May 25, 2018

May 25, 2018 By

This is one of four critiques of the book, The God Delusion (New York / Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006), by perhaps the world’s best-known (and most influential?) atheist, the biologist Richard Dawkins (born in 1941). His words will be in blue. Links to the four critiques follow:

Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion: General Critique

Richard Dawkins’ “Bible Whoppers” Are the “Delusion”

Richard Dawkins: D- Grade for Science & Christianity

Richard Dawkins’ Outrageous Hypocrisy on Abortion

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[all Bible passages cited by myself are RSV]

Dawkins describes God in a way remarkably similar to how Democrats describe Republicans:

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all of fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully. (p. 31)

Other than those few trifles, Dawkins thinks He’s great! The theme of jealousy is one of Dawkins’ biggest beefs:

The tragi-farce of God’s maniacal jealousy against alternative gods recurs continually throughout the Old Testament. (p. 246)

And of course He completely misunderstands this because he doesn’t have a clue on how to interpret the Bible. The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (“Jealousy”) explains it:

When jealousy is attributed to God, the word is used in a good sense. The language is, of course, anthropomorphic; and it is based upon the feeling in a husband of exclusive right in his wife. God is conceived as having wedded Israel to Himself, and as claiming, therefore, exclusive devotion. Disloyalty on the part of Israel is represented as adultery, and as provoking God to jealousy. See, e.g., Deuteronomy 32:16,21; 1 Kings 14:22; Psalms 78:58; Ezekiel 8:3; 16:38,42; 23:25; 36:5; 38:19.

See also my article on anthropopathism and anthropomorphism. I wrote there:

God “condescends” to the limited understanding of human beings, by expressing many truths about himself analogically (as compared to human actions and emotions) so that we can understand Him at all. Otherwise, we would not be able to comprehend a Being so startlingly different and distinct from us and greater than we are.

The article, “Does God Change His Mind?” by Wayne Jackson elaborates further:

The Scriptures frequently employ figures of speech that seem to suggest that God alters his actions in response to man’s behavior. The passage in Exodus 32 is an excellent example of this sort of phraseology.

While Moses was upon the heights of Sinai, receiving the Ten Commandments, the children of Israel in the region below made an idol—a molten calf—and proclaimed it as their deliverer from Egypt.

The corrupt act was wholly antagonistic to the will of God, and the Lord proclaimed his intention to “consume” them. Moses, as a mediator, interceded and pled with Jehovah to not destroy them.

Accordingly, the biblical text represents God’s response in this fashion: “Jehovah repented of the evil [destruction] which he said he would do unto his people” (Ex. 32:14).

The term “repented” reflects a figure of speech, common to many languages, known as “anthropopathism” (literally, man feelings). This is an idiom by which divine activity is described symbolically in terms of human emotion. It is rather similar to the kindred figure, “anthropomorphism” (man form) by which God is described as having physical parts (e.g., eyes, hands, etc.) even though he is not a physical being (Jn. 4:24; Lk. 24:39).

Anthropopathism, therefore, is a figure of speech by which human feelings or emotions are ascribed to God, in order to accommodate man’s ignorance of the unfathomable intentions and operations of deity (cf. Rom. 11:33-36). . . .

It must be understood, therefore, that though certain biblical passages speak of the Lord being “changeless,” while others represent him as “changing” (in response to human conduct), that different senses are in view.

In light of this fact, the “discrepancy” problem dissolves. But when one does not understand some of the common figures of speech utilized by the Bible writers, under the guiding influence of the Holy Spirit, he most certainly will draw many faulty conclusions—sometimes very dangerous ones.

Human languages are punctuated with dramatic figures of speech. This phenomenon is no less true in the case of the Scriptures than it is with other literary productions. A failure to recognize this principle leads to numerous flawed ideas.

Dawkins shows his rank ignorance of Christian theology, too, in how he describes what he erroneously thinks is the Trinity:

Do we have one God in three parts, or three Gods in one? (p. 33)

In C. S. Lewis’s famous analogy of “flatland,” squares, and cubes in his Mere Christianity, he noted that the flatlanders couldn’t imagine a two dimension plane, and that those in that world without a third dimension could not imagine the third. Yet all three exist, and a cube has a “oneness” just as a plane and a line do. In our world, one being is one person. But why should we think our experience is the whole of reality? What is intrinsically impossible about a Being Who Subsists in Three Persons (Being and Person being two distinct categories, so that this is not an automatic contradiction)? The Holy Trinity is not at all impossible a priori (philosophically speaking, and in terms of simple logic).

For us, one Being is one person, but how can it be ruled out logically (or axiomatically) that Being and person may not always be in a one-to-one relationship? I think, then, that the flatland analogy is quite relevant, precisely because it hits upon this difference of perception and defined realities which is the prior axiomatic consideration before we even get to logic. The flatlander says that there are only two dimensions, so that talk of a third dimension is meaningless and incomprehensible to him. So Lewis was maintaining that this is how we are with regard to the Holy Trinity.

I don’t see how the Holy Trinity is a logical contradiction, once one grants the possibility of the trinitarian premise: God can subsist in three persons. It’s very odd and almost incomprehensible to us but not not contradictory, for God to contain three persons (analogous to my three relational attributes) and remain one God, and also for the three persons to be distinct in relation to each other, yet each being God.

Dawkins himself expresses, I think, a key notion in understanding why he goes awry in his biblical interpretation. He applies it to Christian apologists, but it applies at least as much to folks like him and other atheists and biblical skeptics:

We pick and choose which bits of scripture to believe, which bits to write off as symbols or allegories. (p. 238)

Apologists . . . employ that favourite trick of interpreting selected scriptures as ‘symbolic’ rather than literal. By what criterion do you decide which passages are symbolic, which literal? (p. 247)

I’m glad that he asked that last question. Well, we decide in the same way that we make such determinations for any other literature. That’s why it requires a lot of study of biblical hermeneutics and exegesis. The Bible contains many genres or types of literature, and many different cultural contexts. Then there are all the factors that go into the questions of language, and how words meant different things in different cultural contexts.

For atheists, it’s simple: they arbitrarily interpret according to their particular hostile agenda, regardless of whether their method is consistent or not. They approach the Bible like a butcher approaches a hog. The only consistent theme in their views is that the Bile is always wrong, and objectionable. Bottom line: biblical interpretation is not nearly as simple as atheists make out, and the Bible is infinitely more sophisticated and complex and nuanced than they customarily assume is the case. The decree on Scripture, Dei Verbum, from the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) makes a good summary of the task of proper hermeneutics:

To search out the intention of the sacred writers, attention should be given, among other things, to “literary forms”. For truth is set forth and expressed differently in texts which are variously historical, prophetic, poetic, or of other forms of discourse. The interpreter must investigate what meaning the sacred writer intended to express and actually expressed in particular circumstances by using contemporary literary forms in accordance with the situation of his own time and culture. (Saint Augustine) For the correct understanding of what the sacred author wanted to assert, due attention must be paid to the customary and characteristic styles of feeling, speaking and narrating which prevailed at the time of the sacred writer, and to the patterns men normally employed at that period in their everyday dealings with one another. (III, l2)[T]he four canonical gospels . . . have the status of legends, as factually dubious as the stories of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. . . . Nobody knows who he four evangelists were, but they almost certainly never met Jesus personally.  (p. 96)

[R]eputable biblical scholars do not in general regard the New testament (and obviously not the Old Testament) as a reliable record of what actually happened in history . . . (p. 97)

[T]he gospels are ancient fiction . . . (p. 97)

. . . the cult of Jesus, the origins of which are not reliably attested, . . . (p. 202)

Statements like these are as outrageous as they are ridiculous, and couldn’t be more opposite to the truth of the matter than they are. They’re self-refuting, and I certainly will not spend any of my time or take the space in this already long paper to document the mountain of (secular / scholarly) archaeological and historical evidences in favor of biblical historical accuracy and reliability (especially of the New Testament). At least Dawkins has the wits to (halfheartedly) deny the intellectually suicidal “mythicist” position: “Jesus probably existed” (p. 97).

But all this shows very well where Dawkins is coming from, doesn’t it? He can’t even figure out that the Bible is historically trustworthy (remarkably so at that): even before we get to questions of whether the theology presented in it is true or not.

The historical evidence that Jesus claimed any sort of divine status is minimal . . . there is no good historical evidence that he ever thought he was divine. (p. 92)

This is hogwash. The New Testament is historically reliable, and it massively documents these claims, as I show in an exhaustive treatment of this topic. We also have the evidence of hostile witnesses in the Jewish Talmud, and some secular Roman attestation as well.

When the gospels were written, many years after Jesus’ death, nobody knew where he was born. (p. 93)

His mother certainly did. But I guess that possibility never occurred to Dawkins. He seems to think that 1) no Gospel writer could have possibly talked to her about that, and 2) Mary forgot where her own child was born. Such inanities are not rare in atheist polemics. I do appreciate their comedic value, in any event.

Speaking of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Dawkins informs us that Christians believe she “never died but ‘ascended’ bodily into heaven” (p. 179). Of course, Protestants deny that she didn’t die and that she was assumed into heaven. The proper term for what Catholics and Orthodox believe is that Mary was “assumed” bodily into heaven. That’s different from “ascension” to heaven, which in Christian thought is applied solely to Jesus, and means that (unlike Mary) He did it by His own power. Almost all Catholics and all Orthodox hold that Mary died, though the contrary position is allowed in Catholicism.

The remainder of my reply will be devoted to chapter 7 (specifically, pages 237-257), in which Dawkins takes a sledgehammer to the Bible (mostly the Old Testament) and tries to demonstrate that no moral, sensible person could ever admire it or believe that it taught proper morality. He summarizes his contempt:

. . . a system of morals which any civilized person, whether religious or not, would find — I can put it no more gently — obnoxious. To be fair, much of the Bible is not systematically evil, but just plain weird . . . (p. 237)

His view of the Noah story is illustrative:

God took a dim view of humans, so he (with the exception of one family) drowned the lot of them including children . . . (p. 238)

I have written many times about divine judgment. It makes perfect sense (granting the existence of a Creator-God). If you give life, then it seems reasonable that you can also take it away. I don’t accept the analogy I will now draw, myself, because human beings are not the ultimate creators and judges of other human beings, but the atheist pro-abortion mentality (i.e., those atheists who are pro-abortion; not all are) accepts something very like (in some specific respects) what Christians say about God as judge (taking away life, as He chooses).

The person who favors abortion thinks that the mother of a preborn child has total say over him or her, up to and including deciding to end his or her life. Why? Well, as they say, “the child is mine; part of my body; I brought it into existence, and I can do with it as I wish. It has no rights on its own apart from what I decide.” This is true to such an extent, that in the United States, the father of the child has absolutely no say in the matter.

Thus, a person with such views assumes that they completely own another human being (much as was thought in slavery). They brought the child into existence, and so (according to them, and the laws now in most western countries) they can also decide when to terminate his or her life.

Now, hold that thought and ponder the Creator of the universe, Who (Christians believe) grants us life and existence. He has communicated to us moral laws that we are supposed to live by. If we fail to keep those, He may judge us (indeed, at times, entire nations or the entire world). Unlike the aborting mother, He has the perfect prerogative to do so, as our Creator and Judge. And it’s perfectly moral and just for him to do so. If this is incomprehensible to an atheist mind, then I would suggest that they examine what they believe about the preborn children of mothers who want to abort.

If a mere human being has the right to decree the life or death of their own child, why would not God have the right (but in His case a justified one) over all of humanity? Thus, in their own views, they accept a scenario which has some similarities to God being Judge. The analogical similarity is that one being has the prerogative to decree the death of another being who originated from them. The dissimilarity is that abortion is an immoral murder, whereas God’s judgment is perfectly justified, because He applies judgment fairly, and He is the Creator and we are His creatures. I wrote in one of my papers on the topic:

Because God is Creator He also has the prerogative to judge. This is analogous to our experience. Society takes it upon itself to judge the criminal and punish him if he supersedes the “just” laws that govern the society, in order to prevent chaos and suffering. If that is true of human society (one man to another), it is all the more of God, because He is ontologically above us (Creator and created).

So it is perfectly sensible and moral to posit (apart from the data of revelation) a notion of God judging both individuals and nations. God’s omniscience is such that He can determine if an entire nation has gone bad (“beyond repair,” so to speak) and should be punished. And He did so. Now, even in a wicked nation there may be individuals who are exceptions to the rule. So some innocent people will be killed. But this is like our human experience as well. In wartime, we go to war against an entire nation. In so doing, even if it is unintentional, some innocent non-combatants will be killed.

But it’s also different in God’s case because He judged nations in part in order to prevent their idolatry and other sins to infiltrate Jewish (i.e., true) religion. He also judged Israel at various times (lest He be accused of being unfair). In any event, it is not true that nations or individuals were punished because of what their ancestors did. There is a sense of corporate punishment, just described, and it is also true that the entire human race is a fallen race. We all deserve punishment for that fact alone, and God would be perfectly just to wipe us all out the next second. No one could hold it against Him.

He decides to be merciful and grant us grace to do better, but He is under no obligation to do so, anymore than the governor is obliged to pardon convicted criminals. Again, the societal analogy is perfectly apt. If someone rebels at every turn against every societal norm and law and appropriate behavior and so forth, is society to be blamed? Say someone grows up thinking that serial rape is fine and dandy and shouldn’t be prevented at all. So he goes and does this. Eventually, the legal system catches up with him and he gets his punishment. He rebelled against what most people think is wrong, and more than deserved his punishment.

We don’t say that there should be no punishment. We don’t blame society for his suffering in prison. We don’t deny that society has a right to judge such persons. So if mere human beings can judge each other, why cannot God judge His creation, and (particularly) those of His creation that have rebelled against Him at every turn? What is so incomprehensible about that? One may not believe it, but there is no radical incoherence or inconsistency or monstrous injustice or immorality in this Christian (and Jewish) viewpoint (which is what is always claimed by the critics).

Dawkins brings up the story of Abraham’s nephew Lot and his family, who lived in Sodom. He says that God regarded Lot as “uniquely righteous” (p. 239) and so spared him and his family from the destruction of the city, by warning. Two angels visited Lot (whom he may have thought were mere men), and the crowd outside his door wanted to rape them. Lot then offered his daughters to them instead (Gen 19:1-9). This is, admittedly, a difficult passage for anyone to read and interpret. The Cambridge Bible comments:

Lot’s proposal, so atrocious in our ears, may have been deemed meritorious in an Eastern country, where no sacrifice was considered too great to maintain inviolate the safety of a stranger who had been received in hospitality. That Lot should have thought of imperilling the honour of his family, and not have rather hazarded his own life, is due not so much to the weakness of the man as to the terribly low estimate of womanhood which prevailed at that time.

The New Testament refers to Lot as “righteous” (2 Pet 2:7-9), but that could still easily refer to a relative righteousness (i.e., compared to others in Sodom) and not a perfect righteousness (by God’s standards). The fact remains that he is not directly referred to as such in the original passage (though it’s arguably implied in Abraham’s intercession in Genesis 18), which is in contrast to the similar scenario regarding Noah (Gen 6:9: “a righteous man, blameless in his generation; Noah walked with God”) or with, for example, the afflicted Job (Job 1:8: “there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil”).

This is not unusual in Scripture. Men can be referred to as “righteous” who are not at all sinless. Thus, Abraham was called “righteous” (Gen 15:6), yet he lied about his wife being his sister, as Dawkins alludes to on pages 241-242 (see Gen 12:11-13; 20:2). King David is called “righteous” (1 Kings 3:6), but of course, he had a man killed  so he could have his wife, with whom he was committing adultery. “Blameless” Noah, famously, got drunk (Gen 9:21). As soon as a man sins at all, he is less than perfectly righteous, so it is a relative term, for all (Catholics believe) except Jesus and sinless Mary.

In any event, the Genesis text in no way implies that God favored his behavior as regards his daughters. After all, the angels prevented the gang rape from happening  (Gen 19:10-11), and Dawkins notes this as well: “the angels succeeded in repelling the marauders” (p. 240)

The same “non-sanction” applies to the horrendous story (Dawkins brings it up on pp. 240-241) of the Levite offering his daughter and a concubine (who died as a result) for gang rape (Judges 19), Christian apologist Glenn Miller comments on it:

This is one of the most abnormal passages in scripture. It is so filled with aberrations of ethics and law, and is specifically INTENDED to show how EVIL Israel had become during the period of the Judges! But even in this weird story, one can still see glimmers of a ‘better’ ethic from the Law. . . .

Now, there are a few important points from this of relevance to my thesis here:

  1. The violation of the concubine was NOT approved by Israel, EVEN UNDER the assumption of the potential murder of the priest (20.4-11). Indeed, it was called ‘vileness’. [20:3: “wickedness”]
  2. The obvious linkage of this story to that of Sodom is to HIGHLIGHT the exceptional character of this incident–it is NOT NORMAL for Israel.
  3. This horrible event was remembered for centuries as being a “low water mark” for Israel. (cf. Hosea 9.9: They have sunk deep into corruption, as in the days of Gibeah.)
  4. The questionable ethical character of the Old Man, and of the Levite, certainly doesn’t suggest the thought that they are representative of all Israel in this matter.

I have to conclude that the outrage of Israel actually supports a ‘higher view’ of female value, than the ‘lower view’ seemingly exemplified by the Old Man.

Judges 19:30 states: “And all who saw it said, ‘Such a thing has never happened or been seen from the day that the people of Israel came up out of the land of Egypt until this day; consider it, take counsel, and speak.’ ”

A third similar incident with a daughter was the notorious passage of Jephthah, who sacrificed his daughter by burning (Judges 11). Dawkins snarls after recounting it: “God did not see fit to intervene on this occasion” (p. 243). I wrote about the incident at length, and showed that there was no way that God approved of it in any way, shape, matter, or form. So why bring it up in an anti-God, anti-Christian (and anti-Jewish) book? If God can’t be blamed for it, all it shows is that one man committed an abominable sin (which was clearly a sin under Mosaic Law). Like that should surprise anyone?

On page 245, Dawkins rails against the slaughter of the Midianites. It’s another instance of God’s judgment. I have written about that, too. For much more about them, see Glenn Miller’s extensive article. Dawkins implies sexual slavery, because the virgin women were spared. Don Camp, in another excellent, in-depth article on the Midianites, addressed this:

As for taking sexual slaves, a charge that is a favorite among skeptics, everything in the law forbade mistreating captives of war and especially the women. Any captive woman, boy, or girl, would become servant/slaves (the word can mean either or both). But they had the same protections as an indentured servant who was a Jew – with the one exception, they would not be released from slavery after seven years.

If the man of the house or his son married a slave girl, she had even greater protection under the law than a wife married from among his people. She could not be divorced or sold. If she was mistreated, the man was held in serious violation of the law. There was no condoning of sex slavery; slavery was a serious issue for the Jews. They had been slaves and had been mistreated in Egypt. The laws God gave them were designed to prevent them from treating anyone as they had been treated.

Dawkins waxes indignant at the conquest of Jericho:

[T]he Bible story of Joshua’s destruction of Jericho, and the invasion of the Promised land in general, is morally indistinguishable from Hitler’s invasion of Poland, . . . The Bible . . . is not the sort of book you should give your children to form their morals. (p. 247)

In fact, Jericho was not an “innocent” place and was ripe for divine judgment. There is reason to believe that ritual child sacrifice was practiced there (and in other places in ancient Canaan). See scholarly articles that deem it likely or at least one possible interpretation of the evidence of some of the children’s bones and nature of their burial. Dawkins shows a repeated concern for the well-being of children (save for those scheduled to be murdered by abortion). Perhaps he should consider that this abominable practice (that he abhors elsewhere in his book) was ended when cities that practiced it were destroyed. The Bible is clear that child sacrifice is forbidden. Jesus even compared its practice to hell itself.

Dawkins (p. 248) brings up the story in Numbers 15 of a man who was gathering sticks on the Sabbath, and was consequently stoned. At first glance, it sounds terrible, and terribly unjust and evil, doesn’t it? Well, it does if it is given the cursory treatment that Dawkins gives it (only for the purpose of mocking the Bible and Christianity; ending up calling God an “evil monster”). It makes much more sense if it is studied in the depth that it deserves, as apologist Glenn Miller did. But that takes too much time and effort, and Dawkins would be threatening to actually be fair for a change. Dawkins has no time for any of that.

Jesus limited his in-group of the saved strictly to Jews, in which respect he was following the Old Testament tradition, . . . ‘Thou shalt not kill’ . . . meant, very specifically, thou shalt not kill Jews. . . . ‘Neighbour’ means fellow Jew. (p. 254)

I feel like a mosquito in a nudist colony. Where to begin?! This is an absurd, asinine, ignorant, completely false claim. Let’s see, for starters:

Matthew 28:19-20 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, [20] teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you . . . (cf. Jn 17:18)

Matthew 8:5-13 As he entered Caper’na-um, a [pagan Roman] centurion came forward to him, beseeching him [6] and saying, “Lord, my servant is lying paralyzed at home, in terrible distress.” [7] And he said to him, “I will come and heal him.” [8] But the centurion answered him, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; but only say the word, and my servant will be healed. [9] For I am a man under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to one, `Go,’ and he goes, and to another, `Come,’ and he comes, and to my slave, `Do this,’ and he does it.” [10] When Jesus heard him, he marveled, and said to those who followed him, “Truly, I say to you, not even in Israel have I found such faith. [11] I tell you, many will come from east and west and sit at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, [12] while the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness; there men will weep and gnash their teeth.” [13] And to the centurion Jesus said, “Go; be it done for you as you have believed.” And the servant was healed at that very moment.

Matthew 24:14 And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached throughout the whole world, as a testimony to all nations; and then the end will come.

John 3:17 For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.

John 8:12 Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world; he who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” (cf. 9:5; 12:46)

The Old Testament tradition was by no means Jewish-only, either:

Isaiah 42:1 Behold my servant [the Messiah, or Jesus], whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my Spirit upon him, he will bring forth justice to the nations.

