VICTOR REPPERT SAID:
“(I don't like atheist Grayling's talk about not forgiving.”
That misses the point. My point, as I explained at the outset, is that even a hard-bitten atheist like Grayling can furnish arguments which justify everlasting punishment. There’s a certain irony in that given the fact that atheists frequently cite everlasting punishment as a primary reason to reject the Christian faith.
Whether or not his own position is thoroughly consistent with Christian ethics is irrelevant to the argument I made. I was arguing on his own grounds.
“Because we are supposed to forgive those who trespass against us.”
Biblical forgiveness is more qualified than that. You act like a faith-healer who quotes isolated verses about God promising to give us whatever we ask for.
“And Christ asked his Father to forgive the very people who had arranged his crucifixion).”
The textual authenticity of that verse is dubious.
“Suppose we were to ask Grayling ‘What if we had the power to inflict and eternal punishment on Polanski, or Himmler for that matter. Should we do it?’ I don't think Grayling would agree.”
Perhaps he wouldn’t. But the question then is whether he can disagree consistent with his aforesaid position.
For example, if he became aware of the fact that a Christian was using his argument, he might backpeddle to avoid a Christian application.
Unbelievers will sometimes volunteer statements when addressing a sympathetic audience which make unwitting concessions to Christianity. The moment you point that out to them, they wail and flail about to escape the implications of their stated position.
“Proportionality is the basis of the idea of retributive punishment as we know it in the criminal justice system, and this goes back to Scripture. Why is it an eye for an eye? Because that's the upper limit on punishment, so that we don't inflict vengeful pumishments.”
i) Proportionality doesn’t imply an upper limit to punishment. That would depend on the crime. Punishment is limited if culpability is limited.
ii) Let’s also keep in mind that the Mosaic laws and penalties generally deal with sins and crimes wherein one human being wrongs another human beings. Even if such crimes were finitely culpable, this doesn’t mean that wronging God is on a par with wronging your fellow man.
Likewise, some Mosaic laws and penalties concern infractions of ritual purity. That isn’t dealing with moral absolutes. So be careful how you extrapolate from this material.
“Penal substitution theory says that all sin will be punished or atoned for.”
It does? Surely you’re not serious.
i) To begin with, penal substitution doesn’t actually substitute for sin. At best, that’s just a shorthand expression.
An agent cannot suffer or die on behalf of a sin. He cannot assume the punishment which a sin deserves. A sin isn’t liable to punishment.
Rather, an agent can only suffer or die on behalf of another agent. There are no punishable sins, only punishable sinners. Sinners who commit sins. You can’t detach the sin from the sinner–as if it doesn’t belong to him in particular.
ii) Apropos (i), the demerit of sin isn’t some anonymous conglomeration of sin, disconnected from the specific actions of specific agents. Likewise, the merit of Christ isn’t deposited into some general fund–for purposes of redistribution.
Rather, the redeemer dies for individuals. Dies to redeem individual sinners.
Whether he dies for one, many, or all depends on his intentions. The design of the atonement.
Take the case of someone who is covering for someone else. Protecting someone else at his own expense.
Say Jim and John are brothers. Jim is John’s kid brother. Their father is a drunken lout who beats his kids at the slightest provocation.
Jim accidentally breaks his father’s fishing pole. His dad will beat him viciously when he founds out.
To shield his younger brother, John takes the blame. He confesses to the accident to spare his kid brother.
However, John is not taking the place of every kid who may be facing corporal punishment. He’s only doing this for his kid brother.
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
The Second Licona/Ehrman Debate On The Resurrection
Free online audio and video of Mike Licona and Bart Ehrman's 2009 debate on the resurrection are now available.
I reviewed their first debate here.
I reviewed their first debate here.
Tuesday, October 06, 2009
Christian cinematography
OK, I’m glad the filmmakers are focusing on better quality. I salute you. But take some lessons from the past. I am currently teaching a course entitled “Major Christian Authors,” covering such authors as Dante, Spenser, Herbert, Bunyan, Hopkins, Chesterton, T. S. Eliot, C. S. Lewis, Charles Williams, Graham Greene, Flannery O’Connor. NONE of them wrote about people’s personal problems. There is not one terminally ill orphan in the whole lot. No scenes about broken marriages or friends dying or sports teams winning the big game. These classic Christian authors–who actually did influence their cultures–saw Christianity as being rather more than a means of solving life’s problems, and none of them lapsed into the deadly aesthetic sin of SENTIMENTALITY.
These aesthetically more ambitious movies still have a soft-spot for sentimentality. Try making movies that do not attempt to make us cry. That means no diseases, no thrilling comebacks, no dying children. Try making movies that are exciting, or send our imaginations reeling, or that are funny. You will be surprised how well such stories can express and even explore the Christian faith.
http://www.geneveith.com/christian-movies-try-to-be-better-but-still/_3469/
Well, with all due respect, perhaps that’s why so few folks, whether believers or unbelievers, ever read the “major Christian” authors. It’s so far removed from their daily experience, from their ordinary joys, frustrations, disappointments, hopes, fears, struggles, and doldrums.
Isn’t Veith setting up a false dichotomy? Sure, it’s great to watch movies that stretch our imagination. Movies that depict an ideal state of affairs.
But to say that Christian filmmakers should steer clear of death, disease, broken homes, and other asperities of life in a fallen world hardly strikes me as a balanced Christian palette. The Bible itself covers the complete spectrum: the highest highs, lowest lows, and much else in-between.
These aesthetically more ambitious movies still have a soft-spot for sentimentality. Try making movies that do not attempt to make us cry. That means no diseases, no thrilling comebacks, no dying children. Try making movies that are exciting, or send our imaginations reeling, or that are funny. You will be surprised how well such stories can express and even explore the Christian faith.
http://www.geneveith.com/christian-movies-try-to-be-better-but-still/_3469/
Well, with all due respect, perhaps that’s why so few folks, whether believers or unbelievers, ever read the “major Christian” authors. It’s so far removed from their daily experience, from their ordinary joys, frustrations, disappointments, hopes, fears, struggles, and doldrums.
Isn’t Veith setting up a false dichotomy? Sure, it’s great to watch movies that stretch our imagination. Movies that depict an ideal state of affairs.
But to say that Christian filmmakers should steer clear of death, disease, broken homes, and other asperities of life in a fallen world hardly strikes me as a balanced Christian palette. The Bible itself covers the complete spectrum: the highest highs, lowest lows, and much else in-between.
Redefining death
Ideally, the law should be changed to describe more accurately and honestly the way that death is determined in clinical practice. Most doctors have hesitated to say so too loudly, lest they be caricatured in public as greedy harvesters eager to strip living patients of their organs. But their public silence was broken on 24 September at an international meeting that included physicians, transplant surgeons and bioethicists at the Italian Festival of Health in Viareggio. The meeting concluded that lawmakers in the United States and elsewhere should reconsider rigid definitions of death, and called for a wider public debate.
The time has come for a serious discussion on redrafting laws that push doctors towards a form of deceit. But care must be taken to ensure that it doesn't backfire. Learning that the law has not been strictly adhered to could easily discourage organ donation at a time when demand for organs already vastly exceeds supply. Physicians and others involved in the issue would be wise to investigate just how incendiary the theme might be, perhaps in contained focus groups, and design their strategy accordingly.
Few things are as sensitive as death. But concerns about the legal details of declaring death in someone who will never again be the person he or she was should be weighed against the value of giving a full and healthy life to someone who will die without a transplant [emphasis mine].
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v461/n7264/full/461570a.html
The time has come for a serious discussion on redrafting laws that push doctors towards a form of deceit. But care must be taken to ensure that it doesn't backfire. Learning that the law has not been strictly adhered to could easily discourage organ donation at a time when demand for organs already vastly exceeds supply. Physicians and others involved in the issue would be wise to investigate just how incendiary the theme might be, perhaps in contained focus groups, and design their strategy accordingly.
Few things are as sensitive as death. But concerns about the legal details of declaring death in someone who will never again be the person he or she was should be weighed against the value of giving a full and healthy life to someone who will die without a transplant [emphasis mine].
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v461/n7264/full/461570a.html
Can someone tell me who I am?
WASHINGTON—The Vatican has given its “recognitio” to a change in the United States Catholic Catechism for Adults, which is set to go into a second printing.
The change clarifies Catholic teaching on God’s covenant with the Jews. The first version, in explaining relations with the Jews, stated, “Thus the covenant that God made with the Jewish people through Moses remains eternally valid for them.” The revised text states, “To the Jewish people, whom God first chose to hear his Word, ‘belong the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and of their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ.’ (Romans 9: 4-5; cf. CCC, no 839).
http://www.usccb.org/comm/archives/2009/09-174.shtml
At the risk of stating the obvious, the true identity of the Christian faith depends on correctly relating Christianity to Judaism. In what sense is Christianity the goal of Judaism? In what sense is Judaism stultified and misdirected unless it finds its fulfillment in the new covenant?
If the church of Rome is the one true church, then why is Mother Church still trying, like a confused adolescent or amnesiac, to find herself? To discover her true identity? After two thousand years and counting, isn’t it time for Mother Church to grow up? Why is she still undergoing an identity crisis at this stage of the game?
The change clarifies Catholic teaching on God’s covenant with the Jews. The first version, in explaining relations with the Jews, stated, “Thus the covenant that God made with the Jewish people through Moses remains eternally valid for them.” The revised text states, “To the Jewish people, whom God first chose to hear his Word, ‘belong the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and of their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ.’ (Romans 9: 4-5; cf. CCC, no 839).
http://www.usccb.org/comm/archives/2009/09-174.shtml
At the risk of stating the obvious, the true identity of the Christian faith depends on correctly relating Christianity to Judaism. In what sense is Christianity the goal of Judaism? In what sense is Judaism stultified and misdirected unless it finds its fulfillment in the new covenant?
If the church of Rome is the one true church, then why is Mother Church still trying, like a confused adolescent or amnesiac, to find herself? To discover her true identity? After two thousand years and counting, isn’t it time for Mother Church to grow up? Why is she still undergoing an identity crisis at this stage of the game?
