Parallelomania

I saw this plugged by an atheist on Facebook:

http://listverse.com/2013/06/30/ten-influences-on-the-bible/

Normally, I wouldn't comment on anything that unscholarly, but since things like this can throw Christians for a curve, I'll made some observations:

i) To begin with, this reveals something about the outlook of many atheists. They're on the lookout for something, anything, to debunk the Bible. They don't stop to do any elementary fact-checking. They don't have that mindset. So even though they pride themselves on their superior rationality, they are actually quite credulous. 

ii) The attempted parallels reflect some basic methodological errors, documented in Bruce Metzger's classic a classic "Considerations of Methodology in the Study of the Mystery Religions and Early Christianity"

iii) The attempted parallels fail to make allowance for the probable dates of the sources. Obviously, for the Bible to be indebted to a source, the source must antedate the Bible. 

In addition, the source can't be too far removed in place as well as time. What reason is there to think Bible writers were in contact with East Indian literature? 

iv) The attempted parallels appeal to Buddhism and Zoroastrianism. But here's an obvious problem with that comparison. As Edwin Yamauchi explains:

SOURCESWe need to distinguish sharply between first-hand or nearly contemporary sources and later apocryphal and legendary materials.
Zoroaster (628-551 B.C.). We have what appear to be the genuine sayings of Zoroaster in the Gathas of the Avesta. The mass of Zoroastrian texts, however, are in late Pahlavi recensions (ninth century A.D.). Contemporary Old Persian cuneiform inscriptions betray at best only allusions to early Zoroastrianism. Some Greek and Arabic authors also allude to Zoroaster. The Persian national epic, the Shah Namah by Firdausi (c. A.D. 1000), includes traditions of the prophet.
Buddha (563-483 B.C.). Buddha's teachings, after many centuries of being passed on orally, were written down for the first time in the first century B.C. in Ceylon. The earliest written texts which have been preserved are in Pali, an Indo-Aryan dialect which may be the dialect Buddha himself used. The Pali canon of the Hinayana school (the southern branch of Buddhism, also called the Theravada school) is known as the Tipitaka (Sanskrit Tripitaka), meaning "Three Baskets." Portions of this collection, such as the Samyutta Nikaya, the Majjhima Nikaya and the Anguttara Nikaya, may have come into existence two centuries after Buddha's death, but othted much later.
The Sanskrit canon of the Mahayana school, which spread northeastward to Tibet, China, Korea and Japan, dates, at the earliest, to the first and second centuries A.D. According to Christmas Humphreys, "the later Sutras of the Mahayana School, though put into Buddha's mouth, are clearly the work of minds which lived from five to fifteen hundred years after his passing."3
In the later sources one notes a conspicuous exaggeration of the supernatural elements in Buddha's life. But even the earliest traditions, separated as they are by a century or two from Buddha's time, are not free from amplification. As M. Winternitz observes, "Even what are generally considered to be our oldest documents, the texts of the Pali Tipitaka, speak of Buddha often enough as a superhuman being, and tell us more of the legendary man than of the historical Buddha."4  

http://irr.org/jesus-zoroaster-buddha-socrates-muhammad

Let's now turn to some specific claims:

If you are among the approximately 32 percent of the world population that considers themselves Christian, you were probably raised to believe that the Bible was written in some sort of historical vacuum—the various authors being inspired by God alone and having no outside influences whatsoever.

That's a straw man. The doctrine of inspiration championed in conservative evangelical circles is the organic theory of inspiration. Take this classic exposition by B. B. Warfied:

Consider, for example, how a piece of sacred history—say the Book of Chronicles, or the great historical work, Gospel and Acts, of Luke—is brought to the writing. There is first of all the preparation of the history to be written: God the Lord leads the sequence of occurrences through the development He has designed for them that they may convey their lessons to His people: a “teleological” or “etiological” character is inherent in the very course of events. Then He prepares a man, by birth, training, experience, gifts of grace, and, if need be, of revelation, capable of appreciating this historical development and eager to search it out, thrilling in all his being with its lessons and bent upon making them clear and effective to others. When, then, by His providence, God sets this man to work on the writing of this history, will there not be spontaneously written by him the history which it was Divinely intended should be written? Or consider how a psalmist would be prepared to put into moving verse a piece of normative religious experience: how he would be born with just the right quality of religious sensibility, of parents through whom he should receive just the right hereditary bent, and from whom he should get precisely the right religious example and training, in circumstances of life in which his religious tendencies should be developed precisely on right lines; how he would be brought through just the right experiences to quicken in him the precise emotions he would be called upon to express, and finally would be placed in precisely the exigencies which would call out their expression. Or consider the providential preparation of a writer of a didactic epistle—by means of which he should be given the intellectual breadth and acuteness, and be trained in habitudes of reasoning, and placed in the situations which would call out precisely the argumentative presentation of Christian truth which was required of him. 

So even if Melloson's counterexamples were successful, they'd only succeed in burning the straw man he began with. 

There is also a lot of evidence that the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the oldest recorded texts in human history, had an influence on the biblical creation story. The Epic of Gilgamesh tells the story of a man, Enkidu, who was created from the earth by a god. He lives amongst the animals in a natural paradise until he is tempted by a woman, Shamhat. He accepts food from this woman and is forced to leave the place where he lives after becoming aware of his own nakedness. Later in the epic, he encounters a snake which steals a plant of immortality from him. Obviously, there are a lot of parallels between this story and the Graden of Eden from the Bible.

