What are the Old Testament passages about not contacting the dead referring to?

There are some passages in the Old Testament that condemn resorting to mediums and some other practices (Deuteronomy 18:10-12, Leviticus 20:6, 2 Kings 21:6, Isaiah 8:19, etc.). The passages are sometimes brought up in discussions of prayer to saints.

It's popular to take the passages as addressing something narrow like seeking information about the future or trying to get the dead to verbally communicate with you, something that isn't being done by those who practice prayer to saints. And advocates of praying to saints often argue that the saints being prayed to are spiritually alive. It supposedly follows that even if the passages under consideration are about trying to contact the dead in a broader way that goes beyond something like seeking information about the future or trying to get verbal communication from the dead, the passages aren't relevant, since the saints in heaven aren't dead in the way that matters. What should we make of those responses?

Did a Protestant pastor's daughter have a supernatural dream confirming the assumption of Mary?

A Protestant pastor, named Daniel, recently posted a video about a potentially supernatural experience he had with his daughter related to Mary's assumption. He was researching the assumption of Mary, asked God to reveal to him whether the assumption is historical, and was told by his daughter afterward that she'd had a dream in which she saw Mary going up to heaven.

The incident seems to have a lot of potential to be supernatural on its face. Before I get to possible explanations of the episode if it is supernatural, I want to address some reasons to be hesitant about concluding that there is anything supernatural that needs to be explained.

How unusual is Galatians' approach toward the gospel?

Critics of how Evangelicals use Galatians could raise objections to the effect that Galatians is just one document, it's such a short letter, the approach Paul takes there isn't found much or at all elsewhere, etc. On the more liberal side, Galatians could be dismissed as an occasion when Paul lost his temper, a reflection of a bad aspect of Paul's character that we shouldn't emulate, or whatever. From a more conservative or traditional Christian perspective, it could be argued that we should be agnostic about or not base much on certain aspects of Galatians, since it's such a short letter, we don't know much about the context, the themes in question there aren't found much or at all elsewhere, etc.

But even if something Paul said in Galatians were only found there, it ought to be accepted as part of apostolic teaching, what's taught by scripture, and so on. That point could be conceded, yet the alleged rarity of what Galatians says could be appealed to in order to argue that the themes shouldn't be as prominent in our thinking as they are among many Evangelicals. Though I think Galatians expresses views like the foundational nature of sola fide more forcefully than any other source, that sort of material in Galatians is corroborated elsewhere more than people typically suggest.

Did Paul believe in the virgin birth?

C.J. Cornthwaite recently produced a video that's partly about the subject. I want to make several points in response:

The History Of Beliefs About The Unbaptized

Anthony Lusvardi recently published Baptism Of Desire And Christian Salvation (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University Of America Press, 2024). He's a Roman Catholic priest and scholar who did a doctoral dissertation on baptism of desire. Though the book is primarily about that subject, the book also addresses some related concepts to a lesser extent: baptism of blood, invincible ignorance, limbo, outside the church there is no salvation, the salvation of infants who die without having been baptized, etc.

Is Paul praying to the Thessalonians in 1 Thessalonians 5:25?

Obviously not, in any relevant sense. But I recently saw somebody raise 1 Thessalonians 5:25 in a discussion about praying to saints and angels. For whatever reason, it's common for Roman Catholics and those who are sympathetic to Catholicism to claim that Catholics don't pray to saints. Rather, they just ask the saints to pray for them. And I saw somebody bring up 1 Thessalonians 5:25 as an example. The passage not only doesn't support the Catholic practice of praying to saints and angels, but even illustrates one of the problems with the practice.

McLatchie on Swamidass

Jonathan McLatchie comments on Joshua Swamidass' theory regarding Adam and Eve and human evolution:

An innovative and provocative attempt to harmonize evolutionary theory with an historical Adam and Eve has recently been proposed by computational biologist Joshua Swamidass of Washington University in St. Louis. [10] Swamidass proposes that Adam and Eve lived approximately six thousand years ago, in accordance with the traditional creationist understanding. He argues that Adam and Eve did not have parents and were in fact created de novo, as described in Genesis 2. Consistent with a face-value reading of Genesis, Swamidass proposes that Adam was formed from the dust of the earth and Eve from Adam’s side. However, Swamidass argues that Adam and Eve were not the first humans. Rather, their genomes became ‘mixed’ with the rest of the human population outside of the garden through interbreeding (that is, humans who, unlike Adam and Eve, arose naturally through evolutionary processes), such that all extant humans can be said to trace their genealogical ancestry back to Adam and Eve, even though their genetic ancestry includes other lineages, unrelated to Adam, as well. Swamidass points out that universal genealogical ancestors (that is, individuals to whom all modern humans can trace their ancestry) are common, arising often throughout human history. Swamidass proposes that “Adam and Eve are to work as priestly rulers alongside Yahweh Elohim, to expand the Garden across the earth. Civilization is rising, and a new era is coming. Their purpose is to welcome everyone into their family, in a new kingdom of God.” [11] Swamidass distinguishes between what he calls “biological humans” and “textual humans.” [12] For Swamidass, “Biological humans are defined taxonomically, from a biological and scientific point of view. From at least AD 1 onward, they are coextensive with textual humans.” [13] On the other hand, “Textual humans are the group of people to whom Scripture refers. I argue that this group is defined by Scripture to be Adam, Eve, and their genealogical descendants, including everyone alive across the globe by, at latest AD 1. They are a chronological subset of biological humans, meaning that some biological humans in the past are not textual humans, but all textual humans are biological humans.” [14]

