Perspicuity

In this post I'd like to make two related observations. They're not directly related to teach other, but they share the same general topic, and it's more efficient to discuss them together than separately.

1. There are some Christians as well as former Christians who have an unwarranted expectation regarding the nature of Biblical communication. They fail to make certain allowances which they automatically make in ordinary human communication. For instance, when Proverbs makes blanket statements (e.g. Prov 22:6), they treat those as absolute promises. Likewise, when the NT makes blanket statements about prayer (Mt 21:22; Mk 11:24; Jn 14:13), they treat those as guarantees.

They have different rules for Scripture. They have the unspoken assumption that if God is talking, then we shouldn't have to make allowance for implicit conditions or qualifications.

In ordinary human communication, we use hyperbole. We generalize. But when it comes to Scripture, they suppose it ought to mean exactly what it says, without the unstated caveats, conventions, or limitations we take for granted in normal human communication.

It's a simple-minded expectation, like a child who complains that his parents broke their promise if some unforeseen contingency arises. They act as though God would be duplicitous if you had to nuance his statements. As a result, professing Christians who operate with that false expectation suffer a crisis of faith or lose their faith when God "breaks" his promise.

2. I think part of the problem is that you have Christians who read the Bible as if God is speaking directly to them. This segues into my second point. In response to Roman Catholicism, Protestant theologians emphasized the perspicuity of Scripture. Indeed, they may have exaggerated the perspicuity of Scripture. That's understandable, but the case for the Protestant faith doesn't require that.

If God appeared to me and spoke to me personally, the meaning of his statement might well be unequivocally clear to me. That's because God knows how I will understand or misunderstand a statement depending on how exactly that's worded.

Clarity of communication isn't a purely objective feature of speech. It depends on the listener as well as the speaker. What is clear to one person may be unclear to another.

Take opinion polling. The same question may have different connotations to different respondents. Or take an exam in which questions may be open to more than one interpretation. It's possible to overthink some exam questions. 

If the communication is individualized, and the communicator is omniscient, then that can forestall possible misunderstanding. But Scripture is a medium of mass communication. It isn't customized for each reader. In that respect, Scripture won't be equally clear to each reader.

However, a Magisterium is not a solution, not a genuine alternative, because the communications of a pope or ecumenical council will also be mass communication. Will also be a one-to-many communication. 

And even if (ex hypothesi), a pope or ecumenical council is infallible, that's not the same as omniscience. An infallible speaker can still be misunderstood, for unless he knows how the individual will construe his statement, his statement is still vulnerable to misinterpretation. So the Magisterium fails to solve the problem it poses for itself. 

Pomp and circumstance

For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world (1 Jn 2:16).

Woe to you Pharisees! For you love the best seat in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces (Lk 11:43).

For those who plan ahead, funerals are their final statement to the world and God of what you think matters in life. I didn't watch the McCain funeral, but from what I read, it was a typical state funeral for a national figure of his prominence. Eulogized by two former presidents, including the execrable Obama. Eulogized by Nixon's famous/infamous Secretary of State (Kissinger). In a separate ceremony, eulogized by the odious Joe Biden. The main ceremony was held at National Cathedral, flagship of the apostate ECUSA. 

Sen. McCain has a younger brother (Joe McCain) who's still alive. Wouldn't he be the obvious choice to give the eulogy? But he's not that important. 

John McCain had an ambitious, absentee father, and it's an interesting question how he might have turned out differently with a dad who put family ahead of career.  

Papal priorities

https://nypost.com/2018/09/01/pope-calls-plastics-littering-oceans-an-emergency/

The snakebite test

For mainstream evangelicals, the canonical status of the long ending of Mark is a matter to be settled by textual criticism, and the long ending is generally regarded as a scribal interpolation. There are a few reputable holdouts like Maurice Robinson. 

But according to another perspective, the canonical status of the long ending is a matter to be settled by ecclesiastical reception. It's my understanding that Trent implicitly commits Roman Catholics to the canonicity of the long ending. Mind you, I don't think modern Catholic Bible scholars take that seriously. But that's the official position. (You also have a few evangelicals like Peter Gurry who accept the ecclesiastical criterion.)

At a practical level, this generates a dilemma. Although Catholic apologists pay lip-service to the long ending of Mark, I don't see them putting that to the test. While snake-handling churches tragically illustrate the dangers of ignorance, at least they have the commitment to act on their stated principles. By contrast, Catholic apologists defend the long ending of Mark without paying the price. 

