Lowballing converts

http://www.whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2014/04/how_to_handle_converts.html

Doubting Thomist

I'm going to discuss growing pains in Reformed philosophy, using Ed Feser to segue into that larger issue. I'll admit at the outset that commenting on Feser poses something of a dilemma for me. As a rule, I read enough of a writer to make a preliminary judgment on whether or not I think it's worth my time to read more by him. For that reason, I'm not a regular reader of Feser's blog. He's a doctrinaire Thomist who seems to recast every issue in terms of Thomism. I quickly lose interest. I don't share his enthusiasm for Thomist epistemology or metaphysics. I guess that makes me a Doubting Thomist. 

But I admit this may mean I'm not qualified to offer an informed opinion of Feser. With that disclaimer in mind:

i) Feser seems to have a following among some young, philosophically-minded Calvinists. I think one reason is that Feser goes after "New Atheists" and philosophically-clueless secular scientists whom highbrow Christian philosophers don't generally deign to comment on. He's more of a cage-fighter than, say, Alexander Pruss or Peter van Inwagen. And that's useful. 

That said, from what I can tell (based on my admittedly cursory sampling), I have considerable reservations about Feser overall. For instance:

ii) He's a vociferous critic of intelligent-design theory. Now, ID-theory is fair game. However, it's philosophically unenlightening when philosophers like Feser (and Francis Beckwith) criticize ID-theory because it isn't Thomism. Unless you grant that Thomist epistemology and metaphysics should be the standard of comparison, that objection is uninteresting. 

There are intelligent criticisms of ID-theory. Del Ratzsch is a sympathetic critic. Darwinian Elliott Sober is a thoughtful critic. Bayesians like the McGrews are critical of ID-theory because they disagree with Dembski's filter for detecting design, which is a negative criterion (ruling out chance) rather than positive evidence for design. 

One may or may not agree with this criticisms. But at least they are interesting criticisms. 

iii) Apropos (ii), the problem is compounded by the fact that Feser's understanding of Paley and ID-theory have both been challenged. Consider the running debates between his blog and Uncommon Descent. 

iv) To be fair, one of the main attractions of Thomism is that it's a pretty complete philosophical system. Thomistic ethics, epistemology, and metaphysics. It's almost unrivaled among theological traditions for its philosophical breadth and depth. 

Let's take some statements by Feser:

The modern approach is represented by Leibniz-Clarke style cosmological arguments, Paley-style design arguments and “Intelligent Design” theory, Plantinga-style ontological arguments, “Reformed epistemology,” Swinburne-style inductive arguments, etc.  Contemporary philosophy of religion is dominated by these modern sorts of arguments, though there are some thinkers (John Haldane, Brian Davies, Eleonore Stump, et al.) whose sympathies are classical.  These modern arguments typically operate with very different conceptions of causation, modality, substance, essence, and other key metaphysical notions than the ones classical thinkers would accept. 

Now, my approach, being Aristotelian-Thomistic, is decidedly classical.  Like many other Thomists, I not only do not defend the sorts of arguments most other contemporary philosophers of religion do, but I am critical both of the metaphysical/epistemological assumptions underlying the arguments and of the conception of God the arguments arrive at.  For instance, I reject the possible worlds theories in terms of which modality is typically understood in the contemporary arguments; I think the “argument to the best explanation” approach gets reasoning from the world to God just fundamentally wrong 

http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2014/02/an-exchange-with-prof-keith-parsons.html

Elizabeth Anscombe (1919-2001) and her husband Peter Geach are sometimes considered the first “analytical Thomists,” though (like most writers to whom this label has been applied) they did not describe themselves in these terms, and as Haldane’s somewhat vague expression “mutual relationship” indicates, there does not seem to be any set of doctrines held in common by all so-called analytical Thomists. What they do have in common seems to be that they are philosophers trained in the analytic tradition who happen to be interested in Aquinas in some way; and the character of their “analytical Thomism” is determined by whether it tends to stress the “analytical” side of analytical Thomism, or the “Thomism” side, or, alternatively, attempts to emphasize both sides equally. 

We might tentatively distinguish, then, between three subcategories within the group of contemporary analytic philosophers who have been described as “analytical Thomists.” The first category comprises analytic philosophers who are interested in Aquinas and would defend some of his ideas, but who would also reject certain other key Thomistic claims (perhaps precisely because of their perceived conflict with assumptions prevalent among analytic philosophers) and thus fail to count (or even to count themselves) as “Thomists” in any strict sense. This sort of “analytical Thomism” might be said to emphasize the “analytical” element at the expense of the “Thomism.” Anthony Kenny (who rejects Aquinas’s doctrine of being) and Robert Pasnau (who rejects certain aspects of his account of human nature) would seem to exemplify this first tendency. A second category within analytical Thomism would comprise thinkers who do see themselves as Thomists in some sense, and who would argue that those aspects of Aquinas’s thought which seem to conflict with assumptions common among analytical philosophers can be interpreted or reinterpreted so that there is no conflict. This approach might be said to give both the “analytical” and the “Thomistic” elements of analytical Thomism equal emphasis, and is represented by thinkers like Geach, Brian Davies, and C. F. J. Martin (all of whom would attempt to harmonize Aquinas’s doctrine of being with Frege’s understanding of existence) and Germain Grisez and John Finnis (who would reinterpret Aquinas’s ethics so as to avoid what Moore called the “naturalistic fallacy”). The work of Norman Kretzmann and Eleonore Stump also possibly falls into this second category, though since it is often interpretative and scholarly rather than programmatic, it is harder to say. 

