Below are all the links to the massive debate between Calvinism and Arminianism that took place between (mainly) Victor Reppert, Steve Hays, Paul Manata, and Dominic Bnonn Tennant. This post will function as a (almost) one-stop shop for seeing anti-Calvinist arguments, and rebuttals to those arguments. Our opponent, Victor Reppert, has a PhD in philosophy and so makes for an ideal representative of the philosophical arguments Arminians use against Calvinists. In other words, this is no hand-picked opponent. Furthermore, the reader will notice that this debate covers much more ground than philosophical arguments against Calvinism. What began as a moral argument against Calvinism broke off into discussions on: Universalism, Hell, God's attributes, inerrancy, Frankfurt-Counter examples, compatibilism, libertarianism, exegesis of Scripture, theological presuppositions, and much more. This means that many arguments a Calvinist might run into are dealt with and addressed here. At the end, Reppert's last post shows the tremendously scaled down nature of his argument. He all but admits that there is no good argument against Calvinism that does not presuppose the falsity of key Calvinist tenants. He all but admits that the Calvinist can answer the strongest charge leveled against them by other Christians: the problem of evil.
I have a ranged the below in as coherent a list as I could. The debate was highly informal, and thus there are many skips to other subjects. Frequently the reader will note that Reppert never comes back to offer a surrejoinder to our rejoinders. Some "chapters" have many posts grouped together. This is because I felt that they revolved around a central theme and so I thought it would be better to include them all in one "chapter."
I think both Calvinists and Arminians can make use of this "debate." This "debate" will also be helpful generally. Many atheists raise PoE objections to Christianity that are dealt with and answered here. The Calvinist reader can employ the theodicies used here for purposes beyond the Calvinist/Arminian debate. So this "debate" should have a wider appeal and profit.
Steve Hays: Calvinist
Paul Manata: Calvinist
Victor Reppert: Arminian
Dominic Bnonn Tennant: Calvinist
1. Victor Reppert / Steve Hays / Dominic Bnonn Tennant
2. Victor Reppert / Paul Manata
3. Victor Reppert / Paul Manata
4. Victor Reppert / Steve Hays / Victor Reppert / Steve Hays / Paul Manata
5. Paul Manata
6. Victor Reppert / Paul Manata
7. Victor Reppert / Paul Manata
8. Victor Reppert (see second comment down from top) / Paul Manata / Victor Reppert / Paul Manata
9. Victor Reppert / Dominic Bnonn Tennant / Victor Reppert / Paul Manata
10. Steve Hays
11. Victor Reppert / Paul Manata / Dominic Bnonn Tennant
12. Victor Reppert / Paul Manata
13. Victor Reppert / Paul Manata
14. Victor Reppert / Paul Manata
15. Steve Hays
16. Victor Reppert / Paul Manata / Steve Hays (top of post) / Paul Manata
17. Victor Reppert / Steve Hays (bottom of post) / Paul Manata
18. Steve Hays / Steve Hays
19. Steve Hays
20. Victor Reppert / Steve Hays
21. Victor Reppert / Steve Hays / Paul Manata
22. Paul Manata / Victor Reppert
23. Victor Reppert (see 4th comment down from top) / Steve Hays
24. Paul Manata
25. Paul Manata / Victor Reppert (see 2nd comment down from top) / Paul Manata / Victor Reppert / Paul Manata / Paul Manata / Paul Manata
26. Steve Hays
27. Paul Manata
28. Victor Reppert / Steve Hays / Paul Manata
29. Paul Manata
30. Victor Reppert / Steve Hays / Paul Manata
31. Victor Reppert / Paul Manata / Paul Manata
32. Steve Hays
33. Victor Reppert / Steve Hays
34. Victor Reppert / Paul Manata
35. Victor Reppert / Steve Hays / Paul Manata (see comments section of Victor's post)
36. Paul Manata
37. Victor Reppert / (See that comment section for responses by myself and some other Calvinists.)
38. Victor Reppert / (See that comment section for responses by Hays, myself, and other Calvinists.)
39. Victor Reppert
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Manata. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Manata. Sort by date Show all posts
Saturday, June 07, 2008
Saturday, November 27, 2010
Help me! Help me!
Triablogue Caught in a Web of Deception
By Dr. Hector Avalos at 11/26/2010
How to Fight Cyber-Bullies and Win
“Caught in a web” of deception? Sounds like Hector has been watching too many old B horror films:
Delusion is standard fare at Triablogue, but this time even they have a difficult time explaining away a post that was so flagrant in its ethical violations that it had to be removed on August 6, 2010. Their embarrassing ethical fiasco left only a dead link here: Triablogue’s Dead Link.
But Avalos is, by his own admission, a moral relativist. So what would “flagrant ethical violations” amount to?
The post was written by Paul Manata, and it purported to show that renowned ethicists had demolished claims I had made about ethics and metaethics.
Which it certainly accomplished. Avalos is scared stiff.
In a very ill-conceived prank, Manata contacted a number of academic philosophers to ask their opinions about my stance on the circularity of many ethical premises, and those philosophers supposedly all refuted my position. But within a few hours of being published, the post was gone.
Manata’s post was like a snakebite from a Black Mamba. Without antivenom, one bite will suffice. No need to keep biting the victim. Just let nature do the rest.
What happened? If the refutation was so compelling and ethically proper, then why remove the post at all? And why have they kept it so quiet until now (and after I mentioned it) if they were so proud of what they did? Indeed, nothing could be a greater defeat for Triablogue than having to take a post down.
Who are the they?
On their website, Triablogue admits taking down the post and it offers these reasons for the ignominious defeat they suffered. See Triablogue’s Non-Explanation
i) How can Avalos ascribe “flagrant ethical violations” to a post when he’s a moral relativist?
ii) It wasn’t taken down due to ethical problems. It was taken down because Avalos, acting like a little pansy, contacted some of the individuals who panned his incompetent argument as a pressure tactic to censure Manata’s post.
The first one is easy to refute because Triablogue just doesn’t seem to understand even the basics of relativist ethics. Moral relativism does not deny that logic operates once you have accepted the basic premises of your ethics.
Moral relativism affirms that while the initial premises of any ethical system cannot be established by absolute rationales, one can still evaluate whether an ethical system is logically following the initial premises one affirms.
If that’s how he defines moral relativism, then why does he disapprove of the “genocidal passages” in the OT? After all, as long as OT holy war is logically consistent with the initial premises of the narrators or warriors, then there is no ethical lapse.
Likewise, why is Avalos so defensive about the Dinesh D’Sousa’s effort to link the Holocaust to atheism and Darwinism? Once again, as long as the Nazis were logically consistent with the basic premises of their value system, there would be no ethical violation even if atheism and/or Darwinism were the culprits.
Triabloggers affirm to live by truth and honesty, and they were shown not to be doing so.
Avalos hasn’t shown that we were shown to be unethical. He hasn’t shown that Manata’s conduct was logically inconsistent with the initial premises of Manata’s ethical system. Nor mine.
The second reason Triablogue offers is where a blatant untruth or lie is found. I can thoroughly document this untruth if they force the issue and they seem to assume that I don’t have at least some of the relevant e-mails from these philosophers that Triablogue has. Since I do not want to add to the time or trouble caused by Triablogue to these professional colleagues, I have decided not to identify them.
Once again, what’s the “blatant untruth or lie”?
For now, I can say the following:
1. Manata was unable to refute my arguments on his own, and so he sought to use an appeal to authority to refute me.
i) That’s a false dichotomy. Manata refuted them on his own as well as garnering the refutation of others.
ii) Since Avalos is the one who constantly appeals to authority by playing the credentials card, that’s simply a case of calling his bluff.
iii) Avalos said Paul Tobin consulted him before Tobin posted his initial reply to me.
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2010/08/truth-by-definition.html#2815213430833304714
Therefore, by Hector’s own yardstick, Paul Tobin comes up short. “Unable to refute” my arguments “on his own,” he turned to Avalos for help.
2. The philosophers contacted by Manata were given a version of my arguments filtered through Manata, and so they did not evaluate my arguments from my own writings. What Manata gave them were already tainted and distorted versions. Thus, these philosophers were not really evaluating my arguments at all.
As I recall, what Manta gave them were direct quotes from Hector’s chapter in TCD.
3. When I contacted these philosophers to warn them of what Manata had done, one of them responded and reported the following:
A. Manata represented himself only as a student working on something Avalos had written in connection with a course Manata was taking.
B. The philosopher contacted by Manata was not even told about Triablogue and was not asked to say something for publication on that website.
i) Wrong! Manata was not doing this for a course on ethics.
ii) But notice the point-blank contradiction. On #3, Avalos quotes the professor without any indication that he sought or received permission to quote his private email statement in public.
Yet then, on #4, Avalos faults Manata for doing the very thing which Avalos just did on #3! So did Avalos just commit a “flagrant ethical violation?”
C. That philosopher subsequently asked that his comments be removed, and Manata agreed to remove all of the others, too.
And how is it “flagrantly unethical” for Manata to comply with their request?
D. Triablogue, not I, censored the post when Manata realized that his juvenile prank had boomeranged on him. After all, Triablogue controls the website, and so how could I censor it?
Now Avalos is playing dumb. Yet he just admitted that he was the one who tried to get the post taken down by contacting the quoted sources.
Indeed, it’s a backdoor admission on his part that Manata’s post was so devastating to Hector’s fragile reputation that he had to use strong-arm tactics to try to get it removed from the public domain.
So, either Manata lied to these philosophers about his intentions, or he was not telling them the whole truth about his intentions. Manata used their work for a purpose at least some of them did not intend.
Well that’s rather silly. To take a really obvious example, historians and biographers routinely quote from or publish the private letters or diaries of famous individuals from the past. They didn’t obtain the permission of the decedent before they made this information public. Is that a “flagrant ethical violation”?
If one looks at the comments section of the relevant thread (Triablogue’s Non-Explanation), one also sees another blatant contradiction in the following exchange:
MICHAEL SAID:
Sorry, are we able to know why the post was taken down?
11/16/2010 6:16 AM
STEVE SAID:
Well, I didn't take it down, so that's not for me to say.
11/16/2010 8:18 AM
So, on the one hand, Steve Hays tells us he knows that ethical violations were not the reason the post was removed. On the other hand, when asked by Michael why it was taken down, he can only meekly retort that “I didn’t take it down, so that’s not for me to say.” A pusillanimous answer if I’ve ever read one. After all---Couldn’t he even ask Manata?
i) Where’s the “blatant contradiction”? For that matter, he hasn’t even established a previous “blatant contradiction,” much less “another blatant contradiction.”
ii) Assuming my response was “pusillanimous,” what’s so bad about pusillanimity to a moral relativist like Avalos?
iii) Avalos is fallaciously assuming I didn’t know the reason. However, I didn’t say one way or the other. That’s the point.
Why did Triablobue not issue an explanation about their dead link that was only up for a few hours? Didn’t their own readers deserve an explanation? If Hays was willing to say that it was not taken down because of ethical reasons, why couldn’t he tell us the reason it was taken down?
No, they don’t deserve an explanation. I don’t owe them an explanation for what I do, and they don’t owe me an explanation for what they do.
This isn’t like an annual meeting with stockholders on how we invested their money or used the company car.
In any case, it really does not matter whether I am a moral relativist or not.
When an accuser hurls the charge of “flagrant ethical violations,” it certainly matters if the accuser turns out to be a moral relativist.
What matters is that at least one of the moral authorities that Triablogue consulted thought Triablogue was violating HIS ethical standards, not just mine.
i) To begin with, we only have Hector’s word to go by. Why should we credit the hearsay testimony of an avowed moral relativist?
ii) Moreover, even if that were true, so what? Remember how Hector just defined moral relativism?
The first one is easy to refute because Triablogue just doesn’t seem to understand even the basics of relativist ethics. Moral relativism does not deny that logic operates once you have accepted the basic premises of your ethics.
Moral relativism affirms that while the initial premises of any ethical system cannot be established by absolute rationales, one can still evaluate whether an ethical system is logically following the initial premises one affirms.
So, by his own definition, even if (arguendo) Manata violated the moral code of the unnamed professor, that wouldn’t make Manata guilty of a flagrant ethical violation–for what’s ethical or unethical is internal to each individual’s moral code. Unless Manata has the same moral code as the unnamed professor, a moral relativist like Avalos can’t judge Manata’s morality by an outsider’s standard of conduct. In moral relativism, as Avalos defines it, these are incommensurable. What matters is consistency with your own moral premises, not consistency with a second party’s moral premises.
From there, Triablogue’s attempt to whitewash their ethical lapses just gets worse.
Notice how Avalos steadily builds on a series of false premises.
Indeed, the main thing they have left is to assail my supposed “social inferiority” complex due to my economic and ethnic background. Actually, I am not ashamed at all of my background, and I have written on my background quite frequently.
To the contrary, he clearly looks down on his folk Pentecostal roots.
The removal of the post suggest that he is not a fighter, but rather a cowardly cyber-bully who runs when challenged. He may have been the hapless fellow cowering in the alleys when the big boys came looking for him. After all, he was the first to run to these philosophers when he could not handle the argument on his own. Why is that not described as being a “little pansy”?
Notice that Avalos is resorting to emotive appeals to shame Manata. But remember that Avalos is a moral relativist. So his coercive rhetoric is toothless.
The rest of the comments by Parsival38 (aka Steve Hays?) on the thread are simply rehash. This person, by his own definition (peer reviewed journal articles), has no standing in epistemology or ethics, and so he is not even able to judge whether I am competent in those fields. Hays is not in a position to say who is or is not an epistemologist.
i) That’s ironic. Avalos is a “minimalist” in archeology, yet he identifies me as the pseudonymous commenter, even though he offers absolutely no evidence to substantiate his identification.
ii) One doesn’t need to be an epistemologist to know the Avalos is not an epistemologist.
The idea that Prometheus is not a scholarly press is also simply nonsense. The books by Prometheus are reviewed by recognized scholars in recognized scholarly venues (e.g., Review of Biblical Literature), and so it shows that other scholars do recognize their books as scholarly.
When I turn to the Prometheus catalogue, here are some of the “scholarly” titles I find:
The Government vs. Erotica: The Siege of Adam & Eve
Philip D. Harvey
Foreword by Nadine Strossen, president, ACLU
Eight Keys to Greatness: How to Unlock Your Hidden Potential
Gene N. Landrum, PhD
Chocolate— A Healthy Passion
Shara Aaron and Monica Bearden
Lessons of the Locker Room: The Myth of School Sports
Andrew W. Miracle Jr. and C. Roger Rees
Simpsonology: There’s a Little Bit of Springfield in All of Us
Tim Delaney
Seinology: The Sociology of Seinfeld
Tim Delaney
Infiltrating Red-State, White-Ass, and Blue-Suit America
Harmon Leon
A Solstice Tree for Jenny
Karen Shragg
Hooking Up: A Girl’s All-Out Guide to Sex and Sexuality
Amber Madison
S & M: Studies in Dominance and Submission
Edited by Thomas S. Weinberg
Armed Robbery Orgasm: A Lovemap Autobiography of Masochism
Ronald W. Keyes and John Money
The Breathless Orgasm: A Lovemap Biography of Asphyxiophilia
John Money, Gordon Wainwright, and David Hingsburger
Transvestites: The Erotic Drive to Cross-Dress
Magnus Hirschfeld, MD
Dirty Talk
Diary of a Phone Sex “Mistress”
Gary Anthony with Rocky Bennett
Raw Talent: The Adult Film Industry as Seen by Its Most Popular Male Star
Jerry Butler, as told to Robert H. Rimmer and Catherine Tavel
However, I’ll happily grant that Hector’s Prometheus’ titles are fully the equal of these.
Moving along:
August 6, 2010 should be remembered as the date when Triablogue saw its own work as so inane, juvenile, and ethically incoherent that it had to erase it from the world.
How is Manata quoting some professional ethicists on the quality (or lack thereof) of Hector’s argument for moral relativism inane, juvenile, and ethically incompetent?
Manata, who usually trumpets even the slightest supposed victory, has kept quiet this long about it because he knows his defeat was as definitive as it gets in the blogosphere.
To the contrary, Avalos, by his own admission, was so afraid of Manata’s post that he tried to silence his critics. And the fact that he’s still running scared from a deleted post is a self-witness to his professional and intellectual insecurity.
Finally, it will not matter even if Triablogue does post responses purported to come private communications with philosophers. With Triablogue’s credibility with at least some academic ethicists now in tatters, it is clear that supposed quotes and refutations from philosophers posted on Triablogue cannot be taken at face value.
The accuracy of the quotes is evident from the fact that Avalos felt so threatened by them that he went to such lengths to suppress them.
Unless those philosophers post it on their own websites or write it in their own publications, nothing on Triablogue said to come from private communications with philosophers should be trusted to be what Triablogue claims it to be.
Only somebody as panic-stricken as Avalos would resort to these transparent disclaimers.
1. Given Triablogue’s professed adherence to high ethical standards, did Hays ever request that Manata show him the correspondence he sent to these professional philosophers?
As far as that goes, I’d take Manata’s word for it.
2. If he Manata did share such correspondence, did Hays ensure that Manata represented himself and his intentions truthfully to these philosophers?
Manata’s declared intentions were to ask them to evaluate Hector’s argument for moral relativism. Which they did, much to Hector’s acute embarrassment.
3. If Manata did not represent himself truthfully, will he be censured, reprimanded, or forced to issue some sort of apology? Will Triablogue issue an apology or explanation for this sort of misrepresentation?
Since there was no misrepresentation, no apology is even in order.
I actually did not respond to this prank publicly until Parsival38 (aka Steve Hays) trolled the DC site with further personal attacks in the thread to a November 10 post on DC (Avalos Profile).
I await Hector’s evidence that I’m Parsival38.
The problem with the Triabloggers is that they sometimes become inconsiderate of the time professional colleagues have to expend undoing their pranks. Triabloggers think that universities and professors are in the business of settling every argument that they cannot handle themselves. Thus, when it becomes clear that they have no respect for taking the time of colleagues, then it is time to expose them for what they are.
i) By that standard, Paul Tobin can’t handle the arguments on his own.
ii) To judge by some student reviews of Hector’s job performance, the more time we divert from his work, the better for all parties concerned:
Hector Avalos
Name: Hector Avalos
School: Iowa State University
Location: Ames, IA
Department: Religion
**********
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. Has a good heart tho.
