Thinking thrice before supporting Brad Littlejohn

I'm going to comment on this post:

http://www.reformation21.org/blog/2015/09/thinking-thrice-before-support.php

It was clearly an oblique broadside against this post:

http://www.reformation21.org/blog/2015/09/four-reasons-christians-should.php

He begins with hypotheticals. Nothing wrong with that in principle. However, the function of a hypothetical ought to be to clarify ethical reasoning. Instead, he uses hypotheticals to obfuscate the issue, like a squid inking the water. He raises hypothetical scenarios which he doesn't attempt to untangle. Instead of giving the reader any direction, he points the reader in all directions. That's worse than useless. 

Littlejohn says:

Here is my question: if Christians are going to hold up Kim Davis as a paragon of Christ-like refusal to compromise with injustice, then how soon are we going to hold up the hypothetical John Barlow or Joseph Rodriguez or William Black as well? Are we all prepared to examine our own vocations with the same rigor, and leave all to follow Christ? And if not, then is our admiration of Kim Davis simply proof of what progressives accuse us of--namely, a highly selective Pharisaism that takes sexual sins with profound seriousness, and everything else as relatively negotiable?

i) A better question is why we should accept how Littlejohn frames the issue? I, for one, am not holding up Kim Davis as a Christ-like paragon. Why does Littlejohn resort to an obvious caricature of the issue? In fact, the way he cast the question reflects his own intellectual confusion. 

Davis's personal character or personal motivation is irrelevant. This issue isn’t primarily or ultimately about Davis. It was going on long before she came on the scene, and it will continue long after her particular situation is settled one way or the other.

The cause is bigger than any particular individual who happens to represent that cause at any given moment. The rightness of the cause doesn’t derive from a particular spokesman.

ii) Another basic problem is that he indulges in a fact-free analysis, without even bothering to consider the specific laws or legal history. For instance:

Federal anti-discrimination law requires a reasonable accommodation of religious belief where it does not place undue hardships on the employer. And Kentucky, like many other states, provides additional protection against unnecessary government burdens on religion. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/07/opinion/we-dont-need-kim-davis-to-be-in-jail.html?_r=1

Anderson is alluding to Kentucky’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act, as well as Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which:

Prohibits employers from discriminating against individuals because of their religion (or lack of religious belief) in hiring, firing, or any other terms and conditions of employment. The law also prohibits job segregation based on religion, such as assigning an employee to a non-customer contact position because of actual or feared customer preference. 

In addition, the Act  requires employers to reasonably accommodate the religious beliefs and practices of applicants and  employees,  unless  doing so would  cause more than a minimal burden on the operation of the employer's business.A reasonable religious accommodation is any adjustment to the work environment that will allow the employee to practice his religion. Flexible scheduling, voluntary shift substitutions or swaps, job reassignments  lateral transfers, and exceptions to dress or grooming rules are examples of accommodating an employee's religious beliefs. 

http://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/publications/fs-religion.cfm

iii) Littlejohn completely ignores the issue of judicial supremacy. For instance:

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/423781/supreme-court-marriage-abortion-constitution

iv) Littlejohn completely ignores the Kentucky marriage amendment:

Only a marriage between one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in Kentucky. A legal status identical or substantially similar to that of marriage for unmarried individuals shall not be valid or recognized. 

http://www.lrc.ky.gov/Legresou/Constitu/233A.htm

v) Then there's the First Amendment issue. Consider the historic Virginia religious liberty statute, which underlies the Establishment Clause and Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment of the US Constitution:

That no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinion in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities. 

http://www.heritage.org/initiatives/first-principles/primary-sources/virginia-act-establishing-religious-freedom

That clearly rules out a Muslim public employee imposing Sharia on on American citizens. 

vi) Many gov’t employees are in a position where they might be ordered to do something illegal. Take a supervisor who orders them to destroy incriminating evidence of official misconduct. Or take the IRA targeting conservative groups. It’s incumbent on gov’t employees in general to make their own preliminary judgment regarding the legality of orders from higher-ups. If they don’t, they put themselves in legal jeopardy.

Indeed, subordinates are more likely to play the fall guy than the higher-ups. So it’s in their self-interest, as well as public interest, to ask if the order is lawful or unlawful. They are legally liable if they carry out an illegal order.

vii) An individual gov't employee doesn't that the right to formulate social policy and impose that on the public. That's reserved for elected lawmakers, acting collectively. 

However, the First Amendment contains specific civil liberties. A gov't employee has a duty to respect that. Likewise, there's statutory law.

viii) There are, of course, situations in which a Christian is obligated to break the law. But Kim Davis isn't doing that. 

ix) Moreover, there are situations in which "just do your job or quit" is a false dichotomy. For there are situations where you duty is to practice civil resistance within the system. Let's take an example I recently ran across:

Then the war comes and my father is asked by the French prime minister to go with a mission to negotiate with the Germans for the purchase of Grumman fighter planes. A totally amazing story happened. Everybody has forgotten that New York was a  neutral city in 1940. It was full of Nazi purchasing missions, bank missions, engineers. My father was at lunch in honor of the Trade Purchasing Commission at the Wall Street Club. At his table were representatives of the American treasury, the banks and the French delegation. The waiter brings my father a folded sheet of paper saying that a gentleman at another table has asked that I bring this to you. My father whirls around and sees a Nazi purchasing mission, with the swastikas in their lapels. Perfectly legitimate: they too were buying equipment and arranging oil loans with the Chase Bank and many others. Father recognizes a man who had been one of his closest friends in business, and with whom he has had no contact whatever since 1933 when Hitler took over. So my father ostentatiously tears up the note, the piece of paper, and drops it on the floor. He goes to the john; the man is waiting there, grabs my father and says, “You better listen to me whether you like it or not. I can give you no details, I don't know any. We're coming into France very soon.” (This is in 1940.) “Get your family out at any price.” 

Now, this was one of the heads of the most important electrical concerns in Europe, Siemens. The “final solution” meeting had not yet taken place. But in Poland the massacres were already on, and the heads of Siemens knew something. They didn't know the details, because you were shot immediately if you were on leave and talked about it; but it was filtering through the high command, through diplomats, and this man, thank God, believed it, and my father believed him. 

My father got in touch with the prime minister and asked him if his family could join him for a while since the negotiations were going to be longer than he had thought. The prime minister said, “Yes, of course, let them join you.” That's what saved us. We came out with the last American boats. 

