Is Calvinism Islamic?

A popular Arminian tactic is to preemptively discredit Calvinism by associating Calvinism with Islam. I’ll make a few observations:

i) Islam is a Judeo-Christian heresy, parasitic on Muhammad’s (mis-)understanding of the Bible, as well as free-floating theological traditions then in circulation. Because it borrows so heavily from Christianity and Judaism, it’s not surprising that you can find parallels between Islam and Christianity.

For instance, both Islam and Arminianism believe in a divine Creator and Judge. By that yardstick, Arminian theism is Islamic.

ii) Likewise, Islam has parallel debates involving freedom and determinism. If Asharites are analogous to Calvinists, then Mutazilites are analogous to Arminians. As such, the comparison cuts both ways.

iii) Arminians try to preemptively discredit Calvinism by claiming that both Calvinism and Islam subscribe to predestination. As I just pointed out, that’s a double-edged sword. But it also oversimplifies the issue. Some distinctions and definitions are in order.

Theological diversity

Islam has both determinist (Asharite) and indeterminist (Mutazilite) schools of thought. So it parallels the spectrum of Christian positions in that regard.  

Predestination

Predestination is sometimes used as a loose synonym for determinism. But, in principle, there’s a basic difference. Predestination involves forethought or premeditation. Not just that God “determines” all things, but that all things go according to plan.

This concept is illustrated by the bookish metaphor. God writes down what will happen. Everything that happens onstage was scripted offstage. The players recite their lines. A player/playwright analogy.

You do have some “Arminian” Muslims who reverse this by casting Allah in the role of a scribe taking dictation from the future. Allah is jotting down whatever he foresees. The future is not a transcription of the book; rather, the book is a transcription of the future.

The Bible itself uses the bookish metaphor. For now I’m not going to debate the correct interpretation of that metaphor. I’m just defining and distinguishing various concepts.

Occasionalism

Let’s compare predestination to occasionalism to bring out the difference. On this view, God is the sole cause or direct cause of whatever happens:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/occasionalism/#IslOcc

http://www.iep.utm.edu/occasion/#SH2a

Now, this is deterministic. However, it’s logically separable from the notion of a master plan. The Deity could directly cause everything, but be improvising every step of the way. The Deity might have no idea of what he’s going to do next. Even though he causes everything, his actions are purely spontaneous. Making things up on the spur of the moment.

Occasionalism is deterministic, but not predestinarian. Efficient causes, not final causes.

Fatalism

We can also distinguish determinism from predeterminism or predestination.

Fatalism is both deterministic and predeterministic. A classic example concerns the Fates, who predetermine each human lifespan. Unlike mere determinism, it fixes the outcome ahead of time.

However, it differs from predestination in a couple of key respects:

i) It can be capricious or random. There need be no higher purpose or coordinated plan. Just sheer, inexorable power.

ii) The end is inevitable irrespective of the means. Indeed, fatalism is compatible with libertarian freedom. There can be many alternate routes, but they all lead to the same destination.

Causation

There is no received definition of causality. One question is what pretheoretical intuition are we trying to capture when we define causation. Here’s one influential suggestion (by David Lewis):

We think of a cause as something that makes a difference, and the difference it makes must be a difference from what would have happened without it. Had it been absent, its effects — some of them, at least, and usually all — would have been absent as well.

On this definition, predestination is clearly causal. But there’s a catch, for on this definition, even bare permission is equally causal.

Here’s an example of what’s popularly called “predestination” in Islam:

http://www.answering-islam.org/Index/P/predestination.html

Consider how we should classify different passages according to the aforesaid distinctions and definitions. They fall into different categories. 

Kruger vs Ratzinger

Setting the stage for the conflict

Before I move further with Michael Kruger’s work, Canon Revisited, I’d like to share the reason for the enthusiasm for this work. And it has to do with showing a contrast between the entire world and ethos of Protestantism, and the entire world and ethos of Roman Catholicism.

