Men have feelings too!

In certain prolife circles, the usual exceptions for abortion are “rape, incest, and the life of the mother.” This has become a stereotypical expression. I say “usual” in the sense that many prolifers make an exception in these cases. For some it’s just the life of the mother. For others it’s the trio.

Actually, I find the distinction between rape and incest somewhat odd. Isn’t incest a type of rape? I assume those who favor abortion in case of incest aren’t alluding to consensual incest between older siblings.

But let’s consider the politically and emotionally explosive example of rape in case of incest. It’s important, in ethics, to confront the hard cases.

One thing that strikes me about this discussion is how it’s always framed in sexist terms. It’s all about how a woman feels in that situation.

But what about pregnancies where a man’s feelings are involved? Why is that never discussed? Why the double standard?

Let’s take an example. Take a good husband. Maybe he’s balding and overweight. But he’s a loving, faithful husband.

Suppose the wife has an affair. She meets a man who excites her. Makes her feel young again. She has a good marriage, but it’s become routine. Rather dull.

Suppose, as a result of the affair, she conceives a child, and her husband finds out about the affair–as well as the child. Imagine his reaction. He feels a gamut of powerful emotions. His wife has betrayed his trust. He feels violated. Family is where we let our guard down. That leaves us vulnerable. He feels humiliated by the man who stole his wife right out from under him. He’s mad and sad at the same time.

He gave his life to his wife, and it’s too late to start over again as a teenager in high school.

So what should his attitude be towards the child? The child is the emblem of the adulterous affair. Does he therefore have a right to kill the child?

We can sympathize with the man’s outrage. Yet we expect men to exhibit a certain toughness. Life can be very unfair. Life can deliver a gut-punch. But after the initial shock, a man is supposed to suck it up and soldier on. He’s entitled to his feelings, but he’s not entitled to his actions.

Let’s continue this issue from another angle. Many prolifers who oppose abortion in case of rape nonetheless distinguish between saving the child and raising the child. They don’t think the rape victim should have to raise the child. They think it’s perfectly fine for the mother to put the child up for adoption.

And I’m not taking issue with that. But let’s extend that to my comparison. Suppose the cuckold husband takes his wife back. He forgives her. Tries to pick up where they left off.

Suppose, sometime after she gives birth to the child, she abandons the child. Walks out on the marriage. Returns to her adulterous lover. Leaves the illegitimate child with her husband.

What should the husband do with the kid? The kid is a constant reminder of what is wife did to him. A constant reminder of what another man did to him. And the kid isn’t even his kid–unlike rape. There is no preexisting bond.

But the fact remains that someone must raise him. Someone must be a father to the kid. The husband didn’t ask for this situation, but by the same token, the kid didn’t ask for this situation.

Should he put the kid up for adoption? I suppose that’s an option.

But haven’t circumstances made it the cuckold husband’s duty to raise the kid as his own? That’s unfair, but duty can obligate us to do things even under unjust circumstances. The child is still entitled to love, provision, and protection.

Sometimes we find ourselves in situations we shouldn’t be put in. But having been put in that situation, however unfair, we still have certain obligations. Indeed, in God’s economy, that’s a way in which God forces us to be virtuous. To do the right thing even when we’ve been wronged.  

Why Transubstantiation is nonsense

http://paulhelmsdeep.blogspot.com/2012/09/turretin-on-senses.html

Taking the moribund pulse of Arminian theology

I often comment on Roger Olson, but Scot McKnight is another Arminian scholar with a big footprint. Notice his book of the year. This is a barometer for the state of contemporary Arminianism:

Christian Smith, The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism is not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture. In spite of being panned by a few notable evangelicals, Smith is one of America’s finest scholars of evangelicalism, knows theology, and has poked populist evangelicalism in the eye — both eyes in fact. He has laid down a challenge that must be met: How to read the Bible in a way that does not lead to pervasive pluralism but leads to conclusions on which we can agree enough to say “Thus saith the Lord.” Until that happens, we’ve got too many lone rangers claiming “Thus saith the Lord.” What good is it to say we’ve got the very Word of God if we can’t agree on what the Word says?

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2012/01/01/jesus-creed-books-of-the-year/

This corroborates what I’ve said elsewhere: the Arminian tradition is more liberal than the Reformed tradition. Arminians typically list to the left of Calvinists. In this case, far to the left of Calvinists.

McKnight’s objection is also hypocritical. His own theological position (Arminian/Anabaptist) is hardly something all (or even most) Christians agree with. 