Thomists of other schools have been very critical of both of these strains within analytical Thomism, sometimes to the extent of dismissing the very idea of analytical Thomism as being no more coherent than (in their view) “transcendental Thomism” is. But there is a third possible category of “analytical Thomists,” namely those whose training was in the analytic tradition and whose modes of argument and choice of topics reflects this background, but whose philosophical views are in substance basically just traditional Thomistic ones, without qualification or reinterpretation. Here the “Thomism” would be in the driver’s seat and the “analytical” modifier would reflect not so much the content of the views defended but rather the style in which they are defended. 

http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2009/10/thomistic-tradition-part-ii.html

Several issues:

i) Feser seems to be a purist about Thomism, unlike modern revisionists. I find that ironic considering the fact that Aquinas was far from being a philosophical purist. He's quite eclectic. 

ii) Apropos (i), Feser seems to be very concerned with recovering the authentic interpretation of Aquinas. Who's the true Thomist?

Over the centuries, Thomism has acquired many interpretive layers. Is Cajetan's theory of analogy a legitimate or illegitimate development of Thomism? 

I think this whole approach is misguided. Ultimately, philosophy is about ideas. It doesn't matter where you get your ideas. The important distinction is between true and false ideas. Thin ideas and powerful ideas. 

From an intellectual standpoint, a misinterpretation can be more useful than a correct interpretation. Suppose you improve on Aquinas by unintentionally imputing to him a better theory than he held. That's bad exegesis, but good philosophy. 

iii) It isn't clear to me if Feser is saying philosophers like Anscombe, Geach, and Kenny misunderstand Thomism, or if they adulterate it with foreign influences. If the former, then I'd simply point out that, in my estimation, they are Feser's superiors when it comes to original research. Isn't Feser basically a popularizer? By contrast, Geach, for one, did groundbreaking work on Frege. 

If the latter, then I'd say that misses the point. The reason Geach or Anscombe feel free to modify Thomism is because they are real thinkers. They combine complementary ideas from different sources to improve on the status quo ante. They aren't concerned with simply expounding or repristinating Aquinas, but in advancing the argument. There is progress in the history of ideas.  

By the same token, both Feser and Pruss are Catholic philosophers, but Pruss doesn't hesitate to synthesize Aristotelian and Leibnizian insights. He helps himself to whatever he finds useful. And he's clearly Feser's intellectual superior.

Feser is someone who's mastered a system, then applies it to contemporary issues. Paint-by-numbers. Their Catholicism notwithstanding, Anscombe and Geach are fairly independent thinkers who–unlike Feser–both made significant, original contributions to philosophy. 

Kenny is somewhat anomalous. A priest who lost his faith. Very erudite and intellectually gifted, but agnostic. 

I don't see that Feser is a very promising role model for aspiring Reformed philosophers. Let's turn to Scripturalism. 

Gordon Clark was a bright guy, and a well-trained philosopher by the standards of the time. However, even if you're sympathetic to his approach, he can only take you so far. He's mainly a popularizer. He has a conversational style, like some other philosophers of his generation, viz. Brand Blanshard. That makes him readable. He's a way some Christians get hooked on philosophy. That's their introduction. 

But because he usually writes at a popular level, there's not a lot of depth or detail. And it lacks technical rigor. Plantinga raised the bar for how to do Christian philosopher. The same holds true, in a different way, for Swinburne. 

I expect many young Calvinists of a philosophical bent may still get their theology from Warfield and Turretin, or Schreiner and Beale, or Frame, but their philosophical role models are more in the vein of Pruss, Plantinga, the McGrews, van Inwagen, &c. 

Paul Helm has been a mediating figure. A Calvinist who defends classical Christian theism.

You also have bloggers and other Internet resources like William Vallicella, the Prosblogian crew, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, which supply both substance and inspiration. The list goes on and on. 

Compared with that, the "intellectual ammunition" supplied by The Trinity Foundation or Vincent Cheung is pretty low caliber. 

Scripturalism suffers from brain drain. In the past, Michael Sudduth was the most intellectually promising Scripturalist of his generation, but he not only turned his back on Scripturalism, he turned his back on Christianity.

Among the up and coming generation, it's my impression that Ryan Hedrich and Bnonn Dominic Tennant were the most intellectually promising Christians who've been mentored by Scripturalism. However, Bnonn seems to have outgrown Cheung while Ryan appears to be means-testing Scripturalism. That doesn't mean they will make a complete break with Scripturalism. To some extent this can be a case of going behind Clark to the realist/rationalist tradition which inspired him. Going straight to the source. 

Both Ryan and Bnonn read a fair amount of contemporary philosophy and philosophical theology. As a result, their own positions become increasingly refined, with the corresponding result that the stock formulations and supporting arguments of Sean Gerety, Gary Crampton, and John Robbins look increasingly simplistic and amateurish. 

Vincent Cheung is another popularizer. Like a bartender who serves bum wine to the regulars while assuring us that he keeps the good stuff in the back room, Cheung reputedly has superior arguments at the ready. I keep waiting. 

I don't say that to wax triumphalistic about the fortunes of Van Tilian apologetics. Our own talent pool is pretty shallow at the moment. At least at the academic level. Frame is semi-retired. There's Poythress. There's James Anderson, who sometimes teams up with Greg Welty. Among academics, that's the cream of the crop. Now, there may be a lot of younger talent in the pipeline.

