The plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place amongst whom are the Muslims; these profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind’s judge on the last day.

So says the Catechism of the Catholic Church (Part 1, Section 2, Chapter 3, Article 9, Paragraph 3, Sub-paragraph 841, if I understand the organization of the catechism correctly—it seems rather long and complicated considering it’s such an important document).

Let’s make an argument!

1. Muslims and Catholics together adore the one God
2. Muslims adore Allah
3. Therefore, Allah is the one God
4. Therefore, Catholics adore Allah

Yeap, it holds water

I’ve seen Catholics respond to this by saying that the argument doesn’t follow, because Muslims deny certain truths about God, like that he is manifest in Jesus. So, to draw an analogy, you might adore Batman and yet believe that he is not Bruce Wayne; so you can adore God and yet believe that he is not Jesus. But there’s an obvious problem with that comeback, because neither my argument nor the catechism is couched in terms of denial, but rather of affirmation. So we can construct a valid parallel argument from the perspective of Selina Kyle, who knows Batman’s secret identity, in regards to Vicki Vale, who does not:

1. Vicki and Selina together adore Batman (because…)
2. Vicki adores Bruce
3. And Bruce is Batman
4. So of course Selina also adores Bruce

You’ll notice the argument isn’t trying to prove anything new—rather, it’s retracing the steps of reasoning used to get to Rome’s conclusion (premise [1]) in the first place. My conclusion, premise [4], is simply an entailment of Rome’s original line of reasoning.

The premises follow exactly because the argument is framed from the perspective of someone claiming greater knowledge than the parties whom the arguments are about. Catholics say Muslims adore God—and Selina says Vicki adores Batman—not because the epistemically impoverished Muslims believe that Allah is God—or the epistemically impoverished Vicki believes that Bruce is Batman—but because the epistemically gifted Catholics (and Selina) claim to know it.

But if Allah is God like Bruce Wayne is Batman, then Catholics, who adore God and know about his “secret identity”, automatically adore Allah too. Just like someone who adores Batman, and knows his secret identity as Bruce Wayne, must adore Bruce too. They adore them both because they know they’re one and the same person.

The upshot

Well, it’s obvious enough, innit? Catholics explicitly identify Allah with God. Since Christians explicitly deny that Allah is God—he is just another false idol—it follows that Catholics are not Christians, but rather some kind of “enlightened Muslims”. It’s nice to have it confirmed by Rome that Roman Catholicism is not a Christian denomination, but rather a sect of Islam.

Related posts:

1. The term “catholic” in the Nicene Creed

You’ve said on more than one occasion that the Catholic Church mentioned in the Nicene Creed is not the Roman Catholic Church. I have disagreed with you, pointing out that being in communion with the Pope, who is bishop of Rome, makes one part of the Catholic Church. I’ve come across on line an extract from a book which studies this question. I’m not talking about whether the Church went off the rails, just pointing out that when the Fathers at the Council of Nicea talked about the Catholic Church, they meant those who were in communion with Rome. I think the extract is worth reading, just to get a balanced picture.

You can click here to view the extract if you’re interested. Like most Catholic literature I found it interminably dull, and I don’t intend to interact with it specifically here. I just want to point out, more generally, a few problems with taking catholicity in the Nicene Creed to imply communion with Rome:

1. Anachronism

Consider these two statements:

• C: “In the fourth century, the term catholic church referred to the body of churches in communion with the bishop of Rome.”
• R: “In the fourth century, the term catholic church referred to the Roman Catholic Church.”

How does R follow from C? Can you spot the fallacy here? It begins with an “a” and ends with “nachronism”. Here’s an example in case it’s not clear:

• C*: “In the book of Exodus, the term law referred to the body of religious principles and practices administrated by the priesthood.”
• R*: “In the book of Exodus, the term law referred to the body of religious principles and practices administrated by the Sanhedrin.”

2. You can’t eat your cake and have it, too

In the same vein: say, arguendo, that the framers of the creed took it as given that Rome was the head of an authentic Christian institution, and that “catholicity” therefore entailed communion with Rome. Can we reasonably imagine that these same framers expected their definition to extend to any church claiming to be the Roman Church—provided it was located in the right place and claimed succession from the church they knew? That certainly seems like a stretch.

It seems more reasonable to think that, in the event that Rome apostatized, the framers would have dropped communion with Rome as an element of catholicity.

Put another way, you can’t eat your cake and have it too: if in the fourth century the term “catholic” implied a group of churches in communion with the Roman Church, then in the 21st century the same term must imply a group of churches in the same kind of communion with the same Roman Church. If the kind of communion is not the same, and/or the Roman Church is not the same, then the term cannot be consistently applied in the 21st century. And of course, it goes without saying that the nature of communion was different (see point 4); and I’ve given ample defense in the past for my contention that the Roman Church in the 21st century is not a Christian church at all—let alone the same church as that of the fourth century.

3. Essential versus incidental elements to catholicity

In light of the above, if (again, arguendo) we cannot consistently apply the term “catholic” in the Nicene Creed to our situation in the 21st century, what should we do? Obviously there are two options: Firstly, we can accept that the creed itself is faulty since it contains a definition of the church we can’t apply today (and this would be equally true for Roman Catholics as it would be for Protestants). In this case I think it would do violence to the creed to use it at all. We should simply discard it. Or secondly, we can accept that the creed’s framers took the term “catholic” to imply more than we do because they lived in a different time and a different situation, for which there is no modern corollary.

In other words, in the fourth century communion with Rome was taken as a given in the definition of catholicity—but this was an incidental element of the definition, and not an essential one. It was an element which was assumed because it was the nature of the church at the time; but as such, it was not an eternal truth about the church; nor even necessarily an authentic truth. If you take the creed as pointing to essentially spiritual truths, then the church’s catholicity is a spiritual matter (ie, a universal body of believers united in Christ), which may or may not be reflected in its physical structure (ie, a given hierarchy instituted by Christ). You could hold to some mistaken notions of the church’s physical structure, yet still get the spiritual structure right. You might even hold to those mistaken notions precisely because your accurate understanding of the spiritual truths combined with your intuitions to suggest a certain structure.

