Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Atheism Feedback Response 1-11-10
The following article is my second response to Gerry Porter, a cordial atheist that has interacted with my articles titled "Creationist Kooks Offer Debate Challenge" and "Atheism Feedback Response 1-6-10". Because Gerry's second response is so lengthy, I have decided to respond below in blue font to Gerry's salient points.***********************************************************************************
Thank you for your cordial response. It is much appreciated. You said,
"Unfortunately, we debate this matter using two sets of ideas that are fundamentally at odds. For proxies, you send in Hubert Yockey, Lee Spetner, Werner Gitt and the bible while I send in Sean Carroll, Stephen Jay Gould, and Richard Dawkins. You believe utterly in your evidence, and I in mine. A stalemate."
This isn't a stalemate at all. If you would carefully re-read my initial response, you will see that I carefully noted that our fundamental presuppositions determine how we interpret any evidence, facts, or data. In other words, the facts do not speak for themselves. My main point is this:
Unless the Bible is true (whether you believe it or not) the concept of "proof", "evidence", and the "scientific method" is impossible in the first place because God is the one who provides the things needed to correctly understand the world.
Atheistic materialism cannot be true because it doesn't provide the very things that you need to first have in place before you can even begin to evaluate evidence and facts (i.e., immaterial, abstract concepts and laws, reliability of memory, reliability of your senses, etc.). These things are called "preconditions of intelligibility" and they are things that all of us take for granted yet we don't even realize that we need them to even do anything. This is why I offered logical syllogisms like this one:
1. Material things are extended in space.
2. Our concepts of "logic" are not extended in space.
3. Therefore, our concepts of "logic" are non-material.
4. Some versions of materialism (like yours) posit that no non-material entities exist.
5. Therefore, assuming some versions of materialism (like yours), concepts of "logic" do not exist.
The God of the Bible accounts for abstract, immaterials such as concepts, laws, etc. and because the God of the Bible exists we can have a general reliability of our senses, our memory, and we can know that there will be a general uniformity to nature based upon God's promises to maintain said uniformity (Genesis 8:22). All of these types of things are necessary preconditions to carry out the procedures of natural science.
For example, the version of atheistic materialism that Dawkins adheres to assumes that the future will operate in the same way it has in the past based upon past instances of the future being like the past. When they do so, they are committing the logical fallacy known as begging the question. This is what is specifically known in philosophy as "The Problem of Induction" and it has never been solved by secular philosophy. As a matter of fact, this very issue pushed David Hume into complete skepticism. Hume said that you couldn't even be sure if the sun would rise tomorrow because to assume such with 100% certainty would be to commit said logical fallacy.
You discount the Bible, yet you offer nothing to take it's place. If you think that you have something better to offer than the truth of the Biblical worldview that will be both be (a) internally consistent with itself and (b) provide the preconditions for doing science in the first place, please do so, we're more than happy to listen to what you have to say. However, I'll advise you beforehand, secular philosophy has been looking for answers to these issues for thousands of years and they have yet to find answers to them. Therefore, my worldview provides the presuppositions needed to account for things like immaterial, abstract laws and concepts whereas yours does not
You go on to say,
"A secondary problem arises from the fact that your Christian Creationist version is just one of several versions used by other religions in pleading much the same case."
The fact that other religions have competing and contradictory truth claims doesn't mean that mine is wrong. All it proves is that those other religions have competing and contradictory truth claims. The issue is not that they contradict each other, the issue is whether they are true or not. However, given atheistic materialism, why should you care about "truth" and how do you account for the immaterial concept thereof? Also, "truth" is relative if the Triune God is not there to ground it (Judges 21:25; Proverbs 21:2). Why should you or any other atheist care what one piece of evolved pondscum "thinks" or "does" to another piece of evolved pondscum? Gerry, I'm not saying that you can't be moral, I'm just saying that you can't ground your morality in anything higher than yourself. Such is the problem with atheism.
"Because religions have their own proprietary versions to demonstrate how and when God did it all, we on the other side of the matter can be forgiven if we remain skeptical of your results."
This is easily reversible to fit the Creationist position: "Because atheists have their own proprietary versions to demonstrate how and when Nature did it all, we on the other side of the matter can be forgiven if we remain skeptical of your results."
You can't ignore the fact that God has created because like it or not; God has hardwired it into every human being (Romans 1:19-25). The only denial of this occurs when people want to deny it to satisfy their own sinful desires to worship created things rather than the Creator.
"In contrast to your uncoordinated methodologies, the fundamental, Darwinian-based biological and medical science being conducted in research laboratories in Russia, China, Egypt, and Israel is the same as the science in Australian, American, German, and Canadian labs."
If you mean that the scientific procedures operating under the same conditions get essentially the same results, then wonderful! That just demonstrates what I've already said; namely, that God upholds the universe in such a way that we can expect repeatability, predication, reliability of our senses, etc, in order to do operational science under the same conditions regardless of the time, place, or people. I don't expect any different. However, given the fact that you cannot know with certainty that the future is going to be like the past because your worldview doesn't provide the needed preconditions to account for such uniformity, why shouldn't I expect you to turn into a green frog the next time you stub your toe in the middle of the night instead of normally feeling the sharp pain associated with such an experience?
"While, as you point out, Christian Creationist studies agree with major components of Darwin’s notion, you and most other theologians refute certain critical aspects. However, the Vatican and many Protestant churches have quietly concluded that Darwin did indeed get it right."
This is irrelevant as to whether Neo-Darwinian theory is true or not.
"Although Vatican experts agree that natural selection works in accordance with Darwin’s ideas, they insist that Man is a ‘special case’. Man, the Catholics claim, may have physically evolved in accordance with Darwinian principles, but God, and God alone, imbued Man’s mind with grace, ethics, and morality. Which is probably in line with your own thinking – which, when you think about it, is a kind of collaboration, isn’t it?"
No, this is not in line with my own thinking. I deny any kind of molecules to man Neo-Darwinian theistic evolution because it contradicts the historical narratives of Genesis 1-2 and it contradicts known scientific fact as pointed out in my first response. As far as the Vatican is concerned, so much more the worse for them. This is one reason (of many) why I reject Roman Catholicism.
"Even Islamic research facilities realize that, in the real world, they cannot do science based on the Koran; it doesn’t work."
That's because the Qu'ran is false and Islam is false. Islam is false because the Qu'ran is internally contradictory since it tells us that we must adhere to the gospel of Jesus, the Psalms of David and portions of the Old Testament yet it contradicts the most basic teachings of the New Testament (i.e., Jesus' death on the cross). There is more to the issue of Islam, but there are other resources that are better at addressing that issue than myself. See: Answering Islam and Answering Muslims
"Real laboratories doing real medical and biological science in the real world rely exclusively on Darwinian science - because it does work. As your arch foe in this matter, Richard Dawkins, often observes, biological science bears out, in every respect, the correctness of Darwin’s notion."
The "real world" is the God-created world. To deny such is to contradict yourself and be reduced to absurdity as shown in my first response to you as well as in this response.
"But religious leaders have another problem besides what to do with their growing population of retired Gods. Each religious leader is genuinely convinced that his path to righteousness and redemption is the only path and all other paths lead to hell or oblivion. Tell me sir, how can every leader be so sure he is right?"
The same way you are so sure that you are right. You said so yourself in the combox of my blog article on 1-5-2010 when you confidently said, "I’m sorry folks, but Richard Dawkins and his companions are right." The reason why every unbeliever thinks they are right can be summed in two words: self-deception. Cf. Romans 1:21-23.
"How can you, when you know full well that thousands of other men and women are, during each hour of every day, making roughly the same claim for other Gods, be so sure?"
Because without the Triune God of Scripture, I can't know anything at all (Col. 2:3).
"And you, with all the impertinence that only the true believer can muster, beg me to ‘repent’ and join one of these rabid organizations."
It is offensive and immoral to call you to repentance for your rebellion against your Maker? Consider this using the "is-ought" fallacy:
1. Some atheists say that because we are moral means that we ought to be moral.
2. But what is the case doesn't tell us what should be the case.
3. Therefore, because people are moral it doesn't follow that they should be moral.
How do I get an "ought" from an "is" in an atheistic materialistic universe? My friend, your worldview cannot ground, account for, and provide the very concepts that you suggest I need to be consistent with in order to make your "ought not" have any grounding. This is a great example of why you need to repent of your sins and put your trust in Jesus Christ alone.
Dear friend, if you remain in your intellectual autonomy, you will die in your sins and have your just punishment in Hell for having rejected the grace of God offered to you through the sacrificial death of Christ on the cross. Christ had to die because of crimes like yours. Crimes against Him; especially your heinous crime of arrogant, intellectual pride; a pride that shakes your fist at the Creator and says, "I'll have it my way" rather than "Thy will be done" is an idolatry of the highest order. As seen in Romans 1:21-23 above, Paul said that you will either worship God or worship an idol. You are worshiping the idol of your intellect and squandering that good thing God gave you for the purpose of worshiping Him and learning about His world for your grand pursuit of denying Him via intellectual autonomy. Please turn from your idolatry to humble faith in Jesus Christ lest you perish forever.
"We love because He first loved us". (1 John 4:19)
Dusman - Shepherd's Fellowship of Greensboro
Viewing Reality
One of the ironies about the Iraq War is that despite being the most heavily televised war in the history of mankind, the average American knows virtually nothing of what happened there. This is because while the media had access to troops, reporters largely stayed close to their hotels and weren’t on the frontlines. In addition to that, networks (including cable) ran with sanitized images, never lasting for more than the few seconds that needed for their sound bite.
Recently, I’ve been able to watch several videos shot by Pat Dollard, a former Hollywood agent who became an imbedded reporter. The videos he shot are raw, full of coarse language (he’s with Marines, after all), and violence (as it is a war). When I watched the first few videos, I was struck at how intense it was…and I had only watched about 45 minutes. Our troops dealt with this for hours, day in and day out.
You can watch some of the clips at his website here and he’s starting to air episodes of his documentary, Young Americans, on the Big Hollywood website, here. There is obviously a very big content warning. It should not be viewed by minors. Graphically (at least in the videos I’ve seen to date), it’s about on par with movies such as Black Hawk Down. The difference is that this is real, not a movie.
Recently, I’ve been able to watch several videos shot by Pat Dollard, a former Hollywood agent who became an imbedded reporter. The videos he shot are raw, full of coarse language (he’s with Marines, after all), and violence (as it is a war). When I watched the first few videos, I was struck at how intense it was…and I had only watched about 45 minutes. Our troops dealt with this for hours, day in and day out.
You can watch some of the clips at his website here and he’s starting to air episodes of his documentary, Young Americans, on the Big Hollywood website, here. There is obviously a very big content warning. It should not be viewed by minors. Graphically (at least in the videos I’ve seen to date), it’s about on par with movies such as Black Hawk Down. The difference is that this is real, not a movie.
Catholicism and restorationism
One of the stipulative truth-conditions for Catholicism and Orthodoxy is historical continuity. This is exemplified by their dogma of apostolic succession.
They deploy this as a criterion to distinguish the true church from false claimants. Seamless continuity with the past is a mark of the true church. If you can’t trace your ecclesiastical pedigree through unbroken succession, then your church is a false church. A bastard church.
Ecclesiology as genealogy. You have to have the right family tree (as it were).
But one of the oddities of this appeal is that, from an apologetic standpoint, it’s so insular and question-begging. And that’s because there’s a rival paradigm with diametrically opposing assumptions.
Within church history we also have a restorationist strain. This ranges along a continuum. Examples include Anabaptists, Puritans, Plymouth Brethren, Campbellites, Mormons, &c.
The rival paradigm accentuates discontinuity with church history as a mark of the true church. Put another way, it regards continuity with the past as a mark of institutional apostasy.
For the moment I’m not debating the pros and cons of this paradigm. And there are many different variations on this paradigm.
My immediate point is that Catholic and Orthodox apologists are trying to prove that their church is the one true church by using historical continuity as a primary criterion.
But, ironically, even if they were successful in establishing their continuity with the past, their proof would actually be disproof to someone who operates with a restorationist paradigm.
The very type of evidence which Catholic or Orthodox apologists adduce to prove their position is the same type of evidence which a restorationist could adduce to disprove their position.
For if you think the institutional church took a wrong turn at some point in the past, then historical evidence of continuity in the wrong direction is a self-defeating way to vindicate the claims of your denomination. All it amounts to evidence that, having taken a wrong turn, you have pigheadedly continued further down the wrong road. But the greater the movement in the wrong direction, the further removed you are from the right orientation.
If you were supposed to be heading north, and you’ve been heading south for centuries, then that just goes to show how utterly lost you are. You never stop to ask for directions. You never turn around. You just keep putting more miles between you and true destination. At first the true destination lies a few miles behind you, then hundreds of miles, then thousands of miles.
Conversely, for a Catholic or Orthodox apologist to discredit the competition by pointing out that this or that “sect” or “schismatic” movement broke ranks with the status quo is worse than useless since someone with a restorationist criterion regards that as a strong point in his favor. A necessary, midcourse correction. There’s no virtue in toeing the party line if the party bosses moved the border stones.
For now I’m not attempting to evaluate the respective merits of each paradigm. And I’m not arguing for any particular variant thereof.
I’m merely pointing out that Catholic and Orthodox apologists have a blinkered way of taking for granted something which they need to establish at the outset. They are a busily making a case for their position on a presumptive criterion. But they fail to make a case for their presumptive criterion.
And their presumptive criterion is counterproductive, for what they deem to be a mark of the true church many of their opponents deem to be the mark of an apostate church.
They deploy this as a criterion to distinguish the true church from false claimants. Seamless continuity with the past is a mark of the true church. If you can’t trace your ecclesiastical pedigree through unbroken succession, then your church is a false church. A bastard church.
Ecclesiology as genealogy. You have to have the right family tree (as it were).
But one of the oddities of this appeal is that, from an apologetic standpoint, it’s so insular and question-begging. And that’s because there’s a rival paradigm with diametrically opposing assumptions.
Within church history we also have a restorationist strain. This ranges along a continuum. Examples include Anabaptists, Puritans, Plymouth Brethren, Campbellites, Mormons, &c.
The rival paradigm accentuates discontinuity with church history as a mark of the true church. Put another way, it regards continuity with the past as a mark of institutional apostasy.
For the moment I’m not debating the pros and cons of this paradigm. And there are many different variations on this paradigm.
My immediate point is that Catholic and Orthodox apologists are trying to prove that their church is the one true church by using historical continuity as a primary criterion.
But, ironically, even if they were successful in establishing their continuity with the past, their proof would actually be disproof to someone who operates with a restorationist paradigm.
The very type of evidence which Catholic or Orthodox apologists adduce to prove their position is the same type of evidence which a restorationist could adduce to disprove their position.
For if you think the institutional church took a wrong turn at some point in the past, then historical evidence of continuity in the wrong direction is a self-defeating way to vindicate the claims of your denomination. All it amounts to evidence that, having taken a wrong turn, you have pigheadedly continued further down the wrong road. But the greater the movement in the wrong direction, the further removed you are from the right orientation.
If you were supposed to be heading north, and you’ve been heading south for centuries, then that just goes to show how utterly lost you are. You never stop to ask for directions. You never turn around. You just keep putting more miles between you and true destination. At first the true destination lies a few miles behind you, then hundreds of miles, then thousands of miles.
Conversely, for a Catholic or Orthodox apologist to discredit the competition by pointing out that this or that “sect” or “schismatic” movement broke ranks with the status quo is worse than useless since someone with a restorationist criterion regards that as a strong point in his favor. A necessary, midcourse correction. There’s no virtue in toeing the party line if the party bosses moved the border stones.
For now I’m not attempting to evaluate the respective merits of each paradigm. And I’m not arguing for any particular variant thereof.
I’m merely pointing out that Catholic and Orthodox apologists have a blinkered way of taking for granted something which they need to establish at the outset. They are a busily making a case for their position on a presumptive criterion. But they fail to make a case for their presumptive criterion.
And their presumptive criterion is counterproductive, for what they deem to be a mark of the true church many of their opponents deem to be the mark of an apostate church.
Judging "the Church"
Dave Armstrong said...
If one doubts papal infallibility (as David [Waltz] has), then he has likely thought: "it fails because of historical counter-examples a, b, c, and d." The pros and cons of each case could be argued, sticking mostly to historiography (that would be my methodology if it came to that), but the question must be asked, "why is it that one has placed their private judgment and personal doubts above the judgment of the Church in the first place?" That is a question of faith and of the rule of faith.
One has now assumed a Protestant stance of judging the Church (indistinguishable from Luther), rather than being judged by her, and giving assent, without necessarily having every jot and tittle of Catholic doctrine perfectly understood and tied in a neat little package with a shiny purple bow.
http://articulifidei.blogspot.com/2010/01/solemn-announcement-but-with-no-thanks.html?showComment=1263259816843#c8239731309232949749
Brigham Young said…
If one doubts First Presidency (as Dave Armstrong has), then he has likely thought: "it fails because of historical counter-examples a, b, c, and d." The pros and cons of each case could be argued, sticking mostly to historiography (that would be my methodology if it came to that), but the question must be asked, "why is it that one has placed their private judgment and personal doubts above the judgment of the LDS Church in the first place?" That is a question of faith and of the rule of faith.
One has now assumed a Protestant stance of judging the LDS Church (indistinguishable from Luther), rather than being judged by her, and giving assent, without necessarily having every jot and tittle of Mormon doctrine perfectly understood and tied in a neat little package with a shiny purple bow.
