Lies for lives

I’m going to quote and comment on this essay:

http://www.waynegrudem.com/why-it-is-never-right-to-lie-an-example-of-john-frames-influence-on-my-approach-to-ethics/

It is important to clarify at the outset exactly what is being discussed. The question is the narrow one of verbal affirmations of something one believes to be false. In this sense, Lying is affirming in speech or writing something you believe to be false.

 There are several related acts that are not included in this definition. On this narrow definition, “lying” does not include:

 (2) Nonverbal actions intended to mislead or deceive someone (An action is something that happens; it is neither true nor false like a verbal affirmation of something. An example is leaving a light on in our house when we are away for a weekend – an observer may rightly conclude, “The Grudems left a light on,” but that may or may not prove that we are at home.) 

The problem with this narrow definition is that it rigs the analysis. The definition is prejudicial, by preemptively excluding potential counterevidence. By definition, certain types of counterevidence no longer count as evidence.

So this leaves Grudem open to the charge of special pleading. He’s framed the issue in a way that automatically discounts potential defeaters for his position.

Grudem anticipates this objection: 

Of course, some may argue against this narrow definition of lying, saying, for example,  “Deceptive actions are the same thing as lying.” But that is not a careful statement. Deceptive actions are in some ways similar to lying (their goal is to persuade someone else to believe something untrue) and in some ways different from lying. For example, actions are ambiguous and can have various meanings, while verbal affirmations ordinarily are not ambiguous. Also, the Bible treats deceptive actions and false affirmations differently, as I will indicate below. And lying involves a contradiction between what you think to be true and what you say, which does not occur in deceptive actions (a difference that was very significant to Augustine). The differences are important, and show at least that the two categories should be analyzed separately.

I’ll have more to say, but for now I’ll simply point out that his distinction is ad hoc. We’re dealing with a distinction between verbal and nonverbal communication. On the face of it, that’s not a morally principled distinction. Rather, that merely concerns the difference between one medium and another. Mode rather than content.

And, in fact, as Grudem knows, you have sign prophets in Scripture who use nonverbal as well as verbal communication.

Isn’t the morally salient distinction between deceptive and nondeceptive communication rather than verbal and nonverbal communication?

Likewise, isn’t the motivation to deceive a morally salient distinction? Do you have a licit or illicit motive?

The Bible has numerous commands prohibiting “lying” in the sense of affirming something that you believe to be false.

For the moment let’s focus on prohibitions against perjury. As Grudem points out, Biblical prohibitions with respect to “lying” are broader than perjury, but for now let’s focus on perjury to illustrate an underlying principle.

i) The basic flaw in Grudem’s reasoning is that he fails to take into account the implied situation.

Indeed, Grudem basically admits that later on, but he fails to appreciate the significance of his admission when he says:

Therefore there is an alternative to seeing “against your neighbor” as limiting the scope of the ninth commandment. It seem that a better understanding is that “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor” is chosen as a particularly hateful example of lying, because it is a courtroom setting where you intentionally speak falsely against your neighbor (whom you should love!) in a way that will cost him his goods (perhaps to your benefit) or even his life. By this God means to show us how hateful all lying is, not merely this kind of lying.

But that’s context-dependent. It isn’t perjury, per se, but perjury with malicious intent, that’s forbidden.

Case law doesn’t address every conceivable contingency. Rather, case law commonly deals with typical, representative situations.

Take a witness who lies to either inculpate the innocent or exculpate the guilty. What are the usual circumstances under which a witness is tempted to lie?

On the one hand, a witness might lie about his enemy to harm his enemy, even if his enemy is innocent in this particular instance. On the other hand, a witness might cover for kinsman based on a tribal honor code, where you automatically stick up for your kith and kin, even if they were in the wrong.

ii) On a related note, keep in mind the legal framework. This is the Mosaic law. A divinely inspired law code. By definition, the laws are just. That’s another aspect of the implied situation.

Can we automatically transfer those prohibitions to a legal system that is unjust? Or does that rip them out of context?

iii) In addition, we have many different social obligations in Scripture. The general prohibition against perjury involves one social obligation, but there are others we need to consider. Balancing different duties.

Let’s illustrate these principles:

iv) Suppose you attend a public high school. Suppose you’re chatting with one of your classmates, who’s a friend of yours. Suppose he says something like “boys are better at football than girls” or “homosexuals are morally depraved.”

Let’s say his statement violates the school speech code. His statement is “sexist” or “homophobic” according to the speech code.

Let’s say another student overhears the offending remarks, and rats him out. He’s hauled into the Vice-Principal’s office. He denies the accusation.  

You are also brought in and questioned. Did he say what the other student attributed to him?

v) What’s your duty in that situation? Like Grudem, we could simply recite the Mosaic prohibitions against perjury. However, in all likelihood, these envision a very different implied situation. Therefore, it’s dubious to assume that we can simply extrapolate from the Mosaic prohibitions to a situation where your classmate is liable to be unjustly punished based on your testimony. 

And if you tell the truth under those circumstances, you are making yourself an agent of an unjust regime. You are directly complicit in the miscarriage of justice.

The student wasn’t punished for wrongdoing. Rather, the punishment was the wrongdoing. He didn’t wrong anyone. Rather, the school is wronging him. If you witness against him, you are accessory to the injustice. 

vi) In addition, your testimony would be a breach of confidence, as well as a betrayal of trust. Because you’re his friend, he felt it was safe to speak freely in your presence.

So there’s more than one potential duty in play. There’s a prima facie duty to be a truthful witness. But in addition there’s a prima facie duty to honor a confidence and be a trustworthy friend. 

vii) Now let’s vary the illustration. Suppose your classmate says: “I hate fags.”

Now, unlike the first illustration, here’s a case where, from a Christian standpoint, he said something wrong. He doesn’t have the right attitude towards homosexuals. In that case, should you witness against him? That raises a couple of interrelated issues:

viii) Even if what he said was wrong, do we want to empower a system in which all our statements, public and private, are subject to prosecution? Where the authorities can haul us in to interrogate us for saying the “wrong” thing? Where we have to have to be prepared explain, defend, or retract our statements when questioned by some “human rights commission” or whatever?

ix) On a related note, how should we respond when people ask questions they have no right to ask? How should we respond in a coercive situation where we are compelled to answer? Where we are penalized if we refuse to answer? Just saying “that’s none of your business” is not an option.

They demand answers, so they put you in a situation where you have to say something, even though they have no right to ask you that. They gratuitously created that situation.

Like Grudem, we could simply recite the Mosaic prohibitions against perjury, but the implied situation is very different. The Mosaic law has a completely different position on the proper role of gov’t.

The passages fall into several categories, but none of them contains a clear lie (in the sense of a verbal affirmation of what the speaker believed to be false) that is approved by God. Some passages contain deceptive actions such as a military ambush at Ai (Josh. 8:3-8), a surprise attack (2 Sam. 5:22-25), or David pretending to be insane (1 Sam. 21:13). These deceptive actions do seem to be approved by God in these passages, but these do not fall in the category of a “lie” as defined in this article.

 But are such deceptive actions sufficiently different from a “lie” (as defined in this article) so that we are justified in putting them in a different category? I think they are,

for several reasons: (1) Scripture treats them differently, always condemning lies but not always condemning such deceptive actions.

Does Scripture treat them differently because there’s a morally relevant difference between verbal and nonverbal communication, or because the implied situations are so different?

 (2) Actions are not true or false (as verbal affirmations are), but they are just something that happens.

That’s simplistic:

i) Strictly speaking, most actions lack truth-value. They don’t make assertions. They don’t affirm or deny something to be the case. Grudem is right about that.

ii) However, not all actions are “just something that happens.” A ruse de guerre is specifically intended to deceive.

iii) In addition, Grudem downplays the role of manual gestures in human communication, especially in some cultures (e.g. Italian).

 (3) People instinctively treat them differently: If on a weekend I leave a light on in my house (to deter burglars by making them think I am home) and then my neighbor bumps into me staying in a hotel in Tucson (2 hours away), the neighbor might have seen my light but will not think me to be a liar. But if I tell my neighbor, “I’m going to stay home this weekend” and then the neighbor bumps into me in staying in a hotel in Tucson, he will think that I lied to him.

