Thursday, June 21, 2012
Disapproving approval
Over at The Secular Outpost, Jeff Lowder has been calling on Christians to denounce what he regards as mistreatment of atheists. But it’s unclear why Jeff thinks we should do this. Does he think we ought to condemn these (alleged) offenses because they violate Christian ethics? Yet Jeff doesn’t believe in Christian ethics. It’s as if Jeff approves of Christians expressing disapproval on the basis of an ethical code that Jeff disapproves of.
Papal shiites
The mainstream Papacy taught that by a special charism granting infallible authority in matters of faith and morals, the Pope in the exercise of his teaching office is exempt from this common human condition, and had a true intuition of natural law and a true ability to infallibly formulate its dicta propositionally. This view owed a great deal to the Shiite imamology, which taught that the Imam is sinless, infallible, and thus able to be a perfect heir of prophethood, which for Muslims (both Sunni and Shia) has a politically architectonic office.[4]
[4] Classic expositions of the idea are to be found in al Farabi’s Tahsil as sa’ada, and ibn Khaldun’s Muqaddimah. For the Papacy’s reception of the same, see Sten Gagnér, “Boniface VIII and Avicenna,” Proceedings of the Second International Congress of Medieval Canon Law, Stephan Kuttner and J. Joseph Ryan , eds., S. Congregatio de seminariis et studiorum universitatibus, Vatican City, 1965.
The Last Enemy
A friend recently asked me some questions. Here's my reply:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
1) Regarding Ecclesiastes, we have to step back and consider the interpretive framework we should use for this book.
i) The perspective of the book is explicitly and predominantly descriptive and empirical. The narrator speaks from the viewpoint of a keen observer. This viewpoint is expressed in the constant refrain regarding that he’s “seen under the sun.” Although personal experience is a source of knowledge, it’s very limited. You hit a wall. You can only see so far.
ii) Put another way, the observer can only judge by appearances. Hence, the book stresses the inscrutability of divine providence. It often seems so random (e.g. 9:11).
iii) Yet that’s not all there is to it. There’s a contrast between appearance and reality. Not that appearances are illusory, but misleading. Incomplete. They don’t tell the whole story.
Take the climactic theme of divine judgment in 12:14 (cf. 3:17-18; 11:9). Appearances notwithstanding, what we do in this life does make a difference in the long run.
iv) Some liberals think the epilogue was tacked on by a pious editor to salvage the orthodoxy of the book. But epilogue isn’t an anomaly or afterthought. The book is studded with reverent references to God, including the “fear of the Lord” motif (3:14; 5:7; 8:12; 12:13).
There’s a doctrine of providence (3:1-14). 12:13-14 moves in the same ambit as 5:1-7.
So this is part of the book’s dialectical contrast between appearance and reality. Between the limitations of observation on our side of the sun, and the Maker of the sun–whose intentions elude human inspection or detection.
12:13-14 reflects the final viewpoint of the narrator. What he’s been building up to.
v) Consistent with this general approach, the narrator describes the fate of the dead from the standpoint of the living. What appears to be the case when you die. But that must be counterbalanced by eschatological judgment: 3:17-18; 11:9; 12:13-14.
2) Regarding Job:
i) In narrative theology we need to distinguish between the normative viewpoint of the narrator and the perspective of the speakers or characters within the narrative.
ii) A Biblical narrator has various techniques for obliquely expressing his viewpoint. A contrast between apparent and hidden plots. A contrast between normative and foil characters. Dramatic irony.
iii) Everything a given speaker or character in the Jobian narrative says isn’t presumptively true. Indeed, a major purpose of the book is to expose the falsity of what certain speakers say. To disprove Satan’s contention. To expose the shallow outlook of Job’s friends.
iv) Job himself was sick and grief-stricken. Men in that condition often make intemperate statements.
In the course of the book there’s some progression in Job’s understanding, but there’s an ebb and flow. Moments of lucid insight before he sinks back into bafflement and despondency. He briefly rallies, then reverts–in a recurrent cycle. His exclamations often express moods rather than truths. We must interpret the narrative in light of the prologue and epilogue.
3) Concerning Isa 38:18, the speaker is Hezekiah, not Isaiah. A king, not a prophet. It’s an expression of Hezekiah’s gratitude. Thankful to be delivered from the jaws of death, given his palpable fear of death.
But there’s no presumption that Hezekiah has any particular insight into the nature of the afterlife. He’s not God’s mouthpiece. He’s just a Jewish monarch.
