Hilary of Poitiers' commentary on Matthew was recently translated into English by D.H. Williams (Commentary On Matthew [Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2012]). Williams, a patristic scholar who's a Protestant, thinks Paul's concept of justification through faith alone is found in Hilary's commentary. Hilary uses the term "faith alone" in some places when describing his view of justification, and some of his other remarks suggest the same concept without using that terminology. However, elsewhere Hilary makes comments that are suggestive of baptismal regeneration or some other form of justification through works.
Disputes over justification in the church fathers involve several issues. I want to outline some of those before going on to discuss Hilary's significance.
Tuesday, September 08, 2015
Monday, September 07, 2015
The will of the elites
First, progressives can never be taken seriously when they lecture about the “rule of law.” They couldn’t possibly care less about it. If they want “the law” to be obeyed, then why are they crucifying some clerk in some county in Kentucky while celebrating sanctuary cities? And why are they cheering her imprisonment for not signing her name to a piece of paper, yet remaining silent on the multiple felonies committed by Hillary Clinton? Why do they throw stones at a clerk who inconvenienced a few homosexuals, but defend a secretary of state who put our national security at risk by conducting classified business using a private server stored in a bathroom closet?
I mean, the rule of law? THE RULE OF LAW? Sorry for screaming, but I’m afraid my head might explode if I see or hear one more leftist use that term. Where were these progressive proponents of “law” when Barack Obama was illegally enacting the DREAM Act? Where were they when this administration unilaterally and illegally changed Obamacare repeatedly and without congressional consent? Where were they when the IRS was targeting conservative groups? Or when the Department of Justice was prosecuting journalists? Or when Obama was assassinating American citizens?
As a matter of fact, forget all of this, where were they — where was anyone — when this government was running weapons to Syrian terrorists through the consulate in Libya, which led directly to the assassination of an American diplomat, which the administration then lied about in front of the American people? We don’t even talk about that, do we? No, we’re too preoccupied with our mission to hunt down rogue pencil-pushers.
And I wonder how many of these solemn believers in “law” were the same ones making excuses for riots a few months ago? How many are offended by a woman refusing to file paperwork, but were sympathetic to barbarians who burned half a city to the ground?
The hypocrisy is absolutely staggering. These pious little preachers of “law” couldn’t actually give less of a damn about the law. This is about dogma. It always has been.
Second, speaking of which, the Obergefell v. Hodges decision had absolutely nothing to do with the law. Gay “marriage” was forced upon the states by five human beings in black robes sitting in a big stone temple in D.C. The Constitution, which clearly says nothing about gay “marriage,” was ignored. The consent of the people — many of whom live in states, like Kentucky, where the Constitution expressly defines marriage as between a man a woman — was not respected or even considered. If Kim Davis is a government official making up her own laws as she goes along, she’s only following the precedent of the federal government. The only difference is that her “made-up” law is the one that existed before a handful of federal judges made up a new one. So who is the lawless anarchist here?
Gay “marriage” is itself nothing but the will of the elites. It is as much a legal abomination as a moral one. Many people have said, “Well, gay ‘marriage’ is the law of the land, so that’s that,” but what they mean is, “Well, five people in Washington support gay ‘marriage,’ so that’s that.” No, that isn’t that. That’s tyranny. That’s injustice. That’s illegal. It might be true that the Supreme Court has, over time, seized the power to write laws and reshape ancient human institutions according to their radical liberal ideologies, but that doesn’t make it law. It might be “law,” but it isn’t law. Just as gay “marriage” might be “marriage,” but it can never be marriage. The whole thing is a travesty, a sham, an outrage.
So are we morally obligated to cooperate with the evil agendas and the rampant tyrannies of the federal government? Is a clerk in Kentucky, elected by the people of her county and subject to the Constitution of her state, morally required to respect the drunken dictates of judicial activists in Washington? Kim Davis says no. And I think it might be time for the rest of us to come to that same conclusion.
William Provine
Evolutionary biologist William Provine died recently.
They praise him for being a wonderful person, but according to his own worldview, there's no reason to be a wonderful person. I suspect much of his kindness was a residual effect of his former Christian faith and upbringing.
Likewise, I suspect he understood the drastic moral and existential cost of atheism because he had Christianity as a standard of comparison.
I basically agree with him about evolution, although there are scientists (e.g. Rupert Sheldrake, Simon Conway Morris, Michael Behe, Michael Denton) who do think there's design in evolution.
He also suffers from the tunnel vision of people who measure everything by their particular specialization. Even if he believes evolution is true, and there's no evidence for design in evolution, that hardly means there's no evidence for God's existence. That disregards all the other lines of evidence for God's existence.
Finally, I wonder if his labored speech was the result of treatment for brain cancer and the recurrence of his brain cancer.
Why Do Sources Not Refer To Jesus Until After His Lifetime?
People sometimes suggest that the absence of any sources writing about Jesus during his lifetime is a major problem. Why wouldn't anybody have written about him if he existed or, at least, if he was as significant as Christianity claims he was?
Other prominent religious leaders in Israel who lived around the same time, such as Gamaliel and John the Baptist, also aren't mentioned in extant documents dating to their lifetime. Many prominent philosophers and political and military leaders of the ancient world aren't mentioned in extant documents until after their death. There are a lot of potential reasons for that.
