New Testament – Page 3 – Maverick Philosopher

What Did You Do With Your Life, God?

Thanksgiving evening, the post-prandial conversation was very good. Christian Marty K. raised the question of what one would say were one to meet God after death and God asked, "What did you do with your life?"

Atheist Peter L. shot back, "What did you do with your life, God?"

In my judgment, and it is not just mine, the fact of evil is the main stumbling block to theistic belief. While none of the arguments from evil are compelling, some of them render atheism rationally acceptable. This has long been my view. Atheism and theism are both rationally acceptable and intellectually respectable, though of course they cannot both be true.

This puts me at odds with the Pauline passage at Romans 1: 18-20. I'll summarize it. Men are godless and wicked and suppress the truth. What may be known about God is plain to them because God has made it plain to them. Human beings have no excuse for their unbelief. "For since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities — his eternal power and divine nature — have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made . . . ."

Paul's claim here is that the existence and nature of God are evident from creation and that unbelief is a result of a willful turning away from the manifest truth. There is no excuse for unbelief because it is a plain fact that the natural world is divine handiwork. Now I am a theist and I am sympathetic to Christianity. But although I have one foot in Jerusalem, the other is planted firmly in Athens (philosophy, the autonomy of reason). And so I must point out that to characterize the natural world as 'made' or 'created' begs the question in favor of theism. As begging the question, the Pauline claim about the evidentness of the world's being created offers no support for theism. It is an analytic proposition that there is no creation without a creator. So if the heavens and the earth are a creation, then it follows straightaway that a creator exists.

But is the world a divine creation? This is the question, and the answer is not obvious. That the natural world is a divine artifact is not evident to the senses, or to the heart, or to reason. Of course, one can argue for the existence of God from the existence and order of the natural world. I have done it myself. But those who reject theistic arguments, and construct anti-theistic arguments, have their reasons too, and it cannot fairly be said that what animates the best of them is a stubborn and prideful refusal to submit to a truth that is evident. It is not evident to the senses that the natural world is a divine artifact.

I may be moved to marvel at "the starry skies above me" (Kant). But seeing is not seeing as. If you see the starry skies as divine handiwork, then this is an interpretation from within a theistic framework. But the datum seen can just as easily be given a nontheistic interpretation.

At the end of the day you must decide which of these interpretations to accept. You will not find some plain fact that will decide it for you. There is no fact you can point to, or argument you can give, that definitively rules out theism or rules it in.

If the atheism of some has its origin in pride, stubborness and a willful refusal to recognize any power or authority beyond oneself, or beyond the human, as may well be the case with such luminaries as Russell and Sartre, it does not follow that the atheism of all has this origin.

By the way, here we have the makings of an argument for hell. If someone, post-mortem, in the divine presence, and now fully cognizant of the ultimate metaphysical 'lay of the land,' were to persist in a pride Luciferian, and refuse to acknowledge and worship the ultimate Source of truth, goodness, beauty, and reality, a Source itself ultimately true, good, beautiful, and real, then the only fitting place for someone who freely chose to assert his miserable ego in defiance of its Source would be hell. It would be deeply unjust and unreasonable to permit such a person the visio beata.

Judging People

People can and ought to be judged by the company they keep, the company they keep away from, and those who attack them.

Addendum (6/23):

S. N. counters thusly:

For John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine, and you say, ‘He has a demon.’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.' (Luke 7.33-4)

God incarnate can safely consort with gluttons and drunkards and the lying agents of the Infernal Revenue Service, but mortal man cannot. So one who does so consort ought to be judged by the company he keeps. The judgment might be along the following lines, "You are morally weak, and you know you are; and yet you enter the near occasion of sin?"

This leads to a question about "Judge not lest ye be judged." How is this NT verse at Matthew 7, 1-5 to be interpreted? Is it to be read as implying the categorical imperative, "Thou shalt not judge others morally"? Or is it to be interpreted as a merely hypothetical imperative, "You may judge others morally, but only if you are prepared to be judged morally in turn and either condemned or exonerated as the case may be"?

The first reading is not plausible. For one thing, one cannot detach the antecedent or the consequent of a conditional in the way one can detach the conjunct of a conjunction. Compare 'If you don't want to be judged by others, don't judge them' with 'You don't want to be judged by others and you don't want others to judge you.' The categorical imperative 'Don't judge them' does not follow from the first. The declarative ' You don't want others to judge you' does follow from the second.

But now a third reading suggests itself to me, one that in a sense combines the categorical and the hypothetical, to wit, "You may judge others morally, but only if you are prepared to be judged morally and condemned by God, since no man is justified before God." This is tantamount to a categorical prohibition on judging.

I suspect the third reading is the correct one in the context of Christian teaching as a whole. But I'm no theologian.

Seeker and Finder

"Seek, and ye shall find." (Matthew 7:7) But better to be a perpetual seeker than a premature finder.

