Friday, October 18, 2013
The language of a universal popular culture is gone
For about 50 years, America shared a universal popular culture—the radio of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, the movies of the 1930s and 1940s, and the television of the 1950s and 1960s. The reach of these media was amazing. Radio ownership increased to 61% of American households in 1932, from 27% in 1928—a period when one-fourth of households didn't have electricity. Movie attendance in 1930, when talkies became dominant, was 90 million weekly, in a nation of 123 million. Television ownership increased to 88% of American households in 1960, from 9% in 1950.Read more …
With only three or four radio and TV networks, and movie theaters controlled by half a dozen studios, the way to huge commercial success was to produce content that appealed to just about everybody. Popular entertainment exuded a sense of Americanness that long rang true.
A universal popular culture provided politicians with a common language and frame of reference through which they could speak convincingly to the nation as a whole. Franklin Roosevelt's rather formal oratory was supplemented by the friendly, familial tone of his radio fireside chats. Harry Truman's plain-spokenness and Dwight Eisenhower's somewhat stiffer discourse also resonated with a national audience. John Kennedy's stylized rhetoric was leavened by the ready wit of his televised news conferences. The next four presidents, more or less clumsily, also spoke in this universal American idiom.
Ronald Reagan, the master communicator, had made his living in each of the three dominant media—radio, movies, television. He always knew his lines, and they came naturally to him, reflecting the values he cherished from his days as a liberal Democrat in Republican downstate Illinois, and from his days as a conservative Republican in increasingly Democratic Hollywood: tolerance, decency, respect for ordinary people, their troubles and their often unheralded achievements.
Today's world is one of niche popular cultures, available on hundreds of cable TV channels and the Internet. Rush Limbaugh and Jon Stewart are gifted entertainers and political commentators, but they do not seek a universal audience as Will Rogers did. Current pop-culture hits like "Duck Dynasty" on TV or "Gravity" in movie theaters have largely non-overlapping audiences, which are tiny in market share compared with "I Love Lucy" or "It's a Wonderful Life."
Thus, the language of a universal popular culture is no longer available to politicians...
Loving People Includes Tending To Their Minds
I recently listened to James White's report on his visit to South Africa earlier this month. It's a good illustration of the importance of apologetic work and the need for it around the world, not just in the most prosperous nations. Remember, caring for the poor and other disadvantaged people includes caring for their minds, what they believe, and other aspects of their lives that tend to receive less attention than they should in our materialistic culture. How active are you in apologetics, and what are you doing to support apologetic ministries?
Medieval miracles
Jason appears to have a similar charitable perspective to alleged miracles among non-Christian faiths, particularly Roman Catholics. I find that to be odd, knowing what I have read of him in the past outlining the false gospel Catholicism promotes. His conclusion is that within Catholicism, there are Catholics who are genuine believers and the alleged miracle claims from Catholic circles is God working out of compassion on behalf of those Christians. I personally see no precedent from Scripture in which God worked in such a fashion among the purveyors of a false Gospel.
http://hipandthigh.wordpress.com/2013/10/09/the-theology-of-miracles/
I've discussed this before, but I'd like to elaborate on this claim.
i) Fred didn't take time to explain why he doesn't think God would do that, so I can only speculate. However, I assume the unstated reason for Fred's position is that if purpose of miracles is to attest doctrine, then God wouldn't empower a false teacher to preform miracles. For, by so doing, God would attest false doctrine, which would defeat the evidential function of miracles.
ii) Of course, that argument is premised on the assumption that the exclusive purpose of miracles is to attest doctrine. If, however, that's simplistic and reductionistic, then the argument fails.
iii) Fred goes on to attribute some miracles to demonic agency. There is scriptural precedent for that. However, that move undercuts the evidential value of miracles. For if some miracles are demonic, then miracles don't reliably attest doctrine. So that's a potential point of tension in Fred's argument.
iv) But let's consider the assumption from another angle. Unless you believe there were no real Christians between the death of the apostles (or their immediate converts) and the Protestant Reformation, then for many centuries Christians suffered from an obscured gospel.
