Paul on Slavery

Tom Gilson, in comments in the prior post, said this:

The Ephesians passage on slavery recognized or acknowledged the fact of slavery. It does not approve or condone it. In the historical situation, those who were slaves needed moral guidance appropriate to their circumstance, which is what you find in the passage.

I think the matter important enough to warrant its own post, for I think that what Tom says is what many inerrantist would (and have) said.

Let us have the passage from Ephesians again:

6:5-9: Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ; Not with eyeservice, as menpleasers; but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart; With good will doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men: Knowing that whatsoever good thing any man doeth, the same shall he receive of the Lord, whether he be bond or free. And, ye masters, do the same things unto them, forbearing threatening: knowing that your Master also is in heaven; neither is there respect of persons with him.

I believe that Tom's view falls prey to a decisive refutation. Paul does not simply recognize that slavery in fact exists. If that was all that he did, then of course nothing he said would entail that he tacitly condoned it. Rather Paul tells slaves and masters how they are to act, and this does entail that he must condone, if only tacitly, the institution of slavery. The argument is really quite simple. To make it, I'll build upon the analogy of rape. Let us say that I come to know that a certain acquaintance is a serial rapist. I might do a number of things. If a good man, I would report him. If a heartless man, I might do nothing. If an evil man, I might give him advice on how best to carry out his next rape. Indeed it seems that we have a tight relation between approval and advice. If I give you advice about how to do a thing, I thereby condone what you do; and if I think that you ought not do a thing, I ought not give you advice about how to do it.

Paul gives advice to masters and to slaves. Thus he must condone slavery, if only tacitly.

Let me drive the point home. There is simply no right way for a rapist to act, for rape is always and everywhere impermissible. Indeed the always and everywhere impermissibility of rape entails that there's no right way to rape a woman. Just so, the always and everywhere impermissibility of slavery entails that there's no right way to take or hold a slave. But Paul tells slave-owners how they are to treat their slaves and thus assumes that there's a right way to treat slaves. Thus again we must conclude that Paul condones slavery.

Wouldn't it be absurd to say some such thing as this:

Rapist, do right unto your victim. Do not kill or maim her. Do not make her shame known to men.

Of course it would. Why would it be absurd? Rape is always and everywhere an evil, and thus there's no right way to do it. Just so, slavery is always and everywhere evil and thus there's no right way to do it.

Paul was quite indisputably wrong. He was a great man, likely better than any today. But in this matter his moral vision was clouded. He should have condemned slavery instead of give out advice about how masters and slaves should treat one another.

Biblical Particularism, Biblical Liberalism

I'm hard at work on yet another post on inerrancy. I there define a novel type of inerrancy and argue that it's superior to the one I suggest it replace.

I've poked around the internet a bit for material on inerrancy. There's little that's of any use to me. (In contemporary journals and books of philosophy, almost nothing is said about it, even by evangelicals.) But I did some across this yesterday. It's from the Religious Tolerance website. Upon reflection, it says nothing that I did not already know. But what it says it says with exemplary clarity. The passage below was of particular interest to me.

Conservative and liberal Christians have very different concepts of the nature of Scripture. Thus, they tend to develop systems of Christian theology and morality which differ greatly, and are often mutually exclusive. When faced with one of the great moral questions (like abortion, the death penalty, homosexual and bisexual rights, the concept of marriage, various aspects of sexual behavior, etc.) each interprets the Bible in their own way and frequently arrive at quite different conclusions.

A common scenario is that:

• Conservatives will tend to emphasize a few specific passages of the Bible as proofs of their position. After all, if the Bible is without error, then even a single, clear, unambiguous passage will define the correct belief.

• Liberals will prefer to emphasize the basic message of Jesus as the basis of their stance.

For example, 150 years ago, the great moral debate of the day was whether slavery should be preserved or abolished. Those in favor of preservation quoted specific verses that condoned, organized and regulated slavery. They pointed out that Jesus, St. Paul, and others had numerous opportunities to speak on the institution of slavery but never condemned it. Abolitionists largely ignored specific passages that dealt directly with slavery, and preferred to argue on the basis of Jesus' message, and broad theological concepts. They recognized that all persons are created in the image of God, and that one should treat one's neighbor as one's self. These would seem to imply that the ownership of one person by another was a profound evil.

The slavery question dealt a severe blow to traditional beliefs about the Bible. Led by various Anabaptist denominations, Methodists, Unitarians and secularists, an increasing percentage of North Americans rejected slavery as an abhorrent practice. They began to realize that the Bible was wrong on the issue. They concluded that portions of Scripture which discussed slavery had to be ignored, and that a higher level of morality must be adopted. The authority of the Bible within Christendom was severely weakened at that time.

We do seem to have a clear and unambiguous passage. It is this:

Ephesians 6:5-9: Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ; Not with eyeservice, as menpleasers; but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart; With good will doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men: Knowing that whatsoever good thing any man doeth, the same shall he receive of the Lord, whether he be bond or free. And, ye masters, do the same things unto them, forbearing threatening: knowing that your Master also is in heaven; neither is there respect of persons with him.

How could one not take away from this the conclusion that Paul thought slavery permissible? He tells slaves that they must be obedient. He does not tell them to rebel. He does not tell others to free the slave. Rather Paul tacitly gives his approval to the institution and tells us how it should be structured.

Of course many in the past have taken precisely this moral away. Ephesians 6:5-9 was the most important of the passages for pro-slavery apologetics. Now, my claim is this: if one is a Biblical inerrantist, one must take this moral away. The passage is clear and unambiguous. It endorses slavery. Thus if all the Bible says is true, slavery must be permissible.

But of course it is not, and almost all of today's Evangelicals know that it is not. On the issue of slavery, they read the Bible as does the liberal. They search for the essence of the gospel message (the essence, as Christ says, it to love God and neighbor), find that it condemns slavery (one cannot both love the neighbor and keep him as a slave), and then condemn it. But when discussion turns to homosexuality, they do precisely what was done by pro-slavery apologists. They hold up particular passages that speak of homosexuality and with them and them alone in mind issue their condemnation.

Call the one sort of interpretative strategy Biblical particularism. Call the other Biblical liberalism.

My charge is that today's Evangelicals are of two minds. One certain matters, homosexuality for example, they are inerrantists and particularists. On others, they are liberals. I suggest they get their act together and decide what they really want to be. At present, their interpretative strategy is simply incoherent.

Christ's Temptation

Immediately the Spirit impelled Him to go out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days being tempted by Satan; and He was with the wild beasts, and the angels ministered to Him." - Mark 1:12-13

The accounts of Christ's temptation leave me confused. Perhaps you can help me along. (I'll use the masculine, since the example that I wish to discuss is Christ.)

When we say someone was tempted, we mean one of two things. (i) A certain thing was presented to him that has the power to tempt but he felt no temptation to take it. Call this the external sense. (ii) A certain thing was presented to him that has the power to tempt and he felt the temptation to take it. Call this the internal sense.

The difference in the internal and external senses is clear. To each corresponds a sense of 'temptation'. (i) An external temptation is simply the possibility that I take for myself a certain thing that has the power to tempt others. But though this possibility exists (and I know that it exists) I feel no desire to make the thing my own. Others might well feel the temptation, but I do not. The food is in front of me, but I have no desire to eat it. The woman reclines in my bed, but I have no desire to be with her. (ii) An internal temptation, like an external one, requires the possibility that I take for myself a certain thing. But this is not all that it requires. Rather an internal temptation requires that I desire the thing. It requires the wish that I make it my own. The food is in front of me and I want to eat. The women is in my bed and I want to lie down with her.

The question that I wish to ask should come as no surprise. It is this: When Christ was tempted, was the temptation merely external or what is internal as well?

I find both unacceptable. Let us say first that the temptation was internal. If this is so, Christ desired to possess things that it was not right for him to possess. (As Christ makes clear in his responses to Satan, Satan offers him things that he ought not take.) But the desire for such a thing is a sign of moral failure. A being that desires what it ought not have is imperfect. But of course Christ suffered from no such imperfection. Thus Christ's temptation cannot have been of the internal sort.

But neither can it have been purely external. If Christ's temptation was purely external, he is profoundly unlike you and me. Indeed if it was purely external, his humanity was a sham. The temptations we feel lie at the heart of our moral lives. If Christ felt no temptation, he cannot sympathize with us. He cannot know us. He cannot be our Savior.

I need a savior who knows me in my heart of hearts. If Christ's temptations were purely external, he cannot know me.

Moreover, if Christ's temptation was purely external, his sinlessness was inevitable and thus not praiseworthy. A being that can feel no temptation is a being that cannot sin; and a being that cannot sin is one that deserves no praise when it does not sin. But surely Christ's perfection demands the highest praise; it is praiseworthy about all else.

Thus we are left with this dilemma: either Christ's temptation was internal and Christ was thus imperfect, or his temptation was purely external and thus he cannot know us and does not deserve our praise.