Really? There are online editions of the Epic of Gilgamesh. Here's a standard translation, published by Stanford U.:

http://www.sjsu.edu/people/cynthia.rostankowski/courses/119a/s4/The%20Epic%20of%20Gilgamesh.pdf

Did Melloson Allen even bother to read the relevant portions of the Gilgamesh epic, and directly compare it to Genesis? Or was he relying on some thirdhand summary?

1. Unlike Adam, Enkidu wasn't the first man.

2. He was created by a goddess (Aruru).

3. He didn't live in a natural "paradise." He simply lived in the wilderness (in contrast to urban dwellers). 

4. He has sex with a harlot. Quite different from "accepting food."

5. He wasn't a nudist. To the contrary, he "wore a garment like Sumukan."

6. He left the wilderness, not because he became aware of his alleged nudity, but because he lost his rapport with the wild animals after he had sex with the harlot.

7. Gilgamesh, not Enkidu, encountered the snake who stole the plant of immortality.

8. In Genesis, the "snake" tempts them to eat from the tree of knowledge, not the tree of life. 

9. In the Gilgamesh Epic, stealing the plant of immortality is an etiology to explain why snakes shed their skin. Nothing like that in Gen 3.

A man is warned of an imminent flood by a god and is instructed to build a large boat in order to survive. The dimensions of the boat are 120 cubits; the building materials are wood, pitch, and reeds; and there are six decks. After the flood, the boat lands on a mountaintop where the man sends out a series of birds to find dry land. He eventually lets all the people and animals free and sacrifices to the god that saved him.Now although these details sound like they were taken directly from the book of Genesis, you’d find the same information in the story of Utnapishtim, found in the Epic of Gilgamesh.

i) Since Noah's ark wasn't cubical, made of reeds, with six stories, the Genesis narrator obviously didn't borrow these details from the Gilgamesh epic. Once again, did Melloson even bother to compare the two accounts directly? 

ii) Yes, there are some genuine parallels. Of course, if you have two independent accounts reporting the same historical event, then you'd expect them to share some details–not because one is literarily indebted to the other, but because both are indebted to a common event. Their shared dependence on a common event generates certain parallels. That's a mark of historicity.

There are a large number of striking similarities between the book of Proverbs in the bible and the Egyptian Instruction of Amenemope.

Considering the fact that Solomon had formal diplomatic  relations with Egypt, sealed by marriage to Pharaoh's daughter (1 Kgs 3:1; 7:8; 9:16,24; 11:1), why is that surprising? 

Psalms 29 is a hymn that bears so much similarity to Ulgaritic [sic] (the language of the Canaanites) poetry that some believe that it was originally an hymn to Baal. 

That's disputed, but in any event, that would be a case of polemical theology.

Once again, we go back Zoroastrianism and Persian influence. The prophet Daniel was the first biblical figure to refer to ideas of resurrection and judgement in Daniel 12:2, and this can be easily attributed to Babylonian influence. The word “paradise” comes directly from the Persian religion of Mithraism. The word “Hell” seems to derive from the Norse word Hel, most certainly a pre-Christian concept.

i) Since Dan 12:2 never uses the words "paradise" or "hell," one can hardly attribute his nonexistent usage to other sources.

Once more, Melloson appears to be regurgitating thirdhand sources without even bothering to check them against the Biblical passages he references. 

ii) How is "Babylonian influence" interchangeable with "Persian influence"? 

iii) Yes, hell is a pre-Christian concept. But it's not a pre-Biblical concept.

Yet it is clearly a concept that was influenced by pagan religions existing at the time that Christianity came about. Examples of pagan trinities are: Amun, Re, and Ptah of Egyptian Mythology; Anu, Enlil, and Ea of Sumerian Mythology; and Ishtar, Baal, and Tammuz of Babylonian Mythology.

That shows no awareness of how the Trinity is defined.

Moreover, why would NT writers be influenced by ANE Sumerian mythology? Why assume they were even conversant with something that far removed from their own time, place, and culture? This is jump lumping stuff together that has no historical or conceptional links. 

there are still some remarkable parallels between the teachings of Jesus and the teachings of Buddha, Mithras, and Zarathustra.

Other issues to one side, it's necessary to distinguish between Iranian Mithraism and Roman Mithraism. 

There is also some similarity between the story of the Ten Commandments and the Code of Hammurapi [sic], dated around 1772 B.C.

So what? ANE law codes reflect similar socioeconomic conditions. Likewise, people tend to commit the same kinds of crimes.

By the same token, it's not surprising that the Mosaic Law uses stock ANE legal jargon and legal formats.

At the same time, there are significant differences where you'd expect them to be different. In Hammurabi's law code, penalties generally vary according to the social class of the offender, unlike the Mosaic law code. 

Finally, this reflects the antiquity of the Mosaic law code, contrary to liberal theories of composition. 

Is the Jesus' Wife fragment fake?

Thus far I haven't commented on the controversy surrounding the Jesus' Wife fragment. That's because this is a "developing story," so anything I link to is apt to be out-of-date shortly thereafter. For those who wish to follow the developments, one good resource is Larry Hurtado's blog: 

http://larryhurtado.wordpress.com/

That said, I wish to make a general point: the way the issue has been framing is misleading. At the moment, controversy swirls around the question of whether this fragment is a modern forgery. Certainly that's a legitimate question, worth pursuing in its own right. After all, if it's a modern forgery, then that debunks it at one stroke.

But a problem with concentrating on the forgery angle is that it may lead some people to think that if it's not a fake, then it's true. The antonym of fake is authentic. So admitting that it's "authentic" or "ancient" might seem to carry connotations of veracity or historicity. But that's a fallacious inference. 

