I refuse to heel

This will be my final pre-election post on the 2016 presidential election. In this post I'm not using "Trumper" as a derogatory term, but as a neutral antonym for "NeverTrumper". 

Why am I doing one more post on the election? Won't that be out of date after the returns are in? Although there are some topical aspects to this election, both Trumpers and NeverTrumpers are reaching into their ethical toolkits to justify their position. My primary concern is evaluating their ethical tools. They will be reaching into the same toolkits in the future. They will bring to bear the same considerations in future situations which they brought to bear in this situation. As the stakes in the culture wars are ever higher, moral clarity is at a premium. 

The Trump nomination split the conservative movement. Whoever wins tomorrow, the conservative movement will have to realign. Some erstwhile conservatives sold out. They're not coming back. 

I've seen lots of Trumper and NeverTrumper arguments. Both sides have used bad arguments. The bad arguments outnumber the good arguments. 

That's in part because most voters aren't philosophers by aptitude or training. In addition, the choice between voting for Trump and casting a protest vote is a borderline case. Because both candidates are so bad, we have conflicting intuitions. Many of us feel pulled in opposing directions. As a result, both side of the debate have used some bad reasons to support or oppose Trump.

In general, there's a different methodology between the two camps. NeverTrumpers take a more topdown approach. They appeal to moral principles (as they see them). By contrast, Trumpers take a more bottomup approach. They look at the situation. At the immediate threat. 

1. Best Trumper argument

Hillary is a militant secular progressive. A single-minded fanatic. She is hellbent in destroying anyone and anything that gets in the way of her agenda, by any means necessary. It's not just about a few seats on the Supreme Court. It's about packing the Federal judiciary in general. It's about Executive appointees in general. Notice how Obama weaponized Executive agencies to deploy against conservative groups. If anything, Hillary will amp that up. The fact that she broke the law and got away with it emboldens her. 

It's about control of Congress. The Bill of Rights. Parental authority. School choice. The consent of the governed. Gender binaries. Heteronormative values. 

It's about abortion and euthanasia. It's about freedom from wrongful termination because a public or private sector employee dissents from LGBT agenda. It's about gov't shutting down businesses through ruinous fines because they refuse to collaborate in the LGBT agenda. It's about protecting school children from indoctrination. It's about the war on boys. It's about mandatory coed restrooms, and locker rooms. It's about requiring battered women's shelters to admit "transgender women" (i.e. biological men who self-identify as women). 

Trump is a moral cretin. He has no discipline. No focus. No consistent agenda. No political philosophy. These are grave weaknesses in a presidential candidate, but compared to Hillary, his weakness is a strength. He's not out to get conservatives. He's not going to launch a pogrom against conservatives. He's not a zealot like Hillary. That's not what makes him tick. He's a hedonist. He lives for status. He wants to be the center of attention. Hillary poses a direct threat to all that's good and decent in a way that Trump does not. 

I think that's a powerful argument to vote for Trump. And it's a lean argument. It doesn't say anything positive about Trump. It doesn't make any claims about his credibility. It doesn't excuse his vices. So you don't have to defend Trump. 

It's not enough to tip the scales for me, but if I were making the case for a Trump vote, that would be it. And that's not me playing devil's advocate. I believe everything I said. 

2. Best NeverTrumper argument

i) Trump can do a different kind of damage than Hillary. Admittedly, those are intangibles compared to Hillary. But it goes to the old distinction between the enemy within and the enemy without. Trump is like inviting an arsonist to housesit while you go on vacation. Will there be anything to come back to? 

To some degree, the case against Trump is the mirror-image of the case for Trump. The very fact that Hillary is such a ruthless, implacable foe means she will galvanize the conservative movement. By contrast, Trump is a tapeworm that consumes it from the inside out. We've already seen how quickly the "Republican establishment" kowtowed to Trump. We've seen conservative icons sell out to Trump. 

What happens when he has real power? When he has the carrot and the stick of the imperial presidency? The GOP wasn't any great shakes even before Trump ran. 

ii) Which brings me to the next point. A major reason Trump is so godawful is because he's used to getting his way. He's used to people fawning over him and groveling at his Gucci-shoed feet. He lives for that. And this campaign is no exception. He didn't have to accommodate conservatives. Rather, erstwhile conservatives accommodated him. If he can win without accommodating conservatives, why would he govern any differently? He ran on his own terms. If he can win on his own terms, why will he govern any differently? 

One by one we've seen Republican leaders heel when Trump says heel. They jump when he says jump. Someone needs to stand up to him. Someone needs to say, No, I refuse to heel. No, I won't roll over at your command. You can't always get your way. And even if you do, it will be in spite of me, not because of me. I'm not going to be another one of your Borg drones. You will have to shoot me first. 

In fairness, it's possible for individuals to denounce Trump and vote for him at the same time. But in my observation, few voters are that compartmentalized. And parties operate more as collectives than independent-minded individuals. 

3. Worst NeverTrumper argument

i) In my observation, many NeverTrumpers take intellectual shortcuts. They resort to ethical slogans. And it doesn't get any deeper than the slogan. There's no real understanding of what the slogans stand for. NeverTrumpers use them interchangeably:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2016/10/glossary-of-terminological-fallacies.html

In fairness, some Trumpers do resort to morally relativistic arguments when defending their support for Trump. 

ii) Some NeverTrumpers like Albert Mohler, Richard Phillips, John Piper, and Russell Moore appeal to our public Christian witness. I respect Mohler and Phillips. Moore is a lightweight. In general, Piper is a great gift to the church, but his more recent embrace of pacifism and Anabaptism makes him politically unreliable. 