Isaiah 49:6 he says: “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” (cf. 52:10)

Jeremiah 1:5 “Before I formed you [the prophet Jeremiah] in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you;
I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”

Malachi 1:11 For from the rising of the sun to its setting my name is great among the nations, and in every place incense is offered to my name, and a pure offering; for my name is great among the nations, says the LORD of hosts.

The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (“Neighbor”) explains:

Christ gives a wider interpretation of the commandment in Leviticus 19:18, so as to include in it those outside the tie of nation or kindred. This is definitely done in the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37), where, in answer to the question, “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus shows that the relationship is a moral, not a physical one, based not on kinship but on the opportunity and capacity for mutual help.

This flatly contradicts Dawkins’ claim (sadly a not uncommon occurrence); so does the related concept of “stranger” or “sojourner” (non-Jews who resided among the Jews). The following article on that topic in the  International Standard Bible Encyclopedia shows how very wrongheaded and out to sea Dawkins’ ignorant charges are:

I. The Ger.

This word with its kindred verb is applied with slightly varying meanings to anyone who resides in a country or a town of which he is not a full native land-owning citizen; e.g., the word is used of the patriarchs in Palestine, the Israelites in Egypt, the Levites dwelling among the Israelites (Deuteronomy 18:6; Judges 17:7, etc.), the Ephraimite in Gibeah (Judges 19:16). It is also particularly used of free aliens residing among the Israelites, and it is with the position of such that this article deals. This position is absolutely unparalleled in early legal systems (A. H. Post, Grundriss der ethnologischen Jurisprudenz, I, 448, note 3), which are usually far from favorable to strangers.

1. Legal Provisions:

(1) Principles.

The dominant principles of the legislation are most succinctly given in two passages:

He “loveth the ger in giving him food and raiment” (Deuteronomy 10:18); “And if a ger sojourn with thee (variant “you”) in your land, ye shall not do him wrong. The ger that sojourneth with you shall be unto you as the home-born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were gerim in the land of Egypt” (Leviticus 19:33). This treatment of the stranger is based partly on historic recollection, partly on the duty of the Israelite to his God. Because the ger would be at a natural disadvantage through his alienage, he becomes one of the favorites of a legislation that gives special protection to the weak and helpless.

(2) Rules.

In nationality the freeman followed his father, so that the son of a ger and an Israelitess was himself a ger (Leviticus 24:10-22). Special care was to be taken to do him no judicial wrong (Deuteronomy 1:16; 27:19). In what may roughly be called criminal law it was enacted that the same rules should apply to gerim as to natives (Leviticus 18:26, which is due to the conception that certain abominations defile a land; Leviticus 20:2, where the motive is also religious; Leviticus 24:10-22; see SBL, 84; Numbers 35:15). A free Israelite who became his slave was subject to redemption by a relative at any time on payment of the fair price (Leviticus 25:47). This passage and Deuteronomy 28:43 contemplate the possibility of a stranger’s becoming wealthy, but by far the greater number of the legal provisions regard him as probably poor. Thus provision is made for him to participate in tithes (Deuteronomy 14:29; 26:12), gleanings of various sorts and forgotten sheaves (Leviticus 19:10; 23:22; Deuteronomy 24:19,20,21), and poor hired servants were not to be oppressed (Deuteronomy 24:14).

2. Relation to Sacrifice and Ritual:

Nearly all the main holy days apply to the ger. He was to rest on the Sabbath (Exodus 20:10; 23:12, etc.), to rejoice on Weeks and Tabernacles (Deuteronomy 16), to observe the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16:29), to have no leaven on the Festival of Unleavened Bread (Exodus 12:19). But he could not keep the Passover unless he underwent circumcision (Exodus 12:48). He could not eat blood at any rate during the wilderness period (Leviticus 17:10-12), and for that period, but not thereafter, he was probihited from eating that which died of itself (Leviticus 17:15; Deuteronomy 14:21) under pain of being unclean until the even. He could offer sacrifices (Leviticus 17:8; 22:18; Numbers 15:14), and was subject to the same rules as a native for unwitting sins (Numbers 15:22-31), and for purification for uncleanness by reason of contact with a dead body (Numbers 19:10-13).

3. Historical Circumstances:

The historical circumstances were such as to render the position of the resident alien important from the first. A “mixed multitude” went up with the Israelites from Egypt, and after the conquest we find Israelites and the races of Palestine living side by side throughout the country. We repeatedly read of resident aliens in the historical books, e.g. Uriah the Hittite. According to 2 Chronicles 2:17 f (Hebrew 16 f) there was a very large number of such in the days of Solomon, but the figure may be excessive. These seem to have been the remnant of the conquered tribes (1 Kings 9:20). Ezekiel in his vision assigned to gerim landed inheritance among the Israelites (47:22 f). Hospitality to the ger was of course a religious duty and the host would go to any lengths to protect his guest (Genesis 19; Judges 19:24).

The article on “Gentiles” in the same work further elaborates:

Under Old Testament regulations they were simply non-Israelites, not from the stock of Abraham, but they were not hated or despised for that reason, and were to be treated almost on a plane of equality, except certain tribes in Canaan with regard to whom there were special regulations of non-intercourse. The Gentile stranger enjoyed the hospitality of the Israelite who was commanded to love him (Deuteronomy 10:19), to sympathize with him, “For ye know the heart of the stranger, seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Exodus 23:9 the King James Version). The Kenites were treated almost as brethren, especially the children of Rechab (Judges 1:16; 5:24; Jeremiah 35). Uriah the Hittite was a trusted warrior of David (2 Samuel 11); Ittai the Gittite was captain of David’s guard (2 Samuel 18:2); Araunah the Jebusite was a respected resident of Jerusalem. The Gentiles had the right of asylum in the cities of refuge, the same as the Israelites (Numbers 35:15). They might even possess Israelite slaves (Leviticus 25:47), and a Gentile servant must not be defrauded of his wage (Deuteronomy 24:15). They could inherit in Israel even as late as the exile (Ezekiel 47:22,23). They were allowed to offer sacrifices in the temple at Jerusalem, as is distinctly affirmed by Josephus (BJ, II, xvii, 2- 4; Ant, XI, viii, 5; XIII, viii, 2; XVI, ii, 1; XVIII, v, 3; CAp, II, 5), and it is implied in the Levitical law (Leviticus 22:25). Prayers and sacrifices were to be offered for Gentile rulers (Jeremiah 29:7; Baruch 1:10,11; Ezra 6:10; 1 Macc 7:33; Josephus, BJ, II, x, 4). Gifts might be received from them (2 Macc 5:16; Josephus, Ant, XIII, iii, 4; XVI, vi, 4; BJ, V, xiii, 6; CAp, II, 5).

But Dawkins (having not troubled himself to learn facts like the above), digs in all the more:

Jesus was a devotee of the same in-group morality — coupled with out-group hostility — that was taken for granted in the Old Testament. . . . It was Paul who invented the idea of taking the Jewish God to the Gentiles. Hartung puts it more bluntly than I dare: ‘Jesus would have turned over in his grave if he had known that Paul would be taking his plan to the pigs.’ (p. 257)

The above data along these lines puts the lie to this nonsense. Even in the immediate New Testament / new covenant / dawn of Christianity environment of starting to preach the gospel to all the nations outside Israel, it was St. Peter who first specialized in that, not St. Paul. This is shown in Acts 10 in the story of Cornelius the centurion who went to Peter. Peter is said to have had a vision about all foods being clean (the relaxing of the traditional Jewish kosher laws: see 10:9-16). St. Peter states that “God shows no partiality, [35] but in every nation any one who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him” (10:34-35). He preached, and the Holy Spirit fell upon the Gentiles (10:44-45), even before they were baptized (10:47-48).

St. Paul had just converted to Christ, as described in Acts 9. He didn’t go on missionary journeys till the period described in Acts 13, and specifically referred to evangelizing Gentiles in 13:46-48. But Peter had said all of this already, and so had Jesus, and so had many passages in the Old Testament. It was nothing new whatsoever; just a new emphasis or further development of what was already there (which is usually the case with the New Testament in relation to the Old).

Once again, Dawkins flails away at the straw men of his own making. He does that throughout his whole book, as I have repeatedly shown in these four critiques. In a word, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about (hardly even has a clue), and doesn’t know that he doesn’t know. It’s sad and beyond pathetic that such an educated man (a scientist) — indeed, the most renowned atheist in the world — could exhibit so much disinformation and lack of comprehension of that which he professes to be intelligently critiquing.

***

Photo credit: photograph by George Redgrave (9-30-14) [Flickr / CC BY-ND 2.0 license]

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May 25, 2018

May 25, 2018 By

This is one of four critiques of the book, The God Delusion (New York / Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006), by perhaps the world’s best-known (and most influential?) atheist, the biologist Richard Dawkins (born in 1941). His words will be in blue. Links to the four critiques follow:

Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion: General Critique

Richard Dawkins’ “Bible Whoppers” Are the “Delusion” 

Richard Dawkins: D- Grade for Science & Christianity

Richard Dawkins’ Outrageous Hypocrisy on Abortion

***

First let me mention a few things that Dawkins seems utterly unaware of, in a book purporting to be a serious critique of Christianity. He never mentions Alvin Plantinga, almost universally regarded as the greatest living Christian philosopher, and ignores his famous argument regarding God as a “properly basic belief.” He never mentions William Lane Craig, quite arguably the most able philosophical defender of theism (though not an orthodox Christian). He is unaware of philosopher Michael Polanyi (1891-1976) and his notion of tacit knowledge, or Cardinal Newman‘s “illative sense” and profound philosophy of religion, set out in his masterful volume, Grammar of Assent. In other words, there are massive theistic arguments (in my own opinion, the best ones) that he shows not the slightest awareness of.

He gives St. Thomas Aquinas and the cosmological and teleological arguments just a few pages, complete with breezy, condescending dismissals of a few words (e.g., “The five ‘proofs’ . . . are easily . . . exposed as vacuous”: p. 77): as if this is sufficient to take out such longstanding theistic philosophical arguments, still taken quite seriously (agree or no) by many many philosophers. To me, this shows that Dawkins was not attempting a serious (scholarly) book. He was much more interested in mere “populist” propaganda and merely preaching to the atheist choir; revving up the troops for the cause.

The usual (almost obligatory) atheist sweeping, prejudicial insults of Christians and religion generally also indicate the intellectually non-serious and sub-par nature of the project:

I am inclined to follow Robert M. Pirsig . . . when he said,’When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Religion.’ (p. 5)

Of course, dyed-in-the-wool faith-heads are immune to argument . . . (p. 5)

[T]heology . . — unlike science or most other branches of human scholarship —  has not moved on in eighteen centuries. . . . there is no evidence to support theological opinions . . . (p. 34)

It is in the nature of faith that one is capable, like Jung, of holding a belief without adequate reason to do so . . . Atheists do not have faith . . . (p. 51)

[P]eople of a theological bent are often chronically incapable of distinguishing what is true from what they’d like to be true. (p. 108)

The theologians of my Cambridge encounter were defining themselves into an epistemological Safe Zone where rational argument could not reach them because they had declared by fiat that it could not. Who was I to say that rational argument was the only admissible kind of argument? (p. 154)

[W]e should blame religion itself, not religious extremism — as though that were some kind of terrible perversion of real, decent religion. . . . I do everything in my power to warn people against faith itself, not just against so-called ‘extremist’ faith. The teachings of ‘moderate’ religion, though not extremist in themselves, are an open invitation to extremism. . . . religious faith is an especially potent silencer of rational calculation . . . Christianity, just as much as Islam, teaches children that unquestioned faith is a virtue. You don’t have to make a case for what you believe. . . . how can there be a perversion of faith, if faith, lacking objective justification, doesn’t have any demonstrable standard to pervert? (p. 306)

Faith is an evil precisely because it requires no justification and brooks no argument. (p. 308)

[C]rass insensitivity to normal human feelings . . . comes all too easily to a mind hijacked by religious faith. (p. 315)

Accordingly, believing all this bilge, Dawkins subscribes to his colleague Nicholas Humphrey’s recommendation that Christian parents should have no right to bring up their children as Christian (yes, you read that right):

Parents . . . have no God-given licence to enculturate their children in whatever ways they personally choose: no right to limit the horizons of their children’s knowledge, to bring them up in an atmosphere of dogma and superstition, or to insist that they follow the straight and narrow paths of their own faith. (p. 326)

Credit where is is due: he does manage to smuggle in a few truthful and fair-minded bits:

I accept that it may not be so easy in practice to distinguish one kind of universe [with God or without] from the other. (p. 61)

For all sorts of reasons I dislike the Roman Catholic Church. But I dislike unfairness even more, and I can’t help wondering whether this one institution has been unfairly demonized over the issue [of sexual abuse]. (p. 316)

But the bulk of the book is, sadly, filled with digs and falsehoods. I continue:

[O]nly about one in twelve break away for their parents’ religious beliefs. (p. 102)

This is a favorite atheist polemical chestnut: “Christians are raised with this nonsense, so of course they accept it, and this is the main or sole reason they are Christians, not because of any particular thoughtfulness, or reasons.” But of course, this sort of “environmental” approach works both ways (or is a “two-edged sword”). The many nations of the world that are secularizing (especially in Europe) will predictably have a greater and greater effect on the proportion of atheists in any given country.

It’s not some mass revival or pure reason, with folks in those places hitting the libraries with a a vengeance and reading only the very best, most reasonable atheist and anti-theist material and becoming true atheist believers. If someone is raised in an atheist home, they will tend to become an atheist, just as the converse is true in Christian homes. Atheists are subject to the same familial influences and lack of reason and impartial study, and biased formal education (one way or the other) as anyone else. And if we are gonna go down this road of social influences, I would also dare to note the profound effect of absent or lousy fathers, in the case of many famous atheists.

Just to mention my own case: it’s clear that I have “bucked the trend” all through my life and didn’t simply follow some blind, predetermined path. I wrote recently in one of my comboxes:

I can tell you how I have changed in many major ways through the years. Here’s just a short list:

1. Pagan / practical atheist to evangelical Christian (1977). . . .

5. Evangelical Christian to Catholic (1990).

I changed twice from the religious view I was raised in (nominal Methodism): to evangelicalism and then to Catholicism. So the “childhood” theory doesn’t work with me.

I spent my years from age ten to 22 not going to church at all on Sunday, so I was obviously bucking the trend of my surroundings. And I can assure you [I was talking to an atheist from Norway] that being a strongly committed [orthodox] Catholic is not exactly the mainstream position in the US, either (or even in the Catholic Church!). This has always been a Protestant country, and now it is what I would call a “secularist-dominated” culture. I’m not with that trend at all.

I guess I’m one of Dawkins’ “one in twelve” then. He and other atheists will have to deal with my rational arguments, rather than my childhood background. That takes a lot more work, doesn’t it?

Dawkins tackles the miracle of the sun at Fatima, Portugal in 1917:

It is not easy to explain how seventy thousand people could share the same hallucination. (p. 91)

[T]he earth was suddenly yanked sideways in its orbit, and the solar system destroyed, with nobody outside Fatima noticing. (p. 92)

But of course neither quick, breezy dismissal necessarily applies at all. Whether something is a mass hallucination has to be proven, not merely asserted, and even Dawkins concedes that a true mass hallucination is difficult to explain. Atheists have been applying this pseudo-analysis to Jesus’ post-Resurrection appearances for years, with no success.

The second scenario is not at all the only possible one, either. The miracle could simply consist of God changing the perception of the people there (an LSD trip, for example, does the same thing purely naturally); not literally making the sun do weird “unscientific” things. The same possible scenario would also apply to the famous miracle of the Bible, where Joshua “made the sun stand still” (Josh 10:12-13). First of all, the  Bible uses pre-scientific phenomenological language. We actually still do the same today, when we say “the sun came up” or “the sun went down at 6:36.” That’s not literal language, because we know that it is the earth’s rotation that makes it appear that way.

Joshua’s miracle was indeed a miracle, but it could still have been of a psychological nature, as opposed to an astronomical one. Or it could be something like, as one Protestant commentary put it: ” the light of the sun and moon was supernaturally prolonged by the same laws of refraction and reflection that ordinarily cause the sun to appear above the horizon, when it is in reality below it.” Atheists seem to always want to interpret the Bible (and in this case, a Marian-related apparition) hyper-literally, but they are often wrong, because they assume primitive ignorance, when in fact, there is a high degree of sophistication that is beyond the atheist’s willingness (not intellectual capacity) to even attempt to understand.

Dawkins waxes “superior” about miracles in general:

The nineteenth century is the last time when it was possible for an educated person to admit to believing in miracles like the virgin birth without embarrassment. When pressed, many educated Christians today are too loyal to deny the virgin birth and the resurrection. But it embarrasses them because their rational minds know it is absurd, so they would much rather not be asked. (p. 157)

This is pure poppycock. Atheism has never definitively proved that miracles cannot possibly occur. The classic anti-miracles argument from philosopher David Hume is, upon close inspection, actually remarkably weak (almost circular reasoning). Yet atheists always assume it is unanswerable. Indeed, any universal negative of this sort is virtually impossible to achieve. I would recommend the classic on the topic, C. S. Lewis’ book, Miracles, for those of sufficiently open mind and lack of “embarrassment” to peruse. I think anyone who reads that will grasp that the discussion is not at all as simple and conclusive as Dawkins makes out.

But this is stock atheist methodology: merely assume that all intelligent people have ceased believing something or other in Christian theology, which isn’t even factually true, let alone not being an argument or even logical (it’s the ad populum fallacy, in fact). For anyone interested, I have tackled the questions of the validity of miracles, at least three times [one / two / three]

Speaking of David Hume, Dawkins indirectly appeals to his supposed knock-down of the traditional teleological (design) theistic argument for God’s existence:

Before Darwin, philosophers such as Hume understood that the improbability of life did not mean it had to be designed . . . (p. 114)

Hume in fact did not understand this at all. There are many misconceptions about David Hume, including that he was an atheist. He was not: as I have documented. He was some form of deist. He not only did not completely destroy all forms of the teleological argument (perhaps one form of it at best); he himself accepted the argument in some sense, as a proof or strong insinuation of God’s existence:

The order of the universe proves an omnipotent mind. (Treatise, 633n)

Wherever I see order, I infer from experience that there, there hath been Design and Contrivance . . . the same principle obliges me to infer an infinitely perfect Architect from the Infinite Art and Contrivance which is displayed in the whole fabric of the universe. (Letters, 25-26)

The whole frame of nature bespeaks an intelligent author; and no rational enquirer can, after serious reflection, suspend his belief a moment with regard to the primary principles of genuine Theism and Religion . . .

Were men led into the apprehension of invisible, intelligent power by a contemplation of the works of nature, they could never possibly entertain any conception but of one single being, who bestowed existence and order on this vast machine, and adjusted all its parts, according to one regular plan or connected system . . .

All things of the universe are evidently of a piece. Every thing is adjusted to every thing. One design prevails throughout the whole. And this uniformity leads the mind to acknowledge one author. (Natural History of Religion, 1757, ed. H. E. Root, London: 1956, 21, 26)

See many more details in my linked paper about Hume above. I discovered this tidbit of information, which is scarcely known by atheists as a whole, more than thirty years ago now, and I cite reputable Hume scholars to back it up (not to mention Hume’s own clear words).

Not to nitpick, but Dawkins blows a cited historical fact, when he refers to Luther’s saying, “Here I stand, I can do no other” and says that it was said “as he nailed his theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg” (p. 286). Interestingly, the late atheist Christopher Hitchens makes the same exact mistake (God is Not Great, 2007, p. 180). The nailing of the 95 Theses took place on 31 October 1517. The “Here I stand” utterance is reputed to have occurred at the Diet of Worms (on 18 April 1521). This was a conference in which Luther was asked by the Catholic authorities to recant his heretical opinions. He refused, and that was why he said “here I stand” etc. But I say “reputed” because the same Wikipedia article states: “there is no indication in the transcripts of the Diet or in eyewitness accounts that he ever said this, and most scholars now doubt these words were spoken.”

Dawkins ventures into some (to the experienced apologist) humorous “playbook / talking points” arguments against God that don’t hold any water at all, and would be laughed out of any sophomore philosophy classes dealing with the same topics. For example, he tries to go after God’s omnipotence:

[H]e can’t change his mind about his intervention, which means he is not omnipotent. (p. 78)

Nice try, but no cigar. This is reminiscent of the old, “can God make a rock so big that He can’t lift it?” silliness. Omnipotence is “the power to do all that is logically possible to do.” No one need take my word alone for that. The secular Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy discusses logical impossibility (even for an omnipotent being) at length in its article on omnipotence.

Dawkins sort of makes fun of Eastern Orthodox philosopher Richard Swinburne in this respect, acting as if he makes some momentous concession, when in fact this is a very well-known theist reply to the proposed “problem”:

Swinburne generously concedes that God cannot accomplish feats that are logically impossible, and one feels grateful for this forbearance. (p. 149)

I would suggest that Dawkins refrain from entering into hundreds-of-years-old philosophical disputes and matters of philosophy of religion where he hardly has a clue. “Don’t do this at home” (and he wants to talk about us being “embarrassed by believing in Christ’s Resurrection?). Dawkins makes a similar elementary mistake about God answering prayer:

. . . mindreading millions of humans simultaneously . . . talking to a million people simultaneously . . . dreadful exhibition of self-indulgent, thought-denying skyhookery. (p. 155)

He is simultaneously able to hear the thoughts of everybody else in the world. (p. 178)

This exhibits a breathtaking ignorance of orthodox Christian theology proper (theology of God), which holds that God is outside of time (atemporal) and indeed the creator of time as well as matter. Thus, He is not subject to time as we are, and the above scenarios are meaningless. The only “meaning” they have from an informed Christian perspective is that of a joke: Dawkins being ignorant when he is poking fun at Christians for supposedly being so ignorant and stupid, to believe such silly things (that we in fact don’t believe at all). The joke and the last laugh are on him (thanks for the chuckles, Richard). The great apologist C. S. Lewis spoke about this in a BBC radio talk during World War II (listen to it), which later became part of his classic, Mere Christianity:

His life doesn’t consist of moments following one another. If a million people are praying to Him at 10:30 tonight, He hasn’t got to listen to them all in that little snippet we call ’10:30.’ . . . 10:30 and every other moment from the beginning to the end of the world is always the present for Him. If you like to put it that way, He has infinity in which to listen to the split second of prayer put up by a pilot as his plane crashes in flames. That’s difficult I know. . . .

