Exhuming the dead

I'm going to begin by quoting some representative statements:

They argued that the time for confession of sin that is acknowledged to have occurred is always now, and that if we admit that we have sinned, we should not delay but confess our sins now. Psalm 32 was appealed to, on which the Very Reverend Dr. Bryan Chapell preached the opening night of the Assembly, which says that if we delay in confessing our sins our bones will waste away. In fact, Rev. Jon Storck, during a time of prayer that preceded the vote, prayed that if our decision to refer to next year was wrong that our denomination would waste away until we confessed our sin. Speaking also for the substitute was Rev. Leon Brown, an African American pastor from Richmond, VA. 

https://pastortimlecroy.wordpress.com/2015/06/15/the-protest-of-2015/ 

The personal resolution came from two of the most respected Teaching Elders in the PCA, Drs. Sean Lucas and Ligon Duncan.   

The 2015 General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America will be most remembered for how we responded to a personal resolution asking that the PCA acknowledge and repent of past sins during the Civil Rights era. 

The latter argued that particular sins should be repented of particularly, so that after a year of education and work in the presbyteries, we would know better what exactly we were repenting of, so that the repentance may be more heartfelt and thus perhaps bear greater fruit.  

How then do we add feet to our repentance regarding the Civil Rights era... 

http://theaquilareport.com/lessons-learned-from-the-civil-rights-resolution-at-the-2015-pca-general-assembly/ 

Our denominational profiles reveal patterns of ethnic and racial homogeneity.  

Whereas, the effects of these sins have created and continue to create barriers between brothers and sisters of different races and/or economic spheres; and 

Whereas, we also recognize that Scripture establishes precedents for the confession of the past sins of others without assessing personal responsibility for those past sins to the confessing party (Neh. 1:5-7, Neh. 9:13, Daniel 9:4-19) 

http://www.pcahistory.org/pca/race.html

i) I don't think it's asking too much that seminary professors (e.g. Lucas, Duncan, Chapell) be theologically accurate.

ii) Notice the sustained emphasis on vicarious repentance. The living should repent for the sins of the dead. That isn't incidental to this debate. Rather, that's how the issue is characteristically framed. 

iii) Is there something intrinsically wrong with ethnically and racially homogeneous churches? Should we repent of black churches, Latino churches, Asian-American churches?

Certainly a member of one ethnic group should never be made to feel unwelcome by the majority. Suppose, though, I visited a Latino church or Korean church where service is conducted in the naive language. Suppose I don't speak Spanish or Korean. I'm bound to feel excluded, even though no one intended to make me feel excluded. Does that mean native languages worship services are wrong? Should they suspend worship in their native tongue?  

iv) Certainly past evils can have lingering effects. But that's true of the past in general. That's true of World War I, or the Ottoman Conquest. Does that mean I need to repent of WWI or the Ottoman Conquest?

v) I daresay most Americans are very ignorant of American church history. How many Americans, including black Americans, have even heard of Thornwell or Dabney? How many are aware of the fact that in 1845, the Presbyterian Church in the USA passed the following resolution (by a vote of 168 to 13):

Resolved, 1st. That the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in
the United States was originally organized, and has since continued the bond
of union in the Church upon the conceded principle that the existence of
domestic slavery, under the circumstances in which it is found in the southern
portion of the country is no bar to Christian communion (p18). 

https://archive.org/stream/minutesofgeneral1845pres/minutesofgeneral1845pres_djvu.txt

How can that past action create a barrier between black and white Christians if only antiquarians are even cognizant of that resolution? 

vi) Appealing to Ps 32 is inappropriate. That's a case of personal repentance for personal sin.

vii) But what about Daniel, Ezra, and Nehemiah? 

a) To begin with, there's a failure to distinguish between "corporate confession" in the sense of acknowledging the sins of others, and repenting for the sins of others. 

b) Daniel, Ezra, and Nehemiah bring up the past to bring it up to the present. This was about present-day Jews who repeat the sins for their ancestors. Daniel was a member of the generation that went into exile. Most of his contemporaries were covenant-breakers. That's not a thing of the past. 

Likewise, the post-exilic community hadn't learned the lesson of the exile. Members of the post-exilic community were reiterating the transgressions of preexilic Israel–which is why God banished their forebears in the first place.

viii) There's also the question of what "the church" is. Do members of the PCA or OPC belong to the same church as the 1845 Presbyterian denomination that passed that odious resolution? If you've had a complete turn over in the membership, multiple times, so that no one who comprises the 2015 church comprises the 1845 church, then in what sense is that your church? That's so many steps removed from the offending denomination. That mentality reifies a historical abstraction. It's an imaginative projection, like watching a movie about WWII, in which we identify with the good guys rather than the bad guys. Lucas, Ducan et al. relate to dead Presbyterians the way moviegoers relate to a movie character. Although the history is real, the sense of solidarity is fictional. 

