Coronavirus and the Church: Compliant, or Uncreative?

https://www.reformation21.org/blog/coronavirus-and-the-church-compliant-or-uncreative

Piper on the pandemic

https://www.desiringgod.org/interviews/how-do-we-make-sense-of-the-coronavirus?

Includes transcript

Corporate prayer

Corporate prayer and public worship wind back through Christianity to OT worship. The Psalms are corporate prayers, performed in corporate worship. 

Are there any distinctive supernatural blessings indexed to public worship? Is the risk of contracting the coronavirus offset by any supernatural blessings indexed to public worship?

Does it ultimately make any difference whether or not you go to church? Are there certain kinds of blessings that God reserves when Christians pray and worship in fellowship?

Likewise, is there anything supernatural that ever results from public worship? Or is public worship at best a neutral experience, hanging in a balance, but the scales are easily tipped against it if a natural risk factor is added? 

Prayer meetings

Here's a thought-experiment: should churches hold prayer meetings about the pandemic? The prayers would focus on two things:

i) Pray for folks they know who've contracted the illness

ii) Pray that God will mitigate the pandemic

Parishioners at higher risk (elderly, immunocompromised) would be excluded from attending the prayer meeting for their own protection.

1. There's the possibility of contracting infection at the prayer meeting.

2. There's the possibility that God will grant some of the prayer requests. Petitions he wouldn't grant if they hadn't been offered in corporate prayer. 

3. There's the possibility that God will decline to answer their prayers.

How should a Christian balance these considerations or "risk factors"? Should we take the position that it's too risky to give God the opportunity to answer petitionary prayers regarding the pandemic at a prayer meeting?

Even if someone contracts the illness at the prayer meeting, or even if God declines to answer the prayers, it still honors God to hold prayer meetings and practice corporate prayer. So we can still expect God to bless Christians who honor him, even if the blessings are ancillary to the prayer request. Or can we?

Are we duty-bound to forego prayer-meetings where we come together pray for a crisis because it's too risky to seek divine intervention for that situation in that setting? Is the paradox that the worse the situation, the less reason to seek God in corporate prayer? We should only turn to God in corporate prayer when we're safe? 

Sick churchgoers

During the pandemic, suppose two things happen:

i) A Christian goes to church

ii) The same Christian develops the coronavirus

Is the presumption that he got sick by going to church? Or is that the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy?

Consider some other activities the Christian may have engaged in that week:

• Went to the supermarket

• Went to the drug store

• Got takeout from a Chinese joint

• Got delivery pizza

• Spoke face-to-face with some residents in his apartment complex or condo complex

• Checked in on an elderly neighbor to see how they were doing

• Walked his dog, in the course of which he got into a conversation with someone else walking their dog

• Self-quarantined with his wife and three kids

The list could be easily extended. Each of these encounters is a potential transmission vector. He might contract the virus from the pizza delivery boy, or the cashier at the drug store or Chinese takeout joint, or from shoppers at the supermarket, or the elderly neighbor he checked in on, or a family members, and so on and so forth.

So why do critics single out church attendance as the default culprit? What if that's sheer coincidence, given a multiplicity of transmission vectors? Rationally, you could only pin it on church attendance by ruling out all the other transmission vectors. Are critics in a position to work through that process of elimination? Or is singling out church a reflexive indication of their bigotry?

Suspending church services

Two related stories:

https://www.episcopalnewsservice.org/2020/03/11/washington-virginia-dioceses-to-close-all-churches-including-national-cathedral-over-coronavirus/

The ECUSA should have closed shop long ago and returned property to faithful Anglican congregations. 

@Trent_Horn

Suspending mass because of a pandemic shows prudence, not faithlessness. Charity demands we not unwittingly infect others and God gave us intellects to discover how to stop diseases. As the Bible says, "There is a time when success lies in the hands of physicians" (Sir. 38:13).

Would you agree sick people shouldn't go to mass? If so, then what do we with people who are sick without symptoms and don't know they are infecting and possibly causing grave harm to others?

https://twitter.com/Trent_Horn/status/1237998888386093057

i) Not what the Bible says, but OT apocrypha. Medical care during the time of Sirach wasn't notably successful. Usually did more harm then good. 

ii) I don't take the position that weekly church attendance is absolutely obligatory. This post is more about the motivation to justify church closures during an epidemic. 

iii) Life isn't risk-free. Christianity isn't risk-free. In India and the Muslim world, Christians take their life in their hands by going to church. 

iv) There is, of course, an important moral distinction between a necessary risk and a gratuitous risk. But due to the corporate nature of Christian, there's the additional principle of shared risk, shared suffering, and shared reward.

v) Refusing to attend church during an epidemic, or suspending church during an epidemic, betrays a lack of faith. I don't mean you should count on God to protect you from infection, even fatal infection. Rather, you should have the faith to attend church during an epidemic, not because it's risk-free, but because, even if you did contract a fatal inflection, you died because you were acting faithfully. That's good way to die. There's no better way to die. You were acting faithfully by continuing to fellowship with God's people, share in corporate worship and prayer. 

vi) That said, I'm fascinated by the assumption that it's safer to be outside church than insider church. Among other things, the church is a house of prayer. Isn't that the right kind of place to go during an epidemic? And to join with others there in prayer. 

