I’ve been reading Cardinal Dulles’ recent book on the Magisterium. As every good Catholic knows, and every benighted Protestant fails to realize, without the Catholic Magisterium to guide us, we’re at sea without a map and compass.
I plugged his Magisterial coordinates into MapQuest to get my spiritual directions. This instantly illustrates the superiority of the Magisterial GPS over sola Scriptura. With the Magisterium by your side, you can never lose your way.
1: Start out heading north on Charisma Veritatis Certum Dr. toward a two-way stop.
2: Turn left onto St. Vincent St.
3: If you hit a dead end, back up and turn right onto Cardinal Newman St.
4: Merge onto the eastbound lane of the Sensus Fidei Expressway.
5: Take Exit Magisterium Cathedrae Magistralis.
6: If you hit a cul-de-sac, retrace your steps and take Exit Magisterium Cathedrae Pastoralis.
7: If you hit another cul-de-sac, retrace your steps and take Exit Magisterium Docens.
8: If you hit yet another cul-de-sac, retrace your steps and take Exit Magisterium Attestans.
9: If you hit one more cul-de-sac, retrace your steps and take Exit Magisterium Seu Scientificum.
10: Turn right onto Collegialis Affectus Av. toward a three-way stop.
11: Turn left onto Paternal Consensus Lane.
12: If you hit a blind alley, double back and turn right onto Doctoral Consensus Lane.
13: If you hit another blind alley, double back and keep going straight. Collegealis Affectus Av. will merge into Theologist Consensus Lane.
14: Continue on Theologist Consensus Lane until you come to a two-way stop. Turn left onto Dicastery In Forma Communi St.
15: If you hit a dead-end, make a U-turn and then turn right on Dicastery In Forma Specifica St.
16: When you reach Salaverri Blvd., turn right onto 1st Theological Note Av.
17: If you hit a dead end, reverse course and then turn right onto 2nd Theological Note Av.
18: If you hit another dead end, reverse course and then turn right onto 3rd Theological Note Av. Repeat if necessary until you make a right turn onto 14th Theological Note Av. toward a two-way stop.
19: Turn left onto Ordinary Magisterial Lane.
20: If you hit a blind alley, turn around, then make a right turn onto Extraordinary Magisterial Lane toward another two-way stop.
21: Turn left onto Primary Infallible Object Av.
22: If you hit another blind alley, turn around, then make a right turn onto Secondary Infallible Object Av. toward another two-way stop.
23: Turn left onto Virtual Revelatory Lane.
24: If you hit yet another blind alley, turn around, then make a right turn onto Formal Revelatory Lane toward yet another two-way stop.
25: Continue driving until you reach the Great Schism drawbridge. (Average waiting time: 39 years.)
26: After crossing, turn left on Canons Av.
27: If you hit a dead end, back up and make a right turn onto Chapters Av., heading south.
28: When you reach Sentire Cum Ecclesia Dr., turn right onto De Fide Credenda Blvd.
29: If you hit a cul-de-sac, double back and turn left onto De Fide Tenenda Blvd. toward a two-way stop.
30: Turn left onto Obsequium Religiosum Lane.
31: If you hit a dead-end, backtrack until you can make a right turn onto Obsequiosum Silentium Lane toward a 3-way stop.
32: Go straight across Ad Tuendam Fidam Dr. Continue on Tridentine Professio Fide St.
33: If you hit a blind alley, reverse course and turn left onto 1967 Professio Fide St.
34: If you hit another blind alley, reverse course and turn right onto 1989 Professio Fide St. toward the Ratzinger-Bertone Viaduct.
35: Take Exit Imperialist.
36: If case the through street just below the off ramp (Mysterium Ecclesiae) is closed, take the Conciliarist detour.
37: If the Conciliarist detour hits a cul-de-sac, turn onto Papist Lane.
38: Turn right onto Liberae Disceptationis Dr.
39: In case Liberae Disceptationis Dr. is washed out, double back and make a left turn onto Sincere Adhaereatur Av. toward Assensum St., heading west.
40: Turn right onto Charisma Veritatis Certum Dr., heading north.
Total Est. Time: 2000 years and counting.
Wednesday, August 06, 2008
The chattering class
Among the chattering class, gossip is a way of life. Even a profession: the gossip columnist, the tabloid press.
When I was young, this tended to be confined to lurid tabloid rags at the check-out stand. They’d keep you up-to-date on Zsa Zsa’s 27th husband or the 11th remarriage between Liz Taylor and Richard Burton.
It may be hard to believe now, when she’s an aging, overweight has-been with the make-up job of a drag queen, but there once was a time, between the Jurassic and Cretaceous Age, when Taylor was a beautiful woman (e.g. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof).
That was followed in time by kiss-n-tell talk shows where guests got into fistfights with each other, the moderator, or the audience.
This development represented a new low. In the past, gossip columnists used to report scandalous behavior on the part of Hollywood celebrities, but now we had a generation of wannabes who were volunteering seamy details about themselves.
And you didn’t have to watch the shows to learn about it. For this began to invade the “news” media as well. Retaining a veneer of journalistic respectability, the news media wouldn’t directly report sensational stories about the celebrity bimbo du jour. Instead, it would wait for the tabloid media to break the story, then claim that it was merely repeating a story that was already in the public domain.
Then you had the advent of cable TV. I never had cable TV until I moved to California. I was living in a river valley with poor reception, so I got cable.
In channel surfing I’d stumble across “reality” shows. It takes under a minute to size up a show like this. It’s usually populated by rich, spoiled rotten valley girls and surfer dudes. Occasionally you run across small town cheerleaders and football players.
What’s striking about these shows, from the little I’ve sampled before changing the channel, is that the young people in these shows have no concept of a private life.
There is no zone of privacy. Everyone gossips about everyone else to everyone else. Not only do they share personal information about themselves, but they volunteer personal information about their friends and siblings and parents, with the cameras rolling.
It makes me wonder if this is representative of the younger generation. If so, then gossip is epidemic. We wallow in a culture of gossip-mongering.
There are many things wrong with this decadent development:
1.Discretion is a virtue. There’s a virtue in not verbalizing everything that crosses your mind. It’s one thing to think something, another thing to say it. Many things are better left unsaid.
2.Discretion used to be a fixture of friendship. A mark of friendship is that a friend will never pass along an embarrassing fact about another friend. That’s why you feel safe around your friends. You feel free let your guard down. And least you used to.
A friend is someone who will protect the reputation of another friend. Spare him public humiliation. Not necessarily lie for him, but cover for him—as long as we’re dealing with foibles rather than felonies.
To gossip about a friend would be a betrayal of trust. A breach of confidence.
To judge by these TV shows, that seems to be an alien concept among some members of the younger generation. They will say anything, about anyone, on national television—whether it’s a mother or father, friend or sibling.
3.Not only is it wrong to gossip about friends and family, but it’s also wrong to spread malicious rumors about your enemies.
The Bible talks about the sin of gossip, but the church needs to put that label on specific forms of conduct. The church needs to take the lead on this issue—among others.
When I was young, this tended to be confined to lurid tabloid rags at the check-out stand. They’d keep you up-to-date on Zsa Zsa’s 27th husband or the 11th remarriage between Liz Taylor and Richard Burton.
It may be hard to believe now, when she’s an aging, overweight has-been with the make-up job of a drag queen, but there once was a time, between the Jurassic and Cretaceous Age, when Taylor was a beautiful woman (e.g. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof).
That was followed in time by kiss-n-tell talk shows where guests got into fistfights with each other, the moderator, or the audience.
This development represented a new low. In the past, gossip columnists used to report scandalous behavior on the part of Hollywood celebrities, but now we had a generation of wannabes who were volunteering seamy details about themselves.
And you didn’t have to watch the shows to learn about it. For this began to invade the “news” media as well. Retaining a veneer of journalistic respectability, the news media wouldn’t directly report sensational stories about the celebrity bimbo du jour. Instead, it would wait for the tabloid media to break the story, then claim that it was merely repeating a story that was already in the public domain.
Then you had the advent of cable TV. I never had cable TV until I moved to California. I was living in a river valley with poor reception, so I got cable.
In channel surfing I’d stumble across “reality” shows. It takes under a minute to size up a show like this. It’s usually populated by rich, spoiled rotten valley girls and surfer dudes. Occasionally you run across small town cheerleaders and football players.
What’s striking about these shows, from the little I’ve sampled before changing the channel, is that the young people in these shows have no concept of a private life.
There is no zone of privacy. Everyone gossips about everyone else to everyone else. Not only do they share personal information about themselves, but they volunteer personal information about their friends and siblings and parents, with the cameras rolling.
It makes me wonder if this is representative of the younger generation. If so, then gossip is epidemic. We wallow in a culture of gossip-mongering.
There are many things wrong with this decadent development:
1.Discretion is a virtue. There’s a virtue in not verbalizing everything that crosses your mind. It’s one thing to think something, another thing to say it. Many things are better left unsaid.
2.Discretion used to be a fixture of friendship. A mark of friendship is that a friend will never pass along an embarrassing fact about another friend. That’s why you feel safe around your friends. You feel free let your guard down. And least you used to.
A friend is someone who will protect the reputation of another friend. Spare him public humiliation. Not necessarily lie for him, but cover for him—as long as we’re dealing with foibles rather than felonies.
To gossip about a friend would be a betrayal of trust. A breach of confidence.
To judge by these TV shows, that seems to be an alien concept among some members of the younger generation. They will say anything, about anyone, on national television—whether it’s a mother or father, friend or sibling.
3.Not only is it wrong to gossip about friends and family, but it’s also wrong to spread malicious rumors about your enemies.
The Bible talks about the sin of gossip, but the church needs to put that label on specific forms of conduct. The church needs to take the lead on this issue—among others.
When the future ain't what it used to be
Men are natural explorers. Born with a wanderlust gene. Women criticize men for failing to ask directions, yet if Columbus had stopped to ask for directions, we’d all be speaking Hindi.
But by the year 1978, when Percy graduated from High School, every square inch of space that could be explored, had been explored. The surface of the globe. The oceans. The rainforests. Subterranean caves. The solar system. Unmanned probes had gone beyond the solar system, but their practical range was limited. Same thing with telescopes on space platforms.
So what was an adventurous and ingenuous young inventor to do? If the age of spatial discovery was over, what about the age of temporal discovery? If you couldn’t explore space, you could still explore time. And, in a sense, that would be a way of exploring space—space inaccessible to ordinary, timebound experience.
Of course, this may not be the 1978 that some of you remember. That’s because the 1978 you remember isn’t the 1978 that I’m reporting on.
Science fiction writers usually make the mistake of setting their stories safely in the future, under the glib assumption that the present doesn’t resemble their futuristic projections. To make their futuristic scenario realistic, they have to set their story well ahead of their reader’s timeframe.
But that’s a surefire sign that you’re reading fiction. I, however, am a historian. A futuristic historian. The future I’m describing is situated in what would have been your past because that’s the way it really happened. Only you don’t remember it because it didn’t happen to you. It’s not your particular past. The 1978 I’m describing was far more advanced.
For that reason, time travel was illegal. Indeed, it was the only crime that still carried the death penalty. That’s how seriously the authorities took the threat.
This, in turn, drove the science of time travel underground. There was a black market in time travel technology.
However, no one knew for sure if anyone had successfully broken the time travel barrier since time travel, if successful, had a way of covering its own tracks. At least theoretically.
Of course, not every incursion into the past or the future would erase the status quo ante. At least not theoretically. But if it did erase the status quo ante, then it would also erase the evidence for the very change it effected. So it was hard to obtain empirical confirmation. Individual time travelers might sometimes know the difference. But if they knew, they didn’t say—since that would publicize their criminal conduct.
Still, the risk was too high. Which is why time travel was a capital offense.
Percy had graduated from high school a year before. He was now in his freshman year of college. Of course, one didn’t need to go to high school to get an education back then. It could all be done by computer.
But that wasn’t really the point of compulsory public education. The point was to indoctrinate the younger generation. Throw them together, like boot camp, to create social conformity. Dress alike, learn alike, talk alike, think alike, act alike. Cookie cutter citizens for the utopian technocracy.
Indeed, one appeal of time travel was to escape the heavy heel of the social engineers. Some students of time travel were revolutionaries. They were hoping to topple the regime.
But other students, like Percy, were merely adventurers. Even so, Percy had to lead a double life. On the one hand, there was Percy, the model citizen and science major.
On the other hand, there was Percy, the outlaw—who tinkered with time travel in the tool shed behind his parent’s summer cottage—using equipment he smuggled out of the science lab at college. It was risky business, but that, too, was part of the adventure. Scamming the authorities.
Percy planned to marry Belinda, his high school sweetheart, after he graduated from college. Have kids. The whole nine yards.
Would he be able to keep his experiment a secret? He might have to give it up at some point.
He began by trying to send cameras into the past or the future. That way he was hoping he could preview the past or the future. That would be a way of telling if the machine were working properly. And he succeeded.
Then he sent gerbils into the past and the future, and brought them back. That way he could test the safety of time travel. Was the process harmful to biological organisms—like himself?
The gerbils came back alive and well. No dead gerbils. No genetic damage.
Finally, he decided that it was safe for him to make the jump. He didn’t want to do anything too ambitious at first. He decided to go a 110 years into the future. He’d already sent a camera and a gerbil a 100 years into the future. So he knew what to expect. Or so he thought
However, once he made the jump, it wasn’t what he expected. It was the same place and the same time, but something was different. Terribly different.
The last time he sent a camera a 100 years into the future, society was—as you might imagine—far more advanced. This time, about 10 years later, it’s almost as if he’d gone backwards rather than forwards. Back to the dark ages.
He could tell he hadn’t accidentally gone back in time because the infrastructure was still futuristic. But it lay in ruins.
What happened? Most of the human race had been wiped out by some sort of plague. Indeed, in a few hours, he began to feel sick. He didn’t dare go back until he got well.
He became deathly ill. He wasn’t sure if he’d survive the night. But he recovered.
It then occurred to him that by sending a gerbil into the future, he may have infected the future. The gerbil was harmless to people in his own time.
But in the future, when medical science had eradicated infectious disease, people had no resistance to this sort of pathogen. The contagion spread rapidly, killing off all but a hardy few. He only survived because he was resistant to a similar strain.
Ironically, Percy was never more shortsighted than when he was far-sighted. His futuristic outlook proved to be fatally nearsighted.
At first he thought of traveling back into the past to prevent the contagion. But it then occurred to him that he himself was now a carrier. He might carry the plague back into the past. And it wouldn’t be the original strain which he inadvertently introduced into the future. No, it would be a resistant strain. The strain that he developed by surviving the illness. If he went back now, he ran the risk of infecting the past as well as the future.
Perhaps he could create an antigen, based on his own antibodies. But that would take time.
For the next 14 years, he worked on finding an antigen. During that time he married and had kids. Or course, he was hoping to marry Belinda, and have kids by Belinda. But it was too long a wait, and there was no assurance that he would discover an antigen. He might never be able to go back to his own time. So he married Natasha.
In the first few months, Percy felt imprisoned in the future. Trapped in this backward future. He missed his old friends and family. He missed his old lifestyle. The sense of separation was acute.
But over time he began to adjust. Living under these conditions was a challenge, but it had its compensations. At first he found it difficult to cope with the silence. In his own time, he was always connected to something or someone. Talking to someone on the phone. Watching TV. Listening to music. Here, in this preindustrial culture, he was learning to live with silence. Vast stretches of unbroken silence. How would he fill all the void?
But after a while he began to appreciate the silence. To hear the wind and the waves. The birds and the crickets.
He was no longer a cubical drone, having every inch of his existence structured by society. And with the silence, and the isolation, he found a place for prayer.
He never had the time or inclination to pray before. But the absence of sensory overload freed up space for the presence of God. And his social alienation created a hunger for fellowship with the one person whose company transcends time and space.
He also began to blend in with the locals. Adapt to their lifestyle. He went on hunting parties. This was a novel experience for a geeky urbanite. For the first time in his life, he was using all his senses. Using them to track down prey. He wasn’t accustomed to using his senses. He was accustomed to having them used. Bombarded by artificial stimuli. Accustomed to hearing, not listening.
And after they caught a deer or wild boar, the hunters would hold a community feast. Roast the animal over an open fire. Dance and sing by the light of the flames.
This, too, was a unique experience for him. He enjoyed the camaraderie. He was used to ordering synthetic food delivered to his apartment, then eating alone. Even when you ate with someone else, you ate alone—wired into your virtual world of electronic input for eyes and ears.
Then, 14 years later, he did discover an antigen. At last, he was in a position to reverse the damage. But he began second thoughts.
Natasha wasn’t Belinda. There wasn’t the common reservoir of shared memories. With Belinda, they knew the same people and places. You could start a sentence, and she could finish it. She knew what you were talking about. Her eyes lit up with fond recognition.
Percy felt the loss. The isolation. Yet he had a stable marriage with Natasha. What if he’d married Belinda? Who knows? Maybe their relationship would have soured. Ended in divorce.
In 2093, men and women had lower expectations. Life was tough. People were content with less.
And what about his kids? He loved his kids. And they, too, were easily satisfied.
Of course, he was planning to have kids by Belinda. But maybe that wouldn’t turn out as well.
Then again, maybe he’d love his kids by Belinda just as much. But his hypothetical children by Belinda were just abstractions. He didn’t have any affection for them because they didn’t exist.
How could he swap the family he actually had for an unknown quantity? This wasn’t the life he planned. It wasn’t the life he wanted or hoped for.
But even if he would have had a better life with Belinda, that doesn’t mean he wanted to trade in the life he now had for the life he might have had. He had no wish to give up the wife and kids he now had.
