...what many people typically mean when they speak of the liturgy of “the early church” is actually a historically-contingent sample from a span of about four or five hundred years, beginning with, rather than climaxing in, the fourth century. This sort of observation does not tell us whether a certain liturgical form is good or bad, nor even better or worse, but what it does do is place the entire discussion firmly in the realm of human law, tentative investigation, and, thus eventually, prudential application.
What this means for Protestants seeking to appropriate the findings of the liturgical renewal movement is that they must always receive such proposals in a somewhat critical manner. They can be appreciative of good order, appealing aesthetics, and even a sort of historical pedigree, but they can never confuse these things with divine right, nor even “the catholic tradition.” All “historic” liturgies should be brought into conversation with biblical and Reformational principles. Perhaps, most of all, we should keep in mind the great freedom we have in these manners. A certain amount of diversity is granted to us by the freedom of the gospel, and this diversity has been with the Christian church since the earliest days.
Monday, February 24, 2014
The liturgy of “the early church” actually begins in the fourth century.
http://calvinistinternational.com/2014/02/24/quest-historic-liturgy/
Paul Bassett to Dean Obeidallah – “U S Laws are based on the Bible!”
Paul Bassett has had some brief interactions on Twitter with Dean Obeidallah, wrote about some concerns that the rise of Mike Hucakbee and Rick Santorum may lead to what he calls a “Christian Sharia”.
Here is Paul’s larger response to that: U.S. Laws based upon the Bible:
See the entire article here.
Thx Dean. US Laws based on Bible here: http://t.co/LbqsjB5GHJ Rich get into heaven: think King Solomon, Job! @Deanofcomedy @johnbugay
— Paul Bassett (@Colossianstwo8) February 23, 2014Here is Paul’s larger response to that: U.S. Laws based upon the Bible:
I think Dean has missed the point and I would like to set the record straight. In his recent tweet to me he expressed concern that our laws should not be based on the Bible.
First of all, America’s laws are already based on the Bible. Nine of the thirteen colonies that came together to form the United States had established Christian religions. The Founding Fathers were Christians and were committed to creating a new system based on Christian principles. And that trend predated the Constitutional Convention by at least 150 years....
So when the Founders came together in Philadelphia they were not acting contrary to the history of the colonies they there were there to represent. In fact, the Christian foundation of the American culture was so established around the world that the famed German historian, Leopold von Ranke declared that John Calvin was the true founder of America! ...
... when America’s Constitution – the “Supreme Law of the Land” – was contemplated and enacted it was done by professing Christians whose intent was to create a Christian nation. The colonies that sent representatives to the Constitution had either established Christian religions supported by the taxpayer or had overwhelmingly Christian populations without an established church. They only sent people to represent them at Philadelphia that could swear allegiance to a Trinitarian Christianity....
See the entire article here.
“Divine Revelation” Part 3: Methodological Considerations When Discussing “the Church” and “the mind of the Church”
http://reformation500.com/2014/02/24/divine-revelation-part-3-methodological-considerations-when-discussing-the-church-and-the-mind-of-the-church/:
I believe here that we are really close to being able to identify the heart of the issues between Roman Catholics and Protestants....
In your initial comments, you reference a Ratzinger phrase, “the living organism of the faith of all ages”, and you also somewhere reference “the mind of the Church”, failing to take into account a critical portion of thinking.
It’s not true to say that the New Testament writers were “somewhat confused”. I will grant that some patristic writers of the first three centuries were very much confused. Writers especially of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox traditions just simply ignore this confusion – the thinking holds something like “these early writers were closer to the time of the Apostles, therefore they must have had the best understanding” – however, this does not follow at all. In the link that I provided here in this paragraph, I’ve cited many instances of this “confusion”, and many others could be provided....
Sunday, February 23, 2014
How to Read the Bible
While the content here is pretty basic, some readers might find these two lectures helpful, or useful to share with believers seeking to grow in their Bible reading and study:
Doing v. allowing harm
Freewill theists typically contend that Calvinism makes God complicit in evil (or "the author of sin") because God is said to "cause" sin according to Calvinism, where's freewill theism let's God off the hook because God merely permits evil. I'm going to excerpt some passages from an article which illustrate how often and easily that facile distinction breaks down. After that I will add an illustration of my own.
Is doing harm worse than allowing harm?
James Rachels (1975) provides a classic example of the first approach.[2] He offers us a pair of cases—in one, Smith drowns his young cousin in the bathtub; in the other, Jones plans to drown his young cousin, but finds the boy already unconscious under water and refrains from saving him. The two cases are exactly alike except that the first is a killing and the second a letting die. Rachels invites us to agree that Smith's behavior is no worse than Jones's.
It is arguably true that you can be morally responsible only for what you are causally responsible for. So, if you cause a bad state of affairs, you've probably done wrong; whereas if you don't cause a bad state of affairs, you haven't. In choosing between killing and letting die, you are choosing between doing wrong and not doing wrong. (Of course, this doesn't apply to non-harmful cases of killing, such as, arguably, some cases of active euthanasia.) The question of what you ought to do is then tautologously easy.
