Death by guns

Suicides by gun accounted for about six of every 10 firearm deaths in 2010 and just over half of all suicides, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Since the CDC began publishing data in 1981, gun suicides have outnumbered gun homicides. But as gun homicides have declined sharply in recent years, suicides have become a greater share of all firearm deaths: the 61% share in 2010 was the highest on record. That year there were 19,392 suicides by firearm compared to 11,078 homicides by gun (35% of all firearm deaths). The rest were accidents, police shootings and unknown causes.

In terms of both raw numbers and population rates, gun suicides have been on the rise in recent years, even as gun homicides have fallen. In 2010, the gun suicide rate was 6.3 per 100,000 people, compared with 3.6 per 100,000 for gun homicides.

At 87%, males are the vast majority of gun suicides. By age group, people 65 and older have the highest firearm suicide rate: 10.6 per 100,000 people.

(Source)

Pruss on ID theory

It's striking to compare the knee-jerk animosity of some Catholic philosophers and scientists to ID theory with the nuanced assessment of Catholic philosopher Alexander Pruss:

http://alexanderpruss.blogspot.com/2007/10/might-intelligent-design-turn-out-to-be.html

http://alexanderpruss.blogspot.com/2008/08/is-intelligent-design-theologically.html

http://alexanderpruss.blogspot.com/2008/08/is-intelligent-design-scientific-theory.html

http://alexanderpruss.blogspot.com/2010/07/defense-well-sort-of-of-specified.html

http://alexanderpruss.blogspot.com/2013/04/what-if-intelligent-design-is.html

9 things you should know about prayer

http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/tgc/2014/05/05/9-things-you-should-know-about-prayer-in-the-bible/

Feserettes

It's revealing to see the quality of reasoning on display by Feser groupies. 

Nathanael said...As a young Reformed guy who reads your blog regularly I'd just like to say, keep up the good work. 

Nathanael said...So I went over to Triablogue (my first visit there) and saw that the author recommended getting my theology from Turretin and my philosophy from Plantinga and Swinburne. Because apparently the best way to support Reformed theology is to follow guys who reject divine simplicity, divine aseity, and predestination. Oh, and who have a "social" view of the Trinity. Because I guess he never bothered to actually read Turretin (who was as scholastic as they come).

Compare that with what I actually said:

But because he usually writes at a popular level, there's not a lot of depth or detail. And it lacks technical rigor. Plantinga raised the bar for how to do Christian philosopher. The same holds true, in a different way, for Swinburne. 
I expect many young Calvinists of a philosophical bent may still get their theology from Warfield and Turretin, or Schreiner and Beale, or Frame, but their philosophical role models are more in the vein of Pruss, Plantinga, the McGrews, van Inwagen, &c. 

i) Notice that I didn't "recommend" Plantinga or Swinburne. Is Nathanael unable to distinguish between a description and a recommendation?

ii) Moreover, I was distinguishing between theological content and philosophical method. Is Nathanael unable to draw that elementary distinction? 

iii) Also observe how undiscriminating he is. If, say, Plantinga or Swinburne reject divine simplicity, does that render them useless in other respects?  

Being a regular reader of Feser hasn't done much to hone Nathanael's analytical skills. 

Daniel said...I think it is ridiculous that anyone should say that you ignore Frege when you frequently mention how great an influence his article ‘The Thought’ was in turning you away from any physicalist philosophy of mind.

Except for the awkward little fact that I didn't accuse Feser of ignoring Frege. Where did Daniel come up with that?

Anonymous said...Hmm, I'm betting rockingwithhawking = Steve.

Since that speculation is wrong, where do I go to collect on the bet?

Jacob Steiner said...Dr. Feser. First off, I have to give you a certain gratitude of thanks. During my reversion to Catholicism I too discovered St. Thomas Aquinas. I wanted to learn from the great Saint and his philosophical/theological system. Reading Mortimer books on Aristotle and then your book on Aquinas has really shaped me into a better defending of the faith and ultimately the the truth.

Not exactly surprising that a revert to Roman Catholicism would side with Feser. 

Scott said...@"steve":
Your latest rant is unlikely to draw anything but laughter from those of us who are—unlike (by your own admission) you—"qualified to offer an informed opinion of Feser."
This is a pretty good example of the depths of silliness to which you descend:
"[U]nless you have a vested interest in the truth of Thomism, it's philosophically unenlightening to judge ID theory by that yardstick."
That is utter nonsense on several levels.
First of all, if being rationally persuaded that a particular philosophy is true amounts to having a "vested interest" in it, I must have missed that day of logic class.

Yes, I'd say he skipped logic class that day.

Second, pointing out the incompatibilities between two philosophical outlooks is not the same thing as judging one by the yardstick of the other.

I never said that was generally the case. Rather, I said that's what Feser is doing. I guess Scott missed a week of logic class.

Third, even if Ed's sole purpose were to evaluate ID theory by the yardstick of Thomism, that wouldn't make it philosophically uninteresting to everyone who didn't have a "vested interest" in Thomism.

Unless you think Thomism is true, why is it philosophically informative to use Thomism as the benchmark to evaluate ID theory? 