Do da crime, do da time?
There’s an important distinction which is often lost sight of in debates over everlasting punishment:
i) What punishment is appropriate for a particular offense?
ii) Does the passage of time diminish the culpability of the offender?
Take two 9-year-old boys. Billy steals Bobby’s bicycle. Billy is never caught.
Now, perhaps you don’t think Billy is guilty of a damnable sin.
Still, this doesn’t change the fact that even at the age 50, Billy is still guilty of bicycle-theft. The mere passage of time does nothing to diminish or erase his guilt.
What punishment, if any, is appropriate at this stage of the game is a different question from whether he automatically ceases to be deserving of punishment.
Maybe you think there should be no punishment whatsoever at this point. Maybe you think the punishment should be extremely mild. Whatever.
This doesn’t change the fact that he did something wrong, however trivial, and he doesn’t cease to be a wrongdoer (in that regard) just because an arbitrary number of years has elapsed.
Playing out the clock doesn’t make a wrongdoer any less culpable. In fact, it’s often just the opposite.
Instead of a penny-ante offence like bicycle-theft, let’s take the case of a twenty-something investment banker to defrauds his clients, then absconds to Rio, where he lives in luxury for the next forty years off his ill-gotten gain.
We regard a fugitive from justice as more culpable, not less. The fact that he successfully evaded the authorities for so many years, compounds the original offense. In that case the passage of time is an aggravating factor rather than a mitigating factor.
Even if our investment banker is finally apprehended at the age of 70, he enjoyed the best years of his life in freedom and luxury while his clients were condemned to live in penury.
i) What punishment is appropriate for a particular offense?
ii) Does the passage of time diminish the culpability of the offender?
Take two 9-year-old boys. Billy steals Bobby’s bicycle. Billy is never caught.
Now, perhaps you don’t think Billy is guilty of a damnable sin.
Still, this doesn’t change the fact that even at the age 50, Billy is still guilty of bicycle-theft. The mere passage of time does nothing to diminish or erase his guilt.
What punishment, if any, is appropriate at this stage of the game is a different question from whether he automatically ceases to be deserving of punishment.
Maybe you think there should be no punishment whatsoever at this point. Maybe you think the punishment should be extremely mild. Whatever.
This doesn’t change the fact that he did something wrong, however trivial, and he doesn’t cease to be a wrongdoer (in that regard) just because an arbitrary number of years has elapsed.
Playing out the clock doesn’t make a wrongdoer any less culpable. In fact, it’s often just the opposite.
Instead of a penny-ante offence like bicycle-theft, let’s take the case of a twenty-something investment banker to defrauds his clients, then absconds to Rio, where he lives in luxury for the next forty years off his ill-gotten gain.
We regard a fugitive from justice as more culpable, not less. The fact that he successfully evaded the authorities for so many years, compounds the original offense. In that case the passage of time is an aggravating factor rather than a mitigating factor.
Even if our investment banker is finally apprehended at the age of 70, he enjoyed the best years of his life in freedom and luxury while his clients were condemned to live in penury.
Reppert on retribution
“The concept of retribution is that the evildoer should be deprived of happiness to in proportion to the wrongfulness or harmfulness of the act. The proportionality objection to hell would not be that a certain amount of time passing is going to take the guilt away, but rather that no action is infinitely bad or infinitely harmful, and so the proporitionality requirement can be met in a finite length of time, and the eternity of hell isn't necessary. It doesn't imply that guilt diminises with time, it just says that after a certain amount of happiness is deprived from the wrongdoer, the punishment can end, because the crime has been paid for. So the reasoning in the Polanski case doesn't apply here.”
http://dangerousidea.blogspot.com/2009/10/retribution-hell-and-roman-polanski.html
This is confused. By his own admission, opponents of everlasting punishment regard the duration of the punishment as, itself a punishment. And they equate disproportionate punishment with disproportionate duration.
Therefore, their objection only makes sense under the presumption that guilt diminishes over time. If not, then why would the everlasting duration of the punishment be unjust? Unless the damned are less culpable with the passage of time, why would the duration of the punishment be disproportionate?
“There are two standard responses to it. One if that in the case of sin, the offended party is God, and therefore sin, (unlike crime) can and always does deserve an infinite punishment. That seemed more plausible back when people were thought of as standing on different levels of the Great Chain of Being, and a crime against a nobleman was thought more heinous than a crime against a commoner, for that reason only.”
i) That’s a skewed way of putting it. Let’s state the principle more accurately. Social obligations are often a matter of degree.
For example, we have laws against animal cruelty. Let’s say it’s wrong to inflict wanton harm on a dog. However, it’s worse to inflict wanton harm on a child.
Likewise, it’s worse to cheat your own mother than it is to cheat on a spelling test.
Our greatest obligations are to God, since he is the source of our being and wellbeing. Therefore, the worst sins are sins of ingratitude towards our Maker.
ii) I’ve also pointed out on many occasions that “infinite” is a misleading world to characterize everlasting punishment.
“What is more, there is a statute of limitations for many crimes, but no statute for the most heinous crimes. But hell, presumably, is for sinners of every type, and Protestants at least reject the idea that some sins are ‘venial’ and do not threaten a person's salvation.”
This assumes that damnable sins fall short of heinous sins. Where’s the argument?
http://dangerousidea.blogspot.com/2009/10/retribution-hell-and-roman-polanski.html
This is confused. By his own admission, opponents of everlasting punishment regard the duration of the punishment as, itself a punishment. And they equate disproportionate punishment with disproportionate duration.
Therefore, their objection only makes sense under the presumption that guilt diminishes over time. If not, then why would the everlasting duration of the punishment be unjust? Unless the damned are less culpable with the passage of time, why would the duration of the punishment be disproportionate?
“There are two standard responses to it. One if that in the case of sin, the offended party is God, and therefore sin, (unlike crime) can and always does deserve an infinite punishment. That seemed more plausible back when people were thought of as standing on different levels of the Great Chain of Being, and a crime against a nobleman was thought more heinous than a crime against a commoner, for that reason only.”
i) That’s a skewed way of putting it. Let’s state the principle more accurately. Social obligations are often a matter of degree.
For example, we have laws against animal cruelty. Let’s say it’s wrong to inflict wanton harm on a dog. However, it’s worse to inflict wanton harm on a child.
Likewise, it’s worse to cheat your own mother than it is to cheat on a spelling test.
Our greatest obligations are to God, since he is the source of our being and wellbeing. Therefore, the worst sins are sins of ingratitude towards our Maker.
ii) I’ve also pointed out on many occasions that “infinite” is a misleading world to characterize everlasting punishment.
“What is more, there is a statute of limitations for many crimes, but no statute for the most heinous crimes. But hell, presumably, is for sinners of every type, and Protestants at least reject the idea that some sins are ‘venial’ and do not threaten a person's salvation.”
This assumes that damnable sins fall short of heinous sins. Where’s the argument?
Reppert on HMOs
“This is a paper that was given at a right-to-life meeting, and it is a case against an Oregon-style assisted suicide law. But look at what it says about the role HMOs play in protecting the sanctity of human life. The death panels are already a reality.”
http://dangerousidea.blogspot.com/2009/10/hmos-and-assisted-suicide.html
This is Reppert’s argument for Obamacare?
1.To begin with, this has nothing to do with HMOs, per se. If some states have assisted-suicide laws, then that’s a “service” or “medical procedure” which health-care providers will be required to offer their patients.
The answer to that problem is to have a Federal ban on assisted-suicide.
2.Reppert is also overlooking the instrumental role of gov’t in the rise of HMOs. So how is that an argument for an even more expansive role for gov’t in healthcare? Case in point:
We should remember that HMOs did not arise because of free-market demand, but rather because of government mandates. The HMO Act of 1973 requires all but the smallest employers to offer their employees HMO coverage, and the tax code allows businesses – but not individuals – to deduct the cost of health insurance premiums. The result is the illogical coupling of employment and health insurance, which often leaves the unemployed without needed catastrophic coverage.
While many in Congress are happy to criticize HMOs today, the public never hears how the present system was imposed upon the American people by federal law. As usual, government intervention in the private market failed to deliver the promised benefits and caused unintended consequences, but Congress never blames itself for the problems created by bad laws. Instead, we are told more government – in the form of “universal coverage” – is the answer. But government already is involved in roughly two-thirds of all health care spending, through Medicare, Medicaid, and other programs.
For decades, the U.S. healthcare system was the envy of the entire world. Not coincidentally, there was far less government involvement in medicine during this time. America had the finest doctors and hospitals, patients enjoyed high-quality, affordable medical care, and thousands of private charities provided health services for the poor. Doctors focused on treating patients, without the red tape and threat of lawsuits that plague the profession today. Most Americans paid cash for basic services, and had insurance only for major illnesses and accidents. This meant both doctors and patients had an incentive to keep costs down, as the patient was directly responsible for payment, rather than an HMO or government program.
The lesson is clear: when government and other third parties get involved, health care costs spiral. The answer is not a system of outright socialized medicine, but rather a system that encourages everyone – doctors, hospitals, patients, and drug companies – to keep costs down. As long as “somebody else” is paying the bill, the bill will be too high.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul339.html
http://dangerousidea.blogspot.com/2009/10/hmos-and-assisted-suicide.html
This is Reppert’s argument for Obamacare?
1.To begin with, this has nothing to do with HMOs, per se. If some states have assisted-suicide laws, then that’s a “service” or “medical procedure” which health-care providers will be required to offer their patients.
The answer to that problem is to have a Federal ban on assisted-suicide.
2.Reppert is also overlooking the instrumental role of gov’t in the rise of HMOs. So how is that an argument for an even more expansive role for gov’t in healthcare? Case in point:
We should remember that HMOs did not arise because of free-market demand, but rather because of government mandates. The HMO Act of 1973 requires all but the smallest employers to offer their employees HMO coverage, and the tax code allows businesses – but not individuals – to deduct the cost of health insurance premiums. The result is the illogical coupling of employment and health insurance, which often leaves the unemployed without needed catastrophic coverage.
