Why I De-Converted from Evangelical Christianity

Fine Tuning Ethical Intuitionism

2010-11-28T04:00:00.000-05:00

There are different varieties of Ethical (or Moral or Evolutionary) Intuitionism. Some are subject to more criticism than others. I am in the process of fine tuning my particular view of Ethical Intuitionism. I found a recent article by Jeff McMahan to be quite helpful ("Moral Intuition," in The Blackwell Guide to Ethical Theory, ed. Hugh LaFollette [2000], 92-110).

1. What is a moral intuition?

According to McMahan:

[It] is a spontaneous moral judgment, often concerning a particular act or agent, though an intuition may also have as its object a type of act or, less frequently, a more general moral rule or principle. In saying a moral intuition is a spontaneous judgment, I mean that it is not the result of conscious inferential reasoning. In the first instance at least, the allegiance the intuition commands is not based on an awareness of its relations to one's other beliefs. If one considers the act of torturing the cat, one judges immediately that, in the circumstances, this would be wrong. One does not need to consult one's other beliefs in order to arrive at this judgment. This kind of spontaneity, I should stress, is entirely compatible with the possibility that a fair amount of cognitive processing may be occuring beneath the surface of consciousness (pp. 93-94).

2. There is not a special organ or faculty that perceives moral facts.

Although some have held that ethical intuitions are the deliverances of a special organ or faculty of moral perception, typically understood as something like an inner eye that provides occult access to a noumenal realm of objective values (p. 94), I reject this notion. I don't believe that there is something like a sixth sense that is able to perceive moral facts.

3. Intuitions are not infallible.

4. Intuitions are biologically based.

But numerous considerations--such as the diversity of moral intuitions, the fact that people do often doubt and even repudiate certain of their intuitions, and the evident origin of some intutitions in social prejudice or self-interest--make it untenable to suppose that intuitions are direct and infallible perceptions of morality (pp. 94-95).

5. Intuitions may differ among people.

One piece of evidence for this is the surprising uniformity of our intuitions about particular cases. We have been impressed for so long by the claims of anthropologists, English professors, undergraduates, and others about the diversity of moral opinion that we are inclined to overlook how much agreement there actually is. Interestingly, what one finds is that moral disagreements tend to widen and intensify the more we abstract from particular cases and focus instead on matters of principle or theory. When the partisans of different schools of moral thought turn their attention to particular cases, there is far more intuitive agreement that their higher-level disputes would lead one to suspect (pp. 106-07).

There are several explanations for this. One is that our moral intuitions undoubtedly stem from numerous diverse sources: while some derive from biologically programmed dispositions that are largely uniform across the species, others are the products of cultural determinants, economic or social conditions, vagaries of individual character and circumstance, and so on. Given the heterogeneity of these sources, it is hardly surprising that there are conflicts (p. 109).

Ayn Rand on "Free Will" and Justice

2010-11-04T04:00:00.000-04:00

"A sin without volition is a slap at morality and an insolent contradiction in terms: that which is outside the possibility of choice is outside the province of morality. If man is evil by birth, he has no will, no power to change it; if he has no will, he can be neither good nor evil; a robot is amoral. To hold, as man's sin, a fact not open to his choice is a mockery of morality. To hold man's nature as his sin is a mockery of nature. To punish him for a crime he committed before he was born is a mockery of justice. To hold him guilty in a matter where no innocence exists is a mockery of reason. To destroy morality, nature, justice and reason by means of a single concept is a feat of evil hardly to be matched. Yet that is the root of your code. Do not hide behind the cowardly evasion that man is born with free will, but with a 'tendency' to evil. A free will saddled with a tendency is like a game with loaded dice. It forces man to struggle through the effort of playing, to bear responsibility and pay for the game, but the decision is weighted in favor of a tendency that he had no power to escape. If the tendency is of his choice, he cannot possess it at birth; if it is not of his choice, his will is not free" (Ayn Rand, For the New Intellectual, 1961, pp. 136-37).

Is God the Author of Evil? Molinism has no better answer than Calvinism

2010-11-03T04:00:00.001-04:00

In the book, Divine Foreknowledge: Four views (ed. James K. Beilby and Paul R. Eddy, 2001), four evangelical Christians present different views on the meaning of Divine Foreknowledge. Greg Boyd presents the Open-Theism View, David Hunt, the Simple-Foreknowledge View, William Craig, The Middle-Foreknowledge View (aka, Molinism), and Paul Helm, the Augustinian-Calvinist (A-C) View. One of the criticisms often raised by those who oppose the latter view is that it makes God the author of sin. That is because it essentially makes no distinction between foreknowledge and foreordination. God foreknows what he does because he has foreordained it.

Craig expresses this criticism of the A-C view:

The Augustinian-Calvinist perspective interprets the above passages to mean that foreknowledge is based upon foreordination. God knows what will happen because he makes it happen. Aware of the intentions of his will and his almighty power, God knows that all his purpose shall be accomplished. But his interpretation inevitably makes God the author of sin, since it is he who moved Judas, for example, to betray Christ, a sin that merits the hapless Judas everlasting perdition. But how can a holy God move people to ocmmit moral evil and, moreover, how can these people then be held morally responisble for acts over which they had no control. The Augustinian-Calvinist view seems, in effect, to turn God into the devil (p. 135).

Paul Helm, on the other hand, maintains that the Middle-Knowledge View (Molinism) of Bill Craig has the same problem:

On the question of the authoriship of evil, there's not a hairsbreadth bewteen the Augustinian-Calvinist perspective and Craig's Molinism. According to Craig's description of Molinism, "God decreed to create just those circumstances and just those people who would freely do what God willed to happen" (p. 134). While this description does not ential that God is the author of sin (any more than the A-C perspective does), it does entail that God decreed all sinful acts to happen and decreed them precisely as they have happened. If this is so, the God of Molina and Arminius seems to be as implicated in the fact of evil as much (or as little) as the God of the A-C perspective (p. 159).

I agree with Craig that the A-C view does make God the author of sin. Since everything that happens in the word was foreordained by God, then sin was foreordained by him as well. I also agree with Helm that Molinism does not solve this problem. It inserts "middle-knowledge" between foreknowledge and foreordination but the result is the same. If God chooses to actualize a word in which there will be evil and he knows there will be evil due to his middle-knowledge, then he is no less the author of sin than the Calvinist God is.

Furthermore, as John Feinberg points out, Molinism's attempt to safeguard "libertarian free will" also fails. He writes:

[M]iddle knowledge talks about what would happen, so once God chooses the possible world he wants to actualize, he knows in every situation what his creatures would freely do. Divine foreknoweldge is upheld. However, if incompatiblism is correct, how can he know what would happen if any given "x" occurred? That is, if "y" is an incompatibilistically free human action, it must be indeterminate, but if so, it is impossible for God to know in advance of our free choice which "y" would actually occur in any given "x" situation. In virtue of what would he know the particular "y" that would follow? In virtue of causal conditions that confront the agent at the time of decision making and move him to choose as he does? If so, that is determinism, not libertarian free will (The Many Faces of Evil, 2004, p. 113).

Another author, David Hunt, maintains that the Molinist view does not resolve the "soteriological problem of evil" either. He writes:

The Bible appears to teach that some (many? most?) human beings will spend eternity in hell. Whatever "eternity in hell" amounts to, it is certainly not the purpose for which God created the world--God does not desire this for anyone (2 Pet 3:9). but if he is equipped with middle knowledge, he knew exactly who would reject him prior to creating anyone; knowing this, he could easily have refrained from creating these people. Why didn't he do so? This is a more difficult question to answer for the Molinist than it is for the open theist (whose God lacks this knowledge) or the defender of simple foreknowledge (whose God knows the actual future but cannot use that knowledge to change the very thing he foreknows). This does not show that there are no reasons why God might create people he "middle-knows" would reject him, but the need to posit and defend such reasons is a cost not borne by the non-Molinst (Divine Foreknowledge, p. 152)
So, despite the poplularity among a number of Christian philosophers and apologists regarding middle-knowledge (many seem to think its a panacea for all the sticky issues facing Christianity), it doesn't seem to me that it offers any better solution to the problems than does pure Calvinism.

How Did Adam and Eve Sin if they were created "Good"?

2010-11-02T04:00:00.001-04:00

In a prior post, I argued that not even Adam and Eve had a truly free will. If this is true, then the so-called Free Will Defense for the Problem of Evil fails, for they were created with a predisposition towards evil.

R. L. Dabney, the 19th century Calvinist theologian, attempts to explain how beings created as "very good" (Gen. 1:31)could sin. He writes:

How a holy will could come to have an unholy volition at first, is a most difficult inquiry. And it is much harder as to the first sin of Satan, than of Adam, because the angel, created perfect, had no tempter to mislead him and had not even the bodily appetites for natural good which in Adam were so easily perverted into concupiscence. Concupiscence cannot be supposed to have been the cause, pre-existing before sin; because concupiscence is sin, and needs itself to be accounted for in a holy heart. Man's, or Satan's, mutability cannot be the efficient cause, being only a condition sine qua non. Nor is it any solution to say with Turrettin, the proper cause was a free will perverted voluntarily. Truly; but how came a right will to pervert itself while yet right?

... The most probable account of the way sin entered a holy breast first, is this: An object was apprehended as in its mere nature desirable; not yet as unlawful. So far there is no sin. But as the soul, finite and fallible in its attention, permitted an overweening apprehension and desire of its natural adaptation to confer pleasure, to override the feeling of its unlawfulness, concupiscence was developed. And the element which first caused the mere innocent sense of the natural goodness of the object to pass into evil concupiscence, was privative, viz., the failure to consider and prefer God's will as the superior good to mere natural good. Thus natural desire passed into sinful selfishness, which is the root of all evil. ...

When we assert the mutability of a holy will in a finite creature, we only say that the positive element of righteousness of disposition may, in the shape of defect, admit the negative, not being infinite (Systematic Theology, ch. 29).

So, if I understand Dabney correctly, Adam and Eve fell because they were created as finite beings. Even as a candle will eventually burn out due to its finiteness, the first human beings eventually sinned due to their finiteness. Thus, it was inevitable that they sin.

Shedd (vol. 2, p. 149)Adam was holy by creation, but not indefectibly and immutably so. The inclination of his will, though conformed to the moral law, was mutable, because his will was not omnipotent. When voluntary self-determination is an infinite and self-subsistent power, as it is in God, the fall of the will is impossible. But when voluntary self-determination is a finite and dependent power, as it is in man or angel, the fall of the will is possible. ... The power to the contrary; the possibilitas peccandi, or power to originate sin ; belonged to Adam's will because of its finiteness.

If it was inevitable that the first couple sin, then how can they be held culpable?

see discussion at Tribalogue

Unfortunately, since we are not in the position of Adam and since the Bible is silent on the issue, we can only answer with speculation. Granted, it is speculation that is informed by the rest of Scripture, but this isn't an issue that the Bible addresses specifically.

We do know that Adam's sin did not catch God off-guard. It was foreordained, yet in such a way that Adam freely sinned. These concepts are all clear from Scripture. While I do not have a perfect answer for the question, I will give you my speculation with the caveats that 1) I haven't really worked through this in its entirety and 2) I do not hold this position dogmatically and can easily be influenced away from it.

My current belief is that barring active influence from God in the form of common grace, it is impossible for anything to remain in a perfect state. That is, the natural state of everything is entropy, and this is true of man and his spirituality. Thus, it is impossible for God to create a man who of his own power (that is, apart from God's continual upholding via His grace and mercy) will remain steadfast and not turn toward sin.

The advantage to this argument is that it would explain why Adam sinned (i.e. God removed His grace and let Adam be as Adam would be, which invariably means Adam would "break" and sin) and it explains why we will not sin in heaven (i.e. God will not ever remove His grace from us, and therefore we will continually rely on His power to keep us in communion with Him for all time).

The drawback is that it relies on saying that it is impossible for God to create a man who would not sin if God ever let the man exist of the man's own power. However, I wouldn't have a problem with this in theory since I do not believe God can make a round square or any other contradiction, and if it is logically impossible for God to create a person who cannot sin without His continual grace then we don't have a problem there.

So the question would be, is it logically possible for God to create a person who is able of his own power to remain faithful to God? And I haven't worked through that one yet.

But at least it gives me something to think about.
12/16/2007 9:58 PM

see discussion Puritanboard

http://www.puritanboard.com/f15/how-did-adam-sin-27525/

You are also going to have to avoid the Roman error: that Adam's human nature was naturally deficient, that it tended toward concupiscence without the donum superadditum, special grace needed to remain sinless

Rome says concupiscence (inclination to wrongdoing) is natural. Dabney says, "concupiscence was developed." At least Dabney admits the result is mysterious, and not a natural occurrence

Did Adam and Eve have a Free Will?

2010-11-01T04:00:00.001-04:00

The Free Will Defense for the problem of evil really relates only to Adam and Eve; because the Bible teaches that after the fall of the original couple, men's hearts incline towards evil. Man's nature post-fall is corrupt and is bent in the direction of doing evil. Man is totally depraved, meaning that left to himself, he will choose against God. So, according to historic Christianity, the only persons who were truly free were Adam and Eve. That means that the so-called Free Will Defense employed by Christian apologists really only applies to the original couple.

But were they even truly free? What precisely does it mean to have a truly free will? Does it mean that nothing is causing you to choose one option over another or does it mean that nothing is influencing you to choose one option over another? It seems that it must be the former, since it seems impossible for one to make any choice without being influenced by something. But is a will that is influenced, truly free?

I guess the question becomes how much influence is required before one is no longer culpable for his choice? In the criminal justice system, the defense of entrapment can be used by someone who believes that he was "improperly induced" into committing a crime. While this area of the law is complex and somewhat subjective (see Criminal Law , Thomas J. Gardner and Terry M. Anderson, [10th ed., 2009], 146-49 and Criminal Law, David C. Brody, James R. Acker, and Wayne A. Logan [2001], 313-14), it is agreed that the defendant must have had a predisposition to commit the crime before he encountered the undercover officer in order to avoid the charge of entrapment. In other words, to prove the entrapment defense, you have to show that the crime is one that you would not have committed and that you had no predisposition to commit without the inducement of an undercover agent. Police cannot select random citizens to participate in organized sting operations in hopes of generating an arrest. There must be some compelling evidence that a specific individual has a propensity for committing such a crime.

So, in a sting operation, a person is put in circumstances which allows him to reveal his true nature or character, and predispositions. Thus, unless Adam was entrapped, he already had a predisposition to disobey God and eat the fruit. That would mean his nature was already corrupt before he fell (Jesus says that the desire to do something wrong is just as evil as the act itself, see Matt. 5:27-28). It seems therefore that God must have created Adam this way. God created him with a predisposition to commit evil. If Adam had no predispostion to commit the crime of eating the fruit and the snake convinced him to do so, that would be entrapment according to western jurisprudence.

Since one's will (i.e., what one chooses) is based on one's nature (i.e., what one is), it doesn't seem plausible to me that Adam had a truly free will. He was predisposed to disobey God from the moment he was created because he was created with such a nature (see next post).

So much for the Free Will Defense, as the fact is no one, not even the first couple (assuming they really existed) had a genuinely free will.

Halloween

2010-10-31T05:00:00.002-04:00

Short History of Halloween

What band is best suited for Halloween? Its got to be Kiss. In the 70's when I was a teenager, preachers were saying that KISS stood for Kings in Satan's Service. Get over it, it just an act.

God of Thunder

God or Nothing?

2010-10-30T04:01:00.000-04:00

Pat Condell, in his own inimitable way, explains why not to believe in God doesn't mean that one must believe in nothing.

Hugo Grotius on Punishing an Innocent

2010-10-29T04:05:00.000-04:00

Hugo Grotius (1583-–1645) was a Dutch jurist who is famous for his work on international law. He was also a theologian and is credited with developing the governmental theory of the atonement. This theory is similar to the penal substitution theory (PST) and the satisfaction theory of Anselm but has an important difference. It holds that the death of Jesus was a payment of the penalty which sinners deserved but was not the precise equivalent in the sense of a direct substitution. This has led some to term the theory: "Penal Non-Substitution" (see Oliver Crisp, "Penal Non-Substitution," in A Reader in Contemporary Philosophical Theology [2009], 299-327). To further explain:

[The] governmental theory holds that Christ's suffering was a real and meaningful substitute for the punishment humans deserve, but it did not consist of Christ receiving the exact punishment due to sinful people. Instead, God publicly demonstrated his displeasure with sin through the suffering of his own sinless and obedient Son as a propitiation. Christ's suffering and death served as a substitute for the punishment humans might have received. On this basis, God is able to extend forgiveness while maintaining divine order, having demonstrated the seriousness of sin and thus allowing his wrath to "pass over." This view is very similar to the satisfaction view and the penal substitution view, in that all three views see Christ as satisfying God's requirement for the punishment of sin. However, the government view disagrees with the other two in that it does not affirm that Christ endured the precise punishment that sin deserves or its equivalent; instead, Christ's suffering is seen as being simply an alternative to that punishment. In contrast, penal substitution holds that Christ endured the exact punishment, or the exact "worth" of punishment, that sin deserved; the satisfaction theory states that Christ paid back at least as much honor to God as sin took from Him("The Governmental Theory of the Atonement").

Grotius was emphatic that the death of Jesus was in fact a penal act. He wrote:

God was moved by his own goodness to bestow distinguished blessings upon us. But since our sins, which deserved punishment, were an obstacle to this, he determined that Christ, being willing of his own love toward men, should, by bearing the most severe tortures, and a bloody and ignominious death, pay the penalty (emphasis mine) for our sins, in order that without prejudice to the exhibition of the divine justice, we might be liberated, upon the intervention of a true faith, from the punishment of eternal death ")"A Defense of the Catholic Faith Concerning the Satisfaction of Christ against Faustus Socinus" [1617], trans. Frank Foster, in Bibliotheca Sacra, 36 [1879], 106-07).

Therefore, Grotius found it necessary to explain how an innocent person, such as Jesus, could be punished. He argues that since God cannot act unjustly and since the Bible affirms that God does sometimes punish certain people for what others have done, therefore, such punishment must be just. He writes:

I affirm that it is not unjust simply, or contrary to the nature of punishment, that one should be punished for another's sins. When I say unjust it is manifest that I speak of that injustice which springs from the nature of things, not that which is founded upon positive law; so that the divine liberty cannot be abridged by it. In proof of this remark: "God visits the iniquities of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children" [Ex. 20:5]. "Our fathers have sinned, and we have borne their iniquities" [Lam. 5:7]. For the act of Ham, Canaan is subjected to a curse [Gen. 9:25]. For the act of Saul, his sons and grandsons are hung with the approval of God [2 Sam. 21:8, 14]. For the act of David, seventy thousand perish, and David exclaims, "Lo, I have sinned, and I have done wickedly; but these sheep, what have they done" [2 Sam. 24:15-17]? So for the act of Achan his sons were punished [Josh. 7:24], and for the act of Jeroboam his posterity [1 Ki. 14:10]. These passages manifestly show that some are punished by God for others' sins (Ibid., p. 272).

I commend Grotius for acknowledging that the Bible does teach that God sometimes punishes the innocent for what the guilty has done. Some apologists will attempt to deny this fact. However, I do not agree with him that just because the Bible records such punishments as being ordained by God, they must therefore automatically be just. I think that is begging the question.

Next, Grotius claims that since there is a connection between Jesus and humanity (he assumed their nature), thus it is just for Jesus to suffer the penalty that mankind deserves. He writes:

We might reply that no man is unconnected with another; that there is a certain natural union among men by birth and blood; that our flesh was assumed by Christ. But another and a greater connection between us and Christ was designed by God. For Christ was designated by God himself as the "head of the body" of which we are members. . . .

[T]he mystic connection ought in this case to have a place of no less importance, as very clearly appears in the case of a king and his people. The story of the people of Israel, punished on account of David's crime, has been cited above. The ancient author of Quaestiones ad Orthodoxos(which is circulated under the name of Justin), wisely discoursing upon this topic, says: "As man is composed of soul and body, so a kingdom is composed of the king and his subjects. And as, if a man committing sin with his hands receives punishment on his back he who punishes him does not act unjustly, so God acts not unjustly when he avenges the sins of the rulers upon the people" (Ibid., pp. 274-75).

If Christ is somehow connected with sinful man due to his assumption of man's nature, it would seem that Christ should have assumed human nature as it existed after the fall. In other words, he should have assumed a fallen human nature. Grotius does not teach this (although others later would, such as Edward Irving, Karl Barth, etc.). So, the fact that he is also man does not automatically make it just to punish him for what other men have done.

His analogy of a king and his subjects is interesting. There is a sense in which the subjects of a king or government suffer as a result of what their leader(s) do. However, is this just? It seems it is only if the subjects have specifically endorsed the action of their leader(s) that results in the punishment. But, if this is the case, then the subjects are also culpable for their leader(s) action. A more appropriate analogy would be that the king or leader is punished for what the whole country does. Is this just?

One could imagine a scenario where the leader of a country was punished for what his people did but intuitively it still seems unjust. Punishment as such is designed for the one who is guilty. If the leader is somehow completely innocent of what his people have done, then how can he justly suffer punishment in their place? Only if he is somehow culpable in the evil act, can he be justly punished. Furthermore, if he is punished for what his people have done, how can the people justly forego punishment themselves? How can their evil acts be excused because their leader was punished in their place? Whoever the arbiter of justice is in this case, seems to be interested in some type of symbolic justice, which under closer scrutiny is no justice at all.

Must There be Evil if there is Good?

2010-10-28T04:00:00.000-04:00

Christians sometimes offer a defense for the problem of evil by claiming that "there must be evil if there is good. " In other words, you can't have one without the other.

John Leslie Mackie (1917-1981), an Australian philosopher, taught at Oxford University from 1967 till his death in 1981. In 1955, he wrote an important article on the Problem of Evil entitled: "Evil and Omnipotence" (Mind, vol. 64, no. 254, 200-212). In his essay, he offered three responses to this particular claim.

1. Good and evil are not logical opposites.

[U]nless evil is merely the privation of good, they are not logical opposites, and some further argument would be needed to show that they are counterparts in the same way as genuine logical opposites ("Evil and Omnipotence," 204-05).

2. It is not necessary that a particular quality always have a real opposite.

There is still doubt of the correctness of the metaphysical principle that a quality must have a real opposite: I suggest that it is not really impossible that everything should be, say, red, that the truth is merely that if everything were red we should not notice redness, and so we should have no word 'red'; we observe and give names,to qualities only if they have real opposites. If so, the principle that a term must have an opposite would belong only to our language or to our thought,and would not be an ontological principle, and, correspondingly, the rule that good cannot exist without evil would not state a logical necessity of a sort that God would just have to put up with. God might have made everything good, though we should not have noticed it if he had (Ibid., 205).

3. It would require only a miniscule amount of evil to provide the opposite.

But, finally, even if we concede that this is an ontological principle, it will provide a solution for the problem of evil only if one is prepared to say, "Evil exists, but only just enough evil to serve as the counterpart of good." I doubt whether any theist will accept this. After all, the ontological requirement that non-redness should occur would be satisfied even if all the universe, except for a minute speck, were red, and, if there were a corresponding requirement for evil as a counterpart to good, a minute dose of evil would presumably do. But theists are not usually willing to say, in all contexts, that all the evil that occurs is a minute and necessary dose (Ibid., 205).

J. L. Mackie on the Problem of Evil--The Free Will Defense

2010-10-27T04:11:00.001-04:00

John Leslie Mackie (1917-1981), an Australian philosopher, taught at Oxford University from 1967 till his death in 1981. He was also elected a fellow of the British Academy. In 1955, he wrote an important article on the Problem of Evil entitled: "Evil and Omnipotence" (Mind, vol. 64, no. 254, 200-212).

Mackie's argument against the Free Will Defense is twofold. The first is essentially based on his rejection of incompatiblism, i.e., the notion that genuine free will is incompatible with determinism. He argues:

[I]f God has made men such that in their free choices they sometimes prefer what is good and sometimes what is evil, why could he not have made men such that they always freely choose the good ? If there is no logical impossibility in a man's freely choosing the good on one, or on several, occasions, there cannot be a logical impossibility in his freely choosing the good on every occasion. God was not, then, faced with a choice between making innocent automata and making beings who, in acting freely, would sometimes go wrong: there was open to him the obviously better possibility of making beings who would act freely but always go right. Clearly, his failure to avail himself of this possibility is inconsistent with his being both omnipotent and wholly good.

If it is replied that this objection is absurd, that the making of some wrong choices is logically necessary for freedom, it would seem that 'freedom' must here mean complete randomness or indeterminacy, including randomness with regard to the alternatives good and evil, in other words that men's choices and consequent actions can be "free" only if they are not determined by their characters. Only on this assumption can God escape the responsibility for men's actions; for if he made them as they are, but did not determine their wrong choices, this can only be because the wrong choices are not determined by men as they are. But then if freedom is randomness, how can it be a characteristic of will? And, still more, how can it be the most important good'? What value or merit would there be in free choices if these were random actions which were not determined by the nature of the agent? ("Evil and Omnipotence," 209).

