"the kinds of differences we find between Plutarch and his sources are quite comparable with the differences between the Gospels, and nothing in the least like form criticism is postulated by experts on Plutarch." (Richard Bauckham, Jesus And The Eyewitnesses [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2017], 596)
For some other examples of excessive skepticism in gospels scholarship and New Testament research in general, see here and here.
"But generally - in everyday life, in law courts, and in historical research - the normal rule of thumb is to trust what people tell us. Ordinary life would be impossible if we did not….Many New Testament scholars seem to suppose that the more sceptical of the sources they are, the more rigorously historical is their method. But this is not how historians usually work. In good historical work it is no more an epistemic virtue to be sceptical than it is to be credulous. In everyday life, we do not systematically mistrust everything anyone tells us. When someone who is in a position to know what they tell us does so, we normally believe them. But we keep our critical faculties alert and raise questions if there is specific reason to doubt. There is no reason why historical work should be substantially different in its dialectic of trust and critical assessment. Sometimes excessive scepticism goes hand-in-hand with a misplaced desire for certainty….But in historical work the desire for certainty, for any sort of total accuracy, is as misplaced as systematic scepticism. In history we only deal with probabilities (as is also the case in much human knowledge). Historians are in the business of constantly making reasonable judgments of probabilities. To believe testimony, to trust it when we have no means of verifying its content in detail, is a risk, but it is the kind of risk we are constantly taking when we trust testimony in ordinary life." (ibid., 608, 613)
Monday, June 19, 2017
How New Testament Scholarship Has Changed Over Time
Scholarship is important, and there's a danger in underestimating it, as many people do. But there's also a danger in overestimating it:
"It also worth thinking about how different the world of New Testament scholarship was in Bultmann's time from what it has become. There were comparatively few scholars working in the field and relatively few significant books published. It was possible for Bultmann and a few others to exercise a dominance over the development of the subject that is scarcely conceivable today for any scholar or small group of scholars, however brilliant. In the overcrowded and methodologically pluralist world of Gospels scholarship today form criticism, were it a new approach now, would be unlikely to achieve the wide-ranging and long-lasting influence it has actually had. Realising this implies that less weight should be given to the feeling, which I am sure many scholars have, that form criticism must have got at least some essential things right because it has been so very widely accepted by scholars." (Richard Bauckham, Jesus And The Eyewitnesses [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2017], 592)
"It also worth thinking about how different the world of New Testament scholarship was in Bultmann's time from what it has become. There were comparatively few scholars working in the field and relatively few significant books published. It was possible for Bultmann and a few others to exercise a dominance over the development of the subject that is scarcely conceivable today for any scholar or small group of scholars, however brilliant. In the overcrowded and methodologically pluralist world of Gospels scholarship today form criticism, were it a new approach now, would be unlikely to achieve the wide-ranging and long-lasting influence it has actually had. Realising this implies that less weight should be given to the feeling, which I am sure many scholars have, that form criticism must have got at least some essential things right because it has been so very widely accepted by scholars." (Richard Bauckham, Jesus And The Eyewitnesses [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2017], 592)
The Significance Of The Repetition Of Names In The Gospels
"In passing, it is worth noting that fictional writers, for obvious reasons, usually do not have more than one character bearing the same name, even when they are well aware that some of the names they use were very popular in the context they depict. In this respect, the fact that the Gospels have several Marys, several Simons, several Judases, and several Jameses is a noteworthy feature." (Richard Bauckham, Jesus And The Eyewitnesses [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2017], 545)
Sunday, June 18, 2017
LGBT "rights"
Matt Flannagan is a Christian ethicist who draws some useful distinctions in response to militant atheist Keith Parsons:
He makes one mistake about American history, which isn't surprising since he's not American:
The Jim Crow laws didn't allow businesses to discriminate against black customers. Just the opposite: they mandated discrimination.
It's the difference between the legal freedom to discriminate and the legal obligation to discriminate.
It was right to strike down the Jim Crow laws, which violated the 13-14th Amendments.
So that's not analogous to requiring businesses to practice nondiscrimination.
Here's black economist Thomas Sowell in the history:
To fill up what's lacking in Christ's afflictions
Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church (Col 1:24).
1. This is a somewhat puzzling passage. It's not entirely unexampled in Paul's writings. 2 Cor 1:5 has a similar sentiment ("For as we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings").
