Justin Taylor's Blog, page 75

The Moral of C. S. Lewis’s Story? Don’t Be Like a Dog

C. S. Lewis:

You will have noticed that most dogs cannot understand pointing. You point to a bit of food on the floor; the dog, instead of looking at the floor, sniffs at your finger. A finger is a finger to him, and that is all. His world is all fact and no meaning.

And in a period when factual realism is dominant we shall find people deliberately inducing upon themselves this doglike mind.

A man who has experienced love from within will deliberately go about to inspect it analytically from outside and regard the results of this analysis as truer than his experience.

The extreme limit of this self-binding is seen in those who, like the rest of us, have consciousness, yet go about to study the human organism as if they did not know it was conscious.

As long as this deliberate refusal to understand things from above, even where such understanding is possible, continues, it is idle to talk of any final victory over materialism.

The critique of every experience from below, the voluntary ignoring of meaning and concentration on fact, will always have the same plausibility. There will always be evidence, and every month fresh evidence, to show that religion is only psychological, justice only self-protection, politics only economics, love only lust, and thought itself only cerebral biochemistry.

C. S. Lewis, “Transposition,” in The Weight of Glory, 114-15.

Behind the Bow Tie: A Profile of a Professor with a Missionary Heart

Here is an excellent video profiling Dr. Rob Plummer, a very popular New Testament Professor at the Southern Seminary Baptist Theological Seminary (and the proprietor of the free Daily Dose of Greek resource):

The Concept of Self-Deception: A Philosophical Analysis, Everyday Illustration, and Application to Romans 1

In a philosophical-theological essay from 1995, Greg Bahnsen looks at the concept of self-deception. He starts with some philosophical work, illustrates this from an everyday example, and finally looks at how this analysis applies to Romans 1 (where unbelievers know God but unrighteously suppress that knowledge).

 

1. Self-Deception in Philosophical Analysis

Bahnsen explains what is going on when a person is self-deceived about a belief, analyzing the concept in terms of iterated beliefs, corrigible disavowals, motivated rationalization of evidence, and self-covering intentions.

The analysis of self-deception fostered here maintains that when S deceives himself:

 

S believes that p,
S is motivated to ignore, hide, deny (etc.) his belief that p, and
By misconstruing or rationalizing the evidence, S brings himself to believe falsely that “S does not believe that p.”

In order to preserve something about his own self-conception, S engages in motivated rationalization of the evidence so that he relies in his theoretical and practical inferences on the proposition that he is not relying in his theoretical and practical inferences on p.

He is morally culpable for this lie about himself because it is engaged intentionally, and yet he may not be aware of his intention since it has become habitual or, being self-covering, has become something he no longer thinks about (like falling asleep).

S obscures his dreaded belief that p, as well as his intention to obscure it by rationalizing the evidence.

Self-deception involves deception of the self, by the self, about the self, and for the sake of the self.

2. An Everyday Illustration of Self-Deception

Bahnsen then provides an example to illustration common forms of self-deception, using Mrs. Jones:

The principal calls her to say that her son Johnny (her pride and joy, her only child) has been caught stealing lunch money out of students’ desks.

The evidence is plain that Johnny is a thief, and this is the third time she has received such a call from the school.

She has also noticed money missing out of her own purse at home, and Johnny has been coming home with expensive items from the store.

Mrs. Jones shows the affective symptoms of believing the proposition that Johnny is a thief. She tries to avoid situations where she is likely to be reminded of his dishonesty. She moves to a new neighborhood, transferring Johnny into a new school, and refusing to put a phone in her new home. She keeps an unusually attentive eye on her boy, but will not admit that she does so, etc.

Yet on the other hand, since nobody in the Jones family has ever stooped to dishonesty, and Johnny is her one reason left for living in the cruel world, she persuades herself that Johnny could not have done the dishonest deeds reported by the principal.

She forgets the past evidence and supplies “more credible” explanations of present evidence (e.g., money is missing from her purse because she is so careless or forgetful).

She goes out of her way to express confidence in her son to others, makes a show of giving him mature responsibilities, and tries to do only what one who believed in Johnny’s virtue would do.

She avers that she has a fine boy who is a joy to her, a regular paragon of virtue. Nevertheless, she flies off the handle at him over trifling matters (in a way unlike the way she related to him prior to the principal’s phone calls).

She astonishes and embarrasses others by seizing on every oblique innuendo to defend Johnny’s honesty.

