The precis is sketchy, but from what I can infer, his thesis would undercut the New Perspective on Paul:
http://upper-register.typepad.com/blog/2011/11/my-sbl-paper-on-november-19-2011.html
http://www.sbl-site.org/meetings/abstract.aspx?id=20918
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
"Sticks and Stones"
A friend in the UK informs me about a film pitch that his friend in Cambridge has made:
There's a film competition on right now called Enter The Pitch, in which prospective film-makers enter 2 minute pitches of films that are biblically based. Yes you heard right - films based on the bible!BTW, you can view more of Dominic Halford's work here:
My friend Dominic has created a pitch called "Sticks and Stones" for a historical comedy taking place in post-Exodus times, during the wanderings of God's chosen people in the wilderness. He's created a 2 minute cartoon that uses silhouettes against a stark orange background to portray characters and their actions in the orange-colored desert, I think it's quite funny and also pretty stylistic - there's also a cool voice over.
There are a total of 40 different pitches and you can view them on this website: http://www.enterthepitch.com
Dominic's pitch (Sticks and Stones) is number 309. There's a total of 40 pitches that made it into the long-list and if you register your details you can vote for three of them. Before you can vote, you need to have completely watched 6 pitches. There are some pretty exciting stories in there.
Anyway, if you're interested it would be nice if you could check out Dominic's pitch and vote for it if you'd like to see the full film made - remember it's number 309 and you need to register first before you vote. Voting closes on 30th November 2011.
The Roman Catholic Hermeneutic
It’s important to understand, when Catholics and Protestants approach a given topic in Scripture or in history, they approach things in different ways. And it’s this difference, often unspoken, that often renders the subsequent discussions so maddening. You’ll hear things like “You have your interpretation, I have mine”. But what are these “interpretations” based upon?
This blog post describes what I’ve called “the Roman Catholic Hermeneutic,” and once you understand how this principle works, you can locate it anywhere. Any time you’re discussing Scripture with Roman Catholics, look for this method.
For Protestants, understanding begins with exegesis, and exegesis begins with a patient and humble listening to the text, with the willingness to hear an alien word,” according to Thomas Schreiner (citing “Romans,” from the Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament” series, pg. 2). “We are all prone to read our own conceptions into the text. Thus our first task is simply to see what the text actually says.” The Protestant seeks to understand what God is genuinely saying, through his Revelation in Scripture, from start to finish. The Protestant is concerned to track “what God’s people knew, and when they knew it,” and in the process, to understand what God revealed of himself over time, and finally in His Son, as is witnessed by the New Testament.
The Roman Catholic approaches Scriptures in a different way. Rather than trying to understand the text, and then allowing it to speak its word, the Roman Catholic starts with modern Roman doctrine, and then uses Biblical texts in such a way that they can seemingly provide support for those doctrines. We can and do call it “proof-texting” – pouring Roman Catholic “interpretations” back into “proof-texts”. In many cases, this means taking a verse that has nothing at all to do with Roman Catholicism, but nevertheless hijacking it, frequently contrary to its original meaning, and using it to support Roman Catholicism.
I’ve already outlined, in my post on The righteousness of God, how, early in church history, Augustine, who did not understand the Hebrew concepts of the Old Testament, substituted for those concepts a “popular culture” understanding of “righteousness”. Subsequently, the “infallible Church” wrote Augustine’s lack of understanding into an “infallible” dogma of “justification” at Trent.
That was a seminal example of how Roman Catholicism simply misunderstands something, dogmatizes it, and then looks for further support of its errors. One might call it a “twisting” of the Scriptures. Do you think I’m being overly harsh with this? Look at what some leading Roman Catholics have to say about this “method”.
Joseph Ratzinger, before he was pope, in his 1990 work Called to Communion invokes “the internal continuity of the Church’s memory” as “the standard for judging what is to be considered historically and objectively accurate”.
This Roman Catholic hermeneutical method – “the mind of the church” – is well described by popes and scholars. It is, in fact, a blatant form of revisionism.