2. In terms of historical theology, this is a traditional prooftext for the Catholic treasury of merit:
1475 In the communion of saints, "a perennial link of charity exists between the faithful who have already reached their heavenly home, those who are expiating their sins in purgatory and those who are still pilgrims on earth. between them there is, too, an abundant exchange of all good things."86 In this wonderful exchange, the holiness of one profits others, well beyond the harm that the sin of one could cause others. Thus recourse to the communion of saints lets the contrite sinner be more promptly and efficaciously purified of the punishments for sin.1476 We also call these spiritual goods of the communion of saints the Church's treasury, which is "not the sum total of the material goods which have accumulated during the course of the centuries. On the contrary the 'treasury of the Church' is the infinite value, which can never be exhausted, which Christ's merits have before God. They were offered so that the whole of mankind could be set free from sin and attain communion with the Father. In Christ, the Redeemer himself, the satisfactions and merits of his Redemption exist and find their effficacy."871477 "This treasury includes as well the prayers and good works of the Blessed Virgin Mary. They are truly immense, unfathomable, and even pristine in their value before God. In the treasury, too, are the prayers and good works of all the saints, all those who have followed in the footsteps of Christ the Lord and by his grace have made their lives holy and carried out the mission the Father entrusted to them. In this way they attained their own salvation and at the same time cooperated in saving their brothers in the unity of the Mystical Body."881478 An indulgence is obtained through the Church who, by virtue of the power of binding and loosing granted her by Christ Jesus, intervenes in favor of individual Christians and opens for them the treasury of the merits of Christ and the saints to obtain from the Father of mercies the remission of the temporal punishments due for their sins. Thus the Church does not want simply to come to the aid of these Christians, but also to spur them to works of devotion, penance, and charity.89
But even if, for argument's sake, Col 1:24 was consistent with the treasury of merit, it can't be used to prove that dogma inasmuch as the treasure of merit is a much more specific and complex notion than the content of Col 1:24. Assuming that Col 1:24 is consistent with the verity of the Thesaurus Meritorum, it's equally consistent with the falsity of the Thesaurus Meritorum.
3. It can't mean that Christian suffering supplements the atonement of Christ. For one thing, in this very same letter, Paul stresses the sufficiency of the atonement:
13 And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, 14 by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross (Col 2:13-14).
Moreover, there's nothing specifically redemptive about Paul's terminology in Col 1:24. He doesn't refer to the "blood", "cross", or "death" of Christ.
4. Paul's statement probably includes the affliction of Christian persecution. But the language is more generic.
5. To some degree, Christian suffering poses a paradox. Sometimes the most devout suffer the most. Why is that?
In the case of persecution, the rationale is obvious. A public witness to an unbelieving world.
But much Christian suffering isn't directly testimonial in that respect. Some Christian suffering appears to be pointless, or directed at those who leave deserve it. Why do some of the most saintly believers endure the most?
Perhaps Col 1:24 provides an answer, or at least a hint. Imagine if Christians were exempt from suffering. It would be much harder for us to appreciate what Jesus went through on our behalf. His suffering would be an intellectual abstraction rather than an emotional experience we can relate to. But because Christ and Christians share suffering in common, that makes the suffering of Christ more real to us.
Jesus didn't merely suffer redemptively. Consider his reaction to the death of Lazarus. With that in mind, consider the bereavement he must have undergone when beloved relatives died. He probably outlived his stepdad. May well have outlived his grandparents. Maybe an aunt and uncle. Like you and me, he knew what it's like to bury a loved one. He knew the grieving heart firsthand.
In addition, his own family misunderstood him. There was no one he could relate to on his own level.
Christians participate in the afflictions of Christ in the sense that suffering is the common lot of man, And Jesus entered into our sorrowful experience. To that degree, it's reciprocal.
On God, gods, and God's son
This is a sequel to my prior post:
Unitarian apologist Roman Montero has attempted to rehabilitate his original response to me:
It actually is explicitly whether or not Jesus is the Christ in verse 24 they say “if you are the messiah tell us plainly.” They didn’t ask for his identity they asked whether or not he was the messiah.
False dichotomy. Questioning whether he's the messiah is a question about his true identity.
But it does preclude it for all intents and purposes since messiah means “anointed one” and the assumption is that he is anointed by God, to do God’s will. God doesn’t need to be anointed by anyone.
i) That commits a semantic fallacy. The conceptual meaning of "messiah" is a different issue from the etymological or idiomatic meaning of the word "messiah". The concept of messiahship isn't confined to occurrences of the word "messiah". Rather, that's a theological construct based on many OT motifs. For instance, many "messianic prophecies" don't use the word "messiah". But they contribute to the overall concept of messiahship.
ii) Moreover, the concept of messiahship will vary according to the speaker. The Jewish opponents of Christ may have a different idea of messiahship than Jesus or NT writers. They may fail to recognize the messianic significance of certain OT motifs or oracles.
