A Discussion Of The Eye Of The Beholder

Lydia McGrew will be on Cameron Bertuzzi's YouTube channel at 1 P.M. this afternoon to discuss her book, The Eye Of The Beholder (Tampa, Florida: DeWard Publishing, 2021). It argues for the historicity of the fourth gospel. It's a great book, and you can order it here.

There's Always Another Election Just Around The Corner

One of the reasons for the problem I referred to in my post yesterday is that the media, talk radio, and other sources keep treating political issues (and some cultural ones) with such disproportionate urgency. Last year, I wrote some posts about how people don't have enough urgency in religious contexts (here and here). But there's so much more urgency in other contexts, like politics. And the nature of life and our political system is such that there's always going to be another election, another legislative controversy, another court decision just around the corner. We should have urgency about those matters up to a point. But that urgency needs to be less than the urgency we have for religious issues.

One of the questions Evangelicals (and everybody) should ask themselves is how much the work they're concerned about is already being done. How we ought to proportion our work to the work of others is one of the factors we should take into account, yet it's often neglected. People keep giving disproportionately more attention to political and cultural issues that are already getting far more attention than religious issues that are more important. They'd rather be the fifty-millionth person to comment on an issue in presidential politics than be the fifty-thousandth person to comment on a religious issue that's more in need of attention. They'd rather be the thirty-eight-millionth person to comment on the latest racial controversy the media (including the conservative media) are telling them to be so concerned about than be the thirty-eight-thousandth person to comment on a religious issue that's been far more neglected.

It makes sense to discuss more popular and less neglected issues to some extent. Sometimes we can't avoid it even if we wanted to, for example. But we need to be careful about it. Part of being careful about it is to take these proportioning issues into account. And we should recognize how misleading the culture's urgency about politics and other matters can be and often is.

Religion Is Upstream Of Culture

It's true that culture is upstream of politics. But that fact should be supplemented by the more important fact that religion is upstream of culture (e.g., religion is more important; religion has more potential to be influential; religion has been more influential in some significant contexts). Yet, on television, Twitter, Facebook, and elsewhere, people give far more attention to political issues and non-religious cultural issues than they do to religious ones. That includes the large majority of Evangelicals.

This Is The Time For Contest And For Fighting

"Let us not then seek relaxation: for Christ promised tribulation to His disciples and Paul says, 'All who will live godly in Christ Jesus, shall suffer persecution.' [2 Timothy 3:12] No noble-spirited wrestler, when in the lists, seeks for baths, and a table full of food and wine. This is not for a wrestler, but for a sluggard. For the wrestler contendeth with dust, with oil, with the heat of the sun's ray, with much sweat, with pressure and constraint. This is the time for contest and for fighting, therefore also for being wounded, and for being bloody and in pain. Hear what the blessed Paul says, 'So fight I, not as one that beateth the air.' [1 Corinthians 9:26] Let us consider that our whole life is in combats, and then we shall never seek rest, we shall never feel it strange when we are afflicted: no more than a boxer feels it strange, when he combats. There is another season for repose. By tribulation we must be made perfect." (John Chrysostom, Homilies On Hebrews, 5:7)

Don't Forget About Josephus

There are some contexts in which Christians should be giving Josephus more attention than they typically do. Because Josephus was a non-Christian, he had no dog in some of the fights among the Christians of his day or later generations. And since he was writing so early (the late first century), his comments are more valuable accordingly.

As Steve Mason (a non-Christian scholar who specializes in the study of Josephus) noted, "He [Josephus] also confirms, in case there was any doubt, that James was distinguished by being Jesus' actual brother - a significant point in view of later Christian thinking about Mary's status as 'perpetual virgin' and speculation as to whether Jesus' 'brothers and sisters' were really only spiritual relatives or more distant physical relations." (Josephus And The New Testament [Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 2005], 248) For more about how Josephus supports Mary's giving birth to other children after Jesus, and does so in multiple ways, see Eric Svendsen's Who Is My Mother? (Amityville, New York: Calvary Press, 2001).

