A pain in the Buttigieg

Presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg recently gave a much-touted, much-quoted speech to Victory Fund, a pressure group for the LGBT pogrom. I have no idea who the Democrat nominee will be. I'll comment on some of his statements because dumb ideas can become very influential and harmful. 

Two preliminary observations: 

1. Why was the audience at Victory Fund cheering his statements about the Creator? How many of them actually believe that God made us? 

2. It's not enough for infidels like Buttigieg to reject Christianity. Rather, the attempt something more insidious. They try to co-opt Christianity. They try to redefine it, pretending that progressive Christianity is the real deal, while biblical Christianity is just an interpretation, not to mention an illegitimate interpretation. That's an especially dangerous form of intolerance. It refuses to let the opposing side define their own position. It can't concede that the other side represents the authentic expression of the opposing position. It acts as though the other side is misrepresenting its own position. Tyrants like Buttigieg presume to speak on behalf of Christianity, as spokesmen for what Christianity really stands for. 

This is different than disagreeing with a position. This is more radical. This is the refusal to allow and acknowledge that there even could be an opposing position. It becomes impermissible and punishable even to mention the existence of a contrary viewpoint. 

This idea that there’s something wrong with you, puts you at odds not only with yourself but with your maker. Speaking only for myself, I can tell you that if me being gay was a choice, it was a choice that was made far, far above my pay grade. If you have a problem with who I am, your problem is not with me, your quarrel, sir, is with my Creator.

That's a popular homosexual trope. Several basic problems:

i) The idea that there's something wrong with humans is core Christian theology. We are sinners. We have a propensity to evil. 

ii) What about people with genetic illnesses. Does that diagnosis put them at odds with their maker? Apart from Adam and Eve, humans don't come direct from the hand of God. God uses natural processes to creates human beings. God creates us indirectly through providential means. And in a fallen world, things can and do go wrong with the moral and natural order.

iii) I don't have an opinion on whether Buttigieg chose to be Buttigieg. There could be a combination of nature and nurture. But acting on homosexual impulses is a choice.

iv) As a Calvinist, I don't have a problem with saying God caused Buttigieg to be homosexual. That doesn't preclude disapproval. If I think there's something morally wrong with villains like Queen Jadis or the Unman, does that put me at odds with C. S. Lewis? Hardly. They are villainous characters by design. The reader is intended to disapprove of Queen Jadis and the Unman. Disapproval of the character doesn't entail disapproval of the novelist. A villain is a foil character. 

By the same token, I can disapprove of Buttigieg lifestyle and political agenda even though God predestined it. God predestined that as something for Christians to combat, just as Lewis invented Lucy and Ransom to counter Jadis and the Uhman.

My marriage to Chasten has made me a better man

Does anal sex make you a better man? What about rimming or golden showers? 

perfectly legal to fire somebody because of who they are…

But that's precisely what zealots like Buttigieg want to do to Americans who dissent from the LGBT policies. 

freedom to live of life of your choosing

Once again, zealots like Buttigieg deny to Christians the freedom to live a life of their choosing. 

county clerk their interpretation of their religion

If that's a swipe at Kim Davis, she was enforcing state law. 

only get one life

Which illustrates the danger of atheism. If you think this life is all there is, that naturally makes you ruthless. 

transgender troops ready to put their lives on the line for this country have their careers threatened with ruin

Transgender soldiers are physically and psychologically unfit. 

In addition, I don't owe transgender soldiers any more gratitude than I owe squeegee bandits. Don't do something I didn't ask, wish, or countenance, then act like you're doing me a favor. Don't try to shoehorn me into your debt against my will. You weren't doing that for me, but for yourself, as a pretext to leverage the issue. Your cynical tactics are nothing more than emotional coercion and moral extortion. 

Free course on Constitutional interpretation

A key issue in the culture wars:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zau6JpCb47o&t=6s

Unplanned pregnancies

Critics of Calvinism like to bring up hard cases. That's legitimate inasmuch as Calvinism can't duck the hard cases. It is, however, self-deluded for freewill theists to imagine that their alternative exempts themselves from equally hard cases. 

Let's take the case of "unplanned pregnancies". From a theological perspective, are unplanned pregnancies good or evil? 

In popular parlance, I think an "unplanned pregnancy"is generally a euphemism for a pregnancy resulting from premarital sex, extramarital sex, failure to use contraception (even though the couple didn't want a child), or contraceptive failure. From the standpoint of the couple, the pregnancy was unintended and usually undesirable. The most extreme example is a child conceived in rape.

From a human perspective, such pregnancies are unintended. But are they unintended from a divine perspective? According to open theism, just about every pregnancy is unplanned from God's viewpoint since God doesn't know the future. Exceptions might be Isaac and Jesus, although it's an interesting question how the God of open theism could promise Abraham a child if God doesn't know or control what human beings will do, including sex.

However, it's hard to see how any pregnancy can be unplanned under Molinism or Arminianism, for God's actions in creation and providence are necessary causes of every particular pregnancy, and God knows the end-results of his actions in creation and providence.

From a Reformed perspective, every pregnancy is predestined. Do freewill theists think humanly unplanned pregnancies are evil? Freewill theists often charge the God of Calvinism with hypocrisy for decreeing what he forbids. 

But that's morally complex. If a child is conceived in sin, the process is evil, but does that mean the product is evil? Do freewill theists think the child is tainted by the process (e.g. premarital or extramarital sex)? Presumably not. Does it impugn divine benevolence if God welcomes every child into the world? Presumably not. 

Assuming that every pregnancy is a providentially planned pregnancy, even if many pregnancies are humanly unplanned, the good outcome is inextricably linked to sinful causes in however many cases. Do freewill theists regret the outcome? Open theists might. 

Black holes

https://stream.org/astronomers-release-first-image-black-hole/

An Upcoming Book On Papias

Stephen Carlson is nearing completion of a book on Papias. Bart Ehrman recently put up two guest posts from Carlson on his blog, here and here, and it looks like at least one more is on the way. I've recommended Carlson's material in the past, especially on Christmas issues. I expect his book on Papias to be good, and Ehrman anticipates that the book will be "a definitive, full-length study of Papias". Judging by what I've read of Carlson's views so far (at Ehrman's blog and elsewhere, including in an email exchange), I expect to agree with most of what Carlson has to say about Papias, but not all of it. And we need to be careful to distinguish Carlson's views from Ehrman's.