Grace

One cannot count on it, but one ought not discount it. "The wind bloweth where it listeth." (John 3:8)

Overbelief and Romans 1: 18-20

I met with S. N. in Tempe yesterday for philosophy and chess. While we were talking about overbelief, it occurred to me that Romans 1: 18-20 is another good example of overbelief. Now there is an issue that the budding theologian S. N. made me aware of, an issue that the philosopher in me desires to set aside, namely, the question whether St. Paul is speaking in his own voice in the passage in question. That is indeed an interesting question, but my concern is with the argment that the passage embodies, regardless of who is making it. I will write as if Paul is speaking in his own voice. If you disagree, substitute 'pseudo-Paul' for 'Paul.'

I will first give my reading of the passage, and then explain how it connects with William James' notion of overbelief. (I understand that the term 'overbelief' surfaces first in Matthew Arnold who supposedly derives it from Goethe's use of Aberglaube. My concern is solely with James' use of the word.)

The Pauline Passage

Rather than quote the whole of the Pauline passage at Romans 1: 18-20, I'll summarize it. Men are godless and wicked and suppress the truth. What may be known about God is plain to them because God has made it plain to them. Human beings have no excuse for their unbelief. "For since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities — his eternal power and divine nature — have been clearly seen,
being understood from what has been made . . . ."

Paul's claim here is that the existence and nature of God are evident from creation and that unbelief is a
result of a willful turning away from the truth. There is no excuse for unbelief because it is a plain fact that the natural world is divine handiwork. Now I am a theist and I am sympathetic to Christianity. But although I have one foot in Jerusalem, the other is planted firmly in Athens. And so I must point out that to characterize the natural world as 'made' or 'created' begs the question in favor of theism. As begging the question, the Pauline claim about the evidentness of the world's being created offers no support for theism. It is an analytic proposition that there is no creation without a creator. So if the heavens and the earth are a creation, then it follows straightaway that a creator exists.

But is the world a divine creation? This is the question, and the answer is not obvious. That the natural world is a divine artifact is not evident to the senses, or to the heart, or to reason. Of course, one can argue for the existence of God from the existence and order of the natural world. I have done it myself. But those who reject theistic arguments, and construct anti-theistic arguments, have their reasons too, and it cannot fairly be said that what animates the best of them is a stubborn and prideful refusal to submit to a truth that is evident. It is simply not evident to the senses that the natural world is a divine artifact.

I may be moved to marvel at "the starry skies above me." This was one of two things that filled Kant with wonder, the other being "the moral law within me." But seeing is not seeing as. If you see the starry skies as divine handiwork, then this is an interpretation from within a theistic framework. But the datum seen can just as easily be given a nontheistic interpretation.

It is all-too-human to suspect in our opponents moral depravity when we cannot convince them. The Pauline passage smacks of that all-too-humanity. There are sincere and decent atheists, and they have plenty of excuse for their unbelief. The best of them, if wrong in the end, are excusably wrong.

Overbelief in the Pauline Passage

Here is my working definition of 'overbelief' based on my reading of William James: an overbelief is a belief arrived at by reading out of an experience more than is contained within it.

We experience the world as existent, as beautiful, and as orderly. But we don't experience the world as divine handiwork any more than we experience it as the work of Satan contrived to fool us into taking it to be real when it is not, and seduce us with its beauty and order. That the world is divine handiwork is therefore, by the above definition, an overbelief.

That is not to say that it is false. It is to say, as S. N. pointed out yesterday, that the belief is undetermined by the experience. Overbeliefs are undetermined by what we actually and literally experience. (Admittedly, it is a tricky question what exactly we literally experience: do I see my car, or only the front of my car? Do I touch my cat, or only the fur of my cat? I see a green tree, but do I see that a tree is green? Do I even see a green tree? I see an instance of greenness and an instance of treeness, but do I see that the two property-instances are compresent?)

That the world is divine handiwork is an overbelief. That doesn't make it false or even unreasonable. Indeed, overbeliefs are unavoidable. As James writes,

These ideas [overbeliefs] will thus be essential to that individual's religion; — which is as much as to say that over-beliefs in various directions are absolutely indispensable, and that we should treat them with tenderness and tolerance so long as they are not intolerant themselves. As I have elsewhere written, the most interesting and valuable things about a man are usually his over-beliefs. (The Varieties of Religious Experience, Penguin 1982, p. 515, orig. publ. 1902)

A Callable Loan

We who thrive get used to being alive, and forget we have our lives on loan, a loan that can be called on the spot without advance notice. Compare James 4:13-17 (NIV):

¹³Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” ¹⁴Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. ¹⁵Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” ¹⁶As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil. ¹⁷If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.

More on the Putative Paradox of Forgiveness

This just over the transom:

Finally, a post on forgiveness. 🙂 But my spirit within me won't permit me to forgo responding to what you've written. You characterize the paradox this way: It is morally objectionable to forgive those who will not admit wrongdoing, show no remorse, make no amends, do not pay restitution, etc. But if forgiveness is made conditional upon the doing of these things, then what is to forgive? Conditional forgiveness is not forgiveness. That is the gist of the putative paradox, assuming I have understood it.

That is not quite right.