Transgender self-defense techniques

As progressive Christians, we've put transphobic, homophobic, misogynistic, toxic masculinity behind us. Now's the time to master unisex self-defense techniques:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCZtcxGwHRg&app=desktop

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G10uv57Romo

The Vatican brothel

Although this article is five years old, it provides some useful background to the current situation:

https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2013/12/gay-clergy-catholic-church-vatican

Debate With A Mormon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XbJ3954HW8

The miracle of seed-faith

Catholic loyalists remind me of gullible sheep who are suckered into dipping into their life savings, Social Security, pension, or welfare check to pad the wallet of prosperity preachers. Remember "the miracle of seed faith? 

Sharks can manipulate softheaded dupes with an idealistic sales pitch. The sharks don't believe it but the donors do. Cynics in leadership who play the laity for chumps. Just as prosperity preachers have a credulous constituency, that has it's counterpart among the Catholic faithful. 

For instance, Cardinal Dolan has an affable, avuncular TV persona, yet he's deeply implicated in the coverup. Apparently, Cardinal McCarrick oozed empathy on camera. Pope Francis projects saintliness, but behind-the-scenes he's an enabler of the lavender mafia. 

This goes way back. I believe it's well-established that Cardinal Spellman was a sodomite. He had an acrimonious falling out with Fulton Sheen. But Sheen honored the code of silence. 

Apollo and Daphne

Suppose you discovered Bernini's Apollo and Daphne on a desert island. The island has no human inhabitants. And there's no other evidence that it ever had human inhabitants. Still, you conclude that the statue is an artifact. It didn't pop into existence uncaused. It did not and could not have a natural cause. 

That's analogous to the cosmological argument. But that's very coarse-grained. A more fine-grained argument is the teleological argument. That's more powerful, runs much deeper.

The original slab of marble didn't select for that particular sculpture. There are so many different sculptures that might be made from the same block of marble. And they're mutually exclusive. If a sculptor carves it one way, he can't carve it another way. He has to make a choice.

Possibilities greatly outnumber actualities. Although the size, shape, and texture of the material impose built-in limitations on the number of potential sculptures in that block of marble, yet for every sculpture, there's ever so many alternate sculptures. So it's not just a question of why there's something rather than nothing, but why there's this particular something rather than another something.

The block of marble doesn't really contain the sculpture. Rather, the sculpture began as an idea. The sculpture represents the union of something conceptual with something concrete. A relation between the block of marble and something outside the marble. The sculptor has a mental image which he instantiates in the physical medium of the marble. 

It would be absurd to say time and chance can produce the sculpture. Rather, it takes intelligence to make a selection from the panoply of abstract possibilities and actualize that one possibility to the exclusion of all other candidates. In a sense, intelligence is a simplifying device. 

Secular bromides on death

There's a sense in which Christians should take atheism seriously, not because it's true, but because it provides an instructive point of contrast to Christianity. Often we can't truly appreciate something unless and until we lose it or consider the dire alternatives. What would life be like without it? Too many Christians fail to think deeply about the alternatives, and so they fail to appreciate the surpassing value of the Gospel. 

In addition, many people think about atheism the wrong way. They act like there are two sides to every question, and this is just another two-sided issue. But the stakes are far higher on some issues.

Atheists have different perspectives on death. Off the top of my head, here are some:

1. Bravado

Some atheists (e.g. Antony Flew) labor to make a virtue of necessity. They act like mortality is a good thing. According to that posture, the fact that this life is all there is is what makes it precious. You don't get a second chance, so you better make the most of this one-time opportunity.

I don't know how many atheists really believe that, or if this is a just a way to parry Christianity. The best defense is a good offense. Instead of conceding that Christianity would be better if it were true, but alas it's not, you pretend that oblivion is better than heaven. 

2. Feigned indifference

Some atheists like Epicurus and Lucretius contend that oblivion is a matter of indifference. Once you die, you're not conscious of what it's like not to be alive anymore. 

In addition, prenatal and postmortem nonexistence are said to be symmetrical. This sentiment is captured by the witticism attributed to Mark Twain: 

I don't fear death. I was dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and hadn't suffered the slightest inconvenience.

