Contra Gentes

Bad Roman Catholic Arguments

2009-05-03T17:15:00.000-07:00

Ben Douglass, a traditional Roman Catholic, did a good post on bad RC arguments against Protestantism (with some focus on Calvinism).

Ben is not one of those Roman Catholics who is on the fence thinking about converting. Instead, he is a traditionalist who has thought things through...quite thoroughly. A worthy opponent indeed.

Confused Arminians

2009-02-14T17:55:00.000-08:00

Well, I noticed this comment under one of my posts just a week or two ago and decided not to respond to it since had been awhile since Ben posted it. I thought that he probably wouldn't return since it had been so long.

Then I saw that one of Ben's fellow bloggers posted on the same verse, here. So, I thought that I'd respond first to Ben's comment and then give a brief response to kangaroodort's post:

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arminianperspectives said:
"So you do not believe that there were ever any "tribes" or "people groups" that existed and eventually ceased to exist that were not reached with the gospel?"

Me:
You're importing your 21st century American definition of "tribe" or "people groups" into the 1st century term "tribe." The 1st century term was more general than that.

Also, you have the same problem since the text (Revelation 5:9-10) states: "...and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth."

The "them" who have been made "a kingdom and priests to our God" and who "shall reign on the earth" are the same group that Christ has ransomed for God in verse 9. To say that they are not coterminous would require you to insert the term "some of" before the "them" in verse 10.

If you decide that the "people for God" (v.9) is not every single last human being, then you too are forced to admit that not all tribes (assuming your 21st century definition) are in view here since some were destroyed before the gospel reached them.

arminianperspectives said:
"And do you not see how much further you are forced to qualify "all" and "world" here?"

Me:
I don't have to qualify the term "all" or "world." That simply IS what they meant in their historical contexts. You, however, are reading your 21st century American cultural assumptions into a 1st century Jewish context.

arminianperspectives said:
"So when Scripture says that God desires all men to be saved it is really saying "God desires some men to be saved from among all people groups at some point in history.""

Me:
The term "all" must be interpreted in light of its immediate context. No, I don't give that interpretation every time I see the word, "all," especially in the case of 2 Peter 3:9 (which I don't want to get into here). But in the other contexts, you are again confounding quality and quantity. (More on that below.)

arminianperspectives said:
"All men without distinction fits nicely with all men without exception so you must further qualify "all" to "some"."

Me:
Let me illustrate:

Zoologist: "Look Dr. Peterson, every kind of bird can be found in that tree!"
Peterson: "Yes, isn't that amazing?!"
[An Arminian walks up to them.]
Arminian: "Well, since every single last bird fits into every kind of bird, then you must mean that every single last bird is up in that tree."
Zoologist: "Um...what?"
Peterson: "No, sir, you don't understand. We don't mean that every single last bird is up there but only that there are some from every category of bird that are up in the tree."
Arminian: "Ah ha! Now you have to qualify the term "all." But that's not what all means since all means all all the time. What you should have said is, 'Some of every kind of bird are in the tree.'"
Zoologist: "No. But that would mean that not one of every kind of bird could be found in this tree. But as you can see, there is one crow, one peacock, one raven, one bluebird, one..."
Arminian: "But that's not what 'all' means!!!!!!!!!!!"
Peterson: "Why does this man just not get it?"
Zoologist: "He must be an Arminian..."
Peterson: "Oh."

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Now, I will move on to kangaroodort's post. He quotes one, Robert Picirilli:

"Instead, they mean that God wills for the elect among all peoples and classes and ethnic groups in society be saved: God loves and saves the elect whether Jew or Gentile, whether in one nation or another, whether rich or poor, old or young.I think that such attempts fail to grapple seriously with those verses, and in conclusion I want to emphasize 1 Jn. 2:2.1 John 2:2, “This verse is one good example of the final reason, above, for universal atonement: “And he is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world.”What does John mean by “world”? He uses this word 23 times in this short letter, consistently indicating the very opposite of the people of God. Consider 2:15-17; 3:1, 13; 4:1-5; 5:4,5, 19. The people of God and “the world” are two different peoples, hostile to each other. Surely John uses “world” in 2:2 in the same way, and not as a reference to the rest of the elect in the world.The other places in this letter where “we” or “us” stands in comparison to “the world,” as here in 2:2, also make this clear. There are four such places: 3:1; 4:5,6; 5:4,5; and 5:19: “We are of God, and the whole world lies in the evil one.” This seals the point beyond argument. “We” and “the world” are two different realms. But we must not be proud: Jesus died not only for us, but for those who hate us, not only for us but for those who are in the grip of the evil one. Not only for us, but for the wicked world that has rejected Him."

Me:
Well, Picirilli starts off well, but still fumbles the ball in the same place that Arminians do quite frequently, by confusing quality and quantity (or by trying to have the term mean both referents at the same time).

Picirilli is correct that in John, the term "world" frequently refers to the world-system or people characterized by that world-system opposed to God (in terms of worldview), and this term can vary with a few nuances. [Of course, the term 'world' does not always have that meaning (e.g. John 21:25 where it refers to the space on the earth between the surface and outer space). I would assert that 1 John 2:2 has the same meaning as its parallel in John 11:51-52 which would make 'world' in 1 John 2:2 refer to some from every people group.]

The problem comes when he tries to make 'world' refer to *everyone in* that world system. For example, how can such a definition reconcile 1 John 2:15 with the Sermon on the Mount?

Or what does John 1:10 mean? Every single last person did not know Jesus?! That obviously contradicts John 1:12.

No, the Arminian is committing basic logical fallacies in order to come up with his proof texts.

Darwin's Predictions

2009-01-23T07:31:00.000-08:00

There's a new website put up by Cornelius Hunter, author of Darwin's God and Science's Blindspot, two books that I highly recommend.

http://www.darwinspredictions.com/

Second Response to Persiflage on the Decree

2009-01-10T14:27:00.000-08:00

Persiflage responded to my first response here. I will be interacting with this response as well as one of the comments he made to Bnonn over at Triablogue.

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Persiflage,

First, I am not going to spend any more time on the issue of theological terminology except to say this: there is specialized terminology in any discipline whether it is in science, engineering, cosmetics, journalism, etc. Frequently, that terminology will take well-known words and change their meaning slightly to fit the situation. For example, in the oil industry there is a device called a “pressure bomb.” Is it really an explosive? No, it is simply a pressure reading device that is lowered into a well that records pressure over a period of time. This linguistic situation is no different in theology.

Second, I’m not going to say anything on the philosophy of metaphysics in regards to free-will. The guys over at Triablogue are better at that than I.

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Next, the main body of this post will be on theodicy.

Perhaps I need to make a few qualifications on orthodox Calvinist theodicy:

1. God did not (nor does He) create any of His creatures morally evil.
2. God does not tempt men to do morally evil actions.
3. God does not Himself do any morally evil actions.
4. God does not prescribe (i.e. give laws for) morally evil actions.
5. God does not get pleasure from morally evil actions.
6. God does not coerce men to do any morally evil actions (though Bnonn made a point in his comment to you that “determined” is not necessarily the same thing as “coerced” given compatibilist free-will).

And specifically:

7. God does not coerce men to disbelieve.
8. God does not prevent men from coming to true repentance which results in justification and eternal salvation (but this is to be differentiated from temporary or superficial repentance).

You’re right that the word “ra‘” in Lamentations 3, Isaiah 45, Amos 3, Jeremiah 4, and (to add one to the list) Job 2:10 should probably not be translated “evil” as in moral evil, and it does refer to the punishment God is meting out upon wicked cities and nations. However, I do believe that it should be translated “calamity” instead of simply “punishment” (though it includes that idea in these texts), and although God’s intentions for destroying the wicked were righteous, the actions and intentions of the nations that did the destroying were not. Thus, the calamity that was brought upon those cities should be considered morally evil (or at least it involved moral evil in carrying it out).

While I neither believe that God Himself coerced the Babylonians to bring calamity nor that God Himself was the proximate cause of drawing the Babylonians south to invade Judah (i.e. God probably willingly permitted the demonic host to do that), I do think that it is theologically proper to say that God was the ultimate cause of the event. This becomes clear when you simply read the verses in which God states that *He* was the one who did it (see also Daniel 1:2).

As John Oswalt, himself an Arminian, notes in his commentary on Isaiah 45:7:

“7 The climax of the particular statement being made in this segment appears in this verse. Here the prophet spells out exactly what he means when he says there is no other than the Lord. If any question yet remained about the degree of uniqueness and exclusivity that he was claiming for God, this verse should lay it to rest. He chooses two areas in which to make his claims: nature and history, and in both of them uses the figure of antinomy, or polar opposites, to make his point. In each of the parallel pairs he begins with a verb which expresses specific, concrete action by God (form, make) and closes with one which is even more theologically expressive, the same one in both cases (create). What Isaiah asserts is that God, as creator, is ultimately responsible for everything in nature, from light to dark, and for everything in history, from good fortune to misfortune. No other beings or forces are responsible for anything.
Without question such a sweeping assertion raises some serious problems, especially as we try to puzzle out issues of justice and fairness. At the same time, we must take into account the point being made and the alternative. The point is that everything which exists, whether positive or negative from our perspective, does so because of the creative will of God. The alternative to this view is that things happen in the world of nature or history that have their origin in some being or force other than God, things that he is powerless to prevent. If that alternative is correct, then God is but one of the gods and is as powerless to save us from ourselves as they are. Furthermore, he is no more the expression of ultimate reality than they are. Since he is limited, we must look beyond him for whatever is final in this world. Given that alternative, it is easy to see why Isaiah makes qualifications, given the rest of Scripture. But that is the correct direction to move: from principle to qualification. If we start with qualification, we will never reach the overarching principle.
An important qualification is already implicit in the text. The Hebrew word ra‘ has a wide range of meanings, much like the English word “bad.” Like “bad” it can refer to moral evil (“Hitler was a bad man”) or to misfortune (“I’m having a bad day”) or merely to that which does not conform to some potential, real or imagined (“That’s a bad road”). This is not the case with the common English equivalent for ra‘, “evil,” which almost always refers to moral wickedness. Thus if we read “I…create evil” (AV), we conclude that God causes people to make morally evil decisions. That this is not the correct translation of ra‘ in this circumstance is shown by the opposite term used, which is salom, “health, well-being, peace, good relations, good fortune.” The opposite of these would be those connotations that we most commonly ascribe to “bad.” What the prophet is saying is that if bad conditions exist in my life, they are not there because some evil god has thwarted the good intentions of a kindly but ineffectual grandfather-god, who would like me to have good conditions but cannot bring them about. They are there solely as a factor of my relations to the one God. They may be there because I have sinned against his natural and moral laws, or they may be there because by their means I can become more like him, or they may be there for reasons that he cannot explain to me. But they are not there in spite of God. He is the only uncaused cause in the universe.”
-John N. Oswalt, The Book of Isaiah: Chapters 40-66 (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1998), pp.203-205.

So, while God did not intend moral evil by bringing about those actions, He brought those actions about knowing full-well that the proximate causes (e.g. the Babylonians) would be morally evil or would commit morally evil actions in the process. Let’s take an example:

Job 2:10
In this passage, Job says, “Should we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?” Of course, the word, “evil,” should be understood as “disaster” or “calamity,” but the calamity in Job’s case took the form of the murder of his children by Satan and the murder of his servants and theft of his flocks by the Chaldeans. Yet, Job ascribes both well-being and the disaster that fell upon him ultimately to God. Is God then accountable for the moral evil that was brought upon Job? No. He willingly permitted Satan to do that. Nevertheless, God set the boundaries of what Satan could and could not do and even knew exactly what Satan would do given God’s foreknowledge, and thus, Job correctly ascribed these actions ultimately to God.

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You continue to say things like:
“However, all the many passages of Scripture (and there are more) that say that God allows and makes use of evil that exists, never say that God made it exist, ordained it to exist, or caused it to exist. God uses evil, yes. But God ultimately causes evil? No.”

Me:
You are completely missing the force of the texts that were cited. You are probably reading the verses too quickly, assigning a meaning that will fit your theology, and not really paying careful attention to the exact words used or their order. Theses texts don’t simply say that God uses (already-existing) evil or calamity and makes good out of it. They name God as the ultimate cause of the evil act.

Genesis 50:20
“As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive.”
Here, the “it” that God meant for good refers back to the evil actions of the brothers. It was not as if God saw the evil actions of the brothers and proceeded to clean-up their mess. Rather, the event was ultimately caused by God Himself. God meant the actual event itself for good. But if God “meant” the actual event of selling their brother into slavery, then God must be the ultimate cause.

1 Samuel 2:25
Again, the very act of choosing to disobey their father ultimately came from God. The act of disobedience to their father was sin! Did God Himself do this? No, He probably willingly permitted a demon to harden their heart against obeying their father. Nevertheless, God should be and in fact *is* described as the ultimate cause.

Revelation 17:17
Again, the act of the kings in giving their royal rule over to the beast is itself a sinful act (probably the fulfillment of Psalm 2:2), and yet, God is specifically described as the ultimate cause of that act: “He has put into their hearts to carry out His purpose.”

I could go list every text that we discussed, but I think that you get my point.

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Next, I’d like to deal with your interpretation of the events in Exodus.

You write:
“…although in Pharaoh’s case, it very specifically says that he hardened his own heart…”

Me:
While it is true that Pharaoh did harden his heart, there are a number of problems with your statement:

1.) In a compatibilist scheme, there is an ultimate cause and proximate causes. God is the ultimate cause, and a demon (that God willingly permitted to do the act) as well as Pharaoh himself were the proximate causes. So, you’re committing a fallacy (i.e. begging the question against compatibilism) in saying that either God hardened Pharaoh OR Pharaoh hardened himself but not both.

2.) Psalm 105:23-45 recounts the events of the Exodus. It states that God “turned [the Egyptians’] hearts to hate His people, to deal craftily with His servants,” before Moses and Aaron are sent to Pharoah in v.26! So, God did hearden Pharaoh’s heart in the first place.

3.) As G.K. Beale has shown, whenever Pharaoh hardened his own heart, it is always in fulfillment of a previous passage where it says that God will harden Pharaoh’s heart (cf. 4:21 with 5:2, 7:3 with 7:13, etc.) or a passage after the event commenting on the past (cf. 9:34 with 10:1, etc.). Furthermore, Beale shows that the phrase “as the Lord had said” (Heb: ka’aser dibber YHWH; 7:13, 7:22, 8:15, 19, 9:1) is a statement used frequently in the Pentateuch to denote a promise-fulfillment where God acts in behalf of His people. Thus, even in the passages where it says that Pharaoh hardened his heart, this should be seen as God having heardened it as the ultimate cause.

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You then quote Greg Boyd who quotes Ezekiel 18 and 33 (same with Lamentations 3:33). However, those texts simply mean that God is not sadistic, not that God has a universal salvific will. It does not mean that God had not reprobated (i.e. ordained to not elect) the wicked in His eternal decree. You also have to couple those verses with others such as Deuteronomy 28:63 which states that God does take pleasure when justice is done and the wicked are destroyed:

“It shall come about that as the LORD delighted over you to prosper you, and multiply you, so the LORD will delight over you to make you perish and destroy you; and you will be torn from the land where you are entering to possess it.”

In other words, God is not sadistic in punishing evil, but He does take pleasure when justice is done.

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You then quote Greg Boyd on Proverbs. I’ll have to wait on commenting on this until I obtain Bruce Waltke’s commentaries on that book which may be awhile since they’re quite expensive.

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As to Habbakuk 2:12-13, I believe that I have over-extended the meaning and implications of that passage. It simply means that the rise of evil empires through bloodshed and other evils is futile since the omnipotent God will punish them and bring all of their gain to nothing. Oops.

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You stated:
“John 12:40 is a difficult passage often misinterpreted. A more full description of the same thing is found in Matthew 13:13-15 where the author is explaining how Jesus and Israel’s rejection of him is fulfilling a prophecy in Isaiah. Some people use this passage to say that God doesn’t want some people to understand the truth and repent. That is inaccurate when you read the whole story.”

Me:
I am not going to argue (nor did I) with your statement that God does not cause unbelief ***except*** to make the qualifications that I made above (see #8 under the Calvinist theodicy). Here’s what I actually said:

“God hardened those who rejected Jesus so that they would not repent; though, it probably means a temporary repentance like Ahab’s (see 1 Kings 21:20-29) since God refuses none that come to Him. God did this so that the Jewish leaders and their followers would hate Jesus and kill Him. Though this passage from Isaiah is usually cited in the Synoptic Gospels in such a way that suggests that those who disbelieve harden their own heart, the passage from John cites it in such a way as to suggest that God is the one who hardens their hearts. Of course, both are true since God is the ultimate cause and the unbelieving men are the proximate cause.”

Scripture most certainly does teach that God is the cause of the hardening. Once someone first rejects the gospel, the result is that God pours out His wrath by giving them over to believing falsehoods. This is the plain meaning of 2 Thessalonians 2:11, Romans 11:7-10, Isaiah 63:17, etc.

You’ve told both Peter Pike and I what those passages don’t or can’t mean, but you have never actually told us what they ***do*** mean.

Next, you used Acts 17:30. However, Acts 17:30 is a command for all men to repent. You’re assuming that if God gives a command, then man must be metaphysically (and not just physically) able to obey those commands. But this again assumes the Principle of Alternative Possibility and Libertarian Free-Will.

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I’ll get around to dealing with your posts on the actual TULIP at a later date.

Thanks.

The Term 'World' in the Johannine Corpus

2009-01-04T13:20:00.000-08:00

This was in the comment box over at this Triablogue post:

G said, "All individuals would still be included. We need to suppress the next steps of logic so that you can say "all men", without reaching the more desired Calvinistic ending of "some men"."

Me:
Actually, it wouldn't. "All men without exception" would necessarily entail "all men without distinction" but not the other way around.

The word, "world," as it is often used in the Gospel and Epistles of John, has reference to quality, not quantity.

Sometimes it has reference to the evil nature of human society. John 3:16 does not mean that God had so much love that He loved every single last human being, but rather, it means that God had so much love that He loved humans (but not necessarily every single human) in spite of their sinfulness. The quantity of that group can only be determined by the context.

Sometimes (as in 1 John 2:2), it has reference to all people groups (a universal of qualities), i.e. both Jews and Gentiles, and is used to oppose the 1st century Jewish idea that God would only bless the Jews, Gentiles were sub-humans, and other assorted racist ideas.

Thus, God chooses men out of *every* (universal) tribe, tongue, people, and nation, but *not* *everyone in* every tribe, tongue, people, and nation.

It is all men without distinction (i.e. *some* from *every* people group), not all men without exception (i.e. *everyone in* every people group).

Response to Persiflage on the Decree

2008-12-29T18:13:00.000-08:00

Persiflage wrote:
“But I have to tell you man, if that is all Calvinism means by the word “ordain” then I don’t have a problem with the Westminster Confession when it says that God did “ordain whatsoever comes to pass.” There’d only be a small annoyance that the men who wrote this worded it poorly and could have eliminated a lot of confusion if they just wrote “whatsoever comes to pass is in God’s plan.””

Me:
Well, I think that you have again misunderstood what I said. The decree is a simple plan. However, God is the one who writes all of history including the actions of men in it. It is *not* that God looks ahead of time, sees what man does, and fits his plan around what He foresees man will do. My only point in writing this definition was to dispel the straw-man of Calvinism that God winds-up all humans like a toy at the beginning of creation, and they simply move and do what He wants them to do.

In other words, I do not deny that God actually wanted (in the decretive sense) all the actions of men in history to come to pass since He planned them.

Persiflage wrote:
“I looked up ordain in the Webster Dictionary, and it defined it as “to establish or order by decree or law.””

Me:
That is a dictionary of the modern English which has nothing to do with *Theological terms*, especially ones that originated during the times of the 17th century Protestant scholastics. You might want to purchase and use a Dictionary of Theology or a Calvinistic Systematic Theology instead.

That you are using secular definitions of terms instead of theological definitions is a constant problem throughout your response.

Persiflage wrote:
“In one sense I absolutely agree with you, in the other sense I start to worry about other Scripture that says how things happen against God’s will (even if he’s philosophically the “first cause” of everything. So I won’t argue or agree with your interpretation of these Scriptures until I understand this better.”

Me:
Yes, when I used the term, ‘ultimate cause,’ I meant it in the sense that God *wanted* it to happen (again, in a decretive sense but not in a prescriptive sense). God set in action a chain of events that He knew would result in whatever would happen, *and* He *wanted* it to happen (again, in a decretive sense but not necessarily in a prescriptive sense). When it says that “God has put it in their hearts to execute His purpose by having a common purpose, and by giving their kingdom to the beast, until the words of God will be fulfilled,” (Revelation 17:17) God specifically *wanted* the kings to give their power over to the beast (which would no doubt include idolatrous worship).

This does not mean, however, that God wanted them to worship the beast in the prescriptive sense since God specifically forbids false worship. Rather, the way that this event would probably happen would be like that described in Job 1 or 2 Chronicles 18:18-22. God would bring Satan before Him and specifically permit Satan to “entice” and influence the minds of those kings and tell Satan to “prevail” in doing so (2 Chronicles 18:18-22). God *wanted* Satan to “prevail” in the decretive sense so that God’s purpose might come about.

When God *wants* (decretively) a certain evil event to happen, He willingly permits an evil spirit or man to do evil in order to bring about His purpose. God is never the one who entices to sin (James 1:13). He always *permits* it to happen. However, He never gives demons open reign everywhere and in all cases. God specifically sets the parameters of what He will allow the demon to do, sets the goal, and allows no more. God *wants* the evil event to happen so that it will fulfill His righteous purposes.

I know that I’m being a bit repetitive, but I don’t know how else to show you the distinction between God’s prescriptive (i.e. law) will and His decretive (i.e. providential) will. In essence, what I am saying is that defining the term, “God’s will” or “God wants this to happen,” in the sense that God prescribes a law for mankind is far too narrow for how the Biblical text uses it.

Persiflage writes:
“Do you see the problem here? If the “free choice” is caused by something, then it wouldn’t be a “free choice” in the first place.”

Me:
But that is the very issue under dispute, and it won’t be solved by a simple appeal to your intuitions. This has been debated back and forth by philosophers of metaphysics for many years now.

Persiflage wrote:
“A moral agent’s free will doesn’t cause choices, instead free will is the power through which the moral agent makes his choices. The fact that God gave him this “power” does not mean (a) that he is suddenly omnipotent, or (b) that God caused the free choice.”

Me:
But self-causality simply assumes one’s own self-existence, i.e. aseity. If God creates and sustains their very ontic existence, from where does their power come from to bring into being their self-generated choice? I don’t know how else to explain it to you. Sorry.

You go on to quote Geisler, but compatibilists of all stripes have pointed out that that is far too simplistic and creates all sorts of problems. Philosophy isn’t my best field, and so, I can only recommend some works:

J.M. Fischer’s The Metaphysics of Free Will

J.M. Fischer’s My Way: Essays on Moral Responsibility

John Frame’s No Other God

John Frame’s The Doctrine of God (pp.138-145)

Persiflage wrote (concerning 1 Samuel 2:25):
“Why did God desire to put them to death? Because they were already wicked in the first place - wicked enough for God to want to put them to death sooner than later (as opposed to the entire human population). And there is no reason for us to conclude that God preordained for them to reject him in the first place.”

Me:
Again, you’re missing the force of the passage. The passage states:

“But they would not listen to the voice of their father, for the LORD desired to put them to death.” (1 Samuel 2:25)

They chose to disobey BECAUSE *GOD WANTED* them to. Again, this is not in the prescriptive sense as if God told them to do so or God Himself controlled their minds, but nevertheless, the text names God as the *cause* of their disobedience.

He was the ultimate cause, not in the sense that He simply set in motion a chain of events that “just happened” to result in their choice, but rather, it was a *calculated* move on His part. They chose exactly what He wanted them to chose, not because they just so happened to chose it, but because He knew that the events that He set in motion would be the *effective cause* of their choice.

The Eternal Decree of God

2008-12-27T18:29:00.000-08:00

I am continuing my response to Persiflage on the 5 points of Calvinism. However, most Calvinists (including myself) would agree that there is another point of Calvinism that is more fundamental than the TULIP: the belief that God has decreed all that comes to pass.

Persiflage has taken issue with this over at Triablogue, and Peter Pike has been interacting with him for some time now and has made this the subject of a post.

Pike has already made most of the points that I am about to make, but I intend to use a few more examples that I believe will make those points a bit less controversial. First, let’s start with the basic statement from the Westminster Confession of Faith:

“God from all eternity did by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass; yet so as thereby neither is God the author of sin; nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.” WCF 3.1

I. Ordain/Decree-
First, let us take the term “ordain” (alt. ‘decree’, WLC 12, WSC 7). Ordain, here, simply refers to God’s plan of what shall occur in history. It is not causal in itself. It is not as if God simply wound-up creation like a toy and all history simply unfolds on its own power. Indeed, the WCF specifically denies such a form of determinism:

“God hath endued the will of man with that natural liberty, that is neither forced, nor by any absolute necessity of nature determined to good or evil.” WCF 9.1

John Frame notes that the Confession, here, supports the notion of “the independence of human choices from sequences of cause and effect within nature, a freedom from natural causation.” (The Doctrine of God, p.145) Instead, God fulfills his decree in history by interacting with His creatures, placing the boundaries to their movements (Job 14:5, Acts 17: 26), permitting certain acts by spiritual forces (2 Chronicles 18:18-22, Job 1:12), etc. This brings us to certain other points that need definition.

II. Human Freedom-
Human freedom is defined, here, in a compatibilist sense. In other words, compatibilist free-will (CFW) is a view of metaphysics that states that human freedom can be both free (and thus responsible for its actions) and determined at the same time. In the case of Calvinism, the determinism comes not from a material determinism (as it is in Stoicism or modern secular thought) but from a Divine determinism.