Even if it's not a forgery, that carries no presumption that it's historical or true. From about the mid-2C and beyond, lots of apocryphal stories about Jesus were produced by various sects. At best, this is pious fiction, with no connection to the historical Jesus. 

To take a comparison, The Da Vinci Code was ostensibly written by Dan Brown in 2003. And that's true. Dan Brown is the real author. And the ostensible date of publication is correct. It's not pseudepigraphal. It's not a forgery. It wasn't written at a different date by someone impersonating Dan Brown. In that sense, The Da Vinci Code is "authentic."

That, however, has no bearing on whether the content of The Da Vinci Code is historically accurate.  As many scholars have documented, The Da Vinci Code is tabloid fiction masquerading as church history.

By the same token, even if the Jesus' Wife fragment is "authentic," that doesn't mean it's factual or probably factual. 

Raising the Devil

Bill Ellis is a Penn State folklorist who's published Raising the Devil: Satanism, New Religions, and the Media; Aliens, Ghosts, and Cults: Legends We Live, and Lucifer Ascending: the Occult in Folkore and Popular Culture. 

He writes from a skeptical perspective. He's nominally Lutheran, but his analysis is consistently naturalistic. He's a contributor to the Skeptical Inquirer, founded by militant atheist Paul Kurtz. 

In Raising the Devil, he attempts to trace the "Satanic Scare" (i.e. repressed memories of Satanic ritual abuse) to the influence of modern exorcism (e.g. Kurt Koch). He believes this represents the evolution of an urban legend. He connects this to related "legends" like alien abduction narratives and ouija boards that channel the dark side. These, and other "legends," are elaborated in his two later books. 

He also ties this into the charismatic movement and deliverance ministries. He contends that Pentecostals had to construct a "satanic counterfeit" to distinguish Spirit-possession from demonic possession. 

In the course of his research, he's uncovered a lot of interesting background material and some striking parallels. But there are problems with how he tries to work this disparate material into his overall thesis.  

i) For instance, the need to distinguish between Spirit-possession and demonic possession hardly originates with the modern charismatic movement. That's a theme in both the NT and the OT.

ii) Likewise, exorcism was practiced by the ancient church. Denominations like Anglicanism and Roman Catholicism have exorcists. 

At best, Ellis can only argue that charismatics are reinventing or rediscovering a preexisting paradigm. Convergent theological evolution. 

iii) Whether or not you think ouija boards channel the dark side is, in part, a worldview issue. If you're an atheist, you will demand a naturalistic explanation. 

When Koch's Between Christ and Satan appeared in English in 1962, he immediately found himself in demand outside Germany. That year he came to the US for the first time to give talks on demonology at the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago and the Dallas Theological Seminary. Soon after, he was involved in a series of world tours, visiting fundamentalist seminaries in Latin America, Australia, and Asia.  

Two major British discussions of demon possession, Michael Harper's Spiritual Warfare (1970 and John Richards's But Deliver Us from Evil (1974) repeatedly cite Koch's case histories as authoritative. In the US, Koch was endorsed by the fundamentalist theologian Merrill F. Unger in his Demons in the World Today (1971). 

This complex of ideas soon influenced secular psychological medicine as Koch and HIs mentor Alfred Lechler inspired respect from professionals. When John Warwick Montgomery organized a symposium on demon possession at the University of Notre Dame under the auspices of the Christian Medical Association (1976), participating clinical psychologists were often skeptical of demon possession. Nevertheless, they cited Koch and Lechler more frequently than any other resources. 

In particular, Dr. John White, Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Manitoba, endorsed Lechler's diagnostic description of demon possession, noting cases from his own practice.  

These three elements developed among some networks of therapists into a core set of beliefs and practices, which became for secular psychiatry the analog of the "diabolical medicine" created by Koch and his followers. That is, many different puzzling mental disorders were now diagnosed as resulting from multiple personalities. Intensive therapy, often involving clinical hypnosis, attempting to get the patient to recall memories of of childhood trauma, thought to be the cause of the disorder…Over time, these traumas were identified as evidence for real acts of "ritual abuse" carried out by members of satanic cults.   

Bill Ellis, Raising the Devil: Satanism, New Religions, and the Media (University of Kentucky Press 2000), 17, 87-89.

i) This fails to document the charismatic connection, which is a key link in Ellis's thesis. Moody Bible Institute and Dallas Theological Seminary are cessationist strongholds.

ii) As an Anglican exorcist, John Richards has his own case histories to draw upon. He's not dependent on Koch. 

iii) John Warwick Montgomery is Lutheran rather than charismatic.

iv) It's unclear how John White supposedly influenced secular psychology. Although he was a psych prof., White was also a Christian missionary and Vineyard pastor. 

v) Unger didn't rely on Koch. Unger corresponded with foreign missionaries who bore witness to the same phenomena as Koch. 

vi) How would the fact that secular psychologists cite Koch or Lechler indicate that they were influenced by Koch and Lechler, rather than citing them to document what some Christians believe? 

The most frequently cited authority in the first generation of demonologists was the Lutheran Charismatic, Kurt E. Koch. born in November 1913 in Berghausen, a town located in the German provoke of Baden, near the Black Forest and the Swiss border, Koch receiving his Doctor of Theology degree from the University of Tubingen, specializing in mental heath counseling. Returning to Baden in the 1930s as a pastor and youth counselor, he found the area afflicted by a "flood of magic." In fact, the chaotic period between the two World Wars was marked by a revival of many forms of occultism. The focus of many of these magical practices was The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses, an early analog of Anton LaVey's Satanic Bible describing how to perform black magic. 

