There’s an “Our Lady” of Just About Anything. Why Not “Our Lady of the Amazon”, Pachamama?

Pachamama, Our Lady of the Amazon

Traditionalist and conservative Roman Catholics (see here and here, for example) are going apoplectic over the notion that Pope Bergoglio brought Pachamama statues into the Vatican. “It’s a pagan idol” they say.

That should be beside the point. There’s a legal pope endorsing it, there’s a group of Italian bishops who wrote a prayer to Pachamama. Call it #developmentofdoctrine.

There’s an “Our Lady” of just about anything you can think of. “Our Lady of the Amazon” (Pachamama) certainly can fit into this calendar.

What follows below is from the “Marian calendar” published by a website called “Roman Catholic Saints & Heroes!” – Interesting that “Heroes” is added.

The site is owned by a layman, James Fitzhenry, “Through the Immaculate Heart of Mary”, who prays “that the example of their lives may inspire all Catholic children to imitate their virtues, and serve as well to remind men of our age of the great things that can be accomplished through dedication to purpose and the grace of God.”

There’s just about one for every day of the year:

Text & Canon Conference

https://www.aomin.org/aoblog/2019/11/03/text-and-canon-conference-initial-thoughts/

Walk in the light

1.Once again I'm exploring the biblical symbolism of light and darkness. That's a major metaphor in Scripture. The Bible has many references to light, including natural light, preternatural light, and figurative light, viz.

• Pillar of fire (Exod 13:21)

• Wall of fire (Exod 13:19)

• Shekinah (Exod 40:38; Num 9:15-16; Isa 4:5; Ezk 1:4)

• Fiery sea of glass (Rev 15:2)

• Lightning (Ps 77:18)

• Plague of Darkness (Exod 10:21-29)

• Transfiguration (Mt 17:2)

• Light of Christ (Jn 1:4-5; 3:19-21; 8:12; 9:5; 12:35-36,46)

2. There are different positions someone can be in relation to light:

i) Daylight 

In that position, you're surrounded by light. There's no darkness apart from the shadow you cast.

ii) Pool of light

If you sit in front of a campfire or fireplace in the dark, you may be sitting in a pool of light, surrounded by darkness.

iii) Ring of firelight

Here you may be sitting or standing in darkness, but you're encircled by a protective ring of firelight. There's darkness both inside and outside the circle. Although you're sitting or standing in darkness, you're safe inside the ring of firelight. Dangers lurk in the darkness outside the circle. 

3. So there's more than one way to visualize how Christians might be in the light. 

i) It might be akin to daylight. 

ii) It might be akin to a pool of light. Suppose it's fatal for the kingdom of darkness to step into the pool of light. 

iii) It might be like a ring of fire. Suppose it's fatal for the kingdom of darkness to cross the fiery barrier. 

4. The Johannine references trade on the imagery of sunlight and daylight, evoking the creation account. And the Johannine references are metaphorical.

5. At the Plague of Darkness, Goshen was in a pool of light, surrounded by darkness on all sides. 

At the Transfiguration, especially if that happened at night, the disciples were literally in a pool of preternatural light generated by Christ. They were surrounded by darkness, but the Transfiguration brought the disciples into Christ's corona. 

6. In Exod 13:19, the Israelites were probably encircled by a wall of fire, which kept the Egyptians soldiers at bay. A literal, albeit preternatural ring of firelight. 

How far did Judas fall?

In his debate with Peter Williams, Bart Ehrman said (48 min. mark): 

I would like to know a single case in history where somebody was hanged and he died by going head first and his gusts opened up: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuZPPGvF_2I

1. Ehrman has a simplistic notion regarding the role of evidence in historical reconstruction. Our evidence for ancient history is fragmentary. As a result, modern historians make educated guesses to fill the gaps. Imagine a modern historian trying to write a history of ancient Greece, Roman, or Egypt if he confined himself to direct evidence. That's not possible. The surviving records are too fragmentary. So when scholars reconstruct history, they must use their imagination to postulate scenarios that bridge the lacuna. They should, of course, admit that these are educated guesses. But there's nothing special about what Bible scholars do in that regard. 

2. Matthew doesn't say where Judas hanged himself. Acts doesn't say where Judas hanged himself. It indicates where he landed. All it says (in Greek) is that:

He acquired a field from the reward of unrighteousness, and falling headlong he burst open in the middle and all his guts spilled out. 