In fairness, some "evangelical" Trump apologists have undoubtedly brought the Gospel into disrepute. However, there's a difference between perception and reality. We can't be hostage to mere perception, however ignorant or malevolent. We can't let popular perception to dictate our actions. 

The question is whether we have morally and rationally defensible positions. If so, we make our case. 

If we're seen to be "compromising" despite making a good case for our positions, the fault lies in the percipient. We must be prepared to challenge people who judge our actions by their unwarranted standards.

ii) In addition, the Christian witness objection cuts both ways. There are voters, especially men, who are turned off by Christianity because they think Christians would rather wring their hands than get their hands dirty. Piper himself is morphing into the parody of a Christian who's too heavenly-minded to be of any earthly use. 

4. Worst Trumper argument

i) Trumpers, like NeverTrumpers, resort to intellectual shortcuts. In their case, it's not so much moral principles, but simplistic rules of thumb:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2015/11/the-art-of-put-on.html

ii) Many Trumpers exhibit blind credulity in Trump's bona fides.

iii) By the same token, many Trumpers rationalize his moral degeneracy. 

iv) I noticed on Justin Taylor's Facebook Wall that some commenters act as though they needed John MacArthur to give them permission to vote for Trump. They can now do so with a clear conscience because JMac said it's okay. That's just hero worship. 

"One of the most telling things about Calvinists"

On Facebook, Jerry Walls and I got into an impromptu debate. Here's a slightly edited version:

Jerry Walls 

LOVING THE HATE

One of the most telling things about Calvinists is that they take the meaning of passages that say God hates some people as literal, obvious and beyond dispute, but they go to great lengths to explain that passages that say God loves the world, or that Christ died for all, do not mean that he literally loves everyone (at least not in any robust sense of the word), or that Christ died for everyone. The former they take to be utterly clear and straightforward, while the latter require sophisticated interpretation.

Steve Hays

i) Is that a claim about Calvinists in general? What about Calvinists (e.g. William Young) who regard emotive language about God as anthropopathic? 

ii) A Calvinist needn't believe God "literally" hates the reprobate. Rather, he can take the position that "love/hate" language is rhetorical (i.e. antithetical parallelism). Likewise, that those are ancient Near Eastern legal synonyms for choosing and rejecting. 

iii) On the face of it, Jerry's comparison is equivocal. That's not about the meaning of "love" and "hate," but about the meaning of the Greek word kosmos in Johannine usage or the function of universal quantifiers ("every, all").

Jerry Walls  

[Calvinists] think the nature of divine sovereignty and divine hatred are more clear than the nature of divine love and goodness.

Steve Hays

Jerry, what is your evidence for that allegation? Do you mean they think that from their viewpoint or yours?

Jerry Walls 

To cite just one example, WC, 3:7 appeals to the "unsearchable counsel of his own will" in accounting for God's choice to extend or withhold mercy as he pleases. What is clear is the nature of "sovereign power over his creatures" but how this expresses love and goodness is far less clear.

Steve Hays 

Since you're quoting the Westminster Confession, what about this? "All those that are justified, God vouchsafeth, in and for his only Son Jesus Christ, to make partakers of the grace of adoption: by which they are taken into the number, and enjoy the liberties and privileges of the children of God; have his name put upon them; receive the Spirit of adoption; have access to the throne of grace with boldness; are enabled to cry, Abba, Father; are pitied, protected, provided for, and chastened by his as by a father; yet never cast off, but sealed to the day of redemption, and inherit the promises, as heirs of everlasting salvation" (WCF 12).

Now, that may not be how you define God's love and goodness, but to say Calvinists lack a clear concept of God's love and goodness on their own terms is demonstrably false. So are you attempting an internal critique or an external critique?

Jerry Walls 

Cf Calvin: "It therefore seems to them that men have reason to expostulate with God if they are predestined to eternal death solely by his decision, apart from their own merit. If thoughts of this sort ever occur to pious men, they will be sufficiently armed to break their force even by the one consideration that it is very wicked merely to investigate the causes of God’s will. . . . For God’s will is so much the highest rule of righteousness that whatever he wills, by the very fact that he wills it, must be considered righteous. When, therefore, one asks why God has so done, we must reply: because he has willed it." Sovereignty is clear, the nature of goodness and justice is not, and in fact, right is reduced to sovereignty.

Steve Hays 

i) Jerry, even in the snippet you quote, the context of Calvin's remark is the role of "merit" in salvation. So he's shadowboxing with Catholic synergism. Jerry, you do realize, do you not, that when you quote from theological polemics of the past, you need to take into account what they were opposing. 

ii) In addition, your quotation of Calvin is one-sided. He was a staunch critic of theological voluntarism. Have you read Paul Helm's analysis of Calvin's position on that point? Cf. P. Helm, John Calvin's Ideas (Oxford, 2004), chap. 11. 

So I'm just wondering why you leave that out. You're not intentionally trying to misrepresent his overall position, are you? 

iii) Furthermore, you continue to duck the question of whether you're attempting an internal or external critique. For instance, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitches deem it sufficient to disprove God's benevolence by quoting "offensive" OT passages. But, of course, OT writers didn't think those passages were incompatible with Yahweh's benevolence. Orthodox Jews don't think that. Bible-believing Christians don't think that.