Put another way, if God elected a Christian to be born in Medieval Europe, then due to social conditioning and the available theological models and resources, that Christian would have a very flawed theology by Protestant standards. Yet Calvinists do believe that God preserves a remnant throughout church history, including the pre-Reformation era. Indeed, the fact that you could be a genuine Christian despite the poor theological paradigms at your disposal is a tribute to God's sustaining grace. God is able to overcome those daunting impediments.
And even if you're not a Calvinist, I daresay evangelical Christians generally believe there were real Christians before the Protestant Reformation. By contrast, it's cults like Mormonism which think the Gospel went into eclipse for centuries on end, until God restored the "lost" gospel.
So unless you think there were no true Christians during the "Dark Ages" or the Middle Ages or the Renaissance, unless you think the gospel dropped out of sight between the death of St. John and a monk nailing 95 theses to the door of All Saints Church, then, in fact, you must make allowance for the coexistence of true believers and false doctrine.
There are, of course, degrees of error. But it's going to reflect the religious culture of that time and place.
There are, of course, degrees of error. But it's going to reflect the religious culture of that time and place.
v) I'd add that within this historical context, we could even grant the evidential value of miracles. By the standards of the day, a medieval missionary could symbolize Christianity–in contrast to, say, unchurched Vikings. In that historical setting, he can be a representative of the Christian faith even if his theology quite deficient. To take a comparison, under the Mosaic Covenant the high priest officially represented the true faith, even if he was personally corrupt. He held that emblematic role, in contrast to the pagan nations which surrounded ancient Israel.
If, say, God empowered a medieval missionary to practice "power evangelism" in the face of unchurched Vikings, that wouldn't attest the specifics of medieval theology. Rather, that would operate at a higher, more symbolic level. It would stand in contrast to the heathen faith of the Vikings.
vi) Finally, MacArthurites typically insist that continuationists should be able to furnish evidence for miracles throughout church history. If, however, continuationists meet their demand, it would be duplicitous of MacArthurites to dismiss the evidence because it comes from the wrong period of church history. To discount evidence of medieval miracles because they are too...medieval.
vi) Finally, MacArthurites typically insist that continuationists should be able to furnish evidence for miracles throughout church history. If, however, continuationists meet their demand, it would be duplicitous of MacArthurites to dismiss the evidence because it comes from the wrong period of church history. To discount evidence of medieval miracles because they are too...medieval.
vii) Having spoken in abstractions, I'd like to close with a concrete illustration. Indeed, I've set the stage. This concerns Bernard of Clairvaux's reputation as a miracle-worker. Keep in mind that this was written by contemporaries and eyewitnesses. Also keep in mind that this was prior to his canonization. He wasn't technically a "saint" at that time. So this isn't your conventional hagiography. Rather, it's a historical chronical.
…Especially in Geoffrey of Auxerre's account of Bernard's preaching of the Second Crusade in Germany…It is predominately about a group which accompanied Bernard, recording miracles as they happened…they provide an excellent example of miracles performed as a living saint, recorded in meticulous detail by well-informed, astute and reputable observers:
EBERHARD: On that day I saw him cure three others who were lame.
FRANCO: You all saw the blind woman who came into church and received her sight before the people.
GUADRIC: And we saw that a girl whose hand was withered had it healed, while the chant at the offertory was being sung.
GERHARD: On the same day I saw a boy receive his sight.
BISHOP HERMAN: The priest of the town of Hereheim, for so it was called, showed me a man who had been blind for ten years who came from his home on the First Sunday of Advent, and it was blessed by Bernard as he passed and he returned to his home seeing. I had heard of this before and everyone in that area confirmed it.
EBERHARD: I heard from two honest men, one a priest the other a monk, about two people in the town of Lapenheim who on that same day were blessed and receive their sight.
PHILIP: On Monday in my presence a blind man was led into the church and after the saint had laid his hand on him, just as you have heard from everyone, the people proclaimed that he could see.
ABBOT FROWIN: I myself with brother Godfrey saw that man coming in.
FRANCO: On Tuesday, in Frieburg the mother of a blind boy brought him in the morning to our lodging; and when the Father was told that after he had touched him he could see, he ordered inquires to be made about him; and I myself did this. I interrogated the boy and he replied that he could see clearly and proved it with many actions.