When neighbors get curious over her missing cash and Johnny’s new acquisitions, Mrs. Jones fidgets, blushes, looks away, answers in halting fashion or changes the subject.

She treats the evidence broached in an unusual and distorted way, all the while apparently satisfying herself that her interpretations are quite plausible.

In this situation we find it very natural to express the view that Mrs. Jones is self-deceived. The affective symptoms justify us in attributing to her the belief that Johnny is a thief. Because she cannot stand that thought with its attendant psychic discomfort, she is motivated to hide this information from herself and direct her attention to the evidence in odd ways.

She dissents from believing her son is dishonest.

She claims the school officials had a vendetta against Johnny and were framing the poor boy.

She leans on implausible interpretations of facts, ignores the best and most obvious indicators, and brings herself to believe that she does not believe in Johnny’s dishonesty. (She is not the mother of a crook!)

She fools herself about her awareness of the truth.

The symptoms of this false second-order belief are nearly identical with believing that it is not the case that Johnny is a thief. She conceives of herself as trusting this untrustworthy son, and while guarding herself against his untrustworthiness she enthusiastically affirms her belief in him to others. She meets all the criteria of self-deception as proposed above, and we are able to describe what she is doing without resorting to paradox.

3. Application to Romans 1

Finally, Bahnsen argues that this analysis of self-deception provides us with categories to explain the self-deception Paul unpacks in Romans 1, where unbelievers know God but suppress that knowledge:

All men know and hence believe that God exists. The revelational evidence is so plain that nobody can avoid holding the conviction that God exists, even though they may never explicitly assent to this belief.

We are justified in ascribing such a belief to men on the basis of their observed behavior in reasoning (e.g., relying on the uniformity of nature), in morals (e.g., holding to ethical absolutes in some fashion), and in emotion (e.g., fearing death).

Nevertheless, all men are motivated in unrighteousness and by fear of judgment to ignore, hide, and disavow any belief in the living and true God (either through atheism or false religiosity).

By misconstruing and rationalizing the relevant, inescapable evidence around them (“suppressing it”), men bring themselves to believe about themselves that they do not believe in God, even though that second-order belief is false.

Sinners can purposely engage in this kind of activity, for they also deceive themselves about their motivation in handling the evidence as they do and about their real intentions, which are not noble or rational at all. Thereby they “go to sleep” (as it were), forgetting their God.

Because the evidence is clear, and because the suppression of the truth is intentional, we can properly conclude that all men are “without excuse” and bear full responsibility for their sins of mind, speech, and conduct.

Given the elaboration of self-deception offered here, we can better appreciate what Paul says in Romans 1, namely, that “knowing God,” all men “suppress the truth in unrighteousness.” And we can assert non-paradoxically that unbelievers culpably deceive themselves about their Maker.

—Greg Bahnsen’s article, “The Crucial Concept of Self-Deception in Presuppositional Apologetics” [Westminster Theological Journal LVII (1995): 1-31.

This essay is an application of his 1978 doctoral dissertation at the University of Southern California, entitled “A Conditional Resolution of the Apparent Paradox of Self-Deception.”

The dissertation has been published online as a free ebook under the title, “The Apologetical Implications of Self-Deception.”

Joseph Fiennes to Play a Roman Centurion Who Investigates the Resurrection of Christ

A new movie coming in January 2016:

George Marsden Lectures on the 1950s and the Crisis of Liberal Belief

George Marsden delivers the Current Read lecture at Reformed Theological Seminary (Orlando, FL) in November of 2014, based on his book, The Twilight of the American Enlightenment: The 1950s and the Crisis of Liberal Belief (Basic Books, 2014).

How to Interpet the Constitution: A 10-Minute Crash Course

Guy-Uriel Charles (professor of law at Duke University) calls Michael Paulsen (distinguished university chair and professor of law at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis) ”one of the most brilliant, respected constitutional scholars of our era.”

Charles judges that The Constitution: An Introduction, Paulsen’s new book co-authored with his son and just published by Basic Books, is “perhaps the best, single-volume treatment of the Constitution ever written.”

Steven G. Calabresi, professor of law at Northwestern University, says it’s “the most readable and insightful introduction to the U.S. Constitution since . . . 1840. This book is a must read for anyone trying to learn about the U.S. Constitution.”

Akhil Reed Amar, professor of law and political science at Yale University, calls it “quite simply the best general short introduction to the Constitution ever written.”

