Extreme altruism

Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends (Jn 15:13).

There can be a gray area between suicide and altruism. Suppose a father has a teenager son with liver disease. The son needs a liver transplant. Suppose the father contracts a type of cancer that's almost uniformly fatal. However, the cancer hasn't spread to the liver, and the father is a compatible donor. Would it be morally permissible, before metastasis kicks in, for the father to donate his liver to his ailing son? This will shorten the father's life. He has terminal cancer, but without a liver he will die in a few days.  

What really caused Notre Dame fire?

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/04/what_really_caused_the_notre_dame_cathedral_fire.html

Jesus in Christianity and Islam

"Why I became Muslim"

I don't know if this is worth responding to:

https://www.firstthings.com/article/2019/05/why-i-became-muslim

So First Things, basically a Catholic outfit, is hosting a conversion story about an atheist who became a Muslim. A revealing example of the identity crisis that besets post-Vatican II Catholicism. 

I chose a different course and embarked on a search for God. Where could a lost soul go? Nowhere in college or country offered an answer. What the campus Conservative Party outlined was absurd: We can pick up the fragments of our culture by putting on three-piece suits, getting riotously drunk, and reviving the divine right of kings. I had plenty of opportunities to engage with orthodox Christians, and I sincerely wanted Christianity to be true. It was clear to me that what the authorities in my world celebrated—the collapse of family life, the slaughter of the unborn, the deterioration of high culture—were, in truth, social evils that followed from the decline of the Church. Christianity seemed the natural alternative to secularity. But when I entered the chapels and listened to the ministers, the regeneration I sought didn’t happen. Christian voices sounded all too agreeable and compromising. I wanted something stronger, something that didn’t ­bargain with secularism. I found it in Islam.

That's naive. There are traditional Christians as well as modernist Christians, traditional Muslims as well as modernist Muslims. 

The first part of the Islamic ­shahada, or testimony of faith, is la ilaha il’Allah, “there is no god but God”—an uncompromising statement of pure mono­theism. Islam puts the One God front and center, a simple and commanding being. Philosophy had persuaded me that God was an intellectual and moral necessity. I did not know whether his existence could strictly be proven, but I recognized the dishonesty and intellectual contortions atheism required. Without an absolute, transcendent Lord, I could see no way to objective morality and to a purpose and order in the cosmos that could overcome the transience of this world. I doubted that we could justify even belief in causal regularities without a constantly acting Creator to guarantee them. If I were to embrace God, then God would need to be an ­unmediated, undifferentiated, and decisive Omnipotence, whom I might ­willingly obey.

i) It's unclear what that means. If Allah is unmediated, does that mean Jacob Williams subscribes to occasionalism or theistic idealism? Does he deny the existence of the external world? 

What about the Koran. That's in Arabic. So Allah's communication is mediated through human language. Likewise, an angel supposedly appeared to Muhammad. Once again, that's mediated communication. 

ii) Why is an "undifferentiated" God (whatever that means) required to ground morality and rationality? 

My problem with Christianity arose from the contrast between the abstract Divinity who answers such questions and the all-too-human majesty of Jesus (peace be upon him). Surely God, if he was God, had to be a perfectly simple being, absolutely distinct from his creation. If his separation was questioned, then he wasn’t really the infinite Creator I sought. How could this transcendent being be identical with the fleshy Messiah portrayed in church, complete with his bloody stigmata? The mystery of the Trinity seemed to me a dark glass that made God’s majesty dimmer, not brighter. Rather than puzzling indefinitely, I sided with simplicity and affirmed the Islamic doctrine of tawhid: God’s absolute oneness.

i) What's the relationship between "a perfectly simple being" and "absolutely distinct from his creation"? Is he claiming that in order for God to be absolutely distinct from his creation, he must be a perfectly simple being? If so, how does that follow? How can the source of complexity be absolutely simple or undifferentiated? 

ii) There's a sense in which the Creator must be distinct or separate from the world. He must preexist or exist apart from the world in order to make it. He must have a mode of subsistence independent of the world he made. 