Also there is no precedent on Judaism for a messiah who is Yahweh himself.
Begs the question.
Whatever word Jesus used in Aramaic is irrelevant, John wrote the gospel of John and had he intended his readers to recall the Shema he would have used words that actually reflected the Shema.
That commits a genre confusion. If the writing in question was an epistle, then that observation would have some purchase, but in historical accounts, it is necessary to distinguish between the audience within the narrative and the audience for the book. The statements of Jesus in Jn 10 (and elsewhere) aren't directed at the audience for John's Gospel. Montero is confusing the reception history of the Gospel with the historical incident that John records. In the narrative, the Jewish opponents of Jesus constitute the original audience for this exchange.
It's deeply confused for Montero to say Jn 10:30 wouldn't trigger an association with the Shema because the narrator doesn't use the wording of the LXX. For the frame of reference is the audience Jesus is addressing at that particular time and place, and not a reader outside that setting.
Montero is making the same blunder as people who discern sacramental references in Jn 3 & Jn 6. They disregard the historical setting for those statements, and act as though Jesus is speaking directly to a later reader who's conditioned by subsequent developments in church history.
John used the LXX (as did all the NT writers and early Church) if he wanted to evoke he shema he would have actually done so.
NT writers frequently deviate from the LXX.
Why couldn’t John have used the masculine form, had he wanted to cite the Shema there’s no reason he wouldn’t have.
Jesus isn't quoting the Shema. Rather, Jesus is alluding to the Shema, but incorporating himself into the Shema. He reformulates the Shema.
The Bible typically uses the masculine gender when referring to God. But due to a shift from singular to plural in Jn 10:30, it's natural to use the neuter gender instead since one function of the neuter gender is to express abstract ideas. Deut 6:4 refers to a concrete individual whereas two individuals as one ("I and the Father are one") conveys an abstract concept.
If you look at 24-29, Jesus never actually uses “son of God” as a title in that conversation. So they aren’t reacting to “son of God” as a title.
There's a cumulative reaction to Jesus. They've been on his case for some time. The allegation that he "makes himself God" isn't based on any particular word or phrase, but a range of words deeds and by Christ.
Also there is no reason we should favor a capital G God over a small g god, since θεόν is without the article.
They accuse him of blasphemy. So they're using "God" as a synonym for "Yahweh".
They were wrong because there are plenty of beings in the Bible called gods.
They rightly sense that he's not describing himself in that lesser sense.
(had the Jews been claiming that Jesus was calling himself Yahweh citing psalms 82 would make no sense, since those beings are call gods in the lesser non-Yahweh sense), so him being called god or a god is not blasphemy.
It makes sense as an a fortiori argument.
Also he didn’t call himself god or a god, but rather God’s son and is thus NOT making himself a god.
They didn't accuse him of making himself "a god". So his accusers are using "God" as a synonym for "Yahweh".
The same noun can have different meanings, viz. abstract noun, concrete noun, common noun, proper noun. I've discussed that before.
Where did he make the equivalence between God and gods son, they accusing him of making himself god (or a god).
Once more, they didn't accuse him of making himself "a god". So his accusers are using "God" as a synonym for "Yahweh".
he replied that he called himself Gods son, it was a reply to the charge.
Actually, he did more than that. In v35, he mentions those whom the "word of God" came. Now if the "gods" in Ps 82 refer to human Jewish judges, the "word of God" would have reference to God's verbal revelations to Israel.
However, many scholars think it's either a sarcastic reference to heathen deities or else a reference to angels. But what event involving the "word of God" would correspond to that identification? On that identification, this is probably a flashback to the Prologue, where the divine Logos is the Creator God of Genesis. He made the angels.
Let me ask you though, in your exegesis, what is Jesus’s actual reply? How does it answer the charge? What was the point of citing psalms 82?
I already explained that. Follow the bouncing ball.
Right but in these cases, in the OT, Gods son is always referring to a human son or an angelic son or Israel as a nation, a ontologically lesser entity than Yahweh. Psalms 2 was to David, 2 Samuel 7:14 and 1 chronicles 27:6 refer to Solomon. Genesis 6:2-4, Job 1:6; 38:4-7 and Psalms 89:6 refer to angels. Exodus 4:22-23 refers to Israel, and so on and so forth.
i) To begin with, does Montero reject messianic prophecy? Does he think these passages only refer to historical kings of Israel?
ii) In addition, Montero misses the point. The identification isn't confined to the use of the word "father" or "son", but related concepts of king and prince in royal succession. At the level of human analogies, the king/prince relation is typically a father/son relation. So there's that specific equivalence, in that particular context. A prince/son who succeeds the king/father.
