Revenge of the Sith arrived in the mail a day ago. Yes, I know, it’s the sort of movie you’re supposed to see on the big screen with surround sound and all, but I’m not that much of a purist. Sorry!
I saw the first installment of the Star Wars sextet when it first came out, and I was 17 or 18. That was a good age to see it. I’ve now been around for long enough to see the final installment.
Let me say at the outset that this is easily the best installment since The Empire Strikes Back. It has a real plot and a lot of drive. It’s a great movie to look at.
The basic problem with the Star Wars saga is the standard of reference. How are we supposed to judge it? Are we supposed to compare it with serious cinematic art, treat it like popcorn movie fare, or something in-between?
Lucas has certain artistic pretensions, and whenever he takes his work too seriously it instantly sinks under its own dead weight--like a gold-plated fortune-cookie.
One can never tell the target audience Lucas has in mind. At what age level is he pitching his stuff? Much of it is frankly childish, and it’s hard for a reasonably intelligent viewer to assume a consistent point of view.
The general quality of acting has been a typical weakness in a Star Wars movie, and it’s more damaging in Revenge of the Sith because the theme of this film is the tragic downfall of a decent, well-meaning man. Beginning with the best of intentions, he gradually passes the point of no return.
The problem here is that such a theme requires fine acting on the part of the lead to chart the inner turmoil and transformation. He also needs a strong supporting cast to play off against. In this film, Palpatine is the only character (played by McDiarmid) with the thespian resources to do his part.
Christensen was cast for his looks, not his talent. What we get is a mix of adolescent angst and a white boy pretending to be a gangsta rapper.
McGregor is too younthful to be a convincing mentor, and he also lacks the kindliness and gentle touch which Alec Guinness brought to the part.
In addition, Christensen and Portman (as Padmé) have all the spark of two wet dogs in a downpour.
On a related note, the actors and characters are just not as likable as the original trilogy. This leaves the film with a dead-centered deadness.
There are other irritants. Lucas has a magnificent eye for imaginary landscapes and cityscapes. But he’s so itchy to show off his digital effects that he constantly litters the panorama with a swarm of gnat-like little shuttlecraft.
Yoda began life as a Muppet, and the spectacle of a digitized Yoda in a swordfight with the Emperor is just a computerized Punch & Judy show—or should I say Miss Piggy and Kermit the Frog?
The willing suspension of belief is an act of trust between moviemaker and moviegoer. It cannot be abused too often without fostering a certain level of resentment.
The idea that Palpatine is a Sith Lord in disguise has definite dramatic potential. Great cinematic villains achieve their villainy through sheer acting ability alone. Unfortunately, Lucas doesn’t trust actors and acting to get the message across. Instead, he has to dress up the villain in a Halloween costume and make him spit out his words in a reptilian tone of voice just in case the audience is too obtuse to get the point.
However, the most revealing failure is a moral failing—the lack of a consistent moral vision.
For Lucas, presumably, the heroes are the republicans and the Jedi knights. But what’s so great about the old republic, anyway? Lucas’ idea of representative government is modeled, not on the American experiment, but Athenian democracy, the Roman senate, and the House of Lords. These are aristocrats and royalty. Padmé dresses like an empress and lives in a palace that makes Versailles look like the slave quarters.
And despite Yoda’s Dalai Lama rhetoric, the Jedi are strikingly like the Samurai. It makes you wonder what, exactly, is Lucas’ political ideal. The Shogunate?
This makes for a great costume drama, complete with the tabloid lives of the rich and famous. But it certainly blurs the line between the bright side and the dark side of the force.
Then you have the Buddhist solution to the problem of evil. Anakin seeks the advice of Yoda about premonitions of his wife dying in childbirth. And what is Yoda’s counsel? “Death is a natural part of life. Mourn then, do not. Miss them, do not. Attachment leads to jealousy. The shadow of greed, that is. Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose.”
Can you really blame Anakin for changing sides? Lucas, with his post-Christian vision, leaves the character with a choice between one inhuman philosophy and another inhuman philosophy.
The massacre of the “younglings” is Anakin’s formal rite of initiation into the dark side. Yet it’s Obi-Wan who admonishes him that “only a Sith deals in absolutes.”
Well, if that’s the case, then what’s so bad about the slaughter of the “younglings” or the betrayal of his Jedi brethren and mentors?
Actually, slaughtering the offspring of one’s political rivals is customary in warrior cultures. Such atrocities were part of the honor-code. The problem with Lucas is that he retains the remnants of a Christian conscience. This is in direct tension with his chic, ersatz Buddhism.
And without a moral or emotional center, the epic special effects become mere eye-candy. They signify nothing. Compare that with Dante or Bunyan, where the landscape is a moral landscape. Where every stick and stone serve as spiritual similes—like a two-way mirror between two worlds.
On the other hand, some liberal reviewers savaged the film with the viciousness of a custody battle. Such is the bitter disillusionment of the worldling—whose heart is larger than his creed.
Thursday, November 03, 2005
Wednesday, November 02, 2005
As the fur flies
According to the Church of Jerusalem, the Savior had shoulder-length hair and dreadlocks. Due, however, to the increasing hostility between the church and the synagogue, the true knowledge of our Redeemer’s flocculent features quickly became encrusted in the barnacles of hoary tradition and the evil tincture of vain philosophy.
According to the Occidental Church of the Bewhiskered Saints, our Redeemer had a full beard and shoulder-length hair. They claimed to trace this tradition all the way back to St. Periwig the Stalagmite, who was, in turn, said to be a direct disciple of Papias, according to the Lost Gospel of the Bearded One.
But according to the Roman Church of the Short-Haired Savior, our Redeemer was clean-shaven with a pageboy haircut. At the Second Council of Toupee, anyone who presumed to say that our Savior had dreadlocks was forever excommunicate from the one true body of the Savior, otherwise known as the Roman Church of the Short-Haired Savior.
This was in addition to a number of schismatic groups, such as the Holy White Hairians, who traced their church back to St. John the Revelator (Rev 1:14); the Dromedary Hairians, who traced their church back to John the Baptist (Mt 3:4); and the Purple Pate Hairians, who traced their church back to King Solomon (Cant. 7:5).
But things only got worse after the Reformation as splinter groups multiplied without number. There were the Radical Nappists, who said that our Redeemer had short kinky hair (their creed was: "no 'fro, no bro!"); the Shaggadelics, who went around unshaven, claiming that our Savior had ankle-length locks; and the Predestihairians who, due to an unfortunate misprint their Authorized Version of Rom 8:29, were of the firm opinion that all balding men were presumptive reprobates.
This, in turn, precipitated a breakaway sect, known as the Reorganized Predestihairians, who practiced hair-replacement for the dead.
In our own time, feminist theologians rebelled against “misogynistic” depictions of the Savior. They chose to observe a more inclusive liturgy in which the Savior had pigtails. However, the Anti-Defamation League filed a formal complain on the grounds that this porcine hairdo was anti-Semitic according to the kosher laws.
Maneline denominations tried, as always, to split the difference, proposing a Savior with hip-length hair, but the Church of the Holy He-Man depicted him with a buzz-cut.
This is before we ever get to seeker-sensitive churches who adapt their Christology to the Punk, Gothic, and Skinhead subcultures.
According to the Occidental Church of the Bewhiskered Saints, our Redeemer had a full beard and shoulder-length hair. They claimed to trace this tradition all the way back to St. Periwig the Stalagmite, who was, in turn, said to be a direct disciple of Papias, according to the Lost Gospel of the Bearded One.
But according to the Roman Church of the Short-Haired Savior, our Redeemer was clean-shaven with a pageboy haircut. At the Second Council of Toupee, anyone who presumed to say that our Savior had dreadlocks was forever excommunicate from the one true body of the Savior, otherwise known as the Roman Church of the Short-Haired Savior.
This was in addition to a number of schismatic groups, such as the Holy White Hairians, who traced their church back to St. John the Revelator (Rev 1:14); the Dromedary Hairians, who traced their church back to John the Baptist (Mt 3:4); and the Purple Pate Hairians, who traced their church back to King Solomon (Cant. 7:5).
But things only got worse after the Reformation as splinter groups multiplied without number. There were the Radical Nappists, who said that our Redeemer had short kinky hair (their creed was: "no 'fro, no bro!"); the Shaggadelics, who went around unshaven, claiming that our Savior had ankle-length locks; and the Predestihairians who, due to an unfortunate misprint their Authorized Version of Rom 8:29, were of the firm opinion that all balding men were presumptive reprobates.
This, in turn, precipitated a breakaway sect, known as the Reorganized Predestihairians, who practiced hair-replacement for the dead.
In our own time, feminist theologians rebelled against “misogynistic” depictions of the Savior. They chose to observe a more inclusive liturgy in which the Savior had pigtails. However, the Anti-Defamation League filed a formal complain on the grounds that this porcine hairdo was anti-Semitic according to the kosher laws.
Maneline denominations tried, as always, to split the difference, proposing a Savior with hip-length hair, but the Church of the Holy He-Man depicted him with a buzz-cut.
This is before we ever get to seeker-sensitive churches who adapt their Christology to the Punk, Gothic, and Skinhead subcultures.
The sound of one hand clapping
***QUOTE***
[A note for some of our readers: It goes without saying that the thoughts I express below are my own. They do not necessarily in every detail reflect the opinions of every contributor to this website. Some tender consciences appear to have been offended by my calling into question one specific aspect of atonement theory which is popular in Evangelical circles. What some people fail to understand is that, around here, we do theology like grown ups. We are not afraid of being spanked should we call into question some cherished theological opinion or tradition, so long as we do not step outside the undivided Faith of the Catholic Church. You see, around here we think theological reflection should allow room for calling human traditions into question. We want to create space for each other, to allow serious dialogue and debate to take place without living in mortal fear of being branded a heretic by some over-zealous Doctrinal Guard Dog.
Unfortunately, some, held captive by their theological traditions, are apparently not mature enough to listen patiently while different theological opinions are expressed. And make no mistake about it, the penal substitution model, though it is now dominant in Protestant orthodoxy, is an opinion, not an explicit teaching of Holy Scripture. The Church Universal has never given a sancrosanct status to any particular theory as to the logic and mechanism of the atonement, beyond the fact that Christ “was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate.” Beyond that, grown up theologians can feel free to call into question any human tradition regarding the details of the atonement. We trust that some of our readers are mature enough to understand that.]
http://www.communiosanctorum.com/?p=94
***END-QUOTE***
Translation:
A note to our readers: It goes without saying that I’m pretty full of myself. What all the little people fail to understand, since they’re not near as smart as yours truly, is that, around here, we do theology like grown-ups. Whenever anyone dares to offer an intellectual critique of our position, we impute emotional motives to him since that’s how to have an adult conversation about theology.
We’re not afraid of patting ourselves on the back because, if we don’t do it, who else will? I pat Kevin on the back, and Kevin pats Tim on the back, and Tim pats me on the back in one great big back-slapping, head-patting orgy of mutual admiration and self-congratulation cuz we’re all just so dog-gone wonderful.
It’s hard for folks who aren’t half as wonderful as we are to imagine how unbearably wonderful it is to be so wonderfully wonderful. Sometimes I can hardly contain myself. In fact, I have my right arm in a sling right now after I broke it in three different places by patting myself so hard on the back. Now Tim and I take turns.
We are not afraid of tootin’ our own horn. We even wear earplugs so's we don’t go deaf at the decibel level of our self-horn tootin’.
You see, around here we think theological reflection should allow room to pose as Presbyterians whenever we want to attack Baptists, while allowing more room to attack Presbyterians for not being crypto-Catholics like us. We want to create space for each other—preferably lots and lots of empty space up in the cranial region—to allow serious monologue to take place without living in mortal fear of being branded as a heretic by some over-zealous Doctrinal Guard Dog.
Of course, we reserve the exclusive right to brand a Baptist a heretic for not being more Mormon, and brand a Presbyterian a heretic for not being more Papistical.
And we also reserve the right to wallow in crybaby rhetoric whenever anyone subjects our public drivel to rational scrutiny--cuz that’s how grown-up theologians react to rational scrutiny.
Unfortunately, some, held captive by their theological traditions, are apparently not mature enough to roll over and play dead while we take pot-shots.
Of course, we reserve the exclusive right to make a highly selective and purely opportunistic appeal to tradition whenever it happens to serve our own provincial purpose since we’re so all-fired special. Mr Rogers said we’re special, and he was talking about us’ns, not about you’ins!
Every year we hold a contest with Dave Armstrong to see who’s the extra-specialest and most wonderfulest blogger in the whole wide world.
And let there be no mistake--today it’s penal substitution, but tomorrow it may be inerrancy or hell or the virgin birth or the deity of Christ, cuz it’s all about giving each other his/her own space, dude. We trust that some of our readers—all five of ‘em, including Tim’s Mom and Kevin’s Aunt Bessie and Jeremy (Jeremy’s my cousin twice-removed)—are mature enough to understand that.
[A note for some of our readers: It goes without saying that the thoughts I express below are my own. They do not necessarily in every detail reflect the opinions of every contributor to this website. Some tender consciences appear to have been offended by my calling into question one specific aspect of atonement theory which is popular in Evangelical circles. What some people fail to understand is that, around here, we do theology like grown ups. We are not afraid of being spanked should we call into question some cherished theological opinion or tradition, so long as we do not step outside the undivided Faith of the Catholic Church. You see, around here we think theological reflection should allow room for calling human traditions into question. We want to create space for each other, to allow serious dialogue and debate to take place without living in mortal fear of being branded a heretic by some over-zealous Doctrinal Guard Dog.
Unfortunately, some, held captive by their theological traditions, are apparently not mature enough to listen patiently while different theological opinions are expressed. And make no mistake about it, the penal substitution model, though it is now dominant in Protestant orthodoxy, is an opinion, not an explicit teaching of Holy Scripture. The Church Universal has never given a sancrosanct status to any particular theory as to the logic and mechanism of the atonement, beyond the fact that Christ “was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate.” Beyond that, grown up theologians can feel free to call into question any human tradition regarding the details of the atonement. We trust that some of our readers are mature enough to understand that.]
http://www.communiosanctorum.com/?p=94
***END-QUOTE***
Translation:
A note to our readers: It goes without saying that I’m pretty full of myself. What all the little people fail to understand, since they’re not near as smart as yours truly, is that, around here, we do theology like grown-ups. Whenever anyone dares to offer an intellectual critique of our position, we impute emotional motives to him since that’s how to have an adult conversation about theology.
We’re not afraid of patting ourselves on the back because, if we don’t do it, who else will? I pat Kevin on the back, and Kevin pats Tim on the back, and Tim pats me on the back in one great big back-slapping, head-patting orgy of mutual admiration and self-congratulation cuz we’re all just so dog-gone wonderful.
It’s hard for folks who aren’t half as wonderful as we are to imagine how unbearably wonderful it is to be so wonderfully wonderful. Sometimes I can hardly contain myself. In fact, I have my right arm in a sling right now after I broke it in three different places by patting myself so hard on the back. Now Tim and I take turns.
We are not afraid of tootin’ our own horn. We even wear earplugs so's we don’t go deaf at the decibel level of our self-horn tootin’.
You see, around here we think theological reflection should allow room to pose as Presbyterians whenever we want to attack Baptists, while allowing more room to attack Presbyterians for not being crypto-Catholics like us. We want to create space for each other—preferably lots and lots of empty space up in the cranial region—to allow serious monologue to take place without living in mortal fear of being branded as a heretic by some over-zealous Doctrinal Guard Dog.
Of course, we reserve the exclusive right to brand a Baptist a heretic for not being more Mormon, and brand a Presbyterian a heretic for not being more Papistical.
And we also reserve the right to wallow in crybaby rhetoric whenever anyone subjects our public drivel to rational scrutiny--cuz that’s how grown-up theologians react to rational scrutiny.
Unfortunately, some, held captive by their theological traditions, are apparently not mature enough to roll over and play dead while we take pot-shots.
Of course, we reserve the exclusive right to make a highly selective and purely opportunistic appeal to tradition whenever it happens to serve our own provincial purpose since we’re so all-fired special. Mr Rogers said we’re special, and he was talking about us’ns, not about you’ins!
Every year we hold a contest with Dave Armstrong to see who’s the extra-specialest and most wonderfulest blogger in the whole wide world.
And let there be no mistake--today it’s penal substitution, but tomorrow it may be inerrancy or hell or the virgin birth or the deity of Christ, cuz it’s all about giving each other his/her own space, dude. We trust that some of our readers—all five of ‘em, including Tim’s Mom and Kevin’s Aunt Bessie and Jeremy (Jeremy’s my cousin twice-removed)—are mature enough to understand that.
Tuesday, November 01, 2005
WMD
***QUOTE***
Disinformation: 22 Media Myths That Undermine the War on Terror
by Richard Miniter
* 1.77 metric tons of enriched uranium
* 1,500 gallons of chemical weapons agents
* 17 chemical warheads containing cyclosarin (a nerve agent five times more deadly than sarin gas)
* Over 1,000 radioactive materials in powdered form meant for dispersal over populated areas
* Roadside bombs loaded with mustard and "conventional" sarin gas, assembled in binary chemical projectiles for maximum potency
This is only a PARTIAL LIST of the horrific weapons verified to have been recovered in Iraq to date. Yet Americans overwhelmingly believe U.S. and coalition forces have found NO weapons of mass destruction.
In Disinformation Richard Miniter reveals:
* Three common myths about the Bush Administration that have been spread widely by Michael Moore's film Fahrenheit 9/11
* The 9/11 hijackers used box-cutters to take control of the four planes they hijacked, right? Wrong -- and how this popular myth got started
* How bin Laden declared war on America five separate times and pursued his jihad war against the United States throughout the 1990s -- contrary to liberal media claims that no one had heard of him before 9/11
* Bush knew? No -- as is clear from this close examination of the CIA memo that supposedly warned him about possible hijackings before 9/11
* Are U.S. troops in Iraq to make the world safe for Halliburton? No -- in fact, Halliburton has not made a fortune in Iraq, and is even trying to sell its division that runs Iraqi operations
* A war for oil? Why the U.S. is not fighting one in Iraq or anywhere else
* Clear, uncontested, proven links between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Al Qaeda
Why so many people are so eager to believe these War on Terror myths, no matter how outlandish they are
Miniter marshals the evidence -- all the evidence -- that shoots down this dangerous disinformation and refutes the legions of shallow media talking heads who mindlessly repeat it. If you want the real truth about the War on Terror and what we must do in order to win it, Disinformation is the indispensable starting point.
conservativebooks@hebookservice.com
***END-QUOTE***
Disinformation: 22 Media Myths That Undermine the War on Terror
by Richard Miniter
* 1.77 metric tons of enriched uranium
* 1,500 gallons of chemical weapons agents
* 17 chemical warheads containing cyclosarin (a nerve agent five times more deadly than sarin gas)
* Over 1,000 radioactive materials in powdered form meant for dispersal over populated areas
* Roadside bombs loaded with mustard and "conventional" sarin gas, assembled in binary chemical projectiles for maximum potency
This is only a PARTIAL LIST of the horrific weapons verified to have been recovered in Iraq to date. Yet Americans overwhelmingly believe U.S. and coalition forces have found NO weapons of mass destruction.
In Disinformation Richard Miniter reveals:
* Three common myths about the Bush Administration that have been spread widely by Michael Moore's film Fahrenheit 9/11
* The 9/11 hijackers used box-cutters to take control of the four planes they hijacked, right? Wrong -- and how this popular myth got started
* How bin Laden declared war on America five separate times and pursued his jihad war against the United States throughout the 1990s -- contrary to liberal media claims that no one had heard of him before 9/11
* Bush knew? No -- as is clear from this close examination of the CIA memo that supposedly warned him about possible hijackings before 9/11
* Are U.S. troops in Iraq to make the world safe for Halliburton? No -- in fact, Halliburton has not made a fortune in Iraq, and is even trying to sell its division that runs Iraqi operations
* A war for oil? Why the U.S. is not fighting one in Iraq or anywhere else
* Clear, uncontested, proven links between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Al Qaeda
Why so many people are so eager to believe these War on Terror myths, no matter how outlandish they are
Miniter marshals the evidence -- all the evidence -- that shoots down this dangerous disinformation and refutes the legions of shallow media talking heads who mindlessly repeat it. If you want the real truth about the War on Terror and what we must do in order to win it, Disinformation is the indispensable starting point.
conservativebooks@hebookservice.com
***END-QUOTE***
Jesu Screed
Over at Jesu Screed, Scot McKnight has chosen to attack the traditional doctrine of hell. There is nothing novel in his routine objections to hell.
The only reason this is worth remarking upon is because it illustrates the mainstreaming of annihilationism among “Evangelical” academics.
***QUOTE***
Why? Because we have read much on this and we know that many fine Christians who love the Lord and the Bible have taught other things — including such things as conditional immortality and annihilationism. (I do not speak here for universalists, for that I’m not.) Maybe they are wrong, but they deserve to be listened to.
http://www.jesuscreed.org/?m=200505
***END-QUOTE***
Assuming, for the sake of argument, that those who subscribe to annihilationism or conditional immortality qualify as “fine Christians,” how is that the least bit relevant to where the truth lies?
Apart from divine revelation, we know next to nothing about the afterlife. At most, ghosts and OBEs would furnish some evidence for the existence of an afterlife. Arguments for the incorporeal soul might also support that contention.
But a detailed knowledge of what happens to someone after he dies is dependent on revelation alone. Whether there’s a heaven or hell, and the fixity or duration of each—these are matters of which Christians, however sterling their character, have absolutely no independent knowledge. This is not an argument from experience, but authority—the authority of God’s word.
***QUOTE***
Why? Because we think the logic of an eternal punishment for a finite sin and a finite human seems inconsistent — and we believe with many that humans simply cannot — in space and time — commit infinite sin and that finite sins against an infinite God are still not infinite sins.
***END-QUOTE***
i) This is one of the primary objections to hell. Suppose we feel the same way about it as Dr. McKnight? Does a weak intuition regarding the disproportion between crime and punishment justify a denial of revealed truth?
ii) Do our intuitions point in just one direction? Don’t we also feel that some crimes are so heinous that it’s hard to imagine any adequate punishment?