I'm not going to go through your entire post and pick it apart, but the rest is of similar quality. Not only are you a mouse nipping at the heels of an elephant, but you haven't even got the right elephant.

You mean, like this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXiMs65ZAeU

I appreciate Scott's suggestion that I have Feser running scared, although I doubt Feser would be as enthusiastic about the comparison.

Scott said...@Tom:
"@Scott: If you don't mind my asking, what are you, if not Catholic?"
Non-denominational classical theist and mostly Thomist, not terribly far from Mortimer Adler before his final conversion to Catholicism. I won't be the least bit surprised if I end up doing the same.

So it comes as no surprise that he's so defensive of Feser. 

Greg said...It's kind of like how I find Kant's evaluation of Hume to be unenlightening; I am not a Kantian, so anything Kant had to say is clearly valueless to me.

Unless he thinks Kant's evaluation of Hume is true, why would that be valuable?

Jonathan Garcia said...It is hillarious that the post is called "Doubting Thomist", yet he doesn't gives a single reason why we should doubt thomism.

Perhaps it's hilarious that he can't spell hilarious.

The post is called "Doubting Thomist" because that's a pun on Doubting Thomas. Sorry if that's too subtle for Garcia. 

Anonymous said...@Steve:
The first rule of holes is to stop digging. You just dug yourself even deeper, and you now proceed to advertise the fact in this combox.

Since you Triablogers love to quote scripture as though it were some kind of moral weapon, try this one on for size:

Because loving to quote Scripture is such an indictment. 

Mark Thomas said...Well said, Dr. Feser. There's a lot of "bright" fools on the web that dismiss something simply because "others disagree". 

Which wasn't the argument. The point, rather, is that since Feser's views on Thomism and ID theory have been challenged, his views are not a given. 

Further, there are more objection to intelligent design theory that are also independent of your metaphysics. For instance, check out Tim and Lydia McGrew's thoughts on the matter.

My post specifically mentioned that. Is he paying attention?

Greg said...
Perhaps I'm just siding with Feser out of my "Catholic partisanship," but this exchange strikes me as manifestly uncharitable on Steve's part.

Just what I'd expect a Catholic partisan to say. What a coincidence. 

The argument that Feser is making is clearly that ID is incompatible with classical theism. Not just Thomism, which is the subset of classical theism that Feser endorses. The issue with ID from the classical theistic perspective is that it portrays God as an artificer who acts on preexisting matter with its own quasi-mechanistic tendencies. That view of God is incompatible not just with Thomism but with other varieties of classical theism.

i) That's a ridiculous caricature of ID theory, as if ID theory views the Designer as a Demiurge who used preexisting matter to create the universe. 

ii) Why, moreover, is ID theory (allegedly) incompatible with classical theism, but theistic evolution (which most contemporary Catholic intellectuals espouse) not incompatible with classical theism? 

Nick said...Steve forgets apparently that a number of us fans of Feser are Protestants who happen to think Aquinas's metaphysics is right on a number of points. He can argue against Catholicism all day and not touch Feser's arguments. It's a straw man and for his audience, a way of poisoning the well.

Can Nick quote where I argued against Feser by arguing against Catholicism? Where did Nick come up with that? 

Nick said...Well that's amusing. I've been a fan of Feser for sometime, long before Steve went after him. It's why I hope to have him on my show sometime.
Steve's problem was that he kept equating classical theism with Thomism…

Can Nick quote me on that? I focus on Thomism because Feser is…a Thomist. Isn't that self-explanatory? 

 and made too many comments about Catholicism.

I compared Feser to other Catholic philosophers. What's wrong with that? 

 The debate over Catholicism for me is neither here nor there. It's one of the issues I don't look into and have no desire to. My time is limited.

I'd say that's the reductio ad absurdum of Resurrection apologists. Nick has no desire to have correct views on the scope of the canon, Biblical hermeneutics, Pauline justification, the sufficiency of the atonement, salvation by grace, the afterlife (i.e. Purgatory), the cult of the saints, Marian dogmas, &c. 

Ismael said...I think you made "Steve" cry... I hope he does not rust.

Isn't that clever?

Anonymous said...As a scientist and a former staunch Calvinist (now an "almost Catholic") who left the movement in part because of the unavoidable association with young-Earth creationists and ID proponents, I've heard a lot of "Steves" in my day. 

So a "now almost Catholic" sides with Feser. What a surprise.

Everything you've said about "Steve" is true, but unfortunately you are likely spitting into the wind. He and his ilk take "challenges" of their position as confirmation (Jesus said you'd be persecuted, after all), and yet they clearly perceive mere challenges of other positions as tantamount to disproof.

Nothing like armchair psychology as a substitute for reason and evidence.

Gary Black said...--Sorry, I keep moderating myself and have to delete previous comments--
Divine Frenzy,
I found your link very useful. I read the entire exchange and it was one of the things that spurred my first remark. During that exchange it was quite obvious that Steve will interpret Prejean in whatever light is most beneficial for Steve. It casts serious doubt on Steve's ability to do impartial exegesis. [This would be relevant to anyone looking at Steve as any authority on Biblical interpretation.]