So it doesn’t seem problematic to me for 21st century Protestants to recite the Nicene Creed and take “Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church” to refer to a spiritual unity and authenticity, rather than to some culturally-bound, historical fact about how the church’s structure once was, but cannot be now. In fact, that seems to be the right and appropriate way to understand the creed. The other way around is ass-backwards and nonsensical in modern Christendom.

4. “Communion” doesn’t mean what Catholics like to say it means

All this said, I’m not remotely convinced that communion with Rome was regarded as a given in the definition of catholicity. Or, put another way, if “communion” was regarded as a given, then I’m not remotely convinced it meant “submission” or “oversight by” or “complete unity with” or any such concept that Roman Catholics would anachronistically require. It’s simply untenable to think that Rome was guiding Christendom in the same way it guides the Catholic Church today; or even that it had anything resembling the kind of authority it assumes for itself today.

For example, writing of a dispute in Irenaeus’ day, and another that became prominent shortly afterward, the Catholic scholar Klaus Schatz commented: “Rome did not succeed in maintaining its position against the contrary opinion and praxis of a significant portion of the Church. The two most important controversies of this type were the disputes over the feast of Easter and heretical baptism. Each marks a stage in Rome’s sense of authority and at the same time reveals the initial resistance of other churches to the Roman claim.” (Papal Primacy [Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1996], p. 11) Similarly, in the late second century Polycrates applied the principle of Acts 5:29 to his dispute with the Roman bishop Victor (Eusebius, Church History, 5:24:7). Tertullian criticized the bishop of Rome for an inconsistent response to Montanism (Against Praxeas, 1). The author of a work commonly attributed to Hippolytus refers to the Roman bishop Zephyrinus as “an uninformed and shamefully corrupt man”.

Note that even if Catholics try to say that, in principle, Rome in the fourth century had the same kind of authority as it does in the 21st century—even though in practice this wasn’t yet a fully developed or recognized doctrine—this doesn’t salvage the word “catholic” for them. Because if the kind of communion taken as implicit in the creed is only the kind of communion which was understood and practiced in the fourth century, then it isn’t modern Roman Catholic “communion”. It’s just a general notion of Rome’s importance, and of the need for churches to be in fellowship with one another.

You can read all about it in ‘Is “biblical Christianity” the only rational worldview? (And is atheism wicked?)’ and pick up the pieces from there.

But what I particularly want to do here is call out Randal to answer three questions I’ve already put to him, and which he has summarily ignored.

The story so far

Hoping to illustrate how unbelief cannot be necessarily sinful, Randal formulated a story about “Dr Z” (presumably a different fellow to the rather callous fellow in Borderlands) who loses his faith after seeing a great deal of atrocity. He asked what we should say to this fellow given his situation and his new agnosticism. I thought to myself, “Hrmm, sounds like Job was in a worse situation than Dr Z. After all, his whole family was brutally slaughtered. So what did he say?” Thus I replied:

Randal, in your contrived scenario with Dr Z, I believe a sinless and correct response would be:

“You speak as one of the foolish men would speak. Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?” [cf Job 2:10 —DBT]

But perhaps you don’t believe that the fool says in his heart, “There is no God”? [cf Psalm 14:1 —DTB]

I think this is a reasonable response. After all, Job’s wife wasn’t even suggesting that Job deny God’s existence; only that he deny his goodness. That seems like a lesser denial to me, though of course both are pretty bad. But Job rebukes her as foolish, rightly noting that God is free to give and take as he pleases.

But here’s what Randal has to say:

My jaw dropped to the floor when I read that one. This guy makes Job’s comforters look like rank amateurs. Dr. Z, his shirt still soaked with the blood of the eight year old he labored to save, is a foolish man?

Well, yeah. I’m not impressed by the attempt to divert attention from the actual issue by appealing to the emotion of the situation, because I dare say Job was in a more wretched emotional state—yet managed to “not sin with his lips”. If God is the grounds for all goodness and rationality, then of course denying him—in any situation—is foolish. (Maybe Randal denies that God must be the grounds for all goodness and rationality, but that seems a patently anti-Christian position for a so-called Christian to take.)

However, Randal proved very evasive about his position, so it’s hard to know for sure. To try to clarify where he stands, I asked him:

My questions

1. Do you deny that we have an obligation to believe in God? For example, do you deny that the gospel is a command as well as an invitation; that disobeying God’s commands is sinful; or that God will judge unbelief as sin?

2. Do you deny that it is “the fool” who says in his heart, “There is no God”?

3. Do you deny that a considered disbelief in God is immoral and irrational?

You seem to be saying that provided one has what he thinks is a good excuse for rejecting the source of goodness and rationality, one is not rejecting goodness and rationality (ie, one is not being evil and irrational). That seems like an obvious contradiction. If God is indeed the source of these things, how could there even be a good reason for rejecting him?

So far, no reply. Randal has made some comments on my tone; but not on my content. Curiously, while condemning the tone of his interlocutors, he likened one of them to Edward Norton in American History X—ie, a Nazi skinhead who brutally kills blacks. Nice one Randal. Irenic of you.

Still, you have the chance to set the record straight. You’re welcome to reply here, or of course to create a new post on your own blog.

I am genuinely puzzled by your statement that neither the Orthodox nor Catholic Churches are Christian, but false churches … I really would like to know the answer: when were these false churches established? Who were the Christians up to the time of the Reformation?

To my mind, this question seems calculated to embarrass away my view of Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. It implies the following about my position, and its consequences:

1. The Roman and Eastern Orthodox Churches became (“were established” as) false churches at discrete and measurable points in time;
2. These points must have been prior to the Reformation;
3. Therefore, for some time before the Reformation, there was no genuine Christian Church;
4. Therefore, for some time before the Reformation, there were no genuine Christians;
5. This is untenable and should not be believed (presumably because of Jesus’s promise in Matthew 16:18).

Lemme take a crack at these.

1. The Roman and Eastern Orthodox Churches became false churches at discrete, measurable points in time

I’m not a historical theologian, so frankly I can’t comment. Perhaps there are specific points in time at which both the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches accreted so much false doctrine that they ceased to be genuine Christian institutions. But who could say? Perhaps there is a discrete point in time at which the grains of sand I keep dropping on the ground become a pile. But why does it matter that I can identify that point? Once a certain amount of sand has accumulated, it’s indisputable that there is a pile. And once a certain number of false teachings about the doctrine of justification are accumulated (for example), it’s indisputable that there is no gospel any longer. A church without the biblical doctrine of justification is preaching a false gospel (Galatians 1:6-9; 2:16,21; 3:1-3).