If one doubts papal infallibility (as David [Waltz] has), then he has likely thought: "it fails because of historical counter-examples a, b, c, and d." The pros and cons of each case could be argued, sticking mostly to historiography (that would be my methodology if it came to that), but the question must be asked, "why is it that one has placed their private judgment and personal doubts above the judgment of the Church in the first place?" That is a question of faith and of the rule of faith.
One has now assumed a Protestant stance of judging the Church (indistinguishable from Luther), rather than being judged by her, and giving assent, without necessarily having every jot and tittle of Catholic doctrine perfectly understood and tied in a neat little package with a shiny purple bow.
http://articulifidei.blogspot.com/2010/01/solemn-announcement-but-with-no-thanks.html?showComment=1263259816843#c8239731309232949749
Brigham Young said…
If one doubts First Presidency (as Dave Armstrong has), then he has likely thought: "it fails because of historical counter-examples a, b, c, and d." The pros and cons of each case could be argued, sticking mostly to historiography (that would be my methodology if it came to that), but the question must be asked, "why is it that one has placed their private judgment and personal doubts above the judgment of the LDS Church in the first place?" That is a question of faith and of the rule of faith.
One has now assumed a Protestant stance of judging the LDS Church (indistinguishable from Luther), rather than being judged by her, and giving assent, without necessarily having every jot and tittle of Mormon doctrine perfectly understood and tied in a neat little package with a shiny purple bow.
Theological Gourmet Report
The 2010 edition of the Theological Gourmet Report has been published. Here are the rankings for the top 10 theological schools:
10. Princeton Theological Seminary. Included cuz we had to throw a bone at the Ivy Leaguers or else they'd bark up a storm.
9. Whitefield Theological Seminary. This seminary reflects the greatness of a single individual, George Whitefield. Countless men, women, and children were saved by his preaching and ministry. Well done, Whitefield Theological Seminary, for making the cut.
8. Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. What's better than naming a seminary after a godly man? Naming it after two of 'em!
7. Dallas Theological Seminary. As fine men as Whitefield, Gordon, and Conwell were, they're no match for an entire city.
6. Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. As fine a city as Dallas is, it's no match for an entire denomination with men and women from various cities around the world.
5. Westminster Theological Seminary. As fine a denomination as the SBC is, it's no match for multiple denominations. Although WTS is technically not affiliated with a particular denomination, one can't help but call to mind the WCF when one thinks of WTS. And, of course, various Presby denominations look to the WCF.
4. Reformed Theological Seminary. As fine a representation of multiple denominations as WTS is, RTS reflects the entire Reformed faith. Not to mention RTS has more campuses located in various places than does WTS. Therefore it's ranked above WTS.
3. Oak Hill College. As fine and as many campuses as RTS has, in an iron cage, mono a mono battle to the death, RTS is no match for a hill made of solid oak. (Or a hill with oaks if the oaks are like Treebeard.)
2. Christ Theological Seminary. As fine as a hill made of solid oak is, well, who created the oak hill in the first place? Can any Bible college or seminary do better than to have the Son of God in their name?
1. Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Yes, have the entire Godhead! TEDS is tops.
Honorable mention (#11): The Master's Seminary since through various mind tricks it lures seminarians into thinking they're training their padawan selves to become jedi knights and then masters.
10. Princeton Theological Seminary. Included cuz we had to throw a bone at the Ivy Leaguers or else they'd bark up a storm.
9. Whitefield Theological Seminary. This seminary reflects the greatness of a single individual, George Whitefield. Countless men, women, and children were saved by his preaching and ministry. Well done, Whitefield Theological Seminary, for making the cut.
8. Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. What's better than naming a seminary after a godly man? Naming it after two of 'em!
7. Dallas Theological Seminary. As fine men as Whitefield, Gordon, and Conwell were, they're no match for an entire city.
6. Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. As fine a city as Dallas is, it's no match for an entire denomination with men and women from various cities around the world.
5. Westminster Theological Seminary. As fine a denomination as the SBC is, it's no match for multiple denominations. Although WTS is technically not affiliated with a particular denomination, one can't help but call to mind the WCF when one thinks of WTS. And, of course, various Presby denominations look to the WCF.
4. Reformed Theological Seminary. As fine a representation of multiple denominations as WTS is, RTS reflects the entire Reformed faith. Not to mention RTS has more campuses located in various places than does WTS. Therefore it's ranked above WTS.
3. Oak Hill College. As fine and as many campuses as RTS has, in an iron cage, mono a mono battle to the death, RTS is no match for a hill made of solid oak. (Or a hill with oaks if the oaks are like Treebeard.)
2. Christ Theological Seminary. As fine as a hill made of solid oak is, well, who created the oak hill in the first place? Can any Bible college or seminary do better than to have the Son of God in their name?
1. Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Yes, have the entire Godhead! TEDS is tops.
Honorable mention (#11): The Master's Seminary since through various mind tricks it lures seminarians into thinking they're training their padawan selves to become jedi knights and then masters.
Monday, January 11, 2010
A fate worse than death?
There's a debate on interrogation which seems to be winding down over at First Things: Evangel. I've interacting with various individuals (but mainly with John Mark Reynolds). Here is my side of the exchange:
steve hays
January 11th, 2010
“The main problem with torture in order to gain information, as I see it as a Christian, is that it removes our ability to trust in the sovereignty of God. We torture because we are worried about what the future holds.”
Does having gov’t employees who inspect the structural integrity of bridges express distrust in God’s providence?
steve hays
January 11th, 2010
“What then of pre-trial treatment? What means are permitted in questioning a suspected criminal, that is, someone who has not yet been found guilty of a punishable crime? Since ancient times brutal means have often been employed to elicit a confession or incriminating information from a defendant.”
The question at issue is not to extract a confession under duress, but to extract intelligence under duress. This is about counterespionage, not pretrial discovery.
“Even if the suspect is guilty of harbouring information about fellow conspirators that might be crucial to stopping a terrorist act, he could just as easily give false or misleading information to his interrogators, who would not necessarily know the difference.”
It’s no different than a homicide detective who grills a suspect. He then treats what the suspect tells him as a possible lead which he must follow-up to either confirm or disconfirm. If it turns out to be a false lead, he goes back, armed with that information, to grill the suspect again.
“Any effort to do so will almost inevitably tempt us, in our choice of means, to flirt with the edges of legality and rectitude.”
i) Whether or not we’re skirting the edges of legality begs the question of what laws we should have in place. Do we have good laws? Do our laws protect the innocent, or do our laws protect the assailant?
ii) Should we start with questions of legality or questions of morality?
steve hays
January 11th, 2010
Adam Omelianchuk
“The government has the right to bear the sword, but it does not have the right to carve lines into a detainee’s skin for sadistic interrogation purposes.”
A straw man argument.
steve hays
January 11th, 2010
Adam Omelianchuk
“Actually, it is very different. A detective ‘grilling’ a suspect is not the same as torturing a suspect. Torture is thought to be an aid to investigating–to getting truth from the detainee–it is not the process of investigation itself.”
You’ve abandoned your own argument. You originally objected to “torture” because it’s ineffective in yielding reliable information.
This assumes that an interrogator (or his superiors) simply takes the information at face value, rather than attempted to do any fact-checking.
To the contrary, information from a terrorist is no different that information from a criminal suspect. In both cases they may feed the interrogator misinformation. In both cases the interrogator will treat that information as a possible lead which may or may not turn out to be a false lead.
steve hays
January 11th, 2010
Adam Omelianchuk:
“Hardly.”
It’s a straw man argument for you to compare, let us say, a CIA interrogator who uses sleep deprivation on a terrorist to extract information regarding a terrorist plot to a torturer who is takes a butcher knife to a victim for sadistic pleasure. Not only is your comparison grossly inaccurate, but it’s downright defamatory.
Why do you think it’s morally permissible for you, as a professing Christian, to misrepresent the opposing position with scurrlious comparisons?
steve hays
January 11th, 2010
Adam Omelianchuk
“You are thinking that information extracted from a suspect via lawful means and torture are in the same epistemic place. So why is torture necessary at all?”
“Torture” is your tendentious word, not mine. Don’t impute your assumptions to me.
“The argument for torture rests on a dubious premise that it will lead to reliable information, for when the suspect is put under its duress the suspect will be more willing to tell the truth.”
It rests, on part, on the premise that absent an adequate motivation, he may have no incentive to say anything at all.
“Information extracted from a detainee or a suspect via torture is thought to be more reliable, and therefore torture is necessary for the state to do in order to protect its citizens.”
i) There’s no prior assumption regarding its reliability or unreliability. But we can only check out the reliability of what he says, not what he refuses to say.
ii) At the same time, he does have an incentive to tell the truth if he thinks that lying will result in renewed interrogation.
“But you do not think this is the case, for information extracted under lawful methods of interrogation is of the same epistemic quality as that of information extracted via torture.”
i) To the contrary, it could well be the case that more coercive techniques applied to criminal suspects would sometimes yield very useful information.
ii) However, as I pointed out to Joe Carter, there are tradeoffs in dealing with domestic and foreign terrorists.
Citizens have, or ought to have, greater rights because they have greater responsibilities. They buy into the system. There are general benefits for all. But that also comes at a cost.
Take the presumption of innocence in a criminal trial. That’s a classic tradeoff.
It’s justifiable under the terms of a social contract.
iii) That’s quite different than dealing with foreign terrorists.
steve hays
January 11th, 2010
I can’t speak for all parties concerned, but speaking for myself, Christians have to make ethical decisions on a daily basis. Some trivial, but some momentous. And we need to have the right toolkit for make reasonable decisions, consistent with our Christian duties.
This includes our national policy regarding counterterrorism. I’m puzzled by why Rev. McCain finds this puzzling. It’s fine to post pretty pictures about Christian art and music, but that’s no a substitute for patiently working through difficult moral issues.
If Rev. McCain were an army chaplain or military chaplain, he’d need to counsel doctors, patients, family members, or soldiers on challenging moral issues in ethics and bioethics.
steve hays
January 11th, 2010
Rev. McCain,
How did I set up a straw man? You seemed to indicate that all this talk about “torture” was a waste of time.
I’m genuinely curious about whether you believe Christians in general or Lutherans in particular should participate in this debate. Do you think Lutheran theologians have any specific moral guidance to offer on issues like this? Is it important for Lutheran theologians to offer concrete moral direction on the ethics of counterterrorism?
In my experience, your habit is to default to pious advice about “Looking to Jesus.”
But what would do if you were pastoring a church, if a gov’t (e.g. FBI, CIA) interrogator were a member of your congregation, and he came to you for counsel on the legitimacy and/or limits of coercive interrogation? Would you give him some criteria? Or would you tell him to listen to a recording of the St. Matthew Passion?
I’m not saying that you, personally, have an obligation to speak to this issue. Maybe you don’t feel qualified. Fine.
But you seem to have a problem with other people speaking to this issue. Do you think we should just let secular liberals and secular conservatives hash it out?
steve hays
January 11th, 2010
Rev. Paul T. McCain:
“It is becoming like torture to read yet one more blog post on torture.”
But when I respond by saying “I’m puzzled by why Rev. McCain finds this puzzling,” you reply by saying “Steve, I regret you felt it necessary to exercise the ‘snarky option’ when you said, ‘I’m puzzled by why Rev. McCain finds this puzzling.’”
So why is it “snarky” for me to say I’m puzzled by why you find this puzzling, but it’s not “snarky” for you to say that you find it torturous to read one more post on torture? Can you explain the essential difference?
“You have just responded with obnoxious and insulting remarks.”
No, I simply posed a series of questions. You’re the representative Lutheran here. What’s wrong with asking a Lutheran what Lutheran theology has to say about ethical issues raised by counterterrism, including coercive interrogation? Why do you resent the opportunity to answer that question? Would John Warwick Montgomery resent that question?
If you think Lutheran theology has some detailed guidance to offer on this controverted issue, why don’t you share it with us? Why is that an unreasonable request?
Wasn’t that the point of Joe Carter asking you to join this blog? So that you could bring a Lutheran perspective to the discussion?
BTW, Montgomery and I have corresponded in the past. If you resent me asking you what Lutheran theology has to say on the issue at hand, perhaps I should ask him instead and post his answer on my own blog.
“You are obviously spoiling for a fight, but you’ll have to take your aggression out somewhere else.”
You’re the one who’s ratcheting up the aggressive rhetoric, not me.
“And, I do apologize if my posts containing God’s Word, beautiful paintings, and music and my urging people to look to Jesus have offended you.”
So why don’t you explain how God’s word and looking to Jesus furnish moral concrete guidance on counterterrorism? How does that cash out?
It reminds me of an old book by Tom Skinner, If Christ Is the Answer, What Are the Questions?
steve hays
January 11th, 2010
Matt
“Therefore, the argument that it is acceptable to act in an immoral manner (torture) to gain information that could save lives removes our trust. There is no excuse ever to act in an immoral manner, or a manner that goes against what Christ teaches.”
I think everyone here agrees with that generic principle. The question at issue is whether every form of coercive interrogation is a special case of that generic principle. You need to justify your claim that any kind or degree of coercive interrogation is intrinsically evil.
steve hays
January 10th, 2010 |
Terrorists aren’t POWs. Terrorists go out of their way to flout the laws of war.
How do you define “torture”? Is any form of coercive interrogation, however mild, “torture” in your eyes?
steve hays
January 10th, 2010
“Question: I’m curious to hear why, if torture is allowed by the state, that it’s use can only be justified on foreigners and not on our own citizens. Capturing terrorist who have knowledge of actions that will cause future loss of life are rare. But the police capture criminals every day who have knowledge that could prevent the deaths of innocents. Why don’t we allow the police to torture them?”
In response to Joe’s question:
i) The use of the word “torture” is prejudicial. I understand that opponents will use this word in characterizing their own opposition since they think that designation properly applies to a whole spectrum of coercive techniques. But keep in mind that many proponents of coercive interrogation reject that broad-brush definition.
ii) There is no absolute moral distinction between a foreign terrorist and a domestic terrorist (i.e. US citizen). And if, for the sake of argument, we regard coercion as morally permissible (or even obligatory) in a ticking timebomb situation involving a foreign terrorist, then it would be morally permissible to extend that to a domestic terrorist.
iii) However, the distinction isn’t purely ad hoc. The notion of citizenship is bound up with the notion of a social contract. A social contract involves a tradeoff. You assume certain responsibilities in exchange for certain rights.
And this, in turn, carries the presumption that every member of the social contract (i.e. citizen) is entitled to certain protections, even if an individual shirks his civil duties–because the responsible citizens shouldn’t lose their protections on his account. One for all and all for one.
iv) But in principle, there are extreme cases where that conventional presumption might be overridden. Such immunities are a means to an end, not an end in themselves. And there might be extreme situations in which rote adherence to that conventional presumption would subvert its rationale.
It depends on how hypothetical we want to get.
steve hays
January 10th, 2010
John Mark Reynolds
“An action may be torture if it breaks the free will right of a person through psychological or physical means, but is necessarily torture if it inflicts such harms permanently.”
Correct me if I’m wrong, but you seem to build a particular version of action theory into your definition, then derive a corresponding right from your definition. In other words, the right not to be “tortured” apparently derives, on your definition, from the presupposition that human agents enjoy libertarian freewill. That being the case, to violate their libertarian freedom would be inherently evil.
If that’s your position, then your opposition to “torture” is contingent on your precommitment to libertarian action theory. And, in that case, the moral permissibility or impermissibility of “torture” is not something we can resolve by debating the pros and cons of “torture” directly. Rather, we’d first need to debate the pros and cons of whatever action theory is sponsoring your position on “torture.”
On the face of it, the debate over “torture,” as you have cast it, is a presuppositional debate. If that’s the case, then we need to debate the underlying presuppositions rather than “torture” per se.
But perhaps I misread your intentions.
steve hays
January 10th, 2010
John Mark Reynolds
“An action may be torture if it breaks the free will right of a person through psychological or physical means, but is necessarily torture if it inflicts such harms permanently.”
i) I’m unclear on the driving principle.
a) Is the primary objection to depriving an agent of his right not to have his freewill violated? (Let’s call this a “libertarian right.)
b) Or is the primary objection to inflicting physical and/or psychological harm?
Moreover, I don’t see how this definition confers immunity from “torture” on the terrorist.
If, on this definition, he’s coercively interrogated, then he’s been denied his libertarian rights.
However, his libertarian right is not the only libertarian right to take into consideration.
His victims didn’t give consent to be maimed or murdered.
The victim’s survivors (friends and family) didn’t consent to lose their loved one in a terrorist attack.
So even if we grant JMR’s principle of the sake of argument, that simply generates a dilemma. For however you cut it, someone will have his libertarian rights denied him.
That being the case, why should the libertarian rights of the guilty assailant trump the libertarian rights of the innocent victim?
iii) Furthermore, killing a terrorist, whether on the battlefield or by judicial execution also deprives him of his freedom of choice or freedom of opportunity.
iv) And if the rejoinder is that a terrorist gives implied consent to his own death by assuming the risky occupation of a terrorist, then, by the same token, isn’t he giving implied consent to whatever may befall him at the hands of his captors in case he’s taken alive?
steve hays
January 11th, 2010
Jeremy Pierce
“Steve, I’m not sure why you think JMR’s argument requires libertarian freedom.”
I didn’t say it “requires” it. I’m merely exploring one possible interpretation of his argument.
I believe that he’s a convert to Eastern Orthodoxy, and in my experience the Eastern Orthodox affirm libertarian freewill (e.g. Maximus the Confessor, Joseph Farrel, Perry Robinson, Photios Jones). So I’m just wondering if that’s a theological presupposition of his objection to coercive interrogation inasmuch as coercion violates the freedom of the terrorist to withhold information by “breaking his will” (as JMR is fond of putting it).
steve hays
January 9th, 2010
“Torture is intending to inflict permanent psychological or physical harm to a man in order to break his will and get information from him that he does not wish to give us.”