The point I want to drive home is that God has infinite attention, infinite measure to spare for each one of us. He doesn’t have to take us in the line. You’re as much alone with Him as if you were the only thing He ever created. When Christ died, He died for you individually, just as much as if you had been the only man in the world.

Lastly, I’ll conclude with another rather silly, foolish, and philosophically hyper-naive “argument” that Dawkins repeats over and over, as if doing so gives a weak argument more strength:

There is a much more powerful argument, . . . The whole argument turns on the familiar question ‘Who made God?’ . . . God presents an infinite regress from which he cannot help us to escape. (p. 109)

[T]he designer himself (/herself/itself) immediately raises the bigger problem of his own origin. (p. 120)

[W]ho designed the designer? (p. 121)

As ever, the theist’s answer is deeply unsatisfying, because it leaves the existence of God unexplained. (p. 143)

[I]t will most certainly not be a designer who just popped into existence, or who always existed. . . . the designer himself must be the end product of some kind of cumulative escalator or crane, perhaps a version of Darwinism in another universe. (p. 156)

Dawkins’ answer is tunnel vision and circular reasoning. As I discussed in my previous article about Dawkins, science, and Christianity, he disallows anything but matter in the universe (monism). But of course he can’t prove that that position is true. It’s not unassailable at all. No problem for Dawkins: he simply assumes it and asserts it, sans rational argumentation. If someone follows his “methodology” then of course, God as construed in classical theism and Christianity is made impossible by definition.

But such tactics are not all that indistinguishable from what Dawkins disdained with great relish in his vigorous critique of the classic theistic ontological argument (pp. 80-84) — one of atheists’ very favorite “whipping boys” –, concluding: “isn’t it too good to be true that a grand truth about the cosmos should follow from a mere word game?” (p. 81). Dawkins doesn’t strictly play a word game in “dissing” an eternal, uncreated God, but he plays a quite similar “category game” and simplistic sleight-of-hand in two different ways:

1) There is nothing other than matter in the universe.

2) Ergo, God, being a proposed spirit, cannot exist.

 

This is hogwash for several reasons and plainly circular reasoning. The conclusion (#2) is already present in the premise (#1) and adds nothing new. That’s not argumentation. It’s mere repeated (dubious) assertion, and need not divert us any longer from serious discussion. But with a straight face, Dawkins turns around and makes a second “argument” that contradicts his first one:

A) All matter evolves.

B) Ergo, even if God did hypothetically exist as a physical being, he would have to be the end product of a very long chain of evolutionary development.

First Dawkins thunders that spirit is impossible, and thinks he disproves God thusly. Then he posits that even if God were physical (as folks like Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons believe), he would merely be the product of much evolution, and as such, no solution to the problem of ultimate origins, since we have to explain his origin.

Neither argument flies for even a second. Monism can’t be proven, and one need not even be a monist in order to be an atheist. For instance, the distinguished Australian philosopher David Chalmers is what he calls a “natural dualist.” He argues (sort of like the microbiologist Michael Behe, but with completely different methodology) that natural laws and physics cannot explain the evolution of consciousness. Dawkins assumes that gradualistic evolution can do so, but of course never explains how it does it. He and many others simply believe it in blind faith.

Now, which of those two positions is intellectually more respectable? I say it is that of Chalmers, because he admits that he can’t explain something; nor can science, presently understood (which may always change in the future). But Dawkins believes it because it “must” be so and can’t be otherwise. I’ll take Chalmers, thank you (given that choice), because I intensely dislike blind faith and admire intellectual humility and the recognition of the limits of our knowledge, and not falling into the epistemological error of scientism. And I dislike the observable fact that atheists like Dawkins, who constantly accuse Christians of “blind faith” and anti-evidence instincts, fall into exactly the same error and mindset when it comes to ultimate origins.

Needless to say, in classical theism, God is not a physical being. He’s a spirit, and an eternal uncreated one. Physicists and astronomers tell us that there is no matter today that is demonstrably eternal (because present science holds that the universe began with the Big Bang and will end in a “heat death”). The law of entropy (the Second Law of Thermodynamics) also dictates this.

If the Christian / theist claimed that God is physical, Dawkins would have a strong and valid argument. But that isn’t our claim. If in fact God is a non-material Spirit, then He is not subject to the laws of matter and science at all. Therefore, He could in fact be eternal. It’s not proven, but it’s a live philosophical possibility that can’t be absolutely ruled out.

Christians then say that this hypothesis explains the universe in a more satisfying way than Matter Only: which requires that matter, starting with a chaotic Big Bang, organizes itself (via its internal inherent capabilities) through millions and billions of years into DNA, life, consciousness, and eventually human beings. No one has a clue how the first three things happened or could happen, but most atheists of Dawkins’ stripe appear quite content to simply believe in blind faith that it happened, because the alternative possibility is disallowed from the outset, and because (as Dawkins stated in his book in his logically circular bliss), were here now.

That’s not an argument at all, let alone a scientific argument. I would say that it requires far more faith than Christian belief in a self-existent, omnipotent, omniscient Eternal Spirit Who created the universe, which has been argued for in at least a score of philosophical arguments through the centuries. It’s not true that Dawkins has no blind faith, or no faith at all, as he claims. He believes things that he can’t prove (i.e., starting axioms) and that are no more provable or plausible than Christian claims at best; just like every other thinker who has ever lived.

But if he wants to seriously interact with Christian claims and attempt to refute them, it would be an immense improvement for him to at least learn what it is that we believe, and thus, exactly what it is that he claims to refute. Sun Tzu (prob. 5th century BC) sagely wrote in The Art of War:

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

The “infinite regress god” business is laughable and not a serious argument, and it doesn’t even argue against the God that theists believe in, in faith, and propose in far more sophisticated philosophical terms. I suggest (in all seriousness) that Dawkins brush up on his Christian theology, logic (even the greatest minds can falter in logic at times), and perhaps even old Sun Tzu.

***

Photo credit: Richard Dawkins at the 34th American Atheists Conference in Minneapolis. Photo by Mike Cornwell (3-21-08) [Wikimedia Commons /  Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

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May 23, 2018

May 23, 2018 By

This is one of four critiques of the book, The God Delusion (New York / Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006), by perhaps the world’s best-known (and most influential?) atheist, the biologist Richard Dawkins (born in 1941). His words will be in blue. Links to the four critiques follow:

Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion: General Critique

Richard Dawkins’ “Bible Whoppers” Are the “Delusion” 

Richard Dawkins: D- Grade for Science & Christianity

Richard Dawkins’ Outrageous Hypocrisy on Abortion

***

Before starting in on my critiques of this book with regard to its claims on science and Christianity, I’d like to point out some areas of agreement:

Either he exists or he doesn’t. It is a scientific question . . . (p. 48)

[T]he existence of God is a scientific hypothesis like any other . . . God’s existence or non-existence is a scientific fact about the universe, discoverable in principle if not in practice. (p. 50)

The presence or absence of a creative super-intelligence is unequivocally a scientific question . . . (pp. 58-59)

[T]he God question is not in principle and forever outside the remit of science. (p. 71)

I agree that if materialistic / atheist scientists have disdain for religion and God and Christians and forbid them to “do science” with their religious beliefs intact (as they very often in fact do), that they should also refrain from condemning religion and entering into our domain and “field” from their materialistic perspective. Goose and gander. If we can’t talk about their area, they ought not talk about ours, either. What’s fair is fair.

I also agree that science — by definition — is restricted to empirical observation and matter.

And I say that there are many ways to discover and verify God’s existence besides scientific (e.g., philosophical, experiential, miracles, revelation, faith).

But I am thankful that Dawkins doesn’t remove God altogether from any connection to science whatsoever, as so many scientists do. Although, the further his book is explored, we see that this doesn’t amount to much tolerance on his part, in practice, at least he agrees in principle that God is potentially discoverable (or made plausible or whatever) through science.

I believe that the traditional cosmological and teleological arguments indeed strongly suggest (though I don’t think they technically “prove”) His existence. The former is easily tied into  Big Bang cosmology and the latter to questions of possible irreducible complexity and astronomical odds against — or extreme implausibility of – particular organs or systems having evolved step-by-step purely and solely through the laws that govern matter.

Along these lines, I think he observes truthfully:

[W]e on the science side must not be too dogmatically confident. Maybe there is something out there in nature that really does preclude, by its genuinely irreducible complexity, the smooth gradient of Mount Improbable. The creationists are right that, if genuinely irreducible complexity could be properly demonstrated, it would wreck Darwin’s theory. (pp. 124-125

He also tends to disbelieve the ultra-absurd and absolutely unverifiable, “unscientific” (by our present known scientific laws) notion of the “serial multiverse”:

The standard model of our universe says that time itself began in the big bang, along with space, some 13 billion years ago. The serial big crunch model would amend that statement: our time and space did indeed begin in our big bang, but this was just the latest in a long series of big bangs, each one initiated by the big crunch that terminated the previous universe in the series. . . .  

As it turns out, this serial version of the multiverse must now be judged less likely than it once was. because recent evidence is starting to steer us away from the big crunch model. It now looks as though our own universe is destined to expand for ever. (pp. 145-146)

Shortly after, he tempers his skepticism a bit, but at least this is something on which we agree. That said, let me now proceed to pick apart several statements that I think are dubious (to put it mildly).

On p. 13 he calls Albert Einstein an “atheistic scientist” and blithely assumes that he wold be on his “side” in comments on pages 13-19, stating:

The one thing all his theistic critics got right was that Einstein was not one of them. He was repeatedly indignant at the suggestion that he was a theist. (p. 18)

This is quite right. Einstein was a pantheist (“god is all”) or perhaps a panentheist (“god is in all”). That much is clear and indisputable. The problem is that Einstein also disavowed any connection to atheism, as well as to theism. I outlined Einstein’s religious views in a paper of mine over 15 years ago (prior to Dawkins’ book). Einstein also wrote (see the sources in my linked paper):

Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible concatenations, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion. To that extent I am, in point of fact, religious. (1927)
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My religiosity consists of a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we can comprehend about the knowable world. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God. (1927)
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I’m not an atheist and I don’t think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many different languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn’t know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see a universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws, but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations. (1930)
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Speaking of the spirit that informs modern scientific investigations, I am of the opinion that all the finer speculations in the realm of science spring from a deep religious feeling, and that without such feeling they would not be fruitful. (1930)
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All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. . . . It is no mere chance that our older universities developed from clerical schools. (1937)
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In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognize, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what makes me really angry is that they quote me for support of such views. (c. 1941)
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Then there are the fanatical atheists whose intolerance is the same as that of the religious fanatics, and it springs from the same source . . . They are creatures who can’t hear the music of the spheres. (7 August 1941)
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Does there truly exist an insuperable contradiction between religion and science? Can religion be superseded by science? The answers to these questions have, for centuries, given rise to considerable dispute and, indeed, bitter fighting. Yet, in my own mind there can be no doubt that in both cases a dispassionate consideration can only lead to a negative answer.
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While it is true that scientific results are entirely independent from religious or moral considerations, those individuals to whom we owe the great creative achievements of science were all of them imbued with the truly religious conviction that this universe of ours is something perfect and susceptible to the rational striving for knowledge. (1948)
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You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being. (28 September 1949)
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I have found no better expression than ‘religious’ for confidence in the rational nature of reality, insofar as it is accessible to human reason. Whenever this feeling is absent, science degenerates into uninspired empiricism. (1 January 1951)
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I am also not a “Freethinker” in the usual sense of the word because I find that this is in the main an attitude nourished exclusively by an opposition against naive superstition. My feeling is insofar religious as I am imbued with the consciousness of the insufficiency of the human mind to understand deeply the harmony of the Universe which we try to formulate as “laws of nature.” It is this consciousness and humility I miss in the Freethinker mentality. (23 February 1954)
In a word, like all great and wise (and humble) thinkers, Einstein fully understood that he could not explain everything, and retained his wonder as regards the marvels of the universe. This is very much in line with Christian thinking, and strictly contrary to doctrinaire / crusading atheism, as he himself repeatedly noted. Bottom line: though not a theist, it seems fairly apparent that Einstein was closer in spirit to us — in terms of the relationship of religion to science — than to atheism. Thus, it is erroneous for Dawkins to claim and assume otherwise. He could have found all these citations, just as I did, but he chose only to selectively cite those that fit into his own thesis.
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Since I have mentioned Einstein, I’ll mention another scientist that he brings up, getting important things wrong about him. He calls microbiologist Michael Behe (of “irreducible complexity” and Darwin’s Black Box fame) a “creationist” on page 129. He’s not, and this is easily able to be discovered (if not already known), by ten minutes maximum spent on Google or the Amazon pages of Behe’s books. In the aforementioned book (written in 1996), Dr. Behe writes:
Many people think that questioning Darwinian evolution must be equivalent to espousing creationism. . . . For the record, I have no reason to doubt that the universe is the billions of years old that physicists say it is. Further, I find the idea of common descent (that all organisms share a common ancestor) fairly convincing, and have no particular reason to doubt it. . . . I think that evolutionary biologists have contributed enormously to our understanding of the world. Although Darwin’s mechanism — natural selection working on variation — might explain many things, however, I do not believe it explains molecular life. (p. 5)
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This is not to say that random mutation is a myth, or that Darwinism fails to explain anything (it explains microevolution very nicely) . . . (p. 22)
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I believe the evidence strongly supports common descent. But the root question remains unanswered: What has caused complex systems to form? No one has ever explained in detailed, scientific fashion how mutation and natural selection could build the complex, intricate structures discussed in this book.
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In fact, none of the papers published in JME [Journal of Molecular Evolution] over the entire course of its life as a journal has ever proposed a detailed model by which a complex biochemical system might have been produced in a gradual, step-by-step Darwinian fashion. . . .
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The very fact that none of these problems is even addressed, let alone resolved, is a very strong indication that Darwinism is an inadequate framework for understanding the origin of complex biochemical systems.
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. . . the papers are missing. Nothing remotely like this has bee published. (p. 176)
That is simply not “creationism.” Common decent is antithetical to any form of creationism (whether young-earth or old-earth). Behe’s view is a form of theistic evolution. Therefore, it’s both dishonest and flat-out stupid for Dawkins to describe him in that way. It’s a combination of the unworthy “poisoning the well” and “straw man” fallacious tactics.
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But Dawkins, in his wise and gracious magnanimity, precludes any possibility of that category of thinker (even though Darwin himself didn’t do so). For him, it’s either materialistic / atheistic Darwinian evolution (and gradualist at that) or nothing. No one can honestly, intelligently be a theistic evolutionist. Hence, he writes:
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I am continually astonished by those theists who . . . seem to rejoice in natural selection as ‘God’s way of achieving his creation’. (p. 118)
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Why? How can that be ruled out? Well, in effect, it “is” simply by scientists like Dawkins saying so; not by rational argument. But simply asserting one’s own dogmas is neither science nor philosophy. Charles Darwin wrote on 7 May 1879, less than three years before he died:
It seems to me absurd to doubt that a man may be an ardent Theist & an evolutionist.— You are right about Kingsley. Asa Gray, the eminent botanist, is another case in point— What my own views may be is a question of no consequence to any one except myself.— But as you ask, I may state that my judgment often fluctuates. Moreover whether a man deserves to be called a theist depends on the definition of the term: which is much too large a subject for a note. In my most extreme fluctuations I have never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God.— I think that generally (& more and more so as I grow older) but not always, that an agnostic would be the most correct description of my state of mind. (Letter to John Fordyce, [complete] )
Darwin’s best friend and advocate / “bulldog”: the agnostic Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895), certainly didn’t forbid either God or theistic evolutionists from science. He wrote in his article, “Science and Morals” in 1886:
The student of nature, who starts from the axiom of the universality of the law of causation, cannot refuse to admit an eternal existence; if he admits the conservation of energy, he cannot deny the possibility of an eternal energy; if he admits the existence of immaterial phenomena in the form of consciousness, he must admit the possibility, at any rate, of an eternal series of such phenomena; and, if his studies have not been barren of the best fruit of the investigation of nature, he will have enough sense to see that when Spinoza says, ‘Per Deum intelligo ens absolute infinitum, hoc est substantiam constantem infinitis attributis,’ the God so conceived is one that only a very great fool would deny, even in his heart. Physical science is as little Atheistic as it is Materialistic.
One could go on and on with this sort of thing (for much more, see my book, Science and Christianity). The point is that, if Dawkins wants to invoke Darwin in hushed and semi-hagiographical tones, and pretend that his outlook requires a strict materialism and/or atheism, then he also has to take into consideration Darwin’s own stated views, and that of his closest friends, like Huxley and Gray. We can’t superimpose present atheism back onto them. Darwin and Huxley were both agnostics, and Darwin makes it clear that his revolutionary views developed (in 1859) when he was still a professed theist.
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While Dawkins is “astonished” by theistic evolutionists, he is not above citing them at times to suit his own purposes. Thus he mentions Dr. Kenneth Miller as “the most persuasive nemesis of ‘intelligent design’, not least because he is a devout Christian” (p. 131). Yes he is! And that means he is a theistic evolutionist. On the same page he recommends Dr. Miller’s 1999 book, Finding Darwin’s God. I have it in my library, along with Dr. Behe’s two books. Miller opposes Behe’s take on intelligent design, but in no way does he preclude God from evolution:
By any reasonable analysis, evolution does nothing to distance or to weaken the power of God. . . . A God who presides over an evolutionary process is not an impotent, passive observer. Rather, he is one whose genius fashioned a fruitful world in which the process of continuing creation is woven into the fabric of matter itself. (p. 243)
I have no problem with that at all. However God exercised His power to create (Behe’s way or Miller’s way), He is still intimately involved in the process. And that view is far — poles apart — from Dawkins’ position, which holds that absolutely everything is ultimately or potentially explainable (since there is no God) by natural processes. Dawkins seems to think Miller is on his side. He’s far more on my side.
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Behe and Miller (both Catholics) agree that God is necessary in the evolutionary process, and that this process (nor the earlier creation of the universe) could not have occurred without His involvement in some sense or way (exactly my own view, that I defend as an apologist, especially against atheists). The only difference is over the degree and nature of this theistic (and not deistic) divine participation and guidance. Miller makes God a bit more remote from the workings of scientific laws and processes, whereas Behe brings Him a bit closer. Both views are Christian and quite permissible in that worldview, and for that matter, easily harmonized with the related pre-scientific statements of the Bible. Dawkins states:

The design approach postulates a God who wrought a deliberate miracle, struck the prebiotic soup with divine fire and launched DNA, or something equivalent, on its momentous career. (p. 137)

Yeah, possibly that occurred, and maybe Behe would agree. Miller wouldn’t, and would say that God designed all of those potentialities and actualities from the outset, and let them run their course. Theists can have those discussions. Dawkins can’t, because his prior atheistic dogma dictates that God is impossible (and absurd). Obviously, then, it’s difficult to discuss His relation to evolutionary processes if He ain’t there in the first place. I find this dogmatic closed-mindedness to be contrary to both the scientific and philosophical enterprises.
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Give me an agnostic, a la Darwin and Huxley and Einstein, any day. They retain an open mind and a humility and thoughtful seriousness that Dawkins seems to not even be capable of conceiving. Dawkins is naive and foolish enough to think (in a very un-Einsteinian way) that science can essentially explain everything:
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Historically, religion aspired to explain our own existence and the nature of the universe in which we find ourselves. In this role it is now completely superseded by science . . . (p. 347)
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Alright. Let’s see, then, how Dawkins attempts to explain the origin of the universe and of life. Here’s a few samples:
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[T]he spontaneous arising by chance of the first hereditary molecule strikes many as improbable. Maybe it is — very very improbable, . . .  (p. 137)
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[T]he origin of the eucaryotic cell . . . was an even more momentous, difficult and statistically improbable step than the origin of life. The origin of consciousness might be another major gap whose bridging was of the same order of improbability. (p. 140)
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Natural selection works because it is a cumulative one-way street to improvement. It needs some luck to get started, and the ‘billions of planets’ anthropic principle grants it that luck. Maybe a few later gaps in the evolutionary story also need major infusions of luck, with anthropic justification. (p. 141)
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It follows from the fact of our existence that the laws of physics must be friendly enough to allow life to arise. (p. 141)
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We see here that Dawkins (especially in the final sentence above) ventures into radically circular logical territory (meaning, he has already assumed what he is trying to prove and that his “conclusion” was already present in his premise):
1) Alas, life (including us) is here.
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2) Only physical laws can account for life (no God can possibly explain it, since there is no God).
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3) Therefore, the laws of physics must have done so.
This is hardly compelling: logically or any other way. Dawkins has asserted dogma. He needs to prove it, according to the usual scientific demonstration. This is materialistic [blind] faith and belief in unproven axioms, that I have endlessly critiqued and lampooned in my apologetics for over 35 years now. Dawkins had repeatedly decried “chance” in the book and denied that natural selection entailed it. Yet when he has nothing better to offer, he readily “worships” the god of “luck” in order to shore up his bankrupt worldview, as to how things ultimately got here. How is Dawkins’ “luck” any intellectually superior to Behe’s intelligent design and irreducible complexity? We’re not impressed.
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Referring to the origin of life on earth (“possibly only one planet in the entire universe”), he says that “We now understand essentially how the trick was done” (pp. 366-367). It’s all explained by natural selection, you see. We understand no such thing, which is presumably why Dawkins never blesses us with the scientific explanation. He merely asserts yet again (atheists have become very good at that: so often thinking they need not explain anything). He (with a straight face) proclaims the glories of his god Darwin, and Darwin’s prophet and bearer of good tidings, natural selection, and concludes on his last page (order inverted below):
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[W]e considered the improbability of the origin of life and how even a near-impossible chemical event must come to pass given enough planet years to play with . . . (p. 374)
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[I]n the vastness of astronomical space, or geological time, events that seem impossible . . . turn out to be inevitable. (p. 374)
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Really? This doesn’t follow at all, but has become atheist unquestioned Dogma. I mercilessly satirized the atheists’ religion of “atomism” years ago, in by far my most controversial paper in atheists’ eyes. It raised such a firestorm of protest that I had to write a follow-up explaining the satire: the nature of which  virtually no atheist could even comprehend, being very unfamiliar with being on the receiving end of sarcastic humor that they dish out to us all the time. Here is what Dawkins’ unbridled faith in matter truly amounts to, satirically (but accurately!) expressed:

Matter essentially “becomes god” in the atheist / materialist view; it has the inherent ability to do everything by itself: a power that Christians believe God caused, by putting these potentialities and actual characteristics into matter and natural laws, as their ultimate Creator and ongoing Preserver and Sustainer.

