Can the leopard change its spots?

I read that Michael Brown recently offered a potential defense of Benny Hinn on the grounds the Hinn has repudiated his heresies. (Admittedly, this is second-hand. I haven't listened to Brown's broadcast.) Assuming that's an accurate summary of Brown's argument, it presents a conundrum. How, exactly, would Hinn be able to retract his heresies? Doesn't he claim to be a prophet? Didn't he originally claim that his theological aberrations were the result of his prophetic insights? The only consistent way for Hinn to recant his heresies would be for him to recant his prophetic pretensions. Confess that he never was a real prophet. That he was either a deceiver or self-deceived.  

Hare Krishna commits hara-kiri

I'm going to comment on a recent post by Michael Sudduth:

http://michaelsudduth.com/interview-on-postmortem-survival/

I’d say that my curiosity in survival-related questions began when I was around eight years old.  After having recurrent apparitional experiences in the house I lived in with my parents at the time, I began wondering whether there were real things that I could not normally see but which became visible under certain conditions.  And seeing as I recognized some of the apparitions as deceased members of my family or friends of the family, the experiences prompted the question, is death really the end of our existence?  I never said anything about these experiences to my parents, but I remember feeling encouraged when a couple of years later my grandmother shared with me an apparitional experience she had of my grandfather shortly after his death.  And I recall, on another occasion, overhearing another family member secretly discussing her apparitional experience of my grandfather. In my teenage years I had a variety of paranormal experiences over a two-year period.  Given my prior experiences, I decided to document the experiences in a journal I kept at the time.  I was also inspired by the 1972 television series the Sixth Sense to explore these experiences through various readings in parapsychology.  Interestingly enough, during this time my mother reported an apparitional experience of my grandfather a few days before the death of my grandmother.  Although my mother had no knowledge of my grandmother’s experience several years earlier, her description of the apparition was remarkably similar to what my grandmother had described. In 2002 I left Saint Michael’s College and moved into a historic home in Windsor, Connecticut. There my ex-wife and I had a large number of paranormal experiences, which I documented in written form.  After moving out of the house in 2004, I conducted some interviews with prior occupants of the home and learned that they had similar experiences.  I became very fascinated with the nature of these shared experiences, seemingly tied to a particular physical location, and their possible implications for postmortem survival.   I’ve had the added benefit of participating in a number of paranormal investigations and developing friendships with various mediums over the past eight years.  So my thinking on this topic has been shaped by a wide-range of first-hand experiences, as well as my research and training as a philosopher.

The interview indicates that his experience of the paranormal goes back to childhood. It predates his teenage dabbling with a Ouija board. So this may be a family curse that's been passed down from one generation to the next. And befriending mediums invites further self-delusion. 

Although I was greatly impressed with Price’s reflections on the empirical approach to survival, my conservative Christian views at the time, together with my focus on other topics in graduate school, dissuaded me from a further exploration. On my current view, I think there is a legitimate debate about what exactly paranormal phenomena establish about the reality and nature of postmortem survival.  That’s an issue at the center of my present work.  I am a Vedantin philosopher, so I certainly accept the idea of survival, at least broadly understood as the postmortem persistence of consciousness. 
Well, let me begin with some important caveats and clarifications. Unlike many other philosophers, I don’t object to the survival hypothesis itself, nor do I deny that people can be epistemically justified in believing in survival.  I’ve already stated that I subscribe to the eastern philosophical and spiritual tradition of Vedanta.  So I don’t believe that what I essentially am shares in the limits or destiny of my body or individual mind.  I am a survivalist. 

On the one hand, he doesn't hesitate to promote positions which contradict Christian theology. On the other hand, he can't bring himself to take a position that contradicts Hare Krishna. 

I'd like to make a few general observations about the interview:

i) I think his analysis suffers from reductionism. He seems to be seeking a single causal explanation for all the phenomena in question. But what if there's more than one cause? On the face of it, there are potentially three different parties to one or another of these transactions: ghosts, demons, the medium. So perhaps the correct explanation varies. In some cases a ghost might be the best explanation. In other cases a demon. In still other cases, the medium might be psychic.