Regarding the latter, the following statement has been making its way around the Internet lately. It is more than a tacit admission that there are contradictions within the Roman Catholic system, and it discusses how Roman Catholics are required to deal with these contradictions. (Andy when I say “deal with”, I say it in the spirit with which Roman Catholics are literally commanded to accept these things fully and without question. They get to “receive with docility the teachings and directives that their pastors give them in different forms”. What follows is in the context of the teachings of the Vatican II council being “completely binding” on Roman Catholics, but the principle here applies much more broadly:

1. Whenever the Council teaches something about faith and morals, what it teaches is certainly true, either through the specific note of infallibility or from the religious submission of mind and will owed to the ordinary Magisterium.

2. If such a teaching on faith or morals appears to anyone to conflict with earlier teachings, the problem is not with the truth of the Council’s statement but with our understanding of the Church’s full teaching of which the Council’s statement is inescapably a part.

3. Proper method demands that an understanding of the matter in question be found that accepts the truth of all relevant statements. Later statements can be illuminated by earlier ones and earlier statements can be illuminated by later ones, until a more complete and precise understanding is formed.

4. Where the Council was not teaching on matters of faith and morals, such as where it was describing contemporary conditions or offering recommendations for renewal, its statements are to be received with respect and gratitude but are not necessarily flawless in either their factual accuracy or their prudential judgment.

5. It follows that any arguments which undermine this understanding, whether based upon the pastoral interests of the Council or any other factor, are specious.

(I am reminded of Loyola’s Thirteenth Rule: “To be right in everything, we ought always to hold that the white which I see, is black, if the Hierarchical Church so decides it…” In other words, Rule #1 is: “Rome is right, and you are wrong”. And Rule #2 is, “when in doubt, see Rule #1”).

These directives, it is noted in the First Things article where they are (among other places) found, carefully follow “the principals [sic] laid out by Pope Benedict in his address to the Curia about ‘the hermeneutic of reform, of renewal within continuity.’” The foundation of these ideas come from Pope John XXIII’s opening speech of the council:

                                                                                                                                                                  

Here I shall cite only John XXIII's well-known words, which unequivocally express this hermeneutic when he says that the Council wishes "to transmit the doctrine, pure and integral, without any attenuation or distortion". And he continues:  "Our duty is not only to guard this precious treasure, as if we were concerned only with antiquity, but to dedicate ourselves with an earnest will and without fear to that work which our era demands of us...". It is necessary that "adherence to all the teaching of the Church in its entirety and preciseness..." be presented in "faithful and perfect conformity to the authentic doctrine, which, however, should be studied and expounded through the methods of research and through the literary forms of modern thought. The substance of the ancient doctrine of the deposit of faith is one thing, and the way in which it is presented is another...", retaining the same meaning and message (The Documents of Vatican II, Walter M. Abbott, S.J., p. 715).

“Faith Alone”, Roman Catholic Style

Thus, Roman Catholics are bound to “receive with docility” the notion that “If … a teaching on faith or morals appears to anyone to conflict with earlier teachings, the problem is not with the truth of the [Church’s] statement but with our understanding of the Church’s full teaching ….”

This is almost the very definition of fideism: an “exclusive or basic reliance upon faith alone, accompanied by a consequent disparagement of reason and utilized especially in the pursuit of philosophical or religious truth”. At best, it is an example of the statement, “I don’t know what the explanation is, but the truth is definitely “out there”, somewhere. Now, some Roman Catholics will take issue that this is an example of “faith alone”, as Plantinga defined it. It is “faith alone in the [‘Roman Catholic Church’s full teaching’] alone”.

Pope and Theologian-in-Chief Joseph Ratzinger

For 20-odd years, he was the #2 man in the Vatican. Every Roman Catholic’s favorite theologian these days (those few Roman Catholics who are interested in theology) has to be Joseph Ratzinger. The “brilliant” young theologian Ratzinger was a peritus, or chief theological advisor to [the Liberal] Cardinal Josef Frings of Cologne, Germany. Avery Dulles summarized Ratzinger’s theological achievements at Vatican II:

Benedict XVI was present at all four sessions of the Second Vatican Council from 1962 to 1965. Whereas Karol Wojtyla took part as a bishop, the young Joseph Ratzinger did so as a theological expert. During and after the council he taught successively at the universities of Bonn (1959-1963), Münster (1963-1966), Tübingen (1966-1969), and Regensburg, until he was appointed Archbishop of Munich in 1977. In 1981 he became prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a post he held until the death of John Paul II in April 2005.