Pius IX’s articulated this method in his Letter, “Gravissimas inter,” to the Archbishop of Munich-Freising, Dec. 11, 1862. Pius XII cited and reiterated this in his statement in Humani Generis: “theologians must always return to the sources of divine revelation: for it belongs to them to point out how the doctrine of the living Teaching Authority is to be found either explicitly or implicitly in the Scriptures and in Tradition.”
This is further explained in a variety of sources. One Roman Catholic theologian wrote, “We think first of developed forms for which we need to find historical justification. The developed forms come first and the historical justification comes second.” (“Ways of Validating Ministry,” Kilian McDonnell, Journal of Ecumenical Studies (7), pg. 213, cited in Carlos Alfredo Steger, “Apostolic Succession in the Writings of Yves Congar and Oscar Cullmann, pg. 322.) Steger calls this type of historical revisionism “highly questionable if not inadmissible.”
Aiden Nichols, “The Shape of Catholic Theology” (253) notes that for the last several hundred years, according to these popes, “the theologian’s highest task lies in proving the present teachings of the magisterium from the evidence of the ancient sources.” One internet writer called this method “Dogma Appreciation 101” (related in a discussion of his studies in a Catholic seminary.) Nichols calls this, “the so-called regressive method,” and notes that Walter Kasper (now a Cardinal) has traced the origins of this method to the 18th century.
Roman Catholicism is a “big tent”, and you’ll find all kinds of nonsense in it. But in this feature that I call “the Roman Catholic Hermeneutic”, the method outlined here of revisionism, of “reading back in” something that is not there, is major.
Next time I’ll describe a particular example of this from comments that appeared below.
This blog post describes what I’ve called “the Roman Catholic Hermeneutic,” and once you understand how this principle works, you can locate it anywhere. Any time you’re discussing Scripture with Roman Catholics, look for this method.
For Protestants, understanding begins with exegesis, and exegesis begins with a patient and humble listening to the text, with the willingness to hear an alien word,” according to Thomas Schreiner (citing “Romans,” from the Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament” series, pg. 2). “We are all prone to read our own conceptions into the text. Thus our first task is simply to see what the text actually says.” The Protestant seeks to understand what God is genuinely saying, through his Revelation in Scripture, from start to finish. The Protestant is concerned to track “what God’s people knew, and when they knew it,” and in the process, to understand what God revealed of himself over time, and finally in His Son, as is witnessed by the New Testament.
The Roman Catholic approaches Scriptures in a different way. Rather than trying to understand the text, and then allowing it to speak its word, the Roman Catholic starts with modern Roman doctrine, and then uses Biblical texts in such a way that they can seemingly provide support for those doctrines. We can and do call it “proof-texting” – pouring Roman Catholic “interpretations” back into “proof-texts”. In many cases, this means taking a verse that has nothing at all to do with Roman Catholicism, but nevertheless hijacking it, frequently contrary to its original meaning, and using it to support Roman Catholicism.
I’ve already outlined, in my post on The righteousness of God, how, early in church history, Augustine, who did not understand the Hebrew concepts of the Old Testament, substituted for those concepts a “popular culture” understanding of “righteousness”. Subsequently, the “infallible Church” wrote Augustine’s lack of understanding into an “infallible” dogma of “justification” at Trent.
That was a seminal example of how Roman Catholicism simply misunderstands something, dogmatizes it, and then looks for further support of its errors. One might call it a “twisting” of the Scriptures. Do you think I’m being overly harsh with this? Look at what some leading Roman Catholics have to say about this “method”.
Joseph Ratzinger, before he was pope, in his 1990 work Called to Communion invokes “the internal continuity of the Church’s memory” as “the standard for judging what is to be considered historically and objectively accurate”.
This Roman Catholic hermeneutical method – “the mind of the church” – is well described by popes and scholars. It is, in fact, a blatant form of revisionism.
Pius IX’s articulated this method in his Letter, “Gravissimas inter,” to the Archbishop of Munich-Freising, Dec. 11, 1862. Pius XII cited and reiterated this in his statement in Humani Generis: “theologians must always return to the sources of divine revelation: for it belongs to them to point out how the doctrine of the living Teaching Authority is to be found either explicitly or implicitly in the Scriptures and in Tradition.”