I don’t see that his “instinctive” appeal survives ethical scrutiny. Yes, people may treat those differently, but now that he brought it up, is it fundamentally different? Is so, how so?

This is because (4) actions have ambiguous meanings, but propositions ordinarily do not.

On the one hand, I can think of obscene gestures whose significance is pretty unambiguous. On the other hand, human speech is often ambiguous.

I am not saying deceptive actions are never wrong (sometimes they surely are), but that they belong in a distinct category, one I am not dealing with in this essay.

Do they belong to a distinct category? That’s the very issue in dispute.

Therefore the Bible’s moral standards regarding lying include not only the ninth commandment, but an entire collection of Old Testament and New Testament verses that prohibit speaking lies or falsehood. And there are many other similar verses to those listed here, condemning things such as “lying,” “falsehood,” “liars,” and those who “speak lies.” 

 I agree with him that we’re dealing with a larger principle than perjury. But those also presuppose an implied situation.

But this would be impossible for Jesus, who was also God, since “it is impossible for God to lie” (Heb. 6:18).  Therefore, Jesus never lied. And therefore we never have to lie either. Jesus’ own moral character, and the truthfulness of all his words, provide additional evidence that Scripture prohibits us from ever telling a lie. The character of God who never lies is manifested to us in the life of Jesus, who never told a lie.

Actually, Jesus sometimes resorts to misleading words and deeds–misleading to an outsider:

18 Then one of them, named Cleopas, answered him, “Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?” 19 And he said to them, “What things?”

28 So they drew near to the village to which they were going. He acted as if he were going farther (Lk 24:18-19,28).

5 Lifting up his eyes, then, and seeing that a large crowd was coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, “Where are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?” 6 He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he would do (Jn 6:5-6).

41 So they took away the stone. And Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. 42 I knew that you always hear me, but I said this on account of the people standing around, that they may believe that you sent me” (Jn 11:41-42).

So Grudem’s appeal backfires.

Did Elisha (a prophet of God) lie to the Syrian army? He said, “This is not the way, and this is not the city” (v. 19), but the words are actually ambiguous, somewhat enigmatic. What way? What city? (The one where God wants them to go?) The Lord had “blinded” them (v. 18) so they decided to follow Elisha. The statement “I will bring you to the man whom you seek” (v. 19) is, again, somewhat enigmatic, but rather than leaving them, Elisha did in fact bring them to a place where they encountered him face to face.

This is by no means a clear example of a clear falsehood approved by God. (And in any case, it was not told to save Elisha’s life or anyone else’s life, for the Syrian soldiers were already blinded and harmless.)

Needless to say, studied ambiguity is a standard form of deception.

Other passages have to do with God sending a deceptive spirit or a lying spirit to wicked unbelievers (1 Kings 22:19-23; 2 Thess. 2:11), and these passages raise difficult questions about God’s providential use of evil agents to carry out judgment, but they do not necessarily show God’s approval of the lies any more than God’s ordaining that evil people would crucify Christ (Acts 2:23; 4:27-28) shows that God approved of their evil deeds (he did not: Acts 2:23).

Well, that’s pretty facile. God assuredly approves of his own actions. God is deceiving the wicked through a third party.

It must be said that real-life situations are always more complex, and offer more options, than a hypothetical situation sketched in a sentence or two in an ethics textbook. For example, telling the truth and lying are not the only options, since silence is always an option (though it may lead to suffering, as with the bishop that Augustine used as an example).

i) Silence is counterproductive. The interrogator will interpret your silence as guilty silence. You have something to hide. That confirms his suspicions.

ii) It’s not only or primarily a case of whether you will suffer, but whether what you say will be misused to make others suffer unjustly.

A fourth option is saying any of a hundred different things that don’t answer the question asked, such as, “I will not cooperate with any attempt to capture and kill Jewish people.” Yes, that may mean the Nazi soldiers will force their way in and search around, but they probably would have done that anyway. Who can say that they would even believe the Christian if he said, “No”?

There’s more to it than “yes” or “no”. There will be the demand for specific information regarding the whereabouts of the Jews.

 Some would argue in this situation that such evildoers, such as murderers, had “forfeited their right to the truth.” I would probably agree with this (at least the truth regarding the hidden Jews), and so I would not tell them the truth (we have no general obligation to tell everything we know). But that does not mean that I would have to lie to them either. A Christian in that situation should immediately pray for God’s wisdom to know what to say without lying, and without disclosing where the Jews were hidden.

I wonder if Grudem’s fallback at this point isn’t impacted by his charismatic theology.

Some ethicists would use this situation to argue for a “tragic moral choice,” a case where we have to do a lesser sin (lying) to avoid a greater sin (murder, or giving aid to a murderer, or at least not preventing a murder when we could do so). But John Frame would disagree with this viewpoint, and so would I. This is because I agree with Frame that there are no such tragic moral choices, where God wants us to disobey one of his commands in order to obey another. Frame gives several reasons for rejecting the idea that there are situations where we have to sin, including the following:

(1) “In Scripture, we have a moral duty to do what is right, and never to do what is wrong.” (3) This view implies that “the law of God itself is contradictory, for it requires contradictory behavior.” (6) Since Jesus “in every respect has been tempted as we are” (Heb. 4:15), this view requires that Jesus himself had to sin in some situations, but Scripture repeatedly affirms that Jesus never sinned. (7) 1 Corinthians 10:13 guarantees that God “will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape,” and this implies that there are no tempting situations so hard that all the options are sinful.

Frame writes, “So I must conclude that there are no tragic moral choices, no conflicts of duties.”23

I agree with this position. I think this is significant, because I am concerned that in today’s evangelical Christian world, too often such carefully constructed “hard cases” are used as a wedge to open the door a crack, to get people to admit that there are some situations where it is morally right (and acceptable to God!) to disobey one of God’s commands in Scripture. This was essentially the position of Joseph Fletcher, whose 1966 book Situation Ethics24 constructed all sorts of “hard cases” in which a person supposedly had to lie, or murder, or commit adultery, or steal, in order to act follow the greater principle of “love” for others (that is, to do good for others). 

 But such reasoning from “hard cases” quickly leads to easy rationalization for many other sins. It is easy for people to progress from (1) it is sometimes right to lie to preserve a human life to (2) it is right to lie when it does more good than harm to (3) it is right to lie when you think it will bring a good result to (4) it is sometimes right to break other commands of the Bible when it will do more good than harm. The end result is a terribly weak personal ethical system that lacks any backbone, that ignores the commands of Scripture, and that simply seeks to bring about good results by whatever means (without getting caught). The whole system can slide quickly to moral relativism. 

Grudem’s summary is simplistic:

i) Every obligation isn’t equally or simultaneously obligatory.

ii) One prima facie obligation can come into conflict with another prima facie obligation.

Jesus healing on the Sabbath illustrates both principles.

iii) As a matter of fact, ethics does confront us with borderline cases.

iv) There’s a difference between choosing between the lesser of two “evils” and the lesser of two “wrongs.” Christians should never do wrong. But the lesser of two “evils” is not synonymous with moral evil.

When considering this “situational perspective” for an ethical question, we need to ask what results will come from a given action.  If a person lies (even to protect life), several results will follow:

 (1) The other person’s life might or might not be preserved. But we cannot be sure that different actions (silence, or giving other answers) would not have also preserved life (especially if we trust in God’s sovereign control over situations).

No, we can’t be sure of the outcome. But responsible decision-making includes considering the likely consequences of our actions, to the best of our knowledge. Not all uncertainties are equally uncertain. Not all consequences are equally consequential. For instance, there can be a greater risk of a lesser harm or a lesser risk of a greater harm.

 (2) God will be dishonored, because a human being who is in God’s image, and who represents God on the earth, has told a lie and thus represented his Creator as a liar.

Given the phenomenon of divine deception in Scripture, the logic is reversible.