In the post Vatican II period, “John Paul the Great” may have been pope, but the pope was a philosopher, and Joseph Ratzinger was “the pope’s theologian”. When John Paul II died, in the conclave that followed, no other figure on the horizon had the kind of notability and stature that Ratzinger had.

So, for any given statement on “apostolic succession”, whatever Ratzinger, pope-and-theologian-in-chief, provides the clearest shape of the Roman Catholic argument for authority via apostolic succession.

Why this question is so important in our day

As I’ve noted in the past, Ratzinger points this out in the clearest terms in his 1962 essay “Primacy, Episcopacy, and Successio Apostolica” in the work “God’s Word: Scripture-Tradition-Office  (San Francisco: Ignatius Press ©2008; Libreria Editrice Vaticana edition ©2005). He says “The concept of [apostolic] succession was clearly formulated, as von Campenhausen has impressively demonstrated, in the anti-Gnostic polemics of the second century; [and not, as some Roman Catholic writers assert, in the first century] its purpose was to contrast the true apostolic tradition of the Church with the pseudo-apostolic tradition of Gnosis” (pgs 22-23).

In that thread, one commenter noted Ratzinger’s objection to what von Campenhausen was saying.

If, however, von Campenhausen meant to say here that a later and thus secondary theology of succesio/traditio was preceded by a biblical theology, then this would have to be called an error (Ratzinger, 25).

This is precisely what von Campenhausen was saying. Von Campenhausen suggests precisely that “biblical theology” certainly preceded the concept of “apostolic succession” held by the later (second century) church.

Roman claims to authority, therefore, are dependent upon the fact that the New Testament canon came some time after this formulation of “apostolic succession”.

This is clarified as Ratzinger continues:

For the understanding of the New Testament [writings] as “scripture”, and thus any possible formulation of a New Testament biblical principle, is no earlier than the determination of the principle of succession/tradito, and moreover, it is, to an even greater extent than this latter, determined by Gnosticism through Marcion (Ratzinger, 25).

Look at what Ratzinger is saying: The impetus for the canon of the New Testament is “determined by Gnosticism through Marcion”. But just to be sure everyone gets this idea, Ratzinger drives his point home:

We should not deceive ourselves: the existence of New Testament writings, recognized as being “apostolic”, does not yet imply the existence of a “New Testament” as “Scripture”—there is a long way from the writings to Scripture. It is well known, and should not be overlooked, that the New Testament does not anywhere understand itself as “Scripture”; “Scripture” is, for the New Testament, simply the Old Testament, while the message about Christ is precisely “spirit”, which teaches us how to understand Scripture.” The idea of a “New Testament” as “Scripture” is still quite inconceivable at this point—even when “office”, as the form of the paradosis, is already clearly taking shape” (Ratzinger ,25).

This is where the rubber meets the road. This is Rome’s strongest and most desperate argument for its own authority. Ratzinger dredges up the old “the Church precedes the Scripture” canard. The reason they hold so strongly to this point is because their entire claim to authority is based on this one falsehood. If the New Testament message has greater authority than “the Church”, then all of Rome’s claims to authority may rightly be flushed down the toilet.

                        

[Given that the papacy was a development that began in the third century and saw its full flowering only in the fifth century, the Roman Catholic Church needs something upon which to hang a line between Peter, who, without question, was a great Apostle, and the fifth century. It needs the concept of “Apostolic Succession”, however nebulous that may be, to bridge that gap.]

Here is Ratzinger pressing home his case:

This open situation of the existence of recognized New Testament writings without the existence of any New Testament principle of Scripture or any clear notion of the canon lasted until well in the second century—right into the middle of the period of the conflict with Gnosticism. Before the idea of a “canon” of New Testament Scripture had been formulated, the Church had already developed a different concept of what was canonical; she had as her Scripture the Old Testament but this Scripture needed a canon of New Testament interpretation, which the Church saw as existing in the traditio guaranteed by the succession (Ratzinger, 25-26).

