“The Horror of Surrogate Religions”

"Pope Francis" has diminished the
attractiveness of the papacy

“…transforming the Papacy into a branch of Greenpeace…”

I’m quoting somebody else there, really I am … And following this, is a whole series of really twisted observations from an Italian newspaper.

Popes traditionally have held “Wednesday audiences” in the Vatican – times when the general public can show up and see the pope in person. Generally, you need to make reservations in advance. Tickets are free, but the “Roman Churches Wikia” recommends “You should be at Piazza San Pietro at least 30 minutes before the audience, as there are a lot of people trying to get to their seats”.

At right are two photos from two of these Wednesday audiences. The top photo is undated, but it’s clearly “Pope Francis,” and it is tagged as one of these Wednesday audiences. The bottom photo was from earlier this month (the General Audience of December 2, 2015, which it is said, is “now a recurring sight”, according to the traditionalist blog Rorate Caeli – which nevertheless claims it has loyalty to the papacy).

Along with the photo, they’ve copied an article entitled “The Horror of Surrogate Religions”, by Camillo Langone, published by Il Foglio, “an Italian centre-right daily newspaper, with circulation below 10,000 copies per day”. Still, this is a photograph from a Vatican General Audience, and these comments are from an Italian newspaper. I’m reproducing some of the more graphic comments:

It doesn’t surprise me if St. Peter’s Square is half-empty, or not as full as expected, I would be surprised at the opposite. And I don’t believe that it’s all due to the fear of running into a Muslim with a passion for explosives. It’s true that in recent years, Catholic movements (apart from the Neocatechemunals) capable of bringing youth to the Square have eclipsed, being now reduced to their laughable summer rites … Further, it’s true that Catholicism at the parish level is aged and consequently trembling (the old fear death infinitely more than the young, for them death is a concrete reality, not an idea). Still, it’s not only this. But principally this: as in nature, the heart of man abhors a vacuum.

If the centre of Christianity is perceived as abandoned, this is the reason it ceases to be attractive, this is the reason the fickle head for cults under new guises or old ones, such as environmentalism and animalism which are variations on the pagan theme. Man is a religious being however, and also Pope Francis knows this; in his homily of March 14th 2013, he cited quite surprisingly, the apocalyptic Léon Bloy: “Those who don’t pray to God, are praying to the Devil”.

If the churches aren’t filled with the faithful, sooner or later they will become mosques or at best, museums…

The very contemporary museum run by my friend fills up an ancient abbey emptied by Napoleon and this sounds like something annihilating to me. Jean Clair wrote entire volumes on the museum as a surrogate temple and I have no need of reopening them to know how true this is. That emptiness tends always to filling itself up is a psychological law. Women without children to embrace, easily give themselves to a little dog, they talk to it, they kiss and cuddle it, they buy it little dainties. Father Rosario Struscio, a missionary in India and spiritual father to Madre Theresa, on his return to Italy after many years, was greatly disturbed at “seeing so many women going around with cats in their arms, as if they were children. A Country that has substituted children for cats is a Country with no tomorrow.” It is even a law of city planning: the bell-towers in Milan, which not even archbishops believe in anymore (as the new churches without bell-towers show), have now been replaced with skyscrapers.

“In the desert of their abandonment, the people resign themselves to building the golden calf,” wrote the theologian, Pierangelo Sequeri. Or green idols. If there is no longer belief in Our Lady, the Mother of God, then there is surrender to the fascination of Gaia, the Earth goddess. Clergy yielding to lust, to human senses, need not frighten, but the apostasy of those (as the philosopher of Religion, Marco Vannini retains) “that have lost faith in the Divinity of Christ, and have thus annulled the novelty of the Gospel, by bending themselves in adoration to the world and its Lord” are immensely more dangerous than any Francesca Chaouqui. It is the Dark Society (sic) that projected beasts on the façade of St. Peter’s, specifically on the day of the Immaculate Conception.

It’s a pity that in transforming the Papacy into a branch of Greenpeace, the “mother house” in these affairs is much more credible. Even the other day they were back at it, dictating their agenda by projecting images against tuna-fishing on the monuments of Milan.

John Calvin on Islam

http://theologyandthecity.com/2015/01/02/john-calvin-on-islam/

Does the Koran contradict the Bible?

I'm going to discuss related statements I saw on the Internet by two Christian philosophers. The first said:

Just ran into someone claiming that the God Muslims follow is not the same God as the true God of Christianity, immediately followed by the claim that Muslims are blaspheming God. Take your pick, but I'm not letting you have both of those claims. If they're blaspheming God, then it's God that they're blaspheming and not some other god.

But that's a false dichotomy. Suppose, as a prank, a college student puts the dust-jacket of a Bible on Aleister Crowley's Diary of a Drug Fiend. His roommate, a recent apostate and rabid atheist, flies into a rage when he sees the book, which he takes to be a Bible, and burns it. 

Did his roommate commit blasphemy? Objectively speaking, no. In fact, the book that he unwittingly burnt was a blasphemous book!

Yet he intended to commit blasphemy. He meant to destroy a Bible as an act of sacrilege. So his action was subjectively blasphemous.