Smith’s own solution is no solution. He’s a convert to Roman Catholic. But, of course, Christians don’t agree on Roman Catholicism. So that’s just one more pluralistic option. Even Catholics don’t agree on Catholicism.

Flinty Clint

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/315658/play-clinty-me-mark-steyn

A Preview for the Undecided

Five Things You'll Learn From “No Easy Day” [Language alert]

The level of detail Owen provides is amazing, from mopping blood from bin Laden’s face before he snapped forensic photos of the corpse of the most wanted man in the world, to the meticulous planning that went into the assault. The book goes on sale next week, but if you can’t wait that long, here are a few more tidbits to tide you over.

Chick lit for guys
Forget the Manolos and Chanel handbags -- this book is fully loaded with real-life gear porn. Read this and you’ll know what kind of boots Owen prefers, the types of knives he packs when heading out, the various firearms he uses to ventilate terrorists, and how much more awesome his gear is compared to anything you’ll ever get to strap on. His night-vision goggles alone run $65,000. His helmet can stop a 9mm slug. A page-long rundown of Owen’s personal armory includes lines like, “I also set up my fourteen-inch H&K 416 with an infrared laser and clip-on thermal sight that allowed for more precise night shooting.”

Osama was [vain and wimpy]
Owen’s account of the raid confirms Peter L. Bergen’s report in Manhunt, that bin Laden used Just For Men hair dye to color his beard, and apparently had just done a color treatment before the raid: the SEALs had a hard time recognizing bin Laden at first, as he looked too young. Also, the two guns found in bin Laden’s room were unloaded, and he didn’t even try to get a shot off at the approaching commandos, prompting this observation: “In all of my deployments, we routinely saw this phenomenon. The higher up the food chain the targeted individual was, the bigger a [wimp] he was.”

SEALs: They’re just like us
“Dude” shows up so often you’d think Jeff Spicoli polished the dialogue. Upon returning to the states after the historic mission, one SEAL mowed his lawn. Another slipped straight back into domestic routines with his wife and young child. Owen treated himself to a Taco Bell dinner and ate it in his truck in the parking lot on the way home. Also, they’re not the clean-shaven, high-and-tight types these days. One looked like “a taller version of Gimli, the angry dwarf in The Lord of the Rings.” Another like “an Amish guy with a bowl haircut and a patchy beard that never seemed to grow together.”

Mark Owen -- bookish
What made Owen, who pumped a few rounds into a dying bin Laden’s chest, want to become a SEAL? A novel, Men in Green Faces by Gene Wentz, about a group of SEALs operating in Vietnam. Owen wrote a book report on it in junior high and knew from “page one” that he wanted to be a SEAL.

Mission: Set the Record Straight
Every public account of the raid has been inaccurate, Owen writes, “even reports claiming to have the inside story.” He retired less than a year after bin Laden’s death, and, disgusted with the misconceptions about and the politicization of the raid, got to work on the book. While it details his life story -- his childhood in Alaska, his SEAL training and missions (including the rescue of captain Richard Phillips from Somali pirates) -- Owen says the book is about the team: “I only used my life as a way to describe what it is like to be part of such a special unit,” he writes. And, yes, he is being paid for his story, but most of the book’s proceeds are being donated to charity.

The book will be released on September 4, 2012. My wife has already asked me to preorder a copy.

Eastwood And The Divide Between Americans And The Ruling Class

http://ricochet.com/main-feed/Eastwood-And-The-Divide-Between-Americans-And-The-Ruling-Class

Major development in the culture wars

http://m.techrepublic.com/blog/geekend/star-trek-v-star-wars-a-comparison-in-comics-format/9944

On “Finding Your Inner Luther”

http://www.theologynetwork.org/theology-of-everything/fear-and-loathing-in-las-vagueness.htm

Five hundred years ago, the church was in ... desperate, desperate need of reform. Then, in to the rescue galloped a posse of the most talented individuals of the day. They had among their number the very finest scholars, they shared a heartfelt passion for the renewing of the church – and they accomplished virtually nothing towards that goal. The rescue failed.

That was the sad story of the sixteenth-century humanists (nothing to do with later atheistic humanists!). But where did it all go wrong? They were absolutely sincere in wanting people to live whole-heartedly for Jesus; they were unstinting in their efforts. The problem was, they never thought they needed to bother with theology. They thought that more devotion would do the trick. And so they never questioned the theology of medieval Roman Catholicism. As a result they were doomed ever to remain prisoners of where the church was at, never able to achieve more than cosmetic changes.

It was only when Martin Luther dug into the theological foundations of the church that it was really reformed. And what a Reformation! When gospel-theology led the way, the church was renewed beyond all recognition.