The details given of the journey and of those present were not in question; it was clear where they went and who they were. What, then, did they see? They affirm that they saw and heard Bernard being asked to cure the sick and him doing so. Can these firsthand records of such miraculous cures be considered as events, taking place visibly during the three months of the tour of Germany? It seems that they could: they were events which were seen and recorded by well-known monks and clerics. Bernard…would make the sign of the cross and pray for a cure in the name of Christ, or the Trinity or just himself. On several occasion he was interested in the outcome of events and sent his companions to see if the person concerned was really cured.
The number of cures performed must have been considerably more than those recorded, but the records note the healing of 235 cripples, 172 blind as well as cures of the deaf and dumb, demoniacs and those afflicted with other diseases.
B. Ward, "Miracles in the Middle Ages," G. Twelftree, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Miracles (Cambridge University Press 2011), 158-160.
Thursday, October 17, 2013
What is a dictator? Understanding the complexities of governments today
Dividing the world in black and white terms between dictators and democrats completely misses the political and moral complexity of the situation on the ground in many dozens of countries. The twin categories of democrats and dictators are simply too broad for an adequate understanding of many places and their rulers -- and thus for an adequate understanding of geopolitics. There is surely a virtue in blunt, simple thinking and pronouncements. Simplifying complex patterns allows people to see underlying critical truths they might otherwise have missed. But because reality is by its very nature complex, too much simplification leads to an unsophisticated view of the world. One of the strong suits of the best intellectuals and geopoliticians is their tendency to reward complex thinking and their attendant ability to draw fine distinctions.
Fine distinctions should be what geopolitics and political science are about. It means that we recognize a world in which, just as there are bad democrats, there are good dictators. World leaders in many cases should not be classified in black and white terms, but in many indeterminate shades, covering the spectrum from black to white.
More examples:
Debunkers debunking debunkers
I [Richard Carrier] still find many of his [Robert Price's] claims under-documented and his arguments often weaker than they need to be, his methods are often a cipher, and he is bad at clarifying (e.g. he will defend many different mutually-contradictory theories without explaining what we are supposed to conclude from the fact that he does that, such as whether he thinks they are all equally likely or whether he thinks some are more likely than others but that all are more likely than historicity, or if he even thinks they are more likely than historicity rather than only just as likely or unlikely but likely enough to be uncertain of historicity, etc.; and that’s not the only confusion Price will lead you into, it’s just the one that I often notice the most). He also never thoroughly defends a single coherent theory of Christian origins, making him a moving target for critics (contrast with Doherty, who does a generally good job at this, and is the best mythicist to read, although he still stubbornly falls short of dissertation quality argumentation and just complains when I say that rather than trying to work out how to formulate and document arguments in a way that would pass a fair peer review–such as learning to stop crowding strong arguments with weak arguments, and instead drop the weak arguments and just shore up the strong arguments).
http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/4664/comment-page-1#comment-54444
Dawkins is not a scientist
The fuse of his opponents was lit once again. This time it was Richard Dawkins who exploded. In a review in Prospect magazine titled The Descent of Edward Wilson, Dawkins accused Wilson of "wanton arrogance" and recommended potential readers to throw the book aside "with great force".
In a long conversation from his office at Harvard, where he is emeritus professor at the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Wilson, though clearly annoyed and more than happy to hit back at his detractors, sounds as though he is enjoying himself.
"Would you like to talk about Dawkins?" he continues – and when I say yes, he laughs. "I hesitate to do this because he's such a popular guy, but Dawkins is not a scientist. He's a writer on science and he hasn't participated in research directly or published in peer-reviewed journals for a long time. In other words, there is no Wilson-versus-Dawkins controversy: it's Wilson versus … well, I could give you a goodly list of other scientists doing peer-reviewed research."
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/aug/18/edward-wilson-harvard-biologist-interview
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
"Gutless enablers"
I'm somewhat puzzled by why John MacArthur and his entourage appear to be snubbing Michael Brown. Brown has repeatedly and publicly requested a face-to-face meeting. Why is he rebuffed? Given the fact that MacArthur and his entourage are ardent "Zionists," I don't know why they'd snub such a prominent Messianic Jewish leader. But maybe appearances are deceiving. Perhaps there's more to it than meets the eye.
