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Abraham, Isaac, and … Anselm? A Review of The Question of God’s Perfection

Yoram Hazony and Dru Johnson, eds. The Question of God’s Perfection: Jewish and Christian Essays on the God of the Bible and Talmud. Philosophy of Religion. (Brill, 2019).

The relationship between philosophical reason and biblical revelation has always been a fraught one. At times, warfare has broken out, as when scholars like Blaise Pascal and Martin Buber insisted that the fiery God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is a fundamentally different being from that austere and transcendent God of the philosophers. At other times, a real peace has emerged, perhaps never more perspicuously than at the moment that Anselm concluded the same God revealed to Abraham had bestowed upon the monk-philosopher from Bec a revolutionary insight into the ontology of perfection itself.

Ian Barbour famously offered four models of the relationship between science and theology including conflict and integration. One might apply parallel models to the present debate with some theologians framing the conversation between Abraham and Anselm (or Moses and Maimonides) in terms of conflict while others insist that any surface tension gives way to a deeper congruence best couched in terms of integration.

Within their new edited volume of essays, The Question of God’s Perfection, Yoram Hazony and Dru Johnson aim to bring these two opposing views into fruitful dialogue. The collection of twelve essays is written by a stellar line-up of accomplished Jewish and Christian scholars including Yoram Hazony, Alan Mittleman, Brian Leftow and Eleonore Stump. The book is divided into four sections of three essays each: Challenging God’s Perfection, In Defense of God’s Perfection, Divine Morality, and Divine Attributes.

Hazony and Johnson start off the book with a helpful introduction to the debate over perfection: “Philosophers”, they say, “often describe theism as the belief in the existence of a ‘perfect being—a being that is said to possess all possible perfections…. However, there are reasons to question whether this conception of God’s nature is appropriate as a basis for Jewish theology, and indeed, for religious belief more generally.” (1) What reasons, exactly? Put simply, “The fact is that the God of the Hebrew Bible (‘Old Testament’) does not at all resemble the God that the great debates over God’s existence are all about.”(2) Hence, the question to be resolved: is integration possible or is conflict inevitable?

Two Sample Essays

In my review, I will offer some critical interaction with a representative voice from each side beginning with Hazony’s conflict essay before turning to Stump’s integrationist essay. I will then draw some conclusions on the collection as a whole.

So let us begin with Yoram Hazony’s conflict perspective. Hazony argues that the concept of perfection is rooted in Greek, and specifically Platonic philosophy, which places God in the “realm of immutable and perfect forms.” (11) In contrast to the metaphors in Scripture which are largely based on human beings and other living, dynamic forms (12), “Metaphors such as immutability, impassibility, and simplicity are not drawn from the realm of living things at all.” (13)

Hazony notes that there have been attempts to reconcile these two different portraits, but they tend to grant priority to the philosophical conception of God while marginalizing the Hebrew revelation of God as benighted anthropomorphism (14). Ultimately, Hazony argues that the concept of perfection is not helpful because it requires us to know more of the divine nature than is possible: “It is the sublime that we find in the biblical abstention from attributing perfection to God” (21). In Hazony’s view, when we make ungrounded assertions about perfection we are in danger of the idolatry of creating God in our image.

Hazony makes his case with admirable clarity: in my view, this is one of the best essays in the collection and it provides an excellent introduction to the conflict perspective. However, speaking from the point of view of somebody very much committed to integration, I had several points in response. To begin with, anthropomorphism is inescapable. Few theologians will want to grant, for example, that God is physically embodied, despite repeated references to God’s face, body, finger, throne, et cetera. By the same token, references to God gaining knowledge, changing his mind, or having volcanic eruptions of anger all provide reasonable grounds for anthropomorphic and anthropopathic reading. The question is how much further are we permitted to go and the answer is by no means clear.

As regards the claim that the philosopher’s attributes are not from the realm of the living, I would reply that the Judeo-Christian appropriation of Greek concepts was more critical than Hazony perhaps allows. Consider, for example, the doctrine of impassibility. Far from suggesting the detached prime mover of Aristotle’s imagination, the Judeo-Christian appropriation of the concept produced the exact opposite: a deity who is fully actualized as the most moved mover (to borrow a term that Clark Pinnock errantly directed against impassibility). The impassible God of Judeo-Christian theology is not Aristotle’s God who does not love (or even know) creation, but rather the biblical God who can fully love creation precisely because he does not suffer.