While many in Congress are happy to criticize HMOs today, the public never hears how the present system was imposed upon the American people by federal law. As usual, government intervention in the private market failed to deliver the promised benefits and caused unintended consequences, but Congress never blames itself for the problems created by bad laws. Instead, we are told more government – in the form of “universal coverage” – is the answer. But government already is involved in roughly two-thirds of all health care spending, through Medicare, Medicaid, and other programs.
For decades, the U.S. healthcare system was the envy of the entire world. Not coincidentally, there was far less government involvement in medicine during this time. America had the finest doctors and hospitals, patients enjoyed high-quality, affordable medical care, and thousands of private charities provided health services for the poor. Doctors focused on treating patients, without the red tape and threat of lawsuits that plague the profession today. Most Americans paid cash for basic services, and had insurance only for major illnesses and accidents. This meant both doctors and patients had an incentive to keep costs down, as the patient was directly responsible for payment, rather than an HMO or government program.
The lesson is clear: when government and other third parties get involved, health care costs spiral. The answer is not a system of outright socialized medicine, but rather a system that encourages everyone – doctors, hospitals, patients, and drug companies – to keep costs down. As long as “somebody else” is paying the bill, the bill will be too high.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul339.html
Reppert on Obamacare
“You wouldn't happen to know where this is in the bill, or what Obama statement this comes from?”
For example:
“Section 123 (30) – Establishes a ‘Health Benefits Advisory Committee to recommend covered benefits and essential, enhanced, and premium plans.’ The Advisory Committee would be chaired by the Surgeon General and include members appointed by the President, the Comptroller General, and representatives of relevant federal agencies.”
http://www.house.gov/ryan/speeches_and_editorials/2009speechesandeditorials/73109RJTblog.htm
Back to Reppert:
“If they are Presidential appointees, and they did something like this, it would fall back on the President's head politically. If someone were victimized in such a way, they would run straight to FOX News and tell their story (assuming the rest of the media is too biased to listen). I certainly would.”
I thought you didn’t approve of single-issue voters. Now, however, you’re suggesting that a president’s chances for reelection should turn on whether or not the electorate approves of how his healthcare appointees perform. Is that it?
Customers of insurance companies or HMOs judge their healthcare providers by how well or badly they provide healthcare.
By contrast, the policies of the Executive Branch involve a complex package of issues–some more important than others. Some more important to some voters than other voters.
“The present system is prohibitive for people of modest income who don't have a large enough full-time enployer to provide coverage (I know, since almost all my work has been part time for the last 19 years--full time in total, but part time per employer), there are pre-existing condition exclusions, people get dropped by their insurance companies when the get sick, and there are lifetime caps on what insurance companies will pay for a person's care.”
i) To begin with, Obamacare is not about making healthcare available to everyone who needs it and/or wants it.
Rather, this is about mandating that everyone pay for it whether or not they need it or want it. So access is not the issue. It forces everyone to be covered to cover those who currently lack coverage, but need it or want it. So it’s not about equality of opportunity, but equality of outcome. Let’s be clear on that.
ii) Likewise, this is not about making healthcare more affordable for all. As one legal analyst, who is not a rightwing ideologue, points out:
* "The problem of rising costs." The centerpiece of Obama's advocacy has been that "my plan" will "slow the growth of health care costs," now nearly 17 percent of gross domestic product and racing higher. But his plan would quite clearly increase costs dramatically, which is why he is proposing so many new taxes, "fees," and other levies.
Mandating health insurance (or Medicaid) for 30 million more people will cost hundreds of billions of dollars. Requiring insurers to accept people with costly-to-treat pre-existing conditions will cost billions more.
These particular costs are justifiable, in my view. But they are surely costs. And they are not sustainable in the long run unless they are offset by savings far more serious than Congress is likely to adopt on Medicare (see below) or anything else.
While Obama and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., have proposed significant steps to restrain the growth of health care costs, to their credit, it would probably require much more focused public advocacy to persuade Congress to make fundamental changes in the single biggest driver of the waste and inefficiency that feeds health care inflation. That is the fee-for-service system, under which doctors make more money if they do as many marginally beneficial and arguably unneeded procedures and tests as possible.
Nor has the president made more than a token effort (by proposing to tax "Cadillac" insurance policies) to give consumers a stake in holding down costs. People who would decline to pay out of pocket for many tests, treatments, and drugs almost always consent to them when insurance picks up the tab. And insurance plans often cover such wasteful costs. Because of a decades-old tax subsidy, employer-provided insurance covers not only the necessary, unexpectedly large costs that consumers cannot afford -- the traditional reason for buying insurance -- but also many not-so-necessary tests, procedures, and drugs.
The bill proposed by Baucus, which Obama backs except on some details, would diminish consumers' already weak incentives to hold down costs by requiring insurers to reduce co-payments and deductibles.
* Slashing Medicare's waste and fraud. Obama has vowed to save "hundreds of billions in waste and fraud" from Medicare -- without affecting benefits. This is a fantasy discredited by the countless broken promises of other politicians over the decades to do the same and by Obama's own failure to offer credible specifics.
While Medicare includes plenty of waste, much of it is inextricably intertwined with the benefits that Obama promises not to cut. The Congressional Budget Office has confirmed that the Baucus bill's $130 billion in cuts (over 10 years) to Medicare's managed-care plans would reduce benefits. Some benefits probably should be cut as insufficiently cost-effective. But that doesn't make them "waste and fraud."
* Preventive care saves money? Obama has suggested that requiring insurance companies "to cover, with no extra charge, routine checkups and preventive care" will cut costs. The opposite is probably true. Although judicious expansion of preventive care makes sense, the savings from early detection of some medical problems will be exceeded by the overall cost of requiring insurers to cover tests and marginally beneficial (as well as necessary) preventive care.
My daily statin pill seems sort of necessary (to me, at least) because it may extend my life by keeping my cholesterol down. But it costs my insurer over $2 a day and lessens my incentive to cut cholesterol by changing my diet. Justified costs are still costs: The longer statins keep me alive, the more my other medical problems will cost my insurer and eventually Medicare.
* "Absolutely not a tax increase." That was Obama's response when asked by ABC News about what Baucus calls the "excise tax" of as much as $3,800 a year (since lowered to $1,900) on families who defy his bill's mandate to buy comprehensive health insurance.
The mandate itself is a kind of tax. CBO projected that by 2016, the original Baucus bill would require an individual earning $32,400 a year to pay $4,100 in premiums before getting any subsidy, plus an average $1,500 in deductibles and co-payments. (The much cheaper catastrophic coverage that many people would prefer would not satisfy the mandate.) Baucus has been scrambling to lower these premiums by raising subsidies. But the only ways to get the money are to raise other mandated premiums or taxes, make more Medicare cuts, or incur bigger deficits.
So much for Obama's campaign pledge that "no family making less than $250,000 will see their taxes increase." Maybe it's a good idea to require young, healthy people to buy more-costly insurance than they want or need and then use their premiums to subsidize older, sicker people. But it's deceptive to pretend that this is not a tax.
Consumers would also end up paying the original Baucus bill's 35 percent excise tax on insurance companies that offer Cadillac policies valued at $8,000 (now $8,750) for individuals or $21,000 (now $23,000) for families -- an estimated $215 billion over 10 years -- and more than $50 billion in fees on medical devices, lab tests, and prescription drugs. Plus $27 billion in taxes on employers who don't provide health insurance.
* Deficits won't increase? Obama vowed in his September 9 speech, "I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits -- either now or in the future." The good news is that this should force Congress to produce a plan that at least looks deficit-neutral.
The bad news -- apart from the illusory nature of the promised cuts in Medicare waste and fraud -- is that Obama added an escape hatch. His plan "requires us to come forward with more spending cuts if the savings we promised don't materialize." But when they don't, the "required" cuts probably won't materialize either. That's because nothing can force Congress to deliver any future savings that it "requires" now.
Not to mention the fact that the tax revenues mentioned above would be available to reduce the government's alarmingly gargantuan non-health-care deficits if they weren't spent on Obama's health care plan.
http://www.nationaljournal.com/njmagazine/or_20090923_7256.php
iii) Apropos (ii), you haven’t explained how Obamacare lowers the cost of healthcare. Just because you think something is a nice idea, just because you think we have a problem, doesn’t mean your “solution” is financially feasible. Just because you think something ought to be the case doesn’t make it possible. Reality isn’t infinitely malleable to your wishes.
iv) If insurance companies could never exclude applicants based on preexisting conditions, then there would be no incentive to purchase health insurance until you got sick. Yet insurance companies can only afford to pay you if you back (and others) have been paying into their system for a while.
v) Preexisting conditions are not all of a kind. For example, there is no moral obligation on my part to subsidize someone’s high-risk behavior. If somebody is a chain-smoker, and comes down with lung cancer, I’m under no obligation to subsidize his treatment. If somebody comes down with diabetes because he’s morbidly obese, I’m under no obligation to subsidize his treatment. And, frankly, the needs of my own family come first.
vi) You’re also setting up a false dichotomy by acting as if we must choose between the status quo and Obamacare. But you and I both go back to a time when people didn’t need health insurance to see the doctor. Likewise, when I was a kid, we didn’t go through an HMO to see the doctor.
vii) There’s a trade-off between universal care and the quality care. In a private, fee-for-service system, a doctor has no incentive to ration care. He will provide whatever medical service you can afford.
The incentive to ration care only kicks in when you’re attempting to equalize care.
So it’s a trade-off between lesser care for everyone, or better care for some, and lesser care for others.
You could propose a utilitarian justification for universal healthcare. Since, however, you’re a deontologist rather than a utilitarian, the common good defense is not an option you can use.
“All Obama's public option can do is deny payment, not deny care.”
Are you proposing an unfunded mandate?
If healthcare providers aren’t reimbursed for their services, they will go out of business.
“To actually deny care you have to have a single-payer system in which the health care and health payment are provided by the same governmental entity.”
Of course, Democrats admit that the public option is just a Trojan horse for a single-payer system.