 (3) People will begin to think of the person who lied as (at least sometimes) a liar, someone whose words cannot always be trusted.

If always telling the truth means you betray a confidence, then that will send the same message.

 (4) The moral character of the person who lied will be eroded, because in a difficult situation he failed to obey the biblical commands against lying. 

That begs the question.

  (5) It will become easier to lie in the future, because once a person thinks it is right to lie in some circumstances, this will seem to be an easy solution in additional circumstances, and the person’s lying will become more frequent.

That’s like saying, if you kill in self-defense, that makes it easier to kill in the future. Even if that’s the case, so what?

 (6) The act of lying may be imitated by others, multiplying these results in other situations.

If you have good reason to lie, then they should emulate your example in comparable situations. People need to learn moral discrimination. An ability to draw relevant distinctions, rather than applying a single rote principle to every issue.

Pseudointellectual posturing

97% of scientists accept some form of evolution (there must be something wrong with them)

A few days ago I posted the main bullet points for the lecture I gave at the Evangelical Theological Society on April 6. Some of the responses perpetuate common yet unconvincing lines of defense.

For example, I began my talk by saying that I accept the scientific consensus as a staring point when discussing the question of human origins.

A response I have heard–more times than I care to recall, and that I knew would likely come again even though I think I was super clear in my lecture–is, “Aha. See! If you start with science, of course you’re going to end up with evolution. And that’s your problem. You put too much faith in science instead of in the Bible.”

“Faith in science” suggests that one’s view of scientific matters is on the same sort of playing field as “faith in the Bible,” which then gives a sort of rhetorical oomph to the posed choice. But I don’t have ”faith in science.” I have made a conscious, intellectual decision to accept the overwhelming consensus of demonstrably knowledgable and trained scientists across the world and for several generations.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2013/04/97-of-scientists-accept-some-form-of-evolution-there-must-be-something-wrong-with-them/

For now I’ll just make one elementary observation: the fact that you’re a “scientist” doesn’t mean you are qualified to assess the scientific merits of a theory that falls outside your field of expertise. To take a trivial example, if my car is malfunctioning, I take it to an automechanic, not a phlebotomist. So the 97% figure is bogus. 

This illustrates the pseudointellectualism of Enns.

Misframing Adam and evolution

I will comment on this post:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2013/04/framing-the-evangelical-discussion-of-adam-and-evolution/

My starting point for how I handle this issue of Adam is twofold: (1) I accept the overwhelming scientific consensus concerning evolution, and (2) our considerable knowledge of  how ancient stories of origins functioned. These factors affect how we read the Adam story and they cannot be dismissed or marginalized.

From an exegetical standpoint, why would his belief in evolution affect how he reads Gen 2? Isn’t a major rationale of the grammatico-historical method to guard against anachronistic interpretations? Surely reinterpreting Gen 2 in light of evolution defies the outlook of the narrator and his target audience.

It strains credulity to think that, of all ancient peoples with origins stories, Israel alone escaped this story-telling mentality and gave us something approximating “history” or “science” in the modern sense.

i) This is unintentionally comical. Notice how he poses the question. Basically, he’s asking, what are the chances that Scripture beat the odds?

What this ignores is a little thing called divine inspiration. It was never a question of whether Israel would naturally resist cultural misconceptions.

Of course, Enns denies the inspiration of Scripture. My point is that he isn’t even considering the inspiration of Scripture for the sake of argument. He doesn’t bother to address the obvious counterargument to his objection. So his objection is a straw man.

The tensions between evolution and evangelicalism are real and cannot be “fixed” by simply “grafting” evolution onto evangelicalism. The two most common ways of doing that are by (1) making Adam and Eve into a pair of hominids chosen by God to be the “first,” and (2) making Adam and Eve a “gene pool” of the earliest hominid group, according to genetic studies.

Both of these options fail because they are ad hoc, i.e., made up to support a position once wishes to maintain. A more spiritually and intellectually satisfying way forward is to leave aside ad hoc explanations and take a more exploratory, dialogical approach to solving the issue.

I agree with him. However, his own “Incarnational” model/Israel=Adam compromise is equally ad hoc.

Neither literalism nor inerrancy should be given the status of default positions of orthodoxy. They are themselves theories of how the Bible works that are as open to scrutiny as any.

As scholars like Warfield have documented, this is based on the self-witness of Scripture.

Inerrancy in particular has a difficult time accounting for how the Bible looks so “untended” and “misbehaved” by inerrantist standards.

That’s an odd statement. Does Scripture looks so “untended” and “misbehaved” by inerrantist standards. Enns is clearly judging the appearance of Scripture by his own standards, not inerrantist standards.

Speaking for myself, Scripture looks the way I’d expect an inspired communication to look which was revealed in the idioms of the receptor culture. What we call the organic theory of inspiration.

An incarnational model of Scripture, though hardly the last word, is a better way of accounting for how the Bible behaves than an inerrantist model…

Which D. A. Carson tore to shreds:

http://www.reformation21.org/shelf-life/three-books-on-the-bible-a-critical-review.php

…(and C. S. Lewis wasn’t an inerrantist).

A red herring.

A well-rounded approach to addressing the Adam issue is the metaphor of a trialogue of three voices: historical context, canonical context, and Christian tradition. None of these voices is dominant or the judge over the others, including “Christian tradition.”

The historical context includes ancient origins stories that “calibrate” how Genesis and Paul should be read. The canonical context is three levels: exegetical, Old Testament, and New Testament, and each adds its own complex of issues to the discussion. Christian tradition refers to the various Christian iterations of the gospel, all of which are provisional, not the final word on the gospel. (Fleshing out the “trialogue” metaphor was probably the longest section of the paper and it brought in a lot of issues I discuss in my book.)

So the canonical context, which Enns defines as how Scripture itself understands the historicity of Adam, shouldn’t be dominant or the judge over the other two?

Two things were clear to me as the day progressed: (1) Evangelicalism has a number of big questions ahead of it for addressing evolution, and I am not sure the evangelical system is designed to move forward without a lot of soul searching and discomfort.

The Origin of Species was published in 1859. So, no, this is not ahead of us, but behind us. It’s not as if Bible-believing Christians haven’t addressed this issue before.

Bergoglio’s Gig 2: On speaking out of both sides of your mouth

On the one hand, “Pope Francis” Bergoglio is “reluctant to call himself pope”, preferring to be called the more “humble” title, “Bishop of Rome”:

He still goes by "Bergoglio" when speaking to friends, seems reluctant to call himself pope and has decided to live in the Vatican hotel rather than the grand papal apartment in the Apostolic Palace.

It might seem as if Pope Francis is in a bit of denial over his new job as leader of the world's 1.2-billion Catholics. Or perhaps he's simply changing the popular idea of what it means to be pope, keeping the no-frills style he cultivated as archbishop of Buenos Aires in ways that may have broad implications for the church.

The world has already seen how Francis has cast aside many trappings of the papacy, refusing to don the red velvet cape Benedict XVI wore for official occasions and keeping the simple, iron-plated pectoral cross he used as bishop and archbishop...

Unbearable

Lydia McGrew did a fine post on animal rights fanatics:

http://www.whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2013/04/killt_him_a_bar.html 

I’d like to make an additional point. From what I’ve read, bears (especially grizzly bears and polar bears) have no natural fear of man (Black bears aren’t as large or aggressive, although they are not to be trifled with.). When the white man starting pushing into grizzly bear and polar bear territory, the bears attacked humans without hesitation.

But back then, human settlers had no compunctions about shooting bears. And bears aren’t stupid. It didn’t take them long to figure out that humans were dangerous. At that point, many bears would flee when they sensed the presence of humans. 

BTW, I’m not saying these areas were uninhabited. But Indians with bows and arrows weren’t much of a match for a charging grizzly bear.

However, now that we’re protecting bears from humans rather than protecting humans from bears, I expect there will be more bear-maulings because bears will revert. Lose their acquired fear of humans.

And, of course, this isn’t confined to bears. It also applies to other major predators like wolves and cougars.