Is your church just a building with religious furniture, or is God present where his people are present? Does public worship confer no blessing? Is it more dangerous to be in church during an outbreak than to absent yourself? Only go back when the coast is clear? What do we expect to find when we go to church–in ordinary times? Does church make any appreciable difference? 

vii) Where did some professing Christians ever get the idea that we're supposed to shun the sick? Think of those mission trips sponsored for church teens. They go off to some exotic location for a week or two to do mission. What if one of them develops the symptoms of a highly contagious, life-threatening illness. Should his roommates abandon him to fend for himself? Or should at least one of team risk his own life to stay behind and nurse him back to health? 

viii) To some extent I think we've developed a mentality where we contract out the dangerous or distasteful jobs to "professionals". A number of doctors and nurses are at an age where they are more susceptible the infection. Some of them aren't even Christian. Should we expect more courage from them than from Christians? 

Many modern-day Americans have never seen anyone die. In the past, that was commonplace. 

By the same token, visitation ministry can be a valid alternative. But once again, that doesn't mean we should act like we pay the clergy to do take on the hazardous activities. That's not a proper view of Christian vocation generally. 

ix) In fairness, Trent raises a valid question. Sure, if you have the flu, it would be more considerate to stay home. Likewise, Typhoid Mary shouldn't attend church. Indeed, she should be quarantined.

Yet this isn't about individual discretion, but a blanket ban. Moreover, he extends that to folks who may be sick but asymptomatic. Their illness hasn't manifested itself at that stage of the incubation process. 

But consider what an extreme and paranoid principle that is. I shouldn't attend church if I might be sick but asymptomatic, and I should avoid church because other parishioners might be sick but asymptotic. Well, who's left? That could apply to everyone?

x) In fairness, he's talking about an epidemic, where there's a greater presumption of asymptotic people with a contagious, life-threatening disease. Yet there's a paradoxical sense in which it's more important to go to church the worse things are. Where Christians can pray with each other and not simply for each other. 

What about hosting church services especially for the sick and dying. Those who are still able to come on their own or be brought? Pray over them. Sing together. Read Scripture together. That would be risky for the clergy, but so what? That goes with the territory. That would be risky those who brought them, but so what? Religion is ultimately about death and the world to come. 

Suppose we had a recurrence of the Black Plague, only this was a new, incurable strain. Suppose 80% of the population succumbs. Should they die in overcrowded hospitals or die in church? Would it not be better for plague victims to take refuge in church? What better place to spend their final hours of life? What better place to die? 

xi) There's an opportunity here for a Christian witness. The real or perceived threat of the pandemic has shaken up lots of folks who don't normally think about death. Thanks to modern medicine, we in the west haven't been exposed to pandemics for decades. That makes it a lot easier for folks to be worldly and suppress existential questions about the meaning of life, death, and the afterlife. Evangelical churches should take advantage of the crisis, and swim against the tide.

Is prayer ethical?

This is another post on the perennial "problem of unanswered prayer". The point of the question is not whether it's unethical to pray. The question, rather, is whether it's unethical for God to make the satisfaction of certain needs conditional on prayer. 

Before proceeding, let's narrow the terms. There are different kinds of prayer: prayers of praise, confession, and thanksgiving. The focus of my little post is on petitionary prayer, and intercessory prayer, which is a subset of petitionary prayer. 

We pray for different reasons. In some cases we pray for reasons of piety rather than necessity. Suppose I get a job offer for a better job in a better town. I pray about it. My acceptance of the offer isn't contingent on my receiving a discernible answer to prayer. If I don't hear back from God (so to speak), I'll take the job. Put another way, I'll take the job unless something comes up. By praying to God, I'm asking God to make the offer fall through if it's a bad idea. 

Likewise, we pray when a loved one undergoes surgery. The prayer may be unnecessary. The surgery might be successful with or without prayer. But maybe prayer makes the difference. It would be presumptuous not to pray just because it might work out anyway. 

Then there are desperate prayers. We pray because we really really need something that only God can provide, for us or for a loved one. The outcome is beyond our human control. 