In fairness, Epicurus and Lucretius were pre-Christian, so the hand they were dealt wasn't much to work with. 

3. Stiff upper lip

Some atheists (e.g. Carl Sagan) admit that mortality is bad. Immortality would be better than oblivion. However, they try to make a virtue of that concession by patting themselves on the back for their moral heroism in bravely facing up to the cold hard facts rather than retreating into the comforting illusions of organized religion. 

4. The lucky few

Here's a variation on (3):

We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred? (Richard Dawkins).   

That's all very hortatory. A pep talk for the godless. 

5. Life's a bitch, then you die

There are nihilists (e.g. David Benatar) who think life sucks and death sucks. You'd be better of not existing in the first place, but if you have the misfortune of existing, you now have something to lose by dying. Life is rotten but death is even worse. Death is a rotten end to a rotten existence. 

6. Shaking your fist

This attitude is epitomized by Dylan Thomas's famous poem:

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

The sentiment is understandable, but at the same time there's an impotent vacuity to the faux defiance. 

7. Cheating death

Some transhumanists (e.g. Ray Kurzweil) hope to elude death by digitizing and uploading consciousness into a computer. 

8. Immortality would be an interminable bore

Classic example: Bernard Williams, "The Makropolus Case: Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality".

9. Buddhism

According to Buddhism, life is ineluctably tragic. And when you die, that zeros out your former life. You must start from scratch. So you're cursed to keep saying good-bye to everything and everyone, over and over again. Kinda like Ellen Ripley (Alien franchise) who makes new friends, is put into stasis, comes out of stasis. All her friends are dead. Has to start all over again. 

My intention isn't to evaluate each of these. The fact that atheists are so conflicted about death, the fact that they offer so many contradictory bromides, is unwittingly revealing in itself. 

Dealing with death

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGysXj6-Tbo

https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/do-you-think-about-your-death

Why remain Catholic?

A few comments on this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ani_hnN8Fs&feature=youtu.be

i) Of course he's a bishop, so he's going to stick up for his denomination. If he wasn't committed to his sect, he wouldn't be a Catholic priest, apologist, and bishop in the first place. It's just a partisan pep talk. 

ii) He seems sincere. He may be sincere. But consider all the seemingly sincere bishops and cardinals who are sharks. Projecting sincerity is a job requirement for a successful conman. Some charlatan televangelists project piety, but that's just a mask. There's no presumption that spokesmen like Barron are for real. Almost the entire Catholic episcopate worldwide is morally compromised by the abuse scandal–all the way up to the current pope. Assuming he's sincere, it's the bona fides of a partisan fanatic who can't imagine he made a wrong turn. No different from Mormon apologists or Muslim apologists. 

iii) What can the laity actually do? The Catholic church has an authoritarian, topdown polity. The hierarchy isn't answerable to the laity. Short of boycotting the denomination, members have no leverage. 

iv) Imagine a diehard Marxist who castigated former Communists for "cutting and running". "You must stay and fight for the revolution! Don't use Communist atrocities as an excuse to quit. We have a duty to persevere with the Marxist experiment. Marxism hasn't failed–Marxists leaders have failed. But the failure of Marxist leaders can't discredit the ideology. Our cause is greater than imperfect individuals. Just because it flunks a bench test doesn't mean it's a flawed paradigm. We just need to get the bugs out."

v) Jesus didn't sign an exclusive contract with the church of Rome. Jesus doesn't belong to you. You don't have Jesus on a leash. You don't have a monopoly on saints. 

You're the church of European royalty. The state religion. You got to be where you are through political patronage and palace intrigue. Kings and emperors imposed Catholicism on their subjects: Cuius regio, eius religio. That has nothing to do with Jesus or the Holy Spirit. The church of Rome is worldly from start to finish. 

Toward a Philosophy (Theology) of Christian Voting

The Scandal of the NeverTrump Evangelical Mind

This is an excellent analysis by Thomas Bradstreet, who examines some recent articles on why “NeverTrump” should be the default position for Christians, and shows clearly why this kind of thinking is so vacuous.

One of the things about politics (vs theology, I suppose), is that in theology we can often cite chapter and verse, or we can cite some prior theologian who said such-and-such, and that can be used as real evidence to support a position.