At one time, David Byron seemed to be the natural successor to Bahnsen, but it looks like that stalled. 

Likewise, if Gerety and Crampton are drag factors on Scripturalism, Nate Shannon is a drag on Van Tilianism. Both ships have barnacles on the hull.   

Van Tilian apologetics benefits from institutional patronage. Scripturalism has to live off the land. I think the main thing that keeps Scripturalism going is freebie material from Cheung and the Trinity Foundation. Anyone with Internet access can download lots of the material.

Mind you, institutional patronage is a mixed blessing. Seminaries, Christian colleges, and denominations keep some traditions on life support which couldn't survive on the merits. Likewise, some professors coast on ascribed status rather than achieved status.  

One issue is whether Van Tilian apologetics is an apologetic method or a Christian philosophy. Take Bahnsen's debate with Gordon Stein, where he stumped Stein's physicalism by invoking the laws of logic, as a paradigm case of abstract objects.  

That counterexample worked for a live debate with an unprepared opponent. However, the theistic foundations of logic go well beyond apologetic method. Rather, that requires a detailed metaphysical model. 

I actually think the future is promising for Reformed philosophy. As long as it remains rooted in Reformed theology, and uses Reformed theology as the benchmark, it can afford to be pretty eclectic about its philosophical influences.  

The 1982 Carbon Dating Of The Shroud Of Turin

For a few decades, accounts have been circulating about alleged dating work done on a piece of the Shroud of Turin in the early 1980s. Unfortunately, the accounts have been largely unsubstantiated, vague, and inconsistent. If one of the accounts were to be accepted as accurate, would it even have much significance?

If you set out to study these issues in depth, you enter a labyrinth of garbled information, without much guidance and without a lot of hope of accomplishing much. That ought to change. Eyewitnesses and other sources relevant to the events in question are gradually dying off. Attempts to clarify these matters ought to be made sooner rather than later. I want this thread to take some steps in that direction. I don't claim to have even come close to resolving all of the difficulties. But I think I can clarify some points, with a lot still unsettled.

Comrades-in-arms

I'm noticing the potential convergence of what had been two distinct theological groups. There's already a conceptual convergence. 

For convenience, let's call the first group progressive evangelicals. When evangelicals move to the left, it's usually a two-step process. They begin by saying this is a question of interpretation rather than inerrancy. They become irate if you accuse them of denying inerrancy. "How dare you equate your interpretation of Scripture with inerrancy! Just because we disagree with your interpretation doesn't mean we deny the inerrancy of Scripture. Don't be so arrogant!"

But, of late, progressive evangelicals are ditching that face-saving distinction. They admit the Bible is mistaken in some of what it teaches. Three of the hot-button issues are homosexuality, the historicity of Adam, and the OT "genocidal" commands. 

But the list can include other things. They may ax the historicity of the Exodus, or say Paul was a child of his times on the subject of male headship. And so on and so forth.

All these disparate issues are symptomatic of a common underlying issue: the authority of Scripture. They reject the authority of Scripture. 

Basically, they distinguish between the essential and inessential teachings of Scripture. They say you can reject what the Bible teaches about homosexuality, Adam and Eve, "genocidal commands," the Exodus, &c., and still be a faithful Christian, because these aren't Christian essentials. 

Their position is simplicity itself: Whatever Biblical teachings they reject are, by definition, inessential. Their very rejection automatically demotes the offending doctrine to the dustbin of inessentials. 

So this group is already center-left on the ethical, political, and theological spectrum. I can't help noticing how this seems to coincide with the Obama presidency. Apparently, progressive evangelicals feel the current cultural milieu makes it safe for them to come out of hiding.

In a way, this is a refreshing development. They drop the pretense of publicly maintaining a position (inerrancy) which hitherto they privately denied. Now they've come clean. 

On a related note, I'm struck by how quickly John Walton's view of Gen 1 garnered a following. There was an instant audience for his treatment. Like a neglected market niche. Progressive evangelicals who were just waiting for his interpretation to come along to justify their preexisting unease with Gen 1. 

It reminds me of how little resistance there was to Darwin's Origin of Species. If Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually satisfied atheist, Walton made it possible to be an intellectually satisfied progressive evangelical.

Many old-earth creationists, and even a few theistic evolutionists (e.g. Warfield) are committed to the inerrancy of Scripture. Their interpretation of Gen 1 is consistent with the inerrancy of Gen 1. 

What makes Walton's approach different is that it erases the distinction between interpretation and inerrancy, for his interpretation commits him to the errancy of Gen 1. On his view, God accommodated the narrator's obsolete understanding of the cosmos. God did not correct the narrator's erroneous viewpoint. What the narrator purports to be the case is false. So on his interpretation, Gen 1 is simply false in that respect.

Now let's compare all this with the second group. We might call them Resurrection apologists. 

Needless to say, Christian apologists have always defended the Resurrection. That goes without saying. But a more recent development is using the Resurrection to defend Christianity in general. They treat the Resurrection as both the theological and apologetical linchpin of Christianity. 

To my knowledge, John Warwick Montgomery initiated this trend. Other apologists followed suit.

This is related to a "minimal facts" approach. To some extent I think the "minimal facts" approach was originally adapted to the time-limits of a live, public, formal debate. But it's taken on a life of its own.