BTW, I think all animal rights fanatics should be put in a cage overnight with a wolf or grizzly bear.  

Chess or Dominos?

According to a common Arminian analogy, God is like a Grand Master chess player while we are mere novices. We can make our moves, but God is going to win the game no matter what we choose to move.

There are two problems with this analogy. The first has been discussed here before, in that such an analogy simply is the definition of fatalism. Fatalism is when the end is assured no matter what choices are made by the actors involved. In Greek mythology, where this concept first emerged, this is seen in the fact that someone is told their future doom, and in seeking to avoid that future doom the actor brings about the very doom that he was seeking to avoid. To give an example, suppose someone is fated to die by drowning. To avoid this, he moves to the middle of the desert, makes sure that there are no bodies of water nearby—not even sinks or bathtubs. On the day he is fated to drown, he is thirsty and gets a cup of water. While drinking, he hiccups, inhales the water into his lungs, and drowns. Thus, his fate is confirmed despite how hard he tried to get around it.

This is precisely what the chess analogy does, however. No matter what moves the player opposite God makes, he is fated to lose the game. It is impossible for him to make a move that would checkmate God, in such an analogy.

It is important to make a distinction between this and the Calvinist view of determinism. Under Calvinism, were it not for the exact choices that we make, the end result would not attain. In other words, contra the Arminian position that no matter what choice we make God will win in the end, the Calvinist position is that God will win in the end precisely because he has ensured what choices we will make.

In this sense, Calvinism is more akin to someone who has set up an elaborate Rube Goldberg machine. Or for a simpler concept, think of a set of dominos. He pushes the first domino over, and the last domino is destined to fall because every single needed domino is in the exact position it needs to be in so that when it falls it will push over the next domino. If the domino were to be in a different position, the cascade would stop and the final domino would not fall.

With this in mind, we can now look at the second problem the chess analogy exposes in Arminianism. Under the chess analogy, none of our choices actually matter. Whether we move a pawn or a knight for our first move will not impact the fact that we are going to lose the game. As such, if the chess analogy is an accurate representation of Arminianism, then what it teaches us is that our free will is irrelevant to the end goal God has in mind. Our choices simply do not matter one bit. We can choose anything and it won’t affect the outcome.

In other words, the chess analogy offers us freedom in exchange for irrelevance. Just as it does not matter that the man fated to drown moved to the middle of the desert, so too it does not matter what we choose to do with our lives. The end is has been fated. This trivializes our choices and renders them nonsensical.

On the contrary, however, the Calvinist view demonstrates that our choices are meaningful and, indeed, necessary for the end God has in mind. Without our exact choices being exactly what they are, the end result would not attain at all. The end, therefore, is dependent upon what we choose. Our choices simply are the plan that God has put in place.

So what are we to make of these choices under Calvinism? They are, as the Westminster Confession calls it, the secondary causes by which God enacts His will. Our choices are what God uses to enact His will. He has created each and every one of us, knows us intimately and knows what influences must be in place in order for us to make the exact choice needed to render His will enacted. Unlike the chess master who must wait for us to act in order to know what to do next, God is an artist who has put the pieces of his carefully constructed scenario into place so that each bit will function precisely as intended along the entire path.

Thus, if you believe that the chess analogy is an accurate representation of Arminian theology, and you also believe that your choices are relevant and matter, then you cannot consistently hold to Arminian theology. But there is still plenty of room for you in the Calvinist camp.

Tactful lies

After Sir Denis died from cancer in 2003, her mother continually had to be reminded that her husband had gone.

"I had to keep giving the bad news over and over again," said Carol Thatcher. "Every time it finally sank in that she had lost her husband of more than 50 years, she'd look at me sadly and say 'oh', as I struggled to compose myself."

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/04/08/margaret-thatcher-dead-prime-minister-struggle-dementia_n_3037449.html

This raises an ethical question. If you have a relative who’s going senile, if she (or he) can’t remember that her spouse predeceased her, so that every time you tell her, it’s like the first time she heard it, why would you even tell her? Why put her through all that? Why make her constantly relive the shock and pain of hearing that? Why not tell a tactful lie, and thereby spare her the gratuitous grief of repeated tellings and repeated forgettings?

In Roman Catholic theology, lying is intrinsically evil. There are no circumstances under which a lie is morally permissible. But Evangelicals aren’t bound by Catholic dogmas.

http://www.frame-poythress.org/must-we-always-tell-the-truth/

"Man Caves" Are For Sissified Boys

"Man Caves" connote that the woman rules the roost, and the female of the house is gracious enough to "allow" her husband to be relegated to his cubbyhole. Certainly, what has contributed to the husband being subjugated to this inferior position is the sports commercials on television that portray men as children. And sadly, I have personally seen some guys play this role over the years.

Guys, grow up. Don't call your abode in your library office or entertainment room a "Man Cave." And certainly do not treat it like a Man Cave (or shall I say, "Boy Cave"?).

Speaking of home library offices, here are some ideas.

Bergoglio’s Gig, Part 1

Before he was elected pope, Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio had an opportunity to address the cardinals of the conclave. The WSJ relates the long-term vision he provided regarding “the future of the church”:

Cardinal Bergoglio, however, wanted to talk about the elephant in the room: the long-term future of the church and its recent history of failure. From its start, Pope Benedict’s papacy had been focused on reinforcing Catholicism’s identity, particularly in Europe, its historic home. Amid a collapse of the church’s influence and following in Europe, the German pontiff had called on Catholics to hunker down and cultivate a “creative minority” whose embrace of doctrine was sound enough to resist the pull of secular trends across the continent. That message, however, had been overshadowed by the explosion of sexual-abuse allegations across Europe and rampant infighting in the Vatican ranks.

The notes on Cardinal Bergoglio’s sheet were written in his native Spanish. And he could easily have delivered the remarks in Spanish—19 of the cardinals voting in the conclave came from Spanish-speaking countries and a team of Vatican translators was on hand to provide simultaneous translations in at least four other languages.

But he spoke in Italian, the language cardinals most commonly use inside Vatican City and the native tongue of Italy’s 28 voting-age cardinals, the most of any single nation. He wanted to be understood, loud and clear. The leaders of the Catholic Church, our very selves, Cardinal Bergoglio warned, had become too focused on its inner life. The church was navel-gazing. The church was too self-referential.

“When the church is self-referential,” he said, “inadvertently, she believes she has her own light; she ceases to be the mysterium lunae and gives way to that very serious evil, spiritual worldliness.”

Roman Catholicism, he said, needed to shift its focus outward, to the world beyond Vatican City walls, to the outside. The new pope “must be a man who, from the contemplation and adoration of Jesus Christ, helps the church to go out to the existential peripheries, that helps her to be the fruitful mother, who gains life from the sweet and comforting joy of evangelizing.”

The word he used, periferia in Italian, literally translates into “the periphery” or “the edge.” But to Italian ears, periferia is also a term loaded with heavy socioeconomic connotations. It is on the periphery of Italian cities, and most European ones, that the working-class poor live, many of them immigrants. The core mission of the church wasn’t self-examination, the cardinal said. It was getting in touch with the everyday problems of a global flock, most of whom were battling poverty and the indignities of socioeconomic injustice.

German Cardinals Reinhard Marx of Munich and Walter Kasper, an old Vatican hand, perked up. So did Cardinals Juan Luis Cipriani Thorne of Lima and Jaime Lucas Ortega y Alamino of Havana, who promptly asked the pope for the notes of his address. For days they had heard speeches about “new evangelization,” a term from past popes that many cardinals used to honor their memory while disagreeing over what it meant. Suddenly, they were hearing someone speak about justice, human dignity. And it was simple, clear, refreshing.

“He speaks in a very straightforward way,” said Cardinal George. “And so perhaps—more than the content—it was simply a reminder that here is someone who has authenticity in such a way that he’s a wonderful witness to the discipleship.”

