Dialogue w Agnostic Scientist on God’s Logic, Axioms, & Biases

Last updated on: October 17, 2018 at 11:37 am By Dave Armstrong

Compiled from e-mail exchanges between myself and the late Dr. Jan Schreurs. His words will be in blue.

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What we feel God would or would not do is a prejudice (preconceived idea) if it is not based on logic or testing. If we reason it out with solid logic, it remains a bias but it is no longer a prejudice.

I agree, except that you leave out revelation, and attesting miracles, for some reason, which the Christian can never do. Typically, the secularist looks at reality only (or primarily) from the empirical plane. You may no longer believe in miracles or revelation, but we do, so your countering thoughts should at least take that into consideration for the sake of argument. Furthermore, these things can be tested in many ways. Look at the scientific testing, e.g., on the Shroud of Turin, or the many known cases of incorrupt saints, up to hundreds of years after their deaths (St. Bernadette is one; Fr. Solanus Casey, a local Detroit priest who may be canonized is another — he died in the late 50s).

The Bible has faced every imaginable scrutiny (oftentimes from fundamentally hostile, predisposed, and unreasonable critics) and has held its own — far more than I could say for evolution, if I do say so. Archaeology, e.g., is a clear example of a science applied to the trustworthiness of the Bible. And it has only helped our case, believe me. Furthermore, I say that the traditional cosmological and teleological arguments – empirical proofs for God – are stronger than ever in light of the utter evolutionary failure to explain origins and design in a materialistic fashion. So there is a very real sense in which Christianity is more empirically verified than evolutionary science is.

I wasn’t aware that I had excluded revelation and miracles in what came before this, but I was leading up to that anyway, so we may as well tackle it here.

An example of my aggressive “anticipatory” style of argumentation. :-)

A logical creator would not interfere in his own creation.

On what logical (let alone empirical) basis do you believe this and deign to make such a statement? As it is, you are merely arguing in a circle – presupposing the deistic position (as opposed to theism). “God wouldn’t do x.” — “Why?” — “Because that ain’t how God should logically act!” Etc. Job 42:1-3.

If he needs to because it is flawed, he isn’t the omnipotent and omniscient creator you suppose he is.

This doesn’t follow (rejecting your rhetorical deistic premise), as omnipotence refers to the power to do whatever God chooses to do. An omnipotent Being may choose to permit things for the eventual greater good in the long run – a sort of “divine utilitarianism” if you will (though that is surely a very poor analogy — I speak anthropomorphically here). Nor does omniscience necessarily rule out “flaws” brought in due to human free will, rebellion, ungratefulness, pride, and sin. An omniscient Being may very well possess knowledge (we say He certainly does) about why allowing sin is better than not allowing it.

By definition, such a God knows far more than we do, which is why it is fundamentally silly and illogical to make statements such as your “A logical creator would not interfere in his own creation.” I know you don’t believe in our God, but that’s beside the point. You need to at least make your arguments within our presuppositions (if you desire for them to be either relevant or thought-provoking or effective). I thought your task was to refute our view. You can’t do that by smuggling in another view (deism) and then acting as if it were ours, or that it refutes our apologetic.

If he does because he wants to, he wants something the way people who invent gadgets want something (comfort, timesavings, wealth, recognition, admiration, love, etc.) Didn’t Aquinas say that God can have no desires?

He does whatever He does because He loves us (because He is love), and wants to see us saved. God is entirely self-sufficient and self-existent (He needs nothing, and is unchangeable), but that doesn’t rule out His love for His creatures, as love is first and foremost a will for another to prosper, have the best life possible, grow spiritually, etc.

Still, you offer arguments in support of divine intervention. Those arguments do not address the logic of intervention by a perfect creator, but whether your God did or did not intervene.

When you give me some logic and reason why you presuppose a deistic god, I will give you the Christian reasons for our view. We’re both in the same boat epistemologically in that sense, though of course I accept revelation, whereas you don’t.

It seems that you are willing to prove that God is illogical.

Not at all. I’ll let the Calvinists do that. :-)

On the other hand, your arguments may be no good.

Really? That’s a surprise to me . . .

If God is illogical, there is no way we are going to recognize him based on reasoning. Besides, even if we figure out his wishes for today, there is no way to know what he will want tomorrow.

Agreed; except that the latter assertion applies even if God is logical (His thoughts and ways being far higher than ours).

If God’s logic were so far above ours, we would not recognize his logic and our logic won’t help us at all.

Not His logic: his “thoughts and ways.”

God presumably gave us all the logic we need to recognize him when he speaks and acts. So, even if God’s logic is superior to what he gave us, he will say or do nothing [that is intended for our consumption] that we cannot comprehend with the logic he gave us. Else he is in the business of tricking us or hiding from us (see below).

He reveals Himself, but it is foolish to think that we could completely understand everything an infinite, omniscient being says and does.

If God is logical, and powerful enough to have created us, there is no way we are going to recognize him if he tries to hide from us.

Agreed; but He hasn’t hidden from us at all — taking the long view of salvation history.

And if he sets out to fool us, he can have us any minute of any day. So we must assume that, if God tries to persuade us, he will use solid logic, which he gave us the power to master. You can take it from there.

He does; God’s logic is no different than ours, since logic is an absolute (or, universal — whichever is the preferred philosophical description). That’s why God can’t make a rock so big that He can’t lift it, because that is logical nonsense in relation to an omnipotent being. Hence even God can’t “supersede” logic. It is simply the ironclad law of the relationships of ideas.

That’s the difference between prejudice and bias. All prejudices are biases, but not all biases are prejudices.

Agreed.

You may argue that logic itself is biased. And so it is. It is biased toward useful conclusions from proven premises (in prior theorems). That’s deliberate.

Logic is simply what it is: the inherent and intrinsic rules of the relationships of ideas to each other.

You may phrase it that way, but I see great dangers lurking. Everything is what it is, no? But logic is a construct of the human mind.

Saying that two planets cannot be in the same space at the same time is not merely in my mind. That is a rule involving both logic and physics. I can’t be you and myself at the same time. Same thing. You know: a = a.

It comes in kinds and flavors [e.g. two-valued logic versus three-valued logic].

Well, that’s over my head.

Contrast that with something like gravity. No matter which theory of gravity we embrace [some erroneous] the thing itself remains unchanged.

So do the basic rules of syllogistic logic, no?

In short, the various logic systems and math systems are deductive systems based on a bias of people who seek useful conclusions rather than just any statement that could be selected from a list by a random number generator (RNG), for example. Selection by RNG would be unbiased. Reasoning with logic is biased.

I think logic represents an objective reality “out there,” not just in our heads.

And even more interesting than the axioms are the rules of inference we accept, but they usually aren’t discussed in introductory logic courses.

Yes; this and the tabula rasa issue: questions concerning the supposed “certainty” of logical positivism and empiricism.

Ultimately, of course, all those theorems derive from freely accepted axioms and rules of inference.

Yes; how to arrive at the axioms is the truly intellectually interesting thing. Logic isn’t particularly interesting in and of itself, any more than gravity or molecular properties are. They just are.

But, as Galileo argued against Aristotle, for that very reason logic alone is not sufficient. Our axioms may be wrong. And then even the best logic will lead to incorrect conclusions.

Oh, I agree. And I strongly suspect that Aristotle would, too. No doubt, he was caricatured by his critics, just as we Christians routinely are by our alleged secular “superiors.” His later follower St. Thomas Aquinas is always slandered by our Orthodox friends.

Aristotle would have agreed with Galileo if he had all the data Galileo had. But Aristotle was adamant that his logic could solve problems absolutely when data were not to be had. And there he was wrong. And there Aquinas was wrong too. And that is why we call Galileo the father of modern science.

By the way, if some of us misrepresent Aristotle, the scholastics did so far more. Galileo always defended Aristotle against the misrepresentations of the peripatetics. That, of course, while refuting Aristotle’s physics. But Galileo had great respect for Aristotle’s original approach and pioneering trailblazing. It took a genius to get as far as Aristotle did in his days, twenty centuries earlier. But Galileo had little respect for the slavish followers who hadn’t used their eyes and ears since.

No particular comment . . .

So how do we distinguish good axioms from bad? Aha! We test our axioms directly or indirectly when we can. Now, in geometry and the mathematical arts, we cannot test all axioms directly. But we can test the resulting theorems. An example of that is the axiom of parallel lines. Depending on how we postulate the meeting of parallel lines, we get three equally valid geometries [of which we study only Euclidean in high school].

Yes.

Another form of testing is looking for refutations of inductive rules. Once we spot a flying reindeer, our inductive generalization that no reindeer will ever fly goes into the wastebasket.

Indeed. And when we confirm a miracle, the typical scientific disbelief in the possibility of that also goes into the basket. David Hume’s argument against miracles — much as it is trumpeted by secularists — was hardly compelling. And remember, Hume was himself a theist, who put forth a version of the teleological argument.

Show me one miracle that has been confirmed, as you put it. But yes, the inductive proposition [no miracle ever occurred or will occur] is refuted by one undisputed instance of a miracle.

There are many, many. One famous one at present is the healing of Mother Angelica’s legs. There are hundreds of medically-documented miracles. I have some interesting material along those lines in my files. Of course there is the Resurrection, too.

I doubt that we can go into all the subtleties of testing and measuring here, or that we even need to.

But it will involve philosophy and religion at some point, just as evolution itself does.

Hmm… I see how philosophy of measurement might get involved, just as philosophy of science necessarily gets involved when we do science. I’m not quite sure how religion needs to come into play in testing and measuring. Perhaps you can elaborate?

Our philosophy is bound to influence even the way we test a phenomena whose possible category we have ruled out from the outset (or at least show a marked hostility towards its possibility).

I’m only trying to clarify the ideas involved. And the idea is that the tests are objective.

More or less. :-)

Note also that philosophy of science and science go hand in hand. It is only after doing science for a while that we can adjust any preconceived notions we had about science, perhaps inherited from a theoretician who never set foot in a lab. Then we do some more science and make some more adjustments to the philosophy, if needed.

Fair enuff.

They are objective in the sense that their results do not depend on my biases or on yours. That is the strength of science.

But obviously the data is often “slanted” to fit into (unproven) preconceived notions in evolutionary theory, whereas I and other critics don’t see that many conclusions follow which we are told do follow. Perhaps you say we are dense, or severely biased. I say we are simply being consistently scientific (and yes, theistic) in our outlook.

All right, even tests can be slanted toward desired results (opinion polls, for example).

This is what I meant.

But scientists do their best to avoid such slanted tests since they are not in the interest of the desired result (usually), which is useful information. When you get clearly slanted tests, in almost all cases that I know of, the tests were not designed by professional scientists but by amateurs who like to claim that their “tests” are scientific.

I can see that.

I don’t have that experience with tests. I suspect that you are referring to reports in the popular literature of lab tests or of field tests. They usually get it wrong. I have been cited by many journalists, after a phone interview or a personal interview, on results that had nothing to do with evolution/creation, and they invariably got the science wrong. At first I couldn’t understand why. But after half a dozen times, I resigned myself to the fact that journalists just don’t understand science.

Ah! Now your pronounced dislike of Muggeridge comes more clearly into focus.

And that is why it is science (and engineering) that has given us all these neat gadgets that we take for granted today.

Those things are proven (as to scientific validity) by the fact that they actually work. The proof is in the pudding. That is real, basic, fundamental, practical science — the understanding and application of physics and properties. Evolutionary theory, on the other hand, is a bunch of ungrounded and unproven grand theories and hypotheses (philosophical and quasi-religious in nature) all mixed in together, with little regard for actual testing and falsifiability (and of course, the prior — unnecessary — hostility to a possible Creator, which we have discussed at length).

Magnetism and electrostatic charging were known to the ancient Greeks, but not understood. So no useful gadgets or machines were produced based on them. It is only in the 18th century that pioneers dared defy traditional explanations and started to develop more rational theories, first as ungrounded and unproven grand theories and hypotheses just like the evolution ideas you despise so much. That, however, led to better testing and better theories and finally to an electromagnetic theory that we couldn’t live without today.

Now, when it comes to guesswork (what hypotheses are in the early stages) I would have far more confidence in the guesswork done by trained and seasoned scientists than in the guesswork done by trained and seasoned historians, journalist, jurists, artists etc. when the matter to be guessed about involves nature. Is that unreasonable?

No. But it is unreasonable for scientists to overstep their academic and philosophical bounds, and start usurping the functions of both philosophy and religion, in terms of ultimates and origins in particular.

When you say that scientists are so proud of their objectivity and you disapprove of their arrogance, you are probably misunderstanding them.

I have seen real arrogance time and time again. That is not a misunderstanding. Nor is it confined to scientists, of course. All intellectuals and academics (including Christian ones, and clergymen) are prone to it. But there is a pride in allegedly superior knowledge (or shall I say “wisdom?”). It shows in the way such people discuss religion — the very examples they give which they find compelling as disproofs of Christianity and/or theism (and you manifest some of the same sort of insubstantial examples in this very letter).

We see it constantly in the mass media, in how Christianity (particularly Catholicism) is belittled and mocked, and dismissed as a childish mediæval holdover. Yet any fashionable idiocy such as TM or astrology or radical feminism or radical environmentalism is treated seriously, even though they don’t possess 1/100th of the proofs behind them that Christianity has.

I know of no serious scientist (and I know hundreds of them) who takes astrology or New Age fads seriously.

Good.

Feminism and environmentalism are different animals. But I suppose that the epithet “radical” implies irrationality and then any scientist would agree with you (shades of “fanatical” in another context?).

Hopeful . . . :-)

I’m not sure what you mean by TM so I can’t comment on that.

Transcendental Meditation. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi; the guy the Beatles were obsessed with till he was caught with Mia Farrow’s sister. That turned off Lennon, so that he became a peacenik and then a Marxist radical (consistency or constancy not being one of his distinguishing marks).

They know how gullible and biased we all are (they included). That’s precisely why they rely on objective tests to assist them in sorting the wheat from the chaff.

But of what use is that objective evidence if it is so distorted and minimized, as in evolution? This is why I have maintained for 17 years now that evolutionary science is not all science, but a mixture of science and false (non-theistic) philosophy and wild inductive leaps, akin to religious faith in the misguided zeal and almost fanatical resistance to disproof which its “true believers” exhibit.

And what you find in the mass media is not usually scientific opinion. We are as amazed by what journalists and pop fiction writers tell us as you are.

Judging from their obscene treatment of Christians, conservatives, and pro-lifers. no media innacuracy or incompetence in fact-reporting would ever surprise me.

I said you probably misunderstand the scientists. Another possibility is that you don’t even know what the scientists really say, seeing it only through the filters of mass media.

I see what they have said about the (inadequacy of) evidence for evolution . . .

. . . But I would trust scientists far more than any other class of people when it comes to selecting credible reports about matters concerning nature’s workings and laws.

But of course; as this is their area of expertise. But by the same token, it is not necessarily the scientist who will believe in or understand an out-of-the-ordinary transcending of these laws by a miracle. Scientists don’t study the supernatural, by and large. Likewise, it is not their place to be making pronouncements that the supernatural does not exist.

In other words, faith yes, blind faith no. Educated guesses yes, prejudiced guesses no.

In this we are one.

Oops! I hope you remember that educated guesses are biased guesses but not prejudiced guesses?

:-) Hopefully!

By contrast, I have letters in my file from theologians and apologists trying to explain to me why God does not want to be tested or why we cannot test the Catholic claims about the Eucharist, for example. A God who refuses to be tested is not a logical God.

There is a sense in which both things are true. We ought to believe, based on what we already know, and not demand proof all the time (after all, what is faith in the first place? It isn’t just the end result of a syllogism). On the other hand, God certainly has given proofs of Himself, in miracles, in the Resurrection, in fulfilled prophecies, in the time-honored wisdom of the moral teaching of the Bible, in changed lives, in the cultural fruit which Christianity has produced (including science itself), etc.

Thanks for a challenging reply to the bias/prejudice/objectivity issue.

You’re welcome.

I break it down in pieces because each needs separate detailed argumentation. I hope my division is agreeable to you and that who is writing is obvious from my format.

I can always tell. You are very inventive in such matters. :-)

Let’s look at your arguments briefly.

1. Shroud of Turin. No proof that it was the body of Jesus. Thousands were crucified like Jesus was. Age of cloth in serious question, not because of test results (they put it consistently in the Middle Ages) but because the samples may have been poorly chosen by Church authorities. We have a good idea how the image was made, but it requires a warm body wrapped in medicinal herbs. In other words, the man was crucified but taken off the cross before he died. Then he was treated to heal his wounds. Other medical evidence indicates the body was not in rigor mortis.

I didn’t expect you to accept any such possible evidence, because you are a Doubting Thomas (and far worse than that in terms of excessive skepticism). I was giving you the reasons why we believe what we do.

2. Incorrupt bodies of saints. I hadn’t heard about Fr. Solanus before. Would his body by any chance be displayed in a glass-wood shrine instead of being buried like everyone else?

Not that I know of. He is under the ground.

The only cases of “incorrupt” bodies I know of are bodies that have been preserved in fairly airtight cases and not exposed to normal decay processes in open air or in the ground.

So you are saying that being in a vacuum would prevent bodily decay (I’m asking; I don’t know – I would have thought not)?

And even if you look at those “incorrupt” bodies, they are not a pretty sight. There is nothing “incorrupt” about them. Unless you call mummies in the pyramids incorrupt too, and why aren’t they saints also?

They are a far cry from mummies. :-) Give me a break. So it looks like your only reply here is the “airtight” one (i.e., in the physics sense, not logically LOLOL).

3. Scrutiny of the Biblical accounts. Even Christians don’t agree on many details of what the Bible says.

So what? As I have stated, you can find a “Christian” who will believe anything these days. I couldn’t care less about what some liberal “Christian” claims is the true Christian teaching. I trace my beliefs back to the Apostles and Jesus, just as the early Christians did.

Luke and Matthew are in clear contradiction on events surrounding the birth of Jesus.

Yeah? Prove it!

Six accounts of the Resurrection in the NT are incompatible.

Prove it.

Three conversion stories of Paul are incompatible. Etc. etc.

Forget the “etc’s” (though they would no doubt be great fun to explore with you too). Just prove the three you have cited. I want to know if your statements have any backbone, or if they are without real substance (as I strongly suspect).

4. Archeology. You’re right that some passages in the Bible agree with archeological evidence. I know a lot of books that agree far better though.

Like what? And how old are those books?

What you show with this argument is that the writers did rely on their own history and sometimes even on events they witnessed. It has no bearing on what God did or did not do.

God entered into history, taking on human flesh in the Incarnation. This is the whole point.

5. Cosmology and teleology. Those concern proofs of existence, not of divine intervention once God created.

It’s not quite that simple, because we Christians say that God continually “sustains all things by his powerful word” (Heb 1:3; NRSV). What science can never prove or disprove is the fact that God created the natural laws (and the universe) which science presupposes and studies, and that He allows them to continue in uniformitarian fashion (excepting miracles). This is a continual involvement in His own creation.

Again, of course you reject that outright, but to believe it requires no violation whatever of the laws of science as we know them, and it is just as good an explanation (I think, far better) of the origins of such order as the atheist view of spontaneous order (and diversity) arising out of nothing, chaos (the Big Bang), and then the homogeneity of hydrogen atoms. In other words, Omnipotent Matter in place of Omnipotent God. The former axiom is no more provable than the latter. Why, then, do you materialist scientists assume that it is? On what basis?

Even if we accept the reasoning as proof [many don’t] there is no way to conclude from there that the God of the Bible is the God whose existence was proved. My logic argument would say it isn’t the God of the Bible.

True; they are two different propositions. I would say such arguments are logically consistent with the biblical God. I have never claimed more for the argument than that. It is a philosophical argument for theism, not a Christian apologetic argument, strictly speaking.

6. Other miracles. Ancient texts are full of descriptions of miracles that even Christians don’t accept. The miracles that the Christians do accept have no more proof going for them than the ones they reject.

What would be an example of a miracle which you would accept — please describe for me sufficient evidence and proof to make you believe the event had happened.

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(originally June 1999)

Photo credit: image by geralt (6-6-15) [Pixabay / CC0 Creative Commons license]

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Dialogue w Agnostic on Common Objections to Christianity

Last updated on: October 15, 2018 at 3:17 pm By Dave Armstrong

The following exchange of amiable private correspondence is reproduced with my opponent, Matt Fahrner’s permission. He has expressed a desire that his letter to me be available in its entirety, for contextual reasons. I have not omitted any part of it below. I thank him for this opportunity to clarify my own beliefs and to present to my website visitors a congenial (and I think constructive and instructive) discussion between a Christian and an agnostic. Matt’s words will be in blue. Indented excerpts are my own words, from another dialogue, with an atheist, to which Matt was responding.

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I have a few issues with this article (and more) that I wanted to voice.

Thank you for the chance to dialogue and clarify.

First I have to be honest that:

a) I’m not nor have ever been a Catholic (my dad was).
b) I’m agnostic at best.
c) I don’t know nearly as much religious literature as either of you do.
d) I have a lot of anger toward religion, mostly related to the fact
that I have seen religion as an extension of authority, hypocritical, inflexible, and elitist.

In short, I’m starting off on the wrong side so forgive me.

I greatly appreciate the admission of biases and predispositions up-front. We all have them, and it is foolish to pretend otherwise.

The breaking-down of the Judaeo-Christian ethical standard is clearly the root cause behind virtually all the chaos and tragedy that we see in our society today.

This implies that when the “Judeo-Christian ethical standard” was in place at some theoretical time in the past that things were better (ie: there wasn’t chaos and tragedy).

Correct, but of course it is a matter of degree (I would argue that the standard was never completely in place anywhere or at any time), and it is an historically subjective judgment as well, not provable in any strict sense. It is true though that the above statement is a bit rhetorically exaggerated, though I stand by the basic, broad truth of it. Nor does it imply that no “chaos and tragedy” existed before in some “Christian” culture. This is a fallen world, which will always have evil and human rebellion in it.

My question is when was this? This is the same argument that flusters me with many conservatives, the implication that things were “better back then…”

It is historically (statistically) demonstrable that in our own country – say, 50 years ago – rates of crime, and things such as divorce, child abuse, promiscuity, spousal abuse, drugs, pornography, and a number of other societal ills, were significantly less than they are now. The rise of these problems was paralleled by the rise of sexual liberalism and the ascendancy of philosophical relativism and a number of adverse trends such as increased hedonism, narcissism, materialism, etc. (i.e., the values of the 60s counterculture). Several books have been written about this – and not just Christian ones, but also secularist sociological analyses. Other wicked practices, notably prejudice and institutional discrimination have – thankfully – declined.

When was “then”? Right after Jesus died, when Romans were persecuting Christians?

At that time, Christians were rescuing babies who were put out by the pagan Romans in the snow to die (much like our partial-birth infanticide today). So at least self-professed Christians were united as to the evil of abortion (unlike today). The profundity of religious commitment often coincides with persecution. It is that, rather than a particular time period, which raised personal morality and commitment to desirable and heroic ethical ideals (in this instance, Christian ones). There were certainly many lousy, hypocritical Christians in the fabled early Church as well, as we learn from Paul’s letters to the Galatians and Corinthians, and also the beginning of the book of Revelation.

But I was speaking of the culture as a whole. It is clear that cultures rise and fall in terms of moral decay and decadence (even viewed apart from a particular religious perspective); that can hardly be denied. The later Roman Empire, periods of Hebrew decadence (as chronicled in the Old Testament), and the mass human sacrifices of the Aztecs come immediately to mind. Those situations were relatively bad periods, compared to other times and places. One can also note the widely-acknowledged revival in England in the 18th century, largely brought on by John Wesley and his social influence. My larger argument was that – all in all – Christianity has had a very positive social affect on cultures.

In the middle ages, when people were repressed, dying of disease, and we had such lovely instruments as the Spanish Inquisition?

There is a pronounced bias against the Middle Ages precisely because it was a period dominated by Christian (Catholic) influence. We see this in the very terminology employed (“Dark Ages,” “Enlightenment,” “Renaissance,” etc.). I have written about aspects of this, but it is a question ultimately for historians. I would say that the 20th century was incalculably worse than any century of the Middle Ages. It was unquestionably more violent and bloody than all previous history put together. And what was the cause of that? Christianity? Hardly! It was Communism (officially and fundamentally atheistic) and Nazism (pagan). Both systems specifically persecuted Christians, among others, which ought to give you a clue of some of the dynamics and causal elements going on there. No secularist has any grounds for feeling morally superior (as a group) to us Christians, given the past 100 years!

The 1700’s when slavery was in vogue and monarch’s heads were coming off?

The Catholic Church repeatedly condemned slavery. This was not a Christian institution per se. It flowed from human greed and the lust for money and free labor, not Christian principles, which were primarily responsible for its abolition (remember the evangelical Wilberforce in England, or the Quakers in the US?). As for monarch’s heads coming off (and heads in general), you must know that the most likely place to see that in the 18th century was in France during the French Revolution, also atheistic and anti-Catholic, and arguably spurned on by the agnostic and atheist (or at least anti-Catholic) philosophes. Christians have had their internecine wars, also, to be sure, but they are clearly no worse (I say, far less destructive) than the wars brought on by secularist, pagan, and nationalist philosophies more recently.

The 1800’s when children were working in mills,

And if you study this, you will find that it was progressive Christian activists who were at the forefront of stopping child labor. These in turn were more numerous as a result of the several major revivals in American history, such as the Great Awakening of the 1840s, which brought about all sorts of positive societal changes, including the seeds of modern feminism, for one.

brothers killing brothers?

This (the American Civil War, I assume you meant) was mainly cultural and political in cause and origin, not predominantly a Christian conflict. I was not arguing for any “Golden Age.” My point was that many of the ills we see today can arguably be traced to a lessening of Christian influence culturally, personally, and especially ethically. I was referring largely to the prevailing ethical relativism today, which is in stark contrast to Christian absolute morality.

The 20’s (WWI)?

That was from 1914-1918, but anyway, this, too, can hardly be blamed on Christianity. Rather, it seems to me that the major cause was nationalism, which Catholicism in particular has played a large role in opposing, as we believe in an overarching society of the Church, which transcends petty nationalism and ethnocentrism.

The 30’s (stock market crash)?

People were more religious then, precisely because they were suffering, and less able to depend on the typical crutches of materialism and financial security, which tends to mitigate against religiosity.

The 40’s (WWII)?

You again miss my point. It can be shown that many social indicators were more healthy and positive in past times in this country – not that there were no problems at all (which would be a silly and absurd proposition).

The 50’s (Cold war, segregation, Korea, Communist witch hunts)? And of course we know all hell broke lose when we got into the 60’s.

See the above.

When was this golden time of “ethical standards”? When haven’t teenagers been having sex out of wedlock?

Oh, if you read, e.g., the famous Kinsey Report on sexual behavior, from the late 40s, you will find that teenagers (especially girls) were far less sexually active than they are now. Virtually no social scientist would dispute that. We had a sexual revolution, after all. It could hardly have been a revolution, if nothing changed.

When haven’t people been killing each other?

Again, if you want to count numbers, secularism, atheism, and paganism have exponentially and astronomically more numbers of victims than religious wars. You can bring up the few thousand executions of the Inquisition (as you did), and ignore the estimated 60 million of the Maoist Revolution (as you did), or the 10 million starved Ukrainians of Stalin (as you did, and as the liberal columnists and useful idiots of that time ignored or overlooked also). And I didn’t even include the multiple millions of legally aborted babies, which long ago put the paltry 6 million of the Holocaust to shame. I have this little proverb I came up with:

“The liberalism of death is the death of liberalism.”

How true that is. Liberalism used to mean caring for the downtrodden, the innocent, the exploited. Well, nothing is more innocent or helpless than a baby in its mother’s womb, being led to slaughter and savage butchery on the altar of personal convenience, expedience, and sexual license without responsibility.

When was the moral character better, because I can easily argue though we may have had times with less sex, those times had far worse things going on.

Some things were worse, such as the wicked racism and other ethnic prejudices, and the treatment of women in many respects. But based on what I have said, I would much rather live in the 30s than in the current era. That said, I do believe a revival is coming which will reform our society again, just as so many of the most decadent centuries in history were followed by great moral and spiritual revivals in the next century (e.g., 13th, 16th, and 19th centuries).

. . . rather than explaining the ill and now manifest consequences of premarital sexual promiscuity?

Assuming people take the proper precautions, other than “Gods wrath”, what are the “ill” consequences of premarital sexual promiscuity?

Higher divorce rates, broken homes, abused children, venereal disease and in some cases AIDS (despite such “precautions), and arguably many other things. Just today, in fact, I heard a sociologist on the radio say that co-habitation increases the chance for a divorce. The silly, misguided “try-before-you-buy” sexual philosophy is a lie. And this guy was not arguing on a religious basis, but on sociological, social-science grounds. He even stated that he was not “a religious person.” Contraception has to be used correctly. But today, if it fails, the woman can always kill the baby. And abortion is no light affair, easily undertaken, no matter what one’s opinion on it is (radical feminists are now saying this). It cannot be denied that the higher abortion rates are due in large part to increased sexual activity.

Birth control is very simple to use, far simpler than arranging a marriage I might add, and highly effective.

One would think so, but the fact of the matter is that it is often used incorrectly. As to the general matter of the evil of contraception (a major factor in my own conversion to Catholicism), and abortion, see my web page Life Issues.

I’m married, but I’ve never regretted even slightly any of my sexual activity before marriage. Yes, I got emotionally hurt at times, but I don’t think it had any relation to sex or lack thereof.

What can I say? My own opinions on this, from an explicitly Christian perspective, are expressed on my Sexuality Web Page.

Frankly I’m of the opinion that its foolish, at least as a man, to get married without having sex with your partner.

The social statistics (as mentioned today by the sociologist referred to above) suggest otherwise. The truth is exactly the opposite (though there will be many exceptions, of course). The happiest, most sexually-satisfied marriages, generally-speaking, are those of committed Christians who waited till they got married. I have seen many social studies supporting that opinion. Promiscuity before marriage is a far greater indicator of sexual problems in marriage and divorce. There are many reasons for that, too complex to delve into here.

I honestly believe there is no way to differentiate “lust” from “love” until you’ve gotten past the “lust” part.

That’s a common opinion today, I suppose. I think it is very sad and unfortunate, both for legitimate romance, true respect for women, and for marriages.

One can spurn that grace and become overly skeptical, and adopt fallacious objections.

Just as one can spurn skepticism and adopt fallacious faith.

Sure one can. As for myself, I can and do defend my faith rationally, as presently, and all over my website. Can you do the same with regard to your viewpoint?

Not if they are closed-minded as you seem to be. If they are open at all to the evidence, there is plenty.

Closed-mindedness goes both ways.

Indeed it does.

Clearly you have left yourself room for little doubt.

I’m always willing to change my mind, and I have on almost every major issue I have considered in depth. Can you say the same? I used to believe almost everything you have expressed.