This argument begins to get into trouble when we reflect on the fact that we are often responsible for upshots we allow: the death of the houseplants or the child's illiteracy. When we notice that, in these cases, the plants die or the child remains uneducated because of some failure on the agent's part, it becomes clear that the agent does, in some sense, cause the upshots. Moreover, most widely accepted contemporary accounts of causation imply that some event or fact involving these agents causes the deaths or illiteracy. For example, the counterfactual account of causation—according to which (very roughly) event E causes F if and only if had E not occurred F would not have occurred either—implies that it was the agent's failure to water the plants that caused the deaths.[7] John Mackie's INUS condition—according to which E causes F if and only if E is a(n insufficient but) necessary part of a(n unnecessary but) sufficient condition for F—implies that the fact that the agent failed to water the plants causes the plants to die.[8]
Suppose, for example, the victim dies because I push his head under water. He wouldn't have died if I had been absent. On the other hand, suppose he is in deep water and cannot swim and I don't save him. He would have drowned anyway if I had been absent. In these two cases, the counterfactual account draws the line in the intuitively correct way.
This account is sometimes used to support the claim that doing harm is worse than allowing harm, on the grounds that, on this account, allowing harm is simply a matter of letting nature take its course, which, other things being equal, is good, or at least permissible. There are two or three quick objections to this argument. Firstly, it assumes that acting (such as killing or saving lives) is a matter of interfering with the course of nature—in other words, that human action is somehow outside of the course of nature. This is extremely controversial. Secondly, even if human action is outside the course of nature, if the agent is faced with a choice between killing one and allowing two to die at the hand of some other agent, this argument would favor neither option since neither involves letting nature take its course. But, as traditionally understood and used, the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing is supposed to favor letting die in this case just as much as in others. Thirdly, interfering in the course of nature is sometimes obviously the better course of action—to stop the bleeding, restart the heart, and so on.
The key difference here is between cases where the agent produces the result by an action and cases where she produces it by an inaction—pushing the head under water or refraining from throwing a life preserver. There's an extra complication here, however. Sometimes, Quinn says, your relevance to a death can be positive, you can kill, in other words, even though you don't act. This happens, for example, when you are on a train headed towards some drowning victims you wish to save when you notice someone tied to the tracks ahead of you. You can stop the train but you choose not to in order to reach your destination. Quinn believes that you kill in this case, because the train acts as your agent, taking you where you want to go, and crushing the person tied to the tracks in the process. On the other hand, if you had chosen not to stop the train for some other reason but you would have not minded had someone else stopped the train, then your failure to stop the train would not have constituted a killing.
A puzzle remains. What about cases where the agent removes a safety net from beneath a falling victim, unplugs a respirator, kicks a rock out of the path of the runaway vehicle, and other similar cases? No physical forces run from the agent to the victim. So, by the account under discussion, they are cases of negative relevance, and yet many of them, at least by many people, are confidently judged to be cases of positive relevance.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/doing-allowing/
Suppose a drug dealer recruits adults or teens with Down syndrome to work as couriers. They are easily duped into working for him since they fail to appreciate the significance of their actions.
The dealer can't be arrested for dealing drugs since he didn't actually deal the drugs. If his couriers are apprehended, that can't be traced back to him since they lack the mental competence to testify against him in a court of law.
Question: is it better or worse for him to peddle drugs directly or exploit individuals with Down syndrome to do it for him?
Prayers for my brother
I'd like to ask for prayers for my brother and his family. He is scheduled for surgery tomorrow for a rare cancer known as Pseudomyxoma Peritonei; and while it is not an aggressive cancer, it is a messy metastasization of a cancer of the appendix that affects the whole lower abdomen.
The surgery is a 10 hour surgery. They will basically open him up from sternum to crotch, take every organ out (and all the intestines), clean them off, scoop all the Pseudomyxoma Peritonei out of him, irrigate everything with chemo, then put him all back together. The recovery from this is difficult, but if he recovers well from this, his prognosis is excellent. But they all face a difficult couple of weeks.
The surgery is a 10 hour surgery. They will basically open him up from sternum to crotch, take every organ out (and all the intestines), clean them off, scoop all the Pseudomyxoma Peritonei out of him, irrigate everything with chemo, then put him all back together. The recovery from this is difficult, but if he recovers well from this, his prognosis is excellent. But they all face a difficult couple of weeks.
Saturday, February 22, 2014
Wartick v. Anderson
I'm going to quote James Anderson's responses to J. W. Wartick:
POSTED BY | FEBRUARY 17, 2014, 12:53 PM
POSTED BY | FEBRUARY 18, 2014, 2:05 PM
POSTED BY | FEBRUARY 21, 2014, 9:14 PM
POSTED BY | FEBRUARY 18, 2014, 2:12 PM
POSTED BY | FEBRUARY 21, 2014, 9:29 PM
Hi J.W.,
I think if your readers take the time to read my entire post and my subsequent interaction with Greg Welty in the comments, they’ll find that I don’t import a Calvinist understanding of foreknowledge and foreordination into Molinism and I don’t confuse middle knowledge with free knowledge.