2. These points of apostasy must have been prior to the Reformation

I tend to agree. I’m not very familiar with Eastern Orthodoxy, but it seems to me that both the Roman and Eastern Orthodox Churches had fully vacated the gospel of grace by the time of the Reformation, teaching instead a gospel of works.

3. Therefore, for some time before the Reformation, there was no genuine Christian Church

This seems to presuppose a rather tendentious view of ecclesiology. I don’t grant that “the Church” is contiguous with a monolithic religious institution. The Bible doesn’t use the word that way. It mostly speaks of individual churches.

I think individual churches could be genuinely Christian, even if technically under the authority of a non-Christian ecclesiastical institution. Of course, I also think it’s not particularly likely that they would be.

On the other hand, if we take “the Church” to be a spiritual entity rather than a physical one, (3) is obviously false. Inasmuch as there were still Christians prior to the Reformation (see below), there was still an invisible church comprising all those believers—even if it never met together.

4. Therefore, for some time before the Reformation, there were no genuine Christians

This premise, of course, only highlights how false the Catholic gospel is. Unless I’m much mistaken, I glimpse the hidden assumption that salvation is through the sacraments, and so without a “true church” to belong to, you can’t be saved.

But of course, salvation is not through the sacraments; it’s through faith in God’s promise that your sins are dealt with by the atoning work of Christ. And that promise is something not particularly hard to come by, even in the most hopelessly lost church. You can accumulate an awful lot of useless baggage in your beliefs, but still be counted among the sheep if you’re trusting exclusively in the work of Christ for your salvation.

Now, it goes without saying that most adherents to Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy are not trusting exclusively in the work of Christ. That would have been especially so among the laity of the middle ages and Renaissance, who had no access to the Bible, and who therefore had to simply trust what their priests told them about the means of salvation—which of course was that they had to perform certain works.

To a large extent, that situation continues. From the evidence I’ve seen, Catholicism has not improved since then (again, I know little of Eastern Orthodoxy). Its adherents, especially in countries like Italy, Spain and the Latin Americas, are highly indoctrinated in all manner of superstitions and practices by which they hope to be saved. In fairness, much of this is not directly from the Church. But in equal fairness it’s the natural extension of what the Church teaches; and the Church certainly does nothing to discourage or correct it. It makes my blood boil just to think on it, that Roman Catholicism is actively encouraging such rank idolatry and “Christianized” paganism, leading these poor ignorant, lost souls straight into hell.

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean.

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

Be that as it may, I don’t think there were no genuine Christians prior to the Reformation. I have no doubt that God continued to gather his elect, even out of the grim sludge of false doctrine that would, without his grace, have drowned them.

The above premises are untenable and should not be believed

I actually do think it’s untenable to claim there were no Christians for some time prior to the Reformation. But I don’t think it’s untenable to believe that the number of those whom God saved during the middle ages dwindled because the gospel was largely obviated by an increasingly apostate and politically-motivated “church”. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. But the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.

Related posts:

1. The term “catholic” in the Nicene Creed

This is a continuation of the discussion started with Stuart McEwing in his article ‘Openness Theology (Part 2)’. I realize it’ll go over the heads of some, and I apologize for that—but I think these issues are interesting and important enough to warrant bringing them to the front page. Interesting because, for more philosophically-inclined Christians, they raise questions about our own natures and our relationship to God; important because the answers to these questions have a lot of ramifications for not just our theology, but also our apologetics.

For example, a fairly standard line of attack for skeptics is to draw out the inconsistencies between holding to both God’s definite foreknowledge (DFK) and libertarian free will—which many Christians do. As a skeptic of LFW, though a believer in DFK, I took this line of attack in the comments thread of Stuart’s article:

P = “God knows that an agent S will choose A rather than ¬A”
Q = “S will choose A rather than ¬A”
[A] = the principle of accidental necessity (PAN)
[L] = the principle of logical necessity

1. [A]P
2. [L](P → Q)
3. [A]Q

This precludes the possibility of S’s choosing ¬A. Since LFW typically relies on the principle of alternative possibility (PAP), this argument suffices to disprove the standard libertarian view.

Stuart, however, resolves the difficulty by rejecting the principle of alternate possibility while still holding to libertarian freedom: namely, that our choices are causally unrestrained. To justify rejecting PAP, he cites a hypothetical scenario where it seems that PAP is false, but agent S still has free will. This kind of scenario was first proposed by a philosopher named Harry Frankfurt, and is so called a Frankfurt Counterexample.

At this point, I’m gonna start talking to Stuart directly:

Continuing the discussion…

Stu: I think it’s interesting that you object to PAP using a Frankfurt Counterexample. Frankfurt being a compatibilist and all (: But I take it you’re adopting the Molinist position, ala William Lane Craig.

I think that’s problematic, because ultimately it collapses into a pure Reformed theology. PAP is necessary to liberterian free will (LFW), because without it there’s no obvious distinction between incompatibilism and compatibilism; and without that, there’s no reason to believe in LFW and be a Molinist!

For example, imagine a choice between A and ¬A, where God foreknows the outcome A. Compatibilists, who hold to theological determinism, believe something like the following:

1. Principle of Volition (PV): Agent S can consciously contemplate A or ¬A and choose one
2. Principle of Accidental Necessity (PAN): S cannot choose ¬A because his choice of A is accidentally necessary
3. Principle of Compatibilistic Free Will (CFW): S freely chooses A

But what’s the difference between these beliefs, taken together, and what a libertarian would believe sans PAP? Perhaps you’d say (2) is incomplete, and that completing it creates the relevant distinction:

2C: S cannot choose ¬A because his choice of A is accidentally necessary AND causally restrained
2L: S cannot choose ¬A because his choice of A is accidentally necessary though NOT causally restrained

But the difference being suggested here only gains its force by trading on an equivocation in the concept of causality. (2L) cannot be true as a blanket statement under traditional Christianity. And (2C) need not be true, depending on what kind of causation you have in view.

If any kind of causation is in view, then presumably the libertarian and the compatibilist would both agree that (2C) must be true, and together reject (2L)—because the mechanics of God’s creative act necessitate at least three causal restraints on contingent choices:

CR1. Prior to creation, God surveyed all possible worlds and chose to create this one (call it W1)
CR2. God initially instantiated W1 in reality by speaking it into being
CR3. God continually upholds the instantiation of W1 in reality moment to moment

Any Christian must believe all three of these propositions, and all three of them constitute causal restraints on our choices.