The problem is this. Forgiving unconditionally — forgiving someone without their apology, repentance, penance, etc. — seems to amount to little more than condoning what they've done; it's hardly forgiveness but more of an acceptance of the wrong. On the other hand, forgiving on the condition that the wrong has been atoned — the wrongdoer has apologized, repented, made reparations, performed penances, etc — seems to be superfluous, insofar as after atonement has been made, the wrongdoer is not guilty of anything any longer and thus there is nothing to forgive, nor would continued resentment be appropriate.

BV: That's exactly what I said, though in a lapidary manner. So I think we agree as to what the putative paradox is. I call it 'putative' because I don't see it as a genuine paradox.

You write that, The first limb strikes me as self-evident: it is indeed morally objectionable to forgive those who will not admit wrongdoing, etc. But this is contentious; not everyone sees this the way you do. For instance, Jesus seems to forgive wrongdoers unconditionally on two occasions, once in the pericope adulterae (at John 7.53-8.11) and again at Luke 23.34 when he is being crucified. A significant number of contemporary philosophers (e.g., David Garrard, Eve McNaughton, Leo Zaibert, Christopher McCowley, Cheshire Calhoun, Glen Pettigrove) defend the practice of unconditional forgiveness, as well. So it's unacceptable simply to accept the first horn of the paradox as is; there is the argumentation of all these philosophers to deal with!

BV: Yes, my assertion is debatable, but then so is almost everything in philosophy and plenty of what is outside of philosophy. I don't think bringing Jesus in advances your argument. Either Jesus is God or he is not. If he is not, then he lacks the authority to contravene the existing law and forgive the adulteress. If he is God, then two problems. First, your argument then rests on a highly contentious theological presupposition. (I will remind you that in conversation you said that you were not trying to work out the Christian concept of forgiveness, but the concept of forgiveness in general.) Second, granting that God has the authority to forgive and forgive unconditionally, that has no relevance to the human condition, to forgiveness as it plays out among mere mortals such as us. For one thing, God can afford to forgive unconditionally; nothing can touch him. But for us to adopt a policy of forgiving unconditionally would be disastrous.

At Luke 23:34, Jesus is reported to have said, "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do." Note that Jesus is not forgiving his tormenters; he is asking God the Father to forgive them. So this passage is not relevant to our discussion. Besides, there is nothing here about unconditional forgiveness. Jesus could have been requesting his Father to forgive the killers after punishing them appropriately.

Your mention of contemporary philosophers who support your position is just name-dropping. To drop a name is not to give an argument. I would have to see their arguments. Is it unacceptable for me to hold to my understanding of forgiveness according to which it is morally objectionable to forgive the unrepentant in advance of studying the arguments of those you mention? No more unacceptable than holding to the view that motion is possible in advance of studying the arguments of Zeno and his school, or holding to the reality of time despite my inability decisively to refute McTaggart. I might just stand my Moorean ground: "Look, I just ate lunch; therefore time is real!" Similarly with forgiveness: "Look, it is a wonderful thing to forgive, but only on condition that the offender own up to his wrongdoing, make amends, etc."

You also write, I admit that once the miscreant has paid his debt, he is morally in the clear. His guilt has been removed. But I can still forgive him because forgiveness does not take away guilt, it merely alters the attitude of the one violated to the one who violated him. You are forgetting another important aspect of forgiveness beyond the change in attitude, however, namely that it is a way of responding to wrongdoers as wrongdoers. Another way of putting this is that forgiveness is only possible when someone stands before us as guilty for some wrong done and is thus an appropriate candidate for resentment, anger, etc. If someone has atoned for their wrong and is no longer guilty, then there's no ground for resentment and thus there's nothing more to forgive! So the change in attitude after atonement has been made may resemble forgiveness, but it's hardly genuine forgiveness since there's no wrong to forgive any longer.

BV: This is an interesting and weighty point, but I disagree nonetheless. You may be conflating two separate claims. I would say that it is a conceptual truth that if X forgives Y, then X perceives Y as having done wrong, whether or not Y has in fact done wrong. This truth is analytic in that it merely unpacks our ordinary understanding of 'forgiveness.' But it doesn't follow from this conceptual truth that there is nothing left to forgive with respect to a person who has atoned for his misdeed. I say there is: the mere fact that he has done me wrong in the first place. Suppose he stole my money, but then apologized and made restitution. In that case the demands of justice have been met. But there is still something left to forgive, namely, his having stolen my money in the first place. The apology and restitution do not eliminate the whole of the guilt, for the offender remains guilty of the misdeed. After all, his apology and restitution do not retroactively make him innocent. He remains guilty as charged. The fact of his having committed the misdeed can in no way be altered. Though contingent at the time, it now has the modal status of necessitas per accidens.

There is obviously a difference between one who is guilty of an offence and one who is innocent of it. That distinction remains in place even after the guilty party pays for his crime. Your position seems to imply that punishment retroactively renders the criminal innocent — which is absurd.

Consider this. Forgiveness is commonly thought of as gracious; it is a generous way of responding to wrongdoers that goes beyond strictly what they deserve. How is it at all generous to change one's attitude towards a wrongdoer only once atonement has been made and she is effectively no longer a wrongdoer?