**********
Claims to be valid because he is "impartial" to subject material, yet clearly, and vocally, is against or unfavorable toward material presented. Professor Avalos has a distinct presuppostion that orders his manner of teaching, yet refuses to recognize his own bias.
**********
His broken English does nothing to strengthen his typically convoluted arguments. Class is ridiculously easy, however, if one has been exposed to works such as Atheism for Dummies.
**********
He is EXTREMELY biased against all religion, but if you know that going in, he makes you think.
**********
He has all the wrong answers to all the right questions.
http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=469479&page=1
By Dr. Hector Avalos at 11/26/2010
How to Fight Cyber-Bullies and Win
“Caught in a web” of deception? Sounds like Hector has been watching too many old B horror films:
Delusion is standard fare at Triablogue, but this time even they have a difficult time explaining away a post that was so flagrant in its ethical violations that it had to be removed on August 6, 2010. Their embarrassing ethical fiasco left only a dead link here: Triablogue’s Dead Link.
But Avalos is, by his own admission, a moral relativist. So what would “flagrant ethical violations” amount to?
The post was written by Paul Manata, and it purported to show that renowned ethicists had demolished claims I had made about ethics and metaethics.
Which it certainly accomplished. Avalos is scared stiff.
In a very ill-conceived prank, Manata contacted a number of academic philosophers to ask their opinions about my stance on the circularity of many ethical premises, and those philosophers supposedly all refuted my position. But within a few hours of being published, the post was gone.
Manata’s post was like a snakebite from a Black Mamba. Without antivenom, one bite will suffice. No need to keep biting the victim. Just let nature do the rest.
What happened? If the refutation was so compelling and ethically proper, then why remove the post at all? And why have they kept it so quiet until now (and after I mentioned it) if they were so proud of what they did? Indeed, nothing could be a greater defeat for Triablogue than having to take a post down.
Who are the they?
On their website, Triablogue admits taking down the post and it offers these reasons for the ignominious defeat they suffered. See Triablogue’s Non-Explanation
i) How can Avalos ascribe “flagrant ethical violations” to a post when he’s a moral relativist?
ii) It wasn’t taken down due to ethical problems. It was taken down because Avalos, acting like a little pansy, contacted some of the individuals who panned his incompetent argument as a pressure tactic to censure Manata’s post.
The first one is easy to refute because Triablogue just doesn’t seem to understand even the basics of relativist ethics. Moral relativism does not deny that logic operates once you have accepted the basic premises of your ethics.
Moral relativism affirms that while the initial premises of any ethical system cannot be established by absolute rationales, one can still evaluate whether an ethical system is logically following the initial premises one affirms.
If that’s how he defines moral relativism, then why does he disapprove of the “genocidal passages” in the OT? After all, as long as OT holy war is logically consistent with the initial premises of the narrators or warriors, then there is no ethical lapse.
Likewise, why is Avalos so defensive about the Dinesh D’Sousa’s effort to link the Holocaust to atheism and Darwinism? Once again, as long as the Nazis were logically consistent with the basic premises of their value system, there would be no ethical violation even if atheism and/or Darwinism were the culprits.
Triabloggers affirm to live by truth and honesty, and they were shown not to be doing so.
Avalos hasn’t shown that we were shown to be unethical. He hasn’t shown that Manata’s conduct was logically inconsistent with the initial premises of Manata’s ethical system. Nor mine.
The second reason Triablogue offers is where a blatant untruth or lie is found. I can thoroughly document this untruth if they force the issue and they seem to assume that I don’t have at least some of the relevant e-mails from these philosophers that Triablogue has. Since I do not want to add to the time or trouble caused by Triablogue to these professional colleagues, I have decided not to identify them.
Once again, what’s the “blatant untruth or lie”?
For now, I can say the following:
1. Manata was unable to refute my arguments on his own, and so he sought to use an appeal to authority to refute me.
i) That’s a false dichotomy. Manata refuted them on his own as well as garnering the refutation of others.
ii) Since Avalos is the one who constantly appeals to authority by playing the credentials card, that’s simply a case of calling his bluff.
iii) Avalos said Paul Tobin consulted him before Tobin posted his initial reply to me.
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2010/08/truth-by-definition.html#2815213430833304714
Therefore, by Hector’s own yardstick, Paul Tobin comes up short. “Unable to refute” my arguments “on his own,” he turned to Avalos for help.
2. The philosophers contacted by Manata were given a version of my arguments filtered through Manata, and so they did not evaluate my arguments from my own writings. What Manata gave them were already tainted and distorted versions. Thus, these philosophers were not really evaluating my arguments at all.
As I recall, what Manta gave them were direct quotes from Hector’s chapter in TCD.
3. When I contacted these philosophers to warn them of what Manata had done, one of them responded and reported the following:
A. Manata represented himself only as a student working on something Avalos had written in connection with a course Manata was taking.
B. The philosopher contacted by Manata was not even told about Triablogue and was not asked to say something for publication on that website.
i) Wrong! Manata was not doing this for a course on ethics.
ii) But notice the point-blank contradiction. On #3, Avalos quotes the professor without any indication that he sought or received permission to quote his private email statement in public.
Yet then, on #4, Avalos faults Manata for doing the very thing which Avalos just did on #3! So did Avalos just commit a “flagrant ethical violation?”
C. That philosopher subsequently asked that his comments be removed, and Manata agreed to remove all of the others, too.
And how is it “flagrantly unethical” for Manata to comply with their request?
D. Triablogue, not I, censored the post when Manata realized that his juvenile prank had boomeranged on him. After all, Triablogue controls the website, and so how could I censor it?
Now Avalos is playing dumb. Yet he just admitted that he was the one who tried to get the post taken down by contacting the quoted sources.
Indeed, it’s a backdoor admission on his part that Manata’s post was so devastating to Hector’s fragile reputation that he had to use strong-arm tactics to try to get it removed from the public domain.
So, either Manata lied to these philosophers about his intentions, or he was not telling them the whole truth about his intentions. Manata used their work for a purpose at least some of them did not intend.
Well that’s rather silly. To take a really obvious example, historians and biographers routinely quote from or publish the private letters or diaries of famous individuals from the past. They didn’t obtain the permission of the decedent before they made this information public. Is that a “flagrant ethical violation”?
If one looks at the comments section of the relevant thread (Triablogue’s Non-Explanation), one also sees another blatant contradiction in the following exchange:
MICHAEL SAID:
Sorry, are we able to know why the post was taken down?
11/16/2010 6:16 AM
STEVE SAID:
Well, I didn't take it down, so that's not for me to say.
11/16/2010 8:18 AM
So, on the one hand, Steve Hays tells us he knows that ethical violations were not the reason the post was removed. On the other hand, when asked by Michael why it was taken down, he can only meekly retort that “I didn’t take it down, so that’s not for me to say.” A pusillanimous answer if I’ve ever read one. After all---Couldn’t he even ask Manata?
i) Where’s the “blatant contradiction”? For that matter, he hasn’t even established a previous “blatant contradiction,” much less “another blatant contradiction.”
ii) Assuming my response was “pusillanimous,” what’s so bad about pusillanimity to a moral relativist like Avalos?
iii) Avalos is fallaciously assuming I didn’t know the reason. However, I didn’t say one way or the other. That’s the point.
Why did Triablobue not issue an explanation about their dead link that was only up for a few hours? Didn’t their own readers deserve an explanation? If Hays was willing to say that it was not taken down because of ethical reasons, why couldn’t he tell us the reason it was taken down?
No, they don’t deserve an explanation. I don’t owe them an explanation for what I do, and they don’t owe me an explanation for what they do.
This isn’t like an annual meeting with stockholders on how we invested their money or used the company car.
In any case, it really does not matter whether I am a moral relativist or not.
When an accuser hurls the charge of “flagrant ethical violations,” it certainly matters if the accuser turns out to be a moral relativist.
What matters is that at least one of the moral authorities that Triablogue consulted thought Triablogue was violating HIS ethical standards, not just mine.
i) To begin with, we only have Hector’s word to go by. Why should we credit the hearsay testimony of an avowed moral relativist?
ii) Moreover, even if that were true, so what? Remember how Hector just defined moral relativism?
The first one is easy to refute because Triablogue just doesn’t seem to understand even the basics of relativist ethics. Moral relativism does not deny that logic operates once you have accepted the basic premises of your ethics.
Moral relativism affirms that while the initial premises of any ethical system cannot be established by absolute rationales, one can still evaluate whether an ethical system is logically following the initial premises one affirms.
So, by his own definition, even if (arguendo) Manata violated the moral code of the unnamed professor, that wouldn’t make Manata guilty of a flagrant ethical violation–for what’s ethical or unethical is internal to each individual’s moral code. Unless Manata has the same moral code as the unnamed professor, a moral relativist like Avalos can’t judge Manata’s morality by an outsider’s standard of conduct. In moral relativism, as Avalos defines it, these are incommensurable. What matters is consistency with your own moral premises, not consistency with a second party’s moral premises.
From there, Triablogue’s attempt to whitewash their ethical lapses just gets worse.
Notice how Avalos steadily builds on a series of false premises.
Indeed, the main thing they have left is to assail my supposed “social inferiority” complex due to my economic and ethnic background. Actually, I am not ashamed at all of my background, and I have written on my background quite frequently.
To the contrary, he clearly looks down on his folk Pentecostal roots.
The removal of the post suggest that he is not a fighter, but rather a cowardly cyber-bully who runs when challenged. He may have been the hapless fellow cowering in the alleys when the big boys came looking for him. After all, he was the first to run to these philosophers when he could not handle the argument on his own. Why is that not described as being a “little pansy”?
Notice that Avalos is resorting to emotive appeals to shame Manata. But remember that Avalos is a moral relativist. So his coercive rhetoric is toothless.
The rest of the comments by Parsival38 (aka Steve Hays?) on the thread are simply rehash. This person, by his own definition (peer reviewed journal articles), has no standing in epistemology or ethics, and so he is not even able to judge whether I am competent in those fields. Hays is not in a position to say who is or is not an epistemologist.
i) That’s ironic. Avalos is a “minimalist” in archeology, yet he identifies me as the pseudonymous commenter, even though he offers absolutely no evidence to substantiate his identification.
ii) One doesn’t need to be an epistemologist to know the Avalos is not an epistemologist.
The idea that Prometheus is not a scholarly press is also simply nonsense. The books by Prometheus are reviewed by recognized scholars in recognized scholarly venues (e.g., Review of Biblical Literature), and so it shows that other scholars do recognize their books as scholarly.
When I turn to the Prometheus catalogue, here are some of the “scholarly” titles I find:
The Government vs. Erotica: The Siege of Adam & Eve
Philip D. Harvey
Foreword by Nadine Strossen, president, ACLU
Eight Keys to Greatness: How to Unlock Your Hidden Potential
Gene N. Landrum, PhD
Chocolate— A Healthy Passion
Shara Aaron and Monica Bearden
Lessons of the Locker Room: The Myth of School Sports
Andrew W. Miracle Jr. and C. Roger Rees
Simpsonology: There’s a Little Bit of Springfield in All of Us
Tim Delaney
Seinology: The Sociology of Seinfeld
Tim Delaney
Infiltrating Red-State, White-Ass, and Blue-Suit America
Harmon Leon
A Solstice Tree for Jenny
Karen Shragg
Hooking Up: A Girl’s All-Out Guide to Sex and Sexuality
Amber Madison
S & M: Studies in Dominance and Submission
Edited by Thomas S. Weinberg
Armed Robbery Orgasm: A Lovemap Autobiography of Masochism
Ronald W. Keyes and John Money
The Breathless Orgasm: A Lovemap Biography of Asphyxiophilia
John Money, Gordon Wainwright, and David Hingsburger
Transvestites: The Erotic Drive to Cross-Dress
Magnus Hirschfeld, MD
Dirty Talk
Diary of a Phone Sex “Mistress”
Gary Anthony with Rocky Bennett
Raw Talent: The Adult Film Industry as Seen by Its Most Popular Male Star
Jerry Butler, as told to Robert H. Rimmer and Catherine Tavel
However, I’ll happily grant that Hector’s Prometheus’ titles are fully the equal of these.
Moving along:
August 6, 2010 should be remembered as the date when Triablogue saw its own work as so inane, juvenile, and ethically incoherent that it had to erase it from the world.
How is Manata quoting some professional ethicists on the quality (or lack thereof) of Hector’s argument for moral relativism inane, juvenile, and ethically incompetent?
Manata, who usually trumpets even the slightest supposed victory, has kept quiet this long about it because he knows his defeat was as definitive as it gets in the blogosphere.
To the contrary, Avalos, by his own admission, was so afraid of Manata’s post that he tried to silence his critics. And the fact that he’s still running scared from a deleted post is a self-witness to his professional and intellectual insecurity.
Finally, it will not matter even if Triablogue does post responses purported to come private communications with philosophers. With Triablogue’s credibility with at least some academic ethicists now in tatters, it is clear that supposed quotes and refutations from philosophers posted on Triablogue cannot be taken at face value.
The accuracy of the quotes is evident from the fact that Avalos felt so threatened by them that he went to such lengths to suppress them.
Unless those philosophers post it on their own websites or write it in their own publications, nothing on Triablogue said to come from private communications with philosophers should be trusted to be what Triablogue claims it to be.
Only somebody as panic-stricken as Avalos would resort to these transparent disclaimers.
1. Given Triablogue’s professed adherence to high ethical standards, did Hays ever request that Manata show him the correspondence he sent to these professional philosophers?
As far as that goes, I’d take Manata’s word for it.
2. If he Manata did share such correspondence, did Hays ensure that Manata represented himself and his intentions truthfully to these philosophers?
Manata’s declared intentions were to ask them to evaluate Hector’s argument for moral relativism. Which they did, much to Hector’s acute embarrassment.
3. If Manata did not represent himself truthfully, will he be censured, reprimanded, or forced to issue some sort of apology? Will Triablogue issue an apology or explanation for this sort of misrepresentation?
Since there was no misrepresentation, no apology is even in order.
I actually did not respond to this prank publicly until Parsival38 (aka Steve Hays) trolled the DC site with further personal attacks in the thread to a November 10 post on DC (Avalos Profile).
I await Hector’s evidence that I’m Parsival38.
The problem with the Triabloggers is that they sometimes become inconsiderate of the time professional colleagues have to expend undoing their pranks. Triabloggers think that universities and professors are in the business of settling every argument that they cannot handle themselves. Thus, when it becomes clear that they have no respect for taking the time of colleagues, then it is time to expose them for what they are.
i) By that standard, Paul Tobin can’t handle the arguments on his own.
ii) To judge by some student reviews of Hector’s job performance, the more time we divert from his work, the better for all parties concerned:
Hector Avalos
Name: Hector Avalos
School: Iowa State University
Location: Ames, IA
Department: Religion
**********
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. Has a good heart tho.
**********
Claims to be valid because he is "impartial" to subject material, yet clearly, and vocally, is against or unfavorable toward material presented. Professor Avalos has a distinct presuppostion that orders his manner of teaching, yet refuses to recognize his own bias.
**********
His broken English does nothing to strengthen his typically convoluted arguments. Class is ridiculously easy, however, if one has been exposed to works such as Atheism for Dummies.
**********
He is EXTREMELY biased against all religion, but if you know that going in, he makes you think.
**********
He has all the wrong answers to all the right questions.
http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=469479&page=1
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
You're dethpicable!
Sean Gerety has done a post in response to me and others:
http://godshammer.wordpress.com/2009/04/29/vantillian-shadow-boxing-round-one/
Cutting the dead wood, I’ll comment on his major claims:
But how can he possibly know this?…Beyond that, Manata has no way of knowing that the Bible contains even one “unarticulated equivocation on the part of the revealer.”
i) Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that this is an accurate description of Manata’s position. Let’s further assume, for the sake of argument, that this is, indeed, a consequence of Manata’s position.
So the basic objection is that we should reject Manata’s position if a consequence of his position is that Manata can’t know what the Bible says about this or that.
Now, assuming that this consequence is sufficient to invalidate Manata’s position, it’s equally sufficient to invalidate Sean’s position. If Scripturalism is true, then Sean can’t know a single thing about the Bible. He can’t know anything the Bible says. Indeed, he cannot knowingly distinguish a Bible from a Koran or Playboy magazine or Mad magazine.
ii) If the Bible is the only source of knowledge, then Sean can’t get past the subject/object duality. Scripture would be the object of knowledge, but the subject of knowledge (e.g. Sean) would be an extrabiblical entity. So how could an extrabiblical subject of knowledge ever come to know the biblical object of knowledge if the Bible is the only source of knowledge?
iii) He can’t learn what the Bible teaches through the use of his senses, for Scripturalism rejects the senses as a source of knowledge. The Bible is the only source of knowledge.
iv) He can’t learn what the Bible teaches through innate knowledge, in part because he has no innate knowledge of the Bible. We’re not born knowing what the Bible teaches.
Indeed, that would undermine the very notion of a public, historic revelation. God revealed himself through the medium of speakers and writers. The spoken word and the written word. And the written word is also the record of the spoken word.
It was revealed to Christians via prophets and Apostles. Bible writers.
v) And even if, for the sake of argument, the knowledge of Scripture were innate, Scripturalism would reject that mode of knowledge–for in that case, Scripture would not be the only source of knowledge. Rather, the knowledge of Scripture would be mediated by the innate knowledge of the human mind. The human mind would be the immediate source of knowledge, and not the word of God.
If that isn’t enough to show the absurdity and blasphemy entailed in defending the idea of Biblical paradox, shall we revisit some of the incredible nonsense — along with outright and open heresies — some of these men have defended all in the name of “biblical paradox”? It is no coincidence that virtually all defenders of the false gospel of the Federal Vision are self-professed Vantilians. It’s no surprise either that virtually all of the Federal Vision opponents that happen to be Vantilians remain utterly incapable of doing anything to stop it’s advance and instead call the FV men currently disturbing the church “our brothers in Christ.” I guess one good paradox deserves another.