Mackie's second response to the Free Will Defense is what he calls "the Paradox of Omnipotence." He writes:

But besides this there is a fundamental difficulty in the notion of an omnipotent God creating men with free will, for if men's wills are really free this must mean that even God cannot control them, that is, that God is no longer omnipotent. It may be objected that God's gift of freedom to men does not mean that he cannot control their wills, but that he always refrains from controlling their wills. But why, we may ask, should God refrain from controlling evil wills? Whv should he not leave men free to will rightly, but intervene when he sees them beginning to will wrongly? If God could do this, but does not, and if he is wholly good, the only explanation could be that even a wrong free act of will is not really evil, that its freedom is a value which outweighs its wrongness, so that there would be a loss of value if God took away the wrongness and the freedom together. But this is utterly opposed to what theists say about sin in other contexts. The present solution of the problem of evil, then, can be maintained only in the form that God has made men so free that he cannot control their wills.

This leads us to what I call the Paradox of Omnipotence: can an omnipotent being make things which he cannit subsequently control? Or, what is practically equivalent to this,can an omnipotent being make rules which then bind himself? ...

It is clear that this is a paradox: the questions cannot be answered satisfactorily either in the affirmative or in the negative. If we answer "Yes ", it follows that if God actually makes things which he cannot control, or makes rules which bind himself, he is not omnipotent once he has made them: there are then things which ce cannot do. But if we answer "No", we are immediately asserting that there are things which he cannot do, that is to say that he is already not omnipotent (Ibid., 209-10).

But How Do You Explain the Empty Tomb?

2010-10-26T04:00:00.001-04:00

Recently on CommonSenseAtheism, Luke had a post on the Resurrection which featured the following cartoon from JesusandMo.net:

This humorous cartoon, I think, makes an important point. Apologists often maintain that certain "minimal historical facts" cannot be explained apart from a literal resurrection. But, this begs the question because the "historical facts" are part of the story in which the resurrection is reported. As one commenter named Garen said on Luke's blog:

I’m often amazed how even skeptics accept the non-miraculous elements of the Gospels as unbiased history. It comes as a package. If you take the miracles out of the Gospel accounts, of course you will get miracle shaped holes.-- Garren October 18, 2010 at 11:17 am

Another commenter, ShaneSteinhauser, using biting sarcasm, explains how the apologists arguments work:

Luke, don’t you understand?

1. Anything that is reported by at least three ancient non-anonymous scources, and has enemy attestation is fact. This is true because random New Testament historian X says so, and he is not biased at all in anyway whatsoever.

2. The three gospels report the empty tomb. And we know that the gospel writers are not baised at all because they are Jesus’ disciples who died for their belief, and we know this because early church fathers say so and they are not biased either. Also we know that the gospels are totally reliable even though they were written at least 20 years after Jesus died. We know this because studies in africa have shown that Oral Transmission is extremely accurate. And obviously studies of african traditions have merit on middle eastern traditions.

3. The three gospels were written by Jesus’ followers and we know this because the early church fathers who are not biased at all said so.

4. The jews admit that there was an empty tomb and we know this because one of the gospels says so. And that is all we need for enemy attestation. No, we do not actually need a word from an actual jew of the time we just need a gospel saying that he said so. That is good enough.

So now that I have proven that there was an empty tomb how do you explain it Luke? Obviously since you don’t have a good explaination Jesus coming back from the grave wins by default. Also since nobody can explain what made that bumping noise in my closet last night it must be the boogeyman--ShaneSteinhauser October 18, 2010 at 2:21 pm

Alvin Plantinga's Free Will Defense

2010-10-25T04:00:00.005-04:00

Alvin Plantinga is perhaps the foremost Christian philosopher of our generation. He has been, until his recent retirement, the John A. O'Brien Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. His fame is due primarily to two things: 1) His development of the idea that the belief in God is properly basic and is warranted without any external evidence (Reformed Epistemology). 2) His Free Will Defense which is viewed by many as having demolished the logical problem of evil. I have, in a prior post, discussed the essence of his Reformed Epistemology. In this post, I would like to point out a few problems with his Free Will Defense as a solution for the logical problem of evil.

The logical problem of evil, as opposed to the evidential problem of evil, is the contention that to posit the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, wholly good god in an evil world constitutes a logical contradiction. In other words, an all-powerful god, all-knowing god, and a perfectly good god could not permit evil. (The evidential problem of evil says it is unlikely, not necessarily impossible, for such a god to exist given the amount of evil in the world).

Plantinga explains the essence of his argument:

[W]e can make a preliminary statement of the Free Will Defense as follows. A world containing creatures who are significantly free (and freely perform more good than evil actions) is more valuable, all else being equal, than a world containing no free creatures at all. Now God can create free creatures, but He can't cause or determine them to do only what is right. For if He does so, then they aren't significantly free after all; they do not do what is right freely. To create creatures capable of moral good, therefore, He must create creatures capable of moral evil; and He can't give these creatures the freedom to perform evil and at the same time prevent them from doing so (God, Freedom, and Evil [1977], 30).

1. A world with significantly free creatures is more valuable than one with creatures who are not significantly free.

I would like to know on what basis Plantinga makes this claim. How can one say that a world with significantly free creatures is really more valuable than one without such free will? He is making "significant free will" more important than the permission of evil and the subsequent suffering it entails. I would like to see an argument for this assertion.

2. An act can only be considered morally significant or praiseworthy if the individual could have made a different choice.

In other words, if one is not capable of making an evil choice, then his choice to do right is not morally praiseworthy. Plantinga explains:

What is relevant to the Free Will Defense is the idea of being free with respect to an action. If a person is free with respect to a given action, then he is free to perform that action and free to refrain from performing it; no antecedent conditions and/or causal laws determine that he will perform the action, or that he won't. It is within his power, at the time in question, to take or perform the action and within his power to refrain from it.

...[I] shall say that an action is morally significant, for a given person, if it would be wrong for him to perform the action but right to refrain or vice versa (Ibid., pp. 29-30).

This would mean that none of God's actions are morally praiseworthy and that in reality the term morality does not apply to God. As James R. Beebe puts it:

God, it seems, is incapable of doing anything wrong. Thus, it does not appear that, with respect to any choice of morally good and morally bad options, God is free to choose a bad option. He seems constitutionally incapable of choosing (or even wanting) to do what is wrong. According to Plantinga’s description of morally significant free will, it does not seem that God would be significantly free. Plantinga suggests that morally significant freedom is necessary in order for one’s actions to be assessed as being morally good or bad. But then it seems that God’s actions could not carry any moral significance. They could never be praiseworthy. That certainly runs contrary to central doctrines of theism ("Logical Problem of Evil").

3. To accomplish the greater good, God is justified in permitting evil.

Plantinga writes:

The Free Will Defense can be looked upon as an effort to show that there may be a very different kind of good that God can't bring about without permitting evil (God, Freedom, and Evil, p. 29).

My problem with this is twofold. First, it contradicts the concept of absolute morality which Christians claim to hold. However, in the Free Will Defense, it is okay to allow some evil so that a greater good will come from it. This is "the end justifying the means" which Christians usually attribute to moral relativism. Such a view takes a teleological or consequential view of ethics as opposed to what Christians normally insist upon, a deontological view. In other words, actions are not intrinsically right or wrong but are judged to be right or wrong depending upon the results of the actions.

Second, to permit an evil to occur when one could have prevented it makes one culpable. Christians often make the distinction between God permitting evil and God causing evil. They argue that God cannot cause evil because that would violate his holy character. Why does it not violate his holy character for him to permit evil? If I permit my child to do evil, how can I hold him responsible for what I permitted; and, furthermore, how can I escape culpability in the evil he committed? Permitting something is a form of condoning it.

Sunday Funnies--Lewis Black

2010-10-24T07:22:00.000-04:00

Lewis Black on the Old Testament

Lewis Black on Prayer

A Six-Point Calvinist

2010-10-23T08:16:00.000-04:00

HT: Blog on the Way

What is Atheism?

2010-10-23T04:00:00.000-04:00

An excellent overview of what it means to be an atheist.

HT: CommonSenseAtheism

God Has Not Forgiven Us --From Sola Ratione

2010-10-22T16:00:00.003-04:00

I have discovered a blog, Sola Ratione, which has some good posts on the penal substitutionary theory of the atonement. With the author's permission, I am going to re-post them here. This one is entitled: God Has Not Forgiven Us.

If Jesus was punished for our sins (in the sense that God's wrath was directed toward him instead of us), then it follows that God has not forgiven us.

To forgive someone means that we have let go of our resentment or anger against them.

It does not mean that we have simply found some innocent bystander upon whom we can dump our anger instead.

This kind of 're-direction' is so outrageously unjust that it's hard to know what to call it.

At best it is a kind of therapeutic device. Rather than direct our anger on the person responsible for causing us harm, we lash out at someone else instead. In so doing we discharge or release our anger to such an extent that we no longer feel anger over what was done to us.

In real life, this phenomenon typically occurs when we have been attacked or bullied by someone who is more powerful than us.

The risk of attacking them is too great. So we deal with our rage by taking it out on someone who is less likely to retaliate.

The aim is to restore a semblance of self-respect and pride, in a situation where we are out-gunned.

Most of us would condemn this approach as highly unethical - on several counts.

1. It doesn't address the original offence.

2. An innocent person is attacked.

3. It is likely to set up an endless chain of revenge-taking (the person we picked on, being less powerful than us, takes their anger out on someone who is less powerful than them, and so on).

But is this what is happening on the cross?

Not exactly.

God doesn't re-direct His anger onto Jesus because He is worried that we might retaliate if He tried it on us.

No, God takes it out on Jesus because He loves us too much. His anger is so strong that if He let rip (as He does to those whom He consigns to Hell) our relationship would not survive.

But there are problems with this version of the story.

To begin, it is rather like a parent who loves his kids to bits, but knows that he has serious anger-management issues.

So when the smaller, more vulnerable kids annoy him, he narrowly avoids killing them - but only by viciously beating up his eldest son. (Fortunately, this son is eminently scapegoatable, given his almost miraculous ability to recover from the most cruel, even murderous beatings!)

Now there's a role model to emulate! Social services, not to mention the police, would be onto such a 'dad' in seconds.

So is that what God is like?

Well, perhaps we have not taken into account the way in which the Triune Godhead is at work here.

On this version, God is more like a father who, again, is so loving that he manages to resist killing his children when they piss him off.

But he only does so by going into his study and punching himself in the face, over and over again, until his anger dissipates.

God, in other words, got into some serious self-harming on the cross - purely as an outlet for his wrath-management problem.

Not a pretty picture.

But again, perhaps we haven't quite caught the analogy.

We sometimes say that, when we forgive, we 'absorb' the anger that we felt toward the person who hurt us.

So perhaps God is doing the same sort of thing. That is, God in the Son 'absorbs' the anger of God the Father.

This sounds much more palatable.

But it doesn't work.

When we say that we 'absorb our anger' in forgiveness, this does not mean that we turn around and 'get angry at ourselves' in order to avoid getting angry at the person who hurt us! No advocate of forgiveness would ever endorse that interpretation.

And yet that is, in effect, what a trinitarian God is doing: God the Father is re-directing his wrath away from us and turning it instead against God the Son.

This is 'absorption' only in the sense in which a self-abuser 'absorbs' the knife blade with which he is slicing his own flesh!

So what do we conclude?

Well, it looks like Jesus did not die on the cross so that God could forgive us.

Forgiveness had nothing to do with it.

Instead, He died so that God could let off some steam.

Thanks God. But next time, it might be easier if you just booked in to see a therapist.

Is Christ held vicariously liable for our sins?--From Sola Ratione

2010-10-22T12:00:00.000-04:00

"I remember once sharing the Gospel with a businessman. When I explained that Christ had died to pay the penalty for our sins, he responded, "Oh, yes, that's imputation." I was stunned, as I never expected this theological concept to be familiar to this non-Christian businessman. When I asked him how he came to be familiar with this idea, he replied, "Oh, we use imputation all the time in the insurance business." He explained to me that certain sorts of insurance policy are written so that, for example, if someone else drives my car and gets in an accident, the responsibility is imputed to me rather than to the driver. Even though the driver behaved recklessly, I am the one held liable; it is just as if I had done it. Now this is parallel to substitutionary atonement. Normally I would be liable for the misdeeds I have done. But through my faith in Christ, I am, as it were, covered by his divine insurance policy, whereby he assumes the liability for my actions. My sin is imputed to him, and he pays its penalty. The demands of justice are fulfilled, just as they are in mundane affairs in which someone pays the penalty for something imputed to him. This is as literal a transaction as those that transpire regularly in the insurance industry." - W. L. Craig, "Question 122, Subject: Penal Theory of the Atonement."

Craig is right to say that the owner of a car can be held vicariously liable for any negligence committed by someone to whom they have loaned their car. But what he omits to mention is that the driver must be using the car primarily for the purpose of performing a task for the owner.

For this kind of imputation to work as a parallel to substitutionary atonement, then, it would have to be the case that when we commit sins, we are acting primarily so as to achieve the purposes of Jesus Christ! Only then could he rightly be held liable for our sinful actions.

Don't think that one is going to work too well!

This kind of 'test' is also used when imputing liability to a corporation for the acts of its employees. A corporation can be held vicariously liable for the acts of its employees only if (1) the employee acted within the scope of their employment; (2) their actions, at least partly, benefited the corporation; and (3) it would be reasonable to impute the employee's acts and intentions to the corporation.

None of these three conditions find a parallel in the doctrine of penal substitution. Quite the opposite in fact.

(1) When we sin, we are acting against what it is that God has demanded of us. (2) It is hard to see how our sinfulness could, even partly, be said to 'benefit' Jesus Christ. (3) It could never be reasonable to impute our sinful acts or our sinful intentions to Christ himself, since he is, by definition, incapable of sin.

Punishment is not an Abstract Commodity --From Sola Ratione

2010-10-22T04:00:00.000-04:00

"[T]he victim, within limits, has the freedom to decide to what extent and in what manner to inflict punishment. I do not see how this freedom would not extend to accepting a voluntary penal substitute. Take for instance the football player who is late to team practice. The coach of the team punishes the late player by demanding he run 5 laps around the field. The team captain steps forward and asks the coach if he could run the 5 laps in the other's stead. If the coach agrees to such an arrangement, then there does not seem to be anything unjust about this transfer of penalty. I take it this is because in the transfer the initial justification for punishment is still in place – that is the late player's misuse of his team-privileges led to the temporary withdrawal of a team-privilege. Whether the late player of the team captain serves the punishment, the initial justification is the same. And the additional good ends that the punishment is likely to secure (e.g. team unity) are accomplished whether the late player runs the laps or the team captain runs them." - Steven L. Porter "Swinburnian Atonement and the Doctrine of Penal Substitution," Oxford Readings in Philosophical Theology: Volume 1: Trinity, Incarnation, Atonement, edited by Michael Rea (Oxford University Press, 2009): p. 325.

This is an excellent example of just how counter-intuitive penal substitution really is.

Can anyone imagine a team captain asking to run 5 laps on behalf of the late football player? And the coach agreeing to this bizarre transaction?

What message would that send to the late player, let alone his team-mates? 'Don't worry if you do the wrong thing lads. The captain is (literally!) a sucker for punishment, and will cop it on your behalf.'

I don't know what kind of football players Porter is acquainted with, but you don't have to be a total cynic to see that the team is very unlikely to respond well to the captain's offer. 'Team unity' would not be particularly high on the list of possible outcomes.

The players are far more likely to ridicule the captain for being such a 'mug' (or words to that effect). And if this were the only time that the captain had made such an offer, then it is not difficult to foresee the players suspecting favoritism . . . or worse: 'Jeez, what does this guy have on the captain?'

And they would have good reason to question the propriety of what is going on here. This kind of substitution is clearly inappropriate, at almost every level.

How can Porter be so mistaken in his intuitions?

I think the root of the problem is that he thinks that punishment is a kind of abstract commodity. Like hard cash, it really doesn't matter who gives it or who receives it. Its value remains the same: 20 dollars is 20 dollars, no matter who owns it.

Likewise, the value of punishment, Porter thinks, is entirely independent of who it is directed against. If a temporary withdrawal of a team-privilege is warranted by the offending behavior of the late player, then what is required is that there be a temporary withdrawal of a team-privilege. Doesn't really matter who cops it, just so long as they agree to it and know what they're doing.

We can perhaps see just how bizarre this view is, by creating a similar scenario:

Suppose it's pay-time for the football team. The coach is about to hand out their individual pay packets, when the team captain steps forward and asks the coach if he could have all the team's pay for himself, instead of it being distributed to the other players as per usual. If the coach agrees to such an arrangement, then there does not seem to be anything unjust about this transfer. This is because in the transfer the initial justification for the wages being paid is still in place – that is, each player has fulfilled their job description for that month. So it really doesn't matter who takes the pay. The initial justification for the wages being paid is the same.

Doesn't really work, does it!

That's because 'what is deserved' is, morally speaking, inextricably linked to 'the person who deserves it'. Punishment can only be morally justified if it is directed against the person who deserves it. If you break this connection - as is necessarily the case in any penal substitution - the situation immediately becomes morally incoherent, if not repugnant.

Can Penal Substitution be Justified on Utilitarian Grounds? --From Sola Ratione

2010-10-21T12:00:00.000-04:00

"[T]he practice of penal substitution in other scenarios seems wrong. We do not think it good for the mother of a convicted rapist to serve his time in prison. I propose that the reason why such a transfer is morally counter-intuitive is that while the victim still has the right to transfer the punishment, the likely good ends of such punishment would not be served by such a transfer. Given that deterrence and prevention are the main potential goods of criminal punishment it is probably never good that such a penalty be transferred, for there is little hope of achieving these goods through a transfer." - Steven L. Porter "Swinburnian Atonement and the Doctrine of Penal Substitution," Oxford Readings in Philosophical Theology: Volume 1: Trinity, Incarnation, Atonement edited by Michael Rea (Oxford University Press, 2009): p. 326.

Just when we thought Porter's theory of punishment was retributivist through and through, it turns out that he is a utilitarian after all. What else could he mean by saying that: "deterrence and prevention are the main potential goods of criminal punishment."

Clearly, there is some confusion in Porter's mind here – and no doubt he would retract this statement, and revert to his usual retributivism, if its consequences were pointed out. But it is worth taking him seriously at this point, just to expose the trouble that a utilitarian version of penal substitution will encounter.

Let's suppose that the father of a convicted rapist agrees to serve the time in prison on behalf of his son. No one but the judge, the son and the victim knows about this transfer. So far as the public are concerned, the right man has been jailed.

Let's also assume that the son is duly chastened by his father's amazing sacrifice, and turns his life around. He does not re-offend, and goes on to live his life as an up-standing citizen.

In such a case, it looks like the penal substitution has brought about the "main potential goods of criminal punishment". We have both specific and general deterrence (so far as that is ever possible) in the bag.

And yet.

An innocent man has been punished, with the full knowledge and authorization of the legal system. This is outrageous. It makes no difference at all that the transaction was voluntary, or that the good of deterrence was achieved.

It is morally wrong to punish the innocent. Period.

Private citizens, even victims, can offer themselves up as sacrificial lambs if they like. But our legal officials have the right to over-rule this offer – as a matter of justice, and as is their duty as upholders of the 'rule of law' values of impartiality, independence and consistency. As Andrew Ashworth puts it:

"Just because a person commits an offence against me, however, that does not privilege my voice above that of the court (acting 'in the general public interest') in the matter of the offender's punishment. A justification for this lies in social contract reasoning, along the lines that the state may be said to undertake the duty of administering justice and protecting citizens in return for citizens giving up their right to self-help (except in cases of urgency) in the cause of better social order. " A. Ashworth, "Responsibilities, Rights and Restorative Justice" Brit. J. Criminology (2002) 42: 578-595: p. 585.

De Facto and de Jure Penal Substitution --From Sola Ratione

2010-10-21T04:00:00.000-04:00

"If the friend gives the offender a gift sufficient to pay the fine, we have a de facto case of penal substitution. Whoever may sign the cheque, it is the friend who mainly suffers the loss that was meant to be the offender's punishment. . . . If we were single-mindedly against penal substitution, and yet we saw that preventing it in the case of fines was impractical . . . we ought to conclude that fines are an unsatisfactory form of punishment. . . . We might not abandon fines, because the alternatives might have their own drawbacks. But our dissatisfaction ought to show. Yet it does not show. The risk of de facto penal substitution ought to be a frequently mentioned drawback of punishment by fines. It is not. And that is why I maintain that all of us, not just some Christians, are of two minds about penal substitution. . . . [B]oth sides agree that penal substitution sometimes makes sense after all, even if none can say how it makes sense. And if both sides agree to that, that is some evidence that somehow they might both be right." - David K. Lewis, "Do we believe in penal substitution?" in Papers in ethics and social philosophy, Volume 3, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000): p. 134-35.

This is hardly a ringing endorsement of the doctrine of penal substitution, which is not surprising given that Lewis is an atheist. Even so, Lewis's argument is flawed.

The chief problem is that he has used an example involving a de facto penal substitution to defend the moral coherence of a de jure penal substitution. But the two are miles apart, morally speaking.

The criminal justice system cannot prevent a friend from, clandestinely, paying an offender's fine on their behalf. But this is very different from the court authorizing such a transaction, treating it as if it were a right and lawful exchange. No judge would ever explicitly sanction, let alone impose de jure penal substitution – even if they are unable to prevent the de facto version.

Yet, the penal substitution of Jesus Christ was pre-planned, authorized, carried out and proclaimed from the hill-tops by God, 'the righteous judge of all'. There is nothing de facto, illicit or behind-the-scenes about 'Christ dying for our sins' at all.

It gets worse.

Theologically, the victim of our sinfulness is none other than God in the person of Christ. So imagine, if you will, a judge turning to the victim of an offence in open court and saying, 'Look, the offender clearly can't pay the fine. So I'd like you to pay it for him. What do you think?'

Even if the victim agreed to this transaction ('Thy will be done'), can you imagine the outcry?

Or again, suppose the fine was so colossal that the victim would be made utterly bankrupt by paying it off: he would lose his house, all his possessions and any savings. Under this scenario, we can well imagine that the victim might be 'sweating blood' over the thought of his impending sacrifice!

But how likely is it that the judge would get away with this bizarre request? Would it not be universally denounced? Politicians, penal theorists, victim groups and journalists would, with one voice, condemn the transaction.

It doesn't change things in the least to suppose that the victim, in this case, is also the judge himself (as is the case in the divine transaction). For a start, this equation would only weaken the analogy even further, since no judge would ever be permitted to serve in a case in which he or she was the victim in question!

But let us suppose that this was legally possible, and that the judge, as the victim, offered to pay off the offender's debt himself. This would still not be morally or legally acceptable. The judge's wish would be interpreted by the public and the entire judiciary as little more than a kind of self-harming exercise, or a misguided martyrdom. His own views and preferences would be over-ruled– as they often are – by the public interest and the rule of law.

If anyone is to be punished, then justice demands that they deserve it; and they can only deserve it if they are personally culpable for the wrongdoing in question.

In short, the concept of de jure penal substitution, in the human context, would violate the fundamental principles of any retributive theory of justice, not to mention the central purpose and rationale of our entire legal system.

It cannot, therefore, be used to lend analogical support to the Christian doctrine of penal substitution.

Why Did Jesus Choose to Die?--From Sola Ratione

2010-10-20T12:00:00.000-04:00

"It is either foolish or suicidal to die voluntarily unless there is some great good that can only or best be accomplished by voluntarily dying. . . . [So] Christ must have had a great good in mind that could only or best be accomplished by voluntarily dying [on the cross]. . . . The only great good that can justify a voluntary death is if that death saves other lives, and the only theory of atonement that makes sense of why the death of Jesus would save other lives is the theory of penal substitution. . . . Therefore, the doctrine of penal substitution is the only adequate explanation of Christ's voluntary death on the cross." - Steve L. Porter, "Dostoyevsky, Woody Allen, and the Doctrine of Penal Substitution", in Paul Copan and William Lane Craig, eds., Contending with Christianity's Critics (Broadman and Holman, 2009) 233-248: p. 244-45, 248.

If Porter is right here, then it follows that Christ must have thought that his death on the cross would act as a 'penal substitute' and thereby save us from physical and spiritual death. Put another way, Porter is implying here that Christ believed in the doctrine of penal substitution.