Have you ever spent significant time trying to disprove God?

In effect, yes, as I familiarized myself with the many philosophical arguments against God. Have you spent significant time studying the theistic and Christian proofs for God?

Have you ever seriously entertained doubt without the expectation of the return to faith (ie: with faith having actually and truly left you)?

No, but I have bolstered my faith by a long study (now 19 years) of apologetics, which helps one’s faith, as it is seen (in my strong opinion) that Christian faith is the most rational outlook or worldview to have. I am most willing to give up faith as well, if compelled by reason (or even some profound experience) to do so. But Christianity is not simply a rational thing; faith transcends mere reason, though it is not irrational. Long discussion . . .

Have you ever grasped upon one exceptional glaring flaw that you cannot gloss over with “faith”?

I think the problem of evil is a very troubling philosophical problem (about the best objection to Christianity skeptics can argue), but I think that the Christian answers to it are sufficient enough that it does not affect my overall faith. I think the evil in the universe, assuming that there is no God, would be an infinitely more troubling and terrifying affair, as there would be no ultimate meaning of, or escape from, the suffering and evil.

Because I believe with an issue as complicated as this that atheist, agnostic, or faithful alike will be compelled to find huge flaws that cannot be solved in their viewpoints.

I appreciate the fairness of this analysis. Obviously, I think our answers to the charges against us and the God we believe in are more satisfying than the answers (or, in my experience, non-answers and silence) that atheists and agnostics give to our objections to their systems of belief. I agree that all systems have problems. We would expect that. I say ours are not fatal to our beliefs, whereas, in my opinion, yours are.

while still being justifiably skeptical about present evolutionary theory. The least you could do is admit that you don’t have anything to offer the world which is superior (or even equal) to what Christianity has offered it (even considered apart from its ultimate truthfulness).

Huh? I can understand your personal choice to be skeptical about Darwinism, but to imply the Bible has something more to offer on this is absurd. There isn’t the least bit of empirical evidence supporting the Judeo-Christian theory on creationism. All there is is simple hearsay.

You are mixing apples and oranges here. I don’t use biblical arguments in my critiques of materialistic evolutionary theory (not all evolutionary theory), but philosophical and scientific ones. My critique is philosophically complex and much more nuanced and subtle.

Evolution and natural selection can literally be shown in your own house. Use Raid on ants, the ones that live were more resistant and go on to reproduce a stronger, now “evolved” offspring. Same problem with antibiotics, hence our current issues with TB.

I agree with this, because it comes under the category of microevolution, which I accept. But that is far different than macroevolution, which assuredly has not been demonstrated (not in terms of pure materialism).

:-) Your favorite charge! Can’t you ever flat-out disagree with a viewpoint without making the ubiquitous charge of circularity?

Well, circular argument is par for the course for Christianity isn’t it?

No, not in an informed presentation and understanding, but go ahead and make your argument.

1) The Bible is the word of god – according to what? The Bible (maybe other religious writings, but same problem). Zero empirical proof.

No; rather, things like fulfilled prophecy, accuracy about various scientific/philosophical issues (e.g., creation ex nihilo, which is consistent with present Big Bang cosmology, which holds that the universe had a beginning). Also, there are many historical arguments, such as the evidences for the resurrection of Jesus; other miracles consistent with a biblical view, etc.

2) We need God to forgive us for our sins. Where did those sins come from? God. Believe me, I would have never felt bad about sex and felt I needed forgiveness if I wasn’t brought up in religious dogma.

This is a variant of the problem of evil. There are philosophical and/or Christian answers for this. One may think they are lousy answers, but they are not circular. I wouldn’t expect you to feel bad about sex, being brought up in this present cultural milieu. We believe that one’s conscience can be dulled and stunted. This is no difficulty for our position.

3) You need faith to go to heaven. What if I want to question that premise? You don’t have faith and you won’t go to heaven (kills religious discourse pretty quick I must say – better have faith and shut up).

Well, I agree that this is a stupid, insubstantial presentation of the cogency and rationality of Christian faith. If this is how it has been presented to you, I assure you that you have not been in the circles where you would receive an infinitely better presentation of Christianity (which I can relate to as well, as this was the case with me until about age 23). I would hope that my website is one such place, where you can see what sort of arguments we can bring to bear; as opposed to this silly, caricatured, simpleton, garden-variety “pop” version of “Christianity” you describe.

4) God is perfect. According to what? God.

:-) Ditto.

That’s just a few.

Oh, I could come up with at least as many objections to agnosticism, believe me. And my objections usually go unanswered (again, I speak from 19 years of experience dialoguing on these matters). whereas I have carefully tried to answer yours, or refer you to papers which attempt to answer them.

That’s not to say I don’t believe in God. I really don’t know what I believe,

Fair enough.

except I do believe:

1) The Bible was written by men and thus reflects the words and opinions of the men who wrote it. It may contain the word of God, but it is not THE word of God. I challenge you to prove me otherwise without referencing the bible or some other religious document.

It certainly was written by men, but they were inspired by God.

2) I don’t think God according to the Bible is perfect. I think this was added on after the fact to shut off religious argument.

By whom? When? Prove it!

If God is perfect you can’t argue can you? It seems clear that there are multiple occasions that God “corrects” himself. More modern revisionists have chosen to make all sorts of excuses for this but it seems to be BS to me.

This gets into exegesis (interpreting the Bible and cross-reference) and as such is far beyond the present discussion. Many of these questions require huge discussions themselves. That is what my website was designed to tackle.

3) Even if they are the words of God I don’t in my heart agree with them all. I think no amount of “enlightenment” will change that.

It requires faith, but such faith is not irrational.

I don’t want to go to Hell if there is one, but I have to say this: I’d rather be honest to myself in hell, than a liar in heaven.

Wait till you get there, then give me your opinion as to how pleasant a place it is. :-) I’m half-joking . . . Secondly, you don’t have to be intellectually dishonest to be a Christian (rightly-understood). I certainly don’t feel that way at all, or else I wouldn’t believe as I do, since I take a very high view of reason and consistency.

I’d hope, if he’s as good as he claims, that he would appreciate someone who’s being honest about their feelings, not just kissing up. What kind of faith is that after all?

I agree that faith must be intellectually credible. I think that Christian faith is. You just have to do more reading. Start with my website. There is plenty of food for thought there, to stimulate your intellect, believe me.

As a last note, just because I’m getting so tired as to be stupid, why do we as a “Christian society” spend so much time worrying about sex, homosexuality, and adultery when there are so many other sins that we seem to ignore?

Because — for one reason — the family, and by extension, sexual morality, are the bedrocks of stable society. These are very important issues. I do agree that Christians tend to deal with sexual matters too much and ignore other issues such as poverty, the treatment of minorities, etc. Why that is would be a long discussion. But then I could say that non-Christians are just as selectively indignant, if not more so. They will ignore the evils of Communism or abortion, while they simultaneously decry capital punishment and apartheid (now just a memory, while the persecution of Christians in China goes on unabated). The argument works both ways.

I mean, why does the Pope spend so much time worrying about sex and not reminding us that:

A camel will sooner fit through the eye of a needle, than a rich man get to heaven.

(or something like that).

The pope does talk quite a bit about world conditions and the evil of materialism. I doubt that you have read much of his writings. You parrot so many of the typical caricatures. What have you read about Christianity, anyway?

I mean in a society hopelessly lost in materialism which is threatening to consume the very Earth on which we depend, comparatively sex seems like a tiny detail.

I think both things are very important. I don’t have to choose one and deny the wrongness of the other, as you are doing.

Uh, duh, now I’m really getting stupid. Feel free to ignore me.

:-) No; I thought this was an excellent chance to dialogue. Thank you.

Take care, and I eagerly look forward to your return letter.

***

(originally 8-3-00)

Photo credit: Picture by Hay Kranen / PD (10-10-06) [public domain / Wikimedia Commons]

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Dialogue: Church Fathers on Perspicuity & Sola Scriptura

Last updated on: October 15, 2018 at 2:46 pm By Dave Armstrong

Perspicuity is a fancy word for “clearness” / ease of understanding of Scripture. Carmen Bryant is a Baptist missionary and Bible scholar (M.A. and Th.M. from Western Seminary). Her words will be in blue.

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The Views of the Early Church in General

A study of the development of the doctrine Perspicuity of Scripture will show that it was not a teaching invented during the Protestant Reformation but a resurrected one.

This I deny. I affirm precisely what Carmen denies, and will copiously document this below. Various aspects of the teaching can be found in the Fathers (just as in my own view and the present-day Catholic one), but not the doctrine in its entirety, which presupposes that Scripture is the formal rule of faith apart from the Church. I maintain that that notion must be anachronistically imposed on the Fathers in order for the “case” for perspicuity amongst the Fathers to succeed.

In looking at this doctrine in church history, it is of paramount importance to recognize that in spite of its name, Perspicuity does not mean that there is nothing obscure in Scripture. The reasons for labeling the doctrine Perspicuity of Scripture are more historical than lexicographical. In addition to whatever internal obscurity might already exist, there were external conditions imposed on Scripture that resulted in its meaning being almost totally hidden to the Christian population.

This is also a slander (knowingly or not) against the Catholic Church and its care and preservation of the Scriptures throughout the ages. No Protestant — knowing the facts of history — could have less than a tremendous gratitude towards the Catholic Church for its transmittance of Holy Scripture down to the 16th century and afterwards. The destructive theological liberalism and Higher Criticism of the Bible with which we deal today, on the other hand, originally came out of a totally Protestant milieu (largely the aftermath of Lutheran pietism in Germany; late 18th and early 19th centuries).

So I submit that if we are to examine influences destructive of a high view of Scripture as divinely-inspired, we must look far beyond the Catholic Church. Yet Carmen nowhere mentions these historical influences; only the Catholic Church is singled out, as if it were the enemy of the Scriptures, and popular knowledge of its teachings. That is sheer nonsense – the exact opposite of the truth -, as I will demonstrate as we proceed.

The Apostolic Church*

In the Church of New Testament times, Perspicuity of Scripture was assumed, not debated. The apostles used the Old Testament Scriptures to validate their message that Jesus of Nazareth was the promised Messiah. Such a methodology could succeed because God’s message in Scripture was in fact clear to the listener.

This is no proof of perspicuity. It merely illustrates that the Apostles appealed to Scripture as the central element of their apologetic, just as the Fathers and Catholics have always done. There was still need of an authoritative interpreter. Furthermore, what is pointed to here is contained in the Bible itself; the Apostles were authoritative interpreters of the Old Testament Scriptures. They are in a far different category than Joe X. Protestant today with a Bible in his hand and a supposed direct line to the Holy Spirit for guidance. Secondly, they (especially St. Paul) continually appealed to the “tradition” passed down or handed down, which they had received from Our Lord Jesus Himself.

In that way they were again of one mind with the Fathers and Catholic methodology, which stresses apostolic succession and continuity of developing Christian doctrine, derived from the original deposit of faith. Thirdly, they did not deny the absolute necessity of a visible, institutional Church with real authority. So on all these counts, the analogy of the NT writers citing the OT is far more in line with Catholicism than Protestantism.

The apostles could reason with their listeners by appealing to Scriptures they already knew and understood. In this the apostles followed the same methodology as their Master, who repeatedly referred to the teachings of the Hebrew Scriptures in order to back up his own. Jesus rebuked his listeners for having trouble understanding him — not because they could not understand the words he was saying but because they were spiritually unprepared. The words were clear enough, but their hearts belonged to Satan and could not receive Jesus’ teachings.

Jesus was also there to correct misunderstandings; this is the whole point. He could rebuke them (as in John 6, when they – like most Protestants today – refused to accept a literal Eucharist) because He had the full authority – as God – to offer an authoritative commentary. Therefore one cannot conclude from this example that “perspicuity” as an abstract concept can ever exist apart from the authority of Jesus and the Apostles and – by extension – the Church, of which they and their successors the bishops and popes were the leaders.

One can’t (if they are to be intellectually and exegetically honest) cite the Bible (or the Fathers) so selectively. Appeals to the OT are thought to be proof positive of perspicuity, yet the accompanying variables of Church and Tradition (also thoroughly biblical) are ignored as of no import or consequence. Thus the view which purports to be so “biblical” ironically becomes radically unbiblical in its extreme selectivity and arbitrariness as to which biblical passages it will recognize and which it will blithely ignore.

Similarly, the apostles and other leaders of the newly founded Church used the narratives, prophecies and wisdom literature of the Old Testament to convict both Jews and Gentiles of eternal truth. They expected their readers and listeners to understand not just the mere statements but also their spiritual significance. Spiritual understanding is a gift from God to all who are redeemed, a gift that is expected to grow to completeness, even to the point of fathoming the treasures of wisdom and knowledge that are in Christ. Believers who remain at the elementary level are rebuked. The apostles were operating on the principles of Perspicuity: all those who truly belong to God are expected to grow in their understanding of what is revealed in Scripture because of the work of God’s Spirit within. Unbelievers, on the other hand, are limited in their understanding because their hearts are not prepared to receive spiritual wisdom.

None of this proves perspicuity. This is a collection of truths with which Catholics wholeheartedly agree, and half-truths which omit aspects of the Church and Tradition which cannot be so easily dismissed, if one wishes to maintain a truly biblical worldview, taking into account all of Holy Scripture, not just verses which appear on the surface to support perspicuity. Protestants – try as they may – simply cannot rationalize away the fact that both Tradition and a visible, institutional, apostolic, catholic (universal) Church are present and non-optional in the New Testament.

The Post-Apostolic Period

When the first post-apostolic authors cited Scripture, they were still referring primarily to the Septuagint version of the Hebrew Bible. Copies of the gospels and epistles circulated among the churches and were considered authoritative as Scripture if genuinely apostolic, but no one had yet gathered these documents into a cohesive collection. The writings of this period were aimed principally at combating false doctrine, especially Gnosticism, that was threatening the purity of the faith as handed down by the apostles. Although a complete doctrine of the Perspicuity of Scripture was not formulated until centuries later, we can still determine what the early writers believed about Perspicuity by observing the way they used Scripture in their fight against the aberrant beliefs that arose under the name of Christianity.

I shall maintain below again and again that late-arriving, novel Protestant views are being superimposed back upon the Fathers. The Protestant bias and great desire to claim the Fathers for themselves — to find some modicum of historical support for late Protestant inventions — has made it difficult for objective historical analysis to take place. We see this quite frequently in anti-Catholic polemicists such as William Webster, Eric Svendsen, and James White. They have been corrected by Catholic apologists time and again, to no avail. I have myself debated both Webster and White via mail or on my website, and neither offers the slightest counter-reply.

I shall begin my historical analysis of the Fathers and their view of Scripture and Tradition (and also that of Catholicism) with some general observations by six Protestant scholars:

How do we know that what the church says is true? The Roman Catholic answer to this question is the clearest answer that has ever been formulated . . .

The ‘Roman Catholic consequences’ begin to emerge with the assertion that the Church, through its bishops, is the guardian of tradition. The task of the church is to see that the gospel is handed down without being corrupted. Since not all the nuances of the faith are explicitly developed in the Bible, it is the contribution of tradition to take what is only implicit in Scripture, and make it explicit in the church. Thus tradition is creative and dynamic, and the church sees to it that tradition neither contradicts itself nor becomes inconsistent with the Biblical witness. This means that Scripture and tradition are two sources of truth and must not be separated. If they are, so the view maintains, disaster follows. The Reformers asserted that tradition had distorted the Biblical witness . . .Roman Catholics believe, more fervently than Protestants imagine, that Scripture and tradition are complementary rather than antithetical sources of truth. (Robert McAfee Brown, The Spirit of Protestantism, Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1961, 172-173, 214)

A Bible-only mentality virtually equates spiritual reality with the text of Scripture itself, whereas the Scripture is a pointer to or a witness to that reality . . . There is a difference between being biblical and biblicistic (i.e., employing the Bible-only mentality). There is a difference between honoring ‘sola scriptura’ and bibliolatry (the excess veneration of Scripture). . . . On more than one occasion it has been pointed out that the Bible-only view of Scripture is very much like the Muslim view of Scripture . . . Muslims believe that the earthly Qu’ran is a perfect copy of an actual Qu’ran in Paradise . . . The Christian view of Scripture is that there is a human and historical dimension to Scripture . . . Scripture is not the totality of all God has said and done in this world. Scripture is that part of revelation and history specially chosen for the life of the people of God through centuries. ‘Sola scriptura’ means that the canon of Scripture is the final authority in the church; it does not claim to be the record of all God has said and done . . . Patient research in the matter of tradition has brought to the surface the good side of the concept. Paul himself uses the language of tradition in a good sense (1 Cor. 11:23, 15:3). Both Roman Catholic and Protestant scholars have been coming closer and closer in a newer and better notion of tradition on both sides. For example, they agree that much of the revelation given in the period of time contained in the Book of Genesis must have been carried on as tradition . . . In the Christian period the bridge between Christ and the written documents of the New Testament was certainly tradition. The ‘sola scriptura’ of the Reformers did not mean a total rejection of tradition. It meant that only Scripture had the final word on a subject . . . If we reject church tradition we have no idea what the New Testament is attempting to communicate. There is no question that the great majority of American evangelicals are not happy to have such a large weight given to tradition. Even so . . . might we not be heirs of tradition in such a manner that we are not aware of it? However we vote on this issue, it remains true that scholars no longer can talk about Scripture and totally ignore tradition . . . If a Christian could not have his own Scripture until the time of printing and its translation into modern languages, then the kind of Christianity the Bible-only mentality accepts could not have existed until the sixteenth century . . . If copies of the Holy Scripture were rare because of the expensive cost of reproduction by hand-copying then there must have been other valid sources through which the laymen could know the contents of the Christian faith. Such may be: the preaching of the bishop in the early church . . . ; the sacraments and the liturgy which used biblical themes, biblical personalities, and quotations from Scripture so that solid biblical truth could be learned indirectly . . . ; church architecture, decorations within a church, and other forms of Christian art which reflected biblical themes and materials. This is not an exhaustive list but it does show how the millions of Christians . . . could have had a substantial understanding of the Christian faith prior to the invention of printing. And if one has such a perspective on the whole history of the church he need not be caught in the logical box to which the Bible-only mentality leads . . . so narrow that it becomes self-defeating. (Bernard Ramm, in Rogers, Jack B., editor, Biblical Authority, Waco, Texas: Word Books, 1977, “Is ‘Scripture Alone’ the Essence of Christianity?’, 116-17, 119, 121-122)

The ‘sola scriptura’ principle does not exclude a respectful listening to the wisdom of the past. For we stand in a community of faith and cannot leap over two thousand years of Christian history in disregard of the prodigious labors already done . . . Biblicism is an antitraditional preoccupation with the Bible. It limits its interests to the Bible alone and does not seek nor accept the guidance and correction which the history of exegesis affords. There is something audacious about such a leap from the twentieth century back into the first century without even a glance at the ways in which Scripture has hitherto been understood. Indeed, in such a case there is the real danger that the interpreter will bring the Bible under his own control. Every explicit denial of tradition involves a hidden commitment to a personal brand of tradition. (Clark Pinnock, Biblical Revelation, Chicago: Moody Press, 1971, 118-119)

As regards the pre-Augustinian Church, there is in our time a striking convergence of scholarly opinion that Scripture and Tradition are for the early Church in no sense mutually exclusive: kerygma, Scripture and Tradition coincide entirely. The Church preaches the kerygma which is to be found in toto in written form in the canonical books.

The Tradition is not understood as an addition to the kerygma contained in Scripture but as the handing down of that same kerygma in living form: in other words everything is to be found in Scripture and at the same time everything is in the living Tradition. It is in the living, visible Body of Christ, inspired and vivified by the operation of the Holy Spirit, that Scripture and Tradition coinhere . . . Both Scripture and Tradition issue from the same source: the Word of God, Revelation . . . Only within the Church can this kerygma be handed down undefiled . . . (Heiko Oberman, The Harvest of Medieval Theology, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, revised 1967 edition, 366-367)

Clearly it is an anachronism to superimpose upon the discussions of the second and third centuries categories derived from the controversies over the relation of Scripture and tradition in the 16th century, for ‘in the ante-Nicene Church . . . there was no notion of sola Scriptura, but neither was there a doctrine of traditio sola.’. . . (1)

The apostolic tradition was a public tradition . . . So palpable was this apostolic tradition that even if the apostles had not left behind the Scriptures to serve as normative evidence of their doctrine, the church would still be in a position to follow ‘the structure of the tradition which they handed on to those to whom they committed the churches (2).’ This was, in fact, what the church was doing in those barbarian territories where believers did not have access to the written deposit, but still carefully guarded the ancient tradition of the apostles, summarized in the creed . . . The term ‘rule of faith’ or ‘rule of truth’ . . . seems sometimes to have meant the ‘tradition,’ sometimes the Scriptures, sometimes the message of the gospel . . . In the . . . Reformation . . . the supporters of the sole authority of Scripture . . . overlooked the function of tradition in securing what they regarded as the correct exegesis of Scripture against heretical alternatives. (Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine: Vol. 1 of 5: The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600), Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1971, 115-17, 119; citations: 1. In Cushman, Robert E. and Egil Grislis, editors, The Heritage of Christian Thought: Essays in Honor of Robert Lowry Calhoun, New York: 1965, quote from Albert Outler, “The Sense of Tradition in the Ante-Nicene Church,” 29. 2. St. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 3:4:1)

It should be unnecessary to accumulate further evidence. Throughout the whole period Scripture and tradition ranked as complementary authorities, media different in form but coincident in content. To inquire which counted as superior or more ultimate is to pose the question in misleading terms. If Scripture was abundantly sufficient in principle, tradition was recognized as the surest clue to its interpretation, for in tradition the Church retained, as a legacy from the apostles which was embedded in all the organs of her institutional life, an unerring grasp of the real purport and meaning of the revelation to which Scripture and tradition alike bore witness. (J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1978, 47-48)

Catholic apologist Joe Gallegos expands upon these comments, and offers the Catholic outlook on the patristic perspective of these matters:

[E]ven though the Catholic Church and the early Fathers admit a material sufficiency of the Bible it maintains that Tradition, Church and Scripture are inseparable…and that the one cannot understand the meaning of the Sacred Scripture without Tradition and Church! That is why the early Fathers can admit a sufficiency of the Bible and the existence of unwritten traditions at the same time….In sum, the Fathers admitted a material sufficiency of the Bible but no less affirmed its formal ‘insufficiency’! All things can be found within the pages of Holy Writ (implicitly or explicitly) but for a proper and authentic understanding of Scripture something else is required–that is, Tradition and Church.

*

Vincent of Lerins make the same point. We read in his Commonitories:

*

Here perhaps, someone may ask: Since the canon of the Scripture is complete and more than sufficient in itself, why is it necessary to add to it the authority of ecclesiastical interpretation? As a matter of fact, [we must answer] Holy Scripture, because of its depth, is not universally accepted in one and the same sense. The same text is interpreted different by different people, so that one may almost gain the impression that it can yield as many different meanings as there are men. Novatian, for example, expounds a passage in one way; Sabellius, in another; Donatus, in another. Arius, and Eunomius, and Macedonius read it differently; so do Photinus, Apollinaris, and Priscillian; in another way, Jovian, Pelagius, and Caelestius; finally still another way, Nestorius. Thus, becuase of the great distortions caused by various errors, it is, indeed, necessary that the trend of the interpretation of the prophetic and apostolic writings be directed in accordance with the rule of the ecclesiastical and Catholic meaning. (Comm 2)

*

. . . The point of controversy in these set of replies is this: did the Fathers affirm the Catholic rule of faith consisting of Scripture, Tradition and Church or did they affirm the Protestant rule of faith (Sola Scriptura) which interprets Scripture via private exegesis?

*

. . . the Catholic Church affirms and admits the ‘material’ sufficiency (apart from the canonical issues of the Bible) of both the Scriptures itself and Tradition itself….both have the same Divine origin and but differ in modes only…. That is why the Catholic Church will NOT base a doctrine (apart from canon of the Bible) only on tradition alone or on Scripture alone–the belief must find a touchstone in both! For example, in Ott’s “Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma” you will find Ott religiously appealing to BOTH Scripture and Tradition. All doctrines of the Catholic faith are found explicitly or implicitly in the pages of Holy Writ…the same goes for Tradition. Tradition has some advantages (there are others): 1) it permits fullness, which the written text would have narrowed down to the limits of clear exposition and 2) it is by it’s nature a community phenomenon — whereas the text could be read by an individual by him or herself, tradition by it’s very nature fufills the communal aspects of Church. Scripture too has some advantages(there are others): 1) has the dignity which always and everywhere has gained for itself, 2) contain the actual words of Our Lord and Savior, and 3) It is fixed under one cover. In sum, Tradition allows the Church to preserve God’s saving Word in it’s fullness while Scripture ensures the preservation of it’s purity! (From the web page St. Athanasius, the Scriptures, Tradition, and the Church (Joe Gallegos vs. James White), an excellent debate highly-related to the present one. See also Joe Gallegos’ page Material Sufficiency and Sola Scriptura in the Fathers (Contra William Webster) )

For the sake of space, I cannot cite every quote from the Fathers which Carmen presents (nor those patristic opinions or quotes which present no particular difficulty for the Catholic position). Rather, I will let her summarize her conclusions about what particular Fathers taught, and then present countering citations and evidences. I again urge readers to consult Carmen’s original paper in order to read her arguments in their full context.

Many Fathers are passed over which could easily be brought forth as fruitful witnesses for the Catholic viewpoint of the Fathers and Scripture/Tradition. The argument, remember, was that this view was that of the early Church, and that Protestants merely re-introduced it. I find the evidence presented as quite weak and unconvincing (there would be hundreds of patristic proof texts if Protestants are right about this), whereas the counter evidence which could easily be presented is overwhelming and irrefutable.

St. Clement of Rome (fl. c. 96)*

Clement, bishop of Rome in the last decade of the first century, frequently cites the Old Testament in his letter to the Corinthians about 96 AD. He does not explain the cited passage but assumes that his readers will understand the plain sense of the words and agree with his use of it . . . Scripture is plain enough to be understood and applied by all.

Yet St. Clement also espouses tradition (he doesn’t seem to speak the “biblical” evangelical lingo):

Let us conform to the glorious and holy rule of our tradition. (Letter to Corinthians 7:2)

Furthermore, Clement teaches apostolic succession in 42:1-4 and 44:1-4, and held that bishops were a permanent office and continuation of the apostolic ministry. He himself exercised a robust authority, which Catholics regard as papal (Clement being a bishop of Rome). He speaks to the church at Corinth as if it was in subjection to himself and the Church of Rome:

But if certain people should disobey what has been said by him through us, let them understand that they will entangle themselves in no small sin and danger. (59:1)

Lastly, Clement cites as “Scripture” in 23:3-4 a source which is not in the Bible as later determined. It is also cited in 2 Clement 11:2-3 (not considered to have been written by Clement, however). Anglican scholar J. B. Lightfoot speculated that the citation was from the lost book of Eldad and Modat mentioned in the Shepherd of Hermas (Vis. 2.3.4).

St. Irenaeus (c. 130 – c. 202)

. . . Irenaeus acknowledges that “simple-minded” people can be led astray by such twisting of Scripture, but only because these persons do not know enough of Scripture to keep them from being deceived. When the various passages are put back in their right order and context, the sense is clear to the one who has accepted the truth “received at baptism.”

In like manner he also who retains unchangeable — in his heart the rule of the truth which he received by means of baptism, will doubtless recognise the names, the expressions, and the parables taken from the Scriptures, but will by no means acknowledge the blasphemous use which these men make of them. But when he has restored every one of the expressions quoted to its proper position, and has fitted it to the body of the truth, he will lay bare, and prove to be without any foundation, the figment of these heretics.

. . . Thus Irenaeus sets forth and practices another principle of the doctrine of Perspicuity of Scripture that was to be stated more formally in later times: What is obscure in one portion of Scripture is made clear in another portion. The explanations of the more obscure portions are within Scripture itself. The believer needs to study and meditate upon the entire Word in order to find the sense that God intended.

Irenaeus interprets types, symbols and parables with Christ as the center of his hermeneutic. For him, the true interpretation of the Scriptures lies with the Church, because the Church has inherited its doctrines from the apostles of Christ. In the context of Against Heresies, the Church stands in contrast to those who have broken away from the mainstream, the Gnostic heretics that have either twisted Scripture or done away with the portions that are not suitable to their doctrine. There is no differentiation made among persons within the Church that would indicate some are qualified to read and interpret Scripture while others should be hindered. All are encouraged to learn, and the amount of understanding will vary with the study and meditation given to the Scripture — as well as the measure of love that a person has for God.

But St. Irenaeus, too, accepts authoritative Tradition and apostolic succession (as Carmen — contrary to her overall argument — admits: “For him, the true interpretation of the Scriptures lies with the Church, because the Church has inherited its doctrines from the apostles of Christ”), in contrast to later Protestant beliefs about Scripture Alone as the rule of faith (a host of other citations could easily be brought forth – see the web pages above):

When, however, they are confuted from the Scriptures, they turn round and accuse these same Scriptures, as if they were not correct, nor of authority, and [assert] that they are ambiguous, and that the truth cannot be extracted from them by those who are ignorant of tradition . . . It comes to this, therefore, that these men do now consent neither to Scripture or tradition. (Against Heresies 3, 2:1)

Suppose there arise a dispute relative to some important question among us, should we not have recourse to the most ancient Churches with which the apostles held constant intercourse, and learn from them what is certain and clear in regard to the present question? For how should it be if the apostles themselves had not left us writings? Would it not be necessary, [in that case,] to follow the course of the tradition which they handed down to those to whom they did commit the Churches? (Against Heresies 3, 4:1)

*

But, again, when we refer them to that tradition which originates from the apostles, [and] which is preserved by means of the successions of presbyters in the Churches, they object to tradition, saying they themselves are wiser. (Against Heresies 3, 2:2)

Protestant scholar Ellen Flessman-van Leer, in her Tradition and Scripture in the Early Church (Van Gorcum, 1953, pp. 139 and 188), writes:

For Irenaeus, on the other hand, tradition and scripture are both quite unproblematic. They stand independently side by side, both absolutely authoritative, both unconditionally true, trustworthy, and convincing.

Irenaeus and Tertullian point to the church tradition as the authoritative locus of the unadulterated teaching of the apostles, they cannot longer appeal to the immediate memory, as could the earliest writers. Instead they lay stress on the affirmation that this teaching has been transmitted faithfully from generation to generation. One could say that in their thinking, apostolic succession occupies the same place that is held by the living memory in the Apostolic Fathers.

St. Irenaeus did not accept the New Testament we have today. He did not consider 2 Peter, Jude or Hebrews scriptural, but did include the Shepherd of Hermas in the canon.

