Greatly Helped By Apologetics

When people are attempting to justify apologetics (it's remarkable how often that needs to be done, even in Christian circles), passages like 1 Peter 3:15 and Jude 3 often come up. A passage that ought to be mentioned more often is Acts 18:27, along with the context provided by verse 28. Ben Witherington writes:

"We are told that on his arrival, Apollos was a great help to those who had come to believe through God's grace. The help he rendered was apparently not just in teaching those who were already Christians but in doing apologetics….This last verse reflects the language of public debate used of a contest in which rhetoric is used, which involves arguments (or 'proofs') and refutations offered back and forth to convince the audience." (The Acts Of The Apostles: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1998], 568)

Darrell Bock writes:

"This strong verb appears only here in the NT. It means 'overwhelm' someone in argument (BAGD 184; BDAG 229)." (Acts [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2007], 593)

Apollos' apologetic activity isn't described as something counterproductive. There's no suggestion that faith is a blind leap in the dark or belief that goes against reason (two anti-Biblical notions that are popular in the modern world), so that Apollos' work was superfluous or undermining people's faith. His apologetic efforts aren't described in neutral terms either. Nor does Luke merely say that Apollos' work was helpful. Rather, he emphatically refers to how it "greatly helped".

That isn't true of every apologetic effort. But the potential is there. Apologetics is important work. That's especially the case in a rapidly developing information age like ours. People have so much access to so much information and are in such frequent contact with so many people and ideas. Work like Apollos' is even more important than usual.

Holy Spirit, living breath of God

Holy Spirit, living Breath of God,
Breathe new life into my willing soul.
Bring the presence of the risen Lord
To renew my heart and make me whole.
Cause Your Word to come alive in me;
Give me faith for what I cannot see;
Give me passion for Your purity.
Holy Spirit, breathe new life in me.

Holy Spirit, come abide within;
May Your joy be seen in all I do—
Love enough to cover ev'ry sin
In each thought and deed and attitude,
Kindness to the greatest and the least,
Gentleness that sows the path of peace.
Turn my striving into works of grace.
Breath of God, show Christ in all I do.

Holy Spirit, from creation's birth,
Giving life to all that God has made,
Show Your power once again on earth;
Cause Your church to hunger for Your ways.
Let the fragrance of our prayers arise.
Lead us on the road of sacrifice
That in unity the face of Christ
Will be clear for all the world to see.

(Source)

When trials come

When trials come no longer fear
For in the pain our God draws near
To fire a faith worth more than gold
And there His faithfulness is told
And there His faithfulness is told

Within the night I know Your peace
The breath of God brings strength to me
And new each morning mercy flows
As treasures of the darkness grow
As treasures of the darkness grow

I turn to Wisdom not my own
For every battle You have known
My confidence will rest in You
Your love endures Your ways are good
Your love endures Your ways are good

When I am weary with the cost
I see the triumph of the cross
So in its shadow I shall run
Till He completes the work begun
Till He completes the work begun

One day all things will be made new
I'll see the hope You called me to
And in your kingdom paved with gold
I'll praise your faithfulness of old
I'll praise your faithfulness of old

(Source)

WARNING: Jerry Walls Ahead

Wintery Knight has posted a recent Jerry Walls video, “Jerry Walls lectures on objections to Reformed Theology”, with the comment, “WARNING: This lecture is a very sharp and pointed critique of Calvinist theology. Viewer discretion is advised”.

I have good friends who are Arminians (I know the retort: “friends don’t let friends be Arminians”), and so normally I don’t take much interest in these types of discussions. I like WK and I wanted to see what he found so compelling. But after watching this video, I can’t understand how anybody can take Jerry Walls seriously, at least from a theological perspective. I left the following comment:

I was not impressed. Walls begins with TULIP, but genuine Reformed theology begins with very careful prolegomena and the doctrines of God and Scripture. If an Arminian wants to try to score an easy win against Calvinists, I guess a caricature of TULIP is a good place to start. But if an Arminian really wants to understand the genuine Reformed faith, he must start way earlier in Reformed systematics.

As it is, Walls’s big trump card is “the character of God”, but without an analysis of the Reformed Doctrine of God, Walls’s “character” is something of his own making.

