Is God to blame?

Mr. Nguyen,

A friend drew my attention to your article on the religious implications of the tidal wave.



A few comments:

1. Your article bears a startling resemblance to one published by Martin Kettle in The Guardian:



Do I smell a whiff of plagiarism?

2. Speaking for myself, I’ve never had any respect for folks who only bring up the problem of evil when something spectacular happens in their own generation, or something tragic happens in their personal life.

To begin with, this is a rather psychopathic reaction. The attitude seems to be: evil is only an abstraction unless it happens to me.

Now, at an emotional level, this may be true. But at an intellectual level, you don’t have see something for yourself to know it’s real and form an opinion about it. There have been plenty of well-reported natural disasters over the centuries. A new catastrophe doesn’t raise any new questions. There is no reason to revise one’s worldview in light of the latest instance of natural or moral evil. The exercise reminds me of all those fatuous book titles about the possibility of faith after Auschwitz.

3. In addition, it makes no moral difference whether 30 people die in one day, or one person dies every day for 30 days in a row. When a lot of folks die all at once, that grabs our attention, but there is no moral difference between a sudden sum and a serial sum.

4. It isn’t clear to me why you choose to attack Christian theism rather than Hindu or Buddhist or Muslim theism. Why do you classify Yahweh as an "interventionist" God, but decline to classify Allah as an interventionist God? What about Shiva--the Destroyer?

Is it because you regard the God of the Bible is the only God worth either believing in or disbelieving? If so, I agree! Otherwise, your bias is blatant.

5. You then level a totally incoherent charge against Christian theism. On the one hand, you say that "they might have been chosen because an interventionist God actually regarded the Hindus of India and the Muslims of Indonesia and the Buddhists of Thailand as deserving of earthly suffering."

"In the aftermath to last year's Bam earthquakes, which killed more than 20,000 (mostly Muslim) Iranians, conservative American rabbi Daniel Lapin argued in the Chicago Jewish News that God dispatches natural disasters to punish those who have not embraced Judeo-Christian traditions. Noting that the US had been relatively untouched by natural disasters, Lapin wrote: "We ought to acknowledge that each day, every American derives enormous benefit from the faith of our founders and of their heirs." So goes the pungent logic of one who believes in an interventionist God."

On the other hand, you ask: "And what of the many Christians and Jews, including charity workers, still missing? Do they, and their family members, deserve their suffering?"

Okay, so which is it? Are non-Christians being singled out? Or are Jews and Christians targeted as well? Is it discriminate or indiscriminate?

BTW, Rabbi Lapin, fine man that he is, does not speak for all of Christendom. The very Christians who lay great weight on the sovereignty of God also lay great weight on the often-inscrutable character of divine providence. We do not assume a one-to-one correspondence between a particular sin and a particular judgment. The Bible itself denies such a mechanical correlation. Read John 9:1-3. Read the Book of Job.

6. You bring up the case of underage victims. To this I’d say three things:

i) Christian theology has a doctrine of original sin. You may not like it, but if you’re going to attack the inner logic of Christian theism, you need to take that into account.

ii) Every adult began life as a child. We see a child as he is. God sees a child as he would be or will be.

iii) You complain when children die along with their parents. But if the children survived, I expect you’d gripe about the plight of all the orphans. So this seems to be a red-herring.

7. You confound responsibility and blame. The title of your article poses the question, "Is God to blame?" But the body of your article attributes ultimate responsibility to God. Yet these are too different things. Responsibility is a necessary condition for blame, but it is insufficient to entail blame. Yes, according to Scripture, God is ultimately responsible for whatever happens. That goes with the pay-grade. But he is not solely responsible, and he is not blamable.

There is a vast apologetic literature on this subject. Do you ever read the people you write about?

8. Christian faith is not like a light-switch we flip on and off depending on the vicissitudes of the nightly news. Christian faith is a God-given apprehension of God’s reality and revelation. In Calvin's classic definition, "faith is a firm and certain knowledge of God's benevolence toward us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts through the Holy Spirit," Institutes 3.2.7.

9. Of much more interest is the faith of the unbeliever. Why is a secularist so emotionally and intellectually ill-adapted to the only world he claims there to be? Why does he act so disappointed? Why does he act as though there is something wrong with the world when a natural disaster strikes? Why does he act as though things are not the way they’re supposed to be? Where does he get this ideal? Not from the world, obviously.

From and evolutionary standpoint, a tsunami is just an arm of natural selection weeding the garden. If we feel bad about the victims, that is only because evolution has programmed us to empathize with members of our own species.

It is not the nominal Christian who loses his faith in God, but the atheist who loses his faith in the world, which is so very telling. The unbeliever behaves like a believer in a state of deep denial.

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<< I don't think Nguyen or other secularists think there's something wrong with the world when an earthquake strikes. They are not questioning the workings of nature, rather they are questioning the workings of theistic belief, especially the interventionist model of God, and also the notion of God as benevolent. >>

No, I think it cuts deeper than that. Certainly it is possible to mount an argument based on the internal logic of a belief-system. The critic doesn't have to subscribe to the belief-system himself to do this. He is merely examining the coherence of the position on its own grounds. Yes, that can be done.

However, the reaction of the typical secularist to natural evil isn't that self-contained. He assigns a tragic significance to the catastrophic loss of life. He thinks it is a bad thing when a natural disaster sweeps away hundreds or thousands of human lives. He renders a value judgment about the consequences of a natural disaster.

So this is based on his own worldview. And this can be one reason, quite irrespective of Christian theism, that he does not subscribe to Christian theism. This is an independent value-judgment which he brings to bear in the evaluation of Christian theism.

And that reaction doesn't make much sense from a secular outlook. A cold-blooded secular analysis would run more along the following lines:

A natural disaster is a mechanism of natural selection. It is a way in which the blind watchmaker weeds his garden. We find the loss of human life disagreeable because almighty natural selection has programmed us to empathize with members of our own species. Such fellow feeling confers is survival advantage on the species by tricking the human carrier into altruistic behavior which will up the odds of passing along his smart genes to the next generation.

As Edward Wilson and Michael Ruse put it, "human beings function better if they are deceived by their genes into thinking that there is a disinterested objective morality binding upon them, which all should obey," "Moral Philosophy as applied science," _Philosophy_ (1986), 61:179.

The underlying fallacy, committed by Kettle and Nguyen alike, is the double standard they apply to theism and atheism. On the one hand, they suggest that a natural disaster is incompatible with their preconception of what Christian theism *would* allow. On the other hand, Nguyen quotes some passages from Scripture to suggest that the outcome is, in fact, consistent with Christian theism, but this is incompatible with his preconception of what God *should* be like.

And beyond that ground-floor duplicity, neither of them regards a secular worldview as disqualified by its dire ramifications. So why do stern consequences disqualify theism, but not atheism? To the extent that we live in a harsh world, any realistic theology will have a hard-nosed aspect. That is not all it will have, but that will be part of the picture.

<< You write that "Every adult began life as a child. We see a child as he is. God sees a child as he would be or will be." Are you suggesting that God foresaw what they would be like as adults and decided to condemn them to an early death because of the sins they would commit? >>

No, my point was in response to Nguyen. He presented the underage victims as an especially problematic case for Christian theism.

Many people see children as innocent. This is a rather romantic view. Children have a violent temper which would turn murderous if it were within their power to act out their impulses. There is no more frightening spectacle than the imaginary idea of a child with godlike powers of omnipotence.

However, it is true that children under the age of discretion are in a condition of diminished responsibility--although they have a keen sense of fair play if you break a promise!

But it is also true that if we knew what some children would become, we would look at them rather differently. In fact, I recall reading a philosophical debate over whether it would be moral to smother Stalin (or some such) in the cradle if we knew the future destiny of that child. This is also the stuff of SF stories about time-travel.

I'm not entering into that debate for now. My immediate point, in relation to Nguyen, is that he is judging God by a narrow, human viewpoint when God would have a far more sweeping perspective. He postulates an omniscient God, only to disprove him by the application of a near-sighted point of view.

The question is not whether kids are especially deserving of death. The question is whether they are morally immune--from a divine vantagepoint. In Christian theology, there are reasons for death above and beyond the guilt of the decedent. It may further some larger objective.

To take a human analogy, a foot-soldier may be more evil than a field commander, but it terms of strategy and tactics, you aim for the field commander, not because he is especially depraved, but because he is more important to the success of the enemy.

As I also said in my reply to Nguyen, astute Christians are extremely reticent about reading divine providence like a cautionary tale.

A few final clarifications:

1. I'm not the one trying to assign blame, here. Kettle and Nguyen are the ones playing the blame-game. Since that is how they chose to frame the debate, I have to answer the question the way the answer was cast.

2. It is also possible to say that there's some blame to go around without blaming everyone concerned.

For example, the West Coast has had a tsunami monitoring system since the 60s. And this is very low-tech. Why didn't the authorities in S. Asia take the elementary precaution of installing a monitoring system as well?

Likewise, the West Coast has certain evacuation procedures in place in case of an earthquake which might generate a tsunami. A few years ago, when I was still living in the NW, some coastal schools were evacuated due to submarine earthquake in the vicinity of Japan or some such place. No tsunami in fact materialized, but the schools were evacuated just in case--since an evacuation needs a little lead time.

Now, seismologists had, naturally enough, registered the earthquake off the coast of Sumatra, but they didn't relay that info to the authorities. Why wasn't there a protocol in place for doing that?

In addition, one precursor to a tsunami making landfall is that the water goes out before it comes back in. I've heard on the news that when this happened, what people did, instead of heading for high ground or an upper story building, was to head for the teach and mull around, gawking at the spectacle. This reflects elementary ignorance. Shouldn't the school system be teaching the coastal population what to expect?

The answer is that most folks, including most politicians, are crisis-driven. They put off the day of reckoning until disaster strikes (literally!), then they throw up their hands and ask how this could have happened. With 120K casualties, you can be sure that, after all the recriminations are duly ventilated, all the obvious precautions will now be put in place--now that its too late to do the victims any good.

In a natural and moral order, there are consequences for failing to anticipate and make minimal provision for predictable natural disasters. And I wouldn't be at all surprised if, by the time another natural disaster should strike, preparedness had once again fallen by the wayside and the populace is caught off guard.

3. Kettle and Nguyen contend that an event like the S. Asian tsunami falsifies belief in the Christian God. This objection can take two forms.

i) They can mount an internal argument to the effect that this is inconsistent with what Christian theology would predict for the state of the world.

Indeed, both of them broach that line of argument. However, their objection is prized, not on what Christian theology actually teaches, but on some sort of thirdhand, greeting card version.

There are a lot of fatalities in the pages of Scripture. Some of these reflect the judgment of God, and make use of natural disasters. And some of those entail underage fatalities as well (e.g., the Flood; the Plague of the Firstborn).

In addition, children can die through no fault of their own. We just celebrated the Christmas season. One of the traditional elements of the season is a commemoration of the massacre of the innocents (Mt 2:16-18). In order to kill the Christchild, Herod orders the slaughter of all the boys in Bethlehem 2 years and under. And this in fulfillment of OT prophecy (Jer 31:15).