The second said:

Now suppose you think, as is plausible, that when the Quran says that God has no son (Q4:171; Q6:101) it’s contradicting the Bible (John 3:16, etc.). In that case, you’re presupposing that the Quran is referring to the same God as the Bible. Conversely, if you think the Quran is referring to a fictional, non-existent deity when it says that God has no son, you need to consider whether the Quran is actually contradicting the Bible in saying so (and if it is contradicting the Bible, how it is doing so). The same goes for other objectionable statements the Quran makes about God. 

If you say the Quran is in fact referring to the God of the Bible (because it make false claims about the God of the Bible) are you thereby implying that Christians and Muslims “worship the same God”? Not necessarily. It all depends what you mean by “worship the same God”. 

http://www.proginosko.com/2015/12/on-contradicting-the-bible/

That raises several issues:

i) Some commentators think these statements reflect Muhammad's garbled, hearsay grasp of the Bible or Christian theology. He had no direct knowledge of the Bible. If so, he's not actually attacking orthodox Christian doctrine. Rather, this represents his misunderstanding of Christian doctrine. 

On that interpretation, Muhammad meant to attack Christian theology, but it was a failed referent. Burning a straw man.

ii) Other commentators think Muhammad is attacking the theology of certain heretical sects. If so, this could be based on firsthand information. It might be reflect an accurate understanding of what they taught. It is not, however, an accurate description of orthodox Christian doctrine. If it was intended to attack Christian theology in general, then it's a failed referent. 

iii) Still other commentators think Muhammad was, in fact, attacking orthodox Christian theology. If so, in that respect it's is about the same God or same Jesus as the Bible. That, however, is contrary what people mean who say Muslims and Christians worship the same God or believe in the same God. For in this case, Muhammad is contrasting Allah with the Christian deity. Muhammad is saying Allah is the one true God in opposition to the Christian deity. 

In that case, it might be possible to affirm a common referent, but deny common belief or common worship.

iv) As to whether the Koran contradicts Biblical theism if Allah is a fictional, nonexistent deity–the worshiper of a nonexistent deity can intend to contrast his god with the Biblical God. Take modern Hindu nationalists who persecute Christians in the name of Lord Rama or some other mythical Hindu god.

v) Finally, we could turn this around. The Bible mocks the idol-gods of paganism as "vanities". There's a sense in which the referent concerns heathen beliefs rather than gods. What they think about gods.  

(For convenience, I've framed the discussion in terms of what Muhammad thought and said. But due to the murky editorial history of the Koran, we don't know how much of the Koran actually goes back to Muhammad.)

A brief note on "do Muslims and Christians worship the same God"

http://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2015/12/a-brief-note-on-do-muslims-and.html

The same God?

"The Same God? A Plea for Precision" by Prof. James Anderson.

Donning the hijab

i) I'm going to comment on the issue of whether Muslims and Christians believe in or worship the same God. This is occasioned by the current controversy at Wheaton. I doubt that either Phillip Ryken or Larcyia Hawkins could offer a philosophically solid defense of their respective positions, so my interest is not to minutely analyze the specifics of this particular situation. Rather, I'm just using it to illustrate some general and perennial principles. 

ii) Regardless of whether the administration formulated a philosophically satisfying argument, Ryken's instincts were right. I think he did the right thing. And it's possible to do the right thing even if you can't give a good reason for what you did. Giving a reason is different than having a reason. 

iii) Believing in a God is different than knowing God. A person can believe in a nonexistent God. Indeed, that's what the Bible says about pagan idolaters.

It's possible to have a natural knowledge of the true God (e.g. Rom 1). However, especially in organized religion, the God one worships or believes in is the theological construct of their faith-tradition. In some cases it's continuous with the natural knowledge of God, but goes well beyond that (i.e. Christianity). In other cases, it subverts the natural knowledge of God (i.e. idolatry, heresy).

v) Likewise, believing in God is different than worshiping God. Worship involves a particular attitude towards God. Reverence, praise, thanksgiving, and devotion. A paradigm case is Satan, who believes in God, but his attitude is the antithesis of worshipful. 

v) There are competing theories of reference. Philosophy being what it is, there's no consensus on the right theory of reference. So any position you take will be subject to challenge. The philosophers I've seen defending Hawkins operate with a theory of linguistic reference (e.g. Frege, Kripke) whereas my starting point is a theory of mental representation or propositional attitudes. 

vi) We don't believe in God directly. Rather, the immediate referent is our concept of God: what we think God is like. True or false worship is inextricably bound up with true and false ideas of God. 

Theologically, that's how Scripture distinguishes between idolatry and true worship. A pagan worships a figment of his own imagination. 

I also think that's true on philosophical and psychological grounds:

The Representational Theory of Mind (RTM) (which goes back at least to Aristotle) takes as its starting point commonsense mental states, such as thoughts, beliefs, desires, perceptions and imagings. Such states are said to have “intentionality” — they are about or refer to things, and may be evaluated with respect to properties like consistency, truth, appropriateness and accuracy. 

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mental-representation/ 

A propositional attitude is the mental state of having some attitude, stance, take, or opinion about a proposition or about the potential state of affairs in which that proposition is true.
A representational approach to belief, according to which central cases of belief involve someone's having in her head or mind a representation with the same propositional content as the belief.  