On page 214 of his book cited above, Mason quotes Josephus' comments on how the baptism of John the Baptist was non-justificatory and non-regenerative: "They must not employ it [baptism] to gain pardon for whatever sins they had committed, but as a consecration of the body implying that the soul was already cleansed by right behaviour." (Antiquities Of The Jews, 18:5:2) Given the close relationship between John and Jesus and John's baptism and Christian baptism (as illustrated by John 3:26-30 and Peter's comments in 1 Peter 3:21 that are similar to those of Josephus, for example), it makes more sense to think that there would be more rather than less continuity between the two baptisms. The New Testament evidence suggests that John's baptism was non-justificatory and non-regenerative, and Josephus gives us further reason to reach that conclusion.

How much did Irenaeus influence our view of the gospels?

Critics often suggest that Irenaeus had an inordinately large influence on what gospels were considered canonical, what authors those gospels were attributed to, and other gospel issues. However:

"Irenaeus hardly adopted precisely these four Gospels randomly, especially given his emphasis on church tradition; and is it an accident that he chose the four Gospels more reflective of first-century Judean traditions than our other extant gospels (the 'apocryphal' gospels and gnostic sayings treatises)?" (Craig Keener, Acts: An Exegetical Commentary, Volume I [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2012], 399)

Martin Hengel mentioned a line of evidence that's rarely discussed:

"Claus Thornton has shown that this [a passage in Irenaeus about gospel authorship] is an earlier tradition, which must be taken seriously; as the geographical references and references to persons show, it is written throughout from a Roman perspective....As Thornton has demonstrated, it corresponds to the short notes about authors in the catalogues of ancient libraries, of the kind that we know, say, from the Museion in Alexandria. Presumably this information comes from the Roman church archive." (The Four Gospels And The One Gospel Of Jesus Christ [Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Trinity Press International, 2000], 35-36)

Here's the passage in question:

"Matthew also issued a written Gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect, while Peter and Paul were preaching at Rome, and laying the foundations of the Church. After their departure, Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, did also hand down to us in writing what had been preached by Peter. Luke also, the companion of Paul, recorded in a book the Gospel preached by him. Afterwards, John, the disciple of the Lord, who also had leaned upon His breast, did himself publish a Gospel during his residence at Ephesus in Asia." (Against Heresies, 3:1:1)

Notice how unnecessary the reference to Peter and Paul's work in Rome is. I don't recall anybody else describing the timing of the composition of the gospel of Matthew that way. Similarly, connecting the origins of Mark's gospel to the apostles' work in Rome ("After their departure") is unnecessary. Just before what I've quoted above, Irenaeus refers to how the apostles had spread the gospel "to the ends of the earth", so the shift to such a focus on Rome is somewhat contrary to the context. Irenaeus probably was citing a Roman source along the lines of what Hengel refers to above. So, Irenaeus is citing an earlier source that presumably made its claims independently of Irenaeus, a source that was well positioned to have significantly reliable information (the Roman church).

For more about how Irenaeus' influence is often overestimated in these contexts, see here, here, and here.

Justification Apart From Baptism After The Time Of The Apostles

Gavin Ortlund recently posted a YouTube video about the common assertion that baptismal regeneration was universally accepted by the early church. Ortlund is a credobaptist, as I am. He discusses some of the relevant Biblical passages, whether infants should be baptized, and other issues, but not much is said about early views of the relation between baptism and justification. Some commenters beneath the video mentioned that they hadn't come across many discussions of such topics, presumably meaning that credobaptists rarely address the relevant patristic issues.

