Creationism vs. Christianity
2009 April 15
I came across this BBC show where a Christian philosopher argues that evolution is entirely consistent with traditional readings of the Bible, something that ought to frustrate everyone from Kent Hovind to Richard Dawkins.
Part 1:
Part 2:
Part 3:
Part 4:
Part 5:
Part 6:
Having a slow connection makes watching these impossible, but I’m pretty skeptical he could make evolutionary science fit with *traditional* readings of the Bible, unless he restricts his tradition to the last century.
I think his point is that throughout the history of the church many, many church leaders accepted that Genesis 1 and 2 were allegorical, and that it is misleading to say that every Christian believed in a young Earth and a literal reading of Genesis right up until 1859. Even after 1859 Cunningham points out that many clergy saw no conflict between Christianity and evolution.
FWIW: He also takes Dennett and Dawkins to task for saying that evolution necessarily implies atheism.
Dan,
Thanks for posting that. It was good.
He focused his “Christian” belief on the Church of England’s teachings. He clearly has a problem with puritans, protestants and anyone that thinks the reformation was a good thing. He also left out the teachings of any of the first century Christian leaders that took Genesis literally.
Who were the first century Christian leaders who took the Genesis account literally?
I think a lot of people confuse thinking Genesis 1 is allegorical with being “old earth”. Again, I don’t know what this guy said, but Augustine, the famous go-to guy for a church father thinking Genesis is allegorical, believed in the biblical chronology for the age of the universe (i.e., at his time, around 4500 years old). I’m not sure how many were old-earth, but its probably far less than those who took Genesis 1 allegorically, since the chronology begins in Gen 5 and is taken as historical in the gospel of Luke.
But, your point is taken about Genesis 1 itself.
Dennet and Dawkins and co. think that evolution implies atheism because they assume the only possible contender for a reason to believe in God’s existence is the design argument; once they think they have eliminated the necessity of inferring design, they think that all reasons for believing in God have been vanquished.
(They also think that because they’ve establish a hypothetical scenario in which evolutionary forces could explain the existence of everything, they have demonstrated such a scenario is historically factual.)
Of course, as with many other things, Augustine was wrong.
Sure, he could have been, but he certainly was representative of the “tradition”.
Who would be representative of the “tradition”?
Um, Augustine? That’s who I was referring to. Are you asking a different question though?
Yeah, sorry, Andrew, I could have been a little clearer. Who besides Augustine makes up those who represent the “tradition”? I think Porp is touching on where I’m going with it. However, this is an area with which I am not familiar—so if you do know, I would like to know.
No, in this area and all others, Augustine is only representative of certain elements of ‘the “tradition”‘. This, in part, is why language referring to ‘the Christian tradition’ (or whatever) is always deceptive. Since its origin, there have always been several different traditions existing simultaneously within Christianity. Consequently, to make Augustine (or any other voice for that matter) representative of the tradition is a power-play that all of us need to reject.
“No, in this area and all others”
ya like his book on the Trinity, what a retard eh?
Umm, what?
Dan (O): It’s one thing to recognize (rightly) that there has always been variety in the tradition of the church. But it’s another to conclude that those different options have been held with equal degree. You’d have to provide some stronger evidence that the “language referring to ‘the Christian tradition’ (or whatever) is always deceptive.” Sometimes, there truly is a majority.
John:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v2/n4/early-church-on-creation
http://books.google.ca/books?id=HhvDEGPr96gC&pg=PA72&lpg=PA72&dq=young+earth+creation+Philo+and+Josephus&source=bl&ots=kIuo5EZAtK&sig=pOt1IvoyOfSU_n1tFy-XKPnOpGA&hl=en&ei=zeDoSbvJDZe-M_r3hNsF&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3#PPA72,M1
The latter mentions that Josephus also held to a young earth view. I think he would be representative of the general rabbinic position of Jesus’ day, too, but I can’t remember where I read that.
Sure, there are often majorities. And often majorities are wrong. So that there have always been (shifting) majorities within Christianity does not necessarily mean that the (shifting) positions held by those majorities are any more authoritative than positions held by any given minority.
Where’s Dunn when you need him? I’m sure he can point us to the Wikipedia article that reminds us how the argumentum ad populum is a logical fallacy.
(Oh, and oddly enough, I actually agree with theroan about something — Augustine’s work on the Trinity is one that has been quite unhelpful to Christianity over the centuries. I’ll take Moltmann’s The Trinity and the Kingdom over Augustine any day.)
Dan o.:
Right. I was about to qualify my response with the comment that tradition is not infallible. And given your (and John and Dan’s) position on theological authority, I know it won’t be relevant, but for me knowing what the majority of rabbinic teachers in Jesus’ day and the majority of Christians soon after Jesus taught, give me a good idea what Jesus and the apostles taught, and for people who agree with the (traditional
) view of biblical authority knowing the tradition during those periods is relevant.
And I’ll have to go with Augustine over Moltmann on the Trinity
I posted this on my blog today. I’ve been meaning to post it for a while. Some food for thought.
When asked on The Innoculated Mind (Jan 25, 2007) in a conversation about how Science (and more specifically Evolutionary Biology) and Religion might fit together, P.Z. Myers had this to say:
Interesting. Keep in mind these are not the words of some fundamentalist on a witch hunt, rather of a man who is deeply proud of his Atheism.
I’m not sure that the scientific method needs to operate so perisitically in one’s life. To question a minister over and over seems to be the product of being an asshole rather than using the scientific method. It seems, science tends to erode religious belief that is not well-founded. It would have no power, however, over a religious belief (no matter how scientifically inclined one was) that was well-founded.
I don’t think it’s a big secret that Myers, along with Dawkins would very much like to force a choice between evolutionary biology and Christianity. They may not be fundamentalists but they are certainly evangelists for atheism and their strategy does involve trying to convince people that “real” Christianity needs creationism, so if you ditch creationism, you might as well become an atheist. They present a more complex version than that, but yeah, that’s it. In a weird way they entirely agree with a lot of creationists then.
One more thought:
There is some usefulness in considering majority opinion; sometimes individuals are wrong because they have some kind of impediment that the majority do not have. It doesn’t have absolute weight, since sometimes the individuals are correct against the majority. But it’s worth considering in making a complete judgment.
It strikes me as silly that the scientific method would be intrinsically destructive to faith. The scientific method is just the method of coming up with hypotheses and then subjecting them to experiments to determine if those hypotheses explain phenomena. Nothing about that method requires naturalism at all.
Of course, if you sneak in methodological naturalism like Meyers and co. do, then it’s only logical that eventually you will come out with atheism, and anyone who begins with methodological naturalism but concludes with the existence of the supernatural is obviously falling into what Meyers calls “compartmentalizing” which is a nice word for “believing an absurdity”.
Actually, Andrew, I’m surprised that you think that my rejection of a (fictional) singular and authoritative Tradition would lead me to see majority views within Christianity (or Second Temple Judaism, for that matter) as irrelevant. I do think that those majority views are quite relevant and deserve to be studied in depth (I am, after all, completing a second degree in biblical theology). Indeed, when we carefully study these views, we come to realize those majority views which are very important to Christianity (say, for example, the revelation of God in Jesus) and which stem from other outside cultural influences (say, for example, the subordination of woman).
Further, I am not simply prioritizing the view of an individual (say myself) over against a group (this so-called ‘Christian Tradition’). Rather, I am referring to the fact that there are always different, and sometimes competing and contradictory, groups within Christianity.
Finally, I would like to hear you explain your perspective on how this Christian Tradition is authoritative but not infallible (as I suspect that you will end up describing a position very similar to my own). Oh, and good luck in not coming across as entirely subjective!
