Idols of the Tribe

Laurence Tribe, long-time professor of Constitutional law at Harvard University, may be the weightiest voice in favor of a "living Constitution"—at least the weightiest voice in the public eye. He has also written an entire book in defense of abortion. It is therefore instructive to see the quality of reasoning that he brings to bear on partial-birth abortion.

http://www.now.org/issues/abortion/dxanalysis.html

1. "This memorandum addresses the constitutionality of…a proposed federal statute that would criminalize a certain abortion procedure whether or not the fetus is viable, and without making any exception for the health of the mother."

Make a careful note of the underlying assumption. The assumption is that Congress is subservient to the courts. It is up to the courts to determine whether an act of Congress is constitutional or not.

This assumption governs the entire discussion. No supporting argument is offered for this assumption.

Now the reason that Dr. Tribe offers no argument in defense of this assumption is that it represents the current status quo. So he can safely take it for granted.

But it is important to keep in mind that this assumption is by no means unquestionable. It is striking that those who are so fond of invoking Jefferson on church/state separation fall strangely silent regarding his views on judicial review:

"The question whether the judges are invested with exclusive authority to decide on the constitutionality of a law has been heretofore a subject of consideration with me in the exercise of official duties. Certainly there is not a word in the Constitution which has given that power to them more than to the Executive or Legislative branches."
—Thomas Jefferson to W. H. Torrance, 1815. ME 14:303

"But the Chief Justice says, 'There must be an ultimate arbiter somewhere.' True, there must; but does that prove it is either party? The ultimate arbiter is the people of the Union, assembled by their deputies in convention, at the call of Congress or of two-thirds of the States. Let them decide to which they mean to give an authority claimed by two of their organs. And it has been the peculiar wisdom and felicity of our Constitution, to have provided this peaceable appeal, where that of other nations is at once to force."
—Thomas Jefferson to William Johnson, 1823. ME 15:451

"But, you may ask, if the two departments [i.e., federal and state] should claim each the same subject of power, where is the common umpire to decide ultimately between them? In cases of little importance or urgency, the prudence of both parties will keep them aloof from the questionable ground; but if it can neither be avoided nor compromised, a convention of the States must be called to ascribe the doubtful power to that department which they may think best."
—Thomas Jefferson to John Cartwright, 1824. ME 16:47

"The Constitution . . . meant that its coordinate branches should be checks on each other. But the opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves in their own sphere of action but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch."
—Thomas Jefferson to Abigail Adams, 1804. ME 11:51

"To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions [is] a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men and not more so. They have with others the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps. Their maxim is boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem [good justice is broad jurisdiction], and their power the more dangerous as they are in office for life and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves."
—Thomas Jefferson to William C. Jarvis, 1820. ME 15:277

"In denying the right [the Supreme Court usurps] of exclusively explaining the Constitution, I go further than [others] do, if I understand rightly [this] quotation from the Federalist of an opinion that 'the judiciary is the last resort in relation to the other departments of the government, but not in relation to the rights of the parties to the compact under which the judiciary is derived.' If this opinion be sound, then indeed is our Constitution a complete felo de se [act of suicide]. For intending to establish three departments, coordinate and independent, that they might check and balance one another, it has given, according to this opinion, to one of them alone the right to prescribe rules for the government of the others, and to that one, too, which is unelected by and independent of the nation. For experience has already shown that the impeachment it has provided is not even a scare-crow . . . The Constitution on this hypothesis is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please."
—Thomas Jefferson to Spencer Roane, 1819. ME 15:212

"This member of the Government was at first considered as the most harmless and helpless of all its organs. But it has proved that the power of declaring what the law is, ad libitum, by sapping and mining slyly and without alarm the foundations of the Constitution, can do what open force would not dare to attempt."
—Thomas Jefferson to Edward Livingston, 1825. ME 16:114

"My construction of the Constitution is . . . that each department is truly independent of the others and has an equal right to decide for itself what is the meaning of the Constitution in the cases submitted to its action; and especially where it is to act ultimately and without appeal."
—Thomas Jefferson to Spencer Roane, 1819. ME 15:214

For more on this subject, cf. L. Kramer, The People Themselves: Popular Constitutionalism and Judicial Review (Oxford 2004).

Anyone conversant with the current state of the debate will instantly recognize that Jefferson is raising the very same objections to judicial activism that are entertained today.

Indeed, The Constitution Restoration Act of 2004, presently making its way through Congress, would limit the jurisdiction of Federal courts in certain cases and promote federalism, under the power vested in Congress by article III, section 1 of the Constitution.

2. Consider what Tribe's hermeneutical legerdemain has brought us to. He says, in all seriousness, "that fetal viability is the constitutionally significant event, ad the bill's barely-concealed attempt to apply an altogether different standard is flatly inconsistent with the Liberty Clause of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments as construed by the Supreme Court in Casey."

Now is that just beautiful? We really need to pause a while lest this get by us too fast. We need to take in the full force of what has just been said. He is telling the reader that the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments address the question of fetal viability.

Let us, for just a moment, remind ourselves of what these Amendments actually say:

Amendment V

"No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."

"Fetal viability"? Hmm. Do you see anything in the Fifth Amendment about "fetal viability"? Okay, let's give the Fourteenth Amendment a try.

Amendment XIV

Do you find anything about "fetal viability under section 1?

"Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

No, nothing there. What about section 2?

"Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a state, or the members of the legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such state, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such state."

No, nothing there, either. Okay, it must be hidden away somewhere in section 3.

"Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability."

Gee, did I miss something? What about 4-5?

"Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any state shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void."

"Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article."

It's not just that there is no express reference to the right of an abortion, much less fetal viability, in the Bill of Rights. There is no implication to that effect.

There is nothing wrong with going beyond the ipsissima verba of the Constitution in the sense of either inferring a general principle from a special case, or inferring a special application from a general principle.

But that is not what is going on with Dr. Tribe. There is nothing in either the explicit or implicit propositions of the Constitution, much less the intent of the framers or the intent of the states that ratified the document, to purport a right of abortion in the text.

What you have, instead, is something like this: once upon a time there were states that banned birth-control devices. The Supreme Court didn't like those laws. So it cast about for a way to strike them down. It did this by first inferring a right of privacy in the Constitution. From this it then inferred a right to contraception. Once upon a time there were states that banned abortion. The Supreme Court didn’t like those laws, so it inferred the right to an abortion from the right to contraception. The next step is to infer all the possible undercutters or overriders to the right to an abortion—such as fetal viability, the life and health of the mother, &c.

Now the problem with this whole line of reasoning is that it has no basis in fact. And even if it did have a bit of factual anchorage to begin with, it weighs anchor as soon as it begins to draw inferences of inferences of inferences.

What you have is a fictive legal construct. The process of reasoning is much like a literary tradition, say the Star Trek franchise. Gene Roddenberry created a storybook world with certain customs and characters and scientific laws.

Someone who writes within the Star Trek tradition as a fixed frame of reference, moving forward or backward in time. Although Capt. Kirk had no mother or father in the series, yet the character would have to have a mother and father, so you could give him and father and mother, and create a backstory out of that.

All we're doing here is to toy with the incidental implications of abstract ideas. Even if the ideas had a hook in reality, they soon take on a life of their own through mutual association.

And this is fine as long as you don't forget that what we have here is the natural play of the imagination. But to reify this free-floating, deductive chain as though it bore any sort of correspondence to what is right or wrong or true or false with the world, when it is—at most—at several removes from the real world, by some six degrees of separation, is—at very best—delusional, and—at worst—sheer flimflam dudded up in judicial robes. "

The house that Jack built" makes for a good bedtime story, but bad jurisprudence. For the law deals with real people—flesh-and-blood victims and victimizers.

We need to take a few steps back and slap our face with cold water. Words mean what they meant—which is to say, what the author meant them to mean. And words do not define reality. They have no objective, n-ordered entailments for the world at large. Rather, words and ideas have referential power only insofar as they are true to the world they represent. The world confers whatever constantive force they enjoy, not vice versa.

You cannot make a meal from a recipe alone. The recipe does not create its own ingredients. To cook up a new set of rights from the Bill of Rights by toying with merely possible consequences and unintended associations or is to substitute a paper steak for the real thing.

And if that were not bad enough, much of what passes for judicial review doesn't even rise to the level of a merely possible implication, but is only consistent with the imported premise. In what sense does the "Liberty Clause" implicate the right to an abortion? Is the reasoning that if you ban abortion, you deprive a mother of the freedom to choose an abortion? That tautology is, of course, true, but by the same token, if you criminalize bank robbery, then that infringes on the freedom of bank robbers.

And if we're going to apply such loose logic, what about depriving the baby of life? Remember the wording of the "Liberty Clause": nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." If an abortionist can apply "liberty" to the case of the mother, why can an anti-abortionist not apply "life" to the case of the child? Pretty selective prooftexting.

3. Tribe begins by faulting the bill for failing to make provision for the life and health of the mother. But he then glosses the "health" of the mother to cover "all factors—physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman's age." In other words, there are no restrictions on abortion, for the definition of a woman's "health" can be extended and attenuated to any degree necessary to necessitate any abortion whatsoever. Abortion anytime, anywhere, for any reason.

This especially exposes the insincerity of his saying that Congress has no business to butt in given the "ability of the States to enact laws of their own dealing with precisely the same subject matter," for by his lights, the judiciary is superior to the legislative branch, either at the state or federal level; and that, what is more, the legislative branch has absolutely no discretion in this area for the Supreme Court has settled the matter once and for all time.

4. Tribe takes exception to the wording of the bill. He dubs this "a peculiar bit of alchemy" because "the terms ‘fetus' and ‘infant' are interchangeable," which he characterizes as a "novel definition of 'infant.'"