I do have theory. MacArthurites seem to subdivide charismatics (and continuationists) into two groups: bad bad charismatics and good bad charismatics.
On the one hand, you have the bad bad charismatics. These are the charlatans. The TBN types.
On the other hand, you have the good bad charismatics. These are the respectable charismatics.
However, the good charismatics are bad in a different way. You see, the good charismatics are the "gutless enablers" (to quote Dan Phillips) of the bad charismatics. The reputable charismatics cover for the disreputable charismatics. The mere existence of reputable charismatics confers virtue by association on the disreputable charismatics. So, in their own way, even the good charismatics are just as bad (or worse) than the bad charismatics.
This furnishes a striking parallel with the way militant Darwinians like Richard Dawkins, Jerry Coyne, and PZ Myers treat Michael Ruse and Stephen Jay Gould. Even though Ruse and Gould are just as committed to Darwinian dogma as Coyne, Myers, and Dawkins, they are still treated as traitors to the cause because they refuse to demonize the critics of Darwinism. It's not enough to be for the cause. You must be against whoever is against the cause. It's personal. The friend of my enemy is my enemy.
Deflecting miracles
I've run across the following strategies which MacArthurites use to deny modern miracles:
i) They say we have is no objective evidence for modern miracles. For instance, we have no medical verification. All we have are reports from dark-skinned, beetle-browed Third-World primitives.
You then ask what literature the MacArthurite has studied in modern miracles. Oftentimes, they act as if that's an outlandish demand.
ii) When confronted with evidence countering their denial (e.g. medical verification), one fallback strategy is to distinguish between mediate and immediate miracles. They deny the occurrence of modern miracles involving human agency.
Now, there are certainly cases in which that's a valid distinction. However, there are other cases where that distinction breaks down. Take Jas 5:15-16. To say that doesn't involve human agency is special pleading.
Of course, a MacArthurite could add further caveats to exempt a Jas 5:15-16 case, but that would be evasive. In that event they are devising ad hoc criteria to preemptively screen out any evidence which would falsify their claims. It parallels methodological atheism. Whenever your demand is met, move the goal post.
iii) Another fallback strategy is to admit the miracle, but say it's the wrong kind of miracle. It doesn't rise to the level of a Biblical miracle. So the admission becomes a throwaway concession.
There are problems with that maneuver. Biblical miracles are not all of a kind. Is the floating ax-head or the coin in the fish's mouth on the same plane as raising Lazarus or surviving in a furnace?
Anyway, isn't the issue whether an event rises to the level of a miracle, not whether it rises to the level of an extra special miracle? The contrast is supposed to be between modern miracles and their nonoccurence, not between different kinds of occurrent modern miracles.
iv) A related fallback is to admit the miracle, but discount it because it's not an "undeniable" miracle.
One problem with that strategy is the ambiguity of the key term. Does "undeniable" mean:
a) A miracle which no one should deny?
or
b) A miracle which no one would deny?
A MacArthurite can't mean (b), because that would discredit every Biblical miracle at one stroke. After all, there are millions of unbelievers who deny Biblical miracles.
So that leaves (a): A miracle which no reasonable person will deny. A miracle which nobody ought to deny.
If so, a MacArthurite needs to explain why it's reasonable for him to deny the miracle in question.
v) A final fallback strategy is to admit the miracle, but classify it as a demonic miracle. There is some biblical precedent for that category.
However, there also happens to be biblical precedent for misattributing the work of the Spirit to the work of the devil (Mt 12:22-32). If a MacArthurite is so bent on denying modern miracles that he'd always opt for a demonic attribution over a divine attribution, then he'd attribute a miracle to the devil even if God is its source.
In addition, God is behind some demonic miracles (e.g. 1 Sam 16:14). So those aren't always mutually exclusive attributions.