He may well have hanged himself in a different location above the Field of Blood, then his falling corpse landed in the Field of Blood. For instance, Mount Olivet has an elevation of 2684 feet while the adjacent peak (Mount Scopus) has an elevation of 2710 feet. If, say, he hanged himself on the branch of an olive tree high on the hillside of Mount Olivet, it's easy to imagine the falling body splattering over the field when it hit the ground. 

It's possible that the tree was dislodged by seismic activity (Mt 27:51; 28:2). 

Ever since Darwin

I don't know if this is worth posting since it's not like I'm covering new ground or anything, but here's my (lightly edited) response to an atheist on evolution:

You need to clear your head of McClatchie when it comes to evolution. The canard of unproven is false. You need to spend dome time understanding it better. Stop using your conclusion, the Bible, as a test for all else. Stop trying to make ideas fit your preconceived notion of reality in Christian terms fir your comfort...Seriously watch some other videos besides the discovery institute and Ken Ham. Have you ever watched Ken Miller. There us a Ken who us keen of evolution. And he is a Christian.

1. There are different legitimate means to know something is true. Empirical science is neither the sole nor primary method.

2. There are non-religious secular neo-Darwinists who are skeptical about neo-Darwinism (e.g. Denis Noble at Oxford University, James Shapiro at the University of Chicago).

a minority does not a consensus make. ID proponents can also be favorable to ID. Skepticism is a good thing, cynicism is not. The Consensus conclusion is Neo darwinian evolutionary theory is the current best model that explains evolutionary change in speciation. It holds and stands because it is rigorously challenged all the time, and I don’t mean lecture halls and churches, I mean in actual research. This does not mean that it can not be overthrown with a model that explains and makes better predictions. It just means it has not. Biblical or Islamic Creationism has not been able to, ID Creationism has tried but since the Dover Trial I have heard of no new ideas snd the ones proposed back then were dissmissed as inadequate and unsupported. Is there something new beside Bombardier beetles and Bacterial flagellum? I would like to hear it.

1. Yes, I'm familiar with "actual research" in science. I have a scientific background. I've presented at scientific conferences. I've published scientific research at a doctoral level.

2. You're talking about a lot of things I never even brought up. Lots of things irrelevant to what I've said. It just sounds like you're parroting talking points from village atheists rather than interacting with what scholars have said. It's ironic you earlier criticized Ken Ham because your arguments are like Ken Ham's arguments if Ken Ham was a neo-Darwinist.

3. If you think neo-Darwinism amounts to "evolutionary change in speciation" then you're highly ignorant of what neo-Darwinism is. Indeed, even a Young Earth Creationist could agree with that definition! For example, you leave out small-scale random mutations leading to wide-array structural changes in body plans, natural selection as the primary causative agent of adaptive change, and the role of genetic heredity in tracing a universal common ancestor. I'd recommend you read a text like Ernst Mayr's What Evolution Is if you want to know what a world-class neo-Darwinist argues. Mayr was an atheist and a neo-Darwinist. A doyen among evolutionists.

4. At the risk of stating the obvious, truth isn't decided by majority vote or consensus. Ultimately it depends on the scientific evidence, arguments, etc.

5. Sure, there's a lot of science that's settled science, so to speak, but there's a lot of science that's far from settled too. When it comes to neo-Darwinism, there are many fundamentals which even secular scientists who otherwise support neo-Darwinism would question. Neo-Darwinism only looks like a "consensus" to the uninformed layperson, but far from it when you read the academic and related literature. There's plenty of internecine debate even among secular scientists who otherwise support some kind of neo-Darwinistic model. Anyone can read a book like James Shapiro's Evolution: A View from the 21st Century or a paper like Denis Noble's "A theory of biological relativity: no privileged level of causation" and come to their own conclusions.

6. One doesn't have to be a creationist to question neo-Darwinism. The people I've already cited aren't creationsts. They're not religious. They're just secular scientists who dissent from neo-Darwinistic principles.

Required reading for atheists

This is a complement to an earlier post:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2016/12/im-going-to-list-and-summarize-what-i.html

The two posts overlap. The earlier post is more technical and detailed. This post is deliberately simplified. But it adds some new arguments and some new titles. 

Many atheists think Christians are supposed to start from scratch every time they meet a new atheist. As if every time we meet an atheist, we're expected to repeat all the arguments and evidence. It's like requiring every teacher to instruct each student individually rather than classroom instruction. 

The typecast atheist who has a checklist of argumentative questions, who acts like these questions have never been answered before, and is too lazy to study the preexisting answers. Too lazy to ask where to find good answers to his questions. Instead, he's like a college student who tells the professor, "I don't read textbooks, and I won't sit in class with other students. No, you must individually tutor me". 