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/belief/

vii)  I think there's often an equivocation regarding the object of knowledge. The object of knowledge could be a mental representation or what it purports (or intends) to represent. Are we comparing beliefs about God with other beliefs about God, or comparing beliefs about God with God himself? 

A belief about God is not God. A belief about God is a human mental state. So we need some way to draw that distinction. Perhaps we could distinguish between the proximate referent and the remote referent (analogous to the proximal stimulus and distal distal stimulus). The question is whether a particular belief about God corresponds to God. Is God like or unlike my concept of God?

I'd view the referent of "God" or "Allah" as, in the first instance, a mental representation. Beliefs about God. The question, then, is how representational that concept or propositional attitude actually is. If beliefs mediate the referent, then different beliefs have distinguishable referents. 

And a mental representation can misrepresent the object or intended referent. If Muslims and Christians have different mental representations of God, or different propositional attitudes about God, then they don't believe in the same God–if reference is fixed by means of mental content.

viii) I've seen philosophers defend Hawkins by appeal to Frege's distinction between sense and reference. Take the stock example: the Morning Star and the Evening Star mean different things, but share the same referent.

However, that's the case because both designations are based on the same object (Venus), and both are accurate descriptions of the same object, seen at different times under different viewing conditions. Both descriptors correspond to the intended referent. Both are truly about that object. 

If, however, that was not the case, then these wouldn't be coreferential. So we need to distinguish between the intended referent and whether that actually maps onto the object.

Take mistaken identity. If I see a picture of Marlene Dietrich and say that's Rita Hayworth, does it refer to Hayworth? Even if Hayworth is the intended referent, that's not a picture of Hayworth. Even if Muhammad intends for Allah to map onto Yahweh, that doesn't make it so. 

ix) Concepts of God range along a continuum. At one end you had have pagans and heretics. At the other end, theologically astute Christians. And you have borderline cases. I don't think "same" and "different" are adequate to capture degrees of similarity and dissimilarity. It's too dichotomous. 

We need to use more qualified language. It's rather like counterfactual identity, where you take the nearest possible world as a frame of reference. 

With respect to Christians, it comes down to divine condescension. God accepts our sometimes inadequate, inaccurate beliefs about him as if they pick out God. Depending on a person's orthodoxy or theological sophistication, some, many, or most beliefs do map onto God. Ultimately, it's up to God, in his providence, how well any person's theological beliefs track God.

Certainly God's self-revelation in Scripture has given us a reliable basis for true, referential beliefs regarding God. But misinterpretation will produce erroneous beliefs. 

x) Some defenders of Hawkins compare the relationship between Christianity and Islam with the relationship between Christianity and Judaism. There are, however, problems with that comparison:

a) "Judaism" is ambiguous. Judaism isn't any one thing. Does that refer to OT theism, or to the varieties of modern Judaism? 

Bruce Walkte once said in class that because he's an OT professor, people ask him about Judaism, and he tells them that he's not an expert on Judaism because that's a different religion. 

b) It's anachronistic to make OT theism the standard of comparison. You can't just turn back the clock on progressive revelation. 

c) There's a difference between not believing in Trinitarian/Incarnational theology prior to the Incarnation, or the explicit revelation of the Trinity, and rejecting later stages of revelation and redemption. 

d) Of the various religions, Christianity has the most in common with Judaism. But that cuts both ways. If you say that means Christians and Jews believe in or worship the same God, then where does that leave a religion that has less in common with Christianity? Unless you're a religious pluralist (e.g. John Hick), at some point along the spectrum you must draw a line and say they don't believe in or worship the same God. 

For instance, does the Jesus of traditional Mormon theology pick out the same Jesus as the NT? No. The Mormon Jesus is a different kind of being with a completely different backstory. 

It's like comparing Santa Claus to St. Nicholas. St. Nicholas is a historical figure; Santa Claus is a fictional character. Although Santa Claus draws some inspiration from traditions about St. Nicholas, Santa Claus has a different (imaginary) prehistory. Santa Clause and St. Nicholas aren't coreferential.  

xi) I'd say Allah is a fictive construct. A fictional character in a fictional book. I'd classify the Koran as historical fiction. That genre can combine factual elements with imaginary incidents and imaginary characters. 

By contrast, Yahweh/Jesus/the Trinity is real. Assuming that's the case, in what respect do Christians and Muslims believe in the same God? Put another way, how is that different than comparing Jesus to Krishna or Yahweh to Zeus? 

When the specific contention is whether Muslims and Christians believe in the same God, or worship the same God, I don't see how we can avoid the criterion of mental content or mental representations, given that framework. 

Of course, a Muslim would accuse me of begging the question, but I'm not debating a Muslim. At the moment we have an intramural debate between professing Christians (especially evangelicals) who take the truth of Christianity for granted. And if some of them are religious pluralists, then that's a different debate. 

I don't hesitate to use Christianity as the standard of comparison. If this was a debate between a Christian and a Muslim, then I'd have to argue for that presupposition. But I don't shoulder that burden of proof in this particular discussion. 

xii) Francis Beckwith has defended Hawkins:

http://www.thecatholicthing.org/2015/12/17/do-muslims-and-christians-worship-the-same-god/

Beckwith is more consistent inasmuch as Vatican II, codifying Karl Rahner, said:

841 The Church's relationship with the Muslims. "The plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place amongst whom are the Muslims; these profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind's judge on the last day."330 [LG 16; cf. NA 3.]