Next, we turn to an essay representative of the integrationist perspective. In her defense of the concept of God in classical theism Eleonore Stump focuses on the theology of Thomas Aquinas. She directly counters the charge that the Thomistic God is static and immutable in a way that contradicts the dynamic, engaged, living deity of the Hebrew tradition. In reply, Stump focuses on the concept of eternity, arguing in particular that the divine eternity should be viewed as representing the fullness of time rather than the negation of temporality (including becoming, change, dynamism, relationship). In this manner, far from being cut off from creation in Plato’s timeless empyrean, God’s eternity suggests that he is most fully present to and in relation with his creatures: “Aquinas’s God is highly responsive to human beings and engaged with them in personal and interactive ways. He is a God who is a particular and personal friend to every person of faith. And he looks very like the biblical God.” (79)

My sympathies with Stump’s argument should be evident given the parallel between her treatment of eternity and my treatment of impassibility. At this point, my primary complaint is that she does not go far enough in bringing her analysis into fruitful dialogue with the conflict theorists and their specific concerns. For example, a conflict theorist might concede that a sufficiently elaborate metaphysic can, in principle, offer a putative resolution of these two very different perspectives. Nonetheless, they may still view Stump’s analysis as constituting the mere addition of epicycles to a fundamentally unworkable theory. Far better to set aside the Greek suspicion of time and change than attempt to reconcile it to the living, breathing, and straight-forwardly temporal entity of the Hebrew Scriptures.

The Verdict

My concerns about Stump’s essay bring me to what is arguably the most important weakness in the work: namely, the relative lack of substantive interaction between the conflict and integration perspectives. Time and again I found myself wondering how the theorists of each camp would respond to the points made by the other side. To that end, the book would have been greatly enriched by the kind of direct engagement between contributors that one finds, for example, in Zondervan’s Counterpoint series.

The dialogue between the conflict and integration perspectives could be made more productive by addressing some underlying questions. To begin with, there is the critical question of linguistic reference: that is, do the biblical authors and the philosophers refer to the same being when they refer to God?* After all, it is difficult to conceive a more fundamental question than this. And to that end, it would be helpful to contrast Bertrand Russell’s descriptivist theory of names (and its natural fit with the conflict view) from Saul Kripke’s causal-historical theory of names (and its natural fit with the integration view).

Second, it would be valuable to have an explicit discussion of the role of intuitions in framing our understanding of perfection and related concepts, not least because intuitions about perfection inevitably shape the way we read texts like Ezekiel 16 (i.e. the portrayal of God as a homicidally enraged husband). To what degree do all readers appeal to a priori intuitions of perfection and goodness in their reading of scripture? Personally, I suspect these appeals are more widespread than some conflict theorists recognize.

This leads me to a third point concerning the relationship between general revelation and theological reflection. While I share the caveat of the conflict theorists that appeal to general revelation and natural theology can lead to errant conclusions and perhaps even “idolatry”, I would add that the same danger lies in the opposite direction. Insofar as general revelation provides evidence to inform our theological reflection, expressing skepticism toward it could unduly truncate our theological resources leading to a danger of idolatry no less serious than that posed by the integration theorists.

As you can probably surmise, my suggestions for a more productive dialogue favor my own integrationist view. So take that for what it is worth. Regardless, even if The Question of God’s Perfection does not achieve the cross-fertilization of perspective for which I might have hoped, it is nonetheless an important new collection on a critically neglected topic. As such, it is a must-have for professional theologians, philosophers, and university libraries. I should add that the book is, for the most part, surprisingly accessible for the seminarian or motivated upper-level undergraduate. But unfortunately, the relatively high $75 price-point will be prohibitive for many potential readers. That is an unfortunate reality of academic publishing. At the very least, I would encourage interested readers to request their local library purchase a copy. The Question of God’s Perfection may not be perfect (sorry, I couldn’t resist), but it is nonetheless an essential contribution to an oft-overlooked front of interdisciplinary debate.

Thanks to Brill for kindly providing me with a review copy of the book.

You can order The Question of God’s Perfection here.

* For an excellent overview of the thesis that these are two different beings, see Norbert Samuelson, “That the God of the Philosophers is not the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,” Harvard Theological Review, 65, no. 1 (1972), 1-27. For an influential attempt to identify the two concepts, see Thomas Morris, “The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Anselm,” Faith and Philosophy 1, no. 2 (1984), 177-187.