I'd add that the demonic explanation and the psychic explanation are not mutually exclusive. A medium might be demonically empowered thru possession. 

ii) We need to draw some theoretical distinctions in terms of apparitions. In principle, there are two or three distinctions:

a) The dead initiating contact with the living. 

b) The living initiating contact with the dead. A medium opens a two-way channel. Whether the dead respond might be voluntary.

c) Summoning the dead. The dead are compelled to appear. Classic sorcery. 

I'm not vouching for the reality of these distinctions. Just drawing them for conceptual clarity. Having a bigger toolbox helps us classify and assess the evidence. Likewise, I'm discussing what's possible, not permissible. 

iii) Both (b) and (c) would be cases of necromancy. A Biblically forbidden activity.

iv) Assuming, for the sake of argument, that it's possible to summon the dead or initiate contact with the dead, what class of decedents would be available? Departed saints? Or the damned? 

Since Scripture forbids necromancy, it seems antecedently unlikely that God would make departed saints available to mediums. However, we have the counterexample of the medium summoning Saul (1 Sam 28). That, however, may be quite exceptional. Saul's attempt to contact Samuel backfires. For Samuel uses the occasion to denounce Saul. The exercise seals the fate of the apostate king. God may have allowed Saul to appear for that express purpose. That would also explain why the medium seemed to be surprised. Perhaps wasn't expecting Samuel to actually appear. 

Assuming, for the sake of argument, that necromancy is sometimes successful, it seems more likely that only the damned would be accessible. Admittedly, that's speculative. 

v) But what about (a)? Is it permissible for departed saints to appear to the living? That's hard to say. 

There are credible reports of apparitions of the dead. That, of itself, doesn't necessarily establish the identity of the apparition. It appears to be the decedent. But at least in some cases, appearances might be deceptive. 

vi) As a Christian, I'm not ashamed to admit that I discount reincarnation on theological grounds. 

vii) In addition, reincarnation isn't clearly the simplest overall explanation for certain phenomena. That's because simplicity involves more than one variable. For instance, even if reincarnation is the simplest discrete explanation for certain phenomena, that must be counterbalanced by the fact that reincarnation is metaphysically cumbersome. It would require elaborate offstage machinery to pull that off. So the explanatory simplicity of reincarnation is deceptive. 

viii) I've also analyzed prima facie evidence for reincarnation on several occasions:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2013/03/deja-vu.html

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2009/03/reincarnation-or-retrocognition.html

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2009/03/possession-reincarnation.html

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2009/03/stigmata-reincarnation.html

NT quality miracles

Fred Butler  I guarantee none of them have witnessed a NT quality miracle. Amputees having limbs restored & quadriplegics restored. None if them. But restoring limbs was a regular work of Christ along w/ restoring sight & hearing. Why doesn't it happen now? The same with amputees. Jesus healed amputees in Mt 15. Any Iraqi veterans having limbs restored? Why not?

There are numerous problems with Fred's argument;

i) Why does he set the bar at "NT quality miracles" rather than Biblical quality miracles? Why doesn't he include OT miracles in his standard of comparison?

ii) Does Mt 15 say Jesus healed amputees? As various scholars have pointed out, the terminology in 15:30-31 is influenced by OT usage. The text alludes to Isa 35:5-6. And Nolland, in his standard commentary on the Greek text (639-40), makes a case for taking "maimed" as an allusion to Zech 11:16. In that event, the meaning is colored by OT usage. Moreover, the genre is poetic. Figurative usage, which plays on the shepherd/sheep metaphor. So Fred's interpretation is linguistically dubious.

iii) Moreover, appealing to Mt 15 doesn't falls short of showing that restoring limbs was a "regular" work of Christ. 