BV: I agree that forgiveness is gracious and not strictly a matter of desert. It is nevertheless generous to forgive even after atonement has been made. For one is forgiving the offender of having committed the misdeed in he first place. I deny that the offender is no longer a wrongdoer after the penalty has been paid. Again, your position seems to imply that punishment retroactively renders the criminal innocent.

Remember the Derrida quote I cited:

Imagine, then, that I forgive on the condition that the guilty one repents, mends his ways, asks forgiveness, and thus would be changed by a new obligation, and that from then on he would no longer be exactly the same as the one who was found to be culpable. In this case, can one still speak of forgiveness? This would be too simple on both sides: one forgives someone other than the guilty one. In order for there to be forgiveness, must one not on the contrary forgive both the fault and the guilty as such, where the one and the other remain as irreversible as the evil, as evil itself, and being capable of repeating itself, unforgivably, without transformation, without amelioration, without repentance or promise? Must one not maintain that an act of forgiveness worthy of its name, if there ever is such a thing, must forgive the unforgivable, and without condition? (On cosmopolitanism and forgiveness, pp. 38-9)

BV: John Searle once said of Derrida that he gives bullshit a bad name. So an appeal to the authority of Derrida will have as little effect on me as an appeal the supposed authority of Paul Krugman in an economic connection. The Derrida passage smacks of sophistry what with the rhetorical questions and the typically French amorphousness. He seems to be advancing the following sophism. If one forgives the one who has atoned, then "one forgives someone other than the guilty one." But that is to confuse numerical identity with qualitative identity.

Thus I have to hold, pace tua, that genuine forgiveness must be unconditional, and conditionalized forgiveness is less than true.

BV: And I continue to maintain, pace tua, that only conditional forgiveness is morally unobjectionable and that conditional forgiveness counts as genuine forgiveness.

Scriptural Inerrancy Again

The following is from a reader who wishes to remain anonymous but who wants me "to hear a different perspective on the matter than that of the Calvinists who comment on your blog: I don't want you thinking they are the ones rightly interpreting the Christian texts."

……………….

Jesus and Paul had a rather liberal interpretation of the Old Testament Law, by which I mean a non-literal, moralist interpretation. I shall explain this in further detail by offering a few exemplary statements from them both.

Jesus famously said that "What goes into someone’s mouth does not defile them, but what comes out of their mouth, that is what defiles them" (Mt 15:11), specifying what he meant a few verses later: "But the things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart, and these defile them. For out of the heart come evil thoughts — murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what defile a person" (vv. 18-20). This is directly contradictory to the teaching of the Old Testament Law; after a long list of animals the eating of which is strictly forbidden, Lev 11:24 reads: "You will make yourselves unclean by [eating] these." Jesus denies the literal truth of Lev 11:24 by denying the reality of ritual purity and impurity; instead he gave a spiritualized, moralist interpretation of purity and impurity: the only true (im)purity or (un)cleanliness is moral (im)purity or (un)cleanliness.

A further expression of the denial of the reality of ritual purity and impurity and, implied with this, a rejection of the temple sacrificial system of worship is involved in Jesus' quoting the verse from Hosea 6:6, "I desire mercy, not sacrifice." When the Pharisees see that Jesus eats at the same table as many tax collectors and sinners — i.e., those who would render him ceremonially unclean and incapable of participating in the temple cult, thus removed from the blessings of God — Jesus responds that God desires mercy, not sacrifice (Mt 9:10-13). "Sacrifice" is connected to a concern for ritual purity, as well as participation in the temple religious system; what God wants is not this, but mercy towards those who are in need of love: particularly those rejected by the religious figures and "holy men" of his time. God evidently is not concerned with ritual purity; he wishes that men be kind to one another, and he makes an effort to show such kindness himself through Jesus. But a rejection of ritual purity, the requirement for sacrifice, the legitimacy of the temple, etc., is a rejection of a literal reading of many Old Testament texts.

Consider also Jesus' and Paul's affirmation that the true fulfillment of the Law is obedience to the command "Love thy neighbor as thyself" (see, e.g., Mt 22:34-30; Rom 13:8-10, Gal 5:14). This cannot be literally true, for the various ritual and ceremonial injunctions of the Law (e.g., regarding circumcision, dietary habits, sacrifices, etc.) cannot in any plausible way be interpreted as mere instances of love for neighbor; no one would ever get the impression that the command to circumcise one's child on the eighth day is an instance of "love thy neighbor" by reading the relevant OT texts. What this statement suggests, rather, is a non-literal and moralist interpretation of the Old Testament: what is really of value is the moral teaching about loving your neighbor; all that ritual and ceremonial stuff doesn't mean much of anything and can even at times be ignored.

One more example would be Paul's affirmations regarding the ultimate insignificance of circumcision: "A person is not a Jew who is one only outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. No, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code" (Rom 2:28-29); "Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing. Keeping God’s commands is what counts" (1 Cor 7:19); "Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is the new creation" (Gal 6:15). No one would ever come to such a conclusion merely reading what the Old Testament says regarding the requirement of circumcision: "Every male among you shall be circumcised. . . . My covenant in your flesh is to be an everlasting covenant. Any uncircumcised male, who has not been circumcised in the flesh, will be cut off from his people" (Gen 17:10, 13-14). Paul elevates obedience to the moral commandments of God, especially "love thy neighbor", above the command of circumcision, so much so that the latter command is effectively annulled.