Why frame Biblical interpretation in terms of "authorities" rather than who has the best exegetical argument?

My favorite part of the exchange is when Steve says "the purpose and practice of the GHM is widely attested in Scripture itself." Steve's argument is that we should use grammatico-historical method (GHM) and never allegory in our interpretation of Scripture. He states, "Incidentally, there is no such thing as 'moderate' allegorization ... Once you cut the text free from its historical moorings, you’re at sea without a map, compass, or coastline."
I found this hilarious because the New Testament quotes the Old in a way we know contradicts the original meaning of the OT author.

That's a stock allegation which many careful NT scholars have refuted. Gary suffers from self-reinforcing ignorance. 

Greg said...Indeed he does. Take him where TimL quoted him. Feser's critique of the philosophy of nature behind ID does not rely on Thomism. His series of posts on Nagel are themselves a critique of that mechanistic philosophy of nature.
Feser regards the weakness of naturalism (explicit in full-blown naturalism and implicit in ID) as a reason to adopt Thomism, but his critique of it does not rely on Thomism.

It doesn't? Then why is his critique of ID theory couched in explicit reliance on Thomist assumptions? For instance:

http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2010/04/intelligent-design-theory-and-mechanism.html

Steve knows none of this, having by his own admission not read enough of Feser to know better (though he nevertheless insists that he shouldn't have to read Feser).

Perhaps Greg hasn't read (or remembered or understood) enough of Feser. to know better. 

Charles said...I have to say that after reading Steve's blog, I agree there is little there, other than name dropping and more name dropping. I am sure the guy is well read. So, I think that was the mission, rather than to critically examine Feser. In fact, he falls prey to his own critique of Feser, with regard to being more of a follower than a thinker. Most intellectually driven Reformed thinkers tend to do that. "Is it Van Tillian? Ok. Then I'm for it. Is it Schaefferian presuppositionalism? Then I am against it." That's nice to know how you feel, Mr. Reformed guy...but do us a favor and embellish a bit more on what you're saying.

Can Charles quote me on that? "Is it Van Tilian? Ok." Where do I say that?

Alyosha said...So, let me get this straight. The same guy ("Steve") who said this:
//A misunderstanding can be more philosophically fruitful than a correct understanding (of a philosopher's actual position). For what ultimately matters in philosophy is the truth or falsity of the idea, not the truth or falsity of the attribution. //
...also says that the only reason to be interested in the compatibility of Thomism and ID is "vested interest in Thomism"?
I thought what ultimately mattered in philosophy was the truth or falsity of the idea as opposed to the attribution. Shouldn't anyone interested in ID be interested in the arguments that have been made against it? And, shouldn't any Christian interested in ID be interested in whether it is compatible with Classical Theism (the historically dominant position among Christian thinkers)?
This Steve guy seems like a joke...

It's because what ultimately matters in philosophy is the truth or falsity of the idea that the only reason to judge ID theory by Thomism is if you grant the truth of Thomism. So the joke is on Alyosha. 

Finally, we're treated to an intelligent comment:

Mr. Green said...

Jeremy Taylor: I do think it incorrect though that ID is incompatible with Classical Theism. Maybe this is because I'm not sure what is being referred to as ID.

Since it's not a trademarked term, it is typically abused as much as "evolution" or "creation" in such arguments, and hence many discussions that employ the phrase are worthless from the get-go (well, Internet discussions, certainly... but then Sturgeon's Law surely applies here).

Does ID have to refer to a well-developed and mechanistic philosophical position, or can it just refer to scientific and mathematical critiques of the science of Darwinism?

I'd say neither, if we go by a reasonable definition that takes it primarily to have something to do with "intelligence" and "design". (Also, it depends on what we mean by "darwinism"... did I mention how badly terms get abused in any discussions about special evolution?)

It seems clear to me that the central point of interest in ID is that notion that some things clearly demonstrate their deliberate design (as opposed to being merely accidentally ordered, or showing "as-if" intentionality). And I take it as obvious that this is so: for example, if you found a pile of papers printed with Hamlet on the floor of a printers' shop, it wouldn't violate any law of physics to suppose that tray after tray of type accidentally fell over and marked up some pages, but nobody would actually believe that a complete and accurate copy of Hamlet "just happened" to tip over. And if ID is taken to mean a scientific claim, we can certainly be more precise and calculate how many possible possible positions a tray of type could fall into, etc., and come up with an empirically-based (un)likelihood. All of which is obviously compatible with classical theism. (Questions about biological evolution are of course a particular application of this principle — what the answer turns out to be when we ask ID questions about biology is something for biologists to figure out.)