Funny isn’t! How we agree from opposite sides.
Thing is, Dawkins, Dennett, Meyers, et al, lack serious philosophical underpinnings. Now, anyone who knows me knows I don’t really evaluate “qualification” based on degrees, academic credentials, or even experience; rather, the proof is in the pudding. I think the arguments they present, in and of themselves, fall flat, very plainly, most of the time.
Andrew mentioned Naturalism; the combination Evolution and Naturalism (both of which depend on each other entirely) backs us into a epistemic corner that there is little to no way out of; yet the scientist doesn’t consider this.
The principles of the Method are derived from higher principles. Science, at every turn, needs to appeal to it’s father; philosophy. But it is this exercise that these (and most) scientists fare most poorly. Specialization means a narrowing view; there simply isn’t scope enough to consider “foundation.” This, then, should cause us to question the scientific results themselves.
So much of Evolutionary theory is based on natural selection working a certain way. Now, the entire system might be utterly undone:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090330200821.htm
The evolutionary model is based on an assumption: the fittest survive. It seems self-evident, almost a truism. This kind of induction, however, is bad philosophy (which also means it is bad science), and there will be very concrete consequences.
It’s all so transient. I’d rather hang my hat on something a bit more certain – there’s freedom in the leap.
Dennett is a philosopher.
I’m not sure that what you’re saying is germaine to my point which is that while you (and Dawkins, and Myers) see a need to choose one side or the other, many others (myself included) do not see it this way.
Oh, only the first line was really germane. The rest was tangential.
And while Dennett is a philosopher of sorts, his philosophy sucks, which in my estimation doesn’t make him much of a philosopher.
How much Dennett have you read? I don’t agree with some of what Dennett has written (I haven’t read the totality of his works – so maybe I’d agree with him on other stuff, I don’t know), but that doesn’t make him not a philosopher.
Dan:
I apologize for my poorly qualified assessment of you. You’re right, I know you care about the context, what I meant was that this particular context is not quite so determinative for your ultimate beliefs as it is for me. This is because, for me, the context helps to determine the meaning of scripture (Jesus and the apostles, and the OT prophets), which is ultimately infallible (at least I want it to be) for me. For you, however, to determine the context of the scriptures is not quite so determinative: you could, theoretically, conclude that the context of the scriptures implies that the scriptures teach the just war theory (or that most of them do), but then for very different reasons override the scriptures (or most of them) anyway, because in your philosophy they are not ultimately authoritative qua the scriptures. In my crass, unqualified, way of speaking, that difference was what I was trying to get at when I said you wont think the context “is relevant”.
In terms of how I think “tradition” should funciton authoritatively but not infallibly, I think we first need to distinguish what category of tradition. I would separate the context of Scripture from post-biblical interpretations of scripture as being two significantly different categories of “tradition”; the first functions as I mentioned above, the second functions, in my opinion, the way Barth described in his Church Dogmatics: as the commentary of our older brothers and fathers (and sisters and mothers!) which needs to be respectfully heard before it is criticized. I think one might be able to theologically ground the non-infallible “authority” of tradition in the fact of the witness of the Spirit to all believers combined with the fact that this witness can be resisted and our professions of what it is teaching us can be distorted.
This is different from how we ought to hear scripture: we are not to respectfully hear and then criticize God, we are just to obey him.
Also, with my second last post above, I was not trying to imply you were positing yourself as an individual against “the great traditon”. One could simply rephrase what I said to be about “minorities” and “majorities”, or even perhaps two equal but opposed parties.
I should add one more qualification: regarding the context of the scriptures, I don’t think it is infallible in itself either. Hopefully it should be clear that I think (like the classic Protestant position) the scriptures alone (that needs to be qualified slightly, but is practically correct) are infallible, and this context is only authoritative insofar as it tells us what scripture is saying, not in any other way.
I still feel a little uncomfortable about that last comment of mine, so let me try again.
The context of the scriptures are not instrinsically authoritative at all. It simply helps to determine the meaning of the scriptures which are intrinsically authoritative.
I’m not sure how else to describe it, but if its not clear I can try.
Andrew,
I actually think that I take context more seriously than you do (after all, I’m a biblical studies guy…aren’t you a theology guy?). It seems to me that you only want to contextualize Scripture to a certain ideologically pre-determined point, whereas my study of the context of Scripture has actually significantly altered my ideology (and it continues to do so). In this regard, I might postulate that I actually allow Scripture to be more authoritative than you do. Studying Scripture, and treating it as an authority, has significantly altered my (socio-economically and culturally conditioned) faith. Can you say the same? Is it Scripture that you have made infallible or your pre-conceived notion of what Scripture has to say?
At this point in my academic career, I’ve probably studied biblical studies and theology and philosophy equally. My first thesis was on political/moral theology, comparing Yoder and O’Donovan, and required a fair grasp of exegetical issues. My current thesis, you are correct, is in systematics (on the issue of the authority of scripture).
I can say without doubt that studying the text and context of scripture has altered my understanding of the text. The most obvious example that comes to mind is accepting some of the streams of the “New Perpsective on Paul” into my theology, and some of the Third Quest material as well (mostly via NT Wright). As well, some of my views on the Trinity have been affected by research into the post-biblical context.
So, while I admit I have biases (as do you), I deny that they absolutely control my reading of the text. I certainly make a distinction between the infallible text and my reading of it. Tempermentally, I am actually a fairly skeptical and obsessively perfectionistic person, so rarely do I have the kind of closure you are implying that I do.
I also would still want to maintain that I treat the scriptures as more of an authority than you (and please understand I am talking about in theory; I’m not claiming I’m a more virtuous person than you!), but I’m not sure it’s really worth getting into a debate over that in particular. Unless, of course, you really want to
God bless
Just as an open question. I’ve only watched the first little bit of part 1, but I took a jump on over to biblegateway to re-read Genesis 2; where the heck is there a 2nd narrative? From what I can tell the second chapter continues from chapter 1, kind of does a sum up and then man is placed in the garden of eden which to me seems like the specific garden of eden was created AFTER the events of Genesis 1, am I wrong here?
Jason,
There is a structural division in 2, where it says “and this is the generations of the heavens and the earth”, but I think you are correct that the narrative itself is referring to the creation of the Garden, man and woman. The events in the Gen 2 narrative occur on day six of the Genesis 1 narrative.
The sequence of what happens is quite different though. If Gen. 2 happens all on day 6, why are the animals created AFTER man in Gen. 2 while they are clearly created BEFORE man in Gen. 1? The sequence seems quite clearly to contradict.
I did a quick check, and the NIV, ESV say that God “had” formed out of the ground… other versions don’t translate this way, but there are other options off the top of my head: that the narrative is not being strictly chronological, or else God made new sets of animals to bring to Adam. Nothing says that this is the exact same creation of animals as mentioned in Gen 1:25. James Jordan mentions the following point from Umberto Cassuto’s (not an inerrantist evangelical; he was a critical Jewish scholar) commentary:
“Cassuto first noted that 2:19 says that God produced from the ground every “beast” and “bird,” but not “cattle” (domestic animals). The implication is that the cattle were already with Adam in the Garden, since he later gives names to them (2:20). The reason why God formed the other animals was so that they could pass before Adam. As with the trees of the Garden in 2:8-9, 2:19 does not show God creating new species, but producing new individual animals for Adam to name.”
Or it could be a sign that it’s allegorical. I mean I suppose there are ways to read this to compensate for the fact that they appear, on the face of it, to conflict. I figured there would be a to do so since many different scholars have attempted to tackle a number of apparent contradictions and, if these innovations could not be made, I’m sure that inerrancy would have been consigned a trash heap a long time ago. But still, I see the text as in no way to be deficient if it is an allegory. What if God intends for it to be so? Is it not true that inerrant =/= nonfiction?