In the introduction to his first guest post by Carlson, Ehrman refers to how Papias "claims to have known and interviewed the companions of disciples of Jesus’ own apostles (it’s a bit confusing: but Jesus had his apostles; after his death they themselves had disciples; Papias knew people who knew these disciples of the apostles)". It's highly unlikely that Papias was always so far removed from the apostles, though, as I explained in a response to Richard Bauckham a couple of years ago. (To get to the most relevant section of the post, do a Ctrl F search for "beginning with Papias", and start reading at that paragraph.) Most likely, Papias was a disciple of John the son of Zebedee, the apostle, and consulted other people who had been in contact with John and the other apostles. And he probably relied on sources further removed from the apostles on other occasions. So, the degree to which Papias was removed from the apostles varied from one situation to another. But he did on some occasions have closer contact with the apostles than Ehrman refers to. Remember, Ehrman's views aren't equivalent to Carlson's. But I recommend reading Ehrman's posts and Carlson's book when it comes out.

The Bible and The Tempest

Is there a point of tension between the perspicuity of Scripture and the grammatico-historical method? To the extent that correct exegesis requires background information about the text, does that undercut the perspicuity of Scripture? A few points:

i) It's possible that the Protestant Reformers exaggerated the perspicuity of Scripture. That's not a fatal concession to Catholicism unless Catholicism is a viable alternative. Moreover, that just shifts the issue, since exegeting church fathers, papacy encyclicals, conciliar documents, Aquinas et al. raises the same need for background information. Catholic sources can't be interpreted in a historical vacuum. 

It's not as if popes, church fathers, and Scholastic theologians are more perspicuous than the Bible. Indeed, that adds 2000 years of additional layers to sift through. 

ii) The Protestant claim is not that Scripture is uniformly perspicuous. To say background information is sometimes necessary to exegete a particular passage doesn't imply that all of Scripture or most of Scripture is obscure without the illumination and clarification of background information. 

iii) Apropos (ii), it's possible both to overemphasize and underemphasize the necessity of background information. Let's take a comparison. To understand the language in The Tempest, it helps to have an annotated edition, like A. L. Rowse. But once you known the language, the basic plot and motives of the characters are comprehensible. Indeed, Shakespeare wrote it to make sense on its own terms, at the level of the story. 

But according to Renaissance historian Frances Yates, The Tempest is a political allegory. Cf. The Occult Philosophy of the Elizabethan Age (Routledge, 1979), based on court wizard John Dee. Suppose we grant that interpretation for the sake of argument. That would mean there's a whole hidden dimension to The Tempest. It moves on two levels. There's the overt story, and then there's a parallel story it alludes to. A story behind the story. If true, that would certainly fill in our interpretation of The Tempest. It would go two-levels deep. 

But even if that's true, it doesn't invalidate the overt meaning of the story. The overt meaning of the story is independent of the subtext, in the sense that it's a self-contained story with a dramatic logic all its own. It can stand alone without any reference to the underlying allegory. It enjoys a certain interpretive autonomy in that regard. The story is complete without the allegory. 

By comparison, even if the reader is missing the subtext of certain biblical passages, that doesn't ipso facto falsify a textual reading. Knowledge of the subtext may enrich the overall interpretation, but it doesn't necessarily correct a textual reading.

John Newton on providence

When we have done our planning, his plan in our favor gradually opens, and he does more and better for us than we could either ask or imagine. I can hardly recollect a single plan of mine, of which I have not since seen reason to be satisfied, that had it taken place in season and circumstance just as I proposed, it would, humanly speaking, have proved my ruin; or, at least, it would have deprived me of the greater good the Lord had designed for me. Letters of John Newton (Banner of Truth, 1984), 188.

An apology for thinking

https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2019/04/roger-scruton-an-apology-for-thinking/

Dereliction of duty

Benedict XVI has released what amounts to an informal encyclical: 

http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/the-church-and-the-scandal-of-sexual-abuse

He confirms the sodomite establishment in Catholic clerical circles. More damning evidence from an insider who occupied the highest echelons of the Catholic church. 

Yet the problem with his lament is that he writes like a spectator witnessing an accident scene, while first responders intervene. But in addition to his admittedly brief pontificate, he was Prefect for the CDF from 1982-2005. He was JP2's righthand man. So where was the church discipline from the top down? Why does he act like a helpless bystander? 

Is the Second Coming obsolete?

The other day in class I was explaining why some theologians find the personal second coming of Christ to be an awkward fit with the modern world. For example, will Israeli Air Defense scramble two F-15s when they pick up a UFO incoming on radar?

Like I said, awkward.

— Tentative Apologist (@RandalRauser) April 11, 2019

It's no more or less "awkward" than the Ascension. It's the Ascension in reverse (Acts 1:9-11). Once again, why is Rauser a contributor to The Christian Post? What does that tell you about the editorial oversight of Richard Land? 

The Bible is a dangerous book

A stock objection to the Protestant faith is the rote claim that Scripture is a blueprint for anarchy without an infallible interpreter. It's dangerous to put the Bible in the hands of the laity. 

There's a gain of truth to that. There are readers who lack a responsible hermeneutic. Making the Bible as an open book is risky.

However, we can turn that around. It's dangerous when a particular class has a monopoly on the interpretation of Scripture. For instance, Southern slave masters wanted to keep slaves illiterate. Wanted to keep the Bible out of the hands of slaves. They wanted to retain hermeneutical hegemony. That ultimately failed because it was in direct conflict with nature of the Protestant faith. 

Slave masters were right to fear what would happen when slaves could read the Bible for themselves. When they suddenly had access to the entire Bible, and not just safe prooftexts spoonfed to them by their masters. The Bible was a threat to the status quo; a threat to the ruling class. 

Scripture is often attacked for failing to offer an explicit, blanket condemnation of slavery. Ironically, I always see this objection lodged by white atheists. By contrast, Southern slaves were quick to pick up on the countercultural message of Scripture. Quick to discern an analogy between the bondage of the Israelites in Egypt and Ole Massa as Pharaoh. The Bible in the hands of a slave was a loaded gun pointed at the head of the Antebellum establishment. 

The Bible is a dangerous book. That's why secular regimes outlaw the Bible. They know that putting a Bible in the hands of the proletariat is subversive to the totalitarian pretensions of the regime. That's a recipe for revolution. 