Stephen Presser, professor of legal history at Northwestern University, says it is “the best introduction to the United States Constitution available. ”

John Copeland Nagle, professor of law at the University of Notre Dame, says ”This is the one book that I recommend to anyone who wants a comprehensive and enjoyable overview of the Constitution, what it means, and why it matters.”

High praise indeed.

In a recent two-part article for Public Discourse (an indispensable online journal about religion, law, and liberty), Dr. Paulsen offers us a crash course—part 1 and part 2—on the real questions about constitutional interpretation that you need to know.

“Ninety-five percent of constitutional law,” he writes, “amounts to deciding how to go about the enterprise of reading and applying the Constitution itself.” He identifies five broad categories of interpretive techniques that courts and commentators employ. Below is an outline of his main points.

1. Arguments from the Straightforward, Natural, Original Linguistic Meaning of the Text

“The Constitution is a written document, written at a particular time, addressed to a particular political community, reflecting certain assumptions, and designed to function as supreme written law on an ongoing basis. The simplest, most straightforward, and most correct way to interpret the Constitution is to read the words and phrases of the document and apply them in accordance with the meaning the words would have had to reasonably informed readers and speakers of the English language at the time the document was adopted.”

2. Arguments from the Structure, Logic, and Relationships Created by the Document as a Whole

“This is really just a slightly more sophisticated or specialized version of reading the text. It simply posits that you should read the whole text, understand the relationship of parts of the text to each other, and attend to the governing structures the document creates.”

3. Arguments from the History, Original Intention, or Purposes behind an Enacted Text

“This technique recognizes that sometimes the text’s meaning is unclear and that evidence of historical understanding can help clear up disagreements. A good constitutional interpreter, however, should recognize that ‘intention’ best functions as evidence of the meaning of the words, not as a substitute for them. Because we have a written constitution, what ultimately counts is the historical meaning of the words the Constitution’s adopters used, not what they necessarily ‘had in mind.'”

4. Arguments from Precedent

“This gives rise to incredible confusion, for the simple reason that the precedents hopelessly contradict one another and frequently contradict the document itself. The problem with many bad Constitutional Law courses is that they are all about the precedents, and not at all about the Constitution. The short answer to the problem of precedent is that some precedents are sound—helpful interpretations of the Constitution that can help resolve doubtful points—and other precedents are unsound, unhelpful misinterpretations of the Constitution’s text, structure, and history. That’s really all there is to it. The sound precedents are useful guides; the unsound ones should be regarded as having no authority or validity whatsoever.”

5. Arguments from Policy, Pragmatism, or Considerations of “Substantive Justice”

“As a technique of constitutional interpretation—of actual textual exegesis—of trying faithfully to ascertain the meanings of the Constitution’s words—policy-driven “interpretation” is, of course, completely illegitimate. . . . Moreover, what one person thinks is good “substantive justice,” another will think a wrongheaded atrocity. . . .  Did it ever occur to you that policy differences not actually addressed by the Constitution are to be resolved by democracy—by the institutions of representative government?”

How Do These Principles Fit Together?

Here is Paulsen’s exhortation:

Use these techniques in the order in which I have listed them, in a fairly strict hierarchy, proceeding down the list only to resolve uncertainties that remain at any given level, and never getting down so low as “policy.” Thus, text and structure have priority and primacy; evidence of intention has its limited place; precedent is dangerous and slippery and should never trump the written constitutional text, but might be useful for seeing what someone else has thought about an issue; and policy-driven interpretation is simply a bad joke.

Sadly, this is nearly the exact opposite of the order in which the modern Supreme Court uses these methods. The justices frequently start with policy, discuss endless precedents, and on rare occasions—when these prove unsatisfying—actually get to the text.

 

Finally, Paulsen addresses two clean-up issues.

Who Gets to Interpret the Constitution?

The wrong answer is “the Supreme Court.”

The right answer is that the Constitution does not specify a single authoritative constitutional interpreter, and that this is a singular, defining feature of its text and structure. . . . The correct answer to the question of who gets to interpret the Constitution is “everyone.” The framers of the Constitution quite sensibly considered the power of constitutional interpretation—the power to interpret all the other powers, and all the rights of the people—to be far too important a matter to vest in a single set of hands.

 

What Do We Do with Ambiguity?

Where the Constitution does not supply an answer, the Constitution does not supply an answer, and We the People get to do what we want, operating through the institutions of representative government created by the Constitution’s structure.