The School of Alexandria and Allegorical Interpretation

Next, it is argued that the exegetical School of Alexandria, and Fathers such as Clement of Alexandria and Origen, following Philo and Platonic thought, introduced foreign Greek philosophies into biblical commentary and hermeneutics, thus poisoning the well for perspicuity and popular understanding of the “clear” Scripture for subsequent generations throughout the Middle Ages until Luther and Calvin restored the true belief once again:

Origen further developed what was begun by Clement. Origen is especially significant because his allegorical methods established the hermeneutical methodology for the Church throughout the Middle Ages, and to some extent even to the present. Origen was also from Alexandria and a controversial figure even in his own time. He combined his Platonic philosophy with Christianity, particularly in the interpretation of Scripture, applying a body-soul-spirit theory to the Word of God. Many of the narratives were impossible happenings in his view. If Scripture really was divine literature, such narratives had to have a spiritual or mystical meaning. He did not completely do away with the literal, but nevertheless put his emphasis upon the spiritual.

. . . However, which narratives were to be understood literally, and which ones only spiritually? The logical outcome of this method would be the giving over to the trained leadership of the Church the responsibility to hear, read and study the Scriptures. Origen’s interpretative methods obscured much of Scripture and removed the possibility of profitable study for the average “untrained” Christian who would not be able to discern “literal narrative” from “spiritual narrative.”

In the online Catholic Encyclopedia article on Biblical Exegesis (by A. J. Maas), a summary of the Fathers’ approach to the literal and allegorical senses of Scripture, particularly that of Origen, who was an exception to the rule, is laid out:

The Fathers of the Church were not blind to the fact that the literal sense in some Scripture passages appears to imply great incongruities, not to say insuperable difficulties. On the other hand, they regarded the language of the Bible as truly human language, and therefore always endowed with a literal sense, whether proper or figurative. Moreover, St. Jerome (in Is., xiii, 19), St. Augustine (De tent. Abrah. serm. ii, 7), St. Gregory (Moral., i, 37) agree with St. Thomas (Quodl., vii, Q. vi, a. 14) in his conviction that the typical sense is always based on the literal and springs from it. Hence if these Fathers had denied the existence of a literal sense in any passage of Scripture, they would have left the passage meaningless. Where the patristic writers appear to reject the literal sense, they really exclude only the proper sense, leaving the figurative.

*

Origen (De princ., IV, xi) may be regarded as the only exception to this rule; since he considers some of the Mosaic laws as either absurd or impossible to keep, he denies that they must be taken in their literal sense. But even in his case, attempts have been made to give to his words a more acceptable meaning (cf. Vincenzi, “In S. Gregorii Nysseni et Origenis scripta et doctrinam nova recensio”, Rome, 1864, vol. II, cc. xxv-xxix). The great Alexandrian Doctor distinguishes between the body, the soul, and the spirit of Scripture. His defendants believe that he understands by these three elements its proper, its figurative, and its typical sense respectively. He may, therefore, with impunity deny the existence of any bodily sense in a passage of Scripture without injury to its literal sense. But it is more generally admitted that Origen went astray on this point, because he followed Philo’s opinion too faithfully. . . . It was Origen, too, who fully developed the hermeneutical principles which distinguish the Alexandrian School, though they are not applied in their entirety by any other Father.

Note that Origen’s views were not accepted as exegetical and hermeneutical norms for “official” Catholic interpretation. Carmen’s opinion above, therefore, is incorrect, and overly-broad. The historical truth about medieval and present-day Catholic exegesis is much more nuanced and complex. Origen spoke for himself in this instance, and he was wrong.

The same article elaborates upon the history and biblical basis for the “mystical” or “spiritual” or “typical” (typological) sense of Scripture (bolded emphasis added):

The typical sense has its name from the fact that it is based on the figurative or typical relation of Biblical persons, or objects, or events, to a new truth. This latter is called the antitype, while its Biblical correspondent is named the type. The typical sense is also called the spiritual, or mystical, sense: mystical, because of its more recondite nature; spiritual, because it is related to the literal, as the spirit is related to the body. What we call type is called shadow, allegory, parable, by St. Paul (cf. Rom., v, 14; I Cor., x, 6; Heb., viii, 5; Gal, iv, 24; Heb., ix, 9); once he refers to it as antitype (Heb., ix, 24), though St. Peter applies this term to the truth signified (I Pet., iii, 21) . . .

*

Scripture and tradition agree in their testimony for the occurrence of the typical sense in certain passages of the Old Testament. Among the Scriptural texts which establish the typical sense, we may appeal to Col., ii, 16-17; Heb., viii, 5; ix, 8-9; Rom., v, 14; Gal., iv, 24; Matt., ii, 15 (cf. Os., xi, 1); Heb., i, 5 (cf. II K., vii, 14). The testimony of tradition concerning this subject may be gathered from Barnabas (Ep., 7, 8, 9, 12, etc.), St. Clement of Rome (I Cor., xii), St. Justin, Dial. c. Tryph., civ, 42), St. Irenaeus (Adv. haer., IV, xxv, 3; II, xxiv, 2 sqq.; IV, xxvi, 2), Tertullian (Adv. Marc., V, vii); St. Jerome (Ep. liii, ad Paulin., 8), St. Thomas (I, Q. i, a. 10), and a number of other patristic writers and Scholastic theologians. That the Jews agree with the Christian writers on this point, may be inferred from Josephus (Antiq., XVII, iii, 4; Pro m. Antiq., n. 4; III, vi, 4, 77; De bello Jud., V, vi, 4), the Talmud (Berachot, c. v, ad fin.; Quiddus, fol. 41, col. 1), and the writings of Philo (de Abraham; de migrat. Abraham; de vita contempl.), though this latter writer goes to excess in the allegorical interpretation . . .

*

All Catholic interpreters readily grant that in some passages of the Old Testament we have a typical sense besides the literal; but this does not appear to be granted with regard to the New Testament, at least not subsequently to the death of Jesus Christ. Distinguishing between the New Testament as it signifies a collection of books, and the New Testament as it denotes the Christian economy, they grant that there are types in the New-Testament books, but only as far as they refer to the pre-Christian economy. For the New Testament has brought us the reality in place of the figure, light in place of darkness, truth in place of shadow (cf. Patrizi, “De interpretatione Scripturarum Sacrarum”, p. 199, Rome, 1844). On the other hand, it is urged that the New Testament is the figure of glory, as the Old Testament was the figure of the New (St. Thom., Summa, I, Q. i, a. 10).

*

Again, in Scripture the literal sense applies to what precedes, the typical to what follows. Now, even in the New Testament Christ and His Body precedes the Church and its members; hence, what is said literally of Christ or His Body, may be interpreted allegorically of the Church, the mystical body of Christ, tropologically of the virtuous acts of the Church’s members, anagogically of their future glory (St. Thom., Quodl., VII, a. 15, ad 5um). Similar views are expressed by St. Ambrose (in Ps. xxx, n. 25), St. Chrysostom (in Matt., hom. lxvi), St. Augustine (in Joh., ix), St. Gregory the Great (Hom. ii, in evang. Luc., xviii), St. John Damascene (De fide orth., iv, 13); besides, the bark of Peter is usually regarded as a type of the Church, the destruction of Jerusalem as a type of the final catastrophe. . . .

*

It may be said in general that these earliest Christian writers admitted both the literal and the allegorical sense of Scripture. The latter sense appears to have been favoured by St. Clement of Rome, Barnabas, St. Justin, St. Irenaeus, while the literal seems to prevail in the writings of St. Hippolytus, Tertullian, the Clementine Recognitions, and among the Gnostics. . . . Among the eminent writers of the Alexandrian School must be classed Julius Africanus (c. 215), St. Dionysius the Great (d. 265), St. Gregory Thaumaturgus (d. 270), Eusebius of Caesarea (d. 340), St. Athanasius (d. 373), Didymus of Alexandria (d. 397), St. Epiphanius (d. 403), St. Cyril of Alexandria (d. 444), and finally also the celebrated Cappadocian Fathers, St. Basil the Great (d. 379), St. Gregory Nazianzen (d. 389), and St. Gregory of Nyssa (d. 394). The last three, however, have many points in common with the School of Antioch. . . .

*

(c) The Latin Fathers. The Latin Fathers, too, admitted a twofold sense of Scripture, insisting variously now on the one, now on the other. We can only enumerate their names: Tertullian (b. 160), St. Cyprian (d. 258), St. Victorinus (d. 297), St. Hilary (d. 367), Marius Victorinus (d. 370), St. Ambrose (d. 397), Rufinus (d. 410), St. Jerome (d. 420), St. Augustine (d. 430), Primasius (d. 550), Cassiodorus (d. 562), St. Gregory the Great (d. 604). St. Hilary, Marius Victorinus, and St. Ambrose depend, to a certain extent, on Origen and the Alexandrian School; St. Jerome and St. Augustine are the two great lights of the Latin Church on whom depend most of the Latin writers of the Middle Ages. . . .

*

(ii) Second Period of Exegesis, A.D. 604-1546

*

We consider the following nine centuries as one period of exegesis, not on account of their uniform productiveness or barrenness in the field of Biblical study, nor on account of their uniform tendency of developing any particular branch of exegesis, but rather on account of their characteristic dependence on the work of the Fathers. Whether they synopsized or amplified, whether they analysed or derived new conclusions from old premises, they always started from the patristic results as their basis of operation.

It is obvious, then, that the consensus amongst the Fathers (and the medievals following them) is the belief that Scripture can be properly interpreted in a typological, allegorical, figurative, and “mystical” sense, while not denying the fundamental nature of the literal, “historical” sense. As usual, the truth is not “either/or” (as is so often observed in the Protestant perspective). It is “both/and.”

In any event, according to Carmen’s thesis, the early Church (in the main?) accepted some proto-Protestant version of perspicuity. She strongly implies (if she doesn’t assert it outright) that allegorical interpretation mitigates against this (since it obscures Scripture and its “plain” meaning), and is therefore a corruption of the mainstream patristic hermeneutical and exegetical view.

The above summary (if it is accepted at all as accurate) demolishes this contention, in my opinion, for it reveals that the Fathers en masse accepted multiple forms of interpretation all along (and that the medieval exegetes followed their method: they didn’t deviate from them). Thus, as is so often the case, Protestants must improperly read back their peculiar views into the Fathers.

Luther and Calvin, then, are again shown to be revolutionaries in this regard, introducing novelties, not reformers who merely brought back (“resurrected”) what was present and normative in the early Church (as Carmen contends). Protestants cannot prove with extensive documentation that the Fathers – taken as a whole – uphold their notions of sola Scriptura, perspicuity, an invisible church, literal interpretation to the exclusion of other methods, or a denial of apostolic succession.

With all due respect, such analysis cannot survive even the first in-depth Catholic counter-reply, because history in this instance (as well as Scripture, I believe) is again on the Catholic side. Therefore, Protestant polemicists are reduced to producing largely-unsubstantiated and highly selective summaries of alleged Church history which lack sufficient documentation, and ignore a host of complicating factors. A confident, true historical thesis can easily incorporate or take into account (rather than obscure or ignore) all the known historical facts within itself, as the Catholic viewpoint does.

St. Augustine (354-430)

Augustine of Hippo was perhaps the greatest expounder of Christian doctrine in the early centuries of Christianity. Both Catholics and Protestants have cited his works in confirmation of their own views . . . True obscurities do exist, but God is the one who put them into Scripture. His purpose was to hold pride in check and increase the respect Christians would give to Scripture.

Some of the expressions are so obscure as to shroud the meaning in the thickest darkness. And I do not doubt that all this was divinely arranged for the purpose of subduing pride by toil, and of preventing a feeling of satiety in the intellect, which generally holds in small esteem what is discovered without difficulty.

Yet there is no obscurity in Scripture that by necessity remains unfathomable. The darkness of obscurity can be penetrated by studying the rest of Scripture. Augustine sets forth a principle that is resurrected during the Reformation: Scripture interprets Scripture.

Accordingly the Holy Spirit has, with admirable wisdom and care for our welfare, so arranged the Holy Scriptures as by the plainer passages to satisfy our hunger, and by the more obscure to stimulate our appetite. For almost nothing is dug out of those obscure passages which may not be found set forth in the plainest language elsewhere.

The Scriptures plainly teach that which is necessary for faith and salvation, as well as teaching how the Christian should live. These are the things that should be studied first and committed to memory. Only after the believer is firmly grounded in these necessary doctrines should he go on to delve into the more obscure teachings of Scripture.

For among the things that are plainly laid down in Scripture are to be found all matters that concern faith and the manner of life. After this, when we have made ourselves to a certain extent familiar with the language of Scripture, we may proceed to open up and investigate the obscure passages, and in doing so draw examples from the plainer expressions to throw light upon the more obscure, and use the evidence of passages about which there is no doubt to remove all hesitation in regard to the doubtful passages.

Ignorance accounts for much of what is labeled obscure. Thorough study of the Scriptures as well as knowledge from other fields of learning should clear up most of these. When neither context nor general knowledge will clear up an obscure passage, one may apply reason – but, Augustine says,

This is a dangerous practice. For it is far safer to walk by the light of Holy Scripture; so that when we wish to examine the passages that are obscured by metaphorical expressions, we may either obtain a meaning about which there is no controversy, or if a controversy arises, may settle it by the application of testimonies sought out in every portion of the same Scripture.

The solution to the unsolvable obscure passages may be to interpret the passage figuratively. Here Augustine is not talking about figurative language but allegorical interpretation. He only uses the word allegory twice in On Christian Doctrine, and both times it refers to a type of speech within Scripture itself, not a type of interpretation, but he sometimes uses the word “figurative” in the same way that other Church Fathers use the word “allegorical.”

Augustine remained an allegorist but he did not take allegory as far as Clement of Alexandria. He retained a deep respect for the literal interpretation and the perspicuity of Scripture, insisting on several points which were later included in the doctrine of Perspicuity during the Reformation. He also set up several controls over the use of allegory.

Here, the Protestant “either/or” mentality is fully apparent. Neither the centrality or popular “accessibility” of Scripture nor a respect for the literal hermeneutical sense rules out Tradition and Church, apostolic succession, or four-fold interpretation of Scripture. St. Augustine is not a Protestant!

If one cites him — as above — only when he agrees or appears to agree with one or more Protestant distinctives, but neglects to take into account numerous other statements of his which are entirely “Catholic,” then it is an improperly selective and ultimately intellectually dishonest presentation, and does disservice both to St. Augustine and the Protestant cause – supposedly so rooted in the early Church and the great Augustine himself. In this vein, Protestant scholar Heiko Oberman observes:

Augustine . . . reflects the early Church principle of the coinherence of Scripture and Tradition. While repeatedly asserting the ultimate authority of Scripture, Augustine does not oppose this at all to the authority of the Church Catholic . . . The Church has a practical priority . . .

The Harvest of Medieval Theology,

Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, revised edition, 1967, 370-371)

Many other citations of St. Augustine with regard to this subject could be brought forth. Here are a few:

[T]he custom [of not rebaptizing converts] . . . may be supposed to have had its origin in Apostolic Tradition, just as there are many things which are observed by the whole Church, and therefore are fairly held to have been enjoined by the Apostles, which yet are not mentioned in their writings. (On Baptism, Against the Donatists 5:23[31] [A.D. 400] )

*

But the admonition that he [Cyprian] gives us, ‘that we should go back to the fountain, that is, to Apostolic Tradition, and thence turn the channel of truth to our times,’ is most excellent, and should be followed without hesitation. (Ibid., 5:26[37] )

*

But in regard to those observances which we carefully attend and which the whole world keeps, and which derive not from Scripture but from Tradition, we are given to understand that they are recommended and ordained to be kept, either by the Apostles themselves or by plenary [ecumenical] councils, the authority of which is quite vital in the Church. (Letter to Januarius [A.D. 400])

*

For in the Catholic Church, not to speak of the purest wisdom, to the knowledge of which a few spiritual men attain in this life, so as to know it, in the scantiest measure, indeed, because they are but men, still without any uncertainty…The consent of peoples and nations keep me in Church, so does her authority, inaugurated by miracles, nourished by hope, enlarged by love, established by age. The SUCCESSION of priests keeps me, beginning from the very seat of the APOSTLE PETER, to whom the Lord, after his resurrection, gave it in charge to feed his sheep, down to the present EPISCOPATE…The epistle begins thus: — ‘Manicheus, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the providence of God the Father. These are the wholesome words from the perennial and living fountain.’ Now, if you please, patiently give heed to my inquiry. I do not believe Manichues to be an apostle of Christ. Do not, I beg you, be enraged and begin to curse. For you know that it is my rule to believe none of your statements without consideration. Therefore I ask, who is this Manicheus? You will reply, An Apostle of Christ. I do not believe it. Now you are at a loss what to say or do; for you promised to give knowledge of truth, and here you are forcing me to believe what I have no knowledge of. Perhaps you will read the gospel to me, and will attempt to find there a testimony to Manicheus. But should you meet with a person not yet believing in the gospel, how would you reply to him were he to say, I do not believe? For MY PART, I should NOT BELIEVE the gospel except moved by the authority of the Catholic Church. So when those on whose authority I have consented to believe in the gospel tell me not to believe in Manicheus, how can I BUT CONSENT? (C. Epis Mani 5,6)

*

Wherever this tradition comes from, we must believe that the Church has not believed in vain, even though the express authority of the canonical scriptures is not brought forward for it. (Letter 164 to Evodius of Uzalis)

To be sure, although on this matter, we cannot quote a clear example taken from the canonical Scriptures, at any rate, on this question, we are following the true thought of Scriptures when we observe what has appeared good to the universal Church which the authority of these same Scriptures recommends to you. (C. Cresconius I: 33)

It is obvious; the faith allows it; the Catholic Church approves; it is true. (Sermon 117:6)

The authority of our Scriptures, strengthened by the consent of so may nations, and confirmed by the succession of the Apostles, bishops and councils, is against you. (C. Faustus 8:5)

*

No sensible person will go contrary to reason, no Christian will contradict the Scriptures, no lover of peace will go against the CHURCH. (Trinitas 4, 6, 10)

St. Jerome (c. 345-419) Jerome was a contemporary of Augustine who initially shared the views of the Alexandrian exegetes but later came to be more in line with the Antiochene school. He affirmed a “deeper meaning” to Scripture, but contended that this spiritual significance must be rooted in the literal.

As was the mainstream Catholic position all along, as shown above.

He considered Origen a heretic but also thought he had done a credible job of explaining some obscure passages of Scripture.

Jerome played an involuntary role in Scripture’s becoming concealed from the Christian population in ensuing centuries. He translated the Bible into Latin because Greek was no longer a lingua franca in Europe. The Vulgate was the result, appropriately named because it was written in the vulgar or common language of the time. Approximately 300-400 years later, though, Latin had gone through enough changes that people of southern and western Europe began to realize that the Classical Latin taught in the schools was “perceptibly a different language, rather than merely a more polished, cultured version of their own.”

In the meantime, the Vulgate became the recognized authoritative translation of the Scriptures for use in the Church of Rome. The sacredness ascribed to the Word of God was extended as well to the language into which it had been translated, i.e., the Latin that had become the official language of the Church. The attitude toward Latin was also affected by tradition. Since “the time of Saints Hilary and Augustine the notion prevailed that the three languages used in the inscription on the Cross [Aramaic, Latin and Greek] were sacred.” The common language continued to change over the centuries, but the language of the Church and the Word of God did not. The God who communicated with mankind to the point of incarnating himself in human flesh became a God who was steeped in mystery, his revelations known only to a select few.

This was not the intention of Jerome.

This fatuous charge that somehow the Catholic Church was against popular reading of Holy Scripture and vernacular translations is one of the most common slanderous charges against the Catholic Church, but also (thankfully) one of the easiest to thoroughly disprove.

For now, I present a citation from St. Jerome which clearly (perspicuously?) indicates that he did not believe in sola Scriptura:

I will tell you my opinion briefly and without reserve. We ought to remain in that Church which was founded by the Apostles and continues to this day. If ever you hear of any that are called Christians taking their name not from the Lord Jesus Christ, but from some other, for instance, Marcionites, Valentinians, Men of the mountain or the plain, you may be sure that you have there not the Church of Christ, but the synagogue of Antichrist. For the fact that they took their rise after the foundation of the Church is proof that they are those whose coming the Apostle foretold. And let them not flatter themselves if they think they have Scripture authority for their assertions, since the devil himself quoted Scripture, and the essence of the Scriptures is not the letter, but the meaning. Otherwise, if we follow the letter, we too can concoct a new dogma and assert that such persons as wear shoes and have two coats must not be received into the Church. (The Dialogue Against the Luciferians 28)

The Antiochene School of Theology: Not All It’s Cracked Up to Be

The hermeneutical methods of the Alexandrian School, particular those of Origen, prevailed and eventually became the standard of the Church of Rome.

This is incorrect, as detailed above. Origen’s position was extreme, and the literal sense of scriptural interpretation was always primary, though not excluding other senses. Nor did the Church and Catholic commentators reject the Antiochene approach entirely. More “either/or” inaccuracies and straw men . . .
*

Not all theologians in the early Church, however, agreed with this allegorical approach. Those of the Antiochene school dissented from the position that there was a spiritual meaning hidden within the text. In fact, they held that allegorical interpretation destroyed the real message of Scripture. They also distinguished between allegory as used in Scripture itself, and the allegorical interpretation as used by the Alexandrian school. They were unwilling to lose [the historical reality of the biblical revelation] in a world of symbols and shadows.Where the Alexandrines use the word theory as equivalent to allegorical interpretation, the Antiochene exegetes use it for a sense of scripture higher or deeper than the literal or historical meaning, but firmly based on the letter. This understanding does not deny the literal meaning of scripture but is grounded on it, as an image is based on the things represented and points toward it. Both image and thing are comprehensible at the same time. There is no hidden meaning which only a Gnostic can comprehend. John Chrysostom observes that everywhere in scripture there is this law, than when it allegorizes, it also gives the explanation of the allegory.”

Again, this was the mainstream patristic position, not just that of the School of Antioch.

. . . Even as the Alexandrians did not completely dispense with the literal meaning of Scripture, so also the Antiochenes did not dismiss allegory. However, they insisted that any allegorical interpretation must be based on the literal. The Antiochene school’s hermeneutic lost out to that of the Alexandrians. Their methods were not forgotten, however, and were later revived in the 13th century by St. Thomas Aquinas, who greatly admired the work of John Chrysostom and was responsible for restoring the literal meaning to its rightful importance.

I cite once more the online Catholic Encyclopedia article on Biblical Exegesis (by A. J. Maas; bolded emphasis added):

The School of Antioch. The Fathers of Antioch adhered to hermeneutical principles which insist more on the so-called grammatico-historical sense of the Sacred Books than on their moral and allegorical meaning. It is true that Theodore of Mopsuestia urged the literal sense to the detriment of the typical, believing that the New Testament applies some of the prophecies to the Messias only by way of accommodation, and that on account of their allegories the Canticle of Canticles, together with a few other books, should not be admitted into the Canon. But generally speaking, the Fathers of Antioch and Eastern Syria, the latter of whom formed the School of Nisibis or Edessa, steered a course midway between Origen and Theodore, avoiding the excesses of both, and thus laying the foundation of the hermeneutical principles which the Catholic exegete ought to follow. The principal representatives of the School of Antioch are St. John Chrysostom (d. 407); Theodore of Mopsuestia (d. 429), condemned by the Fifth Ecumenical Synod on account of his explanation of Job and the Canticle of Canticles, and in certain respects the forerunner of Nestorius; St. Isidore of Pelusium, in Egypt (d. 434), numbered among the Antiochene commentators on account of his Biblical explanations inserted in about two thousand of his letters; Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrus in Syria (d. 458), known for his Questions on the Octateuch, the Books of Kings and Par., and for his Commentaries on the Psalms, the Cant., the Prophets, and the Epistles of St. Paul. The School of Edessa glories in the names of Aphraates who flourished in the first half of the fourth century, St. Ephraem (d. 373), Cyrillonas, Balaeus, Rabulas, Isaac the Great, etc.

Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman, in his classic work An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (Part 2, Chapter 7, section 4: “Scripture and its Mystical Interpretation” — emphasis added), penetratingly wrote about the orthodoxy of the mystical sense as the norm within the Christian (Catholic) Church, and the excesses of the Antiochene School of hermeneutics and “hyper-literalism.” I cite him at length, because his analysis is so relevant to the present debate (bolded emphasis added):

Several passages have occurred in the foregoing Chapters, which serve to suggest another principle on which some words are now to be said. Theodore’s exclusive adoption of the literal, and repudiation of the mystical interpretation of Holy Scripture, leads to the consideration of the latter, as one of the characteristic conditions or principles on which the teaching of the Church has ever proceeded. Thus Christianity developed, as we have incidentally seen, into the form, first, of a Catholic, then of a Papal Church.
*

Now it was Scripture that was made the rule on which this development proceeded in each case, and Scripture moreover interpreted in a mystical sense; and, {339} whereas at first certain texts were inconsistently confined to the letter, and a Millennium was in consequence expected, the very course of events, as time went on, interpreted the prophecies about the Church more truly, and that first in respect of her prerogative as occupying the orbis terrarum, next in support of the claims of the See of St. Peter. This is but one specimen of a certain law of Christian teaching, which is this, – a reference to Scripture throughout, and especially in its mystical sense [Note 14].1. This is a characteristic which will become more and more evident to us, the more we look for it. The divines of the Church are in every age engaged in regulating themselves by Scripture, appealing to Scripture in proof of their conclusions, and exhorting and teaching in the thoughts and language of Scripture. Scripture may be said to be the medium in which the mind of the Church has energized and developed [Note 15]. When St. Methodius would enforce the doctrine of vows of celibacy, he refers to the book of Numbers; and if St. Irenaeus proclaims the dignity of St. Mary, it is from a comparison of St. Luke’s Gospel with Genesis. And thus St. Cyprian, in his Testimonies, rests the prerogatives of martyrdom, as {340} indeed the whole circle of Christian doctrine, on the declaration of certain texts; and, when in his letter to Antonian he seems to allude to Purgatory, he refers to our Lord’s words about “the prison” and “paying the last farthing.” And if St. Ignatius exhorts to unity, it is from St. Paul; and he quotes St. Luke against the Phantasiasts of his day. We have a first instance of this law in the Epistle of St. Polycarp, and a last in the practical works of St. Alphonso Liguori. St. Cyprian, or St. Ambrose, or St. Bede, or St. Bernard, or St. Carlo, or such popular books as Horstius’s Paradisus Animae, are specimens of a rule which is too obvious to need formal proof. It is exemplified in the theological decisions of St. Athanasius in the fourth century, and of St. Thomas in the thirteenth; in the structure of the Canon Law, and in the Bulls and Letters of Popes. It is instanced in the notion so long prevalent in the Church, which philosophers of this day do not allow us to forget, that all truth, all science, must be derived from the inspired volume. And it is recognized as well as exemplified; recognized as distinctly by writers of the Society of Jesus, as it is copiously exemplified by the Ante-nicene Fathers. . . . “Holy Scripture,” says Cornelius Lapide, “contains the beginnings of all theology: for theology is nothing but the science of conclusions which are drawn from principles certain to faith, and therefore is of all sciences most august as well as certain; but the principles of faith and faith itself doth Scripture contain; whence it evidently follows that Holy Scripture lays down those principles of theology by which the theologian begets of the mind’s reasoning his demonstrations. He, then, who thinks he can tear away Scholastic Science from the work of commenting on Holy Scripture is hoping for offspring without a mother.” [Note 19] Again: “What is the subject-matter of Scripture? Must I say it in a word? Its aim is de omni scibili; it embraces in its bosom all studies, all that can be known: and thus it is a certain university of sciences containing all sciences either ‘formally’ or ’eminently.'” [Note 20]

Nor am I aware that later Post-tridentine writers deny that the whole Catholic faith may be proved from Scripture, though they would certainly maintain that it is not to be found on the surface of it, nor in such sense that it may be gained from Scripture without the aid of Tradition. [Thus Newman confirms that Catholics acknowledge material sufficiency of Scripture] 2.

And this has been the doctrine of all ages of the Church, as is shown by the disinclination of her teachers to confine themselves to the mere literal interpretation of Scripture. Her most subtle and powerful method of proof, whether in ancient or modern times, is the mystical sense, which is so frequently used in doctrinal controversy as on many occasions to supersede any other.

Thus the Council of Trent appeals to the peace-offering spoken of in Malachi {343} in proof of the Eucharistic Sacrifice; to the water and blood issuing from our Lord’s side, and to the mention of “waters” in the Apocalypse, in admonishing on the subject of the mixture of water with the wine in the Oblation. Thus Bellarmine defends Monastic celibacy by our Lord’s words in Matthew xix., and refers to “We went through fire and water;” etc., in the Psalm, as an argument for Purgatory; and these, as is plain, are but specimens of a rule. Now, on turning to primitive controversy, we find this method of interpretation to be the very basis of the proof of the Catholic doctrine of the Holy Trinity. Whether we betake ourselves to the Ante-nicene writers or the Nicene, certain texts will meet us, which do not obviously refer to that doctrine, yet are put forward as palmary proofs of it. Such are, in respect of our Lord’s divinity, “My heart is inditing of a good matter,” or “has burst forth with a good Word;” “The Lord made” or “possessed Me in the beginning of His ways;” “I was with Him, in whom He delighted;” “In Thy Light shall we see Light;” “Who shall declare His generation?” “She is the Breath of the Power of God;” and “His Eternal Power and Godhead.”

On the other hand, the School of Antioch, which adopted the literal interpretation, was, as I have noticed above, the very metropolis of heresy. Not to speak of Lucian, whose history is but imperfectly known, (one of the first masters of this school, and also teacher of Arius and his principal supporters), Diodorus and Theodore of Mopsuestia, who were the most eminent masters of literalism in the succeeding generation, were, as we have seen, the forerunners of Nestorianism. The case had been the same in a still earlier age; — the Jews clung to the literal sense of the Scriptures and hence rejected the Gospel; the Christian Apologists proved its divinity by means of the allegorical. The formal connexion of this mode of interpretation with {344} Christian theology is noticed by Porphyry, who speaks of Origen and others as borrowing it from heathen philosophy, both in explanation of the Old Testament and in defence of their own doctrine.