On this methodology, an apologist brackets the inspiration of Scripture and treats the NT like any other ancient historical source. He defends the basic reliability of the relevant NT passages which witness to the Resurrection. 

This apologetic strategy is spawning a corresponding theological posture, in which you distinguish between essential doctrines like the Resurrection and inessential doctrines like inerrancy. On this view, if the Resurrection never happened, Christianity would be false–but if the Exodus never happened, Christianity would still be true. If the tomb wasn't empty on Easter, Christianity would be false–but if Adam never existed, Christianity would still be true. 

Now, unlike progressive evangelicals, Resurrection apologists are center-right on the theological spectrum. Yet their fallback position on inerrancy is pretty much interchangeable with the position of progressive evangelicals. The main difference is that, at least for now, the rejection of inerrancy by Resurrection apologists is still hypothetical, whereas progressive evangelicals actually and openly reject it.

But both groups already distinguish between essential and inessential Biblical teachings. In principle (or practice), a faithful Christian can disregard inessential Biblical teachings. And I don't see any appreciable difference in the examples which both groups use to illustrate inessential Biblical doctrines. Both groups could draw up the same list. At least, their respective lists would overlap to a very considerable degree. 

Although the Resurrection apologists still espouse inerrancy, it's unclear how they can maintain a stable distinction between progressive evangelicals and themselves. There no longer seems to be a fundamental distinction in principle. Perhaps the only difference is that they disagree on whether or not Scripture has actually crossed the threshold of error. But that's not a make-or-break issue for Resurrection apologists. They don't have a major stake in the outcome of that debate.  

These two groups arrived that their respective positions independently of each other, yet their respective positions are conceptually convergent. For both, the authority of Scripture is expendable. 

Cleanliness is next to godliness

http://www.aquinasonline.com/Topics/Humor/soap.html

Is Dachau wrong?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-npNtGMT2E

Mad Hatter

A few days ago I just noticed a request (last month) by E. Calvin Beisner for me to comment on this post:

http://jenhatmaker.com/blog/2014/03/25/world-vision-gay-marriage-and-a-different-way-through

So here's my belated reply. Although World Vision reversed itself, the issues haven't gone away.

Before commenting on the specifics, I'll make some general observations. 

i) I don't read Jen Hatmaker. I'm guessing she has a following among some religous women.

ii) Throughout the piece she appeals to relativism. Funny how people who resort to relativism are oblivious to the obvious fact that that's a double-edged sword. Relativism is self-refuting. 

The same goes for her false intellectual modesty. For people like her, intellectual modesty is a virtue they only urge on their opponents, whereas they themselves are intellectually immodest. She's clearly taking sides. She's siding with "gay Christians." But in that event, her appeal to relativism undercuts her own position as well. 

iii) Presumably, she doesn't relativize everything in Scripture. Take those going-to-heaven-when-you-die promises in Scripture. I assume she values those. 

I will attempt a measured response that might help us through yet another damaging fallout surrounding the single most polarizing issue in our generation. I aim to be a peacemaker, because someone has to be.

She appoints herself the voice of reason. How humble. 

But with employees from over 50 denominations, some of which sanction same-sex marriages (United Church of Christ, The Episcopal Church, the Presbyterian Church (USA), and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America), as well as staff in the 17 states plus the District of Columbia where same-sex marriages are legal and binding, World Vision has chosen not to make this issue a condition of employment. 

Why not? For instance, there are conservative Christian colleges and seminaries with an interdenominational faculty. But these institutions have their own statement of faith, to which faculty must subscribe as a condition of employment. 

Rather, they are leaving the theological sorting to the local church of which WV considers their organization an “operational arm,” not a “theological arm.”

Like distinguishing the political wing of Hamas from its military wing. 

First of all, the Christian community is not going to reach consensus on gay marriage. 

Consensus already exists. The Christian community is solidly opposed homosexual marriage. Those who support homosexual marriage signal their defection from the Christian community. By supporting homosexual marriage, they define themselves out of the Christian community. Their support places them out of bounds. 

Every article, regardless of its position for or against, is the same. The support arguments; same. The rebuttals; same. The circular thinking; same. The responses are fully predictable, the language identical, the interpretations immovable, and after all the energy expended, we discover we are at the same impasse.

That's largely true. But that doesn't make every argument and counterargument equally meritorious. She can only take that position on pain of instantly invalidating her own claims. 

This is a fact: Thousands of churches and millions of Christ-followers faithfully read the Scriptures and with thoughtful and academic work come to different conclusions on homosexuality (and countless others). Godly, respectable leaders have exegeted the Bible and there is absolutely not unanimity on its interpretation. 

Of course, that's just a question-begging assertion. She acts as if everyone must submit to her personal diktat. 

There never has been. 

Historic Christianity has been united against homosexuality. 

Reason and humility occupies too small a place in the analysis of the historical church and the progressive interpretation of Scripture. We just get ANGRY and DEFEND and say WELL I GUESS YOUR BIBLE IS MISSING A SECTION. It’s immature and myopic and a watching world is dumbfounded by our refusal to critically self-evaluate and invite nuance into an ancient text that was written across several cultures, 40+ writers, 1500 years, 8 genres, and an entire worldview shift once Jesus hit the scene.

If anything, the Majority World (i.e. the Global South) is dumbfounded by the way radical chic religionists in the West are moral, political, and theological weathercocks. 