The atheist places extraordinary faith in matter – arguably far more faith than we place in God, because it is much more difficult to explain everything that god-matter does by science alone.

Indeed, this is a faith of the utmost non-rational, childlike kind. . . .

The polytheistic materialist . . . thinks that trillions of his atom-gods and their distant relatives, the cell-gods, can make absolutely everything in the universe occur, by their own power, possessed eternally either in full or (who knows how?) in inevitably unfolding potentiality.

One might call this (to coin a phrase) Atomism (“belief that the atom is God”). Trillions of omnipotent, omniscient atoms can do absolutely everything that the Christian God can do, and for little or no reason that anyone can understand (i.e., why and how the atom-god came to possess such powers in the first place). . . .

Oh, and we mustn’t forget the time-goddess. She is often invoked in worshipful, reverential, awe-inspiring terms as the be-all, end-all explanation for things inexplicable, as if by magic her very incantation rises to an explanatory level . . . The time-goddess is the highest in the ranks of the Atomist’s wonderfully varied hierarchy of gods (sort of the “Zeus” of Atomism). One might call this belief Temporalism.

Atomism is a strong, fortress-like faith. It is often said that it “must be” what it is. . . .
Some Atomist utterances even have the “ring” of Scriptures; for example, urgings of an appropriate humility regarding man’s opinion of his own importance, because the universe is so large, and we are so small, as if, somehow, largeness itself is some sort of inherently God-like quality. . . .

All of this desperate “pseudo-explanation” of the universe comes about because Dawkins disallows anything but matter to exist in the universe (the position of monism, as opposed to dualism). Listen to his viciously circular and hyper-silly utterances, made with a blind faith that is admirable at least in its “heroically” hopeless defiance of reason and reality alike:
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[T]here is nothing beyond the natural, physical world, no supernatural creative intelligence . . . no soul . . . If there is something that appears to lie beyond the natural world as it is now imperfectly understood, we hope to eventually understand it and embrace it within the natural. (p. 14)
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[A]ny creative intelligence, of sufficient complexity to design anything, comes into existence only as the end product of an extended process of gradual evolution. Creative intelligences, being evolved, necessarily arrive late in the universe, and therefore cannot be responsible for designing it. God, in the sense defined, is a delusion . . . (p. 31; italics in original)
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[T]he Darwinian is challenged to explain the source of all the information in living matter . . . Darwinian natural selection is the only known solution to the otherwise unanswerable riddle of where the information comes from. (pp. 113-114)
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I confess that I am an utter loss to reply to such fathomless inanities as this, so I will again cite my “Atomism” paper and conclude:
The Atomist – ever-inventive and childlike – manages to believe any number of things, in faith, without the unnecessary addition of mere explanation.

“Why” questions in the context of Atomism are senseless, because they can’t overcome the Impenetrable Fortress of blind faith that the Atomist possesses. The question, “Why do the atom-gods and cell-gods and the time-goddess exist and possess the extraordinary powers that they do?” is meaningless and ought not be put forth. It’s bad form, and impolite. We know how sensitive overly religious folk are.

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Photo credit: American biologist and [Catholic] theistic evolutionist Kenneth R. Miller (b. 1948), photographed on 1-10-06 [public domain / Wikimedia Commons]
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May 21, 2018

May 21, 2018 By

This is one of four critiques of the book, The God Delusion (New York / Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006), by perhaps the world’s best-known (and most influential?) atheist, the biologist Richard Dawkins (born in 1941). His words will be in blue. Links to the four critiques follow:

Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion: General Critique 

Richard Dawkins’ “Bible Whoppers” Are the “Delusion”

Richard Dawkins: D- Grade for Science & Christianity

Richard Dawkins’ Outrageous Hypocrisy on Abortion

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Richard Dawkins informs us how compassionate secular (including atheist) liberals are. They are “nice liberal people” who “cannot bear suffering and cruelty” (p. 328 in the hardcover edition, as throughout). Because of this compassion, Dawkins is “scandalized” by “victim[s]” of traditional “ritual sacrifice” of human beings (p. 327). He approvingly cites psychologist Nicholas Humphrey, decrying this type of “act of ritual murder: the murder of a dependent child by a group of stupid, puffed up, superstitious, ignorant old men” (Humphrey’s words: pp. 327-328). Dawkins waxes indignant over this outrage:

Again, the decent liberal reader may feel a twinge of unease. Immoral by our standards, certainly, and stupid, . . . 

The Inca priests cannot be blamed for their ignorance . . . But they can be blamed for foisting their own beliefs on a child . . . (p. 328)

Dawkins provides for us a mini atheist manifesto on the preciousness of life: “luck” being the atheist equivalent of “blessing” and/or perhaps also “grace”. It would be genuinely moving if we could only forget the multiple millions that he doesn’t include in it:

In Unweaving the Rainbow I tried to convey how lucky we are to be alive, given that the vast majority of people who could potentially be thrown up by the combinatorial lottery of DNA will in fact never be born. . . . 

We are staggeringly lucky to find ourselves in the spotlight. However brief our time in the sun, if we waste a second of it, or complain that it is dull or barren or (like a child) boring, couldn’t this be seen as a callous insult to those unborn trillions who will never even be offered life in the first place? . . . the knowledge that we have only one life should make it all the more precious. The atheist view is correspondingly life-affirming and life-enhancing . . . (p. 361)

Alas, Dawkins seems to be blissfully unaware of the fatal and, to my mind, hyper-cruel and evil diabolical logic inherently involved in such reasoning. The pro-abortion atheist is in favor of the deliberate, legally sanctioned depriving of this “precious” life of preborn children scheduled  to be aborted, despite the fact that it is the only life he or she will ever have. There is, of course, no afterlife in the atheist view, and no soul.

Thus, this pitiful creature attempting to emerge from the womb to see the light of day is prevented from the outset from possessing what Dawkins sincerely cherishes as “staggeringly lucky”; that is, this “only one life”: a “precious” life that we all are privileged to have. Is this not a chilling expression of the wickedness of the pro-abortion / anti-life mindset; the culture of death?

Dawkins, in his wisdom and charity, even freely concedes that “Human embryos are examples of human life. Therefore, by absolutist religious lights, abortion is simply wrong: full-fledged murder” (p. 291). Yes it is, but, try as I may, I fail to see why such a view should or would be confined merely to religious folks (by the “internal atheist” reasoning I provided in the preceding paragraph).

Did not Dawkins inform us in the excerpt above that life is so eminently “precious”? Here he includes preborn “human life” in the same category. Thus, logically, this class of “humans” are (or ought) to be included in the class of those in possession of this same human life; who are “staggeringly lucky” etc.

He trapped himself with his own words, by daring to call the preborn child “human.” This is similar to the cognitive dissonance and ludicrous Orwellian self-delusion of the pro-abortion expectant mother, who calls her preborn child (i.e., one she chooses to “want”) a (or “my”) “baby”. Then when she doesn’t want to carry a conceived child to term, she will refuse to call it a “baby.”

Dawkins also (rightly but hypocritically) waxes indignant — twenty pages earlier — over the demotion of various classes of people to sub-human status:

One reason black people and women and, in Nazi Germany, Jews and gypsies have been treated badly is that they were not perceived as fully human. (p. 271)

The “progressive” trend against this sort of outrage and in favor of “a common humanity” was, so Dawkins informs us, derived from “deeply unbiblical ideas that come from biological science, especially evolution” (p. 271). Okay. Materialistic evolution (which forbids God to play any role in it at all, according to Dawkins and atheists generally) fosters respect for life and commonness among all humankind. Wonderful! Ah, but wait! Dawkins utterly contradicts all of this touchy-feely, warm fuzzy Kumbaya love for one and all in the following proclamation:

The granting of uniquely special rights to cells of the species Homo sapiens is hard to reconcile with the fact of evolution. . . .

The evolutionary point is very simple. The humanness of an embryo’s cells cannot confer upon it any absolutely discontinuous moral status. . . . 

[E]volutionary continuity shows that there is no absolute distinction. Absolutist moral discrimination is devastatingly undermined by the fact of evolution. (pp. 300-301)

This grotesque” “scientism” mentality then leads to the evil justifying of abortion, and for that matter, to the ritual human sacrifice of born children by the Incas, Aztecs, and many other cultures (though Dawkins seems utterly unaware of that logical consequence of his stated position). Indeed, the Nazis thought it quite justified all that they did, too. They proclaimed themselves (accurately or not) to be social Darwinists all through the Holocaust.

Despite all of these massive self-contradictions and vicious logical circularities, Dawkins bravely weathers on. He protests:

What kind of ethical philosophy is it that condemns every child, even before it is born, to inherit the sin of a remote ancestor? (p. 251)

First of all, he ought to get it right, when venturing into Christian theology. Christians believe that the Fall of Man was a collective one: a rebellion from mankind as a whole; not merely Adam and Eve, whose rebellion is then “attributed” to innocents evermore. This notion is derived from passages such as 1 Corinthians 15:22: “. . . in Adam all die” (RSV). I wrote in my paper, Biblical Evidence for Original Sin:

“In Adam,” not “because” of Adam’s original sin, which gave us a propensity, . . . The Fall is that of the entire human race; we are all in the same boat. 

Moreover, this supposed rank injustice and unfairness (that many atheists love to ignorantly carp on and on about) is utterly removed through baptism (via baptismal regeneration), according to Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and many major branches of Protestantism, such as Anglicanism, Methodism, and Lutheranism. My mentor, Fr. John A. Hardon, S. J., one of America’s leading catechists in the 20th century, describes the effects of “baptismal graces” in his Modern Catholic Dictionary:

The supernatural effects of the sacrament of baptism. They are: 1. removal of all guilt of sin, original and personal; 2. removal of all punishment due to sin, temporal and eternal; 3. infusion of sanctifying grace along with the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit; 4. incorporation into Christ; and 5, entrance into the Mystical Body, which is the Catholic Church; 6. imprinting of the baptismal character, which enables a person to receive the other sacraments, to participate in the priesthood of Christ through the sacred liturgy, and to grow in the likeness of Christ through personal sanctification. Baptism does not remove two effects of original sin, namely concupiscence and bodily mortality. However, it does enable a Christian to be sanctified by his struggle with concupiscence and gives him the title to rising in a glorified body on the last day.

That’s a lot of things! But note especially #1 (bolded portion). Obviously, we understand that atheists don’t believe any of this. But that’s irrelevant if the topic is the alleged injustice of the Christian doctrine of original sin (which is what Dawkins was commenting upon above). Now they are in our realm, talking about our beliefs, not their own. And once they enter into that arena, they are responsible for not distorting beyond recognition what we teach. That’s unethical, and sloppy, crappy scholarship (in some cases, what can only be described as deliberately dishonest “research”). Dawkins simply appears — like multitudes of atheists when it comes to biblical theology — woefully ignorant and misinformed.

Dawkins thunders on the same page 251: “They and all their descendants were banished forever from the Garden of Eden, deprived of the gift of eternal life . . .” Of course this isn’t true. The baptism of infants drastically changes that, and then the way of salvation through the cross of Christ is open to any person who will accept this free grace of God, to heaven and eternal life. Just because atheists and others reject this free grace and the salvation and eternal life that comes through it, is no reason to blame Christianity and God, as if it’s all gloom and doom and hopeless misery, under the wascally wascal arbitrary “tyrant-god” that exists solely in the fanciful and endlessly inventive atheist imagination. 

Sorry for the slight digression, but I think we can see that this extreme aversion to original sin (on fallacious grounds) is all the more clueless and out to sea, once we realize what Dawkins believes about the heartless killing of innocent young children: by the hundreds of millions. I paraphrase his own words above, in order to highlight the hypocrisy:

What kind of ethical philosophy is it that condemns every innocent, helpless preborn child whose mother doesn’t want him or her, even before he or she is born, to be the victims of the sin of his or her parents and the abortionist who mercilessly tortures [in most cases, felt] and murders him or her (for profit), and deprives this poor child of the only life he or she will ever have (according to atheist worldview): no afterlife; no life on earth, period?

Which of these two scenarios is more ethical: original sin rightly understood, and the solution to it in Christian theology, or abortion as fully and logically thought through, according to atheist presuppositions about ethics and [nonexistence of] souls and heaven, and murder?

Dawkins goes back and forth throughout the book, seeming to be (at least fleetingly) against cruelty and murder of children here, and utterly indifferent to it there. When he is condemning the biblical and ancient Hebrew accounts from the Old Testament, of course he is all for children not being killed. Sometimes they lose their lives as members of cultures which are being judged by God (which is a long, complex discussion itself, but a perfectly valid one).

Be that as it may, Dawkins condemns these instances of divine wrath and judgment: incensed that Moses “gave orders that all the boy children should be killed” (p. 245) in the case of the Midianites, and commanded the Jews to “utterly destroy” various cultures inhabiting ancient Canaan (see p. 248). This is part of the standard, stock atheist repertoire of endlessly parroted objections to the Bible and to “God” (not the real one, but their gutted / invented version of Him).

It’s very curious and inexplicable, however, that in a volume often given over to documenting various “objectionable” stories from the Old Testament, Dawkins omits — for some reason known only to him — the many vociferous condemnations of child sacrifice in the Bible:

Leviticus 18:21 You shall not give any of your children to devote them by fire to Molech, and so profane the name of your God: I am the LORD.

Leviticus 20:2-3 Say to the people of Israel, Any man of the people of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn in Israel, who gives any of his children to Molech shall be put to death; the people of the land shall stone him with stones. I myself will set my face against that man, and will cut him off from among his people, because he has given one of his children to Molech, defiling my sanctuary and profaning my holy name.

Deuteronomy 12:31 . . . every abominable thing which the LORD hates they have done for their gods; for they even burn their sons and their daughters in the fire to their gods.

2 Kings 16:2-3 Ahaz was twenty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem. And he did not do what was right in the eyes of the LORD his God, as his father David had done, but he walked in the way of the kings of Israel. He even burned his son as an offering, according to the abominable practices of the nations whom the LORD drove out before the people of Israel.

2 Kings 17:17-18 And they burned their sons and their daughters as offerings, and used divination and sorcery, and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the LORD, provoking him to anger. Therefore the LORD was very angry with Israel, and removed them out of his sight; none was left but the tribe of Judah only.

2 Kings 23:10 And he defiled To’pheth, which is in the valley of the sons of Hinnom, that no one might burn his son or his daughter as an offering to Molech.

2 Chronicles 28:3 and he burned incense in the valley of the son of Hinnom, and burned his sons as an offering, according to the abominable practices of the nations whom the LORD drove out before the people of Israel.

2 Chronicles 33:6 And he burned his sons as an offering in the valley of the son of Hinnom, and practiced soothsaying and augury and sorcery, and dealt with mediums and with wizards. He did much evil in the sight of the LORD, provoking him to anger.

Psalm 106:36-39 They served their idols, which became a snare to them. They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to the demons; they poured out innocent blood, the blood of their sons and daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan; and the land was polluted with blood. Thus they became unclean by their acts, and played the harlot in their doings.

Jeremiah 7:31-32 And they have built the high place of Topheth, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire; which I did not command, nor did it come into my mind. Therefore, behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when it will no more be called Topheth, or the valley of the son of Hinnom, but the valley of Slaughter: for they will bury in Topheth, because there is no room elsewhere.

Jeremiah 19:5 and have built the high places of Ba’al to burn their sons in the fire as burnt offerings to Ba’al, which I did not command or decree, nor did it come into my mind;

Jeremiah 32:35 They built the high places of Ba’al in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to offer up their sons and daughters to Molech, though I did not command them, nor did it enter into my mind, that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin.

Ezekiel 16:20-21 And you took your sons and your daughters, whom you had borne to me, and these you sacrificed to them to be devoured. Were your harlotries so small a matter that you slaughtered my children and delivered them up as an offering by fire to them?

Ezekiel 16:36 Thus says the Lord GOD, Because your shame was laid bare and your nakedness uncovered in your harlotries with your lovers, and because of all your idols, and because of the blood of your children that you gave to them,

Ezekiel 20:21 When you offer your gifts and sacrifice your sons by fire, you defile yourselves with all your idols to this day. . . .

Ezekiel 20:31 When you offer your gifts and sacrifice your sons by fire, you defile yourselves with all your idols to this day. And shall I be inquired of by you, O house of Israel? As I live, says the Lord GOD, I will not be inquired of by you.

Ezekiel 23:37-39 For they have committed adultery, and blood is upon their hands; with their idols they have committed adultery; and they have even offered up to them for food the sons whom they had borne to me. Moreover this they have done to me: they have defiled my sanctuary on the same day and profaned my sabbaths. For when they had slaughtered their children insacrifice to their idols, on the same day they came into my sanctuary to profane it. And lo, this is what they did in my house.

Wisdom 12:3-6 Those who dwelt of old in thy holy land thou didst hate for their detestable practices, their works of sorcery and unholy rites, their merciless slaughter of children, and their sacrificial feasting on human flesh and blood. These initiates from the midst of a heathen cult, these parents who murder helpless lives, thou didst will to destroy by the hands of our fathers,

See much more about the numerous biblical prohibitions of abortion.

That’s an awful lot of biblical data to be ignorant of, or to deliberately pass over, ain’t it? Moreover, Jesus even compared hell to the child sacrifices that occurred in the valley of Hinnom (aka Gehenna) in Jerusalem (I almost was able to walk through it when I visited in 2014). The New Testament word for eternal hell is Gehenna. Thus, we know that Jesus had in mind what took place in this valley, as a metaphor for hell. In other words, child sacrifice (morally equivalent to abortion) is, in the mind of Jesus, a good description of hell (as I have written about).

At length, we are blessed with Dawkins’ final judgment on this sordid matter of abortion, with its unsavory nature involving profound suffering, that even Dawkins (safely away from its oceans of blood and guts and severed or savagely burned or ripped-apart heads and limbs) is forced to confront and admit as a not-so-nice thing, after all. In his section, “Faith and the Sanctity of Human Life” he opines:

Does the embryo suffer? (Presumably not if it is aborted before it has a nervous system; and even if it is old enough to have a nervous system it surely suffers less than, say, an adult cow in a slaughterhouse.) (p. 293)

And if late-aborted embryos with nervous systems suffer — though all suffering is deplorable — it is not because they are human that they suffer. There is no general reason to suppose that human embryos at any age suffer more than cow or sheep embryos at the same developmental stage. And there  is every reason to suppose that all embryos, whether human or not, suffer far less than adult cows or sheep in a slaughterhouse, especially a ritual slaughterhouse where, for religious reasons, they must be fully conscious when their throats are ceremonially cut. (p. 297)

Well, that settles it and makes us all feel so much better! He would go on to inform his readers three pages later that “The humanness of an embryo’s cells cannot confer upon it any absolutely discontinuous moral status.” Right. That comes through loud and clear in Dawkins’ ghastly, emotionally flat, compassion-challenged, and Nazi-like comparisons of the suffering of preborn children to that of cows and sheep in slaughterhouses and “cow or sheep embryos at the same developmental stage.” That makes it all so understandable and justified, doesn’t it? We feel warm all over to be informed of these things.

All of these pitiable creatures being led to slaughter are on the same moral plane, you see. Human babies thus have no moral status that is superior to that of any other creature: be it a sheep, cow, or for that matter, a snail darter or a worm or a tree, or the last mosquito that you swatted. We’re all one big happy family, in the [materialistic] evolutionary community [minus God, of course] of all living things.

So, no big deal. If these babies have to be tortured and murdered (usually due to others’ sin and irresponsibility), we can take solace in the fact that it is no worse than similar experiences of the baby’s cow or sheep brethren. Since we don’t (at least not yet!) talk of murdering sheep; likewise we cannot refer to the murdering of children, who have no inherent, unique value or preciousness among all other beasts (or else their destruction would be forbidden).

It’s all wrapped up in a pretty bow (either blue or pink). This is the wonderful caring world we now inhabit: the secular / atheist Utopia, where one and all are loved and cherished, except for the smallest, most innocent and helpless among us: children in their mothers’ wombs:  exponentially far and away the most dangerous place for any human being to ever be.

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Photo credit: Richard Dawkins, photographed in March 2005 by Christopher G. Street [public domain / Wikimedia Commons]

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March 20, 2008

March 20, 2008 By
+ Galileo Redux
Dawkins2
British atheist biologist Richard Dawkins (b. 1941) at the 35th American Atheists Convention (4-10-09). Photo by Marty Stone [Wikimedia Commons / Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license]

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(3-20-08)

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A Catholic commented in a thread devoted to a post of mine regarding Galileo:

I think the Church would not get into these types of situations or be the cause for such questions if she would stick to religion and religious topics and leave science to scientists.

I replied:

But you neglect to see that Galileo was being overly dogmatic and intruding into the theological realm. This is not simply a matter of the “Church” making a dumb mistake and overstepping its bounds. The “Church” (i.e., the magisterium) never spoke on the matter one way or the other (see the lengthy quotation in my post referred to above, from The Catholic Encyclopedia). Certain members of the Church held erroneous cosmological views. But so did Galileo in some respects too. Big wow. Folks made errors. No big deal. As I wrote in my treatment of the Galileo issue, in my book, The One-Minute Apologist:

But the scientist (though basically correct) was overconfident and quite obstinate in proclaiming his scientific theory as absolute truth, and this was a major concern. Accordingly, St. Robert Bellarmine, who was directly involved in the controversy, made it clear that heliocentrism was not irreversibly condemned, and also that a not-yet proven theory was not an unassailable fact. Bellarmine actually had the superior understanding of the nature of a scientific hypothesis. Galileo was scientifically fallible, too. He held that the entire universe revolved around the sun in circular (not elliptical) orbits, and that tides were caused by the rotation of the earth. True heliocentrism wasn’t conclusively proven until some 200 years later.