* * *

The historical reality of the Reformation is that it was a theological event. True, there were moral consequences, but the Reformation wasn’t first of all about moral self-improvement and tidying the ecclesiastical house. It was about aligning the church's doctrines with Biblical teaching.

It was this that prompted Martin Luther later to comment:

Life is bad among us as among the papists. Hence, we do not fight and damn them because of their bad lives …. I do not consider myself to be pious. But when it comes to whether one teaches correctly about the word of God, there I take my stand and fight. That is my calling. To contest doctrine has never happened until now. Others have fought over life; but to take on doctrine—that is to grab the goose by the neck! … When the word of God remains pure, even if the quality of life fails us, life is placed in a position to become what it ought. That is why everything hinges on the purity of the Word. I have succeeded only if I have taught correctly. (Cited by Steven Ozment, "The Age of Reform, 1250–1550: An Intellectual and Religious History of Late Medieval and Reformation Europe" (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1980), pgs 315-316 (emphasis added).

A reminder about Luther’s “Wise Turk” quote

Now that a Mormon is running for president and tends to be favored by Christian conservatives over his Christian liberal opponent, we are hearing more and more that famous quotation from Martin Luther: “I’d rather be ruled by a wise Turk than by a foolish Christian.” The problem is, non [sic] one has been able to find that famous quotation in any of the voluminous works of Luther. It appears that the quotation is apocryphal. I suspect it may have originated as an attempt to explain the implications of Luther’s doctrine of the Two Kingdoms, as in, “Luther would have rather been ruled by a wise Turk. . .” which then was recalled as “Luther said he would rather have been. . . .” At any rate, I would love to identify the earliest occurrence of that quotation in print….

Let’s be clear. The “wise Turk” quote is an urban legend, an old wives’ tale, just like the oft-repeated fairy tales that Luther threw an inkwell at the devil (or vice versa), or invented the Christmas tree, or that Billy Graham referred to Lutherans (or the Lutheran Church, or the Missouri Synod) as “a sleeping giant.”

This article is yet another Sisyphean attempt to drive a spike through this urban legend non-quote, and specifically to address the erroneous claim that the alleged quote is a loose paraphrase of the following excerpt from Martin Luther’s “An Open Letter to the Nobility of the German Nation”:

“It is said that there is no better temporal rule anywhere than among the Turks, who have neither spiritual nor temporal law, but only their Koran; and we must confess that there is no more shameful rule than among us, with our spiritual and temporal law, so that there is no estate which lives according to the light of nature, still less according to Holy Scripture.”

As will be shown below the urban legend quote has absolutely nothing to do with this quoted excerpt from “An Open Letter to the Nobility” and any such claimed paraphrase is quite unlikely to have been even loosely uttered (in German or Latin) by Dr. Luther elsewhere. The key points, as they should be for all phrases bandied about as being uttered by (or paraphrased from) Luther, are context, context, context. …

A bit later he says:

“But as the pope is Antichrist, so the Turk is the very devil. The prayer of Christendom is against both. Both shall go down to hell, even though it may take the Last Day to send them there; and I hope it will not be long.”

An update to the original Gene Veith article

An earlier version of it here

Do you feel lucky?

I admit I didn’t watch the GOP convention. The only thing I bothered to tune into was Clint Eastwood’s speech. This left the pundit class perplexed.

It often sounded as if Eastwood was a doddering 82-year-old. Yet the seeming offhandedness was punctured by calculated jabs, with a comedian’s sense of timing. There was a studied unstudiedness to the performance. Catching the audience off-guard by appearing to ramble, which left the listener unprepared for the surprise attack in the next line. The very unpredictability made it suspenseful. What’s he going to say next?

In the age of YouTube, this is bound to be a hit, in a way the carefully scripted, focus group vetted speeches of the other speakers will never be. 

http://www.npr.org/2012/08/30/160358091/transcript-clint-eastwoods-convention-remarks

Wooden probabilities

Thus, the alleged resurrection of Jesus is an "extraordinary claim" in the sense that it has an extremely low prior probability, i.e., Pr(R | B) <= 10-11. In other words, even if God exists, R has an extremely low prior probability for the simple reason that God has an extremely weak tendency to resurrect people from the dead.[3] To be precise, He resurrects from the dead less than one human in every 100 billion.

http://secularoutpost.infidels.org/2012/08/ECREE5.html

i) That’s a false premise. According to the Biblical doctrine of the general resurrection, God will resurrect everyone who ever lived. The only folks he won’t raise from the dead are those who happen to be alive at the time of the Parousia. And even they will be immortalized.

ii) In addition, this reflects Jeff’s wooden grasp of probability. Even if God hasn’t raised anyone else from the dead, this doesn’t tell you anything about the likelihood that he raised Jesus from the dead. It all depends on what reason he has for raising Jesus, but not raising others.