But that doesn't follow on non-Catholic assumptions.

Keep in mind that Rome wasn't always so ecumenical. Pope Urban II mobilized the First Crusade, Pope Innocent III mobilized the Reconquista, while Pope Pius V mobilized the Battle of Lepanto. 

First, what does it mean for two terms to refer to the same thing? Take, for example, the names “Muhammed Ali” and “Cassius Clay.” Although they are different terms, they refer to the same thing, for each has identical properties. Whatever is true of Ali is true of Clay and vice versa. (By the way, you can do the same with “Robert Zimmerman” and “Bob Dylan,” or “Norma Jean Baker” and “Marilyn Monroe”).
So the fact that Christians may call God “Yahweh” and Muslims call God “Allah” makes no difference if both “Gods” have identical properties.

That's a red herring. It's certainly true that Arab Christians can use "Allah" to designate the Christian Deity. 

On the other hand, "Allah" has different connotations when used by a Muslim or an English speaker. It would be inappropriate to use "Allah" for the Christian God in English discourse. 

In fact, what is known as classical theism was embraced by the greatest thinkers of the Abrahamic religions: St. Thomas Aquinas (Christian), Moses Maimonides (Jewish), and Avicenna (Muslim). Because, according to the classical theist, there can only in principle be one God, Christians, Jews, and Muslims who embrace classical theism must be worshipping the same God. It simply cannot be otherwise.

i) Islam is not an Abrahamic religion. That's Muslim propaganda. 

ii) I doubt Maimonides thought Muslims, Jews, and Christians believe in the same God. And even if he did, it's even more doubtful to suppose he thought they worship the same God.

On the one hand, he viewed Christians as heretics. Idolaters. On the other hand, while he preferred Islam's unitarian monotheism to Christianity's Trinitarian, Incarnational theology, he preferred Christianity's reverence for the OT to Islam, which replaces the OT (and the NT) with the Koran. 

Moreover, it wouldn't surprise me if Maimonides was pulling his punches with respect to Islam. After all, his employer was the Sultan. So he may well have said less than he privately thought. 

But doesn’t Christianity affirm that God is a Trinity while Muslims deny it? Wouldn’t this mean that they indeed worship different “Gods”? Not necessarily. Consider this example. Imagine that Fred believes that the evidence is convincing that Thomas Jefferson (TJ) sired several children with his slave Sally Hemings (SH), and thus Fred believes that TJ has the property of “being a father to several of SHs children.” On the other hand, suppose Bob does not find the evidence convincing and thus believes that TJ does not have the property of “being a father to several of SHs children.”
Would it follow from this that Fred and Bob do not believe that the Third President of the United States was the same man? Of course not. In the same way, Abraham and Moses did not believe that God is a Trinity, but St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Billy Graham do. Does that mean that Augustine, Aquinas, and Graham do not worship the same God as Abraham and Moses? Again, of course not. The fact that one may have incomplete knowledge or hold a false belief about another person – whether human or divine – does not mean that someone who has better or truer knowledge about that person is not thinking about the same person.

a) An obvious problem with that illustration is its failure to distinguish intrinsic properties from extrinsic properties. Jefferson would still be Jefferson without his kids; by contrast, the Father would not (and could not) exist apart from the Son. 

b) In addition, Beckwith is effectively imputing to Hawkins an understanding that there's no reason to think she shares. Does she really have a sophisticated theory of reference?Beckwith is arguing on her behalf by making a case for her claim that I seriously doubt she'd be able to make on her own. So we need to distinguish between whether the claim is defensible and her own motivations. 

xiii)  Gene Green said "Dr. Hawkins and others want to follow the example of Jesus, who went to those who were discriminated against," he said. "He ate with people whom others rejected. Jesus calls us to love our neighbors, and the Muslims are our neighbors."

a) In the USA, discrimination against Muslims is statistically negligible, 

b) The greatest danger to Muslims is other Muslims. 

xiv) Hawkins said she'd don the hijab "to stand in religious solidarity with Muslims." 

That's a cheap, morally confused gesture. Whenever Muslims commit some atrocity on American soil, which occurs with increasing frequency, you always had people who rush to the defense of…Muslims. Their reflexive reaction is to express solidarity with Muslims, even though Muslims were the perpetrators. That's always their first impulse. 

What about showing solidarity with the Jewish and Christian victims of Islam? Heck, what about showing solidarity with Muslim women by undergoing a clitorectomy? Obviously she won't do that because that would really cost her something. 

Sure, she can take a stance against the mythical persecution of Muslims in the USA, but it's morally blind to show solidarity with Muslims rather than victims of Muslim social mores. There's no consistency to her position. It's just radical chic posturing.

A model Christian-Muslim discussion

Prof. James Anderson recommends a debate or discussion (or two) between Dr. James White and Imam Muhammad Musri: "A Model Christian-Muslim Discussion".

Apologetic Material On Christmas Issues

Here's a collection of resources. I post one every year, on the day after Thanksgiving. I decided to post on the subject again today, for those who didn't see the earlier post when it originally went up. I don't know how many people are offline just after Thanksgiving or miss these posts for some other reason. But these last several days before Christmas tend to be the time when Christmas apologetic issues are most prominent in the culture.