Space, time, and God
A friend of mine asked me to assess the pros and cons of different positions on God's relation to time and space. This is an intricate debate. It involves exegetical theology, systematic theology, and philosophical theology. It involves theories of time, theories of causality, temporal indexicals, &c.
i) These positions range along a continuum, from classic Christian theism at one end to open theism, process theism, and Mormonism at the other end. Classic Christian theism regards God as timeless and spaceless. Some mediating positions regard God as spaceless, but temporal. They may regard God as timeless before creation, but temporal after creation. Or they may take the position that as of creation, God occupies time and space alike. The Incarnation is considered a limiting case of the respective positions.
ii) We need to clarify two semantic issues. Is it inconsistent for eternalists to speak of God "preexisting" the world, existing "before" creation, or "prior" to creation? Not necessarily.
It seems to me that "before" is literally a spatial preposition. Although we often use it as a temporal preposition, I think that's figurative. An example of how a concrete expression acquires an abstract sense, the way we use "seeing" for physical perception as well as psychological perception. Likewise, the "pre-" suffix isn't essentially temporal. It can be used to denote timeless relations. Same thing with "prior." And, in any event, we use "pre-" and "prior" as synonyms for "before" for stylistic variation.
Finally, we can often express the same idea using a different spatial preposition, like God existing "apart" from creation or "outside" of time rather than "before" creation.
iii) Eternalists refer to divine "accommodation." But that's ambiguous. That could mean two different things:
a) When Bible writers produce a record of God communicating with Abraham (to take one example), they depict a timeless God in temporal terms.
b) When God communicates with Abraham, he adapts his mode of communication to Abraham's humanity, as a timebound creature with eyes and ears.
The first interpretation is epistemological while the second interpretation is ontological. The first interpretation is about the record of the event, while the second interpretation is about the event itself. The first interpretation assumes that in writing about God, the authors of Scripture must resort to anthropomorphic representations. The second interpretation assumes that God really does communicate this way. That's not just a literary representation. It's not how we speak about God, but how God speaks to us. Yet it's still a case of God coming down to our level.
iv) A prima facie advantage of the temporalist position is that it allows us to take more of the Biblical depictions of God at face value, viz. dialogue, interaction, reaction, answering prayer. But is that an actual advantage?
a) Open theists take these depictions more literally than classic theists, while Mormons take these depictions more literally than open theists. For that matter, Scripture sometimes depicts God in bestial or inanimate terms. If we took that literally, it would be very pagan, like Ovid's protean gods in the Metamorphosis. Carried to its logical extreme, this hermeneutic goes further than almost anyone wants to take it.
b) It fails to make allowance for the use of theological models and metaphors. That's a pervasive feature, rather than an isolated feature, of Biblical revelation. God assumes certain roles drawn from human society. Bible writers use various theological metaphors for God.
v) Temporalists think there are philosophical and theological advantages to God's presence in time and space. He knows time and place by direct experience.
a) But what does that really mean? God isn't present in space the way an embodied agent like a human being is present in space. God doesn't interact with his physical environment the way I manipulate physical objects with my hands. God doesn't move through space the way I walk. God doesn't acquire information the way I perceive the world through my five senses.
But if God's spatial presence is subject to so many qualifications, it seems increasingly abstract as we shear off one concrete analogue after another.
b) Likewise, is God present in time the way humans are present in time? But if existing in time is the way God knows what happens, then that rules out divine foreknowledge. Temporalists can stipulate that God exists throughout time, but is that coherent? And even if that's coherent, why think it's true?
vi) Eternalists have their own prooftexts. The invisibility of God implies his incorporeality. The six-day creation account implies the creation of time with the creation of space. They also cite passages like 1 Cor 2:7, 2 Tim 1:9; Tit 1:2-3, and Jude 25 to show that the beginning of the world was the beginning of time.
There is the danger of making this biblical data answer a more specific question than it was designed to address. But it does counterbalance facile temporalist prooftexting.
vii) Some temporalists think God entered time at the moment he created time. But there are problems with that inference:
a) Even if creation generates a new relation, that's an extrinsic relation rather than a real change in God. To take a comparison, if I father a child, that makes my late father a grandfather. My action causes that retroactive effect. But it doesn't change the past. It doesn't change my father. It's merely an extrinsic relation.
b) Moreover, since eternalists think God is timeless, they don't grant that creation even generated a new relation vis-a-vis God. For if God is timeless, then there was no time before God made the world. Since God isn't on or in the timeline, God isn't earlier than the world. The world isn't later than God.
viii) Temporalists think God's presence in time is necessary to secure God's knowledge of tensed facts. But that's a dubious claim.
a) To begin with, God's knowledge of time-indexed facts would be time-indexed knowledge (of time-indexed facts). But in that event, God's knowledge of tensed facts would be severely limited to his own position on the timeline. Since humans live and die at different times, their past, present, and future doesn't generally match his past, present, and future.