Reactionary, emotional attacks are not helpful. Denny Burk decrying the “collapse of Christianity at World Vision” under a “false prophet who comes to you in sheep’s clothing…but inside is a ravenous wolf” is exactly the sort of emotional jargon that whips Christians into a frenzy and incites us to crucify one another. Burk declared that we would know false teachers by their fruits.

As any Biblical literate reader can see, Burk's "emotional jargon" is the jargon of Jesus. 

We do not need any more inflammatory soldiers in the culture wars; we need more thought leaders who are slower to publicly condemn their faithful brothers and sisters.

Which assumes that supporters of homosexual marriage are "their faithful brothers and sisters." Notice how she careens between relativism and absolutism. 

Perhaps you don’t agree with gay marriage, but this policy change at WV doesn’t affect your support of their mission. This is not a deal breaker for you. Great. It doesn’t have to be. You do not need to defend your continued sponsorship. Without question, WV is a high-ranking international charity that has transformed millions of lives. It has a solid, established history and employing married gay people has no bearing on their infrastructure or unambiguous mission to serve the poor in the name of Christ.

She compartmentalized homosexuality from charity for poor and needy children. But homosexuals prey on poor and needy children. Poverty is a source of child prostitution in the Third World. That includes child prostitutes who service homosexual Johns. 

Brothers and sisters, I am starving for reasonable, measured Christ-followers to become the dominant voices in the ongoing culture wars.

Having disqualified herself from that role. 

"Gays don't become straight"

I'm going to comment on a post by Arminian theologian Randal Rauser (who is sometimes featured at the Society of Evangelical Arminians):

http://randalrauser.com/2014/04/gays-dont-become-straight-so-what-now/

For some time now, evangelicals have argued that homosexual orientation can be changed through reparative therapy. That idea is no longer sustainable. For some time failure and scandal have plagued various evangelical reparative organizations, including the most visible of all, Exodus International. Now Justin Lee, author of Torn: Rescuing the Gospel from the Gays vs. Christians Debate, has joined the chorus calling for evangelicals to abandon this approach to homosexuality with his bluntly titled article: “Dear Evangelicals, Let’s Stop Burying Our Heads in the Sand on ‘Ex-Gay’ Ministries“.

i) I don't have an informed opinion on reparative therapy. But by the same token, what makes Rauser an expert on the subject? He's not a trained psychologist who specializes in homosexuality. He presumes to speak with absolute confidence on behalf of any and all homosexuals, despite the testimony of some to the contrary. 

ii) What is the success rate for any psychological therapy? Why assume homosexuals can't range along a continuum? 

The biblical texts prohibiting same sex acts are well known. What is disputed, however, is whether those texts apply to homosexual persons as we now understand them. It is fair to say that in the ancient world there is no conception of homosexuality as an orientation parallel to heterosexuality. Given that we now know there is such an orientation and that it cannot be changed, the question becomes inescapable: do the texts of condemnation apply to these persons as well? Some Christian ethicists believe they do while others believe they do not.Some Christians believe homosexuality is God-given and good (see for example, Mel White and his organization SoulForce) while other Christians believe homosexual orientation is part of the fall but that homosexuals can still participate in covenantal Christian unions (see for example, Lewis Smedes). This is a good reminder that within the realm of acceptance there are different kinds of acceptance.

Here he's recycling the standard propaganda, as if such claims haven't been debunked by scholars like Robert Gagnon. This kind of revisionist exegesis has been around since John Boswell, the late Yale historian, who, not coincidentally, died of AIDS at 47. 

Now, for reasons of job security, Rauser has to be a bit cagey about tipping his own hand. So he simply presents this as one of two possible "options." 

Sources on the History of Welch's Grape Juice Replacing Wine at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

This past year I gave a Ph.D. presentation on "Evangelicals and the Lord’s Supper: Turning Wine into Grape Juice in Nineteenth-Century America"

Someone asked me to post some selected bibliography from my research:

Blocker, Jack S., and David M. Fahey. Alcohol and Temperance in Modern History: An International Encyclopedia 2 Vol. 2003.

Burns, Eric. The Spirits of America: A Social history of Alcohol. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2004.

Chazanof, William. Welch’s Grape Juice: From Corporation to Co-operative. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1977.

Hallett, Anthony, and and Diane Hallett. “Thomas B. Welch, Charles E Welch.” Entrepreneur Magazine Encyclopedia of Entrepreneurs. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 2008.

Mathison, Keith A. Given for You: Reclaiming Calvin’s Doctrine of the Lord’s Supper. Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R Publishing, 2002.

McCormick, Scott. The Lord’s Supper: A Biblical Interpretation. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1966.

Moore, Russell. Understanding Four Views On the Lord’s Supper. Grand Rapids, Mich: Zondervan, 2007.

Norwood, Frederick Abbott. The Story of American Methodism: A History of the United Methodists and Their Relations. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1974.

O’Brien, Betty A. “The Lord’s Supper: Fruit of the Vine or Cup of Devils?” Methodist History 31.4.,1993. [This article is particularly helpful]

____________. “The Lord’s Supper Traditional Cup of Unity or Innovative Cups of Individuality.” Methodist History 32.2., 1994.

Vineland Greater Chamber of Commerce Membership Directory & Community Guide. “History of Vineland.” http://www.vinelandcity.org/History.htm

Willard, Frances Elizabeth. Woman and Temperance: Or, The Work and Workers of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. New York: Arno Press, 1972.

Williamson, G. I. Wine in the Bible & the Church. Phillipsburg, NJ: Pilgrim, 1976.