To Cardinal Cipriani Thorne of Lima, Peru, the address was vintage Bergoglio. For years, the Peruvian had heard his fellow Latin American cardinal deliver similar remarks. And like those earlier speeches, his message to the General Congregation walked a very fine line. Many cardinals, including Cipriani Thorne, were stern opponents of any rhetoric that appeared to invite class warfare. Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI had reined in liberation theology, the teachings of Latin American priests who embraced Marxism, and churchmen like Cipriani Thorne had supported the crackdown. But Cardinal Bergoglio’s message to cardinals deftly sidestepped those ideological pitfalls by grounding his message in a call to model the modern church on the humility of its origins.

“He’s not relating this to ideology, to let’s say, rich against poor,” Cardinal Cipriani Thorne said. “No, no, nothing like that. He’s saying that Jesus himself brought us to this world to be poor—to not have this excessive consumerism, this great difference between rich and poor.”

What many thought Cardinal Bergoglio was offering the church—after a decade of struggling to overcome the sexual-abuse crisis and years of internal bickering over issues like the liturgy—was a new narrative. He was telling a story of modern Catholicism that focused less on its complex inner workings and more on its outreach to those most in need.

“We’ve been arguing intra-ecclesia,” Cardinal Cipriani Thorne said. Cardinal Bergoglio’s speech was a call to stop “messing around” and “get to the point: It’s Jesus.”

What is his long-term vision for the church? I’ll have more to say about it in the installment, Lord willing.

Inter-racial marriage and same-sex marriage

William Lane Craig on "Inter-Racial Marriage and Same Sex Marriage".

Yahweh Does Not Play Word Games

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/345483/dehumanizing-word-games-gosnell-andrew-c-mccarthy

the baby’s little fingers were clasping and unclasping, and his little feet were kicking. Then the doctor stuck the scissors in the back of his head, and the baby’s arms jerked out, like a startle reaction, like a flinch, like a baby does when he thinks he is going to fall.
The doctor opened up the scissors, stuck a high-powered suction tube into the opening, and sucked the baby’s brains out. Now the baby went completely limp. . . . He cut the umbilical cord and delivered the placenta. He threw the baby in a pan, along with the placenta and the instruments he had just used.

And the Lord said by his servants the prophets, “Because Manasseh king of Judah has committed these abominations and has done things more evil than all that the Amorites did, who were before him, and has made Judah also to sin with his idols, therefore thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Behold, I am bringing upon Jerusalem and Judah such disaster that the ears of everyone who hears of it will tingle. (2 Kings 21:10-12)

Speaking hope to the world

HT: Tim Challies.

The Bad Fruit Of Neglecting Apologetics And Other Intellectual Matters

I agree with William Lane Craig's comments in his April 2013 newsletter (I'm quoting the email edition I received):

One overwhelming impression of these engagements is the way in which the intellectual defense of Christian faith attracts men. Both at Texas A&M and again at Miami every single student who got up to ask a question was a guy! I wondered if the girls are just shy. But then I remembered a lengthy clip Jan and I watched of cast members of Downton Abbey doing a Q&A with an audience in New York. Almost every person who came to the microphone at that event was a woman! It wasn’t until late into the evening that a man finally asked a question, which was remarked by all the cast members. Why the difference between that session and the ones I experienced?—simply because the Downton Abbey program is highly relational, which is more appealing to women, whereas my talks were principally intellectually oriented, which is more appealing to men.

Churches have difficulty attracting men, and the church is becoming increasingly feminized. I believe that apologetics is a key to attracting large numbers of men (as well as women) to church and to Christ.

The papacy’s murky origins

The Wall Street Journal has a “Saturday Essay” entitled “How the Pope was Picked”.

I left a comment -- my comment is #6, linked here.

I said this:

My hope is that he will have the courage to relate research about the papacy’s murky origins. At a very recent ecumenical discussion, the Roman Catholic New Testament Scholar John Meier said “A papacy that cannot give a credible historical account of its own origins can hardly hope to be a catalyst for unity among divided Christians.” Catholic Archbishop Roland Minnerath said “At the heart of the estrangement that progressively arose between East and West, there may be a historical misunderstanding. The East never shared the Petrine theology as elaborated in the West.” And the Lutheran scholar John Reumann said “historically a gap occurs at the point where it has been claimed “the apostles were careful to appoint successors.” All of this is related in “How Can the Petrine Ministry Be a Service to the Unity of the Universal Church?” James F. Puglisi, Editor, Grand Rapids, MI and Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, ©2010. It’s time for the Catholic Church to own up to this publicly.

RINO Rubio

"Secure the border FIRST, then we will talk."

This should be the conviction of Republicans including Rubio.

However, Republicans are so eager to create 11 million Democrats overnight with their immigration bill, the bill that Democrats are laughing about behind closed doors.

Enter the permanent Democratic majority:

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/04/marco-rubio-immigration-bill-89979.html?hp=t1

P.S. There is the myth that these illegal immigrants want citizenship. The vast majority do not. They want the benefits of citizenship, but not the citizenship itself.

Ed Dingess: Troll

This post is a bit ironic since I'm calling attention to Ed Dingess rather than ignoring him! Also, I've failed at ignoring him many times in the past, against my better judgment, and to my considerable detriment.

So I hope this post serves as a word of warning to others. Don't make the same mistake I did! Please be aware of Ed Dingess. Or at the very least take great caution when attempting to engage him in dialogue or debate.

Of course, if you're not aware of Dingess, that's fortunate!

However, if you'd like to be aware of Dingess, you could start by checking out this comment from RWH.

I'll turn off comments for this post for hopefully pretty obvious reasons.

Ancient Non-Christian Sources On Gospel Authorship

Something I wrote in a recent Stand To Reason thread:

It should be noted that many ancient non-Christian sources corroborated the traditional authorship attributions of the gospels (Marcion, Celsus, Porphyry, Julian the Apostate, etc.). Those today who reject the authorship attributions aren’t just disagreeing with the ancient Christians, but also with the ancient Jewish and pagan opponents of the religion. We find ancient non-Christian sources disputing the authorship of Old Testament books, such as the Pentateuch and Daniel, as well as some of the New Testament in a minority of cases, and the ancient Christians sometimes disputed the authorship claims among themselves (whether Peter wrote 2 Peter, whether John wrote Revelation, etc.). Thus, it can't be argued that they were just uncritically accepting whatever authorship claims were made or never thought of the possibility that the attributions were wrong. They knew that the attributions could be wrong, and they sometimes disputed them, yet we see widespread acceptance of the traditional authorship attributions of the gospels among both ancient Christians and non-Christians.

For some examples of the evidence from these non-Christian sources, see my series linked within the post here and John Cook's The Interpretation Of The New Testament In Greco-Roman Paganism (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 2002), e.g., 140, 184, 198, 203, 235, 263, 289, 297, 301, 303-304.

The Perfect Storm for America's Death

"Barack Obama, as did Mussolini, Lenin, Mao and Hitler before him, has the ability to visibly remain above the fray, appear as the champion of the people and manipulate the emotions of an ill-educated populace.  In the case of Obama he has the further benefit of being able to exploit the racial guilt embedded in the American society."

www.americanthinker.com/2013/04/why_the_united_states_is_a_dying_country.html

The Christian Scientific Society

http://www.christianscientific.org/css-first-annual-meeting-pittsburgh/

Plenary Session
A friendly debate on Intelligent Design.
Prof. Martin Poenie, Department of Molecular Cell and Developmental Biology, Univ. of Texas at Austin
Prof. Jed Macosko, Department of Physics, Wake Forest University

Special Talk
Can Darwin-Doubting Scientists Experience Academic Freedom?
Casey Luskin, Discovery Institute (California Bar, active member)

Annual Meeting Format
The Annual Meeting is open and free of charge to all associate and full members of the society; there is no additional registration charge. Registration must be done in advance to ensure space. To register, send email to info@christianscientific.org.

http://www.christianscientific.org/

A Devastating Critique Of James Randi

Michael Prescott has a good post on a new book by Will Storr. The book is partly about parapsychology, and it includes interviews of Rupert Sheldrake and James Randi. Here's a quote from Sheldrake, taken from the interview:

“Randi is a liar,” says Sheldrake. “He's a man of very doubtful character indeed – a rude, aggressive, dogmatic Skeptic who knows nothing about science. He's taken seriously by people like Dawkins – they worship him – because they see themselves as engaged in a war against unreason and religion. And if you're in a war, you want to have thugs on your side.”