How much time is enough time for a man who tortures little children? Would McKnight care to put a number on that?
Or what about a ne’er-do-well son who cheats his aged mother out of her life-savings, sticks her in a state-run nursing home, and absconds to Rio with the loot?
Or, to take another example, one limitation of the death penalty is that a mass murderer can kill many times, but you can only kill him one time.
These are extreme examples, but they’re the sort of limiting-cases which expose the fallibility of our moral intuitions.
iii) For that matter, the only reason a sinner commits a finite number of sins in this life is because he only gets to live for a finite amount of time before he dies. If he never died, he’d continue to sin. If he lived longer, nothing would change.
So it’s rather artificial to pretend that God should limit his sentence to the historical accident of death.
Take the case of a suicide bomber who prematurely explodes before he gets a chance to take anyone else with him.
Should God mete out a lesser sentence because the suicide bomber bungled the job? Should he be treated more leniently because he accidentally killed himself before he deliberately killed anyone else? Intuitively speaking, wouldn’t a just God take his homicidal intent into account, even if he didn’t live long enough to carry out his murderous designs? And how is that different than any other sinner?
iv) This brings us to McKnight’s shallow grasp of sin and judgment. God is not judging our sins. God is judging sinners. A sinner is a sinner no matter how long or short his lifespan. McKnight’s atomistic and quantitative analysis of sin misses the fundamental point. At issue is not the guilt of the action, but the guilt of the actor.
v) Assuming, for the sake of argument, that the traditional doctrine is inconsistent, isn’t annihilationism equally inconsistent?
On McKnight’s own view, the damned suffer permanent loss. Their finite sins have unending consequences. For they are deprived of their very existence, forever and ever. Isn’t that incommensurate with whatever they did during their finite lifespan?
And even if you throw in postmortem evangelism, that is still a finite second-chance. If he blows his postmortem opportunity, he’s zapped out of existence.
vi) For that matter, isn’t everlasting bliss in glory an incommensurate reward for whatever was done before a Christian died?
Perhaps McKnight would say that’s different: we’re saved by grace, we didn’t earn it.
Ah, but according his own loose standards, there are many “fine Christians” who do introduce an element of personal merit into the scheme of salvation.
vii) And while we’re on the subject, I’d hasten to add that universalism is also incommensurate with anything done in this life.
So every position you take on the afterlife is vulnerable to this charge. As such, it either proves too much or too little.
However, as I argued under (ii)-(iv), this objection, as an objection to hell, is riddled with fallacies.
***QUOTE***
Why? Because we cannot bear the thought of humans we love or know or speak with or have known or know about will spend Eternity in such graphic pain and misery. Those who love their neighbors, at least as much as themselves, cannot look with glee or triumphalism or joy and vindictiveness on Dark Places. We can imagine the horror and it terrifies.
***END-QUOTE**
i) Hell is supposed to be horrific and terrifying.
ii) We can be triumphant, not in ourselves, but in the justice of God.
iii) It’s easy to speak in facile terms about neighbor-love and presume to speak on behalf of everyone else, but everyone doesn’t feel that way by a long shot.
Take a guy who makes his living cheating little old women out of their nest-egg. Now, his own mother may still love him because she’s his mother. Mother-love often has that all-forgiving quality.
But what about someone else’s mother? What about the son of the mother who was cheated out of her nest-egg by the ne’re-do-well? It’s precisely because he loves his own mother that he hates anyone who would cheat his mom out of her life-savings. Is the prospect unbearable to a devoted son that a man will burn in hell for cheating little old women out of their life savings?
A theological liberal is just like a political liberal. They feel for the abusers more than for the abused. They presume to forgive the abusers at the expense of the abused. This is their idea of love. They are large-hearted towards the abusers and heartless towards the abused.
Speaking for myself, I prefer my hard-hearted doctrine of hell over McKnight’s soft-hearted alternative.
***QUOTE***
Why? Because we know the grandeur of God’s embracing grace, we know the glory of that grace, and we wonder if maybe, somehow, God might even turn hell inside out and upside down — even though we do not understand it or comprehend how it might be just or know how it would be good. We are among those who fell [sic.] the pull of God’s final grace — the way Paul feels its glorious pull in Romans 5.
***END-QUOTE***
Is this an argument for annihilationism or universalism? Hadn’t McKnight just told us that he denies universalism?
It is certainly unclear how annihilationism has any higher claim on the grace of God than the traditional doctrine of hell.
And one of problems with universalism is that mercy ceases to be mercy if God must be merciful to everyone. Grace is no longer grace, but obligation.
***QUOTE***
Why? Because we know the ground of reality is the perichoresis, God’s interpenetrating love and mutual indwelling of the Trinity in love — which has been a consistent theme from Gregory of Nyssa to Jonathan Edwards to Miroslav Volf, and we wonder if God’s Love might be able to turn human sinfulness into divine grace and glory. And we want that Love to hold our hearts in its embracing grace.
***END-QUOTE***
Jonathan Edwards, for one, wouldn’t deny that God is able to turn our sinfulness to his own glory. But many things are possible which are never actual. God is equally able to damn everyone.
***QUOTE***
Why? Because we know that the Old Testament does not speak of hell, because we know that what many say about hell is rooted in passages that are about God’s historical judgments — in time, in space, on earth, judgments against his people’s unfaithfulness, and because we know that many people today think Jesus was speaking about 70 AD in Mark 13 (parallels) and that the parables attached to that chapter might be speaking of that in-time, in-space, in-history judgment against Jerusalem and because we know that we could be wrong about this interpretation too (but maybe not), and because there is not as much in the New Testament about hell as there is about historical judgment, and because the one book that seems to talk so much about it — Revelation — is front to back apocalyptic and metaphor and imagery and symbolism and we just wonder, if maybe even judgment imagery ought not to be taken too literally.
***END-QUOTE***
Now the problems begin to pile up like an accident on the LA freeway:
i) Actually, the OT has a fair amount to say about the afterlife, including hell. Just read Shades of Sheol by Philip Johnson or Hell Under Fire edited by Christopher Morgan and Robert Peterson.
ii) One problem with preterizing the hellish language of Scripture is that, by the very same token, you can just as well preterize the heavenly language of Scripture. The price for doing away with hell is to do with heaven. What McKnight has just given us is a synthesis of annihilationism and universalism in the form of universal annihilationism. How does that square with the love and the grace of God?
***QUOTE***
Why? Because we know that even when Jesus speaks about hell he uses graphic physical imagery and we know that human bodies can’t go on burning for ever and ever because they will be incinerated, and because we know that “fire” is an image and a metaphor quite often in the Bible for judgment and for purgation and maybe isn’t literal. And that therefore we wonder what it might be an image about — and we wonder and we hope and we do this because we believe in the Bible and hope that it might refer to something as simple as separation (as Lewis wrote in The Great Divorce).
***END-QUOTE***
i) A metaphor is not a blank slate.
ii) Yes, fire can stand for spiritual refinement, but that isn’t based on the mere usage of fiery imagery, but on a larger context in which purification is clearly in view.
iii) There is also the matter of temporal markers (“eternal,” “everlasting”).
iv) And there is also the matter of divergent destinies.
***QUOTE***
Why? Because we believe God is Sovereign, and that it is his judgment (not ours), and that what he wants to do will be Goodness itself, Beauty itself, and it will always be consistent with his glorious person. We want what he wants.
***END-QUOTE***
i) Does McKnight really believe that God is sovereign? Since he denies universalism, McKnight must either believe that God is able, but unwilling to save everyone--or else that God is willing, but unable to save everyone. If the former, then his position is no more loving than the traditional view; if the latter, then he denies the sovereignty of God.
ii) Does he want what God wants? Or does he want God to want what he wants?
***QUOTE***
Why? Because we might be wrong, and we’d like to be wrong because it pains us to hear our brothers and sisters talk the way they do about hell and final judgment as if it doesn’t matter and as if humans are dispensable and as if these brothers and sisters have got things so right and that they know they are on the right side — when the whole Bible points its fingers at attitudes like that.
***END-QUOTE***
It is the annihilationist who, be definition, regards some human beings as dispensable, not the traditionalist. We’re not the ones who say that God is zapping people out of existence.
***QUOTE***
These are some thoughts — and I am speaking for my own heart and the heart of others when I say these things, and I know what the Bible says and I believe what it says, but I’m with a lot of brothers and sisters who know that what it says is not that clear and that we ought to be more humble about it all and that we ought to spend our time loving our neighbors and not assigning who to where. I know what I think the Bible says but I hope that what I think is not what will happen — why? Because it is unbearable, friends, unbearable.
***END-QUOTE***
i) Notice the false antithesis. How is it unloving to forewarn men and women of impending danger? Of extreme danger?
ii) Many “unbearable” things are true. Unbearable things happen all the time. That should serve as a cautionary omen of things to come and things to avoid.
The only reason this is worth remarking upon is because it illustrates the mainstreaming of annihilationism among “Evangelical” academics.
***QUOTE***
Why? Because we have read much on this and we know that many fine Christians who love the Lord and the Bible have taught other things — including such things as conditional immortality and annihilationism. (I do not speak here for universalists, for that I’m not.) Maybe they are wrong, but they deserve to be listened to.
http://www.jesuscreed.org/?m=200505
***END-QUOTE***
Assuming, for the sake of argument, that those who subscribe to annihilationism or conditional immortality qualify as “fine Christians,” how is that the least bit relevant to where the truth lies?
Apart from divine revelation, we know next to nothing about the afterlife. At most, ghosts and OBEs would furnish some evidence for the existence of an afterlife. Arguments for the incorporeal soul might also support that contention.
But a detailed knowledge of what happens to someone after he dies is dependent on revelation alone. Whether there’s a heaven or hell, and the fixity or duration of each—these are matters of which Christians, however sterling their character, have absolutely no independent knowledge. This is not an argument from experience, but authority—the authority of God’s word.
***QUOTE***
Why? Because we think the logic of an eternal punishment for a finite sin and a finite human seems inconsistent — and we believe with many that humans simply cannot — in space and time — commit infinite sin and that finite sins against an infinite God are still not infinite sins.
***END-QUOTE***
i) This is one of the primary objections to hell. Suppose we feel the same way about it as Dr. McKnight? Does a weak intuition regarding the disproportion between crime and punishment justify a denial of revealed truth?
ii) Do our intuitions point in just one direction? Don’t we also feel that some crimes are so heinous that it’s hard to imagine any adequate punishment?
How much time is enough time for a man who tortures little children? Would McKnight care to put a number on that?
Or what about a ne’er-do-well son who cheats his aged mother out of her life-savings, sticks her in a state-run nursing home, and absconds to Rio with the loot?
Or, to take another example, one limitation of the death penalty is that a mass murderer can kill many times, but you can only kill him one time.
These are extreme examples, but they’re the sort of limiting-cases which expose the fallibility of our moral intuitions.
iii) For that matter, the only reason a sinner commits a finite number of sins in this life is because he only gets to live for a finite amount of time before he dies. If he never died, he’d continue to sin. If he lived longer, nothing would change.
So it’s rather artificial to pretend that God should limit his sentence to the historical accident of death.
Take the case of a suicide bomber who prematurely explodes before he gets a chance to take anyone else with him.
Should God mete out a lesser sentence because the suicide bomber bungled the job? Should he be treated more leniently because he accidentally killed himself before he deliberately killed anyone else? Intuitively speaking, wouldn’t a just God take his homicidal intent into account, even if he didn’t live long enough to carry out his murderous designs? And how is that different than any other sinner?
iv) This brings us to McKnight’s shallow grasp of sin and judgment. God is not judging our sins. God is judging sinners. A sinner is a sinner no matter how long or short his lifespan. McKnight’s atomistic and quantitative analysis of sin misses the fundamental point. At issue is not the guilt of the action, but the guilt of the actor.
v) Assuming, for the sake of argument, that the traditional doctrine is inconsistent, isn’t annihilationism equally inconsistent?
On McKnight’s own view, the damned suffer permanent loss. Their finite sins have unending consequences. For they are deprived of their very existence, forever and ever. Isn’t that incommensurate with whatever they did during their finite lifespan?
And even if you throw in postmortem evangelism, that is still a finite second-chance. If he blows his postmortem opportunity, he’s zapped out of existence.
vi) For that matter, isn’t everlasting bliss in glory an incommensurate reward for whatever was done before a Christian died?
Perhaps McKnight would say that’s different: we’re saved by grace, we didn’t earn it.
Ah, but according his own loose standards, there are many “fine Christians” who do introduce an element of personal merit into the scheme of salvation.
vii) And while we’re on the subject, I’d hasten to add that universalism is also incommensurate with anything done in this life.
So every position you take on the afterlife is vulnerable to this charge. As such, it either proves too much or too little.
However, as I argued under (ii)-(iv), this objection, as an objection to hell, is riddled with fallacies.
***QUOTE***
Why? Because we cannot bear the thought of humans we love or know or speak with or have known or know about will spend Eternity in such graphic pain and misery. Those who love their neighbors, at least as much as themselves, cannot look with glee or triumphalism or joy and vindictiveness on Dark Places. We can imagine the horror and it terrifies.
***END-QUOTE**
i) Hell is supposed to be horrific and terrifying.
ii) We can be triumphant, not in ourselves, but in the justice of God.
iii) It’s easy to speak in facile terms about neighbor-love and presume to speak on behalf of everyone else, but everyone doesn’t feel that way by a long shot.
Take a guy who makes his living cheating little old women out of their nest-egg. Now, his own mother may still love him because she’s his mother. Mother-love often has that all-forgiving quality.
But what about someone else’s mother? What about the son of the mother who was cheated out of her nest-egg by the ne’re-do-well? It’s precisely because he loves his own mother that he hates anyone who would cheat his mom out of her life-savings. Is the prospect unbearable to a devoted son that a man will burn in hell for cheating little old women out of their life savings?
A theological liberal is just like a political liberal. They feel for the abusers more than for the abused. They presume to forgive the abusers at the expense of the abused. This is their idea of love. They are large-hearted towards the abusers and heartless towards the abused.
Speaking for myself, I prefer my hard-hearted doctrine of hell over McKnight’s soft-hearted alternative.
***QUOTE***
Why? Because we know the grandeur of God’s embracing grace, we know the glory of that grace, and we wonder if maybe, somehow, God might even turn hell inside out and upside down — even though we do not understand it or comprehend how it might be just or know how it would be good. We are among those who fell [sic.] the pull of God’s final grace — the way Paul feels its glorious pull in Romans 5.
***END-QUOTE***
Is this an argument for annihilationism or universalism? Hadn’t McKnight just told us that he denies universalism?
It is certainly unclear how annihilationism has any higher claim on the grace of God than the traditional doctrine of hell.
And one of problems with universalism is that mercy ceases to be mercy if God must be merciful to everyone. Grace is no longer grace, but obligation.
***QUOTE***
Why? Because we know the ground of reality is the perichoresis, God’s interpenetrating love and mutual indwelling of the Trinity in love — which has been a consistent theme from Gregory of Nyssa to Jonathan Edwards to Miroslav Volf, and we wonder if God’s Love might be able to turn human sinfulness into divine grace and glory. And we want that Love to hold our hearts in its embracing grace.
***END-QUOTE***
Jonathan Edwards, for one, wouldn’t deny that God is able to turn our sinfulness to his own glory. But many things are possible which are never actual. God is equally able to damn everyone.
***QUOTE***
Why? Because we know that the Old Testament does not speak of hell, because we know that what many say about hell is rooted in passages that are about God’s historical judgments — in time, in space, on earth, judgments against his people’s unfaithfulness, and because we know that many people today think Jesus was speaking about 70 AD in Mark 13 (parallels) and that the parables attached to that chapter might be speaking of that in-time, in-space, in-history judgment against Jerusalem and because we know that we could be wrong about this interpretation too (but maybe not), and because there is not as much in the New Testament about hell as there is about historical judgment, and because the one book that seems to talk so much about it — Revelation — is front to back apocalyptic and metaphor and imagery and symbolism and we just wonder, if maybe even judgment imagery ought not to be taken too literally.
***END-QUOTE***
Now the problems begin to pile up like an accident on the LA freeway:
i) Actually, the OT has a fair amount to say about the afterlife, including hell. Just read Shades of Sheol by Philip Johnson or Hell Under Fire edited by Christopher Morgan and Robert Peterson.
ii) One problem with preterizing the hellish language of Scripture is that, by the very same token, you can just as well preterize the heavenly language of Scripture. The price for doing away with hell is to do with heaven. What McKnight has just given us is a synthesis of annihilationism and universalism in the form of universal annihilationism. How does that square with the love and the grace of God?
***QUOTE***
Why? Because we know that even when Jesus speaks about hell he uses graphic physical imagery and we know that human bodies can’t go on burning for ever and ever because they will be incinerated, and because we know that “fire” is an image and a metaphor quite often in the Bible for judgment and for purgation and maybe isn’t literal. And that therefore we wonder what it might be an image about — and we wonder and we hope and we do this because we believe in the Bible and hope that it might refer to something as simple as separation (as Lewis wrote in The Great Divorce).
***END-QUOTE***
i) A metaphor is not a blank slate.
ii) Yes, fire can stand for spiritual refinement, but that isn’t based on the mere usage of fiery imagery, but on a larger context in which purification is clearly in view.
iii) There is also the matter of temporal markers (“eternal,” “everlasting”).
iv) And there is also the matter of divergent destinies.
***QUOTE***
Why? Because we believe God is Sovereign, and that it is his judgment (not ours), and that what he wants to do will be Goodness itself, Beauty itself, and it will always be consistent with his glorious person. We want what he wants.
***END-QUOTE***
i) Does McKnight really believe that God is sovereign? Since he denies universalism, McKnight must either believe that God is able, but unwilling to save everyone--or else that God is willing, but unable to save everyone. If the former, then his position is no more loving than the traditional view; if the latter, then he denies the sovereignty of God.
ii) Does he want what God wants? Or does he want God to want what he wants?
***QUOTE***
Why? Because we might be wrong, and we’d like to be wrong because it pains us to hear our brothers and sisters talk the way they do about hell and final judgment as if it doesn’t matter and as if humans are dispensable and as if these brothers and sisters have got things so right and that they know they are on the right side — when the whole Bible points its fingers at attitudes like that.
***END-QUOTE***
It is the annihilationist who, be definition, regards some human beings as dispensable, not the traditionalist. We’re not the ones who say that God is zapping people out of existence.
***QUOTE***
These are some thoughts — and I am speaking for my own heart and the heart of others when I say these things, and I know what the Bible says and I believe what it says, but I’m with a lot of brothers and sisters who know that what it says is not that clear and that we ought to be more humble about it all and that we ought to spend our time loving our neighbors and not assigning who to where. I know what I think the Bible says but I hope that what I think is not what will happen — why? Because it is unbearable, friends, unbearable.
***END-QUOTE***
i) Notice the false antithesis. How is it unloving to forewarn men and women of impending danger? Of extreme danger?
ii) Many “unbearable” things are true. Unbearable things happen all the time. That should serve as a cautionary omen of things to come and things to avoid.
Monday, October 31, 2005
There goes the neighborhood
***QUOTE***
Rioting by youths in a Paris suburb has highlighted the discontent among sections of France's immigrant population.
The BBC News website's Henri Astier explores the sense of alienation felt by many French Muslims.
Like many others, Nadir Dendoune's suburb has turned into a ghetto
When Nadir Dendoune was growing up in the 1980s, his home town of L'Ile Saint-Denis, north of Paris, was a fairly diverse place.
"We were all poor, but there were French people, East Europeans, as well as blacks and Arabs," says Mr Dendoune, 33, an author and something of a celebrity in his estate.
Two decades on, the complexion of the place has changed.
"On my class photos more than half the kids were white," he says. "On today's pictures only one or two are."
L'Ile St-Denis is among the "suburbs" around French cities where immigrants, notably from former North African colonies, have been housed since the 1960s.
Blighted by bad schools and endemic unemployment, the suburbs are hard to escape.
The immigrants' children and grandchildren are still stuck there - an angry underclass that is increasingly identified through religion.
Ten years ago these youths were seen as French "Arabs".
Now most are commonly referred to, and define themselves, as "Muslims".
Many countries have ethnic and religious enclaves. But in France they cause particular alarm, for three reasons.
First, they are not supposed to exist in a nation that views itself as indivisible, and able to assimilate its diverse components.
Separatism, the French are told, is a plague afflicting the Anglo-Saxon multicultural model.
The government bans official statistics based on ethnicity or religion. As a result, no one knows exactly how many Muslims live in the country - at least five million is the best guess.
Second largest religion
Five million Muslims (estimate)
35% Algerian origin (estimate)
25% Moroccan origin (estimate)
10% Tunisian origin (estimate)
Concentrated in poor suburbs of Paris, Lille, Lyon, Marseille and other cities
Ghettos also threaten another tenet of French identity - secularism.
As the country celebrates the centenary of the separation of Church and State, Islam is seen as the biggest challenge to the country's secular model in the past 100 years.
Thirdly, the worldwide rise of Islamic militancy strikes fear in the heart of a country that is home to Europe's biggest Muslim community.
French police know that there is no shortage of potential jihadis in the country.
The assertiveness of French Islam is seen as a threat not just to the values of the republic, but to its very security.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4375910.stm
***END-QUOTE***
Rioting by youths in a Paris suburb has highlighted the discontent among sections of France's immigrant population.
The BBC News website's Henri Astier explores the sense of alienation felt by many French Muslims.
Like many others, Nadir Dendoune's suburb has turned into a ghetto
When Nadir Dendoune was growing up in the 1980s, his home town of L'Ile Saint-Denis, north of Paris, was a fairly diverse place.
"We were all poor, but there were French people, East Europeans, as well as blacks and Arabs," says Mr Dendoune, 33, an author and something of a celebrity in his estate.
Two decades on, the complexion of the place has changed.
"On my class photos more than half the kids were white," he says. "On today's pictures only one or two are."
L'Ile St-Denis is among the "suburbs" around French cities where immigrants, notably from former North African colonies, have been housed since the 1960s.
Blighted by bad schools and endemic unemployment, the suburbs are hard to escape.
The immigrants' children and grandchildren are still stuck there - an angry underclass that is increasingly identified through religion.