Koch himself was sensitive to mental problems linked to occultism, since as a child he found that whenever he visited his grandparents he would wake up in the night and see "a huge beast with glowing eyes." These vision puzzled him for years, until his father mentioned that he had had similar night visitations during his own youth. Koch continues: 

The bombshell dropped when my father related how his grandmother, while raising her children, had practiced magic with the Six and Seventh Books of Moses. This, then, was my great-grandmother. At one stroke I understood why the experiences of my father and his siblings were similar to those of my own childhood. My grandmother, about whom there had been many rumors, was the demon-oppressed daughter of an enchantress. Now I could see how my grandmother and great-grandmother were responsible both for my father's frightening experiences and also for my own terrifying moments of fear. This insight motivated me as pastor and evangelist to conduct thousands of conversations with soul-sick, occult-oppressed persons and come to hear similar things.  

Beginning in the 1930s, Koch specialized in counseling individuals suffering from depression and other signs of mental illness. He noted that such patients inevitably had had contact with folk healers like his great-grandmother, or had practiced some form of folk magic. 

By 1949 he had developed a relationship with Wiesbaden psychologist Alfred Lechler, one of a group of Christian therapists in Germany who accepted demonic influence as a valid diagnosis for some mental problems. Lechler, too, assumed that involvement in folk magic could lead to such demonization. He argued: 

What then must we regard as the cause of demonic enslavement and possession? If we enquire closely from such people…we very often find in their background the use of magic means such as are employed in black magic, viz. acts of charming or being charmed, the sin of fortune telling or visits from fortune tellers and card layers, and participation in spiritist sessions. Black magic is much more prevalent than is ordinarily assumed…Together with spiritist activities, magic stands in a class of its own in relation to other sins, when it includes an appeal to Satan's services or even a formal pact with Satan…For by invoking Satan man yields himself unequivocally to powers of darkness, in that he attempts by magic and the help of Satanic power to gain something that God has forbidden or withheld.  

Following Lechler, Koch developed a "demonic" clinical psychology based on his belief that Brauche, or Germanic folk healing, was  a dangerous ritual that derived its power from evil sources and so constituted an implicit pact with Satan. Koch used narratives and beliefs drawn from folk healing to demonstrate the evils of the occult.  

Koch developed a huge file of cases from his ministry in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, which he organized under types of occult involvement…These books include many accounts, anecdotal and firsthand, of cases involving what he defined as demonic activity. 

Koch's works on discerning and remedying demonic possession were cited as authoritative within the deliverance ministry. Three of his ideas became essential to the deliverance mythology, and so his key arguments formed a theoretical base for much of the anti-Satanism propaganda that followed. First he argued that charms and procedures used in Germanic folk healing, even when they appeared to help the patient, were always satanic in nature. Such diabolical charms left "engrams," or concealed psychic inures, in the personality of the person healed, which later emerged as physical or mental illnesses of demonic origin. Most importantly, these engrams were multigenerational in nature, inherited by children or even grandchildren from relatives who were in league with demons.  

Koch built a theological argument identifying Germanic magical healing as a satanic parody of spirit-filled ministry. This tradition is often called "brauche" ("using" occult powers) or "pow-wow" in areas of the US where it is still actively practiced. Healers, as folklorists have observed, do in fact resemble priests as channels of superhuman powers that drive away evil forces causing the illness. While no two powwowers use the same or even similer motions, their rituals are often analogous to those of a priest's blessing. Koch also notes this similarity and argues that the healing ritual was in fact a close counterfeit of institutional Christian liturgy. The healer's conventional invocation of the Trinity or "three holy names" correspond to addressing God in prayer; use of a charm was equivalent to use of the Scriptures; symbolic actions such as drawing the ailment to the healer matched sacramental laying on of hands; and the fetish often used related to holy water or the Sacrament. 

In short, folk healers in the Germanic tradition often function as exorcists, banishing not only the ailment but also the evil spirits that caused them…When one recognizes, too, that such folk traditions were often passed on and practiced by females in the face of a patriarchal religious instate, we see how the powwower could be considered a serious folk rival to the institutionally ordained pastor or priest.  

Koch was hardly original in attacking folk healing: many pastors before him had denounced it as superstitious and ignorant. But Koch believed that it was more than superstition; indeed it worked all to well. Rather than simply calling it irrational, he conceded that powwowers could produce medically valid cures. But he argued that such healing only appeared to have a beneficial effect. 

His second major contribution lay in his use of existing psychological terminology to define the mechanism by which this spiritual harm was caused. It is well known, Koch notes, that disorders in the mental realm could lead to physical, "psychosomatic" illnesses. But he argued that the reverse was also true: magical cures of organic illnessness were actually curses that could lead to mental disorders. This explained why those who apparently had been healed successfully by charming later on fell prey to mental illnesses…In some cases, the problems could be traced to conscious guilt over having dabbled in sorcery. In other instances, as when a child was charmed at birth, the effects of the magic healing led to otherwise inexplicable physical and mental problems. 

Koch argued that when magical healing took place, the physical trauma was not in fact exorcised; rather, it moved to the "organic unconsciousness" and became an engram that could later produce mental disorders.  

Koch's third and most long-lasting contribution to the deliverance mythology was his argument that the effects of "occult sins" were multigenerational. That is, mental illness could be caused by individuals' own dabbling with the occult or, equally, to the use of folk magic by parents or grandparents. One reason underlying this argument was the belief that white magic was a satanic as black, and the same persons who promised to help patients could and often did use their powers aggressively to harm them.  

