Tuesday, April 03, 2007
A Merciful And Faithful High Priest
"Jesus did not die a gentle death like Socrates, with his cup of hemlock, much less passing on 'old and full of years' like the patriarchs of the Old Testament. Rather, he died like a slave or a common criminal, in torment, on the tree of shame. Paul's Jesus did not die just any death; he was 'given up for us all' on the cross, in a cruel and a contemptible way. The theological reasoning of our time shows very clearly that the particular form of the death of Jesus, the man and the messiah, represents a scandal which people would like to blunt, remove or domesticate in any way possible. We shall have to guarantee the truth of our theological thinking at this point. Reflection on the harsh reality of crucifixion in antiquity may help us to overcome the acute loss of reality which is to be found so often in present theology and preaching." (Martin Hengel, Crucifixion [Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Fortress Press, 1977], p. 90)
"If only I do could it all over again!"
We often think very carelessly about counterfactual personal identity, asking ourselves questions of doubtful intelligibility, such as, “What if I had been born in the Middle Ages?” It is very easy to fail to consider the objection, “But that would not have been the same person,” R. Adams, The Virtue of Faith and Other Essays in Philosophical Theology (Oxford 1987), 59.
A man breeds goldfish, thereby bringing about their existence. We do not normally think it is wrong, or even prima facie wrong, for a man to do this, even though he could equally well have brought about the existence of more excellent beings, more intelligent and capable of higher satisfactions. (He could have bred dogs or pigs, for example.), ibid. 60.
Suppose it has been discovered that if intending parents take a certain drug before conceiving a child, they will have a child whose abnormal genetic constitution will give it vastly superhuman intelligence and superior prospects of happiness. Other things being equal, would it be wrong for the intending parents to have normal children instead of taking the drug?…I do not think tha parents who chose to have normal children rather than take the drug would be doing anything wrong, ibid. 61.
Leibniz once wrote, “You will insist that you can complain, why didn’t God give you more strength [to resist temptation]. I answer: If He had done that, you would not be you, for He would not have produced you but another creature,” ibid. 65.
To those who are angry at God for not replacing Adam and Eve, after their fall, with better creatures, “so that the stain should not be transmitted to their posterity,” he [Leibniz] replies that:
“If God had thus removed sin, a very different series of things, very different combinations of circumstances and people and marriages, and very different people would have emerged, and hence if sin had been taken away or extinguished they themselves would not be in the world. And therefore they have no reason to be angry at Adam and Eve for sinning, much less at God for permitting the sin, since they ought rather to set their own existence to the credit of this very toleration of sins,” ibid. 66
Leibniz goes on to compare the complainers with someone of half-noble birth who is “angry with his father for marrying a lower-born wife, not thinking that another person would be in the wolrd instead of him if his father had married a different wife,” ibid. 66.
Leibniz is right about this. Even if I could have existed without some of the evils of the actual world (for example, those that will occur tomorrow), I could not have existed without past evils that have profoundly affected the course of human history, and especially the “combinations of…people and marriages.” We do not have to go all the way back to Adam and Eve to find evils that were necessary for our existence. If it had not been for the First World War, for example, my parents would probably never have met and married, and I would not have been born. A multiplicity of interacting chances, including evils great and small, affect which people mate, which gametes find each other, and which children come into being. The farther back we go in history, the larger the proportion of evils to which we owe our being; for the causal nexus relevant to our individual genesis widens as we go back in time. We almost certainly would never have existed had there not been just about the same evils as actually occurred in a large part of human history…by nature and historical situation human beings are subject to disease and death, exposed to earthquake and hurricane, and surrounded by potential enemies. Had it not been so, we would never have existed, ibid. 66-67.
It will be objected that even if evils were *causally* necessary for our existence, an *omnipotent* deity could have created us without them, and may have wrong us by not doing so. But I think that is wrong…God’s reasons for creating us individually are presumably bound up with his other plans for the world, which would have been different if he had prevented the evils in question. I see no reason why he would or should have created us in particular if he had prevented them—and hence no reason why he has wronged us by not doing so, ibid. 67.
I do not think it would have been possible, in the metaphysical or broadly logical sense that its relevant here, for me to exist in a world that differed much from the actual world in the evils occurring in the parts of history that contain my roots…My identity is established by my beginning…the identity of those gametes presumably depends in turn on their beginnings and on the identity of my parents, which depends on the identity of the gametes from which they came, and so on. It seems to me implausible to suppose that the required identities could have been maintained through generations in which the historical context differed radically from the actual world by the omission of many, or important, evils, ibid. 67-68.
You may still think, for example, that the life you had planned and hoped for before an evil befell you ten years ago would have been better than your actual life. Yet you may be so attached to actual projects, friendships, and experiences that would not have been part of that other life that you would *not* now wish to have had it instead of your actual life, ibid. 74.
A man breeds goldfish, thereby bringing about their existence. We do not normally think it is wrong, or even prima facie wrong, for a man to do this, even though he could equally well have brought about the existence of more excellent beings, more intelligent and capable of higher satisfactions. (He could have bred dogs or pigs, for example.), ibid. 60.
Suppose it has been discovered that if intending parents take a certain drug before conceiving a child, they will have a child whose abnormal genetic constitution will give it vastly superhuman intelligence and superior prospects of happiness. Other things being equal, would it be wrong for the intending parents to have normal children instead of taking the drug?…I do not think tha parents who chose to have normal children rather than take the drug would be doing anything wrong, ibid. 61.
Leibniz once wrote, “You will insist that you can complain, why didn’t God give you more strength [to resist temptation]. I answer: If He had done that, you would not be you, for He would not have produced you but another creature,” ibid. 65.
To those who are angry at God for not replacing Adam and Eve, after their fall, with better creatures, “so that the stain should not be transmitted to their posterity,” he [Leibniz] replies that:
“If God had thus removed sin, a very different series of things, very different combinations of circumstances and people and marriages, and very different people would have emerged, and hence if sin had been taken away or extinguished they themselves would not be in the world. And therefore they have no reason to be angry at Adam and Eve for sinning, much less at God for permitting the sin, since they ought rather to set their own existence to the credit of this very toleration of sins,” ibid. 66
Leibniz goes on to compare the complainers with someone of half-noble birth who is “angry with his father for marrying a lower-born wife, not thinking that another person would be in the wolrd instead of him if his father had married a different wife,” ibid. 66.
Leibniz is right about this. Even if I could have existed without some of the evils of the actual world (for example, those that will occur tomorrow), I could not have existed without past evils that have profoundly affected the course of human history, and especially the “combinations of…people and marriages.” We do not have to go all the way back to Adam and Eve to find evils that were necessary for our existence. If it had not been for the First World War, for example, my parents would probably never have met and married, and I would not have been born. A multiplicity of interacting chances, including evils great and small, affect which people mate, which gametes find each other, and which children come into being. The farther back we go in history, the larger the proportion of evils to which we owe our being; for the causal nexus relevant to our individual genesis widens as we go back in time. We almost certainly would never have existed had there not been just about the same evils as actually occurred in a large part of human history…by nature and historical situation human beings are subject to disease and death, exposed to earthquake and hurricane, and surrounded by potential enemies. Had it not been so, we would never have existed, ibid. 66-67.
It will be objected that even if evils were *causally* necessary for our existence, an *omnipotent* deity could have created us without them, and may have wrong us by not doing so. But I think that is wrong…God’s reasons for creating us individually are presumably bound up with his other plans for the world, which would have been different if he had prevented the evils in question. I see no reason why he would or should have created us in particular if he had prevented them—and hence no reason why he has wronged us by not doing so, ibid. 67.
I do not think it would have been possible, in the metaphysical or broadly logical sense that its relevant here, for me to exist in a world that differed much from the actual world in the evils occurring in the parts of history that contain my roots…My identity is established by my beginning…the identity of those gametes presumably depends in turn on their beginnings and on the identity of my parents, which depends on the identity of the gametes from which they came, and so on. It seems to me implausible to suppose that the required identities could have been maintained through generations in which the historical context differed radically from the actual world by the omission of many, or important, evils, ibid. 67-68.
You may still think, for example, that the life you had planned and hoped for before an evil befell you ten years ago would have been better than your actual life. Yet you may be so attached to actual projects, friendships, and experiences that would not have been part of that other life that you would *not* now wish to have had it instead of your actual life, ibid. 74.
Monday, April 02, 2007
Intelligent Design or Secular Moonshine?
(Posted on behalf of Steve Hays)
This is part of an ongoing debate that I’ve been having with an old friend. His words are in blue.
So, when you say “observable universe”, it seems you just mean “our universe” regardless of whether all of it has been observed or not. In fact, much of it, if not most of it is beyond the reach of our instruments at this point.
For purposes of extrapolating from the known to the unknown, the observable universe is our reference point.
At any rate, even if we ignore the possibility of a multiverse and other universes, and focus on the universe we know, inflationary theory provides a naturalistic explanation for the origin of our universe that does not involve violation of the conservation law.
Except that if we ignore the megaverse hypothesis, then the so-called law of conservation, which is simply be descriptive of a natural force or constant, would be a *result* of cosmic origins, and not, therefore, a *constraint* on cosmic origins.
While we should not assume that the various constants obtaining in our universe would have the same values in other universes, it’s hard to see how the law of conservation would not apply within these other universes (if, of course, they exist in the first place and are self-contained closed systems).
It’s only valid to extrapolate from our universe to a parallel universe if you already know that the parallel universe is the same *kind* of universe. But since it’s inaccessible to direct or indirect detection—much less inspection)—we have no empirical basis for such an assumption. Indeed, it’s a circular proposition. You’d already need to know that an alternative world is analogous to your own to justify the comparison in the first place.
I think we have a fundamental difference here. For you, a supernatural explanation is just fine and dandy, a perfectly normal thing.
True.
For me, it definitely isn’t. You yourself keep speaking of the only universe we know, yet you want to leap to something of which we have no experience and no example in the universe – a supernatural phenomenon or realm. You contradict yourself. You criticize extrapolations to another universe (which is merely another example of a known object – our universe), yet you don’t even extrapolate. You resort to a supernatural explanation. For you to argue that God created the universe through fiat, requires you to first create God by fiat. (I know that you deny that God is not a postulate but I think in reality it is, because all the various theistic arguments fail, as far as I’m concerned.)
The God theory or hypothesis is neither testable nor potentially testable. So it’s totally removed from the possibility of actual evidence.
Several issues here:
1.You simply assert that we have “no experience and no example of a supernatural phenomenon in the universe.”
This is nothing more than an admission of your own personal inexperience. Many credible witnesses testify to having had just such an experience. So there’s no inconsistency on my part.
2.It also depends on whether you are talking about a specific experience/example regarding the supernatural origin of the universe, or a general experience/set of examples regarding the existence of the supernatural.
3.The scientific method generally deals with the impersonal, empirical, and repeatable. That is not the appropriate model for “testing” the existence of a personal, transcendent agent.
Many things are real which escape the net of the scientific method. I have personal memories of things that no longer exist. In that respect, many of my memories are unverifiable. The past is irrevocable. But my memories of the past can be accurate all the same.
It’s like the old adage: “If all you have is a hammer, then every problem will look like a nail.” We need a bigger toolkit than the scientific method to accommodate reality.
4.We don’t know that a parallel universe would be “another example” of a known object—our universe. For we only have one relatum of the comparison—our own universe.
You and other Christians are certainly free to postulate God (or provide various arguments for God) as an explanation for the universe. But it is at best a hypothesis and you need to label it as such. I happen to think it’s a hypothesis that fails to explain the origin of the universe and lots of other things that it claims to explain. Besides, as I’ve just said above, it’s inherently untestable. It’s simply a matter of belief – and therein lies the problem.
Unlike theists, those who hypothesize a multiverse or other secular cosmological concepts don’t go around claiming certainty for their ideas.
For some reason, you seem to be bothered by the idea of religious certainty. But you don’t explain why.
I believe that writers like Sam Harris and Andrew Sullivan regard religious certainty as dangerously dogmatic—unlike theological moderates or secular fallibilists who are allegedly more tolerant and flexible. Maybe that’s your objection.
But, actually, there’s no much cash value difference between absolutism and relativism. A secular fallibilist may be ever so doubtful on paper, but as a practical matter he must still makes decisions. At a pragmatic level, his probabilities and dubieties will have the same force as certainties. Maybe I’m unsure if I should make a left turn or a right turn. But I can’t very well split the difference between left and right. I can’t turn partly right and partly left. I can only do one or the other.
In the ream of public policy, a law based on uncertain theories or doubtful hypothesis will still have the force of law. It will have the same legal teeth as a law based on religious verities.
You may say that such a law is subject to future revision, but you’re just exchanging one set of uncertainties for another, and the revised law will still penalize lawbreakers. So however uncertain the secular fallibilist may be in principle, he will have to act with a measure of practical certainty. Principled relativism translates into pragmatic absolutism. De jure relativism on paper; de facto absolutism in action.
This is not a question of faith. I have no faith that science will find an explanation for any particular thing. All I’m saying is that science might find an explanation and is the only known way an explanation might be found. You certainly don’t say there might be a God, you say there is a God – that’s faith.
1.There’s a difference between formal and informal certainty. As writers like Pascal, Michael Polanyi, and Cardinal Newman have pointed out, there’s a difference between reflective and prereflective knowledge.
We frequently begin with intuitive knowledge. This is preanalytical or pretheoretical. And it supplies the raw materials for formal analysis or formal argumentation.
But it isn’t possible to explicate all of our tacit knowledge in logical syllogisms or intersubjectival propositions. Experience is person-variable. And a lot of experience is too subtle and pervasive to objectify and formalize.
For purposes of dialogue, a Christian will attempt to find common ground with the unbeliever, but their common ground lies on the tip of the proverbial iceberg. This is what lies above the surface, in the public domain.
But a Christian may also have a multitude of reasons that are intransitive because they are tied to his unique, personal experience. So we know more than we can say.
2.It is very difficult to demonstrate anything, in the sense of apodictic proof. Ironically, some of the most familiar and “undeniable” phenomena, like the existence of the external world, are the hardest to prove—in part because these are the things we presume in order to prove anything else.
What you’re doing is rejecting the whole enterprise of science. If such thinking had been prevalent down the centuries right until today, we would still believe that thunder and lightning had supernatural causes. And we certainly would not be anywhere near the technological level that we have achieved.
Sorry, but that’s an outsider’s uniformed caricature of Christian theism. Jews and Christians have always believed in ordinary providence and second-causes. Ancient Israelites knew that rain came from clouds, trees came from seeds, babies came from sex, &c.
In general, Christian theism doesn't offer direct divine agency as a substitute for second-causes. Rather, God would be the source of secondary agents and agencies.
A Christian philosopher or theologian, unless he happens to be an idealist or occasionalist (which is very rare), doesn't think of divine agency as ranging along the same continuum as second causes. He doesn't view God as discretely intervening every time to send rain or make babies.
As a rule, theism would explain particular phenomena by explaining the origin of the second causes and not the effect (particular phenomena) of the second-causes. In other words, God would be the ulterior or indirect cause.
There are exceptions, such as when a stage-4, terminal cancer patient who goes into spontaneous and total remission the very next day in answer to prayer.
In Christian theology, particular events are normally the result of ordinary providence. Second-causes. Natural forces. Natural mechanisms.
But there are also miracles as well as certain occultic phenomena which bypass ordinary providence.
I’ll start with Plantinga but let me first quote at length from the decision of Judge John E Jones III in the Kitzmiller et al. vs Dover Area School District case concerning the teaching of ID in Dover, Pennsylvania public schools. Bear in mind that Judge Jones is a Republican who was appointed by Dubya.
And why do you want to begin with Judge Jones? He’s not a philosopher of science. And I believe that in his written opinion he was simply plagiarizing an ACLU legal brief.
I find it fascinating that opponents of ID are prepared to forfeit the autonomy of science and cede the definition of true science to the judiciary.
Plantinga writes that “a Christian academic and scientific community ought to pursue science in its own way, starting from [his italics] and taking for granted what we know as Christians”. An extraordinary and extraordinarily absurd statement. It’s first of all a bald-faced admission of what I said above: that the Christian God has to be considered a given, it’s the starting point rather than something to be proven.
You’re overlooking a key word: what we “know” as Christians. Plantinga takes the position that we should judge any particular claim by our larger body of beliefs. By everything we know or have good reason to believe.
And Plantinga has often argued for his Christian faith. So this is decidedly not a case of assuming what one needs to prove.
