Reply to the Anti-Calvinists

Victor Reppert is continuing his muddled critique of Calvinism over at DI. I'll offer some muddled responses. His comments will be in red.

"First, while I admit that Scripture can correct my conception of goodness, accepting reprobation would, on my view, not be a correction, but an out and out reversal, of what goodness seems to me to be. If Hitler was wrong to send people to Auschwitz, could it be OK for God to send people to an everlasting Auschwitz, when he could have chosen eternal bliss for them?"

i) And can Scripture "reverse" some particular conception of goodness? I don't see why not. Some may think that it is never good in any circumstance to make an innocent man pay for the sins of the guilty. In coming to the Bible, and being asked to accept what Jesus did on behalf of sinners, this man could reply: "That requires me to reverse my conception of goodness." Or, say one is a humanist. Man is the highest good. Since Reppert admits that God is the highest good, then he presents the humanists with a concept of goodness that is the reverse (outright denial, even) of the humanists. So, I don't see the problem Victor has here.

ii) Notice the philosopher's version of an ace up the sleeve. The philosopher's get out of jail free card. It is: The Appeal to Intuition (and this intuition is not like our intuition that modus ponens is correct, either. Not even close to that universally recognized). Now, the secret to offering this particular response to a position is that you much pooch our your lips, shake your head back and forth and say, "I just don't have that intuition."

iii) Reppert makes a disanalogy between Hitler and God. One relevant detail left out is that God is sending criminals to their just deserts.

iv) Reppert is more confused why God who would send sinners to hell, I'm more confused at why the Holy One of Israel, the Fear of Isaac, would save anyone. The Calvinist's high view of God is matched by Reppert's low view of sin.

v) If Reppert believes in hell, then he must answer why God would instantiate any person who chooses to go to hell when he could have saved them the pain and everlasting punishment by not creating them. If he believes all go to heaven, and also all have libertarian freedom, he must answer how God can guarantee this on a libertarian model.

vi) Was it impossible for God to make a world where everyone freely (in a libertarian way) did what was right? If not: (a) what happens in heaven?, (b) if Plantinga's transworld depravity is appealed to, what about Jesus' creaturely essence not being depraved?. If so, why this world? If for a greater good defense, why can't the Calvinist appeal to this?

"Second, it’s the very influence of Scripture on my character that makes Calvinism a problem. Scripture teaches that I should love my neighbor as myself and undermines the idea, in the parable of the Good Samaritan, that there are people outside the pale of being my neighbor. If I think about the people whom I come the closest to loving as I do myself, I don’t find that there are two good options, either an eternal bliss in relation to God, or eternal justified punishment forever and ever separated from God. The more I love someone, the less acceptable the second option is."

i) This is poor reasoning. It begs the question. If the sinner is a criminal worthy of punishment, then what does "loving your neighbor" have to do with anything? (Indeed, who says we are God's neighbor, anyway? Someone's massively confusing the Creator/creature distinction.) Does Reppert protest the sending away of child molesters? Of punishing them for their crimes? Either he does not love them (and undercuts his argument), or there is no problem with him loving his neighbor and punishing them.

ii) Love of neighbor is not the same kind of love as salvific or electing love (see D.A. Carson's The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God for some relevant distinctions). Reppert is making a category mistake with this argument from love of neighbor.

iii) Apropos (ii), love of neighbor doesn't mean I can't kill someone trying to kill my wife. Is this man, who is trying to kill my wife, outside the pale of neighbor? Why should God alloow those in heaven who (a) hate him?, (b) hate his followers?, and (c) don't want to be there. Reppert's apologetic inspiration, C.S. Lewis, once said: "There are two kinds of people in the end. The ones who say to God "Thy will be done", and the ones to whom God will say, "thy will be done."

iv) As a matter of fact, there are people outside the pale of neighbor. Those trying to do you harm, for instance. Does Reppert think he should help those trying to beat and rob him like like the man who fell into the hands of the robbers in Luke 10?

v) Reppert acts as if every law Reppert is commanded to obey, God is likewise obliged. This logically leads to Mormonism, though. Does God need to honor his father (and mother!)? How about theft? If God owns everything, how can he steal what is his? We are commaded to pray, does God pray to himself.

"Finally, the summum bonum that God pursues in saving and damning is supposed to be his own glory. How in the world does damning someone eternally glorify God. How does taking voices out of the heavenly choir glorify God? Sending people to hell by a decree before the foundation of the world deprives God of glory."

i) I am trying to make a metaphysical point, Reppert is acting as if epistemic hindrances have something to do with that. Say I don’t know, what of interest follows? That God does not in fact gain glory from his cosmic display of justice? Hardly. What follows is the uninteresting claim that Paul Manata doesn't know how God gains glory.

ii) It's not as if those who go to hell did not commit acts of sin themselves. That God decreed it is not a problem to me. Now, allow me to pooch my lips out, shake my head from side to side, and say to Reppert: I just don't have these intuitions.

iii) Reppert is asking questions and then asserting. The above isn't an argument. He wouldn't accept it if someone simply asserted: "Neurons do all the work attributed to the mind."

iv) How does allowing unrepentant criminals into heaven add to the glory of God? Does Reppert think God forces people to repent? Perhaps Reppert think that after some time in hell, people will gladly repent. In this reppert demonstrates his low view of sin. The sinners will gnash their teeth against God in hell. Their pride will be maximalized. Their hatred intensified. God's goodness villainized. God and his people stigmatized. This compounds their crime. Begets more judgment. How does allowing these people into heaven add to God's glory?

v) Reppert begins his theology with his intuitions, the Calvinist begins with Scripture. Reppert can't show his views in Scripture. Can Reppert exegete any of his views from Scripture? How about libertarian freedom? Can Reppert exegete universalism from Scripture? I think not. So, his argument is armchair philosophical speculation.

"Paul Manata does not think that Calvinism relies on theological voluntarism, and does therefore think that God’s goodness, even on a Calvinistic view, is in some way commensurable with goodness as human beings ordinarily understand it."

i) I think I said that the good God does is really and objectively good. Since it is, Reppert would have to, if he were thinking appropriately, admit the actual goodness of God's actions.

ii) And, it's no big mystery that there is a position on God-talk called "analogy." And it's not just the Calvinist who uses it. A dog is faithful to his master as a man is faithful to his wife in an analogous way. But the Creator/creature distinction comes into play here. Though God is truly good, it's not an univocal good with man's goodness. Man isn't, for instance, infinitely good.

Michael Sudduth writes,

"The theological pessimist emphasizes the fact that God is unlike anything in the world. But what does this mean? Is God not completely like everything in the world of human experience? Or he is completely unlike everything in the world of human experience? If God is not completely like everything in the world of human experience, then God does share all properties or characteristics with anything else. But if God is completely unlike everything in the world of human experience, then God does not share any properties or characteristics with anything else. It is certainly true that God does not share all properties with anything else, but it's hard to see how God could not share any properties with anything else. If God had nothing in common with anything else, God would have at least one thing in common with everything else, namely the property of "having nothing in common" (as this would be a property of both God and everything else)."

"He claims Sudduth blows the idea that Calvin is a theological voluntarist. He quotes a passage with suggests otherwise, but I wonder how he would interpret the following statement form the Institutes

The will of God is the highest rule of justice, so that what He wills must be considered just…for this very reason, because he wills it. (Institutes, vol ii, chap 3, trans. John Allen. Philadephia: Presbyterian Board of Christian Education, p. 23) quoted in John Beversluis’ C. S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion p. 230.

Now, as I see it not much turns on whether Calvin was a voluntarist (or, to use Beversluis’ terminology, and Ockhamist) or not. I suspect that a textual case could be made on both sides of the issue."

i) Here Reppert loses some respect. If he's going to "interact" with an article, and try to "rebut" one of my points, he can at least read the article he's "rebutting." Here's what I mean. It just so happens, unfortunately for Reppert, that Sudduth deals with this exact quote from the institutes! Starting with II. Calvin’s Rejection of the Distinction and reading down will be enough to show Reppert’s position in error. Here's the link to Sudduth.

ii) Respected Calvinist philosopher, Paul Helm, also interacts with this exact quote. Helm points out that, in the same section Reppert mines from Beversluis, Calvin goes on to say:

We do not advocate the fiction of “absolute might”: because this is profane, it ought rightly to be hateful to us. We fancy no lawless God who is a law unto himself…But we deny that he is liable to render an account; we also deny that we are competent judges to pronounce judgment in this cause according to our own understanding’. (Inst. III.23.2)

"I am more interested in Manata’s suggesting that, for the most part, you can use many of the same defensive responses to the problem of evil if you are a Calvinist. Of course you can’t use the free will defense, but there are other considerations used by people like Plantinga, Alston, Adams, etc, that a Calvinst can still use."

i) Can Reppert use the free will defense? How does that work for heaven?

ii) Is Reppert thinking of Plantinga's free will defense? That's been shown to be insufficient for defending Christian theism (sec. 1.3).

"In many cases, we find that some things that seem to be gratuitously evil turn out to have good sides we couldn’t see. The wicked act of selling Joseph to the slavers resulted, after a long chain of events, in Jacob’s family being able to settle in Egypt and to avoid the ill effects of the famine."

i) It's more than that. It's that we might not see that things "turn out" for good, and is possible that we might never understand, given our creatureliness and the magnitude of God’s plan. I quote Welty at length,

But now let us suppose, again for the sake of argument, that Wykstra's application of CORNEA is an utter failure, an overly bold and therefore indefensible amendment to the Principle of Credulity. What of the weaker hypothesis that Alston proposes in its place? Rather than "proceeding on the basis of any such unrestricted epistemological principle," Alston says the more proper response

focuses on the peculiar difficulties we encounter in attempting to provide adequate support for a certain very ambitious negative existential claim, viz., that there is (can be) no sufficient divine reason for permitting a certain case of suffering, E. I will be appealing to the difficulties of defending a claim of this particular kind, rather than to more generalized human cognitive weaknesses (102).

That is, Alston (unlike Wykstra) is willing to initially grant the atheist his 'it appears' claims. But, Alston argues, a moment's reflection on the part of the atheist will rob premise (1) of Rowe's argument of any rational support.[16] The atheist is perhaps initially entitled to say, "it appears that God could not have a morally compelling reason for permitting this evil." But when he is led to reflect upon, more particularly, his cognitive limitations vis-à-vis the complexity of God's plan, to reflect upon his inability to determine whether or not an omniscient God could have a sufficient reason for permitting this evil, he should realise that this very cognitive limitation is a reason that tells against the initial 'appears' claim. The common-sense qualification Swinburne makes to the Principle of Credulity has been fulfilled in the course of this very exercise.

Swinburne would disagree; he alleges that even if Alston is right that our moral and logical intuitions may be in error when examining an instance of evil, this is a worthless point, for Alston has still given us no "reason to suppose that our error is more likely to lie in the one direction rather than in the other" (1998, 28). That is, if Alston's argument is to be consistent, it must call into question all of our moral and logical intuitions. We need "positive argument for supposing that certain appearances rather than others are misleading" (1998, 28).

Three replies are in order here.

3.2.2.1 Alston Defines the Limits

First, this criticism overlooks the explicit restriction Alston places upon his scepticism, as well as his rationale for that restriction. The heart of Alston's argument is that

the critic is engaged in attempting to support a particularly difficult claim, a claim that there isn't something in a certain territory, while having a very sketchy idea of what is in that territory, and having no sufficient basis for an estimate of how much of the territory falls outside his knowledge. This is very different from our normal situation in which we are forming judgments and drawing conclusions about matters concerning which we antecedently know quite a lot, and the boundaries and parameters of which we have pretty well settled (120)... [The point] is that the judgments required by the inductive argument from evil are of a very special and enormously ambitious type and that our cognitive capacities that serve us well in more limited tasks are not equal to this one" (124 fn. 36) (my italics).

Alston is zealous to maintain this explicit restriction upon his scepticism. Thus,

having carefully examined my desk, I can infer 'Jones's letter is not on my desk.' But being ignorant of quantum mechanics, I cannot infer 'this treatise on quantum mechanics is well done' from 'so far as I can tell, this treatise on quantum mechanics is well done' (102).