This story will be of considerable interest to historians, because it means that early in 1940 — the Germans came through in May, whereas this was in January — an informed senior German knew something. 

http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/1506/the-art-of-criticism-no-2-george-steiner

Now the Nazi official could either quit or do his job. Instead, he did something better: he took advantage of his job to tip off an old friend. Due to his position, he had inside information, which he shared with an old friend, to save his life. That's not something he'd be privy to if he resigned. And to "just do his job" would mean facilitating the Final Solution. Instead, he chose a third option. 

Does Littlejohn have answers to the questions he poses? If so, why not present them? If not, what's the point of raising questions himself can't answer? 

He may say he left it to the reader, but that's a cop-out. He would not have done the post in the first place unless he thought Christians who support Davis's action are shortsighted. Since he clearly doesn't trust their judgment, he needs to answer the questions he poses to them. If he can't answer his own questions, why is he attacking them? 

Even if he says he was up against a word-limit, he has other venues in which to expound his views at greater length. People like Littlejohn don't exercise genuine leadership. Not only do they fail to say or do the right thing, they get in the way of those who do. If they have nothing constructive to offer, they should butt out. 

Abortion, election, and apostasy

Abortionists sometimes cite popular belief in universal infant salvation as a wedge tactic to taunt Christians: If you believe all babies are heavenbound, why do you oppose abortion? This is meant to generate a dilemma: logically, you should either support both or oppose both. 

John Piper recently posted on this subject:

http://www.desiringgod.org/interviews/if-babies-go-to-heaven-why-oppose-abortion

Given the cards he dealt himself, I think he played his hand fairly well. That said:

i) Speaking for myself, I'm dubious about universal infant salvation. All the world's worst people used to be cute little kids. I can't help mentally rewinding the clock. Go back in time from what they are to what they were. 

Seems arbitrary to say that if you die at seven you fly to heaven, but if you die at nine you fry. 

We see children as they are, not as they will be. At least initially. Sometimes we live long enough to see how they turn out–for better or worse. 

So I doubt a key premise of the argument. But even if I didn't, I don't think the argument goes through. 

ii) If this poses a dilemma at all, it only poses a dilemma for freewill theists rather than Calvinists. The unstated premise of the argument is that people can lose their salvation. Hence, if somebody is now saved, killing him now is the way to seal his salvation. If salvation can be lost, it is risky to live another day. To play it safe, die when you are saved. The longer you wait, the greater the risk that you will died unsaved. 

Incidentally, the logic of that argument is hardly confined to infants. It would apply just as well to born-again adults. 

iii) But, of course, Calvinism rejects the operating premise. What ensures your salvation is not when you die, but election–which is unalterable. Not, in the first instance, what happened in time, but what happened in eternity. The elect can't lose their salvation. You either have it or you don't.

From a Reformed standpoint, nothing you do can change the number of the elect. In the classic formulation of the Westminster Confession: "These angels and men, thus predestinated, and foreordained, are particularly and unchangeably designed, and their number so certain and definite, that it cannot be either increased or diminished" (WCF 3:4).

iv) But it might be argued that this misses the point. The claim is not that we retroactively cause God to elect more people if more babies die in the womb. The claim, rather, is that if more (elect) babies die in the womb, then that's how God predestined the end-result all along. Our alternate course of action (i.e. aborting elect babies) is the consequence of God's foreordination, rather than God's foreordination as the consequence of our alternate course of action. 

v) There is, however, a basic problem with that argument. It's a counterfactual scenario. As such, it doesn't refer to the world in which you and I actually live, but to an alternate timeline.

But even if you believe in universal infant salvation vis-a-vis the actual world, you can't just switch to an alternate timeline, yet assume everything else remains the same. Even if your thought-experiment only changes on variable, that's just a thought-experiment. You can conjecture that God might do it that way, but it's not as if you have given God a blueprint which he must follow. 

Suppose there's a possible world in which some people kill their children in the superstitious belief that doing so will ensure their salvation. It doesn't follow that in fact raises the number of the elect. For in that alternate timeline, God may not elect all dying infants, even if he does so in this world. 

vi) Furthermore, even if you subscribe to predestinarian universal infant salvation, that doesn't imply that more people are ultimately elect. It may simply mean a greater percentage of the elect die in infancy, and fewer in adulthood–even though the overall number is exactly the same. The sum is the same. All that's different is how the elect are distributed by time of death. Whether more die younger or older. 

Could Jesus sin?

Orthodox Christians believe Jesus was sinless. They believe that in part simply because the Bible says so. In addition, the Bible doesn't merely say Jesus was sinless. Rather, there's an underlying principle: a sinner can't atone for the sins of another sinner. Therefore, the Redeemer had to be sinless. 

But over and above that issue is the related question of whether Jesus could sin. Was he impeccable? 

The question is somewhat ambiguous. Are we asking whether Jesus qua human could sin or whether Jesus qua divine could sin? Some might take the position that although Jesus qua human was peccable, the divine nature acted as a check on that possibility, rendering Jesus impeccable. 

Some might dismiss the whole question as one of those effete conjectures that theologians haggle over when they aren't numbering angels on pinheads. There are, however, freewill theists who take the position that unless Jesus was able to sin, he couldn't truly experience temptation. There was nothing to resist.

This typically has the adult Jesus in view. Say, Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. 

But suppose we consider the question from the standpoint of Jesus as a young child. And let's grant for the sake of argument that Jesus could sin.

It's hard to think of anything more dangerous than an almighty child. Imagine a temper tantrum magnified by omnipotence. 

Children can fly into a sociopathic rage. Yet no harm usually comes of it because they are ineffectual and the murderous mood is short-lived. But if the child was omnipotent…all hell would break loose.

Now, it might be objected that, unlike the average child, Jesus was sinless. Again, though, on the hypothesis I'm exploring, Jesus could sin. Assuming that's the case, what would prevent the realization of that potential? 

In the case of Jesus as an adult, or even a teenager, we can appeal to his self-restraint. That, however, assumes a level of cognitive development which young kids lack. Young kids don't have much impulse control. Little or no cognizance regarding the long-term consequences of their actions. They are in a state of diminished responsibility. 

So, if Jesus was peccable, it's hard to see what would prevent a two-year-old Jesus from sinning. 

I suppose we could redefine our terms by classifying sin in age-appropriate categories. What is sinful in an adult isn't necessarily sinful in a child.

But even if we grant that distinction, it doesn't rule out certain, like killing his mother or stepbrother in a childish fit of rage. We've just said that wouldn't be sinful at his tender age. 

