Wednesday, February 07, 2007
Eyewitness Memory
"There is no evidence that the Pharisees abstained from writing their 'traditions of the fathers.' There is even less reason to suppose that an insistence on oral transmission alone characterized other Jewish groups at the time of Jesus, such as the (highly literary) Qumran community. However, again it is not true that Gerhardsson entirely neglected the role of written materials: he postulated that, just as private notebooks were in fact used by the rabbis and their pupils, so writing, as an aid to memory, could have been used in early Christian circles prior to the Gospels....In a predominantly oral society, not only do people deliberately remember but also teachers formulate their teachings so as to make them easily memorable. It has frequently been observed that Jesus' teaching in its typically Synoptic forms has many features that facilitate remembering. The aphorisms are typically terse and incisive, the narrative parables have a clear and relatively simple plot outline. Even in Greek translation, the only form in which we have them, the sayings of Jesus are recognizably poetic, especially employing parallelism, and many have posited Aramaic originals rich in alliteration, assonance, rhythm, rhyme, and wordplay. These teaching formulations were certainly not created by Jesus ad hoc, in the course of his teaching, but were carefully crafted, designed as concise encapsulations of his teaching that his hearers could take away, remember, ponder, and live by. We cannot suppose that Jesus' oral teaching consisted entirely of such sayings as these. Jesus must have preached much more discursively, but offered these aphorisms and parables as brief but thought-provoking summations of his teaching for his hearers to jot down in their mental notebooks for frequent future recall. (Obviously, therefore, it was these memorable summations that survived, and when the writers of the Synoptic Gospels wished to represent the discursive teaching of Jesus they mostly had to use collections of these sayings.) This kind of encapsulation of teaching in carefully crafted aphorisms to be remembered was the teaching style of the Jewish wisdom teacher. As Rainer Riesner puts it, 'Even the form of the sayings of Jesus included in itself an imperative to remember them.' Jesus' hearers would readily recognize this and would apply to memorable sayings the deliberate practices of committing to memory that they would know were expected....Such notebooks [as ancient rabbis used] were in quite widespread use in the ancient world (2 Tim 4:13 refers to parchment notebooks Paul carried on his travels). It seems more probable than not that early Christians used them....The eyewitnesses who remembered the events of the history of Jesus were remembering inherently very memorable events, unusual events that would have impressed themselves on the memory, events of key significance for those who remembered them, landmark or life-changing events for them in many cases, and their memories would have been reinforced and stabilized by frequent rehearsal, beginning soon after the event. They did not need to remember - and the Gospels rarely record - merely peripheral aspects of the scene or the event, the aspects of recollective memory that are least reliable....We may conclude that the memories of eyewitnesses of the history of Jesus score highly by the criteria for likely reliability that have been established by the psychological study of recollective memory....[quoting Gillian Cohen] Research has tended to emphasize the errors that occur in everyday memory functions. The picture that emerges is of an error-prone system. This emphasis is partly an artefact of research methodology. In experiments it is usually more informative to set task difficulty at a level where people make errors so that the nature of the errors and the conditions that provoke them can be identified....People do make plenty of naturally occurring errors in ordinary life situations, but, arguably, the methodology has produced a somewhat distorted view of memory efficiency. In daily life, memory successes are the norm and memory failures are the exception. People also exhibit remarkable feats of remembering faces and voices from the remote past, and foreign-language vocabulary and childhood experiences over a lifetime. As well as such examples of retention over very long periods, people can retain large amounts of information over shorter periods, as when they prepare for examinations, and sometimes, as in the case of expert knowledge, they acquire a large amount of information and retain it for an indefinitely long time. Considering how grossly it is overloaded, memory in the real world proves remarkably efficient and resilient. [end quote of Gillian Cohen]" (Richard Bauckham, Jesus And The Eyewitnesses [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2006], pp. 252, 282, 288, 346, 357)
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Leaning on a weak reed
Many people don’t believe the Bible because the Bible is soooo unscientific. Here’s a revealing window on the world of contemporary physics:
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Stringing physics along
Review: February 2007
The Trouble with Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next_Lee Smolin_2006 Houghton Mifflin 416pp £25.00/$26.00hb
"Hypotheses non fingo," wrote Isaac Newton 300 years ago in the second edition of his Principia Mathematica. It has been variously translated as "I do not make hypotheses" or "I do not feign hypotheses". Instead, Newton established laws of nature such as his theory of universal gravitation – simple, economical equations of broad explanatory power able to account for diverse phenomena both known and yet to be observed. His natural philosophy became the dominant paradigm of the mechanical world-view and, more generally, what we call the scientific method.
In the last few decades, however, physical theory has drifted away from the professional norms advocated by Newton and other enlightenment philosophers. A vast outpouring of hypotheses has occurred under the umbrella of what is widely called string theory. But string theory is not really a "theory" at all – at least not in the strict sense that scientists generally use the term. It is instead a dense, weedy thicket of hypotheses and conjectures badly in need of pruning.
That pruning, however, can come only from observation and experiment, to which string theory (a phrase I will grudgingly continue using) is largely inaccessible. String theory was invented in the 1970s in the wake of the Standard Model of particle physics. Encouraged by the success of gauge theories of the strong, weak and electromagnetic forces, theorists tried to extend similar ideas to energy and distance scales that are orders of magnitude beyond what can be readily observed or measured. The normal, healthy intercourse between theory and experiment – which had led to the Standard Model – has broken down, and fundamental physics now finds itself in a state of crisis.
Lee Smolin, a theorist at the Perimeter Institute, Waterloo, Canada, has written a thoughtful, provocative book that squarely addresses these problems and advocates a solution in bold new approaches to physics. A principal aim of The Trouble with Physics is to re-engage theory with what actually occurs, or may occur, in the realm of observable phenomena. The book also addresses such core questions as: Why do quarks, leptons and gauge bosons have the diverse masses they possess? What are dark matter and dark energy? How can quantum mechanics and general relativity be combined into a single theory?
String theory originally shared most of these goals, but it got caught up in its own mathematical beauty. Like Narcissus, it increasingly began to contemplate its own reflection, to the exclusion of observable phenomena. To evade comparisons with dross reality, for instance, string theorists have invoked an unseen "metaverse" of parallel universes corresponding to the "landscape" of 10500 possible solutions that might exist. The fact that our universe has spawned galaxies, stars, planets and intelligent life is explained away by the anthropic principle. Of late, a few leading theorists have even begun to suggest a radical new philosophy of science, rejecting Newton, in which hypotheses no longer require observable evidence in order to be accepted as valid theories. To a hardened experimenter like me, this is blasphemy.
So it is refreshing to hear from a theorist – one who was deeply involved with string theory and championed it in his previous book, Three Roads to Quantum Gravity – that all is not well in this closeted realm. Smolin argues from the outset that viable hypotheses must lead to observable consequences by which they can be tested and judged. That is, they have to be falsifiable. Newton's theory of gravitation, for example, could later account for the orbit of Halley's Comet – not just those of the Moon and planets for which it was originally formulated. But string theory by its very nature does not allow for such probing, according to Smolin, and therefore it must be considered as an unprovable conjecture.
http://physicsweb.org/articles/review/20/2/1/1
**********************************************
Stringing physics along
Review: February 2007
The Trouble with Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next_Lee Smolin_2006 Houghton Mifflin 416pp £25.00/$26.00hb
"Hypotheses non fingo," wrote Isaac Newton 300 years ago in the second edition of his Principia Mathematica. It has been variously translated as "I do not make hypotheses" or "I do not feign hypotheses". Instead, Newton established laws of nature such as his theory of universal gravitation – simple, economical equations of broad explanatory power able to account for diverse phenomena both known and yet to be observed. His natural philosophy became the dominant paradigm of the mechanical world-view and, more generally, what we call the scientific method.
In the last few decades, however, physical theory has drifted away from the professional norms advocated by Newton and other enlightenment philosophers. A vast outpouring of hypotheses has occurred under the umbrella of what is widely called string theory. But string theory is not really a "theory" at all – at least not in the strict sense that scientists generally use the term. It is instead a dense, weedy thicket of hypotheses and conjectures badly in need of pruning.
That pruning, however, can come only from observation and experiment, to which string theory (a phrase I will grudgingly continue using) is largely inaccessible. String theory was invented in the 1970s in the wake of the Standard Model of particle physics. Encouraged by the success of gauge theories of the strong, weak and electromagnetic forces, theorists tried to extend similar ideas to energy and distance scales that are orders of magnitude beyond what can be readily observed or measured. The normal, healthy intercourse between theory and experiment – which had led to the Standard Model – has broken down, and fundamental physics now finds itself in a state of crisis.
Lee Smolin, a theorist at the Perimeter Institute, Waterloo, Canada, has written a thoughtful, provocative book that squarely addresses these problems and advocates a solution in bold new approaches to physics. A principal aim of The Trouble with Physics is to re-engage theory with what actually occurs, or may occur, in the realm of observable phenomena. The book also addresses such core questions as: Why do quarks, leptons and gauge bosons have the diverse masses they possess? What are dark matter and dark energy? How can quantum mechanics and general relativity be combined into a single theory?
String theory originally shared most of these goals, but it got caught up in its own mathematical beauty. Like Narcissus, it increasingly began to contemplate its own reflection, to the exclusion of observable phenomena. To evade comparisons with dross reality, for instance, string theorists have invoked an unseen "metaverse" of parallel universes corresponding to the "landscape" of 10500 possible solutions that might exist. The fact that our universe has spawned galaxies, stars, planets and intelligent life is explained away by the anthropic principle. Of late, a few leading theorists have even begun to suggest a radical new philosophy of science, rejecting Newton, in which hypotheses no longer require observable evidence in order to be accepted as valid theories. To a hardened experimenter like me, this is blasphemy.
So it is refreshing to hear from a theorist – one who was deeply involved with string theory and championed it in his previous book, Three Roads to Quantum Gravity – that all is not well in this closeted realm. Smolin argues from the outset that viable hypotheses must lead to observable consequences by which they can be tested and judged. That is, they have to be falsifiable. Newton's theory of gravitation, for example, could later account for the orbit of Halley's Comet – not just those of the Moon and planets for which it was originally formulated. But string theory by its very nature does not allow for such probing, according to Smolin, and therefore it must be considered as an unprovable conjecture.
http://physicsweb.org/articles/review/20/2/1/1
The Real Reason Blogger Has Problems
All of us using Blogger know the drill. We sign in to the dashboard...oops, Blogger is down yet again; or we go visit a blog to read, and, oops, Blogger is down...again.
The intrepid reporters at Tominthebox have uncovered the real reason.
See: http://tominthebox.blogspot.com/2007/02/texe-marrs-tominthebox-brought-blogger.html
I must disagree, however, the real reason is that the Devil Priest James White is discussing textual criticism on the DL! Yes, that's right, all them 'xandrian manuscripts is whut's making God call down His judgment on us all!
The intrepid reporters at Tominthebox have uncovered the real reason.
See: http://tominthebox.blogspot.com/2007/02/texe-marrs-tominthebox-brought-blogger.html
I must disagree, however, the real reason is that the Devil Priest James White is discussing textual criticism on the DL! Yes, that's right, all them 'xandrian manuscripts is whut's making God call down His judgment on us all!
John W. Montgomery on The "New" Atheism
The Great Divorce
Ebon Muse has posted a book review of The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis.
HT: Victor Reppert.
Let me begin by saying that, at an artistic level, I think The Great Divorce is one of Lewis's lesser efforts.
Lewis was both a man of ideas and a man of imagination. When the two come together, the fusion is ideal. But sometimes the ideas overpower the story.
I also think that there are some serious deficiencies in his theology. And his treatment of hell does disclose some tensions in his theological outlook. That said, let's consider Ebon's objections:
"Regrettably, Lewis has fallen into the same trap many proselytizing Christians fall into when they attempt to speak on behalf of nonbelievers: the black-and-white, us-against-the-world view of fundamentalism that recognizes no similarities between those who believe and those who do not, the mindset that will not for a second entertain the idea that anyone who believes differently might do so for honest or intellectually convincing (even if only to them) reasons, or that such people can ever be moral. In the pages of this book, all born-again Christians are portrayed as noble, kind-hearted, selfless and honest, while all nonbelievers are portrayed as evil, selfish and insincere. Well-poisoning, ad hominem attacks, and other fallacious tactics are frequently deployed, and the sincerity of non-Christians' motives is constantly questioned and slandered. Few converts will be won by such a distrustful attitude. Until Christian proselytizers recognize that those who disagree with them are still human beings with their own thoughts, feelings and honestly held opinions, no meaningful dialogue between the two groups will ever be possible."
http://www.ebonmusings.org/atheism/books/greatdivorce.html
There are a couple of problems with this criticism:
1. One problem with this characterization is the way it overlooks the well-known fact that Lewis had been on both sides of this fence. He knew atheism from the inside out. So this is not a caricature.
One might also compare Lewis with a couple of his contemporaries, such as T. S. Eliot, both before his conversion (The Waste Land; The Hollow Men) and afterwards (Ash Wednesday; the Four Quartets). Or the early novels of Hemingway, reflecting postwar disillusionment.
2. Another problem is the way Ebon ignores the fact that this is a depiction of the afterlife. So it does accentuate the extremes of virtue and vice. Believers become their best selves while unbelievers become their worst selves.
It isn't meant to be true to life here and now. In the afterlife, the mixed motives and moral ambiguities are gone.
Moving along:
"I would also point out one further injustice of Lewis' conception: there is no real punishment in his Hell. Even the damned who were truly evil during life, those who deserve to be there as much as anyone does, are not made to pay for their deeds in any meaningful way - they are not made to see the wrongness of what they did."
But how does this square with Ebon's other accusations?
"As well, it might be argued that Lewis' Christianity itself - its gloomy and stifling claims about universal depravity and the inevitable damnation of the majority of humankind, its cruel and vengeful God."
"In essence, he is saying, the good people in Heaven should not be troubled by the suffering and misery of the damned."
"It further reinforces the facts that any god who would create Hell would be a monster."
Ebon can't seem to make up his mind. On the one hand, he objects that, in Lewis' depiction of hell, the damned suffer no real punishment. They don't get what they deserve.
On the other hand, he objects that, in Lewis' depiction of hell, the damned endure so much misery and suffering that only a cruel, vengeful, and monstrous God would condemn people to hell.
So which is it?
Another problem, which is all too typical of those who oppose the doctrine of hell, is a traditional conception of hell which owes more to Dante, Hieronymous Bosch, Jonathan Edwards, and horrific B-movies than it does to the actual teaching of Scripture.
The opponent of hell has inherited a literary and artistic tradition of hell, and what he spends his time attacking is this extrascriptural tradition rather than the scriptural depiction.
We need to take a few paces back an exegete Scripture, making due allowance for a degree of figurative imagery.
On the one hand, I think that sound exegesis rules out universalism, annihilationism, and postmortem evangelism.
And hell is certainly a place of punishment, where retributive justice reigns supreme.
On the other hand, once you bracket the picturesque metaphors, the Bible doesn't have a whole lot to say about how justice is exacted on the damned.
This has been filled in over the centuries by literary license and artistic imagination. But let's not confuse that extrascriptural overlay with the core teaching of Scripture.
Finally, Ebon wraps up his attack on this hortatory note:
"What is the solution? Shall we dream up a universalist afterlife where all human beings, perhaps after undergoing a punishment commensurate with the harm they caused to others during life, will be admitted to an eternity of happiness? There is nothing stopping us from inventing such pleasant fantasies, but the problem is that all afterlife scenarios suffer alike from the same lack of confirming evidence. At best, such beliefs inspire complacency in the face of the world's troubles; at worst, they encourage people to throw away what may be the only life they will ever have in futile pursuit of a mirage. Rather than waiting for Heaven to come to us, we should seek to create it ourselves, and make this world a place where hopes of an afterlife where all injustices will be put right are unnecessary. We can only hope that when humanity finally matures, both the pleasing daydreams and the dark nightmares of theism will finally be set aside."
This is boilerplate humanism. And it suffers from two or three problems:
1. It disregards the many arguments for the truth of Christianity.
2. Ironically, it substitutes a secular millennialism for scriptural eschatology.
What is the source of all the world's injustices? Us. Human beings.
That is why human beings can never roll up their shirtsleeves and put an end to injustice. That's like asking the Gambinos to crack down on organized crime. The source of the problem cannot be the source of the solution.
In the end, it's Ebon Muse who pursues a utopian mirage. And that's been tried before.
3. Notice how angered and offended he is at Lewis' rather tame novella. Clearly Lewis hit a raw nerve. Cut too close to the bone of Ebon's insecurities.
In The Great Divorce, Lewis is, to some degree, the anti-Macdonald, opposing the universalism of his literary mentor.
Yet he is also the anti-Dante. The Great Divorce is the anti-Inferno. Lewis is trying to take the sting out of hell. Remove the stigma. Make hell more morally, emotionally, and intellectually respectable to modern sensibilities.
But even his kinder, gentler vision of hell is too threatening to Ebon Muse. Ebon fears the very thing he denies. Denies it because he fears it.
HT: Victor Reppert.
Let me begin by saying that, at an artistic level, I think The Great Divorce is one of Lewis's lesser efforts.
Lewis was both a man of ideas and a man of imagination. When the two come together, the fusion is ideal. But sometimes the ideas overpower the story.