To take a comparison, consider an immortal being who came into existence at the beginning of the world. He coexisted with Abraham. He coexisted with David. But because the "present" shifts, what is past, present, or future for him won't synchronize with other timebound beings. who come on the scene at different points in world history.
b) Apropos (a), the temporal indexical perspective reflects an inherently first-person rather than third-person perspective. Say I'm writing this on Oct 16, 2013 AM. That's my present, at the moment. What is present to me or for me. In the nature of the case, I can't identify with everyone else's first-person indexical perspective, for a universal perspective would be third-person rather than first-person. So the temporalist explanation fails to solve the problem it posed for itself.
God doesn't "know" my temporal indexical in the unobjectionable sense that God isn't me. But that's not a limitation on divine omniscience. It would be false for God to know my temporal indexical. For each individual has a unique first-person viewpoint. It would be false for God to see himself as me.
However, it's possible for God to see himself as if he were me. There's a critical difference between assuming someone's else's viewpoint and having someone else's viewpoint. Between seeing yourself as someone else, and seeing yourself as if you were someone else.
ix) Temporalists appeal to the Incarnation. However, they also appeal to creation. But if God already entered time at creation, then in what unique sense did he enter time at the Incarnation? On the face of it, there's a tension in the temporalist argument.
x) Calvinism has a resource over and above classical Christian theism, a resource lacking in freewill theism. If God has planned everything in advance, then whatever happens in time and space is the exemplification of God's extramundane plan. Dialogue, "reaction," interaction, were written into the script before the curtain rises. Those are built-in features. There's nothing incongruous about a timeless predestinarian God dialoguing with Abraham, or answering prayer.
To take a comparison, it's been said that Alfred Hitchcock filmed his movies in his head before he actually directed them. It was just a logistical question of filming what he imagined. Outwardly depicting his mental picture. He saw it all in his imagination before he had stagehands build sets, before he directed actors, before he shot on location, before the cameras rolled.
Another example is sculpture. The 3D image that emerges from the marble slab is the result of the sculptor's prior mental image. He didn't see that in the marble. Rather, he chisels out of the marble what he first saw in his own mind. He objectifies his preconception. The statue is a physical projection of a mental image, superimposed on stone.
Of course, freewill theists resent the idea that we are basically storybook characters come to life. They find that humiliating. But that's the price you pay to be a creature. It's either that or nothing. We are the effects of Someone else's mind.
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
Bob Larson
Not Redbeard Larson!!!!!!
It isn't nice to mock the color of Larson's beard. His barber informs me that Bob used to have a light brown beard until he developed his deliverance ministry. As anyone who's seen End of Days can assure you, the Archfiend practices scorched-earth tactics. Gabriele Amorth used to have a luxuriant head of hair before His Infernal Majesty singed it like a blowtorch. Bob's fire-retardant shampoo dyed his beard red.
Alan should be more respectful. If it weren't for Bob and his death-defying daughters, swarms of flying monkeys would eclipse the sun.
qewhriwengnkawdkgnasdlgknqad;flkasdnf;laksngdfgnknknknkagndgnfkgnkfgfnknfknkkkkkkknnnnnnnnnnnnnnn
Alan seems to be insinuating that Bob's gift of tongues transcribes a jammed computer keyboard. However, I have it on good authority that when Bob speaks in tongues, he's actually quoting Aristophanes: Βρεκεκεκὲξ κοὰξ κοάξ
Fissures in dispensationalism
The dustup between Michael Brown and John MacArthur represents a potential split in dispensationalism, although it may be more of a generational thing. MacArthur's an ardent dispensationalist. That makes him a "Zionist." But he's also a hardshell cessationist.
Conversely, Michael Brown is the foremost Messianic Jewish apologist of his generation. And it's my impression that charismatic Messianic Judaism is far and away the dominant form of Messianic Judaism at present.