There is No Pro-Life Case For Planned Parenthood

http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/08/05/there-is-no-pro-life-case-for-planned-parenthood/

Torley on sola scriptura

I recently left some comments at the Calvinist International:

https://calvinistinternational.com/2015/07/29/all-that-the-prophets-have-spoken-a-rejoinder-to-feser-pt-2/

It appears that conversation has died down, so I'm going to repost my comments.

Vincent Torley asked some questions, which I answered. Torley is a Catholic Intelligent Design theorist. 

steve Vincent Torley • 6 days ago

Dear Dr. Torley,

Thanks for all your fine work over at Uncommon Descent:

i) There were some questions raised about Esther and the Song of Songs at a Jewish council after the fall of Jerusalem. That event precipitated an identity crisis in Palestinian Judaism.

However, these are very belated musings. That's long after the initial reception of the books at issue. We need to distinguish between the original reception history and much later disputations, triggered by a crisis. And it's just one local Jewish council.

ii) To my knowledge, Revelation was accepted early on. It was Dionysius (3C bishop of Alexandria) who later raised questions, largely based on stylistic differences between Revelation and the Gospel of John. I'd just note in passing that given how much of Revelation quotes or paraphrases the OT, the style of Revelation is largely indebted John's sources rather than his personal style. So that objection is ill-conceived.

In addition, Eusebius was critical of millenarianism, so that jaundiced his view of Revelation.

The case for the canon is based on both internal and external evidence. If the "John" of Revelation is the apostle John, then that's sufficient grounds to canonize it. And the apostle John is certainly the best candidate.

We know from Heb 13:23 that this book was written by a member of the Pauline circle. In fact, J. Ramsey Michaels has argued that it was written by Timothy.

In any case, it has a sterling theological provenance in 1C Christianity, both due to its likely date (pre-70 AD) and affiliations with Paul's inner circle.

Apostolicity is not a requirement for canonicity. Inspiration (e.g. prophetic inspiration) is sufficient.

iii) Barber commits a common blunder. Our copies of the LXX date from the Christian era. So that can't be used to tell us the content of the Jewish canon.

Moreover, it was convenient for scribes to treat codices as a general lectionary, including noncanonical books along with canonical books. A codex was a miniature library. You could bind several books in one for ease of availability. Like a portable bookshelf.

There's no evidence I'm aware of that Qumran treated Intertestamental literature or its in-house sectarian literature on a par with OT Scripture. That's discussed by Richard Bauckham.

iv) The Bible may not settle some questions for the simple reason that they don't need to be settled. They are adiaphora.

v) In NT usage, "bishop" doesn't have the same function as in Catholic polity. The only priesthood in the new covenant is the priesthood of Christ.

steve Vincent Torley • 3 days ago

Dear. Dr. Torley, I'll break my response into separate comments. Since you're contrasting the Catholic and Protestant positions, let's consider the Catholic alternative:

i) There's a left/right split in the Catholic church. And that extends into the hierarchy. Compare Walter Cardinal Kasper to Raymond Cardinal Burke.

ii) There are many loose ends in Catholic moral theology. Take competing positions in Catholic casuistry regarding probabilism, probabiliorism, and equiprobabilism.

iii) When the Catholic church takes a stand against something, that's apt to be compromised by loopholes. For instance, it forbids lying, but allows for mental reservations, equivocations, amphibologies, &c. It forbids divorce, but allows for annulment.

To an outsider, it smacks of special pleading.

iv) From a typical evangelical perspective, the Catholic position on divorce is contrary to Scripture. So which is worse: having unresolved moral problems–or resolving them in the wrong direction?

v) On a number of pressing moral issues, the Catholic church doesn't even claim to offer certainty. Benedict XVI candidly admitted that:

"We are in fact constantly confronted with problems where it isn’t possible to find the right answer in a short time. Above all in the case of problems having to do with ethics, particularly medical ethics...We finally had to say, after very long studies, 'Answer that for now on the local level; we aren’t far enough along to have full certainty about that.' 

Again, in the area of medical ethics, new possibilities, and with them new borderline situations, are constantly arising where it is not immediately evident how to apply principles. We can’t simply conjure up certitude...There needn’t always be universal answers. We also have to realize our limits and forgo answers where they aren’t possible...it simply is not the case that we want to go around giving answers in every situation..." (J. Ratzinger, Salt of the Earth [Ignatius, 1996], 100-101).

Back to Torley:

"the number of denominations still espousing Christian morality seems to be steadily decreasing, judging from the responses of certain self-professed Christians to recent Supreme Court decisions (especially Roe vs. Wade and Obergefell vs. Hodges)."