Why doesn't God just meet the need without making it contingent on prayer? The conventionally pious explanation is that the habit of prayer cultivates an awareness of our utter dependence on God. If our needs were provided for automatically, we'd take it for granted. We'd become presumptuous. But because prayer is a conscious act, it forces us to be conscious of our neediness and vulnerability and reliance on God. 

And answered prayer is a great encouragement. We desperately needed something only God could supply, and God supplied our need! 

That explanation is fine as far as it goes, but does it run aground in the case of unanswered prayer? What happens when God makes the satisfaction of a desperate need conditional on prayer, but then refuses the request? Does the logic still work? 

In a paradoxical way, unanswered prayer makes us at least as acutely aware of our need for divine provision as answered prayer. If anything, it rubs it in. If we don't get what we ask for, the need goes unmet. We really needed something only God could provide, but he declined. So the need remains outstanding. And that's a painful way to experience our hopeless dependence on God. It was something only God could do, he refused, so we're at a loss. It hurts. The inconsolable disappointment. 

Rebuffed. No remedy. Nowhere else to go. No one else to turn to. No other resources to fall back on. That was our only chance.

So we're bereft. But to be bereft reminds us of what it's like to try to make it on our own without God. It's God or nothing. And sometimes we face divine abandonment. We feel deserted at the very time we most needed a sign or answer from God. Yet that's an excruciating reminder of how alone we are in the world, if we were truly in a godless universe. The effect can be spiritually alienating, but it is a way, albeit brutal, to drive the message home. If you don't have God you don't have anything. Because sometimes that's our experience, even as Christians. You wait for something that never happens. The window of opportunity closes. 

There's a certain tension in being a Christian apologist. A Christian apologist may find himself in the position of defending a God who's wounded him or wounded his loved ones. A Christian apologist is not shielded from adversity.

Sometimes life in a fallen world is like a concentration camp. Sometimes the camp is liberated. But sometimes death is the only escape. A shallow, unmarked grave facing this side of the world–with heaven on the other side. 

Severe depression

As many have already heard, Jarrid Wilson committed suicide. Wilson was a 30 year old pastor in California who apparently had a lifelong struggle with depression.

In the relatively recent past, there have been other young evangelical Christians who have committed suicide as well. For example, Rick Warren's son Matthew shot and killed himself at age 27 in 2013. Also another pastor in California named Andrew Stoecklein took his own life at age 30.

I don't wish to comment on the ethics of suicide at this moment. Besides, other Christians like Steve have commented on suicide in the past and said far more intelligent and helpful things than I ever could.

Rather I'll just offer a useful screening tool for people who suspect they might be depressed or know those whom they suspect might be depressed. Not that all suicide attempts and suicides are necessarily related to depression but the majority are related to severe depression.

In any case, the "tool" is simply a series of questions that physicians (such as psychiatrists) will ask a person whom they suspect might be depressed to help determine if they are depressed and, if so, the severity of their depression. If they are severely depressed, as opposed to mild or moderate depression, it could mean they're at risk of suicide.

It's taken from a British book called the Oxford Handbook of Clinical Specialties (10th ed.), p 345:

We use a similar but not as memorable mnemonic in the US. They're different mnemonics but the same ideas or concepts underlie both.

You can click on both images to enlarge if need be.

For example, a physician will ask a person how many hours they're sleeping each night, how often, if they're tossing and turning or able to sleep right away. What they find enjoyable (e.g. reading books, watching movies, listening to music, taking walks on the beach) and how frequently they do these things. If they feel embarrassed or guilty of anything. How they feel when they're awake. If they're chronically tired. How well they can concentrate on small, medium, and big tasks. If they're under or over eating. How they're functioning at work and play. If they have made any well formulated plans to commit suicide.

Eloquence

1. It's useful for Christian writers who have the latent talent to cultivate an eloquent prose style. If you have a worthwhile message, and you want the reader (or listener) to pay attention, eloquence is a way to make them take notice. Eloquence makes the message memorable. People are more likely to reread an eloquent writer. Indeed, there are people who read certain writers just for the style (e.g. Santayana). 

In addition, a good prose style will enrich the message. For instance, the apt use of metaphor lends greater insight to the message than an abstract style. Well-chosen metaphors make the truth concrete, making it clearer to the mind.

Although they aren't great prose stylists, infidels like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins have a catchy style that sells the message. We should be able to counter that and do them one better. 

The appeal of hymns by Isaac Watts, Charles Wesley, and William Cowper lies not merely in the message or musical setting, but in their poetic power. Same thing with the King James Bible, the traditional Book of Common Prayer, George Herbert, and Henry Vaughan. 