Parallelomania

I saw this plugged by an atheist on Facebook:

http://listverse.com/2013/06/30/ten-influences-on-the-bible/

Normally, I wouldn't comment on anything that unscholarly, but since things like this can throw Christians for a curve, I'll made some observations:

i) To begin with, this reveals something about the outlook of many atheists. They're on the lookout for something, anything, to debunk the Bible. They don't stop to do any elementary fact-checking. They don't have that mindset. So even though they pride themselves on their superior rationality, they are actually quite credulous. 

ii) The attempted parallels reflect some basic methodological errors, documented in Bruce Metzger's classic a classic "Considerations of Methodology in the Study of the Mystery Religions and Early Christianity"

iii) The attempted parallels fail to make allowance for the probable dates of the sources. Obviously, for the Bible to be indebted to a source, the source must antedate the Bible. 

In addition, the source can't be too far removed in place as well as time. What reason is there to think Bible writers were in contact with East Indian literature? 

iv) The attempted parallels appeal to Buddhism and Zoroastrianism. But here's an obvious problem with that comparison. As Edwin Yamauchi explains:

SOURCESWe need to distinguish sharply between first-hand or nearly contemporary sources and later apocryphal and legendary materials.
Zoroaster (628-551 B.C.). We have what appear to be the genuine sayings of Zoroaster in the Gathas of the Avesta. The mass of Zoroastrian texts, however, are in late Pahlavi recensions (ninth century A.D.). Contemporary Old Persian cuneiform inscriptions betray at best only allusions to early Zoroastrianism. Some Greek and Arabic authors also allude to Zoroaster. The Persian national epic, the Shah Namah by Firdausi (c. A.D. 1000), includes traditions of the prophet.
Buddha (563-483 B.C.). Buddha's teachings, after many centuries of being passed on orally, were written down for the first time in the first century B.C. in Ceylon. The earliest written texts which have been preserved are in Pali, an Indo-Aryan dialect which may be the dialect Buddha himself used. The Pali canon of the Hinayana school (the southern branch of Buddhism, also called the Theravada school) is known as the Tipitaka (Sanskrit Tripitaka), meaning "Three Baskets." Portions of this collection, such as the Samyutta Nikaya, the Majjhima Nikaya and the Anguttara Nikaya, may have come into existence two centuries after Buddha's death, but othted much later.
The Sanskrit canon of the Mahayana school, which spread northeastward to Tibet, China, Korea and Japan, dates, at the earliest, to the first and second centuries A.D. According to Christmas Humphreys, "the later Sutras of the Mahayana School, though put into Buddha's mouth, are clearly the work of minds which lived from five to fifteen hundred years after his passing."3
In the later sources one notes a conspicuous exaggeration of the supernatural elements in Buddha's life. But even the earliest traditions, separated as they are by a century or two from Buddha's time, are not free from amplification. As M. Winternitz observes, "Even what are generally considered to be our oldest documents, the texts of the Pali Tipitaka, speak of Buddha often enough as a superhuman being, and tell us more of the legendary man than of the historical Buddha."4  

http://irr.org/jesus-zoroaster-buddha-socrates-muhammad

Let's now turn to some specific claims:

If you are among the approximately 32 percent of the world population that considers themselves Christian, you were probably raised to believe that the Bible was written in some sort of historical vacuum—the various authors being inspired by God alone and having no outside influences whatsoever.

That's a straw man. The doctrine of inspiration championed in conservative evangelical circles is the organic theory of inspiration. Take this classic exposition by B. B. Warfied:

Consider, for example, how a piece of sacred history—say the Book of Chronicles, or the great historical work, Gospel and Acts, of Luke—is brought to the writing. There is first of all the preparation of the history to be written: God the Lord leads the sequence of occurrences through the development He has designed for them that they may convey their lessons to His people: a “teleological” or “etiological” character is inherent in the very course of events. Then He prepares a man, by birth, training, experience, gifts of grace, and, if need be, of revelation, capable of appreciating this historical development and eager to search it out, thrilling in all his being with its lessons and bent upon making them clear and effective to others. When, then, by His providence, God sets this man to work on the writing of this history, will there not be spontaneously written by him the history which it was Divinely intended should be written? Or consider how a psalmist would be prepared to put into moving verse a piece of normative religious experience: how he would be born with just the right quality of religious sensibility, of parents through whom he should receive just the right hereditary bent, and from whom he should get precisely the right religious example and training, in circumstances of life in which his religious tendencies should be developed precisely on right lines; how he would be brought through just the right experiences to quicken in him the precise emotions he would be called upon to express, and finally would be placed in precisely the exigencies which would call out their expression. Or consider the providential preparation of a writer of a didactic epistle—by means of which he should be given the intellectual breadth and acuteness, and be trained in habitudes of reasoning, and placed in the situations which would call out precisely the argumentative presentation of Christian truth which was required of him. 

So even if Melloson's counterexamples were successful, they'd only succeed in burning the straw man he began with. 

There is also a lot of evidence that the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the oldest recorded texts in human history, had an influence on the biblical creation story. The Epic of Gilgamesh tells the story of a man, Enkidu, who was created from the earth by a god. He lives amongst the animals in a natural paradise until he is tempted by a woman, Shamhat. He accepts food from this woman and is forced to leave the place where he lives after becoming aware of his own nakedness. Later in the epic, he encounters a snake which steals a plant of immortality from him. Obviously, there are a lot of parallels between this story and the Graden of Eden from the Bible.