Other prominent religious leaders in Israel who lived around the same time, such as Gamaliel and John the Baptist, also aren't mentioned in extant documents dating to their lifetime. Many prominent philosophers and political and military leaders of the ancient world aren't mentioned in extant documents until after their death. There are a lot of potential reasons for that.
Sunday, September 06, 2015
She's been married four times!
According to Arminian theologian Randal Rauser:
This brings me to an issue I’ve raised at several points in the past. So long as Christians apply to others different standards from those which they apply to themselves and their immediate belief community, they will not have a credible moral voice in the public square.
Oh yeah, and as for that clerk Kim Davis, she’s been married four times. (To be fair, that’s three divorces before she says she became a Christian. But that doesn’t change Jesus’ above-mentioned indictment.)
http://randalrauser.com/2015/09/christians-standing-against-gay-marriage-need-to-be-consistent-on-divorce/
I've discussed this once before, but now I'd like to approach it from a different angle. Rauser's objection is hardly unique to him, but it's even more inexcusable for him to use it because he is a reasonably sophisticated thinker who's capable of drawing intelligent conceptual distinctions when he wants to. But his desire to assimilate with the cultural elite in this case betrays him into shoddy logic.
Davis's marital status is a red herring. Why? Because this is not first and foremost about her. She's just an incidental player. One face of a cause far larger than herself. The question at issue is not her goodness, but the goodness of the cause which she–among so many others–happens to represent. The morality of a cause grounded is the principle, not the person. A bad person doesn't make a good cause bad.
That should be obvious, but since so many people miss it, let's consider a few concrete illustrations:
Hitler, Mussolini, and FDR all had mistresses. Historians suspect Ike had a mistress. Would it therefore be reasonable to conclude that fighting for Nazism and fighting against Nazism were morally equivalent? Hardly.
From what I've read, Gandhi was a pretty sleazy person. Does that delegitimate the cause of Indian independence? Why should it? That's something you must judge on the merits. If Gandhi were worthier, that wouldn't make the cause any worthier–and if he were less worthy, that wouldn't make the cause less worthy.
I think it's safe to say that Dabney and Thornwell were more personally virtuous than Sherman and Grant. Does that mean the Confederate cause was more virtuous than abolitionism? What a non sequitur.
From what I've read, Martin Luther King suffered from some glaring moral and theological deficiencies. (And, of course, the same could be said for some of his opponents.)
Does that discredit the Civil Rights movement? Not at all. King was never the standard of comparison.
Causation and dualism
Traditionally, many Christians subscribe to substance dualism. That is to say, they think humans have an immortal, incorporeal soul. That's largely based on Biblical passages which indicate an intermediate state between death and the general resurrection. That when you die, you don't cease to exist. Consciousness survives brain death. And I think that's correct.
A stock objection to dualism is that it's hard to see how one kind of substance (matter) can act on another kind of substance (mind) or vice versa.
This is based almost entirely on the intuition that causation involves a point of contact. It can be direct contact between cause and effect, or it can be energy transfer that's transmitted through an intervening medium. A physical chain of cause and effect–like a game of pool or dominoes.
Let's consider some comparisons. Alcohol is a mood-altering chemical. At least in theory, it's not hard to grasp how ingesting or imbibing a chemical substance can affect brain chemistry. Beer and brain are both physical substances.
Compare that to a hug. Hugs are mood altering gestures. But it's harder to explain how gentle, momentary pressure on the sternum can affect one's mood.
The stock explanation is appeal to oxytocin. A hug releases oxytocin, which has a chemical effect on the brain.
And that may be true to some degree. However, to explain the effect of a hug by reference to oxytocin only pushes the question back a step, for you must then explain how a neuropeptide have that effect. Is a neuropeptide really responsible for all the varied dispositions that people attribute to it? For many people, a hug is deeply meaningful in a way that seems to be irreducible to stimulating one neuropeptide.
It seems more plausible to explain the mood-altering effect of a hug as innate code language. We've been designed to interpret a hug as a social signal.
In any case, the effect seems to be further removed from the physical cause in that instance than alcohol consumption.
Be that as it may, let's consider one further example, which is even more detached from a point of contact: watching a movie or a game can be a mood-altering experience. It can make the viewer happy, sad, or mad. It can be exciting.
What the viewer sees causes a mood in the viewer. But what is the nature of the cause? It doesn't act on the brain in any direct sense.
Rather, certain images hold personal significance for the viewer. In a movie, he may relate to some characters. He cares about them. He becomes invested in what happens to them.
He can related to their situation. So he is drawn into the story, as if it was happening to him.
It has an emotional effect on him, but that's a purely intellectual, interpretive exercise. Things we see can affect our mental states, not because there's a point of physical contact, but because they are significant to the viewer. That's a cause/effect relation between two disparate substances.
Saturday, September 05, 2015
Unlawful orders
One popular reaction to Kim Davis is that "She should just do her job or resign."
That's a reaction which contains several dubious, unexamined assumptions, some of which I've already addressed.