I certainly don’t see anything irrational in altruism and I’m sure many other atheists would agree. Humans are both self-centered and altruistic. Many people would consider being altruistic a necessary part of being a complete human being who is an integral part of society, rather than just being an isolated, atomized individual.
The question at issue is not whether altruism per se is irrational, but whether secularism has the wherewithal to justify altruism.
Altruism is beneficial to the common good. As such, it is often beneficial to the individual. However, we also have cases like the lifeboat scenario in which there’s a conflict between altruism and self-interest.
“There are now tens of thousands of hominid fossils in museums around the world supporting our current knowledge of human evolution. The pattern that emerges from this vast body of hard evidence is consistent across thousands of investigations. All models, all myths involving the singular, instantaneous creation of modern humans fail in the face of this evidence.”
And how do you identify these fossils as “hominid” fossils? You could only do that if you could arrange them according to lineal descent. But how do you establish lineal descent when the fossils are so widely separated in time and space?
Plantinga writes that “the theist knows that God created the heavens and the earth and all that they contain”. Pray tell, how in the world does the theist know this?? What is the theist’s evidence?? The biblical account of Genesis??
Plantinga has made his case elsewhere, both in what he himself has written and other works he references or recommends.
Besides, as Judge Jones astutely noted, “attributing unsolved problems about nature to causes and forces that lie outside the natural world is a “science stopper.” ” The problem is precisely that the Christian does not want to follow the evidence where it leads: rather than continuing on the evidence path, she puts up her own divine barrier and decides there’s no need to go further.
1.I don’t see anything particularly astute about a judge who is simply regurgitating a catchphrase from Dawkins.
2.As I’ve said before, this objection also confuses the level at which a theistic explanation operates.
3.The methodological naturalist is not prepared to follow the evidence wherever it leads, for he rules out of abounds, in advance of the evidence, any evidence that might lead back to God.
On what basis does he conclude this?? The only basis is his Christian belief, not any type of evidence beyond Biblical stories.
You obviously haven’t read very much Plantinga.
And, anyway, it’s absurd for theists to say that humans were created in the image of God. Does that mean God is humanoid or hominid??? And…God is supposed to be omnipotent, omniscient, eternal, infinitely benevolent, non-physical, and beyond space and time. Does any human being possess these qualities?? God seems to be everything that humans are not!! Indeed, I believe that’s exactly why humans created him.
That’s an exegetical question. Here’s one standard answer:
http://www.shef.ac.uk/bibs/DJACcurrres/Postmodern2/Humanity.html
Plantinga writes about the basic physical constants that “it seems puzzling that these values should have been just as they are”. He probably would have said that regardless of what the values were!! Constants are constants, they have to have a certain value rather than another. The values of the constants could be inherent (in a particular universe, if there is more than one), just like the pi ratio, as Dawkins suggests in The God Delusion. Did God set the value of pi? Could he have given it another value? And the constants may even be interdependent, but verification of this notion will only come if a “grand unified theory” is formulated.
This confuses a necessary truth like the value of pi with a contingent truth like the basic physical constants.
There is an interesting Darwinian explanation proposed by astrophysicist Lee Smolin. Dawkins mentions it in The God Delusion but I’ve read more about it elsewhere.
I’ll come back to Smolin (see below).
These assertions make a mockery of science. We simply have no reason to suppose that a supernatural realm exists – apart from religious beliefs about this. There is no justification whatsoever for concluding that something hard to explain has a supernatural cause. That would be tantamount to shutting the door on science. And anyway, just exactly how are we supposed to learn about the supernatural? And is there just one supernatural causal agent, or are there many others? For example, poltergeists or your garden-variety demons lurking behind bushes.
Christian theism doesn’t preclude demonic agency. So what’s your point?
Let me quote once again from the Dover decision:
once you attribute a cause to an untestable supernatural force, a proposition that cannot be disproven, there is no reason to continue seeking natural explanations as we have our answer.
This assumes that ID explanations are untestable. What’s the basis for that assumption?
If nature is designed, how is science supposed to find this out? Nature contains many regularities and patterns. Is that design? If all of nature is designed, then why would this be perceivable only through alleged gaps? Only those who believe in a Designer perceive design in nature. In other words, you have to assume a Designer to begin with. It’s the same problem we saw with Plantinga.
i) Human beings have a prereflective sense of what constitutes design. This is true whether you’re a Christian or an atheist.
Dembski has tried to mathematically formalize this intuition in terms of specified complexity. So that would be one of the criteria, along with irreducible complexity (a la Behe).
ii) Christian philosophers aren’t looking for God in the “gaps.” Rather, they find God in the overall design—among other arguments and lines of evidence.
Regarding (2), he asserts that “it is often the conviction that something is a product of design that keeps scientists in the hunt. Any company trying to reverse engineer a competitor’s new computer model pays particular attention to puzzling components”. But this is a flawed analogy. A computer is obviously a product of design, and of human design at that. We know computers are human-designed.
That only pushes the question back a step: how do we know that computers are designed? Dembski will discuss that.
Using this line of reasoning, we should ignore new work in all fields of study and research, be it historiography, literature, medicine, whatever. What is fresh and exciting today may tomorrow turn out to be a dead end or replaced by something better.
You’re waxing hyperbolic. Some fields of research are less speculative than others. There’s also a difference between technological progress and scientific theorizing.
You’re therefore once again evading the issue. It’s very simple actually. You maintain that God created the universe. In that case, you need to give a plausible explanation of how he did this. To say that God created the universe is to say that he is the cause of the universe. I don’t plan to do an intensive internet course on philosophical and theological notions of causation! This is a clearcut case. The fact is that neither you nor any other theologian can explain the causality of ex nihilo creation, and thus find it necessary to engage in philosophical acrobatics to get out of having to expaining this.
i) The “how” question is prejudicial since it tends to suggest an intervening medium or mechanism—which is precisely what creation ex nihilo is not.
ii) Moreover, a causal mechanism is not the bedrock explanation. As one philosopher explains:
McGrew’s comments have special reference to dualism, but they are equally applicable to causal explanation in general.
OK, let’s play your game. I assert the existence of exactly 100 gods who control the universe. Let’s call them collectively the Centotheon (although linguistic purists might prefer the name Hekatotheon), which would make me a centotheist. (Btw, the head of the Centotheon is the mighty Megalotheus). So, before you reject centotheism, you would have to make an in-depth study of natural centotheology, philosophical centotheology and Centotheist apologetics. Just give me 10 years or so (and enough money to live on during that period) and I’ll try my best to come up with works in those fields. Then you will have to read these works, before daring to dismiss centotheism. Do we have a deal?
Several issues here:
1.A Christian philosopher is not “asserting” the existence of God. Rather, he is *arguing* for God’s existence.
2.If you’re going to issue sweeping denials about the absence of any evidence for the supernatural, then it isn’t asking too much of you to read the other side of the argument.
3.I’m under no obligation to disprove purely hypothetical scenarios.
4.Your hypothetical, which is variant on Hume’s divine committee, would merely push the problem back a step, for one would then need a unifying principle to coordinate the divine committee.
And, no, there is no burden of proof on the shoulders of atheists. It is theists who are claiming the existence of something, not atheists. Otherwise I could also state that “acentotheists” (and I presume you’re one of them) have a burden of proof of showing how the universe can possibly function without the Centotheon (glory be unto them!)
This is far too facile:
1.If there is no evidence for something, then there is no onus to disprove it. But if the presence or absence of evidence is the very issue in dispute, then it would be question-begging to limit the burden of proof to only one side of the contested issue.
2.Where it’s a choice between atheism and (Christian) theism, the atheist does not believe that a world without God is indistinguishable from a world with God. To the contrary, he thinks that these two opposing positions predict for different consequences. And he is also of the opinion that the actual world is more consistent with atheism than theism. Therefore, he does have his own burden of proof to discharge.
Thanks for these references, but they all concern the Bible. So…your evidence for God is based on the Bible.
That’s not the only line of evidence, but it’s one line of evidence. Remember, I was responding to your statement that you “don't think there's any more proof for the Christian God, than for Zeus, or for leprechauns.”
If there’s probative evidence for what the Bible claims to be, then that, in turn, would be evidence for the existence of the Christian God. I’m simply responding to you on your own grounds.
This is what I can say (very briefly) based on what I know so far:
There is really no proof of the existence of Jesus. He himself did not write anything, nor are there any accounts mentioning Jesus written during his lifetime. (Correct me if I’m wrong)
Would you apply this same reasoning to the (non-)existence of Buddha, Socrates, or Alexander the Great?
How is the fact that somebody didn’t write anything germane to the evidence for his existence? That would just be one line of evidence out of many others.
And if one were predisposed to be hyperskeptical like you, then one would also deny the authenticity of a personal memoir or autobiography.
To say nothing was written about him in his lifetime is fatally vague. Many biographies are written about an individual after he died. Sometimes they’re written by friends and contemporaries. Sometimes they’re written by strangers who make good use of source material.
Furthermore there are contradictions in the story of Jesus as related by the writers of the Bible.
Since you don’t mention anything specific, there’s nothing specific to rebut. Are you alluding to the sort of pseudoproblems which Richard Dawkins talks about in his book?
As far as I’m concerned, the story of Jesus is a fable that was spread from person to person, writer to writer, in an age when storytelling was a highly developed art form all over the world.
Once again, you’ve given me nothing to respond to because all you’re offering is an unsubstantiated opinion which doesn’t begin to interact with the standard evangelical literature on the historical Jesus. There’s no argument for me to counter.
There is no proof of the divinity of Jesus, even if in fact such an individual existed. I’ve read Craig’s defense of the resurrection claim in his debate with Sinnott-Armstrong, but neither the latter nor I find it convincing in the least.
Why not? Once again, you’re giving me a threadbare conclusion without a supporting argument.
There is voluminous literature on this topic, both pro and con. As far as I’m concerned, to believe in the Virgin Birth, or the various miracles performed by Jesus, or his Resurrection and Ascension is not much better than to believe that Grimm’s Fairy Tales or Aesop’s Fables are true in the sense that they actually happened. And to be honest, I think these tales teach more than the Bible does!
Once again, where’s the supporting argument?
The Bible is full of contradictions, inconsistencies, and historical and scientific inaccuracies as various writers have pointed out. It only goes to show that the book is very much the flawed work of imperfect human beings with a well-developed imagination which is not to say that the Bible doesn’t refer to some real historical events.
This is a string of allegations with nothing specific to back it up, much less interacting with the counterarguments.
The Bible is full of alleged first-person statements and commands by God (Then the Lord said: “XXXX”), third-person references to alleged statements and commands by God, and references to alleged actions carried out by God. This does not in any way prove that such statements or commands were actually made by God, or that those actions (if the events described did in fact take place) were the work of God. None of this is proof of the existence of God.
No one is arguing that the Bible is inspired merely because it claims to be inspired. However, the claim is not irrelevant. If a speech were attributed to Churchill, that alone wouldn’t prove that Churchill wrote it. If, however, a speech were anonymous, that would greatly complicate the process of assigning authorship. So there is a value to self-referential ascriptions. The public verification of Scripture is based on other phenomena, such as prophecy, or internal and external evidence that a book of the Bible was written when, by, and about whomever or whatever it depicts.
The type of God depicted in the Bible, especially the Old Testament, contradicts the Christian notion of God being good, just, or even all-powerful. We see a God who is cruel, jealous, vindictive, and arbitrary.
This is just another string of generic, unsupported assertions. With all due respect, it doesn’t suffice to claim the moral and intellectual superiority of atheism without the rational argumentation to make good on that claim.
And I’d add that secularism has no basis for rendering these Olympian value-judgments in the first place. Indeed, a number of secular philosophers candidly admit as much:
http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=6383
http://www.believermag.com/issues/200307/?read=interview_ruse
http://www.qsmithwmu.com/moral_realism_and_infinte_spacetime_imply_moral_nihilism_by_quentin_smith.htm
Dawkins has written that “the God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction”. Another writer (I forget who) has written that the OT God is essentially a Middle Eastern tyrant writ large. This is the way people in those times saw powerful rulers and just projected this onto their idea of God.
To the contrary, Yahweh is a covenant-keeping God. This is the opposite of a capricious Oriental despot.
Swinburne? The man who said the Holocaust gave the Jews a great opportunity to be courageous and noble and that if one less person had been burnt by the Hiroshima bomb, there would have been less opportunity for courage and sympathy (according to Dawkins in God Delusion). So, I assume he’d love to have had a chance to be sent to a death camp.
Now you’re being sophistical. Swinburne’s theodicy is irrelevant to his critique of Hume.
Here we have another flawed analogy. First of all, aliens would not be supernatural, they would presumably be mortal, material, intelligent beings like ourselves.
You seem to be treating the design inference as a one-step argument, so that Dembski (or some other ID theorist) must prove the divine designer at a single stroke.
As I understand it, the design inference is a two-step argument. The first step is to identify the presence of design; the second step is to identify the designer.
You are collapsing the two into one, or maybe reversing them, as if the ID theorist must first establish the designer.
Secondly, such a radio signal would mean the likelihood, not certainty, that an intelligent life form which knows mathematics has deliberately sent out this signal.
You appear to be assuming that a theistic argument is worthless unless it’s certain rather than probable. Why do you assume that? Do you think that historical arguments are worthless unless they are certain rather than probable?
Thirdly, while we don’t know the exact source, it would be a known type of source, another version of ourselves.
Really? Once again, you have things backwards. We don’t have to begin with a classification of the source, viz., these are ETs.
Rather, we’d begin with the phenomenon of design. That the signal would exhibit a level of complexity which we attribute to intelligence.
This does not prejudge the origin of the signal, as if it had to come from biochemical aliens rather than angels or whatever.
Dembski writes that “we infer design repeatedly and reliably without knowing characteristics of the designer”. He then quotes Humean philosopher Elliott Sober in an attempt to find an inconsistency with his Humeanism: “Archaeologists sometimes unearth tools of unknown function, but still reasonably draw the inference that these things are, in fact, tools.” Inferring that these objects are hominid-made tools is a far cry from inferring a supernatural designer from something.
You’re repeating your initial mistake by bundling a two-step argument into one.
-- Dembski says that the Humean approach “can’t account for how we recognize design in the first place”. He gives an example of aboriginal arrowheads and asks: “How did we recognize that the arrowheads in our past experience were designed? Did we see humans actually manufacture those arrowheads? If so, how did we recognize that these humans were acting deliberately as designing agents and not just randomly chipping away at random chunks of rock?”
This is ridiculous! Of course, we didn’t see humans make those arrowheads. But we know humans can make arrowheads and we have found many examples of various types of arrowheads. Arrows of some sort with arrowheads of some sort were used into the 19th century and even now, some primitive tribes use them. So, seeing a group of arrowhead-looking stone objects at a given site, we can safely conclude these are hominid- or human-made arrowheads, especially if remains of ancient hominids or humans have been found as well. And if we have many examples of similar-shaped objects found at a given site or region, we can also safely conclude that these are not just effects of random activity without a particular aim.
What allows us to conclude that stars are like arrowheads, and are products of intelligent manufacture? We know human beings produce arrowheads and have done so for centuries, but we have no evidence for the production of stars by any intelligent supernatural being.
-- Dembski writes that “According to Reid, we attribute design as an inference from signs of intelligence…We do not get into the mind of the designers and thereby attribute design.” But Hume does not deal much with the mind of designers. Rather, he focuses on effects and inferring designers from effects. It is theists like Dembski who have a certain designer in mind from the outset and already “know” the mind of the designer, based on the Bible.
-- Dembski writes that “Design reasoning is effect-to-cause reasoning: It begins with effects in the physical world that exhibit clear signs of intelligence and from those signs infers to an intelligent cause. Neither of Hume’s two main criticisms against design therefore holds up. Induction is entirely the wrong analytic framework for how we infer design.”
This is faulty logic. Dembski is again pre-supposing his conclusion. He sees “clear signs of intelligence” at the outset and then infers “an intelligent cause”. Hume’s whole point was to question whether these effects can indeed be attributed to intelligence. In fact, he argues against making a supernatural induction from natural effects. There is a vast difference between inferring a human designer from an arrowhead, and a supernatural designer from a star or, more broadly, from the structure of the universe.
I think you’re missing the point of Dembski’s argument. Take the hoary example of the watchmaker. We do not perceive the intentions of the watchmaker. His intentions are private, inaccessible. We do not perceive his intention to design a watch. So we are *inferring* his intentions from the product.
Things that are consciously designed are usually designed for a purpose.
And how do you know the purpose for which they were designed?
Paley’s watch tells us the time, planes transport us, houses provide us shelter.