And there was a larger concern. If he were to change everything back to the way it was, to restore the status quo ante, wouldn’t he be killing all these people?
In a sense, he already killed millions or billions of people when he messed with the future. Yet that was unwitting. A kind of involuntary mass manslaughter. But this time around, it would be premeditated mass murder. And, what is worse, he’d be killing his own wife and kids in the process.
The future that would have been never was. He wasn’t wronging or harming actual human beings. You can’t murder a nonentity.
There was no way to simply reset the clock as if none of this had ever happened. You could undo the effects of time travel, but you couldn’t undo the future itself. Replacing one actual future with another actual future didn’t change what had happened.
His parents and siblings were grief-stricken at his mysterious disappearance. But they had all died of old age. Long, long ago. He tracked down the cemetery where they were buried. He used to visit it from time to time.
When he began his research, he didn’t have a wife and kids. When he began his research, he was obsessed with reversing the damage. He didn’t stop to consider the consequences. He threw himself into his work—to numb the pain of loss. But that was then.
One morning he sent a camera back into the past, to his own time, to see it one more time. Then he destroyed the time machine.
He took the secret of his past with him to the grave. He was afraid to tell anyone, lest they blame him for the catastrophe he wrought upon the human race.
Born in 1960, Percy died in 2134 at the age of 74. He arranged to be buried in the same cemetery as his parents and siblings and long lost classmates. And before he died, he dictated his epitaph: “When I awake, I shall be satisfied with your likeness.” He was still a futurist—but now of another kind.
But by the year 1978, when Percy graduated from High School, every square inch of space that could be explored, had been explored. The surface of the globe. The oceans. The rainforests. Subterranean caves. The solar system. Unmanned probes had gone beyond the solar system, but their practical range was limited. Same thing with telescopes on space platforms.
So what was an adventurous and ingenuous young inventor to do? If the age of spatial discovery was over, what about the age of temporal discovery? If you couldn’t explore space, you could still explore time. And, in a sense, that would be a way of exploring space—space inaccessible to ordinary, timebound experience.
Of course, this may not be the 1978 that some of you remember. That’s because the 1978 you remember isn’t the 1978 that I’m reporting on.
Science fiction writers usually make the mistake of setting their stories safely in the future, under the glib assumption that the present doesn’t resemble their futuristic projections. To make their futuristic scenario realistic, they have to set their story well ahead of their reader’s timeframe.
But that’s a surefire sign that you’re reading fiction. I, however, am a historian. A futuristic historian. The future I’m describing is situated in what would have been your past because that’s the way it really happened. Only you don’t remember it because it didn’t happen to you. It’s not your particular past. The 1978 I’m describing was far more advanced.
For that reason, time travel was illegal. Indeed, it was the only crime that still carried the death penalty. That’s how seriously the authorities took the threat.
This, in turn, drove the science of time travel underground. There was a black market in time travel technology.
However, no one knew for sure if anyone had successfully broken the time travel barrier since time travel, if successful, had a way of covering its own tracks. At least theoretically.
Of course, not every incursion into the past or the future would erase the status quo ante. At least not theoretically. But if it did erase the status quo ante, then it would also erase the evidence for the very change it effected. So it was hard to obtain empirical confirmation. Individual time travelers might sometimes know the difference. But if they knew, they didn’t say—since that would publicize their criminal conduct.
Still, the risk was too high. Which is why time travel was a capital offense.
Percy had graduated from high school a year before. He was now in his freshman year of college. Of course, one didn’t need to go to high school to get an education back then. It could all be done by computer.
But that wasn’t really the point of compulsory public education. The point was to indoctrinate the younger generation. Throw them together, like boot camp, to create social conformity. Dress alike, learn alike, talk alike, think alike, act alike. Cookie cutter citizens for the utopian technocracy.
Indeed, one appeal of time travel was to escape the heavy heel of the social engineers. Some students of time travel were revolutionaries. They were hoping to topple the regime.
But other students, like Percy, were merely adventurers. Even so, Percy had to lead a double life. On the one hand, there was Percy, the model citizen and science major.
On the other hand, there was Percy, the outlaw—who tinkered with time travel in the tool shed behind his parent’s summer cottage—using equipment he smuggled out of the science lab at college. It was risky business, but that, too, was part of the adventure. Scamming the authorities.
Percy planned to marry Belinda, his high school sweetheart, after he graduated from college. Have kids. The whole nine yards.
Would he be able to keep his experiment a secret? He might have to give it up at some point.
He began by trying to send cameras into the past or the future. That way he was hoping he could preview the past or the future. That would be a way of telling if the machine were working properly. And he succeeded.
Then he sent gerbils into the past and the future, and brought them back. That way he could test the safety of time travel. Was the process harmful to biological organisms—like himself?
The gerbils came back alive and well. No dead gerbils. No genetic damage.
Finally, he decided that it was safe for him to make the jump. He didn’t want to do anything too ambitious at first. He decided to go a 110 years into the future. He’d already sent a camera and a gerbil a 100 years into the future. So he knew what to expect. Or so he thought
However, once he made the jump, it wasn’t what he expected. It was the same place and the same time, but something was different. Terribly different.
The last time he sent a camera a 100 years into the future, society was—as you might imagine—far more advanced. This time, about 10 years later, it’s almost as if he’d gone backwards rather than forwards. Back to the dark ages.
He could tell he hadn’t accidentally gone back in time because the infrastructure was still futuristic. But it lay in ruins.
What happened? Most of the human race had been wiped out by some sort of plague. Indeed, in a few hours, he began to feel sick. He didn’t dare go back until he got well.
He became deathly ill. He wasn’t sure if he’d survive the night. But he recovered.
It then occurred to him that by sending a gerbil into the future, he may have infected the future. The gerbil was harmless to people in his own time.
But in the future, when medical science had eradicated infectious disease, people had no resistance to this sort of pathogen. The contagion spread rapidly, killing off all but a hardy few. He only survived because he was resistant to a similar strain.
Ironically, Percy was never more shortsighted than when he was far-sighted. His futuristic outlook proved to be fatally nearsighted.
At first he thought of traveling back into the past to prevent the contagion. But it then occurred to him that he himself was now a carrier. He might carry the plague back into the past. And it wouldn’t be the original strain which he inadvertently introduced into the future. No, it would be a resistant strain. The strain that he developed by surviving the illness. If he went back now, he ran the risk of infecting the past as well as the future.
Perhaps he could create an antigen, based on his own antibodies. But that would take time.
For the next 14 years, he worked on finding an antigen. During that time he married and had kids. Or course, he was hoping to marry Belinda, and have kids by Belinda. But it was too long a wait, and there was no assurance that he would discover an antigen. He might never be able to go back to his own time. So he married Natasha.
In the first few months, Percy felt imprisoned in the future. Trapped in this backward future. He missed his old friends and family. He missed his old lifestyle. The sense of separation was acute.
But over time he began to adjust. Living under these conditions was a challenge, but it had its compensations. At first he found it difficult to cope with the silence. In his own time, he was always connected to something or someone. Talking to someone on the phone. Watching TV. Listening to music. Here, in this preindustrial culture, he was learning to live with silence. Vast stretches of unbroken silence. How would he fill all the void?
But after a while he began to appreciate the silence. To hear the wind and the waves. The birds and the crickets.
He was no longer a cubical drone, having every inch of his existence structured by society. And with the silence, and the isolation, he found a place for prayer.
He never had the time or inclination to pray before. But the absence of sensory overload freed up space for the presence of God. And his social alienation created a hunger for fellowship with the one person whose company transcends time and space.
He also began to blend in with the locals. Adapt to their lifestyle. He went on hunting parties. This was a novel experience for a geeky urbanite. For the first time in his life, he was using all his senses. Using them to track down prey. He wasn’t accustomed to using his senses. He was accustomed to having them used. Bombarded by artificial stimuli. Accustomed to hearing, not listening.
And after they caught a deer or wild boar, the hunters would hold a community feast. Roast the animal over an open fire. Dance and sing by the light of the flames.
This, too, was a unique experience for him. He enjoyed the camaraderie. He was used to ordering synthetic food delivered to his apartment, then eating alone. Even when you ate with someone else, you ate alone—wired into your virtual world of electronic input for eyes and ears.
Then, 14 years later, he did discover an antigen. At last, he was in a position to reverse the damage. But he began second thoughts.
Natasha wasn’t Belinda. There wasn’t the common reservoir of shared memories. With Belinda, they knew the same people and places. You could start a sentence, and she could finish it. She knew what you were talking about. Her eyes lit up with fond recognition.
Percy felt the loss. The isolation. Yet he had a stable marriage with Natasha. What if he’d married Belinda? Who knows? Maybe their relationship would have soured. Ended in divorce.
In 2093, men and women had lower expectations. Life was tough. People were content with less.
And what about his kids? He loved his kids. And they, too, were easily satisfied.
Of course, he was planning to have kids by Belinda. But maybe that wouldn’t turn out as well.
Then again, maybe he’d love his kids by Belinda just as much. But his hypothetical children by Belinda were just abstractions. He didn’t have any affection for them because they didn’t exist.
How could he swap the family he actually had for an unknown quantity? This wasn’t the life he planned. It wasn’t the life he wanted or hoped for.
But even if he would have had a better life with Belinda, that doesn’t mean he wanted to trade in the life he now had for the life he might have had. He had no wish to give up the wife and kids he now had.
And there was a larger concern. If he were to change everything back to the way it was, to restore the status quo ante, wouldn’t he be killing all these people?
In a sense, he already killed millions or billions of people when he messed with the future. Yet that was unwitting. A kind of involuntary mass manslaughter. But this time around, it would be premeditated mass murder. And, what is worse, he’d be killing his own wife and kids in the process.
The future that would have been never was. He wasn’t wronging or harming actual human beings. You can’t murder a nonentity.
There was no way to simply reset the clock as if none of this had ever happened. You could undo the effects of time travel, but you couldn’t undo the future itself. Replacing one actual future with another actual future didn’t change what had happened.
His parents and siblings were grief-stricken at his mysterious disappearance. But they had all died of old age. Long, long ago. He tracked down the cemetery where they were buried. He used to visit it from time to time.
When he began his research, he didn’t have a wife and kids. When he began his research, he was obsessed with reversing the damage. He didn’t stop to consider the consequences. He threw himself into his work—to numb the pain of loss. But that was then.
One morning he sent a camera back into the past, to his own time, to see it one more time. Then he destroyed the time machine.
He took the secret of his past with him to the grave. He was afraid to tell anyone, lest they blame him for the catastrophe he wrought upon the human race.
Born in 1960, Percy died in 2134 at the age of 74. He arranged to be buried in the same cemetery as his parents and siblings and long lost classmates. And before he died, he dictated his epitaph: “When I awake, I shall be satisfied with your likeness.” He was still a futurist—but now of another kind.
No duty to defend the indefensible
John Mark Reynolds is a very hit-and-miss pundit. Sometimes he’s insightful. At other times his blind spots come to the fore. For a case of the latter, see http://www.scriptoriumdaily.com/2008/07/17/the-duty-to-defend-the-nearly-indefensible/
Here he commits three basic blunders:
1. He fails to distinguish between opposition and support. As a rule, it would be wrong of me to oppose Myers’ Constitutional freedom of speech. But from this it doesn’t follow that I’m obliged to support his Constitutional freedom of speech. Let him defend his own freedom of speech.
There are people who think that unless everyone has a right, no one has a right. Therefore, they think it’s incumbent on us to defend everyone’s right if we’re to defend anyone’s right.
But that’s very Pollyannaish. Don’t assume the person you defend will return the favor. Indeed, Myers is a case in point. He is using his right to deny the same right to others. Myers is trying to ban ID-theory from the curriculum. He’s trying to censor free speech. He’s using his freedom to abridge the freedom of others.
I’m not going to defend that behavior. To the contrary, I’m going to oppose that behavior. He’s set up a dilemma in which it’s impossible for me to defend him and defend his opponents at the same time. He’s an enemy of free speech, except when it comes to his own free speech.
Let’s also remember that the First Amendment does not impose an obligation on private citizens. Rather, it’s a restraint on public officials.
2. JMR also fails to distinguish between free speech and paid speech. Taxpayers are under no obligation to subsidize Myer’s free speech.
The fact you have a Constitutional right to bear arms doesn’t mean that I’m obliged to buy you a gun.
3. There’s no reason to assume that Myers doesn’t know what he’s doing. And even if he were “invincibly ignorant,” the verse that Reynolds is alluding to (Lk 23:34) is of dubious textual authenticity.
Here he commits three basic blunders:
1. He fails to distinguish between opposition and support. As a rule, it would be wrong of me to oppose Myers’ Constitutional freedom of speech. But from this it doesn’t follow that I’m obliged to support his Constitutional freedom of speech. Let him defend his own freedom of speech.
There are people who think that unless everyone has a right, no one has a right. Therefore, they think it’s incumbent on us to defend everyone’s right if we’re to defend anyone’s right.
But that’s very Pollyannaish. Don’t assume the person you defend will return the favor. Indeed, Myers is a case in point. He is using his right to deny the same right to others. Myers is trying to ban ID-theory from the curriculum. He’s trying to censor free speech. He’s using his freedom to abridge the freedom of others.
I’m not going to defend that behavior. To the contrary, I’m going to oppose that behavior. He’s set up a dilemma in which it’s impossible for me to defend him and defend his opponents at the same time. He’s an enemy of free speech, except when it comes to his own free speech.
Let’s also remember that the First Amendment does not impose an obligation on private citizens. Rather, it’s a restraint on public officials.
2. JMR also fails to distinguish between free speech and paid speech. Taxpayers are under no obligation to subsidize Myer’s free speech.
The fact you have a Constitutional right to bear arms doesn’t mean that I’m obliged to buy you a gun.
3. There’s no reason to assume that Myers doesn’t know what he’s doing. And even if he were “invincibly ignorant,” the verse that Reynolds is alluding to (Lk 23:34) is of dubious textual authenticity.
The right to bear arms
I’m not going to discuss the legalities of gun ownership or gun control. Instead, I’m going to make a point about their underlying philosophies.
For conservatives, the right to bear arms is grounded in the right of self-defense. And they view that right as an individual right. For conservatives, the police are a supplement to self-defense, not a substitute for self-defense.
Liberals, by contrast, believe in social control. They distrust the hoi polloi to act responsibility. Citizens are like underage children who require the adult supervision of the State. Bureaucrats are the official grown-ups who keep the rest of us in check. Give us an allowance. Set the curfew. Ground us for coming home too late.
For liberals, the police are a substitute for self-defense, not a supplement to self-defense.
Because the hoi polloi can’t be trusted, the State needs to impose a degree of uniformity on social conduct. An individual cannot be allowed to own a gun because that would introduce an unstable element into the social order. That would represent a loss of control. You can’t predict what an individual will do. An individual is a free variable. And that’s intolerable.
Individual conduct must be strictly regulated so that everyone does the same thing. So that everyone is answerable to the same handlers and minders. Order trumps freedom because freedom is a destabilizing force, and individuals can’t be trusted to act responsibly. The State must impose a large measure of social conformity on the populace. To think alike, speak alike, dress alike, eat alike, live alike.
From a conservative viewpoint, this represents the worst of all possible worlds. It doesn’t eliminate criminality since, by definition, criminals refuse to play by the rules.
The practical effect is twofold: (i) It leaves law-abiding citizens defenseless in the face of the criminal element; (ii) it’s a recipe for abuse of power since there’s no check on the ruling class. Bureaucrats are no wiser or more virtuous than the citizens they govern, and power goes to their head.
Government is just a bunch of people. It empowers one bunch of people at the expense of another. Unless accountability is a two-way street, the State becomes tyrannical.
Liberalism is a half-truth. It’s true that many private citizens can’t be trusted. But it’s equally true that many public officials can’t be trusted. The political class is just as sinful as the governed.
No mechanism will save us from ourselves. There’s no substitute for virtue. That’s why secular ideologies careen between the equally dysfunctional options of anarchy and totalitarianism. Right now, liberalism is going through a totalitarian phase.
If you arm civilians, some individuals will abuse the right to bear arms. Liberals will point to isolated atrocities as proof that we need to confiscate guns. Of course, they don’t start with confiscation. Their policy is more incremental than that.
But if you disarm the citizenry, then the average citizen is literally defenseless against the criminal element. It all depends on whether the police can arrive in time. A minute too late and you’re dead.
For liberals, it’s better to have the occasional massacre of unarmed civilians by a well-armed sniper because that’s the price you pay for social control. The innocent must die for the common good. That’s the unfortunate, but necessary cost of preserving the social order. Don’t take it personally.
Of course, even if you accept that calculus in theory, it doesn’t work out that way in practice. Criminals soon outnumber policemen. Soon the police are outgunned. Organized crime takes over.
The right to bear arms goes back to the fundamental principle that I have the right and responsibility to defend myself and my family. The State doesn’t have the right to abrogate my individual right of self-defense. The State exists to protect my rights, not abrogate my rights by transferring them to the State.
For conservatives, the right to bear arms is grounded in the right of self-defense. And they view that right as an individual right. For conservatives, the police are a supplement to self-defense, not a substitute for self-defense.
Liberals, by contrast, believe in social control. They distrust the hoi polloi to act responsibility. Citizens are like underage children who require the adult supervision of the State. Bureaucrats are the official grown-ups who keep the rest of us in check. Give us an allowance. Set the curfew. Ground us for coming home too late.
For liberals, the police are a substitute for self-defense, not a supplement to self-defense.
Because the hoi polloi can’t be trusted, the State needs to impose a degree of uniformity on social conduct. An individual cannot be allowed to own a gun because that would introduce an unstable element into the social order. That would represent a loss of control. You can’t predict what an individual will do. An individual is a free variable. And that’s intolerable.