I would disagree, too, that his description of TULIP was accurate. It was accurate within the bounds of stereotypes, but I think his whole simplified message is wrong-headed.

What I find most alarming is that he gets an audience for this kind of thing among evangelical Christians.

For just one response, see Steve Hays’s critique of Walls’s article in Philosophia Christi:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2012/10/impugning-god.html

All things work together for good

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose (Rom 8:28).

Commentators differ on the best way to render and understand this verse. Fitzmyer has a useful breakdown of the major options. 

Some commentators think "God" is the subject of the sentence: God works all things together for good…

But whatever the theological merits of that rendering, it's considered ungrammatical. Some commentators object to making "all things" the subject of the sentence on that grounds that that's too impersonal. "Things" don't cooperate for our benefit. 

There's a sense in which that's true, but it misses the point by erecting a false dichotomy. Certainly Paul didn't suppose that "things" cooperate for the good of Christians independent of divine agency. V28 is sandwiched between lengthy passages that expound God's plan and providence. God works through things for our good. 

Rather, it's a matter of emphasis, and the emphasis is quite important to practical theology. For it's "things" that often seem to impede rather than facilitate the walk of faith. They get in the way. They often seem to conspire against us rather than for us. That's frustrating. Aggravating. Discouraging. And no one knew that better than Paul himself. He had firsthand experience. Just read 2 Corinthians!

So Paul is making the point that, appearances notwithstanding, all things (both all things and all things) do, in fact, work together for the ultimate good of Christians. And that's a very familiar idea for a writer like Paul. Consider OT history, Consider the Joseph cycle (Gen 37-50). Despite repeated obstacles and setbacks, despite appearances to the contrary, God was directing events behind the scenes for the good of his chosen people. 

Not just the obviously good things, but even, or especially, the seemingly bad things, contribute to our welfare. All things. But that's often something we can only appreciate in hindsight.Yet that isn't helpful when we're in the thick of things. That's why we need God's promise. God's promise is a glimpse of hindsight in advance. 

Lutherans and Elvis sightings

Over the centuries, Calvinists have so successfully vilified Arminianism that people who are Arminian are afraid to say so. This is true even though Arminianism is the default theological position of Christian Protestantism. 

http://evangelicalarminians.org/survey-are-you-an-arminian-and-dont-even-know-it-2/

It's gratifying to see SEA correct a rampant urban legend. I don't know when or by whom the rumor got going that Lutherans are real, but it's about time that someone finally set the record straight. Like other chimerical critters, Lutherans only exist in Marvel comic books. Arminianism is the default theological position of Christian Protestantism.

"After Adam"

Recent research in molecular biology, primatology, sociobiology, and phylogenetics indicates that the species Homo sapiens cannot be traced back to a single pair of individuals, and that the earliest human beings did not come on the scene in anything like paradisal physical or moral conditions. It is therefore difficult to read Genesis 1–3 as a factual account of human origins. In current Christian thinking about Adam and Eve, several scenarios are on offer. The most compelling one regards Adam and Eve as strictly literary figures—characters in a divinely inspired story about the imagined past that intends to teach theological, not historical, truths about God, creation, and humanity. 

Recent studies in primatology, sociobiology , and phylogenetics are also pertinent to the historicity of Adam and Eve and to the Christian doctrines of the Fall and original sin. Here a range of evidence establishes that virtually all of the acts considered “sinful” in humans are part of the natural repertoire of behavior among animals—especially primates, but also birds, insects, and other species—behaviors including deception, bullying, theft, rape, murder, infanticide, and warfare, to name but a few.7  

The source of the human inclination toward self-aggrandizement, then, is to be found in animal nature itself. Far from infecting the rest of the animal creation with selfish behaviors, we humans inherited these tendencies from our animal past. 

Together, these newer lines of research join other, well-established ones in making it hard to imagine that the earliest human beings appeared on the scene in anything like paradisal physical or moral conditions. They would instead have had to struggle to sustain themselves, and to do so, they would have possessed strong tendencies toward the same types of behavior common to all animals. Only over time would they have developed a sufficient spiritual awareness to sense that many selfish behaviors are contrary to God’s will, and the moral imperative to transcend those behaviors. 

http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/2010/PSCF9-10Harlow.pdf

Of course, Harlow imagines that this is just a problem for traditional Christian theology. But it's not. If you accept this evolutionary account, then it doesn't just falsify young-earth creationism or old-earth creationism. Even theistic evolution is squeezed out of the picture. There's no middle ground between special creation and naturalistic evolution, for the evolutionary narrative is indistinguishable from naturalistic evolution. 