It is?
i) Why define “torture” as the intent to inflict “permanent” harm?
Does this mean that if a technique does not inflict permanent physical or psychological harm, that you regard an impermanent as morally licit?
ii) Does sleep deprivation inflict permanent harm?
iii) How does your permanent/impermanent distinction square with your criterion of “soul liberty?”
I thought you objected to “torture” because any form of coercion violated the “soul liberty” of the agent.
But how is your permanent/impermanent distinction relevant to that objection? Even if it’s impermanent, it remains “torture” if you define torture as anything coercive.
It seems to me that you’re is making up the argument on the fly. It looks very piecemeal and ad hoc to me. Am I missing something?
iv) The intent of coercive interrogation is not to inflict permanent harm, but to use coercion as a means of extracting intel from an unwilling terrorist.
Whether the harm is permanent or impermanent would be incidental to the intent.
Indeed, an interrogator might well wish to avoid inflicting permanent psychological harm since it might be necessary to interrogate the terrorist again in case the information turned out to be bogus.
steve hays
January 9th, 2010
“Torture is, by its very nature, a drawn out act that leaves the man tortured with psychological wounds that he will have to work out in this world not in the world to come.”
i) Whether the mental wellbeing of the terrorist is all-important begs the very question at issue.
ii) But beyond that, this objection is problematic on its own grounds. For innocent survivors of a terrorist attack also suffer “psychological wounds.” Their mental wellbeing may be shattered for life as they suffer the inconsolable loss of their loved ones in the attack.
So either way, you’ll be left with “broken” individuals. That being the case, why should the mental wellbeing of the terrorist take precedence over the mental wellbeing of his victims?
Even on his own terms, I’ve unclear about the coherence of JMR’s moral priorities at this juncture.
steve hays
January 9th, 2010
“While two Wrights certainly can make an airplane, two wrongs don’t do anything but mulitply wrongs.”
Whether it’s wrong to break the will of a terrorist begs the question.
“The terrorist is a man and my enemy. As a Christian my basic disposition toward him is love.”
i) And what about your disposition towards his prospective victims?
ii) Moreover, it’s not a question of whether he’s my personal enemy. He may be no threat to me personally. But he’s a threat to others.
Do you think one can be equally loving to everyone? What about a schoolyard sniper? If it’s a choice between the life of the sniper and the life of the next victim in the crosshairs, should the police sharpshooter be more loving towards the sniper than the students he has pinned down in the schoolyard?
“The mental well being of a terrorist is not the issue.”
Is isn’t? I thought you made that a central issue. We mustn’t psychologically wound the terrorist.
“His crimes have harmed his own soul and God will judge him. I can punish him for his crimes, but there are limits to what a man can do.”
That’s a category mistake. Coercive interrogation isn’t punitive.
“He broke individuals, but (in a Christian ethic) that does not mean I can break him. It is not eye for an eye in our faith.”
That commits the same category mistake.
“We do not help the victims of terror by terrorizing the terrorist.”
Oh, please! We certainly help potential victims by preventing their victimizing by a terrorist if we can foil the plot through effective interrogation.
steve hays
January 9th, 2010
John Mark Reynolds
“I am sorry for them and will help them as much as I can…”
You’re “sorry” for them? That’s it?
Feeling sorry for them is hardly a moral substitute for taking precautionary measures which would forestall their unjust loss in the first place.
Feeling sorry is appropriate if that’s the most we can do. But it’s not something we should do in lieu of taking reasonable measures to avoid tragic, foreseeable outcome.
“…but not at the cost of adding to the wrong.”
Which begs the question of whether we’d be adding to the wrong.
“I am not calling the prospective victim, the terrorist is.”
I think you must have used the wrong verb. Did you mean “harming” rather than “calling”?
If so, then it’s quite possible for a third party to harm someone through negligence. If a hospital administrator knows that one of his surgeons is an alcoholic, but takes no preemptive action, and the surgeon butchers a patient, the administrator is morally complicit.
However, it’s possible that I misread your sentence.
“We may execute him for his greater crimes.”
The question at issue is not what we can do after the fact, but what we can do in advance to avert a foreseeable atrocity.
We can also stand by as we watch a man beat his 5-year-old to death, then execute him for murder. But is that a substitute for timely intervention?
“There are simply some things we cannot do (surely you agree?) to save the innocent.”
I agree. And thus far you haven’t come anywhere near crossing that threshold.
“The fact that he is a threat does not justify doing anything to stop that threat. Right?”
Agreed. But these fact-free abstractions do nothing to resolve the concrete issue.
“We can stop the sniper by killing him. Nobody disagrees (in this thread with that).”
But killing the sniper isn’t loving to the sniper. It’s loving to his potential victims, but not to the sniper.
“I don’t think all punitive actions wrong, but I also don’t think all good ends (hopefully stopping a future harm) justify all actions.”
Agreed. But that’s another airy-fairy abstraction. To set an abstract boundary says nothing about what lies on either side of the boundary.
“The harm I do in torture is certain and the good I will get from it less so. Much less so.”
That’s a tendentious claim. One the one hand you “traumatize” the terrorist. So maybe he has nightmares for the rest of his life. Big deal. Why should terrorism be a risk-free occupation?
On the other hand, you save the lives of, let’s say, dozens of innocent men, women, and children.
Or let’s say it’s just one 5-year-old girl. Say she’d be horribly burned in a terrorist attack. Or lose her mother. How you think the harm of “torture” (as you define it) outweighs the good of her physical or emotional wellbeing still eludes me.
“The usefulness of torture depends on: a. having the right man, b. knowing he has good information, c. be willing to do whatever it takes to get that information. Nobody I know believes that ‘c’ is moral.”
Richard Posner might demur.
However, I’m happy to keep this within the confines of Christian ethics–since that’s my own frame of reference.
Incidentally, you’re a convert to Eastern Orthodoxy, aren’t you? To my knowledge, and I’m no expert, the Eastern Orthodox could be pretty ruthless in suppressing heretics, not to mention what they had to do to fend of Muslims armies for as long as they could.
How does your opposition to any form of coercive interrogation correlate with the anthropology of Eastern Orthodox theologians?
“Everyone I know argues that waterboarding is NOT torture, because ‘c’ is obviously a problem.”
i) Depends, in part, on how you define “torture.” If you define torture as anything coercive, anything designed to break the resistance of the terrorist, then, yes, waterboarding would qualify as torture.
ii) However, I think that trivializes the definition of torture.
iii) Moreover, you’re equivocating. Waterboarding a terrorist is hardly a case of “doing whatever it takes.”
From what I’ve read and seen, waterboarding is very unpleasant. It triggers an involuntary gag reflex. Unbearable.
But there are far worse things you can do to a human being, both physically, emotionally, or both.
iv) Even more to the point, you’re fallaciously arguing that because forms of “torture” or coercion at the far end of the spectrum are illicit, then any form of “torture” or coercion is illicit even if it’s far milder. But it’s hardly valid to extrapolate from the most extreme cases conceivable to far more moderate forms of coercion, like, say, sleep deprivation.
“On examining what effective waterboarding is I think it is torture and so cannot be done.”
You define it as torture because you define any coercive technique as torture. You posit such a low threshold for what constitutes torture that by definition, waterboarding is torture–just as various techniques well short of waterboarding are torture under your definition.
“If you believe “c” then we have too little in common to talk.”
I agree with you that “c” goes too far. However, your test-case (waterboarding) fails to illustrate “c.”
“We might foil the plot, but only by becoming like them.”
I always find it intriguing that opponents of “torture” like yourself presume to raise moralistic objections to “torture,” but in the process you erase all moral distinctions.
Coercing a terrorist to divulge actionable intel doesn’t make us just like him. Aims and motives are hardly irrelevant to the moral valuation of a deed.
On the one hand we have a malicious terrorist who uses any means whatsoever to kill the innocent for no good reason. On the other hand we have a conscientious interrogator who uses some, by not all means, to protect the innocent from unjust harm.
If you refuse to draw necessary ethical distinctions, then you have no right to make moral pronouncements.
“I would not buy victory at that price and I hope that my innocent fellow citizens would be willing to die for the ideals of our nation.”
You’re welcome to speak for yourself, but I’d like to think our national ideals include the duty to take reasonable precautions in safeguarding innocent men, women, and children from mass murder.
“We fight to defend a way of life and must not destroy it or undermine it in our way of defending it.”
A way of life is a luxury of the living. How does allowing jihadis to kill us preserve our way of life?
“Otherwise, we could save all the lives by merely giving up and letting the first set of terrorists win. We could give them what they want (power) and nobody would die.”
You have defined “torture” in such minimalistic terms that if we captured a terrorist with foreknowledge of an impending attack on a sold-out football stadium, and if we knew that he suffered from coulrophobia (due to some childhood trauma), it would be morally preferable to let 100,000 spectators die in a conflagration rather than violate his “soul liberty” by bringing a circus clown into the interrogation room to perform a skit in his presence.
steve hays
January 10th, 2010
Thanks, Mr. Reynolds.
However, in context, my question pertained to the *historic* position of the Orthodox church. Back when, say, the Byzantines and Romanians were having to fend off Muslims armies. Or back when the Orthodox church had the temporal power to suppress heretics.
How did those measure line up with the Orthodox anthropology of Orthodox theologians or prelates back *then*?
steve hays
January 10th, 2010
Brian Boeninger
“Could you say a bit more about what this talk of ‘taking precedence over’ and of goods ‘outweighing’ harms amounts to? Even if we agreed on a certain theory of value according to which, say, the death of 1000 innocent people ‘outweighs’ the harm done to a victim of torture, I don’t see how that would do much to support the view that torturing someone in order to prevent 1000 deaths is morally justified – probably not even if one accepted a fairly bald consequentialism. After all, it seems likely that the death of 1000 innocent people ‘outweighs’ (in the same sense) the harm done by, say, raping or killing or torturing the innocent daughter of a terrorist we think has relevant information, etc. But surely you agree that raping the innocent daughter of a terrorist in order to prevent 1000 deaths is not morally justified, no?”
i) Your counterexample involves a fatal equivocation. My example involved a contrast between a wrongdoer (i.e. a murderous terrorist) and the innocent victims of a premeditated plot. Your counterexample ignores the distinction between guilt and innocence, malicious intent and noble intent, as if those considerations are irrelevant to moral decisions.
ii) ”Torture” is your choice of words, not mine.
iii) And why would you characterize a terrorist as the “victim”?
“So even if we agreed to a theory that ‘weighed’ harms in the manner your comments suggest, we wouldn’t be any closer to a justification of torture unless we subscribed to a moral principle (‘an action is justified/permissible if the harm it does is “outweighed” by the harm it prevents’) with absurd consequences.”
But that’s a misrepresentation of what I said. Why did you misrepresent my argument?
i) I introduced a qualification involving the distinction between guilt and innocence, malicious intent (i.e., to take innocent life) and noble intent (i.e. to save innocent life).
Why does that disappear from your summary? There can be no distinction between right and wrong without an attendant distinction between innocence and guilt.
Suppose a wounded schoolyard sniper (say, a man in his 30s) is wheeled into the ER along with one of his gunshot victims (say, a 7-year-old student). Suppose both the sniper and student have the same rare blood type. The hospital only has enough of that plasma on hand to treat one of them.
Do you think the needs of the innocent gunshot victim ought to override the needs of the wounded sniper? Or should the surgeon flip a coin?
“At the very least, you’d want to stipulate that the harm caused by torture is outweighed by the harm that the torture prevents *and* that there are no available alternatives that do less harm. But even this principle seems open to the type of counterexample I’ve mentioned above (not to mention the reasons to think that real-world cases rarely if ever satisfy the second conjunct).”
That builds on your previous misrepresentation.
“Perhaps your language of “precedence” and “weighing” wasn’t intended to suggest a consequentialist view of the sort I’ve questioned, or you have a more refined sort of consequentialist view in mind.”
i) To begin with, I’m not the only one who’s introducing consequentialist considerations into this discussion.
Both JMR and Joe Carter have also been introducing consequentialist considerations into their opposition to “torture.”
If you disapprove of any consideration to the probability or magnitude of the consequences of a given policy, then why aren’t you more evenhanded in your objections?
ii) Any well-rounded value theory will need to integrate a number of criteria in decision-making, viz. motives, moral norms, circumstances, consequences.
iii) It’s not an all-or-nothing choice between treating consequences as either all-important or wholly unimportant.
iv) I don’t know why you’re so disturbed by the idea of comparing the tradeoffs between one action and another.
In treating a patient, a doctor has to take a wide variety of issues into consideration. He will take greater risks in case the patient is at greater risk of death unless a high-risk procedure is performed. He will consider the probable success or failure of different procedures. One procedure might have both a greater upside (superior potential benefits) as well as a greater downside (be more hazardous). Another procedure might have both a lesser upside as well as a lesser downside.
steve hays
January 11th, 2010
Brian Boeninger
“The plainest reading of your comment suggests the first objection. But I saw nothing in what Reynolds said which entailed that he disagreed with your ‘comparative value’ assessment.”
i) If he regards coercive interrogation of whatever degree or kind as inherently evil, then a comparative value assessment would have no impact on his position.
ii) On the other hand, if he’s concerned with the physical/psychological wellbeing of the terrorist, then the terrorist is not the only party whose wellbeing is at stake.
I’m drawing attention to an apparent inconsistency in his position.
“Mine was a simple request to fill in for us those gaps (i.e. implicit premises) in your argument.”
Since I’ve repeatedly and explicitly introduced the guilt or innocence of the affected parties was one of the differential factors, that is not a gap in my argument. So are you alluding to some other alleged gap in my argument?
“You’ve done some of that: you mentioned the distinction between a wrongdoer and an innocent, for instance, and one’s motives in doing an action.”
I’ve been doing that in multiple replies to JMR. So that’s not an ex post facto response to your objection.
“After all, plenty of other cases come to mind: a terrorist has information about a bomb planted in a mall which would kill 10 people. The harm done to the terrorist if one were to cut off his fingers, one at a time, and then his toes, is outweighed (in some sense of that term) by the good of preventing 20 innocent deaths; that harm is done to a wrongdoer, with the intent of saving innocent lives. Do these facts (outweighing, wrongdoer vs. innocents, motives and purposes, etc.) yield the conclusion that the harm to the terrorist is justified?”
i) We could always discuss the question whether there are some lines we can’t cross, and how to draw them. But that’s premature at this stage of the argument. Until we settle the prior question of whether coercive interrogation of *any* degree or kind is morally permissible, it’s a moot point to debate which coercive techniques fall inside or outside the bounds of moral propriety.
ii) Moreover, objecting to coercive interrogation on the basis of borderline cases is fallacious. For we’re confronted with borderline cases on many ethical issues. But unless you think the existence of borderline cases is an excuse to never act at all (and inaction is, itself, a morally freighted posture), then raising the specter of borderline cases is just a blocking maneuver rather than a principled objection.
“I still don’t know how you’d want to analyze “X (morally) outweighs Y,” or more importantly what you’d add to “X outweighs Y” in order to get a sufficient condition for X being morally permissible”
What are you looking for? A mathematical formula in making moral decisions? That doesn’t exist. We bring certain criteria to bear, and we make a value judgment.
Go back to my hypothetical of the wounded sniper and his gunshot victim. Do you have a priority structure for dealing with that situation?
“Again, my main question to you concerned why you thought that Reynolds was committed to saying that the harm of torture ‘outweighed’ the good of preventing e.g. innocent death.”
Maybe because he’s actually used arguments to that effect. The dehumanizing effect of “torture” on the tormenter outweighs the potential value of the intelligence garnered by that procedure. You can’t be a “gentleman” soldier. Or allowing “torture” leads to “disastrous” consequences. So, on that view, the “disastrous” consequences outweigh the potential value of the intelligence.
Or do you have a problem with stock metaphors like “outweigh,” “override,” &c.?
steve hays
January 11th, 2010
“The main problem with torture in order to gain information, as I see it as a Christian, is that it removes our ability to trust in the sovereignty of God. We torture because we are worried about what the future holds.”
Does having gov’t employees who inspect the structural integrity of bridges express distrust in God’s providence?
steve hays
January 11th, 2010
“What then of pre-trial treatment? What means are permitted in questioning a suspected criminal, that is, someone who has not yet been found guilty of a punishable crime? Since ancient times brutal means have often been employed to elicit a confession or incriminating information from a defendant.”
The question at issue is not to extract a confession under duress, but to extract intelligence under duress. This is about counterespionage, not pretrial discovery.
“Even if the suspect is guilty of harbouring information about fellow conspirators that might be crucial to stopping a terrorist act, he could just as easily give false or misleading information to his interrogators, who would not necessarily know the difference.”
It’s no different than a homicide detective who grills a suspect. He then treats what the suspect tells him as a possible lead which he must follow-up to either confirm or disconfirm. If it turns out to be a false lead, he goes back, armed with that information, to grill the suspect again.
“Any effort to do so will almost inevitably tempt us, in our choice of means, to flirt with the edges of legality and rectitude.”
i) Whether or not we’re skirting the edges of legality begs the question of what laws we should have in place. Do we have good laws? Do our laws protect the innocent, or do our laws protect the assailant?
ii) Should we start with questions of legality or questions of morality?
steve hays
January 11th, 2010
Adam Omelianchuk
“The government has the right to bear the sword, but it does not have the right to carve lines into a detainee’s skin for sadistic interrogation purposes.”
A straw man argument.
steve hays
January 11th, 2010
Adam Omelianchuk
“Actually, it is very different. A detective ‘grilling’ a suspect is not the same as torturing a suspect. Torture is thought to be an aid to investigating–to getting truth from the detainee–it is not the process of investigation itself.”