Help Chris see Christmas

More info here.

The Daily Wire has an article on Chris Dunn titled "Texas Hospital Seeks To End Life-Support For Lucid Patient".

Verses of violence

http://www.charismanews.com/opinion/in-the-line-of-fire/53868-verses-of-violence-comparing-the-bible-and-quran

Did Jesus even exist? Responding to five objections

http://michaeljkruger.com/did-jesus-even-exist-responding-to-5-objections-raised-by-rawstory/

Mensa candidates

Eisenhower reputedly said "God help this country when someone sits in this chair who doesn't know the military as well as I do."

Many conservatives are excited by the brilliance of Ted Cruz. Before he dropped out, Jindal was his only competition on the IQ scale. 

If the nomination comes down to Cruz or Rubio, both men are quality candidates. Much better than in previous election cycles. 

However, brilliance is overrated. Obviously, there are some professions where that's a big plus, like math and science. But even in that case, the tortoise sometimes outperforms the hare. Linus Pauling was a genius; James Watson was a plodder. But it was Watson, not Pauling, who discovered the Double Helix.

In politics, Newt Gingrich is a brilliant man, but a failed leader as Speaker of the House. 

Robert McNamara and McGeorge Bundy were supersmart, but they gave poor advice on how to prosecute a war. 

Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Bill Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, Michael Rubin, Donald Rumsfeld, and Dick Cheney are very bright guys, but they don't know how to win wars–or when to cut their losses. 

They have the wrong kind of intelligence and/or the wrong kind of experience. Too abstract. A large part of winning wars is knowing which wars to avoid. Avoid getting into wars you can't win. 

Brilliance can be a snare if it makes you overconfident in what you can achieve. Especially in foreign policy, there are many variables beyond the control of any president. Brilliance isn't the first thing I look for in a presidential candidate. 

Dershowitz on Cruz

After 50 years with the same employer, Alan Dershowitz is nearing retirement. By his count, he's had 10,000 students, and they include some of the leaders of the world, although not one who, despite becoming editor of the law review, was denied access to his enrollment. Dershowitz told me recently he will always remember fondly using the Socratic method in criminal law classes, where, in any given 90-minute lecture, he'd call on about 40 students out of 150 assembled.

"No answer is right," he said. "I'd go from student to student. I knew my students very well and knew what their positions essentially would be so I knew who to call on to get a good, provocative discussion going."

Judging from those whom he's instructed over the years, he had a wealth of choices. Recently, I asked him for a sound bite on some of the better known.

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas): "Off-the-charts brilliant. And you know, liberals make the terrible mistake, including some of my friends and colleagues, of thinking that all conservatives are dumb. And I think one of the reasons that conservatives have been beating liberals in the courts and in public debates is because we underestimate them. Never underestimate Ted Cruz. He is off-the-charts brilliant. I don't agree with his politics."

http://www.philly.com/philly/columnists/michael_smerconish/20140406_The_Pulse__Dershowitz_and_his_life_at_Harvard_Law.html

The guards at the tomb

62 The next day, that is, after the day of Preparation, the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered before Pilate 63 and said, “Sir, we remember how that impostor said, while he was still alive, ‘After three days I will rise.’ 64 Therefore order the tomb to be made secure until the third day, lest his disciples go and steal him away and tell the people, ‘He has risen from the dead,’ and the last fraud will be worse than the first.” 65 Pilate said to them, “You have a guard of soldiers. Go, make it as secure as you can.” 66 So they went and made the tomb secure by sealing the stone and setting a guard (Mt 27:62-66).

This is discounted by "skeptics" due to its patently apologetic thrust. But a basic problem with that reaction is that the anecdote is inherently plausible. If Jesus predicted that he was going rise from the dead, both Pilate and the Jewish establishment would be motivated to nip that legend in the bud. Surely they didn't need an aggressive new religious sect, headquartered in Jerusalem, to contend with.

Moreover, even if you lack prior belief in Jesus, there's nothing implausible about messianic claimants forecasting their return from the dead. To my knowledge, that's not uncommon. Making good on the prediction is the tough part. To take a modern example, some devotees are still waiting for Rebbe Manachem Schneerson to rise from the grave. So there's no reason to doubt that Jesus made that prediction. 

The crown prince

One of the perceived challenges for Christians is how to account for the seemingly abrupt transition from OT monotheism to NT Trinitarianism. How could NT writers go so easily from one to another? I think that problem is fairly artificial, because it overstates the difference. 

i) To begin with, the OT has the Spirit of God in addition to Yahweh. But surely Jews understood the Spirit of God to be divine. Not a creature. 

At the same time, spirits are personal agents in the world of the Bible, viz. angels, demons, ghosts. So, by the same token, it would be natural for Jews to understand the Spirit of God as a personal agent. 

In that respect, OT Judaism was already binitarian rather than unitarian. Jews may not have mentally sorted out exactly how Yahweh and the Spirit of God were interrelated, but it's not as if there's a chasm to leap across as we move from OT theism to NT theism. 

ii) Moreover, the basic reason the NT is more explicit about the Trinity is that it tells the story of the Father sending the Son into the world to redeem sinners. And that, in turn, is followed by the Father (or the Son) sending the Spirit into the world to take up where Jesus left off. Since that operation hadn't happened in OT times, there was no need to spell it out. The OT mentions different elements of that scenario, but doesn't put it all together.

