Spies like us

What causes someone to betray his country? I have in mind the so-called Cambridge Five, viz. Kim Philby, Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt, John Cairncross, Victor Rothschild.

The Cambridge Five was, in turn, a subset of The Cambridge Apostles.

I find this question interesting for a number of reasons. I lived through the second half of the Cold War. My parents were contemporaries of the Cambridge Five. I grew up on Cold War spy thrillers like The Quiller Memorandum; The Manchurian Candidate; Smiley’s People; Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; The Spy Who Came In from the Cold.

In addition, there are parallels between the Cambridge Five and the American liberal establishment. Indeed, our current president has a Bolshevik philosophy.

What factors might predispose a man to betray his country? Are there any common denominators?

We might begin by turning the question around: “Why would most folks never consider becoming traitors?”

Offhand I can think of three reasons:

i) There’s a generic reason. They’d have too much to lose if they were caught. This is what deters many people from committing serious crimes.

ii) In addition, some people think it would be morally wrong.

iii) Finally, I suspect most folks wouldn’t do so because they are emotionally invested in their country. They identify with their nationality. That’s who they are. They love their country. They love their countrymen.

Kim Philby rationalized his treason by saying “that in order to betray, one must first belong,” while Blunt quoted E. M. Forster: “If I have to choose between betraying my country or betraying a friend, I hope I would have the guts to betray my country.”

Of course, these are excuses which try to ennoble their perfidy. So we have to take that with a grain of salt.

But it may also contain a grain of truth. For both these statements reflect a degree of detachment or alienation. And the sentiment must be sincere to some degree, for if it’s scarcely conceivable that they’d sell out their countrymen unless they felt, at some level, that they didn’t belong.

Of course, for normal people, Forster’s dilemma a false dichotomy. Your country isn’t just some abstraction, over against your friends. For instance, if you’re American, your friends and relatives are typically American–unless you’re an immigrant.

A country is many things: a history, culture, geography, and people. And that’s part of our socialization. It shapes who we are. If we grew up in a different country, we’d turn out somewhat differently.

That’s why many entertainers who have an international career retire to their native land. They retain that fundamental attachment.

We also need to draw another distinction. Some Germans thought Marlene Dietrich was a traitor because she sided with the Allies. But I expect Dietrich thought the Nazis and their sycophants (e.g. Leni Riefenstahl) were the real traitors. She probably thought of herself as a loyal German–just as members of the French Resistance viewed themselves as the true patriots, while they viewed Vichy officials and other collaborators as the real Quislings.

In that sense, love of country is sometimes consistent with fighting against your country, but that doesn’t involve a rejection of your country. Rather, that’s a case of ousting foreign invaders. A Reconquista.

That, however, is not the outlook of the Cambridge Five. To my knowledge, these are the overlapping factors:

Boarding school

They were all sent to those notorious all-male boarding schools at an early age. As such, they didn’t have a normal social life, growing up in a family, with their mother, father, and siblings. Rather, this was severely disrupted during their formative years. And their social isolation undoubtedly retarded their emotional maturation. The normal social bonding that occurs in childhood.

Immorality

Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt were homosexual. Moreover, the Cambridge Five moved in a social circle where that was more common, viz. Forster, Keynes, Turing, Wittgenstein. A homosexual subculture.

Homosexual existence is lonely and self-alienating. It’s not at all like making a life with a woman. Having that to come back to after working outside the home, or returning from a trip.

Not like going to see your son play football at the local high school. It’s not emotionally rooted in your family and community.

Conversely, Kim Philby and Donald Maclean were heterosexual roués. That, too, reflects emotional restlessness. A lack of domestic stability. Inability to grow up and settle down.

Academia

As alumni of Ivy-League prep schools and universities, moral and intellectual snobbery is a powerful temptation. To view yourself as the best and the brightest. A breed apart. Look down on working-class and middle-class values. Disdain ordinary God-fearing churchgoers.

And elitism requires an ideology to distinguish itself from the unwashed masses.

Atheism

The Cambridge Five were Marxists. And they moved in social circles (the Cambridge Apostles, the Bloomsbury Group) where atheism was fashionable.

Atheism has a different honor code. Disdaining conventional morality and piety.

