Randal Rauser's Blog, page 79

The Christian Apologist’s Serenity Prayer

God, grant me the serenity to concede the objections I cannot defeat

Evidence to rebut the objections I can

And wisdom to know the difference.

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Is Catholic Communion Cannibalism? My Thoughts

To be sure, atheists aren't the first one to make the charge. 500 years ago Anabaptists denounced Catholics as "God gobblers", for example. Consider that the 16th century equivalent of an internet meme.

Not entirely fair, but, if you'll pardon the pun, does the charge have bite?

— Tentative Apologist (@RandalRauser) April 29, 2019

So here are my thoughts.

Let’s start with a definition of “cannibalism” courtesy of dictionary.com: “the eating of human flesh by another human being.”

What does the Catholic Church teach?

Next, we can cite some relevant passages from the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

1357 We carry out this command of the Lord by celebrating the memorial of his sacrifice. In so doing, we offer to the Father what he has himself given us: the gifts of his creation, bread and wine which, by the power of the Holy Spirit and by the words of Christ, have become the body and blood of Christ. Christ is thus really and mysteriously made present.

1367 The sacrifice of Christ and the sacrifice of the Eucharist are one single sacrifice: “The victim is one and the same: the same now offers through the ministry of priests, who then offered himself on the cross; only the manner of offering is different.” “In this divine sacrifice which is celebrated in the Mass, the same Christ who offered himself once in a bloody manner on the altar of the cross is contained and is offered in an unbloody manner.”

1374 The mode of Christ’s presence under the Eucharistic species is unique. It raises the Eucharist above all the sacraments as “the perfection of the spiritual life and the end to which all the sacraments tend.”199 In the most blessed sacrament of the Eucharist “the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ and, therefore, the whole Christ is truly, really, and substantially contained.”200 “This presence is called ‘real’ – by which is not intended to exclude the other types of presence as if they could not be ‘real’ too, but because it is presence in the fullest sense: that is to say, it is a substantial presence by which Christ, God and man, makes himself wholly and entirely present.”201

1375 It is by the conversion of the bread and wine into Christ’s body and blood that Christ becomes present in this sacrament.

We see two things in these passages. First, the presence of Christ in the Eucharist is “unique” (1374). He is not present in this bodily form elsewhere in creation than in the sacrament. Second, he nonetheless really is present substantially as the bread and wine are converted into his very body and blood.

Karl Rahner and Herbert Vorgrimler state the doctrine of transubstantiation as follows:

Neo-Latin meaning “essential change”: at the consecration in the Mass the changing of the substance of bread and wine, by the power of God, into the substance of Christ’s Body and Blood, which thereby become present while the empirical realities as phenomena (Species) of bread and wine remain.” (“Transubstantiation,” Theological Dictionary, 466)

So that’s the doctrine of the Church.

Technical vs. Substantial Vegetarians and Non-Cannibals

If the wafer is transformed into the flesh of Christ, it would seem to follow necessarily that to consume the consecrated wafer is to consume the human flesh of Jesus Christ. Since a human person’s consumption of human flesh meets the definition of cannibalism, it follows trivially that the human person who consumes the human flesh of the consecrated wafer is, thereby, a cannibal.

It seems to me that the best way forward for the Catholic is to bite the bullet on this one. Yes, it is cannibalism. However, we must make an important distinction. While it is true that this act technically meets the definition of cannibalism, it is not cannibalistic in the substantial sense, and that’s the sense that matters.

So what’s the difference I am drawing between technical and substantial? That difference is rooted in the standard social function of the term “cannibal”. Consider, by analogy, the term “vegetarian”. To be a vegetarian is to abstain from the consumption of all animal matter (i.e. meat) in one’s diet.

While that is the standard definition of vegetarian, I would argue that it can also be viewed as the technical application of the term. By contrast, the substantial application of the term vegetarian is somewhat more narrow and pertains to abstaining from the consumption of all animal matter in one’s diet that once constituted part of an animal. There are at least two reasons for this dietary restriction: consuming that animal matter is complicit in the infliction of unjust suffering upon animals and it also exacts a disproportionate environmental cost. These concerns are the real motivation for censuring the consumption of animal matter.