Do you see a way out?

Immigration: A Plea for Redescription

I'm quite surprised by the Evangelical voice in the immigration debate. Yes, I know that it is a conservative voice. Yes, I know that it is a voice that's often nationalistic. But I'm still surprised. The language they use is not the right one for a Christian.

Evangelicals talk of illegal immigration and often say of illegal immigrants that they're criminals. They say they have no respect for law.

Evangelicals talk of the need for border security. They talk of the economic drains on the U.S. economy - health care and education are the two mentioned most often. They talk of the threat of terrorism.

I don't wish to dispute the truth of any of this. Some of it seems true to me. Some false. But let's put the issue of truth to the side. Instead let's redescribe the situation and ask whether the Evangelical ought to change her views if she adopts this redescription.

Let us say that the great majority of illegal immigrants are Christian. Let us say that they come from poverty, and that their sole reason to enter the U.S. is to make a better life for themselves and their families. Let us say that they work very hard. Let us say that they love their families deeply - indeed that their culture seems to value family greater than our own.

What is the Evangelical to say? I think it obvious. Illegal immigrants are our brothers and sisters in Christ. They live out the Christian ideal of love of family and of God. They are, like all national heroes here in the U.S., risk takers who sacrifice for the sake of those they love.

Evangelical, I say this to you: if you really do believe what you say you believe, you must change how you speak - and how you think - of illegal immigrants. In Christ, there is no nation, there is no race. Rather there is only humanity. Treat the illegal immigrants with the respect their humanity demands. Recognize in them their great virtues. Know that they're precisely the sort of people you wish to live and work here in the U.S.

If you do not change, you make those around you suspect that you are racist. You give lie to your proclamation of your faith. You make your faith seem like a cover for your racism.

Divine Simplicity

I still do a bit of philosophical work. A few months ago, I came across this piece. Its authors are Michael Bergmann and Jeffrey Brower. Among its topics is divine simplicity. Much in the paper is good, but the discussion of divine simplicity is deeply flawed. I explain why here.

What is the doctrine of divine simplicity? It is that God is simple in all ways that a being can be simple. It is that within his being, God displays absolutely no multiplicity of any kind. On this doctrine, God has no temporal parts and he has no spatial parts. On this doctrine, he exemplifies no property, for if a thing exemplifies a property, we find within it both that property and the relation of exemplification.

The doctrine of divine simplicity has many defenders. Among them are Augustine, Anselm and Aquinas. As one might expect given that men of such philosophical acumen are among its defenders, its allure is undeniable. For if God in some way divides his being up into parts, it seems that those parts are more basic than is he. If God divides his being up into parts, he must depend upon those parts for his existence, for in general a thing, if composite, depends for its existence upon the existence of its parts.

But we simply cannot say such things of God. Nothing is more basic than is he. He depends upon nothing for his existence. Thus God has no parts of any kind. He has no temporal parts. He has no spatial parts. He exemplifies no property.

I'll leave you with a set of objections to the doctrine of divine simplicity. Though I do feel its allure, I do not know what to say in response to them.

1. The Christian God is triune. He unites with his being three persons. But even if this does not imply a multiplicity of distinct Gods, does it not imply a multiplicity of distinct persons? Does it then not imply that there is a kind of plurality within God's being?

2. God is omnibenevolent, omniscient and omnipotent. But does this not mean that he exemplifies three distinct properties? Thus does it not mean that God's being evinces plurality? Even if we could somehow prove that we have here not three properties but one property with three names, do we not have to say that God is distinct from this property and thus that his being evinces plurality? For a property is something abstract, something that can be exemplified. But God is not abstract. Rather he is perfectly concrete, and like all things that are concrete, he cannot be exemplified. (If he could be exemplified, it would make sense to say some such thing as this: x exemplifies Godness. But this is nonsense. Thus God is not at all like, say, color. It makes perfect sense to say that a thing exemplifies redness.)

My Creed

Ever since my interest in Christianity began to grow (I seem now to recall that it began the year my twins were born - 1999) I've found that I cannot join a church. The reason, simply put, is that I know of no church where I'd find myself in complete agreement on all doctrinal matters with other members. Those brave few who've read more than a few of my posts know something of the objections I raise to Christian doctrine, both Catholic and Protestant.

Last night I had a minor epiphany. I realized that I was wrong about this. My lack of agreement should not serve as an impediment to my conversion. There is much in Christianity that I accept. Perhaps that makes me a Christian. Perhaps I should simply pick a church with whose members I am in agreement on a number of fundamental issues, and join it.

What are those issues that I think important? For what should I look in a church? My answer is My Creed. (My Creed is subject to change without prior notification. The author of My Creed does not claim he has certain knowledge of any of its constituent propositions. Rather he claims only that they now seem plausible to him.)

My Creed

The world revealed to the senses is not the whole of the world. The self revealed to the senses is not the whole of the self. The world did not come to be from nothing. Rather it had a cause that stands outside it. The cause is single, not multiple. The cause is God. The self did not come from nothing. It did not come from blind physical processes unwatched and not chosen. Rather the self was made by another and greater self. It was made by God. God wishes that we love both him and one another for eternity. But in our present state this is impossible. We live in a state of spiritual infancy, and our purpose in this life and in the life after is to learn to love perfectly. All are immortal. All will fulfill their purpose. The opportunity for spiritual growth does not end when we die. Rather it persists for so long as we fall short of perfection. Perhaps I will be perfected in this life. Perhaps my perfection will require the life-age of the universe. But no matter how long it takes, it will happen. Christ was perfect love made flesh. He came not to pay a price, but rather to evince love, give hope, and form a body of followers in which love might grow. Scripture is a human record of God's relation to the world of his creation and as such is subject to the very errors that plague all human work. Scripture is not inerrant. Scripture answers in us a felt need for guidance in our moral quest. We know that its ethic of love answers to our most fundamental need. Its sole authority rests in this.


I'd be curious if anyone has a suggestion about a denomination in which someone such as me - someone who believes only My Creed and no more - might be welcome.

Many From One: The Metaphysics of Human Genesis

The debate over the research use of human embryonic stem cells rages. I have little new to say about it. But I would like to correct one nearly ubiquitous mistake. It is that a human being begins to exist when sperm fertilizes ovum. (In what follows, when I speak of sperm, ovum and zygote, I mean the human variety.)

Of course I do not dispute that the fertilized ovum, i.e. the zygote, is alive. Nor do I dispute that it is human. But it is not yet the human being that will come to exist.

How can it be human and not a human being? It is human but not a human being in precisely the sense that a sperm or an ovum is human but not a human being. (For simplicity, consider only the example of a sperm cell.) A sperm is human in the sense that it originates in a human male. It is thus human and not, say, bovine or canine. But of course it not a human being.

Note that the indefinite article 'a' is crucial here. A sperm is human but is not a human. (Of course a human is human. But a thing might be human and not a human.)

What I've said so far is beyond dispute. If you think it false, or do not understand, give it another go. Do not continue on until you understand.

Now begins the metaphysics. I've said that a zygote is human but not a human being, and I've explained what I mean by this. But I've not yet given my reason. The reason takes us into the metaphysics of identity.

When the zygote divides, it gives rise to a pair of new cells. Does the zygote survive its division? If it does, it is either one or the other of the pair of cells to which it gives rise. (It cannot be both, for one thing cannot become two things.) But since the two cells to which it gives rise are exactly similar, we can have no more reason to say that the zygote becomes this one than that it becomes that one. Thus neither of the pair of child cells is the proper successor to the parent zygote cell, i.e. neither is identical to the parent. Conclusion: when the zygote divides, it ceases to exist.

Note that a human zygote is in this regard precisely similar to all cells that undergo division. When an amoeba divides, it ceases to exist. When a bacterium divides, it ceases to exist. Cell division is, in all cases, at once both destructive and generative. The parent cell ceases to exist. The child cells begin to exist.

Now, assume for the sake of reductio ad absurdum that a zygote is already a human being is not a mere precursor thereof. (Reductio ad absurdum is a form of argument in which a certain assumption is show false by the deduction of an absurdity from it). As argued, when the zygote divides, it ceases to exist. Thus when the zygote divides, the human being that by assumption it was ceases to exist. Of course if this were so, we must say at some point in time either at or after zygotic division, a new human being comes to exist, for of course pregnancy does end in the birth of a human being.

This is absurd. Pregnancy does not progress through the creation of one human being, its destruction, and the creation of a new. Rather there is only ever one human being within the womb. Thus the assumption with which be began must be false. It must be false that a zygote is already a human being.

This leaves us with the question of just when a human being does in fact begin to exist. Is it when the zygote divides, or is it after? I suspect that it's not at the time of division but rather some days after. I'll return to the issue in a later post, but do note that the door has been opened for even the most ardent defender of the sanctity of human life to endorse embryonic stem cell research.