The truth that dare not speak its name

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2019/04/roger-scruton-cameron-s-resignation-was-death-knell-conservative-party

The art of the autobiography

The canonical Gospels are often classified as Greco-Roman bio. How the Gospels are classified goes to the question of their historicity. And that can go either way. If you classify them as historical by literary genre, then by definition they're historical. Or you might classify them as historical based on the contents and corroboration. 

There are, however, many different kinds of biographical and autobiographical writing. To my knowledge, this is a severely neglected topic in Gospel criticism. This is my off-the-cuff taxonomy. There may be other examples I've overlooked since I haven't done in-depth research on the issue. My immediate purpose isn't to peg the Gospels according to this taxonomy, but to briefly explore how Gospel criticism typically oversimplifies the range of genre. 

1. Critical biography

An academic tome intended to be excruciatingly exhaustive. Usually about a public figure. Documents every detail as equally important. Nothing too trivial to escape notice. A reference work for fellow historians or diehard fans. 

2. Official propaganga

Stuff churned out by court historians to embellish the image of the glorious leader.

3. Hagiography 

An image-conscious autobiography designed to control how he will be remembered by posterity. A crafted reputation.

4. Hatchet-job

An anti-hagiography. Tries to debunk someone's reputation. Dig up dirt. Peddle rumor, gossip, and innuendo. A. N. Wilson's biography of C. S. Lewis is a case in point.

5. Nice guys finish last

In the entertainment industry, polishing your bad boy/bad girl credentials is a career booster. The star goes out of their way to be be sensational and scandalous.  

6. Exposé

Designed to settle old scores with political enemies or professional rivals. 

7. Apologetic

Defending one's reputation and the pristine purity of one's motives. Examples include Josephus and Newman's Apologia. 

8. The Wit and Wisdom

A subdivision of hagiography, with catchy quips and one-liners

8. Confessional

Often documents the before and after of a dramatic conversion experience. Classic examples include Augustine and Bunyan.

However, it can also be by infidels who aspire to authenticity and transparency (e.g. Sartre). 

9. Underdog

Heroic tale of somebody who overcomes adversity. Booker T. Washington is a classic example. 

10. Witness

The testament of an eyewitness to institutional evil. Examples include Elie Wiesel and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

11. Self-promotional propaganda

Mein Kampf

12. Memoir

A selective autobiography. Not selective based on some agenda, but simply what the writer finds personally significant. Defining incidents in his life. Not so much about himself, but using his experience and observation to comment on the world. Heavy on interpretation. The reader views a particular time and place through the eyes of the autobiographer. An extreme example is Proust.

13. Diaries

In cases where the diarist is famous, he may write self-consciously in anticipation that his "private" diaries will someday come to light–in which case the diary may be less forthcoming. If the diarist is not a public figure, the entries are more likely to be candid, unguarded, and revealing. 

14. Intellectual autobiography

Typically in a festschrift for a philosopher, with a focus on his intellectual development. Thinkers who influenced his outlook. Sparring partners.

15. Travelogue

By explorers who travel the world or discover the world. Their life is defined where they've been. The places make their lives interesting to read about. 

16. Pioneers

By desperate or adventurous people who settle an area, then write about their risky, arduous experience bringing civilization to the wilderness.  

17. War journals

Some folks live in exciting, harrowing, hazardous times. The circumstances make their lives gripping to read about.

18. Autobiographical fiction

Mark Twain, Larry McMurtry, Giorgio Bassani, Thomas Hughes (Tom Brown's School Days).

A Caution About Ben Shapiro's New PragerU Video And Book

You can view the video here. It centers around the Athens/Jerusalem distinction made by Tertullian. I haven't read Shapiro's book, though I did look up his citation of Tertullian there and read the surrounding context. I can't evaluate his book as a whole, but the video is misleading, as is the portion of the book I read. Shapiro does a lot of good work, and I suspect the book as a whole has a lot of good qualities. But the video is problematic, and what little I've seen of the book raises some concerns about it.

I wrote an article several years ago about misrepresentations of Tertullian's comments on Athens and Jerusalem and another passage in Tertullian that's often misrepresented. Go here to find an index of responses to many other misconceptions about the church fathers, including other ones about the supposed intellectual negligence of the early Christians. And here's an article I wrote about the intellectual nature of Christianity and the importance of apologetics.

The appeal of Catholicism

I think the appeal of Catholicism for some cradle Catholics and converts to Catholicism is that you can lose yourself in Catholicism because it's so all-encompassing. There are Catholic philosophers, novelists, poets, painters, playwrights, composers, sculptors, filmmakers, mystics, architects, ethicists, &c. In that regard, Catholicism is one-stop shopping. There's a sense in which you could be intellectually and aesthetically fulfilled without ever leaving the Catholic compound, because there's Catholic everything. You'd never know what you were missing, because every slot has Catholic representation. So you never run out of Catholic trails to explore. You just keep going deeper into Catholicism. In a human lifespan, it's inexhaustible. Mind you, there are some problems with that:

i) It's quite possible for someone to be eclectic and cherry-pick the best from every culture. You can mix and match. You can like a lot of stuff by Catholics without any commitment to Catholic theology. We do that with ancient Greek and Roman art and literature, which is often pagan on the face of it. 

ii) A very impressive edifice can be built on nonsense. If there's enough talent feeding into Catholicism, it will build an impressive edifice, even if the foundation is legendary embellishment.

For instance, I enjoy Poulenc's Stabat Mater. Especially the performance conducted by Georges Prêtre with Régine Crespin as soloist. From somebody with my musical sensibilities, it's a powerful experience. The tonal aura of a dying world. Yet the text he set to music is pious nonsense. In principle, he could set a Buddhist poem to the same kind of music with the same elegiac effect. 

iii) In addition, you can lose yourself in something to the point where you never find your way out of the forest. You keep walking in circles, impervious to correctives, because you stopped reading the critics. You just go ever-deeper into error. 

The dispute over evolution and theology is asymmetric

I think the dispute over evolution and theology is not a symmetric one, as my friend Paul Garner would say.  My own efforts to understand God's creation from a creationist perspective could very well be wrong.  But if I am wrong, I have made mistakes about science because of my adherence to what I believe to be the Word of God.  On the other hand, if BioLogos and their followers are wrong, that seems to be a more serious matter.  They offer us a rather radically different vision of the Bible and the Christian message of sin, its source, and its consequences.  These strike me as far weightier matters that warrant great fear and trembling rather than cavalier enthusiasm.

http://toddcwood.blogspot.com/2019/04/my-visit-to-biologos.html

My intellectual development

Having been a Christian blogger and apologist, this might be a good time to say something about my intellectual development and predilections:

• I never pursued an academic career because that requires a field of specialization, and my interests are too varied to sacrifice. Moreover, I think my wide-ranging interests enrich my apologetic resources. 