So there is nothing in Christian theology which is contradicted by a natural disaster. Kettle and Nguyen don't know what they're talking about. They attack the Christian faith in studied ignorance of what it allows or disallows.

4. The alternative is to mount an external argument, based on their own value-system. Kettle and Nguyen hint at this tactic as well. They oppose secular naturalism to Christian supernaturalism. But this assumes that naturalism has the inner resources to derive a secular system of ethics. To see some of the hurdles in the way of that program, just read a review of Richard Dawkins latest missive (see below).

http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0408/articles/barr.htm

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<< I'm not an expert on the Christian God - but Christians do seem to believe that God can intervene in individual cases. >>

Yes, this is the traditional view, as held by such classic exponents as Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, and Edwards.

<< In almost every disaster (whether natural or man-made) where there are survivors, you often hear people thanking God they survived. But they overlook the fact that God allowed many others to perish. >>

That depends. "Miracle" is often used rather loosely for highly improbable events like being the only survivor of a plane crash. Skeptics discount this sort of claim on the grounds that, sooner or later, an improbable event is bound to turn up. And there is some truth to that.

However, not all miraculous events (or reports thereof) are statistical anomalies. Premonitions, say, or the sudden and utter remission of terminal cancer after prayer, are resistant to that sort of parsing. The fact that everyone is not cured of terminal cancer in answer to prayer does not, of itself, explain away the cases that are--any more than if I went into a casino, and every hand I played was a royal flush, would my appeal to random chance or the fact that most of the other gamblers were losing save me from a pair of concrete galoshes!

<< I think theism makes more sense if you think of God as the creator of the natural order, including the process of evolution, but not as a power that intervenes in specific cases to affect human beings one way or another or passes judgment on human beings. >>

You don't say why you think this makes more sense than the interventionist model. In Christian theology, there is a balance between providence and miracle. There is room for miraculous intervention, but if that became the norm, then chaos would ensue.

<< I know you'll cite the Bible to refute this notion, but the Bible was written by human beings -- any divine "input" or inspiration is unprovable. Well, that's a whole other matter for debate! >>

It's not that I cite the Bible to refute it. Quoting Scripture to someone who doesn't believe it is obviously a question-begging exercise.

However, it is not question-begging to quote Scripture when folks like Kettle and Nguyen contend that natural disasters such as the recent tsunami falsify Christian theism. There are no simple refutations of Christian theism. For we're dealing here with an interlocking belief-system in which one doctrine can come to the aid of another doctrine at any given pressure point. Hence, there are built-in answers to stock objections. It is not so much that it was designed that way, but it works out that way.

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Different religious traditions have different strategies for dealing with the problem of evil. The Hindu/Buddhist theodicy is based on the law of karma. This does involve blaming the victim. And it is, of course, also bound up with belief in reincarnation. For a classic critique, cf. P. Edwards, _Reincarnation_ (Prometheus Books 1996).

This is a philosophical theodicy. At a more down-to-earth level, folk Hinduism and folk Buddhism are polytheistic, so that life is an obstacle course in which you bribe the gods and play one off against another.

Because Muhammad claimed to be the successor and seal of the OT and NT prophets, Islam has a nominal commitment to the notion of an interventionist God. That is a pillar of OT narrative theology, not to mention the life of Christ in the Gospels.

However, this is a rather perfunctory apologetic move on Muhammad's part. He had no real knowledge or grasp of the Bible. He was just using what little he knew of the Judeo-Christian tradition as a launching pad for his own "prophetic" career.

Stripped of this Judeo-Christian residual, Islamic theism is essentially deistic and apophatic. Islam is not a redemptive religion--hence, it has no central place for redemptive miracles. According to a Muslim philosophy of history, the major events in world history are creation, the revelation of the Koran, and the day of judgment.

In addition, Allah is utterly other and intrinsically unknowable. His will is both inexorable and inscrutable--not unlike the old Greek notion of fate.

As a consequence, there is, in Islam, a strong emphasis on blind submission to the capricious will of Allah. Unlike Yahweh, Allah is not a God who binds himself by covenant to a people. Rather, we're just ants on an anthill.

Incidentally, I think this is the major reason why Muslims are so often so irrational. Muslims are just as smart as anyone else, but their religious tradition cultivates a totally unquestioning faith--unlike, say, the Anselmian tradition of faith seeking understanding.

Also, because Islam is not a redemptive religion, their prophets have to be well-nigh perfect. The sins and foibles we run across in the Scriptural accounts of Abraham, Moses, David, and the like are simply inadmissible in Islam. This is why Muslims fly into a homicidal rage against the slightest suggestion that Muhammad may have been subject to the commonplace passions and iniquities of every other man.

The idea of a test of faith or test of character is an ancient one, and is not necessarily religious, although it can be.

This frequently has a humanistic coloration. There is, for example, then ancient idea of trial by ordeal. Here the contestant proves himself to be worthy of some reward.

You can find a carryover of this principle in Catholic martyriology, as well as mysticism (the dark night of the soul) and monasticism (the counsels of perfection--poverty, celibacy, obedience; not to mention other austerities, viz., vow of silence, self-flagellation, hair-shirt, &c.).

In classic Protestantism (e.g., Calvinism, Lutheranism), there is no place for human merit in salvation, and hence, no place for trial by ordeal in this sense.

You also get, in liberal theology, the idea that faith in God is an inherently dubious affair, and hence, faith is an act of the will, suppressing our doubts. On this view, a test of faith is a test of our willpower.

Again, in classic Protestant theology, faith is a gift of God. God is both the source and object of faith. Hence, there is no need for a test of faith in this sense.

At the same time, the heat of adversity can either melt or harden an untested faith. It has opposite effects depending on the believer. And this is also a mark of whether faith is of grace, or simply a hereditary relic.

One function of adversity in Christian piety and theology is to give faith an existential dimension. For the most part, Christian faith is a form of knowledge by description rather than acquaintance--of faith in things past and future rather than here-and-now. But by experiencing the providence of God in our lives as he carries us through various adversities, faith is enriched.

In Scripture there are some notable challenges to faith. Among the best known cases are the trial of Abraham (Gen 22), the Book of Job, and the temptation of Christ in the desert (Mt 4; par. Lk 4), as well as the garden of Gethsemane (Mt 26; par. Lk 22).

People usually read the Book of Job out of context, ignoring the programmatic function of the prologue (1-2). The book of Job is not about the worthiness of Job, but about the worthiness of God. Is God worthy of total devotion? Job's faith under fire supplies the occasion for illustrating an affirmative answer to this question. Job is singled out to honor God by his steadfast faith.

There is no entirely satisfactory explanation of the trial of Abraham if we limit ourselves to Gen 22. It can only be understood as it was understood in the Gospel of John, where Abraham prefigures God the Father and Isaac prefigures Christ as the Lamb of God (Jn 1:29,36; cf. Gen 22:8) and only Son of the Father (Jn 3:16). Just as Isaac brings the firewood to the altar, Christ bears his cross to Calvary (Jn 19:17). Just as Isaac submits to self-immolation, Christ submits to crucifixion.

Likewise, the temptation of Christ in the wilderness recapitulates the temptation of Israel in the wilderness. He suffers for his people. And when his people suffer, they take comfort and courage in the fact that they have in him an empathetic high priest who has been there before them and gone before them to prepare a way to God. This is the leading theme of the Book of Hebrews.

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I agree with this and would only add a few other points:

1. You know the old distinction between the cardinal virtues and the theological virtues, and there is some truth to that. Neighbor-love really is a Christian virtue. It is not something that common grace supplies.

Ecumenists decry the fact that denominationalism makes a poor witness to the world, and there's a grain of truth in that, but you only have to compare a broadly Christian culture, even a nominally Christian culture, with a pre-Christian, post-Christian, or anti-Christian culture, be it Buddhist, Marxist, fascist, Dutch, Hindu, pagan (e.g., Aztec, Assyrian, Iroquois), Muslim, &c., to see how much we're taking for granted.

2. In Calvinism, God is translucent to reason; in Islam, God is opaque to reason. In Calvinism, God has a plan for the world. What is more, his has a revealed plan for the world. It is not revealed in exhaustive detail, but it is knowable and known in broad outline.

His providence is often mysterious in detail, but our knowledge of his plan enables us to make some sense of his providence.

In Islam, God has a will, but no apparent plan or purpose. Islam has a doctrine of revelation, but it is the revelation of an inapprehensible God. Although various attributes are apparently predicated of Allah in the Koran, their ascription is equivocal rather than analogical.

There was a fight over in the early days of Islam between the progressive, rationalist wing (Mu'tazilites) and the apophatic old guard (Ash'arites). The Ash'arites won, the Mu'tazilites lost. The former represent orthodox Islam, the latter--heresy. So we end up with a classic contrast between predestination (Calvinism) and fatalism (Islam).

3. This also accounts, I think, for our (US) failures in Iraq. Americans are a charitable, proactive, problem-solving, can-do people. Bush acted as though Iraqis would react to the liberation the way Americans would.

But Iraq, being a Muslim country, Iraqis are passive, suspicious, superstitious, risk-aversive, uncharitable, and fatalistic.

This is not to deny that we've make some friends there and have some success stories (under-reported in the media), but it's obvious that the level of public support has been pretty pathetic. And it was naive to expect otherwise.

Natural disaster

Mr. Kettle,

A friend drew my attention to your column on the problem of evil.



It is hard to know where to begin.

1. Unlike you, many Christians don’t wait around for disaster to strike before working out a position on the problem of evil. Augustine wrote about the problem of evil in his magnum opus on _The City of God_. This is widely available in translation. Aquinas wrote about the problem of evil in his commentary on the Book of Job. This is also accessible in translation. Cf. _Thomas Aquinas, The Literal Exposition of Job: A Scriptural Commentary Concerning Providence_, A. Damico & M. Yaffe eds. (Scholars Press 1989). There is even an online precis of the argument at:



For a more recent treatment of divine providence, cf. P. Helm, The Providence of God (IVP 1994).

I notice that, when it comes to the subject of religion, many op-ed writers feel that they have a perfect right to air their opinions without benefit of research. Perhaps you can explain that presumptuous policy to me and your other readers.

2. For reasons you never explain, you set up a dichotomy between a theological explanation and a scientific explanation. What makes you think that belief in a seismic mechanism is incompatible with belief in God? Christian theology is not opposed to the idea of second-causes. For example, the Westminster Confession of Faith discusses second-causes in relation to the plan and providence of God (cf. WCF: 3:1; 5:2).

3. You describe the Lisbon earthquake as “appalling.” Interesting choice of words. Is that a scientific analysis? Is that an empirical property adhering to earthquakes?

To call an earthquake appalling is not to render a scientific judgment, but a value judgment. But, according to your column, there are only two types of explanation: scientific and theological. And you treat these as mutually exclusive. So where does the ethical evaluation of a natural event fit into your worldview?

4. How, exactly, do you think that a natural disaster undermines the notion of a divine order? How can you ask why an earthquake will strike in some places, but not others?

Natural disasters are not random events. To begin with, natural disasters (e.g., volcanoes, tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, forest fires, earthquakes, tidal waves, electrical storms) serve a natural purpose. Many of them function as a natural safety valve to equalize the buildup of potential energy, extreme pressure or heat imbalance.