Three problems with this claim:
i) If Scripturalism is true, then Sean is in no position to know what Van Tilians believe. He’s in no position to know what Federal Visionaries believe. He’s in no position to impute the views of the Federal Vision to any Van Tilians.
Sean is like a drunk who keeps swearing off the bottle, only to find himself back in the saloon a day later. In one breath he vigorously asserts the tenets of Scripturalism, but in the next breath he relapses into extrabiblical assertions.
It’s hard for him to keep up the Scripturalist act 24/7. He keeps forgetting his lines. He keeps reverting to the default position of extrabiblical knowledge.
ii) Does he have any evidence that Anderson endorses the Federal Vision? Does he have any evidence that Sudduth endorses the Federal Vision?
Both Manata and I are on record repudiating the Federal Vision.
iii) While we’re on the subject of “outright and open heresies,” what about Clark’s pantheistic idealism, when he reduces human beings to nothing more than divine ideas? What about Clark’s modalism, when he collapses the immanent Trinity into the economic Trinity (cf. The Incarnation, p55)?
Calling Manata out again on his sinful treatment of Clark, who was easily the most important Christian thinker of the last century.
Is that a fact? No. Not on Scripturalist grounds. Does Scripture explicitly or implicitly teach that Clark was easily the most important Christian thinker of the last century? Obviously not.
That is simply Sean’s opinion. And opinion which falls short of knowledge. An opinion that he can’t even probabilify.
For all he knows, Clark might just as well be the least important Christian thinker of the last century. For all he knows, Clark may not even be a Christian thinker. For all he knows, Clark may be a Scientologist.
If Scripturalism is true, these extrascriptural assertions fall short of knowledge. If Scripturalism is true, then you can’t even rank extrascriptural assertions according to probable degrees of truth.
Hence, one man’s opinion is no better than another man’s opinion.
And Robbins, who was Clark’s most able and best known defender, became the catalyst for another tired attack on Scripturalist epistemology.
If Robbins was his most able defender, then the case for Clark’s position weak indeed!
Now, I never claimed that one could know that Clark, Robbins, or even Manata exist.
If Scripturalism is true, then he can’t even know that Adam, Abraham, David, Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John ever existed.
Heck, he can’t even know if Jesus ever existed. He may opine that Jesus existed, but his opinion is no better than the contrary opinion of Richard Carrier.
Frankly, since the word “exists” can be predicated on everything from hallucinations to Klingons, I would argue that everything exists. Regardless, perhaps “Gordon Clark” was the nom de plume of some ghost writer. I honestly have no way of knowing. Seeing that Paul Manata has posted under the name Tom Bombadil, perhaps Bombadil is really Manata or perhaps both are Steve Hays? The Internet is a funny place. Yet, somehow men like Hays and Manata think that if I cannot account for the existence of a given person apart from Scripture and can’t “know” they exist in the sense of a justified true belief, then any opinion I may have of these men, even if true, is therefore moot.
Frankly, Sean can’t even “give an account” of how he knows Scripture. For Scripturalism, Scripture is like a safe with all the right answers on the inside. But we lack the combination to open the safe.
I have to wonder if these men while claiming to be Christians (something I also cannot know, but can only presume) would agree that Scripture does in fact prohibit false witness along with slander in many places including Colossians 3:8; “But now you also, put them all aside: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive speech from your mouth.”
Agree on what grounds? Scripturalist grounds? On Scripturalist grounds, we can’t say that Scripture prohibits false witness or slander. We can’t know what Scripture says because we can’t “give an account” of how we know that–if Scripturalism is true. We can’t give an empirical account of how we know that since Scripture rejects sense knowledge. And we can’t give an intuitive account of how we know that since we’re not born with a knowledge of Scripture.
For all we know, a la Scripturalism, Scripture commends and commands slander and false witness.
So, the question is, does Manata and Hays think Gordon Clark and John Robbins are men? Notice, the question is not do they know they are men? This is important, because Hays is correct, if Manata really thinks Clark is a fictional character, then he can’t libel Clark anymore than he can libel Tinkerbell.
On the other hand, Manata has given no indication that he thinks Clark is a fictional character, therefore if Manata thinks Clark was a man he is under the command of Scripture not to slander Clark (libel being just slander in written form) and is therefore guilty of sin.
Bracketing, for the moment, the pesky fact that, by his own admission, Sean can’t possibly know what he’s talking about, does this consequence actually follow from Scripture?
Suppose that Manata bore false witness against Daffy Duck. And suppose Manata happens to believe that Daffy Duck is a real, albeit ducky, person.
According to Scripture, has Manata sinned against Daffy Duck? Can you sin against a fictitious character?
Where does Scriptural explicitly or implicitly address the sin of slandering a fictitious character? Does a fictitious character have a reputation to protect?
In Scripture, bearing false witness is a judicial term. Would Scripture view Daffy Duck as a bona fide defendant in a court of law?
What if Manata compares Daffy Duck to a drug dealer? Is that a sin? Although Daffy Duck might regard that comparison as “dethpicable,” I don’t see that Biblical jurisprudence would convict Manata for defamation of animated characters.
However, I’ll grant you that Sean has opened my eyes to a very creative way of looking at Biblical jurisprudence. In future, I’ll be far more circumspect when I venture to opine about Tweety Bird or Pepé Le Pew.
I’d also add, in passing, that if Manata was actually under the impression that Daffy Duck is a real, albeit ducky person, then it seems to me that his delusion would be, at the very least, an extenuating circumstances if not, indeed, an exculpatory circumstance.
The argument would be simply:
Scripture teaches that slander/libel is sin
Manata slandered/libeled Clark
Manata sinned against Clark
Well, at the risk of being pedantic, there are three little problems with his three-step argument. Sean can’t prove the major premise. He can’t prove the minor premise. Hence, even if the conclusion follows from the premises, the argument is unsound.
But aside from the drab little fact that Sean’s three-step argument happens to be a misstep every step of the way, it’s a pretty impressive argument. Far be it from me to quibble over these niggling details.
Notice, it doesn’t matter if Manata or I know that Clark is a man or that he exists. If Manata thinks Clark is a man then he is required by Scripture to admit he sinned against Clark.
Notice, it doesn’t matter if Manata or I know that Daffy Duck is a duck or that he exists. If Manata thinks Daffy is a duck then he is required by Scripture to admit he sinned against Daffy.
Either that or explain how painting Clark as the philosphical equivalent of a crank dealer looking to create a bunch of strung out Scripturalist tweekers isn’t libel?
i) Maybe because it’s a figurative analogy. Sean has yet to show how Manata’s figurative analogy is even mistaken, much less deliberately and maliciously false. It’s undoubtedly provocative, but the Bible itself is chock-full of provocative metaphors (e.g. the whore of Babylon).
ii) BTW, it’s not as if John Robbins was this lamb-like figure whose commentary on his theological opponents resembled a Hallmark greeting card. Indeed, some of his opponents would say that Robbins libeled them.
All men are sinners.
Michael Sudduth is a man.
Therefore, Michael Sudduth is a sinner.
The syllogism is valid.
There are two little problems with this syllogism:
i) It’s deceptive to cast the argument in terms of a categorical syllogism. That takes the major and minor premises for granted, as if these were true. But Scripturalism is in no position to affirm the truth of either premise.
Hence, if the argument were true to the tenets of Scripturalism, it ought to be cast in terms of a hypothetical syllogism:
If all men are sinners,
And Michael Sudduth is a man,
Then Michael Sudduth is a sinner.
ii) Which brings us to the next point. A valid argument is not a sound argument. Validity is a necessary, but insufficient, condition of a sound argument.
Unless a Scripturalist can demonstrate the truth of the major and minor premises, the validity of the argument is irrelevant. Take a comparison:
If all ducks are sinners,
And Daffy is a duck,
Then Daffy Duck is a sinner.
The syllogism is valid.
Do you deny that Michael Sudduth is a man? If so, you have a problem.
No, Scripturalism has a problem with that claim. Scripturalism can’t prove from Scripture that all men are sinners, since Scripturalism can’t know what Scripture teaches. And it can’t know anything about Michael Sudduth.
It matters not that Scripture nowhere says that Michael Sudduth is a man. If you think you are a man, you are required by the syllogism to think that you are a sinner.
The syllogism remains valid however you arrived at the conclusion that Michael Sudduth is a man. If you happen to think you are an angel, Christ came to save sinners, not the righteous. You have excluded yourself from salvation. It matters not whether you have knowledge or true belief of the minor premise. The conclusion follows. The syllogism is valid.
i) The syllogism about Daffy Duck (see above) is valid too. What if a man happens to think he’s Daffy Duck? Is he thereby required to think he’s a talking duck?
ii) Does the Bible require me to hold false beliefs as long as they are validly derived from false premises? Is it my epistemic duty to believe a false conclusion if it’s a valid conclusion?
Seems to me that, according to Scripture, it’s my epistemic duty to recant a false belief.
To do that, Hays or Manata would have to show that the Scriptures really do teach insoluble paradoxes that are forever beyond the bar of human reason. This would admittedly render the Scriptures, taken in and of themselves and as the axiom or starting point for the Christian faith, contradictory and self refuting because we would know then at least some of Scripture is false. That’s because one side of any given contradiction must be, and not may be, false.
Several issues:
i) That’s not my position. My position is that we shouldn’t come to Scripture with an extrascriptural presumption regarding the presence or absence of revealed paradoxes. Rather, we should find out what God has revealed. Our posture is to listen and learn. Not superimpose an extrascriptural presumption on the nature of what God is permitted to tell us.
ii) Ironically, Sean’s a priori opposition to Scriptural paradox is a violation of Scripturalism itself. He is assuming, apart from Scripture, what it is possible for Scripture to disclose. Fitting Scripture with an extrascriptural muzzle.
iii) Sean is resorting to the same methodology as a Catholic apologist. Stipulate an unacceptable consequence. Then confabulate a religious epistemology to avoid the stipulative consequence.
iv) I myself am not a big fan of theological paradox. That said, there’s no antecedent objection to theological paradox.
v) Apropos (iv), before we get to the question of what is possible as a matter of revelation, we ought to ask what is possible as a matter of reality. Revelation is a revelation about reality. If reality is paradoxical, then it wouldn’t be surprising if revelation is paradoxical.
vi) Apropos (v), paradox is a common feature of human experience in science, mathematics, and logic. It often requires great ingenuity to resolve a prima facie paradox, and some prima facie paradoxes remain unresolved despite the best efforts of the best minds.
This phenomenon figures in some very abstract disciplines, where pure reason reigns supreme.
vii) Apropos (vi), if reality confronts us with a variety of prima facie paradoxes, then there’s no prior expectation that revelation would be devoid of prima facie paradoxes since revelation is a revelation of reality–albeit a partial revelation thereof.
viii) The obvious reason for this impression is that reality is far more complex than the human mind. It seems to me that paradox is a predictable result of a finite mind that’s attempting to grasp an object of knowledge that’s far more complex than the subject of knowledge.
ix) By contrast, the mind of God is infinitely more complex than mundane reality, while abstract objects are isometric with his own mental complexity. Hence, what is paradoxical for the human mind would not be paradoxical for the divine mind.
x) This doesn’t begin to mean the paradoxical teachings of Scripture, if there are any, are false. Sean is equivocating. A prima facie paradox is not the same thing as an actual contradiction.
ix) Finally, even if, for the sake of argument, we grant the presence of insoluble, prima facie paradoxes in Scripture, what practical difficulty does that actually pose? Even if we can’t grasp how the relata interrelate, we can grasp and affirm each relatum. For example, we can know what it means for Jesus to have a human nature and a divine nature, even if we can’t exactly put the two together.
Perhaps if men like Manata, Anderson and Hays spent more time trying to solve any of the remaining the so-called “paradoxes of Scripture,” rather than attributing them to “an unarticulated equivocation on the part of the revealer,” they might actually contribute something worthwhile to Christ’s church.
A few more issues:
i) While it’s flattering to be classed with Anderson, I’m a Lilliputian to his Gulliver.
ii) As for Manata, it’s only a matter of time before he leaves me in the dust. In fact, I often have to dust off my windshield as I try to play catch up.
iii) I’ve actually spent a fair amount of time on alleged contradictions. Unlike Sean, I don’t talk about it–I do it.
iv) Sean is just a poseur. He plays the role of a Christian rationalist, yet something is missing: he’s long on rhetoric, but short on reasons.
Indeed, he’s the flipside of Hitchens and Dawkins. One is struck by the gaping chasm between the intellectual pretension and the intellectual performance. A wealth of rhetorical flourishes to camouflage the poverty of argumentation.
Sean keeps harping on Manata’s alleged slander because that’s a face-saving device. Since Sean can’t actually argue for his position, he covers his ignominious retreat with show of moral outrage.
If the traditional formulations need improvement then they should be revised in the light of Scripture.
To revise the confessions in light of Scripture, you’d have to be in a position to know both the confessions and the Scriptures. Scripturalism denies the possibility of knowing either.
http://godshammer.wordpress.com/2009/04/29/vantillian-shadow-boxing-round-one/
Cutting the dead wood, I’ll comment on his major claims:
But how can he possibly know this?…Beyond that, Manata has no way of knowing that the Bible contains even one “unarticulated equivocation on the part of the revealer.”
i) Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that this is an accurate description of Manata’s position. Let’s further assume, for the sake of argument, that this is, indeed, a consequence of Manata’s position.
So the basic objection is that we should reject Manata’s position if a consequence of his position is that Manata can’t know what the Bible says about this or that.
Now, assuming that this consequence is sufficient to invalidate Manata’s position, it’s equally sufficient to invalidate Sean’s position. If Scripturalism is true, then Sean can’t know a single thing about the Bible. He can’t know anything the Bible says. Indeed, he cannot knowingly distinguish a Bible from a Koran or Playboy magazine or Mad magazine.
ii) If the Bible is the only source of knowledge, then Sean can’t get past the subject/object duality. Scripture would be the object of knowledge, but the subject of knowledge (e.g. Sean) would be an extrabiblical entity. So how could an extrabiblical subject of knowledge ever come to know the biblical object of knowledge if the Bible is the only source of knowledge?
iii) He can’t learn what the Bible teaches through the use of his senses, for Scripturalism rejects the senses as a source of knowledge. The Bible is the only source of knowledge.
iv) He can’t learn what the Bible teaches through innate knowledge, in part because he has no innate knowledge of the Bible. We’re not born knowing what the Bible teaches.
Indeed, that would undermine the very notion of a public, historic revelation. God revealed himself through the medium of speakers and writers. The spoken word and the written word. And the written word is also the record of the spoken word.
It was revealed to Christians via prophets and Apostles. Bible writers.
v) And even if, for the sake of argument, the knowledge of Scripture were innate, Scripturalism would reject that mode of knowledge–for in that case, Scripture would not be the only source of knowledge. Rather, the knowledge of Scripture would be mediated by the innate knowledge of the human mind. The human mind would be the immediate source of knowledge, and not the word of God.
If that isn’t enough to show the absurdity and blasphemy entailed in defending the idea of Biblical paradox, shall we revisit some of the incredible nonsense — along with outright and open heresies — some of these men have defended all in the name of “biblical paradox”? It is no coincidence that virtually all defenders of the false gospel of the Federal Vision are self-professed Vantilians. It’s no surprise either that virtually all of the Federal Vision opponents that happen to be Vantilians remain utterly incapable of doing anything to stop it’s advance and instead call the FV men currently disturbing the church “our brothers in Christ.” I guess one good paradox deserves another.
Three problems with this claim:
i) If Scripturalism is true, then Sean is in no position to know what Van Tilians believe. He’s in no position to know what Federal Visionaries believe. He’s in no position to impute the views of the Federal Vision to any Van Tilians.
Sean is like a drunk who keeps swearing off the bottle, only to find himself back in the saloon a day later. In one breath he vigorously asserts the tenets of Scripturalism, but in the next breath he relapses into extrabiblical assertions.
It’s hard for him to keep up the Scripturalist act 24/7. He keeps forgetting his lines. He keeps reverting to the default position of extrabiblical knowledge.
ii) Does he have any evidence that Anderson endorses the Federal Vision? Does he have any evidence that Sudduth endorses the Federal Vision?
Both Manata and I are on record repudiating the Federal Vision.
iii) While we’re on the subject of “outright and open heresies,” what about Clark’s pantheistic idealism, when he reduces human beings to nothing more than divine ideas? What about Clark’s modalism, when he collapses the immanent Trinity into the economic Trinity (cf. The Incarnation, p55)?
Calling Manata out again on his sinful treatment of Clark, who was easily the most important Christian thinker of the last century.
Is that a fact? No. Not on Scripturalist grounds. Does Scripture explicitly or implicitly teach that Clark was easily the most important Christian thinker of the last century? Obviously not.
That is simply Sean’s opinion. And opinion which falls short of knowledge. An opinion that he can’t even probabilify.
For all he knows, Clark might just as well be the least important Christian thinker of the last century. For all he knows, Clark may not even be a Christian thinker. For all he knows, Clark may be a Scientologist.
If Scripturalism is true, these extrascriptural assertions fall short of knowledge. If Scripturalism is true, then you can’t even rank extrascriptural assertions according to probable degrees of truth.
Hence, one man’s opinion is no better than another man’s opinion.
And Robbins, who was Clark’s most able and best known defender, became the catalyst for another tired attack on Scripturalist epistemology.
If Robbins was his most able defender, then the case for Clark’s position weak indeed!
Now, I never claimed that one could know that Clark, Robbins, or even Manata exist.
If Scripturalism is true, then he can’t even know that Adam, Abraham, David, Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John ever existed.
Heck, he can’t even know if Jesus ever existed. He may opine that Jesus existed, but his opinion is no better than the contrary opinion of Richard Carrier.
Frankly, since the word “exists” can be predicated on everything from hallucinations to Klingons, I would argue that everything exists. Regardless, perhaps “Gordon Clark” was the nom de plume of some ghost writer. I honestly have no way of knowing. Seeing that Paul Manata has posted under the name Tom Bombadil, perhaps Bombadil is really Manata or perhaps both are Steve Hays? The Internet is a funny place. Yet, somehow men like Hays and Manata think that if I cannot account for the existence of a given person apart from Scripture and can’t “know” they exist in the sense of a justified true belief, then any opinion I may have of these men, even if true, is therefore moot.