This is further explained in a variety of sources. One Roman Catholic theologian wrote, “We think first of developed forms for which we need to find historical justification. The developed forms come first and the historical justification comes second.” (“Ways of Validating Ministry,” Kilian McDonnell, Journal of Ecumenical Studies (7), pg. 213, cited in Carlos Alfredo Steger, “Apostolic Succession in the Writings of Yves Congar and Oscar Cullmann, pg. 322.) Steger calls this type of historical revisionism “highly questionable if not inadmissible.”
Aiden Nichols, “The Shape of Catholic Theology” (253) notes that for the last several hundred years, according to these popes, “the theologian’s highest task lies in proving the present teachings of the magisterium from the evidence of the ancient sources.” One internet writer called this method “Dogma Appreciation 101” (related in a discussion of his studies in a Catholic seminary.) Nichols calls this, “the so-called regressive method,” and notes that Walter Kasper (now a Cardinal) has traced the origins of this method to the 18th century.
Roman Catholicism is a “big tent”, and you’ll find all kinds of nonsense in it. But in this feature that I call “the Roman Catholic Hermeneutic”, the method outlined here of revisionism, of “reading back in” something that is not there, is major.
Next time I’ll describe a particular example of this from comments that appeared below.
Monday, November 14, 2011
The New Testament on the Future Salvation of Israel
JESUS
“(37) “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those who are sent to you! How often I have longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you would have none of it! (38) Look, your house is left to you desolate! (39) For I tell you, you will not see me from now until you say, ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!’”” (Matt 23:37–39)
“They will fall by the edge of the sword and be led away as captives among all nations. Jerusalem will be trampled down by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.” (Luke 21:24)
JAMES
“(14) Simeon has explained how God first concerned himself to select from among the Gentiles a people for his name. (15) The words of the prophets agree with this, as it is written, (16) ‘After this I will return, and I will rebuild the fallen tent of David; I will rebuild its ruins and restore it” (Acts 15:14–16; Cf. Acts 1:6–7).
PAUL
“(25) For I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers and sisters, so that you may not be conceited: A partial hardening has happened to Israel until the full number of the Gentiles has come in. (26) And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written: “The Deliverer will come out of Zion; he will remove ungodliness from Jacob. (27) And this is my covenant with them, when I take away their sins.”” (Rom 11:25–27)
“(37) “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those who are sent to you! How often I have longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you would have none of it! (38) Look, your house is left to you desolate! (39) For I tell you, you will not see me from now until you say, ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!’”” (Matt 23:37–39)
“They will fall by the edge of the sword and be led away as captives among all nations. Jerusalem will be trampled down by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.” (Luke 21:24)
JAMES
“(14) Simeon has explained how God first concerned himself to select from among the Gentiles a people for his name. (15) The words of the prophets agree with this, as it is written, (16) ‘After this I will return, and I will rebuild the fallen tent of David; I will rebuild its ruins and restore it” (Acts 15:14–16; Cf. Acts 1:6–7).
PAUL
“(25) For I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers and sisters, so that you may not be conceited: A partial hardening has happened to Israel until the full number of the Gentiles has come in. (26) And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written: “The Deliverer will come out of Zion; he will remove ungodliness from Jacob. (27) And this is my covenant with them, when I take away their sins.”” (Rom 11:25–27)
Leaving by the back door
steve hays November 9, 2011 at 1:38 pm #
Stephen
“Jim,Thus, if I may be blunt, I think people like you and Al Mohler deserve much blame when (for example) I see Christians walk away from Jesus in college because they learned X, Y, or Z traditional belief about the Bible, Biblical History, etc., may not have been what they were taught.”
There’s more than one way to walk away from the faith. Another way is to treat everything in Christian theology as optional. You may continue to go through the motions, attending church, keeping up appearances, but psychologically you already left the faith behind. What remains is just a shell.