Ten years ago these youths were seen as French "Arabs".
Now most are commonly referred to, and define themselves, as "Muslims".
Many countries have ethnic and religious enclaves. But in France they cause particular alarm, for three reasons.
First, they are not supposed to exist in a nation that views itself as indivisible, and able to assimilate its diverse components.
Separatism, the French are told, is a plague afflicting the Anglo-Saxon multicultural model.
The government bans official statistics based on ethnicity or religion. As a result, no one knows exactly how many Muslims live in the country - at least five million is the best guess.
Second largest religion
Five million Muslims (estimate)
35% Algerian origin (estimate)
25% Moroccan origin (estimate)
10% Tunisian origin (estimate)
Concentrated in poor suburbs of Paris, Lille, Lyon, Marseille and other cities
Ghettos also threaten another tenet of French identity - secularism.
As the country celebrates the centenary of the separation of Church and State, Islam is seen as the biggest challenge to the country's secular model in the past 100 years.
Thirdly, the worldwide rise of Islamic militancy strikes fear in the heart of a country that is home to Europe's biggest Muslim community.
French police know that there is no shortage of potential jihadis in the country.
The assertiveness of French Islam is seen as a threat not just to the values of the republic, but to its very security.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4375910.stm
***END-QUOTE***
Apostolic digression
Benedict XVI is one of the few pontiffs with the brainpower to make a case for his own job. Let’s see how he does:
***QUOTE***
That the primacy of Peter is recognizable in all the major strands of the New Testament is incontestable.
http://ignatiusinsight.com/features2005/print2005/ratzinger_succession.html
***END-QUOTE***
“Primacy” is a loaded word. Peter was a natural, albeit wavering, leader. These are personal qualities, not official qualities. His character traits are hardly transferable to an ecclesiastical office. To do so would be to personify an office, which is a category mistake.
And although Peter was a leader of the early church, he was not the only leader. He was not even the leader of the mother church in Jerusalem.
***QUOTE***
The real difficulty arises when we come to the second question: Can the idea of a Petrine succession be justified? Even more difficult is the third question that is bound up with it: Can the Petrine succession of Rome be credibly substantiated?
Concerning the first question, we must first of all note that there is no explicit statement regarding the Petrine succession in the New Testament. This is not surprising, since neither the Gospels nor the chief Pauline epistles address the problem of a postapostolic Church—which, by the way, must be mentioned as a sign of the Gospels' fidelity to tradition.
***END-QUOTE***
They don’t address the problem of a postapostolic church? The very fact that you have a NT, that the Apostles bequeathed to the church a permanent written record of the Christ-Event and its theological significance in the Gospels and Pauline epistles and other NT documents is nothing if not a preparation for the postapostolic church.
In addition, the NT does set up a rudimentary form of church office to carry on the work of the Apostles. And it’s rudimentary because that’s all that’s needed in the life of the church. No elaborate bureaucracy is required.
Ratzinger is begging the question in his own favor by assuming that the NT left the problem unresolved. Why presume that NT teaching is incomplete in this respect? Why presume that the Apostolate left the job half-finished? Why not credit the NT authors with having said what needed to be said?
***QUOTE***
Indirectly, however, this problem can be detected in the Gospels once we admit the principle of form critical method according to which only what was considered in the respective spheres of tradition as somehow meaningful for the present was preserved in writing as such.
***END-QUOTE***
i) What about what was meaningful for the future as well as the present?
ii) This form-critical axiom will also be relevant to the question of dating. If, as the form critics would have it, the gospels were written late, as etiologies, to historicize preexisting dogma; if, that is to say, the gospel writers make up stories to illustrate the doctrine and practice of the post-70 AD church, so that the post-70 AD church supplies the sitz-em-leben of the Gospels, then why, on his own accounting, do the Gospels fail to address the problem of the postapostolic church if they were written in the postapostolic era? His position is self-refuting.
***QUOTE***
In those writings of the New Testament that stand on the cusp of the second generation or else already belong to it-especially in the Acts of the Apostles and in the Pastoral Letters—the principle of succession does in fact take on concrete shape.
***END-QUOTE***
Notice that Ratzinger is implicitly treating the Pastorals as deutero-Pauline. This is a euphemism for forgery.
***QUOTE***
The Protestant notion that the "succession" consists solely in the word as such, but not in any "structures", is proved to be anachronistic in light of what in actual fact is the form of tradition in the New Testament. The word is tied to the witness, who guarantees it an unambiguous sense, which it does not possess as a mere word floating in isolation. But the witness is not an individual who stands independently on his own. He is no more a wit ness by virtue of himself and of his own powers of memory than Peter can be the rock by his own strength. He is not a witness as "flesh and blood" but as one who is linked to the Pneuma, the Paraclete who authenticates the truth and opens up the memory and, in his turn, binds the witness to Christ. For the Paraclete does not speak of himself, but he takes from "what is his" (that is, from what is Christ's: (Jn 16: 13).
***END-QUOTE***
i) This is a straw man argument. Except for say, the Plymouth Brethren, most Protestants do not deny that you have church office in the NT. There is a “structure” in place.
The real issue is whether the high churchman is entitled to go beyond the NT church to mandate all manner of unscriptural accretions.
ii) How is the appeal to the Holy Spirit relevant to his case? Evangelicals do not deny that the Apostles and other NT writers were inspired. So how does the “pneumatic” criterion distinguish the Catholic position from the Protestant position?
***QUOTE***
This binding of the witness to the Pneuma and to his mode of being-"not of himself, but what he hears" -is called "sacrament" in the language of the Church. Sacrament designates a threefold knot-word, witness, Holy Spirit and Christ-which describes the essential structure of succession in the New Testament. We can infer with certainty from the testimony of the Pastoral Letters and of the Acts of the Apostles that the apostolic generation already gave to this interconnection of person and word in the believed presence of the Spirit and of Christ the form of the laying on of hands.
***END-QUOTE***
i) Notice the leap of logic. How does the category of “sacrament” emerge from what he just said? It doesn’t. He’s laid no foundation for this momentous inference. It just pops in out of the blue. This is, indeed, a key step in his argument, but he didn’t arrive at that juncture by stepwise logic. Rather, he’s skipping over many preliminary steps to get there. Observe the anachronistic equation of holy orders with the imposition of hands. There’s no logical transition from point A to point Z.
***QUOTE***
In opposition to the New Testament pattern of succession described above, which withdraws the word from human manipulation precisely by binding witnesses into its service, there arose very early on an intellectual and anti-institutional model known historically by the name of Gnosis, which made the free interpretation and speculative development of the word its principle. Before long the appeal to individual witnesses no longer sufficed to counter the intellectual claim advanced by this tendency. It became necessary to have fixed points by which to orient the testimony itself, and these were found in the so-called apostolic sees, that is, in those where the apostles had been active. The apostolic sees became the reference point of true communio.
***END-QUOTE***
i) The Gnostics didn’t merely reinterpret the Bible. They wrote their own apocryphal “scriptures.”
ii) Why is it necessary to counter an intellectual claim by an anti-intellectual appeal to tradition? Why not counter an intellectual claim on its own grounds? Why not point out that the Gnostics were guilty of Scripture-twisting?
iii) Tradition is also subject to interpretation.
iv) Restricting the interpretation of the Bible to the sole jurisdiction of the “Church” does not withdraw the Bible from human manipulation, but merely relocates the arena of manipulation. If the Gnostics can manipulate the Scriptures, so can the bishops.
***QUOTE***
But among these sees there was in turn–quite clearly in Irenaeus of Lyons–a decisive criterion that recapitulated all others: the Church of Rome, where Peter and Paul suffered martyrdom. It was with this Church that every community had to agree; Rome was the standard of the authentic apostolic tradition as a whole.
Moreover, Eusebius of Caesarea organized the first version of his ecclesiastical history in accord with the same principle. It was to be a written record of the continuity of apostolic succession, which was concentrated in the three Petrine sees Rome, Antioch and Alexandria-among which Rome, as the site of Peter's martyrdom, was in turn preeminent and truly normative. [2]
***END-QUOTE***
This may well be an accurate description of what took place, but what Ratzinger is describing is a polemical short-cut. Instead of out-arguing the heretics, appeal is made to tradition on the assumption that the teaching of a then-current apostolic see is identical with the teaching of the apostles. But this assumption is quite tendentious. For example, the seven churches of Asia Minor (Rev 2-3) were apostolic sees, founded by the Apostle John. Yet some of them were already on the brink of apostasy.
***QUOTE***
This leads us to a very fundamental observation. [3] The Roman primacy, or, rather, the acknowledgement of Rome as the criterion of the right apostolic faith, is older than the canon of the New Testament, than "Scripture".
We must be on our guard here against an almost inevitable illusion. "Scripture" is more recent than "the scriptures" of which it is composed. It was still a long time before the existence of the individual writings resulted in the "New Testament" as Scripture, as the Bible. The assembling of the writings into a single Scripture is more properly speaking the work of tradition, a work that began in the second century but came to a kind of conclusion only in the fourth or fifth century. Harnack, a witness who cannot be suspected of pro-Roman bias, has remarked in this regard that it was only at the end of the second century, in Rome, that a canon of the "books of the New Testament" won recognition by the criterion of apostolicity-catholicity, a criterion to which the other Churches also gradually subscribed "for the sake of its intrinsic value and on the strength of the authority of the Roman Church".
We can therefore say that Scripture became Scripture through the tradition, which precisely in this process included the potentior principalitas–the preeminent original authority–of the Roman see as a constitutive element.
Two points emerge clearly from what has just been First, the principle of tradition in its sacramental form-apostolic succession—played a constitutive role in the existence and continuance of the Church. Without this principle, it is impossible to conceive of a New Testament at all, so that we are caught in a contradiction when we affirm the one while wanting to deny the other.
***END-QUOTE***
This is hardly a new argument. It’s a stock objection to the Protestant rule of faith. By way of reply:
i) The incomplete state of the canon is irrelevant to the authority of Scripture in relation to the institutional church.
To take a comparison, the OT canon was far from complete when the preexilic prophets were called up to denounce a decadent religious establishment. The Levitical priesthood preexisted the exilic and postexilic books of the Bible. That did not prevent the prophets from denouncing a corrupt religious establishment.
Just imagine an apostate high priest using Ratzinger’s argument on Isaiah or Jeremiah: “Now look here, Jeremiah: the priesthood is older that the canon of the OT. The canonization of the OT is more properly speaking the traditional work of Ezra. So don’t you go quoting the Mosaic Covenant to me! Without the primacy of the priesthood, it is impossible to conceive of an OT at all, so that you are caught in a contradiction when you affirm the one while wanting to deny the other!”
ii) Since the books of the NT were written at different times and places, it naturally took a while to collate them all. But that is a mere formality. Unless the NT documents are of canonical quality, they cannot be included in the canon--and if they are of canonical quality, they cannot be excluded from the canon.
iii) Just as the NT writings originally existed in geographical isolation, the NT church consisted of house-churches scattered hither and yon. So the state of the NT church is analogous to the state of the NT corpus. Just as the NT canon was instantiated in different times and places, the NT church was instantiated in different times and places. Some NT books were written before some NT churches were founded. Just as the NT writings weren’t written or collated all at once, the apostolic churches (or “sees”) weren’t planted all at once.
And if you want to extend the process of canonization into the 5C, you can just as well extend the process of Roman primacy into the 5C and beyond. So the argument from chronological priority is a double-edged sword.
iv) We aren’t bound by the criterion of Eusebius or Irenaeus. Ratzinger is confounding a historical process with a process of verification. We can have different criteria to justify the same historical outcome.
v) Assuming, for the sake of argument, that the NT does bear witness to the "primacy" of Peter, why is Ratzinger appealing to the NT to validate the papacy? If he's going to argue that Roman primacy is the criterion for the NT canon, then how can he turn around and invoke the NT to legitimate the papacy? See the circular reasoning?
***QUOTE***
We can add that Rome and Antioch were conscious of succeeding to the mission of Peter and that early on Alexandria was admitted into the circle of Petrine sees as the city where Peter's disciple Mark had been active.
***END-QUOTE***
Were “conscious” of succeeding Peter. Wow, how’s that for proof postive! Have you ever noticed that every heretic and cult-leader is privy to this sense of consciousness as well?
***QUOTE***
Having said all that, the site of Peter's martyrdom nonetheless appears clearly as the chief bearer of his supreme authority and plays a preeminent role in the formation of tradition which is constitutive of the Church-and thus in the genesis of the New Testament as Bible; Rome is one of the indispensable internal and external- conditions of its possibility. It would be exciting to trace the influence on this process of the idea that the mission of Jerusalem had passed over to Rome, which explains why at first Jerusalem was not only not a "patriarchal see" but not even a metropolis: Jerusalem was now located in Rome, and since Peter's departure from that city, its primacy had been transferred to the capital of the pagan world. [4]
***END-QUOTE***
This geographical criterion is a non-sequitur. The logical form of the argument would be that whomever Peter ordained (through the imposition of hands) was Peter’s successor. Of course, in his far-flung ministry, Peter would have had occasion to lay hands on any number of individuals in different parts of the Roman Empire, such as the see of Antioch. And they, in turn, would ordain successors, such as the see of Alexandria.
So Ratzinger’s argument either proves too much or too little. And Ratzinger is about as capable as they come.
***QUOTE***
That the primacy of Peter is recognizable in all the major strands of the New Testament is incontestable.
http://ignatiusinsight.com/features2005/print2005/ratzinger_succession.html
***END-QUOTE***
“Primacy” is a loaded word. Peter was a natural, albeit wavering, leader. These are personal qualities, not official qualities. His character traits are hardly transferable to an ecclesiastical office. To do so would be to personify an office, which is a category mistake.
And although Peter was a leader of the early church, he was not the only leader. He was not even the leader of the mother church in Jerusalem.
***QUOTE***
The real difficulty arises when we come to the second question: Can the idea of a Petrine succession be justified? Even more difficult is the third question that is bound up with it: Can the Petrine succession of Rome be credibly substantiated?
Concerning the first question, we must first of all note that there is no explicit statement regarding the Petrine succession in the New Testament. This is not surprising, since neither the Gospels nor the chief Pauline epistles address the problem of a postapostolic Church—which, by the way, must be mentioned as a sign of the Gospels' fidelity to tradition.
***END-QUOTE***
They don’t address the problem of a postapostolic church? The very fact that you have a NT, that the Apostles bequeathed to the church a permanent written record of the Christ-Event and its theological significance in the Gospels and Pauline epistles and other NT documents is nothing if not a preparation for the postapostolic church.
In addition, the NT does set up a rudimentary form of church office to carry on the work of the Apostles. And it’s rudimentary because that’s all that’s needed in the life of the church. No elaborate bureaucracy is required.
Ratzinger is begging the question in his own favor by assuming that the NT left the problem unresolved. Why presume that NT teaching is incomplete in this respect? Why presume that the Apostolate left the job half-finished? Why not credit the NT authors with having said what needed to be said?
***QUOTE***
Indirectly, however, this problem can be detected in the Gospels once we admit the principle of form critical method according to which only what was considered in the respective spheres of tradition as somehow meaningful for the present was preserved in writing as such.
***END-QUOTE***
i) What about what was meaningful for the future as well as the present?
ii) This form-critical axiom will also be relevant to the question of dating. If, as the form critics would have it, the gospels were written late, as etiologies, to historicize preexisting dogma; if, that is to say, the gospel writers make up stories to illustrate the doctrine and practice of the post-70 AD church, so that the post-70 AD church supplies the sitz-em-leben of the Gospels, then why, on his own accounting, do the Gospels fail to address the problem of the postapostolic church if they were written in the postapostolic era? His position is self-refuting.
***QUOTE***
In those writings of the New Testament that stand on the cusp of the second generation or else already belong to it-especially in the Acts of the Apostles and in the Pastoral Letters—the principle of succession does in fact take on concrete shape.
***END-QUOTE***
Notice that Ratzinger is implicitly treating the Pastorals as deutero-Pauline. This is a euphemism for forgery.
***QUOTE***
The Protestant notion that the "succession" consists solely in the word as such, but not in any "structures", is proved to be anachronistic in light of what in actual fact is the form of tradition in the New Testament. The word is tied to the witness, who guarantees it an unambiguous sense, which it does not possess as a mere word floating in isolation. But the witness is not an individual who stands independently on his own. He is no more a wit ness by virtue of himself and of his own powers of memory than Peter can be the rock by his own strength. He is not a witness as "flesh and blood" but as one who is linked to the Pneuma, the Paraclete who authenticates the truth and opens up the memory and, in his turn, binds the witness to Christ. For the Paraclete does not speak of himself, but he takes from "what is his" (that is, from what is Christ's: (Jn 16: 13).
***END-QUOTE***
i) This is a straw man argument. Except for say, the Plymouth Brethren, most Protestants do not deny that you have church office in the NT. There is a “structure” in place.
The real issue is whether the high churchman is entitled to go beyond the NT church to mandate all manner of unscriptural accretions.
ii) How is the appeal to the Holy Spirit relevant to his case? Evangelicals do not deny that the Apostles and other NT writers were inspired. So how does the “pneumatic” criterion distinguish the Catholic position from the Protestant position?
***QUOTE***
This binding of the witness to the Pneuma and to his mode of being-"not of himself, but what he hears" -is called "sacrament" in the language of the Church. Sacrament designates a threefold knot-word, witness, Holy Spirit and Christ-which describes the essential structure of succession in the New Testament. We can infer with certainty from the testimony of the Pastoral Letters and of the Acts of the Apostles that the apostolic generation already gave to this interconnection of person and word in the believed presence of the Spirit and of Christ the form of the laying on of hands.
***END-QUOTE***
i) Notice the leap of logic. How does the category of “sacrament” emerge from what he just said? It doesn’t. He’s laid no foundation for this momentous inference. It just pops in out of the blue. This is, indeed, a key step in his argument, but he didn’t arrive at that juncture by stepwise logic. Rather, he’s skipping over many preliminary steps to get there. Observe the anachronistic equation of holy orders with the imposition of hands. There’s no logical transition from point A to point Z.
***QUOTE***
In opposition to the New Testament pattern of succession described above, which withdraws the word from human manipulation precisely by binding witnesses into its service, there arose very early on an intellectual and anti-institutional model known historically by the name of Gnosis, which made the free interpretation and speculative development of the word its principle. Before long the appeal to individual witnesses no longer sufficed to counter the intellectual claim advanced by this tendency. It became necessary to have fixed points by which to orient the testimony itself, and these were found in the so-called apostolic sees, that is, in those where the apostles had been active. The apostolic sees became the reference point of true communio.
***END-QUOTE***
i) The Gnostics didn’t merely reinterpret the Bible. They wrote their own apocryphal “scriptures.”
ii) Why is it necessary to counter an intellectual claim by an anti-intellectual appeal to tradition? Why not counter an intellectual claim on its own grounds? Why not point out that the Gnostics were guilty of Scripture-twisting?
iii) Tradition is also subject to interpretation.
iv) Restricting the interpretation of the Bible to the sole jurisdiction of the “Church” does not withdraw the Bible from human manipulation, but merely relocates the arena of manipulation. If the Gnostics can manipulate the Scriptures, so can the bishops.
***QUOTE***
But among these sees there was in turn–quite clearly in Irenaeus of Lyons–a decisive criterion that recapitulated all others: the Church of Rome, where Peter and Paul suffered martyrdom. It was with this Church that every community had to agree; Rome was the standard of the authentic apostolic tradition as a whole.
Moreover, Eusebius of Caesarea organized the first version of his ecclesiastical history in accord with the same principle. It was to be a written record of the continuity of apostolic succession, which was concentrated in the three Petrine sees Rome, Antioch and Alexandria-among which Rome, as the site of Peter's martyrdom, was in turn preeminent and truly normative. [2]
***END-QUOTE***
This may well be an accurate description of what took place, but what Ratzinger is describing is a polemical short-cut. Instead of out-arguing the heretics, appeal is made to tradition on the assumption that the teaching of a then-current apostolic see is identical with the teaching of the apostles. But this assumption is quite tendentious. For example, the seven churches of Asia Minor (Rev 2-3) were apostolic sees, founded by the Apostle John. Yet some of them were already on the brink of apostasy.
***QUOTE***
This leads us to a very fundamental observation. [3] The Roman primacy, or, rather, the acknowledgement of Rome as the criterion of the right apostolic faith, is older than the canon of the New Testament, than "Scripture".
We must be on our guard here against an almost inevitable illusion. "Scripture" is more recent than "the scriptures" of which it is composed. It was still a long time before the existence of the individual writings resulted in the "New Testament" as Scripture, as the Bible. The assembling of the writings into a single Scripture is more properly speaking the work of tradition, a work that began in the second century but came to a kind of conclusion only in the fourth or fifth century. Harnack, a witness who cannot be suspected of pro-Roman bias, has remarked in this regard that it was only at the end of the second century, in Rome, that a canon of the "books of the New Testament" won recognition by the criterion of apostolicity-catholicity, a criterion to which the other Churches also gradually subscribed "for the sake of its intrinsic value and on the strength of the authority of the Roman Church".
We can therefore say that Scripture became Scripture through the tradition, which precisely in this process included the potentior principalitas–the preeminent original authority–of the Roman see as a constitutive element.
Two points emerge clearly from what has just been First, the principle of tradition in its sacramental form-apostolic succession—played a constitutive role in the existence and continuance of the Church. Without this principle, it is impossible to conceive of a New Testament at all, so that we are caught in a contradiction when we affirm the one while wanting to deny the other.
***END-QUOTE***
This is hardly a new argument. It’s a stock objection to the Protestant rule of faith. By way of reply:
i) The incomplete state of the canon is irrelevant to the authority of Scripture in relation to the institutional church.
To take a comparison, the OT canon was far from complete when the preexilic prophets were called up to denounce a decadent religious establishment. The Levitical priesthood preexisted the exilic and postexilic books of the Bible. That did not prevent the prophets from denouncing a corrupt religious establishment.