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Good arguments don’t need to persuade everyone to be good

This morning, I tweeted a brief critique of Carl Sagan’s famous soliloquy on the pale blue dot:

Carl Sagan famously looked at an image of that "pale blue dot" called earth taken from Voyager 1 and mused about human insignificance in the universe. Sorry, Dr. Sagan, size does not map onto significance. One human life is more valuable than an interstellar nebula.

— Tentative Apologist (@RandalRauser) February 17, 2019

If you’re unfamiliar with this famous rumination, you can listen to it here.

Anyway, I do love Sagan’s writing. He was a masterful science communicator and a true poet as well. That said, the diminutive size of the earth has precisely no metaphysical or atheological import.

However, The Thinker™ challenged me by replying:

“How do you justify your claim?”

I responded with an argument:

If size determines value then a 10-ton pile of dirt would be more valuable than a 5 lb infant.
A 10-ton pile of dirt is not more valuable than a 5 lb infant.
Therefore, size does not determine value.

The Thinker™ replied:

“How do you justify premise 2?”

I replied:

Oh good grief, I hope you never have kids.

Please note that the emoticon was not that large in the original tweet. For some reason, it became huge after being copy-pasted into this article. But truth be known, this is a serendipitous alteration because the emoticon’s outsized dimensions convey more effectively the depth of my incredulity toward the suggestion that premise 2 needs to be justified.

Think about it like this. Imagine that a dam upriver breaks and a wall of water is rolling toward Smith’s farm. Smith only has time to save the pile of dirt in the back of his pick up truck or the baby in his house. Given that choice, he opts to save the baby. Who would ever ask Smith for his justification in choosing to save the baby over the dirt? Such a question would be absurd.

On the contrary, the justification would only be required in the alternative decision. If Smith had opted to save the pile of dirt instead of the baby, we would demand a justification. But what justification could there be? I’ll leave it to others to answer that question. Suffice it to say, premise 2 needs no justification.

But what then should we think about The Thinker™ and his claim that premise 2 does need justification? Is he arguing in bad faith by presenting skepticism about a premise that he does not, in fact, hold? Or does he really doubt premise 2? I don’t know.

We could try to bring him to reason by presenting him with the Farmer Smith dilemma and asking him what he would do and why. And that might bring him to concede the justification for 2. But what if it didn’t? What if he demanded a reason to think the baby should be saved instead of the dirt? Well, I suppose you could continue to attempt to reason with him.

However, it is also important to take the following lesson: just because you can find a person who is willing to deny the premise of an argument does not mean the argument is not good. Indeed, one can regularly meet unreasonable people who reject a premise in an argument for various reasons. One can also find generally reasonable people who are nonetheless unreasonable within a particular field and that leads them to reject an argument. Either way, for an argument to be a good argument, it needs to be logically valid (i.e. the conclusion needs to follow from the premises) and it needs to have premises that are widely recognized by reasonable people as true or at least highly plausible.

To sum up, don’t ever hang the worth of an argument on its ability to persuade everyone because that rarely if ever happens.

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Why the problem of evil is the ultimate theist/atheist standoff

In this article, we are going to take a hard look at the problem of evil. We begin with an excerpt from my book You’re not as Crazy as I Think. I then offer some additional thoughts.

On April 15, 1989, Ramon Salcido took his three daughters—Teresa, age two; Carmina, age three; and Sofia, age four—out to a field. He then proceeded with horrifyingly methodic calculation to take each child over his knee, pull her head back, and slit her throat. Here is the account provided by Carmina (the sole survivor): ‘[He] grabs my hair, pulls my head back and I put my hands up … protecting, so he cut open my fingers and I moved them…. I move my hands out of the way, [in] one clean cut. It was just like a razor.’ And there he left them to die, lying facedown in the dirt, with gaping wounds from ear to ear. Approximately thirty-six hours later the children were found. And while Teresa and Sofia were long since dead, incredibly three-year-old Carmina was still holding on to life.

Undoubtedly, Christians are most successful at dealing with the problem of evil when they treat evil as some abstract quantity that can be isolated and analyzed apart from actual evil events. Kept at the level of abstraction the problem of evil is relatively manageable. As we have seen, God allows evil because of his intent to achieve commensurately greater goods, a view that is called the greater goods theodicy. In much the same way that a parent subjects a child to the suffering of chemotherapy to achieve the greater good of a cancer-free body, so God subjects human beings to many horrible experiences, in part, for the greater good of sanctified creatures.