In theory, we can distinguish between historical and theological truths about God, creation, and humanity. For instance, the parables of Jesus are fictional stories, yet they teach theological truths. 

That, however, doesn't solve the problem Harlow has posed for himself. The parables of Jesus teach theological truths because they are true to life. Lifelike. They have verisimilitude. 

The problem for Harlow, even on his own terms, is that he isn't merely distinguishing between historical and theological truth. He has driven a wedge between the two. Gen 1-3 could only be theologically true, despite being historically false, if the narratives are at least analogous to historical events. But in Harlow's understanding, natural history is fundamentally unlike Gen 1-3. The real past is radically dissimilar to the "imagined past" of the Biblical depiction.  That follows on his own grounds, even if we grant his assumptions for the sake of argument. 

I won't say too much about the rest of his argument. His discussion of the scientific evidence is one-sided. Moreover, his scientific evidence is more persuasive if you ignore the unstated presuppositions, viz. methodological naturalism, the uniformity of nature. If, however, God is active in the process, then you can't assume a linear continuum of cause and effect. 

His comparative mythological parallels are forced. His exegesis lacks critical sympathy. This is not a feasible alternative to traditional Christian theology, but a dead-end. 

The next frontier in civil rights and social justice

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/NC-lawmaker-Pedophilia-is-like-homosexuality-5576632.php

God-dishonoring Arminians

The Society of Evangelical Arminians (SEA) is an association of evangelical scholars and laymen who adhere to Arminian theology and are united in order to glorify God, edify his people, protect them from error, and foster the proper representation of our magnificent God to the world by…(2) refuting Calvinism and diminishing the number of its adherents, through the concerted, strategic effort of Arminians networked through the society for the accomplishment of these goals. 

http://evangelicalarminians.org/about-us/

Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that Arminian theism is correct. (Of course, there are varieties of Arminianism, but I'll pass on that for now.) Let's say God is just like SEA's statement of faith. 

Would God be pleased with SEA's priorities? Or do SEA's priorities dishonor the Arminian God?

If Arminian theism is correct, then refuting Calvinism and diminishing the number of Calvinists is a God-honoring exercise. Problem is, if Arminian theism is correct, why does refuting Calvinism and diminishing the number of Calvinists take precedence over refuting atheism and diminishing the number of atheists? Refuting Roman Catholicism and diminishing the number of Roman Catholics? Refuting Islam and diminishing the number of Muslims? Refuting Mormonism, Hinduism, or Buddhism, and diminishing the number of their adherents?

Refuting abortion or euthanasia, and diminishing the number of abortions or "mercy-killings"? Refuting homosexual marriage? Refuting attacks on the inerrancy of Scripture? Refuting attacks on the historicity of Adam? 

Does the Arminian God think that refuting Calvinism and diminishing the number of Calvinists is more important than all these other issues? Why is that SEA's only target? 

How will SEA members respond if, on the Day of Judgment, God asks them why they didn't make anything like the same "concerted, strategic effort" to refute these other egregious errors? Why was their concerted, strategic goal confined to refuting Calvinism and diminishing the number of Calvinists?

Ironically, if Arminian theism is true, I'd feel safer as a Calvinist than a member of SEA on the day of Judgment. I'd hate having to explain to the Almighty why I was so negligent in these other areas. 

Frankly, I don't think the God of Arminianism is very real to SEA members. For if he were real to them, they'd realize that they dishonor the God they profess by their pinched agenda, to the exclusion of so many other targets, which–if Arminian theism is true–are at least as antithetical to the "proper representation" of God as Calvinism. 

Corporate personhood

I'm going to begin by making a legal and political point, then use that to segue into a theological point. Liberals mock or revile the legal concept of corporate personhood when that crops up in certain First Amendment cases that don't go their way. They act like corporate personhood is arbitrary or absurd.