• Everything I care about ties into Christian theology. All my varied interests tie into Christian theology. That provides a unifying principle. I don't have a fallback position. I can't detach Christianity from what matters. I have no positions independent of Christianity. It's Christianity all the way down. All my positions in ethics, metaphysics, and epistemology are guided by or grounded in Christian theology. 

• I backed into apologetics to answer other people's questions rather than my own. However, there came a point in life where it was helpful having that in reserve.

• I think naturalism is a recipe for moral nihilism, existential nihilism, and epistemic nihilism. As such, naturalism is a backstop against apostasy because there is no alternative to Christian reality.  

• Because apologists influence each other, apologetics can get stuck in a rut. It becomes too stereotypical and repetitive. One thing I've tried to do is to explore neglected lines of evidence for the Christian faith, thereby broadening the evidential basis for Christianity. 

• I became a Calvinist for what at the time were inadequate reasons. However, I made the right call. My initial understanding of Calvinism was formed and informed by reading Warfield and Cunningham. Paul Helm has also been useful over the years. 

• Although freewill theism has produced a number of eminent thinkers, I just can't take it seriously as a solution to the problem of evil. And the God of freewill theism is a smaller God than the God of Calvinism. Not the greatest conceivable being. 

• As a young Christian I explored Catholicism, but I was always too Bible-centered to find Catholicism satisfactory. Aesthetically I identify with the high-church tradition but theologically I identify with the low-church tradition. 

• Correspondence with Greg Bahnsen, John Frame, Vern Poythress, and William Young served as sounding boards in the initial formulation of my theology. 

• I'm basically a classical theist, although I reject Thomistic simplicity 

• I prefer exegetical theology and philosophical theology to historical theology

• I prefer metaphysics to epistemology

• I prefer the principle of plenitude to the principle of parsimony 

• I prefer rationalism to empiricism. I like philosophical and scientific thought-experiments. However, the empiricist emphasis on sense knowledge is a salutary corrective to the rationalist derogation of sense knowledge. 

• I subscribe to the Medieval exemplarist tradition

• I find symmetries interesting, especially reflection symmetries, crystallography, tessellation, infinity mirrors, Pachelbel's canon, &c. The Trinity is the paradigm symmetry. Reality is ultimately complex rather than simple. 

• I'm an indirect realist. To that extent, I'm a scientific antirealist. Appearances all the way down. Layered appearances. In that regard, divine revelation is necessary to provide an intersubjectival check on sensory perception. 

• The philosophy of time is an interest of mine 

• John Ruskin and Christina Rossetti are side interests

• Historic thinkers I find stimulating include Anselm, Berkeley, Descartes, Leibniz, Newman, Philoponus, and Pascal.

• Recent thinkers I find stimulating include Robert Adams, Dembski, Geach, Gödel, David Lewis, Le Poindevin, Thomas Nagel, Plantinga, Pruss, Poincaré, Josh Rasmussen, Sheldrake, van Fraassen, van Inwagen, Van Til. 

• I often correspond with Greg Welty, Paul Manata, James Anderson, Tim and Lydia McGrew

• When I was younger I used to think ethicists were philosophers who lack the acumen to do metaphysics, or aging philosophers who lost their intellectual edge. However, I developed a greater appreciation for ethics as I came to view it in a broader existential light: what makes life meaningful. 

• Favorite theistic proofs:

Argument from miracles

Argument from numbers

Argument from counterfactuals

Argument from truth (Aquinas)

Argument from logic

Argument from reason (Rasmussen)

Argument from contingency (Leibniz)

Evolutionary argument against naturalism

Pascal's Wager

An Antiracism Glossary

https://shenviapologetics.com/an-antiracism-glossary/

Reframing the problem of evil

In standard philosophical discussions regarding the problem of evil, the nature and occurrence of evil is typically held to be prima facie evidence against God's existence, although that can be offset by other kinds of evidence for God's existence. 

Put another way, God's benevolence and existence are linked. If the problem of evil calls into question God's benevolence, that in turn calls into question God's existence. 

It's striking that the stereotypical way of casting the issue is so different from Scripture. In Scripture, God's existence is never in doubt. However, prophets and psalmists sometimes express frustrations or misgivings about God's benevolence. To that extent, God's existence and goodness aren't tightly linked. 

To be sure, it's not that God's goodness is questionable from the viewpoint of Scripture. But there are speakers within Scripture that voice a perceived tension between God's existence and his benevolence. So that reframes the issue. 

Do men talk about their feelings?

Women complain that men don't talk about their feelings. At least that's a cliche I've heard for as long as I can remember. However, in my admittedly anecdotal experience, many men do talk about their feelings. The reason more women aren't aware of that is because men generally share their feelings with other men! They confide in male friends.

Assuming that men are less likely to express their feelings with women, why is that? Again, I'm no expert, but women have a reputation for dredging up the past when they argue with their husband or boyfriend. I can't say how representative that is, but it's not based on nothing.

A man would be foolish to open up to a woman if he knows she's going to use that against him to win an argument. So I suspect that may be a major reason why men are more likely to open up around other men than with their wife or girlfriend. Just a hunch. 

In addition, there's a certain paradox in male friendship. On the one hand, men are naturally competitive with other men, so you might think they'd be reticent about letting down their guard and showing any sign of weakness. On the other hand, since men are psychologically alike, there's no particular shame in sharing emotions and experiences that are common to men. Moreover, I think men are more inclined to put things behind them rather than having a mental record of every word, deed, misdeed, or perceived failure on instant replay. 

These are, of course, broad generalizations with many exceptions. But if a wife or girlfriend wants a guy to let her on how he's feeling, she can't simultaneously turn that against him to win an argument. That's a betrayal of trust. It will be rewarded with resentment, and drive guys to confide in other guys. 

BTW, my enecounters with women over the years has generally been quite positive, so I'm not speaking from bitter personal experience. I'm not unloading or venting. Rather, I'm speaking on behalf of other guys whose experience is less agreeable than mine. 