I also think that there are some serious deficiencies in his theology. And his treatment of hell does disclose some tensions in his theological outlook. That said, let's consider Ebon's objections:
"Regrettably, Lewis has fallen into the same trap many proselytizing Christians fall into when they attempt to speak on behalf of nonbelievers: the black-and-white, us-against-the-world view of fundamentalism that recognizes no similarities between those who believe and those who do not, the mindset that will not for a second entertain the idea that anyone who believes differently might do so for honest or intellectually convincing (even if only to them) reasons, or that such people can ever be moral. In the pages of this book, all born-again Christians are portrayed as noble, kind-hearted, selfless and honest, while all nonbelievers are portrayed as evil, selfish and insincere. Well-poisoning, ad hominem attacks, and other fallacious tactics are frequently deployed, and the sincerity of non-Christians' motives is constantly questioned and slandered. Few converts will be won by such a distrustful attitude. Until Christian proselytizers recognize that those who disagree with them are still human beings with their own thoughts, feelings and honestly held opinions, no meaningful dialogue between the two groups will ever be possible."
http://www.ebonmusings.org/atheism/books/greatdivorce.html
There are a couple of problems with this criticism:
1. One problem with this characterization is the way it overlooks the well-known fact that Lewis had been on both sides of this fence. He knew atheism from the inside out. So this is not a caricature.
One might also compare Lewis with a couple of his contemporaries, such as T. S. Eliot, both before his conversion (The Waste Land; The Hollow Men) and afterwards (Ash Wednesday; the Four Quartets). Or the early novels of Hemingway, reflecting postwar disillusionment.
2. Another problem is the way Ebon ignores the fact that this is a depiction of the afterlife. So it does accentuate the extremes of virtue and vice. Believers become their best selves while unbelievers become their worst selves.
It isn't meant to be true to life here and now. In the afterlife, the mixed motives and moral ambiguities are gone.
Moving along:
"I would also point out one further injustice of Lewis' conception: there is no real punishment in his Hell. Even the damned who were truly evil during life, those who deserve to be there as much as anyone does, are not made to pay for their deeds in any meaningful way - they are not made to see the wrongness of what they did."
But how does this square with Ebon's other accusations?
"As well, it might be argued that Lewis' Christianity itself - its gloomy and stifling claims about universal depravity and the inevitable damnation of the majority of humankind, its cruel and vengeful God."
"In essence, he is saying, the good people in Heaven should not be troubled by the suffering and misery of the damned."
"It further reinforces the facts that any god who would create Hell would be a monster."
Ebon can't seem to make up his mind. On the one hand, he objects that, in Lewis' depiction of hell, the damned suffer no real punishment. They don't get what they deserve.
On the other hand, he objects that, in Lewis' depiction of hell, the damned endure so much misery and suffering that only a cruel, vengeful, and monstrous God would condemn people to hell.
So which is it?
Another problem, which is all too typical of those who oppose the doctrine of hell, is a traditional conception of hell which owes more to Dante, Hieronymous Bosch, Jonathan Edwards, and horrific B-movies than it does to the actual teaching of Scripture.
The opponent of hell has inherited a literary and artistic tradition of hell, and what he spends his time attacking is this extrascriptural tradition rather than the scriptural depiction.
We need to take a few paces back an exegete Scripture, making due allowance for a degree of figurative imagery.
On the one hand, I think that sound exegesis rules out universalism, annihilationism, and postmortem evangelism.
And hell is certainly a place of punishment, where retributive justice reigns supreme.
On the other hand, once you bracket the picturesque metaphors, the Bible doesn't have a whole lot to say about how justice is exacted on the damned.
This has been filled in over the centuries by literary license and artistic imagination. But let's not confuse that extrascriptural overlay with the core teaching of Scripture.
Finally, Ebon wraps up his attack on this hortatory note:
"What is the solution? Shall we dream up a universalist afterlife where all human beings, perhaps after undergoing a punishment commensurate with the harm they caused to others during life, will be admitted to an eternity of happiness? There is nothing stopping us from inventing such pleasant fantasies, but the problem is that all afterlife scenarios suffer alike from the same lack of confirming evidence. At best, such beliefs inspire complacency in the face of the world's troubles; at worst, they encourage people to throw away what may be the only life they will ever have in futile pursuit of a mirage. Rather than waiting for Heaven to come to us, we should seek to create it ourselves, and make this world a place where hopes of an afterlife where all injustices will be put right are unnecessary. We can only hope that when humanity finally matures, both the pleasing daydreams and the dark nightmares of theism will finally be set aside."
This is boilerplate humanism. And it suffers from two or three problems:
1. It disregards the many arguments for the truth of Christianity.
2. Ironically, it substitutes a secular millennialism for scriptural eschatology.
What is the source of all the world's injustices? Us. Human beings.
That is why human beings can never roll up their shirtsleeves and put an end to injustice. That's like asking the Gambinos to crack down on organized crime. The source of the problem cannot be the source of the solution.
In the end, it's Ebon Muse who pursues a utopian mirage. And that's been tried before.
3. Notice how angered and offended he is at Lewis' rather tame novella. Clearly Lewis hit a raw nerve. Cut too close to the bone of Ebon's insecurities.
In The Great Divorce, Lewis is, to some degree, the anti-Macdonald, opposing the universalism of his literary mentor.
Yet he is also the anti-Dante. The Great Divorce is the anti-Inferno. Lewis is trying to take the sting out of hell. Remove the stigma. Make hell more morally, emotionally, and intellectually respectable to modern sensibilities.
But even his kinder, gentler vision of hell is too threatening to Ebon Muse. Ebon fears the very thing he denies. Denies it because he fears it.
Eyewitness Testimony In Ancient Sources
"The ancient historians - such as Thucydides, Polybius, Josephus, and Tacitus - were convinced that true history could be written only while events were still within living memory, and they valued as their sources the oral reports of direct experience of the events by involved participants in them. Ideally, the historian himself should have been a participant in the events he narrates - as, for example, Xenophon, Thucydides, and Josephus were - but, since he could not have been at all the events he recounts or in all the places he describes, the historian had also to rely on eyewitnesses whose living voices he could hear and whom he could question himself...Of course, not all historians lived up to these ideals, and most employed oral traditions and written sources at least to supplement their own knowledge of the events and the reports of other eyewitnesses. But the standards set by Thucydides and Polybius were historiographic best practice, to which other historians aspired or at least paid lip-service. Good historians were highly critical of those who relied largely on written sources. That some historians pretended to firsthand knowledge they did not really have is backhanded support for the acknowledged necessity of eyewitness testimony in historiography....What mattered to Papias, as a collector and would-be recorder of Gospel traditions, was that there were eyewitnesses, some still around, and access to them through brief and verifiable channels of named informants. It is natural to suppose that those who were writing Gospels (our canonical Gospels) at the time of which Papias speaks would have gone about their task similarly, as indeed the preface to Luke's Gospel confirms. For the purpose of recording Gospel traditions in writing, Evangelists would have gone either to eyewitnesses or to the most reliable sources that had direct personal links with the eyewitnesses. Collective tradition as such would not have been the preferred source....In the present chapter we have shown that three of the Gospels - those of Mark, Luke, and John - make use of the historiographic principle that the most authoritative eyewitness is one who was present at the events narrated from their beginning to their end and can therefore vouch for the overall shape of the story as well as for specific key events....these three Gospels use the literary device we have called the inclusio of eyewitness testimony. This is a convention also deployed in two later Greek biographies, by Lucian and Porphyry, which may lend further weight to the identification of the inclusio of eyewitness testimony in three of the Gospels....Thus, contrary to first impressions, with which most Gospels scholars have been content, the Gospels do have their own literary ways of indicating their eyewitness sources. If it be asked why these are not more obvious and explicit in our eyes, we should note that most ancient readers or hearers of these works, unlike scholars of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, would have expected them to have eyewitness sources, and that those readers or hearers to whom the identity of the eyewitnesses was important would have been alert to the indications the Gospels actually provide....Historians in antiquity did not name their eyewitness sources as a matter of course, but in specific cases they did...In their close relationship to eyewitness testimony the Gospels conform to the best practice of ancient historiography." (Richard Bauckham, Jesus And The Eyewitnesses [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2006], pp. 8-9, 34, 146-147, n. 35 on p. 304, 310)
Monday, February 05, 2007
The tail wagging the god
John Loftus' quality of reasoning is definitely going to the dogs—quite literally.
http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2007/02/franky-pet-and-problem-of-good-god.html
Puppy love as atheology!
This is his finest argument since birdman.
However, as I read through his three-hanky, I couldn't help thinking of Willard. You remember Willard, don't you? The classic horror flick about a social misfit with his pet killer rats.
Now, if only Loftus would substitute a few beady-eyed rodents for that cute, cuddly picture of the Basset Hound, I wonder if his argument from evil would still tug at the heartstrings. Hmm.
http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2007/02/franky-pet-and-problem-of-good-god.html
Puppy love as atheology!
This is his finest argument since birdman.
However, as I read through his three-hanky, I couldn't help thinking of Willard. You remember Willard, don't you? The classic horror flick about a social misfit with his pet killer rats.
Now, if only Loftus would substitute a few beady-eyed rodents for that cute, cuddly picture of the Basset Hound, I wonder if his argument from evil would still tug at the heartstrings. Hmm.
The Cambrian Explosion: Biology’s Big Bang
The Cambrian Explosion: Biology’s Big Bang by Stephen Meyer, Marcus Ross, and Paul Chien.
Initial Impressions Of Richard Bauckham's Book
I recently finished reading Richard Bauckham's Jesus And The Eyewitnesses (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2006). I've already linked to reviews by Chris Tilling and Ben Witherington, and Patrick Chan has linked to a review by Craig Blomberg. A lot of what needs to be said about the book has already been said.
The role of eyewitnesses in shaping the New Testament and early Christianity is stated explicitly in many early sources, and it would be reasonable to expect eyewitnesses to be highly influential even without any explicit discussion of the subject in the early documents. Bauckham adds stength to a case that was already strong by bringing attention to a lot of less explicit evidence that's often neglected. It seems likely that the neglect of such evidence, both the more explicit evidence and the less explicit evidence, is often due to the fact that some scholars don't like the implications that follow. Bauckham repeatedly refers to conclusions that some scholars reach with "no evidence" (p. 278) or in the teeth of large amounts of contrary evidence. For example:
"It is a curious fact that nearly all the contentions of the early form critics have by now been convincingly refuted, but the general picture of the process of oral transmission that the form critics pioneered still governs the way most New Testament scholars think." (p. 242)
He comments on how the study of memory hasn't been given much attention by form critics or by New Testament scholars in general (pp. 310-311, 319-320). Bauckham addresses the issue of memory in depth, and his conclusions render many of the theories of modern scholars, particularly more liberal scholars, implausible. Human memory isn't as bad as the more critical theories of Christian origins require.
Bauckham also effectively draws out the implications of the larger context in which Christianity originated. It was commonplace to seek out eyewitness testimony, and the people of the ancient world were often critical of non-eyewitness testimony and miracle claims in particular. Bauckham cites a common expression, found in multiple sources, to the effect that eyes are better witnesses than ears. In other words, eyewitness sources should be sought out rather than relying on sources who only heard an account with their ears. Bauckham cites many extra-Biblical parallels to the circumstances and literary practices of early Christianity. We can often tell that the early Christians were interested in eyewitness testimony because they express that interest in the same manner in which non-Christian sources did.
The book is a little over 500 pages long, and it discusses many subjects and goes into a lot of detail. I'm planning to post some excerpts in the coming days, but I'll only be able to scratch the surface. It's a good book, and I recommend reading it.
I do have some disagreements with Bauckham. One of my biggest disagreements is over the authorship of the Johannine documents. He makes a good case for authorship of the fourth gospel by a disciple of Jesus named John, but he argues for a John other than the son of Zebedee. His view is similar to Martin Hengel's. D.A. Carson is supposed to respond to Bauckham's argument in a commentary on the Johannine epistles that is, as far as I know, not out yet (D.A. Carson and Douglas Moo, An Introduction To The New Testament [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2005], n. 23 on p. 235). I assume that, if Carson was still working on the commentary when Bauckham's book came out, he'll include a discussion of Bauckham's latest arguments on the subject. I'm sure that Carson's evaluation of Bauckham's case will be better than mine, but I want to mention some of my initial impressions on the issue after reading Bauckham's book. He discusses this authorship issue at length and in multiple parts of the book. I can't interact with every detail of his argument in an article like this, and I might forget or misunderstand some of the points he made. I'm going by my initial impressions after reading a book that's more than 500 pages long. I did take notes, but not of every detail.
I still believe that the fourth gospel was written by the son of Zebedee, and here are some of the problems I see with Bauckham's case:
- He doesn't produce any explicit evidence that a second disciple of Jesus named John even existed, much less that this second John authored the fourth gospel. All of the evidence he cites, without exception, is of a highly ambiguous nature. For example, while it's true that the Muratorian Canon calls John "disciple" while calling Andrew "apostle", the terminology is too fluid to give much weight to Bauckham's argument. Bauckham himself cites examples of both terms being used of the same class of people in other second century sources. While the disciple/apostle distinction does add some weight to Bauckham's case, he needs evidence much weightier in order to overcome the large amount of more explicit evidence supporting authorship by the son of Zebedee. Similarly, while Polycrates' reference to John as "wearing the high-priestly frontlet" might be derived from Acts 4:6, it seems highly unlikely that Polycrates would have seen the John in that passage as a close disciple of Jesus, and, once again, Bauckham himself mentions some reasonable alternatives that would reconcile Polycrates with authorship of the fourth gospel by the son of Zebedee. Again, Bauckham needs much weightier evidence if he's to overcome the large amount of explicit evidence supporting the traditional view.
- All of the evidence he cites against authorship by the son of Zebedee is highly ambiguous. He asks why the fourth gospel would keep referring to the author as "the beloved disciple", without naming him, then name him in passing in John 21:2. But John 21:2 doesn't name the beloved disciple. It names a group that includes him (the sons of Zebedee). I'm not aware of any explicit evidence against authorship by John the son of Zebedee, in Bauckham's book or anywhere else.
- The second John who Bauckham argues for is supposed to have been close to Jesus as His beloved disciple. Yet, none of the other three gospels, Acts, or the writings of Paul mention this second John. They all mention the son of Zebedee. Bauckham notes that the sons of Zebedee are "barely" in the fourth gospel at all (p. 403), which would be a significant contrast with the other gospels and other early sources. But if the beloved disciple is one of the sons of Zebedee, then the fourth gospel would be more consistent with other early sources with regard to the prominence of the sons of Zebedee. The traditional view that the beloved disciple is John the son of Zebedee makes better sense than Bauckham's theory in this context.
- Bauckham points out that Irenaeus sometimes refers to people other than the Twelve as "apostles", so that he might have somebody outside the Twelve in view when he refers to the author of the fourth gospel as an apostle. That's true. But given the fact that the son of Zebedee was more prominent than Bauckham's second John (assuming that second John's existence), shouldn't we assume that the son of Zebedee is more likely in view when a John is referred to as "apostle" without any attempt to add further qualifiers? If Bauckham's John was considered an apostle, it would have to be in some lesser sense than the sense in which the son of Zebedee was an apostle. An unqualified reference to a John who is an apostle is more likely to refer to a John who was an apostle in the highest sense.
- As far as I recall, Bauckham never addressed the fact that the beloved disciple in the fourth gospel is close to Peter (13:23-24, 20:2-3, 21:20), something we know to be true of the son of Zebedee in the other three gospels, Acts, and Galatians (Mark 5:37, 9:2, Acts 3:1-4:23, 8:14-25, Galatians 2:9, etc.). Apparently, we're supposed to believe that not only was there a second disciple of Jesus named John who became universally confused with another John, but we're also supposed to believe that this second John shared the characteristics of being a close disciple of Jesus and being close to Peter, two characteristics that we know to be true of the son of Zebedee. In other words, Bauckham's theory doesn't just suggest that these two Johns were similar in sharing the same name. It also suggests that they were similar in other unusual ways.
- Bauckham acknowledges that some second century sources identified the son of Zebedee as the author of the fourth gospel, and he comments that attribution to the son of Zebedee seems to be "universal" in the third century (p. 452). If sources of the late second century, such as the Muratorian Canon and Polycrates, were still attributing the fourth gospel to some other John, then how likely is it that attribution to the son of Zebedee would be universal in the third century? Some of those third century sources lived in the second century also. If a large variety of second century sources identify the author of the fourth gospel as a person named John, all of those references can reasonably be identified as the son of Zebedee, Bauckham acknowledges that some of them are references to the son of Zebedee, and attribution to the son of Zebedee seems to be universal in the third century, then why should we think that proposing a second John never explicitly mentioned anywhere makes better sense of the evidence?
- As far as I know, the earliest source to explicitly advocate the theory of a second John is Dionysius of Alexandria, around the middle of the third century. He doesn't seem to have known of any long-standing tradition of a second John, but instead was speculating on the basis of internal evidence and what he had heard about the existence of tombs for more than one John in the city of Ephesus (Eusebius, Church History, 7:25). Similarly, not long after Dionysius, Eusebius (Church History, 3:39:5-7) offers another speculative and unlikely argument for another John based on a passage in the writings of Papias and an appeal to Dionysius' argument for two tombs of John in Ephesus. Both men would have had reason for mentioning a long-standing tradition of the existence of multiple Johns, but they don't. If their highly speculative theories left explicit traces in the historical record, and other theories about authorship by somebody other than the son of Zebedee left explicit traces in the historical record (the claim by the Alogoi that Cerinthus wrote the Johannine documents), doesn't it seem likely that arguments surrounding the existence of Bauckham's second John would have left more explicit traces? Instead, he has to rely on highly questionable readings of sources like Papias, the Muratorian Canon, and Polycrates.
- Bauckham repeatedly states or suggests that early Christian sources would have had a strong desire to attribute the Johannine documents to the son of Zebedee rather than Bauckham's second John. But if that second John was not only a disciple of Jesus, but even Jesus' close "beloved disciple", then why would the early Christians have much of a problem with attributing documents to him? They attributed documents to Mark, Paul, Barnabas, and other men who weren't as close to Jesus as the beloved disciple was. What motive would have been so strong as to result in a universal replacement of Bauckham's second John with the son of Zebedee? Bauckham never proposes a motive that I would consider anywhere close to sufficient.