Well, according to the Oxford English dictionary, an infant is "a child during the earliest period of life (or still unborn)." And according to the 1611 (KJV) rendering of Job 3:16, an infant who never saw the light of day is in synonymous parallelism with a stillborn child. So it looks like Tribe is working with a novel definition of novelty.

Actually, a more egregious specimen of semantic alchemy occurs when Tribe repeated treats "woman" and "mother" as interchangeable. But these two words have different meanings and connotations. Every mother is a woman, but every woman is not a mother.

The distinction is not inconsequential. It is easier to depersonalize the abortion debate if you talk about women in general in relation to an anonymous fetus, for a woman qua woman has no relationship to any particular fetus. By contrast, a mother has a very special relationship to the child in her womb.

It is also striking how the abortionist will attempt to personalize the plight of the woman while endeavoring, in equal measure, to depersonalize her baby by the use of clinical terminology like "the fetus." Consider the tonal difference between "mother and child" as over against "woman and fetus."

5. Like every other abortionist, Tribe regularly resorts to euphemisms. He tries to cast this as a debate over "reproductive freedom" or "reproductive destiny."

Really now, is anyone denying the right of a woman to have a baby? Of course not!

Moreover, who is denying a woman the right not to have a baby? No one that I'm aware of.

Rather, the woman has already exercised her freedom of choice in consenting to engage in sexual reproduction. And guess what. When a woman engages in sexual reproduction, she sometimes gets pregnant!

So what Tribe is really saying is that a woman cannot be trusted with the consequences of her chosen lifestyle. How is this really any different from the old fashioned view that a woman could not enter into a binding contract without the approval of her husband or father or brother?

6. Dr. Tribe has a disconcerting habit of oscillating between moralistic and legalistic arguments. But these are not on a par. Legalistic arguments are based on precedent and the principle of stare decisis, as when he cites Roe, Doe, Danforth, Thornburgh, and Casey.

But moralistic arguments are independent of common law, as when he talks about "experimenting" with the life and health of the mother or "trading" her welfare for the welfare of the child. This way of speaking suggests that something ought to be law because it is morally incumbent, and not incumbent because it is a matter of law and law alone.

It is ethically unseemly, to say the least, to make the fate of the unborn child turn on merely legalistic maneuvers, erected on one false or question-begging premise upon another.

Tribe finds it morally arbitrary to make the right of the unborn baby hinge on its physical location. Of course, a prolifer would regard the child as sacrosanct at every stage of gestation. But, beyond that, it is no less arbitrary to say that a child might have a right to life in 1972, but have no right to life in 1973.

Just as artificial is the criterion of fetal viability. It should be unnecessary to point out that a pre-term baby is not supposed to be viable outside the womb. That is what the womb is for. How long can Mr. Tribe survive without food, water, warmth, or oxygen?

In the same vein, Tribe talks about the "undue burden" placed on a mother's wellbeing. This is a very unnatural way of characterizing a natural condition. One might as well say that having to walk on both feet places an undue burden on a biped.

Tribe talks about abortion as "an obviously tragic procedure that everyone wishes were never necessary." But this is a straw man argue. Most legal abortions are not medically necessary. A tragic choice is a moral dilemma that is forced upon one.

The plastic pearl of great price

Ask a Mormon missionary how anyone can know that Mormonism is true, and he'll refer you to the following statement:

"And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost" (Moroni 10:4).

This calls for a number of comments:

i) A Christian is only at liberty to pray a Christian prayer—a Trinitarian prayer. Any other prayer is idolatrous. Although this prayer is formally Christian, inasmuch as it makes use of traditional terminology, Mormon theology defines the persons very differently than does the Bible.

ii) This prayer is question-begging. To what "God" would we be praying? Only the true God could truthfully answer this prayer, so unless we know in advance that this prayer is addressed to the true God, it assumes what it needs to prove.

iii) Not everything is open to prayer. I don't have the right to ask God if it's okay for me to have an affair with another man's wife. Praying over the matter does not confer any moral warrant on adultery. The Bible does not authorize prayer as a short-cut to verify what I believe or justify what I do.

There is, however, a deeper objection to this appeal. For the Mormon missionary is giving a different answer to verify Mormonism that Joseph Smith himself has given. Now, if Joseph Smith is indeed a true prophet of God who restored the lost Gospel, it only seems fair to judge Mormonism by its founder's own methodology. So let us measure Mr. Smith by his own yardstick.

This can be found in a little work entitled "Extracts from the History of Joseph Smith, the Prophet." I have a copy of this, bound with The Book of Mormon, Doctrine & Covenants, and The Pearl of Great Price, published by the LDS (1978).

Smith begins by explaining his perplexity over doctrinal diversity. "Some were contending for the Methodist faith, some for the Presbyterian, and some for the Baptist" (2:5).

"So great were the confusion and strife among the different denominations, that it was impossible for a person young as I was, and so unacquainted with men and things, to come to any certain conclusion who was right and who was wrong" (2:8).

"Who of all these parties are right; or, are they all wrong together?" (2:10).

"Unless I could get more wisdom than I then had, I would never know; for the teachers of religion of the different sects understood the same passages of scripture so differently as to destroy all confidence in settling the question by an appeal to the Bible" (2:12).

Now, this reaction is perfectly understandable, but it calls for a few comments:

i) By his own admission, Smith was confused because he was young and ignorant. But the solution to that is not private revelation, but education.

ii) Doctrinal diversity is nothing new. In 1C Judaism you had Pharisees and Sadducees, Hillelites and Shamaites, Zealots, Essenes, and Philonic Platonists, to name a few.

Yet that doesn't prevent Jesus and the Apostles from adjudicating a question by direct appeal to Scripture. They did this all the time in debate with various Jewish groups and schools of that. Some interpretations make more sense than others. It's as simple as that. You study both sides of a debate and decide for yourself which side makes the best case for its position. Which side has the better of the argument? Not all reasons are equally good.

iii) Who said that we have to be equally certain about everything? After all, everything is not equally important. There are degrees of certainty and doubt.

iv) Moreover, the Mormonism has had its own history of internal strife. After Joseph Smith was killed in a shootout, there was a fight over succession, resulting in a split between those who followed his son and those who followed Brigham Young. Then you have a number of breakaway polygamist sects. And you also have a liberal/conservative divide within LDS ranks. So there are plenty of splitter-groups that all lay claim to be true to Mormonism.

Joseph Smith then appeals to Jas 1:5 to break out of this hermeneutical circle (2:11). But there are two things wrong with this appeal:

i) If, according to Smith, questions cannot be settled by direct appeal to Scripture, due to the diversity of interpretations, then how can Smith appeal to Jas 1:5 to justify his own action?

Why is it valid for him to appeal to Scripture, but invalid for the Baptist or Methodist or Presbyterian to do the same? What warrant does Mr. Smith have for such a double standard?

ii) If you read the way in which James describes the nature of wisdom, he is not talking about private revelation, but sanctified common sense (Jas 3:13,17).

He then tells us about an angelic apparition, during which all the Christian denominations were condemned as "corrupt" and "abominable" (2:19). But why should the reader believe that Mr. Smith was ever privy to this apparition? Why take his word for it? He had no witnesses. And it is not as though he was a man of sterling character. Rather, he had a reputation as a dabbler in the occult—in particular, a crystal-gazer. This is exactly what we'd expect of a religious charlatan.

But, assuming, for the sake of argument, the apparition was genuine, why assume that it was divine rather than diabolical? The Devil appeared to Adam and Eve. The Devil appeared to Jesus. Zechariah had visions of the Devil, as did John the Revelator.

Moving ahead, Mr. Smith records a later angelic apparition, in which he is informed, with respect to Joel 2:28, "that this was not yet fulfilled, but was soon to be." But according to Acts 2, this prophecy was fulfilled on the day of Pentecost.

Finally, Mr. Smith describes his "translation" of the Book of Abraham from the original Egyptian:

"I went to the city of New York, and presented the characters, which had been translated, with the translation thereof, to Prof. Charles Anthon, a gentleman celebrated for his literary attainments. Professor Anthon stated that the translation was correct, more so than any he had before seen translated from the Egyptian…He gave me a certificate, certifying to the people of Palmyra that they were true characters, and that the translation of such of them as had been translated was also correct" (2:64).

Let us be crystal clear on what this claim amounts to: (i) Smith made an "accurate" translation of the Book of Abraham from the original Egyptian text; (ii) Smith had this translation verified by Prof. Anthon, the orientalist at Columbia University.