iii) On the other hand, if God is the source of the world, then in some respect the world must mirror God. The world must be conceptually contained in God's imagination. The world begins as a divine idea. God objectifies his idea in space and time. Analogous to a musical composition that originates in the composer's mind. In that respect, the world must correspond to something in God. 

iv) It's not clear that Williams understands the Incarnation. Identity can operate at more than one level. It's not that God becomes identical with a human soul and body. Rather, the Incarnation involves a relation–a contingent relation–between the divine Son and a human body and soul. To take a comparison, a living human individual is a composite being: an embodied soul. We might say that's what he is, but that allows for distinctions. The pairing of a particular body with a particular soul. These remain distinct and even separable. 

v) There's an a priori character to how Williams evaluates the options. But how does he know what God is like apart from divine self-revelation? He operates with preemptive criteria, as though he knows in advance what God must be like. What's the justification for that procedure? How can the Trinity be discounted merely because it's mysterious? What if reality is mysterious? Indeed, shouldn't we expect God to be mysterious in some degree, given God's surpassing greatness and our intellectual limitations? Can we simply intuit what God is like, or is that an act of discovery? 

So goes the first shahada. The second declares Muhammadun rasool’Allah: “Muhammad is the Messenger of God.” This is a matter of Scripture. In the Qur’an’s claims to be the direct speech of God, Islam again seemed a simpler and more compelling story. One God, one final Message.

Once again, he has this odd prejudice about simplicity. But how is one man's uncorroborated, self-serving report better than multiple-attestation? 

C. S. Lewis argued that a man claiming to be God must be either a lunatic, a liar, or truly the Lord. Likewise, a man claiming to be a Messenger of God must be either insane, dishonest, or just what he says he is. I judged, based on my reading of history, that Muhammad (peace be upon him) could not have been either of the former two. The facts of his life and ministry reveal an honest man in full possession of his rational faculties. 

The Koran reveals Muhammed to be someone who changes his message because he makes shortsighted claims that fail to anticipate unforeseen eventualities. Hence the face-saving theory of abrogation. 

By contrast, it wasn’t hard for me to avoid Lewis’s trilemma, because Muslims simply do not believe that Jesus (peace be upon him) ever claimed to be God. Rather, we hold him to have been another prophet like Moses, Abraham, and Isaac (peace be upon them all). 

Yes, the Koranic Jesus is a different Jesus than the NT Jesus. But what makes the Koranic Jesus the standard of comparison? Muhammad didn't know Jesus or know anyone who knew Jesus. What makes his belated account–written centuries after the fact–more accurate than 1C witnesses? 

The final piece of the puzzle fell into place upon my learning of the long process of redaction and recomposition that produced the canon that became the Bible. 

i) That's hard to respond to because it's so vague. Is Williams alluding to the formation of the canon? Or is he alleging that the books of the Bible were repeatedly edited? If so, what's his evidence? Or is he making a claim about the textual transmission of the Bible? Or is he making a claim about fluid oral tradition before the Gospels were committed to writing? What's his source of information? Is he channeling Bart Ehrman?

ii) What about the murky editorial history of the Koran? 

This was consistent with the Islamic narrative of an earlier revelation that, though true, was imperfectly preserved. The Qur’an was the unification and confirmation of what the Bible merely tried to assemble.

To the contrary, Muhammad treats the Bible in his own time and place as accurate. He challenges those who doubt his message to compare his message to the Bible. He makes copies of the Bible, in the possession of 7C Jews and Christians in Arabia, the litmus test for the veracity of his own purported revelations. 

