The "deep into history" trope

Somehow a Catholic propaganda site (Reformation Apologetics @HolyCatholicFaith) wormed itself into my Facebook feed. I could unfollow it but for now I'm using it for target practice. The latest exchange:

Hays

Protestant patrologists and Protestant church historians are just as deep into church history as their Catholic academic counterparts. They see the same evidence, but draw a contrary conclusion. For that matter, modern-day Catholic church historians concede that the traditional narrative of the papacy is a historical fiction.

Jayson

You mean different people have different opinions on the truth? What exactly does that prove other than people have different opinions? And as for your claim about catholic scholars, I hope you make the same claim about “Protestant scholars” and the deity of Christ, etc.

Hays

It proves that the maxim "to be deep into church history" doesn't select for Catholicism. Next question?

As for making the same claim about Protestant scholars, you fail to grasp the dialectic. I'm simply responding to the Newmanesque appeal on its own grounds. That doesn't mean I share his assumptions. So your attempted parallel fails.

Jayson

Newman’s appeal was simply a claim couched in rhetorical flourish. It is either true or false on the basis of its claims, not anything else. If you really think his claim was that “once you read a lot of history books you automatically become Roman Catholic” then you’re certainly more obtuse than you let on. His point was that it’s a deeper look into the historical data that makes it obvious that Protestantism is false. That there are so called catholic scholars that deny the historicity of the papacy is both irrelevant to Newman’s point and irrelevant to whether or not Protestantism is reasonable once delving deeply into history.

Hays 

Quoting Newman is a Catholic convert trope. "I used to be a Protestant who knew nothing about the church fathers, but once I began go read them the scales fell from my eyes"–as if that automatically validates the traditional claims of Rome. That's the point of the comparison with Protestant patrologists and church historians. 

And I'm always amused by lay nobodies and one-man magisteria who presume to say mainstream Catholic scholars aren't real Catholics. The hierarchy doesn't share your assessment. You don't count. You don't have a vote. Get over yourself. Submit to your bishop and shut up.

Risk and reality

The problem of natural evil is a perennial issue in theodicy. There are stock responses. I think some of them are good. But I'd like to approach it from a different angle. 

A fringe benefit of living in a physically dangerous world is that it forces you to take reality seriously. A hazardous environment weeds out inattentive people. 

When life becomes too safe, when people lose their sense of danger because they're used to having buffers that protect them from harm, it's easy to lose touch with reality. It's easy to indulge in make-believe and wishful thinking when you don't have the electric shock of reality to jolt you out of your beautiful delusions and playacting. Take a few examples in our own time and place:

• Into the Wild. The movie about a young idealist who imagines it would be a swell idea to spend a winter in the Alaska outback. He goes there unprepared and dies.

• Egotists who die in accidents by taking selfies in dangerous settings. Precariously preached on a cliff or mountain peak. Or with a rhino, grizzly bear, bison, or bull moose in the background–as if wild animals are stuffed animals.

• Progressives who insist that "transwomen" have a right to access shelters for battered women and rape victims.

• Adults who imagine they are animals. And they demand that everyone accommodate their fantasy.

• The antivaxxer movement

• Open border polices that admit people into the country who haven't been screed for infectious diseases.

• Replacing solid waste disposal with composting leftover food, which is a magnet for rats, which, in turn, invites an outbreak of bubonic plague.

• Hikers who only take a cellphone with them. They don't have extra water or overnight gear. If they get into trouble, they assume they can always call for help and somebody in a chopper will rescue them. 

• Hikers who venture into bear country without a high-powered rifle.

• Private pet collectors with dangerous exotic animals that sometimes kill them.

• Immigration policies that induct Muslims into the country, thereby introducing domestic terrorism, honor killings, a gang-rape culture &c. into the host country. 

• People who get too close to dangerous animals in zoos and animal parks. 

• Gun bans/confiscation that leave civilians defenseless against the criminal class. 

A false sense of security fosters moral and spiritual insanity. Living in a dangerous world, where there are no buffers, forces you to be realistic if you expect to survive–much less to thrive. There's no margin for error.

People who become too insulated from danger are apt to be cocky, arrogant, presumptuous, and foolhardy. Paradoxically, natural evil can be a corrective to moral evil. Having beliefs that defy reality is willful lunacy. Real life isn't composed of downy pillows that cushion your fall. False beliefs can hurt you. That's a disincentive to cultivating false beliefs. 

To become increasingly detached from reality is a form of moral and intellectual derangement. Natural evil motivates people to take truth seriously. The pain of flouting reality motivates people to take truth seriously. 