The NT pulls back the curtain to reveal what was going on behind-the scenes. And that's necessary to explain the significance of Christ's mission. 

iii) The other element you have is the divine messiah. And it wasn't much of an adjustment for NT writers to believe in a divine messiah.

Christian apologists refer to certain prooftexts like Isa 9:6, and that's a valid appeal. However, too much emphasis on Isa 9:6 can be misleading, as if it's rare for the OT to anticipate a divine messiah.

But that overlooks a common OT motif. In the OT generally, there's the oft-repeated story of a coming prince. He is the crown prince. The heir apparent. The royal son of his regal father. 

There are many versions of this story in the OT. And all of them imply a divine messiah. In the story, the king stands for God. Hence, the prince stands for God's son. 

A son succeeds his father because he is most like his father. No one else is more like, or even as much like, a man than his son.

But in this story, the king is divine–which makes the son divine. There's a necessary and essential parity between the nature of the reigning monarch, and the nature of the heir who takes his place, or reigns alongside him.  

"Only Islam can defeat Islam!"

According to Keith Parsons:

What is also needed is a new and compelling narrative, one that can compete with and defeat the narrative of ISIS and other hateful ideologies…What kind of idealistic message is needed? Well, obviously it must be Islamic. Only Islam can defeat Islamist fanaticism. - See more at: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/secularoutpost/2015/12/16/message-to-moderate-muslims/#sthash.JGmu7OCK.dpuf

So a militant atheist like Parsons thinks only Islam can defeat Islamist fanaticism. That's an ironic concession from an atheist. By his own admission, atheism can't defeat jihadism, Only a better version of Islam can.

And Parsons is half right: it takes a powerful religion to defeat a powerful religion. That's because religion has a fundamental appeal that atheism does not. You can't beat something with nothing. 

And that means only Christianity can defeat Islam. A superior religious ideology. Better ideas. And, especially, grace. 

Even if some Muslims found atheism persuasive, that only cuts Islam at the root, without planting something better in its place. 

Of course, that doesn't negate the need for a military defense. 

John Byl On The Great Christ Comet

A recent post at his blog is about Colin Nicholl's book on the star of Bethlehem.

Grading presidential debates

Here's Ben Shapiro's report card on the latest GOP presidential debate:

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/12/15/republican-debate-grades-trump-actually-won-this-time/

Shapiro is usually a good read. However, I don't quite agree with his grading criteria. Mind you, he doesn't really explain what his criteria are. It's basically assumed. 

There are different kinds of debate. Take a formal debate. Both sides agree on the question to be debated. The wording is important, because that determines the burden of proof.

In a debate like that, which side won or lost is based, not on which side was right or wrong, but which side did a better job of discharging their respective burden of proof. Which debater was more logical. Marshalled prima facie evidence for his position. Answered objections. 

Suppose you had a debate between an atheist and a Christian. In principle, the atheist could win even though he's dead wrong, because winning and losing isn't about truth and falsehood, but how well you meet the burden of proof. 

Take another kind of debate: oral arguments before the Supreme Court. The Solicitor General defends the position of the administration while a state attorney general defends state law. Now, they may privately disagree with their client. They may use arguments they don't believe. They're not representing their own position, but the client's position. They argue on behalf of the client. You grade their performance by how well or badly they field questions from the bench.

In principle, and often in practice, they may be completely insincere. They don't necessarily–or even typically–believe what they say. 

Now compare that to presidential debates. That's more like a job interview. Competing applicants for the same job. What you should listen for is not so much who did the best job in the debate, but who'd do the best job as president. The criteria are very different.

In a presidential debate, unlike a formal debate (see above), having the right position on the issues is very important. And unlike lawyers who can argue both sides of a case, in a presidential debate, the candidate's sincerity is very important. Does he intend to keep his campaign promises? 

It doesn't matters which contender is the best debater, but which contender would make the best candidate, and/or the best president. 

For instance, Adlai Stevenson was a much better public speaker than Ike. Stevenson wrote great speeches. But I daresay Ike was a much better peacetime president than Stevenson would have been. Our enemies feared Ike. He wasn't the kind of guy they dared to put to the test. 

Reagan was over the hill when he ran against Carter. More so when he ran against Mondale. On the merits, he lost his debates with Carter and Mondale. They were sharper. Better informed. Yet he had a much better vision for American domestic and foreign policy than they did. 

By the same token, Reagan was bad a press conferences while Bill Clinton excelled at press conferences. Yet Reagan was a fine president while Clinton was a dreadful president. 

For all his manifest limitations, Bush 43 was a better president, especially on domestic policy, then Al Gore or John Kerry would have been. That's despite the fact that Kerry, for one, bested Bush in their debates. 

Chocolate eclair for president

It's funny how many supporters think Trump is a tough guy because he talks tough. But Trump is a creme puff. He was born into a creme puff existence. He's led a creme puff existence all his life. 

His penthouse suite looks like the interior of Versailles. There's an elevator from his bedroom to his boardroom. If he leaves Trump Tower, he takes a helicopter, or a limousine to a private jet, which flies him to a casino. The closest he ever got to the outback was a golf course.