I don't see that decreasing. What I see is increasing polarization of preexisting factions. The Obama era has had a sorting action. The religious left came out of the shadows. But that division has been around since the Enlightenment. Even during the Middle Ages, you undoubtedly had many closet infidels.

steve Vincent Torley • 3 days ago

"But let that pass. To me, there are two serious problems with what I might call the classic Protestant view. The first problem is that it leaves a number of pressing moral problems unresolved."

i) To begin with, sola Scriptura doesn't mean the Bible is an encyclopedia with all the answers. In addition to Scripture, an evangelical ethicist can make use of reason and evidence. General revelation supplements special revelation.

ii) Even in NT times, you had competing Jewish factions. You had Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, Zealots. You had the school of Shammai and the school of Hillel. There was no referee.

iii) God hasn't give us ready-made answers for every pressing moral problem. He hasn't made the right answer immediately clear. He puts us in a position where we must think deeply about an issue before arriving at a reasonable resolution.

"Take slavery. All one can show from Scripture is that chattel slavery is ruled out. There is no compelling Scriptural argument against the slaveholder who says, 'I don't own my slaves as such; I merely own their labor, in perpetuity.'"

But there are differing degrees and kinds of servitude. And there are different ways in which a person can enter servitude. So it's unclear why where should be a uniform answer to a pluriform issue. Unless you assume at the outset that all forms of servitude are morally equivalent, which runs the risk of prejudging or oversimplifying the issue, there's no reason to think servitude in general is intrinsically immoral. In some cases it can depend on circumstances, or the particular form of servitude.

"Or take torture. I can't think of any Scriptural argument against its use when it is intended to save innocent lives. Now, you might argue that the institutional Church took a very long time to address these issues, and that there were a number of serious mis-steps by individual clerics (including Popes) along the way, and you would be right. But as the saying goes, better late than never. At least now we can say that the Church teaches with a united voice that slavery and torture are immoral."

But that begs the question of whether "torture" is always wrong. Why shouldn't that be something that calls for careful distinctions and qualifications?

To begin with, the word "torture" is so indiscriminate. Suppose a known terrorist suffers from arachnophobia or claustrophobia. It is torture to exploit his phobia to save innocent lives? Even if we decide to define that as "torture," why would it be wrong to exploit his phobia to save innocent lives? Why does protecting him from that phobia take precedence over protecting innocent lives?

"I might add that there are a number of practical moral issues for Christians that Scripture does not settle clearly: the permissibility of divorce and remarriage in exceptional circumstances; contraception; and the question of whether lying is ever justified."

i) Commentators on Matthew and 1 Corinthians typically think Scripture does allow for the permissibility of divorce and remarriage in cases of infidelity and desertion.

ii) Biblical law and ethics usually deals with typical situations, not rare situations. Suppose a woman unwittingly marries a man who murders his wives to collect on the life insurance policy. That might be grounds for divorce and remarriage, even though Scripture doesn't mention that, for the simple reason that Scripture doesn't have occasion to directly speak to such an atypical situation.

iii) Evangelical ethicists typically think contraception is permissible, so that example begs the question.

Moreover, many Catholics, including some conservative intellectuals, find the blanket ban on contraception to be unreasonable. They think the distinction between "artificial" birth control and NFP ad hoc, and they think the blanket ban can't be justified on natural law principles. For instance, in The Virtues, Catholic philosopher and logician Peter Geach admits that the traditional arguments against contraception are bad arguments. He labors to defend the official position in spite of the admittedly bad arguments that are traditionally adduced to support it.

iv) Many evangelical ethicists think Scripture does permit lying in some situations. So that example begs the question. Conversely, it's very hard to explain how lying can be intrinsically evil on natural law principles.

When Catholic moral theology does take (seemingly) firm positions, the positions strike an outsider as arbitrary. Moreover, on closer examination, these hardline positions reduce to technicalities and escape clauses which make the position inevitably seem inconsistent and duplicitous.

Regarding the creeds, in missiology we consider that an issue of cross-cultural contextualization. In some cases it may be a mistake to impose Western formulations on alien cultures. We need to find conceptual equivalents rather than verbal equivalents.

We Don’t Cry for Lions

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/05/opinion/in-zimbabwe-we-dont-cry-for-lions.html

Race in America

Sean Michael Lucas
Yesterday at 8:18pm · Twitter ·
I have to admit: not sure how a white person can read any history of race in America & not think there's a lot to repent of & apologize for.

Predictably, this statement provoked a strong response, both pro and con. Commenters who defended the tweet appealed to the principle of corporate responsibility as well as the need for racial reconciliation. Commenters who defended the tweet often made patronizing remarks about critics of the tweet. There's a lot to sort out here:

i) If the objective is reconciliation, then it's counterproductive to alienate one side of the debate by making patronizing comments about the critics. That suggests this isn't really about reconciliation, but feeling morally superior. Looking down on others. 

ii) There are occasions when racial identity is significant. Currently, the KKK is a dumping ground for rejects from the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Clown College. By signing up for the KKK, they get to wear a nifty costume and play with matches. 

There was, however, a time decades ago when the KKK was a major domestic terrorist organization. At that time, it would have been salutary for white (Southerners), because they were white, to publicly oppose the KKK. Especially because they were white, it would be good for them to disassociate themselves from the KKK. To say, "You don't speak for me. You don't represent me."