While Swamidass’ model is superficially attractive in that it does not require positing thousands of gaps in the Genesis genealogies, the problems that it raises are too intolerably great for me to commend Swamidass’ solution. For one thing, in what sense, if any, can non-Adamic biological humans be considered to be fully human? Are they affected by original sin, and did Jesus die to save them? Swamidass conjectures that these biological humans bear God’s image but “are not yet affected by Adam’s fall. They have a sense of right and wrong, written on their hearts (Rom. 2:15), but they are not morally perfect. They do wrong at times. They are subject to physical death, which prevents their wrongdoing from growing into true evil (Gen. 6:3).” [15] The Scriptures, however, make no such distinction between biological humans and textual humans. Swamidass’ view would seem to suggest logically that those individuals who were biological (but not textual) humans are qualitatively indistinct from other animals. But in that case it makes no sense to call their deeds evil, or to postulate that they had a sense of right and wrong. Moreover, if they, as Swamidass suggests, “do wrong at times”, then does this not suggest that Adam’s fall is but one of many falls that have occurred in human history? The theological ramifications that accompany this scenario are too severe for me to entertain Swamidass’ proposal.

How To Argue For Prophecy Fulfillment

In a post last year, I outlined how I think we should address issues of prophecy fulfillment by starting with the common ground we have with skeptics. Begin with fulfillments that are accepted by both sides. You could also grant much of what critics say about a prophecy for the sake of argument, such as that the passage isn't Messianic in its original context, but argue that Jesus' alignment with the passage in a typological or secondary manner is evidentially significant. And much of Jesus' alignment with the relevant passages comes from facts widely accepted even among non-Christians. I cited Isaiah's Servant Songs as an example of a good place to start. What I want to do here is discuss another approach that can be taken within the same framework.

Instead of using passages, like the Servant Songs, organize your material around topics. That allows you to appeal to material from more than one passage or series of passages. It's also easier in some ways for people to understand and remember the material involved if you take a topical approach. Here are some examples of the topics that could be used:

Early Ignorance Of The Assumption Of Mary

Today is the Feast of the Assumption, commemorating Mary's alleged bodily assumption to heaven. There's a significant line of evidence that's seldom discussed that suggests the early Christians had no concept of an assumption of Mary. Many early patristic sources cite Enoch, Elijah, and Paul as examples of people who didn't die, were translated to heaven, etc., yet they never say any such thing about Mary or include her as an example (e.g., Clement of Rome, First Clement, 9; Tertullian, A Treatise On The Soul, 50; Tertullian, On The Resurrection Of The Flesh, 58; Tertullian, Against Marcion, 5:12; Origen, in Thomas Scheck, trans., Origen: Commentary On The Epistle To The Romans, Books 1-5 [Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University Of America Press, 2001], 5:4:3, p. 340; Methodius, From The Discourse On The Resurrection, 3:2:14; Apostolic Constitutions, 5:7; Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures, 3:6; John Chrysostom, Homilies On John, 75; Jerome, To Pammachius Against John Of Jerusalem, 29, 32; Faustus, cited in Augustine, Reply To Faustus The Manichaean, 26:1; Augustine, On The Grace Of Christ, And On Original Sin, 2:27). Irenaeus, for instance, writes about the power of God to deliver people from death, and he cites Enoch, Elijah, and Paul (2 Corinthians 12:2) as illustrations of people who were "assumed" and "translated", but he says nothing of Mary (Against Heresies, 5:5). How likely is it that all of these sources, commenting in so many different contexts, would all refrain from mentioning Mary's assumption, even though they knew of it? They're sometimes describing Christian beliefs in general, not just their own, which makes their failure to mention Mary even more significant. If these early Christians held as high a view of Mary as Roman Catholicism does, or even close to so high a view, you'd expect them to cite her more than anybody else. Instead, they don't cite her at all.

