Monday, December 23, 2013
A fish rots from the head down
As remarkable as it may sound, most biblical scholars are not Christians. I don’t know the exact numbers, but my guess is that between 60% and 80% of the members of SBL do not believe that Jesus’ death paid for our sins, or that he was bodily raised from the dead. The post-lecture discussions are often spirited, and occasionally get downright nasty.
http://www.reclaimingthemind.org/blog/2009/11/frustrations-from-the-front-the-myth-of-theological-liberalism/
The False Priorities Of Christian Opponents Of Christmas
Earlier today, Michael Brown had his annual radio program about the debate over whether Christians should celebrate Christmas. I've been posting at Brown's site on a variety of related topics. Here's part of what I wrote:
In my experience, the few people who do a lot of work in the area of Christmas apologetics are individuals who think highly of the Christmas holiday. I've been working in this field for a long time, and I can't think of a single person who's at the forefront of defending a traditional Christian view of Jesus' childhood who's opposed to the Christmas holiday. I'm not saying that opponents of Christmas never do any good work in this area. But the general trend seems to be that supporters of the holiday are much more concerned about these apologetic issues and are at the forefront of doing the work that needs to be done. It would be good if opponents of Christmas would spend less time watching dubious YouTube videos about the alleged pagan roots of Christmas, reading unreliable web sites on the subject, etc. and spend more time doing the apologetic work that needs to be done. Instead of tilting your head, squinting your eyes, and reading between the lines to see some sort of alleged pagan significance in a Christmas tree or the lights hanging over your neighbor's porch, you ought to be more concerned about the false ideas being promoted by the likes of Brown, Ehrman, and Lincoln.
Kismet
When John Piper preached at our church two weeks ago, he talked about the very high view Muslims have of the sovereignty of God. They believe in a God who ordains whatsoever comes to pass. They believe in a God who knows the hairs on our heads. They believe in a God who can do as he pleases.So is there any difference between a sovereign Allah and the sovereign God of the Bible? Piper argued that in Islam the sovereignty of God operates independently of his other attributes, such that Allah can be capricious and arbitrary in his exercise of divine power. This is, no doubt, how some Christians see the Reformed view of God and why they reject it so strenuously.
http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/kevindeyoung/2013/12/20/something-better-than-sovereignty/
i) I agree with the overall point that Piper and DeYoung are making. Sovereignty all by itself is not a good thing. Calvin led the way in that respect when he attacked theological voluntarism. To isolate God's will from his other attributes results in an amoral sovereignty. Unlike Allah's sheer will, Yahweh's sovereign will is characterized by his wisdom and goodness.
ii) However, I think both men oversimplify Islam. In my younger days I did a lot of reading on Islam, so I may be rusty, but as I recall, we need to consider a number of issues:
iii) When we talk about Islamic theology, what are the sources? The Koran? The Hadith? Traditional commentaries on the Koran? Muslim jurisprudence? Islamic Kalam?
What about contemporary Islam, which interacts with medieval and modern philosophy?
iv) We need to draw further distinctions:
a) Fatalism. No matter what happens, the outcome is the same. That's consistent with libertarian freedom. There could be alternate routes, but they all lead to the same destination.
b) Determinism. This takes different forms. From what I've read, the Asharites espouse a roughhewn version of compatibilism.
By contrast, Al-Ghazali propounded occasionalism. There are no second-causes. Every event is the direct effect of Allah's immediate causation.
c) Predeterminism. That can take the form of a master plan. Everything happens according to plan.
Something can be determined without being predetermined.
d) Or it can involve physical determinism, where the present is the inevitable result of prior states. A chain of cause and effect. That's different from occasionalism, where the present is causally discontinuous with the past.
e) Providence
A plan requires something over and above the plan itself to implement the plan. Primary or secondary causality.
iv) Some Muslims (e.g. Asharites) were determinists while other Muslims (e.g. Mutazilites) were indeterminists.
The Koran has a references to a divine tablet. On one interpretation, that suggests a script or blueprint. Everything that happens is scripted. That would be a predestinarian metaphor. It's all written out in advance.
However, the Mutazilites turned that around. Allah sees the future, and writes down what he foresees. He's writing history ahead of time. He's writing history before it happens. Writing about the future as if already lies in the past. But the future is not scripted. Rather, the tablet transcribes the future.
