Will There be Lawyers in Heaven?

A few weeks ago, I was struck by a line in Abraham Kuyper's "Lectures on Calvinism" (1898), one of the great (and accessible!) modern Protestant works on politics and law. In a world without sin, Kuyper wrote, "every rule and ordinance and law would drop away, even as all control and assertion of the power of the magistrate would disappear." Heaven, he suggests, is no place for law or lawyers.

We lawyers come in for a lot of abuse, much of it justified, but I'm not so sure our work will disappear in heaven. The conclusion that law and thus lawyers will be unnecessary seems to assume that in heaven we will be all seeing and all knowing, and all complexity will simply disappear. I'm not sure where that assumption comes from; it doesn't seem especially consistent with the hints of heaven, with all its richness and diversity, that we get in the Bible. The absence of sin doesn't necessarily mean the absence of complexity, and where there is complexity law and lawyers seem to have a role to play. (Professor Skeel)

Can we think of examples of situations where people of good will would find lawyers useful? Here's one. Suppose two people are making an agreement about who will do which tasks before they meet again. A lawyer is useful for making sure they've covered all contingencies and that they really understand each other. "Contracts" are useful even if nobody expects a court to have to enforce them, just to clarify meaning, and ordinary people aren't all that good at making clear agreements.

Any other examples?

David Frum on Christmas

David Frum writes on how Jews should deal with Christmas.

Roman-Protestant Conversions

From First Things:

That “U.S. Religious Landscape Survey” issued by the Pew Research Center last February continues to be sliced and diced by various analysts, including Robert Benne, who writes in The Cresset, a magazine published by Valparaiso University. “Continuing the list of surprises about Catholicism,” Benne writes, “ten percent of all Protestants are former Catholics but eight percent of Catholics are former Protestants. ... “The big difference,” he says, “is that they aim at the weakest Catholics while we aim at the strongest evangelicals.” The claim is that evangelicals who are more theologically versed and religiously committed are more open to Catholicism, while Catholics who become evangelicals were, for whatever reason, alienated from Christianity. Put differently, religiously serious evangelicals are more likely to become Catholic, while religiously lapsed Catholics are more likely to become evangelicals. ... Some while back, I spoke at an Episcopal parish in the Northeast and afterward had dinner with the members of the vestry. Ten of the fourteen members present were former Catholics, and seven of them said they would be Catholics today if it were not for their divorces that prevented them from receiving Holy Communion. The pastor of an evangelical megachurch who says more than half his members are former Catholics tells me, with a smile, “I hope you guys don’t change your rules on divorce and remarriage.”

Is The World Evil?

Three Hierarchies quotes Newman thus:

One literature may be better than another, but bad will be the best, when weighed in the balance of truth and morality. It cannot be otherwise; human nature is in all ages and all countries the same; and its literature, therefore, will ever and everywhere be one and the same also. Man's work will savour of man; in his elements and powers excellent and admirable, but prone to disorder and excess, to error and to sin. Such too will be his literature; it will have the beauty and the fierceness, the sweetness and the rankness, of the natural man, and, with all its richness and greatness, will necessarily offend the senses of those who, in the Apostle's words, are really "exercised to discern between good and evil."

Newman's hostile admiration to secular literature is perhaps in the same spirit as ascetism generally: if it feels good, don't do it. This has both Protestant and Roman Catholic versions. I suppose it's like the gnostic view that the body is bad. The other, correct, view is that God gave us the world to enjoy rather than as a damning distraction.

http://haloscan.com/tb/catwood/1080069888189988950

Divine Law versus Natural Law

The distinction between divine law and natural law is that natural law can be deduced by man by introspection and observation, but divine law is revealed only by direct communication from God. One question is whether divine law can ever contradict natural law. Or, perhaps a little different: Is a sin evil because God forbids it, or does God forbid it because it is evil?

In considering this question it is useless to think about sins that are forbidden by both natural and divine law, sins such as murder, theft, and adultery (in their traditional, uncontroversial, contexts). Rather, the question becomes important in situations such as the following: Is it okay to divorce a man for wife-beating? Did God really command the Israelites to slaughter Canaanite children? Is it just for people to be damned when they never had a chance to hear the Gospel?

As these examples indicate, the question bears heavily on the fundamentals of Christianity. If God forbids sins because they are evil, we are saying that we have a reason independent from God for thinking something is evil, and that reason trumps any reason we might derive from the Bible or systematic theology. Thus, if we believe that killing children is always wrong, so a good God could not command it, we must either reject God's goodness or reject the books of Genesis (Abraham and Isaac), Joshua (the Canaanites), and Kings (I think--- David and the Amalekites).

I think it's important to believe that sins are wrong because God forbids them, not the reverse. Here are some reasons:

1. Otherwise you must reject the reliability of the Bible. This is not just a rejection of inerrancy: you must reject substantial portions,and, implicitly, all of the Bible that refrains from condemning those portions.

2. Because we are all biased when it comes to our own actions, when we are deriving natural law we will tend to exclude our own misdeeds from being called sins.

3. Because we are all culturally biased, when we are deriving natural law we will tend to exclude misdeeds that our own culture allows from being called sins.

4. Otherwise we have in effect replaced God with a higher divinity, the source of natural law, in which case we should move directly to worship of that divinity.

Note that if you are willing to throw out Christianity altogether, these reasons disappear. Indeed, that is the response of some people. They acknowledge, correctly, that the Christian God's law conflicts with what we think is right and wrong in our culture, and they conclude, incorrectly, that He is not God. In effect, our culture is their god.

Slate's Exchange between Kmiec and Douhat on Abortion

Slate had an exchange between Douglas Kmiec and Ross Douhat that shows very well the approach of the feminized male to political thinking and discussion, the European social philosophy leftism of even conservative Roman Catholics, the gullible bandwagon-jumping of so many Christians, and, perhaps, the "emergent church" attitude.

To summarize: Professor Kmiec (a devout Catholic and a former high Reagan official, remarkably) argued that anti-abortion people should really vote for Barack Obama, because he would spend more on anti-poverty programs that would reduce abortion, appointing anti-Roe judges reduces the quality of the judiciary, and regulating abortion makes Republicans the party of hate, not love. Mr. Douhat responded by attacking these claims and calling Kmiec a fool and a shill for liberals. Kmiec responded by saying how cruel Douhat was, forgiving him, and offering to pray for him. Carlson responded by saying that Kmiec should act like a man, and Douhat was right anyway.

Here are excerpts. Kmiec II and Carlson are the most fun to read.

Kmiec I:

Republicans have been trying to sell themselves for so long on the basis of judicial appointments and the supposed "fifth vote" to overturn Roe, sometimes you wonder if they realize how selecting judges on that basis disserves the rule of law. ...

The Democrats had a brilliant strategy on abortion this year: Don't play the futile court speculation game. Instead, Obama's team promoted life in ways that don't depend upon a Supreme Court vacancy and cooperating nominee. Specifically, Obama had the Dems commit to promote life with enhanced social and economic assistance. This idea had traction—the Catholic vote literally switched from Republican to Democrat, going (in preliminary numbers) 55-45 for Obama nationwide, which is amazing given the amount of outright lies and falsehoods the GOP was purveying about the president-elect on this issue. (Not to mention the co-conspiring clergy the Republicans captured, who were literally preaching that voters would go to hell for voting for Barack.) The Republicans became the party of fear and damnation rather than solution or respect for life. As a consequence, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, and Virginia are in the Democratic, not the Republican, column.

It's admittedly hard to untie the abortion knot, but here's a thought: Republicans could have moved a constitutional amendment that would presume life to begin at conception, while further providing that no government, federal or state, is competent to legislate on the question absent a supermajority. The effect? Taking the Supreme Court's "activist" thumb off the scale against life while at the same time avoiding the criminalization of a woman's freedom. This is not the ideal Catholic position, but it's closer, and the Catholic Church has less standing to complain about a grant of freedom that could then be fairly influenced by the moral instruction associated with a woman's religious choice....

Finally, beyond these somewhat wonkish ideas for policy innovation, Republicans ought to remember occasionally that they are—or at least were—the party of Lincoln, and ought to promote civil and human rights. That is better than dragging one's feet on reasonable ways to break up the systematic racism or gender stereotypes that still inhabit much of our culture.

Douhat 1:

The trouble with seeking common ground on abortion is that the legal regime enacted by Roe and reaffirmed in Casey permits only the most minimal regulation of the practice, which means that any plausible "compromise" that leaves Roe in place will offer almost nothing to pro-lifers. Even the modest restrictions that prevail in many European countries (and that, not coincidentally, coincide with lower abortion rates) are out of the question under the current legal dispensation. This, in turn, explains why the national debate inevitably revolves around the composition of the Supreme Court and the either/or question of whether a president will appoint justices likely to chip away the Roe-Casey regime or justices likely to uphold it. ...