Moreover, different natural disasters are generated by different natural conditions. This may be news to you, but one only encounters a volcanic eruption where one encounters a volcano.

5. We choose to characterize certain natural events as “disastrous” or “catastrophic” because they are disastrous or catastrophic for us. But natural elements and natural forces have a constructive as well as destructive aspect. Fire warms, but fire burns. Too little water will kill you, but too much water will kill you as well.

6. Many natural disasters are avoidable. Men choose to live in regions prone to certain natural disasters. Men choose to wait until disaster strikes before they take precautions. Men often create the conditions for a natural disaster through shortsighted policies.

One consequence of living in a moral order is that if you tempt fate, if you choose to be foolhardy, you may lose the bet. If you choose to live in the tropics, you expose yourself to tropical storms. If you choose to live at sea level along the shoreline, you expose yourself to coastal flooding. If you live in a dry, wooded area, you expose yourself to wildfire. If you love to live around mountains, you expose yourself to volcanoes, earthquakes, and snowslides. If you deforest a hill, you expose yourself to mudslides. If you build on a landfill, you expose yourself to liquefaction. If you live on a riverbank, you may get inundated. If you live in a drought-prone region, you may suffer from famine. If you go outside in a thunder storm, you may be struck by lightning. If you swim with sharks, you may be eaten. If you swim at all, you may drown. If you live around rattlesnakes, you may be bitten. If you hike in the mountains, you may die of exposure. If you climb a mountain, you may tumble to your death.

My point here is not to assign blame. My point, rather, is that where you choose to live is often a calculated risk. Life consists in a series of tradeoffs. A natural disaster is only a challenge to religious faith for a columnist who entertains an utterly childish notion of how the world should work.

7. You can only become disillusioned if you nurse illusions in the first place. You can only see your expectations dashed if you foster false expectations. People in Bible-times knew about earthquakes (Amos 1:1; Zech 14:5).

8. Nature is cyclical. God has made it so in order that we can plan our lives accordingly (Gen 8:22). Without a measure of constancy to the natural world, life would be utterly unpredictable, which would, in turn, make it very difficult to live at all.

This enables us to harness the forces of nature. But, by the same token, we must respect the forces of nature. In ancient Egypt, the agricultural economy was dependent on a natural disaster--the annual flooding of the Nile.

Electricity is a source of electrocution and electrification alike. Used the right way, it will make life a lot easier; used the wrong way, it will put an end to life.

Life would be pretty inconvenient without gravity. Imagine trying to survive in a weightless environment? But if you fall off a cliff, then gravity becomes, for you, a natural evil. Ought God to suspend the laws of nature every time someone somewhere does something dangerous? Consider how that would jeopardize everyone else? If everything were miraculous, life would be a nightmare.

9. Yes, there's a sense in which many accidents and natural disaster are indiscriminate. Yet they are indiscriminate, not in the sense that the innocent die along with the guilty, but in the sense that some sinners live, while other sinners die. Jesus spoke of this. He refers to an incident, fresh in the minds of his audience, of a tower that collapsed, killing eighteen people (Lk 13:4). He then says something which must be shocking to modern sensibilities: “Do you think they were worse sinners than anyone else? Unless you repent, you shall all likewise perish!”

The victims were sinners, and the survivors were sinners. Those who died didn't die because they were especially sinful, especially deserving of death over and above those who came out of it alive.

In a fallen world, every life is forfeit, every life under divine judgment. God is under no obligation to spare the lives of sinners. Everyone dies sooner or later. And death is a sanction for sin.

You say there is only one big question to ask about the tidal wave: why did it happen? But, no. The one big question to ask is this: what happens to you after you die? And the lesson we should take away from a natural catastrophe is this: “Repent, lest you perish as well!”

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<< Some comments about choice:

You talk about people "choosing" to live in the tropics, or on the coast, or various other places where potential dangers lurk. Actually, the vast majority of people in the world don't choose where they live. They're born there and grow up there. They're part of societies and cultures that have been rooted in a given place for hundreds or thousands of years. >>

This objection teeters on an obvious equivocation. No, people don't choose where they are born. But that wasn't my point, was it? There is a clear difference between where you were born and whether you choose to live out your days in your place of birth.

Yes, they are rooted in an ancient culture. And this supplies a disincentive to pull up roots. People generally like to live among their own kind, stick with what they know.

That's natural and understandable. There's nothing wrong with that. Often there's a lot that's right with that. But it's a choice all the same, and it comes with certain consequences.

<< Also, most of these people are not in a financial position to just pack up and go somewhere else. >>

i) Isn't it often the other way round? People emigrate to escape poverty and make a better life for themselves? To take one example, the Irish emigrated to America to escape the potato famine.

ii) The question of poverty is where natural and moral evil sometimes intersect. Why are people poor? Well, there are a variety of reasons. They may live in a region that lacks the natural resources to support a large population. That is a natural evil, but to some extent it is an avoidable natural evil.

Or they may be poor because a powerful few exploit the masses. That is a moral evil. At the same time, some oppressed peoples revolt while others suffer under the yoke for generations on end. That is a choice. Both choices have consequences. To mount a revolt is not risk-free. But to live under oppression carries a cost as well. Each choice is reasonable. Each choice has its tradeoffs.

iii) Some people continue to have more children than they can support. This was understandable before the days of contraception, but it continues to be the case in many parts of the world where contraception is available.

That, again, is a choice. I have no objection to large families. But there are consequences in either case.

<< Certainly the kids who were killed were not in a position to assess the dangers of living there and decide to move elsewhere. >>

Parents make choices for their kids. Kids benefit from having prudent parents, and suffer from having imprudent parents. If a father is jailed for theft, his kids will suffer. One of the things that makes a moral evil evil is that the innocent may suffer along with the guilty, for things done by evil-doers.

<< Besides, tsunamis are not a frequent phenomenon in the Indian Ocean region. >>

True, but that's a gamble, isn't it? A calculated risk.

<< As for the millions living on the coasts of Sumatra, Sri Lanka, or Tamil Nadu (southern India) being a foolhardy bunch -- if anything, it's the opposite. >>

Now you're applying my characterization to examples to which it does not apply. Risk ranges along a continuum. If I build a house on the bluffs of La Jolla, erosion may eat away at the foundations. If I build a house on a riverbank, or shoreline, or dry, wooded area, I assume a heightened risk. I do so for a heightened advantage--the pretty view.

Fine, I like pretty views. But if disaster strikes, I either have no one to blame but myself, or else it isn't a question of assessing blame at all.

If mountain-climbing is my hobby, I assume an added risk. You could multiply examples as well as I can. Some risk-taking is reckless, other forms are more reasonable, but they still play the odds, and when you choose to play the odds, you're luck may run out.

Only an ideology drenched in the politics of victimology, an ideology which treats every adult as a minor incapable of informed consent, would take exception to my common sense observations on this particular point. But that seems to be where Kettle and Nguyen are coming from.

<< These are all areas where people can earn a livelihood through fishing, coconut harvesting, and various related activities. They're lush, temperate areas that normally provide ample food and materials for shelter. >>

Yes, and that makes it a reasonable choice--a reasonable risk assessment. But the cost/benefit ratio doesn't make it 100% safe or risk-free. It only means that the positives generally outweigh the negatives.

<< To talk about "choosing" the region one lives in is a very American way of looking at things, where people pack up and move pretty much at will. >>

Surely you're not serious? How was America colonized in the first place? And not just by the Europeans. What about the Mesoamerican civilizations (Inca, Aztec, Maya). These are not indigenous to the new world.

Trade & travel (by land and by sea), immigration/emmigration, invasion, conquest, empire-building are a commonplace of Far Eastern, ANE and Levant--of Orient and Occident alike. Writers like Charles Hapgood (Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings) and Cyrus Gordon (Riddles in History; Before Columbus) have written extensively on this subject, while field archaeologists like the late Thor Heyerdahl have actually recreated some of the ancient mechanisms of cultural diffusion. The itch to discovery the unknown is not a modern phenomenon--think of Marco Polo, Ibn Battuta, and Pytheas of Massalia? Think of how Alexander sent cultural artifacts back to Aristotle.

<< And even in the US, millions live in harm's way, for example, in Charleston, South Carolina, which is in a hurricane zone, in Florida, also hurricane country, the Midwest, which is prone to tornados, Southern California, which is prone to earthquakes and wildfires, etc etc. >>

Yes, and the point of that is...what? I referred to general geographical phenomena which are applicable wherever they apply. We happen to be talking about S. Asia because that's where the tsunami struck, and not because the US is immune to natural disasters.

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

Thanks for the Safire article:

msafire/index.html?inline=nyt-per>

By way of comment:

1. The date of Job is any one's guess, but I'm inclined to date it to the Solomonic age or a little thereafter.

2. Safire appears to date it to the Exile. I don't see that the book was occasioned by a national crisis of faith. On the face of it, the book was occasioned by a personal crisis of faith. The inspired record of Job's tribulations was canonized for its benefit to other believers who must suffer in the dark.

3. I seem to recall reading a review of Safire's book which indicated his belief in a finite God--a la Kushner.

4. Readers are often disappointed by the fact that God, in the speech from the whirlwind, never directly answers Job's question. But this misses the point:

i) The answer is given, not at the end of the book, but the beginning (prologue).
ii) The answer is given, not to Job, but to the reader. The very nature of Job's ordeal is that he cannot know the reason. If he were in on the huddle between the Lord and the Accuser, then the tension between faith and sight would be dissolved.

5. There is a difference between saying that so-and-so got what he deserved, and saying that so-and-so's calamity is a direct punishment for his sin.

Due to sin, we are all liable to suffering and/or punishment. None of us get worse than we deserve from God. But it does not follow from this that because so-and-so got what he deserved, he got it because he deserved it.

Sin makes me deserving of punishment. Thus, if I suffer for sin, I suffer no injustice on account of sin--not from God.

However, that doesn't necessarily mean that I'm suffering a particular punishment for a particular sin. It is just that, as a sinner, I have no claims on God, so God can treat me more harshly than a sinless person. Now, he may not be treating me harshly because I'm a sinner. He may be treating me harshly because that serves a long-range objective which has very little to do with me, except as a means to an end. But my sinful status is a precondition for this treatment.

To take an example from the proverbial illustration of lifeboat ethics, suppose the ship is on fire and taking on water. There is only one lifeboat left. Suppose I have a handgun. That gives me the power to say who gets on and who gets left behind. There are more passengers than room on the boat. I have to choose between an abortionist, on the one hand, and a wife and mother, on the other.

Given that choice, I would let the mother and child onto the lifeboat, but bar the abortionist. In effect, I'm handing him a death-sentence.

Now, I'm not doing so because he's an abortionist. All other things being equal, it's none of my business. Ordinarily, I wouldn't throw him over board on sight! His occupation, taken by itself, is not a sufficient reason for me to discriminate.

But in this situation, given the different moral status of the abortionist in relation to the mother and child, I do treat him differently. His occupation does supply a necessary condition, to treat him less well than the mother and child. (If you don't like the example of an abortionist, you can make a mental substitution more to your liking.)