- The idea that Eusebius or other early Christians were trying to suppress what Papias wrote about a second John is highly unlikely. Papias' work was extant until the Middle Ages, and a large variety of people had access to it and commented on it. (See here.) Some of the people who commented on it either say that Papias attributes the fourth gospel to the son of Zebedee or write as if Papias' testimony is consistent with that conclusion. I don't remember Bauckham ever discussing this fact in his book. At the web site linked above, see the comments of George the Sinner and Balthasar Cordier. If Bauckham is correct about his second John and the son of Zebedee becoming merged into one person in the minds of later sources, then when a later source like Jerome refers to how Papias was a disciple of John the evangelist, shouldn't we conclude that Jerome had John the son of Zebedee in mind? But if Papias refers to some second John instead in his writings, writings that men like Jerome had access to, wouldn't they know that some other John was in view? If somebody like Eusebius was deliberately ignoring what Papias said about a second John, then what about all of the other sources who also had access to Papias' writings and who either state or suggest that the John in question is the son of Zebedee? Were all of these other sources suppressing the truth along with Eusebius? Did all of them misread Papias?
Again, I would expect D.A. Carson to offer a better response to Bauckham on this issue than I can. I hope that Craig Keener, Craig Blomberg, and other advocates of the traditional view will also interact with Bauckham on this point.
I think that Bauckham's theory is the second best option available, but authorship by John the son of Zebedee still best explains the evidence. Though I disagree with Bauckham on this point, I think highly of him as a scholar, and I recommend his book. I consider it one of the most significant books in Biblical scholarship in recent years.
The role of eyewitnesses in shaping the New Testament and early Christianity is stated explicitly in many early sources, and it would be reasonable to expect eyewitnesses to be highly influential even without any explicit discussion of the subject in the early documents. Bauckham adds stength to a case that was already strong by bringing attention to a lot of less explicit evidence that's often neglected. It seems likely that the neglect of such evidence, both the more explicit evidence and the less explicit evidence, is often due to the fact that some scholars don't like the implications that follow. Bauckham repeatedly refers to conclusions that some scholars reach with "no evidence" (p. 278) or in the teeth of large amounts of contrary evidence. For example:
"It is a curious fact that nearly all the contentions of the early form critics have by now been convincingly refuted, but the general picture of the process of oral transmission that the form critics pioneered still governs the way most New Testament scholars think." (p. 242)
He comments on how the study of memory hasn't been given much attention by form critics or by New Testament scholars in general (pp. 310-311, 319-320). Bauckham addresses the issue of memory in depth, and his conclusions render many of the theories of modern scholars, particularly more liberal scholars, implausible. Human memory isn't as bad as the more critical theories of Christian origins require.
Bauckham also effectively draws out the implications of the larger context in which Christianity originated. It was commonplace to seek out eyewitness testimony, and the people of the ancient world were often critical of non-eyewitness testimony and miracle claims in particular. Bauckham cites a common expression, found in multiple sources, to the effect that eyes are better witnesses than ears. In other words, eyewitness sources should be sought out rather than relying on sources who only heard an account with their ears. Bauckham cites many extra-Biblical parallels to the circumstances and literary practices of early Christianity. We can often tell that the early Christians were interested in eyewitness testimony because they express that interest in the same manner in which non-Christian sources did.
The book is a little over 500 pages long, and it discusses many subjects and goes into a lot of detail. I'm planning to post some excerpts in the coming days, but I'll only be able to scratch the surface. It's a good book, and I recommend reading it.
I do have some disagreements with Bauckham. One of my biggest disagreements is over the authorship of the Johannine documents. He makes a good case for authorship of the fourth gospel by a disciple of Jesus named John, but he argues for a John other than the son of Zebedee. His view is similar to Martin Hengel's. D.A. Carson is supposed to respond to Bauckham's argument in a commentary on the Johannine epistles that is, as far as I know, not out yet (D.A. Carson and Douglas Moo, An Introduction To The New Testament [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2005], n. 23 on p. 235). I assume that, if Carson was still working on the commentary when Bauckham's book came out, he'll include a discussion of Bauckham's latest arguments on the subject. I'm sure that Carson's evaluation of Bauckham's case will be better than mine, but I want to mention some of my initial impressions on the issue after reading Bauckham's book. He discusses this authorship issue at length and in multiple parts of the book. I can't interact with every detail of his argument in an article like this, and I might forget or misunderstand some of the points he made. I'm going by my initial impressions after reading a book that's more than 500 pages long. I did take notes, but not of every detail.
I still believe that the fourth gospel was written by the son of Zebedee, and here are some of the problems I see with Bauckham's case:
- He doesn't produce any explicit evidence that a second disciple of Jesus named John even existed, much less that this second John authored the fourth gospel. All of the evidence he cites, without exception, is of a highly ambiguous nature. For example, while it's true that the Muratorian Canon calls John "disciple" while calling Andrew "apostle", the terminology is too fluid to give much weight to Bauckham's argument. Bauckham himself cites examples of both terms being used of the same class of people in other second century sources. While the disciple/apostle distinction does add some weight to Bauckham's case, he needs evidence much weightier in order to overcome the large amount of more explicit evidence supporting authorship by the son of Zebedee. Similarly, while Polycrates' reference to John as "wearing the high-priestly frontlet" might be derived from Acts 4:6, it seems highly unlikely that Polycrates would have seen the John in that passage as a close disciple of Jesus, and, once again, Bauckham himself mentions some reasonable alternatives that would reconcile Polycrates with authorship of the fourth gospel by the son of Zebedee. Again, Bauckham needs much weightier evidence if he's to overcome the large amount of explicit evidence supporting the traditional view.
- All of the evidence he cites against authorship by the son of Zebedee is highly ambiguous. He asks why the fourth gospel would keep referring to the author as "the beloved disciple", without naming him, then name him in passing in John 21:2. But John 21:2 doesn't name the beloved disciple. It names a group that includes him (the sons of Zebedee). I'm not aware of any explicit evidence against authorship by John the son of Zebedee, in Bauckham's book or anywhere else.
- The second John who Bauckham argues for is supposed to have been close to Jesus as His beloved disciple. Yet, none of the other three gospels, Acts, or the writings of Paul mention this second John. They all mention the son of Zebedee. Bauckham notes that the sons of Zebedee are "barely" in the fourth gospel at all (p. 403), which would be a significant contrast with the other gospels and other early sources. But if the beloved disciple is one of the sons of Zebedee, then the fourth gospel would be more consistent with other early sources with regard to the prominence of the sons of Zebedee. The traditional view that the beloved disciple is John the son of Zebedee makes better sense than Bauckham's theory in this context.
- Bauckham points out that Irenaeus sometimes refers to people other than the Twelve as "apostles", so that he might have somebody outside the Twelve in view when he refers to the author of the fourth gospel as an apostle. That's true. But given the fact that the son of Zebedee was more prominent than Bauckham's second John (assuming that second John's existence), shouldn't we assume that the son of Zebedee is more likely in view when a John is referred to as "apostle" without any attempt to add further qualifiers? If Bauckham's John was considered an apostle, it would have to be in some lesser sense than the sense in which the son of Zebedee was an apostle. An unqualified reference to a John who is an apostle is more likely to refer to a John who was an apostle in the highest sense.
- As far as I recall, Bauckham never addressed the fact that the beloved disciple in the fourth gospel is close to Peter (13:23-24, 20:2-3, 21:20), something we know to be true of the son of Zebedee in the other three gospels, Acts, and Galatians (Mark 5:37, 9:2, Acts 3:1-4:23, 8:14-25, Galatians 2:9, etc.). Apparently, we're supposed to believe that not only was there a second disciple of Jesus named John who became universally confused with another John, but we're also supposed to believe that this second John shared the characteristics of being a close disciple of Jesus and being close to Peter, two characteristics that we know to be true of the son of Zebedee. In other words, Bauckham's theory doesn't just suggest that these two Johns were similar in sharing the same name. It also suggests that they were similar in other unusual ways.
- Bauckham acknowledges that some second century sources identified the son of Zebedee as the author of the fourth gospel, and he comments that attribution to the son of Zebedee seems to be "universal" in the third century (p. 452). If sources of the late second century, such as the Muratorian Canon and Polycrates, were still attributing the fourth gospel to some other John, then how likely is it that attribution to the son of Zebedee would be universal in the third century? Some of those third century sources lived in the second century also. If a large variety of second century sources identify the author of the fourth gospel as a person named John, all of those references can reasonably be identified as the son of Zebedee, Bauckham acknowledges that some of them are references to the son of Zebedee, and attribution to the son of Zebedee seems to be universal in the third century, then why should we think that proposing a second John never explicitly mentioned anywhere makes better sense of the evidence?
- As far as I know, the earliest source to explicitly advocate the theory of a second John is Dionysius of Alexandria, around the middle of the third century. He doesn't seem to have known of any long-standing tradition of a second John, but instead was speculating on the basis of internal evidence and what he had heard about the existence of tombs for more than one John in the city of Ephesus (Eusebius, Church History, 7:25). Similarly, not long after Dionysius, Eusebius (Church History, 3:39:5-7) offers another speculative and unlikely argument for another John based on a passage in the writings of Papias and an appeal to Dionysius' argument for two tombs of John in Ephesus. Both men would have had reason for mentioning a long-standing tradition of the existence of multiple Johns, but they don't. If their highly speculative theories left explicit traces in the historical record, and other theories about authorship by somebody other than the son of Zebedee left explicit traces in the historical record (the claim by the Alogoi that Cerinthus wrote the Johannine documents), doesn't it seem likely that arguments surrounding the existence of Bauckham's second John would have left more explicit traces? Instead, he has to rely on highly questionable readings of sources like Papias, the Muratorian Canon, and Polycrates.
- Bauckham repeatedly states or suggests that early Christian sources would have had a strong desire to attribute the Johannine documents to the son of Zebedee rather than Bauckham's second John. But if that second John was not only a disciple of Jesus, but even Jesus' close "beloved disciple", then why would the early Christians have much of a problem with attributing documents to him? They attributed documents to Mark, Paul, Barnabas, and other men who weren't as close to Jesus as the beloved disciple was. What motive would have been so strong as to result in a universal replacement of Bauckham's second John with the son of Zebedee? Bauckham never proposes a motive that I would consider anywhere close to sufficient.
- The idea that Eusebius or other early Christians were trying to suppress what Papias wrote about a second John is highly unlikely. Papias' work was extant until the Middle Ages, and a large variety of people had access to it and commented on it. (See here.) Some of the people who commented on it either say that Papias attributes the fourth gospel to the son of Zebedee or write as if Papias' testimony is consistent with that conclusion. I don't remember Bauckham ever discussing this fact in his book. At the web site linked above, see the comments of George the Sinner and Balthasar Cordier. If Bauckham is correct about his second John and the son of Zebedee becoming merged into one person in the minds of later sources, then when a later source like Jerome refers to how Papias was a disciple of John the evangelist, shouldn't we conclude that Jerome had John the son of Zebedee in mind? But if Papias refers to some second John instead in his writings, writings that men like Jerome had access to, wouldn't they know that some other John was in view? If somebody like Eusebius was deliberately ignoring what Papias said about a second John, then what about all of the other sources who also had access to Papias' writings and who either state or suggest that the John in question is the son of Zebedee? Were all of these other sources suppressing the truth along with Eusebius? Did all of them misread Papias?
Again, I would expect D.A. Carson to offer a better response to Bauckham on this issue than I can. I hope that Craig Keener, Craig Blomberg, and other advocates of the traditional view will also interact with Bauckham on this point.
I think that Bauckham's theory is the second best option available, but authorship by John the son of Zebedee still best explains the evidence. Though I disagree with Bauckham on this point, I think highly of him as a scholar, and I recommend his book. I consider it one of the most significant books in Biblical scholarship in recent years.
Sunday, February 04, 2007
Nouthetic counseling
Last Sunday a guest speaker at church did a little promo for an upcoming seminar on nouthetic counseling. Since this movement has a following in some Reformed circles, I’ll take the occasion to briefly evaluate nouthetic counseling.
I. Preliminaries
Nouthetic counseling was founded by Jay Adams. Adams is even better known as a world-class skateboarder.
On second thought, that’s a different Jay Adams. Sorry ‘bout that!
Moving along—as soon as you slap a “Reformed” adjective ontp something or another, a number of people in the Reformed community let down their guard. “Well, if it’s ‘Reformed,’ then it must be good!”
But we need to observe a few cautions:
1.The fact that a Calvinist may believe in something doesn’t automatically make his belief a Reformed distinctive or Reformed essential. Let’s not confuse an adventitious association with a logical implication.
For example, Harold Camping made a name for himself as a Calvinist. But this doesn’t, by any stretch of the imagination, mean that some of his eccentric beliefs are the least bit Calvinistic.
2.Even if something is Reformed, there can sometimes be more than one Reformed viewpoint.
3.And even if something is Reformed, it still needs to acquit itself before the bar of Scripture.
I don’t say any of this in criticism of nouthetic counseling. But just as a reminder that not everything which flies under the banner of Calvinism should go unexamined.
II. The Upside
1.There’s no doubt that modern psychology is chock-full of quackery and irreligious ideology. Indeed, the two often go together. Irreligious ideology promotes quackery, while quacks promote irreligious ideology.
Nouthetic counseling has rightly summed us to be alert to the humanism and charlatanism embedded in so much modern psychology.
2.Apropos (1), it’s often impossible to give sound advice without a sound view of human nature or morality. This Bible is the first place we should turn for such guidance.
Once again, nouthetic counseling has rightly redirected the conversation.
3.Adams has accentuated the importance of behavior modification. Not merely the attempt to break off bad habits, but forming good habits to take the place of bad habits. Up to a point, this is useful advice.
4.Although Adams is best known for nouthetic counseling, he has also written a number of very useful books on preaching. Indeed, I regard his writing in the field of homiletics as preferable to his psychological stuff.
5.Adams has the voice, vernacular, and stage-presence of a natural-born preacher. Some of his taped sermons are good models of manly preaching.
III. The Downside
Adams is a reactionary. As such, he’s distinguished by the strengths and weaknesses of a reactionary.
1.Certainly we should look to the Bible as our primary source of guidance. When, however, we look to the Bible, we also find that the Bible points us to the real world as another source of knowledge.
To the extent that modern psychology can never entirely escape natural revelation or common grace, there is much to be gleaned from a discriminating study of modern psychology.
We can learn from experience. We can learn from case studies. We can learn from abnormal psychology, child psychology, clinical psychology, criminal psychology, empirical psychology, parapsychology, neuropsychology, neuropharmacology, psycholinguistics, psychoendrocrinology, &c.
There’s an anti-scientific bias to nouthetic counseling, but Calvinism has a doctrine of ordinary providence.
2.Apropos (1), we can also learn a thing or two from Christian practioners outside the Reformed stable, such as Paul C. Vitz, Gary Collins, Paul Meier, Norman Wright, and James Dobson.
3.Nouthetic counseling has a problem with mental illness. Ironically, Adams is also influenced by academic fads and secular authors. As Martyn Lloyd-Jones, a fellow Calvinist, has pointed out:
***QUOTE***
The third category [of illness] to which your patient, or enquirer, may belong is the psychological. I use that general term, but if you prefer it, it could be “mental illness.” This is at the present time an important consideration because we are now in the midst of one of the latest crazes, or fashions, in the Christian, and even evangelical, world. The concept of “mental illness” has come under attack at the present time, mainly as the result of the writings of Thomas Szasz…Unfortunately, too, he now has a number of followers who are writing up his views in popular books. One of the best known is Jay Adams with his widely selling Competent to Counsel. But he is just a popularizer of Thomas Szasz and he is simply affirming, with Szasz, that there is no such entity as mental illness, that patients are really suffering from sin and need to be dealt with purely in a scriptural manner,” Healing & the Scriptures (T. Nelson 1988), 153,155.
***END-QUOTE***
4.Apropos (3), the proudly amateurish quality of nouthetic counseling would potentially endanger a counselee who suffers from mental illness.
For example, nouthetic counseling doesn’t have much use for psychotropic drugs. Indeed, a nouthetic counselor, unlike a psychiatrist, lacks the medical training or certification to administer psychotropic drugs.
Now there’s no doubt that we live in an overmedicated culture. But this doesn’t mean that mental illness is an illusion, or that mental illness can never be treated by psychotropic drugs.
5.Because nouthetic counseling is theologically oriented, it is only as good as the theology feeding into it.
For example, on matters of divorce and remarriage, it is only as good as its exegesis of the pertinent passages of Scripture. And, in that respect, there’s no particular reason why we should first turn to Jay Adams or some disciple of his for the exegesis of Gen 2 or Mt 19 or 1 Cor 7. Begin with the leading commentators.
In my opinion, Adams is not a terribly discerning or reliable exegete.
6.Likewise, Adams is a cessationist. And since nouthetic counseling is theologically-oriented, this has a direct impact on a certain type of counselee.
Adams doesn’t believe in demonic possession during the church age, or other forms of occultic bondage.
But if he’s wrong on that, then nouthetic counseling will be ineffectual at best, and harmful at worst, in dealing with a counselee who is suffering from some form of demonic oppression.
7.Adams has a rather mechanical, push-bottom approach to sanctification, as if by running down a checklist you can outgrow a besetting sin or compulsive behavior.
But our sins and character-traits are often far more entrenched than that lawnmower will successfully uproot.
8.Apropos (7), nouthetic counseling fosters a cookie-cutter attitude towards the counselee. You don’t really listen to them. Or you only listen long enough to locate them in a preexisting slot, then quote Scripture to them.
In my opinion, a number of the Puritans, like William Ames, Richard Sibbes, and Richard Baxter were far better at dealing with cases of conscience than the fairly formulaic and confrontational methods of nouthetic counseling, viz.
The Bruised Reed (Puritan Paperbacks) (Banner of Truth Trust)
by Richard Sibbes
ISBN#: 851517404
Works of Richard Sibbes. Volume 1 (Banner of Truth 1973)
Conscience: With the Power and Cases Thereof (Still Waters Revival Books, reprint)
by William Ames
Christian Directory (Soli Deo Gloria Ministries; New Ed edition 1997)
by Richard Baxter, J. I. Packer
9.And don’t forget to read commentators like Waltke and Longman on the Book of Proverbs.