Thus, Joseph Smith is staking his own veracity on the confirmation and corrobortion of Prof. Anthon. This is the evidence he is giving the reader to credit his prophetic claims. But when Prof. Anthon got wind of this appeal, he wrote a debunking the appeal in toto:
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http://www.utlm.org/onlineresources/anthonletter.htm

New York, Feb. 17, 1834

Dear Sir –

I received this morning your favor of the 9th instant, and lose no time in making a reply. The whole story about my having pronounced the Mormonite inscription to be "reformed Egyptian hieroglyphics" is perfectly false. Some years ago, a plain, and apparently simple-hearted farmer, called upon me with a note from Dr. Mitchell of our city, now deceased, requesting me to decypher, if possible, a paper, which the farmer would hand me, and which Dr. M. confessed he had been unable to understand. Upon examining the paper in question, I soon came to the conclusion that it was all a trick, perhaps a hoax. When I asked the person, who brought it, how he obtained the writing, he gave me, as far as I can now recollect, the following account: A "gold book," consisting of a number of plates of gold, fastened together in the shape of a book by wires of the same metal, had been dug up in the northern part of the state of New York, and along with the book an enormous pair of "gold spectacles"! These spectacles were so large, that, if a person attempted to look through them, his two eyes would have to be turned towards one of the glasses merely, the spectacles in question being altogether too large for the breadth of the human face. Whoever examined the plates through the spectacles, was enabled not only to read them, but fully to understand their meaning. All this knowledge, however, was confined at that time to a young man, who had the trunk containing the book and spectacles in his sole possession. This young man was placed behind a curtain, in the garret of a farm house, and, being thus concealed from view, put on the spectacles occasionally, or rather, looked through one of the glasses, decyphered the characters in the book, and, having committed some of them to paper, handed copies from behind the curtain, to those who stood on the outside. Not a word, however, was said about the plates having been decyphered "by the gift of God." Every thing, in this way, was effected by the large pair of spectacles. The farmer added, that he had been requested to contribute a sum of money towards the publication of the "golden book," the contents of which would, as he had been assured, produce an entire change in the world and save it from ruin. So urgent had been these solicitations, that he intended selling his farm and handing over the amount received to those who wished to publish the plates. As a last precautionary step, however, he had resolved to come to New York, and obtain the opinion of the learned about the meaning of the paper which he brought with him, and which had been given him as a part of the contents of the book, although no translation had been furnished at the time by the young man with the spectacles. On hearing this odd story, I changed my opinion about the paper, and, instead of viewing it any longer as a hoax upon the learned, I began to regard it as part of a scheme to cheat the farmer of his money, and I communicated my suspicions to him, warning him to beware of rogues. He requested an opinion from me in writing, which of course I declined giving, and he then took his leave carrying the paper with him. This paper was in fact a singular scrawl. It consisted of all kinds of crooked characters disposed in columns, and had evidently been prepared by some person who had before him at the time a book containing various alphabets. Greek and Hebrew letters, crosses and flourishes, Roman letters inverted or placed sideways, were arranged in perpendicular columns, and the whole ended in a rude delineation of a circle divided into various compartments, decked with various strange marks, and evidently copied after the Mexican Calendar given by Humboldt, but copied in such a way as not to betray the source whence it was derived. I am thus particular as to the contents of the paper, inasmuch as I have frequently conversed with my friends on the subject, since the Mormonite excitement began, and well remember that the paper contained any thing else but "Egyptian Hieroglyphics." Some time after, the same farmer paid me a second visit. He brought with him the golden book in print, and offered it to me for sale. I declined purchasing. He then asked permission to leave the book with me for examination. I declined receiving it, although his manner was strangely urgent. I adverted once more to the roguery which had been in my opinion practised upon him, and asked him what had become of the gold plates. He informed me that they were in a trunk with the large pair of spectacles. I advised him to go to a magistrate and have the trunk examined. He said the "curse of God" would come upon him should he do this. On my pressing him, however, to pursue the course which I had recommended, he told me that he would open the trunk, if I would take the "curse of God" upon myself. I replied that I would do so with the greatest willingness, and would incur every risk of that nature, provided I could only extricate him from the grasp of rogues. He then left me.

I have thus given you a full statement of all that I know respecting the origin of Mormonism, and must beg you, as a personal favor, to publish this letter immediately, should you find my name mentioned again by these wretched fanatics.

Yours respectfully, CHAS. ANTHON.

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On these grounds alone, Joseph Smith is a false prophet by his own chosen standard of reference. He is the one who volunteered this evidence in substantiation of his prophetic claims. If, therefore, Prof. Anthon expressly contravened that very claim, then the evidence is falsified by Mr. Smith's stated rules of evidence. This is, all by itself, sufficient to prove him an outright fraud.

But even that is not the end of the story. For since that time, a number of Egyptologists, have had occasion to compare the Book of Abraham against facsimiles of the Egyptian original. As Gleason Archer, who is, himself, a student of the language, has expressed the state of scholarly opinion, "Their finding was that not a single word of Joseph Smith's alleged translation bore any resemblance to the contents of this document," A Survey of Old Testament Introduction (Moody 1994), 555. Cf. C. Larson, By His Own Hand Upon Papyrus: A New Look at the Joseph Smith Papyri (Grand Rapids 1992).

So Joseph Smith has been weighed in a scale of his own choosing, and found to be sadly and wholly wanting. He has furnished both the evidence and the rules of evidence for his own indictment and conviction. It remains for us to pass sentence.

Original intent

One of the key debates between liberal and conservative is over original intent v. a "living Constitution." Robert Bork and Antonin Scalia are the leading proponents of original intent. Here's a (rather illiterate) transcript of a speech by Scalia on the subject.

http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/wl1997.htm

A layman looks at evolution

I’m not a scientist. Maybe that disqualifies me from forming a scientific opinion about evolution. Even if that were so I’d still have a right to form a theological opinion about evolution.

However, evolution is taught in the public schools, and leading Darwinians pen high-level popularizations for mass consumption. So apparently I am expected to form a scientific opinion about evolution.

One problem I have with the evolutionary literature is that it doesn’t ask certain questions that I ask, and since it doesn’t ask them, it doesn’t answer them. Here are three questions I have about evolution.

1. Hydrophobia

To my knowledge, monkeys have a natural fear of water. This includes the great apes. And this comes from the fact that, unlike most other animals, monkeys don't know how to swim. So they're afraid of drowning.

By contrast, humans are not afraid of water. Indeed, humans revel in water--from babies in bathwater to water sports and high-end real estate. Yet if humans were an offshoot of the same simian branch or trunk, wouldn't we expect human beings to exhibit an instinctual and irrepressible fear of water?

2. Oil fields

A certain amount of our lives is spent at the local gas station. One day as I was gassing up the car I began to wonder what was the evolutionary explanation for oil fields. I’m not asking about the evolutionary explanation of fossil fuel in general. The idea, I suppose, is this represents the cumulative residual of millions of animals dying over millions of years.

The question, though, is how that manages to pool into oil fields? For if animals are dying at all different times and places, what I’d expect to see is a geological substratum honeycombed with numberless little pockets of oil.

So the question, from an evolutionary standpoint, is how all the isolated drops of oil collect in massive underground reservoirs? What is the pathway? And is the underlying rock porous enough for the oil to seep through and pool in one or more places? And one could pose some of the same logistical questions regarding coalmines. Perhaps a petroleum geologist would have a simple explanation for this, but I haven’t heard it.

By contrast, so-called flood geology seems to offer a very straightforward explanation. You had a global, one-time event, resulting in some massive collective deposits. They all died more or less at once, and the receding floodwaters would have dumped them into some concentrated areas.

No doubt a complete explanation is more complicated than that. The question, though, is whether a complete explanation is less complicated than that.

3. River valleys

Yesterday I was reading a newspaper article on an archeological dig in the Savannah River valley to uncover a pre-Clovis level of human occupation in the New World.

This got me to thinking of a couple of things. First, it's my impression that a lot of the evidence of "early man" is taken from river valleys—whether extant or prehistoric.

Second, the distinction between pre- and post-Clovis culture (as well as other gradations of the geological column) presupposes the law of superposition.

Now the law of superposition is a common sense principle. But doesn't that assume a fairly steady and stable process of deposition?

Yet I should think that a river valley would be inherently unstable. To begin with, you have a continuous process of deposition and erosion, going on at the same time.

Second, every now and then you have record rainfall, or a record snowpack in the mountains (with a record snowmelt come spring), resulting in torrential runoff.

Not only would this lay down a lot of new sediment, but it would scour out a lot of the old strata, both several layers deep as well as wide—eroding the riverbanks, where "early man" would camp out.

So how does an archeologist know that what he sees today is 15,000 years old rather than 150 years old?

This is even before we figure in the impact of a global flood.

Once upon a liberal

Once upon a time there was a kind and compassionate mad scientist by the name of Herr Doktor Liberius. Liberius was very unhappy with the way the world was. So he set about to turn the world into one big social experiment.

He began by inventing a better human being by the name of Androgyne. Now Androgyne had removable sex organs so that he/she could choose his/her own gender from one day to the next. Androgyne also had an African nose and mouth, Asian eyes, and reddish skin.

One day, in a terrible lab accident, Doktor Liberius inadvertently bred a set of blue eyes and shock of blond hair. But he quickly disposed of this color scheme— lest someone take offense.

Liberius next made a rotating set of parents for Androgyne. Monday-Thursday, Androgyne had two mommies, while Friday-Sunday, Androgyne had three daddies.

In order to defray the expenses of the lab, made Androgyne’s various parents pay a wide variety of taxes for its upkeep. There were many different duties for many different "services." There was a bedroom tax for sleeping on a king-sized mattress, a prorated potty tax for each use of the WC, an oxygen surtax for unauthorized intake of fresh air, a gustatory surtax for eating non-organic snacks, an ingressive tax for getting into the car, an egressive tax for getting out of the car, and so on.

(Originally, the potty tax was a flat tax until the Anti-Defecation League went to court to have this struck down as an unduly regressive form of taxation)

Because Androgyne’s two mommies and three daddies had to hold two or three different jobs apiece to pay all their taxes, they had no time to spend with poor little Androgyne. So Doktor Liberius, as a kind and compassionate mad scientist, opened a 24/7-daycare center, and charged the parents a daycare duty.

When the parents complained that they could not afford to pay the daycare duty, Doktor Liberius, as a kind and compassionate mad scientist, hired them to work at the daycare so that they could pay the daycare duty out of their daycare wages. This way they were now working at the daycare to pay the daycare because they were too busy working at the daycare, to pay the daycare, to take care of little Androgyne at home. What could be more convenient?