In Scripture, idolatry is a paradigm-case of those who've lost contact with reality and replace it with imaginary constructs. Although the deterrent value of natural evil is limited–insofar as some people are willfully reckless–it prevents other people from plunging off the deep end. Without that objective stinger, subjectivity takes over.   

Driving a wedge between reason and authority

A convert to Catholic attempted to rebut my post:

http://scottericalt.com/steve-hays-posits-false-dichotomy-between-authority-and-reason/

He calls his site Triablogue, for optimistic reasons known to him alone. 

I didn't name the blog. Ryan MacReyolds did. 

His latest screed is entitled “Catholic apologetics is self-destructive” — which must explain why it’s been around since Justin Martyr.

News flash: Justin Martyr wasn't Roman Catholic. 

At this point I am curious. Have Protestant apologists given up on sola scriptura? Maybe I’ve been otherwise engaged in recent years and missed the news. But I thought that the authority of Bible — and just the Bible, that’s it, sir — was one of the pillars of the Protestant Reformation. We judge everything by the authority of those seventy-three sixty-six books. Every doctrine must be found there or it’s just a vile tradition of men. Have Protestants given this up now? I only ask questions.

Mr. Hays goes on: “Notice how often a Catholic apologist reframes an issue in terms of authority … Human reason is so untrustworthy that we need the pope to play referee.”

Well, yes and no. I don’t really need to pull out Proverbs 14:12 here. If Mr. Hays and I are in an argument about sola scriptura, it’s fair for me to point out that the Bible must be interpreted and how does he know his interpretation is right? The meaning is not just there; the Bible does not interpret itself, Westminster notwithstanding. After all, Protestants differ even among themselves about many key verses. If that were not so, Arminians and Calvinists could not both be Protestant. That’s how unreliable “the Bible alone” is.

But that does not mean that Catholics have abandoned, or even given small importance to, “human reason.”...Does Mr. Hays have reason to believe that the Orthodox behave like Calvinist bloggers and make stuff up as they go?

Mr. Hays has a lot to explain when he cites Aquinas’s appeal to reason on the Real Presence. Aquinas was Catholic, sir.

All these objections suffer from the same confusion. I don't erect a dichotomy between reason and authority. Rather, that's what Catholic apologists typically do. Catholic apologists have resorted to skepticism since the Counter-Reformation:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2017/12/catholic-fideism.html

And it remains a fixture of Catholic apologetics right up to our own day. Take my recent exchange with Michael Liccione:

https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2019/08/running-in-place.html

Or take Ed Feser's essay, "The God of a Philosopher," in the recent Faith and Reason anthology, edited by Besong and Fuqua. Unlike Catholic apologists, I don't impugn the general competence of reason. Likewise, I'm not the one who says communication is so ambiguous that we require the pope to play referee. 

The strategy of Catholic apologists generates a dilemma. They can't tear down reason to attack the Protestant faith, then turn right around and appeal to the same untrustworthy faculty to defend Catholicism. 

And it’s a caricature to say that the pope plays referee all the time between warring Catholics. Not in my experience. First of all, Catholics don’t have that kind of hotline to the Vatican. Half the time, we can’t even get the local bishop to pay us any mind. Second, too many Catholics these days are full of pride and hiss like feral cats at anything the pope says. Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome is a real problem. But Catholics don’t send the pope an email every time Boodle and Coodle get in an argument about Luke 22:36 and the second amendment. The pope’s role as teacher of the whole Church is more about preserving the unity of the faith than answering every question that comes up.

I appreciate Alt's frank admission regarding the general uselessness of a living teaching office. I wish him success in persuading his fellow Catholics to share his dim view regarding the general uselessness of a living teaching office. 

And here, dear reader, is where the false dichotomy emerges. To give evidence at all means that the evidence has some authority, in your view.

Now he's resorting to his own homespun redefinitions. 

Apart from not knowing the meaning of “hiatus”—incongruity is closer to Mr. Hays’ meaning...

I'm using "hiatus" the same way dictionaries do: "a rift, break, gap, hole, discontinuity, where something is missing". An apt descriptor for how the dogma of transubstantiation drives a wedge between appearance and reality. 

 — no Catholic apologist I know defends, say, the Marian dogmas by telling us that the Church teaches the Marian dogmas and stopping there…In a similar way, when Pope St. John Paul II wrote in defense of the teaching that the priesthood is restricted to men (Ordinatio Sacerdotalis), he didn’t say “the Church has always taught this” and stop there. He explained why the Church has always taught it…And when Pope St. Paul VI reiterated the ban on artificial contraception (Humanae Vitae), he gave several arguments from reason, including an appeal to natural law.

i) He has yet to wrap his head around what the actual argument is. Catholic apologists constantly assert that human reason is so unreliable, interpretation is so unreliable, that we need the pope to play referee. They deploy Pyrrhonian skepticism to create an opening for the argument from authority (i.e. the magisterium) as the necessary backup. When, however, they do an about-face and appeal to the same discredited reason to prop up Catholic dogmas, the contradiction is blatant. 

ii) Yes, popes attempt to defend their dogmas by appeal to reason, but that's a throwaway maneuver because when it fails to persuade, they fall back on the fideism of naked ecclesiastical authority. 