I have argued elsewhere that Porter's article gives us no reason to think that this doctrine is morally defensible. But since Porter's view is that penal substitution is the only 'great good' that could have justified Christ's voluntary death, it follows that he must have given up his life for no good reason.

Of course, Jesus would not have been the first person in history to have sacrificed his life in vain. Nor the last. There are countless men and women who have mistakenly believed that the only way someone's life could be saved would be if they sacrificed their own.

Some of these brave souls clearly should have given the matter a little more thought before they took the fatal plunge. We can often know, well in advance, that laying down our life will not save the life of another. Porter gives us a useful example:

"We think it either foolish or suicidal when a person jumps in front of a speeding train proclaiming love for a friend. Unless, of course, the friend (or someone else) is in front of the speeding train and jumping in front of the train was the only way to save that person." (p. 245)

But being foolish is not the same as making an honest mistake. It is more likely that Jesus was simply applying the (flawed) moral concepts and theological principles available to him at the time. In that case, he was just unlucky rather than foolish.

Porter, of course, thinks that Christ's decision to submit to death on the cross could not have been an act of foolishness; nor could it have been just an honest mistake on the part of Jesus. But both of these explanations can only be ruled out if the theory of penal substitution can be morally justified – which, as I (along with many others) have argued, it is not.

Is the Doctrine of Penal Substitution Morally Plausible?--From Sola Ratione

2010-10-20T04:00:00.000-04:00

"In order to establish the moral framework that grounds the central claim of penal substitution it will be argued that (1) punishment is an appropriate response to intentional human wrongdoing and (2) it is good in some circumstances for humans to exact that punishment. We will then proceed to argue from the human context to the divine context: (3) punishment is an appropriate divine response to intentional human wrongdoing and (4) it is good in some circumstances for God to exact that punishment on wrongdoers, and (5) the goodness of such punishment can still be achieved by God's taking that punishment upon Himself in the person of Jesus Christ." - Steve L. Porter, "Dostoyesvky, Woody Allen, and the Doctrine of Penal Substitution", in Paul Copan and William Lane Craig, eds., Contending with Christianity's Critics (Broadman and Holman, 2009) 233-248: p. 238.

This is an analogical argument. Porter argues that there are key similarities between human and divine punishment; so if the former is morally plausible, then the latter is likely to be as well.

But it takes little more than a cursory reading of the quote above to notice that the human context, upon which the analogy is based, is missing a key element.

Let's accept, for the sake of argument, that, from (1) and (2), we can infer, by analogy, (3) and (4). But upon what basis do we arrive at (5)? And is not (5) the chief cause of the moral controversy about the doctrine of penal substitution?

Earlier in the piece, Porter tries to divert our attention by suggesting that the real reason why so many have rejected this doctrine is that punishment, per se, is felt, by many, to be morally unnecessary, if not repugnant.

"[There is] and increasing tendency to see an emphasis on punishment as in some sense outdated or inhumane. The common idea is that we, let alone God, have moved beyond such primitive and violent ways of dealing with our anger. . . . [This] shift in intuitions regarding punishment . . . helps to explain why there has been a recent resurgence of objectors to penal substitution." p. 234.

This is a red herring. The vast majority of those who reject a penal substitutionary theory of the atonement do so because they cannot see how it could be morally acceptable for the punishment that is deserved by an offender (human sinners) to be 'taken on by' or 'transferred to' the innocent victim (God in the person of Jesus Christ). Or, as Porter puts it:

"[T]he central claim [of the doctrine of penal substitution] is that in His voluntary suffering and death, Christ takes on the penal consequences of sin on behalf of human sinners." p. 237

Moreover, those who have objected to this doctrine typically do so by arguing that this transaction has no (morally defensible) analogy within the human domain. It is this key objection that Porter, in this article, seems to side-step altogether.

To explain:

The problem with penal substitution is that it entails that someone can be punished even if they in no way deserve this treatment - even if they are the innocent victim of the wrongdoing in question. The doctrine breaks the moral connection between culpability and punishment. The guilt or innocence of the person being punished is beside the point.

This violates one of the most widely held moral intuitions that we have. The most serious wrong that can be committed by our criminal justice system is to punish the innocent. And it is far worse if it does so knowingly. It is precisely to honor this deeply embedded intuition that we have such elaborate and expensive court systems. This principle is part of what we mean by 'the rule of law'.

None of this is given even a passing mention by Porter. He more or less just asserts that it does not matter, from a moral point of view, who is punished. What is important about punishment is not that it is directed against the guilty. Rather, it is that the punishment must objectively re-express the value of the victim, and that the wrongdoing is seen to be taken with utter seriousness. And this expressive function, he supposes, can be achieved even if the punishment is taken on by an innocent victim.

"The goodness of the punishment is still seen in that Christ's going to the cross for our sins takes sinners and their sin with utter seriousness and objectively reexpresses the value of the God head in response to the devaluing of the Godhead expressed by human sin. By looking to the cross, we too can perceive the importance God attaches to us, to the gravity of our offense, and to the right valuing of the Godhead." p. 243.

But it is not difficult to see how there could be no morally justifiable human parallel to this claim. Imagine if a judge were to sentence the innocent victim of a crime to 10 years in prison, and used the following justification in his supporting statement:

"I believe that sentencing the victim to 10 years of penal servitude takes the offender and his crime with utter seriousness and objectively reexpresses the value of the victim in response to the devaluing of their human dignity and worth expressed by the crime."

The judge would, with absolute justification, be removed from the bench within seconds.

In short, so far as this article is concerned, Porter has not provided us with any reason to think that "Christ's suffering the penal consequences of human sin on behalf of sinners" is remotely plausible from a moral point of view.

Grasping at Straws Part Fourteen--Evangelicals Defend Genocide

2010-10-19T03:59:00.004-04:00

Well, I have discovered another attempt to defend the Canaanite genocides to add to my grasping at straws series. This one is defended by Chuck Missler, a layman who through the urging of Hal Lindsey embarked on a speaking and writing ministry. For over 20 years Chuck was a Bible teacher at Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa, CA and regularly appeared on TBN with Paul and Jan Crouch.

He believes that the Canaanites had to be completely eradicated because they had Nephilim dwelling in their midst. These Nephilim were descendants of the cohabitation that took place between the sons of God (fallen angels, aka demons) and human females in Genesis 6:1-4.

He writes:

One of the disturbing aspects of the Old Testament record was God's instructions, upon entering the land of Canaan, to wipe out every man, woman, and child of certain tribes inhabiting the land. This is difficult to justify without the insight of a "gene pool problem" from the remaining Nephilim, Rephaim, et al., which seems to illuminate the difficulty.

See the video below by William Cooper:

Genocide in the Bible? from Ano on Vimeo.

Because Israel did not fully obey this command to wipe out all of the Canaanites, the Nephilim survived and are still with us today. Missler believes they are the creatures that fly the UFO's.

If you can stomach more of his science fiction, he explains below how the Nephilim are behind UFO abductions:

Lest you think this is some extreme fringe position within Evangelicalism, keep in mind that Missler is a best selling author and a regular on the Christian television circuit. His position is also endorsed by Hal Lindsey, the best selling author (Christian or non-Christian for the decade of the 1970's).

"Morals Without God?" by Frans de Waal

2010-10-18T17:35:00.002-04:00

There was an interesting article in the NY Times yesterday (10/17/10) by Frans de Waal, the renowned primatologist, entitled: "Morals Without God." Regular readers of my blog know that I hold to a form of Ethical Intuitionism or better yet, Evolutionary Intuitionism (see the book of the same title by Brian Zamulinski).

While I certainly have not worked out all of the details of the theory to my own satisfaction, I feel that there is a strong scientific basis for this idea of moral instincts. In the NY Times article by de Wall, he states:

Charles Darwin was interested in how morality fits the human-animal continuum, proposing in “The Descent of Man”: “Any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts … would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience, as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well developed … as in man.” ...

Fortunately, there has been a resurgence of the Darwinian view that morality grew out of the social instincts. Psychologists stress the intuitive way we arrive at moral judgments while activating emotional brain areas, and economists and anthropologists have shown humanity to be far more cooperative, altruistic, and fair than predicted by self-interest models. Similarly, the latest experiments in primatology reveal that our close relatives will do each other favors even if there’s nothing in it for themselves.

Such findings have implications for human morality. According to most philosophers, we reason ourselves towards a moral position. Even if we do not invoke God, it is still a top-down process of us formulating the principles and then imposing those on human conduct. But would it be realistic to ask people to be considerate of others if we had not already a natural inclination to be so? Would it make sense to appeal to fairness and justice in the absence of powerful reactions to their absence? Imagine the cognitive burden if every decision we took needed to be vetted against handed-down principles. Instead, I am a firm believer in the Humean position that reason is the slave of the passions. We started out with moral sentiments and intuitions, which is also where we find the greatest continuity with other primates. Rather than having developed morality from scratch, we received a huge helping hand from our background as social animals [emphasis mine].

At the same time, however, I am reluctant to call a chimpanzee a “moral being.” This is because sentiments do not suffice. We strive for a logically coherent system, and have debates about how the death penalty fits arguments for the sanctity of life, or whether an unchosen sexual orientation can be wrong. These debates are uniquely human. We have no evidence that other animals judge the appropriateness of actions that do not affect themselves. The great pioneer of morality research, the Finn Edward Westermarck, explained what makes the moral emotions special: “Moral emotions are disconnected from one’s immediate situation: they deal with good and bad at a more abstract, disinterested level.” This is what sets human morality apart: a move towards universal standards combined with an elaborate system of justification, monitoring and punishment [emphasis mine].

See the video below for de Waal's contention that there is a biological basis for the 'golden rule.'

The Calvinist God and the Chilean Miners

2010-10-18T04:04:00.001-04:00

I found an interesting post on a site called TheArminian.net. The author asks:

For the benefit of this post, I want to ask why fallen human beings, with regard to the 33 miners, sought every means possible to secure their rescue, but God does not do the same in the Calvinistic system? What is it within human beings, generally speaking, that seeks to rescue those in peril? Granted, the analogy will only carry so far, because Arminianism rejects the heresy of Universalism (cf. Matt. 7:21-23; Rev. 20:11-15) — all 33 miners were rescued. In spite of the Calvinist’s best efforts at explaining how God could in any genuine sense desire the salvation of all people (as Scripture explicitly teaches at 1 Timothy 2:4 et al.), since He has from eternity past, allegedly, already unconditionally selected to save only some (by bringing them to faith through regeneration), they pale in comparison to the words of Christ Jesus: “How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” (Matt. 23:37 NRSV)

The Chilean president stated that, whatever it takes, all miners would be rescued. His confident assertion and enthusiasm was inspiring. He and everyone else recognized that those men were in need, so they did what they could to secure their freedom. ...

As Calvinism has it, however, God is not interested in irresistibly saving every individual, nor does He genuinely love the world, contra Scripture (John 3:16). We are left wondering why human beings, in an effort to rescue all 33 miners, for example, retain more genuine love in their breast for other human beings than does the God of Calvinism?

The author makes an important observation. Human beings, seemingly, have more love and compassion than does the Calvinist God. Of course, the Calvinist would say that all men deserve nothing but wrath and judgment and the fact that God saves any is pure grace. Furthermore, God is wise and sovereign, who are we, the mere creature, to question the all-knowing Creator? Anticipating such a reply, a commenter who calls himself DrWayman remarks:

Imagine the outcry if the Prez of Chile, for his own good reasons, decided that only three of the miners would be saved and the rest were to perish. Of course, we would be upset with him but he decided that he did not need to share with us his reasoning for doing so. He told us to trust him, that his salvation of the three miners shows just how terrific he is. Everyone should be glad because he could have left them all to perish…

What would be the response of humanity to such a decree by the President of Chile? Would he be praised for his love and grace? Or would he be condemned as a heartless tyrant?

The Arminian is not off the hook, though, either. As the blogger said above, Arminianism does not hold to universalism. It teaches that some will be eternally lost. To follow the analogy, under Arminianism, some of the miners because of their stubborness would have refused to come out of the mine. The rescuers, respecting the free will of the miners, would have left them to perish.

Does that really make sense? If some of the miners had refused to come out of the mine, it would have been because they were not "thinking right." The trauma of being in the mine for such a long time would have caused some kind of psychological damage resulting in their refusal to come out of the mine. Similarly, in Arminian theology, sinners are not "thinking right." Their minds and their wills have been damaged by sin. They may refuse to cooperate with the grace of God and be saved. What should be done with such people?

In the case of the miners, if some had refused to come out, I tend to think they would have been rescued against their will. The argument would have been that these poor people have been traumatized to the point that they can no longer think rationally and it is the responiblity of the rescuers to override their will and bring them to safety.

How do you think the world would respond to such a scenario? I submit that the rescuers would have been praised for doing the right thing, the loving thing, the humane thing. But what about the fact that these stubborn miners had their free will violated? Isn't free will the ultimate good in the universe, even more than love? It seems so according to Arminianism.

Thus, neither Arminianism nor Calvinism really presents a truly loving God. They both put free will over love. In Calvinism, it is God's free choice that is supreme and in Arminianism it is man's free choice that is supreme.

Religions: People Will Believe Anything

2010-10-17T04:02:00.001-04:00

Recently, I did a post on Scientology. This religion was founded by the science fiction author, L. Ron Hubbard. Its teachings are bizarre yet they have a number of faithful followers including many Hollywood celebrities.

Mormonism seems a lot like science fiction as well. Yet, it has millions of followers including some otherwise intelligent people. When I lived in Arizona, I knew a number of Mormons who were intelligent people including lawyers, doctors, and other professionals. I wondered how could they believe the nonsense that their religion teaches. See below:

Many Evangelical Christians will mock the teachings of Mormonism and Scientology as ridiculous absurdities. However, one could make the case that Evangelical Christianity is also absurd.

What is the Cause of the Economic Downturn in the US?

2010-10-16T04:00:00.001-04:00

Well, according to Mac Brunson, Pastor of the First Baptist Church of Jacksonville, Florida, the third largest church in the Southern Baptist Convention with 28,000 members, it is because "God's people" are not tithing (i.e., giving 10% of their income to the church). Last Sunday (10/10/10), he said this to his congregation:

"I want to tell you something. You cannot convince me, that a big portion of the economic downturn in this country doesn't rest squarely on the shoulders of Christians who will not honor God with the tithe. When you come to the place in this country where only 2 to 3 percent of the people tithe that call themselves Christian, we should expect the judgment of God."

We Should Expect the Judgment of God for Non-Tithers from FBCJax Watchdog on Vimeo.

As the FBC Jax Watchdog, put it:

If God is judging America for Christians and their financial stewardship, I'll go out on a limb and say it is not for non-tithers. It is more likely we face God's judgment because we are forking so much of our money over to mega-palaces of entertainment to enrich rock star preachers and to build grand and glorious buildings with new pews and carpet, and in so doing we are neglecting our brothers and sisters who are in need during recession, we are not caring for our families and their future, and we're failing to give to the poor and stand for justice as we are called to do under the New Covenant

Wouldn't it be great if all churches had a "watchdog" like the FBC JAX Watchdog? Of course, expect harassment from the church if you do. See what happened to FBC Jax Watchdog.

Using the Same Bible, Some Christians Defend Slavery and Others Decry It

2010-10-15T03:59:00.004-04:00

As I pointed out in previous posts, slavery was defended by many conservative Christians in the 18th and 19th centuries. These Christians were not only southerners. Charles Hodge, for example, from Princeton Seminary defended the practice. It seems that most Calvinists did defend it. Three vocal Calvinist defenders were George Whitefield, R. L. Dabney and James Petigru Boyce. Those who spoke out against slavery tended to be non-Calvinists, for example John Wesley, Charles Finney, George Fox, and so-on.

Abraham Lincoln in his second inaugural address said: Both [the pro-slavery side and the abolitionists] read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other.

My point is that the Bible was not really clear on this important moral issue, just as it is not clear on much of what it teaches, including how one is to be saved. It seems that if the Bible were actually a divine revelation, an omniscient being could have done a better job of making himself clear.

Below is a 15 minute section from the documentary, God in America, which details how American Christians used the same Bible to both defend and condemn slavery.

Watch the full episode. See more FRONTLINE.

What if Flannagan's Hyperbole Interpretation is Correct?

2010-10-14T12:28:00.004-04:00

Steve Douglas of Undeception has an interesting post regarding the contention by some apologists, such as Matt Flannagan, that the commands to commit genocide in Joshua were merely hyperbolic.

He writes:

Let’s just say God did not command genocide or the extermination of the Canaanites after all. Let’s grant that He only commanded them to subjugate, or, in Plantinga’s words, “attack them, defeat them, drive them out.” What does that buy us?

To my mind, little is gained by this sort of reasoning, however well defended. Those who have a problem with divine-mandated genocide are not likely to think much differently of this counter-assertion that He instead “merely” commanded war, killing, and the forcible removal of multiple peoples established in a homeland for centuries or more beforehand. The latter isn’t even a “just war” according to Augustine.

How likely is it that the God who we as Christians claim was exemplified in His self-sacrificial servant Jesus of Nazareth demanded as a non-negotiable act of obedience and faithfulness that His people wage a full-scale assault of an entire region populated by several civilizations — whether or not the method was “total war” or marginally more kid-friendly? That’s the question that needs to be addressed.

I agree with Douglas. Even if the hyperbole interpretation were correct (and I don't believe that it is), it does not solve the moral problem associated with Israel's warfare recorded in Joshua.

John Goldingay, who does defend a less than literal reading of the genocidal commands, writes:

Surely God does not punish whole nations. It would not be fair. It would mean so many "innocent people" getting punished. While a literalistic reading of Deuteronomy and Joshua likely makes this seem a much bigger issue than historically it was, a less literalistic reading does not mean it ceases to be an issue [emphasis mine]. It is not one peculiar to this particular theological and ethical question. It is a fact of experience recognized by both Testaments that the members of a nation are bound together in their destiny, for good and for ill, like the members of a family. The First Testament has little of the modern instinct to distinguish between combatants and noncombatants, recognizing that these are battles between peoples not between professional armies (Old Testament Theology, vol. 3: Israel's Life, 577-78).

While Flannagan's hyperbole interpretation may minimize the problem somewhat, it does not resolve it. And even if it did fully resolve the problem, one would still be left with the case of Sodom, the Noahic flood, the Amalekites, the hanging of Saul's sons and grandsons on account of Saul's sin, and the killing of 70,000 Israelites for David's sin of counting the people, and so on. The issue is how can a just God condemn people for crimes that they did not personally commit?

HT: Vic Reppert

A Calvinist Response to the Problem of Evil

2010-10-14T04:02:00.000-04:00

Voddie Baucham provides the Calvinist answer to the problem of evil.

HT: Wes Widner

Grasping at Straws Part Thirteen--Evangelicals Defend Genocide

2010-10-13T04:02:00.001-04:00

Gleason Archer (1916-2004) was one of the preeminent Evangelical Old Testament scholars of the 20th century. Fundamentalist Evangelicals especially liked to hold him up as a scholar with a Ph.D. from Harvard who defended the inerrancy of Scripture. When I took Old Testament Introduction at Bob Jones University, we used his A Survey of Old Testament Introduction as our textbook. He defended the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, the single authorship of Isaiah, an early date for the book of Daniel, and virtually every other fundamentalist denial of bibical criticism. We were told here is a man with a Ph.D. from Harvard who has met the critics on their level and refuted them.

In his book, An Encylopedia of Bible Difficulties, Archer defends the command of the Hebrew God to exterminate the Canaanites including their infants. He does not try, as many other Christian apologists have, to minimize the severity of the commands. He writes:

Such complete destruction might appear to be needlessly harsh, since it included infants who were too young to have committed overt sin, even though the older children and the adults may all have fallen into utter depravity. Should we not understand this severity to be the result of a savage Bedouin mentality on the part of the wilderness warriors rather than a punitive measure ordained of God? (p. 155).

His answer is an emphatic, No. It was ordained by the God he worships. He gives three explanations to justify the genocide.

1. The genocide was on a smaller scale than the destruction of Sodom and the flood of Noah.

If criticism there be, we should not stop there, for the destruction of Jericho was far smaller an affair than the annihilation of the populations of Sodom and Gomorrah and their allies in Genesis 19:24-25. And then again this volcanic catastrophe was far less significant in the loss of life than Noah's Flood, which, except for Noah's family, wiped out the entire human race (p. 155).

I like the honesty of Archer. If the Bible is inerrant, then we should understand that God has on more than one occasion brought about the extermination of whole people groups. The extermination of the Canaanites is really nothing new. How this is supposed to be a defense of the Canaanite genocide, though, is a mystery to me. It is on a smaller scale so therefore it is okay? In fairness to Archer, I don't think this is really what he means to imply. I think he means that God is sovereign and that when he gets ready to destroy his creatures, he has a right to do so. This is in effect the Calvinist argument.

2. The extermination of the Canaanites was necessary in the same way that radical surgery is sometimes necessary to remove cancer.

The loss of innocent life in the demolition of Jericho was much to be regretted, but we must recognize that there are times when only radical surgery will save the life of a cancer-stricken body. The whole population of the antediluvian civilization had become hopelessly infected with the cancer of moral depravity (Gen. 6:5). Had any of them been permitted to live while still in rebellion against God, they might have infected Noah's family as well. The same was true of the detestable inhabitants of Sodom, wholly given over to the depravity of homosexuality and rape, in the days of Abraham and Lot. As with the Benjamites of Gibeah at a later period (Judg. 19:22-30; 20:43-48), the entire population had to be destroyed. So also it was with Jericho and Ai as well (Josh. 8:18-26); likewise with Makkedah (Josh. 10:28), Lachish (v.32), Eglon (v.35), Debir (v.39), and all the cities of the Negev and the Shephelah (v.40). In the northern campaign against Hazor, Madon, Shimron, and Achshaph, the same thorough destruction was meted out (Josh. 11:11-14).

In every case the baneful infection of degenerate idolatry and moral depravity had to be removed before Israel could safely settle down in these regions and set up a monotheistic, law-governed commonwealth as a testimony for the one true God. Much as we regret the terrible loss of life, we must remember that far greater mischief would have resulted if they had been permitted to live on in the midst of the Hebrew nation. These incorrigible degenerates of the Canaanite civilization were a sinister threat to the spiritual survival of Abraham's race. The failure to carry through completely the policy of the extermination of the heathen in the Land of Promise later led to the moral and religious downfall of the Twelve Tribes in the days of the Judges (Judg. 2:1-3, 10-15, 19-23). Not until the time of David, some centuries later, did the Israelites succeed in completing their conquest of all the land that had been promised to the descendants of Abraham (cf. Gen. 15:18-21). This triumph was only possible in a time of unprecedented religious vigor and purity of faith and practice such as prevailed under the leadership of King David, "a man after God's own heart" (1 Sam. 13:14; Acts 13:22) (pp. 155-56).

Notice that Archer admits that innocent life was lost in Jericho and by implication in all the other campaigns. He says it is regrettable but necessary. Why was it necessary? Because the Canaanites, if allowed to live, would infect the "pure" religion of Israel. First, his answer doesn't solve the moral problem of God ordering the destruction of "innocents." If these people were truly innocent, they were not deserving of the punishment God commanded for them. If God can punish the innocent, then he is not just nor is he holy. Second, the Israelites "pure" religion was infected numerous times in their history, if the Bible record is to be believed; since God presumably knew this was going to happen, why did he order the extermination of whole people groups including the innocent ones who were part of those groups? If the reason was to protect Israel's religion, it didn't work and he knew it wouldn't work.

3. The Israelites did not have the "spiritual weapons" that Christians have.

In our Christian dispensation true believers possess resources for resisting the corrupting influence of unconverted worldlings such as were hardly available to the people of the old covenant. As warriors of Christ who have yielded our members to Him as "weapons of righteousness" (Rom. 6:13) and whose bodies are indwelt and empowered by God the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 6:19), we are well able to lead our lives in the midst of a corrupt and degenerate non-Christian culture (whether in the Roman Empire or in modern secularized Europe or America) and still keep true to God. We have the example of the Cross and the victory of the Resurrection of Christ our Lord, and he goes with us everywhere and at all times as we carry out the Great Commission.

As New Testament believers, the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but spiritual, "mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds; casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ" (2 Cor. 10:4-5). These weapons, far mightier than those of Joshua, are able to capture men's hearts for God; and we have no occasion as ambassadors for Christ to resort to physical weapons to protect our faith and land (as the Israelites were compelled to do, if they were to survive spiritually). But on the contrary we carry on a life-saving offensive as fishers of men, and we go after the unsaved and unconverted wherever they are to be found. But we must recognize that our situation is far more advantageous than theirs, and our prospects of victory over the world are far brighter than theirs. For this we can thank God. But we must refrain from condemnation of those who lived in the very different situation that prevailed before the Cross and recognize that they acted in obedience and faith toward God when they carried out his orders concerning the Canaanites (p. 156).