While this theodicy works fine in the abstract (that is, when our discussion is restricted to ‘evil’ and ‘good’ as general qualities abstracted from their concrete instantiations), when applied in the concrete it loses much of its appeal. Indeed, in the minds of some it makes God look positively monstrous. Even for the Christian who accepts God’s providential hand working sovereignly in all events, there is something distinctly unpalatable about the notion that an Israelite mother cannibalized her child or a father slit his children’s throats so that God might achieve a commensurately greater good. As a result, though I may believe the argument to be valid, I can nonetheless understand why atheists like Richard Dawkins find the reasoning of greater goods theodicy to be ‘grotesque.’

In that excerpt, I point out that evil is not an abstract problem. Or at the very least, it is not primarily an abstract problem. Rather, it is a concrete problem which is constituted by many terrible acts including Ramon Salcido’s unspeakable murder and attempted murder of his daughters. At this point, I’d like to go further into the resulting disagreement between (Christian) theists and atheists concerning the relationship between these kinds of horrors and theism.

That brings us to a common philosophical saying — One man’s modus ponens [MP] is another man’s modus tollens [MT] — which provides us with a key to interpreting this standoff. In order to explain this statement, we should begin by explaining what MP and MT are. These terms refer to two different valid forms of logical argument:

MP

If P then Q.
P.
Therefore, Q.

MT

If P then Q.
Not Q.
Therefore, not P.

So now, back to the saying: One man’s modus ponens [MP] is another man’s modus tollens [MT]. The idea here is that two different people can interpret the same data differently relative to their distinct starting points, and that includes the theist and atheist’s very different interpretation of Ramon Salcido’s horrific actions:

MP [The Theist’s View]

If God allowed Ramon Salcido to commit this atrocity then God had morally sufficient reasons for doing so.
God allowed Ramon Salcido to commit this atrocity.
Therefore, God had morally sufficient reasons for doing so.

MT [The Atheist’s View]

If God allowed Ramon Salcido to commit this atrocity then God had morally sufficient reasons for doing so.
God did not have morally sufficient reasons for doing so.
Therefore, God did not allow Ramon Salcido to commit this atrocity.

[Given that Ramon Salcido could only commit this atrocity if God (an omnipotent being) did allow it, the conclusion to MT entails that God, as defined, does not exist.]

Note that the theist and atheist agree on the conditional first premise. But they part ways at the second premise: P vs. not-Q. The Christian theist reasons that God allowed this evil from which it follows that he had morally sufficient reasons to do so. The atheist, by contrast, insists that God could not have a morally sufficient reason to allow this evil. And thus, we can conclude that God did not allow it (and indeed, that God does not exist).

Interestingly, at this point in the standoff, I often find atheists growing frustrated. “Well if you’re going to insist that God has a morally sufficient reason for every evil that occurs then how can I ever hope to falsify your Christian faith?”

It’s a strange complaint, however. Don’t get mad at me if you are unable to demonstrate that this terrible evil is one for which God could not have a morally sufficient reason. After all, you’re the one claiming to have a reason to believe God does not exist.

Moreover, the atheist objector needs to appreciate that they are in precisely the same position. If the Christian is failing to demonstrate to the atheist’s satisfaction that God had a morally sufficient reason to allow this evil, the atheist is likewise failing to demonstrate to the theist’s satisfaction that God does not have a morally sufficient reason to allow this evil. There is a perfect symmetry in this standoff, a stark contrast of intuitions borne of distinct starting points.

And that brings me back to the opening excerpt from my book You’re not as Crazy as I Think. One thing each side should do is attempt to see things from the other’s perspective. The Christian should develop a sympathetic understanding of the atheist’s perspective by contemplating horrific evils rather than evil in the abstract. And the atheist likewise should develop sympathetic understanding for the Christian’s perspective by grappling with the reality of cognitive closure such that our inability to see how God could have a morally sufficient reason for allowing evils like this is not, in itself, a good reason to believe that there is no God who has a morally sufficient reason for allowing evils like this.