...to my mind any pro-choice American who sincerely seeks a national consensus on the subject of abortion should support overturning Roe and returning the issue to the democratic process—a position that I would have liked to see the pro-choice Rudy Giuliani experiment with, for instance, in his quest to become the GOP nominee. But I certainly understand why pro-choicers don't see things quite that way.

What I don't understand at all is Kmiec's position, which seems to be that the contemporary Democratic Party, and particularly the candidacy of Barack Obama, offered nearly as much to pro-lifers as the Republican Party does. I am sure that Kmiec is weary of being called a fool by opponents of abortion for his tireless pro-Obama advocacy during this election cycle, but if so, then the thing for him to do is to cease acting like the sort of person for whom the term "useful idiot" was coined, rather than persisting in his folly. ...

...what he calls "outright lies and falsehoods" about Obama's views were, in fact, more or less the truth: The Democratic nominee ran on a record that can only be described as "very, very pro-choice," and his stated positions on abortion would involve rolling back nearly all the modest—but also modestly effective—restrictions that pro-lifers have placed upon the practice and/or appointing judges who would do the same. There may have been reasons for anti-abortion Americans to vote for Barack Obama in spite of his position that abortion should be essentially unregulated and funded by taxpayer dollars. But Kmiec's suggestion that Obama took the Democrats in anything like a pro-life direction on the issue doesn't pass the laugh test. (And nor, I might add, does his bizarre argument that because the goal of placing a fifth anti-Roe justice on the court is somehow unrealistic, the pro-life movement should pursue a far more implausible constitutional amendment instead.)...

I can't begin to fathom why the GOP should consider taking any advice whatsoever from a "pro-lifer" who has spent the past year serving as an increasingly embarrassing shill for the opposition party's objectively pro-abortion nominee.

Kmiec 2:

I am stunned by the coarseness of your writing, Ross. While we have not met, so little of what you have written is in any way respectful or acknowledges that you are addressing not some abstraction but a fellow human that I can only pray that if any of your family or closest friends come into contact with this commentary that they reach out to you in the most gentle and understanding way, without precondition, to calm an anger that is harmful to the soul.

Genuine love and affection do not reside on the Internet, so I cannot extend it to you, but in my heart, I forgive your great unkindness. I do hope you can free yourself from its enslavement. Realize that your meaning is bound up in the occasions in your life to be of service. Ross, once you allow yourself to see your dependence upon others, and their need for you, I am certain you will appreciate the cruelty of what you have written.... One could sense that anger in the mobs riled by Mrs. Palin's tirades about Obama being in a conspiracy of some sort with Bill Ayers. It was frightening to see on tape, and it is even uglier to see it rear its head here.

Ross, you are not ordinary in God's eyes; nor are the women facing abortion as a tragic answer to a dismal, impoverished, and near-hopeless existence. Ross, you and she are brother and sister made in God's image and are expected to be of help to one another. That is a lesson for the Republicans.

If it be useful idiocy to save even one child from death by lifting up the economic or social prospects of the mother, I accept the title as an honor among men. It is pro-life. If it is hypocritical not to want to treat as criminal the woman abandoned by the selfishness of an abusive spouse, I embrace the hypocrisy. It, too, is pro-life. ...

...in the reminder from Benedict XVI, St. Paul admonished Christians to be reconciled with their brothers before receiving Holy Communion; and Pope Benedict echoes his words: "Each time you come to the altar for the celebration of the Eucharist, may your souls open to forgiveness and fraternal reconciliation, ready to accept the excuses of those who have hurt you and ready, in your turn, to forgive."

Carlson (in full):

Hey, Doug. Toughen up. Seriously. I've read suicide notes that were less passive-aggressive than this. Let's review what actually happened: You argued that Obama is not a pro-choice extremist. Ross disagreed. Rather than respond with a counterpoint, you got hysterical, dismissing Ross as a hater, even fretting about the future of his soul.

Come on. Get some perspective. And for God's sake, stop whining. For a moment there, you reminded me of the McCain campaign, bitching about "sexism" when people started to ask tough questions of Sarah Palin. Republicans didn't used to talk this way. Let's stop the trend now, starting with you.

I understand it must have hurt when Ross accused you of shilling for Obama. On the other hand, he's right. You did shill for Obama. That's not Ross' fault. Don't blame him.

But if you are going to blame him, do it directly, like a man, without all the encounter-group talk and Pope quotes. People often attack the religious right, sometimes with justification. But as you just reminded us, there is nothing in the world more annoying than the religious left.

Douhat II:

Douglas, Tucker, Jim, Kathleen, and Christine,

I don't want to hijack this entire discussion, so let me just say that I appreciate Douglas Kmiec's prayers and leave it at that.

I do, however, want to second Tucker's earlier point about the importance of finding candidates who can actually communicate. Going back to Bush the elder,...

November 24. There's been speculation as to why Prof. Kmiec would make such a weak case for Obama. Could it be that he's so serious about ending abortion that he's hoping Obama will appoint him to the Supreme Court, so he himself can be the "Fifth Vote" and reverse Roe?

Does the Bible Esteem Happiness?

That's a good question my wife asked me. Answering it will involve a bit of word study, since it seems that Hebrew's asher (ק ר א) and Greek's makarios (&mu &alpha &kappa &alpha &rho &omicron &sigma) (sp?), which the King James Version translate as "happy" mean it in the sense "blessed", so "joy" or "delight" might be the word to focus on. See, too, Aristotle, Aquinas, and Hooker. I wonder what Calvin and Luther have to say? I should also let Professor Kimball know what I find, since he gave an econ seminar last week on happiness as one of multiple goals.

Creationism and Creeds

Three Hierarchies has been discussing how one Lutheran bishop has elevated six-day creationism as an indisputable part of Lutheran doctrine. This kind of thing is one of my pet peeves with evangelicals. Let's put aside for argument the question of whether God created the Earth in six days some 5000 years ago, and concentrate on the importance of this doctrinal point. Is it really on the same level of importance as the bodily resurrection,transubstantiation, salvation by faith alone, and suchlike? No. In fact, the topic was of no more than minor interest before 1880 or so. People did think about it-- Augustine famously considered six-day creationism absurd-- but it was a matter of explaining a particular Bible passage.

The main defense for insisting on creationism is that it is a good indicator of a person's views on more important topics. That is indeed a good general argument. One of the "Five Fundamentals" was the Virgin Birth. That is doctrine trivial in itself, but it is a good indicator of whether a person believes in miracles, prophecy, and Scripture. Creationism serves as an indicator of inerrancy, but it is not a good one. A person can believe the Bible is inerrant without believing in six-day creation, by simply treating Genesis 1 as a metaphor, a reasonable thing to do given its style and context. A person can also believe in six-day creation without believing the Bible is reliable, by believing that Genesis is reliable but nothing outside the Torah (an Orthodox Jew, for example, would reject the New Testament).

A second defense would be that belief in creationism is a good indicator of a person's willingness to buck the conventional wisdom. It shows you are willing to believe something that seems ridiculous to modern intellectuals. That is a good willingness to have, but this is not ground well chosen for exercising it. For one thing, belief in the bodily resurrection does about as well in showing that you are willing to contradict secularists, and that is a far more central doctrine. For another, creationism is highly culture-bound, unlike most other doctrines. As I said before, anybody before 1880 would wonder why it was so prominent, whereas the bodily resurrection has always been a point of contention between believers and unbelievers. For another, the particular method of creation has no implications for actual behavior, so it is picking a fight on a purely intellectual ground, without convicting anyone of sin. A better issue, though equally non-central and particular to our culture, would be the sinfulness of homosexuality. That doctrine is undisputably biblical, and much more offensive to modern unbelievers. If Christians are going to look unreasonable, let us do it on issues that really get other people riled up because they actually matter.

The Chronology of the Crucifixion

Pastor Bayly preached a good sermon on Matthew 26 today, the chapter were Jesus tells the disciples at the Last Supper that one of them will betray him. Some ideas:

1. Judas must have been particularly trusted, since he was in charge of the money. He must have thought that he had no time to spare in betraying Jesus, once Jesus had said one of the disciples was to betray him.

2. The Last Supper was not the Passover meal. Passover was to start the next evening, when the Passover meal would be served. The Last Supper was during the Day of Preparation, when the lamb is killed. Jesus was to be killed that day, and there would be no more Passover meals. The Last Supper instituted a substitute.

3. When the Gospels speak of "the Sabbath", they don't necessarily mean a Saturday. Instead, they might mean a special day of rest, such as Passover or Yom Kippur. That was the case here.