We've been discussing the issues here for many years, and I want to link some of those threads for anybody who's interested. See here for an overview of the history of belief in justification through faith alone between the time of the apostles and the Reformation. Read the comments section of the thread as well, since other relevant information is discussed there. Regarding how passages like John 3:5 supposedly were universally interpreted early on, see here. Timothy Kauffman has argued that the church fathers have often been misinterpreted on baptismal issues like these. I disagree with many of his conclusions, but you can go here for links to his material and my brief response to it. Ortlund often referred to 1 Peter 3:21 in his video. I don't think the salvation mentioned by Peter is justification, so the reference to salvation isn't even relevant, but what the passage goes on to say probably contradicts the concept of justification through baptism. See here for a discussion of that passage and other Biblical material. You can find many other posts about the relevant Biblical passages elsewhere in our archives. See here on Galatians 3:27, here on the idea that baptism isn't a work and the notion that it should be assumed to be present in passages that don't mention it, and so on.

The Significance Of Galatians 2:9

I've often discussed how unlikely it is that Galatians 2:9 would have been written if the earliest Christians had believed in a papacy. Not only is Galatians a good place to go when addressing the doctrine of justification, but it's also a good place to go when the papacy is being discussed. But notice that Galatians 2:9 is also significant in the context of the historicity of the gospels and Acts. Those documents portray Peter, James, and John as the most prominent members of the Twelve (for non-papal reasons), frequently putting Peter and John together, and Galatians 2:9 has Peter and John together as reputed pillars of the church (James the son of Zebedee being dead by then). And the prominence of James the brother of Jesus in Galatians 2:9 is what we'd expect from Acts. So is the placing of Paul and Barnabas together. There's other relevant material in Galatians as well, but 2:9 is a good passage to remember as one that concisely illustrates so much.

Overcoming The Temptation To Take Revenge

"Awe your heart, then, with the authority of God in the Scriptures; and when carnal reason says, 'My enemy deserves to be hated,' let conscience reply, 'But doth God deserve to be disobeyed?' 'Thus and thus hath he done, and so hath he wronged me'; 'But what hath God done that I should wrong him? If my enemy dares boldly to break the peace, shall I be so wicked as to break the precept? If he fears not to wrong me, shall not I fear to wrong God?' Thus let the fear of God restrain and calm your feelings….Set before your eyes the most eminent patterns of meekness and forgiveness, that you may feel the force of their example….Remember that by revenge you can only gratify a sinful passion, which by forgiveness you might conquer. Suppose that by revenge you might destroy one enemy; yet, by exercising the Christian's temper you might conquer three - your own lust, Satan's temptation, and your enemy's heart." (John Flavel, Keeping The Heart [Great Britain: Christian Focus Publications, 2019], 82, 84)

Deeply-Rooted Doctrines

"Beloved, our condition needs much endurance; and endurance is produced when doctrines are deeply rooted. For as no wind is able by its assaults to tear up the oak, which sends down its root into the lower recesses of the earth, and is firmly clenched there; so too the soul which is nailed by the fear of God none will be able to overturn." (John Chrysostom, Homilies On John, 54:1)

The Conjuring 3 And The Evidence Against The Warrens

The third installment in the Conjuring series is coming out in late May in England and in early June in the United States. The first two installments were among the most popular horror movies ever made. Like other popular movies, their influence overflows into other contexts. One of those other contexts is the predictable discussions of Ed and Lorraine Warren that come up whenever a Conjuring movie is released.

There's a large amount of material on the web discussing the case The Conjuring 3 is based on. The best articles I've come across are this one in the Washington Post that was published in 1981, shortly before the trial of Arne Johnson began, and this one published in 2014 in the Hartford Courant. And here's a more recent article that summarizes how various aspects of the case have developed over the last few decades.

I want to quote and comment on some portions of the first two stories linked above, since I found those portions especially pertinent to evaluating the genuineness of the case. First, from the Washington Post story:

The Moral Value Of Intellectual And Apologetic Work

"On the one hand, writing the way [the apostle Paul] usually writes - developing precise arguments with cogency and clarity - is not, in my view, morally neutral. It is a sign of honesty. To give reasons for what you believe and to strive for clarity that reveals what you truly think are marks of integrity." (John Piper, Why I Love The Apostle Paul [Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2019], 94)

Some past correspondences with Steve Hays

A longtime Triablogue reader and a friend of Steve Hays thought some of their past email correspondences might be beneficial for others to read. He granted us permission to post these correspondences. He preferred to be anonymous so I've edited and anonymized the content. Of course, "SH" refers to Steve Hays.