A bit of explanation re these three causal restraints Christianity implies

Statement (CR1) entails a causal restraint on our choices, because God’s ability to know true facts about choices in worlds which have not been instantiated logically entails that his knowledge is not grounded on any choices’ actually obtaining. But if his knowledge is not grounded on the choices’ obtaining, yet he still has definite foreknowledge of their outcomes, it follows they must be causally determined. Were they not—were they indeterminate—then by definition he could not know their outcomes.

Statement (CR2) entails a causal restraint on human choices, since S’s choice of A is conditioned on God’s instantiation of W1. Indeed, every choice made in W1 occurs inevitably as God determined when he chose to instantiate W1.

Statement (CR3) entails a causal restraint on human choices, because we know that God alone instantiates things in reality. This instantiative power is a kind of causation, though not a natural causation (aka secondary causation). It’s an existential or primary causation. By definition, only God has this power; it’s sui generis, and a non-communicable attribute. Were God not exercising this power continually, the universe would simply fail to exist. Thus we know that whenever something is real, God alone instantiates it in reality; and since S’s choice to A is real, God alone therefore instantiates it in reality. It’s arguable whether this is merely a restatement of (CR2) or not; I don’t have a considered opinion on that.

The upshot (which is threefold):

Firstly, we must be careful when, in (2C) and (2L) above, we talk about S’s choice being “causally restrained”. Do we mean that it’s restrained in a natural sense, in an existential sense, or both? Any Christian must, of necessity, acknowledge that our choices are existentially causally restrained. But then there is no disagreement between the libertarian and the compatibilist, and their views appear to be the same. On the other hand, if we’re only talking about natural causal restraint, the compatibilist need not (to my knowledge) affirm that our choices are restrained at all; ie, he may agree with the libertarian that the only causally relevant factor in S’s choice is the action of S’s own will.

Secondly, because libertarianism without PAP implies a closed future, and acknowledges God’s definite foreknowledge even of non-instantiated worlds, it therefore necessarily entails theistic determinism:

TD. Theistic determinism is true just in case for an agent (S) choosing whether A, the outcome A or ¬A is actualized inevitably because of a prior action on the part of God.

Thirdly, libertarianism with PAP necessarily entails the opposite: ie, it implies an open future, which in turn requires a denial of God’s definite foreknowledge, since there is literally nothing for him to know about human choices logically prior to their obtaining.

Make a choice: Calvinism or Open Theism

This is why an Arminian theology will either collapse into a Reformed theology or an Open theology when you push its premises to be consistent with one another. Once you’ve discarded PAP you’re most of the way there, since you’re essentially adopting a compatibilist view already—making theological determinism a lot easier to swallow.

On the other hand, if your intuitions were to refuse to let you discard PAP—as I’ve seen be the case for many Arminians, despite the PAP counterexample God conveniently provided for us right in the Bible itself (Exodus 7ff)—then if you want to align all your beliefs to be consistent you have to let go of God’s definite foreknowledge.

I look forward to your thoughts (:

Related posts:

1. NY Times twists on horns of secular free will dilemma

As Glenn notes, the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy is the widely accepted benchmark for what this doctrine entails. Very briefly stated, it affirms that the Bible is without error. That is what “inerrant” means. Glenn singles out the following parts of the Statement for disagreement:

WE AFFIRM that inspiration, though not conferring omniscience, guaranteed true and trustworthy utterance on all matters of which the Biblical authors were moved to speak and write.

WE AFFIRM that Scripture, having been given by divine inspiration, is infallible, so that, far from misleading us, it is true and reliable in all the matters it addresses.

WE AFFIRM that Scripture in its entirety is inerrant, being free from all falsehood, fraud, or deceit.

WE DENY that Biblical infallibility and inerrancy are limited to spiritual, religious, or redemptive themes, exclusive of assertions in the fields of history and science. We further deny that scientific hypotheses about earth history may properly be used to overturn the teaching of Scripture on creation and the flood.

WE AFFIRM that the doctrine of inerrancy has been integral to the Church’s faith throughout its history.

One of the obvious problems with this disagreement is that it severely undermines one’s apologetic with regard to the witness of Scripture. By disagreeing with these statements, Glenn commits himself to admitting that the Bible is not guaranteed true, trustworthy, and reliable; and may be misleading and contain falsehood, fraud, or deceit. That is a difficult situation for a Christian apologist like him to be in.

For my own part, I am an inerrantist, and I find Glenn’s critique of inerrancy shallow and unsophisticated to the point of attacking a strawman. Here’s why.

The Objection Evaluated

Glenn provides the following evidence for discarding inerrancy:

If the texts of the Bible contain not a single error, then two biblical accounts of the same event will agree. They need not cover all the same aspects of the event, but they will agree in the sense that there will not be any conflict between them. Otherwise there is an error present, since two accounts of an event that conflict cannot both be fully correct. However, we know that this is not the case when it comes to the four Gospels. There are some cases where this is fairly obvious. For example, all four Gospels contain sentences attributed to Jesus, but they differ from one Gospel to the next.

What is obvious to anyone with even a little exegetical training is that Glenn is implicitly evaluating the Bible against a modern, scientific or journalistic standard of reporting. It should go without saying, however, that the Bible is an ancient, prescientific compilation. While, in the Modern West, it is considered “inaccurate” or even “dishonest” to quote someone without doing so verbatim, in the ancient Near East no such view existed. On the contrary, it was customary to quote the essence of what a person said, without concerning oneself over the minutiae of the words and sentence structure used. This fact was not lost on the framers of the Chicago Statement, as indicated by Article XIII:

We deny that it is proper to evaluate Scripture according to standards of truth and error that are alien to its usage or purpose. We further deny that inerrancy is negated by Biblical phenomena such as a lack of modern technical precision, irregularities of grammar or spelling, observational descriptions of nature, the reporting of falsehoods, the use of hyperbole and round numbers, the topical arrangement of material, variant selections of material in parallel accounts, or the use of free citations.

