Yes, Virginia, there is a real devil

Here's a personal anecdote (which I post with permission) by a long-time Tblog reader who was into the occult prior to his Christian conversion: 

Just before being saved, I was attending prayer meetings with this group of charismatic roman catholics (this isn't the weird part, believe it or not). One night one of the priests was speaking and his voice kind of faded out as this very oppressive, palpable darkness filled the room. It wasn't so much a lack of light as it was an unbearable sense of evil. After a while, I could clearly make out the sound of cloven hooves stalking around nearby. When I was saved that night, I had a vision of sorts - one in which I saw two paths, at one end was Satan and at the other was the Lord. I went towards Christ and I was immediately filled with the realization that everything in Scripture was true. All the stories about David, everything about the Apostles, I knew that the whole thing was true from the first page to the last. 

With regard to the sound of hooves, I know that this is a popular cliche and that if Satan has any physical form at all then maybe he doesn't actually have goat horns and hooves etc. But who knows, he might be willing to use that form in order to fulfill expectations. As for the vision, I sometimes wonder if that was really the result of my imagination or not. Jesus looked kind of the same way that you see him in paintings. Satan looked like a being cloaked in smoky, shadowy darkness. Perhaps if it was a real vision, I would be more sure of it.

It's that time of year again

Every time Halloween season rolls around, there's a perennial Christian debate about letting your kids celebrate Halloween. 

i) The history of a custom has no particular bearing on its contemporary significance. The past significance of a custom doesn't determine its contemporary significance. 

ii) A boy could wear could wear the costume of an exorcist. That way he's symbolically combatting the dark side.

iii) Wise parents pick their fights. This is not a hill to die on. Parents should avoid making their kids unnecessarily resentful. Save that for real moral issues. A classic mistake many well-meaning, but over-scrupulous Christian parents make is to alienate their kids from the faith by drawing the line over penny-ante issues. There will be real issues like Smartphone usage, social media usage, &c. Drawn the battle lines on serious issues like that.

The ethics of bribery

This is a follow-up to this post:

https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2019/10/life-for-life.html

1. Bribery is morally complex. One complicating factor is that bribery involves two potential parties: the briber and the bribee. And what may be unethical for the bribee may not be unethical for the briber. 

Regarding the bribee, I think demanding, soliciting, or accepting a bribe is probably always wrong. I say "probably" because ethicists can be quite ingenious about concocting esoteric hypothetical exceptions. But offhand I can't think of any realistic exceptions. But may be there are counterexamples I'm overlooking.

2. Regarding the briber, I think offering or giving a bribe is prima facie wrong, but there are situations where that's overridden. There are corrupt societies in which bribery is the only way to obtain essential goods and services. Innocent people, through no fault of their own, find themselves at the mercy of an unjust system. And this is very common throughout human history. 

3. Here's another complicating factor: we usually think of bribery in terms of unfair favors or preferential treatment. Take the recent scandal involving college applicants who feign a disability. That cheats applicants with genuine disabilities. 

But in a deranged society, offering a bribe might be necessary to obtain something to which one is normally entitled. That's something which ought to be available without a bribe. People are shirking their duties when the refuse to provide necessary goods and services unless they receive a bribe. 

Take the hypothetical of the death camp where you offer the commandant a bribe to spare your innocent son from execution. Normally, not murdering innocent people isn't a request for preferential treatment or special favors. It's only in a morally twisted situation that preventing murder is a request for preferential treatment. 

All about the Biden/Trump Ukranian Scandals

This is “impeachment made simple”. Really. Share this with everyone, everywhere. All your friends, all your social media. Even, especially your friends and relatives outside of the country. Blanket the world with this. The subject matter is a bit complex, but this will clarify everything, really.

Life for life

One of the most moving stories in Rosenbaum’s deeply moving Holocaust and the Halakhah tells of how one can be a great moral hero even when acting out of mistaken conscience. A man in a concentration camp comes to his rabbi with a problem. His son has been scheduled to be executed. But it is possible to bribe the kapo to get him off the death list. However, the kapo have a quota to fill, and if they let off his son, they will kill another child. Is it permissible to bribe the kapo knowing that this will result in the death of another child? The rabbi answers that, of course, it is permissible. The man goes away, but he is not convinced. He does not bribe the kapo. Instead, he concludes that God has called him to the great sacrifice of not shifting his son’s death onto another. The father finds a joy in the sacrifice amidst his mourning.