Infinite Sin, Infinite God: Addendum

In Infinite Sin, Infinite God I asked the question, Just what is meant when we are said to have an infinite obligation? I considered two possible responses, viz. we have an obligation to do something infinite, and we have an obligation to do a thing perfectly. But I now say that two other answers are possible. (iii) An infinite obligation is an obligation that extends through all future time. (iv) An infinite obligation is an obligation that is infinite in strength.

Let us consider each in turn.

An obligation that extends through all future time is of course infinite in a way. But its infinitude does not necessarily imply that its violation merits an infinite penalty. For any particular violation of that obligation need not itself extend through infinite time. Rather it might occur at a single point in time, and if so, it does not evince the kind of infinity found in the obligation.

What if the violation were never to cease? What if, for example, I were to never love God as I ought? Even if this were so, still the violation would never be infinite in time. It would in a certain sense grow but it would always remain finite. Thus even a violation that never ceases does not for that reason merit an infinite penalty.

Now let us turn to iv. What sense are we to make of talk of an obligation infinite in strength? Only one answer seems possible: an obligation is infinite in strength just if no other possible obligation can take precedence over it. For what can we mean when we say that one obligation is stronger than another than that the one takes precedence over the other? Plausibly our obligations to God are of this sort, for no matter how great is our obligation to one another, our obligation to God is greater still. Let us now ask whether the fact that our obligations to God can never be trumped entails that their violation merits an infinite penalty. Here I begin to loose my way. When we trade in talk of infinite strength for talk of precedence, we seem no longer to have any basis on which to judge just how harshly this or that violation should be treated. Of course we do have a basis on which to say that this violation should be treated more harshly than that, and thus we have a kind of relative penalty scale on which we can order possible violations. But we have no reason to say that a certain violation, considered in isolation, deserves just this penalty and no other. We have no way to fix any point on the scale.

Thus again we find that we have no reason to suppose that the violation of an infinite obligation requires an infinite penalty. A violation of our obligation to God, even though it can never be trumped, might still merit only a finite penalty. (Of course it would merit a greater penalty than a violation of any other sort of obligation, but this alone does not imply that the penalty merited must be infinite.) With this, SMITE collapses.

Infinite Sin, Infinite God

I often hear said that any sin, no matter how minor from our point of view, merits eternal torment, because like all sins it is an infinite sin against an infinite God. (Call this doctrine "SMITE", for "Sin Merits Infinite TormEnt".) A perspicuous statement of this doctrine is found in Jonathan Edwards.

[S]in is heinous enough to deserve eternal punishment, and such a punishment is no more than proportionable to the evil or demerit of sin. If evil of sin be infinite, as the punishment is, then it is manifest that the punishment is no more than proportionable to the sin punished, and is no more than sin deserves. And if the obligation to love, honour, and obey God be infinite, then sin which is the violation of this obligation, is a violation of infinite obligation, and so is an infinite evil. Once more, sin being an infinite evil, deserves an infinite punishment, an infinite punishment is no more than it deserves: therefore such punishment is just; which was the thing to be proved. (Jonathan Edwards, "The Eternity of Hell Torments" in The Works of Jonathan Edwards (vol. 2, Edinburgh, Banner of Truth, 1974) 83.)

In sum, the view is this. All sin is a violation of our obligation to God. Moreover, all our obligations to God are infinite. Thus violation of any of those obligations is an infinite evil. But an infinite evil deserves an infinite penalty. Thus all sin deserves an infinite penalty.

Let us ask if this view is defensible.

Let us turn first to the notion of an infinite penalty. How are we to understand 'infinite penalty' in this context? Is is a penalty exacted for infinite time; in this context, the kind of infinity meant is eternity. But note that it is a penalty that has not been paid for all past time. Rather it's a penalty that a sinner will begin to pay at some time in the future. But if this is so, the penalty paid will always be finite. After a day, the sinner will have paid only a bit. After a thousand years, much will have been paid. But no matter how far we go into the future, only a finite amount of the infinite penalty will have been paid. We must conclude that it's a logical impossibility to pay the infinite penalty. But if it's impossible to pay the penalty, it seems absurd to say of God that He exacts it from us. Surely we should not say of God that He attempts to bring about a thing that simply cannot occur. The circle cannot be squared. Thus God will not attempt to square it. We cannot pay the infinite penalty. Thus God will not attempt to extract it from us.

What now of the claim that all sin is a violation of our obligation to God? (Edwards does not make this claim explicit, but he does seem to presuppose it.) I do not say that it is false. Instead I say only that I do not understand it. If I fail to discipline my children, I violate the obligation I have to them. But how do I also thereby violate an obligation I have to God? Have I wronged God? Perhaps I wrong God as I wrong a parent if I were his child's teacher and yet failed to teach that child. But this is speculation.

Last let us examine the claim that all our obligations to God are infinite. Take Edwards' example of love. In what sense is my obligation to love God infinite? Two answers seem possible. (i) Perhaps it is an obligation to evince an infinite love of God. However, I do not think that I'm capable of such a thing. I am a finite being, and all that I feel and do is of necessity finite. Thus it's impossible for me to evince an infinite love. (ii) Is the obligation to evince infinite love of God an obligation to evince a perfect love of God? I find it plausible to say that I ought to love God perfectly. But as said before, I cannot love God infinitely, for I can do nothing infinitely. Thus to love God perfectly is not to love Him infinitely.

Indeed what I've said of love can be said of all our obligations to God. They are not infinite obligations. Rather they are obligations to do a thing perfectly. (I suspect that Edwards has confused 'infinite' and 'perfect'. In the case of God, all that He is and does is of course both infinite and perfect. But in our case, though perfection is possible, infinity is not. The perfection appropriate to us qua finite beings is finite; the perfection appropriate to God qua infinite being is infinite.) But once we've said this, we find that we must reject SMITE. Our sins, since not infinite, do not merit eternal torment.

If I were more cynical that I am, I would say that Edwards invented a fallacious little argument for a conclusion he already believed. (If I were more cynical than I am, I'd say he often does this.)

Whither Personal Responsiblity?

A few days ago I had my say about Evangelical Christianity and the American ideal of self-reliance. Last night as I lay in bed, I began to wonder about a certain related ideal, the ideal of personal responsibility. It too is touted by Evangelicals; it too is an American ideal. (You're most likely to find it in the mouth of a Republican, but it is not unique to them.)

Calls for personal responsibility are calls to take personal responsibility for what we do. Thus they are not the really quite trivial claim that we in fact are responsible for what we do. They are rather calls to acknowledge that we are responsible and to act as if we know it.

(Before I continue, let me say this about the 'personal' of 'personal responsibility'. It adds nothing more than emphasis, for of course all responsibility is of necessity personal. The only beings that act are persons - groups act only in the sense that the persons who make them up act. But only those beings who act can be responsible for what they do, and so only those beings who act can take responsibility for what they do. Thus I'll drop the 'personal' from 'personal responsibility' in what follows. I'll say only 'responsibility'.)

What has the call to take responsibility to do with self-reliance? First we must say that they are not one and the same. The fact that ones takes responsibility for what one has done in the past does not imply that one was then self-reliant; one can take responsibility, for instance, for one's lack of self-reliance, for one's reliance not upon oneself but upon others. But surely the two are related in a way. Indeed in the minds of those who think both important, they are inextricably linked. What is the nature of that link? Here I think it helpful to distinguish a past-directed call to take responsibility from a future-directed one. The past-directed call is a call to accept whatever consequence might be associated with one's past mistakes. The future-directed call is a call to take charge of one's life, to make it one's own. How do I at present act in such a way that I might take responsibility for a day to come? Insofar as it in my power, I quite deliberately decide how best to act and invest myself fully in the fulfillment of my plan. But if I do this, I am self-reliant.

Thus we find that a call to take responsibility, if understood as a future-directed call, is one and the same as the call to self-reliance. But if this is so, the Evangelical belief that we ought to take responsibility for what we do is subject to the very same objection that I made in Can a Good Christian be a Good American? Evangelical Christianity is a religion of non-self-reliance. It is a religion of reliance upon Christ. Thus it cannot be a religion of responsibility for our future. It is on the contrary a religion of Christ's responsibility for our future.

The Evangelical will of course protest. She will say that, though my conclusion has a kernel of truth in it, that kernel is wrapped in falsehood. The kernel is that through Christ and Christ alone are we able to keep His commands. If left to our own, she will say, we are quite incapable of obedience to the law. But that this is so, she will say, does not imply that we can take no responsibility for our future. For Christ will not come to our aid if we do not ask Him, and if we do not ask we will stand quite justly condemned. Thus there is one thing that we must do. We must ask for Christ's aid. We must admit our weakness, our sinfulness. We must acknowledge Christ's rightful place as our ruler and we must submit to him.

But notice just how weak is this move. We are left with a drastically attenuated type of responsibility. There is only one thing we ought to do, only one thing we can do, and it is to ask for help. If the call to take responsibility is only this, how very thin it is.