Hand shadows

I've made this point before, but I'm going to use a different illustration to make the same point. The Nicene paradigm is based on an asymmetrical relation between the Father, Son, and Spirit, where the Father is the source of the Son and Spirit. The exegetical basis for that is dubious (for reasons I've detailed elsewhere). 

Although the Nicene paradigm was developed in opposition to Arianism, the Nicene paradigm remains implicitly unitarian. By making the Father the unoriginate source of the Son and Spirit, the Father is the real God behind the Trinity. It reduces the Son and Spirit to hand shadows or shadow puppets. The Father is the light, the positive source, while the Son and Spirit are secondary, negative effects, like shadows cast by light. If there was a momentary interruption in the transmission, the Son and Spirit, like shadows, would instantly cease to be because their existence is totally derivative. The Nicene Trinity is a cinema in silhouette. The Father is the shadowgrapher while the Son and Spirit are silhouettes. 

God and gender

"Progressive Christians" object to using masculine pronouns for God. They resort to awkward neologisms like "Godself". The justification is that God isn't male. God is a discarnate spirit. 

Ironically, this debate has been overtaken by transgenderism. "Progressive Christians" champion the cause of transgenderism, yet that detaches gender from biology, so if they wish to be consistent, they must reverse their position on masculine pronouns for God.

But bracketing their intellectual schizophrenia, what about the original argument? Things that are biologically sexless can still be gendered. Take a Jane Austen novel (or Virginia Wolf novel, or short stories by Eudora Welty). The novel is not a female body. It doesn't have female chromosomes, hormones, or sexual anatomy. A Jane Austen novel is an inanimate object. 

And yet a Jane Austen novel is unmistakably feminine. Her novels are exemplifications of a feminine outlook. They reflect a feminine viewpoint.

The converse is true with respect to the Iliad or The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Even if these writings were anonymous, and we knew nothing about the authors over and above the writing itself, we can tell that a Jane Austen novel is written by a woman while the Iliad or The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is written by a man. In works like these, the reader sees the world through the eyes of a man or woman, even though the book itself has no biological sex. 

So gender is more abstract than sexual biology. Sexual biology and psychology are concrete exemplifications of those abstract properties. 

Dogs and babies

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2019/04/03/tiny-baby-did-not-have-any-hospital-visitors-five-months-so-nurse-adopted-her/

Compare this to women who "rescue" dogs from animal shelters, then have "dog mom" bumper stickers.

War on reality

http://whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2019/04/the_denial_of_reality_must_be.html

Part of the reason for this is that once you deny God, then reality ceases to be normative. In naturalism, reality is arbitrary. A blind surd. So why not rebel against reality?

Naturalism and unitarianism

There's a striking parallel between naturalism and unitarianism. Naturalism is reductionistic. Naturalism prioritizes parsimony. So, for instance, naturalism prefers monism over dualism because monism is metaphysically simpler. Everything is reducible to a single substance. Matter and energy are the same thing in different states. And that's all there is. Naturalism labors to explain away the need for abstract objects or minds distinct from brains. Likewise, bigger things are composed of smaller things. The ultimate constituents of reality are utterly simple (elementary particles). 

Sometimes naturalists grudgingly allow for platonic realism or paradox because reality forces ineluctable complexity onto naturalism. Likewise, naturalists may posit a multiverse to evade the fine-tuning argument, or because that's one interpretation of quantum mechanics. But whenever possible, naturalism seeks maximal simplicity. Eliminative materialism is a limiting case of naturalistic reductionism. 

By the same token, unitarianism is reductionistic. Impatient with complexity. The unitarian God is preferable to the Trinitarian God because the unitarian God is simpler. A merely human messiah is preferable to God Incarnate because that's simpler. 

James White Confronts City Council

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUtaUg1sJQs

The origin of the Easter Bunny

– Wesley Huff

Is Heb 1 about the new creation?

A while back I asked a renown Bible scholar to comment on Dale Tuggy's idiosyncratic, "new creation" reinterpretation of Heb 1. Here's how the scholar responded: 

The point of the catena [in Heb 1] is to demonstrate Jesus's superiority to the angels - or. better, difference in kind from the angels. It does not have to all relate to the exalted Jesus, but works with the standard Jewish correlation of "God is the only Creator of all things" and "God is the only sovereign Lord of all things."

"The beginning" is virtually a technical term for the primordial time at the beginning of everything (Gen 1:1; Prov 8:22-23; John 1:1). 

"You founded [past tense]  the earth and the heavens ..." would be utterly unparalleled as a way of referring to the new creation. For the NT, the new creation of heaven and earth is still very much future (Rev 21; Acts 3:21). Only in the case of individual Christians can new creation be said to have already happened (2 Cor 5:17). 

The new creation, when it comes, will not perish (Heb 12:27).

Tuggy's exegesis is ridiculously forced and quite obviously special pleading.

The Song of Songs

The couple in Song of Songs was not married. Or engaged. The most literal reading of the Bible is that they were sneaking around having wild and enthusiastic premarital sex.

I’m sorry people have been telling you lies about this.

— Lura Groen (@lura_groen) April 3, 2019

i) Apparently, Lura is ordained in the ELCA.

ii) To the contrary, the couple seems to be bride and groom. And as one commentator observes:

The centerpiece of the book is a wedding scene that concludes with the consummation of their relationship. Iain Duguid, The Song of Songs: An Introduction and Commentary (IVP 2015), 41.

iii) It's artificial to isolate the sexual mores in the Song of Songs from Proverbs or the Mosaic Law.

iv) The "most literal reading"? This isn't a prosaic narrative, but a highly stylized set of love poems with a loose narrative thread.

v) Unfortunately for Lura, it's overwhelmingly heteronormative.

vi) I think the book is a fictional depiction of the sexual fantasies of a man and woman engaged to be married. Erotic poetry to celebrate the sexual passion and anticipation of the bride and groom. That accounts for the blurry, fluid, dream-like plot.

"No crying he makes"

"Away in a Manger" is a favorite Christmas carol. (I prefer the Kirkpatrick tune.) The line "no crying he makes" is often chided as Gnostic or Docetic. It's true that the sentiment may be unrealistic, although babies don't cry all the time. 

