Beyond binary

A friend asked me to comment on this:

https://sundayschoolanswers.wixsite.com/kalebgraves/post/a-christianity-beyond-binary

A Christianity Beyond Binary

God is beyond gender binary, so why can't our faith be too?

I’m a Christian, training to be a minister, and LGBTQ affirming. I was affirming of gender non-conforming and transgender people before I supported people seeking same-sex relationships. This may seem like a bigger step than just acceptance of same-sex marriage, but this affirmation is backed up by medicine, scripture, and praxis that has only gotten stronger since I took this position a few years ago.

For a couple of reasons I'm skipping over the "medical evidence:

How to mitigate the coronavirus

1. It's possible the US will soon look something like Italy looks now. So let's look at what's happening in Italy.

A worst-case scenario about the coronavirus

Suppose we take a worst-case scenario with regard to the coronavirus pandemic:

1. Case fatality rates for coronavirus are predicted to be around 0.5% to 1% when it's all said and done. Yes, that's already very high in comparison to, say, the seasonal flu, which is 0.05% to 0.1%. If the predictions are accurate, then that's 1.65 million to 3.3 million dead in a population of approximately 330 million.

   However, suppose the case fatality rate from coronavirus is super high at (say) 3%. If 3% die, then that's 9.9 million dead. Call it 10 million dead. That'd be more people than we've ever lost in any war. Maybe even in all the wars we've ever fought combined.

   (By the way, I realize this is simplistic. Here is what epidemiologists would say instead. My point in this post isn't accuracy, but a worst-case scenario. Of course, there are always even worst-case scenarios than this worst-case scenario, but I think this is sufficient to say what I'll say below.)

Prophets of doom

I've noticed some people, from all walks of life - including physicians, virologists, and epidemiologists - seem to be stuck in this rut where it's all about how bad the coronavirus is going to be, how we're not being told the truth about how bad it will be, and so on. All their tweets are retweeting other prophets of doom. It's disaster 24/7.

Now, I grant it could well be that the forecast is extremely gloomy. The coronavirus could end up being catastrophic for our nation and the world.

However, we're not there yet. The future hasn't come. We're still in the present.

Hence, why not attempt to focus on what we can do to stem the tide of the coronavirus right now? Begin to change one's mindset from shock and dismay to grim determination to salvage a situation even if it appears to be unsalvageable? What other choice do we have even if it's so bad? Lay down and die?

Just to be clear, I'm not criticizing people for pointing out that the coronavirus is worse than what's reported in the media. It's good to face the facts as they are. It's also necessary for us to make sure the powers that be are doing their job and acting in the American people's best interests.

However, there are some people who are so hyperfocused on the bad that they risk paralyzing themselves. Or panicking. If enough people are like this, then it could result in mass hysteria.

We need to take aggressive action if we are to prevent the darkest timeline from unfolding. My concern is if enough people are driven to despair or start panicking. That's how societies start to unravel.

Makeshift "hospitals"

Here's a thought about a solution to the coronavirus overwhelming our hospitals:

1. As we know, hospitals and related medical facilities are the ones primarily providing care for the coronavirus if it's serious enough. Hospitals have the personnel, equipment, and medications. Of course, this threatens to overwhelm hospitals if there are too many patients requiring care. For example, see this Twitter thread for one physician's perspective of how hospitals in Northern Italy are overwhelmed.

2. However, if circumstances warrant it, one solution could be to turn community centers and even people's homes into makeshift "hospitals" to care for those in need. A health care worker could come and visit when needed (e.g. to administer medications in a neighborhood). Medical engineers could develop and build the required equipment for homes and communities. Portable or at least more portable versions of what's in the ICU. In fact, health care workers could teach Americans what to do. A lot of what happens in supportive care is teachable even to someone without any medical background. After all, a nation that could virtually single-handedly supply the entire Allied war effort during WW2 with planes, ships, jeeps, clothes, boots, helmets, food, guns, and many other things could presumably be inventive enough to build and able enough to supply our own citizens with necessary medical equipment and so on. Heck, China built an entire hospital hospital in 10 days just for the coronavirus. Surely we can do even more! We have a fine history of American ingenuity and productivity.