4) Concerning Ps 88 and other psalms:
i) Ps 88 starkly expresses a sense of divine abandonment, and uses picturesque imagery to illustrate that theme. That’s subjective. How he felt at the time.
iii) But objectively speaking, God did not forsake him. Indeed, I doubt the psalm was written in the midst of his ordeal. Although the psalms use passionate language, that doesn’t mean they were written in the white heat of passion. The psalms are highly artistic literary productions. It requires a certain level of composure to write them. A certain distance or detachment from the immediacy of the event. You have to be able to collect your thoughts.
Ps 88 was probably written in retrospect. A commemoration and mediation on what he went through.
iii) When OT saints are under conviction of sin, in conjunction with a life-threatening illness, they express doubts about what awaits them. Will they face divine judgment? Will they be in a position to praise God? Or will they be shamed? Will they suffer the lot of the wicked?
On their deadbed, or what they take to be their deathbed, the saints are often apprehensive. As they look back over the life they led, they become acutely aware of their cumulative transgressions. Death becomes a forbidding, foreboding prospect–not because they doubt God, but because they doubt themselves. Not because they fear oblivion, but because they fear punishment. Will they die out of favor with God? All their buried insecurities rise to the surface. Guilt. Long-forgotten sins. Lost opportunities to make things right. Too late to make amends.
It takes faith to overcome our fears. We must consciously and constantly remind ourselves of God’s promises. Cling to the promises. And that’s harder for some believers than others. That’s exacerbated when we are physically weak. When we feel vulnerable. Is sickness itself a mark of God’s disfavor? These misgivings can afflict God’s people in their extremity. Especially in their extremity.
Modern Bible readers may find it harder to identify with these sentiments because modern medical science buffers us from our mortality. Most illnesses aren’t terminal illnesses. And we’re often insulated from death. Many people die in hospitals or nursing homes. We don’t live among death the way our forebears did. We don’t have that constant reminder.
Paul: on authority: “They added nothing to my message” (Gal 2:6)
What follows here is my response to comments by Michael Liccione and Bryan Cross, probably two of the more significant thought leaders among the “Called to Communion” gang, on the topics, roughly, of “Scripture and church” or “authority” or “apostolic succession and New Testament canon”.
Regular readers here will recognize many of the themes I’ve written about in the past. But what I’ve put down here for the first time is something I’ve had in mind for a long time, but have not till this point been able to articulate it succinctly enough. Indeed, what follows here is rough, but it is the thing I’ve had in mind from the moment that I decided I could no longer be Roman Catholic. This is where the battle is, and must be joined. This is where the battle for Jason Stellman’s heart and mind and soul is occurring. It is where Joshua Lim goes wrong.
What follows here is what makes the Reformation [warts and all] the most worthwhile thing that could have happened in church history.
You will note that this is necessarily incomplete. What follows has been submitted in an even rougher form as a series of comments in this Called to Communion thread. Lord willing they will let my comments be published, and it will lead to further discussion.
Given the incompleteness of what I write here (I’ll call it an “outline” of my primary argument against Roman Catholic authority), I do need to thank Dr. Michael Kruger and his work Canon Revisited, for closing the circle. For completing the “authority of Scripture” loop. It is my intention to “tear down” the Roman Catholic authority structure, and that’s what I do in this piece. But Dr. Kruger builds and rebuilds. He shows, in detail that I have not yet covered here, the reasons why the New Testament canon stands alone. I think a lot of people will be eternally grateful to Dr. Kruger for his work.
Regular readers here will recognize many of the themes I’ve written about in the past. But what I’ve put down here for the first time is something I’ve had in mind for a long time, but have not till this point been able to articulate it succinctly enough. Indeed, what follows here is rough, but it is the thing I’ve had in mind from the moment that I decided I could no longer be Roman Catholic. This is where the battle is, and must be joined. This is where the battle for Jason Stellman’s heart and mind and soul is occurring. It is where Joshua Lim goes wrong.
What follows here is what makes the Reformation [warts and all] the most worthwhile thing that could have happened in church history.
You will note that this is necessarily incomplete. What follows has been submitted in an even rougher form as a series of comments in this Called to Communion thread. Lord willing they will let my comments be published, and it will lead to further discussion.
Given the incompleteness of what I write here (I’ll call it an “outline” of my primary argument against Roman Catholic authority), I do need to thank Dr. Michael Kruger and his work Canon Revisited, for closing the circle. For completing the “authority of Scripture” loop. It is my intention to “tear down” the Roman Catholic authority structure, and that’s what I do in this piece. But Dr. Kruger builds and rebuilds. He shows, in detail that I have not yet covered here, the reasons why the New Testament canon stands alone. I think a lot of people will be eternally grateful to Dr. Kruger for his work.