For instance, Philby was apparently a true believer in Marxism. A convinced ideologue. And that, in turn, generated the paradox of the ruthless idealist. A man sending colleagues to their death for the greater glory of the enemy regime.

For some reason, Marxism has a magnetic attraction for some men and women. It’s especially appealing if you don’t have to live under it.

There were some disenchanted Marxists, viz. Koestler, Orwell, Dos Passos. But others, like Philby, turned a blind eye to the atrocities.

In addition, atheism has fringe benefits. Debauchery and infidelity are natural allies. Since sodomy and philandery are opposed to Christian ethics, atheism absolves the practioner of annoying guilt feelings. That’s reflected, not merely among the Cambridge Five, but among the Cambridge Apostles and the Bloomsbury Group.

So these seem to be related factors that made it easier for them to double-cross their countrymen.

The sovereignty of God and the “whosoever will” promise

I’m following up on some of the line of questioning that took place in the wake of my blog post “Double Predestination”?.

Several commenters pointed out, for example, that the WCF says: “By the decree of God, for the manifestation of his glory, some men and angels are predestined unto eternal life, and others foreordained to everlasting death” (WCF III.3). And another commenter on the Lutheran thread pointed to a statement that Calvin made in the Institutes:

“By predestination we mean the eternal decree of God by which he determined with himself whatever he wished to happen with regard to every man. All are not created on equal terms, but some are preordained to eternal life, others to eternal damnation; and, accordingly, as each has been created for one or other of these ends, we say that he has been predestined to life or death.” (John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 3:21:5)

I understand about the decrees of God. And I understand that nothing occurs outside of the purview (and outside of the decree) of the Sovereign Lord.

“Double Predestination” is in quotes, however, because that’s not what the teaching is. That terminology is not precise, and it is not helpful in discussion with Lutherans (for example, much less among the Reformed), which I alluded to. Note that the WCF quote uses two different words: “predestined” and “foreordained”. What’s happening in both cases is similar but not precisely interchangeable.

* * *

We have the means and the ability in our day to avoid the kinds of misunderstandings that the early Reformers succumbed to. We have the benefit of hindsight. In many cases, we know precisely where the misunderstandings occurred, and we have the ability to re-frame them in more precise terms. This may not solve all the problems, but it will help to foster discussions that are based on honest disagreements and to avoid having discussions that are informed by prejudices.

And second, we have the Internet, a means by which correct information can be disseminated all over the world, immediately, rather than, as was the case in the 16th through the 18th centuries, the need to write and publish a pamphlet or book, and the months or years it would take for the knowledge to be disseminated.

I think that’s the case here.


What follows is taken from J.I. Packer’s lecture series, “The English Puritans”, from Lecture 5, “The Bible in Puritan Theology – 1”, beginning at 28:00. I think this is tremendously helpful in understanding “the background of [a] Puritan teaching that needs to be understood” and one that is “rarely understood”.

"Pro-Life Aristotle"

An interview with Christopher Kaczor about his book The Ethics of Abortion: Women's Rights, Human Life, and the Question of Justice.

If anyone is interested in a sample of his work, they could check out "Does Personhood Begin with Conscious Desires?".

The Bible, Protestantism, and the Rise of Natural Science

http://creation.com/review-harrison-bible-protestantism-natural-science

Negotiating Darwin: The Vatican Confronts Evolution

If you didn't know better, you'd almost suspect the One True Church® was devising and revising her policies on the fly:

http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/print/review/601

http://ncse.com/rncse/29/1/review-negotiating-darwin

http://books.google.com/books/about/Negotiating_Darwin.html?id=Q8WrXHnQf8MC

The Darwinian Dilemma

Here are two articles by Sharon Street which make the case that naturalistic evolution undermines moral realism:

Go to her academic page for downloadable versions:

https://files.nyu.edu/jrs477/public/streetpapers.html

1. "A Darwinian Dilemma for Realist Theories of Value," Philosophical Studies 127, no. 1 (January 2006):  109-166.
2.  "Reply to Copp:  Naturalism, Normativity, and the Varieties of Realism Worth Worrying About," Philosophical Issues (a supplement to Noûs), vol. 18 on "Interdisciplinary Core Philosophy," ed. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, 2008.  