3. That was the carrot; here's the stick. I realize this is far from ideal. It wouldn't be the best care for a patient. Perhaps under normal circumstances it would even justify law suits for poor standard of care for patients. In fact, it's quite possible there would be tons of medical errors and some or many people might even die from the medical errors. However, if the situation is dire enough, and hospitals are running at double if not triple capacity, and people are dying anyway, then what other choices are there? This is just a thought.

Finessing the problem of evil

From a Facebook exchange:

That's a simplistic caricature of reprobation. The fact that the reprobate end up in hell doesn't mean that's the purpose of God creating them. If a soldier throws himself on a grenade to shield is comrades, that's the last thing he does, but it's not as if he was born for that sole purpose.

You repeat the same oversimplification. According to reprobation, the reprobate are hellbound in part because they were predestined to hell. But that doesn't mean they were born with that sole end in mind. To the contrary, the reprobate have an important role to play in world history and sacred history. In addition, they are damned because they are wicked. Culpability is a necessity (albeit insufficient) condition for reprobation.

To begin with, it's no different from Augustinianism or classical Thomism, both of which are highly predestinarian. If you're posing a philosophical question about whether libertarian freedom is necessary to be blameworthy, that's a hotly contested issue in the philosophical literature. Are you going say God is worse than the devil based on disputed philosophical conjectures?

You're raising a philosophical objection, but you're not prepared to defend your position philosophically. And you're prepared to blaspheme God based on a philosophical objection which, by your own admission, you lack the competence to defend. Reprobation doesn't make eternal suffering the "foundation of creation and salvation." Why not say unconditional election makes eternal bliss the foundation of creation and salvation? The point, though, is that evil is not an unplanned evil. God has a good reason for the foreordination of the fall, otherwise it was within his power to preempt it. There are certain kinds of good, second-order goods, that are made possible by evil. You and I wouldn't exist in an unfallen world. You and I are the product of chains of events leading up to us that include many intervening evil variables. So there are tradeoffs.

i) I'm saying you want to have to both ways. You want to have the benefit of a philosophical objection without the hard work of philosophical argument to justify your objection. You raise a philosophical objection, but then play the "I'm a simple man card". 

ii) The deny that God planned evil means that evil caught God off-guard. If God foresaw evil as a result of his creative fiat, then he intended the consequences of his own actions. That's logically unavoidable. 

iii) Yes, God is responsible for whatever happens. But there's a difference between responsibility and culpability. Responsibility is a necessary but insufficient condition of culpability. The former doesn't entail the latter. And to say God is responsible for whatever happens doesn't make him solely responsible. He's not the only agent. 

iv) The comparison with slaves and murdered children fails to take guilt into account. So your comparison is amoral. 

v) So you deny that God will the long-term consequences of his own actions? 

God doesn't will evil for evil's sake, but he wills evil for the compensatory goods. Do you think God willed the crucifixion of Christ?

vi) Certain kinds of goods require evil. If a child dies of leukemia, and the parents make a replacement child, the new child wouldn't exist apart from the tragedy of the first child's death. 

vii) You've presented no argument for the claim that double predestination is arbitrary.

"it's possible for God to foresee evil without intending either it or its consequences, and to act and plan in a manner that provides for it."

i) It's not just a case of God foreseeing the consequences of an action, but the consequences of his own actions. Does God not intend the consequences of his own creative/providential actions? Is it an divine accident that those actions have those end-results? Like an uncoordinated house guest who breaks an antique flower vase by inadvertently bumping into it and knocking it over?

ii) Perhaps you're using "intend" in the specialized sense of double effect theory, where the evil is a necessary but indirect side-effect of the action. If so, Calvinism can draw the same distinction.

Mind you, it's disputable in the double effect literature whether the dichotomy between intended and foreseen outcomes is stable. 

"I'm using 'responsibility' and 'culpability' interchangeably."

You can do that if you wish, but there's an important conceptual distinction inasmuch as responsibility for an action may be either praiseworthy or blameworthy. 

"I'm actually kind of concerned now by what you mean by those cases being 'amoral'."

It's amoral for you to compare cases of innocent suffering with just punishment.

"God wills only good, otherwise He is not God."

But God can will good indirectly.

"Of course He didn't will the Crucifixion"

Was the crucifixion an unplanned event? If God planned it, how can God not intend or will his own plans? 