Montero suffers from an atomistic approach, where he's fixated on isolated words rather than Biblical concepts, motifs, and evolving theological constructs in progressive revelation.
So yes it can mean a “divine” son, in the sense that created angelic creatures are “divine”, but there is an infinite gap between that “divine” and the kind of divinity that applies to Yahweh.
Not how I'm using the term.
I don’t know what you mean by “truly divine”. Do you mean figures that can be rightly called divine? In that case sure, angels and humans are “truly” divine, do you mean divine in the sense that Yahweh is divine?
"Divine" in the same sense that Yahweh is divine.
The thing is this is you equivocating. Define “divine” and then stick to it.
Montero is a Johnny-come-lately to this discussion. I've defined my terminology on many occasions in multiple exchanges with Dale Tuggy.
If “sons of God” is a divine title, and by divine you mean something that can include human kings and angels, then yeah, sure it’s a divine title; but that doesn’t get you a millimeter closer to a trinitarian Christology.
Notice that Montero is imputing his examples and interpretations to me, then accusing me of "equivocation". His accusation is muddleheaded. I don't grant his frame of reference or his interpretations.
If you mean divine in the sense of only referring to Yahweh, then no, it’s never used as a divine title.
"Sonship" is used as a divine title in Isa 9:6, and it's frequently used as a divine title in the NT.
Again, you need to define deity, in one sense so is Satan, so are angels and so on. In another sense only Yahweh is.
Deity as in Yahweh. Deity as in possessing incommunicable divine attributes or incommunicable divine prerogatives.
Except it doesn’t say the Word was with the Father, it says the Word was with “God”
I'm sorry, but that's obtuse. You need to interpret the designations in light of the Prologue as a whole, where the narrator alternates between the "Father" and "God" as a synonymous proper name for the Father.
and the Word was deity. And Deity can be used of angels as well.
Montero is oblivious to context. Jn 1:1-5 is a studied allusion to the creation account in Gen 1. The Word was deity in the same sense that the Creator God in Gen 1 was deity. That's the frame of reference.
But the Word was not τὸν θεόν, it was θεὸς. Now you’re right that it implies Deity, but again, it’s not the same kind of Deity as the God who he is with.
Once again, that's confused. In Jn 1:1, the second clause uses the articular rather than anarthrous construction because one function of the Greek definite article is to denote a proper name, and the narrator is using "God" in the second clause as a proper name for the Father.
By the way he prologue is paralleling Philo’s logos theology. For Philo the logos is a secondary, created being through whome the god Yahweh creates. So John doesn’t identity Jesus as he creator, but the one through whome all things are created; echoing Philo’s language. Whether or not John drew from Philo or Plato himself or was simply using common language is besides the point, he point is John knew how his prologue would be read by his intended audience (non Jewish Christians).
i) The Philonic Logos could never become Incarnate, pace the Johannine Logos (Jn 1:14).
ii) In addition, that involves a Platonized Judaism which denies that God creates directly. There must be intermediaries between God and the world. So the Philonic Logos is a Demiurge to shield the transcendence of God. But that's moves in a conceptual world quite alien to Biblical theism.
iii) Assuming that "non-Jewish Christians" are John's intended audience, there's no reason to think they'd be familiar with Philonic Judaism, or take an interest in Philonic Judaism. At best, that would only resonate with some Diaspora Jews.
Why wouldn’t he include himself in divine beings such as angels or the “sons of god” of Job and Psalms?
He's not including himself, but contrasting himself. Does Montero not know what an a fortiori argument is?
The most quoted scriptures in relation to Christ in the NT are psalms 110:1 where Jesus is the non-Yahweh “lord”, and Daniel 7:13-14 where Jesus is the non-Yahweh “son of man”. Both those scriptures, used countless of times for Christ, exclude the possibility of him being Yahweh.
I recently discussed Ps 110:
Montero doesn't bother to explain how Dan 7 excludes the possibility that messiah is Yahweh.
Yeah, but there is nothing distinguishing the way they are “one”. In fact Jesus makes it clear that they are “one” in the same way Jesus and the Father are “one”;
Where does Jn 17 say that?
Isn’t John 17 talking about them using the same language as John 10:30?
Different context.