The Donum Superadditum, Aquinas, Pseudo-Dionysius, and the false and empty nature of Roman Catholic Tradition

WSC professor of historical theology Scott Clark has put up a post that I think gets to the heart of the disagreement between the Reformers and Rome.

http://heidelblog.net/2012/10/defining-nature-grace-dualism/

To begin to come to some understanding consider these passages from an essay by Herman Bavinck, “Calvin and Common Grace,” trans. Geerhardus Vos The Princeton Theological Review 7 (1909): 437–65, in which he gave an account of his understanding of the differences between the medieval and Reformation churches on the relations between nature and grace. In the medieval period,

The Church, however, is not merely the possessor of supernatural truth; in the second plea it is also the depository and dispenser of supernatural grace. As the Church doctrine is infinitely exalted above all human knowledge and science, so the grace kept and distributed by the Church far transcends nature. It is true this grace is, among other things, gratia medicinal is, but this is an accidental and adventitious quality. Before all else it is gratia elevans, something added to and elevating above nature. As such it entered into the image of God given to Adam before the Fall, and as such it again appears in the restoration to that original state. In view of its adding to exalted nature a supernatural element, it is conceived as something material, enclosed in the sacrament, and as such dispensed by the priest. Thus every man becomes, for his knowledge of supernatural truth and for his reception of supernatural grace, that is, for his heavenly salvation, absolutely dependent on the Church, the priest and the sacrament. Extra ecclesiam null salus.

The most important thing to observe here is that, in this conception, grace elevates nature. Thomas (Aquinas) taught that grace “perfects” nature, that creation is inherently imperfect. It is not that, as the Reformed would say later, creation was created awaiting glorification. It was, rather, that creation was inherently corrupt. As Bavinck wrote,

The world, the state, natural life, marriage and culture are not sinful in themselves; only they are of a lower order, of a secular nature, and unless consecrated by the Church, easily become an occasion for sinning.

Again, the thing to notice is the hierarchical conception of existence. Gradually, through the medieval period, the Western church came to think of the relations between God and man as an ontologically hierarchy with man at the bottom and God at the top.

The whole hierarchical idea is built on the sharp distinction between nature and grace.

This gets at the crux of the issue: “the sharp distinction between nature and grace.” Which, distinction, according to Bavinck, was repudiated by the Reformation.

…the Reformation of the sixteenth century differed from all these attempts in that it not merely opposed the Roman system in its excresences but attacked it internally in the foundations on which it rested and in the principles out of which it had been developed. The Reformation rejected the entire system, and substituted for it a totally different conception of veritias, gratia, and bona opera.

This is an under appreciated element of the Reformation, the reassertion of the distinction between the Creator and the creature. That distinction destroyed the hierarchy and asserted a strict analogy between God and man. According to the Reformation, salvation was no longer to be considered deification, participating in the divine being, or “elevation” but deliverance from wrath, free acceptance by God on the basis of Christ’s righteousness imputed and received through faith (trusting in Christ). Sanctification, conformity to Christ, became the consequence of justification.

This account of the difference between the medieval and Reformation is consistent with the way the Reformed saw the issue.

Thus, for Bavinck, the issue seems to have been two things: a hierarchical ontology (view of being) and the “sharp distinction” (dualism) between nature and grace.

The key difference is this: in the Protestant scheme, the Biblical statement (Gen 1:31) is authoritative: that “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good”. Man, as created, was “very good”.

But in the Roman Catholic scheme, created man was not “good enough”, and a “donum superadditum” (“superadded grace”) needed to be “added”. In the Roman Catholic scheme, in the fall, man only lost this “donum superadditum”. But in the Protestant scheme, there was no “superadded grace” to lose. Man simply became dead in sin.

This “ontological” distinction had some history in the early church.

Another egregious difference, more importantly, that Clark points out, is “the hierarchical conception of existence”. As he says, “gradually, through the medieval period, the Western church came to think of the relations between God and man as an ontologically hierarchy with man at the bottom and God at the top.”

Aquinas relies heavily on this “hierarchy”, which is a neo-Platonic concept, which Aquinas got from a sixth century theologian named “Pseudo-Dionysius”. He is “pseudo” because he tried to portray himself as the first-century Dionysius, a companion of Paul, from Acts 17:34.