Can a Good Christian be a Good American?

Can a good Christian be a good American? (Some cringe when citizens of the U.S. use 'American' to describe themselves and themselves alone. America, they say, includes all of North, Central and South America. With all due respect, they seem not to have considered the possibility that 'American' is ambiguous. It means either an inhabitant of the United States or an inhabitant of the greater continent of which the U.S. is part. I mean the former.)

American Christians, at least those of an Evangelical bent, are likely to say 'Of course a good Christian can be a good American'. Indeed they're likely to say good Christians make the best Americans, that the ideals of Christianity and of Americanism are not only compatible but serve to reinforce one another. (This is no doubt part of what's claimed when Evangelicals say that this is a Christian nation. They mean not only that America was founded on Christian ideals but that those ideals, if followed, make one a good American. Evangelicals seem on the whole quite patriotic, quite nationalistic, for they believe that in the U.S. Christianity fares best.)

I deny this. Good Christians most certainly cannot be good Americans. For consider an ideal at the core of Americanism, the ideal of self-reliance. It is part of what makes us distinctive as a people, and even when we fall short of it we still project it as a ideal. We are the people who do not need help, who do not rely upon help. Indeed we think that help corrupts. It makes us lazy, it makes us dependent. Better to eschew all help even if one fails without it, we say.

Who do we admire most here in the U.S.? The scrappy young boxer from a broken family who fights his way to the top. The child of poverty who, against all odds, manages to get an education and then begins a business that she makes successful through sheer grit. We're all told to be like these, to go out into the world and follow our dream. (Evangelicals often criticize Hollywood for its anti-Christian bent. But Hollywood still pushes the 'follow your dream' message hard. Consistency demands that Evangelicals commend Hollywood for that.) We're not told to sit back and let the dream come to us. We're not told to attach ourselves to another who will realize our dream for us. No, not that. We're told to go out and ourselves realize our dream.

Note just how deeply individualistic is this ideal. It's the individual that is told to go out into the world and make his way there. Whatever success he meets is his alone; whatever failure he suffers is his alone. He owes neither success or failure to anyone or any group outside himself. It is all his and his alone. It is a lonely ideal, an ideal that posits only the individual and a world to be conquered. It has no use for group or for origin. Indeed it is deeply suspicious of talk of such things. On the ideal of self-reliance, talk of group-membership or of origin can easily turn into an excuse not to work, not to better oneself or one's station. Better to put talk of such things to the side and get on with the work at hand.

This ideal of self-reliance is fundamentally at odds with Christianity. Christianity is a religion of non-self-reliance. It is a religion of reliance upon another. The other is of course Christ. Whatever strength we have comes from him. Whatever in us is good has him as its source.

Does this mean that we do no work? Of course not. Does this mean that we set not goals? Of course not. Rather it means that we must recognize in all we do that it is not we who achieve some good but rather Christ through us. Self-reliance is a myth. Christ-reliance is the only truth. Pride in the fruits of our own labor is always misplaced. Gratitude to Christ for what he works through us is always required.

Moreover Christianity is a religion in which the group is of fundamental importance. It is a religion that demands we set aside the individualism proper to Americanism and submit ourselves to serve the body of Christ here on Earth, the Christian church. The Christian is at bottom not one set out to conquer the world. He is rather one of many, and his very identity is wrapped up in his place within the Church. He is who is he because of that place.

This seems to me a fundamental incoherence in the Evangelical world-view. I suspect that Evangelical's keep their adherence to the ideals of Americanism and of Christianity separate. They do not allow they to come into contact, for if they did the psychic strain of their inconsistency would force them to give up one or the other. I submit to them that they should consider the two ideals together.

One last point. The incompatibility of the ideals of Christianity and Americanism should lead Evangelicals to rethink their oft-made claim that the United States is a Christian nation. If they mean by this that the ideals that animate the two are fully consistent and indeed serve to reinforce one another (and no doubt this is part of what's meant) they're dead wrong, and if one's fundamental loyalty is to Christ one must work to rid American of the myth of self-reliance.

Ad Hominem

I often find that I do not understand charges of ad hominem. (For the novice: ad hominem is a fallacy of a certain sort, i.e. it is a kind of mistake made in the attempt to establish the truth of some conclusion. The phrase 'ad hominem' is from the Latin, and means roughly 'against the man'. Ad hominem, we will find, is a fallacy that illegitimately substitutes a judgment about the character of a man for a judgment about the truth of what he says.) I don't mean that I don't understand what's meant by 'ad hominem'. About that I'm tolerably clear. What I often don't understand is why in debate this or that person thinks his opponent is guilty of ad hominem. I suspect that many charges of ad homimen are misplaced.

In the course of my discussion of ad hominem, I'll explain why I think charges of ad homimen are often misplaced.

First, let us place ad hominem on the fallacy map. Ad hominem is an informal fallacy. It has to do not with the form of an argument but rather with the content of its premises and conclusion. It is, moreover, a fallacy of irrelevance. The premises of an argument guilty of ad hominem are not relevant to its conclusion, i.e. the truth of those premises (if in fact they are true) should in no way contribute to our confidence in the truth of the conclusion. Last ad hominem is a species of genetic fallacy. One who commits ad hominem invites us to reject an opinion for no other reason than that its source is tainted in some way.

Next let us have a definition.

An argument commits the fallacy of ad hominem just if it infers from premises to do solely with the character of a person that that person's views about a certain irrelevant matter are false.

The definition makes quite clear just what ad hominem is. It is a fallacy of irrelevance in which we are to conclude that what a man says is false because he and not his argument has some defect. (Excuse the sexist language. I promise next post to shift to 'she' and 'her'.)

Why take the time to define this particular form of fallacy of irrelevance? Why not simply counsel that when one argues one must be careful never to commit any fallacy of irrelevance? Of course all arguments in which the premises are irrelevant to the conclusion are fallacious. Why not simply say so and leave it at that? The reason is that ad hominem is really quite common. Indeed we humans seem to have a predilection to commit it. We do it again and again. Why is this? Do we perhaps feel a need to believe that those we condemn must be through and through corrupt, so corrupt that even their very words are always false? Do we perhaps feel a need to tear down those we condemn so that we cannot even grant the truth of what they say? These are but guesses. I'll speculate no further. This question is, in all strictness, not a logical one at all; it has nothing to do with logic per se.

If you've ever had a logician explain to you what ad hominem is, likely that logician will not have inserted 'irrelevant' into her definition as I have into mine. Why insert it? Why not leave it out? If we leave it out, we must conclude that ad hominem is not always a fallacy. For we might well encounter an argument in which both premises and conclusion are about the character of a man. Indeed such a argument might take this form:

Issac is quick to anger but slow to forgive. Thus Issac is a hypocrite.

In this little argument, both the premise and the conclusion concern Issac's character. But the premise is quite clearly relevant to the conclusion. (Those who are quick to anger sin against others and thus are in need of their forgiveness. But Issac only very reluctantly gives forgiveness to others.) Thus the argument commits no fallacy. We must conclude then that if we wish to say that ad hominem is in all cases fallacious, the claims made within the premises about a man's character must be irrelevant to the claim made within the conclusion.

Of course instances of ad hominem are likely not as brazen as the definition might lead us to suspect. As with other sorts of fallacy, one who commits ad hominem will likely try to hide his mistake. He will not say any such thing as this: "Issac is a mean son-of-a-bitch. Thus his proof of the Poincare conjecture must be mistaken." Rather one who commits the fallacy of ad hominem is likely to hide his error by misdirection. Often he begins with a discussion of another's views. But he quickly leaves off discussion of those views and begins a rant about the other's faults. In this way we are invited to reject the other's views though we are never explicitly told that his views must be false because he has this or that fault of character. The moral here is that we must take care both when we read the arguments of others and when we construct our own. Ad hominem can be subtle. It can attempt to hide itself. Beware, then, when an argument - whether your own or the argument of another - begins to delve into the life of a man. This is no sure sign that the argument is fallacious. (Recall the little argument about Issac.) But it is a danger sign.

I'll say just a few words about mistakes to avoid when a charge of ad hominem is made. (i) One does not commit ad hominem simply because one says something critical of the character of another. Criticism of character is quite obviously often permissible, indeed sometimes it is required. But one may not infer anything irrelevant about the truth of a person's views simply because one has found fault not with those views but with them. (ii) In cases where one wishes to determine whether a certain person is a genuine authority in some area of inquiry, one may quite legitimately say something about their character. An environmental scientist - a climatologist, say - who radically altered his views after he began employment in the oil industry quite naturally and inevitably comes under suspicion. He looks to have sold out. Now, we cannot say that his views are for that reason false - if we did, that would be ad hominem. But we can for that reason find him no longer a legitimate authority. He has likely compromised his objectivity and thus we can no longer look to him as a source of unbiased, expert opinion.