Mind you, even that is a tu quoque argument. It's using racial identity as a launchpad to argue that racial identity is far less important than morality. 

iii) There are many different ways to group human beings. We have many different things in common, as well as things that differentiate one human from another. So it becomes a question of values and priorities. 

For instance, blood type is important in the context of infusions and transfusions. You can group people by blood type. And sometimes that's significant. But most of the time, blood type would be an irrelevant way to classify people. 

iv) Let's take a comparison. I will list three people:

a) Strom Thurmond

b) Robert Byrd

c) Tim Scott

Which of these do I have the most in common with? Well, if racial identity is the criterion, then I have more in common with Byrd and Thurmond than Scott. But why should that be the criterion? On the one hand, Thurmond was a Dixiecrat and Byrd was Klansman. Why should I feel that I have more in common with them than Tim Scott? Yet when Sean says "[I'm] not sure how a white person can read any history of race in America & not think there's a lot to repent of & apologize for," he singles out racial identity as the criterion. As if that's the most important common denominator. 

v) Let's compare these two statements:

"[I'm] not sure how a white person can read any history of race in America & not think there's a lot to repent of & apologize for."

"[I'm] not sure how a person with two big toes can read any history of race in America & not think there's a lot to repent of & apologize for."

Does the second statement make any sense? Depends. Sean shares two big toes in common with Confederates and Klansmen.  Maybe you think it's ridiculous to single out big toes as the standard of comparison. But how is that more ridiculous than singling out whiteness? How does either one have any intrinsic significance to the comparison?

Sean might say whiteness is germane because the Americans who discriminated against blacks were motivated by racial animus. 

But that's equivocal. That's an overlapping comparison. Presumably, Sean is not motivated by racial animus, even though he himself is white. Therefore, racial identity is not the common denominator in that comparison. Rather, racial identity is incidental in that regard. 

vi) Sean's statement is unintentionally revealing. It divulges the viewpoint he assumes. Let's take a comparison:

Suppose I watch Miracle, the movie about the hockey team that won the 1980 Olympics. Suppose at the end of the film I exclaim: "That makes me proud to be white!"

Well, it's true that all the teammates were Caucasian. However, to make the film a statement of white pride would say everything about the viewer, and nothing about the film. It would reflect the perspective of a viewer who identifies with the team, not because they are American, but because they are white.

But relating to the team at that level is skewed. That shouldn't be important. It's a film about patriotism and rooting for the underdog. 

vii) Now, regarding white Americans who oppressed blacks, in many cases they didn't just happen to be white. Their racial identity was important...to them. They are motivated by racial animus. 

If, however, you're comparing them with me, then in that respect we all just happen to be white. The racial common denominator is incidental. You might as well note that we have big toes in common. True, but that's hardly a morally salient similarity. 

viii) The way some evangelicals frame "racial reconciliation" is like a guy who's a part-time arsonist and a part-time fireman. It's good for business. Burning buildings keeps him gainfully employed. 

Likewise, some evangelicals–not to mention "progressives"–begin by provoking racial animosity, then using that as a pretext to call for racial reconciliation. It's a racket. 

I'm not suggesting that this is conscious on the part of Sean. Rather, he and other like-minded evangelicals lack the detachment to see that they are creating an unnecessary problem in order to solve it. We shouldn't have that sense of solidarity with the dead in the first place. 

ix) Regarding corporate responsibility, unless you're very careful, that backfires. For instance, young black men commit felonies at a rate that's astronomically disproportionate to their Asian and Caucasian counterparts.

But, of course, not all young black men are felons. Does Sean think hard-working, law-abiding blacks have a lot to repent of and apologize for in reference to black felons? Does corporate responsibility mean we should view them the same way we view criminals? Surely that would be unjust. Indeed, that would be the essence of prejudice. But if we rightly refuse to blame virtuous blacks for villainous blacks, we should rightly refuse to blame virtuous whites for villainous whites. 

x) Finally, suppose I watch a movie like House of Flying Daggers. That has heroes, heroines, and villains. These are Chinese characters played by Chinese or Japanese actors.

Because I'm white, does that mean I'm now allowed to relate to any of the characters?   

Take another comparison: suppose Sean was given a choice. As of tomorrow, he could no longer be a white man. He could either be a man of any other race, or he could be a white woman. Which would he pick?

Surely the question answers itself: for any normal man, his sexual identity is far more fundamental to him than his racial identity. His gender, as a biological male, goes to his core personal identity in a way that his race does not. 

Euthanasia and capital punishment

Many people who oppose capital punishment are the same people who support assisted suicide. A stock objection to capital punishment is the risk of executing the innocent. If you're wrong, they don't get a second chance.

But when it comes to assisted suicide, you know that you're killing the innocent. They weren't even convicted of a serious felony. 

Moreover, they don't get to change their minds about the wisdom of committing suicide once they're dead. Death has a certain…you know…permanence.

If they hadn't undergone voluntary euthanasia, they might have overcome their depression, been in a much more upbeat mood a month later or a year later or whatever. But by assisting their demise, you rob them of a second chance. 