In the realm of politics, everyone has an opinion, but there are no chapters-and-verses (which aren’t taken out of context, or which aren’t subjected to the kind of rigorous thinking that you’re doing here). Rather:

What’s striking about the writing of [many of the] NeverTrump evangelicals generally is the utter absence of any theoretical discussion of what would seem to be a foundational issue, namely, how one would go about determining how one should vote. Why would a movement, one that so values truth and honesty, give so little attention to what is most necessary to prove their conclusions? The answer is this: NeverTrump evangelicals exist in a sea of rhetorical devices, tricks, moralisms, and pithy lines. The moment that they get precise they disclose their vacuous reasoning and the emotive foundations of their unthought and, in consequence, lose their cheering crowd.

It’s that same thing that we see a lot and have described in the past ... someone may be a competent scholar in one field, but that almost never seems to translate to being particularly insightful in a field that’s not that person’s field of scholarship.

This article, on the other hand, is a model of clear thinking that will benefit many evangelicals (I hope) as we move into the 2018 and 2020 election cycles.

(Thomas Bradstreet is a Ph. D. candidate in political science and teaches at a university in the southern United States.)

The Magician's Nephew

How could evil originate in a good world? Or did it? In The Magician's Nephew, Lewis solves that theological conundrum by making the source of evil a malevolent invader from another world. Lewis has a comparable device in Perelandra. 

I remember a Bible scholar who said the Tempter in Gen 3 performs the same function. Since Eden was initially devoid of evil, it had to enter the garden. The source of evil lay outside the garden rather than the inside the garden.

Although that may finesse the proximate source of evil, it only pushes the question back a step. It can't explain the ultimate source of evil. How did the malevolent invader become evil in the first place? How did evil originate wherever he came from? 

The issue is sometimes framed in terms of how a holy or perfect agent could ever find evil appealing in the first place. 

It's like asking how a movie villain became a villain. At one level, there may be an explanation inside the plot or narrative. There may be a backstory about some pivotal event that took him in the wrong direction. 

At another level, outside the story, he's a villain because the director had the idea of a villainous character, and he turned his idea into a movie. It began in his mind. The villain was originally a thought. The villain in the story objectifies the director's imagination. At that level, he does dastardly things in the movie because he does dastardly things in the director's imagination, and the movie character is a projection of the director's imagination. 

There's the additional fact that while Adam was initially sinless, that doesn't mean there was no room for improvement. A quest for knowledge isn't inherently wrong. Intellectual curiosity is a good thing. 

In this case, it's forbidden knowledge, but that combines something innocuous with something prohibited. There can be wrong ways to acquire something good.

Moreover, certain kinds of knowledge are corrupting. Getting inside the mind of a serial killer is corrupting. Likewise, learning about evil by doing evil is corrupting. Then there's second-order evils where an agent must commit one kind of evil to be in a position to experience another kind of evil. Some kinds of knowledge are safe for God but dangerous for creatures.  

Pope trims sanctions for abusers

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2017/02/25/pope-quietly-trims-sanctions-sex-abusers-seeking-mercy/98399022/

Waiting for Aslan

I ran across this recently:

https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2016/01/nikabriks-candidate

I'm not a regular reader of First Things. I'm only became aware of this article because Victor Reppert plugged it. A few observations:

1. Many Trump critics are obsessed with the fact that many evangelicals or "white evangelicals" voted for Trump. They can't let it go. They're trapped in that timewarp.

For them, this is the great evangelical betrayal. The great evangelical sellout. They don't listen to defenses. They assume that any proposed justification is just a rationalization. It's all about power. They can't entertain the possibility that some evangelicals might have principled reasons to vote for him. It isn't possible to have an intelligent dialogue with critics like that. 

2. However, for rational people, assessing Trump is a multi-stage process. Rational people leave themselves open to reassessing a position in light of new evidence. In the case of Trump there are roughly three phases:

i) When he ran in the primaries, there are two criteria: 

a) His statements and behavior as a private citizen. 

b) Comparing him to his Republican competitors. How did he stack up in terms of ideology, credibility, and electability vis-a-vis his rivals for the nomination? 

Electability is necessarily speculative, since we don't know in advance what will happen. It's an educated guess. 

ii) When he ran in the general election, the Democrat nominee–Hillary Clinton–was the major basis of comparison. The major criterion.  

iii) And now we have the Trump presidency. Obviously we couldn't gauge his presidential performance ahead of time. So nowadays, the policies of the Trump administration are the logical basis of comparison. That's the criterion. And it's not just about Trump–but about his administration in general. 