The rabbi was certainly right. The father’s conscience presumably was mistaken (unless God specifically spoke to him and required the sacrifice). Yet the father is a moral hero in acting from this mistaken conscience.

http://alexanderpruss.blogspot.com/2019/09/fulfilling-requests.html

i) I disagree with Pruss. All things being equal, it's certainly permissible or even obligatory for the father to bribe the kapo to save the life of his innocent young son. And that principle could be extended to protecting innocent lives generally. 

ii) If there are two drowning children, one of whom is yours, it's permissible or even obligatory to save your own. You have a greater duty to your own dependents, despite the tragedy to the other child.

But this hypothetical has greater moral complexity. It isn't just a question of whether the prima facie vice of bribery can be overridden. That's a separate issue. Considered in isolation, sometimes that's justifiable or incumbent. Bribery is not intrinsically wrong. 

But by bribing the kapo, the father would knowingly facilitate child murder. He is collaborating with the child-killers. He becomes a part of that moral and causal nexus. 

So the rabbi was most certainly wrong while the father was most certainly right. Although it would be psychologically understandable if the father did that, and there are mitigating factors, the deed remains objectively heinous. 

iii) Mind you, this assumes we inhabit a moral universe where there's at least one right course of action open to us. That requires a strong doctrine of providence. If, on the other hand, reality confronts us with genuine moral dilemmas, then we're on our own. 

Beale on a Point Against Preterism

"Some preterists believe that the great tribulation was to take place before and during the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. But they do not adequately explain how the churches of Asia Minor would be affected by a future tribulation limited to Jerusalem or even to Palestine." (Beale, Revelation, 435)

From Last Supper to Lord's Supper

1. From what I've read, the fundamental objection to female priests is that a priest assumes the role of alter Christus at Mass. When celebrating the eucharist, the priest is a stand-in for Jesus. Therefore, a priest must be male.

Since I repudiate the whole sacerdotal paradigm, I reject female priests for the same reason I reject male priests. My objection lies further upstream. I reject a key presupposition that underlies that understanding of communion. 

I'm not fighting over a word. If Anglicans wish to call their clergymen priests, I don't care. 

2. However, the issue doesn't stop there. With the possible exception of the Plymouth Brethren, in nearly all Protestant denominations of my acquaintance, elders officiate at communion. From what I can tell, that's a relic of the Catholic paradigm. 

So this is a Christian custom rather than a divine mandate. I don't object to Christian customs, per se. I've always attended churches where the clergy officiate at communion. I do think that's a somewhat pernicious tradition because it fosters bad subliminal theological conditioning. However, I never felt called to start a whole new denomination over this one issue. 

It's one of those things where I sometimes have private mental reservations when I attend a church service. My own theology is so developed that I don't expect any denomination to be the mirror-image of my theology. 

3. This does raise a live issue in theological method. How does the Lord's Supper correspond to the Last Supper? Is the Lord's Supper a theatrical historical reenactment of the Last Supper, where participants resume the same roles as the Last Supper? A sacred play in which the original parts are represented? Or does the Last Supper provide general guidelines for how the Lord's Supper should be celebrated?

4. There's no presumption that the way in which a practice is inaugurated furnishes the template for how it's subsequently observed. For instance, festivals like Yom Kippur, Tabernacles, Firstfruits, and the Feast of Weeks were inaugurated by a thunderstorm theophany and angelophany at Mt. Sinai, but that doesn't mean the initial conditions are repeated every time the festivals were celebrated. Indeed, the initial conditions were unrepeatable.

Likewise, the new covenant community was inaugurated at Pentecost with a fire theophany and xenoglossy, but that doesn't' mean every time the lost are evangelized or a new church is planted, the initial conditions are repeated. Indeed, the fire theophany is unrepeatable while xenoglossy is rare. 

5. For instance, the Last Supper was a Passover Seder meal. As such, roast lamb was on the menu. But when we celebrate communion we don't repeat that detail as a historical reenactment of the Last Supper. 

Needless to say, few denominations practice foot-washing whenever communion is celebrated. Jesus led the disciples in singing a Hallel Psalm at the Last Supper (Mt 26:30; Mk 14:26). But that's not a fixture of most communion liturgies I'm aware of. 