You’ve abandoned your own argument. You originally objected to “torture” because it’s ineffective in yielding reliable information.
This assumes that an interrogator (or his superiors) simply takes the information at face value, rather than attempted to do any fact-checking.
To the contrary, information from a terrorist is no different that information from a criminal suspect. In both cases they may feed the interrogator misinformation. In both cases the interrogator will treat that information as a possible lead which may or may not turn out to be a false lead.
steve hays
January 11th, 2010
Adam Omelianchuk:
“Hardly.”
It’s a straw man argument for you to compare, let us say, a CIA interrogator who uses sleep deprivation on a terrorist to extract information regarding a terrorist plot to a torturer who is takes a butcher knife to a victim for sadistic pleasure. Not only is your comparison grossly inaccurate, but it’s downright defamatory.
Why do you think it’s morally permissible for you, as a professing Christian, to misrepresent the opposing position with scurrlious comparisons?
steve hays
January 11th, 2010
Adam Omelianchuk
“You are thinking that information extracted from a suspect via lawful means and torture are in the same epistemic place. So why is torture necessary at all?”
“Torture” is your tendentious word, not mine. Don’t impute your assumptions to me.
“The argument for torture rests on a dubious premise that it will lead to reliable information, for when the suspect is put under its duress the suspect will be more willing to tell the truth.”
It rests, on part, on the premise that absent an adequate motivation, he may have no incentive to say anything at all.
“Information extracted from a detainee or a suspect via torture is thought to be more reliable, and therefore torture is necessary for the state to do in order to protect its citizens.”
i) There’s no prior assumption regarding its reliability or unreliability. But we can only check out the reliability of what he says, not what he refuses to say.
ii) At the same time, he does have an incentive to tell the truth if he thinks that lying will result in renewed interrogation.
“But you do not think this is the case, for information extracted under lawful methods of interrogation is of the same epistemic quality as that of information extracted via torture.”
i) To the contrary, it could well be the case that more coercive techniques applied to criminal suspects would sometimes yield very useful information.
ii) However, as I pointed out to Joe Carter, there are tradeoffs in dealing with domestic and foreign terrorists.
Citizens have, or ought to have, greater rights because they have greater responsibilities. They buy into the system. There are general benefits for all. But that also comes at a cost.
Take the presumption of innocence in a criminal trial. That’s a classic tradeoff.
It’s justifiable under the terms of a social contract.
iii) That’s quite different than dealing with foreign terrorists.
steve hays
January 11th, 2010
I can’t speak for all parties concerned, but speaking for myself, Christians have to make ethical decisions on a daily basis. Some trivial, but some momentous. And we need to have the right toolkit for make reasonable decisions, consistent with our Christian duties.
This includes our national policy regarding counterterrorism. I’m puzzled by why Rev. McCain finds this puzzling. It’s fine to post pretty pictures about Christian art and music, but that’s no a substitute for patiently working through difficult moral issues.
If Rev. McCain were an army chaplain or military chaplain, he’d need to counsel doctors, patients, family members, or soldiers on challenging moral issues in ethics and bioethics.
steve hays
January 11th, 2010
Rev. McCain,
How did I set up a straw man? You seemed to indicate that all this talk about “torture” was a waste of time.
I’m genuinely curious about whether you believe Christians in general or Lutherans in particular should participate in this debate. Do you think Lutheran theologians have any specific moral guidance to offer on issues like this? Is it important for Lutheran theologians to offer concrete moral direction on the ethics of counterterrorism?
In my experience, your habit is to default to pious advice about “Looking to Jesus.”
But what would do if you were pastoring a church, if a gov’t (e.g. FBI, CIA) interrogator were a member of your congregation, and he came to you for counsel on the legitimacy and/or limits of coercive interrogation? Would you give him some criteria? Or would you tell him to listen to a recording of the St. Matthew Passion?
I’m not saying that you, personally, have an obligation to speak to this issue. Maybe you don’t feel qualified. Fine.
But you seem to have a problem with other people speaking to this issue. Do you think we should just let secular liberals and secular conservatives hash it out?
steve hays
January 11th, 2010
Rev. Paul T. McCain:
“It is becoming like torture to read yet one more blog post on torture.”
But when I respond by saying “I’m puzzled by why Rev. McCain finds this puzzling,” you reply by saying “Steve, I regret you felt it necessary to exercise the ‘snarky option’ when you said, ‘I’m puzzled by why Rev. McCain finds this puzzling.’”
So why is it “snarky” for me to say I’m puzzled by why you find this puzzling, but it’s not “snarky” for you to say that you find it torturous to read one more post on torture? Can you explain the essential difference?
“You have just responded with obnoxious and insulting remarks.”
No, I simply posed a series of questions. You’re the representative Lutheran here. What’s wrong with asking a Lutheran what Lutheran theology has to say about ethical issues raised by counterterrism, including coercive interrogation? Why do you resent the opportunity to answer that question? Would John Warwick Montgomery resent that question?
If you think Lutheran theology has some detailed guidance to offer on this controverted issue, why don’t you share it with us? Why is that an unreasonable request?
Wasn’t that the point of Joe Carter asking you to join this blog? So that you could bring a Lutheran perspective to the discussion?
BTW, Montgomery and I have corresponded in the past. If you resent me asking you what Lutheran theology has to say on the issue at hand, perhaps I should ask him instead and post his answer on my own blog.
“You are obviously spoiling for a fight, but you’ll have to take your aggression out somewhere else.”
You’re the one who’s ratcheting up the aggressive rhetoric, not me.
“And, I do apologize if my posts containing God’s Word, beautiful paintings, and music and my urging people to look to Jesus have offended you.”
So why don’t you explain how God’s word and looking to Jesus furnish moral concrete guidance on counterterrorism? How does that cash out?
It reminds me of an old book by Tom Skinner, If Christ Is the Answer, What Are the Questions?
steve hays
January 11th, 2010
Matt
“Therefore, the argument that it is acceptable to act in an immoral manner (torture) to gain information that could save lives removes our trust. There is no excuse ever to act in an immoral manner, or a manner that goes against what Christ teaches.”
I think everyone here agrees with that generic principle. The question at issue is whether every form of coercive interrogation is a special case of that generic principle. You need to justify your claim that any kind or degree of coercive interrogation is intrinsically evil.
steve hays
January 10th, 2010 |
Terrorists aren’t POWs. Terrorists go out of their way to flout the laws of war.
How do you define “torture”? Is any form of coercive interrogation, however mild, “torture” in your eyes?
steve hays
January 10th, 2010
“Question: I’m curious to hear why, if torture is allowed by the state, that it’s use can only be justified on foreigners and not on our own citizens. Capturing terrorist who have knowledge of actions that will cause future loss of life are rare. But the police capture criminals every day who have knowledge that could prevent the deaths of innocents. Why don’t we allow the police to torture them?”
In response to Joe’s question:
i) The use of the word “torture” is prejudicial. I understand that opponents will use this word in characterizing their own opposition since they think that designation properly applies to a whole spectrum of coercive techniques. But keep in mind that many proponents of coercive interrogation reject that broad-brush definition.
ii) There is no absolute moral distinction between a foreign terrorist and a domestic terrorist (i.e. US citizen). And if, for the sake of argument, we regard coercion as morally permissible (or even obligatory) in a ticking timebomb situation involving a foreign terrorist, then it would be morally permissible to extend that to a domestic terrorist.
iii) However, the distinction isn’t purely ad hoc. The notion of citizenship is bound up with the notion of a social contract. A social contract involves a tradeoff. You assume certain responsibilities in exchange for certain rights.
And this, in turn, carries the presumption that every member of the social contract (i.e. citizen) is entitled to certain protections, even if an individual shirks his civil duties–because the responsible citizens shouldn’t lose their protections on his account. One for all and all for one.
iv) But in principle, there are extreme cases where that conventional presumption might be overridden. Such immunities are a means to an end, not an end in themselves. And there might be extreme situations in which rote adherence to that conventional presumption would subvert its rationale.
It depends on how hypothetical we want to get.
steve hays
January 10th, 2010
John Mark Reynolds
“An action may be torture if it breaks the free will right of a person through psychological or physical means, but is necessarily torture if it inflicts such harms permanently.”
Correct me if I’m wrong, but you seem to build a particular version of action theory into your definition, then derive a corresponding right from your definition. In other words, the right not to be “tortured” apparently derives, on your definition, from the presupposition that human agents enjoy libertarian freewill. That being the case, to violate their libertarian freedom would be inherently evil.
If that’s your position, then your opposition to “torture” is contingent on your precommitment to libertarian action theory. And, in that case, the moral permissibility or impermissibility of “torture” is not something we can resolve by debating the pros and cons of “torture” directly. Rather, we’d first need to debate the pros and cons of whatever action theory is sponsoring your position on “torture.”
On the face of it, the debate over “torture,” as you have cast it, is a presuppositional debate. If that’s the case, then we need to debate the underlying presuppositions rather than “torture” per se.
But perhaps I misread your intentions.
steve hays
January 10th, 2010
John Mark Reynolds
“An action may be torture if it breaks the free will right of a person through psychological or physical means, but is necessarily torture if it inflicts such harms permanently.”
i) I’m unclear on the driving principle.
a) Is the primary objection to depriving an agent of his right not to have his freewill violated? (Let’s call this a “libertarian right.)
b) Or is the primary objection to inflicting physical and/or psychological harm?
Moreover, I don’t see how this definition confers immunity from “torture” on the terrorist.
If, on this definition, he’s coercively interrogated, then he’s been denied his libertarian rights.
However, his libertarian right is not the only libertarian right to take into consideration.
His victims didn’t give consent to be maimed or murdered.
The victim’s survivors (friends and family) didn’t consent to lose their loved one in a terrorist attack.
So even if we grant JMR’s principle of the sake of argument, that simply generates a dilemma. For however you cut it, someone will have his libertarian rights denied him.
That being the case, why should the libertarian rights of the guilty assailant trump the libertarian rights of the innocent victim?
iii) Furthermore, killing a terrorist, whether on the battlefield or by judicial execution also deprives him of his freedom of choice or freedom of opportunity.
iv) And if the rejoinder is that a terrorist gives implied consent to his own death by assuming the risky occupation of a terrorist, then, by the same token, isn’t he giving implied consent to whatever may befall him at the hands of his captors in case he’s taken alive?
steve hays
January 11th, 2010
Jeremy Pierce
“Steve, I’m not sure why you think JMR’s argument requires libertarian freedom.”
I didn’t say it “requires” it. I’m merely exploring one possible interpretation of his argument.
I believe that he’s a convert to Eastern Orthodoxy, and in my experience the Eastern Orthodox affirm libertarian freewill (e.g. Maximus the Confessor, Joseph Farrel, Perry Robinson, Photios Jones). So I’m just wondering if that’s a theological presupposition of his objection to coercive interrogation inasmuch as coercion violates the freedom of the terrorist to withhold information by “breaking his will” (as JMR is fond of putting it).
steve hays
January 9th, 2010
“Torture is intending to inflict permanent psychological or physical harm to a man in order to break his will and get information from him that he does not wish to give us.”
It is?
i) Why define “torture” as the intent to inflict “permanent” harm?
Does this mean that if a technique does not inflict permanent physical or psychological harm, that you regard an impermanent as morally licit?
ii) Does sleep deprivation inflict permanent harm?
iii) How does your permanent/impermanent distinction square with your criterion of “soul liberty?”
I thought you objected to “torture” because any form of coercion violated the “soul liberty” of the agent.
But how is your permanent/impermanent distinction relevant to that objection? Even if it’s impermanent, it remains “torture” if you define torture as anything coercive.
It seems to me that you’re is making up the argument on the fly. It looks very piecemeal and ad hoc to me. Am I missing something?
iv) The intent of coercive interrogation is not to inflict permanent harm, but to use coercion as a means of extracting intel from an unwilling terrorist.
Whether the harm is permanent or impermanent would be incidental to the intent.
Indeed, an interrogator might well wish to avoid inflicting permanent psychological harm since it might be necessary to interrogate the terrorist again in case the information turned out to be bogus.
steve hays
January 9th, 2010
“Torture is, by its very nature, a drawn out act that leaves the man tortured with psychological wounds that he will have to work out in this world not in the world to come.”
i) Whether the mental wellbeing of the terrorist is all-important begs the very question at issue.
ii) But beyond that, this objection is problematic on its own grounds. For innocent survivors of a terrorist attack also suffer “psychological wounds.” Their mental wellbeing may be shattered for life as they suffer the inconsolable loss of their loved ones in the attack.
So either way, you’ll be left with “broken” individuals. That being the case, why should the mental wellbeing of the terrorist take precedence over the mental wellbeing of his victims?
Even on his own terms, I’ve unclear about the coherence of JMR’s moral priorities at this juncture.
steve hays
January 9th, 2010
“While two Wrights certainly can make an airplane, two wrongs don’t do anything but mulitply wrongs.”
Whether it’s wrong to break the will of a terrorist begs the question.
“The terrorist is a man and my enemy. As a Christian my basic disposition toward him is love.”
i) And what about your disposition towards his prospective victims?
ii) Moreover, it’s not a question of whether he’s my personal enemy. He may be no threat to me personally. But he’s a threat to others.
Do you think one can be equally loving to everyone? What about a schoolyard sniper? If it’s a choice between the life of the sniper and the life of the next victim in the crosshairs, should the police sharpshooter be more loving towards the sniper than the students he has pinned down in the schoolyard?
“The mental well being of a terrorist is not the issue.”
Is isn’t? I thought you made that a central issue. We mustn’t psychologically wound the terrorist.
“His crimes have harmed his own soul and God will judge him. I can punish him for his crimes, but there are limits to what a man can do.”
That’s a category mistake. Coercive interrogation isn’t punitive.
“He broke individuals, but (in a Christian ethic) that does not mean I can break him. It is not eye for an eye in our faith.”
That commits the same category mistake.
“We do not help the victims of terror by terrorizing the terrorist.”
Oh, please! We certainly help potential victims by preventing their victimizing by a terrorist if we can foil the plot through effective interrogation.
steve hays
January 9th, 2010
John Mark Reynolds
“I am sorry for them and will help them as much as I can…”
You’re “sorry” for them? That’s it?
Feeling sorry for them is hardly a moral substitute for taking precautionary measures which would forestall their unjust loss in the first place.
Feeling sorry is appropriate if that’s the most we can do. But it’s not something we should do in lieu of taking reasonable measures to avoid tragic, foreseeable outcome.
“…but not at the cost of adding to the wrong.”
Which begs the question of whether we’d be adding to the wrong.
“I am not calling the prospective victim, the terrorist is.”
I think you must have used the wrong verb. Did you mean “harming” rather than “calling”?
If so, then it’s quite possible for a third party to harm someone through negligence. If a hospital administrator knows that one of his surgeons is an alcoholic, but takes no preemptive action, and the surgeon butchers a patient, the administrator is morally complicit.
However, it’s possible that I misread your sentence.
“We may execute him for his greater crimes.”
The question at issue is not what we can do after the fact, but what we can do in advance to avert a foreseeable atrocity.
We can also stand by as we watch a man beat his 5-year-old to death, then execute him for murder. But is that a substitute for timely intervention?
“There are simply some things we cannot do (surely you agree?) to save the innocent.”
I agree. And thus far you haven’t come anywhere near crossing that threshold.
“The fact that he is a threat does not justify doing anything to stop that threat. Right?”
Agreed. But these fact-free abstractions do nothing to resolve the concrete issue.
“We can stop the sniper by killing him. Nobody disagrees (in this thread with that).”
But killing the sniper isn’t loving to the sniper. It’s loving to his potential victims, but not to the sniper.
“I don’t think all punitive actions wrong, but I also don’t think all good ends (hopefully stopping a future harm) justify all actions.”
Agreed. But that’s another airy-fairy abstraction. To set an abstract boundary says nothing about what lies on either side of the boundary.
“The harm I do in torture is certain and the good I will get from it less so. Much less so.”
That’s a tendentious claim. One the one hand you “traumatize” the terrorist. So maybe he has nightmares for the rest of his life. Big deal. Why should terrorism be a risk-free occupation?
On the other hand, you save the lives of, let’s say, dozens of innocent men, women, and children.
Or let’s say it’s just one 5-year-old girl. Say she’d be horribly burned in a terrorist attack. Or lose her mother. How you think the harm of “torture” (as you define it) outweighs the good of her physical or emotional wellbeing still eludes me.
“The usefulness of torture depends on: a. having the right man, b. knowing he has good information, c. be willing to do whatever it takes to get that information. Nobody I know believes that ‘c’ is moral.”
Richard Posner might demur.
However, I’m happy to keep this within the confines of Christian ethics–since that’s my own frame of reference.
Incidentally, you’re a convert to Eastern Orthodoxy, aren’t you? To my knowledge, and I’m no expert, the Eastern Orthodox could be pretty ruthless in suppressing heretics, not to mention what they had to do to fend of Muslims armies for as long as they could.
How does your opposition to any form of coercive interrogation correlate with the anthropology of Eastern Orthodox theologians?
“Everyone I know argues that waterboarding is NOT torture, because ‘c’ is obviously a problem.”
i) Depends, in part, on how you define “torture.” If you define torture as anything coercive, anything designed to break the resistance of the terrorist, then, yes, waterboarding would qualify as torture.
ii) However, I think that trivializes the definition of torture.
iii) Moreover, you’re equivocating. Waterboarding a terrorist is hardly a case of “doing whatever it takes.”
From what I’ve read and seen, waterboarding is very unpleasant. It triggers an involuntary gag reflex. Unbearable.