If an atheist is not prepared to read up on answers to the stock questions/objections, then he's not intellectually serious or curious. Due to the brevity of the human lifespan, we have to make choices about where to put our time. We can spend more time on fewer people or less time on more people. We can be more intensive at the expense of being less extensive or more extensive at the expense of being less intensive. Those are necessary tradeoffs. Wise Christians strike a balance. We sink extra time into a smaller circle, while we also try to do things for a larger group. 

My recommendation is to give the atheist a reading list of arguments for Christianity. To acquaint him with the range of evidence for Christianity. If he's unwilling to read the material, then he's not a sincere truth-seeker, he's not asking questions or raising objections to find out what the answers are, so invest your time in someone else. 

The case for Christianity takes the form of a cumulative case argument. There's no one piece of evidence. 

An atheist might complain that my list is one-sided. In fact, I'm deeply read in the atheist literature. I've gone out of my way to read high-level atheists. So I know both sides of the argument. Indeed, I daresay that I'm better versed in atheism than most atheists.

However, all you need to know about atheism is whether naturalism commits the consistent adherent to moral and/or existential nihilism. If that's the case, then you can scratch it off the list. 

The list below is just a sample. But it will be a real eyeopener for the sincere truth-seeker who has no inkling with regard to multiple lines of evidence for Christianity. 

The Face of Miracles

William Dembski has co-authored (with Alex Thomas) an ebook titled The Face of Miracles:

The Faces of Miracles is an eBook written by Bill Dembski and Alex Thomas. It will be presented on this blog, BillDembski.com, over the next four months (November 2019 thru February 2020), with new installments typically appearing on Mondays.

You can read the Introduction now.

I don't know if I'll agree with what Dembski and Thomas have to say, but it'll likely be quite thought-provoking. Dembski is a highly intelligent and refreshingly independent thinker.

Speaking of miracles and related phenomena (e.g. NDEs), I've most appreciated what Jason Engwer, Steve Hays, Robert Larmer, and Tim McGrew have said on these topics. I don't know what Dembski has planned, but it would be good to see Dembski interact with what they've written. Jason and Steve's material is available on Triablogue, while Larmer and McGrew have published academic articles and books (e.g. The Legitimacy of Miracle, the SEP entry on miracles).

This world is not my home

At a mundane level, the journey of life is a metaphor for the lifecycle: conception, birth, childhood, coming-of-age, young adulthood (marriage, children), middle-age, old age, and death. From a Christian perspective, the journey of life is a metaphor for our pilgrimage through this world into the next world. That includes the lifecycle, but takes a long-range view which extends far beyond death into eternity. A classic illustration is Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress. My mother used to sing "This World is Not My Home" (by Albert Brumley). 

The journey of life as spiritual pilgrimage is a standard Christian metaphor. But it can be abstract. Something we initially believe because we're supposed to believe it, but not because we experience it. However, as we ourselves pass through the stages of life, and watch those ahead of us complete the journey, the metaphor takes on increasing emotional resonance.

Sometimes we experience something that yanks us back into the past. It may be a fragrance that reminds us of something from childhood. It may be a hymn or song we haven't hear for years, that reminds us of a particular incident or time of life in our past.

Recently I put on an old shirt I haven't worn for years. Turns out I hadn't worn it for 8 years! I felt something in the pocket. Turned out to be a card the size of a business card. An appointment card with the date for a medical appointment for a relative. I drove her to the appointment. 

That brought back a flood of memories. The route to and from the clinic. The fact that she is now deceased. And other poignant associations. 

It's a dramatic reminder of time's passage. Of what has happened in the intervening years. Eight years is not a long time, but things can happen in that time that makes it more significant that the raw interval. 

To see the journey through the rearview mirror. The miles gone by. What lies ahead in relation to what lies behind. We were traveling companions on the pilgrimage, but she crossed the finish line before I did. And that forces an adjustment in my own perspective. Experience has a way of working abstract Christian beliefs deeper into your system. 

The Church's Considered, Mature Rejection Of Roman Catholic Teaching

I want to add something to the points Steve Hays has been making lately about development of doctrine. It's common for Roman Catholics to tell us that the church often doesn't define a doctrine until it's been violated. Supposedly, the church develops a fuller understanding of the faith, or expresses what it understands more fully, as it struggles against heretics and other opponents. Or something that existed in seed form all along won't grow into a tree until the church later gives the subject more consideration for some other reason. Large and complicated beliefs that are not only consistent with scripture, but also implied by it, such as Trinitarianism and the canon of scripture, are often cited as examples.