So your tactic of simply quoting a passage from Calvin or the WCF, as if that ipso facto demonstrates your point, begs the question. Once again, are you judging Reformed theism to be unclear on God's love and goodness from your own viewpoint, or the viewpoint of Calvin, the Westminster Divines, &c.? Surely you appreciate that rudimentary hermeneutical distinction.

To take another obvious example, annihilationists consider adherents of everlasting punishment to have an unloving theology while universalists consider annihilationists to have an unloving theology. Arminians consider Calvinists to have an unloving theology while universalists consider Arminians to have an unloving theology. So, once again, Jerry, are you simply invoking your (idiosyncratic) brand of Arminianism as the standard of comparison? If so, each theological tradition can do that in relation to every other theological tradition. John Hick started out as a religious exclusivist. Then he decided that cast aspersions on the love and benevolence of God, so he became a religious inclusivist. Then he decided that that, too, cast aspersions on the love and benevolence of God, so he became a religious pluralistic, attacking the "myth of God Incarnate". 

So it's hardly adequate for you to merely take your own position as the yardstick, as if that's a given. Anyone can do that. That's only persuasive to people who already agree with you. At some point you need to justify your standard of comparison. As a philosopher, surely you realize that.

To take yet another example, consider critics of penal substitution or vicarious atonement who brand that as "cosmic child abuse". For them, that's contrary to the love and benevolence of God.

Jerry Walls 

If the passages I cited do not illustrate that for Calvinists God' sovereignty is clear in his unconditional election, whereas his justice and goodness are mysterious, if not utterly inexplicable to us, well, I am pretty sure nothing else I might cite would help. So I will not waste any more of your time or mine.

Steve Hays 

Jerry, that's a patronizing and evasive reply. You are shirking your burden of proof. I hardly think it's asking too much that you, as a philosophy prof., present a supporting argument for your inferences. 

This is how it works. You make a claim. I explain why I think you fail to make good on your claim. The proper response from you is to either show, be reasoned argument, why my explanation is deficient, or withdraw your original claim. 

If you can't rise to the challenge, then that's a backdoor admission that your Arminianism is philosophically indefensible. It's something you merely assert to be the case. In that event, you're just an Arminian fideist. 

How is that any better than atheists who stipulate moral realism? Or that consciousness is an emergent property of matter?

Jerry Walls 

No, it is clear that Calvinists think they know what sovereignty means in election and predestination; and that justice and goodness are relatively mysterious, if not opaque to us. Indeed, Calvin tells us even to ask the question is impious. If you cannot see it, sorry.

Steve Hays 

He says it's impious to question God's justice. That isn't just Calvin. That's God speaking from the whirlwind in Job. By the same token, St. Paul says the same thing in Rom 9. Likewise, Paul appeals to God's mysterious providence in Rom 11. So are you saying St. Paul had a defective view of God's love and benevolence? Your snippy replies don't engage the issues.

Notice, btw, that I haven't appeal to mystery. I'm just responding to your quotes. Besides getting testy and condescending, do you have an actual rebuttal?

In the very section in question, Calvin says "We, however, give no countenance to the fiction of absolute power," Institutes 3:23.2. So he explicitly repudiates theological voluntarism.

Calvin presents a more detailed repudiation of theological voluntarism here: "That Sarbonic dogma, therefore, in the promulgation of which the Papal theologians so much pride themselves, “that the power of God is absolute and tyrannical,” I utterly abhor. For it would be easier to force away the light of the sun from his heat, or his heat from his fire, than to separate the power of God from His justice. Away, then, with all such monstrous speculations from godly minds, as that God can possibly do more, or otherwise, than He has done, or that He can do anything without the highest order and reason. For I do not receive that other dogma, “that God, as being free from all law Himself, may do anything without being subject to any blame for doing so.” For whosoever makes God without law, robs Him of the greatest part of His glory, because he spoils Him of His rectitude and justice. Not that God is, indeed, subject to any law, excepting in so far as He is a law unto Himself. But there is that inseparable connection and harmony between the power of God and His justice, that nothing can possibly be done by Him but what is moderate, legitimate, and according to the strictest rule of right. And most certainly, when the faithful speak of God as omnipotent, they acknowledge Him at the same time to be the Judge of the world, and always hold His power to be righteously tempered with equity and justice." The Secret Providence of God.

So Calvin rejects divine sovereignty as defined by sheer will. 

Why does Jerry ignore Reformed expositions of God's goodness, love, mercy, &c. in, say, Turretin's Institutes (1:241-44), or Bavinck's The Doctrine of God (Banner of Truth, 203-209), or Frame's exposition of God's love and goodness in The Doctrine of God (chap. 20), or Geerhardus Vos's detailed exposition:

http://www.biblicaltheology.org/sdlg.pdf

Why does Walls engage in the subterfuge that Calvinists are shy about discussing God's love, goodness, mercy, &c., in the teeth of so much documentation to the contrary?

The ethics of nuclear weaponry

https://thearcmag.com/the-ethics-of-nuclear-weapons-66ba5014cb19#.6gi41921a

Newtonian fatalism

I'd like to employ another example to illustrate a theodicy I often use. I don't think there's one silver bullet theodicy. But by combining several, we cover most-every situation. 

Before getting to that, I often talk about the problem of evil in fairly clinical terms. That's because I'm discussing the intellectual problem of evil rather than the emotional problem of evil. There's really not much you can say about the emotional problem of evil. That's not generally something that can be handled at a distance. It requires face-to-face contact. Grieving with those who grieve (Rom 12:15).