It may be almost laid down as an historical fact, that the mystical interpretation and orthodoxy will stand or fall together. [Protestant Church historian Jaroslav Pelikan, in his The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600), p. 61 – cited earlier – quotes the last sentence above, in the course of a treatment of hermeneutics, and notes that “Newman’s generalization is probably an accurate one.”] This is clearly seen, as regards the primitive theology, by a recent writer, in the course of a Dissertation upon St. Ephrem. After observing that Theodore of Heraclea, Eusebius, and Diodorus gave a systematic opposition to the mystical interpretation, which had a sort of sanction from Antiquity and the orthodox Church, he proceeds; “Ephrem is not as sober in his interpretations, nor could it be, since he was a zealous disciple of the orthodox faith. For all those who are most eminent in such sobriety were as far as possible removed from the faith of the Councils”. On the other hand, all who retained the faith of the Church never entirely dispensed with the spiritual sense of the Scriptures. For the Councils watched over the orthodox faith; nor was it safe in those ages, as we learn especially from the instance of Theodore of Mopsuestia, to desert the spiritual for an exclusive cultivation of the literal method. Moreover, the allegorical interpretation, even when the literal sense was not injured, was also preserved; because in those times, when both heretics and Jews in controversy were stubborn in their objections to Christian doctrine, maintaining that the Messiah was yet to come, or denying the abrogation of the Sabbath and ceremonial law, or ridiculing the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, and especially that of Christ’s Divine Nature, under such circumstances ecclesiastical writers found it to their purpose, in answer to such exceptions, violently to refer {345} every part of Scripture by allegory to Christ and His Church.” [Note 21] . . . The use of Scripture then, especially its spiritual or second sense, as a medium of thought and deduction, is a characteristic principle of doctrinal teaching in the Church.

As for the prevalence of rank, serious Christological error in Antioch, I offer the following list of its heretical patriarchs (Protestants and Catholics pretty much agree on Chalcedonian Christology – all these heresies contradict that; thus are regarded as equally heretical in both camps):
*

Paul of Samosata 260-269 Modalist

Eulalius c.322 Arian

Euphronius c.327-c.329 Arian

Leontius 344-58 Arian

Eudoxius 358-60 Arian

Euzoius 361-78 Arian

Peter the Fuller 470,475-7, 482-88 Monophysite

John Codonatus 477,488 Monophysite

Palladius 488-98 Monophysite

Severus 512-18 Monophysite

Sergius c.542-c.557 Monophysite

Paul “the Black” c.557-578 Monophysite

Peter Callinicum 578-91 Monophysite

Anthanasius c.621-629 Monothelite

Macedonius 640-c.655 Monothelite

Macarius c.655-681 Monothelite

Needless to say, this is not a very impressive record for orthodoxy. It would be difficult to argue that the local, prevailing method of biblical hermeneutics had nothing to do with this. The Nestorian heresy, in particular, was strongly connected to Antioch, as we learn from a reputable Protestant scholarly source:

Nestorius (d.c. 451), from whom the heresy takes its name . . . entered a monastery at Antioch, where he became imbued with the principles of the Antiochene theological school, and probably studied under Theodore of Mopsuestia . . . Nestorius’s opponents succeeded in winning the support of St. Cyril of Alexandria and the Egyptian monks to their cause. Both sides having appealed to Rome, at a Council held there in August 430, Nestorius’s teaching was condemned by Pope Celestine.[and also in 431 by the Ecumenical Council of Ephesus which proclaimed in opposition that Mary was the “Mother of God” or “Theotokos,” not simply “Christotokos”] (F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone, editors, The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, Oxford Univ. Press, 2nd ed., 1983, 961-962)

Nor was the Antiochene emphasis in soteriology at all consistent with Protestant (and Catholic) emphases, as another Protestant reference work points out:

[I]ts soteriology . . . admitted a significant place to human merit. This fact may explain Nestorius’s sympathy for Pelagius.[it is also noted that Antioch’s Christological tendency “was towards Sabellianism”] (J. D. Douglas, editor, The New International Dictionary of the Christian Church, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Pub. House, revised edition of 1978, 49)

Thus we see a time-honored tendency of Protestant polemics: anyone or any school or sect which disagrees with the Catholic Church in any given belief is co-opted as a “comrade-in-arms” in the struggle to counter the “errors” of the “Roman Church.” Thus the Antiochene School of Theology becomes the great proponent of perspicuity and the grammatico-historical interpretation of Scripture, and champion of a sort of proto-evangelicalism, while its grave Christological and soteriological heresies (equally rejected and decried by orthodox Protestantism) are overlooked or de-emphasized.

They don’t matter, because the object is to find some agreement, any agreement, with much-later Protestant principles. Once those are located (in actuality or only in imagination), any other aspects of the holder’s belief are ignored (whether consciously or unconsciously). Frankly, I find this method to be special pleading, and plain bad historiography.

Even the greatest and most orthodox figure to come out of this school, St. John Chrysostom, takes an entirely Catholic view of Tradition, by no means harmonious with the Protestant sola Scriptura:

“Therefore, brethren, stand fast and hold the traditions which you have been taught, whether by word or by our letter” [2 Thess 2:15]. From this it is clear that they did not hand down everything by letter, but there was much also that was not written. Like that which was written, the unwritten too is worthy of belief. So let us regard the tradition of the Church also as worthy of belief. Is it a tradition? Seek no further. (Homilies on 2 Thess 4:2)

The Patristic and Catholic Approach to Hermeneutics

John F. McCarthy, in his series of online essays, The Neo-Patristic Approach to Sacred Scripture (emphasis added), presents the Catholic view of these matters, which differs (even with regard to historical questions) markedly from the Protestant one (while in some respects it is much more similar than one might suppose):

Why promote the neo-Patristic approach? Meditation upon things said in Sacred Scripture is important for every Christian. The Fathers of the Church have laid out a basic Christian approach to the study and meditation of the inspired word. This approach of the Fathers was followed by all Catholic exegetes, especially as regards the literal sense, but in recent centuries with lessening emphasis upon the spiritual senses except for certain texts relating to the dogmas of the Church. However, towards the end of the nineteenth century some Catholic exegetes (interpreters) began to follow what is now known as the historical-critical approach, developed by rationalist and liberal Protestant exegetes, and this new approach has now with some exceptions virtually supplanted the Patristic approach among Catholic biblical scholars.

*

But many problems and logical contradictions have arisen from the results of historical-critical interpretation, even when used by Catholic exegetes. The neo-Patristic approach aims to address and solve these problems and contradictions and to reinstate the Patristic approach by the use of an updated framework based upon the largely implicit framework of the Fathers of the Church in the hope of enabling insights old and new and of making it easier to pray the Scriptures.. . . . The Patristic approach is recommended, if not mandated, in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (paragraphs 115-119). These paragraphs should be reread and discussed. They illustrate the need and the urgency of developing the neo-Patristic approach. . . .

*

The neo-Patristic method uses the framework of the four senses of Sacred Scripture, as developed initially by St. Augustine of Hippo and others and more fully by St. Thomas Aquinas, especially in his Summa Theologiae (part I, question 1, article 10) See Thomas Kuffel, “St. Thomas’ Method of Biblical Exegesis,” in Living Tradition, no. 38 (November 1991). The four senses involved are the literal sense, the allegorical sense, the tropological, or moral, sense, and the anagogical, or eschatological, sense (also known as the final sense). These four senses will be examined in the course of this study program.

The neo-Patristic method, just as the Patristic method, always begins with the literal sense of a passage, which sense is basic to the three spiritual senses and can be understood to a degree without them, but, from a neo-Patristic viewpoint, it cannot be fully understood except in contrast with one or more of the spiritual senses which may be written with the same words into the same passage.

Importance of the literal sense. Pope Pius XII, in his encyclical letter Divino afflante Spiritu (Enchiridion biblicum, 550; Rome and the Study of Scripture, 550), points out to interpreters of the Sacred Books that “their foremost and greatest endeavor should be to discern and define clearly that sense of the biblical words which is called literal.” It is necessary to determine first what the sacred text really says before one can come to understand what the sacred text really means.

All of the truths that are necessary for faith are expressed or implied in the literal sense of Sacred Scripture or in the Sacred Tradition of the Church, and, we might add, the basic facts and truths that underlie the three spiritual senses of Sacred Scripture are all presented somewhere in the literal sense of the Scriptures or in the Sacred Tradition of the Church.

The neo-Patristic approach to historicity. While the historical-critical method tends to assume that accounts in the Sacred Scriptures are unhistorical in the modern sense, the neo-Patristic method assumes that Scriptural accounts presented as history are historical. This difference between the two methods arises historically from the fact that historical-criticism is rooted in rationalism, while the neo-Patristic method is rooted in belief that the Sacred Scriptures have been written by God through the human instrumentality of the sacred writers. The sacred writers were not used as subhuman instruments in the sense of automatic writing in which the human writer writes unconsciously under the influence of someone else, but through their use by the Holy Spirit as rational persons who were cooperating with their mind and will. In the neo-Patristic understanding of divine inspiration, what the sacred writers wrote was not limited entirely by their own background and personal capacities; they were not confined by their own knowledge and experience.

St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)*

Thomas Aquinas, the “angelic doctor” of the Church, moved away from a reliance upon allegorical interpretation toward an appreciation of the literal meaning of Scripture. He still promoted allegory, dividing it into three possible meanings, but insisted that all allegorical interpretation must rise from the literal meaning, not apart from it. All these meanings are possible because God has the power to use human language and adapt it as needed for his own purposes.

Since the literal sense is that which the author intends, and since the author of Holy Writ is God, Who by one act comprehends all things by His intellect, it is not unfitting, as Augustine says (Confess. xii), if, even according to the literal sense, one word in Holy Writ should have several senses.

All of this was identical to the patristic consensus, and no different from the usual, normative approach of Catholicism throughout its entire history, so again, it looks like we are dealing here with a vast oversimplification, and a co-opting of St. Thomas as another sort of “proto-Protestant,” which is as ludicrous as when the same attempt is made to “claim” St. Augustine. The very fact that Protestants so admire Augustine and Aquinas and want so much to claim them for their camp (when in fact they are entirely Catholic, and the preeminent Catholic theologians) shows that something is strangely, ironically awry in the Protestant opinion of Catholicism, and that the Catholic Church throughout its history was far more “on the ball” than many Protestants are willing to admit.

John F. McCarthy, in his online essay, Neo-Patristic Exegesis to the Rescue, elaborates:

St. Thomas reflected on this method and gave a valuable explanation of the four senses in addition to expounding them in his commentaries on the Scriptures. His teaching can serve as the starting point for a more extended and differentiated exposition of this method, beginning with the first big distinction between the “literal” sense and the “spiritual,” or “mystical,” sense. For St. Thomas, this distinction arises from the fact that the rightly understood meaning of the words themselves of Sacred Scripture pertains to the literal, or historical, sense, while the fact that the things expressed by the words signify other things produces the spiritual sense. Thus, the spiritual sense is understood to be a typical, or figurative, sense which is based upon the literal sense and presupposes it. This basic double sense is possible because God, who is the principal Author of Sacred Scripture, has brought it about that things and events having their own historical meaning are used also to signify other things. But the central thing signified by these prefigurements is Jesus Christ Himself, who as the God-Man is the central focus of the spiritual sense and the subject of an extended symbolism which is known as the Allegory of Christ.The distinction between the literal and the spiritual senses of Sacred Scripture is analytical, even though spiritual realities are often the primary meaning of a text, because a certain interaction of faith and reason is implied in this division. The original meaning of words can be examined by unaided reason, as can the unfolding of visible happenings, but the spiritual meaning of words and events can be seen only by the light of faith. In Part I, Question I of the Summa Theologiae, St. Thomas points out that revealed teaching is necessary for man (article 1), that this teaching is a science based upon revealed truths that are visible under the light of faith (article 2), and that God is the subject of this science (article 7). Approaching, then, the distinction between the literal and the spiritual senses from an analytical point of view, I would say that the literal sense tends to be exclusively seen by the unaided human reason, while the spiritual sense is penetrated by theological reason aided by the light of faith. Where the text is speaking literally about spiritual realities, and above all about supernatural realities, the unaided reason can see the statement in a flattened and unmeaningful way, but it cannot “understand” the statement. Where the text contains spiritual meanings beneath the literal sense, the unaided reason can see these meanings at best in a flattened and unmeaningful way, while reason enlightened by faith can both see the spiritual meanings in a meaningful way and see the literal meaning in a more complete way – provided that it has the appropriate theological framework at its command. Looking, then, at sacred teaching as presented by the text of Sacred Scripture, and reasoning along the lines of St. Thomas, we can justifiably say that the inspired writings are necessary, not only because what is contained in them spiritually could not be figured out by man on his own, but also because the poor, fallen reason of man tends away from the spiritual truth and towards his own self-gratification. Men without grace do not want to know the spiritual truth and they endeavor to rub it out where it is written. But men possessed of faith and sanctifying grace will discover the truth and understand it. . . . St. Thomas answers affirmatively to the question “whether there ought to be distinguished four senses of Sacred Scripture,”34 basing his response upon the authority of St. Augustine of Hippo and of Venerable Bede. St. Augustine observed: “In all the holy books it is behooving to discern the eternal things to be seen there, the deeds that are there narrated, the future things that are predicted, the things that are commanded to be done.”35 St. Thomas sees these four things to refer respectively to the anagogical, the historical, the allegorical, and the tropological senses of Sacred Scripture. St. Thomas also quotes Venerable Bede as saying: “There are four senses of Sacred Scripture: history, which narrates things done; allegory, in which one thing is understood from another; tropology (that is, moral discourse), in which the ordering of habits is treated; and anagogy, by which we are led upward to treat of highest and heavenly things.”36 St. Thomas identifies the “historical sense” of Bede with the literal sense presented by the words themselves, and he makes an analytical division of the spiritual sense into allegory, tropology, and anagogy . . . . . . St. Thomas notes in the first place that things which actually happened can refer to Christ and his members as shadows of the truth, and this is what produces the allegorical sense, while other comparisons, being imaginary rather than real, whether in Sacred Scripture or in other literature, do not stand outside of the literal sense. Hence, the allegorical sense of Sacred Scripture is not imaginary and is not a genre of human inventiveness. . . . Finally, it might seem that, if these four senses were necessary for Sacred Scripture, each and every part of Sacred Scripture would have to have these four senses, but, as Augustine says in his commentary on Genesis, “in some parts the literal sense alone is to be sought.” To this St. Thomas replies that various parts of Scripture have four, three, two, or only one of these senses. Thus, the literal events of the Old Testament can be expounded in the four senses. The things spoken literally of Christ as the Head of the New Testament Church can also be expounded according to the four senses, because the historical Body of Christ can be expounded allegorically of the Mystical Body of Christ, and tropologically of the acts of the faithful to be modelled after the example of Christ, and anagogically inasmuch as Christ is the way to glory that has been shown to us. The things spoken literally of the Church of the New Testament can be expounded in three senses, because they can also be expounded tropologically and anagogically, but not allegorically, except that things mentioned literally regarding the primitive Church may have allegorical meaning regarding the later Church of the New Testament. The things of moral import in the literal sense can be expounded only literally and allegorically. And, finally, the things spoken literally regarding the state of glory cannot be expounded in any other sense.

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(originally 6-11-00)

Photo credit: Miniature of the book’s author, Vincent of Beauvais, within a border containing the arms of Edward IV, to whom this manuscript belonged. Miroir historial, vol. 1 (Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum historiale, trans. into French by Jean de Vignay), Bruges, c. 1478-1480, Royal 14 E. i, vol. 1, f. 3r [public domain / Wikimedia Commons]

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Seidensticker Folly #27: Confusion Re John the Baptist

Last updated on: October 10, 2018 at 12:12 pm By Dave Armstrong

Atheist and anti-theist Bob Seidensticker, who was “raised Presbyterian”, runs the influential Cross Examined blog. He asked me there, on 8-11-18: “I’ve got 1000+ posts here attacking your worldview. You just going to let that stand? Or could you present a helpful new perspective that I’ve ignored on one or two of those posts?” He also made a general statement on 6-22-17: “Christians’ arguments are easy to refute . . . I’ve heard the good stuff, and it’s not very good.” He added in the combox: “If I’ve misunderstood the Christian position or Christian arguments, point that out. Show me where I’ve mischaracterized them.”

Such confusion would indeed be predictable, seeing that Bob himself admitted (2-13-16): “My study of the Bible has been haphazard, and I jump around based on whatever I’m researching at the moment.” I’m always one to oblige people’s wishes if I am able, so I decided to do a series of posts in reply. It’s also been said, “be careful what you wish for.” If Bob responds to this post, and makes me aware of it, his reply will be added to the end along with my counter-reply. If you don’t see that, rest assured that he either hasn’t replied, or didn’t inform me that he did.

But don’t hold your breath. He hasn’t yet uttered one peep in reply to my previous 25 installments. Bob (for the record) virtually begged and pleaded with me to dialogue with him in May 2018, via email. But by 10-3-18, following massive, childish name-calling attacks against me, encouraged by Bob on his blog, his opinion was as follows: “Dave Armstrong . . . made it clear that a thoughtful intellectual conversation wasn’t his goal. . . . [I] have no interest in what he’s writing about.”

Bob’s words will be in blue. To find these posts, word-search “Seidensticker” on my atheist page or in my sidebar search (near the top).

*****

In his article, “Clueless John the Baptist” (8-27-12; rev. 3-14-15), Bible-Bashing Bob wrote:

John the Baptist was in prison when he heard the marvelous stories about Jesus, and he sent his disciples to ask, “Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?” (Matthew 11:2–3).

Whaaa … ? This is a remarkable question! John the Baptist doesn’t know whether Jesus is the Messiah or not?

John was pretty clear about who Jesus was when he baptized him. Not only did he recognize Jesus’s priority and ask that Jesus baptize him (Matt. 3:14), but he heard a voice from heaven proclaiming Jesus as God’s son. His conclusion at the time: “I have seen and I testify that this is God’s Chosen One” (John 1:34).

John’s very purpose was to be the messenger who would prepare the way (Matt. 11:10). How could he not know? . . .

And John has to ask who Jesus is?

It’s called depression; it’s called despair, or sometimes, the “dark night of the soul.” It may have been only momentary or short-lived, for all we know, and it could have been caused by food and/or sleep deprivation in prison. It shows that John — though a prophet and great biblical figure — was a human being like the rest of us, with the whole range of emotions. In any event, most of us mere mortals have experienced it (even Bob, I would venture to guess). I had a horrific, six-month experience of despairing clinical depression in 1977, at age 18. Blessedly, it has never returned since. But I know of it firsthand. And I was in a nice suburban home, not a horrible prison, like John was.

It may also have had to do (partially or wholly) with the dual Jewish notions of the Messiah: the Suffering Servant and the Triumphant King. John (like many Jews then, and Jews to this day) may have been expecting the latter. We Christians expect the latter, too, and call it the Second Coming.

Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers states, regarding Matthew 11:3:

The sickness of deferred hope turns the full assurance of faith into something like despair. So of old Jeremiah had complained, in the bitterness of his spirit, that Jehovah had deceived him (Jeremiah 20:7). So now the Baptist, as week after week passed without the appearance of the kingdom as he expected it to appear, felt as if the King was deserting the forerunner and herald of His kingdom. The very wonders of which he heard made the feeling more grievous, for they seemed to give proof of the power, and to leave him to the conclusion that the will was wanting.

Expositor’s Greek Testament takes the second view:

The effect of confinement on John’s prophetic temper, the general tenor of this chapter which obviously aims at exhibiting the moral isolation of Jesus, above all the wide difference between the two men, . . . Jesus, it had now become evident, was a very different sort of Messiah from what the Baptist had predicted and desiderated (vide remarks on chap. Matthew 3:11-15). Where were the axe and fan and the holy wind and fire of judgment? Too much patience, tolerance, gentleness, sympathy, geniality, mild wisdom in this Christ for his taste.

Apologist Eric Lyons adds:

Skeptics also assume that John’s faith never wavered. They fail to recognize (or accept) that, like other great men of faith who occasionally had doubts (e.g., Moses, Gideon, Peter, etc.), John may have asked this question to Jesus out of momentary unbelief. McGarvey appropriately reminded us that John’s “wild, free life was now curbed by the irksome tedium of confinement…. Moreover, he held no communion with the private life of Jesus, and entered not into the sanctuary of his Lord’s thought. We must remember also that his inspiration passed away with the ministry, on account of which it was bestowed, and it was only the man John, and not the prophet, who made the inquiry” (p. 279, ital. in orig.). John may also have wondered why, if Jesus was a worker of all manner of miracles, was he still in prison. Could Jesus not rescue His forerunner? Could He not save him from the sword of Herod? Jesus’ response to John: “And blessed is he who is not offended because of Me” (Matthew 11:6). John (or John’s disciples) may have needed to be reminded to stay the course, even if they did not understand all of the reasons why certain things happened the way they did (cf. Job 13:15).

Even the great prophet Elijah, right after his triumphant encounter with the false prophets on Mt. Carmel (1 Kgs 18:21-40; I’ve been at the spot), descended into despair and became suicidal:

1 Kings 19:3-4 (RSV) Then he was afraid, and he arose and went for his life, and came to Beer-sheba, which belongs to Judah, and left his servant there. [4] But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a broom tree; and he asked that he might die, saying, “It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life; for I am no better than my fathers.”

We find more confusion in the John the Baptist story when we try to figure out who John really is. Jesus cites an Old Testament prophecy that says that the messenger who will prepare the way for the Messiah would be the prophet Elijah. Jesus then makes clear that John the Baptist is this reincarnation of Elijah (Matt. 11:14).

But wait a minute—in another gospel, John makes clear he’s not Elijah (John 1:21).

This is the problem with harmonizing the gospels: they don’t harmonize.

I dealt with this so-called “confusion” way back in 2006, in my “Dialogue w Agnostic on Elijah and John the Baptist”:

Luke 1:17 states that John the Baptist would “go before him [God] in the spirit and power of Elijah.” Jesus described him as “Elijah who is to come” (Matt 11:14; cf. Mk 9:11-13) because Hebrew thinking often employed prototypes or types and shadows. It was a way to emphasize a man’s characteristics to simply call him the name of another, since the other represented certain thinks in the Hebrew mind. Elijah was a prophet (one of the greatest), and John was the last of the prophets (Matt 11:9-11).

Matthew 17:10-13 is a parallel to Mark 9:11-13, where Jesus refers to John the Baptist as “Elijah.” But this passage shows that the disciples understood this prototypical thinking, since it tells us “the disciples understood that he was speaking to them of John the Baptist” (17:13). Moreover, both Elijah and Moses are described as appearing with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration (Matthew 17:3-4). We know that this Elijah returned from heaven is distinguished from John the Baptist (as a person) because even as Jesus and the disciples were coming down the mountain, Jesus referred to Elijah as “already come” and that men “did to him whatever they pleased. So also the Son of man will suffer at their hands” (Matt 17:12-13).

This (persecution to the death) was true of John (and Jesus) but never of Elijah, so it absolutely proves that Jesus thought John and Elijah were two different men, even though He called John “Elijah” — in prototypical language. It also rules out reincarnation (which is utterly contrary to biblical Christianity anyway) because it shows that Elijah was still alive as a distinct person even after John the Baptist was murdered, whereas in reincarnation, Elijah would have ceased to be when he “moved into” John’s body.

Another notable example of this Hebrew prototypical thinking is the David-Messiah-Jesus parallelism. For example, note this famous messianic passage (familiar to anyone who loves Handel’s Messiah):

Isaiah 9:6-7 For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government will be upon his shoulder, and his name will be called “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, upon the throne of David, and over his kingdom, to establish it, and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and for evermore. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this. (cf. Jer 23:5; Lk 1:32)

But Jeremiah 30:8-9 calls the Messiah “David”:

“And it shall come to pass in that day, says the LORD of hosts, that I will break the yoke from off their neck, and I will burst their bonds, and strangers shall no more make servants of them. But they shall serve the LORD their God and David their king, whom I will raise up for them.” (cf. Ezek 34:23-24; 37:24-25: “David my servant shall be their prince for ever.”)

In John 1:21, John himself is simply denying that he is literally Elijah, come back (as Elijah did indeed come back at the Transfiguration). No contradiction; just different senses, explained by the Hebrew idea of prototypes. For much more biblical data on that, see the excellent article by Wayne Jackson: “A Study of Biblical Types.”

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Photo credit: John the Baptist (c. 1542), by Titian (1490-1576) [public domain / Wikimedia Commons]

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Seidensticker Folly #26: Spiritual Bodies R Still Bodies!

Last updated on: October 9, 2018 at 11:39 am By Dave Armstrong

Atheist and anti-theist Bob Seidensticker runs the influential Cross Examined blog. He asked me there, on 8-11-18: “I’ve got 1000+ posts here attacking your worldview. You just going to let that stand? Or could you present a helpful new perspective that I’ve ignored on one or two of those posts?” He also made a general statement on 6-22-17: “Christians’ arguments are easy to refute . . . I’ve heard the good stuff, and it’s not very good.” He added in the combox: “If I’ve misunderstood the Christian position or Christian arguments, point that out. Show me where I’ve mischaracterized them.”

Bob’s words will be in blue. To find these posts, word-search “Seidensticker” on my atheist page or in my sidebar search (near the top).

*****

In his article, “Debunking 10 Popular Christian Principles for Reading the Bible” (3-2-15), Bible-Bashing Bob opined:

The puzzle given is Paul’s statement that “[the human body] is sown a natural body, [but] it is raised a spiritual body” (1 Corinthians 15:44). Paul is rejecting the imperfect physical body and sees it perfected in the spiritual equivalent. While this was popular Greek thinking at the time, it was eventually rejected by the Christian church. . . .

The only problem [Jim] Wallace solves is how to hammer the Bible to fit his preconceptions. He goes into his Bible study certain that God raises bodies physically rather than spiritually, and he’s determined to wring that meaning from it. That’s not how an honest person reads the Bible.

Elsewhere, Bob wrote:

Paul says, “The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable … it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body” (15:42–4). This makes clear that the resurrected Jesus was spirit, not flesh. This sounds a lot like docetism, a heresy that was rejected in the First Council of Nicaea. It also contradicts Luke’s physical post-resurrection Jesus: “Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have” (Luke 24:39). (4-8-13)

Bob maintains that Paul’s reference to a “spiritual body” is to a pure spirit, with no physical body. This is immediately absurd, since “spirit” cannot have an additional description of “body”. A “body” is physical, and spirits aren’t physical; they are immaterial. Yet Bob appears to think that his flatly absurd interpretation of the passage is the only “honest” one anyone can take. We Christians, according to him, are reading into Holy Scripture things that aren’t there. That’s false, and it is Bob foolishly projecting precisely what he is doing, onto us.

Evangelical G. Shane Morris gives a good refutation of this Gnostic-influenced thinking in his article, “Jesus Has a Physical Body Forever (And So Will We)”:

There’s a common misconception in the Christian rank and file that Jesus’ resurrected body was something other than a real, physical body with flesh and bones, and that our resurrected bodies will likewise be something other than or somehow less solid than our bodies are now. . . .

Christians’ enduring hope has always been what Paul said the creation itself groans for: “the redemption of our bodies.” (Romans 8:23) This is what it means to swallow up death in victory. A “spiritual resurrection” of any kind isn’t resurrection. It’s a euphemistic redescription of death.

Second, the term “spiritual body” in 1 Corinthians 15:44 does not, in Paul’s original use, mean what the phrase seems to imply in English. [N. T.] Wright points out that to the original audience, a “spiritual body” understood as an “immaterial body” would be a contradiction in terms. There is no such thing. You might as well talk about solid mist or dry water. What Paul is doing, in context, is contrasting a body of flesh (which is the most common New Testament metonym for fallen humanity) with the body of the Spirit—that is, a body empowered and animated by the Holy Spirit. The Jews and Greeks had words for immaterial beings.

If Paul had meant for us to expect a non-physical resurrection, he could have spoken of “ghosts,” or “spirits.” He did not. For a man of his background, “resurrection” meant only one thing: To get up out of the grave, body and all, and walk again. Jesus left behind an empty grave devoid of flesh and bones. He took them with Him. And so will we. (1 John 3:2) A physical understanding of our resurrection bodies is crucial to the passage, as Paul calls Christ Himself “a life-giving spirit” in the very next verse. Does this mean the resurrected Christ is a mere spirit? If so, what of the central fact of Christian history? What of the empty tomb? Where did the body go? It got up and walked out, scars and all.

Finally, people will sometimes cite the gospel accounts of Jesus entering through locked doors and walking through walls to visit the Disciples as proof that His body was not quite as solid as it appeared. This is a huge non-sequitur, if you consider it for just a moment. This is God we’re talking about. He had spent His entire ministry in a quite ordinary human body, performing miracles that defied the laws of physics (walking on water, disappearing through crowds, being transfigured and shining like the sun, etc.). No one but the Docetic Gnostics ever suggested that this calls into question the corporeal reality of Jesus’ pre-resurrection body.

James Bishop adds:

Paul was, prior to his conversion, a Pharisee. Pharisees held to a physical resurrection (see: Jewish War 3.374, 2.163; 4Q521; 1QH 14.34; 4Q 385-391; Genesis Rabbah 14.5; Leviticus Rabbah 14.9). For instance, one leading scholar by the name of NT Wright, in his 700 page volume, argues that the resurrection in pagan, Jewish, and Christian cultures meant a physical and bodily resurrection (2). Paul held the same view (cf. 1 Corinthians 6:14; Romans 8:11; Philippians 3:20-21). . . .

As [N. T.] Wright articulates: “Until second century Christianity, the language of ‘resurrection’ had been thought by pagan, Jew, and Christian as some kind of return to bodily and this-worldly life” [The Resurrection of the Son of God, 2003, p. 83].

The context of 1 Corinthians 15 further bolsters this view:

1 Corinthians 15:35-42 But some one will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?” [36] You foolish man! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. [37] And what you sow is not the body which is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. [38] But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body. [39] For not all flesh is alike, but there is one kind for men, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. [40] There are celestial bodies and there are terrestrial bodies; but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another. [41] There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory. [42] So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable.

Does Bob think that Paul thought the moon was a spirit and not physical? It’s absurd. Sadly, the absurd is a frequent feature of Bob’s anti-Christian ravings.

In 1 Corinthians 15 Paul uses the Greek word egiro (usually “raised” in English) 19 times, referring to resurrection, either of Jesus (15:4, 12-17, 20) or of the general resurrection of human beings (15:29, 32, 35, 42-44, 52). It was used in the verse Bob brought up (15:44). The same word is used in the gospels of the raising of the young girl who had died. She remained human, with her body, after being raised He was holding her hand when she was raised):

Matthew 9:18, 23-25 While he was thus speaking to them, behold, a ruler came in and knelt before him, saying, “My daughter has just died; but come and lay your hand on her, and she will live.” . . . [23] And when Jesus came to the ruler’s house, and saw the flute players, and the crowd making a tumult, [24] he said, “Depart; for the girl is not dead but sleeping.” And they laughed at him. [25] But when the crowd had been put outside, he went in and took her by the hand, and the girl arose [egiro].

In John 12, the word is applied to Lazarus three times (12:1, 9, 17: “raised from the dead” and “raised him from the dead”: RSV). In John 12:2, the risen Lazarus is referred to, sitting at the table, eating supper with Jesus: obviously a physical being. This is what the word means: “a body being physically raised and restored after it had died.”