If the Principle of Credulity cannot be fitted to obvious counterexamples like the above, then the Principle as it stands has no authority with respect to the judgements that are relevant to the evidential argument from evil, since these counterexamples form a precise parallel to those judgements. Even as ignorance of the complexities of quantum mechanics disqualifies me from passing judgement on how well done is a treatise on the subject, so ignorance of the complexities of God's plan disqualifies human beings (in their present cognitive condition) from passing judgement on how well done is a world God has made.

3.2.2.2 Alston Appeals to Discontinuity

Second, this criticism overlooks the fact that Alston's argument appeals to a clear principle of discontinuity between our knowledge of human affairs and our knowledge of God's affairs, to a discontinuity between our ability to conceptualise possibilities for sufficient reasons and God's ability to conceptualise them. Thus Alston asks his readers to

remember that our topic is not the possibilities for future human apprehensions, but rather what an omniscient being can grasp of modes of value and the condition of their realization. Surely it is eminently possible that there are real possibilities for the latter that exceed anything we can anticipate, or even conceptualize. It would be exceedingly strange if an omniscient being did not immeasurably exceed our grasp of such matters (109, my italics).

Such an appeal to discontinuity is familiar to those conversant with Joseph Butler's apologetic strategy in The Analogy of Religion Natural and Revealed to the Constitution and Course of Nature (1736). From the title alone it might be inferred that Butler only appealed to observed continuities between religious claims and the 'constitution and course of nature,' but this is not the case. While Butler does make great use of reasoning about unknown possibilities from the known constitution and course of nature, he recognises (and, like Alston, even exploits to his advantage) the limitations of this method of reasoning.

Thus, Butler argues for human immortality by pointing out that although we have in our lifetime undergone much change, we have still survived. Therefore, it is likely that we will survive death. This is Butler employing the principle of continuity. But, Butler also points out that we do not know enough about death to say (with the materialist) that it involves a loss of our present powers. This is Butler employing the principle of discontinuity. (For both of these points, see "Of a Future Life, " in ch. 1 of the Analogy.)

We can see Wykstra's emendation to the Principle of Credulity, and Alston's argument generally, as being in the spirit of Butler's appeal to discontinuity. There are areas concerning which human beings (in their present cognitive condition) are not qualified to speculate. If this is true for some of us with respect to human endeavours like quantum mechanics; why is it not all the more true for all of us with respect to divine endeavours?

As one commentator has expressed Butler's strategy:

Analogy tries to show that special revelation is analogous to natural revelation. Disanalogy, or the argument from ignorance, tries to show that the unlikeness of the supernatural invalidates unbelieving objections: the unbeliever does not know enough to object to scriptural teaching. This too is, in Butler's estimation, a practical kind of argument, like those by which we make decisions in everyday life. He presses the non-Christian to be consistent: admit in the religious debate the same continuities and discontinuities that you freely recognize elsewhere. When you do that, he tells the inquirer, you will see that special revelation has the same cogency that you accept in natural revelation. And if there are problems in special revelation, they are no greater than the problems of natural revelation. Since you are able to bear with the latter, you should be able equally to bear with the former.[17]

3.2.2.3 Alston Provides 'Positive Argument'

Third, I take Alston as having, in any case, fulfilled Swinburne's requirement; he has given "positive argument for supposing that certain appearances rather than others are misleading" (Swinburne, 1998, 28). Namely, those 'appearances' into which the concept of God enters as part of its description are misleading, to the extent that we have not reflected upon the relationship between the cognitive abilities of that God, and our own cognitive limitations. We can interpret Alston as holding that 'it appears that p' (where p is 'God could not have a morally compelling reason for permitting this evil') would be misleading, if the aspect of 'God' being considered is merely that he is a perfectly good being. But if, in addition to his perfect goodness, his perfect wisdom and power are equally considered - that is, if it is truly the concept of God (and not a scaled-down substitute) which enters into the content of p in 'it appears that p' - then cause for scepticism as to the rational acceptability of p is due to enter in. It was the burden of Alston's article to argue this point at length. He initially concedes to the atheist his 'it appears that p' only because he is convinced that further reflection on the content of p will make p well-nigh indefensible.

To formalise a bit,[18] if we take the following definitions:

h = 'God could not have a morally compelling reason for permitting this evil'

e = 'it seems to me that God could not have a morally compelling reason for permitting this evil'

k = irrelevant background knowledge

c = considerations of our human cognitive condition vis-à-vis God's omniscience and omnipotence

Then I am convinced that Alston's argument is meant to show that, even if it is a fact of human psychology that P(h/e.k)> 1/2, what is important with respect to the evidential argument from evil is that Alston's considerations lead to P(h/e.k.c)W 1/2.

"So if something appears evil, it may not be because

1) We don’t see all the causes and effects that will result for this so-called evil.
2) We don’t see the long-term consequences of the evil.
3) We don’t see the eternal consequences of the evil.
4) We don’t see the possible bad consequences of eliminating the evil."

i) Given God's infinity, he divine plan, the massive gap between his knowledge and ours, possibly hundreds of various theodicies, the promise of his trustworthy word that "the judge of the earth shall do right," and that he has a morally sufficient reason for what he does, and that he is working all thing together for the good of those who love him, Reppert’s 4 little points may safely be said to be a tad bit underwhelming. I quote Helm, again:

God may have a reason and yet that reason not be available to us. Perhaps this is true of all the particular things that God ordains. Why was Esau the twin of Jacob and not, say, Izzy (or Lizzy)? Or why were there not triplets, Jacob, Esau and Izzy? It may seem arbitrary of God to bring into existence these two, and not some other two, or some three. We may presume that Calvin might say there is a reason for this, but that the reason has not been disclosed to us. There are multitudes of reasons for multitudes of states of affairs, perhaps none of which we can give the reason for. Maybe the reason for this irritating fact is that the will of God is not concerned with separately-identifiable situations, but with whole ensembles, with worlds. That is, maybe we ought to be asking not, why not Izzy? But, Why a world in which there is no Izzy? However, we find, naturally enough, that whether we ask ‘Why not a world with Izzy?’ we do not have a reason for that, though we have fewer questions to ask. Perhaps the reason can be given, and appreciated, only when the world is over, when this passing world is done.

ii) Reppert is begging the question against the model. Recall Alston:

remember that our topic is not the possibilities for future human
apprehensions, but rather what an omniscient being can grasp of modes of value
and the condition of their realization. Surely it is eminently possible that
there are real possibilities for the latter that exceed anything we can
anticipate, or even conceptualize. It would be exceedingly strange if an
omniscient being did not immeasurably exceed our grasp of such matters"
(emphasis added).

"Now if someone went to hell as a result of divine decree who could have been saved, and I say that isn’t something a good God could permit, which one of these mistakes could I be making? It’s a final result for someone’s soul. We see all the causes and effects, at least so far is this particular life is concerned. The long-term consequences are known, even the eternal consequences are known, and the alternative possibility of God’s saving that person is also known. So my error can’t be traced to any of these four sources. So where did I go wrong if I thought this would be wrong for God to do, but it really isn’t? It must be that my conception of goodness is dead wrong. That’s all that’s left."

i) I proved above (my first (i)) that it is many times that our conception of "good" is "dead wrong." This doesn't imply that metaphysical conclusion that God's actions are not good.

ii) Reppert equivocates. he could have been saved only by another decree. Given the decree, he could not be saved.

iii) How does Victor know that we see all the causes and effects? I don’t see how he can say that, at all. And, his admission that "at least in this life" is perhaps more telling than he admits. If he doesn’t know all, most, many, some, hardly any, of all the causes and effects, how is he in a position to make this judgment, at all? Especially when the Calvinist trusts God at his word, the testimony of another person, a person who cannot lie, that he will do good, right, just.

iv) How are the long term consequences known? We're talking eternity here. Victor thinks that all that is taken into account is that we know "He is in hell for eternity." How in the world does he know that that is the only long term consequence?

v) Victor's error can most certainly be traced to those four sources, and the multitude of other sources involved in a divine plan. Indeed, look at the finding of science. The detailed plans of how our universe is fine tuned. The amazing DNA program we have. Most learned scientists admit we only know the tip of the ice berg here! Is it a little presumptuous for victor to think that he has the majority of the picture in an admittedly more involved, detailed, and mysterious part of God's plan for all things? I refer to Paul Helm once again:

One can think up other sorts of considerations why the reasons are presently hidden, reasons to do with prudence, or appropriateness, or the fact that it is none of our business, or otherwise not in our interests to know them. In modern society there is the problem of balancing the disclosing of information with the right to privacy. In respect of the reasons for the election of one and the reprobation of another Calvin asserts God’s right to privacy, as Paul does in Romans 11.33f. The sources of election etc. are ‘secret’, as Calvin often says.

Perhaps, as Jesus once said of his own disciples, there are reasons that we presently cannot bear. Perhaps because we would necessarily misconstrue these reasons, or make a bad use of them. In any case why, if God has a reason for doing X or not doing it, do we have an overriding entitlement to know what that reason is? As Alvin Plantinga asked, in a rather different context, Why should we be the first to know? Different attitudes to this question mark deep religious differences.

vi) I am not convinced by Reppert's arguments in the slightest. He may dislike Calvinism all he wants, disagree with it, etc., but I would at least appreciate his admission that on this argument, he doesn't have the Calvinist where he thinks he has him. I trust Reppert can be intellectually honest here. Admitting my points doesn't mean he needs to become a Calvinist. It will just show that he can treat his opponent charitably, recognizing what the good vs. the bad arguments against a position are. Surely Reppert doesn’t think that every single argument he ever offers against the Calvinist is spot on, does he? That’s a pretty good record, especially for someone who admits he’s not an expert in theology, historical theology, Calvinism, or Calvin.

(HT James Anderson for Helm's paper)

Okay, I'm Officially Over It

This is not the Reformed View

Really?

Turretinfan responds so very well.

These particular words are filled with irony:

Second, James White is so fixated in his theology and ministry with the sovereignty of God that he cannot speak with any kind of substand about God’s will, desire, love, or grace about anything other than God’s sovereignty, decree, and predestinating purpose

1. That's what the debate actually was about.

2. Dr. White has, on more than one occasion, as have I, affirmed the "Free Offer."

3. Do you, sir, reserve this condemnation only for those of us who hold to the Penal or Pecuniary views of the atonement, or do you also feel the same way about those who post on nothing but God's will, love, or grace - eg. "common grace" and the free offer. In case you haven't looked about, but some of the major internet proponents of your view of the atonement have not lifted a finger on their blogs in quite some time - if ever - to help the rest of us as we interact with the Romanist, the Orthodox, the Atheist, the Mormon, the Arian, the Muslim, and so on. Isn't it well past time for them to "put up or shut up?" If they really believed what they say they believed, then they should demonstrate it.

Indeed one cannot help but notice that one side of this particular debate is generally the one doing that work - and it's not yours. Fortunately, there are exceptions. Indeed, there are exceptions on both sides, but you know, from what I've seen, the exceptions are not your "ring leaders."

4. In fact, the real irony here is that I've seen your cadre work hard, very hard, to systematically rewrite systematic theology to suit your own ends. I'm particularly disturbed by the misuse of Charles Hodge, beginning @ the Puritanboard some time ago and spilling over into the blogosphere later. Take a gander at his commentary on the pertinent texts of Romans and 1 Corinthians, and he by no means holds to your view. While you all play historical theology, the rest of us are interacting with the very people to whom you say we should maintain the "free offer."

No more than you should have some Protestant Reformed theologian, who denies the free offer of the Gospel, and who denies common grace, to be the poster-child for being a Calvinist should you have James White out in the public eye representing himself and his lop-sided Calvinism as true and proper Calvinism.