Variant Selections & Topical Arrangement

I highlight the latter items—topical arrangement and variant selections—because of additional evidence Glenn moves on to allege against biblical inerrancy. He presents for consideration the differences in who is reported to have visited the tomb on Sunday morning in Matthew 28:1, Mark 16:1, Luke 24:10, and John 20:1–2; concluding, reading all four accounts, could you tell who was there and who was not?

The answer, however is obviously yes. As the ESV Study Bible notes on Luke 24:10, It was Mary … and the other women indicates that at least five women went to the tomb. And of John 20:2, contra Glenn’s claim that according to John 20:1–2, the only woman involved was Mary Magdalene, it observes: The plural we suggests the presence of other women besides Mary. Since Luke 24:10 lists Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them, and Mark 16:1 lists at least one of those women as Salome, it’s trivial to deduce that these were all present—with at least one other, unnamed woman.

The only way in which one can find a difficulty in this passage is to suppose that each of the authors intended to exhaustively list everyone present. Yet even reading modern writing, that’s far from a reasonable or normal assumption. Imagine I were emailing someone to tell him about our going to an apologetics conference. I might say that “Thinking Matters went to the conference”; or, if the person I was telling knew particular people in Thinking Matters, but not others, I might say that “Jason and Stuart and I went to the conference”; or I might just mention Jason if the other people were less important in the telling. None of these even suggest that the rest of Thinking Matters wasn’t present; let alone entail it.

A final evidence alleged against inerrancy is as follows:

Another type of difference between different Gospels is the way that different events are placed in a different order. A well known example is the cleansing of the temple in Jerusalem. In the Synoptic Gospels this event occurs after Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, fairly late in the narrative. In John’s Gospel however, this event occurs in chapter 2, before much else has happened.

But it’s a well-documented fact that adhering to a strict chronological order when reporting is a relatively modern invention. In the ancient Near East, arranging anecdotes by topic or by idea was an extremely common, not to mention effective, story-telling technique. It’s called block logic. It’s not wrong, unless you’re specifically intending to present a chronological description of events. It’s just a different way of recounting things. Someone claiming enough exegetical competence to reject the doctrine of inerrancy should know this.

Standards of Truth

Now, Glenn even acknowledges that standards of truth in the ancient Near East may differ to those in the modern West. Yet in doing so, rather than seriously considering the issue and recognizing the relevant cultural distinctions, he appears to mock the notion:

Maybe you want to rescue it by saying that inerrancy is not only compatible with individual writers using their own style, but it is also compatible with the fact that writers are doing no more than adhering to standards of accuracy that were acceptable in their day, and that is why there are no problems with the existence of conflicting accounts, because the fact is, standards of the day just weren’t very high. But this is inerrancy in name only, and it creates a hilarious spectacle for the sceptics to pour scorn upon. [...] If we qualify inerrancy this much to save it, it becomes a useless idea altogether.

There is simply no way to overstate how theologically inept—not to mention culturally prejudiced—this statement is. It amounts to saying that using the grammatico-historical method of exegesis to determine our doctrine is a hilarious spectacle. It’s akin to saying that all we need are English Bible translations, because qualifying our understanding of Scripture against its sociolinguistic context is to qualify it so much that it becomes useless. It’s to say that putting ourselves into the shoes of the authors and audience of the scriptural autographs is not merely irrelevant, but an exercise in comedy.

What Glenn wants us to believe is that how the original authors and audience of Scripture understood errors merely indicates that their standards were too low. And, if we qualify inerrancy to mean that the Bible is free from error as its original authors and audience understood errors to be, then it’s a “hilarious spectacle” and a “useless idea altogether”. This objection is dead on arrival for two reasons:

Inerrancy is supposed to be defined by Scripture

Firstly, even if standards of truth in biblical times were sub par—tsk, tsk—it remains that the biblical authors wrote in those times. Now, maybe Glenn thinks those scamps should have used modern Western standards of reporting, even though these were totally alien to their culture, where the retelling of stories was a largely verbal affair and the manner of conceptualization was quite different. But the fact remains that they didn’t use our standards. They used their own. Probably because the ignorant peons they were writing to, wretched, barely hominid gimps that they were, expected it.

Thus, taking into account what the Bible itself considers an error when we’re defining inerrancy is not a “qualification”. It is a central tenet of the doctrine. When Scripture attests to its own inerrancy, it does so assuming an ancient Near Eastern concept of truth and error.

Modern journalistic standards are not an objective ideal

Secondly, what justification does Glenn have for taking his view that the “standards of the day just weren’t very high”? High compared to what? It isn’t as if our modern Western conventions for journalism constitute an objective standard against which any kind of story-telling should be judged. They’re not some pinnacle of reporting—a gilt-edged ideal that any writer in any culture should be looking up to and trying to imitate, even if that were possible without the use of technologies unavailable to them. In fact, these standards aren’t even commonly used in Western society.

Does Glenn really believe that the genre of the gospels is functionally identical with modern journalism? Does he seriously believe that using any other story-telling conventions actually amounts to error? If I tell him that “Thinking Matters went to an apologetics conference last month”, and he tells his wife that Bnonn said, “Last month, Thinking Matters went to an apologetics conference,” should we say that his standards of testimony are so low that, in fact, he has reported what I said erroneously? Even in the modern day there is no presumption that we retell the exact words someone used unless we’re doing so in very specific circumstances—such as writing for a newspaper, or using a blockquote tag. Certainly, the advent of copy and paste has made this much easier, and thus raised our expectations. But that hardly implies that reporting the gist, if not the precise words, is a lowlier method, and in fact constitutes error. The only time that would be true is if there is a presumption of a verbatim quote. Unless Glenn has remarkable evidence to the contrary, in the case of Scripture, there is not.

Moreover, even in modern journalistic writing it is never expected that the author report everything, or that he not be selective about the facts he conveys. In fact, basic common sense tells us that every reporter must do these things, because it is inherent to the nature of reporting as a subjective exercise. And this may become more pronounced depending on the kind of story-telling techniques an author is using, and the specific reasons he has for writing. In short, Glenn appears to ignore even the most obvious facts of literary criticism in his efforts to make his case.