And so, what if a person could consume meat wholly apart from any animal suffering or disproportionate environmental cost? I am thinking specifically of animal matter which has been cultivated in a laboratory such that this meat never formed part of the body of a sentient, living organism. Instead, it was cultivated from cells in a petri dish. (I’m assuming the cellular base was originally collected in a wholly ethical way consistent with vegetarian concern to avoid animal suffering.) While the consumption of this meat would technically violate the vegetarian identity, I would submit that it would be consistent with the substantial motivations behind (most) vegetarianism: i.e. the avoidance of animal suffering and disproportionate environmental cost of meat production.

From that perspective, the person who eats only lab meat may technically be violating the definition of vegetarianism, but they nonetheless meet the substantial definition and its underlying moral concerns. And thus, while this person may not be a technical vegetarian, they retain substantially a vegetarian.

The same point can be made with respect to cannibalism and the Eucharist. Non-cannibalism eschews the cannibalistic act because that act involves inflicting suffering upon human persons and devaluing human personhood and the body by way of consumption of that body. But those strictures assume that the matter which is consumed once formed part of a living human person’s body.

This is not true of the Eucharist. Thus, while these elements may technically become one with the body and blood of Christ, they were never part of the body of the living human person Jesus. In that sense, the consecration of Eucharistic elements in the Mass is analogous to the growing of new meat in a laboratory. And the consumption of the Eucharist avoids the social censure of cannibalism in the same way that the consumption of lab-grown meat avoids the social censure of carnivory.

To conclude, just as the person who restricts themselves to lab-grown meat may meet the substantial definition of being a vegetarian, so the person who restricts themselves to Eucharistic elements may meet the substantial definition of being a non-cannibal. And so, the cannibal charge may be good for a cheap shot in a meme, but as a significant objection to Catholicism, it lacks a substantial bite.

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Answering the biggest questions about apologetics and Christianity

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of speaking in the morning service at West Meadows Baptist Church in Edmonton, AB. In the service, Pastor Mark presented me with four questions from the congregation on topics in apologetics (though he had let me know earlier in the week what those questions would be).

As you can guess, these are not especially complex questions — What is apologetics? What is absolute truth? What’s the best argument for God or Christianity? Why is there evil and suffering? — but they are perennial questions. And it’s always a challenge to consider how to address one of these big questions in 7 or 8 minutes and to do so in an accessible and engaging way for a lay audience. So here’s my best shot:

https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tentativeapologist/190428_RandalRauser_Pastor411.mp3

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If Christians are not, on average, better than non-Christians, is that a problem for Christianity?

The stage for the question before us is set in the second of these two Twitter surveys that I recently posted:

If Christians are not, on average, more honest than non-Christians, then that fact would constitute at least some degree of evidence against the truth of Christianity.

— Tentative Apologist (@RandalRauser) April 24, 2019

The second survey is our focus here. But rather than limit our scope to honesty, we will expand it to a general consideration of virtue. With that in mind, here’s the claim:

If Christians are not, on average, more virtuous than non-Christians, then that fact would constitute at least some degree of evidence against the truth of Christianity.

Why should we think this is true? The reasoning is loaded into the first premise of the following argument while the skeptical challenge comes in the second premise:

1. If Christians are being sanctified by the Spirit then Christians, on average, should evince more holiness than non-Christians.

2. Christians do not, on average, evince more holiness than non-Christians.

3. Therefore, Christians are not being sanctified by the Spirit

Granted, the conclusion does not entail that Christianity is false, but it comes perilously close. After all, if it follows that Christians on average are not being sanctified by the Spirit, what does that say about the credibility of the witness of the Christian church to the Spirit and all other major Christian doctrines?