This criticism cuts both ways, for the undercurrent that runs through many of the posts I've seen from your crowd is that your view is "the" true and proper view and no other, and you'll quote many a theologian in your support, even if it's out of context. Indeed, I've been specifically told by one of you, who shall remain nameless, just to make you wonder, that there has been a good old fashioned conspiratorial coverup of what the true and proper view is. This same person even told me privately that to say "the command impels the gospel" or "we should evangelize indiscriminately because we don't know who the elect are" is simply not enough! Rather, we have to protect God's very honor, and the way to do this was by a QuasiAmyraldian view of the atonement.

a. That's a marvelous demonstration of an ethical, not an exegetical argument.
b. It's also borderline heresy. God's command alone is not enough?!

I'm sorry, but until you all take care of some glaring problems emanating from your side of the aisle, you lose the credibility to lob "you're all a bunch of big meanies" at us, and you undermine what you say you believe about the atonement by allowing your ring leaders on the internet to post on nothing but those issues while getting their knickers in a twist when we confront the obvious hypocrisy in doing so to the exclusion of all else while those of us on the receiving end of their posts are the ones actually interacting with the unregenerate - while they fail to do so themselves.

So, how about it? Will the QuasiAmyraldians about whom I am writing take some time to actually interact with Atheists, pagans, etc., or will they get red in the face and whine about it? Here's an idea: Given your obvious talents for researching historical theology, why don't you spend some time interacting with the perpetual misuse and abuse of the Ancient Church Fathers by our Roman Catholic friends? Given your obvious belief in the "free offer" craft some responses to the endless bile spewed from the depths of the Debunking Christianity blog. If you decide to whine about a public post about your behavior, then don't expect it to be taken seriously, for, if you really believed in the "free offer" you'd roll up your sleeves and do some internet apologetics and evangelism with the rest of us. Until then, don't expect me and a bunch of others to take you seriously and to continue to roll our eyes.

Paul Seely

(Posted on behalf of Steve Hays.)

Over at Green Baggins, Paul Seely has come to the defense of Peter Enns.¹ He's posted several related comments, so I'll rearrange the material by topic:

To help one arrive at an answer to my question regarding accommodation, it may help to look at the question from a slightly different perspective via the issue of “phenomenal language.” Scripture often speaks of the sun “rising,” and “going down.” Since people in biblical times believed the sun was literally moving, when a biblical author made a statement of this nature, he thought he was saying that the sun was literally rising and literally going down. In other words, he would have been surprised and unwilling to agree that he was just using phenomenal language, just speaking about appearances.

If you will read those papers, even though I did not specifically address the movement of the sun, you will find a plethora of evidence from both ancient literature and anthropology that Peoples in OT times, including the educated, did not distinguish between the appearance of the universe and its factual nature. That is, they believed that the appearance was the reality. The earth looks flat, so they thought it is flat. The sky (especially at night) looks like a solid dome, so they thought it is a solid dome. The sea at the horizon looks circular, so they thought the sea must surround the earth. Mutatis mutandis, the sun looks like it is moving, so it is moving. In addition to this, because the earth is fixed, a revolving earth is excluded. And because the earth is flat even if you forced the concept of revolving upon it, there would never be any nighttime unless the sun moved. Given the flat earth and the nighttime, the sun has to literally move. Given all of the evidence I cited in my papers (and more) the burden of proof falls on anyone supposing the Israelites, or even Moses, distinguished the appearance of the sun's movement from the reality.

To summarize Seely's contention:

i) The ancients didn't distinguish between appearance and reality.

ii) As a consequence of (i), they thought the earth was flat, the sky was a solid dome, the sea surrounded the earth, the earth was immobile, and the sun was mobile.

By way of response:

1.Seely is attributing naïve realism to the ancients. Things were the way they appeared to be.

By this logic, the ancients thought that mountains really were smaller at a distance. As you walked toward a mountain or hill, it literally grew taller.

Is it Seely's contention that the ancients were, in fact, that clueless? Could it not occur to an ancient Israelite that mountains only seemed to be smaller at a distance?

2.I'd add that Bible writers describe mountains and hills as if they really are taller than the surrounding countryside. So they don't speak as if they think the size of mountains is observer-relative.

3.Likewise, did an ancient sailor really think an oar was bent in water?

4.Assuming Seely would concede that the ancients did make allowance for certain optical illusions, then they did distinguish between appearance and reality. Yet that's the linchpin of his subsequent argument. He ascribes ancient belief in geocentrism and a flat earth to the fact that the ancients didn't distinguish between appearance and reality. But once he is forced to admit that, at least in some cases, they did draw such a distinction, then he loses the major premise in which he grounded his conclusions.

5.Let's remember that you would have had the same bell curve in the ancient world that we have in the scientific age. The ancient world had its share of brilliant men. Its Bronze Age version of Dirac, Da Vinci, Einstein, Feynman, Gauss, Mandelbrot, Newton, Pauling, Penrose, Poincaré, Shannon, von Neumann, Witten, &c.

Men of native, scientific genius. Of course, employment opportunities were limited back then, viz. scribes, tanners, farmers, shepherds, hunters, carpenters, fishermen, masons, blacksmiths, &c. But the raw intelligence was already in place. And with it comes the natural aptitude to draw inferences from observations.

6.Yes, the earth looks flat. And the sun seems to move across the sky. But how do those two observations go together?

i) The sun apparently travels from east to west. Yet this happens everyday. But if the earth were flat, how did the sun make its way back to the east in time to repeat the cycle?

Logically, we'd expect if the earth were flat, for the sun rising in one place and set in another, then reverse direction, so that it alternates direction from one day to the next.

But, of course, that's not what we observe. So there's a certain tension between the motion of the sun and the flatness of the earth.

ii) Would the sun go under the earth? But what does that mean if the earth is flat? Why wouldn't the flat earth be solid all the way down until you hit bedrock? Why would there be anything underneath the flat earth?

iii) The only way for the sun to go under the earth is if there were empty space under the earth. But that's not something an earth-bound observer could see. Rather, that would be an inference.

iv) And if an ancient Israelite could imagine that the sun went under the earth, then it would be just as easy to imagine the sun going around the earth. But if the sun circles the earth, then it's more natural to think of the earth as a round object. Two globes floating in space. One globe circles another other.

But if you think it through to that point, then there's no way of telling which object is moving in relation to the other.

v) Ancient stargazers would have noticed the phenomenon of retrograde motion. That's easier to account for in a system of mutual motion. And the calculations are simpler in a heliocentric system.

vi) The ancients were well aware of the seasons. Their calendars and agricultural cycles were dependent on the seasons.

Surely they noticed a correlation between the seasons and the shortening or lengthening of day and night. Surely they also noticed that the sun didn't rise or set in the same place along the horizon throughout the year. And yet, if the sun were moving across the sky of a flat earth, what would account for the seasonal variations?

But if the earth were spinning like a top, with an axial tilt, then that would explain the seasons.

vii) The ancients were well aware of solar and lunar eclipses. From these events it's possible to draw some inferences regarding the size and shape of the sun, moon, and earth.

viii) How big was the sun? Did it looks smaller because it was smaller? Or it did look smaller because it was farther away?

If, in fact, then sun were bigger than the earth, then—intuitively speaking—it seems more natural for the smaller object to orbit the larger object, rather than vice versa.

ix) The ancients were also familiar with whirlwinds. And these exhibit the Coriolis effect. Suppose you were a Bronze Age Richard Feynman. What might you infer from that phenomenon?

xi) Ancient mariners could observe ships “sink” below the horizon, or vice versa. That makes sense if the earth were spherical rather than flat.

xii) How would the sun, moon and stars move through a solid dome? If you really think the sky is a solid dome, then, logically, the earth would be illuminated because the dome was backlit, with holes in the dome, through which shafts of light would beam down. But, of course, that doesn't allow for the motion of the luminaries through space. So would the sky need to be a movable dome?

7.I've been drawing attention to empirical phenomena which any attentive observer could see with his own eyes. Phenomena in tension with a literal triple-decker universe.

Perhaps Seely would say that not every ancient Israelite would be smart enough to ponder the deeper implications of empirical evidence. But he's the one who indulges in sweeping generalities about what the ancients believed.

8.Let's also recall that heliocentrism was originally an armchair theory. Long before the space age. Ground-based observers came up with this theory. Naked-eye astronomy.

9.And consider the role of thought-experiments in science,² such as Newton's spinning water pail. Later, Mach came up with a counter thought-experiment.

In principle, there's nothing to this experiment that a Bronze Age “scientist” couldn't visualize or duplicate.

Then there's Newton's thought experiment involving an orbital canon ball. In principle, an ancient archer could have drawn the same inference.

10.My point is that men in Bible times might well have been far more sophisticated than Seely gives them credit for.³

11.Even more to the point, Seely is setting up a false dichotomy between a phenomenal interpretation of the text and a grammatico-historical interpretation of the text—for the natural phenomena don't implicate geocentrism or a flat-earth or a triple-decker universe. An alert observer would be able to perceive the fact that what he saw called for a more complex model behind the scenes to account for what he saw.

12.Another fundamental problem with Seely's argument is that that ANE cosmography in general, as well as Biblical cosmography in particular, was rather stylized, using architectural metaphors to signify sacred space—as the symmetrical counterpart to sacred time.⁴ The universe was a temple. As such, architectural metaphors were used to depict the universe. That was a way of denoting its sacral significance. Seely is very insensitive to the cultic dimension of Biblical cosmography. But grammatico-historical exegesis would take this into account.

I hope you will read my papers, and you might add the discussion of the biblical/ANE universe in Chapter 7 of John Walton's Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament. He is a very conservative professor of OT at Wheaton, but too well educated in ANE literature to take the Bible out of context. The same might be said for John Currid, professor of OT at Reformed Theological Seminary in Mississippi. And see my comments in the Save our Seminary thread that Charles Hodge and E. J. Young acknowledged that the OT was speaking of a solid sky, and Warfield acknowledged specifically that the merely human [and erroneous] opinion about the sun's relation to the earth might show up in inspired Scripture outside of the scope of the writer's teaching [hence as an accommodation.]

Three issues:

i) This statement overlooks important OT scholars who demure.⁵

ii) It's also deceptive for Seely to cite Currid and Walton when—in fact—they interpret Genesis very differently than he does. Yes, they agree with him on 1:6, but they disagree with him on so much else.⁶ If he's going to invoke their expertise in ANE literature, then that carries over to all the times in which they differ with Seely.

iii) Even if we construe Gen 1:6 to denote a “solid firmament,” that misses the point—for if Moses is using architectural symbolism, then the sky is the roof of the cosmic temple. But this doesn't mean Moses really thought the universe was just a scaled up version of the tabernacle or pagan shrines.⁷ The imagery is emblematic, not representational.

Historically, this has led to two different responses in the Reformed tradition. Turretin argued on the basis of such passages that since God cannot lie and he knows more about these things than we do, we ought to agree with Scripture and reject the Copernican theory. (Compendium Theologicœ Didactico-Elencticœ,(Amsterdam, 1695.) He rejected the idea that such passages were accommodated to the beliefs of the times. Calvin, on the other hand, when dealing with the size of the sun, moon, and stars (Gen 1:16) set the example of reducing such statements to merely phenomenal language, and Warfield's statement (above) about such matters follows Calvin's example.

The biblical evidence cited by Turretin, which I would also cite, is given by T. as follows: “First. The sun is said [in Scripture] to move in the heavens, and to rise and set. (Ps. 19, 5.) The sun is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race. (Ps. 104, 19.) The sun knoweth his going down. (Eccles. 1, 5.) The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down. Secondly. The sun, by a miracle, stood still in the time of Joshua. [As Luther had said, Joshua commands the sun to stand still, not the earth.] (Joshua, 10, 12-14,) and by a miracle it went back in the time of Hezekiah. (Isa. 38, 8.) Thirdly. The earth is said to be fixed immoveably. (Ps. 93, 1.) The world also is established, that it cannot be moved. (Ps. 104, 5.) Who laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not be removed for ever. (Ps. 119, 90, 91.) Thou hast established the earth, and it abideth. They continue this day according to thine ordinances. [He missed the best evidence: Eccles 1:5 ends with the statement that the sun rushes back to its starting place, which could not be phenomenal language because no one sees it do this.]