In addition, I think some people feel that every gov't employee can't be a Supreme Court in miniature. They can't substitute their own interpretation of the Constitution for the Supreme Court. If that were the case, then chaos would ensue.
Let's consider a comparison: I'm not a JAG, but to my knowledge, the military draws a necessary distinction between lawful and unlawful orders.
I believe that barring extenuating circumstances, a soldier is duty-bound to obey lawful orders. He can get into a lot of trouble if he disobeys a lawful order.
However, a soldier is duty-bound to disobey an unlawful order. He can get into a lot of trouble if he obeys an unlawful order. (This is true in law enforcement as well.)
Take the Mỹ Lai Massacre. To say the soldier should either "do his job or quit" is hardly the right response in that situation.
In addition, it is initially up to the soldier to make a personal determination about the legality of the order. Now, his decision may well be reviewed. But he is required to exercise his individual judgment regarding the legality of the order. In that respect, every soldier must judge for himself. Every soldier must be a military tribunal in miniature.
That's not what it may come down to in the final analysis, but he must be able to justify his actions. It's not enough to say "I was just following orders." Rather, it's incumbent on him to interpret the legality of the order.
For instance:
Seems like pretty good motivation to obey any order you're given, right? Nope. These articles require the obedience of LAWFUL orders. An order which is unlawful not only does not need to be obeyed, but obeying such an order can result in criminal prosecution of the one who obeys it. Military courts have long held that military members are accountable for their actions even while following orders -- if the order was illegal.
http://usmilitary.about.com/cs/militarylaw1/a/obeyingorders.htm
In principle, you might object that it's chaotic to say every solider has an obligation to second-guess the legality of orders, yet that hasn't destroyed military discipline. And the alternative is the Nuremberg Defense.
Papal indulgences
The Catholic Church, instructed by the Holy Spirit and in accordance with sacred Scripture and the ancient Tradition of the Fathers, has taught in the holy Councils and most recently in this ecumenical Council that there is a purgatory and that the souls detained there are helped by the acts of intercession (suffragia) of the faithful, and especially by the acceptable sacrifice of the altar.
Related Canon 30 from the Council of Trent's Decree on Justification (Sixth Session, 1547)
30. If anyone says that after the grace of justification has been received the guilt is so remitted and the debt of eternal punishment so blotted out for any repentant sinner, that no debt of temporal punishment remains to be paid, either in this world or in the other, in purgatory, before access can be opened to the kingdom of heaven, anathema sit ["let him be anathema" or excommunicated].
http://www.crossroadsinitiative.com/library_article/775/Decree_on_Purgatory_Council_of_Trent.html
1030 All who die in God's grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified, are indeed assured of their eternal salvation; but after death they undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven.
http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p123a12.htm
1471 "An indulgence is a remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven, which the faithful Christian who is duly disposed gains under certain prescribed conditions through the action of the Church which, as the minister of redemption, dispenses and applies with authority the treasury of the satisfactions of Christ and the saints."81 [Paul VI, apostolic constitution, Indulgentiarum doctrina, Norm 1.]
http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p2s2c2a4.htm
i) If, for the sake of argument, you accept the Tridentine premise, then there's a certain inner logic between purgatory and indulgences. In the Tridenine definition, purgatory involves retributive punishment. It's about guilt. Paying off your debt. Same thing with the treasury of merit. The "satisfactions" of Christ and the saints presume the same forensic category.
If you think there's a treasury of merit which the pope can tap into, then, within that framework, it makes sense to say your purgatorial sentence is subject to commutation or pardon. Someone else paid the debt. Someone else made restitution on your behalf.
ii) Mind you, even on its own terms, that's dubious. It operates with a quantitative view of guilt, as if as sinner has incurred x units of guilt which may be offset by x units of merit. But why think guilt is quantitative rather than qualitative? There are other problems, but I'll pass on that.
iii) Another problem is the contradiction between the traditional conception of purgatory and the contemporary conception (in Roman Catholicism). The contemporary conception has undergone a paradigm-shift from retributive justice to remedial justice. From objective guilt to subjective corruption. Purgatory is now a process of postmortem sanctification to purify the decedent before he is ready for heaven.
But even if you grant that for the sake of argument, it clashes with the traditional theology of indulgences. If purgatory is necessary to complete your sanctification, then that process can't be accelerated or short-circuited by a papal indulgence. Rather, that would operate at its own pace. However long it takes you to eradicate your sinful disposition. An indulgence would prematurely convey you to heaven, before the refining fire has had time burn away the dross.
So you end up with a hybrid theology of purgatory and indulgences, combining disparate elements from two incompatible paradigms.
The least dangerous branch of government
i) On paper, we have separation of powers. Now, humans being what they are, the temptation of each branch is to use the legitimate power it has to gain illegitimate power at the expense of the other two branches. We have this perennial tug of war where one branch attempts to augment its power by taking power away from another branch, or vice versa.
Within limits, the system can survive. But ultimately, separation of powers is a honor system. It depends on each branch exercising self-restraint. If one or more branches refuse to play by the rules, then the system breaks down. It becomes unworkable.