6. The fact that we follow the instructions in the institution of the Lord's Supper doesn't entail we reprise the role of Jesus. That's a non sequitur. We repeat the instructions, not the instructor. If a physician prescribes a medication, that doesn't mean someone must reprise the physician's role every time the patient takes the medication. 

The fact that Jesus presided at the Last Supper doesn't carry over to the Lord's Supper because the Last Supper is a one-time event with some unique circumstances–the foremost being Jesus himself. The instructions for the Lord's Supper don't include instructions for somebody to take his place when we celebrate communion. That confuses the descriptive level of the narrative with the prescriptive level. 

Hart failure

I don't think he does himself any favors with this riposte:

https://theopolisinstitute.com/leithart_post/good-god-a-response/

A classic disconnect between the self-image someone is attempting to project and what he actually reveals about himself.

Angel choir

1. In folk theology, heaven has an angel choir. When you die and go to heaven, you hear the angels sing. You might even join the angel choir. Heaven has a mixed choir consisting of saints and angels. There's a vacant seat with your name on it, awaiting your arrival. 

I don't know the history of this belief. Perhaps it was popularized by Handel's Messiah, which turns Lk 2:13-14 into choral music. But to my knowledge there's no clear passage of Scripture which says angels sing. Lk 2:13-14 doesn't say they sang, although praise is consistent with song. So that's evolved into a bit of Christmas folklore, embellished by seasonal anthems, carols, and hymnody. 

There's the passage in Job 38:7, but that's poetic and metaphorical. The Book of Revelation has scenes of heavenly singing, but the choristers seem to be saints rather than angels. 

2. It's often said that choirboys have angelic voices. What's meant by that, I think, is that choirboys have "sexless" voices, in the sense that their voices lack the virile or sensual timbre of opera singers. Even so, choirboys don't have genderless voices: their voices are recognizably male. But they do have an ethereal quality to them. 

3. Assuming for argument's sake that angels sing, how could they sing? 

i) It might be telepathic singing. That still doesn't indicate what it sounds like, but it's a mode of vocalism consistent with discarnate spirits.

ii) They might have human or humanoid voices if they assume corporeal form. Whether that would be a male or female timbre, adult or prepubescent, would depend on the anatomy. 

Still, there's no clear biblical evidence that angels sing. In principle, if you heard or saw angels sing in a near-death experience, that would be prima facie evidence, but that also depends on how near-death experiences map onto reality. 

4. Another question is whether Christians actually sing in heaven. How literally should we take the depictions in Revelation? 

That may be more than a purely hermeneutical question. If Christians sing on earth, it would be natural for them to sing in heaven. They will carry their memories of Christian music with them into the afterlife. 

Admittedly, they can't physically vocalize in heaven. However, I sometimes dream that I'm singing in church, so the saints might sing in that simulated sense. Indeed, heaven is so inspiring that it's hard to see how the saints could resist breaking in song. 

5. This also raises the question of what the saints will sing. Presumably, sainted composers will continue to write music in heaven. Music even better than what they composed on earth.

There are also composers who wrote some great Christian music even though they weren't Christian (e.g. Brahms, Fauré, Ralph Vaughan Williams). Will their particular talent be lost, or will that be transferred to some of the saints? 

In a multiverse scenario, Brahms or Fauré might be Christian in a parallel universe, yet all Christians wind to the same heaven–regardless of where they originate. 

6. Does heaven have its own history of music, that parallels OT history and church history? Does music in heaven mirror the chronological development of music?

For instance, we don't know how the Psalter was sung. We don't know what kind of music it was originally set to. Maybe it was chanted, or maybe it was set to folk tunes. 

When OT saints passed on, was the music they heard and sang in heaven the same kind of music they heard and sang on earth? When medieval Christians died, was the music they heard and sang in heaven the same kind of music they heard and sang on earth? Likewise, Renaissance church music, Baroque church music, Black Gospel, and so on and so forth? 

7. Since God knows the future, it's possible that heavenly music retroactively represents later periods of music. OT saints and medieval saints get to hear Bach, Handel, Vivaldi, Mendelssohn, Fauré , Black Gospel, &c. centuries or millennia ahead of time! 

I haven't said anything about rock music because that's what's played in hell, on jukeboxes. I have that on good authority, from an anonymous source–a high-placed informant in the heavenly hierarchy who shared it with me on condition of confidentiality. 

Admittedly, this post is an exercise in theological speculation. Up to a point, I think that's a way to cultivate heavenly-mindedness. 