I think the predestinarian interpretation is more plausible, but we're just dealing with a few passing references in the Koran.
v) The Koran also talks about God guiding some people and leading others astray. That's deterministic, but not necessarily predeterministic. Indeed, that's consistent with fatalism.
One interpretive difficulty is knowing where Muhammad got his ideas. I suspect fatalism often personifies the apparent randomness of life. There often seems to be no rhyme or reason to who lives and who dies, who propers and who suffers. You can do all the right things, and still come to a horrible end. So it seems like you were doomed all along. Conversely, some people seem to be lucky. Or they get away with things. That may lie behind many Koranic passages.
You also have astrology or astrological fatalism in folk Islam.
Robert Gagnon on the Duck Dynasty flap
I'm interviewed briefly on Anglican Unscripted about the Duck flap, starting at the 1 minute mark and going to the 18 minute mark.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkuz9lAqBUU&feature=youtu.be
Hopeless teens
From a United Methodist youth pastor:
The way I see it, the time for that debate has long since passed. The stakes are too high now. The current research suggestions that teenagers that are gay are about 3 times more likely to attempt suicide than their heterosexual peers. That puts the percentage of gay teens attempting suicide at about 30-some percent. 1 out of 3 teens who are gay or bisexual will try to kill themselves. And a lot of times they succeed. In fact, Rev. Schaefer’s son contemplated suicide on a number of occasions in his teens.The fact of the matter is, it doesn’t matter whether or not you think homosexuality is a sin. Let me say that again. It does not matter if you think homosexuality is a sin, or if you think it is simply another expression of human love. It doesn’t matter. Why doesn’t it matter? Because people are dying. Kids are literally killing themselves because they are so tired of being rejected and dehumanized that they feel their only option left is to end their life. As a Youth Pastor, this makes me physically ill. And as a human, it should make you feel the same way. So, I’m through with the debate.We are past the time for debate. We no longer have the luxury to consider the original meaning of Paul’s letter to the Corinthian church. We are now faced with the reality that there are lives at stake. So whatever you believe about homosexuality, keep it to yourself. Instead, try telling a gay kid that you love him and you don’t want him to die. Try inviting her into your church and into your home and into your life. Anything other than that simply doesn’t matter.
http://intheparlor.wordpress.com/2013/12/19/what-you-believe-about-homosexuality-doesnt-matter/
Several issues:
i) He assumes the reason homosexual teens are at higher risk of suicide is because they are "so tired of being rejected and dehumanized." That's his key operating assumption. Unfortunately, he merely asserts that to be the case. He offers no supporting argument.
For instance, a successful Hollywood screenwriter (Ned Vizzini) committee suicide a few days ago. Is it because he was so tired of being rejected and dehumanized? Did lesbian academic Denice Denton, chancellor of UCSC, commit suicide because she was stigmatized for her sexual orientation?
It doesn't even occur to this UMC youth pastor to ask himself if he has the cart before the horse. What if homosexuals have higher rates of suicide because homosexual relationships are emotionally unsatisfying? What if homosexuality itself is the source of the problem? What if that's inherently depressing, because their deepest physical and psychological needs are constantly frustrated by that misdirected impulse?
What if they commit suicide because they've been told homosexuality is their only option? That's a recipe for despair. You rob them of hope. You deprived them of a better alternative.
ii) Here's a consideration: how many teenagers are suicidal because they've been misclassified as homosexual when they are actually heterosexual? How many of them are suicidal because that's the only option they've been given ("your gay!")?
Adolescence can be a confusing time of life, as boys and girls transition from childhood to adulthood. In that unsettled state, they are impressionable. Unsure of themselves. In a pop culture and educational subculture that glorifies homosexuality, heterosexual teens can be steered into homosexuality. They are assigned that orientation by peers, teachers, and school administrators who want more youths to self-identify as homosexual. That proves how enlightened and tolerant they are.
What percentage of "homosexual" teens has been trapped into playing a role that doesn't fit them, because they aren't really homosexual? They've been pushed into that role.
If they express uncertainty as they probe their newfound sexual impulses, they are immediately shoehorned into that niche. How often does that happen?