No one would come to the conclusions that Jesus and Paul did merely by reading the salient Old Testament texts themselves; their interpretation is non-literal and moralist, and is merely one manifestation of the tendency towards spritualized, internalized interpretations of inherited religion that appears in other places (e.g., ancient Greek religion with the advent of the philosophers) as well. (For more on this, see Stephen Finlan, The Background and Contents of Paul's Cultic Atonement Metaphors (Boston: Brill, 2004), 47ff.)

BV comments: I find the foregoing persuasive and would extract the following argument against inerrancy from it:

1. If the Scripture is inerrant, then no later passage revises, corrects, contradicts, annuls, or abrogates any earlier passage.

2. There are NT passages that contradict OT passages, e.g. MT 15:11 contradicts Lev 11:24.

Therefore

3. It is not the case that the Scripture is inerrant.

The argument is valid in point of logical form. If the first premise is not true, then I simply do not know what plenary inerrancy means. (I assume we mean by inerrancy plenary (full) inerrancy. Otherwise I could maintain that my blog is inerrant, provided you ignore all assertions in it that are mistaken. "It is everywhere inerrant except where it isn't.") The first premise is true and so is the second as the anon. contributor demonstrated. Therefore, the Scriptures are not inerrant.

ComBox open. But if you comment, be BRIEF and address PRECISELY WHAT IS CLAIMED by the anonymous contributor. Otherwise you will be unmercifully cast into the outer cyber-darkness where there is much weeping and the gnashing of teeth.

On Joy at Osama’s Demise: Dennis Prager Responds to Me on the Air

It's been an interesting morning. At 10:30 AM I noticed that my traffic was way up for the day. And then at 11:12 AM I heard Dennis Prager reading on the air the first paragraph of a post of mine from yesterday in which I express my disappointment at Prager for rejoicing over Osama bin Laden's death when the appropriate response, as it seems to me, is to be glad that the al-Qaeda head is out of commission, but without gleeful expressions of pleasure. That's Schadenfreude and to my mind morally dubious.

(Even more strange is that before Prager read from my blog, I had a precognitive sense that he was going to do so.)

In his response, Prager pointed out that the Jews rejoiced when the Red Sea closed around the Egyptians, and that this rejoicing was pleasing to God. (See Exodus 15) Apparently that settled the matter for Prager.

And then it dawned on me. Prager was brought up a Jew, I was brought up a Christian. I had a similar problem with my Jewish friend Peter Lupu. In a carefully crafted post, Can Mere Thoughts be Morally Wrong?, I argued for a thesis that I consider well-nigh self-evident and not in need of argument, namely, that some mere thoughts are morally objectionable. The exact sense of this thesis is explained and qualified in the post. But to my amazement, I couldn't get Peter to accept it despite my four arguments. And he still doesn't accept it.

Later on, it was Prager who got me to see what was going on in my discussion with Peter. He said something about how, in Judaism, it is the action that counts, not the thought or intention. Aha! But now a certain skepticism rears its head: is Peter trapped in his childhood training, and me in mine? Are our arguments nothing but ex post facto rationalizations of what we believe, not for good reasons, but on the basis of inculcation? (The etymology of 'inculcation' is telling: the beliefs that were inculcated in us were stamped into us as if by a heel, L. calx, when we were impressionable youths.)

The text that so impressed me as a boy and impresses me even more now is Matt. 5: 27-28: "You have heard that it was said, You shall not commit adultery. [Ex. 20:14, Deut. 5:18] But I say to you that anyone who so much as looks with lust at a woman has already committed adultery with her in his heart."

Not that I think that Prager or Peter are right. No, I think I'm right. I think Christianity is morally superior to Judaism: it supersedes Judaism, preserving what is good in it while correcting what is bad. Christianity goes to the heart of the matter. Our hearts are foul, which is why our words and deeds are foul. Of course I have a right to my opinion and I can back it with arguments. And you would have to be a liberal of the worst sort to think that there is anything 'hateful' in what I just wrote about Christianity being morally superior to Judaism.

But still there is the specter of skepticism which is not easy to lay. I think we just have to admit that reason is weak and that the moral and other intuitions from which we reason are frail reeds indeed. This should make us tolerant of differences.

But toleration has limits. We cannot tolerate the fanatically intolerant. So, while not rejoicing over any man's death or presuming to know — what chutzpah! – where any man stands in the judgment of God, I am glad that Osama has been removed from our midst.

Easter Morning Thoughts on 1 Corinthians 15:14

Biblia Vulgata: Si autem Christus non resurrexit, inanis est ergo praedicatio nostra, inanis est et fides vestra.

King James: And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.

Orthodox Christianity stands and falls with a contingent historical fact, the fact of the resurrection of Christ from the dead. If he rose from the dead, he is who is said he was and can deliver on his promises. If not, then the faith of the Christian inanis est, is vain, void, empty, delusional.