As in all my apologetics, and especially when about these “notorious” instances of Catholic error, I want the “whole story” to be known and understood, not just one-sided propaganda that seeks to discredit the Church first and foremost and ignores all of the relevant information.

We get the added bonus that the whole, real truth is invariably far more interesting than the self-interested, self-promoting myths and legends that are too often bandied about by academics and so-called “intelligentsia” (in this case, in the name of “science”).

If anyone is overstepping the largely legitimate methodological boundaries of science and religion today, it is the subgroup of atheist, materialist scientists: folks like Richard Dawkins, who insist on stepping outside of their area of expertise and proclaiming dogmatically that there is no God. Dawkins as a scientist cannot say that, because science deals with matter (and God is Spirit, and the supernatural is outside the realm of science per se).

But he won’t shut up about it because it makes him feel important and smarter-than-thou and sells lots of books and makes lots of $$$$$. He won’t say (at least not very often, or loudly) that as a scientist he has no prerogative to speak about it, and that when he does so, he is doing it merely as a non-expert amateur philosopher: scarcely more qualified than you or I. That would be too honest and real and counter-productive.

So these guys transgress the boundaries all the time, and it’s fine, but let a Catholic scientist like Michael Behe dare to say only that not all things can be explained by conventional evolution, and the sky falls down. That is bringing religion into science, and flat earth creationism and “Bible science,” blah blah blah.

The double standard is wider than the Grand Canyon.

* * * * *

I refuse (as an apologist and enthusiastic student of the history of ideas) to let a complex issue like the Galileo affair be reduced to secular-inspired slogans. We owe much more than that to our Catholic forefathers who weren’t nearly as “dumb” as they are so often made out to be.

As I see it, I am simply collecting all the relevant facts and presenting them, so that readers can have a more accurate picture of what actually happened. Like most people, I was spoon-fed the secular line that made out that the Church was this troglodyte, anti-intellectual, anti-scientific, know-nothing monster and Galileo and his cohorts were all open-minded, enlightened truth machines, persecuted as such by the reactionary Church.

The truth is far more complex than that, as I think I have shown in the few words that I devoted to the issue in my latest book, and in some longer papers. For one thing, Galileo remained an orthodox Catholic, and he was guilty of now-known scientific errors, too. St. Robert Bellarmine (no intellectual slouch) actually had a more accurate notion of scientific hypotheses and theories than Galileo did (by today’s definitions and criteria). And that ain’t just me saying that. As usual, I back myself up with the relevant sources (as much as possible, from non-Catholics). In this instance, it was well-known philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn:

Most of Galileo’s opponents behaved more rationally. Like Bellarmine, they agreed that the phenomena were in the sky but denied that they proved Galileo’s contentions. In this, of course, they were quite right. Though the telescope argued much, it proved nothing.
(The Copernican Revolution, New York: Random House / Vintage Books, 1957, p. 226)

Kuhn, in this same book, even defends, at length, the contributions and brilliance of the lifelong geocentrist Tycho Brahe (describing him as “the preeminent astronomical authority” of the second half of the 16th century, who had “immense prestige”), as I documented in a paper of mine.

Truth is stranger (and far more interesting) than fiction. It’s not the case that the Catholics were (to use the caricatures and stereotypes constantly utilized by materialist scientists and other like-minded secularist academics) the anti-science dummies who were all geocentrists, and refused to look through Galileo’s telescope, while the scientists were (to a person) the ultra-smart, forward-looking, inquisitive folks (gee, kinda like scientists today!), who were never geocentrists, and who would never, ever believe something as “unscientific” as astrology.

WRONG on all counts. One must look at individuals, and in the context of their time, and have some understanding of the intellectual milieu as well and a sense of the development of both science and theology over time. Kuhn understands this. The ones who truly study the matter on both “sides” with an open mind do, as a general rule.

What happened, happened. The Church is on record as having apologized for the errors that some high-ranking Catholics made, through Pope John Paul II and others. They had nothing whatever to do with infallibility. They were simple human errors, of a sort that many scientists and philosophers also made. I noted in my book chapter on Galileo that the Lutheran philosopher Leibniz: one of the most brilliant minds of all time, fought against Newton’s theory of gravitation.

No one is denying that such errors occurred (last of all, me). But the fuller picture should also be discussed because of how the incident is used and exploited by secularists and non-Catholic Christian opponents of the Catholic Church.

My methodology is always the same regarding all these “scandals” in Catholic history: whether it be the Inquisition or the Crusades or the current sexual scandal. I don’t deny the real wrongs and errors at all, but I put them in proper perspective and refuse to accept the nonsense that always makes the Catholic Church the Big Bad Boogeyman and ignores similar scandals in non-Catholic circles. I will not bow to intellectual double standards, ever.

Atheist scientists want to go back to the early 17th century and even then have to distort what happened and only present one side of it, when there are plenty of far more scandalous “skeletons” in their own closet (that we rarely hear about), and more recently, at that. We need only go back less than two hundred years to find stuff like phrenology, where the shape of a person’s skull was thought (by mainstream science) to have a direct relationship to their intelligence. The science of, say, 1900, was shot through with racism: hardly a proud chapter in scientific history.

But Christians of two, three generations earlier, like William Wilberforce and the abolitionists were far more “progressive” on the race issue. Christians (not “progressive” scientists) are always on the cutting edge of societal progress, whether we look at slavery, or civil rights, or the fall of Soviet Communism (Pope John Paul II and Christians in Eastern Europe, and another “dumb guy”: Ronald Reagan).

I have shown how Galileo himself and other scientists of his time like Kepler, were neck-deep in astrology.

Eugenics is another sad chapter in scientific history. We saw what the Nazis did with that. In America, we had sterilization of black men and suchlike. Remember, Germany was one of the most scientifically advanced societies then and now. But this was supposedly “good science”. Margaret Sanger picked it up and institutionalized her racism in her group, Planned Parenthood, and indeed, this played the key role in promulgation of the immorality of contraception and later, of abortion itself. That’s why the best Christian apologists of the period, like Chesterton and C.S. Lewis, wrote about these kinds of follies that were rampant within science. Lewis often satirized the tunnel vision materialist scientist of his time. Chesterton went after eugenics; both of them lambasted contraception, etc.

Many Protestant and Catholic Christians accept the typical secular line about Galileo. They may be persuaded by the secular intellectuals to think that the Catholics of former times were dumb, just as many academics think we’re dumb today, too, just as the more anti-Catholic Protestants also do. We all must be vigilant to avoid being taken in by secularism and its ways of thought. It’s a constant battle. But we have to be aware that we are doing it.

My perspective is that we should be critical of the information we get, and understand the presuppositions and biases of those who give it. Catholics have biases, too. Everyone does (as I’ve always stressed). That’s exactly why I have constantly advocated hearing “both sides” of any issue and getting all the facts, and never relying on one account only, and why I am a huge advocate of dialogue and debate, because it is, in my opinion, the very best way to learn and to use one’s mind to its potential.

My task as an apologist and amateur historian of ideas (that and development of doctrine are two of my very favorite areas of inquiry) has been to fight the stereotypes that are passed down by critics of Catholicism or of larger Christianity and to demonstrate on a popular level that there was much more complexity and nuance in play than is usually assumed because of uncritical acceptance of biased secular history.

I not only defend the Church’s position (truly defend it, with reason, not just parrot or regurgitate it), but I interact with severe critics of it, and make arguments not only for why our position prevails, but why theirs fails and falls short, as well. This is critical thought and having the courage of one’s convictions. In dialoguing, one is forced to look more closely at their own position, and I have posted some 400-450 dialogues and debates on my blog.

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Further discussion, with questions from CHNI board members paraphrased and in blue:

Doesn’t the discussion of (and in) the Galileo affair depend in large part on whether to literally interpret biblical passages about the movement of the sun?

A lot of it had to do with that, yes.

Has the Church actually defined this matter?

The problem had to do with literalizing what was intended as phenomenological language, or over-literalizing in some places, and how science and the Bible can be interpreted in harmony; respecting both areas of knowledge. It can be done. In a pre-scientific understanding, the sun going up and down would imply that the earth is not moving and the sun is.

The Church hasn’t defined this (as far as I know) because it has nothing to do with faith and morals per se. The Church as a whole simply accepts heliocentrism based on scientific proofs of same. At the time of Galileo, there was quite respectable science (given the state of knowledge at that time) for geocentrism too (as I discussed, regarding Tycho Brahe, above), so believing such a thing was not as wacko and reactionary as is customarily made out today. The math involved in either system, as I understand it, was not even all that different. It’s easy with hindsight to condemn our ancestors as dumbos, and to stand on the shoulders of giants. We can call those in the past mental midgets, but it doesn’t follow. They made it possible for the knowledge we have today: scientific or otherwise.

A lot of the prevailing attitudes, I’m convinced, are based on a prior “chronological snobbery” (C.S. Lewis’s delightful term) or disdain for the “age of faith” or the Middle Ages. G.K. Chesterton wrote about this:

There is something odd in the fact that when we reproduce the Middle Ages it is always some such rough and half-grotesque part of them that we reproduce . . . Why is it that we mainly remember the Middle Ages by absurd things? . . . Few modern people know what a mass of illuminating philosophy, delicate metaphysics, clear and dignified social morality exists in the serious scholastic writers of mediaeval times. But we seem to have grasped somehow that the ruder and more clownish elements in the Middle Ages have a human and poetical interest. We are delighted to know about the ignorance of mediaevalism; we are contented to be ignorant about its knowledge. When we talk of something mediaeval, we mean something quaint. We remember that alchemy was mediaeval, or that heraldry was mediaeval. We forget that Parliaments are mediaeval, that all our Universities are mediaeval, that city corporations are mediaeval, that gunpowder and printing are mediaeval, that half the things by which we now live, and to which we look for progress, are mediaeval.

(“The True Middle Ages,” The Illustrated London News, 14 July 1906)

Scientifically speaking, we can’t say the earth is the center of anything, since it is just one planet in one solar system in one galaxy. I think we should say it is the spiritual center of the universe, as far as we know. And we can say that the universe is “theocentric.”

If science disagrees with the Church, it is in error.

The Church, by and large, doesn’t try to proclaim on scientific matters. It’s more concerned with ethical situations that scientific advance has made matters of discussion, such as cloning or artificial insemination or birth control, or assisted suicide. There is no glaring conflict with science at present. The Church hasn’t ruled out the possibility of evolution. It only says that there was a primal human pair, and that each soul is a special creation by God, and holds, of course, that God created the entire universe and all matter in it and that He continues to uphold it by His word of power, using the scientific laws of nature that He created to do so, mostly in a natural manner.

As it stands, Big Bang cosmology is quite consistent with the biblical account of creation. Current speculation of a cyclical or oscillating universe is sheer speculation. There is no proof of that whatsoever.

The Church only speaks authoritatively about matters of faith, and so we have to interpret the Galileo incident in that light, right?

Both sides (i.e., the parties) were at fault. Some in the Church were making false notions of biblical interpretation dogmas and “scientific,” while Galileo was being unscientifically dogmatic in proclaiming as “proven” and “fact” his new theories, that were not yet proved by the criteria of science itself.

I believe firmly that revelation and science (and the logic, mathematics, and philosophy that lie behind science) are two harmonious forms of knowledge that do not conflict and that all truth is God’s truth. I’ve seen nothing that causes an irreconcilable contradiction. Evolution doesn’t do that. Relativity doesn’t. Biochemistry, as far as I am concerned, leads to a quite appropriate conclusion of intelligent design, and ties into the traditional teleological (design) argument for God. I also agree with Galileo’s statement that “the Church teaches us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go.”

If science conflicts with the Catholic faith, it is false, no?

Yes, but in practice sometimes it takes years for the scientific community to catch up with the knowledge of the Church. We’ve been saying the universe began in an instant from the beginning. Science figured this out and made it “orthodoxy” only in the last forty or so years (as the agnostic astronomer Robert Jastrow has noted). We’ve said all people were equal, while science was toying with phrenology and eugenics. Eventually they got it and got up to speed. The Catholic Copernicus advanced heliocentrism, with the blessing of the pope. Etc., etc.

For some folks to make out that the Church was somehow “anti-science” is an exercise in showing their own profound ignorance about the history of science and the relationship of Catholicism and Protestantism to it. Some Catholic individuals were on the wrong side of some particular scientific question, but that is true of scientists as well, so big wow. It’s all part of the overall advancement of knowledge and science. Some folks are gonna be wrong.

My big beef is that every (non-dogmatic) Catholic mistake in history is trumpeted from the housetops and made far more than it was in historical context, while similar whoppers and embarrassing skeletons in the closet of science itself are rarely if ever heard about. And so, e.g., in secular treatments about Galileo, one rarely reads about how deeply he was into astrology. That doesn’t fit the mold and the plan and the usual spin, so it is left out. The goal is to make Christians and the Church look like idiots, not to present what actually happened, and to explain all the relevant considerations. The goal in most secular presentation and public education (consciously or not) is propaganda, not true education, where a thing is analyzed properly and fairly.

I include all these relevant factors in my treatments of the subject, so people can have a well-rounded treatment that respects all sides, rather than trying to make one out as idiots and the other as selfless truth machines, along with anachronistic projection of current scientific approaches back to a time 500 years ago that was very different from today.

Galileo was right about the science (i.e., heliocentrism), but for (partially) the wrong reasons. The folks in the Church who condemned his theories were wrong, but for (partially) the right reasons.

The Church as the Church is not an organ of scientific inquiry. Even when dogmas proclaim something like creation, they don’t explain the “how” but only state the bald fact that God created.

The Catholic theologians who claimed that Galileo didn’t see what he saw in his telescope were out of bounds.

And these were the minority, which is itself caricatured, as I noted above, with a quote from Thomas Kuhn.

Scientists shouldn’t get all angry about a caricature of actual Catholic teaching and action.

There are all kinds of distortions about the history of this affair. The Catholic Encyclopedia makes it clear that no dogmatic proclamations were involved:

As to the decree of 1616, we have seen that it was issued by the Congregation of the Index, which can raise no difficulty in regard of infallibility, this tribunal being absolutely incompetent to make a dogmatic decree. Nor is the case altered by the fact that the pope approved the Congregation’s decision in forma communi, that is to say, to the extent needful for the purpose intended, namely to prohibit the circulation of writings which were judged harmful. . . . As to the second trial in 1633, this was concerned not so much with the doctrine as with the person of Galileo, and his manifest breach of contract in not abstaining from the active propaganda of Copernican doctrines. The sentence, passed upon him in consequence, clearly implied a condemnation of Copernicanism, but it made no formal decree on the subject, and did not receive the pope’s signature.

When the Church defined that a soul is created at conception, was it trying to scientifically explain conception?

No. It’s not trying to explain it, because that is a physical, scientific matter. As to the soul, that is non-material, and so science cannot speak authoritatively about it. Likewise, science can’t say anything about the soul. The minute a scientist does so, he is acting as a theologian or philosopher or both, not as a scientist.

The Church in Galileo’s time was concerned with the teaching that Man is the center of the universe, right?

Yes; but that in turn does not require geocentrism. I don’t see how it makes any difference, but that was the notion that had been passed down, and was from Aristotelianism.

Does the universe somehow illustrate that man is at the center?

The Anthropic Principle might be said to be one argument in that regard, used today. Most scientists today don’t want to do such a thing, and would relegate it to philosophy. I think, myself, that there is a borderline area between science, philosophy , and religion, where they all intersect, since science is itself derived from philosophy (empiricism) and presupposes metaphysical categories and existence and the trustworthiness of our senses for observation before it can get off the ground at all. Religion has many philosophical elements. Some philosophies are quasi-religious in either character or at least how they function in a person’s life.

But there is very little intelligent discussion about these “border areas” today. Only a few who understand the different areas to a decent degree even try to do so. It’s one of my big goals in my “general apologetics”: to bridge the gaps of these areas which are seen to almost be mutually exclusive. They are, in a sense, methodologically, but not altogether, when closely scrutinized.

June 15, 2023

June 15, 2023 By
0 Comments

Catholicism: The Elect Are Predestined; Reprobate in 1 Peter 2:8; God’s Providence (We Agree!); False Prophet as God’s “Tool”; Good Ol’ Romans 9 

The late Steve Hays (1959-2020) was a Calvinist (and anti-Catholic) apologist, who was very active on his blog, called Triablogue . His 819-page self-published book, Biblical Calvinism has graciously been made available for free. On 9 September 2006, Hays was extraordinarily charitable towards me (seeing that almost all anti-Catholics have treated me like Vlad the Impaler). He wrote then:

I don’t think I’ve ever accused him of being a traitor or apostate or infidel. . . . I have nothing to say, one way or the other, regarding his state of grace. But his sincerity is unquestionable. I also don’t dislike him. . . . I don’t think there’s anything malicious about Armstrong—unlike some people who come to mind. In addition, I don’t think I’ve ever said he was unintelligent. For the record, it’s obvious that Armstrong has a quick, nimble mind. 

Sadly, two-and-a-half years later, starting in April 2009 and up through December 2011 (in the following quotations) his opinion radically changed, and he claimed that I have “an evil character,” am “actually evil,” an “ego-maniac, narcissist,” “idolater,” “self-idolater,” “hack who pretends to be a professional apologist,” given to “chicanery,” one who doesn’t “do any real research,” “a stalwart enemy of the faith . . .  no better than [the atheists] Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens,” with an intent to “destroy faith in God’s word,” “schizophrenic,” “emotionally unhinged,” one who “doesn’t trust in the merit of Christ alone for salvation,” “has no peace of mind,” “a bipolar solipsist,” “split-personality,” and a “bad” man. See more gory details.

I feel no need whatsoever to reciprocate these silly and sinful insults. I just wanted the record to be known, and to show how apologetics can too often descend to such atrocious “soul-reading” ad hominem inanities. Hopefully, Hays took to heart his own criticism of some Arminians, from this book (p. 54): “They are so caught up in the momentum of the debate that they issue intemperate threats which, after a cooling off period, they’d realize are foolhardy.” I hope and pray so.

For my part, I’ve always maintained that Hays was a very intelligent,  sincere, and well-meaning man, and I believe that I can and have learned a great deal from Reformed Protestants: my brethren in Christ. We have a lot in common, but we also have honest disagreements, and this series will mostly be concerned with those. They can be discussed without acrimony or disrespect. This is the last of four critiques of Hays’ book. I will be focusing solely on Section II: “Exegetical Considerations”. It runs from pages 20 to 186. See also the 29 installments of my Reply to Hays’ “Catholicism” series: listed on my Anti-Catholicism web page, under “Steve Hays”. My Bible citations are from the RSV. Steve Hays’ words will be in blue. Unlike the previous series, I won’t list his subtitles.

Related Reading:

Calvinism & General Protestantism: Catholic Critique web page (where all of these replies will be listed: search “Hays'”)

John Calvin: Catholic Appraisal web page 

A Biblical Critique of Calvinism (book: 2012, 178 pages; includes replies to exegetical arguments in Books I-III of John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion)

Biblical Catholic Answers for John Calvin (book: 2010, 388 pages; includes line-by-line replies to Book IV of John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion)

Biblical Catholic Salvation: “Faith Working Through Love” (book: 2010, 187 pages; includes 71 pages of rebuttals of four of the five Calvinist distinctives in “TULIP”; minus the “U”)

64 Critiques of John Calvin: Introduction & Master List (more in-depth replies than what was eventually compiled in my book about John Calvin. Most were completed for his 500th birthday in 2009)

Salvation, Justification, & “Faith Alone” web page (contains many articles relevant to Calvinist soteriology and “TULIP”)

*****

Romans 8:28-30 And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. 29 For those whom he chose beforehand he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. 30 And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified. [pp. 35-36]

Romans 11:2 God has not rejected his people whom he chose beforehand. Do you not know what the Scripture says of Elijah, how he appeals to God against Israel? [p. 36]

1 Corinthians 1:26-31 For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; 28 God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, 29 so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. 30 And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, 31 so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” [p. 45]

Ephesians 1:3-12 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, 4 even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love 5 he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. 7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, 8 which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight 9 making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ 10 as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. 11 In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, 12 so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. [pp.45-46]

Ephesians 2:8-10 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. [p. 48]

2 Timothy 1:9 who saved us and called us to[a] a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, [p. 50]

As I noted previously, Catholics believe in the predestination of the elect (as well as salvation by grave alone). We hold human free will choices in harmony with predestination. It’s a paradox and ultimately mysterious exactly how they work together (and we have different schools of thought on it: Thomist and Molinist; I am the latter), but Scripture teaches both things, so we hold to both of them. The difference in our differing opinions — both allowed in Catholicism — lies in how much God takes into account in predestining individuals, what He knew from all eternity would be our free choices and how we would react to His grace, justification, and salvation.

Romans 8:35-39 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? 36 As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” 37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. [pp. 37-38]

Ephesians 1:13-14 In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, 14 who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory. [p. 46]

1 Peter 2:9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. [p. 51]

Revelation 13:8 and all who dwell on earth will worship it, everyone whose name has not been written before the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who was slain. [p. 52]

The elect will not fail to be saved, by definition. It’s obvious and a truism. But there can be such a thing as a disciple / believer in Jesus Christ, who has various gifts and is in God’s grace, who then spurns these gifts and grace and becomes separated from God, up to and including damnation, if they don’t repent.

1 Peter 2:8 They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do. [p. 51]

John Wesley: They who believe not, stumble, and fall, and perish for ever; God having appointed from all eternity, “he that believeth not shall be damned.”

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary: not that God ordains or appoints them to sin, but they are given up to “the fruit of their own ways” according to the eternal counsel of God. The moral ordering of the world is altogether of God. God appoints the ungodly to be given up unto sin, and a reprobate mind, and its necessary penalty. . . . God, in the active, is said to appoint Christ and the elect (directly). Unbelievers, in the passive, are said to be appointed (God acting less directly in the appointment of the sinner’s awful course) [Bengel]. God ordains the wicked to punishment, not to crime [J. Cappel].