…and simply use logic, you are appealing to the authority of some logical formula…One can not possibly argue anything at all if there weren’t first an agreement about what counts as proof. That’s what authority is.

Once again, we're treated to Alt's idiosyncratic redefinition of standard terms and concepts. 

A math teacher

Francis and Edith Schaeffer, founders of the unique Christian community in Switzerland, L’Abri, had a daughter who was struggling with mathematics at her school. Priscilla had complained that she could never get through her algebra without a tutor. The Schaeffers could not afford one, so they prayed about it. The next day a Czech refugee came to visit and to ask the Schaeffers' advice about his wife’s spiritual needs. The man was very grateful. What could he do? He happened to be a math teacher! (William Edgar. Does Christianity Really Work?)

Pop Catholicism

Around the 26 min. mark:

https://wordonfireshow.com/episode194/

Bishop Barron throws lay Catholic pop apologists under the bus:

Everyone and his brother can hang out a shingle and say "Hey, I'm a Catholic [whatever]." Well, are you–and what's your background and what's your formation and your education and your credentials, and does your bishop know what you're doing and what you're saying? 

Fireproof

Alex Kendrick

I’ll give you one of my favorite stories. There was a couple who came to our church. As soon as they met us in the atrium – this is after Fireproof came out – and they were weeping, gave us a hug, and they said, “We had to tell you our story.”

So, we said, “Okay.”

And in a very brief amount of time, they said, “We were married as 19-year-olds.” And then, after that first year of marriage – ’cause marriage is hard –

Mikel Del Rosario

Mm-hmm.

Alex Kendrick

– they divorced. One of them went to the Carolinas, and the other one went to the West Coast. And for 26 years, they never saw each other. When the movie Fireproof came out, both of them happened to see it in the theater and were both convicted. Neither one of them had remarried.

And so, the husband reached out and found her and sent her a letter saying, “I owe you an apology. I never knew how to love you. I saw this movie Fireproof, and I realized that I didn’t know what I was doing. Please forgive me for the way I hurt you.”

She responded back to him and said, “I saw that same movie, and I agree with you. I didn’t know how to love you. Would you also forgive me?”

Mikel Del Rosario

Wow.

Alex Kendrick

They ended up meeting in person – this is 26 years later – and they struck up a friendship that blossomed into love, and they got remarried, this time as Christians. And to celebrate the one-year anniversary of their remarriage, they came to our church to tell us their story.

https://voice.dts.edu/tablepodcast/faith-work-and-filmmaking/

Into the cave

Religious pluralists and universalists (the distinction is cosmetic) think all roads lead to God–whatever "God" is. Is there a face behind the mask, or is it nothing but masks? 

Perhaps the standard metaphor is mountain trails. Different trails on different sides of the mountain all converge on the summit. A winsome if rather banal metaphor.

By contrast, here's a different metaphor. There's only one tunnel out of the cave. There are ever so many tunnels that entice you further into the cave. Tunnels with no outlet. Or branching tunnels. One wrong turn takes you to the next wrong turn. A network of tunnels leading nowhere. Well, not exactly nowhere. Rather, penetrating ever deeper into the cave. Putting the outside world further behind with every fateful step. A trap.  

Lost

I think it's very hard for moderns to appreciate the fear of being lost. In the age of maps and street signs and GPS and smartphones, it's well-nigh impossible to be really and truly lost. You have to go hiking in a remote wilderness or travel to a Third World backwater. Nowadays it takes a real effort to be utterly lost. You can almost always get directions or call for help. 

But in the ancient world, it was terrifyingly easy to be utterly lost. Have no clue how to get back to where you were before you lost your way or or how to find your destination from where you now are. 