Just imagine an apostate high priest using Ratzinger’s argument on Isaiah or Jeremiah: “Now look here, Jeremiah: the priesthood is older that the canon of the OT. The canonization of the OT is more properly speaking the traditional work of Ezra. So don’t you go quoting the Mosaic Covenant to me! Without the primacy of the priesthood, it is impossible to conceive of an OT at all, so that you are caught in a contradiction when you affirm the one while wanting to deny the other!”
ii) Since the books of the NT were written at different times and places, it naturally took a while to collate them all. But that is a mere formality. Unless the NT documents are of canonical quality, they cannot be included in the canon--and if they are of canonical quality, they cannot be excluded from the canon.
iii) Just as the NT writings originally existed in geographical isolation, the NT church consisted of house-churches scattered hither and yon. So the state of the NT church is analogous to the state of the NT corpus. Just as the NT canon was instantiated in different times and places, the NT church was instantiated in different times and places. Some NT books were written before some NT churches were founded. Just as the NT writings weren’t written or collated all at once, the apostolic churches (or “sees”) weren’t planted all at once.
And if you want to extend the process of canonization into the 5C, you can just as well extend the process of Roman primacy into the 5C and beyond. So the argument from chronological priority is a double-edged sword.
iv) We aren’t bound by the criterion of Eusebius or Irenaeus. Ratzinger is confounding a historical process with a process of verification. We can have different criteria to justify the same historical outcome.
v) Assuming, for the sake of argument, that the NT does bear witness to the "primacy" of Peter, why is Ratzinger appealing to the NT to validate the papacy? If he's going to argue that Roman primacy is the criterion for the NT canon, then how can he turn around and invoke the NT to legitimate the papacy? See the circular reasoning?
***QUOTE***
We can add that Rome and Antioch were conscious of succeeding to the mission of Peter and that early on Alexandria was admitted into the circle of Petrine sees as the city where Peter's disciple Mark had been active.
***END-QUOTE***
Were “conscious” of succeeding Peter. Wow, how’s that for proof postive! Have you ever noticed that every heretic and cult-leader is privy to this sense of consciousness as well?
***QUOTE***
Having said all that, the site of Peter's martyrdom nonetheless appears clearly as the chief bearer of his supreme authority and plays a preeminent role in the formation of tradition which is constitutive of the Church-and thus in the genesis of the New Testament as Bible; Rome is one of the indispensable internal and external- conditions of its possibility. It would be exciting to trace the influence on this process of the idea that the mission of Jerusalem had passed over to Rome, which explains why at first Jerusalem was not only not a "patriarchal see" but not even a metropolis: Jerusalem was now located in Rome, and since Peter's departure from that city, its primacy had been transferred to the capital of the pagan world. [4]
***END-QUOTE***
This geographical criterion is a non-sequitur. The logical form of the argument would be that whomever Peter ordained (through the imposition of hands) was Peter’s successor. Of course, in his far-flung ministry, Peter would have had occasion to lay hands on any number of individuals in different parts of the Roman Empire, such as the see of Antioch. And they, in turn, would ordain successors, such as the see of Alexandria.
So Ratzinger’s argument either proves too much or too little. And Ratzinger is about as capable as they come.
Saturday, October 29, 2005
Election & assurance
Last month, Perry Robinson made the following statement:
***QUOTE***
For example, when I was Reformed I knew many people who were sure that they were elect. They were quite dogmatic on the point. Most of them ended up falling away and/or dying in unbelief to my knowledge. They thought that had confirming evidence of their own election. They thought that they had the self attesting witness of the Spirit. Now can someone be wrong and think that they have the self attesting witness of the Spirit and not actually have it? I see no reason to think that this isn’t possible.
http://www.energeticprocession.com/archives/2005/09/evil_genies_fre.html
***END-QUOTE***
Perry proceeds to tie this into a general objection to Reformed theology. I responded in kind.
However, I’ve also wanted to discuss his example on its own terms, for it raises an issue of pastoral theology.
It would be a grave mistake for any Calvinist to directly vest his assurance of salvation in election, per se, or special redemption, or other suchlike.
At a first-order level, the Reformed basis for the assurance of salvation is no different from any other Evangelical tradition: faith in Christ.
If you don’t have faith in Christ, everything else counts for nothing at all. Indeed, without faith in Christ, everything else counts against you.
Christ is the door. Faith in Christ is the port of entry.
Now, given faith in Christ, certain other doctrines and blessings click into place. For there are various promises attendant to faith in Christ.
If I believe in Christ, then I have reason to believe that I’m elect, that God will preserve me in faith unto death.
So, at this second-order level, the various doctrines of grace, such as election, special redemption, sola fide, and perseverance, do afford a secondary ground of assurance.
But all these promises are promises to Christians. They are attached to our faith in Christ.
What a Calvinist should say is not: “I know I’m a Christian because I’m elect,” but, “I know I’m elect because I’m a Christian.”
So our reason for believing that we are elect is no weaker or stronger than our reason for believing that we are Christians. Our blessings in Christ are contingent on our being in Christ.
At an ontological level, it is true to say that I “am” a Christian because I “am” elect.
But, at an epistemic level, it is wrong to say that I “know” I’m a Christian because I’m elect.
The order of being is: election>faith
The order of knowing is: faith>election
The assurance of salvation properly follows the order of knowing, and only indirectly, the order of being. So the evidence for our ontological status is still a matter of faith. If you are elect, then you will have the grace of faith. But faith is the sign of grace.
It’s the grace of God which engenders our faith in God, but it’s our faith in God which is the sign of his grace.
The opposite error would be to trust in your faith in Christ. Once again, the assurance of salvation comes, not from trusting in your faith, but trusting in Christ. You don’t look to your faith; rather, your faith is looking to Christ.
Faith looking at itself is a source of spiritual insecurity. Never look to your own faith. Don’t put faith in faith; rather, put your faith in Christ.
By the same token, there are theological traditions which deny the assurance of salvation because they treat the grace of God as resistible, or treat justification as a process, or intrude human merit into the transaction.
Such traditions cannot benefit from a secondary level of assurance. They rob the believer of the assurance of salvation.
You can see this with Wesley and Luther before they rediscovered the Biblical doctrine of justification by faith. I don’t doubt that they were already children of God. But their defective theology prevented them from laying claiming all the riches of Christ.
In addition, there are Christians who fret over whether they have enough faith, or the right kind of faith. For now, I’d just say two things:
1.This is really out of our hands. If there’s nothing more you can do about it, then there’s no point in working yourself into a frenzy. Leave the rest to God and wait upon the Lord.
2. These sorts of anxieties are a petty good sign of the presence, rather than the absence, of grace. It is the nominal Christian, the man dead in sin, who is insensible to self-doubt. Dead men suffer no scruples or inner struggles. Their conscience is clear because their conscience is seared.
***QUOTE***
For example, when I was Reformed I knew many people who were sure that they were elect. They were quite dogmatic on the point. Most of them ended up falling away and/or dying in unbelief to my knowledge. They thought that had confirming evidence of their own election. They thought that they had the self attesting witness of the Spirit. Now can someone be wrong and think that they have the self attesting witness of the Spirit and not actually have it? I see no reason to think that this isn’t possible.
http://www.energeticprocession.com/archives/2005/09/evil_genies_fre.html
***END-QUOTE***
Perry proceeds to tie this into a general objection to Reformed theology. I responded in kind.
However, I’ve also wanted to discuss his example on its own terms, for it raises an issue of pastoral theology.
It would be a grave mistake for any Calvinist to directly vest his assurance of salvation in election, per se, or special redemption, or other suchlike.
At a first-order level, the Reformed basis for the assurance of salvation is no different from any other Evangelical tradition: faith in Christ.
If you don’t have faith in Christ, everything else counts for nothing at all. Indeed, without faith in Christ, everything else counts against you.
Christ is the door. Faith in Christ is the port of entry.
Now, given faith in Christ, certain other doctrines and blessings click into place. For there are various promises attendant to faith in Christ.
If I believe in Christ, then I have reason to believe that I’m elect, that God will preserve me in faith unto death.
So, at this second-order level, the various doctrines of grace, such as election, special redemption, sola fide, and perseverance, do afford a secondary ground of assurance.
But all these promises are promises to Christians. They are attached to our faith in Christ.
What a Calvinist should say is not: “I know I’m a Christian because I’m elect,” but, “I know I’m elect because I’m a Christian.”
So our reason for believing that we are elect is no weaker or stronger than our reason for believing that we are Christians. Our blessings in Christ are contingent on our being in Christ.
At an ontological level, it is true to say that I “am” a Christian because I “am” elect.
But, at an epistemic level, it is wrong to say that I “know” I’m a Christian because I’m elect.
The order of being is: election>faith
The order of knowing is: faith>election
The assurance of salvation properly follows the order of knowing, and only indirectly, the order of being. So the evidence for our ontological status is still a matter of faith. If you are elect, then you will have the grace of faith. But faith is the sign of grace.
It’s the grace of God which engenders our faith in God, but it’s our faith in God which is the sign of his grace.
The opposite error would be to trust in your faith in Christ. Once again, the assurance of salvation comes, not from trusting in your faith, but trusting in Christ. You don’t look to your faith; rather, your faith is looking to Christ.
Faith looking at itself is a source of spiritual insecurity. Never look to your own faith. Don’t put faith in faith; rather, put your faith in Christ.
By the same token, there are theological traditions which deny the assurance of salvation because they treat the grace of God as resistible, or treat justification as a process, or intrude human merit into the transaction.
Such traditions cannot benefit from a secondary level of assurance. They rob the believer of the assurance of salvation.
You can see this with Wesley and Luther before they rediscovered the Biblical doctrine of justification by faith. I don’t doubt that they were already children of God. But their defective theology prevented them from laying claiming all the riches of Christ.
In addition, there are Christians who fret over whether they have enough faith, or the right kind of faith. For now, I’d just say two things:
1.This is really out of our hands. If there’s nothing more you can do about it, then there’s no point in working yourself into a frenzy. Leave the rest to God and wait upon the Lord.
2. These sorts of anxieties are a petty good sign of the presence, rather than the absence, of grace. It is the nominal Christian, the man dead in sin, who is insensible to self-doubt. Dead men suffer no scruples or inner struggles. Their conscience is clear because their conscience is seared.
Friday, October 28, 2005
A peace-loving faith
***QUOTE***
The big story on the Brussels Journal this week has been the troubles at the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. Here's how the trouble started:
The Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten is being protected by security guards and several cartoonists have gone into hiding after the newspaper published a series of twelve cartoons (view them here) about the prophet Muhammad. According to Islam it is blasphemous to make images of the prophet. Muslim fundamentalists have threatened to bomb the paper's offices and kill the cartoonists. . . .
The publication led to outrage among the Muslim immigrants living in Denmark. 5,000 of them took to the streets to protest. Muslim organisations have demanded an apology, but Juste rejects this idea: "We live in a democracy. That's why we can use all the journalistic methods we want to. Satire is accepted in this country, and you can make caricatures," he said. The Danish imam Raed Hlayhel reacted with the statement: "This type of democracy is worthless for Muslims. Muslims will never accept this kind of humiliation. The article has insulted every Muslim in the world." . . .
The affair, however, has also led to a diplomatic incident. On Thursday the ambassadors of eleven Muslim countries, including Indonesia, a number of Arab states, Pakistan, Iran, and Bosnia-Herzegovina, complained about the cartoons in a letter to Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen. They say the publication of the cartoons is a "provocation" and demand apologies from the newspaper.
Jyllands-Posten was also included on an al-Qaeda website listing possible terrorist targets. An organisation which calls itself "The Glorious Brigades in Northern Europe" is circulating pictures on the internet which show bombs exploding over pictures of the newspaper and blood flowing over the national flag of Denmark. "The Mujahedeen have numerous targets in Denmark--very soon you all will regret this," the website says.
In this one example we see nearly the whole of the problem presented by the collision between Islam and Western liberalism. But amidst the many difficulties, two stand out. First, is the statement from imam Raed Hlayhel, "This type of democracy is worthless for Muslims." Certainly Hlayhel does not speak for all of Islam. But the worry is that if he speaks for even a tiny minority--say, 5 percent of the world's Muslims--that's still a lot of people.
The second shock is the support of 11 Muslim states for this bullying of the Danish press. It is one thing for a lone imam to try to mau-mau a newspaper. It is another to see him standing, arms linked, with foreign governments.
To highlight the true nature of this impasse, the Brussels Journal's Paul Belien notes a situation in Belgium:
Meanwhile in Brussels a young Muslim immigrant published a poster depicting the Virgin Mary [unclothed]. Though the picture has drawn some protest from Catholics (though not from Western embassies, nor from the bishops), this artist need not fear being murdered in the street. On the contrary, he is being subsidised by the Ministry for Culture. [note: I changed the wording here in order to prevent the email from being caught up in everyone's spam filters]
But of course.
Best,
Jonathan V. Last
www.weeklystandard.com
***END-QUOTE***
The big story on the Brussels Journal this week has been the troubles at the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. Here's how the trouble started:
The Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten is being protected by security guards and several cartoonists have gone into hiding after the newspaper published a series of twelve cartoons (view them here) about the prophet Muhammad. According to Islam it is blasphemous to make images of the prophet. Muslim fundamentalists have threatened to bomb the paper's offices and kill the cartoonists. . . .
The publication led to outrage among the Muslim immigrants living in Denmark. 5,000 of them took to the streets to protest. Muslim organisations have demanded an apology, but Juste rejects this idea: "We live in a democracy. That's why we can use all the journalistic methods we want to. Satire is accepted in this country, and you can make caricatures," he said. The Danish imam Raed Hlayhel reacted with the statement: "This type of democracy is worthless for Muslims. Muslims will never accept this kind of humiliation. The article has insulted every Muslim in the world." . . .
The affair, however, has also led to a diplomatic incident. On Thursday the ambassadors of eleven Muslim countries, including Indonesia, a number of Arab states, Pakistan, Iran, and Bosnia-Herzegovina, complained about the cartoons in a letter to Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen. They say the publication of the cartoons is a "provocation" and demand apologies from the newspaper.
Jyllands-Posten was also included on an al-Qaeda website listing possible terrorist targets. An organisation which calls itself "The Glorious Brigades in Northern Europe" is circulating pictures on the internet which show bombs exploding over pictures of the newspaper and blood flowing over the national flag of Denmark. "The Mujahedeen have numerous targets in Denmark--very soon you all will regret this," the website says.
In this one example we see nearly the whole of the problem presented by the collision between Islam and Western liberalism. But amidst the many difficulties, two stand out. First, is the statement from imam Raed Hlayhel, "This type of democracy is worthless for Muslims." Certainly Hlayhel does not speak for all of Islam. But the worry is that if he speaks for even a tiny minority--say, 5 percent of the world's Muslims--that's still a lot of people.
The second shock is the support of 11 Muslim states for this bullying of the Danish press. It is one thing for a lone imam to try to mau-mau a newspaper. It is another to see him standing, arms linked, with foreign governments.
To highlight the true nature of this impasse, the Brussels Journal's Paul Belien notes a situation in Belgium:
Meanwhile in Brussels a young Muslim immigrant published a poster depicting the Virgin Mary [unclothed]. Though the picture has drawn some protest from Catholics (though not from Western embassies, nor from the bishops), this artist need not fear being murdered in the street. On the contrary, he is being subsidised by the Ministry for Culture. [note: I changed the wording here in order to prevent the email from being caught up in everyone's spam filters]
But of course.
Best,
Jonathan V. Last
www.weeklystandard.com
***END-QUOTE***
The sad state of Catholic anti-intellectualism
Jonathan Prejean has now sallied forth once more from his on-again/off-again retirement to wage war on no fewer than four different fronts: Jason Engwer, the Pedantic Protestant, D. T. King, and yours truly.
1.Prejean takes issue with the PP’s charge that the Catholics he has known have an amateurish grasp of Scripture.
The problem here is that you have two kinds of Catholics. On the one hand, there are those with a very competent command of exegesis. These are scholars like Ray Brown, Murphy-O’Connor, Joseph Fitzmyer, and L. T. Johnson, to name a few.
They’re liberal by evangelical standards, but they ask the right questions of the text and they often give the right answers.
Problem is: what they say doesn’t make a dent in Catholic theology. It doesn’t feed into Catholic theology. Catholic dogma is driven by historical theology rather than exegetical theology. Catholicism committed itself to certain positions a long time ago, and these are not subject to revision in light of better exegesis. The Catholic church only turns to Scripture to legitimate a preexisting practice or belief. It doesn’t derive its practice or belief from direct interaction with the text of Scripture. And even if it did, a dogmatic misinterpretation is irreformable.
The other kind of Catholics follow from the first kind. Because they know that tradition is the steam engine and Scripture is the caboose, they don’t bother to have a competent grasp of Scripture. They have no incentive to ask the right questions. They simply go through the motions of appealing to Scripture.
As Kung said of Rahner:
“A second fundamental defect in Rahner’s theology also becomes evident to me: the lack of historical-critical exegesis. Rahner once laughingly advised a student known to me that it was enough to go to lectures on exegesis for one or two semesters; but in the end dogmatics was decisive,” My Struggle With Freedom (Eerdmans 2003), 252.
2.Prejean also brings up St. Jerome in this connection. That’s an ill-chosen choice to illustrate his position. Evangelicals have great respect for Jerome. Because he lived in the Holy Land, because he studied with rabbis there, he’s a useful source of information.
Evangelicals agree with Jerome’s argument for the Jewish canon of the OT. Evangelicals also agree with Jerome’s exegetical defense of Daniel’s prophecies (I own a copy of his commentary), whereas Benedict XVI has sided with Porphyry, the great pagan opponent of the Christian faith. The only reason to agree with Porphyry is if you share his worldview.
So I appreciate Prejean’s high regard for Jerome, and if he happens to have the Pope’s email address, perhaps he could encourage Benedict XVI to recover that same measure of respect for Jerome’s exegesis.
3.Prejean then levels the accusation that “These people aren't capable of questioning Scriptural authority, and that's an intellectual weakness.”
i) This is a very simplistic allegation. To begin with, it is a fact of life, and a very striking fact indeed, that many men and women come to the faith by merely reading the Bible. That’s it. Nothing more. Just reading the Bible is sufficient for many to engender faith in the Bible. The Bible, all by its little lonesome, has that kind of persuasive power.
And if, in fact, the Bible is the word of God, then one would expect it to have that inherent power to persuade.
And, as a practical matter, it could hardly be otherwise. Most Christians are not intellectuals.
So what are we to do with all these Christians, and they’re not all Protestant, by any means, who find that they can’t help believing in the Bible? That they have this spontaneous and irrepressible faith in Scripture? They cannot not believe in Scripture. They simply find it compelling and convincing as is, period.
And there’s nothing all that unusual about this. Belief is essentially involuntary. We don’t will ourselves to believe or disbelieve. Belief is not a sheer act of the will. Rather, we are predisposed to believe certain things when presented with suitable evidence. The combination of the evidence with the predisposition automatically triggers a believing state of mind. And the same evidence presented to a jaundiced observer will trigger disbelief.
ii) Which brings us to the next point. For other Christians it isn’t all that simple. They come to the Bible with certain preconceptions which form an intellectual impediment to faith. Until the impediment is removed, this is a mental block to faith in Scripture.
These individuals need explicit reasons, corroborative evidence, and answers to their objections. This is all the more so given the cottage industry we’ve had since the Enlightenment to discredit the claims of Scripture at every turn.
iii) In addition, some people are temperamentally prone to self-doubt, which spills over in religious doubts of one degree or another. They also benefit from supporting arguments and supporting evidence. Feelings are feeble, fickle things, but reasons have a certain tenacity to them.
4.Prejean next takes aim at the doctrine of inerrancy:
“That's why I consider the Chicago Statement on Inerrancy so incredibly implausible; I can't imagine how I could credit the truth of propositional content based solely on authority.”
This totally misses the point. The Chicago Statement was never intended to make a case for inerrancy. It was framed at a time when various Evangelical institutions like Fuller Seminary, the SBC, and the LCMS were mainstreaming and liberalizing.
The purpose of the Chicago Statement was to clarify the boundaries of inerrancy, of what inerrancy allows and disallows. It was designed to eliminate certain loopholes and rebut certain red-herrings.
The Chicago Statement presupposes the inerrancy of Scripture rather than proving it. By definition, only Bible-believing Christians would ever subscribe to the Chicago Statement. In these respects it has the same functions and limitations as any other creed.
If you’re looking for an argument as to why we should subscribe to the doctrine of Scripture formulated in the Chicago Statement, you will have to look elsewhere.
BTW, I don’t see that Pius IX or Leo XIII would have had any great difficulty being signatories to the Chicago Statement. The fact that Prejean doesn’t like it is symptomatic of the triumph of modernism in the Catholic church today.
5.Finaly, Prejean says:
“This whole "damned if you do; damned if you don't" matter of anti-Catholic stereotyping is pretty incredible. If I'm intellectually curious, then I'm "speculating beyond the bounds of Biblical authority," and yet, I'm simultaneously supposed to be so incurious that I accept whatever the Magisterium tells me.”
Actually, the arguments that Jason and I and the PP (I can’t speak for King) have had with Jonathan have next to nothing to do with the authority of Scripture.
For the most part our debates were over the proper hermeneutic to use when interpreting a document from the past. A guy like James Barr, who has zero respect for the authority of Scripture, employs the grammatico-historical method no less than does the Evangelical inerrantist.
Again, Prejean is free to speak for himself, but in my many exchanges with Roman Catholics on the Internet, it’s just like talking to a Mormon or J-Dub. They give me their reasons for what they believe. I critique their reasons, on their own grounds. They then reply by simply repeating their original reasons—like a prerecorded message.
But even this is a cut above Prejean, who gives no reasons at all, but spends all his time prepositioning himself for the perfect playoff, which—conveniently enough--never comes.
1.Prejean takes issue with the PP’s charge that the Catholics he has known have an amateurish grasp of Scripture.
The problem here is that you have two kinds of Catholics. On the one hand, there are those with a very competent command of exegesis. These are scholars like Ray Brown, Murphy-O’Connor, Joseph Fitzmyer, and L. T. Johnson, to name a few.
They’re liberal by evangelical standards, but they ask the right questions of the text and they often give the right answers.