You can leave the faith by the backdoor as well as the front door.
steve hays November 9, 2011 at 1:53 pm #
Gabe
“They are simply looking at the data and deriving a conclusion that best fits the facts. And the data gives absolutely no evidence of an orginal pair of human beings who lived 6000 years ago and from whom all humanity descended. No amount of further studying the data will lead to this conclusion either.”
That’s philosophically naive. Science has a default assumption about the uniformity of nature. All things being equal, science presumes continuity. Natural processes happen at a given rate.
But science itself is constantly messing with nature. A lot of modern technology introduces a counterflow dynamic into the process to yield a different result. Agents interacting with nature can alter the outcome.
Likewise, drawing inferences from the presumptive state of the gene pool over time involves suppositions regarding the rate of genetic drift. But that, itself, is not an evidentiary datum.
Some of the commenters sound like the wilderness generation. That generation didn’t take divine agency seriously. They expected things to happen the way things normally happen.
steve hays November 9, 2011 at 2:40 pm #
Gabe
“Adam and Eve didn’t exist, the story is a myth, period.”
Gabe is wrong, period. See how easy that was?
“What’s more probable, that all these scientists and vast accumulated knowledge are wrong…”
If you’re still discussing genomics, then we don’t have vast accumulated knowledge of genomics. That’s a fairly recent, very fluid scientific discipline.
If you’re discussing macroevolution, then “all scientists” don’t agree.
“…or that an ancient creation story is wrong?”
What’s more likely–that fallible scientists attempting to reconstruct the past from trace evidence and methodological naturalism are wrong, or the Creator telling us what he did?
“Believing in a literal Adam and Eve is almost on par with believing in a flat earth in the face of contradicting evidence.”
Once again, you’re just like a member of the wilderness generation. You don’t make allowance for divine agency. For you, God’s presence is indistinguishable from his absence.
steve hays November 9, 2011 at 2:48 pm #
More likely that (some) scientists are wrong.
steve hays November 9, 2011 at 2:51 pm #
Gabe
“Wrong, there is already a vast amount of knowledge accumulated.”
You have a habit of substituting adjectives for arguments. You pay lip-service to the “evidence,” but defend your position with one-liners.
steve hays November 9, 2011 at 3:03 pm #
i) To begin with, that’s not my entire argument, is it? I’ve also presented some philosophical arguments which you simply disregard–because you have no counterargument.
ii) And if there’s good evidence to believe in the inspiration of Scripture, then that authorizes whatever Scripture teaches.
And, of course, there are arguments for the inspiration of Scripture.
steve hays November 9, 2011 at 4:16 pm #
There are many objections to macroevolution. It isn’t just Genesis.
Moreover, if you’re concerned about intellectual honesty, it should concern you that according to naturalistic evolution, your intellect is the byproduct of a mindless process.
“But that’s what it all boils down to. Without the book of Gensis do you really think anyone would be saying we all descended from two humans 6,000 years ago? That conclusion is the result of reading the story and then trying to twist all the data to conform. That’s intellectual dishonesty.”
I haven’t said anything about chronology one way or the other. But since you keep harping on the issue, there’s no direct evidence for the age of the world. All we really have is a current ongoing process. We can hypothetically run the clock backwards from the present to a hypothetical point of origin.
Yet that’s like taking the period set of Clint Eastwood’s Pale Rider and retrojecting a backstory. But there’s nothing that actually corresponds to the backstory. The story doesn’t go back any further than where the movie begins–some time in the 19C. There is no time before the movie begins. That’s the actual point of origin, even though you could hypothetically run the clock back in “time” to hypothetical past characters.
steve hays November 10, 2011 at 4:30 pm #
Gabe
“You can’t even address the mechanism used to determine the age of the earth, fossils, etc. If you actually studied it you would realize you are wrong in your assumption. Try again.”
You just never get it, do you? My assumptions (whatever they may be) are not the question at issue. Rather, what’s at issue are the unprovable assumptions feeding into the “mechanism” used to determine the age of earth, fossils, &c. Unless and until you can mount an actual argument to the contrary, you’re spinning your wheels and kicking up mud. Try again.
steve hays November 10, 2011 at 6:37 pm #
How bout you presenting something that resembles an actual argument for a change?