Andrew,
No, I don’t think we need to debate about who sees the bible as more authoritative than whom. In fact, that was largely the point I was trying to make in my last comment. Arguing about who takes context more seriously, or who treats Scripture as more authoritative is usually an entirely pointless discussion. Any time you charge me with not taken Scripture or its context(s) seriously, I can easily reverse the charge. So, by making this point, my hope is that those with more ‘Conservative Evangelical’ tendencies will stop using that almost always vacuous charge in order to circumnavigate meaningful engagement and discussion.
I need to correct myself: you did say “usually” and “almost always”, and I didn’t really read that carefully when I responded…
Dan:
I see the point; I guess my unwillingness to continue debating this stems from a slightly different reason. I do believe I could make the case that conservative evangelicals, in their theory of scripture, take it as more authoritative than people who have a lower view of scripture, and for that reason the context of the scriptures are also more important for their ultimate values, etc. But I don’t want to debate this because I doubt that this particular debate is going to be useful. Not that it is useless in the abstract.
Fair enough, although I will point out that you continue to engage this fruitless and almost meaningless ideological jargon when you suggest that those whose approach is different than yours have a ‘lower view of scripture’. Once again, I could easily reverse this accusation and assert that my view of scripture is higher than yours. So, yes, if the debate about these things would not be useful, it might not be very useful to think in those terms in the first place.
poserorprophet:
Given that Andrew’s beliefs seem to line up more with what the Scriptures own self-witness I don’t think there’s any problem with him saying that your view of Scripture is lower than his.
Fruitless? Meaningless jargon? Come on.
Earlier, poserorprophet wrote:
Oh yes. That silly old acritical Paul. This is a high view of Scripture eh? Speaking of fruitless and meaningless jargon ….
Right. Just like when that silly Jesus guys, all muddied by misogynistic property law, said even looking at another man’s wife was adultery.
WHAT WAS HE THINKING?!
I’m glad we set our own standards.
Ben, what are you talking about?
I’m riffing on Keith’s tongue-in-cheek comments. What dots aren’t you connecting?
Dan, didn’t mean that to sound snarky. Let me explain.
Poserorprophet is more or less calling Paul a bigot. The problem is that his criteria are entirely personal. He’s not building this view on anything extra-biblical (how can he) so he is using the Scriptures themselves in this aim. The only reason he is able to come to this conclusion is because he doesn’t believe God is actually behind Paul’s ideas… but how does He know what God is behind? We have few options:
- personal revelation
- the testimony of others
- a record/transcript
When you start to pull the arguments apart, you see that the hermeneutic being used is really just a big game of Let’s Beg the Question.
Now, this would all be ok if it were some friends in a pub; we’re allowed to be wrong and we’re allowed to “venture out” intellectually. However, when one is in a position to teach others and shape their world view… well, one had better be damned sure that they are not adding shackles instead of allowing the Spirit to release them.
I don’t know what would be surprising about Paul being a bigot. Perfection is not a prerequisite to author the Bible and we are all prejudiced to some greater or lesser degree. It would appear that you are equally begging the question by assuming that God is behind not just Paul’s ideas but everything Paul wrote that has survived for the modern canon, word-for-word.
It would be surprising that Paul was a bigot. He was a very successful missionary and a man full of affection, genuine agape love (1 Cor 13) for slaves (since Onesimus, a runaway slave sought him out), for women (many of his associates were women), whose churches included reform homosexuals of both varieties (“And such were some of you” 1 Cor 6.11); he had friends amongst the Asiarchs (Acts 19.31) and a proconsul (Acts 13.12). Paul supported the concept of human equality (Gal 3.8): “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” He believed that Christians belong to one race of people and refused to allow that there would be division between Jewish and gentile Christians (Eph. 2.11-22). This is a remarkable level of egalitarianism in period when Romans and Jews alike saw themselves as superior, and women and slaves as inferior.
Of course, anyone is capable of any sin.
What is on trial is whether:
1) Paul’s being a bigot is revealed through the Scriptures
2) Bigamous opinion found it’s way into Paul’s instruction
So, I’m starting from a place of faith: what Paul writes by way of instruction inspired by the Holy Spirit, and is perfect instruction. Whether he was a bigot apart from the instruction he gave is immaterial as far as the scope discussion is concerned.
If you are starting, however, from an academic position, then the burden of proof is on you. Was Paul a bigot? Prove it. Was his writing bigamous? Prove it.
You are only truly able to come to this place (the opinion that Paul’s writings are bigamous) if you have established that he is wrong, and that God’s standard is something different than Paul’s. You must then prove that this is actually the case (something that no one has, in any of these campaigns, has managed to do).
There is a difference between accepting something through faith (Paul’s instruction was perfect and has been preserved) and begging the question. Not every assumption is a logical fallacy.
A bigot is:
Benjamin: May a suggest that it would be detrimental if Paul were a bigot. Bigotry is a serious character flaw and incompatible with the Christian gospel. Paul’s bigotry as a zealot who persecuted Jews who believed in Jesus had to be overcome on the Damascus road before he could become the apostle to the gentiles.
It is not the case that the inspiration of Scripture is somehow detached from the words or thoughts of the author. The Christian view of inspiration is not dictation or recitation, as in Islam. Inspiration is far more incarnational–the Holy Spirit imbues the author who writes as an incarnated representative of God. That doesn’t make the person perfect, but a character flaw like bigotry, which is basically hatred and intolerance, would be not compatible with inspiration. Did not Jonah have to overcome his bigotry before he could preach to Nineveh?
Do we really want to go down this road? I mean we’ve got King David to overcome if we do. The man was an adulterer, but on top of this he kills the man he cuckolded – not as a crime of passion but by means of a deliberate, premeditated conspiracy in which he involved all of his military leaders. I don’t think sociopath is too strong a word here.
Now what about Paul. Assuming we can rehabilitate David, I still think that there’s a case for Paul to be bigoted in the following sense: Read enough 19th Century European writers and it’s inevitable that you’ll encounter more than a few of them manifesting the background anti-Semitism of their time and place. That this was a common cultural assumption of the day does not make it not bigotry.
David was what you say, but the scripture accounts of his sin, including his own Psalms (51, 32), show that he had acknowledged and repented of his sins. Also, the prophets who wrote the account in Samuel tell a chilling and forthright account, which showed that God both judged and forgave David. What an amazing story! That gives hope to all of us that God loves us and will forgive us when we turn from our sin and turn to him.
As for your analogy of 19th century writers, it is simply not helpful in understanding Paul who was transformed on the Damascus road. Beforehand he was a bigot, but afterward he became all things to all men. I gave a long list of texts showing that Paul was not a bigot; why not deal with that list instead of coming up with another false historical analogy? I mean if you can’t somehow explain away that list, you really have nothing at all to support the calumny that he was a bigot.
You know what, that’s a brilliant reminder. I don’t believe Paul was actually a bigot, but it’s not necessarily problematic for me if he were one (God giving grace for the moment of instruction).
BUT… I’m rethinking this. If we are bearing fruit, it is because the Spirit has freedom within us; it is because we are surrendered. A case could be made that the bigger the fruit (and the greater responsibility) the greater the surrender. So for Paul to have been given the kind of charge he was given – under-shepherd of the Gentiles – he would have to have been maximally “perfect” (after all, Christ did command us to be perfect).
This is not to say that Paul was actually perfect, but I think a case could be made that we was as perfect as any human could be, this side of glory, given the fruit coming out of him and the extent to which God was willing and able to use him.