Several issues:

i) Isn't it anachronistic to interpret Biblical statements in light of Ptolemaic astronomy? And if Bible writers were that self-conscious about celestial mechanics, then they were capable of entertaining heliocentric as well as geocentric speculations.

ii) Statements about the (im-)mobility of the earth have reference, not to the relation of the earth to other celestial bodies, but to eschatological earthquakes—which symbolize divine judgment.

iii) John Walton doesn't interpret Joshua's Long Day the same way that Turretin or Seely does.⁸

iv) The description of the sun in Eccl 1:5 is figurative. Solomon personifies the sun as a runner who is “gasping” or “panting” to make his way around the racetrack.⁹ And note the similes and metaphors in Ps 19:5.

Did ancient Israelites think the sun literally dwelt in a tent, was literally a bridegroom, was literally a runner? Isn't it quite arbitrary of Seely to selectively take one part of this description literally and another part figuratively?

My question can then be framed as, On what basis do we reject the historical-grammatical meaning of any passage in Scripture and replace it with the meaning that it is just phenomenal language? Or, What is the criterion or criteria for deciding when an inspired statement in Scripture can be set aside as not really speaking of the actual facts but only of the misleading appearances?

This takes us back to my questions, which could be summed up as, On what basis do those who follow Calvin, Hodge, and Warfield in believing that merely human opinions have been accommodated into inspired Scripture, separate those errant opinions from the inerrant teachings of Scripture? Since Hodge and E.J. Young acknowledged that Scripture is speaking of a solid sky, a concrete example would be Gen 1:6, 7. What is the inerrant teaching in those verses, and what is the accommodated human opinion? And on what basis do you tell the difference?

Seely has failed to give us any examples in which we must set aside the grammatico-historical meaning of the passage. He's failed to give us any examples in which Scripture has accommodated errant human opinions.

On a final note, I'm struck by how supporters of Enns play the Devil's chaplain in this debate. They're casting about for some wedge which they can use to punch through a more liberal view of Scripture. Can they find some verse of Scripture at which the inerrantist will balk?

Their strategy is to instill a spirit of doubt in the mind of a Christian. It's a game of chicken with the Word of God.

This is nothing short of diabolical. If that's the only way they can defend Enns, then that, alone, is sufficient reason for Westminster to fire him.

---

1 http://greenbaggins.wordpress.com/2008/03/28/on-peter-enns
2 http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/thought-experiment
3 Incidentally, there are contemporary Christians who defend geocentrism. That's not the position I'm arguing for, but I doubt that Seely would have the scientific expertise to win an argument with an astute geocentrist. For example:
http://www.geocentricity.com/ba1/no71/selbrede.html
4 E.g. J. Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil (Princeton 1994).
5 C. Collins, Genesis 1-4 (P&R 2006), 45-46; V. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis: Chapters 1-17 (Eerdmans 1991), 122; G. Wenham, Genesis 1-15 (Word 1987), 19; R. Youngblood, The Book of Genesis (Wipf & Stock 1999), 28.
6 J. Currid, Genesis 1:1-25:18 (EP 2003); J. Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament (Baker 2006); Genesis (Zondervan 2001).
7 Cf. V. Hurowitz, I Have Built You an Exalted House: Temple building in the Bible in the Light of Mesopotamian and Northwest Semitic Writings (Sheffield 1992); O. Keel, The Symbolism of the Biblical World: Ancient Near Eastern Iconography and the Book of Psalms (Seabury 1978).
8 Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament, 262-63.
9 D. Garrett, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs (Broadman 1993), 285; I. Provan, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs (Zondervan 2001), 55.

Google, UN unveil project to map movement of refugees

Google, UN unveil project to map movement of refugees: "Internet search giant Google Inc. unveiled a new feature Tuesday for its popular mapping programs that shines a spotlight on the movement of refugees around the world.

The maps will aid humanitarian operations as well as help inform the public about the millions who have fled their homes because of violence or hardship, according to the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, which is working with Google on the project."

A Proposed Paleontology Study

The past couple of days I’ve been thinking a bit about the fossil record. I’ve e-mailed a couple of people some of my thoughts, but today something finally crystallized in my mind and I’ve come up with a paleontology study to propose. Obviously, this study is beyond my capabilities to perform myself, but I wanted to throw this out there to see what other people thought about it anyway (and who knows, if a paleontologist reads it and decides it’s worth studying then maybe I’ll get an actual answer sometime!).

First, this study begins with two assumptions:

Assumption 1: Most (animal) organisms that die will be very young, very old, or infirm; the “ideal” specimen (i.e., the age when the species is, on average, the healthiest) only dies in the case of random accidents, which are rare. As anecdotal evidence to back up my assumption here, consider your local city’s closest graveyard. If you go through it and look at the various tombstones, you will see that the large majority of people buried there are going to be very young or very old. Furthermore, a detailed excavation of the graveyard would indicate many people there died of diseases. However, if you look at the number of graves of, say, people aged 15-30 years, the vast majority of those will be people who died of non-natural causes (e.g., suicide, murder, car accidents, drug overdoses, etc.).

We also have evidence from the animal kingdom. Most victims of predators are the young and defenseless, the old who have weakened, or those who are otherwise already disabled in some manner. It is rare that a healthy animal will be killed by a predator (it still happens, but statistically this would happen far less often than any other type of death of a species).

Assumption 2: Most living (animal) organisms have larger populations close to the “ideal” specimen age than in any other demographic. In the case of the elderly, since organisms have to pass through the younger ages to get to an advanced state and there is the possibility of death in those younger ages too, it is obvious that there will be fewer elderly people than younger people. However, it is also the case that given the high infant mortality rate of most species and the fact that only a few will survive past the first couple of months (and also the fact that the youngest age ranges are typically far shorter than the length of the “ideal” specimen), there will usually be more of the “ideal” organisms living than the young. Again, this is not a hard and fast rule, but it is an assumption I think has some validity in the animal kingdom).

Hypothesis: If fossils have more “ideal” specimen types than very young, old, or infirm types, then organisms that are fossilized are almost always killed by catastrophic and indiscriminate “accidents” rather than due to factors such as predation, illnesses, or other more natural causes.

Note that under these circumstances, the “catastrophic and indiscriminate accidents” would not necessarily be such things as mudslides (although depending on the extent of the mudslide, one could qualify). The reason being is that if you have two organisms of the same species and a mudslide is heading toward them, the one that is the fastest will have greater odds of escaping than the slower one (this is the unobjectionable—and trivial—aspect of Natural Selection). Therefore, the very young, very old, and infirm would have a greater likelihood of dying in that mudslide than would a healthy organism.

This would not be the case, of course, in a widespread mudslide that would kill everything regardless of the speed of the organism involved. As such, minor mudslides would not qualify as a “catastrophic and indiscriminate accident” whereas a major mudslide would. Note also that the “major” and “minor” aspect of the mudslide depends on such things as the size of the organism and the location of the organism too. For instance, a meter high mudslide has a good chance of wiping out an entire colony of trilobites, but probably wouldn’t kill a Brachiosaurus. Further note that there could be other things than mudslides too (I only use the mudslide illustration since fossils are often explained as having been created by rapid burial of animals, such as during a mudslide).

The reasoning for my hypothesis is: Since most natural deaths will be of organisms that are very young, very old, or infirm (assumption 1), then if the fossilization happens after a natural death there should be far more young, old, and infirm specimens than “ideal” types. However, since there will be more of the “ideal” specimens alive at any one time (assumption 2), then if a catastrophic and indiscriminate accident occurred to create the fossil, a random selection out of the entire population has a greater chance of landing on one of the “ideal” specimens than on any other demographic. Therefore, if there are more “ideal” types of fossils than the very young, very old, or infirm, most (if not all) fossils are caused by catastrophic and indiscriminate events instead of natural and common causes.

If that reasoning is valid, the question is: What does the fossil record show? Are most fossils “ideal” types? Or are most fossils very young, very old, or infirm?

While this study would be interesting just for the sake of knowledge alone, there’s another reason it might be important. Think about the large size of many dinosaur species. After all, we’ve already noted that a mudslide could be one of these catastrophic and indiscriminate events for a colony of trilobites; but many dinosaurs were huge. If there are more “ideal” types of these large dinosaurs, then there would have had to have been many large-scale catastrophes to hit these dinosaurs (especially since modern assumptions are that it is very difficult to make a fossil in the first place, let alone to find it after it has been made, so there would have been many more of these catastrophes that have occurred than we have found fossils). And that, of course, would lead to the question of whether it is more plausible to assume a score of major catastrophes or that our assumptions about fossil creation are false.

By the way, I’d also note that if someone responds that it would be impossible to tell this from the fossil record, then it would be impossible to tell anything relevant to evolution from the fossil record too. That is, if we cannot tell the relative age of a dinosaur or whether or not it was severely ill from the fossil record, how are we to tell the relationship of that dinosaur to other similar-looking dinosaurs? Could they not be similar looking because they’re identical species but one had scurvy, for instance?

Just some thoughts.

Overhearing the Word of Life

The Bible was written for us rather than to us.

Most every objection to the inspiration of Scripture comes from disregarding this simple fact.

The Bible was written between about two-thousand and thirty-five hundred years ago. The books are undated. Some books contain datable events, but the reader must supply the dates. That’s because the Bible was written for us rather than to us.

Like all history, Bible history is severely selective. But when a historian has a contemporaneous audience in mind, he can afford to let his audience fill in the gaps. That’s because the Bible was written for us rather than to us.

We have thirteen letters by Paul. Occasional pieces. Of the two surviving letters to the church of Corinth, we can infer that he wrote at least four letters to the Corinthians. And we only have his side of the correspondence. We must reconstruct the rest. That’s because the Bible was written for us rather than to us.

Books of the Bible rarely say where they were composed, or to whom. That’s because the Bible was written for us rather than to us.

Background information outside of Scripture is sparse and partisan. That’s because the Bible was written for us rather than to us.

When, therefore, I come to Scripture, I expect to find many obscurities and loose ends. I don’t expect it to be transparent to the eye. The wonder of it all is that Scripture is still intelligible so much of the time. That’s because, although it wasn’t written to us, it was written for us.

There’s a sense in which you and I don’t even belong here. I’m an outsider. An interloper. A trespasser.

We are the wild vine. We were graciously grafted onto the native foliage.

Like having a friend at the door of the club, we were let it without a ticket or a formal invitation. We were escorted to the nosebleed seats in the uppermost balcony.

We have been permitted and privileged to overhear this ancient conversation which God had with his people so very long ago. He has allowed us to hear the echo of that life-giving conversation he had so very long ago.

But some spectators high up in the balcony jeer and heckle. Instead of removing their shoes before they entered, to reverently listen and learn, they wave signs and shout the speaker down because the Bible isn’t utterly transparent to their understanding. They demand answers. Instant answers. They act as though the Bible was written to them rather than for them.

They deny the inspiration of Scripture. And yet, if Scripture were inspired, it would confront us with many obscurities and loose ends—since it was written for us rather than to us.

We ought to be thankful even to be here. So many perished outside the auditorium without ever hearing the word of life. Less attitude, and more gratitude, is what is called for. Yes, unspeakable gratitude.

Ents

(Posted on behalf of Steve Hays.)

[According to the Seminarillion, Ents are the offspring of Pieter Enns, a legendary ogre who dwelt in the land of Westmünster during the Second Age, and devoured nubile seminions for breakfast.]

I've been asked to comment on something which Stephen Young posted over at Green Baggins. Let's make a few preliminary observations before I delve into the details.

i) I don't know what theory of inspiration he thinks that he's opposing. Who or what is the target of these examples? The Westminster Confession? The Chicago Statement? Warfield? Turretin?

If so, then he's shadowboxing with a straw man.

ii) What if we couldn't harmonize two Biblical accounts of the same event? Would that impugn the accuracy of Scripture? No.

Suppose you and I went to Disney World. Suppose that evening we wrote down what we saw in our daily journals.

There would be almost no overlap between your account and mine if you and I chose to go to different events at Disney World.

Or suppose we saw the same events, but I went in the morning while you went in the afternoon. And suppose we didn't state the time of day when we attended.