It's like a doctor who has to break terrible news to a patient. Tell the patient that he has terminal cancer or a degenerative illness. Suppose the patient asks why that happened to him? Well, in some cases, the doctor has an answer. He can say that due to your family history, you have a genetic predisposition to develop gastric cancer or Huntington's disease (or whatever). That's the right answer to the question. But, of course, it doesn't make the diagnosis less any less bleak. 

Mind you, even that can sometimes be helpful. The patient knows there's nothing he could have done to prevent it. Early diagnosis wouldn't help. Change of diet wouldn't help. 

In the nature of the case, an answer to the intellectual problem of evil will be somewhat dry. That's because we're addressing the philosophical aspect of the problem. I myself have seen the problem of evil up close and personal. Although I often write about it with critical detachment, that doesn't mean I'm a brain-in-a-vat. It just means I don't discuss family tragedies in public. 

Now for the illustration. To my knowledge, there are two tropes about fatalism in the horror genre:

I. Delayed fatalism

According to this trope, you can never cheat fate. At best, you can postpone the inevitable. But sooner or later, fate will find you. It will sneak back around and get you when you least expect it. You may temporarily outwit your fate, but eventually it will catch you off-guard.

II. Newtonian fatalism

According to this trope, you can cheat fate…but there's a catch! You can cheat fate, but someone else will have to take your place. Fate demands a substitute. In this version, if someone could elude fate, and there's nothing to compensate his evasion, that throws the natural order out of whack. In order to maintain cosmic equilibrium, it's life for life and death for death. You can only escape your fate if that's offset by a fall guy.

This has great dramatic potential in cheesy horror films where you volunteer your best friend. For some inexplicable reason, he suddenly finds himself in near-miss freak accidents. One close call after another. Little does he know you gave him up to save your own skin. And when he finds out…

Although this is fiction, it has a real-world counterpart. In a world that's overwhelmingly governed by cause and effect, every action has a reaction. So Newton's third law has implications for the problem of evil.  

If you think about it, it's a sobering fact that saving one life may come at the expense of another life. Someone may die in an accident because of something someone else did a 100 years earlier. A perfectly innocent action in the past may result in future calamity. Thankfully, most of us don't know the future. Even we did, it would be petrifying to see some of the long-term consequences of our benign actions. 

Likewise, if your father had married a different woman, or your mother had married a different man, you wouldn't be here. Someone else would be here instead. And so on and so forth.

So when we ask, why didn't God do this instead of that, we need to consider how one thing leads to another. It isn't cost-free. Someone's ill-fortune may pay the price for your good fortune, or vice versa. 

Hillary, Trump, and double effect

Although this is often cast in terms of the lesser-evil principle, we can recast the issue by invoking another principle, namely the double effect principle. In the "canonical" for (a la Catholic moral theology), you cannot use a bad means to a good end. Since I'm not Roman Catholic, I'm not bound by that caveat. So, to reformulate it a bit:

There are situations where causing harming is unavoidable regardless of what you do or refrain from doing. Either you will cause harm or you will permit someone else to cause harm, because you refuse to intervene. Given that forced option, it may be permissible to cause harm to minimize harm. 

Put another way, there are situations where an agent performs an action that has two effects: one good and one bad. Moreover, inaction on the agent's part will have a bad effect, without the compensatory good effect.

The action may still be licit provided that the intended effect desired by the agent is good while the bad effect is merely foreseen, and not intended.

An advantage of causing harm yourself, rather than leaving it to someone else to cause harm, is that you have more control over how, when, where, and/or to whom the harm is inflicted. You can be more discriminating, and thereby mitigate the degree of harm. 

That, of itself, doesn't settle the question of voting in the 2016 presidential election. But it does provide another moral framework for weighing the pros and cons, both ethical and practical. 

What's the point of the atonement?

In his debate with John Lennox, Christopher Hitchens said that for the first 98,000 years of human suffering, God watches this with perfect insouciance. Finally, God says we have to intervene now. We have to do something about this. What would be the best way to intervene to redeem this rather bleak picture? What about having someone tortured to death in an obscure part of the Middle East? That ought to cure it. 

Likewise, in his debate with John Lennox, Richard Dawkins said it's "petty and small-minded" to think the creator of the cosmos (if he existed) would come to this speck of dust to rid the world of sin. That fails to do justice to the grandeur of the universe. 

Several problems:

i) I wonder what Christian theologians, if any, Hitchens and Dawkins ever read. What's their source of information regarding the purpose of the atonement? Or is this just an applause line? 

ii) The purpose of the atonement is not to rid the world of sin or suffering. If you're going to cast the issue in terms of ridding the world of something, the purpose of the atonement is to rid the world of guilt, not sin or suffering. The point is not to eradicate sin or suffering. That's the purpose of Judgment Day. Rather, the point of the atonement is to satisfy divine justice so that God can justly forgive sinners. So, yes, you have sin and suffering both before and after the atonement. That's not a failure of the atonement. The atonement accomplished precisely what it was aiming at. In particular, to make atonement for the sins of the elect. 

God will indeed eradicate the world of sin and suffering. More precisely, God will glorify believers and separate them from the wicked. But that's a different action than the atonement. 

iii) I'd add that 1C Jerusalem was hardly an "obscure part of the Middle East". Again, maybe that's just another applause line, but it's rhetorical rather than factual. 

iv) Finally, Dawkins stresses how supposed incongruous it would be for God to come to our little planet to rid the universe of sin. But that's like saying it's "petty and small-minded" for physicians to go where there's an outbreak. Of all the awesome and scenic parts of the world to choose from, why would they go to some Third World hellhole? The answer, as Jesus said, is that physicians tend to the sick, not the heathy. You go where there's a need. 