Saturday, June 17, 2017
I and the Father are one
Some guy named Roman A. Montero–evidently a unitarian–attempted to respond on Tuggy's behalf to a post of mine:
The context is whether or not Jesus is the Christ, as it explicitly says in verse 24.
The context is the true identity of Jesus. Moreover, messiahship is an umbrella category and something of a cipher. Nothing that precludes a divine messiah
John 10:30 is NOT a reference to the Shema the only connection is the world “one” and John doesn’t even use the same Greek word for one as the LXX does in Deuteronomy 6:4 (John uses ἕν and Deuteronomy uses εἷς, when the NT quotes the Shema it uses εἷς, the original word for one used in the Greek Shema). So no, it wouldn’t trigger that association.
i) That's confused. To begin with, unless Montero imagines that the exchange originally took place in Greek, which is highly unlikely, Christ's opponents didn't hear him use ἕν rather than εἷς. Presumably, the exchange originally took place in Aramaic.
ii) Since there's a shift from a singular subject in Deut 6:4 to a plural subject in Jn 10:30, it's logical for the narrator to shift from masculine to neuter in translating the statement into Greek.
No he doesn’t use “Son of God” as a synonym for “God”, he uses it to mean “son of God”. “Son of God” is never used in any Jewish literature to refer to YHWH. It is used to refer to Kings and to lesser Deities (later understood as angels). So their charge was either completely confused (which would make sense for Johns portrayal of the Jewish enemies of Jesus, they were often confused) or they thought calling ones self a “son of God” in the sense of a lesser deity was blasphemy.
Compare these two statements:
The Jews answered him, “It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God.”
do you say of him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’?
i) Notice that in v36, Jesus attributes to them the allegation that they accused him of blasphemy for calling himself the "Son of God", when, in v33, they actually accused him of making himself "God". So Jesus himself is using "God" and "Son of God" as interchangeable terms. They allege that he makes himself "God". Jesus treats their allegation was equivalent to "Son of God". Unless Montero thinks that Jesus is misrepresenting the charge of his opponents, he must concede that in this passage, Jesus uses "God" and "Son of God" as synonymous designations.
ii) In the OT, there's a king/prince motif that parallels a father/son motif, where the prince is the royal heir (e.g. Pss 2; 72; 89; 110; 132; Isa 9; Dan 7). The concepts of fatherhood and sonship are used in the context of royal succession. It's easy to see how that implies a divine son of a divine father. Even if that's merely latent in the OT (which is debatable), it's patent in the NT.
We can’t just assume they mean that Jesus is calling himself YHWH.
Since Montero himself says θεὸς can be employed in OT usage to denote figures that are not truly define, how can they accuse him of blasphemy unless they understand him to be making divine claims in the proper sense of Yahweh?
Yeah, they use “God” as father, because the Father is God. John 1:1 is almost certainly not calling God YHWH, the same with 20:28 and 1 John 5:20, but those are different issues.
i) The Father is deity. So is the Son.
ii) It's unclear what Montero is attempting to say in reference to Jn 1:1. In the second clause ("and the Word was with God"), θεὸς functions as a proper noun to designate the Father, whereas, in the third clause ("and the Word was God"), θεὸς functions as an abstract noun to denote the deity of the Word. An interpretive paraphrase would read:
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with the Father, and the Word was deity."
We have the same interplay in Jn 1:18. The prologue clues the reader into the true identity of Jesus. That gives the reader an advantage over various characters in the succeeding narratives. The reader already know what others in the story must discover.
iii) In addition, Jn 1:1-5 is casting the Word/Son in the role of the Genesis Creator. The primordial giver of life and light. So that classifies the Word/Son as Yahweh.
And that recurs in Jn 10:28, where Jesus claims the stupendous prerogative to confer eternal life.
Saying Christ is Deity is not the same as saying he is YHWH.
Depending on the context, it most certainly is the same thing (see above).
His entire point is that it IS used for lesser Deities and thus it is NOT blasphemy. Meaning he is in that category. The way Jesus responded would make NO sense if he was YHWH in the flesh.
i) In makes perfect sense in an argument from the lesser to the greater (a minore ad maius), which is a common rabbinical type of argument.
ii) It makes no sense that Jesus would include himself in the category of heathen deities–or angels, for that matter.
Actually there is NO precedent for “Son of God” to mean YHWH, it can mean a lesser deity or a king (both of which can also be, in a lesser sense, called god), but never YHWH. What you need for your theology is not that Son of God can mean divinity in some broad sense, but that it can mean YHWH, it cannot.
There's OT precedent where father/son correspond to king/prince in settings where the son/prince is rightful heir to Yahweh's kingdom.