Rome thus hangs its hat upon the lateness of the canon of the New Testament. If the Roman Catholic version of the lateness of the New Testament can be shown to have some dependence on “tradition”, then somehow, Rome’s version of its own claim to authority might ring true. On the other hand, if the writings of the New Testament had authority to shape orthodox belief (as Kruger argues), then the Reformation is precisely correct in its “throwing off” of Roman authority in favor of a Scriptural-based rule of faith.

It’s not hard to see where this is going. Lord willing, I’ll pick up more of this next time. 

Economic Advice to Ronald Reagan in 1980

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204880404577225870253766212.html

Al-Ghazali isn't a real Muslim!

I’ll comment on this:

http://thedebateinitiative.com/2012/05/25/three-big-problems-with-the-atonement/#comment-3403

Well, if Steve grants the interpretation of Christians, which I appeal to then that doesn’t mean that it is counter productive. I only appealed to Paul’s statement to show that there is some idea of universal principles. That is all. I know that Paul taught PTS. The whole point I am trying to make is that people such as Paul contradict the universal principle of “anti-PTS” to begin with!.

i) Zawadi ignores the fact that his interpretation of Rom 2:14-15 is disputed.

ii) And even if we grant his interpretation, his appeal is self-defeating. By his own admission, Paul taught penal substitution. So Paul doesn’t think penal substitution is intuitively wrong.

And Paul is hardly alone. Other OT and NT writers teach penal substitution. So they don’t think penal substitution is intuitively wrong.

Even if Paul taught that human beings are endowed with an innate grasp of certain moral truths, the (alleged) injustice of penal substitution doesn’t count as one of those moral truths.

Zawadi is making a claim about moral intuition in general, then applying that to penal substitution in particular. But that’s a fallacious inference inasmuch as Zawadi’s inference is not implicit in the general claim. He’s assuming what he needs to prove.

Unfortunately, Steve is passing off false analogies. Why is that? It’s true that there are certain laws such as bans on alcohol or principles (such as in the case of the PTS) exclusive to particular faiths, however in this particular context I was raising the point that the moral principle of the guilty needing to be held accountable for their crimes and not the innocent IS A UNIVERSAL PRINCIPLE SHARED BY EVERYONE INCLUDING CHRISTIANS. The idea is that EVEN CHRISTIANS recognize that fairness denotes that the guilty pay for their own criminal actions and not the innocent. However, Christians for some odd reason only see this to be okay with Jesus supposedly dying for their sins. For this particular situation, they make it okay. They suddenly make an exception to this metaphysical moral intuition.

You see the difference now? This isn’t a typical case of where a religion differs with others regarding certain morals. Rather, this is a case where all human beings (including Christians) recognize a certain moral principle, yet Christians violate this principle when it comes to the alleged death of the Son of God for their sins.

i) There is no universal moral intuition against penal substitution or vicarious atonement. Many religions practice animal sacrifice or human sacrifice to appease their god or gods. The victim dies in place of those on whose behalf he is sacrificed. So that belies Zawadi’s facile appeal to a universal moral intuition to the contrary.

What’s his evidence for a universal moral intuition to the contrary? Clearly he lacks universal empirical evidence, for there’s extensive, cross-cultural empirical evidence for vicarious sacrifice. Not only does he lack evidence commensurate with the scope of his claim, but he ignores evidence to the contrary.

ii) Even if (ex hypothesi) Jesus were the exception to the rule, Jesus is inherently exceptional. So that wouldn’t be an ad hoc exception–even if we grant, for the sake of argument, that it is, indeed, an exception to the rule. Rather, that would another point of principle–given the exceptional metaphysical nature of the Redeemer.

I’m going to have to let an Asha’rite Muslim (which I am not) defend that notion, since I personally believe that this contrary to Islam (as I have publicly stated before over here http://www.ahlalhdeeth.com/vbe/showpost.php?p=38645&postcount=1).

So Al-Ghazali and Ibn Khaldun weren’t real Muslims. Zawadi discredits himself by such a preposterous claim.