Yet I doubt Christians who espouse the peccability of Christ wish to take it even that far. Moreover, this isn't just a question of what he could do, but what he would do given what he could do.

The question at issue is whether it's consistent to say both that he was sinless and capable of sinning. For even if adulthood supplies a firewall to maintain that distinction, that assumes a process of psychological maturation which can't be retrojected back into first few years of life. 

In addition, the more special you make him as a child, the less like normal children you make him, doesn't that undermine the rationale for denying that he was impeccable? The more sui generis he is, the more disanalogous temptation is for him than it is for us. So this seems to generate a dilemma for the freewill theist. 

Sanders at Liberty

http://mschultz83.com/2015/09/15/sanders-at-liberty/

When the cat's away, the mice will play

43 But know this, that if the master of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. 44 Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.45 “Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom his master has set over his household, to give them their food at the proper time? 46 Blessed is that servant whom his master will find so doing when he comes. 47 Truly, I say to you, he will set him over all his possessions. 48 But if that wicked servant says to himself, ‘My master is delayed,’ 49 and begins to beat his fellow servants and eats and drinks with drunkards, 50 the master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he does not know 51 and will cut him in pieces and put him with the hypocrites. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth (Mt 24:43-51).

i) Unanswered prayer is one reason some professing Christians lose their faith. On the face of it, some NT statements about prayer overpromise and underperform. How do we address the prima facie discrepancy?

ii) Keep in mind that the NT writers who wrote or recorded the promises surely experienced unanswered prayer. I doubt they got everything they prayed for, any more than we do. So even if the language is unqualified, they themselves would have understood there to be implicit qualifications.

iii) Unbelievers claim that examples of answered prayer are the artifact of sample selection bias. We forget all the unanswered prayers and only remember the answered prayers. Given how often we pray, it's statistically inevitable that sometimes we will experience an outcome that dovetails with our prayer. But that's random. What's left over after we discount all the misses. 

iv) Now there's sometimes a grain of truth to that. Some Christians are guilty of wishful thinking. 

However, the primary function of prayer is not to prove God's existence. Rather, its primary purpose is either to ask for something that only God can provide, or to make the outcome contingent on something more than natural probabilities or our own abilities.

That is to say, although there are situations where the desired outcome might be naturally obtainable, that depends on factors over which we have limited control. We pray, in part, to raise the odds (as it were) that it will turn out the way we hope. Not to mention cases where only God can make the difference. 

But prayer isn't designed to furnish direct evidence for God's existence. Rather, that's a side-effect.

v) In addition, the question of whether answered prayer is just luck isn't different in kind from how we generally distinguish coincidental events from intentional events. For instance, although it's astronomically improbable that I will see any particular license plate, it's inevitable that I will see some license plates. If, however, I see the same license plate several times a day when I glance in my rearview mirror, I have good reason to suspect I'm being shadowed. 

Even though some examples which we take to be answered prayer may be ambiguous, that doesn't mean every case is ambiguous. Some examples of answered prayer may resist a coincidental interpretation for the same reason that some other events resist a coincidental interpretation. Indeed, there are obviously situations in which a coincidental interpretation would be willfully irrational. If I keep seeing the same license plate in my rearview mirror, I ought to be suspicious. If it happens once, that's random. If it happens twice (in the same day), that's coincidental. But if it repeatedly shows up, then something funny is going on.

And, of course, some one-time events are clearly by design. You don't necessarily have to multiple instances to up the odds that it's not a random event. A one-of-a-kind event can still be orchestrated. If I return to my home to find the furniture rearranged, I know that didn't happen by accident, even if that's a unique experience for me. 

vi) One reason NT writers don't use qualified language in reference to prayer promises is because the reader is expected to make reasonable allowance for obvious exceptions. 

Some answers to prayer are precluded in advance by God's standing policy. For instance, I can pray that I will stop aging at 25, but God won't answer that prayer because the aging process is part of the curse. That will continue until the Parousia.

Likewise, I can pray that I will never be a victim of crime, but if God has determined that crime will exist in a fallen world, then I can't count on God answering that prayer. Maybe he will protect me, but if he doesn't, that's not surprising. Prayers like that reflect an overrealized eschatology. They conflict with God's plan at this stage of world history. 

In the nature of the case, God will not answer prayers which conflict with what he has determined to be the case. And there are certain kinds of situations where that's predictable. 

vii) On a related note, two or more answered prayers have the potential, in principle, to generate conflicting consequences. Many prayers may go unanswered for the simple reason that the answers must be coordinated to avoid a train wreck down the line. 

To take a humorous example, Alec Guinness made a comedy (The Captain's Paradise) in which he played a bigamist. Because his job required him to ferry back and forth between Morocco and Gibraltar, he took advantage of the situation by having two different wives at respective ends on his round trip. That only worked so long as he could keep that separate, keep each secret from the other. But eventually they began to bleed into each other. 

In many cases, answered prayer can't be compartmentalized. Hence, only prayers are answerable that are mutually consistent with God's plan for the future. 

viii) Finally, there's the studied absence of God. Take the Bible text I quoted at the top of the post. Passages like that are classified as "the delay of the Parousia." But there's another way of viewing them. 

To some extent, God acts like an absentee landlord. Why? It's a test of faith. How will you behave when you think there's no God who's monitoring your actions? It's easy to be faithful when you think God is watching you. A truer test of fidelity is how you act when the supervisor is out of sight. 

How do people act when they begin to doubt God's existence? When they doubt the supervisor will return? 

If, however, God routinely answered prayer, then there'd be no real correlation between faith and fidelity. If you have continuous evidence that the security camera is rolling, you will behave yourself. But how you behave during a power outage, when the security camera is dead, is what truly reveals your character and commitment. 

Faith Alone: The Doctrine of Justification

Tom Schreiner has just published an exegetical defense of the Pauline/Protestant doctrine of sola fide. A useful corrective in an age of willful ecumenical confusion.

Confessions of a teenage demarcationist

http://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2015/09/i-was-teenage-demarcationist.html

Losing hope in the world

Yet I must confess that I felt, and still feel, great admiration for both my religiously and politically committed comrades. They may have been "intellectual" in the sense we have adopted here, or they may not have been, that was not important. One way or the other, in the decisive moments their political or religious belief was an inestimable help to them, while we sceptical and humanistic intellectuals took recourse, in vain, to our literary, philosophical, and artistic household gods. 