My response to your comment highlighted the distinction between God’s decree and God’s foreknowledge for this reason: the decree is an active willing rather than a passive knowing. According to Molinism, God acts so as to ensure that S chooses A in C. So the issue I’m raising is this: given that God’s has decreed that S will choose A in C is it possible for S not to choose A in C? If it is, then God’s decree must be fallible. If it isn’t, then it’s far from clear how Molinism really preserves libertarian free will; S is free only in a very qualified sense (with respect to C but not with respect to God’s decree).
It doesn’t do to say, “If S were to choose otherwise then God would have decreed otherwise,” because that’s dodging the issue. It’s answering a different question than the one I’ve posed. None of this presupposes Calvinist understandings of terms or confuses middle and free knowledge.
J.W.,
“Your argument is that molinism entails a fallible God. Thus, your argument is that molinism–on molinism’s terms–entails a fallible God.”
If you read the comments under my original post — as I’m sure you have done — you’ll see that I conceded that my original argument needed to be modified to take into account how the LFW of creatures is characterized (specifically, whether or not the divine decree is taken into account as part of the circumstances in which the creatures make their free choices). I’m arguing that the Molinist faces a dilemma depending on how the conditions for LFW are cashed out: as I observed in my previous comment (above) either the Molinist has to concede the fallibility of the divine decree or he fails to preserve the LFW of the creatures. That’s still an internal critique of Molinism. It doesn’t depend on any Calvinist presuppositions.
“First, you misstate the actual premise, which is not that God would have decreed otherwise but that God would have foreknown otherwise; again, this leads me to think you’re not taking molinism on molinism’s terms. Instead, it seems you continue to conflate foreknowledge and the decree.”
With all respect, this comment makes clear that you are the one who is failing to do justice to Molinism, and thus failing to seriously engage with my argument.
Molinism is not primarily a theory about divine foreknowledge, although it does address that issue. Rather, it’s a primarily theory about divine providence (as the title to Thomas Flint’s book indicates; likewise William Lane Craig’s contribution to the book Four Views on Divine Providence). Molinism accounts for divine foreknowledge partly by way of the divine decree (i.e., God deciding to create particular creatures and place them in particular circumstances so that they will act in foreseeable ways).
Consider, for example, Craig’s essay in the Four Views book. He begins by talking about the post-Reformation debates over God’s decrees; specifically, whether or not God’s hypothetical knowledge of creaturely free decisions is logically prior to his creative decree. Both the Dominicans and the Molinists affirmed that God had an eternal decree that encompassed all events, but they disagreed over the logical relationship of God’s decree to his free knowledge.
Craig makes clear that the divine decree is more fundamental than divine foreknowledge, since the latter is dependent on the former: “Given middle knowledge of counterfactuals of creaturely freedom and the divine decree, foreknowledge follows automatically as a result, without any need of God’s peering into the future, as detractors of divine foreknowledge imagine.” (p. 85) In other words, God foreknows what will happen because God decrees what will happen (partly on the basis of his middleknowledge).
Listen again to the discussion between Craig and Helm. Craig makes a point of saying how he could affirm most of what the WCF says about God’s eternal decree and divine providence. (He has made the same point in other venues.) Note how he explicitly says that God ‘preordains’ all things — not merely foreknows, but foreordains.
So when you say that the “actual premise” of Molinism “is not that God would have decreed otherwise but that God would have foreknown otherwise” if S were not to choose A in C, you are the one misrepresenting Molinism. You’re underselling it! Yes, God would have foreknown otherwise, but that’s precisely because God would have decreed otherwise, since his foreknowledge follows from his decree (as Flint and Craig make clear in their expositions of Molinism).
If you don’t recognize this distinctive Molinism view of the divine decree, it’s little wonder you aren’t impressed by my argument.
J.W.,
I’m not sure how restating the Molinist view, and pointing out things I already grant, addresses my objection. Yes, if S to had chosen otherwise in C, the counterfactuals would have been different and God’s middle knowledge would have been different. But how does that preserve S’s libertarian freedom post-decree? How does that explain S’s ability to choose not-A given that God has already decreed that S choose A?
By the way, it’s worth noting that the following two propositions are just as true on Calvinism as they are on Molinism:
(1) If S had chosen otherwise, God would have decreed otherwise.
(2) If S had chosen otherwise, God would have foreknown otherwise.
In other words, these aren’t distinctive to Molinism, and since they’re consistent with determinism they do nothing to show that Molinism avoids determinism. A theistic compatibilist can happily affirm (1) and (2).
J.W.,
“This is why Craig often says molinism has a rather robust view of sovereignty, because once God actualizes a world, whatever God brought about to happen in that world will happen, period. One cannot bring it about that the world God brought into existence will fail to be the world God brought about.”
Right — and that’s precisely the basis for my objection. If S cannot bring it about that God’s decree fails, then S is not really free (in the libertarian sense) to choose not-A given that God has decreed that S will choose A. As I’ve pointed out, the Molinist wants to have his cake and eat it. But he cannot preserve both divine infallibility and human libertarian freedom.
J.W.,
“They don’t bring it about that God’s decree fails; they bring it about that the decree’s content would have been different.”
I don’t see how that addresses the issue, since it confuses the factual (what God has actually decreed) with the counterfactual (what God would have decreed).