And that's a problem because lostness is a major theological metaphor (e.g. Ps 119:176; Jer 50:6; Ezk 34:4; Zech 11:16; Mt 10:6; Lk 15:4; 19:10). Modernday Christian readers need to exercise their imagination to feel those passages.

i) A person can be physically lost or psychologically lost. In his autobiography, Mark Twain recounts a personal anecdote of the former: 

A bat is beautifully soft and silky; I do not know any creature that is pleasanter to the touch or is more grateful for caressings, if offered in the right spirit. I know all about these coleoptera, because our great cave, three miles below Hannibal, was multitudinously stocked with them…I think she [his mother] was never in the cave in her life; but everybody else went there. Many excursion parties came from considerable distances up and down the river to visit the cave. It was miles in extent and was a tangled wilderness of narrow and lofty clefts and passages. It was an easy place to get lost in; anybody could do it--including the bats. I got lost in it myself, along with a lady, and our last candle burned down to almost nothing before we glimpsed the search party's lights winding about in the distance.

ii) Perhaps more terrifying than physical lostness is psychological lostness. In some cases that has both a physical and psychological dimension. Take someone scooped off the street and carted off to a KGB prison. The prisoner knows where he is. So he's not lost in that sense.

But he's out of contact with his friends and family. No one knows where to find him. No one knows if he's dead or alive. He may spend the rest of his life in the claustrophobic recesses of a KGB prison. No one on the outside will ever hear from him again. 

He may never go home. Or he may be released so many years later that there's no home to go back to. 

iii) Or take a war orphan. He knows where he is. But he's lost in the sense that he's cut off from his relatives. He's no longer a part of anyone. He no longer has a sense of belonging. He's socially and emotionally adrift. Without relatives to love and protect him, the world suddenly becomes a very indifferent, uncaring place. 

iv) From there we shift to examples of sheer psychological lostness. Take someone who's mind is slipping away due to dementia or mental illness. A temporary example is drug-induced psychosis. Losing your mind is more terrifying than physical lostness. That's not about your surroundings; not about being in the wrong place. Rather, that's you. That's the essence of who you are. You are disappearing. You are ceasing to be, bit by bit. Or so it seems. 

Virginia Woolf was prone to bouts of insanity. During a lucid period she committed suicide because she couldn't face the prospect of being sucked into yet another bout of insanity. 

v) Or take a bad dream in which you're trying to get home. But you take the wrong bus. You keep going in the wrong direction. The distance between you and home increases. You keep moving ever further from your desired destination. You become more and more lost as the dream takes you down strange streets and alleyways into a heart of darkness. Inescapably lost–until you awaken. But the damned never wake up. Circling forever deeper into the infinite labyrinth of hell. 

When we read about the lost condition of unbelievers, we should visualize examples like these, to help regain the elemental fear that gripped our forebears. 

Is God a science-stopper?

I'd like to revisit Richard Dawkins's "science-stopper" objection. He alleges that if you say "God did it," then there's no point seeking a scientific explanation.

i) At best, that only applies to miracles. Take a miraculous healing. There's no causal explanation beyond divine agency.

But even in that regard, there may still be a teleological explanation. If God miraculously heals somebody, there's still the question of why he healed that person rather than someone else. Does the healing have a larger purpose in terms of future outcomes?

ii) In addition, we can generalize the principle. Take the Antikythera mechanism. To ascribe the device to intelligent agency hardly nullifies a scientific investigation into how it works and what it's for. To the contrary, it's only because the product was designed that we presume it has a purpose. It if was like random patterns in sand dunes, we wouldn't ascribe any particular significance to the artifact. 

"Are you a Christian?"

To those who asked him [Peter Hare] if he was a Christian, his standard response was, "I don't know. I'll tell you what I believe, and then you tell me whether you count me a Christian or not. A. Kenny, Brief Encounters (SPCK 2018), 85. 

Although he's ducking the question, it does raise a practical issue. Because so many people have different preconceptions of what Christianity represents, and because, due to the prevalence of theological illiteracy, so many people have highly distorted preconceptions of Christianity, it may be that giving a direct answer isn't always the best strategy, since they will simply translate your affirmation into their preconception. A direct answer wouldn't tell them what I believe, but what they think it means to be a Christian. 

So it might be more instructive to say something like, "That's a good question! I assume you wouldn't ask that unless you had questions about Christianity. So why don't you ask me those questions."

Dawkins on simplicity

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hb4aanpsx6Q

Between 114-117 min, agnostic lapsed Catholic philosopher Kenny corrects Dawkins on simplicity.

Low audio but it has captions

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Leaving aside biblical theology for simple embodied experience, we all know that women are the glory of men. They are the thing that, when considering humanity as a whole, men themselves are most inclined to celebrate. If presented with the choice of saving either a man or a woman, we save the woman; we consider them of greater value. One woman’s face launched a thousand ships. Another’s is compared to a summer’s day. Just as the beauty of the lily is the glory of the pasture, so is the beauty of the woman the glory of the man.

https://bnonn.com/head-coverings-1/

i) I'd like to briefly revisit this claim. There's a lot of truth in this. Mind you, women have to compete with sports when it comes to what many men celebrate.

ii) Then there's the cliché example of the ambitious, competitive workaholic guy who puts career ahead of relationships. 

iii) As for considering women of greater value, so that we'd save a woman before we'd save a man, that's more complicated. Perhaps he means that all things being equal, if it's a choice between a random man and a random woman, the woman gets the nod. Rescuing strangers. 

iv) Even at that level, there are complications. What if it's a 5-year-old boy? I can't generalize. 

v) In addition, I wouldn't say men automatically value a wife or girlfriend more than they value their father, son, or brother. Unfortunately, many marriages come and go, but blood ties are nearly indestructible. Likewise, many male friendships outlast marriages. 