So sin gives God a moral warrant to treat sinners rather ruthlessly. Sinners are not entitled to a sense of entitlement. Given that the sinner's life is forfeit to God, God wrongs no sinner by taking his life or causing him to suffer.

And in some cases, that may be a direct punishment for a specific sin. But it need not be.

Job is not being punished for anything in particular. But given that he is deserving of punishment, this renders his ordeal at the hands of God a just desert, even if, as is the case, it was inflicted for reasons other than the exactation of divine justice.

4. Sinners never have a right to get angry with God. This is an irrational reaction. If you believe that God is omnipotent, omniscient, and beneficent, then it is unreasonable to challenge the wisdom of his ways.

Now, when men are in a state of physical or emotional pain or exhaustion, or when they find themselves in a truly desperate situation, they are prone to mindlessly lash out.

And God, in his magnanimous mercy, puts up with a certain amount of this--like a father with an ill-tempered child. But when the sinner recovers his right state of mind--which only obtains in the case of a Christian--then he should repent of his folly and impiety, praising God for his long-suffering love.

5. I'd add that getting angry with God is a half-truth. When unbelievers get angry with God's disposition of the world, they pay a grudging regard to the fact that God is, indeed, the Lord of all.

When unbelievers deny the existence of God on account of evil, they act like a child who is disillusioned with his father. Their reaction bears an attitude which is at once childish (in the bad sense), and childlike (in the good sense).

6. Safire is mistaken to insinuate that the OT lacks a doctrine of the afterlife.

7. The happy ending is not a prosaic add-on. God is not a sadist. Because Job passed the test, he is restored. This is not like Greek tragedy where Oedipus gouges out his eyes and curses the darkness for the remainder of his days.

Of course, there are losses in life which cannot be redeemed on this side of the grave. Yet there has also been a moral and spiritual progression in the Book of Job--from beginning to end. It is not all loss without compensatory gain, and the gain is more than a mere reversion to the status quo ante.

This is the difference between Greek tragedy and Christian comedy. Comedy, in the technical sense, is a uniquely Biblical genre. Tragedy is the genre of the damned, and comedy of the redeemed.

8. It is certainly a gross misreading of Job for Safire to suppose that God is in charge of the natural order, but not the moral order. In the wisdom literature, God is very much the Lord of both domains.

Defending the Resurrection

Antony Flew was, until very recently, the world's most famous atheist. He was heir to Russell's mantle. So it was naturally newsworthy when the grand old man of atheism publicly recanted his atheism. According to Gary Habermas, "he was rereading my arguments for the resurrection and was very impressed with them."

One can only hope and pray that he will come around to the faith before he dies. Speaking for myself, though, I've always harbored certain misgivings about this whole line of argument. I guess that approach got off the ground with Montgomery, and has since been formalized by the likes of Habermas, Moreland, and Craig. And there are some good elements to their argument. Still...

1. I don’t find one Biblical miracle more or less credible than another. What we think of miracles in general and miracles in particular has more to do with our basic predisposition and fundamental preconception of what is inherently possible or impossible.

Reports of a miracle may vary in their credibility (although the record of Scripture is equally credible throughout), but miracles do not vary in their credibility--excepting those that are mere circus tricks. This is how I would evaluate modern miracle claims.

2. I'm also not into carving out the Resurrection, as a freestanding event and apologia. I prefer a whole-to-part style of argument over against a part-to-whole style of argument.

I suppose one reason for the current method is that you can't argue for the entire Bible at one sitting, so you isolate a particular event. And, in terms of apologetic strategy, there's something to be said for that angle. But we've gotten into a rut.

3. I don’t care for the appeal to a pre-Markan Passion narrative or a pre-Pauline formula (1 Cor 15).

i) To begin with, I'm not into going behind the sources. They were not written to be taken apart, and it isn't possible to reconstruct the editorial process.

ii) I don’t find John any less credible than Mark. There's an assumption here that what's earlier is better. I don’t agree. The question is not earlier v. later, but early enough. Was the document in question written within living memory of the event?

Likewise, it all depends on the character of the informant. I don’t see that mythic embellishment has much to do with the elapse of time. On the one hand, it doesn't take any amount of time for a liar to embellish his story. On the other hand, an honest witness can live to be 100 and never embellish the story.

iv) I wouldn't lay so much weight on the appeal to 500 witnesses (1 Cor 15:6). This is, after all, a second or thirdhand source--at least the way it is generally put forth in the apologetic literature.

It really comes down to your judgment of Paul. Was he a good investigator? Did he ask the right men the right questions?

BTW, the conventional wisdom has it that Paul got his info on of his trips to the church of Jerusalem. Maybe so. But let us not forget that Paul, in his pre-Christian days, interrogated many Christians. At the time he was too blinded by animus to give them a fair hearing. But don't you suppose, after his Damascus Road conversion, as he thought back on those inquisitions, that he saw the sobriety and bravery of their testimonials in a whole new light?

I find Paul immensely credible. A brilliant man who threw away a brilliant career, who burned his bridges with his own social circle.

BTW, scholars usually conjecture that Paul must have been a married man at some point in his life. A man who moved in his circles had to be a married man. And since he was evidently not a married man by the time we begin to read about him, they conjecture that by then he must have been a widower.

Well, as long as we're indulging in speculation, I have my own pet theory: I think it far more likely that his wife left him after he became a Christian. Can't you just see it? Oh, the scandal! Oh, the shame! If nothing else, her family would have insisted on a divorce. How could she live with this traitor! This apostate!

4. Likewise, I would not, from an apologetic standpoint, put so much stock in the transformation of the disciples. It is true that this is inconceivable apart from the reality of the Resurrection. The problem, though, is that if someone doesn't believe in the record of the Resurrection, why would he believe in the record of their reaction to the Resurrection?

What all this comes down to is not some much the credibility of narrative, but of the narrator. And that brings me to another point: there is a common characteristic of Bible writers: holiness. On the one hand, they lack any trace of the professional ambition that you find so often in the church and in the world. Indeed, by following the Lord they normally sacrifice any promising or lucrative career they would otherwise enjoy.

On the other hand, they also lack the conspicuous mendacity that we see in cult-leaders and charlatans like Muhammad, Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, Chas Russell, Judge Rutherford, et al. From an unbelieving standpoint, the writers of Scripture had nothing to gain and everything to lose.

5. I don’t agree with the way in which the NT account of the Resurrection is severed from OT expectation. Except for Isa 53 & Ps 22, there is very little by way of direct prophecy for the Messiah's demise; and except for Ps 16, there is very little by way of direct prophecy for his resurrection. That is one reason it caught so many of the Jews off-guard. They were not expecting the death and resurrection of the Messiah.

And even if there were more in the way of direct prophecy, liberals have a way of blunting the edge of Messianic prophecy by claiming that the Gospel writers simply concocted a story to dovetail with OT prophecy.

And yet, looking back, you can see the inevitability of the Messiah's demise and rise. This is contained, not so much in prophecy as it is in typology and theology. Of course the Messiah had to die! That was the whole point of all those animal sacrifices. But because typology is emblematic, the fulfillment is only something you can discern after the fact.

Of course the Messiah had to rise again! For that would be the divine sign that the sins for which he made atonement had been really and truly forgiven. He died to put an end to death.

6. There is also an indirect, but very telling testimony to the Resurrection which is lost sight of in the current literature. James and Jude never write about the Resurrection. But they write about a living Lord. Now, they would hardly write about Jesus the way they do if their half-brother were rotting in the grave!

Of course, this argument assumes the traditional authorship of the letters so denominated, but Guthrie and Schreiner, among others, have presented a very convincing defense of that attribution.

7. To me, it's a waste of time to debunk alternative theories of the empty tomb, viz., the swoon theory, mass hallucination, the stolen body, the wrong address, yada yada yada.

I suppose that, for the sake of completeness, there is some value in addressing each of these individually, but this misses the larger point: why affirm the gospel account of an empty tomb, but deny the gospel account of how it was emptied? This is where I’d take issue with the liberals.

Likewise, why spend a lot of time rebutting a "spiritual" resurrection? Does anyone really believe in this? Do those who deny the bodily resurrection dredge up the idea of a spiritual resurrection because they actually believe in it? I don’t think so. This is just a liberal blocking move.

All in a day's work

It was remarkable, yes, nothing short of remarkable, with what frantic alacrity his thoughts could tumble, one upon another, in the little time it took for saline solution made its way from the plunger to the heart muscle. There! You could see it coming out of the syringe, like an army on the march, and commence its advance through the plastic tube in the lockstep stride of a crack unit on its daily drill. Such elegant efficiency is not without a certain austere beauty.

How did Dr. Liebestod find himself is such a position as this? It all seemed so long ago. And, indeed, it was. It began with debunking that old mythology about the imago Dei. For how very many centuries, millennia, in fact, had humanity been shackled to this primitive creed? Think, just think, I say, of how that backward belief had stalled the natural evolution of human society.

When Liebestod began his career in bioethics, it was a brave and lonely field. There were the usual run of religious fanatics who never saw an innocent life they didn’t try to save. In order to overcome this insensate hostility to progress, it was necessary to think strategically. The first step was a public campaign of judicious relabeling.

A lot of simple folks had a hang-up over words like "death" and "killing." The pairing of an adjective like "mercy" or "dignity" could soften up their resistance, but the controlling noun was still too negative. That was until Liebestod hit upon the phrase "life-reassignment therapy." Had such a positive, life-affirming ring to it, don’t you think?

Liebestod glanced over at the I.V. The solution was slinking down the tube.

Where was he? Oh, yes. Strategic thinking. The next step was to recast the issue in terms of freedom--freedom of choice, freedom of opportunity, freedom to do your own thing. "To be or not to be" and all that good stuff. In time, of course, this would mean the freedom to be done to, to be done in, but once the wedge was firmly a place, a little hammering would do the rest.

And it was a short step from the right to die to the duty to die. No one had a right to be a burden on anyone else. In order to get the law enacted, it was necessary to put in a temporary conscience clause for the overscrupulous physician, but these could be amended with a sunset proviso once the legislation was in force.

The final step was to repackage this question in terms of compassion. And you needed to illustrate this principle with a few well-chosen tearjerkers about having to put the family dog to sleep.

Once the scarecrow of religious extremism was taken down and tossed upon the dunghill of history, the way was clear.

Liebestod took another look at the I.V. The solution was now down to the bottom of the loop.

What was he thinking? Ah, yes! Emancipated man was a meat machine, and what a glorious meat machine was he! But just as there were gradations in the quality of steak meat, there were gradation in the quality of human life--as between a zygote, a newborn, and a grown-up. It all came down to simple, elementary biochemistry, you see. Mix up one batch of chemicals and you get a baby, another and you get a chicken, yet another and you get a Mozart. You mix them up for different reasons: a chicken for eating and a Mozart for hearing. Indeed, there were some cultures in which Mozart would be on the menu as well, and who were we to judge?

Oh, did I say "baby." This, of course, was not a term to be used in polite company. A cool, clinical, impersonal term like "zygote" or "fetus" was so much more serviceable. Made it sound like an old car part at the junkyard.