Finally, at the end of the day, we may each find ourselves in a place like Martin Luther at the Council of Worms:

“Unless I am convinced by Scripture and plain reason – I do not accept the authority of the popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other – my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. God help me. Amen.”

In other words, we must each make our own judgment as to how things seem to us. But hopefully, we will do so with a charitable appreciation for the reasons that others may reasonably disagree.

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A Conversation with Catholic Apologist Trent Horn: Part 1 (The Magisterium)

Trent Horn is one of my favorite Catholic apologists.

You know what? Scratch that, he’s one of my favorite apologists, period. You can visit him online at his website, and you should definitely check out his excellent podcast The Counsel of Trent, and you should obviously check out his books on Amazon.

And now you should also read our conversation. Here’s part 1 where we have a conversation about the Magisterium (teaching authority) of the Catholic Church and whether such an authority is necessary to make sense of the great diversity in Christian expression.

RR: Trent, thanks for joining me in this conversation. In the World Christian Encyclopedia, “World Christianity consists of 6 major ecclesiastico-cultural blocs, divided into 300 major ecclesiastical traditions, composed of over 33,000 distinct denominations….” (Vol. 1, p. 16). Whew! That’s a lot of Christianities!

So here’s my question: in the midst of all that bewildering diversity, what is your case for Roman Catholicism as the fullest or most correct expression of Christianity?

TH: Thanks for having me Randal!

First, this citation from the World Christian Encyclopedia is misleading (even though many Catholics are fond of citing it). For example it counts the same religious group existing in different countries as belonging to different denominations and even cites liturgical rites within the Catholic Church as being completely different denominations, which is false. However, even if there were only hundreds of different denominations they still differ among each other on extremely important areas of theology (like soteriology and the nature of the sacraments) as well as morality (like the permissibility of abortion and homosexual behavior). Given their mutually exclusive claims we should ask, “Upon what authority do these different denominations claim to possess the fullest expression of the Christian faith?”

The Bible does not teach that scripture is our sole, ultimate authority for theological matters and the first Christians did not treat scripture in this way. In fact, belief in the infallibility of the canon of scripture must be grounded in an authority outside of scripture or else the argument for the inspiration of scripture becomes circular and invalid. Instead, the Bible and early Church fathers confirm that Jesus established a single Church with a sacred hierarchy composed of priests and bishops who were responsible for administering sacraments like the Eucharist and Reconciliation (a.k.a confession).

The purpose of these sacraments is to transmit sanctifying grace and infuse Christ’s righteousness into a person’s soul and, as a result, make that person an adopted child of God within God’s new covenant family that is found the one universal or “catholic” Church (Catholic, of course, meaning “according to the whole”). The authority to teach and lead this Church was first given to the Apostles who then handed this authority on to successors that exists today as the bishops of the Catholic Church.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that, “Those who believe in Christ and have been properly baptized are put in a certain, although imperfect, communion with the Catholic Church” (838). As a Catholic I desire that all Christians become one just as Jesus and the Father are one and can experience a perfect communion with the Church Jesus Christ established. Obviously, there is much more I could say and for a lengthier presentation I’d refer readers to my book The Case for Catholicism: Answers to Classic and Contemporary Protestant Objections. But for now I’m happy to discuss any points or issues that stand out to you.

RR: Excellent, that’s very helpful. I’d like to begin with the way you characterize the disagreement:

“Given their mutually exclusive claims we should ask, ‘Upon what authority do these different denominations claim to possess the fullest expression of the Christian faith?’”

I agree that there are inescapable disagreements between various denominations. For example, Catholics baptize infants, whereas Baptists do not; Catholicism embraces an episcopal polity while Baptists embrace a congregational polity.

However, it doesn’t necessarily follow that there is one right way to baptize or one right way to pursue church governance. To be sure, that may be the case. But it is also possible that each of these practices is correct relative to its context. For example, it may be that within Catholicism the normative rite of initiation is infant baptism cum first communion whereas within a Baptist church it is normatively believer’s baptism cum child dedication. Similarly, within Catholicism the normative mode of church governance is episcopal, but within a Baptist church it is congregational.

Of course, that relativist interpretation couldn’t explain all difference, but it could explain much of it. However, in doing so it would also marginalize the claims of any single denomination — including the Roman Catholic Church — as being the one true church. So how would you rebut that relativist interpretation of the deep divergence in belief and practice among different denominations?