To take a comparison, suppose I ask if it’s extraordinary to find fallen leaves stacked in neat piles. That depends. It would be extraordinary if fallen leaves arranged themselves into neat piles on the lawn. If, however, a gardener raked the yard, that’s pretty ordinary. 

The answer depends on the presence or absence of personal agency, as well as the particular intent of the agent. That’s not something you can calculate in the abstract, from raw frequency.

Senator Marco Rubio of Florida

http://live.wsj.com/video/republican-senator-marco-rubio-introduces-romney/A1941E10-B7BE-4F58-9086-D953496061C6.html

Tremendously inspiring.

Typology Preserves Biblical Inerrancy Against Ehrman’s Mistake

http://jimhamilton.info/2012/08/29/typology-preserves-biblical-inerrancy-against-ehrmans-mistake/

Is Jesus a Democrat?

http://christthetao.blogspot.com/2012/08/phil-zuckerman-jesus-wants-you-to-vote.html

The Professor Who Thought He Knew Bigotry When He Saw It

http://www.thinkingchristian.net/2012/08/the-prof-who-thought-he-knew-bigotry-when-he-saw-it/

A Public Service Announcement from your Good Friends at Triablogue

For those of you who may be inclined to be on the lookout for various ad hominems that you can avoid in discussions, I’ve noted that Bryan Cross has exhibited a severe dislike for the phrase “the boys at Called to Communion”. This is from a while back at Tim Prussic’s blog:

One thing that Mr. Stellman wants to make clear is that he was REFORMED before his move to Rome. This is, or course, part of the polemic. Protestant Christian, rest assured that Jason Stellman KNOWS your position better than you do. HE WAS TOTALLY REFORMED. In Mr. Stellman’s words:

… blather here, etc., etc., ...

This is the uniform pitch from the boys at Called to Communion. They were more Reformed than you. After all, did you graduate from Westminster… the bastion of Reformed verity?! You might think you know the Bible and Reformed theology, but these boys at CTC know Reformed better than you do, cuz they were totally Reformed.

Bryan, as is frequently the case, provides the first comment on the blog post:

Tim,

“Boys”? I’m 43. How old are you? Are your arguments and evidence so poor that you have to resort to this sort of patronizing name-calling?

In your opinion, what, exactly, about Reformed theology did those of at CTC not know?

After several denials on Tim’s part that any harm was intended, Bryan helpfully explained (as he often does):

Here’s what I see quite commonly among Reformed pastors. Men who agree with you are called men. Men with whom you disagree strongly are called boys. That’s why the federal vision defenders are frequently referred to (by those who disagree with them) as “FV-boys.” There is a reason for this selective use of the term ‘boys.’ It is derogatory. If it weren’t, they would use it equally of men with whom they agree, and men with whom they disagree. When called on their use of it, they can, of course, always claim that they meant it as “fellows.” But, their selective use of it only in reference to those with whom they disagree shows otherwise.

In all, the word “boys” was use some 38 times in this post and comment string, a testimony to the truly offensive nature of this moniker.

Now, I myself have aroused some ire using the phrase “the Jason Stellman gang”, in a March 1, 2009 email, with that subject line. It began:

Subject: "The Jason Stellman Gang"
------------------------

From: John Bugay
To: [names withheld]
Date: Sun, Mar 1, 2009 at 10:36 AM

Hi all -- This email is to introduce you to the "Called to Communion" website, http://www.calledtocommunion.com .

I apologize for being provocative in my subject line, but I can't help but be provoked by the roll call of names that have put this together:
*

# Andrew Preslar
# Bryan Cross *
# Jonathan Deane (?)
# Matt Yonke *
# Neal Judisch *
# Sean Patrick *
# Taylor Marshall
# Tim Troutman *
# Tom Brown *
# Tom Riello

These individuals say, “We arrived in the Catholic Church in diverse ways but through a similar path involving spiritual formation within the Reformed tradition of confessional Protestantism.”

An Asterisk (*) denotes those who also arrived on this website via Jason Stellman’s blog.

Now, this was my own email to somebodys other than Jason. Of course, I was asked for some proof that these individuals didn’t know each other before they started communing on Jason’s blog. Which I was not able to produce. But Jason caught wind of it, and it really seemed to have raised his ire at the time.

If you wish to avoid the charge of ad hominem when dealing with the stalwart defenders of Roman Catholicism over at Called to Communion, I urge you to avoid using the phrases “the boys at Called to Communion” and “the Jason Stellman gang”.