Of course, judges and lawmakers are perfectly aware of the fact that corporate personhood is a legal fiction. But it's a meaningful and essential construction. As one prominent law prof. explains:

The law also treats various nonhuman, nonsentient entities as “persons” for certain legal purposes. Corporations, estates, trusts, partnerships, and government entities are often defined this way. Walmart, Illinois, and the California Pension Fund can sue, for example, without anyone asking if they have a right to abortion. Sometimes, corporations can bring suit (or be sued) because a statute explicitly gives “persons” that right, and defines “persons” to include corporations. At other times, the statute does not define “persons,” but courts interpret the word to include corporations because they believe that is what Congress intended. This transubstantiation of corporations into persons advances some pretty uncontroversial policy goals. If corporations lacked personhood, you couldn’t sue FedEx for crashing a van into your car, or Walmart for selling you a defective space heater that burns down your home, or J.P. Morgan for defrauding you when you get a lemon mortgage. You wouldn’t be able to enter into contracts with a corporation at all. Legislatures and courts have been treating corporations like persons for hundreds of years: There is even a general interpretive rule in the law that when Congress says “persons,” it means corporations as well, unless the context of the statute provides otherwise. 

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/view_from_chicago/2013/12/personhood_for_corporations_and_chimpanzees_is_an_essential_legal_fiction.html

Here's another useful analysis:

http://www.vox.com/2014/7/2/5860732/six-reasons-liberal-should-like-corporate-personhood

This goes into even more detail:

http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/articles/Shapiro-JMLR-vol44-n4-2011.pdf

So the principle is quite important in its own right. But that brings me to the next point. Catholics complain that justification by faith alone, the imputation of Adam's sin, and the imputation of Christ's righteousness, are "legal fictions." Likewise, some atheists (e.g. Ken Pulliam) and Arminian theologians (e.g. Joel Green) complain that penal substitution (or vicarious atonement) is a "legal fiction." To this I'd say three things:

i) If you'd rather die in your sins than accept vicarious atonement, you get what you ask for.

ii) It's not a legal fiction. Christ's righteousness really is imputed to the elect. 

iii) But suppose, for the sake of argument, it was a legal fiction. So what? Maybe that sounds bad. But there's no reason a "legal fiction" should have invidious connotations. The law treats businesses and nonprofit organizations as if these were were persons, even though a legal person is not a real person. Yet there's nothing silly about that construction. To the contrary, it's a necessary acknowledgement of the fact that human action has a social as well as individual dimension. The law must confer personal rights and responsibilities on such organizations. 

Union with Christ is analogous to corporate personhood. Even if we consider it a "legal fiction," that's a meaningful and necessary principle.  

Dershowitz on Hobby Lobby

From a blue ribbon liberal law prof.:

http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-TV/2014/07/02/Dershowitz-Hobby-Lobby-Case-Insignificant-Contraception-Not-Denied-in-Win-Win

Rauser's forked tongue

Arminian theologian Randal Rauser's continues his campaign to normalize homosexuality and transgenderism in Christian theology. Activists like him always deny their agenda. If they declared their intentions at the outset, that would provoke instant opposition. So they resort to an incremental strategy to chip away at resistance to their agenda. 

Talking out of one side of his mouth:

Randal Rauser Mod Rob • a month ago
Interestingly, after I posted this I discovered that Steve Hays from Triablogue wrote a response to my article in which he speculates: 

"I assume Rauser is using this as a wedge tactic to justify homosexuality and transgenderism in the church." 

*face-palm* 

http://randalrauser.com/2014/06/intersexuality-the-pastors-dilemma/#comment-1416912319

Talking out of the other side of his mouth:

The biblical authors did not have a conception of the problem of transgender identity as we now understand it. 

Note the close parallel between homosexuality and transgender identity. Just as the Bible does not offer any clear response to transgender identity as we currently understand it, so a person can plausibly argue it offers no clear response to homosexuality as we currently understand it. 

http://randalrauser.com/2014/07/homosexuality-and-christianity-a-review-of-the-brown-vines-debate-part-1/

Will Santa occupy Wall Street?

I'll briefly comment on this post:

http://evangelicalarminians.org/middle-knowledge-in-scripture/

However, there’s no shortage of the passages more directly supporting middle knowledge – those passages showing that God’s knows what we would choose under different settings. It’s not as if scripture limits middle knowledge to the famous examples of David in Keilah or the inhabitants of Tyre and Sidon.