How is your denial consistent with Acts 2:23 & 4:27-28? (Not to mention that the Greek is probably using proginosko in the idiomatic sense of prior choice.)

"That the 'replacement' child is a good in no way makes the earlier child dying of leukemia not an evil."

Unresponsive to the argument inasmuch as I never said the death of the first child was not an evil. To the contrary, it was a necessary evil for the second-order good of the replacement child to transpire.

If we were living in an unfallen world, we could discuss what God is prepared to plan with respect to evil with greater speculative freedom because evil would just be an abstraction and the debate would be hypothetical. But in a situation where God and evil actually coexist, that takes certain explanations off the table. At this stage we must play the hand we were dealt, which curtails the range of available theodical options. Lots of Christians act like they can artificially buffer God from complicity in evil, but given the fact of evil along with divine creation and providence, that logically commits us to certain positions, like it or not, and forecloses certain escape routes.

Hype or doomsday?

I haven't posted my personal thoughts on the coronavirus until now because I'm not sure I have anything worthwhile to say:

i) The larger danger may be an artificial crisis by businesses and gov't officials panicking and overreacting. If we had drugstores and supermarkets close. Or if Internet providers send their employees home. Or if gov't officials attempt citywide lockdowns. 

ii) Another scenario is that the virus will be severe in terms of infection rates and mortality rates. Ironically, there's a sense in which we shouldn't panic in a worst-case situation because there's little we can do to mitigate the damage. No point getting hysterical about something you have no control over. 

According to (i), we have an avoidable catastrophe. Not the pandemic itself, but how people make it worse, maybe far worse, than it naturally is. 

According to (ii), we have an unavoidable disaster, in which case I'm fatalistic. 

One doomsday scenario is if the power company and public water system don't have enough healthy employees to keep things running.

And, of course, there's a cascade effect. It's not just about a supermarket having enough healthy employees for a skeleton staff at reduced hours. Supermarkets have to be constantly restocked by truckers.

If supermarkets close, they will be broken into and looted. Hospitals will be looted.

As Peter has often remarked, industrial, hitech societies are quite fragile compared to rural "backward" Third World countries. And cities are especially vulnerable to a cascade effect. Moreover, cities supply the suburbs.

At the moment, nations like Italy may be the canary in the coal mine. How Italy fares may presage what happens in the USA. 

Security and liberty

Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. (Benjamin Franklin)

1. I think, somewhat ironically, what could be our undoing as a nation in light of the coronavirus (if, arguendo, it's going to be cataclysmic) is our respect for the rights of the individual and civil liberties in general. We can't (and shouldn't) take draconian measures like China can. We can't even do what some European nations can do where (it seems) they mandate top-down measures on the whole of society (e.g. Italy). So for us, generally speaking, social distancing and any other drastic measures have to be voluntary, enacted by local communities and individual states; it can't be coerced by the federal government or the powers that be. I think that's our great strength, but maybe it's also a great weakness when it comes to dealing with an epidemic. So, pace Franklin, it might come down to a choice between security and liberty, even though that's not a choice any full-blooded American would ever wish to make.

2. I think Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during wartime, but I don't know if we should treat the coronavirus pandemic as if we're in a war or similar.

3. If it becomes bad enough, but there's a vaccine, then this also goes to the question of whether we should mandate vaccinations against the coronavirus for the public good, even if there's a significant minority who would be up in arms about it (e.g. anti-vaxxers, libertarians).

Lourdes shrine closes healing pools as precaution against coronavirus

https://catholicherald.co.uk/lourdes-shrine-closes-healing-pools-as-precaution-against-coronavirus/

Challies goes soft

Question is posed at 26:25.

Marian prooftexts

Over the years I've commented on Marian prooftexts, but it's helfpu to collect and analyze the stock examples in one place. Some of this repeats what I've said elsewhere while some of this is new. 

Mass suspended!

It is easier for the earth to exist without the sun than without the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass!

– Padre Pio

Well that may just be put to the test. What if Mass is suspended and nothing happens? The skies don't blacken. Demons don't storm out of hellmouth and take over the world. What if everything is business as usual? Suppose you can't tell the difference? 

This is another crisis for the Catholic church. I've been joking with friends about how the Vatican needs to authorize communion condoms so that the faithful can safely take communion on the tongue. 