Frankly, Sean can’t even “give an account” of how he knows Scripture. For Scripturalism, Scripture is like a safe with all the right answers on the inside. But we lack the combination to open the safe.
I have to wonder if these men while claiming to be Christians (something I also cannot know, but can only presume) would agree that Scripture does in fact prohibit false witness along with slander in many places including Colossians 3:8; “But now you also, put them all aside: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive speech from your mouth.”
Agree on what grounds? Scripturalist grounds? On Scripturalist grounds, we can’t say that Scripture prohibits false witness or slander. We can’t know what Scripture says because we can’t “give an account” of how we know that–if Scripturalism is true. We can’t give an empirical account of how we know that since Scripture rejects sense knowledge. And we can’t give an intuitive account of how we know that since we’re not born with a knowledge of Scripture.
For all we know, a la Scripturalism, Scripture commends and commands slander and false witness.
So, the question is, does Manata and Hays think Gordon Clark and John Robbins are men? Notice, the question is not do they know they are men? This is important, because Hays is correct, if Manata really thinks Clark is a fictional character, then he can’t libel Clark anymore than he can libel Tinkerbell.
On the other hand, Manata has given no indication that he thinks Clark is a fictional character, therefore if Manata thinks Clark was a man he is under the command of Scripture not to slander Clark (libel being just slander in written form) and is therefore guilty of sin.
Bracketing, for the moment, the pesky fact that, by his own admission, Sean can’t possibly know what he’s talking about, does this consequence actually follow from Scripture?
Suppose that Manata bore false witness against Daffy Duck. And suppose Manata happens to believe that Daffy Duck is a real, albeit ducky, person.
According to Scripture, has Manata sinned against Daffy Duck? Can you sin against a fictitious character?
Where does Scriptural explicitly or implicitly address the sin of slandering a fictitious character? Does a fictitious character have a reputation to protect?
In Scripture, bearing false witness is a judicial term. Would Scripture view Daffy Duck as a bona fide defendant in a court of law?
What if Manata compares Daffy Duck to a drug dealer? Is that a sin? Although Daffy Duck might regard that comparison as “dethpicable,” I don’t see that Biblical jurisprudence would convict Manata for defamation of animated characters.
However, I’ll grant you that Sean has opened my eyes to a very creative way of looking at Biblical jurisprudence. In future, I’ll be far more circumspect when I venture to opine about Tweety Bird or Pepé Le Pew.
I’d also add, in passing, that if Manata was actually under the impression that Daffy Duck is a real, albeit ducky person, then it seems to me that his delusion would be, at the very least, an extenuating circumstances if not, indeed, an exculpatory circumstance.
The argument would be simply:
Scripture teaches that slander/libel is sin
Manata slandered/libeled Clark
Manata sinned against Clark
Well, at the risk of being pedantic, there are three little problems with his three-step argument. Sean can’t prove the major premise. He can’t prove the minor premise. Hence, even if the conclusion follows from the premises, the argument is unsound.
But aside from the drab little fact that Sean’s three-step argument happens to be a misstep every step of the way, it’s a pretty impressive argument. Far be it from me to quibble over these niggling details.
Notice, it doesn’t matter if Manata or I know that Clark is a man or that he exists. If Manata thinks Clark is a man then he is required by Scripture to admit he sinned against Clark.
Notice, it doesn’t matter if Manata or I know that Daffy Duck is a duck or that he exists. If Manata thinks Daffy is a duck then he is required by Scripture to admit he sinned against Daffy.
Either that or explain how painting Clark as the philosphical equivalent of a crank dealer looking to create a bunch of strung out Scripturalist tweekers isn’t libel?
i) Maybe because it’s a figurative analogy. Sean has yet to show how Manata’s figurative analogy is even mistaken, much less deliberately and maliciously false. It’s undoubtedly provocative, but the Bible itself is chock-full of provocative metaphors (e.g. the whore of Babylon).
ii) BTW, it’s not as if John Robbins was this lamb-like figure whose commentary on his theological opponents resembled a Hallmark greeting card. Indeed, some of his opponents would say that Robbins libeled them.
All men are sinners.
Michael Sudduth is a man.
Therefore, Michael Sudduth is a sinner.
The syllogism is valid.
There are two little problems with this syllogism:
i) It’s deceptive to cast the argument in terms of a categorical syllogism. That takes the major and minor premises for granted, as if these were true. But Scripturalism is in no position to affirm the truth of either premise.
Hence, if the argument were true to the tenets of Scripturalism, it ought to be cast in terms of a hypothetical syllogism:
If all men are sinners,
And Michael Sudduth is a man,
Then Michael Sudduth is a sinner.
ii) Which brings us to the next point. A valid argument is not a sound argument. Validity is a necessary, but insufficient, condition of a sound argument.
Unless a Scripturalist can demonstrate the truth of the major and minor premises, the validity of the argument is irrelevant. Take a comparison:
If all ducks are sinners,
And Daffy is a duck,
Then Daffy Duck is a sinner.
The syllogism is valid.
Do you deny that Michael Sudduth is a man? If so, you have a problem.
No, Scripturalism has a problem with that claim. Scripturalism can’t prove from Scripture that all men are sinners, since Scripturalism can’t know what Scripture teaches. And it can’t know anything about Michael Sudduth.
It matters not that Scripture nowhere says that Michael Sudduth is a man. If you think you are a man, you are required by the syllogism to think that you are a sinner.
The syllogism remains valid however you arrived at the conclusion that Michael Sudduth is a man. If you happen to think you are an angel, Christ came to save sinners, not the righteous. You have excluded yourself from salvation. It matters not whether you have knowledge or true belief of the minor premise. The conclusion follows. The syllogism is valid.
i) The syllogism about Daffy Duck (see above) is valid too. What if a man happens to think he’s Daffy Duck? Is he thereby required to think he’s a talking duck?
ii) Does the Bible require me to hold false beliefs as long as they are validly derived from false premises? Is it my epistemic duty to believe a false conclusion if it’s a valid conclusion?
Seems to me that, according to Scripture, it’s my epistemic duty to recant a false belief.
To do that, Hays or Manata would have to show that the Scriptures really do teach insoluble paradoxes that are forever beyond the bar of human reason. This would admittedly render the Scriptures, taken in and of themselves and as the axiom or starting point for the Christian faith, contradictory and self refuting because we would know then at least some of Scripture is false. That’s because one side of any given contradiction must be, and not may be, false.
Several issues:
i) That’s not my position. My position is that we shouldn’t come to Scripture with an extrascriptural presumption regarding the presence or absence of revealed paradoxes. Rather, we should find out what God has revealed. Our posture is to listen and learn. Not superimpose an extrascriptural presumption on the nature of what God is permitted to tell us.
ii) Ironically, Sean’s a priori opposition to Scriptural paradox is a violation of Scripturalism itself. He is assuming, apart from Scripture, what it is possible for Scripture to disclose. Fitting Scripture with an extrascriptural muzzle.
iii) Sean is resorting to the same methodology as a Catholic apologist. Stipulate an unacceptable consequence. Then confabulate a religious epistemology to avoid the stipulative consequence.
iv) I myself am not a big fan of theological paradox. That said, there’s no antecedent objection to theological paradox.
v) Apropos (iv), before we get to the question of what is possible as a matter of revelation, we ought to ask what is possible as a matter of reality. Revelation is a revelation about reality. If reality is paradoxical, then it wouldn’t be surprising if revelation is paradoxical.
vi) Apropos (v), paradox is a common feature of human experience in science, mathematics, and logic. It often requires great ingenuity to resolve a prima facie paradox, and some prima facie paradoxes remain unresolved despite the best efforts of the best minds.
This phenomenon figures in some very abstract disciplines, where pure reason reigns supreme.
vii) Apropos (vi), if reality confronts us with a variety of prima facie paradoxes, then there’s no prior expectation that revelation would be devoid of prima facie paradoxes since revelation is a revelation of reality–albeit a partial revelation thereof.
viii) The obvious reason for this impression is that reality is far more complex than the human mind. It seems to me that paradox is a predictable result of a finite mind that’s attempting to grasp an object of knowledge that’s far more complex than the subject of knowledge.
ix) By contrast, the mind of God is infinitely more complex than mundane reality, while abstract objects are isometric with his own mental complexity. Hence, what is paradoxical for the human mind would not be paradoxical for the divine mind.
x) This doesn’t begin to mean the paradoxical teachings of Scripture, if there are any, are false. Sean is equivocating. A prima facie paradox is not the same thing as an actual contradiction.
ix) Finally, even if, for the sake of argument, we grant the presence of insoluble, prima facie paradoxes in Scripture, what practical difficulty does that actually pose? Even if we can’t grasp how the relata interrelate, we can grasp and affirm each relatum. For example, we can know what it means for Jesus to have a human nature and a divine nature, even if we can’t exactly put the two together.
Perhaps if men like Manata, Anderson and Hays spent more time trying to solve any of the remaining the so-called “paradoxes of Scripture,” rather than attributing them to “an unarticulated equivocation on the part of the revealer,” they might actually contribute something worthwhile to Christ’s church.
A few more issues:
i) While it’s flattering to be classed with Anderson, I’m a Lilliputian to his Gulliver.
ii) As for Manata, it’s only a matter of time before he leaves me in the dust. In fact, I often have to dust off my windshield as I try to play catch up.
iii) I’ve actually spent a fair amount of time on alleged contradictions. Unlike Sean, I don’t talk about it–I do it.
iv) Sean is just a poseur. He plays the role of a Christian rationalist, yet something is missing: he’s long on rhetoric, but short on reasons.
Indeed, he’s the flipside of Hitchens and Dawkins. One is struck by the gaping chasm between the intellectual pretension and the intellectual performance. A wealth of rhetorical flourishes to camouflage the poverty of argumentation.
Sean keeps harping on Manata’s alleged slander because that’s a face-saving device. Since Sean can’t actually argue for his position, he covers his ignominious retreat with show of moral outrage.
If the traditional formulations need improvement then they should be revised in the light of Scripture.
To revise the confessions in light of Scripture, you’d have to be in a position to know both the confessions and the Scriptures. Scripturalism denies the possibility of knowing either.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Sean of the Dead
SEAN GERETY SAID:
“The problem you pose Steve is not just a problem for Scripturalists.”
Everyone should play close attention to this concession. Not surprisingly, Sean states this concession as briefly as possible, then tries to hurry past. it
But Sean is conceding that, on Scripturalist grounds, he doesn’t know if Clark, Robbins, or Manata are real people. He doesn’t know if Manata ever said what he attributes to Manata.
A further irony of Sean’s position is that he’s demanding something from Manata which, if Manata were to comply, would be unverifiable. Sean is demanding a public recantation from Manata. But if, a la Sean, you deny the possibility of sense knowledge or extrascriptural knowledge, then what would a public recantation amount to?
Every time that Sean issues public demands for public apologies or public recantations, Sean is the one who is implicitly recanting his Scripturalist epistemology.
For, on a Scripturalistic epistemology, not only don’t these public demands, apologies, and recantations count as knowledge, but they don’t even count as probable knowledge.
I’m still waiting for Sean to explain his way out of his self-imposed dilemma.
“As John Robbins pointed out long ago and in response to M. Sudduth, ‘The statements and commands in Scripture apply to all our thoughts, whether they rise to the level of knowledge or not. We are to bring every thought into captivity to Christ, that is, into captivity to Scripture’."
You’re confounding a standard of knowledge with a source of knowledge.
“Now, I realize that RE folks have lowered the epistemic bar considerably to where opinion along with necromancy and so-called ‘Natural Theology’ (an enterprise Van Til rightly called antichristian) are now sources of knowledge.”
If you study Reformed historical theology, you’ll see that natural theology is a part of the Reformed tradition. It is your position that Reformed theology is antichristian?
“But if you think Clark and Robbins were real men and Paul's superiors then Manata's disgusting personal attack against these men is sin.”
i) What does it matter what I think? After all, you think my epistemology is fatally flawed. So what would be the value of my conceding your allegation on the basis of a fatally flawed theory of knowledge? My conclusion would derive form a false premise, would it not?
ii) I wouldn’t lump Clark and Robbins together. Clark was a better man and a greater man than Robbins. Robbins was simply riding on his coattails.
iii) Manta’s superiors in what sense? His ecclesiastical superiors? Ruling elders?
To my knowledge, Robbins avoided participation in a Presbyterian accountability system. Indeed, he was arguably schismatic. So in what sense was he, much less is he, Manata’s elder or superior?
Or do you mean “elder” in the loose sense of a professing believer who is older than us? Born before us?
Does that make Norm Shepherd Manata’s elder and superior?
“Sin that you clearly defend and endorse.”
i) Actually, I haven’t taken a position on Manata’s comparison. Rather, I’m holding you to the implications of your stated epistemology.
ii) Since you can’t win that argument, since you can’t even win on your own turf, you’ve resorted to the old debater’s trick of changing the subject.
You try to deflect attention away from your manifest failure to make good on your stated epistemology by a big show of feigned indignation. Wax indignant over an alleged slight to the honor of Clark and Robbins as a rhetorical decoy to throw us off the scent. Surely you don’t think anyone is taken in by this stunt. But, having dealt yourself a losing hand, your options are limited.
iii) And what was Manata’s “sin.” He made an argument from analogy. Of course, every argument from analogy also involves an element of disanalogy. What you have done is to studiously disregard the analogy and shift attention to a disanalogy which was no part of Manata’s actual argument.
It’s a transparent diversionary tactic. Just what we’d expect from a losing opponent.
iv)In your opinion, Manata “sinned” against Clark and Robbins. In my opinion, he did not. What makes your opinion special?
“But what really is Manata's objection to Scripturalism? That what we call knowledge is limited to those things either set down in Scripture or deduced therefrom? Wow, what a horrible thing for Christians to believe! (I guess we need to throw out the first chapter of the WCF). “
i) That’s a deliberate falsehood. The Westminster Divines do not restrict knowledge to the explicit or implicit teaching of Scripture. Indeed, in the very section you allude to, they also mention the “light of nature.”
Do you have any textual evidence that the Westminster Divines denied the possibility of sense knowledge?
ii) Even more to the point, how do you know what the Westminster Confession even says? Did you deduce WCF 1:6 from Scripture? From what verse of Scripture did you deduce the wording of WCF 1:6?
Assuming, for the sake of argument, that the Westminster Divines restricted knowledge to the explicit or implicit teaching of Scripture, you’d be in no position to know that on Scripturalist grounds, now would you?
“That we distinguish, along with the Bible, between three noetic states: knowledge, opinion, and ignorance.”
And if you apply your threefold distinction to your own statements, then your own statements don’t rise to the level of knowledge. So, by your own admission, you don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t know that what you say is either true or even probably true.
“I realize that Manata and others here on Triblogue do not so distinguish and deny that knowledge requires any account or needs to be justified.”
i) First of all, you’re someone who likes to talk about justification rather than actually doing it. Talking about justification is a sorry substitute for offering an actual justification. When are you going to stop talking about it and start doing it?
ii) Knowledge requires no justification. Knowledge-claims may sometimes require justification, but knowledge itself requires no justification.
“Perhaps this explains why Manata continuously attacks and ridicules Christians who deny Biblical paradox, limit the source of knowledge to God's propositional revelation in Scripture.”
If you limit all knowledge to Scripture, then you can’t even know Scripture.
“And who believe the proper role of the theologian is to solve apparent contradictions and harmonize Biblical paradoxes, not to defend and promote them as fetishes to promote devotion in worship.”
I don’t think Manata has any problem with the harmonistic method. I think his problem is with the axiomatic insistence that revealed truth could never strike a human being as paradoxical.
“FWIW I believe the idea that Scripture teaches insoluble paradoxes encourages laziness in Bible study, commends ignorance, raises biblical theology along with its ever elastic exegesis over systematics and sound Reformed hermeneutics, and elevate clerics and academics, especially those of the Vantilian stripe, into a new priestly class who alone can peer into the Biblical stew of apparent contradictions, antinomies, tensions, analogies, and insoluble paradoxes and demand assent to their contradictory view of truth on the basis of nothing more than their own authority.”
I, myself, don’t think that Scripture teaches insoluble paradoxes. But once, again, notice what Sean does and doesn’t attempt.
Sean substitutes a denial for a demonstration. He denies that any revealed truths are paradoxical, but he doesn’t offer a single argument to actually demonstrate his claim.
I’m still waiting for Sean to present a rational case for his position. Show us your reasons, Sean. Construct some formal arguments.
Of course, any argument he offered, even if he had the competence to argue for his position, would merely be his opinion.
That’s his conundrum. To argue for Scripturalism is a self-refuting exercise. To argue for Scripturalism, you’d have to step outside of Scripture.
The Bible is one thing while Sean is another thing. If Scripture is the only source of knowledge, then we’d be in no position to know that, for we are extrascriptural beings. If Scripture is the only source of knowledge, then we can’t know what Scripture knows, for we can’t get past the subject/object duality. If Scripture is the only source of knowledge, then we can never know what Scripture says from the inside out–in which case, we can never know anything.
In that event, we’re on the outside, staring at a windowless box. The truth is inside the box. But we can never open the box or see through the box or see into the box.
“The problem you pose Steve is not just a problem for Scripturalists.”
Everyone should play close attention to this concession. Not surprisingly, Sean states this concession as briefly as possible, then tries to hurry past. it
But Sean is conceding that, on Scripturalist grounds, he doesn’t know if Clark, Robbins, or Manata are real people. He doesn’t know if Manata ever said what he attributes to Manata.
A further irony of Sean’s position is that he’s demanding something from Manata which, if Manata were to comply, would be unverifiable. Sean is demanding a public recantation from Manata. But if, a la Sean, you deny the possibility of sense knowledge or extrascriptural knowledge, then what would a public recantation amount to?
Every time that Sean issues public demands for public apologies or public recantations, Sean is the one who is implicitly recanting his Scripturalist epistemology.
For, on a Scripturalistic epistemology, not only don’t these public demands, apologies, and recantations count as knowledge, but they don’t even count as probable knowledge.
I’m still waiting for Sean to explain his way out of his self-imposed dilemma.