You can go to Public Discourse and read the whole thing—part 1 and part 2—with more elaboration on each of the points outlined above.

10 Ideas Embedded in the Slogan “All Truth Is God’s Truth”

Duane Litfin writes that the slogan “All truth is God’s truth” became popular because it “encapsulated a set of convictions that are vital for the Christian’s intellectual task. These ideas lie embedded in the sloan as entailments, necessary implications. To embrace the slogan was to embrace these implications. My purpose here is to surface these entailments so that, even if we may allow an overworked catchphrase to rest in peace, we will not lose the truths it was designed to express.”

Here is his outline:

God exists. (“This is the most basic idea of all. It is the foundation for all that a Christian can know.”)
Through the agency of his Son, God created the universe and all that is in it.
We can therefore entertain an intellectual construct called “reality.” (Reality = “things as God knows them to  be.” “While a God-centered definition of reality does not by itself grant us access to that reality . . . it is nonetheless what makes it possible to talk about reality in the first place.”)
This reality is complex and multi-dimensional. (“The cosmos God created . . . has physical, spiritual, and moral dimensions to it, but each dimension is fully real because its reality is anchored in the fact that it is part of what God knows to be the case.”)
This reality, though complex and multi-dimensional, is also coherent and unified, centered upon the person of Jesus Christ. (“When [the universe] is properly understood, as by God himself, Jesus Christ is seen to be the Source, the Sustainer, and the Goal of all created things.”)
God has created humans with the capacity to apprehend, however fallibly and incompletely, this reality.
Genuine knowledge is therefore feasible for humans. [“. . . in some ways, humans are able to some extent, to know and describe some dimensions of the reality God knows.” Jonathan Edwards: true knowledge consists of the “agreement of our ideas with the ideas of God.” ]
Human knowledge of reality stems from two prime sources: special revelation and discovery. (“Humans can come to know that something is the case because God has told them by special revelation it is so . . . ; or they can know something is the case by discovering it for themselves—that is, by applying their God-given capacity for apprehension to those dimensions of the created order that are available to them.”
We can therefore maintain a distinction between truth and error. (“. . . in the end, some version of a representational theory of language and or a correspondence theory of truth must remain in play if we are to conceive of truth in a fully biblical way.”)
All that is truthful, from whatever source, is unified, and will cohere with whatever else is truthful. (“Because God’s reality is unified and coherent, centered as it is on the person of Christ, all truthful apprehensions of that reality, or truthful expressions of those apprehensions, will cohere and contribute to an integrated, unified, Christ-centered vision of all things.”

—Duane Litfin, Conceiving the Christian College (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 86-95.

The Brain Is More Like a Muscle Than a Shoebox (Or, Why It’s Good for Kids to Learn Latin)

Doug Wilson:

If a football coach were making his player run wind sprints in a particularly hard practice, no one would upbraid him for making his players run from the thirty-yard line to the forty-yard line and then, mindlessly, pointlessly, back again. If he were confronted, he would point out that the issue was discipline and not the particular piece of ground the players were covering. In fact the ground covered in the subsequent game is not important in itself either but is related to a higher end.

We tend to think of our students’ minds as finite shoeboxes, and we then think we must take special care not to put anything in there if we do not want it to remain there for life. But the brain is more like a muscle. A student who learns one language, such as Latin, is not stuck with his shoebox three-quarters full, with no room for Spanish. Rather the student has a mind that has been stretched and exercised in such a way that subsequent learning is much easier, not much harder.

Now of course this kind of mental discipline could be acquired by requiring of the students the intellectual equivalent of running back and forth. While a football coach might be able to get away with this, because everyone understands the point, we should not attempt it in the classroom—although mental wind sprints that had no point in themselves would still be better than simple laziness. The reason this approach would not work in the classroom is that the human mind is inescapably teleological; it wants to know why it is learning something. Latin has the advantage of providing the grist for the mill of the mind, while also providing great practical advantages. To return to our metaphor of football, the study of Latin is therefore simultaneously an exercise to prepare for the game and part of the game.”

—Douglas Wilson, The Case for Classical Christian Education (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2003), 140-141.

Update: A comment from reader Ben Wheaton:

I disagree. Any language will have the same mental benefits as Latin.  So why learn, as a primary part of the curriculum, a dead language, when living languages like Spanish and French not only have the same effects, but also are useful in the modern world to communicate with others?