Aquinas believed that Pseudo-Dionysius was the real thing, and he relied on him as a source almost as authoritative as Scripture. Such is the vacuous nature of Roman Catholic “Tradition” that it relies so heavily on an imposter, and they didn’t even know it.

I suspect more of this sort of thing will follow.

[Bryan Cross’s name inserted here so it comes up on a Google Alert, and he can try to respond to this one.]

Disproving Carrier

What an atheist with advanced training in math and science thinks of Carrier's new book:

http://irrco.wordpress.com/2012/09/08/a-mathematical-review-of-proving-history-by-richard-carrier/

http://irrco.wordpress.com/2012/09/12/probability-theory-introductio/

http://irrco.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/the-effect-of-error-in-bayess-theorem/

Dennett contra Weinberg

http://bedejournal.blogspot.com/2012/10/dennett-contra-weinberg.html

Ethics, atheism, and the Euthyphro dilemma

I’m going to discuss the Euthyphro dilemma by comparing and contrasting two different atheists on morality. Let’s begin by outlining the nature of the so-called dilemma.

If, on the one hand, God commands or forbids something because it’s right or wrong, then it’s right and wrong apart God. God is not the ultimate source of morality. Rather, God himself is subject to a more ultimate standard.

If, on the other hand, God’s bare command or prohibition is what makes something right or wrong, then good and evil are arbitrary and vacuous. Arbitrary because there’s no underlying rationale for the command or prohibition. And that, in turn, renders good and evil meaningless, for they are consistent with any command or opposing command.

Here is how a prominent atheist states the alleged dilemma, with special emphasis on one horn of the alleged dilemma:

Translated into contemporary terms, the question Socrates is asking is this: Are morally good actions morally good simply in virtue of God’s favoring them? Or does God favor them because they are–independently of his favoring them–morally good?

Divine command theory says that what is good is good only because God has commanded it; there is nothing more to an act’s being good than that God command it.

[According to] divine independence theory, the goodness of an action is a feature that is independent of, and antecedent to God’s willing it.

The two theories differ on what accounts for this congruence. DCT says that it is God’s command that explains why the good acts are good, while DIT says that it is the goodness of the acts that explains why God commanded them.

The way to bring out the difference is to consider a case of an act that we’d all antecedently agree is morally wrong–say, torturing an innocent child. If DCT is correct, then the following counterfactual is true: If God had commanded us to torture innocent children, then it would have been morally right to do so. DIT, however, entails the following: If God had commanded us to torture innocent children, then God would not have been perfectly good.

Only the theorist who believes that right and wrong are independent of God’s commands could have any basis for thinking she or he knows in advance what God would or would not command. If, as DCT says, an act’s being good just consists in its being chosen by God, then there’s nothing about the action in advance of its being chosen or rejected that would enable us to determine what attitude God would take toward it in some other possible world. “Good” for the divine command theorist is synonymous with “commanded by God.” …there is nothing that is inherently good or bad, and thus nothing that explains God’s choosing which acts to endorse and which acts to prohibit.

I doubt that there are many people who really believe DCT. If there were, then there would be fewer interpretive difficulties surrounding those stores in the Bible that depict God commanding actions that we would ordinarily take to be moral atrocities.

The Bible is full of accounts of God’s killing, displacing, or otherwise seriously smiting presumably innocent people who had the misfortune of belonging to a tribe whose leaders had threatened to impede his ambitions for the Israelites…Sometimes, there’s not even a pretext that the doomed people are morally at fault: The only “crime” committed by the Canaanites was living in a land God wanted for his people.

The question can be asked, then, Why ought one to obey God? The fact that this question can be asked, that it’s comprehensible, that it makes sense, is sufficient proof that the mere existence of an all-powerful Creator is not enough to generate a realm of moral fact.

Louise Antony, “Atheist as Perfect Piety,” R. Garcia & N. King, Is Goodness Without God Good Enough?: A Debate on Faith, Secularism, and Ethics (Rowman & Littlefield 2009), 71,72,73,79,80.