But humor aside, it's pretty amazing that public masses have now been suspended throughout Italy. The hierarchy is sending a clarion message about its lack of faith, and the dispensability of this central sacrament. Logically, they should trust in God to protect faithful communicants. Yet they're afraid to take the risk in case the gamble doesn't pay off. But if you can't bet on your own religion...

Some hard truths about the coronavirus

The behavior of people fighting over toilet paper reminds me of the words of Jesus: “For if people do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?" God help us if we have to fight over anti-viral meds.

— Michael F. Bird (@mbird12) March 8, 2020

1. I think Bird makes a good point. As I've said in the past, how people are responding to the coronavirus is a bit more disconcerting to me than the coronavirus itself. Not that the coronavirus isn't a threat, but how people behave can sometimes make things worse.

2. It doesn't help that some "experts" fan the flames. They're contributing to unnecessary alarm.

3. Panicking is irrational. There's no need to shout at each other and fight over toilet paper and hand sanitizer. Certainly not at this point. If, however, something like this happens, then I'll admit it may be time to panic.

4. That said, we shouldn't be carefree about the coronavirus either. Here are some hard truths, at least as I see them, but obviously people should always fact-check everything for themselves:

Self-inflicted punishment

@RandalRauser

Christians sometimes defend the doctrine of hell as eternal conscious torment by saying that hell is self-imposed (rather than divinely-imposed) torment. But it is doubtful that this qualification helps much. 

It's true that that in itself is an insufficient justification. The criterion of self-affliction is too facile to stand on its own, although it can be a morally relevant factor.

If a person was engaging in egregious self-harm, wouldn't you restrain them, forcibly if necessary? Hell on this view is surely the ultimate form of self-harm. And we are to suppose nobody intervenes for eternity? 

The problem here is that Rauser is recasting the issue as if we were dealing with innocent victims of mental illness. People who engage in self-harm through no fault of their own. He uses the morally neutral language of "person" rather than the "wicked". Rauser's outlook is amoral. 

If, however, a terrorist was about to accidentally step on a cobra or a serial killer was about to accidentally step into quick sand, I wouldn't intervene to save them from self-inflicted harm. Hell is about retributive punishment, not misfortune. 

Coronavirus vis-à-vis Contagion

1. I enjoyed the movie Contagion. I thought it was generally accurate and realistic. Below is a British physician reviewing the movie in light of what's happening with the coronavirus. I appreciate his humor and I think his review would be educational for many people too. Hence why I'm posting it.

2. As far as where things stand with the coronavirus at present. I haven't paid any attention to Scott Gottlieb until now, so I don't know what he's been saying about the coronavirus in the past, but I largely agree with his recent remarks here. There's a transcript as well.

International Women's Day

1. I'd argue Christianity has a higher regard for women than virtually any other religion or worldview. Perhaps a major exception is Judaism, though rabbinic Judaism is quite different than biblical Judaism. And secular humanism is parasitic on Judeo-Christian values about women. Anyway others better than I have written reams about all this so I won't belabor the point.

2. I don't know why we need an International Women's Day to celebrate women in general. I don't celebrate women in general, just like I don't celebrate men in general. There are good and bad among men and women.

3. It seems to me International Women's Day is just another diversity day to push feminism. I mean a mixture of second, third, and/or fourth wave feminism. Just like there are diversity days to push liberal or progressive values and goals about minorities like Native Americans, African-Americans, Latinos/Hispanics, and so on. Mind you, I support many minority issues, but what I don't support is the liberal or progressive use or manipulation of minorities to push their own agendas.

4. Besides, as far as that goes, why isn't there a UNESCO-recognized International Men's Day? Especially in light of all the issues and problems many men suffer today.

The value of fiction

1. Human beings have an insatiable appetite for fictional stories. That includes short stories, novels, plays, and epic poems. More recently, that includes movies and TV dramas, as well as interactive video game stories. 

2. Is there any Christian justification for the consumption of fictional stories, especially in such massive quantities? No doubt many people have a skewed sense of priorities. They consume too much fiction to the neglect of Bible study, apologetics, and the practice of the Christian faith. That said:

3. Human beings are prone to boredom. Cultivating the life of the imagination is a form of intellectual playtime and recreation. 