This is one of the weakest arguments I have encountered to defend the Canaanite genocide. Since Israel did not have the "spiritual weapons" that Christian have, then they had to use physical weapons to destroy whole people groups? Playing along with Archer for a moment, whose fault was it that the Israelites did not have the "spiritual weapons" that Christians have? It was God's. The poor Canaanites just lived at the wrong time in history.

Gleason Archer might have been a very learned man, but his justification of the Canaanite genocides is lame. Many Evangelicals have done a better job of attempting to "defend the indefensible" than did he.

Americans Owe a Lot to a Skeptic--Thomas Jefferson

2010-10-12T08:59:00.005-04:00

Americans today can thank Thomas Jefferson for leading the way in establishing religious freedom in our country. Jefferson, a Christian Deist, who was called an atheist by his political opponents, is the single most important figure in this struggle for freedom of conscience. Christians, and people of other religions can thank Thomas Jefferson, a skeptic and a rationalist, for their freedom to practice whatever superstition they desire without government interference. Without the good sense of a skeptic, Americans today might all have been forced to belong to one religion.

A new PBS production, God in America, documents this. The first clip is about 7 minutes and the second clip about 9 minutes. Well worth watching.

Watch the full episode. See more FRONTLINE.

HT: John Loftus

Thomas Jefferson's Advice to His Nephew on the Study of Religion

2010-10-12T04:00:00.001-04:00

On August 10, 1787 Thomas Jefferson penned a letter to his nephew, Peter Carr, who was entering his alma mater, The College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. Jefferson advised him on several subjects but I am particularly interested in his counsel on how to approach the study of religion. He wrote:

In the first place, divest yourself of all bias in favor of novelty and singularity of opinion. Indulge them in any other subject rather than that of religion. It is too important, and the consequences of error may be too serious. On the other hand, shake off all the fears and servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear (emphasis mine). You will naturally examine first, the religion of your own country. Read the Bible, then as you would read Livy or Tacitus. The facts which are within the ordinary course of nature, you will believe on the authority of the writer, as you do those of the same kind in Livy and Tacitus. The testimony of the writer weighs in their favor, in one scale, and their not being against the laws of nature, does not weigh against them. But those facts in the Bible which contradict the laws of nature, must be examined with more care, and under a variety of faces. Here you must recur to the pretensions of the writer to inspiration from God. Examine upon what evidence his pretensions are founded, and whether that evidence is so strong, as that its falsehood would be more improbable than a change in the laws of nature, in the case he relates. For example, in the book of Joshua, we are told, the sun stood still several hours. Were we to read that fact in Livy or Tacitus, we should class it with their showers of blood, speaking of statues, beasts, and etc. But it is said, that the writer of that book was inspired. Examine, therefore, candidly, what evidence there is of his having been inspired (emphasis mine). The pretension is entitled to your inquiry, because millions believe it. On the other hand, you are astronomer enough to know how contrary it is to the law of nature that a body revolving on its axis, as the earth does, should have stopped, should not, by that sudden stoppage, have prostrated animals, trees, buildings, and should after a certain time gave resumed its revolution, and that without a second general prostration. Is this arrest of the earth's motion, or the evidence which affirms it, most within the law of probabilities? You will next read the New Testament. It is the history of a personage called Jesus. Keep in your eye the opposite pretensions: 1, of those who say he was begotten by God, born of a virgin, suspended and reversed the laws of nature at will, and ascended bodily into heaven; and 2, of those who say he was a man of illegitimate birth, of a benevolent heart, enthusiastic mind, who set out without pretensions to divinity, ended in believing them, and was punished capitally for sedition, by being gibbeted, according to the Roman law, which punished the first commission of that offence by whipping, and the second by exile, or death in fureâ. See this law in the Digest Lib. 48. tit. 19. §. 28. 3. and Lipsius Lib 2. de cruce. cap.

These questions are examined in the books I have mentioned under the head of religion, and several others. They will assist you in your inquiries, but keep your reason firmly on the watch in reading them all.

Do not be frightened from this inquiry by any fear of its consequences. If it ends in a belief that there is no God, you will find incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise, and the love of others which it will procure you (emphasis mine). If you find reason to believe there is a God, a consciousness that you are acting under his eye, and that he approves you, will be a vast additional incitement; if that there be a future state, the hope of a happy existence in that increases the appetite to deserve it; if that Jesus was also a God, you will be comforted by a belief of his aid and love. In fine, I repeat, you must lay aside all prejudice on both sides, and neither believe nor reject anything, because any other persons, or description of persons, have rejected or believed it. Your own reason is the only oracle given you by heaven, and you are answerable, not for the rightness, but uprightness of the decision (emphasis mine). I forgot to observe, when speaking of the New Testament, that you should read all the histories of Christ, as well of those whom a council of ecclesiastics have decided for us, to be Pseudo-evangelists, as those they named Evangelists. Because these Pseudo-evangelists pretended to inspiration, as much as the others, and you are to judge their pretensions by your own reason, and not by the reason of those ecclesiastics. Most of these are lost. There are some, however, still extant, collected by Fabricius, which I will endeavor to get and send you.

America's Four Gods

2010-10-11T11:33:00.002-04:00

A fascinating new book by two Baylor University professors discusses American's conceptions of God. It is entitled, America's Four Gods: What We Say About God--and What That Says About Us, by Paul Froese and Christopher Bader. Based on their research, the four conceptions of God are:

1. The Benevolent God
2. The Critical God
3. The Distant God
4. The Authoritative God

Here is a story about the book from ABC News:

I intend to read the book and perhaps have some additonal posts on the subject.

P.S. I just discovered that USA Today has an interesting article with some charts illustrating the relation between one's conception of God and other issues such as homosexuality, poverty, disasters, and the USA.

Also here is a link to the book's website. There you will find a test to determine your conception of God (that is, if you believe in one).

Philosopher David Lewis on Penal Substitution

2010-10-11T04:00:00.000-04:00

David Kellogg Lewis (1941–2001) was Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University for over 30 years. He wrote a short paper entitled: "Do We Believe in Penal Substitution?" (in Michael Rea, ed. Oxford Readings in Philosophical Theology: Trinity, Incarnation, and Atonement [2009], 308-13).

In the paper, Lewis argued that we all, Christians and atheists alike, agree that it is wrong to incarcerate or execute a substitute in place of the person who committed the crime. However, he says, we also both agree that it is okay for a substitute to pay a fine (monetary penalty) or make compensation to a victim in the stead of the one who committed the crime. He writes:

What function would we have to ascribe to punishment in order to make it make sense to punish an innocent substitute?—A compensatory function. Suppose that the offender’s punishment were seen mainly as a benefit to the victim, a benefit sufficient to undo whatever loss the offender had inflicted upon him. Then the source of the benefit wouldn’t matter. If the offender’s innocent friend provided the benefit, the compensatory function would be served, no less than if the offender himself provided it (p. 309).

Lewis says that its not just Christians who are "double-minded" with regard to penal substitution, he says:

All of us—atheists and agnostics, believers of other persuasions, the lot—are likewise of two minds about penal substitution. We do not believe that the offender’s friend can serve the offender’s prison sentence, or his death sentence. Neither can the friend serve the offender’s sentence of flogging, transportation, or hard labour. But we do believe—do we not?—that the friend can pay the offender’s fine.Yet this is just as much a case of penal substitution as the others (p. 311).

He concludes that perhaps non-believers ought not be so quick to condemn the logic of the Penal Substitutionary Theory (PST) of the atonement. If we agree that it works in some cases (monetary fines), then perhaps, it could work in other cases, such as the death of Jesus in the stead of sinners. He states:

It indicates that both sides agree that penal substitution sometimes makes sense after all, even if none can say how it makes sense. And if both sides agree to that, that is some evidence that somehow they might both be right (p. 313).

Is Lewis correct? One often hears defenders of the PST compare the price paid by Jesus on the cross with the payment of a debt. Since debts obviously can be transferred, then perhaps it does make sense to say that Jesus paid the penalty (even though it was not a monetary fine) for man's sin.

I don't think Lewis is correct, however. While we allow a substitute to pay the fine or monetary debt of another, it is not analogous to the PST of the atonement. In the PST, Jesus bears the guilt of man's sin. A substitute who pays the fine owed in place of his friend does not bear his friend's guilt. I came across a comment on another blog that I thought explained this point very well. A poster who calls himself AK Mike said:

Hello--not a philosopher, but a lawyer. I think the premise here is wrong--we do not allow substitution in the case of fines. The criminal remains responsible for paying the fine--she cannot delegate this responsibility to another party. Even if another party agrees to pay, if that payment is defaulted, the court will look to the criminal to cure the default, not the other party.

Having another pay a criminal's fine is just a way of describing where the money comes from that the criminal obtains to pay the fine. It is inherent in the nature of a fine as punishment that the money to pay it will have to come from somewhere--from wages, from an inheritance, from a gift--where it comes from is not relevant to the question of who is being punished. The court records will always show the criminal has having paid, not some third party.

Research on De-Conversion

2010-10-10T04:00:00.001-04:00

Last week I received the following email:

Dear Ken,

I am putting together a project that hopes to address the experiences of people who have "deconverted" from a monotheistic, polytheistic, or religious based faith. One of the tools I am using to collect data and experiences is a questionnaire I put together at Teologye.com – a site I created for this purpose. I especially would like to hear from skeptics, agnostics, and atheists. One of my goals at the end of this project is to publish a book based on the information I’ve gathered from interviews and data gathered via the site.

Would you be comfortable notifying your readers of this effort and the questionnaire? I’ve included the links below. I am hoping to reach as many people as possible and your site’s audience has the knowledge and experiences I am hoping to tap into.

http://teologye.com/

http://teologye.com/questionnaire

Kindest Regards,

Rick Dean

I followed up with Rick and I think his project is interesting. I have completed his questionnaire (only takes a couple of minutes) and I would recommend that my readers do likewise.

Should We Fear Islam?

2010-10-09T04:00:00.001-04:00

A very interesting discussion recently took place on ABC moderated by Christiane Amanpour. I think anyone interested in the subject of Islam and terrorism should watch (and this ought to be everyone). One of the main points made is that there is no "one true" Islam anymore than there is "one true" Christianity. People as diverse as the Rev. Wright of Chicago and Pastor Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church are Christians. It would not be right to consider either of these as the "true" Christianity and condemn all Christians based on the statements of either man. In the same way it would be wrong to condemn all Muslims on the basis of what the extremist Islamists teach. Similarly, it would be wrong to condemn all Mormons on the basis that some Mormon fundamentalists are polygamists.

However, there is another element to this discussion. Christian extremists and Mormon extremists do not have the political base that Muslim extremists have. Thank goodness that Fred Phelps is not the ruler of a country, especially a country with a strong military or nuclear capabilities. Islamic extremists do rule certain countries and do have enormous military might as well as millions of willing martyrs. This aspect of Islam, political Islam, does need to be feared in my opinion.

More on the "Hyperbole" Interpretation of the Genocidal Commands of Yahweh

2010-10-08T04:03:00.000-04:00

Some Christian apologists have tried to explain away the moral problem created by the genocidal commands of Yahweh by saying that the commands were never intended to be literal but instead should be understood as hyperbole. This position is advocated by Nicholas Wolterstorff, Paul Copan, and Matt Flannagan, among others. I have responded to this hyperbole defense before (see here and here).

On another blog, Parableman, Jeremy Pierce writes a post entitled: "Copan on the Canaanite Genocide." Pierce was initially hesitant about the hyperbole defense but in the post says that he now thinks it has possiblities.

One astute commenter who calls himself Alain wrote:

By Alain on October 2, 2010 1:54 AM

It is important to remember that the “need” to defend God’s decision to end the lives of a large group of people is radically alien to Hebrew or Ancient Near Eastern thought. This is a modern preoccupation that ignores the fact that for the ancient Israelite (or in the ANE in general with their gods), God as creator gave life and had the right to take it back from His creatures when they displeased Him. Be alive was not a right but a privilege granted by the deity.

Additionally, the distinction between the “guilty” males and the women and children is an artificial distinction that ignores the biblical concept of corporate solidarity (for example, the sin of Achan, an individual was imputed to whole nation in Joshua 7 and the whole nation became accursed and was defeated by her enemies). It is reasonable to assume that God saw the Canaanite nations as corporately guilty and thus as deserving corporate judgment.

Besides the fact that nothing in the text suggests that it was meant to be taken as hyperbole, the reason why this view must be rejected is the fact that it fails to explain the rationale for the divine command. Deuteronomy 20:17-18 clearly states that the Canaanites in the Promised Land needed to be utterly destroyed (lit. to ban) “so that they may not teach you to do according to all their detestable things which they have done for their gods, so that you would sin against the LORD your God”. As such, exterminating the Canaanites living in the direct vicinity of the Israelite would prevent said Canaanites from being a negative example and teach the chosen nation their depraved and idolatrous ways. The point Moses is making fails if he is merely using hyperbolic language and only referring to a reduction of the Canaanite pollution because the survivors (and they would be numerous under the hyperbole view) while shaken by the “severe attack” would still be able to lead the Israelites astray; thus defeating the purpose of the ban in the first place.

Additionally, the hyperbole view does not make sense because the same passage differentiates between what is to be done to Israel’s immediate neighbors (total ban) and how to punish more distant nations (sparing women and children). Numbers 31:9-19 shows how selective capital punishment was applied. The fact that only a category of women and the children were spared and the rest executed indicates that hyperbole is not in view here. Even when women and children were spared, it was not because of some concept of “innocence” but because they were given to the soldier as spoil of war.

The same overall concern is reflecting in Deut 7:1-6 where Moses instructs the nation to utterly destroy (again the idea of the “ban”) not only the people but also their cultic infrastructure in order to prevent idolatry and Israel’s own destruction. Hyperbole does not work here too since the people is to be destroyed just like the places where they worship.

If the “complete” ban was not total but merely hyperbolic, what criteria would be used to determine that it was not fulfilled? More importantly, if the removal of the “cancerous” neighbors was partial, how could it accomplish its stated purpose?

While the hyperbolic view might satisfy the uneasy modern mind, it creates theological issues that undermine the theological point of the ban.

Alain is precisely correct. The ANE thought in terms of "collective culpability" and therefore the author of Joshua and the other texts saw no moral problem in the extermination of an entire group. This same mindset is present, I think, in Romans 5 where Paul says the whole human race is culpable for the sin of Adam. As Alain also points out, the Hebrew word חרם rules out the possibility of hyperbole. In another comment, he writes:

By Alain on October 3, 2010 8:17 PM

Deut 20:16 indicates how the ban [חרם] is to be understood. The command to put the Canaanites under the ban is explicitly contrasted with the command in the preceding verse “not to leave alive anything that breathes”. One needs major exegetical gymnastic to make “ban” mean “separation” here, unless want means separation from the land of the living … and breathing humans.

Understanding the ban as complete extermination also explains why no offer to surrender is made (however, if it was only separation/ packing and leaving, terms of peace would make sense here since the point of the passage is to avoid unnecessary destruction including the destruction of plant life).

This understanding of Deut 20 is confirmed when Israel actually applies these rules of engagement in the battlefield under When it comes to Jericho, the city is put under the ban and here again the meaning of the ban is indicated in the passage itself (only Rahab and her household are to be left alive—Joshua 6:17 cf. 21-22). The fact that Joshua specifically presents Rahab as an exception to the rule indicates that the command was to be taken literally.

The simple fact is that the hyperbole defense does not work. It is another case of Evangelicals Grasping At Straws to defend the indefensible.

Bishop Eddie Long's Empire

2010-10-07T14:00:00.000-04:00

Earlier today I ran a post on the tax advantages that the US government gives to churches and pastors. It results in a subsidizing of these religious institutions. Where is the outcry? Have you even heard any politicians mention this? Aside from Senator Grassley , I haven't.

Bishop Eddie Long has recently been in the news regarding the allegation of sexual abuse. While all the current focus is on these allegations, someone needs to look into his financial empire. It turns out that Bishop Long has an empire that is much bigger than just his church of 25,000 members. He also has an organization called, The Father's House, in which churches and pastors agree to submit to his authority and pay him their tithes.

Rachel Tabachnick recently wrote: Long claims spiritual authority over more than his New Birth mega-church in Lithonia, Georgia. He is the 'apostolic authority' over churches in The Father's House network, including 79 churches in Georgia alone and a total of approximately 275 in 38 states.

According to the The Father's House website: The Father's House is a ministry that is intended for Senior Pastors who are led to submit themselves under the spiritual covering and apostolic authority of Bishop Eddie L. Long.

Tabachnick explains: This model requires tithing (payment of ten percent) into the leader's network. The website for Long's The Father's House network list the benefits and responsibilities of "covering" provided by Long.

Long is something of a Pope over these churches. Notice the outfits used when he recently ordained another Bishop in his organization.

What Long has going here is something of a pyramid scheme. Churches tithe up the ladder. Apostle John Kelly explains the principle in the book The New Apostolic Churches (ed. Peter Wagner):

If they [Pastors] tithe to their local church, they are tithing back into their own paychecks...

...Many pastors will declare they have a covering, but the question is, do they tithe to that covering? By tracking the tithe, we can literally track the order in the house of God.

Our local churches also tithe, but they tithe for a different purpose. Instead of tithing to their spiritual covering, they tithe to the network for global impact and a global harvest.

Apostle Kelly is the founder of International Christian Wealth Builders Foundation . According to Tabachnick, this organization

works to prepare for the 'great wealth transfer' prophesied by the movement and to aid in the "advancement of the Kingdom of God on earth." This is not redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor. Dominionists are diehard free marketers who rave against the country's supposed decline into Marxism. Wishful progressives have described the charitable and faith-based work of some dominionists as a return of the social gospel, but these dominionist forcefully reject any association with the social gospel, describing it as socialism. The wealth redistribution that they are referring to is a future windfall that will go from the ungodly to the godly, a belief that the New Apostolics share with many prosperity doctrine or Word of Faith preachers.

When will people wake up and demand that these religious institutions pay taxes!

"Parsonage Allowance" and other Tax Advantages Available to Clergy

2010-10-07T04:01:00.001-04:00

Creflo Dollar's "Parsonage"

The "Parsonage" on the Inside

The IRS allows "ordained ministers" who are employed by a religious institution to exempt the money they pay to maintain a residence from taxation ("Parsonage Allowance"). This is not a deduction but an exemption (full amount is substracted from income). The only limit on the amount is the "fair market rental value" of the house. So, a Mega Church Pastor, such as Creflo Dollar (or Eddie Long, or T.D. Jakes, or Rick Warren, or Joel Osteen or whoever), can exempt the fair market rental value on his home from his income. Fortunately he can only do this for his primary residence (as they usually own several homes).

Let's say that the Pastor's primary residence is valued at $5 million. A general rule of thumb for fair market rental value is 1% of the value of the home. In this case, it would $50,000 a month or $600,000 a year. That money is exempted from his income. He doesn't have to pay federal, state, or Social Security taxes on it. In addition, if he has a mortgage, he can also deduct the interest paid on it. This amounts to a double deduction but it is legal under IRS rules. Assuming his interest rate was 5%, that would be another $240,000 a year that could be deducted from his income. At this point, he could make well over $850,000 a year without owing any taxes.

If that is not bad enough, as an ordained minister, the Pastor is also allowed to opt out of Social Security. That means a savings of at least another 15% of his income. This is a special privilege available to ministers.

Granted, most Pastor's do not have the income of a Creflo Dollar or a Bishop Eddie Long but they are entitled to the same perks from the Government. This is, in my opinion, a clear violation of church and state. Why is the IRS giving special tax breaks to religious leaders? It forces every other taxpayer to subsidize religions that they may not believe in.

With the deep debt that the USA is in, we need to look for more revenue sources. One way to get some immediate relief is to quit subsidizing pastors and churches. Why won't politicians call for eliminating these tax breaks? Because it would be political suicide and most only care about getting re-elected.

We need statesmen today not politicians. Thomas Jefferson, in The Virginia Act For Establishing Religious Freedom, written three years after he penned the Declaration of Independence, said: "to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical."

Craig Blomberg on De-Conversion

2010-10-06T04:00:00.001-04:00

Craig Blomberg is a well-known Evangelical scholar. He is Distinguished Professor of New Testament at Denver Seminary (Conservative Baptist Association). He offers three "consistent factors" that "trigger" a rejection of Christianity. On his blogpost dated Oct. 1, 2010, he writes:

Studies of deconversions find three fairly consistent factors or kinds of experiences that trigger such rejection of Christianity. First, a crisis of some kind unexpectedly intrudes into a person’s life. Maybe it is the loss of a loved one, a major personal failure or even sin, a life-changing injury, a divorce or a devastating financial loss. Second, the community to which this individual has normally turned to for support in hard times turns on that individual instead. Perhaps it is a kind of church discipline that does not seem geared to lead to rehabilitation. Perhaps it involves pat theological slogans that don’t adequately address the complexity of the situation. Perhaps it includes interpersonal estrangement rather than empathy. Third, the hurting person is introduced to and/or for the first time takes seriously and investigates seriously an alternate world view. This may be a different religion or, as it commonly seems today to be, some form of agnosticism or atheism.

According to the studies of de-conversion which he fails to cite, an apostate typically experiences:

1. A personal crisis.
2. A let-down by the church.
3. A questioning of his or her world view.

I don't know about others but in my case, #'s 1 and 2 were not involved. I increasingly came to the conclusion that the Evangelical Christian world-view was inconsistent and incoherent. It did not "mesh" with the real world in which I was living. There was no more reason to believe the Bible was really a divine revelation than there was to believe the Koran or any other "holy book." They all reflected the religious ideas that were prevalent in their time and in their culture.

It is interesting how Blomberg phrases his #3. The person is introduced to and/or for the first time takes seriously and investigates seriously (emphasis mine) an alternate world view.

I think he has hit the nail on the head here. Most Evangelical Christians will not take seriously the possiblity that their world-view (which includes an inspired and inerrant Bible, a bloody human sacrifice which satisfies God's wrath against sin, an eternal hell, and so on) might be wrong. Their minds are closed to that possibility. If you can ever get them to seriously question their world-view and seriously investigate other world-views, there is an excellent possiblity that they will de-convert.

G. C. Foley on Substitutionary Atonement

2010-10-05T04:00:00.000-04:00

George Cadwalader Foley (1851-1935) was the Professor of Homiletics and Pastoral Care in the Divinity School of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Philadelphia. In 1908, he delivered "The Bohlen Lectures" at his Divinity School. These lectures were published in 1909 under the title: Anselm's Theory of the Atonement . He does not deal specifically with the Penal Substitutionary Theory (PST) of the atonement but he does criticize the notion of substitution as it is found in Anselm's Satisfaction Theory. His objections are equally applicable to the PST of the atonement. He identifies the following problems:

1. It makes sin (disobedience) and obedience impersonal.

First, it is an impersonal, institutional idea, derived equally from the Church discipline, the Wergeld, and feudalism. If the law be regarded as impersonal, and the debt of man as well, then any one may render satisfaction. But justice, or rather righteousness, is God's nature, and law is the expression of His character, of Himself. He demands man's obedience, and that is what man owes. Christ's obedience cannot be accepted in place of ours, because it is ours which is wanted. The obedience which we failed to render cannot be offered by any one else, so as to make up the deficiency; because obedience is personal, and nothing can be done with the deficiency but to pardon it or else let it work its due punishment. One who is mystically united with us, as our Head, our Sponsor, our Representative, may offer His perfect obedience as the pledge of our own, as the response of humanity to the requirements of God. But God can be satisfied with nothing less than righteousness, and not even with that from any other than the one who lacks it and of whom He asks it (pp. 182-83).

2. It fails to distinguish between a material and a moral debt.

Again, the idea of substitution fails to distinguish between a material and a moral debt. The difference between a pecuniary and an ethical obligation is now generally recognised, because the Anselmic theory of a judicial process that would nowadays be called civil has given way to the analogy of ciiminal proceedings. But the fundamental point remains untouched, and the following admissions, chiefly by believers in satisfaction, may be applied to Anselm's satisfaction by substitution. Archbishop Magee says: "Neither guilt nor punishment can be conceived, but with reference to consciousness which cannot be transferred" [Discourses and Dissertations on the Scriptural Doctrines of Atonement, p. 197]. Anselm does not teach that Christ bore our punishment, though he uses the idea of guilt as indicating our exposure to penalty; it is in this connection that we may claim Magee's support (p. 183).

... Anselm has ignored the significance of a moral debt and treated it as simply material, as so external to the person as to permit of a transfer of the duty of obedience (p. 186).