Read what Prescott goes on to quote regarding Randi's inconsistencies and lies, as well as an exchange Storr had with Randi during an interview. Read the whole thing. There's a lot of valuable material.

No enemies on the left

"Why Doesn't Communism Have as Bad a Name as Nazism?"

In Defense of Christian Activism

http://www.frame-poythress.org/in-defense-of-christian-activism-vs-michael-horton-and-meredith-kline/

Uncharted waters

The use of birds which could be released for determining the presence and direction of land (Gen 8:6-12) is not a folkloristic invention, but reflects actual navigational practice…A cage full of homing pigeons is not a bad method of direction finding.

C. Gordon, Before Columbus (Crown Publishers 1971), 77.

James Hornell [“The Role of Birds in Ancient Navigation”] shows that several ancient peoples used birds for the purpose of finding out whether there was land within a navigable distance, and in what direction. Hornell adduces references to the practice of carrying aboard several “shore-sighting birds” among the ancient Hindu merchants when sailing on overseas voyages contained in the Hindu Sutta Pitaka (5C BC), according to which these birds were “used to locate the nearest land when the ship’s position was doubtful.” The same practice is mentioned in the Buddhist Kevaddha Sutta of Digha, written about the same period.

R. Patai, The Children of Noah: Jewish Seafaring in Ancient Times (Princeton 1998), 10-11.

Birds in ancient navigation

6 At the end of forty days Noah opened the window of the ark that he had made 7 and sent forth a raven. It went to and fro until the waters were dried up from the earth (Gen 8:6-7).

In traversing their seas, the people of Taprobane [Ceylon] take no observations of the stars, and indeed the Greater Bear is not visible to them; but they carry birds out to sea, which they let go from time to time, and so follow their course as they make for the land.

Pliny, Natural History, 6.24.

One of the first Norwegian sailors to hazard the voyage to Iceland was a man known as Raven-Floki for his habit of keeping ravens aboard his vessel. When he thought he was nearing land, Raven-Floki released the ravens, which he had deliberately starved. Often as not, they flew "as the crow flies" directly toward land, which Raven-Floki would reach simply by following their lead.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ancient/secrets-of-ancient-navigators.html

Coptic Christians under siege as mob attacks Cairo cathedral

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/coptic-christians-under-siege-as-mob-attacks-cairo-cathedral-8563600.html

Hundreds of Christians were under siege inside Cairo’s Coptic cathedral [Sunday] night as security forces and local residents, some armed with handguns, launched a prolonged and unprecedented attack on the seat of Egypt’s ancient Church.

At least one person was killed and at least 84 injured as Christians inside the walled St Mark’s cathedral compound came under a frenzied assault from their assailants in the main road outside.

The fighting erupted after a mass funeral for five Copts who were killed during violent clashes in a north Egyptian town on Saturday. A Muslim man also died in the clashes, which happened after an Islamic institute was daubed with offensive graffiti.

Following yesterday’s service thousands of Christians poured out on to the street and began chanting slogans against Mohamed Morsi, the Egyptian President and long-time member of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Late last night President Morsi issued a statement in which he said he had spoken to Pope Tawadros II, the leader of the Coptic church, and had given orders for the cathedral and citizens to be guarded. He said protecting the lives of Muslims and Christians was a state responsibility and added: “I consider any attack on the cathedral as an attack on me, personally.”

The man killed in the clashes outside the cathedral was named by the state news agency, MENA, as Mahrous Hana Tadros, a Christian name. MENA said 11 of the 84 injured were police officers.

Peter Escalante puts his finger on the root of the “Two Kingdoms” debates

From Peter Escalante at “The Calvinist International”:

John Calvin, of course, said that reason and natural law themselves both point to the architectonic necessity of civil theology, ...

But more is involved here than reason and revelation. For [Roman Catholic writers], the papalist distinction between nature and supernature, and it is important to understand this lest we simply assume that evangelicals and papalists are really talking about quite the same things in these discussions.

Thus a brief reflection on the end of man is in order, since the end of man is the central affair of politics. Both [Roman Catholic writers he is referring to -- see the original articles at the link above] assert the papalist doctrine of the two ends of man, though neither really deal with the controversy about this doctrine among papalist doctors, let alone between those and the evangelical doctors. But in short the idea is that man has a temporal end – roughly what Aristotle calls happiness – and also a “supernatural” end, which is the beatific vision, in which the original nature will be aufgehoben [repealed].

The beatific vision is St Paul’s “face to face,” the final and perfect communion of man with God. Christians have always wondered what exactly the relation of this world, not simply as fallen, but even in original integrity, is to that final status promised by the Scriptures, and the controversy about that relation long predates the great reformation of religion five hundred years ago. And it continues to this day. Although it has become something of an Arcanum, it is the crucial center of the question of what it is for Christians to live in the world.

Attentive readers will see in [the Roman Catholic’s] reply not only the idea of the two ends of man, but also the idea of the donum superadditum.

"Watchblogs"

 

 

Among the realities of this digital world is a whole class of web sites known as discernment blogs or watchblogs...They are the playground bullies of the Internet, shaking their fists and demanding your lunch money.

http://www.challies.com/articles/in-the-crosshairs-of-the-discernment-bloggers

I deeply resent that. Does Challies think watchbloggers like me are such cheapskates that we’d settle for lunch money? I’m not some smalltime crook. I’m an Ocean’s 11 watchblogger!

 

On a serious note, I don’t think Tblog has ever said anything negative about Challies, so I doubt we’re one of the “watchblogs” he’s alluding to.

Also, I believe he’s alluding to the SGM/Mahaney scandal. That raises serious issues of institutional transparency and institutional accountability. I think some “watchbloggers” went after Challies because they thought he was sweeping that under the rug. I haven’t followed the controversy, myself.

The other thing is a national divide in terms of cultural tone: kinda like Masterpiece Theatre meets High Plains Drifter.

Vikings

I’ve been watching the Vikings TV series. My forebears are Vikings on my father’s side, which we can trace back to 10C Normandy (named after the Norsemen).

The show is filmed in Ireland, with magnificent scenery. The story is ostensibly set in the 9C. Apparently, the show is roughly faithful to Nordic legends, which isn’t the same thing as historical accuracy. 

Unlike the Merlin TV series, Vikings does acknowledge the existence of medieval Christianity. Indeed, the tension between Nordic paganism and medieval Christianity is one of the show’s dramatic pivots.

Except for Athelstan, the monkish war captive, none of the other characters is admirable. All of the men are murderous looters. And the women (e.g. Siggy, Lagertha) are just as bad as the men. Ragnar’s young son (Bjorn) has a certain boyish likeability, but he will grow up to be a killer like his dad.

Normally, Earl Haraldson would be the villain. Normally the audience would be rooting for Ragnar to slay Haraldson. Problem is, all of them are villains.

Normally, heroes play off villains, and vice versa. Yet Ragnar is hardly a sympathetic character. He isn’t treacherous the way Haraldson is, but he’s still a rapacious butcher.

Theoretically, the show has great potential if the monk evangelized the pagans. But I doubt the screenwriters will take the story in that direction. That would be too Christian.

When the Vikings plunder the monastery at Lindesfarne, they naturally seize the silver and gold, but what the monks value is not the silver and gold, but the Bible manuscripts. As Athelstan says, “Without the word of God, all is darkness!” And Athelstan smuggles a codex of Scripture to have with him.

Fimmel doesn’t strike me as a natural actor. He tries too hard. You can see the gears moving. Thinks too much about acting.

I liked him better in The Beast, although he was a little off in that role, too. He reminds me of James Dean in Giant, who gave a memorable, but studied performance.

Gabriel Burne is a fine actor. I liked him in Stigmata. Dumb film, but a strong performance. Burne has real stage presence. He originally studied for the priesthood.