It is true that we have a soft-spot for the smile and the chuckle of a cute little kid. After all, he reminds us of--well--of us! When we look into his bright and trusting eyes we see ourselves staring back.

By the same token, there were children--grown children, mind you!--who retained an inordinate attachment to their elderly parents.

No doubt natural selection programmed us to feel this way--for the preservation of the species. But now that we know about evolution, we can improve on our own evolution. We can overrule our baser, familial instincts with an eye to the balance sheet. It would be irrational, quite irrational, I say, to let our primitive feelings get in the way of judicious human pruning and weeding of the ill-timed or suboptimal members of our species.

Liebestod looked over his shoulder. The solution was now crawling up the loop.

How did he get hear again? Forty-eight hours ago, Liebestod had checked into the hospital, complaining of abdominal cramps. A scan turned up stage-4 liver cancer. He was immediately transferred to the Haven of Rest ward, conveniently located adjacent to the morgue. The usual preparations were made for his "life reassignment."

One mildly irritating development was the subsequent discovery that he had been misdiagnosed. Seems that the scans had been inadvertently switched. What he really had were gallstones, not terminal cancer. They passed out of the system in due course, and he was fit to be discharged.

But once a patient was officially transferred to the Haven of Rest ward, no reprieve was possible. Originally, life-reassignment therapy required some sort of informed consent. However, experience had shown that candidates had the inconsiderate habit of changing their minds at the last minute.

Perhaps "inconsiderate" is too harsh a word. Such vacillation was only understandable. But to put their minds at ease, the onerous decision was taken out of their hands and given to the Board of Medical Ethics. After all, no one needed a consent form to shoot a horse with a broken leg. Indeed, Dr. Liebestod, until his unfortunate mishap, had been a board-member in good standing.

A bonus point of this minor readjustment is that life-reassignment therapy could now be scheduled to dovetail with limb reattachment and organ transplant surgery. If, say, an accident victim needed a new eye or ear, or hand or toe, or skin-graft, the Vivisection Team would pay a visit to the Haven of Rest ward.

At first, organ donation was voluntary, but as with life-reassignment therapy, it didn’t take long to find out that a promising organ donor was not always the best judge of the cost/benefit ratio, and could not be relied on in a crunch to act in the best interest of all parties concerned. Why, without some procedural safeguards in place, there was always the danger that a perfectly healthy organ donor might just up and check himself out of hospital, leaving an accident victim stranded on the operating table.

The equitable distribution of medical goods and services demanded the enforcement of a more predictable routine. And, after all, a life-reassignment patient could get along well enough with one eye or one foot. It’s not as if he had much more use for a full complement at this stage of the game.

On a busy day, like a holiday weekend, the Haven of Rest ward did a steady business as the Vivisection Team might even need both eyes, or a reproductive organ--to patch up the overflow of accident victims, gunshot victims, and the like.

And, after a while, it was found to be more cost-effective for area hospitals to share organ donors when high-priority items were in short supply. The burn unit of one hospital would swap organ donors with the cardiovascular unit of another--in case they needed a particular pigment or hair color.

And the procedure was reversible as well, for the best way of preserving an organ was to stow it inside a life-reassignment patient until the transplant patient was ready for surgery. Did you know that some life-reassignment patients had as many as two livers, three hearts, and four stomachs--all snuggled up inside, like a stuffed turkey?

Just as parts were replaceable, so were people. We all die sooner or later, so it’s only a matter of timing, and we can juggle the timing. As long as killing had no adverse effect on the body politic, it was the responsible thing to do.

Speaking of the time, Liebestod glanced over at the I.V. The solution was inching up his left ventricle.

It had been an uphill climb to arrive at this point--bioethics, I mean, not the saline solution. Liebestod looked back over his distinguished life with a certain contentment as he savored the magnitude of his achievement. He had beaten back the forces of superstition and ignorance--what with their blind, implacable opposition to progressive ethics and human rights. He was widely respected in his field.

Why, only next month he was slated to receive the philanthropist-of-the-year award for his humanitarian services. As luck would have it, he had been drafting his acceptance speech when the gallstones acted up. He was especially proud of the opening paragraph. How did that go again? Oh, yes, "My fellow physicians, I am honored tonight to re..."

More on a converted atheist...

Biola > Page 1 : Biola News & Communications: "During a couple telephone discussions shortly after their last dialogue, Flew explained to Habermas that he was considering becoming a theist. While Flew did not change his position at that time, he concluded that certain philosophical and scientific considerations were causing him to do some serious rethinking. He characterized his position as that of atheism standing in tension with several huge question marks. "

This is an extensive interview between Flew and long time philosophical opponent. It's riveting.

The Matrix

At one level, there’s not much to say about The Matrix. The only reason to take it seriously is that so many other folks take it seriously. Whatever you think of it as a movie, it’s a cultural phenomenon worth commenting on.

But let’s say a few things about the movie itself before commenting on its popular appeal. It plays on the perennial theme of the gap between appearance and reality. This goes back to Parmenides. For him, time and motion were illusory.

No one might have taken that seriously except for two influential disciples who did much to popularize and immortalize his counterintuitive views. One was Zeno. His celebrated paradoxes lent a loony logic to Parmenides. They were deployed to prove something "obviously" false. And yet, even to this day, some of them are very difficult to disprove.

In addition, there was Plato, the mythmaker and prose-stylist. If Zeno lent logical appeal to Parmenides, Plato lent him aesthetic appeal.

The same sceptical outlook infects Indian and Buddhist philosophy, viz., Sankara, Nagarjuna. The world is "Maya"--illusory or delusive.

You also get this with Bishop Berkeley. Locke had drawn a distinction between primary and secondary properties. Primary properties were objective while secondary properties were subjective impressions. Berkeley took this a step further. Since our only port of entry to the primary properties is via the secondary properties, why assume that there is any extramental object at all? All properties are mental ones. No one really believes this, and yet, how do you disprove it?

And even if you believe in a world "out there," you can never know to what extent your perception of the external world resembles the external world. Where do sense and sensible meet?

So when the character of Morpheus asks, "What is real? How do you define ‘real?’ If you’re talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then ‘real’ is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain," this poses a genuine philosophical conundrum. And the first half of the film, which toys with this theme, definitely pricks the curiosity of the viewer.

But the answer is less interesting than the question--at least as the movie develops the answer. For the second-half is anticlimactic--a long fuse without a bang.

There are several reasons for this. One is the acting. Where Keanu Reeves is concerned, I just don't see what anyone sees in him. Maybe the girls go for him or something. But, for me, he’s just a blank space on the screen--what with that lobotomatic stare and surfer-dude delivery. This is the actor who put da "duh" into "duh." He’s a parody of a parody.

By contrast, Laurence Fishburne has real stage presence. But that only serves to expose the vacuities of the lead actor.

Neo’s love interest is played by a fetching actress. But she has no dramatic function. Her only purpose is to be pretty and kick some major butt.

Then you have the underlying premise. Computers have turned their makers into human batteries. Now, the generic idea of computers outstripping their makers and taking over the world is a stock theme in SF film and literature. And there is a horrific irony in the idea of computers turning human beings into mechanical components.

However, the idea of computers harnessing our body temperature as an energy source is simply absurd. To begin with, surely there are inanimate energy sources at their disposal--even if you take solar power out of the picture. And as far as biological sources are concerned, would it not be more efficient to harness a larger warm-blooded mammal than Homo sapiens?

There is also the question of how much energy would be expended in the care-and-feeding of the human host. And where are all these human batteries being warehoused? How are they kept warm on a sunless planet?

But even if we waive all that aside, why entertain the human host with simulated sensory input? If all you need is a warm body, a comatose state or even brain-dead host on life-support would seem to do the job just as well without recourse virtual recreation.

In addition, how does simulated sensory input connect one mind with another? How are they conscious of each other’s existence? Would that not require some mode of mental output to form a shared awareness?

It isn’t just that the human batteries are interacting with virtual characters in separate programs. Rather, they seem to share a common VR world.

And how is it that Morpheus or Trinity us able to "jack into" the Matrix without the computer monitoring this security breach?

For that matter, who was the first human being to break the spell? And having awakened from his dream-world, how did he escape his pod? How did he survive? Where did he go?

Finally, what’s the point of all that gravity-free kung fu--like Peter Pan on steroids? Why must the computer resort to a martial-arts program to polish off the hackers? Why doesn’t it just delete the neural interface without all the kickboxing antics? Who’s in control of the video game--the computer or the hacker? Cyberspace is real to a character within cyberspace, but neither the computer nor its escapees are laboring under that illusion.

The reason for this parade of illogicality is to furnish a clothes-hanger on which to drape all the fancy f/x. Of course, many SF films stumble and fall down at that common sense level--sacrificing elementary logic for razzle-dazzle. But if film is to be a serious artistic medium, and if SF is to be a serious literary genre, then shouldn’t we hold the SF film to a higher standard? If the SF genre is incapable of fabricating an internally consistent world, then why bother with the SF genre? Why not work within the fantasy genre where you are not bound by the laws of physics? Where you can make your own rules?

I admit that I only saw the first installment of the series. To judge by movie reviews, the second was worse than the first, and the third was worse than the second.

And yet the Matrix was a cult movie in more than the artistic sense of a cult following. There were fans that really came to believe in the "Matrix." And even for fans who could still distinguish between fact and fiction, the movie was taken quite seriously, generating a good deal of philosophical analysis and debate. And this despite its overdraft on the willing suspension of belief.

What accounts for this deep-seated appeal? Two related reasons, I surmise:

i) As touched upon before, The Matrix trades upon an apprehension of and appetite for the transcendent. There is, indeed, more to reality than meets the idea. By dint of natural revelation and common grace, even the unbeliever can intuit the existence of an unseen realm and intangible dimension.

ii) The Matrix pirated redemptive themes from the Christian faith. To be sure, the Wachowsky brothers borrowed a lot of ideas from a lot of folks. But many of these names and allusions were merely clever and incidental.

Yet the redemptive themes run deeper. Neo is a cyber-Messiah. And the Messianic motif is central to the story. In addition, the identity of "Zion," as antipodal to the "Matrix," plays off the Exodus and Eschaton.

This illustrates the fact that post-Christian art cannot revert to the state of pre-Christian art. It can go back on the faith, but it cannot go back of the faith.

Neo cannot be a Savior of his world, for he is a creature of the world. For all he knows, his escape from the Matrix is just another VR program. Only the designer of the Matrix would be in a position to know where illusion ends and reality begins.

Christ can be the Savior of the world, for Christ is the Maker of the world. Neo is from the world, but Christ comes into the world. He knows what the world is really like. And he is able remake a fallen world.

The first noel-2

" Traditionalists promote theories meshing Matthew's and Luke's versions. Says Paul L. Maier, a professor of ancient history at Western Michigan University: 'Radical New Testament critics say it's a hopeless jumble. I myself do not think it's impossible to harmonize them.'"

So why doesn't van Biema proceed to tell the reader how Maier proposes to harmonize the two accounts? Didn't he ask him? If not, why not? If so, why didn't he include the explanation?