I don't think it's coincidental that fine prose stylists like Ruskin and C. S. Lewis were failed poets. While they didn't have what it takes to be successful poets, they had a poet's ear for language and eye for imagery, which infuses their prose.

2. Some Christians might object that what I say clashes with 1 Cor 2:1-5. However, Paul is, himself, an eloquent writer. I think his objection is not to eloquence, as such, but in part to oratory that's ostentatious, designed to impress rather than express–and in part to sophistical rhetoric that substitutes emotive power for truth, reason, and evidence. 

3. It's a mistake for preachers to strain to be more eloquent than they actually are. The Baptist preacher Robert G. Lee is a good example of someone who is laboring for effect. His language is pretty in a tinselly sort of way. Empty showy conceit. I'm not impugning his motives, just his taste.

Another example is Christopher Frye, in The Lady's Not for Burning. Although the language is vaguely Shakespearean, Shakespeare didn't merely string together pretty words, but picturesque metaphors. 

4. Many writers use a metaphorical word, then leave it at that. But that's generally ineffective. Because the stock of metaphorical words is so familiar, merely using a metaphorical word usually fails to conjure a corresponding image in the mind of the reader or listener. In the same vein, I notice that careless writers use other words in a sentence that jar with the metaphorical word. The writer himself didn't pause to mentally picture the metaphor behind the word. 

If you wish to take advantage of a metaphor, you need to do more than use a metaphorical word. Rather, you need to expand that into a visual description which evokes a scene or image in the mind of the reader. 

5. In addition, it's good if writers don't just have stock metaphors to draw upon, but a fresh experience of the world that supplies the stock metaphors in the first place. Go to the source. A good writer is a keen observer. 

6. Euphony is another trait of good prose. A misguided cliche one runs across in style manuals is to prefer a shorter synonym to a longer synonym. But that's bad advice. A good sentence has a certain rhythm. In that case, a writer with a good ear will choose words that contribute to the overall rhythm of the sentence. He's not choosing words in isolation. It's not just a question of how many syllables a particular word has, but how many syllables the sentence has–as well as the accentual stress. 

By the same token, the next word you choose should depend on how the preceding word ends. Does it end with a vowel or consonant? Does the next word begin with a vowel or consonant? Do they combine to produce a pleasing effect? Poetic techniques like assonance and consonance should work their way into prose, albeit unobtrusively. 

It's often good to write sentences with a lilting cadence. But it depends on the subject matter. Sometimes a grating, abrasive style underscores the message. It's good to vary the style. A uniform style is monotonous. Alternate between staccato and legato. 

It would be a mistake for an author to waste his best style on everything he writes about, however, mundane or ephemeral. Best to save the best style for topics that merit a more expressive or elevated treatment. A foreground requires a background. A prosaic style for more forgettable things makes a high style more arresting by contrast. 

Prayer in the multiverse

The problem of unanswered prayer is an issue in pastoral theology as well as theodicy and apologetics. By "unanswered prayer" I simply mean you didn't get what you ask for. 

On the face of it, it's often the case that God doesn't grant the prayers of Christians (or OT Jews). However, when we talk about unanswered prayer, that's shorthand for prayers that go unanswered in this world. 

Suppose you have a suicidal son or brother. You pray for mental healing but he ends up taking his own life despite your heartfelt prayers on his behalf. 

Did God decline to answer your prayer? Perhaps. In a sense.

But there's a hidden assumption to the problem of unanswered prayer. Suppose God created a multiverse. If that's the case, then prayers that go unanswered in our world are answered in a parallel universe or alternate timeline. 

There's a parallel universe in which my counterpart prays for his suicidal brother, and God grants the prayer request. The brother doesn't commit suicide. If that's true, then God answers nearly every prayer. On this view, prayers that go unanswered in one timeline are answered in another timeline. On this view, the unqualified prayer promises in Scripture might be absolutely true. 

Of course, that's a bit philosophical. However, every human being of average intelligence takes hypothetical and counterfactual scenarios in stride. That's part of human deliberation and decision-making. We contemplate different courses of action. We think of ourselves as the same agent in different hypothetical scenarios. 

The main question is whether those remain unexemplified possibilities, or whether they actually happen. Obviously, forking paths don't happen in the same timeline. But if God made a multiverse, then they actually play out. 

Even in a multiverse, wicked or foolish prayers will still go unanswered. There is that exception.

I'm not saying for a fact that God created a multiverse. I'm in no position to verify or falsify that conjecture, although I think it's theologically reasonable and even likely, for reasons I've given before. 