“As John Robbins pointed out long ago and in response to M. Sudduth, ‘The statements and commands in Scripture apply to all our thoughts, whether they rise to the level of knowledge or not. We are to bring every thought into captivity to Christ, that is, into captivity to Scripture’."
You’re confounding a standard of knowledge with a source of knowledge.
“Now, I realize that RE folks have lowered the epistemic bar considerably to where opinion along with necromancy and so-called ‘Natural Theology’ (an enterprise Van Til rightly called antichristian) are now sources of knowledge.”
If you study Reformed historical theology, you’ll see that natural theology is a part of the Reformed tradition. It is your position that Reformed theology is antichristian?
“But if you think Clark and Robbins were real men and Paul's superiors then Manata's disgusting personal attack against these men is sin.”
i) What does it matter what I think? After all, you think my epistemology is fatally flawed. So what would be the value of my conceding your allegation on the basis of a fatally flawed theory of knowledge? My conclusion would derive form a false premise, would it not?
ii) I wouldn’t lump Clark and Robbins together. Clark was a better man and a greater man than Robbins. Robbins was simply riding on his coattails.
iii) Manta’s superiors in what sense? His ecclesiastical superiors? Ruling elders?
To my knowledge, Robbins avoided participation in a Presbyterian accountability system. Indeed, he was arguably schismatic. So in what sense was he, much less is he, Manata’s elder or superior?
Or do you mean “elder” in the loose sense of a professing believer who is older than us? Born before us?
Does that make Norm Shepherd Manata’s elder and superior?
“Sin that you clearly defend and endorse.”
i) Actually, I haven’t taken a position on Manata’s comparison. Rather, I’m holding you to the implications of your stated epistemology.
ii) Since you can’t win that argument, since you can’t even win on your own turf, you’ve resorted to the old debater’s trick of changing the subject.
You try to deflect attention away from your manifest failure to make good on your stated epistemology by a big show of feigned indignation. Wax indignant over an alleged slight to the honor of Clark and Robbins as a rhetorical decoy to throw us off the scent. Surely you don’t think anyone is taken in by this stunt. But, having dealt yourself a losing hand, your options are limited.
iii) And what was Manata’s “sin.” He made an argument from analogy. Of course, every argument from analogy also involves an element of disanalogy. What you have done is to studiously disregard the analogy and shift attention to a disanalogy which was no part of Manata’s actual argument.
It’s a transparent diversionary tactic. Just what we’d expect from a losing opponent.
iv)In your opinion, Manata “sinned” against Clark and Robbins. In my opinion, he did not. What makes your opinion special?
“But what really is Manata's objection to Scripturalism? That what we call knowledge is limited to those things either set down in Scripture or deduced therefrom? Wow, what a horrible thing for Christians to believe! (I guess we need to throw out the first chapter of the WCF). “
i) That’s a deliberate falsehood. The Westminster Divines do not restrict knowledge to the explicit or implicit teaching of Scripture. Indeed, in the very section you allude to, they also mention the “light of nature.”
Do you have any textual evidence that the Westminster Divines denied the possibility of sense knowledge?
ii) Even more to the point, how do you know what the Westminster Confession even says? Did you deduce WCF 1:6 from Scripture? From what verse of Scripture did you deduce the wording of WCF 1:6?
Assuming, for the sake of argument, that the Westminster Divines restricted knowledge to the explicit or implicit teaching of Scripture, you’d be in no position to know that on Scripturalist grounds, now would you?
“That we distinguish, along with the Bible, between three noetic states: knowledge, opinion, and ignorance.”
And if you apply your threefold distinction to your own statements, then your own statements don’t rise to the level of knowledge. So, by your own admission, you don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t know that what you say is either true or even probably true.
“I realize that Manata and others here on Triblogue do not so distinguish and deny that knowledge requires any account or needs to be justified.”
i) First of all, you’re someone who likes to talk about justification rather than actually doing it. Talking about justification is a sorry substitute for offering an actual justification. When are you going to stop talking about it and start doing it?
ii) Knowledge requires no justification. Knowledge-claims may sometimes require justification, but knowledge itself requires no justification.
“Perhaps this explains why Manata continuously attacks and ridicules Christians who deny Biblical paradox, limit the source of knowledge to God's propositional revelation in Scripture.”
If you limit all knowledge to Scripture, then you can’t even know Scripture.
“And who believe the proper role of the theologian is to solve apparent contradictions and harmonize Biblical paradoxes, not to defend and promote them as fetishes to promote devotion in worship.”
I don’t think Manata has any problem with the harmonistic method. I think his problem is with the axiomatic insistence that revealed truth could never strike a human being as paradoxical.
“FWIW I believe the idea that Scripture teaches insoluble paradoxes encourages laziness in Bible study, commends ignorance, raises biblical theology along with its ever elastic exegesis over systematics and sound Reformed hermeneutics, and elevate clerics and academics, especially those of the Vantilian stripe, into a new priestly class who alone can peer into the Biblical stew of apparent contradictions, antinomies, tensions, analogies, and insoluble paradoxes and demand assent to their contradictory view of truth on the basis of nothing more than their own authority.”
I, myself, don’t think that Scripture teaches insoluble paradoxes. But once, again, notice what Sean does and doesn’t attempt.
Sean substitutes a denial for a demonstration. He denies that any revealed truths are paradoxical, but he doesn’t offer a single argument to actually demonstrate his claim.
I’m still waiting for Sean to present a rational case for his position. Show us your reasons, Sean. Construct some formal arguments.
Of course, any argument he offered, even if he had the competence to argue for his position, would merely be his opinion.
That’s his conundrum. To argue for Scripturalism is a self-refuting exercise. To argue for Scripturalism, you’d have to step outside of Scripture.
The Bible is one thing while Sean is another thing. If Scripture is the only source of knowledge, then we’d be in no position to know that, for we are extrascriptural beings. If Scripture is the only source of knowledge, then we can’t know what Scripture knows, for we can’t get past the subject/object duality. If Scripture is the only source of knowledge, then we can never know what Scripture says from the inside out–in which case, we can never know anything.
In that event, we’re on the outside, staring at a windowless box. The truth is inside the box. But we can never open the box or see through the box or see into the box.
Wednesday, December 01, 2010
Debunking Christianity Caught in a Web of Dissimulation: How to Fight Cyber-Pansies and Win
Hector Avalos has chimed in again:
By now, many of our perceptive DC commentators have rightly seen through the tortured excuses provided for Manata’s ethical behavior.
What is this really about? This is a massive diversionary tactic. Manata wrote a critique of Hector’s argument for moral relativism. Hector discounted Manta’s critique because Manata is not an “expert” in the field.
So Manata then answered Hector on his own terms by running Hector’s argument by some philosophers who are experts in the field.
When, to a man, they panned Hector’s argument, he felt the urgent need to do something to salvage his reputation. So he’s trying to change the subject. Deflect attention away from his intellectual performance by talking about Manata’s ethical performance.
So this is just a decoy to throw folks off the scent. It’s a backdoor admission that he lost the argument. Manata called his bluff, and Avalos left the table penniless.
He claims he did nothing wrong. The fact that the philosophers he contacted asked him to remove their comments itself is evidence that they did not think what he did was right.
This is a classic bait-and-switch tactic. It isn’t true to the way in which Avalos originally set up the issue. This is what he originally said, in the very same post:
The first one is easy to refute because Triablogue just doesn’t seem to understand even the basics of relativist ethics. Moral relativism does not deny that logic operates once you have accepted the basic premises of your ethics. Moral relativism affirms that while the initial premises of any ethical system cannot be established by absolute rationales, one can still evaluate whether an ethical system is logically following the initial premises one affirms.
My complaint is not so much whether Triablogue is morally wrong or not but whether they are FACTUALLY AND LOGICALLY CONSISTENT WITH THEIR CLAIMS…In that sense, it is wrong for Triablogue to claim that they represent honesty if their definition of honesty entails telling people how they will use e-mails on their blogs. If honesty means that you represent yourself factually to someone from whom you are trying to extract an opinion, then we can certainly say that Triablogue did not act in accordance WITH THEIR DEFINITION OF HONESTY.
Assuming, for the same of argument, that the philosophers whom Manata contacted didn’t think what he did was right, that’s completely irrelevant to the way in which Avalos himself framed the issue.
For the issue is not whether Manata’s actions were consistent with their ethical premises, but if his actions were consistent with his own ethical premises. Yet Avalos isn’t even pretending to evaluate Manata’s conduct “in accordance with” his code of conduct.
Ironically, Hector’s attack is self-criminating, for Hector’s attack contradicts the terms very own his definition of moral relativism. Therefore, by his own yardstick, Hector has acted unethically towards Manata.
What he did wrong was to ask for their comments under false pretenses. He intended to post their comments all along, but he did not tell them that he was going to do that.
That accusation raises several issues:
i) If I don’t tell someone what I’m going to do with his comments, how does that amount to soliciting his comments under false pretenses?
If I identified myself as someone I’m not, or if I said I was going to do one thing with his comments when I intended to do something else, that would be a false representation. But Manata didn’t do that.
Suppose I go to a jewelry store and ask the jeweler about different bracelets. Suppose I plan to buy a bracelet for my girlfriend, but I don’t tell the jeweler what my plans are. In what sense have I acted under false pretenses?
ii) Likewise, in what sense is it wrong for me to buy a bracelet without telling the jeweler what I’m going to do with it? Is it morally incumbent on me to make a full disclosure of my ulterior intentions before I ask the jeweler for advice?
iii) Notice that Avalos is accusing Manata of wrongdoing (“What he did wrong was to…”). Yet Avalos originally said: “My complaint is not so much whether Triablogue is morally wrong or not but whether they are FACTUALLY AND LOGICALLY CONSISTENT WITH THEIR CLAIMS.”
iv) “Wrong” by whose standards? By Hector’s standards? But he’s a moral relativist. So he can’t impose his standards on a second parties. His standards are relative to his ethical premises, not to Manata’s ethical premises.
Note that even in the e-mail he says he sent them, he mentions nothing about Triablogue or his intentions to post their comments.
That’s a revealing glimpse into Hector’s mindset. The police-state mentality of a totalitarian academic. According to him, a student is not allowed to ask a question unless he submits a list of all his known associates, so that Avalos can perform a background check. What Manta did wrong was to solicit their opinion of an argument without first giving them the names and addresses of his beer buddies, relatives, intramural teammates, coworkers, ex-girlfriends, kindergarten classmates, &c.
You see, Avalos believes in profiling students, to check against his No Fly List. Never take a question from a student with the “wrong” associates. One wonders what he does with Christian students, or Republican students, or Libertarian students, or other unsavory types of that ilk.
Manata gave them the false impression that their comments were meant to help him with a student project not with a blog “debate” into which they were going to be dragged.
i) There is nothing in his email to convey that impression. He identifies himself as a college student and philosophy major who takes an interest in ethics and metaethics. He’s read some of their books and articles.
If you’re contacting a professional ethicist, that’s a perfectly natural way to introduce yourself.
ii) Moreover, he didn’t ask them any personal questions. Rather, he asked them to comment on whether or not they thought Hector’s “tautological” argument for moral relativism was logically sound.
Manata and his comrades are simply amateurish and juvenile nuisances in the blogosphere. They can blog all they want, but it is different when they start taking the time of professional colleagues to settle arguments that they cannot handle by themselves, especially when they do so under false pretenses or without full disclosure.
From what I can tell, Avalos diverts a lot of his time to extracurricular activities. Like trying to deny tenure to a distinguished astronomer. Or acting as a campaign consultant to Barack Obama. Or writing op-eds.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Seriously serious thinkers
That's why I AM considered a serious thinker and you are not, even if you think I'm dead wrong.
A couple of basic problems:
i) Serious thinkers don’t going around telling everyone they’re serious thinkers. They don’t try to convince everyone they’re serious thinkers by telling everyone they’re serious thinkers.
Can you imagine Alvin Plantinga using this appeal in one of his essays: “You should take me seriously cuz I’m a serious thinker!”
Serious thinkers acquire a reputation for being serious thinkers by writing serious books and articles. Not by claiming to be serious thinkers.
It’s a symptom of Loftus’ inferiority complex that he feels the need to convince people that he’s a serious thinker by talking about what a serious thinker he is.
ii) If Loftus were a serious thinker, he’d also realize that, from a secular standpoint, it makes no ultimate difference if you’re a serious thinker or a frivolous thinker. The morgue doesn’t distinguish between the corpse of a serious thinker and the corpse of a frivolous thinker.
Loftus has yet to make a clean break with Christianity. He lost his faith, and became a militant atheist, yett he is still channeling a worldview in which truth and falsehood matter. But in the grand secular scheme of things, truth and falsehood are irrelevant.
iii) Indeed, as Manata and I have often pointed out to Loftus, consistent physicalism doesn’t even have room for true and false beliefs. If Loftus were a serious thinker, he would take eliminative materialism seriously, since that’s logical conclusion to which his secular outlook is committed.
You have merely dug your own credibility grave, Paul.
Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that Manata is not a “credible” disputant. So what?
Personal credibility is not a general condition for evaluating someone’s argument. Credibility is something we look for in a witness. Say an expert witness, or an eyewitness to a crime.
But suppose a philosopher were discussing the ontological proof. Would the cogency of the philosopher’s analysis depend on whether the philosopher were a credible person? No. The quality of his argumentation is irrelevant to his personal credibility. The philosopher could be a chronic liar, but his analysis of the ontological proof could still be sound.
If Loftus were a serious thinker, he’d appreciate that elementary distinction.
Henceforth no one should take what you write seriously.
Of course, Manata has already refuted Loftus’ allegation. But, once again, let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that Manata did misrepresent his position.
How does that possibly invalidate everything that Manata has ever written? Clearly it doesn’t.
If Loftus were a serious thinker, he would never say that a misrepresentation in one place invalidates everything else a writer ever said. That’s not a serious objection to Manata’s critique of Avalos.
Indeed, Loftus is simply using this bogus charge as a pretext to avoid having to interact with Manata’s critique of Avalos. It’s a transparent evasive maneuver.
Seriously thinkers don’t fall back on those sophistical tactics. Obviously, Loftus can’t refute Manata’s critique of Avalos. If he could, he would.
So he trumps up the bogus charge that Manata isn’t “credible” as an escape hatch to avoid having to refute Manata.
And let's not forget that J. P. Holding caught Loftus in a deliberate hoax a while back. So Loftus is not a credible person. So Loftus is not a serious thinker.
A serious thinker does not try to misrepresent the views of his opponents.
The ironic thing about this charge is that Manata’s post is mostly devoted to exposing the fact that Avalos misrepresented the position of Brian Lewis.
If Loftus were a serious thinker, he’d admit that Avalos is not a serious thinker since Avalos misrepresented Lewis.
All we’re getting from Loftus is self-serving rhetoric to camouflage the fact that he’s not up to the job of refuting Manata. Blustery verbiage by a man retreating from the battlefield.
A couple of basic problems:
i) Serious thinkers don’t going around telling everyone they’re serious thinkers. They don’t try to convince everyone they’re serious thinkers by telling everyone they’re serious thinkers.
Can you imagine Alvin Plantinga using this appeal in one of his essays: “You should take me seriously cuz I’m a serious thinker!”
Serious thinkers acquire a reputation for being serious thinkers by writing serious books and articles. Not by claiming to be serious thinkers.
It’s a symptom of Loftus’ inferiority complex that he feels the need to convince people that he’s a serious thinker by talking about what a serious thinker he is.
ii) If Loftus were a serious thinker, he’d also realize that, from a secular standpoint, it makes no ultimate difference if you’re a serious thinker or a frivolous thinker. The morgue doesn’t distinguish between the corpse of a serious thinker and the corpse of a frivolous thinker.
Loftus has yet to make a clean break with Christianity. He lost his faith, and became a militant atheist, yett he is still channeling a worldview in which truth and falsehood matter. But in the grand secular scheme of things, truth and falsehood are irrelevant.
iii) Indeed, as Manata and I have often pointed out to Loftus, consistent physicalism doesn’t even have room for true and false beliefs. If Loftus were a serious thinker, he would take eliminative materialism seriously, since that’s logical conclusion to which his secular outlook is committed.
You have merely dug your own credibility grave, Paul.
Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that Manata is not a “credible” disputant. So what?
Personal credibility is not a general condition for evaluating someone’s argument. Credibility is something we look for in a witness. Say an expert witness, or an eyewitness to a crime.
But suppose a philosopher were discussing the ontological proof. Would the cogency of the philosopher’s analysis depend on whether the philosopher were a credible person? No. The quality of his argumentation is irrelevant to his personal credibility. The philosopher could be a chronic liar, but his analysis of the ontological proof could still be sound.
If Loftus were a serious thinker, he’d appreciate that elementary distinction.
Henceforth no one should take what you write seriously.
Of course, Manata has already refuted Loftus’ allegation. But, once again, let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that Manata did misrepresent his position.
How does that possibly invalidate everything that Manata has ever written? Clearly it doesn’t.
If Loftus were a serious thinker, he would never say that a misrepresentation in one place invalidates everything else a writer ever said. That’s not a serious objection to Manata’s critique of Avalos.
Indeed, Loftus is simply using this bogus charge as a pretext to avoid having to interact with Manata’s critique of Avalos. It’s a transparent evasive maneuver.
Seriously thinkers don’t fall back on those sophistical tactics. Obviously, Loftus can’t refute Manata’s critique of Avalos. If he could, he would.
So he trumps up the bogus charge that Manata isn’t “credible” as an escape hatch to avoid having to refute Manata.
And let's not forget that J. P. Holding caught Loftus in a deliberate hoax a while back. So Loftus is not a credible person. So Loftus is not a serious thinker.
A serious thinker does not try to misrepresent the views of his opponents.
The ironic thing about this charge is that Manata’s post is mostly devoted to exposing the fact that Avalos misrepresented the position of Brian Lewis.
If Loftus were a serious thinker, he’d admit that Avalos is not a serious thinker since Avalos misrepresented Lewis.