Pizza Hut for monasteries

Does the pizza delivery boy get a tip?

Moreland–is there life after death?

In this post I'll use "dualism" as shorthand for substance dualism. I subscribe to Cartesian interactionist dualism. I don't subscribe to Thomistic dualism (hylomorphism). 

A. This is a fairly useful exchange as far as it goes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmfsZ_-Z_OY

But it tries to cover far too much ground in far too little time. Also, Moreland and the interviewer are talking at cross-purposes for a while, which squanders precious time. 

B. Moreland probably has far more to say about religious pluralism, but due to time constraints, deflected that issue.

C. Up to a point, dualism and physicalism are empirically equivalent explanations. Both are consistent with the data that the interviewer cited, viz. memory loss, inability to form new memories, and loss of cognitive function.

According to dualism, the brain is an interface between the mind and the physical world. It mediates action or information in both directions. If damaged, the brain blocks input or output at both ends. 

If the brain is damaged, that may block new sensory input. That prevents the mind from receiving new information from and about the sensible world.

If, conversely, the brain is damaged, that may block the ability of the mind to communicate with the outside world. Memories are stored in the mind, not the brain. If the brain is damaged, that impedes retrieval. The memories can't get through a washed out bridge. So long as the mind is embodied, that imposes limits on mental activity. 

All things being equal, the scales tip slightly in favor of physicalism as the simpler explanation. All things considered, additional evidence weighs heavily on the dualist side of the scales. 

D. Moreland greatly understates the evidence for the afterlife. I'll begin by proposing a more complex taxonomy:

1. Indirect philosophical evidence for the afterlife

2. Indirect empirical evidence for the afterlife

3. Direct theological evidence for the afterlife

4. Direct empirical evidence for the afterlife

Let's run back through these:

(1)-(2) constitute evidence for dualism. If there's evidence that the mind is ontologically independent of the brain, then that's indirect evidence for the afterlife. That's what makes disembodied consciousness possible. 

1.  Indirect philosophical evidence for the afterlife

i) The hard problem of consciousness. 

Philosophical arguments that the characteristics of consciousness are categorically different from physical structures and events. 

ii) Roderick Chisholm's argument:

https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2019/09/body-and-soul.html

2. Indirect empirical evidence for the afterlife

i) Veridical near-death experiences and veridical out-of-body experiences.  

ii) ESP, psychokinesis. If all mental activity takes place inside the brain, then the mind can't know about the physical world or act on the physical world apart from sensory input or the body interacting with its environment. If, conversely, there's empirical evidence that mental activity is not confined to the brain, then that's evidence for the metaphysical possibility of disembodied postmortem survival. 

3. Direct theological evidence for the afterlife

i) The biblical witness to the intermediate state. If there's good evidence that the Bible is a trustworthy source of information, then that's indirect evidence for whatever it teaches. 

ii) The resurrection of Christ

That's evidence, not for the immortality of the soul, but a reembodied state. 

That's what "Christian physicalists" pin their hopes on. However, the immortality of the soul is a bridge to the resurrection of the body. A philosophical objection to "Christian physicalism" is that if consciousness ceases at death, then what God resurrects isn't the same person who died but a copy of the person who died. And that raises questions of personal identity. If your existence is discontinuous, if there's a break or gap in your existence, then what does God restore? Is a copy of you you? 

4. Direct empirical evidence for the afterlife 

i) A subset of near-death experiences report meeting a decedent who wasn't known to be dead at the time. In a variation, the decedent imparts information that could not naturally be known. If the report is true, that's direct empirical evidence for postmortem survival. 

ii) Veridical postmortem apparitions, viz. poltergeists, grief apparitions, crisis apparitions, Christophanies. 

Randy angels

1. Gen 6:1-4 is enigmatic, in part because it's so compressed, and in part because it uses a designation ("sons of God") that has no parallel elsewhere in the Pentateuch.

A popular interpretation is that it describes fallen angels mating with women, thereby spawning a race of hybrids. 

2. There are problems with that interpretation. For one thing, even if the "sons of God" are angels, they are never identified as fallen angels. The passage contains no background information concerning a primordial angelic fall. So on the angelic interpretation, there's no narrative assumption that angels mating with women was illicit. That requires a backstory regarding rebellious angels. But that context is missing. 