Doktor Liberius then opened a preschool in the daycare, and after that a K-12 in the daycare. Needless to say, he had to raise taxes to defray the cost of the new school.

The core curriculum was learning how to feel good about yourself feeling good about your neighbor feeling good about yourself.

After Androgyne graduated from the daycare school, he/she had trouble holding down a job because he/she had no marketable job skills. As a kind and compassionate mad scientist, Doktor Liberius started a remedial job-training program, charging the parents a surtax. The core curriculum was learning how to feel good about yourself feeling good about your neighbor feeling good about yourself.

Androgyne complained that he/she had to walk a whole block from the daycare center to the adjacent training center. As a compassionate mad scientist, Doktor Liberius hired a taxicab service to transport Androgyne from the daycare center to the training center, and charged the parents a taxi-tax.

After Androgyne graduated from the program, he/she still had trouble holding down a job. As a kind and compassionate mad scientist, Doktor Liberius took immediate measures to solve the problem. He passed a law classifying Androgyne’s incompetence as a board certified medical disability. Any business that fired an employee who didn’t do his job was mandated by law to pay him a full pension.

As an early retiree, Androgyne had a lot of free time on his/her hands, and began to dabble in armed robbery as a way of passing the time. As a kind and compassionate mad scientist, Doktor Liberius took swift action to break the cycle of violence. He passed a law disarming security guards, fining bank managers for badmouthing bank robbers ("hate speech"), and made the bank hire a psychologist to counsel Androgyne on his/her injured self-esteem.

But Androgyne sank into a deep funk. His/her condition was scientifically diagnosed as removable sex organ syndrome (RSOS). The prescribed course of therapy was removable-removable sex organ surgery (RRSOS). To cover the cost, his parents were assessed an RRSOS-tariff.

Although the operation was pronounced a complete success, it presented Androgyne with a new challenge. Back in preschool he had received a complete course how to practice safe sex with removable sex organs. But what was he supposed to do with a fully integrated set of sex organs?

The hospital sent him home with several extra packages of male contraceptives, after charging the parents a—you guessed it! —prophylactic-tax. Unfortunately, Androgyne was inexperienced in the use of condoms, and his experimental efforts resulted in an unwanted pregnancy.

This, in turn, triggered a good deal of litigation and legislation. The local grocery store was sued and assessed a fine for failing to supply organic cucumbers for sex ed. They carried non-organic cucumbers, but these were deeply offensive to vegan contraceptive consumers. As a consequence, a new law was passed mandating that all grocery stores either stock organic cucumbers—in various lengths and circumferences, specified in law.

For a time it looked like zucchinis mind win out over cucumbers when The Zucchini Action Defense Fund (ZADF) made a sizable contribution to the chairman's reelection campaign. However, this motion was tabled after The Committee for the Ethical Treatment of Zucchinis (CETZ) too strenuous exception, contending that this law would play into the racist stereotype of Latin Lovers, and incite possible violence against innocent, law-abiding zucchinis.


But the episode was so embarrassing that poor Androgyne became ever more depressed. At first he was prescribed anti-depressants, for which his parents were assessed an uppers-surtax. When he got hooked on uppers, he was prescribed downers, for which his parents were prescribed a downers-surtax. Then he was checked into drug rehab, for which his parents were charged a rehab-tax. After he became a hopeless junkie, he was given free needles, which came out of the I.V.-tariff. Then he was given free cocaine, which came out of the crack-tax lock-box.

Meanwhile, Androgyne’s parents began to complain about their workload. As a kind and compassionate mad scientist, Doktor Liberius cut them back to a 4-day workweek, gave them an annual 3-month vacation, and raised their taxes to make up for lost revenue.

Due to chronic fatigue, Androgyne, along with his two mommies and three daddies, was committed to a state-run nursing home. However, the nursing home suffered from a staffing shortage.

You see, as a kind and compassionate mad scientist, opposed the death penalty for anyone above the age of 9 months outside the womb, but supported the death penalty for anyone below the age of 9 months inside the womb. This had the unforeseen consequence of seriously skewing the ratio between bedpan users and bedpan disposers.

As a result, Androgyne, along with his two mommies and three daddies, lived unhappily ever after. Well, not quite. As a kind and compassionate mad scientist, Doktor Liberius had them put out of their misery and ground into Magnon chow-mien to feed the lab rats, so that he could invent a better human being by the name of Androgyne 2. Now Androgyne 2 had removable sex organs so that...

The End

******************************************************

Disclaimer: all the people in this story are real. But the names have been changed to protect the good name of innocent fairy tale characters from guilt-by-association.

One faith, one Lord, one baptism

There is, as most of us know, a perennial debate between paedobaptism and credobaptism. One reason the debate remains at a stalemate is that the reason people take different sides has less to do with the direct arguments, which are rather weak on either side, than with the indirect or supporting arguments. For your doctrine of the sacraments has less to do with sacramentology than with ecclesiology. The doctrine of the church, variously construed, is what undergirds various views on baptism. Let’s take three cases:

I. Roman Catholicism

The direct argument for infant baptism is baptismal regeneration. On this ground, the baptismal candidate need not satisfy any prior condition; he not be in a state of grace, for the rite of baptism is itself what confers the grace signified by the sacrament.

However, the direct argument, even if otherwise sound (which I deny), cannot stand on its own. For although the subject need not satisfy any prior condition to validate the sacrament, the officiate must meet a prior condition to validate the sacrament. Just consider how the Roman Church defines the true church. According to Vatican II,

"The Church is a sheepfold, the sole and necessary gateway to which is Christ (Jn 10:1-10)."

"[The Church is] societally structured with hierarchical organs."

"This Church, constituted and organized as a society in the present world, subsists in the Catholic Church, which is governed by the successor of Peter and by the bishops in communion with him," Lumen Gentium.

So it is a particular doctrine of the church that underwrites Catholic baptism.

II. Presbyterian paedobaptism

Presbyterians give a couple of direct arguments for infant baptism: (i) household baptism and (ii) the parallel between baptism and infant circumcision.

However, even if these arguments were otherwise sound, they are, at most, practical arguments, implying the de facto observance of infant baptism. They do not, however, supply the de jure grounds.

For this, Presbyterians downshift to a couple of supporting arguments: (i) federal headship and (ii) the continuity of the covenants. According to federal theology, God deals with people, not merely as individuals, but as representative units under a representative head. And whatever the other dispensational discontinuities or administrative details, there is only one covenant of grace. Whoever is saved is saved the same way, whether in the OT church or the NT church. Indeed, the New Covenant is the culmination of federal headship and the capstone of OT promise.

III. Reformed credobaptism

Among Reformed Baptists, the direct argument lies in the simple fact that wherever baptism is explicitly illustrated or enjoined, there is a faith-condition.

To this the Presbyterians then counter that faith-condition is an incidental prerequisite owing to the fact that the NT church was a missionary church which naturally addressed its evangelistic message to adults. But once a Christian family was established, the OT default setting would click in.

Now, whatever the merits or demerits of this particular counterargument, the position of the Reformed Baptist runs deeper. Insofar as baptism is the rite of church membership, what qualifies a baptismal candidate really turns on the definition of the church, and terms of church membership. Consider the following statements from the London Baptist Confession:

"The catholic or universal church is invisible—consistings of the whole number of the elect who have been, who are being, or who yet shall be gathered into one under Christ who is the church's head.

All persons throughout the world who profess to believe the gospel and to render gospel obedience unto God by Christ are, and may be called, visible saints, provided that they do not render void their profession of belief by holding fundamental errors or by living unholy lives; and of such persons all local churches should be composed.

The members of these churches are saints by reason of the divine call, and in a visible manner they demonstrate and declare, both by their confession of Christ and their manner of life, that they obey Christ's call…yielding full assent to the requirements of the gospel.

All believers are under obligation to join themselves to local churches when and where they have opportunity to do so," LBCF 26:1-2,6,12.

In brief, the true members of the true church are the elect. They are believers, visible saints. True faith is a living faith.

IV. Weighing the options.

So how do these three options shake out?

1. None of the supporting arguments is altogether compelling. Although they are consistent with their respective sacramental positions, and probilify one view over against another, they do not entail that view by strict implication, for they operate at a rather more general level of abstraction.

2. I personally have no firm position on the baptism of infants. In a sense, you could accept the Baptist view on the significance of baptism, but accept a Presbyterian view on the baptismal candidate, for if baptism is a sign of grace rather than a means of grace, then its administration conveys no saving benefit, withholding its administration withholds no saving benefit, while its abuse conveys no matching malediction.

3. I regard the corroborative doctrines as more important than the doctrine they corroborate.

4. And I do have settled views on the corroborative doctrines.

5. Regarding Romanism, of this one could say a little or a lot. But I'll content myself with two or three comments:

i) It is pretty breathtaking to see Jn 10:1-10 cited to prove that the Church is the door to Christ, rather than Christ as the door to the Church. In a way this says it all. It perfectly encapsulates the difference between Roman and Reformed soteriology and ecclesiology. Needless to say, it represents an utter inversion and perversion of the Johannine text.

ii) There is a tension between sovereign grace and sacramental grace, for sovereign grace is particular and irresistible, whereas sacramental grace is indefinite and ineffectual.

iii) The most perilous part of sacramental realism is that it fosters a false assurance of salvation, for the subject puts his faith, not in Christ, but in the sacrament, or the Church which redeems the sacramental token.

6. Regarding the Presbyterian and Reformed Baptist arguments, I would say that both sets of supporting arguments are fundamentally true, but one can give full assent to the supporting arguments without giving full assent to their secondary application.