4. Fiction takes us to other times and places. Before we were born. Where we never lived. Fiction exposes us to the imagination of other human beings. So it vastly broadens our mental horizon. We're not confined to our personal, firsthand experience of the world. It creates a collective imagination (not in the Jungian sense). 

5. Fiction is a vehicle Christians can use to filter their own experience. To provide a theological interpretation of their own life and the world round them. A fictional setting is more flexible than individual reality. A way to illustratively think through the practical implications of a Christian worldview. 

6. From the standpoint of Christian metaphysics, there's the question of whether one man's fictional story may be another man's lived reality. When we write a story, God thought of that story before we did. Every story originates in God's imagination. Our fictional stories are just a tiny finite sample drawn from the infinite library of God's illimitable imagination.

7. Between divine omniscience and divine omnipotence, it's possible that some of our fictional stories are true stories. They are fictional in relation to the world history of our particular universe, but from what I can tell, there's no presumption that God only created one timeline. If I write a fictional story, I may unwittingly write about real people in a real time and place. It's fictional in relation to the world history of the universe God put me in, but it may have a realistic counterpart in parallel universe with an alternate world history.

Of course, that's speculation, but it's no less speculative to deny it. Given all the interesting, worthwhile ways in which things might turn out differently, it seems like an arbitrary coin toss if there's only one world history–to the neglect of so many other significant forks in the road. I can't prove that conjecture, so it's not a point of Christian orthodoxy, but conjecture is unavoidable on both sides of the question. 

Thoughts on clerical celibacy

https://arturovasquez.wordpress.com/2020/01/22/thoughts-on-clerical-celibacy/

His position, as a lapsed Catholic, is ambivalent but interesting.

"Death is what gives life meaning"

@SecularOutpost

Death is what gives life meaning.

The fact that life can be lost is what makes life meaningful.

It’s the risk of loss of one’s own life that gives the other things meaning.

https://twitter.com/SecularOutpost/status/1236376219597168640

1. You can file this under: if you want a shallow answer to an existential question, ask an atheist.  

Atheists face a dilemma of their own making. How do they play the losing hand they dealt themselves? Some of them are more forthright about the consequences. By contrast, Jeff's strategy is to make a virtue of necessity.  

Why Did Polycrates Refer To John As A High Priest?

Critics of the attribution of the fourth gospel to John the son of Zebedee often cite Polycrates as a witness against that attribution. Polycrates referred to the Beloved Disciple as "a priest, wearing the high-priestly frontlet" (in Eusebius, Church History, 5:24:2). In an article here, I argue against Richard Bauckham's formulation of the objection. I'm not aware of any easy explanation for why Polycrates referred to the Beloved Disciple as he did. We have to choose among options that are all difficult to some degree. But I proposed some possible explanations that I consider less problematic than Bauckham's. What I want to do here is expand on one of those alternatives to Bauckham's view.

How plausible is it that Polycrates was referring to the son of Zebedee as a high priest in a metaphorical sense? Notice that one of the Johannine documents, Revelation, puts substantial emphasis on the theme of the priesthood of all believers (1:6, 5:10, 20:6). And notice that the theme appears early, within the first several verses, in addition to being spread out over a few segments of the book. It's a somewhat prominent theme. Similarly, both the fourth gospel and Revelation make much of Jesus' role as a sacrificial lamb, which has priestly associations, especially given the Johannine emphasis on how Jesus offered himself rather than having his life taken unwillingly. And the lamb of God theme appears early in the fourth gospel, in the first chapter (1:29). So, both of these Johannine documents put a lot of emphasis on priestly themes, even referring to them near the beginning, and Revelation emphasizes the theme of a metaphorical priesthood in particular.

If all believers are viewed as priests, it's not much of a further step to think of somebody like an apostle as a priest in a higher sense, such as being a high priest. In fact, Polycrates starts with a reference to the Beloved Disciple as a priest, then qualifies it with a reference to being a high priest. He may have had the Johannine concept of the priesthood of all believers in mind, which he then expanded into a metaphorical high priesthood for John.

Keep in mind, too, that the passage in Polycrates begins with a reference to figures like John as "great lights". There's no question that Polycrates is being metaphorical to some extent.

Much more can be said about Polycrates' comments. I'm not trying to be exhaustive here. Those who want to read more about the subject can consult my post responding to Bauckham linked above, his book, or Dean Furlong's recent book that I referred to earlier.