3. Scholars fall into two basic camps. Some scholars think the text is mythological. They have no problem with mythological interpretations of Scripture because they think Scripture frequently reflects a mythological outlook. They don't think this incident ever happened–or could happen.

4. Moreover, the interpretation offered by critical scholarship isn't angelic but polytheistic. They think the text describes gods siring demigods by mating with women. 

5. Yet other Christians think the angelic interpretation is realistic. But in that event, the angelic identification is equivocal. In order for angels to sire offspring by mating with women, the angels would have to transform into men, with male sexual anatomy and seminal fluid. At least temporally, the angels would cease to be angels, becoming human males at an anatomical, genetic, and chromosomal level. 

But even assuming that angels have that ability, the offspring wouldn't be hybrids or half-breeds but purebred humans. So that fails to explain what made the Nephilim superior to normal human males.  

Like chapters in a book

Genesis

Exodus

Leviticus

Numbers

Deuteronomy

Joshua

Judges

Ruth

1-2 Samuel 

1-2 Kings

1-2 Chronicles

Ezra

Nehemiah

Esther

Job

Psalms

Proverbs

Ecclesiastes

Song of Solomon 

Isaiah

Jeremiah

Lamentations

Ezekiel

Daniel

Hosea

Joel

Amos

Obadiah

Jonah

Micah

Nahum

Habakkuk

Zephaniah

Haggai

Zechariah

Malachi

Matthew

Mark

Luke

John

Acts

Romans

1-2 Corinthians

Galatians

Ephesians

Philippians

Colossians

1-2 Thessalonians

1-2 Timothy

Titus

Philemon

Hebrews

James

1-2 Peter

1-3 John

Jude

Revelation

1. Above is the Protestant canon of Scripture. One problem with Catholicism is that because Catholics think "the Church" gave us the Bible, they don't consider how the books of Scripture go together. 

There's a certain logic to the arrangement in the Protestant canon. The OT canon is roughly chronological and topical. 

However, it's somewhat arbitrary because there's more than one logical way to arrange them. For instance, the lives of the prophets overlap the Historical Books. And the Psalter spans the entire history of OT Israel.

In principle, you could splice sections of the prophets and Psalter into parallel columns with sections of the Historical Books. And that would be illuminating. 

The NT begins with historical narratives. And these are chronological: the life of Jesus followed by apostolic church history. Then there are letters grouped by authorship, capped by Revelation. 

It's logical but someone arbitrary. Luke/Acts could be grouped together. John's Gospel and 1-3 John could be grouped together. 

2. In a way, books of the Bible are like chapters of one book. There's an overarching plot or storyline with subplots or intermezzi. 

Now, if you never read the Bible, and some books were missing, you might not notice the gaps. But if other books were missing, it would be very choppy. 

In addition, if you were very familiar with the complete canon, then some books were removed, you'd notice gaps even if you wouldn't notice the same gaps in case you never read the Bible. And not just because you remembered the missing books, but because, having read through the entire canon on multiple occasions, you have a sense of flow that would be disrupted if certain otherwise "dispensable" books were removed. You might not notice their absence if you never read the Bible before, but having read the Bible with those books, they fill in many background details. Although some of them can be removed without disrupting the overall plot or storyline, they make a subtle, felt contribution to the flow. 

3. Put another way, a journey has a linear continuity to it.  But sometimes the traveler stays in certain locations along the way for extended periods. It's not just a place to eat and sleep, then resume the journey the next day. Maybe winter's approaching, and he has to make camp before he can cross the mountains in the spring. Or maybe some locations are especially scenic, so he lives there for a few weeks or months to take it in. 

Likewise, the Bible isn't just a journey through time and space. The pilgrims settle down here and there to reflect on what they've experienced thus far and what lies ahead. They take stock of where they are, where they've been. The obstacles they overcame. Losses along the way. It's not a nonstop journey. Some books of the Bible provide depth of field. It's not just about moving forward in a straight line, but taking a breather to savor the present moment and give thanks for past deliverance. Striking a balance between the here-and-now as well as the hereafter. Each day isn't just a steppingstone but of value in its own right. 

4. You could rearrange some chapters, and it would still make sense. A different kind of sense. Continuity isn't everything. Take nonlinear narration, like flashbacks. Those are different ways to tell the same story. Both foresight and hindsight provide insight. 