He leads a satin sheet life. If he ever had to sleep on cotton sheets, he'd bleed to death. 

Nicky Cruz is way tougher than Trump. Tom Skinner was tougher than Trump. Heck, Ronda Rousey is tougher than Trump. Voting for Trump is like electing a chocolate eclair to be Commander-in-Chief. 

Trump talks about bombing ISIS to smithereens. At the risk of showing my age, I heard that kind of rhetoric during the Vietnam War. LBJ, Bob McNamara, and Gen. Westmoreland were going to win that war by bombing the Viet Kong to smithereens. 

Shapeshifters

This is a sequel to my previous post:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2015/12/skinwalkers.html

Is there any evidence for the existence of shapeshifters? Does Scripture speak to that issue? This is of some potential relevance to Christian missionaries who minister to people-groups where traditional witchcraft is prevalent. 

i) There are OT passages which suggest angels can materialize. Assume physical form. 

ii) Ps 91:5 might allude to the night hag. However, the passage is poetic.

iii) Isa 13:21 & 34:14 may allude to desert wraiths, night hags, and goat-demons. However, the language could be mythopoetic. 

iv) The OT bears witness a pagan cult of goat-demons (Lev 17:7; cf. 2 Kgs 23:8; 2 Chron 11:15). And that may lie in the background for the aforesaid passages in Isaiah.

That, however, doesn't testify to their existence, but to a type of idolatry. 

v) Mt 12:43 refers to desert demons, although that may be picturesque rather than literal.

So I'd say all these passages are neutral on the question of whether shapeshifters exist.

vi) Finally, you have the identity of Azazel in Lev 16. It's difficult to determine what that refers to. On one interpretation, Azazel is a desert demon. And it would be tempting for Israelites in the Sinai to placate a desert demon with an offering. The obvious problem with that explanation is that Lev 17:7 explicitly forbids that very practice.

A variation of that interpretation is not that the scapegoat an offering to Azazel. Rather, because the nature of the scapegoat is to be sent away, it will enter the domain of Azazel. That's a side-effect of the offering, rather than the intention of the offering. An incidental consequence. But the passage is admittedly obscure. 

In sum, I'd say the Scriptural evidence is inconclusive. It allows for the possible existence of shapeshifters, but doesn't attest their existence. 

Certainly many things are possible on a Biblical worldview that are impossible on a naturalistic worldview. Of course, what's possible and what's actual are two different things. 

What about extrabiblical evidence for shapeshifters? The most reputable evidence I've run across is from psychiatrist M. Scott Peck, describing two of his patients, whom he exorcised:

I still did not know precisely when and why Beccah had become possessed. I knew that around age six she had developed an abnormal attraction to a book of woodcuts that told one version of the pact with the devil story. M. Scott Peck, Glimpses of the Devil: A Psychiatrist’s Personal Accounts of Possession, Exorcism, and Redemption (Free Press 2005), 214-15. 

The extraordinary amount of restraint required was one of the less remarkable features of the exorcism. The most remarkable was the change in the appearance of Beccah’s face and body. Except during break times and a few other occasions when Satan would seemingly be replaced by Beccah, she did not appear to be a human being at all. To everyone present, her entire face became like that of a snake. I would have expected it to be the usual kind of poisonous snake with a triangular head, but that was not the case. The head and face of this snake were remarkably round. The only exception to this roundness was its nostrils, which had a distinct snub-nosed look. Most remarkable of all were the eyes. They had become hooded, ibid. 173. 

During another appointment, again for but a minute, Beccah’s face appeared to be that of a very dry, thick-skinned, lizardlike creature—possibly an iguana. Definitely a reptile but nothing like a snake. ibid. 225.

On a related note, I'm reminded of Michael Sudduth's experience:

My two years in Windsor, Connecticut deepened my long-standing and recently re-wakened interest in survival. Within a couple of days of moving into the early Federal-style home built by Eliakim Mather Olcott in 1817, my wife and I (and dog) began to experience a combination of prototypical haunting and poltergeist phenomena. Although we critically investigated the various phenomena as they occurred, we were unable to trace the phenomena to natural causes. Given the fairly astonishing nature of some of the phenomena, my curiosity about our experiences peaked and I began research into the history of the home and the experiences of its former residents. This led to what has been a ten-year long investigation, including interviews with former residents, visitors to the home, and acquaintances of residents as far back as the 1930s.   My inquiry turned up testimony from several prior occupants to experiencing phenomena identical, even in detail, to the phenomena my wife and I experienced. What I found equally fascinating, though, was the fact that occupants of the home prior to 1969, including long-term residents, claimed not to have experienced anything unusual. 1969 was the year resident Walter Callahan Sr. committed suicide in the home. In this way, the pattern of experiences surrounding the home fit a more widespread pattern in which ostensibly place-centered paranormal phenomena are associated with a suicide or other tragic event at the location. 

http://michaelsudduth.com/personal-reflections-on-life-after-death/ 

Likewise, I read a book a while back about an Eskimo community that relocated to ancient burial grounds, where witchdoctors were interred. According to the anthropologist who wrote the book, based on her extensive contact, that gave rise to hauntings. Cf. Edith Turner, The Hands Feel It.