Problem with Dan's list is that he tendentiously classifies these as prooftexts for middle knowledge, when–at best–they only bear witness to counterfactual knowledge. Although middle knowledge would be a type of counterfactual knowledge, counterfactual knowledge is not equivalent to middle knowledge. Even William Lane Craig candidly admits the distinction and concedes that you can only prooftext God's counterfactual knowledge from Scripture, not middle knowledge. So Dan is salting the mine.

God uses His middle knowledge to warn people. If you put yourself into a given circumstance, you will do this. God knew what would happen if the Israelites intermarried. He knew what the foreign wives would do and how the Israelites would respond. Sadly, Solomon didn’t listen.
On divine determinism, God’s foreknowledge is logically “too late” to serve as a warning.  All  (even the hypothetical – if you intermarry, you will fall away) is determined by God.  So 1 Kings 11 turns into “I told you I determined you would fall” as opposed to “I told you you would fall”.

i) Notice how Dan abruptly shifts from middle knowledge to foreknowledge, as if these are interchangeable concepts. 

ii) The providential inutility of simple foreknowledge is a problem for freewill theism. If God already knows what human agents will do in the future, then it's too late for God or the agents to change course. That's not a problem for Calvinism, since God doesn't and shouldn't change his mind. But that's an acute problem for freewill theism. 

iii) The warning is only too late if it was God's intention to deter Solomon. But according to "divine determinism," that wasn't God's intention in the first place. 

Deterrence is not the only purpose of a warning. Like other future-oriented discourse (e.g. prophecy), warnings can have a retrospective value. Some people learn the hard way. The fact that they were warned, then suffered the consequences of disregarding the admonition, can make them appreciative of God's prescient wisdom. Likewise, learning by experience, even–or especially–by painful experience, makes the lesson more real than abstract information. 

Generally, those who reject middle knowledge providing two alternative views of these texts. The first grants that the passages teach what a person would do in various settings but denies we have libertarian free will. For biblical arguments we have libertarian free will see (link).  Here’s an example from Steve Hays:

•  God knows what might have happened because he knows how things would turn out had he decreed that alternative.

•  And that’s also consistent with God as the final source of every alternate possibility. What’s possible is a measure of divine omnipotence. God knows what God is capable of doing. Divine omnipotence is the engine generating those possibilities. (link)

I don’t think omnipotence (i.e. God’s capabilities) is enough to account for these passages. Imaging [sic] God creates Santa (which of course He could do). God could have Santa deliver toys this year or He could have Santa occupy Wall Street instead. How does He know which would happen if Santa existed? God must not only be able to do either, but He must choose one.

God knows what would happen if Santa existed because he not only decrees Santa's bare existence, but he decrees what Santa will do. Yes, God must choose which possible outcome to instantiate. So what? That's perfectly consistent with a predestinarian model of divine counterfactual knowledge. God knows Santa will deliver toys this year if that's the timeline God decrees. Conversely, God knows Santa will occupy Wall Street if that's the timeline God decrees. God knows which outcome God decrees. 

Dan's analysis is thoroughly confused. 

Planet of the Apes

My little post on "Adam, Eve, and Cain" generated some feedback:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Reformed/comments/29qbyo/if_adam_and_eve_were_not_the_first_humans_then/?sort=old

Rostin Commonly, theistic evolutionists who believe in an historical Adam think that his special creation consisted of a preexisting hominid being ensouled.
If someone is comfortable with holding that view, I don't know why believing something similar about Eve would be problematic.

Several problems:

i) Ensoulment is a classic stopgap solution favored by Catholic evolutionists. But from what I've read, ensoulment reflects antiquated embryological notions ("quickening"). Why would a theistic evolutionist graft obsolete embryology onto evolutionary biology to make Gen 2 more scientific? If you're going to be consistently scientific, then you need to avoid appeals to prescientific theories like ensoulment. 

ii) Ensoulment presumes a dualistic anthropology in which God imparts an immaterial soul to a preexisting hominid. Ensoulment accounts for the unique psychological traits of the ensouled hominid. Yet that's in tension with evolutionary biology, which is committed to physicalism. According to evolution, the difference between man and nonhuman hominids is a difference of degree, not of kind. We range along a common continuum. What makes us psychologically distinct from nonhuman hominids is an evolutionary process of gradual encephalization. We are different because we have bigger brains, not because we have an immaterial soul superadded to our nonhuman hominid brain. 