A New Type of Theodicy: Dembski on Natural Evil

I suspect that some will say that I've been overly harsh with William Dembski. Perhaps so. But even if I have not been overly harsh, let me now be unabashedly enthusiastic. Dembski has authored a quite extraordinary piece in which he attempts to square the claims that (i) natural evil long predates the Fall, and (ii) the existence of natural evil depends upon the Fall. It is here: Christian Theodicy in Light of Genesis and Modern Science. The style is crisp and conversational with no sacrifice made to clarity. It is at once both insightful and creative. It should be read by all who take an interest in theodicy. I do hope that it has the effect that it deserves.

Dembski provides a short summary of his view in the passage below:

God does not merely allow personal [i.e. moral] evils . . . to run their course subsequent to the Fall. In addition, God also brings about natural evils (e.g., death, predation, parasitism, disease, drought, famines, earthquakes, and hurricanes), and lets them run their course prior to the Fall. Thus, God himself disorders the creation . . .. God disorders the world not merely as a matter of justice (to bring judgment against human sin as required by God’s holiness) but even more significantly as a matter of redemption (to bring humanity to its senses by making us realize the gravity of sin).

In his argument he relies upon the view, held in common by such diverse thinkers as Augustine, Thomas and Calvin, that in the 'moment' of God's creation of the world, He knew all that would happen within it. (I scare-quote 'moment' because it does not signify a moment within time but an, as it were, all-at-once creative act in which the world and all its contents come to be.) God thus knew that humans would fall. He thus knew the necessity that He would have to act so as to reconcile fallen humanity to Himself. The plan to reconcile was two part. He would send Christ so that fallen humanity might be restored to the perfection it enjoyed before the Fall. But He would not do only this. He would also make the world such a place that the 'gravity of sin' would be manifest in the world about us, and in this way humanity would know the necessity that it cleave to Christ for its redemption. How must the world be ordered so that the gravity of sin would be manifest? It must be a world of death and destruction, of failure and pain. It must be a world of injury and disease, of hurricane and earthquake. It must be, in short, a world of great natural evil. The necessity of natural evil is a pedagogical necessity.

Let us be clear. God did not at the time of the Fall so transform a perfect world that it would thereafter make the gravity of sin apparent to us. Rather He set the world up so that from it's very start it would contain those natural evils (or potential for natural evils) that, after the Fall, would make clear to us the gravity of sin and our need for a redeemer. The the taint of the Fall does not enter the world when the Fall occurs. It was there all along.

We do here have a species of what metaphysicians call 'backwards causation'. Events at a certain time - Adam and Eve's fall - bring about a state of affairs at a prior time - a world shot through with natural evil. But they do not do so directly. Rather between the first and the second in the explanatory chain lies God and His desire to make known to us the wages of sin. The explanatory chain is this. Our world is such that, at a certain time and place, humanity will fall. God thus knows this, for God knows all things, now, before and to come. Thus God, since all-good, so ordered the world that humanity might be reconciled to Him. A world able to bring humanity to the realization of a necessity for reconciliation must contain great natural evil. Thus God so ordered the world that it contained great natural evil. Finally, in His wisdom God found it best to allow natural evil free reign even before the time of the Fall.

Note that this explanatory sequence is not a sequence of temporal succession. What comes first in it does not come first in time. Rather it comes first only in the logic of explanation.

So ends my little explication of Dembski's views. In a later post, I'll comment a bit. For now, let me say only this: I am skeptical that a world in which natural evil is given free-reign before the Fall is better than one in which natural evil enters the world only after the Fall. (Also I'm skeptical that Dembski does the views of John Hick justice. Indeed we'll see that Dembski's view, like so many other types of theodicy, likely collapses into a kind of Hickianism.)

Uncommon Condescent

Con`de*scent", n. [Cf. Condescend, Descent.] An act of condescension. [Obs.] --Dr. H. More.

The title of my post is a pun on a pun. I hope that you'll forgive me.

A few days ago I began to read William Dembski's Uncommon Descent. I'd like to take a moment to explain why I don't think I'll return.

First, let me say something about the tone of the posts. An anger suffuses them. Anger directed at whom? For what reason? The object of his anger, I assume, is that part of the scientific and academic community that refuses to take his work with any seriousness. He is quite thoroughly marginalized and will likely remain so. (I mean to make no judgment about the justice of this state of affairs. Rather I only mean to report what seems to me to be the case. Has he been treated unfairly? I have no idea.) Indeed the great majority of his peers will not even so much as take him on. Most, I suspect, don't think it worth their time. The few who might feel some temptation to take on the defenders of ID, moreover, fear that their peers would ostracize them if they did so. Thus Dembski and others of his sort labor mostly in scientific obscurity. (Of course they do possess some cultural notoriety. But this is due to the existence of a community of conservative Christians who find ID congenial.)

But even if I'm wrong in my speculations about the cause and object of his anger, I am quite certain of its existence. The anger most often takes the form of sarcasm. His posts are often deeply, darkly sarcastic. He lashes out at those who have denied him a place at the table, and sarcasm is his weapon of choice. This makes the whole of Uncommon Descent seem like one great fit. It's expressed not by cries but by the written word. It's a clever fit. It's a long fit. But a fit it is.

This is the first of my reasons to give up on Uncommon Descent. My second concerns not the tone of what is said there but the content. Dembski has a quite low opinion of those of his scientific peers who reject ID. Indeed he is quite often openly derisive of them. He accuses them of the most simple and obvious fallacies. He accuses them of bad faith; they quite deliberately, Dembski says, cover over the faults of their view. Now, it might well turn out that some form of ID will become the dominant paradigm within origins science. But no matter if this happens or not, I find it highly unlikely that the men and women upon whom Dembski heaps his derision are guilty of the sins, whether intellectual or moral, of which they're accused. They are not stupid and they are not wicked. Perhaps they are wrong, but their mistakes are for the most part honest.

Don't expect me to say anything about the virtues or vices, whether intellectual or moral, of either this or that foe or this or that ally of ID. Don't expect me to say anything of the vices or virtues, whether theoretical or empirical, of either ID or or the Darwinian account of origins. I simply do not know enough to make any judgments of this sort. In this, I am no doubt like the great majority. We are on the outside and will never know enough about the theories or the theoreticians to make any judgment about character of theoretician or content of theory. Rather we who are outside must look for certain marks of genuine scientific authority and make our judgments based upon that and that alone. What are these marks? Has a person been trained by experts in her field? Does she work at a place known to house experts in her field? Has she published in peer-reviewed journals in her field? Does she have the esteem of her peers? Do her opinions cohere with other experts in the field? Is she free of any entanglements that might compromise her objectivity? Most evolutionary biologists meet these criteria and thus we must trust them and what they say. (Trust them absolutely? Of course not. Error both small and great could still easily creep in. The mere fact that a generation of scientists agree on a certain matter is no guarantee that their opinion is true. But that they agree is good reason for those of us on the outside to believe what they say; for those of us on the outside, that the experts say a thing is good though not conclusive reason to believe it.)

Does Dembski meet these criteria to the same degree as they are met by his opponents? No. Thus we have less reason to trust him than we do his opponents. But even if we should have made a mistake in this, we still can say this with certainty: the charges of intellectual shabbiness and moral corruption that Dembski levels at his opponents are very nearly certainly false.
(Dembski does his cause no favor when he makes such charges. He alienates his peers in the scientific community, and he alienates those such as me who have insufficient knowledge of the content of the disputes to form any independent judgments.)

Grace to All

As I said in a prior post, most if not all Protestants hold that those who do not put their trust in Christ will suffer eternal torment. I there asked how this could be just given that many have never heard the name of Christ. I'd like now to sketch an Augustinian response to this question. After I'll explain why I think it must be rejected.

What form does that Augustinian response take? (I don't mean to say that this is precisely what Augustine himself says. I'm no exegete and will not pretend that I am. But if what I say deviates from the line followed by Augustine, it is still like that line.) The Augustinian response says first that, in this post-Fall world, all are sinners and all are need in God's mercy. It infers from this that all, if condemned to eternal torment, are justly condemned. But why then are some saved from this fate? God's holds out his mercy to some and not to others and thereby makes a faith that will save them possible. How might he do this? He comes to some as He came to Saul on the road to Damascus. To others He gives pious parents who raise them up in the Faith. But no matter how He makes their faith possible, mercy is His reason, for all are sinners and all deserve damnation. Only by His mercy does God save some from this fate.

Of course we must now ask this of the Augustinian: Why does God choose only some and not others on which to bestow his grace? The answer cannot be that those whom He chooses deserved what was given them. No one deserves such a thing. It is a gift freely bestowed. It is not something in any way owed. Nor can the answer be that God makes mercy possible so that he might thereby increase the amount of good within the world, for if that were His motive He would surely grant the gift of faith to all. A world in which all are saved is surely in total better than a world in which only some are saved. But if our question cannot be answered in either of these two ways, it cannot be answered at all. No other answers present themselves.