Conclusion

Overall, Glenn’s understanding of inerrancy is too inadequate for his critique to gain any actual traction against the doctrine. The fundamental exegetical principles of genre, language, cultural context, and intent are all ignored, meaning that inerrancy itself is essentially ignored, while a strawman is burned in its place. Indeed, it’s as if he’s unaware that inerrancy is an exegetical issue at all. Instead of looking at the scriptural foundation for the doctrine, and the linguistic nuances of the term “error”, he imposes upon Scripture his own arbitrary conventions of reporting, finds it lacking, and then declares that inerrancy must be false. Sadly, the comments on his blog suggest that many other Christians don’t see anything immediately problematic with this approach. Hopefully this article can serve as a corrective.

Related posts:

1. The term “catholic” in the Nicene Creed

I’m in a discussion with a guy regarding free will, and in our discussion, we’ve come to a point where he is asking how we know when to interpret Scripture literally or figuratively.  The reason he asks is because he utilizes the argument against “no one is good, not even one” as we see unbelievers doing good all the time.  I’ve tried talking with him about God’s standard of Good as compared to man’s standard, but he says that he sees a verse like that as more metaphoric, in that no man is totally good, but that he can choose to still do good things.  He then asks how I know that we are to take the verse talking about earth’s ‘four corners’ as figurative, wanting me to say that I base it on extra biblical evidence, so that he can prove his point that he sees unbelievers doing good things every day, so a verse like found in Romans 3 can’t be literal.

Any help you can give me would be wonderful.  How do I answer this question well?

Bearing in mind that I’m by no means a trained exegete, there seem to be a few ways to address this:

1. There’s a disparity between empirical and moral extra-biblical evidence

On the one hand, as regards interpreting Scripture in light of extra-biblical evidence, there’s an obvious disanalogy between empirical and moral evidence. We can know that the earth is round in a good number of extra-biblical ways, because God has equipped us with faculties to make these sorts of determinations. In one sense, the same is true of moral judgments: God has equipped us with a conscience to tell between good and evil. But there are two major differences which must be noted:

a. Direct disparity

Whereas Scripture’s purpose is very seldom to describe brute empirical facts, it is very often to describe moral facts. Its chief concern is with the relationship between God and man—and the major problem with that relationship is a moral one. So whereas we may have good warrant for treating as metaphorical empirical descriptions which are prima facie not literally true, the same warrant does not exist to treat prima facie false moral descriptions as metaphorical.

b. The implausibility of interpreting Scripture against our moral intuitions

Expanding on (a), it must be noted that Scripture claims our moral intuitions are fundamentally skewed by the fall. It describes man as totally depraved, and his way of judging good as fundamentally wrong. Rather than judging goodness by looking to God, we naturally judge goodness by looking to man. Thus, if we believe Scripture, we should expect that our prima facie moral judgments will be wrong in many instances—especially with regard to morality in respect to God, as opposed to merely in respect to other people. If Scripture is correct, then fallen man only considers this latter “human-human” morality, and ignores that while one may do good to another man, that same act may still be evil as regards God. I would direct your friend to Paul’s direct statement in Romans 14:23 that “whatever does not proceed from faith is sin”. For this reason, our moral intuitions do not provide any kind of extra-biblical support for rejecting the literal truth of Scripture’s moral statements. Quite the opposite is true. If Scripture’s statements are literally true, then our moral judgments are most likely false as regards our goodness with relation to God.

c. Assuming the consequent

Building on (b). your friend is flagrantly begging the question against you. He wants to deny the literal truth of Scripture’s moral statements on the basis of his own moral intuitions. But one of the things that Scripture says about his moral intuitions is that they are incapable of providing a reliable basis for these sorts of judgments—thus, if Scripture is literally true in these matters, his moral intuitions provide no kind of useful extra-biblical data. By insisting that they do, he is therefore assuming the very thing he needs to prove: namely, that Scripture’s moral statements are metaphorical.

2. Moral intuitions are subjective and vary between people

Moreover, I do not share your friend’s moral intuitions. On the contrary, one of the things that makes Scripture so plausible to me is how accurately and unashamedly it describes the moral condition of man. To be sure, as an unbeliever I certainly would have agreed with your friend. I would have rejected Scripture’s moral statements on exactly the same basis: I refused to judge goodness as something in relationship to God, and instead recognized only human-human moral relationships. Thus, I judged most people to be relatively good. However, as a believer who knows that all things are rightly judged in relationship to God, it is impossible for me not to see that “no one does good”, since even great acts of charity and self-sacrifice are driven not by a motivation to honor God, but by a desire to honor man. All the moral actions of any unbeliever—and many of believers as well, since we are by no means perfect yet—are basically idolatrous despite whatever benefit they may have to other people. So I would say that:

a. Judging between conflicting intuitions

Your friend’s entire case seems based on the assumption that his moral intuitions in this matter are correct—yet given that his intuitions are by no means universal, this is a highly tendentious assumption. If someone else, like me, finds Scripture’s moral statements intuitively plausible when taken literally, his whole case is undermined. Why should I accept his intuitions over mine?

b. Judging like an unbeliever rather than a Christian

Given what I’ve said about how unbelievers judge moral issues, your friend’s attitude in general constitutes a Big Red Flag. He is judging moral issues exactly as if he were an unbeliever, rather than as a Christian. Mind you, given that he appears to be at best a semi-Pelagian, that doesn’t come as any great surprise.

3. Exegetical deficiencies

On the other hand, his contention is inept on exegetical grounds as well. A phrase like “the four corners of the earth” is not difficult to see as a figure of speech. However, a phrase like “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God”—along with the rest of the three chapters Paul dedicates to describing the moral condition of man, and the umpteen passages he draws from in the Old Testament—are plainly not. There is simply no linguistic warrant for taking all of these passages as metaphorical; so if your friend wishes to do so, the burden of proof rests squarely on his shoulders. Whereas Scripture never repeatedly and explicitly claims that the earth has four corners (it does use the expression once or twice, but that is at best an implicit claim), it does repeatedly and explicitly claim that man is totally depraved, morally corrupt, unable to please God, and so on. It states this fact in any number of different ways, from the hand of any number of different prophets. So your friend needs to have an answer to each of those passages.