Is the Catholic church 2000 years old?

Catholic apologists compare their "2000-year-old" church to upstart Protestant denominations. I've discussed that before, but I'll expand on that:

1. Suppose a young couple buys a Fixer Upper. At the time it's all they can afford on their meager income. As their income rises, they remodel the house. As their income continues to rise, they make additions on either side. Finally, they demolish the original house, preserve the additions, and build a new house in-between the flankers. Is the final house the same house as the original house?

There's a kind of historical continuity in play. But no part of the original house exists. It's been replaced, part by part. And not even by the same kinds of parts, but different kinds of parts. It's unrecognizable compared to the Fixer Upper. So mere historical continuity doesn't make it the same house or even similar to the original house. 

Moreover, even if some of the original parts were preserved, it's undergone so much change that it's equivocal to say it's the same house. It's the same in some respects but not the same in key respects. 

2. There are different ways a faith-tradition might be new. On the one hand, it might have new doctrines, new interpretations. On the other hand, it might be a new combination of old doctrines and old interpretations. It might recombine them in different ways.

3. To some extent, Protestant theology was new. It emerged in the 16C. However, it didn't pop in out of the blue. In many respects it had theological antecedents. And Protestants claim it's older than Catholicism because it represents a restoration of biblical theology, from which Catholicism deviated. 

However, the Catholic church under Pope Francis, or even under Pope Benedict XVI or Pope John-Paul II, is a different church than it was under Leo XIII or Pius IX. The Catholic church under Pope Innocent X and Pope Clement IX is a different church from the medieval church. By condemning Jansenism, they anathematized the Augustinian tradition. What held an honorable place in Catholicism prior to Calvinism became intolerable after Calvinism. Catholic theology is reactionary. 

One could give many other examples. There really is no such thing as "the Roman Catholic Church" because it keeps reinventing itself. Just as the Protestant movement emerged in the 16C, Catholicism reemerges in different mutations throughout the course of church history. 

4. Catholic apologists save face by distinguishing between two different kinds of change: 

i) In the case of inconsistent changes, those are extraneous to what's essential to Catholicism. Those were never dogmatic, infallible, irreformable, de fide teachings. 

ii) Other changes represent the development of doctrine. They are said to be consistent with dogma.   

But while that may be persuasive to conservative Catholics, it cuts no ice when debating with Protestants, since we don't grant their distinctions. These are ad hoc distinctions superimposed on Catholicism despite the evidence. While Catholics naturally assume a Catholic viewpoint, they can't reasonably expect or demand that Protestants share their viewpoint. So comparing their "2000-year-old" church to the Protestant faith begs the question. When we look at the history of Catholicism, we don't see a 2000-year-old church. Rather, we witness a dialectical succession of ideas. 

Like any historical process, you can retrace current developments to antecedent conditions and causes. That holds true for Catholicism and evangelicalism alike. But that doesn't mean the house standing on the same property as the Fixer Upper is the same house. 

Jesus as Satirist

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

https://www.scottmasson.ca/info

"God made the integers; all else is the work of man"

A short exchange I had with a philosophical theologian:

Josh 

Maybe "The Advancement Theory". That captures this idea of the mathematical landscape advancing in God's mind, and then also the advancement of the world, along lines without end.

Hays  

I don't see how that's supposed to work. Don't mathematical truths involve interlocking systems of entailment relations? If so, all the elements must be in place for the mathematical truth, object, or structure (however we wish to put it) to obtain. Mathematical truths can't be waiting for the coin to drop. Rather, they must exist as a unit or not at all.

Josh 

Some perhaps. But there may be basic structures that provide a foundation for iterations.

Hays

Let's put it another way, do you agree that mathematical truths are paradigm-cases of necessary truths? If so, mathematical truths can't become true. Mathematical truths can't evolve. Of course, if one's a naturalist, then one may try to reduce math to human psychology, in which case it does evolve. But that's bad theology.

Josh

A very good question. I'm toying with the idea that only basic mathematical truths are necessary (in the strongest sense).

Hays 

So you agree with Leopold Kronecker that "God made the integers; all else is the work of man".