Jesus' Fulfillment Of Prophecy Wasn't Faked By Him Or The Early Christians

Sean McDowell recently posted a brief video on Twitter responding to the idea that Jesus lied about being born in Bethlehem. You can see a somewhat longer response in the original YouTube video. His comments are good as far as they go, and he's deliberately being concise, but much more could be said.

I have a collection of resources on the evidence for Jesus' birth in Bethlehem, and I'll be saying a lot more about the subject during the Christmas season later this year. However, there's more evidence for, and more ancient and modern non-Christian acknowledgement of, Jesus' background in Nazareth and Capernaum, which fulfills Isaiah 9:1. See here regarding problems with alleging that Jesus or the early Christians made up the claim that he was raised in Nazareth. And you can go here to read my interaction with a skeptic on these issues in a thread last year. Here's an interaction with a skeptic in the Sean McDowell thread.

There are a lot of other prophecy fulfillments that are similarly unlikely to have been fabricated by Jesus or the early Christians. See here for a collection of examples.

One good teacher or more than one?

"In considering whether Jesus said something or not, we should remember that it is simpler to suppose that one genius came up with remarkable teaching than to posit that multiple people had brilliant ideas and all independently attributed them to the same prior teacher….If we want to say that Jesus told none of the parables, we need to have at least three individuals who created different parables in order to explain those unique to each source. This is problematic when we know that soon afterward, parables were not a popular form for early Christian authors to use. If we suppose that Jesus told some of these parables and others were put on his lips by followers, again we have multiple parable tellers at different periods, with parables suddenly going out of fashion among Christians….Some of Jesus's parables, such as the parables of the sower, good Samaritan, and prodigal son, are viewed as masterpieces of composition. It is far simpler to suppose that the founding figure of the new religion was the creative genius for these stories than to suppose that several later creative geniuses all credited their less creative founder with their great compositions." (Peter Williams, Can We Trust The Gospels? [Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2018], approximate Kindle locations 1712, 1725)

Maybe it's time to give the Germans a break

One question often brought up in studying World War II is the question of how the average German could have allowed the Gestapo and the S.S. to take over their country and kill so many people unopposed.

Perhaps we should ask the Canadians.

The Lord Is Your Home

"Be not discouraged to go from this country to another part of the Lord's earth: 'The earth is His, and the fulness thereof.' This is the Lord's lower house; while we are lodged here, we have no assurance to lie ever in one chamber, but must be content to remove from one corner of our Lord's nether house to another, resting in hope that, when we come up to the Lord's upper city, 'Jerusalem that is above,' we shall remove no more, because then we shall be at home. And go wheresoever ye will, if your Lord go with you, ye are at home; and your lodging is ever taken before night, so long as He who is Israel's dwelling-house is your home (Psa. xc. 1)." (Samuel Rutherford, Letters Of Samuel Rutherford [Carlisle, Pennsylvania: The Banner of Truth Trust, 2012], 43)

Deceptive Nostalgia

Nostalgia is often misleading. Our reasons for valuing something in the past were trivial or sinful. One of the questions Christians should ask themselves is how Christian their nostalgia is. And how much has it matured over time? If your most valued memories are trivial ones, that's a problem. If the memories that move your emotions the most and the ones you want to talk to other people about the most are sinful or are focused on less significant aspects of life, that should change.

There's nothing wrong with being nostalgic about holidays spent with relatives, a trivial song, or whatever. But are those things accompanied by nostalgia about your relationship with God, time spent doing more significant things in life, music of a more Christian and mature nature, etc.?

When I hear people talk about their most valued memories, their best experiences in life, and so forth, I'm often astonished at how immature they are. Even Christians often express sentiments of such an immature, and sometimes even anti-Christian, nature. What's going on in your life if what you most value has so little to do with God and has matured so little over time?