And how do you know that? By reading the mind of the carpenter, aerospace engineer, and watchmaker? Or by the teleological features of the artifact itself? You are inferring design from the outcome.
For what purpose were we and other life forms designed, if we are not the products of blind evolution? To be objects of amusement for God?? I don’t see any purpose.
Now you’re confounding the issue of whether X was designed with the issue of what it was design for. But we can answer the former without answering the latter. I could discover a mechanical object of unknown design. Even if I don’t know what it’s for, I can know that it was the product of intelligent design.
Yes, we as individuals can have a purpose or aims in our lives. But that’s very different from a watch or a plane. They don’t have their own aims or purposes. They are only instruments for other entities, intelligent living entities, and have specific functions that assist those entities. What similar functions do we have, whom do we assist? And what is the purpose of all the billions of galaxies, stars, uninhabited planets, nebulae and other cosmic phenomena in our universe? Only to enable life on Earth? Or also on other planets? (Would the latter accord with Christian theology?) Wouldn’t there be a more efficient way of creating life-sustaining worlds, if that was the purpose? Why go through such a tortuous route? It sure looks like our planet is an incidental by-product of blind, unconscious cosmic forces and events. No, the universe does not look designed.
i) You continue to commit a level-confusion regarding the evidence for design.
ii) As far as omnipotence is concerned, one process is just as effortless to instantiate as another.
iii) There may be life on other planets. Or we may colonize space some day.
iv) In one respect, human existence is purely gratuitous. We don’t have to exist. But God, in his magnanimity, creates a race of rational creatures that can share in his beatitude.
Something doesn’t have to be functional to be good. Belief in divine teleology doesn’t commit one to a purely utilitarian value system.
And what Nagel writes about the eye is sheer nonsense. He obviously hasn’t read The Blind Watchmaker or other books explaining how evolution works. Dawkins explains at length how the eye could have developed and at several points.
Perhaps Nagel has been reading Berlinski’s critique of Dawkins:
http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=1416
http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=1509
This statement shows a total misunderstanding of what science is all about. Science is about the pursuit of truth about the physical world. You can’t expect scientists to all agree what The Truth is and present it to us on a silver platter. To make a blanket statement that “they really don’t know what they’re talking about” just because scientists have a variety of views and theories, which sometimes do contradict each other, is like saying historians as a group don’t know what they’re talking about because they often disagree with each other.
i) You need to bone up on the philosophy of science. Whether or not science is about the pursuit of truth is a subject of ongoing debate:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationality-historicist/
http://www.loyno.edu/~folse/Laudanoutline.html
http://www.frame-poythress.org/poythress_articles/1990ReviewMoreland.htm
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Thebes/7755/young_davis_a_3.html
http://www.csc.twu.ca/byl/modelstest.doc
ii) As to the more specific issue at hand, contemporary physics is, from what I’ve read, in a state of extreme disarray:
http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/
http://physicsweb.org/articles/review/20/2/1/1
Well, let me turn the tables here. Since theologians often contradict each other, we can certainly say they don’t know what they’re talking about!
The short answer is that theologians who agree with me know what they’re talking about while theologians who disagree with me don’t know what they’re talking about
Moreover, let me make the following statement: If theologians and clergy from the world’s religions knew where the truth lay, they wouldn’t propose and propagate so many mutually exclusive theological viewpoints!! The problem is that the latter do claim to know what the truth is.
Actually, there’s a deep streak of scepticism in Indian philosophy (i.e. Hindu and Buddhist philosophical theology).
Scientists don’t make such a claim.
Okay, so according to you, science is all about the *pursuit* of truth, but the quarry is so elusive that scientists never claim that they have actually captured their quarry. What, exactly, is the point of pursuing the truth if you can never bag it?
They propose theories that try to explain various aspects of the physical world. They use observation, experimentation, mathematical problem-solving, and the previous results of these activities to build theories and then to try to verify them.
Okay, so according to you, scientists try to *verify* their theories without every claiming to know what the truth is.
I don’t see how we can gain knowledge of a transcendent realm, since we have no tools, scientific or otherwise, to do this beyond our fertile imagination and sheer willingness to believe without proof.
We gain knowledge by revelation.
Yes, but a field of knowledge like history is essentially irrelevant to the question of the existence of God and God’s being the cause of the universe and of life.
Christianity is predicated on historical events: creation, redemption, judgment, and revelation.
It sounds like you’re backtracking on the Christian argument about the centrality of mankind in the Divine Creation. Or have I got the argument wrong?
Yes, you’ve got the argument wrong. You’re getting carried away with a metaphor. The *figurative* centrality of man is irrelevant to the old literal debate between geocentrism and heliocentrism, or the size of the universe.
Yes, in fact, you do need a certain amount of stars and star stuff in order to produce the chemical elements necessary for life in our universe. As Carl Sagan famously said “We are all star stuff”! But the existence of a big enough universe to have enough stars to ultimately enable life does not mean the universe was deliberately created to be like that.
But that’s a separate issue. As I already explained, the point of the argument is not that you need a big universe for life to exist on planet earth, but that you need a big universe for life to exist anywhere at all, whether here or elsewhere in the universe.”
This, of itself, doesn’t prove the fine-tuning argument, but the fine-tuning argument is not a one-step revelation.
Well, if the initial conditions were fine-tuned for the possibility and not the inevitability of life, doesn’t that undermine Christian arguments for a divine creation, including the creation of mankind? I imagine God would not have settled just for possibility, but would have ensured the emergence of life, in particular intelligent life on Earth.
In Christian theology, creation is not an automated process—as if life just pops into existence when a certain threshold of self-organization is reached.
You’ve brought us back to the question of the probability of the emergence of our universe – assuming that’s what you mean when you talk about a “physically deterministic system coming into being”. But you don’t really have any grounds for asserting that the emergence of our universe was improbable. We know the probability of picking 4 aces in a row from a well-shuffled deck of cards is pretty low – and I think an exact figure can be attached to the probability. But we can’t assign any sort of figure regarding our universe.
One thing we can say is that IF we live in a multiverse and there are potentially millions of universes co-existing and new ones emerging, then any given universe is no less improbable than any given person being born on our planet. It’s just something that happens fairly regularly. And IF we live in a temporally infinite serial multiverse, i.e. just one universe at a time, then our universe would have been inevitable, assuming of course that the pattern of big bang and big crunch goes on indefinitely. However, a serial multiverse is considered less likely (as Dawkins mentions in God Delusion) given that a big crunch ending for our universe is unlikely. But IF our universe is unique (so far), with no predecessor and no co-existent fellow universes, then it’s really impossible and even senseless to talk about probability or improbability. We have no way to gauge this.
Well, here’s one response:
1 http://maverickphilosopher.powerblogs.com/posts/1169922673.shtml
This is part of an ongoing debate that I’ve been having with an old friend. His words are in blue.
So, when you say “observable universe”, it seems you just mean “our universe” regardless of whether all of it has been observed or not. In fact, much of it, if not most of it is beyond the reach of our instruments at this point.
For purposes of extrapolating from the known to the unknown, the observable universe is our reference point.
At any rate, even if we ignore the possibility of a multiverse and other universes, and focus on the universe we know, inflationary theory provides a naturalistic explanation for the origin of our universe that does not involve violation of the conservation law.
Except that if we ignore the megaverse hypothesis, then the so-called law of conservation, which is simply be descriptive of a natural force or constant, would be a *result* of cosmic origins, and not, therefore, a *constraint* on cosmic origins.
While we should not assume that the various constants obtaining in our universe would have the same values in other universes, it’s hard to see how the law of conservation would not apply within these other universes (if, of course, they exist in the first place and are self-contained closed systems).
It’s only valid to extrapolate from our universe to a parallel universe if you already know that the parallel universe is the same *kind* of universe. But since it’s inaccessible to direct or indirect detection—much less inspection)—we have no empirical basis for such an assumption. Indeed, it’s a circular proposition. You’d already need to know that an alternative world is analogous to your own to justify the comparison in the first place.
I think we have a fundamental difference here. For you, a supernatural explanation is just fine and dandy, a perfectly normal thing.
True.
For me, it definitely isn’t. You yourself keep speaking of the only universe we know, yet you want to leap to something of which we have no experience and no example in the universe – a supernatural phenomenon or realm. You contradict yourself. You criticize extrapolations to another universe (which is merely another example of a known object – our universe), yet you don’t even extrapolate. You resort to a supernatural explanation. For you to argue that God created the universe through fiat, requires you to first create God by fiat. (I know that you deny that God is not a postulate but I think in reality it is, because all the various theistic arguments fail, as far as I’m concerned.)
The God theory or hypothesis is neither testable nor potentially testable. So it’s totally removed from the possibility of actual evidence.
Several issues here:
1.You simply assert that we have “no experience and no example of a supernatural phenomenon in the universe.”
This is nothing more than an admission of your own personal inexperience. Many credible witnesses testify to having had just such an experience. So there’s no inconsistency on my part.
2.It also depends on whether you are talking about a specific experience/example regarding the supernatural origin of the universe, or a general experience/set of examples regarding the existence of the supernatural.
3.The scientific method generally deals with the impersonal, empirical, and repeatable. That is not the appropriate model for “testing” the existence of a personal, transcendent agent.
Many things are real which escape the net of the scientific method. I have personal memories of things that no longer exist. In that respect, many of my memories are unverifiable. The past is irrevocable. But my memories of the past can be accurate all the same.
It’s like the old adage: “If all you have is a hammer, then every problem will look like a nail.” We need a bigger toolkit than the scientific method to accommodate reality.
4.We don’t know that a parallel universe would be “another example” of a known object—our universe. For we only have one relatum of the comparison—our own universe.
You and other Christians are certainly free to postulate God (or provide various arguments for God) as an explanation for the universe. But it is at best a hypothesis and you need to label it as such. I happen to think it’s a hypothesis that fails to explain the origin of the universe and lots of other things that it claims to explain. Besides, as I’ve just said above, it’s inherently untestable. It’s simply a matter of belief – and therein lies the problem.
Unlike theists, those who hypothesize a multiverse or other secular cosmological concepts don’t go around claiming certainty for their ideas.
For some reason, you seem to be bothered by the idea of religious certainty. But you don’t explain why.
I believe that writers like Sam Harris and Andrew Sullivan regard religious certainty as dangerously dogmatic—unlike theological moderates or secular fallibilists who are allegedly more tolerant and flexible. Maybe that’s your objection.
But, actually, there’s no much cash value difference between absolutism and relativism. A secular fallibilist may be ever so doubtful on paper, but as a practical matter he must still makes decisions. At a pragmatic level, his probabilities and dubieties will have the same force as certainties. Maybe I’m unsure if I should make a left turn or a right turn. But I can’t very well split the difference between left and right. I can’t turn partly right and partly left. I can only do one or the other.
In the ream of public policy, a law based on uncertain theories or doubtful hypothesis will still have the force of law. It will have the same legal teeth as a law based on religious verities.
You may say that such a law is subject to future revision, but you’re just exchanging one set of uncertainties for another, and the revised law will still penalize lawbreakers. So however uncertain the secular fallibilist may be in principle, he will have to act with a measure of practical certainty. Principled relativism translates into pragmatic absolutism. De jure relativism on paper; de facto absolutism in action.
This is not a question of faith. I have no faith that science will find an explanation for any particular thing. All I’m saying is that science might find an explanation and is the only known way an explanation might be found. You certainly don’t say there might be a God, you say there is a God – that’s faith.
1.There’s a difference between formal and informal certainty. As writers like Pascal, Michael Polanyi, and Cardinal Newman have pointed out, there’s a difference between reflective and prereflective knowledge.
We frequently begin with intuitive knowledge. This is preanalytical or pretheoretical. And it supplies the raw materials for formal analysis or formal argumentation.
But it isn’t possible to explicate all of our tacit knowledge in logical syllogisms or intersubjectival propositions. Experience is person-variable. And a lot of experience is too subtle and pervasive to objectify and formalize.
For purposes of dialogue, a Christian will attempt to find common ground with the unbeliever, but their common ground lies on the tip of the proverbial iceberg. This is what lies above the surface, in the public domain.
But a Christian may also have a multitude of reasons that are intransitive because they are tied to his unique, personal experience. So we know more than we can say.
2.It is very difficult to demonstrate anything, in the sense of apodictic proof. Ironically, some of the most familiar and “undeniable” phenomena, like the existence of the external world, are the hardest to prove—in part because these are the things we presume in order to prove anything else.
What you’re doing is rejecting the whole enterprise of science. If such thinking had been prevalent down the centuries right until today, we would still believe that thunder and lightning had supernatural causes. And we certainly would not be anywhere near the technological level that we have achieved.
Sorry, but that’s an outsider’s uniformed caricature of Christian theism. Jews and Christians have always believed in ordinary providence and second-causes. Ancient Israelites knew that rain came from clouds, trees came from seeds, babies came from sex, &c.
In general, Christian theism doesn't offer direct divine agency as a substitute for second-causes. Rather, God would be the source of secondary agents and agencies.
A Christian philosopher or theologian, unless he happens to be an idealist or occasionalist (which is very rare), doesn't think of divine agency as ranging along the same continuum as second causes. He doesn't view God as discretely intervening every time to send rain or make babies.
As a rule, theism would explain particular phenomena by explaining the origin of the second causes and not the effect (particular phenomena) of the second-causes. In other words, God would be the ulterior or indirect cause.
There are exceptions, such as when a stage-4, terminal cancer patient who goes into spontaneous and total remission the very next day in answer to prayer.
In Christian theology, particular events are normally the result of ordinary providence. Second-causes. Natural forces. Natural mechanisms.
But there are also miracles as well as certain occultic phenomena which bypass ordinary providence.
I’ll start with Plantinga but let me first quote at length from the decision of Judge John E Jones III in the Kitzmiller et al. vs Dover Area School District case concerning the teaching of ID in Dover, Pennsylvania public schools. Bear in mind that Judge Jones is a Republican who was appointed by Dubya.
And why do you want to begin with Judge Jones? He’s not a philosopher of science. And I believe that in his written opinion he was simply plagiarizing an ACLU legal brief.
I find it fascinating that opponents of ID are prepared to forfeit the autonomy of science and cede the definition of true science to the judiciary.
Plantinga writes that “a Christian academic and scientific community ought to pursue science in its own way, starting from [his italics] and taking for granted what we know as Christians”. An extraordinary and extraordinarily absurd statement. It’s first of all a bald-faced admission of what I said above: that the Christian God has to be considered a given, it’s the starting point rather than something to be proven.
You’re overlooking a key word: what we “know” as Christians. Plantinga takes the position that we should judge any particular claim by our larger body of beliefs. By everything we know or have good reason to believe.
And Plantinga has often argued for his Christian faith. So this is decidedly not a case of assuming what one needs to prove.
I certainly don’t see anything irrational in altruism and I’m sure many other atheists would agree. Humans are both self-centered and altruistic. Many people would consider being altruistic a necessary part of being a complete human being who is an integral part of society, rather than just being an isolated, atomized individual.
The question at issue is not whether altruism per se is irrational, but whether secularism has the wherewithal to justify altruism.
Altruism is beneficial to the common good. As such, it is often beneficial to the individual. However, we also have cases like the lifeboat scenario in which there’s a conflict between altruism and self-interest.
“There are now tens of thousands of hominid fossils in museums around the world supporting our current knowledge of human evolution. The pattern that emerges from this vast body of hard evidence is consistent across thousands of investigations. All models, all myths involving the singular, instantaneous creation of modern humans fail in the face of this evidence.”
And how do you identify these fossils as “hominid” fossils? You could only do that if you could arrange them according to lineal descent. But how do you establish lineal descent when the fossils are so widely separated in time and space?
Plantinga writes that “the theist knows that God created the heavens and the earth and all that they contain”. Pray tell, how in the world does the theist know this?? What is the theist’s evidence?? The biblical account of Genesis??
Plantinga has made his case elsewhere, both in what he himself has written and other works he references or recommends.
Besides, as Judge Jones astutely noted, “attributing unsolved problems about nature to causes and forces that lie outside the natural world is a “science stopper.” ” The problem is precisely that the Christian does not want to follow the evidence where it leads: rather than continuing on the evidence path, she puts up her own divine barrier and decides there’s no need to go further.
1.I don’t see anything particularly astute about a judge who is simply regurgitating a catchphrase from Dawkins.
2.As I’ve said before, this objection also confuses the level at which a theistic explanation operates.
3.The methodological naturalist is not prepared to follow the evidence wherever it leads, for he rules out of abounds, in advance of the evidence, any evidence that might lead back to God.