Perhaps we are getting ahead of ourselves. After all, a Christian could concede this argument but point out that there is nothing troublesome in it until the skeptic provides good evidence for the second premise. And this is true, of course. While the skeptic can readily proffer their personal anecdotes of Christians who failed to be holier than non-Christians (by their estimation), that doesn’t as yet support the conclusion that Christians on average, do not evince more holiness than non-Christians. So what is the evidence that Christians are, on average, not more virtuous than non-Christians? Since the skeptic is presenting the argument, the onus is on them to provide that evidence.

Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that the skeptic does provide that evidence. Would the conclusion follow? The problem, at that point, would be this: are we measuring the holiness of genuine Christians or merely professing Christians? This might seem to the skeptic like a tortured bit of adhocery, but to the Christian, it is merely a sobering fact of ecclesial life:

“They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’

“He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.'” (Mt 25:44-45)

In other words, there is a difference between professing Christians and true Christians, no-true-Scotsman fallacy be damned!

What do you think? If premise 2 were established such that professing Christians were, on average, not holier than professing non-Christians, would that constitute at least some degree of prima facie evidence against Christianity?

In a subsequent post, I’ll say more about the problems with the skeptic’s argument, but that’s enough, for now.

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Your poor Christian witness today could make atheists a century from now

There’s a key moment in the film Gladiator where the character Maximus (Russell Crowe) observes, “Brothers, what we do in life, echoes in eternity.” You might equally say that it echoes in history, spreading out like ripples on a pond. An effective Christian witness can tell a powerful story of faith which shapes lives for years — or even generations — to come.

Conversely, a maladroit witness can adversely affect those same lives, often in unimaginable ways. This sobering point hit me recently as I was reading through the memoir of atheist Barbara Ehrenreich. At one point in the book, she recounts how she had always remained committed to a secular and skeptical position, ever since her youth. As she says, “The one place I never thought to look for answers was religion.” She then explains why:

“That approach had been foreclosed at some point in the late nineteenth century when, according to my father, his grandmother Mamie McLaughlin renounced the Catholic faith. When her father was dying she had sent for a priest, only to get word back many hours later that the priest would come for no less than twenty-five dollars. Perhaps the priest could be forgiven for dodging the long ride by horse or mule to whatever makeshift, mud-bound mining camp she and her family lived in. But Mamie did not forgive him.” (Living with a Wild God: A Nonbeliever’s Search for the Truth about Everything (Twelve, 2014), p. 2)

This implications of this passing revelation are simply stunning. Perhaps 120 years ago, a priest shirked his duty to offer last rites to a dying man, and a century later that led to a young woman never considering that Christianity might be true.

As we navigate our own lives day to day, seeking to do so as witnesses to Christ and his kingdom, we should ask ourselves whether we have done anything like that priest, a regrettable action which might end up making atheists a century from now.

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Fahrenheit 11/9. A Brief Review

Today, I tweeted a brief review of Michael Moore’s latest film (released last fall): Fahrenheit 11/9. I decided to post it here as well (albeit in slightly edited form).

Just watched Michael Moore’s Trump film Fahrenheit 11/9. Definitely worth watching. It’s less about Trump than the systemic corruption of a political system beholden to monied interests. Ironically, I think the most haunting moment is when Moore depicts Barack Obama traveling to Flint, Michigan (while still president), not to offer relief for a lead-laced public water system which is poisoning a poor population, but rather to tamp down fear by pretending to drink the water.

The film also includes typical Moore features — e.g. a lame stunt (involving Flint water) and a cartoonish juxtaposition of Hitler imagery with a Trump voice-over. But that latter segment receives gravitas by the analysis of Yale historian Timothy Snyder and these ominous words: “The thing we have to mobilize for is not safety but freedom.” (For my review of Snyder’s book On Tyranny, click here.) And while Moore’s harangue of capitalism may lack a solution, his concern for the poor and disenfranchised can’t be faulted.

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Liberal Christians who distort the Gospel and Conservative Christians who do likewise

A New York Times interview with the theologian Serene Jones, the current president of Union Theological Seminary, is getting some attention given that Jones enthusiastically tosses multiple cherished doctrines of Christian orthodoxy. Virgin birth? “Bizarre,” she says. God as omnipotent and omniscient? “A fabrication of Roman juridical theory and Greek mythology.” The resurrection of Jesus? Pfft! “For me, the message of Easter is that love is stronger than life or death. That’s a much more awesome claim than that they put Jesus in the tomb and three days later he wasn’t there.” How about whether God exists? “Bwa-ha-ha-ha!!!!”