Why do people who support assisted suicide but oppose capital punishment think convicted killers are entitled to the benefit of the doubt, but not depressed patients? 

Nate Shannon's one-trick pony show

Nate Shannon recently published an article ("The epistemology of divine conceptualism") which I will comment on:

The principle concern I have has to do with the incomprehensibility of God.

What a surprise! Yet another rerun of Shannon's one-trick pony show.

One problem is that he doesn't bother to define what he means by the incomprehensibility of God, even though he uses that as a theological criterion. Indeed, trying to define it would entangle him a dilemma. If you can specify in what respect God is incomprehensible, then haven't you dispelled the mystery? But if you can't, then isn't your statement reducible to theological noncognitivism?

If propositions are essentially about something, as they must be in order to do the philosophical work we need them to do (bear truth, for one thing), they must be about something other than themselves or other abstracta; they must be about real, concrete particulars.

That's such an odd criticism coming from a self-styled Calvinist. Isn't this parallel to the decree? 

One way to preclude this encroachment has been to say that God eternally has in his mind an exhaustive (probably infinite) library of complete sets of logically consistent propositions, called possible worlds. This is thought to help because before God creates (or ‘actualizes’ one of them), all possible worlds are merely possible; no single world enjoys modal or ontological privilege (no possible world is actual or more real than any other).

Once again, how else would a Reformed philosophical theologian unpack the notion of predestination? God has a complete concept of the world he intends to create. That stands in contrast to other concepts he has of other worlds he refrains from making. How can you cash out predestination without appeal to possible worlds? Isn't a master plan for world history (or a world) a possible world? 

Thus, in my view, this is more or less a leading concern for divine conceptualism, at least for the traditional theist: do we have epistemic rights to put these laws of logic in the mind of God? As no doubt the reader will have noticed, I harbor an openness to the possibility that the laws of logic as we know them do not exist necessarily, in the strong sense in which this is usually taken, but only given a few things (whichever things get us from God’s being uncompelled to create all the way to the actual world). Put more precisely, I think there is rather too much confidence (exaggerated epistemic license, we might say) in the claim that the laws of logic as we know them do in fact exist necessarily, even for God, in the very mind of God.

He seems to be flirting with universal possibilism. 

According to our lonely but courageous traditional theist, exegesis of Scripture gives us a God who is one essence in three persons. The Son, the second person, is God of himself as to essence, but as Son (as to his person) he is derivative of the Father.

i) To begin with, I don't agree with that particular formulation. I prefer the position of Warfield, Helm, and Frame.

ii) More to the point, how is his claim not prying into the inner life of the godhead, but what Greg and James say is prying into the inner life of the godhead?

iii) How is that formulation consistent with his appeal to divine incomprehensibility? Shannon plays both sides of that fence, jumping back and forth. When it concerns something he wants to affirm or deny, then we can know what God is like. But when it's about theistic conceptual realism, that violates divine incomprehensibility! 

His procedure is so arbitrary. There's no consistent principle at work. 

iv) Finally, if you flirt with universal possibilism, you forfeit the right to parse the Trinity. Anything goes. 

Minimally, the creator/creature distinction is the idea that God is the original, incomprehensible but fully self-comprehended, self-sufficient I AM, and the creation is dependent upon him, derivative of him, and utterly comprehended by him.

He can't maintain the creator/creature distinction and simultaneously toy with universal possibilism. 

A ‘mind’ then is whatever a necessary truth requires; but this is no more than we knew from the outset about necessary truths. In this case, when we say ‘G/god’ we are re-naming an aspect of a necessarily true proposition, and, as they say, promoting it to incompetence.

Whether necessary truth requires a mind is disputed. So that's not just renaming necessary truth. 

Moreover, it involves a relation between a mind and necessary truth. 

To prove the existence of God from the necessity of such propositions is to produce a kind of ontological argument with an appendix. 

What's wrong with that? 

I might take divine incomprehensibility to be the fact that God as he is to himself (ad intra) defies explanation. 

That's reminiscent of the radical apophaticism of Maimonides and al-Ghazali. It sounds very pious, but it's barely distinguishable from atheism. If you can't know what God is like in himself, then you can't know that God even exists. 

We may point specifically to the essence of God subsisting in three persons, or to the equal ultimacy of three and one, or to the irreducibility of relative personal distinctions and essential unity in the Godhead, or perhaps to the self-existence (aseity) of each distinct triune person in the unity of God.23 Any of these will do for now.

Is that or is that not what God is like in himself? Is the Trinity what God is like in himself, or other than what God is like in himself? 

"I shall be like that tree, I shall die at the top"

NT scholars typically think "Jesus traditions" were initially transmitted orally. More liberal scholars think this was creative oral tradition; more conservative scholars think this was oral history, based on retentive living memory. Oral cultures foster a retentive memory.