So, once again, this makeshift solution is in tension with the evolutionary theory that it's attempting to pacify. 

iii) Gen 2 describes a different process for the origin of Eve than for the origin of Adam. Even if you think the language is figurative, when a narrator uses different figurative language, these must represent different things. 

iv) By that logic, Cain was afraid that soulless hominids would avenge the death of Abel. But since these hominids are unrelated to the family of Adam, why would Cain's fratricide lead to a blood feud between Cain and hominids unrelated to Cain? 

Moreover, this assumes that soulless hominids think Cain violated a tribal honor code by murdering a member of his kith and kin. But isn't that a moral perspective which soulless hominids lack? Isn't that kind of ethical enlightenment the result of endowment? 

davidjricardoBingo. Anyone asking this question has clearly not thought the issue through clearly.

moby__dickSo you're saying that the offspring of Adam and Eve never mated with the pre-existing hominids?

davidjricardoI don't think we know that. I tend to think no, or at least they weren't supposed to do so. I do think that a pre-existing hominid female would not be a "helper suitable for him."

Dying_DailyWhy would you say that?

davidjricardoThe question presupposes that God made Adam when there were preexisting "humans." But, any answer to the question "Why did God make Adam when there were already humans?" will necessarily answer the question "Why did God make Eve?" To ask the latter demonstrates a lack of thought about the former.

Yet Ricardo has just admitted, in a roundabout way, that these are two contradictory explanations. If, on the one hand, the people alluded to in Gen 4 were real human beings, contemporaneous with Adam and Eve, then that could supply a wife for Adam. Moreover, there'd be no need for God to create Adam in the first place, given preexisting humans.

If, on the other hand, they were soulless hominids, then Adam and Eve were in fact the first humans (pace theistic evolution). 

Furthermore, theistic evolutionists cite Gen 4 to explain where Cain got his wife. But if only Adam's offspring were truly human, does that imply interspecies breeding? Cain mating with a nonhuman hominid? 

namer98Gen 2:7, man was ensouled. 

No. Ensoulment means imparting a soul to a living organism. In Gen 2:7, by contrast, the man was not alive until God's act of in-breathing. That's what made him alive or brought him to life. Prior to that moment, all you had was a lifeless body. 

Before the mountains were brought forth

"Before the Mountains Were Brought Forth: A Defense of Divine Timelessness" by Lydia McGrew.

Potential Christian Explanations Of Near-Death Experiences

A recent commenter in an old thread asked me several questions about near-death experiences (NDEs): whether the religious figures encountered in NDEs identify themselves or are being identified by the experiencers instead, whether I can provide examples of NDEs contradicting each other, how I explain the paranormal knowledge some experiencers seem to gain through their experience, how well the demonic view of NDEs explains the NDEs of children, and more. You can read my responses in the comments section of that thread. One of the issues I address is the range of options Christians have for explaining NDEs. Even if my explanation is incorrect, are there other explanations that would also be consistent with some form of Christianity?

Is it always wrong for a man to hit a woman?

A provocative post over at rockingwithhawking's weblog.

Jesus According to Scripture

http://booksataglance.com/author-interviews/interview-with-darrell-bock-author-of-jesus-according-to-scripture-restoring-the-portrait-from-the-gospels

No, Virginia, Science hasn't debunked Adam

http://www.whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2014/07/no_virginia_science_has_not_de.html

Is Hobby Lobby a "slippery slope"?

One of the dumber objections to the Hobby Lobby ruling, an objection that's mindlessly repeated by various opponents, is that it creates a "slippery slope" precedent. It doesn't even occur to liberals who raise this objection that slippery slope objections don't select for liberal ideology. Both sides use slippery slope arguments. 

Take a stock objection to homosexual social policy: if you decriminalize sodomy, the next step is a right to homosexual marriage, then polygamous or incestuous marriages, then pederasty. That's a conservative slippery slope argument. And, as a matter of fact, that prediction is coming to pass.

By the same token, it doesn't occur to critics of the Hobby Lobby ruling that there's also a slippery slope argument regarding invasive gov't. That had SCOTUS ruled the other way, that accelerates the momentum towards a totalitarian state.