10.Finally, Christian bloggers like Jeremy Pierce, Adrian Warnocke, and JollyBlogger have evaluated nouthetic counseling in the past. Check it out.
I. Preliminaries
Nouthetic counseling was founded by Jay Adams. Adams is even better known as a world-class skateboarder.
On second thought, that’s a different Jay Adams. Sorry ‘bout that!
Moving along—as soon as you slap a “Reformed” adjective ontp something or another, a number of people in the Reformed community let down their guard. “Well, if it’s ‘Reformed,’ then it must be good!”
But we need to observe a few cautions:
1.The fact that a Calvinist may believe in something doesn’t automatically make his belief a Reformed distinctive or Reformed essential. Let’s not confuse an adventitious association with a logical implication.
For example, Harold Camping made a name for himself as a Calvinist. But this doesn’t, by any stretch of the imagination, mean that some of his eccentric beliefs are the least bit Calvinistic.
2.Even if something is Reformed, there can sometimes be more than one Reformed viewpoint.
3.And even if something is Reformed, it still needs to acquit itself before the bar of Scripture.
I don’t say any of this in criticism of nouthetic counseling. But just as a reminder that not everything which flies under the banner of Calvinism should go unexamined.
II. The Upside
1.There’s no doubt that modern psychology is chock-full of quackery and irreligious ideology. Indeed, the two often go together. Irreligious ideology promotes quackery, while quacks promote irreligious ideology.
Nouthetic counseling has rightly summed us to be alert to the humanism and charlatanism embedded in so much modern psychology.
2.Apropos (1), it’s often impossible to give sound advice without a sound view of human nature or morality. This Bible is the first place we should turn for such guidance.
Once again, nouthetic counseling has rightly redirected the conversation.
3.Adams has accentuated the importance of behavior modification. Not merely the attempt to break off bad habits, but forming good habits to take the place of bad habits. Up to a point, this is useful advice.
4.Although Adams is best known for nouthetic counseling, he has also written a number of very useful books on preaching. Indeed, I regard his writing in the field of homiletics as preferable to his psychological stuff.
5.Adams has the voice, vernacular, and stage-presence of a natural-born preacher. Some of his taped sermons are good models of manly preaching.
III. The Downside
Adams is a reactionary. As such, he’s distinguished by the strengths and weaknesses of a reactionary.
1.Certainly we should look to the Bible as our primary source of guidance. When, however, we look to the Bible, we also find that the Bible points us to the real world as another source of knowledge.
To the extent that modern psychology can never entirely escape natural revelation or common grace, there is much to be gleaned from a discriminating study of modern psychology.
We can learn from experience. We can learn from case studies. We can learn from abnormal psychology, child psychology, clinical psychology, criminal psychology, empirical psychology, parapsychology, neuropsychology, neuropharmacology, psycholinguistics, psychoendrocrinology, &c.
There’s an anti-scientific bias to nouthetic counseling, but Calvinism has a doctrine of ordinary providence.
2.Apropos (1), we can also learn a thing or two from Christian practioners outside the Reformed stable, such as Paul C. Vitz, Gary Collins, Paul Meier, Norman Wright, and James Dobson.
3.Nouthetic counseling has a problem with mental illness. Ironically, Adams is also influenced by academic fads and secular authors. As Martyn Lloyd-Jones, a fellow Calvinist, has pointed out:
***QUOTE***
The third category [of illness] to which your patient, or enquirer, may belong is the psychological. I use that general term, but if you prefer it, it could be “mental illness.” This is at the present time an important consideration because we are now in the midst of one of the latest crazes, or fashions, in the Christian, and even evangelical, world. The concept of “mental illness” has come under attack at the present time, mainly as the result of the writings of Thomas Szasz…Unfortunately, too, he now has a number of followers who are writing up his views in popular books. One of the best known is Jay Adams with his widely selling Competent to Counsel. But he is just a popularizer of Thomas Szasz and he is simply affirming, with Szasz, that there is no such entity as mental illness, that patients are really suffering from sin and need to be dealt with purely in a scriptural manner,” Healing & the Scriptures (T. Nelson 1988), 153,155.
***END-QUOTE***
4.Apropos (3), the proudly amateurish quality of nouthetic counseling would potentially endanger a counselee who suffers from mental illness.
For example, nouthetic counseling doesn’t have much use for psychotropic drugs. Indeed, a nouthetic counselor, unlike a psychiatrist, lacks the medical training or certification to administer psychotropic drugs.
Now there’s no doubt that we live in an overmedicated culture. But this doesn’t mean that mental illness is an illusion, or that mental illness can never be treated by psychotropic drugs.
5.Because nouthetic counseling is theologically oriented, it is only as good as the theology feeding into it.
For example, on matters of divorce and remarriage, it is only as good as its exegesis of the pertinent passages of Scripture. And, in that respect, there’s no particular reason why we should first turn to Jay Adams or some disciple of his for the exegesis of Gen 2 or Mt 19 or 1 Cor 7. Begin with the leading commentators.
In my opinion, Adams is not a terribly discerning or reliable exegete.
6.Likewise, Adams is a cessationist. And since nouthetic counseling is theologically-oriented, this has a direct impact on a certain type of counselee.
Adams doesn’t believe in demonic possession during the church age, or other forms of occultic bondage.
But if he’s wrong on that, then nouthetic counseling will be ineffectual at best, and harmful at worst, in dealing with a counselee who is suffering from some form of demonic oppression.
7.Adams has a rather mechanical, push-bottom approach to sanctification, as if by running down a checklist you can outgrow a besetting sin or compulsive behavior.
But our sins and character-traits are often far more entrenched than that lawnmower will successfully uproot.
8.Apropos (7), nouthetic counseling fosters a cookie-cutter attitude towards the counselee. You don’t really listen to them. Or you only listen long enough to locate them in a preexisting slot, then quote Scripture to them.
In my opinion, a number of the Puritans, like William Ames, Richard Sibbes, and Richard Baxter were far better at dealing with cases of conscience than the fairly formulaic and confrontational methods of nouthetic counseling, viz.
The Bruised Reed (Puritan Paperbacks) (Banner of Truth Trust)
by Richard Sibbes
ISBN#: 851517404
Works of Richard Sibbes. Volume 1 (Banner of Truth 1973)
Conscience: With the Power and Cases Thereof (Still Waters Revival Books, reprint)
by William Ames
Christian Directory (Soli Deo Gloria Ministries; New Ed edition 1997)
by Richard Baxter, J. I. Packer
9.And don’t forget to read commentators like Waltke and Longman on the Book of Proverbs.
10.Finally, Christian bloggers like Jeremy Pierce, Adrian Warnocke, and JollyBlogger have evaluated nouthetic counseling in the past. Check it out.
Blanshard on The Problem of Evil
"The treatment of evil by theology seems to me an intellectual disgrace. The question at issue is a straightforward one: how are the actual amount and distribution of evil to be reconciled with the government of the world by a God which is in our sense good?" -Blanshard, Reason and Belief, 546
Well that's the problem, isn't it? Talk about stacking the deck in your favor. I can just as easily say:
"The treatment of evil by atheology seems to me an intellectual disgrace. The question at issue is a straightforward one: how are the actual amount and distribution of evil to be considered problematic with the government of the world by a God which is in God's sense good?"
Furthermore, why is "our sense of good," considered good? Is it "good" to allow mothers their own "choice" in the matter of the unborn they carry? To not tie them down with the hassle of children (mistakes) if they don't want to be? To complain about a God who (allegedly) commits mass murder, while we do the same, seems a bit prejudicial. Seems a bit hypocritical. And, just who is the "we" Blanshard is referring to? Cannibals? Christians? Islamic terrorists? Secular humanists?
At any rate, as you can see with Blanshard, the problem of evil for most atheologians stems from what they take to be good or evil. But I don't think it's an understatement to claim that most people would agree with the tautology that if the secular humanist assumes that man is the highest standard, and then gets to define evil as whatever is offensive to man, or lowers him from his exalted platform, and good as whatever lifts man up, places him on the pedestal he deserves, then the argument from evil which runs thus: The amount of evil in this world is hard to reconcile with a God who is supposed be good in the above sense of good, seems to follow most naturally (at least if you're a moral realist).
But without that assumption, without the importing of secular humanism on to the Christian God, the argument doesn't even get off the ground. The great Blanshard's argument was foiled before it began. It may cause secular humanists to pat each other on the back while they mock the Christian God at their candlelight dinners, but the theist doesn't even bat an eyelash at this. It doesn't register on our radar. People say that the problem of evil is a problem for the theist too. But what is the problem of evil? If it's really no more than what Balnshard suggests - that God isn't good in the sinners sense of good - then, rather than having a problem, I wholeheartedly concur. But this is about as problematic as saying that my 7 year old can't hit hard in the Mirco Cro Cop sense of "hit hard."
You want some advice from a Christian theist? You want to have us take seriously your problem of evil argument? Well, I suggest an argument which shows that if the Christian worldview were true, what God allows and ordains is atrocious. That is, give a de jure objection that is not independent of the de facto question. Sure, we may have a psychological problem with evil, we may fail to act consistent with our worldview by not trusting God that he "works all things together for good after the council of His will," but as for an objection aimed at the rationality of belief in God, or against God's existence, though we may try to help you see the error of your argument, it really doesn't cause us to bat an eyelash.
Arguments for evolution
The arguments for evolution seem to take two or three stereotypical forms:
1. The Default Argument (a la Dawkins):
i) The spontaneous origin/evolution of life is wildly improbable.
ii) However, the existence of God is even more improbable since God would have to be more complex than anything he designed.
iii) Hence, naturalistic evolution still comes out on top by process of elimination.
iv) Given (i)-(iii), even if we had no physical evidence for evolution, the theory of evolution would still be warranted. Indeed, there is no justifiable alternative.
v) Given (iv), we don’t need any physical evidence for a stepwise, evolutionary pathway. It is sufficient to postulate a hypothetical pathway.
vi) Given (iv), we don’t even need to spell out a stepwise, working model. It is sufficient to postulate that B co-opted A on the way to C.
vii) Given (iv), we can substitute computer simulations for physical evidence.
2. The Metascientific Argument (a la Lewontin)
i) By definition, the scientific method is predicated on the uniformity of nature.
ii) Creationism, whether in the form of special creation or theistic evolution, would violate the uniformity of nature, and thereby undermine the scientific method.
iii) Given (i)-(ii), the only scientific explanation for the origin and/or development of life will be a naturalistic explanation.
iv) Hence, the scientific presumption will invariably favor naturalistic evolution, even if we had no physical evidence or feasible theories for naturalistic evolution.
3. The Cumulative Argument (a la Ernest Mayr)
i) The best evidence for evolution is the fossil record.
ii) Unfortunately, the fossil evidence for evolution is underdetermined by the fossil record because the fossil record is incomplete.
iii) However, we can supplement the fossil record with other, admittedly inferior, lines of evidence (e.g. morphology, microbiology, biogeography).
1. The Default Argument (a la Dawkins):
i) The spontaneous origin/evolution of life is wildly improbable.
ii) However, the existence of God is even more improbable since God would have to be more complex than anything he designed.
iii) Hence, naturalistic evolution still comes out on top by process of elimination.
iv) Given (i)-(iii), even if we had no physical evidence for evolution, the theory of evolution would still be warranted. Indeed, there is no justifiable alternative.
v) Given (iv), we don’t need any physical evidence for a stepwise, evolutionary pathway. It is sufficient to postulate a hypothetical pathway.
vi) Given (iv), we don’t even need to spell out a stepwise, working model. It is sufficient to postulate that B co-opted A on the way to C.
vii) Given (iv), we can substitute computer simulations for physical evidence.
2. The Metascientific Argument (a la Lewontin)
i) By definition, the scientific method is predicated on the uniformity of nature.
ii) Creationism, whether in the form of special creation or theistic evolution, would violate the uniformity of nature, and thereby undermine the scientific method.
iii) Given (i)-(ii), the only scientific explanation for the origin and/or development of life will be a naturalistic explanation.
iv) Hence, the scientific presumption will invariably favor naturalistic evolution, even if we had no physical evidence or feasible theories for naturalistic evolution.
3. The Cumulative Argument (a la Ernest Mayr)
i) The best evidence for evolution is the fossil record.
ii) Unfortunately, the fossil evidence for evolution is underdetermined by the fossil record because the fossil record is incomplete.
iii) However, we can supplement the fossil record with other, admittedly inferior, lines of evidence (e.g. morphology, microbiology, biogeography).
Saturday, February 03, 2007
Revelation 12
Though it's popular among modern Roman Catholics to view the woman of Revelation 12 as Mary, the interpretation is exegetically problematic and wasn't so popular among the earliest Christians:
"Even Oecumenius, the first true proponent of the full-orbed Marian interpretation, is not considered a canonized father of the church....The number of patristic writers in the first six centuries who subscribe to the people of God view of Revelation 12 (at least sixteen known to us, counting Quodvultdeus, nine of whom are canonized saints) far exceeds the number of those who see Mary as the primary or secondary referent (only two, none of whom are canonized fathers of the Roman church)....It is not until the fifth century (in Quodvultdeus) and the sixth century (in Oecumenius) that we find positive evidence for seeing, respectively, Mary as a secondary referent unintended by the author of the Revelation and Mary as the primary referent in the interpretation of this text. In any case, the Marian interpretation was never the majority opinion in the early church. The majority viewed the 'woman' as the people of God, both the ancient church and the New Covenant church." (Eric Svendsen, Who Is My Mother? [Amityville, New York: Calvary Press, 2001], pp. 231-232)
See, for example, Hippolytus (Treatise On Christ And Antichrist, 61), Methodius (The Banquet Of The Ten Virgins, Discourse 8:5-7), and Victorinus (Commentary On The Apocalypse Of The Blessed John, 12:1-2). These fathers often make the same observations about the passage that are made by modern critics of the Marian interpretation. They sometimes argue against elements of the Marian view, and they don't advocate the Marian view anywhere else, so it seems unlikely that they were merely proposing other interpretations in addition to the Marian interpretation. Rather, it seems that the earliest interpreters didn't see Mary in Revelation 12. They identified the woman as some other entity and repeatedly contradicted the Marian interpretations that are popular today.
"Even Oecumenius, the first true proponent of the full-orbed Marian interpretation, is not considered a canonized father of the church....The number of patristic writers in the first six centuries who subscribe to the people of God view of Revelation 12 (at least sixteen known to us, counting Quodvultdeus, nine of whom are canonized saints) far exceeds the number of those who see Mary as the primary or secondary referent (only two, none of whom are canonized fathers of the Roman church)....It is not until the fifth century (in Quodvultdeus) and the sixth century (in Oecumenius) that we find positive evidence for seeing, respectively, Mary as a secondary referent unintended by the author of the Revelation and Mary as the primary referent in the interpretation of this text. In any case, the Marian interpretation was never the majority opinion in the early church. The majority viewed the 'woman' as the people of God, both the ancient church and the New Covenant church." (Eric Svendsen, Who Is My Mother? [Amityville, New York: Calvary Press, 2001], pp. 231-232)
See, for example, Hippolytus (Treatise On Christ And Antichrist, 61), Methodius (The Banquet Of The Ten Virgins, Discourse 8:5-7), and Victorinus (Commentary On The Apocalypse Of The Blessed John, 12:1-2). These fathers often make the same observations about the passage that are made by modern critics of the Marian interpretation. They sometimes argue against elements of the Marian view, and they don't advocate the Marian view anywhere else, so it seems unlikely that they were merely proposing other interpretations in addition to the Marian interpretation. Rather, it seems that the earliest interpreters didn't see Mary in Revelation 12. They identified the woman as some other entity and repeatedly contradicted the Marian interpretations that are popular today.
The Anti-Lewis
Here are two reviews of Philip Pullman by Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens' expose is all the more revealing, if not ironic, when you consider that Hitchens is every bit as much the militant atheist as Pullman.
Pullman's first novel is coming to the silver screen later this year. So be on your guard.
This is the Most Dangerous Author in Britain
A Labour of Loathing
UPDATE: The Above reviews are by Peter Hitchens, not Christopher Hitchens. See comment below. Sorry 'bout that.
Pullman's first novel is coming to the silver screen later this year. So be on your guard.
This is the Most Dangerous Author in Britain
A Labour of Loathing
UPDATE: The Above reviews are by Peter Hitchens, not Christopher Hitchens. See comment below. Sorry 'bout that.
Pious fraud
Since I recently crossed swords with Michael Pahls over Jn 6, I might as well take the occasion to comment on some of the other things he’s posted over at the pseudo-Reformed/deutero-Catholic website (which I found beginning here):
http://www.reformedcatholicism.com/?author=12
***QUOTE***
It is impossible to reclaim those who have lapsed in Hebrews 6 and 10, because they have explicitly renounced their salvation as sacramentally mediated. They have turned their back on baptism (enlightenment), the Holy Supper (heavenly gift), the proclaimed word, and the variegated Spirit-wrought charisms of the community. In turning their back on the people of God they have turned their back on God in Christ and vice versa. They have “spurned the Son of God,” “profaned the blood of the covenant” and “outraged the Spirit of grace.” This is why “not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together” is part and parcel of the exhortations to perseverance in Hebrews.
***END-QUOTE***
This is exhibit A of acontextual exegesis. Michael makes no effort to show that “enlightenment” (6:4) and “the heavenly gift” have reference to baptism and communion respectively.
It is true that “enlightened” came to be a synonym for baptism in patristic usage. Read Hughes’ commentary.
But it would be anachronistic to read that back into Hebrews without further argument. Pahls has done nothing to exegete that significance from the actual usage of the author of Hebrews, or his general theology, or his literary allusions.
By contrast (according to Hughes), the identification of “the heavenly gift” with communion doesn’t even have the benefit of patristic attestation.