CFW is opposed to Libertarian Free-Will (LFW) which states that human freedom is incompatible with determinism of any form. If an action is determined, then it is not considered to be free (and thus the person is not responsible). This is called the Principle of Alternative Possibilities (PAP) which states that given any situation, a free creature must be able to instantiate different possible worlds. This is not to say that there cannot be any influences but that given all those influences, the will must be able to instantiate alternative choices. [Note: this is not just the existence of a choice, the condition of responsibility in CFW, but is the actual ability to instantiate a different possible world.] LFW usually takes one of two forms: 1) causal-inderminate which says that the choice of someone is uncaused or 2) self-causal which says that someone creates their own choices ex-nihilo.

I will be citing several portions of Scripture on this point later. For now, I will note that Causal-Indeterminism completely destroys human freedom and responsibility as it makes the origin of choices random and uncaused. This was the original form of LFW that the WCF speaks against when it says that CFW (in opposition to causal-indeterminism) actually establishes human freedom since the proximate cause of someone's choice originated with that person rather than it being random and uncaused. Self-causation, on the other hand, is completely absurd in a theistic system (being defined in the classical/Biblical sense) since it grants creatures (whose continual existence in dependent upon God) the ability to create ex nihilo as if they posessed aseity and omnipotence.

The next three distinctions are closely related to each other, and an example will be cited after all of them have been defined:

III. Ultimate and Proximate Causes-
Calvinism also makes the distinction between ultimate and proximate causes. As noted above, Calvinism declares that God is the ultimate cause of all things and has decreed all that comes to pass including the sinful actions of mankind. However, Scripture also states that God in no way forces man to sin, tempts him (James 1:13), or prescribes sinful actions for him (Jeremiah 32:35; again, see below).

Thus, while God may be the *ultimate* cause of everything, He is not the *proximate* cause of everything.

IV. Ends and Means-
In Calvinism, God ordains all that comes to pass, but Calvinism is not fatalism. In fatalism, someone’s fate has been determined no matter what choices they make. In Calvinism, someone’s ‘fate’ has been determined through the means of the choices that they make. Thus, King Hezekiah must pray a prayer of repentance for the nation of Judah during the seige of Jerusalem in order to obtain deliverance (Isaiah 37:14-35) even though God had already promised deliverance for Judah through the prophet Hosea several decades before (Hosea 1:7). God’s decreed end happened through the means of the human free action (remember: defined in a compatibilist sense) of the king. Fatalism would say that God would have saved Judah no matter what choice the king made.

Another example would be God’s promise to deliver Paul and the crewmen of the ship from the storm (Acts 27:23-24). However, Paul tells the crewmen that unless they remain in the ship they cannot be saved (v.31). Thus, the salvation from death is decreed by God through the means of staying on the ship. They would not have been saved no matter what they had done (as it would have been if fatalism was the case), but only through the means of Paul’s warning.

In Calvinism, God has decreed both the means as well as the ends so that the end result never comes about except through the means.

V. The Two Wills of God: Prescriptive and Decretive-
A distinction between God’s prescriptive will and His decretive will should also be made. God’s prescriptive will is that set of laws which God has prescribed for man to do or not to do, i.e. God’s Moral Law. The Ten Commandments are an example of God’s prescriptive will.

God’s decretive will is that which God wants to happen in history. Both the ends and the means (cited above) are God’s decretive will.

VI. Biblical Analysis
An analysis of a few Biblical texts will prove that these distinctions can be made and that Scripture clearly selects for the Calvinist view:

a.) Did God Will that Jesus Die at the Hands of Wicked Men?
Clearly God never prescribed that men should kill His Messiah, and in fact, it is just the opposite (Exodus 20:13). However, Scripture also says that “the LORD was pleased to crush Him, putting Him to grief” (Isaiah 53:10). Again, Peter declares that Christ was “delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God” (Acts 2:23) and that the Jews and the Romans did “whatever [God’s] hand and [His] purpose predestined to occur” (Acts 4:28).

So, did God want Jesus to die at the hands of wicked men?
Prescriptively, no.
Decretively, yes.

b.) Genesis 50:20
“As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive.”
Commentary:
According to Genesis 37:18-27, Joseph’s brothers were the ones who plotted Joseph’s demise. However, according to Genesis 50:20, Joseph, who was a prophet, informs us that it was God’s plan the whole time. God’s prescriptive will said that what Joseph’s brothers did was evil, but God’s decretive will decreed that Jacob’s family be saved from the famine through the use of the brothers’ evil (i.e. the proximate cause). Thus, God was the ultimate cause of what happened to Joseph so that His plan might be fulfilled and Abraham’s descendents saved.

It was not as though Jacob’s brothers first acted and then God came in to clean up the mess they made. No, the “it” in “God meant it” refers back to the first clause, namely “you meant evil against me”. There is one action present with two separate motives referring to that one action, one originating with the brothers and one with God.

c.) Judges 9:23
“Then God sent an evil spirit between Abimelech and the men of Shechem; and the men of Shechem dealt treacherously with Abimelech,”
Commentary:
From what we know about God’s use of evil spirits (i.e. demons) from other passages of Scripture (2 Chronicles 18:18-22, Job 1:12, Luke 22:31, etc.; see these and other Scripture passages below), evil spirits ask God to allow them to do evil acts to men. God then allows (or disallows) them to do specific acts to accomplish His plan. Here, God sent an evil spirit to start a war between two evil groups so that, in the end, they might destroy one another (Judges 9:56-57).

Here, God is the ultimate cause of the suffering and death inflicted by the two parties so that God’s plan would be fulfilled. However, the demon and the two groups were the proximate causes of the sin that occurred.

d.) 1 Samuel 2:25
“If one man sins against another, God will mediate for him; but if a man sins against the LORD, who can intercede for him?” But they would not listen to the voice of their father, for the LORD desired to put them to death.
Commentary:
The sinful human free act of disobedience to their father (Exodus 20:12) ultimately came from God “for the LORD desired to put them to death.” They chose X because God wanted Y. This cannot be self-causal or causal-indeterminate LFW since the ultimate origin of their choice was not in themselves but in God.

e.) 2 Samuel 12:11
“Thus says the LORD, ‘Behold, I will raise up evil against you from your own household; I will even take your wives before your eyes and give them to your companion, and he will lie with your wives in broad daylight.”
Commentary:
Although it was Absalom who committed these evil acts of adultery (and was held accountable for such), God was the ultimate cause of these acts and used them for good (i.e. David’s punishment).

f.) 2 Samuel 17:14
“Then Absalom and all the men of Israel said, “The counsel of Hushai the Archite is better than the counsel of Ahithophel.” For the LORD had ordained to thwart the good counsel of Ahithophel, so that the LORD might bring calamity on Absalom.”
Commentary:
To quote Robert Morey: “This passage is remarkable. It answers the questions, “Why did Absalom and all the men of Israel choose not to listen to Ahithophel when he was the clearly the wisest counselor in their midst? Why did they choose to take Hushai’s advice instead?” The text states that God caused them to choose Hushai because He had ordained to defeat Absalom. They chose what He ordained them to choose.” (emphasis his) –Dr. Robert A. Morey, The Nature and Extent of God’s Knowledge, 2nd Edition (Las Vegas, Nevada: Christian Scholars Press, 2002), pp.65-66. Again, they chose X because God wanted Y.

g.) The Comparison of 2 Samuel 24:1 and 1 Chronicles 21:1
“Now again the anger of the LORD burned against Israel, and it incited David against them to say, “Go, number Israel and Judah.””
“Then Satan stood up against Israel and moved David to number Israel.”
Commentary:
There is no contradiction here. Just as in passages like Judges 9:23, 1 Samuel 16:14, Job 1:12, and 2 Chronicles 18:18-22, God uses fallen angels to accomplish His will. God was the ultimate cause of David’s sin (by willingly permitting Satan to tempt David), but Satan was the proximate cause (as well as David himself) and thus responsible. As the Puritans said, “The devil is God’s lackey.”

h.) 2 Chronicles 18:18-22
“Micaiah said, “Therefore, hear the word of the LORD. I saw the LORD sitting on His throne, and all the host of heaven standing on His right and on His left. The LORD said, ‘Who will entice Ahab king of Israel to go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead?’ And one said this while another said that. Then a spirit came forward and stood before the LORD and said, ‘I will entice him.’ And the LORD said to him, ‘How?’ He said, ‘I will go and be a deceiving spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.’ Then He said, ‘You are to entice him and prevail also. Go and do so.’ Now therefore, behold, the LORD has put a deceiving spirit in the mouth of these your prophets, for the LORD has proclaimed disaster against you.””
Commentary:
In this amazing passage, God uses an evil sprit to commit an evil act (i.e. lying) to false prophets so that they would give false prophecies of victory to the evil King Ahab which would result in his death (i.e. good). Prescriptively, God hates lying (Exodus 20:16), but here, God providentially ordains that the lying spirit “prevail” in its deceitful actions in order to bring about good in the end. Again, this is not a bare permission but a willing permission since God ordained the ends and the means whereby His purpose should be accomplished.

i.) Job 1:21
He said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I shall return there. The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away. Blessed be the name of the LORD.”
Commentary:
Job recognizes that the evil acts of the Sabeans and Chaldeans which God hates and will judge them for (Exodus 20:13, 15, 17) have their ultimate cause (through secondary means, of course) in God.

j.) Psalm 105:25
“He turned their heart to hate His people, to deal craftily with His servants.”
Commentary:
Psalm 105 summarizes Biblical history from the time of Abraham through Deuteronomy. Here, the inspired psalmist informs us that the evil intentions of the new Pharaoh, recorded in Exodus 1:8-10, had their ultimate cause in God. God purposefully sent Israel down into Egypt and caused them to multiply so that Pharaoh and the Egyptians would become jealous of the Israelites. Pharaoh hardened his own heart, but at the same time, it was God who hardened Pharaoh’s heart.

k.) Proverbs 16:9-10
“The mind of man plans his way, but the LORD directs his steps. A divine decision is in the lips of the king; his mouth should not err in judgment.”
Commentary:
A man’s actions may have been willed freely, but they were ultimately foreordained to come to pass by God. This is the essence of compatibilist free-will (as opposed to the non-Calvinist’s version, libertarian free-will).

l.) Proverbs 20:24
“Man's steps are ordained by the LORD, how then can man understand his way?”
Commentary:
(See Proverbs 16:9-10 above.)

m.) Proverbs 21:1
“The king's heart is like channels of water in the hand of the LORD; He turns it wherever He wishes.”
Commentary:
This passage could not be clearer. (See Proverbs 16:9-10 above.)

n.) Ecclesiastes 7:14
“In the day of prosperity be happy, but in the day of adversity consider--God has made the one as well as the other so that man will not discover anything that will be after him.”
Commentary:
(See Job 1:21 and Proverbs 16:4 above.)

o.) Ecclesiastes 9:1
“For I have taken all this to my heart and explain it that righteous men, wise men, and their deeds are in the hand of God. Man does not know whether it will be love or hatred; anything awaits him.”
Commentary:
(See Proverbs 16:9-10 above.)

p.) Isaiah 10:5-7
“Woe to Assyria, the rod of My anger and the staff in whose hands is My indignation, I send it against a godless nation and commission it against the people of My fury to capture booty and to seize plunder, and to trample them down like mud in the streets. Yet it does not so intend, nor does it plan so in its heart, but rather it is its purpose to destroy and to cut off many nations… Is the axe to boast itself over the one who chops with it? Is the saw to exalt itself over the one who wields it? That would be like a club wielding those who lift it, or like a rod lifting him who is not wood. Therefore the Lord, the GOD of hosts, will send a wasting disease among his stout warriors; and under his glory a fire will be kindled like a burning flame.”
Commentary:
Here, God says that He is sending Assyria to punish Israel. In verses 12-14, the Assyrian king thinks that he has and will conquer the lands of his empire by his own might and for his own reasons. In reality, God is the ultimate cause of the king’s desire for conquest. God wields the king and his army like one wields a wood axe and a war club. God will send Assyria to punish Israel and then turn around and punish Assyria for their evil intentions and pride. This is similar to Genesis 50:20 in that there is one action with two different motives for that one action, one with the Assyrian king and one with God.

q.) Isaiah 45:7
“The One forming light and creating darkness, causing well-being and creating calamity; I am the LORD who does all these.”
Commentary:
Clearly, God is the ultimate cause of evil as well as good.

r.) Isaiah 46:9-10
“Remember the former things long past, for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is no one like Me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things which have not been done, saying, ‘My purpose will be established, and I will accomplish all My good pleasure’;”
Commentary:
God has actively foreordained everything in history to come to pass for His purpose and His good pleasure. Notice that what is purposed is comprehensive: the end from the beginning.

s.) Isaiah 63:17
“Why, O LORD, do You cause us to stray from Your ways and harden our heart from fearing You? Return for the sake of Your servants, the tribes of Your heritage.”
Commentary:
(See the Exodus passages above as well as Ezekiel 14:9 and John 12:39-40 below.)

t.) Jeremiah 4:6
“Lift up a standard toward Zion! Seek refuge, do not stand still, for I am bringing evil from the north, and great destruction.”
Commentary:
God was the ultimate cause (though not the proximate cause) of the evil that happened to Judah.

u.) Lamentations 3:37-39
“Who is there who speaks and it comes to pass, unless the Lord has commanded it? Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that both good and ill go forth? Why should any living mortal, or any man, offer complaint in view of his sins?”
Commentary:
The author of Lamentations (thought to be Jeremiah) informs us that evil’s (in this case the Chaldean invasion’s) ultimate cause is God’s decree.

v.) Ezekiel 14:9
“But if the prophet is prevailed upon to speak a word, it is I, the LORD, who have prevailed upon that prophet, and I will stretch out My hand against him and destroy him from among My people Israel.”
Commentary:
This is an example of God’s use of false prophets in hardening the hearts of idolaters. These idolaters are seeking a prophet who will give them what they want to hear, something that affirms their lifestyle. God informs us that He Himself will cause (probably through the secondary means of an evil spirit) the false prophet to give a false prophecy (see especially 2 Chronicles 18:18-22 above). This will harden the hearts of the idolaters and strengthen them in their apostasy, resulting in greater judgment (see especially the Exodus passages above).

w.) Amos 3:6
“If a trumpet is blown in a city will not the people tremble? If a calamity occurs in a city has not the LORD done it?”
Commentary:
Amos reveals that the destruction of a city and its inhabitants by invading armies is ultimately caused by God’s decree.

x.) Habakkuk 2:12-13
“Woe to him who builds a city with bloodshed and founds a town with violence! Is it not indeed from the LORD of hosts that peoples toil for fire, and nations grow weary for nothing?”
Commentary:
This passage tells us that the ultimate cause of the destruction of evil empires (usually by other evil empires with evil motives) is God. Of course, God probably does this through the secondary means of willingly permitting a demon to influence kings and their armies to do such. Nevertheless, God is still considered to be the ultimate cause.

y.) John 9:1-3
As He passed by, He saw a man blind from birth. And His disciples asked Him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he would be born blind?” Jesus answered, “It was neither that this man sinned, nor his parents; but it was so that the works of God might be displayed in him.”
Commentary:
Jesus reveals the reason for this man’s blindness. It was not for the reason of his sins or his parents’ sins (such as Pharisees had taught), but rather, God decreed from the beginning of time that he be born blind (probably through the secondary means of a genetic defect) and be put in that place for the purpose that Jesus would work a miracle on him. See also Exodus 4:11.

z.) John 12:39-40
“For this reason they could not believe, for Isaiah said again, “HE HAS BLINDED THEIR EYES AND HE HARDENED THEIR HEART, SO THAT THEY WOULD NOT SEE WITH THEIR EYES AND PERCEIVE WITH THEIR HEART, AND BE CONVERTED AND I HEAL THEM.””
Commentary:
God hardened those who rejected Jesus so that they would not repent; though, it probably means a temporary repentance like Ahab’s (see 1 Kings 21:20-29) since God refuses none that come to Him. God did this so that the Jewish leaders and their followers would hate Jesus and kill Him. Though this passage from Isaiah is usually cited in the Synoptic Gospels in such a way that suggests that those who disbelieve harden their own heart, the passage from John cites it in such a way as to suggest that God is the one who hardens their hearts. Of course, both are true since God is the ultimate cause and the unbelieving men are the proximate cause.

aa.) Romans 9
I’ll deal with this one when Persiflage gets around to unconditional election.

bb.) Romans 11:7-10
“What then? What Israel is seeking, it has not obtained, but those who were chosen obtained it, and the rest were hardened; just as it is written, “GOD GAVE THEM A SPIRIT OF STUPOR, EYES TO SEE NOT AND EARS TO HEAR NOT, DOWN TO THIS VERY DAY.” And David says, “LET THEIR TABLE BECOME A SNARE AND A TRAP, AND A STUMBLING BLOCK AND A RETRIBUTION TO THEM. LET THEIR EYES BE DARKENED TO SEE NOT, AND BEND THEIR BACKS FOREVER.””
Commentary:
(See the comments on John 12:39-40.)

cc.) 2 Thessalonians 2:11-12
“For this reason God will send upon them a deluding influence so that they will believe what is false, in order that they all may be judged who did not believe the truth, but took pleasure in wickedness.”
Commentary:
Once a man has rejected God’s truth, God hands them over to the dominion of Satan so that his thoughts will be highly influenced by “the prince of the power of the air” (Ephesians 2:2). See also 2 Corinthians 4:4. Prescriptively, God wants men to obey His gospel, but decretively, God ordains that those who reject His gospel be given over to further unbelief (Romans 1:21-28).

dd.) Revelation 17:17
“For God has put it in their hearts to execute His purpose by having a common purpose, and by giving their kingdom to the beast, until the words of God will be fulfilled.”
Commentary:
Is it God’s will for the nations to worship the beast? Prescriptively, no (Exodus 20:3-7), but decretively, yes so that “His purpose” should “be fulfilled.” Of course, this probably involved willingly permitting Satan to influence their minds, but this was not a “bare permission” since the verse identifies God as the ultimate cause of their actions.

VII. Conclusion
If God has ordained the end from the beginning to accomplish His purpose (Isaiah 46:9-10), makes men blind, mute, or dumb in order to accomplish His purpose (Exodus 4:11, John 9:1-3), is the ultimate cause of the death of every man (1 Samuel 2:6, Job 1:21), is the ultimate cause of sins such as disobedience or not accepting wise counsel so that He can destroy someone through their own actions (1 Samuel 2:25, 2 Samuel 17:14), is the ultimate cause of evil spirits causing men to sin so that God can accomplish His purpose in destroying those men (1 Samuel 16:14, 2 Samuel 24:1 and 1 Chronicles 21:1, 2 Chronicles 18:18-22, etc.), uses wicked men for the purpose of the evil that they would do so that it would result later in good (Genesis 50:20), directs the steps of men, the decisions of kings, and ultimately controls the deeds of wise and righteous men (Proverbs 16:9-10, 20:24, 21:1, Ecclesiastes 9:1), creates both prosperity and adversity (Ecclesiastes 7:14, Isaiah 45:7) and good and evil (Jeremiah 4:6, Lamentations 3:37-38), is the ultimate cause of the rise and destruction of empires and their cities (Isaiah 10:5-7, 37:26-27, Amos 3:6, Habakkuk 2:12-13, Acts 17:26), is the ultimate cause of false prophecy so that He can judge wicked men (2 Chronicles 18:18-22, Ezekiel 14:9), is the ultimate cause of heart-hardening and thus unbelief and/or disobedience (Joshua 11:20, Psalm 105:25, Isaiah 63:17, John 12:39-40, Romans 11:7-10, 2 Thessalonians 2:11-12, Revelation 17:17), is the ultimate cause of the Messiah’s death at the hands of wicked men (Isaiah 53:10, Acts 2:23, 4:28), and works all things after the counsel of His will (Ephesians 1:11), then it follows that that covers just about everything under the sun. God has foreordained whatsoever comes to pass.

A Response to Persiflage, Intro

2008-12-26T23:36:00.000-08:00

Peter Pike (a.k.a. “Calvindude”) over at Triablogue has been interacting with another blogger, Persiflage, a self-described non-Arminian non-Calvinist. Pike said that he would continue interacting with Persiflage, but I too would like to address some of the arguments that Persiflage was making.

First, I'd like to say that it's refreshing to have a non-Calvinist that doesn't get extremely emotional like the Campbellite Pelagians that come around the internet and do drive-by comments spewing their ignorance. Persiflage seems to show critical thinking skills and is open to the arguments that we have to present. It’s easy when one is in a back-and-forth behind a keyboard to get insulting, forgetting that your opponent is a brother in Christ. It seems that Persiflage has lived up to this standard so far, and so, I intend to do the same.

Having said these things, I have noticed from a few statements made by Persiflage that I can expect a typical Dave Hunt / Norman Geisler style straw-man attack on Calvinist doctrine. For example, take a few quotes from this post:

“So consider this a short introduction to a 5 part series. First of all, I'm not Arimian. I don't believe in universalism and I don't believe that a Christian can lose his salvation…With this ths series of 5 essays, I'm going to explain why I can't agree to any of the 5. I used to think I believed in at least 2 of them, but then I heard the "offical explanation" and couldn't even find Scripture to support my belief in those.”

Now, I may be proven wrong when he does his post on the Perseverance of the Saints and actually comes out supporting a Free-Grace Movement Dispensational Once-Saved-Always-Saved doctrine, but I’ve a got a feeling that I’m going to see the standard Adrian Rodgers style “Calvinists believe that the saints persevere on their own willpower” straw-man.

Also, here’s another from this comment:

“Charles Spurgeon, himself a Calvinist, disbelieved in "Double Predestination" however. Spurgeon said - "I cannot imagine a more ready instrument in the hands of Satan for the ruin of souls than a minister who tells sinners it is not their duty to repent of their sins ... who has the arrogance to call himself a gospel minister, while he teaches that God hates some men infinitely and unchangeably for no reason whatever but simply becauses he chooses to do so. O my brethren. May the Lord save you from the charmer, and keep you ever deaf to the voice of error." - quoted in Iain H. Murray's 'Spurgeon v. Hyper-Calvinism: A Battle for Gospel Preaching'”

However, this equivocates on the term ‘Predestination’. John Calvin and R.C. Sproul use the term differently than Spurgeon and other modern theologians. In Medieval scholastic terminology, ‘Predestination’ simply meant God’s foreordination in general, whether it be through primary or secondary causation (another distinction that Persiflage refuses to acknowledge in Reformed theology). Most modern Reformed theologians, however, define ‘Predestination’ as God acting in Himself (i.e. monergistically) to bring about the electing decree. Thus, God works His irresistable grace upon men in regeneration resulting in faith, justification, sanctification, perseverance, and eventually glorification. The opposite side of predestination of the elect is the ‘Reprobation’ of the non-elect which is defined as God simply allowing the non-elect to go their own way and freely choose damnation rather than faith. While God decrees both, God is active in history toward the elect but passive toward the non-elect. Thus, Spurgeon would agree with Calvin and Sproul once the terms are properly defined.

Also, it is a straw-man to say that if God decrees something, then man doesn't have to respond in faith since this ignores the distinction between means and ends.

There also seems to be a misunderstanding of what the term 'decree' means. The decree is simply God's ***plan*** from before creation. The decree does not affect anything in itself.

There is an equivocation on what the term “free” means as Persiflage begs-the-question against Compatibilism by assuming that the only kind of freedom possible is Libertarian Free-Will Action Theory (LFW) and the Priciple of Alternative Possibility (PAP).

Anyway, it’s getting late, and so I’ll start with a post tomorrow on the Decree of God and its proper definition.

More on Scientific Realism

2008-12-14T18:25:00.000-08:00

There's been a post over at crev.info on scientific realism.

I did a post debunking scientific realism a while back, here.

Answering a Question

2008-12-10T19:12:00.000-08:00

I was reading tonight and a novel idea dawned on me: check my S&S e-mail (it's located on my profile BTW). Well, I had a lot of spam but 1 actual e-mail question (that has been sitting there for 3 months!...oops):

:::QUOTE:::

You state the following:

"Augustine’s View of Original Sin: Augustine’s view of Original Sin, namely that the guilt of the first sin of Adam was transmitted to his offspring, was for the most part limited to the West. To this day, most Eastern Orthodox believe that Adam’s sin added death and corruption to human nature, not the guilt of the sin as well."

Now, isn't this the biblical and reformed view of original sin? I mean, don't we believe that the guilt is also transmitted to adam's offspring?
God bless,
Mario

:::END-QUOTE:::

Yes, Mario. I believe that you misunderstood what I said.

The Reformed affirm that Adam passed on not only the death and corruption of our nature but also the legal guilt.

The Eastern Orthodox Church believes that Adam passed on only the death and corruption of our nature but NOT the legal guilt.

More Secular Superstitions

2008-12-05T17:50:00.000-08:00

This is another confirmation that the secularist is more likely to be superstitious than the Theist.

Let us not also forget that Richard Dawkins believes in space aliens.

Then, I guess that he makes a great spokesman for the atheist community.

Sinner's Prayer Evangelism

2008-11-28T17:07:00.000-08:00

The Inconsistency of Islamic Apologetics

2008-11-19T19:01:00.000-08:00

Francis Beckwith's Conversion Book

2008-11-16T19:00:00.000-08:00

Steve Hays reviews Beckwith's conversion story book, and shocker of all shockers...it recycles all the bad old arguments that have been refuted since the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Divided "Infallible" Councils

2008-11-14T18:28:00.000-08:00

Steve Hays has hit the history books (again) on the debates that went on within the chambers of the last few Roman Catholic ecumenical councils.

Leftists and Sub-Prime Lending

2008-10-03T14:53:00.000-07:00

Who caused this mess?

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Answer: Leftists and their dumb ideas.

Secular Superstitions

2008-09-25T08:03:00.000-07:00

This post over at Uncommon Descent pretty much confirmed my view of the so-called 'Enlightenment': the 'Enlightenment' simply replaced one set of superstitions (Dark Age beliefs) for another set of equally superstitious beliefs. From the post:

:::QUOTE:::

The reality is that the New Atheist campaign, by discouraging religion, won’t create a new group of intelligent, skeptical, enlightened beings. Far from it: It might actually encourage new levels of mass superstition. And that’s not a conclusion to take on faith — it’s what the empirical data tell us.