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
Drones and privacy
(Posted on behalf of Steve Hays on behalf of David Gadbois.)
Here are a few of my thoughts on the recent criticisms of the increasing operations of unmanned aircraft conducting surveillance in U.S. airspace. I came across this article. That's a photo of a Predator B UAV in the Department of Homeland Security/Border Patrol's livery at the top of the article. Other conservative and libertarian pundits that I respect, such as Charles Krauthammer, have made similar criticisms as Mr. Cooke. And I notice that a lot of folks outside of my work have expressed their concerns to me personally on this issue in the past few weeks. I don't know where your political sympathies lie on privacy issues, but here is my take.
All of the information I mention here is public knowledge.
- While I do work for an unmanned aircraft manufacturer, at this time sales to domestic law enforcement make up a very small fraction of the UAV market. The U.S. and foreign militaries are still the biggest customers in the market by far. I'm not particularly worried that this issue would affect my livelihood one way or another.
- I think I have fairly good street cred (amongst those who know me) as a small-government guy, residing in a political orbit somewhere between National Review (conservative) and Reason (libertarian) magazine. I'm generally wary of government overreach, especially by the federal government in breach of its constitutional limitations.
- Technical issues
That being said, I'm not sure why people consider unmanned aircraft to be fundamentally more intrusive than manned aircraft that routinely fly and surveil in national airspace. Most current UAV systems are operated by a pilot and sensor operator in a ground station, connected either via line-of-sight or satellite wireless data links. The police-operated helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft that have been around for decades likewise require a pilot and camera/spotlight operator for the routine law enforcement operations that most don't object to. Very few UAV systems are autonomous (i.e. don't require pilots in the loop).
The main driver behind law enforcement's adoption of unmanned systems is cost. It is simply cheaper to have unmanned aircraft as your eyes in the sky per hour vs. a manned aircraft. The only relevant operational advantage of UAVs (that I can think of) is the fact that they tend to be harder to detect audibly or visually (especially when compared to conventional helicopters), but this is not an inherent advantage. For aircraft that share roughly the same gross weight and flight envelope, one can design a manned aircraft to operate as silently as, say, a Predator UAV, and with a similar visual footprint.
There are, however, classes of UAVs that are smaller than classes of aircraft that would be sizeable enough to conceivably carry humans. These are usually referred to as micro-UAVs. Even smaller craft exist (think hummingbird size), and are known as nano-UAVs. However, the performance and utility of optical sensors diminishes as you scale down to sizes that can be flown on these platforms. The level of capability varies wildly given different sizes and classes of aircraft and corresponding payloads, and I'm not sure what specifically most people picture as being an insidious threat to their freedom.
Mr. Cooke is concerned that UAVs can provide footage with similar detail as the CCTV cameras that are prevalent in Britain, but that surely isn't right. A UAV loitering at several thousand feet in altitude simply cannot provide this kind of resolution. I haven't seen any classified or proprietary footage, but all of the video I have seen from Predators is only clear enough to identify the presence and general behavior of men on the ground. You could discern that someone is planting an IED, for instance, but you would never get a facial recognition. One could more plausibly raise a constitutional objection to certain uses of infrared sensors (that can image the thermal signatures of humans and provide a general, silhouetted shape), as those are capable of seeing through the walls and ceilings of homes and other buildings. But again, law enforcement has had that capability on manned platforms for many years, so it is hard to see how the situation with unmanned aircraft is fundamentally different. Who cares if this is being done from a Cessna as opposed to a Predator?
One could rightly point out that some UAV platforms, in the micro or nano class, can and do operate at altitudes of dozens or hundreds of feet rather than thousands, but these become easy to detect at such close ranges, and as mentioned their smaller sizes limit the performance of their optical payloads. There are fundamental limitations in play- the laws of physics as pertains to optics give an upper bound of the performance of any optical device of a given, fixed size.