For an interpretation which is more sensitive to the author’s own usage, read Ellingworth.
A more contextual explanation of the passage would be as follows:
The author is addressing a congregation of Messianic Jews, probably in Rome. Christianity is coming under persecution from the Roman authorities.
Since Judaism was a licit religion under Roman law, and since Judaism had also been a saving faith, the members of this congregation are tempted to revert to Judaism. For the historical reconstruction, read Lane.
They cannot be reclaimed if (or as long as) they turn their backs on the New Covenant and look to an obsolete covenant (the Old Covenant) as the object of saving faith.
As yet, they haven’t made that fateful choice.
Pahls’ sacramental interpretation is also problematic on its own grounds, for his view of postbaptismal apostasy would commit him to the rigorist position of the “schismatic” Donatists and Novatianists.
Continuing:
***QUOTE***
I must begin by telling you that I do not like to preach on Reformation Sunday. Actually I have to put it more strongly than that. I do not like Reformation Sunday, period. I do no understand why it is part of the church year. Reformation Sunday does not name a happy event for the Church Catholic; on the contrary, it names failure. Of course, the church rightly names failure, or at least horror, as part of our church year. We do, after all, go through crucifixion as part of Holy Week. Certainly if the Reformation is to be narrated rightly, it is to be narrated as part of those dark days.
Reformation names the disunity in which we currently stand. We who remain in the Protestant tradition want to say that Reformation was a success. But when we make Reformation a success, it only ends up killing us. After all, the very name ‘Protestantism’ is meant to denote a reform movement of protest within the Church Catholic. When Protestantism becomes an end in itself, which it certainly has through the mainstream denominations in America, it becomes anathema. If we no longer have broken hearts at the church’s division, then we cannot help but unfaithfully celebrate Reformation Sunday.
***END-QUOTE***
Several issues:
1.Since Reformation Sunday is only a man-made tradition, it wouldn’t say that we are under any obligation to mark it on our calendars. This is a point of liberty.
But as long as the observance is voluntary rather than mandatory, I have no more problem with Reformation Sunday that other holidays like Christmas or Advent.
2. We can celebrate Reformation Sunday in the same spirit that the Jews celebrated the Passover.
Just as the Exodus marked a liberation from Egyptian bondage, we can thank God that the Reformation liberated Christians from bondage to a decadent religious system.
3.It’s rather simple-minded to define the *concept* of Protestantism from a dictionary definition of the *word* “Protestant”.
The nature of Protestant identity isn’t derivable from a popular label. Why does Michael indulge in semantic fallacies to prove his point?
4.Who says that Protestantism is an end in itself?
Continuing:
***QUOTE***
Unfortunately, the Catholics are right. Christian salvation consists in works. To be saved is to be made holy. To be saved requires our being made part of a people separated from the world so that we can be united in spite of–or perhaps better, because of–the world’s fragmentation and divisions. Unity, after all, is what God has given us through Christ’s death and resurrection. For in that death and resurrection we have been made part of God’s salvation for the world so that the world may know it has been freed from the powers that would compel us to kill one another in the name of false loyalties. All that is about the works necessary to save us.
***END-QUOTE***
This is a caricature of Evangelical theology. It deliberately rides roughshod over fundamental distinctions regarding the source and role of good works in salvation.
Continuing:
***QUOTE***
For example, I often point out that at least Catholics have the magisterial office of the Bishop of Rome to remind them that disunity is a sin. You should not overlook the significance that in several important documents of late, John Paul II has confessed the Catholic sin for the Reformation. Where are the Protestants capable of doing likewise? We Protestants feel no sin for the disunity of the Reformation. We would not know how to confess our sin for the continuing disunity of the Reformation. We would not know how to do that because we have no experience of unity.
***END-QUOTE***
A couple of points:
1.Is the magisterial office of the papacy a good thing? Where is his supporting argument?
Why is Michael drawing invidious comparisons without bothering to establish the standard of comparison in the first place? Is that too much to ask?
2.He’s very free with the word “sin.” By what authority does he accuse Evangelicals of sin for the “sin of disunity” or the “sin of the Reformation.”?
The question at issue is not whether Evangelicals can be divisive to a fault. This is not a question of individual sins.
No, the question is whether the very idea of the Reformation is inherently sinful.
What he needs to do is to first exegete what he takes to be the relevant passages of Scripture, and then show that the Reformation in toto is analogous to what Scripture classifies as sin.
Thus far, all we get from Michael are personal assertions dressed up as oracular anathemas for whatever he happens to disapprove of.
Continuing:
***QUOTE***
The magisterial office–we Protestants often forget–is not a matter of constraining or limiting diversity in the name of unity. The office of the Bishop of Rome is to ensure that when Christians move from Durham, North Carolina to Syracuse, New York, they have some confidence when they go to church that they will be worshipping the same God. Because Catholics have an office of unity, they do not need to restrain the gifts of the Spirit. As I oftentimes point out, it is extraordinary that Catholicism is able to keep the Irish and the Italians in the same church. What an achievement! Perhaps equally amazing is their ability to keep within the same church Jesuits, Dominicans, and Franciscans.
***END-QUOTE***
Other issues aside, they could only be sure of this if, on the basis of Herculean historical research, they could be sure of unbroken apostolic succession contingent on the valid administration of holy orders for each and every link in the chain.
How does Michael propose that we achieve this level of certainty? Michael keeps giving us his conclusions without the elementary spadework to support his conclusions.
***QUOTE***
I think Catholics are able to do that because they know that their unity does not depend opon everyone agreeing. Indeed, they can celebrate their disagreements because they understand that our unity is founded upon the cross and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth that makes the Eucharist possible. They do not presume, therefore, that unity requires that we all read Scripture the same way.
This creates a quite different attitude among Catholics about their relation to Christian tradition and the wider world. Protestants look over to Christian tradition and say, ‘How much of this do we have to believe in order to remain identifiably Christian?’ That’s the reason why Protestants are always tempted to rationalism: we think that Christianity is to be identified with sets of beliefs more than with the unity of the Spirit occasioned through sacrament.
Moreover, once Christianity becomes reduced to a matter of belief, as it clearly has for Protestants, we cannot resist questions of whether those beliefs are as true or useful as other beliefs we also entertain. Once such questions are raised, it does not matter what the answer turns out in a given case. As James Edwards observes, “Once religious beliefs start to compete with other beliefs, then religious believers are - and will know themselves to be –mongerers of values. They too are denizens of the mall, selling and shopping and buying along with the rest of us.”
***END-QUOTE***
1.This is a fascinating admission. Having castigated the Protestant cause for the sin of disunity, he then proceeds to redefine Christian unity by eliminating a common faith.
Does he really think that a common faith is irrelevant to religious identity in either the OT covenant community or the NT covenant community?
2.At the same time, he is making his own faith-claims about church and sacrament.
***QUOTE***
In contrast, Catholics do not begin with the question of “How much do we need to believe?” but with the attitude “Look at all the wonderful stuff we get to believe!” Isn’t it wonderful to know that Mary was immaculately conceived in order to be the faithful servant of God’s new creation in Jesus Christ! She therefore becomes the firstborn of God’s new creation, our mother, the first member of God’s new community we call church. Isn’t it wonderful that God continued to act in the world through the appearances of Mary at Guadalupe! Mary must know something because she seems to always appear to peasants and, in particular, to peasant women who have the ability to see her. Most of us would not have the ability to see Mary because we’d be far too embarrassed by our vision.
***END-QUOTE***
1.And does he believe in the Immaculate Conception? Does he believe that God continues to act in the world through Marian apparitions?
2.What about the visions of Muhammad or Swedenborg or Joseph Smith or Oral Roberts?
Does Michael have any criterion for distinguishing between divine visions and occultic visions, or does he even care?
***QUOTE***
Therefore Catholics understand the church’s unity as grounded in reality more determinative than our good feelings for one another. The office of Rome matters. For at least that office is a judgement on the church for our disunity. Surely it is the clear indication of the sin of the Reformation that we Protestants have not been able to resist nationalistic identifications. So we become German Lutherans, American Lutherans, Norwegian Lutherans. You are Dutch Calvinist, American Presbyterians, Church of Scotland. I am an American Methodist, which has precious little to do with my sisters and brothers in English Methodism. And so we Protestant Christians go to war killing one another in the name of being American, German, Japanese, and so on.
***END-QUOTE***
1.Having, by his own lights, reduced Evangelical identity to bare belief, notice how he now substitutes feeling for belief. Does he really think these are equivalent?
2.Isn’t it a caricature of Evangelical theology to say it’s reducible “our good feelings for one another”? Is Michael even attempting to be accurate at this point? Or is he reading his opponents in the light of all the straw man he’s burning?
3.Why assume that nationalistic identifications are sinful?
God chooses when and where we will be born. That inevitably affects our live options and general outlook. Social conditioning is an aspect of God’s ordinary providence.
Nationality is not a criterion of truth, but to treat nationality as inherently sinful is quite unnatural given the way in which, to take one example, OT covenant theology builds on patriarchy and tribalism as fundamental units of socio-religious identity.
4.If he’s alluding to WWII, does he really think that America went to war against Japan or Germany simply because American Protestants like to kill German Protestants or Japanese Protestants?
Does Michael think that this amounts to a serious analysis of the historical provocations and personal motivations?
Nothing about the Nazis or the Japanese imperial cult or Japanese stratocracy.
If he’s not alluding to WWII, what’s the connection between Germans, Japanese, Americans, and killing?
5.Notice his flagrant disregard for the degree to which American Evangelicals freely associate with one another.
***QUOTE***
You can tell the destructive character of that narrative by what it has done to the Jews. The way we Protestants read history, and in particular our Bible, has been nothing but disastrous for the Jews. For we turned the Jews into Catholics by suggesting that the Jews had sunk into legalistic and sacramental religion after the prophets and had therefore become moribund and dead. In order to make Jesus explicable (in order to make Jesus look like Luther - at least the Luther of our democratic projections), we had to make Judaism look like our characterization of Catholicism. Yet Jesus did not free us from Israel; rather, he engrafted us into the promise of Israel so that we might be a people called to the same holiness of the law.
***END-QUOTE***
There are a couple of basic problems with this indictment:
1. On the one hand, it disregards philosemitic Evangelical traditions like Calvinism and Fundamentalism.
2. On the other hand, it disregards the role of Russian Orthodoxy in the pogroms, as well as the role of Medieval Catholicism in the slaughter of the Jews during the Crusades, as well as the role of Catholic countries like Austria and Poland in the Holocaust.
So one would like to see Michael to make a minimal effort at moral, historical, and theological consistency. Or is that too much to ask?
***QUOTE***
THE WOMAN: MARY AS A TYPE OF THE CHURCH
Revelation is a book of “thick” as opposed to “thin” symbolism. What I mean by “thick” is that they are capable of double references. The “Antichrist,” for example can refer to a single person (the Roman Emperor of John’s day, a future tyrant, etc.) or it can refer to a general spirit of human idolatry in any day (last week, for example, we spoke of self-justifying human egoism as the “spirit of antichrist”). With the “woman” in this passage we have the same phenomenon.
A simple reading of verses 2 and 5 make the connection with the Blessed Virgin Mother of Jesus obvious. Mary is the woman who gives birth to the, “male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron.” It is Mary’s son, who was, “caught up to God and to God’s throne.” in the Ascension. Simply put, Mary is the woman in Revelation. This does not exhaust the symbol, however. To say that the woman is merely Mary is to miss John’s point.
John also says in verse one that the woman is, “clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.” These descriptions associate the woman with the Old Testament’s prophetic hopes for the glory of the whole people of God who experience his salvation. The twelve stars here, represent the twelve tribes of Israel. From this perspective we might say that the woman represents the people of God from whom Jesus traces his human lineage.
To put it very simply, John is speaking of Mary as the ideal representative of the people of God. In doing so, John is simply expanding on the picture of Mary already present in the Gospels themselves.
**END-QUOTE***
This identification would be more impressive if Pahls could lift a finger to interact with objections to his identification by the major commentators (e.g. Aune, Beale, Keener, Smalley), as well as contemporary Catholic/ecumenical scholarship, viz. R. Brown, K. Donfried, J. Fitzmyer, & J. Reumann, eds. Mary in the New Testament (Fortress 1978).
Continuing:
***QUOTE***
The canon of Holy Scripture being closed, there is no new revelation or addition to the one, completed revelation of God in Christ (Heb. 1:1-4), but the Church is graced by God with the illumination of the Holy Spirit, who faithfully guides her into all truth (Jn. 16:13). The Church’s witness may therefore be spoken of as normative, but because the witness of the Church is always subject to the Scripture, her witness is always a “normed norm” (norma normata). On this basis, the Church retains the right, with the consent of the faithful, to dogmatically define and present the teachings of Scriptures, to settle controversies, and to close its communion to dissension.
***END-QUOTE***
He assumes, without benefit of argument, that Jn 16:13 refers to the church. He then erects an edifice over a nonexistent foundation.
Continuing:
***QUOTE***
An acceptible doctrine of Purgatory can start from quite ordinary principles faced in the confession and repentance from personal sin. A confessor or a pastor would be acting irresponsibly if he were to offer the assurance of forgiveness to one that has confessed to stealing while refusing to restore the stolen object to its rightful owner. Suborning that kind of cognitive dissonance would be inimical to the kind of personal reformation intended by the word “repentance” (metanoia) and would amount to what Bonhoeffer called the offer of a “cheap grace.” [Bonhoeffer writes, “Cheap grace means grace as a doctrine, a principle, a system. It means forgiveness of sins proclaimed as a general truth, the love of God taught as the Christian “conception” of God…Cheap grace means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner. Grace alone does everything, they say, and so everything can remain as it was before.” The Cost of Discipleship (trans. R.H. Fuller; London: SCM, 1959; repr., New York: Touchstone, 1995) 44.]
Human beings, even redeemed human beings, have an incredible aptitude for self-deception and the evasion of truth. [Calvin describes the human heart as a “factory of idols” (fabricum idolorum). Institutes (1559) 1.5.11-12.] In its most Gospel-shaped expressions, Purgatory ceases to be expressed in terms of time and space and merely expresses a postmortem, personal encounter with Christ in which the remaining structures of self-deception and self-evasion are finally crumbled and we see ourselves as we truly are before God. In full light of God’s truth and holiness, the false self is burned away and we are graced with the gift of a full and complete repentance.
Of course, one must readily say that this represents but one potential (and historically novel) configuration of the doctrine. As such, assent to the dogma could not be imposed as binding on the conscience or be regarded as necessary to salvation (Cf. Article 20). In fact, one may venture that this represents such a thoroughgoing mitigation of the Medieval doctrine that it ceases to be recognizable as the dogma of Purgatory altogether. My only concern is to name the space in which the affirmation of such a doctrine could be acceptable to communing Anglicans.
***END-QUOTE***
Note the complete absence of appeal to divine revelation in his attempt create “space” for an acceptable version of Purgatory.
By what criterion, if any, does Michael attempt to distinguish between the truth and make-believe or pious fraud?
http://www.reformedcatholicism.com/?author=12
***QUOTE***
It is impossible to reclaim those who have lapsed in Hebrews 6 and 10, because they have explicitly renounced their salvation as sacramentally mediated. They have turned their back on baptism (enlightenment), the Holy Supper (heavenly gift), the proclaimed word, and the variegated Spirit-wrought charisms of the community. In turning their back on the people of God they have turned their back on God in Christ and vice versa. They have “spurned the Son of God,” “profaned the blood of the covenant” and “outraged the Spirit of grace.” This is why “not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together” is part and parcel of the exhortations to perseverance in Hebrews.
***END-QUOTE***
This is exhibit A of acontextual exegesis. Michael makes no effort to show that “enlightenment” (6:4) and “the heavenly gift” have reference to baptism and communion respectively.
It is true that “enlightened” came to be a synonym for baptism in patristic usage. Read Hughes’ commentary.
But it would be anachronistic to read that back into Hebrews without further argument. Pahls has done nothing to exegete that significance from the actual usage of the author of Hebrews, or his general theology, or his literary allusions.
By contrast (according to Hughes), the identification of “the heavenly gift” with communion doesn’t even have the benefit of patristic attestation.
For an interpretation which is more sensitive to the author’s own usage, read Ellingworth.
A more contextual explanation of the passage would be as follows:
The author is addressing a congregation of Messianic Jews, probably in Rome. Christianity is coming under persecution from the Roman authorities.
Since Judaism was a licit religion under Roman law, and since Judaism had also been a saving faith, the members of this congregation are tempted to revert to Judaism. For the historical reconstruction, read Lane.
They cannot be reclaimed if (or as long as) they turn their backs on the New Covenant and look to an obsolete covenant (the Old Covenant) as the object of saving faith.
As yet, they haven’t made that fateful choice.
Pahls’ sacramental interpretation is also problematic on its own grounds, for his view of postbaptismal apostasy would commit him to the rigorist position of the “schismatic” Donatists and Novatianists.
Continuing:
***QUOTE***
I must begin by telling you that I do not like to preach on Reformation Sunday. Actually I have to put it more strongly than that. I do not like Reformation Sunday, period. I do no understand why it is part of the church year. Reformation Sunday does not name a happy event for the Church Catholic; on the contrary, it names failure. Of course, the church rightly names failure, or at least horror, as part of our church year. We do, after all, go through crucifixion as part of Holy Week. Certainly if the Reformation is to be narrated rightly, it is to be narrated as part of those dark days.
Reformation names the disunity in which we currently stand. We who remain in the Protestant tradition want to say that Reformation was a success. But when we make Reformation a success, it only ends up killing us. After all, the very name ‘Protestantism’ is meant to denote a reform movement of protest within the Church Catholic. When Protestantism becomes an end in itself, which it certainly has through the mainstream denominations in America, it becomes anathema. If we no longer have broken hearts at the church’s division, then we cannot help but unfaithfully celebrate Reformation Sunday.