Keeping aside the fact that not all Christians would agree with this interpretation (the most amusing counter interpretation being that Satan gave up his possession of us because of our sins for the “purchase money of Christ’s blood”) this doesn’t change the fact that there is an internal contradiction between PTS and the concept of forgiveness as illustrated in the other passages, which I pointed to. To merely brush them aside as “certain aspects of Biblical forgiveness” doesn’t make the problem go away I’m afraid.

i) There is no internal contradiction. Zawadi is arguing from silence. The fact that some passages don’t mention redemption as a condition of forgiveness hardly contradicts the necessity of redemption as a condition of forgiveness. The passages he quotes don’t say redemption and remission are antithetical. Rather, they don’t speak to that connection one way or the other.

ii) There is also a difference between divine and human forgiveness. To say God requires atonement to pardon sinners don’t entail the same requirement when men forgive their fellow man. Our duties to God and man are not interchangeable.

Steve says this as if us human beings don’t already understand what forgiveness means!

There is no uniform concept of forgiveness. For instance, some people think forgiveness is unconditional while others think it’s conditional.

Well then…… what does it mean (would be nice to quote some scripture here)???

Since Scripture doesn’t say the Father and the Son were “separated” at Calvary, I don’t have to quote a Scripture to the contrary. Zawadi is the one who framed the issue in terms of separation, not me. The onus lies on him to justify his usage.

How do I understand that the “wage of sin is death” and apply it to the case of Jesus?

What is there not to understand?

I’m curious to know where the New Testament teaches that Jesus was propitiated, for I only see the Father being mentioned as having his wrath appeased in Romans 3:25. Where does it mention the same for the Son and Spirit?

i) To begin with, Zawadi is committing the word-concept fallacy. The concept of propitiation can be present where the word is absent.

ii) He is also confusing exegetical theology with systematic theology. To say Jesus was propitiated would be an inference from Trinitarian theology.

Granting that Jesus was both the subject and object of propitiation…. Why would God PUNISH HIMSELF in order to APPEASE HIMSELF?

i) To say that God punished himself is equivocal. God qua God didn’t “punish” himself. Rather, the Son of God Incarnate endured divine punishment.

ii) To say God “appeases” himself is a colorful, rather anthropomorphic way of saying that God exacts justice.

Can Steve explain why several Christian preachers keep telling us Muslims that one reason why Christianity teaches that God is closer to human beings than in Islam is because Jesus came down to earth and lived amongst us and related to us, etc. etc. etc. Muslims keep hearing from Christians that God loved us sooo much that he came down to earth and died for us and to be close to us, etc. etc. etc. Does Steve disagree with this approach of Christians? If not, then can’t the Muslim rightly point out that the Father didn’t do all this, hence it’s expected that we feel differently towards the Father?

Several issues:

i) Religious exponents vary in their sophistication. Ibn Rushd and Seyyed Hossein Nasr are more sophisticated than the average Imam. If you’re going to attack Christian theology, you need to do better than pick on Christian preachers.

ii) It isn’t a question of physical distance. What makes Allah more remote than the Trinity isn’t because there is literally more space between Allah and his creatures.

iii) Rather, the difference is due, in part, to how much or little God has in common with his creatures. In Christian theology, God has both communicable and incommunicable attributes. God is like us in some respects.

By contrast, Islam stresses the absolute transcendence of Allah. The sin of shirk. Apophaticism. Allah is ineffable and inaccessible.

iv) On a related note is what God does or doesn’t do for his people. The Christian God is loving, in part, because he shows his love for sinners through his redemptive deeds.

v) We also need to distinguish between picture language and reality. God doesn’t literally reside in the sky, or live on a mountaintop (e.g. Mt. Olympus, Mt. Zaphon). It’s not like an astronaut can see God or rocket to heaven if he reaches a certain altitude. God isn’t actually “up there.”

God doesn’t literally come down from the sky, like Greek gods coming down to the plains of Troy in the Iliad.

That’s anthropomorphic. Descending from heaven is picturesque.

vi) There’s a difference between the figurative depiction of God coming down to us and the literal depiction of God becoming one of us and dwelling among us in the person of the incarnate Son.

God can come to us in Christ without leaving heaven. He doesn’t have to “go” anywhere to be accessible in the person of his Son.

The Christian God is, indeed, far more accessible than Allah.

In a nut shell, did the Son suffer for us or not?

That’s equivocal. The Son qua Son doesn’t suffer, but the Son qua incarnate does suffer. 