Let me ask the question as directly as I can. If God has actually decreed that S will choose A, does S have the power not to choose A? It won’t do to answer, “Yes, because S can bring it about that God would have decreed otherwise,” because ex hypothesi God hasn’t decreed otherwise.
An Arminian bedtime story
Jerry Walls
A CALVINIST BEDTIME STORY
“Imagine a parent who is able to control each and every action of his children, and furthermore, is able to do so by controlling their thoughts and inclinations. He is thus able to determine each and all actions taken by those children. He is also able to guarantee that they desire to do everything that they do, and this is exactly what he does. He puts them in a special playroom that contains not only toys but also gasoline and matches, and then gives them explicit instructions (with severe warnings) to avoid touching the gasoline and matches. Stepping out of sight, he determines that the children indeed begin to play with the matches. When the playroom is ablaze and the situation desperate, he rushes in to save them (well, some of them). He breaks through the wall, grabs three of the seven children, and carries them to safety. When the rescued children calm down, they ask about their four siblings. They want to know about the others trapped inside, awaiting their inevitable fate. More importantly, they want to know if he can do something to rescue them as well.
“When they ask about the situation, their father tells them that this tragic occurrence had been determined by him, and indeed, that it was a smashing success—it had worked out in exact accordance with his plan. He then reminds them of his instructions and warnings, and he reminds them further that they willingly violated his commands. They should be grateful for their rescue, and they should understand that the others got what they deserved. When they begin to sob, he weeps with them; he tells them that he too has compassion on the doomed children (indeed, the compassion of the children for their siblings only dimly reflects his own). The children are puzzled by this, and one wants to know why such a compassionate father does not rescue the others (when it is clearly within his power to do so). His answer is this: this has happened so that everyone could see how smart he is (for being able to know how to do all this), how powerful he is (for being able to control everything and then effectively rescue them), how merciful he is (for rescuing the children who broke his rules), and how just he is (for leaving the others to their fate in the burning playroom). And, he says, ‘This is the righteous thing for me to do, because it allows me to look as good as I should look.’”
From Thomas H. McCall, “We Believe in God’s Sovereign Goodness: A Rejoinder to John Piper” Trinity Journal 29NS (2008): 241-242.
It’s hard to imagine a better story for Piperian Calvinists who have a passion for their theology and want to convey its true glory to children and other neophytes in the faith.
i) To begin with, this trades on the emotional connotations of small, clueless, helpless children. That triggers our protective instincts. Yet that's hardly analogous to adults or sinners.
ii) Perhaps even more to the point, It's striking that Arminians like Walls and McCall find this persuasive when it's trivially easy to tell a parallel bedtime story by substituting Arminian assumptions.
Assuming divine foreknowledge or middle knowledge, God knowingly puts them in a special playroom that contains not only toys but also gasoline and matches. God knows that by putting them in that situation, they will set the play room on fire. God knows that by putting them in that situation, some of them will burn to death. God could prevent that tragic outcome by not putting them in that situation in the first place. And that wouldn't violate their freewill.
Even assuming that God doesn't know the outcome, a parent is negligent for placing small children in a play room with matches and gasoline. Indeed, the legal term is "depraved indifference." If they die in a house fire as a result of those initial conditions, the parent is culpable for exposing them to such a risky situation.
Riddle me this!
Antony Flew penned a famous parable about the invisible gardner. His parable is somewhat self-defeating. After all, since gardens don't prune or weed themselves, even if the gardner was empirically indetectable, we'd be required to infer a powerful intelligence who was acting as a gardner behind-the-scenes. Left untended, gardens revert to the wild.
Perhaps, though, Flew intended the identity of the garden to be ambiguous. Was it really a garden, or a meadow with wildflowers that looked like a garden?
Be that as it may, Basil Mitchell countered Flew with a little parable of his own. Mitchell was a Christian philosopher and apologist. Here's his counter parable:
In time of war in an occupied country, a member of the resistance meets one night a Stranger who deeply impresses him... The partisan is utterly convinced at that meeting of the Stranger’s sincerity and constancy and undertakes to trust him. They never meet in conditions of intimacy again. But sometimes the Stranger is seen helping members of the resistance, and the partisan is grateful and says to his friends, ‘He is on our side.’ Sometimes he is seen in the uniform of the police handling over patriots to the occupying power. On these occasions his friends murmur against him: but the partisan still says, ‘He is on our side.’ He still believes that, in spite of appearances, the Stranger did not deceive him... Sometimes his friends, in exasperation, say, ‘Well, what would he have to do for you to admit that you were wrong and that he is not on our side?’ But the partisan refuses to answer.
i) Although it's hypothetical, it would have some concrete resonance for Mitchell and Flew, as Englishmen who lived through World War II. That's clearly the tacit background for the parable. Even though it's fictional, it's realistic. Things like that probably happened during the war.
ii) What's interesting about Mitchell's parable is that the Stranger is morally ambiguous. His actions are open to two opposing interpretations. Whose side is he on? He is trying to infiltrate the resistance or the occupation force? Is he a bad guy impersonating a good guy, or a good guy impersonating a bad guy?