Jesus was obviously also still in a physical body after He was resurrected, but it was a spiritual body, and so He could “walk through walls” (which modern physics tells us is actually physically possible, in additional dimensions and what-not). He ate fish with His disciples, told Thomas to put his hand in His wounds, which were still visible; was touched by Mary Magdalene, broke bread with the two disciples on the way to Emmaus, etc.

Norman Geisler and Thomas Howe offer further explanation in the following excerpt their book, When Critics Ask: A Popular Handbook on Bible Difficulties (Wheaton, Illinois: Victor Books, 1992):

[N]otice the parallelism mentioned by Paul:

The complete context indicates that “spiritual” (pneumatikos) could be translated “supernatural” in contrast to “natural.” This is made clear by the parallels of perishable and imperishable and corruptible and incorruptible. In fact, this same Greek word (pneumatikos) is translated “supernatural” in 1 Corinthians 10:4 when it speaks of the “supernatural rock that followed them in the wilderness” (RSV).

Second, the word “spiritual” (pneumatikos) in 1 Corinthians refers to material objects. Paul spoke of the “spiritual rock” that followed Israel in the wilderness from which they got “spiritual drink” (1 Cor. 10:4). But the OT story (Ex. 17; Num. 20) reveals that it was a physical rock from which they got literal water to drink. But the actual water they drank from that material rock was produced supernaturally. When Jesus supernaturally made bread for the five thousand (John 6), He made literal bread. However, this literal, material bread could have been called “spiritual” bread (because of its supernatural source) in the same way that the literal manna given to Israel is called “spiritual food” (1 Cor. 10:3).

Further, when Paul spoke about a “spiritual man” (1 Cor. 2:15) he obviously did not mean an invisible, immaterial man with no corporeal body. He was, as a matter of fact, speaking of a flesh and blood human being whose life was lived by the supernatural power of God. He was referring to a literal person whose life was Spirit directed. A spiritual man is one who is taught by the Spirit and who receives the things that come from the Spirit of God (1 Cor. 2:13–14).

To summarize Paul’s doctrine of the general resurrection, I cite the section on that topic in the entry, “Resurrection” in the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia:

As the believer then passes into a condition of glory, his body must be altered for the new conditions (1 Corinthians 15:50; Philippians 3:21); it becomes a “spiritual” body, belonging to the realm of the spirit (not “spiritual” in opposition to “material”). Nature shows us how different “bodies” can be–from the “body” of the sun to the bodies of the lowest animals the kind depends merely on the creative will of God (1 Corinthians 15:38-41). Nor is the idea of a change in the body of the same thing unfamiliar: look at the difference in the “body” of a grain of wheat at its sowing and after it is grown! (1 Corinthians 15:37).

Just so, I am “sown” or sent into the world (probably not “buried”) with one kind of body, but my resurrection will see me with a body adapted to my life with Christ and God (1 Corinthians 15:42-44). If I am still alive at the Parousia, this new body shall be clothed upon my present body (1 Corinthians 15:53,54; 2 Corinthians 5:2-4) otherwise I shall be raised in it (1 Corinthians 15:52). This body exists already in the heavens (2 Corinthians 5:1,2), and when it is clothed upon me the natural functions of the present body will be abolished (1 Corinthians 6:13). Yet a motive for refraining from impurity is to keep undefiled the body that is to rise (1 Corinthians 6:13,14).

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Photo credit: The Resurrected Christ Appears to the Virgin (1629), by Guercino (1591-1666) [public domain / Wikimedia Commons]

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Seidensticker Folly #24: Paul’s Massive Ignorance of Jesus (?)

Last updated on: October 5, 2018 at 12:56 pm By Dave Armstrong

He also made a general statement on 6-22-17: “In this blog, I’ve responded to many Christian arguments . . . Christians’ arguments are easy to refute . . . I’ve heard the good stuff, and it’s not very good.” He added in the combox: “If I’ve misunderstood the Christian position or Christian arguments, point that out. Show me where I’ve mischaracterized them.” Such confusion would indeed be predictable, seeing that Bob himself admitted (2-13-16): “My study of the Bible has been haphazard, and I jump around based on whatever I’m researching at the moment.”

I’m always one to oblige people’s wishes if I am able, so I decided to do a series of posts in reply. It’s also been said, “be careful what you wish for.” If Bob responds to this post, and makes me aware of it, his reply will be added to the end along with my counter-reply. If you don’t see that, rest assured that he either hasn’t replied, or didn’t inform me that he did. But don’t hold your breath.

Bob (for the record) virtually begged and pleaded with me to dialogue with him in May 2018, via email. But by 10-3-18, his opinion was as follows: “Dave Armstrong . . . made it clear that a thoughtful intellectual conversation wasn’t his goal. . . . [I] have no interest in what he’s writing about.” Be that as it may, what is one to make (whatever he thinks of me) of his great (and perhaps in due course total) unwillingness to defend his ideas and opinions against my numerous serious critiques?

Bob’s words will be in blue. To find these posts, word-search “Seidensticker” on my atheist page or in my sidebar search (near the top).

*****

In his article, “How Reliable is Apostle Paul When He Knew Very Little About Jesus?” (12-17-12; rev. 9-4-15), Bob pontificated:

For being the founder of Christianity, Paul knew surprisingly little about Christ. . . .

Using the gospels as a guide, we’ll find that Paul is a shallow source of information.

If we were to extract biographical information from the gospels, we’d have a long list—the story of Jesus turning water into wine, walking on water, raising Lazarus, the Prodigal Son story, curing blindness with spit, odd events like his cursing the fig tree, and so on. But what information about Jesus do we get from Paul? . . .

No parables of the sheep and the goats, or the prodigal son, or the rich man and Lazarus, or the lost sheep, or the good Samaritan. In fact, no Jesus as teacher at all.

No driving out evil spirits, or healing the invalid at Bethesda, or cleansing the lepers, or raising Lazarus, or other healing miracles. As far as Paul tells us, Jesus performed no miracles at all.

No virgin birth, no Sermon on the Mount, no feeding the 5000, no public ministry, no women followers, no John the Baptist, no cleansing the temple, no final words, no Trinity, no hell, no Judas as betrayer (he mentions “the twelve”), and no Great Commission. Paul doesn’t even place Jesus within history—there’s nothing to connect Jesus with historical figures like Caesar Augustus, King Herod, or Pontius Pilate.

Perhaps everyone to whom Paul wrote his letters knew all this already? Okay, but presumably they already knew about the crucifixion, and Paul mentions that 13 times. And the resurrection, which Paul mentions 14 times.

This is an astonishingly clueless piece. Once again, the apologist tasked with responding to this sort of bilge (unfortunately, myself) feels like a mosquito on a nude beach: so many opportunities, but where to begin?! Well, here we go.

To take the last paragraph first: obviously Paul mentioned the crucifixion and resurrection a lot because they are absolutely central to the Christian gospel and our theology. That’s why he mentioned them more, even though his readers (being Christians) already knew about them. This ain’t rocket science, folks. But the Christians he was writing to also knew about the fine details of Jesus’ life; therefore, he didn’t need to repeat them. It wasn’t his primary purpose in his letters.

For supposedly knowing “surprisingly little about Christ,” Bob’s own article (in portions that I have not cited) notes many particulars about Paul’s writings, which seem to refute his own grandiose claims. After all, he lists fourteen separate aspects of Jesus and His life (complete with many biblical references) that even he concedes Paul knew about.

According to Strong’s Concordance: a standard biblical reference work, Paul mentions the word “Jesus” 218 times (an average of 2 1/2 times per chapter). In his epistles, he also mentions “Christ” (Greek for Messiah) apart from “Jesus” another 212 times. That’s 430 times total. I had to sit here and laboriously count up all the instances of “Christ” by itself, because an intelligent, educated man claims with a straight face that “Paul knew surprisingly little about Christ.”

Bob commits a glaring omission in not including the book of Acts (written by Luke) as data concerning what Paul knew and supposedly didn’t know about Jesus. It records many of his words, including sermons, and is basically devoted to his story, starting in chapter 13, till the last chapter (28). Thus, 57% of the book is about Paul (16 chapters out of 28); yet Bob didn’t think it was relevant in determining what Paul knew and taught about Jesus Christ. Go figure! And no, I refuse to spend more valuable time counting up Paul’s use of “Jesus” and “Christ” in Acts. Here’s the searchable Bible I use. Anyone can do it if they wish.

This is how ridiculous it gets in having to refute the ludicrous claims of atheists about the Bible and Christianity: and why very few are willing to do it. Who can blame them? It virtually takes the patience of Job. I’m half-disgusted at myself for doing this very paper, but I know it will do some good, and help some people inclined to believe Bob (or those who want to be able to refute these sorts of pseudo-“arguments”), and so I persevere. Please pray for me. Since prayer can be applied backwards in time (God being outside of time), I know that the prayers of some of you reading this will literally help me write it. Thanks!

Bob spends a great deal of energy listing various elements of the Gospel stories, and argues that it is odd that Paul (granting his conclusion for a moment) doesn’t include them. But why must we accept his premise in the first place? I see no compelling reason why. Protestant apologist Kyle Butt, in his excellent article, “Did Paul Write About Jesus as a Historical Person?” stated:

[Tom] Harpur’s major contention is that Paul did not mention details about Jesus’ life such as His birthplace in Bethlehem, His mother’s name, or His specific miracles. Yet, if the guiding hand of God produced the New Testament documents, it makes perfect sense that such information would not be repeated in Paul’s writings, since it was so thoroughly documented in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. In truth, the fact that Paul repeatedly alludes to Jesus in the flesh, but does not reiterate the various details of the gospel accounts, shows that Paul coincides with the Gospel writers, but was independent of them as well. Why would God need to record for the fifth time the various miracles and facts about Jesus’ life in the writings of Paul? Paul consistently dealt with many of the events in Jesus’ life such as His death, burial, resurrection, trial before Pilate, birth according to the seed of David, and the overarching fact that He took on the form of a human. Harpur’s complaint that Paul did not mention enough of the details that are recorded in the gospel accounts is a criterion that he and his fellow skeptics have arbitrarily chosen and that proves nothing. . . .

The obvious truth is that Paul saturated his writings with the name of Jesus and repeatedly stressed that Jesus had come in the flesh as a historical human being. The details he left out of his writings accord perfectly with what one would expect from divine inspiration, and show that, while he acknowledged the historical Jesus, his writings serve as testimony independent of the gospel accounts.

Catholic Ann Nafziger, in her piece, “If St. Paul’s Letters Are Older Than the Gospels, Why Does He Leave a Lot Out?” adds:

Because he was writing to specific audiences with particular issues in mind, it resulted in a less-than-systematic portrayal of Jesus’ life. For example, when writing to a church that he had founded, if there were no current controversies about the virgin birth or Jesus’ miracles, he wouldn’t have felt the need to address them.

The short answer is that the Gospels (four times!) already dealt with Jesus’ life in its fine details. Paul’s letters largely consist of systematic theology. They are the “theology” / “intellectual” portion of the New Testament: which is quite as necessary as the Gospels are. Different purpose; different content. It’s really as simple as that.

But beyond that basic consideration, in some of his claims regarding alleged Pauline “ignorance” Bob is factually wrong, as I will now proceed to show. Above, Bob wrote: “As far as Paul tells us, Jesus performed no miracles at all.” And later on in his post he elaborates:

Paul indirectly admits that he knew of no Jesus miracles:

Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles (1 Cor. 1:22–3)

Why “a stumbling block”? Jesus did lots of miraculous “signs”—why didn’t Paul convince the Jews with these? Paul apparently didn’t know any. The Jesus of Paul is not the miracle worker that we see in the Jesus of the gospels. . . .

The Jesus of Paul isn’t the Jesus of the gospels.

Bob refutes himself (a not uncommon occurrence), because he himself said that “Paul mentions” Jesus’ resurrection “14 times.” Is that not a miracle? Indeed, it is Jesus’ greatest miracle: the conquering of death, and showing that there is an afterlife. The Gospels teach that Jesus raised Himself (it was His own miracle), just as He had raised Lazarus:

John 2:18-22 (RSV) The Jews then said to him, “What sign have you to show us for doing this?” [19] Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” [20] The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?” [21] But he spoke of the temple of his body. [22] When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word which Jesus had spoken.

John 10:17-18 . . . I lay down my life, that I may take it again. [18] No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again . . .

Note that Jesus thought His resurrection was the “sign” that the Jews demanded (2:18). He reiterates this elsewhere in comparing His resurrection to the “sign of Jonah” (Mt 16:1-4; Lk 11:29-30): that is, his emerging from the whale (metaphor for His tomb) after three days. Bob’s citing of 1 Corinthians 1:22-23 proves nothing that he claims. Paul’s simply saying that the crucifixion was loathsome to the Jews, and made it harder for them to accept Christianity. There is no hint that “he knew of no Jesus miracles:”. It’s ludicrous. In the same book he mentions the resurrection of Jesus nine times: in 6:14 and eight more times in chapter 15.

Moreover, when Paul recalls the story of his conversion to Christ, he mentions miraculous occurrences caused by “Jesus of Nazareth” (Acts 22:8): namely, “a great light from heaven” (22:6, 11), “brighter than the sun” (26:13), and “a voice” [of Jesus] from heaven (22:7; 26:14), which the others around him couldn’t hear (22:9). That’s all miraculous, supernatural stuff (I think even Bob would agree). It’s a “heavenly vision” (26:19).

Bob claims there is “no Trinity” in Paul’s writing. This is absolutely absurd. See my papers on the Deity of Jesus and The Holy Trinity: filled with hundreds of biblical proofs (including scores of them in Paul’s writing).

He claims that there is “no John the Baptist” either. But Paul does in fact mention him, in an evangelistic sermon delivered at Antioch of Pisid’ia:

Acts 13:24-25 Before his coming John had preached a baptism of repentance to all the people of Israel. [25] And as John was finishing his course, he said, `What do you suppose that I am? I am not he. No, but after me one is coming, the sandals of whose feet I am not worthy to untie.’

Bob claims that there is “no hell” in Paul’s writings. He doesn’t use the word, but he repeatedly teaches the concept, some eleven times, as one article on the topic documents, referring to God’s “wrath and fury” towards the unrepentant (Rom 2:8), “wrath of God” (Col 3:6), “tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil” (Rom 2:9), “punishment of eternal destruction and exclusion from the presence of the Lord ” (2 Thess 1:9). “Destruction” here doesn’t mean “annihilation”: as the article explains.

Bob claims: “Paul doesn’t even place Jesus within history—there’s nothing to connect Jesus with historical figures like . . . Pontius Pilate.” Wrong again! (does anyone see a pattern here?):

Acts 13:27-29 For those who live in Jerusalem and their rulers, because they did not recognize him nor understand the utterances of the prophets which are read every sabbath, fulfilled these by condemning him. [28] Though they could charge him with nothing deserving death, yet they asked Pilate to have him killed. [29] And when they had fulfilled all that was written of him, they took him down from the tree, and laid him in a tomb.

1 Timothy 6:13 In the presence of God who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, [Bob cites this, too, but he thinks the letter wasn’t written by Paul]

Bob thinks Paul has no knowledge of “Judas as betrayer” either. But he is in error again. Paul certainly refers to him here:

1 Corinthians 11:23 For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread,

Since Bob himself cited this verse, who does he believe Paul thinks was the one who betrayed Jesus? Not that logical consistency is a very common trait in Bob’s anti-Bible rantings . . .

Bob also argues that because Paul referred to the disciples as “the twelve” (1 Cor 15:5) at the time Jesus appeared to them after His resurrection, therefore he wasn’t aware of Judas’ death, that decreased the group to eleven. But this is an example of non-literal biblical usage again. As an analogy: in Genesis 42:13, the children of Jacob said they were the “twelve brothers” even though they thought that Joseph (the 12th) was dead, leaving eleven.

It appears fairly plausible, if not certain, that “the twelve” (without “disciples” added) had become a title for the group of men that were Jesus’ disciples and closest companions (see, e.g., Mt 26:14, 47; Mk 4:10; 6:7; 9:35; 10:32; 11:11; 14:10, 17, 20, 43; Lk 8:1; 9:1, 12; 18:31; 22:3, 47; Jn 6:67, 71; 20:24; Acts 6:2). Jesus clearly uses it as a title, in this way: “Did I not choose you, the twelve . . .?” (Jn 6:70). The number twelve also had great meaning in Hebrew thought, as many biblical examples show.

Lastly, we use numbers in a non-literal fashion in the same way today. So, for example, there is the Big Ten Conference in college football (with our two beloved Michigan teams), which actually has fourteen members. It had ten from 1912 to 1950 (when Michigan State was added), eleven from then till 2011, when it became twelve, and 14 after 2014. From 2011 to 2014, the Big Ten had twelve teams, and the Big 12 consisted of ten teams!

We also use the term “two-by-four” for the common piece of lumber, when in fact, its actual dimensions are 1 5/8 inches by 3 5/8 inches. If such non-literal numbers can be used by us, why not also in the Bible? What forbids it? As with virtually all of these alleged “biblical contradictions” I’ve ever seen, they turn out to be nonexistent. Why isn’t Bob out there also running down the Big Ten for “lying” about the number of their teams?

Bob writes: “Not confirmed: There is no confirmation of the post-resurrection appearances in Paul’s epistles.” Bob stumbles upon the truth here (like the unplugged clock, twice a day). But this theme is present in one of his sermons: the one given at Antioch of Pisid’ia, which I now cite for the third time:

Acts 13:30-31 But God raised him from the dead; [31] and for many days he appeared to those who came up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, who are now his witnesses to the people.

What would Paul have said about the philosophical issues that divided the church for centuries? These don’t mean much to most of us today because they’ve long been decided, but they were divisive in their day—whether Jesus was subordinate to God or not, whether Jesus had a human body or not, whether he had a human nature or not, whether he had two wills or not, whether the Holy Spirit was part of the Godhead, and so on. No one knows how Paul would have resolved them or even if they crossed his mind.

Kyle Butt observes:

Is it true that Paul . . . never referred to Him as a flesh and blood human being? Certainly not. . . .

Not only did Paul repeatedly mention Jesus, but he specifically stressed that Jesus had come in the flesh as a real human being. For instance, in 1 Timothy 2:5, Paul wrote: “For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus.” To elucidate what he meant by the word “man,” Paul wrote in Philippians 2:5:

Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a servant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross (emp. added).

Any attempt to turn Paul’s phrase “in the likeness of men” into some sort of spiritual, mystical appearance is doomed to failure. Furthermore, Paul more specifically mentioned that “the likeness of men” that he discussed in Philippians meant human flesh. Paul wrote to the Romans about “Jesus Christ our Lord, who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh” (Romans 1:3, emp. added).

There are many other indications as well; for example:

Acts 20:28 Take heed to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God which he obtained with the blood of his own Son. [hard to have “blood” and not be a man]

Colossians 2:8-9 See to it that no one makes a prey of you by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ. [9] For in him the whole fulness of deity dwells bodily,

1 Timothy 3:16 Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of our religion: He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated in the Spirit, seen by angels, preached among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory.

It’s also difficult for a spirit being with no body to be crucified. Bob himself says that Paul mentions Jesus’ crucifixion 13 times. I’ll take his word on that; thus, it is 13 times that he refutes his own vapid inanity about Paul not being sure if Jesus had a body or not. For that matter, a spirit can’t be “raised from the dead.” That presupposes a physical body that died and is now back alive. Bob says Paul mentions Jesus’ resurrection 14 times, so he refutes one clueless point of his 27 times. Not bad! Saves me a lot of work . . .

As to Jesus’ two wills, that is mostly covered in the Gospels, as I have documented, but Paul also makes statements that are consistent with the orthodox Christian understanding (two wills: divine and human).

Jesus being “subordinate” to or in subjection or submission to God the Father poses no problem at all for His deity or for trinitarianism, as Protestant apologist Glenn Miller explains, in extreme (but wonderful!) depth: as is his wont. This aspect as well as the two natures of Christ (also mentioned in Bob’s laundry list above) are strikingly highlighted in this Pauline passage:

Philippians 2:5-8 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, [6] who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, [7] but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. [8] And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.

It’s patently ridiculous to suggest that there is nothing in Paul to suggest his opinions on either of these doctrines. This paper is long enough, Bob has already been refuted over and over (and easily so), and the patience I asked readers to pray for is barely hanging by a thread about now. But we’ll do one last refutation (and it’s a decisive one indeed, if I do say so):

What would Paul have said about . . . whether the Holy Spirit was part of the Godhead, . . . No one knows . . . if [it even] crossed his mind.

Really? Paul cites an Old Testament prophecy (Isaiah 6:8-10) in Acts 28:25-27, but with one important language difference. The Old Testament passage says that “I heard the voice of the Lord saying . . .” (Is 6:8). But when Paul cites it, he introduces it as follows: “The Holy Spirit was right in saying to your fathers through Isaiah the prophet” (Acts 28:25). This is a direct (logical) unarguable equation of the Holy Spirit with God. Thus, the question did indeed cross Paul’s mind, and he rendered a definite opinion on it. He makes the same equation in the following passages:

1 Corinthians 3:16-17 Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? [17] If any one destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and that temple you are. (cf. 6:19; 2 Cor 6:16)

1 Corinthians 12:4-6, 11 Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; [5] and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; [6] and there are varieties of working, but it is the same God who inspires them all in every one. . . . [11] All these are inspired by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills.

2 Corinthians 3:16-17 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. [18] And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.

I guess Bob, in his exhaustive Bible study, undertaken with the utmost seriousness and intellectual honesty (and particular attention to fine detail) managed to somehow miss all of this biblical information that I found. Anyone can accept it if a man admits to being ignorant about a given subject. We all have thousands of topics we’re unacquainted with. But to claim to be an expert on the Bible and Christian theology, and condescendingly mock millions of Christians — who clearly know exponentially more about these theological topics than Bob does –, is insufferable folly.

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Photo credit: Orthodox icon of St. Paul’s conversion, photographed by Ted (3-9-11) [Flickr / CC BY-SA 2.0 license]

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God as Cosmic Santa Claus & the Bible as Fairy-Tale

Last updated on: September 30, 2018 at 6:14 pm By Dave Armstrong

Reply to Common Atheist Critiques Concerning the Christian Epistemology of Belief in the Bible and God

Atheists often chide Christians for placing faith in the Bible: that it is God’s inspired and infallible revelation. They argue that we can’t possibly know or prove that. But all of us (including atheists) extrapolate the truthfulness (at least in general terms) of a work based on things in it which we can easily verify or substantiate. Then we trust the writer for the rest. And, of course, for the Christian, we exercise faith, which is not unlike the sort of trust just mentioned. It is not a blind faith, but one which extrapolates from, and is wholly consistent with, the evidences of reason.

The Christian does this with the Bible, on many levels. We trust Jesus, because He showed Himself trustworthy and claimed to be God (and we believe Him, because of His demonstrated character and the miracles He performed, which eyewitnesses saw). He accepts Old Testament Scripture, so we do also. We see fulfilled prophecies and practical wisdom, and archaeological and historiographical support for the Bible’s accuracy.

We see sublime moral teaching, and the absence of silly myths, as were present, for example, in Greek mythology, despite the rational thought of the Greek philosophers a little later. Hebrew literature is notably lacking fantastic or fairy-tale elements. We see internal coherence of teaching. These are a few of the many reasons we would offer.

People differ on how to establish factuality. If one takes a strictly empiricist view, then only things that can be verified by the senses, and replicable experiment or observation are accepted. But then one has to explain and justify the axiom that is involved in empiricism (which is quite difficult to do, if intended to exclude other sorts of knowledge and epistemology).

As for extrapolation from many instances where a particular document has been shown to be true and accurate; we do that with every scholar whom we trust. We don’t try to verify everything he says. What we do is see if he has a proven track record, and the more we see that he does, without errors, we trust him more so in the future. Likewise, Christians have a host of cumulative, complementary reasons for their acceptance of the Bible.

Granted, nothing else (except alternate holy books) claims to be inspired and infallible, but in many ways, the Christian has no different of a method or epistemology for what he believes, than anyone else does with any other kind of literature. We happen to believe that the Bible is revelation, and verified by miraculous occurrences. So, of course, one must allow those two things as categories and possibilities. Christians contend that many verifications, taken together, are not inconsistent with a justified belief that the Bible is a revelation from God. I hasten to add that this is not a proof (because one still must exercise faith); but it is a plausible, consistent, and not irrational viewpoint.

It would be a gigantic, probably impossible task to “verify” (prove?) every statement in a book, let alone a complex one like the Bible. Yet we all have many books which we believe contain substantially true information. I think the phone book is an example of that. Do I have to call everyone in it to prove that the number matches the person before I will “believe” the phone book? Or take the voting ballot. Do I have to personally contact every candidate to “prove” they are running, and that their name on the ballot isn’t just made up?

One can see how silly it gets . . . Yet the atheist often demands absolute proof for the Bible’s claims before granting that the Christian has any basis for placing faith in it, that it is God’s inspired word. How an atheist regards any other work as true or false involves largely the same processes, with faith (or, trust, extrapolation, inductive leaps) added onto them.

Let me illustrate by an example. On what basis would an atheist be skeptical of statements in Bertrand Russell’s autobiography? When he talks about some opinion he had in 1925, I venture to guess that an atheist would simply assume his report. They would not doubt it, nor would they have many ways in which they could reasonably doubt it, even if they wanted to, because that is an eyewitness report (first-hand!). Of course, the miracles in the Bible were seen by eyewitnesses as well.

I am saying that how we approach matters of truth and falsity is very complex, and involves issues of proof, verifiability, axiom, induction and deduction, experience, and plausibility which are some of the deepest, most difficult areas of philosophy. And I am strongly denying that the Christian approach to the Bible (at least for halfway intelligent, educated Christians) is one of irrationality, gullibility, and blind faith, as is the atheist stereotype, as if it has no reasonable basis whatsoever.

I think prejudices, predispositions, and biases are much more prevalent than any of us would like to admit. This was evident in one of my brief Internet encounters with an atheist, who described the Bible as “patently absurd,” and lamented the fact that “it was written by brutal savages thousands of years ago.” But what does the time of writing have to do with anything?

Who determines what is “brutal”? I think (for some odd, strange reason which is difficult to comprehend) that stabbing a full-term human baby in the back of the neck with scissors, after pulling her halfway out of her mother, and sucking her brains out, is “brutally savage.” Yet that is the law of our land (it’s called “partial-birth abortion”), and great numbers of Senators and Supreme Court Justices alike defend it.

Yet we (at least the more advanced and civilized among us, such as this particular atheist) look down our noses at “ancient savages” because they claimed to have the sanction of God when they “dashed children against the rocks”? At least they claimed some higher purpose beyond themselves. Today, “inconvenience” and the nebulous, all-encompassing “choice” is enough to rationalize brutal savagery against helpless infants, unfortunate enough to have been conceived by irresponsible, immature, selfish parents who would rather kill than nurture and love their own children; their own flesh and blood.

No century was anywhere near as savage as the 20th, and the violence was overwhelmingly dominated by non-Christians: either proclaimed institutional atheists (Communists) or violently anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, anti-Aryan racist pagans (Nazis). So I find this a curiously incoherent and inconsistent point of view, if I do say so.

Then he said that the Bible was “completely irrelevant by today’s standards.” But who determines what is “relevant” or not, and how? What does it mean to be “relevant”? What are “today’s standards”? Who determines those, and why should I be bound to their opinions?

He contended that the Bible was “horrifically brutal.” But again, what is brutality? Again, I need merely appeal to abortion, if we want to talk brutality. I see that as self-evidently brutal. If someone does not, I would love to hear the reasons why. So, then, why does this atheist (and many others of like mind) assume that we are, in our age, obviously more civilized and less “brutal and savage” than those in ages past?

The atheist then decried the “immoral vision of ‘God'” found in the Bible. Does he have this opinion because we believe that God has power over life and death, as Judge, being the Creator of life in the first place? That is “immoral”? On what basis is morality established? God is supposedly a “violent dictator.” It’s not okay for God (Who is believed to be omnipotent by nature and to reign over all of His creation) to ever “dictate” or be “violent,” yet it is fine and dandy for human beings to do so for purely sexual and selfish reasons. Very interesting concept there . . . .

This atheist described the Bible as “fairy tales written by a handful of savages a few thousand years ago.” The short reply to this is as follows:

1) The Bible is not “fairy tales,” but history, with plenty of archaeological and historiographical substantiation.

2) The ancient Jews were not “savages,” but a highly advanced society and culture.

3) I don’t see what relevance the age of the material has to anything. Aristotle and Plato (or some Greek atheist philosophers of your choice) lived over two thousand years ago too. I don’t see atheists caring about that, as long as they agree with the philosopher.

He then asked, “How does some meta view of “Universe is God”, get twisted into the OT God or that Christ guy?” That discussion would take months. It is important to narrow the subject down to something manageable. But it does little good to mull over biblical details with atheists. I would rather stick to philosophical categories.

He suspected that the orthodox view of Jesus was based upon “very selective reading and re-interpreting the text to fit your own preconceptions.” But I reply that Jesus’ claims are self-explanatory and quite clear. One either accepts them or not (the alternatives being belief that He is a madman or liar, it seems to me). But that is why Christians believe the “Christ guy.” We take Him at His word. And we believe that the Bible is a revelation from the God Who created the Universe and Man (whether by special creation or evolution).

But if an atheist disallows miracles and revelations from the outset, then that entity hardly could make any sense to them. All these things have to be approached from the level of presupposition and axiom, in Christian-atheist discussions. And it takes a long time to achieve any appreciable degree of mutual understanding and respect.

Many atheists think that belief in Santa Claus and God are on the same intellectual level: infantile projections of idealized figures, intended to fill a need, or as a psychological crutch, and both equally fanciful and nonexistent. Their reasoning (boiled down to its basics) runs: “many people (children) believe in Santa Claus, and many believe in God. As the former is not a truth, so may the latter be an untruth as well.” One atheist I interacted with even argued that Santa Claus was a “lie” and that parents should not teach his existence as if it was truth. He then compared the epistemology of his childhood belief in God with his earlier belief in Santa Claus.

This is ridiculous. Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny are not “lies,” they are fairy tales and cultivators of the imagination and wonder of childhood. Fictional books serve the same function, even for adults. Is every work of fiction a lie? Myths serve to promulgate important truths about life. Once we get older, we find out they are not literally true, yet the wonder of childhood is retained in them, as we teach our own children.

Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the tooth fairy might be thought of as personifications for certain ideals of good and good behavior: graciousness and reward for good behavior. They bring the concepts alive to children whose minds are not developed enough to grasp abstract subjects, apart from concrete realities. A child trusts its parents. When I toss my 11 month old daughter up into the air, she trusts that I will catch her, not that I will let her fall and be harmed. All parents “propagandize” young children. There is no other way to teach them. One has to take some position.