Compare Buddhism. It too promises salvation of a sort. But the salvation it promises is not a promise by its founder that rests on the existence of the founder or on anything he did. For Christianity, history is essential, for Buddhism inessential. The historical Buddha is not a savior, but merely an example of a man who saved himself by realizing his inherent Buddha-nature. The idea of the Buddha is enough; his historical existence unnecessary. 'Buddha,' like 'Christ,' is a title: it means 'the Enlightened One.' Buddhism does not depend either on the existence of Siddartha, the man who is said to have become the Buddha, or on Siddartha's becoming the Buddha.

Hence the Zen saying, "If you see the Buddha, kill him." I take that to mean that one does not need the historical Buddha, and that cherishing any piety towards him may prove more hindrance than help. Buddhism, as the ultimate religion of self-help, enjoins each to become a lamp unto himself. What is essential is the enlightenment that one either achieves or fails to achieve on one's own, an enlightenment which is a natural possibility of all. If one works diligently enough, one can extricate oneself from the labyrinth of samsara. Oner can achieve the ultimate goal on one's own, by one's own power. There is no need for supernatural assistance.

Is this optimism justified? I remain open to Christianity's claims because I doubt the justification of self-help optimism. One works and works on oneself but makes little progress. That one needs help is clear. That one can supply it from within one's own resources is unclear. I know of no enlightened persons. But I know of plenty of frauds, spiritual hustlers, and mountebanks.

Both Buddhism and Christianity are life-denying religions. But while Christianity denies this life for the sake of a higher life elsewhere and elsewhen, Buddhism denies this life for the sake of extinction. The solution to the problem of suffering is to so attenuate desire and aversion that one comes to the realization that one never existed in the first place. Some solution. And yet there is much to learn from Buddhism and its practices. They are the two highest religions. The two lowest are the religions of spiritual materialism, Judaism and Islam, with Islam at the very bottom of the hierarchy of great religions.

Islam is shockingly crude, as crude as Buddhism is overrefined. The Muslim is promised all the crass material pleasures on the far side that he is forbidden here, as if salvation consists of eating and drinking and endless bouts of sexual intercourse. Hence my term 'spiritual materialism.' 'Spiritual positivism' is also worth considering. The Buddhist is no positivist but a nihilist: slavation though annihilation.

Admittedly, this is quick and dirty, but it is important to cut to the bone of the matter from time to time with no mincing of words. For details see my Buddhism category.

Note: By 'orthodox' I do not have in mind Eastern Orthodoxy, but a Christianity that is not mystically interpreted, a Christianity in which, for example, the resurrection is not interpreted to mean the attainment of Christ-consciousness or the realization of Christ-nature.

Illegal Immigration, The Catholic Bishops, and the Misuse of Scripture

(Written 26 April 2006, revised 23 May 2010)

At the website of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, we read:

Why is the Catholic Church involved in the immigration issue? There are several reasons the Catholic Church is involved in the immigration debate. The Old and New Testaments, as well as the encyclicals of the Popes, form the basis for the Church's position. In Gospel of Matthew, Jesus calls upon us to "welcome the stranger,for what you do to the least of my brethren, you do unto me. " (Mt. 25-35, 40).

There is a deep mistake being made here, and we should try to understand what it is. The mistake is to confuse the private and public spheres and the different moralities pertaining to each.

Note first that if one scriptural passage can be invoked as a basis for public policy and law, then any can. We are enjoined in other New Testament places to "Resist not the evildoer," "Turn the other cheek," and the like.

Injunctions such as these cannot be made the basis for public policy whatever value they have in the private sphere.

Imagine a society that implements a policy of not resisting (apprehending, trying, convicting, incarcerating) rapists, murderers, and miscreants generally. Such a society would seal its own death
warrant and cease to function. It is a fact of human nature that people, in the main, behave tolerably well only under threat of punishment. People for the most part do not do the right thing because it is the right thing, but out of fear of punishment. This is not pessimism, but realism, and is known to be true by all unprejudiced students of history and society. Conservatives know this 'with their bones'; liberals need to learn it the hard way. Therefore not even a 'Christian' society can afford to make "Resist not the evildoer" a principle of public policy.

As for turning the other cheek, it is a policy that works well in certain atypical circumstances. If a man has a well-formed conscience, and is capable of feeling shame, then turning the other cheek in the face of his affront can achieve a result far superior to that achieved by replying in kind. Nonviolence can work. Gandhi's nonviolent resistance to the British may serve as an historical example. The Brits could be shamed and in any case Gandhi had no other means at his disposal. But imagine what would happen if Israel turned the other cheek in the face of its Islamist enemies who would blow it off the face of the earth at the first opportunity?

Once your enemy has reduced you to the status of a pig or a dog fit only to be slaughtered, then there is no way to reach him, shame him, or persuade him by acts of forebearance and kindness. You must resist him, with deadly force if necessary, if you wish to preserve your existence. The evil triumph when the good fail to defend themselves.

But is it not better to suffer wrong than to inflict it, as Socrates maintained? Would it not be better to perish than to defend one's life by taking life? Perhaps, but only if the underlying metaphysics and
soteriology are true. If the soul is immortal, and the phenomenal world is of no ultimate concern — being a vale of tears, a place through which we temporarily sojourn on our way to our true home —
then the care of the soul is paramount and to suffer wrong is better than to inflict it.