When that happens, moreover, there may be no solution within the system. You can only have checks and balances on abuse of power if the abusive branch honors the checks and balances.
ii) To my knowledge, one function of the courts is to adjudicate between conflicting laws. You can have conflicting laws between state and Federal statutes, as well as conflicting Federal statues. Or conflicts between statutory law and the regulations promulgated by executive agencies.
In case of conflict, the court may have to decide which law prevails. In ruling in favor of a litigant, it must pick which law prevails.
Likewise, the Constitution is the supreme law of the land. The courts must interpret the Constitution, just like the courts must interpret state and Federal statutes. So, for instance, you might have a conflict between state law and the US Constitution. That has to be resolved.
In that respect, I think judicial review has some validity. This is reinforced by the fact that, in some cases, Federal law trumps state law. In case of conflict, I can understand why Federal judges might have the authority to strike down state laws.
iii) Even in these instances of judicial review, judges need to act in good faith. If they abuse their authority by using a case as a pretext to strike down a state law on ideological grounds, then that delegitimates the ruling. And it becomes a question of whether a state or another branch of gov't should acquiesce to that ruling for the sake of stability.
iv) I'd add that (ii) that has limitations, given Federalism. For instance:
The U.S. Constitution grants the federal government with power over issues of national concern, while the state governments, generally, have jurisdiction over issues of domestic concern. While the federal government can enact laws governing the entire country, its powers are enumerated, or limited; it only has the specific powers allotted to it in the Constitution. For example, Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution grants Congress the power to levy taxes, mint money, declare war, establish post offices, and punish piracies on the high seas. Any action by the federal government must fall within one of the powers enumerated in the Constitution.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/federalism
v) Mind you, I don't think it's incumbent on the court has to fix vague or conflicting laws. The court can send it back to Congress or the legislature. Say it's up to Congress or the legislature to rewrite the law to eliminate the conflict or eliminate the ambiguity.
vi) Ever since FDR, we've had a proliferation of executive agencies that issue endless regulations. These are promulgated, not by elected officials, who are answerable to the voter, but by faceless unaccountable bureaucrats.
As such, the only recourse a private business or private citizen has is to challenge it in court. To that extent, I can appreciate why judges might have the authority to strike down regulations of executive agencies. These have the force of law, yet they lack the legitimacy of statutory law, which was the product of legislators, enacting the will of the electorate–at least in theory.
vii) Of course, one partial solution is to ax some of these agencies. Likewise, instead of Congress merely authorizing an executive agency to do something, Congress could and should detail what the agency is required to do.
viii) Then there's the stickier question of whether the judiciary should have the right to strike down acts of Congress. To discharge its Constitutional duties, each branch of gov't must interpret the Constitution. The executive branch must construe what the Constitution has to say about the jurisdiction of the executive branch. Ditto: the judicial and legislative branches. Jefferson had an interesting theory:
"My construction of the Constitution is . . . that each department is truly independent of the others and has an equal right to decide for itself what is the meaning of the Constitution in the cases submitted to its action; and especially where it is to act ultimately and without appeal."
—Thomas Jefferson to Spencer Roane, 1819. ME 15:214
On that view, as I understand it, each branch might be at liberty to disregard how the other two branches interpret the Constitution when it concerns actions that don't require the cooperation of the other branches. That wouldn't be the same thing as striking down an act of Congress. Rather, a judge would refuse to take that into account when ruling for or against a litigant. It would rule on the basis of the judge's own understanding of the Constitution, or refrain from ruling at all unless the Constitution speaks to that particular issue.
However, I'm not sure how practical that is. At most, that would only work in cases where the court doesn't need the cooperation of the executive for the ruling to take effect. And in many cases, moreover, the Constitution doesn't specify a legal remedy. That's why we have statutory law.
ix) Thus far I've been using examples where the court has a legal frame of reference. A conflict between one law and another. Sometimes, however, the Supreme Court strikes down laws when no other preexisting law forms the standard of comparison. It isn't picking one law over another. Rather, it fabricates a right.
One tactic is to build on a false premise. The use of dubious precedents to justify a lawless ruling.
x) This generates a dilemma. To disregard judicial rulings has a destabilizing effect. After all, we do need a judiciary branch. It must have authority to do its job. Taken too far, if you flout judicial rulings you end up with a banana republic.
However, that must be offset by the danger of judicial despotism. A runaway judiciary is just as threatening to a democratic republic as nullification. So there are tradeoffs. Separation of powers requires a degree of judicial independence, but if that's abused too often it will become tyrannical.
And this hazard isn't confined to the judiciary. Each branch of gov't has the potential to go rogue. So we have the same tradeoffs. When does the risk of tyranny outweigh the risk of anarchy? When does the risk of anarchy outweigh the risk of tyranny?
It's like human shields. If the enemy puts military assets in civilian population centers, then dares you to defend yourself by bombing civilians, it has deliberately taken the most humane military options off the table. What's left is a choice between bad and worse.
Likewise, if one branch of gov't flagrantly abuses its authority, there may be no good solution. The remaining options all have potentially dire downsides. There may be no political solution, no redress within the system itself, if the internal strain becomes too great.