Occasionally, you have a maverick scholar like Alan Millard who thinks writing in the time of Jesus has been neglected. Millard has done original research on the subject, sifting primary sources regarding 1C literacy–especially in Jewish circles. And I think that's a very good angle to take.

I myself espouse the plenary verbal inspiration of Scripture. In addition, I think God enhanced the memories of the disciples (cf. Jn 14:26).

However, let's consider oral history. It's a truism that we remember events better than words. But how accurately do we remember words? Let's take a comparison:

By 1732 he [Jonathan Swift] was noticing a serious deficit in short-term memory: "I often forget what I did yesterday, or what passed half an hour ago." It was a condition he had long foreseen. As early as 1720, when he was walking with Edward Young, secretary to the lord lieutenant at the time, he made a remark that Young put in print much later: "As I and others were talking with him an evening's walk, about a mile out of Dublin, he stopped short; we passed on; but perceiving that he did not follow us, I went back, and found him fixed as a statue, and earnestly gazing upward at a noble elm, which in its uppermost branches was much withered and decayed. Pointing at it, he said, 'I shall be like that tree, I shall die at the top.'" 

No reason has ever been given to doubt Young's anecdote; he was a highly principled clergyman as well as a moralizing poet.  

…there is corroboration in an independent anecdote from Swift's friend Faulkner: "One time, in a journey from Drogheda to Navan, he rode before his company, made a sudden stop, dismounted his horse, fell on his knees, lifted up his hands, and prayed in the most devout manner. When his friends came up, he desired and insisted on their alighting, which they did, and asked him the meaning. 'Gentlemen,' said he, 'pray join your hearts in fervent prayers with mine, that I may never be like this oak tree, which is decayed and withered at the top, whilst all the other parts are sound.'" Leo Damrosch, Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World (Yale University Press 2013), 460. 

Gospel harmonists are sometimes unsure whether similar passages in the Gospels are variations on the same event or similar events. Here we have the same imagery and sentiment, but the setting is different. The wording is quite similar in each case: the difference is that, in the first case, the "withered and decayed" phrase is used by the narrator, while in the second case, it is attributed to Swift. Is that just coincidental? Or did Young misremember that Swift used that phrase? Or did Young remember, but put those words in the mouth of the narrator to introduce the scene?

In any case, we have two independent accounts that convey the same idea, using the same imagery and many of the same words. It's not just the "gist" of what he said. Both accounts preserve some of the very same wording. It's just that in Young's account, some of what is a direct quote in Faulkner (attributed to Swift) is reassigned to the narrator. Young may well be exercising a bit of editorial license, by describing the scene in Swift's words–or perhaps Swift's statement influenced how Young himself remembered the scene.

Whatever the explanation, we're dealing with uninspired recollection of a one-time event, yet in comparing the two accounts, the recollection is both substantively and verbally accurate. 

Scripturalism's Cartesian deceiver

Ryan Hedrich has written a post that's in part a taxonomy of Scripturalist positions, as well as interacting with my analysis:

http://unapologetica.blogspot.com/2015/08/classifying-and-clarifying.html

Before engaging his post, I'll begin with some definitions:

i) Knowledge:

Traditionally, knowledge was defined as true belief. However, that's inadequate inasmuch as we might accidentally entertain a true belief. So more recent epistemologists think some additional condition must be met for a belief to qualify as knowledge.

Some epistemologists think that if your belief is caused by a reliable process–a process that produces true beliefs, then that suffices to qualify as knowledge.

Other epistemologists think a belief must be "justified." On one view, a belief is justified if you have introspective access to sufficient reasons for your belief.

ii) Cartesian deceiver:

An agent or process that induces delusional beliefs in the human subject. It could be "God"–albeit a mischievous or malicious "God." It could be a creature or process from God that has the same deceptive effect.

It needn't be omniscient or omnipotent. A fallible deceiver could be the source of fallible beliefs, if our beliefs are dependent on that erratic source. 

iii) Although the Cartesian deceiver is a thought-experiment, it has real-world analogues. LSD, brain cancer, brainwashing, and Alzheimer's can all produce delusive beliefs. Likewise, it's been argued that naturalistic evolutionary psychology is a Cartesian deceiver. 

iv) In my experience, Scripturalists typically say there are two kinds of beliefs: unjustified opinion and knowledge. I'm not imputing that position to Ryan, who's more astute.

In my experience, Scripturalists typically stipulate that for a belief to count as knowledge, it must be infallible, incorrigible, or irrefragable. 

v) The Cartesian deceiver poses a distinctive problem for Scripturalism–although Ryan's modified epistemology may avoid it.

I'm not suggesting that non-Scripturalists have a master key that enables them to unlock the trap. In one respect, Scripturalists, externalists, evidentialists, empiricists, Van Tilians et al. all fall prey to the Cartesian deceiver. 