"Luke's description of an empire-wide census at the time of Jesus' birth, with Palestine's part conducted by the Syrian governor Quirinius, seems inaccurate. There is no other record of a census in Palestine at the time, and Quirinius was not yet governor. But he did administer an infamous census on Augustus' behalf some 12 years later, in AD 6."

i) This is an argument from silence.

ii) It presumes a standard of comparison. Why assume that Luke is less accurate than Tacitus or Josephus? Why is Luke erroneous, but Josephus is inerrant?

Isn't Luke a 1C witness to 1C history? Why is he deemed to be less reliable than Tacitus or Josephus--especially when he is closer in time to the events than either of them? Luke wrote in the early to mid-60s, Josephus in the mid-to-late 70s (The Jewish War) and early to mid-90s (Antiquities of the Jews), while the Annals of Tacitus date to the 2C.

iii) It is beyond the scope of my review to delve into the census of Quirinius. The reader should consult the relevant entries in the standard reference works (The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, 4:12-13; The Illustrated Bible Dictionary, 3:1308-11; The Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible, 5:5-6) as well as excursus 2 of Bock's commentary on Luke, 1:903-09; Arndt's explanation in Bible Difficulties & Seeming Contradictions (Concordia 1987), 68-71; Cranfield's discussion in "Some Reflections on the Virgin Birth," On Romans (T&T Clarke 1998), 157-58, Barnett's discussion in Jesus & the Rise of Early Christianity (IVP 1999), 97-99, chapter 11 of E. Martin's The Star that Astonished the World (ASK 1996), and B. Witherington's article on the "Birth of Jesus," in the Dictionary of Jesus & Yhe Gospels, J. Green et al. eds. (IVP 1992), 60-74.

To illustrate, let's summarize Martin's discussion. In a nutshell, his argument is as follows: based on interlocking sources of info from Josephus, Tertullian, Justin, Orosius, Moses of Khorene, and the Paphlagonian inscription, Martin argues that the census was not for purposes of taxation, but for the citizens for the Roman Empire to take a loyalty oath to Augustus as the Pater Patriae.

He also argues that, according to Josephus, there was a chronological gap between the governorship of Saturnius and the governorship of Varus. He then argues that Quirinius was the acting governor to fill this gap.

The gap took place during the summer break of 2 BC. He argues that the reason for the gap is that August was when Augustus celebrated his Silver Jubilee as well as the 750th anniversary of Roman, such that all the bigwigs would want to be in town at that time for the celebration.

"The blank space that Brown reported in the 1st century astronomical accounts where there should have been notice of Jesus' star has not prevented thousands of enthusiasts from attempting to locate it retroactively."

"Blank space?" "Enthusiasts"? Within the last few years, two professional astronomers independently published two book-length investigations of the Matthean account, both put out by academic publishing houses: Mark Kidger, The Star of Bethlehem: An Astronomer's View (Princeton U 1999); Michael Molnar, The Star of Bethlehem: The Legacy of the Magi (Rutgers U 1999).

Once again, it wouldn't hurt van Biema to acquaint himself with the relevant literature before he advertises his ignorance to the world.

" In keeping with his view of Joseph and Mary as year-round residents, Matthew has the Magi visit a "house." Luke introduces the manger as part of his view of them as involuntary short-timers."

Van Biema reminds me of a conductor's quip about the great Heldentenor: "at least you knew where you stood with Melchior because he always made the same mistakes." Once Van Biema gets a bad idea fixed in his brain, he just keeps harping on it.

" How do the experts interpret these lines? As you might guess, they wonder where Luke got them. The first angel's language, some note, was less biblical than ... imperial. Brown called it 'a christology phrased in a language that echoes Roman imperial propaganda.'"

i) Maybe. But all the key terms ("sign") and titles (soter, christos, kyrios) have their antecedents in LXX usage, and the heavenly host is another OT motif. Van Biema should take a look at Fitzmyer's commentary (AB 28) on Luke, 1:409-12.

ii) In addition, the imperial cult antedated Luke on any dating scheme you please, whether early or late.

Moving on from Van Biema's hit-piece to Meacham's hatchet job, the subtitle is, itself, highly prejudicial: "how the gospels mix faith and history."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6653824/site/newsweek

But why oppose faith and history in this invidious fashion? Doesn't Meacham have faith in what he's writing? Doesn't he want the reader to believe in the factual accuracy of his article? Isn't he writing to persuade as well as inform?

" The clash between literalism and a more historical view of faith is also playing out in theaters and bookstores."

Another false antithesis. Why posit a clash between what is literal and what is historical? Should the reader apply this disjunction to Meacham's own article?

" This is why modern, grounded, discerning people do make leaps of faith, accepting that, as the Gospel of John put it, 'the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.'"

Why equate Christian faith with a "leap" of faith? Why can't Christian faith be a reasonable faith?

" If we dissect the stories with care, we can see that the Nativity saga is neither fully fanciful nor fully factual but a layered narrative of early tradition and enduring theology."

Why should we "dissect" the Gospels? They were not put together to be taken apart. It isn't possible, at this distance, to reconstruct the editorial process.

Does Meacham's many-layered analysis represent the original viewpoint of the Evangelist, or an artificial grid imposed on the text by Meacham and his fellow sceptics?

"The first followers, we should always remember, believed that the Risen Lord was going to return and usher in a new apocalyptic age at any moment."

Did they? I've dealt with this bogus claim in my essay on hyperpreterism.

" As the years rolled by and the world endured, however, the Apostles and the first generations of church fathers realized they were not witnesses about to be swept up into heaven but earthly stewards of a message that had to be written down, explained and defended."

How does Meacham happen to know this? How do you document the existence of oral tradition? If it's oral, it doesn't leave a paper trail, right?

Meacham is regurgitating the old evolutionary theory of the Bible--an oral stage followed by a literary stage. Doesn't Luke indicate that there were many literary digests of the life of Christ at the time he put pen to paper (Lk 1:1)? Only Mark's effort has survived, but his was not the only one or even the first in line.

Doesn't this make sense? You use the spoken word when dealing with people face-to-face, and the written word when dealing with people at a distance. That is why the Apostles were avid letter-writers.

" To make their case in this congested theological universe, the Gospel writers collected traditions in circulation and told Jesus' story."

Isn't this an overstatement? It may apply to Luke. But does it apply to John?

"John P. Meier, a Roman Catholic priest and professor at Notre Dame, the author of a monumental series, 'A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus,' points out that there is no convincing evidence Jesus himself ever spoke of his birth."

And there is no convincing evidence that Jesus himself never spoke of his birth. An argument from silence is a doubled-edged sword.

"Neither Mary nor Joseph (who is not a figure in the years of Jesus' public life) appears to have been a direct source."

Once again, how is Meier or Meacham in a position to know that? Mary and Matthew both belonged to the church of Jerusalem (Acts 1:13-14). And Luke certainly had occasion of visit the church of Jerusalem, with or without Paul.

"In 1965, the Second Vatican Council held that while the Scriptures are ultimately "true," they are not necessarily to be taken as accurate in the sense we might take an Associated Press wire report about what happened at a school-board meeting as accurate. The council focused on the importance of paying attention to "literary forms" in Scripture. The Gospels are such a "literary form," and the accounts of Jesus in the canon are not history or biography in the way we use the terms. Classical biography, however, was a different genre. Writers like Plutarch invented details or embellished traditions when they were reconstructing the lives of the famous, and the Christmas saga features miraculous births, supernatural signs and harbingers of ultimate greatness similar to those found in pagan works. If we examine the Nativity narratives as classical biography, then the evangelists' means and mission—to convey theological truths about salvation, not to record just-the-facts history—become much clearer."

i) This is yet another fact-free assertion. To begin with, the Gospel-writers already had a preexisting tradition of historiography at their disposal--it's called the OT.

ii) In addition, Meacham is simply ignorant of the major literature on Greco-Roman historiography as well as the historicity of the Gospels and Acts.

He should read Keener's commentaries on Matthew and John, France on Mark, Bock on Luke, Witherington on Acts. He should read France on Matthew: Evangelist & Teacher. He should read Blomberg's commentaries on Matthew and John, as well as his book on Jesus and the Gospels--not to mention his book on The Historical Reliability of the Gospels. He should read Hemer on The Book of Acts In the Setting of Hellenistic History. He should read The Book of Acts in Its Ancient Literary Setting, Winter & Clarke, eds. He should read Stonehouse on the Origins of the Synoptic Gospels, as well as Barnett on Jesus & the Rise of Early Christianity. That's just for starters.

As to comparative mythology, I've already made mention of Machen and Metzger. We could throw in Everett Ferguson on the Backgrounds of Early Christianity for good measure.

" The earliest and sparest Gospel, Mark's (circa AD 60), begins at Jesus' baptism by John as an adult, skipping the Nativity altogether. The latest and most philosophical, John's (circa 90), links Jesus with God at the very birth of the universe."

Where is the supporting evidence for this dating-scheme? I myself would date Mark to the 40s or 50s, and John to the 60s--after the demise of Peter.

" So we are left with Matthew and Luke, Gospels composed between AD 60 and 90."

Between 60 and 90? That's quite a spread! If he dates their composition to after the fall of Jerusalem (AD 70), then this comes into conflict with his thesis about the imminent return of Christ. Matthew and Luke could not very well believe that Jesus would return with the sack of Jerusalem if they were writing after the sack of Jerusalem. So something has to give. Which is it?

" By asserting Mary's virginity, Matthew and Luke are taking the device of the miraculous conception farther than any other Jewish writer had before."

"The device?" In what sense is the virgin birth a device? I've heard of a birth-control device, but not a virgin-birth device!

" If the virginal conception were a historical fact, however, it is somewhat odd that there is no memory of it recorded in the Gospel accounts of Jesus' ministry or in the Acts of the Apostles or in the rest of the New Testament."

i) Why is it odd? It occurs where we would expect it to occur--in the gospels, which are a biographical genre. There is no expectation that it would crop up in a non-biographical genre.

ii) What would occasion its introduction in the ministry of Christ?

iii) Actually, Cranfield, for one, finds further allusions to the Virgin Birth in Mk 6:3, Jn 1:13; 6:41f.; 8:41; Rom 1:3; Gal 4:4, & Phil 2:7. Ibid. 153-54. And, of course, there's Isa 7:14 hovering in the wings.

" It is also striking that in parts of the Gospels Mary herself appears unaware of her son's provenance and destiny."

Her incomprehension would be the same apart from the particulars of the Virgin Birth.

" If Jesus had been conceived by a human father before Joseph and Mary had begun their lives together as husband and wife (either by Joseph himself, a soldier or someone else), then the Holy Ghost would have provided a convenient cover story for the early church."

i) "A cover story"? But just a few paragraphs before, Meacham told his readers that "The last thing the Christians wanted was to appear to be yet another mythological cult, worshiping some kind of demi-god; their deep Jewish faith in the commandment to have 'no other gods before me' foreclosed that possibility. 'Incredible tales' were for the idolatrous." Does Meacham listen to his own words?

ii) And a few more paragraphs before that, Meacham told his readers that " Miraculous conceptions have deep roots in Jewish tradition: the aged Sarah bearing Isaac, the barren wife of Manoah bearing Samson, the barren Hannah bearing Samuel (and, according to Luke, Mary's kinswoman Elizabeth, both aged and barren, bearing John the Baptist just before Mary conceived Jesus)."