This is, on the one hand, what lends them their enduring appeal; on other hand, this is why they fail to convert many to the opposing position. They are compelling in their own right, but not quite as convincing when conscripted to adjudicate the paedo/credobaptist debate. For the supporting arguments are doctrines deployed in defense of another doctrine.

7. One doesn't have to be a Presbyterian partisan to regard their model of covenant theology as essentially sound, for the London Baptist Confession is only a modification of the Westminster Confession.

8. On the other side, were it not for the felt need to make room for infant baptism, there is nothing that a Presbyterian ought to find objectionable in the Baptist definition of the church. The invisible church is the company of the elect, and although the visible church is a mixed multitude, no principled Presbyterian would knowingly admit a reprobate or nominal believer into full fellowship.

Indeed, Presbyterians are famous, some one would say infamous, for their devotion to church discipline.

The Catholic and Baptist views represent the antipodes of ecclesiology. Although the Roman Church professes herself to be the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church, yet as a practical matter, sanctity takes a very distant third to unity and catholicity.

In this respect, a low-church Baptist has a higher ecclesiology than a high churchman, for the Reformed Baptist has a higher standard of church membership.

9. Precinding Catholicism as out of bounds, I would say that it matters less what you believe about baptism than what you believe about the supporting arguments.

Take whichever side you will on baptism as long as you come down squarely on both sides on the supporting arguments.

The Rise of the Fourth Reich

Just this month, Robert Reich has come out with an article entitled "Bush’s God."
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewPrint&articleId=7858

This follows on the heels of a similar article of his, published back in December.
http://www.prospect.org/print/V14/11/reich-r.html

In the December issue there was much alarmist talk of how the religious right constitutes a "clear and present" threat to religious liberty. But, in this issue, it is Mr. Reich who launches a frontal assault on religious liberty. Apparently the threat was insufficiently imminent after all, so he has chosen to fulfill his own dire prediction with a preemptive first strike.

It begins as a discussion about the tax-exempt status of churches. From there is goes to a more general discussion of church/state separation. Finally, it launches into a general broadside against religion as even more dangerous than international terrorism.

Anyone who has had occasion to hear Robert Reich on TV knows him to be a very smart, savvy guy. He is a highly articulate liberal with a quick mind and a quick tongue.

It is striking, therefore, that such a bright thinker can pen such a slack piece of reasoning. Let us run through his arguments, such as they are.

1. Mr. Reich equates a tax-exemption with a direct governmental subsidy. Now, only a liberal would be capable of making that equation, for the reasoning is, at best, circular.

It is not the government that subsidizes the taxpayer, but the taxpayer that subsidizes the government. Government gets its money from the people, not vice versa.

When a taxpayer takes a tax deduction, or receives a tax-rebate, this is not a case of government subsidizing the taxpayer. It only means that the government is not garnishing quite as much of his wages as would otherwise be the case.

Again, if a church, which already enjoys a tax-exemption, were to endorse a particular candidate, this would not "cost" the government anything above what is already lost in tax-revenue from the initial exemption.

The suppressed premise of his argument seems to be that taxation is a form of income redistribution. It is not merely a case of giving a wager-earner more of his money back; no, it is taking from Peter to pay Paul.

Okay, on that convoluted construction you could say that any tax-exemption is a de facto government subsidy. But if this is deemed to be an unacceptable consequence, it is only objectionable because the liberal is drawing a liberal conclusion from a liberal premise. The more fundamental question is whether the tax code should be structured in such a way as to make it a mechanism of income redistribution.

Suppose we were to scrap the graduated tax system for a flat tax, or even ditch most federal, state, and local taxes for user-fees? After all, we got along without a Federal income tax until Woodrow Wilson came along.

Mr. Reich then makes the following claim:
"The Constitution of the United States prohibits the federal government from enacting laws that promote or establish any religion. That's because the Framers understood the importance of keeping a strict separation between church and state. History has amply demonstrated how established religions undermine democracy. Citizens holding different beliefs from the majority, or no beliefs at all, are often disadvantaged, marginalized, or even ostracized. Government support tends to corrupt even an established religion whose leaders seek official favors in return for religious decrees and indulgences, and who do the government's bidding in return for state benefits."

There are at least four fundamental flaws in his analysis:

1. Notice the downward semantic slide from "establishment" to "support" or "promotion." This trades on a fatal equivocation. There is quite a difference between the establishment of a national church and some form of Federal promotion or sponsorship. Reich is substituting weaker words that are not synonymous with the original.

As a matter of historical fact, the Federal government was a patron of the faith. To take but one example, the very first Congress made provision for new churches to be built in the Northwest Territory. And just consider what-all Thomas Jefferson, patron saint of church/state separatists, had a hand in:
* Legislative and Military Chaplains,
* Establishing a national seal using a religious symbol,
* Including the word "God" in our national motto,
* Official Days of Fasting and Prayer-at least on the state level,
* Punishing Sabbath breakers (is that real enough for you?),
* Punishing marriages contrary to biblical law,
* Punishing irreverent soldiers,
* Protecting the property of churches,
* Requiring oaths saying "So Help Me God," taken on the Bible
* Granting land to Christian churches to reach the Indians
* Granting land to Christian schools
* Allowing Government property and facilities to be used for worship
* Using the Bible and non-denominational religious instruction in the public schools. (He was involved in three different school districts and the plan in each one of these REQUIRED that the Bible be taught in our public schools).
* Allowing clergymen to hold public office, and encouraging them to do so,
* Purchasing and stocking religious books for public libraries,
* Funding of salaries of clergymen in Indian mission schools.
* Funding for construction of church buildings for Indians,
* Exempting churches from taxation,
* Establishing professional schools of theology. [He wanted to bring over from Geneva, Switzerland, the entire faculty of Calvin's theological seminary and establish it at the University of Virginia.]
* Treaties requiring other nations to guarantee religious freedom,
* Including religious speeches and prayers in official ceremonies.
http://www.reclaimamerica.org/PAGES/NEWS/newspage.asp?story=989&SC=real%20thomas%20jefferson

And let us not forget that 10 of the 55 delegates to the Constitutional Convention were Presbyterians. Cf. Dictionary of the Presbyterian & Reformed Tradition in America, D. Hart, ed. (IVP 1999), 19.

Indeed, it is arguable that our very system of federalism and republican democracy owed a good deal to Presbyterian theology:

i) The theology of revolution, which flew in the face of the then-regnant divine right of kings, goes back to the OT, when, in times of national apostasy (e.g., Jezebel; Athalia), a godly remnant would rebel and plot to overthrow the apostate regime.

ii) The OT makings of a theology of revolution received more formal articulation in the work of Scots-Presbyterians like Gillespie (Aaron's Rod) and Rutherford (Lex Rex), not to mention its practical implementation in the Scottish Reformation of the Church, under Knox. And this outlook was popularized in Colonial America by John Witherspoon. James Madison was a student of Witherspoon's at Princeton.

iii) The notion of a republic once again has striking parallels with OT covenant theology, what with its principle of federalism (federal headship) and tribal eldership.

iv) This would also receive a concrete model in Presbyterian polity, with its representational form of gov't and graded court system, reminiscent of the separation of powers, check & balances, and triple-decker gov't (session/presbytery/GA>municiple/state/federal).

It was not until 1947 that Hugo Black suddenly "discovered" a wall of separation in the Establishment clause. What the Framers were blind to, he could divine.

2. Notice, as well, the downward semantic slide from the "federal government" to "government" in general. Yet the Establishment clause expressly applies to the Federal government only. The states had established churches well into the 19C. The Framers assuredly did not write strict separation of church and state into the Constitution. To the contrary, the point of the Establishment clause was to leave the status quo ante intact.

3. As to the consequences of government patronage, whatever the merits of this objection, it is not a Constitutional objection.

4. It is also unclear how Mr. Reich arrives at the conclusion that an established church undermines democracy. It is true that the institution of an established church is associated with the imperial or monarchal age. But, in that event, it was the state establishing the church, and not the church the state.

For that matter, Mr. Reich might as well reason that science undermines democracy inasmuch as science arose in the age of kings, and prospered under royal patronage.

From here, Mr. Reich graduates to a "larger" and more insidious "pattern":
"In its eagerness to promote the teaching of creationism in public schools, encourage school prayer, support anti-sodomy statutes, ban abortions, bar gay marriage, limit the use of stem cells, reduce access to contraceptives, and advance the idea of America as a "Christian nation," the Bush administration has done more to politicize religion than any administration in recent American history. It has already blurred the distinction between what is preached from the pulpits and what are the official policies of the United States government, to the detriment of both. Right-wing fundamentalists -- including not a few high-level Bush-administration officials -- charge us secularists with being "moral relativists" who would give equal weight to any moral precept. In so doing, they confuse politics with private morality. For religious zealots, there is no distinction between the two realms. And that is precisely the problem."

LIke the White Queen, Mr. Reich operates with a Looking-Glass logic by which he reads American history in reverse. In each of his examples, it is the liberal elite that is endeavoring by its iron-fisted methods to overthrow the status quo, whereas the religious right is attempting to hold the line or restore the status quo ante. Yet in his backward scansion of American history, when modern-day liberals overturn original intent, venerable precedent, and traditional values, they are somehow the guardians of the ancien regime, while the Evangelicals are somehow the radical innovators, trying their darndest to undo the First Amendment.

Curiouser still is when Mr. Reich, in the very next paragraph, pits this as a battle between enlightened progressives and retrograde obscurantists. Now, either both his charges are false, or—at most—one is falsified by the other; but one thing is for sure: they can’t both be true. So his allegation suffers from a sorry lack of elementary coherence.

Equally incoherent is his charge that Evangelicals are guilty of politicizing religion and erasing the distinction between public and private morality.