The rest of your paragraph piggybacks on faulty assumptions I’ve already addressed.
For example:
“Section 123 (30) – Establishes a ‘Health Benefits Advisory Committee to recommend covered benefits and essential, enhanced, and premium plans.’ The Advisory Committee would be chaired by the Surgeon General and include members appointed by the President, the Comptroller General, and representatives of relevant federal agencies.”
http://www.house.gov/ryan/speeches_and_editorials/2009speechesandeditorials/73109RJTblog.htm
Back to Reppert:
“If they are Presidential appointees, and they did something like this, it would fall back on the President's head politically. If someone were victimized in such a way, they would run straight to FOX News and tell their story (assuming the rest of the media is too biased to listen). I certainly would.”
I thought you didn’t approve of single-issue voters. Now, however, you’re suggesting that a president’s chances for reelection should turn on whether or not the electorate approves of how his healthcare appointees perform. Is that it?
Customers of insurance companies or HMOs judge their healthcare providers by how well or badly they provide healthcare.
By contrast, the policies of the Executive Branch involve a complex package of issues–some more important than others. Some more important to some voters than other voters.
“The present system is prohibitive for people of modest income who don't have a large enough full-time enployer to provide coverage (I know, since almost all my work has been part time for the last 19 years--full time in total, but part time per employer), there are pre-existing condition exclusions, people get dropped by their insurance companies when the get sick, and there are lifetime caps on what insurance companies will pay for a person's care.”
i) To begin with, Obamacare is not about making healthcare available to everyone who needs it and/or wants it.
Rather, this is about mandating that everyone pay for it whether or not they need it or want it. So access is not the issue. It forces everyone to be covered to cover those who currently lack coverage, but need it or want it. So it’s not about equality of opportunity, but equality of outcome. Let’s be clear on that.
ii) Likewise, this is not about making healthcare more affordable for all. As one legal analyst, who is not a rightwing ideologue, points out:
* "The problem of rising costs." The centerpiece of Obama's advocacy has been that "my plan" will "slow the growth of health care costs," now nearly 17 percent of gross domestic product and racing higher. But his plan would quite clearly increase costs dramatically, which is why he is proposing so many new taxes, "fees," and other levies.
Mandating health insurance (or Medicaid) for 30 million more people will cost hundreds of billions of dollars. Requiring insurers to accept people with costly-to-treat pre-existing conditions will cost billions more.
These particular costs are justifiable, in my view. But they are surely costs. And they are not sustainable in the long run unless they are offset by savings far more serious than Congress is likely to adopt on Medicare (see below) or anything else.
While Obama and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., have proposed significant steps to restrain the growth of health care costs, to their credit, it would probably require much more focused public advocacy to persuade Congress to make fundamental changes in the single biggest driver of the waste and inefficiency that feeds health care inflation. That is the fee-for-service system, under which doctors make more money if they do as many marginally beneficial and arguably unneeded procedures and tests as possible.
Nor has the president made more than a token effort (by proposing to tax "Cadillac" insurance policies) to give consumers a stake in holding down costs. People who would decline to pay out of pocket for many tests, treatments, and drugs almost always consent to them when insurance picks up the tab. And insurance plans often cover such wasteful costs. Because of a decades-old tax subsidy, employer-provided insurance covers not only the necessary, unexpectedly large costs that consumers cannot afford -- the traditional reason for buying insurance -- but also many not-so-necessary tests, procedures, and drugs.
The bill proposed by Baucus, which Obama backs except on some details, would diminish consumers' already weak incentives to hold down costs by requiring insurers to reduce co-payments and deductibles.
* Slashing Medicare's waste and fraud. Obama has vowed to save "hundreds of billions in waste and fraud" from Medicare -- without affecting benefits. This is a fantasy discredited by the countless broken promises of other politicians over the decades to do the same and by Obama's own failure to offer credible specifics.
While Medicare includes plenty of waste, much of it is inextricably intertwined with the benefits that Obama promises not to cut. The Congressional Budget Office has confirmed that the Baucus bill's $130 billion in cuts (over 10 years) to Medicare's managed-care plans would reduce benefits. Some benefits probably should be cut as insufficiently cost-effective. But that doesn't make them "waste and fraud."
* Preventive care saves money? Obama has suggested that requiring insurance companies "to cover, with no extra charge, routine checkups and preventive care" will cut costs. The opposite is probably true. Although judicious expansion of preventive care makes sense, the savings from early detection of some medical problems will be exceeded by the overall cost of requiring insurers to cover tests and marginally beneficial (as well as necessary) preventive care.
My daily statin pill seems sort of necessary (to me, at least) because it may extend my life by keeping my cholesterol down. But it costs my insurer over $2 a day and lessens my incentive to cut cholesterol by changing my diet. Justified costs are still costs: The longer statins keep me alive, the more my other medical problems will cost my insurer and eventually Medicare.
* "Absolutely not a tax increase." That was Obama's response when asked by ABC News about what Baucus calls the "excise tax" of as much as $3,800 a year (since lowered to $1,900) on families who defy his bill's mandate to buy comprehensive health insurance.
The mandate itself is a kind of tax. CBO projected that by 2016, the original Baucus bill would require an individual earning $32,400 a year to pay $4,100 in premiums before getting any subsidy, plus an average $1,500 in deductibles and co-payments. (The much cheaper catastrophic coverage that many people would prefer would not satisfy the mandate.) Baucus has been scrambling to lower these premiums by raising subsidies. But the only ways to get the money are to raise other mandated premiums or taxes, make more Medicare cuts, or incur bigger deficits.
So much for Obama's campaign pledge that "no family making less than $250,000 will see their taxes increase." Maybe it's a good idea to require young, healthy people to buy more-costly insurance than they want or need and then use their premiums to subsidize older, sicker people. But it's deceptive to pretend that this is not a tax.
Consumers would also end up paying the original Baucus bill's 35 percent excise tax on insurance companies that offer Cadillac policies valued at $8,000 (now $8,750) for individuals or $21,000 (now $23,000) for families -- an estimated $215 billion over 10 years -- and more than $50 billion in fees on medical devices, lab tests, and prescription drugs. Plus $27 billion in taxes on employers who don't provide health insurance.
* Deficits won't increase? Obama vowed in his September 9 speech, "I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits -- either now or in the future." The good news is that this should force Congress to produce a plan that at least looks deficit-neutral.
The bad news -- apart from the illusory nature of the promised cuts in Medicare waste and fraud -- is that Obama added an escape hatch. His plan "requires us to come forward with more spending cuts if the savings we promised don't materialize." But when they don't, the "required" cuts probably won't materialize either. That's because nothing can force Congress to deliver any future savings that it "requires" now.
Not to mention the fact that the tax revenues mentioned above would be available to reduce the government's alarmingly gargantuan non-health-care deficits if they weren't spent on Obama's health care plan.
http://www.nationaljournal.com/njmagazine/or_20090923_7256.php
iii) Apropos (ii), you haven’t explained how Obamacare lowers the cost of healthcare. Just because you think something is a nice idea, just because you think we have a problem, doesn’t mean your “solution” is financially feasible. Just because you think something ought to be the case doesn’t make it possible. Reality isn’t infinitely malleable to your wishes.
iv) If insurance companies could never exclude applicants based on preexisting conditions, then there would be no incentive to purchase health insurance until you got sick. Yet insurance companies can only afford to pay you if you back (and others) have been paying into their system for a while.
v) Preexisting conditions are not all of a kind. For example, there is no moral obligation on my part to subsidize someone’s high-risk behavior. If somebody is a chain-smoker, and comes down with lung cancer, I’m under no obligation to subsidize his treatment. If somebody comes down with diabetes because he’s morbidly obese, I’m under no obligation to subsidize his treatment. And, frankly, the needs of my own family come first.
vi) You’re also setting up a false dichotomy by acting as if we must choose between the status quo and Obamacare. But you and I both go back to a time when people didn’t need health insurance to see the doctor. Likewise, when I was a kid, we didn’t go through an HMO to see the doctor.
vii) There’s a trade-off between universal care and the quality care. In a private, fee-for-service system, a doctor has no incentive to ration care. He will provide whatever medical service you can afford.
The incentive to ration care only kicks in when you’re attempting to equalize care.
So it’s a trade-off between lesser care for everyone, or better care for some, and lesser care for others.
You could propose a utilitarian justification for universal healthcare. Since, however, you’re a deontologist rather than a utilitarian, the common good defense is not an option you can use.
“All Obama's public option can do is deny payment, not deny care.”
Are you proposing an unfunded mandate?
If healthcare providers aren’t reimbursed for their services, they will go out of business.
“To actually deny care you have to have a single-payer system in which the health care and health payment are provided by the same governmental entity.”
Of course, Democrats admit that the public option is just a Trojan horse for a single-payer system.
The rest of your paragraph piggybacks on faulty assumptions I’ve already addressed.
Monday, October 05, 2009
False Flag operation
“About 2002 or 2003 I [Robin Parry] wrote a book called The Evangelical Universalist…I kept my identity secret in the first instance to protect my employer. Sadly there are some Christians out there who would not be at all happy to know that the Editorial Director for Paternoster is a believer in universal restoration…So to avoid unnecessary difficulties for my employer I kept my real name out of it until enough people had read the book…”
http://theologicalscribbles.blogspot.com/2009/08/i-am-evangelical-universalist.html
http://theologicalscribbles.blogspot.com/2009/08/i-am-evangelical-universalist.html
The Speech Police
CRAIG BLOMBERG SAID:
“The policy on inclusive-language was created over 20 years ago in the late 1980's when 2/3 of the faculty were complementarians. I don't know of anyone today who actually penalizes students for not following the policy as a few did 20 years ago. We just encourage students to follow it and be sensitive to their brothers and sisters. If bloggers wouldn't jump to assumptions of things they have no way of actually knowing, then there wouldn't need to be so many retractions…Truth truly does divide when the ones being divided from are as quick to state unfounded opinions as truth without checking up on them as you folks are [emphasis mine].”