Greek lexicography and the death of Judas

It's common to allege that Matthew and Acts present contradictory accounts regarding the death of Judas. One issue is the meaning of πρηνής, ές in Greek. Two related observations:

1. Some words in ancient Greek are much better attested in our extant Greek sources than others. This means a number of Greek words had additional means which weren't preserved in our extant sources.

2. On a related note, our extant source of ancient Greek are random and unrepresentative. They depend on what scribes wanted to copy. They oversample of literary Greek. As a result, there's lots of Greek slang or Greek words with slang definitions  (in addition to literary definitions) because the spoken language is poorly preserved. 

So that's something we must make allowance for in debates over inerrancy and harmonization.

Count the cost

I recently saw this quotation from Mama Bear Apologetics:

Most people don't really want the truth. They just want constant reassurance that what they believe is the truth.

At the same time, I'm reminded of what Blaise Pascal said: "Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it."

Of course, the statement is indeed the case for many people, but let me take it in a different direction:

Many people might want the truth if they're able to receive the truth in a way convenient to their lives. However, when it comes to the truth of Christianity, that's not possible, because Christ and Christianity teach a message that's quite inconvenient to us, to say the least! The gospel cuts to the core of our beings. Our acceptance of Christ means the death of the old, death to old patterns of thinking and living, death to our very selves. Indeed, the Bible exhorts us to count the cost of living a life committed to Christ. Many people aren't willing sacrifice their very lives for this truth which is The Truth. Many people aren't willing to crucify themselves so that their old selves are dead and buried, laid to rest six feet under, even though the one who does will receive a new birth with a new life, better than anything they could have ever imagined in their prior life, for what was prior is death, compared to the life to come. A life eternal.

Changing the biblical metaphor, many people prefer to remain in the womb and die there. They're like a baby who refuses to be born. A baby who prefers swimming in the swishy safety of his mother's amniotic fluid rather than coming into the solidity of life. A baby who prefers to have his lungs breathe in liquid rather than to have his lungs take in life's first breath and expand to fulsome health in oxygenated wholeness. A baby who prefers to remain attached to and reliant upon his mother's cardiovascular circulation system rather than to have a living heart beating and pulsating and perfused with a newness of life all its own. A baby who prefers to remain with his eyes tightly shut rather than coming into the world to behold its bright colors and beautiful sights and (surely best of all) the face of his maker who loves him and called him to come forth.

Jimmy Lai and the fight for freedom in Hong Kong

Synopsis:

In this special edition of Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson recorded in front of a live audience at the Hoover Institution, Peter interviews Jimmy Lai, the entrepreneur and leader in the fight to preserve democracy in Hong Kong. Lai describes the struggles he has endured including having his home fire-bombed, his family harassed, and his business threatened by the Chinese Communist Party. They also discuss the Trump administration's response to the Hong Kong protest movement, how the NBA and other American businesses found themselves in an awkward position between their business interests and their politics, and what Lai believes to be China’s ultimate goal: to make Hong Kong just another city in Communist China. Finally, Lai asks Americans to keep Hong Kong at the forefront of their thoughts and not to give up on them.

A transcript is available here.

Catholic school

If Protestants and Catholics were high school students:

Bejon on Judges

Alastair Roberts interviews James Bejon on the book of Judges, but also discusses biblical theology and several other things that'd likely be interesting to Christians. (Note: It seems like there are a couple of technological glitches along the way.)

Public service announcement

Now that we're back on Standard Time, citizens need to be in a state of high alert. Standard Time is the season for vampires. Rumor has it that affluent vamps bribed lawmakers to create Standard Time in the first place. If bears forage in spring and summer, then hibernate in winter, vamps hibernate in spring and summer, then forage in winter. When days are short and nights are long, that's hunting season for vamps. And Standard Time gives them an extra hour before they must take refuge in their sunless coffins. So be extra vigilant as we enter the most perilous time of year. If any of your "friends" complain about Daylight Savings Time, that's an ominous clue. Another telltale sign is if they're allergic to Italian cuisine with garlic. The clincher is when they don't appear in photographs. 

Schism

1. Catholic polemical theology stresses the grave sin of schism. But that's circular because schism in Catholic usage is basically a made-up category. And don't quote me NT passages that use the word "schism" in Greek, because that's a semantic fallacy. In ecclesiastical usage, "schism" is a technical term. NT Greek usage doesn't have that specialized meaning.

The NT does have two related categories: heresy and apostasy. The clearest NT example of schism are the heretics who broke away from St. John's congregations (1 John). But, of course, evangelicals don't think the Catholic church is comparable to John's congregations. If anything, it's the other way around. The Catholic church broke away from NT exemplars. 