…whether they were highly educated national economists and theologians or less versed workers and peasants, their belief or their ideology gave them that firm foothold in the world from which they spiritually unhinged the SS state. Under conditions that defy the imagination they conducted Mass, and as Orthodox Jews they fasted on the Day of Atonement although they actually lived the entire year in a condition of raging hunger…They survived better or died with more dignity than their irreligious or unpolitical intellectual comrades; who often were infinitely better educated and more practiced in exact thinking. I still see before me the young Polish priest who had no living language in common with me and who therefore spoke to me in Latin of his faith. "Voluntas hominis it ad malum," he said and glanced sorrowfully at a Kapo who was just passing by and who was feared for his brutality. "But God's goodness is immeasurable and thus it will triumph." Our religiously or politically committed comrades were not at all, or only a little, astonished that in the camp the unimaginable became reality. Whoever turned away from God, said the pious Christians and Jews, had to reach the point where he perpetrated or suffered the atrocities of Auschwitz…Here nothing unheard-of occurred, but only what the…God-believing men, had always expected or at least considered possible…Their kingdom, in any event, was not the Here and Now, but the Tomorrow and Someplace, the very distant Tomorrow of the Christian, glowing in chiliastic light…The grip of the horror reality was weaker where from the start reality had been placed in the framework of an unalterable idea. 

I was not in the least bit curious about a religious grace that for me did not exist, or about an ideology whose errors and false conclusions I felt I had seen through. I did not want to be one with my believing comrades, but I would have wished to be like them: unshakable, calm, strong. What I felt to comprehend at that time still appears to me as a certainty: whoever is, in the broadest sense, a believing person, whether his belief be metaphysical or bound to  concrete reality, transcends himself. He is not the captive of his individuality; rather he is part of a spiritual continuity that is interrupted nowhere, not even in Auschwitz. He is both more estranged from reality and closer to it than his unbelieving comrade. Further from reality because in is Finalistic attitude he ignores the given contents of material phenomena and fixes his sight on a nearer or more distant future; but he is also closer to reality because for just this reason he does not allow himself to be overwhelmed by the conditions around him and thus he can strongly influence them. For the unbelieving person reality, under adverse circumstances, is a force to which he submits…For the believer reality is clay that he molds. Jean Améry, At the Mind's Limits (Indiana U, 1980), 13-14.

There is hope, but not for us

There are stock arguments for the traditional authorship and dating of NT books like the Gospels, James, and Revelation. I think these are good arguments. But I'd like to explore a neglected line of evidence.

Moderate to liberal scholars typically date the Synoptic Gospels (esp. Matthew and Luke) to after the Jewish War (c. 67-73). I think that's easier to say if you're not a Jew who lived through the Jewish War. 

Admittedly, there's a sense in which that disqualifies me as well. But this is less about being Jewish or having a particular experience, then cultivating an awareness of the relevant sensibilities. 

Let's take a comparison. George Steiner and Edmund Wilson are both great literary critics. Steiner regards Kafka as a major writer, whereas Wilson regards him as overrated and ephemeral. Why the difference?

Simply put: Steiner is Jewish and Wilson is Gentile. Steiner is reading a Jewish author through Jewish eyes. He sees Kafka as a prescient allegory of the Shoah.

That's magnified by the fact that Steiner is, himself, haunted by the Shoah. His father had the wisdom to get his immediate family out of Dodge, but he couldn't save his extended family. He wrote them pleading letters. They ignored the threat and perished in the death camps. Steiner has the psychology of a Holocaust survivor (whether or not he meets the technical definition, which is disputed). 

By contrast, Wilson just doesn't get Kafka. He can't. Kafka doesn't speak to him at that level. It's too alien to his own experience. He has a waspish, patrician background. Hobnobbed with F. Scott Fitzgerald. He has no ear for Kafka. I don't necessarily say that as a criticism. It's not as if I can directly relate to Kafka's experience either. 

Let's draw another distinction. When people look back on their youth and childhood, there's often a sense of loss–assuming they had a happy childhood. But that can take either one two very different forms:

i) They may wax nostalgic about the past. Take writers like Mark Twain (The Adventures of Huck Finn & Tom Sawyer) and Ray Bradbury (Dandelion Wine). Although that's tinged with a sense of regret, because it's irrecoverable, the loss was natural and gradual.

ii) But then you have writers whose happy youth or childhood was torn from their arms. Prematurely ripped away. Take Giorgio Bassani. His novels are set in pre-war Ferrera. And they reflect that place and period. They reflect his actual experience, making allowance for artistic license. 

Yet they are told with a view to the Shoah. Although the historical setting is prospective, the narrative viewpoint is retrospective, as a chain of events leads inexorably to the abyss. 

This is Holocaust literature. And it has Biblical precedent in exilic literature (e.g. Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Lamentations). In Jeremiah you have escalating despair as he foresees his people doomed by their own obduracy. What makes it so maddening is the self-fulling nature of their fate. They bring it upon themselves by their defiance. Ezekiel oscillates between elation and bitter rage.  And Lamentations gives voice to the unspeakable. 

Now, the Jewish War was an event similar in significance to the Holocaust and the Babylonian Exile. Even for Jews outside Palestine, Jerusalem was the epicenter of Judaism. It's hard to overstate the psychological impact that would have on survivors. There's medical evidence that children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors suffer from transgenerational trauma. And you'd have the same dynamic for analogous events. 

And that's a basic problem with the post-70 date for Matthew. If it was written after that cataclysm, why does it not read like Lamentations, Jeremiah, or Ezekiel? Although ostensively set in the time of Jesus, we'd expect the calamity of the Jewish War to cast a long backward shadow, just as we find in exilic literature and Holocaust literature. That's assuming it was, in fact, written after 70 AD. 

But Matthew doesn't begin to have the emotional register of someone who wrote from that harrowing vantagepoint. Yes, there are storm clouds on the horizon in the Olivet Discourse. But that lacks the direct transparency and intensity of searing personal experience. It's abstract. Future. Not the past as future.

Instead, the reader is treated to academic debates about Halakha and competing theories of the afterlife–from forty years before. And that's perfectly consistent with Matthew being precisely what it purports to be–rather than a retrojection. 

Compare that to Paul Celan, who lost both parents in the death camps. Who was repeatedly hospitalized for clinical depression. Who eventually committed suicide–unable to overcome the grief and guilt. Likewise, Primo Levi was another Jewish chronicler of the Shoah who survived the death camps, but succumbed to suicide. Ditto: Jean Améry. The memory was just unbearable. 

Conversely, the tone of Revelation calibrates very well with exilic literature and Holocaust literature. It's easy to imagine John writing that after the Jewish War. The emotional register parallels Ezekiel. 