That might make it difficult for an unsuspecting reader to sort out the chronological details. Yet the discrepancies would be purely illusory.

But imagine if the higher critics got hold of our journals. They would insist that each journal was a work of composite authorship, involving several different redactors. The stories of what we saw must have undergone a long period of oral gestation before they were committed to writing. The higher critics would carefully peel away the editorial layers to isolate and identify the rival theologies of the Ur-Hattist, Ur-Cinderellist, and the Ur-Epcotist. Erudite monographs reconstructing the Epcotist Community and the Cinderellist Circle would be published. Bart Ehrman would write a bombshell book on the long lost ideology of the Hattist faction—which had been ruthlessly suppressed by power-hungry, "orthodox" Cinderellians.

Yet stuck-in-the-mud fundies would blindly insist that these canonical accounts were authentic and accurate even though they didn't coincide on many details. Bold, visionary professors who tried to liberate their students from the shackles of this scholastic, antiquated paradigm would be persecuted by the old guard.

iii) Then there's Stephen Young's disingenuous disclaimer. On the one hand, he double-dares the inerrantist to harmonize these passages. But just in case the inerrantist should rise to the challenge, he dismisses the effort in advance because it robs the text of its "richness" and significance. If the inerrantist fails, he fails—but if he succeeds, he also fails.

Moving along:

Hopefully you would accept me as a Christian—I am, after all, a member in good standing at a PCA church.

Perhaps his membership status needs to be readjusted in light of his public comments.

A while back, when I was frustrated by similar sentiments from someone else on a different blog, I typed out the following nine examples off the top of my head and posted them. They represent some of the types of issues, I think, inerrantists should confront when articulating what Scripture 'is.'

As if inerrantists had never done that before.

So, for all the nuanced Reformed inerrantists here—who pay close attention to the phenomena of Scripture—please do share your thoughts on these examples.

The issue isn't specific to Reformed inerrantists. I see no reason to cast it in such parochial terms.

Some of these may seem harmonizable. But, in those cases, as I try to point out, you miss out on the theological depth and significance of the passage and the Scriptural writing in question—thus making me suspicious that the harmonization deal with the text in a way honoring to it.

He sets up a false antithesis between theology and historicity.

1) Mark 12.9 attributes words to Jesus that Matthew's version of the pericope attributes to the crowd (Matt 21.41).

I agree with Bock that this as probably a case of narrative compression.¹ Instead of distributing the question to one speaker, and the answer to another, Mark and Luke summarize the incident.

Does Young think that the traditional doctrine of inspiration can't make allowance for narrative compression? Where did he get that idea?

For another fun synoptic 'who said what' instance compare Matt 19.16-17 with Mk 10.17-18. In Mark the man said to Jesus 'Good teacher.' In Matthew the man says uses good with reference to the deed in question. What is going on here? We could multiply examples such as these from the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) almost endlessly. The Matt 19 and Mk 10 example has an interesting history of discussion in Westminster circles. Both E.J. Young and Ned Stonehouse treated it at some length. Young essentially harmonizes while Stonehouse refuses to do so, looking at how the differences reflect the freedom and creativity of the author and as such serving as windows in on the theology of the writings in question.

The conventional explanation is that Matthew redacted Mark. The Markan version could leave a misleading impression regarding the divinity or rectitude of Jesus.

Does Young think the traditional version of inspiration is unable to accommodate this? If so, why?

Without a proper context, facts can be deceptive. And a writer like Matthew was in a position to know something that his audience did not.

(2) The Synoptics portray Jesus as eating his last supper with the disciples as a Passover meal (Thursday night), being arrested that night, and being crucified Passover day, Friday (c.f. Mk 14.12 / Lk 22.15; then follow the narratives). John portrays Jesus as eating supper sometime prior to Passover and then being crucified on the eve of Passover precisely when the Lambs are being slaughtered for the Passover meals for the Jews (see John 13.1-5; 19.14-16). It seems that John has a rich theological reason for what he is doing—Jesus being killed with the Passover lambs fits in nicely with his emphasis of Jesus as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1.29; cf. 1.36). Or, perhaps the Synoptics were motivated in their chronological presentation to cast the last supper (eucharist?) as a new Passover meal? It seems we have the authors of the Gospels (or at least one/some of them) modifying the 'facts' for their theology.

Blomberg discusses this issue in his standard monograph of the historicity of the Gospels.² Unless Young can tell us why he thinks that Blomberg's harmonization is unsatisfactory, we need go no further.

(3) Does Jesus tell the disciples to take a staff (Mk 6.8) or not (Matt 10.10)? I have heard it suggested that the only way to 'deal with' this is positing autographs that did not have this problem—therefore this issue arises from corruption in the transmission history of either Mark or Matthew. This would seem like an extreme case of 'special pleading.' What do you all think?

i) I agree with Blomberg that this is probably a case of narrative compression.³ On his understanding, Matthew's version is a composite speech combining some of Jesus' injunctions to the Twelve with some of his injunctions to the seventy-two disciples. There is only a contradiction if we fail to make due allowance for Matthew's redaction.

ii) France makes the additional point that,

The specific application of these instructions to the mission of the Twelve in Galilee, rather than as rules for all subsequent Christian mission, is indicated by Luke 22:35-36, where they are rescinded for the new situation following Jesus' arrest.⁴

So these injunctions were always flexible in time and place.

(4) Do you mind if I mention a canon 'issue'? Jude quotes the Book of the Watchers (1 Enoch 1-36; a Jewish apocalypse of the 3rd century BCE) as Scripture, Jude 14-15. The way he introduces it corresponds to ways other parts of our Bible (and contemporary Jewish literature) cite what the authors in question would consider Scripture. Such a view of the Book of the Watchers for Jude makes sense since the Book of the Watchers—along with many of the other writings making up 1 Enoch—were viewed as Scripture by Jews in many (most?) strands of Early Judaism in the centuries prior to Jesus and around his time. In fact, the view of 1 Enoch as Scripture continues in the early church as early church writers cite 1 Enoch as Scripture (see, for example, the Epistle of Barnabus with its 3 citations of 1 Enoch with scripture citation formulas!). I am not claiming 1 Enoch or some of the writings in it should be in our canon—but rather that this material makes the Bible messier than we would like.

i) Jude doesn't use a standard citation formula for Scripture in quoting Enoch.

ii) Young offers no documentation to back up his claim that many Jews in pre-Christian Judaism regarded 1 Enoch as Scripture. As one authority has noted:

The fact that works such as 1 Enoch or Jubilees have been preserved since 70 CE through other/Christian channels need not indicate that they were accepted as authoritative and authentic within Second Temple Judaism beyond the pale of the sect which came in part to occupy Qumran.⁵

iii) Has Young ever read the standard monograph of Jude by Charles? Unless he can explain why he thinks that this analysis is unsatisfactory, we need go no further.⁶

iv) Commentators generally attempt to reconstruct the life-situation of a Biblical document as a preliminary exercise before they proceed to the exegesis proper. This includes an effort to identify the target audience or implied reader.

But we only have one document from the hand of Jude. And what we do have is exceedingly brief. As such, we have a very restricted frame of reference for knowing what this sectarian literature would have meant to him or his audience or his opponents. As such, there's no solid basis on which to draw sweeping conclusions regarding his personal opinion of the Apocrypha or Pseudepigrapha.

(5) What did Jesus say on the Cross? You could put all the Gospels on this together and have our '7 last words of Jesus' sermon series. But, that distorts the different theologies of the death of Jesus that each Gospel has. This is especially true if you conflate Mark and Luke on the death of Jesus. They have different views on the death of Jesus and his approach to it—which can be very theologically enriching (after all, it is the Bible) if we do not flatten them out.

i) Traditionally, the seven words of Jesus consist of Matthean saying (27:46; par. Mk 15:34), three Lucan sayings (23:34; 23:43; 23:46), and three Johannine sayings (Jn 19:26f.; 19:28; 19:30). And the textual authenticity of Lk 23:34 is questionable.

ii) How one Markan saying and three Lucan sayings represent different theologies is something that Young asserts rather than demonstrates.

iii) Moreover, "different" is ambiguous. Does he mean "different" as in contradictory? If so, how does he think they represent contradictory doctrines of the Passion?

And if they're not theologically contradictory, then how does that present a contrast to the traditional doctrine of inspiration?

(6) Deuteronomy (10.1-5) has a different understanding of where the ark came from than Exodus.

He doesn't say what he means here. But as one commentator has observed, there's a difference in literary genre between the two accounts, so we'd expect some differences: "the sermonic style of the text in Deuteronomy is such that particular parts are emphasized and other items are added (the ark) which do not appear in Exodus."⁷

Does Young think that the traditional doctrine if inspiration can't make allowance for differences in literary genre?

Another commentator makes the additional point that,

In the following verses [Deut 10:1-11] we have a very condensed account of the incident [Exod 34:1-4) without special attention to exact chronology. It was sufficient to draw attention to some of the more important features of those events which presumably everyone knew about.⁸

Does Young think the traditional doctrine of inspiration can't make allowance for narrative compression or topical selection?

(7) Who failed to dislodge the Jebusites from Jerusalem, Judah (Josh 15.63) or Benjamin (Judg 1.21)? Note, it is exactly the same verse, except that Judges has modified the material from Joshua to fit in with its, basically, anti-Benjamin ideology/theology seen throughout the book. If you delve into this further, you find this to be a window into some rich theology in Judges. But, if you flatten this out, you start to miss something God was saying through Judges.

i) As several commentators (e.g. Block, Howard, Woudstra) have explained, Jerusalem was a border town. As such, we'd expect the city limits to be disputed by rival claimants.

ii) Moreover, Judges obviously recounts a latter state of affairs than Joshua. Would we try to harmonize a 1990 roadmap of NYC with an 1890 roadmap of NYC?

iii) How does understanding that both statements are factually accurate removed the "rich theology in Judges"? Is Young saying that rich theology comes at the expense of impoverished factuality, or that rich factuality comes at the expense of impoverished theology?

(8) Was Hiram/Huram-abi's descent from the tribe of Naphtali (1 Kgs 7.14) or Dan (2 Chr 2.13-14)? Perhaps one could harmonize this, but then you are missing out on the Chronicler's rich theology of Solomon and Hiram/Huram (in the building of the Temple) as the new Bezalel and Oholiab (who built the Tabernacle). As the Chronicler draws on his sacred scripture and traditions, he brings out this parallel between Huram and Oholiab by, among other things, giving Huram the same tribal affiliation as Oholiab (see Exod 31.6, 35.34, 38.23). All this has a very important function in the Chronicler's overall message and theology. But, again, to harmonize this is to get in the way of understanding what God is saying and doing through Chronicles.

i) Since every man has both a mother and a father, it's quite possible to be of multi-tribal descent. Moreover, some place names can be geographical while others can be eponymous.

ii) And how does factual accuracy "get in the way" of theology? Young seems to think a message is more meaningful if it's less truthful. Is fiction his standard of sound theology? If so, he might be happier converting to Mormonism or Scientology.

(9) Is it ok for a Moabite to enter the assembly of the Lord and be part of Israel (the book of Ruth) or not (Deut 23.3-6)? See also the general theology of Ezra-Nehemiah on foreigners, Israel, and marriage.

i) In context, the Mosaic legislation is talking about pagan Moabites who also enemies of Israel. By contrast, Ruth was a convert to the true faith.

ii) In addition, the Mosaic law has to be adjudicated, and OT judges enjoy broad powers of judicial discretion. That's' because the Mosaic law, like ANE law codes generally, was paradigmatic rather than exhaustive.

In sum, Young's 10 examples are pitifully easy to harmonize. They pose no threat to the inerrancy of Scripture. We don't need to revise our theory of inspiration—a "theory" which happens to be conterminous with the self-witness of Scripture.