“What Americans Really Believe,” a comprehensive new study released by Baylor University yesterday, shows that traditional Christian religion greatly decreases belief in everything from the efficacy of palm readers to the usefulness of astrology. It also shows that the irreligious and the members of more liberal Protestant denominations, far from being resistant to superstition, tend to be much more likely to believe in the paranormal and in pseudoscience than evangelical Christians.

:::END-QUOTE:::

During the Renaissance, men who rejected the authority of Rome went one of two ways. They either reformed their beliefs by conforming to Scripture and got rid of many of the superstitions of the Middle Ages, or they rejected propositional revelation altogether and were left to figure out the nature of reality (a universal) starting with only their own 'reason' and experiences (particulars). Seeing that one cannot validly reason from a particular to a universal and having cut themselves off from the only Source that could possibly give them answers to the nature of reality since He alone possesses complete knowledge of it, they were left with nothing but fear of the unknown.

Thus, instead of believing in elves and fairies, they now believe in UFOs and little green men.

Instead of believing in spontaneous generation of flies from trash, they simply add billions of years with the same belief and declare it to be 'scientific'.

Instead of believing in astrology, they now believe in multiple-universes.

Instead of believing that a frog can turn into a prince, they simply add a few million years and call it "our hominid ancestry."

Argument for Church Infallibility...Again

2008-09-18T21:05:00.000-07:00

Jason Engwer deals with the argument that if the Protestant uses the church fathers to determine the New Testament canon, then he ought to accept the fathers' belief in the infallibility of the church, here. [Of course, both parts of the above statement are disputed.]

More from Triablogue on High Church Arguments

2008-08-10T13:33:00.000-07:00

Another great post responding to Romanists' arguments for their church's authority.

UPDATE: Steve continues to deal with Bryan Cross' bad philosophical arguments (i.e. what the Reformers called 'sophistry') for Roman Catholic authority here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. [The ecclesiolaters just don't know when to give up, do they?] More: Here and (hopefully) the capstone post here.

UPDATE II: I was wrong. Naive Catholic converts just don't know when to give up, do they? Anyway, David Waltz has been trying to respond to Steve. Steve and Gene's replies are here, here, here, and here.

Lastly, there are two reasons why I am linking to all of these posts. First, so that I can go back through them one day in order to write-up my own summary essay on this matter. Second, so that everyone else who reads this blog (however few that may be) will also be able to read them and come to the same conclusion.

Steve also pointed out an article by Cardinal Avery Dulles that notes that Benedict XVI (then Ratzinger) believed (and still does) that Vatican II taught heresy:

"At discussions of Gaudium et Spes in September 1965, Ratzinger voiced many of the criticisms that would later appear in his books and articles: The schema was too naturalistic and unhistorical, took insufficient notice of sin and its consequences, and was too optimistic about human progress."

"Instead of replacing dogmatic utterances with dialogue, Ratzinger contends, it would have been better to use the language of proclamation, appealing to the intrinsic authority of God’s truth. The constitution, drawing on the thought of Teilhard de Chardin, links Christian hope too closely to the modern idea of progress. Material progress is ambivalent because it can lead to degradation as well as to true humanization. The Cross teaches us that the world is not redeemed by technological advances but by sacrificial love. In the section on unification, Gaudium et Spes approaches the world too much from the viewpoint of function and utility rather than that of contemplation and wonder."

"Ratzinger’s commentary on the first chapter of Gaudium et Spes contains still other provocative comments. The treatment of conscience in article 16, in his view, raises many unsolved questions about how conscience can err and about the right to follow an erroneous conscience. The treatment of free will in article 17 is in his judgment “downright Pelagian.” It leaves aside, he complains, the whole complex of problems that Luther handled under the term “servum arbitrium,” although Luther’s position does not itself do justice to the New Testament."

"He is enthusiastic about the centrality of Christ and the Paschal mystery in article 22, and he finds in it a statement on the possibilities of salvation of the unevangelized far superior to the “extremely unsatisfactory” expressions of Lumen Gentium 16, which seemed to suggest that salvation is a human achievement rather than a divine gift."

Also, Gene Bridges posted a Fitzmeyer quote with regard to the "unanimous consent of the church fathers" that hits the nail on the head:

Joseph A. Fitzmyer, S.J.: When one hears today the call for a return to a patristic interpretation of Scripture, there is often latent in it a recollection of Church documents that spoke at times of the ‘unanimous consent of the Fathers’ as the guide for biblical interpretation.But just what this would entail is far from clear. For, as already mentioned, there were Church Fathers who did use a form of the historical-critical method, suited to their own day, and advocated a literal interpretation of Scripture, not the allegorical. But not all did so. Yet there was no uniform or monolithic patristic interpretation, either in the Greek Church of the East, Alexandrian or Antiochene, or in the Latin Church of the West. No one can ever tell us where such a “unanimous consent of the fathers” is to be found, and Pius XII finally thought it pertinent to call attention to the fact that there are but few texts whose sense has been defined by the authority of the Church, “nor are those more numerous about which the teaching of the Holy Fathers is unanimous.” Joseph A. Fitzmyer, Scripture, The Soul of Theology (New York: Paulist Press, 1994), p. 70.

Triablogue on the Catholic Magisterium

2008-08-08T21:26:00.000-07:00

Yes, I've been gone for a while. Anyway, Steve over at Triablogue just posted a great review of Cardinal Dulles' book on the Magisterium. He also posted a reply to a Catholic commenter who threw out all the old Roman Catholic philosophical arguments for high-church authority. [My replies to those arguments are found here.]

UPDATE: Steve continues to review Dulles' book on the Magisterium. Here, he deals with the typical Roman Catholic spoof-texting to "prove" that the New Testament taught Roman Catholic ecclesiology.

Down with the Statist Pigs!

2008-06-11T08:42:00.000-07:00

Watch this guy as he lectures the Canadian "Human Rights Commission":

Booyeah!!!

Take that, Fascist Pigs!!!

Next:

:)

:P

:D

And on Glenn Beck:

Molecules Don't Work That Way...

2008-06-01T11:13:00.000-07:00

...but in a Darwinist's imagination they do.

Christ - The Only Way

2008-05-30T20:34:00.000-07:00

Imputation of Original Sin and Ezekiel 18

2008-05-28T19:23:00.000-07:00

CMP continues his series of posts on Original Sin and touches upon Ezekiel 18.

Frogamander?

2008-05-28T18:06:00.000-07:00

Nope.

The Imputation of Adam's Sin at Parchment and Pen

2008-05-24T18:48:00.001-07:00

C Michael Patton wrote a post defending the federal view of the imputation of Adam's sin and made the point that the palatability of a doctrine should not determine its veracity.

Canyons, Flooding, and The Flood

2008-05-24T11:46:00.000-07:00

There is a post over at Creation-Evolution Headlines that is interesting as it pertains to two things:

1. The Unreliability of Scientific Realism and

2. The Age of the Earth (namely the downfall of Uniformitarianism in favor of a return to Catastrophism).

The scientist who proposed this theory on the formation of canyons by catastrophic flooding did not make any connection to a global Flood and was probably a secular scientist and not a creationist. Nevertheless, the foundations of Uniformitarianism, the basis upon which scientists rejected the historicity of Genesis, are slowly giving way.

Praise Be to God!

A Comment on Scientific Realism at Green Baggins

2008-04-26T16:44:00.000-07:00

This was a comment made by one supporting Peter Enns' re-interpretation of the Bible so that it fits current scientific theories. This comment in quotes is followed by my comment responding to it:

"I am an engineer. I cannot seal my worlds apart from one another like you suggest. I know no technical person (engineering, science, medicine, etc) who can. I beg you to reconsider your dismissal of the fruitfulness of critical/scientific method for ascertaining things about the physical world, including its history. Everything surrounding you right now — your computer, your clothing, the materials constituting your furniture and the building you occupy, the food in your stomach, and the antibiotics in your blood the last time you were sick — they are all proof of this fruitfulness. Of course it is not perfect, but that is not necessary (utterly relativizing science was not Kuhn’s point). Please reconsider, if only because pastorally you stand to lose so many technical people by insisting on that tack."

No one is compartmentalizing worlds. In fact, I would consider myself an Instrumentalist, one who recognizes that scientific theories can be useful for engineering things but realizes that with the discovery of a single piece of data an old theory can be placed in the dustbin, rethought, and a new (and sometimes drastically different) theory can emerge.

It was this case with geosynclinal theory. All geologists back in 1960 believed that mountains were formed through trough-like depressions that were filled with sediment, heated, became unstable, and rose to become mountain ranges. In fact, this theory was so widely held that it was said to be as sure as Darwin's theory of natural selection. It could account for the vast majority of the data at the time. What happened to it? Some guy proposed plate tectonics. Within a small period of time, the geosynclinal theory that was believed in by everyone was washed away and replaced by a very different one.

Another example would be the various geocentrist theories of our solar system. It allowed them to predict the position of planets and stars to a great degree of accuracy and was held world-wide by almost all cultures. Did its success mean that it was true? Of course not!

Yet another example would be Newton's Laws. Were they true? If anyone has heard of Heisenberg and Einstein, then obviously not. But did they allow us to engineer all sorts of useful things? Absolutely!

But that's the point. While scientific theories can be useful for engineering such as the things you mention above, antibiotics and computers, they should not be given the status of descriptors of the actual world.

More examples could be given that bear upon the very issue of dating methods. One example is Yellowstone National Park's fossil forrests (i.e. trees buried vertically on top of one another). Just about every geologist at one time thought that the fossil forrests must have been created gradually over long periods of time (i.e. one forest buried and another forrest planted above it and the cycle repeated over again). In fact, this "overwhelming consensus" is what caused Ron Numbers to leave the Christian faith!

Well, after Mt. St. Helens blew, one geologist that witnessed the event who was also an expert on Yellowstone, noticed that the trees that were washed away in mudflows were buried upright, in the same manner as those at Yellowstone. Now, the catastrophic mudflow explanation is the leading theory for how the buried forrests were deposited. Ron Numbers stopped believing in the inerrancy of the Bible all because he didn't wait long enough for the current theory to be overturned. That is the whole point! Christians shouldn't have to re-interpret their Bible because of scientific theories. Scientific Realism is false! Instrumentalism should instead be the philosophy of science for every Christian.

And by the way: I'M AN ENGINEER TOO!

[BTW: The story about Ron Numbers and the Yellowstone forrests can be found here.]

Common High-Church Arguments

2008-04-20T12:32:00.000-07:00

Here's a list of my posts responding to common high-church arguments:

The Infallible Knowledge Argument

The Doctrinal Chaos Argument

The Argument from Apostolic Tradition and Succession
(Related: The Influence of Greco-Roman Culture on Early Christianity)

The Argument from Canon Certainty

The Argument from Canon Certainty

2008-04-19T14:02:00.000-07:00

The last major argument against the Protestant rule of faith, sola Scriptura, that we shall consider is the argument from the canon. Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox like to argue that the only reason that the Protestant has a canon of Scripture today is because it was the Roman Catholic/Eastern Orthodox Church that created it. They will argue that the Protestant must rely on their Church’s tradition as found in the writings of the church fathers so as to ascertain the canonicity of the Scriptural books. Sometimes they will use textual variants, New Testament Apocrypha, and Gnostic Gospels (i.e. Bart Ehrman-style arguments) to argue that the only way to have certainty with regards to the canon is to have it established by an infallible authority. “The Church created the canon, and so, it has the sole right to interpret the canon,” they argue. To this we reply:

The “Church” Did NOT Create the Scriptures: First, the Church does not have the sole right to interpret Scripture just because members of the Church wrote it.

The Scriptures were not penned by committees but by individuals moved by the Spirit and written to the Church.
These individuals were apostles given the gift of inspiration by the Holy Spirit. No bishop in either the Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox Churches claims to be inspired.
The Holy Spirit is the author of both the Scriptures (2 Timothy 3:16) and the Church (Acts 2:1-4), and so, He decides which will have priority.

Historical Witness, Not Sacred Tradition: The Protestant canonical approach in regards to the church fathers has been to see them as historical witnesses whose testimony should be weighed instead of seeing them as recipients of ‘Sacred Tradition’ (in the dogmatic sense). In fact, since the church fathers give us conflicting accounts as to the origins of certain books, seeing them as historical witnesses whose testimony must be discerned as to its relevance through careful historical study is necessary.

Heretical Sources as Well: Heretical sources were utilized in addition to the church fathers for determining the canonicity of a book. For example, Tatian, an apostate who converted to Gnosticism, in his Diatesseron, names only Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John as the Four Gospels and no others. This is significant since, being a Gnostic, he would be inclined to include any existent Gnostic Gospels, such as the Gospel of Judas or Thomas, in addition to the canonical ones.

Internal Evidence as Well: Internal evidence such as intertextuality (i.e. an already established canonical book naming another book as canonical) and historical allusions (i.e. things that would identify the author’s background and proximity to other canonical authors) which give evidence to a book’s canonicity have been used.

The Skeptical Argument is Self-Destructive: Any skeptical argument calling into question the reliability of the transmission of a written text can be re-packaged and returned with ten-times the destructive power against an oral tradition. I noted several cases of this in “The Argument from Apostolic Tradition and Succession” post found here.

The Hebrews Knew the OT Canon Without an Infallible Authority: (See the same argument in “The Infallible Knowledge Argument” post.)

Early Church Knew the NT Canon Without an Infallible Authority: (See the same argument in “The Infallible Knowledge Argument” post.)

Fathers and Others Who Looked to the Jews: There were a large number of church fathers and later scholars who, when they had become more learned on the subject of the canon, accepted the Hebrew Canon (which omitted the Apocrypha) instead of consulting “Church tradition”. These fathers and others include: Melito of Sardis, Julius Africanus, Hilary of Poitiers, Cyril of Jerusalem, Athanasius, Epiphanius, Gregory Nazianzus, Amphilochius, Basil the Great, Rufinus, Jerome, Anastasius of Antioch, Primasius, Nicolas of Lyra, Pope Gregory the Great, John of Damascus, the Glossa Ordinaria (a commentary), Cardinal Cajetan, The Venerable Bede, Agobard of Lyons, Alcuin, Walafrid Strabo, Haymo of Halberstadt, Ambrose of Autpert, Radulphus Flavicencius, Hugh of St. Victor, Richard of St. Victor, John of Salisbury, Peter Cellensis, Rupert of Deutz, Honorius of Autun, Peter Comestor, Peter Mauritius, Adam Scotus, Hugh of St. Cher, Philip of Harvengt, Nicholas of Lyra, William of Ockham, Antoninus, Alonso Tostado, Dionysius the Carthusian, Thomas Walden, Jean Driedo, John Ferus, Jacobus Faber Stapulensis, Johannes Petreius, Cardinal Ximenes, and the Bible translation, Sanctes Pagnini.

No Agreement Within Eastern Orthodoxy: Despite the claims of Eastern Orthodox apologists, there is actually no agreement as to the extent of the canon within Eastern Orthodox circles. This is especially so within the Russian Orthodox Church as well as the Greek Orthodox Church:

“For the Greek Church, the Synod of Jerusalem in 1672 introduced Wisdom and other Deuterocanonical books to a place in Holy Scripture. ‘There appears to be no unanimity, however, on the subject of the canon in the Greek Orthodox Church today. Catechisms directly at variance with each other on this subject have received the Imprimatur of the Greek Ecclesiastical authorities and the Greek clergy may hold and teach what they please about it (Metzger: 195),”^¹

“The Hebrew version of the Old Testament contains thirty-nine books. The Septuagint contains in addition ten further books, not present in the Hebrew, which are known in the Orthodox Church as the “Deutero-Canonical Books.” These were declared by the Councils of Jassy (1642) and Jerusalem (1672) to be “Genuine parts of Scripture”; most Orthodox scholars at the present day, however, following the opinion of Athanasius and Jerome, consider that the Deutero-Canonical Books, although part of the bible, stand on a lower footing than the rest of the Old Testament.”^²

Analogy to Rabbinic Judaism: Assuming for the sake of argument that the Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox is correct in their assertion, the Protestant can always make an analogy to Rabbinic Judaism. God used the Hebrew people to write and gather the Old Testament, and the Christian’s knowledge of the Old Testament canon is dependant upon their ‘tradition’. However, they rejected (on the basis of tradition) the most important aspect of the Old Testament Scriptures which they testify to, the Messiah, and so, God rejected that visible authority structure and built up a new congregation from the faithful remnant of the Hebrew people.

In the same way (for the sake of argument), God used the Roman Catholic/Eastern Orthodox Church to write and gather the New Testament canon, and (for the sake of argument) the Protestant’s knowledge is dependant upon that Church’s ‘traditions’. However, the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox reject (on the basis of ‘Tradition’) one of the most important aspects of the New Testament Scriptures which they testify to, justification by faith alone, and so, God rejected that visible authority structure and built up a new congregation, the Protestants, from the faithful remnant of the Roman Catholic/Eastern Orthodox Church. To put it in an outline form (and again, this is for the sake of argument):

God gives OT to the Hebrews ----> Using tradition, the Jews reject Christ ----> God dispenses with the old, visible authority structure and starts over using the faithful remnant.

God gives NT to the R.C.C./E.O.C. ----> Using tradition, the R.C./E.O. reject sola fide ----> God dispenses with the old, visible authority structure and starts over using the faithful remnant.

To quote John the Baptist:

“But when [John the Baptist] saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, ‘You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Therefore bear fruit in keeping with repentance; and do not suppose that you can say to yourselves, “We have Abraham for our father”; for I say to you that from these stones God is able to raise up children to Abraham. The axe is already laid at the root of the trees; therefore every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.’ ” (Matthew 3:8-10)

To make my analogy clear, I’ll change the words up a bit:

“But when Martin Luther saw many of the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox bishops coming to Mass, he said to them, ‘You false teachers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Therefore bear fruit in keeping with repentance; and do not suppose that you can say to yourselves, “We have Christ and the apostles for our spiritual fathers”; for I say to you that from these stones God is able to raise up children to Christ and His apostles. The axe is already laid at the root of the trees; therefore every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.’ ”

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1 D. Winston, The Wisdom of Solomon: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (Doubleday 1979), p.67.

2 T. Ware, The Orthodox Church (Penguin Books 1997), p.200.

The Argument from Apostolic Tradition and Succession

2008-04-16T18:20:00.000-07:00

A very common objection to the Protestant rule of faith that has been around since the time of the Reformation is that sola Scriptura has led to the formation of novel doctrines such as sola fide and creates a great multiplicity of differing Biblical interpretations. It is argued that we must follow the unwritten traditions of the Church that have been passed down throughout the ages by the bishops who are the successors of the apostles as our lens through which we interpret Scripture. The criterion for what is truly “tradition” is that it has been believed always, everywhere, and by all, and by using this standard, we can know with certainty what the Bible really means. I have dealt with the “Doctrinal Chaos” argument elsewhere, and there are many problems with the appeal to Church tradition as a more objective way for interpreting the Bible:

Begging the Question: The argument that novel doctrines are always wrong assumes the priority of historical theology over against exegetical theology, and so, it begs the question in favor of Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox priorities. The Protestant argument was always that the beliefs of the Church gradually became corrupted over time due to accretions from outside influences. [See “The Influence of Greco-Roman Thought and Culture” below.]

Shifting the Problem One Step Back: The writings of the church fathers are literary documents just like Scripture, and so, you have the same alleged problem in interpreting them as you do Scripture. Of course, it can be argued that the writings of the fathers have a greater degree of clarity than do the Scriptures (which I would deny), but once it is admitted that the difference in clarity between the church fathers and Scripture is one of degree and not of kind, then the argument loses much of its force and becomes somewhat subjective.

Even the Apostolic Church Had Its Problems: Even Paul’s first-hand hearers and disciples had problems understanding what he said and meant (Galatians 1:6-10, 1 Corinthians 1:11, 11:17-24, 2 Peter 3:15-16). There were also many false teachers who warped (or flat-out denied) apostolic teaching when the apostles weren’t around (Acts 20:28-30, 2 Corinthians 11:13-15, Revelation 2:14-15, 20). If the apostolic churches didn’t quite get Paul’s message even when he taught it to them in person and were persuaded by men coming into the church who taught pseudo-Christian ideas, then why should we believe that the post-apostolic Church fared any better?

The Appeal is Selective: The choice of beliefs for a tradition from amongst the early centuries of the church is selective since the church fathers and other early writers often held many differing views that were sometimes completely at odds with each other. Furthermore, there are a number of beliefs within Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy that were either developed after the early church era or are completely at odds with the early church’s beliefs. In other words, many of Roman Catholicism’s and Eastern Orthodoxy’s chief doctrines were not believed always, everywhere, and by all:

Roman Catholicism

Complete Innovations:

Papal Primacy: I covered this in my extensive quotations of Klaus Schatz here.^¹ To quote Cardinal Congar:

“Application of the principle is difficult, at least at a certain level. In regard to individual texts of Scripture total patristic consensus is unnecessary: quite often, that which is appealed to as sufficient for dogmatic points does not go beyond what is encountered in the interpretation of many texts. But it does sometimes happen that some Fathers understood a passage in a way which does not agree with later Church teaching. One example: the interpretation of Peter’s confession in Matthew 16.16-19. Except at Rome, this passage was not applied by the Fathers to the papal primacy; they worked out exegesis at the level of their own ecclesiasiological thought, more anthropological and spiritual than judicial. . . . Historical documentation is at the factual level; it must leave room for a judgement made not in the light of the documentary evidence alone, but of the Church's faith.”^²

Papal Infallibility: This can be found nowhere in the early church, and in fact, most everyone up into the Middle Ages believed that past popes have erred.^³

Popes Over Councils: Up until the fifteenth century, it was believed that ecumenical councils could overrule the decision of a pope. In fact, Martin Luther’s appeal was to a council so that the judgment of Pope Leo X would be overruled. But of course, the appeal was denied by the pope, and the authority of popes over that of councils became official at Vatican I.

Mary’s Immaculate Conception: Despite Rome’s claims to the contrary, almost everyone in the early church denied Mary’s sinlessness, and even amongst those in the West such as Augustine (who believed that she was free from the taint of actual sin) did not deny that she still had the taint of Original Sin. In fact, Vincent of Lerins names this doctrine as one of the innovations of the Pelagians. To quote J.N.D. Kelly:

“Tertullian, however, repudiated the suggestion, finding the opening of her womb prophesied in Exodus 13, 2, and Origen followed him and argued that she had needed the purification prescribed by the Law…Irenaeus and Tertullian recalled occasions on which, as they read the gospel stories, she had earned her Son’s rebuke, and Origen insisted that, like all human beings, she needed redemption from her sins; in particular, he interpreted Simeon’s prophecy (Luke 2, 35) that a sword would pierce her soul as confirming that she had been invaded with doubts when she saw her Son crucified…On the other hand, almost all Eastern theologians, so far from acknowledging her spiritual and moral perfection, followed Origen in finding her guilty of human frailties…Only in Syria, where Marian devotion was particularly fervid, do we find Ephraem delineating her as free from every stain, like her Son…But he [Hilary] still regarded the birth as a natural one; he also took it for granted that Mary would have to face God’s judgment for her sins…On the other hand, he [Augustine] did not hold (as has sometimes been alleged) that she was born exempt from all taint of original sin (the later doctrine of the immaculate conception)…After Ephesus, admittedly, her divine maternity and perpetual virginity seem to have been accepted without question in East and West; but the old doubts about her sinlessness and moral perfection continued to be widely held.”^⁴

Some Catholic apologists like to cite some of the church fathers who called Mary “immaculate”, but this is a semantic anachronism as even many of Rome’s scholars have pointed out.

Mary’s Bodily Ascension: This dogma originally started with the Gnostics and was taught by only one church writer in the fifth century who did so on the mistaken notion that the Gnostic text which taught it was orthodox. The Transitus literature was later condemned by Pope Gelasius. This dogma has absolutely no basis in Scripture or historical tradition, and even the current Pope acknowledges this and has to appeal to a form of doctrinal development:

“Before Mary’s bodily Assumption into heaven was defined, all theological faculties in the world were consulted for their opinion. Our teachers’ answer was emphatically negative... ‘Tradition’ was identified with what could be proved on the basis of texts. Altaner, the patrologist from Würzburg...had proven in a scientifically persuasive manner that the doctrine of Mary’s bodily Assumption into heaven was unknown before the fifth century; this doctrine, therefore, he argued, could not belong to the ‘apostolic tradition.’ And this was his conclusion, which my teachers at Munich shared. This argument is compelling if you understand ‘tradition’ strictly as the handling down of fixed formulas and texts...But if you conceive of ‘tradition’ as a living process whereby the Holy Spirit introduces us to the fullness of truth and teaches us how to understand what previously we could still not grasp (cf. Jn 16:12-13), then subsequent ‘remembering’ (cf. Jn 16:4, for instance) can come to recognize what it had not caught sight of previously and yet was handed down in the original Word…”^⁵

Beliefs Specific to the West:

Purgatory: Although Catholic apologists have for centuries cited the likes of Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, etc. as believing in Purgatory, this is an anachronism. In reality, those mentioned above believed in Catharsis which would happen on the Last Day, not an intermediate state that happens before the Last Day. In reality, the belief in Purgatory was limited to the Western Church with its theology of merit. I covered this on my old website here^⁶ and here.^⁷

Augustine’s View of Original Sin: Augustine’s view of Original Sin, namely that the guilt of the first sin of Adam was transmitted to his offspring, was for the most part limited to the West. To this day, most^⁸ Eastern Orthodox believe that Adam’s sin added death and corruption to human nature, not the guilt of the sin as well.

Atonement Theories: The belief that Christ’s death gained merit that was placed in the Treasury of Satisfaction which is then communicated through the Church’s sacraments is limited to the Roman Catholic Church. The East never accepted merit theology.

Aristotelianism: Though there were theologians who appealed to Aristotle before him, Aquinas built an entire theology from Aristotelian categories, and the RCC later made his doctrines into dogma.

Transubstantiation: The teaching that the elements of the Eucharist change into the physical body and blood of Christ is specific to the RCC today (although some of the Eastern fathers taught something like it). Appealing to the passages in the early fathers that speak of Christ’s “Real Presence” is to commit the fallacy of equivocation since there were (and still are) several different “Real Presence” theories in the early church, only one of which involved a physical change.