Finally, a friend shared some anecdotes from Reddit. Whether or not we find these credible depends on how we evaluate testimonial evidence in general:

My grandmother on my mothers side has always been very superstitious, for lack of better word, she's not religious, but she does believe in a lot of paranormal stuff. 

Her mother was full blooded Navajo and her father was Irish. Either way, she'd never been anywhere East of Montana and she grew up in Nevada. 

One year, when I was in grade school, we went to visit her, most of the visit was pretty uneventful, typical boring old people stuff, except she always kept her curtains drawn shut and would always peek out the window and when someone asked what she was doing, she would simply reply " Yenaldlooshi is watching me" 

This went on for nearly the entire visit until a few days before we were due to leave, My grandma and my (then) baby brother (he's 19 now lol) were in the front yard that evening, planting flowers when all of a sudden, my grandmother starts shouting "Insert little brothers name here get away from that creature! It's not safe!" of course, being in Nevada, we all assumed that my brother had found a scorpion or a rattle snake, so we all run outside, to see my Grandmother clutching my little brother and shaking in terror against the side of the house, standing out in the yard, was a large, black, great-Dane sized dog, it was staring at my grandmother with an intensity I'd never seen before. It looked up at us, gave a little huff and bounded off, I don't remember if it moved unusually fast or not, but do remember it had really deep yellow eyes. 

When my mother asked my grandmother what had happened, she kept repeating " The Yenaldlooshi has found me". She moved a couple weeks after that.
(Source)

Anybody that has been on the Navajo reservation has either probably heard of some creepy things or have experienced pretty creepy things. Namely skinwalkers. I have only seen one. Here is my story. I come from a small town in northern Arizona that's sandwiched between the Paiute reservation to the north and the U.S.'s largest Navajo reservation to the south. My high school being so small (a 1A high school that has, on average, 80 students enrolled every year.) always had to travel south about 5-10 hours one way to play another high school in any sport. This means that we traveled A LOT on the Navajo rez. And we also usually stayed at hotels when we would head out to play and come home in the morning but this trip was a little bit different. I remember the basketball coach saying that the school didn't have enough money to put up the teams in a hotel that trip so we were going to be on the road for a total of about 12 hours. I was the only male senior to play basketball that season. We had just got done playing our game and headed home on our bus "Big Blue." We were headed out and it wasn't long, about 2 hours of driving, before we had entered the rez. By this time, everyone was asleep with it being about 2 in the morning. When we had crossed the rez's border I noticed the bus driver had sped up and was now going about 85 mph. I thought this was a little weird because he never exceeded the speed limit, at least not in my high school career. For some reason, I couldn't fall asleep like the rest of my teammates, and I just sat at the back of the bus staring out across the desolate desert landscape that was lit up by the full moon. As I looked out, I could see a figure running towards the bus at an angle of pursuit...and keeping up with the bus at 85 mph. As the figure got closer I saw that it was a humanoid form. As a matter of fact it looked exactly like a human, only that the face was painted half black and half white with glowing eyes. Glowing eyes like a rabbit's eyes reflecting light from a spotlight. I immediately thought, "Holy crap! It's a skinwalker!!" The skinwalker ran up to the edge of the road and just kept up pace with the bus hurdling sage brush and rocks while staring at me. After I made eye contact with the thing, I COULD NOT look away. It was as if something was holding my head and eyes in place. The skinwalker just smiled at me this inhuman smile that went ear-to-ear, showing crooked, yellow, pointed teeth. I felt like I was going to throw up and I was panicking through the whole ordeal. The skinwalker started to crumple down on to all fours, still keeping up with the bus. I could see his bones crack and reform, hair started appearing all over the skinwalker's body and in about 3 seconds was now a coyote and it ran off back into the desert out of view. As soon as it was gone, I ran to the onboard bathroom and puked a mixture of food and blood. I didn't want to tell anyone for fear they would think I was crazy. I confided in my Navajo friend. She told me that I needed to see the chief, who also happened to be a friend of mine, and get a blessing. I saw him the next school day in the parking lot. He just came up to me and mumbled something in Navajo while waving a feathered scepter-like thing, turned around, got in his truck and drove away. To this day, I haven't seen another skinwalker. It might be due to the fact I moved away from that town and rez, and, if I do have to go south, I go around...WAY around.
(Source)

I was about 15-16 years old and walking home from a friends place at about 2-3 O'clock in the morning with the friend I was living with at the time. My mate was pushing a BMX and we were just talking and laughing as we walked home. All of a sudden we saw what looked like 2 very large Greyhounds jump over a set of mailboxes at some flats (apartments) and landed in the middle of the road. The mailboxes appeared to be about 1.5 meters tall and about 5-6 meters from the road. 

At the moment I thought it was a little strange but kept watching them. What I witnessed was something I will never forget in my life. The 2 "Greyhounds" as they ran down the road appeared to both stand up on their hind legs and morph into a much bigger much beefier being of which I can only describe to be looking like a "Yowie" which I guess is the equivalent to a Sasquatch to our friends from American and other countries. These "Yowies" both ran around a corner about 200 meters in the direction we came and we both sat there dumbfounded. A few seconds later we heard what sounded like a small female child scream in terror. Keeping in mind it was around 3am in the morning and there were no children out. We both looked at each other in horror without saying a word I jumped on the handle bars on the bike and he peddled that bike non stop all the way home about 2 kilometers away.