4. The slippery slope to hell

Your friend’s avenue of argument leaves the way open to deny basically any doctrine that someone finds personally objectionable:

a. Any doctrine can be denied based on some arbitrary intuition

If it’s reasonable to take depravity as metaphorical because a literal view conflicts with one’s moral intuitions, then it is reasonable to take the Trinity as metaphorical because a literal view conflicts with one’s logical intuitions; or it’s reasonable to take hell as metaphorical because a literal view conflicts with one’s emotional intuitions. Perhaps your friend is thinking of adding unitarian universalisism to his Pelagianism?

b. Many doctrines can be denied even on the basis of purely moral intuitions

But even if we arbitrarily confine the argument to moral intuitions, a great deal can still be denied. Many people find the notion of penal substitution morally abhorrent. Even if your friend does not, how does he propose to convince people of the truth that Jesus died for their sins, when their moral intuitions would lead them to believe that, in fact, the crucifixion was a merely metaphorical event? That would certainly be deeply hypocritical. And denying the doctrine of hell on moral grounds is as old as the hills. Not to mention the goodness of God, and/or the unity of Scripture, since YHVH did some pretty unsettling things back in the day when Israel was still in vogue. No doubt examples can be multiplied.

In conclusion

In short, it seems to me that your friend is taking the approach of subjecting Scripture to his own personal opinions, rather than allowing Scripture to stand in judgment over his opinions. That is not Christianity—it is a religion of his own invention; merely inspired by the Bible.

Related posts:

1. The term “catholic” in the Nicene Creed

As a reflection of my view’s ongoing attenuation, I’d like to take a stand against one aspect of Scripturalism—namely, its low view of sense experience. Witness Cheung’s latest:

To illustrate, in John 12:27-30, a noise sounded from heaven. That was the event. Some of those in the crowd thought it had thundered, while others said that an angel had spoken. Perhaps this was so beyond the expectation of some of the people that they could not believe it. The confusion demonstrates that sensations are unreliable, and serves as an inspired example against empiricism. Nevertheless, some of them thought that they heard words, that an angel had spoken.1

Following some discussion, he adds,

For this reason, it is no exaggeration to say that, logically speaking, one cannot be an empiricist and a believer at the same time. This is because the empiricist cannot know anything, and he cannot believe anything. This includes those who claim to hold revelation as the first principle of their worldview, but then insist that the reliability of sensation is the precondition for any access to revelation in the first place. In reality, then, the reliability of sensation is their first principle. Despite their pretensions, they are nothing more than empiricists, because if they make empiricism their starting point, then they can never be anything other than empiricists. Logically, they cannot be Christians, although we can take the route of charity and assume that these people are inconsistent with their own philosophy. Nevertheless, since they seem to insist that they are intellectually competent and thus alert to the implications of their epistemology, this route is chosen by force out of a reluctance to condemn them.

Empiricism is the view that knowledge is mostly, or even exclusively, derived through the senses.2 It’s unclear that Cheung is aware of this, however, since he appears to use the term “empiricist” as a catch-all for anyone who holds to the mere reliability of the senses. This is indirectly corroborated by the fact that there are far more obvious passages of Scripture which disprove empiricism as it is typically conceived—namely Romans 2:15 or Jeremiah 31:33, which state plainly that some knowledge is intrinsic to all people, and that some other knowledge is directly communicated to some people by God, apart from empirical means. It therefore seems safe to assume that Cheung is using the term “empiricism” in a rather more expansive way than is strictly accurate, to refer to anyone who upholds the view that our senses typically yield true beliefs about reality, or even more generally to refer to anyone who upholds the view that our senses are the producers or mediators of beliefs at all.

It will be noted by long time readers that I have no difficulty with labeling certain ostensibly Christian positions as actually non-Christian. But it strikes me as an immense stretch to (I) label John 12:27–30 an “inspired example against empiricism” (bearing in mind how Cheung is using that term), and (II) on that basis, to label anyone as non-Christian who takes the reliability of sense experience as a precondition to knowing God’s public revelation. Let me briefly comment on these two points.

I. What does the passage actually say?

As regards Cheung’s exegesis, there are three plain and insurmountable defects:

a. The conclusion doesn’t follow

Firstly, John does not record enough information to derive Vincent’s conclusion by good and necessary consequence. As he himself admits of the event, “perhaps this was so far beyond the expectation of some of the people that they could not believe it.” But if the cause of their error was plausibly located in their false expectations and presuppositions, so that they just could not believe what their senses were conveying to them, then nothing at all can be conclusively proved about the accuracy of those senses themselves. Perhaps they were entirely reliable, and the people all perceived the event accurately. Or perhaps they weren’t, and the people’s error was caused by faulty perception and/or a faulty interpretation of that perception. But Cheung’s case requires the unreliability of the people’s senses. If there is even a possibility that their senses were reliable, yet that they still misinterpreted the event, then the unreliability of sense perception is not proven. And Cheung himself admits that this is possible—even plausible.

Now, he may argue that whether it is the senses themselves, or people’s interpretation of them, something about sense perception is unreliable. But this would just be back-pedaling. He has claimed this passage as a divinely inspired example against empiricism. Remembering how he uses this word, he’s essentially saying that this passage disproves the view that the senses are in some way producers or mediators of typically true beliefs. It isn’t a question of whether people, having had the initial true belief conveyed to them via their senses, reinterpret that belief to conform to their presuppositions. After all, were that the case Cheung would also have to deny the possibility of a priori knowledge such as that mentioned in Romans 2:15, since people take their true, God-given inherent beliefs and twist them into false ones (see, for example, Romans 1:18ff).

b. Even if the conclusion does follow, it can’t prove Cheung’s point

Secondly, John 12:27–30 is a particular instance of some particular people drawing false conclusions about an extraordinary event. Let’s grant, without justification, that the reason for their error was their faulty senses rather than their faulty presuppositions. How is Cheung going to prove, from the fact that these few people’s senses did not produce or mediate true beliefs about an extraordinary event, that all people’s senses do not produce or mediate true beliefs about ordinary events? To draw that inference, Cheung must reason inductively. That is, he must infer a universal principle from a particular datum. As Cheung himself loves to remind people, “induction is always a formal fallacy”, and “on the basis of induction, one can never establish any proposition, let alone a universal proposition“.3

Thus, even granting Cheung’s unjustified assumption about what the passage is teaching regarding sense perception, there is simply no way for him to take this specific case and form a general principle out of it. He cannot say that since the Bible teaches the unreliability of some people’s senses in this particular case, it therefore teaches that other people’s senses are always or often or sometimes unreliable in other cases.