Suppose we're the only intelligent creatures in the universe. Or suppose we're the only fallen creatures in the universe. Naturally, God would zero in on our planet. If sinners are earthlings, wouldn't we expect God to intervene on planet earth? 

For that matter, even if there were other fallen creatures in the universe whom God redeemed, why assume we'd know about it? Indeed, that would be distracting information. 

Out of Africa

The Out of Africa theory of human origins would be more impressive if simians were confined to Africa. But, of course, there are New World simians as well as Old World simians. And even Old World simians aren't confined to Africa. You have various species in East Asia and South Asia. Given the diverse geographical distribution of simians, it's harder to argue that they all originated in Africa, or man in particular. 

Understanding Prayer for the Dead

In his foreword, to James B. Gould's, Understanding Prayer for the Dead: Its Foundation in History and Logic (Cascade Books, 2016), Jerry Walls says:

The author distinguishes four kinds of prayers for the dead, and notes that the main Christian traditions have differed on the matter of which of these kinds of prayer are appropriate. The four kinds of prayer are for consummation, growth, purification, and salvation. While the first kind of prayer is most widely accepted and practiced, by many Protestants as well as Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholics, the second and third types of prayer are accepted less commonly by Protestants, but are practiced by the Orthodox and Catholics. However, the fourth kind of prayer, for salvation, is generally rejected by all three traditions, on the ground that postmortem repentance and salvation are impossible. 

As a Protestant who has written a book defending a doctrine of purgatory, including postmortem repentance, I am both intrigued by Gould's argument as well as attracted to it. Indeed, the early practice of prayer for the dead, particularly prayer for purification, was one of the factors that led to the eventual development of the doctrine of purgatory. The traditional doctrine of purgatory however, pertains only to persons who died in a state of grace, so postmortem salvation is excluded…As Jairus and his friends learned, death may not be the insurmountable barrier we think it is. 

Several issues:

i) One question concerns the boundaries of Arminianism. Walls keeps moving the border stone. Does Arminianism have definable boundaries? What is out of bounds? How far can you redefine traditional Arminianism before it ceases to be Arminian? Jerry has a bunch of groupies who rubber-stamp whatever their guru says. Whenever he has forthcoming book or interview, they say "I can't wait!" They agree with him in advance of whatever he says. Nowadays, Arminianism seems to be harmonious with just about anything besides Calvinism. 

ii) The appeal to Jairus is a bait-n-switch. His daughter wasn't even dead at the time Jairus dispatched his servants to solicit Christ's intervention. And even if she was, that would be a "prayer for the dead" is the sense of petitioning God to restore a decedent to life. That's completely different from a "prayer for the dead" in terms of purgatorial sanctification or postmortem salvation. Jerry's comparison is criminally equivocal.

iii) Whether prayer for the dead, in Jerry's sense, is permissible depends in part on your theology. It's not so much a question of directly challenging prayer for the dead, but challenging the underlying theology.

iv) In addition, there are disanalogies between intercessory prayer for the living and intercessory prayer for the dead. Much intercessory prayer presumes the liabilities of life in a fallen world. The kinds of harms and deprivations to which we're vulnerable in the here-and-now. Disease, poverty, suffering. Life in a fallen world is hazardous and precarious. Picking your way through a minefield. 

But in classic Protestant theology, when Christians die, that takes them out of harm's way. They no longer have the same needs. They can no longer be hurt. They've put all that behind them. They leave the world of pain, danger, and suffering behind. That's very liberating. A huge relief. They are safe and secure in heaven. They no longer need intercessory prayer. 

But for people like Jerry, the afterlife is an extension of the fallen world. Logically, if the lost can be saved in the afterlife, then the saved can be lost in the afterlife. If the psychological dynamic is fluid in one direction, why not the other? 

v) If our prayers can facilitate postmortem salvation, why does the Bible never once command us to pray for the dead? Prayer is a huge part of Biblical piety. Both Old and New Testaments are chockfull of prayers and commands to prayer. If postmortem salvation is possible, if that actually happens, if prayer for the dead makes a necessary contribution to the salvation of decedents who wouldn't otherwise be saved, then there's nothing more important that you can pray for. So why the silence of Scripture? 

vi) There's a major point of tension between belief in God's universal love and belief that death is the cutoff for salvation. But one can relieve a point of tension in either one of two different directions. Because Walls regards the universality of God's love as nonnegotiable, he makes whatever adjustments are necessary (e.g. postmortem purgatory, postmortem salvation, prayer for the dead) to relieve the tension.

Problem is, there's no evidence that his postulates are true. It's a third story conjecture resting on a second story conjecture resting on a first story conjecture. A skyscraper of wishful thinking. 

vii) In addition, there's at least prima facie evidence that his position is contradicted by some passages of Scripture. And that's not confined to Calvinism. That includes Jansenism, Thomism, and Augustinianism. 

Roll the dice

I've seen some Christians use a gambling metaphor for the 2016 election. It's a sure bet that we have lots to lose if Hillary wins. By contrast, Trump is a roll of the dice. You may win the bet or lose the bet, but given the choice, it's more reasonable to roll the dice, which gives you the chance of a better outcome. Neither candidate is a safe bet, but one is undoubtedly threatening in a way the other is not.