To begin with, it is not as though Mr. Reich were a lobbyist for limited government. Quite the contrary, he wants to turn American into yet another Eurocratic nanny-state, with a coercive equality imposed from above.

And no one has done more to politicize morality that the liberal elite, what with its judicial tyranny, its thought police, its compulsory public education, its mandatory multiculturalism, and its frivolous litigation against consensual conduct, to name but a few of its undemocratic incursions into the sphere of social engineering.

Why should Christians support an anti-Christian curriculum? If Mr. Reich were a true libertarian, he would defend school choice.

The NEA has been running the public school system two or three generations now. Yet our students are abysmally ignorant, while a number of lowly homeschoolers are distinguishing themselves.

Liberals like Mr. Reich don’t believe in academic standards, for they value equality over freedom, and equality can only be achieved by dumbing-down the curriculum to the lowest common denominator. You create a level playing field by flattening the high ground with your liberal bulldozers and steamrollers.

Moreover, liberals don’t want to teach students the facts. Rather, they want to turn out politically correct clones for their totalitarian utopia.

Why does Mr. Reich deem it wrong to "impose" religion on our children, but deems it entirely right to impose his irreligion on our children? He is utterly blind to his own bias. This, of course, is what happens when you only read one side of the argument. Like liberals in general, Mr. Reich has too much contempt for the opposing argument to even acquaint himself with the opposing argument. But is that not the very definition of prejudice?

The reference to contraceptives is deceptive. This is not about consenting adults, but parental consent in the case of minors.

Why stop with stem cells? Why not clone human beings to harvest their organs on organ farms?

Why stop with same-sex marriage. Why not abolish the age of consent, as NAMBLA would have it?

Moving onto his climactic paragraph, Mr. Reich paints the conflict in apocalyptic tints and Manichaean hues:
"The great conflict of the 21st century will not be between the West and terrorism. Terrorism is a tactic, not a belief. The true battle will be between modern civilization and anti-modernists; between those who believe in the primacy of the individual and those who believe that human beings owe their allegiance and identity to a higher authority; between those who give priority to life in this world and those who believe that human life is mere preparation for an existence beyond life; between those who believe in science, reason, and logic and those who believe that truth is revealed through Scripture and religious dogma. Terrorism will disrupt and destroy lives. But terrorism itself is not the greatest danger we face."

Again, this is riddled with so many fallacies that it is hard to know where to begin:

1. In what respect does modernism select for individualism? Indeed, even a number of humanistic writers like Huxley, Koestler, Orwell, and Bradbury have warned their fellow free-thinkers of the dangers of a secular totalitarian state, and their ominous prognostications have often come true in the 20C, and into the 21C.

2. Mr. Reich obviously values coercive equality over individual freedom. He resorts to libertarian rhetoric as a means to a socialist end.

3. In what respect does secularism place a premium on human life, either in theory or practice? How does an ardent abortionist like Reich believe in the sanctity of life? Of course, Reich never says "sanctity." For the secularist, there is no sanctity—only profanity.

In his Decmeber issue he complains about the "gruesome pictures" of aborted babies. What about the gruesome footage of the Nazi death camps? Or the killing fields of Cambodia?—both the sludge of secular humanism. Like a Mafia don who delegates the dirty work to a hit-man, Mr. Reich is offended, not at the slaughter of our young, but at having his silk suit bespattered with their innocent blood.

How does the destruction of embryonic stem cells uphold the sanctity of life? And don't you just suppose that Mr. Reich is also an advocate of euthanasia, whether voluntary or involuntary, for the aged, the infirm, the retarded and deformed? His is a merciless meritocracy for the cream of humanity.

This is the irony of the welfare state. With one hand it rocks the cradle, with the other it strangles the infant of years. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Reich.

4. Even more to the point, how is the value of human life enhanced by saying that human life is reducible to organic chemistry—to a three pound lump of biodegradable meat, the random byproduct of an indifferent and insensate process; that the virtuous and the vicious share a common oblivion; that, when I expire, all my hopes and fears, loves and longings die with me, as though I never were?

5. In what sense is logic a modern discovery? Has Mr. Reich never heard of Aristotle? What about Medieval advances in the study of logic?

6. Are unbelievers is more logical than are believers? Aristotle was a monotheist as well as a pioneer of categorical logic. Leibniz was a monotheist as well as a pioneer of symbolic logic. Gödel read his Bible on Sundays—even believed in demons. Gödel was also the greatest mathematical logician of the 20C, as well as Einstein's favorite conversation-partner. Peter Geach was a Catholic philosopher as well as a professor of logic. Richard Swinburne uses Bayesean logic in Christian apologetics, while Alvin Plantinga uses modal logic in Christian apologetics.

7. Where do abstract laws of logic come from, anyway? In what do they inhere? Can a secular worldview do justice to the necessity and universality of logic? Or are they attributes of an infinite and timeless mind?

8. Are unbelievers more reasonable than are believers? Then why doesn’t Mr. Reich, for one, give us some reasons for why he is an unbeliever? All he does is to contrast one position with another. But that is not a reason for choosing one position over another. Where are the supporting arguments? He dons a cerebral air, but fails to make a reasoned case for anything he believes in. Looks like anti-intellectualism masquerading as rationality. Instead of solid reasoning we see a lot of hand-waiving.

9. Can a blind, evolutionary process underwrite reason? Or does it undercut reason?

10. Is there a conflict between reason and revelation? What does that mean, exactly? Most of what we know and believe comes from second-hand information. In this respect, getting your information from the Bible is no different than getting your information from a textbook or encyclopedia. What matters is whether your source of information is reliable or not.

11. Science? What does he know of science? Is he a scientist? Not at all. What does he happen to know about science that a believer doesn’t know? Can’t a scientist be a man of faith?

Modern science arose in Western Europe—in what was then Christian Europe. Kepler was a devout Lutheran. Newton was a Bible-believer, as well as the greatest scientist who ever lived. Indeed, Newton was one of the architects of modern science.

12. Perhaps, though, what Mr. Reich would say is that you can be both a Christian and a scientist, but only at the cost of consistency. Well, if that is what he means, then that is yet another lonely assertion in search of a supporting argument. How would he fare in a debate with Walt Brown or Kurt Wise or Bill Dembski or Michael Behe or John Byl—to name a few?

For that matter, scepticism regarding the mainstream model of evolution is not limited to Christian fundamentalists. It includes Crick, Hoyle, Denton, Gödel, Grassé, and Sheldrake.

Even among its staunchest allies, some Darwinians have rather peculiar ways of defending their theory. Richard Lewontin is on record as saying that "We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs…in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories…We cannot allow a divine foot in the door," while Richard Dawkins has written that "It is almost as if the human brain were specifically designed to misunderstand Darwinism, and to find it hard to believe," and yet again that "Even if there were no actual evidence in favor of the Darwinians theory…we should still be justified in preferring it over all rival theories."

Although both of them are secular humanists, John Searle and Thomas Nagel say they find it impossible to reduce mind to matter.

13. When talking of modernity, there is also a widespread tendency to confuse pure and applied science, theory and technology.

But there are two competing philosophies of science—realism and antirealism. This goes all the way back to the Greeks, with their distinction between the natural and mathematical sciences. There are those who regard scientific theories as useful fictions that enable us to manipulate our environment, but fail to describe the way things really are.

14. What is the "scientific" argument for putting the homosexual on a par with the heterosexual? Where is his evidence?

15. Again, without benefit of any supporting argument whatsoever, Mr. Reich places Christianity and Islam on the same moral plane. Were he a true student of history, he would know that throughout history it is Islam, always Islam, that has been the aggressor. It is Islam that overran the Mideast, and Eastern Europe, and the Levant. It is Islam that is engaged in a global jihad against the rest of the world.

Our mortal enemy hides in plain sight. Why is Mr. Reich unable to see the whites of their eyes? But in the backseat of the limousine liberal, all windows have been refitted with mirrors. So the liberal can no longer see the world as it is. He can only see his own reflection.