3. It is based on a fiction and is unjust.

The idea of literal substitution is really a survival of folk-faith, where continually we see the disposition of men to shift upon another the results of their sin. But it cannot for a moment be considered as literal, because it is an utterly fictitious proceeding, and confusing to the moral sense. It makes God violate the very justice which is said to demand satisfaction, because it makes Him satisfied with an obedience as ours which is not ours. This is a double offence against justice: it foregoes the claim of obedience upon the one who owes it, and it accepts a substitute from one who does not owe it (p. 186).

Richard Dawkins on Viruses of the Mind

2010-10-04T04:00:00.000-04:00

I recently came across this article by Richard Dawkins in which he compares faith to a computer virus. I think he makes some interesting points.

Like computer viruses, successful mind viruses will tend to be hard for their victims to detect. If you are the victim of one, the chances are that you won't know it, and may even vigorously deny it. Accepting that a virus might be difficult to detect in your own mind, what tell-tale signs might you look out for? I shall answer by imaging how a medical textbook might describe the typical symptoms of a sufferer (arbitrarily assumed to be male).

1. The patient typically finds himself impelled by some deep, inner conviction that something is true, or right, or virtuous: a conviction that doesn't seem to owe anything to evidence or reason, but which, nevertheless, he feels as totally compelling and convincing. We doctors refer to such a belief as "faith."

2. Patients typically make a positive virtue of faith's being strong and unshakable, in spite of not being based upon evidence. Indeed, they may feel that the less evidence there is, the more virtuous the belief.

3. A related symptom, which a faith-sufferer may also present, is the conviction that ``mystery,'' per se, is a good thing. It is not a virtue to solve mysteries. Rather we should enjoy them, even revel in their insolubility.

4. The sufferer may find himself behaving intolerantly towards vectors of rival faiths, in extreme cases even killing them or advocating their deaths. He may be similarly violent in his disposition towards apostates (people who once held the faith but have renounced it); or towards heretics (people who espouse a different --- often, perhaps significantly, only very slightly different --- version of the faith). He may also feel hostile towards other modes of thought that are potentially inimical to his faith, such as the method of scientific reason which may function rather like a piece of anti-viral software.

5. The patient may notice that the particular convictions that he holds, while having nothing to do with evidence, do seem to owe a great deal to epidemiology. Why, he may wonder, do I hold this set of convictions rather than that set? Is it because I surveyed all the world's faiths and chose the one whose claims seemed most convincing? Almost certainly not. If you have a faith, it is statistically overwhelmingly likely that it is the same faith as your parents and grandparents had.

6. If the patient is one of the rare exceptions who follows a different religion from his parents, the explanation may still be epidemiological. To be sure, it is possible that he dispassionately surveyed the world's faiths and chose the most convincing one. But it is statistically more probable that he has been exposed to a particularly potent infective agent --- a John Wesley, a Jim Jones or a St. Paul. Here we are talking about horizontal transmission, as in measles. Before, the epidemiology was that of vertical transmission, as in Huntington's Chorea.--Richard Dawkins, "Viruses of the Mind," in Dennett and His Critics: Demystifying Mind, ed. Bo Dahlbom (1993), 13-27.

Sunday Funnies--Similarity between Catholicism and Judaism

2010-10-03T04:00:00.001-04:00

Church of Scientology Exposed

2010-10-01T07:45:00.002-04:00

The Church of Scientology was founded by Science Fiction Author and con-man extraordinaire, L. Ron Hubbard in 1953. According to Sam Moskowitz, a reporter and writer, Hubbard said: "You don't get rich writing science fiction. If you want to get rich, you start a religion." It certainly worked for him, according to Forbes, he was worth over $200M when he died in 1986. The Church has grown dramatically since that time and today has holdings that no doubt exceed $1B. All of it in the US, is of course, tax free.

Here is a sample of what Scientologists actually believe (here is the entire South Park episode):

Many celebrities including Tom Cruise, Kirsti Alley, and John Travolta are scientologists. The church has enormous power in the entertainment field. It is known for its heavy handed intimidation of any who oppose it. According to Penn Jillette, Showtime will not allow him to expose Scientology on his program Bullshit. He says:

We haven't tackled Scientology because Showtime doesn't want us to. Maybe they have deals with individual Scientologists —- I'm not sure. And we haven't tackled Islam because we have families.

Below is a recent Documentary on the Church of Scientology by BBC reporter John Sweeney. You may wonder why I would put something about scientology on my blog, since my purpose is to explain why I de-converted from Evangelical Christianity. It is to show that religion, no matter how bizarre, can find devout followers and can hold enormous sway over people's lives.

William Connor Magee on Penal Substitution

2010-10-01T05:00:00.000-04:00

William Connor Magee (1821–1891) was an Irish clergyman of the Anglican church. He was Bishop of Peterborough from 1868-1891 and he was made the Archbishop of York in 1891, the same year that he died. He opposed the Penal Substitutionary Theory (PST) of the Atonement. In 1887, he wrote a book entitled: The Atonement in which he pointed out three problems with the PST.

1. It is unjust.

According to this theory the one and only obstacle which stands in the way of the sinner's forgiveness is God's justice, and Christ's death has removed that obstacle by satisfying His justice. To this theory it is objected that, so far from being a triumph of justice, it is a triumph of injustice. It is doubly unjust—first, that God should not punish the guilty; and secondly, that He should punish the innocent. If the sinner deserves punishment, justice requires that he, and not another, should suffer. If Christ were perfectly innocent, justice requires that He should not suffer. There can be no justice, whatever else there may be, in punishing Him instead of the sinner. For what God's justice requires is surely not that where sin has been committed somebody should suffer, but that the sinner should suffer—he and no other (p. 101).

2. Jesus did not pay the penalty for sin.

He could not have suffered our penalty for sin, inasmuch as part, the largest part, of that penalty is remorse, which He could never have experienced. And, moreover, our penalty for sin is eternal death, and that He certainly has not suffered; while, on the other hand, the death He did die--namely, physical death--is not that from which He has delivered us, for we are all still subject to it. In no true or real sense, then, it is alleged, can Christ be said to have suffered the penalty that we incur by sin... (p. 102).

3. The notion of transferring equal amounts of suffering from one to another is impossible.

Nay, I go further, and I say that this whole idea of transferring certain exact and mathematically equal amounts of moral suffering from one person to another as if they were so many weights in a scale or so many chemical quantities in a laboratory, seems to me unthinkable: I cannot even imagine it. Persons are not things; personal feelings, states, conditions cannot be made to change places as if they were material substances. He who takes my place in suffering does not, and cannot, take my sufferings. These cannot be the same for him as they would be for me, simply because he is not I. In his place I should not feel precisely as he did; I might feel more, I might feel less; I should certainly feel differently; my penalty, therefore, cannot be transferred to him... (pp. 103-04).

And I further object to this doctrine of satisfaction of justice by exact equivalence of suffering because I see to what rash speculation, to what hideous conclusions, it has led. To rash and daring speculation, for instance, as to the nature and the intensity of the sufferings of Christ; to peeping and prying beneath the shadows of Gethsemane; to measuring of the exact tale of His agony and bloody sweat; to putting of His tears into our bottle and examining them by some quantitative analysis of our own; to showing how His six hours of suffering must, because He was infinite, have equalled the eternity of suffering due to all the sins of the finite human race; as if, on the supposition of the infinite overweighing the finite, an instant of suffering might not have sufficed as well as a century of it; and, worse than this--to the horrible conclusions that inasmuch as His sufferings were exact equivalents for demanded penalties, it would follow that any sins not forgiven could not have been atoned for; and therefore, that we must believe that He died only for the elect, and therefore that He who sent Him to die for men loved only the elect and hated all others, thus landing us in all the horrors of particular redemption and predestined reprobation (pp. 105-06).

Clergy Gone Wild--Roman Catholics and Protestants Alike

2010-09-30T16:00:00.002-04:00

With all the reports about clergy sex abuse in the news, it seem we live in the era of Clergy Gone Wild. The Roman Catholic Church scandals have been dominating the news but its not only the RCC that has a problem keeping its clergy under control. Protestant clergy, including Evangelical Preachers, seem to be trying their best to keep up with the Catholics.

Valerie Tarico, a former evangelical Christian, and a licensed psychologist, has an excellent piece on ExChristian.net entitled: "The Protestant Clergy Sex Abuse Pattern." She begins:

One of the most striking aspects of the Protestant clergy sex abuse pattern is that most people don’t realize it is a pattern. The Catholic Church has taken a well deserved beating in the courts and in the court of public opinion as former altar boys, orphans and ordinary parishioners have come forward with appalling stories of sex abuse. Yet equally egregious violations by Protestant clergy have failed to generate the same level of outrage. Why?

She gives four reasons:

The Catholic Church is easier to think of as a monolithic entity. That means it is easier for the press to cohere the abuse incidents into a single story and our brains to grock it. The idea of one big conspiracy appeals to us: “The Church” did it and then covered it up.
The centralized hierarchy of Catholicism makes Catholic offenders easier to sue and guarantees deep pockets. The lawsuits in turn both generate their own news cycle and bring victims out of the closet.
Since most Americans are Protestants, the Catholic Sex Abuse scandal is a story about “them.” Protestant Pedophilia is a story about “us,” which makes it less gratifying and more uncomfortable.
Most Americans find the idea of celibacy peculiar at best. It makes for a more interesting narrative than a generic story about abuse of authority.

The truth is, though, that Protestants, including Evangelicals, have a big problem in this area too.

Here are some websites that document these abuses:

Blog on the Way
Stop Baptist Predators
Clergy Gone Wild

Black Collar Crime Blotter

Bishop Eddie Long's Mentor--Earl Paulk

2010-09-30T10:09:00.001-04:00

It turns out that another Atlanta mega church's Pastor, Bishop Earl Paulk, was Bishop Eddie Long's "spiritual mentor."

WSB Radio has learned another Atlanta minister with a sordid sexual past mentored Bishop Eddie Long as a young preacher. Ole Anthony of the Trinity Foundation, a watchdog organization which monitors clergymen like Long, says the late Bishop Earl Paulk mentored Long as a young pastor. ... Paulk, who died last year, was an evangelical mega church leader accused of having sex with many women in his congregation including his brother's wife and his own granddaughter. Anthony compared Long's "Spiritual Sons" program in which his three young accusers were members with Paulk's "Kingdom Relationships," saying both were really designed to sexually gratify the clergymen.

Paulk's church, Chapel Hill Harvester Church, once had 15,000 members but after a paternity suit which revealed that the assistant Pastor, D. E. Paulk, was really Paulk's son and not his nephew as everyone thought, attendance declined.

The 80-year-old leader of a suburban Atlanta megachurch is at the center of a sex scandal of biblical dimensions: He slept with his brother's wife and fathered a child by her.

Members of Archbishop Earl Paulk's family stood at the pulpit of the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit at Chapel Hill Harvester Church a few Sundays ago and revealed the secret exposed by a recent court-ordered paternity test.("Megachurch leader in mega-sized sex scandal," MSNBC [11/19/2007]).

The revelation came out as a result of a civil lawsuit filed by a former church employee, Mona Brewer who says Earl Paulk manipulated her into an affair from 1989 to 2003 by telling her it was her only path to salvation. Earl Paulk admitted to the affair in front of the church last January.

Under oath in a deposition, Earl Paulk claimed that Brewer was the only woman besides his wife that he had slept with. The paternity suit proved otherwise. Paulk died in 2009 before he could face trial for perjury. His once great mega church property was sold and the few members left moved and changed their name. Is this going to be the future of Eddie Long's empire?

Consensus Statement on The Science of Morality

2010-09-30T04:01:00.000-04:00

It seems to me that points #2 and #3 are in harmony with the theory of Ethical Intuitionism which I have defended.

CONSENSUS STATEMENT

A statement of consensus reached among participants at

the Edge The New Science of Morality Conference

Washington, CT, June 20-22, 2010

1) Morality is a natural phenomenon and a cultural phenomenon

Like language, sexuality, or music, morality emerges from the interaction of multiple psychological building blocks within each person, and from the interactions of many people within a society. These building blocks are the products of evolution, with natural selection playing a critical role. They are assembled into coherent moralities as individuals mature within a cultural context. The scientific study of morality therefore requires the combined efforts of the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities.

2) Many of the psychological building blocks of morality are innate

The word "innate," as we use it in the context of moral cognition, does not mean immutable, operational at birth, or visible in every known culture. It means "organized in advance of experience," although experience can revise that organization to produce variation within and across cultures.

Many of the building blocks of morality can be found, in some form, in other primates, including sympathy, friendship, hierarchical relationships, and coalition-building. Many of the building blocks of morality are visible in all human culture, including sympathy, friendship, reciprocity, and the ability to represent others' beliefs and intentions.

Some of the building blocks of morality become operational quite early in childhood, such as the capacity to respond with empathy to human suffering, to act altruistically, and to punish those who harm others.

3) Moral judgments are often made intuitively, with little deliberation or conscious weighing of evidence and alternatives

Like judgments about the grammaticality of sentences, moral judgments are often experienced as occurring rapidly, effortlessly, and automatically. They occur even when a person cannot articulate reasons for them.

4) Conscious moral reasoning plays multiple roles in our moral lives

People often apply moral principles and engage in moral reasoning. For example, people use reasoning to detect moral inconsistencies in others and in themselves, or when moral intuitions conflict, or are absent. Moral reasoning often serves an argumentative function; it is often a preparation for social interaction and persuasion, rather than an open-minded search for the truth. In line with its persuasive function, moral reasoning can have important causal effects interpersonally. Reasons and arguments can establish new principles (e.g., racial equality, animal rights) and produce moral change in a society.

5) Moral judgments and values are often at odds with actual behavior

People often fail to live up to their consciously-endorsed values. One of the many reasons for the disconnect is that moral action often depends on self-control, which is a fluctuating and limited resource. Doing what is morally right, especially when contrary to selfish desires, often depends on an effortful inner struggle with an uncertain outcome.

6) Many areas of the brain are recruited for moral cognition, yet there is no "moral center" in the brain

Moral judgments depend on the operation of multiple neural systems that are distinct but that interact with one another, sometimes in a competitive fashion. Many of these systems play comparable roles in non-moral contexts. For example, there are systems that support the implementation of cognitive control, the representation of mental states, and the affective representation of value in both moral and non-moral contexts.

7) Morality varies across individuals and cultures

People within each culture vary in their moral judgments and behaviors. Some of this variation is due to heritable differences in temperament (for example, agreeableness or conscientiousness) or in morally-relevant capacities (such as one’s ability to take the perspective of others). Some of this difference is due to variations in childhood experiences; some is due to the roles and contexts influencing a person at the moment of judgment or action.

Morality varies across cultures in many ways, including the overall moral domain (what kinds of things get regulated), as well as specific moral norms, practices, values, and institutions. Moral virtues and values are strongly influenced by local and historical circumstances, such as the nature of economic activity, form of government, frequency of warfare, and strength of institutions for dispute resolution.

8) Moral systems support human flourishing, to varying degrees

The emergence of morality allowed much larger groups of people to live together and reap the benefits of trust, trade, shared security, long term planning, and a variety of other non-zero-sum interactions. Some moral systems do this better than others, and therefore it is possible to make some comparative judgments.

The existence of moral diversity as an empirical fact does not support an "anything-goes" version of moral relativism in which all moral systems must be judged to be equally good. We note, however, that moral evaluations across cultures must be made cautiously because there are multiple justifiable visions of flourishing and wellbeing, even within Western societies. Furthermore, because of the power of moral intuitions to influence reasoning, social scientists studying morality are at risk of being biased by their own culturally shaped values and desires.

Signed by:

Roy Baumeister, Florida State University
Paul Bloom, Yale University
Joshua Greene, Harvard University
Jonathan Haidt, University of Virginia
Sam Harris, Project Reason
Joshua Knobe, Yale University
David Pizarro, Cornell University

McCormick--DiSilvestro Debate: The Salem Witch Trials and the Resurrection of Jesus

2010-09-29T16:00:00.003-04:00

Last week two philosophers in the Philosophy Department at California State University in Sacramento debated the resurrection of Jesus. Atheist Matt McCormick argued that the evidence for genuine witchcraft occuring in Salem, MA in the late 1600's is much stronger than the evidence that Jesus arose from the dead in the 1st century, yet virtually no one accepts the idea that there were real witches in Salem. Christian Russell DiSilvestro argued that the best explanation for the data about Jesus from the 1st century is that Jesus really rose from the dead. He acknowledged that real witchcraft could have happened in Salem because he believes in demons and the Bible teaches that witches are real (e.g., Saul's encounter with the Witch of Endor in1 Sam. 28). Thus, he has no issue believing that real supernatural acts took place in Salem.

Debate #1 from Philosophy Department, CSUS on Vimeo.

Is the Bible Clear on How Someone can be "Saved"?

2010-09-29T04:01:00.002-04:00

This post appeared on Luke's CommonSenseAtheism blog on Monday of last week. I am re-posting it here for any that may not have seen it.

One of the factors in my de-conversion from Evangelical Christianity was my realization that the Bible does not read as one would expect a divine revelation to read. First, it simply reflects the ideas and beliefs of the time and culture in which it was written. It would seem that if it were a divine revelation, it would present ideas that would transcend those of its times. For example, why doesn't it condemn slavery? Why does it attribute mental illness or epilepsy as demon possession? Second, it contains much information and detail that seems to be unimportant and unworthy of a divine being. For example, the detailed genealogies in 1 Chronicles (9 chapters) and the gathering of 100 Philistine foreskins by David (1 Sam. 18:25-27). Third, it is ambiguous on important matters such as how one is to be "saved" or redeemed to God. In an interview that I did with Luke on his Conversations from the Pale Blue Dot, I said:

If the Bible is really a revelation from God and if God really loves man and really wants to reconcile man to himself, would he not have made it much clearer how someone is to be saved? I know that if my children were separated from me and I had the opportunity to write them a letter to tell them how to get back to me, I certainly wouldn't do it in parables and language that's ambiguous enough that it can be interpreted a thousand different ways. I would do my best to make it crystal clear how they could find me .. and if I would do that as a finite human being, certainly God being infinite and being omniscient could find a way to do that. So as I looked at the Bible, as I read it, as I studied it I just came to the conclusion that it cannot be from a divine being.

Most Evangelical Christians will maintain that the Bible is clear on how to be saved. For example, Kevin Bauder, the President of Central Baptist Theological Seminary in Minneapolis, writes:

In other words, the aspect of Scripture that can be understood by anyone is its saving message. Any truth that is essential to salvation is clearly and comprehensibly revealed "in some place of Scripture or other." Anyone can learn the way of Salvation by reading the Bible. It is no small matter that the way of salvation has been revealed in language that any person can understand. We do not have to rely upon sophisticated intellectual tools. We do not have to rely upon specially-endued ecclesiastical spokesmen. If we can read the Bible in our hands, then we can know how to be saved ("Fundamentalism: Whence? Where? Whither? Part 8").

Bauder is espousing one of the main tenets of the Reformation--the perspicuity of Scripture. The Reformers argued that one could understand the major teachings of the Bible without any help from the Roman Church. The RCC, on the other hand, maintained, that they, and only they, could properly interpret the Scriptures. One Roman leader is reported to have said that if we allow each person to interpret the Bible for himself there will be total confusion and an unlimited number of sects. That is precisely what has happened.

The fact is that Evangelicals cannot even agree among themselves as to what the Bible requires for salvation. They unanimously maintain that faith is required but they disagree on the meaning of faith, the exclusivity of faith, the origin of faith, and the object of faith.

The Meaning of Faith: What Exactly is Involved in Saving Faith?

Those who believe the Bible is the inspired and inerrant Word of God cannot agree among themselves as to what exactly is involved in having saving faith. For some, faith is simply intellectual assent. For example, on the website of the Grace Evangelical Society, one reads:

Faith is the conviction that something is true. To believe in Jesus (“he who believes in Me has everlasting life”) is to be convinced that He guarantees everlasting life to all who simply believe in Him for it (John 4:14; 5:24; 6:47; 11:26; 1 Tim 1:16).

No act of obedience, preceding or following faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, such as commitment to obey, sorrow for sin, turning from one’s sin, baptism or submission to the Lordship of Christ, may be added to, or considered part of, faith as a condition for receiving everlasting life (Rom 4:5; Gal 2:16; Titus 3:5). This saving transaction between God and the sinner is simply the giving and receiving of a free gift (Eph 2:8-9; John 4:10 ; Rev 22:17).

For others, such as John MacArthur, John Piper, and J. I. Packer, saving faith is much more than simply intellectual assent. It is that plus submission to the Lordship of Christ? In his very popular book, The Gospel According to Jesus: What is Authentic Faith? , MacArthur argues that obedience

• is included in the "definition of faith, being a constitutive element in what it means to believe" (p. 171).
• is "an integral part of saving faith" (p. 174).
• is "synonymous with faith" (p. 174)
• is "indivisibly wrapped up in the idea of believing" (p. 176).

This is no minor controversy as it involves precisely what is required in order to be saved. It has evoked a number of books in which evangelicals debate one another on the nature of saving faith (1). The various positions are diametrically opposed to one another and cannot be harmonized.

The Exclusivity of Faith: Is Faith Alone Sufficient for Salvation?

While evangelicals such as John MacArthur and the Grace Evangelical Society disagree on what constitutes saving faith, they do agree that faith alone is the single requirement for salvation. Others who also believe the Bible to be inspired and inerrant, though, disagree. They would insist that water baptism is also required. Those evangelicals who trace their lineage to Alexander Campbell (including the churches of Christ, the Independent Christian Churches/Churches of Christ, Evangelical Christian Church in Canada, and the Christian Church [Disciples of Christ]) believe that faith plus baptism is necessary for salvation. Campbell, a former Baptist, became convinced that the Bible demanded baptism in order to receive forgiveness of sins. He maintained that he was following the clear teaching of Scripture. Campbell’s maxim was: "Where the Bible speaks, we speak; where the Bible is silent, we are silent."

On the churches of Christ website, one reads that through baptism:

•You are saved from sins (Mark 16:16 1 Peter 3:21)
•You have remission of sins (Acts 2:38)
•Sins are washed away by the blood of Christ (Acts 22:16; Hebrews 9:22; Hebrews 10:22; 1 Peter 3:21)
•You enter into the church (1 Corinthians 12:13; Acts 2:41,47)
•You enter into Christ (Galatians 3:26-27; Romans 6:3-4)
•You put on Christ and become a child of God (Galatians 3:26-27)
•You are born again, a new creature (Romans 6:3-4; 2 Corinthians 5:17)
•You walk in newness of life (Romans 6:3-6)
•You obey Christ (Mark 16:15-16; Acts 10:48; 2 Thessalonians 1:7-9).

Other evangelical groups also insist that baptism is an important element for salvation, although they would disagree with Campbell that it follows faith (and must be by immersion). For example, the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, holds that baptism precedes faith and somehow produces faith. On their website, they state:

Baptism, we believe, is one of the miraculous means of grace (together with God's written and spoken Word) through which God creates and/or strengthens the gift of faith in a person's heart (see Matt. 28:18-20; Act. 2:38; John 3:5-7; Act. 22:16; 1 Peter 3:21; Titus 3:5-6; Gal. 3:26-27; Rom. 6:1-4; Col. 2:11-12; 1 Cor. 12:13).

Although we do not claim to understand how this happens or how it is possible, we believe (because of what the Bible says about baptism) that when an infant is baptized God creates faith in the heart of that infant. This faith cannot yet, of course, be expressed or articulated, yet it is real and present all the same (see e.g., 1 Peter 2:21; Acts 2:38-39; Titus 3:5-6; Matt. 18:6; Luke 1:15; 2 Tim. 3:15; Gal. 3:26-27; Rom. 6:4; Col. 2:11-12; 1 Cor. 12:13). This faith needs to be fed and nurtured by God's Word (Matt. 28:18-20), or it will die.

Evangelical Anglicans also hold that baptism regenerates. (2) The vast majority of evangelicals, however, disagree; but, yet all claim to be following the "clear" teaching of the Bible.

The Origin of Faith: How is Faith Generated?

Bible-believing evangelicals also cannot agree on how man acquires faith. Calvinists say that faith is a gift from God. According to them, Faith is not something man contributes to salvation but is itself a part of God's gift of salvation - it is God's gift to the sinner, not the sinner's gift to God (see here). While Arminians say that faith originates in man. According to them, The sinner has the power to either cooperate with God's Spirit and be regenerated or resist God's grace and perish. The lost sinner needs the Spirit's assistance, but he does not have to be regenerated by the Spirit before he can believe, for faith is man's act and precedes the new birth. (see here).

So, some Christians read the Bible and conclude that God determines who is saved and implants faith in those people and other Christians read it and conclude that any man can choose to have faith. This is a crucial matter but yet Christians reading the same Bible come to different conclusions.

The Object of Faith: In Whom Must One Have Faith?