Individual conduct must be strictly regulated so that everyone does the same thing. So that everyone is answerable to the same handlers and minders. Order trumps freedom because freedom is a destabilizing force, and individuals can’t be trusted to act responsibly. The State must impose a large measure of social conformity on the populace. To think alike, speak alike, dress alike, eat alike, live alike.
From a conservative viewpoint, this represents the worst of all possible worlds. It doesn’t eliminate criminality since, by definition, criminals refuse to play by the rules.
The practical effect is twofold: (i) It leaves law-abiding citizens defenseless in the face of the criminal element; (ii) it’s a recipe for abuse of power since there’s no check on the ruling class. Bureaucrats are no wiser or more virtuous than the citizens they govern, and power goes to their head.
Government is just a bunch of people. It empowers one bunch of people at the expense of another. Unless accountability is a two-way street, the State becomes tyrannical.
Liberalism is a half-truth. It’s true that many private citizens can’t be trusted. But it’s equally true that many public officials can’t be trusted. The political class is just as sinful as the governed.
No mechanism will save us from ourselves. There’s no substitute for virtue. That’s why secular ideologies careen between the equally dysfunctional options of anarchy and totalitarianism. Right now, liberalism is going through a totalitarian phase.
If you arm civilians, some individuals will abuse the right to bear arms. Liberals will point to isolated atrocities as proof that we need to confiscate guns. Of course, they don’t start with confiscation. Their policy is more incremental than that.
But if you disarm the citizenry, then the average citizen is literally defenseless against the criminal element. It all depends on whether the police can arrive in time. A minute too late and you’re dead.
For liberals, it’s better to have the occasional massacre of unarmed civilians by a well-armed sniper because that’s the price you pay for social control. The innocent must die for the common good. That’s the unfortunate, but necessary cost of preserving the social order. Don’t take it personally.
Of course, even if you accept that calculus in theory, it doesn’t work out that way in practice. Criminals soon outnumber policemen. Soon the police are outgunned. Organized crime takes over.
The right to bear arms goes back to the fundamental principle that I have the right and responsibility to defend myself and my family. The State doesn’t have the right to abrogate my individual right of self-defense. The State exists to protect my rights, not abrogate my rights by transferring them to the State.
Tuesday, August 05, 2008
From The Mary Of History To The Mary Of Roman Catholicism
From Philip Schaff's History Of The Christian Church (Saginaw, Michigan: Historical Exegetical ‘Lectronic Publishing, 1996):
From her [Mary's] example issues a silent blessing upon all generations, and her name and memory are, and ever will be, inseparable from the holiest mysteries and benefits of faith. For this reason her name is even wrought into the Apostles' Creed, in the simple and chaste words: "Conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary."
The Catholic church, however, both Latin and Greek, did not stop with this. After the middle of the fourth century it overstepped the wholesome biblical limit, and transformed the "mother of the Lord" into a mother of God, the "humble handmaid of the Lord" into a queen of heaven, the "highly favored" into a dispenser of favors, the "blessed among women" into an intercessor above all women, nay, we may almost say, the redeemed daughter of fallen Adam, who is nowhere in Holy Scripture excepted from the universal sinfulness, into a sinlessly holy co-redeemer. At first she was acquitted only of actual sin, afterward even of original; though the doctrine of the immaculate conception of the Virgin was long contested, and was not established as an article of faith in the Roman church till 1854. Thus the veneration of Mary gradually degenerated into the worship of Mary; and this took so deep hold upon the popular religious life in the Middle Age, that, in spite of all scholastic distinctions between latria, and dulia, and hyperdulia, Mariolatry practically prevailed over the worship of Christ. Hence in the innumerable Madonnas of Catholic art the human mother is the principal figure, and the divine child accessory. The Romish devotions scarcely utter a Pater Noster without an Ave Maria, and turn even more frequently and naturally to the compassionate, tender-hearted mother for her intercessions, than to the eternal Son of God, thinking that in this indirect way the desired gift is more sure to be obtained. To this day the worship of Mary is one of the principal points of separation between the Graeco-Roman Catholicism and Evangelical Protestantism. It is one of the strongest expressions of the fundamental Romish error of unduly exalting the human factors or instruments of redemption, and obstructing, or rendering needless, the immediate access of believers to Christ, by thrusting in subordinate mediators. Nor can we but agree with nearly all unbiased historians in regarding the worship of Mary as an echo of ancient heathenism. It brings plainly to mind the worship of Ceres, of Isis, and of other ancient mothers of the gods; as the worship of saints and angels recalls the hero-worship of Greece and Rome. Polytheism was so deeply rooted among the people, that it reproduced itself in Christian forms. The popular religious want had accustomed itself even to female deities, and very naturally betook itself first of all to Mary, the highly favored and blessed mother of the divine-human Redeemer, as the worthiest object of adoration....
In striking contrast with this healthful and sober representation of Mary in the canonical Gospels are the numerous apocryphal Gospels of the third and fourth centuries, which decorated the life of Mary with fantastic fables and wonders of every kind, and thus furnished a pseudo-historical foundation for an unscriptural Mariology and Mariolatry. The Catholic church, it is true, condemned this apocryphal literature so early as the Decrees of Gelasius [bishop of Rome]; yet many of the fabulous elements of it - such as the names of the parents of Mary, Joachim (instead of Eli, as in Luke iii.23) and Anna, the birth of Mary in a cave, her education in the temple, and her mock marriage with the aged Joseph - passed into the Catholic tradition....
The titles given to Mary [in the Middle Ages] were far more numerous than the titles given to Christ and every one of them is extra-biblical except the word "virgin." An exuberant fancy allegorized references to her out of all sorts of texts, never dreamed of by their writers. She was found referred to in almost every figurative expression of the Old Testament which could be applied to a pure, human being. To all the Schoolmen, Mary is the mother of God, the queen of heaven, the clement queen, the queen of the world, the empress of the world, the mediatrix, the queen of the ages, the queen of angels, men and demons, the model of all virtues...
Monks, theologians, and poets strain the Latin language to express their admiration of her beauty and benignity, her chastity and heavenly glory. Her motherhood and virginity are alike subjects of eulogy. The conception of physical grace, as expressed when the older Notker of St. Gall called her "the most beautiful of all virgins," filled the thought of the Schoolmen and the peasant. Albertus Magnus devotes a whole chapter of more than thirty pages of two columns each to the praise of her corporal beauty. In his exposition of Canticles 1:15, "Behold thou art fair, my love," he comments upon the beauty of her hair, her shoulders, her lips, her nose, her feet, and other parts of her body. Bonaventura's hymns in her praise abound in tropical expressions, such as "she is more ruddy than the rose and whiter than the lily." Wernher of Tegernsee about 1178 sang:
Her face was so virtuous, her eyes so Bright,
Her manner so pure, that, among all women,
None could with her compare.
In a remarkable passage, Bernard represents her in the celestial places drawing attention to herself by her form and beauty so that she attracted the King himself [God] to desire her. [Schaff explains in a footnote that the term Bernard uses for "desire" is "the usual word for lust".] ...
The Canticles was regarded as an inspired anthology of Mary's excellences of body and soul. Damiani represents God as inflamed with love for her and singing its lines in her praise. She was the golden bed on which God, weary in His labor for men and angels, lay down for repose. The later interpretation was that the book [Song of Solomon] is a bridal song for the nuptials between the Holy Spirit and the Virgin. Bernard's homilies on this portion of Scripture are the most famous collection of the Middle Ages. Alanus ab Insulis, who calls Mary the "tabernacle of God, the palace of the celestial King," says that it [Song of Solomon] refers to the Church, but in an especial and most spiritual way to the glorious virgin. Writer after writer, preacher after preacher, took up this favorite portion of the Old Testament. An abbess represented the Virgin as singing to the Spirit: "My beloved is mine and I am his. He will tarry between my breasts." The Holy Spirit responded, "Thy breasts are sweeter than honey."
To Mary was given a place of dignity equal or superior to Christ as the friend of the sinful and unfortunate and the guide of souls to heaven. Damiani called her "the door of heaven," the window of paradise. Anselm spoke of her as "the vestibule of universal propitiation, the cause of universal reconciliation, the vase and temple of life and salvation for the world." A favorite expression was "the tree of life" - lignum vitae - based upon Prov. iii:8. Albertus Magnus, in the large volume he devotes to Mary's virtues, gives no less than forty reasons why she should be worshipped, authority being found for each one in a text of Scripture. The first reason was that the Son of God honors Mary. This accords with the fifth commandment, and Christ himself said of his mother, "I will glorify the house of my glory," Isa. lx:7; house, according to the Schoolman, being intended to mean Mary. The Bible teems with open and concealed references to her. Albertus ascribed to her thirty-five virtues, on all of which he elaborates at length, such as humility, sincerity, benignity, omnipotence, and modesty. He finds eighty-one biblical names indicative of her functions and graces. Twelve of these are taken from things in the heavens. She is a sun, a moon, a light, a cloud, a horizon, an aurora. Eight are taken from things terrestrial. Mary is a field, a mountain, a hill, a stone. Twenty-one are represented by things pertaining to water. She is a river, a fountain, a lake, a fish-pond, a cistern, a torrent, a shell. Thirty-one are taken from biblical figures. Mary is an ark, a chair, a house, a bed, a nest, a furnace, a library. Nine are taken from military and married life. Mary is a castle, a tower, a wall. It may be interesting to know how Mary fulfilled the office of a library. In her, said the ingenious Schoolman, were found all the books of the Old Testament, of all of which she had plenary knowledge as is shown in the words of her song which run, "as was spoken by our fathers." [Luke 1:55] She also had plenary knowledge of the Gospels as is evident from Luke ii:19: "Mary kept all these sayings in her heart."...
Bonaventura equals Albertus in ransacking the heavens and the earth and the waters for figures to express Mary's glories and there is a tender chord of mysticism running through his expositions which is adapted to move all hearts and to carry the reader, not on his guard, away from the simple biblical statements. The devout Franciscan frequently returns to this theme and makes Mary the subject of his verse and sermons. He exhausts the vocabulary for words in her praise. She is prefigured in Jacob's ladder, Noah's ark, the brazen serpent, Aaron's rod, the star of Balaam, the pot of manna, Gideon's horn, and other objects of Hebrew history. To each of these his Praise of the Blessed Virgin Mary devotes poetic treatment extending in cases to more than one hundred lines and carrying the reader away by their affluence of imagination and the sweetness of the rhythm.
Imitating the Book of Psalms, Bonaventura wrote two psalteries, each consisting of one hundred and fifty parts. Each part of the Minor Psaltery consists of four lines, its opening lines being "Hail Virgin, tree of life; Hail Virgin, door of liberty; Hail Virgin, dear to God; Hail Virgin, light of the world; Hail Virgin, harbor of life; Hail Virgin, most beautiful." In the Greater Psaltery, Bonaventura paraphrases the one hundred and fifty psalms and introduces into each one Mary's name and her attributes, revelling in ascriptions of her preeminence over men and angels. Here are several selections, but no selection can give any adequate idea of the liberty taken with Scripture. The first Psalm is made to run, "Blessed is the man who loves thee, O Virgin Mary. Thy grace will comfort his soul." The twenty-third runs, "The Lord directs me, O Virgin mother of God - genetrix dei - because thou hast turned towards me His loving countenance." The first verse of Psalm 121 reads, "I have lifted up my eyes to thee, O Mother of Christ, from whom solace comes to all flesh."...
So also Bonaventura pronounces Mary the mediator between us and Christ. As God is the lord of revenge - Dominus ultionum,- he says in his Greater Psaltery, so Mary is the mother of compassion. She presents the requests of mortals to the Second Person of the Trinity, softening his wrath and winning favors which otherwise would not be secured....
Where the thinkers and singers of the age were so ardent in their worship of Mary, what could be expected from the mass of monks and from the people!...
In few respects are the worship and teaching of the Middle Ages so different from those of the Protestant churches as in the claims made for Mary and the regard paid to her. If we are to judge by the utterances and example of [Popes] Pius IX. and Leo XIII., the mediaeval cult still goes on in the Roman communion. And more recently [Pope] Pius X. shows that he follows his predecessors closely. In his encyclical of Jan. 15, 1907, addressed to the French bishops, he says, "In full confidence that the Virgin Immaculate, daughter of our Father, mother of the Word, spouse of the Holy Ghost, will obtain for you from the most holy and adorable Trinity better days, we give you our Apostolic Benediction."
Monday, August 04, 2008
Sense And Nonsense About Heaven And Hell
I recently read a book I'd like to recommend, Kenneth Boa and Robert Bowman's Sense And Nonsense About Heaven And Hell (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2007). It's a good intermediate-level overview of the Biblical perspective of the afterlife and some related issues. There are some relevant subjects that aren't addressed much or at all, such as near-death experiences and Purgatory (for more on those issues, see here and here), but the book discusses a large variety of topics in less than 200 pages: the immortality of the soul, the nature of the resurrection body, annihilationism, universalism, infant salvation, etc. This would be a good book to read or to give to others as an introduction to a Biblical view of the afterlife and related issues.
Sunday, August 03, 2008
The Credibility Of The Gospel Resurrection Narratives
Those who have listened to the Licona/Ehrman debate on the resurrection that I discussed yesterday might be interested in some other resources that address issues like the ones raised in that debate. Concerning the credibility of the resurrection narratives in general, I would recommend N.T. Wright's The Resurrection Of The Son Of God (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress Press, 2003) and commentaries on the gospels such as Craig Keener's A Commentary On The Gospel Of Matthew (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1999), his The Gospel Of John: A Commentary, Vol. 2 (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 2003), and Darrell Bock's Luke, Volume 2, 9:51-24:53 (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 1996). On the genre of the resurrection narratives, see here. Regarding whether the resurrection narratives were unhistorical legends that grew over time, see here. Concerning the unexpected nature of the resurrection narratives, see here. On the authorship of the gospels, see here, here, here, and here. On the general reliability of early Christian authorship attributions, see here. Last year, I wrote four articles on some evidence that's often neglected for the traditional gospel authorship attributions: here, here, here, and here. Two years ago, I had some lengthy interactions with a member of the Debunking Christianity staff regarding many of the issues surrounding Jesus' resurrection, including some of the issues addressed in the Licona/Ehrman debate. Two of the most significant articles I wrote in that context are here and here. I'll close with a quote of some portions of the second article that are relevant to Bart Ehrman's vision theory and his dismissal of the resurrection narratives in the gospels:
Demanding more evidence doesn't explain the evidence we have. And considering that the early Christians preserved eyewitness testimony from apostles and their associates (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, James, Jude, Polycarp, etc.), why should we believe that this testimony can't be accepted unless it's accompanied by more testimony? Why should we believe that what we have is insufficient? Considering that modern skeptics have to resort to highly speculative theories about widespread memory loss, widespread hallucinations, widespread apathy, etc., the evidence we have is sufficient to make skeptics resort to ridiculous theories that are far less plausible than the Christian alternative. Why isn't that sufficient? And that's just on the one issue of Jesus' resurrection. When other issues are taken into consideration as well, such as fulfilled prophecy, the skeptical theories become even more ridiculous....
People also knew that men like Abel and Zechariah were put to death unjustly (Matthew 23:35), yet no resurrection occurred just after their death. Their resurrection in the end times might be viewed as some sort of reversal of what had been done to them unjustly, but an unjust death by itself wasn't enough to convince people that a resurrection was going to occur just after the death. And the early Christians tell us that people weren't expecting to see Jesus risen (Matthew 28:1-6, 16:1-3, Luke 24:11, John 20:25, Acts 9:1, etc.), even after they heard of the empty tomb (Luke 24:11, 24:21-24, John 20:2, 20:15, 20:25). Men like James, Paul, and Paul's travel companions weren't Christians, so why should we think that they were expecting any vindication of Jesus? And the people who saw Jesus repeatedly failed to initially recognize who they were seeing (Luke 24:13-31, John 20:15, 21:4, Acts 9:5). If they were expecting to see Jesus, then why would they initially not recognize who they had seen?...
If first century Jews thought that a resurrection had occurred, they would expect physical evidence to accompany it. As I explained to Matthew [Green of Debunking Christianity] before, it's highly unlikely that a group of eleven men or more than 500 (1 Corinthians 15:6), for example, would all naturalistically experience a vision in an altered state of consciousness on the same subject at the same time, without realizing that they were mistaken. If these visions occurred in their minds, not outside their minds, then we would expect one person to see Jesus standing 500 feet away to the south, while another person would think he sees Jesus standing 10 feet away to the east. Different people would hear Jesus saying different things. When they compared their experiences, there would be major, widespread contradictions. Where's Matthew's evidence that people can naturalistically share detailed visions on the same subject at the same time? And if he thinks it can happen, why does he think it's probable with all of the resurrection accounts?...
Matthew hasn't proven any "discrepancies and embellishments", and even if there were some errors in the resurrection accounts, an error on one issue wouldn't justify a dismissal of what's reported on every other issue. Some of the details most problematic for Matthew's theory are details that are agreed upon by all of the sources. For example, all of the sources agree that the resurrection witnesses weren't expecting to see Jesus resurrected (Matthew 28:1-6, Mark 9:10, 16:1-3, Luke 24:11, John 20:25, Acts 9:1, etc.). The three documents that go into the most detail about the resurrection appearances (Luke, John, and Acts) tell us that people sometimes didn't initially know that they were seeing Jesus (Luke 24:13-31, John 20:15, 21:4, Acts 9:5). All four gospel authors refer to physical evidence produced by the resurrection (Matthew 28:9, Mark 16:4-6, Luke 24:42-43, John 21:9-13, etc.). All of the sources reporting on resurrection appearances agree that Jesus appeared to groups of people (Matthew 28:17, Luke 24:36, John 20:26, Acts 9:7, 1 Corinthians 15:6, etc.). Thus, characteristics such as a lack of expectation, a lack of initial recognition of Jesus, an interest in and the presence of physical evidence, and appearances to groups of people (not just individuals) are widely attested, and there's nothing about the reporting of such characteristics that suggests "discrepancy" or "embellishment". These characteristics are widely reported and are inconsistent with what we know about hallucinations and other psychological disorders.