Ironically you charge Dale with equivocation, but you’re entire argument argues by equivocating between θεὸς as a term for lower Deities lower case “gods” and θεὸς as used for “yhwh”, you can’t bridge that gap without warrant.
My "entire argument" was never predicated on the use of θεὸς in Jn 10. Indeed, my primary argument concerned the evocation of the Shema in Jn 10:30. That verse doesn't use θεὸς. Instead, it does something even more powerful.
The same goes for the equivocation apologists constantly use between κύριος as a title for a “lord” and κύριος as a replacement for the divine name, you can jump from one to the other without making a case for it. Also make sure you check the Greek before you say one verse is a reference to another.
The argument is not that κύριος in general is a Greek synonym for "Yahweh", but in NT passages that quote or allude to Yahweh, then reapply distinguishing prerogatives of Yahweh to Christ.
The exegesis is simple, Jesus is NOT blaspheming because it’s not blasphemy for beings that are below YHWH to be called “gods” much less “God’s Son”, and if they focused on his works they would know that he actually was the Christ and was sent from God and one with him, in the same way the apostles would be one with both him and God (John 17). It’s quite straight forward.
Jn 17 compares the unity of the apostles to the unity of the Father and Son. But these represent separate groups. The apostles constitute one group while the Father and Son constitute a different group.
Unless you have an axe to grind.
As if unitarians have no axe to grind!
Friday, June 16, 2017
Thursday, June 15, 2017
Cool of the day?
And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden (Gen 3:8, ESV).
To my knowledge, Meredith Kline was the first scholar to challenge the traditional rendering of Gen 3:8. Rather than a refreshing afternoon breeze, he thought it denoted a storm theophany. Jeffrey Niehaus, who developed that interpretation, renders the verse: “Then the man and his wife heard the thunder of Yahweh God as he was going back and forth in the garden in the wind of the storm and they hid from Yahweh God among the trees of the garden”.
And that's been defended by John Sailhamer and Douglas Stuart. John Walton is sympathetic, but noncommittal. John Collins is critical, but that's because he's invested in the theory that Gen 2:5 reflects the dry season.
Linguistically, there's not much to go on one way or the other. However, a storm theophany would certainly fit the judicial context.
If, moreover, Adam and Eve had never experienced rain or thunderstorms (Gen 2:5), then a storm theophany would be all the more terrifying.
It would be similar to the inaugural theophany that Ezekiel witnessed (Ezk 1). From afar, that appeared to be an electrical storm, but as it drew near, it was clearly far more than that. Ps 18 provides a poetic description.
Cryptids
A friend asked me if I've done much study in cryptozoology or Fortean topics. If so, were there any cryptids or anomalous phenomena I found particularly compelling?
We need to draw an initial distinction. Some cryptids, if they exist, are biological organisms. Therefore, assessing reported sightings depends in part on what's naturally possible or probable.
Conversely, some cryptids, if they exist, are numinous beings. So naturalistic criteria don't apply.
Kraken
That may have its basis in the giant squid
Giant anacondas
It's possible that there are larger anacondas in the wild than we've discovered. However, beyond a certain length, an anaconda would have the girth of a subway train. How realistic is that?
Loch Ness monster
Several issues:
i) I guess the theory is that after the ice age receded, it left behind a geographically isolated species. Old glacial fiords. I don't think there's anything antecedently improbable about that.
ii) One issue is how many breeding pairs would need to reside in Loch Ness to maintain a replacement rate. You'd expect more sightings if there are more specimens.
iii) I believe Loch Ness has been probed by sonar beams, but nothing turned up.
iv) To me, the famous grainy 1934 photograph looks like a bathtub toy for kids (e.g. rubber ducky). And the picture has no frame of comparison to judge the scale of the object.
I'm guessing the Loch Ness monster is a legend, perhaps to promote tourism.
Bigfoot
i) If it exists, what is it? Is it an Old World ape that migrated to the New World across the Bering Land Bridge during the ice age? Or is it supposed to be humanoid (e.g. Neanderthal)?
ii) If it has humanoid intelligence, I'd expect it to produce corresponding material culture (e.g. Neolithic). That would be easy to detect.
iii) To my eyes, the famous Patterson–Gimlin film looks like a man in a monkey suit. Like those low-budget sci-fi flicks from the 50s.
iv) I've read about Indian tales of Bigfoot. But in Indian tales, Bigfoot is a numinous being. So that either rules out naturalistic explanations or else Indian tales reflect legendary embellishment.
v) A difficulty with Indian stories is establishing their indigenous pedigree. Since most tribes were oral cultures, it's hard to say how old the stories are.