But my argument in this post doesn't require anything that ambitious. The point is that for all we know, the problem of unanswered prayer is a misnomer if, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, God did, in fact, answer our prayers. But because our only fame of reference is the timeline in which we find ourselves, we can't tell. Even if we're multiply instantiated in alternate timelines, we're not conscious of every timeline.

It's analogous to my future counterpart. My present self isn't conscious of what my future self is aware of, or vice versa. Like a moving spotlight. 

We often seem to pray in vain. We prayed our heart out for something that never transpires. Or maybe it does. Just not in this particular timeline. 

If so, why would God set things up that way? Because every plot its share of unique goods. So there's value in having alternate world histories. 

Two types of apostates

There are roughly two kinds of people who lose their faith over the problem of evil. On the one hand are apostates for whom this is an intellectual problem. That may include "offensive" passages or "offensive" doctrines in Scripture, as well as the usual assortment of natural and moral evils in the world around us. 

They robotically repeat all the tropes about God and evil. They stop thinking after they lose faith in God. They show no awareness for the evil of atheism. They reprobate the perceived implications of Christian theism but never think far enough to seriously consider the implications of naturalism (e.g. moral, existential, and epistemic nihilism). They remain cocooned in the residual idealism of their former faith. Their apostasy is an intellectual affectation. I have no sympathy for apostates like that.

On the other hand are apostates for whom this is an existential problem. It's not about ideas. Rather, they've been crushed by life. Or they've seen a loved one crushed by life. They don't become crusaders for atheism. They don't turn this into their new cause in life. Rather, they withdraw in quiet resignation and despair, defeated by life. They haven't simply given up on faith, but given up on life. Too beaten down to care about anything anymore. They dare not hope for something better. They don't get the attention that ostentatious apostates do because they don't seek attention. They'd rather disappear. Be forgotten.  

I have more respect and sympathy for them. Not intellectual sympathy, but compassion and empathy. Although their position is tragically mistaken, it's not for show. I suspect apostates like that are easier to reach and reclaim. 

What to tell a dying child

Here's a follow up to my previous post:

https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2018/11/deathbed-atheism.html

A longtime reader of Triablogue ran my query by CA. On Twitter, he responded as follows:

@CounterApologis

In fact, if my child did have a terminal illness, depending on the age you wouldn't want to tell them if they couldn't handle it. But you would make them as comfortable as possible and spend as much time with them as possible. /1

What is the alternative? Tell a child who can't handle the reality of death they're going to be with a god that let them get sick and won't heal them, taking them away from their parents? As if that'll make them feel any better. 2/2

1. CA is struggling to be a consistent atheist. Does CA think it's wrong to tell a dying child a comforting lie? Most atheists don't think lying is intrinsically wrong. From a secular standpoint, if it's a choice between a child who dies in terror if you tell it the truth and a child who dies in peace if you tell it a comforting lie, what should an atheist say? Should he speak as an honest atheist or speak as a loving parent? 

This dilemma is less about the child than the atheist. It goes to the question of whether atheism is livable. 

2. Some atheists might bite the bullet and say it doesn't ultimately matter if the child died in peace or died in terror because he won't remember how he died. What difference does it really make whether he was happy or terrified in the last few weeks, days, or hours prior to death? Death wipes out everything that went before. 

3. CA evades the issue by casting the Christian alternative in the most jaundiced way he can think of. To begin with, death will take them away from their parents according to Christianity and atheism alike. And from a secular standpoint, that's permanent, whereas, from a Christian standpoint, there's the hope of reunion. 

Yes, it makes a dying child feel better that he won't pass into oblivion, but go to a nicer place. I had an Aunt Vera who died of diphtheria at 3 1/2. Her last words were, "Kiss me papa, I'm going to Jesus!"

Why don't more pastors speak out?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOPB2hbrqsM

When tomorrow never comes

Although I don't think unanswered prayer casts doubt on God's existence (too much evidence for that), it does cast prima facie doubt on God's benevolence. Ironically, Deists think the problem isn't with unanswered prayer but answered prayer! They think a God who intervenes is a God who lacks foresight to get it right the first time around. They view divine intervention as God rewriting the script. Editing his rough draft. That's actually a good objection to open theism. 

In theory, this ranges along a continuum from a God who never answers prayer to a God who always answers prayer. What would a world be like where God answers every prayer? 

To begin with, are we confining that to Christian prayers and pre-Christian Jewish prayers? Or does that extend to, say, Hindu prayers? Even if we confine it to Christian and Jewish prayers, do we distinguish between nominal believers and true believers? 

One problem with God answering every prayer is that some prayers cancel out other prayers. Some prayers are mutually incompossible. 

We might compare efficacious prayer to time-travel scenarios. In the sci-fi lore, time travel has a disruptive impact on the future by replacing the original future with an alternate timeline. The more often that happens, the more disruptive the effect. Cumulative temporal dislocation. 