The interaction of "good" and "bad" healing powers, often wielded by the same individual, is a regular and presumably functional part of this tradition of belief. Certainly the dual role of healers has been employed described in other cultures' traditions of belief, notably that of the African Diaspora (e.g., Jackson 1976).  

Koch relied on widespread folk traditions of becoming a witch through some sort of ritual demonic pact. Likewise, he accepted stories that described the effect of such pacts on the children of such sorcerers. One woman, who claimed to have subscribed both herself and her unborn child to the Devil, later saw the child suffer early senility. And a man who contracted with the Devil to gain a wife from a higher social class later fathered twins that were born "horribly disfigured." 

Stories and rumors current among American healers frequently assume that a witch is likely to–perhaps even obligated to–cause the death of a child or other family member in exchange for her magical gifts (Randolph 1947; Yoder 1962; Stewart 1976). Hence, in traditional witchcraft stories, the gaining of supernatural powers accomplishes the exact reverse of healing and making the community whole. Koch adopted this belief in his own theory; even when children seem at first to be unaffected or unaware of their parents' occult powers, they still suffer later in life (15-22).

i) I'm puzzled by his classification of Koch as a "Lutheran Charismatic." To begin with, that's almost oxymoronic. To my knowledge, Lutheran theology is broadly cessationist. Admittedly, it antedates some of the contemporary distinctions. 

Moreover, Koch wrote about the tongues movement. He's closer to the cessationist end of the spectrum, although he allows for the possibility that, in isolated cases, God may grant this to individual Christians. Cf. The Strife of Tongues. 

ii) This misclassification is not an incidental mistake. Since Ellis is arguing that Pentecostalism was a catalyst for the Satanic ritual abuse legend, classifying Koch as a representative of charismatic theology is pivotal evidence for his claim.  

iii) It's important to distinguish between folk medicine and folk magic. Although some folk remedies are occultic, there's nothing inherently occultic about a folk remedy. Likewise, even if a folk remedy traditionally utilizes a magic ritual, that may be separable from the remedy itself.

For instance, if a tribe inhabits the Amazon jungle for generations, it may, by trial and error, discover the medicinal properties of certain fauna or flora. That lore is transmitted from one generation to the next. Even if the tribal herbalist is a witchdoctor, the remedy may have genuine therapeutic value, regardless of the mumbo jumbo that accompanies it. 

iv) We need to distinguish between Koch's case studies and his interpretation. He developed a theory to explain the evidence. His theory may be deficient. The mechanism ("engrams") is speculative. And he may be guilty of hasty generalizations. But you can't dismiss the evidence by demising the theory.

v) Ellis doesn't really engage the evidence. On the face of it, there's some general plausibility to the connections which Koch made, even if that needs to be refined or scaled back. 

vi) How should the contemporary Christian church address the question of demonic activity? Unless you take a hyperdispensational view, which disallows the very possibility of this occurring during the church age, it's something we need to deal with at both a theological and practical level.

Obviously, "deliverance ministries" are magnets for quacks and charlatans. One problem is making diagnosis and deliverance too formulaic. 

Book Review: The Righteous Mind

The following is a review of Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind (Random House: New York, 2010).  Like a good Christian, I am a couple years behind the curve reviewing this important contribution to secular sociology and ethics. Fortunately, the book's content isn't time-sensitive, and much of it can apply to methods of evangelism.  (Because I am reviewing an Amazon Kindle copy, page citations might not properly align with the print version. I believe Haidt is pronounced like “height.”)

Things God can do to reveal Himself

http://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2014/05/things-god-can-do-to-reveal-himself.html

Goodness and greatness

Vikings concluded season two this week. In general, I think the second season was not as good as the first season. (Although Fimmel's acting is stronger in season two.) I think the basic problem is that the raw material is not that promising. I'm reminded of something Bill Vallicella said:

If the aim is to depict reality as it is, why select only the most worthless and uninspiring portions of reality for portrayal? Why waste brilliant actors on worthless roles, Paul Newman in The Color of Money, Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner in The War of the Roses, to take two examples off the top of my head from a potential list of thousands. The Grifters is another example. An excellent film in any number of respects. But imagine a film of the same cinematic quality which portrays in a subtle and intelligent manner a way of life — I avoid 'lifestyle' — that has some chance of being worth living.  

http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2009/09/advice-for-hollywood-liberals.html

I'm also reminded of something Dan Henninger once said about The Sopranos. Although it was about as good as it could be given the subject matter, it had limited interest, limited dramatic potential, because, in his words, "these are small people."

He meant morally small. Crooks. 

There's a certain irony about great directors who make great films about crooks. And there's certainly a place for depicting depravity. But, hopefully, we find that tiresome after a while. Would you want these people to be your friends? Are their lives really that intriguing? How great can something be unless it's good?

That's the problem with Vikings. How far can you develop a drama with such unappealing characters? Their outlook on life is so one-dimensional. 

There's a scene in the season finale in which Ragnar asks Athelstan to teach him a Christian prayer. Athelstan kneels, and has Ragnar kneel. That, itself, is probably an unusual experience for a proud pagan warrior. He then teaches Ragnar the Lord's Prayer.

Ragnar's interest in Christianity isn't necessarily pious. He's disappointed with the Norse gods because they haven't given him enough sons. A warrior's lifestyle is hazardous. The heir apparent can die in battle at any time. So Ragnar needs several potential heirs waiting in line so that if the leading candidate is slain, there's always another one right behind him to move up. (Of course, that's a recipe for fratricide, as rival heirs eliminate the competition.)