The question is whether Dispensational cessationists will alienate the Messianic Jewish movement. Drive them away. That would be ironic.
On the other hand, the Strange Fire Conference may be the Alamo of Dispensational cessationism. The last stand in a lost cause.
Even Billy Graham, who has a much bigger footprint than MacArthur, is quickly fading from memory:
If that can happen to Graham during his lifetime, when he's still publishing, the passage of time won't necessarily–or even probably–be any kinder to old lions like MacArthur and Robert Thomas.
Brown v. MacArthur
I think Brown makes some good points:
MacArthur and Brown represent opposite ends of the spectrum, so this is, in a sense, Brown's unbalanced position counterbalancing MacArthur's unbalanced position. Brown puts the best face on Pentecostalism while MacArthur puts the worst face on Pentecostalism.
I think it's a mistake for MacArthur to refuse to meet with Brown. It's a mistake for MacArthur to constantly talk about charismatics rather than talk to charismatics.
How representative are charismatic excesses? Brown minimizes them whereas MacArthur maximizes them.
It seems to me that charismatic excesses are clearly more than isolated incidents. But I wonder if there's any reliable polling data from a sociologist of religion who surveys the prevalence certain teachings or certain phenomena in the Pentecostal/charismatic movement worldwide.
Monday, October 14, 2013
Homicide or suicide?
Freewill theists draw a bright line between God "causing, commanding, or determining" a human agent to do something, and "allowing" the agent to do it to himself or other humans. Let's consider two different scenarios.
Suppose the paperboy has an affair with the wife of an insurance salesman. While he's away at work every day, his wife and the paperboy conduct an illicit affair. Then, one day, the insurance salesman comes home early and catches them in flagrante delicto. He shoots the paperboy dead. He's convicted of murder, but sentenced for manslaughter due to mitigating circumstances.
Suppose, instead, the paperboy has an affair with the wife of a billionaire. The billionaire finds out. Due to his financial resources, this cuckold husband can be more creative about how he exacts revenge. Shooting the adulterer would be too quick and easy. He wants to make the adulterer suffer.
He has a windowless cell built in the basement of his sprawling mansion. The cell is furnished with a bed, recliner, shower, wc, bidet, and a vending machine that's restocked from the back. There's a dvd player with a set of the paperboy's favorite TV series. Overhead lights come on 16 hours a day, and turn off 8 hours a day. The temperature stays at a preset 70º.
The adulterer is abducted, sedated, and placed in the cell. Then the opening is walled in.
One other thing: the cell contains a loaded revolver.
All his physical necessities are provided for. The captive adulterer has everything he needs to survive in there for decades. Everything he needs to live, but nothing live to for. That's the catch. Everything he needs to go on living except for a reason to go on living.
He has some entertainment, but watching reruns of his favorite TV show will soon become torment.
There's no escape. The only way out is to take his own life. Otherwise, he will die in there of old age.
The vindictive husband knows that an interminable existence in the cell will eventually become unbearable. Sooner or later, the adulterer will use the loaded revolver on himself. The fact that the adulterer executes himself makes it poetic justice–from the husband's viewpoint.
His captor didn't shoot him. His captor didn't put the gun in his hand and pull the trigger. Technically, it was a suicide, not a homicide.
Let's say the captive had libertarian freewill. His captor didn't make the captive off himself. The captive was free to do otherwise. Free to stay alive. Die of natural causes at 90.
Yet isn't there a sense in which the vindictive husband killed him just as surely as if he shot him with the revolver, rather than arranging circumstances for the adulteror to die at his own hand. So was it homicide or suicide?