I love to tell the story; more wonderful it seems
Than all the golden fancies of all our golden dreams.

Is it a moral imperative to get off of Social Media yet?

For the past five months, I've stayed off Facebook completely and I am happy to report that the world did not end. I did not go crazy or suffer at all for this. In fact, I think I am probably more sane than before.

Even setting aside the political aspects that are so simple to dive into when it comes to Facebook and Twitter in particular, Social Media is really better described as Antisocial Media because it makes it easier for people to engage in their depravity. To that end, it serves as a great illustration that Calvinism has something going for it, insomuch as basically good people left to their own devices would end up shaping a social media platform that is basically good too. But what you actually find when people are left to their own devices is that they group together to bully those they disagree with, create cancel mobs to attack individuals who “step out of line”, will willfully pass on things they know are lies if it serves their own goals, and the more anonymous they are, the more corrupted they become.

The greatest irony of living in a culture where the average person has the most access to every single bit of information that they ever had in history, is that the average person will ignore all of it. It used to take a research team months of combing through dusty books in the reference section of libraries to find out information about what, say, a 19^th century historical figure once said. Today, we can find that information in a thirty second long internet search, and that's “too much work”. So rather than check to see if Ronald Reagan really said, “Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary”, we pass it on in our timeline because the meme looked cool. (For the record, the quote, which I actually did see on a picture of Ronald Reagan on Facebook, does indeed have an attribution, but it wasn't said by Reagan. The attribution is: Marx, Karl & Engels, Friedrich. “Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League.” London, England. March 1850.)

But while I can make my argument about the objectively evil nature of Social Media without touching on the political aspects of Social Media, the reality is that the political aspects cannot be ignored either. And it's those political aspects which drive the question I asked in the title. Silicon Valley very clearly has an iron grip on Social Media platforms, and Silicon Valley very definitely has a specific political bent. They are also not shy about using their power to enact that political change. The problem is the political change they implement is almost universally contrary to Biblical principles. And lest there be confusion, I don't mean in the sense of setting up a theocracy. I'm talking about the basic, bare-bones aspect of civic governing which the Bible condemns as being evil even in countries which were never in a covenantal relationship with Him are being promoted by the policies being pushed forward by Silicon Valley.

Naturally, one can still use those platforms to push for the Gospel. In that regard, one could make the claim that Social Media is like the printing press. It makes it possible to spread either good or evil messages, but the person who writes the message is the one responsible for whether or not it is used for good or evil.

Except that there are certain truthful statements that you can write on Facebook—statements which are merely affirmations of the Gospel—which will get your account banned. In that way, it's not like the printing press, for the printing press doesn't have editorial control over what people use it for. Mark Zuckerberg does have that control over what you say on Facebook. Jack Dorsey does have that control over what you say on Twitter. Susan Wojcicki does have that control over what you say on YouTube.

Also, we must be cognizant of the fact that these “free” platforms constitute the richest companies in the world right now, and you must ask yourself how is it possible for a company that does not charge users to access it to not only make money, but THAT MUCH of it? It's scarcely hidden that everything you do or say on those platforms is feeding social algorithms designed to modify your behavior, primarily into purchasing more things. That is, the platform is not the product—it is the bait. You are the product being sold to the advertisers.

But it's not just advertisers who are willing to buy your attention. If Microsoft, Toyota, or Dasani can purchase manipulation efforts to get you to buy their product, what makes you think a foreign government couldn't pretend to be a corporation seeking advertising when they are really pushing subversion? And what's to stop Silicon Valley from doing it themselves when they want more power under our own governmental structure?