Really? There are online editions of the Epic of Gilgamesh. Here's a standard translation, published by Stanford U.:

http://www.sjsu.edu/people/cynthia.rostankowski/courses/119a/s4/The%20Epic%20of%20Gilgamesh.pdf

Did Melloson Allen even bother to read the relevant portions of the Gilgamesh epic, and directly compare it to Genesis? Or was he relying on some thirdhand summary?

1. Unlike Adam, Enkidu wasn't the first man.

2. He was created by a goddess (Aruru).

3. He didn't live in a natural "paradise." He simply lived in the wilderness (in contrast to urban dwellers). 

4. He has sex with a harlot. Quite different from "accepting food."

5. He wasn't a nudist. To the contrary, he "wore a garment like Sumukan."

6. He left the wilderness, not because he became aware of his alleged nudity, but because he lost his rapport with the wild animals after he had sex with the harlot.

7. Gilgamesh, not Enkidu, encountered the snake who stole the plant of immortality.

8. In Genesis, the "snake" tempts them to eat from the tree of knowledge, not the tree of life. 

9. In the Gilgamesh Epic, stealing the plant of immortality is an etiology to explain why snakes shed their skin. Nothing like that in Gen 3.

A man is warned of an imminent flood by a god and is instructed to build a large boat in order to survive. The dimensions of the boat are 120 cubits; the building materials are wood, pitch, and reeds; and there are six decks. After the flood, the boat lands on a mountaintop where the man sends out a series of birds to find dry land. He eventually lets all the people and animals free and sacrifices to the god that saved him.Now although these details sound like they were taken directly from the book of Genesis, you’d find the same information in the story of Utnapishtim, found in the Epic of Gilgamesh.

i) Since Noah's ark wasn't cubical, made of reeds, with six stories, the Genesis narrator obviously didn't borrow these details from the Gilgamesh epic. Once again, did Melloson even bother to compare the two accounts directly? 

ii) Yes, there are some genuine parallels. Of course, if you have two independent accounts reporting the same historical event, then you'd expect them to share some details–not because one is literarily indebted to the other, but because both are indebted to a common event. Their shared dependence on a common event generates certain parallels. That's a mark of historicity.

There are a large number of striking similarities between the book of Proverbs in the bible and the Egyptian Instruction of Amenemope.

Considering the fact that Solomon had formal diplomatic  relations with Egypt, sealed by marriage to Pharaoh's daughter (1 Kgs 3:1; 7:8; 9:16,24; 11:1), why is that surprising? 

Psalms 29 is a hymn that bears so much similarity to Ulgaritic [sic] (the language of the Canaanites) poetry that some believe that it was originally an hymn to Baal. 

That's disputed, but in any event, that would be a case of polemical theology.

Once again, we go back Zoroastrianism and Persian influence. The prophet Daniel was the first biblical figure to refer to ideas of resurrection and judgement in Daniel 12:2, and this can be easily attributed to Babylonian influence. The word “paradise” comes directly from the Persian religion of Mithraism. The word “Hell” seems to derive from the Norse word Hel, most certainly a pre-Christian concept.

i) Since Dan 12:2 never uses the words "paradise" or "hell," one can hardly attribute his nonexistent usage to other sources.

Once more, Melloson appears to be regurgitating thirdhand sources without even bothering to check them against the Biblical passages he references. 

ii) How is "Babylonian influence" interchangeable with "Persian influence"? 

iii) Yes, hell is a pre-Christian concept. But it's not a pre-Biblical concept.

Yet it is clearly a concept that was influenced by pagan religions existing at the time that Christianity came about. Examples of pagan trinities are: Amun, Re, and Ptah of Egyptian Mythology; Anu, Enlil, and Ea of Sumerian Mythology; and Ishtar, Baal, and Tammuz of Babylonian Mythology.

That shows no awareness of how the Trinity is defined.

Moreover, why would NT writers be influenced by ANE Sumerian mythology? Why assume they were even conversant with something that far removed from their own time, place, and culture? This is jump lumping stuff together that has no historical or conceptional links. 

there are still some remarkable parallels between the teachings of Jesus and the teachings of Buddha, Mithras, and Zarathustra.

Other issues to one side, it's necessary to distinguish between Iranian Mithraism and Roman Mithraism. 

There is also some similarity between the story of the Ten Commandments and the Code of Hammurapi [sic], dated around 1772 B.C.

So what? ANE law codes reflect similar socioeconomic conditions. Likewise, people tend to commit the same kinds of crimes.

By the same token, it's not surprising that the Mosaic Law uses stock ANE legal jargon and legal formats.

At the same time, there are significant differences where you'd expect them to be different. In Hammurabi's law code, penalties generally vary according to the social class of the offender, unlike the Mosaic law code. 

Finally, this reflects the antiquity of the Mosaic law code, contrary to liberal theories of composition. 

Is the Jesus' Wife fragment fake?

