Saturday, June 03, 2017
Westminster West and Westminster East on sola fide
http://upper-register.typepad.com/blog/2017/06/justification-and-union-with-christ-bibliography.html
Friday, June 02, 2017
Born from above
Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born from above, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (Jn 3:3).
i) Most commentators think anothen is a typical Johannine double entendre. It could either mean "above" or "again" (or "anew").
ii) However, this creates a potential problem. Seems likely the Jesus and Nicodemus spoke to each other in Aramaic. Yet commentators inform us that Aramaic has no word with this double entendre. (e.g. Brown, 1:130). If the narrator is uses a play on words that only works in Greek, then that raises questions about the historicity of the dialogue.
iii) One possible explanation is that this is a paraphrase or summary of a longer exchange. But a problem with that explanation, which may well be true in its own right, is that we have a case of dramatic irony which turns on the studied ambiguity of a particular word. Jesus intends one meaning ("from above"), which Nicodemus misunderstands, while the reader shares the understanding of Jesus. So the confusion of Nicodemus depends on double entendre. But if it was clearer in the original language, how did his confusion arise?
iv) However, I question the scholarly assumption that the dialogue can't be reproduced in Aramaic. I'm struck by the overconfidence of some commentators.
I'm no expert, but what's our sample of 1C Aramaic? How much Aramaic survives from that period? What if 1C Aramaic did have a synonym that corresponds to the Greek word?
Likewise, isn't most of the period Aramaic literary Aramaic? But Jesus and Nicodemus were using conversational Aramaic. The spoken word has some vocabulary that the written word does not, and vice versa. Colloquialisms that don't survive in written sources that come down to us.
For that matter, the same word can gain or lose meanings over time. Likewise, you have dialectical variations from one region to another, or one social demographic to another. So I'm dubious about the self-assurance of some commentators on this issue. You'd think they were native 1C Aramaic speakers!
v) In addition, if they spoke in Aramaic, that doesn't mean they used Simon pure Aramaic. It's not uncommon for one language to have loan words from another language. The more so in a polyglot culture like the Roman Empire.
v) In addition, if they spoke in Aramaic, that doesn't mean they used Simon pure Aramaic. It's not uncommon for one language to have loan words from another language. The more so in a polyglot culture like the Roman Empire.
OEC chronology
1. As I've said on more than one occasion, I think it's useful to explore and develop both YEC and OEC interpretations of Genesis. Recently I discussed YEC, now I'll turn to OEC.
To my knowledge, OEC chronology is less developed than YEC chronology, in the sense that there's less effort to place Gen 1-11 in a general timeline. Biblical chronologies usually begin with Abraham, c. 2000 BC.
2. The major events in Gen 1-11 are:
i) Creation of the world (Gen 1:1-2:3).
ii) Creation of the Garden (Gen 2).
iii) The Fall (Gen 3)
iv) Ramp up to the Flood (Gen 4-5).
v) The Flood (Gen 6-9).
vii) Tower of Babel
Where do those happen on an OEC timeline?
3. OEC accepts conventional astronomical and geological dates.
Like YEC, OEC accepts fiat creation of natural kinds, including the special creation of Adam and Eve.
On OEC, as I understand it, God introduces a natural kind into the ecosystem by fiat creation. Through adaptation, the original nature kind produces a number of varieties.
Natural kinds are phased in in a staggered fashion. For instance, you have the age of the dinosaurs. That includes a corresponding climate and vegetation.
Then you have the age of birds and mammals. That sort of thing.
Unlike YEC, OEC doesn't have a particular stake in the order of their appearance. In principle, plants could antedate animals. Marine organisms could antedate land animals.
BTW, this isn't just a face-saving conjecture. Intelligent design theorists contend that, as a matter of fact, the fossil record does show the abrupt appearance of organisms with well-developed, novel body plans that have no precursors. Likewise, they argue that there is no incremental pathway for some organisms to develop from precursors.
4. So when does human history begin? I suppose the answer depends in part on our ability to date and distinguish human fossil remains from extinct apes. Darwinians use comparative anatomy. A problem with that frame of refernce is that we can't gauge the mental abilities of fossils. We need living specimens.
One possible way to demarcate humans from extinct primates is the presence of artifacts which unmistakably indicate human intelligence, viz. artwork, musical instruments, weapons, symbolic markings, domestic construction, burial customs.
The earliest datable artifacts would give us a rough terminus ad quo. Presumably, humans antedate the earliest artifacts we happen to discover. So the terminus ad quo would be however much earlier. But that's a rough terminus ad quo.
5. On that chronological spread, the flood might have happened tens of thousands of years ago.
6. Scholars sometimes attempt to correlate Gen 4:17-22 with archeological periods, viz. neolithic, copper age, bronze age, metallurgy, &c.
However, that involves some dubious assumptions:
By the same token, the Tower of Babel is typically related to Mesopotamian ziggurats. But while that's possible, we need to make allowance for similar structures to develop independently. For instance, do Egyptians pyramids, Mesoamerican pyramids, and Mesopotamian ziggurats reflect cultural diffusion? Do they go back to a common point of origin? Or do these represent independent developments?