As far as reading goes, I own The Bible, Rocks, and Time: Geological Evidence for the Age of the Earth by Davis Young and Ralph Stearley. This is a 500pp defense of the antiquity of the earth, with a full rundown of all the conventional dating techniques. So it would behoove not to impute your ignorance to me, since that merely makes you look doubly ignorant.
steve hays November 11, 2011 at 12:59 pm #
Don Johnson
“You have formed a cocoon that allows you to play a game of solipsism. Why do you think this brings glory to God?”
You have made a tendentious assertion in lieu of a reasoned argument. Why do you think this brings glory to God?
Parable of the Good Capitalist
A businessman was going down from the Upper East Side to Wall Street, when he fell among regulators and tax collectors, who stripped him–taking his billfold, his Rolex, and his cufflinks, then departed–leaving him penniless.
Now by chance a Democrat was going down that road, and when he saw him he fined the businessman for lying on the sidewalk without a permit. So likewise a community activist, when he came to the place and saw him, shouted: “Serves him right! He’s the 1%!”
But a capitalist, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, apprehended the assailants and restored the man’s belongings.
Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the businessman who fell among regulators and tax collectors?
Feeding the beast
Reppert’s trying to make a case for Obama’s reelection.
Do you think the problem of debt could be made better by asking the wealthiest 1% to pay more in taxes?
No I don’t.
i) For one thing, while we have a few billionaires and multibillionaires in the US, we have no trillionaires or multitrillionaires. Yet the unfunded liabilities of Social Security and Medicare alone run into trillions upon trillions of debt.
ii) For another thing, as long as gov’t can open a new vein of “revenue,” it has no incentive to worry about the national debt.
Jesus taught that the rich have a responsibility to help the poor, and sometimes he suggests that they are going to hell for failing to do so.
i) First of all, this isn’t a case of the rich giving to the poor, but the rich giving to the gov’t. Notice Reppert’s bait-n-switch.
Gov’t takes from the rich and gives to voting blocks, or pet projects (e.g. “green” technology).
ii) Do social programs actually help the poor?
iii) Reppert is alluding to Mt 25, which he misinterprets.
Shouldn't the teachings of Jesus be reflected in the tax code?
One source of poverty in the Roman Empire was oppressive taxation:
(92) Moreover let the governors of cities cease to oppress them with continual and excessive taxes and tributes, filling their own stores with money, and in preserving as a treasure the illiberal vices which defile their whole lives; (93) for they do, on purpose, select as collectors of their revenues the most pitiless of men, persons full of all kinds of inhumanity, giving them abundant opportunity for the exercise of their covetousness; and they, in addition to their own innate severity of temper, receiving free license from the commands of their masters, and having determined to do everything so as to please them, practice all the harshest measures which they can imagine, having no notion of gentleness or humanity, not even in their dreams; (94) therefore they throw everything into disorder and confusion, levying their exactions, not only on the possessions of the citizens, but also on their persons, with insults and violence, and the invention of new and unprecedented torture.