Open theism and prayer

Here is God just about to make it rain for the sake of the farmers and their crops in the fields around Clyst Honiton when he overhears the urgent prayer of the vicar who is running his garden party that afternoon and changes his mind. A. Kenny, Brief Encounters (SPCK 2018), 24.

When did marriage become a sacrament?

Divorce, Annulment & Communion
An Orthodox Theologian Weighs In
By David Bentley Hart

Neither, for several centuries after the Apostolic Age, did any Christian theological authority think of marriage as a sacrament in our sense. Augustine (354–430) thought it might be described as a sacramentum in the proper acceptation of the Latin word: a solemn and binding oath before God. But even then, although he took the term chiefly from Jerome’s rendering of Ephesians 5:32, he certainly did not number matrimony among the saving “mysteries” of the church, alongside baptism and the Eucharist. Neither did anyone else, for many, many years. Even the great Church Fathers tended to treat marriage as little more than a civil institution, no different in kind for Christians than for non-Christians. One need only look, for example, at John Chrysostom’s fifty-sixth homily (on the second chapter of Genesis) to see how unacquainted even a late-fourth-century theologian of the highest eminence was with any concept of “holy” matrimony. And, inasmuch as they thought of marriage chiefly as a natural fact rather than as a sacred vocation, the Christians of late antiquity did not treat it as a theological topic.

In his Commentary on Matthew, for example, Origen (ca. 184–253) notes that many of the bishops of his time permitted both divorce and remarriage among the faithful. Canon 11 of the Council of Arles (314) recommends that a divorced man not remarry so long as his former wife still lives, but also grants that, for healthy young men incapable of the continence this would require of them, remarriage may prove necessary. Basil the Great (ca. 330–379) instructed Amphilochius of Iconium to allow men abandoned by their wives to remarry without penalty...Even Augustine, while firmly convinced that marriage should as a rule be indissoluble, nonetheless confessed in his Retractiones that he had no final answer on the issue.

To be honest, many modern believers would be shocked to learn how late in Christian history a clear concept of marriage as a religious institution evolved, and how long it took for it to be absolutely distinguished from what would come to be thought of as common-law unions, or for the church to insist on its solemnization in all cases. They would be even more disturbed, I imagine (as much on democratic principles as religious), to discover that throughout much of the Middle Ages the whole issue of wedlock certified by the church concerned mostly the aristocracy, inasmuch as marriage was chiefly a matter of property, inheritance, and politics. As far as we can tell, among the peasantry of many lands, and for many centuries, marital union was a remarkably mercurial sort of arrangement, one that coalesced and dissolved with considerable informality, as circumstances dictated. And the clergy did not, for the most part, give a damn.

Really, when one looks at it closely, in light of both the empirical facts and the abstract principles of the matter, the distinction between divorce and annulment is specious all the way down. For one thing, as regards actual cases on the ground, anyone who has seen a sufficient number of annulments at close quarters (and I have witnessed quite a few) knows that they are not only fairly easy to obtain for those willing to make the effort, but that the terms governing them are applied with such plasticity that it is difficult to see how any marriage could fail to meet the standards. True, abusus non tollit usum (abuse does not do away with proper use); but, in fact, there really is no abuse involved. The very concept of annulment, as something ontologically distinct from divorce, is logically incoherent, and really can be taken seriously only by a mind so absolutely indoctrinated to believe that the Roman Catholic Church does not tolerate divorce and remarriage that no evidence to the contrary can alter that conviction.

The very premise that a marriage can be pronounced null and void, in effect retroactively (since that same marriage would be regarded as real and legitimate if suit for annulment had never been brought forward), on the grounds of some original defect of intention that means it was never a real marriage to begin with (though again, it would be considered a real marriage if that defect were never exposed), basically provides a license to regard every marriage as provisional only. After all, in what union of a man and a woman could one not detect some crucial defect of original intention if one were to seek it? Moreover, if one looks at the criteria customarily used to prove that a marriage was never really a marriage, they scarcely differ at all from the criteria that the Orthodox Church—in principle, at least—is supposed to accept as legitimate grounds for divorce. And what is a divorce, after all, other than a recognition that the original marriage was contracted in ignorance and without full mutual commitment to everything a true marriage is?

It might make Catholics feel better about their Eastern brethren if the Orthodox Church called these separations “annulments,” and issued formal absolutions from wedding vows under such terms. I have to say, however, that I am glad it does neither. To my mind, the concept of annulment is not only specious and logically contradictory, but also somewhat insidious—in fact, often rather cynical and cruel. It is terrible enough when a marriage—something on which a man and a woman, at what is usually a fairly innocent moment in their lives, have staked their futures and their hopes for happiness—falls apart. It is somehow all the more terrible when, solely for the sake of avoiding institutional embarrassment, we are asked to indulge in the fiction that it was never a real marriage to begin with.