Easter Oratorio

Papal mixed signals

http://vaticanfiles.org/en/2019/04/vf161/

Agnus Dei

Bach St. John Passion

Bach St. Matthew Passion

Old School Presbyterians

Adoration of the lamb

Divine Condescension and the Attributes of God

WTS theology/systematics prof. Scott Oliphint is facing a heresy trial:

https://www.theaquilareport.com/a-charge-brought-against-dr-scott-oliphint-professor-of-apologetics-at-westminster-seminary/

A few brief observations:

i) I lack in-depth knowledge of Oliphint's theology. It's one of those situations where you read enough of somebody to make a preliminary judgment about whether it's worthwhile to read more of their stuff. From what I've read of him, Oliphint doesn't strike me as a high-level thinker, so I haven't bothered to deepen and broaden my familiarity with his writings. It's my impression, from what I've read, that he's out of his depth. So my knowledge of his theology is admittedly cursory. Life is short, so we make investment decisions about where to put our time. He has a son (Jared Oliphint) who strikes me as having a sharper mind than his old man. 

ii) Ironically, WTS has made it very impractical to have a detailed knowledge of Oliphint's position by withdrawing his controversial book from circulation, which makes remaining copies prohibitively expensive. Not that I don't buy expensive books, but for the price of that one book I could buy several different books that actually interest me. 

Parenthetically, I question the ethics of WTS buying the rights to the book from the publisher, like a product recall. Is that an appropriate use of seminary funds? Likewise, is it appropriate to conceal his position from public view and scrutiny by making the evidence inaccessible? 

iii) Here's an excerpt from his controversial book:

When Scripture says that God changes his mind, or that he is moved, or angered by our behavior, we should see that as literal. It refers us to God and to his dealings with us. It is as literal or as real as God being the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Scott Oliphiint, God with Us: Divine Condescension and the Attributes of God (Crossway 2011), 123-24.

In a way this seems to be readjudicating the Clark controversy. To judge by the excerpt, Oliphint is adopting Murray's position, but taking it to a logical extreme. It becomes similar to open theist hermeneutics. Assuming that's a representative sample, he's staking out a position more characteristic of freewill theism than Calvinism. Calvinism and freewill theism are competing theological paradigms. A position that rejects divine aseity, immutability, and impassibility is on the opposing side of the spectrum.  

Now Oliphint tries to nuance that, but the question is whether he's attempting to have it both ways. Can you have it both ways? I don't think so. 

iv) In fairness to Oliphint, this goes back to perennial debates about the relationship between exegetical theology and philosophical theology. The role of anthropomorphism and all that. Certainly there's a danger, and not just a hypothetical danger, of filtering biblical theism through an extraneous interpretive grid. Take debates over divine simplicity, or the way Aquinas glosses Exod 3:14. 

v) This becomes, in part, an issue of theological method. Do we interpret narrative theology in terms of what Scripture says about the divine attributes in more didactic genres? If there are passages which teach divine aseity, omnipotence, omniscience, and impassibility, then those are logically and literally irreconcilable with narrative or poetic passages that depict God as shortsighted, short-tempered, blindsided, reactionary, &c. Take passages about absolute predestination. Well, that can't be true if God is surprised by the turn of events or angered by the outcome.    

By the same token, the OT indictment of pagan polytheism loses most of its force if Yahweh is typical of the high gods in the pagan pantheon, the primary difference being that there's just one deity of that kind rather than many–who happens to be the God of Israel. 

To be the absolute Creator, God had to exist apart from time and space if time and space are modes of creation. If everything unfolds according to a master plan, then there's an asymmetrical relation between God and creation, where the world has no effect on God. The influence goes one way. That's not philosophical theology. Rather, that's exegetical theology. That's biblical creation, predestination, and providence. Of course, freewill theists demur, but that illustrates the competition between two incompatible approaches. Different reading strategies, divergent theological paradigms. 

The alternative is to say that Scripture is inconsistent. But if we affirm inerrancy, then it's necessary to make allowance for anthropomorphism. And if, indeed, the God of classical theism is approximately correct, then we'd expect God to relate to us on our level. That's not special pleading. Admittedly, appeals to anthropomorphism can be too facile and reflexive. We need to be circumspect about that principle. But it's not imported from philosophical theology. 

vi) That said, the resurgence of Reformed Thomism and Nicene subordination is animated by tribal loyalties and crowd psychology rather than fidelity to the witness of Scripture. Perfunctory profession of sola Scriptura while chauvinistic tradition carries the day. There's blame to go around in this controversy. It's not one-sided. 