Imagine a world in which there was no time-travel from January until the first Thursday in July. Up to that point there's continuity as people cycle through the week, a day at a time. But on the first Thursday in July (of that year), time travel became ubiquitous. 

That means you never get beyond Thursday. Friday never comes because Friday is constantly replaced by alternate futures. Every morning, when you wake up, it's Thursday. Each time it's a different Thursday. Not a different calendar date Thursday. The same calendar date Thursday, but a Thursday in a different timeline. You go through Thursday, go to bed, fall asleep, and it's Thursday all over again when you wake up because the disruptive effect of ubiquitous time travel resets the starting-date. 

Efficacious prayer would have a similar effect. Two alternate timelines sharing their histories up to the moment where they fork off. If God answers a prayer, that stands in contrast to what might have been had he not, and vice versa. If God answered every prayer, that's like constantly resetting the starting-date–so that we keep repeating the same calendar day. Different things happen each time because it represents a road not taken, but there's no continuity and no progression. You're forever stuck in Thursday. It's not the same as a time loop, because things change every time that happens, but it's always on that particular day. The next day never comes. Hence, the paradox of efficacious prayer. 

If efficacious prayer generates a conundrum like that, then that may be one reason why God selectively answers prayer, even though some prayers seem to be just as "deserving" as others. God strikes a balance between stability, intercession, and chaos. 

Stanley interview

Jonathan Merritt recently interviewed Andy Stanley:

http://seekersspeakers.libsyn.com/andy-stanley

Stanley's an intellectual lightweight, but he's influential, which is why it's important to evaluate his statements.

1. Introducing the program, Merritt acted like the Enlightenment brought reason and logic into the discussion, as if Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Boethius, Maimonides, and medieval scholastics never existed. He also acted as though the historical criticism of Scripture was a 19C invention, which ignores pagan critics (e.g. Porphyry) and Muslim critics (e.g. Ibn-Hazm). Maybe he really is that uninformed. 

2. Is Stanley unaware of the fact that Merritt is a homosexual activist? Is Stanley unaware of the fact that Merritt is using Stanley's concessions, evasions, and obfuscations as a wedge tactic to mainstream homosexuality in the church and the general culture? 

There's nothing wrong with pastors talking to homosexuals, or homosexual journalists and activists, but you need to be cognizant of their agenda and not allow them to control the dialogue. Apparently, Stanley is such a babe-in-the-woods that it never occurs to him that he's a tool for Merritt's social agenda. 

3. Stanley says there was no "the Bible" before the 4C. That's straight out of Dan Brown's playbook.  

4. He chronically alternates between the Mosaic covenant and the OT in general, as if those are equivalent. 

5. He says 

If I didn't believe in the virgin birth, do you think I'd tell anyone? That's a career-ending move.

So by his own admission, he has no credibility when he assures us that he really does believe in the inerrancy of Scripture.  

6. He says 

The only reason any of us take any of the stories in the OT seriously is because Jesus did. If there had been no NT, no Jesus, you and I wouldn't believe [Adam and Eve and the flood]. We'd put that in the category of ancient myth. 

i) It's true that for Christians, our belief in the NT contributes to our belief in the OT. But Stanley disregards the fact that Christianity must be validated by the OT. 

ii) There are independent reports of the flood in Mesopotamian traditions. Likewise, there's archeological corroboration for many things in the OT. Why does Stanley ignore that evidence? 

7. He says:

Then they have to wrestle to the ground when Jesus referenced many of these things, was he referencing these things as something that happened in history, or was he referencing them like [the apocryphal story" of George Washington cutting down the cherry tree. Why we watch fictitious movies. We cry even though it never happened, but we walk away inspired. 

Then a person has to decide, what did he mean? And I'm comfortable letting the conversation go from there. They should have the same view of the OT that Jesus did. But then the challenge is to discover how did Jesus view his own scriptures. I'd never press anyone that if you can't accept all of as historically true then you can't really be a Christian. I think that's a little bit absurd. 

So he just leaves those two options hanging out there. Are they historical reports or apocryphal tales? Flip a coin. 

It doesn't occur to him that he has a pastoral responsibility to explain and defend how Jesus viewed the OT. Not just leave it open-ended, but take a stand and give supporting arguments. 

Perhaps that's because, in reality, he's skeptical, but he doesn't want to put his cards on the table, face up, so he constantly plays coy. 

8. He says

The base of faith Is not about a text. Christianity did not begin because somewhat read something but because someone saw something. The text is secondary to the event. Unlike other religious systems we have an event-based faith. 