Whether we should expect to find remnants of the Tower of Babel depends on the date, building materials, erosion, and recycling materials.
7. Some young-earth creationists believe the genealogies in Gen 5 & 11 are closed, while others believe the genealogies are open. The former think the universe is about 6000 years old while the latter think the universe is about 10,000 old.
The question is whether an OEC timeline stretches the chronology of Gen 1-11 beyond the breaking point.
i) Except for partial preterists, young-earth creationists allow for great gaps in long-range prophecy.
ii) If the basic purpose of the genealogies in Gen 5 & 11 is to trace a lineage from Adam to Abraham, then I don't think it much matters how far apart the links are. The point is that only Abraham has that particular set of ancestors. Doesn't matter how distant they are in relation to each other so long as they converge on Abraham. You just need a sample that singles out Abraham.
iii) If Gen 1-11 is only concerned with narrating the big events, the most theologically significant events or turning-points leading up to Abraham, then that would be consistent with vast intervals in-between. The Bible is typically severely selective in what it covers.
Catholic polemics and the Enlightenment
Catholic apologists sometime allege that the Protestant movement is responsible for the Enlightenment and secularization. Here's a discussion in which it's the other way around: Counter-Reformation polemics were a catalyst for the Enlightenment and secularization:
Calvinism, Thomism, and the polemics of freewill theism
The God of Reformed theism is constantly impugned as a "moral monster," "worse than Hitler," "worse than Satan," &c. It makes God the "author of sin". Turns men into "robots" and "puppets".
What's odd about this is the incessant attack on the morality of Calvinism, while Thomism gets a pass. Thomism is a very influential theological tradition that continues to have many devoted and outspoken adherents. Yet Thomism is just as "deterministic" as Calvinism. Why do freewill theists who chronically revile Calvinism ignore Thomism? Why the one-sided treatment?
Paris accords
Several issues on the Paris accords:
i) Trump can't "withdraw" from the Paris accords since that treaty wasn't ratified in the first place. Obama never had the legal authority to unilaterally commit the USA to a treaty which wasn't ratified.
Democrats have developed a bad habit of circumventing the Constitutional process. When they lack popular support to get a law passed, they simply ascribe the force of law to something that lacks legal authority. In this instance, they want the benefits of a treaty without ratification.
This isn't just a technicality. Ratification by the people's elected representatives is a way of making public policy more accountable to…the public!
So this is yet another example of liberal totalitarianism. Cultural elites believe they are wiser than the general public, and so they feel justified in subverting the democratic process to get their way.
On the substantive issue:
ii) Global warming "science" is highly politicized. Many environmentalists regard humans as a blight on the planet. They reject human exceptionalism. They subscribe to antinatalism.
They use global warming as pretext to leverage their green policies. They think green policies are a good idea even if global warming didn't pose a threat. So, for them, this is the noble lie.
In addition, Democrats like intrusive, expansive gov't. They can never have too much social control. Green policies give them another excuse to socially engineer the lives of the proletariat, to achieve their utopian goals.
iii) That isn't conspiracy mongering on my part. To the contrary, we've seen them cooking the books. For instance:
iv) Here's a more balanced take on "climate change"
Conditioned to trust the system
Now that Trump has "withdraw" from the Paris accords, we will constantly be hearing the argument from authority by global warming alarmists. How we should automatically defer to the "experts" on global warming. In that regard, here's an instructive anecdote:
Dead birds. As Ralph Nader walked under the trees, he noticed dead birds.And not just one or two. There were more than a dozen of them spread around the ground under the trees and on the sidewalk. What was doing on?Nader knew someone regularly sprayed pesticides to kill insects on the trees at Princeton University, where he was then a student. He had watched men in trucks with big tanks of liquid chemicals pull out huge hoses and shoot streams of spray up at the trees."Sometimes students were sprayed going to and from classes," Nader says. "I remember getting sprayed with the stuff myself."But what about the birds?"They weren't mutilated," he says. "It was pretty easy to put things together and conclude that their deaths probably were caused by the spray, which I knew contained the chemical DDT. I decided to take a couple of the birds up to the school newspaper to let them know they should look into it."When Nader arrived, he found a reporter on the paper leaning back in his chair with his feet propped on his desk. The reporter was not interested when Nader showed him the dead birds and told and him of his discovery. In fact, he acted bothered by Nader's intrusion into his office."Listen," he bluntly informed Nader. "We have some of the best chemistry and biology professors in the nation here. They're smart, all right? If there was a problem with DDT, don't you think they would've figured it out?""Look what it's obviously done to these birds," Nader replied. "You don't think it might be harmful to people, too?"After the reporter waved him off, Nader wrote a letter to the editor for publication in the school newspaper. But the editor refused to run the letter, even after Nader went back and argued with him."I learned then that you can have very smart people around, but if they are not interested in finding out what might be going on–or are simply busy with their own research or consulting–things can get missed. Important things," Nader says. "It was a perfect example of what people will take for granted if they've been conditioned to trust the system". Kevin Graham, Ralph Nader: Battling for Democracy (2000), chap. 7.