All true. But if preternatural pregnancies enjoy such precedent in OT history, how is the Virgin Birth a convenient cover story?

" Matthew makes an even more explicit connection with the Jewish past, stating outright that Jesus is answering ancient expectations. Citing Isaiah 7:14—'Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us'—the evangelist writes: 'Now all this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet.' A problem with this elegant passage from Isaiah is that it may have long been mistranslated and misinterpreted."

It should be needless to say that the exegesis of Isa 7:14 is well-trodden ground. For a defense of the traditional interpretation, the reader should consult: M. Brown, Answering Jewish Objections to Jesus (Baker 2003), 3:17-32; 199-210; J. Motyer, "Content and context in the interpretation of Isaiah 7:14," TynB 21 (1970); E. Young, Studies in Isaiah (Eerdmans 1954).

"What is clearer is that the visit of the Magi came to be seen as a fulfillment of Psalm 72…There is no historical evidence of such a visit, but the symbolic significance is obvious."

"History records no such Herodian slaughter…"

i) Of course, ancient historians only write about the rich and famous. By that standard, there's no historical evidence that more than a few hundred people ever existed in the ancient world. There is no historical evidence of trees in the state of Georgia in 1066. There is no historical evidence that fish were swimming in the Columbia River in 1492. In fact, there is no historical evidence that the Columbia River even existed in 1492. At least, I know of no period historian who has recorded the presence of trees and rivers and fish at this place and time. Is it therefore reasonable to conclude that although Alexander the Great was a real person, since historians wrote about him, that Alexander never had a great-grandfather, if no historian wrote about his great-grandpa? Is it reasonable to conclude that there were no trees in Georgia or fish in the Columbia River absent a written record to that effect?

There are no written records for most of the things that ever were or ever occurred in the past. Is it reasonable to conclude from this that most of the time, nothing at all took place? That the timeline consists of long stretches of nothingness punctuated a little blips of being?

ii) Notice the perversely tendentious character of Meacham's denial. If Cicero or Tacitus or Josephus say that something happened, then we have a historical record of the event; but of Matthew or Luke or John say that something happened, then there's absolutely no evidence that it ever happened!

The chief value of corroboration is not to confirm every detail, which is unrealistic to expect, but to attest the trustworthy character of the reporter. If what he says holds up on the points at which it can be tested, then that carries a presumption of fidelity on the points at which it cannot be tested.

And a disagreement between two sources is not, of itself, prejudicial to one source over against another.

" There is, of course, no way to know whether Luke's story of the heavenly host announcing Jesus' arrival to the shepherds really happened; one has to believe in angels, and explain away the fact that the Gospels fail to note any ensuing communal or individual recollection of this spectacular birth, one witnessed by the rustics (in Luke) and the Magi (in Matthew), in the years of Jesus' public life."

i) Of course, should you operate under Meacham's rules of evidence, then if the Gospels did record an ensuing recollection of this event, that would be further evidence that it never occurred!

ii) To say that there's no way of knowing assumes that you can only know something directly. But if you know someone who knows it, if you know that your source of knowledge is reliable, then you know whatever it tells you to be true.

"In the gnostic 'Gospel of Philip,' Pagels points out, the Gospel author reinterprets Jesus' birth, suggesting that while Jesus was born biologically to Mary and Joseph, he was reborn spiritually as the son of God…Such a view prompted a fierce counterattack from Irenaeus, a late-second-century church father who believed that Jesus was utterly unique—that he had been born in a unique way and had been raised from the dead in a unique way."

i) The Coptic Gospel of Philip dates to the 4-5C. I'd like to see the steps by which Elaine Pagels is able to trace this back to the time of Irenaeus or before.

ii) How is it that liberals make so much of the very brief interval between the life of Christ and the canonical Gospels, but so very little of the far wider interval between the life of Christ and the Gnostic gospels?

When all is aid and done, the question is not how an inspired book which was written 2000 years ago could confront a modern reader with a few obscurities; no, the real question is how an uninspired book which was written 2000 years to could confront a modern reader with so few obscurities. It is the low view of Scripture, and not the high view of Scripture, which cries out for a special explanation. It takes less faith to be a believer than an unbeliever.

The first noel-1

Both Newsweek and Time Magazine have come out with articles about the birth of Christ. Ordinarily, the only time I bother to read either magazine is when I'm waiting to see the doctor, and flip through whatever magazines happen to be lying around.

But given the intrinsic importance of the issue, I've decided to make an exception to my rule--although the quality, or lack thereof, of the two articles, offers no incentive for me to revise my usual policy.

Before we dig into each article individually, a number of preliminary points need to be made:

1. If you want to have an honest debate over the birth of Christ, the fair and balanced way of doing it would be to invite a liberal and a conservative NT scholar to debate the issue. Side A would give an opening statement. Side B would comment on the opening statement. Side A would reply to his comment. Then Side B would give an opening statement. Side A would comment on the opening statement. Side B would reply to his comment. Then Side A would give a closing statement, followed by a closing statement from side B. You might wrap up the debate with a round table discussion in which a moderator was to ask an equal number of liberal and conservative panelists to comment on the debate. That would be an honest debate.

By contrast, Meacham and van Biema control the flow of information. They only tell you what they think is important. They quote little snippets from so-and-so, or summarize the views of anonymous scholars. But this is not how either a liberal or a conservative scholar would marshal his arguments if he had a free hand in writing his own article on the subject.

We are not getting any representative idea of how a conservative scholar would make his case. In particular, we are not getting the supporting arguments. The journalist functions as a filter to screen out whatever he doesn't want the reader to hear--whatever doesn't comport his journalistic agenda.

2. Both articles try to cast doubt on the Gospel accounts by the mere fact that they differ in their treatment of the subject. But if this is reason to infer, in the words of Meacham, that neither account "is fully fanciful nor fully factual," then, by parity of reasoning, we are justified in saying that neither the Newsweek nor the Time Magazine article is fully factual since each of them differs in its treatment of the subject. One could easily perform a comparative study of the two articles, parallel to the so-called Synoptic problem, and try to derive the same sceptical conclusions.

3. Both Meacham and Van Biema pose a pseudo-problem, which then they propose to solve. They make heavy weather over the fact that the setting of nativity stories alternates between Bethlehem and Nazareth. But how is that a problem?

At this point we need to draw a few elementary distinctions. To say that I don't know how to relate two events can either mean that (i) the events present an actual or apparent contradiction, or else (ii) there is not contradiction in view, but I simply lack enough incidental detail to put them in order or explain what motivated the action.

Now, what do Matthew and Luke say about the setting of the nativity accounts? Matthew says that Jesus was born in Bethlehem (Mt 2:1). After he was born, one or two years later (2:7,16), the Magi paid him a visit. At that time, the Holy Family were living in a house of some sort. After the Magi came and went, the Holy Family fled to Egypt (2:14). After their Egyptian sojourn, they moved to Nazareth (2:23).

Luke indicates that Mary and Joseph were living in Nazareth before Jesus was born (Lk 2:4). While she was pregnant, they made a trip to Bethlehem, where she gave birth (2:4-6). His birth was witnessed by shepherds and angels (2:8-20). Afterwards they made a trip to Jerusalem (2:22ff.). And after that they returned to Nazareth (2:39).

Now, none of this presents the reader with either an actual or apparent contradiction. Remember what a historical discrepancy would amount to: a solid object cannot occupy the same space at the same time.

Where does one Evangelist either say or imply that the Holy Family was residing in one place and time when another Evangelist says or implies that the Holy Family was living elsewhere at exactly the same time? Am I missing something?

Luke says that Joseph and Mary were living in Nazareth before Jesus was born. Matthew doesn't say where they were living before Jesus was born. Luke states that Jesus was born in a stable, after which the Holy Family made a trip to Jerusalem for the circumcision of Jesus and purification of Mary--while Matthew states that, at a later date, the Holy Family was living in a house. Both Matthew and Luke say that the Holy Family eventually settled in Nazareth.

There is plenty of time between the first noel and the first epiphany (1-2 years, Mt 2:7,16) to fit in a trip to Jerusalem. Of course, any reconstruction is someone speculative, but to impute a contradiction to the two accounts also entails a conjectural reconstruction of how the elements could or could not be harmonized.

4. Both Meacham and van Biema lean on the argument from silence. Their assumption and insinuation is that if everything happened the way Matthew and Luke tell us, we should expect corroborative evidence for the various steps of the story.

But such an argument from silence ignores two obvious problems:

i) It assumes that period historians would take an interest in, and have knowledge on, the circumstances surrounding the birth of a working-class Jewish boy in Palestine.

ii) It overlooks the fragmentary state of the record. As a leading scholar puts it,

"How very little we really know about Syria in the 1C BC and the 1C AD, above all about the religious atmosphere prevailing there in that period, or about Judaea under the Roman prefects between AD 6 and AD 41 (which is even closer to the heart of the NT scholar)!" M. Hengel, Acts and the History of Earliest Christianity (Fortress 1980), 3-4.

"Of the sixteen books of Tacitus' Annals, which are fundamental to our knowledge of Roman history in the 1C AD, books 7-10 are missing. They are important for the history of the NT period as they covered the years 37-47 and also dealt with the situation in Judaea under Tiberius and Caligula," ibid. 7.

"It is a special gift of providence that the works of Josephus have survived when those of his Jewish competitor and opponent, Justus of Tiberias, have been lost. By far the greater part of our knowledge about Jewish history in the Hellenistic period from the time of the conquest of Palestine by Alexander the Great comes from Josephus. A whole series of names and narratives from the gospels and Acts only become really comprehensible in the light of the more detailed report by the Jewish historian," ibid. 7.

There are other, minor sources of information which Hengel goes on to mention--in relation to later phases of NT history, but what is impressive is not how little corroboration we have of NT history, but how much we enjoy despite the ravages of time.

5. Both Meacham and van Biema quote or summarize scholars when it suits their purpose, but they fail to distinguish between scholarly opinion and scholarly argument. Merely to quote some scholar's opinion is unconvincing without the supporting evidence.

Moreover, Meacham and van Biema cite a number of no-name "scholars" from third-tier institutions. The only big name that comes up on a regular basis is Raymond Brown.

Furthermore, Meacham and van Biema often content themselves with generic summaries of some school of thought. Now, I realize that reporters are addicted to anonymous sources, but is there some compelling reason why they refrain from naming a liberal or conservative scholar? Presumably, this is not the same as protecting the identity of a Mafia informant, is it?

I suspect the reason they don't name their sources is that a lot of this information is derived from third-hand, word-of-mouth reportage.

Let's move on to van Biema article: "Behind the First Noel,"
http://www.time.com/time/subscriber/covers/1101041213/story.html

"How peculiar it is to find that the actual Gospel Nativities are the part of Jesus' biography about which Bible experts have the greatest sense of uncertainty—even more than the scripture about the miracles Jesus performed or his sacrificial death. Indeed, the Christmas story that Christians know by heart is actually a collection of mysteries. Where was Jesus actually born? Who showed up to celebrate his arrival? How do the details of the stories reflect the specific outreach agendas of the men who wrote them?"