- Moral and constitutional issues
I think some of my civil libertarian friends are seeing "emanations", "penumbras", and other hallucinagenic artifacts in the Bill of Rights that simply aren't there when they assert that the 4th Amendment provides a general right of privacy. The idea that there are restrictions and requirements on how the government may conduct search and seizure is conceptually much more narrow. Perhaps there is a moral case to be made that there ought to be a legal right to privacy, but that ought to be debated in a democratic society and established either by amendment to the constitution or else via conventional legislation passed in Congress. Any amount of serious reflection on the issue would reveal that it would be very difficult to define the nature of (and limits of) a general right to privacy with sufficient philosophical and legal precision and rigor. Also, as a Christian, I cannot think of a biblical principle that would necessarily underwrite an individual right to privacy in relation to the government, so if this right exists I would have to put it into a subservient category of rights (such as "no taxation without representation"), in other words, it would not be a fundamental moral right, even if important.
Concerning the 4th Amendment, even the most restrictive reading of the text would certainly not prohibit the operation of an unmanned aircraft for the purpose of surveillance per se, it would only require that a warrant be obtained on the basis of probable cause to authorize its use. This seems to be the aim of Rand Paul's bill that requires a warrant prior to the deployment of a UAV, qualified by a handful of exceptions (and, sadly, employing the morally ludicrous exclusionary rule).
I'm no lawyer, but it seems to me that mere observation and photographic documentation of a person in a public place does not constitute a "search" of his person or intimate possessions, and as such aerial surveillance does not inherently constitute a search that is subject to the amendment at all. The situation gets a little stickier if the person being observed is on his own (or someone else's) private property, but if the person is in an "open field" (i.e. not in a home structure or, perhaps, the curtilage) then they are subject to search under the Open Fields doctrine. I don't know enough to say how legitimate this principle is constitutionally speaking, but it was codified by the Supreme Court's interpretation of the 4th Amendment in 1924 (Hester v. U.S.).
More interesting is the school of thought that contends that searches are permissible without a warrant as long as they are "reasonable". No less a light than Judge Scalia has advocated this view, thus placing more emphasis on the first clause of the Amendment. Others put more weight on the second clause (the Warrant Clause), insisting that warrants are always required barring only a few exceptions. Interestingly, I consulted the Heritage Guide to the Constitution, and it mentions both views without explicitly endorsing either:
Until recently the Supreme Court said that warrants were required for all searches and seizures, save those that fell within some exception to that requirement....Today, the Court uses different language, emphasizing not the second half of the Fourth Amendment's text, but the first (the ban on "unreasonable searches and seizures"). See Indianapolis v. Edmond (2000)
Even Richard Epstein remarks:
The amendment speaks with a forked tongue. On the one hand, it is clear that the right of all people to be "secure in their persons" looks as though it is "violated" by either pat-downs or body scanners. On the other hand, the use of the law’s most indispensable weasel word, "unreasonable," suggests that only some searches are "unreasonable," leaving it to the fine art of constitutional interpretation to decide which ones those are....That pesky word "unreasonable" has worked its way into our constitutional heritage through the text of the Fourth Amendment. We are thus duty-bound to make sense of it by asking what kinds of searches the government can properly undertake.
In my view, the grammar and syntax of the Amendment establish a prima facie reading of the text that understands the first clause as having independent meaning from the second clause. In other words, I would side with Scalia's view that there is such a thing as a "reasonable search" that would not require a warrant (as opposed to the view that the first clause is merely a preamble that justifies second clause [the Warrant Clause]). It might be that the language of the 4th Amendment underdetermines the issue, and ought to be amended and clarified one way or the other.
- In saying these things I do not deny that unmanned aircraft can be potential tools to facilitate government overreach, abuse, Big Brotherism, anti-constitutional encroachments, or outright tyranny. And yes, if there is a drone hovering ten feet outside of your house, peering into your bathroom window with its camera, I would consider it morally to be intrusive, reprehensible, as well as an abridgement of the 4th Amendment's protections. You can make a slippery slope argument if you wish, but this is simply not the situation we are in at present by merely allowing UAVs to aid in domestic law enforcement operations. The existence of a tool, that can admittedly be used for good or evil, does not automatically plunge us in to Orwell's 1984. And if the tool is not intrinsically evil, on what basis can we impose a blanket prohibition?
The faith of the faithless
Ewen must have an odd idea about what "reason requires." In my view, reason requires that you at least consider the arguments for the other side before issuing such pronouncements.
Let’s look at some of the “scholarship” Parsons relies on:
Crossan, J.D. (1998), The Birth of Christianity. San Francisco: Harper.
_____. (1995). Who Killed Jesus? San Francisco: Harper.
Huxley, T.H.. (1893), "The Value of Witness to the Miraculous," in Selected Works of T. H. Huxley: Science and the Christian Tradition. New York: D. Appleton.
Lüdemann, G. (1995), What Really Happened to Jesus? Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press.