Problem is: what they say doesn’t make a dent in Catholic theology. It doesn’t feed into Catholic theology. Catholic dogma is driven by historical theology rather than exegetical theology. Catholicism committed itself to certain positions a long time ago, and these are not subject to revision in light of better exegesis. The Catholic church only turns to Scripture to legitimate a preexisting practice or belief. It doesn’t derive its practice or belief from direct interaction with the text of Scripture. And even if it did, a dogmatic misinterpretation is irreformable.
The other kind of Catholics follow from the first kind. Because they know that tradition is the steam engine and Scripture is the caboose, they don’t bother to have a competent grasp of Scripture. They have no incentive to ask the right questions. They simply go through the motions of appealing to Scripture.
As Kung said of Rahner:
“A second fundamental defect in Rahner’s theology also becomes evident to me: the lack of historical-critical exegesis. Rahner once laughingly advised a student known to me that it was enough to go to lectures on exegesis for one or two semesters; but in the end dogmatics was decisive,” My Struggle With Freedom (Eerdmans 2003), 252.
2.Prejean also brings up St. Jerome in this connection. That’s an ill-chosen choice to illustrate his position. Evangelicals have great respect for Jerome. Because he lived in the Holy Land, because he studied with rabbis there, he’s a useful source of information.
Evangelicals agree with Jerome’s argument for the Jewish canon of the OT. Evangelicals also agree with Jerome’s exegetical defense of Daniel’s prophecies (I own a copy of his commentary), whereas Benedict XVI has sided with Porphyry, the great pagan opponent of the Christian faith. The only reason to agree with Porphyry is if you share his worldview.
So I appreciate Prejean’s high regard for Jerome, and if he happens to have the Pope’s email address, perhaps he could encourage Benedict XVI to recover that same measure of respect for Jerome’s exegesis.
3.Prejean then levels the accusation that “These people aren't capable of questioning Scriptural authority, and that's an intellectual weakness.”
i) This is a very simplistic allegation. To begin with, it is a fact of life, and a very striking fact indeed, that many men and women come to the faith by merely reading the Bible. That’s it. Nothing more. Just reading the Bible is sufficient for many to engender faith in the Bible. The Bible, all by its little lonesome, has that kind of persuasive power.
And if, in fact, the Bible is the word of God, then one would expect it to have that inherent power to persuade.
And, as a practical matter, it could hardly be otherwise. Most Christians are not intellectuals.
So what are we to do with all these Christians, and they’re not all Protestant, by any means, who find that they can’t help believing in the Bible? That they have this spontaneous and irrepressible faith in Scripture? They cannot not believe in Scripture. They simply find it compelling and convincing as is, period.
And there’s nothing all that unusual about this. Belief is essentially involuntary. We don’t will ourselves to believe or disbelieve. Belief is not a sheer act of the will. Rather, we are predisposed to believe certain things when presented with suitable evidence. The combination of the evidence with the predisposition automatically triggers a believing state of mind. And the same evidence presented to a jaundiced observer will trigger disbelief.
ii) Which brings us to the next point. For other Christians it isn’t all that simple. They come to the Bible with certain preconceptions which form an intellectual impediment to faith. Until the impediment is removed, this is a mental block to faith in Scripture.
These individuals need explicit reasons, corroborative evidence, and answers to their objections. This is all the more so given the cottage industry we’ve had since the Enlightenment to discredit the claims of Scripture at every turn.
iii) In addition, some people are temperamentally prone to self-doubt, which spills over in religious doubts of one degree or another. They also benefit from supporting arguments and supporting evidence. Feelings are feeble, fickle things, but reasons have a certain tenacity to them.
4.Prejean next takes aim at the doctrine of inerrancy:
“That's why I consider the Chicago Statement on Inerrancy so incredibly implausible; I can't imagine how I could credit the truth of propositional content based solely on authority.”
This totally misses the point. The Chicago Statement was never intended to make a case for inerrancy. It was framed at a time when various Evangelical institutions like Fuller Seminary, the SBC, and the LCMS were mainstreaming and liberalizing.
The purpose of the Chicago Statement was to clarify the boundaries of inerrancy, of what inerrancy allows and disallows. It was designed to eliminate certain loopholes and rebut certain red-herrings.
The Chicago Statement presupposes the inerrancy of Scripture rather than proving it. By definition, only Bible-believing Christians would ever subscribe to the Chicago Statement. In these respects it has the same functions and limitations as any other creed.
If you’re looking for an argument as to why we should subscribe to the doctrine of Scripture formulated in the Chicago Statement, you will have to look elsewhere.
BTW, I don’t see that Pius IX or Leo XIII would have had any great difficulty being signatories to the Chicago Statement. The fact that Prejean doesn’t like it is symptomatic of the triumph of modernism in the Catholic church today.
5.Finaly, Prejean says:
“This whole "damned if you do; damned if you don't" matter of anti-Catholic stereotyping is pretty incredible. If I'm intellectually curious, then I'm "speculating beyond the bounds of Biblical authority," and yet, I'm simultaneously supposed to be so incurious that I accept whatever the Magisterium tells me.”
Actually, the arguments that Jason and I and the PP (I can’t speak for King) have had with Jonathan have next to nothing to do with the authority of Scripture.
For the most part our debates were over the proper hermeneutic to use when interpreting a document from the past. A guy like James Barr, who has zero respect for the authority of Scripture, employs the grammatico-historical method no less than does the Evangelical inerrantist.
Again, Prejean is free to speak for himself, but in my many exchanges with Roman Catholics on the Internet, it’s just like talking to a Mormon or J-Dub. They give me their reasons for what they believe. I critique their reasons, on their own grounds. They then reply by simply repeating their original reasons—like a prerecorded message.
But even this is a cut above Prejean, who gives no reasons at all, but spends all his time prepositioning himself for the perfect playoff, which—conveniently enough--never comes.
What does God feel?
Divine Impassibility: Why Is It Suffering?
By Paul Helm Emeritus Professor, University of London
The doctrine of God's impassibility has fallen on hard times. In the era of the Suffering God and of “Holocaust theology” scarcely anyone has a good word to say for it.[1] This in itself is a striking fact, given the Christian church's eras-long commitment to the doctrine. These days nearly everyone sees the eclipse of divine impassibility as an unqualified blessing. For them the idea is totally unscriptural, a case of “baptised paganism,” an object lesson in what happens when theology takes its lead not from divine revelation but from Neo-Platonism.
The modest aim here is to say a word or two in favour of the doctrine before it finally slips from the Christian consciousness. The words may even help, in some small way, to arrest its eclipse. I hope so. I shall try to show why impassibility is suffering, then to try to show a little of what impassibility, properly understood, means, to offer some scriptural support for it and finally to reflect a little on what divine impassibility commits us to.
The Problem of Language
I suggest two sets of reasons each having to do with language. One set has to do with the accidents of the English language (and perhaps for all I know, of other languages. I have not gone into this). The other is more fundamental.
There is, I believe, at least for Anglophones, often a basic confusion between three English words: impassivity,(the English form of impassitas), impassability, and impassibility. The Oxford Shorter Dictionary defines “impassive” as “deficient or void of mental feeling or emotion; unimpressionable, apathetic.” (And it also notes a “good sense,” “imperturbable.”) It goes without saying that Christians do not wish to worship and serve an apathetic God; a God who, like a human psychotic, is unconcerned by the needs of human beings. Nor even a God who, like a Stoic philosopher, is imperturbable no matter what happens. But then to suppose that the doctrine of divine impassibility commits one to such a view is based upon simple linguistic confusion, between impassivity and impassibility—of which more in a moment. But first, what about impassability? If the road is blocked by ice or mud then it is impassable. There is no way through. Such an idea, applied to God, makes matters worse. For if God is not only apathetic, if he is also impassable, then there is no way open to get through to him. He must forever remain in a state of apathy; perhaps, to make matters even worse, of blissful apathy.
Let's turn finally to impassibility. Unfortunately, among the senses the Oxford Dictionary gives of “impassible” is this: incapable of feeling or emotion; impassive. However the main sense is “incapable of suffering injury or detriment” along with “incapable of suffering; not subject to pain.” I believe it is possible to provide an understanding of “impassible” which does justice to Scripture and church teaching, but it is clear from this glance at the dictionary that it is an uphill struggle. A word, such as “impassible,” that continually needs guarding against confusion and misunderstanding is not a good tool for theological discourse.
There is a second reason having to do with language why impassibility is suffering an eclipse. “Impassibility” is a negative term. Even when properly understood, and then applied to God, it tells us what God is not, or what God cannot do, rather that what he is like and can do. Such a negative approach to thinking about God is nowadays regarded as being too vague and insubstantial for the modern Christian church. For the modern church is impatient with learning what God is not like, she wants to know what God is like, and in particular she desperately seeks reassurance that God is like us—that he is accessible to our imagination, and especially in need of reassurance that he is our emotional peer. This is one reason for the current stress on biblical narrative, on the anthropomorphic and anthropopathic language of Scripture, and on Christology “from below,” as is evidenced (in different ways) by the prevalent social trinitarianism, and by the appeal of “open theism.” Put in conventional theological terms, in the modern Christian mind the language of divine immanence swamps the language of divine transcendence. And impassibility is part of the language—part of the “grammar”—of divine transcendence. I shall return to this point shortly and develop it.
This contemporary craving for a human-like God is heightened by modern approaches to suffering and evil. Bonhoeffer's phrase, “Only a suffering God can help,” is repeated like a mantra. There is of course a perfectly good sense to these words. God in Christ suffers in taking our sin, and so helping us in a way that nothing else can. But a suffering God who endures suffering in the same way that we suffer may help by comforting us, but he is helpless to deliver us from evil.
The grammar of God
The key idea for any appreciation of the idea of divine impassibility, and of its reappropriation and defense, must be the Creator-creature distinction, and the biblical idea of divine fullness. In the case of emotions, we must focus on the idea of a divine life of unimaginable richness and constancy, not of fitfulness and spasm. In this connection it is unfair as well as unbalanced to separate the divine impassibility from all other divine characteristics and to single it out for special treatment. Divine impassibility is part of a web of ideas which constitute a “grammar,” a canonical way of talking about God, a way of articulating the reality of the divine fullness. In this respect, impassibility is an aspect of divine immutability (God cannot change or be changed), of divine simplicity (the sovereign God does not depend for this existence on 'parts' which are more fundamental than he is) of divine necessity (God exists non-dependently), and of divine eternity (God is not bound by time, with part of his life in the past, as all his creatures are). God’s immutability covers his will, his decrees, his promises and counsel, and of course, his emotional life. Its biblical basis is found in such passages as Jas. 1.17, Ps. 102.29, Is. 14.24, Rom. 11,.29, Heb. 6. 17: 13. 8, Is 46. 10, 2 Cor. 1 18-20.
But none of this means that God is devoid of (what we call) feelings. He loves his creation, he cares for his people, he hates unrighteousness, and so on—he is pure goodness. The trouble is that we are in something of a bind when we attempt to articulate this further. When we think of constancy, steadiness, and dependability at the human level we think of people possessing dispositions that are virtuous. So a person who dashes into the icy water to save the child expresses courage, a courageous disposition. He may never have to act in this way again. But in God these dispositions are never latent, for there is no “slack” in God, but he is utterly engaged. So what are we to make of the expressions of divine anger, or of compassion, in Scripture? We are to understand them in terms of the “big picture” or (in more academic language) a “pattern of judgment'”[2] about God, and thus to see them as expressions of the divine fullness accommodated to the real-time situations of his people, their characters and needs, and of God's purposes for them. For instance, to draw out their faith, (as with Hezekiah) or their obedience, (as with Moses) or their patience (as with Job).
So divine immutability does not signal total inaction or immobility, like the face of the Moon, a state incapable of personal relationship. Rather, it speaks of firmness, faithfulness, covenantal constancy, grounded in who God essentially is. Likewise divine impassibility is not impassivity, but constant goodness, variously expressed (according to God's will and to the specifics of human history) as (for example) love, or wrath, or mercy. Such expressions are rooted in the immutability of the divine nature, the fact that God is unchangeable in goodness and perfection, and cannot be deterred or deflected by outside forces. Of course God’s immutable relation to his creation is not perceived as such by it, but what is perceived is a function of the situation or condition of the creaturely recipient. Just as (we say) the Sun is now setting, now rising, so God is now wise, now just, now loving etc. depending on the human circumstances in which he is “encountered” and on God's purposes in these circumstances.
By contrast human emotion is affected by ignorance and moral weakness, by surprise, fear, partiality and physical distance. (This reminds us that a range of emotions is necessarily connected with human physical embodiment.) For instance, while all of us know that at this very moment there are hundreds of children dying in Darfur this fact fails to move us, whereas if children were dying in a similar fashion on our doorstep we would be moved to grief and compassion and action. These outbreaks of emotion would not be unrelated to our own self-interests, of course, and to what follows from the fact of our physical embodiment.
So emotion in humans is not an unmixed good. Emotion is better than no emotion, but its expression is often the result of selfishness and ignorance. With God it is otherwise. He has an emotional life— he cares and loves and judges and has compassion on his sinful world. But his life—unlike our own emotional lives—is not spasmodic and moody. God does not have a temper. He cannot be cowardly or vain. Rather his “emotional life” is an expression of his perfect goodness and knowledge. The life of God is not first passive and then reactive, as ours is, but it is wholly active.
Is divine impassibility Scriptural?
This, for Christians, is of course the chief question, and we have already begun to offer an answer to it. But it is currently taken for granted by many Christians that the question is easily answered. Many are quick to say that divine impassibility is not and could not be Scriptural. For does not Scripture assert that God suffers, that he is angry, that he expresses surprise, that he fears, and laughs, and repents? Did not Christ, the Son of God, suffer? How could such a God be impassible? Then quickly—all too quickly—it is concluded that the idea of divine impassibility is the result of imposition of Scripture rather than exposition of it, of eisegesis rather than exegesis. It's part of an attempted theological takeover by Greek ideas. But now, it is proudly claimed, we have learned to “take the Bible seriously!”
There are a number of reasons why we should be cautious about this all too common reaction. One is historical. The anthropopathisms of the Bible are not new, nor newly discovered, any more than its anthropomorphisms are. They loom large. Those who affirmed divine impassibility—the theological mainstream from (say) Augustine to Jonathan Edwards—were aware of them. Yet the presence of these data in Scripture was not a sufficient reason for them to deny impassibility. Did they not take the Bible seriously? Why then did they come to the view that God is impassible?
Secondly, this approach to Scripture, if carried out consistently, has rather embarrassing consequences. For Scripture also says that God has eyes, ears, a backside—anthropomorphic language, as we quickly say. And we say that God uses such language in Scripture not because he in fact has eyes, ears and a backside but because by the use of such terms he adapts himself vividly to our way of thinking. There is something in God that corresponds to this language, which it draws attention to, even though it is not literally descriptive of God. God sees—what does this mean? That he has eyes? And if he eyes, does he have eyelashes and eyebrows? How many eyes does he have? Does he have 20/20 vision? None of this is appropriate. Talking in this way about God would be absurd. In saying that God sees, Scripture means (something like) God has immediate, unimpaired knowledge of what he allegedly sees. A child will readily understand this.
Why not something similar with the language about God's emotions? Are we really to believe that God gets angry, that he is overcome with anger? That he is incapacitated by suffering? That he is paralysed with fear? Can we allow that such expressions of anger or suffering carry the connotations of surprise and ignorance and apprehension and impatience and selfish vengefulness that human emotion typically does?
What does affirming divine impassibility commit us to?
As already noted, in the thinking of the classical Christian theologians, the Fathers, the medievals, Reformers such as Calvin, the Reformed Scholastics, Jonathan Edwards, impassibility is an aspect or consequence of divine immutability. Immutability is in turn rooted in divine simplicity. But divine simplicity has been frequently misunderstood, or caricatured.
For though God is simple, without parts, without division, there is nevertheless a complexity in the mind of God, but this complexity does not depend on something other than himself. The classical Christian tradition readily recognises this. So—to take one historical example—in discussing the question “Does God know things other than himself?” [3] Aquinas asserts that God's essence contains the likeness of things other than himself, and since there are many kinds of things other than himself there are presumably many likeness of things contained in the divine essence. However, Aquinas wishes to deny that God knows things other than himself by learning about them, because then the divine intellect would depend on them, and (Aquinas thinks) God's sovereignty or aseity or Creatorhood would be compromised.
So God knows “many things” and we may think of God's “feelings” as simply his attitudes to what he knows. What he knows—the details of everything that comes to pass—is present to the divine mind, even though that mind is itself simple, without parts or divisions, immutable and impassible. What could be more complex than the universe, with its unparalleled variety? God the Father takes pleasure, no doubt in the goodness of the various aspects of the creation, and in the Incarnation, being well pleased with his beloved Son. And we find in Scripture that among the many things that God knows that he has delight in are: a just weight (Prov. 11.1); the upright in their way (Prov. 11.20); those that deal truly (Prov. 12.22); the prayer of the upright (Prov. 15.8) and so on; among those things which he has ordained which he hates are a proud look (Prov. 6.16), Esau (Mal. 1.3), all workers of iniquity (Psalm 5.3) and so on.
How are we to understand these attitudes of God? I suggest that it is improper to strongly model these on human feelings, to think of these as passions. Although undoubtedly as God has accommodated himself to our human condition in this way he represents himself as passionate, God cannot really be passionate because of the suggestion, in the use of the word “passion,” that the one who is passionate is overtaken or derailed or blinded by the passion. The passion is an irrational response. Though even here we must be careful, for a person may speak with full control of himself, yet in an impassioned way. His passion may be a way of speaking of the strength of his commitment. Because of it he may speak and act with greater care than otherwise. This is unlikely with us, but if God is to be said to be passionate then this is how it must be with him. So perhaps we would not be far astray if we thought of God not as 'having passions' but as utterly impassioned in all that he does.
Does God have feelings, then? We may, influenced by our touchy-feely culture, think that the answer is obvious. Of course he has. But here again some caution is called for. For we use the term “feeling” to cover not merely mental states, feelings of sympathy or compassion, or of betrayal or alienation, but also feeling arising from changes in our bodies, or event the fact of being embodied. We feel tired, we have aches and pains, scratches and itches, sexual pleasure, we experience cold and heat. Is this how it is the God? Clearly not. And our mental states, our feelings or emotions, are frequently the result of selfishness and ignorance. If in saying that God feels, or even that God has emotions, we are simply (and carefully) speaking of God's impassioned attitudes of delighting in, and hating, and loving in the manner sketched above, then clearly the answer is yes.
But what of the Incarnation? For many, anxieties about divine impassibility are at their highest in the case of Jesus. They say: Jesus is God, and Jesus suffered, therefore God suffered. The conclusion seems inescapable. But is it? Is it then equally valid that: Jesus sat on the side of the well, Jesus is God, therefore God sat on the side of the well......Are we not at such points as these faced with the mystery of the incarnation, of the union of the human nature with the person of the Son of God? But must we not say, to avoid absurdity, something like: Jesus Christ, being God incarnate, the Mediator, sat on the side of the well, and suffered for our salvation?
How are we to understand the emotional life of our Lord? Are episodes in the life of our Lord—his reaction to the Temple money-changers, or to the death of Lazarus, for example—cases of God's emotion made flesh? In a way they are, but not in any way which involves the transmutation of the divine emotion into something else. It is God expressing his impassioned love (along with much else he expresses) through the vehicle of assumed human nature. So the emotional life of our Lord is what you get when the second person of the impassible God assumes is embodied in human nature. It is an inevitable expression of the divine character in a way conditioned by the necessities of being united to what is human and so localised in time and space.
When Jesus was angry then - no doubt - this is expressive of God's impassioned anger. But the predicate anger is not univocal in each case. It is rather like the different ways in which a French horn and a cello sound out middle C; their sounds have the same value, but they sound somewhat different. The predicates “Jesus is angry,” “God is angry” express emotion which has moral parity, but its human expression is conditioned in a way in which the unincarnate divine reality is not.
Conclusion
Perhaps we need a new word, or a new family of words, to express the constancy and fullness of God's emotional life, his feelings.[4] But perhaps more than this, we need to allow ourselves the time to re-think our way into the older way of thinking about God. Part of this process will involve resisting the pattern of thought which says; either God is simple and impassible, uncaring and unfeeling or he is an all-too-human God who reacts with human-like passion to what he learns about his creation. There is a “third way,” to recall God's settled attitudes to what he has ordained to come to pass, the varied ways in which the fullness and goodness of God is refracted in the varied life of his creation, and to see this fullness and goodness supremely refracted in the Incarnation, under the all too familiar conditions of time and space.
[1] Though see the excellent treatment in Thomas Weinandy, Does God Suffer? (Edinburgh, T and T Clark, 1999)
[2] See Stephen E Fowl, (ed.) The Theological Interpretation of Scripture (Oxford, Blackwell, 1997).
[3] Summa Theologiae 1a 14, 5.
[4] I once suggested the term of art 'themotion' ( in 'The Impossibility of Divine Passibility' in The Power and Weakness of God, ed. Nigel B Cameron (Edinburgh, Rutherford House, 1990), but obviously it has not caught on!
http://www.reformation21.org/Past_Issues/October_2005_Home/Feature/94/
By Paul Helm Emeritus Professor, University of London
The doctrine of God's impassibility has fallen on hard times. In the era of the Suffering God and of “Holocaust theology” scarcely anyone has a good word to say for it.[1] This in itself is a striking fact, given the Christian church's eras-long commitment to the doctrine. These days nearly everyone sees the eclipse of divine impassibility as an unqualified blessing. For them the idea is totally unscriptural, a case of “baptised paganism,” an object lesson in what happens when theology takes its lead not from divine revelation but from Neo-Platonism.
The modest aim here is to say a word or two in favour of the doctrine before it finally slips from the Christian consciousness. The words may even help, in some small way, to arrest its eclipse. I hope so. I shall try to show why impassibility is suffering, then to try to show a little of what impassibility, properly understood, means, to offer some scriptural support for it and finally to reflect a little on what divine impassibility commits us to.
The Problem of Language
I suggest two sets of reasons each having to do with language. One set has to do with the accidents of the English language (and perhaps for all I know, of other languages. I have not gone into this). The other is more fundamental.