Suppose you had a Jewish scientist or military intelligence officer serving in the Third Reich or the Vichy regime. That might seem counterintuitive, but not necessarily.
Perhaps he can pass for an Aryan. They don't suspect he's Jewish. He can do more damage on the inside than the outside. He can be an informant to the allies or the resistance.
But there's a catch. He must be a convincing Nazi. So he has to go through the motions. Feign enthusiasm for the cause.
iii) This is a common plot motif in police dramas. An undercover cop tries to infiltrate the mob. But there's a catch. The rite of initiation involves having the new recruit carry out a hit. That's a test of his bona fides.
The new recruit is brought to an abandoned warehouse or industrial garage. The Don is there with his goons. There's a blindfolded man kneeling on the floor. Turns out, he's a snitch. A police informant. The Don orders the new recruit to cap the snitch.
That's a dilemma for the undercover cop, but a win-win for the Don. If, on the one hand, the cop refuses, then the Don has blown his cover. If, on the other hand, he caps the snitch, then he's crossed over. He's become one of them. He can never go back to being a policeman. They have the goods on him. He's morally and legally compromised.
How far is the cop prepared to go to maintain his cover? This is usually where you have a commercial break, to keep the audience in suspense. How will the screenwriters extricate their character from the bind they put him in?
There are two conventional solutions. One is the deus ex machine. They have a timely intervention. Perhaps, at the very last moment, just before the cop has to refuse or pull the trigger, the Don receives a phone call requiring his presence elsewhere.
Or perhaps the cop is wearing a wire. His team comes storming in right in the nick of time.
The other solution is for the cop to say, "No, boss, he's more useful to us alive. The police don't know we know he's a snitch. So we can use him to feed them disinformation. Throw them off the scent."
The Don nods at this ingenious plan.
Screenwriters typically won't allow the hero to cross that line of no return. What made 24 bracing in the first season or so is that Jack Bauer played against the conventions. He was idealistic, but a ruthless idealist. A utilitarian. He was prepared to do whatever it took for the common good. Defeat the enemy by any means necessary.
TV viewers weren't use to that. After a while, they come to expect it–but not at first.
TV viewers weren't use to that. After a while, they come to expect it–but not at first.
iv) What's interesting about Mitchell's parable is that you can have a good guy who appears to be morally ambiguous. By analogy, God could do things which seem to make him morally ambiguous, even though he's benevolent. Do things which are obviously benevoent, but do other things which call into question his benevolence.
Of course, God is in a very different situation than a double agent. So we'd have to consider what, if anything, would be analogous.
v) In the argument from evil, atheists typically cite large-scale events to illustrate moral or natural evils, like the Holocaust or the Boxing Day tsunami. However, it's pretty easy to come up with a theodicy to account for such events. Precisely because they are such massive events, their occurrence or nonoccurrence has enormous consequences for good or ill. Both good and bad consequences ensue as a result of their occurrence. Both good and bad consequences would ensue as a result of their nonoccurence. That's the stuff of alternate histories. Preventing the moral or natural evil would eliminate the evil at the cost of eliminating some resultant goods as well as causing some other evils in its place.
What's harder to account for are little evils. Private evils. Self-contained evils that seem to have no beneficial consequences. They appear to be truly gratuitous.
Mitchell's parable, and variations thereon, does illustrate the principle that an agent can appear to be morally ambiguous even when he's acting morally.
vi) Of course, even if we don't have a theodicy, the argument from evil is toothless. Absent God, there is no evil. Absent God, we feel compassion for victims because natural selection conditions us to feel that way. But humans have no objective value.
Since there's abundant evidence for God's existence, what we have is, at most, a riddle.
It may be that some evils need to be humanly inexplicable to furnish a test of faith. If we could explain every evil, then we wouldn't need to trust God. That, itself, may be the explanation.
Friday, February 21, 2014
Justification: A Guide for the Perplexed
Prof. James Anderson reviews Justification: A Guide for the Perplexed by Alan J. Spence.
The invisible navigator
But how do we know that evolution is nonteleological or that any teleology in it must be scientifically unascertainable. Imagine you are on an ancient ship and observe a steersman at the helm. The ship traverses difficult waters and reaches port. You conclude that the vessel’s trajectory at sea was teleological. Why? Two things: you see a steersman controlling the ship’s rudder who, on independent grounds, you know to be a teleological agent; also, you witness the goal-directed behavior of the ship in finding its way home.
Now imagine a variation on this story. An ancient sailor comes on board a twenty-first century ship that is completely automated so that a computer directly controls the rudder and guides the vessel to port. No humans are on board other than this sailor. Being technologically challenged, he will have no direct evidence of a teleological agent guiding the ship—no steersman of the sort that he is used to will be evident. And yet, by seeing the ship traverse difficult channels and find its way home by exactly the same routes he took with ancient ships guided by human steersmen, he will be in his rights to conclude that a purpose is guiding the ship even if he cannot uncover direct empirical evidence of an embodied teleological agent at the helm.
http://evoinfo.org/papers/ConsInfo_NoN.pdf
Sin is lawlessness
Explaining the sense in which a Christian can't sin according to 1 Jn 3:9, Karen Jobes says:
When "sin" is first mentioned in this passage in 3:4, it is identified there with anomia [lawlessness]…The [definite} article functions to designate a category of sin that is identified with lawlessness ("and sin is lawlessness"). This suggests that John is not referring to every sin as anomia, but is concerned with the sin that leads to eschatological judgment (i.e., apostasy). John will later say in 5:16-17 that there is sin that does not lead to death.