Philosophers can't be friends

In this post I'm going to discuss some related issues. One concerns the nature of biblical inerrancy. A way in which inerrancy is defended is to distinguish truth from pedantic precision. You didn't miss a target you didn't aim for. I'd like to put that distinction in a larger framework.

Another issue is whether it's ever justifiable to lie. I'm actually not going to discuss that. Rather, I'm going to discuss an issue that lies behind it. 

Let's take an example. Many hymns have some theological inaccuracies. That may reflect the defective theology of the hymnodist. Or it may simply be a concession due to the ambiguous nature of poetic imagery, or the restrictive verbal choices imposed by meter and rhyme. 

Under such circumstances, is it permissible to sing a theologically inaccurate clause of a hymn? Is it morally permissible for the singer to exercise mental reservations when singing a clause that's theologically inaccurate? 

A Puritan might say that's a good argument for exclusive psalmody. This is what happens when you sing uninspired music in public worship.

However, that doesn't get us out of the woods. Exclusive psalmodists don't normally sing psalms in the original Hebrew. Rather, they sing them in translation. In addition, they often sing metrical versions of the Psalter. So that's two steps removed from the original. And there's a certain amount of fudging that's necessary to squeeze the translation into a metrical straightjacket. What they sing only loosely corresponds to the original. 

To take another example, suppose you had a roommate who's a scrupulous philosopher. Whenever you ask him a question, he demands that you define your terms. Whenever you answer him, he demands that you define your terms. Moreover, he demands that you provide corroborative evidence for all your claims. That you justify all your operating assumptions. 

Even though you might admire his scrupulosity, it's impossible to be friends with someone like that. Indeed, it wouldn't last a day. If that's what it means to be a consistent philosopher, then philosophers can't be friends, because they are incapable of making the minor practical compromises that are necessary for social life. 

Another example is Clifford's infamous dictum that it's wrong, always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence. A problem with that dictum is the failure to prioritize. It isn't even possible to have sufficient evidence for everything be believe. And it isn't necessary. Not all beliefs are equally important. Many beliefs are trivial. So we should focus on the justification of truly important beliefs. 

Human communication routinely involves or even requires abundant resort to approximations. Studied imprecision, where we deliberately say less than we mean or more than we mean. Where we intentionally make statements that are strictly false. 

And yet, for two reasons, that's not dishonest:

i) There's no intention to deceive. And ordinarily, there's no deceptive effect. 

ii) The common function of communication is to facilitate a transaction. Questions are asked or answered to perform certain tasks. Even though the statements may be ambiguous or imprecise, the listener understands what was meant. 

In that context, pedantic precision would lead to social gridlock. It would frustrate a basic function of communication, as the exchange got bogged down in gratuitous caveats. Honesty doesn't obligate us to foment social paralysis. 

Take references to colored objects. Does honestly require a speaker to specify the exact shade? 

Take references to "tall" or "short". Does honesty require the speaker to resolve the sorites paradox?  

This goes to distinction between practical and moral compromise. By its constant resort to approximations, human communication is rife with practical compromises, but that isn't  equivalent to moral compromise inasmuch as there's no intention to mislead the listener, the listener was not misled, and it successfully discharges the purpose of the communication, which is transactional or performative rather than narrowly propositional. 

Finally, this goes to the obligation to practice interpretive charity. It's not reducible to what the statement means, but the purpose of the statement. 

This is an issue in biblical hermeneutics. Exegesis aims to ascertain what the writer meant. That's fine up to a point, but it can break down if we fail to make allowance for the nature of communication. Take the allegation that Jesus was wrong to say the mustard seed is the smallest seed there is. 

Our scrupulous philosopher is mistaken about the ethics of communication. His preconception is too narrow. 

Vos and Van Til: How Wide the Divide?

https://www.proginosko.com/2019/04/vos-and-van-til-how-wide-the-divide/

Dale Tuggy and the Biblical Basis of the Trinity, Part 2: Is the Doctrine of the Trinity Incoherent?

https://robertbowman.net/2019/04/18/dale-tuggy-and-the-biblical-basis-of-the-trinity-part-2-is-the-doctrine-of-the-trinity-incoherent/

“Don’t Force Your Sexual Ideology on Me and My Children”

https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2019/04/51308/

Who is vandalizing French churches?