Thus far I haven't commented on the controversy surrounding the Jesus' Wife fragment. That's because this is a "developing story," so anything I link to is apt to be out-of-date shortly thereafter. For those who wish to follow the developments, one good resource is Larry Hurtado's blog: 

http://larryhurtado.wordpress.com/

That said, I wish to make a general point: the way the issue has been framing is misleading. At the moment, controversy swirls around the question of whether this fragment is a modern forgery. Certainly that's a legitimate question, worth pursuing in its own right. After all, if it's a modern forgery, then that debunks it at one stroke.

But a problem with concentrating on the forgery angle is that it may lead some people to think that if it's not a fake, then it's true. The antonym of fake is authentic. So admitting that it's "authentic" or "ancient" might seem to carry connotations of veracity or historicity. But that's a fallacious inference. 

Even if it's not a forgery, that carries no presumption that it's historical or true. From about the mid-2C and beyond, lots of apocryphal stories about Jesus were produced by various sects. At best, this is pious fiction, with no connection to the historical Jesus. 

To take a comparison, The Da Vinci Code was ostensibly written by Dan Brown in 2003. And that's true. Dan Brown is the real author. And the ostensible date of publication is correct. It's not pseudepigraphal. It's not a forgery. It wasn't written at a different date by someone impersonating Dan Brown. In that sense, The Da Vinci Code is "authentic."

That, however, has no bearing on whether the content of The Da Vinci Code is historically accurate.  As many scholars have documented, The Da Vinci Code is tabloid fiction masquerading as church history.

By the same token, even if the Jesus' Wife fragment is "authentic," that doesn't mean it's factual or probably factual. 

Raising the Devil

Bill Ellis is a Penn State folklorist who's published Raising the Devil: Satanism, New Religions, and the Media; Aliens, Ghosts, and Cults: Legends We Live, and Lucifer Ascending: the Occult in Folkore and Popular Culture. 

He writes from a skeptical perspective. He's nominally Lutheran, but his analysis is consistently naturalistic. He's a contributor to the Skeptical Inquirer, founded by militant atheist Paul Kurtz. 

In Raising the Devil, he attempts to trace the "Satanic Scare" (i.e. repressed memories of Satanic ritual abuse) to the influence of modern exorcism (e.g. Kurt Koch). He believes this represents the evolution of an urban legend. He connects this to related "legends" like alien abduction narratives and ouija boards that channel the dark side. These, and other "legends," are elaborated in his two later books. 

He also ties this into the charismatic movement and deliverance ministries. He contends that Pentecostals had to construct a "satanic counterfeit" to distinguish Spirit-possession from demonic possession. 

In the course of his research, he's uncovered a lot of interesting background material and some striking parallels. But there are problems with how he tries to work this disparate material into his overall thesis.  

i) For instance, the need to distinguish between Spirit-possession and demonic possession hardly originates with the modern charismatic movement. That's a theme in both the NT and the OT.

ii) Likewise, exorcism was practiced by the ancient church. Denominations like Anglicanism and Roman Catholicism have exorcists. 

At best, Ellis can only argue that charismatics are reinventing or rediscovering a preexisting paradigm. Convergent theological evolution. 

iii) Whether or not you think ouija boards channel the dark side is, in part, a worldview issue. If you're an atheist, you will demand a naturalistic explanation. 

When Koch's Between Christ and Satan appeared in English in 1962, he immediately found himself in demand outside Germany. That year he came to the US for the first time to give talks on demonology at the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago and the Dallas Theological Seminary. Soon after, he was involved in a series of world tours, visiting fundamentalist seminaries in Latin America, Australia, and Asia.  

Two major British discussions of demon possession, Michael Harper's Spiritual Warfare (1970 and John Richards's But Deliver Us from Evil (1974) repeatedly cite Koch's case histories as authoritative. In the US, Koch was endorsed by the fundamentalist theologian Merrill F. Unger in his Demons in the World Today (1971). 

This complex of ideas soon influenced secular psychological medicine as Koch and HIs mentor Alfred Lechler inspired respect from professionals. When John Warwick Montgomery organized a symposium on demon possession at the University of Notre Dame under the auspices of the Christian Medical Association (1976), participating clinical psychologists were often skeptical of demon possession. Nevertheless, they cited Koch and Lechler more frequently than any other resources. 

In particular, Dr. John White, Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Manitoba, endorsed Lechler's diagnostic description of demon possession, noting cases from his own practice.  

These three elements developed among some networks of therapists into a core set of beliefs and practices, which became for secular psychiatry the analog of the "diabolical medicine" created by Koch and his followers. That is, many different puzzling mental disorders were now diagnosed as resulting from multiple personalities. Intensive therapy, often involving clinical hypnosis, attempting to get the patient to recall memories of of childhood trauma, thought to be the cause of the disorder…Over time, these traumas were identified as evidence for real acts of "ritual abuse" carried out by members of satanic cults.   