Paul and Empire
Commenting on Wright's recent magnum opus on Paul:
In this chp we get to the heart of the new contribution that PFG will make; here is a full display of the imperial cult as a/the context for understanding Paul’s claim that Jesus is Lord.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2013/10/10/rome-as-empire-and-emperor-worship/
Now, I haven't read Wright's new book, and I don't plan to. I'm just commenting on McKnight's summary.
i) It's hard to see how that's a "new" contribution to Pauline scholarship. The Paul-and-Empire angle already well-trodden ground. For some background:
ii) Apropos (i), for those who look to Wright for groundbreaking scholarship, this is day-old bread.
iii) Academic Bible scholarship (as well as academic theology) is on a perennial quest for newness for the sake of newness. That's a way to make your mark in the field. Saying something new and bold. Or at least make it seem new and bold.
iv) Although Wright is a theological leader in the Anglican Communion, and even though he has quite a following among some of the laity (both inside and outside the Anglican Communion), I seriously doubt that within the guild of NT scholars, he sets the agenda. He's one of scads of prominent NT scholars. Competition is stiff.
v) But let's get to the main point. In the NT, the Lordship of Christ may have some incidental political reverberations as a polemic against the imperial cult or the divinization of the state. However, the fundamental reason the NT presents Jesus as Lord is not make a political statement, but because Jesus is the Incarnation of Yahweh. Jesus is the fulfillment of OT prophecies regarding the coming of Yahweh to redeem, rule, and dwell with his people. And, of course, that will be subdivided into two separate advents.
Although the Lordship of Christ can serve to undercut totalitarian statism, that's not the raison d'être. Jesus isn't Lord to foil Caesar. Rather, because Jesus is Lord, for reasons altogether independent of Caesar, Jesus can function as a foil to Caesar, and modern counterparts.
And there's nothing that distinctive about the Roman imperial cult. After all, in the OT you had the Egyptian Pharaonic cult. Same play, different players. The Babylonian state religion is another analogue (cf. Dan 3).
Sunday, October 13, 2013
Commemorating United Nations Day And Eid-al-Adha
I recently looked at the month of October in more than a dozen calendars (Christian and non-Christian, from different publishers, etc.). All of them mention Halloween on October 31. None mention Reformation Day. Surely some calendars do mention it, but I don't remember ever seeing it in the many calendars I've looked at over the years. Some of the calendars I recently went through mention about ten holidays in the month, including as many as three holidays on a single day. All of them have more than enough space to include a reference to Reformation Day. None mention it. Here are some of the holidays they do mention for October:
United Nations Day
Health and Sports Day (Japan)
Breast Cancer Awareness Day
National Boss Day
World Animal Day
National Children's Day
Labour Day (New Zealand)
Sweetest Day
Bank Holiday (Ireland)
Eid-al-Adha
Mother-In-Law Day
Indigenous People's Day
"Those preachers whose voices were clear and mighty for truth during life continue to preach in their graves. Being dead, they yet speak; and whether men put their ears to their tombs or not, they cannot but hear them." (Charles Spurgeon, cited in The C.H. Spurgeon Collection [Albany, Oregon: AGES Software, 1998], A Biography Pictoral Of C.H. Spurgeon, 3)
United Nations Day
Health and Sports Day (Japan)
Breast Cancer Awareness Day
National Boss Day
World Animal Day
National Children's Day
Labour Day (New Zealand)
Sweetest Day
Bank Holiday (Ireland)
Eid-al-Adha
Mother-In-Law Day
Indigenous People's Day
"Those preachers whose voices were clear and mighty for truth during life continue to preach in their graves. Being dead, they yet speak; and whether men put their ears to their tombs or not, they cannot but hear them." (Charles Spurgeon, cited in The C.H. Spurgeon Collection [Albany, Oregon: AGES Software, 1998], A Biography Pictoral Of C.H. Spurgeon, 3)
Snake in deGrasse Tyson
Neil deGrasse Tyson is a well-known astrophysicist as well as director of the Hayden Planetarium in NYC. He's also an educator and immensely interested in furthering scientific learning and knowledge in society. He's presumably against racism and sexism and would fight against poverty in low socioeconomic areas such as inner cities.
However, he evidently not only has no problem with the consequences of his following recommendations, but in fact he indeed maps out and hopes for a particular result:
Learn evolution on your own. There's nobody stopping you from accomplishing that. And if the absence of evolution is state sanctioned, then move from the state. Such an exodus (if you allow the term) will render the region without scientifically literate people and the local economy will collapse in this technologically competitive 21st century in which we live. My hope is that Americans usually pay attention to when they lose money. So poverty may be the force required to effect these changes.
(Source)
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