But there are far worse things you can do to a human being, both physically, emotionally, or both.
iv) Even more to the point, you’re fallaciously arguing that because forms of “torture” or coercion at the far end of the spectrum are illicit, then any form of “torture” or coercion is illicit even if it’s far milder. But it’s hardly valid to extrapolate from the most extreme cases conceivable to far more moderate forms of coercion, like, say, sleep deprivation.
“On examining what effective waterboarding is I think it is torture and so cannot be done.”
You define it as torture because you define any coercive technique as torture. You posit such a low threshold for what constitutes torture that by definition, waterboarding is torture–just as various techniques well short of waterboarding are torture under your definition.
“If you believe “c” then we have too little in common to talk.”
I agree with you that “c” goes too far. However, your test-case (waterboarding) fails to illustrate “c.”
“We might foil the plot, but only by becoming like them.”
I always find it intriguing that opponents of “torture” like yourself presume to raise moralistic objections to “torture,” but in the process you erase all moral distinctions.
Coercing a terrorist to divulge actionable intel doesn’t make us just like him. Aims and motives are hardly irrelevant to the moral valuation of a deed.
On the one hand we have a malicious terrorist who uses any means whatsoever to kill the innocent for no good reason. On the other hand we have a conscientious interrogator who uses some, by not all means, to protect the innocent from unjust harm.
If you refuse to draw necessary ethical distinctions, then you have no right to make moral pronouncements.
“I would not buy victory at that price and I hope that my innocent fellow citizens would be willing to die for the ideals of our nation.”
You’re welcome to speak for yourself, but I’d like to think our national ideals include the duty to take reasonable precautions in safeguarding innocent men, women, and children from mass murder.
“We fight to defend a way of life and must not destroy it or undermine it in our way of defending it.”
A way of life is a luxury of the living. How does allowing jihadis to kill us preserve our way of life?
“Otherwise, we could save all the lives by merely giving up and letting the first set of terrorists win. We could give them what they want (power) and nobody would die.”
You have defined “torture” in such minimalistic terms that if we captured a terrorist with foreknowledge of an impending attack on a sold-out football stadium, and if we knew that he suffered from coulrophobia (due to some childhood trauma), it would be morally preferable to let 100,000 spectators die in a conflagration rather than violate his “soul liberty” by bringing a circus clown into the interrogation room to perform a skit in his presence.
steve hays
January 10th, 2010
Thanks, Mr. Reynolds.
However, in context, my question pertained to the *historic* position of the Orthodox church. Back when, say, the Byzantines and Romanians were having to fend off Muslims armies. Or back when the Orthodox church had the temporal power to suppress heretics.
How did those measure line up with the Orthodox anthropology of Orthodox theologians or prelates back *then*?
steve hays
January 10th, 2010
Brian Boeninger
“Could you say a bit more about what this talk of ‘taking precedence over’ and of goods ‘outweighing’ harms amounts to? Even if we agreed on a certain theory of value according to which, say, the death of 1000 innocent people ‘outweighs’ the harm done to a victim of torture, I don’t see how that would do much to support the view that torturing someone in order to prevent 1000 deaths is morally justified – probably not even if one accepted a fairly bald consequentialism. After all, it seems likely that the death of 1000 innocent people ‘outweighs’ (in the same sense) the harm done by, say, raping or killing or torturing the innocent daughter of a terrorist we think has relevant information, etc. But surely you agree that raping the innocent daughter of a terrorist in order to prevent 1000 deaths is not morally justified, no?”
i) Your counterexample involves a fatal equivocation. My example involved a contrast between a wrongdoer (i.e. a murderous terrorist) and the innocent victims of a premeditated plot. Your counterexample ignores the distinction between guilt and innocence, malicious intent and noble intent, as if those considerations are irrelevant to moral decisions.
ii) ”Torture” is your choice of words, not mine.
iii) And why would you characterize a terrorist as the “victim”?
“So even if we agreed to a theory that ‘weighed’ harms in the manner your comments suggest, we wouldn’t be any closer to a justification of torture unless we subscribed to a moral principle (‘an action is justified/permissible if the harm it does is “outweighed” by the harm it prevents’) with absurd consequences.”
But that’s a misrepresentation of what I said. Why did you misrepresent my argument?
i) I introduced a qualification involving the distinction between guilt and innocence, malicious intent (i.e., to take innocent life) and noble intent (i.e. to save innocent life).
Why does that disappear from your summary? There can be no distinction between right and wrong without an attendant distinction between innocence and guilt.
Suppose a wounded schoolyard sniper (say, a man in his 30s) is wheeled into the ER along with one of his gunshot victims (say, a 7-year-old student). Suppose both the sniper and student have the same rare blood type. The hospital only has enough of that plasma on hand to treat one of them.
Do you think the needs of the innocent gunshot victim ought to override the needs of the wounded sniper? Or should the surgeon flip a coin?
“At the very least, you’d want to stipulate that the harm caused by torture is outweighed by the harm that the torture prevents *and* that there are no available alternatives that do less harm. But even this principle seems open to the type of counterexample I’ve mentioned above (not to mention the reasons to think that real-world cases rarely if ever satisfy the second conjunct).”
That builds on your previous misrepresentation.
“Perhaps your language of “precedence” and “weighing” wasn’t intended to suggest a consequentialist view of the sort I’ve questioned, or you have a more refined sort of consequentialist view in mind.”
i) To begin with, I’m not the only one who’s introducing consequentialist considerations into this discussion.
Both JMR and Joe Carter have also been introducing consequentialist considerations into their opposition to “torture.”
If you disapprove of any consideration to the probability or magnitude of the consequences of a given policy, then why aren’t you more evenhanded in your objections?
ii) Any well-rounded value theory will need to integrate a number of criteria in decision-making, viz. motives, moral norms, circumstances, consequences.
iii) It’s not an all-or-nothing choice between treating consequences as either all-important or wholly unimportant.
iv) I don’t know why you’re so disturbed by the idea of comparing the tradeoffs between one action and another.
In treating a patient, a doctor has to take a wide variety of issues into consideration. He will take greater risks in case the patient is at greater risk of death unless a high-risk procedure is performed. He will consider the probable success or failure of different procedures. One procedure might have both a greater upside (superior potential benefits) as well as a greater downside (be more hazardous). Another procedure might have both a lesser upside as well as a lesser downside.
steve hays
January 11th, 2010
Brian Boeninger
“The plainest reading of your comment suggests the first objection. But I saw nothing in what Reynolds said which entailed that he disagreed with your ‘comparative value’ assessment.”
i) If he regards coercive interrogation of whatever degree or kind as inherently evil, then a comparative value assessment would have no impact on his position.
ii) On the other hand, if he’s concerned with the physical/psychological wellbeing of the terrorist, then the terrorist is not the only party whose wellbeing is at stake.
I’m drawing attention to an apparent inconsistency in his position.
“Mine was a simple request to fill in for us those gaps (i.e. implicit premises) in your argument.”
Since I’ve repeatedly and explicitly introduced the guilt or innocence of the affected parties was one of the differential factors, that is not a gap in my argument. So are you alluding to some other alleged gap in my argument?
“You’ve done some of that: you mentioned the distinction between a wrongdoer and an innocent, for instance, and one’s motives in doing an action.”
I’ve been doing that in multiple replies to JMR. So that’s not an ex post facto response to your objection.
“After all, plenty of other cases come to mind: a terrorist has information about a bomb planted in a mall which would kill 10 people. The harm done to the terrorist if one were to cut off his fingers, one at a time, and then his toes, is outweighed (in some sense of that term) by the good of preventing 20 innocent deaths; that harm is done to a wrongdoer, with the intent of saving innocent lives. Do these facts (outweighing, wrongdoer vs. innocents, motives and purposes, etc.) yield the conclusion that the harm to the terrorist is justified?”
i) We could always discuss the question whether there are some lines we can’t cross, and how to draw them. But that’s premature at this stage of the argument. Until we settle the prior question of whether coercive interrogation of *any* degree or kind is morally permissible, it’s a moot point to debate which coercive techniques fall inside or outside the bounds of moral propriety.
ii) Moreover, objecting to coercive interrogation on the basis of borderline cases is fallacious. For we’re confronted with borderline cases on many ethical issues. But unless you think the existence of borderline cases is an excuse to never act at all (and inaction is, itself, a morally freighted posture), then raising the specter of borderline cases is just a blocking maneuver rather than a principled objection.
“I still don’t know how you’d want to analyze “X (morally) outweighs Y,” or more importantly what you’d add to “X outweighs Y” in order to get a sufficient condition for X being morally permissible”
What are you looking for? A mathematical formula in making moral decisions? That doesn’t exist. We bring certain criteria to bear, and we make a value judgment.
Go back to my hypothetical of the wounded sniper and his gunshot victim. Do you have a priority structure for dealing with that situation?
“Again, my main question to you concerned why you thought that Reynolds was committed to saying that the harm of torture ‘outweighed’ the good of preventing e.g. innocent death.”
Maybe because he’s actually used arguments to that effect. The dehumanizing effect of “torture” on the tormenter outweighs the potential value of the intelligence garnered by that procedure. You can’t be a “gentleman” soldier. Or allowing “torture” leads to “disastrous” consequences. So, on that view, the “disastrous” consequences outweigh the potential value of the intelligence.
Or do you have a problem with stock metaphors like “outweigh,” “override,” &c.?
The bogeyman
Over at the First Things blog, David Goldman did a provocative article on the following phenomenon:
The horror-film genre is multiplying like one of its own monsters, showing six-fold growth over the past decade—turning what used to be a Hollywood curiosity into a mainstream product. Not only the volume of films but their cruelty has increased, with explicit torture now a screen staple.
http://www.firstthings.com/article/2009/10/be-afraidmdashbe-very-afraid
He offers the following explanations:
But there is a pattern to the highs and lows of the horror genre that may reflect something specific about Hollywood’s feeding of the mood of the United States—something about America’s encounter with truly horrible events, from the Second World War through Vietnam and down to the attacks of September 11, 2001 and the lingering conflict in Iraq. Terror loiters in dark corners just off the public square.
Among all the film genres, horror began as the most alien to America. The iconic examples of the genre in the 1930s required European actors and exotic locales—vampires from central Europe, for example, and zombies from Haiti. The films were noteworthy precisely because they were so unlike the cinematic mainstream: In 1931, the year that Frankenstein and Dracula first appeared, the worldwide film industry managed to make and release 1054 features, of which only seven could be called supernatural thrillers. After retreading the same material for twenty years, Hollywood finally put a stake through the genre’s heart. By 1948, the few horror films being made were the likes of Abbott and Costello encountering Dracula, the Wolfman, and Frankenstein’s monster. Laughing at monsters was emblematically American—and remained so, as when Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder did it, perhaps best of all, in 1974 with Young Frankenstein.
In other words, Hollywood gave us a small run of exotic-origin horror films in the 1930s, all drawn from European fiction: Dracula, Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Picture of Dorian Gray. After the Second World War, however, these nightmares of tormented Europeans were mostly naturalized as sight gags for American adolescents.
And that was how it was supposed to be. The monsters had a different meaning in their Old World provenance. As Heinrich Heine once observed, the witches and kobolds and poltergeister of German folktales are remnants of the old Teutonic nature-religion that went underground with the advent of Christianity. The pagan sees nature as arbitrary and cruel, and the monsters that breed in the pagan imagination personify this cruelty. Removed from their pagan roots and transplanted to America, they became comic rather than uncanny. America was the land of new beginnings and happy endings. The monsters didn’t belong.
Making fun of foreign monsters fit the national mood after the war—a war, after all, in which Americans had encountered for the first time a neopagan foe that wielded horror as an instrument of policy. The existence of horror is, generally, a weakness of Christian civilization, for such civilization stands, finally, as the rejection of the horrors that paganism always accepts and often embraces. How can a good God permit terrible things to happen?
What motivated so many Americans to subject themselves to such torment? Perhaps the explanation is that horror had returned as a subject in American life with Vietnam. U.S. troops were engaged with an enemy that made civilian populations the primary theater of battle, fighting a different and terrible sort of war. The images of civilians burnt by napalm transformed my generation. Until our adolescence—I was already twelve when John F. Kennedy was killed—America’s civic religion was taken for granted.
There are any number of possible explanations for this phenomenon. What the bare facts show, however, is that moviegoers are now evincing a susceptibility to horror. People watch something in the theater because it resonates with something outside the theater. To see the cinematic representation of horrible things may be frightening, but the viewer knows that it is safe. And the sense of safety we derive from watching make-believe things helps us tolerate the prospect of real things.
Random acts of terror against civilians seem a new and nearly incomprehensible instrument of war to most Americans. That is why they have such military value: The theater of horror has a devastating effect on our morale. The same is true for suicide attacks, which continue on a scale that has no historical precedent. The enemy’s contempt for his own life is, in a sense, even more disturbing than his disregard for ours. Nor should we underestimate the cultural impact of the torture debate. Not only has America considered regularizing an abhorrent practice, but our armed forces have become entangled in countries where torture is a routine and daily matter. Americans do not need to imagine what might be going on in Afghanistan. They can see videos on YouTube of young Muslim women being tortured for minor infractions.
Starting on September 11, 2001, Americans were exposed to an enemy that uses horror as a weapon, as did the Nazis—who never succeeded in perpetrating violence on American soil. In its attempt to engage the countries whence the terrorists issued, America has exposed its young people to cultures in which acts of horror (suicide bombing, torture, and mutilation) have become routine.
I find this analysis fairly unconvincing:
1.WWII and the Cold War all had their share of horrific images. There’s nothing special about the Vietnam War or 9/11 which sets it apart in that regard.
2.While the Sixties had many horrific televised events, many who lived during the Sixties, including the younger generation of Hollywood directions, look back on the Sixties with nostalgic affection.
I’d chalk up the phenomenon to different factors:
1.The Hays Code (no relation) became a dead letter in the Sixties. In the absence of self-censorship by the film industry, movies became increasingly explicit in various ways. The horror genre represents a subset of that general trend.
2.To the degree that the horror genre is lucrative, Hollywood will naturally churn out sequels and knockoffs of horrific blockbusters. If it finds a successful formula, it will up the ante.
3.To the extent that the general culture becomes more secularized, there’s a reversion to pagan depravity and occultism.
Mind you, we have to be careful about extrapolating from Hollywood fare to the general culture. Hollywood fare is, in the first instance, a reflection of a cultural elite (Hollywood directors, producers, screenwriters).
But to the degree that there’s a popular appetite for this material, it is a barometer of the national mood.
4.To some extent the horror genre may be tapping into the subliminal insecurity of the viewer, although that depends on whether the viewer identifies with the victim or the psychopath.
5.I think that, to some degree, horror films mirror a nagging, gnawing anxiety about unknown, untamable dangers which may strike at any moment. And I don’t mean natural disasters or freak accidents.
I think they betray a guilty conscience. That many of us are living on the edge. Living on borrowed time. That we may lose the bet. That like the furies of Greek mythology, something is out there, waiting to collect on our outstanding moral debts.
The “bogeyman” mirrors the suppressed fear that while we seem to get away with many things, our comeuppance is lurking just around the corner, biding its time to strike when we least expect it. A relentless, merciless, implacable avenger.
It may have a human guise, but behind the mask is something inhuman, subhuman, and superhuman all in one.
The horror-film genre is multiplying like one of its own monsters, showing six-fold growth over the past decade—turning what used to be a Hollywood curiosity into a mainstream product. Not only the volume of films but their cruelty has increased, with explicit torture now a screen staple.
http://www.firstthings.com/article/2009/10/be-afraidmdashbe-very-afraid
He offers the following explanations:
But there is a pattern to the highs and lows of the horror genre that may reflect something specific about Hollywood’s feeding of the mood of the United States—something about America’s encounter with truly horrible events, from the Second World War through Vietnam and down to the attacks of September 11, 2001 and the lingering conflict in Iraq. Terror loiters in dark corners just off the public square.
Among all the film genres, horror began as the most alien to America. The iconic examples of the genre in the 1930s required European actors and exotic locales—vampires from central Europe, for example, and zombies from Haiti. The films were noteworthy precisely because they were so unlike the cinematic mainstream: In 1931, the year that Frankenstein and Dracula first appeared, the worldwide film industry managed to make and release 1054 features, of which only seven could be called supernatural thrillers. After retreading the same material for twenty years, Hollywood finally put a stake through the genre’s heart. By 1948, the few horror films being made were the likes of Abbott and Costello encountering Dracula, the Wolfman, and Frankenstein’s monster. Laughing at monsters was emblematically American—and remained so, as when Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder did it, perhaps best of all, in 1974 with Young Frankenstein.
In other words, Hollywood gave us a small run of exotic-origin horror films in the 1930s, all drawn from European fiction: Dracula, Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Picture of Dorian Gray. After the Second World War, however, these nightmares of tormented Europeans were mostly naturalized as sight gags for American adolescents.
And that was how it was supposed to be. The monsters had a different meaning in their Old World provenance. As Heinrich Heine once observed, the witches and kobolds and poltergeister of German folktales are remnants of the old Teutonic nature-religion that went underground with the advent of Christianity. The pagan sees nature as arbitrary and cruel, and the monsters that breed in the pagan imagination personify this cruelty. Removed from their pagan roots and transplanted to America, they became comic rather than uncanny. America was the land of new beginnings and happy endings. The monsters didn’t belong.
Making fun of foreign monsters fit the national mood after the war—a war, after all, in which Americans had encountered for the first time a neopagan foe that wielded horror as an instrument of policy. The existence of horror is, generally, a weakness of Christian civilization, for such civilization stands, finally, as the rejection of the horrors that paganism always accepts and often embraces. How can a good God permit terrible things to happen?