There is, I believe, at least for Anglophones, often a basic confusion between three English words: impassivity,(the English form of impassitas), impassability, and impassibility. The Oxford Shorter Dictionary defines “impassive” as “deficient or void of mental feeling or emotion; unimpressionable, apathetic.” (And it also notes a “good sense,” “imperturbable.”) It goes without saying that Christians do not wish to worship and serve an apathetic God; a God who, like a human psychotic, is unconcerned by the needs of human beings. Nor even a God who, like a Stoic philosopher, is imperturbable no matter what happens. But then to suppose that the doctrine of divine impassibility commits one to such a view is based upon simple linguistic confusion, between impassivity and impassibility—of which more in a moment. But first, what about impassability? If the road is blocked by ice or mud then it is impassable. There is no way through. Such an idea, applied to God, makes matters worse. For if God is not only apathetic, if he is also impassable, then there is no way open to get through to him. He must forever remain in a state of apathy; perhaps, to make matters even worse, of blissful apathy.
Let's turn finally to impassibility. Unfortunately, among the senses the Oxford Dictionary gives of “impassible” is this: incapable of feeling or emotion; impassive. However the main sense is “incapable of suffering injury or detriment” along with “incapable of suffering; not subject to pain.” I believe it is possible to provide an understanding of “impassible” which does justice to Scripture and church teaching, but it is clear from this glance at the dictionary that it is an uphill struggle. A word, such as “impassible,” that continually needs guarding against confusion and misunderstanding is not a good tool for theological discourse.
There is a second reason having to do with language why impassibility is suffering an eclipse. “Impassibility” is a negative term. Even when properly understood, and then applied to God, it tells us what God is not, or what God cannot do, rather that what he is like and can do. Such a negative approach to thinking about God is nowadays regarded as being too vague and insubstantial for the modern Christian church. For the modern church is impatient with learning what God is not like, she wants to know what God is like, and in particular she desperately seeks reassurance that God is like us—that he is accessible to our imagination, and especially in need of reassurance that he is our emotional peer. This is one reason for the current stress on biblical narrative, on the anthropomorphic and anthropopathic language of Scripture, and on Christology “from below,” as is evidenced (in different ways) by the prevalent social trinitarianism, and by the appeal of “open theism.” Put in conventional theological terms, in the modern Christian mind the language of divine immanence swamps the language of divine transcendence. And impassibility is part of the language—part of the “grammar”—of divine transcendence. I shall return to this point shortly and develop it.
This contemporary craving for a human-like God is heightened by modern approaches to suffering and evil. Bonhoeffer's phrase, “Only a suffering God can help,” is repeated like a mantra. There is of course a perfectly good sense to these words. God in Christ suffers in taking our sin, and so helping us in a way that nothing else can. But a suffering God who endures suffering in the same way that we suffer may help by comforting us, but he is helpless to deliver us from evil.
The grammar of God
The key idea for any appreciation of the idea of divine impassibility, and of its reappropriation and defense, must be the Creator-creature distinction, and the biblical idea of divine fullness. In the case of emotions, we must focus on the idea of a divine life of unimaginable richness and constancy, not of fitfulness and spasm. In this connection it is unfair as well as unbalanced to separate the divine impassibility from all other divine characteristics and to single it out for special treatment. Divine impassibility is part of a web of ideas which constitute a “grammar,” a canonical way of talking about God, a way of articulating the reality of the divine fullness. In this respect, impassibility is an aspect of divine immutability (God cannot change or be changed), of divine simplicity (the sovereign God does not depend for this existence on 'parts' which are more fundamental than he is) of divine necessity (God exists non-dependently), and of divine eternity (God is not bound by time, with part of his life in the past, as all his creatures are). God’s immutability covers his will, his decrees, his promises and counsel, and of course, his emotional life. Its biblical basis is found in such passages as Jas. 1.17, Ps. 102.29, Is. 14.24, Rom. 11,.29, Heb. 6. 17: 13. 8, Is 46. 10, 2 Cor. 1 18-20.
But none of this means that God is devoid of (what we call) feelings. He loves his creation, he cares for his people, he hates unrighteousness, and so on—he is pure goodness. The trouble is that we are in something of a bind when we attempt to articulate this further. When we think of constancy, steadiness, and dependability at the human level we think of people possessing dispositions that are virtuous. So a person who dashes into the icy water to save the child expresses courage, a courageous disposition. He may never have to act in this way again. But in God these dispositions are never latent, for there is no “slack” in God, but he is utterly engaged. So what are we to make of the expressions of divine anger, or of compassion, in Scripture? We are to understand them in terms of the “big picture” or (in more academic language) a “pattern of judgment'”[2] about God, and thus to see them as expressions of the divine fullness accommodated to the real-time situations of his people, their characters and needs, and of God's purposes for them. For instance, to draw out their faith, (as with Hezekiah) or their obedience, (as with Moses) or their patience (as with Job).
So divine immutability does not signal total inaction or immobility, like the face of the Moon, a state incapable of personal relationship. Rather, it speaks of firmness, faithfulness, covenantal constancy, grounded in who God essentially is. Likewise divine impassibility is not impassivity, but constant goodness, variously expressed (according to God's will and to the specifics of human history) as (for example) love, or wrath, or mercy. Such expressions are rooted in the immutability of the divine nature, the fact that God is unchangeable in goodness and perfection, and cannot be deterred or deflected by outside forces. Of course God’s immutable relation to his creation is not perceived as such by it, but what is perceived is a function of the situation or condition of the creaturely recipient. Just as (we say) the Sun is now setting, now rising, so God is now wise, now just, now loving etc. depending on the human circumstances in which he is “encountered” and on God's purposes in these circumstances.
By contrast human emotion is affected by ignorance and moral weakness, by surprise, fear, partiality and physical distance. (This reminds us that a range of emotions is necessarily connected with human physical embodiment.) For instance, while all of us know that at this very moment there are hundreds of children dying in Darfur this fact fails to move us, whereas if children were dying in a similar fashion on our doorstep we would be moved to grief and compassion and action. These outbreaks of emotion would not be unrelated to our own self-interests, of course, and to what follows from the fact of our physical embodiment.
So emotion in humans is not an unmixed good. Emotion is better than no emotion, but its expression is often the result of selfishness and ignorance. With God it is otherwise. He has an emotional life— he cares and loves and judges and has compassion on his sinful world. But his life—unlike our own emotional lives—is not spasmodic and moody. God does not have a temper. He cannot be cowardly or vain. Rather his “emotional life” is an expression of his perfect goodness and knowledge. The life of God is not first passive and then reactive, as ours is, but it is wholly active.
Is divine impassibility Scriptural?
This, for Christians, is of course the chief question, and we have already begun to offer an answer to it. But it is currently taken for granted by many Christians that the question is easily answered. Many are quick to say that divine impassibility is not and could not be Scriptural. For does not Scripture assert that God suffers, that he is angry, that he expresses surprise, that he fears, and laughs, and repents? Did not Christ, the Son of God, suffer? How could such a God be impassible? Then quickly—all too quickly—it is concluded that the idea of divine impassibility is the result of imposition of Scripture rather than exposition of it, of eisegesis rather than exegesis. It's part of an attempted theological takeover by Greek ideas. But now, it is proudly claimed, we have learned to “take the Bible seriously!”
There are a number of reasons why we should be cautious about this all too common reaction. One is historical. The anthropopathisms of the Bible are not new, nor newly discovered, any more than its anthropomorphisms are. They loom large. Those who affirmed divine impassibility—the theological mainstream from (say) Augustine to Jonathan Edwards—were aware of them. Yet the presence of these data in Scripture was not a sufficient reason for them to deny impassibility. Did they not take the Bible seriously? Why then did they come to the view that God is impassible?
Secondly, this approach to Scripture, if carried out consistently, has rather embarrassing consequences. For Scripture also says that God has eyes, ears, a backside—anthropomorphic language, as we quickly say. And we say that God uses such language in Scripture not because he in fact has eyes, ears and a backside but because by the use of such terms he adapts himself vividly to our way of thinking. There is something in God that corresponds to this language, which it draws attention to, even though it is not literally descriptive of God. God sees—what does this mean? That he has eyes? And if he eyes, does he have eyelashes and eyebrows? How many eyes does he have? Does he have 20/20 vision? None of this is appropriate. Talking in this way about God would be absurd. In saying that God sees, Scripture means (something like) God has immediate, unimpaired knowledge of what he allegedly sees. A child will readily understand this.
Why not something similar with the language about God's emotions? Are we really to believe that God gets angry, that he is overcome with anger? That he is incapacitated by suffering? That he is paralysed with fear? Can we allow that such expressions of anger or suffering carry the connotations of surprise and ignorance and apprehension and impatience and selfish vengefulness that human emotion typically does?
What does affirming divine impassibility commit us to?
As already noted, in the thinking of the classical Christian theologians, the Fathers, the medievals, Reformers such as Calvin, the Reformed Scholastics, Jonathan Edwards, impassibility is an aspect or consequence of divine immutability. Immutability is in turn rooted in divine simplicity. But divine simplicity has been frequently misunderstood, or caricatured.
For though God is simple, without parts, without division, there is nevertheless a complexity in the mind of God, but this complexity does not depend on something other than himself. The classical Christian tradition readily recognises this. So—to take one historical example—in discussing the question “Does God know things other than himself?” [3] Aquinas asserts that God's essence contains the likeness of things other than himself, and since there are many kinds of things other than himself there are presumably many likeness of things contained in the divine essence. However, Aquinas wishes to deny that God knows things other than himself by learning about them, because then the divine intellect would depend on them, and (Aquinas thinks) God's sovereignty or aseity or Creatorhood would be compromised.
So God knows “many things” and we may think of God's “feelings” as simply his attitudes to what he knows. What he knows—the details of everything that comes to pass—is present to the divine mind, even though that mind is itself simple, without parts or divisions, immutable and impassible. What could be more complex than the universe, with its unparalleled variety? God the Father takes pleasure, no doubt in the goodness of the various aspects of the creation, and in the Incarnation, being well pleased with his beloved Son. And we find in Scripture that among the many things that God knows that he has delight in are: a just weight (Prov. 11.1); the upright in their way (Prov. 11.20); those that deal truly (Prov. 12.22); the prayer of the upright (Prov. 15.8) and so on; among those things which he has ordained which he hates are a proud look (Prov. 6.16), Esau (Mal. 1.3), all workers of iniquity (Psalm 5.3) and so on.
How are we to understand these attitudes of God? I suggest that it is improper to strongly model these on human feelings, to think of these as passions. Although undoubtedly as God has accommodated himself to our human condition in this way he represents himself as passionate, God cannot really be passionate because of the suggestion, in the use of the word “passion,” that the one who is passionate is overtaken or derailed or blinded by the passion. The passion is an irrational response. Though even here we must be careful, for a person may speak with full control of himself, yet in an impassioned way. His passion may be a way of speaking of the strength of his commitment. Because of it he may speak and act with greater care than otherwise. This is unlikely with us, but if God is to be said to be passionate then this is how it must be with him. So perhaps we would not be far astray if we thought of God not as 'having passions' but as utterly impassioned in all that he does.
Does God have feelings, then? We may, influenced by our touchy-feely culture, think that the answer is obvious. Of course he has. But here again some caution is called for. For we use the term “feeling” to cover not merely mental states, feelings of sympathy or compassion, or of betrayal or alienation, but also feeling arising from changes in our bodies, or event the fact of being embodied. We feel tired, we have aches and pains, scratches and itches, sexual pleasure, we experience cold and heat. Is this how it is the God? Clearly not. And our mental states, our feelings or emotions, are frequently the result of selfishness and ignorance. If in saying that God feels, or even that God has emotions, we are simply (and carefully) speaking of God's impassioned attitudes of delighting in, and hating, and loving in the manner sketched above, then clearly the answer is yes.
But what of the Incarnation? For many, anxieties about divine impassibility are at their highest in the case of Jesus. They say: Jesus is God, and Jesus suffered, therefore God suffered. The conclusion seems inescapable. But is it? Is it then equally valid that: Jesus sat on the side of the well, Jesus is God, therefore God sat on the side of the well......Are we not at such points as these faced with the mystery of the incarnation, of the union of the human nature with the person of the Son of God? But must we not say, to avoid absurdity, something like: Jesus Christ, being God incarnate, the Mediator, sat on the side of the well, and suffered for our salvation?
How are we to understand the emotional life of our Lord? Are episodes in the life of our Lord—his reaction to the Temple money-changers, or to the death of Lazarus, for example—cases of God's emotion made flesh? In a way they are, but not in any way which involves the transmutation of the divine emotion into something else. It is God expressing his impassioned love (along with much else he expresses) through the vehicle of assumed human nature. So the emotional life of our Lord is what you get when the second person of the impassible God assumes is embodied in human nature. It is an inevitable expression of the divine character in a way conditioned by the necessities of being united to what is human and so localised in time and space.
When Jesus was angry then - no doubt - this is expressive of God's impassioned anger. But the predicate anger is not univocal in each case. It is rather like the different ways in which a French horn and a cello sound out middle C; their sounds have the same value, but they sound somewhat different. The predicates “Jesus is angry,” “God is angry” express emotion which has moral parity, but its human expression is conditioned in a way in which the unincarnate divine reality is not.
Conclusion
Perhaps we need a new word, or a new family of words, to express the constancy and fullness of God's emotional life, his feelings.[4] But perhaps more than this, we need to allow ourselves the time to re-think our way into the older way of thinking about God. Part of this process will involve resisting the pattern of thought which says; either God is simple and impassible, uncaring and unfeeling or he is an all-too-human God who reacts with human-like passion to what he learns about his creation. There is a “third way,” to recall God's settled attitudes to what he has ordained to come to pass, the varied ways in which the fullness and goodness of God is refracted in the varied life of his creation, and to see this fullness and goodness supremely refracted in the Incarnation, under the all too familiar conditions of time and space.
[1] Though see the excellent treatment in Thomas Weinandy, Does God Suffer? (Edinburgh, T and T Clark, 1999)
[2] See Stephen E Fowl, (ed.) The Theological Interpretation of Scripture (Oxford, Blackwell, 1997).
[3] Summa Theologiae 1a 14, 5.
[4] I once suggested the term of art 'themotion' ( in 'The Impossibility of Divine Passibility' in The Power and Weakness of God, ed. Nigel B Cameron (Edinburgh, Rutherford House, 1990), but obviously it has not caught on!
http://www.reformation21.org/Past_Issues/October_2005_Home/Feature/94/
Thursday, October 27, 2005
What's a Christian?
In the minutiae of apologetics, it is possible to lose sight of the basics. In answering this question, I’ll adapt the WSC, 14:2.
A Christian is someone who believes in the truth of whatever is revealed in the Bible, on the authority of God himself speaking in Scripture. A Christian obeys the commands of Scripture, trembles before its warnings, and embraces the promises of God for this life and the life to come. But a Christian is especially someone who believes in and puts his trust in Christ alone for justification, sanctification, and eternal life.
A Christian is someone who believes in the truth of whatever is revealed in the Bible, on the authority of God himself speaking in Scripture. A Christian obeys the commands of Scripture, trembles before its warnings, and embraces the promises of God for this life and the life to come. But a Christian is especially someone who believes in and puts his trust in Christ alone for justification, sanctification, and eternal life.
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Tradition
Thanks for the email.
You have a way of reifying or personifying "tradition." This talismanic use of the term amounts to the deification of a word.
As you surely know, "tradition" is a highly selective historical and theological construct. It isn't just "out there," like Mt. Everest, with a sign on it.
The Orthodox Church favors the Greek Fathers over the Latin Fathers, while the Catholic church favors the Latin Fathers over the Greek Fathers. To some extent it's a matter of emphasis or degree, but the point remains that "Tradition" cannot adjudicate that preference.
Some damnable heresies like docetism and Arianism are just as "traditional," in terms of antiquity and proximity, as the orthodox version of the doctrines in question.
Jesus has a claim on you personally. You owe him your intellectual allegiance. You are answerable to him. As Christians, you and I don't have the right to farm that out to a second party.
To do so is an act of insubordination to our Lord. To do so is to deny his direct authority over our lives by passing the buck to an intermediary.
Our intellectual superiors and predecessors in the faith don't always agree with each other, do they? And not just on the incidentals.
If they're so smart, which some of them are, then what you do is to listen to their arguments. That's what smart men are good at, right? Giving reasons? Articulating the faith. What counts is not opinion, but the argument which undergirds the opinion.
To whom much is given, much is required. To whom less is given, less is required. God doesn't require you to be infallible. He's not going to judge you by the same standard as those you regard as your intellectual superiors.
Why do you believe it stretches back to Jesus and the Apostles? What do you mean by "the faith."
Like "tradition," "the faith" is another highly selective historical and theological construct. What is your specific historical evidence that specific elements of the faith stretch back to the NT church?
BTW, who cares? Why do you think we have to be able to trace this back by some historical chain-of-custody? That's a very ambitious claim. Why start at the end and try to work your way back to the beginning? Why not start at the beginning?
Why do you have to document that a present-day belief reaches back to the NT church? If you want to know if something is dominical or apostolic, why not go straight to the Bible?
There's a difference between saying: "I don't understand if certain parts of the faith are revealed in Scripture" and saying: "I don't understand certain parts of the faith revealed in Scripture."
It is sufficient to understand that something is a revealed truth, whether or not you fully understand the revealed truth in question. It is insufficient not to understand if something is even revealed in Scripture, but believe it anyway.
How do you know that the saints understood it better than you unless you have a standard of comparison other than the saints? Unless you can understand the Bible for yourself, by what yardstick do you know that they understand the Bible better than you?
How is it that can you understand the saints, but you can't understand the Scriptures? Aren't you dependent on your interpretation of the saints?
No one is "assuming" that those who went before us are wrong. Rather, we give them a respectful hearing. But unless they give reasons for what they believe, we have no reason to believe them. And if they do give reasons for what they believe, then their reasons are subject to rational scrutiny.
In addition, there is an advantage to living at a later phase of church history. We have the benefit of biblical archeology. We have the benefit of hindsight.
It's a little vague to say that my way of thinking derives from the Reformation.
Depending on our historical position, we have different intellectual options. One reason I opt for the Protestant rule of faith and the grammatico-historical method is because that option is out there. Now, if I hadn't been born at a certain period in history, I might not be smart enough to think of that for myself.
But this, of itself, doesn't mean that because the immediate derivation for my belief is historically conditioned, that I cannot then derive the same belief from a more principial source.
Suppose I'm an atheist. As an atheist I believe in naturalistic evolution. Then I become a Bible-believing Christian. I now disbelieve in evolution because I think that evolution is unscriptural.
Because I believe it's unscriptural, I start boning up on the antievolutionary literature. I didn't read this when I was an atheist. Instead, I read Dawkins, Gould, and so on.
Now I have an incentive to read Behe, Dembski, and so on.
As a result, I now have a scientific reason for disbelieving in evolution, in addition to my theological reason.
How do you know it's always been taught? Newman went down this path before. He found that he couldn't document a historical chain-of-custody.
Calvinism didn't just pop into the space-time continuum from a subspatial vacuum. It has historical antecedents as well. It's on its own historical trajectory.
But even if it did, so what?
Suppose a commuter plane crashes on a desert island. An atheist is the only survivor. He has zero religious background. He discovers a Bible on the plane. In his boredom, he begins to read it.
Is it not possible for him to come to a saving knowledge of the faith?
Put another way, what is the source of tradition? If you say it's Scripture, then it's possible to go back to the source, is it not? After all, you have to start sometime, somewhere. If the church fathers could make the first move, so can you.
Unless we can compare tradition to Scripture, how do we know that tradition is scriptural?
What's so great about a corrupt visible unity?
Inconsistency is not necessarily a bad thing. Inconsistency is inevitable when someone is in a transitional phase, where he regards his current situation as unsatisfactory. Some strands of what were once his central beliefs are still central. Other stands are moving out to the periphery, while still other strands which used to be peripheral are moving towards the center. But he's not clear, as yet, on how the web of belief will look after all the readjustments are in place. A capacity for self-criticism is a spiritual and intellectual virtue.
Don't be so apprehensive. We're Christians, not deists. God isn't like a snake who abandons her young as soon as they're born. God didn't slap a parachute on our back and toss us out the airlock to fend for ourselves on a desert island. This isn't one of those survivor-type "reality" shows.
Trust in the providence of God. There is no safer place to be than to take refuge in the Bible. It is scary to jump out of a burning skyscraper. It feels safer to be on firm footing. Yet if you stay there you'll burn to death. But if you know there's a big fat airbag waiting for you down below, the only safe thing to do is to let go of your illusory security and taking a flying leap. What normally feels like the safest course of action is the most hazardous, while what normally seems like the most hazardous course of action is the safest.
It would be disastrous to be equally uncertain about every belief, but we don't need to be equally certain about every belief. We don't have to make up our mind about everything. And our certainties or uncertainties may rearrange themselves over a lifetime of faith. It's a threshing process, winnowing the wheat from the chaff.
You have a way of reifying or personifying "tradition." This talismanic use of the term amounts to the deification of a word.
As you surely know, "tradition" is a highly selective historical and theological construct. It isn't just "out there," like Mt. Everest, with a sign on it.
The Orthodox Church favors the Greek Fathers over the Latin Fathers, while the Catholic church favors the Latin Fathers over the Greek Fathers. To some extent it's a matter of emphasis or degree, but the point remains that "Tradition" cannot adjudicate that preference.
Some damnable heresies like docetism and Arianism are just as "traditional," in terms of antiquity and proximity, as the orthodox version of the doctrines in question.
Jesus has a claim on you personally. You owe him your intellectual allegiance. You are answerable to him. As Christians, you and I don't have the right to farm that out to a second party.
To do so is an act of insubordination to our Lord. To do so is to deny his direct authority over our lives by passing the buck to an intermediary.
Our intellectual superiors and predecessors in the faith don't always agree with each other, do they? And not just on the incidentals.
If they're so smart, which some of them are, then what you do is to listen to their arguments. That's what smart men are good at, right? Giving reasons? Articulating the faith. What counts is not opinion, but the argument which undergirds the opinion.
To whom much is given, much is required. To whom less is given, less is required. God doesn't require you to be infallible. He's not going to judge you by the same standard as those you regard as your intellectual superiors.