The Lord has made everything for its purpose, even the wicked for the day of trouble (Prov 16:4).

The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps (Prov 16:9).

I know, O Lord, that the way of man is not in himself, that it is not in man who walks to direct his steps (Jer 10:23).

Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father (Mt 10:29). [p. 55]

Also henceforth I am he; there is none who can deliver from my hand; I work, and who can turn it back? (Isa 43:13).

Declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, “My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose” (Isa 46:10).

So shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it (Isa 55:11).

The Lord brings the counsel of the nations to nothing; he frustrates the plans of the peoples. 11 The counsel of the Lord stands forever, the plans of his heart to all generations. (Ps 33:10-11)

Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand (Prov 19:21).

No wisdom, no understanding, no counsel can avail against the Lord (Prov 21:30). [p. 56]

Catholics wholeheartedly believe in God’s providence, as I emphasized in Reply #3, because it’s an explicitly biblical doctrine.

If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, 2 and the sign or wonder that he tells you comes to pass, and if he says, ‘Let us go after other gods,’ which you have not known, ‘and let us serve them,’ 3 you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams. For the Lord your God is testing you, to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. 4 You shall walk after the Lord your God and fear him and keep his commandments and obey his voice, and you shall serve him and hold fast to him. 5 But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he has taught rebellion against the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you out of the house of slavery, to make you leave the way in which the Lord your God commanded you to walk. So you shall purge the evil from your midst (Deut 13:1-5).

i) Isn’t this a clearcut example of divine solicitation to sin? God, through the instrumentality of the false prophet, is “testing” the covenant community. [p. 97]

No it’s not. The text never says that God caused false prophets to teach falsehoods and blasphemies. But He allows them in his free will to sin, and then utilizes that sin to (in one sense) in this instance “test” the Israelites, to see if they would follow the ideas and ways of the false prophet, just as He utilized the sin of Joseph’s brothers selling him into slavery, to bless Egypt and the very brothers who sinned (“God meant it for good”). Hays and Calvinists confuse God’s permissive will and providential plans with His perfect will and eternal decrees of predestination.

The false prophet is a tool. God is using the false prophet to test the allegiance of his people. [p. 97]

Yes, he’s a tool. That’s more like it. It doesn’t follow that God predestined His sin; He is simply using it. Likewise, Nebuchadnezzar wasn’t a saint because God called him his “servant” (Jer 25:9; 27:6; 43:10) and used him to judge Israel when he destroyed Jerusalem in 586 BC. Hays alluded to this on page 116: “He uses them [the Babylonians] as executors of divine judgment against wayward Israel.”

Hays brings up the beloved Calvinist “prooftext” Romans 9 many times (e.g., pp. 144-155), but usually responding to someone else. I have my own argument, that has been posted on my blog for over thirteen years now: Romans 9: Plausible Non-Calvinist Interpretation.

This concludes my four-part examination of Hays’ book.

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***

Photo credit: Portrait of John Calvin by Titian (1490-1576) [public domain / Wikimedia Commons]

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Summary: This is one of my many (often point-by-point) replies to the “Exegetical Considerations” section (pp. 20-186) of Steve Hays’ “Biblical Calvinism” book on Calvinism.

June 14, 2023

June 14, 2023 By
0 Comments

Does God “Micromanage” Every Intent?; God Judges Assyria; Israel Judged in Isaiah 6; Predestined Crucifixion; Acts 13:48: “Ordained to Eternal Life”; Catholic Church & God’s Providence

The late Steve Hays (1959-2020) was a Calvinist (and anti-Catholic) apologist, who was very active on his blog, called Triablogue . His 819-page self-published book, Biblical Calvinism has graciously been made available for free. On 9 September 2006, Hays was extraordinarily charitable towards me (seeing that almost all anti-Catholics have treated me like Vlad the Impaler). He wrote then:

I don’t think I’ve ever accused him of being a traitor or apostate or infidel. . . . I have nothing to say, one way or the other, regarding his state of grace. But his sincerity is unquestionable. I also don’t dislike him. . . . I don’t think there’s anything malicious about Armstrong—unlike some people who come to mind. In addition, I don’t think I’ve ever said he was unintelligent. For the record, it’s obvious that Armstrong has a quick, nimble mind. 

Sadly, two-and-a-half years later, starting in April 2009 and up through December 2011 (in the following quotations) his opinion radically changed, and he claimed that I have “an evil character,” am “actually evil,” an “ego-maniac, narcissist,” “idolater,” “self-idolater,” “hack who pretends to be a professional apologist,” given to “chicanery,” one who doesn’t “do any real research,” “a stalwart enemy of the faith . . .  no better than [the atheists] Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens,” with an intent to “destroy faith in God’s word,” “schizophrenic,” “emotionally unhinged,” one who “doesn’t trust in the merit of Christ alone for salvation,” “has no peace of mind,” “a bipolar solipsist,” “split-personality,” and a “bad” man. See more gory details.

I feel no need whatsoever to reciprocate these silly and sinful insults. I just wanted the record to be known, and to show how apologetics can too often descend to such atrocious “soul-reading” ad hominem inanities. Hopefully, Hays took to heart his own criticism of some Arminians, from this book (p. 54): “They are so caught up in the momentum of the debate that they issue intemperate threats which, after a cooling off period, they’d realize are foolhardy.” I hope and pray so.

For my part, I’ve always maintained that Hays was a very intelligent,  sincere, and well-meaning man, and I believe that I can and have learned a great deal from Reformed Protestants: my brethren in Christ. We have a lot in common, but we also have honest disagreements, and this series will mostly be concerned with those. They can be discussed without acrimony or disrespect. This is one of many planned critiques of Hays’ book. I will be focusing solely on Section II: “Exegetical Considerations”. It runs from pages 20 to 186. See also the 29 installments of my Reply to Hays’ “Catholicism” series: listed on my Anti-Catholicism web page, under “Steve Hays”. My Bible citations are from the RSV. Steve Hays’ words will be in blue. Unlike the previous series, I won’t list his subtitles.

Related Reading:

Calvinism & General Protestantism: Catholic Critique web page (where all of these replies will be listed: search “Hays'”)

John Calvin: Catholic Appraisal web page 

A Biblical Critique of Calvinism (book: 2012, 178 pages; includes replies to exegetical arguments in Books I-III of John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion)

Biblical Catholic Answers for John Calvin (book: 2010, 388 pages; includes line-by-line replies to Book IV of John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion)

Biblical Catholic Salvation: “Faith Working Through Love” (book: 2010, 187 pages; includes 71 pages of rebuttals of four of the five Calvinist distinctives in “TULIP”; minus the “U”)

64 Critiques of John Calvin: Introduction & Master List (more in-depth replies than what was eventually compiled in my book about John Calvin. Most were completed for his 500th birthday in 2009)

Salvation, Justification, & “Faith Alone” web page (contains many articles relevant to Calvinist soteriology and “TULIP”)

*****

Psalm 33:10-11, 15 The Lord brings the counsel of the nations to nothing; he frustrates the plans of the peoples. 11 The counsel of the Lord stands forever, the plans of his heart to all generations. 15 he who fashions the hearts of them all and observes all their deeds. [p. 26]

Proverbs 19:21 Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand. [p. 27]

These are statements of God’s sovereignty and providence. We have no disagreement with it, of course. A Calvinist like Hays sees this as antithetical to human free will choices (which is the purpose he produces it). It’s not. As I have already shown in several examples in my previous two installments, God works around sinful human choices (allowed in His permissive will) and is able to work out His perfect will in the long run. All of the relevant biblical data has to be considered and harmonized.

Proverbs 21:1 The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will. [p. 28] [cf. Prov 20:24]

First of all, the nature of proverbial literature is that it states general truths, which can admit of exceptions. If the Calvinist wishes to assert that God directs the hearts and minds and will of every ruler and political leader to do whatever He wants them to do, in every minute particular, then they have a huge problem, since it would follow that evil leaders were always directed by God to do His will right along with the good rulers. Thus, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Nero, Attila the Hun, Pol Pot, the wicked rulers of the Assyrians and Babylonians, Caligula, Diocletian, and all the other myriads of evil rulers only did what God wanted (in effect, forced) them to do. That can’t be because God’s perfect will never includes intrinsically evil ends.

These wicked rulers acted of their own free will, just as the Pharaoh of Moses’ time did (“Pharaoh . . . hardened his heart”: Ex 8:15; cf. 8:19, 32; 9:7, 34-35). The Bible then states that God hardened his heart (see Reply #1), but it was because Pharaoh already had done so in his free will, and God in His providence “gave him up” to it (cf. Romans 1). His actions, then, cannot be chalked up to foreordained decrees of God (so that he could not have possibly acted otherwise). When Moses and Aaron said “Let my people go” to Pharaoh (Ex 5:1), he could have said “okay.” His response was not foreordained or predetermined. The Bible says several times after this first encounter that God “hardened his heart,” but note that in the end, Pharaoh did let the Israelites go; therefore, the entire scenario involved his free will to do as he wished:

Exodus 12:31-32 And he summoned Moses and Aaron by night, and said, “Rise up, go forth from among my people, both you and the people of Israel; and go, serve the LORD, as you have said. [32] Take your flocks and your herds, as you have said, and be gone; and bless me also!”

Then, as we all know, Pharaoh changed his mind again, and pursued the Hebrews, until his army was drowned in the sea:

Exodus 14:5-8 When the king of Egypt was told that the people had fled, the mind of Pharaoh and his servants was changed toward the people, and they said, “What is this we have done, that we have let Israel go from serving us?” [6] So he made ready his chariot and took his army with him, [7] and took six hundred picked chariots and all the other chariots of Egypt with officers over all of them. [8] And the LORD hardened the heart of Pharaoh king of Egypt and he pursued the people of Israel as they went forth defiantly.

It’s always the same dynamic, as I have repeatedly shown in this series. Man makes up his mind to do evil, then it is said non-literally that God in His providence and use of evil to bring about good, “hardened” him; or He allows Satan to afflict Job for a time, etc. The Calvinist interpretation doesn’t fly. It dies the death of a thousand cuts. God in His providence eventually defeats tremendous evil but sometimes it takes centuries. We defeated Hitler and Hirohito in World War II (after having allowed, in our stupidity and naivete, Hitler to build up his military), but Stalin’s and Mao’s evils continued. Once that crisis passed, human beings decided to start murdering preborn children by the hundreds of millions: far more deaths than occurred in the World War (God hasn’t yet caused that extreme wickedness to cease). So the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Isaiah 14:24-27 The Lord of hosts has sworn: “As I have planned, so shall it be, and as I have purposed, so shall it stand, 25 that I will break the Assyrian in my land, and on my mountains trample him underfoot; and his yoke shall depart from them, and his burden from their shoulder.” 26 This is the purpose that is purposed concerning the whole earth, and this is the hand that is stretched out over all the nations. 27 For the Lord of hosts has purposed, and who will annul it? His hand is stretched out, and who will turn it back? [p. 29]

God promised to defeat and judge nations who came against His chosen people, Israel. For example:

Zephaniah 2:13 And he will stretch out his hand against the north, and destroy Assyria; and he will make Nineveh a desolation, a dry waste like the desert.

And that’s exactly what happened. As always, God incorporated free human choices. Assyria was an empire from the 14th century to the 7th century BC. In the late 7th century BC, it was conquered by a coalition of the Babylonians and  Medes. Nineveh was the largest city in the world for about fifty years (with 100-120,000 population) until it was sacked in 612 BC. The Assyrians had their chance to repent and reform themselves, with the preaching of the prophet Jonah in Nineveh in the 8th century BC. They did for a time (at least in Nineveh), but must have descended back into wickedness and their notorious cruelty towards enemies, leading to their God-ordained judgment.

John 12:39-40 Therefore they could not believe. For again Isaiah said, 40 “He has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, lest they see with their eyes, and understand with their heart, and turn, and I would heal them.” [pp. 33-34]

Here is the Old Testament passage cited:

Isaiah 6:9-10 And he said, “Go, and say to this people: `Hear and hear, but do not understand; see and see, but do not perceive.’ [10] Make the heart of this people fat, and their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.”

The prophet Isaiah (c. 740- c. 681 BC) lived during the reign of King Hezekiah. Encyclopedia Britannica (“Hezekiah”) states that the “dates of his reign are often given as about 715 to about 686 BC.” New Bible Dictionary (“Hezekiah”: p. 524) states that at the beginning of Hezekiah’s reign, “the religious life of the nation had been contaminated by heathen influences . . . superstition, idolatry, and spiritual blindness . . .”

On page 121, Hays wrote: “Reformed theological method is based less on snappy one-liners than tracing out the flow of argument or narrative arc in larger blocks of Scripture,” and he gave Isaiah chapters 40-48 as an example. Very well, then. If we are to better understand what God wanted to communicate in Isaiah 6:9-10, that was cited in John 12:39-40, we need to understand the situation in Israel, as described by Isaiah in chapters 1-5, that led God to proclaim what he did through Isaiah, in a pungent, sarcastic way:

Isaiah 1:4  Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, offspring of evildoers, sons who deal corruptly! They have forsaken the LORD, they have despised the Holy One of Israel, they are utterly estranged.

Isaiah 1:7, 9 Your country lies desolate, your cities are burned with fire; in your very presence aliens devour your land; it is desolate, as overthrown by aliens. . . . If the LORD of hosts had not left us a few survivors, we should have been like Sodom, and become like Gomorrah.

Isaiah 1:13, 15 Bring no more vain offerings; incense is an abomination to me. New moon and sabbath and the calling of assemblies — I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly. . . . When you spread forth your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood.

Isaiah 1:21, 25 How the faithful city has become a harlot, she that was full of justice! Righteousness lodged in her, but now murderers. . . . I will turn my hand against you and will smelt away your dross as with lye and remove all your alloy.

Isaiah 2:8 Their land is filled with idols; they bow down to the work of their hands, to what their own fingers have made.

Isaiah 3:8-9 For Jerusalem has stumbled, and Judah has fallen; because their speech and their deeds are against the LORD, defying his glorious presence. [9] Their partiality witnesses against them; they proclaim their sin like Sodom, they do not hide it. Woe to them! For they have brought evil upon themselves.

Isaiah 5:12, 20, 24-25 . . . they do not regard the deeds of the LORD, or see the work of his hands. . . . [20] Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, . . . [24] . . . they have rejected the law of the LORD of hosts, and have despised the word of the Holy One of Israel. [25] Therefore the anger of the LORD was kindled against his people,
and he stretched out his hand against them and smote them, . . .

All of that and more sets the stage for Isaiah 6 and the words under consideration. Again, Israel caused its own judgment to come about. The text explicitly explains this. They “brought evil upon themselves” (Is 3:9), and as a result, the Bible states, “Therefore the anger of the LORD was kindled against his people . . .” God didn’t cause this to happen or ordain it. He allowed it to happen and judged the wicked (even among His chosen people) when it did. If the Calvinist take were correct, on the other hand, Isaiah 5:25 would have to read something like, “Therefore the LORD preordained the sin of His people and made them as wicked as Sodom, so that his anger was kindled against them.” With all due respect, that’s not the God of the Bible that I have studied for 45 years, but rather, a capricious God Who acts in irrational, senseless, and unjust ways.

Acts 2:23 this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. [p. 34]

Acts 4:28 to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place. [p. 35]

Acts 4:27 reads: “for truly in this city there were gathered together against thy holy servant Jesus, whom thou didst anoint, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel,”

Jacob Arminius (1560-1609), the Dutch Protestant theologian, from whose name “Arminianism” derives, wrote about these two passages:

Let us see now what can be proved from these passages. The passage in Acts 2:23, teaches, not that God willed that the Jews should slay Christ, but, that he was “delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God” into the power of those who wished to slay him. Nothing more can be inferred from Acts 4:28. For God predetermined to deliver His own Son into the hands of his enemies, that He might suffer from them that which God had laid upon him, and which the Jews, of their own wickedness and hatred against Christ, had determined to inflict upon him.

God, indeed, “determined before” that death should be inflicted on Christ by them; but in what character did God consider them when He “determined before” that this should be done by them? In that character, surely, which they had at the time when they inflicted death upon Christ, that is, in the character of sworn enemies of Christ, of obstinate enemies and contemners of God and the truth; who could be led to repentance by no admonitions, prayers, threats or miracles; who wished to inflict every evil on Christ, if they could only obtain the power over him, which they had often sought in vain.

It is evident, then, that there was here no other action of God in this case than that He delivered His own Son into their hands, and permitted them to do their pleasure in reference to him, . . .

But there appears here no action of God by which they were impelled or moved to will and to do what they willed and did; but He used those who wished, of their own malice and envy, to put Christ to death, in a mode, which, He knew, would conduce to His own glory and the salvation of men. (“Allegation 3“, from Works, Vol. 3 [1853], 387-388)

Acts 13:48 And when the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord, and as many as were appointed to eternal life believed. [p. 35]

John Wesley exegeted this text as follows:

As many as were ordained to eternal life – St. Luke does not say fore – ordained. He is not speaking of what was done from eternity, but of what was then done, through the preaching of the Gospel. He is describing that ordination, and that only, which was at the very time of hearing it. During this sermon those believed, says the apostle, to whom God then gave power to believe. It is as if he had said, “They believed, whose hearts the Lord opened;” as he expresses it in a clearly parallel place, speaking of the same kind of ordination, Acts 16:14, &c [“The Lord opened her heart to give heed to what was said by Paul”]. It is observable, the original word is not once used in Scripture to express eternal predestination of any kind [Strong’s word #5021: tassó]. The sum is, all those and those only, who were now ordained, now believed. Not that God rejected the rest: it was his will that they also should have been saved: but they thrust salvation from them. Nor were they who then believed constrained to believe. But grace was then first copiously offered them. And they did not thrust it away, so that a great multitude even of Gentiles were converted. In a word, the expression properly implies, a present operation of Divine grace working faith in the hearers. (Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament, 5th ed., 1788, 398-399; bracketed additions my own)

Acts 17:26 And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place [p. 35]

This is part of God’s providence, which the Catholic Church accepts as enthusiastically as any Protestant, and I dare say, any Calvinist, too. Calvinists don’t “own” the notions of providence and predestination. St. Thomas Aquinas wrote about providence in the 13th century, contending that the regulation of all things to an end (ratio ordinis rerum in finem) exists from all eternity (see Summa Theologica, I, 22, 1) and that every human being is adapted to an end through God’s providence (S.th. I, 22, 2). The First Vatican Council in 1870 taught:

Everything that God has brought into being he protects and governs by his providence, which reaches from one end of the earth to the other and orders all things well. (Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith, Ch. 1: On God the Creator of All Things, 4; cites the deuterocanonical Wisdom of Solomon 8:1 in support: “She reaches mightily from one end of the earth to the other, and she orders all things well.”)

The Catholic Encyclopedia has a magnificent article, “Divine Providence,” dated 1911. I cite about half of the section entitled, “The testimony of Scripture”:

Though the term Providence is applied to God only three times in Scripture (Ecclesiastes 5:5; Wisdom 14:3; Judith 9:5), and once to Wisdom (Wisdom 6:17), the general doctrine of Providence is consistently taught throughout both the Old and New Testaments. God not only implants in the nature of things the potentiality of future development (Genesis 1:7, 12, 22, 28; 8:17; 9:1, 7; 12:2; 15:5), but in this development, as in all the operations of nature, He co-operates; so that in Scriptural language what nature does, God is said to do (Genesis 2:5, cf. 9; 7:4, cf. 10; 7:19-22, cf. 23; 8:1-2, cf. 5 sq.). Seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, the clouds and the rain, the fruits of the earth, life itself alike are His gift (Genesis 2:7; 8:2; Psalm 146:8, 9; 28; 103; 148; Job 38:37; Joel 2:21 sq.; Sirach 11:14). So too with man. Man tills the ground (Genesis 3:17 sq.; 4:12; 9:20), but human labours without Divine assistance are of no avail (Psalm 126:1; 59:13; Proverbs 21:31). . . . God is the sole ruler of the world (Job 34:13). His will governs all things (Psalm 148:8; Job 9:7; Isaiah 40:22-6; 44:24-8; Sirach 16:18-27; Esther 13:9). He loves all men (Wisdom 11:25, 27), desires the salvation of all (Isaiah 45:22; Wisdom 12:16), and His providence extends to all nations (Deuteronomy 2:19; Wisdom 6:8; Isaiah 66:18). He desires not the death of a sinner, but rather that he should repent (Ezekiel 18:20-32; 33:11; Wisdom 11:24); for He is above all things a merciful God and a God of much compassion (Exodus 34:6; Numbers 14:18; Deuteronomy 5:10; Psalm 32:5; 102:8-17; 144:9; Sirach 2:23). Yet He is a just God, as well as a Saviour (Isaiah 45:21). Hence both good and evil [i.e., judgment] proceed from Him (Lamentations 3:38; Amos 3:6; Isaiah 45:7; Ecclesiastes 7; 15; Sirach 11:14), good as a bounteous gift freely bestowed (Psalm 144:16; Ecclesiastes 5:18; 1 Chronicles 29:12-4), evil as the consequence of sin (Lamentations 3:39; Joel 2:20; Amos 3:10, 11; Isaiah 5:4, 5). For God rewards men according to their works (Lamentations 3:64; Job 34:10-7; Psalm 17:27; Sirach 16:12, 13; 11:28; 1 Samuel 26:23), their thoughts, and their devices (Jeremiah 17:10; 32:19; Psalm 7:10). From His anger there is no escape (Job 9:13; Psalm 32:16, 17; Wisdom 16:13-8); and none can prevail against Him (Sirach 18:1; Wisdom 11:22-3; Proverbs 21:30; Psalm 2:1-4; 32:10; Judith 16:16, 17). If the wicked are spared for a time (Jeremiah 12:1; Job 21:7-15; Psalm 72:12-3; Ecclesiastes 8:12), they will ultimately receive their deserts if they do not repent (Jeremiah 12:13-7; Job 21:17, 18; 27:13-23); while the good, though they may suffer for a time, are comforted by God (Psalm 90:15; Isaiah 51:12), who will build them up, and will not cease to do them good (Jeremiah 31:28 sq.; 32:41). For in spite of the wicked, God’s counsels are never changed or thwarted (Isaiah 14:24-7; 43:13; 46:10; Psalm 32:11; 148:6). Evil He converts into good (Genesis 1:20; cf. Psalm 90:10); and suffering He uses as an instrument whereby to train men up as a father traineth up his children (Deuteronomy 8:1-6; Psalm 65:10-2; Wisdom 12:1, 2); so that in very truth the world fighteth for the just (Wisdom 16:17). . . .

