responded to me on those points in either forum.
I don't deny that Eastern Orthodox give explanations for why they reject patristic beliefs that they disagree with. But Grano1 suggested that there was a continuity of belief. Even if you think that the fathers were speaking fallibly when they opposed the veneration of images or opposed praying to the deceased, for example, the fact remains that they did hold such positions that aren't consistent with modern Eastern Orthodoxy. To go from not baptizing infants or baptizing them only when they're near death, on the one hand, to baptizing all infants without regard to nearness of death, on the other hand, is a change. To go from opposition to the veneration of images to venerating images is a change, not a continuous belief. To go from praying only to God to also praying to the deceased and angels is a change.
Perry can raise some qualifiers if he wants to, such as an Eastern Orthodox standard for "what the Bishops taught", but I think that most people would consider the contradictions between the church fathers and today's Eastern Orthodox more significant than Perry does. For Perry to act as if my post suggests that I'm unaware of the qualifications he discusses is misleading, especially when I addressed such issues in a discussion with Perry earlier this year.
On infant baptism, Perry writes:
"Enweger’s material on infant baptism has been discussed here before, but let me pick out one goof. One line of evidence against infant baptism is supposedly the belief that children were not guilty, and therefore had no need of baptism. The idea of children being guilty came later. Well this supposes that the function of baptism is primarily to remove guilt."
Perry doesn't tell us what "goof" in my comments he's responding to. Where did I make the argument he's objecting to?
I don't know what Perry has in mind, but I recommend that people compare my posts on infant baptism (the ones I linked to earlier today and the others available in the archives here) to Perry's claim that infant baptism has always been a teaching of the church. I've largely repeated the sentiments of the paedobaptist patristic scholar David Wright on this issue. Nothing Perry has written in response so far (today or earlier this year) overturns my position. The reason why Perry has to keep appealing to the fallibility of individual church fathers, what some people might have believed without leaving a record of their beliefs in the historical record, etc. is because the historical record doesn't support Perry on these issues.
Common grace
**QUOTE***
Grano1 said:
I posted a comment this morning somewhere on here about narrowing my focus down to one troubling question, due to time constraints. Don't know if and where that post showed up, but here's my question: At one point in our discussion I asked Steve if God loved Todd, the 'blasphemer,' and wanted him to be saved. As far as I can see, he never answered. But someone writing as 'Shining and Burning Light' had this response:
"God hates sinners who remain in their sins. He does have a general love for all men in that He provided a Savior and has offered that Savior to everyone. He also provides for the needs of sinner and saint alike as He causes the rain to fall on the wicked as well as the righteous. However, He has a special love for Christians. He doesn't love all men with the same love that He has for His people who are in covenant with Him through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. So, if a blasphemer doesn't come to Christ, does God love him? Obviously not with that special redemptive love that leads to salvation. Should you align yourself with an unrepentant blasphemer over and against a Christian brother with whom you disagree about theological matters? Sounds fishy to me, anyway...."
First of all, I aligned myself with Todd only in the sense that I found his questions non-frivolous. I did not know his history with the blog and was considering the particular questions on that post only.
I still would like to hear from Steve -- does God love Todd? Does He want him to repent and be saved?
Above, Shining... says God hates unrepentant sinners who remain in their sins. What if he is predestined to repent tomorrow and be saved? Does that mean God didn't love him today? Isn't God's love toward the unbeliever what prompts Him to save him? "Christ died for us while we were yet sinners," right? "For God so loved the world..." right?
But if I follow this logic it implies that God hates what we would consider his "enemies." Yet Christ commands us to love OUR enemies. Isn't God expecting us to do something he himself won't do? Didn't Christ die for us while we were at enmity with him?
So again I ask...what about it, Steve? Does God love Todd and want him to be saved?
***END-QUOTE***
A couple of preliminary comments:
1.The combox at T-blog has a way of turning into an informal discussion board. And that’s fine with me. I think that’s a healthy development.
But by that same token, I’m not bound by anyone’s formulation, and no one is bound by mine.
2.To my knowledge, none of the historic Reformed confessions address this issue, so there’s no official answer to your question.
I believe that this issue got started with Kuyper’s doctrine of common grace.
Kuyper, in turn, had a deep influence on the CRC.
Herman Hoeksema took issue with Kuyper’s doctrine of common grace (back in the 20s).
He lost his battle with the CRC, and formed a breakaway denomination.
At a later date (in the 40s), this issue, along with some others, resurfaced in the Clark Controversy, when Gordan Clark’s application for ordination in the OPC was challenged.
The majority report, written by John Murray and Ned Stonehouse, carried the day.
On this view, the universal offer of the gospel implied a well-meant offer, according to which God loves the reprobate and desires their salvation.
The minority report, representing the viewpoint of Gordon Clark, William Young, and others, took issue with this inference.
So you can find contemporary Calvinists on both sides of this issue.
3. As to my own general position:
On the one hand, I agree with Kuyper and disagree with Hoeksema regarding the reality of common grace.
On the other hand, I also agree with William Young that the universal offer does not imply a well-meant offer—at least in the way that Murray construes it.
To me, an offer is sincere as long as it is true. If anyone complies with the terms of the promise, God will make good on his promise.
While I affirm common grace, common grace is, in my opinion, for the benefit of the elect rather than the reprobate.
In a common field, God must send his sun and rain on the wheat and tares alike in order to send his sun and rain on the wheat in particular.
So God often blesses the reprobate for the sake of the elect.
4.With respect to Todd, if Todd is one of the elect, then God loves him and desires his salvation. Indeed, if Todd is one of the elect, then God will regenerate Todd at some future date.
But if Todd is a reprobate, then God does not love him or desire his salvation.
And since Todd doesn’t believe in God, there’s no reason why he should find this offensive.
5.I do not impute to God an unrequited desire.
This world is exactly what God wants it to be. If God didn’t like it, he was in a position to make another world entirely to his liking.
There’s nothing to hinder God from having the world he wants, down to the very last detail.
Mind you, this doesn’t mean that God approves of everything that occurs considered in isolation to his overall purpose.
And his motives are very different from the motives of the sinner.
6.There is, of course, a sense in which repentance is good, and God approves of whatever is good.
But some goods are greater than others. And some goods are incompatible with other goods.
For example, there is more than one woman who would make a good wife for me, which doesn’t mean that I should marry more than one woman!
7.We are to love our enemies for the duration of the church age. There is, however, such a thing as hell.
The injunctions in the Sermon on the Mount do not address the final state.
Grano1 said:
I posted a comment this morning somewhere on here about narrowing my focus down to one troubling question, due to time constraints. Don't know if and where that post showed up, but here's my question: At one point in our discussion I asked Steve if God loved Todd, the 'blasphemer,' and wanted him to be saved. As far as I can see, he never answered. But someone writing as 'Shining and Burning Light' had this response:
"God hates sinners who remain in their sins. He does have a general love for all men in that He provided a Savior and has offered that Savior to everyone. He also provides for the needs of sinner and saint alike as He causes the rain to fall on the wicked as well as the righteous. However, He has a special love for Christians. He doesn't love all men with the same love that He has for His people who are in covenant with Him through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. So, if a blasphemer doesn't come to Christ, does God love him? Obviously not with that special redemptive love that leads to salvation. Should you align yourself with an unrepentant blasphemer over and against a Christian brother with whom you disagree about theological matters? Sounds fishy to me, anyway...."
First of all, I aligned myself with Todd only in the sense that I found his questions non-frivolous. I did not know his history with the blog and was considering the particular questions on that post only.
I still would like to hear from Steve -- does God love Todd? Does He want him to repent and be saved?
Above, Shining... says God hates unrepentant sinners who remain in their sins. What if he is predestined to repent tomorrow and be saved? Does that mean God didn't love him today? Isn't God's love toward the unbeliever what prompts Him to save him? "Christ died for us while we were yet sinners," right? "For God so loved the world..." right?
But if I follow this logic it implies that God hates what we would consider his "enemies." Yet Christ commands us to love OUR enemies. Isn't God expecting us to do something he himself won't do? Didn't Christ die for us while we were at enmity with him?
So again I ask...what about it, Steve? Does God love Todd and want him to be saved?
***END-QUOTE***
A couple of preliminary comments:
1.The combox at T-blog has a way of turning into an informal discussion board. And that’s fine with me. I think that’s a healthy development.
But by that same token, I’m not bound by anyone’s formulation, and no one is bound by mine.
2.To my knowledge, none of the historic Reformed confessions address this issue, so there’s no official answer to your question.
I believe that this issue got started with Kuyper’s doctrine of common grace.
Kuyper, in turn, had a deep influence on the CRC.
Herman Hoeksema took issue with Kuyper’s doctrine of common grace (back in the 20s).
He lost his battle with the CRC, and formed a breakaway denomination.
At a later date (in the 40s), this issue, along with some others, resurfaced in the Clark Controversy, when Gordan Clark’s application for ordination in the OPC was challenged.
The majority report, written by John Murray and Ned Stonehouse, carried the day.
On this view, the universal offer of the gospel implied a well-meant offer, according to which God loves the reprobate and desires their salvation.
The minority report, representing the viewpoint of Gordon Clark, William Young, and others, took issue with this inference.
So you can find contemporary Calvinists on both sides of this issue.
3. As to my own general position:
On the one hand, I agree with Kuyper and disagree with Hoeksema regarding the reality of common grace.
On the other hand, I also agree with William Young that the universal offer does not imply a well-meant offer—at least in the way that Murray construes it.
To me, an offer is sincere as long as it is true. If anyone complies with the terms of the promise, God will make good on his promise.
While I affirm common grace, common grace is, in my opinion, for the benefit of the elect rather than the reprobate.
In a common field, God must send his sun and rain on the wheat and tares alike in order to send his sun and rain on the wheat in particular.
So God often blesses the reprobate for the sake of the elect.
4.With respect to Todd, if Todd is one of the elect, then God loves him and desires his salvation. Indeed, if Todd is one of the elect, then God will regenerate Todd at some future date.
But if Todd is a reprobate, then God does not love him or desire his salvation.
And since Todd doesn’t believe in God, there’s no reason why he should find this offensive.
5.I do not impute to God an unrequited desire.
This world is exactly what God wants it to be. If God didn’t like it, he was in a position to make another world entirely to his liking.
There’s nothing to hinder God from having the world he wants, down to the very last detail.
Mind you, this doesn’t mean that God approves of everything that occurs considered in isolation to his overall purpose.
And his motives are very different from the motives of the sinner.
6.There is, of course, a sense in which repentance is good, and God approves of whatever is good.
But some goods are greater than others. And some goods are incompatible with other goods.
For example, there is more than one woman who would make a good wife for me, which doesn’t mean that I should marry more than one woman!
7.We are to love our enemies for the duration of the church age. There is, however, such a thing as hell.
The injunctions in the Sermon on the Mount do not address the final state.
Everyone's subjective but me!
From Al Kimel’s combox:
***QUOTE***
14. A Wandering Thomist Says:
August 30th, 2006 at 11:46 am
The point made that Calvinists find Calvinism in the Bible because they read the Bible through the lens of Calvinist confessional documents is spot on. Every Reformed Christian I have talked to does this — the confessional documents stand as the filter they use when reading scripture or the fathers. Everything that doesn’t fit that filter is discarded, either overtly (if a church father is involved) or indirectly (if it is a scripture passage). Context in the text is not looked at — what is critical is finding proof-texts and isolated verses that can be fit into the confessional statement (Westminster, Dort, etc.).
This makes it incredibly difficult to have a productive conversation with Calvinists — unless one can break through the programming. I haven’t been able to do that yet!
***END-QUOTE***
There are several glaring problems with this statement:
1.I don’t doubt that this allegation is true for a certain percentage of Calvinists—especially the cradle Calvinist.