Mack, B.L. (1993), The Lost Gospel. San Francisco: Harper.
_____. (1995), Who Wrote the New Testament? San Francisco: Harper.
Martin, M. (1991), The Case Against Christianity. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Paine, T. (1974), The Age of Reason. P. S. Foner, ed. Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press.
Ranke-Heinemann, U. (1988), Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven: Women, Sexuality, and the Catholic Church. New York: Doubleday.
Spong, J.S. (1994), Resurrection: Myth or Reality? San Francisco: Harper.
Wells, G.A. (1996), The Jesus Legend. Chicago: Open Court.
_____. (1989), Who Was Jesus? La Salle, IL: Open Court.
In fact, his bibliography doesn’t contain any major evangelical scholars. By his own yardstick, Parsons is irrational, for he’s failed to consider the arguments for the other side.
In fact, it’s amusing to see a philosopher with so little independent judgment. He reads the liberal side of the argument, and that’s it. Childlike faith in whatever liberal scholars say.
Just suppose
According to militant atheist Keith Parsons:
Let’s try a thought experiment: What would a contemporary account of Jesus have looked like had it been written by a historian with the resources, aims, and methods of a modern critical historian?… Now, of course we do not know what our imaginary historian would have concluded, but it should be abundantly clear that his product would be very different from the Gospel records.
Of course, that’s a wholly artificial comparison. We don’t measure ancient historians like Julius Caesar or Dio Cassius by that anachronistic yardstick. Ancient history will be written according to period conventions.
So let’s try a different thought experiment. Imagine that you’re an atheist. But suppose, for the sake of argument, that Jesus really was the Son of God Incarnate. Suppose he really did live and die in 1C Palestine, perform miracles, rise from the dead, and return to heaven.
Suppose four biographies were written about him. Suppose one was written by a Jewish disciple and a member of his inner circle (John). Suppose one was written by another Jewish disciple (Matthew). Suppose one was written by a younger contemporary who was a native of Jerusalem (Mark). Suppose one was written by a gentile Godfearer who had extensive contacts with members of the 1C church (Luke).
How would we expect these ancient biographies to differ, if at all, from the canonical gospels? Wouldn’t we expect their biographies to reflect the literary conventions of Biblical and Hellenistic historiography? Wouldn’t we expect them to link the life and ministry of Christ to OT prophecies? Wouldn’t we expect them to adapt their presentation to their target audience? Wouldn’t we expect them to reflect differences in their individual background and personal experience? Wouldn’t we expect them to record miracles of Christ? Wouldn’t we expect them to alternate between a chronological presentation and a topical presentation? In sum, what would be different if it were true under the circumstances?
Where is Robert Bellarmine?
I mentioned in my previous blog post that “it’s impossible to get English translations of Bellarmine’s polemical works, unless you consult a source such as Turretin”.
The reason for this, I believe, is that Rome certainly did not have its act together at the time of the Reformation. An image that comes to mind is one of Keystone Cops running around trying to decide what to do about Luther [given that they did not have an easy way to kill him].
Here, from the Reformation historian Patrick Collinson, is an example of how Rome dealt with “uncomfortable” information in that era:
The reason for this, I believe, is that Rome certainly did not have its act together at the time of the Reformation. An image that comes to mind is one of Keystone Cops running around trying to decide what to do about Luther [given that they did not have an easy way to kill him].
Here, from the Reformation historian Patrick Collinson, is an example of how Rome dealt with “uncomfortable” information in that era:
In 1543 a little book was published in Venice with the title Trattato utilissimo del beneficio di Giesu Christo crocifisso i cristiani (A Most Useful Treatise on the Merits of Jesus Christ Crucified for Christians), written by an elusive Benedictine monk called Benedetto da Mantova (dates of birth and death unknown, but his surname seems to have been fontanino) with some help from the humanist and poet Marcantonio Flaminio (1498-1550), a popular work of piety that was translated into several languages including Croat. At first sight this may appear to be a piece of native Italian Christocentrism, part of a Pauline and Augustinian renaissance known to have been nourished by a Spanish humanist and biblicist, Juan de Valdes (1500-1541), whose pious circle in Naples had included Flaminio. But the Beneficio can be read in more than one way. It proves to have been made up from a number of transalpine Protestant texts, and especially the 1539 edition of Calvin's Institutes. Whether or not Benedetto had come across Calvin in his monastery on the slopes of Mount Etna, which seems unlikely, the Institutes was known to Flaminio.I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say that “official Rome” was embarrassed by many of the things its own apologists were saying, and it certainly had the ability to deal with embarrassing information.