But what sin is not anomia? It is sin that has been confessed and cleansed by the blood of Jesus Christ (1:9; 2:1-2). The sin of a believer who acknowledges and confesses it is of a different type than the sin of those who refuse to confess and submit to God's authority. It is the anomia sin that leads to death that the one born of God is not able to commit because God's seed remains in them and they have been born of God. 1, 2, & 3 John (Zondervan 2014), 147-48.
The savior of the world
Exegeting 1 Jn 2:2 in her recent commentary on 1 John, Karen Jobes says:
If here it is a reference to the whole planet, consideration of the historical context in which John wrote makes a more likely interpretation to be the universal scope of Christ's sacrifice in the sense that no one's race, nationality, or any other trait will keep that person from receiving the full benefit of Christ's sacrifice if and when they come to faith.
In the ancient world, the gods were parochial and had geographically limited jurisdictions. In the mountnains, one sought the favor of the mountain gods; on the sea, of the sea gods. Ancient warfare was waged in the belief that the gods of the opposing nations were fighting as well, and the outcome would be determined by whose god was strongest. Against that kind of pagan mentality, John asserts the efficacy of Jesus Christ's sacrifice is valid everywhere, for people everywhere, that is "the whole world."
But "world" in John's writings is often used to refer not to the planet or all its inhabitants, but to the system of fallen human culture, with its values, morals, and ethics as a whole. Lieu explains it as that which is totally opposed to God and all the belongs to him. It is almost always associated with the side of darkness in the Johannine duality, and people are characterized in John's writings as being either "of God" or "of the world" (Jn 8:23; 15:19; 176,14,16; 18:36; 1 Jn 2:16; 4:5). Those who have been born of God are taken out of that spiritual sphere, though not out of the geographical place or physical population that is concurrent with it (Jn 13:1; 17:15: see "In Depth: The "world" in John's Letters" at 2:16).
Rather than teaching universalism, John here instead announces the exclusivity of the Christian gospel. Since Christ's atonement is efficacious for the "whole world," there is no other form of atonement available to other peoples, cultures, and religions apart from Jesus Christ. 1, 2, & 3 John (Zondervan 2014), 80.
Has anyone seen this?
Might be worth a response or two on Twitter.
@Deanofcomedy I have. I am equally against imposing Christian values through government as well. The #bible is as sick as the #koran
— ASH: Deadpool E: (@caprica1980) February 21, 2014Rooting for the home team
Jonathan Merritt has done a post defending the incendiary comparison between Jim Crow laws and laws protecting religious liberty against the homosexual lobby. Merritt has less excuse than Kirsten Powers. For instance, he has an MDiv from SEBTS.
However, considering the fact that Merritt is apparently homosexual himself, his sympathies are not surprising:
Klan cakes
There is in this sad world such a thing as a Ku Klux Klan wedding — should the management of Harlem’s famous Sylvia’s Restaurant be prosecuted under civil-rights law if the establishment should decline to cater such a wedding? It is impossible for me to imagine that that should be the case.
http://www.nationalreview.com/node/371633/print
The enemy of my enemy is my friend
Barring unforeseen developments, this will be my final response to Tom Chantry's screed against John Frame. I'll alternate between Chantry's original post and his sequel:
I call Frame’s approach to knowledge “relativistic” because it elevates personal interpretation to the same level as the thing interpreted.
To the contrary, Frame explicitly distinguishes our interpretation of Scripture from Scripture itself.
Saying that the normative perspective is our understanding of the Word and not the Word itself does not help.
Notice that Chantry is now chiding Frame for distinguishing between Scripture and our understanding of Scripture, when just a sentence before he chided Frame putting them on a par. You can't get more confused than that! So Chantry's allegation is self-contradictory on the face of it.
This makes the Word something other than perspicuous. It may only be guessed at, never truly apprehended. That is the essential character of relativism.
i) I think this is the source of Chantry's muddleheaded objection: you can't say in the abstract whether our interpretation is on a par with Scripture because that's not a fact-free claim. Rather, it depends on whether or not our interpretation is correct. If our understanding of Scripture is correct, then we could say our understanding of Scripture coincides with the meaning of Scripture. There would be "identity" at that level.
ii) But, of course, Christians can misinterpret Scripture, so it's necessary to distinguish between the meaning of Scripture and our understanding of Scripture. Sometimes that distinction is bridged, and sometimes not.
iii) It would be "relativistic" to say Scripture has no objective meaning. It would be relativistic to say Scripture has objective meaning, but that meaning is humanly inaccessible. But Chantry doesn't quote Frame saying that.