See also:

http://www.sermonaudio.com/sermoninfo.asp?SID=322111921180 

"From Supper to 'Sacrament': Why the Early Church Moved from Supper to Bread and Wine" by John Mark Hicks [online]

Habermas on NDEs

Since this is a hot-button issue right now, here are two interviews by a leading evangelical apologist and NDE researcher:

http://www.garyhabermas.com/qa/qa_index.htm#nea

http://www.skeptiko.com/112-gary-habermas-skeptical-of-near-death-experience-spirituality/

Aquinas’s “donum superadditum” vs the Alien Righteousness of Christ

Here is the heart of the issue between Protestants and Roman Catholics. For those who are following along in my series on “chain-of-being” ontology:

Starting things off: Eastern Orthodoxy: Same as all the other Eastern religions
Part 1: “Metaphysical Religion” and “Becoming One with God”
Part 2: Aquinas, “existence”, and the failure to observe the Creator-creature distinction

Here is the Creator/creature distinction in the ontological sense:

Intrinsically holy, God is qualitatively distinct from creation—not just more than, but different from, his creatures. There is no divine soul, preexisting throughout eternity, thrown mercilessly into the realm of time and matter. God breathed life into Adam in creation, and he “became a living being” (Gen 2:7 NIV)—an embodied soul and an animated body. And yet, God pronounced this creation good (Gen 1:4, 1:10, 1:12, 1:18, 1:21, 1:25, [and “very good” when speaking of man, Gen 1:31]).

It is no crime to be different from God. Finitude is not a “falling away” from some primordial infinitude. There is no part of human nature that is higher, brighter, more infinite, or more real than another. This means that the only legitimate ontological distinction is between the uncreated God and the created world, not between spiritual and material realms (as is posited in the “chain-of-being” ontology). Ontological difference – the strangeness that makes us stand in awe of God’s majesty – is good … (from Michael Horton, “The Christian Faith”, A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims On the Way, Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan © 2011, pg 42).

So yes, above and beyond the condition “to exist”, Confessional Protestantism holds this Creator/creature distinction. This distinction also exists in the ethical sense after the fall:

Clean power

From Dr. David Martyn Lloyd-Jones:

I remember a woman who was a spiritist, and even a medium, a paid medium employed by a spiritist society. She used to go every Sunday evening to a spiritist meeting and was paid three guineas for acting as a medium. This was during the thirties, and that was quite a large sum of money for a lower-middle-class woman.

She was ill one Sunday and could not go to keep her appointment. She was sitting in her house, and she saw people passing by on their way to the church where I happened to be ministering in South Wales. Something made her feel a desire to know what those people had, and so she decided to go to the service, and did so. She came ever afterward until she died and had become a very fine Christian.

One day I asked her what she had felt on that first visit, and this is what she said to me. She said, “The moment I entered your chapel and sat down on a seat among the people, I was conscious of a power. I was conscious of the same sort of power as I was accustomed to in our spiritist meetings, but there was one big difference. I had a feeling that the power in your chapel was a clean power.”

--Elizabeth Catherwood and Christopher Catherwood, eds., The Christ-Centered Preaching of Martyn Lloyd-Jones: Classic Sermons for the Church Today (Crossway, 2014), 34

HT: Dane Ortlund.

Is science self-correcting?

Atheists allege that Christian theology is unfalsifiable, unlike scientific theorizing, which, because it's fact-based rather than faith-based, is not only falsifiable, but according to Carl Sagan, "self-correcting."

Here's an example of self-correcting science:

During a talk at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Nima Arkani-Hamed, a physicist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., paced to and fro in front of the blackboard, addressing a packed room about the future of supersymmetry. What if supersymmetry is not found at the LHC, he asked, before answering his own question: then we will make new supersymmetry models that put the superpartners just beyond the reach of the experiments. But wouldn’t that mean that we would be changing our story? That’s okay; theorists don’t need to be consistent—only their theories do. 

http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=6836

"Thomistic Simplicism"

I'm going to comment on this post:

https://philosophyandtheism.wordpress.com/author/nateshannon/

I'll begin with two general observations:

i) A basic problem with Oliphant and Shannon is how they seem to be saying more than they really are. They are writing words. Words which denote ideas. They put certain words together, which makes it look like they are putting certain ideas together. Combining ideas with other ideas. 

But they aren't showing how the ideas go together. They aren't showing how these concepts are logically interrelated. At most, they assert that this idea is related to that idea.

So it's combining words with other words, words which denote ideas, as if that explains anything. The words are doing the work of logic. The discussion stays at a verbal surface level. They are saying far less than they appear to be, to the casual reader. We see words on a page, words connected to other words, as if that connects ideas to other ideas. But the performance is illusory.

ii) Another problem: in his post he keep claiming that Helm's position (i.e. God is unaffected by the world) is grounded in Thomistic simplicity. However:

i) He doesn't quote Helm making that connection.

ii) He doesn't show how that follows from Thomistic simplicity.

iii) The denial that God is affected by the world doesn't presuppose Thomistic simplicity. One can hold that on other grounds. 

Moving along:

On the one hand:

Metaphysical simplicism renders all biblical teaching about God ‘metaphorical’, at best, or “not literally true,” says Helm: “On the theory of divine accommodation, statements such as ‘God repented’ are in a sense false, false if taken literally.