It is hard to distinguish between the theology of the Beneficio and Protestantism. "Man can never do good works unless he first know himself to be justified by faith." Other scholars insist, however, that the Beneficio is an expression of Evangelism, a movement that was not generated by Protestantism and should be distingueshed from it. What is certain is that the Beneficio was placed on the Index and so successfuly repressed by the Roman Inquisition that of the many thousands of copies of the Italian edition that were once in existence only one is known to survive, discovered in the library of a Cambridge college in the nineteenth century. That sort of successful repression was the Counter-Reformation. (The Reformation, a History, Patrick Collinson, (c)2003, pgs 105-106.)
Blind Roman Guides
I’ve
commented briefly at Called to Communion, just simply having made a recommendation
of Canon Revisited. In the very next comment, someone
named Randy said “It seems like it suffers from the phantom argument fallacy”.
He also
referred me to Tom Brown’s
article on the Canon Question as sort of a model of how someone ought to
treat arguments. Before I get into detail on the meat of the argument, I’d like
to point out something that Tom Brown slips in, as if it were an established
fact, which impugns Calvin where Calvin most likely is correct.
The Called
to Communion guys are fond of saying
things like “remember one of the cardinal rules in ecumenical inquiry:
Don’t get your Catholic theology from Protestant hearsay–and vice versa. Go to
the source, if you want to learn the truth”. This is certainly wise advice,
especially if one is tempted to listen to Roman Catholic hearsay about John
Calvin from a Roman epologist like Tom Brown. Brown cites Calvin, of course,
just to appear to be above board:
“But a most pernicious error widely
prevails that Scripture has only so much weight as is conceded to it by the
consent of the church. . . . For they mock the Holy Spirit when they ask: Who
can convince us that these writings came from God? . . . . Who can persuade us
to receive one book in reverence but to exclude another, unless the church
prescribe a sure rule for all these matters?”20
The footnote
(20) is to “John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, book I, ch. 7,
sec. 1.” That’s fine as far as it goes. Then Brown
says matter-of-factly, “As an initial matter, Calvin misstates the Catholic
position by stating that, according to the Catholic Church, Scripture has its
authoritative weight accorded to it by the Church. Rather, the Catholic
position is that Scripture has divine authority because it is God-breathed, the
Holy Spirit having inspired the texts’ authors. That is, Scripture has divine
authority because of its divine author, not because of the role of God’s Church
in producing it…”
But the
Battles version of Institutes footnotes this statement, [among other
references] to “John Eck, Enchiridion (1553), ch i., fo. 4a-6b”.
Now, it’s
true that Eck was not an “official” source of Roman teaching at the time, but
one might assume that, given
his position as a papal emissary, he’d be a pretty good
source. Someone might also suggest that Calvin has misrepresented what Eck was
saying, but that’s not likely. First, Calvin was fairly scrupulous about
getting his opponents arguments correct. And second, Battles
himself translated the Eck document from which he cites.
I’m not
going to spend the $35.00 at this point to see what Eck says. But I’d be
willing to surmise that Battles wouldn’t have spent the time translating this
work if there weren’t something in it that he wanted to show.
I’ll suggest
further, that a Reformed writer like Battles translated an Eck document, simply
because Rome wanted to hide what its Reformation-era apologists were saying.
After all,
wasn’t someone like Robert
Bellarmine the great champion of Roman Catholic doctrine at the time of the
counter Reformation? And yet, it’s impossible to get English translations of
Bellarmine’s polemical works, unless you consult a source such as Turretin.
If any Roman
Catholic thinks that this is just a bit too skeptical, consider the “Dialogus
de Potestate Papae” of Silvester Prierias (1518). Bernhard Lohse, in his
1999 “Luther’s Theology” (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press) notes of this writer
and this work:
[Prierias]
was a member of the Roman Commission entrusted with introducing canonical
proceedings against Luther in the spring of 1518. He composed the Dialogus as an expert opinion for the commission
in the spring of 1518, and may have submitted it as early as April or May 1518.
On August 7, 1518, Luther received the Dialogus
together with the summons to defend himself in person at Rome on suspicion of
heresy. The Dialogus, obviously,
cannot be regarded as a particularly brilliant theological treatise on the
papacy. Still, as evidence of the view
then dominant in Rome and of the aggravation it caused in Luther’s dispute, it
has a significance scarcely to be overestimated. Here we see how those who
set the tone at Rome thought of the church and the papal office, above all what
they had to find fault with in Luther. (107-108).