2.And it’s equally true for every other theological tradition.
For example, since the time, say, of the Photian schism, how many Popes have been converts to Catholicism?
Haven’t they all been cradle Catholics?
So, yes, there’s such a thing as Reformed programming, as well as Catholic programming, Orthodox programming, Mormon programming, &c., &c.
An objection likes this proves everything and nothing. The Wandering Thomist is staking out the position that “Everyone is subjective but me!”
But he’s just as susceptible to peer pressure and social conditioning as the rest of us. And so are the members of his particular communion.
3.And it’s hardly applicable to those who’ve converted to Calvinism from another theological tradition.
4.It’s also a very ironic criticism. After all, isn’t a Catholic supposed to read the Bible through the lens of Catholic confessional documents?
5.Finally, the Wandering Thomist” should try to work through, say, Carson’s commentary on John or Schreiner’s commentary on Romans to see if a trained exegete who is also a Calvinist conforms to his caricature.
***QUOTE***
16. Perry Robinson Says:
August 30th, 2006 at 11:55 am
Hays is intelligent but uninformed when it comes to Orthodox theology. This is made manifest by his inability to mount anything that looks like an internal critique.
***END-QUOTE***
Åssuming that that this is true, why does Perry accuse his opponents of being uniformed instead of informing them?
Why doesn’t Perry take the opportunity to make his case for Orthodoxy?
***QUOTE***
In any case, Hays is practically a self confessed Nestorian, glossing personhood as an “instance of a nature” and therefore stands condemned under the Confessional standards of the Reformation traditions. He should take care of his own lumber yard first.
***END-QUOTE***
Several more problems:
1.Perry’s standing tactic is proof by labeling.
Instead of attempting to mount a serious argument, he merely attempts to classify his opponent according to some traditional heresy, whether or not it fits.
2.What personhood are we talking about? Divine personhood or human personhood?
A divine person is not an instance of a nature. As I’ve explained many times before, the exemplar/exemplum relation is a Creator/creature relation. It is not internal to the Godhead.
God himself does not exemplify a nature. A divine person is not a property instance of the divine nature. Nature is not prior to person in the Godhead—or vice versa.
3.Assuming, for the sake of argument, that I stand condemned by the Reformed confessions, so what?
Is Perry insinuating that I’m not a true Calvinist? Again, so what?
I’m a Biblicist first, and a Calvinist second. My lumberyard is Scripture.
I call myself a Calvinist because I think that’s what I am, and because almost everyone who reads Triablogue has no difficulty arriving at the same designation.
It’s useful for people who know where you’re coming from. I play with an open deck.
But it’s not as if I first select the label of choice, then conform myself to the label. I’m not attempting to fill out every nook and cranny of the Reformed tradition. To bend to every preexisting contour of the Reformed tradition. Maybe I do, and maybe I don’t.
4.You see, Perry is an Orthodox chauvinist, but I’m not a Reformed chauvinist.
For Perry, salvation is a matter of what lapel pin you wear, what jersey you don, what fraternity you belong to. He who dies with the right brand-name wins. He's a partisan first, last, and always.
5.Kimel and Wandering Thomist think my problem is that I’m too blinkered by my sectarian confessional standards.
But Perry thinks I stand condemned by my sectarian confessional standards.
So I’m both too confessional and too contra-confessional. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
***QUOTE***
14. A Wandering Thomist Says:
August 30th, 2006 at 11:46 am
The point made that Calvinists find Calvinism in the Bible because they read the Bible through the lens of Calvinist confessional documents is spot on. Every Reformed Christian I have talked to does this — the confessional documents stand as the filter they use when reading scripture or the fathers. Everything that doesn’t fit that filter is discarded, either overtly (if a church father is involved) or indirectly (if it is a scripture passage). Context in the text is not looked at — what is critical is finding proof-texts and isolated verses that can be fit into the confessional statement (Westminster, Dort, etc.).
This makes it incredibly difficult to have a productive conversation with Calvinists — unless one can break through the programming. I haven’t been able to do that yet!
***END-QUOTE***
There are several glaring problems with this statement:
1.I don’t doubt that this allegation is true for a certain percentage of Calvinists—especially the cradle Calvinist.
2.And it’s equally true for every other theological tradition.
For example, since the time, say, of the Photian schism, how many Popes have been converts to Catholicism?
Haven’t they all been cradle Catholics?
So, yes, there’s such a thing as Reformed programming, as well as Catholic programming, Orthodox programming, Mormon programming, &c., &c.
An objection likes this proves everything and nothing. The Wandering Thomist is staking out the position that “Everyone is subjective but me!”
But he’s just as susceptible to peer pressure and social conditioning as the rest of us. And so are the members of his particular communion.
3.And it’s hardly applicable to those who’ve converted to Calvinism from another theological tradition.
4.It’s also a very ironic criticism. After all, isn’t a Catholic supposed to read the Bible through the lens of Catholic confessional documents?
5.Finally, the Wandering Thomist” should try to work through, say, Carson’s commentary on John or Schreiner’s commentary on Romans to see if a trained exegete who is also a Calvinist conforms to his caricature.
***QUOTE***
16. Perry Robinson Says:
August 30th, 2006 at 11:55 am
Hays is intelligent but uninformed when it comes to Orthodox theology. This is made manifest by his inability to mount anything that looks like an internal critique.
***END-QUOTE***
Åssuming that that this is true, why does Perry accuse his opponents of being uniformed instead of informing them?
Why doesn’t Perry take the opportunity to make his case for Orthodoxy?
***QUOTE***
In any case, Hays is practically a self confessed Nestorian, glossing personhood as an “instance of a nature” and therefore stands condemned under the Confessional standards of the Reformation traditions. He should take care of his own lumber yard first.
***END-QUOTE***
Several more problems:
1.Perry’s standing tactic is proof by labeling.
Instead of attempting to mount a serious argument, he merely attempts to classify his opponent according to some traditional heresy, whether or not it fits.
2.What personhood are we talking about? Divine personhood or human personhood?
A divine person is not an instance of a nature. As I’ve explained many times before, the exemplar/exemplum relation is a Creator/creature relation. It is not internal to the Godhead.
God himself does not exemplify a nature. A divine person is not a property instance of the divine nature. Nature is not prior to person in the Godhead—or vice versa.
3.Assuming, for the sake of argument, that I stand condemned by the Reformed confessions, so what?
Is Perry insinuating that I’m not a true Calvinist? Again, so what?
I’m a Biblicist first, and a Calvinist second. My lumberyard is Scripture.
I call myself a Calvinist because I think that’s what I am, and because almost everyone who reads Triablogue has no difficulty arriving at the same designation.
It’s useful for people who know where you’re coming from. I play with an open deck.
But it’s not as if I first select the label of choice, then conform myself to the label. I’m not attempting to fill out every nook and cranny of the Reformed tradition. To bend to every preexisting contour of the Reformed tradition. Maybe I do, and maybe I don’t.
4.You see, Perry is an Orthodox chauvinist, but I’m not a Reformed chauvinist.
For Perry, salvation is a matter of what lapel pin you wear, what jersey you don, what fraternity you belong to. He who dies with the right brand-name wins. He's a partisan first, last, and always.
5.Kimel and Wandering Thomist think my problem is that I’m too blinkered by my sectarian confessional standards.
But Perry thinks I stand condemned by my sectarian confessional standards.
So I’m both too confessional and too contra-confessional. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Seeing Through a Mirror Darkly
This week is my birthday. I'd hoped to take some extra time away. Alas that was not to be. Oh well.
Mr. Kimel does not seem to realize that the Church Fathers, et.al. must be exegeted as well. What is his standard, pray tell, for understanding the Church Fathers, the Catholic Cathechism, the proceedings of the Councils, Canon Law, etc.?
1. Bzzt. I'm not a Presbyterian, and my own church doesn't employ the 2nd London Baptist Confession. I've stated this more than once on this blog. I am a Calvinist for these reasons: (a) Scripture itself teaches it, and I arrived at these conclusions about it apart from the confessions, etc. (in point of fact, I was reared in the easy believism, dispensationalism of independent Baptistery, did not become a Christian until college, and was about as far from Calvinism and Covenant Theology as you can get), (b) I am a consistent Trinitarian, and (c) I came to my understanding of Covenant Theology itself by reading Scripture. I did not take a course in Covenant Theology in order to learn it. When I did, it only confirmed what I had already concluded. If you wish to undermine Calvinism, speaking for myself, this is why I will ask you to demonstrate otherwise from Scripture.
2. As a matter of fact, my library is littered with the likes of Thomas Oden. Hint: I studied Patristics, Christology, and Theology Proper from his material. My professor was the same for each and was a big ol' Arminian from Gordon-Conwell Seminary. Incidentally, he also taught me modern (e.g. liberal) theology (feminist, process, neo-orthodox, etc.). Loved the man. Great professor. He made us learn the opposing position from the inside out, not as evangelicals looking in.
3. "Al Kimmel does not see that the only reason the Bible seems to support Catholicism is because he is reading it through the hermeneutical lens of the Roman Catholic Magisterium." I must thank Mr. Kimmel for demonstrating why Catholicism and Orthodoxy produces very few competent exegetes given this starting point.
4. The competent exegetes Rome has produced use the GHM. This is the same method I and my fellow Tblogers use.
5. With respect to Calvinism vs. other soteriological viewpoints, if you'd care to actually do your research, there are very few exegetical responses to Calvinism that don't cause men to wind up in theology with no epistemic explanatory power or that is inconsistent with what it wants to do (which is usually get God "off the ethical hook" that Calvinism is said to put Him with respect to theodicy or that all power and ever evasive attribute of "omnibenevolence." Arminians and Lutherans generally object to Calvinism on ethical or philosophical, not exegetical grounds. For example, they'll generally argue not against unconditional election but against reprobation. That's not an exegetical argument. That's an ethical objection. The book Why I'm not a Calvinist by Walls and Dongell in that arena demonstrates that quite well.
6. Reading a standard commentary where these issues tend to arise, we often find that Arminians agree with Calvinists on key passages like 2 Peter 3:9 and 1 Tim. 2:4. For an example cf. R. Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter (Word 1983), 312-13. In others, it's pretty standard fare for them to repeat the intension-extension fallacy when the pantos passages occur.
Why does this bother you Mr. Kimel? Roman Catholics and The Orthodox are interested in the Fathers for largely the same reasons. In fact, according you Rome, you need them in order to arrive at your conclusions anyway.
Speaking for myself, I only replied to Grano1 on his own level. It's not as if Rome and Constantinople have sole ownership of the Fathers. I'm far more interesting in knowing what Scripture says than what they say. All you have in the Fathers is a selected group of private opinions. Incidentally, which Scriptures regarding soteriology has Rome or the Fathers infallibly interpreted?
1. Mr. Kimel, you know nothing about me. In point of fact, I have taught church history, and I actually teach it using it as a model fo dogmatic progression.
2. Why should this bother you? That the Church Fathers were not raging paedobaptists, venerators of Mary, venerators of icons, and Roman Catholics does not bother Roman Catholics, so why should it bother you if Calvinists and Amyraldians are not bothered if they weren't Calvinists and Amyraldians?
Mr. Kimel, Newman also stated, "
Uh-huh. How is it exactly that these uninspired men, whose voice is supposedly united in an admittedly indeterminate state can be of supreme authority? How can implicit obedience then be transferred to the Church, which has yet to determine what the practical rule of duty is according to these same Fathers? This is Sola Ecclesia at its best. It is your communion's position that we need these men's collective testimony to tell us what Scripture means clearly, yet your own communion admits their unified voice is indeterminate in form and uninspired. Truly, you see darkly.