Collective guilt

One objection to original sin is that it seems unfair to be blamed for something we didn't do. Sometimes that spills over into a parallel objection to vicarious atonement and penal substitution. I've discussed these objections from various angles over the years. But here's another consideration. 

Many cultures take collective guilt for granted. One people-group will continue to b lame another people-group for what that group or a particular representative of that group did in the past. For instance, when Ali lost the battle for succession after Muhammad died, that fomented a blood feud which continues right up to our own time. 

Likewise, the Greek Orthodox have never forgiven Roman Catholics for the Fourth Crusade. By the same token, it wouldn't surprise me if many Chinese and Koreans still hold a historical grudge against wars of aggression that Japan used to wage against her neighbors. I'm sure we could give example after example. 

Now my point is not that I think this in itself justifies the principle of collective guilt. I'd also add that collective guilt is not a general principle in scripture. The examples of Adam and Jesus are exceptional. 

My point, rather, is that whether or not collective guilt seems to be unfair is culturally-variable. In many cultures there's a powerful sense of solidarity between members of the same people-group which extends from the present into past generations, living and dead.  

And that raises the question of which is right. Is the sense of unfairness that some people feel a legitimate moral intuition or is it just the product of social conditioning in their particular culture? When two different cultures have competing sensibilities on this issue, what's the tiebreaker? 

This is why I'm inclined to be both a moral skeptic and a moral realism. That's a consistent position because moral skepticism concerns moral epistemology while moral realism concerns moral ontology. There are moral facts, but how well do we access them?

The question is the extent to which I should trust my moral intuitions. If I was born in a different culture, I might well have some radically different moral intuitions. This is one reason we need divine revelation: to reaffirm true moral intuitions and disaffirm false moral intuitions. 

History, sola scriptura, and the real presence

From a Facebook conversation

Hays

If Newman could have found what he was looking for from the beginning, his theory of development would be superfluous at best and counterproductive at worst.

Ernesto

There is no such thing as the doctrine of development... might be worth to go back and have a second look. 

Hays

“The tradition which comes from the apostles develops in the Church with the help of the Holy Spirit. For there is a growth in the understanding of the realities and the words which have been handed down. This happens through the contemplation and study made by believers, who treasure these things in their hearts, through a penetrating understanding of the spiritual realities which they experience, and through the preaching of those who have received through episcopal succession the sure gift of truth. For, as the centuries succeed one another, the Church constantly moves forward toward the fullness of divine truth until the words of God reach their complete fulfillment in her” (Vatican II, Dei Verbum 8).

The fate of the unevangelized

An exchange I had on Facebook, slightly edited. 

Hays 

The assumption of Scripture is that human beings are born lost. They come into the world in a lost condition. They don't have to do anything special, anything extra, to be in a lost condition. That's their default situation. The Gospel takes for granted that they are already lost. That's what they need to be rescued from, if they are not be rescued at all.

Caleb 

Sure. But the question is is there the opportunity for them to be rescued, if they've never heard of the solution?

Hays 

If they never hear and believe the Gospel, that's a way of saying the remain in the same condition into which they were born. Nothing changed to shift their original lost condition.

Caleb 

Yes, but should they not at least be given the chance to hear the message that will change their condition?

Hays 

Why? To be spiritually lost is not simply an innocent misfortune, but a preemptive punishment for sin and willful alienation from God? In Scripture, it's not as if they are lost through no fault of their own.

Caleb 

No, but their geographic location (which is relevant to whether or not they may hear the solution to their condition) is through no fault of their own. God decides where and when people are born.

Hays 

1. They're not lost because of their geographical location. Their geographical location simply keeps them in their lost condition. It's like If I'm bitten by a cobra and don't have access to antivenom, so I die. In a roundabout sense you could I died because I didn't receive antivenom, but I wouldn't need it in the first place unless I was dying from snakebite. Lack of antivenom is a secondary cause of death, but the primary cause is snakebite.

2. The fact that some people live and die outside the pale of the Gospel is God's preemptive judgement.

Caleb 

I agree that their geographical location does not condemn them. But a better analogy would be that you for bitten by snake, and God chose whether or not you'd be in a location where there is Anti-Venom. Shouldn't everyone get access to the Anti-Venom, and have it up to the people as to whether or not they will accept or reject that cure?

Hays 

No, because a person's moral condition can be a disqualifying factor. If a serial killer was bitten by a cobra, he's not entitled to antivenom. It's no injustice to let him die. Indeed, it's an injustice to let him live.

Caleb

But wouldn't the sense of humanity mean that everyone is a serial killer in the situation? It seems more plausible to say that either all killer should die, or that all of them should be given mercy. If all of the killer sins are the same, why would some be saved over others?