Before introducing the second atheist, I’m going to comment on these excerpts:

i) She says torturing an innocent child is something “we’d all antecedently agree is morally wrong.” But as an atheist, she’s in no position to posit that claim. For one thing, it seems to be empirically false. After all, there are people who torture innocent children. Do they think what they are doing is morally wrong?

ii) Furthermore, even if we think it’s morally wrong, that doesn’t make it morally wrong. From an atheistic standpoint, we might say natural selection brainwashed us into cherishing children because that sentiment promotes the survival of the species. But once you become aware of the fact that you were brainwashed, you no longer feel obliged to comply with your conditioning.

iii) In addition, there are secular utilitarians who could propose a scenario in which it’s morally permissible or even obligatory to torture a child. Take a variation on the ticking timebomb scenario. A terrorist won’t divulge the information needed to prevent nuking Chicago unless we torture, or threaten to torture, his child. The harm done to one child is offset by the harm done to thousands of children unless we torture his child. 

iv) She also cites biblical commands which she classifies as “moral atrocities.” But Bible writers didn’t think those were moral atrocities.

v) Furthermore, many cultures, both ancient and modern, commit similar “atrocities.” Do the perpetrators think they are committing “moral atrocities?

So it’s hard for her to come up with any cases “we’d all antecedently agree is morally wrong.”

I’m not being pedantic, here. She’s not entitled to systematically beg the question when illustrating her thesis. She needs to discharge her burden of proof.

vi) She says no pretext for executing the Canaanites is even given. But that’s willfully ignorant. The divine command is not a bare command. It supplies a rationale, implicating the Canaanites in idolatry and immorality.

vii) She also says “there’s nothing about the action in advance of its being chosen or rejected that would enable us to determine what attitude God would take toward it in some other possible world.”

But that confuses the epistemology of ethics with the ontology of ethics. Whether something is good or bad, and whether we know ahead of time whether it’s good or bad are separate issues.

viii) Finally, she makes the eccentric claim the mere ability to ask why we ought to obey God is sufficient proof that the mere existence of an all-powerful Creator is not enough to generate a realm of moral fact.

But that’s confused. At one level we can simply accept the morality of a divine command on the authority of a wise and benevolent God. That’s sufficient reason for us to accept it.

But that doesn’t make the command itself groundless. God can have good reason for what he commands. And knowing that God has a good reason is distinct from knowing what reason he has.

ix) There’s also a difference between moral imperatives and a moral obligation to obey a divine command. We can have a moral obligation to obey a divine command even if the command itself is not a moral imperative.

For instance, God commanding Abraham to leave Ur is not, itself a moral absolute. Rather, God commanded Abraham to leave Ur because Abraham leaving Ur is part of God’s long-range plan to redeem the world. His command is purposeful.

Abraham has a duty to obey God’s command, but not because leaving Ur is intrinsically obligatory. Rather, God has a good reason for command Abraham to leave Ur. And Abraham ought to trust God’s wisdom, even if God didn’t reveal his reason to Abraham.

x) Apropos (ix), that type of obligation sidesteps the Euthyphro dilemma. God’s command to Abraham isn’t arbitrary. Rather, God’s command is explicable in reference to God’s overarching plan (whether or not that explanation is available to Abraham). By the same token, it’s not independent of God.

Let’s now quote another atheist:

If value is tied to life, its content will depend on particular forms of life, and the most salient reasons it gives us will depend, even in a realist conception, on our own form of life. This is how a realist account can accommodate one of the things that make subjectivism seem most plausible, namely the fact that what we find self-evidently valuable is overwhelmingly contingent on the biological specifics of our form of life. Human good and bad depend in the first instance on our natural appetites, emotions, capacities, and interpersonal bonds, If we were more like bees or lions, what seems good to us would be very different, a point that Street emphasizes.

[Quoting Street]: “Imagine, for instance, that we had evolved more along the lines of lions, so that males in relatively frequent circumstances had a strong unreflective evaluative tendency to experience the killing of offspring that were not his own as “demanded” by the circumstances, and so that females, in turn, experienced no strong unreflective tendency to “hold it against” a male when he killed her offspring in such circumstances, on the contrary becoming receptive to his advances soon afterwards.”