Packing for the desert island

There's a Christian meme that's making the rounds of the Internet:

One cuisine:   

One author: 

One genre of music: 

One TV show: 

One place: 

One season:

One city: 

One game:

One book of the Bible: 

One movie: 

...how about you?

A few observations:

1. This is an expansive variation on the desert island trope: if you only have one book with you on a desert island, which would you pick? 

2. Up to a point this is a useful spiritual exercise to prioritize. Asking what's your favorite, what's the best, what's the greatest, can be intellectual pruning so that we don't fritter away the gift of life on what's frivolous, ephemeral, unimportant, and second-rate. 

3. That said, there's no one best example of everything or even most things. And for that we should be grateful since life would become very boring very fast if there was one best example of everything. We need variety. 

Something can be the best in one respect, but not in another. Creatures have limitations. Not every excellence is compossible in the same thing. There are tradeoffs. 

4. To take another comparison: as I've often remarked, a flawed masterpiece is far more satisfying than a flawless artwork. For instance, Casino Royale is a flawless movie, but there's nothing that makes me care. By contrast, Hitchcock makes movies that are very uneven, yet they have a few unforgettable scenes. 

5. Regarding one book of the Bible, a problem with that hypothetical is whether we've read the entire Bible, whether we're already familiar with the Bible in general, and with that overall background in mind, we pick one book of the Bible. But what if we never read the Bible. In that event, which one book should we read? 

Likewise, as our memory of the Bible in general fades on the desert island, does that make the one book we took more valuable or less valuable? There's a sense in which books of the Bible are like chapters of one book. Even if you had a favorite chapter, it's not a stand-alone chapter. Its meaning depends in part on preceding or succeeding chapters.  

6. When Christians are asked, if you could only take one book with you to the desert island, the conventional answer is "The Bible". In one respect, that's a pious answer, the answer you're supposed to give. But here's another way to put it: if you couldn't take the Bible, what book or author would you take?

If I couldn't take the Bible, I wouldn't take anything to else to read. No matter how fine a Christian poet, theologian, or fiction writer, I wouldn't want to have one man's outlook that embedded in my own mind. Where there'd be no point of contrast, no other writers to counterbalance that singular outlook. I wouldn't want my mind dominated by the outlook of just one other person, however gifted and orthodox. That would be a kind of possession. 

Rauser's persecution complex

Tentative Apologist

@RandalRauser

An angry Calvinist blogger targeted me this week.

i) The "angry Calvinist" trope as the lead-in. That defamatory trope says more about Rauser than it does about Calvinists. 

ii) What is Rauser's evidence regarding my emotional state when I wrote the post? Compare his lead-in with what I wrote:

https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2019/10/whats-good-for-gosse-is-good-for-gander.html

I invite him to quote and explain the passages which show that I was angry when I wrote it. 

iii) The "angry Calvinist" trope is part of a larger scurrilous narrative that internet Arminians have constructed around Calvinists. They reduce Calvinists to fictional characters or villains in their imaginary narrative. That's a common tactics by bigots in general. 

iv) Does Rauser impute anger to me because he's projecting his own motives onto me? When he attacks the position of, say, Robert Gagnon or Michael Brown on the LGBT agenda, does that mean Rauser is an angry progressive blogger? 

Turning to his post:

https://randalrauser.com/2019/10/hamfisted-heresy-hunters/

i) Is his objection to heresy hunters per se or only to hamfisted heresy hunters? 

ii) BTW, notice that he offers no substantive rebuttal to my post. 

Calvinist blogger Steve Hays has a long list of people he needs to monitor on a regular basis and I’m apparently on that list. 

i) Even though he's Canadian, Rauser monitors Pres. Trump on a daily basis and issues daily tweets about Trump and Trump supporters. If you want a study in obsession, start there. By contrast, you could count on the fingers of one hand (with fingers to spare) the tweets he's issued about Justin Trudeau. His priorities are stark.  

ii) I comment on representatives of various positions. Regarding progressive theology, Rauser is about as good a spokesman as anyone for that position. In the past I commented on Peter Enns, but he's banal and repetitive, so I stopped reading his blog(s). I used to comment on Roger Olson, but he has a limited repertoire, so that's repetitive. 

iii) So Rauser suffers from a persecution complex. My "monitoring" and commenting on his posts and tweets has gotten under his thin skin. He can't stand the scrutiny. 