Most evangelicals would hold that one must have faith in Jesus Christ in order to be saved. However, there is a growing movement among evangelicals who maintain that one can be saved without ever having heard of Jesus. For example, the evangelical John Sanders writes:

Saving faith … does not necessitate knowledge of Christ in this life. God’s gracious activity is wider that the arena of special revelation. God will accept into his kingdom those who repent and trust him even if they know nothing of Jesus ("Is Belief in Christ Necessary for Salvation?" The Evangelical Quarterly 60.3 (July-Sept. 1988): 252-53).

Similarly evangelical theologian Clark Pinnock states:

Faith in God is what saves, not possessing certain minimum information… A person is saved by faith, even if the content of faith is deficient (and whose is not?). The Bible does not teach that one must confess the name of Jesus to be saved ... The issue that God cares about is the direction of the heart, not the content of theology (A Wideness in God's Mercy: The Finality of Jesus Christ in a World of Religions [1992], p. 158).

In other words, these evangelicals hold that as long as one has faith in accordance with how much revelation one has of God, that is sufficient for salvation. Other evangelicals violently disagree. They insist that one must have faith specifically in Jesus Christ in order to be saved. (3) But then this group of evangelicals disagree among themselves on precisely what one must believe about Jesus in order to be saved. Must one believe that Jesus is a member of the Trinity, co-equal with the Father and the Spirit or is it adequate to believe that Jesus is the Son of God without being more specific? The debate goes on.

So, what must one do to be saved? It depends on which bible-believing evangelical you ask. Even though they all agree that the Bible is the inspired Word of God, they cannot agree on what it says. As I stated at the beginning, it seems to me that if the Bible were really a divine revelation, it would be clear and unambiguous throughout but at the very least it would be plain on how one is to be saved.

ENDNOTES

(1) After MacArthur published his Gospel According to Jesus in 1988, Zane Hodges, a longtime professor at Dallas Theological Seminary, wrote a book opposing his position: Absolutely Free: A Biblical Reply to Lordship Salvation (1989). Charles Ryrie, another professor at Dallas Seminary, tried to take a middle of the road position in his book, So Great Salvation: What It Means to Believe in Jesus Christ (1989) disagreeing with both Hodges and MacArthur.

(2) See Article XXVII in the Thirty Nine Articles (1563) and "The Public Baptism of Infants," in the Book of Common Prayer (1662).

(3) See D. A. Carson, The Gagging of God: Christianity Confronts Pluralism (1996) and John Piper, Jesus: The Only Way to God: Must You Hear the Gospel to be Saved? (2010). For a debate among evangelicals on this subject, see John Sanders, Ronald Nash, and Gabriel Fackre, What About Those Who Have Never Heard?: Three Views on the Destiny of the Unevangelized (1995).

What to Tell the Next Religious Kook who knocks on your door

2010-09-28T16:00:00.000-04:00

Pat Condell

"If you want to know about God, you might want to talk to an atheist"

2010-09-28T08:30:00.002-04:00

"If you want to know about God, you might want to talk to an atheist," so says an article in the LA Times by Mitchell Landsberg. It is based on a recent survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. Landsberg asks the question:

So why would an atheist know more about religion than a Christian?

American atheists and agnostics tend to be people who grew up in a religious tradition and consciously gave it up, often after a great deal of reflection and study, said Alan Cooperman, associate director for research at the Pew Forum.

"These are people who thought a lot about religion," he said. "They're not indifferent. They care about it."

Atheists and agnostics also tend to be relatively well educated, and the survey found, not surprisingly, that the most knowledgeable people were also the best educated. However, it said that atheists and agnostics also outperformed believers who had a similar level of education.

This fits my experience as well. When I was a believer, I was aghast at the general ignorance among my fellow Christians on the Bible and Theology. Even in a fundamentalist Evangelical church, most Christians have never read the entire Bible, most could not give reasons for their faith (apart from perhaps some religious experience), and most did not know exactly what they were supposed to believe doctrinally.

If you want to take the quiz, it can be found here.

Were the Founding Fathers of America Christians?

2010-09-28T04:00:00.000-04:00

There is a popular belief among many in the United States that our country is a Christian nation and that the founding Fathers were all Christians. With the rise of the religious right in the 1980's and now the Tea Party, this view continues to grow. How does this belief correspond with the facts? An excellent book has been written by David L. Holmes, Professor of Religious Studies at William and Mary, entitled: The Faiths of the Founding Fathers (Oxford Press, 2006). He discusses the religious environment of 18th century America and the influence of British deism. He has entire chapters on the religious views of Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, as well as others. His conclusion is that the founding fathers could be grouped as follows:

Non-Christian Deists: Thomas Paine, Ethan Allen.

Deistic Christians/Unitarians: Ben Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe.

Orthodox Christians: Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams, John Jay, Elias Boudinot, John Witherspoon.

The difference in the Non-Christian Deists and the Deistic Christians/Unitarians is that the latter believed that many of the teachings of Jesus were worthy of emulation. They gave Jesus a special place in their theology although not the place of God as in orthodox Christianity. Confusion often arises because most of the Founding Fathers mentioned "God," or "the Creator," or "Providence" in their speeches and writings. Yes, they believed in a divine being; they were not atheists (there were very few public atheists at this time). However, the fact that they mention God does not mean that they are orthodox Christians either.

Politics and Atheism

2010-09-27T04:00:00.002-04:00

I have tried to steer clear of politics because this blog's raison d'être is to detail why I am no longer an Evangelical Christian and, frankly, politics had nothing to do with my de-conversion. Many of my readers are probably left of center politically as that that seems to be the case with most atheists. I don't think there is, or that there needs to be, any direct correlation between one's disbelief in god(s) and one's political stance. Yet, some atheist bloggers seem to assume that to be atheist means that one is also a political liberal.

I classify myself as a libertarian, although I don't necessarily agree with every plank of the Libertarian Party platform . I believe in fiscal conservatism but not social conservatism. I think smaller government, lower taxes, and fewer regulations are desirable.

I have discovered that I am not alone. Here are some notable non-believers whose political views are quite similar to mine:

Thomas Jefferson
Ayn Rand
George Will
Christopher Hitchens

Here are some conservative atheist groups on the internet:

Atheist and Agnostic Pro-Life League

The Atheist Conservative

The Secular Right

The Conservative Humanist Association

The Secular Conservative

Here is an excellent article by Heather McDonald, entitled, "Not all conservatives have a direct line to God, and they don't want one, either," in The Chicago Sun-Times of September 3, 2006. She argues that one does not need to believe in God in order to believe in conservative values and in reality the marriage between religion and conservatism , as exemplified by the religious right, is destructive to conservative values.

So, if you are a political liberal, I respect your views but please don't make those views a test of "atheist orthodoxy." There is room for us to disagree on political matters while agreeing that there is no reason to believe in god(s).

Bishop Long Does Not Explicitly Deny the Charges

2010-09-26T10:31:00.002-04:00

Bishop Eddie Long has been accused by 4 young men of sexual abuse. Here is what he said to his congregation this morning:

Bishop Long Addresses His Mindless Followers:

If I were accused of such things and I was innocent, I would say as loudly as I could--"I did not commit these acts of which I have been accused." The fact that Long does not deny the allegations but only says "I am not perfect" and "I will fight this" makes one think he is guilty.

Sunday Funnies--God Tempts Abraham

2010-09-26T04:00:00.002-04:00

Disagreements Among Christians on the Atonement of Christ

2010-09-25T04:00:00.001-04:00

In 1875, R. W. Dale, in a series of lectures on the Atonement, pointed out the disagreements that have existed among Christians throughout Church History. He said:

From this brief review of the history of the doctrine, it appears that for nearly a thousand years many of the most eminent teachers of the Church were accustomed to represent the Death of Christ as a ransom by which we are delivered from captivity to the devil; that for nearly five centuries the most eminent teachers of the Church were accustomed to represent the Death of Christ as an act of homage to the personal greatness and majesty of God; that during the last three centuries the great Protestant Churches have represented the Death of Christ as having a relation neither to the devil nor to the personal claims of God, but to the moral order of the universe.

While the fundamental conception of the Atonement has been passing through these remarkable changes, the doctrine has been involved in other controversies of hardly inferior magnitude. There have been controversies as to whether Christ died for all men, or whether He died for the elect only; or whether, as was suggested as early as the third century by Origen, the effects of His Death extend to the whole universe. There have been controversies as to whether the Death of Christ was in itself an adequate Atonement for human sin, or whether its adequacy depends upon God's acceptance of it as adequate. When the Death of Christ was regarded as a kind of concession to the devil, there were controversies as to whether the concession was necessary in the nature of things, in order to effect our redemption; the same controversy was renewed under other forms when the Death of Christ was regarded as an act of homage to the Divine Majesty; and it has reappeared among Protestants, to whom the Atonement is neither a concession to the claims of Satan, nor even an acknowledgment of the personal claims of God. Whether, if men were to be saved, the Atonement of Christ was necessary or not; whether its effects extend to all mankind or only to the elect; whether it consisted in His righteousness, which was tested by His sufferings, or whether the sufferings themselves constituted its very essence; whether it was intended to redeem us from the power of Satan, or to propitiate the injured majesty of God, or to assert the eternal principles of the Divine government — all these questions have divided the Church.

The Fathers attempted to explain why it is that through the Death of Christ we escape from the penalties of sin, and their explanations were rejected by the schoolmen. The schoolmen attempted to explain it, and their explanations were rejected or modified by the reformers. The reformers attempted to explain it, and within a century after the Reformation, Grotius and his successors were attempting to explain it again (The Atonement (pp. 296-98).

I could add that since Dale's time (1875) the disagreements among Christians on the nature, extent, and reason for the death of Christ have only multiplied. It is amazing that the central doctrine of Christianity, the atonement, is so unclear that Christians have never been able to come to some sort of consensus on it.

Does God Really Want Us to Believe in Miracles?

2010-09-24T04:00:00.004-04:00

Two days ago, I posted the slides that Matt McCormick, Professor of Philosophy at California State University, used in his first debate with his colleague, Russell DiSilvestro. Those compared the evidence for witchcraft at Salem, Massachuetts in the 17th century with the evidence for Jesus being raised from the dead in the 1st century.

Yesterday, I posted the slides used in his second debate with DiSilvestro. These compare the reports of miracles at Lourdes with the reports of Jesus' resurrection.

Today, I post the slides used in the third debate with DiSilvestro. These show that if God really wanted us to believe in miracles, he could have provided much better evidence.I

Does god want us to believe miracles

If the above will not load for you, you can access it here.

Reports of Miracles at Lourdes and Reports of Jesus' Resurrection

2010-09-23T04:00:00.004-04:00

Yesterday, I posted the slides that Matt McCormick, Professor of Philosophy at California State University, used in his first debate with his colleague, Russell DiSilvestro. Those compared the evidence for witchcraft at Salem, Massachuetts in the 17th century with the evidence for Jesus being raised from the dead in the 1st century.

Today, I post the slides used in his second debate with DiSilvestro. These compare the reports of miracles at Lourdes with the reports of Jesus' resurrection.

Miracles At Lourdes

If the above will not load for you, you can access it here.

The Job of the Preacher according to Bishop Eddie Long

2010-09-22T13:40:00.001-04:00

According to Bishop Eddie Long, Pastor of the Atlanta megachurch, New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, the job of the preacher is to "bring fresh sperm" to his congregation. See below:

If you can handle it, there is a longer version of the Bishop's speech (complete with romantic music) available here.

If the allegations leveled against Bishop Long yesterday by two members of his congregation are correct, I guess the Bishop has been taking his job seriously and literally.

Evidence for Witchcraft in Salem compared to Evidence for Jesus' Resurrection

2010-09-22T10:25:00.001-04:00

Matt McCormick, Professor of Philosophy at California State University, has developed the following powerpoint slides to use in the debate he had this week with Russell DiSilvestro, a colleague of his in the Philosophy Department. I think they are excellent and I look forward to seeing the videotape of the debate.

The Resurrection And The Salem Witch Trials

If the above will not load for you, you can access it here.

Retributive Justice, Hell, and the Atonement

2010-09-22T04:00:00.003-04:00

In a prior post, I argued that the Bible teaches the retributive theory of justice. This concept of justice is foundational not only to the Penal Substitutionary Theory (PST) of the Atonement but also to the doctrine of hell. There has been a concerted effort of late by evangelicals to "water-down" (pun intended) the doctrine of hell. As the conservative evangelical Mark Dever states:

But today Christians are more consumer-savvy. They know how to market themselves by jettisoning the unpopular bits, like a new product or politician. [A. C.] Grayling continues
"Nowadays, by contrast, Christianity specializes in soft-focus mood-music; its threats of hell, its demand for poverty and chastity, its doctrine that only a few will be saved and the many damned, have been shed, replaced by strummed guitars and saccharine smiles"(Against All Gods (Oberon, 2007), 24).

Another very conservative Evangelical, Al Mohler, agrees:

Though hell had been a fixture of Christian theology since the New Testament, it became an odium theologium—a doctrine considered repugnant by the larger culture and now retained and defended only by those who saw themselves as self-consciously orthodox in theological commitment.

Mohler maintains that the doctrine of hell

...is reformulated in order to remove its intellectual and moral offensiveness. Evangelicals have subjected the doctrine of hell to this strategy for many years now. Some deny that hell is everlasting, arguing for a form of annihilationism or conditional immortality. Others will deny hell as a state of actual torment. John Wenham simply states, “Unending torment speaks to me of sadism, not justice” (Facing Hell: An Autobiography [1998], 254). Some argue that God does not send anyone to hell, and that hell is simply the sum total of human decisions made during earthly lives. God is not really a judge who decides, but a referee who makes certain that rules are followed. Tulsa pastor Ed Gungor recently wrote that “people are not sent to hell, they go there” (What Bothers Me Most About Christianity [2009], 196). In other words, God just respects human freedom to the degree that he will reluctantly let humans determined to go to hell have their wish.

These "hell-reforming" Evangelicals are, according to Mohler, following the lead of C. S. Lewis. 70 years ago, Lewis wrote:

I willingly believe that the damned are, in one sense, successful, rebels to the end; that the doors of Hell are locked on the inside. I do not mean that the ghosts may not wish to come out of Hell, in the vague fashion wherein an envious man 'wishes' to be happy: but they certainly do not will even the first preliminary stages of that self-abandonment through which alone the soul can reach any good. They enjoy forever the horrible freedom they have demanded, and are therefore self-enslaved: just as the blessed, forever submitting to obedience, become through all eternity more and more free (The Problem of Pain [1940], 130).

While this "new" portrait of hell is a little more palatable to modern man, the fact is that undermines the rationale of the atonement. The atonement, at least according to the penal substitution version, is required in order to satisfy the retributive justice of God. In the PST, God punishes His Son, so that sinners will not have to be punished. If hell is not an active punishment by God, then the rationale behind the PST is destroyed.

Greg Gilbert (Pastor of Third Avenue Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky) makes this clear:

Why did Jesus have to die on the cross? It was because that was the only way God could righteously not send every one of us to hell. Jesus had to take what was due to us, and that means he had to endure the equivalent of hell as he hung on the cross. That doesn’t mean that Jesus actually went to hell. But it does mean that the nails and the thorns were only the beginning of Jesus’ suffering. The true height of his suffering came when God poured out his wrath on Jesus. When the darkness fell, that wasn’t just God covering the suffering of his Son, as some have said. That was the darkness of the curse, of God’s wrath. It was the darkness of hell, and in that moment Jesus was enduring its full fury—the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty.

In other words, according to Gilbert, God can only remain just if sin is punished (which is the retributive theory). He writes:

God is not a corrupt judge. He is an absolutely just and righteous one.
Over and over the Bible makes this point. When God reveals himself to Moses, he declares himself to be compassionate and loving, but he also says, “Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished.” The Psalms declare that “Righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne.” What an amazing statement! If God is to continue being God, he cannot simply set justice aside and sweep sin under the rug. He must deal with it—decisively and with exacting justice. When God finally judges, not one sin will receive more punishment than it deserves. And not one will receive less than it deserves, either.

So, those evangelicals who want to remake hell into merely a place of self-chosen exile, and eliminate God's active role in the punishment, have, in some cases, unwittingly removed the basis for the PST of the atonement. It doesn't seem that one can consistently adhere to the PST and at the same time see hell as a place of self-chosen exile. Evangelicals who do so have, as Mohler puts it, transformed God from a judge who decides, to a referee who makes certain that rules are followed. Hell is no longer punishment deserved because of man's sin but merely the place man chooses to be. Free will becomes the single most important element in God's universe and God exists to ensure that each person's freedom is safe-guarded. While, as I said above, this may be more palatable to the sensibilities of modern man, it is a far cry from what the Bible itself teaches.

Does the Bible Teach Retributive Justice?

2010-09-21T04:00:00.007-04:00

One of the problems faced by those evangelicals who deny the Penal Substitutionary Theory (PST) of the Atonement (and they are a distinct minority within evangelicalism) is that the Bible teaches retributive justice.

What precisely is the retributive theory of justice? The basic principle is that the guilty person has committed a wrong and he must be "paid-back" or "recompensed" for his offense. When a person is wronged, the scale of justice, as it were, has been tipped against him. In order to bring that scale back to equilibrium, the offender must suffer harm in proportion to what he caused the victim. That is the essence of retributive justice. It is not concerned primarily with the consequences of the punishment, whether or not it benefits anyone, but with the fact that the evil committed deserves to be punished. It is based on a deontological view of ethics, namely that some acts are intrinsically wrong, and therefore, deserving of punishment. The philosopher Immanuel Kant was one of the strongest advocates of the retributive theory of justice. In The Metaphysical Elements of Justice , he wrote:

Judicial punishment can never be used merely as a means to promote some other good for the criminal himself or for civil society, but instead it must in all cases be imposed on him only on the ground that he has committed a crime (p. 138).

Does the Bible teach the retributive theory of justice? The answer is an emphatic, Yes. In the beginning of the Bible, God makes it clear that the punishment for disobeying him (sin) is death. Shortly after creating Adam and Eve, God told them:

"You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die" (Genesis 2:16-17, New International Version).

After the first couple sinned by eating the forbidden fruit, they realized that they were naked and the Bible says: “The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them” (Genesis 3:21). This was the first instance of death recorded in the Bible. Animals died in order for God to clothe Adam and Eve with animal skins. Christian theologians have consistently argued that this was the first case of sacrificial substitution in the Bible. Innocent animals were killed in order for Adam and Eve to be clothed.

Someone might ask, “I thought that God told Adam that “he would surely die,” if he ate the forbidden fruit? It’s true that God did say that and most Christian commentators have explained God's statement in the following way: Adam and Eve died spiritually, that is, they were cut off from the blessing of unhindered fellowship with God. When they ate the fruit,the seeds of mortality were also planted in them so that eventually they would die physically. In the meantime, the death of the animals served as a vivid illustration of the consequences of sin.

The story of the flood of Noah in chapter six of Genesis also illustrates the concept of retributive justice. Because man had become so corrupt in sinning against God, God decided to send a flood to destroy mankind (Genesis 6:13-14). In God’s mind, sin deserves punishment and that punishment must be death. Thus, the whole world, with the exception of Noah’s family, must die.

The first case of retribution being ordered for crimes that a man commits against another man is found in Genesis 9:6:"Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man.” God decrees that if a man kills another man, he must be punished with the same punishment, namely death. This verse illustrates another aspect of retributive justice--that the punishment must fit the crime.

One of the best known phrases from the Bible is “an eye for eye, and a tooth for a tooth.” This illustrates very clearly the concept of retributive justice that God commanded his people to follow. It is the principle of lex talionis,that is, the punishment should be proportionate to the crime. The phrase is found three places in the Hebrew Bible:

Exodus 21:23-25—“But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.“

Leviticus 24:19-20—“If anyone injures his neighbor, whatever he has done must be done to him: fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. As he has injured the other, so he is to be injured. “

Deuteronomy 19:21—“Show no pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.”

All three of these passages are found in sections of the Torah in which God is laying out the principles of justice that he wants his chosen people, the Israelites, to follow. A straightforward reading of these passages makes it very clear that in God’s mind there is only form of justice, namely, retributive justice.

It is true that Jesus seems to repeal this form of justice in Matthew 5:38-39:

“You have heard that it was said, 'Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.' But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.“

Typically, Christian commentators have interpreted this command to refer to interpersonal relations. In other words, if you as an individual are mistreated by another person, you should not seek retaliation. While Jesus does not explicitly say so here, in Romans 12, discussed below, the idea is that retribution will come against the wrongdoer but it will be God who exacts the punishment.

When we come to the writings of Paul, we find the concept of retributive justice to be a dominant theme. A key word is ἀνταποδίδωμι, (to repay, requite) which is translated in the King James Version as “recompense,” and in the New International Version as “pay back.” Vine’s Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words defines the word (ἀνταποδίδωμι): "to give back as an equivalent, to requite, recompense" (the anti expressing the idea of a complete return).”

In Romans 12:17-19, Paul, in harmony with what Jesus said in Matthew 5:38-39 (see above), says that Christians are not to exact retribution from those who are persecuting them but rather to leave that in God’s hands. He writes:

“Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: "It is mine to avenge; I will repay (ἀνταποδίδωμι)," says the Lord. “

If this retribution does not take place before, it will, according to Paul, when Jesus returns from heaven. He writes in 2 Thessalonians 1:6-8:

“God is just: He will pay back (ἀνταποδίδωμι) trouble to those who trouble you and give relief to you who are troubled, and to us as well. This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels. He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.“

This passage shows that God has not changed his mind, at least if one can believe Paul, about the retributive theory of justice.

The last book of the Bible, the book of Revelation, also makes it clear that God will exact retribution against the world for its sin. In agreement with Paul’s teaching in 2 Thessalonians, John sees Jesus coming back from heaven and executing judgment on the people of the earth (Revelation 19:11-15). This judgment is the display of God’s wrath against sinners. In chapter 20:11-15, the final judgment is depicted in which all men are resurrected to stand before God and to be judged on the basis of their works. The implication is that the punishment is in proportion to the evil committed (retributive justice).

Thus, the Bible consistently teaches the retributive theory of justice from beginning (Genesis) to end (Revelation). In accordance with these principles of retributive justice, theologians have constructed the PST of the atonement. Only this theory of the atonement satisfies the demands of retributive justice.

Christians Who Are Afraid of Science

2010-09-20T04:00:00.004-04:00

The BioLogos Forum, a website which features moderate evangelicals' attempts to harmonize the Bible and science, has created quite a stir among fundamentalist evangelicals. Albert Mohler, the President of the Southern Baptist Seminary, has blogged against their attempts. John MacArthur, the President of the Master's Seminary, has said that this is an issue over which Christians must "draw a line in the sand." These fundamentalist evangelicals are afraid that if one accepts the findings of science, then it will no longer be possible to believe that the Bible is a divine revelation. They maintain that one must accept whatever the Bible says as the ultimate authority and if science disagrees, then science is wrong. This type of thinking is not new among conservative Christians. It is interesting that the Reformers of the 16th century violently opposed the findings of Copernicus regarding the fact that the earth revolves around the sun. They saw this as blatantly contradicting Scripture.

Martin Luther said:

People gave ear to an upstart astrologer who strove to show that the earth revolves, not the heavens or the firmament, the sun and the moon. Whoever wishes to appear clever must devise some new system, which of all systems is of course the very best. This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy; but sacred Scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still and not the earth (Luther's Works [Walsch 1743 edition], vol. 22:2260 cited in Andrew Dickson White, A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology [1901], vol. 1: 126)

Luther's protégé, Phillip Melancthon wrote:

The eyes are witnesses that the heavens revolve in the space of twenty-four hours. But certain men, either from the love of novelty, or to make a display of ingenuity, have concluded that the earth moves; and they maintain that neither the eighth sphere nor the sun revolves. ... Now, it is a want of honesty and decency to assert such notions publicly, and the example is pernicious. It is the part of a good mind to accept the truth as revealed by God and to acquiesce in it (Elements of Physics [1549] cited in White, 1:126-27).

John Calvin had the following to say about those who advocated heliocentrism:

... those dreamers who have a spirit of bitterness and contradiction, who reprove everything and pervert the order of nature. We will see some who are so deranged, not only in religion but who in all things reveal their monstrous nature, that they will say that the sun does not move, and that it is the earth which shifts and turns. When we see such minds we must indeed confess that the devil possesses them, and that God sets them before us as mirrors, in order to keep us in his fear ("Sermon on 1 Corinthinas 10:19-24," in the Corpus Reformatorum, vol. 49:677 translated by Robert White in "Calvin and Copernicus: The Problem Reconsidered," Calvin Theological Journal 15 [1980]: 236-37).

Of course, the Roman Catholic Church also opposed Copernicus. At the trial of Galileo, Cardinal Bellarmine is reported to have said:

To assert that the earth revolves around the sun is as erroneous as to claim that Jesus Christ was not born of a virgin (cited in Sean Kelly, Rosemary Rogers, Saints Preserve Us [1993] p. 243).