The gospel of grace-3

17. Indicatives over imperatives. To take a classic case, Arminians assume that God would never blame us for breaking his law unless we were able to keep it. So they operate according to the principle that ability limits liability. Up to a point the Bible endorses this commonsense intuition. In the law we have the category of unwitting sins. So the law recognizes cases of diminished responsibility. Even here, though, it is noteworthy that the law only classifies ignorance as an extenuating rather than exculpatory circumstance. This already represents a declension from Arminian ethics.
Moreover, the Bible also operates according to a principle of federal representation. For example, the Bible says that the one sin of the one man resulted in the condemnation of his entire posterity (Rom 5:12ff.). This may strike us as unfair, but for now I’m just stating what the Bible says. As long as this is a debate between fellow Christians it shouldn’t be necessary to justify Scriptural doctrine.
The Arminian assumes that the purpose of the law is to supply a standard of conduct. And this is one function of the law. And if that were the only purpose of the law, it seems reasonable to suppose that it would be an attainable standard. Of course, that is not the only reasonable supposition. Professionals often measure their work against the greatest representatives in the field. In most cases, this is an unattainable standard, yet it is hardly useless on that account. Such an ideal of excellence challenges us to do better than if we lowered the bar.
Moreover, a standard of conduct may serve as a standard of judgment. In various fields, a candidate is disqualified if he can’t meet a certain standard of excellence. Here the standard does not presuppose that everyone is able to rise to the challenge. To the contrary, it is used to eliminate the majority of candidates in order to isolate and identity an elite few. I mention these two alternatives to illustrate the fact that the Arminian intuition rests on a snap judgment, which begins to lose its initial plausibility once we start to consider a few concrete counter-examples. This is a weakness with intuition. It is apt to overgeneralize. Something that had seemed self-evidently true may appear obviously false as soon as someone draws our attention to a major exception.
Furthermore, revelation, and not reason, is the Protestant rule of faith. I am still old fashioned enough to believe that theology is the queen of the sciences, and reason is her handmaid. However plausible the Arminian formula may seem—and as we’ve begun to see that it is deceptively simplistic even when judged by reason—the principle that ability limits liability runs smack up against the Biblical diagnosis of man’s moral condition. One reason that the Reformed/Arminian debate will continue until the end of the church age is that the Arminian cannot bring himself to submit to the superior wisdom of God. The Calvinist can raise all the same objections, but he is prepared to bow before the judgment of God. This isn’t a groveling act of obeisance or abject act of intellectual suicide; on the contrary, it is supremely rational to defer to a supreme intelligence. This is what sets apart the sheep from the goats: the sheep follow the Shepherd—day or night—whereas the goats will only follow the Shepherd’s lead during the day—when they can see the path for themselves. The Calvinist is a full-time follower whereas the Arminian is a daylight disciple. When the sun goes down, the Calvinist takes out his Bible (Ps 119:105) while the Arminian whips out his flashlight.
The Bible also teaches that God had an ulterior motive in giving the law. And that was to expose and even intensify our depravity (Ezk 20:25-27; Rom 3:20; 5:20; 7:7,13; Heb 10:3). This represents the antipode of the Arminian assumption. Here the law presupposes our moral incompetence. It also implies a distinction between God’s decretive and preceptive will; God lays down certain precepts that he never intended us to keep. A classic example would be his command to Abraham to sacrifice Isaac (Gen 22).
18. Indicatives over conditionals. A favorite charge of Arminian authors is that Calvinism renders the admonitions of Scripture, such as the apostasy passages in Hebrews, otiose. Unless apostasy were a live option for the true believer, these would cease to be genuine warnings.
While this line of argument may enjoy a lot of intuitive appeal, it is logically fallacious. For example, conditionals include counterfactuals. We have a string of these in 1 Cor 15 with reference to the resurrection. Yet Paul is proposing the antecedent in order to demonstrate the impossibility of the consequent. The whole point of a contrary-to-fact conditional is that it is factually false but counterfactually true. The Arminian, with his commitment to conditional election, sufficient grace, hypothetical universalism, and freedom of future contingents is already knee-deep in the truth-value of counterfactuals. The primary point of difference is that Arminians index counterfactuals to the will of man whereas Calvinists index counterfactuals to the will of God.
19. Minimal over maximal meaning. As a rule, dogmatic and systematic theology ought to confine themselves to the positive assertions and strict implications of Scripture. The objective is to develop a belief-system where the creedal aspect is brought to the fore. Christians are believers. Our priority should be to determinate what the Bible obliges us to believe, and not what it allows us to believe. Arminian theology leans on possible inferences and natural intuitions. This is not a solid foundation for faith. It doesn’t take very seriously the ethical imperative of faith. Indeed, it often reads more like an evasive strategy.
20. Systematic over incidental treatments. Some Biblical writers are more sweeping thinkers than others, while some Biblical books and genres of Scripture major on a particular theme. It is only logical, then, to begin with certain books and authors when developing a division of theology, viz., election (John; Romans/Ephesians); justification (Romans/Galatians); assurance (1 John); covenant theology (Hebrews); charismatic theology (1 Corinthians); christology (John); polity (Acts; Pastorals); worship (the Psalter); ethics (Exodus-Deuteronomy; Proverbs); the problem of evil (Job; Romans).
21.Unilateral over bilateral harmonization. In harmonizing one set of passages with another, it may not be possible or plausible to harmonize in either direction. For example, metaphors are reducible to literal properties or predicates. The attributes ascribed to God by classical Christian theism (e.g. necessary, timeless, omnipotent, omniscient) are already abstract or literal, and therefore irreducible. There is nothing to refine away. But in the case of emotive attributes like love, wrath, regret, jealousy, and frustration, there is an anthropomorphic aspect. The many moods of human love cannot be mapped back onto God. So some allowance has to be made for hyperbole, as well as a distinction drawn between the conceptual content of an emotive attribute and secondary aspects that are incidental to its mode of subsistence. In finite, sensuous agents, love has aspects that are inapplicable to a sovereign, spiritual agent.
22. Progressive over prior revelation. The NT writers will often justify their position by appeal to an OT passage. For example, John defends reprobation by invoking Isa 6:9-10 (Jn 12:40) while Paul defends it by invoking Exod 9:16 and Mal 1:2-3 (Rom 9:13,17). Arminians try to deflect this appeal by claiming that apostolic exegesis violates original intent. This counter-move is objectionable on several grounds:
i) It disregards the authority of apostolic exegesis. When a Bible writer interprets a passage of Scripture for us, we should take this inspired gloss as our point of departure rather than reinterpreting the original by our own lights. It is not the place of a commentator or theologian to double-check the exegesis of an Apostle.
ii) It disregards the principle of thematic development. Scripture is an organic whole. The meaning of a passage is to be found, not only in the original context but also in the telic context. God has choreographed the unfolding of revelation and redemptive history in order for it to converge on the Christ-event and its fallout. When interpreting Scripture we should not only read the end from the beginning (promise), but also the beginning from the end (fulfillment). Both perspectives are necessary.
Points (i) and (ii) are complementary. Because of their position in redemptive history, the final context of OT revelation is realized in the writers of the NT. They represent the terminus of a divine trajectory (e.g. Lk 24:25-27; Rom 15:4; 1 Cor 10:11; 1 Pet 1:12).
For example, Ezekiel extends the Edenic motif to the Restoration of Israel (Ezk 47:1-12), while John extends Ezekiel’s typology to the Church Triumphant (Rev 2:7; 22:2,4). It would be retrograde to deconstruct Revelation back into Ezekiel and then deconstruct Ezekiel back into Genesis. This is like playing a sonata backwards; Scripture resembles the movement of a sonata: exposition, development, recapitulation. To collapse the end of the arc into its inception dehistoricizes the natural flow of Scripture.
iii) When, moreover, we are exegeting Paul (or John or the author of Hebrews), the question of immediate importance is, How does Mal 1:2-3 function at this stage of Paul’s argument? It is Romans, and not Malachi, that supplies the governing context. Rom 9:13 is not simply a roundabout way of getting at Malachi’s authorial intent—anymore than Malachi an indirect way of getting at Paul’s authorial intent. The meaning of each is not exhausted by the other. So in determining Paul’s use of a primary source, it is the secondary source that furnishes the point of reference.
This is not to deny the value of comparison, but we should not assume that a given verse serves the same purpose in both the primary and secondary source materials. Because the setting is different, every time a NT author applies an OT verse to his circumstances he necessarily recontextualizes the passage.
To take a comparison, a commentator on Matthew or Luke would not take Mark as the controlling context for what a parallel passage in Matthew or Luke could mean, any more than a commentator on Chronicles would take Samuel or Kings as an external check on a companion passage in Chronicles. What matters first of all is how the later author understood the relevance passage in relation to his situation, and not how the verse applied in its original setting. As long as the extrapolation is convergent rather than divergent with the import and implications of the original, no violence is done to the original.
iv) We must also distinguish between intent and implication. Intent is psychological and private; implication is logical and public. The logical implications of a given passage are not limited to the conscious intent of the author, to which, in any event, we lack direct access. If a Christian carpenter cited Deut 22:8 to warrant the installation of smoke detectors, he could not very well justify that on the basis of original intent, and yet it is a valid inference from the underlying principle of a safety regulation. He derives a general principle from a specific case-law, and the reapplies that principle to a new situation.
v) Even in their original setting, these verses have a predestinarian force. On Mal 1, the Edomites are expressly said to be the object of God’s eschatological curse (1:4; cf. Isa 35:5,9ff.; Ezk 35:9; Obadiah 10,18). This implicates their spiritual destiny. Moreover, the OT operates from a principle of tribal solidarity. The fate of the clan is bound up with the fortunes of its patriarch. Indeed, covenant theology exploits this principle. The love/hate language is stereotypical terminology in OT covenant theology. Moreover, God generally coordinates grace with the means of grace. The fact that the covenants of promise extend through the line of Isaac/Jacob rather than Ishmael/Esau again implicates the spiritual fate of the Edomites. They are an accursed people, cut off from the stream of revelation and redemption (cf. Jn 4:24; Eph 2:12). Of course, this doesn’t amount to strict numerical identity, for election can cut across family lines (cf. Amos 3:12?); but as a rule, if a people-group is born outside the pale of special revelation, then that represents the peremptory judgment of God. There is no neat separation in Scripture between historical and spiritual destiny.
On Isa 6:9-10, by hardening Israel the Lord cuts off any opportunity of repentance that would spare the nation from exile. It may be objected that this has reference to the temporal fortunes of the nation rather than the spiritual fate of individuals. However, that analysis is superficial; for by this act of reprobation God is also condemning the people to remain sunken in idolatry. The principal evil is not exile but idolatry; exile is merely the formal sanction, while idolatry carries its own penalty—for idolatry is the paradigmatic sin in Scripture. To be left in a state of idolatry is a sentence of damnation. Hell is the ultimate exile—exile from God’s presence. As with Mal 3, God’s action is preemptive with respect to the spiritual opportunities of generations to come. In the case of Israel, it will terminate in the Restoration, but not for the apostate generation.
On Exod 9:16, I have already discussed the hardening of Pharaoh under (4). I would only add that:
a) Pharaoh is presented as a mere puppet in the hands of God. Arminians often charge that Calvinism reduces men to puppets. They are half-right where the reprobate are concerned. Pharaoh is a foil for revealing God’s sovereignty (Exod 14:4,17-18). He is merely a means to an end. That is why God gave him life and put him on the throne in the first place. No consideration is ever given to his own spiritual well-being. On the contrary, he was set up for the fall. His only raison d’être is to serve as a cautionary tale. As such, he illustrates the grace of God towards others, to the conspicuous exclusion of himself—for in God’s hands he is instrumental in a redemptive plan to which he is not party. Rather, he is to be used and discarded—like a ladder that is kicked aside once the summit has been scaled. Giving Pharaoh a "fair chance" to repent would jeopardize the whole enterprise. The hardening of Pharaoh’s heart is conditioned on God’s glory and not Pharaoh’s freedom. Of course, we shouldn’t feel sorry for Pharaoh. He was a ruthless ruler enjoyed all the perks of absolute monarch.
Calvinism, so they contend, reduces men to puppets or robots. I wonder, though, just what is the difference between the puppet/puppeteer relation and the potter/clay relation (Isa 29:16; 41:25; 45:9; Jer 18:6; Rom 9:21)?