Every boy is not a extroverted jock. Some boys are susceptible to self-doubt, to doubting their masculine adequacy, because they don't measure up to the athletic paragon.
Some boys need the camaraderie of contact sports. But many boys aren't cut out for that.
We need heteronormative role models for introverted boys who have no interest or aptitude in intramural sports.
iii) To what extent does a divorce culture, in which sons grow up without regular contact with their fathers, foster insecurity in their masculine identity? To what extent does that make some adolescent boys unsure of themselves around girls?
iv) Then you have boys who really are homosexual. What about that? Should we just accept that?
Let's take a comparison. From what I've read, drug addicts are at much higher risk of suicide. If a teenager is a junkie, does that mean we should celebrate drug addiction as a legitimate alternate lifestyle?
Tempting God
Spectacularly point-missing. The post was about reading Mark by itself, and assuming only things that first century Jews would assume about God, e.g. he knows all, he can't die.
i) Is Dale really that simple-minded? Yes, God is omniscient and immortal.
But let's take a comparison: can a man get from L.A. to Seattle in two hours? Well, a man can't walk from L.A to Seattle in two hours. He can't run that fast. A man qua man can't traverse that distance in two hours. But a man can fly a plane from L. A. to Seattle in two hours.
God qua God can't die. God qua God can't be ignorant. But Mark presents both the humanity and divinity of Christ. The Son qua God can't die, but the Son qua Incarnate can die. The Son qua God can't be ignorant, but the Son qua Incarnate can be ignorant.
ii) It's because Mark makes some statements about Jesus that are incompatible with divinity that we affirm the humanity of Christ. Conversely, it's because Mark makes some statements about Jesus that are incompatible with humanity that we affirm the divinity of Christ.
For Dale to say Christ can't be God because God can't die or be ignorant misses the point. Yes, we know that. And it's because Mark makes statements about Jesus that are inconsistent if Jesus is only human or only divine that we believe Jesus to be both human and divine.
BTW, since Tuggy is an open theist, he doesn't believe God knows the future.
To *argue against* Chalcedonian christology would, of course, require a lot more than a quick overview of Mark. We don't bring in later catholic two-natures theory in expounding Mark's meaning, because, that whole theoretical project just anywhere to be found there. You gents just don't want to take time to understand Mark in his own terms - you want to do systematic theology and polemical apologetics. But, first things first.
i) Except that Dale doesn't take the time to understand Mark on his own terms. Take major commentaries on Mark by R. T. France and Robert Stein. Notice how they exegete the deity of Christ in Mark from Mk 1:1-4. They make the effort to understand Mark on his own terms, using grammatico-historical exegesis. Or consider the way Sigurd Grindheim exegetes the deity of Christ in Mark in his grammatico-historical monograph: Christology in the Synoptic Gospels, chap. 2. Grindheim takes the time to understand Mark on his own terms, using contextual and intertextual clues.
ii) I didn't resort to systematic theology or Chalcedonian Christology in my response to Dale.
Yes, I referred to the two natures of Christ, but that's just a case of using extrabiblical terminology to summarize Scripture. It's not as if Dale limits himself to Biblical terminology when he talks about "humanitarian unitarianism."
Mark treats Jesus as simultaneously human and divine.
By the way, even as late as Irenaeus, it seems that many catholics happily accepted that Jesus didn't know the day or hour (full stop). http://trinities.org/blog/archives/4365
A red herring.
Tempting God to sin is not the same as putting God to the test (i.e. try his patience). Surely you don't want to say that 1st c. Jews thought God could be tempted to sin. (How could all all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-around perfect being be motivated to sin?) But this is what the reader assumes Satan to be doing to Jesus in Mark 1.
i) Once again, is Dale really that simple-minded? He fails to draw an elementary distinction between subjective and objective temptation. Can God feel temptation? No. Can an external agent try to tempt God? Yes.
Even if Jesus was merely God, that's perfectly consistent with Satan trying to tempt him. Because that's something Satan does with God, not something that motivates God. It comes from the outside, not the inside.
ii) Furthermore, since Jesus isn't merely God, because Jesus is also a man, it's possible for Jesus to feel human temptations.
iii) Finally, to feel tempted is not inherently sinful.