But what about the Gospel of John? I think it might well have been written in the 60s. 

But suppose it was written in the 90s. Is that consonant with what I've been discussing? Possibly. People have different coping strategies. One way is to become more withdrawn. And, indeed, John's Gospel is detached and otherworldly. If the life you knew has been obliterated, that's one way to adapt. 

If Matthew was composed before 70 AD, and is literarily dependent on Mark, then Mark is however much earlier. 

The letter of James is written in a serene style that bears no trace of trauma to the collective psyche of 1C Jewry which you'd anticipate if it was penned sometime after the Jewish War. 

Luke is less susceptible to this style of analysis. Likely a Gentile convert to Judaism, and then to Christianity via Judaism. Although he's profoundly invested in Messianic Judaism, that's not a part of his formative experience, so even if his Gospel was written after 70 AD, I wouldn't necessarily expect it to reflect the same traumatization. There are, however, other arguments for dating its composition prior to 70 AD.

I've been using Jewish comparisons, but we could cast a wider net. Dabney was so demoralized after his side lost the Civil War that he moved to Texas. He just couldn't stand to live in Virginia any more. The life he'd known and loved was literally shot to pieces. Or consider the enduring psychological impact on dispossessed American Indians, driven from their ancestral lands.  

Finally, this may touch on the question of what happened to most of the apostles. After being listed in the Gospels, why did many melt away? You have traditions and legends, but that has an apocryphal flavor. A way of validating a national sect. 

One explanation may be that some of them perished in the siege of Jerusalem. Not because they were too devoted to the city, or nostalgic memories, but because they had relatives there, or because they had house-churches there where they ministered. Like missionaries who stayed behind in China during the Japanese invasion. Rather than abandon their flock, they suffered with them and died with them.  

Why did the chicken cross the road?

William Lane Craig: In the wake of your new book, Chicken Physics–published by Bantam Press (pardon the pun)–I'd like to ask you a question or two. For starters, "Why did the chicken cross the road?"

Lawrence Krauss: That's the sort of deceptive, prejudicial question I've come to expect from Bible-thumpers like you.

Craig: Why do you say that?

Krauss: It begs the question by assuming there was a reason the chicken crossed the road.

Craig: What's wrong with that question?

Krauss: Because nothing caused the chicken to cross the road. 

Craig: Nothing at all?

Krauss: That's right. 

Craig: So how did it get from one side of the road to the the other side?

Krauss: It just popped out of a quantum vacuum. 

Craig: Is that anything like a Hoover vacuum? 

Krauss: Nothing is not like anything. That's the point.

Craig: Very well. Permit me to ask you another question: "Which came first: the chicken or the egg?"

Krauss: There you go again with your loaded questions! One didn't come before the other. Rather, both popped right out of the quantum vacuum.

Craig: That's a mighty impressive vacuum. Almost like pulling rabbits out of the hat.

Krauss: If I didn't know better, I'd say the quantum vacuum has godlike powers. 

Elimination round

Both John Loftus had Jeff Lowder have repeatedly challenged W. L. Craig to a public debate. Since they're both competing for his attention, perhaps they need to begin with an elimination round. The survivor can proceed to the next round. 

There are many potentially interesting match-ups. Problem is, there's only one Craig and many aspirants. He can't debate them all. He can only debate a small fraction. And he's already 66, so the opportunities are rapidly diminishing. He has to be very finicky. 

In fact, I expect some aspirants are getting desperate because they know time is running out. 

He debates people who are either highly credentialed or very prominent. There's also a difference between who you debate when you are getting established, and who you debate after you are established. Once you have a reputation, you attract bigger fish. 

When did Paul first see Jesus?

It's common for scholars to deny that Paul knew the historical Jesus. But is that correct?

Paul witnessed the martyrdom of Stephen:

12 And they stirred up the people and the elders and the scribes, and they came upon him and seized him and brought him before the council (Acts 6:12). 

58 Then they cast him out of the city and stoned him. And the witnesses laid down their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul (7:58). 

8 And Saul approved of his execution. And there arose on that day a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles. 2 Devout men buried Stephen and made great lamentation over him. 3 But Saul was ravaging the church, and entering house after house, he dragged off men and women and committed them to prison (Acts 8:1-3).

Stephen was martyred about a year after Christ was crucified. Cf. Eckhard Schnabel, Acts, 43. As another scholar notes:

The fact that witnesses laid their clothes at Saul's feet suggest that he was already the acknowledged leader in the opposition to the earthly church (cf. 8:1,3). David Peterson, The Acts of the Apostles, 268.  

In 4:35,37; 5:2, lying something at someone's feet implies a recognition of that person's authority. Ibid., 268n89.

So Paul was in Jerusalem a year after the Crucifixion. And he was a seminal figure in the persecution of the early church. 

What was Paul doing in Jerusalem at that time? He was a rabbinical student. 

I am a Jew, born in Tarsus in Cilicia, but brought up in this city, educated at the feet of Gamaliel according to the strict manner of the law of our fathers, being zealous for God as all of you are this day (Acts 22:3).

This statement indicates that although Tarsus was his hometown, he was already living in Jerusalem well before he began his rabbinical studies. As one scholar notes:

Paul mentions his place of origin only briefly and moves on to his early life in Jerusalem. There are three participles in the Greek, highlighting successive stages in Paul's experience: he was "born" in tarsus, "brought up" in Jerusalem, and "educated" at the feet of Gamaliel. So Paul's theological roots were essentially Palestinian rather than Diaspora Judaism…This phase of Paul's education probably began some time after he turned thirteen, when he was instructed by Gamaliel "according to the strictness of our ancestral law," ibid. 597.

One possibility is that Paul's father moved the family to Jerusalem to give his son proper socialization in traditional Judaism. This preceded his formal rabbinical education. Or perhaps there was an aunt and uncle in Jerusalem who hosted Paul. That's reinforced by another statement: 

16 Now the son of Paul's sister heard of their ambush, so he went and entered the barracks and told Paul (Acts 23:16).

As one scholar notes, 

Paul and his sister were apparently brought up in Jerusalem, and his sitter remained there to marry and have children. Ibid. 621. 

The upshot is that Paul was in town at the time Jesus made trips to Jerusalem during his public ministry. That's reinforced by the fact that Jesus went to Jerusalem during major festivals. 

This would also help to explain why Paul was on the groundfloor of opposition to the Christian movement. He was a protege of Gamaliel, who was, in turn, a member of the Sanhedrin. Gamaliel was directly involved in formulating a policy to counter the nascent Christian movement in Jerusalem. 