The same goes for Christianity which, as Nietzsche remarks, is "Platonism for the people." If you are a Christian, and look beyond this world for your true happiness, then you are entitled to practice
an austere morality in your private life. But you are not entitled to impose that morality and metaphysics on others, or demand that the State codify that morality and metaphysics in its laws and policies. For one thing, it would violate the separation of Church and State. More importantly, the implementation of Christian morality would lead to the destruction of the State and the State's ability to secure life, liberty, and property — the three Lockean purposes for which we have a state in the first place.

The problem of confusing private and public morality is well understood by Hannah Arendt ("Truth and Politics" in Between Past and Future, Penguin 1968, p. 245):

The disastrous consequences for any community that began in all earnest to follow ethical precepts derived from man in the singular — be they Socratic or Platonic or Christian — have been frequently pointed out. Long before Machiavelli recommended protecting the political realm against the undiluted principles of the Christian faith (those who refuse to resist evil permit the wicked "to do as much evil as they please"), Aristotle warned against giving philosophers any say in political matters. (Men who for professional reasons must be so unconcerned with "what is good for themselves" cannot very well be trusted with what is good for others, and least of all with the "common good," the down-to-earth interests of the community.) [Arendt cites Nicomachean Ethics, Book VI, and in particular 1140b9 and 1141b4.]

There is a tension between man qua philosopher/Christian and man qua citizen. As a philosopher/Christian, I am concerned with my soul, with its integrity, purity, salvation. I take very seriously indeed the Socratic "Better to suffer wrong than to do it" and the Christian "Resist not the evildoer." But as a citizen I must be concerned not only with my own well-being but also with the public welfare. This is true a fortiori of public officials and people in a position to influence public opinion, people like Catholic bishops. So, as Arendt points out, the Socratic and Christian admonitions are not applicable in the public sphere.

A Catholic bishop, therefore, who is pro illegal immigration on the strength of the "welcome the stranger" passage demonstrates a failure to understand the simple point that Arendt undescores.

What is applicable to me in the singular, as this existing individual concerned with the welfare of his immortal soul over that of his perishable body, is not applicable to me as citizen. As a citizen, I
cannot "welcome the stranger" who violates the laws of my country, a stranger who may be a terrorist or a drug-smuggler or a human-trafficker or a carrier of a deadly disease or a person who has no respect for the traditions of the country he invades; I cannot aid and abet his law-breaking. I must be concerned with public order and the very conditions that make the philosophical and Christian life possible in the first place. If I were to aid and abet the stranger's lawbreaking, I would not be "rendering unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's."

Indeed, the Caesar verse provides a scriptural basis for Church-State separation and indirectly exposes the fallacy of the Catholic bishops who cannot comprehend the simple distinctions I have tried to set forth.

Is Atheism Intellectually Respectable? On Romans 1:18-20

Joe Carter over at First Things argues that "We have to abandon the politically correct notion that atheism is intellectually respectable." My own view is that theism and atheism are both intellectually respectable. Carter makes his case by invoking St. Paul:

In Romans, St. Paul is clear that atheism is a case of vincible ignorance: “For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.” Acknowledging the existence of God is just the beginning—we must also recognize several of his divine attributes. Atheists that deny this reality are, as St. Paul said, without excuse. They are vincibly ignorant.

Paul's claim here is that the existence and nature of God are evident from creation and that unbelief is a result of a willful turning away from the truth. There is no excuse for unbelief because it is a plain fact that the natural world is divine handiwork. Now I am a theist and I am sympathetic to Christianity. But although I have one foot in Jerusalem, the other is planted firmly in Athens (philosophy, the autonomy of reason). And so I must point out that to characterize the natural world as 'made' or 'created' begs the question in favor of theism. As begging the question, the Pauline claim about the evidentness of the world's being created offers no support for theism. It is an analytic proposition that there is no creation without a creator. So if the heavens and the earth are a creation, then it follows straightaway that a creator exists.

If the atheism of some has its origin in pride, stubborness and a willful refusal to recognize any power or authority beyond oneself, or beyond the human, as is plainly the case with many of the cyberpunks over at Internet Infidels and similar sites, not to mention such luminaries as Russell and Sartre, it does not follow that the atheism of all has this origin.

Paul appears to be doing what ideologues regularly do when pushed to the wall in debate: they resort to ad hominem attacks and psychologizing: you are willful and stubborn and blinded by pride and lust; or you are a shill for corporate interests; or you are 'homophobic' or 'Islamophobic' or xenophobic; or you are a fear-monger and a hater; or you are a liar or insincere or stupid; or you are a racist, etc.

Joe Carter does the same thing.

Objection: "You are ignoring the deleterious noetic consequences of original sin. Because our faculties have been corrupted by it, we fail to find evident what is in itself evident, namely, that the world is a divine artifact. And it is because of this original sin that unbelief is inexcusable."