Not the law of the land
The Supreme Court ruling on homosexual marriage was based on judicial review. That's a contentious issue in American jurisprudence, with a very checkered history. To say, without further ado, that judicial rulings are "the law of the land" is not a given:
Religious accommodation
Many critics of Kim Davis who ignorantly accuse her of breaking the law are oblivious to the fact that the law requires employers (including the gov't) to make reasonable religious accommodations.
Although he's clearly unsympathetic to Davis, this prominent law prof. makes some useful points about religious accommodation:
Revolution from within
Interesting observations from a law prof who's unsympathetic to Davis on the merits, but can still see a principled argument for civil resistance:
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If disobedience or some form of revolution were acceptable here, why should it be off-limits to keep my job while undermining it? Why isn’t undermining one’s job from the inside, in the service of a larger moral goal, an acceptable form of revolution? The “quit or do your job” folks, to the extent they hold out the extreme option of revolution, seem to be all implying that revolution must, at a minimum, require quitting. But if gay marriage justifies revolution, it’s hard for me to see why a form of revolution can’t be fifth-column undermining on the job.
Scalia and others have an answer: public officials have a duty not to engage in this form of revolution because of their oath. But that assumes that the oath is really valid in immoral conditions. Surely there can be oaths that, while not immoral on their face, cease to be binding once it’s clear that they require one to engage in immoral acts. Imagine you’re a public official in Nazi Germany — I don’t know what kind of oaths they took, but suppose you took an oath when it wasn’t clear that you were serving an immoral regime, and the regime gives you orders that are more and more immoral. And suppose there’s nothing to prevent you from resigning — and, if you like, joining the Allied armies or the armed resistance. Are you required to do that rather than keep your job and seek to undermine the regime? I don’t think so.
Admittedly, I don’t think that all resistance that’s justifiable in Nazi Germany is also justifiable in the contemporary United States. As Dale Carpenter says in his recent post, “ not every moral problem is like slavery.” I agree: in fact, Dale and I think Davis is wrong on the merits, so of course we don’t think this is comparable to slavery (or Nazi Germany). But it’s tough to put ourselves in the position of people who believe differently: I’ve observed some hard-liners who really do think that gay marriage is a comparable evil. Not that we have to agree with that view, but the question is whether the (possibly oath-based) proceduralist argument (“do your job or engage in revolution, but if you do that you have to quit, because OMG the oath”) should carry any logical weight with adherents of that view. While I think acceptable resistance against Nazis differs from acceptable resistance against liberal democratic governments, the reason I think that has nothing to do with oaths, and it’s not clear to me how an oath-based theory would successfully distinguish between the two situations.
Bottom line: I’m fine continuing to criticize Davis on substantive moral grounds. And I’m fine showing why Davis’s actions are illegal under the positive law; but once you get to the point where you’re making the illegality serve a normative goal, you have to confront issues of legitimate disobedience, and I’m not sure that a purely procedural (“quit or do your job”) argument will work to exclude Davis’s “keep your job but follow your ideals” strategy of disobedience.
Friday, September 04, 2015
Judicial supremacy
According to Princeton law prof. Robert P. George,
Judicial supremacy is an anti-constitutional doctrine, not a constitutional principle. Cases such as Dred Scott v. Sandford, Roe v. Wade, and Obergefell v. Hodges are unconstitutional usurpations by the judiciary of the constitutional authority of the American people acting through their elected representatives in the Congress and state legislatures. The edicts handed down in these decisions are not "the law of the land" and should not be treated as such by the people or other public officials. What Abraham Lincoln said in rejecting the Court's lawless and usurpative ruling in Dred Scott remains true: to accept judicial supremacy would be for the American people to "resign their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal." In the debate between Abraham Lincoln and Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney, the author of the Dred Scott opinion, we should side with the Great Emancipator. To do otherwise is to abandon republican government and accept, to quote Thomas Jefferson, "the despotism of an oligarchy."
https://www.facebook.com/robert.p.george.39/posts/884217818313444?pnref=story
Lowder needs to take a chill pill
Where is the Condemnation from Theists For Zacharias’s Dishonesty?
September 2, 2015 by Jeffery Jay Lowder
If a prominent atheist such as Richard Dawkins had exaggerated his credentials in the way Ravi Zacharias has, then we can be sure that theists would have shouted that fact from the mountaintops.
So why is it that Zacharias is getting a “free pass” from theists?
I won't name names, but I know that several prominent, vocal theists do read this blog on a regular basis. (You know who you are.)
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/secularoutpost/2015/09/02/where-is-the-condemnation-from-theists-for-zachariass-dishonesty/
I'll begin by making some general comments about "hypocrisy" before turning to the specific case of Ravi.
i) Like liberals generally, Jeff is obsessed with the specter of hypocrisy (or equivalent terms). Mind you, liberals and atheists are only bothered by real or perceived hypocrisy by Republicans and Christians. When it comes to hypocritical Democrats, they shrug.
ii) Because Jeff shares this obsession, he just assumes that Christians are as alert to "hypocrisy" as he is, and would be quick to jump on that issue if someone like Richard Dawkins were the hypocrite. But due to our partisan commitments, we turn a blind eye when one of our own is guilty.
iii) Hypocrisy can stand for two different things:
In my experience, unbelievers fixate on the ethical dimension of hypocrisy. Hypocrisy as a character issue. Behavior that preemptively disqualifies the Republican or Christian from having an argument or position we should take seriously. You must have moral authority to speak to an issue. If you're a hypocrite, then we can safely discount your position or argument. That's the tactic.