(Might we say that a world in which some are saved and some damned is better than a world in which all are saved? Might it be that just punishment is such a great good that any very good world must contain many instances of it? This seems to run counter to the love ethic that is so clearly articulated in the New Testament. God wishes that all will be saved; and the damnation of even a single one is a very great tragedy, is something always to be greatly regretted.)

So then God's reason to bestow His grace upon these but not those is left a mystery.

Before I begin to lay out my objection to this, let me give the Augustinian response to the complaint that God acts unfairly when He bestows His grace upon some but not all. All are inveterate sinners; no one can raise himself out the morass of sin by himself. Rather every man, if left to himself, will sin without cessation. Thus if God damns you, you only get what you deserve; and the fact that some are shown mercy does not change the fact that, if He damns you, you were treated just as you deserve. Put a bit differently: that God shows mercy to one who has sinned sets up no obligation to show mercy to all who have sinned. Rather the mercy God shows is a purely gratuitous act and in no way lessens the guilt of those to whom He shows no mercy.

Let me now turn to my objection to this Augustinian story. It was hinted at above and is really quite simple. It is much better that all be saved than that only some be saved. Indeed of all the goods that are contingent, i.e that could either come to pass or not, it is one of the greatest. (The only greater of which I can think is the Incarnation.) Moreover, all could be saved and yet it not be the case that some greater good would thereby be sacrificed. Thus God, who of necessity acts so as to bring about a very good world, will act so as to insure that all are saved.

I do not pretend to know how this will happen. Perhaps those who are not saved in this world are saved in the next. Perhaps those who are not saved in this life will live another (and another and another . . .) until they are saved. But however it will be done, to let even a single one be damned is contrary to God's essential goodness. Thus all will be saved.

This is one of the elements of my faith, such as it is. Indeed in a way it is the foundation of my faith, its central tenet.

Is God Male?

The Presbyterian Church (USA) has stirred up a bit of controversy. They have given their imprimatur to a host of new names for the Trinity. I'd like to focus upon one. It is this: Compassionate Mother, Beloved Child and Life-Giving Womb. Many conservatives, Albert Mohler and Joe Carter among them, have condemned the terminological novelty. They ask us instead to use only the names of God that God Himself uses in Scripture and thus ask us to reject the use of such feminine names for the Trinity.

My point of entry into this debate is the question, Is God male?

The simple answer of course is 'No'. God is not male. Male is a biological category; it is the category of life-forms whose organs of reproduction create sperm for the fertilization of ova. God does no such thing as this. Thus He is not male. (Christ was male. But does this imply that any of the three persons of the Trinity is male? Surely not. To use the language of John, Christ was the union of the Logos and a particular human male. Christ qua human was male. Christ qua Logos was not. The Logos - the second person of the Trinity - is not itself male, for like the other two persons of the Trinity it is not physical.)

But why then when Scripture speaks of God does it make persistent use of masculine language? One conclusion is immediate and obvious. If God is not male, when God is referred to with a masculine pronoun (or some other bit of masculine language), that pronoun (or other bit of language) is not literal. It is rather in some way figurative.

But in what way is it figurative? How are we to understand it? Here we must begin theological speculation, for Scripture does not provide a direct answer to our question.

I can think of only one answer to our question. It is this: God must be more male-like than He is female-like in some significant regard. Only if this is true is the use of 'He'-metaphor appropriate; if it were not true, i.e. if God were more female-like than male-like, it would be appropriate not to use 'He' in reference to God but rather 'She'.

So then we are driven to ask a second question. In what way is God is more male-like than female-like? Here Scripture gives us a hint. The man, we are told, is to rule over the woman in a marriage. He is sovereign there. (Ephesians 5.22 ff, Colossians 3.18 ff and I Peter 3.1 ff. I know that some attempt to interpret these passages so that they say that husband and wife are to submit to one other equally. This does violence to the texts. If left to speak for themselves, they make clear that the husband is at the head of the family and that the wife stands behind.) Moreover, men are sovereign within the Church (1 Corinthians 14:34 and 35 e.g.); women's roles within it are quite severely restricted, for they are commanded not to speak there. Indeed his sovereignty within both family and Church is what, from a spiritual point of view, is distinctive about man; if we put this characteristic aside, there is nothing to distinguish man spiritually from woman.

Second point: God too is sovereign. His sovereignty is of course infinitely greater than that of a mere man, for it extends over the whole of creation. Moreover, a man's sovereignty within Church and home is subordinate to God's; a man is, as it were, but a lieutenant to God the general. But nonetheless both man and God are sovereign within their particular domains.

My suggestion is this: it is the sovereignty evinced by both man and God that makes use of the masculine pronoun 'He' appropriate of God. I know that this is a mere suggestion. Nothing I've said amounts to a proof. But I do find appeal in the above line of thought; it is plausible. (It is no doubt accepted by many Christians of an especially conservative bent of mind.)

If my suggestion should prove true, we have a condemnation of Biblical theology. Woman is relegated to a lesser status; she is more animal-like than God-like, for like an animal she is not to rule but to be ruled over. She is less than fully rational, for if man is to stand as sovereign in Church and home it must be because his rational faculties make him suited for that role.

One last word and I'll be done. Perhaps we should pursue another exegetical strategy here. We've assumed throughout that a certain model of Scripture's inspiration. We've assumed that God Himself has made the choice to use masculine language in description of Himself, and we've attempted to find His reason for this. But what if it was not God but was rather man who chose to use 'He' of God? Of course conservatives will not accept this; they read Scripture in such a way that it is always God and never man who chooses the manner of Scripture's composition. But I take the argument of the above to show that this conservative view is likely untenable. If we accept the conservative exegetical strategy, we find that we must attribute a most pernicious sexism to God. I'll not mince words. This is heresy. Thus the conservative exegetical strategy is likely flawed and so should be rejected.

Forgiven

I recently had the pleasure to read Morris Dees' account the civil rights trial of James Knowles. Michael Donald, a young black man from Mobile, Alabama, had been lynched. Knowles was charged with his murder. On the stand, Knowles turned to Donald's mother and asked her forgiveness. In a quiet voice, she replied that she already had.

She already had. She had forgiven him before he had asked forgiveness.

What do we say of Donald's mother and her act of forgiveness? I can think to say only this: she was a great woman.

One can be forgiven and yet never have asked for forgiveness. Moreover, if one waits to forgive, one is not as great as those who forgive immediately. The great forgive even when forgiveness is not asked.

Why then do so many insist that God does not forgive unless we do some such thing as place our trust in Christ? This makes God seem less good than Donald's mother. God forgives all immediately.

I know the reply that will be made: God's justice demands that a price be paid for every sin. But this makes God's mercy subordinate to God's justice, and thus is just backwards. Before all else, God is love and thus His justice is subordinated to His love.

Questions about Sin and Grace

Over the past year here at The Philosophical Midwife, I've taken as my target the fundamental dogmas of Protestant Christianity. But I've really only scratched the surface. There's much there about which I've said nothing or only very little.

Perhaps before I launch yet another broadside, I should ask a few questions. I might well harbor certain misconceptions about Protestantism. If they are cleared up for me, I can invest my time here more wisely.

I have two questions. The first concerns sin and the second grace.

1. We live in a world ruined by the Fall. The ruin is not merely around us. It is within us. We ourselves were ruined by Adam and Eve's sin. As a result, sin is quite inevitable for us. We come into the world unable not to sin. All who have come after Adam and Eve have sinned. All who will come after us will sin.

But how then can we be held responsible for our sins? Indeed if they are inevitable, it seems a mistake to call them 'sins'. They are more like disabilities, something that we cannot help, something that it would be perverse to hold us responsible for.

In the above, I rely upon the premise that if we cannot help but do a thing, we cannot be rightly held responsible for it. I you deny it, all I can think to say is that here we must part company. It seems to me as obvious as any moral truth. I say to you that, if you feel it necessary to deny it, you should trace backwards and find the belief that leads you to deny it; and then give up that belief.

2. It is characteristic of Protestant Christianity to hold that only those who know Christ and put their faith in Him will be saved. But what are we to say of those who've never heard the name of Christ? What do we say of those who, though they've heard the name, do not know who He is? Will they be damned? Will they suffer because of an ignorance for which they cannot be faulted?

(This question occurred to me very early on in my religious education. I was brought up Church of Christ, and like most Protestant denominations, it taught that those who did not put their faith in Christ were lost.)

God surely could have insured that all would have come to know who Christ was and thus would have had the choice to either accept or reject Him. But He did not. How then can He hold those responsible who, through no fault of their own, do not know who Christ was?

Biblical Inerrancy and Errors of Transmission

Let me again take up my assault on the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy. (As before, I say that it is the doctrine that the Bible, when interpreted appropriately at every point, is at every point wholly without error.)

But let us take a bit more care than we have before when we state the doctrine. In particular let us ask, What version of the Bible do we mean?