iv) While we're on the subject, here's Darryl Hart's stated position on the regulative principle:
[The] distinction between the historical and normative definitions is not so easy to pull off, since the historical and the normative will naturally overlap. The way I come to understand the normative will be affected by the historical if I have subscribed to it, and the way I come to subscribe to the historical will be affected by how I read the normative. In other words, interpreting the Bible is a whole lot more complicated in a Calvinistic psychology than the distinction between the historical and normative senses of the RPW allows.
http://www.frame-poythress.org/the-regulative-principle-scripture-tradition-and-culture/
Why is triperspectivalism "relativistic" but Hart's position is not? Remember, Hart is on the faculty of WSC. The institution that Chantry is vouching for.
v) Finally, there's a persistent air of unreality to Chantry's objection. Frame has an enormously long paper trail in theology and ethics. That's a concrete illustration of how Frame himself understands triperspectivalism. How he actually goes about doing theology and ethics. There's nothing "relativistic" about Frame's positions in theology and ethics. You may disagree with some of his positions, but they aren't relativistic. If you want to see relativism, try John Hick.
It is possible to reject one’s confessional commitments in a forthright and honest way. One critic complained that I did not similarly attack Meredith Kline. In the first place, I have not seen Kline’s approach invading Reformed Baptist discussions, and this continues to be my main concern. I didn’t care for Kline’s view on a number of points, but I’ll tell you what I did appreciate: where he differed with the Westminster Standards, he stood in class and said plainly, “I take exception to the standards at this point.” You can debate whether or not he ought to have been allowed to do this at Westminster, but at no point did he, for instance, pretend to be Sabbatarian while redefining Sabbatarianism. Instead, he said, “I no longer hold the confessional doctrine on Sabbath.”
i) Was that Chantry's "main concern"? No doubt that's one of Chantry's professed concerns. But didn't Chantry emphatically lay down a firm principle:
At Nicea the churches recognized the orthodox truth regarding the nature of Christ and formulated that teaching in a creed. The result was to put an end to personal interpretations within the church – to distinguish between what was inside and what was outside the boundaries. Anyone who wished to pursue a private interpretation would have to do so outside the boundaries of the communion defined at Nicea. In other words, the church recognized early on that sinful tendency drives theology away from biblical truth – even where the Bible is quoted. Corporate recognition of right interpretations put a brake on individual error. The Eccumenical creeds did this for the entire church; in a more recent era the confessions have accomplished the same task for various segments of the church.
To confessionalists – Presbyterian or Baptist – the confessional documents represent the settled corporate interpretations coming down to us from the ages. They are not individual interpretations (no individual can authorize or adopt a confession), but rather the summary of the teaching of the church. They are secondary standards under Scripture, but they create safe boundaries around our interpretation of Scripture. To transgress those boundaries in favor of an individual or private interpretation is to tread on thin ice. Whereas years or in some cases centuries of theological experience went into the language of the confession – often recognizing the dangers of certain misstatements – we live in an age in which far too many a Christian and even theologian is likely to stand alone with his Bible and say, “It seems to me…” Confessionalism is intended to prevent this error.
Now, however, he actually "appreciates" the fact that Kline's individual interpretations sabotage "the settled corporate interpretations" handed down to us through the ages because he was brazen about it. So long as you openly tamper with the brakes, so long as you defiantly transgress the boundaries, then Chantry won't do two posts attacking you as "dangerous" and "disruptive."
ii) There's something else rather curious about Chantry's nonchalant response to Kline. Chantry touts the "supportive letter" he wrote to WSC in response to The Escondido Theology. Well, who was Chantry supporting? By opposing The Escondido Theology, wasn't he defending Frame's targets?
At a substantive level, Frame's primary target was Meredith Kline. That's because Frame regards Kline as the intellectual architect of the "Escondido theology." He was the brains behind the Escondido theology, whereas writers like Horton and Stellman are popularizers.
So how can Chantry adopt such a laissez-faire attitude towards Kline? Is it because Chantry doesn't actually know what's in The Escondido Theology? Did he write that obsequious letter based on hostile rumors? Did he prejudge the book unread? Frame is "dangerous." Frame is the author. Therefore the book must be bad. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
The antiquity of a confession is necessarily distasteful to anyone who believes that the shifting situation changes our situational perspective, requiring new formulations. Thus Frame has attacked the very practice of confessionalism – and with linguistic gymnastics as dishonest as anything he has said about the Regulative Principle. Consider the following statement from Frame’s blog:
In Reformed circles, this tendency leads to a fervent traditionalism, in which, not only the Confessions, but also the extra-confessional practices of the Reformed tradition, in areas such as worship, evangelism, pastoral care, are placed beyond question. In an atmosphere of such traditionalism, it is not possible to consider further reform, beyond that accomplished in the Reformation period itself. There is no continuing reformation of the church’s standards and practices by comparing them with Scripture. Thus there is no way in which new practices, addressing needs of the present time, can be considered or evaluated theologically. This is ironic, because one of the most basic convictions of the Reformed tradition itself is sola Scriptura, which mandates continuing reformation, semper reformanda. At this point, Reformed traditionalism is profoundly anti-traditional.
Note Frame’s concern for “new practices, addressing needs of the present time.” One can see in this the application of a shifting situational perspective.