As I say, they only care about the ethics of hypocrisy when it concerns a Christian or Republican.
iv) Now, I think the avoidance of hypocrisy is important for individual ethics. My personal behavior.
As a rule, I'm less concerned about hypocrisy in other people. It's not my responsibility. I'm not living their life for them.
A partial exception would be people who wield power over me. When voting for a candidate, his integrity (or lack thereof) is one consideration. Policy and morality are often linked, for good or ill.
Likewise, there are certain jobs, like the pastorate, that demand personal integrity.
v) "Hypocrisy" carries an ethical connotation. But I'm less concerned with the ethical dimension than the intellectual dimension.
Even then, intellectual consistency in the abstract isn't a virtue. If you begin with a faulty principle, and you think or act consistent with that faulty principle, then intellectual consistency is vicious rather than virtuous.
My concern isn't primarily with someone's consistency or inconsistency, but with whether their position is right or wrong. Consistency is good if the underlying principle is good, but if the underlying principle is bad, then the more inconsistent the better.
vi) That doesn't mean inconsistency is unimportant. There are people who begin with their cause, then resort to any argument to defend it. They don't hesitate to use contradictory arguments. They are blind or shameless partisans who routinely apply double standards.
What is that important? If they had a reasonable position, they should be able to defend it with consistent arguments. Lack of intellectual consistency may mean they don't have evidence and reason on their side. There is no guiding principle beyond whatever furthers the cause.
In that respect, it's useful to expose intellectual inconsistencies. That's a test of rationality rather than morality. Not so much what it says about their character, but their coherence–or lack thereof.
Mind you, people can be inconsistent for innocent reasons. They may lack the aptitude, expertise, or leisure time to work out a consistent position.
vii) Suppose Dawkins was guilty of resume inflation. That would be significant, not so much because of what it said about his character, but his qualifications. Is he an authority on the question at issue? It's not that his character is unimportant, but it's fairly unimportant to me, since I'm not him.
viii) Turning to Ravi, Jeff links to an earlier post on the same blog. I don't recall having seen that post. I don't mouse over to The Secular Outpost everyday. And when I do, I begin skimming it. I check the authors and titles. Depending on the author or title, I may or may not read it. It's a question of time management.
ix) I don't pay much attention to Ravi because he's a popularizer. As a rule, I don't read Christian popularizers. Rather, I read people I have something to learn from. Ravi isn't on my regular reading list. I don't recall if I've ever read a book by him. If so, it was many years ago.
Sometimes I'll read just enough of an author to make a preliminary judgment about whether he is worth reading. If I'm unimpressed, I likely will not revisit that writer.
It's different with atheism. I do read some popularizers–as well as the philosophers, scholars, and scientists. But that's because atheist popularizers are influential, and I use them as a foil.
x) The post Jeff links to accuses Ravi of resume inflation. For all I know, that may well be the case. If so, it is wrong for him to misrepresent his academic credentials.
xi) That said, I have no independent confirmation for some of the allegations in the post. And the post itself is from a hostile, partisan source, so it would be naive to presume the accuracy of the allegations.
To evaluate the supporting material, I'd have to attempt to do my own fact-checking. But why should I expend my time on that rather than something else? What makes that a priority?
xii) The post says his website altered his CV after some of his academic claims were challenged. That's quite possible. But I don't have before and after screenshots, so I can't verify that allegation.
xiii) The post faults him for touting a doctorate when, in fact, all he has are honorary doctorates. Well, I don't approve of honorary doctorates. But Ivy League institutions award these to prominent atheists. So why single out Ravi for opprobrium?
In fact, it's ironic that in the name of consistency, a Christian apologist is reproached for flaunting honorary doctorates when so many atheists do the same thing, yet that's passed over in silence.
xiv) The post uses the charge of resume inflation as a pretext to attack Ravi on positions they disagree with, like dating the book of Daniel. But that has nothing to do with resume inflation. Rather, that suggest the case against Ravi on resume inflation is thin, so they must pad it with extraneous allegations to make it look more impressive.
xv) East Indians (as well as other minorities) are severely underrepresented in Christian apologetics. So we need to encourage their participation.
What if Kim Davis was Muslim?
This has become an overnight trope for opponents of Kim Davis:
What I want is even one reputable journalist (if any remain) to ask that question to any of the vocal supporters of Ms. Davis' civil disobedience. In case you didn't get it, I'll repeat the question. How would you feel about this Rowan County Clerk if she were instead a dark-skinned Muslim who refused to do her job because she thought it violated the teachings of the Koran?
That's a pretty stupid question, really; because we all know the answer. If a Muslim Kim Davis were allowed to hold up the civil workings of her county based on the Koran; you all, along with the whole Fox News megaphone would be apoplectic about Sharia Law!!!!!! on a 24/7 basis.