Versions of course exist. Not all include the same texts in the canonical set of Biblical texts. But let us put that issue to the side. Perhaps we'll return to it at a later time.

I wish to concentrate now upon errors in the transmission of Biblical texts. These can be of various sorts. When a text is copied, deletions might be made. Additions might be made. Changes might be made.

Such errors inevitably result in versions of the Bible. An error in transmission creates a new Bible. The new one of course overlaps with the old. But because it is not wholly overlap the old, it is not identical to the old.

I expect that my readers will be familiar with the Pericope Adulterae. It is the story told in John 7:53–8:11. There a young adulteress who the Pharisees are ready to stone is saved by Christ. Christ in her defense utters that famous sentence "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her".

This is my favorite of the Christ-narratives. He is there at once wise and compassionate. But alas, it is not authentic. It is not in the earliest of the New Testament manuscripts and thus was very likely inserted into John's gospel by a later scribe.

How does this amount to an objection to the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy? In this way. How does the inerrantist explain the inerrancy of Scripture? How does she believe it came to be wholly without error? Inerrantists answer in a single voice. It is inerrant because it is Spirit-breathed. It was, when first composed, so guided by the Spirit in its composition that it contains no error. But note that this alone is not sufficient to explain the inerrancy of the Bible we now possess. We do not have the original Bible manuscripts. Rather we have but copies of (copies of copies . . .) of the originals. (Moreover, we have not the total set of texts that some thought deserved a place in the canonical set. Rather the texts of the Bible we now possess were selected from a much larger set of texts. But let us put that issue to the side.) But as the example of the Pericope Adulterae makes clear, those who copied the Biblical texts were not wholly faithful to the texts before them. They made additions (and deletions and changes, too).

Now, my question for inerrantists is this: Why would the Spirit allow such copy errors? The Spirit wished to produce a Bible wholly inerrant. The Spirit guided the authors of Biblical texts so that their manuscripts would be inerrant. The Spirit of course could have so guided the scribes whose task it was to copy Biblical texts that their work would have introduced no error into their product. But the Spirit did not do this.
This is an inexplicable oversight on the part of the Spirit. Indeed, given how the inerrantist portrays the work of the Spirit, it seems quite un-Spirit-like. What might be said in response? Was the Spirit simply inconsistent in its actions? This is hardly consistent with divinity. Did the Spirit perhaps lack the ability to guide thescribess as they made their copies? The Spirit is God and so lacks the ability to do nothing. Might the Spirit have been ignorant of the errors of the scribes? Again we must say that the Spirit is God and thus lacks knowledge of nothing.

There is nothing for the inerrantist left to say.

The conclusion is obvious. We must assume that the Spirit is consistent in its actions, and it is moreover both perfectly knowledgeable and perfectly powerful. Thus since it did not act so as insure that the scribes who copied Biblical texts did not introduce any error, it did not act so as to insure that the authors of the Biblical texts made no errors when they wrote. The doctrine of Biblical inerrancy must be abandoned.

Sola Scriptura, Part I

Sola scriptura is a pillar of Protestant Christianity. It is exceeded in importance only by the doctrine of Sola fide.

What is Sola scriptura? It is that one need not look outside the Bible for direction in matters either moral or spiritual. It is the doctrine that if one is in search of direction in some matter either spiritual or moral, one will find all that one needs in the Bible. (Be careful. It's not the doctrine that all that one needs will be explicitly said in Scripture. It is rather that one will find that materials to assemble what one needs within Scripture. How difficult will be the assembly? Not overly difficult. It's supposed to be something that anyone with even a modicum of intelligence can do. For the Protestant, we need no priesthood to interpret the Bible for us. We are quite capable to do it on our own.)

Sola scriptura is demonstrably false. Its falsity can be proved in a number of ways. Here I build my argument upon a what I think is a uncontroversial view of our obligations to nonhuman animals.

The Bible has very little to say about our obligations to nonhuman animals and what it does say is often either quite difficult to interpret or is so succinct that it is of little use. (I direct you to Proverbs 12:10, Isaiah 11:6-9, Genesis 9:1-3, Genesis 1:20-31. I know of no other verses relevant in this regard.) From these verses we get nothing like a complete view of our obligations to nonhuman animals. We do not get even an idea about how to begin to build such a view.

Of course much is said in the Bible about what we owe to other human beings, and to God. But the Bible fails to say how much of this, if any, is also applicable to nonhuman animals. It does seem that the Bible condones the consumption of animal flesh (at least of certain types). (Let us stress 'seems'. Some take Isiah 11 to show us that consumption of animal flesh is not part of God's original purpose for the world. It is rather a sign of its corruption, of its degradation.) But it says nothing about the kind of life, or death, we owe to those we eat. On that question, we are on our own.

One might perhaps say (Immanuel Kant said it) that we have no real obligations to nonhuman animals. If this were so, the Bible's silence on the matter would in no way undermine Sola scriptura. But Kant was quite self-evidently wrong. He do have real duties to nonhuman animals. We cannot torture them for pleasure. We cannot treat them as mere things and harm them unnecessarily as we would destroy a mere thing. We must pay heed to their needs, even when those exceed the need for the basics of survival. Some animals needs space to roam and the autonomy to roam it as they will. Some animals are intensely social and thus evince a need for the presence of others of their kind.

I do not intend here to even so much as sketch a complete theory of our obligations to nonhuman animals. Rather all that I wish to say is that we many such obligations.

The argument is complete. To sum: The Bible provides little to no guidance when the issue arises of our obligations to nonhuman animals. But we do have many such obligations. Thus Sola scriptura is false.

(I expect that most if not all Prostestants will at this point reply that if we cannot look to the Bible for the final word on all matters moral and spiritual, we will have no guidance on these matters at all and will thus lapse into a relativism of personal preference. I don't agree. I think that the only reason we can have to think the Bible God-breathed is that it concords with our own deepest moral intuitions. Moral intuition comes first. Belief in the Biblical truth is derivative and comes after. Expect a post on this in the future.)

Prophecy and Biblical Authority

For reasons inscrutable to my wife, I often listen to local Evangelical radio. On purely moral matters, I sometimes hear something wise, something of use. But when talk turns to the authority of Scripture, the relation of science to religion, such basic theological issues as the purpose of Christ's passion and death, I almost never find anything to uplift or enlighten.

Yesterday I caught a bit of an argument for the authority of Scripture. It concerned prophecy.

Let me make clear that the argument was aimed at ones such as me, ones who either doubt or reject the truth of Scripture. It is an argument meant to persuade the doubters and the rejecters. Thus it cannot assume the truth of any part of Scripture. Rather that it what is was intended to prove.

The argument's author (an evangelical minister - forgive me but I can't now recall his name) says that fulfillment of prophecy is the best evidence of Scripture's truth. Indeed prophecy's fulfillment he called the very 'signature' of God. (Other forms of evidence of Biblical truth were relegated to a lesser status. They were called 'fingerprints of God'.)

What are the prophesies of which he speaks? We need not say specifically. Rather all we need say is that they are prophesies recounted in the Bible itself. Moreover, their fulfillment is too recounted in the Bible. Do we have any other source for these prophecies? No. All are recounted only in the Bible. Do we have any other account of their fulfillment? Again no. All are recounted only in the Bible.

What then will our evangelical say if we ask him why we should believe these Biblical accounts? He cannot merely assume that we believe them, for he undertake to prove that the Bible is true. But assume this he did. He had nothing to say in response to this question.

This is a quite egregious error. In his attempt to prove the veracity of Scripture, he assumed that very thing. He assumed the veracity of the Scriptural accounts of prophesy and its fulfillment to prove the veracity of Scripture.

Logicians have a name for a fallacy of this sort. It is called 'circularity'. Circular arguments, needless to say, prove nothing at all, for the very thing that they hope to prove they assume in the course of that proof.

We have an irony here as well. Our evangelical no doubt believes - indeed he said in his discourse - that Christianity is paradigm rationality. But at the very start of his defense of it, he quite obviously commits one of the most basic of logical errors. Of course this does not imply that Christianity itself is irrational. But it does cast grave doubt upon the rationality of our evangelical, at least in theological matters. (He might act perfectly rationally when no engaged in theological discourse. I of course have no idea.) He claim to a more perfect rationality is pure pretense, pure bluff.

Procreate!

I have come to suspect that the so-called "Cultural Conservatives", in their war upon reproductive autonomy, will not rest content with the overturn of Roe and the subsequent radical restriction of abortion rights. They'll go after birth control next. Of course the Catholic Church remained a staunch enemy of birth control even when Protestants dropped their objections to it. But the tide on birth control has begun to turn. Conservative Protestants have begun to speak out against it.

Here are the words of a conservative Protestant of some influence:

"This epidemic of chosen childlessness will not be corrected by secular rethinking. In an effort to separate the pleasure of sex from the power of procreation, modern Americans think that sex totally free from constraint or conception is their right.