And you can't just assume that there was some type of naturalistic experience that occurred in ancient honor-shame societies that would be able to overcome such obstacles. If you have no evidence for such naturalistic experiences, then assuming the existence of them whenever you need to, in order to maintain your theory, isn't convincing....
The suggestion that John was unaware of all of the earlier gospels, or that he thought that it would be acceptable to contradict them, is highly unlikely. As Craig Keener writes:
"Suggesting that the Fourth Gospel is not directly dependent on the Synoptics need not imply that John did not know of the existence of the Synoptics; even if (as is unlikely) Johannine Christianity were as isolated from other circles of Christianity as some have proposed, other gospels must have been known if travelers afforded any contact at all among Christian communities. That travelers did so may be regarded as virtually certain. Urban Christians traveled(1 Cor 16:10, 12, 17; Phil 2:30; 4:18), carried letters (Rom 16:1-2; Phil 2:25), relocated to other places (Rom 16:3, 5; perhaps 16:6-15), and sent greetings to other churches (Rom 16:21-23; 1 Cor 16:19; Phil 4:22; Col 4:10-15). In the first century many churches knew what was happening with churches in other cities (Rom 1:8; 1 Cor 11:16; 14:33; 1 Thess 1:7-9), and even shared letters (Col 4:16). Missionaries could speak of some churches to others (Rom 15:26; 2 Cor 8:1-5; 9:2-4; Phil 4:16; 1 Thess 2:14-16; cf. 3 John 5-12) and send personal news by other workers (Eph 6:21-22; Col 4:7-9). Although we need not suppose connections among churches as pervasive as Ignatius’ letters suggest perhaps two decades later, neither need we imagine that such connections emerged ex nihilo in the altogether brief silence between John’s Gospel and the ‘postapostolic’ period. No one familiar with the urban society of the eastern empire will be impressed with the isolation Gospel scholars often attribute to the Gospel 'communities.'" (The Gospel Of John: A Commentary, Vol. 1 [Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 2003], pp. 41-42)
John surely was familiar with at least one of the Synoptics, probably all of them, and he probably regarded them highly, as other Christians of the time did. John's disciple Papias, for example, speaks highly of Mark's gospel....
As I've documented, there are many details in the early documents (and not just the gospels) that are inconsistent with Matthew's theory. For Matthew to sustain his theory, he has to propose that large portions of the early documents are unhistorical, and at a time when contemporaries and eyewitnesses of Jesus and the apostles were still alive and in prominent places of leadership. Matthew would have us think that Jews believing in a resurrection would mistake naturalistic visions for a physical resurrection, and would fail to look for the sort of physical evidence referred to in the gospels and Acts, then would allow their later contemporaries to make up the accounts we find in documents like the gospels, Acts, and 1 Corinthians. Not only did the early Christians allow it to happen and not leave any trace of opposition in the historical record, but the early enemies of Christianity either didn't notice it or also failed to leave any trace of their objections in the historical record. And Matthew proposes all of this, and more, just to dismiss one miracle associated with Christianity, the resurrection of Jesus. When you include the other theories he has to propose to dismiss everything else he dislikes, you end up with major portions of documents written by eyewitnesses and contemporaries of Jesus and the apostles that Matthew has to dismiss. What we have under Matthew's scenario is a Jesus who is radically redefined by eyewitnesses and contemporaries who were willing to suffer and die for what they were reporting about Him, and the people alive at the time who knew better apparently were too apathetic to do much about it.
Saturday, August 02, 2008
Why Bart Ehrman Keeps Losing Debates
I recently listened to a debate held earlier this year, between Michael Licona and Bart Ehrman, on the subject of Jesus' resurrection. Much of what I said in a previous post about the 2006 debate between William Craig and Bart Ehrman is applicable to this more recent debate. Ehrman repeats a lot of what he argued in the 2006 debate, even on issues where Craig had corrected him.
Ehrman ignores Craig's refutation of his assertion that miracles are the "least likely occurrence" in any historical context. Not only did Craig correct Ehrman on this issue in 2006, but so did Licona in this 2008 debate, yet Ehrman kept repeating the argument even after Licona had refuted it as well. For an example of Ehrman's repetition of the argument after it was refuted, see the eleventh minute of the second hour.
Ehrman repeats a lot of claims of liberal scholarship that were answered long ago. He doesn't make much of an effort to interact with more recent and more conservative scholarship. Many of his claims have been refuted by the likes of Richard Bauckham's Jesus And The Eyewitnesses (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2006) and Paul Eddy and Gregory Boyd's The Jesus Legend (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2007).
Early in the debate, Ehrman claims that the records we have of Peter's death are "legends that were written hundreds of years later" (thirty-second minute of the first hour). Yet, around the fifty-fourth minute of the second hour, he tells us that Peter and Paul are the only apostles for whom we have first-century records of their death. Even that second claim is wrong, as Licona notes. For more on this subject, see here.
He makes the dubious claim that none of the gospels claim to have been written by eyewitnesses (thirty-fourth minute of the first hour).
He comments that the titles of the gospels aren't found until the second century (thirty-fifth minute of the first hour), which doesn't have much significance if he's limiting his claim to gospel manuscripts. We don't have any gospel manuscripts prior to the second century.
He asserts that the gospel authors relied on oral tradition, as if there were no previous written records (thirty-fifth minute of the first hour).
He makes the ridiculous comparison between the early transmission of oral tradition and the telephone game played by children (thirty-sixth minute of the first hour).
He criticizes attempts to harmonize the gospels, as if such a procedure is equivalent to writing our own fifth gospel (fortieth minute of the first hour), even though historians regularly practice harmonization of sources.
He makes the absurd claim that Jesus' resurrection is a matter of theology, but not history (forty-second minute of the first hour).
He makes comparisons between the reports of Jesus' resurrection and allegedly similar reports in other sources, such as Apollonius of Tyana, but repeatedly fails to take note of the differences among these accounts. (For some discussions of such alleged parallels to the accounts about Jesus, see Steve Hays' e-book on the resurrection, This Joyful Eastertide, and here.) Ehrman doesn't seem to have much familiarity with the Christian response to his argument. Michael Licona's mentor, Gary Habermas, has frequently addressed this issue, for example.
Ehrman apparently didn't even know that Licona believes in Biblical inerrancy (fourth minute of the second hour).
He makes a ridiculous comparison between Sabbati Sevi's conversion to Islam and Paul's conversion to Christianity (twenty-fifth minute of the second hour).
He repeatedly ignores the evidence we have from Paul when discussing the nature of the evidence we have for the resurrection. In response to Licona's refutation of his comparison between Jesus and Apollonius of Tyana, Ehrman refers to the lateness of the gospels and their alleged anonymity, for example, without mentioning the earliness and non-anonymous nature of Paul and other sources Paul refers to (the creed of 1 Corinthians 15, for example). See, for example, minutes twenty-seven and forty-one of the second hour.
Ehrman's attempts to undermine the historicity of the empty tomb are weak, and he doesn't even address some of the most significant evidence supporting the historicity of the empty tomb. He claims that Mark's report of the discovery of the empty tomb by women is suspicious, because having women discover it would be consistent with one of the motifs of Mark's gospel. Supposedly, Mark wanted "outsiders" to discover the empty tomb, and the women qualified as such. But if the unbelief of other people, such as the apostles, disqualified them from being the discoverers of the empty tomb in Mark's eyes, then why wouldn't the unbelief of the women do the same for them? They didn't go to the tomb expecting it to be empty. And it's not as though Mark couldn't have had a male outsider discover the tomb. For some examples of the evidence for the empty tomb that Ehrman didn't address, see here.
Ehrman repeatedly assumes that ancient non-Christian or modern accounts of the miraculous are unhistorical, then parallels those accounts with what the early Christians reported and suggests that we shouldn't accept the Christian accounts either. But a Christian worldview allows for miracles outside of Biblical history, both Divine and demonic supernatural activity. He doesn't justify his assumption that these extra-Biblical reports are false, and he often ignores significant differences between those accounts and the Biblical accounts. For a discussion of one of the extra-Biblical categories he mentioned, Marian apparitions, see here. And see here.
Ehrman lost this debate, just as he lost his debate with William Craig in 2006. (Licona had a bad voice during the debate, and he didn't use a lot of good arguments he could have used, yet he did better than Ehrman.) He lost both debates for similar reasons. He keeps repeating bad arguments that have long been refuted by Christians, including Christians who have explained the erroneous nature of those arguments in his presence. He doesn't seem to make much of an effort to research the arguments of his opponents, and he hasn't kept up much with scholarship that's more conservative than his own.
Ehrman ignores Craig's refutation of his assertion that miracles are the "least likely occurrence" in any historical context. Not only did Craig correct Ehrman on this issue in 2006, but so did Licona in this 2008 debate, yet Ehrman kept repeating the argument even after Licona had refuted it as well. For an example of Ehrman's repetition of the argument after it was refuted, see the eleventh minute of the second hour.
Ehrman repeats a lot of claims of liberal scholarship that were answered long ago. He doesn't make much of an effort to interact with more recent and more conservative scholarship. Many of his claims have been refuted by the likes of Richard Bauckham's Jesus And The Eyewitnesses (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2006) and Paul Eddy and Gregory Boyd's The Jesus Legend (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2007).
Early in the debate, Ehrman claims that the records we have of Peter's death are "legends that were written hundreds of years later" (thirty-second minute of the first hour). Yet, around the fifty-fourth minute of the second hour, he tells us that Peter and Paul are the only apostles for whom we have first-century records of their death. Even that second claim is wrong, as Licona notes. For more on this subject, see here.
He makes the dubious claim that none of the gospels claim to have been written by eyewitnesses (thirty-fourth minute of the first hour).
He comments that the titles of the gospels aren't found until the second century (thirty-fifth minute of the first hour), which doesn't have much significance if he's limiting his claim to gospel manuscripts. We don't have any gospel manuscripts prior to the second century.
He asserts that the gospel authors relied on oral tradition, as if there were no previous written records (thirty-fifth minute of the first hour).
He makes the ridiculous comparison between the early transmission of oral tradition and the telephone game played by children (thirty-sixth minute of the first hour).
He criticizes attempts to harmonize the gospels, as if such a procedure is equivalent to writing our own fifth gospel (fortieth minute of the first hour), even though historians regularly practice harmonization of sources.
He makes the absurd claim that Jesus' resurrection is a matter of theology, but not history (forty-second minute of the first hour).
He makes comparisons between the reports of Jesus' resurrection and allegedly similar reports in other sources, such as Apollonius of Tyana, but repeatedly fails to take note of the differences among these accounts. (For some discussions of such alleged parallels to the accounts about Jesus, see Steve Hays' e-book on the resurrection, This Joyful Eastertide, and here.) Ehrman doesn't seem to have much familiarity with the Christian response to his argument. Michael Licona's mentor, Gary Habermas, has frequently addressed this issue, for example.
Ehrman apparently didn't even know that Licona believes in Biblical inerrancy (fourth minute of the second hour).
He makes a ridiculous comparison between Sabbati Sevi's conversion to Islam and Paul's conversion to Christianity (twenty-fifth minute of the second hour).
He repeatedly ignores the evidence we have from Paul when discussing the nature of the evidence we have for the resurrection. In response to Licona's refutation of his comparison between Jesus and Apollonius of Tyana, Ehrman refers to the lateness of the gospels and their alleged anonymity, for example, without mentioning the earliness and non-anonymous nature of Paul and other sources Paul refers to (the creed of 1 Corinthians 15, for example). See, for example, minutes twenty-seven and forty-one of the second hour.
Ehrman's attempts to undermine the historicity of the empty tomb are weak, and he doesn't even address some of the most significant evidence supporting the historicity of the empty tomb. He claims that Mark's report of the discovery of the empty tomb by women is suspicious, because having women discover it would be consistent with one of the motifs of Mark's gospel. Supposedly, Mark wanted "outsiders" to discover the empty tomb, and the women qualified as such. But if the unbelief of other people, such as the apostles, disqualified them from being the discoverers of the empty tomb in Mark's eyes, then why wouldn't the unbelief of the women do the same for them? They didn't go to the tomb expecting it to be empty. And it's not as though Mark couldn't have had a male outsider discover the tomb. For some examples of the evidence for the empty tomb that Ehrman didn't address, see here.
Ehrman repeatedly assumes that ancient non-Christian or modern accounts of the miraculous are unhistorical, then parallels those accounts with what the early Christians reported and suggests that we shouldn't accept the Christian accounts either. But a Christian worldview allows for miracles outside of Biblical history, both Divine and demonic supernatural activity. He doesn't justify his assumption that these extra-Biblical reports are false, and he often ignores significant differences between those accounts and the Biblical accounts. For a discussion of one of the extra-Biblical categories he mentioned, Marian apparitions, see here. And see here.
Ehrman lost this debate, just as he lost his debate with William Craig in 2006. (Licona had a bad voice during the debate, and he didn't use a lot of good arguments he could have used, yet he did better than Ehrman.) He lost both debates for similar reasons. He keeps repeating bad arguments that have long been refuted by Christians, including Christians who have explained the erroneous nature of those arguments in his presence. He doesn't seem to make much of an effort to research the arguments of his opponents, and he hasn't kept up much with scholarship that's more conservative than his own.
Friday, August 01, 2008
Calvinism, Attacked from Without and Within... et tu Brutas?
Victor Reppert's been blogging on Calvinism again. He said he was done for a while. Me thinks many Arminian philosophers and apologists have an axe to grind against Calvinism because if the Calvinists are right, those apologosophers lose out on one of their favorite arguments against physicalism, naturalism, and the atheism that uses those philosophical systems. Re-reading Reppert's DI book last week, I saw his use of libertarian free will play a somewhat key role in his AFR against naturalism. Same can be said of Moreland, Craig, and the rest of the usual suspects.
I guess on one hand I can understand, if I felt one of my best arguments for theism and against the best philosophies of atheism were undermined by a particular theological viewpoint, then I'd probably feel a bit nervous. But of course I hope I'd look at the theological merits of the case, bending the knee to Scripture. If that is what the Bible taught, so much for my precious argument. And of course Calvinists feel that the very best exegesis and systematic theology is borne out and expressed by the Reformed faith.
So I wonder why Victor posts on Calvinism. Is it to rally the Arminian troops? To reaffirm Arminian thought. Help Arminians sleep well at night? It certainly can't be to persuade Calvinists. Us Calvinists believe that the Bible teaches Calvinism. Victor never presents and defends any exegetical interpretation of key passages. Simply refuses to debate the exegetical case. That's fine. He's a philosopher and not a theologian, he says. Okay, we understand. But he must understand that he's simply not going to get anywhere with the Calvinists...if he's even trying to, that is.
I mean, we're certainly not going to drop what we take to be the best exegesis and systematic theology, the theological system which gives most glory to God and presents the most robust worldview that can meet unregenerate man head on, for some philosophical position that is mired in controversy and has been going on for thousands of years. And despite what some may believe, it's not even clear that libertarianism is the shining light on the hill leading men to theism and away from naturalism and physicalism. Van Inwagen is a physicalist about man, yet for a large portion of his career he was also libertarian about free will. Kane, one of the foremost defenders of libertarian free will today presents a fully naturalistic account of LFW in his books on free will. So though Victor may say that theologians debate the text and so Calvinism isn't "clear," it is also true that philosophers debate issues of moral responsibility and free will and so his philosophical arguments hardly can play the trump here. Not only that, it seems to me that it is the Calvinist in the debate who plays both games the best. Victor uses the debates among theologians as his excuse for not having to deal with the exegetical arguments. But I could play the same game with the philosophers. When I appeal to Frankfurt, Fisher, semi-compatibilism, etc., I do so only as a way to (a) meet the philosophical objections on their own ground and (b) as a handmaiden to the Queen of the sciences. Victor must understand that, for the Calvinist (or at least for me), I don't care if FCEs are problematic or if compatibilism is (on strictly philosophical grounds, that is). To me all that means is that I had better find another way to express what is in the Bible. I could simply say, "Well this is what the Bible teaches, so either (a) reject it or (b) drop your arguments against it." One must understand that when dealing with someone who has what would be, if true, the most unimproved justification or warrant one could have for believing something (God said so), then you need to deal with the justification itself. Take the case of the purloined letter. Memory was enough to function as a defeater-defeater in that case. The analogy fails because a video recording of the theft would defeat the defeater-defeater where a philosophical speculation (on that is hotly debated at that) isn't going to serve as a defeater against what God says. So Victor (or any Arminian, or even an atheist for that matter) had better engage the text itself. Perhaps there may be some areas where a philosophical argument could lead us to change our understanding of Scripture. I grant that. I grant that the situation can serve to make us aware that the norm isn't what we had thought. But one is going to be hard pressed to make that case in a highly debatable field of philosophical inquiry. One that has been going on for thousands of years, with no end in site! Victor may think indeterminism and libertarianism are just "obvious," but it is obviously (!) not that "obvious." All one needs to do is look on Amazon. Even my own library would show that "it's a jungle out there."