BTW, Jesus still exists. He rose from the dead and ascended to the Father. He's quite capable of healing at a distance. Yet by Fred's lights, he hasn't regularly healed amputees for the past 2000 years. So where does that leave Fred's comparison? 

iv) Furthermore, his argument either proves too much or too little. Notice that Fred confines his appeal to Christ rather than the Apostles. He doesn't quote any examples of apostles healing amputees. But if restoring amputees is a litmus test of a true healer, then by his own yardstick, the apostles were charlatans. At least, we have no record of their healing amputees. So we can't presume that they did so, in the absence of any textual evidence to that effect. In that event, how can we hold contemporary Christians to a higher standard than the Apostles? 

v) Finally, there's the problem of what constitutes a "NT quality miracle." Is the draught of fish a NT quality miracle? Is dispelling the fever of Peter's mother-in-law a NT quality miracle? Is the coin in the fish's mouth a NT miracle. Is exorcism a NT quality miracle? 

Sacrament of Penance: Public? Private? Once? Repeatable?

The Sacramental World in the Sentence of Peter Lombard

The human predicament ... was that, no matter what, people sin again: private penance, not public penance, is a remedy for those fresh outbreaks. Even Gratian, down in Bologna, argued for repeatability: charity rules that the ancient tradition of public penance should not be enforced, even though its rules should remain on the books. Why? Although Augustine, in other contexts, argued for unrepeatability, Gratian cited the anti-Donatist Augustine, who defined penance as the way of dealing with postbaptismal sin, yet argued that Donatists thought that rebaptism was the only means to reconciliation.

Peter argued for repeatability by citing what seem to be self-contradictory opinions of the authorities. In the first distinction on penance (distinction 14), for instance, he cited Ambrose, Augustine, and Origen that penance is a once-in-a-lifetime event. He then cites Augustine, Ambrose, and John Chrysostom that penance can be repeated as often as sins arise.

The infallible Council of Trent ruled that it was repeatable, private, to a priest, and it always had been, from the moment Christ instituted the sacrament.

Praying for amputees

Fred Butler ‏So you would pray that an Iraqi war veteran would have his limbs restored fully? Lay hands on him to that end?

i) I don't know the point of Fred's question. Is he suggesting that Christians shouldn't pray for physical healing? Is he suggesting it's wrong to pray for the physical restoration of an amputee?

Speaking for myself, I don't see why we shouldn't pray for that. Whether or not God grants the request, there's nothing wrong with praying for that–since we don't know ahead of time what God is prepared to do. 

ii) By the way, I've encountered MacArthurites who deny that answers to prayer are ever miraculous. If you pray for someone dying of cancer and he recovers, that's "providential" rather than miraculous. 

Is that Fred's position? If so, he can't say God no longer performs that kind of miracle in answer to prayer, if MacArthurites don't even classify that as a miracle. 

Fred Butler  James 5:13-14 is abt restoring a sinner to fellowship (sickness due to their sin). 

i) I'm not clear on Fred's answer. Do elders at Grace Community church refuse to obey Jas 5:13-14? 

ii) Is Fred saying Jas 5:13-14 is about restoring a sinner to fellowship rather than physical healing? Is it merely about confession and forgiveness rather than a prayer for healing? 

Fred Butler ‏If God were doing the miracles today as you say, it would be evident to all his people.

• 
  

i) So Fred admits that MacArthurites do judge continuationism by experience. Yet they chide charismatics for judging continuationism by experience. Why the double standard?


ii) How evident would miracles be? For instance, there's credible evidence that Joy Davidman went into remission when an Anglican priest laid hands on her and prayed for her. However, that's only public knowledge because she was the wife of a famous Christian. And even then, I daresay many Christians don't know about it because they aren't into C. S. Lewis. 

Dan Phillips ‏Dude, happens all th time. In Africa, or like the Australian bush. 23 feet beyond camera-shot. Daily!

Or like the reported miracles in the Sinai desert. Or like the reported temptation of Christ in the wilderness.  Why is Dan Phillips the dummy to Carl Sagan's ventriloquist? 

"The God of the universe"

peteenns

And as for violence, I think you continue to underestimate the sheer brutality of it in the OT, perhaps to preserve a fundamental continuity at all costs. Israel's God kills or sanctions killing humans to take the land and give it to his people. He also either orders or sits by as Israel takes captive women and children, and in at least once incident, allows the division of virgin women as spoil (Number 31). Do you really think the God of the universe was OK with that then?