Dan G:
“What if God intends for it to be so? Is it not true that inerrant =/= nonfiction?”
If someone could make a case that Genesis 1-2 is allegorical stronger than the case against reading is as allegorical, I would have no problem believing that. There certainly can be allegorical texts that are nonetheless true on the level they are actually intending to make assertions about reality (the ethical or theological rather than the historical, or what have you). I just happen to think the text for the most part seems to give strong indications it was intended to be taken historically.
Even if it were taken as historical, which I agree with you that it was, do you think we still ought to take it as historical, in light of Christian tradition, which reads the account differently; geology; etc.? I have no problem with thinking that the Ancient Jew believed this to be historical and at the same time to deny that it is historical. Modernly speaking (take that as you wish), it doesn’t really seem like an informed account of how the cosmos was created. I don’t have to take it as allegorical, though. However, I am really not blaming the Israelites for not having a better account. It served the purposes at the time and explained to them exactly what they needed to know. It doesn’t really serve the purposes of the time we are now in—or at least from my perspective.
In a spectrum of views on Scripture from the ultra-liberal atheistic to the bibliolatrous, Poser’s view of Scripture is only “higher” than Andrew’s if you consider that it is “higher critical”–i.e., liberal. But Andrew’s view is higher if the reverence and authority accorded to Scripture is the measure. Since this latter is what Andrew meant, it is hardly “meaningless ideological jargon” to call his view of Scripture “higher” than Poser’s.
In our past discussions, it has become clear that Andrew’s view of Scripture is higher than mine. So also a Reform Protestant view of Scripture is higher than the Roman Catholic view, because of the authoritative place the Scripture has in relation to other possible authorities in the church. Now the net effect of Poser’s view of Scripture on the subject of homosexuality is that it is a little lower than Michael Foucault. For the Scripture cannot be read and understood, even by a person with PhD in a NT-related field, without the reading of Foucault. That subjugates the Bible to Foucault. And who is Foucault? A human philosopher who had no standing in the church as a biblical scholar or a theologian. That puts the Bible and the church very low indeed. Poser also has a low view of church father Augustine (see also his comments above) and even of the church too.
Really? This is like an audition for the Scarecrow in Wizard of Oz there’s so many straw men hanging around. PW, I could explain to you how you’ve massively misinterpreted everything Dan O. has said, but I realize that you seem to approach his writing with little more than a desire to nitpick, misinterpret and demonize so my comments would be in vain. I have no problem with people who disagree with me (this is helpful in marriage) but I do have a problem with people who discuss things at the level of tabloid-grade propagandists. As much as I’m trying to keep things on an even keel here, you are making it exceedingly difficult for me to see your contributions to these discussions as being in good faith.
FWIW, one can have a low view of Augustine, or any other church father and still be a Christian. One can also have a low view of the church itself and still be a Christian. Anything else would be idolatry.
I haven’t misinterpreted Dan O. but challenged his view that it takes a 20th cent. French philosopher to understand Romans 1, while he craps on a doctor of the church, who is almost universally recognized by both Protestants and Catholics as one of if not the greatest theologian of all time (and whose Magnum Opus is the namesake of this blog).
And as for the low view of the church, Poser says, “So, when that is the case, no matter how the matter gets resolved, the Church is still a write-off.” Does he really believe that the church is a write-off? Yet Jesus says, “… upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”
What is certain to me, is that his view of Scripture is not higher than Andrew’s. That is just strong delusion.
In the context in which he said the church was a write-off I think he meant the institutional church in the west, not the church universal. Again, I’m assuming that this is just a cheap out-of-context stab since your PhD makes it hard for me to believe that you actually didn’t understand what was being said. Maybe that sounds condescending, but if you’re going to play dumb, I’ll treat you as such.
Also, I’m not going to hate on Augustine, but I’m also not saying he’s above criticism. The tagline of this blog is a riff on his infamous line about chastity. I make no idol of Augustine.
It is possible to show a high regard a Church Father without agreeing with everything he ever wrote. It is also possible to critique the church and yet do so with affection. But it is insufferable for a person to denigrate a beloved Father of the church while maintaining that Christians cannot arrive at a correct of understanding of the Scriptures without the help of a French philosopher. In such a view, the church is incompetent, misinterpreting for two millenia Romans 1 and Genesis 1-2. In fact, as Brooks pointed out, Poser actually said that Paul himself missed the boat. That is a low view of the church and her teachings indeed. Yet Ephesians says God gave gifts (Eph 4.11):
Poser’s low view of Paul tacitly calls into question the Christian doctrine of the inspiration of the Scripture; not only so, it stems from a defective ecclesiology, in which a 20th century philosopher is necessary to undo 20 centuries of hurtful teaching on sexuality in the Christian church. He would thereby open the church to a “wind of doctrine” based on human philosophy. It calls into question not merely the sufficiency of Scripture but also the sufficiency of Christ who appointed the apostles, including Paul, to guide the founding of his church.
I was happy to discuss the issues hoping that the force of my arguments would carry more weight than any degree that I might hold. But Poser has failed the to provide evidence from the primary sources and resorted to a secondary source. When I pointed out that that is not evidence, he scoffed, thereby revealing his confusion about what constitutes valid evidence in an exegetical argument. That is amateurish. I don’t expect everyone to write or think like scholars, but this blog is taking on some pretty heavy issues which require an exegetical treatment of Scriptures, and it is easy enough for clever person like Poser to bulldoze the discussion. Blogs can be learning tools, but they also unfortunately allow students like Poser to publish before they have acquired a requisite level of maturity and skill. He already has a following when he should still be learning. This would probably be ok if he showed some humility. But I know great scholars who are far more reticent to speak their minds. When doctoral students in biblical studies arrive at the Divinity School Cambridge, Tyndale House advises them to remain silent in the seminars for at least one year. A blog is a medium which allows one to publish to the world before sitting at the feet of great teachers. It’s like the 18-year old rookies in the NBA who won’t listen to their coaches because they make more money.
Why should I accept Foucault as evidence? Besides having a few higher degrees myself I can point to any number of scholars who also agree with the church’s historical teaching on sexuality and interpretation of Romans 1; and so Poser’s citation of Foucault is merely an appeal to authority. But why not cite Augustine or any of the Church Fathers? Not a single one of them holds this view. Why this quasi-reverential treatment of Foucault? Poser has now left pouting, saying that he will not answer a fool in his folly, as though any of us have done him harm by pointing out our disagreements with his evidence, arguments and conclusions.
And if you’ve been following the Cavaliers’ season at all this year, you’d be aware that having a young kid like LeBron James as the star of your team hurts you nothing. So what if Dan or I or anyone else doesn’t have a PhD? This is a way to silence those who disagree with you – and yet there are those with considerable learning who disagree with you as well. The unspoken assumption of your writing is that anyone who disagrees with you lacks proper theological training and that if we were only oh so learned as you their eyes would be open to the unquestionable brilliance of everything that you say. You more or less told everyone here lacks a PhD to shut up and listen. Well this isn’t Cambridge, and we don’t have an entrance exam, and once again I’ll remind that you don’t run this place – so get used to me and all the rest of the rabble. Even better, allow yourself to consider that you might not be the super-genius with the theologically correct answer to every question.
Lebron is 25 and five-year veteran. By NBA standards he’s hardly a kid anymore. Are you saying that Poser is Lebron?