On what basis does he conclude this?? The only basis is his Christian belief, not any type of evidence beyond Biblical stories.
You obviously haven’t read very much Plantinga.
And, anyway, it’s absurd for theists to say that humans were created in the image of God. Does that mean God is humanoid or hominid??? And…God is supposed to be omnipotent, omniscient, eternal, infinitely benevolent, non-physical, and beyond space and time. Does any human being possess these qualities?? God seems to be everything that humans are not!! Indeed, I believe that’s exactly why humans created him.
That’s an exegetical question. Here’s one standard answer:
http://www.shef.ac.uk/bibs/DJACcurrres/Postmodern2/Humanity.html
Plantinga writes about the basic physical constants that “it seems puzzling that these values should have been just as they are”. He probably would have said that regardless of what the values were!! Constants are constants, they have to have a certain value rather than another. The values of the constants could be inherent (in a particular universe, if there is more than one), just like the pi ratio, as Dawkins suggests in The God Delusion. Did God set the value of pi? Could he have given it another value? And the constants may even be interdependent, but verification of this notion will only come if a “grand unified theory” is formulated.
This confuses a necessary truth like the value of pi with a contingent truth like the basic physical constants.
There is an interesting Darwinian explanation proposed by astrophysicist Lee Smolin. Dawkins mentions it in The God Delusion but I’ve read more about it elsewhere.
I’ll come back to Smolin (see below).
These assertions make a mockery of science. We simply have no reason to suppose that a supernatural realm exists – apart from religious beliefs about this. There is no justification whatsoever for concluding that something hard to explain has a supernatural cause. That would be tantamount to shutting the door on science. And anyway, just exactly how are we supposed to learn about the supernatural? And is there just one supernatural causal agent, or are there many others? For example, poltergeists or your garden-variety demons lurking behind bushes.
Christian theism doesn’t preclude demonic agency. So what’s your point?
Let me quote once again from the Dover decision:
once you attribute a cause to an untestable supernatural force, a proposition that cannot be disproven, there is no reason to continue seeking natural explanations as we have our answer.
This assumes that ID explanations are untestable. What’s the basis for that assumption?
If nature is designed, how is science supposed to find this out? Nature contains many regularities and patterns. Is that design? If all of nature is designed, then why would this be perceivable only through alleged gaps? Only those who believe in a Designer perceive design in nature. In other words, you have to assume a Designer to begin with. It’s the same problem we saw with Plantinga.
i) Human beings have a prereflective sense of what constitutes design. This is true whether you’re a Christian or an atheist.
Dembski has tried to mathematically formalize this intuition in terms of specified complexity. So that would be one of the criteria, along with irreducible complexity (a la Behe).
ii) Christian philosophers aren’t looking for God in the “gaps.” Rather, they find God in the overall design—among other arguments and lines of evidence.
Regarding (2), he asserts that “it is often the conviction that something is a product of design that keeps scientists in the hunt. Any company trying to reverse engineer a competitor’s new computer model pays particular attention to puzzling components”. But this is a flawed analogy. A computer is obviously a product of design, and of human design at that. We know computers are human-designed.
That only pushes the question back a step: how do we know that computers are designed? Dembski will discuss that.
Using this line of reasoning, we should ignore new work in all fields of study and research, be it historiography, literature, medicine, whatever. What is fresh and exciting today may tomorrow turn out to be a dead end or replaced by something better.
You’re waxing hyperbolic. Some fields of research are less speculative than others. There’s also a difference between technological progress and scientific theorizing.
You’re therefore once again evading the issue. It’s very simple actually. You maintain that God created the universe. In that case, you need to give a plausible explanation of how he did this. To say that God created the universe is to say that he is the cause of the universe. I don’t plan to do an intensive internet course on philosophical and theological notions of causation! This is a clearcut case. The fact is that neither you nor any other theologian can explain the causality of ex nihilo creation, and thus find it necessary to engage in philosophical acrobatics to get out of having to expaining this.
i) The “how” question is prejudicial since it tends to suggest an intervening medium or mechanism—which is precisely what creation ex nihilo is not.
ii) Moreover, a causal mechanism is not the bedrock explanation. As one philosopher explains:
The question seems to presuppose that there must in general an account of how a physical thing acts upon a non-physical thing. This seems too strong… Perhaps the greater mathematical tractability of physical causation contributes to the illusion that modern science has unraveled the metaphysics of causation. But at some point, causation itself is proximate rather than mediated; and at that point, it is mysterious.
It sets it apart on the superficial level that it shows that the causal interactions we notice at the level of ordinary medium-sized, medium speed events are mediated, examples of distal causation rather than proximate causation. But at the bottom level of the physical-physical causal models, we have a brute interaction for which we have no model whatsoever.
My point is that there's no such thing as paving the last mile; at the bottom level of any theory of P-P causation, no matter how elaborate, you're going to have a case of proximate causation, and the causal relation at that point will be mysterious, not graced with any model at all. So the impressive success of a multi-layered reductive approach to P-P causation is not squeezing the dualist into a corner; it is simply beside the point.
Yes, from a metaphysical point of view unmediated interaction is always utterly mysterious, that is, unexplicatable, precisely because it is unmediated. Another way of putting this is that proximate causation must always be a brute metaphysical fact. No analysis or insights will eliminate such facts; the growth of science is in many ways a story of the substitution of one layer of brute facts for another. The reductions available in physics are very impressive. But they never get rid of the layer of brute fact.1
McGrew’s comments have special reference to dualism, but they are equally applicable to causal explanation in general.
OK, let’s play your game. I assert the existence of exactly 100 gods who control the universe. Let’s call them collectively the Centotheon (although linguistic purists might prefer the name Hekatotheon), which would make me a centotheist. (Btw, the head of the Centotheon is the mighty Megalotheus). So, before you reject centotheism, you would have to make an in-depth study of natural centotheology, philosophical centotheology and Centotheist apologetics. Just give me 10 years or so (and enough money to live on during that period) and I’ll try my best to come up with works in those fields. Then you will have to read these works, before daring to dismiss centotheism. Do we have a deal?
Several issues here:
1.A Christian philosopher is not “asserting” the existence of God. Rather, he is *arguing* for God’s existence.
2.If you’re going to issue sweeping denials about the absence of any evidence for the supernatural, then it isn’t asking too much of you to read the other side of the argument.
3.I’m under no obligation to disprove purely hypothetical scenarios.
4.Your hypothetical, which is variant on Hume’s divine committee, would merely push the problem back a step, for one would then need a unifying principle to coordinate the divine committee.
And, no, there is no burden of proof on the shoulders of atheists. It is theists who are claiming the existence of something, not atheists. Otherwise I could also state that “acentotheists” (and I presume you’re one of them) have a burden of proof of showing how the universe can possibly function without the Centotheon (glory be unto them!)
This is far too facile:
1.If there is no evidence for something, then there is no onus to disprove it. But if the presence or absence of evidence is the very issue in dispute, then it would be question-begging to limit the burden of proof to only one side of the contested issue.
2.Where it’s a choice between atheism and (Christian) theism, the atheist does not believe that a world without God is indistinguishable from a world with God. To the contrary, he thinks that these two opposing positions predict for different consequences. And he is also of the opinion that the actual world is more consistent with atheism than theism. Therefore, he does have his own burden of proof to discharge.
Thanks for these references, but they all concern the Bible. So…your evidence for God is based on the Bible.
That’s not the only line of evidence, but it’s one line of evidence. Remember, I was responding to your statement that you “don't think there's any more proof for the Christian God, than for Zeus, or for leprechauns.”
If there’s probative evidence for what the Bible claims to be, then that, in turn, would be evidence for the existence of the Christian God. I’m simply responding to you on your own grounds.
This is what I can say (very briefly) based on what I know so far:
There is really no proof of the existence of Jesus. He himself did not write anything, nor are there any accounts mentioning Jesus written during his lifetime. (Correct me if I’m wrong)
Would you apply this same reasoning to the (non-)existence of Buddha, Socrates, or Alexander the Great?
How is the fact that somebody didn’t write anything germane to the evidence for his existence? That would just be one line of evidence out of many others.
And if one were predisposed to be hyperskeptical like you, then one would also deny the authenticity of a personal memoir or autobiography.
To say nothing was written about him in his lifetime is fatally vague. Many biographies are written about an individual after he died. Sometimes they’re written by friends and contemporaries. Sometimes they’re written by strangers who make good use of source material.
Furthermore there are contradictions in the story of Jesus as related by the writers of the Bible.
Since you don’t mention anything specific, there’s nothing specific to rebut. Are you alluding to the sort of pseudoproblems which Richard Dawkins talks about in his book?
As far as I’m concerned, the story of Jesus is a fable that was spread from person to person, writer to writer, in an age when storytelling was a highly developed art form all over the world.
Once again, you’ve given me nothing to respond to because all you’re offering is an unsubstantiated opinion which doesn’t begin to interact with the standard evangelical literature on the historical Jesus. There’s no argument for me to counter.
There is no proof of the divinity of Jesus, even if in fact such an individual existed. I’ve read Craig’s defense of the resurrection claim in his debate with Sinnott-Armstrong, but neither the latter nor I find it convincing in the least.
Why not? Once again, you’re giving me a threadbare conclusion without a supporting argument.
There is voluminous literature on this topic, both pro and con. As far as I’m concerned, to believe in the Virgin Birth, or the various miracles performed by Jesus, or his Resurrection and Ascension is not much better than to believe that Grimm’s Fairy Tales or Aesop’s Fables are true in the sense that they actually happened. And to be honest, I think these tales teach more than the Bible does!
Once again, where’s the supporting argument?
The Bible is full of contradictions, inconsistencies, and historical and scientific inaccuracies as various writers have pointed out. It only goes to show that the book is very much the flawed work of imperfect human beings with a well-developed imagination which is not to say that the Bible doesn’t refer to some real historical events.
This is a string of allegations with nothing specific to back it up, much less interacting with the counterarguments.
The Bible is full of alleged first-person statements and commands by God (Then the Lord said: “XXXX”), third-person references to alleged statements and commands by God, and references to alleged actions carried out by God. This does not in any way prove that such statements or commands were actually made by God, or that those actions (if the events described did in fact take place) were the work of God. None of this is proof of the existence of God.
No one is arguing that the Bible is inspired merely because it claims to be inspired. However, the claim is not irrelevant. If a speech were attributed to Churchill, that alone wouldn’t prove that Churchill wrote it. If, however, a speech were anonymous, that would greatly complicate the process of assigning authorship. So there is a value to self-referential ascriptions. The public verification of Scripture is based on other phenomena, such as prophecy, or internal and external evidence that a book of the Bible was written when, by, and about whomever or whatever it depicts.
The type of God depicted in the Bible, especially the Old Testament, contradicts the Christian notion of God being good, just, or even all-powerful. We see a God who is cruel, jealous, vindictive, and arbitrary.
This is just another string of generic, unsupported assertions. With all due respect, it doesn’t suffice to claim the moral and intellectual superiority of atheism without the rational argumentation to make good on that claim.
And I’d add that secularism has no basis for rendering these Olympian value-judgments in the first place. Indeed, a number of secular philosophers candidly admit as much:
http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=6383
http://www.believermag.com/issues/200307/?read=interview_ruse
http://www.qsmithwmu.com/moral_realism_and_infinte_spacetime_imply_moral_nihilism_by_quentin_smith.htm
Dawkins has written that “the God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction”. Another writer (I forget who) has written that the OT God is essentially a Middle Eastern tyrant writ large. This is the way people in those times saw powerful rulers and just projected this onto their idea of God.
To the contrary, Yahweh is a covenant-keeping God. This is the opposite of a capricious Oriental despot.
Swinburne? The man who said the Holocaust gave the Jews a great opportunity to be courageous and noble and that if one less person had been burnt by the Hiroshima bomb, there would have been less opportunity for courage and sympathy (according to Dawkins in God Delusion). So, I assume he’d love to have had a chance to be sent to a death camp.
Now you’re being sophistical. Swinburne’s theodicy is irrelevant to his critique of Hume.
Here we have another flawed analogy. First of all, aliens would not be supernatural, they would presumably be mortal, material, intelligent beings like ourselves.
You seem to be treating the design inference as a one-step argument, so that Dembski (or some other ID theorist) must prove the divine designer at a single stroke.
As I understand it, the design inference is a two-step argument. The first step is to identify the presence of design; the second step is to identify the designer.
You are collapsing the two into one, or maybe reversing them, as if the ID theorist must first establish the designer.
Secondly, such a radio signal would mean the likelihood, not certainty, that an intelligent life form which knows mathematics has deliberately sent out this signal.
You appear to be assuming that a theistic argument is worthless unless it’s certain rather than probable. Why do you assume that? Do you think that historical arguments are worthless unless they are certain rather than probable?
Thirdly, while we don’t know the exact source, it would be a known type of source, another version of ourselves.
Really? Once again, you have things backwards. We don’t have to begin with a classification of the source, viz., these are ETs.
Rather, we’d begin with the phenomenon of design. That the signal would exhibit a level of complexity which we attribute to intelligence.
This does not prejudge the origin of the signal, as if it had to come from biochemical aliens rather than angels or whatever.
Dembski writes that “we infer design repeatedly and reliably without knowing characteristics of the designer”. He then quotes Humean philosopher Elliott Sober in an attempt to find an inconsistency with his Humeanism: “Archaeologists sometimes unearth tools of unknown function, but still reasonably draw the inference that these things are, in fact, tools.” Inferring that these objects are hominid-made tools is a far cry from inferring a supernatural designer from something.
You’re repeating your initial mistake by bundling a two-step argument into one.
-- Dembski says that the Humean approach “can’t account for how we recognize design in the first place”. He gives an example of aboriginal arrowheads and asks: “How did we recognize that the arrowheads in our past experience were designed? Did we see humans actually manufacture those arrowheads? If so, how did we recognize that these humans were acting deliberately as designing agents and not just randomly chipping away at random chunks of rock?”
This is ridiculous! Of course, we didn’t see humans make those arrowheads. But we know humans can make arrowheads and we have found many examples of various types of arrowheads. Arrows of some sort with arrowheads of some sort were used into the 19th century and even now, some primitive tribes use them. So, seeing a group of arrowhead-looking stone objects at a given site, we can safely conclude these are hominid- or human-made arrowheads, especially if remains of ancient hominids or humans have been found as well. And if we have many examples of similar-shaped objects found at a given site or region, we can also safely conclude that these are not just effects of random activity without a particular aim.
What allows us to conclude that stars are like arrowheads, and are products of intelligent manufacture? We know human beings produce arrowheads and have done so for centuries, but we have no evidence for the production of stars by any intelligent supernatural being.
-- Dembski writes that “According to Reid, we attribute design as an inference from signs of intelligence…We do not get into the mind of the designers and thereby attribute design.” But Hume does not deal much with the mind of designers. Rather, he focuses on effects and inferring designers from effects. It is theists like Dembski who have a certain designer in mind from the outset and already “know” the mind of the designer, based on the Bible.
-- Dembski writes that “Design reasoning is effect-to-cause reasoning: It begins with effects in the physical world that exhibit clear signs of intelligence and from those signs infers to an intelligent cause. Neither of Hume’s two main criticisms against design therefore holds up. Induction is entirely the wrong analytic framework for how we infer design.”
This is faulty logic. Dembski is again pre-supposing his conclusion. He sees “clear signs of intelligence” at the outset and then infers “an intelligent cause”. Hume’s whole point was to question whether these effects can indeed be attributed to intelligence. In fact, he argues against making a supernatural induction from natural effects. There is a vast difference between inferring a human designer from an arrowhead, and a supernatural designer from a star or, more broadly, from the structure of the universe.
I think you’re missing the point of Dembski’s argument. Take the hoary example of the watchmaker. We do not perceive the intentions of the watchmaker. His intentions are private, inaccessible. We do not perceive his intention to design a watch. So we are *inferring* his intentions from the product.
Things that are consciously designed are usually designed for a purpose.
And how do you know the purpose for which they were designed?
Paley’s watch tells us the time, planes transport us, houses provide us shelter.
And how do you know that? By reading the mind of the carpenter, aerospace engineer, and watchmaker? Or by the teleological features of the artifact itself? You are inferring design from the outcome.
For what purpose were we and other life forms designed, if we are not the products of blind evolution? To be objects of amusement for God?? I don’t see any purpose.
Now you’re confounding the issue of whether X was designed with the issue of what it was design for. But we can answer the former without answering the latter. I could discover a mechanical object of unknown design. Even if I don’t know what it’s for, I can know that it was the product of intelligent design.