“It all depends on one’s starting point. The Triabloguers are absolutely convinced that the Calvinist system—and it is a system in a way that, say, Aquinas’s Summa Theologia is not—accurately and faithfully represents the teaching of Holy Scripture as established by superior scientific exegesis. Lutherans, Methodists, and Mennonites, and of course Catholics and Orthodox, simply do not exegete the Scriptures as well as they do.”
Mr. Kimel does not seem to realize that the Church Fathers, et.al. must be exegeted as well. What is his standard, pray tell, for understanding the Church Fathers, the Catholic Cathechism, the proceedings of the Councils, Canon Law, etc.?
“The Triaboguers do not see that the only reason the Bible seems to support Calvinism is because they are reading it through the hermeneutical lens of the Westminster Confession and the canons of Dort.”
1. Bzzt. I'm not a Presbyterian, and my own church doesn't employ the 2nd London Baptist Confession. I've stated this more than once on this blog. I am a Calvinist for these reasons: (a) Scripture itself teaches it, and I arrived at these conclusions about it apart from the confessions, etc. (in point of fact, I was reared in the easy believism, dispensationalism of independent Baptistery, did not become a Christian until college, and was about as far from Calvinism and Covenant Theology as you can get), (b) I am a consistent Trinitarian, and (c) I came to my understanding of Covenant Theology itself by reading Scripture. I did not take a course in Covenant Theology in order to learn it. When I did, it only confirmed what I had already concluded. If you wish to undermine Calvinism, speaking for myself, this is why I will ask you to demonstrate otherwise from Scripture.
2. As a matter of fact, my library is littered with the likes of Thomas Oden. Hint: I studied Patristics, Christology, and Theology Proper from his material. My professor was the same for each and was a big ol' Arminian from Gordon-Conwell Seminary. Incidentally, he also taught me modern (e.g. liberal) theology (feminist, process, neo-orthodox, etc.). Loved the man. Great professor. He made us learn the opposing position from the inside out, not as evangelicals looking in.
3. "Al Kimmel does not see that the only reason the Bible seems to support Catholicism is because he is reading it through the hermeneutical lens of the Roman Catholic Magisterium." I must thank Mr. Kimmel for demonstrating why Catholicism and Orthodoxy produces very few competent exegetes given this starting point.
4. The competent exegetes Rome has produced use the GHM. This is the same method I and my fellow Tblogers use.
5. With respect to Calvinism vs. other soteriological viewpoints, if you'd care to actually do your research, there are very few exegetical responses to Calvinism that don't cause men to wind up in theology with no epistemic explanatory power or that is inconsistent with what it wants to do (which is usually get God "off the ethical hook" that Calvinism is said to put Him with respect to theodicy or that all power and ever evasive attribute of "omnibenevolence." Arminians and Lutherans generally object to Calvinism on ethical or philosophical, not exegetical grounds. For example, they'll generally argue not against unconditional election but against reprobation. That's not an exegetical argument. That's an ethical objection. The book Why I'm not a Calvinist by Walls and Dongell in that arena demonstrates that quite well.
6. Reading a standard commentary where these issues tend to arise, we often find that Arminians agree with Calvinists on key passages like 2 Peter 3:9 and 1 Tim. 2:4. For an example cf. R. Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter (Word 1983), 312-13. In others, it's pretty standard fare for them to repeat the intension-extension fallacy when the pantos passages occur.
“The Church Fathers are only of interest to them to the degree that the Fathers confirm their exegetical conclusions.”
Why does this bother you Mr. Kimel? Roman Catholics and The Orthodox are interested in the Fathers for largely the same reasons. In fact, according you Rome, you need them in order to arrive at your conclusions anyway.
Speaking for myself, I only replied to Grano1 on his own level. It's not as if Rome and Constantinople have sole ownership of the Fathers. I'm far more interesting in knowing what Scripture says than what they say. All you have in the Fathers is a selected group of private opinions. Incidentally, which Scriptures regarding soteriology has Rome or the Fathers infallibly interpreted?
“That the Church Fathers were not five-point TULIP Calvinists does not bother them.”
1. Mr. Kimel, you know nothing about me. In point of fact, I have taught church history, and I actually teach it using it as a model fo dogmatic progression.
2. Why should this bother you? That the Church Fathers were not raging paedobaptists, venerators of Mary, venerators of icons, and Roman Catholics does not bother Roman Catholics, so why should it bother you if Calvinists and Amyraldians are not bothered if they weren't Calvinists and Amyraldians?
"“And this one thing at least is certain; whatever history teaches, whatever it omits, whatever it exaggerates or extenuates, whatever it says and unsays, at least the Christianity of history is not Protestantism. If ever there were a safe truth, it is this” (J. H. Newman). And one [i.e. Kimel] might add, it is even a safer, uncontrovertible truth that Christianity was never ever ever ever Calvinist."
Mr. Kimel, Newman also stated, "
...though the Fathers were not inspired, yet their united testimony is of supreme authority; at the same time, since no Canon or List has been determined of the Fathers, the practical rule of duty is obedience to the voice of the Church."
Uh-huh. How is it exactly that these uninspired men, whose voice is supposedly united in an admittedly indeterminate state can be of supreme authority? How can implicit obedience then be transferred to the Church, which has yet to determine what the practical rule of duty is according to these same Fathers? This is Sola Ecclesia at its best. It is your communion's position that we need these men's collective testimony to tell us what Scripture means clearly, yet your own communion admits their unified voice is indeterminate in form and uninspired. Truly, you see darkly.
Time present & time past
The affable Al Kimel has weighed in on the debate between Grano and some of the T-bloggers.
http://catholica.pontifications.net/?p=1940
“It all depends on one’s starting point. The Triabloguers are absolutely convinced that the Calvinist system—and it is a system in a way that, say, Aquinas’s Summa Theologia is not—accurately and faithfully represents the teaching of Holy Scripture as established by superior scientific exegesis. Lutherans, Methodists, and Mennonites, and of course Catholics and Orthodox, simply do not exegete the Scriptures as well as they do.”
1.Actually, I don’t know that Jason Engwer is a five-point Calvinist. I invited him to join the team for other reasons.
2.It’s true that I think Reformed exegesis is better over all than non-Reformed exegesis. Of course, Lutherans think that Lutheran exegesis is better than non-Lutheran exegesis. And Mennonites think they interpret the Sermon on the Mount better than the Magisterial Reformers.
So I’m not quite sure what the point of this observation is.
Continuing with Kimel:
“The Triaboguers do not see that the only reason the Bible seems to support Calvinism is because they are reading it through the hermeneutical lens of the Westminster Confession and the canons of Dort.”
This is wrong on several counts:
1.Speaking for myself, I’m not a cradle Calvinist. I’m a convert to Calvinism. So it’s not as if I have the tinted lens of the Westminster Confession or the canons of Dort glued to my face.
2.Many verses of Scripture are neutral on the details of the Calvinist/non-Calvinist debate. And I use the same methodology for both.
My methodology isn’t essentially any different from Fitzmyer or Brown (Catholic), Wenham, Wright, France, Thiselton, Towner, Smalley, O’Brien, or Barnett (Anglican), Keener or Fee (charismatic), Witherington, Green, Marshall, or Barrett (Wesleyan), Hoehner, Bock, or Block (Dispensational), Cranfield (Barthian), or Bruce (Plymouth Brethren), to name a few.
3.Now, there are certain meta-hermeneutical issues in which Calvinism does come into play.
A strong doctrine of divine sovereignty underwrites inspiration in a way that a libertarian position does not.
A strong doctrine of providence underwrites the hermeneutical process in a way that a libertarian position does not.
So, at the level of epistemic justification, Calvinism is able to warrant a high view of Scripture as well as a level of confidence in the hermeneutical process in a way that a metaphysic of mere contingency cannot.
4.There is also a dialectical interplay between a belief-system and its prooftexts.
For example, covenant theology does supply a hermeneutical framework. At the same time, covenant theology is dependent on exegesis.
Is this viciously circular? No. For it turns on the explanatory power of covenant theology. Can covenant theology integrate more exegetical data than an alternative scheme? If so, then it’s exegetically superior to the alternatives.
Continuing with Kimel:
“The Church Fathers are only of interest to them to the degree that the Fathers confirm their exegetical conclusions.”
I can’t speak for my colleagues, but it depends on what we mean:
1.If this is an argument from authority, then it’s true that I don’t regard the church fathers as authority-figures.
2.I’m interested in their arguments. The quality of their argumentation.
3. In addition, some church fathers are in a position to be historical witnesses to this or that.
Moving along:
“That the Church Fathers were not five-point TULIP Calvinists does not bother them.”
True. I believe in the progress of dogma. I believe that knowledge is cumulative.
But seeing as Kimel is also a theological progressive, a la Newman, it’s unclear to me why a degree of discontinuity between past and present is unfavorable for Calvinism, but favorable for Catholicism.
Moving along:
“And this one thing at least is certain; whatever history teaches, whatever it omits, whatever it exaggerates or extenuates, whatever it says and unsays, at least the Christianity of history is not Protestantism. If ever there were a safe truth, it is this” (J. H. Newman). And one [i.e. Kimel] might add, it is even a safer, uncontrovertible truth that Christianity was never ever ever ever Calvinist.
1.But Newman’s statement is obviously false. It would only be true if we limit historical theology to pre-Reformation theology.
Yet a quarter of (church) historical theology now includes Protestant theology. Five-hundred years from now, half of historical theology will include Protestant theology.
2.Moreover, Catholicism is hardly monolithic. For example, Cardinal Dulles has discussed the evolution of the present pontiff’s views on Vatican II, as well as the differences between John-Paul II and Benedict XVI on Vatican II.
http://firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0602/articles/dulles.html
3.It’s true that Christendom was never Calvinist, but then, Christendom was never any one thing in particular.
http://catholica.pontifications.net/?p=1940
“It all depends on one’s starting point. The Triabloguers are absolutely convinced that the Calvinist system—and it is a system in a way that, say, Aquinas’s Summa Theologia is not—accurately and faithfully represents the teaching of Holy Scripture as established by superior scientific exegesis. Lutherans, Methodists, and Mennonites, and of course Catholics and Orthodox, simply do not exegete the Scriptures as well as they do.”
1.Actually, I don’t know that Jason Engwer is a five-point Calvinist. I invited him to join the team for other reasons.
2.It’s true that I think Reformed exegesis is better over all than non-Reformed exegesis. Of course, Lutherans think that Lutheran exegesis is better than non-Lutheran exegesis. And Mennonites think they interpret the Sermon on the Mount better than the Magisterial Reformers.
So I’m not quite sure what the point of this observation is.
Continuing with Kimel:
“The Triaboguers do not see that the only reason the Bible seems to support Calvinism is because they are reading it through the hermeneutical lens of the Westminster Confession and the canons of Dort.”
This is wrong on several counts:
1.Speaking for myself, I’m not a cradle Calvinist. I’m a convert to Calvinism. So it’s not as if I have the tinted lens of the Westminster Confession or the canons of Dort glued to my face.
2.Many verses of Scripture are neutral on the details of the Calvinist/non-Calvinist debate. And I use the same methodology for both.
My methodology isn’t essentially any different from Fitzmyer or Brown (Catholic), Wenham, Wright, France, Thiselton, Towner, Smalley, O’Brien, or Barnett (Anglican), Keener or Fee (charismatic), Witherington, Green, Marshall, or Barrett (Wesleyan), Hoehner, Bock, or Block (Dispensational), Cranfield (Barthian), or Bruce (Plymouth Brethren), to name a few.
3.Now, there are certain meta-hermeneutical issues in which Calvinism does come into play.
A strong doctrine of divine sovereignty underwrites inspiration in a way that a libertarian position does not.
A strong doctrine of providence underwrites the hermeneutical process in a way that a libertarian position does not.