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2009/10/speech-codes.html#5945505826871314639
“Here are the standards I [Douglas Groothuis] give my students for their papers for me…The Denver Seminary Student Handbook stipulates that you must use inclusive language. Do not use ‘mankind,’ ‘man,’ etc., when you are referring to both women and men. Papers not consistently using inclusive language will be downgraded one-half grade. For help in this matter see ‘Guidelines for Non-sexist Use of Language’ from the American Philosophical Association [emphasis mine].”
http://theconstructivecurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2009/09/tips-for-writing-philosophy-papers.html
“The policy on inclusive-language was created over 20 years ago in the late 1980's when 2/3 of the faculty were complementarians. I don't know of anyone today who actually penalizes students for not following the policy as a few did 20 years ago. We just encourage students to follow it and be sensitive to their brothers and sisters. If bloggers wouldn't jump to assumptions of things they have no way of actually knowing, then there wouldn't need to be so many retractions…Truth truly does divide when the ones being divided from are as quick to state unfounded opinions as truth without checking up on them as you folks are [emphasis mine].”
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2009/10/speech-codes.html#5945505826871314639
“Here are the standards I [Douglas Groothuis] give my students for their papers for me…The Denver Seminary Student Handbook stipulates that you must use inclusive language. Do not use ‘mankind,’ ‘man,’ etc., when you are referring to both women and men. Papers not consistently using inclusive language will be downgraded one-half grade. For help in this matter see ‘Guidelines for Non-sexist Use of Language’ from the American Philosophical Association [emphasis mine].”
http://theconstructivecurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2009/09/tips-for-writing-philosophy-papers.html
Dr. Blomberg on speech-codes
CRAIG BLOMBERG SAID:
“Steve, you obviously haven't read our document in its entirety or at all carefully or you are basing your information on inaccurate second-hand material.”
I quoted verbatim from the handbook and gave the url.
“We all use the appropriate pronoun (he for men, she for women) when referring to specific people. Quotations of others' works must preserve their exact wording.”
I quoted from the section on “Writing with Gender-Neutral Language” (pp11-13). Where does that section make allowance for gender-specific singular usage?
“Faculty are not required to be egalitarian--about 40% of us are not.”
Then why does your seminary impose an egalitarian speech-code on the student body?
“If asking students to change a sentence like ‘Each student must bring his Bible to class’ to ‘All students must bring their Bibles to class’ is some horrible theological or literary infringement in someone's mind, they probably need a larger view of contemporary realities. Which is more important--to stop perpetuating the myth that keeps some people from becoming Christian, namely, that evangelicals are hopelessly sexist in their language or to ask mature believers to apply 1 Corinthians 9:19-23?”
Of course, that’s a false dichotomy. Instead of capitulating to the pansexual standards of the power elite, we should use their offended reaction as an opportunity to explain to them the Christian worldview, including the Biblical doctrine of creation.
“Yes, being a Christian does involve putting others' concerns above self (Phil 2:4, rightly translated in the TNIV as over against the NIV), but I don't hear any of that in this post.”
i) Once again, that’s a tendentious way to frame the issue. It’s not as if a Christian who has a principled reason to use gender-specific language has anything personally to gain from such usage.
ii) We also need to distinguish between the genuine concerns of others and artificial concerns which are driven by a value-system that is diametrically opposed to the Christian worldview.
iii) Apropos (ii), the better part of putting someone else’s interests ahead of our own is to properly diagnose their true interests in the first place, and deal with their actual needs. Catering to liberal prejudice is hardly the best way to minister to a lost world.
“If this tiny restriction for the sake of the gospel is to be labelled political correctness run amuck, it's time for the authors of such labels to turn their computers off and join the real world of the rest of us trying to reach lost and dying people for Christ!”
Among other issues, that’s a terribly provincial and ethnocentric view of the lost world. Many traditional cultures would be offended by unisex language. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t both appeal to cross-cultural evangelism and also impose an egalitarian speech-code on patriarchal cultures.
“Why is it that every time my attention is drawn to Triablogue it's because it is being critical of a fellow Christian, usually unnecessarily, usually with a carping tone, and without any sense that people have actually tried to understand where the person being criticized is coming from or to give them the benefit of the doubt that they might be well-intentioned. It's time for this blogsite to make a 180 degree U-turn in substance and in tone, or just stop posting. The Bible calls it ‘repentance’.”
i) Just to set the record straight–your otherwise admirable seminary is the institution guilty of discriminating against fellow Christians. So I think it would behoove you to emulate the same tolerance towards your student body that you’re so quick to urge on others.
ii) I’d add that giving people the benefit of the doubt that they might be well-intentioned is a two-way street. I don’t see you putting that into practice where Triablogue is concerned.
iii) In case you’re also alluding to my comments on your Molinist post, Jeremy Pierce said much the same thing:
http://parablemania.ektopos.com/archives/2009/07/calminianism.html
Do you think that he should either repent or stop posting?
Dr. Blomberg. You’re a great ornament to the evangelical church. You’ve done wonderful work in the field of inerrancy and the historical Jesus. You’ve authored or coauthored some fine commentaries, as well as a great 2-volume intro to the NT. Not to mention a lot of other useful stuff.
It would behoove you not to stake so much personal capital on this particular issue.
I’m a bit puzzled by your hair-trigger reaction, especially since I said nothing about you in my post. Perhaps this is, in part, a holdover from the grief you took for your published debate with Stephen Robinson. I happen to think the criticism of your participation and performance was generally unfair.
“Steve, you obviously haven't read our document in its entirety or at all carefully or you are basing your information on inaccurate second-hand material.”
I quoted verbatim from the handbook and gave the url.
“We all use the appropriate pronoun (he for men, she for women) when referring to specific people. Quotations of others' works must preserve their exact wording.”
I quoted from the section on “Writing with Gender-Neutral Language” (pp11-13). Where does that section make allowance for gender-specific singular usage?
“Faculty are not required to be egalitarian--about 40% of us are not.”
Then why does your seminary impose an egalitarian speech-code on the student body?
“If asking students to change a sentence like ‘Each student must bring his Bible to class’ to ‘All students must bring their Bibles to class’ is some horrible theological or literary infringement in someone's mind, they probably need a larger view of contemporary realities. Which is more important--to stop perpetuating the myth that keeps some people from becoming Christian, namely, that evangelicals are hopelessly sexist in their language or to ask mature believers to apply 1 Corinthians 9:19-23?”
Of course, that’s a false dichotomy. Instead of capitulating to the pansexual standards of the power elite, we should use their offended reaction as an opportunity to explain to them the Christian worldview, including the Biblical doctrine of creation.
“Yes, being a Christian does involve putting others' concerns above self (Phil 2:4, rightly translated in the TNIV as over against the NIV), but I don't hear any of that in this post.”
i) Once again, that’s a tendentious way to frame the issue. It’s not as if a Christian who has a principled reason to use gender-specific language has anything personally to gain from such usage.
ii) We also need to distinguish between the genuine concerns of others and artificial concerns which are driven by a value-system that is diametrically opposed to the Christian worldview.
iii) Apropos (ii), the better part of putting someone else’s interests ahead of our own is to properly diagnose their true interests in the first place, and deal with their actual needs. Catering to liberal prejudice is hardly the best way to minister to a lost world.
“If this tiny restriction for the sake of the gospel is to be labelled political correctness run amuck, it's time for the authors of such labels to turn their computers off and join the real world of the rest of us trying to reach lost and dying people for Christ!”
Among other issues, that’s a terribly provincial and ethnocentric view of the lost world. Many traditional cultures would be offended by unisex language. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t both appeal to cross-cultural evangelism and also impose an egalitarian speech-code on patriarchal cultures.
“Why is it that every time my attention is drawn to Triablogue it's because it is being critical of a fellow Christian, usually unnecessarily, usually with a carping tone, and without any sense that people have actually tried to understand where the person being criticized is coming from or to give them the benefit of the doubt that they might be well-intentioned. It's time for this blogsite to make a 180 degree U-turn in substance and in tone, or just stop posting. The Bible calls it ‘repentance’.”
i) Just to set the record straight–your otherwise admirable seminary is the institution guilty of discriminating against fellow Christians. So I think it would behoove you to emulate the same tolerance towards your student body that you’re so quick to urge on others.
ii) I’d add that giving people the benefit of the doubt that they might be well-intentioned is a two-way street. I don’t see you putting that into practice where Triablogue is concerned.
iii) In case you’re also alluding to my comments on your Molinist post, Jeremy Pierce said much the same thing:
http://parablemania.ektopos.com/archives/2009/07/calminianism.html
Do you think that he should either repent or stop posting?
Dr. Blomberg. You’re a great ornament to the evangelical church. You’ve done wonderful work in the field of inerrancy and the historical Jesus. You’ve authored or coauthored some fine commentaries, as well as a great 2-volume intro to the NT. Not to mention a lot of other useful stuff.
It would behoove you not to stake so much personal capital on this particular issue.
I’m a bit puzzled by your hair-trigger reaction, especially since I said nothing about you in my post. Perhaps this is, in part, a holdover from the grief you took for your published debate with Stephen Robinson. I happen to think the criticism of your participation and performance was generally unfair.
God's firemen
Many victims of fire die in their sleep–overcome by smoke inhalation. Oblivious to the fire. Oblivious to the peril. They don’t even know that they are dying–until it’s too late to flee the flames.
A Christian is like a sleeper in a burning apartment complex. God awakened him. Awakened him before he succumbed to smoke inhalation. Awakened him before the fire cut off his only escape route.
In principle, he would race out outside and watch it burn down from a safe distance. Then go on with his life. Start a new life. Make new friends. Put it all behind him.
Instead, he pounds on doors up and down the hallway to awaken his fellow tenants. If they don’t respond, he will bust the door down and carry his incapacitated neighbor out of the building, then return to rescue others.
He can’t awaken them all. He can’t rescue them all. But he does what he can, while he can–before the building is engulfed in flames.
A Christian is like a sleeper in a burning apartment complex. God awakened him. Awakened him before he succumbed to smoke inhalation. Awakened him before the fire cut off his only escape route.