Yes, we as individuals can have a purpose or aims in our lives. But that’s very different from a watch or a plane. They don’t have their own aims or purposes. They are only instruments for other entities, intelligent living entities, and have specific functions that assist those entities. What similar functions do we have, whom do we assist? And what is the purpose of all the billions of galaxies, stars, uninhabited planets, nebulae and other cosmic phenomena in our universe? Only to enable life on Earth? Or also on other planets? (Would the latter accord with Christian theology?) Wouldn’t there be a more efficient way of creating life-sustaining worlds, if that was the purpose? Why go through such a tortuous route? It sure looks like our planet is an incidental by-product of blind, unconscious cosmic forces and events. No, the universe does not look designed.
i) You continue to commit a level-confusion regarding the evidence for design.
ii) As far as omnipotence is concerned, one process is just as effortless to instantiate as another.
iii) There may be life on other planets. Or we may colonize space some day.
iv) In one respect, human existence is purely gratuitous. We don’t have to exist. But God, in his magnanimity, creates a race of rational creatures that can share in his beatitude.
Something doesn’t have to be functional to be good. Belief in divine teleology doesn’t commit one to a purely utilitarian value system.
And what Nagel writes about the eye is sheer nonsense. He obviously hasn’t read The Blind Watchmaker or other books explaining how evolution works. Dawkins explains at length how the eye could have developed and at several points.
Perhaps Nagel has been reading Berlinski’s critique of Dawkins:
http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=1416
http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=1509
This statement shows a total misunderstanding of what science is all about. Science is about the pursuit of truth about the physical world. You can’t expect scientists to all agree what The Truth is and present it to us on a silver platter. To make a blanket statement that “they really don’t know what they’re talking about” just because scientists have a variety of views and theories, which sometimes do contradict each other, is like saying historians as a group don’t know what they’re talking about because they often disagree with each other.
i) You need to bone up on the philosophy of science. Whether or not science is about the pursuit of truth is a subject of ongoing debate:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationality-historicist/
http://www.loyno.edu/~folse/Laudanoutline.html
http://www.frame-poythress.org/poythress_articles/1990ReviewMoreland.htm
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Thebes/7755/young_davis_a_3.html
http://www.csc.twu.ca/byl/modelstest.doc
ii) As to the more specific issue at hand, contemporary physics is, from what I’ve read, in a state of extreme disarray:
http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/
http://physicsweb.org/articles/review/20/2/1/1
Well, let me turn the tables here. Since theologians often contradict each other, we can certainly say they don’t know what they’re talking about!
The short answer is that theologians who agree with me know what they’re talking about while theologians who disagree with me don’t know what they’re talking about
Moreover, let me make the following statement: If theologians and clergy from the world’s religions knew where the truth lay, they wouldn’t propose and propagate so many mutually exclusive theological viewpoints!! The problem is that the latter do claim to know what the truth is.
Actually, there’s a deep streak of scepticism in Indian philosophy (i.e. Hindu and Buddhist philosophical theology).
Scientists don’t make such a claim.
Okay, so according to you, science is all about the *pursuit* of truth, but the quarry is so elusive that scientists never claim that they have actually captured their quarry. What, exactly, is the point of pursuing the truth if you can never bag it?
They propose theories that try to explain various aspects of the physical world. They use observation, experimentation, mathematical problem-solving, and the previous results of these activities to build theories and then to try to verify them.
Okay, so according to you, scientists try to *verify* their theories without every claiming to know what the truth is.
I don’t see how we can gain knowledge of a transcendent realm, since we have no tools, scientific or otherwise, to do this beyond our fertile imagination and sheer willingness to believe without proof.
We gain knowledge by revelation.
Yes, but a field of knowledge like history is essentially irrelevant to the question of the existence of God and God’s being the cause of the universe and of life.
Christianity is predicated on historical events: creation, redemption, judgment, and revelation.
It sounds like you’re backtracking on the Christian argument about the centrality of mankind in the Divine Creation. Or have I got the argument wrong?
Yes, you’ve got the argument wrong. You’re getting carried away with a metaphor. The *figurative* centrality of man is irrelevant to the old literal debate between geocentrism and heliocentrism, or the size of the universe.
Yes, in fact, you do need a certain amount of stars and star stuff in order to produce the chemical elements necessary for life in our universe. As Carl Sagan famously said “We are all star stuff”! But the existence of a big enough universe to have enough stars to ultimately enable life does not mean the universe was deliberately created to be like that.
But that’s a separate issue. As I already explained, the point of the argument is not that you need a big universe for life to exist on planet earth, but that you need a big universe for life to exist anywhere at all, whether here or elsewhere in the universe.”
This, of itself, doesn’t prove the fine-tuning argument, but the fine-tuning argument is not a one-step revelation.
Well, if the initial conditions were fine-tuned for the possibility and not the inevitability of life, doesn’t that undermine Christian arguments for a divine creation, including the creation of mankind? I imagine God would not have settled just for possibility, but would have ensured the emergence of life, in particular intelligent life on Earth.
In Christian theology, creation is not an automated process—as if life just pops into existence when a certain threshold of self-organization is reached.
You’ve brought us back to the question of the probability of the emergence of our universe – assuming that’s what you mean when you talk about a “physically deterministic system coming into being”. But you don’t really have any grounds for asserting that the emergence of our universe was improbable. We know the probability of picking 4 aces in a row from a well-shuffled deck of cards is pretty low – and I think an exact figure can be attached to the probability. But we can’t assign any sort of figure regarding our universe.
One thing we can say is that IF we live in a multiverse and there are potentially millions of universes co-existing and new ones emerging, then any given universe is no less improbable than any given person being born on our planet. It’s just something that happens fairly regularly. And IF we live in a temporally infinite serial multiverse, i.e. just one universe at a time, then our universe would have been inevitable, assuming of course that the pattern of big bang and big crunch goes on indefinitely. However, a serial multiverse is considered less likely (as Dawkins mentions in God Delusion) given that a big crunch ending for our universe is unlikely. But IF our universe is unique (so far), with no predecessor and no co-existent fellow universes, then it’s really impossible and even senseless to talk about probability or improbability. We have no way to gauge this.
Well, here’s one response:
One reaction to these apparent enormous coincidences is to see them as substantiating the theistic claim that the universe has been created by a personal God and as offering the material for a properly restrained theistic argument—hence the fine-tuning argument.8 It's as if there are a large number of dials that have to be tuned to within extremely narrow limits for life to be possible in our universe. It is extremely unlikely that this should happen by chance, but much more likely that this should happen if there is such a person as God.
Now in response to this kind of theistic argument, Dawkins, along with others, proposes that possibly there are very many (perhaps even infinitely many) universes, with very many different distributions of values over the physical constants. Given that there are so many, it is likely that some of them would display values that are life-friendly. So if there are an enormous number of universes displaying different sets of values of the fundamental constants, it's not at all improbable that some of them should be "fine-tuned." We might wonder how likely it is that there are all these other universes, and whether there is any real reason (apart from wanting to blunt the fine-tuning arguments) for supposing there are any such things.9 But concede for the moment that indeed there are many universes and that it is likely that some are fine-tuned and life-friendly. That still leaves Dawkins with the following problem: even if it's likely that some universes should be fine-tuned, it is still improbable that this universe should be fine-tuned. Name our universe alpha: the odds that alpha should be fine-tuned are exceedingly, astronomically low, even if it's likely that some universe or other is fine-tuned.
What is Dawkins' reply? He appeals to "the anthropic principle," the thought that the only sort of universe in which we could be discussing this question is one which is fine-tuned for life:the anthropic answer, in its most general form, is that we could only be discussing the question in the kind of universe that was capable of producing us. Our existence therefore determines that the fundamental constants of physics had to be in their respective Goldilocks [life-friendly] zones.
Well, of course our universe would have to be fine-tuned, given that we live in it. But how does that so much as begin to explain why it is that alpha is fine-tuned? One can't explain this by pointing out that we are indeed here—anymore than I can "explain" the fact that God decided to create me (instead of passing me over in favor of someone else) by pointing out that if God had not thus decided, I wouldn't be here to raise that question. It still seems striking that these constants should have just the values they do have; it is still monumentally improbable, given chance, that they should have just those values; and it is still much less improbable that they should have those values, if there is a God who wanted a life-friendly universe.
http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2007/002/1.21.html
1 http://maverickphilosopher.powerblogs.com/posts/1169922673.shtml
The Church Fathers On Resurrection
Christianity is two thousand years old, and the concept of resurrection is more common today than in the past. The earliest Christians lived in a different world than ours:
"Christianity was born into a world where its central claim was known to be false. Many believed that the dead were non-existent; outside Judaism, nobody believed in resurrection....Lots of things could happen to the dead in the beliefs of pagan antiquity, but resurrection was not among the available options." (N.T. Wright, The Resurrection Of The Son Of God [Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress Press, 2003], pp. 35, 38)
The earliest Christians were criticized for their belief in resurrection. It was one of the primary subjects of the earliest apologetic works of the church fathers. Some of the fathers wrote on the subject in the context of their own suffering, even martyrdom.
"Day and night declare to us a resurrection. The night sinks to sleep, and the day arises; the day again departs, and the night comes on. Let us behold the fruits of the earth, how the sowing of grain takes place. The sower goes forth, and casts it into the ground; and the seed being thus scattered, though dry and naked when it fell upon the earth, is gradually dissolved. Then out of its dissolution the mighty power of the providence of the Lord raises it up again, and from one seed many arise and bring forth fruit....Having then this hope, let our souls be bound to Him who is faithful in His promises, and just in His judgments. He who has commanded us not to lie, shall much more Himself not lie...The apostles have preached the Gospel to us from the Lord Jesus Christ; Jesus Christ has done so from God. Christ therefore was sent forth by God, and the apostles by Christ. Both these appointments, then, were made in an orderly way, according to the will of God. Having therefore received their orders, and being fully assured by the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, and established in the word of God, with full assurance of the Holy Ghost, they went forth proclaiming that the kingdom of God was at hand." (Clement of Rome, First Clement, 24, 27, 42)
"I am the wheat of God, and let me be ground by the teeth of the wild beasts, that I may be found the pure bread of Christ. Rather entice the wild beasts, that they may become my tomb, and may leave nothing of my body; so that when I have fallen asleep in death, I may be no trouble to any one. Then shall I truly be a disciple of Christ, when the world shall not see so much as my body. Entreat Christ for me, that by these instruments I may be found a sacrifice to God. I do not, as Peter and Paul, issue commandments unto you. They were apostles; I am but a condemned man: they were free, while I am, even until now, a servant. But when I suffer, I shall be the freed-man of Jesus, and shall rise again emancipated in Him." (Ignatius of Antioch, Letter To The Romans, 4)
"And though all the men of your nation knew the incidents in the life of Jonah, and though Christ said amongst you that He would give the sign of Jonah, exhorting you to repent of your wicked deeds at least after He rose again from the dead, and to mourn before God as did the Ninevites, in order that your nation and city might not be taken and destroyed, as they have been destroyed; yet you not only have not repented, after you learned that He rose from the dead, but, as I said before you have sent chosen and ordained men throughout all the world to proclaim that a godless and lawless heresy had sprung from one Jesus, a Galilaean deceiver, whom we crucified, but his disciples stole him by night from the tomb, where he was laid when unfastened from the cross, and now deceive men by asserting that he has risen from the dead and ascended to heaven. Moreover, you accuse Him of having taught those godless, lawless, and unholy doctrines which you mention to the condemnation of those who confess Him to be Christ, and a Teacher from and Son of God. Besides this, even when your city is captured, and your land ravaged, you do not repent, but dare to utter imprecations on Him and all who believe in Him. Yet we do not hate you or those who, by your means, have conceived such prejudices against us; but we pray that even now all of you may repent and obtain mercy from God, the compassionate and long-suffering Father of all." (Justin Martyr, Dialogue With Trypho, 108)
"Even though fire destroy all traces of my flesh, the world receives the vaporized matter; and though dispersed through rivers and seas, or torn in pieces by wild beasts, I am laid up in the storehouses of a wealthy Lord. And, although the poor and the godless know not what is stored up, yet God the Sovereign, when He pleases, will restore the substance that is visible to Him alone to its pristine condition." (Tatian, Address To The Greeks, 6)
"For as the Lord 'went away in the midst of the shadow of death,' where the souls of the dead were, yet afterwards arose in the body, and after the resurrection was taken up into heaven, it is manifest that the souls of His disciples also, upon whose account the Lord underwent these things, shall go away into the invisible place allotted to them by God, and there remain until the resurrection, awaiting that event; then receiving their bodies, and rising in their entirety, that is bodily, just as the Lord arose, they shall come thus into the presence of God. 'For no disciple is above the Master, but every one that is perfect shall be as his Master.' As our Master, therefore, did not at once depart, taking flight to heaven, but awaited the time of His resurrection prescribed by the Father, which had been also shown forth through Jonas, and rising again after three days was taken up to heaven; so ought we also to await the time of our resurrection prescribed by God and foretold by the prophets, and so, rising, be taken up, as many as the Lord shall account worthy of this privilege." (Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 5:31:2)
"Assuredly, as the reason why restoration takes place at all is the appointed judgment, every man must needs come forth the very same who had once existed, that he may receive at God's hands a judgment, whether of good desert or the opposite. And therefore the body too will appear; for the soul is not capable of suffering without the solid substance (that is, the flesh; and for this reason, also) that it is not right that souls should have all the wrath of God to bear: they did not sin without the body, within which all was done by them. But how, you say, can a substance which has been dissolved be made to reappear again? Consider thyself, O man, and thou wilt believe in it! Reflect on what you were before you came into existence. Nothing. For if you had been anything, you would have remembered it. You, then, who were nothing before you existed, reduced to nothing also when you cease to be, why may you not come into being again out of nothing, at the will of the same Creator whose will created you out of nothing at the first? Will it be anything new in your case? You who were not, were made; when you cease to be again, you shall be made. Explain, if you can, your original creation, and then demand to know how you shall be re-created. Indeed, it will be still easier surely to make you what you were once, when the very same creative power made you without difficulty what you never were before. There will be doubts, perhaps, as to the power of God, of Him who hung in its place this huge body of our world, made out of what had never existed, as from a death of emptiness and inanity, animated by the Spirit who quickens all living things, its very self the unmistakable type of the resurrection, that it might be to you a witness - nay, the exact image of the resurrection. Light, every day extinguished, shines out again; and, with like alternation, darkness succeeds light's outgoing. The defunct stars re-live; the seasons, as soon as they are finished, renew their course; the fruits are brought to maturity, and then are reproduced. The seeds do not spring up with abundant produce, save as they rot and dissolve away; - all things are preserved by perishing, all things are refashioned out of death. Thou, man of nature so exalted, if thou understandest thyself, taught even by the Pythian words, lord of all these things that die and rise, - shalt thou die to perish evermore? Wherever your dissolution shall have taken place, whatever material agent has destroyed you, or swallowed you up, or swept you away, or reduced you to nothingness, it shall again restore you. Even nothingness is His who is Lord of all." (Tertullian, The Apology, 48)
"This temporal and brief suffering, how shall it be exchanged for the reward of a bright and eternal honour, when, according to the word of the blessed apostle, 'the Lord shall change the body of our humiliation, that it may be fashioned like to the body of His brightness!'...What now must be the vigour, beloved brethren, of your victorious consciousness, what the loftiness of your mind, what exultation in feeling, what triumph in your breast, that every one of you stands near to the promised reward of God, are secure from the judgment of God, walk in the mines with a body captive indeed, but with a heart reigning, that you know Christ is present with you, rejoicing in the endurance of His servants, who are ascending by His footsteps and in His paths to the eternal kingdoms! You daily expect with joy the saving day of your departure; and already about to withdraw from the world, you are hastening to the rewards of martyrdom, and to the divine homes, to behold after this darkness of the world the purest light, and to receive a glory greater than all sufferings and conflicts, as the apostle witnesses, and says, 'The sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us.'" (Cyprian, Letter 76:2, 76:7)
"[Jesus] accepted a decaying body so that decaying bodies might put on immortality." (Athanasius, cited in I.D.E. Thomas, The Golden Treasury Of Patristic Quotations [Oklahoma City, Oklahoma: Hearthstone Publishing, 1996], p. 228)
"Wherefore the city [Rome] is more notable upon this ground, than upon all others together. And as a body great and strong, it hath as two glistening eyes the bodies of these Saints [Paul and Peter]. Not so bright is the heaven, when the sun sends forth his rays, as is the city of Rome, sending out these two lights into all parts of the world. From thence will Paul be caught up, from thence Peter. Just bethink you, and shudder at the thought of what a sight Rome will see, when Paul ariseth suddenly from that deposit, together with Peter, and is lifted up to meet the Lord. What a rose will Rome send up to Christ! what two crowns will the city have about it! what golden chains will she be girded with! what fountains possess! Therefore I admire the city, not for the much gold, not for the columns, not for the other display there, but for these pillars of the Church." (John Chrysostom, Homilies On Romans, 32, v. 24)
"Christianity was born into a world where its central claim was known to be false. Many believed that the dead were non-existent; outside Judaism, nobody believed in resurrection....Lots of things could happen to the dead in the beliefs of pagan antiquity, but resurrection was not among the available options." (N.T. Wright, The Resurrection Of The Son Of God [Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress Press, 2003], pp. 35, 38)
The earliest Christians were criticized for their belief in resurrection. It was one of the primary subjects of the earliest apologetic works of the church fathers. Some of the fathers wrote on the subject in the context of their own suffering, even martyrdom.