Understanding the “Federal Vision”

In light of the recent articles I’ve posted, commenting on a couple of Peter Leithart’s articles, I found this article by Dr Alan Strange, a professor at Mid-America Theological Seminary, which provides a brief overview of the history and theologies of the “Federal Vision” advocates. I know that reams and reams have been written about this topic, but it’s still rumbling around “out there” (and maybe even a little closer to home), and it never hurts to have a bit of background on these things.

The movement that has come to be known as the “Federal Vision” came to the attention of many in Presbyterian and Reformed circles following a pastor’s conference at Auburn Avenue Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Monroe, Louisiana, in January 2002. The word federal means “covenantal.” Federal Vision proponents seek to revitalize and develop the doctrines of the covenant and the church.

There are some legitimate concerns that the Federal Vision has raised, especially in our current ecclesiastical context. Being afflicted as we are, in this land, with a low view of the church, the Federal Vision proponents strike significant chords in support of a high view of the means of grace and of the visible church. They eschew a view of the church that would stress the invisible at the expense of the visible and that would exalt the individual and the subjective above the corporate and the objective. They rightly observe that much of the church is afflicted with a low view of the means of grace (especially preaching and the sacraments), the obligation to live holy lives, and the inseparability of justification and sanctification. The solution to these problems, however, lies in the historic Reformed faith at its best. While even Reformed and Presbyterian churches may suffer from what ails the broader body of evangelical churches, they do so not because of their theology but in spite of it.

The problem with the Federal Vision is its tendency to overreact to problems in broader evangelicalism and in certain Reformed circles. For example, subjectivism is rejected by embracing an exaggerated objectivism. The proponents of the whole Federal Vision program routinely seek a theological fix for problems that ought to be addressed pastorally. It seems to be thought that the problems must reflect shortcomings in Reformed theology, when in fact they reflect shortcomings in Reformed practice. There’s nothing wrong with our theology, except that we fail to live up to it. Our standards are not deficient; rather, our deportment is. Too often we fail to be in practice who we truly are in Christ. The solution to lives that are not what they should be is not theological reformulation, as Federal Vision proponents would claim, but faithful living within our already well-developed theological system. It is the best expression of Scripture that the church has, by God’s guidance and grace, developed thus far.

Twenty errors that are held by one or more advocates of the Federal Vision are listed in the conclusion of the report of the OPC’s Committee to Study the Doctrine of Justification:

1.       Pitting Scripture and Confession against each other.

2.       Regarding the enterprise of systematic theology as inherently rationalistic.

3.       A mono-covenantalism that sees one covenant, originating in the intra-Trinitarian fellowship, into which man is invited, thus flattening the concept of covenant and denying the distinction between the covenant of works and the covenant of grace.

4.       Election as primarily corporate and eclipsed by covenant.

5.       Seeing covenant as only conditional.

6.       A denial of the covenant of works and of the fact that Adam was in a relationship with God that was legal as well as filial.

7.       A denial of a covenant of grace distinct from the covenant of works.

8.       A denial that the law given in Eden is the same as that more fully published at Mt. Sinai and that it requires perfect obedience.

9.       Viewing righteousness as relational, not moral.

10.   A failure to make clear the difference between our faith and Christ’s.

11.   A denial of the imputation of the active obedience of Christ in our justification.

12.   Defining justification exclusively as the forgiveness of sins.

13.   The reduction of justification to Gentile inclusion.

14.   Including works (by use of “faithfulness,” “obedience,” etc.) in the very definition of faith.

15.   Failing to affirm an infallible perseverance and the indefectibility of grace.

16.   Teaching baptismal regeneration.

17.   Denying the validity of the concept of the invisible church.

18.   An overly objectified sacramental efficacy that downplays the need for faith and that tends toward an ex opere operato [automatically effective] view of the sacraments.

19.   Teaching paedocommunion.

20.   Ecclesiology that eclipses and swallows up soteriology.

Some of these points, to be sure, warrant elaboration more than others….

http://www.opc.org/nh.html?article_id=478

For More Information.

From one of the best funeral sermons ...

http://www.reformation21.org/blog/2012/05/the-best-funeral-sermon-my-mat.php

If you have never thanked God for the death of Christ in your place, if you have never thanked God for forgiving and accepting you through Christ’s death, if you have never boasted in God’s grace and your weakness, if you have never gloried in the cross Christ, and never set aside other boasting, then please do so now. Boast in Christ’s cross.