So, at the level of epistemic justification, Calvinism is able to warrant a high view of Scripture as well as a level of confidence in the hermeneutical process in a way that a metaphysic of mere contingency cannot.
4.There is also a dialectical interplay between a belief-system and its prooftexts.
For example, covenant theology does supply a hermeneutical framework. At the same time, covenant theology is dependent on exegesis.
Is this viciously circular? No. For it turns on the explanatory power of covenant theology. Can covenant theology integrate more exegetical data than an alternative scheme? If so, then it’s exegetically superior to the alternatives.
Continuing with Kimel:
“The Church Fathers are only of interest to them to the degree that the Fathers confirm their exegetical conclusions.”
I can’t speak for my colleagues, but it depends on what we mean:
1.If this is an argument from authority, then it’s true that I don’t regard the church fathers as authority-figures.
2.I’m interested in their arguments. The quality of their argumentation.
3. In addition, some church fathers are in a position to be historical witnesses to this or that.
Moving along:
“That the Church Fathers were not five-point TULIP Calvinists does not bother them.”
True. I believe in the progress of dogma. I believe that knowledge is cumulative.
But seeing as Kimel is also a theological progressive, a la Newman, it’s unclear to me why a degree of discontinuity between past and present is unfavorable for Calvinism, but favorable for Catholicism.
Moving along:
“And this one thing at least is certain; whatever history teaches, whatever it omits, whatever it exaggerates or extenuates, whatever it says and unsays, at least the Christianity of history is not Protestantism. If ever there were a safe truth, it is this” (J. H. Newman). And one [i.e. Kimel] might add, it is even a safer, uncontrovertible truth that Christianity was never ever ever ever Calvinist.
1.But Newman’s statement is obviously false. It would only be true if we limit historical theology to pre-Reformation theology.
Yet a quarter of (church) historical theology now includes Protestant theology. Five-hundred years from now, half of historical theology will include Protestant theology.
2.Moreover, Catholicism is hardly monolithic. For example, Cardinal Dulles has discussed the evolution of the present pontiff’s views on Vatican II, as well as the differences between John-Paul II and Benedict XVI on Vatican II.
http://firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0602/articles/dulles.html
3.It’s true that Christendom was never Calvinist, but then, Christendom was never any one thing in particular.
Hermeneutical controls
Stuart: What is your criterion for an appropriate means of exegeting scriptural truth? Is it necessarily the one that is most "scientific"?
SH:
1.I wouldn’t use the word “scientific,” which carries unhelpful connotations. Each field of knowledge has its own methodology which is adapted to the subject-matter.
To outline an answer to your question:
i) One reason we should use the GHM is practical: the GHM is inescapable. Everyone uses it. There is no adequate alternative.
The Catholic or Orthodox will employ the GHM when they exegete the church fathers or conciliar statements or papal encyclicals, &c.
In addition, when the Catholic or Orthodox debate a Protestant, they expect the Protestant to understand their words according to the common literary conventions and cultural assumptions of their time and place.
So they are presuming the GHM even as they dispute it.
When a commenter leaves a critical comment on my blog, he expects me to interpret his words within the shared framework of two 21C English-speakers.
2.Apropos (1), unless an author is writing with the intent to deceive, he wants to be understood by his audience. And in order to be understood, he must take their conceptual horizon into account.
He means what he meant his words to mean, and what he meant his words to mean is suited to what his audience could or could not take him to mean. It takes for granted a common body of beliefs from the past and the present.
Communication would fail unless the author and his target audience are using the same cultural code language.
When we study the Bible, we must make allowance for that fact, and assume the viewpoint of the original author and his implied audience.
3.Among other things, the Bible canonizes a literary tradition. Later Bible writers interact with earlier Bible writers.
As such, there is a great deal of intertextual exegesis in Scripture, both within the OT, as well as between the OT and the NT.
So we can learn from Bible writers how they themselves understood the Bible.
Stuart: Why should I not believe that God intended that "truth" preside in His Church's (whatever that is) pronouncements, rather than the historical-grammatical method of interpretation-regardless of its putative rational superiority?
SH: You should believe it if you have good reason to believe it. But absent a divine promise to that effect, your expectation would be unfounded.
Stuart: I am neither Romanist nor Orthodox but merely wish to know the correct method of establishing scriptural truth.
It seems to me that both the Romanist, Orthodox and Reformed positions take as their starting points propositional statements that one would be hard pressed to justify w/o question begging (for example, papal infallibility in the case of Catholics and sola scripture in the case of Protestants).
SH: I’ve defended sola Scriptura on several occasions at Triablogue.
Stuart: Why should I not consider it inconsistent for a Calvinist to claim Truth can be explicated via manmade means ("proper exegesis") rather than as a God given "brute fact" that needs no rational justification?
SH:
1.That depends, in part, on what kind of truth we’re talking about. By and large, the articles of the faith are not items of innate knowledge. So it’s not a brute fact, like my natural knowledge of informal logic.
Rather, it takes the form of acquired knowledge, and that knowledge is acquired by means of verbal revelation.
Words have socially assigned meanings. Moreover, an author assumes more than he says. He takes for granted a certain amount of background knowledge on the part of the reader. The reader is expected to mentally fill in the gaps.
2.For Calvinism, the dichotomy between revelation and secondary means is a false dichotomy.
Calvinism has a strong doctrine of divine providence. God is the author of second-causes.
God can work through means as well as apart from means.
Stuart: Likewise, can the Orthodox or Catholic believer claim infallibility for the Church w/o assuming it?
SH: Catholicism and Orthodoxy do more than merely assume the truth of their respective positions. They argue for their positions.
To take a Catholic example, just read A History of Apologetics by Cardinal Dulles.
While this is by no means limited to Catholic apologetics, it obviously covers that field.
Dulles is, himself, a Catholic apologist.
Or, to take another example, the current Pope (Benedict XVI) is acutely aware of the fact that given the virtual eclipse of Catholicism in Europe, he and others must make a case for Catholicism.
Over on the Orthodox side of the street, Orthodoxy has spend a lot of time in the past defending its position against schismatics, heretics, papists, and Mohammedans.
More recently, it has also defended itself against Evangelicalism. Cf.
P. O’Callaghan, An Eastern Orthodox Response to Evangelical Claims
J. Stamoolis, ed. Three Views of Eastern Orthodoxy & Evangelicalism.
When, therefore, Catholicism or Orthodoxy gives us reasons to be either Catholic or Orthodox, its reasons are subject to rational scrutiny.
Stuart: Truly accounting for belief seems to me to be as much a problem for those outside Calvinism as those inside.
SH: Yes, each side has its own burden of proof to discharge.
SH:
1.I wouldn’t use the word “scientific,” which carries unhelpful connotations. Each field of knowledge has its own methodology which is adapted to the subject-matter.
To outline an answer to your question:
i) One reason we should use the GHM is practical: the GHM is inescapable. Everyone uses it. There is no adequate alternative.
The Catholic or Orthodox will employ the GHM when they exegete the church fathers or conciliar statements or papal encyclicals, &c.
In addition, when the Catholic or Orthodox debate a Protestant, they expect the Protestant to understand their words according to the common literary conventions and cultural assumptions of their time and place.
So they are presuming the GHM even as they dispute it.
When a commenter leaves a critical comment on my blog, he expects me to interpret his words within the shared framework of two 21C English-speakers.
2.Apropos (1), unless an author is writing with the intent to deceive, he wants to be understood by his audience. And in order to be understood, he must take their conceptual horizon into account.
He means what he meant his words to mean, and what he meant his words to mean is suited to what his audience could or could not take him to mean. It takes for granted a common body of beliefs from the past and the present.
Communication would fail unless the author and his target audience are using the same cultural code language.
When we study the Bible, we must make allowance for that fact, and assume the viewpoint of the original author and his implied audience.
3.Among other things, the Bible canonizes a literary tradition. Later Bible writers interact with earlier Bible writers.
As such, there is a great deal of intertextual exegesis in Scripture, both within the OT, as well as between the OT and the NT.
So we can learn from Bible writers how they themselves understood the Bible.
Stuart: Why should I not believe that God intended that "truth" preside in His Church's (whatever that is) pronouncements, rather than the historical-grammatical method of interpretation-regardless of its putative rational superiority?
SH: You should believe it if you have good reason to believe it. But absent a divine promise to that effect, your expectation would be unfounded.
Stuart: I am neither Romanist nor Orthodox but merely wish to know the correct method of establishing scriptural truth.
It seems to me that both the Romanist, Orthodox and Reformed positions take as their starting points propositional statements that one would be hard pressed to justify w/o question begging (for example, papal infallibility in the case of Catholics and sola scripture in the case of Protestants).
SH: I’ve defended sola Scriptura on several occasions at Triablogue.
Stuart: Why should I not consider it inconsistent for a Calvinist to claim Truth can be explicated via manmade means ("proper exegesis") rather than as a God given "brute fact" that needs no rational justification?
SH:
1.That depends, in part, on what kind of truth we’re talking about. By and large, the articles of the faith are not items of innate knowledge. So it’s not a brute fact, like my natural knowledge of informal logic.
Rather, it takes the form of acquired knowledge, and that knowledge is acquired by means of verbal revelation.
Words have socially assigned meanings. Moreover, an author assumes more than he says. He takes for granted a certain amount of background knowledge on the part of the reader. The reader is expected to mentally fill in the gaps.
2.For Calvinism, the dichotomy between revelation and secondary means is a false dichotomy.
Calvinism has a strong doctrine of divine providence. God is the author of second-causes.
God can work through means as well as apart from means.
Stuart: Likewise, can the Orthodox or Catholic believer claim infallibility for the Church w/o assuming it?
SH: Catholicism and Orthodoxy do more than merely assume the truth of their respective positions. They argue for their positions.
To take a Catholic example, just read A History of Apologetics by Cardinal Dulles.
While this is by no means limited to Catholic apologetics, it obviously covers that field.
Dulles is, himself, a Catholic apologist.
Or, to take another example, the current Pope (Benedict XVI) is acutely aware of the fact that given the virtual eclipse of Catholicism in Europe, he and others must make a case for Catholicism.
Over on the Orthodox side of the street, Orthodoxy has spend a lot of time in the past defending its position against schismatics, heretics, papists, and Mohammedans.
More recently, it has also defended itself against Evangelicalism. Cf.
P. O’Callaghan, An Eastern Orthodox Response to Evangelical Claims
J. Stamoolis, ed. Three Views of Eastern Orthodoxy & Evangelicalism.
When, therefore, Catholicism or Orthodoxy gives us reasons to be either Catholic or Orthodox, its reasons are subject to rational scrutiny.
Stuart: Truly accounting for belief seems to me to be as much a problem for those outside Calvinism as those inside.
SH: Yes, each side has its own burden of proof to discharge.
Eastern Orthodox Contradictions Of The Church Fathers
In another thread, Grano1 wrote:
"There is in fact an organic unity between the Orthodoxy of today and the Orthodoxy of the Patristic age -- it is a continuation of the same 'mind.' Which is why we Orthodox are so wary of innovations."
Steve Hays and others have already made some good points in response, such as here. I want to add to what they've said.
Grano1 cites Irenaeus as one of his examples, but Eastern Orthodoxy disagrees with Irenaeus' theology. Some of the most significant references to extra-Biblical tradition in the church fathers are found in book 5 of Irenaeus' treatise Against Heresies. Irenaeus, like many other early fathers, advocates a premillennial eschatology, and he appeals to earlier church tradition, including the teachings of disciples of the apostles, in support of it. Is Grano1 a premillennialist?
Does he agree with the widespread opposition to the veneration of images among the ante-Nicene fathers? If Eastern Orthodox "are so wary of innovations", then why do they so radically differ from the ante-Nicene fathers' view of the veneration of images?