Conservative Christians have been opposing the advancements of science ever since Copernicus (see this prior post). What I find interesting is that these same Christians will utilize the benefits of science while denying the theories that brought about the advancements. If they continue to bury their heads in the sands and pretend that an ancient book written by late Bronze Age tribes is superior to modern science, they will have fewer and fewer adherents.

For a humorous parody of this fundamentalist mentality, see
"Copernicus’ Heliocentricty a Dangerous Threat to Inerrancy."

Richard Dawkins Tells It Like It Is

2010-09-19T11:33:00.001-04:00

Sunday Funnies--Sodom and Gomorrah

2010-09-19T04:00:00.000-04:00

From Ebolaworld.com

Articles and Theses on the Penal Substitutionary Theory of the Atonement

2010-09-18T04:00:00.003-04:00

Articles and Theses in Favor of the PST

"The Death of Sin in the Death of Jesus: Atonement Theology in the NT," by Ben Witherington (2010)

"The Scriptural Necessity of Christ's Penal Substitution," by Richard Mayhue, in The Master's Seminary Journal 20/2 (Fall 2009): 139-48.

"Penal Substitution in the Old Testament," by William Barrick, in The Master's Seminary Journal 20/2 (Fall 2009): 149-70.

"Penal Substitution in the New Testament: A Focused Look at First Peter," by Paul Felix, in The Master's Seminary Journal 20/2 (Fall 2009): 171-97.

"Penal Substitution in Church History," by Michael Vlach, in The Master's Seminary Journal 20/2 (Fall 2009): 199-214.

"Penal Substitution and Christian Worship," by Andrew Snider, in The Master's Seminary Journal 20/2 (Fall 2009): 215-30.

"Penal Substitution in Perspective: Re-Evaluating the Articulation and Application of the Doctrine," by Patrick Franklin, in McMaster Journal of Theology and Ministry 10 (2008–2009): 22–52.

"A Trinitarian Crucifixion: The Holy Spirit and Penal Substitution," by Rustin Umstaddt, a paper presented at the annual meeting of the ETS (2008).

"The Logic of Penal Substitution Revisited," by Oliver Crisp in The Atonement Debate: Papers from the London Symposium on the Theology of Atonement (2008), 208-27.

"Penal Substitution in Romans 3:25-26?," by Jarvis J. Williams, in The Princeton Theological Review (2007): 73-82.

"On the Penal Substitution Model of the Atonement," by Jianshe Kong, Ph.D. dissertaton, Brown University (2007).

"Articulating, Defending , and Proclaiming Christ Our Substitute," by Stephen Wellum, in The Southern Baptist Seminary Journal of Theology (Summer 2007).

"A History of the Doctrine of the Atonement, by Greg Allison, in The Southern Baptist Seminary Journal of Theology (Summer 2007).

"The Atonement in Isaiah's Fourth Servant Song," by Peter Gentry in The Southern Baptist Seminary Journal of Theology (Summer 2007).

"The Cross and Substitutionary Atonement," by Simon Gathercole in The Southern Baptist Seminary Journal of Theology (Summer 2007).

"Songs of the Crucified One: The Psalms and the Crucifixion," by Derek Tidball in The Southern Baptist Seminary Journal of Theology (Summer 2007).

"Christ Bore the Sins of Many: Substitution and the Atonement in Hebrews," by Barry Joslin in The Southern Baptist Seminary Journal of Theology (Summer 2007).

"The SBJT Forum: The Atonement Under Fire," by D. A. Carson, Thomas Schreiner, Bruce Ware and James Hamilton, in The Southern Baptist Seminary Journal of Theology (Summer 2007).

"The Atonement as Penal Substitution," by A. T. B. McGowan in Always Reforming: Explorations in Systematic Theology (2006).

"Nothing but the Blood," by Mark Dever, in Christianity Today (May 2006)

"Question…But isn’t “Penal Substitution” actually illegal (if not immoral)??," by Glenn Miller (2005).

"Can Punishment Bring Peace? Penal Substitution Revisited," by Stephen Holmes in Scottish Journal of Theology (2005)

"The Evangelical Alliance Atonement Symposium: Introductory Address," by David Hilborn (2005)

"Justice, Law, and Guilt," by Garry Williams (2005)

"Punished in our Place: A Reply to Steve Chalke on Penal Substitution," by Garry Williams (2005)

"Why Did Christ Die: A Symposium on the Theology of Atonement," by Sue Groom (2005)

"Swinburnian Atonement and the Doctrine of Penal Substitution," by Steven Porter in Faith and Philosophy (2004): 228-41.

"The Cross and Substitutionary Atonement" by Simon Gathercole in Scottish Bulletin of Evangelical Theology (2003)

“Rethinking the Logic of Penal Substitution,” by Steven Porter in Philosophy of Religion, ed. William Lane Craig, Michael Murray, and Daniel Howard-Snyder (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 2001), 596–608.

"The Atonement in Scripture," by David Petersen, a paper delivered at Oak Hill College School of Theology (2000).

"Moral Faith and Atonement," by John Hare, a paper presented at Wheaton College (1996).

"De Jesu Christo Servatore: Faustus Socinus on the Satisfaction of Christ," by Alan Gomes, in The Westminster Theological Journal (1993).

"What Did the Cross Achieve? The Logic of Penal Substitution," by J I Packer (1974)

"The Atonement and Human Sacrifice," by David Dilling, in Grace Theological Journal (1971)

"Concerning The Necessity And Reasonableness Of The Christian Doctrine Of Satisfaction For Sin," by Jonathan Edwards, The Works of President Edwards in 4 volumes, vol. I, 582-611. (1740)

"Christ's Agony," by Jonathan Edwards, in The works of Jonathan Edwards, ed. Edward Hickman, II, 872ff. (1745)

Articles and Theses in Opposition to the PST

"Poena Satisfactoria: Locating Thomas Aquinas Doctrine of Vicarious Satisfaction in Between Anselmian Satisfaction and Penal Substitution," by John Joy, Master's Thesis, International Theological Institute (2010)

"Substitutionary Atonement and the Church Fathers: A Reply to the Authors of Pierced For Our Transgressions," by Derek Flood, in The Evangelical Quarterly (2010).

"Not Penal Substitution but Vicarious Punishment", by Mark Murphy, in Faith and Philosophy, 26:3 (2009) 253-73.

"A Participatory Model of the Atonement," by Tim Bayne and Greg Restall, in New Waves in Philosophy of Religion eds. Yujin Nagasawa and Erik Wielenberg (2009)

"The Incarnational Theory of Atonement," by Robin Collins (2009)

"The Cross and the Caricatures: a Response to Pierced for Our Transgressions," by N. T. Wright (2007)

"More Thoughts on Penal Substitution" by Scott McKnight (2006)

"Atonement," by Eleonore Stump, in Aquinas, pp. 427-54 (2003).

"Why Does Jesus' Death Matter," by S. Mark Heim, in The Christian Century [March 6, 2001]: 12-17.

"Do We Believe in Penal Substitution," by David Lewis, in Oxford Readings in Philosophical Theology: Trinity, Incarnation, and Atonement, ed. Michael Rea (1997).

"Old Testament Sacrifice and the Death of Christ," by John Goldingay, in Atonement Today, pp. 3-20 (1995).

“Paul’s Understanding of the Death of Jesus,” by James D.G. Dunn, in Reconciliation and Hope: New Testament Essays on Atonement and Eschatology Presented to L.L. Morris on his 60th Birthday (1974), pp.125-141.

"Atonement and 'Saving Faith,'" by Brian Gerrish, in Theology Today (1960)

"Justice," in Unspoken Sermons, Part 3 by George MacDonald (1867)

"The Rise of the Edwardean Theory of the Atonement: An Introductory Essay," Edwards Amas Parks in The Atonement: Discourses and Treatises (1859).

Richard Dawkins Takes the Pope to Task for His Lies

2010-09-17T19:48:00.000-04:00

Here is an excellent post at The FriendlyAtheist

Francis Hall on Penal Substitution

2010-09-17T09:59:00.000-04:00

Francis Joseph Hall (1857-1933) was an Episcopalian Priest and Professor of Dogmatic Theology at The General Theological Seminary of New York City. In 1918, he published volume 7 of his series on Dogmatic Theology entitled: The Passion and Exaltation of Christ. In the book he argued against the Penal Substitutionary Theory (PST) of the atonement. He rejected the PST for the following reasons:

1. The imputation of one man's sin to another is immoral.

First of all, we ought to eliminate the notion that the God of truth and justice resorts to forensic imputation, whether of our guilt to Christ or of His righteousness to us. The presumption is overwhelming that a method of dealing with sin which appears untrue and immoral to men cannot be divine. It took a long time for Israel to learn that "the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him," and that what is needed is the turning of men from sin to righteousness. But what was so slowly learned by the ancients has become a Christian truism, which only needs to be reasonably stated, in order to be ratified by the moral judgment of all enlightened and unprejudiced Christian believers(pp. 45-46).

2. To punish one who is not guilty is a parody of justice.

The punishment of one who is not guilty, followed by exemption from punishment of the real sinners, appears on the face of it to be a parody of justice, and to violate the moral requirement that "the soul that sinneth it shall die" (p. 49).

3. Jesus did not remove physical death as a penalty for sin nor did he suffer spiritual death.

The penalty of sin is twofold: (a) the temporary sufferings of men, which culminate in physical death; (b) the death of the soul, or its final or permanent exclusion from the divine communion and fellowship for which man was made. The former penalty has not been removed by Christ's death; and the latter was not endured by Him (p. 49).

[A]s has been shown, the sufferings which Christ endured still have to be participated in by us. Even on the Cross He is our example. There is, therefore, no penal substitution. It cannot be denied that the term "substitution" is in line with certain scriptural phrases, and also with many expressions in patristic literature. But in its formal use it gives emphasis where Scripture does not, and expresses a more determinative idea than New Testament teaching, comprehensively regarded, justifies. The subject will call for treatment later on. We content ourselves at this point with repudiating the theory of substitution which describes it as penal. Our repudiation of this is absolute (pp. 51-52).

Hall goes on to advocate a theory of the atonement that merges elements of Anselm's theory with elements of the Eastern orthodox theory of incarnational atonement.

Pope's Visit to the United Kingdom

2010-09-16T17:03:00.001-04:00

Pope Benedict XVI arrived in the UK today for a 4 day visit. This evening he held mass in Glasgow, Scotland with 70,000 in attendance. The headline of the London Times reads: POPE WARNS ON DANGERS OF DRUGS, DRINK, MONEY, AND SEX. The article begins: Pope Benedict XVI urged the youth of Scotland to resist the “destructive” temptations of modern life tonight as he kicked off a state visit to Britain by celebrating an open air mass in Glasgow.

I am not sure how much he knows about those subjects, with the exception of money, but maybe he has seen enough of the damage done by his own priests especially in the area of sex to convince him of the dangers.

One of his top aides refused to accompany him to the UK because of "the new and aggressive atheism" that permeates the country. Cardinal Walter Kasper, according to The Scotsman, pulled out of the papal visit after declaring that Britain was like "a Third World country" marked by "a new and aggressive atheism". Perhaps he was upset over the following petition signed by many British luminaries, including Richard Dawkins, Stephen Fry and Terry Pratchett:

We, the undersigned, share the view that Pope Ratzinger should not be given the honour of a state visit to this country.

We believe that the Pope, as a citizen of Europe and the leader of a religion with many adherents in the UK, is of course free to enter and tour our country.

However, as well as a religious leader, the Pope is a head of state and the state and organisation of which he is head has been responsible for:

• opposing the distribution of condoms and so increasing large families in poor countries and the spread of AIDS

• promoting segregated education

• denying abortion to even the most vulnerable women

• opposing equal rights for lesbians, gay, bisexual and transgender people

• failing to address the many cases of abuse of children within its own organisation.

The state of which the Pope is head has also resisted signing many major human rights treaties and has formed its own treaties ('concordats') with many states which negatively affect the human rights of citizens of those states.

In any case, we reject the masquerading of the Holy See as a state and the Pope as a head of state as merely a convenient fiction to amplify the international influence of the Vatican.

I like the wording in the above petition: "the masquerading of the Holy See as a state." I agree 100%. I think it is ridiculous that the Vatican has an ambassador to the US. This only began in 1984. There is too much political influence exerted by the Church in the US and this includes Catholics, Protestants, Evangelicals, Mormons, as well as other religious groups.

A mural outside St John's Church in Edinburgh protests the Catholic Church's ban on women priests

Not only are the atheists protesting the Pope's visit but also Humanists, victims of sexual abuse, women's rights advocates and even Fundamentalist Evangelicals such as Ian Paisely (leader of the Free Presbyterian Church) are expressing their displeasure. What an interesting alliance. It may be many years before the Pope decides to set foot again in the British Isles.

Who is the "Real" Calvinist?

2010-09-16T03:00:00.003-04:00

There is a resurgence of Calvinism among American evangelicals. Al Mohler, President of the flagship Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville, John MacArthur, President of the Master's Seminary in Southern California, John Piper, Pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis are some of the leaders of this "neo-Calvinism" (see "Young, Restless, Reformed: Calvinism is making a comeback—and shaking up the church," Christianity Today [September 2006]). (The movement even has T-shirts, see on the right).

Many of these folks are proud to identify themselves as Calvinists but are they "true" Calvinists? Would John Calvin have accepted them? Listen to Richard Muller, Professor of Historical Theology at Calvin Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids:

I once met a minister who introduced himself to me as a "five-point Calvinist." I later learned that, in addition to being a self-confessed five-point Calvinist, he was also an anti-paedobaptist who assumed that the church was a voluntary association of adult believers, that the sacraments were not means of grace but were merely "ordinances" of the church, that there was more than one covenant offering salvation in the time between the Fall and the eschaton, and that the church could expect a thousand-year reign on earth after Christ's Second Coming but before the ultimate end of the world. He recognized no creeds or confessions of the church as binding in any way. I also found out that he regularly preached the "five points" in such a way as to indicate the difficulty of finding assurance of salvation: He often taught his congregation that they had to examine their repentance continually in order to determine whether they had exerted themselves enough in renouncing the world and in "accepting" Christ. This view of Christian life was totally in accord with his conception of the church as a visible, voluntary association of "born again" adults who had "a personal relationship with Jesus."

In retrospect, I recognize that I should not have been terribly surprised at the doctrinal context or at the practical application of the famous five points by this minister — although at the time I was astonished. After all, here was a person, proud to be a five-point Calvinist, whose doctrines would have been repudiated by Calvin. In fact, his doctrines would have gotten him tossed out of Geneva had he arrived there with his brand of "Calvinism" at any time during the late sixteenth or the seventeenth century. Perhaps more to the point, his beliefs stood outside of the theological limits presented by the great confessions of the Reformed churches—whether the Second Helvetic Confession of the Swiss Reformed church or the Belgic Confession and Heidelberg Catechism of the Dutch Reformed churches or the Westminster standards of the Presbyterian churches. He was, in short, an American evangelical ("How Many Points," Calvin Theological Journal, Vol. 28 (1993): 425-26).

I find it humorous that some Christians fight over "who is the real Calvinist" as if that was somehow a badge of honor. Personally, I find Calvin's theology to be demeaning to God (assuming for a moment that he really does exist). Calvin's God created the world in order to save a chosen few and damn the rest to hell for eternity. Why? Because it brings him glory (Romans 9:22-23) ! Roger Olson, Professor of Theology in the George W. Truett Theological Seminary of Baylor University says: "The God of Calvinism scares me; I'm not sure how to distinguish him from the devil." Thomas Jefferson said:

I can never join Calvin in addressing his god... his religion was Dæmonism. If ever man worshipped a false god, he did. The being described in his 5 points is not the God whom you and I acknowledge and adore, the Creator and benevolent governor of the world; but a dæmon of malignant spirit. It would be more pardonable to believe in no god at all, than to blaspheme him by the atrocious attributes of Calvin (Letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823).

Most Calvinists that I have encountered are haughty and arrogant (see Tribalogue and Pyromaniacs). They and they alone have the truth and every other poor soul, including the majority of historical Christianity, is deluded.

Rustin Umstattd on Penal Substitution and the Trinity

2010-09-15T03:00:00.004-04:00

Rustin J. Umstattd is Assistant Professor of Theology at Midwestern Baptist Seminary (SBC) in Kansas City, Missouri. He presented a paper in 2008 at the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society entitled, "A Trinitarian Crucifixion: The Holy Spirit and Substitutionary Atonement." In the paper he deals with the Holy Spirit's role in the Atonement, an often neglected topic. My interest in his paper relates to how he deals with the theological problem of one member of the Trinity (the Son) being punished by another member of the Trinity (the Father). The punishment endured by Jesus, according to defenders of the Penal Substitutionary Theory (PST) of the atonement, is spiritual death which entails separation from God. The difficult question which all defenders of the PST must attempt to answer is how can one member of the Trinity be separated from another member without causing a breach in the supposed eternal unity of the Godhead. According to A.T.B. McGowan this is the most difficult problem posed by the PST of the atonement. He says:

Let me say that I fully understand the difficulty that attaches to this subject of the Son bearing the wrath of the Father, and I fully respect the theological complexity involved in maintaining penal substitution in the light of the need for a careful delineating of the relationship between the Father and the Son. In my view, this is the strongest theological argument to be faced by any doctrine of penal substitution (Always Reforming: Explorations in Systematic Theology [2006], p. 199).

The moment that appears to demonstrate the separation between the Father and Son is when Jesus crys from the cross: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matt. 27:46). While some have argued that Jesus only felt abandoned by the Father, defenders of the PST, who understand the logic behind the theory, must maintain that there was an actual abandonement. As Umstattd argues:

Jesus’ cry of dereliction in which he quotes Ps 22:1 should not be viewed as a cry of victory in which the entirety of the Psalm is in focus, as a cry of unbelief or despair, or a cry of abandonment in which Jesus only felt forsaken, but was not in actuality.

He, however, adds an important caveat: One must be able to both maintain the abandonment of the Son with the unity of the Trinity that remains unbroken. He believes that it is the Holy Spirit who maintains this unity between the Father and the Son.

Can one say that Jesus was actually abandoned by the Father, though, without breaking the unity of the Trinity? It doesn't seem possible to me. Being abandoned, forsaken, or separated is incongruent with the notion of unity. The unity envisioned in the classic doctrine of the Trinity is not merely a unity of purpose but a unity of being. Each person is said to indwell the other persons. The theological term sometimes used to refer to this is perichoresis. This is a Greek term used to describe the triune relationship between each person of the Godhead. It can be defined as co-indwelling, co-inhering, and mutual interpenetration (Theopedia). Jürgen Moltmann says regarding perichoresis:

{T]his concept grasps the circulatory character of the eternal divine life. An eternal life process takes place in the triune God through the exchange of energies. The Father exists in the Son, the Son in the Father, and both of them in the Spirit, just as the Spirit exists in both the Father and the Son. By virtue of their eternal love they live in one another to such an extent, and dwell in one another to such an extent, that they are one. . . . The unity of the triunity lies in the eternal perichoresis of the trinitarian persons (The Trinity and the Kingdom: The Doctrine of God, pp. 174-75).

Umstattd recognizes the problem when he says:

[W]hen Jesus experienced the Father’s wrath upon the cross and he cried out from the depths of his being the lament of dereliction, the Son was not separated from the Father and the Spirit ontologically, but experientially.

I am not sure how one can be united ontologically and perichoretically and yet experientially be separated. It seems the only way this could happen is if one only felt as if one was separated, but Umstattd maintains the separation was actual and not merely "felt."

Another problem that Umstattd and defenders of the PST face is that if the separation was actual, then not only would there a breach in the unity of the Trinity but there would be a breach in the unity of the person of Christ. Chalcedonian Christology maintains that the two natures, divinity and humanity, dwell together in one single person--Jesus Christ--who is both God and man and yet one person. Is the divine nature in Christ estranged from his human nature on the cross or is it estranged from the Father and the Spirit? It seems that it would have to be one or the other.

Umstattd apparently holds that in one sense the Father and Son were separated on the cross but in another sense they were united by the Spirit. It is almost as if the Spirit is some kind of personal conduit who keeps the two connected even though they are actually separated. He writes:

[I]n the event in which God the Father pours out his wrath upon God the Son, the Spirit is both the bond of love that unites the two even in the separation, and conversely, the Spirit also applies to the Son the Father’s wrath, which is nothing other than the wrath of all three persons together.

He explains further:

[T]he abandonment of the Father was a far deeper suffering. From the depths of his being, he cried out, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani!” In popular terms, the Father turned his back upon the Son because he could not look upon the sin laid upon him. In this forsakenness, Jesus was left alone on the cross to bear the full weight of judgment. At this point, the Spirit is the bond that holds the Trinity together. While that is assuredly correct, it fails to capture another element of the Spirit’s work, his actualizing of the Father’s judgment given to the Son, in which the Son comes under his own judgment. When Jesus experienced the abandonment of the Father, it was executed by and in the Spirit as the one who actualizes God’s interaction with humanity. The abandonment of the Father was experienced by Jesus in the Spirit, while at the same time, underneath and in concert with the abandonment the Spirit held the Father and Son together in unity.

I don't see how Umstattd's position avoids contradiction. If two persons are separated, another person may serve as an intermediary between the two, but if the third person is actually a personal conduit through which the connection is ontologically maintained, then there is no actual separation between the persons. If the God-man is not actually separated from the Trinity on the cross, then he does not endure spiritual death. And since spiritual death is the penalty for sin, he does not endure the penalty for sin thus negating the PST of the atonement.

Stanford Burney on Penal Substitution

2010-09-14T03:00:00.000-04:00

Stanford Guthrie Burney (1814-1893) was the Professor of Theology at Cumberland University, the official institution of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. He is the author of Atonement Soteriology: The Sacrificial, in contrast with the Penal, Substitutionary, and Merely Moral or Exemplary Theories of Propitiation published in 1888. He presents three problems for the Penal Substitutionary Theory (PST) of the Atonement.

1. If God's justice cannot be upheld unless sin be punished, and if Christ did not suffer the precise punishment which man's sin deserves, then God's justice is still not satisfied.

He writes:

Some hold that Christ suffered in degree, but not in kind what all for whom he died would have suffered in time and eternity. This is not substitution in any proper sense. If I am required by law to do a particular thing, and engage another man to do it in my place, and he, instead of doing it, does an equal amount of other work, he does not act the part of a substitute; nor will the law release me. If, however, the governor choose to accept what is actually done, in lieu of what I am required to do, then this is a matter of sovereign prerogative, and not of law or justice. Hence, it is manifest that if the elect world is required by justice to do one thing, and Christ does another thing, and God accepts what he does in lieu of what they are required to do, then the atonement is not a matter of justice, but of sovereign prerogative. But atonement by sovereign prerogative is " the holy horror" of the less inconsistent substitutionists (pp. 94-95).

Furthermore, he argues:

God fixed the kind and amount of penalty proper to the sins of the elect. This kind and amount of penalty were in exact accord with justice. But when God accepted Christ as the substitute "of his people," he changed the penalty materially both as to kind and amount. If the penalty as fixed for sinners was just, then of necessity the penalty as fixed for their substitute was unjust. If the latter was just, then the former was unjust. Dr. Hodge's theory, take it as we will, makes God unjust, if the atonement was made primarily to satisfy justice (p. 104).

2. Punishment presupposes a crime. You cannot have one without the other.

Certainly there is an appreciable distinction between criminality and penalty, between moral corruption and punishment, and we may indicate this difference by the technical forms, "reatus culpae" [ fault] and "reatus poena" [punishment]; if we choose. But it must be remembered that though they are logically distinct they are both logically and chronologically inseparable. Criminality involves liability to punishment, and punishment presupposes criminality. Of course there is no objection to the distinction itself, but grave objection to the order and manner of relationship between criminality and penality as held by substitutionists.

As to the order of relation between crime and penalty, it seems superfluous to say that they are related as cause and effect, or as antecedent and consequence, and that crime is the antecedent and punishment the consequence. Hence, no crime, no punishment. To take away the criminality is to take away, or rather to prevent, the punishment. To remove the disease is to relieve the pain which it produces (pp. 112-13).

3. If Christ paid the penalty for sin (reatus poena) without taking on the demerit or corruption of the sin (reatus culpae), as adherents of the PST maintain, then man is still left in a corrupt or guilty state.

But substitutionists reverse this natural order of the relation between crime and punishment, making the removal of the "reatus poena" antecedent to the removal of the "reatus culpae"—that is, exemption from punishment is the antecedent of deliverance from criminality.