---

1 D. Bock, Luke 9:51-24:53 (Baker 1998), 2:1602.
2 C. Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the Gospels (IVP 2007), 221-25.
3 Ibid. 187-88.
4 R. France, The Gospel of Matthew (Eerdmans 2007), 386.
5 D. Jackson, Enochic Judaism (T&T Clark 2004), 7.
6 J. Charles, Literary Strategy in the Epistle of Jude (USP 1993).
7 P. Craigie, The Book of Deuteronomy (Eerdmans 1989), 199.
8 J. Thompson, Deuteronomy (IVP 1974), 143.

I Feel A Disturbance in the Force

So, let's get this straight shall we:

1. It's okay for the civil government to ban particular religious practices in the geographical limits of Dallas/Tarrant County, TX.


2. It's okay for the authorities to interfere with the FLDS' ecclesiastical beliefs and practices.

3. But it's also okay for Paige Patterson and SWBTS to fire Sherri Klouda based on their ecclesiastical beliefs. (Note, the same judge who ruled against the Santeria priest is the one who ruled in favor of Dr. Patterson).

If you're familiar with Star Wars, you'll know the story:

Palpatine/Darth Sidious uses the Trade Federation to blockade Naboo. Consequently, he comes to power as Chancellor. Later, he manipulates the Trade Federation and it's allies to foment an Separatist rebellion against the considated power of the Republic while on the other using the Jedi to create a Clone Army to fight for the Republic, playing both sides against each other while he tightens his grip on the Republic. In Episode 3, he destroys the Separatist leaders after manipulating Anakin Skywalker to betray the Jedi Order, destroying the Jedi in the process. When he announces the end of the Republic and the beginning of the First Galactic Empire, Amidala says, "So this is how democracy ends, to the sound of thunderous applause."

John Leland and my Baptist forefathers fought to end state churches. Today, the buses and facilities belonging to First Baptist Church of Eldorado, TX were used to help the authorities round up the FLDS' women. Is this really what we want?

The churches have lost the Gospel. On the one hand, men and women sit under the thrall of the teachings of Joel Osteen and Rev. Jeremiah Wright, with but only a hairsbreath of difference between their versions of the Gospel. On the other, they claim it's okay to use "ecclesiastical authority" to fire women for teaching Hebrew at SWBTS, while the same civil authority prohibit Santeria rituals and findsways to get at the FLDS. Meanwhile, they increasingly can't agree on the nature of justification, it's place in the hierarchy of fundamental articles of faith, our rule of faith - I could go on and on here, but the common thread is this: When the Church loses sight of the Gospel, it inevitably resorts to the civil authority to do it's bidding, to accomplish what it fails to do by force of argument in the public square of ideas. The end result can be terrifiying, for the end result of a Gospel-lite/less Church is tyranny, and that can cut both ways. One day, theologically conservative Christians may find ourselves on the other side of the argument, facing the civil authority which we ourselves arm with legal precedents to which we approved which are then used against us.

Emperor Palpatine must be proud.

Nuts-n-dolts

Jay Dyer has issued his limp closing statement in the debate with Josh Brisby:

http://www.nicenetruth.com/home/2008/04/debate-pt-8-jay.html

“I chose to focus on the question of the canon and sola scriptura because it is an area I’ve done quite a bit of reading on.”

Has he now? Then why does he always trot out the same two or three writers? A quote from Bruce. A quote from McDonald. A quote from Johnson.

“It was this central question that led me out of Protestantism, as I came to the conclusion several years ago that the sola scriptura principle and its corollary, the Protestant canon, could not be substantiated with honest scrutiny.”

Dyer’s evasive behavior is hardly distinguished by its “honest scrutiny.”

“Josh has admittedly not done a lot of research in this area.”

If so, that would put him on a par with Dyer.

(Even in that event, Brisby still has the compensatory virtues of a far superior belief-system.)

“Unfortunately, I believe that much of what I wrote and linked in response was glossed over and ignored in a hurried attempt to respond.”

Oh, you mean the same way Dyer ignored, glossed over, and hurried past much of what I wrote?

“Also note that over and over I cite top-notch Protestant scholars who will admit my very arguments.”

Not all of the scholars he quotes are “top-notch scholars.” And when he does quote a top-notch scholar like Bruce, he quotes him very selectively. Bruce did not endorse his position on the Alexandrian canon. Just the opposite.

“Where does he think the LXX came from? Gentiles? No, it came from diaspora Jews.”

Which poses a dilemma for Dyer since he’s arbitrarily selective about what Jewish testimony he credits.

“Palestinian Jews rejected the DB, but the Septuagint, which is the Greek version of the OT composed in the 2nd-3rd century B.C. at Alexandria, Egypt by 70 or 72 Jewish scribes, was used by non-Palestinian Jews. It is a well known fact that the Septuagint (LXX) was both the Bible of the diaspora Jews and the Bible of all the early Christians, as will be proven below. Further, it’s also a fact that the LXX contained the DB, as will also be proven below. Protestant scholars admit the LXX was the bible of the diaspora Jews who were far more numerous at the time of Christ than Palestinian Jews.”

Two problems:

i) Dyer continues to peddle his bait-and-switch tactic over the identity of the LXX, as if the LXX is uniform throughout its variegated history. But as Emanuel Tov has noted,

“The name ‘Septuagint’ denotes both the first Greek translation of the Bible and the collection of Jewish-Greek Scripture, containing inter alia this translation. The latter usage is imprecise because this collection contains also late revisions of the original translation and books that were originally written in Greek. In order to distinguish between the two usages of the word, the collection of Jewish-Greek Scripture is generally called the ‘Septuagint,’ while the first translation of the Bible is often named ‘the Old Greek (translation),” M. Mulder & H. Sysling, eds., Mikra: Text, Translation, Reading & Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Ancient Judaism & Early Christianity (Hendrickson 2004), 161.

Dyer has been repeatedly corrected on his erroneous conflation of two distinct issues, but he’s a chronic liar.

ii) Dyer acts as though, if he can cite some Protestant, any Protestant, then that automatically disproves our position. But Protestant scholars aren’t authority-figures in Protestant theology. Citing a Protestant scholar is not, itself, an argument. He would have to cite the argument of a Protestant scholar. And that argument would be subject to further examination. All arguments, regardless of their religious pedigree, are subject to further examination.

Take a concrete example. Over at Tblog, another Orthodox apparatchik referred to a claim by Trebolle Barrera that Philo quotes from Sirach and Wisdom. When, however, I turn to the chapter in question, this is what Barrera actually says:

"His [Philo's] works include quotations taken almost exclusively from the Pentateuch, but occasionally also from Ben Sira and Wisdom of Solomon, so going beyond the limits of the third part of the canon, L. McDonald & J. Sanders, eds. The Canon Debate (Hendrickson 2002), 132.

Keep in mind that even if Philo quoted from the Wisdom or Sirach, that doesn't mean he quoted them as Scripture. Moreover, that wouldn't attest other books of the Apocrypha.

However, Barrera doesn't furnish any citations from Philo. Instead he has a footnote (#14) in which he references a chapter that Folker Siegert contributed to a larger anthology, as well as a chapter by Beckwith, in another anthology.

But what do Beckwith and Siegert actually have to say? When I go to the page that Barrera cited, Beckwith doesn't say anything about Philo quoting the Apocrypha. Rather, Beckwith cites Philo on the threefold division of the OT canon according to the Therapeutae. Cf. Mikra, 54f.

So that would document the second half of Barrera's statement (about the third part of the canon), but not the first half, about Philo quoting Wisdom or Sirach.

That also makes me wonder which of the two claims Siegert is cited to attest: the threefold OT canon in Philo, or Philo's quotation of Wisdom and Sirach. Is it possible that Barrera cites Siegert to establish the first claim, and Beckwith to establish the second?

However, in the same book which Barrera references, in citing Beckwith, there is also a chapter on Philo by Yehoshua Amir in which he makes the following statement:

"To find out how Philo employs quotations from Scripture in the Greek texts that have come down to us, we need only consult the Scriptural Index contained in the edition of the text with English translation [i.e. the Loeb edition]. A casual glance at the Index reveals the remarkable fact that while quotations from the Pentateuch alone fill 65 pages, only five pages suffice for the listing of quotations from all other parts of the OT, and there are no quotations whatever from the Apocrypha and the Pseudepigrapha" (422).

So Amir also denies that Philo ever quoted the Apocrypha. But he adds, in a footnote, "The index references to these books refer not to Philo's text, but to Colson's notes" (422n8).

This raises the intriguing possibility that Barrera mistook the editorial references to the Apocrypha for Philonic references to the Apocrypha.

So that leaves Siegert. I decided to write him directly. Here’s the exchange:

Re: [Seite kommentieren] Philo on the Apocrypha
From: Prof. Dr. Folker Siegert
To: hays1999@aol.com
Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2008 5:54 am
Attachment
ijd.vcf
hays1999@aol.com schrieb:
> [URL=Online-E-Mail an Herrn Siegert (Mailback-Formular IJD-Website)]
> [Name=steve hays]
> [Area=n/a]
> [Home=n/a]
> [Addr=hays1999@aol.com]
>
> Dear Dr. Siegert,
>
> I have a question for you if you don’t mind. In his contribution to The Canon Debate, Julio Barrera makes the following statement about Philo: “His works include quotations taken almost exclusively from the Pentateuch, but occasionally also from Ben Sira and Wisdom of Solomon, so going beyond the limits of the third part of the canon.”
>
> Barrera himself doesn’t cite any examples of Philo quoting from Ben Sira and Wisdom. Instead, he documents the claim, in a footnote, by citing something you wrote: “Early Jewish Interpretation in a Hellenistic Style.”
>
*In : M. Saebo (ed.): Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Vol. 1/1, Göttingen 1996, pp. 130-198, esp. p. 176.
But you are right in asking your question: As far as I have checked the references, there are only (possible)) allusions, no quotations.
*
> Is it your position that Philo quotes Ben Sira and Wisdom? >
> If so, does Philo quote them as Scripture? On par with the Torah? > *Surely no. Thank you for asking.*

Yours,
Folker Siegert

*****************************

So the two sources that Barrera footnoted to substantiate his claim about the Apocrypha in fact fail to bear out that claim. That’s why it’s useful to crosscheck our sources.

Continuing with Dyer:

“What Josh and other reformed readers missed was that I was responding to Ian Paisley’s erroneous claims when I was making that point.”

To the contrary, Dyer is attacking a soft target like Paisley because he’s so much easier to knock down than a hard target like Ellis or Beckwith.

“Where is the Old Testament reference to the seven sons who were martyred in testimony to the resurrection?”

I responded to that example. There doesn’t have to be an OT reference. That was a Sadducean illustration. It’s not as if the NT rubberstamps Sadducean theology.

For that matter, even NT statement isn’t a quote or citation or allusion to what someone else said.

“In Sirach 24, we see a powerful prophecy of the Incarnation.”

This is a typical instance of Dyer’s naïveté. What supplies the conceptual background of this passage? There are two theories:

i) ”Part 5 is taken to cover 24:1 to 33:18. It begins with the hymn in praise of wisdom, which may be most appropriately described as an aretalogy, a recital of wonderful characteristics, often in the context of the worship of a particular god or goddess. A number of such aretalogies in praise of the Egyptian goddess Isis have survived (Nickelsburg 1981): 60), an interesting comparison in view of the Egyptian links of Sirach. Some have seen the hymn in Sirach as in effect a ‘retouched’ Isis aretalogy,” R. Coggins, Sirach (Sheffield Academic Press 1998), 30.

ii) Additionally or alternatively, there’s the OT wisdom literature (e.g. Prov 1-9; Job 28). Cf. Coggins, 75-77. D. DeSilva, Introducing the Apocrypha, 164.

So the “prophecy” in Sirach is just a reworking of preexisting literature, whether Biblical or extrabiblical.

“Again, in Baruch 3 we have another amazing prophecy of the Incarnation with remarkable clarity.”

Once again, Dyer betrays the same clueless ignorance of his prooftext’s literary dependence on the OT Wisdom literature: “The Wisdom poem, perhaps the most original part of Baruch, was clearly inspired by Job 28:12-13,23-24. Baruch 3:15-31 descants on the theme of Job 28:12-13…the positive counterpart in Bar. 3:32-4:4 again, takes its starting point from Job 28:23,27,” deSilva, 208.