Okay, I admit it, I added the cynical laugh. But everything else comes from President Jones. For her, Christianity is hampered by such antiquated silliness as the virgin birth, an omnipotent and omniscient God, and a resurrected Jesus.

As I said, this interview has been getting some attention. In my circles, that attention has been withering, and for good reason: here we have the familiar story of a liberal Christian tossing essential aspects of the Gospel in order to gain some cultural cachet.

Arguably, the most famous example of this liberal distortion is found in the famous 1900 lectures by the great German theologian Adolf von Harnack (later published in English as What is Christianity?). In those lectures, Harnack reduced Christianity to three innocuous maxims: the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man, and the infinite value of the human soul. Notably, Harnack’s summary left aside a long list of core orthodox Christian claims including the Trinity, the fall, the incarnation, the resurrection, and the final judgment and new kingdom.

And so, when one hears Jones claim that Easter is really about love winning over death while tossing the historical miracle that under-girds that hope, I am among those who interpret her in line with the long history of liberal Christians like Harnack who distort the Gospel even as they purport to be translating it for their age.

Having said all that, I now want to turn the caution back on the so-called conservative Christians, lest they fall into an ill-begotten spirit of triumphalism. In my experience, they are every bit as apt to distort the Gospel as the liberals. For every liberal Harnack, there is a conservative Dwight Moody. You see, while Harnack reduced the Gospel to his three truths, Moody, the great 19th-century American evangelist, reduced the Gospel to these three truth claims: ruined by sin, redeemed by Christ, regenerated by the Spirit.

Moody’s three claims are true, of course. That’s not the point. After all, Harnack’s points are also true. (Put another way, there are fully orthodox interpretations both of Moody’s claims and Harnack’s claims.) The point, rather, is that by emphasizing only those doctrines, Moody leaves a raft of other critically important orthodox claims behind no less than does Harnack.

To be fair, there is an important difference between Harnack and Moody insofar as Harnack rejected particular orthodox doctrines in the same way that Serene Jones rejects particular doctrines. While I do not claim to know Moody’s theology well, I am unaware that he did anything comparable. At the same time, however, it should also be emphasized that the long shadow of Moody’s singular emphasis — ruined by sin, redeemed by Christ, regenerated by the Spirit — has resulted in all sorts of distortions in North American conservative Christianity.

For example, Moody’s focus has often resulted in a Christianity that reduces the Gospel to a private conversion of the heart while leaving untouched the wider social implications of the Gospel. Think about it like this: Moody preached his Gospel during a time of racial segregation, Jim Crow laws, and extra-judicial lynchings. How many conservative Christians of his day thought they can have their individual conversion and private piety while remaining silent on (or even embracing) such moral horrors as that? And is that not a distortion of the Gospel every bit as egregious as that produced by the German liberal theologian?

In our own day, liberalism has resulted in seminary presidents who dismiss the virgin birth as bizarre and who reduce Easter to an inspirational maxim that life triumphs over death. Meanwhile, conservatism has resulted in millions of evangelicals who enthusiastically support a president that habitually lies, mocks his opponents, exhibits malignant narcissism, has affairs with porn stars and uses his lawyer to cover them up, and demonizes refugees and places their children in cages. And that man can be called “godly” and “biblical” by no less a Christian conservative than Michele Bachmann.

Don’t ask me to say which is worse.

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My Dad’s Ashes: A Resurrection Reflection

What does Christian resurrection mean?

On April 3rd, my dad died at the age of 85.

Three days later, an oven heated to approximately 1500 degrees Fahrenheit incinerated his body, reducing it to fine, grey powder. The father I had once known and loved was now vaporized, leaving behind a few pounds of ashen remains.

Resurrection means that these few pounds of ash are not the final chapter. On the contrary, they merely conclude the prologue of a never-ending story.