Hays 

1. If no one deserves to be saved, no one has a right to God's mercy, so it's not unjust for God to discriminate. Discrimination is only wrong in cases where two or more individuals have equal claims.

2. We need to resist the temptation of wanting too hard for something to be true just because we wish it was true, then creating a belief system because we want so hard for that to be the case. Like a teenage boy who's hopelessly in love with a girl who doesn't share his affection. He may convince himself that she's the only girl for him, he won't settle for anyone else, and he passes up realistic opportunities vainly pining for the unattainable.

3. Now, if we wanted to wax speculative, it's possible that God created a multiverse in which the lost/unreached in our world are evangelized/saved in parallel world. But that's just conjecture. Might be true but not something we can bank on.

Caleb 

That multiverse theory is basically Molinism

Hays 

1. Molinism has no monopoly on counterfactuals and possible worlds. Leibniz wasn't a Molinist. Counterfactuals and possible worlds fit into Calvinism, too. Molinism has a theory of middle knowledge, based on God's alleged insight into what nonexistent agents with libertarian freewill would do under various circumstances. The speculative scenario I floated doesn't have or require all those assumptions. It's entirely compatible with predestination.

2. Regarding what happens to the souls of babies:

i) We don't have any definitive revelation on that.

ii) It's possible that God saves everyone who dies below the age of reason. 

iii) That, however, is rather arbitrary. Salvation or damnation through lucky or unlucky timing.

iv) Why would Stalin be saved if he dies at 5 but not at 20–given how he was going to turn out?

What if he dies at 5, passes into the intermediate state, and matures into what he was going to be like at 20 if he hadn't died at 5?

v) I'm sure God saves some dying babies. On a positive note, in Scripture God has a special regard for orphans. And no one is more orphaned than a dying baby.

Plague and providence

1. Thus far I haven't commented on the pandemic from a theodical standpoint. One reason is that I've written so much about theodicy in general that anything I have to say about the pandemic is apt to be repetitious to some degree, and repetition is boring.

2. In addition, there are atheists who act like every time there's some new natural disaster, such as the Christmas Day tsunami (2004) or the Japanese tsunami (2011), this is supposed to shake the faith of Christians. That every natural disaster ought to send us back to the drawing board. But in Christian theology, moral and natural evils are to be expected. And we have a number of preexisting theodical strategies to deal with these events. Natural and moral evil aren't something new, and theodicies aren't generally new, although they undergo refinement.

3. There's a sense in which I agree with unbelievers that evil can call into question God's existence. By that I mean, many people labor under a faulty concept of God, and evil may expose their faulty concept of God. In that regard, evil can have a winnowing effect on theology.

4. It's common to ask why God allows evil. When a Calvinist uses that terminology, some freewill theists object that it's deceptive for a Calvinist to characterize evil in terms of divine permission. According to Calvinism, God predestined evil.

That's true, but when I say God allows evil, I simply mean that God did not prevent a particular evil. You allow something you were in a position to prevent. That's a coherent concept. To say "allow"/"didn't prevent" are stylistic variations on the same idea.

5. Moral and natural evils are not unplanned events. They happen for a purpose. I'd add that even according to influential models of freewill theism like Molinism and simple foreknowledge, these aren't unplanned events.

In open theism, God doesn't have a master plan for the world, but a set of contingency plans.

6. A basic function of theodicy is not to explain why God allowed a particular evil, but to show how that's consistent with God's existence. There may be different reasons God had for allowing the evil in question. Even if we lack the information to narrow it down to one "correct" explanation, we can offer a number of potential reasons showing that the evil is consistent with God's existence.

7. Some Christians deny that natural evils or natural disasters preexisted the Fall. I disagree. I think they serve a necessary purpose to maintain the balance of nature.

I think one effect of the fall is to expose humans to natural dangers that always existed, from the time of creation. In an unfallen world, humans would be divinely shielded from certain natural hazards, but due to the fall, God withdrew his providential protection.

8. This doesn't mean God directly created a pathogen like the coronavirus. God created a world in which natural organisms adapt and mutate.

9. Although Christian theologians tend to focus on the punitive aspect of death, as divine punishment for original or personal sin, that's one-sided. Human mortality has other spiritual purposes. Nothing exposes human vulnerability and helplessness like death. So death provides an opportunity for humans to renounce their feigned autonomy and admit their total dependence on God's mercy and provision.

10. We like to be in control. An unnerving aspect of the coronavirus is the element of uncertainty in terms of scale, lethality, and distribution. It's so unpredictable. Who will it strike next? For unbelievers and nominal believers who live in denial regarding the inevitability of death, who shove the prospect of death into the back of their minds or only think of death in abstract terms, the coronavirus forces them to confront their mortality and lack of control.