26 Then the captain with the officers went and brought them, but not by force, for they were afraid of being stoned by the people…34 But a Pharisee in the council named Gamaliel, a teacher of the law held in honor by all the people, stood up and gave orders to put the men outside for a little while (Acts 5:25,34).

This gave Paul access to official proceedings via his mentor. That explains his presence at the martyrdom of Stephen. By riding on the coattails of his mentor, Paul had entree to the high priestly entourage. But Paul took a harder line than Gamaliel. 

Considering all these connections, it seems quite likely that Paul saw Jesus preach. He certainly had occasion to see Jesus preach. And Jesus drew big crowds. Surely Paul would be curious.

That would explain why Paul took such an early and avid–albeit hostile–interest in the Christian movement. It didn't happen overnight, right after the apostles began preaching the Resurrection. 

That, of course, wouldn't make him a believer. For one thing, that doesn't mean he saw Jesus perform miracles.

And even if he did, the Jewish leaders had an apologetic to explain away the miracles of Jesus: they called him a sorcerer. We find that allegation in the Gospels and Talmud alike. Assuming he saw Jesus preach, he probably viewed Jesus as a false prophet or Messianic pretender. 

But the radiant postmortem appearance of Jesus to Paul on the Damascus road was too much for Paul to deny. Rumors about the Resurrection turned out to be true after all! 

Learn Greek online

http://www.alankurschner.com/learn-biblical-greek-online-private-tutoring-course-in-new-testament-koine-greek/

"Life's a bitch, and then you die"

Phil and I have already lived more than half of our lives. Life on earth faces the same dismal prospect…When you die, you're not going to be surprised, because you're going to be completely dead...Let me summarize my views on what modern evolutionary biology tells us loud and clear -- and these are basically Darwin's views. There are no gods, no purposes, and no goal-directed forces of any kind. There is no life after death. When I die, I am absolutely certain that I am going to be dead. That's the end of me. There is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning in life, and no free will for humans, either. What an unintelligible idea.

Life may have no ultimate meaning, but I sure think it can have lots of proximate meaning...Since we know that we are not going to live after we die, there is no reward for suffering in this world. You live and you die. I've seen bumper stickers (very sexist ones, actually) that say "Life's a bitch, and then you die." Well, whatever life is, you're going to die. 

http://www.arn.org/docs/orpages/or161/161main.htm

Many atheists make similar statements, although Provine is more austere than most. That's what they are stuck with.

What about proximate meaning without ultimate meaning? In a sense, that's a valid distinction. So let's play along with that.

There are movies–I don't have any particular movie in mind–where you have a rich hunter. He used to be a big game hunter, but he got bored with that. He's bagged all the big game. Since, moreover, humans are smarter than animals, it doesn't take that much to outwit the quarry, so that's not terribly challenging.

Being rich, he takes it to the next level. He has his goons abduct young men, men in their physical prime (upper teens and twenties), preferably with survival skills. He has them brought to his remote compound in South American. There he will hunt humans. They will be more challenging quarry than animals.

He may give them tools or primitive weapons. Of course, he will be better armed than they. He doesn't want the sport to be that challenging! It's not a fair fight. He retains the advantage. But it's exhilarating. 

He's an atheist. His life has no ultimate meaning. But hunting down humans for sport gives his life proximate meaning. A fairly stimulating way to pass the time. More interesting than gin rummy.  

From a secular standpoint, there's nothing wrong with that. 

Turning back the clock

One of the peculiarities of the Resurrection is that some acquaintances didn't immediately recognize Jesus (e.g. Jn 20:14-15; cf. Lk 24:16ff.). 

The Emmaus road incident is easier to explain due to God temporarily inhibiting their perception. But what about a case like Mary Magdalene?

One explanation may be the nature of the Resurrection itself. Glorification has the capacity to repair and rejuvenate. It depends on the condition of the individual when they died.

If a Christian dies of brain cancer, God won't resurrect him with brain cancer. If a Christian dies at 90, God won't resurrect him at 90.

The glorified body is youthful and ageless. In the world to come, the saints will no longer experience illness and senescence. 

Jesus was in his early 30s when he died. He spent lots of time out of doors in direct sunlight. When he was on the road, he probably slept out of doors. In addition to hot summers, Israel can have freezing winters. 

So his complexion was weatherbeaten. And by that time he may have had thinning hair or graying hair. In any event, he probably looked older than he would with less exposure to the harsh elements.

But one effect of the Resurrection was to rejuvenate him. His acquaintances wouldn't expect Jesus to appear significantly younger. 

Paul's Physical Experience With The Physical Risen Christ

Steve and I have already said a lot about the physical nature of Paul's experience with the risen Christ in recent discussions with Faith Slayer here and here. I want to expand on some themes I mentioned in those discussions.

The New Testament doesn't just say that Paul saw a light and heard a voice. We're also told that Paul saw Jesus (Acts 9:27, 22:14, 1 Corinthians 9:1). By contrast, Paul's companions are referred to as "seeing no one" (Acts 9:7). Notice, too, that Acts 22:14 uses physical language to describe Paul's hearing of a voice ("hear an utterance from his mouth"). That language could be used in a non-physical way, but those who take it that way bear the burden of proof. All of these passages in Acts about Paul's experience are in the context of Luke's two-volume work, in which he keeps referring to the physical nature of Jesus' resurrection (Luke 24:1-3, 24:39-43, Acts 1:3, 10:41) and how Paul's fellow apostles had physical experiences with the risen Jesus that qualified them as apostles (Acts 1:21-2, 10:40-1). In that context, when Luke refers to how Paul and/or his companions saw, heard, fell to the ground, were blinded, etc., it's absurd to conclude that the experience was subjective and/or non-physical.

It's also absurd to conclude that a body other than the body of Jesus that died was resurrected, as if he was merely given a new body of some type. What dies is what rises. The death is what brings about the need for resurrection in the first place. You could speak of receiving a new body as a resurrection, but that would be a less natural way of using such terminology. Anybody holding such a view would bear the burden of proof. Luke's gospel makes it clear that the dead body was the one that was raised, and it was seeing Jesus raised in that body that qualified individuals as apostles. Notice the emphasis on Jesus' crucifixion wounds, by showing his hands and feet, in Luke 24:39. Notice the continuity in Acts 1:21-2 and 10:37-41. The witnesses saw Jesus in the time leading up to his death and following it. The continuity of the body is suggested. And that continuity isn't just mentioned as a historical fact. Physically witnessing Jesus before and after his death was a requirement for Jesus' original disciples who became apostles. Paul isn't placed in that category, but he is portrayed, in Acts and elsewhere, as being an apostle with equal authority. Seeing Jesus in his physically resurrected state makes more sense of Paul's status as an apostle. People who saw visions of Jesus, like Stephen, have a lesser status than Paul.