All we’re getting from Loftus is self-serving rhetoric to camouflage the fact that he’s not up to the job of refuting Manata. Blustery verbiage by a man retreating from the battlefield.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Arminian Sensibilities
At A.M. Mallett's place, here's what his his combox looks like:
Now, this gives the impression that I said mean and unloving things. That I made untoward comments of some kind. However, that would be far from the truth. I will now paste what I originally wrote and let the reader draw their own conclusions about the self-professed love and Christian charity expressed by Arminian epologists, Mallett being one example:
This is but one example of the alleged Arminian's superior Christian fruit vis-a-vis the Calvinist. This is an example of what Calvinists deal with all the time. Self-serving, self-justifying, self-excepting, sola-inter-group-loving, mean and angry favoritists.
It is also interesting that Arminian epologists are not coming down on Mallett but are excusing and approving of his behavior. I recall these same epologists demanding that Triabloggers rebuke Steve Hays. However, they refuse to do what they ask of others. Their debate tactics have to be shown for what they are: Arminian epologists have, by and large, co-opted the debate tactics of the political left.
It should also be understood that Mallett is trying to protect his image by allowing only one side of the story to get out. In reality, he critiqued a post of mine and called it foolish. When it came to his attention that fellow Arminians in fact did argue in the way he called foolish, he had to backtrack. He then endorsed the interpretation he called foolish, putting my critique of interpretation back on the table as an undefeated-defeater.
Paul Manata said...
This post has been removed by a blog administrator.
June 14, 2010 7:55 AM
A.M. Mallett said...
Mr. Manata, the Triabloke Cartoon Network does not meet our community standards of decency to allow your post to remain on this board.
June 14, 2010 8:04 AM
Paul Manata said...
This post has been removed by a blog administrator.
June 14, 2010 9:27 AM
A.M. Mallett said...
Mr. Manata, you did not understand. The Triabloke Cartoon Network does not meet our community standards of decency to allow your post to remain on this board.
June 14, 2010 1:24 PM
Now, this gives the impression that I said mean and unloving things. That I made untoward comments of some kind. However, that would be far from the truth. I will now paste what I originally wrote and let the reader draw their own conclusions about the self-professed love and Christian charity expressed by Arminian epologists, Mallett being one example:
Paul Manata said...
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2010/06/rocks-for-brains-arminian.html
June 14, 2010 7:55 AM
A.M. Mallett said...
Mr. Manata, the Triabloke Cartoon Network does not meet our community standards of decency to allow your post to remain on this board.
June 14, 2010 8:04 AM
Paul Manata said...
I simply posted a link to my response so thinking people could get both sides. Deleting my post and saying what you said gives the impression that I made an untoward comment.
June 14, 2010 9:27 AM
A.M. Mallett said...
Mr. Manata, you did not understand. The Triabloke Cartoon Network does not meet our community standards of decency to allow your post to remain on this board.
June 14, 2010 1:24 PM
This is but one example of the alleged Arminian's superior Christian fruit vis-a-vis the Calvinist. This is an example of what Calvinists deal with all the time. Self-serving, self-justifying, self-excepting, sola-inter-group-loving, mean and angry favoritists.
It is also interesting that Arminian epologists are not coming down on Mallett but are excusing and approving of his behavior. I recall these same epologists demanding that Triabloggers rebuke Steve Hays. However, they refuse to do what they ask of others. Their debate tactics have to be shown for what they are: Arminian epologists have, by and large, co-opted the debate tactics of the political left.
It should also be understood that Mallett is trying to protect his image by allowing only one side of the story to get out. In reality, he critiqued a post of mine and called it foolish. When it came to his attention that fellow Arminians in fact did argue in the way he called foolish, he had to backtrack. He then endorsed the interpretation he called foolish, putting my critique of interpretation back on the table as an undefeated-defeater.
Wednesday, May 06, 2009
So who's afraid of da big bad wolf?
Sean Gerety has written another huffy-puffy post in reply to Manata and me:
http://godshammer.wordpress.com/2009/05/05/vantilian-shadow-boxing-round-two/
Let’s see how he does:
“(For anyone interested in seeing a couple of heavyweights battle it out, and someone who presented a serious challenge to Clark’s Scripturalism, may I recommend, Revelation and Epistemology, by George Mavrodes, and, more importantly, Clark’s reply to Mavrodes).”
Why is Sean referring us to the writings of Clark and Mavrodes? Reading what they wrote would involve sensory perception. But Sean assures us that sense knowledge is a contradiction in terms. If, therefore, we can’t know what they wrote by reading them, what’s the point of reading them?
“In the case of Manata, his entire attack consisted of arguing, in one form or another, that if I can’t know Manata is a man, since I cannot infer him from Scripture, then I can’t know Manata sinned against Clark and Robbins when he portrayed them as crank dealers on his blog.”
Manata didn’t portray them as crack dealers. Rather, he used a metaphorical analogy.
However, for all Gerety knows, Clark and Robbins really were crack dealers. By his own admission, Gerety’s beliefs about Clark and Robbins are reducible to opinion at best and ignorance at worse.
“As we’ve seen in the first round, Mananta’s argument has no weight as he continues to blindly ignore the biblical imperatives against false witness and slander... Yet, instead of submitting to the clear teaching of Scripture in his sin against Clark and Robbins…”
How does Sean know what Scripture teaches? He can’t know what Scripture teaches by reading Scripture, for sense knowledge is a contradiction in terms. At best he can only opine what Scripture teaches.
He then quotes something from Robbins:
[Your] objection is of the same ilk as those who say, How can I obey the Ten Commandments if I don’t know who my wife is. Well, GHC [Gordon H. Clark] gave one answer to that question, and I gave another many years ago, but since Clark critics are reluctant to take the trouble to acquaint himself with what Clark or I have written, let me repeat myself.
The statements and commands in Scripture apply to all our thoughts, whether they rise to the level of knowledge or not. We are to bring every thought into captivity to Christ, that is, into captivity to Scripture.
I distinguish–as the Bible and Plato do–between three noetic states: knowledge, opinion, and ignorance. Perhaps you do not so distinguish. But why would you not distinguish between knowledge and opinion, or knowledge and ignorance? It seems to me that a refusal or failure to distinguish between these three states can lead only to greater confusion.
Knowledge is always true. One cannot know that 2 + 2 = 5. Opinions may be true or false. Ignorance is neither true nor false. What distinguishes a true opinion from knowledge is an account of that opinion: It is giving reasons. Sudduth dared me to provide any passage of Scripture that so defines knowledge. It seems to me that there are many. For example, “Be ready to give a reason….” “To the Law and to the testimony: If they speak not according to that Word, there is no light in them.” “In Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” All, not some. Hidden, not available to discovery by men. The Scripture is both the content and the account on knowledge.
In the strict sense no one in the twentieth century knows that he is a man, for he has not deduced it from the Bible. (Now perhaps such a deduction is possible, and I would be open to an argument on that point.) It is an opinion we hold. You do not know that you are a man. Your opinion may be true, but unless you can show me the argument, it does not rise to the level of knowledge. If you claim to know that you are a man, please show me the argument. Please do not water down, dilute, or make ambiguous the definition of the word “knowledge.” Don’t blur it with opinion. Don’t bother citing immediate “self-knowledge” or some such notion, for the Scriptures explicitly say: “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it?” What you take to be easily come by, the Scripture says is impossible. Why should anyone believe you rather than Scripture?
So if we have the opinion that we are men, then the syllogism I provided [all men are sinners, ___ is a man, therefore ____ is a sinner] is neither absurd nor irrelevant; it is right on target. We may or may not be correct in our opinion, but if we have that opinion, if you have that opinion, you are required to believe that you are a sinner.
There are several problems with this statement:
i) According to the Scripturalist, knowledge is limited to those things either set down in Scripture or deduced therefrom. So where does Scripture explicitly or implicitly teach that a man can’t know who his wife is? Where does Scripture say or imply you can’t know that you’re a man?
A homosexual apologist like Mel White, Andrew Sullivan, or Barney Frank might find it very convenient to adopt a Scripturalist epistemology:
“In Rom 1, Paul says it’s wrong for a man to have sex with another man, or a woman to have sex with another woman. But that’s purely hypothetical since I can never know if I’m a man or a woman!”
Perhaps Gerety should join the staff of Soulforce.
ii) Sean/Robbins try to get around this by the following line of argument:
a) The injunctions of Scripture apply to all our beliefs
b) That includes true and false beliefs
c) The injunctions of Scripture apply to false beliefs
d) Therefore, even my false beliefs become divine imperatives.
Now that’s a fascinating claim. Suppose I’m high on LSD. In my hallucinogenic state I mistake my dog for my wife. Therefore, according to Robbins/Gerety, I’m required to have sex with my dog to discharge my conjugal duties.
iii) This is based on their appeal to 2 Cor 10:5: “We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ.”
Sean and Robbins take 2 Cor 10:5 to mean, not that we ought to correct our false beliefs in light of the Bible, but that we should simply plug our false beliefs into the injunctions of Scripture.
iv) Robbins says “what distinguishes a true opinion from knowledge is an account of that opinion: It is giving reasons.”
But Robbins also says knowledge is limited to those things either set down in Scripture or deduced therefrom.
Very well, then, let’s apply Robbins’ Scripturalist epistemology to Robbins’ definition of knowledge. Where does Scripture either say or imply that what distinguishes a true opinion from knowledge is an account of that opinion: It is giving reasons? Did Robbins deduce that particular definition of knowledge from the Bible?
It’s incumbent on Sean to show us, by necessary implication from Scripture where Scripture limits knowledge to an opinion supplemented by an account thereof. Does Scripture say or imply that you can’t know anything unless you can give reasons for your beliefs?
v) And what about the syllogism? Validity is a logical concept. Inference is a logical process. Where did Robbins acquire his knowledge of logic? According to Scripturalism, Scripture is the only source of knowledge.
Did Robbins learn the laws of logic from Scripture? Did Sean learn the laws of logic from Scripture? According to Sean, the whole counsel of God, concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man’s salvation, faith, and life, is either expressly set down in scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from scripture.
But that’s not the same thing as learning deduction from Scripture. Rather, that’s a case of bringing your powers of deduction to Scripture. Unless you already knew how to draw inferences, you couldn’t recognize a necessary consequence of Scriptural teaching.
Does this mean that Sean’s knowledge of logic is innate? But if Sean has innate knowledge of logic, then Scripture is not the only source of knowledge. For in that event, Sean knows something he didn’t learn from Scripture. Ditto: Robbins.
vi) Finally, notice that Sean always trots out the same three or four quotes from Robbins. That’s his only fallback. He has nothing else in reserve. Once you shoot that down, he’s defenseless.
Sean then quotes a passage from Bahnsen:
We have already noted above that for someone to know a proposition, at least two conditions must be met: the person must believe the proposition in question, and the proposition must be true. However, even this is an inadequate analysis of knowledge. At first sight, it might seem that if we believe what is in fact true, then we have knowledge; but on further reflection, to define knowledge as true belief proves to be too broad … Beliefs that are arbitrarily adopted or based upon faulty grounds, even when they turn out to be true, do not qualify as instances of “knowledge.”
What is the additional ingredient, besides being correct, that a belief must have in order to count as knowledge? It must be substantiated, supported, or justified by evidence. Knowledge is true belief held on adequate grounds, rafter than held fallaciously or haphazardly. To put it traditionally, knowledge is justified, true belief.
It should be noted here that by “justified” we mean that the person actually has sound reasons (good evidence), not simply that he thinks his evidence is good or sufficient in light of the pool of information available to him.
Sean then says: “Both Van Til and Clark maintained that knowledge, for it to be properly given that name, needs to be accounted for; it needs to be justified.”
Needless to say, this interpretation is quite illiterate. In the passage that Sean just quoted, Bahnsen doesn’t say knowledge must be justified. Rather, Bahnsen says belief must be justified.
“While I’m certainly no expert on ‘Reformed Epistemology,’ and have only recently started to slug through Plantinga’s Warranted Christian Belief.”
Why would Sean bother to read Plantinga’s book? The act of reading involves sensory perception. But Sean assures us that sense knowledge is a contradiction in terms. So what’s the point?
“Now, compare the views of the above Reformed giants with the gnats on Triablogue. These men are not even remotely interested in epistemology in the sense that Van Til, Bahnsen and Clark understood the term. These men are interested in something exceedingly more paltry, but exceedingly easier to obtain. The game these men are playing is so-called ‘Reformed Epistemology,’ which is neither particularly Reformed or even epistemological. Rather than defining knowledge as a justified true belief, what these men call knowledge is something called ‘warrant.’ Now, to what degree do sub-Vantilians like Manata and Hays embrace the sophism of so-called ‘Reformed Epistemology’ I really can’t say.”
But if he really can’t say, then his prior claim that we are playing the game of Reformed Epistemology is an ignorant claim. Ignorant by his own admission.
“However, this is precisely how these men can claim to be ‘rational’ for believing the Scriptures contain insoluble paradoxes (a contradiction by any other name), that are hopefully, or so we are told, resolved in the Godhead.”
i) Once again, he hasn’t begun to show that my position on theological paradox is dependent on Reformed Epistemology.
ii) This is my actual position: It’s rational to believe whatever God reveals. The fact that God reveals something ipso facto makes that a rational object of belief. If God reveals a paradox, then it’s rational to believe the paradox–because it’s rational to believe whatever God reveals.
This doesn’t commitment me to the proposition that God reveals paradoxical truths. Maybe he does and maybe he doesn’t. That’s not something we can know in advance of revelation. But if he did, it would be rational to believe them.
“Of course, if ‘warrant’ can be obtained for believing Van Til’s irrational and self-refuting doctrine of Scripture, which is just more sophistry, almost anything can obtain ‘warrant’ and be magically raised to the level of knowledge. Who needs the three noetic states of knowledge, opinion, and ignorance when ‘warrant’ can magically transform virtually any class of opinions or beliefs into knowledge.”
I don’t have a problem with distinguishing between knowledge, opinion, and ignorance. Indeed, I’m more than happy to apply that threefold rubric to Scripturalism. If I wanted to illustrate opinion and ignorance in contradistinction to knowledge, I can’t think of a better object lesson than Sean Gerety.
“To their shame, sub-Vantilians like Manata and Hays have abandoned the antithesis in the field of epistemology. Today everyone from Logical Postitivsts, Behaviorists, Evolutionists, Animists, Hindus, and Islamic Jihadists, Necromancers, and assorted Atheists can obtain ‘warrant,’ profess to be “rational,” and be said to possess “knowledge,” even if evidently Great Pumpkin worshipers might have a rougher go of it.”
Where did Sean deduce the existence of Hindus, Darwinians, jihadis, &c., from Scripture?
“Consider the following. I had wondered what really is Manata’s objection to Scripturalism? That what we call knowledge is limited to those things either set down in Scripture or deduced therefrom? That Scripture is both the content and the account on knowledge? Wow, what horrible things for Christians to believe! “
Yes, that is a horrible thing for Christians to believe. If it were true that all knowledge is limited to Scripture, then you couldn’t know the Bible, and you couldn’t know the world to which the Bible refers.
“Admittedly, I have no idea what Hays means by ‘sense knowledge?’ It appears to be a contradiction in terms.”
The sentence that “sense knowledge appears to be a contradiction in terms” is, itself, a sensory object. It involves the use of visual markers (letters) to convey information. If sense knowledge is a contradiction in terms, then Sean’s sensory statement that sense knowledge is a contradiction in terms is, itself, a contradiction in terms. So his denial is self-refuting.
“As should be obvious, pressing Hays or even his tag-team buddy Manata to account for ‘sense knowledge,’ not to mention how they know they are men, or even that Manata is man — i.e., to ask them to account for the very things they’ve repeatedly challenged me to account for — would be pointless.”
i) Where does the Bible say that we must account for sense knowledge?
ii) I don’t have to explain how I know I’m a man. That was a minor premise in a syllogism by Robbins and Gerety. The burden of proof lies squarely on their shoulders to account for the minor premises of their own syllogism. Otherwise, even if the conclusion were valid, there’s no reason to believe the conclusion is true.
“Plantinga evidently did not heed Paul’s warning to Timothy: ‘O Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to you, avoiding worldly and empty chatter and the opposing arguments of what is falsely called “knowledge”– which some have professed and thus gone astray from the faith”’(1 Timothy 6:20,21).”
“So much for Peter’s argument in Acts 4:12; ‘And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men, by which we must be saved.’ Peter must have been one of those first century xenophobic conservative Christians. After all, who needs the ‘sine qua non of faith,’ even the Lord Jesus Christ alone, when we have Tillich, some ancient Buddhist canon, and the Tao te Ching.”
Several problems:
i) Where did Sean deduce the existence of Tillich, the Buddhist canon, or the Tao te Ching” from Scripture?
ii) Sean likes to quote Scripture, but he fails to give an account of how he knows Scripture. Sean constantly talks about accounting for belief, but he never gets around to actually giving an account for his beliefs. Long on assertion, short on argumentation.
iii) I’ve already given some reasons for why a Scripturalist can’t know Scripture. Now I’ll give another reason. Sean quotes some statements by Peter and Paul from the English Bible. But that’s a problem for Scripturalism. Gordon Clark rejects representational theories of perception. For example:
“The ‘correspondence theory of knowledge’ faces the insuperable objection that it disallows any knowledge of reality at all. Whatever reality may be, whether individuals like trees and rocks, or Platonic Ideas, or whatever, this theory provides us only with pictures of them. The object of knowledge is therefore a representation and not the reality itself. Since the mind contains only the picture and never the ‘thing,’ there is no possibility of knowing whether the representation is similar to the object or not. To recognize a similarity between two things, they must be compared, and hence both must be in the mind. But if the reality is in the mind, the picture with its similarity is useless. If the reality is not in the mind, the picture, so far as we know, is a picture of nothing. There is hardly any objection to empiricism more fundamental than this one,” Language and Theology, 29.
How is that a problem for Scripturalism? Here’s the problem:
God inspired Peter and Paul to entertain certain true concepts. However, barring telepathy, we can’t read their minds.
Therefore, the only way for them to transmit their concepts is to communicate their concepts through the medium of inspired words. That’s a form of symbolic discourse–where words represent concepts.
But, of course, the reader can’t go back and compare the words to the concepts, since we lack direct access to the minds of Peter and Paul. All we have are the linguistic tokens of their concepts. According to Clark, we don’t know if the words match the concepts.