When a child knows next to nothing about a religion, and reduces it to the level of a child’s myth and fairy-tale, then grows up and rejects Christianity in college (since he barely knew it, let alone how to defend it in the first place), then this is the sort of “argument” we get. This is supposed to be compelling for any thinker to ponder the intellectual justifications of atheism and the disproofs of Christianity? Santa Claus? The Easter Bunny? The tooth fairy? We might as well add Frankenstein, Superman, Spiderman, Batman, and Bigfoot to the list of “Christianity-killers.” There are a ton more reasons to believe in God than Santa Claus, which is why all the great theistic philosophers defended God, not a jolly old man in a red suit with flying reindeer.

Any thinker or thoughtful person should wonder and think about the most important questions of life. We all need hope, no doubt, and Santa Claus plays that role in a child’s mind. Those factors in and of themselves do not prove atheism or disprove Christianity. I think that they rather suggest that there may be a God, because so many of us yearn for him. We don’t say that water doesn’t exist because everyone thirsts for it, or that sex doesn’t exist because most of us have a sexual drive, or that love and acceptance are nonexistent because we all yearn for that. Yet somehow atheists conclude that it is likely that God doesn’t exist because so many believe He does, and have a need for Him. Odd.

The typical odyssey of atheists who were raised Christian is a loss of faith in college, as soon as childhood presuppositions and tenets of faith are challenged, and the hapless person has no knowledge or rational basis to fall back on in order to defend his beliefs (not having been taught any) . I blame the churches for not stressing apologetics and the rational basis for Christianity. It is a failure of education. And this is one reason I am so committed to apologetics. Knowing why we believe (apologetics), as well as what we believe (catechesis or creeds), is crucial to a robust, confident, life-transforming faith.

If a young man or woman in college knew very little about Christianity and how it could be defended, I’m not surprised in the least that they are likely to “reject” it (actually a straw man version, or caricature of it). Catholic apologist G. K. Chesterton wrote (paraphrase):

When people stop believing in Christianity, the problem isn’t that they believe in nothing, but that they will believe in anything.

And:

Christianity has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.

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(originally 11-13-02)

Photo credit: Mother Goose reading written fairy tales (1866), by Gustave Doré (1832-1883) [public domain / Wikimedia Commons]

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Gospel: Defined by the Earliest Christian Preaching

Last updated on: September 26, 2018 at 2:26 pm By Dave Armstrong

[excerpts from reference sources will be in blue; Bible verses (NASB) will be indented]

*****

I. THE WORD

The English gospel is derived from the Anglo-Saxon godspell, which meant “good tidings” and later, the “story concerning God.” Gospel is the usual English translation, in the New Testament, of the Greek euangelion (pronounced yoo-ang-GHEL-ee-on), from which, in turn, we get our English words evangelical, evangelist, etc. The Greek euangelion means, literally, “good message” or “good news.” Seven definitions from standard Protestant reference works, follow:

In the N.T. it denotes the good tidings of the Kingdom of God and of salvation through Christ, to be received by faith, on the basis of His expiatory death, His burial, resurrection, and ascension, e.g., Acts 15:7; 20:24; I Peter 4:17. (Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words, W. E. Vine, Old Tappan, New Jersey: Fleming H. Revell, 1940, under heading “Gospel”)

The term comprises the preaching of (concerning) Jesus Christ as having suffered death on the cross to procure eternal salvation for men in the kingdom of God, but as restored to life and exalted to the right hand of God in heaven . . . it may be more briefly defined as ‘the glad tidings of salvation through Christ; the proclamation of the grace of God manifested and pledged in Christ.’ (Rom. 1:16; 10:16; 11:28; I Cor. 4:15; II Cor. 8:18; Gal. 2:2; Eph. 3:6; Phil. 1:5, etc.). (Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, Joseph H. Thayer, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1901, 257)

The gospel is the good news that God in Jesus Christ has fulfilled His promises to Israel, and that a way of salvation has been opened to all . . . The use of ‘Gospels’ as a designation of the first four books of the N.T. is post-biblical (2nd century A. D.). (New Bible Dictionary, edited by J. D. Douglas, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1962, 484)

The central content of the Christian revelation, the glad tidings of redemption. Hence Christ’s own preaching is a ‘Gospel’ (Mk. 1:14 f.). The use of the word in Christian vocabulary probably comes from the OT . . . Is. 61:1 . . . (The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 2nd edition, edited by F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone, Oxford University Press, 1983, 583)

The message of God’s redemption in Jesus Christ, which lies at the heart of the NT and the church’s faith. In the NT it is, first, the proclamation by Jesus that the kingdom has drawn near and, then, the proclamation by His disciples that in His life, death, and resurrection the kingdom has been established and that salvation and forgiveness are offered to all who believe. (The New International Dictionary of the Christian Church, general editor: J. D. Douglas, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1974, 424)

Good news, specifically the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ (Matt. 11:5 par. Luke 4:18; Heb. 4:2,6; 1 Pet. 1:12 . . . Paul most thoroughly treats the nature of the gospel . . . For Paul, the ‘good news’ was that God had bought salvation through the death of Jesus Christ independent of the rules and regulations that characterized Judaism . . . The apostle Paul . . . proclaimed the incarnate, crucified, and resurrected Christ (Rom. 1:3; 1 Cor 1:17) who appeared to his followers after his resurrection (15:1-8) . . . Paul stressed that the gospel is God’s power unto salvation for all believers, manifesting the righteousness of God, but veiled to all those who do not believe (Rom. 1:16-17; cf. 2 Cor. 4:3-4). (The Eerdmans Bible Dictionary, edited by Allen C. Myers, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1987; based on Bijbelse Encyclopedie, edited by W. H. Gispen, Kampen, the Netherlands, revised edition, 1975; 432-433)

Two passages summarize the content (Rom. 1:1 ff. and 1 Cor. 15:1 ff.), and cf. Rom. 2:16; 16:25; 2 Tim. 3:8. From Rom. 1:1 ff. we learn that the preexistent Son has become man, is as such the expected Davidic Messiah, and has been exalted as kyrios with his resurrection. The resurrection presupposes the death and passion. As the message of Jesus, the gospel brings peace (Eph. 6:15), but judgment is also part of its content (Rom. 2:16). The gospel also brings strength (Rom. 16:25) as the revelation of God’s saving counsel concurrent with the preaching of Jesus. (Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, edited by Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich, translated and abridged in one volume by Geoffrey W. Bromiley; Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1985, 271)

II. THE MESSAGE

(Bible verses from New American Standard Bible)

1. St. Peter, in Jerusalem, speaking to the Jews of Israel and from many of the surrounding districts (Acts 2:6-11); c. A.D. 30-33:

Acts 2:22-24, 32-33, 36, 38-40 Men of Israel, listen to these words: Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through Him in your midst, just as you yourselves know – this Man, delivered up by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death. And God raised Him up again, putting an end to the agony of death, since it was impossible for Him to be held in its power . . .

This Jesus God raised up again, to which we are all witnesses. Therefore having been exalted to the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He has poured forth this which you both see and hear . . .

Therefore let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made Him both Lord and Messiah – this Jesus whom you crucified . . . Repent, and let each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and your children, and for all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God shall call to Himself . . . Be saved from this perverse generation.

2. St. Peter, in Jerusalem, to the Jews; c. A.D. 30-33:

Acts 3:13-15, 18-21, 26 The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified His servant Jesus, the one whom you delivered up, and disowned in the presence of Pilate, when he decided to release Him. But you disowned the Holy and Righteous One, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, but put to death the Prince of life, the one whom God raised from the dead, a fact to which we are witnesses . . .

But the things which God announced beforehand by the mouth of all the prophets, that His Messiah should suffer, He has thus fulfilled. Repent – therefore and return, that your sins may be wiped away, in order that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord; and that He may send Jesus, the Messiah appointed for you, whom heaven must receive until the period of restoration of all things about which God spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets from ancient time . . .

For you first, God raised up His servant, and sent Him to bless you by turning every one of you from your wicked ways.

3. St. Peter, in Jerusalem, speaking to the rulers, elders, scribes and priests of the Jews (after healing a lame man: Acts 3:2-8); c. A.D. 30-33:

Acts 4:8-12 (quoting Psalm 118:22) Rulers and elders of the people, if we are on trial today for a benefit done to a sick man, as to how this man has been made well, let it be known to all of you, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead – by this name this man stands here before you in good health. He (Jesus) is the stone which was rejected by you, the builders, but which became the very corner stone. And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men, by which we must be saved.

4. St. Peter and the apostles, in Jerusalem, speaking to the Sanhedrin, or, Council of the Jews; c. A.D. 30-33:

Acts 5:30-32 The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom you had put to death by hanging Him on a cross. He is the one whom God exalted to His right hand as a Prince and a Savior, to grant repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins. And we are witnesses of these things; and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey Him.

5. St. Peter, in Caesarea, on the Mediterranean shore 65 miles northwest of Jerusalem, speaking to Cornelius, a Roman centurion, his relatives and his close friends (Gentiles); c. A.D. 38:

Acts 10:34-43 I most certainly understand now that God is not one to show partiality, but in every nation the man who fears Him and does what is right, is welcome to Him. He sent the word to the sons of Israel, preaching peace through Jesus Christ (He is Lord of all) – you yourselves know the thing which took place throughout all Judea, starting from Galilee, after the baptism which John proclaimed. You know of Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit and with power, and how He went about doing good, and healing all who were oppressed by the devil; for God was in Him. And we are witnesses of all the things He did both in the land of the Jews and in Jerusalem. And they also put Him to death by hanging Him on a cross. God raised Him up on the third day, and granted that He should become visible, not to all the people, but to witnesses who were chosen beforehand by God, that is, to us, who ate and drank with Him after He arose from the dead. And He ordered us to preach to the people, and solemnly to testify that this is the One who has been appointed by God as Judge of the living and the dead. Of Him all the prophets bear witness that through His name everyone who believes in Him receives forgiveness of sins.

6. St. Paul, in Pisidian Antioch, in what is now central Turkey, speaking to the Jews in the synagogue; c. A.D. 46:

Acts 13:23, 26-33, 38-39 . . . From the offspring of this man (David), according to promise, God has brought to Israel a Savior, Jesus . . .

Brethren, sons of Abraham’s family, and those among you who fear God, to us the word of this salvation is sent out. For those who live in Jerusalem, and their rulers, recognizing neither Him nor the utterances of the prophets which are read every Sabbath, fulfilled these by condemning Him. And though they found no ground for putting Him to death, they asked Pilate that He be executed. And when they had carried out all that was written concerning Him, they took Him down from the cross and laid Him in a tomb. But God raised Him from the dead; and for many days He appeared to those who came up with Him from Galilee to Jerusalem, the very ones who are now His witnesses to the people. And we preach to you the good news of the promlse made to the fathers, that God has fulfilled this promise to us, their children in that He raised up Jesus . . . .

Therefore let it be known to you, brethren, that through Him forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you, and through Him everyone who believes is freed from all things, from which you could not be freed through the Law of Moses . . .

7. St. Paul and Silas, in Philippi, in Macedonia (Greece), speaking to the jailer in whose jail they were being held; c. A.D. 49:

Acts 16:31 Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you shall be saved, you and your household.

8. St. Paul, in Athens, Greece, at Mars Hill, a marketplace and meeting-grounds northwest of the Acropolis, speaking to Epicurean and Stoic philosophers, civic leaders, Athenian citizens and visitors; c. A.D. 49:

Acts 17: 22-31 Men of Athens, I observe that you are very religious in all respects. For while I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with this inscription, ‘TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.’ What therefore you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; neither is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all life and breath and all things; and He made from one, every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times, and the boundaries of their habitation, that they should seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we also are His offspring.’ Being then the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and thought of man.

Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all everywhere should repent, because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead.

9. St. Paul, in Jerusalem, to the Jews; c. A.D. 59 (Paul converted to Christianity around A.D. 34-35):

Acts 22:3-4, 6-8, 10, 12, 14-16, 21 I am a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city, educated under Gamaliel, strictly according to the law of our fathers, being zealous for God, just as you all are today. And I persecuted this Way to the death, binding and putting both men and women into prisons . . . And it came about that as I was on my way, approaching Damascus about noontime, a very bright light suddenly flashed from heaven all around me, and I fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to me, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?’ And I answered, ‘Who are You, Lord?’ And He said to me, ‘I am Jesus the Nazarene, whom you are persecuting.’ . . .

And I said, ‘What shall I do, Lord?’ And the Lord said to me, ‘Arise and go into Damascus; and there you will be told of all that has been appointed for you to do.’ . . . And a certain Ananias, a man who was devout by the standard of the Law, and well spoken of by all the Jews who lived there . . . said, ‘The God of our fathers has appointed you to know His will, and to see the Righteous One, and to hear an utterance from His mouth. For you will be a witness for Him to all men of what you have seen and heard . . . Arise, and be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on His name.’ . . . And He (the Lord) said to me, ‘Go! For I will send you far away to the Gentiles.’

***

(January 1988; expanded and revised on 7-8-02; the original idea and article likely dated from the early 80s)

Photo credit: Apostle Peter Preaching (c. 1370), by Lorenzo Veneziano (b. 1336) [public domain / Wikimedia Commons]

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Reply to Agnostic Ed Babinski’s “Emotional” Argument from Evil

Last updated on: September 19, 2018 at 4:42 pm By Dave Armstrong

Ed’s post appeared on the Debunking Christianity blog. Victor Reppert is a (Protestant) Christian teacher and author of C. S. Lewis’s Dangerous Idea: In Defense of the Argument from Reason, published by Inter-Varsity Press. He runs an excellent blog, dangerous idea, whose purpose is to “to discuss philosophy, chess, politics, C. S. Lewis, . . .” My kind of place! Ed’s words will be in blue; Victor’s in green.

* * * * *

I saw through Plantinga’s initial assumptions regarding his “solution” to the problem of evil twenty years ago while reading Plantinga’s book that a Calvinist friend loaned me. I phoned Plantinga years later. He didn’t answer my question.

I don’t know why he “didn’t answer” your question. Perhaps he was taken aback that you missed the answer, already in his book? Just speculating . . . I don’t think that you stumped him, because indeed, the answer is very simple:

Here’s my question:

A free-willed
All powerful
All knowing
All good
All perfect
All blissful God

creates something SOLELY out of His own will, power, knowledge, goodness, perfection, and bliss, so what room is there for anything less?

God cannot do what you demand because it is logically impossible (a topic that Plantinga amply covered in his book on evil; so you would have read it but didn’t grasp that he had already answered you).

God can’t create another God. It’s impossible for even an omnipotent being to do that.

For if God created another “god” (i.e., something not “less” than Himself); this second “god” is a creation;

A) Therefore, not eternal;

B) Therefore not self-existent;

C) Therefore not all-knowing (because it wouldn’t have known, e.g., about things that occurred before it existed);

D) Therefore not transcendent and out of time (coming into existence at a certain specific time precludes this);

E) Therefore not all-powerful (since it had to rely on another being for it’s own existence and was, thus, subject to its power (in other words, it is a contingent being).

Etc.

All of this is impossible for a Being described as “God” in the classic, theistic (and/or Christian) sense of the word.

Ergo: God cannot create such a being, and can only create something fundamentally lesser than Himself, by virtue of the inherent constrictions of logic and the nature of reality.

Such creatures are necessarily limited in knowledge, by virtue of being creatures. This opens up the possibility of choosing wrongly (error), as a result of such lack of knowledge, or choosing evil, due to the free will that God gave them (they can choose to be against the God Who created them, which is the essence of evil, because of the all-goodness of God).

How can God overcome that? He cannot. Free will and the finite nature of creatures make evil possible, and even an omnipotent God cannot change that. This is precisely what Plantinga proved through logic alone. But no one here [at Debunking Christianity] wants to take on his argument and disprove it. Hence you are left with awkward, fumbling attempts to undermine it by sophistry or nibbling around the edges, doing about as much damage as a mouse would do to a steel door.

Simply piling up emotional examples of evil and suffering that one knows everyone will react to, does not prove a point philosophically (nor does the fact of being emotionally troubled by something necessarily entail doubt and a philosophical / theological existential or epistemic crisis). So let’s go on and see how your argument proceeds . . .

. . . but out of infinite perfection comes a cosmos where everything dies, where bliss is fleeting, where minds and hearts grow confused, damaged, sometimes even shattered via the process of struggling to earn a living and/or raise a family, or whittled down via repressive labor, or bored to death. Where human development is difficult and perilous, where communication is difficult, even perilous, for both people and nations, where ignorance (inherent in each culture, family and individual) and stubbornness about one’s ignorance is rife (the latter perhaps due to increasing inflexibility of the brain/mind once it has assumed a “system”- or been “assumed by” a system – because we not only “have beliefs,” but there is also evidence that “beliefs have us” as well).

Very eloquent, but this does exactly nothing to further your claims that such things somehow cast doubt on God’s existence or His goodness. Things obviously die because they are subject to natural processes of decay. This is the natural world: a created thing dies, but an uncreated, eternal thing does not. Nevertheless, God allowed the possibility of eternal life, and an eternal life in resurrected, glorified bodies, so He has overcome death. The real “problem” with death, then, clearly lies with the atheist, because it makes a mockery of the meaning of life, if all we have is 70-odd years and then we are annihilated for all eternity.

Most of this “evil” which is so troubling to atheists, up to and including a supposed “proof” of God’s nonexistence or non-goodness, is a result of the necessary nature of “natural” nature, or because of free will choices of human beings to do evil (and good). I shall argue in due course that it is implausible and irrational to expect God to overcome all this at all times (as atheists seem to demand).

A cosmos where we cannot “see” what’s “behind it,”

That may be your view, but it is not the biblical, Christian one (and you purport to be making an argument of Christian internal inconsistency, so this is absolutely relevant). The biblical view is that the universe is a clear argument that God exists; it “speaks” God (Romans 1 and elsewhere). And, of course, the revelation in the Bible reveals God in propositional fashion as well.

where “God” and “heaven” and the “afterlife” (or even the “before birth”) remains “hidden” to the vast majority of the earth’s inhabitants throughout time.

This is not true, either, in the Christian view. People may not have the benefit of revelation and the gospel, yet the Bible says that they are judged by what they know, and that they can know at least the basics of God’s law by virtue of conscience (Romans 2). Thus, they can not only know God (by creation and conscience, even without revelation), but can be saved (still by the blood of Christ, whether they know about Jesus or not).

A cosmos where consciousness does not appear to pop out fully grown all at once, but has to develop just as the brain/mind develops in the womb and during the time of infancy, childhood, adolescent impulsiveness and finally adulthood.

So what? Neither development nor evolution suggest in the slightest that God doesn’t exist.

A cosmos where we continue to struggled against a world of nature that kills with cold, wind, fire, water, earth, desert heat, lava, predators, poisons, diseases, parasites. A cosmos where we strive to lessen the painful effects of, or eliminate, nature’s dangers and pains that haunt not only us, but every other living organism on this planet. So we fighting the cold weather that kills to the desert heat that withers, and we strive to discern early warning signs of natural disasters and epidemics. A cosmos where we also strive to eliminate barriers of communication, or blow each other up trying.

Again, simply multiplying difficult aspects of physical and social existence does nothing at all to disprove God, unless you somehow fatally undermine the premises of the Free Will Defense. But no one has done that, which is why appeal to emotions is the order of the day in the atheological polemic. What one can’t do by reason and logic, they can try to smuggle in by a fallacious appeal to touchy-feely emotions.

Christian apologists like Plantinga ADD to the above mix of confusion and dangers their PRESUMPTION that this cosmos is all for the greater good,

It’s not a “presumption” within the Christian world view: it is a rational belief, accepted in faith, based on the content of the revelation. One has to knock down the revelation in order to undermine that. Of course, you and others (knowing this) specialize in approaching the Bible like a butcher approaches a hog. But there is no internal inconsistency or incoherence in a Christian accepting this revelation, on various grounds. Once having done that, we are assured that indeed there is a greater good that we cannot comprehend, being finite and fallen beings, but which we accept on faith, based on what we do know about God’s goodness and power.

and PRESUME that besides all of the above confusion imperfection and dangers – from the death of everything we see – to insufferable boredom – to daily pains – passions – miscommunications – the ignorance inherent in each culture, family and individual – the inflexibility and inertia inherent in each brain/mind as it develops from youth – or degenerates with age – besides all that – Christian apologists insist everyone MUST believe in a particular holy book written by true believers (even in a particular INTERPRETATION of that holy book), or we will not only continue to suffer as on earth, but suffer relentlessly for eternity, without mercy.

Christians believe in revelation (what a revelation!). YAWN. Complaining about what other people believe is not an argument for the problem of evil or anything else.

Secondly, we’re not saved by a book, but by a Person and by God. Since this can occur independently of a book (the Bible), it obviously is not caused by that book, or by one interpretation of it. Those who go to hell do so in their own free will, by their own free choice, having rejected the God Whose existence and nature is “clearly seen” by all (Romans 1). For the life of me, I don’t understand why this should be so objectionable: God allows free creatures to reject Him and even spend eternity without Him if they so desire. Would you rather have Him force you to go to heaven rather than give you the freedom to freely choose heaven or hell as your ultimate destination? In any event, the existence of hell is no proof whatsoever that God is evil. It proves (almost more than anything else) that men are free.

And Plantinga presents it all like it’s the most “rational” view possible.

Certainly it is more rational and sensible than an ultimately meaningless universe where we die and are annihilated, and many many lives seem to have been cruel and senseless, as you say; a profoundly death-worshiping culture where millions of preborn babies are slaughtered with the full consent of people who themselves believe that this life is all there is: so that these children are deprived of what limited existence they have and can’t even see the light of day or see their mother’s faces (the enlightened modern equivalent of the human sacrifices of the Aztecs or of cannibalism). The true, profound problems come when one ponders a universe of that sort, not the Christian universe. The atheist Problem of Good is infinitely more troublesome than the Problem of Evil.

Christian philosopher Victor Reppert at his blog, “C. S. Lewis’s Dangerous Idea,” seems at least doubtful that Plantinga’s view is the most rational and suggests that it might made a bit more sense if people received “another chance” after they had died to “convert.”

I looked over there and I didn’t see Victor taking this stance. Perhaps it was an earlier article you had in mind. I saw him questioning how the atheist thinks he has a silver bullet in the Problem of Evil. He denied this, and made a link to my recent article summarizing Plantinga’s classic Free will Defense. He takes exactly what is my own apologetic and epistemological position, all down the line, as far as I can tell from his two articles:

Most of us think that it is a good day’s work for a philosopher to provide a cumulative-case role-player, something that might “break the tie” if someone is on the fence between two positions, and in combination with other reasons, might provide a good reason for, say, believing in God or not believing in God.

That is exactly my own position, and has been for many many years now.

The argument from evil seems to have a different status, at least in many minds. Many advocates of the argument from evil suppose that that argument, unlike your typical theistic on atheistic argument, really can stand on its own as a disproof of the existence of God, showing that all who believe in God are just being irrational. Plantinga is widely credited by both theists and atheists with showing that the argument does not achieve this goal.

Exactly. Amen.

Yet, I get the impression from some people that they really think that the argument from evil is something more than a cumulative case role-player, and I do not think that this claim is defensible. I am unsure as to whether the argument from evil can successfully play a role as a cumulative-case role-player, but I do not think it can do more than this.

Precisely. He thinks it fails as a disproof of God.

He asks the rhetorical question:

Would anyone like to argue that it really is stronger than your average cumulative-case role player? That, virtually alone of all philosophical arguments, and regardless of all other considerations both pro and con, really provides beyond a reasonable doubt that God does not exist.

In the comments, former Christian “exapologist” sensibly agrees with Reppert:

I agree with you on the point recently made by Van Inwagen in his new book on the problem of evil, viz., that like many other deductive philosophical arguments with momentous conclusions, it’s imprudent to put too much weight on the logical problem of evil. I also think you’re right that a cumulative case is needed for justifiedly being a theist or atheist.

Well-stated, indeed.

As for the “second chance at salvation,” there is room for some debate. I myself have had lengthy dialogues on the subject: “Dialogue On Salvation After Death” (vs. [more liberal Christian] Sogn Mill-Scout). I ultimately decided against this, yet I did so because I believe that God gives everyone ample opportunity and knowledge enough to decide on following God or not during this life. The only “problem” comes when one thinks that God doesn’t give everyone a “fair chance.” I deny this premise, on explicit biblical grounds.

I assume Vic believes that the ignorant limited brain/minds, and confused or debilitated characteristics of people’s brain/minds from living in this imperfect cosmos will be healed following death (otherwise they might misperceive even the afterlife based on past limited experiences or imperfect brain/mind constitutions). So Vic suggests non-Christians will all be given another chance to “believe” after they have seen God and heaven and had time to investigate and ponder matters on the “other” side of this cosmos.

He and I agree that God is merciful and just. Whether he allows this as a means to fairly judge individuals, or else gives everyone a fair chance in this life, the result is the same: no one is damned unfairly or unjustly or apart from their free choice to pursue the path of rebellion against God.

But Vic also realizes I suppose that this is a rationalization on Vic’s part. (What other of Vic’s beliefs might not also be “rationalizations to believe” as he does, i.e., rather than “reasons to believe?”)

The inevitable digs at Christian honesty make their pathetic appearance . . .

At the very least Vic does not appear to think that Plantinga has “solved” all the problems regarding this cosmos and the Christian view of salvation, since Vic recognizes the need to try and go “further” than Plantinga via Vic’s “second chance” scenario/rationalization.

This appears to refer to an earlier paper. Since you provide no link, I’m not gonna spend time searching for it. It is your job to send us to the place that you are critiquing.

Victor Reppert remains uncomfortable, has more questions than most orthodox Christian apologists on the internet. (Welcome to my mind/brain world, Vic, filled with more questions than answers.)

I’d have to see what those are. But from what I have seen from these two articles on the Problem of Evil, he approaches the matter almost exactly as I do (which I would expect, since we are both avid C. S. Lewis devotees). For example, in his article, “More on the Problem of Evil,” he writes:

I can’t for the life of me see why the Christian theist’s inability to explain some evils is more damaging to theism than the naturalist’s inability to explain consciousness is for naturalism. If anything, the theist at least can, in broad outline, show how in many cases suffering can work redemptively. I would admit that in other cases it’s far more mysterious.

. . . If you look back at Clayton’s reasons why he thinks a hidden good argument won’t work, you will find him appealing to Kantian moral principles and moral principles based on a “respect-for-persons” ethic. To get the silver bullet he wants, he either has to argue that these principle hold true objectively and that everyone ought to accept them even if they don’t, or else he has to argue that all Christians either accept them or ought to accept them. I think that puts an intolerable burden on his argument.

“Exapologist” again makes a very sensible comment:

First, I grant that consciousness is a genuine problem for naturalism . . . Second, while I think it’s possible for a theist to resist the logical or evidential problem of evil in principle, so long as their cumulative case for theism is sufficiently strong, I worry that this case isn’t sufficiently strong to make the sorts of resistive moves you mention.

I only add that if the argument fails on logical grounds, it is irrelevant how strong the cumulative Christian / theist case is as far as the Problem of Evil is concerned. That would have relevance for the overall Christian case, but not with regard to whether the atheological [logical] Problem of Evil succeeds in its initial ambitious purpose of disproving God’s existence.

Exapologist then argues that if the cumulative case is weak, then the Plantingian resistance to the claims of the Problem of Evil are weakened thusly. But this doesn’t logically follow at all. He writes:

I’m not sure how interesting your point is with respect to the ability of theists to resist the force of the problem(s) of evil. Consider it granted that you’re in your epistemic rights to resist it. Still, that’s of no help to the non-theist: it gives them no reason whatever for rejecting it.

To the contrary, it provides every sufficient reason to reject the argument insofar as it supposedly disproves 1) God’s existence, or 2) supposed impossibilities of God being all-good or all-powerful or both. The other proofs and evidences of God and Christianity stand or fall independently of this.

Then you ask:

How do you get from perfect goodness to evil? Or from unconsciousness to consciousness? I don’t know. Seems like in both cases philosophers are trying to get to someplace that’s simply excluded from the beginning of their questioning by definition.

Well, we think we do have a pretty good idea, and “know”. It’s called free will. God (yes, the all-good and all-powerful One) can’t create free creatures and at the same time create a state of affairs where they will not have any possibility of sinning and doing evil. It’s logically impossible. And until an atheist grasps that he will just be spinning his wheels and never comprehend why he is doing so and why it accomplishes nothing whatsoever.

You then try the argument from natural evil, in comments at Reppert’s blog:

Lastly, many of the world’s pains and sufferings are not believed to be due to Adam’s “free will,” but are believed to have been around ages before Adam arose. Death was around before Adam, so was pain and suffering. So God choose to create a cosmos where every living things in it eventually dies and where all the living creatures it contains are living lives in which they “struggle” for their very lives against other living things God designed, or against nature in general that God designed, and her myriad ways to kill creatures–from a sudden frost to a tsunami or even asteroid. I haven’t even gotten into how psychological suffering enters into the picture, or brain diseases.

I’ve made an extensive argument about this in my long paper on the Problem of Evil. I’ll do a nutshell version here:

Supposing we assume for the sake of argument that God should (and should reasonably be expected to) intervene in every case of “natural evil.” Nothing bad could then ever happen.

If a tree is about to fall on my daughter, God would suspend the laws of nature and it would spring back up. If I walk into the kitchen of an army barracks where there is a contageous disease, God would manipulate whatever of my cells He has to change in order for me not to catch it. If a mosquito is about to bite my wife on her pretty face, God takes away the stinger or gives the mosquito an urge to eat leaves rather than drink blood, etc.

Does that universe not strike one as immediately absurd? I argued elsewhere that the atheist is extremely reluctant to allow that God intervenes at all in the natural world (denying miracles and any sense of creation unless it is literally identified with natural evolution: and a strong materialist will, of course, even deny any connection there). Yet when we switch over to this scenario, He is supposed to do everything.

For if God can do anything or something to prevent evil, why not everything? By what principle does the atheist judge God and claim that He must supernaturally intervene in every case of possible suffering? Are you saying that God is eternally bound by His nature to prevent my wife being bitten by a mosquito, or else He is an evil, sadistic tyrant? That seems to be a clear reductio ad absurdum. But if He is required to intervene in “big” cases of horrible evil, why not also in little ones? How can a line be rationally drawn? That’s one problem.

The other one is what happens to free will in such a world (as C. S. Lewis argued in his Problem of Pain). If God intervenes every time someone is about to stub their toe, get a sore nose from blowing it too much, or when a criminal is about to strangle someone in their bed, then there really isn’t free will, is there?, nor is there a sensible natural world. How could science even be possible to study, since the world would be changed millions of times a second, it seems to me, therefore could not be systematically studied (there would be nothing systematic to study, since science presupposes both uniformitarianism and methodological naturalism).

No person would be free to do evil because God would prevent it. He would be as powerless as a small fish would be to break out of an aquarium with thick glass walls. But if one has no free will to do evil, how could he be truly free to do good? He would only do good because he has to, not because he is truly free and wants to.