In principle, he would race out outside and watch it burn down from a safe distance. Then go on with his life. Start a new life. Make new friends. Put it all behind him.
Instead, he pounds on doors up and down the hallway to awaken his fellow tenants. If they don’t respond, he will bust the door down and carry his incapacitated neighbor out of the building, then return to rescue others.
He can’t awaken them all. He can’t rescue them all. But he does what he can, while he can–before the building is engulfed in flames.
Sunday, October 04, 2009
A Simple-Minded Test for Arguments Against ObamaCare
A very simple problem arises when people attack Obama's health care proposals. If you are afraid "the government might have death panels," "the government might make you wait weeks for care" etc. etc., you then have to show why this either doesn't happen or won't happen if we keep the current system, with insurance companies in control of funding health care.
We know that insurance companies do exclude people because of pre-existing conditions, they do revoke coverage if you get sick, and they do put lifetime caps on the care that they will fund. We also know that they have to pay huge CEO salaries that dwarf even the President's annual paycheck. So if you are going to argue against Obama's plan, just please tell me what you are afraid the government will do and why you think you don't have to worry about United Health or whoever your private insusre is doing the same darn thing.
I'm not saying that there aren't any arguments that can be made against Obama's plan. What I am saying is that you can't make these arguments without comparing what you are objecting to with present reality.
http://dangerousidea.blogspot.com/2009/10/simple-test-for-arguments-against.html
The death panelists would be presidential appointees. They wouldn’t be elected. And they wouldn’t be subject to Congressional advice, consent, or oversight.
Indeed, the whole point is to insulate them from the democratic process so that they can make unpopular choices that politicians are afraid to make.
By contrast, insurance companies, to stay in business, need to please their customers. They don’t have to please all their customers all the time. But they are responsive to those whom their policies affect in a way that death panels are not.
We know that insurance companies do exclude people because of pre-existing conditions, they do revoke coverage if you get sick, and they do put lifetime caps on the care that they will fund. We also know that they have to pay huge CEO salaries that dwarf even the President's annual paycheck. So if you are going to argue against Obama's plan, just please tell me what you are afraid the government will do and why you think you don't have to worry about United Health or whoever your private insusre is doing the same darn thing.
I'm not saying that there aren't any arguments that can be made against Obama's plan. What I am saying is that you can't make these arguments without comparing what you are objecting to with present reality.
http://dangerousidea.blogspot.com/2009/10/simple-test-for-arguments-against.html
The death panelists would be presidential appointees. They wouldn’t be elected. And they wouldn’t be subject to Congressional advice, consent, or oversight.
Indeed, the whole point is to insulate them from the democratic process so that they can make unpopular choices that politicians are afraid to make.
By contrast, insurance companies, to stay in business, need to please their customers. They don’t have to please all their customers all the time. But they are responsive to those whom their policies affect in a way that death panels are not.
Does hell have a statute of limitations?
One stock objection which atheists raise to Christianity is the doctrine of hell. Hell is unjust, we are told, because the punishment is disproportionate to the crime. The underlying notion is that guilt diminishes over time.
I was reading an article by A. C. Grayling on the Roman Polanski affair. Grayling is a prominent philosopher as well as militant atheist. It’s striking to see him use arguments in the Polanski affair which could be easily adapted to defend the traditional doctrine of hell–inasmuch as he challenges the facile assumption that guilt has an expiration date. Although his argument includes an appeal to deterrence, his argument goes deeper than a purely pragmatic appeal:
The Polanski arrest prompts us to revisit the question of the passage of time and the execution of justice, especially as most people seem to think that Polanski’s offence was committed so long ago, and he has made so many valuable cultural contributions since, that the matter should be dropped. What use, they ask, would it do now to send him to prison? Is it even fair, after all this time?
As so often in thinking about such matters, the answer is that it depends on the nature of the case. Few people would be inclined to forgive and forget in the case of Nazi SS officers who committed atrocities during the Second World War. If a former Nazi mass murderer is found, he is arrested and prosecuted no matter what his age and condition of health. Why? Because the Nazi crimes are the kind that we cannot forgive, and we try to prevent them happening again by stating clearly that perpetrators of them will never be safe from prosecution: for such crimes there is no forgetting, no time limit and no hiding place.
The point is that prosecuting such crimes has a point and purpose now and for the future. It is a matter quite independent of how long ago the crimes were committed. We prosecute and punish in order to maintain our determination not to countenance such crimes.
Rape, murder, child abuse, genocide and crimes against humanity are too serious to allow the mere passage of time to weaken a society’s stand against them…for serious crimes against the person — rape, murder, genocide — there is every justification for a robust and unyielding refusal to let anyone ever escape punishment for them. This holds even when the victims of such crimes, long afterwards, say that they no longer wish to see the perpetrator punished. In their kind and forgiving attitude towards the criminal, they inadvertently forgive the crime; that is something society should not do.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article6852996.ece
I was reading an article by A. C. Grayling on the Roman Polanski affair. Grayling is a prominent philosopher as well as militant atheist. It’s striking to see him use arguments in the Polanski affair which could be easily adapted to defend the traditional doctrine of hell–inasmuch as he challenges the facile assumption that guilt has an expiration date. Although his argument includes an appeal to deterrence, his argument goes deeper than a purely pragmatic appeal:
The Polanski arrest prompts us to revisit the question of the passage of time and the execution of justice, especially as most people seem to think that Polanski’s offence was committed so long ago, and he has made so many valuable cultural contributions since, that the matter should be dropped. What use, they ask, would it do now to send him to prison? Is it even fair, after all this time?
As so often in thinking about such matters, the answer is that it depends on the nature of the case. Few people would be inclined to forgive and forget in the case of Nazi SS officers who committed atrocities during the Second World War. If a former Nazi mass murderer is found, he is arrested and prosecuted no matter what his age and condition of health. Why? Because the Nazi crimes are the kind that we cannot forgive, and we try to prevent them happening again by stating clearly that perpetrators of them will never be safe from prosecution: for such crimes there is no forgetting, no time limit and no hiding place.
The point is that prosecuting such crimes has a point and purpose now and for the future. It is a matter quite independent of how long ago the crimes were committed. We prosecute and punish in order to maintain our determination not to countenance such crimes.
Rape, murder, child abuse, genocide and crimes against humanity are too serious to allow the mere passage of time to weaken a society’s stand against them…for serious crimes against the person — rape, murder, genocide — there is every justification for a robust and unyielding refusal to let anyone ever escape punishment for them. This holds even when the victims of such crimes, long afterwards, say that they no longer wish to see the perpetrator punished. In their kind and forgiving attitude towards the criminal, they inadvertently forgive the crime; that is something society should not do.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article6852996.ece
Speech-codes
We’ve all heard horror stories about speech-codes in liberal academia, where conservative students are persecuted for merely expressing themselves.
However, here’s a striking example of political correctness run amuck at an evangelical seminary:
In your writing at Denver Seminary, you will be required to use gender-neutral language.
In older English, still used in some parts of the English-speaking world, generic nouns later referred to by pronouns used a form of the pronoun “he.” (E.g., “The student should bring his Bible to class.” Today, particularly in the United States, there are increasing numbers of individuals who find this kind of language archaic, confusing and/or offensive. There are ways, however, to avoid using the masculine pronoun in contexts like this, and thus make the language gender-neutral.
http://www.denverseminary.edu/media/student-handbook.pdf
I’ll just venture a few quick comments:
1.Notice that, in the way this speech-code is worded, it not only prohibits the use of the “offensive” masculine pronoun, but it prohibits the use of gender-specific pronouns of either sex (except in artificially compound constructions: “he or she”; “his or her”).
Thus, to be in compliance with the terms of this speech-code, if I were to write a term paper on Christina Rossetti, I’d be downgraded if I referred her as her. Instead, I’d have to contrive unisex circumlocutions to avoid referring to Christina Rossetti as a woman.
Or is it okay to use feminine pronouns, but not masculine pronouns?
2.And beyond that reductio ad absurdum of political correctness, there is the larger issue. Why does an Evangelical seminary discriminate against students who might wish, for either stylistic or theological reasons, to use gender-specific language?
Notice that I’m not discussing the merits of the unisex language debate. I’m not discussing which side is right or wrong on this issue.
I’m just wondering why Denver Seminary doesn’t believe in a minimal degree of academic freedom for students on what ought to be a point of Christian liberty.
If they require the faculty to be egalitarians, that’s their prerogative. But why can’t they permit a bit more diversity among the student body?
When did this become so all-important that the use of gender-specific language on the part of a student is a punishable offense?
That strikes me as oddly legalistic for an evangelical institution in the Baptist tradition. Don’t Baptists traditionally believe in greater freedom of conscience?
3.I also wonder where they draw the line. If a student were to quote a line from Shakespeare which happens to use gender-specific language, would he be downgraded? Must he paraphrase Shakespeare to bring the bard into retroactive compliance with the speech-code?
What if a student writes a term paper about St. Paul. Is he allowed to use masculine singular pronouns in reference to the Apostle?
4.Incidentally, isn’t there something dare I say paternalistic about this speech-code? Are women such fainting violets that they will wither at the sight of a masculine singular pronoun? Do they need to be protected against this body-blow to their frail sensibilities?
5.It also makes me wonder how Denver alumni could survive as missionaries in sexist nations. Would the culture shock be too much for them?
Denver Seminary is a Christian institution with some really fine faculty. It’s a pity to see it degenerate into fanaticism on this particular issue.
However, here’s a striking example of political correctness run amuck at an evangelical seminary:
In your writing at Denver Seminary, you will be required to use gender-neutral language.
In older English, still used in some parts of the English-speaking world, generic nouns later referred to by pronouns used a form of the pronoun “he.” (E.g., “The student should bring his Bible to class.” Today, particularly in the United States, there are increasing numbers of individuals who find this kind of language archaic, confusing and/or offensive. There are ways, however, to avoid using the masculine pronoun in contexts like this, and thus make the language gender-neutral.
http://www.denverseminary.edu/media/student-handbook.pdf
I’ll just venture a few quick comments:
1.Notice that, in the way this speech-code is worded, it not only prohibits the use of the “offensive” masculine pronoun, but it prohibits the use of gender-specific pronouns of either sex (except in artificially compound constructions: “he or she”; “his or her”).