Unfortunately, he plays a very grim character in this drama, so it’s a limited part. By killing Haraldson in the latest episode, they kill off the best actor in the series.

There’s a good child actor who plays Ragnar’s son. And the show has some beautiful women!

Athelstan is too soft and pretty to be a realistic medieval monk. I assume you had to be a tough, hardy physical specimen to survive to adulthood in the middle ages–not a fashion model.

They also make the monk very self-conscious about explaining and defending Biblical stories in contrast to Nordic mythology and folklore. That strikes me as a very modern, pluralistic touch. I’m sure medieval missionaries weren’t bashful about touting the superiority of the Christian faith.

I wonder if monasteries were really that defenseless. Did they just trust in the goodwill or superstitious reverence of the neighbors?

There’s an unintentionally comical scene in the latest episode where king Aelle (of Northumbria) tosses his timid general into a snakepit. To my knowledge, there are no venomous snakes in Northern England. Indeed, I believe venomous snake typically reside in the sunbelt. Moreover, you don’t need to know much about snakes to see that these are boa constrictors. 

Last words

What is your only comfort in life and in death?

That I, with body and soul, both in life and in death, am not my own, but belong to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ, who with His precious blood has fully satisfied for all my sins, and redeemed me from all the power of the devil; and so preserves me that without the will of my Father in heaven not a hair can fall from my head; indeed, that all things must work together for my salvation. Wherefore, by His Holy Spirit, He also assures me of eternal life, and makes me heartily willing and ready from now on to live unto Him.

(The Heidelberg Catechism)

Roger Ebert’s mother on her deathbed:

I never told my mother I wouldn't become a priest, but she got the idea. Even after starting work in Chicago, I never found the nerve, when we were visiting each other, to not attend Sunday Mass with her. She knew well enough those were the only times I went to church. What I was doing, I suppose, was going through the motions to respect a tradition that was more important to her than to me. She believed in the faith until the hour of her death. In her final days, she lapsed into a comatose state. She didn't respond to questions, and her eyes remained closed. Under her breath, barely audible, she repeated the "Hail, Mary" over and over. She was buried from St. Patrick's Church, and I tipped the altar boys.

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/06/my_vocation_as_a_priest.html

John Murray’s father on his deathbed:

I have to give you the sad news that my father passed away last Wednesday. The news of his passing brings a peculiar feeling of sorrow, but I am also filled with a deep feeling of gratitude and joy. He was a dear and eminently worthy father, so faithful, so loving. It is an inexpressible privilege to believe that he is now with the Lord and Savior whom he loved and served for so long. Every indication points in the direction that the work of saving grace was wrought in him at a very early age and with unimpeachable integrity and perseverance he witnessed to the Lord to the ripe age of 90. His interest was lively and his faculties unimpaired, until, just a few weeks ago, his interest in things of this world seemed largely to disappear. In the last letter I had from my sister she told me that for the two days preceding, he was in the 51^st psalm and repeated it again and again from the beginning to the end in Gaelic, his mother tongue, of course.

Collected Writings of John Murray, 3:82.

"Suicide, Mental Illness, Depression, and the Church"

Here is a post from Justin Taylor that might be helpful to some people.

Christians and education

Prof. John Frame writes on the topic of Christians and education.

I don't know if I necessarily agree with everything in the paper. Actually, much more likely I'm not competent enough to say one way or the other. At any rate, as is the case with practically everything he writes about, Prof. Frame offers a ton of helpful insight to sharpen one's thinking.

Among other things, the article includes discussion about the role of the state in the education of children. I think this is especially relevant in our political and sociocultural climate, particularly given the debate over same-sex marriage, as it's quite possible a case for homosexual adoption or otherwise gay parents having and raising their own children will come hand-in-hand with or follow from the debate over same-sex marriage.

Homosexual parasitism

I’d like to make a small but significant point about the relationship between homosexuality and heterosexuality. Homosexuality is parasitic on heterosexuality. Every homosexual is the product of a heterosexual union–no heterosexual was ever the product of a homosexual union. So these are fundamentally asymmetrical.

And even if we qualify that by reference to modern reproductive technologies, these are also parasitic on heterosexuality.

A glossary of marital perversions

The current debate over homosexual marriage invites analogies. For purposes of comparison and contrast, let’s put these options on the table, with precise terminology.

Keep in mind that not all of these are mutually exclusive. It’s possible to combine some of these:

1. Open marriage

Where one or both spouses agree to let the other have sexual partners outside the marriage.

2. Homosexual marriage

Marriage between (at least) two lesbians or sodomites.

3. Incestuous marriage

“Incest” is an umbrella term.

Technical

“Incest” can be purely technical. For instance, you could have a blended family with two sets of kids from different marriages. Legally they are siblings, yet they are really in-laws rather than blood relatives.

Likewise, different cultures have different prohibited degrees of affinity. In some cultures, marriage between cousins is incestuous whereas that’s morally licit in other cultures. Some cultures favor endogamy.

In analogy with homosexual marriage, I think the type of incest in view would be parental incest, whether parent/underage child or parent/grown child.

Sibling

A sexual relationship between a biological brother and biological sister.

Adult

Consensual sexual relations between adult family members (e.g. father/daughter, mother/son, uncle/niece, or adult siblings).

Parental

Sexual relations between a biological parent and biological child, whether minors or adults.

Homosexual

Sexual relations between family members of the same sex.

When Christians compare homosexual marriage to incestuous marriage,  that’s probably shorthand for something more specific, like parental incest.

4. Polygamous marriage

Marriage between three or more parties.

5. Bestial marriage

Marriage between humans and animals.

6. Pederastic marriage

Marriage between an adult and a child or minor of the same sex.

7. Pedophilic marriage

Marriage between an adult and child or minor of either sex.

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

Proponents of sodomite marriage typically resent these comparisons. So I’m going to say a bit more:

i) Proponents of sodomite marriage become oddly Victorian or prudish when opponents compare sodomite marriage to incest, polygamy, pedophilia, or bestiality. But when did proponents of sodomite marriage suddenly develop these sexual hang-ups? Why are they entitled to find these alternative marital arrangements morally invidious when Christians are not entitled to find sodomite marriage morally invidious?

Fact is, once you accept sodomite marriage, then there are no rules. We can define and redefine the rules at will. The rules are whatever we say they are, from one day to the next. It’s just a social convention.

ii) This isn’t just hypothetical. Muslims practice polygamy, child marriage, and–in the case of the Pashtun–pederasty. In the current political climate, it’s very easy to see how Muslims in America would demand legal accommodations on all three fronts, in the name of multiculturalism. Muslims already wield great political clout in Michigan.

In addition, the American Psychiatric and Psychological Associations have been softening their historic opposition to pedophilia.

iii) What about bestiality? Some American Indian tribes reportedly practiced bestiality. So you could imagine American Indians demanding a legal accommodation, just like they did with Peyote.

Likewise, OT prohibitions against bestiality presume its occurrence among pagans. Well, what about neopagans?

In addition, millions of Americans like their pet animals better than human beings.

So what really stands in the way of bestial marriage, once sodomite marriage punches through? 

Coping with suicide

As most of you have heard by now, Rick Warren’s youngest son committed suicide. I’ll just make one observation.

I assume there are parents of kids who committed suicide who torment themselves with the question, “If only we could have gotten him (her) the help he needed.”

Due to his personal wealth and megachurch position, Warren had resources for treating his son that most Christian parents can only dream of. I’m sure his son had the best professional treatment that money could buy. But it wasn’t enough.

In a fallen world, the things we care the most about are the things we have the least control over. God is our only hope, in this life and the life to come.

Conjugal fisting

Sodomite marriage has been called “the defining civil rights issue of our time.” Oddly enough, proponents don’t seem to be in a hurry to define the defining right.

They make it sound like sodomite marriage is a great idealistic cause. But what, exactly, are they defending the right of homosexuals to do to each other in a state of matrimony? 

If you have friends who defend sodomite marriage, and challenge you on your opposition to sodomite marriage, this is what they’re actually defending. This is the great civil rights cause of our time.