T. Nagel, Mind and Cosmos (Oxford 2012), 119.

i) Now what’s striking about this argument is that it could easily be retrofitted to account for many Biblical commands and prohibitions. Instead of blind evolution, we have a Creator God who designed different types of creatures with corresponding appetites, emotions, capacities, and interpersonal bonds. Human obligations would be keyed to human nature–the nature with which God endowed us. Our duties would be engineered into us.

That sidesteps the Euthyphro dilemma, for commands and prohibitions of this kind aren’t good “only” because they are commanded. There is “more to it” than the bare command. Rather, you have an inherent obligation that’s inherent in the nature of the agent. Good for the creature because that’s how the creature was made.

Conversely, this isn’t good apart from God. Rather, it’s contingent on how God designed us.

ii) I’d add that this doesn’t exhaust all types of divine commands. For example, Scripture commands us to be holy because God is holy. What grounds that command is the nested relationship between the divine exemplar and its human exemplification. If God is good–indeed, the summum bonum–then it’s good to be an instance of God’s goodness.

That, too, sidesteps the Euthyphro dilemma. On the one hand this isn’t arbitrary or vacuous. It’s grounded in God’s own nature. But by the same token, it’s not something over and above God himself. 

iii) Likewise, we have a standing obligation to worship God–because God is intrinsically worthy of our worship. That also sidesteps the Euthyphro dilemma. It’s not a good command for the command’s sake. Rather, it’s imbedded in something ultimately greater. We should love the good because it’s good. And God’s goodness is exemplary goodness. There is no higher good, be it possible or actual.

Imagine Joe Biden As Dick Cheney

Something I wrote in another thread:

 

To put things in perspective, ask yourself how the mainstream media and Democrats would have reacted if Dick Cheney had behaved the way Joe Biden did. Or what if a Democratic debate opponent had made points against Cheney like the ones Ryan made against Biden? For example, what if unemployment had been as high under the Bush/Cheney administration as it's been under Obama/Biden? And what if Cheney's Democratic opponent had pointed out to Cheney that unemployment was above 10% in Cheney's hometown (as Ryan did with Biden)? I suspect that the media and Democrats would have made it out to be a great moment in presidential debate history, along the lines of Lloyd Bentsen's comment to Dan Quayle about how he's no John Kennedy. Yet, when Ryan makes the point against Biden, it gets so little attention (at least in the debate coverage I've seen so far). Again, to put this debate in perspective, I think it's helpful to ask yourself what the reaction would have been to Dick Cheney if he had behaved the way Biden did.

Vos on Bavinck

In Dutch Reformed theology you have an intramural debate between infras and supras, as well as those, like Bavinck, who try to steer a middle course. It’s interesting in that regard to read Vos comment on Bavinck’s position in his review, which you can access here:

http://www.biblicaltheology.org/reviews.html

Scroll down to section:

B

And click on:

Gereformeerde Dogmatiek, Volume II (Herman Bavinck)

Go to pages 4-5.

Naturalizing the paranormal

I’m going to comment on a recent post by JD Walters:

http://christiancadre.blogspot.com/2012/09/christianity-and-paranormal.html

First of all, I agree with JD that Christians should take the academic study of the paranormal seriously. For one thing, this has apologetic value. It supplies counterevidence to the common atheistic contention that there’s no point of contact between the enchanted world of the Bible and the disenchanted world we actually inhabit.

Likewise, the paranormal is part of a Christian worldview. Of course, that acknowledgement doesn’t set aside ethical questions regarding participation certain paranormal activities, viz. the occult.

Aside from the benefit of allowing Christians to study parapsychology and comparative religion without fear of the implications for their faith, it can also help us regain a sense of God's presence in everything that happens, not just 'special' events. There is a danger that, if we only view supernatural events as religious, we lose sight of the sacramental reality of the whole world as God's creation. Ultimately, Christianity is not an otherworldly religion. We are not to focus our attention on some spiritual realm, to the neglect of the earthly one. On the contrary, this is the world God cares about and this is the world in which he became flesh. While special visions and other signs and wonders can be uniquely powerful manifestations of God's presence and can be incredibly encouraging, ultimately they will serve their purpose if they turn us back to our everyday lives and activities with a renewed love of God and increased ability to discern His presence everywhere.

