***QUOTE***
Some of you may be familiar with Donald Macleod. Recently, he made some remarks in a newspaper column in Scotland which caught my attention, in light of what I have been saying around here for some time now, about the need for the Presbyterian church to flee from the Evangelical Babylon. After noting that Evangelicals are admittedly good at filling churches, Prof. Macleod warns:
“But we Presbyterians are not Evangelicals. We are Protestants, whose roots lie not in the Great Awakening, but in the Reformation.
Two things haunt me. One is a remark made by a speaker at a recent theological conference. Protestantism, he said, now has no institutional representation in America. The myriad Evangelical churches are not Protestant. The mainline Presbyterian churches are not Protestant. The great seminaries are not Protestant.
Our identity must lie in our Protestantism, with the caveat that can never mean mere anti-Catholicism. Even less can it mean sectarian bigotry. Any true Protestantism will deplore and denounce bigotry, as it will all other forms of hatred of our neighbor.”
Conservative Presbyterians and Anglicans (Reformed Catholics) should come out and be separate from the Evangelical Babylon. We need to reclaim our Protestant roots, and in so doing, we will also restore our rightful Catholic heritage.
http://www.communiosanctorum.com/?p=92
***END-QUOTE***
This is very revealing for the realignment that Paul Owen is proposing. His roots supposedly lie in the Reformation rather than the Great Awakening. The great American seminaries aren’t Protestant. We have no Protestant denominations either.
Instead, “conservative” Presbyterians & Anglicans should separate from Evangelical “Babylon.”
So Dr. Owen has sided with Charles Chauncy. For Dr. Owen, Rome isn’t the Scarlet Woman--or even the LDS.
No, the Scarlet Woman consists of such wanton whoremongers as Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, Daniel Rowland, William Pantycelyn, John MacArthur, the late James Boice, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, the OPC, the PCA, the SBC, RTS, Westminster/Philly, SBTS, DTS, and the Old Princeton theology. (Remember, Princeton was a New Light seminary.)
BTW, Anglicans don’t generally regard themselves as Protestant, do they? That’s why they leave Anglicanism for the Catholic church or the Orthodox church rather than a Lutheran church like the LCMS or WELS.
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
The Squire of Gothos
Jonathan Prejean has responded to what I and others have said in the latest thread:
“Sure. Apply epistemic charity, assume that I am a thinking and rational person, and interpret what I say accordingly.”
“Epistemic charity”? Yeah, right. Here’s a sample of Prejean’s legendary epistemic charity from the very same day:
“…how ignorant he is, a la Engwer. He isn't actually capable of understanding, as far as I can tell. Just doesn't have the chops to read scholarly material and follow the arguments. I don't know whether that's lack of training (he has a mere bachelor's degree in English, which is hardly an analytical field anyway) or whether he's just stupid.”
Yes, Prejean is Mr. Epistemic Charity incarnate.
Moving along:
***QUOTE***
In context, it was quite obvious that I was speaking of God revealing Himself ENTIRELY through text. Which means that the following:
"Then he says that God *does* reveal himself through text, as long as that revelation is in combination with other things."
says EXACTLY THE SAME THING.
And, BTW, notice that Hays did exactly the same thing:
"So what we needed was a whole different model of revelation. A form of revelation which is ontologically of a piece with the Incarnation.
This would be opposed to textual revelation. Not a supplement to textual revelation. But a whole different genus of divine revelation."
Did I say this? No.
***END-QUOTE***
This is, alas, where we have to repeat ourselves:
************************************************
On Oct 22, Prejean said:
***QUOTE***
As such, I consider it highly improbable, considering Who is revealed, that God would reveal Himself through text. He could do so, no doubt, but it would be a bit perverse from a presuppositional standpoint to reveal something by a method that by definition is inadequate to the task, rather like Picasso attempting to convey his artistic vision in a typed page. Requiring that much direct intervention, that much identification between the individual's volition and the Holy Spirit, strikes me as little better than appealing to private revelation. Rather than positing such a thoroughly inadequate means of revelation supplemented by such drastic intervention, I would think that it would be far more aesthetic to conclude that God did not Incarnate Himself meaninglessly, and that His ongoing revelation is (ontologically) of one kind with His Incarnation. This leads to a fundamentally Christological and Eucharistic hermeneutic, unique to Scripture. Hence, the distaste for "private judgment," which more or less presumes a presuppositionally inadequate form of revelation that must be supplemented by God's direct personal revelation of Himself.
***END-QUOTE***
Oct 24, said:
No. It's a case of God revealing Himself through a combination of text, faith, natural theology, mystagogy, community, subsequent historical development, and a host of other factors. Why that is so difficult to comprehend, I have no idea. It's only people who claim epistemic reliability based on a single source who have to worry about vicious circularity. It's that whole (solely) or (independently) that gets read into "through text" that I find objectionable. I can't discern any good reason to think that (solely) or (independently) is warranted. Certainly, the fact that it is the only written record of apostolic teaching doesn't cut it.
Quite a few problems to sort out:
1.The implication of his 10/22 statement is that the principle of textual revelation was “thoroughly inadequate.” It necessitated too much direct divine intervention to supplement its deficiencies.
Textual revelation was inadequate, not merely as a matter of degree, but a matter of kind. It’s like trying to communicate what was distinctive to one medium (painting) to another medium (the written word).
So what we needed was a whole different model of revelation. A form of revelation which is ontologically of a piece with the Incarnation.
This would be opposed to textual revelation. Not a supplement to textual revelation. But a whole different genus of divine revelation.
Now, we can certainly classify the Incarnation as a revelatory event, but by that same token, it would belong to the category of event-media rather than word media.
And one would suppose, given Prejean’s theological commitments, that an extension along the same lines would be related to the Mass and sacramental grace. Presumably, too, this has something to do with the Incarnational dimension of Byzantine epistemology.
One source of unclarity lies in Prejean's effort to fuse two divergent theological traditions--each with its own history of internal development.
For Prejean, this has more aesthetic appeal, which he treats as a theological criterion of truth. So much for his 10/22 statement.
2.But in his 10/4 statement, he substitutes a multiple-source theory of revelation, which includes textual revelation, but in combination with a host of other sources and criteria.
a) Prejean is shifting ground. He now is supplementing textual revelation with a host of other factors.
***************************************************************************
Notice, once again, that I built my interpretation directly on his own words and the way that he set up the original contrast.
What he now does is to simply deny my interpretation without explaining his own words, without explaining why he set up the contrast in the first place if that is not what he meant.
I didn’t merely assert an interpretation of his words. I presented an argument for my interpretation based on the logical ramifications of what he said. He has done nothing here to reconcile his own logic. How does his Incarnational model of revelation, which he originally opposed to textual revelation, what with its excessive interventionism and all, now harmonize with his multiple-source theory of revelation?
Moving along:
***QUOTE***
My point, which is the same as it has been all along, is that text as an exclusive medium is absurdly counter-intuitive. In fact, Hays even owns up to how ridiculous it is when he says:
"A multiple-source theory of revelation would have less aesthetic appeal that a single-source theory. A multiple-source theory is messy, cumbersome, complicated, and inelegant. How do you prioritize the various factors?
Conversely, a single-source model of revelation would be more elegant than a multiple-source theory of revelation. Hence, Prejean’s aesthetic criterion ought to favor the Protestant rule of faith."
This is completely irrational; he's saying that more information is a bad thing from an aesthetic standpoint. The beauty of simplicity owes itself to the COMPLEXITY of what it explains, not the SIMPLICITY of what it explains. If Hays had actually studied a hard science, maybe he'd realize how incredibly stupid anyone with scientific training ought to find this statement. If things weren't hard to explain, simplicity wouldn't be a virtue; it would be a consequence!
***END-QUOTE***
Prejean stumbles quite a few times in the course of this reply:
i) He’s introducing a new concept—the concept of complexity. He didn’t discuss this before, and the concept was not implicit in what he did say.
Prejean is now having to shore up the deficiencies in his previous statement while screaming into a megaphone to cover up the screeching sound of spinning wheels and burning rubber as he slams his car into reverse.
We comment on what people say at the time. We are hardly responsible for his hasty patch-up job when his attempts to shift the blame because we didn’t take into consideration various addenda which he is now trying to backdate.
ii) Theology is not one of the hard sciences, so the analogy is flawed.
iii) How many of the Popes have advanced degrees in a hard science? Does that disqualify them from office?
iv) It’s not as though Prejean is another Penrose or Witten or Feynman.
v) Yes, more information is a good thing. But to say that does nothing to harmonize a multiple-source theory of revelation with the superior economy of an Incarnational model of revelation.
vi) This also assumes that “mystagogy, community, subsequent historical development,” do, indeed, supply us with addition, pertinent information—an appeal which merely begs the question in his favor.
vii) Having more potential sources of information also generates more potential sources of conflict. By what criterion/criteria do you distinguish information from misinformation? Hence, a multiple-source theory of revelation necessitates a priority-structure in a way that a single-source theory of revelation does not.
This is a problem of Prejean’s own making, which he dodges instead of facing head-on.
viii) We have yet to get to Prejean’s biggest blunder, where he confounds the complexity of the source of knowledge with the complexity of the object of knowledge, as if these were interchangeable.
Remember, the original issue as he himself chose to frame the original issue was the superior economy of an Incarnational model of revelation as over against the interventionist model of textual revelation.
The issue here was not the object of knowledge—not the internal complexity of the object—but the source and standard of knowledge.
The question at issue was not the simplicity/complexity of what it explains, but the simplicity/complexity of what does the explaining. This is Prejean’s trademark bait-and-switch tactic when he gets himself snagged in a self-contradiction.
Moving along:
***QUOTE***
What's incredible is that Hays even actually ADMITTED that he hadn't made an argument here:
"It is, rather, predicated on the fact that Sola Scriptura is simply the only rule of faith which God has assigned to the church. Whether it affords certainty or degrees of high probability is not the basis of the claim."
I interpret Scripture with Scripture because Scripture is the only rule of faith which God provided to the Church, according to Scripture, which is the rule of faith...
Single-source revelation is viciously circular. There's no way around it.
***END-QUOTE***
i) Prejean is evidently hoping that the reader will forget the original context of the comment. Prejean misrepresented the argument for sola Scriptura. What he said was: “It's only people who claim epistemic reliability based on a single source.”
That is not how sola Scriptura is grounded. I don’t need to make an argument for sola Scriptura to correct a misstatement of what the argument consists in. All I was doing, and needed to do at this preliminary juncture, was to rectify Prejean’s misstatement of the opposing position. Argument presupposes accurate definitions.
Moving along:
***QUOTE***
See Hays's "argument" here:
"Whether they’re highly reliable or fraught with uncertainty, the senses are the only possible source of sense knowledge. That’s the claim."
This actually proves exactly the OPPOSITE of what Hays claims; if you lack a REASON to believe sense information counts as "knowledge," the fact of sensing can't give it to you. All this proves is that Hays isn't even thinking about the grounds of knowledge, which once again, is not an argument.
***END-QUOTE***
And what reason would that be? An empirical reason or non-empirical reason?
Prejean is simply proving my point. If we lack a reason for believing that sense information counts as knowledge, then we have no alternative to the senses to acquire knowledge of sensibilia. At that point the sensible world would not be an object of knowledge. It’s either this or nothing—at least for purposes of the immediate illustration.
Moving along: “My point was actually exactly the OPPOSITE of what you are saying; it should have been quite obvious that I MEANT "solely" or "independently" in my original statement, at least if the reader wasn't either malevolent or stupid.”
“Malevolent.” “Stupid.” “Nitwits” (see below). “Doesn’t have the chops.”
It’s difficult to have a halfway intelligent conversation with a man who throws a cosmic temper tantrum every time you subject his claims to rational scrutiny. Prejean keeps behaving like Trelane in that old Star Trek episode.
It makes me feel for the poor old house-servants who had to tend to the whims of the aristocracy. The little princeling wants strawberry shortcake for desert. “What! How dare you tell me that strawberries are out of season! Off with your head!”
Moving along:
***QUOTE***
My point is the same that I have been meaning all along: the notion that Scripture can interpret Scripture is ridiculously counter-intuitive, the sort of absurd nonsense that no one would believe without an absolutely compelling argument. Ordinarily, one would not assume such a thing, so it is the extremely high burden of anyone making such an implausible claim that it is even possible. Thus, anyone who believes in "letting revelation define revelation" is unreasonable by default absent making such an argument, because it is practically the definition of vicious circularity. My point is that anyone who believes something that ridiculous without an argument is beyond reason, because they obviously don't have the critical thinking capacity to question the ridiculous.
END-QUOTE***
More confusion worse confounded.
i) Neither I nor JD nor Jason has ever said that the interpretation of Scripture is limited to Scripture. Prejean has a pretty short memory. Remember how Jason and I argued ad nauseum for the grammatico-historical method? Extra-scriptural sources are relevant to the interpretation of Scripture as long as they’re from the relevant time and place. How many times did we go over this ground with Jonathan? But he’s so blinkered by his ideological blinders that he’s incapable of registering basic information no matter how often we stick it right under his nose.
ii) At the same time, Josephus is not our rule of faith. The fact that Josephus and other period historians or archeological data supplies useful background material in interpreting the Bible doesn’t elevate the background material to a rule of faith.
The minutes of the Westminster Assembly are useful for interpreting the Westminster Confession. But the Confession, and not the minutes, is the doctrinal standard (for Presbos).
iii) However, it is Prejean’s own position which is “ridiculously counterintuitive.” The Bible is, among other things, the record of a literary tradition. It is perfectly proper to interpret a literary tradition within the tradition itself. That, indeed, is the natural point of departure. Likewise, it is perfectly proper to interpret Dante or James Joyce or Henry James by a comparative study of their very own writings.
What is more logical, if you want to know how Joyce uses a word, than to do a concordance search of all the occurrences of that word in Joyce’s oeuvres?
iv) This isn’t a vicious circle, but virtuous circule. Poor little Prejean doesn’t know the difference between a circular argument and a definition or description.
A definition or description is supposed to be circular. It is supposed to reproduce, in summary form, the object under review. It is not supposed to be independent of the subject-matter. It if were, it would be inaccurate.
iv) Scholars like Warfield have documented at length the Bible’s own claim to be a verbal revelation from God. That is nothing more or less than an inductive summary of what the Bible has to say about itself. If you want to know what the Bible has to say about itself, you consult the Bible. Nothing viciously circular about that procedure. If you want to understand the Shakespearean character of Othello, the first place to go is Shakespeare’s play by that very name.
v) What would be viciously circular is to argue that Scripture is verbally inspired simply because it claims to be verbally inspired. You need more than the claim to prove the claim. But without the claim, you have nothing to prove in the first place. So, yes, an Evangelical gets his doctrine of Scripture from Scripture, rather than getting his doctrine of Scripture from Spiderman or Bikini magazine.
vi) But while we’re on the subject of informal fallacies, all that Prejean has done, in his appeal to tradition and community and development and so on, is to substitute a vicious regress for vicious circularity.
Moving along:
***QUOTE***
It's like astrology or any other ridiculously counter-intuitive premise that one has no reason to believe. Now, if you can come up with some compelling argument for WHY you let Scripture interpret Scripture, I might give you a pass, but I've certainly never seen one. But the fact that you don't even have sufficient epistemic charity to have a reasonable discussion means I'm not flailing around with you anymore. And since, as usual, new Triablogue nitwits who interact with me have proved to be just as irrational as Hays, that's all for me. I've gotta say that you and Hays have reached new depths before; now an admission of irrationality actually somehow turns into a virtue. You've got the cult mentality down pat; you'd be good Gnostics.
***END-QUOTE***
This is vintage Prejean. Like a losing poker player, he overturns the card table and stomps out of the room.
What Prejean needs at this point is not a compelling argument but a pacifier—a silver-plated pacifier to go with his silver spoon.
Moving along to another critic:
***QUOTE***
Are you all actually really arguing that you know what Prejean meant by his own words better than he himself does? It appears to me that you are arguing with the author of a text and claiming that your analysis of that text provides you with a better knowledge of his original intent than he himself has. You then have to allege dishonesty or inconsistancy on his part when it turns out the meaning you believed to be most probable is not what the author himself claims he intended to communicate.
Wouldn't it be more sensible to just acknowledge that words at best give an estimate of a persons thoughts and that through dialouge you know realise that you misinterpreted his words? You can then criticize what he actually believes rather than the words he used to communicate that belief.
I thought it was quite obvious that the statement he made on October 22 was criticizing the idea that God would reveal himself solely through text, but maybe I'm wrong. If you thought otherwise, you now have the author himself there to correct you. Allege all the ambiguity you want of the original statement, but to go beyond that suggests to me that you value the form of language over and above its substance.
If you appear incapable of intepreting a text written in your own native language and in your own historical period, with the author himself there to assist you on its meaning, are you expecting others to believe that you're any more capable of interpreting a 1800+ year old text, written in two foreign lanuages, authored by God himself?
Perhaps that's why he doesn't take you seriously?
***END-QUOTE***
i) As to choosing between dishonesty and inconsistency, these are not mutually exclusive explanations.
ii) Be that as it may, you are trying to impose on me a restriction which I don’t find you imposing on Prejean. People are quite capable of being logically inconsistent, and the charge of logical inconsistency is perfectly legit long as it’s backed up by direct quotes and analysis of what those quotes entail.
iii) Yes, Prejean is in a very good position to explain himself. What he has chosen to do, however, is not to explain his own words, but to simply deny my interpretation. He did nothing to interact with my specific argument. He did nothing to harmonize his various statements.
All he did was to repeat himself—and to repeat only one part of what he said without attempting to reconcile that with the rest of what he said.
So if he, as the world authority on his own meaning, shows himself incapable of harmonizing his various statements on the subject, then that serves to confirm rather than disconfirm my original interpretation.
iv) I did not allege ambiguity, but contradiction. The problem with Prejean is not that he was unclear, but that he clearly articulated two clearly contradictory views of revelation.
v) BTW, this is not my first run-in with Prejean. So I’m quite accustomed to his modus operandi.
“Sure. Apply epistemic charity, assume that I am a thinking and rational person, and interpret what I say accordingly.”
“Epistemic charity”? Yeah, right. Here’s a sample of Prejean’s legendary epistemic charity from the very same day:
“…how ignorant he is, a la Engwer. He isn't actually capable of understanding, as far as I can tell. Just doesn't have the chops to read scholarly material and follow the arguments. I don't know whether that's lack of training (he has a mere bachelor's degree in English, which is hardly an analytical field anyway) or whether he's just stupid.”
Yes, Prejean is Mr. Epistemic Charity incarnate.
Moving along:
***QUOTE***
In context, it was quite obvious that I was speaking of God revealing Himself ENTIRELY through text. Which means that the following:
"Then he says that God *does* reveal himself through text, as long as that revelation is in combination with other things."
says EXACTLY THE SAME THING.