Version of Justification: The theology of merit and grace as an infused substance (modeled after Aristotelian physics) is specific to the Roman Catholic Church. Instead, the Eastern Church has a theology of being unified with the uncreated, Divine energies of the Trinity.

Beatific Vision: The Roman Catholic Church, following Thomas Aquinas, teaches that the departed saints are given the vision of God’s essence. The East completely denies that one can see God’s essence but only His uncreated energies.

The Filioque: The addition to the Nicene Creed, called the Filioque, was accepted only in the West and was one of the causes of the Great Schism between the Western and Eastern Churches.

Beliefs That Were Either Not Held, Specifically Denied, or Innovated in the Early Church:

The Veneration of Images: The earliest Christians (mostly from the ante-Nicene era) not only did not use images, they specifically and forcefully repudiated their use. Even conservative Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox historians acknowledge this:

“Owing to the influence of the Old Testament prohibition of images, Christian veneration of images developed only after the victory of the Church over paganism. The Synod of Elvira (about 306) still prohibited figurative representations in the houses of God (Can. 36).”^⁹

“The primitive church,” says even a modern Roman Catholic historian, “had no images, of Christ, since most Christians at that time still adhered to the commandment of Moses (Ex. xx. 4); the more, that regard as well to the Gentile Christians as to the Jewish forbade all use of images. To the latter the exhibition and veneration of images would, of course, be an abomination, and to the newly converted heathen it might be a temptation to relapse into idolatry. In addition, the church was obliged, for her own honor, to abstain from images, particularly from any representation of the Lord, lest she should be regarded by unbelievers as merely a new kind and special sort of heathenism and creature-worship. And further, the early Christians had in their idea of the bodily form of the Lord no temptation, not the slightest incentive, to make likenesses of Christ. The oppressed church conceived its Master only under the form of a servant, despised and uncomely, as Isaiah, liii. 2, 3, describes the Servant of the Lord.”^¹⁰

“Christianity in the earliest period seems to have shared the aversion common in Judaism (though not an absolute aversion as is demonstrated by the highly decorated second-century synagogue at Dura Europos) to painted representations in religious contexts.”^¹¹

The Ignatian Episcopacy: Ignatius’ letters teaching the primacy of a single bishop per city have been used by Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox apologists for centuries to support their form of church government. In fact, they argue that since Ignatius was so close to the apostles, the single bishop model must have been taught by the apostles. However, it is clear, both from the New Testament and from First Clement, that the Ignatian episcopacy was an innovation of some of the Eastern churches for practical reasons:

“The fractionation in Rome favored a collegial presbyterial system of governance and prevented for a long time, until the second half of the 2C, the development of a monarchical episcopacy in the city…Before the second half of the 2C there was in Rome no monarchical episcopacy for the circles mutually bound in fellowship.
I summarize my view of the sources. Individual presbyters preside over the different house communities in the city, leading the worship and, as bishops, directing the care of the poor in their own house congregation. Each individual congregation therefore also has its own treasury, and ministered by the individual “episcopus” (Apol.1.67)…Both examples from the end of the century illustrate what was customary at least until the middle of the century for each group in the city: each individual group was presided over by its own presbyter-bishop.”^¹²

“These letters of Ignatius present us with a picture which is completely different from that which we know from other sources. If we compare the two, it appears that the letters of Ignatius must come from a later time…but the solution is a different one: what Ignatius includes in his letters, as often in church history, is not a description of the real situation, but a demand. In fact, matters had taken a completely different course in the churches to which Ignatius addressed in his letters, as their texts show clearly when we examine them more closely. Ignatius is greatly ahead of the actual development; not infrequently it took several generations until the monarchical episcopate was generally accepted.”^¹³

“The organization, such as we can reconstruct it, does not resemble the hierarchical arrangement of the clergy described in Ignatius’s Letters. It comes closer to the synagogal structure of Diaspora Judaism, an organizational arrangement that, in turn, closely resembled that in Greco- Roman collegia. Such arrangements were available in Paul’s milieu. No long period of internal development was required for them to emerge…There is a complete absence of legitimation of any organizational element in these letters. Leaders are not designated as priests, and none of their functions are cultic in character. Instead, they are given the sort of secular designations used in clubs, and their functions are practical and quotidian…Nothing in the letters supports the idea that structure is in the process of creation…The elements of church structure found in 1 Timothy and Titus are far closer to the elements suggested by the undisputed letters of Paul than to the ecclesiastical arrangements outlined by Ignatius of Antioch.”^¹⁴

Not only does this prove that the church governments advocated by Rome and the East are false by their own standard,^¹⁵ it also proves that even Christian writers who were taught by the Apostles could innovate doctrine and practice. This casts a grave shadow upon the reliability of using historical theology (namely tradition) as a guide to the content and meaning of apostolic doctrine.

The Sacerdotal Priesthood: A sacerdotal priesthood did not arise in the Church until the third century when Tertullian started to ascribe sacramental functions to the Christian ministry and Cyprian asserted the same even further:

“Tertullian was the first who expressly and directly asserts sacerdotal claims on behalf of the Christian ministry, and calls it “sacerdotium,” although he also strongly affirms the universal priesthood of all believers. Cyprian (d. 258) goes still further, and applies all the privileges, duties, and responsibilities of the Aaronic priesthood to the officers of the Christian church, and constantly calls them sacerdotes and sacerdotium. He may therefore be called the proper father of the sacerdotal conception of the Christian ministry as a mediating agency between God and the people. During the third century it became customary to apply the term “priest” directly and exclusively to the Christian ministers especially the bishops. In the same manner the whole ministry, and it alone, was called “clergy,” with a double reference to its presidency and its peculiar relation to God.”^¹⁶

The Eucharist as a Propitiatory Sacrifice: The earliest Christians knew nothing of the Eucharist as a propitiatory sacrifice but only as a sacrifice of thanksgiving, a contrite heart toward God:

“The ante-Nicene fathers uniformly conceived the Eucharist as a thank-offering of the church; the congregation offering the consecrated elements of bread and wine, and in them itself, to God…The germs of the Roman doctrine appear in Cyprian about the middle of the third century, in connection with his high-churchly doctrine of the clerical priesthood.”^¹⁷

“The use of the word (sacrifice) in this connection is not to be understood as a reference to the sacrifice of Christ. The word was a common description of prayers, alms and gifts in the usage of the time. It is the “sacrifice” of the people to which reference is being made.”^¹⁸

Private Confession: Despite the Council of Trent’s claim that private confession to a priest was always the practice of the Church from the time of the apostles^¹⁹, all the evidence tells us that the early church only practiced public confession^²⁰:

“In spite of the ingenious arguments of certain scholars, there are still no signs of a sacrament of private penance (i.e. confession to a priest, followed by absolution and the imposition of a penance) such as Catholic Christendom knows to-day. The system which seems to have existed in the Church at this time, and for centuries afterwards, was wholly public, involving confession, a period of penance and exclusion from communion, and formal absolution and restoration - the whole process being called exomologesis. The last of these was normally bestowed by the bishop, as Hippolytus's prayer of episcopal consecration implies, but in his absence might be delegated to a priest. There is plenty of evidence that sinners were encouraged to open their hearts privately to a priest, but nothing to show that this led up to anything more than ghostly counsel. Indeed, for the lesser sins which even good Christians daily commit and can scarcely avoid, no ecclesiastical censure seems to have been thought necessary; individuals were expected to deal with them themselves by prayer, almsgiving and mutual forgiveness. Public penance was for graver sins; it was, as far as we know, universal, and was an extremely solemn affair, capable of being undergone only once in a lifetime.”^²¹

Even the modern Catechism of the Catholic Church states:

“During the seventh century Irish missionaries, inspired by the Eastern monastic tradition, took to continental Europe the ‘private’ practice of penance, which does not require public and prolonged completion of penitential works before reconciliation with the Church. From that time on, the sacrament has been performed in secret between penitent and priest. This new practice envisioned the possibility of repetition and so opened the way to a regular frequenting of this sacrament. It allowed the forgiveness of grave sins and venial sins to be integrated into one sacramental celebration. In its main lines this is the form of penance that the Church has practiced down to our day.”^²²

Eastern Orthodoxy

Beliefs Specific to the East:

The Essence/Energies Distinction: The distinction between God’s essence and His energies was never accepted by the Roman Catholic Church which followed Thomas Aquinas.

Apophaticism: The Western Church never accepted a strict apophatic theology of God but held a healthy balance between apophatic and cataphatic theology instead.

View of Adam’s Fall: The Eastern Church teaches that mankind inherits only the consequences of Adam’s Original Sin, not his guilt. The West, on the other hand, accepted Augustine’s formulation that mankind inherits Adam’s guilt as well.

Beliefs That Were Either Not Held, Specifically Denied, or Innovated in the Early Church:

The Veneration of Images: (see above)

The Ignatian Episcopacy: (see above)

The Sacerdotal Priesthood: (see above)

Acceptance of Heretical Baptism: (see above)

Private Confession: (see above)

Differing Views Within the Early Church

The Council of Ephesus: The Patriarchate of Babylon (which traces its apostolic origins to St. Thomas) denied the decrees and beliefs of the Council of Ephesus and accepted Nestorianism. In fact, many of the Assyrian Christians are Nestorian to this day. On the basis of tradition, the Nestorian churches have as much a reason to believe that their belief is apostolic as do the Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox.

The Council of Chalcedon: All of the churches which call themselves “Oriental Orthodox” trace their origins back to those Christians who did not accept the Chalcedonian formula. These churches include the Copts, the Syriac Orthodox, the Armenian Orthodox, and the Ethiopian Orthodox. Again, on the basis of tradition, these churches have as much a reason to believe that their belief is apostolic as do the Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox.

The Old Testament Canon: While most of the Eastern Orthodox accept the Apocrypha and the Roman Catholic Church has accepted it dogmatically, many of the church fathers (especially the most learned) did not accept it. They include such names as: Melito of Sardis, Julius Africanus, Hilary of Poitiers, Cyril of Jerusalem, Athanasius, Epiphanius, Gregory Nazianzus, Amphilochius, Basil the Great, Rufinus, Jerome, Anastasius of Antioch, Primasius, Nicolas of Lyra, Pope Gregory the Great, and John of Damascus.

Differing Views of the Eucharist: Contrary to the Council of Trent, there were, in fact, many beliefs concerning the nature of the Eucharist after consecration within the early church. Among them included: the mystical view, the consubstantiation view, as well as a transubstantiation-like view. To quote Philip Schaff:

“…we distinguish three views: the mystic view of Ignatius, Justin Martyr, and Irenaeus; the symbolical view of Tertullian and Cyprian; and the allegorical or spiritualistic view of Clement of Alexandria and Origen…The realistic and mystic view is represented by several fathers and the early liturgies…With the act of consecration a change accordingly takes place in the elements, whereby they become vehicles and organs of the life of Christ, although by no means necessarily changed into another substance…The symbolical view, though on a realistic basis, is represented first by Eusebius, who calls the Supper a commemoration of Christ by the symbols of his body and blood, and takes the flesh and blood of Christ in the sixth chapter of John to mean the words of Christ, which are spirit and life, the true food of the soul, to believers…But it is striking that even Athanasius, “the father of orthodoxy,” recognized only a spiritual participation, a self-communication of the nourishing divine virtue of the Logos, in the symbols of the bread and wine, and incidentally evinces a doctrine of the Eucharist wholly foreign to the Catholic, and very like the older Alexandrian or Origenistic, and the Calvinistic, though by no means identical with the latter…As to the adoration of the consecrated elements: This follows with logical necessity from the doctrine of transubstantiation, and is the sure touchstone of it. No trace of such adoration appears, however, in the ancient liturgies, and the whole patristic literature yields only four passages from which this practice can be inferred; plainly showing that the doctrine of transubstantiation was not yet fixed in the consciousness of the church.”^²³

Acceptance of Heretical Baptism: In the midst of the Donatist controversy, the early church accepted heretical Trinitarian baptisms as valid. However, two centuries before, the same controversy took place between Rome and North Africa, but this time the majority of the churches in North Africa and Asia sided against the acceptance of heretical baptisms. In fact, several church fathers rejected heretical baptisms:

“The most eminent Greek fathers of the Nicene age, on the other hand, adhered to the position of Cyprian and Firmilian. Athanasius, Gregory Nazianzen, Basil, and Cyril of Jerusalem regarded, besides the proper form, the true trinitarian faith on the part of the baptizing community, as an essential condition of the validity of baptism. The 45th of the so-called Apostolic Canons threatens those with excommunication who received converted heretics without rebaptism. But a milder view gradually obtained even in the East, which settled at last upon a compromise.”^²⁴

Atonement Theories: According to the noted church historian, J.N.D. Kelly:

“The student who seeks to understand the soteriology of the fourth and early fifth centuries will be sharply disappointed if he expects to find anything corresponding to the elaborately worked out synthesis which the contemporary theology of the Trinity and the Incarnation presents. In both these latter departments controversy forced fairly exact definition on the Church, whereas the redemption did not become a battle-ground for rival schools until the twelfth century, when Anselm’s Cur dues homo (c.1097) focused attention on it. Instead he must be prepared to pick his way through a variety of theories, to all appearance unrelated and even mutually incompatible, existing side by side and sometimes sponsored by the same theologian.”^²⁵

To be fair, Kelly goes on to say that the different theories held much in common. However, the commonalities shared by these theories are also found in the classic Protestant theory of the atonement, penal substitution. The East, following Athanasius, held to a more Platonic view of the atonement while the West held to a more legal and judicial view. These differences remain to this day.

Differing Views on Justification: Alister McGrath notes:

“For the first three hundred and fifty years of the history of the church, her teaching on justification was inchoate and ill-defined. There had never been a serious controversy over the matter, such as those which had so stimulated the development of Christology over the period...The medieval period was characterized by its attempts to accumulate biblical and patristic material considered to be relevant to particular issues of theological interpretation, and by its attempt to develop hermeneutical methods to resolve the apparent contradictions encountered in this process.”^²⁶

Catharsis: Amongst some of the earliest Christians, especially at Alexandria, was the belief in Catharsis, the purifying fire that would cleanse unperfected Christians of their sins on the Day of Judgment. This belief was held by Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, and others. Today, the Roman Catholic Church has accepted its offshoot doctrine, Purgatory, and the Eastern Orthodox have rejected it all together.

Eschatology: One of the earliest church fathers, Papias, held to a form of Premillennialism^²⁷ while most of the later church fathers held to Amillennialism.

The Date of Easter: In the late second century, there was a controversy on the exact day that Christians were supposed to celebrate Easter. Victor, the bishop of Rome, said that Easter should be celebrated one day, and the Eastern bishops represented by Polycrates, bishop of Ephesus, said another. Both claimed apostolic tradition for their respective dates!

“For the parishes of all Asia, as from an older tradition, held that the fourteenth day of the moon, on which day the Jews were commanded to sacrifice the lamb, should be observed as the feast of the Saviour’s passover. It was therefore necessary to end their fast on that day, whatever day of the week it should happen to be. But it was not the custom of the churches in the rest of the world to end it at this time, as they observed the practice which, from apostolic tradition, has prevailed to the present time, of terminating the fast on no other day than on that of the resurrection of our Saviour.”^²⁸

Mary’s Perpetual Virginity: As Basil relates, there were not just a few in the early church who believed that Mary had other children:

“…but Basil of Caesarea, when criticizing the latter, implied that such a view was widely held and, though not accepted by himself, was not incompatible with orthodoxy...”^²⁹

Not All the Early Fathers Had a Complete Canon: Certain fathers (e.g. Arnobius), especially the earlier ones, did not have a complete canon, and this resulted in a massively lopsided theology. Sometimes they were totally ignorant of the Scriptures resulting in a theology that is more akin to Greek philosophy than Christianity.

Fathers with Bad Theology: Some of the church fathers were the authors of some of the most horrendous forms of heresy within the Christian Church. Arnobius was the author of annihilationism. Clement of Alexandria was the originator of Universalism. In fact, there are many within both Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy who consider Universalism to be a possibility, and why shouldn’t they? It’s found in their own ‘Tradition’!

Obviously Wrong Exegesis: There are cases in which the church fathers obviously misinterpreted the Bible resulting in generations of Christians after them making the same mistake. For instance, Augustine used Luke 14:23 to justify the state’s use of force to quell heresy. He failed to notice that the parable was about God’s judgment upon the Jewish nation. This became the policy of the Latin Church for centuries to come, but for today’s Roman Catholics, such an interpretation wouldn’t even cross their minds.

Tradition Based on Bad Science: In Roman Catholicism, any attempt during sexual intercourse to not have a child (i.e. contraception) is considered sinful. This is based on tradition that dates back to the Middle Ages (and probably before that). However, this tradition was based upon a faulty biology:

“Aquinas, in the Summa contra Gentiles, in a chapter on “the disordered emission of semen” treats both masturbation and contraception as a crime against humanity, second only to homicide. Such a view is natural in the context of a biological belief that only the male gamete provides the active element in conception, so that the sperm is an early stage of the very same individual as eventually comes to birth. Masturbation is then the same kind of thing, on a minor scale, as the exposure of an infant…But the view that masturbation is a poor man’s homicide cannot survive the knowledge that both male and female gametes contribute equally to the genetic constitution of the offspring.”^³⁰

Thus, a belief was frozen in time as tradition and became part of dogmatic morality all because of a faulty biology.

Emperor-Enforced Orthodoxy: As I had noted in the “Differing Views Within the Early Church” section above, not all of Christendom accepted the Council of Ephesus or the Chalcedonian formula. In fact, much more of the Eastern Church might have been Nestorian or Monophysite today if it weren’t for the fact that the imperial state enforced the beliefs of Ephesus and Chalcedon upon the Empire and expelled heretics from its borders. Thus, what is now Eastern Orthodoxy is simply Byzantine Imperial Christianity and not the universal faith of all Christians.

The Influence of Greco-Roman Thought and Culture: I covered this important aspect which is relevant to any discussion of the early church here.

No Way to Substantiate an Oral Tradition: Both Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox implicitly assume that their oral traditions were apostolic and passed on faithfully without contortion, addition, or subtraction. However, the problem with this is that there is simply no way to substantiate such a claim, and in fact, there are numerous examples from church history which demonstrate the unreliability of oral traditions.

The Case of Papias’ Eschatology: One of the early church historians, Eusebius, records the beliefs and claims of an apostolic father named Papias:

“But it is fitting to subjoin to the words of Papias which have been quoted, other passages from his works in which he relates some other wonderful events which he claims to have received from tradition. That Philip the apostle dwelt at Hierapolis with his daughters has been already stated. But it must be noted here that Papias, their contemporary, says that he heard a wonderful tale from the daughters of Philip. For he relates that in his time one rose from the dead. And he tells another wonderful story of Justus, surnamed Barsabbas: that he drank a deadly poison, and yet, by the grace of the Lord, suffered no harm. The Book of Acts records that the holy apostles after the ascension of the Saviour, put forward this Justus, together with Matthias, and prayed that one might be chosen in place of the traitor Judas, to fill up their number. The account is as follows: “And they put forward two, Joseph, called Barsabbas, who was surnamed Justus, and Matthias; and they prayed and said.” The same writer gives also other accounts which he says came to him through unwritten tradition, certain strange parables and teachings of the Saviour, and some other more mythical things. To these belong his statement that there will be a period of some thousand years after the resurrection of the dead, and that the kingdom of Christ will be set up in material form on this very earth. I suppose he got these ideas through a misunderstanding of the apostolic accounts, not perceiving that the things said by them were spoken mystically in figures. For he appears to have been of very limited understanding, as one can see from his discourses.”^³¹

Papias claimed that the eschatology of Premillennialism was an apostolic tradition passed down orally. However, both the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches reject Premillennialism in favor of Amillennialism.

The Case of Irenaeus and Jesus’ Age: In an attempt to make an argument against Gnosticism, Irenaeus claimed that an oral tradition, which had supposedly been passed down from the apostles, taught that Jesus was around the age of fifty when he died. However, anyone who has studied the Gospels knows that Jesus was actually about thirty when He died. Irenaeus’ claim was one of the first times in which a later Christian said that he had received an oral apostolic tradition, and guess what? He was wrong.

The Case of *Pseudo*-Dionysius: In the fifth century, there appeared a work that had supposedly been written by Dionysius the Areopagite, one of Paul’s converts (Acts 17:34). It came to exert great influence on Christian theology in both the East and the West partly due to the fact that it was believed to have been written by one with close ties to Paul. However, beginning in the early Renaissance period, it became clear that the Dionysian writings could not have been written any earlier than the fifth century and are thus known as the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius. These writings greatly affected Eastern Orthodoxy which maintains the theology derived from these works as ‘Tradition’. This is another clear example of how easily a non-apostolic belief claiming to be ‘apostolic tradition’ can infiltrate the Church and become frozen as dogma. If a written source (in which the authenticity can be examined) can infiltrate the Church that easily, can one imagine how easily an oral tradition could do the same?

The Case of the Date of Easter: (See “The Date of Easter” under ‘Differing Views Within the Early Church’ above.)

The Case of Heretical Baptisms: As noted above in the discussion of “The Acceptance of Heretical Baptism”, there was a conflict in the third century church over the acceptance of heretical baptisms. What was not mentioned was that both sides claimed apostolic tradition! Cyprian records Pope Stephen’s claims:

“But that they who are at Rome do not observe those things in all cases which are handed down from the beginning, and vainly pretend the authority of the apostles…”^³²

Cyprian goes on to say that Stephen’s apostolic tradition is false and that the rest of the churches of the world agree with his (i.e. Cyprian’s) ‘apostolic’ tradition:

“…any one may know also from the fact, that concerning the celebration of Easter, and concerning many other sacraments of divine matters, he may see that there are some diversities among them, and that all things are not observed among them alike, which are observed at Jerusalem, just as in very many other provinces also many things are varied because of the difference of the places and names. And yet on this account there is no departure at all from the peace and unity of the Catholic Church, such as Stephen has now dared to make; breaking the peace against you, which his predecessors have always kept with you in mutual love and honour, even herein defaming Peter and Paul the blessed apostles, as if the very men delivered this who in their epistles execrated heretics, and warned us to avoid them. Whence, it appears that this tradition is of men which maintains heretics, and asserts that they have baptism, which belongs to the Church alone.”^³³

Cyprian records a letter from Firmilian, bishop of Cappadocia, which sides with him:

“But with respect to the refutation of custom which they seem to oppose to the truth, who is so foolish as to prefer custom to truth, or when he sees the light, not to forsake the darkness?-unless most ancient custom in any respect avail the Jews, upon the advent of Christ, that is, the Truth, in remaining in their old usage, and forsaking the new way of truth. And this indeed you Africans are able to say against Stephen, that when you knew the truth you forsook the error of custom. But we join custom to truth, and to the Romans’ custom we oppose custom, but the custom of truth; holding from the beginning that which was delivered by Christ and the apostles. Nor do we remember that this at any time began among us, since it has always been observed here, that we knew none but one Church of God, and accounted no baptism holy except that of the holy Church.”^³⁴

Eusebius records the letter of Dionysius of Alexandria to Sixtus I about Stephen:

“‘He therefore had written previously concerning Helenus and Firmilianus, and all those in Cilicia and Cappadocia and Galatia and the neighboring nations, saying that he would not commune with them for this same cause; namely, that they re-baptized heretics. But consider the importance of the matter. For truly in the largest synods of the bishops, as I learn, decrees have been passed on this subject, that those coming over from heresies should be instructed, and then should be washed and cleansed from the filth of the old and impure leaven. And I wrote entreating him concerning all these things.’”^³⁵

The Meaning of Justification: When the Bible was translated into Latin, the language of the West, the verb for “to justify,” “dikaioun,” was translated as “iustificare.” Alister McGrath notes the problems that this caused:

“The general tendency among Latin-speaking theologians was to follow Augustine of Hippo…in interpreting iustificare as iustum facere…While this may be an acceptable interpretation of iusificare considered in isolation, it is not an acceptable interpretation of the verb considered as the Latin equivalent of [dikaioun]…it would appear that the Greek verb has the primary sense of being considered or estimated as righteous, whereas the Latin verb denotes being righteous, the reason why one is considered righteous by others... [I]t is necessary to observe that the early theologians of the western church were dependant upon their Latin versions of the Bible, and approached their texts and their subject with a set of presuppositions which owed more to the Latin language and culture than to Christianity itself. The initial transference of a Hebrew concept to a Greek, and subsequently to a Latin, context point to a fundamental alteration in the concepts of ‘justification’ and ‘righteousness’ as the gospel spread from its Palestinian source to the western world.”^³⁶

The meaning of “to justify” as “to make intrinsically righteous” later became dogma in the Roman Catholic Church at the Council of Trent. Again, we see another example of a belief becoming frozen in the Church as a “tradition” that was, in fact, based upon misinformation.

Scriptural Arguments for Tradition are to No Avail: The pro-tradition arguments from Scripture are to no avail since they a.) assume too much (see point 14. below), b.) can’t identify the ‘traditions’ spoken of with either Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox traditions, and c.) assume that that was to be the normative state of the Church for succeeding generations. I’ve started to cover some of the Scriptural arguments for ‘Tradition’ in my series called “The Eisegeted Verses”.

Scripture Assumes the Unreliability of Oral Tradition: There are multiple places, especially in the Old Testament Prophets, where God orders the prophets to write down what He had told them over their prophetic ministry so that succeeding generations would have knowledge of what was said (e.g. Isaiah 30:8, Jeremiah 36:2-4, Habakkuk 2:2-3, etc.). The very existence of the Gospels shows that the Apostles, like the Prophets before them, believed that only a written record, not an oral one, could withstand the test of time. The Protestant does not deny Apostolic Tradition. However, the only reliable way that we can know the content of this tradition is from the written text of Scripture.

Scriptural Perspicuity Should Be the Default Belief: First, why should we believe that the apostles wrote less clearly than when they spoke? Secondly, if one does not take the material sufficiency position, the burden of proof is on them to prove that these traditions were different in content than that of Scripture. Let them produce the documentation. Unless proven otherwise, the formal sufficiency of Scripture should be the default position.