Really, answer that then tell me why you're not a gigantic hypocrite who actually hates religious freedom.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/09/03/1418144/-A-question-for-everyone-supporting-Kim-Davis
So what about her religious conscience? If you think Davis’ religious conscience is sufficient grounds for a same sex couple to be denied a marriage license then be prepared to defend the religious conscience of a Muslim clerk who denies a heterosexual couple a marriage license because the woman is a Muslim and the man is a non-Muslim. Islamic law forbids Muslim women from marrying non-Muslim men unless they convert. Somehow I can’t see Mike Huckabee going out on a limb for a Muslim marriage clerk who demands an Evangelical Christian male convert to Islam in order to marry a Muslim woman.
http://spectator.org/blog/63971/kim-davis-wrong-so-jailing-her
I would say I can't wait for a Muslim county clerk in, say, Dearborn, Michigan (which has a huge Muslim community), to refuse to issue a marriage license to a Christian couple on the grounds that the this kafir couple hasn't been paying jizya... but that's not going to happen.
http://www.thestranger.com/blogs/slog/2015/09/01/22793219/i-suppose-i-should-say-something-about-kim-davis
Finally, the defenders of “religious liberty” are never entirely honest about what they mean. They only really care about the liberty of Christians, not religious people as such. What would they say if a Muslim county clerk refused to marry a Muslim to a non-Muslim? What would they say if that clerk consented to polygamous marriages in accordance with Sharia law? My guess is they’d sound the alarm bells and hysterically protest the theocratic encroachment.
Slippery slope arguments are almost always sloppy, but not in this case. Once you permit religious objections of this kind, where do you draw the line? What constitutes a genuine religious belief? Who can make such a determination? And how do you apply religious exemptions in a secular and pluralistic context? There are no definitive (or acceptable) answers to these questions, which is why church and state are separate in this country.
http://www.salon.com/2015/09/02/this_is_what_religious_liberty_looks_like_kim_davis_and_the_truth_about_the_rights_fight_for_discriminatio/
As you can see, they imagine this is a real humdinger of a counterexample to Christian supporters of Davis. This will leave us speechless.
Several issues:
i) To defend Kim Davis's action doesn't mean I have to defend her argument. It's not incumbent on me to frame the issue in the same way she does. People can be right even if they don't know how best to argue for their position.
ii) The problem with the analogy is that it's crucially disanalogous. Due to his commitment to Sharia law, the Muslim clerk doesn't respect the Bill of Rights. He doesn't acknowledge Constitutional freedom of religion, freedom of speech, or freedom of association. His religion is antithetical to the civil liberties enshrined in the Bill of Rights.
Therefore, that disqualifies him from being an American gov't official in the first place. He cannot, in good conscience, swear an oath of allegiance to uphold the US Constitution.
By contrast, the Bill of Rights implicitly protects Christian freedom of expression. That's one of the primary religions that James Madison had in mind when he drafted the Bill of Rights. Unlike Islam, there's no conflict between Christianity and the Bill of Rights. So the comparison is vitiated by equivocation.
Davis isn't acting in defiance of the Constitution. To the contrary, the Constitution protects the right of Christians to exercise their faith.
iii) Now some critics would say that's fine in reference to the activities of a private citizen, but a public official must do their job and carry out the law.
Well, in 2004, Kentucky voters outlawed homosexual marriage by amending their state constitution. Therefore, Davis was doing her job. Far from breaking the law, she was following the law. She was doing precisely what the voters of Kentucky authorized her to do in that situation. Opponents of Davis are bent on forcing her to break the law.
In addition, there's no Federal statue that mandates homosexual marriage. No Federal statute that supersedes state law in this situation. By contrast, we do have the RFRA. That's a Federal statue protecting religious freedom.
iv) The real contention is that she defied a Supreme Court ruling. But that raises two issues:
a) The Bill of Rights explicitly protects religious freedom. By contrast, the Constitution contains no explicit or implicit right of homosexual marriage.
It's the duty of the Supreme Court to uphold the Constitution. What happens when, instead of respecting our Constitutional liberties, Justices violate our Constitutional liberties by conjuring up an imaginary right out of thin air, which conflicts with our express Constitutional liberties? They just pretend that there's a Constitutional right of homosexual marriage, when there's nothing in the text, logic, history, or original intent of the Constitution to justify that imputation.
b) When the same Court rules against the Obama administration in the Hobby Lobby case, the Obama administration simply circumvented the ruling:
No rule of law is anarchy; selective rule of law is tyranny. Liberal officials exempt their own constituency from the rule of law, but use that as a weapon to blugeon their political opponents.
v) As to drawing lines:
a) We can begin by asking what kinds of religions James Madison had in mind when he drafted the Bill of Rights. In the 13 Colonies, what religions were in play? Likewise, when the 13 colonies ratified the Constitution, including the Bill of Rights, what kinds of religious were in view? You can analogize from that to the contemporary situation.
So, for instance, the free exercise clause was never meant to cover a homicidal doomsday cult like Aum Shinrikyo. Rather, it was meant to cover religions like Judaism and 18C Christian sects.
b) In addition, we have a legislative branch. It isn't necessary to read the tea leaves of the Constitution. The Constitution is silent on many specifics. It's up to Congress or state legislatures to fill in the details. For instance, Congress or a state legislature has the authority to outlaw Aum Shinrikyo. It's not the kind of religion that James Madison or the states which ratified the Bill of Rights had in mind. By the same token, Congress or state legislatures have the authority to outlaw jihad.