By all means, learn more than one language; by all means, even, learn Latin–but don’t start with it. And don’t elevate it above modern languages as somehow superior.  It isn’t.

I am currently engaged in completing a graduate degree in Medieval History.  During the course of my research, I had to read a number of articles in Italian.  I never learned Italian formally, but I can manage pretty well because I know French and Latin.  But you know what?  French was immeasurably more useful than Latin in understanding Italian, because French and Italian are much more similar to each other than Latin is to either of them.  Neither are inflected; Latin is.  Both depend on word order for meaning; Latin generally doesn’t. Do you want to learn Spanish? Learn Spanish. Then, if you’re up for it, learn French (Spanish is a wonderful base for learning French). Then, if you’re up for an ancient language, why not Greek? Or Hebrew? Or, for something exotic, Malay?

Of course, for most people, learning just one other language is plenty; even then, most English-speakers forget their foreign language training. Why? Because English is the international language.

I’ll close this little rant with a wonderful quote from (who else?) Winston Churchill:

[B]y being so long in the lowest form I gained an immense advantage over the cleverer boys. They all went on to learn Latin and Greek and splendid things like that. But I was taught English. We were considered such dunces that we could learn only English. Mr. Somervell—a most delightful man, to whom my debt is great—was charged with the duty of teaching the stupidest boys the most disregarded thing—namely, to write mere English. He knew how to do it. He taught it as no one else has ever taught it. Not only did we learn English parsing thoroughly, but we also practised continually English analysis. . . Thus I got into my bones the essential structure of the ordinary British sentence — which is a noble thing. And when in after years my schoolfellows who had won prizes and distinction for writing such beautiful Latin poetry and pithy Greek epigrams had to come down again to common English, to earn their living or make their way, I did not feel myself at any disadvantage. Naturally I am biased in favour of boys learning English. I would make them all learn English: and then I would let the clever ones learn Latin as an honour, and Greek as a treat. But the only thing I would whip them for would be not knowing English. I would whip them hard for that.

The Two Major Sins in the Old Testament

Peter Adam:

It is certainly the case that in the Old Testament, sacred times, places, objects and actions are inextricably part of the revelation, and foundational to life with God. It is important to remember that these times, places, objects, people, and actions express the covenant relationship between the Lord and his people. They are expressions of covenant holiness: they are sacred because they are aspects of the covenant.

The moral dimension of sacredness in the Old Testament means that when God’s people turn away from him, the sacred things have no positive value and indeed become a snare. The danger is to turn away from God, but to continue to trust in the sacred times, places, objects, people or actions when these things no longer express covenant relationship with God…

There are two major sins in the Old Testament, both of which have to do with the use of sacred objects, places, times and people.

One sin is to follow other gods, to trust their prophets, to engage in their worship, to worship their idols and to trust in them and serve them.

The other sin is to use the sacred objects, places, times and people given by God, but to turn away from God, whose covenant they represent.

The first sin is that of idolatry, and the second that of false security, holding the form but not the power of godliness.

—Peter Adam, Hearing God’s Words: Exploring Biblical Spirituality, New Studies in Biblical Theology, ed. D. A. Carson (Apollos/IVP, 2004), 152.

Al Mohler’s: 10 Books from 2014 that Every Preacher Should Read

Here is Albert Mohler’s list for Preaching Magazine. (I’ll update the post if the article appears online.)

Daniel Block, For the Glory of God: Recovering a Biblical Theology of Worship (Baker Academic)
Terry Muck, Harold Netland, and Gerald McDermott, eds., Handbook of Religion: A Christian Engagement with Traditions, Teachings, and Practices (Baker Academic)
Gerald Bray, God Has Spoken: A History of Christian Theology (Crossway)
Kevin DeYoung, Taking God At His Word: Why the Bible Is Knowable, Necessary, and Enough, and What That Means for You and Me (Crossway)
Thomas Oden, A Change of Heart: A Personal and Theological Memoir (IVP Academic)
G. K. Beale and Mitchell Kim, God Dwells Among Us: Expanding Eden to the Ends of the Earth (IVP)
Tim Keller, Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God (Penguin)
Walter Isaacson, The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution (Simon & Schuster)
Thomas Kidd, George Whitefield: America’s Spiritual Founding Father (Yale University Press.)
Jeremy Treat, The Crucified King: Atonement and Kingdom in Biblical and Systematic Theology (Zondervan)