What about praying to the deceased and angels? There are many passages on prayer in the church fathers, and the earliest fathers say nothing of praying to the deceased and angels. To the contrary, some refer to how Christians pray only to God, and praying to other beings is repeatedly condemned.
What about infant baptism? The earliest references to baptism discuss the practice as if only non-infants are involved, the earliest patristic source to explicitly discuss the subject (Tertullian) argues against baptizing infants, and other sources seem to have believed in baptizing only infants who were nearing death. It seems that infant baptism didn't arise until after the time of the apostles, and in at least some places infants were at first baptized only in cases of early death.
I could give other examples, but these are sufficient to make the point. Eastern Orthodox differ from and sometimes contradict the beliefs of the earliest post-apostolic Christians. Even among later fathers, men like Athanasius and Gregory of Nyssa sometimes advocated views that Eastern Orthodox disagree with.
More significant than the patristic evidence, though, is the Biblical evidence. Just as the writings of men like Clement of Rome and Irenaeus and church councils have an objective historical meaning that we today can discern, so do the Biblical documents. And those documents often contradict Eastern Orthodoxy.
For some documentation on issues like the ones mentioned above, see my posts from earlier this year here, here, here, and here, for example. Other articles that are relevant can be found in the archives of this blog.
"There is in fact an organic unity between the Orthodoxy of today and the Orthodoxy of the Patristic age -- it is a continuation of the same 'mind.' Which is why we Orthodox are so wary of innovations."
Steve Hays and others have already made some good points in response, such as here. I want to add to what they've said.
Grano1 cites Irenaeus as one of his examples, but Eastern Orthodoxy disagrees with Irenaeus' theology. Some of the most significant references to extra-Biblical tradition in the church fathers are found in book 5 of Irenaeus' treatise Against Heresies. Irenaeus, like many other early fathers, advocates a premillennial eschatology, and he appeals to earlier church tradition, including the teachings of disciples of the apostles, in support of it. Is Grano1 a premillennialist?
Does he agree with the widespread opposition to the veneration of images among the ante-Nicene fathers? If Eastern Orthodox "are so wary of innovations", then why do they so radically differ from the ante-Nicene fathers' view of the veneration of images?
What about praying to the deceased and angels? There are many passages on prayer in the church fathers, and the earliest fathers say nothing of praying to the deceased and angels. To the contrary, some refer to how Christians pray only to God, and praying to other beings is repeatedly condemned.
What about infant baptism? The earliest references to baptism discuss the practice as if only non-infants are involved, the earliest patristic source to explicitly discuss the subject (Tertullian) argues against baptizing infants, and other sources seem to have believed in baptizing only infants who were nearing death. It seems that infant baptism didn't arise until after the time of the apostles, and in at least some places infants were at first baptized only in cases of early death.
I could give other examples, but these are sufficient to make the point. Eastern Orthodox differ from and sometimes contradict the beliefs of the earliest post-apostolic Christians. Even among later fathers, men like Athanasius and Gregory of Nyssa sometimes advocated views that Eastern Orthodox disagree with.
More significant than the patristic evidence, though, is the Biblical evidence. Just as the writings of men like Clement of Rome and Irenaeus and church councils have an objective historical meaning that we today can discern, so do the Biblical documents. And those documents often contradict Eastern Orthodoxy.
For some documentation on issues like the ones mentioned above, see my posts from earlier this year here, here, here, and here, for example. Other articles that are relevant can be found in the archives of this blog.
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
Hermeneutical pedigree
Grano: Good lord, one hardly knows where to begin...
SH: That’s one thing we both agree on.
Grano: First of all, as Chrysostom’s reading of St. Paul is readily available in his homilies on Paul's epistles there's no need to rehearse it here. If you don't believe it differs from St. Augustine's, look it up.
SH: You miss the point. The question at issue is not whether Chrysostom’s reading differs from Augustine’s.
Rather, the question at issue is whether his interpretation is correct. What’s the supporting argument for his interpretation?
Why should we prefer Chrysostom on John or Romans to Carson or Schreiner?
Grano: Same holds for the other Church Fathers -- their writings are easily obtainable and consultable. The Patristic evidence comes down starkly against Calvinistic notions of total depravity, limited atonement, irresistable grace, etc. If you bother to read them, you'll see it (unless of course you read the Fathers with your Calvinist template attached.)
SH: Once again, Grano misses the point. To compare and contrast one position with another doesn’t tell us which position is right.
Where are the supporting arguments?
There’s a difference between a true description and a description of what is true.
Grano [quoting me]: "Exegesis never proves anything? So Gnostic or Arian exegesis is just as good as patristic exegesis?"
You left out my "in and of itself."
As early as St. Irenaeus, Christian teachers understood that the heretics could wield the Scriptures too. This is why they seldom, if ever, argued by exegesis alone, despite their very high view of the Scriptures. See how St. Irenaeus refuted the Gnostics (exegesis based on "the rule of faith," i.e. the mind of the Church.) A chief argument of St. Athanasius against the Arians could be summarized as, "Sure, you've got some Scripture passages to back you up, but where's the pedigree for how you interpret them?" -- "Where are the fathers for your beliefs?"
1.So, according to you, patristic exegesis isn’t any better than Gnostic or Arian exegesis.
Rather, the church fathers bring in the makeweight of hermeneutical pedigree to shore up their lack of exegetical superiority.
2.What’s your criterion for a church father?
3.What’s your criterion of the “mind of the Church”?
Grano: And St. Basil argued for the full divinity of the Holy Spirit based not on Scripture alone but on the liturgical tradition of the church. See his "On the Holy Spirit."
SH: So his pneumatology isn’t based on divine revelation alone, but revelation plus liturgical tradition.
Once more, Grano is admitting that Orthodox theology is underdetermined by divine revelation. That it goes beyond what can be inferred from the text of Scripture.
Grano: One exegetes the Fathers and the councils by the same methodology as above. By the power of the Holy Spirit the teaching of the Church, the body of Christ is of necessity self-correcting. This is the way that the Church understands Christ's words that "when the Holy Spirit comes he will guide you (plural) into all truth."
SH:
1.Do you think that Orthodox believers have an exclusive contract with the Holy Spirit, or is the Holy Spirit also on speaking terms with Evangelicals like Thomas Oden?
2.The Montanists would appreciate your pneumatic criterion.
3.What’s your criterion for the identity of the true church?
4.Jn 16:13 uses the plural form because Jesus is addressing the twelve in the upper room.
5.Notice the vicious circularity of Grano’s argument: the Church is empowered by the Holy Spirit to discern that the promise of the Holy Spirit is indexed to the Church.
So his interpretation of Jn 16:13 presupposes ecclesiastical authority even though Jn 16:13 is cited to authorize the teaching ministry of the church.
6.”Self-correcting.” What does this mean? That the Church first makes a mistake, then corrects it? Is that how the Holy Spirit guides the Church? He first leads it into error, and then leads it out of error?
7.Is the Church of Rome self-correcting as well?
Is so, why should we be Orthodox rather than Romanist?
If not, why not?
8.How, exactly, do you think the Holy Spirit teaches the church? Do you have an open canon? Continuous revelation?
Grano: I asked, "Out of the 8,000 commentaries floating around out there, how do you know you've got a ‘good’ one?”
Steve's response: "By sifting the quality of the argumentation in support for any given interpretation."
So whoever Steve thinks makes the best arguments is the best interpreter? Puts an awful lot on one's shoulders, I'd say. Every man has indeed become his own pope.
SH:
1.How did Grano come to the conviction that the Orthodox communion is the true church? By flipping a coin?
Or by exercising his private judgment? If the latter, then I guess that makes him his own pope.
2.Orthodoxy simply canonizes the private opinions of a few select church fathers.
3.We don’t have the right to shift the burden to a second party.
Grano [quoting me]: "Modern commentators know far more about ANE history, 2nd Temple Judaism, and 1C Greco-Roman history than the church fathers."
In a sense this is true, but in another sense they are further away from the reality -- the Fathers were closer to the source, not just chronologically but culturally and in terms of the spiritual milieu.
SH: That’s very vague. How is a 5C AD church father culturally and spiritually closer to the Pentateuch than an Egyptologist or Assyriologist?
How is a Greek Father, tutored in the Classics, closer to the cultural or spiritual milieu of Matthew’s Gospel than, let us say, Jacob Neusner?
Grano [quoting me]: "Later commentators have the benefit of earlier commentators. Knowledge is cumulative."
This is only true if one denies the existence of possible error accumulation.
SH: Oh, I don’t deny the possibility of cumulative error. That’s why we had the Reformation.
Grano: Don't quite get all the list of all the OT events. Is Steve perhaps positing that Calvinism is to Patristics as Patristics is to the OT? This brings new meaning to the idea of "development of doctrine." There is in fact an organic unity between the Orthodoxy of today and the Orthodoxy of the Patristic age -- it is a continuation of the same "mind." Which is why we Orthodox are so wary of innovations.
SH: What is there not to get? You appealed to historical theology to validate Orthodox theology and invalidate Reformed theology.
By that same criterion—which is your criterion, not mine—historical theology thereby invalidates Orthodox theology since Orthodox theology lacks the historical validation of 2nd Temple Jewish theology, or Intertestamental Jewish theology, or postexilic Jewish theology, or exilic Jewish theology, or preexilic Jewish theology, &c.
If you’re going to argue that Calvinism is false because Calvinism is new in relation to Orthodox theology, then Orthodoxy is false because Orthodox theology is new in relation to pre-Christian Jewish theology.
Your historical criterion is a double-edged sword. If antiquity is your yardstick, then Orthodoxy comes up short in relation to Jewish tradition.
You seem to lack experience in debating with those who don’t already share your question-begging assumptions.
SH: That’s one thing we both agree on.
Grano: First of all, as Chrysostom’s reading of St. Paul is readily available in his homilies on Paul's epistles there's no need to rehearse it here. If you don't believe it differs from St. Augustine's, look it up.
SH: You miss the point. The question at issue is not whether Chrysostom’s reading differs from Augustine’s.
Rather, the question at issue is whether his interpretation is correct. What’s the supporting argument for his interpretation?
Why should we prefer Chrysostom on John or Romans to Carson or Schreiner?
Grano: Same holds for the other Church Fathers -- their writings are easily obtainable and consultable. The Patristic evidence comes down starkly against Calvinistic notions of total depravity, limited atonement, irresistable grace, etc. If you bother to read them, you'll see it (unless of course you read the Fathers with your Calvinist template attached.)
SH: Once again, Grano misses the point. To compare and contrast one position with another doesn’t tell us which position is right.
Where are the supporting arguments?
There’s a difference between a true description and a description of what is true.
Grano [quoting me]: "Exegesis never proves anything? So Gnostic or Arian exegesis is just as good as patristic exegesis?"
You left out my "in and of itself."
As early as St. Irenaeus, Christian teachers understood that the heretics could wield the Scriptures too. This is why they seldom, if ever, argued by exegesis alone, despite their very high view of the Scriptures. See how St. Irenaeus refuted the Gnostics (exegesis based on "the rule of faith," i.e. the mind of the Church.) A chief argument of St. Athanasius against the Arians could be summarized as, "Sure, you've got some Scripture passages to back you up, but where's the pedigree for how you interpret them?" -- "Where are the fathers for your beliefs?"
1.So, according to you, patristic exegesis isn’t any better than Gnostic or Arian exegesis.
Rather, the church fathers bring in the makeweight of hermeneutical pedigree to shore up their lack of exegetical superiority.
2.What’s your criterion for a church father?
3.What’s your criterion of the “mind of the Church”?
Grano: And St. Basil argued for the full divinity of the Holy Spirit based not on Scripture alone but on the liturgical tradition of the church. See his "On the Holy Spirit."
SH: So his pneumatology isn’t based on divine revelation alone, but revelation plus liturgical tradition.