Surviving versus Living

I told my Bible study group about this Bill Stuntz post today.

...Medical care is usually about maximizing time itself, about keeping the patient’s heart beating as long as possible. But time isn’t what I want to maximize. Longevity is fine, but life is what matters. And those two words are definitely not synonyms.

Which leads to a crucial characteristic of chemotherapy, at least as I’ve experienced it. Chemo is a strange beast: it restores life by first killing it....

“Killing” is the right word. Forget the many side effects that are too gross to describe. Chemo drains the life from its recipients. ...

... I’ve read and heard a good many stories of stage 4 cancers over the past few months, and in more than a few of them, the patient spends his or her last years—the number of years can be considerable—oscillating between yet another surgery to remove the latest tumor, and more months of chemo to slow the cancer’s spread. They call it “extending life,” and sometimes, that’s what the treatment does—but other times the label misleads; patients survive but don’t really live. Which is why this week’s news seemed so joyous: my oncologist told me that, when I resume chemo after this summer’s thoracic surgery, the dosages of the drugs can be dialed back, and if I so choose, dialed back a lot. Thanks be to God: I can do more than survive; I still have some living to do. Before I heard that news, I was starting to wonder.

... Doctors see their job as fixing the broken places in our ailing bodies. When it comes to the kinds of brokenness that can be repaired, that is as it should be. But there is another set of medical problems that cannot be fixed: cancers that won’t disappear, pains that will last as long as life does. When it comes to those problems, repair is not the proper goal. A better word is redemption: the enterprise of carving out some space, however small, for life—not mere survival—in the midst of diseases that seek to squelch it.

Oncologists are better on this score than most doctors, probably because they see the destructive character of the treatments they administer up close. Even so, the tendency to equate success with survival is strong. Too much so, I think: that tendency needs resisting. I suspect I’m far from alone in saying that survival holds little appeal for me. I want to live—for as much time, or as little, as I have left.

That mind-set follows naturally from my faith, I believe—but a good many of my fellow believers seem to disagree. One of the more surprising aspects of Christian culture in our time and place is the widespread embrace of longevity and survival not just as moral goods, but as moral imperatives. That embrace seemed all too evident in the Terri Schiavo controversy of a few years back, and in the long-running conversation about medical treatment of dying patients. I’m no fan of euthanasia, but I’m also no fan of the idea that physical longevity is a morally proper goal in circumstances like Schiavo’s—or in circumstances like mine. Just because medicine can sustain the body for awhile longer, that doesn’t mean it should always do so. Life is more than a beating heart. And life is what we should be seeking. The good news is, if you look in the right places, it’s usually there to be found.

Learning Hebrew

John Parsons has a good Biblical Hebrew site, Hebrew for Christians. The page I've linked has the ABCD song with Hebrew letters, nicely done, and if you click on the letters on that page, you get interesting tidbits of information

The Scriptures begin with the book of Genesis, but in Hebrew this book is named after its first word: [Hebrew omitted] (bereshit). The first letter of revelation from the LORD, then, was the Bet found in this word.... Note: The sole difference between the letter Bet and the letter Vet is the presence or absence of the dot in the middle of the letter (called a dagesh mark). When you see the dot in the middle of this letter, pronounce it as a "b"; otherwise, pronounce it as a "v."

Rick Warren

I blogged back in 2006 on Pastor Rick Warren, whose words range from pandering to liberals to the fatuous to the perceptive. He did a good job with the Saddleback interviews of Obama and McCain, I think, choosing some good questions for them. I came across something else to count in his favor in a 2008 New Republic article by Alan Wolfe (my boldfacing):

I have yet to let Jesus enter my life, but I admire Warren. We once appeared on a panel together along with Harvard's Peter Gomes at the Aspen Ideas Festival. When it came time for questions, a woman stood up, proclaimed her Judaism, and asked Warren if she was going to burn in hell. He paused before responding--and then answered her question the only way it could be answered. Yes, he said to audible gasps. My reaction was that either you believe that Jesus is the savior or you do not, and I found myself impressed that Warren remained true to his convictions, knowing full well that the audience would not like what he said.

Obama and McCain on Evil

Here's more from the Saddleback Church interviews of McCain and Obama, on the question of evil. The transcript of the Obama interview says:

WARREN: ... Does evil exist? And if it does, do we ignore it? Do we negotiate with it? Do we contain it? Do we defeat it?

OBAMA: Evil does exist. I mean, I think we see evil all the time. We see evil in Darfur. We see evil, sadly, on the streets of our cities. We see evil in parents who viciously abuse their children. I think it has to be confronted. It has to be confronted squarely, and one of the things that I strongly believe is that, now, we are not going to, as individuals, be able to erase evil from the world. That is God's task, but we can be soldiers in that process, and we can confront it when we see it.

Now, the one thing that I think is very important is for to us have some humility in how we approach the issue of confronting evil, because a lot of evil's been perpetrated based on the claim that we were trying to confront evil.

WARREN: In the name of good.

OBAMA: In the name of good, and I think, you know, one thing that's very important is having some humility in recognizing that just because we think that our intentions are good, doesn't always mean that we're going to be doing good.

The transcript of the McCain interview says:

WARREN: ... Does evil exist and, if so, should ignore it, negotiate it with it, contain it or defeat it?

MCCAIN: Defeat it. A couple of points. One, if I'm president of the United States, my friends, if I have to follow him to the gates of hell, I will get bin Laden and bring him to justice. I will do that. And I know how to do that. I will get that done. (APPLAUSE). No one, no one should be allowed to take thousands of American -- innocent American lives.

Of course, evil must be defeated. My friends, we are facing the transcended challenge of the 21st century -- radical Islamic extremism.

Not long ago in Baghdad, al Qaeda took two young women who were mentally disabled, and put suicide vests on them, sent them into a marketplace and, by remote control, detonated those suicide vests. If that isn't evil, you have to tell me what is. And we're going to defeat this evil. And the central battleground according to David Petraeus and Osama bin Laden is the battle, is Baghdad, Mosul, Basra and Iraq and we are winning and succeeding and our troops will come home with honor and with victory and not in defeat. And that's what's happening.

And we have -- and we face this threat throughout the world. It's not just in Iraq. It's not just in Afghanistan. Our intelligence people tell us al Qaeda continues to try to establish cells here in the United States of America. My friends, we must face this challenge. We can face this challenge. And we must totally defeat it, and we're in a long struggle. But when I'm around, the young men and women who are serving this nation in uniform, I have no doubt, none.

Obama's position is correct. Evil exists, and we should confront it, we will not defeat it completely, and there is evil within us.

McCain, however, is right in saying that we should and will defeat evil. We will not defeat all evil, but we will defeat some of it. He does not address the problem of evil generally, only in one area of national policy.

McCain's answer is more impressive than Obama's because he is inspiring and specific. You can tell he really means it. He sees specific evil, and he has specific plans to defeat it. Obama is vague in his examples of evil, and he doesn't seem to have either much interest in defeating it or specific plans. Evil is seen "all the time": "in Darfur", "on the streets of our cities", and "in parents who viciously abuse their children". Obama sounds like a politician who makes excuses for defeat even before he starts, because he doesn't really want to address the problems. He is going to "confront" evil, not "fight evil" or "defeat evil". He is most concerned that in confronting these evils we will not perpetrate evil ourselves. "Let's not be too hasty in trying to end evil" is his message.

THe next day. I should add another excerpt. It is from just before McCain is asked about evil. They are talking about abortion and stem-cell research. What is interesting about it is that when the topic shifted to Evil, McCain did not mention abortion, even though the topic had just come up.

WARREN: OK. (APPLAUSE). All right.

Another issue, stem cells. We've had the scientific break-through of creating pluri-potent (ph) stem cells through adult stem cells.

MCCAIN: Yes.

WARREN: So would you favor or oppose the federal funding of embryonic stem cell research since we had this other break-through?

MCCAIN: For those of us in the pro-life community this has been a great struggle and a terrible dilemma because we're also taught other obligations that we have as well. I've come down on the side of stem cell research. But I am wily optimistic that skin cell research, which is coming more and more into focus and practicability, will make this debate an academic one.

WARREN: How about the issue of evil. I asked this of your rival, in the previous debate. Does evil exist and, if so, should ignore it, negotiate it with it, contain it or defeat it?

MCCAIN: Defeat it. A couple of points. One, if I'm president of the United States, my friends, if I have to follow him to the gates of hell, I will get bin Laden and bring him to justice. I will do that. And I know how to do that. I will get that done. (APPLAUSE). No one, no one should be allowed to take thousands of American -- innocent American lives....