2. Here's another problem with the traditional Catholic allegation that Protestant denominations are schismatic. Schismatic in relation to what? To the church of Rome? A basic problem with that comparison is that the church of Rome keeps reinventing itself. Even though Protestants broke away from the 16C church of Rome, that no longer exists. It isn't possible to reunite with the 16C church of Rome, even if that was desirable. The 16C church of Rome is radically different from the 21C church of Rome. The 1C church of Rome is very different from the 6C church of Rome. How can you be schismatic in relation to a "parent" denomination that's constantly changing? The church of Rome keeps mutating into something else. 

Of course, Catholic apologists insist that there's fundamental continuity, but that's only convincing to Catholic apologists and like-minded Catholics. 

Samaras

Catholics stress "continuity" as a mark of the true church. It's my impression that many Catholics have no inkling what an alternative to the Catholic model of ecclesial continuity might even look like. They've been conditioned to view the issue with Catholic tinted glasses. 

Newman famously used the metaphor of an acorn growing into an oak tree to illustrate the doctrine of development. So let's play along with an organic, botanical metaphor to illustrate a certain type of continuity. I'll use a maple tree instead, 

Trees have lifecycles. A parent tree disseminates the next generation. Then the parent tree dies. The next generation repeats the cycle. So there's a lineage of trees, where each derives from a parent tree up the line. And they're all the same kind of tree, with the same kind of fruit. 

Suppose we view Rome as a diseased and dying maple tree dispersing seeds which took root to grow into new and vibrant maple trees. A fraction of the samaras germinate to become adults. The original maple tree expires, but not before it spawns descendants. So there's generational continuity between the original maple tree and its descendants. There's never a time without a maple tree. The essence of the maple tree is contained in its samaras. The essence of the maple tree is transmitted from one tree to the next, in unbroken succession, from Pentecost to the Parousia. 

Interrelationship between Gen 1-3

https://twitter.com/DrPJWilliams/status/1055596001648615425

Peter Williams on the death of Judas

Read the whole thread:

https://twitter.com/DrPJWilliams/status/1189664253877374979

Your life is not your own

You are not your own; you were bought at a price (1 Cor 6:19-20). 

1. Scripture says nothing directly about the permissibility or impermissibility of suicide, so evangelicals fall back on inferences from general biblical principles and cautionary tales in Scripture. 

1 Cor 6:19-20 is cited as an indirect prooftext to show that suicide is intrinsically wrong. I'll get to that in a moment.

My own position is that suicide is a special case of taking human life in general, like other special cases of taking human life. Taking human life is generally wrong, but there are exceptions, like executing a murderer or killing a sniper to save the school children. 

By the same token, I think suicide is prima-facie wrong, but there are situations where that's overridden. Take the soldier who throws himself on a grenade to shield his comrades from being killed or maimed. That's altruistic suicide.

If you think suicide is intrinsically wrong, you might be conflicted about that example. Presumably, you think what the soldier did was noble. You don't wish to condemn him. So you might try to classify his action as something else. But I think that's special pleading. The only reason to classify it as something else is if you think suicide is necessarily wrong.

If, on the other hand, you think suicide is contingently wrong, then circumstances determine the morality or immorality of that action. BTW, I'm not saying circumstances determine the morality or immorality of every action. Some actions are intrinsically wrong. They can't be justified by good results or the avoidance of bad results.

2. Back to the prooftext. It lays out a general principle that's germane to suicide (among other things). But does it make suicide inherently wrong?

St. Paul himself had a high-risk lifestyle. When he was initially put on trial he had a chance to get off on a technicality. But instead he appealed to Caesar because he wanted to witness to the Roman higher echelon. He deliberately endangered his life when he had an out. And, indeed, he died a martyr. 

The problem with the appeal to 1 Cor 6:19-20 to prove that suicide is always wrong is that it fails to distinguish between putting yourself in harm's way and putting others in harm's way. There are situations where it's permissible or obligatory to endanger yourself to save another or others but impermissible to endanger others. That despite situations where both of belong to God, you were bought with a price. 

Suppose a man and a woman are waiting for an elevator when they're approached by gang members. In one scenario, the man rushes into the elevator, but pushes the woman away, to make his escape while they direct their attention at the hapless woman. In another scenario, he pushes the woman into the elevator and confronts the gang, even though he's outnumbered and bound to lose–to buy her time to escape.

Even if, in both cases, their life is not their own, there's still a moral difference between risky heroism and risking the life of another. So the general principle is too indiscriminate to rule out suicide regardless of the circumstances.