Once more, Grano is admitting that Orthodox theology is underdetermined by divine revelation. That it goes beyond what can be inferred from the text of Scripture.
Grano: One exegetes the Fathers and the councils by the same methodology as above. By the power of the Holy Spirit the teaching of the Church, the body of Christ is of necessity self-correcting. This is the way that the Church understands Christ's words that "when the Holy Spirit comes he will guide you (plural) into all truth."
SH:
1.Do you think that Orthodox believers have an exclusive contract with the Holy Spirit, or is the Holy Spirit also on speaking terms with Evangelicals like Thomas Oden?
2.The Montanists would appreciate your pneumatic criterion.
3.What’s your criterion for the identity of the true church?
4.Jn 16:13 uses the plural form because Jesus is addressing the twelve in the upper room.
5.Notice the vicious circularity of Grano’s argument: the Church is empowered by the Holy Spirit to discern that the promise of the Holy Spirit is indexed to the Church.
So his interpretation of Jn 16:13 presupposes ecclesiastical authority even though Jn 16:13 is cited to authorize the teaching ministry of the church.
6.”Self-correcting.” What does this mean? That the Church first makes a mistake, then corrects it? Is that how the Holy Spirit guides the Church? He first leads it into error, and then leads it out of error?
7.Is the Church of Rome self-correcting as well?
Is so, why should we be Orthodox rather than Romanist?
If not, why not?
8.How, exactly, do you think the Holy Spirit teaches the church? Do you have an open canon? Continuous revelation?
Grano: I asked, "Out of the 8,000 commentaries floating around out there, how do you know you've got a ‘good’ one?”
Steve's response: "By sifting the quality of the argumentation in support for any given interpretation."
So whoever Steve thinks makes the best arguments is the best interpreter? Puts an awful lot on one's shoulders, I'd say. Every man has indeed become his own pope.
SH:
1.How did Grano come to the conviction that the Orthodox communion is the true church? By flipping a coin?
Or by exercising his private judgment? If the latter, then I guess that makes him his own pope.
2.Orthodoxy simply canonizes the private opinions of a few select church fathers.
3.We don’t have the right to shift the burden to a second party.
Grano [quoting me]: "Modern commentators know far more about ANE history, 2nd Temple Judaism, and 1C Greco-Roman history than the church fathers."
In a sense this is true, but in another sense they are further away from the reality -- the Fathers were closer to the source, not just chronologically but culturally and in terms of the spiritual milieu.
SH: That’s very vague. How is a 5C AD church father culturally and spiritually closer to the Pentateuch than an Egyptologist or Assyriologist?
How is a Greek Father, tutored in the Classics, closer to the cultural or spiritual milieu of Matthew’s Gospel than, let us say, Jacob Neusner?
Grano [quoting me]: "Later commentators have the benefit of earlier commentators. Knowledge is cumulative."
This is only true if one denies the existence of possible error accumulation.
SH: Oh, I don’t deny the possibility of cumulative error. That’s why we had the Reformation.
Grano: Don't quite get all the list of all the OT events. Is Steve perhaps positing that Calvinism is to Patristics as Patristics is to the OT? This brings new meaning to the idea of "development of doctrine." There is in fact an organic unity between the Orthodoxy of today and the Orthodoxy of the Patristic age -- it is a continuation of the same "mind." Which is why we Orthodox are so wary of innovations.
SH: What is there not to get? You appealed to historical theology to validate Orthodox theology and invalidate Reformed theology.
By that same criterion—which is your criterion, not mine—historical theology thereby invalidates Orthodox theology since Orthodox theology lacks the historical validation of 2nd Temple Jewish theology, or Intertestamental Jewish theology, or postexilic Jewish theology, or exilic Jewish theology, or preexilic Jewish theology, &c.
If you’re going to argue that Calvinism is false because Calvinism is new in relation to Orthodox theology, then Orthodoxy is false because Orthodox theology is new in relation to pre-Christian Jewish theology.
Your historical criterion is a double-edged sword. If antiquity is your yardstick, then Orthodoxy comes up short in relation to Jewish tradition.
You seem to lack experience in debating with those who don’t already share your question-begging assumptions.
"The crimes of Christianity"
The two standard lines of attack against the Bible come from science and higher criticism.
These, in turn, boil down to the possibility of miracles. If you don’t believe in the miraculous, then you don’t believe in divine inspiration or revelation or any event which would “violate” the “laws” of nature.
However, it’s a tall order to make a case against the possibility of the miraculous.
So the final line of attack consists in a stereotypical litany of charges against the track-record of the church.
This, in turn, has driven the effort to secularize the state and disestablish the church.
And that effort has been quite successful, but with ironic consequences.
There are different ways of addressing this charge.
1.According to Christian theology, Christians are sinners. So documenting the fact that Christians may be guilty of sinful conduct is a confirmation rather than disconfirmation of Christian theology.
2.The unbeliever also faces the challenge of coming up with a moral framework of his own. Many secular thinkers admit that atheism has no foundation for moral absolutes.
But, in that event, they are in no position to indict the church.
3.Another response is to point out that many of the paradigm-examples of ecclesiastical malfeasance are largely urban legends. A member of the CADRE has done a very illuminating series on that subject.
http://christiancadre.blogspot.com/2005/04/many-crimes-of-christianity-refuted.html
4.Finally, I want to go back to the “solution.”
The argument against the church was more persuasive back in the days of Voltaire and Thomas Paine.
After all, the church was often a pretty venal place.
Mind you, that’s really not the fault of the church.
If Louis XIV or Henry VIII wants to make some ne’re-do-well nephew the bishop of York or Amiens, who’s going to stop him?
He has an army. Interdicts are no match for swords and canon balls.
The church was often the consolation prize for second-born sons of the nobility.
Since they weren’t first in line to inherit the crown or the paternal estate, a plum, ecclesiastical preferment was a nice way of buying off a potential political rival.
Likewise, these were the days of a state religion, in which more-or-less everyone was a baptized member of the church.
But the process of secularization has had an unintended consequence.
On the one hand, it hasn’t done away with atrocities of one kind or another. Indeed, they’ve been on the rise.
On the other hand, by driving the Christians from the public square, the privatization of faith has had the effect of separating the sheep from the goats.
Not entirely, of course, but to a far great degree than was possible in the past.
And it’s not the Christians committing the mass atrocities.
With the benefit of hindsight, this raises the retrospective question of who was most responsible for past atrocities.
If, when you succeed in segregating the believers from the unbelievers; and if, when you succeed in empowering unbelievers while disempowering believers, the atrocities not only continue, but escalate (e.g. Maoism, Nazism, Stalinism, abortion, infanticide, euthanasia), then the logical inference to draw from this historical experiment is that it was the closet infidels in a society without church/state separation who were primarily responsible for past atrocities.
So the very success of modern-day secularism undercuts the original premise of modern-day secularism.
These, in turn, boil down to the possibility of miracles. If you don’t believe in the miraculous, then you don’t believe in divine inspiration or revelation or any event which would “violate” the “laws” of nature.
However, it’s a tall order to make a case against the possibility of the miraculous.
So the final line of attack consists in a stereotypical litany of charges against the track-record of the church.
This, in turn, has driven the effort to secularize the state and disestablish the church.
And that effort has been quite successful, but with ironic consequences.
There are different ways of addressing this charge.
1.According to Christian theology, Christians are sinners. So documenting the fact that Christians may be guilty of sinful conduct is a confirmation rather than disconfirmation of Christian theology.
2.The unbeliever also faces the challenge of coming up with a moral framework of his own. Many secular thinkers admit that atheism has no foundation for moral absolutes.
But, in that event, they are in no position to indict the church.
3.Another response is to point out that many of the paradigm-examples of ecclesiastical malfeasance are largely urban legends. A member of the CADRE has done a very illuminating series on that subject.
http://christiancadre.blogspot.com/2005/04/many-crimes-of-christianity-refuted.html
4.Finally, I want to go back to the “solution.”
The argument against the church was more persuasive back in the days of Voltaire and Thomas Paine.
After all, the church was often a pretty venal place.
Mind you, that’s really not the fault of the church.
If Louis XIV or Henry VIII wants to make some ne’re-do-well nephew the bishop of York or Amiens, who’s going to stop him?
He has an army. Interdicts are no match for swords and canon balls.
The church was often the consolation prize for second-born sons of the nobility.
Since they weren’t first in line to inherit the crown or the paternal estate, a plum, ecclesiastical preferment was a nice way of buying off a potential political rival.
Likewise, these were the days of a state religion, in which more-or-less everyone was a baptized member of the church.
But the process of secularization has had an unintended consequence.
On the one hand, it hasn’t done away with atrocities of one kind or another. Indeed, they’ve been on the rise.
On the other hand, by driving the Christians from the public square, the privatization of faith has had the effect of separating the sheep from the goats.
Not entirely, of course, but to a far great degree than was possible in the past.
And it’s not the Christians committing the mass atrocities.
With the benefit of hindsight, this raises the retrospective question of who was most responsible for past atrocities.
If, when you succeed in segregating the believers from the unbelievers; and if, when you succeed in empowering unbelievers while disempowering believers, the atrocities not only continue, but escalate (e.g. Maoism, Nazism, Stalinism, abortion, infanticide, euthanasia), then the logical inference to draw from this historical experiment is that it was the closet infidels in a society without church/state separation who were primarily responsible for past atrocities.
So the very success of modern-day secularism undercuts the original premise of modern-day secularism.
Exodoxy
Some commenters have been asking us how we know that God is not an alien or alien simulation.
To begin with, you need to realize that in a first contact situation, we like to play our cards close to our vest.
You earthlings are such paranoid and panicky lot.
But since you insist, the reason we know that God is not an alien or alien simulation is that you have the question all backwards.
You see, God can’t be an alien because I’m an alien.
My fellow Calvinians and I are really little green men incognito.
BTW, this doesn’t mean that Reformed theology is false. To the contrary, the First Council of Alpha Centuri reads a lot like your Westminster Confession, once you make allowance for certain untranslatable, Centurian idioms like !@#$% and ^&*+<.
In observing lower life-forms like human beings, we assume various disguises. For example, we often take the form of lab rats, paperweights, teacups, and orchids.
Now, if you must know, atheism, not theism, is an alien simulation.
We’ve programmed certain members of your species not to believe in God. The programming comes complete with a number of self-refuting arguments like evolutionary psychology and secular ethics.
Evolution is part of the simulation.
This may strike you as a bit unfair, but to give you a sporting chance, we planted a number of witticisms here and there (e.g. missing links, suboptimal adaptations) so that if you pay attention, you’ll see that it’s just a simulation.
Unfortunately, some members of your species, like Dawkins and Dennett, have no sense of humor. They take everything so dog-gone literally. The irony of it all is quite lost on them. They treat our VR program as if it were the King James Bible.
For example, Richard Dawkins, who is one of our favorite test-subjects, has written that “biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.”
Or course, the joke is on him since the illusion is the reality. For the simulation, like any scientific experiment, was, indeed, designed for a purpose.
This is not to denigrate the man, who’s the Nim Chimpsky of Darminions. We’ve taught him quite a few words and phrases, like “meme” and “methinks-it’s-a-weasel,” in exchange for a ripe banana or two.
To begin with, you need to realize that in a first contact situation, we like to play our cards close to our vest.
You earthlings are such paranoid and panicky lot.
But since you insist, the reason we know that God is not an alien or alien simulation is that you have the question all backwards.
You see, God can’t be an alien because I’m an alien.
My fellow Calvinians and I are really little green men incognito.
BTW, this doesn’t mean that Reformed theology is false. To the contrary, the First Council of Alpha Centuri reads a lot like your Westminster Confession, once you make allowance for certain untranslatable, Centurian idioms like !@#$% and ^&*+<.