Matthew 15: Christ clearly testifies to the need to test allegedly ‘divine’ traditions by the written Word instead of interpreting the written Word through the lens of tradition. The argument that Christ was only speaking of admittedly human-made traditions is completely false since the Rabbis taught that many of these traditions were given to Biblical personages and subsequently passed down orally through the Scribes, and thus, the situation is directly analogous. I covered this here.^³⁷

God Doesn’t Always Work Through Succession: Both Rome and Constantinople claim that the bishops of their Churches are the successors of the apostles, and so, Christians should be obedient to them since they are given this Divine authority that has been passed down through time. However, it should be noted that God frequently does not work through succession:

“There is in the Bible teaching a strong strain of discontinuity, which seems to me as yet almost wholly unacknowledged in Roman Catholic thought. Saul is anointed king and then deposed…There are prophets who belong to professional guilds, and others, like Elisha, who are anointed by a predecessor. But the great prophets are not among them…And finally the Epistle to the Hebrews points out that Jesus, the great High Priest, could not have been a priest at all if he had had to rely on historic succession, since he came from Judah and a priest must be descended from Levi; on the contrary, Jesus stands in the order of Melchizedek, who is notorious for having no genealogy…To say that God has committed himself to working through a historic succession, but has reserved the right of departing from this method in exceptional circumstances is to say that most of the prophets in the Old Testament, and John the Baptist, Jesus, and Paul in the New Testament, are exceptions to a divine rule which finds its full expression in the temple priesthood in the one case and in the Sadducees and Pharisees in the other.”^³⁸

The fact that one bishop holds authority through an unbroken chain of succession which can be traced back to the apostles does not prove that they hold any divine authority. Scripture testifies that God has frequently disregarded the old authorities in favor of new ones which he brought forth from humble beginnings.

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1 http://contra-gentes.blogspot.com/2008/02/papal-primacy-by-klaus-schatz.html

2 Yves M.-J. Congar, Tradition and Traditions: An Historical and a Theological Essay (London: Burns & Oats, 1966), pp. 398-399.

3 Klaus Schatz covers this in a limited fashion in my post on Papal Primacy above. I also have a few examples on my old website here:

http://www.lightshinesindarkness.com/fallible_pope_1.htm

http://www.lightshinesindarkness.com/fallible_pope_2.htm

http://www.lightshinesindarkness.com/fallible_pope_3.htm

4 J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (Peabody, MA: Prince Press, reprinted 2003), p.493, 495-498.

5 Joseph Ratzinger, Milestones (Ignatius, 1998), pp. 58-59.

6 http://www.lightshinesindarkness.com/purgatory_history_1.htm

7 http://www.lightshinesindarkness.com/purgatory_history_2.htm

8 Though, I should note that some Eastern Orthodox theologians do accept Augustine’s view.

9 Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma (Rockford, Illinois: Tan Books and Publishers, Inc., 1974), p. 320.

10 Hefele, as found in Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, 3.8.110

11 The Westminster Handbook To Patristic Theology (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004), p. 32.

12 P. Lampe, From Paul to Valentinus (Fortress 2003), 397, 400.

13 K. Aland, A History of Christianity (Fortress 1985), 1:12.

14 L. Johnson, The First and Second Letters to Timothy (Doubleday 2001), pp.75-76.

15 That is, the standard of tradition “believed always, everywhere, and by all.”

16 Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, 2.4.42

17 Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, Vol. III, ch.7, part 96.

18 Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible 2:125a.

19 “If any one denieth, either that sacramental confession was instituted, or is necessary to salvation, of divine right; or saith, that the manner of confessing secretly to a priest alone, which the Church hath ever observed from the beginning, and doth observe, is alien from the institution and command of Christ, and is a human invention; let him be anathema.” Council of Trent, session 14, canon 6

20 For more information on this, see here.

21 J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (Peabody,MA: Prince Press, reprinted 2003), p.216-217.

22 Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1447

23 Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, Vol. III, ch.7, part 95.

24 Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, 3.7.92

25 J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (Peabody, MA: Prince Press, reprinted 2003), p.375 (emphasis mine).

26 Alister E. McGrath, Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification, 2^nd edition (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, reprinted 1998), pp.23, 38.

27 Eusebius, Church History 3.39.8-13

28 Emphasis mine, Eusebius, Church History 5.23.1

29 J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (Peabody, MA: Prince Press, reprinted 2003), p.495.

30 A. Kenney, What I Believe (Continuum 2006), pp. 92-93.

31 Emphasis mine, Eusebius, Church History 3.39.8-13

32 Emphasis mine, Cyprian, The Epistles of Cyprian, Letter LXXIV.6

33 Emphasis mine, Cyprian, The Epistles of Cyprian, Letter LXXIV.6

34 Emphasis mine, Cyprian, The Epistles of Cyprian, Letter LXXIV.19

35 Emphasis mine, Eusebius, Church History 7.7.4-5

36 Alister E. McGrath, Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification, 2^nd edition (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, reprinted 1998), pp.14, 15.

37 http://contra-gentes.blogspot.com/2007/09/alfred-edersheim-on-matthew-15-and.html

38 Our Dialogue with Rome, pp. 64-66.

The Doctrinal Chaos Argument

2008-04-15T20:29:00.000-07:00

One of the frequent objections to the Protestant rule of faith, sola Scriptura, is the “Doctrinal Chaos” argument. It is usually stated along these lines:

“Just look what happens when people believe that Scripture alone should be followed. There are just so many Protestant denominations, and yet, they all follow the same Bible. I heard there were as many as 20,000! Christ promised us a unity of beliefs (John 17:31), not a great splintering of denominations. If a rule of faith such as sola Scriptura causes division, then obviously it can’t be an effective (much less the true) rule of faith. This clearly shows the necessity for the Church and its traditions to bring unity to Christendom and clarify what the Bible says.”

This argument has probably been used with great success in convincing many a Protestant to convert to either Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy. However, there are a number of problems with this argument:

Misleading Numbers: First of all, the number of 20,000 that is constantly used is a bit misleading. The source of this number comes from David A. Barrett’s World Christian Encyclopedia: A Comparative Survey of Churches and Religions in the Modern World A.D. 1900—2000 (ed. David A. Barrett; New York: Oxford University Press, 1982). The actual number of Protestant “denominations” listed in this work is actually about 8,000, but of course, this number would still be gladly used by Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox apologists. However, Barrett also lists the number of Roman Catholic denominations at 223 and the number of Orthodox denominations at 580!^¹ So, the numbers are derived using a different definition of “denomination” than is normally used.

In fact, Barrett is using “denomination” to refer to any body that retains a semi-autonomous jurisdiction. Thus, if there were ten Independent Baptist churches in a single city with all the same beliefs, then this would be counted as ten different “denominations”. Furthermore, if there were two Southern Baptist congregations in a city holding the same beliefs but had different worship styles (traditional vs. contemporary), then this too would be counted as two different “denominations”. So, the number of actual denominations would shrink greatly from 8,000 to some number probably within the low hundreds. See here^² and here^³ for more information.

But it doesn’t stop there. There are several separate denominations which hold to the same confession of faith. For instance, the Presbyterian Church of America, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, and several Reformed denominations all hold to the Westminster Confession of Faith. This could be said of several Baptist denominations which hold to one of London Baptist Confessions of Faith. This would shrink the number of actual separate beliefs further down into a few dozen or so.

Lastly, it should be noted (as I argue below) that most Protestant denominations don’t differ on most theological issues and have no differences at all on issues of prime importance (i.e., necessary for salvation). In reality, the real divisions are a permutation of a few issues of secondary importance^⁴: paedo-baptism vs. credo-baptism, Calvinism vs. Arminianism, church government, Pentecostalism^⁵ vs. cessationism, a few minor^⁶ sacramental divides (Luther’s, Calvin’s, and Zwingli’s), etc. So, the amount of real, substantive disagreement is actually quite small.^⁷

Begging the Question: The argument begs the question of the importance of visible unity against Protestant ecclesiology which does not emphasize institutional unity at all. It uses Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox ecclesiastical standards and priorities to judge a theology that does not even accept those standards! To the Protestant, the Church is the mystical body of the elect united spiritually to Christ and to each other. The visible church is the congregate of that body (plus pseudo-believers of course). Whether the elect meet in one church building or another with slightly different beliefs is of little importance given Protestant ecclesiology since ultimate unity will be realized at the eschaton.

In fact, according to Reformed theology, God in His providence allows for competition among viewpoints so that the truth will be revealed and refined (1 Corinthians 11:19). In this case, disunity is a means unto an end. Lastly, the appeal to John 10:16 and John 17:20-21 is eisegetical since the unity being spoken of there refers to a unity of all people groups (i.e., ethnic and diachronic) rather than an institutional unity (see John 11:51-52).

In summary, to assume that the main function^⁸ of one’s rule of faith is to be a problem-solving device which brings about visible unity simply begs the question in favor of high-church ecclesiology. Rather, the rule of faith is only supposed to show us what we should believe about God and our duty to Him. Thus, the argument is dead because it commits this fundamental fallacy.

Overstatement of Division: The argument overstates the differences between Protestant groups. In reality, most Protestant groups are very much united doctrinally. As J.I. Packer noted:

“The extent of unanimity among its adherents has been remarkable. If one reviews the historic Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican, Congregational and Baptist confessions, or compares, for example Calvin’s Institutes with the systematic theologies of F. Pieper the Lutheran, Charles Hodge and Louis Berkhof the Presbyterians, E.A. Litton and W.H. Griffith Thomas the Anglicans, W.B. Pope the Methodist and A.H. Strong the Baptist, or if one examines the preaching and spirituality of churches which actively upheld sola Scriptura as a principle for determining faith and action, what impresses is the oneness of overall outlook and the width of the area over which substantially identical positions were taught. Whether those involved felt close to each other as they sparred over points of specific agreement, or defended their denominations against criticism, is perhaps doubtful; but what is not doubtful is that those who historically have held to sola Scriptura, recognizing no magesterium save that of the Bible itself, have been at one on all essentials and on most details too, in a very striking way. If evidence tending to confirm the clarity of Scripture is called for, this fact will surely qualify.”^⁹

Though I may have doctrinal differences with a Methodist or a Presbyterian (and some important ones at that), I can still attend their church and receive communion there with a clear conscience.

Is the Opposite Valid?: If disagreement over a doctrine means that that doctrine is unclear in Scripture, then does agreement over a doctrine mean that it is clear in Scripture? Protestants agree on the nature of justification by faith alone. Will the Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox concede that this is Scriptural since there is agreement amongst those who hold to Scripture alone?

Naïve Assumption of a Single Cause: The argument assumes that the *only* possible cause of disagreement between Protestant traditions is that the Bible is not clear enough. However, there are actually a number of reasons for disagreement that have nothing to do with the Bible’s perspicuity (or lack thereof):

Influence of Humanistic Philosophy: Some Christians, having been influenced by autonomous philosophy^¹⁰, have forced Scripture to say whatever their rationalistic epistemology dictates. This is not sola Scriptura but partim Scriptura/partim philosophia. Take free-will in the early church, for example:

“The earlier patristic period represents the age of the exploration of concepts, when the proclamation of the gospel within a pagan culture was accompanied by an exploitation of both Hellenistic culture and pagan philosophy as vehicles for theological advancement…Indeed, by the end of the fourth century, the Greek fathers had formulated a teaching on human free will based upon philosophical rather than biblical foundations. Standing in the great Platonic tradition, heavily influenced by Philo, and reacting against the fatalisms of their day, they taught that man was utterly free in his choice of good or evil…It is quite possible that the curious and disturbing tendency of the early fathers to minimize original sin and emphasize the freedom of fallen man is a consequence of their anti-Gnostic polemic…Justin’s anti-fatalist arguments can be adduced from practically any of the traditional pagan refutations of astral fatalisms, going back to the second century B.C.”^¹¹

This form of epistemology arose again within Protestant circles during the Arminian Remonstrance. For an example of this, see Walls and Dongell’s Why I am Not a Calvinist where they admit that the Arminian idea of libertarian free-will is derived not from Scripture but from contested philosophical arguments.

Emotional Dislike of Certain Doctrines: Some people are emotionally repulsed by certain Biblical doctrines such as Original Sin, Federal Headship, Predestination, Election, Eternal Conscious Punishment, etc., and so, they force a reading of the Bible to conform to their tastes.

Verse Isolation: Many exegetes throughout the ages have taken single Bible verses removed from their surrounding context and built entire doctrines around their eisegeted verse. This ignores Scripture rather than building on it. It is ‘verse alone’ rather than ‘Scripture alone’.

Ignorance of Grammatico-Historical Context: Exegetes of the past have frequently ignored Scripture’s sitz im leben resulting in eisegesis. For example, if an author of Scripture uses a proverbial phrase particular to a place and time period, and the modern reader is unaware of that, then that reader would probably misunderstand what Scripture says and end up eisegeting the verse.

Influence of Tradition: During the Reformation, several of the Reformers were inclined to believe in certain doctrines simply because they had been in the Church for a long period of time. Of course, these Reformers also believed that these traditions could be supported by Scripture, but nevertheless, the possibility still remains that this psychological influence could have caused them to misinterpret Scripture.

Sin: There have always been men who have gone with their pride instead of accepting correction. To quote J.I. Packer again:

“The matters on which adherents of this principle have differed have been secondary. To the traditional Roman Catholic complaint that Protestant Biblicism produces endless divisions in the church, the appropriate reply is twofold: firstly, the really deep divisions have been caused not by those who maintained sola Scriptura, but by those Roman Catholic and Protestant alike, who rejected it; second, when adherents of sola Scriptura have split from each other the cause has been sin rather than Protestant biblicism, for in convictional terms the issues in debate have not been of the first magnitude.”^¹²

Some Don’t Practice Sola Scriptura: Many of the newer denominations don’t even practice sola Scriptura. Pentecostals have Scripture as their main authority but also rely on charismatic experiences and ongoing revelation. Some heretical denominations of the past, such as the Seventh-Day Adventists, were started by those who claimed to be prophets, and some of their writings are used along with Scripture.

Non-perspicuity in Non-Essentials: On some non-essential doctrines, Protestants will admit a degree of non-perspicuity in Scripture. Eschatology immediately comes to mind. In fact, the Westminster Confession of Faith clearly states this:

“All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all; yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed, for salvation, are so clearly propounded and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them.”^¹³

The very possibility of all of these reasons should force us to give pause before we throw our hands up in the air and conclude that lack of Biblical clarity is at fault simply because of the presence of denominational differences.

Old Covenant Unity: There was no infallible teaching authority under the Old Covenant system, and this even resulted in a number of competing viewpoints once the idea of theology began to develop after the death of the last prophet. The Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, Zealots, the schools of Hillel vs. Shamai were all sects in existence at the time of Christ. If God did not find it necessary to install an infallible teaching authority under this covenant with the competition of viewpoints that resulted, then why should we think that any disunity under the New Covenant is unacceptable?

Of course, at this point, the Catholic or Orthodox apologist may retort that because there has been a change in covenants to a “better” covenant, the New, with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, then the gift of infallibility has been given and God’s standard of unity has changed. There are a few problems with this that come to mind. First, it assumes that the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is supposed to cause institutional unity. Where’s the exegetical argument? Second, as it applies to the Roman Catholic Magesterium, the counter-argument assumes that the Holy Spirit would only be given to a teaching authority. Thirdly and related to the second point, Scripture, especially in the Old Testament prophets, says that not only will the teaching authority not be more centralized, it will be more decentralized! The prophets make it clear that what was given exclusively to the teaching classes of the prophets, priests, and kings, namely the charismata, would be given to all the members of the New Covenant:

“But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the LORD, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the LORD, “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.” (Jeremiah 31:33-34)
“You will have plenty to eat and be satisfied and praise the name of the LORD your God, Who has dealt wondrously with you; then My people will never be put to shame. Thus you will know that I am in the midst of Israel, and that I am the LORD your God, and there is no other; and My people will never be put to shame. It will come about after this that I will pour out My Spirit on all mankind; and your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. Even on the male and female servants I will pour out My Spirit in those days.” (Joel 2:26-29)

Early Church Disagreement: Individual theologians and groups within the early Church disagreed on a number of issues, but never felt the need for absolute unity in doctrine^¹⁴:

Atonement Theories: To quote J.N.D. Kelly:

“The student who seeks to understand the soteriology of the fourth and early fifth centuries will be sharply disappointed if he expects to find anything corresponding to the elaborately worked out synthesis which the contemporary theology of the Trinity and the Incarnation presents. In both these latter departments controversy forced fairly exact definition on the Church, whereas the redemption did not become a battle-ground for rival schools until the twelfth century, when Anselm’s Cur deus homo (c.1097) focused attention on it. Instead he must be prepared to pick his way through a variety of theories, to all appearance unrelated and even mutually incompatible, existing side by side and sometimes sponsored by the same theologian.”^¹⁵

Catharsis: Catharsis was the belief that, on the Last Day, if anyone had any sinful imperfections on their soul, then they would have to endure a painful but purifying fire that would correct that person’s disposition toward sin. This belief had its roots in Clement of Alexandria and was taught by men such as Origen and Gregory of Nyssa. The belief eventually took root in the Western Church where it would later grow into a different but similar doctrine, Purgatory. However, most of the Eastern Church didn’t believe in it then, and they still don’t now.

Hermeneutical Approach: In the early centuries of the Church, there were two main hermeneutical approaches at exegeting Scripture. The allegorical school, started in Alexandria and thoroughly influenced by Hellenism, taught that every passage of Scripture had both a literal and a figurative meaning. The literal school, started in Antioch, believed that unless the context necessitated it, Scripture should be interpreted literally. These two schools disagreed, sometimes vehemently, over the interpretation of Scripture.

This is simply a small list taken out of the many disagreements found between the early church fathers. [See one of my other posts, “The Argument from Apostolic Tradition and Succession”.]

The Early Church and the Perspicuity of Scripture: It is evident from a number of passages in various writings of the early fathers that they believed that Scripture was perspicuous when it came to essential doctrines^¹⁶ (Justin Martyr, Dialogue of Justin ch.55, Clement of Alexandria, The Stromata 6.15, Tertullian, Against Praxeas, ch.11, Lactantius, The Divine Institutes 5.1, 6.21, Athanasius, Four Discourses Against the Arians, Discourse 1.4.13, De Synodis 1.6, Against the Heathen 1.1, Hilary of Poitiers, On the Trinity 2.3, 8.43, Ambrose, On the Holy Spirit 3.14.94, Augustine, Sermons on Selected Lessons of the New Testament, Sermon 2.1, Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Letters of the Blessed Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrus, Letter 99-To Claudianus the Antigrapharius, Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures 5.12, John Cassian, On the Incarnation 6.4, etc., etc., etc.). Yes, they believed in using ‘Tradition’, but it was always used as a supporting argument, never the foundational one. For example, in Theodoret’s Dialogues, he spends the majority of the time exegeting the Bible against the heretic and only appeals to the fathers last. Here are his words:

“You ought to have been persuaded by the apostolic and prophetic proofs; but since you require further the interpretations of the holy Fathers I will also furnish you, God helping me, this medicine.”

-Theodoret of Cyrus, Dialogues, The Immutable

Passages Presupposing Biblical Perspicuity: There are passages in Scripture which presuppose that book’s own or another book’s perspicuity (Psalm 119, Matthew 15:1-11, 22: 29-32, John 20:30-31, Acts 17:11, 1 Corinthians 4:6, 2 Timothy 3:15-17, 1 John 1:4, 5:13, etc.).

Tradition Unclear Too?: Using the same standard, the church fathers weren’t perspicuous either since Mormons can use the church fathers to ‘support’ their doctrine of deification. There are also orthodox Protestant theologians such as Thomas Oden who believe that some later Protestant soteriological beliefs can be found within the writings of the church fathers. Lastly, both the Roman Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox, who share the same church fathers, disagree on what is the true tradition of the Church from their interpretation of the church fathers. Of course, the accusation is that these groups take those passages out of context, but why can’t the same level of discernment be given to Scripture?

Rome Has a Far More Serious Set of Disagreements: Though there may not be as large a range of opinions as found amongst Protestant denominations, Rome, for example, has a number of disagreements amongst its own, some that are far more serious than those amongst Protestants:

Universalism in the Priesthood and Amongst the Peoples: Ever since Teilhard de Chardin started to influence the Roman Catholic priesthood, the Roman Catholic Church has moved leftward (i.e. more humanistic) in its theology. As a result, the priesthood (with some at the highest levels) and many of the laymen they influence have become universalist in their soteriology. This is out and out heresy, and it has affected the denomination at all levels. Conservative Protestants have split-off and no longer commune with liberals.

Traditionalists vs. Conservatives vs. Moderates vs. Liberals: There is a spectrum of beliefs within the Roman Catholic Church concerning the humanist-traditionalist divide that range from Traditionalists (i.e. the most ‘conservative’) to Conservatives to Moderates to Liberals (i.e. the most humanistic). This is an extreme divide since you have people who actually believe in the faith decreed in the older Western ecumenical councils (with their anathemas) alongside humanists who are Catholic in ritual but are practical atheists by conviction. This is a *far* greater divide than anything that exists between the conservative Protestant denominations.

Pro-Abortionists: Rome has yet to excommunicate politicians and others who advocate abortion. This would not be tolerated in my church or any other conservative church that I know of. Even though there is no ambiguity to Rome’s condemnation of abortion and those who support, there are still those who call themselves ‘faithful’ Catholics as well as ‘pro-choice’. Obviously, the perspicuity of a rule-of-faith should not be assumed on the basis of the number of divergent opinions who claim it. If only Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox apologists would use the same standard with Scripture!

Vatican II, A Pastoral Council?: Some traditionalists and conservatives believe that Vatican II was only a pastoral council and not an infallible one which binds the conscience. They say this because there are several statements in the council which contradict previous Roman Catholic teaching. Other conservatives, moderates, and liberals hold that it was indeed an ecumenical council.

Muslims, Jews, Protestants, and Orthodox: In the past, the historic view of the Roman Church was that, outside of official communion in the Roman Catholic Church and obedience to the Roman Pontiff, there is no salvation. However, as of Vatican II, the Roman Catholic Church has made statements that say that not only can Protestants be saved but also Jews and Muslims (Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraphs 819, 838, 840, and 841). Liberals and moderates will say that the Church teaches that Judaism and Islam are different paths to God and Heaven. Conservatives say that these passages teach that only those who are ignorant of the details of the Gospel in those religions can be saved and that Protestants and Eastern Orthodox are true Christians. Traditionalists continue to hold to ‘extra ecclesiam nulla sallus’ sometimes with the exception for extreme ignorance. Statements and actions by John Paul II lended support to the liberal and moderate view. However, church leaders in Central and South America have given support to the conservative and some to the traditionalist. The Roman Catholic Church refuses to clarify the issue.

Dei Verbum: The historic view of the Roman Church concerning Scripture was to affirm its full inerrancy. However, a more recent dogmatic statement released by the R.C.C., Dei Verbum, has stated that the Scriptures are inerrant concerning that which is “for the sake of our salvation” (Part 11). Many Roman Catholic scholars would say that this means that the Scriptures are only inerrant on statements concerning salvation (i.e. how to be saved, etc.), but most R.C. apologists would disagree and take the more historic stance of verbal, plenary inspiration.

The New Order of the Mass: There are several competing views about the ‘New Order of the Mass’ as prescribed in Vatican II. Even according to R.C. organizations, the wording is vague and used by all groups to promote their own doctrine. There are even some traditionalists who still insist that the Mass can and should only be said in Latin.

Predestination: What is the official belief of the Roman Catholic Church on the issue of predestination (Augustinianism, Thomism, Molinism, etc.)? There isn’t one but many competing views: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12378a.htm

‘Tradition’ at Trent: At the Council of Trent, there were two basic views of ‘Sacred Tradition’. One was the partim-partim view which held that the truths of Divine Revelation are found partly in Scripture and partly in the traditions of the Church. The second was the material sufficiency view which held that all Divine Revelation is contained in Scripture but not all of it is perspicuous (thus necessitating the use of Tradition). During the Council of Trent, the majority held to the ‘partim/partim’ view with the minority holding to material sufficiency. The wording of the council was specifically made obscure so that it would please both sides. For many centuries afterward, most Roman Catholics interpreted the wording of the council to mean the ‘partim/partim’ view, but now, modern Roman Catholics interpret it to mean material sufficiency. To this day, there has never been any clarification on an issue as important as the nature of the rule of faith

Pagan Syncretism in South America and Africa: There is a big problem in South America and Africa with Roman Catholics combining Catholicism with elements of pagan idol worship. The Roman Church has not made any big push, such as excommunication, to stop such practices. To this, I could add a rhetorical question posed at those who use the ‘Doctrinal Chaos’ argument: does this rank idolatry nullify the perspicuity of the Roman Church?

If the Roman Catholic here retorts with, “Yes, we do have disagreements, but we are still one church,” then I should reply by noting that his church is a unity in name only and not a complete union of doctrine or spiritual love as he is so quick to chide Protestants for. The followers of the various beliefs may all go by the same name but not the same beliefs or convictions (as is most prominent in the conservative-liberal divide).

The Eastern Orthodox Have Their Divisions as Well: Like Rome, there are a number of theological divides within the Eastern Orthodox churches as well:

Conservatives vs. Liberals vs. Neo-Orthodox: One can go to an Orthodox seminary such as St. Vladimir’s and find several different views on the inspiration of Scripture corresponding to the conservative, liberal, neo-orthodox divide amongst professing Protestants. As I noted in the similar point under the Roman Catholic division above, this is a far greater divide than anything within the conservative^¹⁷ Protestant camp.

Bordering on Universalism: There have been many Eastern theologians dating back to the church fathers who have held to theologies bordering on (if not fully teaching) universalism. This is a form of rank heresy and is much more serious than any divides with Evangelicalism.

Ethnic Divide: Several of the Eastern Orthodox churches are seen by many of their members as being “national” or ethnic churches. They believe in their church because that is their ethnic religion and don’t have real communion with other Orthodox churches and their bishops.

Ecumenism with Rome, the Oriental Orthodox, or Protestants?: There are many, especially amongst the Russian Orthodox that don’t believe that the Orthodox should recognize the Roman Catholics, the Oriental Orthodox, or Protestants as fellow Christians. See here.^¹⁸

Original Sin: There are a few theologians within Eastern Orthodoxy that hold to Augustine’s view of Original Sin (i.e., that the guilt of the sin transferred to subsequent generations) while the majority do not.