There’s a lot of truth to this statement. However, as stated, this represents an overreaction to an equally reactionary alternative. The biblical outlook is both worldly and otherworldly. JD’s position risks deeschatologizing the Christian outlook.

Divine prophecy "involves communication, not merely representation; interpretation, not narration; integration, not fragmentation; moral direction in the present, not manipulation of the future. It preserves freedom; it does not bind people to a predetermined fate. It builds confidence and hope, not insecurity and despair." (pp. 99-100) Prophecy aims fundamentally at moral transformation and is a call to action, not just an announcement of future news stories.

But that oversimplifies the data. Prophecies are not all of a kind. For instance, oracles of judgment tend to be conditional, where one objective is to motivate repentance. (Of course, oracles of judgment can also inculpate the impenitent.)

On the other hand, we wouldn’t want oracles of salvation to be conditional, if that means the prophecy might let us down just when we need it most.

The paranormal needs to be 'naturalized', and understood to be just as much a part of the 'ordinary' world we live in as rocks falling and plants photosynthesizing. In other words, in addition to distinguishing between 'ordinary' and 'extraordinary' or 'special' divine providence, we also need to distinguish between paranormal happenings and divine miracles, the latter being a subset of the former.

If many phenomena formerly thought to be evidence of God's direct intervention instead turn out to be manifestations of 'natural' abilities…

However, I think she is right to call for the naturalization of the paranormal.

i) I’m game for whatever happens to be the best explanation for any given phenomenon. And there’s a temptation to reduce everything to a common explanation. Ever since Aristotle, we like to systematize. Reduce outward variety to an underlying unifying principle. Present a unified explanation.

But that runs the risk of a prescriptive analysis which prejudges and oversimplifies the world.

ii) If, moreover, we classify “divine miracles” as a “subset” of the paranormal, and if we “naturalize” the paranormal as the expression of natural human abilities, then does a miraculous answer to prayer mean that I answered my own prayer? In that case, God didn’t answer my prayer.

iii) The basic problem with Schwebel’s framework, to judge by JD’s exposition, is a false dichotomy, where every paranormal event must either the result of God’s direct action or else the result or our natural paranormal abilities.

But in the Christian worldview, God and man are not the only agents.

iv) This also goes to the definition of the paranormal. In principle, we could say a paranormal event is either the result of the agent’s own ability or else the ability of a secondary agent who empowers the first agent or simply does something to or for another agent.

v) For that matter, even on a “naturalized” paradigm, it doesn’t follow that all humans either have paranormal abilities or the same paranormal abilities. So if a man has a paranormal experience, that could be the result of another man (or agent) exercising his paranormal ability. In fact, even Schwebel seems to draw that basic distinction:

…telepathically induced visions in which the 'signal' comes from the mind of the departed person while the seer supplies the sensory environment and remembered images of the departed, who often appear as the seer remembered them from a previous time.

vi) In addition, this book appears to be an apologia for Catholic miracles, so we need to take that bias into account. That doesn’t mean we can dismiss it out of hand. But the book is apparently designed to legitimate Catholic miracles, as well as explaining their occurrence consistent with rival miracles, by subsuming both under a kind of covering law.

Again, I haven’t read the book. I’m just bouncing off of JD’s summary.

Who won the debate?

I didn’t watch the Veep debate. Veep debates are a sideshow. To judge by the pundits, conservatives were somewhat disappointed by the debate. They were expecting Ryan to trounce Biden. But Biden apparently dominated the debate. He muscled his way to the front of the line by throwing sharp elbows. At least, that’s what the pundits indicate (not having seen it myself).

In a campaign debate, there are two ways to judge the winner:

i) You can judge the winner on the merits. Which candidate gave the best answers? Had the better of the argument? Had the best command of the facts? Had the facts on his side?

ii) However, campaign debates are just a temporary means to an end. The objective of the debate is to influence voters to elect your candidate.

By that measure it’s hard to say who won the debate, because you’re not judging for yourself, based on the merits, but trying to guess the impression it made on swing voters. In theory, pollsters might be able to tell us who won the debate, but, of course, the polls have been dubious in this election cycle because they oversample Democrats.