Hence, the sinner is pardoned, released from all liability to penal suffering, when Christ became his substitute, but is left in his criminal and polluted state; morally corrupt, but not liable to-the divinely ordained consequence of his corruption! At enmity against God, yet not liable to the consequences of that state of enmity. Such a state of things, it is self-evident, is impossible in the sphere of either physical or moral law. It would be possible only in the sphere of human law, and possible here only because of the inherent weakness of human law. Thus, a man commits a malicious murder, is indicted and tried by the proper court; but, by the bribery or death of witnesses, or by corrupting the court, he procures a verdict of acquittal, and is set free. This verdict operates as a barrier against subsequent prosecution and punishment. This is exactly the state in which substitutionary satisfaction puts all for whom Christ died. His death absolutely delivers from "reatus poena," but leaves them in the meshes of "reatus culpae," from which, however, they are at some indefinite time to be wholly or in part relieved (pp. 113-14).

It seems that there is just no way to make the PST work. It is fatally inconsistent and incoherent.

"When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."--Stephen Roberts

2010-09-13T04:00:00.005-04:00

The above quotation attributed to Stephen Roberts is, I think, profound. Philosopher Elizabeth Anderson points out:

The same cognitive bias that leads pagans to believe in witches and multiple gods leads theists to believe in God. Indeed, once the explanatory principle--to ascribe worldly events that bear on human well-being to the intentions and powers of unseen spirits, when no actual person is observed to have caused them--is admitted, it is hard to deny that the evidence for polytheism and spiritualism of all heretical varieties is exactly on a par with the evidence for theism (("If God is Dead, Is Everything Permitted," in Philosophers without Gods, ed. Louise Antony [2007],p. 227).

Anderson recounts her experience at the summer fair in Ann Arbor, Michigan where various religious groups have booths from which to propagate their faith.

Along one street one finds booths of Catholics, Baptists, Calvinists, Christian Orthodox ... Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Baha'i, Mormons, Christian Scientists, Jehovah's Witnesses, Jews for Jesus, Wiccans, Scientologists, New Age believers--representatives of nearly every religion that has a significant presence in the United States. The believers in each booth offer evidence of exactly the same kind to advance their religion. Every faith points to its own holy texts and oral traditions, its spiritual experiences, miracles and prophets, its testimonies of wayward lives turned around by conversion, rebirth of faith, or return to the church. Each religion takes these experiences and reports them as conclusive evidence for its peculiar set of beliefs.

... [I] am always struck by the fact that they are staffed by people who are convinced of their own revelations and miracles, while most so readily disparage the revelations and miracles of other faiths. To a mainstream Christian, Jew, or Muslim, nothing is more obvious than that founders and prophets of other religions, such as Joseph Smith, the Rev. Moon, Mary Baker Eddy, and L. Ron Hubbard, are either frauds or delusional, their purported miracles or cures tricks played upon a credulous audience, their prophecies false, their metaphysics absurd. To me, nothing is more obvious than that the evidence cited on behalf of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam is of exactly the same type and quality cited on behalf of such despised religons. Indeed, it is on a par with the evidence for Zeus, Baal, Thor, and other long-abandoned gods, who are now considered ridiculous by nearly everyone (Ibid., pp. 226-27).

Man seems to be a religious animal and will look for something beyond the natural world to explain what he does not understand. When one becomes a true believer in a particular religion, other contradictory religions are written off as delusional. Yet, if one applied the same standards to his own religion as he is applying to the ones he rejects, he would reject his own as well (This is essentially "The Outsider Test of Faith" popularized by John Loftus). As Robert Heinlein quipped: One man's religion is another man's belly laugh.

When I was an evangelical Christian, I remember wondering how any intelligent person could believe the teaching of Mormonism. Yet, I encountered intelligent lawyers, doctors, and other professionals who were Mormons. This was always something of a mystery to me. I concluded that they must believe, if they really do, without thinking much about it. They must be Mormons because their families have been Mormons for generations. In other words, they believed not based on an impartial examination of the evidence but because of societal and cultural influences. But when I applied the same logic to my own belief system, I looked for excuses as to why my beliefs were rational and not merely due to cultural considerations. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that it is no more logical to believe that God appeared to Moses than it was to believe he appeared to Joseph Smith (or Muhammad or any of the other thousands who have claimed to hear directly from God).

Sunday Funnies--The Tower of Babel

2010-09-12T04:00:00.000-04:00

From Ebolaworld.com

Saturday Jam--The Marshall Tucker Band

2010-09-11T08:08:00.000-04:00

One of my favorite Southern Rock Bands--The Marshall Tucker Band

Can't You See

Fire on the Mountain

Heard it in a Love Song

Dumb, Dumber, and Dumbest

2010-09-10T09:35:00.003-04:00

DUMB

Pastor Terry Jones is dumb. His call to burn Qurans on 9/11 is just plain dumb. The Quran is no worse than the Bible that Pastor Jones loves. The Bible also has many horrible things in it including commands for God's "chosen people" to commit genocide (Deuteronomy 7:2).

DUMBER

The Muslims who threaten those who burn Qurans are dumber. What difference does it make if a holy book is burned? Does it destroy the words of the book? Muslims believe that the words of the Quran are from God (same as Christians believe about the Bible). The words are spiritual. Is a fire going to destroy something spiritual? The Muslims are too sensitive about their religion threatening violence to anyone who dares to draw a picture of Muhammad or speak evil of Islam. Come on, followers of Muhammad, don't be so insecure.

DUMBEST

The dumbest of all is the news media who gives a nutjob like Pastor Jones the spotlight. If the media had just ignored Mr. Jones and his tiny congregation, their dumb actions would have gone largely unnoticed. But the newsmedia is all about ratings and any kind of sideshow is good for ratings. Maybe the American people are the dumbest of all because we enjoy watching such sideshows. Unfortunately any crackpot that wants to get his 15 minutes of fame will now threaten to burn a Quran.

Come on newsmedia, there has got to be more important things to report than what a kook in Florida wants to do some supposed holy book.

Why Hume's Guillotine Fails with regard to Ethical Intuitionism

2010-09-10T04:00:00.001-04:00

Some theists have argued that Hume's Guillotine effectively eliminates the possiblity of there being moral facts given a naturalistic world-view. What is Hume's Guillotine?

Hume's Guillotine, also known as the "is-ought problem" or Hume's law is a criticism of writings by ethicists who make normative claims (about what ought to be) based on positive premises (about what is). The problem was articulated by David Hume in his most important philosophical work, A Treatise of Human Nature (Book III, §I).

Hume argued that one cannot make a normative claim based on facts about the world, implying that normative claims cannot be the conclusions of reason.

The term "Hume's Guillotine" is meant to describe the severance of "is" statements from "ought" statements, which similarly, and colourfully, illustrates the resulting removal of the head from many ethical arguments.

One may consider the following moral argument as an example of an is-ought problem:

1.Sam is stealing money from work.
2.Losing money by theft causes harm to Sam's employers.
3.(One ought to not cause harm to his employers.)
4.Therefore, Sam ought to stop stealing money from work.

Premises 1 and 2 are "is" statements, describing facts of what is happening. Premise 3 and Conclusion 4 are "ought" statements, that describes how things should be happening. But what is the source of this knowledge? This argument appears to be valid if the premises are true, but unless we can logically support Premise 3, it is not sound. What can possibly give us rational knowledge that things ought to be different than the way things are? (Philosophy-Index)

Why doesn't Hume's Guillotine effectively decapitate ethical intuitionism? Simply because ethical intuitionism holds that there are certain moral facts that are self-evident, and are not based on inference or conscious reasoning. One definition of Ethical Intuitionism is a view in moral epistemology according to which some moral truths can be known without inference ("Ethical Intuitionism"). Hume is arguing that one cannot move from a descriptive fact (how something is) to a prescriptive fact (how something ought to be) by means of inference or deduction. However, that is not what ethical intuitionists do. Listen to Brian Zamulinski:

Inference is an intellectual movement from proposition to proposition. Apprehension is the acquisition of a belief in response to a state of affairs. Our ability to apprehend states of affairs is not fundamentally an ability to make inferences, no matter what sorts of inferences. It is an ability to see that such and such is the case. With evolutionary intuitionism, we intuitively apprehend the fact, say, that torture is wrong. We do not infer the belief that torture is wrong from other propositions. Since inference is not involved, the impossibility of inferring an "ought" from an "is" is not relevant. The is/ought gap is of no significance whatsoever for evolutionary intuitionism (Evolutionary Intuitionism: A Theory of the Origin and Nature of Moral Facts [2007], p. 112).

Mark Heim's Indictments Against the Traditional Doctrine of the Atonement

2010-09-09T05:00:00.002-04:00

S. Mark Heim is the Samuel Abbot Professor of Christian Theology at Andover Newton Theological School in Newton, MA. He has written a provocative book on the atonement entitled: Saved from Sacrifice: A Theology of the Cross [2006]. In the book he offers a new perspective on the atonement utilizing the theories of Rene Girard. I will discuss his theory in a later post. For now, I am interested in his 5 indictments against the traditional doctrine of the atonement (He believes that all of the traditional theories of the atonement share the same indictments).

1. Its main feature, a bloody sacrifice, is foreign and repulsive in our culture.

First, such doctrine always trades in the language of sacrifice. Increasing numbers of people find this language empty, literally unintelligible, or actively offensive. The first time I visited the Kali temple in Calcutta, I literally stepped in pools of blood from a sacrificed goat. I felt revulstion, and yet I saw the irony in that reaction. I have attended worship services all my life in which people talked and sang about blood shed for me. I never walked away with any on my shoes before. If I was comfortable with the abstract idea, why did I shrink from the reality? (p. 23).

While the concept of ritual blood sacrifice was part of the culture of the ancient world, it is foreign to us, especially those of us in the Western civilized world.

It is no more natural for people in our society to regard Christ as a sin ofering who removes our guilt than for them to consider sacrificing oxen on an altar in the neighborhood playground to keep their children safe (p. 23).

2. It leads to anti-Semitism.

Second, few can be unaware that the cross has been the keystone of Christian anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism. ... If atonement theology requires a divine victim, it may endow the supposed villains of the piece with an almost supernatural evil ... Beleif in the atonement stands indicted for linking Christian salvation with demonization of Jews (p. 24).

3. It is not unique in ancient mythologies.

A third charge stems from the fact that our knowledge of world religions and mythology puts Jesus' death in an unavoidably comparative context. The Gospels attribute unique significance to the cross. Yet since the rise of modern anthropology, we know that tales of dying and rising gods are a common feature across human cultures. How could there be something special about this tale alone, when we know of Osiris, the myths of the corn kings, and so many other stories? Only Christian nearsightedness can stare fixedly at just one cross while standing in a forest of others (p. 24).

4. It presents a troubling portrait of God.

Fourth, traditional interpretations of the crucifixion are criticized for moral failings, especially in the picture they paint of God. The specific ways Christians have understood the cross often involve transactional analogies of substitution, ransom, or satisfaction. [...] Such categories explain Jesus' death, but in such a way as to pose further troubling questions. If a debt is owed to God, why can't God simply forgive it, as Jesus apparenlty counsels others to do? If God is ransoming us from other powers, why does God have to submit to their terms? If this is God's wise and compassionate plan for salvation, why does it require such violence? [...] We can hardly imagine God demanding the suffering and death of one innocent as the condition of mercy toward guilty others (p. 25).

5. It glorifies suffering and encourages a victim mentality.

Fifth, a rising chorus charges that Christian ideas of atonement foster toxic psychological and social effects. [...] In exalting Christ's death, do we not glorify innocent suffering and encourage people to passively accept roles as surrogate sufferers for others, "in imitation of Christ"? What earthly despot would not be glad to have the weak and oppressed adopt this as their spiritual ideal? By making the cross God's recipe for salvation, do we validate violence as a divine way of doing business? A theology that has the heavenly Father punish his innocent Son to redeem the world looks uncomfortably to some like a charter for child abuse, with an innocent son sent to bear the wrath of a "heavenly father" to make things right for the entire extended family.

[...] Whether we are thinking of society as a whole or as individuals, this indictment states that the cross should carry a label: this religious image may be harmful to your health (pp. 25-26).

These indictments, Heim says,

assert no minor flaw in Christianity, but a consistent fault line in the whole foundation that runs from distorted views of God to spiritual guilt fixation to sacrificial bloodshed to anti-Semitic persceution to arrogant ignorance of world mythology. All of this adds up to a fatally skewed faith, revolving around a central narrative based on sacred violence and the glorification of innocent suffering (p. 27).

Wow, Heim does not "pull any punches" in his criticisms of traditional atonement theory. I agree with him in his indictments but in contrast to him, I find the traditional doctrine of the atonement to be part of the warp and woof of Christianity. To try to remove the doctrine or replace it with his Girardian version, is to destroy the essence of historic Christianity.

The Evolution of the Concepts Behind Sacrifice in the Hebrew Bible

2010-09-08T02:00:00.006-04:00

In a prior post, I discussed the fact that all ancient religions practiced sacrifices. As the Frenchman Joseph De Maistre wrote in 1810: [H]istory shows man to be convinced at all times of this terrible truth, that he lives under the hand of an angry power and that this power can be appeased only by sacrifice ("Enlightenment on Sacrifices," in St. Petersburg Dialogues, trans. Richard LeBrun [1993], p. 353). In the last post, I pointed out at least four purposes that these sacrifices served in the minds of the ancients. In today's post, I want to deal with how the concepts behind religious sacrifice evolved in the Hebrew Bible.

According to Stephen Finlan:

In the premonarchic period, Hebrew sacrifice was not much different from that of its neighbors. Sacrifice was originally for appeasement, mollifying the gods with gifts ((The Background and Content of Paul's Cultic Atonement Metaphors [2004], p. 29).

It seems that one of the early notions underlying the concept of sacrifice was to "feed the god(s)." This is seen in the Hebrew Bible in Numbers 28:2-6 and in the more than 40 passages where the smell of the burnt-offering is said to be a "pleasant aroma" to Yahweh (the table of shewbread also depicted this element). As Finlan points out:

Theology is moving away from such anthropomorphic notions, but in the Pentateuch, it has not moved very far.... Feeding, housing, and mollifying a god, and praying in his direction, are only some of the naturalistic notions that occur in pagan and Hebrew traditions alike (p. 30).

One of the developments in Hebrew theology was the idea that sin causes uncleanness or impurity. The sacrifices then become a means to effect purification. It appears that initially this was seen as some type of physical impurity that could be cleansed by blood and later the physical gave way to a spiritual interpretation of what was taking place. In the Hebrew mind, blood was an important purifying or cleansing agent. According to Finlan, The central feature becomes the sprinkling of blood instead of the sending up of smoke [as in the burnt-offering], and it is understood to purify rather than to appease (p. 40). James D. G. Dunn argues that in the Levitical sacrifices, God is never the object of the verb atone (כָּפַר), instead "sin" is the object. The sacrifice is seen as acting on the sin not on God directly. The key element of the sacrifice becomes the purging or removal of the uncleanness caused by sin (The Theology of Paul the Apostle, p. 214).

Leviticus 17:11 is a key text in understanding the signficance of the blood in the Hebrew mind. It reads: For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement by the life (ESV). The author is saying that the blood makes atonement because the life of a creature is in its blood. Finlan writes:

Manipulation of blood is effective because "the life of the flesh is in the blood"-- obviously (but not to us). The metaphysical logic that was obvious to the author and his readers was soon forgotten in the Jewish tradition. The text became normative, but its animistic assumptions were no longer understood.

Why should the sprinkling of life-force accomplish atonement? There is clearly some equivalency between blood and life, but the exact nature of the equivalency is not spelled out.... [Apparently] life is a force within the blood, and ritual, carefully performed, can harness this dangerous force. Blood, carrying the life-force, can somehow reverse the anti-life of sin and pollution. When the blood is poured on a ritually-polluted temple installation, the life-force cleans away the anti-life force, pollution (p. 41).

How the idea that blood has some special life force developed is not clear. It may be due to the fact that when the blood is removed, the life departs. We do know that this life principle being in the blood was not unique to the Hebrews. According to one conservative commentary on the Old Testament:

The idea that blood contained the essence of life is evidence in the Mesopotamian belief that the first people were created from the blood of a slain deity. But there were no dietary restrictions regarding blood and nothing to suggest a ritual use of blood, either in terms of what was offered to deity or in purification rituals, anywhere else in the ancient Near East (John Walton, Victor Matthews, and Mark Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament, [2000], p. 132).

While the Hebrews may have been unique in the ANE in regard to their ritual use of the blood of the sacrifice, the notion of spilled blood as having expiatory effects was not unique. As De Maistre writes:

Let us accept the vitality of blood, or rather the identity of blood and life, as a fact which antiquity never doubted and which has been acknowledged again today; another opinion as old as the world itself was that heaven grew angry with the flesh, and blood could be appeased only by blood. No nation doubted that there was an expiatory virtue in the spilling of blood [emphasis mine](Ibid., p. 358).

De Maistre maintains that the blood itself was of prime importance in the sacrificial ritual not the flesh or meat of the animal. He writes:

It is not at all merely a matter of a present, of an offering, of first-fruits, of a simple act of homage and recognition offered to the divine sovereign [...]; for on this supposition men would have sought in butcher shops the flesh that had to be offered on their altars [...]. It is a matter of blood; it is a matter of immolation properly speaking; it is a matter of explaining how men of all times and all places could agree in believing that there was, not in the offering of flesh (this must be noted carefully), but in the shedding of blood, an expiatory virtue (Ibid., p. 372).

So, while all nations seemed to recognize the propitiatory power of sacrifices, the ritual use of the blood by the Hebrews indicates that they saw the blood as having magical, purifying power when applied. Finlan refers to the work of Jacob Milgrom (Studies in Cultic Theology and Terminology [1983], pp. 38-43 and pp. 77-79):

Milgrom describes three different levels of purification to handle different levels of pollution: application of the blood of the sacrifice to the horns of the outer altar will purge the impurity caused by the voluntary sin of an individual; blood on the inner altar purges involuntary sin by the community; deliberate and wanton sin by either an individual or the community requires the sprinkling of blood on the kapporet [mercy seat], and can only be done once a year (pp. 32-33).

Initially, this purification by the application of the blood seems to have been taken in some kind of literalistic manner. Finlan argues:

And this reflects a truth about cultic ritual: cult takes the power of symbols literally. In fact, one could define cult as the systematic taking of religious symbols literally--as literal conduits of power. Inasmuch as it involves the belief that action upon the symbol will have an effect on the thing symbolized, cultic ceremony is inherently magical (p. 42).

Later, of course, the literal understanding gives way to a spiritual interpretation of the practice. All of this becomes foundational to how the early Christians interpreted the death of Jesus.

The Concept of Sacrifice in Ancient Times

2010-09-07T03:00:00.005-04:00

One of the common elements in all ancient religions is the offering of sacrifices to a supernatural entity. This entity evolved from a spirit that inhabits natural objects such as rivers, trees, mountains, and so on (animism), to the spirits of departed ancestors (ancestor worship), to deities that were much like man (anthropomorphic deities), to a deity who is transcendent and separate from creation (Hebrew monotheism), to philosophical constructs of a deity that possesses total perfection in every way--omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotentence, etc. (later Greek concepts of deity) [see this prior post]. As the evolution continued, the sacrifices also evolved until eventually they were totally spiritualized and ceased to be physical acts. Stephen Finlan writes:

As the culture evolves, religion evolves, and sacrifice is subjected to continuing reinterpretation and alteration.... From Greece to Asia Minor to Israel, we can see that a heightening of intellectual culture brings a heightening of moral sensibility, and calls bloody sacrifice into question. This is especially visible in the Hebrew and Greek cultures, which both moved toward an emphasis on the inward religious attitude.

As cultures enter a stablization phase, cultic tradents standardize the cult. Under their influence, ritual practices are reinterpreted, changed, or even suppressed.... The metaphysical conceptions motivating many rituals were forgotten by the time the procedures were inscribed in texts (The Background and Content of Paul's Cultic Atonement Metaphors [2004], pp. 46-47).

In order to better understand how early Christians came to interpret the death of Jesus, it is necessary to take a look back at the concepts underlying the offering of sacrifices in ancient religion. There is a host of literature on the subject but the best introduction to the subject is probably the work edited by Jeffrey Carter entitled: Understanding Religious Sacrifice: A Reader (2003). Carter provides lengthy excerpts from some of the best studies done on the matter of religious sacrifices. From reading his work and others, I have come to the conclusion that sacrifices in ancient religions typically involved at least four purposes:

1. To placate the anger of the deity.
2. To garner the favor of the deity.
3. To bring about purification.
4. To restore harmony or order.

Most of these elements can be seen in virtually every religion that has ever practiced sacrifices. The sacrifice is seen as a gift of something valuable to the deity that accomplishes one or more of the above purposes. The concept of placating the anger of the deity and/or garnering its favor seems to be the earliest notions involved in ritual sacrifices. Homer writing about 800 BCE says that the gods are pliable and can be influenced by gifts such as roasted meat ( The Illiad, bk. 9). Plato, writing about 300 years later, was critical of those who thought they could bribe the gods through gifts and sacrifices (See Plato, Laws, bk. 10). One of the earliest references to sacrifices in the Hebrew Bible is found in Genesis 8. After Noah left the ark, he presented burnt offerings of animals and birds to Yahweh. The text says that when Yahweh "smelled the pleasing aroma," he promised never to curse the ground again (v. 21). This description of a burnt-offering being a "pleasing aroma" (KJV, "sweet-smelling savor") is repeated often (42 times) in the Hebrew Bible. According to Stephen Finlan:

[F]iguratively it means a sacrifice that God accepts, but its literal and older meaning is smoke that is tasty to God. The verbal root "nuach" means rest, so it is a restful or "tranquilizing" aroma, pacifying God's anger ... (Problems with Atonement [2005], p. 12).

In other words, the aroma of the cooked animal pacified or calmed the anger that God felt. This is the essence of propitiation (Rom. 3:25; I Jn. 2:2) to which I will return in a later post.

Sacrifices are seen often in the Hebrew Bible prior to the Levitical law. In the book of Job, which most believe predate the patriarchs, Job daily presented burnt-offerings to the Lord (1:5). The patriarchs regularly built altars and made burnt-offerings to the Lord. This was also a common practice of Israel's neighbors. The offering up of an animal (and sometimes a human being) as a burnt-sacrifice was widespread in antiquity. It was seen as an exchange, a gift to the deity in exchange for the deity's favor.

Why were ancient peoples so prone to think that a supernatural agent was causing either the good things or the bad things that were happening to them? According to philosopher, Elizabeth Anderson:

The answer is that they took it for granted that all events bearing on human well-being are willed by some agent for the purpose of affecting humans for good or ill. If no human was observed to have caused the event, or if the event was of a kind (e.g., a plague, drought, or good weather) that no human would have the power to cause, then they assumed that some unseen, more-powerful agent had to have willed it, precisely for its good or bad effects on humans. So, if the event was good for people, they assumed that God willed it out of love for them; if it was bad, they assumed that God willed it out of anger at them. This mode of explantation is universally obeserved among people who lack scientific understanding of natural events. It appears to be a deeply rooted cognitive bias of humans to reject the thought of meaningless suffering. ("If God is Dead, Is Everything Permitted," in Philosophers without Gods, ed. Louise Antony [2007],p. 225).

So, the offering of the sacrificial gift was seen as a means by which one could manipulate or affect the emotions and will of the deity. It really is not that much different today with religious (or superstituous) peoples. For example, many people in the USA today believe that if they attend religious services or give money to a charity, or say certain prayers they can influence a deity's attitude towards them which will result in good fortune.

Henry Solly on the "Punishment" of an Innocent

2010-09-06T03:00:00.001-04:00

Henry Solly (1813-1903) was a Unitarian minister and a social reformer in England. He founded the Working Men's Club and Institute Union in London in 1862.

In 1861, he wrote a book entitled: The Doctrine of Atonement by the Son of God. In it he argued against the Penal Substitutionary Theory (PST) of the atonement. Regarding the "punishment" (I use quotation marks because it is logically impossible to punish an innocent)of Jesus, he writes:

But inasmuch as he was himself " without sin," those sufferings, of course, must not for an instant be viewed as penal or retributory. Strange, indeed, would it be, if we were to imagine that he who was absolutely without sin, the only being that ever walked this earth of whom that could be said, had been especially marked out as the object of punishment, or even permitted to endure punishment at all. Stranger still if we were to suppose that at the very moment when he was manifesting the holiest, divinest spirit of self-sacrificing love, he should have been selected by his Heavenly Father as a fitting object of penal suffering. To suppose such a shocking violation of the eternal laws concerning holiness, suffering, and sin, is to outrage the deepest and most solemn instincts of our moral nature, and pervert the essential meaning of words relating to the holiest and most awful subjects (p. 208).

Sunday Funnies--Noah's Ark

2010-09-05T08:33:00.000-04:00

From Ebolaworld.com