The Old Testament Canon: There is a disagreement within the Eastern Orthodox Church as to the extent of the Old Testament canon. There are a range of views as to what in the deutero-canonical books should be included, and some theologians argue that the Hebrew canon (i.e., the same as the Protestant canon which excludes all of the deutero-canonicals) is the correct one.^¹⁹

Heresy is Universal, No Matter the Authority: As noted above, even in Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, heresies such as universalism and open theism still abound. Does this mean that those two churches’ doctrinal statements aren’t clear enough? If it doesn’t, then why isn’t the same slack given to Protestants?

Disunity is Better Than Forced Unity: I would rather have many denominational splits which separate the conservatives from those who hold to liberal theology than to be forced to commune with and be represented by liberal theologians. Rome has more than her fare share of liberals at the very highest echelons of the church, and Eastern Orthodoxy will get to that point in time.

It’s Worth It: Reading the Bible individually may be risky, but even more risky is believing in a Church with delusions of infallibility and the mistaken notion that its beliefs are apostolic when, in reality, they were ancient misjudgments on the part of the early Christians and frozen in time as ‘tradition’.

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1 Lest the RC and EO apologists try to counter by saying that their 223 or 580 denominations doesn’t compare with Protestants’ 8,000, I would remind the reader that the original argument used by RC and EO apologists was that division is necessarily the result of the failure of the underlying authority structure. So, the question isn’t small division versus massive division, but rather, it is division, period. Any division at all would (by this argument’s standard) mean a failure of the authority structure.

2 http://www.ntrmin.org/30000denominations.htm

3 http://www.ntrmin.org/30000denominationsrevisited.htm

4 Though I would still consider these important, I would not consider people who hold to different positions on these issues to be non-Christians.

5 Though, I would argue that many Pentecostal denominations don’t hold to sola Scriptura.

6 That is, in my opinion.

7 In fact, there are corresponding theological divides within the Roman Catholic Church on many of the same issues that I mentioned above.

8 Which would be the standard by which it is judged to be true or not.

9 J.I. Packer, ‘Sola Scriptura in History and Today’ in John Warwick Montgomery, ed., God’s Inerrant Word: An International Symposium on the Trustworthiness of Scripture (Minneapolis: Bethany, 1974), p.55.

10 i.e. Philosophy that starts with man’s reason and interprets the Bible through that lens instead of starting with Scripture and judging a philosophical belief or deriving one by what the immutable Word of God states.

11 Alister E. McGrath, Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification, 2^nd edition (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, reprinted 1998), pp.17, 19, 20.

12 Packer, op. cit., p.55.

13 Westminster Confession of Faith, 1.7.

14 I should note that this is more of an internal critique of my opponents’ authority system. The opinions of the early fathers are simply a curiosity to me than an authority to which I should have to bind my theological system to.

15 J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (Peabody, MA: Prince Press, reprinted 2003), p.375. (emphasis mine)

16 I will note again that, just as with point 6., this is an internal critique rather than accepting the premise that one’s theology should take into account the beliefs of the church fathers.

17 Liberal “Protestants” don’t hold to sola Scriptura.

18 http://www.orthodox.net/ecumenism/index.html

19 “For the Greek Church, the Synod of Jerusalem in 1672 introduced Wisd and other Deuterocanonical books to a place in Holy Scripture. ‘There appears to be no unanimity, however, on the subject of the canon in the Greek Orthodox Church today. Catechisms directly at variance with each other on this subject have received the Imprimatur of the Greek Ecclesiastical authorities and the Greek clergy may hold and teach what they please about it (Metzger: 195),” -D. Winston, The Wisdom of Solomon: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (Doubleday 1979), p.67.

“The Hebrew version of the Old Testament contains thirty-nine books. The Septuagint contains in addition ten further books, not present in the Hebrew, which are known in the Orthodox Church as the “Deutero-Canonical Books. These were declared by the Councils of Jassy (1642) and Jerusalem (1672) to be “Genuine parts of Scripture”; most Orthodox scholars at the present day, however, following the opinion of Athanasius and Jerome, consider that the Deutero-Canonical Books, although part of the bible, stand on a lower footing than the rest of the Old Testament.” - T. Ware, The Orthodox Church (Penguin Books 1997), p.200.

The Infallible Knowledge Argument

2008-04-13T16:59:00.000-07:00

A common argument used amongst the less thoughtful Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox apologists these days is what I call the “Infallibility Argument” or the “Infallible Knowledge Argument”. The argument is usually stated that, in order to know such things as the inspiration, canonicity, or interpretation of Scripture, we must have an infallible authority to give us the answers to these things. Otherwise, we can never know these things with certainty. Therefore, we must bow the knee before “Mother Church” instead of relying on our human fallibility and Scripture alone for these answers. As I mentioned earlier, I called those who utilized this argument “less-than-thoughtful” and for good reason:

Reduction to an Infinite Regress: If we have to have an infallible authority in order to know anything with certainty (such as the inspiration, canonicity, and interpretation of Scripture), then we have pressed the problem one step backwards since one would also need a second infallible authority to authenticate the first infallible authority. Of course, that would take the problem another step backward to a third infallible authority necessary to authenticate the second, and on and on it goes into infinite regress of necessary infallible authorities. The problem with such an argument is that it assumes epistemic infallibilism (see the point on epistemic infallibilism below).

At this point, some Roman Catholic apologists have appealed to historical evidence in order to give credence to the belief that the Church of Rome possesses infallible authority. Of course, once that is done, the Protestant is also allowed to determine the canonicity and interpretation of Scripture on the basis of historical evidence without any appeal to an infallible authority. I covered this same point in more detail here.^¹

The Specificity of the Conclusion is Limited by the Uniqueness of the Claim: For this kind of argument to work, there can be only one group claiming infallible authority that the Christian can go to for answers. However, the Roman Catholic Magesterium or the Seven Ecumenical Councils are not the only groups claiming infallible authority. There are also cult organizations such as the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, the Mormon Prophet, and others claiming infallibility.

Popes of the Past Have Not Seen It This Way: Popes, such as Leo XIII, have seen the issue the other way around:

“But since the divine and infallible magisterium of the Church rests also on the authority of Holy Scripture, the first thing to be done is to vindicate the trustworthiness of the sacred records at least as human documents, from which can be clearly proved, as from primitive and authentic testimony, the Divinity and the mission of Christ our Lord, the institution of a hierarchical Church and the primacy of Peter and his successors.”^²

The Hebrews Knew the OT Canon Without an Infallible Authority: When he chastised the Pharisees and Sadducees for not knowing the Scriptures (e.g. Matthew 15:3-9, 22:29-32, John 5:39-47, etc.), Jesus implicitly assumed that these groups should have known what was and was not canonical as well as the meaning of those Scriptures even though they didn’t have an infallible authority to decide these matters.

Early Church Knew the NT Canon Without an Infallible Authority: According to the New Catholic Encyclopedia, the first time the extent of the canon was infallibly established within the Roman Catholic Church was at the Council of Trent in the mid-sixteenth century. The Eastern Church has had no such infallible conciliar decree marking out the extent of the canon, and the debate continues to this day within that Church’s own ranks. It is, thus, apparent that the Church got along just fine without an infallible canon list for fifteen hundred years in the West and two thousand years and counting in the East.

Assumes Epistemic Infallibilism: The problem with the argument lies within its implicit assumption that the only way to have any knowledge at all is to have infallible knowledge. This is the same assumption made in Post-Modernism/Linguistic Analysis/Deconstructionism/etc. The problem, of course, is that it is impossible for a human being to possess infallible knowledge of anything due to his finitude. However, this only prevents man from having 100% certainty. When we pick up a newspaper everyday and read a sentence or paragraph that someone wrote, we most certainly understand the meaning of the writer even though we may not be able to discern every last detail or every word’s full connotation that the writer intended. Though we have less than 100% certainty, we still have certainty nonetheless, and we could not live our lives on anything else. In the same way, the Protestant can use fallible means to determine the meaning of Scripture and the extent of the canon with certainty.

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1 http://contra-gentes.blogspot.com/2007/09/eisegeted-verses-introduction.html

2 Pope Leo XIII, Providentissimus Deus, http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Leo13/l13provi.htm

James White's Debate with Jalal Abualrub, Part 1

2008-04-13T13:33:00.000-07:00

Bravo!!!

The Influence of Greco-Roman Culture on Early Christianity

2008-04-11T22:38:00.000-07:00

It is frequently urged by both Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox apologists and theologians that the beliefs and teachings of the church fathers provide a better picture of true, apostolic Christianity than the beliefs that came out of the Reformation. It is argued that the earliest fathers were the successors of the Apostles and received apostolic teaching in the form of unwritten traditions from them. They then passed that tradition on faithfully to the next generation of Christians and so on to the present day Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox Churches.

Contrary to this, it became clear to the Reformers and those who succeeded them that some aspects of the Christianity of the church fathers (and hence, the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches) better reflect aspects of the thoughts, languages, and customs of their cultural environment. It is the purpose of this paper to show that, on many of the distinctive issues that separate Protestants from Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox, the church fathers were heavily influenced by Greco-Roman thought and culture to believe what they did.

I am not saying that the influence was total (contra Harnack). Indeed, they rejected many (but not all) of the conclusions of Greek philosophy, but the point is that they still accepted and worked within the categories of Greek philosophy and the ontological scheme that it taught. With such a framework in place, it became impossible for the church fathers to see such things as juridical justification by faith alone. It was only with the Reformation and its “ad fontes”, “back to the sources”, approach that men started to question the categories of theological thought that they had learned, and Biblical exegetes saw that the beliefs of the church fathers were all too fallible and not a completely reliable guide to apostolic Christianity.

General

“The earlier patristic period represents the age of the exploration of concepts, when the proclamation of the gospel within a pagan culture was accompanied by an exploitation of both Hellenistic culture and pagan philosophy as vehicles for theological advancement. This tentative exploration of the conceptual world is particularly well illustrated by the rise and subsequent decline of the Logos-Christology. The use of such concepts in Christian theology was not, however without its risks: it was not sufficient merely to baptise Plato and Plotinus, for the tension which existed between the essentially Hebraic concepts which underlie the gospel and the Hellenism of the medium employed in its early formulation and propagation remains unresolved. Whilst it is evident that some form of adaptation may be necessary in order to give the gospel more immediate impact on its introduction to an alien culture, it is equally evident that such an adaptation may result in both compromise and distortion of the characteristic and distinctive elements of the gospel. An excellent example of the influence of a Hellenistic milieu upon Christian theology is provided by the doctrine of the [apaueia] of God, which clearly demonstrates the subordination of a biblical to a philosophical view of God.…Indeed, by the end of the fourth century, the Greek fathers had formulated a teaching on human free will based upon philosophical rather than biblical foundations. Standing in the great Platonic tradition, heavily influenced by Philo, and reacting against the fatalisms of their day, they taught that man was utterly free in his choice of good or evil…It is quite possible that the curious and disturbing tendency of the early fathers to minimize original sin and emphasize the freedom of fallen man is a consequence of their anti-Gnostic polemic…Justin’s anti-fatalist arguments can be adduced from practically any of the traditional pagan refutations of astral fatalisms, going back to the second century B.C.”

–Alister E. McGrath, Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification, 2^nd edition (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, reprinted 1998), pp.17, 19, 20.

“Especially through Origen and the Alexandrian school (with roots in Philo), Christian theology was influenced by the notion of the cosmic ladder of being, with lower forms of existence participating in higher forms, deriving ultimately from the absolute. Creation, in this scheme, is an emanation (for Origen, eternal) of divinity from the one God reaching all the way out to the extremities of being. Specific scriptural teachings challenged or qualified aspects of the metaphysical heritage, but the worldview was essentially that of Middle Platonism, Stoicism, and Neoplatonism.”

-Michael S. Horton, Covenant and Salvation: Union With Christ (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007), p.184.

“In the West, Rome, its institutions, and its language had been imposed, whereas the cities in the Greek East had tended to absorb Roman values and to transform them into a common Greco-Roman culture in which the Greek element predominated. In much the same way, we find Christianity tending to absorb Greek philosophical values, until by the end of the third century the line between the beliefs of the educated Christian and the educated pagan in the East would often be hard to draw. After the conversion of Constantine, the empire now directed from New Rome (Constantinople) moved with astonishing ease from the patronage of the immortal gods to that of the supreme God.”

-W.H.C. Frend, The Rise of Christianity, p.368.

“However, he does not limit himself to scriptural and traditional sources; he also borrows something from ancient Greek philosophy. Echoes of Plato are discernible in the following text:
I believe the words of the wise, that every fair and God-beloved soul, when, set free from the bonds of the body, it departs from here, at once enjoys perception and contemplation of the blessings which await it... and goes rejoicing to meet its Lord... Then, a little later, it receives its kindred flesh... in some way known to God, who knit them together and dissolved them, enters with it upon the inheritance of the glory there. And, as it shared, through their close union, in its hardships, so also it bestows upon it a portion of its joys, gathering it up entirely into itself, and becoming with it one spirit, one intellect and one god... Why am I faint-hearted in my hopes? Why behave like a mere creature of a day? I await the voice of the archangel, the last trumpet, the transformation of the heavens, the transfiguration of the earth, the liberation of the elements, the renovation of the universe.”

http://en.hilarion.orthodoxia.org/6_5_11

Language Issues

“The general tendency among Latin-speaking theologians was to follow Augustine of Hippo…in interpreting iustificare as iustum facere…While this may be an acceptable interpretation of iusificare considered in isolation, it is not an acceptable interpretation of the verb considered as the Latin equivalent of [dikaioun]…it would appear that the Greek verb has the primary sense of being considered orestimated as righteous, whereas the Latin verb denotes being righteous, the reason why one is considered righteous by others…[I]t is necessary to observe that the early theologians of the western church were dependant upon their Latin versions of the Bible, and approached their texts and their subject with a set of presuppositions which owed more to the Latin language and culture than to Christianity itself. The initial transference of a Hebrew concept to a Greek, and subsequently to a Latin, context point to a fundamental alteration in the concepts of ‘justification’ and ‘righteousness’ as the gospel spread from its Palestinian source to the western world.”

–Alister E. McGrath, Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification, 2^nd edition (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, reprinted 1998), pp.14, 15.

Doctrine of God

“In Justin the oneness, transcendence and creative role of God are asserted in language strongly coloured by the Platonizing Stoicism of the day. It was apparently his sincere belief that the Greek thinkers had had access to the works of Moses.”

-J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (Peabody, MA: Prince Press, reprinted 2003), p.86.

“The Apologists’ originality (their thought was more Philonic than Johannine) lay in drawing out the further implications of the Logos idea in order to make plausible the twofold fact of Christ’s pre-temporal oneness with the Father and His manifestation in space and time. In so doing, while using such Old Testament texts as Ps. 33, 6 (‘By the word of the Lord were the heavens made’), they did not hesitate to blend with them the Stoic technical distinction between the immanent word (logos hendiathetos) and the word uttered or expressed (logos prophorikos).”

-J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (Peabody, MA: Prince Press, reprinted 2003), p.96.

“[Clement of Alexandria] clearly distinguishes the Three, and the charge of modalism, based on his lack of any technical term to designate the Persons, is groundless; and if he appears to subordinate the Son to the Father and the Spirit to the Son, the subordination implies no inequality of being, but is the corollary of his Platonic conception of a graded hierarchy.”

-J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (Peabody, MA: Prince Press, reprinted 2003), pp. 127-128. [I will note that the Reformed are sometimes chastised by the Eastern Orthodox for not believing that the Son receives His Being from the Father. However, as Kelly notes, this idea comes out of Platonism. The next quotes will reinforce that.]

“No doubt he tries to meet the most stringent demands of monotheism by insisting tht the fulness of unoriginate Godhead is concentrated in the Father, Who alone is ‘the fountain-head of deity’… As it is formulated by Origen, however, the underlying structure of thought is unmistakably borrowed from contemporary Platonism.”

-J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (Peabody, MA: Prince Press, reprinted 2003), p.131.

“In a more limited field the impact of Platonism reveals itself in the thoroughgoing subordinationism which is integral to Origen’s Trinitarian scheme. The Father, as we have seen, is alone [autotheos]; so St. John, he points out, accurately describes the Son simply as [Theos], not [ho Theos]. In relation to the God of the universe He merits a secondary degree of honour; for He is not absolute goodness and truth, but His goodness and truth are a reflection and image of the Father’s.”

-J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (Peabody, MA: Prince Press, reprinted 2003), pp. 131-132.

“[Athanasius’s] anthropology, it should be pointed out, which was thoroughly Platonic and treated the soul as having no necessary connexion with the body, was perfectly consistent with the latter hypothesis.”

-J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (Peabody, MA: Prince Press, reprinted 2003), p.287.

The Fall and Soteriology

“As we might expect, the [Fall] account [Athanasius] gives is a blend of Platonizing metaphysics and the Genesis story. Its most interesting feature is the contrast presupposed throughout between man considered as a creature, i.e. in his natural state, and as the recipient of God’s bountiful favour.…Instead of keeping their gaze fixed on God, however, the first human beings, Adam and Eve, allowed themselves to be distracted by the material world which was closer to them, particularly by their bodies. They turned away, in other words, from Him Who alone is being in the true sense to things which have no real being of their own. So they fell. Deprived of the grace of the divine image, they were reduced to the corruption which, after all, was their nature, lapsing into ignorance and idolatry.”

-J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (Peabody, MA: Prince Press, reprinted 2003), p.287.

“Like Athanasius, they call in philosophzing allegory to aid them in interpreting the Biblical story. For Gregory Nazianzen the Garden is clearly the Platonists’ intelligible world of ideas, its plants being ‘divine concepts’. Gregory of Nyssa carried speculation to the point of proposing, on the basis of Gen. I, 26f., a double creation. The first consisted in the production of the ideal of archetypal man, in the Platonic sense, perfect and without sexual differentiation, comprising in himself all possible men and women. It was because God foresaw that, being creaturely and therefore mutable, he would sin, that He subdivided him, by a second creative act, into male and female, thus inaugurating the actual race of men.”

-J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (Peabody, MA: Prince Press, reprinted 2003), p.348.

“According to this, human nature was sanctified, transformed and elevated by the very act of Christ’s becoming man. Often, though not quite correctly, described as the characteristically Greek theory, it cohered well with the Greek tendency to regard corruption and death as the chief effects of the Fall. In its strict form it tended to be combined with the Platonic doctrine of real universals, in the light of which it was able to treat human nature as a generic whole.”

-J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (Peabody, MA: Prince Press, reprinted 2003), p.375.

“All the fathers, of whatever school, reproduce this motif. The physical theory, it is clear, is an elaboration of it, only parting comparny with it when, under the influence of Platonic realism, it represents human nature as being automatically deified by the incarnation.”

-J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (Peabody, MA: Prince Press, reprinted 2003), p.377.

“Athanasius’s language often suggests that he conceived of human nature, after the manner of Platonic realism, as a concrete idea or universal in which all individual men participate. From this point of view, when the Word assumed it and suffused it with His divinity, the divinizing force would be communicated to all mankind, and the incarnation would in effect be the redemption. Such is the clear implication of numerous passages, such as, ‘Forasmuch as the Word became man and appropriated what belongs to the flesh, these affections no longer attach to the body because of the Word Who assumed it, but have been destroyed by Him’…There is little doubt that Athanasius’s Platonism tended at times to lose touch with his Christianity.”

-J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (Peabody, MA: Prince Press, reprinted 2003), pp. 378-379.

“Like Athanasius, too, [Gregory of Nyssa] translates the Biblical idea of solidarity into the language of Platonic realism. The whole of human nature, he claims, constitutes as it were a single living being…so that the experience of a part becomes the experience of the whole. In this way all mankind is seen to share in what Christ achieves by His resurrection.”

-J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (Peabody, MA: Prince Press, reprinted 2003), p.381.

“Hilary, for example, can write, ‘It was we who needed that God should become flesh and dwell in us, that is, by taking a single flesh to Himself should inhabit flesh in its entirety’. The Platonic conception of human nature as a universal clearly lies in the background here. We can see it again in his statement, ‘For the sake of the human race the Son of God was born from the Virgin and Holy Spirit…so that by becoming man He might take the nature of flesh to Himself from the Virgin, and so the body of the human race as a whole might be sanctified in Him through association with this mixture’. The same Platonic realism inspires Victorinus when he writes, ‘When He took flesh, He took the universal idea of flesh (universalem [logon] carnis); for as a result the whole power of flesh triumphed in His flesh.…Similarly He took the universal idea of soul.…Therefore man as a whole was assumed, and having been assumed was liberated. For human nature as a whole was in Him, flesh as a whole and soul as a whole, and they were lifted to the cross and purged through God the Word, the universal of all universals.’ Elsewhere he argues that, since Christ’s body is ‘catholic’, i.e. universal as opposed to particular, all individual human bodies were crucified in it, and His sufferings have a universal quality.”

-J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (Peabody, MA: Prince Press, reprinted 2003), pp. 386-387.

“[Cyril of Alexandria’s] argument, we observe, was influenced by the Platonic realism which affected the thought of Athanasius and Gregory of Nyssa. Human nature was treated as a generic whole, so that when the divine Word assumed it at the incarnation it could reasonably be said, ‘By virtue of the flesh united to Him, He has us all in Himself’, and, ‘We were all in Christ; the common person of humanity comes again to life in Him’.”

-J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (Peabody, MA: Prince Press, reprinted 2003), p.397.

Allegorism

“Allegorism was well established in Alexandrian Judaism, and Philo, as we have seen, made a systematic use of it to bridge the chasm between the Old Testament revelation and his own Platonizing philosophy. In the hands of such a second-century Christian writer as ‘Barnabas’ Philonic allegorism was able to detect a Christian significance in the least likely passages of the Old Testament.”

–J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (Peabody, MA: Prince Press, reprinted 2003), p.70.

“The inherent difficulties of typology, however, made the transition to allegorism extremely tempting, especially where the cultural environment was Hellenistic and impregnated with Platonic idealism, with its theory that the whole visible order is a symbolical reflection of invisible realities. Hence it is not surprising that most of the fathers injected a strain of allegory, some of them a powerful one, into their typology.”

–J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (Peabody, MA: Prince Press, reprinted 2003), p.72.

Catharsis

“The two theologians were indebted to ancient Greece for the idea that the chastisement inflicted by the gods is not punishment but rather a means of education and salvation, part of a process of purification. In Plato’s view this chastisement is a boon offered by the gods. Clement and Origen deduce from this the idea that “to punish” is synonymous with “to educate” and that any chastisement by God contributes to man’s salvation…Their Platonic idea of Christianity led Clement and Origen to take a comforting view of the matter…In keeping with this attitude, the two theologians give a soothing interpretation of the Old Testament passages in which God explicitly uses fire as an instrument of his wrath...Origen develops to the full the theory of purification, catharsis, which came to him from Plato, the Orphics, and the Pythagoreans.”

-Jacques Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1984), pp.52-53, 55.

“The theme of illumination is, in turn, inseparable in his thought from the theme of purification (katharsis). Gregory inherited an interest in this theme from his studies of ancient Greek philosophy, where katharsis is one of the key notions.”

http://en.hilarion.orthodoxia.org/6_5_8

Universalism

“[Universalism] was picked up by Clement of Alexandria (A.D. 150-220), one of the founders of the Alexandrian schools of theology which tried to reconcile Christianity and Greek philosophy by creating a synthesis between the two. Although there is a possibility that he later came to believe in eternal punishment, it is generally conceded that Clement was the first to teach Universalism in the Christian Church.”

-Dr. Robert A. Morey, Death and the Afterlife (Bloomington, Minnesota: Bethany House, 1984), p.223.

“The term [apokatastasis] is found in Justin Martyr and Irenaeus and developed into a doctrine of universal salvation by Origin. Origen was condemned by a synod in Constantinople…the general concept of a final apokatastasis is, however, found in Gregory of Nyssa and persists in a modified form in Byzantine theology, notably in Maximus the Confessor. It recurs in Modern Russian thinkers such as Solovyov, Bulgakov, and Berdiaev,”

- The Blackwell Dictionary of Eastern Christianity, p.36.

“As the implacable opponents of Eunomius, the Cappadocians were nevertheless dependent on Origen both for their biblical learning in the succession of his Hexapla and for their speculative thought; that becomes evident above all in the formulation of the doctrine of apokatastasis put forward by Gregory of Nyssa, which was spared the official condemnation visited upon Origen’s doctrines,”

- The Blackwell Dictionary of Eastern Christianity, p.482.

“Hell exists as a final possibility, but several of the Fathers have none the less believed that in the end all will be reconciled to God. It is heretical to say that all must be saved, for this is to deny free will; but it is legitimate to hope that all may be saved. Until the Last Day comes, we must not despair of anyone’s salvation, but must long and pray for the reconciliation of all without exception. No one must be excluded from our loving intercession. ‘What is a merciful heart?’ asked Isaac the Syrian. ‘It is a heart that burns with love for the whole of creation, for men, for the birds, for the beasts, for the demons, for all creatures’ (Mystic Treatises, edited by A. J. Wensinck, Amsterdam, 1923, p. 341). Gregory of Nyssa said that Christians may legitimately hope even for the redemption of the Devil.”
http://orthodoxeurope.org/page/11/1/6.aspx

Apophaticism and Mysticism

“Athenagoras described God primarily with negative attributes. This is, he explained what God is not rather than what God is. Later Christian theologians labeled this approach “apophatic theology,” and it became a major part of the story of Christian theology. Apparently Athenagoras and later apophatic thinkers assumed that God’s perfection means being unlike anything created. Thus God can only be truly described by saying what He is not rather than what He is. He is not imperfect, and to change or suffer or even be comprehensible to the human mind is to be tainted by creaturely imperfection. The result, of course, was a gradual diminishing of the Biblical God’s personal nature. Of course, neither Athenagoras nor any other Christian thinker rejected God’s personal being, but some of the ways in which they began to describe God seem to be more like the transcendent origin and ground of all things (arche) in Greek philosophy, which is rather abstract, than the very concrete, personal and interactive God of the Hebrew Bible and apostolic writings.”