In observing lower life-forms like human beings, we assume various disguises. For example, we often take the form of lab rats, paperweights, teacups, and orchids.
Now, if you must know, atheism, not theism, is an alien simulation.
We’ve programmed certain members of your species not to believe in God. The programming comes complete with a number of self-refuting arguments like evolutionary psychology and secular ethics.
Evolution is part of the simulation.
This may strike you as a bit unfair, but to give you a sporting chance, we planted a number of witticisms here and there (e.g. missing links, suboptimal adaptations) so that if you pay attention, you’ll see that it’s just a simulation.
Unfortunately, some members of your species, like Dawkins and Dennett, have no sense of humor. They take everything so dog-gone literally. The irony of it all is quite lost on them. They treat our VR program as if it were the King James Bible.
For example, Richard Dawkins, who is one of our favorite test-subjects, has written that “biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.”
Or course, the joke is on him since the illusion is the reality. For the simulation, like any scientific experiment, was, indeed, designed for a purpose.
This is not to denigrate the man, who’s the Nim Chimpsky of Darminions. We’ve taught him quite a few words and phrases, like “meme” and “methinks-it’s-a-weasel,” in exchange for a ripe banana or two.
"Nothing's being argued" here
Grano1 said:
“As this was simply a descriptive summary of Eastern patristic teaching on the issue, I saw no need to include supporting argumentation. Nothing's not being argued, merely described.”
Since, by his own admission, Grano has made no effort to establish the veracity of his own position, there’s nothing for us to respond to or disprove.
“Undoubtedly depends on who's doing the exegesis, does it not? Chrysostom reads it quite differently than Augustine, for instance.”
And since Grano doesn’t give us Chrysotom’s argument, there’s nothing for us to respond to or disprove.
“Again, depends on whose reading of the Bible you're reading. Many scholars, including great fathers of the Church say ‘yes.’"
To “say” it and to “show” it are two different things.
“As no one should ever be: it's never objective and never proves anything in and of itself. Why? Because it varies greatly from exegete to exegete.”
1.Exegesis never proves anything? So Gnostic or Arian exegesis is just as good as patristic exegesis?
2.And how does Grano propose to exegete the church fathers or ecumenical councils?
“This is patent nonsense. Out of the 8,000 commentaries floating around out there, how do you know you've got a ‘good’ one.”
By sifting the quality of the argumentation in support for any given interpretation.
“I'm willing to bet the ‘good’ ones are those that agree with Steve.”
How much is he willing to bet? I’m happy to raise his bet.
In a recent post I recommended a number of commentaries on various books of the Bible.
Now, I’m a supralapsarian Calvinist. I doubt that a single commentator I recommended is a supralapsarian Calvinist. Indeed, many are not Calvinistic at all.
“Plus, why are modern commentaries assumed to be more valuable than the Fathers' works?”
For a couple of reasons:
1.Modern commentators know far more about ANE history, 2nd Temple Judaism, and 1C Greco-Roman history than the church fathers.
2.Later commentators have the benefit of earlier commentators. Knowledge is cumulative.
“I'd argue the exact opposite.”
So where’s the argument?
“Steve objects to my recourse to historical theology.”
Yes, that’s because revealed theology takes precedence over historical theology.
“Of course, as an appeal to historical theology cuts the legs out from under Calvinism -- no Calvinists in the early church!”
And, of course, an appeal to historical theology cuts the legs out from under Orthodoxy:
No Eastern Orthodox in 2nd Temple Judaism.
No Eastern Orthodox in the Intertestamental Judaism.
No Eastern Orthodox in postexilic Judaism.
No Eastern Orthodox is exilic Judaism.
No Eastern Orthodox in preexilic Judaism.
No Eastern Orthodox under the Monarchy.
No Eastern Orthodox during the Judges.
No Eastern Orthodox during the Exodus.
No Eastern Orthodox during the Patriarchs.
No Eastern Orthodox during the prediluvians.
You see, I’m much too much of a traditionalist to jump on the bandwagon of a theological innovation like Eastern Orthodoxy.
Exist~Dissolve said:
“Yes, exactly. Not to mention the fact that there are 8 million different reading of Augustine as well. Whose token ECF will he be this week? RC? Protestant? Calvinist?”
1.This is pretty funny considering ED’s Baskin-Robbins’ theology. ED’s creed comes in every flavor but Biblical.
2.How is the appeal to theological diversity a defeater for my position and not a defeater for his?
“You are exactly right. The lie of modernistic hermeneutics is that 1.) there is an objective and accessible meaning lying somewhere within the text and 2.) by adopting the ‘right’ methods of exegesis, one can explicate exactly what this is.”
He “says” it’s a lie, but he doesn’t “show” it’s a lie.
“Obviously, the very nature of human discourse mitigates this possibility, as meanings are not ‘there’ waiting to be discovered, but are rather created through the engagement of two (or more) contexts.”
1.So there’s no meaning in the text, but only in the context.
Apparently, meaning suddenly emerges when you smash one meaningless text against another meaningless text.
2.Who said that “modernistic” hermeneutics is acontextual?
Is acontextual exegesis the model of exegesis in a Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible, K. Vanhoozer, ed.?
3.Since meanings are not “there” waiting to be discovered, we can apply ED’s disclaimer to his own statement—and everything else he says.
“Yes, the Calvinist appeal to ‘historical theology’ only travels back about 400 years, and then jumps another 1600+ years to a de-constructed Augustine, one who is no longer the true-blue Catholic that he actually was.”
Once again, this is pretty funny coming from a guy who’s deep into Kierkegaard and Barth. Were they contemporaneous with the church fathers?
“As this was simply a descriptive summary of Eastern patristic teaching on the issue, I saw no need to include supporting argumentation. Nothing's not being argued, merely described.”
Since, by his own admission, Grano has made no effort to establish the veracity of his own position, there’s nothing for us to respond to or disprove.
“Undoubtedly depends on who's doing the exegesis, does it not? Chrysostom reads it quite differently than Augustine, for instance.”
And since Grano doesn’t give us Chrysotom’s argument, there’s nothing for us to respond to or disprove.
“Again, depends on whose reading of the Bible you're reading. Many scholars, including great fathers of the Church say ‘yes.’"
To “say” it and to “show” it are two different things.
“As no one should ever be: it's never objective and never proves anything in and of itself. Why? Because it varies greatly from exegete to exegete.”
1.Exegesis never proves anything? So Gnostic or Arian exegesis is just as good as patristic exegesis?
2.And how does Grano propose to exegete the church fathers or ecumenical councils?
“This is patent nonsense. Out of the 8,000 commentaries floating around out there, how do you know you've got a ‘good’ one.”
By sifting the quality of the argumentation in support for any given interpretation.
“I'm willing to bet the ‘good’ ones are those that agree with Steve.”
How much is he willing to bet? I’m happy to raise his bet.
In a recent post I recommended a number of commentaries on various books of the Bible.
Now, I’m a supralapsarian Calvinist. I doubt that a single commentator I recommended is a supralapsarian Calvinist. Indeed, many are not Calvinistic at all.
“Plus, why are modern commentaries assumed to be more valuable than the Fathers' works?”
For a couple of reasons:
1.Modern commentators know far more about ANE history, 2nd Temple Judaism, and 1C Greco-Roman history than the church fathers.
2.Later commentators have the benefit of earlier commentators. Knowledge is cumulative.
“I'd argue the exact opposite.”
So where’s the argument?
“Steve objects to my recourse to historical theology.”
Yes, that’s because revealed theology takes precedence over historical theology.
“Of course, as an appeal to historical theology cuts the legs out from under Calvinism -- no Calvinists in the early church!”
And, of course, an appeal to historical theology cuts the legs out from under Orthodoxy:
No Eastern Orthodox in 2nd Temple Judaism.
No Eastern Orthodox in the Intertestamental Judaism.
No Eastern Orthodox in postexilic Judaism.
No Eastern Orthodox is exilic Judaism.
No Eastern Orthodox in preexilic Judaism.
No Eastern Orthodox under the Monarchy.
No Eastern Orthodox during the Judges.
No Eastern Orthodox during the Exodus.
No Eastern Orthodox during the Patriarchs.
No Eastern Orthodox during the prediluvians.
You see, I’m much too much of a traditionalist to jump on the bandwagon of a theological innovation like Eastern Orthodoxy.
Exist~Dissolve said:
“Yes, exactly. Not to mention the fact that there are 8 million different reading of Augustine as well. Whose token ECF will he be this week? RC? Protestant? Calvinist?”
1.This is pretty funny considering ED’s Baskin-Robbins’ theology. ED’s creed comes in every flavor but Biblical.
2.How is the appeal to theological diversity a defeater for my position and not a defeater for his?
“You are exactly right. The lie of modernistic hermeneutics is that 1.) there is an objective and accessible meaning lying somewhere within the text and 2.) by adopting the ‘right’ methods of exegesis, one can explicate exactly what this is.”
He “says” it’s a lie, but he doesn’t “show” it’s a lie.
“Obviously, the very nature of human discourse mitigates this possibility, as meanings are not ‘there’ waiting to be discovered, but are rather created through the engagement of two (or more) contexts.”
1.So there’s no meaning in the text, but only in the context.
Apparently, meaning suddenly emerges when you smash one meaningless text against another meaningless text.
2.Who said that “modernistic” hermeneutics is acontextual?
Is acontextual exegesis the model of exegesis in a Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible, K. Vanhoozer, ed.?
3.Since meanings are not “there” waiting to be discovered, we can apply ED’s disclaimer to his own statement—and everything else he says.
“Yes, the Calvinist appeal to ‘historical theology’ only travels back about 400 years, and then jumps another 1600+ years to a de-constructed Augustine, one who is no longer the true-blue Catholic that he actually was.”
Once again, this is pretty funny coming from a guy who’s deep into Kierkegaard and Barth. Were they contemporaneous with the church fathers?
Intellectual frivolity
“Todd -- Steve's response to the contrary, your questions do not appear to me to be frivolous.”
Not only are Todd’s objections frivolous, but Grano’s objections are equally frivolous. That’s because Todd’s objections have been answered on this very blog, time and again.
And when we respond, Todd invariably changes the subject.
For his own part, Grano is merely using this thread as a pretext to plug his EO theology.
He’s a liberty to do so, but it says something about his own moral compass when he takes the side of a blasphemer and chooses to disregard the history of our engagement with Todd.
Thus far, all Grano has succeeded in illustrating is that commitment to EO theology carries with it no corollary commitment to Christian ethics.
“To argue that 6 million innocent people died in the Holocaust and 10 million in Stalin's Russia (in both instances many of them children) all somehow for the "glory" of God is a monstrous lie.”
Once again, we’ve dealt with this sort of objection many times before.
“Jesus said ‘He who has seen me has seen the Father.’"
Eastern Orthodoxy doesn’t hold the copyright to Jn 14:9. We have that verse in our Bibles as well.
“Look at what Christ did while on earth--does he look anything like Calvin's god?”
Good question.
“At that time Jesus declared, ‘I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (Mt 11:25-27).
“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you accursed ones, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (25:41).
“And when he was alone, those around him with the twelve asked him about the parables. And he said to them, ‘To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything is in parables, so that “they may indeed see but not perceive, and may indeed year but not understand, lest they should turn and be forgiven”’” (Mk 4:10-12).
“No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him” (Jn 6:44).
“As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. And his disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ Jesus answered, ‘It was not that this man sinned, or his portents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him’” (9:1-3).
“For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind” (9:39).
“But when Jesus heard it he said, “This illness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it” (11:4).
“Therefore they could not believe. For again Isaiah said, ‘He has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, lest they see with their eyes, and understand with their heart, and turn, and I would heal them’” (11:39-40).
“Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world” (17:24).
“God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you, and to grant relief to you who are afflicted a well as to us, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels inn flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might, when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints, and to be marveled at among all who have believed because our testimony to you was believed” (2 Thes 1:6-10).
“Then the kings of the earth and the great ones and the generals and the rich and the powerful, and everyone, slave and free, hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, calling to the mountains and rocks, ‘Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?” (Rev 6:15-17).
“And at that hour there was a great earthquake, and a tenth of the city fell. Seven thousand people were killed in the earthquake, and the rest were terrified and gave glory to the God of heaven” (11:13).
“And another angel, a third, followed them, saying with a loud voice, ‘If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, he also will drink the wine of God’s wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night, these worshipers of the beast and its image, and whoever receives the mark of its name’” (14:9-11).
Continuing with Grano:
“For a brief but trenchant critique of this notion read David Bentley Hart's little book "The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami?" It points the way to a solution (as much as one can actually claim a 'solution') to the problem of evil that is outside of the Calvinist dialectical box (either God controls everything down to the minutest detail or He doesn't control anything at all.)”
And what is Hart’s solution?
“Simply said, there is no more liberating knowledge given us by the gospel—and none in which we should find more comfort—than the knowledge that suffering and death, considered in themselves, have no ultimate meaning at all.”
http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0503/opinion/hart.html
“The Christian understanding of evil has always been more radical and fantastic than that of any theodicist; for it denies from the outset that suffering, death and evil have any ultimate meaning at all.”
http://www.opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110006097
Yes, I'm sure that will make a believer of Todd in no time flat.
Not only are Todd’s objections frivolous, but Grano’s objections are equally frivolous. That’s because Todd’s objections have been answered on this very blog, time and again.
And when we respond, Todd invariably changes the subject.
For his own part, Grano is merely using this thread as a pretext to plug his EO theology.
He’s a liberty to do so, but it says something about his own moral compass when he takes the side of a blasphemer and chooses to disregard the history of our engagement with Todd.
Thus far, all Grano has succeeded in illustrating is that commitment to EO theology carries with it no corollary commitment to Christian ethics.
“To argue that 6 million innocent people died in the Holocaust and 10 million in Stalin's Russia (in both instances many of them children) all somehow for the "glory" of God is a monstrous lie.”
Once again, we’ve dealt with this sort of objection many times before.
“Jesus said ‘He who has seen me has seen the Father.’"
Eastern Orthodoxy doesn’t hold the copyright to Jn 14:9. We have that verse in our Bibles as well.
“Look at what Christ did while on earth--does he look anything like Calvin's god?”
Good question.
“At that time Jesus declared, ‘I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (Mt 11:25-27).
“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you accursed ones, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (25:41).
“And when he was alone, those around him with the twelve asked him about the parables. And he said to them, ‘To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything is in parables, so that “they may indeed see but not perceive, and may indeed year but not understand, lest they should turn and be forgiven”’” (Mk 4:10-12).
“No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him” (Jn 6:44).
“As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. And his disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ Jesus answered, ‘It was not that this man sinned, or his portents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him’” (9:1-3).
“For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind” (9:39).
“But when Jesus heard it he said, “This illness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it” (11:4).
“Therefore they could not believe. For again Isaiah said, ‘He has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, lest they see with their eyes, and understand with their heart, and turn, and I would heal them’” (11:39-40).
“Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world” (17:24).
“God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you, and to grant relief to you who are afflicted a well as to us, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels inn flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might, when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints, and to be marveled at among all who have believed because our testimony to you was believed” (2 Thes 1:6-10).
“Then the kings of the earth and the great ones and the generals and the rich and the powerful, and everyone, slave and free, hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, calling to the mountains and rocks, ‘Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?” (Rev 6:15-17).
“And at that hour there was a great earthquake, and a tenth of the city fell. Seven thousand people were killed in the earthquake, and the rest were terrified and gave glory to the God of heaven” (11:13).
“And another angel, a third, followed them, saying with a loud voice, ‘If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, he also will drink the wine of God’s wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night, these worshipers of the beast and its image, and whoever receives the mark of its name’” (14:9-11).
Continuing with Grano:
“For a brief but trenchant critique of this notion read David Bentley Hart's little book "The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami?" It points the way to a solution (as much as one can actually claim a 'solution') to the problem of evil that is outside of the Calvinist dialectical box (either God controls everything down to the minutest detail or He doesn't control anything at all.)”
And what is Hart’s solution?
“Simply said, there is no more liberating knowledge given us by the gospel—and none in which we should find more comfort—than the knowledge that suffering and death, considered in themselves, have no ultimate meaning at all.”
http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0503/opinion/hart.html
“The Christian understanding of evil has always been more radical and fantastic than that of any theodicist; for it denies from the outset that suffering, death and evil have any ultimate meaning at all.”
http://www.opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110006097
Yes, I'm sure that will make a believer of Todd in no time flat.
Monday, August 28, 2006
Peer review
“Gord,” over at forumopolis.com, weighs in on the contemptible standards of ID theory:
***QUOTE***
There are no peer-reviewed papers (that meet standard definitions of peer-review) featuring intelligent design and original experimental research in the same paper.
As Judge Jones noted in his opinion, while ID is an interesting theological argument, it is not science.
http://forumopolis.com/showthread.php?t=31086
***END-QUOTE***
Well, ya learn something new every day.
I, for one, had no idea that Judge Jones’ opinion was published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal—much less that his opinion was the result of original experimental research.
***QUOTE***
There are no peer-reviewed papers (that meet standard definitions of peer-review) featuring intelligent design and original experimental research in the same paper.
As Judge Jones noted in his opinion, while ID is an interesting theological argument, it is not science.
http://forumopolis.com/showthread.php?t=31086
***END-QUOTE***
Well, ya learn something new every day.
I, for one, had no idea that Judge Jones’ opinion was published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal—much less that his opinion was the result of original experimental research.
Conference On the Holy Trinity
What single doctrine underwrites the following doctrines and practices in a direct or indirect way?
Theology Proper (The Doctrine of God)
Anthropology (The Doctrine of Man)
Soteriology (The Doctrine of Salvation)
The Family/Marriage
Church Order
Biblical Hermeneutics
If you answer “The Trinity” you scored 100 %
Follow up questions: Do you know why this is the case? Are you a consistent Trinitarian?
Philip Schaff viewed church history as the history of the growth of an organic entity. In its infancy and toddlerhood, God taught the church some fundamental, bedrock truths about who He is, based on the content of His Scriptures. That included the doctrine of the Trinity. These concepts were passed down for over 1500 years, and they were further ensconced in Christendom such that to be an anti-Trinitarian was a worse heresy than being a Protestant, during the time of the Reformation. In addition, these concepts involved them thinking a great deal about concepts like “personhood;” thus what it means to be a person passed into our culture and remained with us. What you think about “personhood” as a concept affects the way you view your fellow man. Thus affects Christian Ethics in such matters as marriage and family, abortion, and homosexuality. It also has an effect on the way you view the lost.
When was the last time you heard a sermon series or series of Sunday School lessons teaching the doctrine of the Trinity? It seems we take it for granted that people believe this. I fear we’re losing this doctrine in the church. Ask folks if they know T.D. Jakes is a modalist. If they say “Yes,” ask them if they think this matters. Many say, “Yes,” but don’t know why. Many say, “No,” and don’t care. As this doctrine goes in the church, so it goes in society. Why do you think we’re struggling with divorce and homosexuality and other such issues today? You guessed it… I’ll be posting more on these ideas in the near future, but until then…
Grace Bible Church in Brandon, FL has put together a conference On the Holy Trinity for October. See details there and at the Founders blog. The speakers included Phil Johnson and Robert Reymond.
Same time, same channel
“I wanted to ask you what you thought of the Season 2 finale” of Battlestar Galactica?
It's been a few months since I've seen it. As I recall, the survivors settled on New Caprica, only to see it turned into a penal colony when the Cylons arrived.
1. This can be evaluated on more than one level. There is a certain dramatic logic to this development. The survivors would be suffering from cabin fever after all these months in space, trying to stay one step ahead of the enemy.
So you can see them giving into the temptation to settle down prematurely.
2. At another level, this is a stock dramatic device which is been around since the days of the silent serials: the cliffhanger ending which leaves an audience on the edge of its seat, waiting for the next installment.
It's a variant on the damsel in distress, tied to the train tracks as the choo-choo approaches. Will Dudley Do-Right be able to rescue her before the train turns her into hamburger?
Another variant is the ticking time-bomb.
3. At still another level, drama is about conflict-resolution, so the screenwriters are creating dramatic tension for the sake of resolving it.
This is why, decade after decade, TV producers resort to the same life-or-death genres, viz. war, espionage, cops & robbers, hospital dramas, courtroom dramas.
The danger is when conflict-resolution becomes an end in itself: the regularly scheduled crisis of the week.
When there's no particular point to the series. It becomes cyclical rather than linear.
"24" is the best example of this formula at present.
4. There's also the subjective question, which varies from one viewer to another, as to whether we care about the characters. Do we care about Starbuck's inner demons? Do we care about Boomer's predicament—a toaster with a conscience? Do we care about who's in love with whom?
Speaking for myself, I could do without the robots-have-feelings-to motif.
5. BTW, our discussions have been limited to the SF genre. When I say that BSG is one of the best TV shows in that genre, this doesn't mean it's one of the best TV shows, period.
There are non-SF TV shows which are dramatically superior.
For example, La Femme Nikita, from a few years ago, was a more intelligent show—albeit pretty grim (reflecting the hopelessness of the secular worldview).
It's been a few months since I've seen it. As I recall, the survivors settled on New Caprica, only to see it turned into a penal colony when the Cylons arrived.
1. This can be evaluated on more than one level. There is a certain dramatic logic to this development. The survivors would be suffering from cabin fever after all these months in space, trying to stay one step ahead of the enemy.
So you can see them giving into the temptation to settle down prematurely.
2. At another level, this is a stock dramatic device which is been around since the days of the silent serials: the cliffhanger ending which leaves an audience on the edge of its seat, waiting for the next installment.
It's a variant on the damsel in distress, tied to the train tracks as the choo-choo approaches. Will Dudley Do-Right be able to rescue her before the train turns her into hamburger?
Another variant is the ticking time-bomb.
3. At still another level, drama is about conflict-resolution, so the screenwriters are creating dramatic tension for the sake of resolving it.
This is why, decade after decade, TV producers resort to the same life-or-death genres, viz. war, espionage, cops & robbers, hospital dramas, courtroom dramas.
The danger is when conflict-resolution becomes an end in itself: the regularly scheduled crisis of the week.
When there's no particular point to the series. It becomes cyclical rather than linear.
"24" is the best example of this formula at present.
4. There's also the subjective question, which varies from one viewer to another, as to whether we care about the characters. Do we care about Starbuck's inner demons? Do we care about Boomer's predicament—a toaster with a conscience? Do we care about who's in love with whom?
Speaking for myself, I could do without the robots-have-feelings-to motif.
5. BTW, our discussions have been limited to the SF genre. When I say that BSG is one of the best TV shows in that genre, this doesn't mean it's one of the best TV shows, period.
There are non-SF TV shows which are dramatically superior.
For example, La Femme Nikita, from a few years ago, was a more intelligent show—albeit pretty grim (reflecting the hopelessness of the secular worldview).
Sunday, August 27, 2006
Cartoon cosmology
A certain apostate blogger, who has only had one idea in his entire life, has been known to allege that Christian theism is committed to a cartoonish worldview.
Be that as it may, it is gratifying to know that secularism is immune to such an accusation:
http://www.simulation-argument.com/
Be that as it may, it is gratifying to know that secularism is immune to such an accusation:
http://www.simulation-argument.com/
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