However, I think the criticism is overly censorious. The problem is that hymnodists must function within a very restrictive scheme of rhythm and rhyme. That severely limits the choice of words, since stanzas must be metrical with rhyming couplets. If one line ends with "awakes," then the next line must end with a rhyming word–preferably with the same number of syllables. The challenge is finding two rhyming words that can be used to form meaningful, contextual sentences. Once you write a sentence with "awakes" as the end rhyme of the first line, that commits you to whatever is available for the next line.  

Of course, if you can't compose a good matching sentence, then you should choose a different pair of words. However, the carol wasn't written by a master lyricist like Charles Wesley, so it's less rhetorically resourceful or theologically alert. In addition, the general theme of the carol limits the topical range of sentences at the disposal of a lyricist.

To chide the implicit Christology expressed in one line over-interprets the sentiment. It's just a way to round out the first line, consistent with poetic meter and rhyming couplets. There's no sinister theological agenda lurking behind the phrase. 

Functional Polytheism: A response to Dale Tuggy by Vladimir Šušić

http://adlucem.co/functional-polytheism-a-response-to-dale-tuggy-by-vladimir-susic/

Josephus, Synoptics, and the argument from silence

Outside NT, Josephus is the main historian for Palestine during Jesus' life.

His Antiquities Bk 18 covers 32 yrs ca. AD 6-38.

At ca. 15,764 words it's shorter than Matt (18,347)/Luke (19,463)

He has <500 words/yr.

It's absurd to think he should mention everything significant.

— Peter J. Williams (@DrPJWilliams) March 28, 2019

Memoirs and memories

1. One objection to the historicity of the Gospels is the argument from silence. Here's an example:

https://www.michaeljkruger.com/gospel-critics-and-the-argument-from-silence/

The argument from silence can be a legitimate and powerful argument. It all depends on whether there's a reasonable expectation that if something happened, we'd have a record of that, or multiple records. There are different explanations for a writer's failure to mention a significant event he knew about, even if it's relevant to his writing. 

2. Paradoxically, a writer might not mention something, not because he's ignorant, or because it didn't happen, but because it did happen and he's knows all about it. For instance, no one knew Dante Rossetti better than his brother Michael. Yet, as I recall, Michael said that being his brother disqualified him from writing an autobiography of Dante. That's not because Michael didn't know enough about his brother, but because he knew too much, and he was protecting Dante's posthumous reputation. Likewise, Warnie Lewis is in invaluable source of information about his brother, but there are lots of sensitive details he left out of the public eye. 

3. Here's another reason a writer might fail to mention something significant. When I was about 40, I wrote a memoir. It was a way to take stock of my life up to that point. Paradoxically, it's quite possible, when writing an autobiography, to inadvertently leave out significant incidents, not because you forgot, but because you remember too much. Our memories are stored in the subconscious. Although we can summon memories to conscious awareness, it's impossible to be conscious of more than a tiny fraction of what we remember. So when you're writing a memoir, it can be difficult to screen out the plethora of memories you don't want to write about in order to focus on the memories you do want to write about. There's no direct way to filter the search parameters so that you just pull up the memories you want to write about. There's a huge amount of mental sifting and sorting required to write an autobiography. It's very easy for significant incidents to slip your mind in the writing process, because human powers of concentration are so limited. 

4. In addition, some memories aren't just a matter of direct recollection, but inferential reconstruction. I'll take an example from my own life. As a boy, I had a dog I was very fond of. I vividly remember the day I got her, and I vividly remember the day I had her euthanized. I have no direct recollection of the date, month, or year for either event. 

Because memory is associative, the trick is to link a memory with another memory that has some datable or broadly datable information. I have a rough idea of when I euthanized my dog, because that was after a trip to Europe. 

I remember that I got my dog on a summer day. My parents drove to a residential neighborhood in Seattle. My dog was in the front yard. As I recall, this was near Cornish. 

And that makes sense because my mother may well have gotten the dog from one of her teaching colleagues. She founded a school for the fine and performing arts on the Eastside, and the teachers she hired would naturally be drawn from Cornish and the UDub. 

But what about the year? I still don't know for sure, but I have a ballpark idea. It took me years to get a bead on that.

Recently, I remembered that even though my grandmother was not a dog person, she appreciated my dog because my dog was very protective. That's back when my grandmother was living in town and came to visit us every so often.

But around the time I started junior high, she moved across the mountains to Yakima. And how do I know when that happened? Because I later read some dated correspondence between my mother and my grandmother that mentioned a time when we went to visit her. That means I must have gotten my dog at least a couple of years before I started junior high. 

Yet it's just a fluke that I have enough random, contextual bits of information to piece it together. That illustrates how hard it can be to nail down the chronology of naturally memorable events we know from firsthand experience. 

5. I'd add that the Internet has made it easier to pin down or flesh out certain details in our recollection. But, of course, biographers and autobiographers didn't have that supplementary source of information for most of human history. 

6. The historicity of the Gospels is frequently defended on the grounds that the writers were deliberately selective. And that's no doubt true to some degree. But for reasons I've just given, eyewitness testimony can be inadvertently selective as well. Silence, per se, carries no presumption that the writer wasn't a firsthand observer. Ironically, he may unintentionally omit significant incidents because recollection is so indiscriminate. 

Do The Resurrection Accounts Fabricate Evidence?

It's often suggested that the New Testament accounts of Jesus' resurrection or the sources they're based upon faked some of their details to make the resurrection seem more credible. Matthew or his source fabricated the account of the guard at the tomb to prevent people from thinking that Jesus' body had been stolen. Luke and John made up stories to further the notion that the resurrection appearances were of a physical nature rather than something like a hallucination or vision. And so on.

Notice the irony in the fact that many of these same critics will object to the brevity of the accounts in Matthew and Mark. That sort of brevity doesn't sit well with the idea that the authors or their sources were trying to pad their case with fake evidence. Even the passages in Luke, John, Acts, and elsewhere are relatively short. The resurrection was so central to all of the gospels that they all conclude just after it, and it's treated as a foundational event in other ways, yet the resurrection accounts only take up a small percentage of the documents.