That's an odd statement. Unless Enns is an atheist, he does believe that the God of the universe "sits by" while things like this happen. Even if he denies the historicity of the OT narratives, things like that certainly happen in the real world. Unless he's an atheist, he must at the very least believe that God is "OK" with allowing that to happen, even though he could prevent it, whether or not he commands it.

Temple and purity laws reflect ANE cultural conventions to which God allowed himself to be adapted and by which he allowed the ancient tribal Israelites to worship him. The Gospel teaches that these things are to be left behind and therefore their substance is critiqued.

That's revealing. According to Enns, divine accommodation means God allowed himself to be adapted to false worship. But that dissolves the distinction between pagan impiety and true piety. 

BTW, Enns tries to put Bible-believing Christians on the defensive. "How dare you believe God commanded these atrocities!" His attitude is usually indistinguishable from Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens.

Problem is, I think he still claims to be a Christian, so he needs to explain how he can straddle the fence between inerrancy and atheism. Since Hitchens and Dawkins don't pretend to be Christian, they are free to trash the Bible. (Mind you, they have difficulty justifying their moralistic value judgments.)

At least inerrantists have a consistent position. How can he continue to believe, assuming he still does, that Christianity is a revealed religion, yet constantly attack the revelatory source of Christianity? 

He's not entitled to be so judgmental when he's so intellectually duplicitous. 

Bridgegate

I haven't bothered to follow "Bridgegate" too closely. But apparently the liberal media has gone overboard in covering the scandal. What's odd about this is the long-term political strategy. Presumably, the liberal media is seizing the opportunity to take down a prominent Republican politician and likely presidential hopeful. Is the objective to preempt him from becoming the GOP nominee? 

If so, what's odd about that strategy is that it does Christie's conservative rivals a favor. Christie would be the candidate favored by the Republican establishment. Backed by party bosses and operatives like Karl Rove. They always go for a "moderate" Republican who's supposedly more electable than a rightwing ideologue–because we've seen how well that worked in the past (e.g. Bob Dole, John McCain, Mitt Romney). 

To knock Christie out of the running makes it more likely that a more conservative candidate will get the nomination. It's unclear how that advances the liberal agenda, unless the liberal media is convinced that a conservative has no chance of winning in the general election, whereas Christie might have a shot. Is that the thinking? Or is it just reflexive?  

Arminians and Catholics Together

Pope Francis the Arminian

This may be somewhat dated -- it references an article that is about two weeks old now. Still, we know that Jerry Walls, the Arminian, has already advocated Purgatory for everyone. Now the ground is prepared for Ecumenical Reunion between Arminians and Roman Catholics as Pope Francis has declared his (and God's) respect for human free will:

http://news.yahoo.com/pope-reaches-39-indifferent-39-catholics-145203142.html

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis offered another gesture to Catholics who are estranged from the church, saying Monday he respects them but that God is waiting for them....

"I would like to tell all those who feel far from God and the church — and I say this respectfully to those who are afraid or indifferent: The Lord calls you and wants you to be part of his people and does so with great respect and love!" Francis said. "The Lord doesn't proselytize, he gives love and this love looks for you, waits for you — for you who don't believe or have drifted away. This is the love of God."

No doubt this includes "separated brethren Catholics" who are "estranged from the Roman Catholic Church". Please come home!!

Hack ... wheeze ...

Different times: Smoking a cigarette while riding the Tour de France, 1920s Rt @HistoricalPics pic.twitter.com/trNYqVRlEW

— George Belgrade (@GeorgeBelgrade) January 21, 2014

Top ally of Pope Francis urges Roman Doctrinal Chief to loosen up

Archbishop Gerhard Mueller:
This Vatican Watchdog is Rebuffed

A “Rare Public Criticism” Among Senior Church Officials

One of the eight cardinals named by Bishop of Rome Bergoglio to be part of his inner circle of advisors has criticized the head of the “Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith”, or CDF (the successor of the Inquisition and the Holy Office). This “Group of Eight” is influential precisely because it is going to handle Bergoglio’s light work – it has been tasked with “being responsible for drawing up a plan to revise the Curia’s constitution.