If you have gloried in the atoning death of Christ, boasted in the cross of Christ in the past, but neglected to do so more recently in your own life, or in your ministry, then please repent now, ask for God’s forgiveness and change your practice. Boast in Christ’s cross.

If you have gloried in anything other than the cross of Christ, in your achievements, your success, your promotion, your recognition, your popularity, your gifts, your experiences, then please repent now, ask God for forgiveness, and change your practice. Boast in Christ’s cross.

If you have gloried in Christ but not in his cross, not in his atoning death as our substitute and our Saviour, then please repent now, adore your Saviour, and boast and glory in his cross.

I appeal to you now, that you would, like Paul, bear the marks of the cross of Christ in yourself, boast in Christ’s cross, and let that Lord Jesus Christ and that cross shape and form your life and ministry. 

Debunked Debunkers

Alex Tsakiris recently interviewed Daryl Bem on his webcast. Among other topics, they discussed skeptics of the paranormal, like Richard Wiseman and James Randi. Here are some of their comments:

Biological immortality

Sal Macaluso on May 27, 2012 at 2:54 pm said:

God did not create things with “the appearance of age” he created things. Scientists use empirical data to come to conclusions about things based on observation. What they conclude when they determine the age of the universe does not actually determine age it simply determines what the evidence reveals. In other words, God did not create Adam to appear to be old (for argument sake, let’s God created Adam as a 25 year old man). He did not create Adam to appear to have the age of a 25-year-old man, He actually created a 25-year-old man. If a scientist went back in time to the 8th day and examined Adam he would have correctly determined that Adam was 25 years old. It’s not as if God created things to simply appear to be old, he created things with the predetermined age that He wanted them to have from the moment of their creation. Ironically, if you really think about it, scientist would not be able to determine that age of things had God not introduced the concept of age when He created.

http://michaeljkruger.com/biologos-theistic-evolution-and-misplaced-confidence/#comment-482

i) That’s an interesting way of putting it, although we still need to distinguish between chronological age and biological age. Adam would be chronologically a day old, but biologically 25 years old.

So, to make the statement a bit more precise, God didn’t create Adam with the appearance of biological age; rather, Adam really was that age–biologically speaking.

ii) We could also extend this principle. At the resurrection of the just, Christians will receive glorified bodies. Not only will these bodies be recreated at an optimal biological age, but they will remain at the same biological age even though they continue to age chronologically.

Spiritual warfare

Counterevidence and the evidential problem of evil

6.1 The Appeal to Positive Evidence for the Existence of God

 

If a given, concrete formulation of the argument from evil appeals to cases of intrinsically undesirable states of affairs that give rise to only to evidential considerations, rather than to incompatibility considerations, then, although the existence of God may be improbable relative to that evidence, it may not be improbable relative to one's total evidence. Theists, however, have often contended that there are a variety of arguments that, even if they do not prove that God exists, provide positive evidence. May not this positive evidence outweigh, then, the negative evidence of apparently unjustified evils?

 

A similar conclusion can be defended with respect to other arguments, such as those that appeal to purported miracles, or religious experiences. For while in the case of religious experiences it might be argued that personal contact with a being may provide additional evidence concerning the person's character, it is clear that the primary evidence concerning a person's character must consist of information concerning what the person does and does not do. So, contrary to the claim advanced by Robert Adams (1985, 245), even if there were veridical religious experiences, they would not provide one with a satisfactory defense against the argument from evil.

 

A good way of underlining the basic point here is by setting out an alternative formulation of the argument from evil in which it is granted, for the sake of argument, that there is an omnipotent and omniscient person. The result of doing this is that the conclusion at which one arrives is not that there is no omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect person, but, rather, that, although there is an omnipotent and omniscient person, that person is not morally perfect.