When I look at the totality of everything involved, whether there are problems with Frankfurt counter examples or not, that just trails in the dust in relation to the big picture. And Calvinists are "big picture" Christians. Besides all of this, us Calvinists can't understand why Arminians just can't see how what they think is problematic on Calvinism is just as problematic on Arminianism, perhaps with some minor tweaking. Not only that, it's not enough to (try to) show that someone is not morally responsible if their action was determined. The Arminian needs to do the dual job of (trying to) showing that Scripture doesn't teach that God determines whatsoever comes to pass according to the council of his will. That's because if Scripture teaches what the Calvinist claims, and teaches that men are responsible, then all the Arminian has done by his argument is to show that Christianity is in error. So if the best exegesis is on the side of the Calvinist, the Arminian had better look for ways to show that moral praise and blame is compatible with determinism. Certainly the Calvinist, since he believes his exegesis and systematic theology the best there is on offer, is under no rational obligation to capitulate to Arminian philosophical objections. The Calvinist, hopefully, doesn't let his apologetic concerns drive his theology. For him it's the other way around.
But besides all of this, if Arminian objections fair no better than how they claim the Calvinist system fairs, the Calvinist has even more reason to simply shrug off Arminian philosophical objections, especially when they come minus any theological ones. One example of this is found in one of Reppert's posts:
http://dangerousidea.blogspot.com/2008/07/calvinists-and-secular-compatibilists.html
Calvinists maintain the following:
1) God's decrees set in motion causal chains that guarantee the
occurrence of all that happens in the world.
2) Persons are morally responsible for those actions, even though they
are the inevitable result of a divine decree.
3) These actions deserve retributive punishment, which in those who do
not receive the saving grace of Christ, is meted out to sinners in
hell.
4) God is not blameworthy for decreeing those actions that He himself
judges as evil. (It is either good because God decreed it, or it is
good because of an unknown and unknowable reason God might have
had).
Of course much of this is vague and ambiguous, if not misleading. (1) can be read fatalistically. Do the events occur regardless of secondary causes or means? (2) has that implication as well. (3) is vague. Which "actions" deserve retributive punishment? The baby's cooing? That was an action, and it was determined. (1) began with "all events" and (3) just speaks of sins. (4) leaves out that we in fact do know the God-justifying reason for his decrees sometimes. (1) - (4) are also imprecise in that they do not distinguish between the decree and providence.
Now, the above four points (taking into consideration my comments) can be found in Scripture. Reppert takes (1) - (4) to constitute problems for Calvinists, so I would maintain that he must find a problem with Scripture itself. This can be seen, in one instance, by tracing the plan of redemption (in its most broad way). I will list four points below that correspond with the four points above. The advantage of this is that no orthodox Christian can deny any of the four points I list. My list is not uncontroversial, that is. Beginning with Genesis we have:
1*) Genesis 3:15 And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel."
2*) Acts 2:23 This man was handed over to you by God's set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross ... Acts 4:27 Indeed Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed. 28They did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen.
3*) Acts 17:31 For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed ... Revelation 20:12 And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books.
4*) Romans 8: 28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
Basically, the Arminian is in a bind. If the argument is that: "If God decrees a person to commit an immoral act, then God is also blameworthy," the Arminian must either drop his argument or admit that God is worthy of blame since in decreeing the death of Jesus he decreed his murder, murder is evil, therefore God decreed evil. Stated another way, the Bible tells us that each man's death is appointed by God, since some men die at the hands of a murderer, God must have decreed murder, since murder is evil, God must have decreed evil. So I don't see what the big deal is. It certainly can't be that in some instances since we don't know what the God-justifying reason is (which we do in the case of Jesus, salvation for his people), there can't be a God-justifying reason. That would be an argument from silence. If it is not an argument from silence then, following Douglas Walton, the objection is in the form of a conditional: If x were the case, then we would expect to know the God justifying reason for x. But I flat out deny that conditional. I especially deny it since an all knowing being told us that he has a good reason for all he does. So the Arminian argument from evil against the Calvinist is shown to backfire since they also believe God decreed what he calls evil. And since they don't believe it was immoral to do that, they can't hold to the general premise that if God decrees an evil, God is to blame.
Not only that, the Arminian has much the same problem as (1) - (4) above, just with some tweaking. For example:
1**) God's creation set in motion the events he knew would unfold if he actually instantiated the creation. (Some get around this by denying God his exhaustive foreknowledge (in the traditional sense)).
2**) Person's are morally responsible for doing what God knew they would do and they would not have done had he not created them.
3**) These actions deserve retributive punishment. (Some avoid this by postulating problematic notions of the atonement and hell. Some simply eliminate the problematic entities from their theology, viz., universalists).
4**) God is not morally blameworthy for intervening to stop an evil whereas a created person would be. (It is either good because God decreed it (c f. various libertarian/Arminian DCTists), or it is good because of an unknown and unknowable reason God might have had (cf. the various skeptical theism arguments from popular Arminian/libertarian philosophers and apologists)).
To close it off, Reppert wonders what secular compatibilists would disagree with in his (1) - (4):
"1) She could say that while natural determinism is compatible with moral responsibility, control by an agent is not, especially an omnipotent one. The problem would then be to account in some principed way for the difference in the way these two cases are adjudicated."
She could say that, sure, but where's the argument? This is simply an assertion. She obviously doesn't believe that in any case whatever where one agent has the power to stop some evil, he should. Certainly she thinks that a father allowing a doctor to stitch up his son, causing his son pain, is not evil, for there's a good reason. So they'd need to do some work here, and I've seen nothing promising coming down the pike. Oh, and of course she would need to present and defend a secular theory of ethic in terms of which she can judge Calvinism by.
"2) She could argue that the attribution of moral responsibility should never be retributive. If that is the case, then the kind of responsiblity-attribution they are engaged in is markedly different from that of the Calvinist, and perhaps different standards apply. If I am asking "Who is responsible" because I want to know whose behavior I need to modify, as opposed to who deserves punishment, this is a very different enterprise, and one that is actually easier to reconcile with determinism."
And all the Calvinist need do is point out the massive problems with this remedial theory. I can use the pagans do beat down the pagans. Not only that, we still need a secular justification of ethics. Oh, and I'll be sure to line up the victims of child molestation and rape and let them know that their attacker is not getting punished. If this is the secular "problem" with Calvinism, then we're fairly free from critical inquiry.
"3) She could argue that there is no "conservation of responsibility," that just because O. J. Simpson is responsible for committing two murders (assuming the prosecution was right) does not mean that an "accessory before the foundation of the world (not just before the fact)" is not also responsible."
Again, yeah, she could try to make this argument. But not only does she need to present and defend her secular ethic, she needs to show how S murdering S* is the same as when S** decrees the murder of S*. One commits the murder, and does so with evil intentions, the other does neither. And, if (3) is a good argument, then as we've seen above, Victor himself has problems since God decreed the murder of Jesus... and he did so "from the foundation of the world."
Now, I understand the purpose of Reppert's post wasn't meant to be an argument against Calvinists, but I don't mean this to be a response to Reppert's post. I simply mean if for T-blog readers. His post also exhibits (sub consciously or consciously) his common misunderstandings and unfamiliarity with Calvinism. So they were corrected. And since he offers possible secular challenges to Calvinism, I took the liberty (!) to point out what the secularist would need to do if he even wanted to get his attack of the ground. Besides that, I think it telling that the secularists strongest argument against Christianity is the argument from evil and the Arminian Christian's strongest argument against Calvinism is the problem of evil. Just as unregenerate hate Christianity, it seems the Arminian hates the Calvinist system with the same passion. I find all of this very telling and think there's more going on behind the scenes. If God really came into the world, revealed his holy character, and set forth the antithesis between him and us, would more people find it comforting than not?
"Reality, in fact, is usually something you could not have guessed. That is one of the reasons I believe Christianity. It is a religion you could not have guessed. If it offered us just the kind of universe we had always expected, I should feel we were making it up. But, in fact, it is not the sort of thing anyone would have made up. It has just that queer twist about it that real things have. So let us leave behind all these boys' philosophies--these over simple answers. The problem is not simple and the answer is not going to be simple either. "
— C.S. Lewis
I guess on one hand I can understand, if I felt one of my best arguments for theism and against the best philosophies of atheism were undermined by a particular theological viewpoint, then I'd probably feel a bit nervous. But of course I hope I'd look at the theological merits of the case, bending the knee to Scripture. If that is what the Bible taught, so much for my precious argument. And of course Calvinists feel that the very best exegesis and systematic theology is borne out and expressed by the Reformed faith.
So I wonder why Victor posts on Calvinism. Is it to rally the Arminian troops? To reaffirm Arminian thought. Help Arminians sleep well at night? It certainly can't be to persuade Calvinists. Us Calvinists believe that the Bible teaches Calvinism. Victor never presents and defends any exegetical interpretation of key passages. Simply refuses to debate the exegetical case. That's fine. He's a philosopher and not a theologian, he says. Okay, we understand. But he must understand that he's simply not going to get anywhere with the Calvinists...if he's even trying to, that is.
I mean, we're certainly not going to drop what we take to be the best exegesis and systematic theology, the theological system which gives most glory to God and presents the most robust worldview that can meet unregenerate man head on, for some philosophical position that is mired in controversy and has been going on for thousands of years. And despite what some may believe, it's not even clear that libertarianism is the shining light on the hill leading men to theism and away from naturalism and physicalism. Van Inwagen is a physicalist about man, yet for a large portion of his career he was also libertarian about free will. Kane, one of the foremost defenders of libertarian free will today presents a fully naturalistic account of LFW in his books on free will. So though Victor may say that theologians debate the text and so Calvinism isn't "clear," it is also true that philosophers debate issues of moral responsibility and free will and so his philosophical arguments hardly can play the trump here. Not only that, it seems to me that it is the Calvinist in the debate who plays both games the best. Victor uses the debates among theologians as his excuse for not having to deal with the exegetical arguments. But I could play the same game with the philosophers. When I appeal to Frankfurt, Fisher, semi-compatibilism, etc., I do so only as a way to (a) meet the philosophical objections on their own ground and (b) as a handmaiden to the Queen of the sciences. Victor must understand that, for the Calvinist (or at least for me), I don't care if FCEs are problematic or if compatibilism is (on strictly philosophical grounds, that is). To me all that means is that I had better find another way to express what is in the Bible. I could simply say, "Well this is what the Bible teaches, so either (a) reject it or (b) drop your arguments against it." One must understand that when dealing with someone who has what would be, if true, the most unimproved justification or warrant one could have for believing something (God said so), then you need to deal with the justification itself. Take the case of the purloined letter. Memory was enough to function as a defeater-defeater in that case. The analogy fails because a video recording of the theft would defeat the defeater-defeater where a philosophical speculation (on that is hotly debated at that) isn't going to serve as a defeater against what God says. So Victor (or any Arminian, or even an atheist for that matter) had better engage the text itself. Perhaps there may be some areas where a philosophical argument could lead us to change our understanding of Scripture. I grant that. I grant that the situation can serve to make us aware that the norm isn't what we had thought. But one is going to be hard pressed to make that case in a highly debatable field of philosophical inquiry. One that has been going on for thousands of years, with no end in site! Victor may think indeterminism and libertarianism are just "obvious," but it is obviously (!) not that "obvious." All one needs to do is look on Amazon. Even my own library would show that "it's a jungle out there."
When I look at the totality of everything involved, whether there are problems with Frankfurt counter examples or not, that just trails in the dust in relation to the big picture. And Calvinists are "big picture" Christians. Besides all of this, us Calvinists can't understand why Arminians just can't see how what they think is problematic on Calvinism is just as problematic on Arminianism, perhaps with some minor tweaking. Not only that, it's not enough to (try to) show that someone is not morally responsible if their action was determined. The Arminian needs to do the dual job of (trying to) showing that Scripture doesn't teach that God determines whatsoever comes to pass according to the council of his will. That's because if Scripture teaches what the Calvinist claims, and teaches that men are responsible, then all the Arminian has done by his argument is to show that Christianity is in error. So if the best exegesis is on the side of the Calvinist, the Arminian had better look for ways to show that moral praise and blame is compatible with determinism. Certainly the Calvinist, since he believes his exegesis and systematic theology the best there is on offer, is under no rational obligation to capitulate to Arminian philosophical objections. The Calvinist, hopefully, doesn't let his apologetic concerns drive his theology. For him it's the other way around.
But besides all of this, if Arminian objections fair no better than how they claim the Calvinist system fairs, the Calvinist has even more reason to simply shrug off Arminian philosophical objections, especially when they come minus any theological ones. One example of this is found in one of Reppert's posts:
http://dangerousidea.blogspot.com/2008/07/calvinists-and-secular-compatibilists.html
Calvinists maintain the following:
1) God's decrees set in motion causal chains that guarantee the
occurrence of all that happens in the world.
2) Persons are morally responsible for those actions, even though they
are the inevitable result of a divine decree.
3) These actions deserve retributive punishment, which in those who do
not receive the saving grace of Christ, is meted out to sinners in
hell.
4) God is not blameworthy for decreeing those actions that He himself
judges as evil. (It is either good because God decreed it, or it is
good because of an unknown and unknowable reason God might have
had).
Of course much of this is vague and ambiguous, if not misleading. (1) can be read fatalistically. Do the events occur regardless of secondary causes or means? (2) has that implication as well. (3) is vague. Which "actions" deserve retributive punishment? The baby's cooing? That was an action, and it was determined. (1) began with "all events" and (3) just speaks of sins. (4) leaves out that we in fact do know the God-justifying reason for his decrees sometimes. (1) - (4) are also imprecise in that they do not distinguish between the decree and providence.
Now, the above four points (taking into consideration my comments) can be found in Scripture. Reppert takes (1) - (4) to constitute problems for Calvinists, so I would maintain that he must find a problem with Scripture itself. This can be seen, in one instance, by tracing the plan of redemption (in its most broad way). I will list four points below that correspond with the four points above. The advantage of this is that no orthodox Christian can deny any of the four points I list. My list is not uncontroversial, that is. Beginning with Genesis we have:
1*) Genesis 3:15 And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel."
2*) Acts 2:23 This man was handed over to you by God's set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross ... Acts 4:27 Indeed Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed. 28They did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen.
3*) Acts 17:31 For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed ... Revelation 20:12 And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books.
4*) Romans 8: 28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
Basically, the Arminian is in a bind. If the argument is that: "If God decrees a person to commit an immoral act, then God is also blameworthy," the Arminian must either drop his argument or admit that God is worthy of blame since in decreeing the death of Jesus he decreed his murder, murder is evil, therefore God decreed evil. Stated another way, the Bible tells us that each man's death is appointed by God, since some men die at the hands of a murderer, God must have decreed murder, since murder is evil, God must have decreed evil. So I don't see what the big deal is. It certainly can't be that in some instances since we don't know what the God-justifying reason is (which we do in the case of Jesus, salvation for his people), there can't be a God-justifying reason. That would be an argument from silence. If it is not an argument from silence then, following Douglas Walton, the objection is in the form of a conditional: If x were the case, then we would expect to know the God justifying reason for x. But I flat out deny that conditional. I especially deny it since an all knowing being told us that he has a good reason for all he does. So the Arminian argument from evil against the Calvinist is shown to backfire since they also believe God decreed what he calls evil. And since they don't believe it was immoral to do that, they can't hold to the general premise that if God decrees an evil, God is to blame.
Not only that, the Arminian has much the same problem as (1) - (4) above, just with some tweaking. For example:
1**) God's creation set in motion the events he knew would unfold if he actually instantiated the creation. (Some get around this by denying God his exhaustive foreknowledge (in the traditional sense)).
2**) Person's are morally responsible for doing what God knew they would do and they would not have done had he not created them.
3**) These actions deserve retributive punishment. (Some avoid this by postulating problematic notions of the atonement and hell. Some simply eliminate the problematic entities from their theology, viz., universalists).
4**) God is not morally blameworthy for intervening to stop an evil whereas a created person would be. (It is either good because God decreed it (c f. various libertarian/Arminian DCTists), or it is good because of an unknown and unknowable reason God might have had (cf. the various skeptical theism arguments from popular Arminian/libertarian philosophers and apologists)).
To close it off, Reppert wonders what secular compatibilists would disagree with in his (1) - (4):
"1) She could say that while natural determinism is compatible with moral responsibility, control by an agent is not, especially an omnipotent one. The problem would then be to account in some principed way for the difference in the way these two cases are adjudicated."
She could say that, sure, but where's the argument? This is simply an assertion. She obviously doesn't believe that in any case whatever where one agent has the power to stop some evil, he should. Certainly she thinks that a father allowing a doctor to stitch up his son, causing his son pain, is not evil, for there's a good reason. So they'd need to do some work here, and I've seen nothing promising coming down the pike. Oh, and of course she would need to present and defend a secular theory of ethic in terms of which she can judge Calvinism by.
"2) She could argue that the attribution of moral responsibility should never be retributive. If that is the case, then the kind of responsiblity-attribution they are engaged in is markedly different from that of the Calvinist, and perhaps different standards apply. If I am asking "Who is responsible" because I want to know whose behavior I need to modify, as opposed to who deserves punishment, this is a very different enterprise, and one that is actually easier to reconcile with determinism."
And all the Calvinist need do is point out the massive problems with this remedial theory. I can use the pagans do beat down the pagans. Not only that, we still need a secular justification of ethics. Oh, and I'll be sure to line up the victims of child molestation and rape and let them know that their attacker is not getting punished. If this is the secular "problem" with Calvinism, then we're fairly free from critical inquiry.
"3) She could argue that there is no "conservation of responsibility," that just because O. J. Simpson is responsible for committing two murders (assuming the prosecution was right) does not mean that an "accessory before the foundation of the world (not just before the fact)" is not also responsible."