Moreover, Sean is quoting from the English Bible. In that case, the English words must correspond to the Greek words.
Perhaps Sean would say we can compare English versions with the original Greek and Hebrew. But that exercise doesn’t eliminate the representational element.
How did he learn Greek and Hebrew? By reading Greek–English or Hebrew–English grammars? But that only pushes the problem back a step.
Suppose he grew up in a home where Greek or Hebrew were his mother tongue. But he only learned Greek and Hebrew by associating certain vocables with certain ostensible objects. So we haven’t eliminated the representational component.
“Seeing that ‘warrant’ has freed Hays from having to justify virtually any knowledge claim, much less his claim to “sense knowledge, it’s not surprsing that he’s left punching the wind.”
Once again, this is simply illiterate. Did I say that knowledge-claims require no justification. No. I said that knowledge requires no justification. On the other hand, I also said that some knowledge-claims may need to be justified.
“Hays’ assertion notwithstanding, and all the RE prattle he might dress it up with, it seems to me that ‘sense knowledge’ would be quite impossible. Given that only propositions can be either true or false and sensations, whatever they may be, are non-propositional, I have no idea how anyone might advance the idea of ‘sense knowledge?’ Could Hays, like Van Til before him, appeal to the methods of science as a means for arriving at this ‘sense knowledge?’ He could, but then he would have to overcome the logical objections raised by Clark in his treatise, The Philosophy of Science and Belief in God, not to mention the objections of men like Bertrand Russell, Karl Popper and others.”
i) Notice how Sean begins the paragraph by denying that sense knowledge is possible. Then, in order to bolster his denial, he ends this paragraph by referring us to sensory objects: the writings of Clark, Popper, and Russell! For someone who prides himself on his rationality, Sean can’t even think straight.
ii) One can form propositional beliefs on the basis of sensory experience. Sean typed his post on computer keyboard. He has learned from experience that if he depresses a particular key, it will produce a particular letter. He has also learned that if he depresses certain keys in a certain order, it will produce a certain sequence of letters.
He also believes that this will happen because his computer keyboard was designed to operate that way.
Likewise, a Christian believes that God designed the world such that some things ordinarily correspond to other things.
“Now, admittedly, perhaps some Divines did hold to a belief in ‘sense knowledge’ as Hays claims, but it certainly didn’t carry any weight in comparison to the Scripture.”
Notice that he’s having to backpeddle from his original claim. The question at issue is not how the Westminster Divines rated the various sources of knowledge. Rather, the question at issue is whether the Westminster Divines limited all knowledge to the Bible. Sean is trying to change the subject to save face.
“I’m not sure if Hays’ ‘sense knowledge’ qualifies as a ‘new revelation of the Spirit’ or a ‘tradition of men’ or something else entirely, but they did stress that the whole counsel of God, and not just part, is either set down or deduced from Scripture and that this covers all things, and not just some things, pertaining to God’s glory, our salvation, the things we should believe (i.e., faith), and, quite frankly, life in general, so I have no idea what role would be left for Hays’ paltry and oxymoronic ‘sense knowledge’? I guess the Confession writers forgot to include Chapter XXXIV; On Superfluous Knowledge So Called.”
What role is left for sense knowledge? Let’s see:
i) The Bible contains various descriptions of the sensible world, including statements about how Christians should relate to the sensible world. For example, don’t commit adultery. Is it superfluous to the Decalogue whether or not you can know if the woman you’re having sex with is your wife or another man’s wife? Or maybe your dog?
ii) There is also the question of how the Bible itself can be an object of knowledge? If sense knowledge is a contradiction in terms, then how do we know what the Bible teaches? Not from reading it or hearing it.
iii) On a related issue, if the Bible is the only source of knowledge, then our knowledge of logic must derive from Scripture alone. But how can we deduce anything from Scripture unless we have a working knowledge of logic?
“Evidently Hays seems to think the Confession writers were endorsing some sort of natural theology by their use of the phrase ‘light of nature.’ After all, Romans 1:19,20, a favorite passage of Evidentalists and natural theologians everywhere, is cited as a proof text for this portion of the Confession…Rather than a means to arrive at truth, Van Til makes clear that the light of nature, or man’s own natural endowment as God’s creature created in His image confronts man ‘within his own constitution.’ Rather than man coming to a knowledge of the truth by observing nature, man instead ‘concocts his scheme of things in order by means of it to suppress the truth,’ not come to know it. Consequently, it would seem Hays is very wrong about what the Confession is teaching here and wants to hang his entire sensate and empirical overcoat on a very slender nail.”
Is Sean really that dense? The question at issue is not what Van Til happened to think, but what the Westminster Divines happened to think. The question at issue is not the interpretation of Rom 1:19-20, but the interpretation of WCF 1:6.
“Again, notice the sophistry involved here. Hays provides no account demonstrating how he knows Clark, Robbins, or Manata are ‘real people’.”
i) I don’t need to since I didn’t accuse Manata of libeling Clark or Robbins. The onus lies on Sean, not me.
ii) Where does Scripture say or imply that I need to demonstrate how I know my father or mother or sister or brother or wife or son or daughter is a real person?
“Yet, as mentioned in Round One, it doesn’t matter whether or not I know if Clark, Robbins, or Manata are ‘real people.’ It doesn’t matter if Manata or Tom Bombadil or whoever he might be is a ‘real person.’ The question is, does Manata express any interest in complying with Biblical commands not to slander?”
i) How does Sean happen to know what the Bible commands? I’m waiting for him to give an account.
ii) Where does Scripture say that you can slander a fictitious person?
“He does not. Manata maintains he did not sin in writing his diatribe characterizing Clark as the Pablo Escobar of epistemology.”
i) Sean doesn’t know that. At best that’s an opinionated claim, and at worst that’s an ignorant claim.
ii) Moreover, Sean has no way to distinguish an opinionated claim from an ignorant claim. Sean can’t claim that some opinions are probably true, while others are probably false. For an opinion, as he defines it, falls short of knowledge. And as Gordon Clark once observed: “A proposition can be probable and known to be probable, only if it resembles or approximates the truth. A person who does not know what is true cannot know what approximates it,” Three Types of Religious Philosophy, 31.
Therefore, Sean’s allegation is not better than ignorance.
I said:
“To my knowledge, Robbins avoided participation in a Presbyterian accountability system. Indeed, he was arguably schismatic. So in what sense was he, much less is he, Manata’s elder or superior?”
To which Gerety responds:
“Clearly, Hays’ knowledge is not to be trusted and if ‘warranted’ it merely demonstrates the uselessness of the entire RE enterprise. Both Clark and Robbins were ordained elders in Reformed denominations. Robbins was also ordained to preach in the PCA. Robbins left the PCA due to its failure to take any action against those Vantilians who continue to teach a false gospel of the Federal Vision in the PCA. You can read his reasons for leaving the PCA here. Robbins did what any Christian ought to do when they are part of a denomination that continues to permit the teaching of a false gospel along side the one true Gospel. So, in his ignorance, Hays joins Manata in his libel of his elder Dr. Robbins, this time falsely accusing him of being a ‘schismatic’.”
Several problems:
i) In responding to my statement (that Robbins avoided participation in a Presbyterian accountability system, which made him schismatic), Gerety admits that Robbins broke with the PCA. He also evades the question of whether Robbins then put himself under the care of another Reformed denomination. To what ecclesiastical body was Robbins answerable?
So how can Robbins be Manata’s ruling elder if Robbins is no longer in the chain-of-command?
iv) The PCA has church courts. An appellate process. It takes a while to adjudicate a controversy like the Federal Vision. In due time, the PCA ruled against the Federal Vision.
If Robbins was ordained (licensed?) to preach in the PCA, then he was a signatory to the PCA appellate process. It was therefore wrong of him not to let the process run its course. Had the PCA ruled in favor of the Federal Vision, then, and only then, would he be justified in leaving the PCA for another Reformed denomination.
iii) Moreover, there’s the little matter of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. It’s not as if a ruling elder in one Presbyterian denomination automatically exercises authority over members of another Presbyterian denomination.
iii) Furthermore, there’s a logistical impediment: Robbins is dead. In what sense is a dead man Manata’s ruling elder? Is Sean advancing a necromantic theory of Presbyterian eldership? On his theory of Presbyterian polity, does the séance take the place of the session?
“As for Clark, he was a member of various Reformed denominations throughout his life. He was an ordained Minister in the Presbyterian Church and later in the OPC, and was one of the OPC’s orignial founders along with Gresham Machen. After the Clark/Van Til Controversy in the OPC, and after Van Til and his associates refused to submit to the discipline of the church and repent of their unprovoked and unprecedented attack on Clark (see any pattern here), and after they launched similar attacks against Clark’s defenders, particularly Floyd Hamilton, Clark left for the United Presbyterian Church of North America and later to the Reformed Presbyterian Church. I guess in Hays’ mind Clark was a ‘schismatic’ too and not Van Til and his associates who continued to disrupt the peace of the church after their failed attempt to defrock Clark. Perhaps it would do Hays some good to get his facts straight before barking in the future.”
i) Notice that in my original comment I said nothing about Clark’s churchmanship. Instead, I confined myself to Robbins.
ii) For the record, I actually agree with the minority report, signed by William Young (among others).
iii) In what sense is Gordon Clark Manata’s ruling elder? Clark is dead. Moreover, he died in 1985. I seriously doubt that Manata was a communicant member of a Reformed denomination in 1985 or earlier. If so, he would have been a very precocious member! What is more, I seriously doubt that Manata was ever a member of the Reformed Presbyterian Church.
How does Clark exercise his ruling eldership over Manata from beyond the grave? Is Gerety his medium? Does he light a votive candle to Gordon Clark or pray to Robbins to intercede for Manata?
Gerety is playing fast and loose with Presbyterian polity and ecclesiology.
“But, as Clark would say, a Biblcal paradox is nothing more than ‘a charley-horse between the ears that can only be eliminated by vigorous rational massage’.”
Yes, that’s what Clark would say. Why would a Scripturalist care what he said? Isn’t the important question what Scripture says? Where does Scripture say that a Biblical paradox is nothing more than “‘a charley-horse between the ears that can only be eliminated by vigorous rational massage”?
As always, Sean honors Scripturalism with his lips, but his heart is far from it.
“By contrast, if one accepts the irrationalism of Van Til and his followers, a Biblical paradox is a charley-horse between the ears that can never be eliminated and any attempt to do so is a sinful failure to ‘think in submission to Scripture’ and to acknowledge the Creator/creature distinction.”
I have never taken the position that any attempt to harmonize a Biblical paradox is sinful. I don’t think that’s Manata’s position either. Or Dr. Anderson’s.
“Despite his assurances to the contrary, Hays seems to take the typical Vantilian approach to paradox and insists that while the paradox remains insoluble for us (evidently due to God’s own equivocation), we are to have faith there is no paradox for God.”
I allow for the possibility of a humanly insoluble paradox. The human subject of knowledge is less complex than the extramental object of knowledge–God, reality as a whole.
http://godshammer.wordpress.com/2009/05/05/vantilian-shadow-boxing-round-two/
Let’s see how he does:
“(For anyone interested in seeing a couple of heavyweights battle it out, and someone who presented a serious challenge to Clark’s Scripturalism, may I recommend, Revelation and Epistemology, by George Mavrodes, and, more importantly, Clark’s reply to Mavrodes).”
Why is Sean referring us to the writings of Clark and Mavrodes? Reading what they wrote would involve sensory perception. But Sean assures us that sense knowledge is a contradiction in terms. If, therefore, we can’t know what they wrote by reading them, what’s the point of reading them?
“In the case of Manata, his entire attack consisted of arguing, in one form or another, that if I can’t know Manata is a man, since I cannot infer him from Scripture, then I can’t know Manata sinned against Clark and Robbins when he portrayed them as crank dealers on his blog.”
Manata didn’t portray them as crack dealers. Rather, he used a metaphorical analogy.
However, for all Gerety knows, Clark and Robbins really were crack dealers. By his own admission, Gerety’s beliefs about Clark and Robbins are reducible to opinion at best and ignorance at worse.
“As we’ve seen in the first round, Mananta’s argument has no weight as he continues to blindly ignore the biblical imperatives against false witness and slander... Yet, instead of submitting to the clear teaching of Scripture in his sin against Clark and Robbins…”
How does Sean know what Scripture teaches? He can’t know what Scripture teaches by reading Scripture, for sense knowledge is a contradiction in terms. At best he can only opine what Scripture teaches.
He then quotes something from Robbins:
[Your] objection is of the same ilk as those who say, How can I obey the Ten Commandments if I don’t know who my wife is. Well, GHC [Gordon H. Clark] gave one answer to that question, and I gave another many years ago, but since Clark critics are reluctant to take the trouble to acquaint himself with what Clark or I have written, let me repeat myself.
The statements and commands in Scripture apply to all our thoughts, whether they rise to the level of knowledge or not. We are to bring every thought into captivity to Christ, that is, into captivity to Scripture.
I distinguish–as the Bible and Plato do–between three noetic states: knowledge, opinion, and ignorance. Perhaps you do not so distinguish. But why would you not distinguish between knowledge and opinion, or knowledge and ignorance? It seems to me that a refusal or failure to distinguish between these three states can lead only to greater confusion.
Knowledge is always true. One cannot know that 2 + 2 = 5. Opinions may be true or false. Ignorance is neither true nor false. What distinguishes a true opinion from knowledge is an account of that opinion: It is giving reasons. Sudduth dared me to provide any passage of Scripture that so defines knowledge. It seems to me that there are many. For example, “Be ready to give a reason….” “To the Law and to the testimony: If they speak not according to that Word, there is no light in them.” “In Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” All, not some. Hidden, not available to discovery by men. The Scripture is both the content and the account on knowledge.
In the strict sense no one in the twentieth century knows that he is a man, for he has not deduced it from the Bible. (Now perhaps such a deduction is possible, and I would be open to an argument on that point.) It is an opinion we hold. You do not know that you are a man. Your opinion may be true, but unless you can show me the argument, it does not rise to the level of knowledge. If you claim to know that you are a man, please show me the argument. Please do not water down, dilute, or make ambiguous the definition of the word “knowledge.” Don’t blur it with opinion. Don’t bother citing immediate “self-knowledge” or some such notion, for the Scriptures explicitly say: “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it?” What you take to be easily come by, the Scripture says is impossible. Why should anyone believe you rather than Scripture?
So if we have the opinion that we are men, then the syllogism I provided [all men are sinners, ___ is a man, therefore ____ is a sinner] is neither absurd nor irrelevant; it is right on target. We may or may not be correct in our opinion, but if we have that opinion, if you have that opinion, you are required to believe that you are a sinner.
There are several problems with this statement:
i) According to the Scripturalist, knowledge is limited to those things either set down in Scripture or deduced therefrom. So where does Scripture explicitly or implicitly teach that a man can’t know who his wife is? Where does Scripture say or imply you can’t know that you’re a man?
A homosexual apologist like Mel White, Andrew Sullivan, or Barney Frank might find it very convenient to adopt a Scripturalist epistemology:
“In Rom 1, Paul says it’s wrong for a man to have sex with another man, or a woman to have sex with another woman. But that’s purely hypothetical since I can never know if I’m a man or a woman!”
Perhaps Gerety should join the staff of Soulforce.
ii) Sean/Robbins try to get around this by the following line of argument:
a) The injunctions of Scripture apply to all our beliefs
b) That includes true and false beliefs
c) The injunctions of Scripture apply to false beliefs
d) Therefore, even my false beliefs become divine imperatives.
Now that’s a fascinating claim. Suppose I’m high on LSD. In my hallucinogenic state I mistake my dog for my wife. Therefore, according to Robbins/Gerety, I’m required to have sex with my dog to discharge my conjugal duties.
iii) This is based on their appeal to 2 Cor 10:5: “We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ.”
Sean and Robbins take 2 Cor 10:5 to mean, not that we ought to correct our false beliefs in light of the Bible, but that we should simply plug our false beliefs into the injunctions of Scripture.
iv) Robbins says “what distinguishes a true opinion from knowledge is an account of that opinion: It is giving reasons.”
But Robbins also says knowledge is limited to those things either set down in Scripture or deduced therefrom.
Very well, then, let’s apply Robbins’ Scripturalist epistemology to Robbins’ definition of knowledge. Where does Scripture either say or imply that what distinguishes a true opinion from knowledge is an account of that opinion: It is giving reasons? Did Robbins deduce that particular definition of knowledge from the Bible?
It’s incumbent on Sean to show us, by necessary implication from Scripture where Scripture limits knowledge to an opinion supplemented by an account thereof. Does Scripture say or imply that you can’t know anything unless you can give reasons for your beliefs?
v) And what about the syllogism? Validity is a logical concept. Inference is a logical process. Where did Robbins acquire his knowledge of logic? According to Scripturalism, Scripture is the only source of knowledge.
Did Robbins learn the laws of logic from Scripture? Did Sean learn the laws of logic from Scripture? According to Sean, the whole counsel of God, concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man’s salvation, faith, and life, is either expressly set down in scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from scripture.
But that’s not the same thing as learning deduction from Scripture. Rather, that’s a case of bringing your powers of deduction to Scripture. Unless you already knew how to draw inferences, you couldn’t recognize a necessary consequence of Scriptural teaching.
Does this mean that Sean’s knowledge of logic is innate? But if Sean has innate knowledge of logic, then Scripture is not the only source of knowledge. For in that event, Sean knows something he didn’t learn from Scripture. Ditto: Robbins.
vi) Finally, notice that Sean always trots out the same three or four quotes from Robbins. That’s his only fallback. He has nothing else in reserve. Once you shoot that down, he’s defenseless.
Sean then quotes a passage from Bahnsen:
We have already noted above that for someone to know a proposition, at least two conditions must be met: the person must believe the proposition in question, and the proposition must be true. However, even this is an inadequate analysis of knowledge. At first sight, it might seem that if we believe what is in fact true, then we have knowledge; but on further reflection, to define knowledge as true belief proves to be too broad … Beliefs that are arbitrarily adopted or based upon faulty grounds, even when they turn out to be true, do not qualify as instances of “knowledge.”