What motivated so many Americans to subject themselves to such torment? Perhaps the explanation is that horror had returned as a subject in American life with Vietnam. U.S. troops were engaged with an enemy that made civilian populations the primary theater of battle, fighting a different and terrible sort of war. The images of civilians burnt by napalm transformed my generation. Until our adolescence—I was already twelve when John F. Kennedy was killed—America’s civic religion was taken for granted.
There are any number of possible explanations for this phenomenon. What the bare facts show, however, is that moviegoers are now evincing a susceptibility to horror. People watch something in the theater because it resonates with something outside the theater. To see the cinematic representation of horrible things may be frightening, but the viewer knows that it is safe. And the sense of safety we derive from watching make-believe things helps us tolerate the prospect of real things.
Random acts of terror against civilians seem a new and nearly incomprehensible instrument of war to most Americans. That is why they have such military value: The theater of horror has a devastating effect on our morale. The same is true for suicide attacks, which continue on a scale that has no historical precedent. The enemy’s contempt for his own life is, in a sense, even more disturbing than his disregard for ours. Nor should we underestimate the cultural impact of the torture debate. Not only has America considered regularizing an abhorrent practice, but our armed forces have become entangled in countries where torture is a routine and daily matter. Americans do not need to imagine what might be going on in Afghanistan. They can see videos on YouTube of young Muslim women being tortured for minor infractions.
Starting on September 11, 2001, Americans were exposed to an enemy that uses horror as a weapon, as did the Nazis—who never succeeded in perpetrating violence on American soil. In its attempt to engage the countries whence the terrorists issued, America has exposed its young people to cultures in which acts of horror (suicide bombing, torture, and mutilation) have become routine.
I find this analysis fairly unconvincing:
1.WWII and the Cold War all had their share of horrific images. There’s nothing special about the Vietnam War or 9/11 which sets it apart in that regard.
2.While the Sixties had many horrific televised events, many who lived during the Sixties, including the younger generation of Hollywood directions, look back on the Sixties with nostalgic affection.
I’d chalk up the phenomenon to different factors:
1.The Hays Code (no relation) became a dead letter in the Sixties. In the absence of self-censorship by the film industry, movies became increasingly explicit in various ways. The horror genre represents a subset of that general trend.
2.To the degree that the horror genre is lucrative, Hollywood will naturally churn out sequels and knockoffs of horrific blockbusters. If it finds a successful formula, it will up the ante.
3.To the extent that the general culture becomes more secularized, there’s a reversion to pagan depravity and occultism.
Mind you, we have to be careful about extrapolating from Hollywood fare to the general culture. Hollywood fare is, in the first instance, a reflection of a cultural elite (Hollywood directors, producers, screenwriters).
But to the degree that there’s a popular appetite for this material, it is a barometer of the national mood.
4.To some extent the horror genre may be tapping into the subliminal insecurity of the viewer, although that depends on whether the viewer identifies with the victim or the psychopath.
5.I think that, to some degree, horror films mirror a nagging, gnawing anxiety about unknown, untamable dangers which may strike at any moment. And I don’t mean natural disasters or freak accidents.
I think they betray a guilty conscience. That many of us are living on the edge. Living on borrowed time. That we may lose the bet. That like the furies of Greek mythology, something is out there, waiting to collect on our outstanding moral debts.
The “bogeyman” mirrors the suppressed fear that while we seem to get away with many things, our comeuppance is lurking just around the corner, biding its time to strike when we least expect it. A relentless, merciless, implacable avenger.
It may have a human guise, but behind the mask is something inhuman, subhuman, and superhuman all in one.
Loving By Teaching
Here's a good post by Ray Ortlund, especially in an age when there's such an overemphasis on caring for people in physical and temporal ways while the spiritual and eternal are neglected.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Eternal procession
Dan Chapa:
“You appealed to Calvin. Here's what he had to say on the subject…So while Calvin may have done some groundwork for your views, he didn't go that far. He didn't leave the orthodox fold. Your views seem closer to Adam Clarke than John Calvin.”
i) Since, in my response to Perry Robinson, I twice went out of my way to distinguish Calvin’s seminal corrective from subsequent refinements which take it a step further, your quotation is badly behind the curve. How do you think quoting Calvin’s position contradicts my appeal when I explicitly qualified my appeal to Calvin from the outset? Are you paying attention?
ii) And, no, my position isn’t closer to Adam Clarke. Rather, it’s closer to Warfield, Frame, and Helm.
If it also happens to be closer to Clarke, then that’s purely coincidental. Maybe we also use the same brand of deodorant.
You might as well say that Clarke’s position is closer to Warfield’s.
iii) BTW, it isn’t essential for me to ground my position in Reformed precedent. As I’ve often said, exegetical theology is the first and foremost consideration. I frequently help myself to the exegetical arguments of non-Calvinist commentators if they have a sound argument for their interpretation.
“There is a difference between what consubstantial means with how it can be. No one has any idea as to how the Trinitarian persons can be consubstantial, but that doesn't mean we don't know if consubstantial means numeric or generic identity.”
And how do you know that? On the basis of exegetical theology? Historical theology? Philosophical theology? What’s your frame of reference?
“Through generation essence is passed from one to anther.”
i) When you define “generation” as “passing” an essence from one person to another, all you’ve done is to replace one metaphor (to generate) with another (to pass along). It’s the metaphor of handing one thing off to another (or handing down), as in, “Please pass the Grey Poupon.”
So your definition of “generation” only pushes the same question back a step. Now you have to define “to pass” in literal terms.
ii) ”Passing” also denotes a temporal process. So you’re now introducing a temporal process into the constitution of the Godhead.
And if you strip away the temporal connotations of “passing” something along, then what’s the residual meaning?
“Through generation essence is passed from one to anther. In the Trinity, generation provides for the mode of continuation of existence.”
“Continuation” is a temporal concept, involving duration through time.
“Not origination, for the Son is unoriginated.”
You can’t logically say the Son is unoriginated and also say he receives his essence from a second party (the Father). If he receives his essence from a second party, then the second party is the source of his essence–in which case he has his source of origin in the second party.
“Not caused, for cause implies temporalityand this generation is eternal.”
If the Son has a divine essence because that essence is conveyed to him by the Father, then his possession of a divine essence is something caused by the conveyance of the essence from the Father to the Son. You’re not being logically consistent with the preconditions that you yourself have posited in this transaction.
“But in a logical and ontological order, the Son proceeds from the Father.”
i) If the Father transmits a (the) divine essence to the Son, then that transaction involves causal priority as well as logical and/or ontological priority.
ii) You’re jumping categories by applying “procession” to the Son. To my knowledge, that category is traditionally reserved for the Spirit.
iii) Different metaphors have different connotations. You can’t switch one metaphor (“procession”) for another (“generation”) and retain the same connotations without further ado.
At the very least, you’d have to reduce both metaphors to a lowest common denominator if you’re going to treat them as synonymous.
But if you’re going to treat them as synonymous, then you can no longer appeal to generation and procession as individuating principles which distinguish the unique modality of the Son from the unique modality of the Spirit.
“This does not follow from eternal generation.”
How does making the generation eternal avoid making the Son a creature of the Father? Why wouldn’t that simply make him an eternal creature?
If he receives his essence from the Father, then he’s the effect of the Father’s nature and will. An eternal effect is still an effect.
“The generation may be seen as natural and necessary rather than volitional.”
And where’s your argument for that claim? If the Son and Spirit receive their essence from the Father, then what necessitates the Father to transmit his divine essence to another party?
Did you get that from exegetical theology? Philosophical theology? What?
“You undersell natural generation and oversell eternal generation to make space for this problem. In natural generation, while the whole nature isn't transferred, a part is. And that part is numerically one with the generator. So the metaphor of passing nature or essence does preserve the unity of the Trinity.”
i) Parceling the Trinity into three different parts doesn’t strike me as a terribly promising way to preserve the unity of the Godhead. On your explanation, the Father possesses the whole nature while the Son and Spirit only possess a part of the essence.
ii) In natural generation, both the begetter and the begotten partially exemplify an abstract essence. So if we applied your natural paradigm to the Trinity, none of the divine persons would possess the entire indivisible essence. Rather, there would be an abstract essence over and above the Trinitarian persons in which they participate.
“Indeed without it, I doubt monotheism can be defended. Three distinct divine essences that are of them divine, is tri-theism.”
i) I don’t think that a modalistic paradigm of the Trinity is preferable to tritheistic paradigm.
ii) Your part/whole framework is also tritheistic. But on your framework, there’s a merely quantitative difference between the entire divine essence of the Father and the partial divine essence of the Son and Spirit. The Son and Spirit have less divine “stuff.”
iii) And, I as just pointed out, your own framework logically entails the partial possession of the divine essence by all three persons. Whether that’s better or worse that (ii) is debatable.
iv) As I’ve already said to you, as well as having said on other occasions, if we want a model of how the Godhead can be three-in-one, I think enantiomorphic symmetries afford a more satisfactory illustration. But you blew right past that.
“Now it's true that the metaphor is restricted. Natural generation is in time, not eternal and only part of the nature is transferred, not the whole. And this is because we know God is one and eternal. Are these restrictions add hoc?”
i) Eternality doesn’t distinguish between generic and numeric unity.
ii) Procession doesn’t distinguish between generic and numeric unity.
iii) You also need to justify your use of these metaphors in the first place. Why should we frame our formulation of the immanent Trinity in terms of generation and procession? For my part, I’ve already discussed the traditional prooftexts.
“But I like the rays of the sun or a river flowing from a lake.”
i) River water from lake water is a case of generic unity, not numeric unity.
ii) And it also involves you in a cause-and-effect relation. The lake causes the river.
Same problems with your solar metaphor.
You can use these as picturesque illustrations if you like, but they hardly have the analogical rigor to “defend monotheism.”
Likewise, generation and procession hardly have the analogical rigor to “defend monotheism.”
“What's your preference, three dancers in unison?”
I’ve already stated my preferred model.
“So if you have two identical glasses of water in each hand, what happens if you drink one? Did you really drink them both?”
If they were truly identical, they wouldn’t be two different glasses of water.
“On the other hand, if Leibniz is really saying that logically two things can't be identical, and you accept his principle, that rules out your own understanding of consubtantiallity.”
i) Of course you’re equivocating. The persons of the Godhead aren’t identical in every respect: otherwise, they wouldn’t be distinct persons.
If x and y are distinct then there is at least one property that x has and y does not, or vice versa.
Conversely, if, for every property F, object x has F if and only if object y has F, then x is identical to y.
ii) It’s not my job to make sense of your terminology. You were the one who defined numerical unity/simplicity in contrast to “ just two things with identical properties.”
I’m merely pointing out the logical implications of your own terms and comparisons.
iii) As enantiomorphic symmetries demonstrate, there can be a one-to-one correspondence between x and y even though x and y are irreducibly distinct.
“But you deny they have their essence from another (either eternally or via origination), no? So in one sense they are of themselves or auto-theos, no?”
“Of themselves” connotes sourcehood. By contrast, there is nothing above, beyond, or behind the persons. They aren’t “from” themselves anymore than they are “from” another. We’ve already arrived at a bedrock fact. The end of the explanatory trail.
“How can the Father be Christ's God, if He does not receive His essence from the Father. How can He be His Son, without eternal generation?”
i) The metaphor of fatherhood/sonship connotes a metaphorical cause/effect relation implicating a common nature. Like father/like son.
ii) Eph 1:3 isn’t an explanation of how the Son can be the Son. It merely states that figurative, archetypal relationship. And it does so using the metaphors of paternity and filiality.
iii) The next question is what does these figurative depictions stand for? Fatherhood and sonship are polyvalent metaphors which create a rich range of possibly literal analogues. One analogy is a divine nature which they share in common.
The sexual process is part of the metaphor. But that scarcely makes a procreative mode of origin the point of the metaphor. We’re dealing with picture language, remember?
It’s no different than when the metaphor of primogeniture (“firstborn”) is applied to Christ in Col 1:15. Indeed, when that metaphor is figuratively applied to Israel in the OT–which supplies the linguistic precedent for this NT usage.
“You appealed to Calvin. Here's what he had to say on the subject…So while Calvin may have done some groundwork for your views, he didn't go that far. He didn't leave the orthodox fold. Your views seem closer to Adam Clarke than John Calvin.”
i) Since, in my response to Perry Robinson, I twice went out of my way to distinguish Calvin’s seminal corrective from subsequent refinements which take it a step further, your quotation is badly behind the curve. How do you think quoting Calvin’s position contradicts my appeal when I explicitly qualified my appeal to Calvin from the outset? Are you paying attention?
ii) And, no, my position isn’t closer to Adam Clarke. Rather, it’s closer to Warfield, Frame, and Helm.
If it also happens to be closer to Clarke, then that’s purely coincidental. Maybe we also use the same brand of deodorant.
You might as well say that Clarke’s position is closer to Warfield’s.
iii) BTW, it isn’t essential for me to ground my position in Reformed precedent. As I’ve often said, exegetical theology is the first and foremost consideration. I frequently help myself to the exegetical arguments of non-Calvinist commentators if they have a sound argument for their interpretation.
“There is a difference between what consubstantial means with how it can be. No one has any idea as to how the Trinitarian persons can be consubstantial, but that doesn't mean we don't know if consubstantial means numeric or generic identity.”
And how do you know that? On the basis of exegetical theology? Historical theology? Philosophical theology? What’s your frame of reference?
“Through generation essence is passed from one to anther.”
i) When you define “generation” as “passing” an essence from one person to another, all you’ve done is to replace one metaphor (to generate) with another (to pass along). It’s the metaphor of handing one thing off to another (or handing down), as in, “Please pass the Grey Poupon.”
So your definition of “generation” only pushes the same question back a step. Now you have to define “to pass” in literal terms.
ii) ”Passing” also denotes a temporal process. So you’re now introducing a temporal process into the constitution of the Godhead.
And if you strip away the temporal connotations of “passing” something along, then what’s the residual meaning?
“Through generation essence is passed from one to anther. In the Trinity, generation provides for the mode of continuation of existence.”
“Continuation” is a temporal concept, involving duration through time.
“Not origination, for the Son is unoriginated.”
You can’t logically say the Son is unoriginated and also say he receives his essence from a second party (the Father). If he receives his essence from a second party, then the second party is the source of his essence–in which case he has his source of origin in the second party.
“Not caused, for cause implies temporalityand this generation is eternal.”
If the Son has a divine essence because that essence is conveyed to him by the Father, then his possession of a divine essence is something caused by the conveyance of the essence from the Father to the Son. You’re not being logically consistent with the preconditions that you yourself have posited in this transaction.
“But in a logical and ontological order, the Son proceeds from the Father.”
i) If the Father transmits a (the) divine essence to the Son, then that transaction involves causal priority as well as logical and/or ontological priority.
ii) You’re jumping categories by applying “procession” to the Son. To my knowledge, that category is traditionally reserved for the Spirit.
iii) Different metaphors have different connotations. You can’t switch one metaphor (“procession”) for another (“generation”) and retain the same connotations without further ado.
At the very least, you’d have to reduce both metaphors to a lowest common denominator if you’re going to treat them as synonymous.
But if you’re going to treat them as synonymous, then you can no longer appeal to generation and procession as individuating principles which distinguish the unique modality of the Son from the unique modality of the Spirit.
“This does not follow from eternal generation.”
How does making the generation eternal avoid making the Son a creature of the Father? Why wouldn’t that simply make him an eternal creature?
If he receives his essence from the Father, then he’s the effect of the Father’s nature and will. An eternal effect is still an effect.
“The generation may be seen as natural and necessary rather than volitional.”
And where’s your argument for that claim? If the Son and Spirit receive their essence from the Father, then what necessitates the Father to transmit his divine essence to another party?
Did you get that from exegetical theology? Philosophical theology? What?
“You undersell natural generation and oversell eternal generation to make space for this problem. In natural generation, while the whole nature isn't transferred, a part is. And that part is numerically one with the generator. So the metaphor of passing nature or essence does preserve the unity of the Trinity.”
i) Parceling the Trinity into three different parts doesn’t strike me as a terribly promising way to preserve the unity of the Godhead. On your explanation, the Father possesses the whole nature while the Son and Spirit only possess a part of the essence.
ii) In natural generation, both the begetter and the begotten partially exemplify an abstract essence. So if we applied your natural paradigm to the Trinity, none of the divine persons would possess the entire indivisible essence. Rather, there would be an abstract essence over and above the Trinitarian persons in which they participate.
“Indeed without it, I doubt monotheism can be defended. Three distinct divine essences that are of them divine, is tri-theism.”
i) I don’t think that a modalistic paradigm of the Trinity is preferable to tritheistic paradigm.
ii) Your part/whole framework is also tritheistic. But on your framework, there’s a merely quantitative difference between the entire divine essence of the Father and the partial divine essence of the Son and Spirit. The Son and Spirit have less divine “stuff.”
iii) And, I as just pointed out, your own framework logically entails the partial possession of the divine essence by all three persons. Whether that’s better or worse that (ii) is debatable.
iv) As I’ve already said to you, as well as having said on other occasions, if we want a model of how the Godhead can be three-in-one, I think enantiomorphic symmetries afford a more satisfactory illustration. But you blew right past that.
“Now it's true that the metaphor is restricted. Natural generation is in time, not eternal and only part of the nature is transferred, not the whole. And this is because we know God is one and eternal. Are these restrictions add hoc?”
i) Eternality doesn’t distinguish between generic and numeric unity.
ii) Procession doesn’t distinguish between generic and numeric unity.
iii) You also need to justify your use of these metaphors in the first place. Why should we frame our formulation of the immanent Trinity in terms of generation and procession? For my part, I’ve already discussed the traditional prooftexts.