***END-QUOTE***
Several issues:
1.Since Reformation Sunday is only a man-made tradition, it wouldn’t say that we are under any obligation to mark it on our calendars. This is a point of liberty.
But as long as the observance is voluntary rather than mandatory, I have no more problem with Reformation Sunday that other holidays like Christmas or Advent.
2. We can celebrate Reformation Sunday in the same spirit that the Jews celebrated the Passover.
Just as the Exodus marked a liberation from Egyptian bondage, we can thank God that the Reformation liberated Christians from bondage to a decadent religious system.
3.It’s rather simple-minded to define the *concept* of Protestantism from a dictionary definition of the *word* “Protestant”.
The nature of Protestant identity isn’t derivable from a popular label. Why does Michael indulge in semantic fallacies to prove his point?
4.Who says that Protestantism is an end in itself?
Continuing:
***QUOTE***
Unfortunately, the Catholics are right. Christian salvation consists in works. To be saved is to be made holy. To be saved requires our being made part of a people separated from the world so that we can be united in spite of–or perhaps better, because of–the world’s fragmentation and divisions. Unity, after all, is what God has given us through Christ’s death and resurrection. For in that death and resurrection we have been made part of God’s salvation for the world so that the world may know it has been freed from the powers that would compel us to kill one another in the name of false loyalties. All that is about the works necessary to save us.
***END-QUOTE***
This is a caricature of Evangelical theology. It deliberately rides roughshod over fundamental distinctions regarding the source and role of good works in salvation.
Continuing:
***QUOTE***
For example, I often point out that at least Catholics have the magisterial office of the Bishop of Rome to remind them that disunity is a sin. You should not overlook the significance that in several important documents of late, John Paul II has confessed the Catholic sin for the Reformation. Where are the Protestants capable of doing likewise? We Protestants feel no sin for the disunity of the Reformation. We would not know how to confess our sin for the continuing disunity of the Reformation. We would not know how to do that because we have no experience of unity.
***END-QUOTE***
A couple of points:
1.Is the magisterial office of the papacy a good thing? Where is his supporting argument?
Why is Michael drawing invidious comparisons without bothering to establish the standard of comparison in the first place? Is that too much to ask?
2.He’s very free with the word “sin.” By what authority does he accuse Evangelicals of sin for the “sin of disunity” or the “sin of the Reformation.”?
The question at issue is not whether Evangelicals can be divisive to a fault. This is not a question of individual sins.
No, the question is whether the very idea of the Reformation is inherently sinful.
What he needs to do is to first exegete what he takes to be the relevant passages of Scripture, and then show that the Reformation in toto is analogous to what Scripture classifies as sin.
Thus far, all we get from Michael are personal assertions dressed up as oracular anathemas for whatever he happens to disapprove of.
Continuing:
***QUOTE***
The magisterial office–we Protestants often forget–is not a matter of constraining or limiting diversity in the name of unity. The office of the Bishop of Rome is to ensure that when Christians move from Durham, North Carolina to Syracuse, New York, they have some confidence when they go to church that they will be worshipping the same God. Because Catholics have an office of unity, they do not need to restrain the gifts of the Spirit. As I oftentimes point out, it is extraordinary that Catholicism is able to keep the Irish and the Italians in the same church. What an achievement! Perhaps equally amazing is their ability to keep within the same church Jesuits, Dominicans, and Franciscans.
***END-QUOTE***
Other issues aside, they could only be sure of this if, on the basis of Herculean historical research, they could be sure of unbroken apostolic succession contingent on the valid administration of holy orders for each and every link in the chain.
How does Michael propose that we achieve this level of certainty? Michael keeps giving us his conclusions without the elementary spadework to support his conclusions.
***QUOTE***
I think Catholics are able to do that because they know that their unity does not depend opon everyone agreeing. Indeed, they can celebrate their disagreements because they understand that our unity is founded upon the cross and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth that makes the Eucharist possible. They do not presume, therefore, that unity requires that we all read Scripture the same way.
This creates a quite different attitude among Catholics about their relation to Christian tradition and the wider world. Protestants look over to Christian tradition and say, ‘How much of this do we have to believe in order to remain identifiably Christian?’ That’s the reason why Protestants are always tempted to rationalism: we think that Christianity is to be identified with sets of beliefs more than with the unity of the Spirit occasioned through sacrament.
Moreover, once Christianity becomes reduced to a matter of belief, as it clearly has for Protestants, we cannot resist questions of whether those beliefs are as true or useful as other beliefs we also entertain. Once such questions are raised, it does not matter what the answer turns out in a given case. As James Edwards observes, “Once religious beliefs start to compete with other beliefs, then religious believers are - and will know themselves to be –mongerers of values. They too are denizens of the mall, selling and shopping and buying along with the rest of us.”
***END-QUOTE***
1.This is a fascinating admission. Having castigated the Protestant cause for the sin of disunity, he then proceeds to redefine Christian unity by eliminating a common faith.
Does he really think that a common faith is irrelevant to religious identity in either the OT covenant community or the NT covenant community?
2.At the same time, he is making his own faith-claims about church and sacrament.
***QUOTE***
In contrast, Catholics do not begin with the question of “How much do we need to believe?” but with the attitude “Look at all the wonderful stuff we get to believe!” Isn’t it wonderful to know that Mary was immaculately conceived in order to be the faithful servant of God’s new creation in Jesus Christ! She therefore becomes the firstborn of God’s new creation, our mother, the first member of God’s new community we call church. Isn’t it wonderful that God continued to act in the world through the appearances of Mary at Guadalupe! Mary must know something because she seems to always appear to peasants and, in particular, to peasant women who have the ability to see her. Most of us would not have the ability to see Mary because we’d be far too embarrassed by our vision.
***END-QUOTE***
1.And does he believe in the Immaculate Conception? Does he believe that God continues to act in the world through Marian apparitions?
2.What about the visions of Muhammad or Swedenborg or Joseph Smith or Oral Roberts?
Does Michael have any criterion for distinguishing between divine visions and occultic visions, or does he even care?
***QUOTE***
Therefore Catholics understand the church’s unity as grounded in reality more determinative than our good feelings for one another. The office of Rome matters. For at least that office is a judgement on the church for our disunity. Surely it is the clear indication of the sin of the Reformation that we Protestants have not been able to resist nationalistic identifications. So we become German Lutherans, American Lutherans, Norwegian Lutherans. You are Dutch Calvinist, American Presbyterians, Church of Scotland. I am an American Methodist, which has precious little to do with my sisters and brothers in English Methodism. And so we Protestant Christians go to war killing one another in the name of being American, German, Japanese, and so on.
***END-QUOTE***
1.Having, by his own lights, reduced Evangelical identity to bare belief, notice how he now substitutes feeling for belief. Does he really think these are equivalent?
2.Isn’t it a caricature of Evangelical theology to say it’s reducible “our good feelings for one another”? Is Michael even attempting to be accurate at this point? Or is he reading his opponents in the light of all the straw man he’s burning?
3.Why assume that nationalistic identifications are sinful?
God chooses when and where we will be born. That inevitably affects our live options and general outlook. Social conditioning is an aspect of God’s ordinary providence.
Nationality is not a criterion of truth, but to treat nationality as inherently sinful is quite unnatural given the way in which, to take one example, OT covenant theology builds on patriarchy and tribalism as fundamental units of socio-religious identity.
4.If he’s alluding to WWII, does he really think that America went to war against Japan or Germany simply because American Protestants like to kill German Protestants or Japanese Protestants?
Does Michael think that this amounts to a serious analysis of the historical provocations and personal motivations?
Nothing about the Nazis or the Japanese imperial cult or Japanese stratocracy.
If he’s not alluding to WWII, what’s the connection between Germans, Japanese, Americans, and killing?
5.Notice his flagrant disregard for the degree to which American Evangelicals freely associate with one another.
***QUOTE***
You can tell the destructive character of that narrative by what it has done to the Jews. The way we Protestants read history, and in particular our Bible, has been nothing but disastrous for the Jews. For we turned the Jews into Catholics by suggesting that the Jews had sunk into legalistic and sacramental religion after the prophets and had therefore become moribund and dead. In order to make Jesus explicable (in order to make Jesus look like Luther - at least the Luther of our democratic projections), we had to make Judaism look like our characterization of Catholicism. Yet Jesus did not free us from Israel; rather, he engrafted us into the promise of Israel so that we might be a people called to the same holiness of the law.
***END-QUOTE***
There are a couple of basic problems with this indictment:
1. On the one hand, it disregards philosemitic Evangelical traditions like Calvinism and Fundamentalism.
2. On the other hand, it disregards the role of Russian Orthodoxy in the pogroms, as well as the role of Medieval Catholicism in the slaughter of the Jews during the Crusades, as well as the role of Catholic countries like Austria and Poland in the Holocaust.
So one would like to see Michael to make a minimal effort at moral, historical, and theological consistency. Or is that too much to ask?
***QUOTE***
THE WOMAN: MARY AS A TYPE OF THE CHURCH
Revelation is a book of “thick” as opposed to “thin” symbolism. What I mean by “thick” is that they are capable of double references. The “Antichrist,” for example can refer to a single person (the Roman Emperor of John’s day, a future tyrant, etc.) or it can refer to a general spirit of human idolatry in any day (last week, for example, we spoke of self-justifying human egoism as the “spirit of antichrist”). With the “woman” in this passage we have the same phenomenon.
A simple reading of verses 2 and 5 make the connection with the Blessed Virgin Mother of Jesus obvious. Mary is the woman who gives birth to the, “male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron.” It is Mary’s son, who was, “caught up to God and to God’s throne.” in the Ascension. Simply put, Mary is the woman in Revelation. This does not exhaust the symbol, however. To say that the woman is merely Mary is to miss John’s point.
John also says in verse one that the woman is, “clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.” These descriptions associate the woman with the Old Testament’s prophetic hopes for the glory of the whole people of God who experience his salvation. The twelve stars here, represent the twelve tribes of Israel. From this perspective we might say that the woman represents the people of God from whom Jesus traces his human lineage.
To put it very simply, John is speaking of Mary as the ideal representative of the people of God. In doing so, John is simply expanding on the picture of Mary already present in the Gospels themselves.
**END-QUOTE***
This identification would be more impressive if Pahls could lift a finger to interact with objections to his identification by the major commentators (e.g. Aune, Beale, Keener, Smalley), as well as contemporary Catholic/ecumenical scholarship, viz. R. Brown, K. Donfried, J. Fitzmyer, & J. Reumann, eds. Mary in the New Testament (Fortress 1978).
Continuing:
***QUOTE***
The canon of Holy Scripture being closed, there is no new revelation or addition to the one, completed revelation of God in Christ (Heb. 1:1-4), but the Church is graced by God with the illumination of the Holy Spirit, who faithfully guides her into all truth (Jn. 16:13). The Church’s witness may therefore be spoken of as normative, but because the witness of the Church is always subject to the Scripture, her witness is always a “normed norm” (norma normata). On this basis, the Church retains the right, with the consent of the faithful, to dogmatically define and present the teachings of Scriptures, to settle controversies, and to close its communion to dissension.
***END-QUOTE***
He assumes, without benefit of argument, that Jn 16:13 refers to the church. He then erects an edifice over a nonexistent foundation.
Continuing:
***QUOTE***
An acceptible doctrine of Purgatory can start from quite ordinary principles faced in the confession and repentance from personal sin. A confessor or a pastor would be acting irresponsibly if he were to offer the assurance of forgiveness to one that has confessed to stealing while refusing to restore the stolen object to its rightful owner. Suborning that kind of cognitive dissonance would be inimical to the kind of personal reformation intended by the word “repentance” (metanoia) and would amount to what Bonhoeffer called the offer of a “cheap grace.” [Bonhoeffer writes, “Cheap grace means grace as a doctrine, a principle, a system. It means forgiveness of sins proclaimed as a general truth, the love of God taught as the Christian “conception” of God…Cheap grace means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner. Grace alone does everything, they say, and so everything can remain as it was before.” The Cost of Discipleship (trans. R.H. Fuller; London: SCM, 1959; repr., New York: Touchstone, 1995) 44.]
Human beings, even redeemed human beings, have an incredible aptitude for self-deception and the evasion of truth. [Calvin describes the human heart as a “factory of idols” (fabricum idolorum). Institutes (1559) 1.5.11-12.] In its most Gospel-shaped expressions, Purgatory ceases to be expressed in terms of time and space and merely expresses a postmortem, personal encounter with Christ in which the remaining structures of self-deception and self-evasion are finally crumbled and we see ourselves as we truly are before God. In full light of God’s truth and holiness, the false self is burned away and we are graced with the gift of a full and complete repentance.
Of course, one must readily say that this represents but one potential (and historically novel) configuration of the doctrine. As such, assent to the dogma could not be imposed as binding on the conscience or be regarded as necessary to salvation (Cf. Article 20). In fact, one may venture that this represents such a thoroughgoing mitigation of the Medieval doctrine that it ceases to be recognizable as the dogma of Purgatory altogether. My only concern is to name the space in which the affirmation of such a doctrine could be acceptable to communing Anglicans.
***END-QUOTE***
Note the complete absence of appeal to divine revelation in his attempt create “space” for an acceptable version of Purgatory.
By what criterion, if any, does Michael attempt to distinguish between the truth and make-believe or pious fraud?
Friday, February 02, 2007
Thursday, February 01, 2007
Nuts to you!
ANONYMOUS SAID:
“You Christian theists are in such a funny position. You claim moral superiority, but when we look at your book, we atheists see a morality typical of the time that spawned it, steeped in superstition.”
And if Abraham were looking at your books, he’d see a morality typical of your time, steeped in secular groupthink.
“Would you really defend Leviticus when God (supposedly) says: ‘[Ye shall keep my statutes] neither shall a garment mingled of linen and woolen come upon thee’."
Yes, I’d defend it with a view to original intent.
“It doesn't matter who God supposedly told this to, it's just plain nuts! NUTS! ... the law would never make any sense under any circumstances-- let alone your claim that from God comes ‘intrinsic morality’. ‘Thou shalt not eat green jelly beans.’ is just as morally applicable in the REAL WORLD.”
Several problems here:
1.You’d make a lousy anthropologist. Every culture has its symbolic associations. You’re a fool if you think you’re automatically in a position, based on your 21C American point of reference, to declare another culture’s custom “just plain nuts! This would never make any sense under any circumstances!”
Suppose a native from an undiscovered tribe in S. America were brought to the United States. What would he think of those funny colored lights we have at every major intersection? “It’s just plain nuts! Those funny colored lights would never make any sense under any circumstances!”
2.The fact that we believe in moral absolutes doesn’t mean that every law in Scripture is a moral absolute. That was never the claim.
3.And you’ve done nothing to salvage Loftus’ argument from evil, which was the original point of reference.
4.Lev 19:19 is part of the ceremonial law. It deals with ritual purity and impurity. To some extent, categories of ritual purity and impurity are admittedly arbitrary.
That’s no objection to the ceremonial law, for we were never claiming otherwise.
5.However, not everything that’s arbitrary is unreasonable.
Libraries catalogue books according to a somewhat arbitrary classification scheme.
It would be a lot simpler to file books on a shelf without all that effort to order them according to a complicated numerical code.
But while that would greatly simplify the shelving process, it would greatly complicate the retrieval process.
There’s nothing intrinsically evil about mixing books on different subjects, but that would also be extremely inefficient if you were looking for a particular book on a particular subject.
Even a somewhat arbitrary way of arranging books by topic is preferable to randomized shelving.
6.The Bible has a doctrine of natural kinds. God created a variety of things. Things of a kind.
This is important to ontology, epistemology, and morality.
Some things naturally go together, while other things don’t.
7.The ceremonial law has its basis in the moral law. To some extent it parallels the natural order, but it goes beyond the natural order to illustrate ethical distinctions and typological truths by symbolic rites and rituals.
Like any cultural code language, it makes perfect sense if you know the code, and perfect nonsense if you don’t know the code.
“Morality isn't fixed; it's not intrinsic, that's the whole point. We as human beings have to evaluate a given moral position based on real outcomes and evidence as much as it is possible.”
Thanks for that insight. Suppose I lobby for the passage of a law according to which every atheist whose last name begins with “M” will be executed.
Before passing that law, I conduct a feasibility study on the most cost-effective method of executing every atheist whose last name begins with “M.”
Does that satisfy your criterion of outcome-based morality?
“How do we evaluate this evidence? Simple. Based upon the "state of being human" -- a just law is created at an attempt to alleviate human suffering.”
But since, according to you, the alleviation of human suffering is not a fixed value, why should we evaluate the evidence or pass a law with that outcome in mind?
If there’s no intrinsic morality, there’s no intrinsic justice. So much for “just” laws.
“In point of fact, it is you theists who claim there are moral absolutes, so YOU must defend the moral edicts of the Bible which now seem horribly out of date and cruel.”
i) I defend them on a regular basis.
ii) Since, according to you, there is no fixed or intrinsic morally, you may find the edicts of Scripture cruel, but they can’t be intrinsically cruel, now can they?
“We atheists don't need to explain why we don't believe in fixed morality. You do.”
May I quote you on that in case an atheist whose last name begins with “M” complains about the new law we’ve passed?
“We have a perfectly reasonable explanation for why certain laws in the Bible are silly. They were written a long time ago and humanity has moved on... please join us.”
But since, according to you, there is no fixed, intrinsically morality, then the fact that humanity has supposedly moved on since Bible times doesn’t mark a moral advance. So why should we join you?
If morality is extrinsic and fluid, then your humanistic laws are just as “silly” as the laws of Scripture.
“You Christian theists are in such a funny position. You claim moral superiority, but when we look at your book, we atheists see a morality typical of the time that spawned it, steeped in superstition.”
And if Abraham were looking at your books, he’d see a morality typical of your time, steeped in secular groupthink.
“Would you really defend Leviticus when God (supposedly) says: ‘[Ye shall keep my statutes] neither shall a garment mingled of linen and woolen come upon thee’."