-Roger Olson, The Story of Christian Theology, p.63.

“A remarkable combination of Platonism with Christianity, to the injury of the latter, appears in the system of mystic symbolism in the pseudo-Dionysian books, which cannot have been composed before the fifth century, though they were falsely ascribed to the Areopagite of the book of Acts (xvii. 34), and proceeded from the later school of New-Platonism, as represented by Proclus of Athens († 485). The fundamental idea of these Dionysian writings (on the celestial hierarchy; on the ecclesiastical hierarchy; on the divine names; on mystic theology; together with ten letters) is a double hierarchy, one in heaven and one on earth, each consisting of three triads, which mediates between man and the ineffable, transcendent hyper-essential divinity. This idea is a remnant of the aristocratic spirit of ancient heathenism, and forms the connecting link with the hierarchical organization of the church, and explains the great importance and popularity which the pseudo-Dionysian system acquired, especially in the mystic theology of the middle ages.”

- Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church 3.9.117

“The image of the sun, which derives from Plato, is one of Gregory’s favourite images when he speaks of God. Gregory uses this image in particular when he speaks of the human person’s striving to God as the highest good:
...From many and great things... which we receive and will receive from God, the greatest and the most generous is our inclination and our kinship to Him. In the realm of intelligible things God is the same as the sun in the realm of sensible. The sun illumines the world visible, while God illumines the world invisible; the former makes bodily sights sunlike, while the latter makes intelligible natures godlike. The sun, while giving a seer to see and a seen to be seen, is itself incomparably more beautiful than what is seen; in the same manner God, while giving a thinker to think and an object of thinking to be thought of, is Himself the climax of everything intelligible, so that every desire finds its end in Him and nowhere else reaches forward.”

http://en.hilarion.orthodoxia.org/6_5_7

“To understand this text, one should remember that in the Platonic tradition the way to perfection was perceived as one from multiplicity to simplicity, from duality to unity. Plotinus, in particular, claims that in order to come to the knowledge of the Unity we must become one from many. Contemplation of the One is, according to Plotinus, a total unity with the One which excludes all multiplicity or diversity:
‘There were not two; beholder was one with beheld; it was not a vision compassed but a unity apprehended. The man formed by this mingling with the Supreme...is become the Unity, nothing within him or without inducing any diversity; no movement now, no passion, no desire, once this ascent is achieved... It was a going forth from the self, a simplifying, a reunification, a reach towards contact and at the same time a repose’. The highest stage of the mystical ascent is a state of ecstasy, a total mingling with the One and diffusion in Him. The vision of the highest Intellectual-Principle is connected in Plotinus with the experience of the vision of light emanating from it. One can, of course, point to the disparity between the ecstasy of Plotinus as a diffusion in the impersonal One and the mystical contemplation of Gregory as an encounter with the personal Deity, the Trinity. Yet one cannot but see a startling similarity of language, terminology or imagery between the two authors.”

http://en.hilarion.orthodoxia.org/6_5_8

Asceticism

“The church fathers were also infected by this virus, too enthusiastic about the potential of Greek philosophy as preparation for the gospel, according to Balthasar. For Dionysius and Maximus, despite a formal adherance, ‘the Trinity plays almost no role whatever in the living-out of the Christian life. In fact what Maximus does is to get past the Cappadocians and Nicea and consciously link up with the Origenist schema of Logos theology.’

Closely bound up with this is their version of the incarnation, which despite the Antiochenes and Nestorius, constantly was inclined to a docetic and Eutychian view. The incarnation is consequently thought of as the most extreme point of “egression” of God from himself. The self-emptying back home to the Godhead.…In this schema the incarnation must appear as something provisional and transitional. The resurrection of the flesh, formally confessed and maintained, appears like a disturbance of the systematic lines and usually was subtilized in one or another form.

Hence come ‘its asceticism and mysticism,…a movement of the ascending, step-by-step return of the world potencies into God, unambiguously away from the material to the spiritual. Spiritualization, presented in a thousand different colorations, is the basic tendency of the patristic epoch,’ with early monasticism already providing ‘the peril of this movement.’ ”

- Michael S. Horton, Covenant and Salvation: Union With Christ (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007), pp. 206-207, quoting Edward T. Oakes, Pattern of Redemption, pp. 113, 115, 116, 119, 120.

“Yet there are abundant examples also of a quite different emphasis on the ascent from matter to mind, which funded asceticism and monasticism. According to Maximus, for example, ‘deifying’ is equivalent to ‘nonmaterial,’ and sexual propagation itself was a result of the fall. ‘For this reason the Logos of God became man, to set man free from this passion and to restore him to the condition for which he had been created.’ ‘Through “practical philosophy” or the active life of the Christian,’ Pelikan explains, ‘some believers rose from the flesh of Christ to his soul; through contemplation others were enabled to go on from the soul of Christ to the “mind” of Christ; and through mystical union some few were able to move further still, from the mind of Christ to his very Godhead.’ ”

-Michael S. Horton, Covenant and Salvation: Union With Christ (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007), pp. 304-305.

“Even the Grecian philosophy was conceived by the Pythagoreans, the Platonists, and the Stoics, not as theoretical knowledge merely, but also as practical wisdom, and frequently joined itself to the most rigid abstemiousness, so that “philosopher” and “ascetic” were interchangeable terms. Several apologists of the second century had by this practical philosophy particularly the Platonic, been led to Christianity; and they on this account retained their simple dress and mode of life. Tertullian congratulates the philosopher’s cloak on having now become the garb of a better philosophy.”

- Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church 2.9.104

“The orthodox or catholic asceticism starts from a literal and overstrained construction of certain passages of Scripture. It admits that all nature is the work of God and the object of his love, and asserts the divine origin and destiny of the human body, without which there could, in fact, be no resurrection, and hence no admittance to eternal glory. It therefore aims not to mortify the body, but perfectly to control and sanctify it. For the metaphysical dualism between spirit and matter, it substitutes the ethical conflict between the spirit and the flesh. But in practice it exceeds the simple and sound limits of the Bible, falsely substitutes the bodily appetites and affections, or sensuous nature, as such, for the flesh, or the principle of selfishness, which resides in the soul as well as the body; and thus, with all its horror of heresy, really joins in the Gnostic and Manichaean hatred of the body as the prison of the spirit. This comes out especially in the depreciation of marriage and the family life, that divinely appointed nursery of church and state, and in excessive self-inflictions, to which the apostolic piety affords not the remotest parallel. The heathen Gnostic principle of separation from the world and from the body, as a means of self-redemption, after being theoretically exterminated, stole into the church by a back door of practice, directly in face of the Christian doctrine of the high destiny of the body and perfect redemption through Christ. The Alexandrian fathers furnished a theoretical basis for this asceticism in the distinction of a lower and higher morality, which corresponds to the Platonic or Pythagorean distinction between the life according to nature and the life above nature or the practical and contemplative life… Clement of Alexandria, otherwise remarkable for his elevated ethical views, requires of the sage or gnostic, that he excel the plain Christian not only by higher knowledge, but also by higher, emotionless virtue, and stoical superiority to all bodily conditions; and he inclines to regard the body, with Plato, as the grave and fetter of the soul.”

- Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church 2.9.105

“But how little such views agreed with the spirit of that age, we see in Clement’s own stoical and Platonizing conception of the sensual appetites, and still more in his great disciple Origen, who voluntarily disabled himself in his youth, and could not think of the act of generation as anything but polluting.”

- Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church 2.9.107

“As Richardson noted, philosophy meant virginity, and in its earlier usages, did ‘not refer to Christian virginity, but primarily to philosophical celibacy.… The Neo-Platonic philosophy of the times, through its doctrine of the purification of the soul by its liberation from the body or sensuous things, taught celibacy and ascetic practices generally. So Plotinus (d. A.D. 270) practiced and taught to a degree, and Porphyry (d. 301+) more explicitly.’ As Prestige noted, pagan mystics ‘prayed to be delivered from the flesh rather than sin.’ Hellenized Jewish hermits appeared well before Christian hermits lived in the Egyptian desert, and there was a Hellenized Jewish colony of hermits in the Egyptian desert, and there was a Hellenized Jewish colony of hermits near Lake Mareotis. From the second century B.C., the ‘immured ones’ of Serapis lived incarcerated in cells near their god, receiving food through small windows and living and dying in their holes. This pagan asceticism, deeply rooted, infiltrated into Christianity.”

- Rousas John Rushdoony, The One and the Many (Thoburn Press: Fairfax, VA., 1978), p.165.

“In Salvian, regrettably, we find the weakening of the body required, ‘for the health of the body is inimical to the soul.’ The soul is ‘an attribute which is divine,’ and the body ‘an enemy which is of the earth.’ ”

- Rousas John Rushdoony, The One and the Many (Thoburn Press: Fairfax, VA., 1978), p.169.

“Knowledge in us is from the soul, which has its origin from heaven; ignorance from the body, which is from the earth: whence we have something in common with God and with animal creation. Thus, since we are composed of these two elements, the one of which is endowed with light, the other with darkness, a part of knowledge is given to us, and a part of ignorance. Over this bridge, so to speak, we may pass without any danger of falling; for all those who have inclined to either side, either towards the left hand or the right, have fallen.”

-Lactantius, Institutes 3.6

"The Knowledge of God" Series

2008-04-06T17:36:00.000-07:00

Here are the links to "The Knowledge of God" series posts:

Scriptural Derivation

Introduction: The Necessity of Theology and Apologetics (1 Peter 3:8-17, “A Ready Defense”)
Part A (Intro.)
Part B (1 Peter 3:8-17)

The Doctrine of God
Part A (Unity, Eternality, and Aseity of God)
Part B (Incomprehensibility, Immutability, and Holiness)
Part C (Creator and Sustainer, Omnipresence, Omniscience, and Omnipotence)
Part D (The Lord of History, Incomparability, and the Personal Nature)

Creation and Man
Part A (Genesis 1:1-2:3)
Part B (The Enuma Elish, Genesis 2:4-25, and Genesis 3:1-24)
Part C (Genesis 4-10, and Genesis 11:1-9)
Part D (Christ: The Assault and Triumph Over the Continuity of Being)

The Irrationality of Sin (Romans 1:18-32, “The Exchange”)

The Wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:18-2:16, "The Wisdom of the Wise")
Part A (1 Corinthians 1:18-31)
Part B (1 Corinthians 2:1-16 and Excursus on Various Other Passages)

Pressing the Antithesis (Acts 17:22-34, “The Covenant Lawsuit”)

Philosophical Application

Overcoming the Anti-Metaphysical Bias

A Refutation of Scientific Realism

The Transcendental Argument for God, Part I (God’s Existence)
Part A (Materialism)
Part B (Dualistic Atheism, Vitalistic Atheism, Pan-psychism, Polytheism, Dualism, Monistic Pantheism, Dualistic Pantheism, and Panentheism)
Part C (Platonism, Aristotelianism, Post-Modernism, A Possible Objection, Conclusion, and Appendix: The Problem of Universals)

The Transcendental Argument for God, Part II (The Necessity of Special Revelation)
Part A (Rationalism, Empiricism, Kantianism, and Modern Idealism)
Part B (Logical Positivism, Probability Theory, Conclusion, and Appendix: Which Revelatory Theism?)

The Knowledge of God, The Necessity of Special Revelation, Part B

2008-04-04T19:36:00.000-07:00

Logical Positivism

Logical Positivism was an extremely empirical philosophy and probably the most anti-religious knowledge theory that ever was. It was started by a group of philosophers that became known as the “Vienna Circle” and was propounded greatly by the Oxford philosopher, Alfred J. Ayer. Greg Bahnsen explains:

“Ayer maintained that any genuinely meaningful and factual statement must pass the “verifiability criterion” (which he could never successfully formulate) – to the effect that any meaningful statement is in theory verifiable by observation, either directly or indirectly (by observation of what can be deduced from it along with other “legitimate” statements). The philosopher does not have available to him any truths that are not accessible by the other sciences, and so the job of the philosopher becomes that of clarifying the language of science, developing logical sophistication, and purifying the field of the nonsense of metaphysics and ethics.”^¹

Thus, something should be believed in only if it could be empirically “verified”, and so, all metaphysics went out the window. Nowadays, very few philosophers would hold to such a self-debunking theory, and the only ones who do are very naïve, philosophically ignorant, and logically untrained scientists and militant atheists. Here’s why:

Arbitrary: They simply defined metaphysics out of existence instead of actually attempting to prove it to be impossible. How could they have possibly have come to the knowledge that the *only* means of knowledge is empirical verifiability. Wouldn’t that first require infinite knowledge of the universe? Thus, they were arbitrary.

Secondary Hypothesis: Given human nature’s propensity to be dogmatic (whether people will admit it or not), scientists always invent secondary hypothesis to protect their theory from being disproven by newly discovered evidence. This would make theories unfalsifiable, and thus, unverifiable.

No Morals, No “Ought”s: Because Logical Positivism denied moral realism, it had to, of logical necessity, deny any “ought”s or “should”s. But on this basis, how could they say that one *ought* to believe something if it is verifiable? If there are no real ethics, then there is no necessary reason why someone should believe in something, verifiable or not!

No Connection Between Facts and Statements: “If “facts” are the actual states of affairs as they are directly experienced (say, the sensation of redness and roundness at this place and at this time), but “statements” are verbal utterances (consisting of written or voiced words like “red” or “round”), in what sense can we “compare” facts and statements? They are completely different kinds of things. (For instance, the word “round” does not look – is not physically sensed as – round.)”^²

Communication Impossible: “At this point Ayer asserts that the Vienna Circle had not solved the basic epistemological problem. What is really meant when we say that a statement is verifiable? Does it mean merely that statements about facts are internally coherent with one another? Does it not also mean that statements must be verifiable in relation to facts? Then, if I make statements about my experience of facts, how can I convey the meaning of my experience to you? For my experience is private to me, and your experience is private to you; how then, if we each have to interpret every statement of fact as referring to our own experience, do we ever succeed in communicating with each other?”^³

Self-Defeating: The verifiability criterion was itself unverifiable. That is, the belief – that for any statement to be true it had to be empirically verified – was itself not empirically verifiable. Thus, by its own standard, the verifiability criterion should not be regarded as true.

A Metaphysic Itself: Apropos (6), because the verifiability criterion was a presupposed axiom, it fell under the category of metaphysics, and so, by the Vienna Circle’s own standard, it was nonsense.

Other Arguments Against Anti-Metaphysics Apply: (See my lesson, “Overcoming the Anti-Metaphysical Bias”.)

Most Arguments Against Scientific Realism Apply: (See my lesson, “A Refutation of Scientific Realism”.)

Scientific Realism

I dealt with Scientific Realism in a previous lesson. (See my lesson, “A Refutation of Scientific Realism”.)

Probability Theory^⁴

Having given up on finding a path to full assurance, some epistemologists have tried making a new path with statistical or “probable” knowledge. Instead, they say, a belief should be held in degrees of assurance in proportion to the probability that it is true. This probability is derived from something such as the frequency of occurrence or from the number of people (usually specialists) who hold to that belief.

For example, the degree to which a scientific theory is thought to be true is in proportion to the number of scientists who believe in it and the extent of time to which it has been believed. Thus, a scientific theory should be held with a great degree of assurance if it is believed in by the vast majority of scientists and has been for a great length of time.

Another example would be in determining whether something in history happened or not. The degree to which a historical event should be believed to have happened is proportional to the frequency to which other similar historical events have happened. Atheists usually apply this to miracles (following David Hume^⁵). Therefore, they say, miracles are unlikely since they have not happened^⁶ and do not happen now.

Of course, using probability theory as an epistemological base is pure folly for the following reasons:

Requires Complete Knowledge of the System: How can one even start thinking about what the probabilities are until one has complete knowledge of the entire system? Probabilities will change as new information about the system becomes known. Critics of probability theory have also pointed out the problem of “priors”:

“The mathematical theory of probability allows us to derive more probabilities once we have some probabilities. To give a simple example, given a probability of x for proposition P, the theory tells us that the probability of ~P equals 1 – x; but it does not provide the probability of P, or ~P, or any other proposition ex nihilo. These probabilities we have to start with, and that are not provided by probability theory itself, are usually called the prior probabilities or just priors. How do we come to our priors? This question is differently answered by subjectivists and those hoping for some kind of logical interpretation of probability. According to the former, our priors are just our subjective degrees of confidence. These, of course, may be vastly different for different individuals, but so be it. Those in favour of logical probability hold that there is some objective, or at least more objective, way of determining prior probabilities. It has been suggested, for instance, that the prior probability of a given proposition can be determined on the basis of the syntactical structure of the sentence expressing that proposition, a suggestion that, however, led already to insurmountable difficulties for very simple artificial languages. Other suggestions have proven equally problematic.”^⁷

This general problem was shown most profoundly in my lesson, “A Refutation of Scientific Realism” (see Argument l.). Obviously no one but God has this knowledge.

Historical One-Time Events: Many events in history are unrepeatable. Thus, this use of probability theory fails to take into account the ingenuity of man. Man is not an automaton. As for miracles, it presents a straw-man view of God by assuming that God is some giant clock who should regularly put out a miracle every hundred years or so just to let man know that He does indeed exist. On the contrary, God’s purpose in miracles is usually to make a very dramatic point, but He has ordained that most events in history take place through the means of ordinary providence. Lastly, but not of least importance, with the New Testament recording the Christological revelation of Jesus the Messiah and its exposition through the Apostles, there is no more need for miracles to confirm an oracle since propositional revelation has ceased and the Holy Spirit provides the assurance to the believer instead.

Subjective: The theory ignores the role psychology plays in one’s determining the boundaries of what event or persons (to use the two examples mentioned in the description) should count as an instance of something which will contribute to that set’s frequency. This is a classification problem and is highly subjective. For example, when analyzing the probabilities of miracles, should one classify the event in question first as a miracle and then look for other examples of miracles to determine the probability based on its historical or current frequency? Or should one classify the event as another kind of historical occurrence (based on another aspect of the event), look for other similar examples where people reacted in a similar fashion to a particular event (claimed to be miraculous or not), and consider the disputed event’s status as a miracle irrelevant to the question of whether it happened or not? Also, there is the problem that one will dismiss all other instances of miracles and then use that frequency of zero to determine the probability of miracles occurring (resulting in a zero probability). This is the circular problem which C.S. Lewis pointed out against Hume.^⁸

It Destroys Science: Experience (especially in the form of science) is predicated on the belief that genuinely new facts can be discovered, but if we are only to believe in something based solely on the past, then on what basis could we believe in something new? This would utterly destroy science. Of course, this brings us back to the more general problem of Induction.

All Other Arguments Against Scientific Realism Apply: (See my lesson, “A Refutation of Scientific Realism”.)

Post-Modernism

I dealt with Post-Modernism in the previous lesson. (See my lesson, “The Transcendental Argument for God, Part I: God’s Existence”.)

Conclusion

Saint Paul once wrote to the saints at Colossae:

“For I want you to know how great a struggle I have on your behalf and for those who are at Laodicea, and for all those who have not personally seen my face, that their hearts may be encouraged, having been knit together in love, and attaining to all the wealth that comes from the full assurance of understanding, resulting in a true knowledge of God's mystery, that is, Christ Himself, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. I say this so that no one will delude you with persuasive argument… See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ. For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form… [Philosophy and the tradition of men] are matters which have, to be sure, the appearance of wisdom in self-made religion and self-abasement and severe treatment of the body, but are of no value against fleshly indulgence.” (Colossians 2:1-4, 8-9, 23)

According to Paul, the reason why the heretics at Colossae failed to reach true knowledge and why their beliefs were arbitrary and ignorant was because they started with human-made categories instead of the special, propositional revelation of Christ who was, is, and ever shall be the all-knowing, sovereign Creator of the universe. It is this same error which plagues all autonomous forms of knowledge:

“If philosophy begins with man and his own authority, then the conclusion of philosophy cannot transcend this source – all of man’s thinking reflects his own subjective ordering and interpretation, but nothing of the objective world of reality. If you start with man’s thoughts as your point of reference, you cannot escape phenomenalism and thus skepticism – the egocentric predicament.”^⁹

There is simply no way for finite man, by himself, to gain a coherent theory of the universe, God, and man unless he transcends the space-time continuum that constantly impinges upon him. This he cannot do. Thus, the only way for him to have knowledge of “the big questions” is for the answers to these questions to be revealed to him by a Being that does, in fact, transcend contingent reality and who possesses complete knowledge of the universe. The only worldview that can meet this requirement is Revelatory Theism.

Appendix: Which Revelatory Theism?

Now that the necessity of Revelatory Theism has been established, the question still remains: which Revelatory Theism? There is still the choice between Christianity, Rabbinic Judaism, and Islam. In short, one can show that the Old Testament truly does point to Christ and that Christianity is the true religion of the Hebrews.^¹⁰ As to Islam, its own Qur’an attests to the authenticity of the Bible even though it contradicts the Bible all over the place!^¹¹ Thus, Islam is self-defeating. So, Christianity is indeed the only actual^¹² existing worldview that meets the two requirements of being both theistic and revelatory in the propositional sense.

[All Scripture quotes are from the NASB, emphasis mine.]

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1 Greg Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic: Readings and Analysis (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1998), p.367, ftnt.203.

2 Greg Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic: Readings and Analysis (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1998), p.371, ftnt.208.

3 Cornelius Van Til as quoted in Greg Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic: Readings and Analysis (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1998), p.370.

4 Here, I am speaking of the use of statistical “probabilities” as an epistemic base. I am not speaking of its use as a tool in more science-related matters.

5 It should be pointed out that Hume has been roundly refuted by many critics who have used some of the counter-arguments I listed below. See these books here, here, and here, for example.

6 I point out the circularity of this below under the “Subjective” argument.

7 http://www.arsdisputandi.org/publish/articles/000041/article.pdf

8 Some proponents of Hume’s argument have tried to improve on it by including a probability which would necessitate that no testimony which attests to a miracle should count. However, as the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes:

“[A] Bayesian analysis sheds no light whatsoever on the structure or substance of the argument, and can do nothing by way of either supporting or refuting the argument. Indeed, any Bayesian analysis of the question of justified belief in miracles must be otiose until the difficult and essential questions concerning “evidence” in relation to an allegedly miraculous occurrence are resolved — at which point any Bayesian analysis will add little except the technical complexity of a formal apparatus that may or may not “clarify” the structure of Hume's argument.

The balancing of probabilities is of no use until it is decided what goes into the balance — that is, what constitutes the evidence that is to be subject to the balancing of probabilities. The point is this; apart from independent philosophical arguments — arguments that would in effect undermine the relevance of a Bayesian analysis to the question of the credibility of reports of the miraculous — no such analysis can, in principle, prove that no testimony can (or cannot) establish the credibility of a miracle.”

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/miracles/

9 Greg Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic: Readings and Analysis (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1998), p.350, ftnt.176.

10 This shall be the subject of a later series.

11 http://www.lightshinesindarkness.com/bible_koran.htm

12 As opposed to hypothetical

The Knowledge of God, The Necessity of Special Revelation, Part A

2008-04-03T17:30:00.000-07:00

The Knowledge of God

The Transcendental Argument for God, Part II

The Necessity of Special Revelation

“No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him.” (John 1:18)

“I have come as Light into the world, so that everyone who believes in Me will not remain in darkness.” (John 12:46)

Introduction

As was shown in the last lesson, unless God exists, knowledge^¹ is impossible. But, that still leaves open the possibility of Deism, the worldview that God created the universe and man but then walked away permanently. Thus, there was neither any interaction with human kind nor special revelation. It is functionally dualistic atheism without all of the problems associated with that view.^²

Still, it remains that man would be ignorant about the nature of the universe, the nature of man and God^³, the purpose of life, ethical limits, etc. In the past, deists (and others) have filled this gap with autonomous knowledge theories such as Rationalism, Empiricism, Idealism, etc. However, as it will be shown, all autonomous knowledge theories fail because they try to arrive at a coherent theory of the whole universe simply by starting with the finite mind of man instead of the revelation of the eternal God. As Cornelius Van Til said, “But to say how one fact differs from another fact in terms of the space-time continuum requires one to have some intelligible conception of this space-time continuum as a whole.”^⁴ Man simply cannot integrate factual data from the universe that impinges upon him into a theory of reality without first knowing what reality as a whole actually is. The only worldview that can meet this criterion is one in which a Being – who transcends this reality and possesses complete knowledge of it – reveals a basic, intelligible conception of the universe, man, and God to man. In other words, man’s knowledge requires a “jump-start” from God.

Thus, the claim of this sub-argument is that unless one presupposes that man has received special, propositional revelation from God that gives man a basic, intelligible conception of the universe, a coherent theory of the space-time continuum, man, and God is impossible.^⁵ What will follow will be a brief description of the major autonomous knowledge theories followed-up by equally brief refutations of those theories. I have already dealt with Platonism and Aristotelianism in the last lesson, and so, I will begin with the “Enlightenment” theories starting with Rationalism. [I will note again, before I begin, that I have had no formal philosophical training, and so my descriptions of these philosophies and the arguments against them may not use the proper philosophical language. I will also gladly accept correction if I have misrepresented any of the philosophies mentioned below.]

The Transcendental Argument for God’s Existence, Part II, Special Revelation

Rationalism^⁶

The Rationalists, such as Rene Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, and Gottfried Leibniz, believed that there were “self-evident” truths that could be deduced with certainty (such as mathematics), and from these foundational truths, all other truths could be deduced. In general, they believed that the mind was connected to all other things such that by simply reflecting upon something in one’s mind, man could come up with truth. It became evident, however, that there were many problems with this philosophy:

Evidently Not Self-Evident: As time progressed, the Rationalists began to disagree with each other over what was rational and what wasn’t. One would say that something was “self-evident”, another would disagree and call the first “irrational”, and the first would return the favor. It became apparent that what was “rational”, “self-evident”, and “intuitive” to these men was, in fact, based upon their personal, subjective, and emotive opinions.

It Destroyed Experience: To quote Cornelius Van Til:

“According to these rationalists, therefore, there was not and there could not be anything new in science.