Thus, to be in compliance with the terms of this speech-code, if I were to write a term paper on Christina Rossetti, I’d be downgraded if I referred her as her. Instead, I’d have to contrive unisex circumlocutions to avoid referring to Christina Rossetti as a woman.
Or is it okay to use feminine pronouns, but not masculine pronouns?
2.And beyond that reductio ad absurdum of political correctness, there is the larger issue. Why does an Evangelical seminary discriminate against students who might wish, for either stylistic or theological reasons, to use gender-specific language?
Notice that I’m not discussing the merits of the unisex language debate. I’m not discussing which side is right or wrong on this issue.
I’m just wondering why Denver Seminary doesn’t believe in a minimal degree of academic freedom for students on what ought to be a point of Christian liberty.
If they require the faculty to be egalitarians, that’s their prerogative. But why can’t they permit a bit more diversity among the student body?
When did this become so all-important that the use of gender-specific language on the part of a student is a punishable offense?
That strikes me as oddly legalistic for an evangelical institution in the Baptist tradition. Don’t Baptists traditionally believe in greater freedom of conscience?
3.I also wonder where they draw the line. If a student were to quote a line from Shakespeare which happens to use gender-specific language, would he be downgraded? Must he paraphrase Shakespeare to bring the bard into retroactive compliance with the speech-code?
What if a student writes a term paper about St. Paul. Is he allowed to use masculine singular pronouns in reference to the Apostle?
4.Incidentally, isn’t there something dare I say paternalistic about this speech-code? Are women such fainting violets that they will wither at the sight of a masculine singular pronoun? Do they need to be protected against this body-blow to their frail sensibilities?
5.It also makes me wonder how Denver alumni could survive as missionaries in sexist nations. Would the culture shock be too much for them?
Denver Seminary is a Christian institution with some really fine faculty. It’s a pity to see it degenerate into fanaticism on this particular issue.
From An Associate Of Justin Martyr
Tatian, an associate of Justin Martyr, wrote:
"We do not act as fools, O Greeks, nor utter idle tales, when we announce that God was born in the form of a man. I call on you who reproach us to compare your mythical accounts with our narrations. Athené;, as they say, took the form of Deïphobus for the sake of Hector, and the unshorn Phoœbus for the sake of Admetus fed the trailing-footed oxen, and the spouse us came as an old woman to Semele. But, while you treat seriously such things, how can you deride us? Your Asclepios died, and he who ravished fifty virgins in one night at Thespiæ lost his life by delivering himself to the devouring flame. Prometheus, fastened to Caucasus, suffered punishment for his good deeds to men. According to you, Zeus is envious, and hides the dream from men, wishing their destruction. Wherefore, looking at your own memorials, vouchsafe us your approval, though it were only as dealing in legends similar to your own. We, however, do not deal in folly, but your legends are only idle tales. If you speak of the origin of the gods, you also declare them to be mortal. For what reason is Hera now never pregnant? Has she grown old? Or is there no one to give you information? Believe me now, O Greeks, and do not resolve your myths and gods into allegory. If you attempt to do this, the divine nature as held by you is overthrown by your own selves; for, if the demons with you are such as they are said to be, they are worthless as to character; or, if regarded as symbols of the powers of nature, they are not what they are called. But I cannot be persuaded to pay religious homage to the natural elements, nor can I undertake to persuade my neighbour. And Metrodorus of Lampsacus, in his treatise concerning Homer, has argued very foolishly, turning everything into allegory. For he says that neither Hera, nor Athené;, nor Zeus are what those persons suppose who consecrate to them sacred enclosures and groves, but parts of nature and certain arrangements of the elements. Hector also, and Achilles, and Agamemnon, and all the Greeks in general, and the Barbarians with Helen and Paris, being of the same nature, you will of course say are introduced merely for the sake of the machinery of the poem, not one of these personages having really existed. But these things we have put forth only for argument's sake; for it is not allowable even to compare our notion of God with those who are wallowing in matter and mud." (Address To The Greeks, 21)
The allegorizing and dehistoricizing Tatian refers to were common among ancient pagans, as, for example, both Celsus and Origen note repeatedly in Origen's Against Celsus (2:55, 8:45). While the ancient Christians affirmed and argued for the historicity of events like those recorded in the gospels and Acts, often with corroboration from non-Christian sources, ancient pagans were often denying the historicity of their own accounts and attempting to allegorize them out of embarrassment. Some Christians also allegorized, but in addition to accepting the historical core of the religion, not as a replacement of it. Origen, for example, despite his widespread allegorizing of scripture, affirmed the historicity of the virgin birth, the Bethlehem birthplace, Jesus' performance of miracles, etc. He wasn't allegorizing instead of accepting such events as historical. Rather, he was allegorizing in addition to accepting such events.
"We do not act as fools, O Greeks, nor utter idle tales, when we announce that God was born in the form of a man. I call on you who reproach us to compare your mythical accounts with our narrations. Athené;, as they say, took the form of Deïphobus for the sake of Hector, and the unshorn Phoœbus for the sake of Admetus fed the trailing-footed oxen, and the spouse us came as an old woman to Semele. But, while you treat seriously such things, how can you deride us? Your Asclepios died, and he who ravished fifty virgins in one night at Thespiæ lost his life by delivering himself to the devouring flame. Prometheus, fastened to Caucasus, suffered punishment for his good deeds to men. According to you, Zeus is envious, and hides the dream from men, wishing their destruction. Wherefore, looking at your own memorials, vouchsafe us your approval, though it were only as dealing in legends similar to your own. We, however, do not deal in folly, but your legends are only idle tales. If you speak of the origin of the gods, you also declare them to be mortal. For what reason is Hera now never pregnant? Has she grown old? Or is there no one to give you information? Believe me now, O Greeks, and do not resolve your myths and gods into allegory. If you attempt to do this, the divine nature as held by you is overthrown by your own selves; for, if the demons with you are such as they are said to be, they are worthless as to character; or, if regarded as symbols of the powers of nature, they are not what they are called. But I cannot be persuaded to pay religious homage to the natural elements, nor can I undertake to persuade my neighbour. And Metrodorus of Lampsacus, in his treatise concerning Homer, has argued very foolishly, turning everything into allegory. For he says that neither Hera, nor Athené;, nor Zeus are what those persons suppose who consecrate to them sacred enclosures and groves, but parts of nature and certain arrangements of the elements. Hector also, and Achilles, and Agamemnon, and all the Greeks in general, and the Barbarians with Helen and Paris, being of the same nature, you will of course say are introduced merely for the sake of the machinery of the poem, not one of these personages having really existed. But these things we have put forth only for argument's sake; for it is not allowable even to compare our notion of God with those who are wallowing in matter and mud." (Address To The Greeks, 21)
The allegorizing and dehistoricizing Tatian refers to were common among ancient pagans, as, for example, both Celsus and Origen note repeatedly in Origen's Against Celsus (2:55, 8:45). While the ancient Christians affirmed and argued for the historicity of events like those recorded in the gospels and Acts, often with corroboration from non-Christian sources, ancient pagans were often denying the historicity of their own accounts and attempting to allegorize them out of embarrassment. Some Christians also allegorized, but in addition to accepting the historical core of the religion, not as a replacement of it. Origen, for example, despite his widespread allegorizing of scripture, affirmed the historicity of the virgin birth, the Bethlehem birthplace, Jesus' performance of miracles, etc. He wasn't allegorizing instead of accepting such events as historical. Rather, he was allegorizing in addition to accepting such events.
Tertullian On Christianity And Paganism
James White recently posted a video on his blog concerning Dan Barker's misrepresentation of Justin Martyr, a misrepresentation that's common among modern skeptics. Similar passages are found in Tertullian, in which he draws some vague conceptual parallels between Christianity and paganism. Like Justin, Tertullian notes differences between Christianity and paganism as well, and he notes Christianity's superior historical credibility. Concerning the virgin birth, Tertullian writes:
"And so the supreme Head and Master of this grace and discipline, the Enlightener and Trainer of the human race, God’s own Son, was announced among us, born—but not so born as to make Him ashamed of the name of Son or of His paternal origin. It was not His lot to have as His father, by incest with a sister, or by violation of a daughter or another’s wife, a god in the shape of serpent, or ox, or bird, or lover, for his vile ends transmuting himself into the gold of Danaus. They are your divinities upon whom these base deeds of Jupiter were done. But the Son of God has no mother in any sense which involves impurity; she, whom men suppose to be His mother in the ordinary way, had never entered into the marriage bond." (Apology, 21)
Notice, too, that Tertullian refers to what's commonly supposed about Jesus, namely that He was conceived through Mary by normal sexual means. Elsewhere in the same section of his Apology, Tertullian comments:
"Then, too, the common people have now some knowledge of Christ, and think of Him as but a man, one indeed such as the Jews condemned, so that some may naturally enough have taken up the idea that we are worshippers of a mere human being."
Note, again, that Tertullian is describing how "the common people" view Jesus. Unlike Dan Barker and other modern skeptics who cast doubt on Jesus' existence, the non-Christians of Tertullian's day accepted His existence and the historicity of events like His condemnation by the Jewish people. It wasn't just a handful of non-Christian individuals who affirmed Jesus' existence (Josephus, Tacitus, Trypho, Celsus, Lucian, etc.). Rather, His existence, along with other details claimed about Him by mainstream Christianity, were commonly accepted by ancient non-Christians.
I recommend reading Tertullian's Apology, in addition to Justin Martyr's First Apology. They have a lot to say about how Christianity compared to paganism, not only conceptually, but also in terms of the evidence offered for their belief systems, their moral standards, etc. The comparison isn't as favorable to modern skepticism as people like Dan Barker would have us believe.