It's obsolete to keep harping on the past–because we make assessments and decisions based on the information we have at any given time. In the nature of the case, we now have information that wasn't available before he became president. Moreover, the information we now have is more directly relevant. Past considerations have been superseded by more timely, more salient evidence. 

3. It's immature to use The Chronicles of Narnia as a moral template, but since that's on the table I'll discuss it. One question is what is ethical framework in the universe of Narnia. The other question is the real-world analogy. Let's start with the first question. Are Narnians obligated to wait for someone–anyone–to respond to Susan's horn rather than making military alliances with what's at hand? What about the horn?

"Susan, Eve's Daughter," said Father Christmas. "These are for you," and he handed her a bow and a quiver full of arrows and a little ivory horn. "You must use the bow only in great need," he said, "for I do not mean you to fight in the battle. It does not easily miss. And when you put this horn to your lips; and blow it, then, wherever you are, I think help of some kind will come to you."  The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, chap. 10.

i) That's not worded as a guarantee. Is Father Christmas infallible? Is that something you can stake your life on? It's certainly better than nothing. But does it mean you're supposed to do nothing to defend yourself? 

ii) Aslan didn't make that promise.

iii) And it's not a promise that Aslan will come to the rescue.  

iv) Do the Narnians have a doctrine of the afterlife? How much do Narians have to lose? Are there eschatological compensations if the villains win?  

Even if, in the Narnian universe, there's a heaven and hell, has that been revealed to Narnians? Is that something they can bank on? What's the religion of Narnia? There is no Narnian Bible. It's rather like the folkloric religion of the patriarchs. Occasional encounters with the Almighty. Oral tradition. 

So it's unclear, within the worldview of Narnia, that they have a duty to pin all their hopes on someone responding to the horn. That's not equivalent to waiting for Aslan. 

4. As for the analogy–what's the analogy? That if we're patient, a deus ex machina will save our bacon? 

But there's no promise that God will intervene–as an alternative to taking matters into our own hands. This isn't like Yahweh making a covenant with Israel: so long as Israel remains faithful, God will protect her from her enemies. Rather, we must play the hand the providence dealt us. To say Trump voters were tired of waiting for Aslan is like some charismatics who refuse to take a deathly ill child to the doctor. They think that's faithless. Their piety may be well-intentioned, but it's theologically uninformed.  

5. No doubt it's wrong in the moral universe of Narnia to revive the White Witch. That's a kind of devil's pact. But is Donald Trump equivalent to the White Witch? That requires an argument–not an assertion. 

Official priorities

https://www.catholicbishops.ie/2018/08/24/statement-by-bishop-william-crean-announcing-the-decision-of-the-bishops-conference-to-divest-from-fossil-fuels/

Advice for the next papal conclave

Qualifications for the new Pope that would bear most fruit. He should believe that
justification is by faith alone,
baptism is a sign not a cause of regeneration,
Christ is at the Lord’s Supper by memory and faith not physically,
the Bible alone has final authority not the pope.

— John Piper (@JohnPiper) August 30, 2018

Ur-source theories

http://whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2018/08/more_on_ursource_theories_of_u.html

Paradigm shift

I. Paradigm shift

Converting from the Protestant faith to the Catholic faith, or vice versa, involves a paradigm-shift. I'm defining a theological paradigm as a comprehensive interpretive grid. A way of viewing, integrating, and simplifying a mass of issues by reference to a particular conceptual scheme. One impediment which prevents some Catholics from conversion is that they are used to filtering everything through their theological paradigm, and they can't imagine an alternative. They don't know the explanatory power of a Protestant paradigm. They don't know how it answers the same questions. They don't think it can answer the same questions. 

In this post I'm going to compare and contrast Catholic and Protestant paradigms. This is a thumbnail sketch. I've provided documentation in other posts. 

Of course, there's no one Protestant paradigm–although they share a family resemblance with many common assumptions–so I'll be speaking for myself. In addition, there's no one Catholic paradigm. So I'll be selective and generalize. My analysis deliberately oversimplifies some issues, but the basic contrast remains the same after we add some caveats. Sometimes we need to see the forest rather than the trees. We can revisit the trees at a later date.