James
Swan has reproduced portions of this document, and in fact, he discusses
the whole issue of question “the Holy Scripture receives its authority or power
from the Roman see” from Luther’s perspective. So you can get the flavor of how
“official Rome” represented itself at the time of the Reformation:
1. Essentially the universal church is
the assembly in divine worship of all who believe in Christ. The true universal
church virtually is the Roman Church, the head of all churches, and the
sovereign pontiff. The Roman Church is represented by the College of Cardinals;
however, virtually it is the pope who is the head of the Church, though in
another manner than Christ.
2. As the universal church cannot err
when it decides on faith and morals, so also a true council cannot err if it
does its best to know the truth, at least not in the end result—and that I
understand under the inclusion of the head. For even a council can initially be
mistaken so long as the investigation of the truth is still in process; indeed
a council has sometimes erred: nevertheless it finally knows the truth through
the Holy Spirit. Accordingly, the Roman Church and the pope cannot err when he
in his capacity as pope comes to a decision, i.e., when he comes to a decision
in consequence of his office and thereby does his best to know the truth.
3.
He who does not hold the teaching of the Roman Church and the Pope as an
infallible rule of faith, from which even Holy Scripture draws its power and
authority, he is a heretic.
4. The Roman Church can establish
something with regard to faith and ethics not only through word but also
through act. And there is no difference therein, except that the word is more
suitable for this than the act. In this same sense custom acquires the power of
law, for the will of a prince expresses itself in acts which he allows or puts
into effect. And it follows that as he is a heretic who wrongly interprets
Scripture, so also is he a heretic who wrongly interprets the teaching and acts
of the Church in so far as they relate to faith and ethics.
Corollary: He who says in regard to
indulgences that the Roman Church cannot do what she has actually done is a
heretic (Michael Tavuzzi, Prierias
(Durham: Duke University Press, 1997, p.111).
Lohse
concludes, “Prierias not only represented the view of infallibility to which
some gave expression toward the close of the Middle Ages, but with his third proposition actually set the Roman church over
Scripture”.
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
God and Holocaust
In short, the Calvinist account of God’s sovereignty given earlier in this chapter inevitably makes God the author of sin, evil, and innocent suffering (such as the children of the Holocaust) and thereby impugns the integrity of God’s character as good and loving. The God of this Calvinism (as opposed to, say, revisionist Reformed theology) is at best morally ambiguous and at worst a moral monster hardly distinguishable from the devil. R. Olson, Against Calvinism (Zondervan 2011), 84.
One would like to think Olson is exaggerating. But, unfortunately, his allegations are easy to document.
I’m afraid some recent apologias for the Holocaust from some Reformed quarters have been nothing less than obscene. In a 2007 sermon, John Piper, asserted that the Nazi Holocaust was divine punishment for the apostasy of the Jewish people in rejecting their Messiah.
And John Piper is hardly alone in the view that the Holocaust was divinely sanctioned. O. Palmer Robertson sees the Holocaust as God's punishment for Jewish covenant-breakers:
Calvinists did not experience any crisis of faith or of theology when confronted with the absolute evil of the Holocaust. Their response to the Holocaust was directed, then, not at God for having decreed the Jews to be murdered but at faithless Jews.
Not to be outdone by Piper and Robertson, Roger Nicole gave his own twist to the vindication of the Holocaust. He said that, in permitting the Holocaust, God cut off the gangrenous arm of the Jewish people to preserve a faithful remnant. On this basis, Nicole concludes, the Holocaust was a good thing, because without it, the entire Jewish people would have perished.
For his part, Cornelius Van Til goes Piper, Nicole, and Robertson one better in his discernment of the hand of God, which he deems patent in the Holocaust: "Yes, without a doubt, the guidance of history by God is perceptible even to our limited gaze. The sense of justice is palpable. Especially is the Holocaust a proof of God’s justice, coming as a long-awaited climax after two thousand years of impenitent infidelity.
As you can see, this confirms an Arminian’s worst suspicions about Calvinism. If anything, it’s even worse that he could imagine.