It may be that many swing voters found Biden’sboorish antics off-putting. Or it may make no difference. According to conventional wisdom, voters vote for the top of the ticket. 

“Double Predestination”?

I’ve been taking part in a Reformed and Lutheran discussion group that was started by occasional Triablogue commenter Andrew Clover. One of the Lutheran commenters there brought up the question of “double predestination”.

But the concept of “double predestination” does not exist in Reformed doctrine. It is merely a caricature of the Reformed position.

Bavinck on Justification and Adoption and Perseverance and Assurance

Jason Stellman asks (118):

I am asking how you, John Bugay, would reconcile your insistence that Protestants can have assurance without having to “do anything” (unlike with Catholics) with the statements in the NT like “Unless you forgive others, your heavenly Father won’t forgive you,” etc.

Here is the great 19th century Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck on how justification and adoption and perseverance and assurance all work together:

God, Job, and the Adversary

In both Egyptian and Mesopotamian thinking, the gods were not considered responsible for evil in the world; therefore, the presence or experience of evil did not have to be resolved in reference to the justice of the gods (this in contrast to Israel, where nothing existed totally outside the jurisdiction of God’s sovereignty; i.e., the rest of the gods were contingent, but he was not)…Even in areas where the gods could be held responsible, they, like human judges, may be doing the best to administer justice, but do so imperfectly.

We have suggested above that the gods in the ancient Near East were somewhat relieved of responsibility because their role in the origin of evil was limited, and because they were often only indirectly considered the cause of suffering…In Israel the absence of any source of divine authority other than Yahweh limited the philosophical possibilities regarding the origin of evil and the source of suffering (1 Sam 2:6; Isa 45:7 Job 2:10; Eccl 7:14). There existed no supernatural power alongside Yahweh or outside of Yahweh’s sphere of power. At the same time Yahweh was considered powerful, good, and just.

The scene in heaven shows that, despite the role of the Challenger, God both initiated the discussion and approved the course of action. This again avoids the easy solution that insulates God by inserting an independently wicked intermediary power.

Numerous verses clearly indicate that God is the cause of Job’s suffering:

1:11; 2:5–The Challenger says that God must stretch out his hand to strike Job.

2:3–God indicates that he is the one who has brought Job’s ruin without cause.

16:9–God assails him.

19:21–The hand of God has struck him.

42:11–Job is consoled over all the trouble that Yahweh brought upon him.

No one in the book ever suggests any other agent as the cause of Job’s suffering. When God places Job in the Challenger’s hands (power, 1:12; 2:6), he is not absolving himself of responsibility but delegating authority to the Challenger…he is a subordinate functionary, not an independent power for evil or the ruin of humanity. Anything approaching dualism would let God off the hook too easily; the book does not provide this option. It is trying to give a deeper understanding of God, not to somehow absolve him of responsibility.

J. Walton, The NIV Application Commentary: Job (Zondervan 2012), 39-41, 73, 109.

Mainline Churches vs. Israel

http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/329969

Foodie Pilgrims

http://www.tnr.com/print/book/review/farm-fable-the-limits-foodie-pilgrims

Take up your cross

What makes the journey of a pacifist long and hard is because of course you are swimming upstream in America, and sometimes you are swimming against a torrential flood in the other direction… Some days I feel like moving to Switzerland, but then I remember, I am the loyal American opposition, and even if my voice is drowned out I still have a vote and a right to be heard…Some days I feel like John the Baptizer— a voice crying in a brutal wilderness.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/bibleandculture/2012/10/03/the-long-journey-of-a-christian-pacifist/

I can barely express my boundless admiration for BW3’s high-minded pacifism. Such is the depth of his self-sacrificial conviction that, if push came to shove, he’d be prepared to leave the comforts of home far behind and move to the outback of Switzerland. Truly the cost of discipleship rarely exacts a higher price. Wasn’t Switzerland where Brezhnev would banish dissidents, to send a blood-curdling message to other would-be dissidents? Imagine BW3, in his hairshirt, having to tough it out in a chalet overlooking Lake Lucerne, on a diet of chocolate-covered locusts and wild honey-peach cake with sugared pistachios. What a cross to bear! Would that more Christians had his humbling spirit of self-denial. His example reduces me to tears.