Those who reject children want to have the joys of sex and marital companionship without the responsibilities of parenthood. They rely on others to produce and sustain the generations to come.

The church should insist that the biblical formula calls for adulthood to mean marriage and marriage to mean children. This reminds us of our responsibility to raise boys to be husbands and fathers and girls to be wives and mothers. God's glory is seen in this, for the family is a critical arena where the glory of God is either displayed or denied. It is just as simple as that."

So says Albery Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. His argument of course savors of Catholicism in a certain respect, but is anti-Catholic in another. It says that copulation should not be uncoupled from procreation. Thus Mohler seems to call upon us to eschew the use of birth control. But he calls upon us to do not only that. We must marry, he says. A life outside of marriage, even if celibate, is outside God's plan. This is an attack upon the priesthood, and indeed upon all within the Church who feel a call to remain celibate.

Let us be clear. For Mohler, we must marry and we must procreate. Indeed it seems that if we follow Mohler's advice families will be large. We cannot use birth control, for when we do we attempt to "separate the pleasure of sex from the power of procreation". (Mohler does not explicitly say that we cannot use birth control. But what he says entails it, and he should take responsibility not only for what he says but also for what is entailed thereby.) But I suspect that Mohler would claim that a wife should not withhold sex from her husband nor a husband sex from his wife. For is not marriage in part for sex? It is, in God's plan (or so I expect Mohler would say), the only proper place for sex, and sex between husband and wife is a natural and inevitable outgrowth of that love. Thus if both parents are fertile, the wife will bear many children.

The battle lines are drawn. I know on which side I stand.

Mohler's mistakes are many in number and kind.

1. I quick read of 1 Corinthians 7 seems to give council contrary to what Mohler says. Paul there praises those who choose to remain unmarried and instead devote their time to God. It is as if Mohler would have us forget what Paul there says.

2. There are many ways to bring good into the world, and procreation is but one of them. Who can say for sure that the way for me to bring the most good into the world is for me to marry and have children? Might I not do better to choose another path? (Paul seems quite clearly to answer Yes in 1 Corinthians 7.)

3. It is good to bring children into the world so that there might be more who can know and love God. Procreation is thus not an end in itself. It serves the end of increase in knowledge and love of God. But since it is not an end in itself, it's quite possible that some should be called to serve the end which it promotes in another way. For example, perhaps it would be better for an artist of world-historical ability to devote herself to her work to the exclusion of all else. It might be that only thus can she produce a body of work able to uplift the spirit in illumine the intellect. Let me put the point in this way. The mind is not for the body and the body's creation of new members of its species. Rather the body is for the mind, and we procreate so that there will be more minds. So what we serve is not the body and the body's function but the mind and its function, and clearly there might be better ways to serve the mind and its function than to procreate. We are not merely animal. We are rational too. Let us not debase ourselves so that we behave as do non-rational animals. Rather let us serve our rationality. Let us make certain that it flourishes in whatever way seems best to us. To do this, some will make more like themselves. Others will devote themselves solely to meditation, to research, to art, to governance and so on. In the end, they serve the same end as do those who procreate but they do so in another way.

4. A woman who must copulate often with her husband and who can never use birth control is a woman who will bear many children. She will undergo many total years of pregnancy and many years with very young children in the house. Such a woman will have no time to pursue other interests. She will be bound to home and to children for decades. Whatever talent she might have had for work outside the home will be squandered. This cannot be good.

5. A time will come when not all couples can have many children. Perhaps the planet can easily support 10 billion, or 50. I do not know. But at a certain point, its ability to support us will fail. Before that time, we must begin to curtail population growth. We must begin to use birth control. Indeed I would suppose that it's better to use birth control now so that we never come near the point at which the Earth's ability to support us fails.

Why I Am Not an Evangelical, Part I

American culture has proved fertile soil for a form of conservative Christianity that calls itself 'Evangelicalism'. As my readers (you brave few) know well, I am no Christian (though I find myself strongly attracted to Christianity). Perhaps I will become Christian some day. I find peace and enlightenment at Catholic mass. Among the priests I know are men of great wisdom and spiritual depth. Perhaps a day will come when they will convince me of what they preach. But I cannot imagine that I will ever become an Evangelical. Its errors are multifarious and manifest. I do hope that its influence wanes in the decades to come, for it is both culturally and religiously corrosive.

In this post and ones to follow, I explain why I take such a critical view of Evangelicalism. This is the first of seven posts. In each, I explain why I reject some central doctrine or stance of contemporary Evangelical Christianity.

Let's first have a list of them. After I'll turn to the first deadly sin.

1. The Doctrine of Substitutionary Attonement
2. The Doctrine of Biblical Inerrancy
3. The Doctrine of Sola Fide (Salvation by Faith Alone)
4. The Viciousness of the Evangelical God
5. Evangelical Disdain for Science
6. Evangelical Alliance with the Republican Party
7. Sexism of Evangelicals (Extraordinarily, both men and women evangelicals!)

Before I begin, let me say that not all Evangelicals are guilty of each of these sins. Do not suppose that "Evangelicalism" has a precise definition captured by some or all of the sins on my list. Rather each sin is characteristic of Evangelicalism. Exceptions can be found, but they are just that - exceptions (quite rare exceptions, I am sure).

Let us turn, then, to the first of the deadly sins.

First Fault: The Doctrine of Substitutionary Atonement

First let's have a statement of the doctrine (hereafter SA). After I'll attack it.

The doctrine concerns the death of Christ. It is an answer to the question, What was the point of His death? The answer that SA gives is multipart. (i) We are all sinners. (ii) We ourselves cannot remove the taint of that sin. We ourselves cannot atone for it. (iii) Christ, since perfect, could pay the price of our sins. He, since perfect, could atone for them by His death. Indeed in His death He did precisely this. (iv) Thus in His death Christ justifies us before God. In His death, he makes possible the forgiveness of our sins and a life eternal in God's bosom.

Thus we come to understand why 'Substitutionary Attonement' is the proper name of this doctrine. Christ, in His death, substitutes for us and bears the penalty of our sins; and in this way is atonement made for our sins.

(Of course most Evangelicals will add that our sins are forgiven only if we put our trust in Christ and ask His forgiveness. But strictly that is not part of SA, so let's say no more about it here. But I will take up the issue when I turn to the topic of The Viciousness of the Evangelical God.)

The Attack

1. No atonement is necessary for forgiveness. I can forgive you the wrongs you've done to me even if you do nothing to atone for those wrongs, even if you do not ask forgiveness. This makes Christ's death unnecessary for the forgiveness that God gives. If the only point that Christ's death can have is that it made possible forgiveness of sins, His death was pointless.

2. But my opponent might dig in her heels. She might say some such thing as this:

God's justice cannot be trumped by His mercy. Rather His justice requires that a price be paid for human sin.

My reply is two-part. (i) To suppose that a price must be paid for sin is to make God a hostage to His justice. Is to make Him unable to forgive if the price of sin is not paid. But any such limitation is inimical to God's nature. God can do as He pleases (so long as what He does involves no absolute impossibility - not even God can square the circle). But to forgive when the price of sin has not been paid is surely possible. Thus God can do it. (ii) God is a merciful god. But if of necessity the price of sin must be paid to God before He can forgive, He never extends His grace to us. To extend grace is to forgive, is to treat as righteous, when the price has not been payed. Thus the supposition that God is a god of mercy contradicts SA.

3. As said, no atonement is necessary for forgiveness. But that of course does not imply that atonement is not sufficient for forgiveness. So let us then suppose that it is sufficient.

But now let us ask whether another can atone for my sins. The answer is clear. My sins are mine alone. Only I can atone for them. You can of course help to alleviate the harm that I did when I sinned. But you do not thereby atone for my sin.

Let's make the point in another way. Defenders of SA often say that Christ bore the burden of our sins and by his death pays the penalty for them. But now we must ask a question like the one asked before. Can another pay the penalty of my sins? The answer is clear. Let us say that I've killed a man in a jealous rage. I am tried, convicted and sentenced to prison. Now, what would we say if someone were to offer to do my time? Might the price of my sin by thereby paid? Of course not. If I were let go free, that would be one injustice. If another innocent man were imprisoned in my place, that would be a second injustice. My sin, my crime demands that I and I alone suffer the penalty of its commission. If we suppose that Christ, when nailed to the cross, did so to pay the price of our sins, we suppose a double injustice. The first is that we, the guilty ones, did not suffer as we ought. The second is that an innocent suffered for a crime He did not commit.

But SA, we know, supposes that substitutionary atonement is possible; it supposes that another can suffer and thereby atone for sins that I've committed. Thus we must conclude that the Doctrine of Substitutionary Attonement is at bottom conceptually incoherent. It betrays a deep error about the nature of sin and its atonement. Whatever account we give of the point of Christ's death, it cannot be that of SA.