Hypocrisy and homosexuality
Arminian theologian Randal Rauser continues to stump for homosexual marriage:
In “Christians standing against gay marriage need to be consistent on divorce” I pointed out the tension with Christians impugning gay marriage as unbiblical whilst ignoring Jesus’ teaching on divorce and remarriage.
i) Notice the studied equivocation. "Ignore" in what sense? Is he referring to Christians who get divorced? If so, how are Christians who don't get divorced ignoring Jesus' teaching on divorce and remarriage? How is it hypocritical for them to impugn homosexual marriage?
ii) What about Christians who divorce and remarry on Biblical grounds? They aren't ignoring Jesus' teaching on divorce and remarriage. So how is it hypocritical for them to impugn homosexual marriage?
iii) What about men and women who got divorced and remarried before becoming Christians? Are they disqualified from impugning homosexual marriage? By parity of logic, does that mean former drug addicts are disqualified from impugning drug abuse?
At best, Rauser is alluding to a subset of professing Christians.
In his book The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience, p. 18, Ron Sider points out how serious the problem of divorce is within the evangelical community. Indeed, he suggests that divorce rates may be higher among evangelicals than in the general population.
Rauser fails to engage evidence to the contrary. For instance:
I understand why Christians would rather talk about gay marriage than the ethical black hole of Christians who are divorced and remarried.
Notice how he keeps lumping all Christians into one group, as if Christians who don't divorce are somehow complicit in divorce. How does Rauser draw the line on collective guilt? If people who don't divorce are ipso facto complicit in divorce, are people who don't murder ipso facto complicit in murder?
But if one purports to uphold the Bible as an ethical guide in matters of marriage, one must apply the standards consistently.
That's hopelessly ambiguous. Does he mean apply the standards consistently in your own life? Or does he mean applying that standard to others? If so, in what sense?
I should apply the same standard in evaluating the conduct of others. But that hardly means I'm in a position to enforce that standard on others. There may depend on factors beyond my control, like what's politically feasible in a democratic republic.
I have heard one way that Christians have attempted to deal with the problem. They concede that remarriage in cases other than marital infidelity results in an adulterous union. However, they add, the moral ascription of adultery applies to the event of the divorced man and/or woman marrying rather than to the resulting state of affairs of that man and woman being married. In other words, the moment was adulterous, but the resulting marriage is not.
Presumably the point of this tortured argument is to shift the spotlight back off divorced and remarried Christians and onto gays. But the reasoning is completely spurious. If the original marital event was illegitimate then the resulting state of affairs does not constitute a legitimate marriage.
By that logic, a child who is conceived in sin (e.g. adultery, rape, fornication) is morally tainted. By that logic, if a young athlete is mortally injured by a drunk driver, it would be wrong to harvest his organs (after he succumbs to his injuries) and donate them to needy patients inasmuch as the moral ascription of (vehicular) homicide applies not only to the precipitating event, but the resultant chain of events.
In like manner, Jesus considers the event of becoming married to result in an ongoing reality which persists even if one receives a certificate of divorce from a civil magistrate.
Rauser doesn't present an exegetical argument for that conclusion. Rather, that's an inference based on his extraneous claim that the moral ascription of the precipitating event automatically transfers to resultant consequences.
Don’t skip over that fact. Mull over it. Let it sink in. Hundreds of thousands of Christians are in ongoing unrepentant states of adultery and all the while the church communities in their midst are saying nothing. They’re saying nothing on divorced and remarried Christians, but they sure are saying a lot about gay marriage.
So here’s the fact of the matter. Christians who want to speak with some moral authority on the topic of gay marriage really ought to start by applying to themselves and their immediate belief communities the very biblical standards that they attempt to enforce on others. This isn’t rocket science. It’s ethical consistency 101.
i) To begin with, Christian laymen don't typically interview a candidate for membership and vote on who joins the church. That's usually up to the pastor and elders. Laymen don't know ahead of time which new church members were divorced and remarried. Likewise, some new church members were divorced and remarried on Biblical grounds. In addition, some were divorced and remarriaged before becoming Christian.
These are important moral and theological distinctions, which Rauser deliberately blurs in his demagogical zeal to defend homosexual marriage.
ii) In addition, if a majority of voters want permissive divorce laws, there's nothing that we can do to prevent it or repeal it. We're outvoted. Does that mean we shouldn't do the good we can in other where we have greater political clout?
iii) Rauser is so fixated on "hypocrisy" that he's blind to harm that the homosexual agenda does to many innocent people. The harm to adopted children. The harm to students who are indoctrinated in LGBT propaganda. The harm to students who are punished for dissent. The harm to employees who lose their jobs unless they affirm the LGBT lifestyle. The harm to parental authority. The harm to minors who are molested by homosexual adults because the establishment puts homosexuals in positions of power over minors and gives them access to minors. And so on and so forth.
iv) Finally, for all his high-minded rhetoric, consider the possibility that Rauser's position is dictated by self-interest. Given the political climate in Canada (as well as the US), a way for him to preempt persecution is to capitulate on homosexuality.
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