There's been extremely widespread vandalism of French churches in the past year or so. Who are the culprits? Who'd be motivated to vandalize French churches?

I have no inside information. I'll just offer some conjectures. Perhaps the most obvious candidates are Muslim immigrants. And just in terms of statistical probabilities, it seems likely that Muslims account for many cases of vandalism. 

Over and above that group, who else is motivated to do that? Another obvious candidate might be militant atheists. To begin with, France is a largely secularized country. There's increasing intolerance towards traditional Christianity, or what atheists perceive to be Christian. Often they have no firsthand knowledge of Christianity. The Catholic church is their default symbol for Christianity. More so in a historically Catholic nation like France. 

In addition, the ongoing abuse scandal has done irreparable damage to the reputation of the Catholic church. So I'm guessing, and this is just a hunch, that most of the vandalism of French churches is a combination of Muslim immigrants and militant atheists. 

It would be interesting to have comparative data from other European countries–as well as Great Britain. 

Cathedrals and mosques

I've seen some pundits complain that the Notre Dame fire got far more attention than China bulldozing the Keriya mosque. A few quick observations:

i) Different people have different reasons for what they value. Many people who aren't Catholic or Christian love Notre Dame as an architectural masterpiece. Many people love Paris. 

ii) At the risk of stating the obvious, there's nothing hypocritical about a Christian feeling greater attachment to Christian art than Muslim art or Buddhist art or Hindu art. As Christians, we naturally have more affinity with Christian art. 

iii) For that matter, we can also make discriminations within Christian art and architecture. If First Baptist Dallas burned to the ground, that would bother me far less than if York, Reims, Amiens, or Vézelay burned to the ground. 

iv) In addition, many westerners are naturally more familiar with western art than Muslim art. 

v) Then there's the question of whether it's wrong to destroy the art of a religion you disapprove of. That's separate from (ii). As a rule, I don't support the destruction of non-Christian art and architecture. But that doesn't mean I'd feel the same sense of loss. 

These are just elementary distinctions. But progressives can't keep more than one idea in their head at a time. 

Church architecture

The fire at Notre Dame raises theological questions about the value of Christian art. At one end of the spectrum is the Puritan position. I disagree with that. It's a principled position, and I respect the Puritans, but it's reactionary. Nevertheless, it merits a respectful hearing. 

A sketchy Christian argument for high art might go like this: We should save the best for the best. We should reserve the best art, music, architecture, poetry, &c. for what's most important. That's a way to remind ourselves of what is truly significant. Insofar as religion is intrinsically the most important thing in life, and the thing that lends value to everything else, insofar as religion is the good that makes everything else good that is good, we should lavish some of our greatest talent on Christian expression. 

Now, I don't necessarily mean in the narrow sense of worship or God directly. The principle includes that, but is broader. Insofar as religion consecrates life in general, we are warranted in lavishing some of our best our talent on other things as well. Take a Christian filmmaker whose movies reflect a Christian worldview. They aren't generally set in church, although there might be scenes of worship. He can bring a Christian touch to everyday life. As a rule, we experience God through the medium of what he has made. 

But to treat everything alike flattens and trivializes what is most important. Many things are ephemeral or inconsequential. 

There's still a place for the plain style. There's a beauty and nobility distinctive to simplicity as well as a beauty and nobility distinctive to complexity. 

Too much high art runs the risk of artificiality, where it becomes too far removed from normal experience. Likewise, there's the danger–often a reality–of substituting aesthetics for sanctity. Moreover, great art (or good art) shouldn't be confused with ostentation. But it's needful to have something higher for mind and heart to aspire to, which lifts us out of the drudgery and humdrum–not to mention ugliness–of ordinary life. So it's a question of balance. Like climbing a mountain for the view. Not necessarily the best place to live year round, but life needs peaks as well as plains. 

Sleuthing the Notre Dame fire

https://www.jihadwatch.org/2019/04/notre-dame-fire-no-workers-were-in-the-cathedral-no-heat-sources-were-near-the-timber-frame