TH: I agree that the correctness of some religious beliefs and practices are relative to the religious community that celebrates them. For example, in the Eastern rites of the Catholic Church the standard age to administer the sacrament of confirmation and first Eucharist is shortly after infant baptism. But in the Western rites of the Church (like the Latin rite with which most people are familiar) those sacraments are normally received when a child reaches the age of reason (around seven years of age). However, there are differences between religious groups that cannot be explained as simply being, “true for them, but not for me.”

It doesn’t make sense to say, for example, that “God exists for Christians but he doesn’t exist for atheists” or “Jesus is God for Christians but he isn’t God for Muslims.” There either is a God or there isn’t and Jesus either is God or he isn’t. Similar questions arise when it comes to important differences among Christians. For example, salvation either can be lost or it can’t and hell either is eternal, conscious suffering or it isn’t. Our beliefs about these things do not change their objective nature. This also means some denominations must have the correct, objective answers to these questions because the questions exhaust all possibilities.

Granted, the examples you cited like church polity or celebrating baptism seem more related to orthopraxy than fundamental elements of orthodoxy, but even in these cases important doctrinal questions arise that have objective answers. When it comes to celebrating baptism we might ask: “Is baptism necessary for salvation? Does the act of baptism spiritually regenerate a person and make him capable of receiving eternal life?” If the answer to both questions is, “yes” then the practice of infant baptism would logically follow.

In response, a critic might say, “Well, maybe baptism spiritually regenerates Catholic babies but it doesn’t do that to Baptist babies” or “Maybe the Pope is infallible for Catholics but not for Protestants.” This brings me to the fatal flaw in the relativist’s rebuttal: How do you know which denominational differences are relative and which are absolute? Which differences represent a valid “diversity of opinion” and which result in one denomination being in (possibly serious) theological error while the other denomination has a truer theology?

That’s why I am glad the Catholic Church has a magisterium, or teaching office, that has received authority from the Apostles and ultimately Christ himself that allows it to faithfully guide believers. One way it does this is by setting “boundaries for belief and practice” that determine what is fundamental and unchangeable, what is true but capable of being refined in the future, and what is acceptable to believe or practice but not obligatory or binding upon all.

RR: You say that the attempt to relativize a subset of doctrinal disagreements has a fatal flaw as regards the challenge of identifying which doctrines can be properly relativized. You then suggest that the way to neutralize that flaw is by appealing to an authoritative magisterium which can guide us in discerning which doctrines are proper candidates of relativization.

But here’s the problem: prior to appealing to Catholic magisterial authority, you offered preliminary reasoned arguments as to which doctrines can be properly relativized. For example, you argued that one cannot relativize the means of salvation or the nature of posthumous punishment: “hell either is eternal, conscious suffering or it isn’t.” Notably, none of those arguments appeals to the Magisterium of the church. On the contrary, they stand independent of it and thus can be evaluated on their own merits whether or not one accepts the Catholic Magisterium.

So it seems to me that your own analysis actually undermines your claim that the challenge of discernment constitutes a fatal flaw which requires appeal to a magisterial authority.

TH: I agree that we can know from reason alone that certain doctrines refer to objective statements that are either true or false for all people (like statements about the existence of God or divinity of Christ). Indeed, we can know from reason that any statement about reality is either true or false and any Christian practice is either permissible, forbidden, or obligatory. The problem still arises, however, as to knowing which doctrines and practices are binding only upon a certain community, only upon believers, or are binding upon all people.

I was replying to the simplistic idea that we need not concern ourselves with doctrinal differences since they can just be true only for those who believe in them. You seem to agree with me that this is not a tenable solution for all doctrines, but only for some of them. But then which sub-set do they apply? Are Unitarianism, monothelitisim, open theism, and the moral permissibility of homosexual behavior areas where believers can reasonably disagree or matters that are non-negotiable?

You could say in response, “Well, let each person examine the sources for belief and come to his own conclusion on those questions” and in one sense, everyone has to do that. For example, I don’t believe in the authority of the Church’s magisterium solely because it is useful in settling these disputes or because it says it is required in doing so (the former being crude pragmatism and the latter being invalid circular reasoning).

My analysis of the biblical and historical evidence, however, has led me to conclude that Christ did not make Scripture the sole source of necessary Christian doctrine to be judged by each believer’s personal interpretation of it. Instead, Christ established an enduring, hierarchical Church that would retain his authority over time and that this Church’s teachings forms the most coherent understanding of the truths we have received from divine revelation.