"And so the supreme Head and Master of this grace and discipline, the Enlightener and Trainer of the human race, God’s own Son, was announced among us, born—but not so born as to make Him ashamed of the name of Son or of His paternal origin. It was not His lot to have as His father, by incest with a sister, or by violation of a daughter or another’s wife, a god in the shape of serpent, or ox, or bird, or lover, for his vile ends transmuting himself into the gold of Danaus. They are your divinities upon whom these base deeds of Jupiter were done. But the Son of God has no mother in any sense which involves impurity; she, whom men suppose to be His mother in the ordinary way, had never entered into the marriage bond." (Apology, 21)
Notice, too, that Tertullian refers to what's commonly supposed about Jesus, namely that He was conceived through Mary by normal sexual means. Elsewhere in the same section of his Apology, Tertullian comments:
"Then, too, the common people have now some knowledge of Christ, and think of Him as but a man, one indeed such as the Jews condemned, so that some may naturally enough have taken up the idea that we are worshippers of a mere human being."
Note, again, that Tertullian is describing how "the common people" view Jesus. Unlike Dan Barker and other modern skeptics who cast doubt on Jesus' existence, the non-Christians of Tertullian's day accepted His existence and the historicity of events like His condemnation by the Jewish people. It wasn't just a handful of non-Christian individuals who affirmed Jesus' existence (Josephus, Tacitus, Trypho, Celsus, Lucian, etc.). Rather, His existence, along with other details claimed about Him by mainstream Christianity, were commonly accepted by ancient non-Christians.
I recommend reading Tertullian's Apology, in addition to Justin Martyr's First Apology. They have a lot to say about how Christianity compared to paganism, not only conceptually, but also in terms of the evidence offered for their belief systems, their moral standards, etc. The comparison isn't as favorable to modern skepticism as people like Dan Barker would have us believe.
Saturday, October 03, 2009
An Exegesis of 1 Timothy 4:10 "...who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe."
“For to this end we toil and strive, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe.” (1 Tim 4:10).In 1 Timothy 4, Paul is exhorting Timothy that sound doctrine and persistent godliness should be the thrust of our life because of the hope of the living God — in this age and the one to come. We should be confident in our creeds and ethics because of the certainty of salvation. Paul introduces verse 10 with the inferential indicator eis touto gar (For to this end), followed by the grounding conjunction hoti (because), which highlights his main point: "we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe." His main point is corroborated by his use of the perfect tense ēlpikamen (we have our hope set), which marks out this action. Interestingly, the only other instance of a perfect tense in this immediate section is found in verse 6:
“If you put these things before the brothers, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, being trained in the words of the faith and of the good doctrine that you have followed (parēkolouthēkas)” (1 Tim 4:5–6).
This is an uncommon term in the New Testament, only used four times (Mark 16:17; Luke 1:3; 1 Tim 4:6; 2 Tim 3:10). In the context of following a belief or practice, this term means "paying special attention, follow faithfully." In other words, for Paul, following sound doctrine is not about a static affirmation of creedal statements on paper — it is an active, conscious, engaged conforming. (Paul would not have anything to do with an ambiguous Church "Statement of Faith"!)
Back to verse 10. In the next statement, and our focus of this article, what is meant by, "who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe"?
Many modern believers read this with the assumption that Christ came to earth with the intention to die for every single individual who has ever lived; hence, "who is the Savior of all people." But only those who believe will have his atonement applied to their sin; hence, "especially of those who believe." Therefore, many modern readers, particularly Arminians, believe this verse undercuts any notion of particular redemption and election, which is affirmed in Reformed theology.
However, we should probe more than a prima facie reading of this verse and ask ourselves certain questions. Is there a theological connection between "the living God" and its qualifier "who is the Savior of all people"? What does "all people" mean here for Paul? Does it mean all people without exception or distinction? And most importantly, how can God be the Savior of those who do not believe? Or is there some other element that has escaped our notice?
A universalist reading should be ruled out since that would contradict Paul's unambiguous teaching in his corpus that many will indeed perish eternally.
Next, the Arminian interpretation reads too much into the statement, "Savior of all people," with two assumptions: (1) that the term "Savior" here must mean "possible Savior" and (2) it denotes "every single person."
But if Christ died for all sins, then there is no legal basis for him to punish or condemn any sinner to perdition; thereby making the Arminian an inconsistent universalist. What basis is there to punish the same sin twice: on the cross and on the sinner. There is none.
In addition, the context here does not state what Paul means by "all people." He could refer to every single person, or he could refer to all kinds of people. Earlier in this same epistle, in the similar context of salvation and all people, Paul makes it clear that he is referring to "all sorts of people," not every single person who has ever lived on planet earth. (See my exegesis on 1 Timothy 2:4 here).
Some interpreters have suggested that God is "Savior of all people" in a physical-preserving sense — if you will, a "common grace Savior." And then he is a spiritual Savior, especially of those who believe.
This is an unlikely interpretation since there is nothing in this context where Paul defines "Savior" in these two different ways. Further, v. 8b provides a soteriological context, "the present life and also for the life to come." And in v. 10, the natural reading is that Paul uses the same meaning for "Savior" for humanity in general, and believers in particular.
The most plausible interpretation of this verse is what I call the Monotheistic-Exclusivism Interpretation. What Paul is saying is that God (and by extension Christ as Redeemer) is the only true Savior in the world, therefore humanity cannot find any other competing Savior outside of the living God. They have no other Savior to turn to.
It is not by mistake that the phrase "living God," a term that suggests monotheism, is connected with this verse. This phrase is often found in the context of polytheism (e.g. Acts 14:15; 1 Thess 1:9; Josh 3:10; 1 Sam 17:26, 36; 2 Kgs 19:4). Since there is only one God who is alive, there is only one Savior for humanity to embrace.
Also, earlier in this same epistle Paul makes a similar exclusive statement that there is one medium of salvation for humanity: “For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,” (1 Tim 2:5). Here Paul connects this with the truth of "one God" with only one mediator, anticipating what he says two chapters later.
In addition, this is similar to Jesus' exclusive statement:
“Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6).
And in the same vein, Peter proclaims:
“And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:12).
For all humanity, there is only one way, truth, life, Father, name, mediator, and Savior — especially of those who believe.
Finally, I want to conclude with another interpretation that is compelling. The term for "especially" is malista. George W. Knight III argues that this term here should be rendered, "that is," thereby functioning as an explanation or further clarification of the preceding statement. The translation would be as follows: "who is the Savior of all people, that is, of those who believe." So this interpretation does not view "those who believe" as a subset of "all people"; instead, "those who believe" identifies who the "all people" are. He writes:
The phrase [malista pistōn, "especially of believers"] contains the one qualification that Paul and NT always posit for receiving God's salvation, i.e., "trust" in God as the only Savior. Absolute [pistōn], as used here and elsewhere in the NT, refers to those who believe in Christ, i.e., Christian believers…[malista] has usually been rendered "especially" and regarded as in some way distinguishing that which follows it from that which goes before it. Skeat ("Especially the Parchments") argues persuasively that [malista] in some cases (2 Tim. 4:13; Tit. 1:10, 11; and here) should be understood as providing a further definition or identification of that which precedes it and thus renders it by such words as "that is." He cites several examples from papyrus letters that would seem to require this sense and that would in their particular cases rule out the otherwise legitimate alternative sense. If his proposal is correct here, which seems most likely, then the phrase [malista pistōn] should be rendered "that is, believers." This understanding is also in line with Paul's assertion that all sorts and conditions of people are in Christ (even at times using [pantes] ) and with his insistence in those contexts that all such are in Christ and have salvation by faith (cf., e.g., Gal. 3:26–28). NIGTC, The Pastoral Epistles, 203–4.
by Alan Kurschner
Ingrown morality
Spectators often lament theological infighting on the internet. All that internecine warfare is so unedifying. By the same token, Catholics deplore schismatics. And, of course, ecumenicists view ecclesiastical unity as both a Christian ideal and a Christian imperative.
Like anything else that sinners do, blogging can put human iniquity on display. However, there are problems with the ecumenical ideal.
Because men are social creatures, we naturally retreat into fairly insular communities. We come in packages. Families. Extended families.
The same applies to theological communities. In the past, this was reinforced by geographical isolation and national churches. And we now have virtual communities. It’s like living in a company town.
There is, however, moral and spiritual dangers which come of taking refuge in self-affirming, self-reinforcing communities. A good example is the priestly abuse scandal in Catholicism. As long as this was perpetrated by one set of insiders on another set of insiders, it went unchecked. It took the scrutiny of outsiders to finally expose it and bring about some measure of reform.
Surrounding ourselves with sympathetic ears is morally and spiritual hazardous. We can become coconspirators in our own moral or spiritual demise. We defend each other. Excuse each other. The in-group can do no wrong. We inoculate ourselves against self-examination–behind the impregnable walls of our fortified city.
So there are benefits to having a clash between one theological community and another. It shakes up the insidious complacency to which we’re prone if we spend too much time in the circular groove of our like-minded fellowship.
Like anything else that sinners do, blogging can put human iniquity on display. However, there are problems with the ecumenical ideal.
Because men are social creatures, we naturally retreat into fairly insular communities. We come in packages. Families. Extended families.
The same applies to theological communities. In the past, this was reinforced by geographical isolation and national churches. And we now have virtual communities. It’s like living in a company town.
There is, however, moral and spiritual dangers which come of taking refuge in self-affirming, self-reinforcing communities. A good example is the priestly abuse scandal in Catholicism. As long as this was perpetrated by one set of insiders on another set of insiders, it went unchecked. It took the scrutiny of outsiders to finally expose it and bring about some measure of reform.
Surrounding ourselves with sympathetic ears is morally and spiritual hazardous. We can become coconspirators in our own moral or spiritual demise. We defend each other. Excuse each other. The in-group can do no wrong. We inoculate ourselves against self-examination–behind the impregnable walls of our fortified city.
So there are benefits to having a clash between one theological community and another. It shakes up the insidious complacency to which we’re prone if we spend too much time in the circular groove of our like-minded fellowship.
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