Edmund Campion

Edmund Campion is an Oxford Roman Catholic who fled England to become a Jesuit in the 1500's and returned as an illegal priest. He was caught, debated by Protestant scholars in the Tower of London, and executed for treason.

He claimed that he was on a merely religious mission, not political, but he was executed not for heresy but for treason. Questions of religion and politics were mixed because the Pope had some years earlier deposed Queen Elizabeth and forbade any Englishmen to obey her on pain of excommunication. A good article on the topic is: Papists, and the "Public Sphere" in Early Modern England: The Edmund Campion Affair in Context, Peter Lake and Michael Questier, The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 72, No. 3, (Sep., 2000), pp. 587-627 . http://www.jstor.org/stable/3079477.

The Pope's 1570 bull Regnans in Excelsis said:

Therefore, resting upon the authority of Him whose pleasure it was to place us (though unequal to such a burden) upon this supreme justice- seat, we do out of the fullness of our apostolic power declare the foresaid Elizabeth to be a heretic and favourer of heretics, and her adherents in the matters aforesaid to have incurred the sentence of excommunication and to be cut off from the unity of the body of Christ.

IV. And moreover (we declare) her to be deprived of her pretended title to the aforesaid crown and of all lordship, dignity and privilege whatsoever...

V. And also (declare) the nobles, subjects and people of the said realm and all others who have in any way sworn oaths to her, to be forever absolved from such an oath and from any duty arising from lordshop. fealty and obedience; and we do, by authority of these presents , so absolve them and so deprive the same Elizabeth of her pretended title to the crown and all other the abovesaid matters. We charge and command all and singular the nobles, subjects, peoples and others afore said that they do not dare obey her orders, mandates and laws. Those who shall act to the contrary we include in the like sentence of excommunication.

Thus, anyone who was a Roman Catholic and who believed in the authority of the Pope had to, as a matter of religious belief, refuse to obey the English government. Edmund Campion, as a Jesuit, took a special vow of obedience to the Pope. Thus, insofar as he followed his religion, he was a traitor to England-- or, if you like, a traitor to Parliament and Queen Elizabeth, if loyal to Queen Mary Stuart. Further, the Bull implies that any Roman Catholic should use all efforts to obey the legitimate ruler-- Mary Stuart-- which meant to depose the pretended ruler, Elizabeth.

In such circumstances it does not seem unreasonable to me to make it illegal for priests to enter England, or that being a priest loyal to Rome would be prima facie evidence of treason.

See also "Campion's Brag,") his challenge to debate.

Ecclesiology Questions

My cumulative ecclesiology page, a list of questions and, at some point, discussion and answers in the style of Aquinas's Summa, is here. I will add the post below to it.

Should books be sold in a church?

Should there be commercial advertising in a church bulletin?

Should money be collected in an offering during worship?

Should worship be beautiful?

Should children have rattles and drums to use during hymnsinging in worship?

Should a church have songs to which the congregation does not sing along?

Should there be clapping after someone has sung or played during worship?

Should children run the service sometimes?

Should there be patronage in choosing a minister?

Should the KJV Bible be used?

Should a person bring his own bible to church?

Should a church have pew bibles?

Is it wrong if members of the congregation do not dress formally, e.g. in jacket and tie?

Is it wrong if members of the congregation dress sloppily, e.g. in shorts and t-shirts? Should women wear hats in church?

The Noahide Laws

The Talmudic Jews have a tradition that 7 laws are commanded to non-Jews. This is important as a sign of which laws are considered universally the most important. They are not the same as the 10 Commandments. They do not, for example, require worship of Jehovah, or observance of the Sabbath, which are laws specifically for the Jews. Sometimes people point to minor laws in the Torah to downplay the importantance of, for example,the prohibition of homosexuality. This is evidence that some laws are considered more important than others, and of universal importance.

Noahide.org has the "The Seven Laws of the Descendents of Noah", well-documented and with page sources and Hebrew in the original and transliterated:

Idolatry: (Strange work - i.e. serving an idol) Avodah Zarah
2 Blasphemy - ‘Blessing’ the Divine Name: (Cursing G-d) Birchat (Kilelas) HaShem
3 Murder: (Spilling blood) Shefichat Damim
4 Sexual transgressions: (Exposure of nakedness) (i.e. incest, adultery, homosexual acts and bestiality etc) Gilui Arayot
5 Theft: (To rob, embezzle.) (Includes rape and abduction) Gezel
6 Courts system: (Judgement, justice, and law etc.) Dinim
7 Eating a limb torn from a live animal: (Limb of the living.) Ever Min HaChai
From Talmud Bavli Sanhedrin 56a; Rambam, Hilchos Melachim 9:1....

Transgressing any one of them is considered such a breach in the natural order that the offender incurs the death penalty. Apart from a few exceptions, the death sentence for a Ben Noach is Sayif, death by the sword / decapitation, the least painful of the four modes of execution of criminals (see the Rambam's Hilchos Melachim 9:14). (The four methods of capital punishment in Torah are: S’kilah - Stoning; S’rifah - Burning; Hereg - Decapitation; Henek - Strangulation.)...

The Rambam in Hilchos Melachim 8:11, writes that all Benei Noach who accept upon themselves the Seven Mitzvos and are careful to keep them and are precise in their observance are termed 'Chasidei Umos ha'Olam' ?????????? ??????? ???????? ('the Pious Ones of the Nations') and they merit a share in the World to Come. However, they must keep these Mitzvos specifically because HaShem (G-d) commanded them in the Torah through Moshe Rabeinu (Moses).

Further information is at:

THE BOOK OF JUBILEES

The 7 laws that Noah gave to his sons in the Book of Jubilees, chapter 7, verse 20.

And in the twenty-eighth jubilee [1324-1372 A.M.] Noah began to enjoin upon his sons' sons the ordinances and commandments, and all the judgments that he knew, and he exhorted his sons to observe righteousness, and to cover the shame of their flesh, and to bless their Creator, and honour father and mother, and love their neighbour, and guard their souls from fornication and uncleanness and all iniquity.

English translations (by Soncino) of the parts of the Talmud that discuss Noahide law:

Sanhedrin 56a & 56b
Sanhedrin 57a & 57b
Sanhedrin 58a & 58b
Sanhedrin 59a & 59b
Sanhedrin 60a & 60b
Sanhedrin 96b
Avodah Zarah 2 & 3
Avodah Zarah 64b, 65a & 65b
Baba Kamma 38a

Henry VIII's Divorce: The Real Story

It is sometimes sneeringly said that the Church of England was founded because Henry VIII wanted a divorce and the Pope would not give it to him. That is the true story that lay under the surface (or, going further, perhaps the true story is that Henry VIII wanted a divorce from Emperor Charles's aunt, and the Emperor objected). The principle at issue, however, seems not to have been divorce, but whether the Church trumped the Bible, exactly the principle that split other Protestants from Rome. Here's what seems to be the story. I'd have to do library research to find if it is correct, however--- web sources are frustratingly vague.

The heir to the English throne, Arthur Tudor, married Catherine of Aragon but died some months later. His brother, the future Henry VIII, wanted to marry the widow. Church law, however, forbade a man to marry his brother's widow, based (somewhat dubiously) on a verse from Leviticus. Henry applied to the Pope for permission to break the rule, and the Pope granted that permission.

The issue was whether the Pope had the authority to grant Henry permission to break divine law.

The Papacy said Yes. Henry said No. Henry submitted the question to various university faculties, and many of them, including ones in France and Italy, agreed with him. The one Protestant university that I've read of him consulting, Marburg, replied that Henry was correct on that narrow issue, but wrong on whether his marriage was invalid, because the underlying church law was wrong.

Update (June 26): I found the key book, Edward Foxe's 1531 The determinations of the moste famous and mooste excellent vniuersities of Italy and Fraunce, that it is so vnlefull for a man to marie his brothers wyfe, that the pope hath no power to dispence therewith. I've posted it at http://rasmusen.org/special/foxe.htm. It's out of copyright, and I think merely scanning it in doesn't count as adding enough to copyright it. It says right at the start:

NOt longe syns there were put forth vnto vs the college of doctours regent{is} of the vniuersitie of Orlea~ce, these .ij. questions, that folowe. The fyrste, whether it be leful by the lawe of god for the brother to take to wyfe that woma~ / whom his brother hath lefte. The seco~de, and if this be forbydden by the lawe of god / whether this prohibition of the lawe of god maye be remytted by the pope his dispensation

Not long since there were put forth unto us, the college of doctors regent of the University of Orleans, these ii questions that follow. The first: whether it be lawful by the law of God for the brother to take to wife that woman whom his brother hath left. The second: and if this be forbidden by the law of God whether this prohibition of the law of God may be remitted by the Pope his dispensation.