RR: Just to be clear, I certainly don’t think that Scripture constitutes “the sole source of necessary Christian doctrine”, not least because that doctrine itself is not to be found in Scripture. (Nor is that what the Protestant Reformers meant by “Sola Scriptura.”) We theologize our reading of Scripture through our experience, shaped by our traditions, and guided by our rational, moral, and aesthetic intuitions. The challenge, then, is to reason all these streams together into a coherent framework of belief. My only point here is to deny the claim that appeal to a magisterium is necessary for this process to work.

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Would you support a divorce in this terrible case?

Imagine that you’re a pastor in a church when you hear the terrible news that a young mother from your congregation drowned her newborn while suffering a psychotic episode brought on by intense postpartum depression. All agree that the child’s death is a tragedy and, given the circumstances, the mother is not criminally responsible for her actions.

While her husband bravely attempts to stand by his wife and help her on her long journey through the valley of death, several months later he comes to you, distraught, and pleading for permission to proceed with a divorce: “Rev,” he says, “I can’t live with the woman that killed my son anymore. I tried but I just can’t do it. I know she’s not responsible, but I can’t stay married. If I do, I’ll go crazy. Please say it is okay for me to seek a divorce.”

How would you advise this anguished congregant?

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On Pastors Who Doubt

Some pastors doubt. For a surprisingly raw and candid exploration of this reality, see the film First Reformed.

Pastors sometimes doubt their own salvation, or the goodness of God, or perhaps even God’s very existence. These doubts may be mild and fleeting or existentially gripping and persistent. And the longer they linger and the deeper they go, the more the pastor might wonder, am I being a person with integrity if I continue to minister when I have these doubts?

In one sense, that’s a question that must be left to every individual to answer. Each one of us must decide for ourselves when we are no longer acting with integrity. That said, I do want to address here the general notion that doubts of this kind are somehow incompatible with an individual’s ministry, and thus that doubts might call the integrity of the minister into question.

My answer is simple: that is a lie. It is a lie akin to the person who thinks that their failure to feel love for their spouse provides grounds for questioning the integrity of their marriage. On the contrary, the integrity of one’s marriage is in peril not when you don’t feel love but rather when you think that lack of feeling is grounds for the abandonment of the marriage. In fact, those who remain true to their vows in the moments when they don’t feel love show themselves to be the truest spouses of all.

By the same token, those who minister to others even in the moments when God seems most hidden to them show themselves to be the truest ministers of all.

For further discussion of doubt and belief see my book What’s So Confusing About Grace? chapter 26.

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Is Preachability at the Gates of Auschwitz a Proper Measure for Good Theology?

On several occasions, I have seen Arminians make the following objection to Calvinism: if you can’t preach this to those who suffer, you shouldn’t believe it. Here’s an example from Roger Olson:

“Someone has said that no theology is worth believing that cannot be preached standing in front of the gates of Auschwitz. I, for one, could not stand at those gates and preach a version of God’s sovereignty that makes the extermination of six million Jews, including many children, a part of the will and plan of God such that God foreordained and rendered it certain.” (Roger Olson, Against Calvinism: Rescuing God’s Reputation from Radical Reformed Theology (Zondervan, 2011), 25.

But let’s think about this for a moment. Roger Olson is an Arminian. According to classic Arminianism, God is still meticulously provident over all events, including the horrors of Auschwitz which he allowed to unfold due, at least in part, to God’s respect for creaturely freedom, even when that freedom results in those creatures engaging in evil actions. Would Olson really be comfortable preaching that at the gates of Auschwitz?

And then there is Open theism. According to that view, God doesn’t know what his free human creatures will do until they do it. Nonetheless, God certainly did know every heinous act of the Final Solution as it unfolded and yet he never stopped it. Would Olson really be comfortable preaching that at the gates of Auschwitz?

The lesson, one might think, is that theologians shouldn’t throw stones in glass houses. That’s certainly true. But the deeper lesson, I would submit, is that one shouldn’t conflate systematic theology with pastoral theology. In other words, you don’t evaluate the quality of a systematic theological understanding of providence based on your ability to preach it to those who are suffering. Why? Because people who are suffering are not looking to hear a systematic theological understanding of providence. Rather, they are looking for comfort and hope and for people to journey with them through the darkness and toward the light. And you can undertake that journey whether you are an open theist, an Arminian, or a Calvinist.