“We don’t find statements like this in the Masoretic canon of the Old Testament.”

Actually we do (see above).

“This is why many Fathers used these texts and many Jews rejected them: because they lent so much support for Christian theology.”

Once more, why would the Jews suppress messianic prophecy in the Apocrypha while retaining messianic prophecy in the OT?

“But Josh has admittedly not even read the Deuterocanon, yet is prepared to tell us they are not inspired and pagan.”

Dyer has never demonstrated the least acquaintance with the standard scholarship on the Apocrypha or Pseudepigrapha. I’m the one who’s been citing that material throughout this debate.

“Did these reformed masters not know what their Protestant masters teach?”

We don’t have any Protestant “masters.”

“Why does F.F. Bruce say, ‘the Book of Wisdom was possibly in Paul’s mind as he dictated the first two chapters of Romans’ (The Canon of Scripture, 51)?”

Let’s compare this with Bruce’s full statement:

“The book of Wisdom was possibly in Paul’s mind as he dictated part of the first two chapters of Romans, but that would not give it scriptural status: if he does allude to it, he probably contradicts it here and there.”

By only quoting the first part of Bruce’s sentence, Dyer tries to create the false impression in the mind of a reader (who doesn’t have access to Bruce’s book) that Bruce is endorsing Dyer’s contention, when, in fact, Bruce explicitly takes the opposite position—if you read the entire sentence.

What a splendid example of Dyer’s “honest scrutiny.”

“But beyond all this, the rabid reformers have consistently ignored one of my stronger points: that we have no direct knowledge of apostolic authorship of various NT texts apart from patristic tradition!”

i) Another bald-faced lie. I specifically responded to that argument by referring Dyer to Hengel’s discussion of the Gospel titles. Quoting a few scholars from dated, popular reference works is no way to engage Hengel.

ii) Moreover, as I (and others) have said umpteen times, there’s a difference between citing a church father as an authority-figure, and citing him as a historical witness.

“I included this quote since in continual annoyance, opponents have insisted that Liturgy didn’t have anything to do with canonicity.”

A straw man argument. Lectionaries can bear witness to the canon. But that’s just one piece of evidence, and it needs to be sifted in time and place.

“F.F. Bruce admits this, when speaking of the Oral Tradition:’These quotations [from early Fathers] do not amount to evidence for a NT canon; they do show that the authority of the Lord and His apostles was not reckoned to be inferior to that of the law and prophets. Authority precedes canonicity; had the words of the Lord and His apostles not been accorded supreme authority, their written words would never have been canonized’ (The Canon of Scripture, pg. 123). Well, there you have it. One of the top Protestant NT scholars of the last century admits the very thing non-Protestants have been saying all along: authority precedes canonicity and Oral Tradition is necessary.”

Once again he deliberately misrepresents Bruce’s actual position. For if you continue down the very same page, Bruce goes on to say that:

“In a society like the Graeco-Roman world of the early Christian centuries, where writing was the regular means of preserving and transmitting material deemed worth of remembrance, the idea of relying on oral tradition for the recording of the deeds and words of Jesus and the apostles would not have generally commended itself (whatever Papias and some others might think).

Yet another example of Dyer’s “honest scrutiny.”

“My challenge to Protestants would be to read Bruce’s The Canon of Scripture with an open and honest mind, and then explain how they can remain Protestants, in good conscience.”

Aside from Dyer’s calculated distortion of Bruce’s real position, I’ve never said that the case for the canon rises or falls on external attestation alone—which is the focal point of Bruce’s fine monograph.

“But back to the point; St. Athanasius lists a canon that no one follows, as do many Church Fathers. In fact, in Lee MacDonald’s work, The Formation of the Christian Biblical Canon, an entire appendix (pgs. 268-276) is devoted to differing canons of various Fathers and councils. St. Athanasius leaves out Esther and includes Baruch.”

He’s blurring the distinction between patristic testimony to the OT canon and patristic testimony to the NT. Generally speaking, Evangelicals don’t look to the church fathers for historical testimony regarding the scope of the OT canon—except in those cases where a few church fathers were in touch with Jewish sources. We wouldn’t look to Athanasius for information on Esther. Jewish sources would be our first line of recourse. Cf. R. Beckwith, The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church, 290: D. Clines, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther (Eerdmans 1992), 254-56.

“Protestant Liturgical Scholar, Geoffrey Wainwright, writes in his Oxford Press work on Liturgical theology as follows: ‘Form-criticism has helped us see that many of the pericopes now included in the Gospels had already been used in the earliest preaching of the Church. This broadly liturgical character of the New Testament material means that there is a fundamental identity of purpose between the ‘oldest collection of sermons’ which acquired scriptural status and the Church’s subsequent preaching in its worship’.”

Of course, form criticism assumes that orality precedes textuality—an assumption that’s been challenged by writers like Alan Millard and Maurice Casey.

“Josh has not studied the formation of the canon in-depth, and honest people who do so often do not remain Protestant long.”

i) Well, that creates another conundrum for Dyer. For he’s been citing Protestant scholars like Bruce and McDonald on the canon of Scripture. But, to judge by what he just said, they don’t count as honest scholars. So how can Dyer cite dishonest scholars to prove his point?

ii) I also curious about how Dyer defines “long.” Metzger was a premier Protestant canonist who died at the age of 93, while Zahn was a premier Protestant canonist who died at the age of 95. I guess if only they’ve lived a wee bit longer, they would have abandoned their Protestant theology for the smells and bells of Constantinople.

“No, the Church determines her OT books as well as her NT books, and she alone is competent to do so: not the Jew, not the heretic, and not the academic.”

Which church? The Orthodox church? But Dyer never made case for the Orthodox church. And the Orthodox church never determined the OT canon. So his claim is self-refuting.

I’d add that given his penchant for crackpot conspiracy theories, it’s odd that Dyer is so trusting when it comes to church history. Logically, Dyer’s scepticism about the political establishment dovetails with Bart Ehrman’s scepticism about the ecclesiastical establishment, viz. The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament; Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew. How can Dyer be so distrustful of the American government when he’s so trustful of the Holy Roman Emperor?

“First Century Judaism is terribly complex, and consisted of converts and racial descendents from many nations and of various traditions.”

True, 1C Judaism wasn’t monolithic. Does Dyer think that Orthodox church history is monolithic? Dyer has swapped one historical complexity for another.

On Polymorphism

Suppose that you were an alien visiting Earth for the first time and someone asked you to put the following two organisms into a Darwinian cladogram. How would you do it?





Now obviously because most of us have a rudimentary understanding of Earth biology, we already know the answer on the above. Not only are these two organisms the same species, they’re actually the same individual (see http://lifecycle.onenessbecomesus.com/indepth.html for the full picture cycle (note that I don’t endorse anything on that site; just happened to find these graphics there).

Assume that you are an alien who has never before seen the Earth, however. Further assume that all you have are these snapshots. You do not have the ability to see these creatures in motion. You can’t watch the caterpillar turn into a butterfly. You only have the two pictures: one organism looks worm-like, the other looks moth-like. There is nothing morphologically-speaking that would link these two organisms.

The relevance to this topic comes when we study the fossil record. Just as the aliens in the example would not have access to a video of the caterpillar turning into a butterfly, so we do not have the ability to see fossils as they grow and change through life. We are left with “snapshots” and not only that, we only have snapshots of organisms as they died (not as they lived).

And the difference between an adolescent organism and an adult organism are not the only things to consider. For instance, take this picture (from http://www.bluechameleon.org/Madagascar%20Photo%20Gallery%20(long%20Thumbnail%20Page).htm:



Is this a picture of Darwinian change, of an adult and an adolescent, or is it simply a picture of two of the same species after one has been mangled by a predator? The answer is none of the above. Instead, what this picture shows is the sexual dimorphism between male and female of the same species of (the rather interestingly named) satanic leaftails.

This example is particularly relevant since, unlike the first, these two organisms look similar to each other, and yet different enough to bring one to question whether they are the same animal. If we have only fossils of these organisms, there is no way to tell what their behavior would be. It would be easy to assume that we have proof of two similar organisms that obviously evolved from a common ancestor, when it’s really just the same species that naturally exists in two forms depended on the sex of the organism.

Again, we have the ability to view these organisms in their living habitat so we know that this is sexual dimorphism. But what if we can’t view the living habitat? What if we had to classify the following, for example:







Here we have three trilobites. These trilobites look similar, yet there are differences between them. The question is, therefore: are these differences proof of Darwinian evolution, sexual dimorphism, or the differences between an adolescent and an adult trilobite? Or is there another answer?

After all, we haven’t even dealt with environment yet (although mentioned obliquely in the question of the satanic leaftails when we questioned whether one had been mangled by a predator). In fact, when it comes to morphology, it is not simply DNA at work, but the environment plays a huge role too. For example, if you take identical Caucasian twins and raise one inside a cave and the other at the equator in the sun, the twins will have completely different shades of skin color. The one in the cave will be pale; the one at the equator will be tanned. This is a morphological difference caused solely by environmental changes that has nothing to do with Darwinian selection pressures or DNA mutations.

Another example is the fact that many Inuit’s have a different jaw structure from other Inuits for the sole reason that some Inuits use their teeth to pull at whale blubber and the skins of animals. Over time, this actually pulls their jaw out of alignment, but it’s gradual enough that the muscular structure can adapt somewhat to the new bone structures. If one compared two skulls, one of an Inuit who did this “teeth pulling” and the other who did not, the jaw structure would be morphologically different. Yet these would not be two difference species: they could be identical twins, after all!

So what about those trilobites? Scientists have a problem. We can’t view the original environment that these creatures lived in, and all we have is a snapshot of individual organisms in fossils. We don’t even have the context of those individual organisms in many cases. We only have isolated organisms sprinkled in the fossil record.

Given the magnitude of variations within the species we can see today, there is no reason to expect that all organisms of the same species must have looked nearly identical in the fossil record. And since we have many instances where only one or two organisms make up the totality of our fossil record of that species, it is fallacious to try to plug those into a cladogram with any sense of certainty. Polymorphism exists within the same species today, and therefore polymorphism cannot be proof of Darwinian evolution.

Entish

[Entish: An archaic dialectic, synonymous with double-talk, spoken by Pieter Enns and his Entish offspring during the Second Age of Middle-Earth.]

Art quotes the following statement by Jerry Shepherd:

“There is nothing in Enns’s book that is not in a trajectory with the teaching I received from the OT department at Westminster in the 80s and early 90s, and I mean the entire department: Dillard, Longman, Waltke, and Groves. For the Board to make this kind of decision with regard to Enns is also at the same time, in my opinion, a judgment on the entirety of the current OT dept., as well as a retroactive judgment on nearly three decades of OT instruction at WTS, especially since two of the endorsers on the back cover of the book are Longman and Waltke.”

http://aboulet.wordpress.com/2008/04/04/jerry-shepherd-on-peter-enns/

The funny thing about this statement is that Enns and his student groupies want to challenge the status quo where the traditional doctrine of Scripture is concerned.

But Shepherd is defending Enns by appealing to tradition, to the status quo. Why should we do it this way? Because we’ve always done it this way!

A pretty lame argument, don’t you think?

There is, indeed, a discernable trajectory afoot. We’ve seen that trajectory play out at Fuller Seminary, among others.

Incidentally, even moderate to liberal scholars can sometimes be useful commentators. Joseph Fitzmyer is a case in point. So this does not involve a wholesale rejection of everything they ever wrote.

Continuing with Art:

“I’ve also had Longman for Old Testament History and Theology II. He’s a great scholar, especially relating to the content of what Pete is writing about. This is why his word on the book means much more to me than Beale or Carson or Helm or a group of PCA/OPC ministers. Those who are trained in the fields of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations realize just how great Pete’s work is. Those who are not trained in these areas seem to be threatened by Pete’s work.”