Yet the very idea of science presupposes that genuinely new facts are discovered and that in being discovered they are not lost in a net of abstract logical relations but really add to a fund of existing knowledge. If the rationalists were right, logic itself would be reduced to an eternal changeless principle of identity. All facts would be wholly known by abstract thought thinking itself. Thus not only would there be no facts not wholly known but the idea of the “wholly known” would become an abstract contentless principle. Logic itself would become meaningless. There would be no longer any process of reasoning; such a process would be absorbed in identity.”^⁷

It Destroyed Individuality: By connecting all minds together along with everything else in the universe, they reduced everything to a blank identity, a form of monism. They had, therefore, destroyed the self, something that was the foundation for their Rationalism.^⁸

Without Foundation: It has been shown by mathematicians and philosophers of mathematics that mathematics is not self-consistent unless one adds certain unprovable assumptions. For example, Kurt Gödel proved that full arithmetic which utilizes both addition and multiplication is not fully consistent without the assumption of a Platonic or actual infinity. Furthermore, Descartes’ famous saying, “I think, therefore I am,” is actually faulty reasoning. As David Hume showed, all the statement, “I think” or (more accurately) “thinking”, proves is that thinking is occurring, but it does not prove that there is a unified “self” doing the thinking.

Arbitrary: How could they have possibly come to possess the knowledge that all of reality was connected through minds? Didn’t they come to believe that based upon speculation?

Empiricism^⁹

Empiricism was the opposite of Rationalism. Instead of believing that everything shared one mind, the empiricists, such as John Locke and George Berkeley, taught that every person was a wholly separate individual whose mind is a tabula rasa, or “blank tablet”. Thus, all knowledge comes through sense perception instead of internal reflection. With this reductionistic epistemology, one of its exponents, David Hume, quickly dissembled it, sending it into the abyss of utter skepticism:

Facts Without Any Relation to Each Other: If knowledge comes only through sense-perception, then all our minds consist of is a list of raw data without any connection between one data point and another. Thus, no complete theory of reality could be formed, and without a complete theory of reality, nothing could be said of reality at all because no one could know what reality really is!

No Universals, No Knowledge: Without logic and mathematics being presupposed^¹⁰, man’s thinking and reasoning processes cannot function, and so, knowledge would be impossible.

Causation Questioned: Once sense-perceptions became discrete events recorded by a “blank slate” without connection between them, there was no reason to believe in the law of cause and effect.^¹¹

Everything is Equally Possible: Without having a complete theory of the universe, no one could know what was probable and what wasn’t. To quote Van Til again:

“Grant an infinite number of possibilities, to begin with, as an absolutely pure empiricism must presuppose, then there is an infinite number of improbabilities to cancel every infinite number of probabilities. That is, there is no probability at all. Such is Hume’s argument. Hume is right when he says again and again that “an entire indifference is essential to chance.” The idea of a law of chances is, strictly speaking, a contradiction in terms. It is to this position of total indifference with respect to the future that anyone embracing a pure empiricism is driven.”^¹²

Thus, they destroyed science, the very mode of knowledge which they wanted to use exclusively.

Goodbye Self!: If our minds are simply “blank slates” passively taking in information, then there is no reason to believe that we are unified cognitive egos. That is, as Hume pointed out, the “self” would just be a “bundle of perceptions”, a bunch of thoughts without connection or purpose.

Most Arguments Against Scientific Realism Apply: (See my lesson, “A Refutation of Scientific Realism”.)

Kantianism^¹³

Immanuel Kant was a philosopher from Prussia who taught that both the Rationalists and the Empiricists were wrong and that both of their extremes would lead to the destruction of experience. He criticized the Rationalists for believing that everything could be known from innate ideas and the Empiricists for believing that the mind was a blank slate. Instead, he believed that no knowledge could be gained without sense-perception, but he also said that the mind imposes concepts such as space, time, quantity, quality, relation, and modality. Greg Bahnsen further explains:

“These mental impositions are “transcendentally” necessary – that is, they are presupposed for the intelligibility of any experience. Thus, “the understanding is itself the lawgiver of nature”; man’s active mind provides the order and regularity necessary for rational and scientific knowledge is only of things as they appear to us (phenomena), rather than of reality as it is “in itself” (noumena). In the very manner that Kant “saved science” (rendering all rational knowledge phenomenal only), he left plenty of room for a realm that transcends the mind’s activity, namely the noncognitive and nonrational experience of human freedom and moral obligation.”^¹⁴

Thus, Kant banished metaphysics, including God, into the realm of the unknowable.

Anti-Metaphysics is Itself a Metaphysic: “If man is autonomous, then he acts as autonomous when he is engaged in intellectual interpretation. That is to say, in assuming man’s autonomy Kant virtually takes for granted the essentially legislative character of human thought.… On Kant’s view man’s autonomous intellectual activity can tell us what ultimate reality cannot be. And to say what ultimate reality cannot be is, in effect, the same as to say what it can and must be. Kant’s rejection of metaphysics simply leads him to the adoption of a new metaphysics.”^¹⁵

All Knowledge Becomes Personal: If every mind imposes order from itself upon the world without any presupposed rational origin of those minds, then it follows that every mind would impose different orders upon reality. Thus, all ‘truth’ would be person-specific and relative. This applies especially to science, the very thing Kant was trying to save, since it was reduced to psychology.

The Relative Law of Non-Contradiction: “Kant argued that since it is the thinking subject that itself contributes the categories of universality and necessity, we must not think of these as covering any reality that exists or may exist wholly independent of the human mind. By using the law of non-contradiction we may and must indeed determine what is possible, but the possibility that we thus determine is subjective rather than objective. It is a possibility for us.… The validity of universals is to be taken as frankly due to a motion and a vote; it is conventional and nothing more.”^¹⁶

The Phenomenal Self: “The “phenomenal” self is the self as it must appear in our experience of it. But this apparent self is the projection of the organizing activity of the mind – that is, the product of a “noumenal” self which is “in itself” free and undetermined. In the nature of the case, this noumenal self could not be rationally understood or interpreted (by the categories of understanding imposed by the active mind). It is a “transcendental unity of apperception,” a mere place-marker for one’s mental activity. In the “transcendental dialectic,” Kant discussed the “psychological paralogism” (or fallacy) that there is a substantial self, with continuing personal identity, that does the thinking.”^¹⁷

Modern Idealism

Modern Idealism was the philosophy of choice for many, if not most, philosophers at the beginning of the twentieth century, but now, it is dead as a movement. Like Rationalism, the Idealists taught that all particulars are a form of a single mind transcending individual reality “coming in degrees to perfect self-consciousness.”^¹⁸ Therefore, all of reality is unified and rational^¹⁹, and so, the gap between the noumenal and phenomenal realm disappears. However, any statement about reality is only a partial truth seeing that it comes from a limited perspective, only a part of the perfect consciousness. Thus, any attempt to gain systematic knowledge is doomed a priori.

Changing Reality, Changing Truth: Because Idealism locates reason and truth immanently in changing reality (and not transcendently as in the Triune God of Christianity), reason and truth both change along with reality. Thus, ‘truth’ is in total flux, and knowledge becomes impossible.

Subjective Truth: If man’s knowledge is simply a part of the perfect consciousness and thus a limited perspective of the whole, then every man’s view of reality will be different but still equally valid. ‘Truth’ would be relative.

Reality an Illusion?: In order to avoid (1), some Idealists made time an illusion, and so, the universe was made non-temporal or unchanging. In that case, all of our sense-experiences would be illusory, and we would be reduced to bland abstract logic.

No Self: As a consequence of either Idealist route (i.e. 1. or 3.), all cognitive egos are absorbed into one great monistic reality, and so, the self is an illusion. It is either an illusion in constant flux or a changeless abstract illusion but an illusion nonetheless.

Arbitrary: How could they have possibly come to possess this knowledge that reality was Idealistic? Didn’t they come to believe that based on speculation? Why should we not believe in pragmatism, Idealism’s arch-enemy instead?

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1 Again, warranted true belief.

2 Of course, many modern deists 1) substitute the belief that God specially created man for some sort of non-teleological evolution and 2) possibly deny the existence of man’s soul. In these cases, (1) would functionally be dualistic atheism *with* all of the associated problems and (2) would functionally be materialism with all of its problems.

3 This would especially include the belief that He has left man alone after creating him.

4 Cornelius Van Til as quoted in Greg Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic: Readings and Analysis (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1998), p.382.

5 This is not to say that autonomous man can’t make one up. That happens all the time. However, such a conception of the universe would be arbitrary.

6 Here, I refer to Enlightenment Rationalism.

7 Cornelius Van Til as cited in Greg Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic: Readings and Analysis (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1998), p.335.

8 Descartes once said, “Cogito ergo sum,” I think, therefore I am. His own existence was “proven” from the rational deduction of him thinking (though, see the next point).

9 Here, I am referring to Enlightenment Empiricism.

10 And as I showed above (see “Rationalism”, Argument 4.), yes, they do have to be presupposed.

11 For a further discussion of this subject and its problems for non-theists, see James N. Anderson’s “Secular Responses to the Problem of Induction”.

12 Cornelius Van Til as cited in Greg Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic: Readings and Analysis (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1998), p.343.

13 The length of this description could never do justice to Kant’s philosophy, and so, for a lengthier description, see here or read Greg Bahnsen’s work, Van Til’s Apologetic, pp.343-358.

14 Greg Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic: Readings and Analysis (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1998), p.344, ftnt.170.

15 Cornelius Van Til as cited in Greg Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic: Readings and Analysis (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1998), p.345.

16 Cornelius Van Til as cited in Greg Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic: Readings and Analysis (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1998), p.346.

17 Greg Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic: Readings and Analysis (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1998), pp.350-351, ftnt.177.

18 Greg Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic: Readings and Analysis (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1998), p.359, ftnt.189.

19 In fact, according to Idealism, reality is reason itself!

The Knowledge of God, TAG, Part C

2008-03-31T18:10:00.000-07:00

Platonism^¹

Platonism was the philosophy of Plato, an Athenian who was the student of Socrates and the teacher of Aristotle. His philosophy is complicated in its detail, and like every worldview that I have described above, I will keep it short.

In Platonism, there are two separate and autonomous ‘realms’ of existence: the realm of matter and the realm of forms. Matter is considered to be a shapeless, changing, time-bound, and ‘unintelligible’ or chaotic surd. The ‘forms’ or ‘Ideas’ were impersonal, eternal, unchanging, timeless, abstract archetypes of all things and the source of all knowledge. The forms take matter and give it shape and substance, and matter “participates” in the forms. Thus, all dogs are ‘formed’ by the form or ‘Idea’ of ‘dog-ness’. All red apples are formed by the forms of both ‘apple-ness’ and ‘red-ness’.

As to man, Plato taught that man’s soul, being quasi-‘divine’, “participated” in that realm of forms but that it was imprisoned in the mortal body. Thus, the goal of man is to be rid of his evil material body so that he can return to his ‘heavenly’ home.

Platonism was and probably still is the closest attempt at building a successful, autonomous and non-theistic worldview. However, there are a great number of problems with Platonism, a number of which Plato’s student, Aristotle, pointed out:

Instantiation: The first and most obvious problem with Platonism is the problem of instantiation. If the forms are impersonal, inactive, abstract things, then how could they cause matter to participate in them? At this point, Plato had to resort to admitted myths, namely a ‘divine’ personal being called the demiurge.

Man’s Intellect is Changing: If man’s intellect learns, then it changes. But if it changes, then by Plato’s own standard, it is unintelligible and knowledge is impossible.

Man Reasons in Temporal Categories: Related to (2) is the fact that man’s intellect has to reason in sequential and temporal categories, not unchanging and immutable ones. Thus, by Plato’s own standard, man’s reasoning process is incapable of reaching true conclusions.

Argument from the Reliability of Cognitive Faculties: If the only ordering powers in the universe are impersonal forms^², then man’s cognitive faculties would have had to come about through an impersonal manner, and thus, the chance that they would be reliable is, at best, inscrutable (see Argument 2. from “Materialism” above).

Both Realms Ultimate: If both realms are ultimate, then the forms cannot fully rationalize matter, and so, rationalism would be canceled out by irrationalism. Thus, because there is still some degree of unintelligibility in the sensory world, knowledge of that world is impossible.

A Form of Evil?: In Platonism, the forms are morally good, and matter is morally evil. However, the very concept of ‘evil’ requires its existence as a form in the realm of forms. As Greg Bahnsen noted:

“This is embarrassing for Plato because he conceived of the realm of Ideas (the Ideal realm) as that which is good or of positive value. For evil things to be intelligible, there must be an Idea for them, but that awkwardly suggests that such Ideas are in their nature both evil (as to substance) and good (as to form) simultaneously.”^³

As Many Forms as Particulars: If there is a black cat, then that cat participates in the forms of ‘blackness’ and ‘cat-ness’. However, in order for the two forms to ‘form’ the cat together, those forms must both participate in the combined form of ‘black cat-ness’. But the cat isn’t simply black. It also has eyes, ears, teeth, enamel on those teeth, etc., and those things have a certain size, shape, color, etc. Thus, there must be an ultimate form for which all the more general forms participate in such that it describes the cat down to its very detail. So, for every particular in the universe, there must be a specific form just for it. Not only that, but since those particulars change, the particular-specific forms must change as well. However, if there are as many forms as particulars, and the forms must change with the particulars, then the forms are just as transient and thus unknowable as the matter which participates in them. Because of this, knowledge would be impossible.

Infinite Regression of Participation: Again, Greg Bahnsen explains:

“If relationships are intelligible on Plato’s terms, they must be an instance of a general Idea. The relationship between particular things and their Idea is that of “participation,” said Plato. Similarly, each participation must itself participate in an Idea of participation, and that participation must in turn participate in its own Idea of participation, and so on ad infinitum. Thus, as Van Til indicates, on Plato’s own terms a man cannot know any one particular thing without having infinite knowledge.”^⁴

Unity or Diversity in the Realm of Forms?: Do all forms ultimately participate in each other making the realm of forms one giant form, or are all forms separate from each other with their own realms of existence? If they are separate from one another, then there is no way for them to interact with one another. This would mean that all particulars that participate in different forms^⁵ would have their own separate realms of existence with their own ‘truths’. If they are, on the other hand, all ultimately one, then they would simply be, as Van Til put it, a completely colorless mass. It would be a bland Idea that said nothing, an ultimately irrational unity.

Ultimately, Plato had eternal, immutable, abstract thoughts without the necessary eternal, immutable Thinker from which those thoughts can be instantiated perfectly in the contingent universe without confusion. These problems can only be solved by placing the forms as ideas in the mind of the immutable God.^⁶

Aristotelianism^⁷

Aristotle was the student of Plato and an instructor in the Academy at Athens until Plato’s death. Afterwards, he tutored Alexander the Great and later started his own school in Athens, the Lyceum. Aristotle tried to improve upon Plato’s philosophy by locating the universals in the particulars themselves instead of in a mysterious realm of Ideas. Thus, every object is composed of both an intelligible form as well as individual, transient matter. Knowledge of this object comes through the senses which “draw out” its intelligible form through mental abstraction. While this solves many of the problems with instantiation and the transient nature of man’s intellect in Plato’s philosophy, it fails to solve all the other problems and even creates some.

Both Realms Ultimate: Aristotle kept Plato’s idea that universals and matter were both equally ultimate, and as with Platonism, the universals could not make matter fully intelligible. Because of this, all knowledge of contingent things would be impossible (see Argument 5. from “Platonism” above).

As Many Universals as Particulars: Aristotle still had the same problem as Platonism of requiring as many universals as particulars (see Argument 7. from “Platonism” above). As Greg Bahnsen notes:

“If one devised a “complex” universal (e.g., the form or Idea of man weighing two hundred pounds, having a snub nose, etc.) for every particular met in one’s experience, there would be as many universals as particulars and no point to distinguishing between universals and particulars. Moreover, the problem would then arise of how the universal of snub-nosedness relates to the complex universal of Socratesness (and to every other universal that incorporates snubnosedness).”^⁸

Person-Specific Truth: “On Aristotle’s own assumptions, what an individual man knows (i.e., the abstraction, the intelligible species) is a result of the internal activity of his own mind and thus private to himself.”^⁹

Argument from the Reliability of Cognitive Faculties: Aristotle still has the same problem as Platonism when it comes to the creation of man’s cognitive faculties (see Argument 4. from “Platonism” above). Although, in Aristotelianism, there is a ‘god’ called the Prime Mover, this ‘god’ simply puts everything in motion^¹⁰ and is only aware of his own existence (making him functionally impersonal).

Evolution of Truth: Because man must come into existence through an impersonal process (as noted in 4.) and is still subject to that process, it follows that the way that he apprehends and forms beliefs about ‘truth’ will change as the process changes his mind (see Argument 3. from “Materialism” above).

Knowledge of Events Impossible: According to Aristotle, knowledge of things is only of their universals through abstraction, and thus, knowledge of individual particulars as they change through time is impossible. Again, Greg Bahnsen:

“Since eternal and unchangeable things are entirely unlike – indeed, contrary to the character of – brute and contingent facts, they would be destructive of the non-Christian’s conception of history as well. This is the dialectical tension inherent in Aristotle’s version of empirical knowledge. If the historical facts are knowable, they are eternal and unchangeable – and thus not historical at all. But if the facts are brute, contingent, and always changing, they are “historical” (in the sense given to that term in unbelieving worldviews), but unknowable.”^¹¹

Post-Modernism

Post-Modernism is basically unbelieving man’s recognition that true knowledge through autonomous means is indeed impossible. It accepts naturalism, and as a result, it states that all truth is relative because man is the product of his environment. Thus, any view of reality, or “meta-narrative”, which claims to be objective is simply a belief that is culturally conditioned, and so, there is no reason to believe in it. Post-Modernism is commendable in that it recognizes that truth cannot be apprehended through autonomous means. However, instead of surrendering through repentance to the God of Special Revelation who is Himself the Truth, it denies everyone knowledge by jumping into the abyss of epistemic nihilism. Of course, this too, has its problems:

Post-Modernism is Itself a Meta-Narrative: By the post-modernists’ own standard, if all beliefs are socially conditioned, then the belief that all beliefs are socially conditioned is itself socially conditioned, and thus, there is no reason to believe in it! If the post-modernist makes a less sweeping claim that there is no way to know that a meta-narrative is true, then they are still refuting themselves since it amounts to the objective claim that objective knowledge is impossible. This would require them to possess complete, total knowledge of the universe in order to claim that they can’t have any knowledge of the universe! Reductio ad absurdum.

Naturalism as Absolute Truth!: Most Post-Modernists are naturalists, and in order to believe in naturalism, Post-Modernists must accept evolutionary theory (in neo-Darwinian or some other naturalistic form) as objective truth. In fact, they must go beyond evolutionary theory and assume metaphysical naturalism as absolute truth! (See the lesson, “Overcoming the Anti-Metaphysical Bias” which goes into more detail.)

And of course, because most Post-Modernists accept naturalism, usually in the form of materialism, the four arguments against materialism mentioned above follow. These, along with (1) would question how the post-modernist came to ‘know’ naturalism is true in the first place:

Argument from the Illusion of Thoughts and Self: (see Argument 1. from “Materialism” above.)

Argument from the Reliability of Cognitive Faculties: (see Argument 2. from “Materialism” above.)

Argument from ‘Evolving’ Truth: (see Argument 3. from “Materialism” above.)

Argument from ‘Person-Specific’ Truth: (see Argument 4. from “Materialism” above.)

A Possible Objection: Is TAG a Skeptical-Threat Argument?

The main objection to the Transcendental Argument for God’s existence has been to accuse it of being a “skeptical-threat” argument. A skeptical-threat argument is basically an argument that throws out the possibility of a hypothetical situation in which human knowledge of the actual world (and the self!) would be impossible. An example of this would Rene Descartes’ Cartesian Demon scenario made popular by the movie, “The Matrix”.

However, this objection, or counter-argument, represents a fundamental misunderstanding of TAG. TAG is a transcendental argument which is, in fact, an *anti*-skeptic argument. In other words, the transcendental argument seeks to root out those pre-conditions for which knowledge would be possible and skepticism would not be warranted.

Not only do they have TAG wrong, they have the accusation facing the wrong direction. It is the unbeliever’s worldview that is a skeptical scenario which leads to epistemic nihilism. As shown above, TAG simply points this out.

Basically, this objection seeks to bar anyone from pointing out to the materialist (or any adherent of any worldview with an impersonal beginning to the universe for that matter) that he is committing the self-excepting fallacy. It seeks to allow him to get away with making the naïve assumption that he is a third-person, objective viewer of the universe. So, not only is this not a real objection to TAG, it is an argument against believing in non-theistic worldviews.

Conclusion

Ultimately, to allow for the possibility of man possessing knowledge^¹², the following conditions must be met:

There must exist one^¹³ personal Being who exists in Himself and created the universe out of nothing.^¹⁴

This Being must possess complete or analytical knowledge of both Himself as well as the universe.

This Being must have created the universe and continue to uphold it in such a way that it is intelligible.

This Being must have personally created man in such a way that man’s cognitive faculties are attuned to his surrounding environment and geared toward truth.

In short, this is Theism.^¹⁵ In order to be justified in believing in anything, you must first believe in God. As one scholar put it:

“[I]n an order created by a perfect, omnipotent, and totally self-conscious Being, God, truth is both final, specific, and authoritative. God’s word can then be, and is inevitably, infallible, because there is nothing tentative about God himself. Moreover, truth is ultimately personal, because the source, God, is personal, and truth becomes incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ and is communicated to those who believe in Him. Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, as the way, the truth, and the life, is also the Christian principle of continuity. The Christian doctrine, therefore, involved a radical break with the pagan doctrine of the continuity of being and with the doctrine of chaos. It also involved a break with the other aspect of the dialectic, the pagan, rationalistic concept of order. Order is not the work of autonomous and developing gods and men but rather the sovereign decree of the omnipotent God. This faith freed man from the sterile autonomy which made him the helpless prisoner of Fate, of the relentless workings of a blind order.”^¹⁶

Appendix: The Problem of Universals

The basic problem which gives rise to the arguments from the ‘Evolution of Truth’ and ‘Person-Specific Truth’ against the worldviews mentioned above is the problem of universal truth. If truth is not universal, that is, constant throughout space and time, then it ‘evolves’ with time or is relative to each person. The problem boils down to the fact that if a worldview does not locate absolute, eternal, changeless truths in the mind of the eternal, personal God, then the apprehension of truth becomes impossible. Here are some quotes from well-known atheists and non-theists who acknowledge this^¹⁷:

“Thus the question “Why science?” leads back to the moral problem: Why have morality at all when life, nature, and history are “not moral”? No doubt, those who are truthful in that audacious and ultimate sense that is presupposed by the faith in science thus affirm another world than the world of life, nature, and history; and insofar as they affirm this “other world”—look, must they not by that same token negate its counterpart, this world, our world?—But you will have gathered what I am driving at, namely, that it is still a metaphysical faith upon which our faith in science rests—that even we seekers after knowledge today, we godless anti-metaphysicians, still take our fire, too, from the flame lit by a faith that is thousands of years old, that Christian faith which was also the faith of Plato, that God is the truth, that truth is divine.”^¹⁸

“Whereas the quarrel about universals and ontogeny had its meaning and significance within the context of medieval Christian culture, it is an intellectual scandal that some philosophers of mathematics can still discuss whether whole numbers exist or not…No, there are no preordained, predetermined mathematical ‘truths’ that just lie out or up there. Evolutionary thinking teaches us otherwise.”^¹⁹

“Recent troubles in the philosophy of mathematics are ultimately a consequence of the banishment of religion from science…Platonism…was tenable with belief in a Divine Mind…The trouble with today’s Platonism is that it gives up God, but wants to keep mathematics a thought in the mind of God…Once mysticism is left behind…Platonism is hard to maintain.”^²⁰

“The very idea that the world or the self has an intrinsic nature – one which the physicist or the poet may have glimpsed – is a remnant of the idea that the world is a divine creation, the work of someone who had something in mind, who Himself spoke some language in which He described His own project. Only if we have some such picture in mind, some picture of the universe as either itself a person or as created by a person can we make sense of the idea that the world has an “intrinsic nature.” ”^²¹

For Further Reading/Listening:

http://radioapologia.com/archives/Metaphysics_and_Meaning_by_Russell_Manion.mp3

http://www.home.earthlink.net/~gbl111/knowledge.htm

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1 This worldview is critiqued here not only because it is a worldview in itself but also because some non-Christians, especially atheists, modify their worldviews by adopting Platonism. So, for example, the resulting worldview would be Platonic atheism.

2 Unless, of course, we want to include Plato’s admittedly mythical demiurge.

3 Greg Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic: Readings and Analysis (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1998), p.325, ftnt. 129.

4 Greg Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic: Readings and Analysis (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1998), pp.326-327, ftnt. 133.

5 Which would be, as per (7), all particulars.

6 And of course, in Christianity, matter is not evil.

7 Like Platonism, some non-Christians, especially atheists, modify their worldviews by adopting Aristotelianism. So, for example, the resulting worldview would be Aristotelian atheism.

8 Greg Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic: Readings and Analysis (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1998), p.330, ftnt. 143.

9 Greg Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic: Readings and Analysis (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1998), p.331, ftnt. 145.

10 Thus, he is not involved in the creation of man.

11 Greg Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic: Readings and Analysis (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1998), p.333, ftnt. 155.

12 i.e., warranted true belief

13 Contra Dualism (see “Dualism” above).

14 That is, the material or spiritual universe cannot be equally eternal and thus ultimate as this Being. There cannot be an equal ultimacy like there is in the worldviews of polytheism, Platonism, Aristotelianism, etc.

15 This, of course, would not eliminate Deism which will be the subject of the next and last lesson, “The Necessity of Special Revelation”.

16 Rushdoony, op. cit., p.143.

17 This is in addition to those cited above in the main lesson.

18 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science.

19 Yehuda Rav, ‘Philosophical Problems in the Light of Evolutionary Epistemology’ in Math Worlds, ed. Sal Restivo (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1993), pp. 81, 100.

20 Reuben Hersch, What is Mathematics, Really? (Oxford, U.K.: The University Press, 1997), pp.42, 122, 135.

21 Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, p. 21.