He makes a big deal about relative chronology, but as far as that goes, when did Christianity begin? He acts as though Christianity began with the Resurrection. But is that the starting-point? Or did it begin with the Incarnation? What about the public ministry of Jesus? The ministry of Jesus consisted of words and deeds. Not just events. And not events first, then words later. Rather, the ministry of Christ constantly alternates between things he says and things he does. On the one hand he performs miracles and exorcisms. On the other hand, he makes speeches, has conversations.

He predicts his own resurrection. So his words precede the event. 

From the get-go, the Christian faith was as much about what observers heard as what they saw (Acts 4:20). Equally word-centered and event-centered. 

9. He says

Over time it's become a text-based faith. Whole theological systems built around either one of those camps. 

That's because we lack direct access to the events. We weren't there. Our only point of entry is mediated by historical records. So we can't turn the clock back and put ourselves in the position of eyewitnesses to the public ministry of Christ. 

10. He says

Who is Jesus is answered for us by what Matthew said, Mark said, Luke said, John said, what Peter said, what James said, what Paul said. Seven 1C witnesses. 

True, but that's text-based. And if you're going to appeal to the NT witness, you have to defend the historicity of the sources. 

Proleptic forgiveness

i) Is suicide ipso facto damnable? One argument for that contention is that if suicide is forgivable, then that implies postmortem forgiveness. To be forgiven, God must forgive him after the fact. After he died. 

However, that inference only follows if you think God is a timebound agent who must wait until after a Christian commits suicide to forgive him. But if God knows the future, then God can forgive some sins before they were committed. Proleptic forgiveness. 

ii) There's also the general issue of whether a born-again Christian can lose his salvation. If salvation is inamissable, then suicide isn't ipso facto damnable. 

Monogamy, polygamy, and divorce

But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery (Mt 5:32). 

3 And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?” 4 He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” 7 They said to him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?” 8 He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. 9 And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery” 10 The disciples said to him, “If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry.”(Mt 19:3-9).

i) Catholic apologists, defending the indissolubility of marriage, argue that the porneia-clauses mean something other than adultery as a justification for divorce. One argument is that Matthew doesn't use the specific word for adultery.

They also contend that the reaction of the disciples indicates a more radical position than adultery as a justification for divorce, since that was already a conventional viewpoint in Judaism. So Jesus must be saying something different. 

ii) I think Matthew uses porneia to include adultery without excluding other sexual sins. Adultery would be the most common cause of marital dissolution. That's the default justification. But in the context of the Roman Empire, there were other sexual sins, especially among pagan Gentiles, that come into play. So Matthew uses a broader word to cover adultery without restricting the grounds to adultery.

iii) Whatever else porneia may mean or not mean, it doesn't mean annulment. 

iv) Since the grounds for annulment are not only broader than adultery, but broader than sexual sin generally, if the Catholic interpretation is correct, then the disciples have little to fear, since the "new" policy is even more liberal as the old policy of Hillel. In practical, it's the functional equivalent of a very lax divorce policy. Annulment is a loophole far larger than adultery. Catholic apologists chafe at the comparison with divorce, but their distinction is sophistical. 

v) It may be that the reaction of the disciples has less to do with what Jesus says about narrow grounds for divorce than his implicit position on monogamy. In Jewish practice, a husband didn't have to divorce his wife if he found the marriage unsatisfactory. There was precedent for polygamy and concubinage as a fallback option. He could follow the venerable example of the patriarchs, judges, and Hebrew kings. That was never explicitly forbidden in divine law. He didn't have to replace his wife, but add another sexual partner to the household. Technically, he was still married to his first wife, but in practice she was passed over in the new arrangement. Put in abeyance. We don't know how many Jewish men took advantage of that tradition, but at least in principle, it was their ace in the hole. 

Yet when Jesus goes back to the creation account to overrule the Mosaic law code, he's presenting monogamy as the archetypal ideal. That blockades polygamy and concubine as escape routes. That's a new move, by forbidding what the Mosaic law permits. He delegitimates that option. 

Jet-set pastors

I notice that many (most?) celebrity/megachurch pastors spend a lot of time jetting around the country or the globe to speak at various conferences. In fairness, this isn't new. Donald Barnhouse used to be absent from Tenth Pres. six months out of the year, due to his popularity on the speaker's circuit. 

But that's pastoral dereliction. These men are preachers rather than pastors. To be a pastor, you need to invest your time in your congregation. You need to know what's going on in the lives of your parishioners. 

You need serious time for sermon prep, prayer, counseling, visitation ministry, as well as serious time with your own family. Some of these "pastors" seem to treat their church as a motel to crash in-between speaking engagements. 