The question is how seriously you take it. Most epistemologists and Christian philosophers don't think that our ability to falsify the Cartesian deceiver should be a condition of knowledge. If we are unable to disprove the hypothetical Cartesian deceiver, that's not a good reason to doubt our beliefs. That doesn't cast reasonable doubt on our beliefs. Indeed, it would be unwarranted to take that thought-experiment too seriously. 

vi) However, Scripturalism sets the bar so high for knowledge that unless it can disprove the Cartesian deceiver, almost nothing will count as knowledge. That's what makes it a distinctive problem of Scripturalism. 

Take internalism. Suppose you have introspective access to your reasons. They seem to be good reasons. But how is that a check against self-delusion? Like LSD, the Cartesian deceiver is persuading you to mistake bad reasons for good reasons. You can't help but find these reasons to be convincing, even though they are deceptive reasons. 

vii) Scripturalists who deny self-knowledge are thereby implicated in a position that's even more skeptical that Descartes. He at least allowed for self-knowledge ("Cogito, ergo sum"). And from that solipsistic starting-point, it's possible to invoke some theistic proofs. That takes you beyond solipsism. But Scripturalists who deny self-knowledge can't even get that far. 

viii) Let's consider Ryan's classifications:

"Subscribe to a purely externalist view on which, say, divine occasionalism or illumination infallibly causes true beliefs, though from a first person perspective we can't know when this occurs."

But that's impotent against the Cartesian deceiver objection, for it uses occasionalism or illumination to infallibly cause false beliefs. The Cartesian deceiver is the source of the delusive illumination or primary caused delusions. 

"Scripturalist: The Bible isn't ink marks on a page. It's the meaning of the physical text, if there even is a physical text."

Once again, that's impotent against the Cartesian deceiver objection. What if the Bible or the "word of God" I perceive is just a hallucination? A Matrix-like simulation that bears no resemblance to the real word of God?

The Cartesian demon is the news feed, planting false memories. What I take to be the "word of God" is whatever the Cartesian deceiver input directly into my mind. 

"Sensations are neither true nor false and so cannot function as premises by which our beliefs are inferentially justified."

I think that's too crude or overstated. There are different kinds of sensory information. The sound of breakers isn't true or false. But the spoken word (a sentence) can be true or false. 

a) The spoken word is structured sensation that uses sound waves to encode and communicate ideas or propositions. 

b) Likewise, although sensations alone are neither true nor false, sensory input, in combination with ideas, can generate true or false beliefs.

If I see a red rose, I can rightly infer that I saw a colored object. If every red object is a colored object, then that's a valid deduction. 

Now, it may not be possible to derive the principle that every red object is a colored object from sensory perception or induction. That principle may be intuitive or innate. That must already be in mind for me to draw inferences about the rose. But seeing the rose, in combination with that a priori truism or analytical truth, yields a new and true belief. As one philosopher notes:

I have stated the basic claims of rationalism and empiricism so that each is relative to a particular subject area. Rationalism and empiricism, so relativized, need not conflict. We can be rationalists in mathematics or a particular area of mathematics and empiricists in all or some of the physical sciences. Rationalism and empiricism only conflict when formulated to cover the same subject.  

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationalism-empiricism/#1.2

c) Likewise, seeing one albino crow is enough to disprove the universal negative that all crows are black. 

"Steve said he believed that some beliefs are infallible. I'm not sure that he meant this in the context of internally justified beliefs."

I meant it in a conditional sense: If we define an infallible belief as a true belief that could not be mistaken, and if God predestines all beliefs (including the subset of true beliefs), then there's a sense in which all true beliefs are infallible, inasmuch as they could not be other than what God foreordained.

But that's conditional: given predestination.  If someone raises the Cartesian deceiver objection, I may not be able to disprove that objection. Mind you, I don't think that's a debilitating concession. It's just a thought-experiment. 

But because Scripturalism sets the bar higher than I do for knowledge, what works for me won't work for Scripturalism. 

"Our senses can cause numerous false beliefs. Sense knowledge is fallible."

True, but the same can be said for reason and memory. Scripturalists need to get down from their high horse and join the rest of us at ground level. They stipulate an inhumane standard of knowledge. Finite creatures can't satisfy those godlike conditions. But why should we? 

Evidence for the historical Jesus

Gary Habermas recently updated his book Evidence for the Historical Jesus, and has a free PDF copy of it as well:

http://www.garyhabermas.com/books/EvidenceBook/GaryHabermas_Evidence-for-the-historical-Jesus-Release_1point0.pdf 

HT: Patrick Chan

The rocky road to papal infallibility

http://orthodoxinfo.com/inquirers/papaldogma.aspx

Feline Cheshire ecclesiology

https://rationalityofaith.wordpress.com/2015/08/01/a-sufficiently-nuanced-high-church-ecclesiology-converges-to-the-protestant-doctrine-of-the-invisible-church/

Is sola scriptura ad hoc?