Okay, now I have an admission to make. John Piper, Roger Nicole, O. Palmer Robertson, and Cornelius Van Til never said what I just attributed to them. I took a statement about what some other folks said, and redacted it. Here’s the actual, verbatim passage:
Worse, some recent apologias for the Holocaust from some Jewish religious quarters have been nothing less than obscene. In a 1987 article (The London Times, May 9, 1987), Lord Immanuel Jakobovitz, the Chief Orthodox Rabbi of Britain and the Commonwealth, asserted that the Nazi Holocaust was divine punishment for the apostasy of the German Jews who founded assimilationist Reform Judaism. "This idol of individual assimilation," he wrote almost gleefully, "exploded in the very country in which it was invented, to be eventually melted down and incinerated in the crematoria of Auschwitz."
Rabbi Jakobovitz is hardly alone in the view that the Holocaust was divinely sanctioned. As reported by the noted Israeli scholar Amos Funkenstein, the ultra-orthodox Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum--who lives in Jerusalem but regards the Jewish secular state and government in Israel as sinful--sees the Holocaust as God's punishment for the Zionist founding of a Jewish state in advance of the promised arrival of the purported new Messiah. As Avishai Margalit just pointed out ("The Uses of the Holocaust," The New York Review of Books, vol. XLI, no. 4, February 17, 1994, p. 7):
The ultra-Orthodox did not experience any crisis of faith or of theology when confronted with the absolute evil of the Holocaust. Their ... response to the Holocaust ... was directed, then, not at God for having allowed the Jews to be murdered but at the Zionists.
Not to be outdone by Rabbis Jakobovitz and Teitelbaum, the ultra-orthodox Brooklyn Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who was even hailed as the new Messiah by his disciples, gave his own twist to the vindication of the Holocaust. In his 1980 book Faith and Science (Emunah v' Madah), this revered sage of orthodoxy opined that, in permitting the Holocaust, God cut off the gangrenous arm of the Jewish people. On this basis, this man of God concludes, the Holocaust was a good thing, because without it, the entire Jewish people would have perished.
Sidney Hook explained why he rejects theism, including Judaism, the religion of his ancestors, in favor of atheism. In a response, the orthodox Chicago Rabbi Yaakov Homnick (Free Inquiry, Fall 1987) indicted Hook's rejection of his heritage as "a far greater tragedy than all of the physically maimed children in the world." Indeed, Rabbi Homnick goes Buber, as well as Rabbis Jakobovitz, Teitelbaum, and Scheinfeld one better in his discernment of the hand of God, which he deems patent in the Holocaust: "Yes, without a doubt, the guidance of history by G-d is perceptible even to our limited gaze. The sense of justice ... is palpable ... Especially is the Holocaust a proof of G-d's justice, coming as a climax of a century in which the vast majority of Jews, after thousands of years of loyalty in exile, decided to cast off the yoke of the Torah."
These are some rabbinical interpretations of the Holocaust. Notice how the rabbis insist that God was behind the Holocaust. God orchestrated the Holocaust as a divine judgment on the Jewish people.
Now, I’m not quoting this material to endorse their interpretation. But compare their statements with Olson’s. On the one hand you have an Arminian theologian who takes it for granted that divine complicity in the Holocaust would be diabolical. On the other hand you have rabbis who unblinkingly assert divine complicity in the Holocaust. These aren’t Calvinists. These are Jews. Their relatives were on the receiving end of the Holocaust. Yet they regard God’s sovereign instigation of the Holocaust as just and praiseworthy.
Once again, my point is not to endorse their particular interpretation of the Holocaust. That's a very in-house affair. But it doesn’t even occur to Olson that some of the people most directly affected by the Holocaust–survivors–might take a position diametrically opposed to his own. He doesn’t even bother to consult Jewish opinion on the Holocaust. (Admittedly, Jewish opinion is hardly monolithic.)
The minimal facts model
http://evaluatingchristianity.wordpress.com/2009/03/05/why-the-minimal-facts-model-is-unpersuasive/
Skip the post. What’s worthwhile are the comments by Anselm, Nathaniel, and McGanahan/ Gene Callahan.
A natural-looking supernaturally-created world
Ironically, here's an atheist cutting the legs out from under Jeff Lowder's evidence for naturalism:
Jonathan MS Pearce said...
Jeff,
Jonathan MS Pearce said...
Jeff,
Let me get this straight - you may have answered this in your objection.
Let's imagine that God created the universe and by fine-tuning all the laws, and creating ex nihilo, he is the supernatural explanation for everything. However, what he created were natural laws and a natural-looking universe. In fact, he's a bit like a classic deist God, stepping away after creation.
Where would this leave the argument, since one would find it difficult to differentiate a naturalistic universe from this supernaturalistic one? Or is it an argument that cannot make claims on first causes, but merely everything thereafter?
Excuse me if I have missed some nuances here.
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