More significantly, think of the large amount of material they could have included, but didn't. There's no description of the resurrection itself. The empty tomb is discovered by some of Jesus' female followers rather than other witnesses who would have been considered more appropriate and more credible. There's no narration of the appearance to James, even though every gospel portrays him as an unbeliever, which makes his conversion after seeing the risen Jesus so important. (For documentation that all of the gospels portray James as an unbeliever, see Eric Svendsen's Who Is My Mother? [Amityville, New York: Calvary Press, 2001].) None of the gospels include the appearance to Paul. If the appearance to more than five hundred mentioned in 1 Corinthians 15:6 is narrated by anybody, it's done without mentioning that so many individuals were involved. Matthew's reference to the physicality of Jesus' body in 28:9 is incidental, and Matthew, Luke, and John's accounts of physicality are accompanied by accounts of people doubting or not recognizing Jesus (Matthew 28:17, Luke 24:16, 24:37-38, John 20:15, 21:4). Ancient Jewish literature frequently portrayed resurrected individuals and other exalted figures in glorious terms (Daniel 12:3, 2 Maccabees 15:13, Matthew 13:43), yet the gospels don't describe the resurrected Jesus that way.

Luke's gospel provides a good illustration of the sort of restraint I'm referring to. Given the earliness of the resurrection creed cited in 1 Corinthians 15 and Luke's close relationship with Paul, Luke probably knew about the appearances to James, Paul, and the more than five hundred. He portrays James as a believer and an apostle in Acts, and he narrates the appearance to Paul there. So, he seems to know about the resurrection appearances to James, Paul, and the more than five hundred, even though he only narrates one of them and waits until several chapters into Acts to do it. Jesus' body and general appearance are described in glorious terms in Luke's accounts of the Mount of Transfiguration and the resurrection appearance to Paul in Acts. Even the angels at Jesus' tomb are described in glorious terms (Luke 24:4-5). But the resurrected Jesus isn't described that way at the close of Luke's gospel or the opening of Acts. I could mention other examples, but these are more than enough to illustrate my point.

The impression given by the gospels and other early sources is that they had a large amount of resurrection evidence to draw from, but were satisfied with citing some representative examples. John 21:25 just about says that.

The rest of church history illustrates what I'm referring to. Even after Matthew's gospel became widely accepted, for example, the guards at the tomb weren't often brought up when Christians were arguing for their religion or the resurrection in particular. The guards offer a significant line of evidence for the resurrection, but they're just one significant line among many others. When I discuss the evidence for the resurrection, sometimes I cite the guard account, and sometimes I don't. Matthew probably included it because of its relevance to Judaism and the leaders of Judaism, to whom he was responding to such a large extent in his gospel. The other gospel authors had no need to include that material and thought that what they did include was adequate.

The earliest Christians don't seem to have been so desperate for resurrection evidence that they were making up stories about guards at the tomb, people touching Jesus' resurrection body, etc. Rather, many modern critics want to dismiss every such detail in the accounts, even if the details are offered so sparingly and surrounded with so much restraint. The early Christians were biased, but their critics have biases of their own.

Broflake

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/broflake

This is a rhetorical riposte to "snowflakes". A way to put younger men who chafe at political correctness on the defensive. 

i) The snowflake category isn't just a rightwing perception. Increasingly, there are liberal outlets that express concern about "snowplow parents." Snowplow parents are so overprotective and meddling that their kids never develop the coping skills they need to function in adult society. That's a real problem. 

ii) Although "broflake" is clever rhetorical tactic, it isn't very smart for progressives to keep antagonizing and writing off major voting blocks. There are lots of men who aren't socially conservative, who naturally vote Democrat, but when the party keeps snubbing guys for being guys, that's half the potential electorate right there. 

iii) I'm not "offended" by progressive attitudes or policies. And I personally probably haven't been hurt by such policies, in part because the culture wars were far less advanced when I was younger, and in part because I had a certain margin that a lot of guys don't have. It was easy for me to make the cut, even though I'm naturally an underachiever. 

But we have policies that are very harmful to men. That's not something to make fun of–unless you just hate half the species. 

When a child says she's trans

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/07/when-a-child-says-shes-trans/561749/

The lynching of Jesse Washington

It is sometimes claimed that Christians who reject hell as eternal conscious torment do so out of "sentimentalism". As if moral horror at the prospect of human beings suffering torture forever is being "too sentimental"? What a grotesque assertion!

— Tentative Apologist (@RandalRauser) April 2, 2019

Notice Rauser's sympathy for the damned rather than sympathy for victims of the damned. To take just one example, consider the lynching of Jesse Washington. A developmentally disabled teenager was convicted of murder, without legal representation, in a kangaroo court. A mob was waiting for him outside the courthouse. They chained him and hauled him off to torture him to death. Cut off his ears. Castrated him. Repeatedly raised and lowered his body into a bonfire so that he'd slowly burn to death. When he tried to climb up the chain to escape the flames, they cut off his fingers. 

That's an extreme example, but I use it to establish a point of principle. What punishment does Rauser think is suitable for the lynch mob? 

Me, myself, and I

i) A stock objection which unitarians raise to Trinitarian theology is that in the Gospels, Jesus talks to the Father or prays to the Father. Unitarians point to that and exclaim: "Ah ha! Jesus and the Father must be different! How silly to think God is talking to himself!"

ii) Now, at one level, that's a brainless objection because Trinitarian theology requires the Father and the Son to be different in a fundamental respect. So that's hardly inconsistent with Trinitarian theology. To the contrary, that's what we'd expect if it's true.

iii) But here's another point: there's nothing necessarily incongruous about the same individual addressing himself or talking to himself. Suppose a time-traveler in the future writes a letter to himself in the past. In contains important information. Reading the letter will avert a disaster. Based on his advance knowledge of how the past will eventuate, he plants the letter at a time and place where his younger self is sure to find it.  

Whether or not time travel is incoherent, there is nothing incoherent in principle about sending a message to yourself. There's nothing contradictory about the idea of doing that. This is just a graphic way to illustrate that principle. 

iv) Or, to take a more prosaic example, suppose you keep a diary because you don't want to forget what happened to you, from day to day. Even though daily incidents might seem to be insignificant at the time, some might prove to be highly significant in retrospect. 

Every so often you review earlier entries in your diary. The diary was written by the writer to the writer. The diarist is both writer and reader. Although it's possible for someone else to read your diary, the reason you kept a diary was to remind yourself of things that happened to you. The diarist is the intended reader of his own diary. 

v) Or take a two-way correspondence between you and your counterpart in a parallel universe. Suppose the multiverse is real, and it's possible to communicate with yourself in the alternate timeline. So you and your counterpart in the parallel universe exchange messages, back and forth. 