(159) Not long ago a certain man who had been appointed a collector of taxes in our country, when some of those who appeared to owe such tribute fled out of poverty, from a fear of intolerable punishment if they remained without paying, carried off their wives, and their children, and their parents, and their whole families by force, beating and insulting them, and heaping every kind of contumely and ill treatment upon them, to make them either give information as to where the fugitives had concealed themselves, or pay the money instead of them, though they could not do either the one thing or the other; in the first place, because they did not know where they were, and secondly, because they were in still greater poverty than the men who had fled. (160) But this tax-collector did not let them go till he had tortured their bodies with racks and wheels, so as to kill them with newly invented kinds of death, fastening a basket full of sand to their necks with cords, and suspending it there as a very heavy weight, and then placing them in the open air in the middle of the market place, that some of them, being tortured and being overwhelmed by all these afflictions at once, the wind, and the sun, and the mockery of the passers by, and the shame, and the heavy burden attached to them, might faint miserably; and that the rest, being spectators, might be grieved and take warning by their punishment, (161) some of whom, having a more acute sense of such miseries in their minds than that which they could receive though their eyes, since they sympathized with these unfortunates as if they were themselves suffering in the persons of others, put an end to their own lives by swords, or poison, or halters, thinking it a great piece of good luck for persons, liable to such misery, to be able to meet with death without torture. (162) But those who did not make haste to kill themselves, but who were seized before they could do so, were led away in a row, as in the case of actions for inheritance, according to their nearness of kindred, the nearest relations first, then those next to them in succession, in the second or third place, till they came to the last; and then, when there were no relations left, the cruelty proceeded on to the friends and neighbors of the fugitives; and sometimes it was extended even into the cities and villages, which soon became desolate, being emptied of all their inhabitants, who all quitted their homes, and dispersed to places where they hoped that they might escape detection. (163) But perhaps it is not wonderful if men, barbarians by nature, utterly ignorant of all gentleness, and under the command of despotic authority, which compelled them to give an account of the yearly revenue, should, in order to enforce the payment of the taxes, extend their severities, not merely to properties but also to the persons, and even to the lives, of those from whom they thought they could exact a vicarious payment.
It’s therefore ironic that Reppert is citing poverty in the 1C as a pretext to raise taxes when, in fact, slashing taxes in the 1C would have contributed to general prosperity. Emperors couldn’t squander all that tax revenue on fancy building projects or military conquest.
Who Would Jesus Tax?
One problem I have with that hypothetical is the way this counterfactual Jesus invariably mirrors the political views of Jim Wallis, Ron Sider, Victor Reppert et al. What a coincidence!
You can't, as a Christian, say that the wealthy are wealthy because they deserve to be…
Why not? If they earn it, don’t they deserve it?
...or that a system that helps the rich get rich and allows the poor to get poorer is acceptable.
So we shouldn’t allow the poor to get poorer? Suppose a man is poor because he’s a compulsive gambler. Should we not allow him to gamble? It’s his money. Shouldn't the gov't assign a team of minders to follow him around?
But it does seem that if you accept the laissez-faire argument, you can't turn around and back out of use the government to help your favorite industry. You can't oppose welfare and the support corporate welfare.
Of course, that’s equivocal. That’s not a gov’t giveaway. It’s merely “helping” industry by not impeding industry. By letting businessmen keep more of what they make. By not suffocating business through excessive regulation. For instance:
IF the government is going to help someone, it has to be the people on the bottom.
This assumes we help people at the bottom by raising taxes. That begs the question.
What I especially dislike is the kind of cafeteria conservativism that appeals to conservative principle so long as they serve the purposes of the big businesses that fund Republican campaigns. But that is what usually happens when you elect conservative candidates.
What I especially dislike is the kind of cafeteria liberalism that appeals to liberal principle so long as they serve the purposes of the trial lawyers and labor unions that fund Democrat campaigns. But that is what usually happens when you elect liberal candidates.
At present, businesses have no incentive to create jobs in America. In fact the tax code actually supports outsourcing.
Which is why we should have a business-friendly tax code.
When I was growing up, and Barry Goldwater was my senator, I learned that one thing conservatives were concerned about was budget deficits.
Well, that isn’t the only thing conservatives should be concerned about. There’s more than one thing that should concern conservatives. For that matter, Goldwater was quite the hawk.
They have returned to the charge in response to Obama's budget deficits. However, this is an article written in Business Week in 2004 chronicling the disappearance of deficit hawks from the Republican Party in the Bush years.
It’s easy to Google conservative attacks on Bush’s budget. But it’s not as if Al Gore offered a more fiscally responsible alternative. Remember his acceptance speech? It was a stocking stuffer of gov’t goodies:
On the highest levels people don't earn money from work, they earn money from investments. Unearned income is taxed at 15%, which is a lower rate than what it taxed for the money you work for. Why is this?
Why should I get taxed less for gambling? If I win money in Vegas, I still have to pay taxes.
i) To begin with, investment income is already double taxed. It’s your taxable income that purchases stocks, bonds, real estate, &c. Then you’re taxed on what you make. (Not to mention paying sales tax and property taxes on real estate.)
ii) And, of course, investment is risky. You may make a killing or lose your shirt.