And, BTW, notice that Hays did exactly the same thing:
"So what we needed was a whole different model of revelation. A form of revelation which is ontologically of a piece with the Incarnation.
This would be opposed to textual revelation. Not a supplement to textual revelation. But a whole different genus of divine revelation."
Did I say this? No.
***END-QUOTE***
This is, alas, where we have to repeat ourselves:
************************************************
On Oct 22, Prejean said:
***QUOTE***
As such, I consider it highly improbable, considering Who is revealed, that God would reveal Himself through text. He could do so, no doubt, but it would be a bit perverse from a presuppositional standpoint to reveal something by a method that by definition is inadequate to the task, rather like Picasso attempting to convey his artistic vision in a typed page. Requiring that much direct intervention, that much identification between the individual's volition and the Holy Spirit, strikes me as little better than appealing to private revelation. Rather than positing such a thoroughly inadequate means of revelation supplemented by such drastic intervention, I would think that it would be far more aesthetic to conclude that God did not Incarnate Himself meaninglessly, and that His ongoing revelation is (ontologically) of one kind with His Incarnation. This leads to a fundamentally Christological and Eucharistic hermeneutic, unique to Scripture. Hence, the distaste for "private judgment," which more or less presumes a presuppositionally inadequate form of revelation that must be supplemented by God's direct personal revelation of Himself.
***END-QUOTE***
Oct 24, said:
No. It's a case of God revealing Himself through a combination of text, faith, natural theology, mystagogy, community, subsequent historical development, and a host of other factors. Why that is so difficult to comprehend, I have no idea. It's only people who claim epistemic reliability based on a single source who have to worry about vicious circularity. It's that whole (solely) or (independently) that gets read into "through text" that I find objectionable. I can't discern any good reason to think that (solely) or (independently) is warranted. Certainly, the fact that it is the only written record of apostolic teaching doesn't cut it.
Quite a few problems to sort out:
1.The implication of his 10/22 statement is that the principle of textual revelation was “thoroughly inadequate.” It necessitated too much direct divine intervention to supplement its deficiencies.
Textual revelation was inadequate, not merely as a matter of degree, but a matter of kind. It’s like trying to communicate what was distinctive to one medium (painting) to another medium (the written word).
So what we needed was a whole different model of revelation. A form of revelation which is ontologically of a piece with the Incarnation.
This would be opposed to textual revelation. Not a supplement to textual revelation. But a whole different genus of divine revelation.
Now, we can certainly classify the Incarnation as a revelatory event, but by that same token, it would belong to the category of event-media rather than word media.
And one would suppose, given Prejean’s theological commitments, that an extension along the same lines would be related to the Mass and sacramental grace. Presumably, too, this has something to do with the Incarnational dimension of Byzantine epistemology.
One source of unclarity lies in Prejean's effort to fuse two divergent theological traditions--each with its own history of internal development.
For Prejean, this has more aesthetic appeal, which he treats as a theological criterion of truth. So much for his 10/22 statement.
2.But in his 10/4 statement, he substitutes a multiple-source theory of revelation, which includes textual revelation, but in combination with a host of other sources and criteria.
a) Prejean is shifting ground. He now is supplementing textual revelation with a host of other factors.
***************************************************************************
Notice, once again, that I built my interpretation directly on his own words and the way that he set up the original contrast.
What he now does is to simply deny my interpretation without explaining his own words, without explaining why he set up the contrast in the first place if that is not what he meant.
I didn’t merely assert an interpretation of his words. I presented an argument for my interpretation based on the logical ramifications of what he said. He has done nothing here to reconcile his own logic. How does his Incarnational model of revelation, which he originally opposed to textual revelation, what with its excessive interventionism and all, now harmonize with his multiple-source theory of revelation?
Moving along:
***QUOTE***
My point, which is the same as it has been all along, is that text as an exclusive medium is absurdly counter-intuitive. In fact, Hays even owns up to how ridiculous it is when he says:
"A multiple-source theory of revelation would have less aesthetic appeal that a single-source theory. A multiple-source theory is messy, cumbersome, complicated, and inelegant. How do you prioritize the various factors?
Conversely, a single-source model of revelation would be more elegant than a multiple-source theory of revelation. Hence, Prejean’s aesthetic criterion ought to favor the Protestant rule of faith."
This is completely irrational; he's saying that more information is a bad thing from an aesthetic standpoint. The beauty of simplicity owes itself to the COMPLEXITY of what it explains, not the SIMPLICITY of what it explains. If Hays had actually studied a hard science, maybe he'd realize how incredibly stupid anyone with scientific training ought to find this statement. If things weren't hard to explain, simplicity wouldn't be a virtue; it would be a consequence!
***END-QUOTE***
Prejean stumbles quite a few times in the course of this reply:
i) He’s introducing a new concept—the concept of complexity. He didn’t discuss this before, and the concept was not implicit in what he did say.
Prejean is now having to shore up the deficiencies in his previous statement while screaming into a megaphone to cover up the screeching sound of spinning wheels and burning rubber as he slams his car into reverse.
We comment on what people say at the time. We are hardly responsible for his hasty patch-up job when his attempts to shift the blame because we didn’t take into consideration various addenda which he is now trying to backdate.
ii) Theology is not one of the hard sciences, so the analogy is flawed.
iii) How many of the Popes have advanced degrees in a hard science? Does that disqualify them from office?
iv) It’s not as though Prejean is another Penrose or Witten or Feynman.
v) Yes, more information is a good thing. But to say that does nothing to harmonize a multiple-source theory of revelation with the superior economy of an Incarnational model of revelation.
vi) This also assumes that “mystagogy, community, subsequent historical development,” do, indeed, supply us with addition, pertinent information—an appeal which merely begs the question in his favor.
vii) Having more potential sources of information also generates more potential sources of conflict. By what criterion/criteria do you distinguish information from misinformation? Hence, a multiple-source theory of revelation necessitates a priority-structure in a way that a single-source theory of revelation does not.
This is a problem of Prejean’s own making, which he dodges instead of facing head-on.
viii) We have yet to get to Prejean’s biggest blunder, where he confounds the complexity of the source of knowledge with the complexity of the object of knowledge, as if these were interchangeable.
Remember, the original issue as he himself chose to frame the original issue was the superior economy of an Incarnational model of revelation as over against the interventionist model of textual revelation.
The issue here was not the object of knowledge—not the internal complexity of the object—but the source and standard of knowledge.
The question at issue was not the simplicity/complexity of what it explains, but the simplicity/complexity of what does the explaining. This is Prejean’s trademark bait-and-switch tactic when he gets himself snagged in a self-contradiction.
Moving along:
***QUOTE***
What's incredible is that Hays even actually ADMITTED that he hadn't made an argument here:
"It is, rather, predicated on the fact that Sola Scriptura is simply the only rule of faith which God has assigned to the church. Whether it affords certainty or degrees of high probability is not the basis of the claim."
I interpret Scripture with Scripture because Scripture is the only rule of faith which God provided to the Church, according to Scripture, which is the rule of faith...
Single-source revelation is viciously circular. There's no way around it.
***END-QUOTE***
i) Prejean is evidently hoping that the reader will forget the original context of the comment. Prejean misrepresented the argument for sola Scriptura. What he said was: “It's only people who claim epistemic reliability based on a single source.”
That is not how sola Scriptura is grounded. I don’t need to make an argument for sola Scriptura to correct a misstatement of what the argument consists in. All I was doing, and needed to do at this preliminary juncture, was to rectify Prejean’s misstatement of the opposing position. Argument presupposes accurate definitions.
Moving along:
***QUOTE***
See Hays's "argument" here:
"Whether they’re highly reliable or fraught with uncertainty, the senses are the only possible source of sense knowledge. That’s the claim."
This actually proves exactly the OPPOSITE of what Hays claims; if you lack a REASON to believe sense information counts as "knowledge," the fact of sensing can't give it to you. All this proves is that Hays isn't even thinking about the grounds of knowledge, which once again, is not an argument.
***END-QUOTE***
And what reason would that be? An empirical reason or non-empirical reason?
Prejean is simply proving my point. If we lack a reason for believing that sense information counts as knowledge, then we have no alternative to the senses to acquire knowledge of sensibilia. At that point the sensible world would not be an object of knowledge. It’s either this or nothing—at least for purposes of the immediate illustration.
Moving along: “My point was actually exactly the OPPOSITE of what you are saying; it should have been quite obvious that I MEANT "solely" or "independently" in my original statement, at least if the reader wasn't either malevolent or stupid.”
“Malevolent.” “Stupid.” “Nitwits” (see below). “Doesn’t have the chops.”
It’s difficult to have a halfway intelligent conversation with a man who throws a cosmic temper tantrum every time you subject his claims to rational scrutiny. Prejean keeps behaving like Trelane in that old Star Trek episode.
It makes me feel for the poor old house-servants who had to tend to the whims of the aristocracy. The little princeling wants strawberry shortcake for desert. “What! How dare you tell me that strawberries are out of season! Off with your head!”
Moving along:
***QUOTE***
My point is the same that I have been meaning all along: the notion that Scripture can interpret Scripture is ridiculously counter-intuitive, the sort of absurd nonsense that no one would believe without an absolutely compelling argument. Ordinarily, one would not assume such a thing, so it is the extremely high burden of anyone making such an implausible claim that it is even possible. Thus, anyone who believes in "letting revelation define revelation" is unreasonable by default absent making such an argument, because it is practically the definition of vicious circularity. My point is that anyone who believes something that ridiculous without an argument is beyond reason, because they obviously don't have the critical thinking capacity to question the ridiculous.
END-QUOTE***
More confusion worse confounded.
i) Neither I nor JD nor Jason has ever said that the interpretation of Scripture is limited to Scripture. Prejean has a pretty short memory. Remember how Jason and I argued ad nauseum for the grammatico-historical method? Extra-scriptural sources are relevant to the interpretation of Scripture as long as they’re from the relevant time and place. How many times did we go over this ground with Jonathan? But he’s so blinkered by his ideological blinders that he’s incapable of registering basic information no matter how often we stick it right under his nose.
ii) At the same time, Josephus is not our rule of faith. The fact that Josephus and other period historians or archeological data supplies useful background material in interpreting the Bible doesn’t elevate the background material to a rule of faith.
The minutes of the Westminster Assembly are useful for interpreting the Westminster Confession. But the Confession, and not the minutes, is the doctrinal standard (for Presbos).
iii) However, it is Prejean’s own position which is “ridiculously counterintuitive.” The Bible is, among other things, the record of a literary tradition. It is perfectly proper to interpret a literary tradition within the tradition itself. That, indeed, is the natural point of departure. Likewise, it is perfectly proper to interpret Dante or James Joyce or Henry James by a comparative study of their very own writings.
What is more logical, if you want to know how Joyce uses a word, than to do a concordance search of all the occurrences of that word in Joyce’s oeuvres?
iv) This isn’t a vicious circle, but virtuous circule. Poor little Prejean doesn’t know the difference between a circular argument and a definition or description.
A definition or description is supposed to be circular. It is supposed to reproduce, in summary form, the object under review. It is not supposed to be independent of the subject-matter. It if were, it would be inaccurate.
iv) Scholars like Warfield have documented at length the Bible’s own claim to be a verbal revelation from God. That is nothing more or less than an inductive summary of what the Bible has to say about itself. If you want to know what the Bible has to say about itself, you consult the Bible. Nothing viciously circular about that procedure. If you want to understand the Shakespearean character of Othello, the first place to go is Shakespeare’s play by that very name.
v) What would be viciously circular is to argue that Scripture is verbally inspired simply because it claims to be verbally inspired. You need more than the claim to prove the claim. But without the claim, you have nothing to prove in the first place. So, yes, an Evangelical gets his doctrine of Scripture from Scripture, rather than getting his doctrine of Scripture from Spiderman or Bikini magazine.
vi) But while we’re on the subject of informal fallacies, all that Prejean has done, in his appeal to tradition and community and development and so on, is to substitute a vicious regress for vicious circularity.
Moving along:
***QUOTE***
It's like astrology or any other ridiculously counter-intuitive premise that one has no reason to believe. Now, if you can come up with some compelling argument for WHY you let Scripture interpret Scripture, I might give you a pass, but I've certainly never seen one. But the fact that you don't even have sufficient epistemic charity to have a reasonable discussion means I'm not flailing around with you anymore. And since, as usual, new Triablogue nitwits who interact with me have proved to be just as irrational as Hays, that's all for me. I've gotta say that you and Hays have reached new depths before; now an admission of irrationality actually somehow turns into a virtue. You've got the cult mentality down pat; you'd be good Gnostics.
***END-QUOTE***
This is vintage Prejean. Like a losing poker player, he overturns the card table and stomps out of the room.
What Prejean needs at this point is not a compelling argument but a pacifier—a silver-plated pacifier to go with his silver spoon.
Moving along to another critic:
***QUOTE***
Are you all actually really arguing that you know what Prejean meant by his own words better than he himself does? It appears to me that you are arguing with the author of a text and claiming that your analysis of that text provides you with a better knowledge of his original intent than he himself has. You then have to allege dishonesty or inconsistancy on his part when it turns out the meaning you believed to be most probable is not what the author himself claims he intended to communicate.
Wouldn't it be more sensible to just acknowledge that words at best give an estimate of a persons thoughts and that through dialouge you know realise that you misinterpreted his words? You can then criticize what he actually believes rather than the words he used to communicate that belief.
I thought it was quite obvious that the statement he made on October 22 was criticizing the idea that God would reveal himself solely through text, but maybe I'm wrong. If you thought otherwise, you now have the author himself there to correct you. Allege all the ambiguity you want of the original statement, but to go beyond that suggests to me that you value the form of language over and above its substance.
If you appear incapable of intepreting a text written in your own native language and in your own historical period, with the author himself there to assist you on its meaning, are you expecting others to believe that you're any more capable of interpreting a 1800+ year old text, written in two foreign lanuages, authored by God himself?
Perhaps that's why he doesn't take you seriously?
***END-QUOTE***
i) As to choosing between dishonesty and inconsistency, these are not mutually exclusive explanations.
ii) Be that as it may, you are trying to impose on me a restriction which I don’t find you imposing on Prejean. People are quite capable of being logically inconsistent, and the charge of logical inconsistency is perfectly legit long as it’s backed up by direct quotes and analysis of what those quotes entail.
iii) Yes, Prejean is in a very good position to explain himself. What he has chosen to do, however, is not to explain his own words, but to simply deny my interpretation. He did nothing to interact with my specific argument. He did nothing to harmonize his various statements.
All he did was to repeat himself—and to repeat only one part of what he said without attempting to reconcile that with the rest of what he said.
So if he, as the world authority on his own meaning, shows himself incapable of harmonizing his various statements on the subject, then that serves to confirm rather than disconfirm my original interpretation.
iv) I did not allege ambiguity, but contradiction. The problem with Prejean is not that he was unclear, but that he clearly articulated two clearly contradictory views of revelation.
v) BTW, this is not my first run-in with Prejean. So I’m quite accustomed to his modus operandi.
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Penultimate thoughts on Miers
At this point it seems quite possible that the Miers’ nomination may go down in flames. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.
There have, however, been some bad things about the conservative backlash to her nomination. Conservative pundits were caught off guard. This is a little odd since her name was one of the names floated by the White House before Bush’s formal announcement. So it shouldn’t have been all that surprising. Apparently, pundits didn’t take that seriously, which was a mistake.
When Gonzales’ name was floated, they shot it down. That’s much better than having a public brawl after-the-fact. One reason the White House leaks a name is to test the political waters.
And because the pundits were caught off guard, they didn’t have a prepared statement. So their immediate reaction was to cast about and cobble together any stray objection that first came to mind. This took on a rather opportunistic appearance—seizing on a whole host of miscellaneous criticisms which were not especially conservative or consistent. Moreover, the attack took a form which is almost sure to make a man like Bush dig in his heels.
And one is still puzzled by the intensity of the opposition. My pet theory is that while there are valid reservations regarding the Miers’ nomination, this is, in some measure, a proxy for pent-up frustrations over other deficiencies of White House policy.
The right-wing is prepared, after a certain amount of grumbling under-its-breath, to give Bush a pass on some issues it cares about—such as vouchers, border control, and deficient spending—as long as it gets something in return. But when he fails to deliver on an issue like high court nominees, then not only does that particular issue rankle the base, but they no longer have that consolation prize to offset all their other resentments. So they snap under the cumulative weight of their many pet peeves.
This is understandable and, to some extent, justifiable, but given the befuddlement of the White House at the insurrection within party ranks, it wouldn’t hurt to send a clearer signal. Otherwise, the overreaction to Miers seems out of proportion to the provocation, and leaves the White House without clear guidance.
There have, however, been some bad things about the conservative backlash to her nomination. Conservative pundits were caught off guard. This is a little odd since her name was one of the names floated by the White House before Bush’s formal announcement. So it shouldn’t have been all that surprising. Apparently, pundits didn’t take that seriously, which was a mistake.
When Gonzales’ name was floated, they shot it down. That’s much better than having a public brawl after-the-fact. One reason the White House leaks a name is to test the political waters.
And because the pundits were caught off guard, they didn’t have a prepared statement. So their immediate reaction was to cast about and cobble together any stray objection that first came to mind. This took on a rather opportunistic appearance—seizing on a whole host of miscellaneous criticisms which were not especially conservative or consistent. Moreover, the attack took a form which is almost sure to make a man like Bush dig in his heels.
And one is still puzzled by the intensity of the opposition. My pet theory is that while there are valid reservations regarding the Miers’ nomination, this is, in some measure, a proxy for pent-up frustrations over other deficiencies of White House policy.
The right-wing is prepared, after a certain amount of grumbling under-its-breath, to give Bush a pass on some issues it cares about—such as vouchers, border control, and deficient spending—as long as it gets something in return. But when he fails to deliver on an issue like high court nominees, then not only does that particular issue rankle the base, but they no longer have that consolation prize to offset all their other resentments. So they snap under the cumulative weight of their many pet peeves.
This is understandable and, to some extent, justifiable, but given the befuddlement of the White House at the insurrection within party ranks, it wouldn’t hurt to send a clearer signal. Otherwise, the overreaction to Miers seems out of proportion to the provocation, and leaves the White House without clear guidance.
The fuzzification of faith
On Oct 22, Prejean said:
***QUOTE***
As such, I consider it highly improbable, considering Who is revealed, that God would reveal Himself through text. He could do so, no doubt, but it would be a bit perverse from a presuppositional standpoint to reveal something by a method that by definition is inadequate to the task, rather like Picasso attempting to convey his artistic vision in a typed page. Requiring that much direct intervention, that much identification between the individual's volition and the Holy Spirit, strikes me as little better than appealing to private revelation. Rather than positing such a thoroughly inadequate means of revelation supplemented by such drastic intervention, I would think that it would be far more aesthetic to conclude that God did not Incarnate Himself meaninglessly, and that His ongoing revelation is (ontologically) of one kind with His Incarnation. This leads to a fundamentally Christological and Eucharistic hermeneutic, unique to Scripture. Hence, the distaste for "private judgment," which more or less presumes a presuppositionally inadequate form of revelation that must be supplemented by God's direct personal revelation of Himself.