 

When the argument from evil is reformulated in that way, it becomes clear that the vast majority of considerations that have been offered as reasons for believing in God can be of little assistance to the person who is trying to resist the argument from evil. For most of them provide, at best, very tenuous grounds for any conclusion concerning the moral character of any omnipotent and omniscient being who may happen to exist, and almost none of them provides any support for the hypothesis that there is an omnipotent and omniscient being who is also morally perfect.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/evil/#AppPosEviForExiGod

But it seems to me that the argument from religious experience, as well as the argument from miracles, does implicate the character of God. Certain types of miracles or providential interventions are out of character for an omnipotent evil God. Likewise, if one grants a veridical experience of God, then why can’t one experience the goodness of God?

Certain miracles or providential events suggest a benevolent God rather than a malevolent God. Take merciful answers to prayer. Or take an unexpected providential intervention that we desperately needed at that particular time of life?

This would be analogous to how we size up a man’s moral character. In principle, evil men can do good things, but that’s not characteristic of evil men. And the more good they do, the less characteristic that will be. That’s atypical. 

How many animals were on the ark?

19 And of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every sort into the ark to keep them alive with you. They shall be male and female. 20 Of the birds according to their kinds, and of the animals according to their kinds, of every creeping thing of the ground, according to its kind, two of every sort shall come in to you to keep them alive (Gen 6:19-20).

 

2 Take with you seven pairs of all clean animals, the male and his mate, and a pair of the animals that are not clean, the male and his mate, 3 and seven pairs of the birds of the heavens also, male and female, to keep their offspring alive on the face of all the earth. 4 For in seven days I will send rain on the earth forty days and forty nights, and every living thing that I have made I will blot out from the face of the ground.” 5  And Noah did all that the Lord had commanded him.

 

6 Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters came upon the earth. 7 And Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives with him went into the ark to escape the waters of the flood. 8 Of clean animals, and of animals that are not clean, and of birds, and of everything that creeps on the ground, 9 two and two, male and female, went into the ark with Noah, as God had commanded Noah. 10 And after seven days the waters of the flood came upon the earth (Gen 7:6-10).

Unbelievers typically allege a contradiction in the number of animals. Was it one pair per kind, or seven pair per kind?

i) Suppose, for the sake of argument, that we bracket the inspiration of Scripture. Even if Genesis was just a human document, even if the flood story was just an ancient myth, assuming this is a contradiction, it’s not a subtle contradiction. Rather, it would be a glaring contradiction. A back-to-back discrepancy.

But it’s unlikely that the narrator would be oblivious to such a conspicuous discrepancy. It’s not like he lost count. The flood account is a carefully crafted story. The narrator is very mindful of what he’s doing.

ii) I think the difference is due, in part, to the narrator’s compositional technique. He employs a synoptic-resumptive/expansive technique, whereby he begins with a general presentation, then circles back to focus on certain details. Moving from general to specific. Supplementing and refining the initial presentation.

iii) Over and above that are other considerations. Why one pair? Because one pair symbolizes the minimal reproductive unit. You need at least one male and one female to produce more males and females.

iv) This, in turn, alludes to Gen 1-2. In Gen 1, God makes natural kinds that reproduce according to their kind. God also creates man and woman as a reproductive pair.

In Gen 2, Adam becomes aware of what he’s missing by naming animals in the garden. They come in pairs, but there’s no female counterpart to himself.

So the flood account mentions one pair of each kind to play on the reproductive symbolism of paired kinds.

Why seven pair? For several reasons:

a) If some animals are sacrificial animals (8:20), while other animals are food items (9:20), then you need more than one pair to maintain a replacement rate.

b) But this also trades on the numerological significance of seven. Indeed, notice the parallel between seven pairs and seven days (7:2-4). Surely that’s not incidental. That’s a back-to-back comparison.

And, of course, this also triggers associations with the seven days of the creation week, in Gen 1. So the septunarian numbering of the animals parallels the septunarian schematization of time.

c) In addition, it foreshadows the kosher laws later in the Pentateuch (Lev 11; Deut 4).

So the alternate numbering of the animals both backshadows and foreshadows other Pentateuchal motifs. We’re dealing with a somewhat schematized version of events, containing some numerological symbolism.

Liberals attribute the “contradiction” to the unsuccessful efforts of the redactor to combine two divergent flood traditions–yet as we’ve just seen, the alternate numbering involves larger, integrated patterns. It’s not confined to the flood account. It picks up on themes that precede the flood account, and it carries over into themes that succeed the flood account.