Resurrection means that those few pounds of ash will be ground zero for an extraordinary bodily reconstitution. Those ashes will form dry bones. And the Sovereign Lord will say to those bones, “I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life.” And there will be a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones will come together, bone to bone. Tendons and flesh will appear on them and skin will cover them, but there will as yet be no breath in them. Then the Sovereign Lord will say, “Come, breath, from the four winds and breathe into this man, that he may live.”

And live again, he shall. The prologue is complete, eternity now to begin.

That’s what resurrection means.

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Sweeping agnostic claims are anything but humble … or wise

Yesterday, The Atheist Missionary posted the following comment on my blog in which he declared his commitment to metaphysical agnosticism:

“Agnosticism with respect to metaphysical truths is not only the ‘smart’ position, it’s the only logical conclusion. That is why the only thing I believe with religious certainty is that there are dimensions, truths and reality which are beyond human comprehension.”

No doubt, some other folk will resonate with what they suppose to be the intellectual humility of this declaration. But there is nothing humble about this claim. Think about it. Here are some metaphysical claims:

There is a world that exists external to the human mind.
Human beings have free will.
Objective morality exists.
Human persons endure through time such that the person who is typing this sentence now is the same person who wrote the blog article that The Atheist Missionary replied to yesterday.
Inorganic matter is not conscious.

According to The Atheist Missionary, the only logical position to take on any of these questions is agnosticism. That is an extraordinary claim. Like, seriously, I can’t reasonably believe that the person typing this present sentence is the same person who typed the first sentence of this article?

Why does The Atheist Missionary take such an extraordinary position? In his comment, he states it as a platitudinous declaration of unimpeachable epistemic wisdom. But it sure ain’t that.

Regardless, I would comment The Atheist Missionary should definitely revisit his branding because he is apparently “The Agnostic Missionary”. Next, he can consider how he could possibly missionize on behalf of this extraordinarily skeptical position.

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Apologetics and the Indoctrinated American Atheist

Over the last fifteen years, I have engaged extensively with atheists across North America. I’ve spoken to local groups, participated in live and radio debates, traded emails, shared various conversations over coffee, and had countless exchanges on my blog. And I can report that my experiences are echoed in sociologists David Williamson and George Yancey’s book There is No God: Atheists in America. The book seeks to understand some common characteristics of the atheistic, secular humanist, freethought community by way of extensive interviews with atheists on topics like politics, ethics, and religion. And while neither I nor Williamson or Yancey would claim the characteristics I’m about to discuss are universal, they are, nonetheless, disturbingly common.

One trait which I have oft observed among atheists is a sharp division between the allegedly rational irreligious in-group and the irrational religious outgroup. So too, Williamson and Yancey observe, “atheists tend to argue that their beliefs about religion come from a rational exploration for truth, as opposed to the irrationality of religious out-groups.” (40)

Since atheists commonly assume that they are especially rational and the religious are irrational, they often dismiss Christian apologetics as a tortured, ad hoc rationalization, a pained attempt to defend the indefensible. This dismissive attitude serves to perpetuate in-group solidarity and dismiss out-group criticisms. Williamson and Yancey develop this theme in chapter 4 which is aptly titled “The Foolishness of Religion.” In one interview an atheist respondent made the following observation:

“It is time for those who challenge religion to come out of the closet, as it were. It is time to stare religion of any stripe in the face with fierce and undaunted truth, the truth that belief in imaginary friends is natural and expected in a 6-year-old. But just as a child develops and then rejects childish ideas, so must humankind abandon belief in an omniscient, omnipotent being.” (50-1)

This tendency to dismiss God, religion, and Christianity as infantilized and irrational denials of the overwhelming weight of evidence is pervasive within this “skeptic” community.