You are completely wrong because I have not appealed to my PhD as an argument for my position. I have appealed to biblical evidence. In any case, I am not promoting my own interpretations but for the way that the church has always interpreted Rom 1, Gen 1-2 and the question of sexuality. This is not my view but the way I was taught and am being taught. It is so simple that you don’t need a PhD to understand it, for simply put, sex is for marriage, and marriage is for the raising of families. I’ve asked for evidence for a radical interpretation of Rom 1 that would allow the church to accept and bless homosexual marriage, and all I’ve gotten are rookie responses. I’m not saying shut up and listen. Not at all. But don’t expect me to accept your amateur attempts to subvert an age-old teaching of the church. I’m not some sycophantic ninny who follows poserorprophet.wordpress.com and comments, “Oh another wonderful post!”, but one who has technical training in biblical exegesis. So Poser is not going to impress me with an appeal to authority. I want to see evidence.
My Cambridge anecdote was meant merely to indicate that students, even doctoral students more advanced than Poser, must have humility, or they will continue to make greenhorn mistakes because of their unwillingness to listen to advice. For if they were already fit for big leagues, then they wouldn’t need a PhD (or a Regent MCS in the case of Poser)–it would be superfluous. This advice is useful at Cambridge, and it is useful for this blog.
Reread what you just wrote – in a comment thread for a post based on the question of whether evolution can be accepted harmoniously with orthodox Christianity it’s still about gays and marriage somehow. We aren’t even talking about this, I deliberately tried to leave the topic alone for a while since the discussions we had have been fruitless. You are damn near obsessed with this topic.
Given that no one is getting paid here my attempts – and yours – are, by definition, amateur. I think you were trying to call me “amateurish” though, and yes everyone types up comments in haste. It pairs well with calling me a “rookie.” I suppose you might also use “noob” (it’s popular with the kids these days) or “sophomoric” to encapsulate your low opinion of my writing; I would however stay away from “retarded” as that’s generally regarded as offensive these days. It’s okay, I’ve been called worse, mostly while driving but sometimes as a result of blogging. So what? Am I supposed to be chastened by this derision? You are fully aware that I am sure I could find a whole cadre of scholars with theology degrees or something who disagree with you and have the academic chops to back up their assertions. The point is, you’ve made yourself judge over debates to which you are party – which is frankly pedantic. I think some of your responses have been weak sauce too, so, um big deal, I guess it’s an impasse.
If you want to call a cadre of scholars, be my guest. I think you would find however that they would be nearly all dyed-in-wool liberals, not people claiming to have a high view of scripture (except perhaps someone like Roy Clements). The high view of scripture is confused with Fundamentalism by liberal theologians and is generally shunned. It’s like a joke I heard a long time ago: How do you tell if someone is a conservative theologian? They are not ashamed to cite a book published by Zondervan.
To such a cadre of scholars, I would apply the same kinds of critiques. It’s what I do full time now.
Now as for being pedantic, I’ve reread the thread, and all I did was object to Poser’s line that he could argue that his view of Scripture is higher than Andrew’s. After that, I just responded to your reactions, the first of which accused me of commenting on this blog in bad faith and of employing propaganda techniques.
As for the question of calling you and Poser amateurs (in the sense of amateurish/rookie by the way)–it is mainly intended not as an insult but as a description of fact. It is not the same as calling you retarded; I actually admire the talent y’all have put together on this blog–obviously there something stimulating going on here! Not only so, I appreciate the obvious intellectual abilities of Poser. To go back to the NBA analogy: an 18-year old rookie may be extremely talented, but he still has a lot to learn. If you have humility, then it would not be hard to admit that you are in fact rookies when it comes to such things as biblical exegesis. As a rookie, if you think my advice is weak sauce, that’s your right; it doesn’t hurt my feels. But since this is a public forum, do not think that I write for your sake alone.
John:
I can easily understand how you can come to the conclusions you do about what we should believe about cosmology given you view of the authority of scripture. But given what should by now be predictable about my views of scripture, I think if the scriptures assert something they do so with the authority of God himself. I think God knows better than modern cosmologists how old the universe is and how it came about, and I trust him over them. It’s a reasonable position, I think, once my view of the authority of scriptures is granted.
That still begs whether God would choose to give a full accounting of all this. I have no evidence to suggest that we are more intelligent than the Israelites, but we have an accumulated body of facts about the natural world that they never could have accessed. Could a story that included the big bang, the development of our solar system, abiogenesis, evolution – including the development of hominids, and the agricultural revolution have been told? More to the point, how would it have helped?
The factuality of those facts aside, I suppose they could have been conveyed in some simple way (e.g. if they could understand how to breed animals, it wouldn’t be so much of a stretch to describe how that could have happened by accident; if the universe came into existence with a giant explosion, that could have been explained), but I think you are right that it would not have made much of a difference. I think fairly often the writers of scripture speak phenomenologically, anyway, so I don’t think they cared about it. But I wasn’t arguing that Genesis was meant to be a scientific explanation for how the world came into existence, I was just saying that it intended to give us the actual age of the universe. That’s a historical claim, and I think it is undeniable that scripture cares about actual history. How important it is to know the age of the universe is a good question, and my answer would be, not terribly, certainly not as important as knowing the historicity of the resurrection, for example. But from my point of view, if God went to the trouble of telling us how old the universe is, he probably thought it was worth something to do so, and probably we could figure that out if we thought about it long enough. I’m sure some theologians have given some possible reasons why.
A possible speculative answer to my last post: it’s fairly commonly pointed out that the structure of the week given in the Mosaic law, with the Sabbath on the last day, was patterned after the creation week. The obvious point from this is that God wanted us to learn how to live after how he worked and rested. So, there’s a reason why it would help to know how long it took God to create the universe. I.e., if he did it for six days and took a rest for one just to give us an example of how to live, if we did not know that he did so it would be one less example for how to live; similarly, if we didn’t know that he did so because he in fact didn’t, and either told us or didn’t tell us: either way, it would be impossible to set an example for us people who only live a hundred years at most.
Now obviously he could have just told how us to live without setting an example, but apparently (at least from the author of Genesis’ point of view) God thought it was worth it to do so.
I find it more probable that the creation story did not beget the Sabbath rest story, but rather the Sabbath rest story begot the creation story. It makes more sense to me to think that it was the response (at least initially) given to the question “Why do we rest on the seventh day?”
–”Well, when God . . .”
Well, I guess if you assumed that Genesis was entirely a human product, or at least a human product to the degree that it was created like normal etiological myths to come up with a rationalization for something after the fact, I guess that would seem probable.
Even if the production of Genesis came about like “normal etiological myths,” it wouldn’t follow that the product was exclusively human in origination.
There is no revelation of the age of the earth in the Bible, rather later on many people counted backwards to arrive at a conclusion that assumes not only that the timing of the Genesis account of creation is true but also that there are no gaps whatsoever in any of the genealogies.
Well, starting with the last point first, one does not need to assume there are no gaps in the Genesis genealogies. There very well might be. The important point is not that there are genealogies, but that (unlike most genealogies) they also include specific chronologies: they mention how old the person was when they had their child, and how much longer they lived after that point. This chronology, combining Genesis 5 and 11, is unbroken from Adam to Abraham, and later, as I recall, a chronology is given from Abraham to the Exodus, and the Exodus to Solomon (and I think even Solomon to the Exile, and the Exile to the end of Exile (cf. Daniel)).
The only other alternative this leaves for fitting the billions of years gap into the Bible’s account is to fit it into somewhere in Genesis 1, presumably before the point on day six when Adam was created. But the plain reading of that text seems to clearly be that it occurred in a normal week (e.g., these are not just 7 “yom”’s, but one’s which have “evening and morning, a day”, and the evening and morning is even further specified by the alternation of light and darkness that occurs with the sun).
Oo0ps! The last comment was clearly not by John, but directed to him. I apologize for the confusion!
Fixed.
Andrew and Dan,
Thanks for the rigorous and stimulating dialogue. I think y’all are great guys and I respect you both. Unfortunately, I’ve decided that I will no longer frequent this blog (Prov 26.4, anybody?). Both of you can feel free to continue to converse with me over email (or at my blog), but I’m getting the heck outta Dodge.
Grace and peace,
Dan
poserorprophet,
Before you go I just wanted to point out the folly of resting on Prov. 26:4 as a reason for not continuing the discussion on this blog. I mean really. Shlomo? That guy was so acritical when it came to the majority view of his day. Have you read his other stuff on wealth and poverty? Look at Proverbs 13:22. Leaving an inheritance for our children? Come on. The real problem is our stuff isn’t it? Shlomo should have known that he shouldn’t have had anything to give away. After all, if he even owned a second pair of shoes he was stealing from the poor. I remember hearing that somewhere.
I think part of the problem is a phenomenological one. If I for instance have a particularly liberal view in some Christian issue, ethic, such as homosexuality, or whatever the case might be, I am labelled as having a “low view of scripture” or an “unauthorative view of scripture” as compared to someone who would hold a more conservative position on the matter. The one view colours (rightly or wrongly) all other potential views that one might have. But certainly one position alone does not make up all my Christian beliefs, which, other than the one observable to others, could be quite conservative. In fact, I might hold things to be quite “authoritative” which people take less serious. And these things may possibly never come up for one to associate me with.
It is possible to have a debate between two people who hold equally to the authority of Scripture to disagree various points doctrine or practice. It happens all the time. But then there are methodologies and views which actually undermine the very authority of the Scriptures.
Just for my two cents worth:
1) I don’t think that PW Dunn has misinterpreted poserorprophet’s beliefs.
2) I think it’s ok that the homosexuality issue came up again as it was in relation to the issue of scriptural authority which was germane to the discussion.
3) That being said, calling one another amateurs, amateurish et al is not helpful. Dan, you’ve pointed out where Dunn has done this. But I have to add that poserorprophet has done this right off the bat. If you go back in the comments, in poserorprophet’s first foray into the debate he called PW Dunn ignorant.
4) There seems to be differences in opinion with regard to the function of a blog. Blogging for me is a way to sharpen my writing (and hopefully my thoughts) and keep me accountable to other people for what I read. When Dan and I originally discussed the point of City of God we hoped we would get a readership but the main point was for it to be a forum to discuss our thoughts and what we were reading. If other people care to listen in then good for them, but really it’s like overhearing a bunch of guys arguing in a pub.
5) A la Postman, I’m starting to see the problems with blogging as a medium. I read a comment and I can’t tell whether the person is being snarky, direct, or playful. I have no idea. One wants to assume the best but who can tell?
Hey Brooks: Thanks for these words. I will just say on your points:
3) Unhelpful perhaps but accurate.
4). You have agreed with my point that a blog can be a learning tool. Poser however is using blogs to impose a point of view for which the root sense of the term “heretical” meaning “schismatic” applies with full force. He is trying to browbeat and coerce through blogging the acceptance of homosexual marriage in the church. Blogging then becomes for him a means of propaganda and dissemination of radical views in an effort to change public and ecclesial opinion. I have reacted strongly because something very important is at stake. I don’t think that I am the best person. Robert Gagnon is for more versed in the subject obviously; Dr. Craig Carter has a great grasp of issues of sexuality. But in the area of biblical exegesis, I am able to oppose Poser’s imposing style.
City of God has become more than an overheard pub conversation. Consider the following: If you google the terms “inerrancy and grammar“, the second hit is a conversation between you and me on the subject. If you do the terms, Michael Coren charlatan, City of God is the first hit. If you type, Richard Hays homosexuality, City of God is number 5. Do you see my point? Therefore, like it or not, City of God has become a public platform. It is much more than a pub conversation that can be overheard.
5): Well, this problem of not being able to read a person’s emotions is already evident in any written media, and more so with computer technology, e-mail, listserves, group discussions, because of the rapidity with which people write and send. But blogging is becoming the new publishing–the internet is killing off the old gatekeepers of the media. These gatekeepers were the filters which for the most part controlled what the public saw. I can’t predict what this technical revolution will bring, but a paradigm shift is taking place before our eyes.
Let’s clear up some confusion.
1) That’s not what I’m saying, I’m saying that he has misinterpreted statements or arguments and then feeds them back inaccurately. I won’t speak to PorP’s situation because this has been done to my own words. Most egregiously with the case where I argued that social practices around sexuality and relationships are in flux and he pretended that that meant that sexuality itself is changing. Such a leap is either the result of careless reading or duplicity. I’m charitable enough to believe the former.
2) The homosexuality issue ALWAYS comes up. How one views the Bible can colour Christian teaching on just about anything.
3) Dunn implied that I’m amateurish – I assume everyone here is a big enough to take care of themselves, so I’m treating that. Ignorant can be an insult or a statement of facts – I am ignorant of where to get good coffee in Mumbai, P.W. Dunn is ignorant of what brand of beer I am drinking now. It’s Creemore, problem solved.
4) It is what it is. I mean if people read or pay attention they do, or not. There is something about a blog though that makes it partially about an audience.
5)Every medium is defective. We’re the first generation to communicate this way, we have to feel it out. Our successes and our failures are part of the process.
1) Please point to my egregious error so I can evaluate what you are saying. Part of your complaint assumes that your viewpoint was completely lucid in the first place, doesn’t it?
2) Let me see: was it me that brought up homosexuality on this blog? I think not. In this particular thread, of course, it is about a high view of Scripture which Poser has not (and it came out in his views about Paul in Rom 1). But I’ve responded to an issue which preoccupies you folks. If you do a search of “homosexuality” on Palabre, you’ll find 7 hits for the term homosexuality: four are re-posts of my comments here; one is a memorial service of a friend, another review of a book on the Bible which was for an issue of InCourage that dealt with the issue of homosexuality (which the editor asked me to do), and a preamble to a series on American-style liberalism. I am not obsessed with the issue; but I believe in biblical authority. Frankly, it is this blog that has made me think about the issue.
If you want, we can go back to discussing why socialism is unbiblical.
Creemore: Great choice, one more thing that we can agree on.
I am wonder why, if you find my views so abusive and intolerant, inciting you and others to anger, you would intentionally illicit a response from me with the words, “I am curious how you would respond to something like this.” I wonder however if your intention is malicious, hoping that someone will take me to a Human Rights Commission (HRC) just like Stephen Boissoin and then you can shut me up for good. If that ever happened, I would leave this country and speak freely from some jurisdiction where the HRC cannot reach me.
I don’t know if you pay any attention to the news these days. In Britain Catholic grandparents were forced to relinquish their grandchildren to adoption by a gay couple. Miss CA was publicly called a dumb bitch by one of the judges in the Miss America contest who said she lost because of her admission that she and her family consider marriage to be between a man and woman. In the aftermath of the Iowa Supreme Court April 3 decision to vacate a state law mandating that marriage be between a man and a woman, Craig Carter writes:
Carter also writes regarding the Stephen Boission incident:
John, I am a teacher of biblical hermeneutics and exegesis. I studied under one of the most respected names in NT exegesis. I come from a Pentecostal background where I have seen a lot of scripture twisting in my time. That is why I spent many years studying proper biblical interpretation. I know it when people are reading their own feelings and beliefs into the Bible, and I sense when it is that the Bible is allowed to stand on its own and speak prophetically to our generation. I can tell you that supporting homosexual marriage, homosexual adoption, and things like Poser’s absurdity that you’re part of the body of Christ because of your poverty even though you hate and deny him–these things are just imposing one’s own views back into the Bible–whether it is contemporary attitudes towards sexuality or Marxism.