"Day and night declare to us a resurrection. The night sinks to sleep, and the day arises; the day again departs, and the night comes on. Let us behold the fruits of the earth, how the sowing of grain takes place. The sower goes forth, and casts it into the ground; and the seed being thus scattered, though dry and naked when it fell upon the earth, is gradually dissolved. Then out of its dissolution the mighty power of the providence of the Lord raises it up again, and from one seed many arise and bring forth fruit....Having then this hope, let our souls be bound to Him who is faithful in His promises, and just in His judgments. He who has commanded us not to lie, shall much more Himself not lie...The apostles have preached the Gospel to us from the Lord Jesus Christ; Jesus Christ has done so from God. Christ therefore was sent forth by God, and the apostles by Christ. Both these appointments, then, were made in an orderly way, according to the will of God. Having therefore received their orders, and being fully assured by the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, and established in the word of God, with full assurance of the Holy Ghost, they went forth proclaiming that the kingdom of God was at hand." (Clement of Rome, First Clement, 24, 27, 42)
"I am the wheat of God, and let me be ground by the teeth of the wild beasts, that I may be found the pure bread of Christ. Rather entice the wild beasts, that they may become my tomb, and may leave nothing of my body; so that when I have fallen asleep in death, I may be no trouble to any one. Then shall I truly be a disciple of Christ, when the world shall not see so much as my body. Entreat Christ for me, that by these instruments I may be found a sacrifice to God. I do not, as Peter and Paul, issue commandments unto you. They were apostles; I am but a condemned man: they were free, while I am, even until now, a servant. But when I suffer, I shall be the freed-man of Jesus, and shall rise again emancipated in Him." (Ignatius of Antioch, Letter To The Romans, 4)
"And though all the men of your nation knew the incidents in the life of Jonah, and though Christ said amongst you that He would give the sign of Jonah, exhorting you to repent of your wicked deeds at least after He rose again from the dead, and to mourn before God as did the Ninevites, in order that your nation and city might not be taken and destroyed, as they have been destroyed; yet you not only have not repented, after you learned that He rose from the dead, but, as I said before you have sent chosen and ordained men throughout all the world to proclaim that a godless and lawless heresy had sprung from one Jesus, a Galilaean deceiver, whom we crucified, but his disciples stole him by night from the tomb, where he was laid when unfastened from the cross, and now deceive men by asserting that he has risen from the dead and ascended to heaven. Moreover, you accuse Him of having taught those godless, lawless, and unholy doctrines which you mention to the condemnation of those who confess Him to be Christ, and a Teacher from and Son of God. Besides this, even when your city is captured, and your land ravaged, you do not repent, but dare to utter imprecations on Him and all who believe in Him. Yet we do not hate you or those who, by your means, have conceived such prejudices against us; but we pray that even now all of you may repent and obtain mercy from God, the compassionate and long-suffering Father of all." (Justin Martyr, Dialogue With Trypho, 108)
"Even though fire destroy all traces of my flesh, the world receives the vaporized matter; and though dispersed through rivers and seas, or torn in pieces by wild beasts, I am laid up in the storehouses of a wealthy Lord. And, although the poor and the godless know not what is stored up, yet God the Sovereign, when He pleases, will restore the substance that is visible to Him alone to its pristine condition." (Tatian, Address To The Greeks, 6)
"For as the Lord 'went away in the midst of the shadow of death,' where the souls of the dead were, yet afterwards arose in the body, and after the resurrection was taken up into heaven, it is manifest that the souls of His disciples also, upon whose account the Lord underwent these things, shall go away into the invisible place allotted to them by God, and there remain until the resurrection, awaiting that event; then receiving their bodies, and rising in their entirety, that is bodily, just as the Lord arose, they shall come thus into the presence of God. 'For no disciple is above the Master, but every one that is perfect shall be as his Master.' As our Master, therefore, did not at once depart, taking flight to heaven, but awaited the time of His resurrection prescribed by the Father, which had been also shown forth through Jonas, and rising again after three days was taken up to heaven; so ought we also to await the time of our resurrection prescribed by God and foretold by the prophets, and so, rising, be taken up, as many as the Lord shall account worthy of this privilege." (Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 5:31:2)
"Assuredly, as the reason why restoration takes place at all is the appointed judgment, every man must needs come forth the very same who had once existed, that he may receive at God's hands a judgment, whether of good desert or the opposite. And therefore the body too will appear; for the soul is not capable of suffering without the solid substance (that is, the flesh; and for this reason, also) that it is not right that souls should have all the wrath of God to bear: they did not sin without the body, within which all was done by them. But how, you say, can a substance which has been dissolved be made to reappear again? Consider thyself, O man, and thou wilt believe in it! Reflect on what you were before you came into existence. Nothing. For if you had been anything, you would have remembered it. You, then, who were nothing before you existed, reduced to nothing also when you cease to be, why may you not come into being again out of nothing, at the will of the same Creator whose will created you out of nothing at the first? Will it be anything new in your case? You who were not, were made; when you cease to be again, you shall be made. Explain, if you can, your original creation, and then demand to know how you shall be re-created. Indeed, it will be still easier surely to make you what you were once, when the very same creative power made you without difficulty what you never were before. There will be doubts, perhaps, as to the power of God, of Him who hung in its place this huge body of our world, made out of what had never existed, as from a death of emptiness and inanity, animated by the Spirit who quickens all living things, its very self the unmistakable type of the resurrection, that it might be to you a witness - nay, the exact image of the resurrection. Light, every day extinguished, shines out again; and, with like alternation, darkness succeeds light's outgoing. The defunct stars re-live; the seasons, as soon as they are finished, renew their course; the fruits are brought to maturity, and then are reproduced. The seeds do not spring up with abundant produce, save as they rot and dissolve away; - all things are preserved by perishing, all things are refashioned out of death. Thou, man of nature so exalted, if thou understandest thyself, taught even by the Pythian words, lord of all these things that die and rise, - shalt thou die to perish evermore? Wherever your dissolution shall have taken place, whatever material agent has destroyed you, or swallowed you up, or swept you away, or reduced you to nothingness, it shall again restore you. Even nothingness is His who is Lord of all." (Tertullian, The Apology, 48)
"This temporal and brief suffering, how shall it be exchanged for the reward of a bright and eternal honour, when, according to the word of the blessed apostle, 'the Lord shall change the body of our humiliation, that it may be fashioned like to the body of His brightness!'...What now must be the vigour, beloved brethren, of your victorious consciousness, what the loftiness of your mind, what exultation in feeling, what triumph in your breast, that every one of you stands near to the promised reward of God, are secure from the judgment of God, walk in the mines with a body captive indeed, but with a heart reigning, that you know Christ is present with you, rejoicing in the endurance of His servants, who are ascending by His footsteps and in His paths to the eternal kingdoms! You daily expect with joy the saving day of your departure; and already about to withdraw from the world, you are hastening to the rewards of martyrdom, and to the divine homes, to behold after this darkness of the world the purest light, and to receive a glory greater than all sufferings and conflicts, as the apostle witnesses, and says, 'The sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us.'" (Cyprian, Letter 76:2, 76:7)
"[Jesus] accepted a decaying body so that decaying bodies might put on immortality." (Athanasius, cited in I.D.E. Thomas, The Golden Treasury Of Patristic Quotations [Oklahoma City, Oklahoma: Hearthstone Publishing, 1996], p. 228)
"Wherefore the city [Rome] is more notable upon this ground, than upon all others together. And as a body great and strong, it hath as two glistening eyes the bodies of these Saints [Paul and Peter]. Not so bright is the heaven, when the sun sends forth his rays, as is the city of Rome, sending out these two lights into all parts of the world. From thence will Paul be caught up, from thence Peter. Just bethink you, and shudder at the thought of what a sight Rome will see, when Paul ariseth suddenly from that deposit, together with Peter, and is lifted up to meet the Lord. What a rose will Rome send up to Christ! what two crowns will the city have about it! what golden chains will she be girded with! what fountains possess! Therefore I admire the city, not for the much gold, not for the columns, not for the other display there, but for these pillars of the Church." (John Chrysostom, Homilies On Romans, 32, v. 24)
Sunday, April 01, 2007
On God and guppies
JOHN W. LOFTUS SAID:
"Have you watched the Planet Earth video of hunting dogs, or killer whales, or many of the other ways animals feed themselves?"
Yes, John, it's a tragedy. And don't forget about the guppies. Have you ever read about the way some guppies mistreat other guppies?
"Occasionally male guppies may behave aggressively towards each other, engaging in fin-nipping and other bullying behaviour."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guppy
If a benevolent, omnipotent, and omniscient God really existed, there would be no fin-nipping in fishbowls.
"Have you watched the Planet Earth video of hunting dogs, or killer whales, or many of the other ways animals feed themselves?"
Yes, John, it's a tragedy. And don't forget about the guppies. Have you ever read about the way some guppies mistreat other guppies?
"Occasionally male guppies may behave aggressively towards each other, engaging in fin-nipping and other bullying behaviour."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guppy
If a benevolent, omnipotent, and omniscient God really existed, there would be no fin-nipping in fishbowls.
Nuts to mutts!
John W. Loftus said:
"Whoever said anything about my pure bred Basset Hound."
Ah, yes, a "purebred" Basset Hound.
"Nuts to mutts!" That's his campaign slogan.
No doubt he believes in separate fire hydrants for mongrels and purebreds.
Loftus is a canine racist. The Jim Crow of canines. The David Duke of dogs.
This is also dovetails with his belief that there should only be one human race.
If elected public dog catcher, Loftus will put an end to canine miscegenation.
"Whoever said anything about my pure bred Basset Hound."
Ah, yes, a "purebred" Basset Hound.
"Nuts to mutts!" That's his campaign slogan.
No doubt he believes in separate fire hydrants for mongrels and purebreds.
Loftus is a canine racist. The Jim Crow of canines. The David Duke of dogs.
This is also dovetails with his belief that there should only be one human race.
If elected public dog catcher, Loftus will put an end to canine miscegenation.
Saturday, March 31, 2007
"Consider the ant!"
“You'll watch as a parasite grows out of an ant's head, how a polar bear preys on Walruses, how hunting dogs kill prey, and so on, and so on. Yes, this is a majestic earth, and wonderful in so many ways. But when you watch this series I want you to ask why God didn't create us all as vegetarians. To me the horror of the law of predation negates the existence of an omni-God...period. And I just don't see how anyone who watches what takes place every second somewhere around the globe can still think God is good. He isn't. The horror of predation in this world proves such a God doesn't exist beyond a shadow of doubt.”
http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2007/03/there-is-no-christian-god.html
Loftus ran out of ideas a long time ago. Indeed, he never had any ideas of his own.
So he picks the mould spores out of his stale objections with a pair of tweezers, and keeps on serving them to his omnivorous readers.
He assures us that there is no Christian God.
Apparently, God didn’t get the memo. I guess that DC is a poor medium for communicating with the Omnipotent.
The problem with his current objection is that it doesn’t make any sense on either secular grounds or Christian grounds.
i) What’s so bad about a parasite growing out of an ant’s head, any way? This serves a natural purpose in the ecological balance. So it’s not a gratuitous evil.
ii) Does he think the ant is suffering? Does he attribute consciousness to an ant?
iii) Even more to the point, his reaction illustrates a typical tension in secularism. Take wolves. In traditional literature, wolves are described as cruel, savage, and vicious.
But you’re not supposed to say that any more. It’s politically incorrect. A naturalist will scold you for falsely imputing human motives and emotions to the wolf.
And, in one sense, the naturalist is right. This is a case of human projection. Treating an animal as if it’s a human being.
Nature isn’t cruel. Human beings can be cruel. But nature is amoral.
Yet Loftus’ whole case is predicated on his childishly anthropomorphic view of the animal kingdom. He identifies with that poor little ant. He imagines what it would “feel” like to be an ant.
But, of course, that has no basis in reality. He is taking himself as the standard of reference. An ant doesn’t share his viewpoint. Indeed, an ant has no viewpoint.
That would be the consistently secular interpretation. And, at a certain level, a Christian would agree.
iv) So why do we automatically tend to ascribe human traits to animals? There’s a theological explanation for that. The material world is one big parable.
God speaks to us through the world—as well as the Word. He teaches us things through the ritual morality play of the natural world.
Consider the symbolic dimension of so many animals in Scripture, viz. the ant, badger, bear, dog, dove, fox, goat, hornet, lamb, leopard, lion, locust, maggot, owl, ox, serpent, sheep, spider, warhorse, wolf, &c.
Indeed, the same animal can have more than one symbolic function, viz. dogs, sheep.
So, at another level, there is a genuine sense in which, by divine design, the animal kingdom has an emblematic and pedagogical function. It mimics human virtues and vices.
These are object lessons. Sermon illustrations. Bards and poets have always understood this.
http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2007/03/there-is-no-christian-god.html
Loftus ran out of ideas a long time ago. Indeed, he never had any ideas of his own.
So he picks the mould spores out of his stale objections with a pair of tweezers, and keeps on serving them to his omnivorous readers.
He assures us that there is no Christian God.
Apparently, God didn’t get the memo. I guess that DC is a poor medium for communicating with the Omnipotent.
The problem with his current objection is that it doesn’t make any sense on either secular grounds or Christian grounds.
i) What’s so bad about a parasite growing out of an ant’s head, any way? This serves a natural purpose in the ecological balance. So it’s not a gratuitous evil.
ii) Does he think the ant is suffering? Does he attribute consciousness to an ant?
iii) Even more to the point, his reaction illustrates a typical tension in secularism. Take wolves. In traditional literature, wolves are described as cruel, savage, and vicious.
But you’re not supposed to say that any more. It’s politically incorrect. A naturalist will scold you for falsely imputing human motives and emotions to the wolf.
And, in one sense, the naturalist is right. This is a case of human projection. Treating an animal as if it’s a human being.
Nature isn’t cruel. Human beings can be cruel. But nature is amoral.
Yet Loftus’ whole case is predicated on his childishly anthropomorphic view of the animal kingdom. He identifies with that poor little ant. He imagines what it would “feel” like to be an ant.
But, of course, that has no basis in reality. He is taking himself as the standard of reference. An ant doesn’t share his viewpoint. Indeed, an ant has no viewpoint.
That would be the consistently secular interpretation. And, at a certain level, a Christian would agree.
iv) So why do we automatically tend to ascribe human traits to animals? There’s a theological explanation for that. The material world is one big parable.
God speaks to us through the world—as well as the Word. He teaches us things through the ritual morality play of the natural world.
Consider the symbolic dimension of so many animals in Scripture, viz. the ant, badger, bear, dog, dove, fox, goat, hornet, lamb, leopard, lion, locust, maggot, owl, ox, serpent, sheep, spider, warhorse, wolf, &c.
Indeed, the same animal can have more than one symbolic function, viz. dogs, sheep.
So, at another level, there is a genuine sense in which, by divine design, the animal kingdom has an emblematic and pedagogical function. It mimics human virtues and vices.
These are object lessons. Sermon illustrations. Bards and poets have always understood this.
Why Timothy Ware has Two Mommies: Ecclesiastical Polygamy and Alternative Church Families
Yet there seemed to be a yawning gap between Orthodox principles and Orthodox practice. If the Orthodox really believed themselves to be the one true Church, why did they place such obstacles in the path of prospective converts? In what sense was Orthodoxy truly "one," when, for example, in North America there were at least nineteen different Orthodox "jurisdictions," with no less than thirteen bishops in the single city of New York?