The Seven Noachic Laws

From Roeber's article about German Jews in early America:

For Jews, the commands given to Noah and his sons after their rescue from the deluge were revealed truth and laid down a clear set of requirements: to establish a society based on laws; to prohibit idolatry; to prohibit blasphemy; to prevent the careless taking of human life; not to tolerate adultery, incest, homosexuality, and bestiality; to prevent robbery; to avoid eating the limb torn from a living animal. These seven basic laws, applicable only to the people of the Covenant, had become the focus of a written tradition by the second century of the Common Era. The body of writings (the Tosefta) that commented on Noachic law began gradually to extend the applicability of the Noachic commands.3 Much later--not before the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries--Jewish commentators who followed Maimonides firmly maintained that gentiles also had to observe these laws. Maimonides believed that this was so not because humans could reason themselves toward the right conclusions, but rather because revelation at Sinai had codified them into the Decalogue. Maimonides assumed that non-Jewish access to the universal truths expressed here brought obligation in its train.

His footnote is useless. Other sources point me to Maimonides's Mishneh Torah, which is not in English on the Web. See also the useful though opinioned "Comments Concerning the Noachide Law, the Mosaic Law, Judaism and Christianity", http://www.auburn.edu/~allenkc/7lawcomm.html

Josephus on Sodomy and Abortion

At the time of Josephus, Jewish law abhorred homosexuality, of course. It also seems to have treated abortion as murder (Against Apion, 2.25)

But, then, what are our laws about marriage? That law owns no other mixture of sexes but that which nature hath appointed, of a man with his wife, and that this be used only for the procreation of children. But it abhors the mixture of a male with a male; and if any one do that, death is its punishment. ... The law, moreover, enjoins us to bring up all our offspring, and forbids women to cause abortion of what is begotten, or to destroy it afterward; and if any woman appears to have so done, she will be a murderer of her child, by destroying a living creature, and diminishing human kind; if any one, therefore, proceeds to such fornication or murder, he cannot be clean.

Thatcherite Gordon Brown

Blogger Cranmer tells us that Gordon Brown gave a speech to the Church of Scotland Assembly about his moral vision. Brown says he believes in the Parable of the Talents, but clearly he has forgotten the parable's ending and its moral. He says

And amidst all the challenges and headlines of recent months I have learned what really matters: that, for me, a life is best measured not by what office or title you hold but by what difference you can make by seeking to do what you judge the right thing, however difficult, and by the causes to which you dedicate your efforts. As a son and now a father I believe in the Parable of the Talents my father taught me:

* that everyone has a talent,

* everyone should have the chance to develop that talent,

* and everyone should be challenged to use that talent and given the best chance to bridge that gap between what they are and what they have it in themselves to become.

And so I believe in the power of opportunity to change lives.

In the Parable, after the third servant has not used his one talent, unlike the first two servants with their their two and ten, his master says:

Thou wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I have not strawed: Thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and then at my coming I should have received mine own with usury. Take therefore the talent from him, and give it unto him which hath ten talents. For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath. And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Thus, Brown is saying inadvertently that he opposes the welfare state!

The Hindu Vicar

Cranmer wrote in 2006: One priest, the Rev David Hart, a convert to Hinduism, has been allowed to continue to officiate as a cleric. His diocese renewed his licence even though he had moved to India, changed his name to Ananda (Sanskrit for ‘happiness'), and participates daily in pagan fire offerings to the snake god Nagar, and offers prayers to the elephant god Ganesh. He also offers namaaz at Muslim prayer halls. He sees no contradiction between these practices and his duties as an Anglican priest; he said he will officiate in a Christian church and a Hindu temple because ‘My philosophical position is that all religions are cultural constructs…" Wikipedia says His next book 'An Introduction to Hinduism' (London: Continuum 2009; Series Editor: Clinton Bennett) will examine the breadth of the Hindu faith as he discovers it living in India and will show how he regards his position as a Hindu believer as entirely compatible with being an Anglican priest in good standing with his diocesan bishop back in England.

Female Elders in Churches

One question of ecclesiology is whether women should be elders. Walking in the rain today, I thought at first of an argument for that position, and then realized it cuts the other way.

The question is whether a passage such as the following implies that women in the America of 2008 should be ordained as pastors.Timothy 3 says

1 This is a true saying, If a man desire the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work. 2 A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behaviour, given to hospitality, apt to teach; 3 Not given to wine, no striker, not greedy of filthy lucre; but patient, not a brawler, not covetous; 4 One that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity; 5 (For if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God?)

My first thought was that this passage has no such implication, because in Paul's time and place women would not apply for public positions anyway. No normal woman would "desire the office of a bishop", so that case could be disregarded. Or, if one did, prudential reasons would so obviously argue against it that, again, there was no need to put in a special comment.

If the passage were about the qualifications to be a tax collector or a soldier the the argument of the previous paragraph would be valid. Its flaw is that in the Greco-Roman world there were priestesses. In fact, they come to mind more easily than priests do. Think of the Vestal Virgins in Rome and the oracle at Delphi. In that cultural context, a new religious cult such as Christianity could get away with having priestesses. The Jews, to be sure, did not, but Christians already had broken with Judaism on the questions of pork, circumcision, and Temple, and having priestesses would hardly increase the size of the break.

Putting aside other reasons, then, the cultural signifance of Timothy 3 might cut the opposite way of what we usually think: it was not an accommodation to the culture of the day, but a purposeful break with the culture. The pagans have priestesses; the Christians will not. That reasoning would apply equally well today. The episcopalians have priestesses; the Christians will not.

20 of 114 Church of England Bishops Homosexual

I've come across a variety of items which point to the Church of England being heavily infiltrated by homosexual clergy. I became interested after reading a good book, Last Rites, by a homosexual ex-vicar who is perceptive in some ways and blind in others. It makes a good read, as he talks about the virtues of tolerance while also talking about how in the past evangelical clergy were quiet because they were afraid to talk and about how he called the police in to harass another pastor who wrote him criticizing his homosexual ways.

What surprises me most, though, is what a large fraction of the clergy and bishops are known homosexuals. Perhaps I shouldn't be; for Anglo-Catholics, it is a chance to dress up in fancy garb and pretend to be a priest. One can be an actor, organist, or singer and get paid for it.

Damian Thompson writes:

A leading Anglican source has told me how many Church of England bishops are easily identifiable as gay. The answer is 20, he says, out of 114 diocesan and suffragan bishops....

I wanted to find out because an extraordinary article has appeared in this week's Church of England Newspaper claiming - quite correctly - that the C of E is the most gay-friendly Church in the world, easily outstripping any other province of the Anglican Communion.

That is because its bishops routinely ignore their own official guidelines on homosexuality - and especially civil partnerships.

The article is by Christopher Morgan, a well-connected religious commentator who, many years ago, was best man at Rowan Williams's wedding. It's a good piece - he has done his homework - but it will shock some of the Church of England Newspaper's evangelical readers.

It is not available free online, so let me quote the relevant passage. The background is that, according to a House of Bishops' "pastoral statement", a bishop is supposed to inquire into the nature of a priest's gay relationship, to ensure that it is non-sexual, before giving a civil partnership his approval.

Morgan writes: "I do not think even one bishop has enquired into the bedroom arrangements of clergy in civil partnerships, ...

Morgan goes on to talk about gay bishops in the Church, and says that George Carey told him on tape that he had ordained at least two. In fact, Dr Carey actually named the two bishops. One of the names came as no surprise, since (if my memory serves me) the bishop had, as a priest, once served as a judge for Mr Gay UK.

From My time at homo-erotic college, The Spectator Dec 7, 1996 by Oddie, William:

Some theological colleges have been traditionally more noted for sodomy than others, though it is probably not too much to say that it is normal in all of them, with the possible exception of some evangelical establishments. The most famous of all used to be St Stephen's House, Oxford (known to its alumni as 'Staggers'), where 20 years ago I was in training for the Anglican priesthood, and where (despite a much publicised purge carried out by the then principal, Father David Hope, now Archbishop of York) I estimated that fully two thirds were openly homosexual, many without doubt actively so.

Nevertheless, the atmosphere at Staggers in my day was certainly more discreet than the overt queening about of the pre-Hope regime, which had been exacerbated by huge quantities of gin - the Reverend Kenneth Leech, a former St Stephen's House student (or `Staggers bag') of this period, described the ethos of AngloCatholicism as `gin, lace and backbiting'. A hardly exaggerated portrait of Staggers at this time is to be found in A.N. Wilson's novel Unguarded Hours (Mr Wilson is a former Staggers bag).