Why do you believe it stretches back to Jesus and the Apostles? What do you mean by "the faith."
Like "tradition," "the faith" is another highly selective historical and theological construct. What is your specific historical evidence that specific elements of the faith stretch back to the NT church?
BTW, who cares? Why do you think we have to be able to trace this back by some historical chain-of-custody? That's a very ambitious claim. Why start at the end and try to work your way back to the beginning? Why not start at the beginning?
Why do you have to document that a present-day belief reaches back to the NT church? If you want to know if something is dominical or apostolic, why not go straight to the Bible?
There's a difference between saying: "I don't understand if certain parts of the faith are revealed in Scripture" and saying: "I don't understand certain parts of the faith revealed in Scripture."
It is sufficient to understand that something is a revealed truth, whether or not you fully understand the revealed truth in question. It is insufficient not to understand if something is even revealed in Scripture, but believe it anyway.
How do you know that the saints understood it better than you unless you have a standard of comparison other than the saints? Unless you can understand the Bible for yourself, by what yardstick do you know that they understand the Bible better than you?
How is it that can you understand the saints, but you can't understand the Scriptures? Aren't you dependent on your interpretation of the saints?
No one is "assuming" that those who went before us are wrong. Rather, we give them a respectful hearing. But unless they give reasons for what they believe, we have no reason to believe them. And if they do give reasons for what they believe, then their reasons are subject to rational scrutiny.
In addition, there is an advantage to living at a later phase of church history. We have the benefit of biblical archeology. We have the benefit of hindsight.
It's a little vague to say that my way of thinking derives from the Reformation.
Depending on our historical position, we have different intellectual options. One reason I opt for the Protestant rule of faith and the grammatico-historical method is because that option is out there. Now, if I hadn't been born at a certain period in history, I might not be smart enough to think of that for myself.
But this, of itself, doesn't mean that because the immediate derivation for my belief is historically conditioned, that I cannot then derive the same belief from a more principial source.
Suppose I'm an atheist. As an atheist I believe in naturalistic evolution. Then I become a Bible-believing Christian. I now disbelieve in evolution because I think that evolution is unscriptural.
Because I believe it's unscriptural, I start boning up on the antievolutionary literature. I didn't read this when I was an atheist. Instead, I read Dawkins, Gould, and so on.
Now I have an incentive to read Behe, Dembski, and so on.
As a result, I now have a scientific reason for disbelieving in evolution, in addition to my theological reason.
How do you know it's always been taught? Newman went down this path before. He found that he couldn't document a historical chain-of-custody.
Calvinism didn't just pop into the space-time continuum from a subspatial vacuum. It has historical antecedents as well. It's on its own historical trajectory.
But even if it did, so what?
Suppose a commuter plane crashes on a desert island. An atheist is the only survivor. He has zero religious background. He discovers a Bible on the plane. In his boredom, he begins to read it.
Is it not possible for him to come to a saving knowledge of the faith?
Put another way, what is the source of tradition? If you say it's Scripture, then it's possible to go back to the source, is it not? After all, you have to start sometime, somewhere. If the church fathers could make the first move, so can you.
Unless we can compare tradition to Scripture, how do we know that tradition is scriptural?
What's so great about a corrupt visible unity?
Inconsistency is not necessarily a bad thing. Inconsistency is inevitable when someone is in a transitional phase, where he regards his current situation as unsatisfactory. Some strands of what were once his central beliefs are still central. Other stands are moving out to the periphery, while still other strands which used to be peripheral are moving towards the center. But he's not clear, as yet, on how the web of belief will look after all the readjustments are in place. A capacity for self-criticism is a spiritual and intellectual virtue.
Don't be so apprehensive. We're Christians, not deists. God isn't like a snake who abandons her young as soon as they're born. God didn't slap a parachute on our back and toss us out the airlock to fend for ourselves on a desert island. This isn't one of those survivor-type "reality" shows.
Trust in the providence of God. There is no safer place to be than to take refuge in the Bible. It is scary to jump out of a burning skyscraper. It feels safer to be on firm footing. Yet if you stay there you'll burn to death. But if you know there's a big fat airbag waiting for you down below, the only safe thing to do is to let go of your illusory security and taking a flying leap. What normally feels like the safest course of action is the most hazardous, while what normally seems like the most hazardous course of action is the safest.
It would be disastrous to be equally uncertain about every belief, but we don't need to be equally certain about every belief. We don't have to make up our mind about everything. And our certainties or uncertainties may rearrange themselves over a lifetime of faith. It's a threshing process, winnowing the wheat from the chaff.
Dodo Bird theology
***QUOTE***
I believe that gaining a decent understanding the reformation of the eleventh century is essential for several reasons. At the very least, it has the potential of making our grasp of our own cherished reformation, four and a half centuries later, so much more comprehensible by helping us to understand more deeply the type of world that one set of reformers created for the next set to live in. It might cause a salutary re-thinking and re-formulating of apologetic categories that have for too long been allowed to stand as a kind of "Sacred Tradition" which, standing above everything like a set of Platonic Forms, is snobbishly dismissive of numerous relevant "worldly" things.
http://www.societaschristiana.com/
***END-QUOTE***
Tim Enloe has a problem. He has a product to peddle. Problem is: nobody cares.
Tim’s ignorance of exegetical theology is equaled only by his incompetence in the field of epistemology.
The only thing he apparently knows quite a bit about is Medieval conciliarism.
Of course, that’s about as useful as a skiboat in the Sahara.
So he’s stuck with this Edsel of Medieval conciliarism. He’s gotta make a living somehow. He’s gotta work up his sales pitch. He’s gotta convince us that we can’t rightly survive without an Edsel repairman. He’s gotta convince us that we need a crash course in Edsel mechanics, followed by a graduate course in Edsel mechanics, followed by a post-grad course in Edsel mechanics.
He’s got this Edsel to sell, and when that’s you’re product, salesmanship is everything.
Somehow we can’t be true-blue Calvinists, or even bona fide Protestants unless we’re deeply versed in the intricacies of Medieval conciliarism, just as we can’t find our way around New York City in 2005 unless we’ve memorized a 1950 roadmap of the Big Apple. Makes a whole lot of sense, doesn’t it?
Now, church history is a worthwhile subject of study, but to pretend that a knowledge of Medieval conciliarism is the magic key to unlock the forgotten treasures of Reformed theology is just a whole lot of hype from a guy who stumbled into Dodo Bird theology and chose to take up lifetime residence on a desert island.
Tim is welcome to become the world authority on the history of nothingless, but forgive us if we don’t join him in his self-imposed exile to the Land That Time Forgot.
I believe that gaining a decent understanding the reformation of the eleventh century is essential for several reasons. At the very least, it has the potential of making our grasp of our own cherished reformation, four and a half centuries later, so much more comprehensible by helping us to understand more deeply the type of world that one set of reformers created for the next set to live in. It might cause a salutary re-thinking and re-formulating of apologetic categories that have for too long been allowed to stand as a kind of "Sacred Tradition" which, standing above everything like a set of Platonic Forms, is snobbishly dismissive of numerous relevant "worldly" things.
http://www.societaschristiana.com/
***END-QUOTE***
Tim Enloe has a problem. He has a product to peddle. Problem is: nobody cares.
Tim’s ignorance of exegetical theology is equaled only by his incompetence in the field of epistemology.
The only thing he apparently knows quite a bit about is Medieval conciliarism.
Of course, that’s about as useful as a skiboat in the Sahara.
So he’s stuck with this Edsel of Medieval conciliarism. He’s gotta make a living somehow. He’s gotta work up his sales pitch. He’s gotta convince us that we can’t rightly survive without an Edsel repairman. He’s gotta convince us that we need a crash course in Edsel mechanics, followed by a graduate course in Edsel mechanics, followed by a post-grad course in Edsel mechanics.
He’s got this Edsel to sell, and when that’s you’re product, salesmanship is everything.
Somehow we can’t be true-blue Calvinists, or even bona fide Protestants unless we’re deeply versed in the intricacies of Medieval conciliarism, just as we can’t find our way around New York City in 2005 unless we’ve memorized a 1950 roadmap of the Big Apple. Makes a whole lot of sense, doesn’t it?
Now, church history is a worthwhile subject of study, but to pretend that a knowledge of Medieval conciliarism is the magic key to unlock the forgotten treasures of Reformed theology is just a whole lot of hype from a guy who stumbled into Dodo Bird theology and chose to take up lifetime residence on a desert island.
Tim is welcome to become the world authority on the history of nothingless, but forgive us if we don’t join him in his self-imposed exile to the Land That Time Forgot.
The second coming of Charles Chauncy
***QUOTE***
Some of you may be familiar with Donald Macleod. Recently, he made some remarks in a newspaper column in Scotland which caught my attention, in light of what I have been saying around here for some time now, about the need for the Presbyterian church to flee from the Evangelical Babylon. After noting that Evangelicals are admittedly good at filling churches, Prof. Macleod warns:
“But we Presbyterians are not Evangelicals. We are Protestants, whose roots lie not in the Great Awakening, but in the Reformation.
Two things haunt me. One is a remark made by a speaker at a recent theological conference. Protestantism, he said, now has no institutional representation in America. The myriad Evangelical churches are not Protestant. The mainline Presbyterian churches are not Protestant. The great seminaries are not Protestant.
Our identity must lie in our Protestantism, with the caveat that can never mean mere anti-Catholicism. Even less can it mean sectarian bigotry. Any true Protestantism will deplore and denounce bigotry, as it will all other forms of hatred of our neighbor.”
Conservative Presbyterians and Anglicans (Reformed Catholics) should come out and be separate from the Evangelical Babylon. We need to reclaim our Protestant roots, and in so doing, we will also restore our rightful Catholic heritage.
http://www.communiosanctorum.com/?p=92
***END-QUOTE***
This is very revealing for the realignment that Paul Owen is proposing. His roots supposedly lie in the Reformation rather than the Great Awakening. The great American seminaries aren’t Protestant. We have no Protestant denominations either.
Instead, “conservative” Presbyterians & Anglicans should separate from Evangelical “Babylon.”
So Dr. Owen has sided with Charles Chauncy. For Dr. Owen, Rome isn’t the Scarlet Woman--or even the LDS.
No, the Scarlet Woman consists of such wanton whoremongers as Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, Daniel Rowland, William Pantycelyn, John MacArthur, the late James Boice, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, the OPC, the PCA, the SBC, RTS, Westminster/Philly, SBTS, DTS, and the Old Princeton theology. (Remember, Princeton was a New Light seminary.)
BTW, Anglicans don’t generally regard themselves as Protestant, do they? That’s why they leave Anglicanism for the Catholic church or the Orthodox church rather than a Lutheran church like the LCMS or WELS.
Some of you may be familiar with Donald Macleod. Recently, he made some remarks in a newspaper column in Scotland which caught my attention, in light of what I have been saying around here for some time now, about the need for the Presbyterian church to flee from the Evangelical Babylon. After noting that Evangelicals are admittedly good at filling churches, Prof. Macleod warns:
“But we Presbyterians are not Evangelicals. We are Protestants, whose roots lie not in the Great Awakening, but in the Reformation.
Two things haunt me. One is a remark made by a speaker at a recent theological conference. Protestantism, he said, now has no institutional representation in America. The myriad Evangelical churches are not Protestant. The mainline Presbyterian churches are not Protestant. The great seminaries are not Protestant.
Our identity must lie in our Protestantism, with the caveat that can never mean mere anti-Catholicism. Even less can it mean sectarian bigotry. Any true Protestantism will deplore and denounce bigotry, as it will all other forms of hatred of our neighbor.”
Conservative Presbyterians and Anglicans (Reformed Catholics) should come out and be separate from the Evangelical Babylon. We need to reclaim our Protestant roots, and in so doing, we will also restore our rightful Catholic heritage.
http://www.communiosanctorum.com/?p=92
***END-QUOTE***
This is very revealing for the realignment that Paul Owen is proposing. His roots supposedly lie in the Reformation rather than the Great Awakening. The great American seminaries aren’t Protestant. We have no Protestant denominations either.
Instead, “conservative” Presbyterians & Anglicans should separate from Evangelical “Babylon.”
So Dr. Owen has sided with Charles Chauncy. For Dr. Owen, Rome isn’t the Scarlet Woman--or even the LDS.
No, the Scarlet Woman consists of such wanton whoremongers as Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, Daniel Rowland, William Pantycelyn, John MacArthur, the late James Boice, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, the OPC, the PCA, the SBC, RTS, Westminster/Philly, SBTS, DTS, and the Old Princeton theology. (Remember, Princeton was a New Light seminary.)
BTW, Anglicans don’t generally regard themselves as Protestant, do they? That’s why they leave Anglicanism for the Catholic church or the Orthodox church rather than a Lutheran church like the LCMS or WELS.
The Squire of Gothos
Jonathan Prejean has responded to what I and others have said in the latest thread:
“Sure. Apply epistemic charity, assume that I am a thinking and rational person, and interpret what I say accordingly.”
“Epistemic charity”? Yeah, right. Here’s a sample of Prejean’s legendary epistemic charity from the very same day:
“…how ignorant he is, a la Engwer. He isn't actually capable of understanding, as far as I can tell. Just doesn't have the chops to read scholarly material and follow the arguments. I don't know whether that's lack of training (he has a mere bachelor's degree in English, which is hardly an analytical field anyway) or whether he's just stupid.”
Yes, Prejean is Mr. Epistemic Charity incarnate.
Moving along:
***QUOTE***
In context, it was quite obvious that I was speaking of God revealing Himself ENTIRELY through text. Which means that the following:
"Then he says that God *does* reveal himself through text, as long as that revelation is in combination with other things."
says EXACTLY THE SAME THING.
And, BTW, notice that Hays did exactly the same thing:
"So what we needed was a whole different model of revelation. A form of revelation which is ontologically of a piece with the Incarnation.
This would be opposed to textual revelation. Not a supplement to textual revelation. But a whole different genus of divine revelation."
Did I say this? No.
***END-QUOTE***
This is, alas, where we have to repeat ourselves:
************************************************
On Oct 22, Prejean said:
***QUOTE***
As such, I consider it highly improbable, considering Who is revealed, that God would reveal Himself through text. He could do so, no doubt, but it would be a bit perverse from a presuppositional standpoint to reveal something by a method that by definition is inadequate to the task, rather like Picasso attempting to convey his artistic vision in a typed page. Requiring that much direct intervention, that much identification between the individual's volition and the Holy Spirit, strikes me as little better than appealing to private revelation. Rather than positing such a thoroughly inadequate means of revelation supplemented by such drastic intervention, I would think that it would be far more aesthetic to conclude that God did not Incarnate Himself meaninglessly, and that His ongoing revelation is (ontologically) of one kind with His Incarnation. This leads to a fundamentally Christological and Eucharistic hermeneutic, unique to Scripture. Hence, the distaste for "private judgment," which more or less presumes a presuppositionally inadequate form of revelation that must be supplemented by God's direct personal revelation of Himself.
***END-QUOTE***
Oct 24, said:
No. It's a case of God revealing Himself through a combination of text, faith, natural theology, mystagogy, community, subsequent historical development, and a host of other factors. Why that is so difficult to comprehend, I have no idea. It's only people who claim epistemic reliability based on a single source who have to worry about vicious circularity. It's that whole (solely) or (independently) that gets read into "through text" that I find objectionable. I can't discern any good reason to think that (solely) or (independently) is warranted. Certainly, the fact that it is the only written record of apostolic teaching doesn't cut it.
Quite a few problems to sort out:
1.The implication of his 10/22 statement is that the principle of textual revelation was “thoroughly inadequate.” It necessitated too much direct divine intervention to supplement its deficiencies.
Textual revelation was inadequate, not merely as a matter of degree, but a matter of kind. It’s like trying to communicate what was distinctive to one medium (painting) to another medium (the written word).
So what we needed was a whole different model of revelation. A form of revelation which is ontologically of a piece with the Incarnation.
This would be opposed to textual revelation. Not a supplement to textual revelation. But a whole different genus of divine revelation.
Now, we can certainly classify the Incarnation as a revelatory event, but by that same token, it would belong to the category of event-media rather than word media.
And one would suppose, given Prejean’s theological commitments, that an extension along the same lines would be related to the Mass and sacramental grace. Presumably, too, this has something to do with the Incarnational dimension of Byzantine epistemology.
One source of unclarity lies in Prejean's effort to fuse two divergent theological traditions--each with its own history of internal development.
For Prejean, this has more aesthetic appeal, which he treats as a theological criterion of truth. So much for his 10/22 statement.
2.But in his 10/4 statement, he substitutes a multiple-source theory of revelation, which includes textual revelation, but in combination with a host of other sources and criteria.
a) Prejean is shifting ground. He now is supplementing textual revelation with a host of other factors.
***************************************************************************
Notice, once again, that I built my interpretation directly on his own words and the way that he set up the original contrast.
What he now does is to simply deny my interpretation without explaining his own words, without explaining why he set up the contrast in the first place if that is not what he meant.
I didn’t merely assert an interpretation of his words. I presented an argument for my interpretation based on the logical ramifications of what he said. He has done nothing here to reconcile his own logic. How does his Incarnational model of revelation, which he originally opposed to textual revelation, what with its excessive interventionism and all, now harmonize with his multiple-source theory of revelation?
Moving along:
***QUOTE***
My point, which is the same as it has been all along, is that text as an exclusive medium is absurdly counter-intuitive. In fact, Hays even owns up to how ridiculous it is when he says:
"A multiple-source theory of revelation would have less aesthetic appeal that a single-source theory. A multiple-source theory is messy, cumbersome, complicated, and inelegant. How do you prioritize the various factors?
Conversely, a single-source model of revelation would be more elegant than a multiple-source theory of revelation. Hence, Prejean’s aesthetic criterion ought to favor the Protestant rule of faith."
This is completely irrational; he's saying that more information is a bad thing from an aesthetic standpoint. The beauty of simplicity owes itself to the COMPLEXITY of what it explains, not the SIMPLICITY of what it explains. If Hays had actually studied a hard science, maybe he'd realize how incredibly stupid anyone with scientific training ought to find this statement. If things weren't hard to explain, simplicity wouldn't be a virtue; it would be a consequence!
***END-QUOTE***
Prejean stumbles quite a few times in the course of this reply:
i) He’s introducing a new concept—the concept of complexity. He didn’t discuss this before, and the concept was not implicit in what he did say.
Prejean is now having to shore up the deficiencies in his previous statement while screaming into a megaphone to cover up the screeching sound of spinning wheels and burning rubber as he slams his car into reverse.
We comment on what people say at the time. We are hardly responsible for his hasty patch-up job when his attempts to shift the blame because we didn’t take into consideration various addenda which he is now trying to backdate.
ii) Theology is not one of the hard sciences, so the analogy is flawed.
iii) How many of the Popes have advanced degrees in a hard science? Does that disqualify them from office?
iv) It’s not as though Prejean is another Penrose or Witten or Feynman.
v) Yes, more information is a good thing. But to say that does nothing to harmonize a multiple-source theory of revelation with the superior economy of an Incarnational model of revelation.
vi) This also assumes that “mystagogy, community, subsequent historical development,” do, indeed, supply us with addition, pertinent information—an appeal which merely begs the question in his favor.
vii) Having more potential sources of information also generates more potential sources of conflict. By what criterion/criteria do you distinguish information from misinformation? Hence, a multiple-source theory of revelation necessitates a priority-structure in a way that a single-source theory of revelation does not.
This is a problem of Prejean’s own making, which he dodges instead of facing head-on.
viii) We have yet to get to Prejean’s biggest blunder, where he confounds the complexity of the source of knowledge with the complexity of the object of knowledge, as if these were interchangeable.
Remember, the original issue as he himself chose to frame the original issue was the superior economy of an Incarnational model of revelation as over against the interventionist model of textual revelation.
The issue here was not the object of knowledge—not the internal complexity of the object—but the source and standard of knowledge.
The question at issue was not the simplicity/complexity of what it explains, but the simplicity/complexity of what does the explaining. This is Prejean’s trademark bait-and-switch tactic when he gets himself snagged in a self-contradiction.
Moving along:
***QUOTE***
What's incredible is that Hays even actually ADMITTED that he hadn't made an argument here:
"It is, rather, predicated on the fact that Sola Scriptura is simply the only rule of faith which God has assigned to the church. Whether it affords certainty or degrees of high probability is not the basis of the claim."
I interpret Scripture with Scripture because Scripture is the only rule of faith which God provided to the Church, according to Scripture, which is the rule of faith...
Single-source revelation is viciously circular. There's no way around it.
***END-QUOTE***
i) Prejean is evidently hoping that the reader will forget the original context of the comment. Prejean misrepresented the argument for sola Scriptura. What he said was: “It's only people who claim epistemic reliability based on a single source.”
That is not how sola Scriptura is grounded. I don’t need to make an argument for sola Scriptura to correct a misstatement of what the argument consists in. All I was doing, and needed to do at this preliminary juncture, was to rectify Prejean’s misstatement of the opposing position. Argument presupposes accurate definitions.
Moving along:
***QUOTE***
See Hays's "argument" here:
"Whether they’re highly reliable or fraught with uncertainty, the senses are the only possible source of sense knowledge. That’s the claim."
This actually proves exactly the OPPOSITE of what Hays claims; if you lack a REASON to believe sense information counts as "knowledge," the fact of sensing can't give it to you. All this proves is that Hays isn't even thinking about the grounds of knowledge, which once again, is not an argument.
***END-QUOTE***
And what reason would that be? An empirical reason or non-empirical reason?
Prejean is simply proving my point. If we lack a reason for believing that sense information counts as knowledge, then we have no alternative to the senses to acquire knowledge of sensibilia. At that point the sensible world would not be an object of knowledge. It’s either this or nothing—at least for purposes of the immediate illustration.
Moving along: “My point was actually exactly the OPPOSITE of what you are saying; it should have been quite obvious that I MEANT "solely" or "independently" in my original statement, at least if the reader wasn't either malevolent or stupid.”
“Malevolent.” “Stupid.” “Nitwits” (see below). “Doesn’t have the chops.”