Now, keep in mind that in Rome-speak, “being responsible for drawing up a plan” doesn’t mean you actually accomplish anything, nor that you even draw up that plan. You’re merely “responsible” for it. But it looks good on a résumé, as they say.

Will they or won’t they ease the rules on divorce and remarriage?

PARIS (Reuters) - An influential aide to Pope Francis criticized the Vatican's doctrinal watchdog on Monday and urged the conservative prelate to be more flexible about reforms being discussed in the Roman Catholic Church.

Were Eyewitnesses Alive for Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John to Consult?

I don't agree with the writing that the Gospels exhibit occasional lapses in memory, but there's some useful material here on eyewitness recollection as well as the pool of informants:

http://gregmonette.com/blog/post/question-were-eyewitnesses-alive-for-matthew-mark-luke-and-john-to-consult

Childish atheism

Dr. Avalos is very biased and intelligent. He does provide more than one viewpoint, however he seems to miss or mistake obvious possible explanations about the materials (Bible.) Whether he does this intentionally, or on purpose it is hard to say. I feel he is a good person, but I feel bad for him because he seems to harbor a great anger towards some things that happened during his childhood church experience. Told us stories that confirmed his bitter recall of those times. 

http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=469479

Athens and Jerusalem

What are the uses and misuses of philosophy in Christian theology?

I. Definition

1) To begin with, we need to define philosophy. 

i) Defining philosophy is, itself, a philosophical question, and different philosophers give different answers concerning the scope of philosophy, depending on their view of what exists. For instance, logical positivists try to exclude metaphysics from philosophy. Physicalists like Quine and Alex Rosenberg favor a scientistic definition of philosophy. 

ii) The question itself impinges on the relationship between philosophy and theology. As Christians, we are open to a more expansive definition of philosophy, because our worldview is less restrictive than physicalism. 

iii) We can define philosophy in methodological terms. Among other things, philosophy concerns logic and the rules of argument. What constitutes a valid or invalid argument? What constitutes a sound or unsound argument? 

iv) We can define philosophy according to the content of philosophy, viz. metaphysics, ethics, epistemology, hermeneutics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science.

v) We can define philosophy in terms of the sources of philosophy. On one definition, philosophy relies on unaided reason. Nonrevelatory sources of information, viz., intuition, personal experience, testimonial evidence. 

vi) Then there's philosophical theology. This could take two different forms:

a) Begin with a revealed truth, then explicate or supplement that through nonrevealtory sources. 

b) Develop the theological implications of nonrevealed sources, viz. a priori theistic proofs. 

II. Misuses

i) One misuse of philosophy in theology is to build a theological system on abstract possibilities. On something that's merely conceivable and consistent, even though there's no positive reason to believe it's true. Possibilities greatly outnumber truths. Many things are possible which will never be true. Putting your faith in some appealing, but imaginary theological construct, is foolish.

ii) Another misuse of philosophy in theology is to invoke intuition to discount revelatory truths. 

III. Uses

i) Knowing how to construct sound arguments or detect unsound arguments is important in both exegetical and systematic theology.

ii) Inferring the logical implications of a revealed truth, or the logical relationship between one revealed truth and another, is important in systematic theology.

iii) Hermeneutics is important in exegetical theology. For instance, what is the locus of meaning? Authorial intent? The audience? Which audience? The historical audience? Implied audience?

Is the meaning of a Psalms self-contained, or does the Psalter as a whole contribute to the meaning of each individual Psalm? 

Or the need to distinguish between sense and reference. 

iv) God-talk

Is God-talk literal or figurative? Is God-talk univocal, analogical, or equivocal? 