To the Athenians in the Areopagus Paul declares:

  • that God made the universe and is its supreme Lord (Acts 17:24);
  • that He sustains the universe in its existence, giving life and breath to all things (verse 25), and hence, as the source whence they all proceed, must Himself lack nothing nor stand in need of any human service;
  • that He has directed the growth of nations and their distribution (verse 26), and
  • this to the end that they should seek Him (verse 27) in Whom we live and move and have our being, and whose offspring we are (verse 28).

Anyone who thinks that the Catholic Church doesn’t believe in God’s providence ought to read this section (and the entire article) three times.

***

Practical Matters: Perhaps some of my 4,300+ free online articles (the most comprehensive “one-stop” Catholic apologetics site) or fifty-one books have helped you (by God’s grace) to decide to become Catholic or to return to the Church, or better understand some doctrines and why we believe them.

Or you may believe my work is worthy to support for the purpose of apologetics and evangelism in general. If so, please seriously consider a much-needed financial contribution. I’m always in need of more funds: especially monthly support. “The laborer is worthy of his wages” (1 Tim 5:18, NKJV). 1 December 2021 was my 20th anniversary as a full-time Catholic apologist, and February 2022 marked the 25th anniversary of my blog.

PayPal donations are the easiest: just send to my email address: apologistdave@gmail.com. You’ll see the term “Catholic Used Book Service”, which is my old side-business. To learn about the different methods of contributing, including 100% tax deduction, etc., see my page: About Catholic Apologist Dave Armstrong / Donation Information. Thanks a million from the bottom of my heart!

***

Photo credit: Portrait of John Calvin by Titian (1490-1576) [public domain / Wikimedia Commons]

***

Summary: This is one of my many (often point-by-point) replies to the “Exegetical Considerations” section (pp. 20-186) of Steve Hays’ “Biblical Calvinism” book.

June 13, 2023

June 13, 2023 By
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Sin & God’s Providence; Does God Cause Infirmities & Send “Evil Spirits”?; Examples of God’s Immediate Judgment, Including Absalom; “A Lying Spirit” 

The late Steve Hays (1959-2020) was a Calvinist (and anti-Catholic) apologist, who was very active on his blog, called Triablogue . His 819-page self-published book, Biblical Calvinism has graciously been made available for free. On 9 September 2006, Hays was extraordinarily charitable towards me (seeing that almost all anti-Catholics have treated me like Vlad the Impaler). He wrote then:

I don’t think I’ve ever accused him of being a traitor or apostate or infidel. . . . I have nothing to say, one way or the other, regarding his state of grace. But his sincerity is unquestionable. I also don’t dislike him. . . . I don’t think there’s anything malicious about Armstrong—unlike some people who come to mind. In addition, I don’t think I’ve ever said he was unintelligent. For the record, it’s obvious that Armstrong has a quick, nimble mind. 

Sadly, two-and-a-half years later, starting in April 2009 and up through December 2011 (in the following quotations) his opinion radically changed, and he claimed that I have “an evil character,” am “actually evil,” an “ego-maniac, narcissist,” “idolater,” “self-idolater,” “hack who pretends to be a professional apologist,” given to “chicanery,” one who doesn’t “do any real research,” “a stalwart enemy of the faith . . .  no better than [the atheists] Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens,” with an intent to “destroy faith in God’s word,” “schizophrenic,” “emotionally unhinged,” one who “doesn’t trust in the merit of Christ alone for salvation,” “has no peace of mind,” “a bipolar solipsist,” “split-personality,” and a “bad” man. See more gory details.

I feel no need whatsoever to reciprocate these silly and sinful insults. I just wanted the record to be known, and to show how apologetics can too often descend to such atrocious “soul-reading” ad hominem inanities. Hopefully, Hays took to heart his own criticism of some Arminians, from this book (p. 54): “They are so caught up in the momentum of the debate that they issue intemperate threats which, after a cooling off period, they’d realize are foolhardy.” I hope and pray so.

For my part, I’ve always maintained that Hays was a very intelligent,  sincere, and well-meaning man, and I believe that I can and have learned a great deal from Reformed Protestants: my brethren in Christ. We have a lot in common, but we also have honest disagreements, and this series will mostly be concerned with those. They can be discussed without acrimony or disrespect. This is one of many planned critiques of Hays’ book. I will be focusing solely on Section II: “Exegetical Considerations”. It runs from pages 20 to 186. See also the 29 installments of my Reply to Hays’ “Catholicism” series: listed on my Anti-Catholicism web page, under “Steve Hays”. My Bible citations are from the RSV. Steve Hays’ words will be in blue. Unlike the previous series, I won’t list his subtitles.

Related Reading:

Calvinism & General Protestantism: Catholic Critique web page (where all of these replies will be listed: search “Hays'”)

John Calvin: Catholic Appraisal web page 

A Biblical Critique of Calvinism (book: 2012, 178 pages; includes replies to exegetical arguments in Books I-III of John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion)

Biblical Catholic Answers for John Calvin (book: 2010, 388 pages; includes line-by-line replies to Book IV of John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion)

Biblical Catholic Salvation: “Faith Working Through Love” (book: 2010, 187 pages; includes 71 pages of rebuttals of four of the five Calvinist distinctives in “TULIP”; minus the “U”)

64 Critiques of John Calvin: Introduction & Master List (more in-depth replies than what was eventually compiled in my book about John Calvin. Most were completed for his 500th birthday in 2009)

Salvation, Justification, & “Faith Alone” web page (contains many articles relevant to Calvinist soteriology and “TULIP”)

*****

[pp. 21-53 consists of Bible passages thought to be in favor of Calvinism, and quotes from commentators, with no input from Hays. I won’t interact with the commentators, because I’m answering Steve Hays, not them, but I’ll deal with a number of the Bible passages if I feel that I have a solid response. He never states what Bible version he cites from. I will cite the Bible passages as he presents them, in blue font. I have removed his bolding, but retained it for the Bible verse listing, and removed the abbreviated book names]

Genesis 45:5-8; 50:20 And now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life. 6 For the famine has been in the land these two years, and there are yet five years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest. 7 And God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. 8 So it was not you who sent me here, but God. He has made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt.

20 As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today. [pp. 21-22]

Yes, of course God uses instances of human sin and brings good from them (even in the crucifixion), according to Romans 8:28 (my favorite verse): “We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose.” In doing so, He doesn’t wipe out human free will choices, but rather incorporates them into a larger divine plan. In other words (as Hays seems to be arguing [?]), He doesn’t foreordain or predestine sinful acts in terms of making it so that the people didn’t truly choose and simply acted like programmed robots doing God’s supposed will for sin. God doesn’t will sin.

If the point is simply noting God’s providence, no one disagrees with Calvinists as far as that goes. Calvinists so often wrongly think that non-Calvinist [serious, non-liberal) Christians disagree, but we don’t. Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery of their own free will.  God used that sin to bring good (even to the very people who committed the serious sin), and so Joseph expresses God’s providence and His working around human sin with the usual Hebrew directness and deep awareness of God’s overriding supervision: “it was not you who sent me here, but God” (Gen 45:8), even though he said three verses earlier, “you sold me here” (45:5; cf. 45:4).

That might seem contradictory (who sent Joseph to Egypt?). But it’s typical Hebrew paradox, where the same thing can be said to be done by both man and God. The brothers “sold” Joseph into slavery, and at the same time God “sent” him to Egypt. It’s the same sort of paradox that we see in Paul: “I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God which is with me” (1 Cor 15:10). Calvinists don’t resonate very well with biblical / Hebraic paradox. They are very “either/or” / false dichotomy sorts of folks. I will, no doubt, repeatedly point this out in the course of this series, because it’s a serious weakness of the Calvinist position.

Exodus 4:11 Then the Lord said to him, “Who has made man’s mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? [p. 22]

An article on a site called Re/Knew (probably Protestant), entitled, “How do you respond to Exodus 4:11?” has an excellent explanation for this verse:

[A]s a matter of hermeneutical principle, Christians should always interpret the Old Testament in the light of the New Testament, not vice versa. . . . Throughout his ministry Jesus came against all infirmities and diseases as things that God does not will. Never once did he ascribe these things to his Father’s will. Never once did he encourage people to find comfort in the notion that these things were part of God’s plan. Rather, infirmities and diseases were consistently understood to be the result of Satan’s activity, which is why he and his disciples delivered people from them. However we interpret this Exodus passage, it must not contradict Jesus’ teaching or his example. . . .

It’s also important to note that God speaks of the human condition in general terms in this verse. As Terrence Fretheim observes, the passage does not imply that God picks and chooses which individuals will be deaf, mute or blind, “as if God entered into the womb of every pregnant woman and determined whether and how a child would have disabilities.” It only implies that God created the kind of world where mortals may become disabled. God created a risky world in which natural processes can be corrupted by free agents with the result that mortals are sometimes “flogged” . . . with infirmities like deafness and muteness. God wanted Moses to know that as the Creator he is able to work around such obstacles in achieving his objectives. In the warfare ministry of Jesus, God went further and demonstrated that the presence of his Kingdom is evidenced by overcoming such obstacles altogether.

I would add that in the book of Job it specifically states that Satan afflicted Job, with God’s permission: “And the LORD said to Satan, ‘Behold, all that he has is in your power . . . ‘ ” (1:12; cf. 2:6); “So Satan went forth from the presence of the LORD, and afflicted Job with loathsome sores from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head” (2:7). Job 42:11 refers to “all the evil that the LORD had brought upon him” but it is referring to God’s allowing of the “evil” in His providence and for His higher purpose: as seen in Job 1:12 and 2:6. All of these relevant passages have to be harmonized, rather than one perspective being ignored, with the result being that a half-truth is promulgated. God allowed the affliction of Job. brought about by the devil himself, in order to provide this story in the Bible, that has comforted many millions of people. He brought good out of it, just as He did in Joseph’s case.

Likewise, when Jesus met the woman “who had had a spirit of infirmity for eighteen years; she was bent over and could not fully straighten herself” (Lk 13:11), He didn’t say that God had caused this, let alone ordained it from all eternity. Rather, He stated, “ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen years, be loosed from this bond . . .?” (13:16). Not only did He deny that God caused the infirmity, but directly attributed it to Satan’s wicked opposition. Peter stated the same sort of thing: “Jesus of Nazareth . . . went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed by the devil” (Acts 10:38).

Moreover, Paul notes that “a thorn was given me in the flesh.” This appears to be another bodily infirmity (many scholars think it may have been a disease of the eyes). How does he characterize it?: as a “messenger of Satan” (2 Cor 12:7). So that’s at least four times that the Bible attributes physical ailments to the devil as the cause and continued persecutor, and not to God. What more is needed to disprove the contrary? God will use the illnesses and ailments and bring good from them, but He didn’t cause or ordain them.

Judges 9:23 And God sent an evil spirit between Abimelech and the leaders of Shechem, and the leaders of Shechem dealt treacherously with Abimelech [p. 24]

This is the same dynamic as in the book of Job: Satan caused the “evil spirit” and God allowed it in His permissive will. Many Protestant commentaries concur:

Benson Commentary: God sent an evil spirit — That is, gave Satan permission to work upon their minds. . . . God can, with the greatest ease, make all the devices of the wicked of none effect; can turn their best contrivances to their ruin . . .
*
Matthew Poole’s Commentary: God gave the devil commission to enter into or work upon their minds and hearts; . . .
*
Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible: Then God sent an evil spirit between Abimelech and the men of Shechem,…. Permitted, yea, gave a commission to Satan, the evil spirit, to go among them . . .
*
Wesley’s Notes on the Bible: God gave the devil commission to work upon their minds.

Similarly, 1 Samuel 16:14 states that “an evil spirit from the LORD tormented” King Saul, and many commentaries (e.g., Benson, Matthew Henry, Matthew Poole, John Wesley) explain it as another instance of the same dynamic of God permitting Satan to torment Saul.

1 Samuel 2:25 If someone sins against a man, God will mediate for him, but if someone sins against the Lord, who can intercede for him?” But they would not listen to the voice of their father, for it was the will of the Lord to put them to death. [pp. 24-25]

There comes a time for judgment and divine wrath as well, and these three boys had apparently reached that point, as habitual fornicators and guilty of “evil dealings” spoken of by “all the people” (1 Sam 2:22-23). God — as our Creator — has power and the prerogative over life and death. Human beings can rebel against Him to such an extent that He at length (knowing this this from all eternity) decides that their time for judgment and damnation has arrived, after having “given them up” (Rom 1:24, 26, 28).

In the New Testament the same thing occurred with Ananias and Sapphira, who “lie[d] to the Holy Spirit” (Acts 5:3) and “tempt[ed] the Spirit of the Lord” (5:9). Both were immediately judged by God and killed (5:5, 10). Interestingly, this passage ties in with 1 Samuel 2:25 insofar as both have to do with sinning against the Lord as opposed to against men. Another example of instant judgment from God had to do with Korah’s rebellion, in the wilderness with Moses:

Numbers 16:28-35 And Moses said, “Hereby you shall know that the LORD has sent me to do all these works, and that it has not been of my own accord. [29] If these men die the common death of all men, or if they are visited by the fate of all men, then the LORD has not sent me. [30] But if the LORD creates something new, and the ground opens its mouth, and swallows them up, with all that belongs to them, and they go down alive into Sheol, then you shall know that these men have despised the LORD.” [31] And as he finished speaking all these words, the ground under them split asunder; [32] and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up, with their households and all the men that belonged to Korah and all their goods. [33] So they and all that belonged to them went down alive into Sheol; and the earth closed over them, and they perished from the midst of the assembly. [34] And all Israel that were round about them fled at their cry; for they said, “Lest the earth swallow us up!” [35] And fire came forth from the LORD, and consumed the two hundred and fifty men offering the incense.

God alone knows men’s hearts. He knows when they are beyond all redemption; when they have committed the unforgivable sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit (Mt 12:31-32; Lk 12:10), and so are ripe for just judgement. In this case, they “despised the LORD” (Ex 16:30). That’s very serious sin, as in the other cases above. In every reprobate person’s life there comes a time when God says to them, “Fool! This night your soul is required of you” (Lk 12:20).

2 Samuel 17:14 And Absalom and all the men of Israel said, “The counsel of Hushai the Archite is better than the counsel of Ahithophel.” For the Lord had ordained to defeat the good counsel of Ahithophel, so that the Lord might bring harm upon Absalom. [p. 25]

This is another case of God’s judgment of a person beyond redemption. Absalom, David’s son, had resolved to rebel against his father and become king (2 Sam 15:4, 6, 10, 12-13). It got so bad that David advised his servants to flee Jerusalem with him, fearing that Absalom would “bring down evil upon us, and smite the city with the edge of the sword” (15:14). Ahithophel became one Absalom’s “conspirators” and David prayed, “O LORD, I pray thee, turn the counsel of Ahithophel into foolishness” (15:31). Absalom was trying to murder his father David (16:11; 17:2, 4). After all that, the text states that “the LORD had ordained to defeat the good counsel of Ahithophel, so that the LORD might bring evil upon Absalom” (17:14).

Absalom met his end by getting his head stuck in the branches of an oak tree while riding a mule (18:9), and then being finished off by David’s allies (19:14-15). God can strike someone dead if He so chooses, or know that a natural calamity will bring about the same end, as in this case. Absalom sealed his fate by opposing David, the “man after [God’s] own heart” (1 Sam 13:14; cf. Acts 13:22) and the prototype of the Messiah and God the Son, Jesus.

2 Chronicles 18:19-22 And the Lord said, ‘Who will entice Ahab the king of Israel, that he may go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead?’ And one said one thing, and another said another. 20 Then a spirit came forward and stood before the Lord, saying, ‘I will entice him.’ And the Lord said to him, ‘By what means?’ 21 And he said, ‘I will go out, and will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.’ And he said, ‘You are to entice him, and you shall succeed; go out and do so.’ 22 Now therefore behold, the Lord has put a lying spirit in the mouth of these your prophets. The Lord has declared disaster concerning you.” [p. 25]

Most people think this “spirit” is an instance of the personification of the spirit of prophecy. It’s definitely not an evil spirit. Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament states concerning the parallel passage in 1 Kings 22:

The spirit (הרוּח) which inspired these prophets as a lying spirit is neither Satan, nor any evil spirit whatever, but, as the definite article and the whole of the context show, the personified spirit of prophecy, which is only so far a πνεῦμα ἀκάθαρτον τῆς πλάνης (Zechariah 13:2; 1 John 4:6) and under the influence of Satan as it works as שׁקר רוּח in accordance with the will of God. . . .  Jehovah sends this spirit, inasmuch as the deception of Ahab has been inflicted upon him as a judgment of God for his unbelief. But there is no statement here to the effect that this lying spirit proceeded from Satan, because the object of the prophet was simply to bring out the working of God in the deception practised upon Ahab by his prophets. . . .

Jehovah has ordained that Ahab, being led astray by a prediction of his prophets inspired by the spirit of lies, shall enter upon the war, that he may find therein the punishment of his ungodliness. As he would not listen to the word of the Lord in the mouth of His true servants, God had given him up (παρέδωκεν, Romans 1:24, Romans 1:26, Romans 1:28) in his unbelief to the working of the spirits of lying. But that this did not destroy the freedom of the human will is evident from the expression תּפתּה, “thou canst persuade him,” and still more clearly from תּוּכל גּם, “thou wilt also be able,” since they both presuppose the possibility of resistance to temptation on the part of man.

***

Practical Matters: Perhaps some of my 4,300+ free online articles (the most comprehensive “one-stop” Catholic apologetics site) or fifty-one books have helped you (by God’s grace) to decide to become Catholic or to return to the Church, or better understand some doctrines and why we believe them.

Or you may believe my work is worthy to support for the purpose of apologetics and evangelism in general. If so, please seriously consider a much-needed financial contribution. I’m always in need of more funds: especially monthly support. “The laborer is worthy of his wages” (1 Tim 5:18, NKJV). 1 December 2021 was my 20th anniversary as a full-time Catholic apologist, and February 2022 marked the 25th anniversary of my blog.

PayPal donations are the easiest: just send to my email address: apologistdave@gmail.com. You’ll see the term “Catholic Used Book Service”, which is my old side-business. To learn about the different methods of contributing, including 100% tax deduction, etc., see my page: About Catholic Apologist Dave Armstrong / Donation Information. Thanks a million from the bottom of my heart!

***

Photo credit: Portrait of John Calvin by Titian (1490-1576) [public domain / Wikimedia Commons]

***

Summary: This is one of my many (often point-by-point) replies to the “Exegetical Considerations” section (pp. 20-186) of Steve Hays’ “Biblical Calvinism” book.

June 12, 2023

June 12, 2023 By
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Preliminaries; God “Hardens” Hearts?; Few or Many Saved? 

The late Steve Hays (1959-2020) was a Calvinist (and anti-Catholic) apologist, who was very active on his blog, called Triablogue . His 819-page self-published book, Biblical Calvinism has graciously been made available for free. On 9 September 2006, Hays was extraordinarily charitable towards me (seeing that almost all anti-Catholics have treated me like Vlad the Impaler). He wrote then:

I don’t think I’ve ever accused him of being a traitor or apostate or infidel. . . . I have nothing to say, one way or the other, regarding his state of grace. But his sincerity is unquestionable. I also don’t dislike him. . . . I don’t think there’s anything malicious about Armstrong—unlike some people who come to mind. In addition, I don’t think I’ve ever said he was unintelligent. For the record, it’s obvious that Armstrong has a quick, nimble mind. 

Sadly, two-and-a-half years later, starting in April 2009 and up through December 2011 (in the following quotations) his opinion radically changed, and he claimed that I have “an evil character,” am “actually evil,” an “ego-maniac, narcissist,” “idolater,” “self-idolater,” “hack who pretends to be a professional apologist,” given to “chicanery,” one who doesn’t “do any real research,” “a stalwart enemy of the faith . . .  no better than [the atheists] Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens,” with an intent to “destroy faith in God’s word,” “schizophrenic,” “emotionally unhinged,” one who “doesn’t trust in the merit of Christ alone for salvation,” “has no peace of mind,” “a bipolar solipsist,” “split-personality,” and a “bad” man. See more gory details.

I feel no need whatsoever to reciprocate these silly and sinful insults. I just wanted the record to be known, and to show how apologetics can too often descend to such atrocious “soul-reading” ad hominem inanities. Hopefully, Hays took to heart his own criticism of some Arminians, from this book (p. 54): “They are so caught up in the momentum of the debate that they issue intemperate threats which, after a cooling off period, they’d realize are foolhardy.” I hope and pray so.

For my part, I’ve always maintained that Hays was a very intelligent,  sincere, and well-meaning man, and I believe that I can and have learned a great deal from Reformed Protestants: my brethren in Christ. We have a lot in common, but we also have honest disagreements, and this series will mostly be concerned with those. They can be discussed without acrimony or disrespect. This is one of many planned critiques of Hays’ book. I will be focusing solely on Section II: “Exegetical Considerations”. It runs from pages 20 to 186. See also the 29 installments of my Reply to Hays’ “Catholicism” series: listed on my Anti-Catholicism web page, under “Steve Hays”. My Bible citations are from the RSV. Steve Hays’ words will be in blue. Unlike the previous series, I won’t list his subtitles.