So Ragnar's interest in Christianity is probably pragmatic. Will the Christian God give him what the Norse gods have failed to supply? In paganism, prayer is not about submitting your will to God, but submitting God's will to you. 

At the same time, it creates an ironic and dramatic point of contrast. If Athelstan's Christian faith is wavering in a heathen direction, Ragnar's heathen faith is wavering in a Christian direction. Will the Viking become more Christian as the monk becomes more heathen? 

"You betrayed the gods–all of them"

Vikings ran its second season finale this week. In one scene, Floki, who likes to taunt Athelstan, accuses Athelstan: "You betrayed the gods–all of them."

Athelstan was a monk before he was abducted by the Vikings when they raided his monastery. Athelstan is something of a social chameleon, who blends with whatever environment he is put in. When he's with Christians, he plays the Christian role. When he's with heathens, he plays a heathen role (although he holds something in reserve).

Floki's point is that, having turned his back on the Christian God when he was living with the Vikings, and having turned his back on the Norse gods when he resumed living with Christians, Athelstan has alienated all the gods. He no longer has a deity to turn to. Athelstan is unnerved by the accusation. Is he doomed? 

From a pagan standpoint, Floki's allegation somewhat misleading. To some degree, pagans believed in local gods. You have your war god and we have our war god. The winners are victorious, either because their war god is stronger, or because the losers were fighting on the turf of the enemy war god, which put them at a disadvantage. 

if you married into a different heathen people-group, you might leave your ancestral gods behind and adopt their gods. Indeed, that was expected. 

Mind you, there was also a certain amount of syncretism in heathen piety. Because some phenomena attributed to the gods was universal, the same god would be responsible for that phenomenon. Presumably, there was only one storm god by different names. One sun god by different names. 

Still, if you keep shifting allegiances, your ancestral gods won't accept you back. Changing sides may be acceptable so long as you remain loyal to your adopted gods. But you will run out of divine patrons if you cross that border too many times.

The heathen gods were not forgiving, even when humans were guiltless. For instance, Zeus would force himself on women. They were in no position to rebuff his unwanted advances. This enraged Hera. But she can't exact revenge on her philandering husband. Zeus is too powerful. So she'd take it out on his hapless victims. 

When he was out hunting, Actaeon accidentally saw Artemis bathing. She changes him into a stag, which provokes his hunting dogs to attack him. 

If that's how the heathen gods treat humans who offend them through no fault of their own, imagine what awaits a human who betrays them! There is no one left to protect you. No where you can go to escape the wrath of the gods. 

Although I'm discussing fiction, paganism is not a dead religion. Folk Hinduism and folk Buddhism are pagan religions. There is also a resurgence of paganism in the West. 

And this is one of the differences between heathenism and Christianity. Peter betrayed Christ. And Peter was not alone. Except for John, all the other disciples abandoned Christ when the authorities took him into custody. They feared collective reprisal. 

Yet betraying the one true God is not an unpardonable offense. The blood of Christ redeemed his betrayer. Peter was contrite. God forgave Peter. 

Praying for sermons

In my observation, Christians pray different kinds of prayer for sermons.

A pastor may pray during the sermon prep phase that God will quicken and clarify his mind so that he will exegete the passage correctly, and think of suitable applications.

Before the sermon, a pastor may pray for freedom to extemporize. Even if he wrote out his sermon, he may wish to leave himself open to the inspiration of the moment. Composing a sermon in the privacy of your study is different from the dynamic of speaking before a live audience. 

In addition, both pastor and parishioners may pray that God will put the parishioners in a receptive state of mind to heed the sermon. 

Finally, the pastor may pray that his sermon will speak to the situation of his parishioners. Be especially relevant to their circumstances. In many cases he can't know what they went through that week. What challenges they may be facing. But God does. 

Now, I don't think these kinds of prayers single out any particular theological tradition. I think Christians generally pray these kinds of prayer.

However, I'd note that these kinds of prayers make far more sense in Calvinism. They assume that God is in control of our mental states. Our psychological predispositions. Hence, God can make us more receptive to the message.

They assume that God is in control of our circumstances. Hence, God can coordinate, indeed, prearrange, the sermon to dovetail with the individual situation of a particular parishioner. 

For instance, in the course of his sermon the pastor may go off message to make some unprepared remarks. As he's preaching, something crosses his mind. So he interjects an impromptu, parenthetical aside. 

After service, as the congregation is filing out of church, a parishioner may quote that part of the sermon and tell the pastor how timely that was. How that spoke directly to his situation that week. What the pastor didn't plan on saying turns out to be the most crucial thing he said.

We may take that for granted. But it only makes sense if God is providentially guiding events according to his master plan for the world. 

The Savior of all

3 This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, 4 who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. 5 For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, 6 who gave himself as a ransom for all (1 Tim 2:3-5). 

10 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). 

11 For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people (Tit 2:11).

This comprises a set of popular Arminian prooftexts. They accuse Calvinists of tampering with the plain sense of these passes. 

But, of course, the Arminian appeal isn't that straightforward. Because Arminians think human freewill can overrule God's will, they don't think God actually saves everyone, or that God is really the Savior of everyone. So they have to qualify their prooftexts by interjecting "potential" into the passages.

How do Calvinists construe them? Let's consider two interpretive approaches:

i) Tom Schreiner notes that in the Pastorals, Paul is combatting a Jewish heresy which seems to restrict access to salvation to those with the right bloodlines. So Paul would be correcting that heresy by explaining that access to salvation cuts across ethnic and genealogical distinctives. Pedigree can't save you or condemn you. Cf. Paul: Apostle of God's Glory in Christ, 184-85.

ii) Another explanation is that pagans believed in tribal or national gods. Local patron gods. But if there is only one God, then that's the only God you can turn to for salvation. One God is the source of salvation for anyone. That nicely explains Paul's one-to-all correlation, which has its background in OT monotheism. 