On the other hand:

Oliphint acknowledges that speaking of God’s essence requires that we speak apophatically, but he affirms a notion of analogy which allows us to speak theologically after the pattern of God’s own trustworthy speech about himself. That is, Scripture affords true knowledge of God as he is in himself, even given creaturely epistemic limitations. “We can affirm that of which we cannot conceive”

i) But if we can only speak of God's essence apophatically, then isn't "God repented" literally false? 

ii) Notice how Shannon goes straight from apophaticism to analogy, as if those are compatible concepts. But doesn't analogy requires some degree of positive knowledge? 

iii) No, we can't affirm what we can't conceive. We can affirm what we partially conceive. 

And so Helm describes a dichotomy between eternal decree and historical event. “In short what God timelessly decrees is a complete causal matrix of events and actions” (Eternal God, 170). In his post he writes, “[b]iblical theism requires that we make a sharp distinction between what God has eternally decreed, and what as a result comes to pass moment by moment, stage by stage in time. Otherwise we confound the Creator with his creation. The coming to pass of what is eternally decreed is executed in time. But God is not in time, though what he decrees to come to pass most certainly is.”

i) I'd say that's a distinction, not a "dichotomy." Those are not in tension. 

ii) What's wrong with Helm's formulation? 

God decrees eternally; and we see this as God acting temporally. 

That's because we're on the receiving end of the transaction. We experience the effect. 

Following Thomas, Helm claims that God eternally decrees historical event E, and therefore we do not say that historical event E affects God in any way or implies the historicity of divine activity.

i) That's because an effect cannot affect its cause. Otherwise, you have retrocausation. 

ii) I don't know what he even means by the "historicity of divine activity." Frankly, I doubt he knows what he means by that.

iii) Although the relation between the decree and the outcome goes in one direction, we can infer the decree from the outcome. The order of knowledge can reverse the order of being. Shannon fails to distinguish between ontological priority and epistemological priority. 

 This is an obvious non-sequitur which gently overlooks the entire economy of salvation, as a result of which Helm denies a historical transition from wrath to grace.

i) Well, you could have a historical transition from wrath to grace, in terms of how sinners experience God's wrath and grace. Take a transition from an unregenerate to a regenerate state. 

What you can't have is an eternal transition from wrath to grace. 

ii) The "entire economy of salvation" is the result of God's decree. So, no, that's not reversible.

Are sodomy and gluttony analogous?

http://www.robgagnon.net/GluttonyComparisonToHomosexualPractice.htm

Is Heaven is for Real a hoax?

I'm going to quote from (and comment on) some of these posts:

http://www.gty.org/Resources/Print/Blog/B121018

http://mennoknight.wordpress.com/2014/04/23/heaven-is-a-hoax/

http://christiananswers.net/spotlight/movies/2014/heavenisforreal2014.html

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/entertainment/2014/04/heaven-is-for-real-ignites-debate-about-what-awaits-us/

http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justintaylor/2014/04/16/david-platt-on-why-you-should-not-believe-heaven-is-for-real/

i) I've been reading some bad objections to Heaven is for Real. Bad objections can backfire. Bad objections to NDEs invite empirical disproof. Bad objections may inoculate people against good objections.

If a pastor tells people that a certain kind of experience is impossible, and if a person later has that experience, or knows someone he trusts who has that experience (e.g. a friend or family member), then the pastor has blown his credibility. When people are told something can't happen, then encounter evidence to the contrary, one reaction is to become cynical. 

Ironically, bad objections can predispose people to the very error you warn them against. Take inaccurate objections to Roman Catholicism. Some converts to Catholicism had an "anti-Catholic" religious upbringing. Unfortunately, in their experience, Catholic theology was caricatured. That actually made them ripe for conversion to Catholicism when they were later exposed to a more accurate version. When their childhood indoctrination was corrected, they felt betrayed. Had they been raised on accurate objections to Roman Catholicism, they'd be far less susceptible to Catholicism. 

ii) One danger or misuse of NDEs is religious pluralism. As Ken Samples puts it, "NDEs can be used as evidence for everyone’s worldviews."

That highlights the need to distinguish between the raw experience and the interpretation of the experience. 

These books are coming out with such frequency that it is virtually impossible to read and review them all. But that shouldn't even be necessary. 

There's some truth to that. It's possible and preferable to stake out a general position on NDEs. Our position at any given time shouldn't be based on the last book we read on the subject. 

It's like natural disasters which kill hundreds or thousands of humans. That goes to the problem of evil. However, a Christian needn't and shouldn't revisit the problem of evil every time there's another natural disaster in the news. He should have a theodicy which deals with that kind of event.

Same thing with NDEs. It's good to work out a position on that kind of experience. At the same time, your position needs to be informed. 

“I’m convinced that the entire book and movie is a hoax from start to finish,” said John MacArthur, the pastor of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, Calif.  “It has nothing to do with Christianity.  It has nothing to do with the Bible.”

i) We need to distinguish between the book and the movie. Movies take artistic liberties with books they are based on. If the source of the movie is factually dubious, and the movie takes artistic liberties with a dubious source, then the movie will be even less factual than the primary source. 

ii) To say it's a "hoax" suggests conscious deception. Is MacArthur alleging that Colton and/or his parents are intentionally deceiving the public? Certainly that's one possibility we need to take into consideration. But is MacArthur in a position to know that? Rather than speculating on their motives, unless he is privy to inside information, it would be preferable to critique the book and the movie on the merits. 