Now you may have once felt the sting of my “abuse”: I told you once that your comments had been long winded and incoherent. But go back and look at the comments that you wrote and see if you could not have expressed yourself more succinctly and coherently–the problem was that you were trying to argue an untenable position, and any argument raised would appear incoherent to most people (well, at least to me). I thought your reaction was thin-skinned and angry since you refused to participate further in the discussion.
But if I am using a polemical style or write in ways that anger you, bear in mind that my own church is under a pall because of the threat of disunity that the radicals like PoserorProphet have brought to our denomination which is being torn asunder. I’ve told you people that before. So I’m not really sorry that I made anyone angry by quoting Scriptures and holding to the Rule of Faith in this matter. But for some reason, you and the others don’t see how it is you, not us, that are the schismatics and the ones who don’t understand the intent of the Bible. Therefore, I won’t let your divisive views stand unchallenged.
Your response is interesting to me because it becomes in essence the possible response of Porp.
If you think my intentions are malicious, then why can’t we and he think that your intention is malicious when you also say these kinds of things about him (for instance, the quotation in the post where I asked you if you really believed these things)? Why is what you say about him true? But what I say about you incorrect?
Moreover, you cite your history for the reason you are so passionate about the things you are passionate about, for your behaviour, etc., which may have incited people to anger or given them the impression they do have of you. But certainly Porp has a history, too, which has made him equally as passionate about certain things and may be the reason he believes as he does in the first place. And if they exempt you from what I have said about you (as I take it your attempting to do), I don’t see how his history (even if he does not explicitly write it) cannot somehow exempt him from your gratuitous comments. If you disagree with him, fair enough, but to accuse him incessantly of underhanded techniques and heresy of which he does not himself subscribe is plainly unfair. It is as though you are trying to remove a fly from his shoulder with a swing of an axe—at least from my perspective it seems that way. What I find interesting is the fact that with you, there is an excuse, with him, however, you write as if there is none.
You may know when people are including their feelings into their reading of the bible, but do you think that you are actually unsusceptible of similar criticism? I think you intolerance for homosexuals is generally what conditions your reading. And because it is so strong, you refuse to allow any insightful developments which, whether it be hermeneutical, biological or the like, would otherwise inform your opinion. You may make a similar criticism about Porp or me. So who is right? The point is you really don’t know any better than anyone else who is including their feelings into their readings. In fact we probably all are. I tell you one thing, however, if you keep on reinforcing and reiterating that Porp is a heretic, using underhanded techniques, etc., people will begin to believe that he truly is these things and is doing these thing whether or not he truly is doing these things—which is a propagandist technique itself not to mention an ad hominem.
As for my “convoluted” posts or whatever you think and thought about them: (I actually don’t think my posts are that abstruse, but for the sake of the argument I will allow it:) granted that we are often writing in haste and our posts don’t come out clear as possible, you are (anyone is) still left with choice of asking for a recapitulation of the position in more clear terms or of abusing me by saying that I am “muddled,” etc., thereby attempting (without actually doing so) to undermine the general position (as opposed to the one I personally espouse); hence you imply that it, too, must be equally muddled. Sure, I could have always said something more succinctly and the like, but I’m not usually composing to the best of my ability for a blog—for persons who generally don’t care anyway—and I’m usually doing other things at any given time than just blogging. The point is, if you really cared you would try to understand it, but since you do not, you do not try to understand. Your statements to the contrary, that you really want to understand, are hollow—unfortunately. I can’t reconcile them with your general persona I see of you on this blog—which is for you even further unfortunate. Now you’ll criticize me for being thin-skinned and angry and not continuing with the debate, but I really don’t want to continue to debate with someone who can no longer comment on the argument and who thus proceeds to comment on the arguer. What am I going to criticize about your position if you haven’t made any rebuttals other then “I don’t understand you”? How am I supposed to know if you are refusing to understand in order to remain in your position?
Your professed skill in hermeneutics is irrelevant. Not that it doesn’t matter in the particular, however. I’ve studied English and Philosophy, which employs a great many of the same hermeneutical principles—in fact it is Philosophy which essentially provides those principles in the first place. I assume that everyone on here has facility with exegesis—including Porp. Maybe some of us have not studied exegesis itself, but knowing proper exegesis and executing it are two different things. You may be good at the one an poor at the other. I could ask you giving me a list of all the principles you know, which could be longer than a list I could compose. I might be able (or if the table was reversed) you might be able to perform a better exegesis and hence a truer one than I could. To imply that Porp is wrong and you are right because you are trained in hermeneutics or more trained, is plain nonsense. Show me the money! The skill is certainly not so specialized that only some can do it. Many of the principles can be reduced to a common sense or a consideration of the possible variables which might be the case in proposition, which would mean, generally speaking, that we’re all more or less on an equal level. As B. Allison said earlier, the “proof is in the pudding”—I don’t care who you’ve studied under. If I see flaws in your argument, I’m not going to consider your particular exegesis as good. If on the other hand you are assuming that because you studied under someone, who is supposedly good at it, that you have the corner on it while rest of us do not, I can’t help but think that you have thus presupposed every position you take against others as essentially correct a priori. And whatever else I might, this is certainly consistent with your apparent confidence that everything you say is true—such as my position being untenable, etc.
Heresy I take as a serious charge; perhaps you throw it around willy-nilly. If you accuse me of heresy, we’re done. I affirm the bodily resurrection of Christ (as far as I know, so does Porp). To say that I am heretical or anyone else (I am not saying that you are doing that of me) I would then have to say you have neglected to take proper consideration for that person (hence you have failed to love a person). You do not excuse him for things which I think you would comparably expect excuse. I can accept you saying I was mistaken or Porp is mistaken and then providing reasons for why he or I was, I just don’t want to be called essentially an opponent of Christianity because my understanding of the world and how I reconcile it with Christianity takes me down different paths and provides me a different understanding. If I deny Christ by all means rip into me, but if I consider things differently than you without denying Christ treat me and them with the love that they require—not as things with which you necessarily have to agree, but as an ideology which your brother holds with which you will disagree.. I don’t care if you feel your own church is under a pall. It is not your Church in the first place. Its evolution, cessation, whatever is not up to you but to Christ and his Father. But for some reason, you and others don’t see how it is you, not us, that are the schismatics and the ones who don’t understand the intent of the Bible. Therefore, I won’t let your divisive views stand unchallenged.
I have actually taught first year seminary-level exegesis course and the majority of students find it daunting. It is not considered an easy course. And the students are not equally gifted or qualified for the subject. But basic Bible reading is something everyone with common sense can do, as you suggest. Poser’s interpretations of Rom 1 are not based on common sense at all, but sophistic attempts to explain away the common sense reading of the passage.
“I don’t care if you feel your own church is under a pall. It is not your Church in the first place.” Your nonchalant attitude irks me, for it is my church, not because she belongs to me, but because I belong to her.
“Heresy I take as a serious charge; perhaps you throw it around willy-nilly.” Not at all. I tend to be very ecumenical.
“I affirm the bodily resurrection of Christ (as far as I know, so does Porp).” That’s very good. So did the Judaizers that Paul anathematized (Gal 1.8).
“If I deny Christ by all means rip into me, but if I consider things differently than you without denying Christ treat me and them with the love that they require” — But if you were poor you could deny Christ and still be part of His body–so has written Poser.
“‘I affirm the bodily resurrection of Christ (as far as I know, so does Porp).’ That’s very good. So did the Judaizers that Paul anathematized (Gal 1.8).”