Yes, I’d defend it with a view to original intent.
“It doesn't matter who God supposedly told this to, it's just plain nuts! NUTS! ... the law would never make any sense under any circumstances-- let alone your claim that from God comes ‘intrinsic morality’. ‘Thou shalt not eat green jelly beans.’ is just as morally applicable in the REAL WORLD.”
Several problems here:
1.You’d make a lousy anthropologist. Every culture has its symbolic associations. You’re a fool if you think you’re automatically in a position, based on your 21C American point of reference, to declare another culture’s custom “just plain nuts! This would never make any sense under any circumstances!”
Suppose a native from an undiscovered tribe in S. America were brought to the United States. What would he think of those funny colored lights we have at every major intersection? “It’s just plain nuts! Those funny colored lights would never make any sense under any circumstances!”
2.The fact that we believe in moral absolutes doesn’t mean that every law in Scripture is a moral absolute. That was never the claim.
3.And you’ve done nothing to salvage Loftus’ argument from evil, which was the original point of reference.
4.Lev 19:19 is part of the ceremonial law. It deals with ritual purity and impurity. To some extent, categories of ritual purity and impurity are admittedly arbitrary.
That’s no objection to the ceremonial law, for we were never claiming otherwise.
5.However, not everything that’s arbitrary is unreasonable.
Libraries catalogue books according to a somewhat arbitrary classification scheme.
It would be a lot simpler to file books on a shelf without all that effort to order them according to a complicated numerical code.
But while that would greatly simplify the shelving process, it would greatly complicate the retrieval process.
There’s nothing intrinsically evil about mixing books on different subjects, but that would also be extremely inefficient if you were looking for a particular book on a particular subject.
Even a somewhat arbitrary way of arranging books by topic is preferable to randomized shelving.
6.The Bible has a doctrine of natural kinds. God created a variety of things. Things of a kind.
This is important to ontology, epistemology, and morality.
Some things naturally go together, while other things don’t.
7.The ceremonial law has its basis in the moral law. To some extent it parallels the natural order, but it goes beyond the natural order to illustrate ethical distinctions and typological truths by symbolic rites and rituals.
Like any cultural code language, it makes perfect sense if you know the code, and perfect nonsense if you don’t know the code.
“Morality isn't fixed; it's not intrinsic, that's the whole point. We as human beings have to evaluate a given moral position based on real outcomes and evidence as much as it is possible.”
Thanks for that insight. Suppose I lobby for the passage of a law according to which every atheist whose last name begins with “M” will be executed.
Before passing that law, I conduct a feasibility study on the most cost-effective method of executing every atheist whose last name begins with “M.”
Does that satisfy your criterion of outcome-based morality?
“How do we evaluate this evidence? Simple. Based upon the "state of being human" -- a just law is created at an attempt to alleviate human suffering.”
But since, according to you, the alleviation of human suffering is not a fixed value, why should we evaluate the evidence or pass a law with that outcome in mind?
If there’s no intrinsic morality, there’s no intrinsic justice. So much for “just” laws.
“In point of fact, it is you theists who claim there are moral absolutes, so YOU must defend the moral edicts of the Bible which now seem horribly out of date and cruel.”
i) I defend them on a regular basis.
ii) Since, according to you, there is no fixed or intrinsic morally, you may find the edicts of Scripture cruel, but they can’t be intrinsically cruel, now can they?
“We atheists don't need to explain why we don't believe in fixed morality. You do.”
May I quote you on that in case an atheist whose last name begins with “M” complains about the new law we’ve passed?
“We have a perfectly reasonable explanation for why certain laws in the Bible are silly. They were written a long time ago and humanity has moved on... please join us.”
But since, according to you, there is no fixed, intrinsically morality, then the fact that humanity has supposedly moved on since Bible times doesn’t mark a moral advance. So why should we join you?
If morality is extrinsic and fluid, then your humanistic laws are just as “silly” as the laws of Scripture.
Another Review Of Bauckham
Patrick mentioned Craig Blomberg's review of Richard Bauckham's recent book. Ben Witherington also reviewed it recently. I'm almost finished reading the book myself, and I'll probably be posting some comments on it in the near future.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Can science explain everything?
Dr Denis Alexander argues against scientific naturalism from a Christian perspective (or see here for a cleaner version of the same).
Also, there are more articles on Christianity and science here.
Disclaimer: I don't necessarily endorse everything in these articles (e.g., theistic evolution).
Also, there are more articles on Christianity and science here.
Disclaimer: I don't necessarily endorse everything in these articles (e.g., theistic evolution).
The Three Faces of Eve-il
Remember The Three Faces of Eve, starring Joanne Woodward? The character suffered from multiple-personality disorder.
On the one hand, there was Eve White, the mousey, fridge housewife.
On the other hand, there was Eve Black, the risqué party girl.
Under psychoanalysis, the character was able to merge her two personality in Jane.
John Loftus also suffers from an identity crisis. You see, there are two of him.
Unfortunately, he’s been considerably less successful in reintegrating his two personalities.
On the one hand, there's Johnny Six-pack Loftus.
This is the ordinary Joe who retains his intuitive belief in moral absolutes. Hence, you get his unguarded, knee-jerk reaction to examples of good and evil—at least as he views them. Hence, the brimstone fulminations of a modern Ingersoll.
On the other hand, there's John Atheologian Loftus.
When he's donning his atheologian’s top hat, he affects the austere opinion that there are no moral absolutes, since there's no elbowroom for moral absolutes in his religiously disinfected, secular outlook.
The real Loftus and his secular alter-ego vie for control, like a patient who suffers from multiple personality disorder. When one personality seizes control, the other is suppressed, and vice versa.
John Atheologian tries to deploy a chemically pure, internal argument from evil, but he can't keep Johnny Six-pack from resurfacing at socially inappropriate moments—rather like Eve Black reemerging at the church social.
The self-consciously amoral Atheologian keeps slipping back into his blue collar, default setting. Other militant unbelievers who suffer from this acute disorder include Bertrand Russell and Richard Dawkins.
Loftus is that curious, but perennial apostate oddity—the hellfire preacher who lost his faith in hellfire. The fire has gone out of his faith, but the fiery, homiletical rhetoric remains.
On the one hand, there was Eve White, the mousey, fridge housewife.
On the other hand, there was Eve Black, the risqué party girl.
Under psychoanalysis, the character was able to merge her two personality in Jane.
John Loftus also suffers from an identity crisis. You see, there are two of him.
Unfortunately, he’s been considerably less successful in reintegrating his two personalities.
On the one hand, there's Johnny Six-pack Loftus.
This is the ordinary Joe who retains his intuitive belief in moral absolutes. Hence, you get his unguarded, knee-jerk reaction to examples of good and evil—at least as he views them. Hence, the brimstone fulminations of a modern Ingersoll.
On the other hand, there's John Atheologian Loftus.
When he's donning his atheologian’s top hat, he affects the austere opinion that there are no moral absolutes, since there's no elbowroom for moral absolutes in his religiously disinfected, secular outlook.
The real Loftus and his secular alter-ego vie for control, like a patient who suffers from multiple personality disorder. When one personality seizes control, the other is suppressed, and vice versa.
John Atheologian tries to deploy a chemically pure, internal argument from evil, but he can't keep Johnny Six-pack from resurfacing at socially inappropriate moments—rather like Eve Black reemerging at the church social.
The self-consciously amoral Atheologian keeps slipping back into his blue collar, default setting. Other militant unbelievers who suffer from this acute disorder include Bertrand Russell and Richard Dawkins.
Loftus is that curious, but perennial apostate oddity—the hellfire preacher who lost his faith in hellfire. The fire has gone out of his faith, but the fiery, homiletical rhetoric remains.
The moral schizophrenia of a militant atheist
“One thing is sure to me. The Triune God in the Bible simply cannot be describing the God who exists. That God is a barbaric God. He is a hateful, racist and sexist God.”
http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2006/02/barbaric-god-of-bible.html
But Loftus says he doesn’t believe that anything is intrinsically good or evil. So even if the God of Scripture were hateful, barbaric, racist, and sexist, that wouldn’t be intrinsically evil.
So how does it follow that such a God cannot exist?
Loftus can’t attack Biblical morality on his own grounds, because he doesn’t believe that anything is intrinsically good or evil, and he can’t attack the Bible on its own grounds since he could only attack the Bible on its own grounds by assuming the Biblical viewpoint for the sake of argument, but the examples he cites from Scripture are not examples which Scripture itself characterizes the way he does.
“He’s a pretty barbaric God, if you ask me.”
But if you ask Loftus, he will tell you that he doesn’t believe that anything is intrinsically good or evil.
“This God is simply the reflection of ancient barbaric peoples.”
But, according to Loftus, barbarism or barbarity is not intrinsically evil.
“God decreed that a man who picked up sticks on the Sabbath day was to be stoned to death (Numbers 15:32-36). God commanded that anyone who curses his father or mother was to be put to death (Exodus 21:17). Witches, and those of differing religious views were to be killed (Ex. 22:18,20). These are pretty stiff punishments, eh?”
But since Loftus doesn’t believe that anything is intrinsically evil, he doesn’t believe these penalties are intrinsically evil.
“God asked Abraham to kill and sacrifice his son Isaac. As I've said, if we heard a voice today telling us to do that, we would not think this voice was God’s, although Abraham wasn’t horrified at the suggestion. Enough!”
Why doesn’t he think this would be the voice of God? Does he think the command is evil? But he doesn’t believe that anything is intrinsically evil.
“Josef Mengele is widely hailed as a monster for doing just that to Holocaust victims.”
http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2006/06/why-trust-god.html
But Loftus doesn’t believe that the Holocaust was intrinsically evil.
“Why didn’t the Christian God ever explicitly and clearly condemn slavery?”
Even assuming the dubious truth of this characterization, why does Loftus believe that God should have done so? According to Loftus, slavery isn’t intrinsically evil.
“If God created us then he can do whatever he wants to us. But that doesn't make him a good God. Goodness means at least treating people as you would want to be treated, and such a God would have no respect for us as human beings.”
http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2006/07/does-god-have-moral-right-to-do.html
Even assuming the dubious premise, since Loftus doesn’t believe that anything is intrinsically good, he can’t believe it’s intrinsically good to treat people as you would want to be treated.
“However, the actual situation is that the presence of the amount of suffering in our world stands as evidence against the existence of any God, from our earthly perspective.”
But since Loftus doesn’t believe that suffering is intrinsically evil, how does this count as evidence against the existence of God?
“Come on, why would he create such a world that has so many faults, like earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, poisonous creatures and plants? Why not create us with better immune systems to diseases which have wiped out whole civilizations in the past? Why did he create the whole predator-prey relationship in the first place?”
But if you can find these sorts of things in the Bible, then the Bible doesn’t regard these evils as evidence against the existence of God.
So what is left of his original objection? It can’t be either internal or external.
“Christians who respond by saying that suffering is God's punishment for our sins fail to understand that the so-called punishments do not fit the crimes.”
Assuming, for the sake of argument, that the punishment exceeds the crime, since Loftus denies that any punishment could be intrinsically evil, how does his objection have any traction?
Not on external grounds. And the Bible doesn’t regard its penalties as disproportionate.
“Even our own system of punishments is more humane in how we treat criminals.”
Assuming, for the sake of argument, that our own system is more humane, Loftus doesn’t believe that it’s intrinsically good to be more humane, or intrinsically evil to be more inhumane. So his external comparison is like a flat tire, punctured by his own nail.
“Ed Babinski has often quoted Voltaire on this subject who said: ‘The silly fanatic repeats to me... that it is not for us to judge what is reasonable and just in the great Being; that His reason is not like our reason, that His justice is not like our justice. Eh! How, you mad demoniac, do you want me to judge justice and reason otherwise than by the notions I have of them?’”
http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2006/08/omniscience-defense.html
But Loftus judges justice by the principle that nothing is intrinsically just or unjust.
“It's time to discuss what is known as the bedrock of atheism, the problem of evil.”
http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2006/04/problem-of-evil-what-can-god-do_26.html
So this is the “bedrock” of atheism. Keep that in mind.
“Here are some more things God could’ve done: One childhood fatal disease like the Spanish Flu of 1918 could have killed Hitler and prevented WWII. One actual attempt on Hitler’s life by some people, including Dietrich Bonhoeffer, could have ended his reign after the war started. A different police officer could have discovered a naked boy who had briefly escaped Jeffrey Dahlmer’s clutches, and upon investigating further could’ve saved that boy’s life. Timothy McVeigh could have had a fatal vehicle crash while driving to Oklahoma, or a crash that would reveal what was inside his truck. McVeigh could also have been killed while in combat before coming back to the states.”
And so on.
But if nothing is intrinsically good or evil, then it isn’t intrinsically evil that God didn’t do any of these things.
So he can’t judge God’s actions by an external absolute.
What about internally? But he’s already told us that the God of Scripture is “barbaric.”
So, according to him, the fact that God doesn’t intervene in these cases is entirely consonant with what Loftus takes to be the Biblical viewpoint. It isn’t intrinsically evil on his own grounds, and it isn’t intrinsically evil on Biblical grounds.
Where does that leave his argument from evil?
“Why did God allow the earthquake that sent the tsunami that killed a quarter of a million people in Asia?”
Since Loftus doesn’t believe that anything is intrinsically evil, it isn’t intrinsically evil that God allowed it.
Not on Loftus’ view of good and evil. And not on a Scriptural view of good and evil.
“Why couldn’t something have happened to all nine hijackers of those planes on that fatal 9/11 day?…God allowed the destruction of nearly 3500 lives that day even though there were means at his disposal to stop it.”
Given Loftus' view of good and evil, how is this relevant to the argument from evil?
http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2006/02/barbaric-god-of-bible.html
But Loftus says he doesn’t believe that anything is intrinsically good or evil. So even if the God of Scripture were hateful, barbaric, racist, and sexist, that wouldn’t be intrinsically evil.
So how does it follow that such a God cannot exist?
Loftus can’t attack Biblical morality on his own grounds, because he doesn’t believe that anything is intrinsically good or evil, and he can’t attack the Bible on its own grounds since he could only attack the Bible on its own grounds by assuming the Biblical viewpoint for the sake of argument, but the examples he cites from Scripture are not examples which Scripture itself characterizes the way he does.
“He’s a pretty barbaric God, if you ask me.”
But if you ask Loftus, he will tell you that he doesn’t believe that anything is intrinsically good or evil.
“This God is simply the reflection of ancient barbaric peoples.”
But, according to Loftus, barbarism or barbarity is not intrinsically evil.
“God decreed that a man who picked up sticks on the Sabbath day was to be stoned to death (Numbers 15:32-36). God commanded that anyone who curses his father or mother was to be put to death (Exodus 21:17). Witches, and those of differing religious views were to be killed (Ex. 22:18,20). These are pretty stiff punishments, eh?”
But since Loftus doesn’t believe that anything is intrinsically evil, he doesn’t believe these penalties are intrinsically evil.
“God asked Abraham to kill and sacrifice his son Isaac. As I've said, if we heard a voice today telling us to do that, we would not think this voice was God’s, although Abraham wasn’t horrified at the suggestion. Enough!”
Why doesn’t he think this would be the voice of God? Does he think the command is evil? But he doesn’t believe that anything is intrinsically evil.
“Josef Mengele is widely hailed as a monster for doing just that to Holocaust victims.”
http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2006/06/why-trust-god.html
But Loftus doesn’t believe that the Holocaust was intrinsically evil.
“Why didn’t the Christian God ever explicitly and clearly condemn slavery?”
Even assuming the dubious truth of this characterization, why does Loftus believe that God should have done so? According to Loftus, slavery isn’t intrinsically evil.
“If God created us then he can do whatever he wants to us. But that doesn't make him a good God. Goodness means at least treating people as you would want to be treated, and such a God would have no respect for us as human beings.”
http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2006/07/does-god-have-moral-right-to-do.html
Even assuming the dubious premise, since Loftus doesn’t believe that anything is intrinsically good, he can’t believe it’s intrinsically good to treat people as you would want to be treated.
“However, the actual situation is that the presence of the amount of suffering in our world stands as evidence against the existence of any God, from our earthly perspective.”
But since Loftus doesn’t believe that suffering is intrinsically evil, how does this count as evidence against the existence of God?
“Come on, why would he create such a world that has so many faults, like earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, poisonous creatures and plants? Why not create us with better immune systems to diseases which have wiped out whole civilizations in the past? Why did he create the whole predator-prey relationship in the first place?”
But if you can find these sorts of things in the Bible, then the Bible doesn’t regard these evils as evidence against the existence of God.
So what is left of his original objection? It can’t be either internal or external.
“Christians who respond by saying that suffering is God's punishment for our sins fail to understand that the so-called punishments do not fit the crimes.”
Assuming, for the sake of argument, that the punishment exceeds the crime, since Loftus denies that any punishment could be intrinsically evil, how does his objection have any traction?
Not on external grounds. And the Bible doesn’t regard its penalties as disproportionate.
“Even our own system of punishments is more humane in how we treat criminals.”
Assuming, for the sake of argument, that our own system is more humane, Loftus doesn’t believe that it’s intrinsically good to be more humane, or intrinsically evil to be more inhumane. So his external comparison is like a flat tire, punctured by his own nail.
“Ed Babinski has often quoted Voltaire on this subject who said: ‘The silly fanatic repeats to me... that it is not for us to judge what is reasonable and just in the great Being; that His reason is not like our reason, that His justice is not like our justice. Eh! How, you mad demoniac, do you want me to judge justice and reason otherwise than by the notions I have of them?’”
http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2006/08/omniscience-defense.html
But Loftus judges justice by the principle that nothing is intrinsically just or unjust.
“It's time to discuss what is known as the bedrock of atheism, the problem of evil.”
http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2006/04/problem-of-evil-what-can-god-do_26.html
So this is the “bedrock” of atheism. Keep that in mind.