Here's a post I wrote several years ago about the evidence for Paul's experience with the risen Christ.

Unknown Jesus

Moderate to conservative scholars have penned many excellent defenses of the historicity of the Gospels. Even more liberal scholars like Dale Allison often make useful point in their defense.

There is, however, a neglected line of evidence for the historicity of the Gospels–and that's what they don't say. Mark says nothing about the childhood of Jesus. John relates in passing a scurrilous rumor about his illegitimacy. Both Matthew and Luke contain infancy narratives. Luke records one incident from his boyhood. And that's it!

Yet many readers would naturally be curious to know more about his childhood. If the Gospels were fictional biographies, we'd expect them to satisfy their pious curiosity. 

To take a comparison, stories about superheroes like Batman, Spiderman, and Superman contain detailed backstories regarding their childhood. And that's because fictional writers aren't constrained by factual knowledge or hard reality.

The obvious reason the Gospel writers say so little about the childhood of Jesus is because they only write about what they know, and they don't know much about his childhood. And when you ponder that, it's very realistic.

Most famous people, unless they are born into a famous family, aren't born famous. Nothing is written about them before they become famous. Very few people ever heard of them before they become famous. 

And oftentimes, what's written about them has reference to the things they did after they become famous. To the things that made them famous. What they did before they became public figures may get far less attention. And depending on the time and place, far less material may be available.

If you knew ahead of time that they were going to become famous, you could interview neighbors, older relatives, &c. But by the time they become famous, the pool of information about their childhood is already beginning to dry up. By the time biographers or historians write about them, living witnesses from their youth may be few. 

To take another comparison, although the resurrection of Christ is a central event, both in the Gospels and the NT generally, nowhere is the actual event described. No NT writer describes the scene of Jesus coming back to life in the tomb. 

Instead, they describe his death. His entombment. And the effect of his resurrection: his post-Resurrection appearances. 

Why don't they record the event itself? For the simple reason that they only report what they know. No one else was in the tomb with Jesus when he came back to life. And even if someone had been there, there's a sense in which there was nothing to see, because it was dark inside the tomb. 

Now, if the Gospels were fictional biographies, we'd expect them to show the Resurrection. Give a visual description. They don't do that because the Gospel writers are constrained by the factual information at their disposal. By personal observation or testimony from eyewitnesses. But Jesus was alone in the tomb. 

In the Gospels, what you get is what was seen. There's a lot you don't get because there's a lot that no one saw by the time of Christ's public ministry.  

All things bright and beautiful

A sequel to this:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2015/09/dead-and-buried-raised-to-life.html

Faith Slayer:

There's no question that the "heavenly vision" Paul experienced is entirely different than the interaction Luke depicts in Luke 24:39-43 where he has the disciples talking and eating with Jesus' resuscitated corpse. If the earliest belief in the Risen Christ was more of a spiritual "visionary" concept (there's nothing in the entire Pauline corpus that indicates otherwise), while the later beliefs (Luke/John) were more "physical," then this is an important distinction to be made.

Several fundamental confusions:

i) For starters, you mischaracterized the nature of the glorified body. It's not a "resuscitated corpse." I realize you're enamored with that phrase, but it's theologically uninformed. 

A resuscitated corpse would be like somebody who drowned in freezing water and was resuscitated 40 minutes later. The freezing process inhibited necrosis, and he is still mortal after he was revived. 

By contrast, a body that's been dead for over 48 hours would undergo significant, irreversible necrosis. That can't be "resuscitated." Unless it was miraculously preserved, it would require a degree of miraculous restoration. 

In addition, the glorified body is immortal, not mortal. That's a point Paul accentuates in the very chapter (1 Cor 15) from which you attempt to prooftext your claim.

The question at issue isn't whether you believe it. Rather, you need to assume the opposing position for the sake of argument in order to attack it. Otherwise, you are burning a straw man.

ii) To assure that "There's no question that the "heavenly vision" Paul experienced is entirely different" begs the question. In both cases, the Risen Christ appears to them. In both cases, their perception of the event is divinely manipulated. 

iii) Finally, you're confused about "earlier" and "later" beliefs. For instance, Alf Wight, (better known by his pen name James Herriot), became world-famous when he published All Creatures Great and Small in 1972. He died in 1995, and his son (Jim Wight) published a biography of his later father in 1999.

After he became famous, many people wrote about Alf Wight. This was much earlier than Jim Wight's biography. 

It would, however, be muddled-headed to suppose the later writing by his son reflects a "later belief," or is less historically authentic than stuff written earlier about Alf Wight. In the nature of the case, his son knew many things about his father that no one else knew or even could know.  

Likewise, if the Gospels of Matthew or John were written by disciples of Jesus, it makes no difference if they were written later than Mark, for they draw on earlier memories. By the same token, Luke's sources are earlier than Luke's Gospel. 

The exact "physicality" of a "spiritual body" is unclear from 1 Cor 15. It's this "spiritual body" that is contrasted with the "natural body".

As several scholars have documented, the adjective ("spiritual") refers to the agency of the Holy Spirit, not the composition of the body.

Paul thought that the spiritual body was made of "material" but there is no indication that he believed the "spiritual body" had anything to do with the former earthly body. 

Even if we grant your contention for the sake of argument, that means what they saw was not a subjective vision of Jesus, but a materially embodied Jesus. So your own representation destroys your central argument.

Scholars still disagree over exactly what Paul meant but you can't claim that Paul envisioned Jesus' corpse rising out of a grave.

You suffer from a wooden notion of "raised," as if that means "a corpse rising out of the grave." Wrong. It's an idiom for restoration to physical life.

Jesus wasn't buried in the ground. So, not, he didn't literally "rise out of a grave." That misses the point. You've been watching too many horror flicks. 

The only way you reach that conclusion is by prematurely reading in the later empty tomb narrative. 

I just corrected your fallacious inference about what's "later" (see above).

Paul was a Hellenized Jew and influences of Stoicism and other Greek thought can be found in his letters.

No, Philo was a Hellenized Jew. Paul was a Diaspora Jew educated in Palestinian Judaism at Jerusalem. 