11. It exposes the ineptitude of many public officials. It chastens blind faith in the cult of expertise. It's a test of moral character, revealing what people are really like when altruism is costly. Does ruthless self-interest dominate?

12. It raises questions about the importance and relevance, or unimportance and irrelevance, of public worship. By the same token, it raises questions about how we prioritize risk assessment. Is a supermarket an essential business but a church service is inessential?

13. Several standard theodicies are germane to the pandemic. For instance:

i) The soul-building theodicy, where suffering is an opportunity to tap into compassion and cultivate sacrificial virtues.

ii) Second-order goods. There are certain kinds of goods whose existence is contingent on the existence of evil. If you eliminate the evil, you eliminate the resultant or compensatory good. So there are tradeoffs. Some evils a necessary evils, in the sense of conditional necessity. They don't have to exist, but they're a necessary source of certain otherwise unobtainable goods.

In that respect, there are tradeoffs. It's easy to imagine ways the world might be a better place, yet that mental exercise involves freezing the goods in place while changing some variables to eliminate the evils. Yet in a cause/effect world, that's artificially compartmentalized.

iii) Events in a cause/effect world have a domino effect. Like time-travel stories, changing a variable in the past changes the future. And the change is more far-reaching the farther it extends into the future. When we think about improving the world, we artificially isolate or insulate causes and effects. But it's not possible to strike an optimal balance where a single world history or timeline contains all the distinctive goods, devoid of evil.

iv) Apropos (ii-iii), housebound couples will result in a baby boom a few months from now. Although many people will die as a result of the pandemic, many new lives will come into being as a result of the pandemic. Individuals who'd never experience the gift of life had it not been for the pandemic. The dying already had an opportunity to live. The tragic death of some creates a situation where others will now have the same opportunity.

v) Human life is brief. What ultimately matters is the world to come (i.e. the New Eden). But you can't participate in the world to come unless you participate in the lifecycle. You must be brought into existence, and you must die, before you can step into eternity. Of course, many humans fail to take advantage of that. They live for what this world has to offer, so the world lets them down. They lose what they had while missing out on what they might have had by squandering their opportunities.

Top 3 reasons I became Catholic

I recently watched John Bergsma's testimony about his conversion to Catholicism:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06F4i4TtS1c

He's a theology prof. at the Franciscan University of Steubenville. I'd just note in passing that his father was a Navy chaplain. So he probably suffered from a certain amount of paternal neglect as a boy due to family separation when his dad was on tours of duty. That can impact a boy's social and psychological maturation. 

Bergsma gives three reason for his conversion:

1. Jas 5:14-16

Several problems:

i) If that's a legitimate prooftext for Catholicism, then why aren't healing miracles a regular occurrence when Last Rites is administered?

He reinterprets that verse in terms of "spiritual healing" or "victory" over sin. Yet in context it clearly includes physical healing.

ii) It doesn't say confess your sins to a priest.

iii) He says he didn't have a Protestant way to obey that verse. Here's an idea: what about confessing your sin to the person you wronged? 

iv) He says confessing your sins to a priest is confessing to the whole church through him. That's so sophistical. A convenient way to evade your duty to confess your sin to the individual you actually sinned against.  

He says the priest represents Christ. That begs the question. 

v) He says auricular confession sidesteps confidentiality issues. But confessing your sin to the person you wronged is confidential, too. And in many cases, they already know you wronged them. 

vi) He mentions that pastors need someone they can confide in. Sure. But that confuses confession with friendship 

2. At Notre Dame, he was exposed to Rev 12 as a Marian prooftext. Despite already having an MA in Scripture as well as an MDiv., this was the first time he became aware of the fact that Rev 12 is a Marian prooftext. That shows you how deficient his seminary education was. And it illustrates the fact that it's easier to convert the uninformed. 

There are several problems with viewing Rev 12 as a Marian prooftext, but for now I'll focus on two:

i) In terms of Catholic Mariology, the chronology is backwards. Mary is assumed to heaven at the end of her life. But in Rev 12, the woman is up there at the outset, then comes down to earth. In Catholic theology, Mary is not a celestial being who originates in heaven. Rather, she's an earthling to ascends to heaven. But the imagery and sequence of Rev 12 are just the opposite.

ii) Although "sky" and "heaven" are sometimes synonymous, at other times they represent two essentially different domains. The sky contains the sun, moon, stars, and clouds–whereas heaven contains God, saints, and angels. 

That's not the same place, but two different places. "Heaven", in the sense of God's abode, doesn't have day and night, sunshine or lunar phases. Heaven doesn't have rainclouds, hailstorms or blizzards. The saints and angels don't need umbrellas. Heaven isn't outer space. It's not a vacuum at near absolute zero. 