What is the additional ingredient, besides being correct, that a belief must have in order to count as knowledge? It must be substantiated, supported, or justified by evidence. Knowledge is true belief held on adequate grounds, rafter than held fallaciously or haphazardly. To put it traditionally, knowledge is justified, true belief.
It should be noted here that by “justified” we mean that the person actually has sound reasons (good evidence), not simply that he thinks his evidence is good or sufficient in light of the pool of information available to him.
Sean then says: “Both Van Til and Clark maintained that knowledge, for it to be properly given that name, needs to be accounted for; it needs to be justified.”
Needless to say, this interpretation is quite illiterate. In the passage that Sean just quoted, Bahnsen doesn’t say knowledge must be justified. Rather, Bahnsen says belief must be justified.
“While I’m certainly no expert on ‘Reformed Epistemology,’ and have only recently started to slug through Plantinga’s Warranted Christian Belief.”
Why would Sean bother to read Plantinga’s book? The act of reading involves sensory perception. But Sean assures us that sense knowledge is a contradiction in terms. So what’s the point?
“Now, compare the views of the above Reformed giants with the gnats on Triablogue. These men are not even remotely interested in epistemology in the sense that Van Til, Bahnsen and Clark understood the term. These men are interested in something exceedingly more paltry, but exceedingly easier to obtain. The game these men are playing is so-called ‘Reformed Epistemology,’ which is neither particularly Reformed or even epistemological. Rather than defining knowledge as a justified true belief, what these men call knowledge is something called ‘warrant.’ Now, to what degree do sub-Vantilians like Manata and Hays embrace the sophism of so-called ‘Reformed Epistemology’ I really can’t say.”
But if he really can’t say, then his prior claim that we are playing the game of Reformed Epistemology is an ignorant claim. Ignorant by his own admission.
“However, this is precisely how these men can claim to be ‘rational’ for believing the Scriptures contain insoluble paradoxes (a contradiction by any other name), that are hopefully, or so we are told, resolved in the Godhead.”
i) Once again, he hasn’t begun to show that my position on theological paradox is dependent on Reformed Epistemology.
ii) This is my actual position: It’s rational to believe whatever God reveals. The fact that God reveals something ipso facto makes that a rational object of belief. If God reveals a paradox, then it’s rational to believe the paradox–because it’s rational to believe whatever God reveals.
This doesn’t commitment me to the proposition that God reveals paradoxical truths. Maybe he does and maybe he doesn’t. That’s not something we can know in advance of revelation. But if he did, it would be rational to believe them.
“Of course, if ‘warrant’ can be obtained for believing Van Til’s irrational and self-refuting doctrine of Scripture, which is just more sophistry, almost anything can obtain ‘warrant’ and be magically raised to the level of knowledge. Who needs the three noetic states of knowledge, opinion, and ignorance when ‘warrant’ can magically transform virtually any class of opinions or beliefs into knowledge.”
I don’t have a problem with distinguishing between knowledge, opinion, and ignorance. Indeed, I’m more than happy to apply that threefold rubric to Scripturalism. If I wanted to illustrate opinion and ignorance in contradistinction to knowledge, I can’t think of a better object lesson than Sean Gerety.
“To their shame, sub-Vantilians like Manata and Hays have abandoned the antithesis in the field of epistemology. Today everyone from Logical Postitivsts, Behaviorists, Evolutionists, Animists, Hindus, and Islamic Jihadists, Necromancers, and assorted Atheists can obtain ‘warrant,’ profess to be “rational,” and be said to possess “knowledge,” even if evidently Great Pumpkin worshipers might have a rougher go of it.”
Where did Sean deduce the existence of Hindus, Darwinians, jihadis, &c., from Scripture?
“Consider the following. I had wondered what really is Manata’s objection to Scripturalism? That what we call knowledge is limited to those things either set down in Scripture or deduced therefrom? That Scripture is both the content and the account on knowledge? Wow, what horrible things for Christians to believe! “
Yes, that is a horrible thing for Christians to believe. If it were true that all knowledge is limited to Scripture, then you couldn’t know the Bible, and you couldn’t know the world to which the Bible refers.
“Admittedly, I have no idea what Hays means by ‘sense knowledge?’ It appears to be a contradiction in terms.”
The sentence that “sense knowledge appears to be a contradiction in terms” is, itself, a sensory object. It involves the use of visual markers (letters) to convey information. If sense knowledge is a contradiction in terms, then Sean’s sensory statement that sense knowledge is a contradiction in terms is, itself, a contradiction in terms. So his denial is self-refuting.
“As should be obvious, pressing Hays or even his tag-team buddy Manata to account for ‘sense knowledge,’ not to mention how they know they are men, or even that Manata is man — i.e., to ask them to account for the very things they’ve repeatedly challenged me to account for — would be pointless.”
i) Where does the Bible say that we must account for sense knowledge?
ii) I don’t have to explain how I know I’m a man. That was a minor premise in a syllogism by Robbins and Gerety. The burden of proof lies squarely on their shoulders to account for the minor premises of their own syllogism. Otherwise, even if the conclusion were valid, there’s no reason to believe the conclusion is true.
“Plantinga evidently did not heed Paul’s warning to Timothy: ‘O Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to you, avoiding worldly and empty chatter and the opposing arguments of what is falsely called “knowledge”– which some have professed and thus gone astray from the faith”’(1 Timothy 6:20,21).”
“So much for Peter’s argument in Acts 4:12; ‘And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men, by which we must be saved.’ Peter must have been one of those first century xenophobic conservative Christians. After all, who needs the ‘sine qua non of faith,’ even the Lord Jesus Christ alone, when we have Tillich, some ancient Buddhist canon, and the Tao te Ching.”
Several problems:
i) Where did Sean deduce the existence of Tillich, the Buddhist canon, or the Tao te Ching” from Scripture?
ii) Sean likes to quote Scripture, but he fails to give an account of how he knows Scripture. Sean constantly talks about accounting for belief, but he never gets around to actually giving an account for his beliefs. Long on assertion, short on argumentation.
iii) I’ve already given some reasons for why a Scripturalist can’t know Scripture. Now I’ll give another reason. Sean quotes some statements by Peter and Paul from the English Bible. But that’s a problem for Scripturalism. Gordon Clark rejects representational theories of perception. For example:
“The ‘correspondence theory of knowledge’ faces the insuperable objection that it disallows any knowledge of reality at all. Whatever reality may be, whether individuals like trees and rocks, or Platonic Ideas, or whatever, this theory provides us only with pictures of them. The object of knowledge is therefore a representation and not the reality itself. Since the mind contains only the picture and never the ‘thing,’ there is no possibility of knowing whether the representation is similar to the object or not. To recognize a similarity between two things, they must be compared, and hence both must be in the mind. But if the reality is in the mind, the picture with its similarity is useless. If the reality is not in the mind, the picture, so far as we know, is a picture of nothing. There is hardly any objection to empiricism more fundamental than this one,” Language and Theology, 29.
How is that a problem for Scripturalism? Here’s the problem:
God inspired Peter and Paul to entertain certain true concepts. However, barring telepathy, we can’t read their minds.
Therefore, the only way for them to transmit their concepts is to communicate their concepts through the medium of inspired words. That’s a form of symbolic discourse–where words represent concepts.
But, of course, the reader can’t go back and compare the words to the concepts, since we lack direct access to the minds of Peter and Paul. All we have are the linguistic tokens of their concepts. According to Clark, we don’t know if the words match the concepts.
Moreover, Sean is quoting from the English Bible. In that case, the English words must correspond to the Greek words.
Perhaps Sean would say we can compare English versions with the original Greek and Hebrew. But that exercise doesn’t eliminate the representational element.
How did he learn Greek and Hebrew? By reading Greek–English or Hebrew–English grammars? But that only pushes the problem back a step.
Suppose he grew up in a home where Greek or Hebrew were his mother tongue. But he only learned Greek and Hebrew by associating certain vocables with certain ostensible objects. So we haven’t eliminated the representational component.
“Seeing that ‘warrant’ has freed Hays from having to justify virtually any knowledge claim, much less his claim to “sense knowledge, it’s not surprsing that he’s left punching the wind.”
Once again, this is simply illiterate. Did I say that knowledge-claims require no justification. No. I said that knowledge requires no justification. On the other hand, I also said that some knowledge-claims may need to be justified.
“Hays’ assertion notwithstanding, and all the RE prattle he might dress it up with, it seems to me that ‘sense knowledge’ would be quite impossible. Given that only propositions can be either true or false and sensations, whatever they may be, are non-propositional, I have no idea how anyone might advance the idea of ‘sense knowledge?’ Could Hays, like Van Til before him, appeal to the methods of science as a means for arriving at this ‘sense knowledge?’ He could, but then he would have to overcome the logical objections raised by Clark in his treatise, The Philosophy of Science and Belief in God, not to mention the objections of men like Bertrand Russell, Karl Popper and others.”
i) Notice how Sean begins the paragraph by denying that sense knowledge is possible. Then, in order to bolster his denial, he ends this paragraph by referring us to sensory objects: the writings of Clark, Popper, and Russell! For someone who prides himself on his rationality, Sean can’t even think straight.
ii) One can form propositional beliefs on the basis of sensory experience. Sean typed his post on computer keyboard. He has learned from experience that if he depresses a particular key, it will produce a particular letter. He has also learned that if he depresses certain keys in a certain order, it will produce a certain sequence of letters.
He also believes that this will happen because his computer keyboard was designed to operate that way.
Likewise, a Christian believes that God designed the world such that some things ordinarily correspond to other things.
“Now, admittedly, perhaps some Divines did hold to a belief in ‘sense knowledge’ as Hays claims, but it certainly didn’t carry any weight in comparison to the Scripture.”
Notice that he’s having to backpeddle from his original claim. The question at issue is not how the Westminster Divines rated the various sources of knowledge. Rather, the question at issue is whether the Westminster Divines limited all knowledge to the Bible. Sean is trying to change the subject to save face.
“I’m not sure if Hays’ ‘sense knowledge’ qualifies as a ‘new revelation of the Spirit’ or a ‘tradition of men’ or something else entirely, but they did stress that the whole counsel of God, and not just part, is either set down or deduced from Scripture and that this covers all things, and not just some things, pertaining to God’s glory, our salvation, the things we should believe (i.e., faith), and, quite frankly, life in general, so I have no idea what role would be left for Hays’ paltry and oxymoronic ‘sense knowledge’? I guess the Confession writers forgot to include Chapter XXXIV; On Superfluous Knowledge So Called.”
What role is left for sense knowledge? Let’s see:
i) The Bible contains various descriptions of the sensible world, including statements about how Christians should relate to the sensible world. For example, don’t commit adultery. Is it superfluous to the Decalogue whether or not you can know if the woman you’re having sex with is your wife or another man’s wife? Or maybe your dog?
ii) There is also the question of how the Bible itself can be an object of knowledge? If sense knowledge is a contradiction in terms, then how do we know what the Bible teaches? Not from reading it or hearing it.
iii) On a related issue, if the Bible is the only source of knowledge, then our knowledge of logic must derive from Scripture alone. But how can we deduce anything from Scripture unless we have a working knowledge of logic?
“Evidently Hays seems to think the Confession writers were endorsing some sort of natural theology by their use of the phrase ‘light of nature.’ After all, Romans 1:19,20, a favorite passage of Evidentalists and natural theologians everywhere, is cited as a proof text for this portion of the Confession…Rather than a means to arrive at truth, Van Til makes clear that the light of nature, or man’s own natural endowment as God’s creature created in His image confronts man ‘within his own constitution.’ Rather than man coming to a knowledge of the truth by observing nature, man instead ‘concocts his scheme of things in order by means of it to suppress the truth,’ not come to know it. Consequently, it would seem Hays is very wrong about what the Confession is teaching here and wants to hang his entire sensate and empirical overcoat on a very slender nail.”
Is Sean really that dense? The question at issue is not what Van Til happened to think, but what the Westminster Divines happened to think. The question at issue is not the interpretation of Rom 1:19-20, but the interpretation of WCF 1:6.
“Again, notice the sophistry involved here. Hays provides no account demonstrating how he knows Clark, Robbins, or Manata are ‘real people’.”
i) I don’t need to since I didn’t accuse Manata of libeling Clark or Robbins. The onus lies on Sean, not me.
ii) Where does Scripture say or imply that I need to demonstrate how I know my father or mother or sister or brother or wife or son or daughter is a real person?
“Yet, as mentioned in Round One, it doesn’t matter whether or not I know if Clark, Robbins, or Manata are ‘real people.’ It doesn’t matter if Manata or Tom Bombadil or whoever he might be is a ‘real person.’ The question is, does Manata express any interest in complying with Biblical commands not to slander?”
i) How does Sean happen to know what the Bible commands? I’m waiting for him to give an account.
ii) Where does Scripture say that you can slander a fictitious person?
“He does not. Manata maintains he did not sin in writing his diatribe characterizing Clark as the Pablo Escobar of epistemology.”
i) Sean doesn’t know that. At best that’s an opinionated claim, and at worst that’s an ignorant claim.
ii) Moreover, Sean has no way to distinguish an opinionated claim from an ignorant claim. Sean can’t claim that some opinions are probably true, while others are probably false. For an opinion, as he defines it, falls short of knowledge. And as Gordon Clark once observed: “A proposition can be probable and known to be probable, only if it resembles or approximates the truth. A person who does not know what is true cannot know what approximates it,” Three Types of Religious Philosophy, 31.
Therefore, Sean’s allegation is not better than ignorance.
I said:
“To my knowledge, Robbins avoided participation in a Presbyterian accountability system. Indeed, he was arguably schismatic. So in what sense was he, much less is he, Manata’s elder or superior?”
To which Gerety responds:
“Clearly, Hays’ knowledge is not to be trusted and if ‘warranted’ it merely demonstrates the uselessness of the entire RE enterprise. Both Clark and Robbins were ordained elders in Reformed denominations. Robbins was also ordained to preach in the PCA. Robbins left the PCA due to its failure to take any action against those Vantilians who continue to teach a false gospel of the Federal Vision in the PCA. You can read his reasons for leaving the PCA here. Robbins did what any Christian ought to do when they are part of a denomination that continues to permit the teaching of a false gospel along side the one true Gospel. So, in his ignorance, Hays joins Manata in his libel of his elder Dr. Robbins, this time falsely accusing him of being a ‘schismatic’.”
Several problems:
i) In responding to my statement (that Robbins avoided participation in a Presbyterian accountability system, which made him schismatic), Gerety admits that Robbins broke with the PCA. He also evades the question of whether Robbins then put himself under the care of another Reformed denomination. To what ecclesiastical body was Robbins answerable?
So how can Robbins be Manata’s ruling elder if Robbins is no longer in the chain-of-command?
iv) The PCA has church courts. An appellate process. It takes a while to adjudicate a controversy like the Federal Vision. In due time, the PCA ruled against the Federal Vision.
If Robbins was ordained (licensed?) to preach in the PCA, then he was a signatory to the PCA appellate process. It was therefore wrong of him not to let the process run its course. Had the PCA ruled in favor of the Federal Vision, then, and only then, would he be justified in leaving the PCA for another Reformed denomination.
iii) Moreover, there’s the little matter of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. It’s not as if a ruling elder in one Presbyterian denomination automatically exercises authority over members of another Presbyterian denomination.
iii) Furthermore, there’s a logistical impediment: Robbins is dead. In what sense is a dead man Manata’s ruling elder? Is Sean advancing a necromantic theory of Presbyterian eldership? On his theory of Presbyterian polity, does the séance take the place of the session?
“As for Clark, he was a member of various Reformed denominations throughout his life. He was an ordained Minister in the Presbyterian Church and later in the OPC, and was one of the OPC’s orignial founders along with Gresham Machen. After the Clark/Van Til Controversy in the OPC, and after Van Til and his associates refused to submit to the discipline of the church and repent of their unprovoked and unprecedented attack on Clark (see any pattern here), and after they launched similar attacks against Clark’s defenders, particularly Floyd Hamilton, Clark left for the United Presbyterian Church of North America and later to the Reformed Presbyterian Church. I guess in Hays’ mind Clark was a ‘schismatic’ too and not Van Til and his associates who continued to disrupt the peace of the church after their failed attempt to defrock Clark. Perhaps it would do Hays some good to get his facts straight before barking in the future.”
i) Notice that in my original comment I said nothing about Clark’s churchmanship. Instead, I confined myself to Robbins.
ii) For the record, I actually agree with the minority report, signed by William Young (among others).
iii) In what sense is Gordon Clark Manata’s ruling elder? Clark is dead. Moreover, he died in 1985. I seriously doubt that Manata was a communicant member of a Reformed denomination in 1985 or earlier. If so, he would have been a very precocious member! What is more, I seriously doubt that Manata was ever a member of the Reformed Presbyterian Church.
How does Clark exercise his ruling eldership over Manata from beyond the grave? Is Gerety his medium? Does he light a votive candle to Gordon Clark or pray to Robbins to intercede for Manata?
Gerety is playing fast and loose with Presbyterian polity and ecclesiology.
“But, as Clark would say, a Biblcal paradox is nothing more than ‘a charley-horse between the ears that can only be eliminated by vigorous rational massage’.”
Yes, that’s what Clark would say. Why would a Scripturalist care what he said? Isn’t the important question what Scripture says? Where does Scripture say that a Biblical paradox is nothing more than “‘a charley-horse between the ears that can only be eliminated by vigorous rational massage”?
As always, Sean honors Scripturalism with his lips, but his heart is far from it.
“By contrast, if one accepts the irrationalism of Van Til and his followers, a Biblical paradox is a charley-horse between the ears that can never be eliminated and any attempt to do so is a sinful failure to ‘think in submission to Scripture’ and to acknowledge the Creator/creature distinction.”
I have never taken the position that any attempt to harmonize a Biblical paradox is sinful. I don’t think that’s Manata’s position either. Or Dr. Anderson’s.
“Despite his assurances to the contrary, Hays seems to take the typical Vantilian approach to paradox and insists that while the paradox remains insoluble for us (evidently due to God’s own equivocation), we are to have faith there is no paradox for God.”
I allow for the possibility of a humanly insoluble paradox. The human subject of knowledge is less complex than the extramental object of knowledge–God, reality as a whole.
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