Father Hope had forbidden drinking (except for a pusillanimous glass of bad sherry after Sunday mass) and had thrown out the lace together with all the beautiful old Latin vestments. He had made a connection between elaborate liturgy and queening about, and there was now in force a regime of unrelieved liturgical austerity.

But the centrepiece of Father Hope's reforms had been the supposed purge of the rampant homosexuality of previous years, which had caused such a scandal that Staggers had nearly been closed down. Things had been just as bad at Cuddesdon, the prestigious theological college known for its `old-school mitre' -just outside Oxford, where Robert Runcie had once been principal. There was some resentment at Staggers that they and not Cuddesdon had attracted notoriety; it was rumoured that Cuddesdon had escaped public obloquy because its own scandals had been hushed up by the then Bishop of Oxford, the Rt Reverend Kenneth Woollcombe, who lived nearby.

At any rate, Father Hope's widely bruited blitz on the queens had the desired effect, and Staggers survived ( to become a hotbed of radical feminism following women's ordination)....

This all happened a long time ago. Things in the Church of England are much worse now and it would be almost impossible to threaten a theological college with closure on the grounds that it permitted sodomy. One college (not Anglo-Catholic) even encourages prospective students to bring their 'partner', male or female, to spend the weekend as part of the selection process.

The New Statesman says

...tabloid revelations in September 1994 that the then newly enthroned bishop of Durham, Michael Turnbull, who had condemned gay clergy in loving relationships, had a conviction for cottaging. An ex-monk called Sebastian Sandys outed three more bishops, including the then bishop of Edmonton, Brian Masters, at a debate at Durham University. Meanwhile, Peter Tatchell's OutRage! issued a list of ten gay bishops who had endorsed anti-gay discrimination within the Church. They included the high-profile bishop of Southwark, Mervyn Stockwood (who has since died).

The climax of the campaign came in March 1995 when the then bishop of London, David Hope, was named Archbishop of York - the number two post in the Church of England. Under pressure from Tatchell, Hope - who had endorsed the sacking of gay clergy and backed a Children's Society ban on gay foster parents - acknowledged that his own sexuality was a "grey area".

Hymns with Blame for the Crucifixion

From The Cyber Hymnal here are some hymns that put blame for the Crucifixion on those who follow Jesus. I've given authors when I've heard of them. In each case I've given the first verse and the relevant verse.

----------------------------

John Newton

In evil long I took delight,
Unawed by shame or fear,
Till a new object struck my sight,
And stopped my wild career.

I saw One hanging on a tree,
In agony and blood,
Who fixed His languid eyes on me,
As near His cross I stood.

Sure, never to my latest breath,
Can I forget that look;
It seemed to charge me with His death,
Though not a word He spoke.

My conscience felt and owned the guilt,
And plunged me in despair,
I saw my sins His blood had spilt,
And helped to nail Him there.

A second look He gave, which said,
"I freely all forgive;
This blood is for thy ransom paid;
I die that thou mayst live."

Thus, while His death my sin displays
In all its blackest hue,
Such is the mystery of grace,
It seals my pardon too.

---------------------------------------------------

Charles Wesley

Come, Thou everlasting Spirit,
Bring to every thankful mind
All the Savior’s dying merit,
All His sufferings for mankind!
True Recorder of His passion,
Now the living faith impart;
Now reveal His great salvation;
Preach His Gospel to our heart.

Come, Thou Witness of His dying;
Come, Remembrancer divine!
Let us feel Thy power, applying
Christ to every soul, and mine!
Let us groan Thine inward groaning;
Look on Him we pierced, and grieve;
All receive the grace atoning,
All the sprinkled blood receive.

--------------------
My times are in Thy hand;
My God, I wish them there;
My life, my friends, my soul I leave
Entirely to Thy care.

...

My times are in Thy hand,
Jesus, the crucified!
Those hands my cruel sins had pierced
Are now my guard and guide.

------------------

Isaac Watts:

How condescending and how kind
Was God’s eternal Son!
Our misery reached His heav’nly mind,
And pity brought Him down.

...

Here let our hearts begin to melt,

While we His death record,
And with our joy for pardoned guilt,
Mourn that we pierced the Lord.

------------------------

My sins laid open to the rod,
The back which from the law was free;
And the eternal Son of God
Received the stripes once due to me.

...

I pierced those sacred hands and feet
That never touched or walked in sin;
I broke the heart that only beat
The souls of sinful men to win.

That sponge of vinegar and gall
Was placed by me upon His tongue;
And when derision mocked His call,
I stood that mocking crowd among.

The Good Samaritan Experiment

The famous Darley-Batson experiment (Darley, J. M., and Batson, C.D., "From Jerusalem to Jericho": A study of Situational and Dispositional Variables in Helping Behavior". JPSP, 1973, 27, 100-108.) Its conclusion is that if people are in a hurry, they help a lot less, but being on the way to preach on the parable did not, but it looks to me as if this second conclusion is wrong, given the data, so do not rely on it.

The Directory for Family Worship

From The Directory for Family Worship (1647), a goo document to read:

...in every family where there is any that can read, the holy scriptures should be read ordinarily to the family; and it is commendable, that thereafter they confer, and by way of conference make some good use of what hath been read and heard. As, for example, if any sin be reproved in the word read, use may be made thereof to make all the family circumspect and watchful against the same; or if any judgment be threatened, or mentioned to have been inflicted, in that portion of scripture which is read, use may be made to make all the family fear lest the same or a worse judgment befall them, unless they beware of the sin that procured it: and, finally, if any duty be required, or comfort held forth in a promise, use may be made to stir up themselves to employ Christ for strength to enable them for doing the commanded duty, and to apply the offered comfort. In all which the master of the family is to have the chief hand; and any member of the family may propone a question or doubt for resolution.

God's Law and What Is Good. The other night someone was saying that the book of Hebrews explained how God's command to Abraham to kill his son did not violate the natural law against murder. It doesn't. Hebrews 11:17-19 says:

By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac: and he that had received the promises offered up his only begotten [son], Of whom it was said, That in Isaac shall thy seed be called: Accounting that God [was] able to raise [him] up, even from the dead; from whence also he received him in a figure.

According to this interpretation, Abraham did think Isaac would die, but also thought that God could raise him up from the dead again and somehow keep the covenant. This does not eliminate the problem that Abraham was commanded to cause the death of his son.

Islam vs. Christianity. What is the difference, and what is similar? The Baylyblog has a good discussion:

(by Lucas Weeks, a ClearNote Pastors College student) Last October, 138 Muslim scholars issued this open letter to Pope Benedict XVI and other Christian leaders entitled “A Common Word Between Us and You”. One month later, dozens of Christian leaders responded in a full-page advertisement in the New York Times, the text of which can be found here...

I am certainly in favor of using our common ground to build bridges to Muslims. Absolutely! But there are two important points to note in this particular discussion: First, this is not a personal exchange of ideas between friends. This is a discussion between scholars and religious leaders who have given their lives to studying and teaching from the Qu’ran and the New Testament. Consequently, the Christian response has a duty to acknowledge the Muslims for their effort to build bridges (which they did do) and to respectfully explain why a Muslim must be united to Jesus Christ before his love for God and for neighbor will be the love that God desires.

And it was precisely this that these Christian leaders certainly did not do.

Second, Christians who read these two documents must understand that the Muslim document was basically honest, while the “Christian” document was basically dishonest. This is a simple question of integrity.

If the men and women who wrote and signed the Christian response truly believe the foundational principle of the Christian faith is simply obedience of the two greatest commands, then the matter is simple: they simply aren’t Christians and they need someone to explain the gospel of Jesus Christ to them.

If, however, these men and women do understand that the foundational principle of the gospel is God’s love to us through Jesus Christ, then they very carefully obscured it in their response to the Muslims.

Pastor Roberts spoke on Romans 5 this morning and told this story about C.S. Lewis:

It is told that during a meeting on comparative religions in Britain that many scholars gathered together to discuss what, if anything, was unique to Christianity. Many different elements were discussed and debated. Was Christianity unique because of its concept of truth? No, other religions have this. Was it unique because of the doctrine of reconciliation? No, other religions have this. Was it unique in terms of inspiration of a particular book? No, again, other religions have this. It is told that C.S. Lewis entered the room during the debate and asked what the discussion was all about. “We are discussing what makes Christianity unique, if anything.” “That’s easy” Lewis responded, “its grace.”

At the heart of Islam is man's love for God. At the heart of Christianity is God's love for Man. Islam is a legalistic religion: follow God's rules, which in Islam are few and well-specified, and you will go to heaven. Christianity is a rejection of legality. God will decide whether you will go to heaven or not, and you can't buy your way in. Only He and the Cross can make you worthy.