The physicality of a resuscitated corpse that walks around talking and eating with the disciples then later floats to heaven? Ok. Where exactly does Paul "emphatically discuss" that?

i) Another example of your rampant confusion. I didn't refer to the resurrected body of Christ, but the nature of the resurrected body in general. 

ii) Jesus didn't "float to heaven" (see below). 

Ok, let's look at the wide range of meaning that the Greek word for raised (egēgertai) has…With such a wide range of meaning you can't claim that the earliest composers of the creed or Paul believed that a physical body literally "rose" out of a grave. 

i) You keep repeating the same blunders. You don't understand how linguistic communication works. The fact that some words have multiple meanings in the abstract does not imply that all those senses are in play in the concrete. Except where a writer is using a double entendre, only one meaning is operative at a time.

It is the sentence and context that determine what sense is operative. The semantic range of a word considered in isolation is irrelevant to what it means in a particular sentence and context. 

For instance, "run" has dozens of different meanings (e.g. to run for public office, a run in stockings, to run a red light, to run a tight ship, a run for his money). However, in sentences like "Johnny hit a home run," "There was a run on the bank," "We're running low on gas," all the other senses are excluded and dormant except for just one identifiable meaning in each particular case.

ii) You don't even grasp the position you presume to attack. No, Jesus didn't literally rise out of the grave–inasmuch as he was never literally buried in the first place. Rather, he was laid in a tomb. The corpse lay flat, in a sleeping position. 

He "rose" in the sense that people raise themselves upright from a horizontal position. When I wake up in the morning, from a recumbent position in bed, I raise myself from the waist up to a vertical position, then stand up. And that may well be the imagery that lies behind the idiom of "raised" to life. 

US Marines: “All-male teams outperform mixed-gender units in 69% of ground-combat tasks”

Mixed-gender combat: “more than bad military judgment. It is morally wrong” (there is no paywall on this article).

the Marine Corps released research data showing that all-male teams outperformed units comprising men and women in 69% of ground-combat tasks, especially those that involve carrying heavy ammunition or weapons.

The findings, Marine officers said, show mixed-gender units are less effective in combat and more likely to suffer casualties than traditional all-male units.

In a summary of the findings, the Marines cited a 1992 presidential report that concluded: “Risking the lives of a military unit in combat to provide career opportunities or accommodate the personal desire or interest of an individual, or group of individuals, is more than bad military judgment. It is morally wrong.”

A new study in an all-volunteer unit last year confirmed the results:

The study found that in 93 of 134 tasks, all-male teams outperformed mixed-gender teams. In 39 tasks, there was no difference. In two tasks, the mixed-gender teams performed better.

“The brutal and extremely physical nature of direct ground combat, often marked by close, interpersonal violence, remains largely unchanged through centuries of warfare, despite technological advancements,” the Marines said in a summary of the research findings.

Not everyone is persuaded by the Marines approach….

Dead and buried, raised to life

Some village atheists left comments on Jason's post:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2015/09/why-do-sources-not-refer-to-jesus-until.html

I will respond to them here.

Jon Sorensen:

"the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised; and coming out of the graves after His resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many."

An no historian wrote once-in-a-history mass resurrection event? How is this even vaguely possible?

i) Suppose Josephus wrote about it–or Tacitus. Would you believe it? No. You'd dismiss that as a superstitious legend. You'd just take that as proof positive that ancient historians were credulous and uncritical.

ii) Suppose you had a modern-day report of a "mass resurrection event" in Africa, Asia or Latin America. Suppose you had multiple eyewitnesses. Would you believe it? No. You'd say what's more plausible: that it's a hoax or that something like that really happened? 

iii) It also depends on how you visualize this unique "mass resurrection" event. The account doesn't describe observers watching the graves open. Rather, it only talks about the result.

Depending on when they died, they'd generally be unrecognizable. Only living friends or relatives would know who they were. Most folks wouldn't know these people ever died in the first place. 

For that matter, if they died when they were old, but were rejuvenated, then even people who knew them might not recognize them right away. 

A God walked couple of years in Judea and Galilee, and nobody wrote about it. Is it more likely that he did not exist at that period?

i) Jesus didn't appear to be a God.

ii) So you fall for the mythicist view that he didn't even exist?

iii) In fact, many people wrote about it. It's in a collection of writings called the NT.

Stop and enjoy the ordinary

http://www.desiringgod.org/articles/stop-and-enjoy-the-ordinary

The duty of lesser magistrates

1.       Kim Davis is not violating but rather upholding Romans 13:1, which says, "Let every person be subject to the governing authorities."  The sovereign secular authority in the United States is the Constitution, and in Kentucky it is the state constitution, which is why Davis swore obedience to both when she took her office as county clerk.  It turns out that the Kentucky Constitution defines marriage as exclusively involving a man and a woman.  It also turns out that the Tenth Amendment to the US Constitution explicitly restricts the federal government from issuing decrees on matters like this.[1]  Davis did not swear an oath to obey the U.S. Supreme Court, who, as pointed out by the four dissenting judges, committed an act of lawlessness in mandating homosexual marriage in the United States.  Davis is right to refuse to obey their usurpation of authority, just as Abraham Lincoln was right to ignore the Dred Scott decision in 1857.   For more details on Kim Davis' upholding of the Constitution, read Harry Reeder's excellent article, with which I wholly agree. https://harryreeder.wordpress.com/2015/09/08/kim-davis-state-criminal-church-discipline/

2.       Kim Davis is fulfilling her God-given duty as the lesser magistrate.  It is the calling of lower government officials to protect the people from the tyranny of the higher magistrate, here the federal government.  This biblical principle was used to justify, among other things, the American Revolution against the British sovereign.  It was exemplified when the fugitive David protected the people from the tyranny of wicked King Saul in the book of 1 Samuel.  Lower officials are morally required to oppose evil oppression from above, which is why lower German officials were convicted for not opposing the heinous deeds of the Nazi hierarchy after World War II.  They were rightly held accountable to stand against evil with the power that had been granted to them.  This is precisely what Davis is doing on behalf of the people of Rowan County, who elected her to office and whose views she is upholding.  (For those who object to the use of the Nazi analogy I offer no apology.  Historically speaking, the tactics of the radical Left in America today finds its closest analogy in the intimidation tactics of the Nazi Party as it gathered power in pre-war Germany.  And the intolerance and savagery of the now-empowered Progressives are very much akin to that of the Nazis.) 

- See more at: http://www.reformation21.org/blog/2015/09/four-reasons-christians-should.php#sthash.8dohEp1m.dpuf