At this point, Art has no intention of making an honest argument:

i) Beale, in his review of Enns, cited OT scholars with the same training as Enns who oppose Enns.

ii) When Enns writes about divine accommodation, using an “incarnational model,” he’s writing outside his field of expertise. A philosophical theologian like Helm is better equipped to discuss these issues than an OT scholar like Enns. Same thing with his discussion of general revelation. And hermeneutics is an interdisciplinary field as well.

iii) When Enns talks about apostolic exegesis, he’s writing outside his field of expertise. Both Beale and Carson are more qualified to speak to that issue.

iv) If the layman isn’t competent to evaluate Enns’ thesis, then that cuts both ways. If the layman is unqualified to return an unfavorable verdict, then he’s equally unqualified to return a favorable verdict. Yet Enns’ book was, to some extent, written for popular consumption.

“The interesting thing is that they seemed to be threatened because they really don’t have another way of answering the challenges of critical scholarship, except, “The Bible is divine.” Great. But what does that mean when Paul starts talking about movable wells.”

i) Enns and his student groupies are getting carried away with a picturesque metaphor. The point of 1 Cor 10:4 is that, wherever they went, the Israelites enjoyed a miraculous provision of water. Not that the same rock followed them around. But that wherever they went in the wilderness, God provided a source of water.

The wilderness was a rocky place. So water would issue from one rocky outcropping or another, as they went from one place to another. It needn’t gush from the very same rock.

ii) Thiselton also cautions against selective use of Jewish tradition. Cf. The First Epistle to the Corinthians, 728.

[Art, quoting Enns]: “Although Jesus was ‘God with us,’ he still completely assumed the cultural trappings of the world in which he lived…So, too, the Bible. It belonged in the ancient worlds that produced it.”

http://aboulet.wordpress.com/2008/04/05/thirsty-jesus/

In the Incarnation, Jesus “completely” assumed the “cultural trappings” of the world in which he lived?

Well, now, let’s see. The cultural trappings of the 1C Roman Empire included sodomy, polygamy, polytheism, and infanticide,” among other things. So, according to Enns’ Christology, Jesus must have been a polygamous, infanticidal, polytheistic sodomite.

“But if you follow the logic of Enns’ critics to the end on these points, then this is what you are left with. You end up having to say that Jesus’ divinity, at every point, shapes his humanity. You end up with a Jesus who doesn’t hunger, doesn’t thirst, doesn’t get tired, and never used the restroom. You end up with a Jesus who isn’t really human and who really cannot relate to us as his creatures. You end up practicing a sort of ‘spiritual docetism’ that Enns warns us about (18). And Docetism is not good for Christology, nor for a Doctrine of Scripture.”

i) What we have here is a demagogical ploy. Because their position on Scripture is indefensible, Enns and his student groupies shift grounds from Bibliology to Christology. Yet that’s a tacit admission that their position on inerrancy is too vulnerable to defend on its own terms.

ii) Since the Bible never uses the Incarnation to model its inspiration, it’s unscriptural to impose this framework on the doctrine of Scripture. Enns is trying to win the debate by framing the issue to his advantage. I reject his frame of reference, which is just a diversionary tactic.

“There are tensions in the NT as well. The suicide of Judas (which was brought up on Green Baggins and, in my opinion, swept under the rug via an insufficient quotation from a commentary attempting to harmonize the two events).”

i) What does Art think is wrong with, say, Darrell Bock’s explanation in his new commentary on Acts (pp83-85)?

ii) Speaking for myself, my best guess is that dogs pulled his body down. Dogs were notorious scavengers. And one reason the Jews removed human corposes was to avoid desecration by scavengers. Conversely, exposing a corpse to scavengers was a way to shame the dead.

Michael Bird also chimes in with some accusatorial questions:

http://euangelizomai.blogspot.com/2008/04/biblical-criticism-and-confessionalism.html

For example:

“Why is Genesis 1-3 similar to the Enuma Elish?”

It isn’t.

“Did the Apostle Paul believe in the inerrancy of the autographa? Why are Paul's citation of Scripture often different from the wording and meaning in the original Hebrew Bible and even the Septuagint (to give one example: Isa. 59.20 cited in Rom. 11.26-27)?”

i) Because Rom 11:26-27 is a composite quote. See Schreiner’s commentary on Romans (p619). Also Seifrid’s explanation in a Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament (p677).

ii) As for Pauline practice generally, Bird is simply begging the question with respect to Apostolic exegesis.

Perfect Satire

As a professional satirist (who has yet to be paid, but the check’s in the mail), I find our modern culture to be extremely disheartening. It seems these days that the only way the average person will understand that he is watching satire is if it says “Stephen Colbert” somewhere in the title. Personally, I think this has to do with the liberal mindset.

In fact, when I wrote Public Transit my goal was for Conservatives to roll in the aisle laughing at the irony while Liberals read it going, “What’s wrong with this? Sounds like a good idea to me!” In other words, I wanted my satire to be so realistic that those who believe the concepts that were being mocked wouldn’t even realize they were being lampooned.

Now whether or not I succeeded in that book, I have found something that has! It’s the Richard Dawkins Rap Video that Sinner & Saint first pointed us to a while back. When I first saw the video, frankly, I couldn’t see how anyone could miss the fact that this is a blatant anti-Dawkins video.

Then I read the response from the New Atheist front. They think that this video is pro-them!

Somehow, the atheists over at Richard Dawkins’s blog and PZ Myers’s blog (and many other dark holes) are convinced that this video is anti-Creationist and pro-Darwin. It’s actually quite revealing that these are the people who proclaim themselves to be the intellectual towers in the land…and they were sucked in by this.

From the opening, this video demonstrates how arrogant Dawkins is. “We appreciate your concern. It is noted and stupid. After all, we are scientists much, much smarter than you.” (By the way, am I the only one who thinks the Dawkins voice actor in this video sounds a lot like the guy who did the Dawkins Delusion parody?)

Immediately following this, you have two scientists examining a test tube. The Darwinist comments that “Natural Selection creates that sort of thing every day” and the other responds, “I think there’s something else going on here.” At which point, the Darwinian scientist makes a call: “Big Gadget, this is Little Tool. We’ve got ourselves a situation.” (Obviously, then, the Darwinians are “tools” of the machine, and now the atheists have edjukated us that being called a tool is a good thing instead of an insult!) The non-Darwinian scientist is then ejected from the lab with “Expelled” stamped on his forehead.

Obviously, this video was not done by the producers of Expelled. I mean, it totally doesn’t fit the theme of their movie at all...

Most of the atheists have simply managed not to view this entire section of the video. Instead, they respond: “The rap lyrics are pro-science!” In other words, they ignore the prologue that sets up the context to the video in order to claim the video is on their side.

It’s amazingly similar to the way Darwinists do science, too. Ignore all the evidence that doesn’t fit with their theory, and then claim that science agrees with Darwinists. They must have gotten used to skewing reality so often they didn’t even realize they’d done it here.

The lyrics of the song are hardly flattering either. And it’s certainly not “pro-science.” Instead, you have Dawkins claiming science while arguing solely from a position of authority. The chorus of the rap is:

He’s the Dick to the Dawk to the PhD
He’s smarter than you, he’s got a science degree.
Dick to the Dawk to the PhD
He’s smarter than you, he’s got a science degree.

The second time through the chorus it changes (evolves!) to:

Yo, he’s the Dick to the Dawk to the PhD
He’s smarter than you, he’s got a science degree.
Dick to the Dawk to the PhD
He’s still smarter than you, he studied biology.

Yet every good scientist ought to know that degrees don’t matter to science. Science is science if it’s testable and repeatable, not if someone with a degree says it’s science. So the lyrics are hardly “pro-science.” At best, one could claim they're pro-Dawkins...IF you ignore the fact that 99% of people who hear someone say, "I have a PhD therefore I'm right" experience this negatively. But it can't be good for science to rest on laurels instead of evidence.

That’s what makes it scary. Atheists who claim they want science to be the standard are saying this is what they mean by "science". Makes one feel all warm and tingly inside, don’t it?

So to sum up how this video goes, it begins by portraying Darwinism as an out of control “machine” that stifles intellectual thought and expels those who disagree with the Darwinian orthodoxy; it shows Dawkins is one of the most arrogant people on Earth (a true statement, by the way); it shows that the Darwinists argue on authority, not science; and it ends with Dawkins admitting he’s a rabid atheist:

Now the machine of our makin’
Sees culture ripe for the takin’
Cuz I’m the rapinest rabidest atheist too*
Unlike the Catholic, the Muslim, or even the Jew
Believes that no god but Science could ever be true.
[Heck] if I was dyslexic, I’d even hate dog too.

* That’s my best guess as to the last word in that line. It actually sounds like he says “atheist Sue.” Interestingly enough, none of the atheist’s versions of the lyrics that I read said “rabidest” there. The one on PZ Myers’ site, for instance, just says: “Cos I'm the rapper thats rappin the ....” (the “….” at the end shows I’m not the only one who can’t figure out that last word!) But if you listen to the video at the 3:12 mark, he definitely says “rapinest rabidest atheist”).

Now, in what way could this possibly be construed as a pro-Darwinian piece? Well, because:

it's far too smart to be pro-creationism. Whoever made it is on the side of the atheists...

I get the feeling that the video is meant to poke fun at both sides of the evolution/ID debate, albeit I agree with the commenter who said that it seems too clever and hip to be the work of a creationist.…

This is simply not how a creationist would parody the pro-science side….

The quality of the work was relatively high (except for a talent for blustering…and whining craetionists have never shown that they are capable of anything artistic, unless directly aping [heh!] another source.)…

No wonder these atheists thought it was pro-them. They’re just as arrogant as Dawkins!

Charlton Heston, RIP

In one sense, the death of Charlton Heston marks the passing of an era. If you compare today’s movie stars with yesterday’s movie stars, they project different models of masculinity and femininity.

Off the top of my head, here some of the male movie stars of the past: Humphrey Bogart, Richard Burton, James Cagney, Gary Cooper, Clark Gable, Errol Flynn, Cary Grant, Burt Lancaster, Steve McQueen, Robert Mitchum, Gregory Peck, John Wayne, and Charleston Heston.

There are also a few aging actors like Kirk Douglas, Clint Eastwood, James Garner, Paul Newman, and Sean Connery who represent a throwback to that era.

Just compare this to Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Justin Timberlake, Heath Ledger, Orlando Bloom, or Ryan Phillippe to see the difference. The difference is that yesterday’s male movie stars were manly whereas their modern counterparts are boyish.

Today, when we want to cast an actor who projects masculinity, we’re basically down to Russell Crowe—or Dennis Haysbert for TV roles.

And the same patterns holds true for female movie stars: Mary Astor, Joan Crawford, Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, Eva Gardner, Rita Hayworth, Lena Horne, Deborah Kerr, Hedy Lamarr, Sophia Loren, Merle Oberon, Maureen O’Hara, Irene Papas, Simone Signoret, Barbara Stanwyck, and Elizabeth Taylor.

A few of these ladies are still alive, but elderly. Compare that to Angelina Jolie or Jennifer Aniston to see the difference. The difference is that yesterday’s female movie stars were womanly whereas their modern counterparts are girlish.

Today’s movie stars look like High School students. Hollywood is subtly redefining manhood and womanhood. This may have begun with the Sixties youth culture. And it may have been reinforced by the spending power of today’s teenagers.

This doesn’t mean that yesterday’s movie stars were better actors. In general, I think the quality of the acting has improved since the Sixties. More convincing. More naturalistic.

This is partly due to the subject matter, which is more realistic. And it’s also due to a generation of actors who were tutored by Lee Strasberg, with Marlon Brando as the iconic method actor.

There’s a certain tension between star power and naturalistic acting. You can’t stand out if you disappear into a part.

Heston himself was an uneven actor. Sometimes hammy. Sometimes wooden. Two of his better films were El Cid and Soylent Green.

I don’t claim that the Thirties and Forties were the golden age of Hollywood. Most of it was stylish escapism.

I’m just noting a cultural shift in the way that gender is projected by Hollywood. And this can have an impact on the general culture, percolating down from the pop cultural icons.

Pagan Christianity

Peter Jones, expert on gnosticism and paganism, member of my church, and one time friend of John Lennon (!), has reviewed Viola and Barna's new book, Pagan Christianity.