Is the weblog post's charge against the Christian letter's signatories valid? The letter does not say that the fundamental pillars of Christianity are love of God and Man; it is not that bad. It even alludes to God's love for Man being central to Christianity, here:

For Christians, humanity’s love of God and God’s love of humanity are intimately linked. As we read in the New Testament: “We love because he [God] first loved us” (1 John 4:19). Our love of God springs from and is nourished by God’s love for us. It cannot be otherwise, since the Creator who has power over all things is infinitely good.

The main problem is that the Christian letter is a wasted opportunity. It says that love is important in Christianity and Islam, which is true but vacuous. It could have made the big point about the Islamic letter missing what is central to Christianity, and thus taught the Islamic clerics something they did not know already. Or, it could have made small points, such as that Islam, contrary to the Islamic letter, does not preach freedom of religion. Instead, the Christian letter says:

We applaud when you state that “justice and freedom of religion are a crucial part” of the love of neighbor. When justice is lacking, neither love of God nor love of the neighbor can be present. When freedom to worship God according to one’s conscience is curtailed, God is dishonored, the neighbor oppressed, and neither God nor neighbor is loved.

If they're going to say that, oughtn't they to mention that Islamic law says that the penalty for a Moslem who converts to Christianity is death, and that missionaries are treated as criminals in many (most?) Moslem countries? Or maybe they are trying to allude to that, very obliquely. The Moslem letter only mentioned "freedom of religion" twice, (p. 3, p. 14 of the full, pdf, version), and then only obliquely.

Somebody should write a better response to the Islamic letter, which is carefully written and which I admire. The letter should talk about the common ground of Islam and Christianity, and about the big differences. I don't know whether it should refer to contentious side-issues such as freedom of religion. It should be written by someone who knows enough about Islam to know whether Islam really allows peaceful co-existence, or whether it demands world conquest. In either case, we have common ground, especially since there is no realistic chance of Islam conquering the world in the next fifty years, and since even when they have conquered Christians, Moslems are supposed to tolerate them as long as they do not try to convert Moslems. Such a letter, too, should not be all sweetness and smiles. The important common ground between Moslems and Christians is what distinguishes them from idolaters, New Agers, and atheists. Saying that both Moslems and Christians are supposed to be nice doesn't help bring us together, even if it were to be true.

Sin. I'd benefit from understanding sin better. Evangelicals are to content to say something is sinful simply because the Bible tells us so. That's fine for a start, and a good "reduced form" as we say in economics. And I agree with Ockham that it is God saying something is sinful that makes it sinful, rather than God looking at something, seeing it is independent sinful, and therefore so naming it. Murder is because God says it is; God doesn't necessarily say it is sinful because it is. But there are also natural law reasons for why most sins are sins, reasons not based on divine revelation. Murder is an example-- there are good natural law reasons for it to be considered bad. But we should also look at lust, gluttony, sodomy, greed, sloth, and so forth.

Gluttony is an overlooked sin. Why is it sinful? What is it, exactly? Here are three possibilities.

1. Gluttony is poor stewardship. If I eat a lot, somebody else doesn't get to eat as much.

2. Gluttony is bestial. I degrade my humanity, and pollute God's image, by stuffing myself and by making myself fat.

3. Gluttony is distracting. I put food before God, both in my attention and when it comes to conscious tradeoffs.

These all have different implications. Thin people who don't eat much can be guilty of Type 1 and 3 gluttony.

Alpha Course. My son wanted me to take a picture of this Alpha Course pamphlet, which is indeed striking.

An Alpha Course Pamphlet

The Name of God. I looked again at my notes on the Tetragrammaton today. They are in sad shape, but the jumble has interesting material in it. The question is how the 4 consonants of the name of God, הוהי or JHVH, ought to be pronounced. What vowels should be added? Jehovah is traditional. Modern scholars use Yahweh. I think they're wrong. My young scholar told me that he thought V was more correct than W. The Y is clearly wrong for English-- we translate the Hebrew Yod as J in Joshua, Jehu, Jehoram, etc. The only big issue remaining is whether there should be a vowel between H and V.

Here's a Bible story from Judges 10 that I just learned about. Abimelech killed all his brothers, who were the rulers of Shechem, except for Jotham. Jotham told this story to the men of Shechem before he fled.

[7] And when they told it to Jotham, he went and stood in the top of mount Gerizim, and lifted up his voice, and cried, and said unto them, Hearken unto me, ye men of Shechem, that God may hearken unto you.

[8] The trees went forth on a time to anoint a king over them; and they said unto the olive tree, Reign thou over us. [9] But the olive tree said unto them, Should I leave my fatness, wherewith by me they honour God and man, and go to be promoted over the trees? [10] And the trees said to the fig tree, Come thou, and reign over us. [11] But the fig tree said unto them, Should I forsake my sweetness, and my good fruit, and go to be promoted over the trees? [12] Then said the trees unto the vine, Come thou, and reign over us. [13] And the vine said unto them, Should I leave my wine, which cheereth God and man, and go to be promoted over the trees? [14] Then said all the trees unto the bramble, Come thou, and reign over us. [15] And the bramble said unto the trees, If in truth ye anoint me king over you, then come and put your trust in my shadow: and if not, let fire come out of the bramble, and devour the cedars of Lebanon.

Jotham says more to connect this to Abimelech, implying that Abimelech is the bramble and that he and the men of Shechem will come to blows later, which they do.

The main point, I think, is that you have to worry about the motives of anybody who wants to be king. It is Plato's problem of the Philosopher King stated some centuries earlier.

Law (a 2004 repeat) What is the purpose of law? To make people behave well. Under Holmes’s “Bad Man” theory in “The Path of the Law”, laws are for the men who will not do good without the threat of punishment. That, however, neglects other purposes of laws which are important if secondary. One is the “expressive” purpose– that expressing that something is wrong is satisfing to the public. Related to that is the educational purpose of law. Even the good man does not know everything, and the law teaches him. From Psalm 119:

97 MEM. O how love I thy law! it is my meditation all the day.98 Thou through thy commandments hast made me wiser than mine enemies: for they are ever with me. 99 I have more understanding than all my teachers: for thy testimonies are my meditation. ... 104 Through thy precepts I get understanding: therefore I hate every false way.

But for the law to achieve this purpose, it must be a trustworthy guide. We must trust the lawgiver to be willing to learn from the law. God’s law is trustworthy. If nothing else, it tells me what God wants, and that is important in itself. Human law is less reliable. If I see a law saying that it is illegal to perform haircuts without a license, I do not conclude that unlicensed haircuts are immoral, or even unsafe, because I think the legislature is wiser than I am. Rather, I conclude that either the legislature has been fooled, or they have been bribed by the barbers to restrict entry.

The Bible is a comfort to Christians because it is a reliable source of law. It still has many difficulties– notably, knowing what law in the Old Testament is still applicable after the Resurrection– but Christians at least have a basis for right and wrong beyond what their culture teaches them. Traditionalists are less grounded, but they at least can find grounding in the axiom that their tradition is reliable. Liberals, despite the confidence they commonly show, are more at sea. They cannot retreat to their culture, since it is a recent and ever-changing one. They are at risk trying to appeal to logical principles grounded in a few generally accepted axioms too, since they often profess a relativism which rules out logic. But that, I think, is what they commonly try to do anyway. John Stuart Mill is an example. He tried to ground morality on the rule of not hurting others, and that is common today too. But the rule turns out to be empty, since anything to which anybody objects hurts them and since it is by no means self-evident that we shouldn’t hurt other people (think of the hurt caused by winning a contest with others, or by starting a new business in competition with them).

Trying to Change God, Not Ourselves The sermon today at St. Ebbe's made a good point: when God makes us notice our sin, our response is often not to change our own behavior, but to change God. We want Him to withdraw His disapproval in exchange for something else we offer, or just to forgive us because he is merciful and we ask. We don't want to give up our sin. I'll have to keep this in mind. Micah 6:7-8 is the passage preached on:

Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, [or] with ten thousands of rivers of oil? shall I give my firstborn [for] my transgression, the fruit of my body [for] the sin of my soul?
He hath shewed thee, O man, what [is] good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?

Pascal's Wager and Diversification of Risk.Marginal Revolution reports on a Justin Wolfers' variant on Pascal's Wager: If you have five children, train each to be a disciple of a different religion. That way, at least someone in the family will get into Heaven.