b) Arminians claim that the episodes are concerned with historiography rather than soteriology. However, Pharaoh’s resistance is specifically classified as sin (9:34; cf. 10:16-17)—which frames the interaction in expressly soteric categories. Moreover, his sin was the result of divine agency. He sinned against the Lord because the Lord hardened his heart. Absent a redemptive remedy, this implies a divine predetermination to damnation.
iii) In Scripture, the condition of the heart is a spiritual condition (e.g. Gen 6:5; 8:21; Deut 29:4; 1 Sam; Ps 14:1; 34:18; 51:10,17; 66:18; 101:2; Jer 17:9; 31:33; Ezk 36:26). This, indeed, is axiomatic. The fact, therefore, that God is represented as turning Pharaoh’s heart to evil certainly implicates his spiritual fate. I realize that this raises theodicean concerns, but a Christian theodicy must begin with the scriptural data rather than preempt them.

23. Prooftexts over doctored texts. Arminians cite a slew of prooftexts in favor of general redemption. When you go through their prooftexts one by one, however, what you find is that not a single verse affirms the distinctive contention of the Arminian. What we have instead are a number of verses that seem to affirm universal salvation. The Arminian glosses these statements by drawing a distinction between a potential and an actual unlimited atonement. But that qualification is devoid of any textual warrant.
For his part, the Calvinist can appeal to a number of direct prooftexts for special redemption (e.g. Jn 6:37-39; 10:11,26; 11:52; 13:1; 17:2,6-7,9,24; Heb 9:15;10:14). He doesn’t have to introduce any further qualifications in order to make them bear out his specific claim. These serve as an independent point of reference for qualifying the so-called Arminian prooftexts. He can also infer special redemption from related doctrines like unconditional election and the grace of faith. By contrast, the Arminian has to engage in a tendentious appeal to a set of verses that he must first qualify on the assumption of universal atonement— as distinct from universal salvation —in order to then invoke them as proof of universal salvation. The reasoning is viciously circular.
The doctrine of special redemption rests on the convergence of at least half a dozen independent lines of evidence:
i) Penal substitution. There are verses that describe the work of Christ in terms of a role-reversal in which our demerit (via Adam) is attributed to Christ while his merit is attributed to us (e.g. Isa 53; Rom 5; 2 Cor 5:18,21; Gal 3:13; Col 2:14; 1 Pet 2:24; 3:18). This exchange implies that every-one for whom Christ died is accounted righteous in God’s sight. But if everyone is not saved, then Christ didn’t die for everyone.
ii) Election. Not only does particular election imply particular atonement, but there are verses in which election and atonement expressly coincide: Christ gave his life for those whom the Father gave to Christ (Jn 6:37-39; 11:2,6-7,9,24; Heb 2:13b). The distinction between election/redemption is not a part/whole relation; rather, it is because the redeemed were already marked out by virtue of election that Christ died for them and them alone. Even apart from passages in which election and redemption are clearly coordinate, particular election would still imply particular redemption (e.g. Jn 10:26; Acts 13:48; Rom 8:29; 9:11-18; 1 Cor 1:27-29; Eph 1:4-11; 2:10; 1 Thes 5:9; 2 Thes 2:13; 2 Tim 1:9; 1 Pet 2:8-9; Rev 13:8; 17:8). This is especially underscored by reprobation.
Arminians like William Klein drive a wedge between individual and corporate election. But this tactic is fallacious on several grounds:
a) Is the equation between class and membership foreign to NT culture? Don’t fishermen count the number of fish in their catch? Don’t shepherds name and number the sheep in their flocks? Don’t tax-collectors add and itemize taxable goods?
b) To isolate a group from its members is far more abstract than the Reformed equation. If Klein is so concerned with the dangers of imposing logical overrefinements on the text, why is he drawing such sophistical distinctions? Even on his own grounds, wouldn’t the concrete, commonsense equation between class and membership be more in keeping with the practical reasoning of shepherds and fishermen?
d) Klein drives a wedge between Greek and Hebrew modes of thought. But this is unhistorical. Even Palestinian fishermen were bilingual—not to mention members of the educated class (e.g. Philo; Josephus). Jews had daily contact with uncircumcized Gentiles. Is Klein seriously suggesting that men like Luke, Paul, and the author of Hebrews were not conversant with "Western" modes of thought. Apparently, Klein managed to get a doctorate in NT studies without ever reading anything by Martin Hengel—e.g., Judaism and Hellenism (Fortress, 1981).
e) Klein’s disjunction is in tension with the inherent individualism of his Arminian soteriology. One can’t combine freewill with a consistently corporate model of our spiritual destiny. Personal autonomy and corporate identity are antipodal positions.
f) While intent is subjective, implication is objective; so even if—for the sake of argument—we were to grant that the NT authors did not draw a conscious inference from corporate to individual election, the class/ member relation would still obtain as a matter of logical necessity. Klein confuses logic with psychology. The fact that St. Paul didn’t have an opinion on Goldbach’s conjecture doesn’t render its truth-value indeterminate.
g) Like every other relativist, Klein can’t keep his word. For example, he complains that reprobation is inconsistent with the universal offer of the Gospel (ibid. 267). So he invokes logic when it suits his purpose—in his own mind, at least.
h) But to address the issue directly, the sacred authors do, in fact, describe election as terminating on individuals. The elect are named and numbered (e.g. Jn 10:3; Rom 11:4,25; Rev 2:17; 6:11; 13:8; 17:8)— including the use of proper names (e.g. Rom 9:11,13) and singular personal pronouns (vv15-16,18). Klein casts God in the role of the thief rather than Good Shepherd—for the thief doesn’t call the sheep by name.
Moreover, the designated individuals (e.g. Pharaoh; Isaac/Jacob) are not isolated cases, but typify a general principle in God’s redemptive and reprobative economy. That is why they are singled out for discussion—owing to their representative significance.
Furthermore, Paul distinguishes between natural election and spiritual election (Rom 9:6-7; cf. 2:28-29). But this implies individual discrimination inasmuch as national election is corporate (i.e. inclusive of all members of the stipulated class) as over against spiritual election—which represents a subset of the total (cf. "some," 11:14). Election operates within people-groups and not simply upon people-groups—cutting across ethnic lines and family ties (cf. 9:6-13,24). For additional argumentation, cf. D. Moo NICNT (Eerdmans, 1996), 571-72; J. Piper, ibid., 65-71.
i) Klein misses the big picture. In Rom 9-11, Paul is addressing the problem of Jewish unbelief. Invoking the principle of corporate solidarity—in this case, the national apostasy of Israel—would simply paraphrase the original problem—offering a description of the problematic phenomenon in lieu of an explanation. It is precisely the general infidelity of Israel that has called into question the ultimate fidelity of God in keeping his promises. Paul’s solution appeals to double-predestination. Yes, God chooses one tribe over another, but he also chooses one member over another. And his choice is not merely for service, but implicates the eternal fate of individuals (cf. 9:3,22-23).

iii) Covenant theology. In chapters like Jn 6, 10, and 17, Father and Son are represented as having entered into a contract to save a people. The Father chooses who is to be saved and commissions the Son to die for them; the Son is a voluntary party to this contract, being sent out with the understanding that he will receive what he has contracted for. The elect are his "wages."
iv) Intercession. The intercession of Christ is grounded in the sacrifice of Christ—owing to the indivisible character of his priestly work. Hence, sacrifice and intercession are conterminous (Heb 1:3b; 7:27; 8:1,3; 9:24b).
v) Programmatic passages. There are verses that map election onto redemption and redemption onto application (e.g. Rom 8:32-34; Eph 1:4-14). Here the very same set of personal subjects is in view from start to finish. Commenting on this correlation in Eph 1, B.B. Warfield observes that "salvation is traced consecutively to its preparation (4-5), its execution (6,7), its publication (8-10), and its application (11-14)," Biblical and Theological Studies (P&R, 1968), 318.
vi) Efficacy. The sustained argument of Hebrews is emphatic on the subjective efficacy of Christ’s atonement (e.g. 4:14; 7:16,24-28; 8:6,10,12; 9:12,14-15,26-28; 10:12-18,22). Here there is no daylight between objective sufficiency and subjective efficiency. Hence, if everyone is not saved, then it follows that Christ didn’t die to save everyone. This line of argument receives additional confirmation from the fact that saving faith is also the reflex result of divine agency (e.g. Jn 1:13; 3:5-6,19-20; 6:44,65; 8:34,44; Rom 7:18; 8:70-8; Acts 16:14; 1 Cor 2:14; Eph 2:1ff.; 4:17ff.; 1 Jn 3:10; 5:19).