“But I like the rays of the sun or a river flowing from a lake.”
i) River water from lake water is a case of generic unity, not numeric unity.
ii) And it also involves you in a cause-and-effect relation. The lake causes the river.
Same problems with your solar metaphor.
You can use these as picturesque illustrations if you like, but they hardly have the analogical rigor to “defend monotheism.”
Likewise, generation and procession hardly have the analogical rigor to “defend monotheism.”
“What's your preference, three dancers in unison?”
I’ve already stated my preferred model.
“So if you have two identical glasses of water in each hand, what happens if you drink one? Did you really drink them both?”
If they were truly identical, they wouldn’t be two different glasses of water.
“On the other hand, if Leibniz is really saying that logically two things can't be identical, and you accept his principle, that rules out your own understanding of consubtantiallity.”
i) Of course you’re equivocating. The persons of the Godhead aren’t identical in every respect: otherwise, they wouldn’t be distinct persons.
If x and y are distinct then there is at least one property that x has and y does not, or vice versa.
Conversely, if, for every property F, object x has F if and only if object y has F, then x is identical to y.
ii) It’s not my job to make sense of your terminology. You were the one who defined numerical unity/simplicity in contrast to “ just two things with identical properties.”
I’m merely pointing out the logical implications of your own terms and comparisons.
iii) As enantiomorphic symmetries demonstrate, there can be a one-to-one correspondence between x and y even though x and y are irreducibly distinct.
“But you deny they have their essence from another (either eternally or via origination), no? So in one sense they are of themselves or auto-theos, no?”
“Of themselves” connotes sourcehood. By contrast, there is nothing above, beyond, or behind the persons. They aren’t “from” themselves anymore than they are “from” another. We’ve already arrived at a bedrock fact. The end of the explanatory trail.
“How can the Father be Christ's God, if He does not receive His essence from the Father. How can He be His Son, without eternal generation?”
i) The metaphor of fatherhood/sonship connotes a metaphorical cause/effect relation implicating a common nature. Like father/like son.
ii) Eph 1:3 isn’t an explanation of how the Son can be the Son. It merely states that figurative, archetypal relationship. And it does so using the metaphors of paternity and filiality.
iii) The next question is what does these figurative depictions stand for? Fatherhood and sonship are polyvalent metaphors which create a rich range of possibly literal analogues. One analogy is a divine nature which they share in common.
The sexual process is part of the metaphor. But that scarcely makes a procreative mode of origin the point of the metaphor. We’re dealing with picture language, remember?
It’s no different than when the metaphor of primogeniture (“firstborn”) is applied to Christ in Col 1:15. Indeed, when that metaphor is figuratively applied to Israel in the OT–which supplies the linguistic precedent for this NT usage.
A Biblical Case for Natural Law
John Frame reviews David VanDrunen's A Biblical Case for Natural Law.
Saturday, January 09, 2010
Truth & popularity
One objection to sola Scriptura which we sometimes run across takes the form of a question: if sola Scriptura is true, then why aren’t more Christians Protestant? I suppose we could generalize the question by asking, If Protestantism is true, then why aren’t more Christians Protestant?
The underlying assumption is a direct correction between truth and popularity.
But in a fallen world, why would we expect truth to be popular? Indeed, in a fallen world, shouldn’t we expect falsehood to be popular?
For example, Biblical prophets are notoriously unpopular. Would it be reasonable to ask, If what Isaiah and Jeremiah said is true, then why didn’t more Israelites believe them?
Likewise, if what Jesus said is true, then why didn’t more Jews believe him?
For that matter, the Catholic objection can be easily turned right back on itself. If Humanae Vitae is true, then why do so many Catholics practice artificial birth control? Why do so many Catholics flout their church’s teaching on abortion?
For that matter, if Catholicism is true, why have traditionally Catholic countries in Europe become so secularized?
Also, at the risk of stating the obvious, truth may have little to do with what people believe. For one thing, people are born into communities. Over a lifetime, they frequently relocate from one community to another, viz. from the nuclear family to high school to college, &c.
Because human existence is a communal existence, we have a natural tendency to assimilate to community standards, be it the family in which we were raised, the schools we attended, the business we work at, the town we live in, &c.
The underlying assumption is a direct correction between truth and popularity.
But in a fallen world, why would we expect truth to be popular? Indeed, in a fallen world, shouldn’t we expect falsehood to be popular?
For example, Biblical prophets are notoriously unpopular. Would it be reasonable to ask, If what Isaiah and Jeremiah said is true, then why didn’t more Israelites believe them?
Likewise, if what Jesus said is true, then why didn’t more Jews believe him?
For that matter, the Catholic objection can be easily turned right back on itself. If Humanae Vitae is true, then why do so many Catholics practice artificial birth control? Why do so many Catholics flout their church’s teaching on abortion?
For that matter, if Catholicism is true, why have traditionally Catholic countries in Europe become so secularized?
Also, at the risk of stating the obvious, truth may have little to do with what people believe. For one thing, people are born into communities. Over a lifetime, they frequently relocate from one community to another, viz. from the nuclear family to high school to college, &c.
Because human existence is a communal existence, we have a natural tendency to assimilate to community standards, be it the family in which we were raised, the schools we attended, the business we work at, the town we live in, &c.
Friday, January 08, 2010
Homoousios
Godismyjudge said...
Steve,
While your rejection of 'eternal generation' or 'eternal procession' conflicts more directly with other aspects of the Nicene creed, it also conflicts with the consubstantiality of the Father and the Son. For example:
"Consubstantiality" describes the relationship among the Divine persons of the Christian Trinity and connotes that God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are "of one being" in that the Son is "generated" ("born" or "begotten") "before all ages" or "eternally" of the Father's own being, from which the Spirit also eternally "proceeds."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consubstantiality
But you have rejected the connotation.
Setting such a connotation aside, I don't see how you can consistently affirm consubstatntiatlity and reject eternal procession. The idea that the Father and Son share an essence that is numerically one and simple (i.e. not just two things with identical properties) seems in conflict with the idea that three persons can have that essence of themselves.
So what do you make of passages like Eph 1:3?
http://turretinfan.blogspot.com/2010/01/arianism-is-consistent-with-scripture.html
1. I don’t regard Wikipedia as the gold standard of theological discourse.
2. ”Consubstantial” simply means “of one and the same substance or essence” (OED).
3. At a minimum, the purpose of the homoousios clause was to exclude the notion that the Son is merely of “like essence” with the Father, rather than identical essence.
4. From what I’ve read, there’s a scholarly dispute over the more specialized question of whether homoousios was also meant to denote generic identity or numeric identity.
5. You confuse the semantic question of what the word or concept means with philosophical question of how the Trinitarian persons can be consubstantial. That’s not a semantic question. Rather, that’s a question for philosophical theology. A Christian can affirm the consubstantiality of the Trinitarian persons without having to endorse any particular explanation.
6. I don’t have to explain how the Trinitarian persons are consubstantial to affirm their consubstantiality. I certainly don’t require a philosophical explanation or justification for my affirmation. Rather, it’s sufficient for me to affirm their consubstantiality in case I have exegetical warrant for the full divinity of the Father, Son, and Spirit.
7. Sexual metaphors like “generation” as well as kinematic metaphors like “procession,” don’t begin to explain the way in which the persons of the Godhead are consubstantial.
i) For one thing, a metaphor is, by definition, figurative rather than literal.
ii) For another thing, a metaphor posits an analogy between one thing and another.
iii) Apropos (i-ii), you need to delimit the intended scope of the metaphor to isolate and identify the literal comparison.
8. How do you decipher these metaphors? Do you think they stand for a source of origin and/or mode of origin? Do you think the Father caused the Son and the Spirit to be?
If so, then that reduces the Son and the Spirit to the level of a creature. It also suggests some form of pantheism, like Neoplatonic emanationism. Or else it treats the Son and the Spirit as contingent beings whom the Father wills into being.
That’s a self-defeating way to affirm the full divinity of the Son and the Spirit.
9. If your objective is to preserve numerical identity of the Father and Son, then “generation” undermines your objective since what is begotten shares the same specific nature as the begetter, but not the same numerical nature. Both the begetter and the begotten are property-instances of a generic quality. They concretely exemplify an abstract exemplar, which stands over and above them.
If you’re going to make an exception in the case of the Trinity, then that betrays the inherent limitations of the metaphor. And you need to show why your exception isn’t an ad hoc restriction on the controlling metaphor.
10. The Bible doesn’t explain how the Trinitarian persons are consubstantial. And I doubt we could even grasp the explanation.
11. The best that philosophical theology can do is to offer analogies. And that can be useful as far as it goes. But even in that respect, we can come up with better analogies than generation and procession to illustrate the consubstantiality of the Trinitarian persons. As I’ve said in the past, I think the principle of symmetry is a better analogy.
12. Your effort to contrast two things that share an essence which is numerically one and simple over against two things with identical properties is decidedly unclear. For if two things share identical properties, then they are really one thing rather than two, according to Leibniz’ law (i.e. the identity of indiscernibles).
13. I don’t think the Trinitarian persons have the same essence “of themselves,” as if each person is the “source” of his own essence (if that’s what you mean), for sourcehood is inapplicable to a divine mode of subsistence.
14. Since you seem to think Eph 1:3 is in tension with my position, it’s up to you to spell out why you deem that to be so.
Steve,
While your rejection of 'eternal generation' or 'eternal procession' conflicts more directly with other aspects of the Nicene creed, it also conflicts with the consubstantiality of the Father and the Son. For example:
"Consubstantiality" describes the relationship among the Divine persons of the Christian Trinity and connotes that God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are "of one being" in that the Son is "generated" ("born" or "begotten") "before all ages" or "eternally" of the Father's own being, from which the Spirit also eternally "proceeds."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consubstantiality
But you have rejected the connotation.
Setting such a connotation aside, I don't see how you can consistently affirm consubstatntiatlity and reject eternal procession. The idea that the Father and Son share an essence that is numerically one and simple (i.e. not just two things with identical properties) seems in conflict with the idea that three persons can have that essence of themselves.
So what do you make of passages like Eph 1:3?
http://turretinfan.blogspot.com/2010/01/arianism-is-consistent-with-scripture.html
1. I don’t regard Wikipedia as the gold standard of theological discourse.
2. ”Consubstantial” simply means “of one and the same substance or essence” (OED).
3. At a minimum, the purpose of the homoousios clause was to exclude the notion that the Son is merely of “like essence” with the Father, rather than identical essence.
4. From what I’ve read, there’s a scholarly dispute over the more specialized question of whether homoousios was also meant to denote generic identity or numeric identity.
5. You confuse the semantic question of what the word or concept means with philosophical question of how the Trinitarian persons can be consubstantial. That’s not a semantic question. Rather, that’s a question for philosophical theology. A Christian can affirm the consubstantiality of the Trinitarian persons without having to endorse any particular explanation.
6. I don’t have to explain how the Trinitarian persons are consubstantial to affirm their consubstantiality. I certainly don’t require a philosophical explanation or justification for my affirmation. Rather, it’s sufficient for me to affirm their consubstantiality in case I have exegetical warrant for the full divinity of the Father, Son, and Spirit.
7. Sexual metaphors like “generation” as well as kinematic metaphors like “procession,” don’t begin to explain the way in which the persons of the Godhead are consubstantial.
i) For one thing, a metaphor is, by definition, figurative rather than literal.
ii) For another thing, a metaphor posits an analogy between one thing and another.
iii) Apropos (i-ii), you need to delimit the intended scope of the metaphor to isolate and identify the literal comparison.
8. How do you decipher these metaphors? Do you think they stand for a source of origin and/or mode of origin? Do you think the Father caused the Son and the Spirit to be?
If so, then that reduces the Son and the Spirit to the level of a creature. It also suggests some form of pantheism, like Neoplatonic emanationism. Or else it treats the Son and the Spirit as contingent beings whom the Father wills into being.
That’s a self-defeating way to affirm the full divinity of the Son and the Spirit.
9. If your objective is to preserve numerical identity of the Father and Son, then “generation” undermines your objective since what is begotten shares the same specific nature as the begetter, but not the same numerical nature. Both the begetter and the begotten are property-instances of a generic quality. They concretely exemplify an abstract exemplar, which stands over and above them.
If you’re going to make an exception in the case of the Trinity, then that betrays the inherent limitations of the metaphor. And you need to show why your exception isn’t an ad hoc restriction on the controlling metaphor.
10. The Bible doesn’t explain how the Trinitarian persons are consubstantial. And I doubt we could even grasp the explanation.
11. The best that philosophical theology can do is to offer analogies. And that can be useful as far as it goes. But even in that respect, we can come up with better analogies than generation and procession to illustrate the consubstantiality of the Trinitarian persons. As I’ve said in the past, I think the principle of symmetry is a better analogy.
12. Your effort to contrast two things that share an essence which is numerically one and simple over against two things with identical properties is decidedly unclear. For if two things share identical properties, then they are really one thing rather than two, according to Leibniz’ law (i.e. the identity of indiscernibles).
13. I don’t think the Trinitarian persons have the same essence “of themselves,” as if each person is the “source” of his own essence (if that’s what you mean), for sourcehood is inapplicable to a divine mode of subsistence.
14. Since you seem to think Eph 1:3 is in tension with my position, it’s up to you to spell out why you deem that to be so.
Theological chicken
FRANCIS J. BECKWITH SAID:
“My point was not to say that an Arian reading of Scripture is superior or equal to the orthodox view. It isn't. What I was saying is that I can see how someone could read Scripture that way and not be irrational in doing so.”
i) No. You made a much stronger claim than that. You said “What Bryan is saying is really uncontroversial: the Arian reading of Scripture is not obviously irrational. It is, of course, heretical. But that does not mean that a fully informed person of good will, with knowledge of the languages, could not have come up with the Arian reading of Scripture” (660).
ii) Moreover, you were coming to Bryan’s defense, and he said, among other things, that “The Arians were able to affirm all the verses that you cite. In addition, Scripture itself does not specify which verses are the hermeneutical standard for interpreting other verses. This is why Scripture alone was not sufficient to resolve the Arian controversy” (654).
iii) On top of that we have Liccione’s statements, such as “What I do hold is that, in the absence of appeal to church authority, there is no way to establish it as de fide rather than merely as one rationally defensible opinion among others. I could generalize the same point to many other theological positions that either have been or are controversial. This is why I am a Catholic not a Protestant. As I read church history, Protestantism of whatever variety has no way, even in principle, to distinguish consistently between propositions that call for the assent of divine faith and propositions expressing plausible opinions which might well turn out to be wrong” (667).
And you left a subsequent comment (677) in which you signaled your agreement with Liccione.
iv) So there’s a common pattern here. You three are trying to play a game of chicken with Evangelicals. You introduce the deity of Christ as a wedge issue or pressure point to leverage our assent to the Magisterium. You then argue that, on the basis of Scripture alone, the Arian interpretation is plausible or rationally defensible such that Scripture alone is inadequate to fend of a heretical Christology like Arianism. You then double-dare the Protestant to choose between the Catholic rule of faith or the Protestant rule of faith. He can only stand by sola Scriptura on pain of admitting Arianism as a valid interpretation of NT Christology.
v) That’s the dilemma you’re trying to pose for Protestants. However, there’s a catch. For your argument, if it is a genuine dilemma, cuts both ways inasmuch as it requires the Catholic apologist to make the exegetical case for the Arians. To concede the legitimacy of their reading, within the hermeneutical constraints of sola Scriptura.
Of course, you think that you can blink before your dragster sails over the cliff by invoking the Magisterium as a deus ex machina to override the "plausible" or "rationally defensible" Arian interpretation of Scripture. But before you get to that point you have to form an opportunistic alliance with the Arians and their modern counterparts.
That tactic makes Catholic apologists Jehovah's Witnesses just under the surface. The only thing that restrains you from becoming cult-members is the makeshift barricade of the Magisterium. Like pushing a wardrobe against the bedroom door as a tornado approaches the house.
vi) If you now want to climb down from that self-defeating perch, you’re free to do so. But if you retract that argument, you thereby forfeit your objection to sola Scriptura.
“It is sometimes difficult to do--and I am certainly guilty of having violated this precept throughout my life--but my rule of thumb in reading others is to always read the person in the most charitable way possible. That is, to read the person in a way that suggests a stronger argument than if I read the person in a less than charitable way…So, in the spirit of the principle of charity I suggest above, I assume the mistake was the consequence of hurrying to make a point without being careful.”
Your idea of “charity” is to coax your target into lowering its shields so that you can fire your Romulan disrupters on the unarmed ship. No doubt it would make things easier for you if only your opponents unilaterally disarmed while you fire away with impunity. Well, that’s not going to happen.
You’re not entitled to the benefit of the doubt. We’re under no obligation to be gullible for your benefit.
You’re a stereotypical cage-phase convert/revert. It isn’t enough for you to walk away from Evangelicalism. No, you’ve come back with your matches and gasoline to burn the house down so that no one else will be victimized the same way you were, when you, too, were just another deluded adherent of sola Scriptura.
Fine. That’s your prerogative. And we reserve the right to defend our home.