And that raises the question of whether Indian stories have evolved due to contact with the white man. Could these be hybrid stories that reflect cross-pollination between Indian folklore and European folklore?
vi) I'd add that (iv-v) also apply to wendigo.
vii) I don't have an informed opinion about the Yeti. Perhaps such an animal could exist in the remote religions of the Hindu-Kush without scientific confirmation. Or maybe it's a tall tale for gullible tourists.
Chupacabra
From what I've read, this was first reported in 1995. That would be pretty inexplicable on either naturalistic or supernatural grounds.
Hellhound
I actually read a reported example of that recently Forget where.
In general, I believe that Old-Hag syndrome probably has an infernal source. I believe that individuals and cultures that practice witchcraft and necromancy can expect to encounter evils spirits, whether demonic or vengeful apparitions of the damned.
In her book, The Hands Feel It, academic anthropologist Edith Turner talks about specters and other spooky phenomena reported by locals at an Eskimo fishing village where she lived for a year. The village was located on old Indian burial grounds. Some of the graves were Eskimo witchdoctors.
Some of the villagers were Christian while others continued to practice indigenous witchcraft. Under the circumstances, I find it plausible that spooky things happened.
Tales from the crypt
Stranger Things? Does God Still Speak?
June 15, 2017 by
One day, recently, as I was just going about my weekly Saturday routines—mostly working in the yard—suddenly and “out of the blue” a face from the distant past came to my mind. I immediately remembered his first name but struggled to think of his last name. His first name was “Dean” and I knew him very well for about three years—at that same church where I served as assistant pastor many, many years ago. Dean and I saw each other two or three times weekly—at church on Sundays, at men’s breakfast prayer meeting midweek, and at Bible study on Wednesday evenings. He was somewhat older than I, but we were in Christian fellowship with each other—together with a group of men. We attended retreats together and he served as counselor at the summer Bible camp I organized and led each summer. All that is to say that for about three years we knew each other well. Then, when I moved far away, we lost touch. I had not thought of him in years.
Soon after his face came to my mind and I remembered his first name I remembered his last name. For the next three days, after his face and name came imposingly and seemingly arbitrarily to my mind, I thought of him along these lines: “I need to look him up and see if I can find his address or phone number and contact him.” I had no idea why. It didn’t even occur to me that God had anything to do with it. If I analyzed it at all I simply assumed it was a “brain hiccup.”
After three days during which I could not stop thinking about Dean I finally got around to looking him up using the world wide web. I entered his name and the city where we both lived in a search engine. (I assumed he still lived there.) What I found was his obituary. He died three days before—on the day his face and name suddenly came to my mind, in that city where we knew each other many years ago.
SBC on the alt-right
Recently, the SBC passed this controversial resolution:
WHEREAS, Racism and white supremacy are, sadly, not extinct but present all over the world in various white supremacist movements, sometimes known as “white nationalism” or “alt-right”; now, therefore, be it RESOLVED, That the messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention, meeting in Phoenix, Arizona, June 13–14, 2017, decry every form of racism, including alt-right white supremacy, as antithetical to the Gospel of Jesus Christ; and be it further RESOLVED, That we denounce and repudiate white supremacy and every form of racial and ethnic hatred as of the devil; and be it further RESOLVED, That we acknowledge that we still must make progress in rooting out any remaining forms of intentional or unintentional racism in our midst; and be it further RESOLVED, That we earnestly pray, both for those who advocate racist ideologies and those who are thereby deceived, that they may see their error through the light of the Gospel, repent of these hatreds, and come to know the peace and love of Christ through redeemed fellowship in the Kingdom of God, which is established from every nation, tribe, people, and language.
It raises a host of issues:
1. It's fine to denounce racism. That said, how often must the living make ritual atonement for the misdeeds of the dead?
2. What's the objective of these denunciations?
i) Is it to disassociate oneself from an invidious social movement? Certainly there's a place for that. "They don't represent me!"
ii) Is it to induce a cheap sense of moral satisfaction?
iii) Is it to persuade? I'd like to focus on (iii). If the objective is to convince people to leave the alt-right, merely denouncing the alt-right is ineffective at best and counterproductive at worst. That plays into the alt-right narrative of the arrogant, out-of-touch "establishment".
3. There's a risk of bringing Christianity into disrepute. I don't mean denominations ought to avoid taking public positions on social issues. I mean that given high rates of biblical illiteracy, it's not enough to use Christian buzzwords. You must make far more effort to explain and justify your Christian frame of reference.