In principle, two readers could interpret the Bible the same way, but one reader has a noncognitive theory of God-talk. He doesn't think Biblical statements about God convey genuine information about God's nature or activity in the world. 

v) Philosophy can explore the rational grounds for believing revealed truths.

vi) Philosophy can explicate or fill in revealed truths by using analogies, viz. what does it mean for God to be timeless or spaceless? Abstract objects can supply analogies. 

vii) Philosophy can be deployed to give positive reasons for believing in theology, viz., theistic proofs. 

viii) Philosophy can be of aid in formulating doctrines. Using precise terminology. Avoiding inaccurate or heretical formulations. 

ix) Philosophy can be deployed to rebut objections to theology. There are many examples:

a) If an atheist objects to the possibility of a timeless or spaceless Creator making the physical world, he is making assumptions about the nature of causality. And there are different philosophical theories of causality. Likewise, how a timeless, spaceless God can know the physical world. 

b) If an atheist objects to the possibility of the intermediate state, philosophical arguments for substance dualism can support the possibility of postmortem survival. 

c) If an atheist objects to miracles, because they "violate" the laws of nature, that raises questions about the ontological status of physical laws. 

d) If an atheist deploys the argument from evil, that raises metaethical questions about secular ethics. Likewise, it raises questions about whether there's a best possible world. That involves thought-experiments. 

e) If an atheist assures us that science has disproven the Bible, that figures in the philosophy of science. Theories of time. Theories of perception. Methodological naturalism. The uniformity of nature. The problem of induction. 

He might also argue that science tacitly relies on theological underpinnings. 

f) If an atheist objects to the possibility of a resurrection, that involves theories of personal identity. 

g) If an atheist alleges that Christian doctrines like the Trinity, Incarnation, divine omniscience, or divine omnipotence, are incoherent, Christians philosophers may be able to show the coherence of these doctrines.

h) But suppose Christian philosophers can't demonstrate their coherence. Yet Christian philosophers might point out that there are many intractable paradoxes in math, science, and philosophy, so the mere fact that some Christian doctrines seem to be incoherent is not an undercutter or defeater so long as we have some independent reason to believe them.

i) An atheist might alleged that Scripture is self-contradictory. A Christian philosopher might respond by critiquing crude notions of what constitutes a contradiction. 

j) An atheist might object that Christians believe in things they can't prove. A Christian philosopher might respond between distinguishing between proof and knowledge. 

High Church?

These two links recently caught my eye:

http://mereorthodoxy.com/millennials-joining-high-church-traditions/

The point here isn’t to get into a fight about who has more converts, but simply to highlight the fact that the trickle of noteworthy evangelicals going to Rome tends to get a fair amount of coverage while the stream of young people leaving Catholicism for Protestantism seems to receive far less...

That said, there is still an interesting discussion to be had about millennial Christians who aren’t happy with the state of evangelicalism and who are looking for something different. There’s a type of younger evangelical who is a conscientious, thoroughly orthodox believer who feels frustrated with the triviality and faddishness of popular evangelicalism.

http://calvinistinternational.com/2014/01/15/high-church-ancient-church-limits-aesthetic/

In that second link, Peter Escalante quotes from the Council of Nicaea:

FORASMUCH as there are certain persons who kneel on the Lord’s Day and in the days of Pentecost, therefore, to the intent that all things may be uniformly observed everywhere (in every parish), it seems good to the Holy Synod that prayer be made to God standing.

He continues: I myself don’t really buy the reasoning that seems to be behind this particular canon, but that’s not the point. The point is, this was a widely held view in the ancient church, and not so widely held in [today’s] “high church.”

My point would be, much of what we see that goes by the name “ancient church” really begins in the 4th century. People who want something like a more genuine Christianity as it was “in the beginning”, that is, in earliest Christianity, would do better to look to the Baptist Pot Luck Lunch.

The Tide of Scholarship favors Christ and the New Testament, but challenges historical Roman Catholic views

The charge has been made of me by a writer who goes by the handle “Cletus Van Damme”, that goes something like this (paraphrasing):

When liberal scholars suggest that the Resurrection didn’t happen or that the OT is not historically accurate, you dismiss them and their methodology. But when those same liberal methodologies help your case against Rome, then its jump onto the bandwagon. Hence your claim of “essentially by the same method of historical investigation” is disingenuous.

I have responded to it in this comment, and a slightly edited response appears below.

The emotional problem of evil

"God's Permitting Horrific Evils" by William Lane Craig.

Is Yahweh the Christian God?