Missional Narcissism and Legalism

http://www.worldmag.com/2013/05/the_new_legalism

Euthanasia and capital punishment

One of the ironies in the death penalty debate is that many people who oppose capital punishment also support euthanasia: "death with dignity." In some cases they support voluntary euthanasia on the basis of personal autonomy. But that inevitably shades into involuntary euthanasia for the senile or developmentally disabled. People who can't make life and death decisions for themselves. At first the family makes the decision. But because grown children suffer from a sentimental attachment to their elderly parents, they can't be trusted to make the "right" decision, so that's soon taken out of their hands. Since, moreover, doctors in countries which practice euthanasia may be gov't employees, it will be bureaucrats rather than the patient or family members who ultimately make the decision.

As a result, you have people who think it's immoral to execute a vicious killer, but virtuous to euthanize someone's mother. 

Neo-Vikings

Arminian doyen Roger Olson, that beacon of clarity in a morally gray world, has once again voiced his opposition to the death penalty, using "botched" executions as one justification:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2014/05/my-response-to-al-mohlers-defense-of-the-death-penalty/

I'll make a few observations:

i) Although I don't think the state should torture murderers to death (not that a "botched" execution qualifies as torture), if the execution accidentally turns out to be painful for a vicious killer, I consider that a bonus point. 

ii) I've often thought the best way to punish a vicious killer is to turn him over to the family of the victim. If he's undoubtedly guilty, let the family of the victim punish him. "He's all yours!"

I suspect the murder rate would drop if prospective murders knew the family of the victim was going to mete out justice. 

iii) I think bleeding-heart opponents of the death penalty should have to stay overnight in the cell of the vicious killers who evoke their empathy.

Death-penalty opponents are just as sociopathic as the sociopathic killers for whom they empathize. For them, the victim or the victim's family is just an abstraction. They have no real compassion for the victim or his family. LIke a classic sociopath, it isn't real to them if it happens to someone else. It's only real to them if someone does it to them. 

iv) The reason we have death by lethal injection in the first place is because death-penalty opponents whined about how cruel other forms of execution were. But there's no pleasing them. If you accede to their demands by replacing other forms of execution with lethal injection, you are conceding to them the principle that there's something inherently cruel and barbaric about execution, so the best we can do is to mitigate that. But at that point you already lost the argument. It's a mistake to appease them in the first place.

v) I suspect many death penalty opponents are cynical. Because they are convinced that capital punishment is evil, they knowingly resort to bad arguments to attack it. They don't care. Because they think capital punishment is immoral, that justifies any argument, any pretext, however lame, you can use against it.

vi) In the case of other opponents, because they think capital punishment is evil, that disarms their critical sense. They have no incentive to stop and consider whether their arguments are any good. 

vii) Incidentally, this reflects a larger trend in contemporary American society. Increasingly, liberals don't even maintain the pretense of applying a uniform standard to everyone. They really think there should be one standard for their kind of people, and a different standard for their opponents.

Take the IRS targeting the Tea Party. That elicited a collective yawn from the Left. They think the Tea Party is evil, so if the IRS targeted the Tea Party, it was getting its comeuppance. Of course, if the tables were turned on them, they'd scream bloody murder, but not because they believe the IRS should be impartial. 

Same thing with the increasing disregard for the Constitution. They don't believe in a uniform standard for everyone concerned. Rather, they believe in one standard for the good guys (themselves), and a different standard for the bad guys (their political or religious opponents). 

For them, freedom of speech (to take one example) should only protect the right kind of speech. Their speech. Not the speech of their ideological adversaries. 

Same thing with "hate crimes" and protected classes. They openly embrace a double standard. 

We're reverting to primitive tribal morality where the only code of conduct is loyalty to members of the in-group. There are no ethical inhibitions in how you treat outsiders. Increasingly, their social mores approximate the Viking code of honor in the History Channel drama. 

The translation of Elijah

19 And Micaiah said, “Therefore hear the word of the Lord: I saw the Lord sitting on his throne, and all the host of heaven standing beside him on his right hand and on his left (1 Kgs 22:19). 

11 And as they still went on and talked, behold, chariots of fire and horses of fire separated the two of them. And Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven. 12 And Elisha saw it and he cried, “My father, my father! The chariots of Israel and its horsemen!” And he saw him no more (2 Kgs 2:11-12). 

17 Then Elisha prayed and said, “O Lord, please open his eyes that he may see.” So the Lord opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw, and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha (2 Kgs 6:17).

(1:6) God spends one-sixth of his entire creative effort (the second day) working on a solid firmament. 

http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/gen/1.html 

(2:11-14) Elijah ascended into heaven in a chariot of fire drawn by horses of fire. 

http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/2kg/2.html

I'm using the SAB as a foil. It nicely illustrates the ineptitude of unbelievers. In this case, Steve Wells (author of the SAB). 

i) If ancient Hebrews thought the sky was a solid dome, how did Elijah ascend to heaven through that impenetrable barrier? Perhaps Wells will say someone opened a window in the sky. But that would release rain, which would extinguish the fiery horse-drawn chariot. 

ii)The account doesn't say he "ascended into heaven in a chariot of fire drawn by horses of fire." Rather, the "whirlwind" was the vehicle. The fiery horse and chariots merely separated Elijah and Elisha. 

iii) Wells doesn't begin to understand the imagery. Biblical theophanies often trade on storm cloud imagery because the Shekinah resembles a storm cloud. The Shekinah has the appearance of luminous plasma or ball lightning. The "whirlwind" is the Shekinah. Elijah was enveloped by the Shekinah, and whisked away. 