In order to enter the Orthodox house, I had to knock upon a particular door. Which "jurisdiction" should I choose? I felt strongly drawn to the Russian Orthodox Church in Exile — the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR), as it is today commonly styled. What I admired in particular was its fidelity to the liturgical, ascetic and monastic heritage of Orthodoxy. While still sixteen I had come across Helen Waddell's book The Desert Fathers, and from that moment I was fascinated by the monastic history of the Christian East. I found that most of the monasteries in the Orthodox emigration belonged to the Russian Church in Exile. In Western Europe I visited two women's monasteries under its care, the Convent of the Annunciation in London, and the Convent of the Mother of God of Lesna outside Paris, and in both I was given a warm welcome. I also admired the way in which the Russian Church in Exile held in honor the New Martyrs and Confessors who had suffered for the faith under the Soviet yoke. On the other hand, I was disturbed by the canonical isolation of the Exile Synod. In the 1950s this was not so great as it has since become, for at that time there was still regular concelebration between Russian Exile clergy and the bishops and priests of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. But I saw that the Russian Church in Exile was becoming increasingly cut off from worldwide Orthodoxy, and that troubled me.
Had there existed in Britain a Russian diocese under the Ecumenical Patriarchate, as there was in France, then I would probably have joined it. As matters stood, the only Russian alternative to the Church in Exile was the Moscow Patriarchate. This had some distinguished members in Western Europe, such as Vladimir Lossky in Paris, Father Basil Krivocheine in Oxford, and Father Anthony Bloom (now Metropolitan of Sourozh) in London. But I felt it impossible to belong to an Orthodox Church headed by bishops under Communist control who regularly praised Lenin and Stalin, and who were prevented from acknowledging the New Martyrs slain by the Bolsheviks.
Despite my love of Russian spirituality, it became evident to me that my best course was to join the Greek diocese in Britain under the Patriarchate of Constantinople...If I became a member of the Ecumenical Patriarchate I would not have to take sides between the rival Russian groups, and I could maintain my personal friendships with members of both the Moscow Patriarchate and the Church in Exile.
http://www.geocities.com/trvalentine/orthodox/ware_conversion.html
In order to enter the Orthodox house, I had to knock upon a particular door. Which "jurisdiction" should I choose? I felt strongly drawn to the Russian Orthodox Church in Exile — the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR), as it is today commonly styled. What I admired in particular was its fidelity to the liturgical, ascetic and monastic heritage of Orthodoxy. While still sixteen I had come across Helen Waddell's book The Desert Fathers, and from that moment I was fascinated by the monastic history of the Christian East. I found that most of the monasteries in the Orthodox emigration belonged to the Russian Church in Exile. In Western Europe I visited two women's monasteries under its care, the Convent of the Annunciation in London, and the Convent of the Mother of God of Lesna outside Paris, and in both I was given a warm welcome. I also admired the way in which the Russian Church in Exile held in honor the New Martyrs and Confessors who had suffered for the faith under the Soviet yoke. On the other hand, I was disturbed by the canonical isolation of the Exile Synod. In the 1950s this was not so great as it has since become, for at that time there was still regular concelebration between Russian Exile clergy and the bishops and priests of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. But I saw that the Russian Church in Exile was becoming increasingly cut off from worldwide Orthodoxy, and that troubled me.
Had there existed in Britain a Russian diocese under the Ecumenical Patriarchate, as there was in France, then I would probably have joined it. As matters stood, the only Russian alternative to the Church in Exile was the Moscow Patriarchate. This had some distinguished members in Western Europe, such as Vladimir Lossky in Paris, Father Basil Krivocheine in Oxford, and Father Anthony Bloom (now Metropolitan of Sourozh) in London. But I felt it impossible to belong to an Orthodox Church headed by bishops under Communist control who regularly praised Lenin and Stalin, and who were prevented from acknowledging the New Martyrs slain by the Bolsheviks.
Despite my love of Russian spirituality, it became evident to me that my best course was to join the Greek diocese in Britain under the Patriarchate of Constantinople...If I became a member of the Ecumenical Patriarchate I would not have to take sides between the rival Russian groups, and I could maintain my personal friendships with members of both the Moscow Patriarchate and the Church in Exile.
http://www.geocities.com/trvalentine/orthodox/ware_conversion.html
The true church for you, but not for me
At the time this puzzled me. In my reading about Orthodoxy I had quickly discovered that it claims to be, not just one among many alternative "denominations," but the true Church of Christ on earth. Yet it seemed as if the Orthodox themselves were telling me, "Yes, Orthodoxy is indeed the one true Church, but you should on no account join it. It is only for us Easterners, Greeks, Russians and the rest." Adherence to the saving truth appeared to depend on the accidents of birth and geography.
There remained, however, one powerful dissuasive. If Orthodoxy is really the one true Church of Christ on earth, how could it be (I asked myself) that the Orthodox Church in the West is so ethnic and nationalist in its outlook, so little interested in any form of missionary witness, so fragmented into parallel and often conflicting "jurisdictions"?
http://www.geocities.com/trvalentine/orthodox/ware_conversion.html
There remained, however, one powerful dissuasive. If Orthodoxy is really the one true Church of Christ on earth, how could it be (I asked myself) that the Orthodox Church in the West is so ethnic and nationalist in its outlook, so little interested in any form of missionary witness, so fragmented into parallel and often conflicting "jurisdictions"?
http://www.geocities.com/trvalentine/orthodox/ware_conversion.html
The Swinging Pendulum Of Doctrinal Development
In another post, I’ve discussed the problems passages like Luke 2:48-50 and John 2:3-4 pose for traditional Roman Catholic beliefs about Mary. Raymond Brown gives an example, related to Luke 2 and John 2, of how a popular belief that develops at one period in history can be reversed by later generations:
“Wherever mariology has been strong, the thought that Mary was limited in her understanding of Jesus has been repugnant. While the Venerable Bede could allow the view that Mary received only a progressive revelation of the divinity of Jesus, by the thirteenth century it was generally agreed that Mary had full knowledge from the time of the annunciation. Peter Canisius (1521-1597) attacked theories of Mary’s limited knowledge as product of the heresies of the Reformers, and only in modern times and gingerly could the question be raised again in Roman Catholicism. See E.F. Sutcliffe, ‘Our Lady and the Divinity of Christ,’ The Month 180 (1944), 347-51; also footnote 19 above.” (The Birth Of The Messiah [New York, New York: Doubleday, 1993], n. 45 on p. 492)
“Wherever mariology has been strong, the thought that Mary was limited in her understanding of Jesus has been repugnant. While the Venerable Bede could allow the view that Mary received only a progressive revelation of the divinity of Jesus, by the thirteenth century it was generally agreed that Mary had full knowledge from the time of the annunciation. Peter Canisius (1521-1597) attacked theories of Mary’s limited knowledge as product of the heresies of the Reformers, and only in modern times and gingerly could the question be raised again in Roman Catholicism. See E.F. Sutcliffe, ‘Our Lady and the Divinity of Christ,’ The Month 180 (1944), 347-51; also footnote 19 above.” (The Birth Of The Messiah [New York, New York: Doubleday, 1993], n. 45 on p. 492)
The Papacy And The Eucharist
Two other issues Philip Blosser mentions in his response to Steve Hays are the papacy and the eucharist. Many of his comments are vague, but the most he would be able to argue is that some patristic sources agreed with Roman Catholicism on these issues or held a view that was similar to a degree. But neither doctrine is apostolic in full or in seed form. On the papacy, see here and here. Regarding the eucharist, see here, section 69 here, and section 95 here.
Friday, March 30, 2007
Other Beliefs About Mary
Earlier this week, I posted an article on the perpetual virginity of Mary in response to the claims made by Philip Blosser in his reply to Steve Hays. In addition to his claims about the perpetual virginity of Mary, Blosser refers to other Marian doctrines in the church fathers. For example, he claims that Augustine "clearly argues for the sinlessness of Mary" (as quoted on p. 126 in Steve's reply to Blosser). Readers may be interested in articles I've written on the sinlessness of Mary here and here. Augustine is among the sources I address. Regarding the Assumption of Mary, see here and here. On the subject of the woman of Revelation 12, see here. Regarding prayers to Mary and Mary's status in Heaven, see here. On venerating images of Mary, see here.
Also worth noting is that many of the individual themes and Biblical passages that Roman Catholics apply to Mary aren't applied in that manner by the earliest patristic sources. For example, while Roman Catholics often see the queen of Psalm 45 as Mary, Justin Martyr refers to the queen as the church (Dialogue With Trypho, 63). So does Clement of Alexandria (cited in Eric Osborn, Clement Of Alexandria [New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008], 214). Roman Catholics often parallel Mary to the ark of the covenant, but the earliest ark parallels among the church fathers identify Jesus or something else, not Mary, as the parallel to the ark (Irenaeus, Fragments From The Lost Writings Of Irenaeus, 48; Clement of Alexandria, The Stromata, 5:6; Tertullian, The Chaplet, 9; Hippolytus, On Daniel, 2:6; etc.). Catholics often cite Revelation 11:19 as a reference to Mary's bodily assumption, whereas the earliest patristic interpreter of the passage doesn't even see Mary as the ark (Victorinus, Commentary On The Apocalypse Of The Blessed John, 11:19).
Catholics often respond by arguing that the fathers might have believed that these passages refer to Mary, even though they don't say so in their writings. That's possible, but how likely is it? For example, if so many ante-Nicene fathers comment on the ark of the covenant, and none of them draw the parallels that modern Catholics are drawing, how likely is it that they held the modern Catholic view, but just happened to repeatedly mention some other interpretation instead? As these fathers show us, we can make sense of these passages of scripture without appealing to a Marian interpretation. Why, then, should we think that some additional Marian interpretation is appropriate?
Also worth noting is that many of the individual themes and Biblical passages that Roman Catholics apply to Mary aren't applied in that manner by the earliest patristic sources. For example, while Roman Catholics often see the queen of Psalm 45 as Mary, Justin Martyr refers to the queen as the church (Dialogue With Trypho, 63). So does Clement of Alexandria (cited in Eric Osborn, Clement Of Alexandria [New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008], 214). Roman Catholics often parallel Mary to the ark of the covenant, but the earliest ark parallels among the church fathers identify Jesus or something else, not Mary, as the parallel to the ark (Irenaeus, Fragments From The Lost Writings Of Irenaeus, 48; Clement of Alexandria, The Stromata, 5:6; Tertullian, The Chaplet, 9; Hippolytus, On Daniel, 2:6; etc.). Catholics often cite Revelation 11:19 as a reference to Mary's bodily assumption, whereas the earliest patristic interpreter of the passage doesn't even see Mary as the ark (Victorinus, Commentary On The Apocalypse Of The Blessed John, 11:19).
Catholics often respond by arguing that the fathers might have believed that these passages refer to Mary, even though they don't say so in their writings. That's possible, but how likely is it? For example, if so many ante-Nicene fathers comment on the ark of the covenant, and none of them draw the parallels that modern Catholics are drawing, how likely is it that they held the modern Catholic view, but just happened to repeatedly mention some other interpretation instead? As these fathers show us, we can make sense of these passages of scripture without appealing to a Marian interpretation. Why, then, should we think that some additional Marian interpretation is appropriate?
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Purgatory
In his reply to Steve Hays, Philip Blosser repeatedly mentions the doctrine of Purgatory. He claims that it had widespread patristic support. But some of the sources he mentions can only be said to have believed in Purgatory if the doctrine is significantly redefined.
The apostle Paul knew he was imperfect both in knowledge of himself (1 Corinthians 4:4) and in sanctification (2 Corinthians 3:18, Philippians 3:12). Yet, he said that he would go to be with the Lord if he died (2 Corinthians 5:1-8, Philippians 1:23). Scripture repeatedly refers to all believers being at peace, having joy, going to be with the Lord, etc. whenever this life ends (Psalm 49:15, 73:24-25, Isaiah 57:1-2, Daniel 12:13, Matthew 25:34, Luke 16:22, Luke 23:42-43, John 14:2-3, 2 Corinthians 5:1-8, 1 Thessalonians 4:16-18, Revelation 7:14-17). Purgatory is never mentioned, but instead is repeatedly contradicted by references to every believer going to Heaven. The afterlife is a frequent theme in scripture, but Purgatory isn't part of the landscape.
The same is true of the earliest patristic sources. When Clement of Rome refers to deceased believers, he always refers to them being in Heaven, never Purgatory (First Clement, 5-6, 44, 50). The same is true of other early sources, such as Polycarp (Epistle To The Philippians, 9) and a document written by the church of Smyrna after Polycarp's martyrdom (The Martyrdom Of Polycarp, 19). Other early sources refer to all believers going to Heaven or a heavenly region of Hades that doesn't have the suffering associated with Purgatory: Justin Martyr (Dialogue With Trypho, 5), Athenagoras (A Plea For The Christians, 31), Irenaeus (Against Heresies, 5:5:1, 5:31:2), Hippolytus (Against Plato, On The Cause Of The Universe, 1-2), Cyprian (Treatises, 7, On The Mortality, 6-7, 26), etc. It should be emphasized that when somebody like Irenaeus refers to all deceased Christians being in Paradise, such a view isn't just an undeveloped seed form of Purgatory. It's a direct contradiction of Purgatory. Also worth noting is that Irenaeus cites the elders of an earlier generation, who knew one or more of the apostles, in support of his anti-Purgatorial views.
Catholics sometimes appeal to comments made by fathers such as Tertullian and Origen, and they appeal to apocryphal documents and catacomb inscriptions, for example. But all of these arguments are problematic. The catacomb inscriptions, for example, are from people we don't know much about, such as just how orthodox they were or how widespread their views were. Many of the inscriptions are late or can't be dated. And when somebody like Tertullian advocates praying for the dead, the doctrine of Purgatory doesn't logically follow. If an increase in the blessings of Heaven were expected from these prayers, then they can't be cited as evidence for Purgatory. The historian Philip Schaff wrote:
"These views of the middle state in connection with prayers for the dead show a strong tendency to the Roman Catholic doctrine of Purgatory, which afterwards came to prevail in the West through the great weight of St. Augustin and Pope Gregory I. But there is, after all, a considerable difference. The ante-Nicene idea of the middle state of the pious excludes, or at all events ignores, the idea of penal suffering, which is an essential part of the Catholic conception of purgatory. It represents the condition of the pious as one of comparative happiness, inferior only to the perfect happiness after the resurrection. Whatever and wherever Paradise may be, it belongs to the heavenly world; while purgatory is supposed to be a middle region between heaven and hell, and to border rather on the latter. The sepulchral inscriptions in the catacombs have a prevailingly cheerful tone, and represent the departed souls as being 'in peace' and 'living in Christ,' or 'in God.' The same view is substantially preserved in the Oriental church, which holds that the souls of the departed believers may be aided by the prayers of the living, but are nevertheless 'in light and rest, with a foretaste of eternal happiness.' Yet alongside with this prevailing belief, there are traces of the purgatorial idea of suffering the temporal consequences of sin, and a painful struggle after holiness. Origen, following in the path of Plato, used the term 'purgatorial fire,' by which the remaining stains of the soul shall be burned away; but he understood it figuratively, and connected it with the consuming fire at the final judgment, while Augustin and Gregory I. transferred it to the middle state." (section 156 here)
The Purgatory scholar Jacques Le Goff, when commenting on the views of Cyprian in the third century (a church father who is often misrepresented as having believed in Purgatory, even though he rejected the concept), remarks that the doctrine of Purgatory "did not yet exist" (The Birth Of Purgatory [Chicago, Illinois: The University of Chicago Press, 1986], p. 58). Regarding appeals to the catacombs, apocryphal documents, Origen, etc., Le Goff explains:
"The abundant epigraphic and liturgical evidence available for the first few centuries of the Christian era has often been used to prove that belief in Purgatory is very ancient indeed. But it seems to me that the interpretation goes beyond the evidence. The favors that God is urged to grant the dead essentially involve the pleasures of Paradise, or at any rate a state defined by pax et lux, peace and light....A Greek apocryphal work from the late second century, The Acts of Paul and Thekla, speaks of prayers for a dead young girl. The pagan queen Tryphena asks her adopted daughter, the Christian virgin Thekla, to pray for her real daughter Phalconilla, who has died. Thekla prays to God for eternal salvation for Phalconilla....The importance of the Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas in the prehistory of Purgatory should neither be exaggerated nor minimized. It is not Purgatory as such that is being discussed here, and none of the images contained in Perpetua's two visions recur in medieval imagery associated with Purgatory. The garden in which Dinocratus [the dead boy being prayed for] finds himself is almost paradisaical in nature; it is neither a valley nor a plain nor a mountain. The thirst and feebleness from which he suffers are described as psychological rather than moral defects. He suffers psychic and physical pain rather than the pain of punishment for a wrong, labor rather than poena, whereas the texts that foreshadow Purgatory or that concern Purgatory per se prefer the latter term to the former. The Passion makes no mention of either judgment or punishment....In this vision of the other world [advocated by Clement of Alexandria and Origen] a number of ingredients of the true Purgatory are lacking, however. No clear distinction is made between time in Purgatory and the time of the Last Judgment. This confusion is so troublesome that Origen is forced both to expand the end of the world and to collapse it into a single moment, while at the same time making its prospect imminent. Purgatory is not really distinguished from Hell, and there is no clear awareness that Purgatory is a temporary and provisional abode. The responsibility for postmortem purification is shared by the dead, with their weight of sin, and God, the benevolent judge of salvation; the living play no part. Finally, no place is designated as the place of purgatory. By making the purifying fire not only 'spiritual' but also 'invisible,' Origen prevented the imagination of the faithful from gaining a purchase on it." (pp. 46, 50, 57)
Regarding Tertullian:
"Between Tertullian's refrigerium interim [a region of the afterlife some believers go to] and Purgatory there is a difference not only of kind - for Tertullian it is a matter of a restful wait until the Last Judgment, whereas with Purgatory it is a question of a trial that purifies because it is punitive and expiatory - but also of duration: souls remain in refrigerium until the resurrection but in Purgatory only as long as it takes to expiate their sins." (pp. 47-48)
Tertullian sees some believers going to a different region within Heaven, a place of enjoyment that lasts until the time of judgment. Purgatory, on the other hand, is a place of suffering that can end before the judgment. Tertullian writes:
"there is some determinate place called Abraham's bosom, and that it is designed for the reception of the souls of Abraham's children, even from among the Gentiles (since he is 'the father of many nations,' which must be classed amongst his family), and of the same faith as that wherewithal he himself believed God, without the yoke of the law and the sign of circumcision. This region, therefore, I call Abraham's bosom. Although it is not in heaven, it is yet higher than hell, and is appointed to afford an interval of rest to the souls of the righteous, until the consummation of all things shall complete the resurrection of all men with the 'full recompense of their reward.'" (Against Marcion, 4:34)
Did Tertullian believe in different regions within what we commonly consider Heaven? Yes. Did he believe in praying for the dead and offering sacrifices for them? Yes. He didn't believe in Purgatory, however.