Even if there is no multiverse, or even if, assuming there is a multiverse, communication between you and your counterpart is technically impossible, there's nothing contradictory about the idea of doing so. Once again, this is just a graphic way to illustrate that principle. 

vi) I'd add that (v) raises tricky issues about personal identity. Yet that's no different in principle from counterfactual scenarios generally. Many philosophers, unless they are diehard reductionists, make allowance for a certain amount of give in personal identity to accommodate the truth-value of counterfactuals. The price for denying that is extremely high. 

Chronological time

1. Readers might find my title redundant. What other kind of time is there? Isn't time necessarily chronological? Depends on what you mean. 

Let's distinguish between chronological time and biological time (or physical time). According to Christian eschatology, God will rejuvenate believers at the resurrection of the just. The saints will have youthful, ageless bodies. 

Let's say the optimal age of a human body is 20. Strictly speaking, I'm not sure the human body has an optimal age. From what I've read, different body organs and systems mature and age at somewhat different rates. In glorification, the optimal age would have to synchronize these rates. For convenience, let's stimulate age 20.

So an immortal saint could be a billion years old, but have the body of a 20-year-old. Chronologically he's a billion years old, but biologically he's only twenty years old. Biologically, he stays the same age while chronologically he continues to age indefinitely. 

2. That parallels a distinction drawn by Philip Henry Gosse. Normally, physical and chronological time coincide, but Gosse had the insight to appreciate that, in principle and possibly in practice, these can be split apart. It's a profound insight, equal to McTaggart's distinction between the A-series and the B-series. The difference is that McTaggart is hailed as a great philosopher of time because he was an atheist, whereas Gosse is mocked because he was a creationist who devised and utilized his distinction to rescue traditional creationism. 

3. Finally, this involves a limitation on divine omnipotence. God can create a father who is biologically younger than his son, but God can't create a father who is chronologically younger than his son. For instance, God could rejuvenate Abraham, but refrain from rejuvenating Isaac. If so, Abraham would be biologically younger than his own son.

However, even an omnipotent agent can't make Abraham chronologically younger than Isaac because chronological time requires relative chronology. A father, to be a father, must preexist his son. It's a cause/effect relation, and the direction of causality, like time's arrow, is linear. 

I'd add that it's useful to recognize certain limitations on divine omnipotence because that's an important consideration in theodicy. There are some things even God can't do. 

"We don't know what Jesus looked like"

In my experience, there are roughly three objections to "pictures of Jesus". One invokes the 2nd Commandment. That's an important objection, which raises a number of complex issues. I think it fails, but it needs to be taken seriously. 

Another objection is the "Nestorian" charge. That's a silly objection, and it could be countered by accusing opponents of Monophysitism.

The third objection is that we don't know what Jesus looked like. Here I'll make four brief observations:

i) Christians need to be careful about referring to Jesus in the past tense. Certainly there are contexts in which it's correct to refer to him in the past tense. When we talk about what Jesus said and did during his 1C ministry. It is, however, striking how often Christians automatically slip into the past tense when referring to Jesus, even though we believe he's alive. So even if the objection were correct, it should be expressed in the present tense: "we don't know what Jesus looks like," rather than "we don't know what Jesus looked like."

ii) I'd add that if Jesus continues to appear to people, then there's a sense in which they do know what Jesus looks like. I'm referring to reported visions of Jesus or heavenly near-death experiences. However, that's not something I'd emphasize because even if some of these are genuine, Jesus may be adapting his appearance to the viewer's cultural expectations to be recognizable to them.

iii) If the Shroud of Turin is authentic, then we have a body-length (front and back) photograph of Jesus. Indeed, a photographic reproduction with 3D information. 

I don't have a firm opinion regarding the authenticity of the Shroud. I just haven't kept up with the research. My point, though, is that it's not a given to say we don't know what Jesus looks like. 

iv) Finally, the objection is arbitrary. We don't know what biblical figures in general looked like. But in my experience, Christians who object to "pictures of Jesus" don't object to movies about Noah, Moses, King David, King Solomon, St. Paul, or the Patriarchs, &c. 

The Most Reluctant Convert

https://www.proginosko.com/2019/04/the-most-reluctant-convert/

Atonement by crucifixion

Historically, many Arminians reject penal substitution. They agree with Calvinists that if Jesus died to satisfy God's justice on behalf of the redeemed, then all the redeemed must be saved, since there's no judicial basis for them to suffer eschatological punishment. In addition, progressive theologians like Randal Rauser find the idea of penal substitution repugnant.

Proponents of penal substitution quote and exegete the standard prooftexts. And I think those carry the day.

There is, though, a neglected, but straightforward argument for penal substitution that doesn't rely on the standard prooftexts. Hidden in plain sight is Christ's voluntary death by crucifixion. 

It can't be seriously doubted that the Gospels (indeed, the NT generally) present the Crucifixion in vicarious, sacrificial terms. If, however, Jesus didn't die a penal substitutionary death, then why did he choose death by crucifixion? Why did he undergo a type of death that's emblematic of vicarious sacrifice? If penal substitution is false, why did he die a violent death at all? If penal substitution is false, why did he have to undergo any kind of death? Whatever the alternative to penal substitution, it doesn't require death, does it? Much less a death with vicarious, sacrificial connotations.

Perhaps opponents of penal substitution will attempt to drive a wedge between vicarious atonement and penal substitution. If so, in what respect is his voluntary vicarious death not punitive in character?

A last-ditch argument might be to claim that Jesus never intended to die by crucifixion; rather, he was overtaken by events. His death, or mode of death, was due to unforeseeable circumstances.

But in the Gospels, Jesus deliberately and repeatedly provokes the authorities, knowing full well that he is courting execution. Moreover, he eludes the lynch mobs. He eludes death by stoning. So Jesus is very single-minded about how he will die. 

Likewise, at his trial, he makes statements that are incriminating from the viewpoint of his accusers and judges. And he refuses to defend himself before Pilate. So, by process of elimination, he leaves the authorities with no other recourse. He systematically engineers his death by crucifixion.  

But if penal substitution is false, he was sending a very confusing message to onlookers. How else could the disciples be expected to interpret his death? 

Progressive Christianity

Liberal Christian theology is like someone who started out with a luxury car but over time had to strip it down to a set of wheels that has to be pushed.

You've got to admire the determination to not give up on the car.#exchristian

— Tim Sledge (@Goodbye_Jesus) March 31, 2019