The storm cloud imagery becomes a picturesque metaphor for archers on chariots. Thunderbolts resemble fiery spears and arrows. Thunder sounds like chariots and galloping warhorses on a plain. 

iv) This dovetails with the angelology of 1-2 Kings. In addition to the Shekinah, angels fight on behalf of Elijah and Elisha. LIke the Shekinah, angels can project luminosity. 

These are common motifs in the OT and NT alike. All these elements come together in Ezk 1. 

Only the paranoid survive

I'll use this post as a springboard to discuss conspiracy theories in general:

http://www.garynorth.com/public/12222print.cfm

Gary North is a bright guy, although he's not as smart as he thinks he is. Intellectual pride is the Achilles heel of the conspiracy theorist.

Conspiracy theorists assume that skeptics of conspiracy theorists are simply gullible. We trust what the bureaucrats tell us. We don't question the "official" narrative.

That, however, is not why I have reservations about many conspiracy theories. Moreover, the conspiracy theorist can be just as credulous in a different way.

Which brings me to the next point. This debate tends to be polarized between knee-jerk conspiracy theorists and knee-jerk debunkers. But as we know, bureaucrats do sometimes engage in conspiratorial behavior. Genuine conspiracies have been uncovered from time to time. So we need to stake a middle ground between credulous conspiracy theorists and dismissive debunkers.

One issue is how to interpret official lies. For instance, it wouldn't surprise me if the gov't lied about 9/11. But what does that mean? Does it mean gov't officials were complicit in the attacks?

For the 9/11 Truther, this means bureaucrats lied about their degree of involvement in 9/11. But there's an obvious alternative motivation. They lied about their culpable lack of involvement in 9/11. 9/11 was a huge embarrassment for the gov't because it failed to protect the populace. Moreover, it was a preventable attack in the sense that there was evidence that something was afoot leading up to the attack. Like Arab students taking flight lessons, but only wanting to know how to steer the plane, not land the plane.

So gov't officials are motivated to lie, not to cover their tracks for orchestrating 9/11, but to cover their tracks for failing to "connect the dots." It's funny how Michael Scheuer became a folk hero for some libertarians even though he was clearly trying to shift blame for his own dereliction. 

Another thing which makes some conspiracy theories more plausible is the observable link between a national disaster and appeal to that event as a justification (or pretext?) to pass new laws and create new agencies to allegedly protect the populace from another attack. But in retrospect that looks suspiciously like a staged event which contributes incrementally to a police state. 

Taken by itself, this is the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. But whether or not that's the intent, that's the effect. 

Mind you, this development doesn't require a conspiracy theory. It's only natural for politicians who were caught off-guard to deflect attention away from their own negligence by saying, "We need to do something so that something like this will never happen again! (famous last words)." That's the typical bureaucratic reflex to a typical bureaucratic failure.

Likewise, gov't officials may lie about an event to forestall mass "panic." But the official lie gives rise to urban legends. So it takes on a life of its own. They may fuel the very thing they were attempting to extinguish. 

Speaking for myself, what are some factors I consider in assessing a conspiracy theory? In assessing a conspiracy theory, I don't assume that gov't officials are honorable or honest. Indeed, I tend to assume the worst about gov't officials, then ask myself how a dishonorable gov't official would weigh the alternatives.

i) I think a corrupt regime like the Obama administration will do whatever it thinks it can get away with. So the question is, how much does it think it can get away with? That becomes a cost/benefit analysis.

ii) What is the political payoff if the conspiracy succeeds? Does that outweigh the risk if it fails?

iii) What is the risk of exposure? How likely is it that the conspiracy can be kept under wraps? How many people are in the loop? Are mission details "highly compartmented"? Depending on the complexity of the operation, is that even feasible? 

iv) What is the legal or political fallout if it leaks? Does the potential damage in case it backfires significantly exceed the potential benefit? Will the president lose public support? Will the ruling party be voted out of power? Will operatives be prosecuted? Will they flip to implicate higher-ups? 

A calculating politician will consider these factors. 

v) Moral restraint. Even a corrupt politician may have moral inhibitions about doing certain things, not because he's virtuous, but because even conventional morality can act as a restraint on some actions. 

Ironically, a misguided conspiracy theory can throw us off the scent, thereby letting the real political culprits escape into the brush. 

Homosexual converts

Recently, a med student and I corresponded on the issue of how the church should counsel homosexual converts to Christianity. He's now edited our correspondence into a post:

http://rockingwithhawking.blogspot.com/2014/05/homsexual-christians-marriage-and.html

Christians and alternative medicine

http://rockingwithhawking.blogspot.com/2014/05/christians-and-alternative-medicine.html

Bavinck and Berkhof

"Bavinck and Berkhof" by Paul Helm.

Drowning, Death, and "Dehumanization"

http://drbrianmattson.com/journal/2014/4/29/drowning-death-and-dehumanization

HT: Alan Kurschner

Brandon Addison’s “Called to Communion” article available in .PDF

Brandon Addison’s “Called to Communion” article, “The Quest for the Historical Church: A Protestant Assessment”, is now available in .PDF format:

http://reformation500.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/brandon-addison-ctc-article-20140501.pdf

Youtube theology

http://bnonn.thinkingmatters.org.nz/why-you-shouldnt-rely-on-youtube-for-your-understanding-of-the-trinity/