Thursday, June 01, 2017
Möbius strip
For critics, mature creation, or Omphalism, is the definition of a special pleading. An ad hoc expedient. Yet whatever the motivation, the idea itself is philosophically deep and powerful.
It goes to the mismatch between existence and imagination. World history has the elements of a story: plot, setting, characters. Conversely, real events must begin at some point and terminate at some point.
The challenge for a storyteller is where to begin the story and end the story. Stories have no absolute starting-point or endpoint, because a story could always begin at an earlier stage or end at a later stage. Although some starting-points or endings are more natural from the standpoint of dramatic logic, there's a sense in which any place a storyteller breaks into the ongoing narrative of world history will be arbitrary. In our imagination, we could always go forward or backwards.
Imagination is like a Möbius strip: twisting around while it continuously loops back on itself with no beginning or ending. Or, if you prefer, the garden of forking paths.
One time I was driving on the freeway, after sunset, in homecoming traffic. Ahead of me, stretching into perspectival infinity, was a moving column of glowing red tail lights–like embers in the night. The car behind me sees the same thing. The car in front sees the same thing. In this continuous stream of cars, there is no absolute frame of reference. Every driver has a view. Every view is relative. You could break into the Möbius strip further up the street or further down the street.
Every world history originates in the mind of God. Alternate narratives in God's infinite imagination. God makes a world by instantiating one of these stories in real time and space.
But there's a mismatch between where a story actually takes place in time, and where it takes place in the imagination. To exist contingently, in real time and space, it must have an absolute beginning. But to exist in the mind, especially the infinite and timeless mind of God, there's no particular date when it happens, in relation to preceding or succeeding events.
The real world is a story within a story. A sample of a perpetual narrative.
Or consider a TV drama like The X-Files. Episodes are stories within the ongoing story of the series.
On the one hand that has an overarching plot theme, involving the gov't conspiracy, aliens, hybrids, &c. That's an evolving storyline with a relative, fairly discernible chronology. Some episodes have to happen before other episodes in that respect.
On the other hand are stand-alone episodes that doesn't intersect with the overarching plot theme. When do these stories take place within the ongoing story? They're not datable in the sense that episodes are which develop the unfolding theme of the gov't conspiracy. That could happen pretty much anywhere, unlike other episodes that have a linear placement.
In addition, although time's arrow flies in one direction, so that we only experience reality moving "forward"–into the future, it is psychologically possible see events run backwards, rather like watching a movie in reverse motion. Although it's rare, in some cases of life review, a person sees his life replay in reverse order.
(By "life review," I mean viz. reports of mountain climbers who fall, but survive. Take the classic article by Albert Heim, interviewing mountain climbers who reported that experience. Heim himself had that experience, which got him interested in the topic.)
It's like we have a camera on our heads recording everything when we're awake.
(BTW, life review is not to be confused with heretical notion of past-life regression, a la reincarnation.)
Robotic priest
A solution to the Catholic priesthood shortage!
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/30/robot-priest-blessu-2-germany-reformation-exhibition
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/30/robot-priest-blessu-2-germany-reformation-exhibition
Mariolatry
An entry point into the world of Marian prayers is the collection put together by Alphonsus Liguori (1696-1787). Liguori, an Italian Catholic bishop who was proclaimed saint in 1839 and eventually Doctor of the Church in 1871, spent many years gathering the best material on Mary he could find from various sources that were used in the liturgical practice of the church. In his book, Liguori explains that Mary is “our life, our sweetness and our hope,” and goes on to argue that Mary’s intercession on our behalf is powerful to the point of enabling sinners to regain the state of grace. Mary can be approached confidently because she can obtain for us from her divine Son anything she asks for. Moreover, devotion to her is a most certain mark of eternal salvation. This book has been shaping Marian devotions since becoming the reference point for subsequent Mariological reflection....
The Holy Rosary is considered a perfect prayer because within it is the awesome story of salvation retold in a way that highlights Mary’s central role in redemption. With the Rosary, devotees meditate on the mysteries of joy, sorrow, and the glory of Jesus and Mary, thus internalizing the blurred analogy between Mary and the Son. Gone is the story of salvation through Christ’s death and resurrection as the Bible tells it. Instead, the Rosary is a powerful tool to shape one’s own imagination in terms of the pervasive presence and agency of Mary in whatever the Triune God is and does. The whole orientation of Roman Catholic “biblical theology” is inherently Marian, in that Mary is thought of as sharing the prerogatives and roles of the Son....
Mariology is an inescapable, all-embracing, and fundamental tenet of Roman Catholic theology and practice. Moreover, it is a deeply troubling development because it is impossible to see a linear and coherent connection between this Marian devotion and the more sobering account of what the Bible actually says about Mary.
http://vaticanfiles.org/2017/06/138-marian-prayers-as-shapers-of-roman-catholic-theology-and-practice/
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