As you can expect, these sharp binary oppositions perpetuate a tendency toward indoctrination and inhibit the atheist’s ability to engage rigorously with the views of others. As Williamson and Yancey observe, “Because atheists have a tendency to see people of faith as irrational, they have a hard time understanding how individuals maintain religious beliefs.” (51)

Williamson and Yancey’s study includes both survey data and in-depth interviews. One of the in-depth interviews was conducted with a young man named “Ralph” and it effectively conveys the average skeptic’s general sense of incredulity toward religion and Christianity:

“Ralph truly struggles to accept the fact that an intelligent person can be religious. He likely struggles more with an inability to understand how intelligent people can be religious than other atheists, but the struggle itself is quite common among atheists. Many of them simply do not believe that a logical individual can have religious faith. For them, nonbelief is the only rational approach for an individual.” (53)

Williamson and Yancey draw some general conclusions about the reasoning of the atheists they surveyed:

“Using college experiences as a reason for leaving their religion buttresses atheists’ conviction about the rationality of their beliefs. It allows for atheists to look back at their transition from religious to nonreligious as moving from emotional indoctrination to a rational appreciation of the truth.” (54)

Time and again, I have encountered atheists with a similar perspective, one which ironically presents their induction into atheist belief as something akin to a religious conversion. Perhaps the clearest example of this conversion phenomenon that I have encountered is found in John Loftus’ book Why I Became an Atheist. In part 1 of my review of the book, I observe,

“Loftus quotes at length from a fellow named ‘exbeliever’ who ‘best described’ how Loftus now views matters. In the passage, exbeliever begins by talking about the days when he was a Christian and follower of John Piper. He recalls that Piper would refer to God as a sweet, nourishing fountain, ‘Taste and see that the LORD is good….’ (Psalm 34:8). That worked for a time, but then something began to change for exbeliever and his fellow doubters.”

Next, I cite Loftus’ quote from this fellow, “exbeliever”:

“The fountain became foul to us. We tried to ignore the taste. We went back to it again and again hoping something would change. We opened the Bible and, instead of finding wisdom, we found violence and the justification of immoral acts. We found anti-intellectualism and backward thinking. We found oppression. Our prayers returned to us void. They bounced off of the ceiling…

“We realized that the fountain wasn’t a being; it was a religion. It was just dogma. It is like we had been drinking from it with our eyes closed and noses plugged. Somehow, though, we opened our eyes and unplugged our noses and discovered that we had been enjoying filth. The fountain was a fountain of blood and other foul things. We realized that we had spent most of our lives consuming a vile concoction.

 “We would have been happy to have simply left, but we couldn’t help but want to pull others away from such a cesspool.” (36)

Finally, I offer the following observation:

“This piece of rhetoric is powerfully effective and deeply revealing. Loftus, the same man who insists he can treat Christianity ‘respectfully’, views Christians as akin to poor blind and anosmic wretches obliviously slurping at a filthy ‘fountain of blood and other foul things’. As for Loftus? Having achieved enlightenment, he now envisions himself as akin to the selfless Bodhisattva who is benevolently attempting to open the eyes and unstop the noses of those pathetic creatures who are feeding at this filthy cesspool.”

As I already suggested, once this indoctriational framework is securely in place, it reinforces the in-group and marginalizes the out-group critiques of the Christian apologist as nothing more than a perversely clever attempt to maintain the irrationality of Christian commitment with contrived evidence.

Of course, while I have framed the discussion in terms of the American atheist, this problem is not limited to the United States. I’ve seen it equally in Canada. And leading British atheists like Richard Dawkins are among the most influential purveyors of this indoctrinational framework. Interestingly, Christian theologian and apologist Alister McGrath offers this reflection on being a young British atheist in the 1960s:

“While I had been severely critical of Christianity as a young man, I had never extended that same critical evaluation to atheism, tending to assume that it was self-evidently correct, and was hence exempt from being assessed in this way.”

Indeed.

So what is the lesson here for the Christain apologist? I would submit that it means for Christian apologetics to find success with a skeptical, atheistic audience requires the apologist to target this very indoctrinational framework of “rational skeptic/atheist/humanist/freethinker” vs. “irrational religionist/Christian” at its very heart and foundation. There is little value in amassing arguments and evidence without first ensuring that the audience is willing and able to hear what you have to say with an open mind.

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