I know of a woman whose well-connected husband managed to obtain an annulment without her consent, and on grounds that would have scarcely qualified him as a plaintiff before a secular divorce court. And I happen to know that, of the two, he was the far more culpable in the matter. What she found bitterest of all in the final settlement was that, according to her church, no one was obliged to admit that her life as a wife and mother of twenty-six years—in a union freely contracted, sacramentally solemnized, physically and fruitfully consummated—had broken apart. 

https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/divorce-annulment-communion

Singing atheists

A grandson of the first Bishop of Liverpool [J. C. Ryle], [Gilbert] Ryle was himself an atheist–but he was what he called "a singing atheist". He used to distinguish between those atheists who would join in the hymns in church, and those who, if forced to attend a service, would keep their mouths tightly shut throughout. A. Kenny, Brief Encounters (SPCK 2018), 82.

We are most hopeless who once had hope

At the luncheon the day before Encaenia, [Graham] Greene make a remark which had a lasting effect on my life. Greene and myself, and another guest, the Oxford publisher Dan Davin, were all, to varying edges, lapsed Catholics. The conversation turned to the following question. Since, to the unbeliever, faith is only a delusion, why do those who have given up their faith feel a sense of loss? Greene quoted the words:

Of all the creatures under heaven's wide cope

We are most hopeless who had once most hope,

We are most wretched that had most believed.

[Easter Day, Arthur Hugh Clough]

A. Kenny, Brief Encounters (SPCK 2018), 174.

Imagine a war orphan. He's been stuck in the orphanage for 3 years. He was told his parents died in a bombing. Then one day, out of the blue, the superintendent tells him it was a case of mistaken identity. His parent are still alive. The fog of war separated them from their young son, but they are coming back for him. He's deliriously happy. 

Then the next day the superintended tells him, sorry, it was a mixup. Indeed, the parents of an orphan survived, but it was the parents of a different orphan. 

Now he's worse off that before he got his hopes up. He'd be better off if he never had his hopes dashed. The disappointment is inconsolable. 

Loss of faith means there's aways the invidious comparison in the back of one's mind between something indescribably better and what you're left with. If you never had the hope of heaven, that would be bad enough, but to have it and lose it is so much worse. It spoils you for anything less. It was just within reach, then snatched away. Like torturing an inmate with false hopes of early release. Dangle it before his eyes, then whisk it away. 

Amazon fire hype

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/08/26/why-everything-they-say-about-the-amazon-including-that-its-the-lungs-of-the-world-is-wrong/

Who's harming homosexuals?

It's hard to think of anything which has done as much harm to homosexuals as religion. #LGBT #atheism #religion

— Secular Outpost (@SecularOutpost) August 26, 2019

Actually, that's easy. By far the greatest harm to homosexuals is the harm they inflict on themselves and each other by a medically and psychologically self-destructive lifestyle. The homosexual lifestyle is suicidal to the homosexual and homicidal to his boyfriends. 

Freedom of choice

Freewill theists typically claim that genuine freedom requires freedom to choose between two (or more) alternatives. Suppose a mandatory evacuation has been ordered for my area due to a storm system that's forecast to produce catastrophic flooding. Before the road is submerged, I drive to friend's house to evacuate him. But he's extremely reluctant to leave. Yet it's highly likely that if he refuses to leave, he will drown.  I'm very athletic. I can easily overpower him if he forces the issue. Suppose we have the following exchange:

Me: Would you like to come with me?

Friend: What if I wouldn't like to come with you?

Me: I believe in freedom of choice. So you can either come willingly or else you can come against your will!

Gun rights don't depend on statistics

https://fee.org/articles/gun-rights-don-t-depend-on-statistics/

Veiling women

I'm going to comment on this post:

https://bnonn.com/head-coverings-1/

The danger of my commenting on Bnonn's post is that it's the first installment of a series with however many parts, which may work itself into a book, so Bnonn might steal my blindingly brilliant observations, claiming that he already addressed those concerns in a later installment. I won't get any credit! Humor aside:

Repent and submit to the pope!

Recently a Roman Catholic told me to "Repent and submit to the Pope".

But therein lies a dilemma. I couldn't submit to the pope even if I wanted to. Since popes contradict each other, which pope am I supposed to submit to? Should I just flip a coin?

We're told that we need a pope to play tiebreaker in case of disagreement. But when popes disagree with each other, one can't appeal to "the pope" to break the tie!

Given the development of doctrine, Catholics should only submit to the last future pope. Since they know that Catholic teaching will continue to change, but they don't know ahead of time how it will change, they ought to suspend judgment until the last future pope has the final word. The pope just before Jesus returns! That way, Catholic dogma can't change any more! 