Darwinism: Science or Philosophy
These proceedings from a symposium titled Darwinism: Scientific Inference or Philosophical Preference? are a bit dated but still worth reading in many respects.
A Quick Look at Roman Catholicism from an Evangelical Point of View, Part 2
Following up on this first episode which focused largely on the history of the papacy and the organization of Roman Catholicism, Darrell Bock, Scott Horrell and Michael Svigel of Dallas Theolgical Seminary discuss various other aspects of Roman Catholicism, including justification, transubstantiation, the priesthood, and veneration of Mary the saints.
Aside from the one or two errors I mentioned the last time, these gentlemen seem to have a good handle on the history and current understanding of Rome; the notion that Rome has been a “sponge” (absorbing in a synchretistic way the various elements of the cultures where it participates); what’s lacking, in my opinion, is the lack of any critical comment on the things they were discussing. Maybe that’s going to be forthcoming.
Bock does clarify at the end, “we’ve tried to be descriptive” – and again, I’m grateful that there are Protestants who are interested in understanding Roman Catholicism. But I do think that the “critical” element that’s lacking is perhaps the most important part.
Here are the original links:
http://www.dts.edu/thetable/play/history-organization-roman-catholic-church
http://www.dts.edu/thetable/play/differences-protestant-catholic-church
Sunday, December 22, 2013
Banning dissent
The attempt to stifle people like Phil Robertson is just part of a larger ongoing pattern by the PC security forces:
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/193545-reddit-science-forum-banks-climate-change-deniers
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/193545-reddit-science-forum-banks-climate-change-deniers
Heavy petting
Phil Robertson has been attacked for comparing homosexuality to bestiality. As usual, this is a case where liberals haven't kept up with their own side of the argument. Peter Singer has been defending bestiality for years. For him, this is just another arbitrary social taboo.
Warning: this is far cruder than anything Robertson said:
http://www.utilitarianism.net/singer/by/2001----.htm
Warning: this is far cruder than anything Robertson said:
http://www.utilitarianism.net/singer/by/2001----.htm
Saturday, December 21, 2013
Tuggy's latest failure
This is my brief sequel to my earlier post:
I'll review some of Tuggy's other arguments against the deity of Christ in Mark's Gospel:
(11) Tempted. (12) But, you can’t tempt God.
i) Does Mark say God can't be tempted? Or is Dale importing that from Jas 1:13? If so, he first needs to exegete Jas 1:13. And he needs to show that Mark means by "temptation" what James means by "temptation." As a rule, it's unsound semantics to use one Bible writer's usage to gloss another Bible writer's usage.
ii) Keep in mind, too, that this isn't about tempting God in general, but about Christ's distinctive mission.
“Who can this be? Even the wind and the sea obey him.” (41) Answer: the Son of God, and Messiah. (ch. 1-3)
In Christology in the Synoptic Gospels: God or God's Servant (T&T Clark 2012), 47-48, Sigurd Grindheim has argued that this scene is a divine theophany, like OT counterparts, which attests the deity of Christ.
and obviously, a real man – that’s presupposed throughout. He seems to need a retreat after the murder of John the Baptist. (30-31) And to recharge through prayer. (46)
Since Trinitarian Christology affirms the full humanity of Christ, this is not a counterexample to the deity of Christ.
“The Father” here is obviously, YHWH, the one true God.
Is Tuggy borrowing this phrase ("the one true God") from Jn 17:3? If so, why use that to filter Mark? Moreover, he needs to exegete Jn 17:3 in context.
The high places in his coming Kingdom are not Jesus’s to grant. (40) We are to infer that this is God’s prerogative, not Jesus’s.
That division of labor is consistent the economic Trinity. Indeed, it's called economic subordination. Although Tuggy doesn't believe in that, he needs to make allowance for that explanation when he presents evidence that's allegedly inconsistent with Trinitarian Christology.
God does not serve us. But Jesus, this “son of man,” does. (45) And he’ll give his life – that is, die, as a ransom for us – something an essentially immortal being could not do. (45)
Yes, God qua God can't die. But God Incarnate can die.
The day and the hour “nobody knows” – not even God’s angels, or the unique Son of God, but only God. (32) If you’re still wondering whether Jesus is God himself, the answer is no – for God knows at least one thing that Jesus does not.