4. The resolution will inevitably be read against the backdrop of the last presidential campaign. Given that context, some people will feel, not without reason, that this is a veiled attack on Trump voters. Many conservatives felt they were boxed into a dilemma. The cultural elite is hostile to whites, men, Christians, and heterosexuals. Where are conservative and/or libertarian voters supposed to turn? It came down to choosing which candidate would do the least damage. One-sided resolutions like this fail to acknowledge and respect their predicament.
5. By the same token, the obsession with white racism is arbitrarily selective. What about the racism of Black Lives Matter or La Raza? What about the way the Obama administration, and his attorneys general (Holder, Lynch) discriminated against whites? What about colleges that discriminate against white and Asian applicants?
6. The phrase "unintentional racism" has the Freudian connotation that whites are presumptively racist, and they can never do enough to overcome the odious presumption.
7. Voters have legitimate grievances about:
• judicial tyranny
• infringements on the Bill of Rights
• affirmative action
• illegal immigration
• Muslim immigration
• voter fraud
• the regulatory state
When voters with legitimate grievances are demonized, when they are denied a reputable outlet to express their grievances and seek redress, that prompts many of them to take refuge in disreputable outlets. Resolutions like this are apt to be self-fulfilling oracles of doom. They contribute to the very phenomenon they denounce.
8. Admittedly, some members of the alt-right are hateful and spiteful. They are not amendable to rational or ethical appeals.
9. Now I'd like to tackle a couple of hot-button issues to illustrate my contentions:
i) Historically, whites are the majority race in the Republic. Of course, Indians were originally the majority race. I'm referring to the point at which they were overtaken by whites. I don't know when the tipping point occurred. And that's irrelevant to my analysis.
There are advantages to being the majority race. Political power. Power in numbers. I don't mean the power to push others around, although it can be abused in that way, but the power to protect yourself and your dependents from being pushed around by an oligarchy. To be a member of the majority race confers a degree of default power. It's harder to be oppressed by the cultural elite. You have the power of the ballot box.
But as the Caucasian share of the electorate shrinks, that leads to loss of political clout and eventually a shift in the balance of power. That will make whites vulnerable in a way they haven't traditionally experienced. I think it's understandable that some white Americans are apprehensive about that prospect.
To say it's understandable doesn't mean it's justifiable. But it's an issue that I think we need bring out into the open and discuss.
ii) From a theological perspective, I'd say that's a price you pay to be a Christian. It would be unjust to exclude other races and ethnicities just because they pose a threat to your power-base. No particular race or ethnicity has a natural claim on this piece of real estate. Christians must be prepared to relinquish certain perks and sacrifice their self-interest for the good of others.
iii) In addition, that's an incentive to evangelize immigrants, so that we share Christian social values in common. Of course, that's not the primary reason to evangelize the lots, but that's a significant fringe benefit.
iv) Christians of all races and ethnicities are brothers and sisters. That's a deeper, more important bond than race.
10. Although I haven't researched the issue, I'm guessing that some working-class white resent successful Asians in America. They may feel that Asians are squeezing out white job applicants and college applicants. They may feel its unfair that the natives must compete with immigrants. The natives should get first pick. Assuming that reflects a widespread sentiment in that demographic group, how should Christians respond?
i) If anything, Asians are underrepresented in college.
ii) Many Asians in American aren't immigrants. They've been here for generations.
iii) America is the land of immigrants. We've always had that competitive dynamic.
iii) America is the land of immigrants. We've always had that competitive dynamic.
iv) In the Revolutionary War, we overthrew the monarchy and aristocracy. We have a competitive system based on achieved status rather than ascribed status. A meritocracy. That favors risk over security. If you can rise higher, you can fall farther. That's the tradeoff.
In some ways that may be, or seem to be, harsher. A sink-or-swim system.
The alternative is socialism. Socialism is deceptively appealing. One problem with socialism is that it punishes the creation of wealth. The result is to make society poorer. The end-result is to reduce the quality of goods and services. The security is illusory. The safety net is shredded because there's not enough wealth to sustain quality or access. Take public pension systems that go bankrupt.
Not only does a free market system create wealth, thereby producing jobs as well as raising the quality of goods and services, but because there's more disposable income, people can be more generous in charitable donations. You still have a safety net.
And by growing the economy, tycoons aren't enriching themselves at the expense of others, but raising the standard of living generally.
Another problem with socialism is the loss of individual liberty. Your choices in life are dictated by unaccountable bureaucrats.
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