The Bible in translation

There's an ongoing debate on the right philosophy of Bible translation. In principle, this is a big deal. Here's one side of the debate from Leland Ryken:

The goal of Bible translation is to take readers as close as possible to the actual words that the biblical authors wrote.  The translation process that this viewpoint produces is called verbal equivalence, which means that every word in the original Hebrew or Greek text is rendered by an equivalent or corresponding English word or phrase.  The goal of Bible translation is: be transparent to the original text—to see as clearly as possible what the biblical authors actually wrote.

Dynamic equivalent translators feel no obligation to find an English equivalent for every word in the original Hebrew and Greek texts; if the text says “he anoints my head with oil,” a dynamic equivalent translation might read “he treats me as an honored guest.”  Paraphrases often bear little resemblance to what the biblical authors wrote (for example, the statement in Psalm 19 that God’s law is “sweeter than honey” becomes “you’ll like it better than strawberries in spring” (The Message).

Essentially literal translators assume that a biblical author meant what he said, so if they give an English equivalent of the words of the original author, they have also stated the author’s meaning.  Dynamic equivalent translators operate on the premise that meaning exists independent of the words of the original author. 

They are well documented in both the practice of dynamic equivalent translators and in their statements of philosophy.  Here are the liberties that dynamic equivalent translators regularly take:

(1) replace what the original authors wrote with something else (e.g., where the text says “establish the work of our hands,” dynamic equivalent translations substitute “let all go well for us”);

(2) change figurative statements into direct statements (again a substitution);

(3) add interpretive commentary to what the biblical authors wrote, so readers do not know what was in the original and what was added;

(4) make the style of the English Bible contemporary and colloquial;

(5) reduce the vocabulary level of the original text;

(6) bring masculine gender references into line with modern feminist preferences.  In all these ways, dynamic equivalent translations give the public a substitute Bible.  I would also assert that the original authors of the Bible had the resources to state their content the way dynamic equivalent translators state it, but instead, they stated it as we find in the original texts of the Bible.  Dynamic equivalent translators take a condescending view of the authors of the Bible, treating them like inept writers who couldn’t state things accurately and therefore need correction.

Dynamic equivalent translations regularly make preemptive interpretive strikes, thereby removing the reader’s ability to know what the original authors wrote and what the interpretive options are.  Additionally, the more literary a text is, the more likely it is to embody multiple meanings in a given detail in the text.  Dynamic equivalent translators regularly reduce the multiple meanings to one by the way they translate a passage.  Dynamic equivalent translations are one-dimensional in places where the original is multi-dimensional. 

Sometimes this commentary takes the form of a substitution (for example, “my feet had nearly slipped” is translated as “my faith was almost gone”).

I will just add in passing that dynamic equivalent translators have a uniformly low view of poetry and figurative language.

https://christianpublishinghouse.co/2016/10/10/leland-ryken-interview-with-cph-differences-in-bible-translations/

The Bible for modern readers

An atheist objection to Christianity is that if the Bible is divinely inspired, it should contain some prophecies about advanced technology. I've discussed that before. I'll make two points.

ii) To recap my first response, suppose you're a moviemaker with a penchant for science fiction. You want to set your story in the future, several centuries from now. And suppose you have actual knowledge of the future. So your depictions of the future are fantastically prescient and realistic. 

That, however, generates a conundrum. It will give your nerdy, geeky movie viewers some clues about the future. Although they think the movie is just science fiction, the depiction of advanced technology gives them ideas. They think about designing gizmos that could really do that. So the effect of your movie is to kickstart the future it depicts. By giving a preview of the future you change the future because your preview influences how people behave, as an intellectual stimulus. 

But because it's premature, because it doesn't represent an incremental development of technology, because it utilizes the resources at hand, at an earlier stage of history, the inventions and discoveries will be different than in the film. By interfering with the natural progression of science, the future it causes isn't the same future, because the modifications begin at an earlier point in the timeline. 

The paradoxical consequence of your movie is that before anyone saw your movie, it accurately predicts how the future will turn out, but once enough people see your movie, it no longer predicts how the future will turn out. Rather, it's an accurate prediction of the future without a past containing your movie. 

iii) But here's another point. It's easier for a modern reader to understand an ancient text than for an ancient reader to understand a modern text. References to modern technology would be unintelligible to an ancient reader. By contrast, references to ancient technology are intelligible to modern readers. We know the past. We have the benefit of hindsight. 

In addition, future technology is constantly changing at a rate that didn't occur in the ancient world. Take the comical spectacle of teenagers who don't know how to use a rotary phone. For today's teenagers, rotary phones might as well be advanced alien technology.