I’m taking the defintions verbatim from NHS safe-sex guidelines for lesbians and sodomites.

1. The right to perform conjugal anal sex:

Anal sex is putting a penis into a sexual partners rectum (insertive) or having sexual partners penis inserted in to the rectum (receptive)

2. The right to perform conjugal felching:

Felching is a practice that involves sucking the semen out of a partner’s anus or vagina, with or without a straw.

3. The right to perform conjugal fisting:

Fisting involves inserting the entire hand, and sometimes part of the arm, into the anus or vagina of a sexual partner.

4. The right to perform conjugal rimming:

Rimming involves oral (mouth, tongue) contact with the anus for the purpose of sexual stimulation.

5. The right to perform conjugal sadomasochism:

The deriving of pleasure, especially sexual gratification from inflicting or submitting to physical or emotional abuse (including being humiliated, beaten and bound).

6. The right to perform conjugal faecophilia

This relates to sexual arousal from the presence of faeces. In some cases faeces may be ingested (Coprophagia).

7. The right to perform conjugal urophilia

Sexual activity involving urine. (Can involve drinking urine, exchange of urine over or into the body).

8. The right to use conjugal butt plugs, &c.:

Sex toys can be used during sex for sexual stimulation. They can be a variety of things, some of the most common are dildos, butt plugs, vibrators and love eggs. Foreign objects are also some times used in this role; many household items are adapted for sexual purposes. Enemas and a douche may also be considered in the context of sex toys.

The Bible in the public square

Should Jews and Christians appeal to Biblical norms when debating homosexual marriage?

Some advocates of traditional marriage think we should confine ourselves to natural law arguments. Now, I have no objection to using common ground arguments in the marriage debate. Here’s a useful collection of articles that reflect that strategy:

http://whatismarriagebook.com/articles/#.UWGaJHGkAbU

However, as Albert Mohler and Denny Burk recently observed, the moral status of homosexuality has suddenly dropped out of the current debate, as if that’s irrelevant or out-of-bounds.

Let’s consider some stock objections to using the Bible in political discourse:

i) Only fundamentalist Bible-thumpers resort to Scripture when debating public policies issues

To begin with, even if that were true, so what?

However, that’s not true. For instance, consider Richard Bauckham’s The Bible in Politics: How to Read the Bible Politically (WJK, 2^nd ed., 2011).

Bauckham is not a fundamentalist. And he’s center/left on the political spectrum.

Or take Daniel Carroll’s books: Thinking Christianly About Immigration; Christians at the Border: Immigration, the Church, and the Bible.

Since he’s using the Bible to promote a position liberals agree with, his appeal to Scripture doesn’t generate the same outcry.

ii) Appealing to Scripture violates separation of church and state

I’m not a Constitutional scholar, but I’ve read Constitutional scholars who argue that the purpose of the Establishment Clause was to prevent the Federal government from instituting a national church. That’s it.

In fact, it doesn’t take a Constitutional scholar to recognize the fact that many modern judges are promulgating very innovative rulings. Discovering things to be unconstitutional which the generation of the Founding Fathers and states which ratified the Constitution and the Bill of Rights never deemed to be unconstitutional. The very notion of a “living Constitution” is a frank admission that many modern judges flagrantly disregard original intent.

iii) If you allow the Bible to dictate public policy, then theocracy is the logical outcome

a) To begin with, this objection is a double-edged sword. Suppose the Bible does obligate Christians to promote a theocratic state. If that’s the case, then that’s what faithful Christians should work towards, assuming it’s politically feasible.

b) However, different Christian traditions have different positions how much of OT social ethics carries over into the new covenant, or church/state relations. Take Baptists, Anabaptists, and Lutherans. Take confessional Presbyterians who operate with a “general equity” principle. Take Richard Hooker’s Anglican position in contrast to the Puritans.

c) An appeal to Scripture is not ipso facto an appeal to Biblical law. When Christians cite Mt 19:4-5, Rom 1:24-27, or 1 Tim 1:10, that’s not an appeal to Biblical law. These passages don’t belong to the legal genre. An appeal to these passages doesn’t transplant Biblical laws into modern American jurisprudence.

Rather, these involve general truths about the nature and moral status of human sexuality. Shouldn’t our civil and criminal law code be based on truths about human nature? Be based on true moral judgments?  

iv) Appealing to Scripture begs the question when debating non-Christians

a) First of all, we can distinguish between defensive and offensive appeals to Scripture. If a Christian is defending his personal view of homosexual marriage, then he’s justified in appealing to Scripture. The fact that his opponent denies the authority of Scripture is irrelevant, for the Christian is giving his own reasons.

b) When going on the offensive, appealing to Scripture would only beg the question if the Christian simply took the authority of Scripture for granted. But, of course, his commitment to Scripture is defensible. It’s quite possible to argue for the authority of Scripture. Indeed, that’s a standard topic in Christian apologetics. A Christian can give reasons for why everyone ought to believe the Bible.

c) In addition, proponents of homosexual marriage have their own burden of proof. What is their source and standard of social ethics? How do they ground objective moral norms?

d) Likewise, if they espouse naturalistic evolution, then what makes human animals property-bearers of human rights or civil rights? Isn’t a human being just a fleeting and fortuitous arrangement of matter?

But God made me this way!

I appreciated Prof. John Frame's article on homosexuality here.

Before “Infallibility” Was a Twinkling in a Pope’s Eye

In an ongoing discussion on Facebook, [a discussion of “the Johannine Comma”], a FB friend of mine said, “It would be Orwellian doublespeak (and arbitrary) to say that a pope can guarantee absolute certainty for an individual on an issue while at the same time reserve the right to remove the absoluteness of that certainty an any time.”

While this discussion focused on an area of biblical interpretation in which he concludes that epistemologically, “They are in the same situation” as evidentialist Protestants” [Pope Leo had said one thing, then a “clarification” some 30 years later said another], this very sort of thing is what was at the foundation of the medieval discussions of papal infallibility.


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In a 13th century dispute over a papal decision (Nicholas III) regarding the rule of the Franciscans, Pope John XXII rejected the notion of “infallibility” (i.e, a later pope can’t change the decree of an earlier pope) because he viewed it as “an improper restriction of his rights as a sovereign”. In the bull “Quia Quorundam”, he said (see paragraph 6):

If therefore after an interdict of a general council it was lawful for the supreme Pontiffs to confirm orders [that] had not been confirmed, and for their successors to dissolve completely [those which] had been so confirmed, is it not wonderful, if, what only the supreme Pontiff may declare or ordain concerning the rules of [religious] orders, it is lawful for his successors to declare or to change to other things. Moreover it is clear that neither the confirmation of the aforesaid [Popes], Honorius, Gregory, Alexander, and Nicholas [III], was accomplished in general council, since no general council was celebrated by any of these. Granted that Innocent IV celebrated a general council, nevertheless during that [council] the above said declaration of his was not accomplished with the authority of any council. Nicholas IV, however, neither celebrated a general council, nor declared anything concerning the said rule. The aforesaid Gregory IX, however, neither confirmed nor declared the said rule, but in a general council, where there had been not a few orders of mendicants abolished, he did not abolish the orders of the said Friars Minor and [Friar] Preachers, but asserted them to be approved, saying thus: “To these [orders], which the resulting utility of the universal church, evident from these things, demonstrates as approved, We do not permit the present constitution to be extended”.

Bernhard Hasler wrote “the pope’s objection may strike us today a grotesque, but the point was well taken: Infallibility always constitutes a limit to the power of an individual pope, who is bound by the infallible declarations of his predecessors. For the time being, the bishops of Rome had no interest in this theory. Discussion of the issue faded away for centuries” (August Bernhard Hasler, “How the Pope Became Infallible”, Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, © 1981, pgs 36-37).

This is one reason why the “Reformation” of Hildebrand (Pope Gregory VII) looms so large. That was the “Reformation” (following the East-West split of 1054) which created the papacy as a “sovereign” in the first place. All Eastern objections to the imperial papacy were at once brushed aside, and the “Imperial papacy” was enabled for the first time to have all the earthly glory it wanted.