Manipulation occurs on that level as well. Specific viewpoints are promoted while others are suppressed. This isn't an accident. This is the whole point of the Social Media ecosystem. This is designed to make you feel isolated and alone simply for holding to positions that they do not want you to hold, and it's designed to amplify positions they want you to hold far beyond their actual power. Look no further than the astonishing power that LGBT advocates have when the May 2018 Gallup poll showed that only 4.5% of Americans identify as LGBT. Now, if you “misgender” someone, you can actually lose your job, and the fact that everyone knows this despite the fact that those who live outside of cities (that is, the majority* of people in the US), rarely have even met a transgendered person.

This manipulation does have an effect, as evidenced by the way that people's views on social issues such as homosexual marriage have so rapidly shifted in recent years. True, one could argue the LGBT movement has always had a disproportionate amount of political power, but it is undeniable that things have changed much faster since the inception of Facebook (2004), YouTube (2005, bought by Google in 2006), and Twitter (2006).  It is not primarily through the influence of Hollywood, which has been blamed in the past. The numbers for the entertainment industry are in free fall, and they've burned off most of the cache of support they used to have. But regardless, pressure from Hollywood remained the same from the 90s through the early 2000s.  Yet Obama ran in 2008 on a platform opposed to gay marriage. By 2012, those who agreed with Obama's position a mere four years previously, were getting banned on the social media platforms. And by 2015, the Supreme Court ruled that gay marriage was now affirmed.

Today, social ideas, especially those relating to the so-called “Woke” movement, are still gaining traction at a rapid pace even through historically conservative Christian institutions. This is almost certainly traceable to the fact that those who are presenting woke content on social media are being promoted on the platform, while the voices of those who object to it are being banned. The disproportionate banning of voices from the right—voices who are nowhere near as extreme as the voices on the left which are being promoted—certainly is shifting the Overton Window ever more quickly to the left.

So, is it a moral imperative to avoid social media? I'll let you come to your own decision. But if you want to use it, for your own mental health, remember that the audiences there are not real. That is, they are not representative of how people really think. They are the cultivated result of social manipulation, and they are specifically designed to influence you on your own feed. The fact that you see some of what your friends have written on Facebook, for example, may make you think that you're getting a genuine sample of what your friends really think. You are not. Facebook commonly does not share every post that your friends have written, and often when they do display it to you it's hours or days later—anyone who uses the platform has run into the experience where they see a post from someone five days after they wrote it, while the entire time they saw the same four posts at the top of their feed. This is intentional, not accidental. Facebook is using their algorithms to decide when to parcel out data they have problems with so they can claim neutrality by delivering it while still manipulating you so you don't respond quickly or see it when the post is most relevant. And only a fool would think they are smart enough to avoid being manipulated when that manipulation is the basis by which Facebook is a multi-billion dollar company.

The only way to actually avoid the manipulation is to avoid social media altogether.

* And if you're wondering why I say that the majority of the US doesn't live in cities, according to https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2020/05/america-a-nation-of-small-towns.html, 39% of the US population lives in cities with more than 50,000 people (which comprise only 4% of all “incorporated places” in the US). Contrast that with the 37% of Americans who don't live in “an incorporated place” at all. The rest live in small towns, of which 76% have fewer than 5,000 people, and 42% of those had fewer than 500 people.

Reports Of Disembodied Hands

In my post yesterday, I quoted some comments by Stephen Braude about how reports of paranormal events are sometimes "similar in so many peculiar details" (The Limits Of Influence [Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, Inc., 1997], 26). An example I've noticed that goes across multiple types of paranormal phenomena is the involvement of disembodied hands. The appearance of disembodied hands is a recurring theme in Braude's discussions of various mediums in his book cited above (43, 142, 146, etc.). As I've discussed elsewhere, disembodied hands were sometimes reported in the Enfield Poltergeist. The post just linked refers to how Alan Gauld and A.D. Cornell discuss the appearance of disembodied hands in their book on poltergeists and hauntings.

It wouldn't be too hard for people to occasionally lie or be honestly mistaken about seeing a disembodied hand, but the frequency with which it's reported and the highly credible nature of some of those reports are significant. It seems more likely that something paranormal is going on than that all of the witnesses have been mistaken in the same unusual way.