“My point was not to say that an Arian reading of Scripture is superior or equal to the orthodox view. It isn't. What I was saying is that I can see how someone could read Scripture that way and not be irrational in doing so.”
i) No. You made a much stronger claim than that. You said “What Bryan is saying is really uncontroversial: the Arian reading of Scripture is not obviously irrational. It is, of course, heretical. But that does not mean that a fully informed person of good will, with knowledge of the languages, could not have come up with the Arian reading of Scripture” (660).
ii) Moreover, you were coming to Bryan’s defense, and he said, among other things, that “The Arians were able to affirm all the verses that you cite. In addition, Scripture itself does not specify which verses are the hermeneutical standard for interpreting other verses. This is why Scripture alone was not sufficient to resolve the Arian controversy” (654).
iii) On top of that we have Liccione’s statements, such as “What I do hold is that, in the absence of appeal to church authority, there is no way to establish it as de fide rather than merely as one rationally defensible opinion among others. I could generalize the same point to many other theological positions that either have been or are controversial. This is why I am a Catholic not a Protestant. As I read church history, Protestantism of whatever variety has no way, even in principle, to distinguish consistently between propositions that call for the assent of divine faith and propositions expressing plausible opinions which might well turn out to be wrong” (667).
And you left a subsequent comment (677) in which you signaled your agreement with Liccione.
iv) So there’s a common pattern here. You three are trying to play a game of chicken with Evangelicals. You introduce the deity of Christ as a wedge issue or pressure point to leverage our assent to the Magisterium. You then argue that, on the basis of Scripture alone, the Arian interpretation is plausible or rationally defensible such that Scripture alone is inadequate to fend of a heretical Christology like Arianism. You then double-dare the Protestant to choose between the Catholic rule of faith or the Protestant rule of faith. He can only stand by sola Scriptura on pain of admitting Arianism as a valid interpretation of NT Christology.
v) That’s the dilemma you’re trying to pose for Protestants. However, there’s a catch. For your argument, if it is a genuine dilemma, cuts both ways inasmuch as it requires the Catholic apologist to make the exegetical case for the Arians. To concede the legitimacy of their reading, within the hermeneutical constraints of sola Scriptura.
Of course, you think that you can blink before your dragster sails over the cliff by invoking the Magisterium as a deus ex machina to override the "plausible" or "rationally defensible" Arian interpretation of Scripture. But before you get to that point you have to form an opportunistic alliance with the Arians and their modern counterparts.
That tactic makes Catholic apologists Jehovah's Witnesses just under the surface. The only thing that restrains you from becoming cult-members is the makeshift barricade of the Magisterium. Like pushing a wardrobe against the bedroom door as a tornado approaches the house.
vi) If you now want to climb down from that self-defeating perch, you’re free to do so. But if you retract that argument, you thereby forfeit your objection to sola Scriptura.
“It is sometimes difficult to do--and I am certainly guilty of having violated this precept throughout my life--but my rule of thumb in reading others is to always read the person in the most charitable way possible. That is, to read the person in a way that suggests a stronger argument than if I read the person in a less than charitable way…So, in the spirit of the principle of charity I suggest above, I assume the mistake was the consequence of hurrying to make a point without being careful.”
Your idea of “charity” is to coax your target into lowering its shields so that you can fire your Romulan disrupters on the unarmed ship. No doubt it would make things easier for you if only your opponents unilaterally disarmed while you fire away with impunity. Well, that’s not going to happen.
You’re not entitled to the benefit of the doubt. We’re under no obligation to be gullible for your benefit.
You’re a stereotypical cage-phase convert/revert. It isn’t enough for you to walk away from Evangelicalism. No, you’ve come back with your matches and gasoline to burn the house down so that no one else will be victimized the same way you were, when you, too, were just another deluded adherent of sola Scriptura.
Fine. That’s your prerogative. And we reserve the right to defend our home.
Thursday, January 07, 2010
Once Upon an A Priori
Before I comment on Michael Liccione’s latest remarks, I’d like to make a general observation. I don’t think it’s coincidental that Bryan Cross, Francis Beckwith, and Michael Liccione are all philosophy majors. That, of itself, is by no means a bad thing. Philosophical aptitude and philosophical training can be very useful in theology.
However, there’s a problem when you take a philosophical orientation as your theological point of departure. When that’s your starting point, than that’s an abstract starting point. It’s not a starting-pointed grounded in the actual history of God’s providential dealings with the covenant community.
As a result, guys like Liccione aren’t describing anything real. They aren’t describing the life-experience of the covenant community from within, in terms of how the Lord has demonstrably chosen, in word and deed, to govern his people. What we’re getting instead is a hypothetical model of how they’d like the church to be. A utopian theory.
It’s a lovely exercise in make-believe–a pleasant diversion–but it has no tangible connection with OT history, NT history, or church history. Rather, it’s a philosophical hagiographon.
On a related note, this orientation tends to generate a vicious cycle. If you dismiss sola scriptura out of hand because you think it’s antecedently unlikely, then you have no incentive to study the Bible with an eye to discovering (among other things) how God actually administers the covenant community. Having decided in advance that sola Scriptura sows untoward consequences, you don’t look to Bible history for your model of God’s special providence.
So you end up with a perfect circle as you smoothly reason from your a priori premise to your foregone conclusion. Your pristine syllogism is uncontaminated by grubby contact with the real world situation. You never have to take a shower or wash your hands.
Moving along:
i) Since the Bible itself is a propositional revelation, that’s a rather odd way of framing the issue. He makes it sound as though the Bible is a primarily nonpropositional, and the challenge is to convert the nonpropositional content of Scripture into dogmatic propositions.
ii) Now, I don’t have any particular problem with sometimes trying to re-express the propositional content of Scripture. That’s something we do in creeds, confessions, sermons, commentaries, and so forth. But it’s not as though we’re putting the content of Scripture into proposition form for the very first time. For the most part, the content of Scripture is already expressed in propositional form.
iii) Perhaps, though, he doesn’t regard Scripture, per se, as essentially revelatory. Maybe he thinks the revelatory content of Scripture is buried in some occasional statements here and there, overlaid by many other statements which don’t count as revelation. So the challenge is to dig out the revelatory statements from the nonrevelatory statements. Is that his point? Is a Catholic theologian like an archeologist who must excavate the Bible to unearth the revelatory statements buried beneath all of the nonrevelatory statements?
That’s one source of theological disputes, but hardly the only source. For example, disputes may arise from willful resistance to unwelcome truths.
i) Of course, the assumption here is that God’s inscripturated word is insufficient by itself to clearly express God’s intentions. Hence, we need some mechanism, over and above Scripture, to identify God’s intentions.
But let’s go back to my example of 1 John. John wrote a pastoral letter, probably to the church of Ephesus, to resolve a crisis in the life of that congregation. John dealt with that crisis by letter because he was either unable or unwilling to deal with it in person.
So the letter itself is designed to adjudicate the crisis–without further recourse to the apostle John. That’s the point of writing a pastoral letter like 1 John. It deals with a crisis by letter when the writer is otherwise occupied or unavailable.
ii) Keep in mind, too, that there are certain benefits to having a written record. Suppose the church of Ephesus had 50 adult members. If John spoke in person, then left, you’d end up with 50 different recollections of what he said. Some recollections would be more accurate than others. But it’s hard to correct one recollection in reference to other. You can compare them, but which ones set the standard?
So it’s obviously useful to have one documentary source, in his own words, which preserves his message. That constitutes an objective reference point which everyone shares in common.
iii) Liccione talks about differing interpretations (“widespread dissensus about such construals”), yet that fails to distinguish between an honest difference of opinion and a willful difference of opinion. For example, I seriously doubt that John’s opponents assented to 1 John. Although it was largely about them, it wasn’t for their benefit. Their acceptance wasn’t expected or required.
i) Keep in mind that fallible human opinions are under the providential control of God. These are not autonomous variables. An infallible God can work his will through fallible human opinions.
For one thing, to be fallible is not to be in error. Fallibility creates the possibility of error, but it doesn’t create the presumption of error in any particular case. God can guide his church by making sure enough of the faithful are right enough of the time from one generation to the next. That keeps it moving in the right direction.
ii) In the situation of 1 John, where’s the Magisterial adjudicator? Perhaps Liccione would say that John himself plays that role.
And it’s possible that a member of the Ephesian church could contact John with some follow-up questions. But keep in mind that 1 John, itself, was intended to adjudicate the crisis. That’s the chosen instrument which he employed to resolve this particular crisis. That’s the concrete expression of the Johannine “magisterium” (as it were). Not something over and above his letter.
If he thought that was inadequate to deal with the situation, he wouldn’t write a letter in the first place.
Yet this assumes that a book of Scripture, like 1 John, lacks the “requisite definitiveness” to do what’s necessary. But is that what John thought of his own letter? Did he think 1 John was unsatisfactory in its own right to accomplish the goal he assigned to it?
I’m using 1 John to illustrate my point. But I could also use Galatians or Hebrews to make the same point.
Put yourself in the position of the recipient. If the courier arrived with 1 John in hand, would it be appropriate for you to respond by saying, “Sorry, but that’s inadequate! What we really need is some mechanism over and above John’s letter to address the crisis!”?
Continuing with Liccione:
And it seems to me that for the Christian inquirer striving to decide whether to be Catholic or Protestant, the salient question to consider is which approach is rooted in divine precedent. Put yourself in the sandals of a 1C Christian. Even in the age of public revelation we still see Apostles and other NT authors resolving disputes through the written word. Written words which are, in fact, NT Scriptures.
i) I don’t think we reject that as a matter of principle. But that’s a paper theory. Whatever its hypothetical merits, there’s no reason to think it’s true.
ii) Indeed, the church of Rome certainly doesn’t give the appearance of being either infallible or indefectible. Rather, it bears a striking resemblance a shortsighted, uninspired, institution that often makes the wrong call, then has to hastily improvise after the fact to repair the damage as best it can.
iii) For that matter, why is a fallible layman like Michael Liccione lecturing us on the necessity of the Magisterium? If the Magisterium is so indispensable, why does it keep delegating the spadework to fallible flunkies and functionaries Liccione? Is the Magisterium tongue-tied?
However, there’s a problem when you take a philosophical orientation as your theological point of departure. When that’s your starting point, than that’s an abstract starting point. It’s not a starting-pointed grounded in the actual history of God’s providential dealings with the covenant community.
As a result, guys like Liccione aren’t describing anything real. They aren’t describing the life-experience of the covenant community from within, in terms of how the Lord has demonstrably chosen, in word and deed, to govern his people. What we’re getting instead is a hypothetical model of how they’d like the church to be. A utopian theory.
It’s a lovely exercise in make-believe–a pleasant diversion–but it has no tangible connection with OT history, NT history, or church history. Rather, it’s a philosophical hagiographon.
On a related note, this orientation tends to generate a vicious cycle. If you dismiss sola scriptura out of hand because you think it’s antecedently unlikely, then you have no incentive to study the Bible with an eye to discovering (among other things) how God actually administers the covenant community. Having decided in advance that sola Scriptura sows untoward consequences, you don’t look to Bible history for your model of God’s special providence.
So you end up with a perfect circle as you smoothly reason from your a priori premise to your foregone conclusion. Your pristine syllogism is uncontaminated by grubby contact with the real world situation. You never have to take a shower or wash your hands.
Moving along:
“Now the question at issue between us is how to identify the propositionally expressible content of divine revelation so that we can have justified certainty about what that content is.”
http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2009/11/solo-scriptura-sola-scriptura-and-the-question-of-interpretive-authority/#comment-5947
i) Since the Bible itself is a propositional revelation, that’s a rather odd way of framing the issue. He makes it sound as though the Bible is a primarily nonpropositional, and the challenge is to convert the nonpropositional content of Scripture into dogmatic propositions.
ii) Now, I don’t have any particular problem with sometimes trying to re-express the propositional content of Scripture. That’s something we do in creeds, confessions, sermons, commentaries, and so forth. But it’s not as though we’re putting the content of Scripture into proposition form for the very first time. For the most part, the content of Scripture is already expressed in propositional form.
iii) Perhaps, though, he doesn’t regard Scripture, per se, as essentially revelatory. Maybe he thinks the revelatory content of Scripture is buried in some occasional statements here and there, overlaid by many other statements which don’t count as revelation. So the challenge is to dig out the revelatory statements from the nonrevelatory statements. Is that his point? Is a Catholic theologian like an archeologist who must excavate the Bible to unearth the revelatory statements buried beneath all of the nonrevelatory statements?
“That question belongs to the subject matter of theology not physics. And in theology, what settles any particular instance of that question is not a process of experimentation which either confirms or disconfirms a mathematically expressed hypothesis. When reason is employed to settle such questions, the reasoning relies for its premises on sources taken as authorities: Scripture and Tradition. Disputes arise in the first place because there is disagreement about precisely what the relevant, propositionally expressible data drawn from those authorities actually mean.”
That’s one source of theological disputes, but hardly the only source. For example, disputes may arise from willful resistance to unwelcome truths.
“Second, the aim of theological reasoning is to identify the content of divine revelation as an object for the assent of divine faith, by taking a particular construal of the data as one intended by a God who, we agree, can no more deceive than be deceived. Such a God, precisely as Revealer, is infallible. Accordingly, we can be sure that a particular construal of the data in the agreed-upon sources truly expresses divine revelation just in case we can be sure that it accurately expresses what God intends for us to understand through those data. And since we can be sure that what is divinely revealed has ipso facto been set forth infallibly, we can be sure that a particular construal of the sources is divinely revealed just in case we can be sure it has been set forth infallibly. That is why, given the widespread dissensus about such construals, there has to be a way of adjudicating irreformably, and thus infallibly, among them, if the corresponding data are to function as objects of divine faith rather than human opinion.”
i) Of course, the assumption here is that God’s inscripturated word is insufficient by itself to clearly express God’s intentions. Hence, we need some mechanism, over and above Scripture, to identify God’s intentions.
But let’s go back to my example of 1 John. John wrote a pastoral letter, probably to the church of Ephesus, to resolve a crisis in the life of that congregation. John dealt with that crisis by letter because he was either unable or unwilling to deal with it in person.
So the letter itself is designed to adjudicate the crisis–without further recourse to the apostle John. That’s the point of writing a pastoral letter like 1 John. It deals with a crisis by letter when the writer is otherwise occupied or unavailable.
ii) Keep in mind, too, that there are certain benefits to having a written record. Suppose the church of Ephesus had 50 adult members. If John spoke in person, then left, you’d end up with 50 different recollections of what he said. Some recollections would be more accurate than others. But it’s hard to correct one recollection in reference to other. You can compare them, but which ones set the standard?
So it’s obviously useful to have one documentary source, in his own words, which preserves his message. That constitutes an objective reference point which everyone shares in common.
iii) Liccione talks about differing interpretations (“widespread dissensus about such construals”), yet that fails to distinguish between an honest difference of opinion and a willful difference of opinion. For example, I seriously doubt that John’s opponents assented to 1 John. Although it was largely about them, it wasn’t for their benefit. Their acceptance wasn’t expected or required.
“That is what the Magisterium, as the Catholic Church understands it, is for. Otherwise we are left only with fallible human opinons about how to interpret the sources; and since there would be no generally accepted means for adjudicating among them, such opinions are not nearly as helpful as fallible but well-confirmed hypotheses in physics.”
i) Keep in mind that fallible human opinions are under the providential control of God. These are not autonomous variables. An infallible God can work his will through fallible human opinions.
For one thing, to be fallible is not to be in error. Fallibility creates the possibility of error, but it doesn’t create the presumption of error in any particular case. God can guide his church by making sure enough of the faithful are right enough of the time from one generation to the next. That keeps it moving in the right direction.
ii) In the situation of 1 John, where’s the Magisterial adjudicator? Perhaps Liccione would say that John himself plays that role.
And it’s possible that a member of the Ephesian church could contact John with some follow-up questions. But keep in mind that 1 John, itself, was intended to adjudicate the crisis. That’s the chosen instrument which he employed to resolve this particular crisis. That’s the concrete expression of the Johannine “magisterium” (as it were). Not something over and above his letter.
If he thought that was inadequate to deal with the situation, he wouldn’t write a letter in the first place.
“If, as I’ve already argued in this comment, an infallible authority is necessary to adjudicate with the requisite definitiveness among competing interpretations of the sources…”
Yet this assumes that a book of Scripture, like 1 John, lacks the “requisite definitiveness” to do what’s necessary. But is that what John thought of his own letter? Did he think 1 John was unsatisfactory in its own right to accomplish the goal he assigned to it?
I’m using 1 John to illustrate my point. But I could also use Galatians or Hebrews to make the same point.
Put yourself in the position of the recipient. If the courier arrived with 1 John in hand, would it be appropriate for you to respond by saying, “Sorry, but that’s inadequate! What we really need is some mechanism over and above John’s letter to address the crisis!”?
Continuing with Liccione:
“It seems to me, as it did to Newman and has to many others, that for the Christian inquirer striving to decide whether to be Catholic or Protestant, the salient question to consider is which approach to doctrine is best suited to settling hermeneutical disputes as they arise over time.”
And it seems to me that for the Christian inquirer striving to decide whether to be Catholic or Protestant, the salient question to consider is which approach is rooted in divine precedent. Put yourself in the sandals of a 1C Christian. Even in the age of public revelation we still see Apostles and other NT authors resolving disputes through the written word. Written words which are, in fact, NT Scriptures.
“But Protestantism rejects, on principle, the very idea that any visible authority can do the adjudicating definitively and infallibly.”
i) I don’t think we reject that as a matter of principle. But that’s a paper theory. Whatever its hypothetical merits, there’s no reason to think it’s true.
ii) Indeed, the church of Rome certainly doesn’t give the appearance of being either infallible or indefectible. Rather, it bears a striking resemblance a shortsighted, uninspired, institution that often makes the wrong call, then has to hastily improvise after the fact to repair the damage as best it can.
iii) For that matter, why is a fallible layman like Michael Liccione lecturing us on the necessity of the Magisterium? If the Magisterium is so indispensable, why does it keep delegating the spadework to fallible flunkies and functionaries Liccione? Is the Magisterium tongue-tied?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)