Naturally, the sola scriptura advocate will deny all this.  But the problem is that even the purportedly more modest, non-simplistic version of sola scriptura has no non-question-begging reason for denying it.  The position is entirely ad hoc, having no motivation at all other than as a way of trying to maintain rejection of the various Catholic doctrines the sola scriptura advocate doesn’t like, without falling into the self-refutation problem facing the more simplistic version of sola scriptura.  It is nothing more than an expression of one’s rejection of those Catholic doctrines, and in no way provides a rational justification for rejecting them.  

http://edwardfeser.blogspot.ca/2015/07/empiricism-and-sola-scriptura-redux.html

I commented on this once before, but now I'd like to expand on my analysis:

i) Suppose there are ad hoc elements in the traditional formulation of sola scriptura. That, of itself, doesn't imply that sola scriptura is wrong. It may only mean we need to refine sola scriptura.

ii) You aren't required to have an alternative on hand to know that the status quo is wrong. Take Newtonian physics. That was a very powerful theory. But increasingly, there were discrepancies between Newtonian predictions and empirical evidence. At first that might be chalked up to inaccuracies in measurement. To the imprecision of telescopes, &c. But as technology advanced, and discrepancies multiplied, that fell outside the margin of error. Moreover, because Newtonian physics was such a tight-knit theory, it couldn't be tweaked with little fixes. 

A 19C scientist could see that something was wrong with Newtonian physics, but not have a replacement theory waiting in the wings. For instance, Einstein's theory requires Riemannian geometry. But that wasn't available before Riemann. 

Oftentimes, scientists don't begin with an alternative theory. Rather, what motivates them to explore alternatives is when the dominant paradigm becomes unsatisfactory. 

Likewise, even if the Protestant Reformers didn't have an off-the-shelf alternative to Roman Catholicism, they'd still be able to see that Roman Catholicism was fundamentally flawed.  

iii) Even if the Protestant Reformers had to improvise, the church of Rome has been improvising from the get-go. The church of Rome has been resorting to quick fixes and big fixes for centuries. Newman's theory of development retrofitted Catholicism. Vatican II retrofitted Catholicism. It's all about "saving the phenomena."

iv) That said, the Protestant Reformers didn't have to start from scratch. They had the whole Bible at their disposal. Likewise, there were pioneering theologians like Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas whom the Protestant Reformers could cannibalize for spare parts.

v) Protestant theology didn't fall out of the sky with Luther. There were precursors like Wycliffe and Hus. 

Luther's 95 theses weren't especially revolutionary. In his time, these were open questions in theology. It's Trent that locked Catholicism into certain positions. 

vi) Papal supremacy has always been controversial. It was still controversial in the 19C, when Ignaz von Döllinger, greatest Catholic church historian of the day, opposed it. More significant was the number of Roman Catholic bishops who opposed the formal declaration of papal infallibility. 

Papal infallibility was always controversial. Indeed, there are persistent allegations of heretical popes, viz. Liberius, Vigilius. This goes back to the patristic era. 

Of course, papal apologists labor to extricate these popes from the charge of heresy, but that's irrelevant. My point is not whether they were, in fact, heretical, but the fact that misgivings about papal claims antedate the Reformation by centuries.

Same with respect to papal primacy. Consider the Quartodeciman controversy, or the dispute between Cyprian and Pope Stephen. Protestant Reformers didn't invent the wheel when they denied papal claims.

vii) Moreover, this isn't confined to outsiders or opponents of Rome. There's medieval conciliarism, according to which a general council outranks a pope. That was supported by Catholic theologians like Jean Quidort, Jean Gerson, and William of Ockham, as well as Cardinal Pierre d'Ailly.

viii) Furthermore, it wasn't just hypothetical. The Great Schism made that a practical necessity. The Roman church could hardly tolerate two or more competing, independent lines of apostolic succession, with each "pope" creating bishops. That had to be put to a stop. 

The problem wasn't, in the first instance, that none of the claimants was the true pope. The problem, rather, was that even if one of them was the true pope, if it was impossible to tell which was which, then not knowing which one was the true pope was worse than having no pope at all. There was no way of knowing who to follow. What if you disobeyed the true pope by unwittingly yielding to an anti-pope? 

To end the chaos, it was necessary to wipe the slate clean and start from scratch by deposing the claimants, if need be, then holding a new election with an undisputed winner.

That expedient succeeded, but at a cost. It was a stopgap measure. How can the pope be head of the church if his fellow bishops can depose him, even if he's the legitimate successor to Peter?   

Typically, to be authoritative, a general council must be convened by the pope and confirmed by the pope. But, of course, that remedy was unavailable during the Great Schism, so the Council of Constance had to do it backwards. It was up to the council to ratify the pope, not vice versa. 

ix) And the theoretical dilemma continued into the Counter-Reformation, with Catholic theologians like Suarez and Cardinal Bellarmine debating what recourse there'd be in the event of a heretical pope. They viewed a general council or the college of cardinals as the fallback. 

This is emanating from doctrinaire supporters of the papacy. Papal loyalists. At the time, the raison d'être of the Jesuit order was to defend the papacy. But even so, they were forced to revisit the intractable conundra generated by the papacy.