God can’t bring this about as a matter of necessity. Free creatures can possibly never sin (the angels who didn’t rebel never did), but there had to remain a possibility that they could have. Indeed, some of them did sin, and we call them the devil and his demons. This is the whole point.

Therefore, natural evil exists because it is the only way to have both a sensible natural world and free will. The same thing applies to evil done by humans to each other, in their free will. The only way an omnipotent God can prevent it is to wipe out free will. But that is not a desirable end at all. So evil must exist. If God could wipe out one instance of it here, He could also (and “should”) wipe out every instance of it. But then free will would go too.

God obviously, then, thought that free will was worth allowing evil. Our multiplications of horror stories do not undermine the logical impossibility (even for God) to have both free will and a “perfect” world. Emotional arguments and retelling of grisly tales of astonishing evil do not dent this at all. That’s not to say they aren’t troubling. Of course they are. Christians are as troubled by evil itself as anyone else (I would say, actually much more so), but shouldn’t be fatally troubled by the Problem of Evil because it simply doesn’t cast into doubt God’s existence or goodness or omnipotence, as shown.

I conclude (allowing that this is mere speculation of a finite human being, but presumably at least of a logical sort) that God could have reasonably done one of two things:

1) Prevented all evil by preventing free will of creatures to occur.

2) Prevented all evil by relentless intervention of obstruction of all natural events or freely willed actions that cause suffering and pain.

But #2 quickly reduces to a scenario of #1 and denial of free will, as I think I’ve shown. And a theoretical #3 (in effect, a weak version of #2) of selective intervention, makes little sense to me, because it is difficult to see where God should intervene and where He should not. On what basis? If He should prevent, say, an instance of chapped lips (a “natural evil,” after all, for someone like myself who can hardly blissfully survive without my constant companion Blistex), why not the slightest stomach cramps over here or an infinitely mild headache over there?

Therefore, I conclude that He opted for allowing free will to exist and a natural world to exist, with only rare miraculous interventions, because this opened up the possibility for much more good, which is better than no good at all (since unfree creatures cannot even do “good” by any reasonable definition of what it means).

But back to your critique:

I have rational difficulties conceiving of a perfectly good and perfectly powerful being squeezing out a cosmos such as this. Furthermore, the experience of this cosmos in which all things die (and struggle not to) with such daily persistence is a shared experience of everyone on the planet.

That’s fine, but I haven’t seen them yet. What I’ve seen is an insufficiently thought-through, illogical argument and a bunch of emotionalism (however eloquent in detailing the human condition in this vale of tears). This doesn’t cut it in establishing your point.

At this point in your paper, you go on to the merest speculation, typical of agnostic hyper-presumptuous game-playing concerning God, which holds less than no interest to me. Someone else can tackle that. I am interested solely in how you supposedly disprove God or a good or omnipotent God by the classical means of the Problem of Evil. As far as I am concerned, you have utterly failed in that task, and I believe I have shown why, above.

You conclude:

Even in the Bible, though Job didn’t curse God, he sought answers. “WHY?” . . . C. S. Lewis admitted a year before he died that he “dreaded most” the thought that he may have been “deceiving himself” concerning the kind of “God” who would give his wife cancer and then himself cancer. Or as in the case of a conversation Mother Teresa had (she didn’t believe in pain killers) with a man suffering intense pain from cancer, “Jesus is kissing you,” to which the man replied, “Then I wish he’d stop.” That’s the problem of pain in a nutshell. The “dread” of C. S. Lewis. The “Whys” of Job and Jesus.

Struggling over this particular pain or evil and wondering what the point of it is, is an emotional response, or one of nerve endings. Everyone understands that. But it’s not an argument against God’s existence or a compelling argument that He is not good.

Christians struggle far more with these questions than atheists do with their own “problem of good.” We don’t need to be lectured about suffering, as if we were unacquainted with it. That goes for me, too. I’ve had plenty of it. My sister-in-law died suddenly of a brain tumor. After she died, my brother lost his job and then found out he had leukemia. He died of that at age 49, after years of intense suffering. I watched all that. My father now has lung cancer. My wife’s father died suddenly, six days before Christmas 2005. His wife is still struggling with grief and depression. Life is filled with such things. My favorite aunt died at a relatively young age, and I still miss her terribly, as I do my only brother.

But note that this doesn’t cause a Christian of robust faith to question that God exists or that He is good. My brother (an evangelical Christian) never lost faith. I never did, watching him suffer and die. In fact, the only thing that made sense of it was the knowledge that he was moving on to a much better life. My mother-in-law hasn’t lost faith at all, despite all her present suffering, nor has my wife, etc. We are not irrational, gullible (let alone cold-hearted) people. We accept in faith that there is some tragic necessity for suffering, even though we don’t always understand it. I think I’ve hit upon the reason why, above.

C. S. Lewis went through a trying time, after his wife died (quite understandably), but he did not die without faith. He regained it. Agnostics and atheists love to quote the parts of A Grief Observed where Lewis is mightily struggling to understand (all this shows is that Christians are both human and honest). But they conveniently neglect to point out that this wasn’t the end of it for Lewis. That book is ultimately one of personal triumph, not despair.

Likewise with Job. He didn’t lose his faith, did he? He struggled with why God did these things (or allowed them to happen), but it is a “problem” precisely because it presupposes that God exists, not that He doesn’t exist.

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(originally 10-23-06)

Photo credit: image by Comfreak (2-27-17) [Pixabay / CC0 Creative Commons license]

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Dialogue: Molinism & How God Predestines (Pt. II)

Last updated on: September 19, 2018 at 4:01 pm By Dave Armstrong

See Part I. Words of “JOS”: a Thomist, will be in blue. My older cited words will be in green.

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This “conditioned” dimension of Molinism is precisely its weakness, since God’s will is not conditioned by anyone or anything, let alone man’s foreseen merits.

That’s not true as a general statement because God’s will is clearly conditioned by those who reject His grace; i.e., those who are damned (conditioned by demerits in that case). This is Catholic teaching over against Calvinist double predestination. Otherwise, we would have God damning souls to hell from all eternity since according to you His will cannot be conditioned by anything else and since Catholics also believe in universal atonement or the universal salvific will of God.

The only thing that interferes with that is the free will of the reprobate to reject God’s mercy and grace. So if the debate is whether God’s will can be “conditioned” with regard to salvation or predestination of the elect, and you say it is impossible as a general proposition, I must disagree.

Secondly, since merit is Catholic dogma and it involves God rewarding those who cooperate with His graces in doing meritorious works, and since this seems to be a huge consideration in how He decides who is saved or not (many biblical passages stating this), it also appears unlikely that man’s free will decisions have nothing at all to do with election (or at any rate, salvation, insofar as there is a distinction).

As I will show further in this response, this “conditioned” predestination has no basis in Scripture, the writings of the Fathers, and the magisterial teachings of the Church.

Molinism hasn’t been condemned by the Church, so it can’t be that far off, or heretical; otherwise it certainly would have been. The sources I have seen show that the fathers’ views were far closer to Molinism. I’ve shown how middle knowledge has explicit biblical support also.

Further, to assert the absolute sovereignty of God predestining some and not others as both Augustine and St. Thomas hold is not the same as Calvinism or else the Church would have condemned these two great doctors.

That God predestines the elect is not in dispute. All parties accept that. The debate is whether He takes into account responses to His grace. He is still sovereign and He still predestines, in either scenario, I would argue, since any response to His grace is itself caused by His grace. It seems to me that if your critique of Molinism were correct, it would have to be semi-Pelagian. But it is not. Therefore, I disagree that God’s sovereignty is undermined by it.

There is little if any indication of middle knowledge in the Scriptures, which is why I find it suspect.

I have presented four passages in my last post.

In regard to the passage from Matt. 11, this does not seem to establish that God dispenses graces based on foreseen merits, for if this were the case, one is hard pressed to explain why God did not choose to reveal the mighty works of Jesus to Tyre and Sidon knowing that they would have repented.

It is a generalization in the first place, to say that a whole city repents. Obviously, each individual will have to stand accountable to God as an individual, and we believe that God gives everyone sufficient grace for salvation. So I disagree that God would have to perform this for these cities in order for them to have sufficient grace to repent. Jesus was simply stating a fact about what would have happened. It is a proof of middle knowledge, not whether God utilizes middle knowledge in order to incorporate foreseen merits into His decision to elect or predestine certain souls to salvation.

The issue, however, is that God did not choose to reveal such things to Tyre and Sidon, and obviously not because of foreseen merits. Instead, God’s choice was made from all eternity to reveal the works of Christ to one generation and not to do so for another. This choice was made freely by God, without influence from man, in accordance with His infinite wisdom.

But that doesn’t mean that those before Christ were less able to be saved than those after. They are judged by what they know, per Romans 2.

1 Timothy 2:4 and another passage, Matt. 28:19-20, clearly show God’s universal will to save all men. But not all men are saved. Therefore, are we to presume that God’s grace is not infallible or efficacious? No.

We are to conclude that free will makes rebellion against God possible and that He accepts this and the consequence of hell rather than the alternative of eliminating free will and providing universal salvation.

Clearly God desires the salvation of all mankind, since God died for the sins of all men. The Augustinians, along with the Thomists, refer to this as God’s antecedent will, in the sense that God desires that it is possible that all men attain salvation. Conceptually, God’s antecedent will is prior to His consequent will, though in reality they are but one, as God is one. However, on account of the fact that not everyone attains salvation (“Many are called, but few are chosen”- Matt. 22:14), it is also evident from all eternity that God permits sin and inflicts damnation on the basis of man’s demerits, which God sees from all eternity.

See; like I said, God’s will is conditioned by (“on the basis of”) demerits. You agree. If that is so, then it seems quite possible and not impossible that it also may be conditioned by merits which are themselves brought about by His grace. Since I have accepted Fr. Most’s scenario which does not involve predestination based on foreseen merits, we don’t disagree on this point as we did before, but I still contend that your reasoning for why God “could or would not” use such a method is not sufficient to prove your assertion. it’s based on Thomist presuppositions which are themselves neither infallible nor the dogma of the Church (as far as I know).

God’s consequent will, however, is also infallible, since it guides some men infallibly to enteral life (predestination, see John 17:12, among others – see texts below) while God permits some men to fall into sin, even though it is really possible for them – on account of the graces that God bestows – to keep the commandments (reprobation).

We agree there.

Therefore, bearing in mind the distinction between antecedent and consequent will in God, there is no contradiction in the passages that stress God’s universal call to salvation and those that stress the absolute predestination of the elect (I will elaborate more on these passages below).

I think one must arrive at a view which preserves the mercy of God as well as His justice, without creating seeming difficulties in “unfairness” — why one set of people is chosen over another without consideration of how they act and believe. Fr. Most’s system does this, which is why I find it entirely satisfactory.

Ott also gives the following proposition as a de fide dogma: “GOD, BY AN ETERNAL RESOLVE OF HIS WILL, PREDESTINES CERTAIN MEN, ON ACCOUNT OF THEIR FORESEEN SINS, TO ETERNAL REJECTION.”

I am not sure if you have misunderstood Ott or if Ott is in error, since the Catechism clearly states, “God predestines no one to hell.” (1037; this statement is referenced to the Second Council of Orange).

The two statements are meant in different senses. The Catechism is referring to predestination in the heretical Calvinist sense, but Ott is not since he mentions foreseen sins, which Calvinism would not include in its view.

However, it is true to say of Church teaching that God permits some men, from all eternity to fall into sin, even final impenitence, and from all eternity God inflicts the just punishment for their sins. God does in fact “foresee” these sins and his judgment is predicated upon them.

So you prove that His will is “conditioned” in this instance once again . . .

The classic term for this theological truth is reprobation, since God merely permits some men and some angels to fall into sin and remain therein; however God does not predestine (direct) man to hell in the strict sense of the word.

We agree.

Yet, it does not follow from this truth that God predestines the just based on their foreseen merits, since no one, in any way can merit eternal life.

Molinists are not saying that anyone merits eternal life (contra Pelagianism); only that God utilizes His middle knowledge in deciding who to give the grace which alone causes them to believe and to attain final salvation. You appear to misunderstand the Molinist claim.

Not even future actions (futuribilia) can condition God’s will. The Church is rather clear on this teaching when, following the insights of St. Augustine and his disciple St. Prosper, she declared in the third canon of Quierzy in 853 AD, “Almighty God wills without exception, all men to be saved, though not all are saved. That some are saved, however, is the gift of Him who saves; if some perish, it is the fault of them that perish.”

This does not contradict Molinism, though. Again, if it did, then the Church would have condemned Molinism, but it chose not to in 1607. Rather, the Molinists were charged not to call the Thomists “Calvinists” and the Thomists were told to refrain from calling the Molinists Pelagians. These things are ultimately mysteries, so no one can be overly dogmatic about it.

From this doctrine, which Mother Church teaches consistently in other councils of that time period (Valence, Langres, Toul, and Thuzey), we can deduce a few important conclusions. First, that God’s will to save is universal, as noted in the Scripture passages above. Yet this universal resolve of God is not efficacious in everyone, but it is sufficient so that it is really possible even for the reprobate to be saved. Even still, God’s will to save is truly efficacious only in the elect. This last point is of prime importance because if we hold that God dispenses grace based on foreseen merits, then the grace God accords to the elect is not really efficacious, since it depends on the response of man.

For God to know in His omniscience (middle knowledge) how one will respond is not the same as the assertion that the man who responds favorably to His grace has caused his own salvation, even in part. The prisoner gets no credit for merely accepting the pardon of the governor. He gets no credit at all. It is a pure gift of mercy and “grace.” It makes no sense to say that the pardoned prisoner somehow caused his own pardon or that the governor had less power and “sovereignty” in the matter simply because his pardons are accepted.

Therefore, since the Church infallibly teaches that God’s grace for the elect is really efficacious, it only follows that it is not based on foreseen merits, but only on the absolute sovereignty of God’s will to dispense his grace freely — unconditionally.

It doesn’t follow at all. You have simply assumed what you are trying to prove. You haven’t yet shown me how God cannot or would not consider foreseen merits or responses to grace in his decision to bestow graces sufficient for salvation. You have asserted it, but not proven it. I have argued, on the other hand, based on the analogy of merit and man’s cooperation with God’s graces in merit (per the Scriptures I presented last time of synergism), that consideration of merit is not impossible; nor does it undermine God’s sovereignty. I agree, however, that a belief-system which incorporates free will decisions in God’s decision to predestine is more difficult to defend than one which does not. Fr. Most solves the problem by introducing a new nuance and distinction:

1) Calvinist (heretical) system:

A) Unconditional election to salvation (aligned with final perseverance)
B) Unconditional reprobation / damnation (either infralapsarian or supralapsarian)

2) Thomist system:

A) Unconditional election to salvation
B) Reprobation / damnation based on foreseen demerits

3) Molinist system:

A) Election to salvation based in part on foreseen acceptance of solely-sufficient grace
B) Reprobation / damnation based on foreseen demerits

4) Fr. Most’s “solution”:

A) Election to salvation based on foreseen non-rejection of God (i.e., the negative criterion of “not rejection” rather than the positive criterion of merit)
B) Reprobation / damnation based on foreseen demerits and utter rejection of God

It seems reasonable, then, that if God takes into account forseen sins in deciding who is to be eternally lost, that He would also take into account foreseen positive actions and beliefs, held or done as a result of His freely given grace, in deciding who to save.

Now I would modify my former statement to make it consistent with Fr. Most: God takes into account foreseen non-rejection of His sufficient grace for salvation.

I would refer back to the above quote from the Council of Quierzy, in which the Church clearly teaches that while reprobation is predicated upon foreseen demerits, salvation and election are not based on foreseen merits, since it is an absolutely unconditional free gift.

Molinism does not make it non-free in the same way that merit does not make salvation in the Catholic understanding non-sola gratia, and in the same way that works as the necessary organic manifestation of faith do not make salvation Pelagian or non-gratuitous. All goes back to grace. You seem to be unable to accept the biblical paradox and insist on either-or reasoning where it is not necessary.

Further, I would invite you to show me one declaration of official Church teaching that corroborates your statement above.

The Church decided to allow this option. Therefore, it is a non-defined permissible opinion for Catholics to hold; ergo, I can hold it in perfectly good faith as a Catholic until informed otherwise. We wouldn’t expect it to be as developed, since middle knowledge itself was only stated by Molina in the 16th century. Some of the Marian doctrines are fairly late, too. Mary Mediatrix is not explicitly defined (at least not at the highest levels). Catholics are permitted to believe it (and I do).

Fatima and Lourdes are not required Catholic beliefs, but plenty of good Catholics believe in these apparitions and miracles connected to them (as I do). So your objection has no force. The fact remains that there is latitude regarding predestination. The Church in its great wisdom has allowed this, so that we wouldn’t have schism or the silly in-fighting that we observe in the endless Protestant Calvinist vs. Arminian wars (with mutual anathemas).

But beyond that, my statement is based on analogical reasoning (which is my second line of defense):

1) I denied that God’s will is unconditioned by anything. It is: by man’s free will.

2) God’s will is conditioned in the case of damnation (as all Catholics agree).

3) Therefore, it is not a priori impossible to suppose that His will as regards the elect may be in part conditioned by foreseen actions, just as it is conditioned in the case of the reprobate.

4) Middle knowledge follows (I think) from omniscience and has been strongly indicated in at least four biblical passages.

5) Scripture often informs us that God’s decision of who to save (at least at the time it is announced, during judgment) appears dependent at least in part on merit and actions of men.

6) The doctrine of merit itself is defined doctrine, and is analogous to merit as regards election. In both cases, man gets no credit for human-generated goodness or the rewards from God obtained therefrom. It is God crowning His own gifts.

I don’t totally understand God’s mind, of course (no one does).

I do (just kidding of course) :-)

Well, that’s just it, isn’t it? No one does, so no one can be dogmatic on these points. But I am giving my reasons for why I believe as I do, in a non-dogmatic fashion (not denigrating the Thomist position at all).

While exhaustively knowing His creative causality He also knows therein all the operations which flow or can flow from this, and indeed, just as comprehensively as He knows Himself. 1 Jn 1:5: ‘God is light and in Him there is no darkness.’ . . .

GOD KNOWS ALL THAT IS MERELY POSSIBLE BY THE KNOWLEDGE OF SIMPLE INTELLIGENCE (scientia simplicic intelligentiae). (DE FIDE)

. . . Holy Writ teaches that God knows all things and hence also the merely possible [cites Est 14:14, 1 Cor 2:10, S. Th. I, 14,9] . . .

GOD ALSO KNOWS THE CONDITIONED FUTURE FREE ACTIONS WITH INFALLIBLE CERTAINTY (Scientia futuribilium). (SENT[ENTIA]. COMMUNIS.)

By these are understood free actions of the future which indeed will never occur, but which would occur, if certain conditions were fulfilled. The Molinists call this Divine knowledge scientia media . . . The Thomists deny that this knowledge of the conditioned future is a special kind of Divine knowledge which precedes the decrees of the Divine Will.

I would like to note here that sententia communis doctrines (“common teaching”) are described by Ludwig Ott (p. 10) as “doctrine, which in itself belongs to the field of free opinions, but which is accepted by theologians generally.” He classifies this type of belief as the fifth highest level of authority. He has five levels of belief below this one: well-founded (bene fundata), more probable (sententia probabilis), probable (probabilior), pious opinions (sententia pia), and tolerated opinions (opinio tolerata). So with four grades of opinion above it, and five below it, middle knowledge is in a fairly good position: certainly high enough to not be sensibly flatly denied by Catholics who personally disbelieve it.

Here is an example Ott gives (p. 179) of (competing?) opinions, both classified as sententia communis:

A) Even on the presupposition of the Divine Resolve of Redemption, the Incarnation was not absolutely necessary.

B) If God demanded a full atonement the Incarnation of a Divine Person was necessary.

I agree (for what it’s worth) with (A), along with St. Thomas and St. Augustine, over against St. Anselm. Here are ten more examples of sententia communis opinions:

Original sin consists in the deprivation of grace caused by the free act of sin committed by the head of the race. (p. 110)

A creature has the capacity to receive supernatural gifts. (p. 101)

Christ’s Vicarious Atonement is superabundant, that is, the positive value of the expiation is greater than the negative value of the sin. (p. 188)

From her conception Mary was free from all motions of concupiscence. (p. 202)

Mary suffered a temporal death. (p. 207)

The moral virtues also are infused with sanctifying grace. (p. 260)

Excepting the Sacrament of Penance, neither orthodox belief nor moral worthiness is necessary for the validity of the Sacrament, on the part of the recipient. (p. 345)

The essential Sacrificial Action consists in the Transubstantiation alone. (p. 409)

The purifying fire will not continue after the General Judgment. (p. 485)

The specific operation of Confirmation is the perfection of Baptismal Grace. (p. 366)

I don’t deny, and neither would the Thomists and the Augustinians, that God does know future events as well as the merely possible. However, this is not the issue. The issue is whether or not God chooses the elect based upon foreseen merits.

Yes, but if Thomists deny the possibility of middle knowledge, then (as I understand it) they eliminate the possibility of consideration of foreseen merits also. Therefore, it is important to establish the plausibility of middle knowledge as an essential component of Molinism from the outset.

I don’t believe this to be the case either in the scriptures or Church teaching.

Obviously, if the contrary opinion were defined at the highest levels, then Molinism would have been ruled out. But since the former is untrue, the latter is allowed; therefore protesting otherwise on the grounds of supposed Church teaching for or against is a non sequitur.

Further, I don’t see the logical necessity of separating the knowledge of the future conditional in God from what God knows in his simple intelligence. Quite simply God knows all, whether real or possible from all eternity in one simultaneous glance. I see no need to distinguish a mode of knowledge that is anterior to God’s simple intelligence. This would seem to be superflous.

This is your Thomist position, based on further premises which are debatable. But I appeal back to my previous survey post for replies to this assertion.

The Fathers assert Divine foresight of conditioned future things when they teach that God does not always hear our prayer for temporal goods, in order to prevent their misuse; or that God allows a man to die at an early age in order to save him from eternal damnation [cites St. Gregory of Nyssa]

I don’t see how this quote supports the Molinist theory of salvation based on foreseen merits.

Technically, it doesn’t; it supports middle knowledge.

The fact that God would allow one man to die in order to save him from future sins, yet He does not do so for another man would clearly seem to indicate that God unconditionally predestines some to eternal life, while others he permits to fall into and remain in sin.

I think the “unconditionally” is the part of your statement which is not proven, and doesn’t inexorably follow from God doing this particular thing.

Please clarify how God answering some prayers and not others establishes the Molinist claim that predestination is based on foreseen merits.

Again, this is proof for patristic support of middle knowledge.

[Ott] In the light of scientia media He then resolves with the fullest freedom to realise certain determined conditions [bolding mine]. Now He knows through scientia visionis with infallible certainty, how the person will, in fact, act in these conditions.

This seems to be a pretty good summary of Molinism. In bold I highlighted one of the main dilemmas with Molinism, in that God — via the scientia media –– determines the conditions in which man will realize his salvation. This would seem to undermine man’s freedom, since he is ultimately determined by preordained circumstances that will compel him to act in a certain manner.

There are two problems with this that I see right off the bat:

1) You contradict yourself since now you claim that Molinism creates determinism and abridges Man’s freedom, whereas before you complained that Molinism makes man’s decision determine God’s will. The first is a false summary, as will be show in #2; the second claim is based on a fallacious analysis of what Molinism entails (already touched upon above).

2) You err, I think, in your use of the word “compel” above. What is “determined” is the prior conditions, not the response of the person to them. God knows how the person will respond, but that doesn’t make the response less free. I could “know”, for example (with a fairly high level of certainty), that my four-year-old daughter will freely choose to pick up and eat a chocolate bunny placed in her Easter basket. I determined the conditions for that to happen (preparing the basket and placing it in a place so that she can find it).

But I didn’t “determine” her choice to eat the chocolate bunny. She freely chose that and could have chosen otherwise (e.g., perhaps in the interim she discovered that she was allergic to chocolate and stopped eating it). Therefore, God did not predetermine the salvation of the person in the Molinist scenario; rather, He created conditions in which He knew the person would freely (not compellingly) make the right choice.

Thus God directs the soul exteriorly, as an equestrian directs the path of a horse exteriorly. Yet because man is free, it cannot be that God directs the course of His soul the way he directs inanimate objects are even animals according to their nature. I will have more on this issue further on.

Correct. But the horse can also rebel and be uncooperative, as far as that goes.

Origen, Commentaries on Genesis , 3,6 [ante 232]

When God undertook in the beginning to create the world, for nothing that comes to be is without a cause, – each of the things that would ever exist was presented to His mind. He saw what else would result when such a thing were produced; and if such a result were accomplished, what else would accompany; and what else would be the result even of this when it would come about. And so on to the conclusion of the sequence of events, He knew what would be, without being altogether the cause of the coming to be of each of the things which He knew would happen. (vol. 1, 200, #461)

This quote seems to reveal Origin’s insight into the infinite knowledge of God, of all things real and conditional. Yet, it does not follow from this quote that Origin believed that predestination was based on foreseen merits. To say that God has foreknowledge is different from saying that God predestines the elect based on foreseen merits. Even still, if your interpretation of this text is valid, it is worth noting that Origen is not exactly a preeminent Church Father.

I agree. Again, this indicates patristic support for middle knowledge. More was given in the Catholic Encyclopedia, as I cited in my last post (emphases added presently):

Generally speaking, the Greeks are the chief authorities for conditional predestination dependent on foreseen merits. The Latins, too, are so unanimous on this question that St. Augustine is practically the only adversary in the Occident. St. Hilary (In Ps. lxiv, n. 5) expressly describes eternal election as proceeding from “the choice of merit” (ex meriti delectu), and St. Ambrose teaches in his paraphrase of Rom., viii, 29 (De fide, V, vi, 83): “Non enim ante praedestinavit quam praescivit, sed quorum merita praescivit, eorum praemia praedestinavit” (He did not predestine before He foreknew, but for those whose merits He foresaw, He predestined the reward). To conclude: no one can accuse us of boldness if we assert that the theory here presented has a firmer basis in Scripture and Tradition than the opposite opinion. (Catholic Encyclopedia, “Predestination”)

See above quote on St. Gregory of Nyssa and the death of infants, which would seem to me to be a clear example of the absolute gratuity of God predestining some and not others.

Once again, the citation was to support middle knowledge. I don’t want to start discussing individual citations in depth. We have enough on our plate already.

By contrast with other texts of St. Augustine, we can ascertain the true sense of the above passage, which would seem to imply absolute predestination, not the conditional predestination of Molina.

We know Augustine believed in that, so we need not argue about it.

On the other hand, I don’t think you can provide texts which absolutely rule this out and allow for predestination in a way which is distinguishable from Calvinist forms which deny human free will.

I think we should be clear about Calvinism and what exactly the Church condemned in Calvinism. The Church did not condemn Calvin’s claim that God absolutely and unconditionally predestines some men to eternal life. This in fact, is the kernel of truth hidden in the rubbish of Calvinism, which was exaggerated at the expense of other truths that the Church preserves in a delicate balance, like a stained-glass window.

Agreed.

I would add that in not condemning this tenet of Calvinism, the Church at the Council of Trent has indirectly endorsed the Augustinian and Thomistic theses that God predestines absolutely, apart from foreseen merits.

Rather, I think we can only conclude from Trent that unconditional predestination to hell was condemned.

And, this indirect “endorsement” would simply reinforce earlier teachings at the first and second Councils of Orange and Quierzy (noted above), when the Church, following St. Augustine, affirmed the absolute gratuity of God’s gift of salvation against the Pelagians and the Semipelagians.

Again, Pelagianism is not at issue. Molinism is not Pelagian at all, as explained in my last survey post. If it were, it would stand condemned by the Church for that reason, if no other. But it was allowed in 1607, so this is an irrelevant consideration.

What the Church did condemn is well known: the denial of free will and the doctrine of total deprivation after the Fall; double predestination- predestination of some men to hell without any consideration of their merits; the subsequent rejection of the sacraments and the necessity of perseverance in faith and good works; the assertion that it is impossible, even with God’s grace, to keep the commandments. Of course, neither the Thomists nor the Augustinians would object to any of the canons at Trent or elsewhere; so to identify them with Calvinism is grossly misleading.

Nor would the Molinists. And I don’t equate Thomists with Calvinists; only in certain limited regards where I see some difficult problems or dilemmas.

Each theological school (excepting Calvinism and other Protestant brands) affirms the mutual interdependence of grace and free will. The following scripture passages seem to clearly show that God predestines some men infallibly to eternal life (and not on the basis of foreseen merits), while others are reprobate:

“Many are called, few are chosen.” (Matt. 22:14)

This doesn’t tell us how they are chosen, so it is irrelevant to our discussion.

Here we see the contrast between God’s antecedent will, which desires that it is really possible for all men to be saved, and God’s consequent will in which some men are predestined infallibly by grace working through charity, while others are not.

But so what? We don’t disagree on that.

“Those whom thou gavest me have I kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition, that the Scripture may be fulfilled.” (John 17:12)

The elect are not lost; they cannot be. So what? No one disputes that.

Here Our Lord seems to state quite clearly that His grace is truly efficacious, in other words, of itself it brings about the term of predestination- eternal life. Because grace is efficacious of itself, it does not depend on our consent- either in the present or the future. Instead, because it is efficacious it moves us to faith and good works, which justify us before God.

One could argue that it depends on our consent in the same way that Scripture speaks many many times of requiring our consent for salvation (“work out your salvation,” etc.). God gives the grace: we freely consent (the consent itself being enabled by grace, as Trent teaches). By analogy, I don’t see how you could absolutely rule out any foreseen consent in God’s decision to elect, since the Bible shows us consent regarding salvation (at least in the temporal order).

“And I give them life everlasting: and they shall not perish for ever. And no man shall pluck them out of my hand. That which my Father hath given Me is greater than all, and no one can snatch them out of the hand of my Father.” (John 10:27-30)

Again, here we see that grace is absolutely efficacious, not dependent in any way upon our consent- either now or in the future.

The text doesn’t say that: you merely eisegete that understanding and exclusion into it. This simply states that God predestines, but no one disagrees with that. Our dispute concerns how He does so, not that He does so. You disputed all my previous patristic quotes on the grounds that they didn’t get into the “how” of utilizing foreseen merits, then you turn around and give Bible proof texts that are equally silent on the “how.” But I can give plenty of Scripture showing how God seems to consider our merits in His decision to save us or not. So the biblical data leans strongly in my direction on this, I think, by considerable analogies.

If we do cooperate with God’s grace, it is only by God’s grace (“prevenient grace”) that we are able to do so.

Exactly. So why do you rule out participation, and God using that as part of His decision to elect and predestine? We get no credit for that; therefore God’s will or decision is not dependent upon it as if it were separate in origin or cause from He Himself. Now you are arguing my case for me.