Sunday, November 13, 2011
God Doesn't Care Whether You Vote For George Washington Or Adolf Hitler
I just listened to one of Greg Koukl's radio programs from 2004. It aired shortly before the election that year. He was addressing the topic "Is God Neutral In The Election?". The discussion starts at the beginning of the second hour of the program, about halfway through the audio here. He's responding to a Sojourners ad about whether God is a Republican or Democrat. Koukl makes some good points against the ridiculous, but common, notion that it's inappropriate to say that God would want us to vote for one party or candidate rather than another.
There's a talk show on a Christian radio station in my area that portrays itself as somehow non-partisan, even though the hosts probably vote Republican in every election. I wonder if they'd apply their non-partisan approach to, say, the Communist party or Nazi party.
There's a talk show on a Christian radio station in my area that portrays itself as somehow non-partisan, even though the hosts probably vote Republican in every election. I wonder if they'd apply their non-partisan approach to, say, the Communist party or Nazi party.
What's a cult?
What’s a cult? Is Mormonism a cult?
It’s often hard to define things. Where Mormonism is concerned, you could begin with a definition of “cult,” then see if that applies to Mormonism.
However, I think that, historically, this procedure is probably backwards. I think the definition of a “cult” arises by process of abstraction from certain religious movements that are treated as paradigm-cases of the thing to be defined. The definition generalizes from those concrete examples. To my knowledge, at the time Christian apologists began to classify the cults, Mormonism was one of the definitive religious movements they had in mind. So, by definition, Mormonism is a cult. Mormonism could only avoid that classification by undergoing radical change.
It’s like asking if Amiens is a gothic cathedral. I suppose you could always begin with a definition. But Amiens is one of the buildings that defines Gothic architecture in the first place.
Over time, this definition is then extended to other, or newer, comparable movements. But this can also result in a rather dated or wooden definition inasmuch as the definition was formulated in reference to certain examples at the time of writing.
Those may furnish an insufficient basis for further extrapolation. If, say, the definition had been formulated a 100 years earlier or later, it might differ in some respects inasmuch as the defining examples might be different.
i) One element in a standard definition is blind allegiance to an authority figure or blind allegiance to institutional authority. This also introduces a psychological dynamic to the definition.
ii) Another element in the standard definition is heresy. But this calls for two qualifications:
a) A heresy is not, itself, a cult. For a heresy is a teaching that denies a fundamental doctrine of the faith, whereas a cult is a sociological phenomenon, viz. a movement with leaders and followers. A cult may mobilize around a heresy, but it has a social identity as well as a theological idenity.
b) In addition, “heresy” is a theological category, but there are secular “cults”–as well as a cultic mindset. Something you can find in sports, politics, science, etc. Perhaps we’d say that’s analogous to certain religious movements.
iii) Finally, I myself am tempted to define a cult as a movement or mentality that either treats unimportant things as all-important or treats all-important things as unimportant.
Orthodoxy in Christology
While I entirely agree that Jewish monotheism was the context of thought within which early christology originated and developed, I think that the relationship of early christology and Jewish monotheism has been profoundly misunderstood. It is vital to work with categories that are appropriate to the texts we are considering, and it seems to me that the category most helpful for characterizing both Jewish monotheism and New Testament christology is that of divine identity. Jewish theology was much more concerned with 'who God is' (divine identity) than with 'what divinity is' (divine nature). Jewish monotheism defined the unique identity of God - what it is that constitutes God the only God - in a number of ways, of which the most prominent are that the God of Israel is the only creator of all things and the only sovereign ruler of all things. These were ways of distinguishing the one God absolutely from all other reality. The exclusive worship of only this one God was the appropriate way of recognizing his unique identity. When we read the New Testament with these ways of characterizing the unique identity of the God of Israel in view, it becomes very clear that the New Testament writings use precisely these uniquely divine characteristics to include Jesus within the unique identity of the God of Israel. When Jesus is pictured as seated at God's right hand on the cosmic throne in heaven from which God exercises his sovereign rule over all things, Jesus is being included in the unique divine identity. It is not that Jesus is exercising a divine function which God may delegate to someone other than God. Sovereignty over all things is a uniquely divine relationship to the world and belongs to who God is.