“Here are some more things God could’ve done: One childhood fatal disease like the Spanish Flu of 1918 could have killed Hitler and prevented WWII. One actual attempt on Hitler’s life by some people, including Dietrich Bonhoeffer, could have ended his reign after the war started. A different police officer could have discovered a naked boy who had briefly escaped Jeffrey Dahlmer’s clutches, and upon investigating further could’ve saved that boy’s life. Timothy McVeigh could have had a fatal vehicle crash while driving to Oklahoma, or a crash that would reveal what was inside his truck. McVeigh could also have been killed while in combat before coming back to the states.”
And so on.
But if nothing is intrinsically good or evil, then it isn’t intrinsically evil that God didn’t do any of these things.
So he can’t judge God’s actions by an external absolute.
What about internally? But he’s already told us that the God of Scripture is “barbaric.”
So, according to him, the fact that God doesn’t intervene in these cases is entirely consonant with what Loftus takes to be the Biblical viewpoint. It isn’t intrinsically evil on his own grounds, and it isn’t intrinsically evil on Biblical grounds.
Where does that leave his argument from evil?
“Why did God allow the earthquake that sent the tsunami that killed a quarter of a million people in Asia?”
Since Loftus doesn’t believe that anything is intrinsically evil, it isn’t intrinsically evil that God allowed it.
Not on Loftus’ view of good and evil. And not on a Scriptural view of good and evil.
“Why couldn’t something have happened to all nine hijackers of those planes on that fatal 9/11 day?…God allowed the destruction of nearly 3500 lives that day even though there were means at his disposal to stop it.”
Given Loftus' view of good and evil, how is this relevant to the argument from evil?
Utilitarianism and evil
John Loftus says that he subscribes to consequentialism as his ethical system. He also spends a lot of time on the argument from evil. For him, this is the trump card of atheism.
But the odd thing about his position is that many of the phenomena he cites as paradigm-cases of evil could be justified on utilitarian grounds.
So, if Loftus were a logical man, he would begin by running through his cliché-ridden list of moral or natural evils, and eliminate all of these examples which can be justified on utilitarian grounds.
In mounting the argument from evil, he would have to limit himself to whatever residual examples of evil that cannot be justified on utilitarian grounds.
Either that or he would have to argue that teleological considerations are incompatible with Christian ethics or Christian theology.
Let’s take some of his favorite examples of evil:
“The 2004 Indonesian tsunami that killed a quarter of a million people…40,000 people who starve every single day in the world. Those who don’t die suffer extensively from hunger pains and malnutrition all of their short lives…the Titanic…leukemia…schizophrenia and dementia…pandemics which have destroyed whole populations of people. Lethal parasites kill one human being every ten seconds. 100 million people were slaughtered in the last century due to genocides, and wars. Well over 100 million animals are slaughtered every year for American consumption alone, while animals viciously prey on each other.”
http://adebateontheproblemofevil.blogspot.com/2007/01/extent-of-suffering-in-our-world-makes.html
1.One fundamental consideration is that, according to consequentialism, a particular phenomenon doesn’t have to be good in and of itself to be justified. It could be evil, considered in isolation. What makes the existence of the phenomenon justifiable is that it is either instrumental to some greater good or common good, or else the possibility of this phenomenon is contingent on general conditions which make other phenomenon possible that are instrumental to a greater good or common good.
2. A particular pain may be evil, but a capacity for pain is a survival advantage.
In addition, the capacity for pain is what makes possible a capacity for pleasure.
3. Parasitism, predation, starvation, illness, aging, and death are Mother Nature’s method of population control. Overpopulation would destroy the ecological balance.
4.Ships can sink due to the existence of water, gravity, icebergs, &c. But water, gravity, and icebergs are not, themselves, natural evils.
5.Human beings can drown because human beings are natural land animals. But to be a natural land animal is not a natural evil. And there are benefits to being a land animal.
6.Even though war and genocide are moral evils, they are made possible by abilities which are not naturally evil. For example, man’s capacity to make tools.
7.A tsunami may be a natural evil, but it is made possible by things like earthquakes which function as a natural safety value to release and equalize pressure points around the globe.
8.Likewise, a tsunami is also made possible by the existence of oceans. But the ocean is not a natural evil. Indeed, it’s necessary to life on earth.
I could go into more detail, but you get the general picture.
You may find my analysis of moral and natural evil to be rather callous. But that’s because many people find utilitarianism to be rather callous. Yet I’m simply measuring Loftus’ examples of evil by his own utilitarian yardstick.
9.I’d add that there is a teleological dimension to the Christian philosophy of history.
10.I’d also add that teleology is not the only consideration in Christian ethics or Christian theology. Life in a fallen world leaves us liable to various tragedies and calamities.
Yet there are compensatory values, for the Fall is a prerequisite of redemption, which represents a second-order good unobtainable apart from the Fall.
But the odd thing about his position is that many of the phenomena he cites as paradigm-cases of evil could be justified on utilitarian grounds.
So, if Loftus were a logical man, he would begin by running through his cliché-ridden list of moral or natural evils, and eliminate all of these examples which can be justified on utilitarian grounds.
In mounting the argument from evil, he would have to limit himself to whatever residual examples of evil that cannot be justified on utilitarian grounds.
Either that or he would have to argue that teleological considerations are incompatible with Christian ethics or Christian theology.
Let’s take some of his favorite examples of evil:
“The 2004 Indonesian tsunami that killed a quarter of a million people…40,000 people who starve every single day in the world. Those who don’t die suffer extensively from hunger pains and malnutrition all of their short lives…the Titanic…leukemia…schizophrenia and dementia…pandemics which have destroyed whole populations of people. Lethal parasites kill one human being every ten seconds. 100 million people were slaughtered in the last century due to genocides, and wars. Well over 100 million animals are slaughtered every year for American consumption alone, while animals viciously prey on each other.”
http://adebateontheproblemofevil.blogspot.com/2007/01/extent-of-suffering-in-our-world-makes.html
1.One fundamental consideration is that, according to consequentialism, a particular phenomenon doesn’t have to be good in and of itself to be justified. It could be evil, considered in isolation. What makes the existence of the phenomenon justifiable is that it is either instrumental to some greater good or common good, or else the possibility of this phenomenon is contingent on general conditions which make other phenomenon possible that are instrumental to a greater good or common good.
2. A particular pain may be evil, but a capacity for pain is a survival advantage.
In addition, the capacity for pain is what makes possible a capacity for pleasure.
3. Parasitism, predation, starvation, illness, aging, and death are Mother Nature’s method of population control. Overpopulation would destroy the ecological balance.
4.Ships can sink due to the existence of water, gravity, icebergs, &c. But water, gravity, and icebergs are not, themselves, natural evils.
5.Human beings can drown because human beings are natural land animals. But to be a natural land animal is not a natural evil. And there are benefits to being a land animal.
6.Even though war and genocide are moral evils, they are made possible by abilities which are not naturally evil. For example, man’s capacity to make tools.
7.A tsunami may be a natural evil, but it is made possible by things like earthquakes which function as a natural safety value to release and equalize pressure points around the globe.
8.Likewise, a tsunami is also made possible by the existence of oceans. But the ocean is not a natural evil. Indeed, it’s necessary to life on earth.
I could go into more detail, but you get the general picture.
You may find my analysis of moral and natural evil to be rather callous. But that’s because many people find utilitarianism to be rather callous. Yet I’m simply measuring Loftus’ examples of evil by his own utilitarian yardstick.
9.I’d add that there is a teleological dimension to the Christian philosophy of history.
10.I’d also add that teleology is not the only consideration in Christian ethics or Christian theology. Life in a fallen world leaves us liable to various tragedies and calamities.
Yet there are compensatory values, for the Fall is a prerequisite of redemption, which represents a second-order good unobtainable apart from the Fall.
Monday, January 29, 2007
Catholicity's father-fixation
PAUL OWEN SAID:
The fact of the matter is that you are a middle-aged seminary student who does not yet know enough to recognize how little he knows. Why don't you at least finish your seminary degree before acting like you are some sort of authority in NT studies? Speaking as a published scholar in the field (and yes, I know I'll catch endless abuse for citing my credentials when the occasion calls for it), who has a terminal degree in New Testament studies, I can tell you, you most plainly are not any kind of authority in these issues.
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2007/01/church-whole-church-and-nothing-but.html
This is one of these unintentionally revealing ad hominem attacks that discloses more about the critic than it does about the target.
And it’s worth addressing because it’s symptomatic of a larger pathology and pathological ecclesiology.
I, of course, have never asked my readers to accept what I say on my own authority. Rather, I cite other scholars. And I cite them for their arguments.
Credentials can be useful, although Owen is a paradigm example of someone well-credentialed, but intellectually unstable.
Conversely, a man like Kenneth Kitchen has no “terminal degree,” but is a far more distinguished scholar than Owen will ever be.
Owen’s the classic company man—who’s fanatically loyal to whatever name-brand he happens to be selling at the time, and transfers his fanatical allegiance from one company to another whenever he changes employers. When he’s selling a Ford, a Ford is the greatest car in the world. When he’s selling a Chrysler, Chrysler is the greatest. When he’s selling a Chevrolet, GM is the greatest. And so it goes—Ford, Chrysler, Chevrolet, Audi, Honda…
Or, to drop the metaphor:
For the record, I grew up in the LDS Church, and had a “born again” experience at the age of 15…From that point on, during the years 1986-1997 I mostly attended Pentecostal churches, ranging from Assemblies of God, to Foursquare Gospel, to Calvary Chapel. During the years 1992-1997, I grew increasingly sympathetic to Calvinism...In the year 1997, while living in Scotland, I began attending a Free Church of Scotland congregation, and gradually was won over to Reformed covenantal theology and infant baptism, though I was never entirely convinced of Presbyterian church government…I was a member of several Presbyterian congregations during the years 1997-2005. During the years 2003-2005, I undertook a fresh look at the Scriptures and much of the literature and confessions of the Reformation and post-Reformation periods. This period of reflection led to my decision to be confirmed in the Anglican church in 2005.
http://www.reformedcatholicism.com/?p=895
Why is Owen so fixated on authority? Because he suffers from a father-complex.
And that’s why Evangelicals cross the Tiber or the Bosporus.
An authoritative Bible isn’t enough for them, so that they look to an authoritative church, which they personify, as their father-figure.
Indeed, this is explicit in Catholicism. A priest is a “Father,” while the Pope is the “Holy Father.”
Catholicity is a quest for Big Daddy.
The father-complex can take different forms.
There’s the good boy and the bad boy. The dutiful, adoring son and the resentful, rebellions son.
Owen represents the good boy. Lives for his father’s approval. To make the old man proud.
And Owen runs through one father-figure after another, searching for the perfect father. Naturally, no one quite measures up.
Owen grew up in a paternalistic cult, and he currently belongs to a paternalistic sect.
There are grown men who remain boys on the inside. They live their entire lives in their father’s shadowy presence. Even after he’s long gone. They never felt they were able to please him. And his absence in death will cast as long a shadow as his living presence.
Incidentally, this points us to a central truth of Christian theology, but it’s misdirected when it’s redirected to the Church.
Then there’s the bad boy. The rebellious son.
Enloe represents the bad boy. The underlying pathology is the same, but the reaction is different. Enloe has “authority issues,” as they say.
He projects his authority-issues onto father-figures like Svendsen and White. In his paranoia, they represent the stock character of the evil stepfather in fairy tales of the Brother Grimm variety. You know the type. Beats the kid with a broomstick and feeds him cold gruel.
At one level, it’s odd that Enloe is involved with Reformed Catholicism and the Federal Vision. Wouldn’t this rub against his anti-authoritarian streak?
Ah, but that’s a way of getting back at the evil step dad. A way to spite the old man. Stick it to him!
For immature males, Dad is either godlike or demonic. No reasonable mean. Pure good or pure evil. Either worship him or desecrate his name.
And this is where the extremes meet. If you begin with an illusion, then that queues you for disillusionment. Adoration turns to loathing if the object of your adoration lets you down. Of course, it only lets you down because you were indulging in a false expectation.
And this brings us to another variant of the bad boy. And that’s the militant atheist. This often takes the form of the apostate.
Paradoxically, the anti-clerical apostate is the flip side of the high churchman. They are obverse sides of the same coin.
These are simply differing adaptive strategies in response to the same underlying, psychological malformation.
And just as almost every heresy is a half-truth, the appeal of catholicity lies in its insidious appeal to a heretical half-truth.
For God has, indeed, implanted a paternal ideal in the human heart. And when we’re young, our human fathers, for better or worse, play the proxy.
Men who mature spiritually and emotionally learn to transfer their ideal from their human fathers to God the Father.
This transition also liberates a son so that he can evolve a realistic
relationship with his human father. He no longer idolizes the old man or holds him to a superhuman standard of perfection—an expectation which, sooner or later, Dad is bound to disappoint.
But men who suffer from arrested development either search for surrogate father-figures or take it out on surrogate father-figures.
The fact of the matter is that you are a middle-aged seminary student who does not yet know enough to recognize how little he knows. Why don't you at least finish your seminary degree before acting like you are some sort of authority in NT studies? Speaking as a published scholar in the field (and yes, I know I'll catch endless abuse for citing my credentials when the occasion calls for it), who has a terminal degree in New Testament studies, I can tell you, you most plainly are not any kind of authority in these issues.
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2007/01/church-whole-church-and-nothing-but.html
This is one of these unintentionally revealing ad hominem attacks that discloses more about the critic than it does about the target.
And it’s worth addressing because it’s symptomatic of a larger pathology and pathological ecclesiology.
I, of course, have never asked my readers to accept what I say on my own authority. Rather, I cite other scholars. And I cite them for their arguments.
Credentials can be useful, although Owen is a paradigm example of someone well-credentialed, but intellectually unstable.
Conversely, a man like Kenneth Kitchen has no “terminal degree,” but is a far more distinguished scholar than Owen will ever be.
Owen’s the classic company man—who’s fanatically loyal to whatever name-brand he happens to be selling at the time, and transfers his fanatical allegiance from one company to another whenever he changes employers. When he’s selling a Ford, a Ford is the greatest car in the world. When he’s selling a Chrysler, Chrysler is the greatest. When he’s selling a Chevrolet, GM is the greatest. And so it goes—Ford, Chrysler, Chevrolet, Audi, Honda…
Or, to drop the metaphor:
For the record, I grew up in the LDS Church, and had a “born again” experience at the age of 15…From that point on, during the years 1986-1997 I mostly attended Pentecostal churches, ranging from Assemblies of God, to Foursquare Gospel, to Calvary Chapel. During the years 1992-1997, I grew increasingly sympathetic to Calvinism...In the year 1997, while living in Scotland, I began attending a Free Church of Scotland congregation, and gradually was won over to Reformed covenantal theology and infant baptism, though I was never entirely convinced of Presbyterian church government…I was a member of several Presbyterian congregations during the years 1997-2005. During the years 2003-2005, I undertook a fresh look at the Scriptures and much of the literature and confessions of the Reformation and post-Reformation periods. This period of reflection led to my decision to be confirmed in the Anglican church in 2005.
http://www.reformedcatholicism.com/?p=895
Why is Owen so fixated on authority? Because he suffers from a father-complex.
And that’s why Evangelicals cross the Tiber or the Bosporus.
An authoritative Bible isn’t enough for them, so that they look to an authoritative church, which they personify, as their father-figure.
Indeed, this is explicit in Catholicism. A priest is a “Father,” while the Pope is the “Holy Father.”
Catholicity is a quest for Big Daddy.
The father-complex can take different forms.
There’s the good boy and the bad boy. The dutiful, adoring son and the resentful, rebellions son.
Owen represents the good boy. Lives for his father’s approval. To make the old man proud.
And Owen runs through one father-figure after another, searching for the perfect father. Naturally, no one quite measures up.
Owen grew up in a paternalistic cult, and he currently belongs to a paternalistic sect.
There are grown men who remain boys on the inside. They live their entire lives in their father’s shadowy presence. Even after he’s long gone. They never felt they were able to please him. And his absence in death will cast as long a shadow as his living presence.
Incidentally, this points us to a central truth of Christian theology, but it’s misdirected when it’s redirected to the Church.
Then there’s the bad boy. The rebellious son.
Enloe represents the bad boy. The underlying pathology is the same, but the reaction is different. Enloe has “authority issues,” as they say.
He projects his authority-issues onto father-figures like Svendsen and White. In his paranoia, they represent the stock character of the evil stepfather in fairy tales of the Brother Grimm variety. You know the type. Beats the kid with a broomstick and feeds him cold gruel.
At one level, it’s odd that Enloe is involved with Reformed Catholicism and the Federal Vision. Wouldn’t this rub against his anti-authoritarian streak?
Ah, but that’s a way of getting back at the evil step dad. A way to spite the old man. Stick it to him!
For immature males, Dad is either godlike or demonic. No reasonable mean. Pure good or pure evil. Either worship him or desecrate his name.
And this is where the extremes meet. If you begin with an illusion, then that queues you for disillusionment. Adoration turns to loathing if the object of your adoration lets you down. Of course, it only lets you down because you were indulging in a false expectation.
And this brings us to another variant of the bad boy. And that’s the militant atheist. This often takes the form of the apostate.
Paradoxically, the anti-clerical apostate is the flip side of the high churchman. They are obverse sides of the same coin.
These are simply differing adaptive strategies in response to the same underlying, psychological malformation.
And just as almost every heresy is a half-truth, the appeal of catholicity lies in its insidious appeal to a heretical half-truth.
For God has, indeed, implanted a paternal ideal in the human heart. And when we’re young, our human fathers, for better or worse, play the proxy.
Men who mature spiritually and emotionally learn to transfer their ideal from their human fathers to God the Father.
This transition also liberates a son so that he can evolve a realistic
relationship with his human father. He no longer idolizes the old man or holds him to a superhuman standard of perfection—an expectation which, sooner or later, Dad is bound to disappoint.
But men who suffer from arrested development either search for surrogate father-figures or take it out on surrogate father-figures.
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