What experts? Liberals? Conservatives? No conservative scholar has the greatest sense of uncertainty over the nativity accounts.

What makes an expert an expert on the nativity stories? Is Dominic Crossan an expert. A few years ago, Jacob Neusner wrote a review of a book by Crossan. He commended Crossan for his engaging prose style, but not for his command of the primary sources.

"Agendas?" What about van Biema's agenda? Assuming that the gospel-writers have an agenda, if an "outreach" agenda discredits their record, does a journalistic agenda discredit his article?

"In the debates over the literal truth of the Gospels, just about everyone acknowledges that major conclusions about Jesus' life are not based on forensic clues. There is no specific physical evidence for the key points of the story."

What is the "forensic," "physical" evidence that Augustus ever existed? Do we need a DNA sample to write history?

"Despite agreeing on the big ideas, Matthew and Luke diverge in conspicuous ways on details of the event. In Matthew's Nativity, the angelic Annunciation is made to Joseph while Luke's is to Mary. Matthew's offers wise men and a star and puts the baby Jesus in a house; Luke's prefers shepherds and a manger. Both place the birth in Bethlehem, but they disagree totally about how it came to be there."

I've already addressed the general allegation, but to comment on a few of the particulars:

i) Since Joseph and Mary were both parties to the arrangement, is there some reason why both of them would not be let in on the secret?

ii) Van Biema is conflating two different events--Christmas and Epiphany-- separated in time and space, and then imputing a conspicuous divergence in the details. But the confusion lies with van Biema. The account of the Magi is not a nativity account. The adoration of the Magi happened at a later date. By then the Holy Family had moved out of the "manger." Van Biema's analysis is simply inept.

iii) Matthew and Luke don't disagree at all, much less "totally," on how it came to be there. Luke tells us, while Matthew is silent. That is not any kind of disagreement.

"These days, however, some feminist readers like Vanderbilt University's Amy-Jill Levine, editor of the forthcoming Feminist Companion to Mariology, are more interested in what might be called Mary's feistiness."

Isn't this agenda driven?

"After Mary's Annunciation, she visits Elizabeth, and the fetus in Elizabeth's belly miraculously leaps up in recognition of God's promised Messiah."

The "fetus"? Is this a Roe v. Wade rendering of Luke?

" Such filigree, scholars concur, would have been foreign to Matthew, who wrote sometime after AD 60, a decade or two before Luke."

What scholars?

Where is the supporting evidence for this dating-scheme? What about scholars like Guthrie (New Testament Introduction), Robinson (Redating the New Testament) and Bock (BCNT 3) who date the composition of Luke to before AD 70?

For that matter, what reason is there, besides the entropy of critical consensus, not to date both to the 40s? This is not a preliterate or illiterate culture. If you know how to write in the 60s or the 80s, you also know how to write in the 40s, give or take.

" Unlike Matthew, Luke is thought to have been a pagan rather than a Jewish convert to Christianity…"

He is? What about scholars who think he was probably a convert to Judaism (a proselyte or God-fearer) before he became a convert to Christianity? His Christian faith would be a natural extension and completion of his adopted Jewish faith.

" His version's heraldic announcements, parallel pregnancies, angelic choirs and shepherd witnesses bear a tantalizing resemblance to another literary form, the reverential "lives" being written about pagan leaders in the same period. In such sagas, a hero is not a hero unless his birth reflects the magnificence of his later achievements, and such super-nativities, originally attached to great figures from antiquity like Alexander the Great, were at that point bestowed upon Roman leaders within decades of their actual deaths."

i) Once again, what is the date of these other literary forms?

ii) A "tantalizing resemblance"? Does the "life" of Alexander, or some Roman emperor, involve a parallel pregnancy, virgin birth, angelic choir, and band of shepherds? Show us the details.

iii) The "hero"? Van Biema is channeling the shade of Joseph Cambell. The technique is to fabricate a "monomyth" by mushing a lot of stuff together without regard to time, place, or divergent details. Such an ahistorical construct is imposed on the data rather than derived from the data.

iv) There were angelic heralds, preternatural pregnancies, and shepherds aplenty in the OT too. No need to roam further afield.

v) J. Gresham Machen went over all this ground some 75 years ago in his classic monograph on The Virgin Birth of Christ.

" By the time Luke wrote, says John Dominic Crossan, author of The Birth of Christianity, 'Christians are competing in a bigger world now, not just a Jewish world ... And in this wider world, Alexander the Great is the model for Augustus and Augustus often becomes the model for Jesus.'"

This is an assertion masquerading as an argument. Where is the supporting evidence?

"Says John Barclay, a New Testament expert at the University of Durham, England: "Theologically, this is the one thing that people will go to the stake for. If they defend the historicity of anything in the Christmas stories, they will defend this.'"

No, that's not where the lines fall. As a rule, those who affirm the virgin birth affirm everything else while those who deny the virgin birth deny everything else.

"Raymond Brown was one who did not. Brown, author of the landmark work The Birth of the Messiah, dean of historical Jesus scholars until his death in 1998 and a Sulpician priest, observed that the idea of divine conception in the womb appeared to be part of a theological progression. The very first Christians thought that Jesus had become God's Son at his Resurrection; Mark, the first Gospel written, seemed to locate the moment at his baptism in the Jordan; and it is only by the time that Matthew and Luke were writing that believers had dated his Sonship to before his birth."

i) If this is part of a theological progression, then we should expect the Fourth Gospel to be even more miracle-laden than Matthew and Luke. John would have more angels. More stars. But John doesn't have an account of the Virgin Birth.

ii) Actually, Mark has a very high Christology. Mark begins his Gospel by equating Christ with Yahweh (Mk 1:3). At that level, there is no room for theological progression.

" Thus, if Mary was the eyewitness source for the Holy Spirit's direct involvement in Jesus' birth (and who else could it be?), her testimony was lost to Christians for half a century before Luke somehow picked it up."

Once again, this assumes, without benefit of argument, the late dating of Luke.

"Facts like Jesus' relatives' seeming ignorance of his messiahship in Mark and John and other clues…"

What other clues? Aside from the "Messianic Secret," Christ's half-brothers knew his Messianic claims, but acted in disbelief until Easter morn.

"Fellow Jews early on challenged Matthew's Gospel assertion that it fulfilled a prophecy in the Book of Isaiah that the Messiah would be born to a "virgin." (Isaiah's Hebrew actually talks of a "young girl"; Matthew was probably working from a Greek mistranslation.)"

i) The Septuagint, which is the Greek version in question, was translated from the Hebrew by pre-Christian Jews.

ii) I would add that the exact translation of Isa 7:14 is something of a red-herring. The important point is not the precise semantic domain of the Hebrew word or its Greek rendering. The point, rather, is whether Isaiah meant to refer to a virgin, and chose the best available word (Heb.='almah) to convey his intent, and wehther the Septuagintal translators, in turn, chose the best available word (Gr.=parthenos) to intersect with the Hebrew.

As a man who makes his living with words, it would profit van Biema to master the elementary distinction between sense and reference.

" Critics may also have alleged that Jesus' birth early in Mary's marriage to Joseph was the result of her committing adultery; much later Jewish sources named a Roman soldier called Panthera. Those accusations, some scholars believe, account for the verse in Matthew in which Joseph considers divorcing Mary before his dream angel allays his doubts."

This assumes that Matthew was responding to early accusations. Where's the evidence? "Much later sources" are hardly evidence of a pre-Matthean slander.

"Jane Schaberg, an iconoclastic feminist critic at the University of Detroit Mercy, has long maintained that parts of Luke's introduction to the topic echo the beginning of an Old Testament passage on rape…"

Isn't this another agenda-driving interpretation?

" Stephen Patterson of Eden Theological Seminary lists divinely irregular conceptions in stories about not only mythic heroes such as Perseus and Romulus and Remus but also flesh-and-blood figures like Plato, Alexander and Augustus, whose hagiographers reported he was fathered by the god Apollo while his mother slept."

i) Except that neither Evangelist says that Jesus was conceived by means of carnal relations between Mary and a god or demigod. Quite the contrary.

ii) This free associative method was debunked by Bruce Metzger in his essay, "Methodology in the Study of the Mystery Religions and Early Christianity," in Historical and Literary Studies: Pagan, Jewish, and Christian (Leiden, 1968), 1-24.

" Brown found no merit in it. "Every line of Matthew's infancy narrative echoes Old Testament themes," he argued. "Are we to think that he accepted all that background but then violated horrendously the stern Old Testament [rule] that God was not a male who mated with women?" Other scholars claim that Luke especially might have been familiar with pagan models closer to the spiritual interaction that today's Christianity believes marked Jesus' conception."

What pagan models in particular? As usual, we are treated to an empty claim, unredeemed by any specifics.

" Those sticking with Bethlehem point out, not unreasonably, that both Matthew and Luke place Jesus' birth there. The skeptics note that they reach the town by such extravagantly different means that one has to wonder whether they weren't trying too hard to get there."

As anyone who bothers to read Matthew and Luke can see for himself, neither writer ever says how Mary and Joseph arrived in Bethlehem. How can they present different means, much less "extravagantly" different means, of getting there when both are entirely silent on the subject? Has van Biema ever read the accounts for himself?

" By Matthew's account, Joseph and Mary are Bethlehem residents and Jesus is born at home. But his very birth necessitates their flight to Egypt (and eventually Nazareth) because Jerusalem's vicious regent, Herod, is determined to murder the Bethlehem child he has learned will one day be King of the Jews. None of that gripping story, however, can be found in Luke. According to Luke, Joseph and Mary, Nazarenes, are on a brief if inconvenient visit to Joseph's ancestral home of Bethlehem, complying with a vast census ("All the world should be enrolled") ordered by the Roman Emperor Augustus. Meanwhile, Mark, written closer to Jesus' actual lifetime, omits Bethlehem and refers to Nazareth as Jesus' patrida, or hometown."

i) Notice, according to van Biema's very own summary, that Matthew doesn't say how they got there. So his supporting argument falsifies rather than validates his claim.

ii) The reason Matthew includes the material about the flight into Egypt and back is to draw attention to the fulfillment of OT typology. That would be more meaningful to his Jewish readers than Luke's Gentile readers. Indeed, van Biema goes on to say that very thing.

Van Biema then says that Luke discusses the nativity in relation to the census to show that Christians were loyal Roman citizens. Perhaps. But in any case, these are not by any means mutually exclusive explanations. Matthew didn't invent Judaism. Luke didn't invent the Roman Empire. These are cofactors in a common history of the period.

This is not "extravagant." To the contrary, that is a perfectly lucid rationale.

iii) Matthew doesn't say that Joseph and Mary are year-round residents. Once again, Van Biema is conflating two separate events. When they first arrive they stay in the manger (according to Luke) as an emergency measure. Later, they secured semi-permanent lodgings (according to Matthew). Jesus is not "born at home."

iv) The whole effort to box the Holy Family into a single hometown is silly. They lived in a mobile society, just like we do.