Rev 12 doesn't depict a woman in heaven, but a woman in the sky. So using Rev 12 to prooftext Mary's role as Queen of Heaven is vitiated by fatal equivocation. 

3. Finally, it was at Notre Dame that he first learned about the existence of the apostolic fathers. He never knew there were any Christian writers before Nicea. Once more, that shows you how deficient his seminary education was. And it again illustrates the fact that it's easier to convert the uninformed. 

He then infers that whatever the apostolic fathers teach reflects the original intention of the apostles, since they were in living contact with the apostles. That includes belief in the real presence. But that's a very slippery inference:

i) For one thing, you have to consider the age of an apostolic father at the time he may have encountered an apostle. How much did they remember at that age?

You can't presume that the apostolic fathers were personally mentored by the apostles, just because they may have heard them speak on one occasion or another. Consider large crowds that gathered to hear the apostle John in old age. Not much opportunity for individualized tutorials. 

ii) To take a comparison, I knew my maternal grandmother as well as some aunts and uncles. But what I know about them is pretty limited because I was young and I didn't think to ask many questions. Many of us wish we'd asked our elderly relatives more questions when they were still alive, but it didn't occur to us at the time. 

iii) Catholic appeal to the apostolic fathers is usually quite careless, but the appeal needs to be far more discriminating: 

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-apostolic-fathers.html

Revisiting the unforgivable sin

i) The unforgivable sin is much discussed in pastoral ministry. In terms of the immediate context, the nature of the sin is clear enough. 

ii) What makes it a topic of ongoing dispute is whether the particular example is just a special case of a general principle, over and above the immediate context. Can that be extrapolated to analogous cases?

iii) Other questions include whether a Christian can commit it. 

iv) Whether, if an unbeliever commits it, he is doomed. Repentance is futile. No point attempting to become a Christian once you cross that line of no return. 

v) And what makes it uniquely unforgivable? Why is it unforgivable to blaspheme the Spirit but not the Son?

The unforgivable sin is endlessly discussed because it raises a number of issues without clear-cut answers. There's no general agreement, although there are cliche responses, which may be correct. 

However, I'd like to suggest a different angle. I'm not proposing that this explanation is necessarily correct. I haven't run across it before. But given the fumbling, flailing, somewhat ad hoc explanations we usually run across, given the lack of theological consensus, it might be worth considering a fresh approach.

The unquestioned assumption is that the unforgivable sin is a damnable sin. Indeed, that's what makes it unforgivable. If it's damnable, then it's unforgivable, and if it's unforgivable, that must mean it's damnable. It will not be forgiven in this life or the afterlife (Mt 12:32). They committed an "eternal sin".

I'm simply point out that there's a possible fallacy lurking in this inference. The basic contrast between forgiveness and the alternative isn't forgiveness or damnation but forgiveness or punishment. Offenders either experience pardon or punishment, forgiveness or judgment. 

However, while damnation is punitive, the principle of punishment is not intrinsically damnatory. Many punishments, including divine punishments, fall short of damnation. Retributive punishment isn't inherently damnatory, although damnation is a type of retribution. And remedial punishment is restorative rather than damnatory (e.g. Heb 12:8). 

What makes it seem damnatory is the statement that it won't be forgiven in the afterlife. And that would be consistent with a damnatory sin. But that's equally consistent with a temporary postmortem punishment. The punishment is held over or postponed for the afterlife. But the contrast doesn't logically entail damnation. Someone who commits this sin might be punished in the afterlife, rather than forgiven in the afterlife, but that doesn't necessarily imply that the punishment is never-ending, but that the offender faces punishment or judgment rather than forgiveness regarding this particular sin. 

In general, biblical punishments don't mean you're doomed. The fact that you weren't forgiven just means you will experience judgment or punitive justice instead. But in many biblical instances, there's life after punishment. Punishment isn't always how the story ends. Sometimes punishment has a refining effect. Sometimes punishment is followed by amendment of life. 

The traditional interpretation of the unforgivable sin as damnatory may be correct. I don't rule that out. I'm proposing an original interpretation for consideration, due both to the potential fallacy of the standard inference, as well as unresolved confusion regarding the unforgivable sin. 

And I don't dent everlasting punishment. I'm not a universalist. I'm just raising questions about the interpretation of this particular transgression. 

Parasite review

(No significant spoilers except in the very last paragraph.)

The film Parasite won the Oscar for Best Picture. It was the first foreign film to have ever done so. It's a South Korean film.