Similarly, and even more unambiguously, when the New Testament portrays the preexistent Christ participating in God's work of Creation, there could be no clearer way, in Jewish theological terms, of claiming that Jesus belongs - eternally - to the unique identity of the one God, the God of Israel, the Creator and Ruler of all things. This is why early Christians worshipped Jesus without supposing that they were abandoning Jewish monotheism. In terms of the definition of Jewish monotheism, the worship of Jesus as included in the unique divine identity made sense, whereas the worship of Jesus as someone other than God, to whom God merely delegated divine functions, would have been idolatry and effectively polytheism. Early Christianity remained monotheistic precise because it attributed divinity in the fullest (and only true) sense to Jesus, not because it made Jesus some kind of lesser divinity distinguished from God.
From this perspective all christology in the New Testament is equally 'high' since at least Jesus' status as exalted to the divine throne of the universe - the symbol of God's uniqueness - is everywhere presupposed and in this basic sense the New Testament writings share a common christology. Against the background of twentieth-century study of New Testament christology, I find rather astonishing to be able to say that, from Pentecost onwards, there was never a stage at which Christians did not consider Jesus to share in the unique divine identity, but I think this is true. In the New Testament there is christological development in the sense of drawing out the implications of this, but there is no development from 'low' to 'high' christology. New Testament christology is already the highest possible christology - but developed and expounded in Jewish theological terms. What made the difference for the Fathers was, first, a context in Hellenistic philosophy which highlighted divine nature rather than divine identity, and, secondly, the temptation to understand monotheism in a non-Jewish way, such that the uniqueness of the one God (the Father) could be maintained by attributing subordinate divinity to Christ.
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Debunking apostasy
Apostates from Christianity proudly view themselves as freethinkers. It's ironic, in this regard, to see how stereotypical their deconversion stories are:
The apostate typically represents himself having been introduced to his former allegiance at a time when he was especially vulnerable — depressed, isolated, lacking social or financial support, alienated from his family, or some other such circumstance. His former associates are now depicted as having prevailed upon him by false claims, deceptions, promises of love, support, enhanced prospects, increased well-being, or the like. In fact, the apostate story proceeds, they were false friends, seeking only to exploit his goodwill, and extract from him long hours of work without pay, or whatever money or property he possessed.
Thus, the apostate presents himself as “a brand plucked from the burning,” as having been not responsible for his actions when he was inducted into his former religion, and as having “come to his senses” when he left. Essentially, his message is that “given the situation, it could have happened to anyone.” They are entirely responsible and they act with malice aforethought against unsuspecting, innocent victims. By such a representation of the case, the apostate relocates responsibility for his earlier actions, and seeks to reintegrate with the wider society which he now seeks to influence, and perhaps to mobilize, against the religious group which he has lately abandoned.
Neither the objective sociological researcher nor the court of law can readily regard the apostate as a creditable or reliable source of evidence. He must always be seen as one whose personal history predisposes him to bias with respect to both his previous religious commitment and affiliations, the suspicion must arise that he acts from a personal motivation to vindicate himself and to regain his self-esteem, by showing himself to have been first a victim but subsequently to have become a redeemed crusader. As various instances have indicated, he is likely to be suggestible and ready to enlarge or embellish his grievances to satisfy that species of journalist whose interest is more in sensational copy than in a objective statement of the truth.
Professor Bryan Ronald Wilson is the reader Emeritus in Sociology at the University of Oxford.
http://www.humanrights-germany.org/experts/eng/wilson01.pdf
http://www.humanrights-germany.org/experts/eng/wilson01.pdf
Papal succession
Don't be decoyed by that bogus Roman list. Here's the true papal succession:
http://www.copticchurch.net/topics/synexarion/popes-of-alexandria-chron.html
http://www.copticchurch.net/topics/synexarion/popes-of-alexandria-chron.html
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