Thank you.

The fly in the ointment

Republicans have a good chance of winning the presidential election this year. Romney is a respectable man with a respectable economic plan, and Paul Ryan adds a kind of excitement that Republicans haven't seen for years.

But I was greatly disappointed when I read this:

Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will deliver the invocation. And Grant Bennett, a longtime friend who has served in Mormon leadership roles with Mr. Romney, will speak to the Republican convention here....

... both Mr. Romney and his wife, Ann, recently have begun to share a little more about their religious life, even allowing a small group of reporters to attend church with them earlier this month. Mr. Robinson supports the move, saying that understanding the Romneys' faith is central to understanding them.

"This is just the fabric of their being," he said....

During the current campaign, the most notable issue related to religion is how it has all but ceased to be an issue. It was almost a year ago when Robert Jeffress, a Baptist pastor in Dallas, called Mormonism a cult. Since then, religion seldom has come up in the campaign.

But polls show Mr. Romney's support still lags among evangelical Christians, a key group within his party. In the latest Wall Street Journal/ NBC News poll, only 55% of evangelicals said they have very positive or somewhat positive feelings about Mr. Romney. Among all Republicans, 74% had positive feelings.

Ralph Reed, founder of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, acknowledged that some evangelical voters may shun Mr. Romney because of his faith, but said most of them reside in heavily Republican states, such as Arkansas, Oklahoma and South Carolina.

"We don't need 'em," he said.

As one Reformed writer said:

Senator Hatch says of Mitt Romney: “He literally lives his religion.” That’s the problem, and it’s an expected one. Romney’s demonic religion has a massive influence in his life and decision-making. Should that cause anxiety to the Christian voter? Is that anxiety such a problem that a Bible-believing person could not, in good conscience, vote for Mitt Romney or any other Mormon?

I'll vote for Romney. But I'll be holding my nose while I do it.

Understanding Mormonism

This is a fabulous and easy-to-understand overview of Mormonism by Dr. James White.

Apocryphal gospels

http://michaeljkruger.com/apocryphal-gospels-and-the-mainstream-media/

Christless Arminianism

jesse says:

August 29, 2012 at 1:55 am

    Roger, any chance you could deal with some of the verses Piper quotes and give the Arminian perspective?

 rogereolson says:

 August 29, 2012 at 12:31 pm

        You missed it, so I’ll say it again: No need to, as IF those scriptures mean what Piper says they mean, then Jesus Christ was not the perfect revelation of God and the Bible itself is not worthy of our trust because God is not good and thus not to be trusted.

There’s a reason why Christianity is called…Christianity. There’s a reason why Christians call themselves…Christians (cf. Acts 11:26). Our theology is Christocentric. Our piety is Christocentric. It all comes down to Jesus. Total devotion to Jesus.

Of course, none of us loves Jesus as much as we should. That’s something we need to work on everyday. Reminding ourselves of what he did for us, does for us, will do for us. Adoring his character.

Christian faith means living for Jesus, living with Jesus, dying with Jesus, and sometimes dying for Jesus (martyrdom). As Paul says, our life is hidden with Christ (Col 3:3).

For Christians, Jesus is the touchstone of all that’s right and true. They don’t measure Jesus by what is good; rather, they measure what is good by Jesus.

Compare this with Roger Olson. Olson lacks total devotion to Jesus. If Jesus doesn’t measure up to Olson’s preconceived ideals, then Olson is prepared to flip him off and go his own way. Olson hates Calvinism more than he loves Jesus.

Olson is more important than Jesus. Jesus is only good if Olson says he’s good. Olson doesn’t measure himself by Jesus. Rather, Olson measures Jesus by himself. If by that yardstick, Jesus comes up short, then so much the better for Olson and so much the worse for Jesus. 

Of course, this is nothing knew. Many Jews were looking for the Messiah, but Jesus wasn’t the Messiah they were looking for. He didn’t live up to their expectations. He wasn't their kind of Messiah.

Olson likes to draw lines in the sand. He draws the line with Calvinists. But now he’s drawn the line with Jesus. He’s prepared to draw a line that puts Jesus on one side of the line, and Olson on the other side of the line. Of course, when you draw the line that way, you may find yourself backing into outer darkness.

Keep in mind that Olson is the star player over at the Society of Evangelical Arminians. Although I haven’t kept count, it’s my off-the-cuff impression that his stuff is reposted there more often than anyone else.

Given a choice between Roger Olson and Jesus Christ, I think I’ll take my chances with Jesus.