Once again, the fact that Jesus is humanly ignorant of many things is entirely consistent with the Incarnation. Although Tuggy rejects the Incarnation, he needs to assume the viewpoint of the opposing position for the sake of argument if he's going to argue against it. His attempted counterevidence is perfectly harmonious with the two natures of Christ.
Let us note that God cannot die. But, Jesus died. So, he’s not God. And he wasn’t faking it. (40-47)
Which fails to take the Incarnation into account. Tuggy acts as if this is at odds with Trinitarian Christology. But Trinitarian Christology doesn't take the position that Christ is divine rather than human. He's both.
Tuggy's presentation operates at the level of a Jehovah's Witness tract.
Pious agnosticism
I'm going to comment this post by Scott Clark's on John Frame's new systematic theology:
I think readers should read widely but they shouldn’t believe everything they read. So we should read liberally but we should read critically, i.e., thoughtfully and always asking ourselves: “Is that true?”
That's excellent advice. Unfortunately, Clark fails to heed his own advice.
The second divergence, closely related to the first, is theological. Frame has come to defend views that are flatly contrary to the Reformed confession on a number of topics from the definition of theology through to Christian ethics.
Of course, one could say the same thing about Clark. He's a selective confessionalist. It's a pity that Clark is a hardened hypocrite. He constantly exempts himself from the consistency he demands from others.
There are presently two competing approaches to Reformed theology. One approach seeks to appreciate and appropriate the Reformed tradition and the confession of the churches and from that starting point and with those resources read the Scriptures and engage the state of the art.
Is that the starting point? Didn't Clark just admonish us to read critically, i.e., thoughtfully and always asking ourselves: “Is that true?”
Why is Clark a confessional Calvinist rather than a confessional Lutheran? Do they just have different arbitrary starting points? How does Clark think we should come to believe the Reformed confessions in the first place? Does he think we always ought to read the Scriptures through the lens of Reformed tradition? If so, what about a Lutheran who shares the identical methodology, but plugs that into Lutheran creeds rather than Reformed creeds?
The other approach, however, seems to regard the tradition with a wary eye and seeks to revise Reformed theology in sometimes radical ways. The volume before us, though it has traditional elements, falls into the second category. This approach, which is more “biblicist” than confessionalist (on this see Recovering the Reformed Confession), has produced some significant divergences from historic Reformed theology.
Does Frame seek to revise Reformed theology? Is that his objective going in? Or is that the occasional, unpremeditated result of his studies?
By dialectical I mean an approach to theology that affirms and denies something at the same time. Frame does this through a method he describes as triperspectivalism.
Clark makes it sound as if Frame affirms and denies the same thing in the same respect. But there's nothing incoherent or contradictory (if that's what Clark is insinuating) about affirming something in one respect, but denying that in another respect.
In his earlier volume on the doctrine of God, he defended the proposition that God is three persons and one person, a view at which, in the present volume. he seems only to hint. Last I knew, few reviewers noted this significant departure from catholic (i.e., universal Christian) dogma and the Reformed confession.
i) In what sense is that a departure from dogma? Is he saying Frame's conceptualization of the Trinity marks a departure, or Frame's terminology?
ii) In Trinitarian and Christological usage, "person" (along with its Greek and Latin cognates) is a term of art. The terminology was fluid in early church history. And theological jargon has stipulative definitions. So it's a question of how the term is used.
iii) We need to distinguish between Frame as an expositor of Van Til, and Frame's own preferred formulations. In explaining and defending Van Til, Frame is exegeting Van Til's usage. How Frame interprets Van Til is not the same thing is how Frame might choose to formulate the issue when speaking for himself.
iv) Clark mentions Frame's conclusion while ignoring his supporting arguments.
The doctrine of divine simplicity, however, is not a remnant of Thomas’ neo-Platonism. It is the interpretation of Holy Scripture and the confession of the Reformed and Presbyterian churches.
i) To begin with, his claim is a non-sequitur. How does the fact that it's nominally codified in Reformed confessions entail that it's not a remnant of Thomistic Neoplatonism?
ii) What does Clark mean by saying divine simplicity is the interpretation of Scripture? For instance, does Clark think there's no difference between divine justice and divine mercy? Are these identical? If so, that's a problem for Reformed theology, according to which God can be unmerciful, but never unjust.