I think that's a useful analogy. I don't object in principle. The question, though, is whether the choice is really that clear-cut. Trump can do a different kind of damage than Hillary. BTW, there's an outside possibility that McMullin will be the next president. 

The faith of an atheist

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PHoMWIlklA

JMac on Trump

JMac recently made a comment that's getting some buzz:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN0IGHg0rms

He's an old man speaking off the cuff, so I wouldn't parse his comment to death. He was responding to a question. Moreover, he was implicitly responding to how some people characterize a vote for Trump.

Some of what he said was perfectly reasonable. The major weakness in his response was the claim that he's not voting for Trump, per se. Rather, he's voting for a worldview, voting for an ideology.

The obvious problem with that justification is that Trump doesn't have anything resembling a consistent worldview or ideology. Trump is not a thinker in any sense. He speaks and acts on the moment to gain a tactical advantage. 

JMac also indicated that Trump has better advisors than Hillary. But there's no evidence that Trump listens to anyone, much less conservative advisors. 

A better way to say what JMac was attempting to say is that a candidate with a malevolent agenda (Hillary) is more dangerous than a candidate with no discernible political philosophy. 

Mind you, the issue is more complex. Even if Hillary is more dangerous in the short-term, it's possible that Trump is more dangerous in the long-term if he co-ops the conservative movement. In fairness, Hillary will do great long-term damage as well. 

Peter Singer on Christianity and atheism

I was watching Peter Singer's debate with John Lennox:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qA7qBtNMayQ

1. In one respect his presentation was what you'd expect from a philosopher. It was well-organized. He gave one positive reason and two negative reasons for not believing in God. He reviewed three traditional theistic proofs. He then gave two arguments against belief in biblical theism. To that extent his presentation was logical and methodical. However, for a philosopher of his prominence and influence, I found his presentation to be frankly incompetent. It is, however, a useful foil. 

Final remarks on 1 John 4

http://www.jamesagibson.com/2016/11/03/final-remarks-on-the-1-john-4-dispute-pertaining-to-calvin-and-his-glaring-omission/

Premonitions

In this post I've going to give some examples of what I consider to be credible premonitions or premonitory dreams. Scripture records a number of revelatory or premonitory dreams. Some happen to believers and some to unbelievers. And, of course, we have the programmatic promise in Acts 2:17-18. So it's not surprising if some people have premonitory dreams today. 

Premonitions can happen apart from dreams. In addition, dreams can intersect with crisis apparitions, where a dead relative appears to the dreamer. By the same token, apparitions can happen within dreams or apart from dreams. 

What's the purpose of premonitory dreams? The most direct function is to warn or prepare the dreamer for an impending crisis. But suppose  it doesn't seem to serve any purpose?

Of course, that could be evidence that it's not premonitory. Just coincidence. However, it might still be premonitory. The purpose would simply be to give the dreamer evidence that there's more to reality than meets the eye. That this physical world is not all there is. Uncanny things happen that don't fit into the tight confines of naturalism. That can be an encouragement to Christians. Likewise, it can give unbelievers reason to reconsider their naturalism. 

I'll begin with a few accounts I find plausible, but a bit doubtful:

i) I've read that Loretta Lynn has premonitions. Something she inherited from her mother. It's possible those are tall tales. However, I don't see what she has to gain by it. She didn't make her fame and fortune as a reputed psychic. According to Kurt Koch, mediumistic magic is hereditary. 

ii) Many years ago I heard a UMC minister share a personal anecdote at a Bible study. He said he was a coal miner's son. He said his mother dreamt about a room she'd never seen before. It may have been a college dorm. Later, she went to the place she dreamt about, and it looked exactly like the dream.

What's striking about this anecdote is that he himself is politically and theologically liberal, so he's not predisposed to believe things like that. However, I'm somewhat hesitant about the account. It's not something that happened to him, but something his mother related to him. So he can't vouch for the experience. And I heard it just once, many years ago, so my recollection might be a little off. 

iii) In the late 80s (I think), a friend took me to his church. We didn't go for the service. Instead, We went upstairs to listen to a talk by a retired missionary. It was a small group gathering.

She was an older woman. She was the daughter of missionaries. She grew up on the mission field.

She married a Christian who was gung-ho about going into missions. Ironically, she was far less enthusiastic than he was. She knew from personal experience that foreign missions was very hard. 

But she was dutiful, so she agreed to return to the mission field with her new husband–even though she really didn't want to resume that life.

While they were there, one day her daughter told her that she (her daughter) had a death premonition. And, in fact, her daughter died two weeks later. 

At that point the missionary told us, "What can you say? It's God's will." She kind of shrugged. 

The missionary described how hard it was to get in touch with her relatives back home. The missionaries were in a backwater (in Africa, or maybe Latin America) with poor telephone communications. And when she did get hold of her parents, they were in total shock, since the death of their granddaughter (just a teenager at the time) was completely unexpected.

Aside from the premonition, what came through was her faithful submission to the will of God, despite a very difficult life. A life of hardship and wrenching disappointment.

It's possible that the story of the premonition was something she just made up, but I don't know what would motivate her to do that. She wasn't famous. She was just sharing her life-story with a handful of people in church. Not even in the main sanctuary. 

It wasn't a story about miraculous deliverance. It didn't have a happy ending. It wasn't: "God spoke to me! God gave me a vision! Now send me a 'seed faith' offering to make it happen."

My main hesitation is that I heard it just once, many years ago, so I'm fuzzy on the details. 