This response raises its own difficulties. First, how can one be morally responsible for a sin that one has not oneself committed but has somehow inherited? Second, if our faculties have been so corrupted by original sin that we can no longer reliably distinguish between the evident and the non-evident, then this corruption will extend to all our cognitive operations including Paul's theological reasoning, which we therefore should not trust either.

For a different take on Carter's piece, see Michael Liccione's Why Atheism Can Be Respectable.

A Different View of the Lewis Trilemma: The Trilemma Vindicated?

Dr. Lukáš Novák e-mails:

I am writing to you personally concerning your last post on your blog, "The Lewis Trilemma." I would like to offer you two things: first, a criticism of your criticism of the "trilemma" (you are right with your terminological quibble, but is there any other word to use instead?), and second, an answer to your question why it isn't possible that Jesus was just "exaggerating" or a "mystic".

I understand that I am quite flooding you with my texts lately, so please feel free not to respond to or even to read this! [Thank you for carefully addressing what I said. It is good so I am publishing it here. Comments are open.]

1. I think that you are mistaken in claiming that "people like Kreeft inadvertently concede [that there is a fourth horn to the trilemma] when they discuss the further possibilities that Jesus never claimed to be divine and that he might have meant his characteristic sayings mystically."

I think that it is clear that to claim that there are just X horns to a trilemma does not mean that it is impossible to suggest or even defend any additional (or seemingly additional) alternative. It is a platitude that to any x-lemma there can be potentially infinitely many other alternatives one can think of. I can think of several others, in this case: Jesus was an extraterrestrial making some research on humans, Jesus was a collective hallucination, Jesus was an incarnation of Quetzalcoatl who could not speak clearly in the Jewish milieu…

When someone is presenting a x-lemma, he must mean something else then: not that these are the only thinkable alternatives, but these are the only thinkable alternatives consistent both in themselves and with certain given data and reasonable assumptions.

[I see your point, but isn't it an extremely reasonable assumption that no man can be identical to God? On the face of it, that is an egregious violation of the logic of identity. I would say that that is a very reasonable assumption despite your attempt, in another thread, to defend a metaphysical framework which renders the Incarnation coherent. So if one grants that it is reasonable to assume that no man could be God, then it is reasonable to consider whether Jesus' words can be given a mystical interpretation or else interpreted as dramatic ways of making a claim that does not violate standard logic. Note also that you are not being quite fair in suggesting that my view opens the floodgate to a potentially infinite number of wild alternatives. It does not, because the mystical interpretation is not unreasonable, has been put forward, and is arguably much more reasonable that that a man is actually God. Its reasonableness is heightened by the extreme unreasonableness of the God-Man identity theory. Tertullian, Kierkegaard, and Shestov, you will recall, embrace the identity precisely because it is absurd. Of course, you will not grant that it is absurd. But I hope you grant that it is reasonable to believe that it is absurd. (I would argue that it would be unreasonable for you not to grant that it is reasonable to view the identity as absurd.) So although I agree that we must consider "the given data and reasonable assumptions" there is room for disagreement as to what these are.]

Continue reading “A Different View of the Lewis Trilemma: The Trilemma Vindicated?”

Augustine on an Analogy for the Incarnation

On this, the Feast of St. Augustine, it is fitting to meditate on an Augustinian passage. There is an interesting passage in On Christian Doctrine that suggests a way to think about the Incarnation. Commenting on the NT text, "the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us," Augustine writes:

In order that what we are thinking may reach the mind of the listener through the fleshly ears, that which we have in mind is expressed in words and is called speech. But our thought is not transformed into sounds; it remains entire in itself and assumes the form of words by means of which it may reach the ears without suffering any deterioration in itself. In the same way the Word of God was made flesh without change that He might dwell among us. (Bk 1, Ch. 13, LLA, 14; tr. D. W. Robertson, Jr.)

What we have here is an analogy. God the Son, the Word, is to the man Jesus of Nazareth as a human thought is to the sounds by means of which the thought is expressed and communicated to a listener. Just as our thoughts, when expressed in speech, do not become sounds but retain their identity as immaterial thoughts, so too the Word (Logos), in becoming man, does not lose its divine identity as the second person of the Trinity. Thought becomes speech without ceasing to be thought; God becomes man without ceasing to be God.

Continue reading “Augustine on an Analogy for the Incarnation”

Is There Any Excuse for Unbelief? Romans 1: 18-20

Paul's claim here is that the existence and nature of God are evident from creation and that unbelief is a result of a willful turning away from the truth. There is no excuse for unbelief because it is a plain fact that the natural world is divine handiwork. Now I am a theist and I am sympathetic to Christianity. But although I have one foot in Jerusalem, the other is planted firmly in Athens (philosophy, the autonomy of reason). And so I must point out that to characterize the natural world as 'made' or 'created' begs the question in favor of theism. As begging the question, the Pauline claim about the evidentness of the world's being created offers no support for theism. It is an analytic proposition that there is no creation without a creator. So if the heavens and the earth are a creation, then it follows straightaway that a creator exists.

If the atheism of some has its origin in pride, stubborness and a willful refusal to recognize any power or authority beyond oneself, or beyond the human, as is plainly the case with many of the cyberpunks over at Internet Infidels and similar sites, it does not follow that the atheism of all has this origin.