***END-QUOTE***
Oct 24, said:
No. It's a case of God revealing Himself through a combination of text, faith, natural theology, mystagogy, community, subsequent historical development, and a host of other factors. Why that is so difficult to comprehend, I have no idea. It's only people who claim epistemic reliability based on a single source who have to worry about vicious circularity. It's that whole (solely) or (independently) that gets read into "through text" that I find objectionable. I can't discern any good reason to think that (solely) or (independently) is warranted. Certainly, the fact that it is the only written record of apostolic teaching doesn't cut it.
Quite a few problems to sort out:
1.The implication of his 10/22 statement is that the principle of textual revelation was “thoroughly inadequate.” It necessitated too much direct divine intervention to supplement its deficiencies.
Textual revelation was inadequate, not merely as a matter of degree, but a matter of kind. It’s like trying to communicate what was distinctive to one medium (painting) to another medium (the written word).
So what we needed was a whole different model of revelation. A form of revelation which is ontologically of a piece with the Incarnation.
This would be opposed to textual revelation. Not a supplement to textual revelation. But a whole different genus of divine revelation.
Now, we can certainly classify the Incarnation as a revelatory event, but by that same token, it would belong to the category of event-media rather than word media.
And one would suppose, given Prejean’s theological commitments, that an extension along the same lines would be related to the Mass and sacramental grace. Presumably, too, this has something to do with the Incarnational dimension of Byzantine epistemology.
One source of unclarity lies in Prejean's effort to fuse two divergent theological traditions--each with its own history of internal development.
For Prejean, this has more aesthetic appeal, which he treats as a theological criterion of truth. So much for his 10/22 statement.
2.But in his 10/4 statement, he substitutes a multiple-source theory of revelation, which includes textual revelation, but in combination with a host of other sources and criteria.
a) Prejean is shifting ground. He now is supplementing textual revelation with a host of other factors.
b) A multiple-source theory of revelation would have less aesthetic appeal that a single-source theory. A multiple-source theory is messy, cumbersome, complicated, and inelegant. How do you prioritize the various factors?
Conversely, a single-source model of revelation would be more elegant than a multiple-source theory of revelation. Hence, Prejean’s aesthetic criterion ought to favor the Protestant rule of faith.
b) Not only does Scripture talk about itself, not only does it contain self-referential statements about its divine identity and process of inspiration, but it comments other sources of information, such as the senses and natural revelation.
It would, therefore, be quite possible for God to direct his people to a multiple-source theory of revelation, including mystagogy, community, subsequent historical development, and so on.
Since, however, Scripture does not redirect the people of God to these supplementary sources of revelation, their revelatory identity lacks divine warrant. Rather, God directs his people to the written record of his words. Others revelatory candidates (save for natural revelation), lack divine authorization.
c) As has been repeatedly pointed out to Prejean, but he’s slow on the uptake, the argument for sola Scriptura isn’t predicated on the superior epistemic certainty afforded by the rule of faith.
It is, rather, predicated on the fact that Sola Scripture is simply the only rule of faith which God has assigned to the church. Whether it affords certainty or degrees of high probability is not the basis of the claim.
Conservative Evangelicals do go on to argue that Scripture is a source of certainty in relation to its particular function, but that claim, while important in its own right, is not the basis for sola Scriptura.
For example, to say that the senses are the only source of sense knowledge is not to quantify the degree of epistemic reliability of the senses. Whether they’re highly reliable or fraught with uncertainty, the senses are the only possible source of sense knowledge. That’s the claim.
d) As has also been pointed out to Prejean on more than one occasion, but he’s a slow learner, sola Scriptura doesn’t exist in a Deistic voice. It functions in conjunction with divine providence. Scripture not only has a doctrine of revelation, but a doctrine of providence as well. These work in tandem. Hence, the charge of vicious circularity is off-the-mark.
Sola Scriptura is, indeed, derived from the self-witness of Scripture, but the claims of Scripture are hardly limited to its self-referential claims.
***QUOTE***
As such, I consider it highly improbable, considering Who is revealed, that God would reveal Himself through text. He could do so, no doubt, but it would be a bit perverse from a presuppositional standpoint to reveal something by a method that by definition is inadequate to the task, rather like Picasso attempting to convey his artistic vision in a typed page. Requiring that much direct intervention, that much identification between the individual's volition and the Holy Spirit, strikes me as little better than appealing to private revelation. Rather than positing such a thoroughly inadequate means of revelation supplemented by such drastic intervention, I would think that it would be far more aesthetic to conclude that God did not Incarnate Himself meaninglessly, and that His ongoing revelation is (ontologically) of one kind with His Incarnation. This leads to a fundamentally Christological and Eucharistic hermeneutic, unique to Scripture. Hence, the distaste for "private judgment," which more or less presumes a presuppositionally inadequate form of revelation that must be supplemented by God's direct personal revelation of Himself.
***END-QUOTE***
Oct 24, said:
No. It's a case of God revealing Himself through a combination of text, faith, natural theology, mystagogy, community, subsequent historical development, and a host of other factors. Why that is so difficult to comprehend, I have no idea. It's only people who claim epistemic reliability based on a single source who have to worry about vicious circularity. It's that whole (solely) or (independently) that gets read into "through text" that I find objectionable. I can't discern any good reason to think that (solely) or (independently) is warranted. Certainly, the fact that it is the only written record of apostolic teaching doesn't cut it.
Quite a few problems to sort out:
1.The implication of his 10/22 statement is that the principle of textual revelation was “thoroughly inadequate.” It necessitated too much direct divine intervention to supplement its deficiencies.
Textual revelation was inadequate, not merely as a matter of degree, but a matter of kind. It’s like trying to communicate what was distinctive to one medium (painting) to another medium (the written word).
So what we needed was a whole different model of revelation. A form of revelation which is ontologically of a piece with the Incarnation.
This would be opposed to textual revelation. Not a supplement to textual revelation. But a whole different genus of divine revelation.
Now, we can certainly classify the Incarnation as a revelatory event, but by that same token, it would belong to the category of event-media rather than word media.
And one would suppose, given Prejean’s theological commitments, that an extension along the same lines would be related to the Mass and sacramental grace. Presumably, too, this has something to do with the Incarnational dimension of Byzantine epistemology.
One source of unclarity lies in Prejean's effort to fuse two divergent theological traditions--each with its own history of internal development.
For Prejean, this has more aesthetic appeal, which he treats as a theological criterion of truth. So much for his 10/22 statement.
2.But in his 10/4 statement, he substitutes a multiple-source theory of revelation, which includes textual revelation, but in combination with a host of other sources and criteria.
a) Prejean is shifting ground. He now is supplementing textual revelation with a host of other factors.
b) A multiple-source theory of revelation would have less aesthetic appeal that a single-source theory. A multiple-source theory is messy, cumbersome, complicated, and inelegant. How do you prioritize the various factors?
Conversely, a single-source model of revelation would be more elegant than a multiple-source theory of revelation. Hence, Prejean’s aesthetic criterion ought to favor the Protestant rule of faith.
b) Not only does Scripture talk about itself, not only does it contain self-referential statements about its divine identity and process of inspiration, but it comments other sources of information, such as the senses and natural revelation.
It would, therefore, be quite possible for God to direct his people to a multiple-source theory of revelation, including mystagogy, community, subsequent historical development, and so on.
Since, however, Scripture does not redirect the people of God to these supplementary sources of revelation, their revelatory identity lacks divine warrant. Rather, God directs his people to the written record of his words. Others revelatory candidates (save for natural revelation), lack divine authorization.
c) As has been repeatedly pointed out to Prejean, but he’s slow on the uptake, the argument for sola Scriptura isn’t predicated on the superior epistemic certainty afforded by the rule of faith.
It is, rather, predicated on the fact that Sola Scripture is simply the only rule of faith which God has assigned to the church. Whether it affords certainty or degrees of high probability is not the basis of the claim.
Conservative Evangelicals do go on to argue that Scripture is a source of certainty in relation to its particular function, but that claim, while important in its own right, is not the basis for sola Scriptura.
For example, to say that the senses are the only source of sense knowledge is not to quantify the degree of epistemic reliability of the senses. Whether they’re highly reliable or fraught with uncertainty, the senses are the only possible source of sense knowledge. That’s the claim.
d) As has also been pointed out to Prejean on more than one occasion, but he’s a slow learner, sola Scriptura doesn’t exist in a Deistic voice. It functions in conjunction with divine providence. Scripture not only has a doctrine of revelation, but a doctrine of providence as well. These work in tandem. Hence, the charge of vicious circularity is off-the-mark.
Sola Scriptura is, indeed, derived from the self-witness of Scripture, but the claims of Scripture are hardly limited to its self-referential claims.
Monday, October 24, 2005
Self-hating Jew-2
In a message dated 10/24/05 12:13:50 PM, underwings@connectexpress.com writes:
Pastor Rev. Dr. Hays, Personal Assistant to Jesus, etc.
Why do you hate Jewish people?
(You don't need to answer as I will not be reading any more of your long
analytical discourses).
For the record, I legally changed my name to Akiva. Got it?
A few years ago I rec'd a perserve email from Prager in which he called
Rachel Corrie a Marxist terrorist and dupe supporter of Hamas and Al Aqsa.
"Rabbi" Lapin is a joke. He's allied with the anti-Semitic convert the
Jews churches you love.
Thus he's allied with the same church groups that fund the Jews for Jesus
hate organization.
JfJ is recognized as a hate group by the ADL. And by me, but I don't have
the clout that they do so you probably won't bother to send your long
winded analytical, full of contempt and satire letters to Abraham Foxman,
altho you sure enjoy spending a great deal of time doing this with me.
Why not use the time to help some in your own community? You could become
a prison volunteer, for example, and teach some Christian background
inmates how to read and write.
(And you work on converting some Jews you love to spit on with your
supremacist, racist theological views,s hey!)
I'm sure you can find some find at least one other Jew or Muslim or
Buddhist or Hindu to "dialogue" with for sport and fun.
I asked both of the conservative Christian DJ's who contacted me last
Tuesday (with requests, respectively, for me to interview last Tuesday) if
they support conversion campaigns targeting Jewish (and other non
Christian) children and youth for conservion).
Neither one replied. As you're so close to these sorts, perhaps you can
explain why they hate Jews? But I won't hold my breath waiting for a non
dogmatic reply.
So I declined the interviews. A cantor I know said I made the right
choice, as he described these guys as bigots (as he would about you).
But he, like me, are non Orthodox Jews so we don't count for you.
Lastly, a Jew of ANY denomination (Orthodox, Conservative,
Reconstructionist, Reform, Renewal et al) does not have or need to believe
in God to lead a Jewish life, to attend synagogue, to be acepted by his or
her rabbi and clerical and educational leaders, etc.
That's a big difference between you and Jews, one which you fail yet to
grasp.
Hi Ken,
Rachel Corrie? Wasn't she the young woman helping Arab terrorists build tunnels to smuggle explosives into Israel--the better to blow up busses in downtown Jerusalem and Jewish teenagers in pizzerias?
Ken, why are you siding with the suicide bombers? Didn't Hitler kill enough Jews already? Are you a donor to Hamas? Are you going to start painting wings on the Muslim "martyrs" who maim and murder Jews to get their 72 virgins? What's wrong with you, Ken?
The ADL? Isn't that the organization which tried to organize a boycott of Mel Gibson's movie for fear it would incite Christians to persecute Jews?
Funny, that never happened, did it? I don't recall the ADL issuing a public apology for its alarmist rhetoric and smear campaign.
In the meantime, Muslims continue to kill Jews at every available opportunity.
Steve
Pastor Rev. Dr. Hays, Personal Assistant to Jesus, etc.
Why do you hate Jewish people?
(You don't need to answer as I will not be reading any more of your long
analytical discourses).
For the record, I legally changed my name to Akiva. Got it?
A few years ago I rec'd a perserve email from Prager in which he called
Rachel Corrie a Marxist terrorist and dupe supporter of Hamas and Al Aqsa.
"Rabbi" Lapin is a joke. He's allied with the anti-Semitic convert the
Jews churches you love.
Thus he's allied with the same church groups that fund the Jews for Jesus
hate organization.
JfJ is recognized as a hate group by the ADL. And by me, but I don't have
the clout that they do so you probably won't bother to send your long
winded analytical, full of contempt and satire letters to Abraham Foxman,
altho you sure enjoy spending a great deal of time doing this with me.
Why not use the time to help some in your own community? You could become
a prison volunteer, for example, and teach some Christian background
inmates how to read and write.
(And you work on converting some Jews you love to spit on with your
supremacist, racist theological views,s hey!)
I'm sure you can find some find at least one other Jew or Muslim or
Buddhist or Hindu to "dialogue" with for sport and fun.
I asked both of the conservative Christian DJ's who contacted me last
Tuesday (with requests, respectively, for me to interview last Tuesday) if
they support conversion campaigns targeting Jewish (and other non
Christian) children and youth for conservion).
Neither one replied. As you're so close to these sorts, perhaps you can
explain why they hate Jews? But I won't hold my breath waiting for a non
dogmatic reply.
So I declined the interviews. A cantor I know said I made the right
choice, as he described these guys as bigots (as he would about you).
But he, like me, are non Orthodox Jews so we don't count for you.
Lastly, a Jew of ANY denomination (Orthodox, Conservative,
Reconstructionist, Reform, Renewal et al) does not have or need to believe
in God to lead a Jewish life, to attend synagogue, to be acepted by his or
her rabbi and clerical and educational leaders, etc.
That's a big difference between you and Jews, one which you fail yet to
grasp.
Hi Ken,
Rachel Corrie? Wasn't she the young woman helping Arab terrorists build tunnels to smuggle explosives into Israel--the better to blow up busses in downtown Jerusalem and Jewish teenagers in pizzerias?
Ken, why are you siding with the suicide bombers? Didn't Hitler kill enough Jews already? Are you a donor to Hamas? Are you going to start painting wings on the Muslim "martyrs" who maim and murder Jews to get their 72 virgins? What's wrong with you, Ken?
The ADL? Isn't that the organization which tried to organize a boycott of Mel Gibson's movie for fear it would incite Christians to persecute Jews?
Funny, that never happened, did it? I don't recall the ADL issuing a public apology for its alarmist rhetoric and smear campaign.
In the meantime, Muslims continue to kill Jews at every available opportunity.
Steve
Sunday, October 23, 2005
The sad saga of a self-hating Jew
I see that Dr. Mohler has a piece on Ken Segan. Ah, what a small world. I happen to know Ken. He and I were coworkers back when I was working at the Seattle Public Library many years ago.
Ken is a secular Jew of Polish extraction. Ken used to invite me down to his studio in Pioneer Square to comment on his art. His art was on the myopic theme of the Holocaust.
He knew I was a Christian, and the real reason he was soliciting my views had nothing to do with art criticism, per se. Rather, he was trying to feel me out on my theology and where the Jews fitted into my theology.
He’d ask me questions, then get all huffy at the answers. He’d say that Christianity was anti-Semitic. I’d ask him to define what Jew was. That always left him speechless. I’d point out that if he couldn’t define what a Jew was, how could he define what a Jew-hater was?
I’d then point out that the NT was written by Jews. That being the case, how could he justify his anti-Semitic prejudice against a historic Jewish document? That left him speechless as well.
I’d follow that up by asking what his warrant was for being so moralistic. Did he believe in moral absolutes? Where did his morality come from?
We went round and round on this on several different occasions before he banished me from his studio. Ken is a completely irrational man.
Below is a letter I emailed to Ken about his column.
******************************************
Hi Ken,
It’s Steve Hays. Remember me?
I just read your PI piece about “Keeping intolerance out of public places.”
You say, “It is troublesome that the University of Washington allows publicly funded facilities for religious rallies that are considered hateful, racist and demeaning to non-Christians, including myself and many of my friends and co-workers.”
Interesting choice of words. “Considered” hateful, racist, and demeaning to non-Christians. Not actually hateful, racist, and demeaning. Merely perceived to be.
Heidegger and other Nazi academics applied the same standard in expelling Jewish professors and Jewish students from German universities. The mere presence of Jews was offensive to the Aryan faculty and student body. Striking to see you intoning the creed of old Jew-haters.
You say, “While Pastor Judah Smith is entitled to believe in religious supremacism, why must racist theology be presented on public school property?”
To begin with, Ken, you’re very free with the word “racist.” There are Christians of every race. Christianity is especially well represented in the Southern Hemisphere. Why, Ken, do you indulge in these hateful, racist and demeaning caricatures of so many people of color?
Moreover, Christians pay taxes to. Their tax dollars support the UW. So why shouldn’t they have access to an institution when they’re footing so much of the bill?
Ken, what do you think the word “public” means, anyway? “Public” means that it belongs to everyone, not just the flag-burners and bra-burners. That’s the difference between the public square and the private sector.
Furthermore, why do you want to shut down public discourse on a college campus, anyway? I thought you were a veteran of the free speech movement? Of course, it’s not uncommon for young radicals to become old fascists. Is that what’s happened to you?
Finally, the very first right enunciated in the very first amendment to the Constitution is the freedom of religious expression.
“U.S. students, faculty and staff have never been as diverse in background and faith as today.”
To begin with, what you’re describing is a coercive diversity.
In addition, you’re idea of religious diversity is limited to the far left end of the religious spectrum.
You say, “Yet religious supremacists not only fail to recognize that bestowal, which some say is God given, they seek to extinguish others' beliefs.”
Ken, last time I checked, you were a militant atheist. So why don’t you speak for yourself instead of mouthing stuff you don’t believe in? If you don’t believe in what you’re saying, why should anyone else?
You say, “During supremacist presentations to high school students in Issaquah and elsewhere, the power of peer pressure is beyond enormous. These rallies provide a serious and harmful threat to non-Christian students and their families, especially immigrants.”
What immigrants are you talking about, Ken? Mexicans? Do they feel harmed or threatened by the Christian faith?
Or are you talking about some other immigrant group? Is this code language for Muslims?
You say, “In the United States, students attending publicly funded schools should be entitled to practice the faith of their families without facing peer pressure to convert.”
By what authority? Who confers this entitlement? Everything is not a right just because you say so.
Why shouldn’t students be subject to peer pressure? Notice what you’re saying. You’re saying that a gag order should be put on student speech.
Ken, when did you go over to the side of the book burners? When did you decide that the “firemen” in Fahrenheit 451 were the good guys, and Oscar Werner was the bad guy? When did you take the side of the Establishment in 1984?
When did you become such a reactionary lobbyist for censorship and prior restraint?
You say, “Rallies on public campuses are un-American and run counter to the spirit of tolerance that our nation's founders and generations of public school teachers and political leaders have led us to believe is our right.”