Now I'll move on to stronger examples. #1 is a dream I myself had, back in 2010. #'s 2-4 are anecdotes that Christian friends have shared with me (which I reproduce with their permission). These have been anonymized to protect the confidentiality of the source. I hasten to add that none of them is charismatic. #'s 5-9 are already in the public domain. Rauser is a Christian philosopher. Ruskin was a Victorian art critic and social commentator. Crespin was an opera diva. The rest are self-explanatory. 

Jen Hatmaker

I'll make a few observations about Jen Hatmaker. I never heard of her until she became instantly notorious for endorsing the LGBT agenda. 

i) From the little I've read, she's a 44-year-old mother and the wife of a megachurch pastor. She graduated from Oklahoma Baptist U. Don't know what her major was. According to one background story:

The writer and speaker calls their weekends a "crazy chaotic show, from Friday to Monday," as she flies between Christian conferences before joining her husband, Brandon, at their Free Methodist church plant for worship each Sunday. 

Amid quippy asides and Instagram photos of everyone smiling wide, Hatmaker chronicles her family—three kids "the old-fashioned way" and two adopted from Ethiopia in 2011—on her popular blog. Her 2012 book, 7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess (B&H Publishing), remains a bestseller as it follows her family's 30-day fasts to combat excessive consumption. 

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2014/march/jen-hatmaker-brings-her-super-christian-family-onto-reality.html

Apparently, she has quite a following among some women. One question is: why? Why think she has any particular wisdom to impart? Why think she's wiser than your own mother? 

There are some gifted women. There are women who have useful things to say. Take a Bible commentator like Karen Jobes, or Christian philosophers like Elizabeth Anscombe and Lydia McGrew, or a poet and devotional writer like Christina Rossetti. These women write with insight. 

But what does Hatmaker have going for her besides natural charisma? What qualifies her to teach women? What does she know that millions of other wives and mothers don't know? Why would you buy her books or attend a conference where she's the keynote speaker? She lacks the exegetical expertise of Karen Jobes. She's not a deep thinker like Elizabeth Anscombe or Lydia McGrew. She lacks the artistic talent of Christina Rossetti. What do women expect to learn from her? 

In that regard she reminds me of other women who have a following, like Joyce Meyer and Rachel Held Evans. Apparently, other women feel that they can "relate" to these celebrities. But why would you cling to their every word and let them do your thinking for you? 

ii) Which brings me to a second point. Unless the pastor or televangelist takes precautions to guard against it, televangelism and megachurches can produce a dynamic in which his family are treated like royalty. Simply to be the wife of a televangelist or megachurch pastor makes her the First Lady. Sons and daughters are princes and princesses. Take husband and wife teams like Kenneth and Gloria Copeland (not to mention that both of them are heretical). Queen to the king. 

Don't get me wrong: I'm not saying there's anything inherently wrong with a husband-and-wife team. I had an elderly relative who used to listen to Jill Briscoe. She graduated from Cambridge. She seemed to be very intelligent. Maybe more so than her husband. 

My point is that a woman isn't morally or theologically discerning simply in virtue of being married to a televangelist or megachurch pastor. Likewise, the fact that someone's a natural public speaker doesn't mean they have good judgment in theology of ethics. That doesn't qualify them to be spiritual leaders. That applies to men as well as women. 

I'm reminded of Erma Bombeck. She was a columnist who made a lucrative career writing about her experience as a housewife. Women could "relate" to her. That's because Bombeck was a humorist. 

In addition, is Jen Hatmaker even a good wife and mother? That's not a part-time job. How can she do that when she's jetting around the country on the speaking circuit? Likewise, is turning your home into a reality show really good for the kids? Is it good for them to live in a fishbowl? Is she even a good role model at that level? 

ii) Now I'd like to shift to a related point. And that's the role of emotions. Emotions are important. There's a sense in which we all live for our emotions. By that I mean, we all want to be happy. 

There is, though, a crucial difference between living for emotions  and living by emotions. It doesn't occur to many people that we need to educate our emotions. There's a difference between raw emotion and sanctified emotion. In and of themselves, emotions are not a morally or rationally reliable guide to forming beliefs or making decisions. 

Likewise, it doesn't occur to many people that sometimes we have a duty to override our emotions. Mere feelings have no moral authority. It's wrong to let your feelings lead you. Sanctified reason, reason informed by revelation, needs to be in the driver's seat, and not emotion. 

How does it differ from no gardener at all?

Anthony Flew famously wrote:

Once upon a time two explorers came upon a clearing in the jungle. In the clearing were growing many flowers and many weeds. One explorer says, "Some gardener must tend this plot." The other disagrees, "There is no gardener." So they pitch their tents and set a watch. No gardener is ever seen. "But perhaps he is an invisible gardener." So they set up a barbed-wire fence. They electrify it. They patrol with bloodhounds. (For they remember how H. G. Well's The Invisible Man could be both smelt and touched though he could not be seen.) But no shrieks ever suggest that some intruder has received a shock. No movements of the wire ever betray an invisible climber. The bloodhounds never give cry. Yet still the Believer is not convinced. "But there is a gardener, invisible, intangible, insensible, to electric shocks, a gardener who has no scent and makes no sound, a gardener who comes secretly to look after the garden which he loves." At last the Sceptic despairs, "But what remains of your original assertion? Just how does what you call an invisible, intangible, eternally elusive gardener differ from an imaginary gardener or even from no gardener at all?"