Again, yeah, she could try to make this argument. But not only does she need to present and defend her secular ethic, she needs to show how S murdering S* is the same as when S** decrees the murder of S*. One commits the murder, and does so with evil intentions, the other does neither. And, if (3) is a good argument, then as we've seen above, Victor himself has problems since God decreed the murder of Jesus... and he did so "from the foundation of the world."
Now, I understand the purpose of Reppert's post wasn't meant to be an argument against Calvinists, but I don't mean this to be a response to Reppert's post. I simply mean if for T-blog readers. His post also exhibits (sub consciously or consciously) his common misunderstandings and unfamiliarity with Calvinism. So they were corrected. And since he offers possible secular challenges to Calvinism, I took the liberty (!) to point out what the secularist would need to do if he even wanted to get his attack of the ground. Besides that, I think it telling that the secularists strongest argument against Christianity is the argument from evil and the Arminian Christian's strongest argument against Calvinism is the problem of evil. Just as unregenerate hate Christianity, it seems the Arminian hates the Calvinist system with the same passion. I find all of this very telling and think there's more going on behind the scenes. If God really came into the world, revealed his holy character, and set forth the antithesis between him and us, would more people find it comforting than not?
"Reality, in fact, is usually something you could not have guessed. That is one of the reasons I believe Christianity. It is a religion you could not have guessed. If it offered us just the kind of universe we had always expected, I should feel we were making it up. But, in fact, it is not the sort of thing anyone would have made up. It has just that queer twist about it that real things have. So let us leave behind all these boys' philosophies--these over simple answers. The problem is not simple and the answer is not going to be simple either. "
— C.S. Lewis
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Orthodox Bans
What is it about the Orthodox? Is their lack of integrity native to their religion?
Within the past year, two Orthodox participants in discussions here have earned a ban. In both instances warnings were issued almost from the time they first began posting here - not due to the content of their writing and argumentation, repetitive though it was, but due to their demagoguery in the comboxes.
Not only that, they both proceeded to defy their bans from the time they were issued. One would think that they would be at least somewhat concerned about maintaining some sort of testimony both personally and for their denomination. It doesn't look good for Orthodoxy to have representatives of their group who behave in such a manner.
What's more the second of these, Lvka, not only violated his ban, but he can't even keep his own word. In a comment since removed, Lvka actually agreed with my vote to permaban him, because without it, he wouldn't be able to resist the temptation to misbehave.
So much for Orthodox integrity. Currently, Lvka and Orthodox are not welcome here, not now, not ever. When Turretinfan urged clemency, I told him that I'm always open to the lifting of a ban. However, I'm not the only contributor to this blog. Unless the others here are open to lifting it, I will not lift it. I've tried that with Orthodox himself too, and he demonstrated he could not be trusted. Indeed, he took to posting pseudonymously for a time too, as if we couldn't figure out it was him.
This sort of infantile behavior will not be tolerated. As a reminder, this blog is also a ministry. We provide this service free of charge to the community, but that doesn't mean that the community gets to set their own terms when participating here. If people who are banned have something to say, then they can use their own blogs to say it - not this one. They wouldn't appreciate it if we showed up at an Orthodox church service and started behaving in this manner. We'd be ejected quickly. The same rules apply to them when they come here, as it would apply to us in such a situation.
So, let the record publicly show the entire blogging community that Lvka and Orthodox are not to be trusted to behave. If they are participating on your blogs, you might want to keep that in mind. I would urge other Orthodox bloggers, like Perry Robinson and JNorm -both of whom do a pretty good job and for whom, while I personally disagree with you both I have some respect for the way you comport yourselves - to have a word with their two peers about such childish behavior.
Get it together, Lvka, and you might just have your ban lifted later on, but it does not help you to act the way you are currently. Any continued posts from you in any thread will tell us that you don't believe that what you say here is worth the bandwidth, and we can do with you what we did with Orthodox - hunt down your posts in every thread, and delete them on the premise that you agree that your posts are without value and should be deleted.
Within the past year, two Orthodox participants in discussions here have earned a ban. In both instances warnings were issued almost from the time they first began posting here - not due to the content of their writing and argumentation, repetitive though it was, but due to their demagoguery in the comboxes.
Not only that, they both proceeded to defy their bans from the time they were issued. One would think that they would be at least somewhat concerned about maintaining some sort of testimony both personally and for their denomination. It doesn't look good for Orthodoxy to have representatives of their group who behave in such a manner.
What's more the second of these, Lvka, not only violated his ban, but he can't even keep his own word. In a comment since removed, Lvka actually agreed with my vote to permaban him, because without it, he wouldn't be able to resist the temptation to misbehave.
So much for Orthodox integrity. Currently, Lvka and Orthodox are not welcome here, not now, not ever. When Turretinfan urged clemency, I told him that I'm always open to the lifting of a ban. However, I'm not the only contributor to this blog. Unless the others here are open to lifting it, I will not lift it. I've tried that with Orthodox himself too, and he demonstrated he could not be trusted. Indeed, he took to posting pseudonymously for a time too, as if we couldn't figure out it was him.
This sort of infantile behavior will not be tolerated. As a reminder, this blog is also a ministry. We provide this service free of charge to the community, but that doesn't mean that the community gets to set their own terms when participating here. If people who are banned have something to say, then they can use their own blogs to say it - not this one. They wouldn't appreciate it if we showed up at an Orthodox church service and started behaving in this manner. We'd be ejected quickly. The same rules apply to them when they come here, as it would apply to us in such a situation.
So, let the record publicly show the entire blogging community that Lvka and Orthodox are not to be trusted to behave. If they are participating on your blogs, you might want to keep that in mind. I would urge other Orthodox bloggers, like Perry Robinson and JNorm -both of whom do a pretty good job and for whom, while I personally disagree with you both I have some respect for the way you comport yourselves - to have a word with their two peers about such childish behavior.
Get it together, Lvka, and you might just have your ban lifted later on, but it does not help you to act the way you are currently. Any continued posts from you in any thread will tell us that you don't believe that what you say here is worth the bandwidth, and we can do with you what we did with Orthodox - hunt down your posts in every thread, and delete them on the premise that you agree that your posts are without value and should be deleted.
The Early Post-Apostolic Christians Were Roman Catholic And Not Anything Like Evangelicalism?
Harvardman has posted some comments in another thread that reflect a common Roman Catholic sentiment:
"While it is possible to find fathers who seemed to believe in justification by faith, and while various interpretations of particular early patristic sources can be advanced to support some aspects of modern evangelical Christianity, the preponderance of the evidence DOES NOT look anything like modern evangelical Christianity. Rather, it appears that Christians who knew the apostles (or who knew men who knew them) and who were obviously neither Gnostics nor Arians, and who served as living examples of apostolic Christianity for the next generation, lived a Christianity centered around: obedience to their Bishop, rejection of the many rival claimants to the chair of their Bishop, and celebration of the Eucharist."
Different Catholics will cite different areas of agreement with the early church, and the argument can vary in other ways, but the general thrust of Harvardman's comments is commonly expressed by Catholics. The amount of truth in the argument depends on how some of the terms are being defined. Harvardman refers to "Christians who knew the apostles (or who knew men who knew them)", but often the length of time involved isn't defined so specifically. Some doctrines and practices, such as the perpetual virginity of Mary and the veneration of images, were widely rejected in earlier generations, but were widely accepted later. A lot depends on what timeframe is in view and how other terms are being defined.
What should we expect to see in early church history in light of the claims of Roman Catholicism and its advocates? Should we just see the sort of vague similarity with Roman Catholicism that Harvardman refers to at the close of his comments above? Think of the claims made by the Council of Trent and the First Vatican Council, for example. Think of the claims made by Popes and Roman Catholic theologians and apologists over the centuries. The Roman Catholic denomination claims to be the one true church, founded by Christ, infallible and maintaining all apostolic teaching in unbroken succession throughout church history. Catholics often state or suggest that all or most of the church fathers were Roman Catholic, that there were few or no rival orthodox groups in early church history, etc. Given such claims, should we expect Catholics like Harvardman to be appealing to such vague similarities with the early church, such as that they were "centered around: obedience to their Bishop, rejection of the many rival claimants to the chair of their Bishop, and celebration of the Eucharist"?
And what about the claim that the early church, as Harvardman defines it, "DOES NOT look anything like modern evangelical Christianity"? It doesn't look anything like Evangelicalism?
In the thread linked above, part of my response to Harvardman consisted of a series of links to articles in this blog's archives relevant to Roman Catholicism and the history of the patristic era. I believe that the following conclusions can be reached about the earliest post-apostolic generations of Christianity in light of the sort of evidence discussed in those linked articles:
- There was no papacy.
- There were multiple forms of church government, including forms not involving a monarchical episcopate.
- Church leaders were required to meet moral and doctrinal standards, and it was considered acceptable to disobey or separate from a leader who violated such standards.
- When apostolic succession was discussed, it was defined in different ways by different sources, and the concepts discussed involved reasoning and qualifications that we don't find in modern Roman Catholic arguments for apostolic succession.
- Infants weren't baptized initially, and the later practice of infant baptism was largely done for a different reason and at a different time than we see in modern Catholicism.
- There were multiple views of the eucharist on issues such as a eucharistic presence of Christ, and John 6 was sometimes interpreted metaphorically, for example.
- Though most of the early post-apostolic sources advocated some form of justification through works, some advocated justification through faith alone, and those who advocated justification through works disagreed with each other about the nature of the works, sometimes contradicting Roman Catholicism on the issue.
- Mary was believed to have sinned.
- They often discussed subjects such as bodily assumptions and what happened to men like Enoch and Elijah without mentioning a bodily assumption of Mary. The concept of an assumption of Mary is absent, including in contexts where it would be appropriate to mention the concept.
- Whether Mary was a perpetual virgin isn't discussed much, though the earliest view seems to be that she wasn't.
- Passages of scripture often cited in support of Roman Catholic Marian doctrines, such as Revelation 12, were interpreted differently than Catholics interpret those passages.
- The concept of Purgatory was initially absent and widely contradicted, and some of the later ante-Nicene fathers who are sometimes cited in support of the doctrine can only be cited for partial support, along with partial contradiction.
- There was widespread opposition to the veneration of images.
- There was widespread belief that prayer is to be offered only to God, not to angels or deceased humans.
- Despite much acceptance of one or more Apocryphal books as scripture, some of the Apocryphal books accepted aren't accepted by Roman Catholicism, and some sources rejected the Apocryphal books.
- Premillennialism seems to have been the most popular eschatology.
Other examples could be cited, such as a comparison between the ecumenism of modern Roman Catholicism and how the early patristic Christians viewed other religions and their adherents. But I think the examples above are sufficient to make the point. Why should we think that the early post-apostolic Christians were Roman Catholic? And why should we think they weren't anything like Evangelicalism?
"While it is possible to find fathers who seemed to believe in justification by faith, and while various interpretations of particular early patristic sources can be advanced to support some aspects of modern evangelical Christianity, the preponderance of the evidence DOES NOT look anything like modern evangelical Christianity. Rather, it appears that Christians who knew the apostles (or who knew men who knew them) and who were obviously neither Gnostics nor Arians, and who served as living examples of apostolic Christianity for the next generation, lived a Christianity centered around: obedience to their Bishop, rejection of the many rival claimants to the chair of their Bishop, and celebration of the Eucharist."
Different Catholics will cite different areas of agreement with the early church, and the argument can vary in other ways, but the general thrust of Harvardman's comments is commonly expressed by Catholics. The amount of truth in the argument depends on how some of the terms are being defined. Harvardman refers to "Christians who knew the apostles (or who knew men who knew them)", but often the length of time involved isn't defined so specifically. Some doctrines and practices, such as the perpetual virginity of Mary and the veneration of images, were widely rejected in earlier generations, but were widely accepted later. A lot depends on what timeframe is in view and how other terms are being defined.
What should we expect to see in early church history in light of the claims of Roman Catholicism and its advocates? Should we just see the sort of vague similarity with Roman Catholicism that Harvardman refers to at the close of his comments above? Think of the claims made by the Council of Trent and the First Vatican Council, for example. Think of the claims made by Popes and Roman Catholic theologians and apologists over the centuries. The Roman Catholic denomination claims to be the one true church, founded by Christ, infallible and maintaining all apostolic teaching in unbroken succession throughout church history. Catholics often state or suggest that all or most of the church fathers were Roman Catholic, that there were few or no rival orthodox groups in early church history, etc. Given such claims, should we expect Catholics like Harvardman to be appealing to such vague similarities with the early church, such as that they were "centered around: obedience to their Bishop, rejection of the many rival claimants to the chair of their Bishop, and celebration of the Eucharist"?
And what about the claim that the early church, as Harvardman defines it, "DOES NOT look anything like modern evangelical Christianity"? It doesn't look anything like Evangelicalism?
In the thread linked above, part of my response to Harvardman consisted of a series of links to articles in this blog's archives relevant to Roman Catholicism and the history of the patristic era. I believe that the following conclusions can be reached about the earliest post-apostolic generations of Christianity in light of the sort of evidence discussed in those linked articles:
- There was no papacy.
- There were multiple forms of church government, including forms not involving a monarchical episcopate.
- Church leaders were required to meet moral and doctrinal standards, and it was considered acceptable to disobey or separate from a leader who violated such standards.
- When apostolic succession was discussed, it was defined in different ways by different sources, and the concepts discussed involved reasoning and qualifications that we don't find in modern Roman Catholic arguments for apostolic succession.
- Infants weren't baptized initially, and the later practice of infant baptism was largely done for a different reason and at a different time than we see in modern Catholicism.
- There were multiple views of the eucharist on issues such as a eucharistic presence of Christ, and John 6 was sometimes interpreted metaphorically, for example.
- Though most of the early post-apostolic sources advocated some form of justification through works, some advocated justification through faith alone, and those who advocated justification through works disagreed with each other about the nature of the works, sometimes contradicting Roman Catholicism on the issue.
- Mary was believed to have sinned.
- They often discussed subjects such as bodily assumptions and what happened to men like Enoch and Elijah without mentioning a bodily assumption of Mary. The concept of an assumption of Mary is absent, including in contexts where it would be appropriate to mention the concept.
- Whether Mary was a perpetual virgin isn't discussed much, though the earliest view seems to be that she wasn't.
- Passages of scripture often cited in support of Roman Catholic Marian doctrines, such as Revelation 12, were interpreted differently than Catholics interpret those passages.
- The concept of Purgatory was initially absent and widely contradicted, and some of the later ante-Nicene fathers who are sometimes cited in support of the doctrine can only be cited for partial support, along with partial contradiction.
- There was widespread opposition to the veneration of images.
- There was widespread belief that prayer is to be offered only to God, not to angels or deceased humans.
- Despite much acceptance of one or more Apocryphal books as scripture, some of the Apocryphal books accepted aren't accepted by Roman Catholicism, and some sources rejected the Apocryphal books.
- Premillennialism seems to have been the most popular eschatology.
Other examples could be cited, such as a comparison between the ecumenism of modern Roman Catholicism and how the early patristic Christians viewed other religions and their adherents. But I think the examples above are sufficient to make the point. Why should we think that the early post-apostolic Christians were Roman Catholic? And why should we think they weren't anything like Evangelicalism?
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Did The First Council Of Constantinople Condemn Premillennialism?
The subject of the condemnation of premillennialism by an ecumenical council has been prominent in some recent discussions here, so I thought I'd repost some of my comments on the subject from another thread. Jnorm888, an Eastern Orthodox, originally claimed that premillennialism was condemned as a heresy by an ecumenical council in the sixth century. He later retracted that claim and replaced it with the claim that the doctrine was condemned by the First Council of Constantinople in the fourth century. NPMcCallum, another Eastern Orthodox, also argued for a condemnation by First Constantinople. Here, below, is my latest response to NPMcCallum on the subject, from the thread here.
NPMcCallum said:
"Jason, I would agree with you 100% if it were not for 'whose kingdom shall have no end.' 'Whose kingdom shall have no end' is the ONLY phrase added to the Christological portion of the creed at Constantinople, the same council which condemns a known chilliast (and I think two known chilliasts, if I can find the source). Why add this phrase to the Creed? There is no other context for this phrase other than chilliasm. I'll happily accept correction if you can show otherwise."
As I explained earlier, I don't know much about the history of the creed in question. I don't know the timing of the addition you're referring to or much else about its background. I know there's been disagreement among scholars regarding where different portions of the creed came from. I haven't followed those disputes in detail.
You've made a lot of assertions, but the only source you've cited so far has been a letter of Gregory Nazianzen, which mentions premillennialism, briefly, as one of the beliefs of some of the heretics in question. It wasn't the central belief of those heretics, and the council itself condemns multiple groups of heretics without any reference to premillennialism. If the phrase in question in the creed came from the council, and the council meant to condemn premillennialism of some type, I would want more evidence before concluding that a condemnation of premillennialism in general was in view. As I said before, an allusion to Luke 1:33 doesn't contradict premillennialism as it's commonly perceived, so the phrase itself shouldn't be seen as a condemnation of premillennialism. You would need to combine the phrase with something else indicating that a condemnation of premillennialism was in mind.
Philip Schaff writes, concerning this addition to the creed:
"This addition likewise is found substantially in the Antiochian creeds of 341, and is directed against Marcellus of Ancyra, Sabellius, and Paul of Samosata, who taught that the union of the power of God (ἐνέργεια δραστική) with the man Jesus will cease at the end of the world, so that the Son and His kingdom are not eternal Comp. Hefele, i. 438 and 507 sq." (source, note 1441)
That heresy isn't part of premillennialism in general. As I said earlier, a condemnation of a heretical form of premillennialism wouldn't qualify as a condemnation of premillennialism in general. You have to attach a heresy to premillennialism that isn't part of premillennialism itself in order to place some form of premillennialism under this condemnation.