There are professing Christians who essentially reject OT theism. They treat OT Judaism as a different religion. What are the differences between the OT and the NT?

i) In a broad sense, the OT represents promise while the NT represents fulfillment. Mind you, even that contrast presumes underlying continuity. The NT can only fulfill the OT if the OT is true. 

ii) In addition, this contrast is somewhat overstated. Both the OT and the NT contain eschatological promises whose fulfillment remains future. Some OT prophecies are fulfilled in the NT, but others remain outstanding. 

iii) The NT contains far less military and political history than the OT. The OT contains extensive historical narratives of palace intrigue, civil war, siege-warfare, and war with Israel's neighbors. It also narrates conditions of cyclical national apostasy. So there's a lot of violence and unsavory material in these pages. 

The four Gospels and Acts are the main historical books in the NT. The Gospels are tightly focussed on the public ministry of Christ while Acts is tightly focused on church-planting. If the NT devoted as much attention to narrating life in the Roman Empire that the OT does to life in the ANE, the NT would be just as violent and unsavory. 

The difference has to do with selection-criteria. The OT has more occasion to narrate brutality and depravity. It narrates the history of a nation. 

iv) Because Israel was a nation-state, the OT includes a law code. The law code includes a penal code as well as laws of war. 

This doesn't make for pleasant reading. However, it's not as if the new covenant obviates the need for a penal code or national defense. Most Christians aren't pacifists or anarchists. So Christian social life will require a counterpart to the OT law code. A penal code and military. 

I daresay that many Christian pacifists are only pacifists on paper. If an armed assailant broke into their home, threatened to rape their wife and slit the throats of their children, their theoretical pacifism would fly out the window. This is just a radical chic pose. 

v) The OT also contains purity codes, the violation of which can result in capital punishment or direct divine execution. The NT lacks the same purity codes. However, there's a principle which carries over. If anything, it's heightened: 

29 How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace? 30 For we know him who said, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge his people.” 31 It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God (Heb 10:29-31). 

vi) The fatal judgment exacted on Ananias, Sapphira (Acts 5), and Herod Agrippa (Acts 12), is very reminiscent of divine violence in the OT. Although it's not on the same scale as some OT judgments, that's a difference in degree rather than kind. 

vii) Likewise, the sack of Jerusalem, which Jesus threatens against apostate Jerusalem, is an example of large-scale divine violence, comparable to many OT judgments. 

viii) The NT contains a certain amount of martial imagery in describing the final judgment. I don't think Jesus literally swoops down from heaven on a war horse and puts his enemies to the sword (Rev 19). However, Revelation  does involve the forcible subjugation of God's enemies. And we can't rule out the possibility that this involves physical violence. 

“That Giant Sucking Sound®”

Generally, I am not a skeptic when it comes to sports. Nor am I a skeptic about business, and huge commercial successes.

In my life, I have been a relatively enthusiastic sports fan, at times. However, I think I’ve watched 10 minutes of NFL football this year. Lately it seems to me that “that Giant Sucking Sound®” we hear involves both time and money being sucked into professional sports. (Especially time, especially at my age.)

I can see why some people would see the repetitiveness here and lose interest in the enterprise.

For folks like me, these links can be useful to non sports fans who nevertheless may find themselves interacting with the general public:

AFC Championship Game: Patriots-Broncos

NFC Championship Game: 49ers-Seahawks


Image HT: David Houston

Red-letter Christians

This is part of an ongoing debate over at the blog of Peter Enns. Shepherd is a graduate of WTS, a classmate of Enns, and an OT prof. at Taylor Seminary. 

Jerry Shepherd KA Crosby • 

• −

K. A., of course, the problem here is that you are cherry-picking the life and teachings of Christ. The crucifixion of Christ is one very important act of self-disclosure. But according to that very same Christ, he will one day return as Judge in great power and glory with all his holy angels and put down all opposition to his reign, and that will be the ultimate disclosure. According to that very same Jesus, the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 was God's action of vengeance against for centuries of murdering the prophets, culminating in the murder of Jesus Christ himself (Matthew 24:34-36). So your suggestion is not an option for Christianity. At best, it is an option for a new version of Christianity which has decided that it will follow the teachings of Christ, but only if those teachings agree with the ideology of the new version's creators.