i) With whom is Flew shadowboxing? Is this directed at theological noncognitivism? Perhaps he's responding to modernist theologians who say God is ineffable. God is indefinable. He transcends our conceptual categories. There's no analogy between God and human words or concepts. If that's his target, then I think his parable scores a direct hit. 

ii) But at another level, his parable suffers from an egregious blindspot. You don't need to empirically detect a gardener to infer a gardener. You don't motion detectors or spectrometry to smoke out the presence of a gardener. Rather, you infer the gardener from the garden. You infer the gardener from his effects. Flowerbeds don't weed themselves. Orchards don't thin themselves. Trees don't grow in rows, much less even-spaced rows. A well-tended garden implies the existence of a gardener. The garden itself is evidence for the gardener. You don't need direct evidence for the gardener, since the garden furnishes indirect, but unmistakable evidence for the gardener. Moreover, that's analogous to many theistic proofs. So in that respect, his parable is counterproductive. 

Typecasting the culture wars

Although this is about Catholicism, it's easy to keep the same cast of characters (heroes and villains), but shift it to a Protestant setting (evangelicals and "progressive" Christians). All the same parallels:

http://www.crisismagazine.com/2016/will-persecution-comes

Hylomorphism

I usually agree with Paul Helm. Here's a rare exception:

http://paulhelmsdeep.blogspot.com/2016/11/the-puritans-soul.html

I agree with Helm on the importance of the body in Christian anthropology. But we don't need Thomistic hylomorphism to value the body. Indeed, a dreaded Cartesian dualist can value the body, without the obscurities of hylomorphism. It's a philosophically and theologically problematic position. Consider the view of analytical Thomist, Elizabeth Anscombe:

This is why I call "immaterial substance" a delusive conception…There is no reason whatever for believing in a temporal immortality of the soul apart from the resurrection…I take the Christian doctrine of immortality to be the doctrine of an unending human life, happy or unhappy, after the resurrection, and not the doctrine of an immortal sort of substance, the soul., to which is appended the doctrine of the resurrection because a disembodied soul is not a complete man, "The Immortality of the Soul," Faith in a Hard Ground, 72,77.

Now, it's possible, I suppose, that her position was partially influenced by Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein once made a skeptical comment about dreams, which his student, Norman Malcolm developed. If we conceive the intermediate state as analogous to dreaming, and if, following Wittgenstein, we're dubious about the "folk psychology" of dreaming, then perhaps that has something to due with her skepticism. But I have no actual evidence that was a factor in her thinking. 

It is, of course, possible, that her skepticism isn't specifically Thomistic, although she devotes time to analyzing the Thomistic category of substance. And I'm not suggesting that Helm ought to be persuaded by her arguments. 

But it's no mystery that hylomorphism, even of the Thomistic variety, is hard to square with the intermediate state. As I recall, Peter Geach, another analytical Thomist (and Anscombe's husband) raises similar difficulties in God and the Soul. From what I've read, Thomists must make ad hoc qualifications to adapt hylomorphism to the intermediate state.  And that's from astute Catholic philosophers who are highly sympathetic to Thomism. 

Dembski drops out of the ID movement

https://billdembski.com/official-retirement-from-intelligent-design/

http://seanmcdowell.org/blog/how-is-the-intelligent-design-movement-doing-interview-with-william-dembski

I had noticed some odd omissions. He hadn't updated his online bibliography for several years. The Discovery Institute has been feting Behe and Denton, but strangely silent about Dembski's contributions, even though he's one of the founders of the movement. I've also seen Evolution News & Views showcasing newer talent (e.g. Doug Axe, Stephen Meyer). 

One reason might be that as an aging mathematician, he may feel his best work is behind him. To be clear, he hasn't recanted his position. 

There is, though, some bitterness. I think, not without reason, that he suffers from burnout because he's been burned so many times. He was run out of town on a rail at Baylor. Then he got a job at SBTS, only to resign a year later. Then he landed a job at SWBTS, only to get into hot water with Paige Patterson. 

He's been frozen out by naturalistic evolutionists, theistic evolutionists, and young-earth creationists. His statement that "the camaraderie I once experienced with colleagues and friends in the movement has largely dwindled" is striking. He feels pretty alienated. Sad, but understandable. For more background on his motivations:

http://www.thebestschools.org/features/william-dembski-interview/#disillusion_with_fundamentalism

This speck of dust

I was listening to Richard Dawkins debate John Lennox. Dawkins said it's "petty and small-minded" to think the creator of the cosmos (if he existed) would come to this speck of dust to rid the world of sin. That fails to do justice to the grandeur of the universe. 

That's a revealing window into the mind of Dawkins. It reminds me of a distinction I've drawn between two kinds of painters: there are artists who like to paint people and artists who like to paint landscapes. Evidently, Dawkins is more interested in the spectacle of the natural world than human beings. 

Certainly humans are physically insignificant compared to the scale of the universe, or even mountains, canyons, and the like. It is, however, a false dichotomy for Dawkins to intuit that a God who's big enough to design the universe would take no interest in little creatures like humans. If anything, it's a mark of divine greatness to be mindful of each and every detail. Where everything happens for a reason. No plot holes. Is a God who only cares about the big picture, but can't be bothered with the details, really superior to a God who's cognizant of the fine details as well as the big picture? Isn't that a hallmark of quality craftsmanship? 

You also have creative writers who are fond of certain characters. They have favorite characters. 

I'm not suggesting that's directly analogous to God. I'm just saying there's nothing incongruous about the notion of a creator who takes a personal interest in the people (or characters) he makes.