You say that "there is no other context for this phrase other than chilliasm", but Schaff's comments above provide another context. The eternality of Christ's reign is relevant to heretics who denied that Christ and His reign are eternal. No condemnation of premillennialism in general is needed to make sense of the creed.
Of the scholars I've read on the history of premillennialism so far, none have argued that the doctrine was condemned by the First Council of Constantinople. And as I noted earlier, the doctrine continued among mainstream Christians after First Constantinople. Furthermore, whoever composed the portion of the creed you're referencing probably realized that premillennialism had been a widespread belief, accepted by the likes of Justin Martyr and Irenaeus. In light of such factors, a condemnation of premillennialism in general seems unlikely. The evidence I've seen so far is against your conclusion.
NPMcCallum said:
"Jason, I would agree with you 100% if it were not for 'whose kingdom shall have no end.' 'Whose kingdom shall have no end' is the ONLY phrase added to the Christological portion of the creed at Constantinople, the same council which condemns a known chilliast (and I think two known chilliasts, if I can find the source). Why add this phrase to the Creed? There is no other context for this phrase other than chilliasm. I'll happily accept correction if you can show otherwise."
As I explained earlier, I don't know much about the history of the creed in question. I don't know the timing of the addition you're referring to or much else about its background. I know there's been disagreement among scholars regarding where different portions of the creed came from. I haven't followed those disputes in detail.
You've made a lot of assertions, but the only source you've cited so far has been a letter of Gregory Nazianzen, which mentions premillennialism, briefly, as one of the beliefs of some of the heretics in question. It wasn't the central belief of those heretics, and the council itself condemns multiple groups of heretics without any reference to premillennialism. If the phrase in question in the creed came from the council, and the council meant to condemn premillennialism of some type, I would want more evidence before concluding that a condemnation of premillennialism in general was in view. As I said before, an allusion to Luke 1:33 doesn't contradict premillennialism as it's commonly perceived, so the phrase itself shouldn't be seen as a condemnation of premillennialism. You would need to combine the phrase with something else indicating that a condemnation of premillennialism was in mind.
Philip Schaff writes, concerning this addition to the creed:
"This addition likewise is found substantially in the Antiochian creeds of 341, and is directed against Marcellus of Ancyra, Sabellius, and Paul of Samosata, who taught that the union of the power of God (ἐνέργεια δραστική) with the man Jesus will cease at the end of the world, so that the Son and His kingdom are not eternal Comp. Hefele, i. 438 and 507 sq." (source, note 1441)
That heresy isn't part of premillennialism in general. As I said earlier, a condemnation of a heretical form of premillennialism wouldn't qualify as a condemnation of premillennialism in general. You have to attach a heresy to premillennialism that isn't part of premillennialism itself in order to place some form of premillennialism under this condemnation.
You say that "there is no other context for this phrase other than chilliasm", but Schaff's comments above provide another context. The eternality of Christ's reign is relevant to heretics who denied that Christ and His reign are eternal. No condemnation of premillennialism in general is needed to make sense of the creed.
Of the scholars I've read on the history of premillennialism so far, none have argued that the doctrine was condemned by the First Council of Constantinople. And as I noted earlier, the doctrine continued among mainstream Christians after First Constantinople. Furthermore, whoever composed the portion of the creed you're referencing probably realized that premillennialism had been a widespread belief, accepted by the likes of Justin Martyr and Irenaeus. In light of such factors, a condemnation of premillennialism in general seems unlikely. The evidence I've seen so far is against your conclusion.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Romans 8:11 And Physical Resurrection
Chris Price has posted another article in his "Is Richard Carrier Wrong About..." series. The latest article addresses Carrier's view of Romans 8:11 as it relates to whether Paul believed in a physical resurrection.
In the comments section, Steven Carr posts some of his typical erroneous objections. (For those who don't know, Carr is a critic of Christianity who visits a lot of web sites and frequently posts on the subject of the resurrection. He doesn't make much of an effort to interact with or learn from the people who respond to him. He's posted here on occasion, and you can find our responses to him if you search the archives.) He objects that a resurrection isn't "EXPLICIT" in the passage, as if it needs to be. If the concept isn't "EXPLICIT" as he defines that term, then Price is "lying" and Price's interpretation must be "all in his mind". Then Carr objects that some passages Price cited from elsewhere in Paul's writings don't mention "our mortal bodies". But Price didn't cite the passages for that purpose. He cited them as more relevant than Carrier's passages, not as complete parallels to Romans 8:11. And Carr's citation of 2 Corinthians 5 only proves his view if we assume his reading rather than a Christian alternative, and he gives us no reason to prefer his.
For more on the subject of Paul's view of the resurrection, see here. Paul's Jewish context, the beliefs of his Christian contemporaries, and the beliefs of his churches shortly after his lifetime suggest that he believed in a bodily resurrection. Yet, Carr "wonders why Carrier can concede that some passages are problematic, yet true scholars like Layman cannot". Given that the sources surrounding Paul (those that influenced him, those influenced with him, and those influenced by him) affirmed a bodily resurrection, why should we think it would be unexpected if no passages in Paul are problematic for the position of bodily resurrection? The reason why Carrier acknowledges that some passages are problematic for his view is because his view is so wrong that he realizes that it's problematic and expects his readers to notice the same thing.
In the comments section, Steven Carr posts some of his typical erroneous objections. (For those who don't know, Carr is a critic of Christianity who visits a lot of web sites and frequently posts on the subject of the resurrection. He doesn't make much of an effort to interact with or learn from the people who respond to him. He's posted here on occasion, and you can find our responses to him if you search the archives.) He objects that a resurrection isn't "EXPLICIT" in the passage, as if it needs to be. If the concept isn't "EXPLICIT" as he defines that term, then Price is "lying" and Price's interpretation must be "all in his mind". Then Carr objects that some passages Price cited from elsewhere in Paul's writings don't mention "our mortal bodies". But Price didn't cite the passages for that purpose. He cited them as more relevant than Carrier's passages, not as complete parallels to Romans 8:11. And Carr's citation of 2 Corinthians 5 only proves his view if we assume his reading rather than a Christian alternative, and he gives us no reason to prefer his.
For more on the subject of Paul's view of the resurrection, see here. Paul's Jewish context, the beliefs of his Christian contemporaries, and the beliefs of his churches shortly after his lifetime suggest that he believed in a bodily resurrection. Yet, Carr "wonders why Carrier can concede that some passages are problematic, yet true scholars like Layman cannot". Given that the sources surrounding Paul (those that influenced him, those influenced with him, and those influenced by him) affirmed a bodily resurrection, why should we think it would be unexpected if no passages in Paul are problematic for the position of bodily resurrection? The reason why Carrier acknowledges that some passages are problematic for his view is because his view is so wrong that he realizes that it's problematic and expects his readers to notice the same thing.
Monday, July 28, 2008
"Evangelicals for Obama"
Before I launch into some Obama bashing, I should, to be “fair and balanced,” say a thing or two about McCain.
McCain wasn’t my first pick. Or my second. Or my third, or fourth, or...
McCain rarely misses an opportunity remind conservatives of why we dislike him so. He goes out of his way to skewer conservatives.
The best argument for voting for McCain is that while Obama is bad on all the issues that McCain is bad on, McCain is better on a few other issues. Obama is uniformly bad. And I think that’s an adequate reason to vote for McCain.
That doesn’t mean it’s an adequate reason for me. McCain is daring conservatives to vote for him because the alternative is even worse. It’s a game of chicken.
I don’t know that I’m prepared to vote for a candidate under such coercive terms. Don’t count on me to blink first. I’m not responsible for this dilemma.
It’s kind of like one of those movie scenarios in which your captors force you to choose which captive will die to spare the lives of your fellow captives: “Either shoot him or we’ll shoot you!” In that situation, kill us all and let God sort it out.
I think one can justify voting for McCain, and I also think one can justify sitting out this election.
I’m also curious to see who he will pick for Veep. If it’s Romney, count me out.
I’d add that even if McCain is elected, there’s not much he can do should the Democrats pick up a veto-proof majority in Congress. Let’s not be so focused in the presidential election that we overlook the Congressional election. That’s equally important.
Now let’s shift to Obama. And let’s begin with white “evangelicals” who plan to vote for Obama.
“Green said young evangelicals are ‘tired of the confrontational politics we've had over the last couple of decades’."
http://www.worldmag.com/articles/14154
Fine. Let’s elect conservatives. That would put an end to confrontational politics.
Barring that, I prefer gridlock to smooth traffic flow over a cliff.
“And want ‘a broader agenda’.”
I don’t want a broader agenda. I want a narrower agenda. Less government, not more.
“And a much more inclusive approach’."
There’s nothing “inclusive” about liberal social policies. It’s all about groupthink.
“According to the Pew Forum's U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, 35 percent of young white evangelicals said society should accept homosexuality, compared to 22 percent of older evangelicals.”
“Accept” in what sense? To have all the same rights as normal people?
“While a commitment to poverty-fighting is nothing new for Christians, 58 percent of young white evangelicals would choose ‘bigger government providing more services’ over ‘smaller government providing fewer services’."
Of course, gov’t doesn’t fight poverty. It promotes poverty. It promotes a culture of dependency. In the welfare state, where you penalize productive citizens and subsidize unproductive citizens, there’s no incentive to work.
“Smith said her top priorities are the environment, poverty, and health care.”
Of course, this is code language for global warming, welfare, and universal health insurance. From what I can tell, anthropogenic global warming is a hoax.
Welfare doesn’t solve poverty. It creates and perpetuates poverty.
Universal heath insurance is a pyramid scam. Who’s going to pay? Not the poor. The rich? No. The rich shelter their income. Look at Ted Kennedy. He’s living off of his old man’s fortune.
Here’s a little history lesson for the younger generation. I grew up in a one-income, middle class family during the 60s and 70s. We didn’t have health insurance back them. No one did. It was a fee-for-service system. And it was affordable. We didn’t need heath insurance.
Insurance isn’t cost effective. If insurance were cost-effective, insurance companies would go out of business. They turn a profit on insurance because you pay in more than they pay out. It’s really pretty obvious.
In fact, government sponsored health insurance drives up the cost of health care. If gov’t is footing the bill, then the companies don’t have to be competitive. Just look at the post office.
BTW, I’m not knocking insurance, per se. But insurance is no solution to health care costs that annually rise higher than the rate of inflation. You end of with rationed health care. Just look at the UK.
“They're the issues that affect her most—more than abortion or gay marriage—and she thinks they're the issues Jesus prioritized, too: ‘I know that Jesus said visit the sick, feed the hungry,’ she said. ‘I feel like I'm not going against my faith by putting those issues at the forefront’."
First of all, she mentioned three issues, not just one. Was Jesus a member of the Green Party?
He also didn’t talk about the sick in general or the poor in general. That has reference to sick or hungry Christians.
BTW, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t be charitable. But the Bible distinguishes between people who are poor through no fault of their own (e.g. widows and orphans) and people who are poor due to their lifestyle choices (e.g. sluggards).
In addition, the Bible proposes various forms of workfare (e.g. indentured service, gleaning the fields) rather than welfare. It proposes interest free loans rather than food stamps. You have to repay a loan.
"The whole gay thing?’ she says. ‘Jesus never mentioned homosexuals at all’."
Let’s see—he condemned fornication (Mt 5:19), defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman (Mt 19:4-6), and mentioned God’s judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah (Mt 10:15). Just what Bible is she reading?
Anyway, it wouldn’t matter if Jesus was silent on the subject. Christian theology isn’t limited to a red-letter edition of the Gospels. Jesus upheld OT ethics, and he also appointed men to speak on his behalf.
Now let’s transition to black “evangelicals” who plan to vote for Obama.
“I started by explaining that for African Americans, there is a sense of hope no longer being deferred. Instead, hope is at the front door knocking furiously, waiting to see if African Americans will answer. If we open the door, forty million African Americans are going to witness a fellow African American getting the largest slice of the American Dream Pie—a dessert many had hoped to see people of color eat in their lifetime, but the many fell asleep having embraced such promises from afar.”
http://ericredmond.wordpress.com/2008/07/11/how-can-any-christian-african-american-vote-for-obama-throwing-the-race-card-on-an-all-black-table/
In other words, vote for him for the empty symbolism. That’s racist. It’s racial tokenism. Vote for a black—any black. Would Redmond vote for Idi Amin or Robert Mugabe?
Black “evangelicals” would be selling themselves cheap if they cast their vote for empty symbolism.
“As the struggle for social and economic equality has been a struggle for all African Americans, regardless of belief system(s), we all share in the joy when one of our own achieves the (presumptive) nomination for the highest office in the land.”
In other words, if you neighbor wins the lottery, then you win the lottery. Except that you don’t. If you neighbor wins the lottery, he gets the big fat check, not you. You’re exactly where you were before he won.
So this is more empty symbolism.
“An office that has been reserved for white males only until now.”
I wouldn’t say the presidency is been “reserved” for white males only until now. Running Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton for president isn’t much of a test.
“Obama’s candidacy would allow all African Americans to say to our forefathers, “we finally did it!’…”
More empty symbolism. Your forefathers can’t hear you. They’re dead and buried.
“Hope, yea victory, is finally here! We are equal at the highest level!”
That’s an illusion. If Obama is elected, it will be white votes that put him over the top. His success or failure still depends on white power.
“If we take DuBois’ musings as an accurate analysis of African American existence, we can see another factor involved in Christian African Americans’ support of Obama: identity.”
Which has nothing to do with Christian identity.
“We now have a candidate who we think identifies with the experience of African Americans.”
No, he identifies with his white Ivy League professors.
“He has experienced the struggle of the great-great-great-grandchildren of slaves (even though he is not one).”
No, he experienced affirmative action.
“So surely, it is supposed, he will fight for policies and programs that will be sensitive to the plight of his people and that work toward uplifting the entire race of people.”
Social programs don’t uplift black Americans. They hold them down.
“To the place where the playing field is level.”
In what sense is the playing field tilted?
“Surely, as one of us, he will sign into law measures that will protect the gains made during the Civil Rights and post-Civil Rights Eras.”
If Obama loses, will the South reinstate Jim Crow? I don’t think so.
“Because he is one of us, we have hope that we will no longer have to look at ourselves through the contemptuous eyes of others—i.e., white Americans.”
Do white Americans look with contempt on black Americans? That’s a pretty sweeping statement.
“We now can look at ourselves through the eyes of the man who could hold the most well-known office in the free-world, and he can look at the world through our eyes.”
This, too, is racist. It reflects a racial inferiority complex. A need for symbolic affirmation.
I’ve never voted for president to validate my personal identity. I’ve never seen myself through the eyes of my president. I never saw myself through the eyes of Bill Clinton.
The implication of Redmond’s statement is that black Americans need to prove themselves to themselves, prove themselves to white Americans, and prove themselves to the world.
Once again, that’s a racist sentiment. It reflects a racial inferiority complex.
If you really think you’re equal, then you have nothing to prove. No one to impress. You’re secure in your own identity.
“For African Americans, to deny Obama would then be, in some sense, to deny one’s own identity.”
In other words, any black American who doesn’t vote for Obama is a traitor. What does this say about Redmond’s priorities?
And how does his attitude differ from the attitude of a Klansman? What’s the difference between white identity politics and black identity politics?
For example, Bobby Jindal is a rising star in the GOP. Would it be a denial of my white identity to vote for an East Indian American? Why should racial identity—whether mine or his—even be a consideration?
“Being able to see the potential for mutual embracing of identities in a candidate further means that African Americans will not feel the need to settle on the candidate who represents the lesser of two evils.”
Only if racial identity trumps Christian identity or moral identity.
“By common consent, many African Americans feel that their votes are taken for granted by one major political party, and only courted as tokenism by the other major party.”
There’s some truth to that. It’s a vicious cycle. Republicans ignore most black candidates because most black candidates are liberal. Most black candidates ignore the GOP in return.
We need movement in both directions. The GOP should seek out talented conservative “minorities” while talented conservative “minorities” should seek out the GOP.
“The votes do not result in policy changes that benefit African Americans as a whole no matter which party’s candidate wins office.”
Conservative policies benefit every race.
“An Obama candidacy immediately changes the hopeless feelings of resignation as the fall approaches.”
“Feelings.”
“Higher than average African American attendance at the polls in November could be a reflection of the joy brought on by the ability to pick a candidate without mental or emotional reservation and resignation.”
But they should have mental reservations about Obama. Indeed, that’s an understatement.
“An Obama nomination looks like a nomination for social justice – far more than does a nomination for someone from the other party.”
What social injustice does Redmond think black Americans are still enduring?
“If the Illinois senator will carry both white and Black voters in November, unlike Democratic candidates from other ethnicities, he will not be able to make promises to African Americans without accountability to keep his promises.”
My that’s credulous. White politicians lie to white voters all the time. Why would a black candidate be any different?
“Instead, he will be under pressure not to let his people down judicially. He will have to reject policies that stand against the Democratic version of racial progress, and he will have to sign into law policies that stand for such progress.”
What current policies stand in the way of blacks?
“They expect social and economic justice policies to find favor with this candidate, for Affirmative Action to be strengthened, for racial profiling and racial inequities in the legal systems to be brought into account and see diminishing statistics, and for ‘equal justice for all’ to be more than words on the halls of justice.”
You know, this way of casting the issue makes it sound as if we have an all-black underclass under the heel of an all-white government.
Last time I checked, there were black judges, black big-city majors, black big-city councilmen, black big-city police chiefs in charge of an integrated police force, &c. Who's oppressing whom?
“An Obama presidency would portray justice in another odd sort of way. Akin to the issue of hope above, his election would be seen as vindication. It would have a self-correcting effect on the errors of America’s history, with its sins of chattel slavery, Jim Crow laws.”