Jerry Shepherd KA Crosby • 

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K. A., my point here is just to show, and your reply demonstrates this, that those who protest so strenuously that Christ is going to be their hermeneutical criterion, usually don't mean that. What they mean is, "Christ is going to be my hermeneutical criterion, as long as the things he says agree with what I think." There are a whole lot of so-called "red-letter Christians" who use the "red-letter" verses in the Gospels to use as an evaluation tool for the rest of the Bible, and then, as it turns out, they actually don't like all the red-letter verses either. I am highly skeptical, therefore, of this attempt to separate "the voice of the man from the Word in scripture." It becomes way too subjective an enterprise.
Additionally, the idea of evil simply reaping its own punishment, though certainly true in a kind of proverbial sense in the Wisdom literature, is not what Jesus is talking about in Matthew 24. That passage, as well as many other passages, show God actively executing wrath against his enemies.

Jerry Shepherd Bev Mitchell • 

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Bev, while this suggestion is made from time to time, the majority of commentaries do not take Boyd's interpretive slant here. Boyd's understanding is more wishful than exegetical. The picture in Rev 19 is a wholistic scene, rather than a necessarily chronological one. The imagery which is brought forward from the OT, as well as the details in the text itself, argue against the idea that this is Christ's own blood. When you take Rev 18 and 19 together, this is nothing but the destruction of the enemies of the God and of the people of god. Babylon falls. A double portion of the atrocities she has committed are now returned upon her. God will repay her as much torture and grief as she has dished out. She will be plagued by death, mourning, and famine. Babylon is overthrown by violence. The rider on the white horse strikes down the nations. He judges and makes war. He rules over the nations with an iron scepter. Bird are invited to come and eat the flesh of the enemies he has conquered. The blood on the robe is blood of the enemies whom the rider slays as he treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God.

Crucicentrism and cruciformity are tremendously important concepts in the NT. But they do not negate the other portraits of wrath being poured out on the wicked.

Jerry Shepherd Bev Mitchell • 

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(1) Yes, Christianity must be crucicentric and cruciform at its very heart. The cross reveals who God is. At the same time, the cross does not exhaustively reveal who God is. So, for example, while on the one hand the cross is a revelation of God's love for his enemies (Luke 23:34; Romans 5:8); Jesus also indicates that the Father's response to those who spurned God's gift of his Son would not be a very pleasant one (Matt 21:33-44). Taken together with other passages such as the one I mentioned in a previous post (Matt 23:34-36), it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 was regarded by the early Christians, and prophesied by Jesus himself, to be the judgment of God on a nation that over the centuries had killed the prophets, and now had killed God's own Son. Despite Christ's prayer of forgiveness on the cross, that prayer was not answered in the affirmative for every single person, or even most persons. And God still brought judgment on the nation for what they had done to his Son. So I just note here that the discussion regarding the cross as revelation of the character of God needs additional nuancing to catch the full picture.
(2) In response to your request, I'll put my cards on the table and say that I believe the Scriptures are the infallible word of God. But they are also at each and every point humans words as well. Because they are humans words, there will be a certain level of accommodation in God's revelation of himself through those human words. I don't want to get caught up in any discussion of inerrancy with regard to all matters historical, scientific, etc. But I do insist that the revelation of God given us in inspired and holy Scripture should be regarded as theologically and morally infallible and inerrant. What God says about himself in the OT is trustworthy and true. And Jesus did not come for the purpose of correcting that revelation.

(3) I do not believe the Holy Spirit's role in exegesis is to help us understand the text, or to give us additional data that would in some way turn the light on and cause us to exclaim, "that's what it means." Rather, his role is to cause us to accept the truth of the text, to be convicted by it, and spiritually transformed by it. Some scholars would frame it this way: the Spirit's role is not cognitive but affective. The Spirit does not explain the text to us. That only comes about by hard exegetical work. But the Spirit does convict us of the truth of the text and the need to incorporate that truth into our own lives.

What's Your Worldview?

Voilà! Prof. James Anderson's latest pièce d'awesome.

Update: In case people don't already know about these lectures from Prof. Anderson.