Colton’s descriptions of heaven are full of fanciful features and peculiar details that bear all the earmarks of a child’s vivid imagination. 

i) This goes to one of the basic problems with the account. A 3-4 child lacks the mental competence to be a reliable witness. In evaluating NDEs, one preliminary consideration is the competence of the subject. Compare Colton Burpo to Eban Alexander. What makes Alexander's case interesting, aside from the medical details, is the fact that he's a neurosurgeon with Ivy League credentials. He brings professional competence to the issue.

Keep in mind that this is just a necessary rather than sufficient condition of a credible witness. You can be a mentally competent witness, but still be unreliable for other reasons. But in Colton's case, he lacks prima facie credibility because he lacks a necessary condition to be a reliable witness. 

In evaluating NDEs, we need to do some preliminary sorting. Some accounts have no prima facie credibility. Others pass that initial test. Some of them merit further scrutiny. 

ii) Having said that, MacArthur's objection exposes a point of tension in his theology. MacArthur subscribes to universal infant salvation:

http://www.gty.org/resources/sermons/80-242/the-salvation-of-babies-who-die-part-1

He thinks all children who die before the age of discretion go straight to heaven when they die. But in that event, what do they experience? 

Is there a kindergarten section of heaven for kindergarten decedents? Is heaven age-appropriate? 

Keep in mind that the intermediate state is, in a sense, a subjective state. A psychological state. The condition of the discarnate soul. It has simulated sensory stimuli. Heaven is not an objective "place" in the concrete, physical sense that the new heavens and earth will be. So, in principle, the experience of heaven could vary to some degree. 

Does MacArthur have some antecedent theological reason to think God would not accommodate the experience of heaven to a child's mind? To what would be pleasant and intelligible to 3-year-old? 

There is simply no reason to believe anyone who claims to have gone to heaven and returned. John 3:13 says, “No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.” [NLT: “No one has ever gone to heaven and returned. But the Son of Man has come down from heaven.”] And John 1:18 says, “No one has seen God at any time.”

But even MacArthur has to make exception for Samuel, Moses, and Elijah. So that proves too much. 

Four biblical authors had visions of heaven—not near-death experiences. Isaiah and Ezekiel (Old Testament prophets) and Paul and John (New Testament apostles) all had such visions. Two other biblical figures—Micaiah and Stephen—got glimpses of heaven, but what they saw is merely mentioned, not described (2 Chronicles 18:18; Acts 7:55).

i) That's a superficial criticism. After all, some Biblical seers (e.g. Ezekiel, St. John, St. Paul) describe their visionary experience as an out-of-body experience. And a near-death-experience is an out-of-body experience, where the soul or consciousness disengages from the body. An out-of-body experience needn't be a near-death-experience, but a near-death-experience is a type of out-of-body experience. 

ii) In addition, Scripture doesn't presume to give an exhaustive list of every type of experience people can have. So, at best, that's an argument from silence. 

In this podcast, John Piper argues against such books from Isaiah 8:19 (And when they say to you, “Inquire of the mediums and the necromancers who chirp and mutter,” should not a people inquire of their God? Should they inquire of the dead on behalf of the living?)

God’s beef with necromancy is that it belittles the sufficiency of his communication. Why would you inquire of the dead to find out what you want to know instead of inquiring of me? And if they say: Well, I have inquired of you and you didn’t tell me what I want to know. He would say: Well, that is your problem. I have told you what you need to know. You don’t need to know about such and such if I haven’t told you. And, in fact, if you go trying to inquire about such and such that I haven’t told you, you are dishonoring me. So that is the nature of the argument. And, therefore, I think the prohibition of séances and necromancy applies to this kind of thing and people ought to stop writing those books.

i) That fails to distinguish between an altered state of consciousness which we initiate, and an altered state of consciousness which we were involuntarily caused to experience.

ii) How is necromancy germane to the experience of a dying child? The child wasn't conducting a séance.  

- Impossible like “people having near death experiences?”Probably not.  That happens all the time.  Even I had a near death experience once when I woke up in a bed soaked in my own blood from head to toe…well, it was mostly my blood…and 2 liters of saline…- Impossible like “people having surgery and being on the ropes?”Again, no.  That happens all the time.  I know of a guy that swallowed a rope and had to have surgery to get it out…well, it was more like floss…and the surgery was non-invasive…

Does Unger deny veridical NDEs? If so, has he studied the evidence for veridical NDEs? Can Unger stop performing stupid pet tricks long enough to do real research? 

- Impossible like getting to go to Heaven outside of Christ, based on the “hope” that…uh…somehow that God will just toss aside his own holiness and the entire person and work of Christ and let everyone in?Well, not everyone everyone.I mean, God can’t let Hitler in…and Stalin…and really bad guys like kidnappers, and child molesters, and pyramid scam artists, and homophobes, and people who deny global warming, and people who eat gluten…and people who are bigots according to your standards of what’s “open minded”…so in the end nobody but yourself and your relatively small circle of friends…Is that the kind of impossible we’re talking about?Well, that must be it.  That’s gotta be the “possibility” that the film is portraying.No sin.No repentance.No gospel whatsoever.

That's a valid objection when NDEs are cited to defend universalism, but what about the status of a dying child? That specific example. What does Unger think happens to children when they die? Does he think a baby has to repent? 

As usual, Unger is incapable of mustering intelligent criticism. He thinks his brand of puerile ridicule is a substitute for reason and evidence.