There is fundamental difference, however. The Judaizers were essentially making Christ irrelevant by saying that the Law was needed—Justification by the Law (Judaizers) as opposed Justification by Faith (Paul). If you make the Law necessary (Gal. 5:2) Christ is no longer of value. And if Christ is of no value—well, then how is that the Gospel. I see why that may apply to Porp’s case, but you are primarily here taking issue with me. You are not going to find in me though (as far as I know) a doctrine which makes Christ irrelevant—in other words, a Justification which is not based on Faith.
“Poser however *is using* blogs *to impose* a point of view for which the root sense of the term “heretical” meaning “schismatic” applies with full force. He *is trying to browbeat and coerce* through blogging the acceptance of homosexual marriage in the church. Blogging then *becomes for him a means of propaganda and dissemination* of radical views in an effort to change public and ecclesial opinion.”
P. W.,
Do you really believe that Porp is consciously, intentionally doing these?
I will allow that Poser believes that what he is doing is good, but I think he knows how it is divisive but doesn’t care. On this blog, he has used propaganda techniques of trying to shame his adversaries. He has on livejournal and wordpress blogs promoted false doctrines, including homosexual marriage and adoption; his teachings regarding the poor are also unbiblical, false and divisive. Thus, blogging is one of his means of disseminating his schismatic teachings.
I think this comment should earn P.W. the title of Patron Saint of City of God.
Well said sir.
This reminds me of a post Keith made a while ago where he pointed out that unity is perhaps not the highest good for the church. Not everyone here or in broader Christendom finds Dan O’s opinions to be schismatic. In regards to the poor, there are many strains of Christianity in which his opinions might be regarded as more mainstream than you would prefer.
Brook’s post implied that we shouldn’t pussyfoot around people like PoserorProphet, but simply call them heretics and dogs outright. There is a time for dialogue and then there is a time for church discipline. But the people who are pro-gay feel the same way. Have you noticed how quickly Anglican church officials lock out congregations which declare themselves against the hierarchy?
Now as for the Poser’s view on the poverty, let this quote stand as representative:
Poser is preaching a different gospel. Paul said that anyone who does so let them be anathema (Gal 1.6-7). In Poser’s view, salvation is based not on faith in Christ but on the lowliness of one’s economic situation or one’s ability to identify with the poor. If by some bad luck or my own antisocial and rebellious tendencies, I find myself living on the streets, I belong to the church. But Poser regularly chastises hard-working, wealthy Christians.
There many strains of Christianity. Many are heretical: Jehovah Witnesses, Mormons–in the early church, the Gnostics. So what if Poser’s opinions are popular somewhere? They are still false, unbiblical, and schismatic.
Here is a comment worthy of consideration:
“P. W. Dunn has continually exploited Porp inasmuch as he has accused him with charges which Porp would never concede to as intentionally executing. His interpretations have often been irresponsible (given his education) and simplicitic; He has cognizantly incited people to anger and has continued to be largely and ignorantly intolerant of other people’s views. When his arguments fail to succeed he subtly abuses his interlocutor. He accuses people for things which he also is guilty, especially the so-called propagandic techniques.”
Who said that and where?
Me, Here.
I’m curious to how you would respond to something like this.
Then why the quotation marks? Is that because you don’t believe what you are writing?
The quotations marks were intended just to emphasize it—they are my editorial error. I do believe they are true.
I responded to John’s comment here:
http://civitatedei.wordpress.com/2009/04/15/creationism-vs-christianity/#comment-2480
but I didn’t get the subordination correct. Of an adminstrator could place the comment here, that would be better.
I think it all depends on how one interprets “Church” here. P. W.’s criticism is a tad simplistic, though I think honestly so. The poor, I think, are counted amongst the Church, not as those who affirm Christ (which I think is the common conception), but as people who the Church itself must be concerned with. And inasmuch as the Church must be concerned with them they are in a sense a part of the Church. This is how I would read Porp. The idea that poor are blessed or will inherit the kingdom for merely being poor is not altogether foreign to the scriptures. The story of Lazarus and the Rich man in Luke suggests that Lazarus attained heaven because of his lot in life; and the rich man, hell because of his. Moreover, the beatitudes feature a blessedness of the poor (Lk.) and poor in spirit (Mt.).
My understanding furthermore is that salvation is “based” on the grace of God. Other conditions are arguably secondary.
I thank you that you allow that my simplistic notions are honestly come by. I will agree that I am simple. And I would argue that the Gospel itself is simple. All have sinned and fall short of God’s glory. All who accept Christ confessing their sins belong to him. All who deny him will be denied before the Father because Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. The church is his bride and consists of those who honestly believe in him and confess him. It is very simple. I have no idea what you or Poser are talking about. But this I am sure of: It is not the Good News; and it is not good news in any sense of the term; it is a message of heavy condemnation of the middle class; and besides, if we would all live like Poser spending our time identifying with street people, we would all die of starvation because nobody would be doing the hard work necessary to make the economy run.
Check the definitions of simplistic and simplicity; they are not the same thing. The extent of your education and study tells me you think Christianity is not as simple as you lead on. I concede that the Gospel is simple. But if you look a little closer, you’ll see that that is not what we are talking about.
When Paul says a different “gospel” in Galatians, he insisted on justification by faith. One is not a member of the people of God because one is Jewish or gentile, but because one believes in Christ. That is the good news. Poser makes a requirement out of a poverty and thus is preaching a different gospel.
I am aware that your use of “simplistic” was intended to be pejorative. I tried however to show a positive side to being simplistic–in the sense of simple. The Christian faith is both as inscrutable as the God who made the heavens and the earth by his Word, and as simple as a baby in the manger. The Gospel, however, is meant to be easily understood because God does not want any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
1. Since you are a Paul man, it might help to explain what it is he means by “gospel,” with examples. I recognize that there is certainly something irregular in his usage. I would certainly defer to you in its meaning.
My understanding of the word, and certainly in other places in scripture this is true, is that it means the message of salvation itself, i.e., that Jesus was crucified, rose from the dead, that he is the messiah, etc.
2. I don’t think what Poser is really saying (he will have to correct me if I am wrong, which may never happen) is that believers in Christ and the poor who deny him are or should actually be meant to be considered in the same pool, so to speak: somewhat in the same way that lay persons and leadership in a church should differ. I think he is saying something to the effect, “Yes, believers in Christ are essentially the Church, but there is also this annexed portion (the poor) who the Church (the believers in Christ) must be so concerned with that they are in effect or functionally speaking a part of the Kingdom itself. (It may have been a bad way of expressing things on his part in the first place.) However, What I think he is really trying to do is exhort believers in Christ to care for the poor, more than determining an ontological status of any person in particular. Like I mentioned before, scripture does support the idea that there is a special place for the poor. And not one purely based on whether or not they affirm Christ.
3. I don’t actually really agree with him, that this is how the church is. It is not entirely within my field of expertise. I am just trying to explain what I think he means. I’m trying to give him a charitable reading.
4. “simplistic” only has a pejorative denotation (at least inasmuch as the SOED and the American Oxford are concerned). The adjective for simplicity—the kind you want—is “simple,” as in “the simple idea was enough to persuade the minds of men.” This word can also have a pejorative sense, but it need not necessarily be so. The point I was making (which I hope you have understood) is that—not the “gospel”—but Porp’s notion of “Church” was understood by you simplistically. So I am not denying that the gospel has a simplicity about it, nor am I denying that it is also severely complicated (for those who wish to really get to the bottom of it). My point was that we speaking about something Porp said, and not the gospel itself.
John:
Poser is a universalist, but that may not be exactly relevant to your points about him. I dunno…
Yeah, I don’t agree with the universalist’s position. There is certainly scripture to suggest the supposed fact, however. And so these people cannot be wholly to blame. There is also plenty to the contrary. I accept it as an honest mistake, though, or at least one not worthy of condemnation.