“Have led us believe is our right”? Really, Ken, are you such an intellectual lemming that you can no longer think for yourself? “Teacher says” and you believe?
Is that your idea of public education? To mass-produce an army of wind-up toy-soldiers who march in place wherever Teacher tells they to go?
“Rallies on public campuses are un-American”? Ken, you lived through the Sixties, like I did. Remember the anti-war protesters? Remember the civil rights movement? Remember the Constitutional right of free speech and freedom of assembly?
Ken, are you a pod person? Did the body-snatchers get to you? Have you been invaded by an extra-terrestrial biological organism? Did you go to bed a radical and wake up a fascist?
Why are you afraid of free speech on college campus? Why shouldn’t college students acquire critical thinking skills? Be free to debate opposing positions?
Why do you think the government should put its iron-boot on the neck of dissenting opinion?
BTW, Ken, the antidote to peer pressure is ideological diversity.
The “tolerance” that our founding fathers wrote into the Constitution is freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, the right to bear arms, states’ rights, and freedom from federal government interference with these (and other) freedoms.
Ken, why do you want to treat government as the grownup, and growups as children needing to be protected from “threatening” speech? Why do you demote adult men and women to the status of minors under the curfew of the Nannystate?
Ken, when did you become an apparatchik for the almighty state? A quisling for the status quo?
You said, “Post-proselytizing Christians and church institutions-of-conscience no longer engage in conversion campaigns as they frequently recognize four tenets unrecognized by Smith.”
You’re talking about nominal Christians and dead churches.
You said, “Our need for constructive interfaith dialogue between Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus and followers of other faiths to create a working methodology for non-violent conflict resolution.”
Just for starters, there are observant Jews like Michael Medved, Rabbi Lapin, and Dennis Prager who recognize that Evangelicals are the best friends that Jews have—practically the only friends that Jews have. It is we, the Evangelicals, who are standing in-between the Jews and the Jew-haters—the jihadis and their Eurocratic allies.
And there’s a younger generation of Jews like Ben Shapiro who are not so eager to sell themselves back into the bondage of a totalitarian state.
Ken, a people (Jews) who can’t tell their friends (Christians) from their enemies (Muslims) is a people with a death-wish.
You said, “Telling a child, youth or young adult that the faith of his or her parents and grandparents has been "superseded" by a "newer, better" faith is immoral, unethical and just plain wrong.”
Sez who? You? What’s your moral authority? Your bare say-so? Who are you to impose your narrow-minded views on everyone else?
What about young Muslims whose hereditary faith instructs the to be a Jew-haters and suicide bomber? Whose hereditary faith preaches the extermination of the Jewish people?
What about a member of the Hitler Youth? It is immoral to talk a skinhead out of his neo-Nazi philosophy?
Why do you think it’s right to use coercion (speech codes, hate-speech) in matters of ideology, but wrong to use persuasion in matters of theology? Can you offer a principled distinction? Does self-determination only apply in politics, but not in religion?
Why do you deny men and women the freedom of opportunity to choose their faith? Why should their grandparents choose their faith for them? Why should geography and ethnicity dictate one’s religion?
Why shouldn't people have a good reason for what they believe. And if they don't have a good reason, why should they be forced to believe it? Why should they not be allowed to have some options?
Do you think that a woman raised in Islam should have no say in the matter? Do you believe that a woman should be subjected to such Islamic customs as child-marriage, honor-killings, and genital mutilation?
What about the Hindu custom of suttee or widow-burning? Would you hold the woman down on the funeral pyre out of deference to her culture? If she ran away, would you return her to her masters?
Why kind of person have you become, Ken? When did you cross over and become the enemy?
Ken, do you have any answer to these questions? Or are you going to persist in what you say and do even though you have no rational justification for what you say and do? If you’re immune to reason and evidence, then how are you in any position to denounce the Nazi?
You then insinuate that Smith is a hypocrite because he opposes abortion while supporting the death penalty, right to bear arms, and preemptive warfare.
This is a facile comparison which disregards elementary moral distinctions between guilt and innocence, aggression and self-defense.
If you’re so devoid of moral discrimination that you can’t tell the difference, then the Warsaw uprising is on the same plane as the gas chambers.
Ken, why do you make a virtue of being unintelligent?
You said, “In Parade magazine on Nov. 14, 1996, Elie Wiesel, the U.S. immigrant, author, teenage concentration camp survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner, wrote, ‘No human race is superior; no religious faith is inferior. All collective judgments are wrong. Only racists make them.’"
Why do you constantly assert a moral equivalence between race and religion? There is no one-to-one correspondence between the two.
How can you claim any moral authority for you position when you peddle such palpable falsehoods?
No religion is inferior to another? In Aztec piety, POWs supplied the raw material for human sacrifice. They were strapped alive to the altar as their throbbing heart was carved from their breast.
You think that’s on the same plain as Jewish ethical monotheism, do you?
You are pronouncing a collective judgment on Evangelicalism, are you not? Why the double-standard?
Ken, I sorry to see you degenerate into the classic self-hating Jew. In your fanatical hatred of all things Christian you hate the Jewish scriptures, you hate the Jewish Messiah, you hate the only people on earth who love the Jews and stand between them and hundreds of millions of genocidal, Jew-hating Muslims and their political syncophants in the secularized capitals of post-Christian Europe.
What a travesty to find you gathering firewood for the next Krystallnacht.
Ken is a secular Jew of Polish extraction. Ken used to invite me down to his studio in Pioneer Square to comment on his art. His art was on the myopic theme of the Holocaust.
He knew I was a Christian, and the real reason he was soliciting my views had nothing to do with art criticism, per se. Rather, he was trying to feel me out on my theology and where the Jews fitted into my theology.
He’d ask me questions, then get all huffy at the answers. He’d say that Christianity was anti-Semitic. I’d ask him to define what Jew was. That always left him speechless. I’d point out that if he couldn’t define what a Jew was, how could he define what a Jew-hater was?
I’d then point out that the NT was written by Jews. That being the case, how could he justify his anti-Semitic prejudice against a historic Jewish document? That left him speechless as well.
I’d follow that up by asking what his warrant was for being so moralistic. Did he believe in moral absolutes? Where did his morality come from?
We went round and round on this on several different occasions before he banished me from his studio. Ken is a completely irrational man.
Below is a letter I emailed to Ken about his column.
******************************************
Hi Ken,
It’s Steve Hays. Remember me?
I just read your PI piece about “Keeping intolerance out of public places.”
You say, “It is troublesome that the University of Washington allows publicly funded facilities for religious rallies that are considered hateful, racist and demeaning to non-Christians, including myself and many of my friends and co-workers.”
Interesting choice of words. “Considered” hateful, racist, and demeaning to non-Christians. Not actually hateful, racist, and demeaning. Merely perceived to be.
Heidegger and other Nazi academics applied the same standard in expelling Jewish professors and Jewish students from German universities. The mere presence of Jews was offensive to the Aryan faculty and student body. Striking to see you intoning the creed of old Jew-haters.
You say, “While Pastor Judah Smith is entitled to believe in religious supremacism, why must racist theology be presented on public school property?”
To begin with, Ken, you’re very free with the word “racist.” There are Christians of every race. Christianity is especially well represented in the Southern Hemisphere. Why, Ken, do you indulge in these hateful, racist and demeaning caricatures of so many people of color?
Moreover, Christians pay taxes to. Their tax dollars support the UW. So why shouldn’t they have access to an institution when they’re footing so much of the bill?
Ken, what do you think the word “public” means, anyway? “Public” means that it belongs to everyone, not just the flag-burners and bra-burners. That’s the difference between the public square and the private sector.
Furthermore, why do you want to shut down public discourse on a college campus, anyway? I thought you were a veteran of the free speech movement? Of course, it’s not uncommon for young radicals to become old fascists. Is that what’s happened to you?
Finally, the very first right enunciated in the very first amendment to the Constitution is the freedom of religious expression.
“U.S. students, faculty and staff have never been as diverse in background and faith as today.”
To begin with, what you’re describing is a coercive diversity.
In addition, you’re idea of religious diversity is limited to the far left end of the religious spectrum.
You say, “Yet religious supremacists not only fail to recognize that bestowal, which some say is God given, they seek to extinguish others' beliefs.”
Ken, last time I checked, you were a militant atheist. So why don’t you speak for yourself instead of mouthing stuff you don’t believe in? If you don’t believe in what you’re saying, why should anyone else?
You say, “During supremacist presentations to high school students in Issaquah and elsewhere, the power of peer pressure is beyond enormous. These rallies provide a serious and harmful threat to non-Christian students and their families, especially immigrants.”
What immigrants are you talking about, Ken? Mexicans? Do they feel harmed or threatened by the Christian faith?
Or are you talking about some other immigrant group? Is this code language for Muslims?
You say, “In the United States, students attending publicly funded schools should be entitled to practice the faith of their families without facing peer pressure to convert.”
By what authority? Who confers this entitlement? Everything is not a right just because you say so.
Why shouldn’t students be subject to peer pressure? Notice what you’re saying. You’re saying that a gag order should be put on student speech.
Ken, when did you go over to the side of the book burners? When did you decide that the “firemen” in Fahrenheit 451 were the good guys, and Oscar Werner was the bad guy? When did you take the side of the Establishment in 1984?
When did you become such a reactionary lobbyist for censorship and prior restraint?
You say, “Rallies on public campuses are un-American and run counter to the spirit of tolerance that our nation's founders and generations of public school teachers and political leaders have led us to believe is our right.”
“Have led us believe is our right”? Really, Ken, are you such an intellectual lemming that you can no longer think for yourself? “Teacher says” and you believe?
Is that your idea of public education? To mass-produce an army of wind-up toy-soldiers who march in place wherever Teacher tells they to go?
“Rallies on public campuses are un-American”? Ken, you lived through the Sixties, like I did. Remember the anti-war protesters? Remember the civil rights movement? Remember the Constitutional right of free speech and freedom of assembly?
Ken, are you a pod person? Did the body-snatchers get to you? Have you been invaded by an extra-terrestrial biological organism? Did you go to bed a radical and wake up a fascist?
Why are you afraid of free speech on college campus? Why shouldn’t college students acquire critical thinking skills? Be free to debate opposing positions?
Why do you think the government should put its iron-boot on the neck of dissenting opinion?
BTW, Ken, the antidote to peer pressure is ideological diversity.
The “tolerance” that our founding fathers wrote into the Constitution is freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, the right to bear arms, states’ rights, and freedom from federal government interference with these (and other) freedoms.
Ken, why do you want to treat government as the grownup, and growups as children needing to be protected from “threatening” speech? Why do you demote adult men and women to the status of minors under the curfew of the Nannystate?
Ken, when did you become an apparatchik for the almighty state? A quisling for the status quo?
You said, “Post-proselytizing Christians and church institutions-of-conscience no longer engage in conversion campaigns as they frequently recognize four tenets unrecognized by Smith.”
You’re talking about nominal Christians and dead churches.
You said, “Our need for constructive interfaith dialogue between Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus and followers of other faiths to create a working methodology for non-violent conflict resolution.”
Just for starters, there are observant Jews like Michael Medved, Rabbi Lapin, and Dennis Prager who recognize that Evangelicals are the best friends that Jews have—practically the only friends that Jews have. It is we, the Evangelicals, who are standing in-between the Jews and the Jew-haters—the jihadis and their Eurocratic allies.
And there’s a younger generation of Jews like Ben Shapiro who are not so eager to sell themselves back into the bondage of a totalitarian state.
Ken, a people (Jews) who can’t tell their friends (Christians) from their enemies (Muslims) is a people with a death-wish.
You said, “Telling a child, youth or young adult that the faith of his or her parents and grandparents has been "superseded" by a "newer, better" faith is immoral, unethical and just plain wrong.”
Sez who? You? What’s your moral authority? Your bare say-so? Who are you to impose your narrow-minded views on everyone else?
What about young Muslims whose hereditary faith instructs the to be a Jew-haters and suicide bomber? Whose hereditary faith preaches the extermination of the Jewish people?
What about a member of the Hitler Youth? It is immoral to talk a skinhead out of his neo-Nazi philosophy?
Why do you think it’s right to use coercion (speech codes, hate-speech) in matters of ideology, but wrong to use persuasion in matters of theology? Can you offer a principled distinction? Does self-determination only apply in politics, but not in religion?
Why do you deny men and women the freedom of opportunity to choose their faith? Why should their grandparents choose their faith for them? Why should geography and ethnicity dictate one’s religion?
Why shouldn't people have a good reason for what they believe. And if they don't have a good reason, why should they be forced to believe it? Why should they not be allowed to have some options?
Do you think that a woman raised in Islam should have no say in the matter? Do you believe that a woman should be subjected to such Islamic customs as child-marriage, honor-killings, and genital mutilation?
What about the Hindu custom of suttee or widow-burning? Would you hold the woman down on the funeral pyre out of deference to her culture? If she ran away, would you return her to her masters?
Why kind of person have you become, Ken? When did you cross over and become the enemy?
Ken, do you have any answer to these questions? Or are you going to persist in what you say and do even though you have no rational justification for what you say and do? If you’re immune to reason and evidence, then how are you in any position to denounce the Nazi?
You then insinuate that Smith is a hypocrite because he opposes abortion while supporting the death penalty, right to bear arms, and preemptive warfare.
This is a facile comparison which disregards elementary moral distinctions between guilt and innocence, aggression and self-defense.
If you’re so devoid of moral discrimination that you can’t tell the difference, then the Warsaw uprising is on the same plane as the gas chambers.
Ken, why do you make a virtue of being unintelligent?
You said, “In Parade magazine on Nov. 14, 1996, Elie Wiesel, the U.S. immigrant, author, teenage concentration camp survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner, wrote, ‘No human race is superior; no religious faith is inferior. All collective judgments are wrong. Only racists make them.’"
Why do you constantly assert a moral equivalence between race and religion? There is no one-to-one correspondence between the two.
How can you claim any moral authority for you position when you peddle such palpable falsehoods?
No religion is inferior to another? In Aztec piety, POWs supplied the raw material for human sacrifice. They were strapped alive to the altar as their throbbing heart was carved from their breast.
You think that’s on the same plain as Jewish ethical monotheism, do you?
You are pronouncing a collective judgment on Evangelicalism, are you not? Why the double-standard?
Ken, I sorry to see you degenerate into the classic self-hating Jew. In your fanatical hatred of all things Christian you hate the Jewish scriptures, you hate the Jewish Messiah, you hate the only people on earth who love the Jews and stand between them and hundreds of millions of genocidal, Jew-hating Muslims and their political syncophants in the secularized capitals of post-Christian Europe.
What a travesty to find you gathering firewood for the next Krystallnacht.
Sign & seal
This morning my PCA pastor gave an exposition and defense of the classic Presbyterian view of the sacraments as efficacious for the elect.
BTW, within certain boundaries of Evangelical orthodoxy, I’m pretty free about where I fellowship. There’s no one-to-one correspondence between what I believe and the church I happen to be attending at the time.
Back to the main point: it occurred to me, in listening to him, that there’s a common confusion over the nature of symbolism and how that cashes out in debate over the sacraments.
To say that what distinguishes a Baptist from a non-Baptist is that a Baptist regards a sacrament as “merely” symbolic whereas a non-Baptist believes there to be something over and above the symbol, is frankly oxymoronic.
In the nature of the case, a symbol entails a relation. A symbol is a symbol “of” something else. It stands for something other than itself.
There is no such thing as a “mere” symbol or a “nude sign.” Even Zwingli would be the first to admit that there is something beyond or behind the symbol itself—to which the symbol is a pointer, to which it corresponds.
So the nature of symbolism, per se, is not what differentiates a Baptist from a non-Baptist. Both sides agree that a sacrament implies a relation between the sign and the significate. Every symbol has its correlative.
The point at issue is not the existence of the relation, but the identity of the relation. The controversy is not whether a sacrament is a symbol “of” something, but whether it “does” something. Is it efficacious? Is it a means of salvation? That’s the bone of contention.
BTW, within certain boundaries of Evangelical orthodoxy, I’m pretty free about where I fellowship. There’s no one-to-one correspondence between what I believe and the church I happen to be attending at the time.
Back to the main point: it occurred to me, in listening to him, that there’s a common confusion over the nature of symbolism and how that cashes out in debate over the sacraments.
To say that what distinguishes a Baptist from a non-Baptist is that a Baptist regards a sacrament as “merely” symbolic whereas a non-Baptist believes there to be something over and above the symbol, is frankly oxymoronic.
In the nature of the case, a symbol entails a relation. A symbol is a symbol “of” something else. It stands for something other than itself.
There is no such thing as a “mere” symbol or a “nude sign.” Even Zwingli would be the first to admit that there is something beyond or behind the symbol itself—to which the symbol is a pointer, to which it corresponds.
So the nature of symbolism, per se, is not what differentiates a Baptist from a non-Baptist. Both sides agree that a sacrament implies a relation between the sign and the significate. Every symbol has its correlative.
The point at issue is not the existence of the relation, but the identity of the relation. The controversy is not whether a sacrament is a symbol “of” something, but whether it “does” something. Is it efficacious? Is it a means of salvation? That’s the bone of contention.
"This is my body"
***QUOTE***
88. Nathan Daniels Says:
October 22nd, 2005 at 3:19 am
Not that I’m into proof-texting, but the most emphatic example in Scripture to me regarding Christ’s presence comes from I Corinthians 11:20-34.
The context is Paul chastizing certain members of the Corinthian church for treating the Lord’s Supper like a common meal. After taking care to quote Christ as declaring the bread and wine to be His Body and Blood, he continues: (v29)…”For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, NOT DISCERNING THE LORD’S BODY”.
I suppose one could make the argument that he’s talking about the church but that’s a stretch considering the correction came because men were getting drunk .
Moreover, how can one person (Steve) deny the consensus of the early Church Fathers, whose writings inform us greatly as to precisely what the Apostles taught the Church as to the meaning of the Scriptures pre-Bible?
http://catholica.pontifications.net/?p=1142#comments
***END-QUOTE***
This raises some valid issues which merit a serious reply.
1.There are two boundaries which frame the Pauline discussion: (i) the Passover and (ii) the abuse of Christian fellowship.
2.The reference to the blood of the covenant is an allusion to the shedding of blood by which the Mosaic covenant was ratified (Exod 24:8). Likewise, the New Covenant will be ratified by the shedding of blood—the blood of Christ (Isa 53:12; Jer 31:31). What is in view, then, is not the composition of the communion elements, but the cross, for which they stand.
3.The Last Supper is a modification of the Seder, where you had the bread, the lamb, the wine, and the bitter herbs.
i) The Passover was, of itself, a symbolic reenactment of the Exodus. As Keener observes, in his commentary on Matthew,
“We should interpret his words here no more literally than the disciples would have taken the normal words of the Passover liturgy, related to Deut 16:3: ‘This is the bread of affliction which our ancestors ate when they came from the land of Egypt.’ (By no stretch of the imagination did anyone suppose that they were re-eating the very bread the Israelites had eaten in the wilderness.) Those who ate of this bread participated by commemoration in Jesus’ affliction in the same manner that those who ate the Passover commemorated in the deliverance of their ancestors. The language of Passover celeb ration assumed the participation of current generations in the exodus event. That Jesus was also in his body at the time he uttered the words further militates against interpreting the bread as literally equivalent to his body,” A Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, 631-632.
ii) The point of comparison and contrast lies in the fact that the sacrifice of Christ now takes the place of the Seder elements. Instead of saying, “This is the bread of affliction,” Christ says, “This is my body.” He substitutes himself for the traditional elements. As C. F. Evans observes, in his commentary on Luke:
“This (is: in Aramaic there would be no verb as a copula) my body—could also correspond to the Passover ritual, this (is) being a formula in the Passover haggadah for the replies made by the head of the household to the questions asked about the peculiar features of the feast (unleavened bread, bitter herbs &c.). ‘What is this?”” Saint Luke, 789.
iii) At the Last Supper, Jesus would have spoken in Aramaic, not Greek. To infer a whole theology of the Eucharist from the presence of a verb which is only the artifact of an idiomatic Greek translation, with no corresponding verb in the Aramaic, gives us a skyscraper without a foundation.
iv) Again, this has nothing to do with the composition of the communion elements, but rather, the Crucifixion as the fulfillment of the Passover.
Paul was a Messianic Jew, and one needs to read 1 Cor 11 through the eyes of a Messianic Jew. The catholic interpretation is a classic and cautionary reminder of how seriously and swiftly the church can lose her moorings as soon as she loses touch with original intent.
4.The crisis which occasioned 1 Cor 11 was a dissention in the Corinthian fellowship. This has reference to a socioeconomic division (11:22). On the one hand, you had a rich Christian patron whose house-church sponsored the Agape feast. On the other hand were the poorer members of the congregation. The patron was discriminating against the poorer members in favor of his wealthy friends and house guests. That’s what lies in the background.
The Eucharist is a token of Christian unity (10:17). But the affluent church members were turning it into a token of Christian disunity.
5.There are three different ways of interpreting 11:29.
i) On the Catholic interpretation, failure to discern the body has reference to failure to discern the Real Presence. But there are problems with this interpretation:
a) It’s extrinsic to the context. At issue is not the doctrine of the Eucharist or orthodoxy, but the behavior of the Corinthians or orthopraxy.
Failure to discern the Real Presence is irrelevant to the economic discrimination in view. Even assuming that the Real Presence is true , the Corinthians could be orthodox and still discriminate.
b) According to catholic doctrine, the true body and blood subsists under the species of bread and wine. So the Real Presence is intangible and invisible. On the catholic interpretation, the Corinthians are culpable for failing to discern the indiscernible.
c) As I’ve argued under (2)-(3), what is in view is not the composition of the elements, but their significance.
ii) Another interpretation takes the reference to the “body” to denote the church. In favor of this interpretation:
a) It is consistent with the socioeconomic context of the passage.
b) It is consistent with Pauline usage (10:16-17).
c) When Paul says that Jesus is the rock (10:4), Roman Catholic theologians don’t infer the literal petrifaction of Christ, do they?
Such an interpretation automatically rules out the Catholic gloss.
Why Nathan supposes that inebriation makes this interpretation a “stretch” is not self-explanatory.
iii) Yet another interpretation takes the reference to the “body” to be a shorthand expression for “body and blood” in v27. This would give it a Eucharistic reference.
Both (ii)-(iii) are reasonable interpretations. There is not much functional difference between (ii) and (iii).
Assuming (iii), the failure in view is the failure to perceive the socioeconomic significance of the Eucharist as a token of Christian unity rather than disunity. A Eucharistic reference alone does not implicate the Real Presence.
6.This is not an issue of one person (me) as over against the church fathers. I’m not the only individual who denies the catholic interpretation of 1 Cor 11.
i) Nathan is acting as though the Apostles bequeathed to the church fathers a verse-by-verse commentary on the NT.
What the Apostles bequeathed to the sub-Apostolic church was not a commentary on the NT, but the NT itself: the NT writings.
ii) I’d add that the church fathers were contemporaries of various heresiarchs and heretical sects. Temporal proximity to the apostles does nothing to broker competing theological claims.
iii) Paul had to address no fewer than four different letters to the Corinthian church to clear up persistent misinterpretations of his own teaching.
If Christians who had the benefit of face-to-face instruction from Paul—as well as Peter—could still distort his teaching, then, yes, it’s quite easy to believe that church fathers could get it wrong as well.
As Luke Timothy Johnson, a leading Catholic commentator, candidly admits,
“It is obvious, first of all, that Christian liturgical practice is not based directly on this text [Lk 22:14-23] but rather on a complex development of ritual traditions that look back to the Gospels only for legitimation after the fact,” Sacra Pagina Series, 3:340-41.
88. Nathan Daniels Says:
October 22nd, 2005 at 3:19 am
Not that I’m into proof-texting, but the most emphatic example in Scripture to me regarding Christ’s presence comes from I Corinthians 11:20-34.
The context is Paul chastizing certain members of the Corinthian church for treating the Lord’s Supper like a common meal. After taking care to quote Christ as declaring the bread and wine to be His Body and Blood, he continues: (v29)…”For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, NOT DISCERNING THE LORD’S BODY”.
I suppose one could make the argument that he’s talking about the church but that’s a stretch considering the correction came because men were getting drunk .
Moreover, how can one person (Steve) deny the consensus of the early Church Fathers, whose writings inform us greatly as to precisely what the Apostles taught the Church as to the meaning of the Scriptures pre-Bible?
http://catholica.pontifications.net/?p=1142#comments
***END-QUOTE***
This raises some valid issues which merit a serious reply.
1.There are two boundaries which frame the Pauline discussion: (i) the Passover and (ii) the abuse of Christian fellowship.
2.The reference to the blood of the covenant is an allusion to the shedding of blood by which the Mosaic covenant was ratified (Exod 24:8). Likewise, the New Covenant will be ratified by the shedding of blood—the blood of Christ (Isa 53:12; Jer 31:31). What is in view, then, is not the composition of the communion elements, but the cross, for which they stand.
3.The Last Supper is a modification of the Seder, where you had the bread, the lamb, the wine, and the bitter herbs.
i) The Passover was, of itself, a symbolic reenactment of the Exodus. As Keener observes, in his commentary on Matthew,
“We should interpret his words here no more literally than the disciples would have taken the normal words of the Passover liturgy, related to Deut 16:3: ‘This is the bread of affliction which our ancestors ate when they came from the land of Egypt.’ (By no stretch of the imagination did anyone suppose that they were re-eating the very bread the Israelites had eaten in the wilderness.) Those who ate of this bread participated by commemoration in Jesus’ affliction in the same manner that those who ate the Passover commemorated in the deliverance of their ancestors. The language of Passover celeb ration assumed the participation of current generations in the exodus event. That Jesus was also in his body at the time he uttered the words further militates against interpreting the bread as literally equivalent to his body,” A Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, 631-632.
ii) The point of comparison and contrast lies in the fact that the sacrifice of Christ now takes the place of the Seder elements. Instead of saying, “This is the bread of affliction,” Christ says, “This is my body.” He substitutes himself for the traditional elements. As C. F. Evans observes, in his commentary on Luke:
“This (is: in Aramaic there would be no verb as a copula) my body—could also correspond to the Passover ritual, this (is) being a formula in the Passover haggadah for the replies made by the head of the household to the questions asked about the peculiar features of the feast (unleavened bread, bitter herbs &c.). ‘What is this?”” Saint Luke, 789.
iii) At the Last Supper, Jesus would have spoken in Aramaic, not Greek. To infer a whole theology of the Eucharist from the presence of a verb which is only the artifact of an idiomatic Greek translation, with no corresponding verb in the Aramaic, gives us a skyscraper without a foundation.
iv) Again, this has nothing to do with the composition of the communion elements, but rather, the Crucifixion as the fulfillment of the Passover.
Paul was a Messianic Jew, and one needs to read 1 Cor 11 through the eyes of a Messianic Jew. The catholic interpretation is a classic and cautionary reminder of how seriously and swiftly the church can lose her moorings as soon as she loses touch with original intent.
4.The crisis which occasioned 1 Cor 11 was a dissention in the Corinthian fellowship. This has reference to a socioeconomic division (11:22). On the one hand, you had a rich Christian patron whose house-church sponsored the Agape feast. On the other hand were the poorer members of the congregation. The patron was discriminating against the poorer members in favor of his wealthy friends and house guests. That’s what lies in the background.
The Eucharist is a token of Christian unity (10:17). But the affluent church members were turning it into a token of Christian disunity.
5.There are three different ways of interpreting 11:29.
i) On the Catholic interpretation, failure to discern the body has reference to failure to discern the Real Presence. But there are problems with this interpretation:
a) It’s extrinsic to the context. At issue is not the doctrine of the Eucharist or orthodoxy, but the behavior of the Corinthians or orthopraxy.
Failure to discern the Real Presence is irrelevant to the economic discrimination in view. Even assuming that the Real Presence is true , the Corinthians could be orthodox and still discriminate.
b) According to catholic doctrine, the true body and blood subsists under the species of bread and wine. So the Real Presence is intangible and invisible. On the catholic interpretation, the Corinthians are culpable for failing to discern the indiscernible.
c) As I’ve argued under (2)-(3), what is in view is not the composition of the elements, but their significance.
ii) Another interpretation takes the reference to the “body” to denote the church. In favor of this interpretation:
a) It is consistent with the socioeconomic context of the passage.
b) It is consistent with Pauline usage (10:16-17).
c) When Paul says that Jesus is the rock (10:4), Roman Catholic theologians don’t infer the literal petrifaction of Christ, do they?
Such an interpretation automatically rules out the Catholic gloss.
Why Nathan supposes that inebriation makes this interpretation a “stretch” is not self-explanatory.
iii) Yet another interpretation takes the reference to the “body” to be a shorthand expression for “body and blood” in v27. This would give it a Eucharistic reference.
Both (ii)-(iii) are reasonable interpretations. There is not much functional difference between (ii) and (iii).
Assuming (iii), the failure in view is the failure to perceive the socioeconomic significance of the Eucharist as a token of Christian unity rather than disunity. A Eucharistic reference alone does not implicate the Real Presence.
6.This is not an issue of one person (me) as over against the church fathers. I’m not the only individual who denies the catholic interpretation of 1 Cor 11.
i) Nathan is acting as though the Apostles bequeathed to the church fathers a verse-by-verse commentary on the NT.
What the Apostles bequeathed to the sub-Apostolic church was not a commentary on the NT, but the NT itself: the NT writings.
ii) I’d add that the church fathers were contemporaries of various heresiarchs and heretical sects. Temporal proximity to the apostles does nothing to broker competing theological claims.
iii) Paul had to address no fewer than four different letters to the Corinthian church to clear up persistent misinterpretations of his own teaching.
If Christians who had the benefit of face-to-face instruction from Paul—as well as Peter—could still distort his teaching, then, yes, it’s quite easy to believe that church fathers could get it wrong as well.
As Luke Timothy Johnson, a leading Catholic commentator, candidly admits,
“It is obvious, first of all, that Christian liturgical practice is not based directly on this text [Lk 22:14-23] but rather on a complex development of ritual traditions that look back to the Gospels only for legitimation after the fact,” Sacra Pagina Series, 3:340-41.
Saturday, October 22, 2005
Nullifidian nullities
Jonathan Prejean has posted some comments on my blog in response to my pot-of-gold thread. That’s his prerogative, though not one he reciprocates over at his own blog.
***QUOTE***
For some reason, oddly enough, Protestants seem quite incapable of comprehending that "private judgment" is not an epistemological category, but an ontological one.
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2005/10/finding-pot-of-gold-at-end-of-rainbow_14.html
***END-QUOTE***
Perhaps we use it to denote an epistemic category because that’s the way it’s ordinarily used by Catholics and Protestants unlike—contrary to Prejean’s eccentric usage.
Prejean is looking up words in The Humpty-Dumpty Dictionary of the English Language. As that great lexicographer expressed himself:
“When I use a word,” Humpty-Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—nothing more or less.”
***QUOTE***
"Private judgment" does not refer to the independent exercise of one's faculties; everyone must do that to some extent or another.
***END-QUOTE***
The reason that Prejean is trying to redefine the phrase is to take the sting out of it. He wants to deny that Catholics and Protestants both exercise private judgment but simply apply it to different documents: the Catholic to tradition and the Protestant to Scripture.
He wants to make you believe that private judgment is something deeper than that to avoid the charge that Catholics are in the same boat as Protestants.
This is why he’s admitting that the independent exercise of one’s faculties is unavoidable. He’s attempting to get that out of the way as soon as possible by seeming to concede the Evangelical comparison, but then pretending that the right of private judgment is something different entirely.
It’s like Arabs who cede land to Israel after losing it in the last war, to then claim that they never lost it since they “gave” it away—albeit after the fact.
With Prejean, it’s all about maneuvering to gain a tactical advantage. As long as you can shift the burden of proof you never have to prove a thing.
***QUOTE***
Nor does it refer to the basis of one's subjective certainty, which everyone also determines individually.
***END-QUOTE***
Once again he’s skewing the issue. No one defines private judgment as the basis of one’s subjective certainty. The contention, rather, is that a Catholic is vulnerable to the same subjective uncertainties as a Protestant.
***QUOTE***
Rather, and quite simply, it refers to the question of whether right belief is a mental state derived from Scripture based on interpreting Scripture with a correctly disposed heart.
***END-QUOTE***
Again, this is a nonstandard usage. A person’s state of heart has nothing to do with the right of private judgment. An unbeliever is capable of rightly understanding a passage of Scripture while a believer is capable of misconstruing a passage of Scripture. That’s not the point of contrast.
Remember that the right of private judgment was framed in a specific historical context. The principle is opposed to a particular version of the argument from authority.
It opposes a blind appeal to ecclesiastical authority. It is opposes an argument from authority without an argument for authority.
***QUOTE***
A Catholic would assert that such a claim absolutely disqualifies someone from even being an interpreter of Scripture, because it necessarily posits an autonomous basis for interpretation apart from the ontological Body of Christ. Properly speaking, the accusation of "private judgment" is a transcendental argument for the ontological inadequacy of any attempt to derive tenets of faith from Scripture. That doesn't mean that arguments can't be made from Scripture in a fashion that resembles those of Protestants, but they merely attempt to exploit the truth that is already (inconsistently) held by such people to destroy their inadequate worldviews.
***END-QUOTE***
Translation: “Catholics can’t justify their theology on exegetical grounds. Evangelicals have the better of the exegetical arguments. So it’s futile for Catholics to keep on fighting a lost cause.”
“Since they beat us fair and square, our rearguard action is to introduce this nifty blocking maneuver. Since it’s a losing battle to beat the Evangelicals on their own turf, o we’ll simply pretend that they never had a right to interpret the Bible in the first place!”
Remember what I said: with Prejean it’s not about the actual play, but the pre-game jockeying for a favorable position.
Notice that nothing has changed since Trent. This is why the Reformation was necessary. It comes down to the same authoritarian assertion: “You have no right to question your superiors! Just shut up and do as you’re told!”
***QUOTE***
The bottom line is that the Body of Christ is ontologically identifiable with the Church itself, and the recognition of the revealed Christ is identical with this identification, so that any attempt to interpret Scripture outside the regula fidei of the Church is a nullity. The ontological ground of faith is the reality of the risen Christ in its full implications and significance (which the Eastern Fathers called the "skopos" of Scripture, and St. Irenaeus called the "regula fidei"): the dependence of creation on the Creator, the transcendence of the Creator, the significance of the Incarnation, and the resultant effectiveness of salvation. If one denies the _skopos_ in any part (as heretics do), one does not acknowledge the Christian faith, and therefore, one has no adequate basis for Scriptural interpretation. What allows the very freedom of interpretation described above is the commonality of the _skopos_, the acknowledgment of the Word Incarnate for our salvation.
***END-QUOTE***
He continues with his blocking maneuver and his totalitarian rhetoric.
Observe the absence of anything resembling an argument. All we’re treated to is one big fat assertion larded with all manner of question-begging claims.
Before we lose our way in the fog-machine of his portmanteau verbiage, a couple elementary remarks are in order.
i) Evangelicals don’t need some fancy-pants metaphysical scheme to justify their rule of faith.
The Bible wasn’t written for sophisticates. The Bible is addressed to a wholly general audience and not an intellectual elite.
The purpose of the grammatico-historical method is, as much as possible, to recover the common knowledge of the original audience. To assume their viewpoint.
ii) When the prophets confronted the corrupt religious establishment, they quoted directly from Scripture. When Jesus confronted the corrupt religious establishment, he quoted directly from Scripture. When the Apostles confronted the corrupt religious establishment, they quoted directly from Scripture.
Evangelicals simply pitch their approach to Scripture at the same level as Scripture itself has chosen to position itself.
But Catholicism is too proud to lower itself to the level of Scripture.
Prejean’s policy would not only disqualify the Evangelical: it would disqualify the prophets and Apostles and Jesus Christ himself, for they all reasoned directly from Scripture and appealed directly to the laity.
Let Prejean have his Popes and prelates, bishops and archbishops, cardinals and cardinal archbishops: for my part, I’ll settle for a carpenter and a few fishermen.
***QUOTE***
The only question is whether Protestants will allow themselves to realize that the faith in human language as an "image" of divine communication (by application of J.L. Austin's speech-action theory and the so-called "accommodation" of God to human language) is entirely inadequate for that purpose. The absurd anthropomorphism required to picture the members of the Trinity actually speaking to one another is an obvious clue, but one that seems to have escaped all but the most subtle of presuppositional apologists. See, e.g.,
http://www.ccir.ed.ac.uk/~jad/vantil-list/archive-Jan-2003/msg00053.html
***END-QUOTE***
I agree that the members of the intramundane Trinity do not literally speak to another, although the members of the economic Trinity do address each other (e.g. Jn 12:28).
***QUOTE***
No, I mean (hypostatically) the actions of the entity are identifiable with the actions of Christ in a systematic way (e.g., the Liturgy is actually Christ doing something). Consequently, the authority of the entity is identifiable with the authority of Christ. When the Church acts qua Christ, the authority is identical with Christ's. To the extent I act as Christ, I am part of the same Body. This is the concept of synergism that pervades all of Scripture; humans can act in a way that is truly God's act. The notion of Catholic authority is that one's judgment qua individual must necessarily concede to the Church's judgment qua Christ, and in that judgment qua Christ, there must be an essential sameness (because Christ is not divided against Himself).
***END-QUOTE***
i) Notice that this is exactly how a cult-leader immunizes himself from accountability. To question the cult-leader is to question God Himself.
This is the stuff of the suicide cult. This is the stuff of the Inquisition. This is the stuff of the totalitarian state. This is the stuff of the jihadist.
Imagine if a guy like Prejean were in a position of power over you. Just think about that for a moment.
And keep that in mind when you hear some apostate Protestant go misty-eyed over “catholicity,” or inform you that we’re still under the Pope.
Have you ever noticed that those who wax nostalgic for the past happen to be those who never lived in the period for which they’re wistful?
And doesn’t it remind you an awful lot of the tin-foil hatters who’ve so spoiled by the blessings of American citizenship that they turn against their own country in fear and loathing?
ii) He offers no exegetical argument for the brazen claim that a human act can be identical with a divine act. Sounds like Prejean has a bad case of the Messiah-complex. Let us hope it can be treated before it enters the terminal stage.
***QUOTE***
As such, I consider it highly improbable, considering Who is revealed, that God would reveal Himself through text. He could do so, no doubt, but it would be a bit perverse from a presuppositional standpoint to reveal something by a method that by definition is inadequate to the task, rather like Picasso attempting to convey his artistic vision in a typed page. Requiring that much direct intervention, that much identification between the individual's volition and the Holy Spirit, strikes me as little better than appealing to private revelation. Rather than positing such a thoroughly inadequate means of revelation supplemented by such drastic intervention, I would think that it would be far more aesthetic to conclude that God did not Incarnate Himself meaninglessly, and that His ongoing revelation is (ontologically) of one kind with His Incarnation. This leads to a fundamentally Christological and Eucharistic hermeneutic, unique to Scripture. Hence, the distaste for "private judgment," which more or less presumes a presuppositionally inadequate form of revelation that must be supplemented by God's direct personal revelation of Himself.
***END-QUOTE***
The difference, here, is that an evangelical takes his doctrine of revelation from revelation.
But Prejean simply denies propositional revelation. It matters not to him that Scripture expressly identifies itself as the word of God. It matters not to him that verbal inspiration figures in the self-witness of Scripture. For, as you can now see for yourself, Prejean is not a Christian, but a Deist.
For him, textual revelation is inartistic. And interventionist Deity isn’t pretty enough for his aesthetic sensibilities. Such a God doesn’t pass the sniff test.
***QUOTE***
My point is that someone who doesn't even *claim* to be acting as Christ in the teaching role clearly isn't, which means that either you're appealing to direct unmediated revelation from God Himself (pretty implausible, I'd say), hence "private judgement," or you're admitting that what you believe was not revealed to you by Christ.
***END-QUOTE***
i) The Bible has a familiar term for someone who claims to be acting as Christ: he goes by the name of the Antichrist. I’m grateful to Prejean for having clarified his intellectual commitments.
ii) Christian theology has never been limited to the teaching of Christ. It is based on the entire Bible, inclusive of the OT and NT.
***QUOTE***
But I notice that you've substituted "like" for "as," which means you're using exactly the language of private judgment. I'm not talking about similarlity or analogy; I'm talking about ontological identity. The action IS God's; it is not LIKE God's. If you claim to be Christ-like, then you aren't even advancing a cognizable claim of truth by my lights.
***END-QUOTE***
Not only is Prejean a Deist, he is also a pantheist. How the two go together is admittedly a bit mysterious, but by the alchemy of Zubirian potions and potations, all things are possible.
The more you read Prejean, the more the mental image forms in your mind of a man in a padded cell typing furiously into his wireless laptop.
***QUOTE***
For some reason, oddly enough, Protestants seem quite incapable of comprehending that "private judgment" is not an epistemological category, but an ontological one.
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2005/10/finding-pot-of-gold-at-end-of-rainbow_14.html
***END-QUOTE***
Perhaps we use it to denote an epistemic category because that’s the way it’s ordinarily used by Catholics and Protestants unlike—contrary to Prejean’s eccentric usage.
Prejean is looking up words in The Humpty-Dumpty Dictionary of the English Language. As that great lexicographer expressed himself:
“When I use a word,” Humpty-Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—nothing more or less.”
***QUOTE***
"Private judgment" does not refer to the independent exercise of one's faculties; everyone must do that to some extent or another.
***END-QUOTE***
The reason that Prejean is trying to redefine the phrase is to take the sting out of it. He wants to deny that Catholics and Protestants both exercise private judgment but simply apply it to different documents: the Catholic to tradition and the Protestant to Scripture.
He wants to make you believe that private judgment is something deeper than that to avoid the charge that Catholics are in the same boat as Protestants.
This is why he’s admitting that the independent exercise of one’s faculties is unavoidable. He’s attempting to get that out of the way as soon as possible by seeming to concede the Evangelical comparison, but then pretending that the right of private judgment is something different entirely.
It’s like Arabs who cede land to Israel after losing it in the last war, to then claim that they never lost it since they “gave” it away—albeit after the fact.
With Prejean, it’s all about maneuvering to gain a tactical advantage. As long as you can shift the burden of proof you never have to prove a thing.
***QUOTE***
Nor does it refer to the basis of one's subjective certainty, which everyone also determines individually.
***END-QUOTE***
Once again he’s skewing the issue. No one defines private judgment as the basis of one’s subjective certainty. The contention, rather, is that a Catholic is vulnerable to the same subjective uncertainties as a Protestant.
***QUOTE***
Rather, and quite simply, it refers to the question of whether right belief is a mental state derived from Scripture based on interpreting Scripture with a correctly disposed heart.
***END-QUOTE***
Again, this is a nonstandard usage. A person’s state of heart has nothing to do with the right of private judgment. An unbeliever is capable of rightly understanding a passage of Scripture while a believer is capable of misconstruing a passage of Scripture. That’s not the point of contrast.
Remember that the right of private judgment was framed in a specific historical context. The principle is opposed to a particular version of the argument from authority.
It opposes a blind appeal to ecclesiastical authority. It is opposes an argument from authority without an argument for authority.
***QUOTE***
A Catholic would assert that such a claim absolutely disqualifies someone from even being an interpreter of Scripture, because it necessarily posits an autonomous basis for interpretation apart from the ontological Body of Christ. Properly speaking, the accusation of "private judgment" is a transcendental argument for the ontological inadequacy of any attempt to derive tenets of faith from Scripture. That doesn't mean that arguments can't be made from Scripture in a fashion that resembles those of Protestants, but they merely attempt to exploit the truth that is already (inconsistently) held by such people to destroy their inadequate worldviews.
***END-QUOTE***
Translation: “Catholics can’t justify their theology on exegetical grounds. Evangelicals have the better of the exegetical arguments. So it’s futile for Catholics to keep on fighting a lost cause.”
“Since they beat us fair and square, our rearguard action is to introduce this nifty blocking maneuver. Since it’s a losing battle to beat the Evangelicals on their own turf, o we’ll simply pretend that they never had a right to interpret the Bible in the first place!”
Remember what I said: with Prejean it’s not about the actual play, but the pre-game jockeying for a favorable position.
Notice that nothing has changed since Trent. This is why the Reformation was necessary. It comes down to the same authoritarian assertion: “You have no right to question your superiors! Just shut up and do as you’re told!”
***QUOTE***
The bottom line is that the Body of Christ is ontologically identifiable with the Church itself, and the recognition of the revealed Christ is identical with this identification, so that any attempt to interpret Scripture outside the regula fidei of the Church is a nullity. The ontological ground of faith is the reality of the risen Christ in its full implications and significance (which the Eastern Fathers called the "skopos" of Scripture, and St. Irenaeus called the "regula fidei"): the dependence of creation on the Creator, the transcendence of the Creator, the significance of the Incarnation, and the resultant effectiveness of salvation. If one denies the _skopos_ in any part (as heretics do), one does not acknowledge the Christian faith, and therefore, one has no adequate basis for Scriptural interpretation. What allows the very freedom of interpretation described above is the commonality of the _skopos_, the acknowledgment of the Word Incarnate for our salvation.
***END-QUOTE***
He continues with his blocking maneuver and his totalitarian rhetoric.
Observe the absence of anything resembling an argument. All we’re treated to is one big fat assertion larded with all manner of question-begging claims.
Before we lose our way in the fog-machine of his portmanteau verbiage, a couple elementary remarks are in order.
i) Evangelicals don’t need some fancy-pants metaphysical scheme to justify their rule of faith.
The Bible wasn’t written for sophisticates. The Bible is addressed to a wholly general audience and not an intellectual elite.
The purpose of the grammatico-historical method is, as much as possible, to recover the common knowledge of the original audience. To assume their viewpoint.
ii) When the prophets confronted the corrupt religious establishment, they quoted directly from Scripture. When Jesus confronted the corrupt religious establishment, he quoted directly from Scripture. When the Apostles confronted the corrupt religious establishment, they quoted directly from Scripture.
Evangelicals simply pitch their approach to Scripture at the same level as Scripture itself has chosen to position itself.
But Catholicism is too proud to lower itself to the level of Scripture.
Prejean’s policy would not only disqualify the Evangelical: it would disqualify the prophets and Apostles and Jesus Christ himself, for they all reasoned directly from Scripture and appealed directly to the laity.
Let Prejean have his Popes and prelates, bishops and archbishops, cardinals and cardinal archbishops: for my part, I’ll settle for a carpenter and a few fishermen.
***QUOTE***
The only question is whether Protestants will allow themselves to realize that the faith in human language as an "image" of divine communication (by application of J.L. Austin's speech-action theory and the so-called "accommodation" of God to human language) is entirely inadequate for that purpose. The absurd anthropomorphism required to picture the members of the Trinity actually speaking to one another is an obvious clue, but one that seems to have escaped all but the most subtle of presuppositional apologists. See, e.g.,
http://www.ccir.ed.ac.uk/~jad/vantil-list/archive-Jan-2003/msg00053.html
***END-QUOTE***
I agree that the members of the intramundane Trinity do not literally speak to another, although the members of the economic Trinity do address each other (e.g. Jn 12:28).
***QUOTE***
No, I mean (hypostatically) the actions of the entity are identifiable with the actions of Christ in a systematic way (e.g., the Liturgy is actually Christ doing something). Consequently, the authority of the entity is identifiable with the authority of Christ. When the Church acts qua Christ, the authority is identical with Christ's. To the extent I act as Christ, I am part of the same Body. This is the concept of synergism that pervades all of Scripture; humans can act in a way that is truly God's act. The notion of Catholic authority is that one's judgment qua individual must necessarily concede to the Church's judgment qua Christ, and in that judgment qua Christ, there must be an essential sameness (because Christ is not divided against Himself).
***END-QUOTE***
i) Notice that this is exactly how a cult-leader immunizes himself from accountability. To question the cult-leader is to question God Himself.
This is the stuff of the suicide cult. This is the stuff of the Inquisition. This is the stuff of the totalitarian state. This is the stuff of the jihadist.
Imagine if a guy like Prejean were in a position of power over you. Just think about that for a moment.
And keep that in mind when you hear some apostate Protestant go misty-eyed over “catholicity,” or inform you that we’re still under the Pope.
Have you ever noticed that those who wax nostalgic for the past happen to be those who never lived in the period for which they’re wistful?
And doesn’t it remind you an awful lot of the tin-foil hatters who’ve so spoiled by the blessings of American citizenship that they turn against their own country in fear and loathing?
ii) He offers no exegetical argument for the brazen claim that a human act can be identical with a divine act. Sounds like Prejean has a bad case of the Messiah-complex. Let us hope it can be treated before it enters the terminal stage.
***QUOTE***
As such, I consider it highly improbable, considering Who is revealed, that God would reveal Himself through text. He could do so, no doubt, but it would be a bit perverse from a presuppositional standpoint to reveal something by a method that by definition is inadequate to the task, rather like Picasso attempting to convey his artistic vision in a typed page. Requiring that much direct intervention, that much identification between the individual's volition and the Holy Spirit, strikes me as little better than appealing to private revelation. Rather than positing such a thoroughly inadequate means of revelation supplemented by such drastic intervention, I would think that it would be far more aesthetic to conclude that God did not Incarnate Himself meaninglessly, and that His ongoing revelation is (ontologically) of one kind with His Incarnation. This leads to a fundamentally Christological and Eucharistic hermeneutic, unique to Scripture. Hence, the distaste for "private judgment," which more or less presumes a presuppositionally inadequate form of revelation that must be supplemented by God's direct personal revelation of Himself.
***END-QUOTE***
The difference, here, is that an evangelical takes his doctrine of revelation from revelation.
But Prejean simply denies propositional revelation. It matters not to him that Scripture expressly identifies itself as the word of God. It matters not to him that verbal inspiration figures in the self-witness of Scripture. For, as you can now see for yourself, Prejean is not a Christian, but a Deist.
For him, textual revelation is inartistic. And interventionist Deity isn’t pretty enough for his aesthetic sensibilities. Such a God doesn’t pass the sniff test.
***QUOTE***
My point is that someone who doesn't even *claim* to be acting as Christ in the teaching role clearly isn't, which means that either you're appealing to direct unmediated revelation from God Himself (pretty implausible, I'd say), hence "private judgement," or you're admitting that what you believe was not revealed to you by Christ.
***END-QUOTE***
i) The Bible has a familiar term for someone who claims to be acting as Christ: he goes by the name of the Antichrist. I’m grateful to Prejean for having clarified his intellectual commitments.
ii) Christian theology has never been limited to the teaching of Christ. It is based on the entire Bible, inclusive of the OT and NT.
***QUOTE***
But I notice that you've substituted "like" for "as," which means you're using exactly the language of private judgment. I'm not talking about similarlity or analogy; I'm talking about ontological identity. The action IS God's; it is not LIKE God's. If you claim to be Christ-like, then you aren't even advancing a cognizable claim of truth by my lights.
***END-QUOTE***
Not only is Prejean a Deist, he is also a pantheist. How the two go together is admittedly a bit mysterious, but by the alchemy of Zubirian potions and potations, all things are possible.
The more you read Prejean, the more the mental image forms in your mind of a man in a padded cell typing furiously into his wireless laptop.
Friday, October 21, 2005
The secular death-wish
From abortion to infanticide to euthanasia, the creed of liberalism is death. That’s the common thread, the common denominator.
Even sex, which is supposed to be about new life, becomes a recipe for death under the secular scalpel.
Concomitant with the liberal death-wish is the denial of death. As Jan Bremmer has noted, “It is one of the characteristics of modern life that the dead no longer are significant in our lives: typically, in Holland graves can be cleared away after only ten years,” The Rise & Fall of the Afterlife, 86.
One obvious reason for paving over graveyards is that unbelievers don’t like to be reminded of their own mortality.
We can also see this in the increasing recourse to plastic surgery to recreate the illusion of youth.
Cher is a good example. The Sixties counterculture was a youth culture. Cher is a child of the youth culture.
There’s only one problem with a youth culture: there’s no future in being young. Youth is a very perishable commodity.
And yet, through the marvels of plastic surgery, Cher at 60 can look like Cher at 30.
Yet it must be odd to look like 30 on the outside, but feel like 60 on the inside.
Yet another reason for paving over the cemeteries is that the average unbeliever has no sense of continuity with the dead. “First you die, then you rot,” so the saying goes.
If there is no afterlife, then death severs, once and for all, the bond between generations.
By contrast, Jews and Christians traditionally had family crypts. This was owing to their firm faith in the resurrection of the just.
For a Christian, a cemetery is an emblem and portent of the communion of the saints—of the great cloud of witnesses who have gone before and await our arrival (Heb 11-12).
After I take my mother to her hair appointment, I drive to a cemetery a few miles away. It’s a nice play to pray.
It’s interesting to spend an hour in a cemetery—to see a trickle of people come and go, to bring fresh flowers, say a prayer, and leave.
Time without space would induce a sense of extreme fragmentation in our lives, for time is fleeting.
Space introduces a sense of stability and continuity. You can never revisit the same time, but you can revisit the same space. Space erects damns and levees within the fluidity of time.
A tombstone is a symbol of union, disunion, and reunion. For those who live and die in Christ, it is a promise, etched in stone, that they are waiting for us and we are going to them.
In Catholicism you have prayers for the dead. This is decadent, but is also, like most heresies, a half-truth.
The dead can do nothing for the living, and the living can do nothing for the dead.
We don’t always know if a loved one died in Christ. But we can pray to God that our loved one died in Christ. We can continue to pray that prayer even after their gone, for even though death has sealed their fate, God is not bound by our ignorance. Even after they’re dead, we can pray that God brought them to faith before they died.
The effect of prayer is not necessarily bound by the timing of prayer. The fact that I pray for an outcome which is now a thing of the past does not infringe on divine omniscience of God, for God doesn’t have to wait until I pray to act on what I pray. God is not bound by time in that sense. So even though prayer cannot affect what was, prayer can affect what was to be—even after the past is past—from our finite point of view.
After all, the unknown is the arena of prayer, whether the imponderables of the future or the past. We don’t pray for the known, but the unknown.
By the same token, Pentecostals are half-right. They’re wrong to suppose that God must do whatever they pray for. Indeed, the best way of finding out that God doesn’t have to do whatever you pray for is to pray for is to name it and claim it and watch all your insolent, unanswered prayers slap you in the face like a sandstorm.
But while presumption in prayer is sin and folly, a certain boldness is a good thing--for what do we have to lose? We may not always get what we ask for, but we rarely get what we never ask for.
***QUOTE***
What's happening in Russia, on the other hand, should cause tears. Mark Steyn has written a short survey of the state of affairs in Russia that breaks the heart and troubles the soul:
Russia is literally dying. From a population peak in 1992 of 148 million, it will be down to below 130 million by 2015 and thereafter dropping to perhaps 50 or 60 million by the end of the century, a third of what it was at the fall of the Soviet Union. It needn't decline at a consistent rate, of course. But I'd say it's more likely to be even lower than 50 million than it is to be over 100 million. The longer Russia goes without arresting the death spiral, the harder it is to pull out of it, and when it comes to the future most Russian women are voting with their fetus: 70 percent of pregnancies are aborted.
Read that last sentence again. But it's not just demographics--it's demographics and frightening externalities:
[Russia] has the fastest-growing rate of HIV infection in the world. . . . The virus is said to have infected at least 1 per cent of the population, the figure the World Health Organization considers the tipping point for a sub-Saharan-sized epidemic. So at a time when Russian men already have a life expectancy in the mid-50s--lower than in Bangladesh--they're about to see Aids cut them down from the other end, killing young men and women of childbearing age, and with them any hope of societal regeneration. By 2010, Aids will be killing between a quarter and three-quarters of a million Russians every year. It will become a nation of babushkas, unable to muster enough young soldiers to secure its borders, enough young businessmen to secure its economy or enough young families to secure its future. True, there are regions that are exceptions to these malign trends, parts of Russia that have healthy fertility rates and low HIV infection. Can you guess which regions they are? They start with a ' Mu-' and end with a '-slim'.
What Steyn is getting at is that as it dies, Russia "could bequeath the world several new Muslim nations, a nuclear Middle East and a stronger China." Calamity heaped on top of tragedy.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/
***END-QUOTE***
Even sex, which is supposed to be about new life, becomes a recipe for death under the secular scalpel.
Concomitant with the liberal death-wish is the denial of death. As Jan Bremmer has noted, “It is one of the characteristics of modern life that the dead no longer are significant in our lives: typically, in Holland graves can be cleared away after only ten years,” The Rise & Fall of the Afterlife, 86.
One obvious reason for paving over graveyards is that unbelievers don’t like to be reminded of their own mortality.
We can also see this in the increasing recourse to plastic surgery to recreate the illusion of youth.
Cher is a good example. The Sixties counterculture was a youth culture. Cher is a child of the youth culture.
There’s only one problem with a youth culture: there’s no future in being young. Youth is a very perishable commodity.
And yet, through the marvels of plastic surgery, Cher at 60 can look like Cher at 30.
Yet it must be odd to look like 30 on the outside, but feel like 60 on the inside.
Yet another reason for paving over the cemeteries is that the average unbeliever has no sense of continuity with the dead. “First you die, then you rot,” so the saying goes.
If there is no afterlife, then death severs, once and for all, the bond between generations.
By contrast, Jews and Christians traditionally had family crypts. This was owing to their firm faith in the resurrection of the just.
For a Christian, a cemetery is an emblem and portent of the communion of the saints—of the great cloud of witnesses who have gone before and await our arrival (Heb 11-12).
After I take my mother to her hair appointment, I drive to a cemetery a few miles away. It’s a nice play to pray.
It’s interesting to spend an hour in a cemetery—to see a trickle of people come and go, to bring fresh flowers, say a prayer, and leave.
Time without space would induce a sense of extreme fragmentation in our lives, for time is fleeting.
Space introduces a sense of stability and continuity. You can never revisit the same time, but you can revisit the same space. Space erects damns and levees within the fluidity of time.
A tombstone is a symbol of union, disunion, and reunion. For those who live and die in Christ, it is a promise, etched in stone, that they are waiting for us and we are going to them.
In Catholicism you have prayers for the dead. This is decadent, but is also, like most heresies, a half-truth.
The dead can do nothing for the living, and the living can do nothing for the dead.
We don’t always know if a loved one died in Christ. But we can pray to God that our loved one died in Christ. We can continue to pray that prayer even after their gone, for even though death has sealed their fate, God is not bound by our ignorance. Even after they’re dead, we can pray that God brought them to faith before they died.
The effect of prayer is not necessarily bound by the timing of prayer. The fact that I pray for an outcome which is now a thing of the past does not infringe on divine omniscience of God, for God doesn’t have to wait until I pray to act on what I pray. God is not bound by time in that sense. So even though prayer cannot affect what was, prayer can affect what was to be—even after the past is past—from our finite point of view.
After all, the unknown is the arena of prayer, whether the imponderables of the future or the past. We don’t pray for the known, but the unknown.
By the same token, Pentecostals are half-right. They’re wrong to suppose that God must do whatever they pray for. Indeed, the best way of finding out that God doesn’t have to do whatever you pray for is to pray for is to name it and claim it and watch all your insolent, unanswered prayers slap you in the face like a sandstorm.
But while presumption in prayer is sin and folly, a certain boldness is a good thing--for what do we have to lose? We may not always get what we ask for, but we rarely get what we never ask for.
***QUOTE***
What's happening in Russia, on the other hand, should cause tears. Mark Steyn has written a short survey of the state of affairs in Russia that breaks the heart and troubles the soul:
Russia is literally dying. From a population peak in 1992 of 148 million, it will be down to below 130 million by 2015 and thereafter dropping to perhaps 50 or 60 million by the end of the century, a third of what it was at the fall of the Soviet Union. It needn't decline at a consistent rate, of course. But I'd say it's more likely to be even lower than 50 million than it is to be over 100 million. The longer Russia goes without arresting the death spiral, the harder it is to pull out of it, and when it comes to the future most Russian women are voting with their fetus: 70 percent of pregnancies are aborted.
Read that last sentence again. But it's not just demographics--it's demographics and frightening externalities:
[Russia] has the fastest-growing rate of HIV infection in the world. . . . The virus is said to have infected at least 1 per cent of the population, the figure the World Health Organization considers the tipping point for a sub-Saharan-sized epidemic. So at a time when Russian men already have a life expectancy in the mid-50s--lower than in Bangladesh--they're about to see Aids cut them down from the other end, killing young men and women of childbearing age, and with them any hope of societal regeneration. By 2010, Aids will be killing between a quarter and three-quarters of a million Russians every year. It will become a nation of babushkas, unable to muster enough young soldiers to secure its borders, enough young businessmen to secure its economy or enough young families to secure its future. True, there are regions that are exceptions to these malign trends, parts of Russia that have healthy fertility rates and low HIV infection. Can you guess which regions they are? They start with a ' Mu-' and end with a '-slim'.
What Steyn is getting at is that as it dies, Russia "could bequeath the world several new Muslim nations, a nuclear Middle East and a stronger China." Calamity heaped on top of tragedy.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/
***END-QUOTE***
Pot of gold-5
Thanks for the email. In answer to your objections:
i) I don't need to defend my own interpretation to show that the opposing interpretation is flawed. I only have to defend my own interpretation if I advance my interpretation as an alternative. I have no problem with your question, but we need to be clear on the burden of proof.
ii) The first question we need to ask in reading the Bible is not, "What makes sense to me?" but, "What would make sense to the original audience?" given its cultural preunderstanding and position in redemptive history and progressive revelation.
Jesus was addressing a Jewish audience prior to the institution of the Lord's Supper. The Eucharist was not their frame of reference. In context, their frame of reference was the wilderness wandering and the feeding of the 5000, which immediately precedes this pericope. They were the target audience, not us--and their historical horizon supplies our own compass points.
iii) Bread is the staff of life. Manna fed the Israelites for 40 years in the wilderness. Hence, it prefigures the sacrificial death Christ inasmuch as the type and antitype alike are life-giving, but with a difference. The shed blood of Christ confers eternal life upon his people.
iv) A metaphorical reading of Jn 6 makes no less sense than a metaphorical reading of Jn 10 or a metaphorical reading of Jn 15.
v) Meaning is a relation. What we mean is how we mean our words to be taken by our audience.
Ordinarily, you write and speak to be understood, which takes the common knowledge of your reader or listener into account. There's a lot you don't say and you don't need to say because language is a social code with a background of shared assumptions.
I don't think that Jesus went out of his way to be unintelligible, do you?
vi) Sure, Jesus can teach something knew. But telling an audience something they can't possibly understand is a pretty poor teaching technique. They can't learn what they can't understand. Surely Jesus was, among other things, a master communicator.
vii) The question is not whether your audience can misunderstand your words, but whether they can understand your words.
viii) The problem with the Pharisees was not their rejection of new teaching, but their rejection of old teaching. Jesus constantly reasons with them from the OT.
In some respects, the Pharisees had a pretty good idea of what Jesus was getting at. They saw him, not without reason, as a threat to their hegemony. He repudiated the authority of the oral Torah. And if Messiah has come, who needs the Temple anymore?
That's one of the ironies threading through the Gospels. His enemies are often quicker to pick up on his claims to divinity than are his followers.
ix) Likewise, the disciples are constantly reproved for their failure to grasp what they were in a position to grasp.
x) There are many specific objections to the sacramental reading of Jn 6. The hermeneutical objection is of broader importance because a flawed hermeneutic will introduce a systematic error into our reading of Scripture generally. Among more specific objections:
a) If the sacramental reading were true, then every communicant is heaven-bound without exception (Jn 6:54). Do you believe that? Do you believe that everyone who ever went to the communion rail is saved?
That's not catholic theology. In catholic theology, sacramental grace is resistible. And there are various impediments to the right reception of the Eucharist, viz., an invalid sacrament, a wrong intention on the part of the priest or communicant, the wrong communion elements, &c.
b) There's an interplay of literal and figurative language in Jn 6. Literal faith in Christ (v47) is picturesquely redescribed as eating Christ (v50f.).
c) John is fond of spiritual metaphors. Why take Jn 6 literally, but Jn 10 or Jn 15 figuratively?
d) Like the synoptic Gospels, the Fourth Gospel is basically self-contained in the sense that the Apostle John can't assume that his readers have access to Luke or 1 Corinthians or other NT books. So his work needs to be comprehensible on its own terms.
Now, the Fourth Gospel doesn't record the institution of the Lord's Supper. So, again, his readers don't have that point of reference when it comes to Jn 6.
e) Although I doubt you're a big fan of Calvinism, there is, nonetheless, a deep predestinarian strain running through the Fourth Gospel. Indeed, it is on display in Jn 6 and elsewhere.
But sovereign grace is at odds with sacramental grace. If you channel saving grace through the sacraments, then it can't be sovereign since sacramental grace is indiscriminate and resistible whereas sovereign grace is discriminating and irresistible.
f) A leading theme of the Fourth Gospel is the culpability of those who refuse to take Jesus at his word. But if his words in Jn 6 are simply incomprehensible, then in what sense are they guilty of unbelief?
g) "Flesh" is an allusion to the Incarnation (1:14), not communion.
h) As I point out in my recent essay "On taking John 6 literally," the sacramentalist backs away from a literal reading of Jn 6 by introducing distancing devices to insulate his claim from palpable falsification.
i) On a more general note, there's a tension between faith in Christ and sacramentalism. Those who view the sacraments as a means of grace are trusting in the sacraments, the priest, the church, for the source of salvation, and not in Christ. The sacraments become a surrogate Christ--a substitute for the real thing.
i) I don't need to defend my own interpretation to show that the opposing interpretation is flawed. I only have to defend my own interpretation if I advance my interpretation as an alternative. I have no problem with your question, but we need to be clear on the burden of proof.
ii) The first question we need to ask in reading the Bible is not, "What makes sense to me?" but, "What would make sense to the original audience?" given its cultural preunderstanding and position in redemptive history and progressive revelation.
Jesus was addressing a Jewish audience prior to the institution of the Lord's Supper. The Eucharist was not their frame of reference. In context, their frame of reference was the wilderness wandering and the feeding of the 5000, which immediately precedes this pericope. They were the target audience, not us--and their historical horizon supplies our own compass points.
iii) Bread is the staff of life. Manna fed the Israelites for 40 years in the wilderness. Hence, it prefigures the sacrificial death Christ inasmuch as the type and antitype alike are life-giving, but with a difference. The shed blood of Christ confers eternal life upon his people.
iv) A metaphorical reading of Jn 6 makes no less sense than a metaphorical reading of Jn 10 or a metaphorical reading of Jn 15.
v) Meaning is a relation. What we mean is how we mean our words to be taken by our audience.
Ordinarily, you write and speak to be understood, which takes the common knowledge of your reader or listener into account. There's a lot you don't say and you don't need to say because language is a social code with a background of shared assumptions.
I don't think that Jesus went out of his way to be unintelligible, do you?
vi) Sure, Jesus can teach something knew. But telling an audience something they can't possibly understand is a pretty poor teaching technique. They can't learn what they can't understand. Surely Jesus was, among other things, a master communicator.
vii) The question is not whether your audience can misunderstand your words, but whether they can understand your words.
viii) The problem with the Pharisees was not their rejection of new teaching, but their rejection of old teaching. Jesus constantly reasons with them from the OT.
In some respects, the Pharisees had a pretty good idea of what Jesus was getting at. They saw him, not without reason, as a threat to their hegemony. He repudiated the authority of the oral Torah. And if Messiah has come, who needs the Temple anymore?
That's one of the ironies threading through the Gospels. His enemies are often quicker to pick up on his claims to divinity than are his followers.
ix) Likewise, the disciples are constantly reproved for their failure to grasp what they were in a position to grasp.
x) There are many specific objections to the sacramental reading of Jn 6. The hermeneutical objection is of broader importance because a flawed hermeneutic will introduce a systematic error into our reading of Scripture generally. Among more specific objections:
a) If the sacramental reading were true, then every communicant is heaven-bound without exception (Jn 6:54). Do you believe that? Do you believe that everyone who ever went to the communion rail is saved?
That's not catholic theology. In catholic theology, sacramental grace is resistible. And there are various impediments to the right reception of the Eucharist, viz., an invalid sacrament, a wrong intention on the part of the priest or communicant, the wrong communion elements, &c.
b) There's an interplay of literal and figurative language in Jn 6. Literal faith in Christ (v47) is picturesquely redescribed as eating Christ (v50f.).
c) John is fond of spiritual metaphors. Why take Jn 6 literally, but Jn 10 or Jn 15 figuratively?
d) Like the synoptic Gospels, the Fourth Gospel is basically self-contained in the sense that the Apostle John can't assume that his readers have access to Luke or 1 Corinthians or other NT books. So his work needs to be comprehensible on its own terms.
Now, the Fourth Gospel doesn't record the institution of the Lord's Supper. So, again, his readers don't have that point of reference when it comes to Jn 6.
e) Although I doubt you're a big fan of Calvinism, there is, nonetheless, a deep predestinarian strain running through the Fourth Gospel. Indeed, it is on display in Jn 6 and elsewhere.
But sovereign grace is at odds with sacramental grace. If you channel saving grace through the sacraments, then it can't be sovereign since sacramental grace is indiscriminate and resistible whereas sovereign grace is discriminating and irresistible.
f) A leading theme of the Fourth Gospel is the culpability of those who refuse to take Jesus at his word. But if his words in Jn 6 are simply incomprehensible, then in what sense are they guilty of unbelief?
g) "Flesh" is an allusion to the Incarnation (1:14), not communion.
h) As I point out in my recent essay "On taking John 6 literally," the sacramentalist backs away from a literal reading of Jn 6 by introducing distancing devices to insulate his claim from palpable falsification.
i) On a more general note, there's a tension between faith in Christ and sacramentalism. Those who view the sacraments as a means of grace are trusting in the sacraments, the priest, the church, for the source of salvation, and not in Christ. The sacraments become a surrogate Christ--a substitute for the real thing.
Thursday, October 20, 2005
The Holy Hive
Once upon a time, in the land flowing with milk and honeysuckle, all was sweetness and light. All was love, all was one. Thus commenceth the Mother Goose nursery rhyme of natural history.
But after the Beeformation, to continue with our fairly tale, there were several different species of beelievers. There were the honeybees. They lived in the One Holy Hive, otherwise known as St. Beeters. It was a splendid edifice of Beenaissance architecture, erected by the carpenter bees, and funded by Beeters Pence.
The Holy Hive was headed by the Queen Beeshop. Whenever the old Queen Beeshop died, her successor was chosen at a beeatific conclave. The candidate with the best waspish waistline was elected to become the next Queen Beeshop. The present Queen Beeshop is Beeatrix XVI who, as legend has it, is descended by unbroken succession from St. Beeter, the first Queen Beeshop.
The Queen Beeshop was the Beediatrix of the drones. She supplied the honeycomb of merit.
In Beeology, the true body of the Queen Beeshop subsisted under the species of honey by the miracle of transwaxification. The Beeblical basis for this dogma was the verse: “Except ye eat the beeswax and drink the honey, ye have no life in you.” They also subscribed to beeptismal regeneration.
As the exclusive channel of honey, there was no salvation outside the hive. Their favorite Beeble verse was: “Oh death, where is thy stinger?”
Yet there was a rival hive of Bumblebees which regarded itself as the true hive. The Bumblebees and the honeybees originally belonged to the very same hive, but that’s before they had a nasty falling out over the date of Beester, otherwise known as Quartobeecimanism.
The Bumblebees were of the view that true beelievers were saved by process of beeification, in which they came to participate in the beeing of the Beeotokos.
They were also distinguished by their veneration of beecons. For them, heaven consisted in the Beeatific vision.
Beyond these two parties was a subspecies of Anglicized honeybees. This hybrid species could never quite make up its mind what it was, flitting from one hive to another in a perennial identity crisis.
Finally, there were the terrapins. According to honey beeologians, the terrapins were said to share a common ancestry with the honeybees.
Their evolutionary emergence was explained by appeal to the development of tonsure in Charles Cardinal Darwin’s classic Origin of the Beecies. For this reason, the honeybees referred to the terrapins as separated beethren.
Since every turtle carried his home on his back, chelonian theology denied that salvation was confined to members of the One Holy Hive, otherwise known as St. Beeters. The terrapins were firm believers in prima Beeble, taking their doctrine of revelation from the Beeble saying: “the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.”
They also observed the sacrament of turtle soup once a week. And many were subscribers to the doctrine of beelievers beeptism.
There were different kinds of terrapins: land tortoises, freshwater turtles, and marine turtles, with many subspecies besides.
The honeybees were scandalized by the sheer variety of terrapins. However, chelonian theology regarded this diversity as no more scandalous than the wide variety of cats and dogs, birds and horses.
But after the Beeformation, to continue with our fairly tale, there were several different species of beelievers. There were the honeybees. They lived in the One Holy Hive, otherwise known as St. Beeters. It was a splendid edifice of Beenaissance architecture, erected by the carpenter bees, and funded by Beeters Pence.
The Holy Hive was headed by the Queen Beeshop. Whenever the old Queen Beeshop died, her successor was chosen at a beeatific conclave. The candidate with the best waspish waistline was elected to become the next Queen Beeshop. The present Queen Beeshop is Beeatrix XVI who, as legend has it, is descended by unbroken succession from St. Beeter, the first Queen Beeshop.
The Queen Beeshop was the Beediatrix of the drones. She supplied the honeycomb of merit.
In Beeology, the true body of the Queen Beeshop subsisted under the species of honey by the miracle of transwaxification. The Beeblical basis for this dogma was the verse: “Except ye eat the beeswax and drink the honey, ye have no life in you.” They also subscribed to beeptismal regeneration.
As the exclusive channel of honey, there was no salvation outside the hive. Their favorite Beeble verse was: “Oh death, where is thy stinger?”
Yet there was a rival hive of Bumblebees which regarded itself as the true hive. The Bumblebees and the honeybees originally belonged to the very same hive, but that’s before they had a nasty falling out over the date of Beester, otherwise known as Quartobeecimanism.
The Bumblebees were of the view that true beelievers were saved by process of beeification, in which they came to participate in the beeing of the Beeotokos.
They were also distinguished by their veneration of beecons. For them, heaven consisted in the Beeatific vision.
Beyond these two parties was a subspecies of Anglicized honeybees. This hybrid species could never quite make up its mind what it was, flitting from one hive to another in a perennial identity crisis.
Finally, there were the terrapins. According to honey beeologians, the terrapins were said to share a common ancestry with the honeybees.
Their evolutionary emergence was explained by appeal to the development of tonsure in Charles Cardinal Darwin’s classic Origin of the Beecies. For this reason, the honeybees referred to the terrapins as separated beethren.
Since every turtle carried his home on his back, chelonian theology denied that salvation was confined to members of the One Holy Hive, otherwise known as St. Beeters. The terrapins were firm believers in prima Beeble, taking their doctrine of revelation from the Beeble saying: “the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.”
They also observed the sacrament of turtle soup once a week. And many were subscribers to the doctrine of beelievers beeptism.
There were different kinds of terrapins: land tortoises, freshwater turtles, and marine turtles, with many subspecies besides.
The honeybees were scandalized by the sheer variety of terrapins. However, chelonian theology regarded this diversity as no more scandalous than the wide variety of cats and dogs, birds and horses.
Spammers galore
I see that spammers have made their presence felt at Triablogue. I suppose I could simply close the comments feature, but that's rather extreme. Readers of Triablogue are grown-ups. They can make allowance for this. I'm not Mother Hen. I don't protect them from themselves or others. Liberals like to treat adults like children. Not me.
Sometime when I'm too tired to make intelligent use of my time, I'll go back through the archive and delete the spam.
Sometime when I'm too tired to make intelligent use of my time, I'll go back through the archive and delete the spam.
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
Fences make good neighbors
OpinionJournal
Best of the Web Today - October 19, 2005
By JAMES TARANTO
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4354666.stm
"Egypt has started to build a security fence around the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh to try to stop attacks on the town, security officials say," reports the BBC:
*** QUOTE ***
The officials said the fence would stretch for 20km (12 miles) and force vehicles wanting to enter the town to pass through one of four checkpoints.
*** END QUOTE ***
Can we expect to hear wails of outrage about the indignities suffered by Arabs who are subject to checkpoints? Or does that only apply when it is Jews who are seeking to protect themselves from terror?
******************************************************************************
Best of the Web Today - October 19, 2005
By JAMES TARANTO
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4354666.stm
"Egypt has started to build a security fence around the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh to try to stop attacks on the town, security officials say," reports the BBC:
*** QUOTE ***
The officials said the fence would stretch for 20km (12 miles) and force vehicles wanting to enter the town to pass through one of four checkpoints.
*** END QUOTE ***
Can we expect to hear wails of outrage about the indignities suffered by Arabs who are subject to checkpoints? Or does that only apply when it is Jews who are seeking to protect themselves from terror?
******************************************************************************
The depopulation of hell
***QUOTE***
Among the Greek Fathers, Irenaeus, Basil, and Cyril of Jerusalem are typical in interpreting passages such as Matthew 22:14 as meaning that the majority will be consigned to hell. St. John Chrysostom, an outstanding doctor of the Eastern tradition, was particularly pessimistic: “Among thousands of people there are not a hundred who will arrive at their salvation, and I am not even certain of that number, so much perversity is there among the young and so much negligence among the old.”
Augustine may be taken as representative of the Western Fathers. In his controversy with the Donatist Cresconius, Augustine draws upon Matthew and the Book of Revelation to prove that the number of the elect is large, but he grants that their number is exceeded by that of the lost. In Book 21 of his City of God he rebuts first the idea that all human beings are saved, then that all the baptized are saved, then that all baptized Catholics are saved, and finally that all baptized Catholics who persevere in the faith are saved. He seems to limit salvation to baptized believers who refrain from serious sin or who, after sinning, repent and are reconciled with God.
The great Scholastics of the Middle Ages are not more sanguine. Thomas Aquinas, who may stand as the leading representative, teaches clearly in the Summa Theologiae that God reprobates some persons. A little later he declares that only God knows the number of the elect. But Thomas gives reasons for thinking that their number is relatively small. Since our human nature is fallen, and since eternal blessedness is a gift far beyond the powers and merits of every created nature, it is to be expected that most human beings fall short of achieving that goal.
The leading theologians of the baroque period follow suit. Francisco Suarez, in his treatise on predestination, puts the question squarely: How many are saved? Relying on the Gospel of Matthew, St. John Chrysostom, St. Augustine, and Pope St. Gregory, he proposes the following estimation. If the question is asked about all men living between the creation and the end of the world, the number of the reprobate certainly exceeds that of the elect. This is to be expected because God was not rightly known before the coming of Christ, and even since that time many remain in darkness. If the term “Christian” is taken to include heretics, schismatics, and baptized apostates, it would still appear that most are damned. But if the question is put about those who die in the Catholic Church, Suarez submits his opinion that the majority are saved, since many die before they can sin mortally, and many others are fortified by the sacraments.
Suarez is relatively optimistic in comparison with other Catholic theologians of his day. Peter Canisius and Robert Bellarmine, for example, were convinced that most of the human race is lost.
Several studies published by Catholics early in the twentieth century concluded that there was a virtual consensus among the Fathers of the Church and the Catholic theologians of later ages to the effect that the majority of humankind go to eternal punishment in hell.
About the middle of the twentieth century, there seems to be a break in the tradition. Since then a number of influential theologians have favored the view that all human beings may or do eventually attain salvation.
One might ask at this point whether there has been any shift in Catholic theology on the matter. The answer appears to be Yes, although the shift is not as dramatic as some imagine. The earlier pessimism was based on the unwarranted assumption that explicit Christian faith is absolutely necessary for salvation. This assumption has been corrected, particularly at Vatican II.
http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0305/articles/dulles.html
***END-QUOTE***
Among the Greek Fathers, Irenaeus, Basil, and Cyril of Jerusalem are typical in interpreting passages such as Matthew 22:14 as meaning that the majority will be consigned to hell. St. John Chrysostom, an outstanding doctor of the Eastern tradition, was particularly pessimistic: “Among thousands of people there are not a hundred who will arrive at their salvation, and I am not even certain of that number, so much perversity is there among the young and so much negligence among the old.”
Augustine may be taken as representative of the Western Fathers. In his controversy with the Donatist Cresconius, Augustine draws upon Matthew and the Book of Revelation to prove that the number of the elect is large, but he grants that their number is exceeded by that of the lost. In Book 21 of his City of God he rebuts first the idea that all human beings are saved, then that all the baptized are saved, then that all baptized Catholics are saved, and finally that all baptized Catholics who persevere in the faith are saved. He seems to limit salvation to baptized believers who refrain from serious sin or who, after sinning, repent and are reconciled with God.
The great Scholastics of the Middle Ages are not more sanguine. Thomas Aquinas, who may stand as the leading representative, teaches clearly in the Summa Theologiae that God reprobates some persons. A little later he declares that only God knows the number of the elect. But Thomas gives reasons for thinking that their number is relatively small. Since our human nature is fallen, and since eternal blessedness is a gift far beyond the powers and merits of every created nature, it is to be expected that most human beings fall short of achieving that goal.
The leading theologians of the baroque period follow suit. Francisco Suarez, in his treatise on predestination, puts the question squarely: How many are saved? Relying on the Gospel of Matthew, St. John Chrysostom, St. Augustine, and Pope St. Gregory, he proposes the following estimation. If the question is asked about all men living between the creation and the end of the world, the number of the reprobate certainly exceeds that of the elect. This is to be expected because God was not rightly known before the coming of Christ, and even since that time many remain in darkness. If the term “Christian” is taken to include heretics, schismatics, and baptized apostates, it would still appear that most are damned. But if the question is put about those who die in the Catholic Church, Suarez submits his opinion that the majority are saved, since many die before they can sin mortally, and many others are fortified by the sacraments.
Suarez is relatively optimistic in comparison with other Catholic theologians of his day. Peter Canisius and Robert Bellarmine, for example, were convinced that most of the human race is lost.
Several studies published by Catholics early in the twentieth century concluded that there was a virtual consensus among the Fathers of the Church and the Catholic theologians of later ages to the effect that the majority of humankind go to eternal punishment in hell.
About the middle of the twentieth century, there seems to be a break in the tradition. Since then a number of influential theologians have favored the view that all human beings may or do eventually attain salvation.
One might ask at this point whether there has been any shift in Catholic theology on the matter. The answer appears to be Yes, although the shift is not as dramatic as some imagine. The earlier pessimism was based on the unwarranted assumption that explicit Christian faith is absolutely necessary for salvation. This assumption has been corrected, particularly at Vatican II.
http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0305/articles/dulles.html
***END-QUOTE***
Till hell freezes over
Salvation Outside The Church?
Tracing The History of The Catholic Response
By Francis A. Sullivan, S.J.
The axiom "outside the Church no salvation, " proudly proclaimed by Catholics (and many other Christians) in earlier centuries, has fallen on hard times. Vatican II teaches that God's saving grace is offered to every human being, including those who have never been evangelized and those who sincerely deny God's existence. This apparent reversal is a crucial test for the standard theories of development of doctrine. Can the concept of "development" encompass such an about-face?
For those already familiar with the subject matter, the book contains few surprises. Omitting the biblical data, it starts with Justin and Irenaeus. Sullivan shows that until the mid-fourth century, the necessity of belonging to the Church was employed only in controversy with heretics and schismatics, but the later fathers taught that Jews and pagans would be lost if they did not enter the Church. Under the influence of Augustine, many medieval theologians took the view that since apostolic times salvation was impossible without explicit belief in the Trinity and the incarnation. The fact some persons had not been evangelized was taken as evidence that God foreknew that they would have rejected the gospel, had it been preached to them. Thomas Aquinas seems to accept this view.
Pope Boniface VIII in his bull Unam sanctam (1302) and several medieval councils (notably Lateran IV and Florence) embraced an apparently rigid interpretation of the maxim that one must belong to the Catholic Church to be saved. After the discovery of the new world, Jesuits such as Suarez, de Lugo, and Bellarmine interpreted the papal and conciliar decrees as not requiring actual membership in the Church on the part of persons who had no opportunity to know the true faith. It became common to say that non-Catholics of good will belonged to the soul, but not to the body, of the Church. Pius XII distinguished between membership in fact (in re) and in desire (in voto). When Leonard Feeney, in 1949, adopted a harsher interpretation, his doctrine was condemned by Rome.
The last chapter deals with the teaching of Paul VI and John Paul II on the salvific value of non-Christian religions. Paul VI, influenced by Danie'lou and others, denied that these religions mediated salvation. John Paul II, while insisting that all salvation is mediated through Christ, apparently leaves room for subordinate mediation by other religions. While recognizing that the present Pope has spoken very circumspectly, Sullivan interprets him as being more optimistic than Paul VI about non-Christian religions.
The axiom "outside the Church, no salvation," Sullivan concludes, is an imperfect way in which Christians have expressed their belief that the Church plays a necessary role in God's salvific plan. While the belief itself is a dogmatic truth, not subject to change, the formulations have been historically conditioned and require revision.
Avery Dulles, S.J.
http://theologytoday.ptsem.edu/apr1993/v50-1-bookreview6.htm
Tracing The History of The Catholic Response
By Francis A. Sullivan, S.J.
The axiom "outside the Church no salvation, " proudly proclaimed by Catholics (and many other Christians) in earlier centuries, has fallen on hard times. Vatican II teaches that God's saving grace is offered to every human being, including those who have never been evangelized and those who sincerely deny God's existence. This apparent reversal is a crucial test for the standard theories of development of doctrine. Can the concept of "development" encompass such an about-face?
For those already familiar with the subject matter, the book contains few surprises. Omitting the biblical data, it starts with Justin and Irenaeus. Sullivan shows that until the mid-fourth century, the necessity of belonging to the Church was employed only in controversy with heretics and schismatics, but the later fathers taught that Jews and pagans would be lost if they did not enter the Church. Under the influence of Augustine, many medieval theologians took the view that since apostolic times salvation was impossible without explicit belief in the Trinity and the incarnation. The fact some persons had not been evangelized was taken as evidence that God foreknew that they would have rejected the gospel, had it been preached to them. Thomas Aquinas seems to accept this view.
Pope Boniface VIII in his bull Unam sanctam (1302) and several medieval councils (notably Lateran IV and Florence) embraced an apparently rigid interpretation of the maxim that one must belong to the Catholic Church to be saved. After the discovery of the new world, Jesuits such as Suarez, de Lugo, and Bellarmine interpreted the papal and conciliar decrees as not requiring actual membership in the Church on the part of persons who had no opportunity to know the true faith. It became common to say that non-Catholics of good will belonged to the soul, but not to the body, of the Church. Pius XII distinguished between membership in fact (in re) and in desire (in voto). When Leonard Feeney, in 1949, adopted a harsher interpretation, his doctrine was condemned by Rome.
The last chapter deals with the teaching of Paul VI and John Paul II on the salvific value of non-Christian religions. Paul VI, influenced by Danie'lou and others, denied that these religions mediated salvation. John Paul II, while insisting that all salvation is mediated through Christ, apparently leaves room for subordinate mediation by other religions. While recognizing that the present Pope has spoken very circumspectly, Sullivan interprets him as being more optimistic than Paul VI about non-Christian religions.
The axiom "outside the Church, no salvation," Sullivan concludes, is an imperfect way in which Christians have expressed their belief that the Church plays a necessary role in God's salvific plan. While the belief itself is a dogmatic truth, not subject to change, the formulations have been historically conditioned and require revision.
Avery Dulles, S.J.
http://theologytoday.ptsem.edu/apr1993/v50-1-bookreview6.htm
Sunday, October 16, 2005
Evidence of evolution
I don’t remember for sure, but I think it was in a book by Dawkins that I ran across an argument for the evolution of marine mammals from land mammals: to wit: marine mammals propel themselves through water by wagging their tails up-and-down instead of side-by-side like fish.
Even if this indicated common ancestry, I don’t see how it indicates the direction of descent. Why not say that land mammals were descended from marine mammals?
But that question aside, dogs wag their tails side-by-side, and I also observed, on a recent walk, that ducks also wag their tails side-by-side. So do crocodilians.
So, by evolutionary logic, land mammals and marine mammals belong to one evolutionary tree while dogs, ducks, and alligators belong to a different evolutionary tree.
In addition, if marine mammals are descended from land animals since they both wag their tails up-and-down, then, by parity of reasoning, ducks, as aquatic animals, are descended from dogs or protodogs since they both wag their tails side-by-side.
Now all we need to cinch the argument is a fossil dog with a duckbill and feathers.
Where would we be without the theory of evolution to help us sort things out?
Even if this indicated common ancestry, I don’t see how it indicates the direction of descent. Why not say that land mammals were descended from marine mammals?
But that question aside, dogs wag their tails side-by-side, and I also observed, on a recent walk, that ducks also wag their tails side-by-side. So do crocodilians.
So, by evolutionary logic, land mammals and marine mammals belong to one evolutionary tree while dogs, ducks, and alligators belong to a different evolutionary tree.
In addition, if marine mammals are descended from land animals since they both wag their tails up-and-down, then, by parity of reasoning, ducks, as aquatic animals, are descended from dogs or protodogs since they both wag their tails side-by-side.
Now all we need to cinch the argument is a fossil dog with a duckbill and feathers.
Where would we be without the theory of evolution to help us sort things out?
On taking John 6 literally
Roman Catholics claim to take Jn 6 literally, unlike the Baptists. But what exactly does it mean to take Jn 6 literally, and who is more literal, the Catholic or the Baptist?
1.Here is what I take a literal interpretation of Jn 6 to mean. Some time around the year AD 30 or so, Jesus performed three nature miracles (the multiplication of food, walking on water, stilling the storm) situated on or about (the E. shore of) the Sea of Galilee.
The next day, in a synagogue located in Capernaum, on the NW shore of the Sea of Galilee, a debate took place between Jesus and the Jews, prior to the Last Supper, centering on a comparison and a contrast between Jesus and the manna in the wilderness.
2.What does a “literal” Catholic reading of Jn 6 amount to? They treat Jn 6 as an allegory of the Mass. What it symbolizes is what takes place whenever the Mass is celebrated, every day, in different parts of the world.
They justify this anachronistic and allegorical interpretation on the grounds that they deny the historicity of the original setting and substitute, in its place, a sitz-im-leben supplied by the life of the Johannine community at the tail-end of the 1C or so, residing in Asia Minor or Shangri-la. By “they,” I mean the standard Catholic commentators on John like Ray Brown and Rudolf Schnackenburg.
3.There is also a striking difference in how a Catholic and a Baptist defines a true body. For a Baptist, the true body of Christ would be the same sort of body—indeed, the very same body—as we see on display in the Gospels and Acts (Mt 28:9; Lk 24:39-40,42-43; Jn 20:17,20,24-29; Acts 1:4; 10:41).
This would be the visible, tangible body of a 1C Palestinian Jewish man, of a certain height and weight—a body that you and I would recognize for what it is.
For a Catholic, however, the true body of Christ is an invisible, intangible, unrecognizable entity hidden beneath the species of bread and wine.
One can’t help noticing that the way in which a Catholic defines the true body and real presence of Christ bears a startling resemblance to those millennial cults (e.g., Millerites, Campingites, J-Dubs, hyperpreterists) which predict the visible, bodily return of Christ, only to redraw the terms of fulfillment when their prediction fails to materialize. They assure us that Christ really did return, and is truly is present with his people, but you just can’t see him, that’s all. He actually did come back in AD 70…or was it 1844?…or was it 1914?…or was it 1994?
1.Here is what I take a literal interpretation of Jn 6 to mean. Some time around the year AD 30 or so, Jesus performed three nature miracles (the multiplication of food, walking on water, stilling the storm) situated on or about (the E. shore of) the Sea of Galilee.
The next day, in a synagogue located in Capernaum, on the NW shore of the Sea of Galilee, a debate took place between Jesus and the Jews, prior to the Last Supper, centering on a comparison and a contrast between Jesus and the manna in the wilderness.
2.What does a “literal” Catholic reading of Jn 6 amount to? They treat Jn 6 as an allegory of the Mass. What it symbolizes is what takes place whenever the Mass is celebrated, every day, in different parts of the world.
They justify this anachronistic and allegorical interpretation on the grounds that they deny the historicity of the original setting and substitute, in its place, a sitz-im-leben supplied by the life of the Johannine community at the tail-end of the 1C or so, residing in Asia Minor or Shangri-la. By “they,” I mean the standard Catholic commentators on John like Ray Brown and Rudolf Schnackenburg.
3.There is also a striking difference in how a Catholic and a Baptist defines a true body. For a Baptist, the true body of Christ would be the same sort of body—indeed, the very same body—as we see on display in the Gospels and Acts (Mt 28:9; Lk 24:39-40,42-43; Jn 20:17,20,24-29; Acts 1:4; 10:41).
This would be the visible, tangible body of a 1C Palestinian Jewish man, of a certain height and weight—a body that you and I would recognize for what it is.
For a Catholic, however, the true body of Christ is an invisible, intangible, unrecognizable entity hidden beneath the species of bread and wine.
One can’t help noticing that the way in which a Catholic defines the true body and real presence of Christ bears a startling resemblance to those millennial cults (e.g., Millerites, Campingites, J-Dubs, hyperpreterists) which predict the visible, bodily return of Christ, only to redraw the terms of fulfillment when their prediction fails to materialize. They assure us that Christ really did return, and is truly is present with his people, but you just can’t see him, that’s all. He actually did come back in AD 70…or was it 1844?…or was it 1914?…or was it 1994?
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