We’ve already corrected those errors.
“And ongoing civil injustices.”
Such as?
“What greater way is there for African Americans in turn to say, ‘We have overcome!”
I can think of a greater way. What about raising your kids in two-parents homes. Helping them with their homework so that they graduate from high school. Things like that.
“What an Obama in the White House would do for African Americans is allow us to feel.”
To “feel.”
“We can say, ‘Now this country is going to treat us equally, fairly, justly’.”
“Now”? Redmond is a pretty successful man in his own right to feel so victimized.
Does Barack Obama look like a victim of social injustice to you? Does his wife look like a victim of social injustice to you? If that’s the face of social injustice, it’s pretty lucrative.
“The above thoughts do not make a judgment on whether Christian African Americans should or should not vote for Obama.”
Of course it’s a judgment on Christian black Americans who don’t vote for him. Redmond just implied that any black American who doesn’t vote for Obama is a traitor to the black race.
“The intention of this work is only to offer some reasons that explain why Christian African Americans might vote for Obama in the fall.”
But notice that he didn’t give any Christian reasons. Not a single one.
“It does not address the suggested contradiction between voting for a pro-choice candidate and claiming to be a voter who holds a pro-life position. Personally, I think that sanctity of life issues only deal with one of ten areas of sin in the Decalogue, so they are not to be elevated above all of the other prohibitions and commandments.”
To begin with, he keeps harping on slavery. But weren’t the abolitionists single-issue politicians? Slavery was just one issue.
And what about the 10 Commandments? Is Obama any better on the other 9 commandments?
By belonging to one of the most liberal Christian denominations, Obama violated the 1st commandment.
By belonging to a church that advocated black liberation theology, Obama violated the 2nd commandment. He idolizes racial identity.
So does Redmond. Redmond idolizes Obama. He talks about Obama the way followers of Father Divine used to take about their leader.
Violation of the 3rd commandment was a crime in the Mosaic law. Does Obama intend to criminalize blasphemy? No.
Does Obama intend to restore the blue laws? No. So much for the 4th commandment.
BTW, I’m not saying if the 10 commandments should be enacted into law. I’m just measuring Obama by the yardstick which Redmond handed me.
Does Obama support the 5th commandment? No. He supports the welfare state. The welfare state doesn’t honor parents. To the contrary, the welfare state denies parental authority. It supplants parental authority. It usurps the role of the parent.
What about the 6th commandment? Redmond already concedes that Obama’s policies violate this command.
And that’s especially ironic. Redmond harps on racial identity, yet abortion is a form of racial genocide. Redmond harps on racial identity as long as we exclude black babies from life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
What about the 7th commandment? Adultery was a capital offense in the Mosaic law. Does Obama intend to execute adulterers? I don’t think so.
Again, I’m not saying if he should or shouldn’t. Just seeing if he measures up to Redmond’s yardstick.
What about the 8th commandment? The welfare state is a form of theft. Coercive income redistribution.
What about the 9th commandment? Our current judicial system isn’t designed to acquit the innocent and convict the guilty. It’s only concerned with the rights of the accused, even when that involves the suppression of probative evidence.
Does Obama plan to rectify that situation? Not that I heard.
What about the 10th commandment? But the welfare state is predicated on envy. Class warfare. It institutionalizes the sin of covetousness—unless, of course, you’re a rich liberal politician, in which case you shelter your major assets and overtax the middle class.
So Obama flunks every one of the Ten Commandments.
Eric Redmond is a black man first and a Christian second—which is no kind of Christian at all.
McCain wasn’t my first pick. Or my second. Or my third, or fourth, or...
McCain rarely misses an opportunity remind conservatives of why we dislike him so. He goes out of his way to skewer conservatives.
The best argument for voting for McCain is that while Obama is bad on all the issues that McCain is bad on, McCain is better on a few other issues. Obama is uniformly bad. And I think that’s an adequate reason to vote for McCain.
That doesn’t mean it’s an adequate reason for me. McCain is daring conservatives to vote for him because the alternative is even worse. It’s a game of chicken.
I don’t know that I’m prepared to vote for a candidate under such coercive terms. Don’t count on me to blink first. I’m not responsible for this dilemma.
It’s kind of like one of those movie scenarios in which your captors force you to choose which captive will die to spare the lives of your fellow captives: “Either shoot him or we’ll shoot you!” In that situation, kill us all and let God sort it out.
I think one can justify voting for McCain, and I also think one can justify sitting out this election.
I’m also curious to see who he will pick for Veep. If it’s Romney, count me out.
I’d add that even if McCain is elected, there’s not much he can do should the Democrats pick up a veto-proof majority in Congress. Let’s not be so focused in the presidential election that we overlook the Congressional election. That’s equally important.
Now let’s shift to Obama. And let’s begin with white “evangelicals” who plan to vote for Obama.
“Green said young evangelicals are ‘tired of the confrontational politics we've had over the last couple of decades’."
http://www.worldmag.com/articles/14154
Fine. Let’s elect conservatives. That would put an end to confrontational politics.
Barring that, I prefer gridlock to smooth traffic flow over a cliff.
“And want ‘a broader agenda’.”
I don’t want a broader agenda. I want a narrower agenda. Less government, not more.
“And a much more inclusive approach’."
There’s nothing “inclusive” about liberal social policies. It’s all about groupthink.
“According to the Pew Forum's U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, 35 percent of young white evangelicals said society should accept homosexuality, compared to 22 percent of older evangelicals.”
“Accept” in what sense? To have all the same rights as normal people?
“While a commitment to poverty-fighting is nothing new for Christians, 58 percent of young white evangelicals would choose ‘bigger government providing more services’ over ‘smaller government providing fewer services’."
Of course, gov’t doesn’t fight poverty. It promotes poverty. It promotes a culture of dependency. In the welfare state, where you penalize productive citizens and subsidize unproductive citizens, there’s no incentive to work.
“Smith said her top priorities are the environment, poverty, and health care.”
Of course, this is code language for global warming, welfare, and universal health insurance. From what I can tell, anthropogenic global warming is a hoax.
Welfare doesn’t solve poverty. It creates and perpetuates poverty.
Universal heath insurance is a pyramid scam. Who’s going to pay? Not the poor. The rich? No. The rich shelter their income. Look at Ted Kennedy. He’s living off of his old man’s fortune.
Here’s a little history lesson for the younger generation. I grew up in a one-income, middle class family during the 60s and 70s. We didn’t have health insurance back them. No one did. It was a fee-for-service system. And it was affordable. We didn’t need heath insurance.
Insurance isn’t cost effective. If insurance were cost-effective, insurance companies would go out of business. They turn a profit on insurance because you pay in more than they pay out. It’s really pretty obvious.
In fact, government sponsored health insurance drives up the cost of health care. If gov’t is footing the bill, then the companies don’t have to be competitive. Just look at the post office.
BTW, I’m not knocking insurance, per se. But insurance is no solution to health care costs that annually rise higher than the rate of inflation. You end of with rationed health care. Just look at the UK.
“They're the issues that affect her most—more than abortion or gay marriage—and she thinks they're the issues Jesus prioritized, too: ‘I know that Jesus said visit the sick, feed the hungry,’ she said. ‘I feel like I'm not going against my faith by putting those issues at the forefront’."
First of all, she mentioned three issues, not just one. Was Jesus a member of the Green Party?
He also didn’t talk about the sick in general or the poor in general. That has reference to sick or hungry Christians.
BTW, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t be charitable. But the Bible distinguishes between people who are poor through no fault of their own (e.g. widows and orphans) and people who are poor due to their lifestyle choices (e.g. sluggards).
In addition, the Bible proposes various forms of workfare (e.g. indentured service, gleaning the fields) rather than welfare. It proposes interest free loans rather than food stamps. You have to repay a loan.
"The whole gay thing?’ she says. ‘Jesus never mentioned homosexuals at all’."
Let’s see—he condemned fornication (Mt 5:19), defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman (Mt 19:4-6), and mentioned God’s judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah (Mt 10:15). Just what Bible is she reading?
Anyway, it wouldn’t matter if Jesus was silent on the subject. Christian theology isn’t limited to a red-letter edition of the Gospels. Jesus upheld OT ethics, and he also appointed men to speak on his behalf.
Now let’s transition to black “evangelicals” who plan to vote for Obama.
“I started by explaining that for African Americans, there is a sense of hope no longer being deferred. Instead, hope is at the front door knocking furiously, waiting to see if African Americans will answer. If we open the door, forty million African Americans are going to witness a fellow African American getting the largest slice of the American Dream Pie—a dessert many had hoped to see people of color eat in their lifetime, but the many fell asleep having embraced such promises from afar.”
http://ericredmond.wordpress.com/2008/07/11/how-can-any-christian-african-american-vote-for-obama-throwing-the-race-card-on-an-all-black-table/
In other words, vote for him for the empty symbolism. That’s racist. It’s racial tokenism. Vote for a black—any black. Would Redmond vote for Idi Amin or Robert Mugabe?
Black “evangelicals” would be selling themselves cheap if they cast their vote for empty symbolism.
“As the struggle for social and economic equality has been a struggle for all African Americans, regardless of belief system(s), we all share in the joy when one of our own achieves the (presumptive) nomination for the highest office in the land.”
In other words, if you neighbor wins the lottery, then you win the lottery. Except that you don’t. If you neighbor wins the lottery, he gets the big fat check, not you. You’re exactly where you were before he won.
So this is more empty symbolism.
“An office that has been reserved for white males only until now.”
I wouldn’t say the presidency is been “reserved” for white males only until now. Running Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton for president isn’t much of a test.
“Obama’s candidacy would allow all African Americans to say to our forefathers, “we finally did it!’…”
More empty symbolism. Your forefathers can’t hear you. They’re dead and buried.
“Hope, yea victory, is finally here! We are equal at the highest level!”
That’s an illusion. If Obama is elected, it will be white votes that put him over the top. His success or failure still depends on white power.
“If we take DuBois’ musings as an accurate analysis of African American existence, we can see another factor involved in Christian African Americans’ support of Obama: identity.”
Which has nothing to do with Christian identity.
“We now have a candidate who we think identifies with the experience of African Americans.”
No, he identifies with his white Ivy League professors.
“He has experienced the struggle of the great-great-great-grandchildren of slaves (even though he is not one).”
No, he experienced affirmative action.
“So surely, it is supposed, he will fight for policies and programs that will be sensitive to the plight of his people and that work toward uplifting the entire race of people.”
Social programs don’t uplift black Americans. They hold them down.
“To the place where the playing field is level.”
In what sense is the playing field tilted?
“Surely, as one of us, he will sign into law measures that will protect the gains made during the Civil Rights and post-Civil Rights Eras.”
If Obama loses, will the South reinstate Jim Crow? I don’t think so.
“Because he is one of us, we have hope that we will no longer have to look at ourselves through the contemptuous eyes of others—i.e., white Americans.”
Do white Americans look with contempt on black Americans? That’s a pretty sweeping statement.
“We now can look at ourselves through the eyes of the man who could hold the most well-known office in the free-world, and he can look at the world through our eyes.”
This, too, is racist. It reflects a racial inferiority complex. A need for symbolic affirmation.
I’ve never voted for president to validate my personal identity. I’ve never seen myself through the eyes of my president. I never saw myself through the eyes of Bill Clinton.
The implication of Redmond’s statement is that black Americans need to prove themselves to themselves, prove themselves to white Americans, and prove themselves to the world.
Once again, that’s a racist sentiment. It reflects a racial inferiority complex.
If you really think you’re equal, then you have nothing to prove. No one to impress. You’re secure in your own identity.
“For African Americans, to deny Obama would then be, in some sense, to deny one’s own identity.”
In other words, any black American who doesn’t vote for Obama is a traitor. What does this say about Redmond’s priorities?
And how does his attitude differ from the attitude of a Klansman? What’s the difference between white identity politics and black identity politics?
For example, Bobby Jindal is a rising star in the GOP. Would it be a denial of my white identity to vote for an East Indian American? Why should racial identity—whether mine or his—even be a consideration?
“Being able to see the potential for mutual embracing of identities in a candidate further means that African Americans will not feel the need to settle on the candidate who represents the lesser of two evils.”
Only if racial identity trumps Christian identity or moral identity.
“By common consent, many African Americans feel that their votes are taken for granted by one major political party, and only courted as tokenism by the other major party.”
There’s some truth to that. It’s a vicious cycle. Republicans ignore most black candidates because most black candidates are liberal. Most black candidates ignore the GOP in return.
We need movement in both directions. The GOP should seek out talented conservative “minorities” while talented conservative “minorities” should seek out the GOP.
“The votes do not result in policy changes that benefit African Americans as a whole no matter which party’s candidate wins office.”
Conservative policies benefit every race.
“An Obama candidacy immediately changes the hopeless feelings of resignation as the fall approaches.”
“Feelings.”
“Higher than average African American attendance at the polls in November could be a reflection of the joy brought on by the ability to pick a candidate without mental or emotional reservation and resignation.”
But they should have mental reservations about Obama. Indeed, that’s an understatement.
“An Obama nomination looks like a nomination for social justice – far more than does a nomination for someone from the other party.”
What social injustice does Redmond think black Americans are still enduring?
“If the Illinois senator will carry both white and Black voters in November, unlike Democratic candidates from other ethnicities, he will not be able to make promises to African Americans without accountability to keep his promises.”
My that’s credulous. White politicians lie to white voters all the time. Why would a black candidate be any different?
“Instead, he will be under pressure not to let his people down judicially. He will have to reject policies that stand against the Democratic version of racial progress, and he will have to sign into law policies that stand for such progress.”
What current policies stand in the way of blacks?
“They expect social and economic justice policies to find favor with this candidate, for Affirmative Action to be strengthened, for racial profiling and racial inequities in the legal systems to be brought into account and see diminishing statistics, and for ‘equal justice for all’ to be more than words on the halls of justice.”
You know, this way of casting the issue makes it sound as if we have an all-black underclass under the heel of an all-white government.
Last time I checked, there were black judges, black big-city majors, black big-city councilmen, black big-city police chiefs in charge of an integrated police force, &c. Who's oppressing whom?
“An Obama presidency would portray justice in another odd sort of way. Akin to the issue of hope above, his election would be seen as vindication. It would have a self-correcting effect on the errors of America’s history, with its sins of chattel slavery, Jim Crow laws.”
We’ve already corrected those errors.
“And ongoing civil injustices.”
Such as?
“What greater way is there for African Americans in turn to say, ‘We have overcome!”
I can think of a greater way. What about raising your kids in two-parents homes. Helping them with their homework so that they graduate from high school. Things like that.
“What an Obama in the White House would do for African Americans is allow us to feel.”
To “feel.”
“We can say, ‘Now this country is going to treat us equally, fairly, justly’.”
“Now”? Redmond is a pretty successful man in his own right to feel so victimized.
Does Barack Obama look like a victim of social injustice to you? Does his wife look like a victim of social injustice to you? If that’s the face of social injustice, it’s pretty lucrative.
“The above thoughts do not make a judgment on whether Christian African Americans should or should not vote for Obama.”
Of course it’s a judgment on Christian black Americans who don’t vote for him. Redmond just implied that any black American who doesn’t vote for Obama is a traitor to the black race.
“The intention of this work is only to offer some reasons that explain why Christian African Americans might vote for Obama in the fall.”
But notice that he didn’t give any Christian reasons. Not a single one.
“It does not address the suggested contradiction between voting for a pro-choice candidate and claiming to be a voter who holds a pro-life position. Personally, I think that sanctity of life issues only deal with one of ten areas of sin in the Decalogue, so they are not to be elevated above all of the other prohibitions and commandments.”
To begin with, he keeps harping on slavery. But weren’t the abolitionists single-issue politicians? Slavery was just one issue.
And what about the 10 Commandments? Is Obama any better on the other 9 commandments?
By belonging to one of the most liberal Christian denominations, Obama violated the 1st commandment.
By belonging to a church that advocated black liberation theology, Obama violated the 2nd commandment. He idolizes racial identity.
So does Redmond. Redmond idolizes Obama. He talks about Obama the way followers of Father Divine used to take about their leader.
Violation of the 3rd commandment was a crime in the Mosaic law. Does Obama intend to criminalize blasphemy? No.
Does Obama intend to restore the blue laws? No. So much for the 4th commandment.
BTW, I’m not saying if the 10 commandments should be enacted into law. I’m just measuring Obama by the yardstick which Redmond handed me.
Does Obama support the 5th commandment? No. He supports the welfare state. The welfare state doesn’t honor parents. To the contrary, the welfare state denies parental authority. It supplants parental authority. It usurps the role of the parent.
What about the 6th commandment? Redmond already concedes that Obama’s policies violate this command.
And that’s especially ironic. Redmond harps on racial identity, yet abortion is a form of racial genocide. Redmond harps on racial identity as long as we exclude black babies from life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
What about the 7th commandment? Adultery was a capital offense in the Mosaic law. Does Obama intend to execute adulterers? I don’t think so.
Again, I’m not saying if he should or shouldn’t. Just seeing if he measures up to Redmond’s yardstick.
What about the 8th commandment? The welfare state is a form of theft. Coercive income redistribution.
What about the 9th commandment? Our current judicial system isn’t designed to acquit the innocent and convict the guilty. It’s only concerned with the rights of the accused, even when that involves the suppression of probative evidence.
Does Obama plan to rectify that situation? Not that I heard.
What about the 10th commandment? But the welfare state is predicated on envy. Class warfare. It institutionalizes the sin of covetousness—unless, of course, you’re a rich liberal politician, in which case you shelter your major assets and overtax the middle class.
So Obama flunks every one of the Ten Commandments.
Eric Redmond is a black man first and a Christian second—which is no kind of Christian at all.
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