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On Anti-Abortion Extremists (and other unhelpful rhetoric)

This cartoon is one panel in a series from Adam4d.com. Read the entire series here: https://adam4d.com/anti-abortion-extr...

CNN just posted an article titled “Before judging ‘late-term abortion,’ understand what it means, doctors say.” I agree with the sentiment. There is way too much heat and not enough light in this complex and highly emotional debate.

That said, I cannot help but reply to the comment of one of the two doctors interviewed for the article. In response to the term “late-term abortion,” Dr. Jennifer Conti observes,

“In obstetrics, we don’t divide pregnancies into terms. ‘Late term’ is an invention of anti-abortion extremists to confuse, mislead and increase stigma. The appropriate language is ‘abortions later in pregnancy.'”

Ah, I see, kind of like how the term “anti-abortion extremists” is an invention of pro-choice supporters “to confuse, mislead and increase stigma”!

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Confusion on the Trinity

Are you looking for an excellent devotional that speaks intelligently on theology and apologetics while remaining accessible to and engaging for the lay reader? Yes, of course you are. Given that fact, I heartily commend Cornelius Plantinga Jr., Beyond Doubt: Faith-Building Devotions on Questions Christians Ask. (Buy it here!)

But while the book is very fine, it isn’t perfect. Consider this excerpt on God:

“What is God like? God is fatherly and motherly, as Isaiah 42:14 and other passages tell us. God is great and holy. God is like Jesus Christ, his Son. God is, finally and everlastingly, triune.” (24)

Here we see an example of confusion when talking about God. Plantinga begins with two statements — God is fatherly and motherly, God is great and holy — which leave the referent ambiguous. However, the third statement fixes the referent to God the Father, the first person of the Trinity: “God is like Jesus Christ, his Son.” (emphasis added) Based on that, it would appear that Plantinga is referring throughout to God the Father. However, after saying that God is like his Son, Plantinga concludes by noting that this God who is like his Son is “finally and everlastingly, triune.”

But wait, we were talking about the Father and the Father isn’t triune. What’s going on here?

Could Plantinga appeal to the dynamic tension between the one and three as famously described by Gregory Nazianzen?

“No sooner do I conceive of the One than I am illumined by the splendour of the Three; no sooner do I distinguish Them than I am carried back to the One.”

The short answer is, no. Gregory describes the dynamic tension between envisioning God as one being and three distinct persons. That’s very different from shifting without warning from referring to God as the Father to referring to God as triune.

It would seem that we have two options.

Option 1: Plantinga espouses a very obscure heresy which attributes triunity to God the Father.

Option 2: Plantinga confusedly uses the word “God” to refer both to God the Father and the Trinity.

Clearly, confusion is the more charitable and likely interpretation. It is disheartening, however, that this kind of confusion should appear in an academic theologian. But alas, confusion is not uncommon when theologians write on the Trinity. Consider, for example, Fred Sanders’ book The Deep Things of God. As I point out in my review, he frequently confuses the doctrine of the Trinity with the Trinity.

To sum up, even if we fail, as yet, to have a theory of the Trinity sorted, we should definitely be diligent in our grammar of the Trinity.

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Formulating an Argument Against Christianity Based on Confusion About Salvation?

About a year ago, I posted an article at Strange Notions titled “Answering the ‘Confusing Revelation’ Objection to Christianity.” In the article, I formulate an argument against Christianity based on the putatively confusing nature of Christian revelation. I then offer a rebuttal to the argument. (At a broader level, my entire book What’s So Confusing About Grace? could be interpreted as a tacit rebuttal.)

I have reproduced the argument (without my rebuttal) below. While I don’t think the argument succeeds, I’d like to hear your thoughts. What do you think of the argument? Does the putative confusion about Christian revelation provide a rebutting defeater to the claim that God has revealed himself through Christianity?

Any all-knowing, perfectly wise, and perfectly good being will be maximally clear in revealing precisely what salvation requires in terms of belief and practice.
God is all knowing, perfectly wise, and perfectly good.
Therefore, God will be maximally clear in revealing precisely what salvation requires in terms of belief and practice.
The Christian revelation is not maximally clear in revealing precisely what salvation requires in terms of belief and practice.
Therefore, God did not reveal the Christian revelation.

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