Let's compare this to another document:
Testimony to Our Time
Teachers of Christ's church are called to "contend for the faith once delivered to the saints" (Jude 3) by addressing the challenges to the faith that arise in each generation. The Board and Faculty of Westminster Seminary California (WSC) confess our faith in the Sovereign God who has revealed himself in his creation, in Christ the incarnate Word, and in Scripture the Word of God written.
Our understanding of God's self-revelation is summarized in the Reformed confessions: the Westminster Confession and Catechisms, the Heidelberg Catechism, the Belgic Confession, and the Canons of Dort. In our time, as in the past, biblical faith faces particular challenges. Recognizing that faithfulness to Christ entails our readiness to speak his truth specifically at those points in which it is under attack in our day, we offer to the church this statement of our understanding of the Scriptures' teaching regarding issues now causing controversy among the people of God. The Board and Faculty of WSC have unanimously adopted this testimony.
http://wscal.edu/resource-center/resource/testimony-to-our-time
It goes on to stake out positions on inerrancy, abortion, hermeneutics, homosexuality, and the ordination of women.
Isn't that precisely the kind of thing Frame had in mind about going beyond the confessions to address modern challenges which weren't on the horizon when the confessions were framed? Yet this is a public statement by the then-faculty of WSC, around the time Chantry was a student. You know, the same institution he wrote that glowing letter about. So how can Frame be so wrong when WSC is so right if WSC was doing the very thing Chantry brands as "relativistic"?
As a friend of mine wrote, “I don’t think some of the commenters fully understand that John Frame took sacred oaths before God and Men that he subscribes to the confessional standards of his Church.” Very true, and rather than admit that he could no longer in good conscience maintain those oaths, Frame pretended that he made them on ‘opposite day’; much of the confession that he promised to uphold is eventually discover to mean the opposite of what the confessional words themselves appear to say.
Two basic problems:
i) Frame has already answered that question:
How can I claim to be a Presbyterian? I am a minister in good standing in a sound Presbyterian church. I have honestly subscribed to Presbyterian doctrinal standards, with a few exceptions which my Presbytery knows and accepts as no barrier to my good standing. I have never vowed to learn nothing from non-Reformed traditions, so my interest in learning from them does not constitute any barrier to my confession of Presbyterianism."
http://www.frame-poythress.org/the-regulative-principle-scripture-tradition-and-culture/
II) In addition, why doesn't Chantry ask the same question of Scott Clark? How can Clark honestly subscribe to the Westminster Standards when he repudiates the Westminster Standards on the days of creation and the civil duties of the magistrate?
iii) Keep in mind that Kline, Clark, and Hart are all targets of The Escondido Theology, which Chantry deplored in his letter to WSC.
Thursday, February 20, 2014
"Jim Crow laws for gays and lesbians?"
Kirsten Powers recently published an op-ed entitled "Jim Crow laws for gays and lesbians?"–in reference to a proposed bill protecting the religious freedom of Kansas businesses and individuals to refuse services to homosexual "couples." I'll just comment on the Jim Crow comparison:
i) Her comparison presumes that homosexual behavior is moral equivalent to race. Needless to say, that begs the question. That's hardly something she's entitled to posit. That assumes the very thing she needs to prove.
ii) The analogy is disanalogous in another key respect. Jim Crow laws restricted rather than protected the freedom of businesses. They didn't give businesses the freedom to refuse service to some customers. Rather, they denied businesses the freedom to serve everyone.
Apparently, lawmakers felt too many white establishments were serving black customers, which is why lawmakers felt it necessary to rob white businesses of the right to serve black customers. So Jim Crow laws are nearly the polar opposite of what Powers insinuates.
iii) Let's take a different comparison. Isaac Stern was one of the premier violinists of his generation. He wasn't the virtuoso that Heifetz was, but he was a greater interpreter.
He gave concerts all around the world. But there was one county he boycotted: Germany. That's because Stern was Jewish, and he belonged to the generation that endured the Holocaust. He could never forgive Germany for what it did to his people.
Now, younger Jewish musicians like Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman, and Daniel Baremboim didn't feel the same way. That's in part because they were a generation later. It didn't hit quite as close to home for them.
Objectively speaking, Stern's reaction was unreasonable. But that's easy to say if you weren't a Jew of Stern's generation.
Now, even if you disagree with Stern, does Powers think international law should require Stern to perform in Germany? Should he be fined or jailed for discriminating against Germans by refusing to concertize in Germany? Or is it his prerogative to boycott Germany, whether or not you agree with his motives?
iv) As a rule, I think private businesses should have the legal right to do business with whoever they wish, and refuse to do business with whoever they wish.
An exception to the rule might be emergency medical care.
Mind you, I can think of examples where E.R. physicians would be morally justified in letting a patient die, viz. a convicted mass murderer who was shanked in prison. But it would be difficult to make those distinctions as a matter of hospital policy.
v) To take one more example, although I disagree with Rome's position on artificial contraception, I don't think Catholic institutions (e.g. hospitals) or Catholic individuals (e.g. pharmacists) should be forced to provide contraceptives.
vi) I'd add that when a business refuses to provide a product or service that's in demand, that creates a business opportunity for an enterprising entrepreneur to supply the neglected market niche.
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