Augustine is widely regarded as the father of the doctrine of Purgatory. Roman Catholics often quote him referring to something similar to the modern Catholic doctrine. But what these Catholics don't explain is that Augustine acknowledged that he was speculating. In other words, he wasn't passing on some tradition handed down in unbroken succession from the apostles. Rather, he was speculating about what might happen in the afterlife. Jacques Le Goff explains:
"[Joseph Ntedika] has put his finger on a key point, showing not only that Augustine's position evolved over the years, which was to be expected, but that it underwent a marked change at a specific point in time, which Ntedika places in the year 413....In the Letter to Dardinus (417) he [Augustine] sketches a geography of the otherworld which makes no place for Purgatory." (The Birth Of Purgatory [Chicago, Illinois: The University of Chicago Press, 1986], pp. 62, 70)
In other words, Augustine's views on the subject developed over time, and he was inconsistent. George Salmon explains the significance of these facts:
"In like manner, when Augustine hears the idea suggested that, as the sins of good men cause them suffering in this world, so they may also to a certain degree in the next, he says that he will not venture to say that nothing of the kind can occur, for perhaps it may. Well, if the idea of purgatory had not got beyond a 'perhaps' at the beginning of the fifth century, we are safe in saying that it was not by tradition that the later Church arrived at certainty on the subject; for, if the Church had had any tradition in the time of Augustine, that great Father could not have helped knowing it." (The Infallibility Of The Church [London, England: John Murray, 1914], pp. 133-134)
Here's an example of Augustine expressing his uncertainty:
"And it is not impossible that something of the same kind may take place even after this life. It is a matter that may be inquired into, and either ascertained or left doubtful, whether some believers shall pass through a kind of purgatorial fire, and in proportion as they have loved with more or less devotion the goods that perish, be less or more quickly delivered from it." (The Enchiridion, 69)
Although people like Augustine were speculating about something like Purgatory, other fathers continued to make comments more consistent with the Biblical and earlier patristic view:
"'Knowing therefore that whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord: we are of good courage, I say, and willing to be absent from the body, and to be at home with the Lord.' Seest thou how keeping back what was painful, the names of death and the end, he has employed instead of them such as excite great longing, calling them presence with God; and passing over those things which are accounted to be sweet, the things of life, he hath expressed them by painful names, calling the life here an absence from the Lord? Now this he did, both that no one might fondly linger amongst present things, but rather be aweary of them; and that none when about to die might be disquieted, but might even rejoice as departing unto greater goods....'We are of good courage, I say, and willing.' Wonderful! to what hath he brought round the discourse? To an extreme desire of death, having shown the grievous to be pleasurable, and the pleasurable grievous. For by the term, 'we are willing' he means, 'we are desirous.' Of what are we desirous? Of being 'absent from the body, and at home with the Lord.'" (John Chrysostom, Homilies On Second Corinthians, 10, vv. 7-8)
And some sources continued to advocate views that are inconsistent with both Roman Catholicism and Evangelicalism (Lactantius, The Divine Institutes, 7:21; Aphrahat, Demonstrations, 6:14, 8:20, 8:22-23, 22:9). But the Evangelical concept that all believers go to a place of peace and joy, without the sufferings associated with Purgatory, is the Biblical view and the view of the earliest church fathers and some of the later fathers.
The apostle Paul knew he was imperfect both in knowledge of himself (1 Corinthians 4:4) and in sanctification (2 Corinthians 3:18, Philippians 3:12). Yet, he said that he would go to be with the Lord if he died (2 Corinthians 5:1-8, Philippians 1:23). Scripture repeatedly refers to all believers being at peace, having joy, going to be with the Lord, etc. whenever this life ends (Psalm 49:15, 73:24-25, Isaiah 57:1-2, Daniel 12:13, Matthew 25:34, Luke 16:22, Luke 23:42-43, John 14:2-3, 2 Corinthians 5:1-8, 1 Thessalonians 4:16-18, Revelation 7:14-17). Purgatory is never mentioned, but instead is repeatedly contradicted by references to every believer going to Heaven. The afterlife is a frequent theme in scripture, but Purgatory isn't part of the landscape.
The same is true of the earliest patristic sources. When Clement of Rome refers to deceased believers, he always refers to them being in Heaven, never Purgatory (First Clement, 5-6, 44, 50). The same is true of other early sources, such as Polycarp (Epistle To The Philippians, 9) and a document written by the church of Smyrna after Polycarp's martyrdom (The Martyrdom Of Polycarp, 19). Other early sources refer to all believers going to Heaven or a heavenly region of Hades that doesn't have the suffering associated with Purgatory: Justin Martyr (Dialogue With Trypho, 5), Athenagoras (A Plea For The Christians, 31), Irenaeus (Against Heresies, 5:5:1, 5:31:2), Hippolytus (Against Plato, On The Cause Of The Universe, 1-2), Cyprian (Treatises, 7, On The Mortality, 6-7, 26), etc. It should be emphasized that when somebody like Irenaeus refers to all deceased Christians being in Paradise, such a view isn't just an undeveloped seed form of Purgatory. It's a direct contradiction of Purgatory. Also worth noting is that Irenaeus cites the elders of an earlier generation, who knew one or more of the apostles, in support of his anti-Purgatorial views.
Catholics sometimes appeal to comments made by fathers such as Tertullian and Origen, and they appeal to apocryphal documents and catacomb inscriptions, for example. But all of these arguments are problematic. The catacomb inscriptions, for example, are from people we don't know much about, such as just how orthodox they were or how widespread their views were. Many of the inscriptions are late or can't be dated. And when somebody like Tertullian advocates praying for the dead, the doctrine of Purgatory doesn't logically follow. If an increase in the blessings of Heaven were expected from these prayers, then they can't be cited as evidence for Purgatory. The historian Philip Schaff wrote:
"These views of the middle state in connection with prayers for the dead show a strong tendency to the Roman Catholic doctrine of Purgatory, which afterwards came to prevail in the West through the great weight of St. Augustin and Pope Gregory I. But there is, after all, a considerable difference. The ante-Nicene idea of the middle state of the pious excludes, or at all events ignores, the idea of penal suffering, which is an essential part of the Catholic conception of purgatory. It represents the condition of the pious as one of comparative happiness, inferior only to the perfect happiness after the resurrection. Whatever and wherever Paradise may be, it belongs to the heavenly world; while purgatory is supposed to be a middle region between heaven and hell, and to border rather on the latter. The sepulchral inscriptions in the catacombs have a prevailingly cheerful tone, and represent the departed souls as being 'in peace' and 'living in Christ,' or 'in God.' The same view is substantially preserved in the Oriental church, which holds that the souls of the departed believers may be aided by the prayers of the living, but are nevertheless 'in light and rest, with a foretaste of eternal happiness.' Yet alongside with this prevailing belief, there are traces of the purgatorial idea of suffering the temporal consequences of sin, and a painful struggle after holiness. Origen, following in the path of Plato, used the term 'purgatorial fire,' by which the remaining stains of the soul shall be burned away; but he understood it figuratively, and connected it with the consuming fire at the final judgment, while Augustin and Gregory I. transferred it to the middle state." (section 156 here)
The Purgatory scholar Jacques Le Goff, when commenting on the views of Cyprian in the third century (a church father who is often misrepresented as having believed in Purgatory, even though he rejected the concept), remarks that the doctrine of Purgatory "did not yet exist" (The Birth Of Purgatory [Chicago, Illinois: The University of Chicago Press, 1986], p. 58). Regarding appeals to the catacombs, apocryphal documents, Origen, etc., Le Goff explains:
"The abundant epigraphic and liturgical evidence available for the first few centuries of the Christian era has often been used to prove that belief in Purgatory is very ancient indeed. But it seems to me that the interpretation goes beyond the evidence. The favors that God is urged to grant the dead essentially involve the pleasures of Paradise, or at any rate a state defined by pax et lux, peace and light....A Greek apocryphal work from the late second century, The Acts of Paul and Thekla, speaks of prayers for a dead young girl. The pagan queen Tryphena asks her adopted daughter, the Christian virgin Thekla, to pray for her real daughter Phalconilla, who has died. Thekla prays to God for eternal salvation for Phalconilla....The importance of the Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas in the prehistory of Purgatory should neither be exaggerated nor minimized. It is not Purgatory as such that is being discussed here, and none of the images contained in Perpetua's two visions recur in medieval imagery associated with Purgatory. The garden in which Dinocratus [the dead boy being prayed for] finds himself is almost paradisaical in nature; it is neither a valley nor a plain nor a mountain. The thirst and feebleness from which he suffers are described as psychological rather than moral defects. He suffers psychic and physical pain rather than the pain of punishment for a wrong, labor rather than poena, whereas the texts that foreshadow Purgatory or that concern Purgatory per se prefer the latter term to the former. The Passion makes no mention of either judgment or punishment....In this vision of the other world [advocated by Clement of Alexandria and Origen] a number of ingredients of the true Purgatory are lacking, however. No clear distinction is made between time in Purgatory and the time of the Last Judgment. This confusion is so troublesome that Origen is forced both to expand the end of the world and to collapse it into a single moment, while at the same time making its prospect imminent. Purgatory is not really distinguished from Hell, and there is no clear awareness that Purgatory is a temporary and provisional abode. The responsibility for postmortem purification is shared by the dead, with their weight of sin, and God, the benevolent judge of salvation; the living play no part. Finally, no place is designated as the place of purgatory. By making the purifying fire not only 'spiritual' but also 'invisible,' Origen prevented the imagination of the faithful from gaining a purchase on it." (pp. 46, 50, 57)
Regarding Tertullian:
"Between Tertullian's refrigerium interim [a region of the afterlife some believers go to] and Purgatory there is a difference not only of kind - for Tertullian it is a matter of a restful wait until the Last Judgment, whereas with Purgatory it is a question of a trial that purifies because it is punitive and expiatory - but also of duration: souls remain in refrigerium until the resurrection but in Purgatory only as long as it takes to expiate their sins." (pp. 47-48)
Tertullian sees some believers going to a different region within Heaven, a place of enjoyment that lasts until the time of judgment. Purgatory, on the other hand, is a place of suffering that can end before the judgment. Tertullian writes:
"there is some determinate place called Abraham's bosom, and that it is designed for the reception of the souls of Abraham's children, even from among the Gentiles (since he is 'the father of many nations,' which must be classed amongst his family), and of the same faith as that wherewithal he himself believed God, without the yoke of the law and the sign of circumcision. This region, therefore, I call Abraham's bosom. Although it is not in heaven, it is yet higher than hell, and is appointed to afford an interval of rest to the souls of the righteous, until the consummation of all things shall complete the resurrection of all men with the 'full recompense of their reward.'" (Against Marcion, 4:34)
Did Tertullian believe in different regions within what we commonly consider Heaven? Yes. Did he believe in praying for the dead and offering sacrifices for them? Yes. He didn't believe in Purgatory, however.
Augustine is widely regarded as the father of the doctrine of Purgatory. Roman Catholics often quote him referring to something similar to the modern Catholic doctrine. But what these Catholics don't explain is that Augustine acknowledged that he was speculating. In other words, he wasn't passing on some tradition handed down in unbroken succession from the apostles. Rather, he was speculating about what might happen in the afterlife. Jacques Le Goff explains:
"[Joseph Ntedika] has put his finger on a key point, showing not only that Augustine's position evolved over the years, which was to be expected, but that it underwent a marked change at a specific point in time, which Ntedika places in the year 413....In the Letter to Dardinus (417) he [Augustine] sketches a geography of the otherworld which makes no place for Purgatory." (The Birth Of Purgatory [Chicago, Illinois: The University of Chicago Press, 1986], pp. 62, 70)
In other words, Augustine's views on the subject developed over time, and he was inconsistent. George Salmon explains the significance of these facts:
"In like manner, when Augustine hears the idea suggested that, as the sins of good men cause them suffering in this world, so they may also to a certain degree in the next, he says that he will not venture to say that nothing of the kind can occur, for perhaps it may. Well, if the idea of purgatory had not got beyond a 'perhaps' at the beginning of the fifth century, we are safe in saying that it was not by tradition that the later Church arrived at certainty on the subject; for, if the Church had had any tradition in the time of Augustine, that great Father could not have helped knowing it." (The Infallibility Of The Church [London, England: John Murray, 1914], pp. 133-134)
Here's an example of Augustine expressing his uncertainty:
"And it is not impossible that something of the same kind may take place even after this life. It is a matter that may be inquired into, and either ascertained or left doubtful, whether some believers shall pass through a kind of purgatorial fire, and in proportion as they have loved with more or less devotion the goods that perish, be less or more quickly delivered from it." (The Enchiridion, 69)
Although people like Augustine were speculating about something like Purgatory, other fathers continued to make comments more consistent with the Biblical and earlier patristic view:
"'Knowing therefore that whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord: we are of good courage, I say, and willing to be absent from the body, and to be at home with the Lord.' Seest thou how keeping back what was painful, the names of death and the end, he has employed instead of them such as excite great longing, calling them presence with God; and passing over those things which are accounted to be sweet, the things of life, he hath expressed them by painful names, calling the life here an absence from the Lord? Now this he did, both that no one might fondly linger amongst present things, but rather be aweary of them; and that none when about to die might be disquieted, but might even rejoice as departing unto greater goods....'We are of good courage, I say, and willing.' Wonderful! to what hath he brought round the discourse? To an extreme desire of death, having shown the grievous to be pleasurable, and the pleasurable grievous. For by the term, 'we are willing' he means, 'we are desirous.' Of what are we desirous? Of being 'absent from the body, and at home with the Lord.'" (John Chrysostom, Homilies On Second Corinthians, 10, vv. 7-8)
And some sources continued to advocate views that are inconsistent with both Roman Catholicism and Evangelicalism (Lactantius, The Divine Institutes, 7:21; Aphrahat, Demonstrations, 6:14, 8:20, 8:22-23, 22:9). But the Evangelical concept that all believers go to a place of peace and joy, without the sufferings associated with Purgatory, is the Biblical view and the view of the earliest church fathers and some of the later fathers.
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