This is an argument worth thinking about. It is not an argument about yourself, but about helping your children. Here, perhaps, is the fallacy. If I am selfish, I care about my own salvation, which this project will surely doom. If I care about my children, I should choose the best estimated outcome for each of them-- which is the religion which best meets the conditions of Pascal's Wager (a high up-side gain and a low down-side cost). The Wolfers project makes sense only in a mixed case where my utility is concave in my children's utility. That's not unrealistic, but it's what we think of as our duty towards the children either-- and remember, if we're thinking about realism, my own salvation is going to weigh very heavily.

Of course, Pascal said that he didn't think his Wager was sound, since only God can give saving faith-- cold-blooded calculation won't make you love God. But the Wager does work as a way to avoid punishment for sin, if not for adoption into God's family.

Making Big Choices under Uncertainty. I had a good talk about Christianity today during my visit to Warwick University. We talked about two fallacies of delayed decision. One is that of Buridan's Ass, who, halfway between two equally good mangers of hay, died of starvation because there was no way to choose between them. Lesson: To not choose is a choice in itself, and sometimes worse than not choosing the best alternative. The second fallacy is that of my webpost a few days ago: of choosing X because it is very uncertain which is better, X or Y. This seems silly until I bring in the application: choosing not to pray to God because it is very uncertain which is better, praying to God or (because he might not exist) not praying. It is quite possible to make your choice and pray heartily to a God you are not sure exists, just as you can write letters to someone who might never receive them or spend thousands of dollars on a medical treatment that might have no chance of
working. You may not be able to fix the degree of your belief, and without a strong belief you may find the discipline of following it hard, but you can make the decision.

Divine Anger and the Atonement. I've always thought that the idea that Jesus had to die on the cross to propitate God for Man's sins was a mystery-- something that we had no way of understanding. There is no logical connection between Eric Rasmusen sinning against God and God having to die on the cross so Eric could be forgiven. Why not just forgive Eric outright? There could well be a reason, but we are not told it. (Click here to read more.)

It is not enough to say that every wrong requires a punishment. I don't accept that as an axiom.

On the other hand, it is true that humans feel innately that every wrong requires a punishment. That feeling is part of human nature. It is closely related to reciprocity. It is a useful feeling for humans to have, even if it can't be justified on more fundamental grounds, just as a taste for sweet things is a useful feeling for humans in pre- industrial societies.

My new thought of today is this. Maybe the Atonement is for our sake in adifferent way than we usually think. Suppose it was unnecessary for Jesus to die in order for our sins to be forgiven, and God simply forgave some people's sins. We humans would be left with a feeling that the sins and the forgiveness were not serious-- it is too easy. We would only feel forgiven, and only feel that justice had been done, if someone were punished. So God died not so we could avoid massive direct punishment, but so we could avoid the punishmnet of feeling that we had done injustice.

Part of this is that we humans think justice has been done if someone is punished even if it is not the culprit who is punished, so long as it is someone who is punished on behalf of the culprit (and not, say, accidentally). If George Junior is to jailed for murder, and George Senior offers to take his place, I think people are satisfied to let him do so.

The Uses of Suffering. Not all suffering can be explained as useful, but some can, as Paul does in Romans 5:3-5: (Click here to read more.)

More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us.

The sermon at St. Ebbe's today was on that passage, and I tried applying it to my own sleepiness at the time. Hardly suffering, but one of those little annoyances that we ought to try to turn to our advantage. Maybe I'll get a little endurance out of it.

The progression is interesting in the passage. Really, I'd have to learn about the Greek to understand it. The King James Version uses quite different words in the middle-- Patience and Experience.

And not only [so], but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; And patience, experience; and experience, hope: And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.

At any rate, the point is that tribulation is, for the faithful, a cause of hope, not of despair, but not directly. God wants us to develop character through our life on earth, and that seems to require suffering. Why, we must leave as a mystery perhaps, but it does not seem unreasonable that God's aim is to create a certain sort of being that requires memories of mild suffering. This is not as hard as the Problem of Evil; this passage does not seem directed towards that.

A Coin Flip Example for Intelligent Design

1. Suppose we come across a hundred bags of 20-chip draws from hundred different urns. Each bag contains 20 red chips. We naturally deduce that the urns contain only red chips. (Click here to read more.)

2. We realize that somebody might have come along and rigged the bags. So we decide to look at videotape of what happened.

3. On looking at the videotape, we see that someone came along and took away 95 of the bags and replaced them with new bags. We now have lost those bags' evidence of redness.

4. But what about the other 5 bags? Our videotape showed nobody replacing them. Shouldn't we be surer than at (1) that those 5 urns contain only red chips? And mightn't we deduce that the other 95 urns contain only red chips too?

Evolution and Religion

David Sloan Wilson, author of Darwin’s Cathedral, a book about the usefulness of religion as an evolutionary adaption, harshly criticizes Richard Dawkins for sloppiness in thinking about religion and evolution. This is part of Dawkins's contempt for group selection, which is misguided. Click here to read more

It is the more sober work of Wilson that is the more serious criticism of Christianity. He says, re Dawkins:

Richard Dawkins and I share much in common. We are both biologists by training who have written widely about evolutionary theory. We share an interest in culture as an evolutionary process in its own right. We are both atheists in our personal convictions who have written books on religion. In Darwin’s Cathedral I attempted to contribute to the relatively new field of evolutionary religious studies. When Dawkins’ The God Delusion was published I naturally assumed that he was basing his critique of religion on the scientific study of religion from an evolutionary perspective. I regret to report otherwise. He has not done any original work on the subject and he has not fairly represented the work of his colleagues....

As one example reported in the July 6, 2006 issue of Nature, a group of microbiologists headed by Benjamin Kerr cultured bacteria (E. coli) and their viral predator (phage) in 96-well plates, which are commonly used for automated chemical analysis. Each well was an isolated group of predators and their prey. Within each well, natural selection favored the most rapacious viral strains, but these strains tended to drive their prey, and therefore themselves extinct. More prudent viral strains were vulnerable to replacement by the rapacious strains within each well, but as groups they persisted longer and were more likely to colonize other wells. Migration between wells was accomplished by robotically controlled pipettes. Biologically plausible migration rates enabled the prudent viral strains to persist in the total population, despite their selective disadvantage within groups.

As a second example reported in the December 8, 2006 issue of Science, economist Samuel Bowles estimated that between-group selection was strong enough to promote the genetic evolution of altruism in our own species, exactly as envisioned by Darwin. These and many other examples, summarized by Edward O. Wilson and myself in a forthcoming review article, are ignored entirely by Dawkins, who continues to recite his mantra that the selective disadvantage of altruism within groups poses an insuperable problem for between-group selection.

 

How Does Christianity Affect My Life

A good question to ask oneself is: "How do I live my life differently because of my religious beliefs?" Or, put a little differently: "If I didn't believe X, how would my life change?" Personally, I don't think I'd engage in much vice, since gross sin is not advisable even if one's aim is temporal happiness. I guess I'd not be writing posts like this if I were not Christian, nor would I go to church, or teach my children about God, or find interest in reading the Bible or thinking about theology. I wouldn't pray, I suppose, though there is an earthly case to be made for prayer too. I would not give money to charity, and I would spend a lot more of my income--- that is perhaps the biggest behavioral change I would expect.

Naturalism

I've started reading the just-published book, God's Undertaker: Has Science Buried God?, of John Lennox, whom I met at St. Ebbe's. It's good. I think I see the essence of the philosophical position of Naturalism now,Click here to read more

from page 29:

[T]here is nothing but nature. It is a closed system of cause and effect. ...There is no `outside'.

The notion is tricky because naturalism does not, I think, exactly mean that magic and gods do not exist. There is no essential difference between a witch who mixes a love potion and a scientist who mixes a cough remedy except that the love potion doesn't work. Both mixers intend to repeat an objective formula to generate predictable results, and both have obtained their formula rationally, by accepting authority, using observation, or plausible theorizing. In the same way, whether we call the force that makes things pull at each other the force Gravity or the god Gravity makes no difference.

I would be hard put to say whether primitive peoples believe in naturalism or not. Their gods and demons are close to being explanations--- but on the other hand, they are believed to be fairly mysterious explanations. I suppose the key is whether the savages think that if they only had time, they'd be able to come up with a comprehensive explanation that included explaining the gods.

I was going to say that Thomas Aquinas thought he had such a comprehensive explanation (a summa theologica), but he didn't. He clearly distinguished between what could be known by reason and what needed to be learned by revelation, and he recognized that revelation did not include all the mysteries we'd like to know about God.

Thus, a naturalistic god is one that can be fully understood by humans-- at least understood as well as we understand, say, lions. He is a god that is in the same order of nature as man. The Greek gods of myth are like that, and the Norse gods, but lurking behind them is the truly supernatural--- the Mysteries, the Forms, the Norns, Erda.