The churches have not confessed a conviction about every theological question or debate but where they have confessed we are bound to it and we do not confess that God is simple and complex. We confess one thing: that he is simple, that he is without parts and we do so, as Luther said, without horns (we don’t say this and not this or Sic et Non). Neither the Trintarian persons nor the attributes make God complex.
i) What happened to Clark's admonition that we should read critically, i.e., thoughtfully and always asking ourselves: “Is that true?”
ii) Does Frame say God is composed of parts?
iii) Clark uses "simplicity" as a buzzword. He stays on the verbal surface. Does he even grasp the metaphysical machinery or varied models? For instance:
In The Christian Faith (2011), pp. 228-30, Mike Horton...appeals to the essence/energies (working) distinction in Basil.
So Frame stands accused of deviating from Reformed tradition because he doesn't recast Reformed theology in Greek Orthodox categories. I didn't realize Gregory Palamas presided at the Synod of Dordt or the Westminster Assembly. I salute his Methuselean longevity.
More recently, the classical Reformed doctrine of simplicity has been a bulwark against the heresy of Open Theism, the doctrine that future contingents are unknowable to God.
i) Why would we rely on such a convoluted argument to refute open theism? Surely there are more direct arguments we can deploy against open theism.
ii) Since an open theist won't treat divine simplicity as a given, it would first be necessary to argue for divine simplicity, then argue for how that's at odds with God's ignorance of future contingents. An approving quote from Berkhof is not an argument.
This passage gets us closer to the heart of the problem, his apparent revision of the traditional Reformed doctrine of the incomprehensibility of God. As a matter of truth, God’s essence is a dark, unrevealed entity. God, as he is in himself (in se) is hidden from us…We know that God’s hidden essence is but we don’t know what God’s essence is. We’re not capable of knowing or understanding that essence. We know what God has revealed of himself to us. God has given us pictures, illustrations, analogies, but he has not revealed himself as he is in himself…The Reformed want to affirm both the mystery of God’s hiddenness and the utterly reliability of his self-revelation.
i) Clark confuses the order of being (i.e. what God is in himself) with the order of knowing (what God is like). Since we're not God, we can't know God as he knows himself. But that doesn't mean we can't know what God is truly like. We just can't can see it from God's unique, first-person perspective. And God must take the initiative in disclosing himself.
ii) If God's essence is unknowable, then Scripture is not a divine self-revelation. God hasn't revealed himself to us in Scripture. Rather, God has revealed something other than himself.
Our Lord himself said:
No one has ever seen God. The only begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known (John 1:18).
So, according to Clark, the Son isn't God in himself? The Son isn't essentially God? The Incarnation of the Son fails to reveal what God is really like? We can't know God's true nature by knowing Christ?
1Timothy 6:16 says “no one has ever seen or can see” God. 1John 4:12 says that “no one has ever seen God.”
How does Clark make the logical leap from verses about the invisibility of God to to the incomprehensibility of God?
Frame has defended the right of the self-described Federal Visionists to teach their doctrines. In the present volume he offers a (remarkably revisionist) defense of the principal godfather of the FV theology, Norman Shepherd.
It's unclear what exactly Clark is alleging. His accusation seems to amount to this:
i) Frame's exposition of justification is traditionally Reformed.
ii) Shepherd's exposition is contrary to traditional Reformed theology.
iii) Frame superimposes his own exposition onto Shepherd. Frame imputes to Shepherd a position at odds with Shepherd's actual position.
But if Frame's own formulation is sound, then Frame's association with Shepherd, even if that's injudicious, is a red herring.
Put another way, even if Frame's friendship with Shepherd affects his objectivity, making him an unreliable interpreter of Shepherd, how is that germane when Frame is speaking for himself rather than putting in a good word for an old friend?
….His method is not only dialectical, it is a latitudinarian, i.e., the goal is that we should tolerate doctrines that the Reformed churches have condemned.
That raises an interesting question. Since the classic Reformed confessions weren't responding to the Federal Vision, modern-day Reformed churches must go beyond the historical purview of 16-17C Reformed confessions to adjudicate the specifics of that particular position.
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