The premise is a poor and unemployed family consisting of a father, a mother, a teenage son, and a teenage daughter end up conning and weaseling themselves into working for a rich family. The father serves as their limo driver, the mother as their house maid, the son as an English tutor for the rich family's daughter, and the daughter as the rich family's youngest son's art therapist. They forged documents to pretend like they have college degrees and work experiences they don't. The rest of the film unfolds from this setup.

I think one could evaluate the film on at least three different levels: a thriller with some dark comedic elements, a critique of "crazy rich" Asian culture, and social commentary (if not metaphor) about contemporary class warfare. Let's consider each of these.

Did Jesus die for little green men?

Now imagine the universe is teeming with other intelligent civilizations. What is a Christian believer supposed to say? Claiming that Christ died only for us, while the rest of the universe is screwed, would be incompatible with God’s love. If, however, earthly Jesus died for the whole universe, myriads of extraterrestrial sinners included, we would have to accept a geocentrism even more preposterous than the spatial variant. Neither is there a way out by suggesting that other intelligent species may not have been “fallen.” This proposal amounts to a negative human exceptionalism that is totally unbelievable, given that alien species are subject to the same general evolutionary mechanisms as we are. Natural selection favours “selfish” traits.

What about multiple incarnations? Here another difficulty of traditional Christian doctrine comes into play: Christ has two natures—he is “truly God and truly man.” But how are members of completely different biological species (“truly man” and “truly Klingon,” let’s say) supposed to stand in a relationship of personal identity? Even worse, if the number of sinful species in the universe exceeds a certain threshold, God would be forced to incarnate himself simultaneously. However, no single person who is an embodied being with a finite nature, i.e. a “truly” biological organism, can be more than one such being at the same time. If, on the other hand, the incarnations were not personally identical, many different persons with a divine nature would result—too many even for a Christian. Finally: May extraterrestrial sinners have been reconciled to God by means different from a divine incarnation? Perhaps, but even if the Christian believer concedes alternative means of salvation she is stuck with the highly implausible geocentric claim that the incarnation, i.e. one of the most remarkable events in the history of the cosmos, happens just 2000 years ago on our planet, although myriads of other inhabited planets were also available.

Therefore, I conclude, the traditional Christian believer can’t make theological sense of extraterrestrial intelligent life.

https://gizmodo.com/which-religion-is-friendliest-to-the-idea-of-aliens-1841241730

i) Unless and until we discover aliens, or they discover us, this is purely academic. Even if this might be a defeater for Christianity, it's a hypothetical defeater, not a demonstrable defeater. 

ii) Calvinists, who subscribe to limited atonement, reject an assumption of his argument.

iii) According to Scripture, many angels are fallen, but no provision was made for their redemption.

iv) There's no reason to think the fall of Adam would implicate inhumane species in original sin. Aliens are not Adam's posterity. Adam is not their federal head.

v) Assuming that aliens exist, there's no presumption that they are fallen. Hence, there's no presumption that aliens require an atonement even if they do exist.

vi) The doctrine of original sin isn't based on evolution. Indeed, theistic evolution typically denies a historic fall.

vii) There's no presumption that if aliens exist, they are the product of evolution rather than special creation. 

viii) The Incarnation is unique in reference to the Son becoming human. In principle, the Incarnation is repeatable in reference to the Son assuming the nature of other intelligent creatures. The uniqueness of the Incarnation doesn't preclude multiple incarnations in that respect because each incarnation would be a unique, unrepeatable union  between the Son and the nature of an intelligent species. 

ix) It's not contrary to personal identity for the Son to form a hypostatic union with more than one species. It would be the same timeless, spaceless Son at one end of the relation. Although there'd be more than one individual creature at the other end of the relation, that would just mean the Son qua Incarnate is not uniquely identical to any particular instance of incarnation, but identical to the ensemble. 

To take a comparison: suppose God created a multiverse. In that event, God is the Creator of each separate universe as well as the multiverse. His identity as Creator operates at more than one level. The Creator of the set as well as the subsets. 

x) In the nature of the case, Bible history zeros in on earth history and human history. It's silent on the question of alien life. It's silent on the question of a multiverse. It doesn't speak to those hypotheticals one way or the other. It doesn't address the world history of aliens on other planets, assuming they exist. For the record, I have no opinion about the existence of aliens in our universe.  

Why Lewis wrote fiction

Why did C. S. Lewis write Christian fiction? He seemed to have several related motivations:

“Any amount of theology can now be smuggled into people’s minds under cover of romance without their knowing it.” (C. S. Lewis, 9 August 1939), The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis.