It’s difficult to have a halfway intelligent conversation with a man who throws a cosmic temper tantrum every time you subject his claims to rational scrutiny. Prejean keeps behaving like Trelane in that old Star Trek episode.
It makes me feel for the poor old house-servants who had to tend to the whims of the aristocracy. The little princeling wants strawberry shortcake for desert. “What! How dare you tell me that strawberries are out of season! Off with your head!”
Moving along:
***QUOTE***
My point is the same that I have been meaning all along: the notion that Scripture can interpret Scripture is ridiculously counter-intuitive, the sort of absurd nonsense that no one would believe without an absolutely compelling argument. Ordinarily, one would not assume such a thing, so it is the extremely high burden of anyone making such an implausible claim that it is even possible. Thus, anyone who believes in "letting revelation define revelation" is unreasonable by default absent making such an argument, because it is practically the definition of vicious circularity. My point is that anyone who believes something that ridiculous without an argument is beyond reason, because they obviously don't have the critical thinking capacity to question the ridiculous.
END-QUOTE***
More confusion worse confounded.
i) Neither I nor JD nor Jason has ever said that the interpretation of Scripture is limited to Scripture. Prejean has a pretty short memory. Remember how Jason and I argued ad nauseum for the grammatico-historical method? Extra-scriptural sources are relevant to the interpretation of Scripture as long as they’re from the relevant time and place. How many times did we go over this ground with Jonathan? But he’s so blinkered by his ideological blinders that he’s incapable of registering basic information no matter how often we stick it right under his nose.
ii) At the same time, Josephus is not our rule of faith. The fact that Josephus and other period historians or archeological data supplies useful background material in interpreting the Bible doesn’t elevate the background material to a rule of faith.
The minutes of the Westminster Assembly are useful for interpreting the Westminster Confession. But the Confession, and not the minutes, is the doctrinal standard (for Presbos).
iii) However, it is Prejean’s own position which is “ridiculously counterintuitive.” The Bible is, among other things, the record of a literary tradition. It is perfectly proper to interpret a literary tradition within the tradition itself. That, indeed, is the natural point of departure. Likewise, it is perfectly proper to interpret Dante or James Joyce or Henry James by a comparative study of their very own writings.
What is more logical, if you want to know how Joyce uses a word, than to do a concordance search of all the occurrences of that word in Joyce’s oeuvres?
iv) This isn’t a vicious circle, but virtuous circule. Poor little Prejean doesn’t know the difference between a circular argument and a definition or description.
A definition or description is supposed to be circular. It is supposed to reproduce, in summary form, the object under review. It is not supposed to be independent of the subject-matter. It if were, it would be inaccurate.
iv) Scholars like Warfield have documented at length the Bible’s own claim to be a verbal revelation from God. That is nothing more or less than an inductive summary of what the Bible has to say about itself. If you want to know what the Bible has to say about itself, you consult the Bible. Nothing viciously circular about that procedure. If you want to understand the Shakespearean character of Othello, the first place to go is Shakespeare’s play by that very name.
v) What would be viciously circular is to argue that Scripture is verbally inspired simply because it claims to be verbally inspired. You need more than the claim to prove the claim. But without the claim, you have nothing to prove in the first place. So, yes, an Evangelical gets his doctrine of Scripture from Scripture, rather than getting his doctrine of Scripture from Spiderman or Bikini magazine.
vi) But while we’re on the subject of informal fallacies, all that Prejean has done, in his appeal to tradition and community and development and so on, is to substitute a vicious regress for vicious circularity.
Moving along:
***QUOTE***
It's like astrology or any other ridiculously counter-intuitive premise that one has no reason to believe. Now, if you can come up with some compelling argument for WHY you let Scripture interpret Scripture, I might give you a pass, but I've certainly never seen one. But the fact that you don't even have sufficient epistemic charity to have a reasonable discussion means I'm not flailing around with you anymore. And since, as usual, new Triablogue nitwits who interact with me have proved to be just as irrational as Hays, that's all for me. I've gotta say that you and Hays have reached new depths before; now an admission of irrationality actually somehow turns into a virtue. You've got the cult mentality down pat; you'd be good Gnostics.
***END-QUOTE***
This is vintage Prejean. Like a losing poker player, he overturns the card table and stomps out of the room.
What Prejean needs at this point is not a compelling argument but a pacifier—a silver-plated pacifier to go with his silver spoon.
Moving along to another critic:
***QUOTE***
Are you all actually really arguing that you know what Prejean meant by his own words better than he himself does? It appears to me that you are arguing with the author of a text and claiming that your analysis of that text provides you with a better knowledge of his original intent than he himself has. You then have to allege dishonesty or inconsistancy on his part when it turns out the meaning you believed to be most probable is not what the author himself claims he intended to communicate.
Wouldn't it be more sensible to just acknowledge that words at best give an estimate of a persons thoughts and that through dialouge you know realise that you misinterpreted his words? You can then criticize what he actually believes rather than the words he used to communicate that belief.
I thought it was quite obvious that the statement he made on October 22 was criticizing the idea that God would reveal himself solely through text, but maybe I'm wrong. If you thought otherwise, you now have the author himself there to correct you. Allege all the ambiguity you want of the original statement, but to go beyond that suggests to me that you value the form of language over and above its substance.
If you appear incapable of intepreting a text written in your own native language and in your own historical period, with the author himself there to assist you on its meaning, are you expecting others to believe that you're any more capable of interpreting a 1800+ year old text, written in two foreign lanuages, authored by God himself?
Perhaps that's why he doesn't take you seriously?
***END-QUOTE***
i) As to choosing between dishonesty and inconsistency, these are not mutually exclusive explanations.
ii) Be that as it may, you are trying to impose on me a restriction which I don’t find you imposing on Prejean. People are quite capable of being logically inconsistent, and the charge of logical inconsistency is perfectly legit long as it’s backed up by direct quotes and analysis of what those quotes entail.
iii) Yes, Prejean is in a very good position to explain himself. What he has chosen to do, however, is not to explain his own words, but to simply deny my interpretation. He did nothing to interact with my specific argument. He did nothing to harmonize his various statements.
All he did was to repeat himself—and to repeat only one part of what he said without attempting to reconcile that with the rest of what he said.
So if he, as the world authority on his own meaning, shows himself incapable of harmonizing his various statements on the subject, then that serves to confirm rather than disconfirm my original interpretation.
iv) I did not allege ambiguity, but contradiction. The problem with Prejean is not that he was unclear, but that he clearly articulated two clearly contradictory views of revelation.
v) BTW, this is not my first run-in with Prejean. So I’m quite accustomed to his modus operandi.
“Sure. Apply epistemic charity, assume that I am a thinking and rational person, and interpret what I say accordingly.”
“Epistemic charity”? Yeah, right. Here’s a sample of Prejean’s legendary epistemic charity from the very same day:
“…how ignorant he is, a la Engwer. He isn't actually capable of understanding, as far as I can tell. Just doesn't have the chops to read scholarly material and follow the arguments. I don't know whether that's lack of training (he has a mere bachelor's degree in English, which is hardly an analytical field anyway) or whether he's just stupid.”
Yes, Prejean is Mr. Epistemic Charity incarnate.
Moving along:
***QUOTE***
In context, it was quite obvious that I was speaking of God revealing Himself ENTIRELY through text. Which means that the following:
"Then he says that God *does* reveal himself through text, as long as that revelation is in combination with other things."
says EXACTLY THE SAME THING.
And, BTW, notice that Hays did exactly the same thing:
"So what we needed was a whole different model of revelation. A form of revelation which is ontologically of a piece with the Incarnation.
This would be opposed to textual revelation. Not a supplement to textual revelation. But a whole different genus of divine revelation."
Did I say this? No.
***END-QUOTE***
This is, alas, where we have to repeat ourselves:
************************************************
On Oct 22, Prejean said:
***QUOTE***
As such, I consider it highly improbable, considering Who is revealed, that God would reveal Himself through text. He could do so, no doubt, but it would be a bit perverse from a presuppositional standpoint to reveal something by a method that by definition is inadequate to the task, rather like Picasso attempting to convey his artistic vision in a typed page. Requiring that much direct intervention, that much identification between the individual's volition and the Holy Spirit, strikes me as little better than appealing to private revelation. Rather than positing such a thoroughly inadequate means of revelation supplemented by such drastic intervention, I would think that it would be far more aesthetic to conclude that God did not Incarnate Himself meaninglessly, and that His ongoing revelation is (ontologically) of one kind with His Incarnation. This leads to a fundamentally Christological and Eucharistic hermeneutic, unique to Scripture. Hence, the distaste for "private judgment," which more or less presumes a presuppositionally inadequate form of revelation that must be supplemented by God's direct personal revelation of Himself.
***END-QUOTE***
Oct 24, said:
No. It's a case of God revealing Himself through a combination of text, faith, natural theology, mystagogy, community, subsequent historical development, and a host of other factors. Why that is so difficult to comprehend, I have no idea. It's only people who claim epistemic reliability based on a single source who have to worry about vicious circularity. It's that whole (solely) or (independently) that gets read into "through text" that I find objectionable. I can't discern any good reason to think that (solely) or (independently) is warranted. Certainly, the fact that it is the only written record of apostolic teaching doesn't cut it.
Quite a few problems to sort out:
1.The implication of his 10/22 statement is that the principle of textual revelation was “thoroughly inadequate.” It necessitated too much direct divine intervention to supplement its deficiencies.
Textual revelation was inadequate, not merely as a matter of degree, but a matter of kind. It’s like trying to communicate what was distinctive to one medium (painting) to another medium (the written word).
So what we needed was a whole different model of revelation. A form of revelation which is ontologically of a piece with the Incarnation.
This would be opposed to textual revelation. Not a supplement to textual revelation. But a whole different genus of divine revelation.
Now, we can certainly classify the Incarnation as a revelatory event, but by that same token, it would belong to the category of event-media rather than word media.
And one would suppose, given Prejean’s theological commitments, that an extension along the same lines would be related to the Mass and sacramental grace. Presumably, too, this has something to do with the Incarnational dimension of Byzantine epistemology.
One source of unclarity lies in Prejean's effort to fuse two divergent theological traditions--each with its own history of internal development.
For Prejean, this has more aesthetic appeal, which he treats as a theological criterion of truth. So much for his 10/22 statement.
2.But in his 10/4 statement, he substitutes a multiple-source theory of revelation, which includes textual revelation, but in combination with a host of other sources and criteria.
a) Prejean is shifting ground. He now is supplementing textual revelation with a host of other factors.
***************************************************************************
Notice, once again, that I built my interpretation directly on his own words and the way that he set up the original contrast.
What he now does is to simply deny my interpretation without explaining his own words, without explaining why he set up the contrast in the first place if that is not what he meant.
I didn’t merely assert an interpretation of his words. I presented an argument for my interpretation based on the logical ramifications of what he said. He has done nothing here to reconcile his own logic. How does his Incarnational model of revelation, which he originally opposed to textual revelation, what with its excessive interventionism and all, now harmonize with his multiple-source theory of revelation?
Moving along:
***QUOTE***
My point, which is the same as it has been all along, is that text as an exclusive medium is absurdly counter-intuitive. In fact, Hays even owns up to how ridiculous it is when he says:
"A multiple-source theory of revelation would have less aesthetic appeal that a single-source theory. A multiple-source theory is messy, cumbersome, complicated, and inelegant. How do you prioritize the various factors?
Conversely, a single-source model of revelation would be more elegant than a multiple-source theory of revelation. Hence, Prejean’s aesthetic criterion ought to favor the Protestant rule of faith."
This is completely irrational; he's saying that more information is a bad thing from an aesthetic standpoint. The beauty of simplicity owes itself to the COMPLEXITY of what it explains, not the SIMPLICITY of what it explains. If Hays had actually studied a hard science, maybe he'd realize how incredibly stupid anyone with scientific training ought to find this statement. If things weren't hard to explain, simplicity wouldn't be a virtue; it would be a consequence!
***END-QUOTE***
Prejean stumbles quite a few times in the course of this reply:
i) He’s introducing a new concept—the concept of complexity. He didn’t discuss this before, and the concept was not implicit in what he did say.
Prejean is now having to shore up the deficiencies in his previous statement while screaming into a megaphone to cover up the screeching sound of spinning wheels and burning rubber as he slams his car into reverse.
We comment on what people say at the time. We are hardly responsible for his hasty patch-up job when his attempts to shift the blame because we didn’t take into consideration various addenda which he is now trying to backdate.
ii) Theology is not one of the hard sciences, so the analogy is flawed.
iii) How many of the Popes have advanced degrees in a hard science? Does that disqualify them from office?
iv) It’s not as though Prejean is another Penrose or Witten or Feynman.
v) Yes, more information is a good thing. But to say that does nothing to harmonize a multiple-source theory of revelation with the superior economy of an Incarnational model of revelation.
vi) This also assumes that “mystagogy, community, subsequent historical development,” do, indeed, supply us with addition, pertinent information—an appeal which merely begs the question in his favor.
vii) Having more potential sources of information also generates more potential sources of conflict. By what criterion/criteria do you distinguish information from misinformation? Hence, a multiple-source theory of revelation necessitates a priority-structure in a way that a single-source theory of revelation does not.
This is a problem of Prejean’s own making, which he dodges instead of facing head-on.
viii) We have yet to get to Prejean’s biggest blunder, where he confounds the complexity of the source of knowledge with the complexity of the object of knowledge, as if these were interchangeable.
Remember, the original issue as he himself chose to frame the original issue was the superior economy of an Incarnational model of revelation as over against the interventionist model of textual revelation.
The issue here was not the object of knowledge—not the internal complexity of the object—but the source and standard of knowledge.
The question at issue was not the simplicity/complexity of what it explains, but the simplicity/complexity of what does the explaining. This is Prejean’s trademark bait-and-switch tactic when he gets himself snagged in a self-contradiction.
Moving along:
***QUOTE***
What's incredible is that Hays even actually ADMITTED that he hadn't made an argument here:
"It is, rather, predicated on the fact that Sola Scriptura is simply the only rule of faith which God has assigned to the church. Whether it affords certainty or degrees of high probability is not the basis of the claim."
I interpret Scripture with Scripture because Scripture is the only rule of faith which God provided to the Church, according to Scripture, which is the rule of faith...
Single-source revelation is viciously circular. There's no way around it.
***END-QUOTE***
i) Prejean is evidently hoping that the reader will forget the original context of the comment. Prejean misrepresented the argument for sola Scriptura. What he said was: “It's only people who claim epistemic reliability based on a single source.”
That is not how sola Scriptura is grounded. I don’t need to make an argument for sola Scriptura to correct a misstatement of what the argument consists in. All I was doing, and needed to do at this preliminary juncture, was to rectify Prejean’s misstatement of the opposing position. Argument presupposes accurate definitions.
Moving along:
***QUOTE***
See Hays's "argument" here:
"Whether they’re highly reliable or fraught with uncertainty, the senses are the only possible source of sense knowledge. That’s the claim."
This actually proves exactly the OPPOSITE of what Hays claims; if you lack a REASON to believe sense information counts as "knowledge," the fact of sensing can't give it to you. All this proves is that Hays isn't even thinking about the grounds of knowledge, which once again, is not an argument.
***END-QUOTE***
And what reason would that be? An empirical reason or non-empirical reason?
Prejean is simply proving my point. If we lack a reason for believing that sense information counts as knowledge, then we have no alternative to the senses to acquire knowledge of sensibilia. At that point the sensible world would not be an object of knowledge. It’s either this or nothing—at least for purposes of the immediate illustration.
Moving along: “My point was actually exactly the OPPOSITE of what you are saying; it should have been quite obvious that I MEANT "solely" or "independently" in my original statement, at least if the reader wasn't either malevolent or stupid.”
“Malevolent.” “Stupid.” “Nitwits” (see below). “Doesn’t have the chops.”
It’s difficult to have a halfway intelligent conversation with a man who throws a cosmic temper tantrum every time you subject his claims to rational scrutiny. Prejean keeps behaving like Trelane in that old Star Trek episode.
It makes me feel for the poor old house-servants who had to tend to the whims of the aristocracy. The little princeling wants strawberry shortcake for desert. “What! How dare you tell me that strawberries are out of season! Off with your head!”
Moving along:
***QUOTE***
My point is the same that I have been meaning all along: the notion that Scripture can interpret Scripture is ridiculously counter-intuitive, the sort of absurd nonsense that no one would believe without an absolutely compelling argument. Ordinarily, one would not assume such a thing, so it is the extremely high burden of anyone making such an implausible claim that it is even possible. Thus, anyone who believes in "letting revelation define revelation" is unreasonable by default absent making such an argument, because it is practically the definition of vicious circularity. My point is that anyone who believes something that ridiculous without an argument is beyond reason, because they obviously don't have the critical thinking capacity to question the ridiculous.
END-QUOTE***
More confusion worse confounded.
i) Neither I nor JD nor Jason has ever said that the interpretation of Scripture is limited to Scripture. Prejean has a pretty short memory. Remember how Jason and I argued ad nauseum for the grammatico-historical method? Extra-scriptural sources are relevant to the interpretation of Scripture as long as they’re from the relevant time and place. How many times did we go over this ground with Jonathan? But he’s so blinkered by his ideological blinders that he’s incapable of registering basic information no matter how often we stick it right under his nose.
ii) At the same time, Josephus is not our rule of faith. The fact that Josephus and other period historians or archeological data supplies useful background material in interpreting the Bible doesn’t elevate the background material to a rule of faith.
The minutes of the Westminster Assembly are useful for interpreting the Westminster Confession. But the Confession, and not the minutes, is the doctrinal standard (for Presbos).
iii) However, it is Prejean’s own position which is “ridiculously counterintuitive.” The Bible is, among other things, the record of a literary tradition. It is perfectly proper to interpret a literary tradition within the tradition itself. That, indeed, is the natural point of departure. Likewise, it is perfectly proper to interpret Dante or James Joyce or Henry James by a comparative study of their very own writings.
What is more logical, if you want to know how Joyce uses a word, than to do a concordance search of all the occurrences of that word in Joyce’s oeuvres?
iv) This isn’t a vicious circle, but virtuous circule. Poor little Prejean doesn’t know the difference between a circular argument and a definition or description.
A definition or description is supposed to be circular. It is supposed to reproduce, in summary form, the object under review. It is not supposed to be independent of the subject-matter. It if were, it would be inaccurate.
iv) Scholars like Warfield have documented at length the Bible’s own claim to be a verbal revelation from God. That is nothing more or less than an inductive summary of what the Bible has to say about itself. If you want to know what the Bible has to say about itself, you consult the Bible. Nothing viciously circular about that procedure. If you want to understand the Shakespearean character of Othello, the first place to go is Shakespeare’s play by that very name.
v) What would be viciously circular is to argue that Scripture is verbally inspired simply because it claims to be verbally inspired. You need more than the claim to prove the claim. But without the claim, you have nothing to prove in the first place. So, yes, an Evangelical gets his doctrine of Scripture from Scripture, rather than getting his doctrine of Scripture from Spiderman or Bikini magazine.
vi) But while we’re on the subject of informal fallacies, all that Prejean has done, in his appeal to tradition and community and development and so on, is to substitute a vicious regress for vicious circularity.
Moving along:
***QUOTE***
It's like astrology or any other ridiculously counter-intuitive premise that one has no reason to believe. Now, if you can come up with some compelling argument for WHY you let Scripture interpret Scripture, I might give you a pass, but I've certainly never seen one. But the fact that you don't even have sufficient epistemic charity to have a reasonable discussion means I'm not flailing around with you anymore. And since, as usual, new Triablogue nitwits who interact with me have proved to be just as irrational as Hays, that's all for me. I've gotta say that you and Hays have reached new depths before; now an admission of irrationality actually somehow turns into a virtue. You've got the cult mentality down pat; you'd be good Gnostics.
***END-QUOTE***
This is vintage Prejean. Like a losing poker player, he overturns the card table and stomps out of the room.
What Prejean needs at this point is not a compelling argument but a pacifier—a silver-plated pacifier to go with his silver spoon.
Moving along to another critic:
***QUOTE***
Are you all actually really arguing that you know what Prejean meant by his own words better than he himself does? It appears to me that you are arguing with the author of a text and claiming that your analysis of that text provides you with a better knowledge of his original intent than he himself has. You then have to allege dishonesty or inconsistancy on his part when it turns out the meaning you believed to be most probable is not what the author himself claims he intended to communicate.
Wouldn't it be more sensible to just acknowledge that words at best give an estimate of a persons thoughts and that through dialouge you know realise that you misinterpreted his words? You can then criticize what he actually believes rather than the words he used to communicate that belief.
I thought it was quite obvious that the statement he made on October 22 was criticizing the idea that God would reveal himself solely through text, but maybe I'm wrong. If you thought otherwise, you now have the author himself there to correct you. Allege all the ambiguity you want of the original statement, but to go beyond that suggests to me that you value the form of language over and above its substance.
If you appear incapable of intepreting a text written in your own native language and in your own historical period, with the author himself there to assist you on its meaning, are you expecting others to believe that you're any more capable of interpreting a 1800+ year old text, written in two foreign lanuages, authored by God himself?
Perhaps that's why he doesn't take you seriously?
***END-QUOTE***
i) As to choosing between dishonesty and inconsistency, these are not mutually exclusive explanations.
ii) Be that as it may, you are trying to impose on me a restriction which I don’t find you imposing on Prejean. People are quite capable of being logically inconsistent, and the charge of logical inconsistency is perfectly legit long as it’s backed up by direct quotes and analysis of what those quotes entail.
iii) Yes, Prejean is in a very good position to explain himself. What he has chosen to do, however, is not to explain his own words, but to simply deny my interpretation. He did nothing to interact with my specific argument. He did nothing to harmonize his various statements.
All he did was to repeat himself—and to repeat only one part of what he said without attempting to reconcile that with the rest of what he said.
So if he, as the world authority on his own meaning, shows himself incapable of harmonizing his various statements on the subject, then that serves to confirm rather than disconfirm my original interpretation.
iv) I did not allege ambiguity, but contradiction. The problem with Prejean is not that he was unclear, but that he clearly articulated two clearly contradictory views of revelation.
v) BTW, this is not my first run-in with Prejean. So I’m quite accustomed to his modus operandi.
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