Related Reading:

Calvinism & General Protestantism: Catholic Critique web page (where all of these replies will be listed: search “Hays'”)

John Calvin: Catholic Appraisal web page 

A Biblical Critique of Calvinism (book: 2012, 178 pages; includes replies to exegetical arguments in Books I-III of John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion)

Biblical Catholic Answers for John Calvin (book: 2010, 388 pages; includes line-by-line replies to Book IV of John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion)

Biblical Catholic Salvation: “Faith Working Through Love” (book: 2010, 187 pages; includes 71 pages of rebuttals of four of the five Calvinist distinctives in “TULIP”; minus the “U”)

64 Critiques of John Calvin: Introduction & Master List (more in-depth replies than those which were eventually compiled in my book about John Calvin. Most were completed for his 500th birthday in 2009)

Salvation, Justification, & “Faith Alone” web page (contains many articles relevant to Calvinist soteriology and “TULIP”)

*****

Taken by themselves, Reformed prooftexts might seem to beg the question by presupposing a Reformed interpretation thereof. (Arminian prooftexting is open to the same objection.) I’ve gone beyond bare prooftexting to provide exegetical arguments for the Reformed
interpretation. [p. 21]

Good! And I will provide a countering Catholic (often similar or identical to an Arminian) interpretation. One of my favorite things — and one of my favorite activities in theology and apologetics — is engaging in exegetical dialogue. Hays loved this, too, but he wasn’t much interested in dialoguing with Catholics about it. He didn’t think he had much to learn from them (since he classified Catholicism as a “counterfeit”). I have a very different outlook.

Although both Calvinists and Arminians have their one-verse prooftexts, Reformed theological method is based less on snappy one-liners than tracing out the flow of argument or narrative arc in larger blocks of Scripture (e.g. Gen 37-50; Exod 4-14; Isa 40-48; Jn 6, 10-12, 17; Rom 9-11; Eph 1-2, 4). [p. 121]

This is a good thing; the more context and more Scripture considered overall, the better. I still think that Calvinists are prone to trotting out the same prooftexts (or scriptural sections like those above), and largely disregarding others which might be construed as counter-arguments, or at the very least, relevant to a particular topic. I hasten to add, however, that every theological group tends to do this (the Bible being a very long and multi-faceted collection of books).

Why do Calvinists keep bringing the issue back to Scripture? Because Christianity is a revealed religion. Because only God knows his own mind. We lack direct access to the mind of God. Intentions are hidden. We don’t know God’s intentions unless he tells us. That’s not something we can intuit or infer from the natural order. [p. 54]

All good reasons. I agree! In my apologetics, I cite as much or more Scripture than anyone I am aware of. Often in dialogues with Protestants I cite probably ten times or more more Bible passages than they do: all relevant to the discussion. So we have this desire very much in common. And it’s really the bottom-line, in discussions of Catholics and Protestants, since we both equally revere God’s inspired, inerrant revelation.

Good, constructive dialogues begin with what both parties agree with, and then move on to differences (in this case, exegetical and doctrinal ones). Hays and I could have truly had some great dialogues on biblical exegesis, but it takes two! He wasn’t interested in that with me, even before he decided to trash my character and work. As it is, you my readers can see what an able Reformed exponent has to say, and I think I can hold my own, too. You’ll get both sides presented: enabling you to make up your minds as to which is more believable and plausible. This is the beauty and utility of dialogue as a wonderful teaching tool.

Arminians typically recast the issue in philosophical categories like “causation,” “determinism,” or “causal determinism,” then proceed to attack these categories. Although there’s a place for framing the issue philosophically, that’s not where we should begin. It makes the debate too abstract, as if this is just a debate over competing ideas or philosophical models. It’s important to start with revealed truths. [p. 54]

I agree again.

Hays, on pages 55-61, presents Bible passages on predestination, God’s providence, and related notions. Catholics and Arminians don’t disagree with any of these (being all inspired revelation!). Our problem with Calvinism is how it incorrectly incorporates the role of human free will and choice into the mix. Many (including Calvinists) aren’t aware that Catholics fully believe in predestination of the elect, and so did someone like John Wesley. Two thematic examples from his list of Scriptures will very nicely illustrate my point about the free will of man:

And the Lord said to Moses, “When you go back to Egypt, see that you do before Pharaoh all the miracles that I have put in your power. But I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go (Exod 4:21).

But I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and though I multiply my signs and wonders in the land of Egypt (Exod 7:3). [p. 58]

I addressed this topic at length over fourteen years ago. The Bible does indeed state several times that “God hardened” Pharaoh’s heart. No one denies that. But if one reads only those passage it sure does sound like some sort of Calvinist determinism or “fatalism” doesn’t it? The problem is that this is not all the Bible says about it. Hays neglected the many verses that discussed how Pharaoh hardened his own heart (and as such has not presented the whole truth), and others — including the Israelites themselves — also doing so. Here they are:

Exodus 8:15 But when Pharaoh saw that there was a respite, he hardened his heart, . . . (cf. 8:19)

Exodus 8:32 But Pharaoh hardened his heart this time also, and did not let the people go.

Exodus 9:34 But when Pharaoh saw that the rain and the hail and the thunder had ceased, he sinned yet again, and hardened his heart, he and his servants. (cf. 9:7, 35)

1 Samuel 6:6 Why should you harden your hearts as the Egyptians and Pharaoh hardened their hearts? . . . (cf. additional general examples: Dt 15:7; 2 Chr 36:13; Job 9:4; Ps 95:8; Prov 28:14; Heb 3:8, 15; 4:7

How these two motifs are harmonized is by holding that Pharaoh rebelled of his own will, and that God in His providence allowed that for His own providential purposes. The Bible then attributes the attitude to God in the sense that in allowing it, He ultimately caused it. It’s a biblical “mode” of talking about God’s providence. Man can choose to follow God and His precepts and commands or not. When we do not, we become more and more hardened. Man is responsible for his own sin.

To assert that “God did so-and-so” when He simply allowed it to take place, is a proclamation of God’s overall Providence. God is communicating that He is ultimately in control. There is also a strong sarcastic element in this sort of biblical concept (that we see in Job and often in the prophets), as if God were saying, “okay; you don’t want to follow Me and do what is best for you? You know better than I do about that? Very well, then, I’ll let you become blind and deluded. See how well off you’ll be then.” Strictly speaking, that isn’t how God thinks or acts, but it was an anthropomorphism to help practical, concrete, non-philosophical Hebrew man be able to relate to the mysterious, transcendent God.

The bottom line is that men harden themselves in rebellion and God allows [without agreeing with] it. Hence we have in Scripture, many “if . . . then” conditional prophecies. If people rebel, God will withdraw His grace and protection from them, and so in a sense He did it. But it was always essentially man’s rebellion:

Joshua 24:20  If you forsake the LORD and serve foreign gods, then he will turn and do you harm, and consume you, after having done you good.”

1 Chronicles 28:9 “And you, Solomon my son, know the God of your father, and serve him with a whole heart and with a willing mind; for the LORD searches all hearts, and understands every plan and thought. If you seek him, he will be found by you; but if you forsake him, he will cast you off for ever.

2 Chronicles 7:17-20 And as for you, if you walk before me, as David your father walked, doing according to all that I have commanded you and keeping my statutes and my ordinances,[18] then I will establish your royal throne, as I covenanted with David your father, saying, `There shall not fail you a man to rule Israel.’ [19] “But if you turn aside and forsake my statutes and my commandments which I have set before you, and go and serve other gods and worship them, [20] then I will pluck you up from the land which I have given you; and this house, which I have consecrated for my name, I will cast out of my sight, and will make it a proverb and a byword among all peoples.

2 Chronicles 15:2 If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you forsake him, he will forsake you.

[see many more examples]

See how much Scripture I bring to bear? Hays provided two passages. I provided more than nineteen to show that his two have to be understood within the framework of all these other ultra-relevant passages (in other words, ten times more, as I alluded to above). This is a constant characteristic of my methodology in dialogue. If the Protestant “wants Bible” I give them plenty of that: sometimes more than they would wish or want to deal with!

Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, 12 in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness (2 Thes 2:11-12). [p. 60]

His prooftext starts with a connecting word, “therefore.” Clearly, then, the preceding verse ought to be incorporated in able to determine the thought expressed in context. “Therefore God” refers back to something that men did. And so, sure enough, the verse before makes it crystal clear that God sent the delusion because these people had already decided to rebel against Him. Accordingly, the last part of the preceding verse refers to “those who are to perish, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.”

In fact, verse 12, which Hays did include, refutes his interpretation as well, because it also explains why God sent the delusion, just as verse 10 did: “all may be condemned who did not believe the truth.” This passage reminds me of another very similar but more explicit one with the same dynamic:

Romans 1:18-28 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of men who by their wickedness suppress the truth. [19] For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. [20] Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse; [21] for although they knew God they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened. [22] Claiming to be wise, they became fools, [23] and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man or birds or animals or reptiles. [24] Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, [25] because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever! Amen. [26] For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. Their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural, [27] and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in their own persons the due penalty for their error. [28] And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a base mind and to improper conduct.

Everything is there. Paul explains exactly why “God gave them up” (1:24, 26, 28). The explanation is in two preceding verses, and the first half of v. 28 (1:23, 25, 28: they “exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images” (idolatry) . . . “because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature” . . . “since they did not see fit to acknowledge God . . .” The causal flow is very clear: men rebel, and then God “gives them up”. Moreover, 1:18 sums up the dynamic of the whole passage: “the wrath of God” comes precisely because of the “wickedness of men who by their wickedness suppress the truth.” How could this be any more clear than it is? The theme is repeated over and over so that no one could possibly miss or misconstrue it.

I have color-coded the passage to show men’s evil acts in red, which cause God to judge them and give them up (in green), with the connecting clauses in purple, bolded and italicized.

On page 62, Hays presents biblical arguments for few being saved: Matthew 7:14 (“For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few”) and Luke 13:23-30 (13:24: “Strive to enter by the narrow door . . .”). These are good, solid arguments. But there are other indications that half or more human beings may be saved. In the parable of the ten maidens with lamps (Mt 25:1-13), five were foolish and were damned (“the door was shut . . . I do not know you”: 25:10, 12) and five were wise and received eternal life (“went in with him to the marriage feast”: 25:10). It’s a 50-50 proposition. Hays referred to this parable in passing on page 63, but didn’t analyze it as I did.

The parable of the talents follows (25:14-30). Here, there are three servants, who are given five talents, two talents, and one talent [a form of money], respectively. The ones who are saved are the first two (“enter into the joy of your master”: 25:21, 23), while the servant with one talent, who did nothing with it, was damned (“cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness”: 25:30). So this parable suggests a 67% rate of final salvation and a 33% rate of damnation. If we take the average of the two, we arrive at a figure of 58.5% being saved in the end, and 41.5% damned. Who knows? Both are right from the lips of Jesus, and parables always mean something. It’s interesting to ponder the implications. Hays (I was happy to see) didn’t rule out the possibility that relatively more could be saved:
*
The version in Luke might suggest that the comparison is more specific. The point of contrast is not about the ratio lost and saved humanity in general, but the difference between the few Jews who respond to Jesus compared to many gentiles who respond to Jesus. On that view, perhaps the majority of the human race will be saved, but mostly drawn from gentile people-groups. [p. 63]
*
Jesus doesn’t answer the question of whether few be saved. He probably leaves it up in the air as a stimulus to the reader. Each reader needs to answer that question for himself by heeding the warning and taking appropriate action. . . . Does the passage imply that only a few will be saved? We need to compare that with the messianic banquet in Lk 13:28-29. That evokes a motif in Isaiah (e.g. Isa 25:6-9; 26:5; 43:5; 49:12; 55:1-2), including the image of Gentiles flooding into God’s kingdom (Isa 59:19). That envisions a multitude. [p. 66]
*
A popular trope that critics of Calvinism mechanically resort to is the allegation that according to Calvinism, God reprobates most human beings. Problem with that allegation is that Calvinism has no official statement on the percentages. [p. 65]
*
I’m glad to hear this. I thought that Calvinists taught that a small minority would be saved.
*

***

Practical Matters: Perhaps some of my 4,300+ free online articles (the most comprehensive “one-stop” Catholic apologetics site) or fifty-one books have helped you (by God’s grace) to decide to become Catholic or to return to the Church, or better understand some doctrines and why we believe them.

Or you may believe my work is worthy to support for the purpose of apologetics and evangelism in general. If so, please seriously consider a much-needed financial contribution. I’m always in need of more funds: especially monthly support. “The laborer is worthy of his wages” (1 Tim 5:18, NKJV). 1 December 2021 was my 20th anniversary as a full-time Catholic apologist, and February 2022 marked the 25th anniversary of my blog.

PayPal donations are the easiest: just send to my email address: apologistdave@gmail.com. You’ll see the term “Catholic Used Book Service”, which is my old side-business. To learn about the different methods of contributing, including 100% tax deduction, etc., see my page: About Catholic Apologist Dave Armstrong / Donation Information. Thanks a million from the bottom of my heart!

***

Photo credit: Portrait of John Calvin by Titian (1490-1576) [public domain / Wikimedia Commons]

***

Summary: This is one of my many (often point-by-point) replies to the “Exegetical Considerations” section (pp. 20-186) of Steve Hays’ “Biblical Calvinism” book.

June 9, 2023

June 9, 2023 By
0 Comments

Sola Scriptura: Self-Defeating; Church Hierarchy; Jerusalem Council

The late Steve Hays (1959-2020) was a Calvinist (and anti-Catholic) apologist, who was very active on his blog, called Triablogue (now continued by Jason Engwer). His 695-page self-published book, Catholicism — a collection of articles from his site — has graciously been made available for free. On 9 September 2006, Hays was quite — almost extraordinarily — charitable towards me. He wrote then:

I don’t think I’ve ever accused him of being a traitor or apostate or infidel. . . . I have nothing to say, one way or the other, regarding his state of grace. But his sincerity is unquestionable. I also don’t dislike him. . . . I don’t think there’s anything malicious about Armstrong—unlike some people who come to mind. In addition, I don’t think I’ve ever said he was unintelligent. For the record, it’s obvious that Armstrong has a quick, nimble mind. 

Two-and-a-half years later, starting in April 2009 and up through December 2011 (in the following quotations) his opinion radically changed, and he claimed that I have “an evil character,” am “actually evil,” “ego-maniac, narcissist,” “idolater,” “self-idolater,” “hack who pretends to be a professional apologist,” given to “chicanery,” one who doesn’t “do any real research,” “a stalwart enemy of the faith . . .  no better than [the atheists] Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens,” with an intent to “destroy faith in God’s word,” “schizophrenic,” “emotionally unhinged,” one who “doesn’t trust in the merit of Christ alone for salvation,” “has no peace of mind,” “a bipolar solipsist,” “split-personality,” and a “bad” man. He wasn’t one to mince words! See more gory details.

I feel no need whatsoever to reciprocate these silly and sinful insults. I just wanted the record to be known. I’ve always maintained that Hays was a very intelligent man, but habitually a sophist in methodology; sincere and well-meaning, but tragically and systematically wrong and misguided regarding Catholicism. That’s what I’m addressing, not the state of his heart and soul (let alone his eternal destiny). It’s a theological discussion. This is one of many planned critiques of his book (see my reasons why I decided to do this). Rather than list them all here, interested readers are directed to the “Steve Hays” section of my Anti-Catholicism web page, where they will all be listed. My Bible citations are from the RSV. Steve’s words will be in blue.

*****

[Chapter 12: Sola Scriptura]

What does sola scriptura mean?

It’s become a Catholic trope to say that sola scriptura is self-contradictory, and I’ve seen Protestant apologists struggle with that charge. [p. 621]

It’s not a trope; it’s a truth.

The historic target of sola scriptura is the papacy and post-apostolic church councils. Sola scripture is the claim that there are no infallible post-apostolic church councils. Likewise, that God didn’t institute the papacy. The pope is not a divine mouthpiece. [p. 621]

Yes, that’s how Martin Luther was forced to adopt the position, by default. He didn’t like Catholic authority so he had to come up with something else. As it was, he was forced into a corner in in the Leipzig Disputation in 1519. This is not how major Christian beliefs ought to originate.

Apropos (iii), suppose a Catholic apologist asks us where do we find that in the Bible? [p. 621]

It’s a perfectly valid and expected question, seeing as Protestants have made Scripture the sola infallible authority. So if sola Scriptura isn’t found in the Bible itself, then it’s simply a fallible tradition of men, to which I ask: why should anyone believe it? At the very least it should be, and we would expect it to be in the inspired Bible, if in fact it’s true.

But that’s the point–we don’t find the papacy in the Bible. [p. 621]

The papacy is all over the New Testament, in the form of Petrine primacy, as I have massively demonstrated.

And we don’t find divine promises to inspire post-apostolic church councils in the Bible. We find promises to the apostles. But we don’t find comparable promises to bishops or post-apostolic church councils. [p. 621]

What we find is the Jerusalem council, which consisted of both apostles and elders (Acts 15:2, 4, 6). It — led by Peter the first pope (15:7-14) — promulgated an infallible decree for all Christians (Acts 16:4), which was indeed inspired by the Holy Spirit (15:28). This is altogether adequate as a representative model of how Christian councils (as a matter of ecclesiology) would work all through history. It’s pointless to believe that such an event would be written about in the Bible, but at the same time pretend that it has no relevance for the rest of Christian history. By the same reasoning, it’s foolish to accept Petrine primacy (as many Protestant scholars do) but think that it has nothing to do with the papacy or papal succession. Why should it only be there in the mid-1st century and then disappear?

Catholics appeal to Acts 15, but apostles along with a sibling of Jesus were participants. So that’s no precedent for post-apostolic church councils. [p. 621]

It also consisted of “elders”: which the text states about six times. So it has all the relevance in the world for future councils.

Moreover, Catholics distinguish between local councils and ecumenical councils. But we don’t find that distinction in Scripture. [p. 622]

We do find the prototype of the latter in the Jerusalem council: it was presided over by the person who is presented in the Bible as the leader of the early Christian Church. It made a decree that bound all Christians and which, indeed, has been held by virtually all Christians since that time. Paul went around proclaiming it in cities far away in Asia Minor. Therefore, it was not merely a local council. It was in Jerusalem, which was at that time the center of world Christianity, just as the councils Vatican I and II were held in Rome: the center of world Christianity.

Destination unknown

Because the Bible is a finished product, it contains no surprises. We know what we’re getting. We know what to expect. [p. 623]

Why is it, then, that Protestants have endless internal disputes, if the Bible is formally sufficient to function as their rule of faith?

How to read a map

To begin with, this isn’t a hypothetical question for Protestants. We believe in sola Scriptura because that is how God in fact chooses to operate. [p. 624]

This is circular reasoning. We only know, in the final analysis, how God operates by the Bible: His inerrant and inspired revelation. But that Bible doesn’t teach sola Scriptura. It’s a man-made, extrabiblical tradition of men: exactly what Jesus taught us to avoid.

The question of sola Scriptura

I like to keep up with the competition. Brand Pitre is one of the best younger generation Catholic apologists. [p. 625]

Really? He didn’t “keep up” with me. I wrote a book critiquing sola Scriptura from the Bible, published by Catholic Answers in 2012, and a second self-published one in the same year that tackled two Anglicans, widely considered to be among the best historic defenders of this false position, and I’ve written more articles on this topic than any other one. But because Hays had by then concluded that I was “evil” and “schizophrenic,” etc. he had no interest in critiquing my books (like James White did: twice) or articles. Even if he thought I was a terrible, lousy apologist (as he did, post-2009), here was his golden opportunity to dismantle my book and be the great champion for sola Scriptura. It’s not like I am a nobody in Catholic apologetics.

All of the active anti-Catholic apologists of our time — including Hay’s colleague and successor on his blog, Jason Engwer — have dealt with my material; some of them quite a bit and for several years. But something about my work threatened ands unnerved Hays to such an extent that he felt he had to hurl every insult imaginable my way, in order to besmirch my name and character, so that his followers would ignore me. Of course that is no refutation at all of my arguments.

i) Believe and obey divine revelation
ii) Don’t elevate non-revelation to the status of divine revelation
iii) Disregard whatever is contrary to divine revelation
Scriptures teaches these propositions. That’s sola Scriptura in a nutshell. [p. 630]

No it’s not. Catholics believe all three of these things as much as Protestants do, yet we don’t hold to sola Scriptura, which means, according to the standard Protestant definition: “Scripture is the only infallible and final authority for Christian doctrine.” Our position is that the Bible itself teaches that there is an authoritative, infallible tradition and Church, so that if you accept all of biblical teaching, you arrive at the Catholic “three-legged stool” rule of faith.

***

This concludes my examination of the late Steve Hays’ “book” Catholicism. He obviously enjoyed and relished taking potshots at Catholicism and playing games with his usual sophistry. My next and last project having to do with him will be my multi-part examination of his “book” Biblical Calvinism, which is 819 pages. It’s a whole different ballgame comprehensively presenting and defending one’s own position. I suspect that he will offer far more serious arguments and less sophistry in this book. I will relentlessly offer counter-arguments from the Bible. It’s nothing new for me. I have devoted two books and part of a third to debunking Calvinism and have large Calvin and Calvinism web pages, including massive line-by-line responses to large portions of Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion. I know the arguments, and I know how to refute them: primarily from the Bible.

***

Practical Matters: Perhaps some of my 4,300+ free online articles (the most comprehensive “one-stop” Catholic apologetics site) or fifty-one books have helped you (by God’s grace) to decide to become Catholic or to return to the Church, or better understand some doctrines and why we believe them.

Or you may believe my work is worthy to support for the purpose of apologetics and evangelism in general. If so, please seriously consider a much-needed financial contribution. I’m always in need of more funds: especially monthly support. “The laborer is worthy of his wages” (1 Tim 5:18, NKJV). 1 December 2021 was my 20th anniversary as a full-time Catholic apologist, and February 2022 marked the 25th anniversary of my blog.

PayPal donations are the easiest: just send to my email address: apologistdave@gmail.com. You’ll see the term “Catholic Used Book Service”, which is my old side-business. To learn about the different methods of contributing, including 100% tax deduction, etc., see my page: About Catholic Apologist Dave Armstrong / Donation Information. Thanks a million from the bottom of my heart!

***

Photo credit: The Whore of Babylon (workshop of Lucas Cranach): colorized illustration from Martin Luther’s 1534 translation of the Bible [public domain / Wikimedia Commons]

***

Summary: The late Steve Hays was a Calvinist and anti-Catholic writer and apologist. This is one of my many critiques of Hays’ “Catholicism”: a 695-page self-published volume.

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