Of course, a megachurch pastor can't give each parishioner lots of individualized attention, due to the pastor-to-parishioner ratio. He has to delegate. He needs to have associate pastors who help with visitation ministry and other things. 

But he still needs to have a life shared in common with his congregation, as a fellow pilgrim. He needs to know them as persons and not just abstractions. Not all of them, but a percentage. A pastor can't do that if he plays hooky so often. 

In addition, a pastor's impact is incremental. One forty minute sermon at a conference is unlikely to be transformative. A faithful pastor has a cumulative influence by preaching week after week, month after month, and year after year, in addition to all he does behind the scenes, in terms of counseling, visitation, marriages, funerals, &c. Most folks aren't zapped into the kingdom by a single inspirational sermon. Even Jesus, with the peerless resources at his disposal, went back to some of the same places time and again. 

That doesn't mean his feet are nailed to the church. He can do local gigs. For instance, some pastors who have an athletic background volunteer as part-time coaches at the local junior high or high school. That's great community outreach. A way to practice friendship evangelism with the unchurched. A way to mentor the next generation of young men.  

There are some bilingual ethnic pastors who fly to the Third World every so often to do evangelism, because they have entree with people-groups that white anglo missionaries find harder to penetrate. But in that case it should be a church with rotating preachers. 

Polling Shows The Importance Of Christmas Apologetics

The Pew Research Center recently published the results of a study showing that Americans hold a significantly less Christian view of Christmas than they did as recently as a few years ago. For example:

Not only are some of the more religious aspects of Christmas less prominent in the public sphere, but there are signs that they are on the wane in Americans’ private lives and personal beliefs as well. For instance, there has been a noticeable decline in the percentage of U.S. adults who say they believe that biblical elements of the Christmas story – that Jesus was born to a virgin, for example – reflect historical events that actually occurred. And although most Americans still say they mark the occasion as a religious holiday, there has been a slight drop in recent years in the share who say they do this.

Currently, 55% of U.S. adults say they celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday, including 46% who see it as more of a religious holiday than a cultural holiday and 9% who celebrate Christmas as both a religious and a cultural occasion. In 2013, 59% of Americans said they celebrated Christmas as a religious holiday, including 51% who saw it as more religious than cultural and 7% who marked the day as both a religious and a cultural holiday….

But the remaining two-thirds of the U.S. public either is not bothered by a perceived decline in religion in Christmas or does not believe that the emphasis on the religious elements of Christmas is waning.

Among the topics probed by the new survey, one of the most striking changes in recent years involves the share of Americans who say they believe the birth of Jesus occurred as depicted in the Bible. Today, 66% say they believe Jesus was born to a virgin, down from 73% in 2014. Likewise, 68% of U.S. adults now say they believe that the wise men were guided by a star and brought gifts for baby Jesus, down from 75%.

In another part of the story, they break down the survey results by age groups. While those born in 1945 or earlier have had an increase in their belief in the Biblical accounts by a few percentage points since 2014, Millennials have had a decrease by a double-digit percentage.

In 2013, in response to research like Pew's, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ran a story in which pastors in the Pittsburgh area were interviewed about how they approach apologetic issues during the Christmas season. The pastors made various excuses for why they didn't do much to address the issues. I quoted the story and commented on it at the time.

If you're interested in doing more about the problem than individuals like those pastors want to do, here's a place to begin.

"I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints." (Jude 3)

"Strange were it that the physician, or the shoemaker, or the weaver, in short all artists, should be able each to contend correctly for his own art, but that one calling himself Christian should not be able to give a reason for his own faith; yet those things if overlooked bring only loss to men’s property, these if neglected destroy our very souls. Yet such is our wretched disposition, that we give all our care to the former, and the things which are necessary, and which are the groundwork of our salvation, as though of little worth, we despise. That it is which prevents the heathen from quickly deriding his own error. For when they, though established in a lie, use every means to conceal the shamefulness of their opinions, while we, the servants of the truth, cannot even open our mouths, how can they help condemning the great weakness of our doctrine? how can they help suspecting our religion to be fraud and folly? how shall they not blaspheme Christ as a deceiver, and a cheat, who used the folly of the many to further his fraud? And we are to blame for this blasphemy, because we will not be wakeful in arguments for godliness, but deem these things superfluous, and care only for the things of earth." (John Chrysostom, Homilies On John, 17:3-4)

The Water and the Wine

For Christians who take an interest in the paedocommunion debate, this should be a useful resource:

http://www.latimertrust.org/index.php/publications/studies/60-ls61

Beckwith is nearly always informative and insightful. Of course, paedobaptism is a necessary presupposition. Baptists reject the premise, of which paedocommunion is an extension.