To begin with, I have never claimed that my “progressive theology or ideology” (whatever that is supposed to be) should be considered a necessary stumbling block for Christian witness. On the contrary, I’ve repeatedly defended alternative views (e.g. Roman Catholicism, open theism, and Hays’ own Calvinism) as fully consistent with mere Christianity and faithful Christian witness. Given that Hays regularly monitors me and thus he must be aware of what I’ve written, I’m forced to conclude that either we label him an egregiously inept reader or a liar.

i) As a progressive theologian, it's not exactly earthshaking that he's defended other progressive theologies/theologians like open theism and the Catholicism of Pope Francis. 

ii) He tries to burnish an image of even-handedness, but that's a ruse which enables him to be utterly one-sided when push comes to shove. Jeff Lowder is the same way. 

iii) I appreciate how he concedes my point. I noted that when he rails against unnecessary stumbling blocks to the Christian faith, he exempts his own progressive theology. He responds by agreeing with me: 

I have never claimed that my “progressive theology or ideology” (whatever that is supposed to be) should be considered a necessary stumbling block for Christian witness.

Which is exactly the point I made in the original post. He never classifies his own (progressive) theology and ideology as  unnecessary stumbling blocks. Yet oddly enough, Rauser then accuse me of being "an egregiously inept reader or a liar" because I said something he agrees with. But wouldn't that make Rauser "an egregiously inept reader or a liar"? I guess that makes also him a hamfisted progressive blogger. 

It’s trivially the case that each individual will distinguish necessary from unnecessary stumbling blocks based on their beliefs about which doctrines are essential to mere Christianity (i.e. the dogmas) and which are non-essential (i.e. theologoumena; adiaphora). It takes a particularly hamfisted heresy hunter, somebody like Steve Hays, to take a trivial and universally applicable fact and try to spin it into an indictable offense…

Once again, I appreciate Rauser's concession that when he says we should avoid unnecessary stumbling blocks to the faith, he's making a trivial observation. In the future, will he preface his observation with the declaimer that what he's about to say is trivial because it amounts to the claim that what makes these unnecessary stumbling blocks is that progressive theologians disdain them?  

…for his perceived enemies. Sadly, Hays is so focused on attacking others that he has not only sacrificed critical nuance and charity in reading his enemies but he has even lost sight of basic consistency and self-awareness.

i) Like the nuance and charity Rauser brings to bear when attacking evangelical Trump supporters. A telling illustration of Rauser's moral self-deception. 

ii) The confabulation continues with my "enemies". That's another example of Rauser's imputations. Ironically, it's not my state of mind but his state of mind. He has no direct access to my state of mind, so the imputation is a reflection of his own state of mind. A figment of his malicious or paranoid imagination.

This, too, is part of the prejudicial narrative that progressives construct around religious and social conservatives. He pats himself on the back for his "charity," consistency and self-awareness when–in reality–he stereotypes people on the right.

iii) Rauser greatly overrates himself by casting himself in the role of "my perceived enemy". But for Rauser to be my enemy, he'd have to be in a position to harm me in some fashion. Since I don't take him nearly as seriously as he takes himself, he doesn't make the cut of "my perceived enemies" (assuming I even have any perceived enemies). 

iv) He is, however, an enemy to others. He's an enemy to the faith of students at Taylor Seminary–as well as other young people he counsels. Progressive theology is counterfeit Christianity. That's a mortal threat to the salvation of those who fall under its spell. Likewise, the progressive ideology he shills is a threat to the well-being of normal, innocent men, women, and children. 

I recognize that Hays seems to feed off conflict and will likely use this article as more fuel to write articles against his enemies. 

i) Notice how "my enemies" becomes an instant trope. Take a seat and watch a legend in the making.

ii) So if he responds to me, that's legitimate, but if I respond to him, that's "feeding off conflict". Yet he's the soul of consistency and self-awareness. Yeah, sure. 

And what about his nonstop tweets regarding Donald Trump? Why isn't that "feeding off conflict"? He's the casting director in the movie in his head, and he's cast himself as the superhero with cape and Batmobile. 

I can’t change that fact, so instead, I offer this commentary as a salutary warning for the rest of us lest we too fall into the trap of becoming a hamfisted heresy hunter.

It's understandable that heretics resent heresy hunters. And his entire post is unwittingly revealing. If you randomly throw rocks into the bushes and you hear a coyote yelp a moment later, it gave itself away. 

How do details in the Old Testament confirm its historicity?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIwGpLFFYG0