Tug-of-war

Freewill theists typically act as though the distinction between God "causing" evil and God "permitting" evil is morally crucial. I'm going to develop an illustration by philosopher Stephen Mumford which a friend shared with me. Ironically, I like his illustration, but disagree with his interpretation.

Take a tug-of-war. Suppose you begin with two evenly-matched teams. They may be evenly matched because both sides have an equal number of teammates, and each teammate is equal in size and strength to his fellow teammates, as well as the opposing teammates. They are numerically and individually equally matched.

Or they may be aggregately evenly matched. Maybe one side has fewer teammates than the other, but its teammates are bigger and stronger than the opposing side, as a result of which each team pulls with the same amount of force. The qualitative advantages balance out the quantitative disadvantages, or vice versa. 

This results in a stalemate. Neither team can win.

So what would it take for one team to win? There are two ways that could happen.

i) By adding another teammate to one side. That would tip the balance of power in its favor. 

ii) By subtracting a teammate from one side. That, too, would shift the balance of power.

We might say adding a teammate causes that team to win the tug of war. Just enough extra force. 

But by converse logic, we might say subtracting a teammate causes that team to lose. Indeed, it's hard to see how that inference can be avoided. As philosopher David Lewis once said: "We think of a cause as something that makes a difference."

If a teammate decided to quit, he'd naturally be blamed for causing his team to lose. His team lost when he stopped pulling the rope. It was a group effort which could not afford a single defection. 

The opposing team won because his team lost, and his team lost because he gave up. In that respect, he caused the opposing team to win. It couldn't win unless his team lost. His team losing was a necessary and sufficient condition of their winning. He made it happen. His action was the differential factor. The tipping point. 

Furthermore, we could recast the issue in terms of rendering an outcome certain. In this case, not pulling ensured defeat. Just as adding a teammate guaranteed (or determined) victory for one side, subtracting a teammate guaranteed (or determined) defeat for the other side. 

Festival of Dangerous Ideas

I'm going to quote from part of a debate between Christian journalist Peter Hitchens (brother of the late Christopher Hitchens) and homosexual activist Dan Savage:

http://jkdinale.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/QA-TRanscript-episode-40-Nov-4-2013.pdf

PETER HITCHENS: Well, the first summary of my opinions is absolutely right but what that has to do with a world of black and white and a world of technicolour I'm not quite sure. You seem to be suggesting that somehow a world in which people don't fulfil their obligations to their children, desert their marriages, don't keep to the laws, are increasingly selfish and follow their own desires and abandon all kinds of ideas of self-restraint and patience is a better world than one where those things actually ruled, and I don't agree with you. The fact that the world is technicolour – the fact the world is technicolour and full of drugs and people who get drunk and people who abandon their husbands and wives doesn't seem to me to be an improvement and it strikes me that it's time somebody said that actually this isn't necessarily a turn for the better. But in any case, when you're discussing all these changes in our lives, you can't return to the past. It's futile to even attempt to. What we're always doing all the time is discussing what we're going to do with the future. At the moment we're very busily choosing the wrong future, in which some of us and all of our children are going to live.

PETER HITCHENS: Well, Christianity more or less collapsed in Europe after 1914 and the First World War and when it ceased to exist, all kinds of other things rushed in to take its place. But mostly what's rushed in to take its place is what I call ‘selfism’: the idea that we are all sovereign in our own bodies, that no-one can tell us what to do with our own bodies and that everything that we do is okay, provided we think we aren't harming anybody else. Quite often the truth is that we are harming other people but hiding it from ourselves.!

PETER HITCHENS: Where do you draw the line? You draw the line fundamentally, as far as I’m concerned, around about the Sermon on the Mount and those instructions given to us and I have absolutely no shame in saying that I believe that the Christian religion was the greatest possession which the human race had, which it's now, in large parts of the world, rather busily throwing away.

DAN SAVAGE: I'm a firm believer in do unto others as you would have them do unto you. I just think there’s more doing unto that’s possible in my philosophy than yours.

PETER HITCHENS: You do an awful lot of things unto other people and indeed yourself and that's your affair. But it’s not the same question.!

DAN SAVAGE: Consent matters and harm matters. Consent matters and harm matters. If there's consent and no one is being harmed it's no one's business what an individual chooses to do with his or her body.

PETER HITCHENS: No. No. No. It's so essential to answer this. The people who say that they're not doing harm are invariably deceiving themselves. The people who divorce and say the children are happier as a result, they're not.

DAN SAVAGE: And the government should rush in to prevent people from being self-deceptive if that’s indeed what they’re doing?

PETER HITCHENS: The teenager who takes drugs and becomes mentally ill and ruins his own life and that of his parents is doing harm to other people, but at the time they do these things they say "No, my body is sovereign. I am a completely autonomous person. I don't harm anybody else. " We lie to ourselves about this all the time. I lie to myself about it. You all lie to yourselves about it. You lie to yourself about. We know that we harm other people.

DAN SAVAGE: Well, they're very popular with gay men because gay men are men and men are pigs and also safer, generally. But, what? What are hook-up apps? Hook up apps are little things on your phone, where you can use GPS and you can say, “I’m here in this location at this time and you can see who is nearby and if somebody is of a like mind and would like to hook up with you you can hook up.

PETER HITCHENS: Do you want me to say anything, or not? It seems to me that when intimacy is something which is profoundly private and often, if people are mistreated when they're intimate with other people, they are severely damaged and the idea that sexual relations can be conducted in this casual and mechanical fashion is extremely cruel and crude and dismisses the concept of human love from a very important part of our relations and I think that's a pity. He doesn't think it's a pity. He wants a crude and, as far as I'm concerned, individualistic, unrestrained and a totally selfish world.!

PETER HITCHENS: What is all this stuff? Women have stormed every profession. Women run the BBC in Britain. I expect they run the ABC in Australia. They dominate huge areas of professional life. The struggle for equality in educational professions was won decades ago.!

KIMBERLEY ADLER: Do you think it's possible that the women's liberation movement has gone too far away from the primary role of women to nurture and raise their children? The current role of mothering is being performed by paid care-givers and my observations are showing me there's a direct correlation between narcissism rising in the population and early separation of mother and child. The women who can do it all tend to have children with narcissistic traits. We ship our kids off to strangers to raise them and wonder why everyone is tired and depressed. We are allowing narcissists to rule our world and – sorry. We are allowing the narcissists to currently rule our world, to tell us how to raise our children?!

PETER HITCHENS: Kimberley, you were fantastically brave. Be careful on your way home. The feminists will get you for that. But of course it's true. There's extraordinary pressure to hand over young children to paid strangers while their actual mothers are tripped off to work.

PETER HITCHENS: Anybody who’s been involved in raising children knows that women are better at it.!

DAN SAVAGE: And remember all of those movements, the antiwar movement, the feminist movement, women's liberation movement - those were sort of generative. They came about when people became supremely uncomfortable.

PETER HITCHENS: All revolutionaries claim to be fighting against the oppression of other people when, in fact, they're fighting for their own personal advantage.

PETER HITCHENS: Dan [Savage] is absolutely right about one thing, which is that heterosexual marriage has been redefined to the point where it is dying very rapidly in western societies. It's become easier to get out of a marriage than it is to get out of a car leasing agreement and, as a result, many people are not getting married in the first place. I don't know what the statistics are here but in my own country marriage is dying out as a thing which people do and increasingly it has been sidelined and it is the crucial issue of the modern western world as to whether marriage will survive as a relationship at all. I think it should. They probably think it shouldn't.

We’re moving towards a position where the only people interested in getting married are lesbian clergy women and I look forward to the day when the female Archbishop of Canterbury is married in a lesbian marriage to the female Archbishop of York.

PETER HITCHENS: Well, hang on a minute. First of all revolutionaries are tremendously authoritarian. It’s revolutionaries who build gulags and set up the KGB. Revolutionaries are far more authoritarian than I am. But the fundamental reason why I no longer hold the infantile views which held in my late teens and early 20s is precisely that: that I grew up. The thing which astonishes me is that so many of my generation did not grow up and still, while they're drawing their pensions, they have revolutionary opinions and attend Rolling Stones concerts. What is wrong with these people?

PETER HITCHENS: I gave that up long ago. It would only make me miserable. I know that you people have won. All I seek to do is to tell the truth about you and what you want while it’s still allowed to do so because you are so fantastically intolerant.

I mean the cultural revolution. I mean the cultural and moral revolution which has swept the western world since the collapse of Christianity.  It changed our societies, as anybody who has lived through it knows, out of all recognition in the course of 50 years and in my view for the worst. He's part of it.

DAN SAVAGE: You're paranoid and you’re projecting by saying we are intolerant. You have...

PETER HITCHENS: See, this is the intolerance. Because I hold an opinion different from his, he has become suddenly a qualified psychoanalyst who can tell me – who can tell me that my opinions which I am entitled to hold.

DAN SAVAGE: You're entitled to your opinions. You’re not entitled to your smears.

PETER HITCHENS: But are a pathology. And this is the absolute seed bed of totalitarianism. When you start believing that the opinions of other people are a pathology, then you are in the beginning of the stage that leads to the secret police and the Gulags.

You’ll have the whole world to yourself soon. You can't imagine anybody else is entitled to hold a view different from yours without having some kind of personal defect. That's what's wrong with you.!

PETER HITCHENS: You said this is very personal. This is very personal. I’ll reply to it. I am a very rich and fortunate person. I can - and I'm coming towards the end of my life anyway. I can personally escape many of the consequences of this but most people can't. They can't afford to and leave aside some of the things you've mentioned but a society in which the use of illegal drugs is widespread and unrestrained is one in which everybody is affected by the consequences, whatever they themselves do. It's like that ridiculous bumper sticker "Don't like abortion? Don't have one," to which my reply has always been: "Don't like murder? Don't commit one".

PETER HITCHENS: We have - those of us who oppose the cultural revolution and think that it’s a mistake are entitled to say so for the moment.

DAN SAVAGE: You’re entitled to say so.

PETER HITCHENS: For the moment.

DAN SAVAGE: Population control. There's too many goddamn people on the planet. And I don't know if that’s a – you know, I'm pro-choice. I believe that women should have the right to control their bodies. Sometimes in my darker moments I am anti-choice. I think abortion should be mandatory for about 30 years.

PETER HITCHENS:  The most dangerous idea in human history and philosophy remains the belief that Jesus Christ was the son of God and rose from the dead and that is the most dangerous idea you will ever encounter.!

I can't really leave it there? Because it alters the whole of human behaviour and all our responsibilities. It turns the universe from a meaningless chaos into a designed place in which there is justice and there is hope and, therefore, we all have a duty to discover the nature of that justice and work towards that hope. It alters us all. If we reject It, it alters us all was well. It is incredibly dangerous. It's why so many people turn against it.

Hating babies

DAN SAVAGE: Population control. There's too many goddamn people on the planet...Sometimes in my darker moments I am anti-choice. I think abortion should be mandatory for about 30 years.  

http://jkdinale.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/QA-TRanscript-episode-40-Nov-4-2013.pdf

There's a certain logic in the fact that homosexual activists like Savage hate babies. Babies represent a normal family life. Represent normal couples. Represent the future. Babies are a distraction. Homosexuals live for the moment. They care about their generation. They don't care about future generations, since they are not a part of that.

Kids are demanding. They become the center of attention. Enormous resources are devoted to child-rearing. This must be intolerable to homosexuals like Savage, who believe all things homosexual ought to be the center of attention.

Of course, some homosexuals have a suppressed, unrequited maternal or paternal instinct. Some of them miss a normal family life.

But in their "darker moments," when they are consistent–and the darker moments are becoming chronic–they hate babies. They hate everything that babies represent–even though that's how they started. Abortion, euthanasia, and homosexuality are all interlinked in a common ideology. 

When did Rome leave the church?

Hardline Protestants like me say Rome is not a Christian church. Rome left the church. That sometimes provokes the question, "When did Rome cease to be Christian?"

Although that's a natural question, it contains a dubious assumption–as if that has to be a punctiliar event. But unlike individual apostasy, the church of Rome is a collective. Many moving parts. And some parts move at different speeds than other parts. Some parts are catching up with other parts.

It's like asking when did a marriage end? Legally, you could say the marriage ended when the divorce papers were signed. But that's a formality. And divorce is the effect of preceding events. One thing had to happen before another thing could happen. 

Often, a marriage dies in stages. Did divorce end the marriage, or did an affair end the marriage? Before the divorce was the affair. That was a precipitating event.

But we can go back another step. Extramarital affairs don't necessarily happen just out of the blue. Sometimes one or both spouses begin to stray psychologically before they stray physically. They lose their commitment to the marriage. They become restless. They want out. They explore escape routes. They may deliberately go places where singles hang out. They arrange "chance" encounters. Although they just happened to meet someone else, they didn't just happen to be there.  

Or sometimes a spouse will intentionally say or do something so hurtful, so unforgivable, to provoke divorce. To cross a line of no return. 

Some people say a marriage ends when love ends. When one or both spouses fall out of love.

Yet there are couples who soldier on through the dry seasons of marriage, and emerge with a stronger marriage at the other end of the ordeal.

A dying marriage is a chain of events. Turning points. The death of a marriage may not be irreversible at any particular stage. If there's willingness on both sides, it's usually possible to restore the relationship.

But when a marriage fails, it's usually not just one crucial event, but a cumulative series of often small incidents that chip away at the foundation until that finally washes away. 

Conversely, little acts of consideration can build a marriage. The dynamic goes both ways. 

Because denominations are collectives, dying denominations tend to die a slow death. An incremental process. But there's a point at which you can look back and say, absent divine intervention, that's a lost cause. Too few of the faithful remain to reverse course. 

What is Roman Catholicism? Part 2: “The System”

The “catholicity” of Rome

What is Roman Catholicism in our day?

One of the key terms is “catholicity”, which is defined as “universal” but in multiple directions. It does not simply now mean “geographically” universal, as it did in the Gospels (“from every nation under heaven” Acts 2:5). That is certainly still one dimension, but it has since taken on other meanings.

The late Avery Cardinal Dulles, for example, saw “catholicity” encompassing what is “above” (“The Fullness of God in Christ”), “from below” (“The Aspirations of Nature”), in terms of “Tradition and Development”, “Sacramental and Hierarchical”, and also, not to be missed, with “Roman Primacy” at the center (“The Catholicity of the Church”, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985).

This is one of the reasons why De Chirico looked at the systematic nature of Roman Catholicism:

This systemic approach, necessary because Catholic theology is a coherent, all-encompassing system, owes much to the original and insightful conviction of Leonard De Chirico. His modified doctoral dissertation, entitled “Evangelical Theological Perspectives on Post-Vatican II Roman Catholicism”, evaluates several evangelical theologians and evangelical-Catholic dialogues and underscores that their appraisals of Catholicism suffer from an exclusively or nearly exclusively atomistic approach to Catholicism—an evaluation of individual doctrines and practices viewed as discrete issues.

He considers the advantages of a systemic approach to be the following:

The Behavior Of Richard C. Miller, Author Of Resurrection And Reception In Early Christianity

Richard C. Miller has recently written a book arguing against a traditional Christian view of Jesus' resurrection. Miller has significant credentials, which you can read about at the Amazon page just linked. The book has been getting some attention in skeptical circles, such as in John Loftus' post here. Steve Hays recently wrote a response to it. On one of his Facebook accounts, Miller writes about his upcoming role at an International Society of Biblical Literature meeting later this year:

What Is Roman Catholicism? Part 1

What is Roman Catholicism in our day? According to Leonard De Chirico, no evangelical theologian has had a good handle on answering this question in the post Vatican II years.

(Although to be fair to evangelicals, Roman Catholics don’t seem to have a handle on it either. As the AP recently quoted “Pope Francis”, “What are we waiting for? For the theologians to reach agreement? That day will never come, I assure you”).

One should note that even (maybe especially) among the core group among the Roman Catholic laity, “large chunks of Mass-going traditional Catholics don’t believe in basic doctrines of the Church” – that’s not “lapsed” Roman Catholics – it’s a group of people who attend Mass regularly and at least feign some kind of devotion to “the Church”. Maybe it has always been that way, since “Christianity” was made the “official” religion the Roman empire. Rome was careful to figure out “Rome is first”, but it kind of left the rest of “ecclesiology” an open question.

(Evidence: I’ve recently had the book “Figuring Out the Church” recommended to me. This is a work by a major Roman Catholic theologian, examining the writings of other Vatican II theologians. Whereas the Vatican II doctrine is “infallibly correct”, no one as yet can definitively figure out what it means).

Nevertheless, De Chirico tries, and Allison very much affirms what De Chirico concludes: that Roman Catholicism does have a “core” and it is identifiable.

Pale blue dot

Some atheists believe in human rights, although they increasingly exclude certain classes (e.g. babies, the senile, the developmentally disabled). They wish to believe that humans have value. 

However, consider this famous statement by Carl Sagan–which is representative of the secular outlook. How can human life have any intrinsic worth given his description? Sure, some humans can be valued by other humans–just like some people cherish diamond rings or celebrity memorabilia (e.g. Elvis Presley's used sweatbands). But that's projecting value onto intrinsically worthless objects. It's a recipe for moral and existential nihilism: 

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. 

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. 

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. 

http://www.planetary.org/explore/space-topics/earth/pale-blue-dot.html

Mother and child

Exod 21:22-23 is a popular prooftext for Christian prolifers. It's the only Biblical passage that speaks directly to the issue of abortion–although many Biblical passages have a general bearing on that issue. However, appeal to that passage is complicated by the ambiguous syntax. Does the injury and penalty have reference to the mother or the baby?

That question probably poses a false dichotomy. Case law is flexible. It's meant to give OT judges guidance on how to adjudicate certain kinds of situations. Similar situations. If this law doesn't single out the mother or child, the syntactical ambiguity is likely intentional. The law is meant to cover both parties–depending on what happens in real life. Case laws present hypothetical examples that have rough, real-world analogues. So prolifers are right to quote this passage. Even if it doesn't specify the baby, it does include the baby. 

After exegeting the passage, Garrett helpfully makes that additional point:

This law envisages a scene in an Israelite village in which two men are fighting and the wife of one runs out to assist her husband The wife happens to be pregnant, and in the ensuring melee the woman is struck and goes into labor. If there is no fatal injury, the adversary of the husband might only have to pay a fine as determined by a jury, after it had considered the aggrieved husband's demands in light of what they know of the situation. If there is a fatal injury, the punishment could be as severe as execution ("life for life"; 21:23b). Unfortunately, an important detail about the law is unclear: it is impossible to tell whether the "fatal injury" is to the mother or the child.  

Probably there is deliberate ambiguity in the text to allow juries latitude in dealing with the varieties of cases that might arise. 

Why does the Bible mention the fight, a detail that seems altogether unnecessary and even somewhat contrived, and why does it not speak more directly of striking a pregnant woman (that is, of striking her deliberately), as these other [ANE] codes do?
I believe that the reason is that a woman who behaved in this way, diving into a brawl while pregnant, might be considered to have brought her troubles on herself. Such behavior would be foolish in the extreme; it practically invites serious medical complications. But this is the whole intent of the law: it is meant to drive home the lesson that a man must be very careful about violence in the presence of a pregnant women, even when the woman herself is behaving irresponsibly. He would do better to flee the scene than to carry on with the fight knowing that he might cause serious injury to the woman and child. It is also significant that the law assumes that the other man, not the woman's husband, is responsible for the injury.  

…special protection is afforded to a pregnant woman and her unborn child in this legislation; no other kind of bystander at a village quarrel (an old person, a woman who is not pregnant, or a young child) is given such considerations. If nothing else, therefore, the law indicates that a strong instinct for protecting the unborn is appropriate. D. Garrett, A Commentary on Exodus (Kregel 2014), 500-503. 

Deadbed visions

Our forebears in the faith used to write about deathbed visions. Seems as though that's fallen out of fashion. That may be because nowadays most people die in hospitals rather than homes. Sometimes they die alone––except for hospital staff. And the surroundings are distracting. 

This post isn't specifically about deadbed visions, but more generally about reported phenomena that happen to some dying patients and/or their loved ones. I'm going to post some anecdotes. In evaluating this material, we need to draw some distinctions and take some precautions:

i) Obviously, this depends on the credibility of the witness. In many cases this is not the kind of experience that a second party would be in a position to observe or corroborate. 

Since the witness is dying, I don't think they have anything to gain or lose by lying. Still, in most cases we only have their word for it.

ii) Even if they saw or heard what they say they saw or heard, that's still subject to interpretation. It's their impression of what they experienced. Whether what they experienced is what they think it was is a separate question.

So we need to distinguish between the reported experience and the interpretation of the reported experience. We can have a credible report of a particular experience. How best to interpret that experience is a different question.

iii) Apropos (ii), the same distinction holds true for witnesses who relay what the dying patient told them. For instance, I have no prior reason to think Trudy Harris is a liar. However, her evidential value lies in reporting what patients told her, and not in her theological interpretation of what they said. She can be a reliable reporter, but an unreliable interpreter. In addition, Trudy has a sugary style that I find off-putting. 

iv) Thus far I've mentioned some skeptical caveats. But now for something more positive. Given the fact of the afterlife, it would not be surprising if some people in the twilight hours of life, with this life nearly behind them and the afterlife just ahead of them, might experience glimpses of the great beyond. And this could be true for the heavenbound and the hellbound alike. In the borderland between life and death, a patient might become more aware of both realms–as they slip away. As their grip on this life loosens.

v) I think it would be a mistake to ignore what dying patients say. To dismiss their experience out of hand. 

For instance, this may be a time when the Lord prepares a Christian for death. For the journey through the shadow of death. Or to comfort the bereaved. 

Conversely, this might be a time when the sins of the wicked begin to catch up with them. 

vi) If some of the dying experience uncanny events, hospice nurses are in a better position than most folks to witness what dying patients experience. 

vii) Likewise, if a pattern emerges of characteristic things that some dying patients say they experience, I think that lends more credibility to their deadbed testimonies. 

General Revelation and Special Revelation, Nature and Grace, and how and why Roman Catholicism Minimizes the Effects of Sin

Sorry for the very snappy title there. But this is foundational material to understanding the differences between Rome and the Reformation, both as they existed at the time of the Reformation, and as they exist today (in a much more subtle form).

In recent weeks, I’ve put together several short blog posts from Bavinck on the role of “General Revelation” generally, and how that ties in with the concept of “nature and grace”. Gregg Allison touches on the topic, but before we get into his explanations, I’d like to provide a bit of context from Bavinck, whom I would consider to be an unimpeachable Reformed source.

The first three installments are:

Herman Bavinck on “General Revelation and Christian Discipleship”. The payoff here is: “dogmaticians do not first divest themselves of their Christian faith in order to construct a rational doctrine of God and humanity … in order later to supplement it with the revelation in Christ. But they draw their knowledge solely and alone from special revelation, i.e., from Scripture. This is their unique principle.”

When Bavinck speaks of “the Christian faith”, he is considering it in the area of what he calls “religion”, which is roughly “the human practice of things”. That is, it falls on the “ectypal” side of things – and not on the “archetypal” side (God as God knows it). More ....

Astrobiology

http://toddcwood.blogspot.com/2015/02/reader-question-what-about-life-on.html

Two kinds of science

http://afterall.net/papers/duhemian-and-augustinian-science-and-the-crisis-in-non-empirical-knowledge/

Crippled delusions of grandeur

http://godawa.com/movieblog/oscar-watch-•-theory-everything-unintentional-tragedy-crippled-atheist-mind/

Russell Moore on Roy Moore

Russell Moore thinks Roy Moore should resign. I think Russell is half right: Moore should definitely resign–only Roy is not the Moore who ought to resign. That should be the other Moore:

http://godfatherpolitics.com/20398/southern-baptist-leader-says-roy-moore-comply-judges-order-resign/

Panning Paul and the Faithfulness of God

http://dro.dur.ac.uk/14230/1/14230.pdf?DDD32+dth0jmb+d700tmt

Where are they now?

The Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors held its first full plenary session in Rome last week under the direction of Boston’s Cardinal Sean O’Malley. They told journalists at a briefing on Saturday they were formulating suggestions for how Pope Francis should make bishops accountable for implementing protection guidelines. As expected, certain survivors’ groups and other critics of the Vatican dismissed this as yet more empty words. That’s unfortunate. But it’s also understandable, especially given the Vatican’s lack of transparency when it comes to dealing with such bishops. The head of the Holy See Press Office, Fr. Federico Lombardi, SJ, offered a rare public display (at least for him) of how defensive church officials can be when pressed for more openness. Visibly irritated, he snapped back at an Italian TV journalist who attempted to ask why there was a delay in the trial of Jozef Wesolowski, the defrocked bishop and former papal nuncio to the Dominican Republic who has been charged with sexual abuse of young boys. “It has nothing to do [with this briefing],” the priest said curtly. When she pressed him an aide took the microphone from her and Fr. Lombardi said, “Enough! Let’s move on.” This, too, was unfortunate. The Holy See has publicly dealt with at least four bishops for either committing abuse or trying to cover it up. But there has been no transparency regarding their whereabouts or their status. In addition to Wesolowski, there is also Belgian Bishop Roger Vangheluwe, who “resigned” in 2010 after admitting to molesting his young nephews. Where is he now? Has he been laicized? The Vatican has not said. Then there is Scottish Cardinal Keith O’Brien, who also “resigned,” just before the conclave of 2013 after being accused of sexual harassment by a number of seminarians and priests. Where is he? The Vatican will not say. And, of course, there’s the case of Bishop Robert Finn of Kansas City, who was given a two-year suspended sentence after being criminally convicted for failing to report sexual abuse of minors. The Vatican supposedly carried out an investigation last September and two months later in a TV interview Cardinal O’Malley had this to say about the Finn case: “It’s a question the Holy See must address urgently.” Is it cynical to wonder what in the world transparency and urgency mean in the Vatican? 

https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/letter-rome-17

The anchor of hope

Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end (Jn 13:1).

One question is what John means by the "end"? Is he using that word in a quantitative sense or qualitative sense? By quantitative, does he mean in a temporal sense? Jesus loved them right up to the final moment of death. He loved them to his last dying breath.

That makes sense in context. After all, his death is imminent. 

By qualitative, does he mean he loved them to the utmost? To the limit? 

That makes sense in context. After all, he's dying for their sake. There is no greater love (cf. 15:13).

Given John's fondness for double entendres, and the fact that both meanings suit the context, both are probably intended. Indeed, they are inextricably linked: he loves them to the point of death. True love follows through to the bitter end. 

We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain (Heb 6:19).

As one commentator explains:

The image, then, is that the anchor (we must picture a rope attached) is entering within the inner place of the temple (the holy of holies), as if it were a grappling hook to which the souls of believers were connected. Once it has secured a place, they can follow after. L. T. Johnson, Hebrews: A Commentary (WJK 2006), 173.

Here, the inner sanctum is a metaphor for heaven.  The Christian afterlife. 

Imagine you and your brother paddle upriver one summer afternoon. As dusk approaches, you turn the boat around. But your brother falls overboard. You throw him a lifeline. But the current is too strong for you to reel him in. 

As darkness falls, you lose sight of your brother, although the rope is still taut. You can't see him, but you can feel him–at the end of the line. 

Your muscles become unbearably sore holding onto the rope. Your hands go numb in the chilly air. 

He no longer responds when you call to him. Perhaps he lost consciousness. Perhaps he succumbed to hypothermia. Perhaps he drowned. Only the swift current keeps him afloat. Maybe you're hanging onto a lifeless body. 

But maybe he's still alive. If you let go now, you will lose him forever. He will be swept downstream. Swallowed up in darkness. Receding into the night. 

If you let go now, all hope is lost. You must redouble your aching grip. Wait until dawning light to see if he survived. To see if it was worth it. Hoping against hope. Will he be restored to you? 

Letting go is an inevitable part of life. But let go of what? What should we hang onto? And what should we relinquish?  

Which end of the rope should we release? The end that's tied to this life–or the end that's tied to the afterlife? 

Wisdom is not only, or mainly, a matter of knowing when to let go but what to let go. An unbeliever will relinquish everything to save his own life. A believer will relinquish everything to save his own soul. 

What do we have to look forward to? Does it begin and end in this life? Or does it begin where this life ends? 

Relating to God

http://wincorduan.bravejournal.com/entry/145224/

Naos

i) This is a postscript to my previous reply to Alan. Both in his post ("Yes, There is a Corpus Fallacy, and It is Committed Frequently") and his podcast ("Why the Bible Teaches a Literal, Physical Temple (Naos) in 2 Thessalonians 2:4, Not a Figurative, Spiritual Temple – Ep. 23) he oscillates between what naos means and what it refers to, as if these are interchangeable categories. I find that a bit odd inasmuch as he talks about Bible scholars trained in linguistics, yet–to my knowledge–sense and reference are not equivalent. 

ii) From what I've read, "naos" doesn't mean or denote a "physical temple." That's not the definition or intension of the word. Consulting three standard reference works, it is not defined in those terms by BDAG, L&N, or EDNT.

At best, that's one of the word's extensions. And even that's inaccurate (see below).  

Perhaps "physical temple" represents Alan's interpretive summary. If so, that's apparently based on concrete examples. Problem is, that conflates sense and reference. 

iii) Apropos (ii), Alan seems to be reducing the sense of naos to a generic abstraction. Since the word often refers to physical temples, he generalizes from that fact to the conclusion that naos means a physical temple.

However, the extension of the word doesn't refer to a generic physical temple, but to many particular temples (or shrines). The concrete referent has greater specificity. It can refer to a pagan shrine (e.g. the temple of Artemis), or Solomon's temple, or the inner sanctum of Solomon's temple, or the Second Temple, or the Herodian temple, &c. 

On the one  hand, it's a semantic fallacy to suggest that it means a "physical temple." 

On the other hand, the vast number of documented (and undocumented) referents would be contrary to Alan's particular identification. In the nature of the case, specific examples select, not for a generic physical temple, but a shrine or temple at a particular place and time. 

I think his procedure–no doubt unintentionally–puts a thumb on the scales. Since he's stressing lexical semantics and semantic fallacies, it is not inappropriate, I think, to bring greater linguistic precision to the analysis. 

The "corpus fallacy" redux

I'm going to reply to Alan's post, as well as his podcast:

Imagine if someone took a three-page high school history paper of yours and claimed, "Your entire vocabulary is contained in that paper." Out of the millions of words in your written and oral discourse over the course of your lifetime, your entire terminology is limited to that high school paper.
That sort of application happens with many interpreters of the Bible. Have you read statements such as: "Matthew tends to have X vocabulary, therefore his theology is Y." Or, worse, "Paul does not use the term X in Y sense, therefore he was not aware of another commonly used sense." Or "Matthew uses X in Y sense, but Mark does not, therefore, Mark is not aware or would use its sense." You get the picture.

I don't know whose windmills Alan is tilting at. That wasn't my argument. But I guess Rocinante can use the exercise.

I have heard this type of reasoning for many years. And no linguistic Bible scholar (actually trained in linguistics) would ever use such a naive argument, at least these days.

So long as Alan is attacking a caricature. But that's irrelevant to my stated argument.

However, since he brought it up, let's consider some illustrations:

i) Protestant Pauline scholars typically include word-studies of the dikaioo word-group when attempting to ascertain Paul's usage. And although they don't confine themselves to Pauline usage, they center their discussion on Pauline usage. That's a starting-point. The primary frame of reference. How does Paul use that word-group? 

Catholics, by contrast, appeal to James. Now, is Alan taking the position that it commits the "corpus fallacy" to begin with Pauline usage in determining what Paul means by his own terminology vis-a-vis "justification"? Should we take into account all the thousands of times Paul may have used that word-group without that particular nuance? 

ii) Calvinists say proegno in some NT passages means "to choose beforehand." Arminians counter that the word usually means "to know beforehand."

Moreover, they could appeal to the thousands of times that Peter and Paul may have used that word in the sense of foreknowledge or prescience rather than prior choice. Does Alan think that's a valid tactic?

lii) Arminians appeal to cosmos in Jn 3:16 to prooftext unlimited atonement. Some Calvinists (and even some non-Calvinists) counter by pointing out that in Johannine usage, cosmos often has a qualitative rather than quantitative connotation. Moreover, they note that John often uses cosmos in contrast to Christians. 

But is that a "corpus" fallacy? Should we appeal to all the thousands of times that John may have used cosmos as a synonym for "everyone"? 

I agree, but I am addressing the claim (or the implication) by some who reject that Paul intends a literal sense of naos (temple) in 2 Thess 2:4, and some who think that Paul never would had used (or even been aware!) of the sense of a literal temple with the term naos. To claim that Paul uses the term in a spiritual sense in other contexts therefore it must mean this in 2 Thess 2:4 is ridiculous and sloppy linguistics (not saying this is Steve's position, but others make this deduction). I demonstrated that absurdity in my program in the link in the blog post.

Once again, Alan is shadowboxing with nameless opponents rather than responding to my own argument. 

In addition, yes, we should start with the target context, but I have seen not a few times from historicists to begin outside of Thessalonians and then import a spiritual meaning to naos in 2 Thess 2:4.

Alan also says that in his podcast. I find the oft-repeated accusation that "historicists" have to go outside the text to derive their interpretation ironic considering the fact that in his podcast, Alan said the naos is a makeshift shrine which Orthodox Jews will build, without divine sanction, before the midpoint of the 7-year period, to reinstate Levitical sacrifices, &c. Where did he get any of those crucial details from 2 Thes 2? 

Beale strains the text when his point is grasping at some connection between the apostasy and the temple representing the "covenant community." The exegetical connection is not there. 

Unfortunately, Alan fails to explain, either here or in the podcast, why that's the case. He simply asserts that these are unrelated.

i) Now, I can't speak for Beale, but if I were fleshing out the connection, I think the argument would go like this:

Beale is offering a unified interpretation. These are aspects of the same event. 

Alan himself admits that the apostasy concerns the professing church. He also admits that it will be instigated by the Antichrist. So the apostasy centers on the church, while the action of the Antichrist is directed at the church. 

In that context, it's logical to see the naos as a figurative synonym for the church. 

ii) Moreover, that meaning has linguistic precedent in Pauline usage. 

iii) Furthermore, this has historical precedent in the Antiochean crisis, where the same religious community and same religious institutions lie in view throughout. Antiochus was persecuting faithful Jews as well as desecrating the Jewish temple. 

By contrast, Alan separates the naos from the church–both in time and place. He treats that as something which happens in Jerusalem. Something that's undertaken by Orthodox Jews. And the action of the Antichrist has reference to that.

On the face of it, Alan is the one who's isolating these elements to produce a compartmentalized interpretation of each, resulting in a disjointed interpretation of the passage as a whole. 

It would be incorrect to claim that therefore he would not be able to draw from a literal sense of naos in the 101 instance, just as any Greek-speaking Jew in the first century would have had in his or her semantic range of this term.

I don't know why Alan is fixated on attacking an argument I never used. 

The linguistic skepticism is not warranted, and would reduce us to only make linguistic observations on single authors! and not on the body of Greek language. 
We have an abundance of documentation in the NT and outside of it. We cannot assume that Greek semantic ranges of words are dependent upon not only a single author, but on a very small sampling of that author. The NT has frequent instances of naos in a literal sense. Paul certainly was aware of this sense and easily could draw from it—which bring us back to the contextual question of 2 Thess 2:4. 

For some odd reason, Alan is absolutely obsessed with refuting an argument I never made. It's like trying to correct a computerized misbilling. No matter how often you call the company and patiently explain to them that the bill is wrong, they never purge the system. The computer keeps spitting out the same erroneous bill. 

Thats not an intellectual virtue. You need to update the objection (or else withdraw the objection) to take into account the actual state of the argument.

If there were another instance in his letters where he clearly talks about a temple in a spiritual-church sense associated with the Antichrist figure that is a different matter.

Does Alan think the sense of a word depends on carrying over the entire context? Isn't that a semantic fallacy? It confuses the meaning of a particular word with the meaning of a sentence, pericope, or argument. 

I'll end with saying that I gave about seven reasons why the context in 2 Thess 2:4 indicates a literal temple, not a spiritual temple. These are arguments that historicists need to contend with. 

Let's run through these:

1. The action of the Antichrist would be a conspicuous, concrete, observable event, to correct the false eschatology of 2:2c.

i) Given the parallel with the other precursive sign, we shouldn't expect that to be more or less conspicuous than the apostasy. The apostasy of the professing church is a bit vague. Throughout church history we have examples of that. The apostasy of the professing church is a matter of degree–unless you deny anything faithful remnant.

ii) Moreover, Alan seems to treat these as independent events. The apostasy of the professing church is clearly different from Ultraorthodox Jews erecting a shrine on the Temple Mount. 

If, by contrast, these are conjoined, then the sign is less ambiguous. 

2. "Taking his seat" suggests a literal physical temple.

That simply begs the question. Where's the supporting argument?

If the naos is figurative, then "taking his seat" is part of the same picturesque metaphor. A consistent word-picture. 

3. The definite article implies a particular temple of the true God.

i) But Alan doesn't think the construction of this shrine is authorized by God. At least he's noncommittal. But absent divine sanction, how is that any different than schismatic or sectarian "Jewish" shrines like the rival shrine in Samaria? 

ii) Furthermore, this overlooks the "heavenly temple" interpretation. 

4. The "object of worship" (2:4) implies a material temple rather than a church.

I find that argument peculiar. Isn't a sanctuary a place of worship rather than an object of worship? And in that respect, a church is a place of worship. 

5. Alan cites an article by Dan Wallace:
My Accordance/Gramcord search revealed altogether ten places in which ναὸς θεοῦ occurred (Matt 26:61; 1 Cor 3:16, 17 [bis]; 2 Cor 6:16 [bis]; 2 Thess 2:4; Rev 3:12; 11:1, 19).As well, there are another six instances of οἶκος θεοῦ, and here again a similar development occurs: The gospels refer to the literal temple (Mark 2:26 and pars. in Matt 12:4 and Luke 6:4), while the referential value of the expression has been transferred to the church by the 60s (1 Tim 3:15;5 Heb 6:21; 1 Pet 4:17).6What are we to make of these data? It seems that by 63 CE (the date I would assign to 1 Timothy),7 the idiom had shifted in Christian usage sufficiently that a metaphorical nuance had become the norm. However, it is equally significant that all of the references in the Corinthian correspondence seem to require an explanation (readily supplied by Paul) in order to make the metaphorical sense clear.

But doesn't that commit the "corpus" fallacy which Alan spends so much time attacking? Why does this little sampling suddenly become representative when Alan says no scholar trained in linguistics would use such a naive argument? 

6. Quoting Green:
The orientation of the divine claims of the "man of lawlessness" is toward the world at large and not the church."

Unfortunately, Green doesn't bother to defend his contention.  

i) What is it about the orientation of the divine claims in 2 Thes 2 that's directed at the world rather than the church? Where's the supporting argument?

ii) If, as Alan admits, the apostasy has reference to the professing church, and the Antichrist is the instigator of the apostasy, then isn't that oriented at the church rather than the world?

iii) What does it mean for the Antichrist to proclaim himself to be God? Hard to say for sure, but here's one possibility:

What if the Antichrist claims to be the Second Coming of Christ? That would make him God Incarnate. 

Moreover, it makes sense that the Antichrist might have a Messiah complex. He's a pretender. A usurper. 

And if he gained a sizable following in the professing church, that would certainly qualify as mass apostasy. His claim to be the Second Coming of Christ would be "a conspicuous, concrete, observable event." So would having a huge entourage in the professing church. 

Hyper-Dispensationalist Doug Stauffer

Typically, hyper-dispenationalists invest ultimate authority into an early 17th century Anglican English translation of the Bible (aka KJV 1611).

But if you have never been exposed to what hyper-dispensationlists believe, here is a flavor:

According to Stauffer, Paul is THE spokesman for the church age (p. 17); the general epistles of Hebrews to Revelation, while containing some church age applications, are actually written for Great Tribulation saints (pp. 20, 27); salvation is obtained by works during the Tribulation (p. 23); Hebrews and James do not teach eternal security (pp. 23, 29); Peter did not preach the gospel of the grace of God (p. 26); the seven churches of Revelation 1-3 are not the body of Christ (p. 29); the epistle of first John teaches that salvation is through works (p. 56); the book of Acts was not given “to show how to establish the local church or its functions” (p. 72), Abraham had to keep his salvation through works (p. 175).

 http://www.wayoflife.org/index_files/beware_of_hyper_dispensatinalism.html

Basically Doug Stauffer believes less than 40% (or 35%) of the NT applies to Christians: Minus the Gospels, Acts, Hebrews and other epistles, and the book of Revelation.

Marcion anyone?

Rumors of miracles

http://goodnewsmag.org/2014/12/rumors-of-miracles/

Libertarian Reformed Baptists?

"Libertarian Reformed Baptists?" by Prof. James Anderson.

Why is the number of the beast 666?

Greg Beale responds.

College dropouts

The left is attacking Scott Walker as a college dropout. Here's a list of other losers:

http://www.businessinsider.com/most-successful-college-droputs-2013-9?op=1

Sympathetic magic

Bnonn has an interesting interpretation of the 2nd commandment:

http://bnonn.com/are-pictures-of-jesus-idolatry-2/

The gist of his argument is that pagans used idols as a form of sympathetic magic. 

Aside from the merits of that interpretation in its own right, it's striking to compare that interpretation with a related interpretation of the 3rd commandment:

There is a third way someone in the ancient world might have taken God's name in vain: by using it as a magical term to make a spell or incantation more potent. The Egyptians thought that there was great power in knowing a god's secret name; the goddess Isis in on myth gains power over Re by learning his secret name. Something like this may be occurring in Acts 19:13-16, where Jewish exorcists use the name of Jesus to try to gain control over demons. D. Garrett, A Commentary on Exodus (Kregel 2014), 477. 

That would offer a unified interpretation of both commandments, based on a common principle: prohibiting various forms of witchcraft.  

In the same vein, notice the link between sorcerers and idolaters in Rev 21:8.