Bill Ellis, Raising the Devil: Satanism, New Religions, and the Media (University of Kentucky Press 2000), 17, 87-89.

i) This fails to document the charismatic connection, which is a key link in Ellis's thesis. Moody Bible Institute and Dallas Theological Seminary are cessationist strongholds.

ii) As an Anglican exorcist, John Richards has his own case histories to draw upon. He's not dependent on Koch. 

iii) John Warwick Montgomery is Lutheran rather than charismatic.

iv) It's unclear how John White supposedly influenced secular psychology. Although he was a psych prof., White was also a Christian missionary and Vineyard pastor. 

v) Unger didn't rely on Koch. Unger corresponded with foreign missionaries who bore witness to the same phenomena as Koch. 

vi) How would the fact that secular psychologists cite Koch or Lechler indicate that they were influenced by Koch and Lechler, rather than citing them to document what some Christians believe? 

The most frequently cited authority in the first generation of demonologists was the Lutheran Charismatic, Kurt E. Koch. born in November 1913 in Berghausen, a town located in the German provoke of Baden, near the Black Forest and the Swiss border, Koch receiving his Doctor of Theology degree from the University of Tubingen, specializing in mental heath counseling. Returning to Baden in the 1930s as a pastor and youth counselor, he found the area afflicted by a "flood of magic." In fact, the chaotic period between the two World Wars was marked by a revival of many forms of occultism. The focus of many of these magical practices was The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses, an early analog of Anton LaVey's Satanic Bible describing how to perform black magic. 

Koch himself was sensitive to mental problems linked to occultism, since as a child he found that whenever he visited his grandparents he would wake up in the night and see "a huge beast with glowing eyes." These vision puzzled him for years, until his father mentioned that he had had similar night visitations during his own youth. Koch continues: 

The bombshell dropped when my father related how his grandmother, while raising her children, had practiced magic with the Six and Seventh Books of Moses. This, then, was my great-grandmother. At one stroke I understood why the experiences of my father and his siblings were similar to those of my own childhood. My grandmother, about whom there had been many rumors, was the demon-oppressed daughter of an enchantress. Now I could see how my grandmother and great-grandmother were responsible both for my father's frightening experiences and also for my own terrifying moments of fear. This insight motivated me as pastor and evangelist to conduct thousands of conversations with soul-sick, occult-oppressed persons and come to hear similar things.  

Beginning in the 1930s, Koch specialized in counseling individuals suffering from depression and other signs of mental illness. He noted that such patients inevitably had had contact with folk healers like his great-grandmother, or had practiced some form of folk magic. 

By 1949 he had developed a relationship with Wiesbaden psychologist Alfred Lechler, one of a group of Christian therapists in Germany who accepted demonic influence as a valid diagnosis for some mental problems. Lechler, too, assumed that involvement in folk magic could lead to such demonization. He argued: 

What then must we regard as the cause of demonic enslavement and possession? If we enquire closely from such people…we very often find in their background the use of magic means such as are employed in black magic, viz. acts of charming or being charmed, the sin of fortune telling or visits from fortune tellers and card layers, and participation in spiritist sessions. Black magic is much more prevalent than is ordinarily assumed…Together with spiritist activities, magic stands in a class of its own in relation to other sins, when it includes an appeal to Satan's services or even a formal pact with Satan…For by invoking Satan man yields himself unequivocally to powers of darkness, in that he attempts by magic and the help of Satanic power to gain something that God has forbidden or withheld.  

Following Lechler, Koch developed a "demonic" clinical psychology based on his belief that Brauche, or Germanic folk healing, was  a dangerous ritual that derived its power from evil sources and so constituted an implicit pact with Satan. Koch used narratives and beliefs drawn from folk healing to demonstrate the evils of the occult.  

Koch developed a huge file of cases from his ministry in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, which he organized under types of occult involvement…These books include many accounts, anecdotal and firsthand, of cases involving what he defined as demonic activity. 

Koch's works on discerning and remedying demonic possession were cited as authoritative within the deliverance ministry. Three of his ideas became essential to the deliverance mythology, and so his key arguments formed a theoretical base for much of the anti-Satanism propaganda that followed. First he argued that charms and procedures used in Germanic folk healing, even when they appeared to help the patient, were always satanic in nature. Such diabolical charms left "engrams," or concealed psychic inures, in the personality of the person healed, which later emerged as physical or mental illnesses of demonic origin. Most importantly, these engrams were multigenerational in nature, inherited by children or even grandchildren from relatives who were in league with demons.  

Koch built a theological argument identifying Germanic magical healing as a satanic parody of spirit-filled ministry. This tradition is often called "brauche" ("using" occult powers) or "pow-wow" in areas of the US where it is still actively practiced. Healers, as folklorists have observed, do in fact resemble priests as channels of superhuman powers that drive away evil forces causing the illness. While no two powwowers use the same or even similer motions, their rituals are often analogous to those of a priest's blessing. Koch also notes this similarity and argues that the healing ritual was in fact a close counterfeit of institutional Christian liturgy. The healer's conventional invocation of the Trinity or "three holy names" correspond to addressing God in prayer; use of a charm was equivalent to use of the Scriptures; symbolic actions such as drawing the ailment to the healer matched sacramental laying on of hands; and the fetish often used related to holy water or the Sacrament. 