I thought I saw how stories of this kind could steal past a certain inhibition which had paralysed much of my own religion in childhood. Why did one find it so hard to feel as one was told one ought to feel about God or the sufferings of Christ? I thought the chief reason was that one was told one ought to. An obligation to feel can freeze feelings. And reverence itself did harm. The whole subject was associated with lowered voices; almost as if it were something medical. But supposing that by casting all these things into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained-glass and Sunday School associations, one could make them for the first time appear in their real potency? Could one not thus steal past those watchful dragons? I thought one could.  "Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What's to Be Said"

And finally, though it may seem a sour paradox – we must sometimes get away from the Authorised Version, if for no other reason, simply because it is so beautiful and so solemn. Beauty exalts, but beauty also lulls. Early associations endear but they also confuse. Through that beautiful solemnity the transporting or horrifying realities of which the book tells may come to us blunted and disarmed and we may only sigh with tranquil veneration when we ought to be burning with shame or struck dumb with terror or carried out of ourselves by ravishing throes and adoration. Does the word ‘scourged’ really come home to us like ‘flogged’? Does ‘mocked him’ sting like ‘jeered at him’? "Introduction to J.B. Phillips’ Letters to Young Churches: A Translation of the New Testament Epistles." 

Our great danger at present is lest the church should continue to practice a merely missionary technique in what has become a missionary situation. A century ago our task was to edify those who had been brought up in the faith: our present task is chiefly to convert and instruct infidels. Great Britain is as much part of the mission field as China. Now if you were sent to the Bantus you would be taught their language and traditions. You need similar teaching about the language and mental habits of your own uneducated and unbelieving fellow countrymen. Many priests are quite ignorant on this subject. What I know about it I have learned from talking in R.A.F.8 camps. They were mostly inhabited by Englishmen and, therefore, some of what I shall say may be irrelevant to the situation in Wales. You will sift out what does not apply.

(1) I find that the uneducated Englishman is an almost total sceptic about history. I had expected he would disbelieve the Gospels because they contain miracles: but he really disbelieves them because they deal with things that happened two thousand years ago. He would disbelieve equally in the battle of Actium if he heard of it. To those who have had our kind of education, his state of mind is very difficult to realize. To us the present has always appeared as one section in a huge continuous process.

In his mind the present occupies almost the whole field of vision. Beyond it, isolated from it, and quite unimportant, is something called "the old days"—a small, comic jungle in which highwaymen, Queen Elizabeth, knights-in-armor, etc. wander about. Then (strangest of all) beyond the old days comes a picture of "primitive man." He is "science," not "history," and is therefore felt to be much more real than the old days. In other words, the prehistoric is much more believed in than the historic.

(2) He has a distrust (very rational in the state of his knowledge) of ancient texts. Thus a man has sometimes said to me, "These records were written in the days before printing, weren't they? And you haven't got the original bit of paper, have you? So what it comes to is that someone wrote something and someone else copied it and someone else copied that and so on. Well, by the time it comes to us, it won't be in the least like the original." This is a difficult objection to deal with because one cannot, there and then, start teaching the whole science of textual criticism. But at this point their real religion (i.e. faith in "science") has come to my aid. The assurance that there is a "science" called "textual criticism" and that its results (not only as regards the New Testament, but as regards ancient texts in general) are generally accepted, will usually be received without objection. (I need hardly point out that the word "text" must not be used, since to your audience it means only "a scriptural quotation.")

(3) A sense of sin is almost totally lacking. Our situation is thus very different from that of the Apostles. The Pagans (and still more the metuentes9) to whom they preached were haunted by a sense of guilt and to them the Gospel was, therefore, "good news." We address people who have been trained to believe that whatever goes wrong in the world is someone else's fault—the capitalists', the government's, the Nazis', the generals', etc. They approach God Himself as His judges. They want to know, not whether they can be acquitted for sin, but whether He can be acquitted for creating such a world. "Christian Apologetics"

Cardinal Müller on Catholicism and Protestantism

This will be a long post. The length is mainly due to the fact that it's running commentary on some things that Cardinal Müller said is three recent articles. If you wish to expedite the reading process, you can just skip the quotes.

Cardinal Müller represents the conservative, intellectual wing of the hierarchy. So it's useful to see how he defends Catholicism and critiques Protestantism. I always like to study the best of the competition:

Vampirism, original sin, and redemption

There's an interesting parallel between vampirism, original sin, and redemption. In vampire lore, vampires have a genealogical identity. They turn humans into vampires by biting them. Vampirism spreads from one vampire to the next. So there are family trees of vampires. 

In addition, a vampire killer doesn't have to destroy every vampire individually. If he can track down the master vampire and destroy him, all his descendants instantly revert to human. So he doesn't have to destroy any of the descendants. He can save them from the curse of vampirism at one stroke by destroying the master vampire.  

Of course, vampires are fictional characters, and they make no scientific sense. At best, they only make sense as creatures of the occult. But the parallels between vampirism and Christian theology are striking.