God moves the will to good works which merit eternal life, but in a way that involves freedom, not necessity (more on this Thomistic principle later)

This is also the Molinistic principle . . .

“….but for the sake of the elect those days shall be shortened.” (Matt. 24:22)

Here Christ clearly distinguishes between the “called” and the “chosen” few that He must have known (loved) from all eternity. No reference is given, either directly or indirectly, of the elect being chosen on the basis of foreseen merits.

Nor is there any indication that they were not, so it is a wash. You can’t dispute the argument from silence on my part and then use it yourself. These are supposed to be your proof texts . . .

“What hast thou that thou hast not received? And if thou hast received, why dost thou glory as if thou had not received it?” (1 Cor. 4:7)

Here St. Paul clearly teaches that all that is good in us, even the cooperation of our will with His will, is a grace given by God that is in no way merited- either now or in the future.

As Molinists agree; so, another moot point.

Therefore, grace is absolutely gratuitous, and not in any way conditioned- especially by foreseen merits.

Dealt with above . . .

“As he chose us in Him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and unspotted in His sight in charity. Who has predestined us unto the adoption of children through Jesus Christ unto Himself, according to the purpose of His will.” (Ephesians 1:3-7)

Here St. Paul clearly links the predestination of certain men with those who he knew before the foundation of the world, in the sense that they were chosen even before the world began. No mention is made of foreseen merits, only that God had already knew or determined who the elect would be.

Nor is any exclusion made of middle knowledge or foreseen actions or merits. This (like all your other texts thus far) helps neither position to establish itself as more plausible.

“We know that to them that love God all things work together unto good: to such as according to His purpose are called to be saints. For whom he foreknew, He also predestined to be made conformable to the image of His son, that He might be the firstborn amongst many brethren. And whom He predestined, them He also called. And whom He called, them He also justified. And whom he justified, them He also glorified.” (Romans 8:28-30)

Here predestination for St. Paul is once again linked to those whom God had already known to be elect at the foundation of the world.

Of course. No one denies that He elects!!!! But how He does it is the question.

The consistent interpretation of “For whom he foreknew” by the Church is not in reference to foreseen merits. This interpretation was introduced by Molina rather later in Church history.

Lots of things develop late. So what? Look at ecumenism and religious freedom, for example: both rather firmly taught by Vatican II. I have shown that St. Ambrose and St. Hilary taught on foreseen merits, and the Catholic Encyclopedia claims virtual unanimity among the eastern fathers and even the western ones, save for St. Augustine. So one has to question whether your claim of “late origin” is valid in the first place.

St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Bonaventure, and even St. Robert Bellarmine (a moderate Molinist) all assert that by “foreknew” St. Paul means “loved” as when Adam “knew” Eve and they begat children. God loved the elect before the world began, and then dispensed graces to guide them infallibly to eternal life and to bear good fruit in them. Hence we can now appreciate St. Augustine’s definition of predestination which is wholly consistent with the of St. Paul, “Predestination is the foreknowledge and preparedness on God’s part to bestow the favors by which all those are saved who are to be saved.”

The text from St. Paul neither proves your position nor disproves mine.

“What shall we say then? Is there injustice with God? God forbid! For He saith to Moses: I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy. And I will show mercy to whom I will show mercy. So then it is not of him that willeth nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy.” (Romans 9:14-17)

In explaining the election of the Jewish people and their mysterious obduracy, St. Paul shows the absolute sovereignty of God’s choice of election, “I will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.” Again, no mention is made to foreseen merits determining God’s choice of election. St. Paul concludes, “So then it is not of him that wills, nor of him that runs, but of God that shows mercy.” It seems rather clear then, for St. Paul, that election has nothing to do with foreseen merits, because it is not of him that wills, but rather that God shows mercy unconditionally.

It doesn’t say that it is unconditional: that is what you read into the passage. And of course God shows mercy; who else could? Man can’t show mercy to himself and save himself, right? So obviously God does that, but this doesn’t give us any information that would solve our dilemma one way or the other. You simply eisegete the passage according to your prior view, just as Calvinists do in supposed support of their double predestination. They think the passage is crystal-clear in support of their position; you do the same even though your position is different from theirs.

Protestant apologist James Patrick Holding has commented on this passage at great length, in response to anti-Catholic Reformed Baptist apologist James White. Here are a few highlights:

[A] socio-contextual reading is more than capable of “consistently reading from 9:6 through 9:24 without changing contexts, topics, or anything else.” Since White has been honest, I will be as well: I believe that Reformed exegesis of this passage manages what it does because, quite simply, working within its own defined parameters — not the original context — it is free to make its own rules, so to speak, so that any problem can be easily eliminated. I do not say White has done this particularly, though he may have (I have no recollection just now), or may have relied on those who have. Furthermore, I honestly believe that Reformed exegetes ultimately deal with any stumbling blocks with the essential reply, “Just shut up and give glory to God, you heathen.” Certainly not all do this . . .

. . . Hebrew “block logic” operated on similar principles. “…[C]oncepts were expressed in self-contained units or blocks of thought. These blocks did not necessarily fit together in any obviously rational or harmonious pattern, particularly when one block represented the human perspective on truth and the other represented the divine. This way of thinking created a propensity for paradox, antimony, or apparent contradiction, as one block stood in tension – and often illogical relation – to the other. Hence, polarity of thought or dialectic often characterized block logic.” Examples of this in practice are the alternate hardening of Pharaoh’s heart by God, or by Pharaoh himself; and the reference to loving Jacob while hating Esau – both of which, significantly, are referred to often by Calvinist writers.

Wilson continues: “Consideration of certain forms of block logic may give one the impression that divine sovereignty and human responsibility were incompatible. The Hebrews, however, sense no violation of their freedom as they accomplish God’s purposes.” The back and forth between human freedom and divine sovereignty is a function of block logic and the Hebrew mindset. Writers like Palmer who proudly declare that they believe what they read in spite of what they see as an apparent absurdity are ultimately viewing the Scriptures, wrongly, through their own Western lens in which they assume that all that they read is all that there is.

What this boils down to is that Paul presents us with a paradox in Romans 9, one which he, as a Hebrew, saw no need to explain. “..[T]he Hebrew mind could handle this dynamic tension of the language of paradox” and saw no need to unravel it as we do. And that means that we are not obliged to simply accept Romans 9 at “face value” as it were, because it is a problem offered with a solution that we are left to think out for ourselves. There will be nothing illicit about inserting concepts like primary causality, otherwise unknown in the text.

The rabbis after the NT explicated the paradox a bit further. They did not conclude, however – as is the inclination in the Calvinist camp – that “a totally unalterable future lay ahead, for such a view contradicted God’s omnipotence and mercy.” They also argued that “unless God’s proposed destiny for man is subject to alteration, prayer to God to institute such alteration” is nonsensical. Of course the rabbis were not inspired in their teachings. Yet their views cannot be simply discarded with a grain of salt, as they are much closer to the vein than either Calvin or Arminius, by over a millennium and by an ocean of thought.

. . . expression in extremes is not a characteristic of Hebrew thought alone. Second and more importantly, Paul was a Hebrew; he quotes from sources in Hebrew as White admits, and communicating in Greek changes neither of these points. Indeed, lingusitic studies by such as Casey indicate . . . that bilingual interference points to Paul preserving his Hebrew linguistic and thought-forms, even as he communicates in Greek.

. . . White has simply found himself lost in the hurricane of social concepts offensive to his Western sentiments; there is, again, not a thing “vague” or “unargued” or “unsubstantiated” about any of this (as my material on Ecclesiastes, inserted into the text of the article, indicates) and it remains a non-answer that fails to in any sense show that the analysis is in error, and one should like to hear White himself say such things to a credentialed scholar like Wilson, whose publication credits include A Workbook for New Testament Greek: Grammar and Exegesis in First John . . . and Dictionary of Bible Manners and Customs (with highly respected Evangelical scholars Yamauchi and Harrison).

. . . I actually believe that White does think refutation is impossible, because he is unfamiliar with the critical literature on the subject of idioms in Hebrew and Hebrew thought. Such literature is no doubt banned by the Inquisition in his sector as threatening to fundamentalism. But as for the panic button of “every negative particle” the answer is no, we need not get that paranoid. Every passage may be subject to critical examination. In this case, taking the negatives in Rom. 9:16 creates a clear contradiction between 9:16 and later passages in Rom. 9, as I show. Calvinists of course solve this dilemma by calling anyone who asks the question heathens and saying they need to give glory to God. As yet that is about all White’s responses have amounted to. And of course it is a falsehood to say we have only Jer. 7:22: We have the entire background of negation idioms and polarized forms of expression to appeal to, documented by the scholastics we cited.

. . . I agree that mercy and compassion — the offering of covenant kinship and consideration — are free. It is once we are within that relationship that rewards and punishments begin to come into play (or does White deny that we have rewards in heaven?). Nevertheless this does not prove in any sense that God did not create people with certain characteristics that suited His purposes. What does White wish to deny? That God foreknew the characteristics of His creation? Is he now an open theist in the defense of Calvinism? This is the critical contradiction that Calvinism cannot account for, as noted above. It makes God dumb when convenient, just like open theism; or else tries to palm off answering. And yes, there does remain a contrast, in my view, between mercy and hardening: It is the stark contrast between covenant concern and non-covenant disregard. And yes, the will of God is to decide who He enters into kinship relationships with. But no, this still doesn’t eliminate characteristics as a factor in God choosing people for specific assignments; and it does not eliminate free choice of humans as a factor in salvation . . . (White as a Sheet: James White’s Indeterminate Take on Mercy and Patronage (Part 1 of ?)

The fathers (save for Augustine, and only in later writings) did not interpret Romans 9 in the way that Calvinists and Thomists do, For example:

God does not have to wait, as we do, to see which one will turn out good and which one will turn out bad. He knew this in advance and decided accordingly. (St. John Chrysostom, Homilies in Romans 16; NPNF 1 11:464-65)

So also he chose Jacob over Esau . . . Why be surprised then, if God does the same thing nowadays, by accepting those of you who believe and rejecting those who have not seen the light? (Theodoret of Cyr, Interpretation of the Letter to the Romans, IER, Migne PG 82 col. 153)

Paul says this in order not to do away with free will but rather to show to what extent we ought to obey God. We should be as little inclined to call god to account as a piece of clay is. (St. John Chrysostom, ibid., NPNF 1 11:467)

God does nothing at random or by mere chance, even if you do not understand the secrets of his wisdom. You allow the potter to make different things from the same lump of clay and find no fault with him, but you do not grant the same freedom to God! . . . How monstrous this is. It is not on the potter that the honor or dishonor of the vessel depends but rather on those who make use of it. it is the same way with people – it all depends on their own free choice. (St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on Romans 16.46; NPNF 1 11:468)

Those who are called vessels for menial use have chosen this path for themselves . . . This is clear from what Paul says to timothy: ‘If anyone purifies himself from what is ignoble, then he will be a vessel for noble use, consecrated and useful to the master of the house, ready for any good work.’ (Theodoret of Cyr, Interpretation of the Letter to the Romans, IER, Migne PG 82 col. 157; citation of 2 Tim. 2:21)

Methodist commentator Adam Clarke provides further background on Paul’s mention of Jacob and Esau:

Verse 12. The elder shall serve the younger] These words, with those of Malachi, Jacob have I loved, and Esau have I hated, are cited by the apostle to prove, according to their typical signification, that the purpose of God, according to election, does and will stand, not of works, but of him that calleth; that is, that the purpose of God, which is the ground of that election which he makes among men, unto the honour of being Abraham’s seed, might appear to remain unchangeable in him; and to be even the same which he had declared unto Abraham. That these words are used in a national and not in a personal sense, is evident from this: that, taken in the latter sense they are not true, for Jacob never did exercise any power over Esau, nor was Esau ever subject to him. Jacob, on the contrary, was rather subject to Esau, and was sorely afraid of him; and, first, by his messengers, and afterwards personally, acknowledged his brother to be his lord, and himself to be his servant; see Gen. xxxii. 4; xxxiii. 8, 13. And hence it appears that neither Esau nor Jacob, nor even their posterities, are brought here by the apostle as instances of any personal reprobation from eternity: for, it is very certain that very many, if not the far greatest part, of Jacob’s posterity were wicked, and rejected by God; and it is not less certain that some of Esau’s posterity were partakers of the faith of their father Abraham.

. . . Verse 21. Hath not the potter power over the clay] The apostle continues his answer to the Jew. Hath not God shown, by the parable of the potter, Jer. xviii. 1, &c., that he may justly dispose of nations, and of the Jews in particular, according as he in his infinite wisdom may judge most right and fitting; even as the potter has a right, out of the same lump of clay, to make one vessel to a more honourable and another to a less honourable use, as his own judgment and skill may direct; for no potter will take pains to make a vessel merely that he may show that he has power to dash it to pieces? For the word came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying, Arise, and go down to the potter’s house, and there I will cause thee to hear my words. Then I went down to the potter’s house, and, behold, he wrought a work upon the wheels. And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hands of the potter: so he made it again another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it. It was not fit for the more honourable place in the mansion, and therefore he made it for a less honourable place, but as necessary for the master’s use there, as it could have been in a more honourable situation. Then the word of the Lord came to me, saying, O house of Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter? Behold, as the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are ye in mine hand, O house of Israel. At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and to destroy it; if that nation, against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them. And at what instant I shall speak concerning a nation-to build and to plant it; is it do evil in my sight, that it obey not my voice, then I will repent of the good wherewith I said I would benefit them. The reference to this parable shows most positively that the apostle is speaking of men, not individually, but nationally; and it is strange that men should have given his words any other application with this scripture before their eyes.

Verse 22. What if God, willing to show his wrath] The apostle refers here to the case of Pharaoh and the Egyptians, and to which he applies Jeremiah’s parable of the potter, and, from them, to the then state of the Jews. Pharaoh and the Egyptians were vessels of wrath-persons deeply guilty before God; and by their obstinate refusal of his grace, and abuse of his goodness, they had fitted themselves for that destruction which the wrath, the vindictive justice of God, inflicted, after he had endured their obstinate rebellion with much long-suffering; which is a most absolute proof that the hardening of their hearts, and their ultimate punishment, were the consequences of their obstinate refusal of his grace and abuse of his goodness; as the history in Exodus sufficiently shows. As the Jews of the apostle’s time had sinned after the similitude of the Egyptians, hardening their hearts and abusing his goodness, after every display of his long-suffering kindness, being now fitted for destruction, they were ripe for punishment; and that power, which God was making known for their salvation, having been so long and so much abused and provoked, was now about to show itself in their destruction as a nation. But even in this case there is not a word of their final damnation; much less that either they or any others were, by a sovereign decree, reprobated from all eternity; and that their very sins, the proximate cause of their punishment, were the necessary effect of that decree which had from all eternity doomed them to endless torments. As such a doctrine could never come from God, so it never can be found in the words of his apostle. (Clarke’s Commentary)

“O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and of the knowledge of God! How incomprehensible are His judgments, and how unsearchable His ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been His counselor? Or who has first given to Him, and recompense shall be made him? For of Him and by Him and in Him are all things. To Him be glory forever. Amen.” (Romans 11:33-36)

St. Paul here yields to the mystery of why God chooses some for election and others he permits to fall into and remain in sin.

He does? Where does that theme appear above? I must have missed it.

He respects the affirmation of all the essential truths of the issue: God’s absolute sovereignty in electing some and not others, as well as our free will, as well as the possibility of keeping the commandments with God’s grace — even for the reprobate.

No one is denying that God is sovereign!!! It doesn’t help your argument to keep repeating things we already agree on.

Of course, no one knows for certain who is saved (except the Church’s decrees on the Saints), which is a different, but related issue. The Bible reveals this apparent arbitrariness of God, which will perhaps only be known clearly in the next life. For instance, God chooses Seth over Cain; Isaac over Ishmael; Jacob over Esau; David over Saul; Judah over Ephraim; Jew over Israelite; and finally, in these last days, God has forsaken the Jews and chosen the Gentiles, so as to win the Jews back to Christ (Romans 9-11).

That is judgment of nations and peoples in most (if not all) cases, as explained by Clarke above, which is a completely different matter from individual destinies.

All of this “choosing” on God’s part is not really arbitrary; it belongs to the delicate tension of God’s Justice and Mercy, as well as His absolute sovereignty — three infinite perfections in God whose reconciliation cannot be fully grasped in this life. Yet we must affirm all of them, as the Church does.

I agree.

Therefore, the Church’s teaching can be summed up as follows:

1. In a certain sense, God wills the salvation of all men, even though not all men are saved.
2. God predestines some men to eternal life, while others he permits on the basis of their own demerits to fall into sin and remain therein, meriting damnation.
3. According to the Council of Trent, God does not will the impossible, since even the reprobate have the possibility of attaining salvation.
4. Therefore, two important truths are affirmed: God absolutely predestines some men to eternal life, and men are free and have the possibility of attaining salvation, even though some do not of their own fault.

Sure; Molinists do not disagree with any of this (except if “absolutely” precludes even cooperation of men with the grace of election and predestination), which is precisely why the school of thought is freely permitted in the Church.

Regardless of the mystery in reconciling man’s freedom with God’s predestination, we must hold with the Church all these truths to be true.

Obviously, “unconditional election” in your sense is not incumbent upon all Catholics to hold, or else Molinism would have been condemned.

Further on, I will examine your comments on free will and determinism, and in what way man is both determined and free, not only in the order of nature, but also that of grace. I believe your difficulty is primarily philosophical, not theological.

Well, we’ll see. I think your difficulty is in clinging to false premises without adequate proof, thinking that Thomism is Catholic dogma in places where it is not so, and in not taking into account all the relevant Scripture passages, analogy, and Hebrew paradox and other modes of thinking common to that culture (as alluded to by Holding above).

If He knows that we will accept and act upon His grace he could therefore choose to elect the person who does so. It still all goes back to God, so I don’t see any problem.

Molina’s theory does ultimately come back to God, which is how it avoids pelagianism and semipelagianism, it is also the reason why I believe the Church has permitted it. However, that it returns to God as the source of all our good actions is not the issue. The issue is whether the predestination of the elect is conditioned by foreseen merits or not. When you propose a statement such as, “If He knows that we will accept and act upon His grace, he could therefore chose to elect he person who does so,” you are proposing a conditional statement (If this, then that). Therefore, following Molina’s logic, you are conditioning God’s will- God’s decision to choose the elect is conditioned by our foreseen merits. This is why many theologians of the Augustinian and Thomist schools- among others- have a real hard time with Molinism. It does not sufficiently preserve St. Paul’s rather clear teaching that election is absolutely gratuitous, neither dependent on our merits now nor in the future. God’s mercy and love are absolutely unconditional; they are not commanded in any way either now or in the future.

I’ve dealt with this already . . . Hopefully you will deal directly with my arguments since you wrote this, too.

I don’t think that grace is dependent upon foreseen consent, but rather election to salvation…

This statement, if I understand it correctly, seems to me to be a contradiction. Election is God’s free gift (grace) through which we merit glory; therefore, just as you admit grace does not depend on foreseen consent, it would only follow that neither does election, since election is a free and gratuitous gift of God; election is merited only on the basis of God’s own grace, bearing in mind St. Paul’s words in 1 Cor 4:7: “What do you have that you have not received?”

We don’t disagree on that, but it is not proof that God wouldn’t use middle knowledge to foresee how men would react to His grace. You need to accept biblical paradox: God and men working together. Men work because God gave them the grace to do so. Their free will was also because of His grace. No good thing man does arises purely from their natural powers. So I fail to see the difficulty.

So if you admit that grace does not depend on foreseen consent, then it would seem contradictory to state that election is based on foreseen consent.

That doesn’t follow because the consent itself is from grace; therefore, it would be (in Molinist thought) God “crowning His own gifts,” just as the Church has proclaimed that He does in cases of merit per se.

Further, in admitting that grace does not depend on foreseen merit you seem to be departing from Molinism.

Nope; I am departing from Pelagianism. And you yourself correctly admit that Molinism is anti-Pelagian.

God would then take into account how men are going to act, in His election of some and not others to salvation. If I’m right about that, how He distributes grace is not dependent on man’s will over against His own.

It’s not because grace enables all responses towards God and the good.

Again this seems contradictory. To say that God takes into account how men are going to act, and then suggest that God’s distribution of grace is not dependent upon man’s will in foreseen situations, would be a clear contradiction.

No; it is biblical paradox. See the Scriptures I provided for man acting along with God, and the Bible describing both things in very similar terms. Thomism goes astray if it doesn’t incorporate biblical, Hebraic modes of thinking within its analysis.

Either God’s decision to dispense graces is based on our future actions or not; if so, then God’s will depends on our future will.

It doesn’t “depend” on it; it simply incorporates this aspect of knowledge within the decision to elect. This is how God’s providence works in general: the free will decisions of men are known and incorporated in the overall “master plan.” That doesn’t make God’s will “dependent” on man; quite the contrary, we are entirely dependent on him and have only a limited domain of freedom. We are merely characters in a book. The author is in control (ultimately) of what we do, and how it fits in to his “plot.”

I would never hold that God’s will is dependent upon ours. If that is what Molinism entails, and you can prove this to me, then I will change my position. But I will have to see some solid documentation for that to happen.

There is, to my knowledge, no explicit statement from Molina or any other Molinist that God’s will is dependent upon ours. Yet this is a conclusion that is easily drawn . . .

Just because God takes into account our response (in Molinism) does not prove that “salvation is entirely dependent on our will.”

I disagree here. We cannot hold that predestination is conditioned on the basis of foreseen merits and at the same time hold that predestination is not dependent upon man’s will.

Yes we can, because of the complex relationship of man’s will and the God Who makes it possible and intrinsically guides it insofar as it moves in the direction of the good and true and grace-filled. Your fallacy is that you see “man’s will” and you immediately interpret it as if it is in inexorable contrast to God’s will. When we sin, this is indeed true. But when we act “under grace,” this is not the case. Therefore, election based on foreseen merits would be “within” God’s will and grace, insofar as it is not “distinct” from God in terms of cause or control. Until you recognize this biblical and theological paradoxical truth, you’ll keep repeating the same error over and over.

Clearly, if one holds that predestination is conditioned, then it depends in some sense, upon man’s will. Whether conditioned, or complete, God’s decision to elect is no longer completely sovereign, as St. Paul clearly teaches in the above passages.

I disagree, for reasons I have expressed again and again. You’re arguing exactly as Calvinists do with their “monergism” mantra. It’s neither theologically, nor biblically, nor logically necessary, in my opinion.

Therefore, there is no such thing as “man’s will for good” without God’s enabling grace.

Yes, this is why I am not a Molinist.

That wouldn’t be sufficient reason, since all agree with this.

The existence of true human free will means that determinism is ruled out.

How so? This, I believe is the heart of your dilemma (a false one I might add), as it was for Molina. Further, it depends upon what you mean by determinism. If by determinism, you understand movement by necessity, as for example the planet Earth is moved in orbit out of necessity due to the Sun’s gravitational pull, then yes, clearly this contradicts freedom.

That is how I meant it, yes. Man can do otherwise from what he chooses to do. He is a free agent. Man even has the freedom to reject God.

Yet, from this it does not follow that man is not determined at least in some sense, though clearly in a different fashion from inanimate objects. St. Thomas, in his fifth argument for God’s existence, sets down a very plain observation that every agent acts for a certain end. For example, the eye exists for seeing and not for hearing; and the lung for breathing and not knowing, etc. Therefore, every agent is determined towards a certain end according to its own nature. In other words, God moves each thing according to its own nature; if the agent is inanimate, God governs it according to the laws of physics; if the agent is vegetative, then according to the laws of vegetation; if the agent is an animal then God governs it according to instinct.

Likewise, the same is true for man. Man is determined, though in a different way than physical objects, plants and animals: he is determined according to his own nature which is endowed with intellect and free will, of which the end or purpose is to love and choose the “good”. Therefore, as God moves all other objects according to their nature, so too, God moves man according to his nature- freedom- to choose the good. God does this naturally through the gift and preservation of freedom, and He does so supernaturally through the gift of faith which produces in us good works that merit eternal life.

Thus, following a Thomistic approach, the determinism of necessity (as is the case with all other objects in the universe) is ruled out, yet man still remains determined, but according to his own nature. And, by analogy, the same holds true for grace and predestination. Predestination is nothing other than God moving- through-grace- the souls of the elect toward salvation.

The Thomist “physical” notion of causation (for virtually everything, it seems) was critiqued at some length in my survey paper. I do not accept all of these Thomist “dogmas” or undisputed premises. I am a philosophical syncretist, as Suarez was.

. . . Essentially, I am arguing that Molinism is self-refuting because it falls into the false dilemma that it wishes to avoid: determinism. According to Molina, God predestines some to eternal life on the basis of foreseen merits. God, through the scientia media, knows the various situations that man could find himself in and how he would respond. God then dispenses the graces of salvation based upon foreseen merit because God knows, for example, that Peter will respond to the grace of repentance after denying Christ three times, whereas God withholds such graces to Judas because He knows that Judas will not repent. In other words, God, through middle knowledge, knows how each person will respond in each situation, and dispenses graces accordingly.

Therefore, man’s salvation becomes a matter of circumstance; God allows certain men to arrive at various circumstances in which it is possible for them to be saved, and further God dispenses saving grace to those of whom he has foreseen cooperating with efficacious grace. On the other hand, God extends sufficient grace to everyone- even Judas- so that it is really possible for all to be saved. However, on account of the scientia media, God knows that Judas will despair in this situation and therefore God denies him efficacious grace. So, in the last analysis of Molinism, it is as if God guides the course of circumstance through grace so that each person has the maximum possibility of being saved, even though God denies efficacious grace to those whom He foresees to reject Him.

I hold that this undermines man’s freedom because essentially it is circumstances guided by grace that realize man’s election. God guides the course of history so that each circumstance is arranged as to present to man the possibility of salvation; God knows how each man will act and so he leads them through a litany of circumstances that will compel him to choose this way or that way, despite knowing that a certain set of circumstances might lead man to sin or even incur damnation. Thus, according to Molina, the fate of man is determined by God’s grace operating through circumstance rather than the will properly speaking. As noted below, this is entirely unlike the Augustinian and Thomistic understanding of how God determines man’s freedom.

Man’s freedom is not determined by God from the outside, as an environment determines the development of a species. Instead, God determines man from the inside, moving man towards his natural and supernatural ends (see below) through the will choosing what is good. Therefore, in stressing man’s freedom and role in the economy of salvation, Molinism admittedly departs from the tradition of St. Thomas and St. Augustine and winds up actually compromising man’s freedom instead, since it all comes down to circumstances pre-arranged by God’s scientia media.

That doesn’t eliminate your difficulties, as outlined in my survey paper, because you still have to explain why, in your system, God chooses one person and not the next, if election is unconditional. On what grounds? If you say that it is (in effect) arbitrary: He simply chooses one person and leaves the other to damnation (as we all can justly be left, etc.), then you have to explain how this can be if, in fact, we are all equally blameworthy and should be damned.

If we’re all equally to blame (original and actual sin), then if God will simply choose some for election and not others, I don’t see how you can escape the element of “unfairness” and lack of justice for those who are damned (since all are equally guilty). If He chooses some “absolutely unconditionally,” as you say, then those whom He does not choose must be damned no matter what they do. And the practical result of that is exactly the same as in supralapsarian Calvinist double predestination, as Ott noted.

It’s like saying there are ten murderers, and the governor (after trials, of course) decides to hang five of them and let the others go scot-free. When asked how he could do this, he replies, “they were all guilty and worthy of death, so those who were executed cannot complain of injustice, but I have the right to pardon whomever I will, so the relatives of the executed men have no grounds whatsoever to complain of unfairness.” No one would accept that in this world of men, so why do large portions of Christians accept it when it comes to analyses of how God elects?

We can only go by the analogy of how we approach these things, in our own moral sense given us by God and guided by the Holy Spirit (in Christians). Fr. Most did that, and I think his solution makes eminent logical and moral sense, and is harmonious with what we know from the Bible.

Therefore, I reject this scenario and accept either Molinism or Fr. Most’s solution, because they are more in accord with an instinctive, intuitive understanding of how love and mercy and fatherhood function and operate. God rejects only those who continually spurn His grace. The reat are saved (unconditionally or prior to foreseen merits, you’ll be happy to know) in that grace. I find that to be the most satisfactory interpretation of what all agree is a profound mystery, by far.

If I’m wrong, I’ll learn that one day. It’s not like one’s position on these extremely complex matters has all that much effect on one’s Christian life. We follow and obey God. Period. This is interesting to ponder and debate, but it makes no practical difference which way one comes down on it.

Lastly, as noted above, there is another dilemma with the scientia media in that efficacious grace seems to lose its efficacious quality, since it only becomes efficacious if man cooperates (as foreseen by middle knowledge). Therefore, the Molinists are forced to conclude that efficacious grace is not intrinsically efficacious, only extrinsically efficacious because it is conditioned by man’s foreseen response. Yet, in lieu of the teachings of the Church and the Scriptures quoted above, I don’t think there is any basis for establishing that efficacious grace is not efficacious of itself.

Dealt with in my other paper . . .

It is clear, both from reason and revelation, that God determines the human person, as a first cause determines a second cause…

Yes, of course.

If you agree with this proposition, then you cannot logically hold, as you stated above that “the existence of the true human free will means that determinism is ruled out.”

I meant this (as I recall without looking at the context) in the complex way that I have defended, meaning that I accept sovereignty and providence every bit as much as you do, and only differ on how it is applied to our world. We can go round and round on this forever if you don’t acknowledge the paradox which makes these things appear contradictory when they are not necessarily so.

The fact is that since God is the first cause of our freedom, he remains the effective cause of our freedom and our salvation; and just as a first cause is not conditioned by a second cause; neither is God’s choice to predestine some and not others conditioned by foreseen merits (secondary causes) that man will produce in the future.

Old ground by now . . . Obviously, no one can overcome your reasoning as long as you remain within the Thomist paradigm that you have accepted. One has to overthrow various presuppositions that you hold in that paradigm which guide your own opinions and preclude certain other opinions. That’s what this comes down to.

I’m not beholden to any particular theological system other than the constraints of Catholic orthodoxy itself, so I am able to move more freely through these discussions and consider options that you have no freedom to consider because of your quasi-dogmatic Thomist preconceptions (which is why I could accept the Fr. Most solution, as even half the Thomists he discussed it with could do). I don’t observe this to judge you or condemn you at all (it’s not a value judgment); I’m simply stating a philosophical (epistemological) observation, and a point of logic.

Thanks for the stimulating discussion, and I look forward to your reply. It may take a few days for me to respond to any future replies because I need to work on my new book and am behind (I did this today instead of my book which was a bit naughty of me . . . :-).

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(originally 4-24-06)

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