In short, folk healers in the Germanic tradition often function as exorcists, banishing not only the ailment but also the evil spirits that caused them…When one recognizes, too, that such folk traditions were often passed on and practiced by females in the face of a patriarchal religious instate, we see how the powwower could be considered a serious folk rival to the institutionally ordained pastor or priest.  

Koch was hardly original in attacking folk healing: many pastors before him had denounced it as superstitious and ignorant. But Koch believed that it was more than superstition; indeed it worked all to well. Rather than simply calling it irrational, he conceded that powwowers could produce medically valid cures. But he argued that such healing only appeared to have a beneficial effect. 

His second major contribution lay in his use of existing psychological terminology to define the mechanism by which this spiritual harm was caused. It is well known, Koch notes, that disorders in the mental realm could lead to physical, "psychosomatic" illnesses. But he argued that the reverse was also true: magical cures of organic illnessness were actually curses that could lead to mental disorders. This explained why those who apparently had been healed successfully by charming later on fell prey to mental illnesses…In some cases, the problems could be traced to conscious guilt over having dabbled in sorcery. In other instances, as when a child was charmed at birth, the effects of the magic healing led to otherwise inexplicable physical and mental problems. 

Koch argued that when magical healing took place, the physical trauma was not in fact exorcised; rather, it moved to the "organic unconsciousness" and became an engram that could later produce mental disorders.  

Koch's third and most long-lasting contribution to the deliverance mythology was his argument that the effects of "occult sins" were multigenerational. That is, mental illness could be caused by individuals' own dabbling with the occult or, equally, to the use of folk magic by parents or grandparents. One reason underlying this argument was the belief that white magic was a satanic as black, and the same persons who promised to help patients could and often did use their powers aggressively to harm them.  

The interaction of "good" and "bad" healing powers, often wielded by the same individual, is a regular and presumably functional part of this tradition of belief. Certainly the dual role of healers has been employed described in other cultures' traditions of belief, notably that of the African Diaspora (e.g., Jackson 1976).  

Koch relied on widespread folk traditions of becoming a witch through some sort of ritual demonic pact. Likewise, he accepted stories that described the effect of such pacts on the children of such sorcerers. One woman, who claimed to have subscribed both herself and her unborn child to the Devil, later saw the child suffer early senility. And a man who contracted with the Devil to gain a wife from a higher social class later fathered twins that were born "horribly disfigured." 

Stories and rumors current among American healers frequently assume that a witch is likely to–perhaps even obligated to–cause the death of a child or other family member in exchange for her magical gifts (Randolph 1947; Yoder 1962; Stewart 1976). Hence, in traditional witchcraft stories, the gaining of supernatural powers accomplishes the exact reverse of healing and making the community whole. Koch adopted this belief in his own theory; even when children seem at first to be unaffected or unaware of their parents' occult powers, they still suffer later in life (15-22).

i) I'm puzzled by his classification of Koch as a "Lutheran Charismatic." To begin with, that's almost oxymoronic. To my knowledge, Lutheran theology is broadly cessationist. Admittedly, it antedates some of the contemporary distinctions. 

Moreover, Koch wrote about the tongues movement. He's closer to the cessationist end of the spectrum, although he allows for the possibility that, in isolated cases, God may grant this to individual Christians. Cf. The Strife of Tongues. 

ii) This misclassification is not an incidental mistake. Since Ellis is arguing that Pentecostalism was a catalyst for the Satanic ritual abuse legend, classifying Koch as a representative of charismatic theology is pivotal evidence for his claim.  

iii) It's important to distinguish between folk medicine and folk magic. Although some folk remedies are occultic, there's nothing inherently occultic about a folk remedy. Likewise, even if a folk remedy traditionally utilizes a magic ritual, that may be separable from the remedy itself.

For instance, if a tribe inhabits the Amazon jungle for generations, it may, by trial and error, discover the medicinal properties of certain fauna or flora. That lore is transmitted from one generation to the next. Even if the tribal herbalist is a witchdoctor, the remedy may have genuine therapeutic value, regardless of the mumbo jumbo that accompanies it. 

iv) We need to distinguish between Koch's case studies and his interpretation. He developed a theory to explain the evidence. His theory may be deficient. The mechanism ("engrams") is speculative. And he may be guilty of hasty generalizations. But you can't dismiss the evidence by demising the theory.

v) Ellis doesn't really engage the evidence. On the face of it, there's some general plausibility to the connections which Koch made, even if that needs to be refined or scaled back. 

vi) How should the contemporary Christian church address the question of demonic activity? Unless you take a hyperdispensational view, which disallows the very possibility of this occurring during the church age, it's something we need to deal with at both a theological and practical level.

Obviously, "deliverance ministries" are magnets for quacks and charlatans. One problem is making diagnosis and deliverance too formulaic. 

Book Review: The Righteous Mind

The following is a review of Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind (Random House: New York, 2010).  Like a good Christian, I am a couple years behind the curve reviewing this important contribution to secular sociology and ethics. Fortunately, the book's content isn't time-sensitive, and much of it can apply to methods of evangelism.  (Because I am reviewing an Amazon Kindle copy, page citations might not properly align with the print version. I believe Haidt is pronounced like “height.”)