c. If it can prove Cheung’s point, then it refutes him

Thirdly, if for some reason we are very silly and grant Cheung’s entire case, then it simply destroys itself. How did he come to know what John 12:27–30 says? Was it not by reading the Bible? Yes it certainly was. Is reading an activity which requires the reliability of our perception? Yes it certainly is. Does it entail that the senses produce or mediate true beliefs? Yes it certainly does. It makes not the slightest difference if Cheung holds to some form of occasionalism, where the action of the senses are merely events on the occasion of which God directly communicates knowledge to the mind. The fact remains that there is a direct correlation between what we perceive and what we believe. Cheung, when he perceives the inked glyphs on the page of his Bible, believes that he is perceiving certain letters forming certain words with certain meanings, and not other letters forming other words with other meanings. Since the formation of these beliefs is directly correlated to his senses, it makes not the least amount of difference what precise mechanism of knowledge-formation is under way, since if his senses are in fact consistently unreliable, or inconsistently reliable, or if they do not produce or mediate true beliefs, then he will either be forming consistently unreliable or inconsistently reliable beliefs about what Scripture teaches, or he will not be forming any beliefs at all. In whatever case, he has no reason to think that Scripture says what he thinks it says.

II. Empiricism and Christianity

Cheung claims that holding to the reliability of the senses precludes one holding to the first principle that the Bible is the word of God. He claims that by holding this “empiricist” belief, one is committing oneself to holding it as a first principle. This is plainly absurd. I don’t have to take the reliability of my senses as my foundational presupposition in order to have good reasons for believing it. For example, if my first principle is that the Bible is the word of God, then it follows necessarily that our senses are mediators or producers of consistently (though not necessarily invariably) true beliefs. If they were not, I could not know anything about the Bible, since it is given in a format which requires the reliability of sense perception. Thus, I could not know that the Bible is the word of God, and my first-principle would self-destruct.

Therefore, if it is true that the Bible is the word of God, then our senses are reliable mediators of true beliefs. Conversely, if our senses are not reliable mediators of true beliefs, then it cannot be known that the Bible is the word of God, and so this proposition is self-refuting as a first principle. We require our senses to become aware of the Bible’s contents. This doesn’t commit us to believing, necessarily, that knowledge of its contents is caused by our senses in some way—it doesn’t commit us to any metaphysical theory of knowledge-acquisition. It simply commits us to affirming that the beliefs we form on the occasion of sense experiences are typically accurate. It’s either that, or claim that we all receive special revelation entirely apart from our reading the Bible. But in that case one wonders what the purpose of senses are at all. One wonders, in fact, if the physical world even exists under Cheung’s view.

Thus, despite to Cheung’s assertion, it is plainly moronic4 to view any doctrine affirming the reliability of our senses as un-Christian or anti-Christian. It is irrational and absurd to refer to anyone who upholds that knowledge is gained through perception, and that this is a generally reliable process, as un-Christian. On the contrary, it is those who deny the reliability of the senses who are the ones affirming idiotic,5 un-Christian doctrines.

That said, since Scripture nowhere claims that one’s view of empiricism is vital to faith or salvation, the very notion that, “logically”, such people “cannot be Christians” is pure nonsense. The whole question is moot, and a poor reflection on the one making such a patently legalistic claim. Let Vincent produce his deductions from Scripture before he publicly deplores what are manifestly biblical, rational beliefs.

1. ↑ Vincent Cheung, ‘Light and Darkness’ (http://www.vincentcheung.com/2009/05/12/light-and-darkness/). Similar sorts of statements appear in Scripturalist Sean Gerety’s latest post, ‘Vantilian Shadow Boxing – Round Three’ (http://godshammer.wordpress.com/2009/05/12/vantilian-shadow-boxing-round-three/), but in charity I am picking on the most erudite, well-educated, and philosophically trained Scripturalist I know, rather than the worst. Gerety has already been soundly refuted at Triablogue—see Steve Hays, ‘Shadowboxing with a lepresean’ (http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2009/05/shadowboxing-with-lepresean.html) for the most recent article as of this posting, or refer to the ‘scripturalism’ tag for a complete listing of articles in the exchange.
2. ↑ See http://www.answers.com/empiricism for a number of good overviews.
3. ↑ Vincent Cheung, Ultimate Questions (http://www.vincentcheung.com/books/ultimate2004.pdf [PDF]); p 21 (emphasis mine).
4. ↑ That is, unbiblical and stupid. This is a favorite word of Cheung’s, deriving from the Greek word moros, so I trust he will not mind me using it in this way. See Cheung, ‘Professional Morons’ (http://www.vincentcheung.com/other/promorons.pdf) and ‘A Moron By Any Other Name’ (http://www.vincentcheung.com/other/morbyname.pdf).
5. ↑ “A moron by any other name is still an idiot” (‘A Moron By Any Other Name’, p 7).

Damian over at ‘And Slaters Go Plop’ has recently written on Dogma, arguing against its intellectual legitimacy, and asking how we can avoid it. He says,

By ‘dogmatic’ I am describing an absolutist kind of belief that, if I could summarise in my own words, boils down to the fact that you would really rather hold to what you believe than accept an alternative even if the alternative is true. Dogma is the belief you refuse to interrogate.

Dogma in Christianity

I’d like to note, for the record, that this is not how dogmatism is typically perceived in Christianity. Dogma is a mainstay of biblical Christianity, and where it is rejected the religion crumbles. Dogma is there whenever a doctrine is taken as authoritative, or presupposed as true—such as when we treat the Bible as the word of God. So, for the sake of avoiding confusion, let it be noted that Christians do not define dogma in such a negative way. That is not the primary meaning of the word, as most dictionaries reflect. William Shedd’s Dogmatic Theology, for instance, is a seminal and highly positive dissertation on the theoretical truths of faith concerning God and his works.

Why is dogmatism bad anyway?

As regards this colloquial, negative view of dogmatism, however, some questions need to be asked. Damian seems to be taking absolutism in one’s beliefs as inherently undesirable, assuming we do want truth. But this doesn’t seem a very sustainable attitude if he wishes to be consistent and avoid special pleading.

A dogma, he says, is the belief you refuse to interrogate. But what of beliefs which are not readily interrogatable? Presumably, for instance, we all believe that our sense perception correlates accurately to a real, external world. Is that belief undesirable or unlikely merely because it cannot be readily interrogated? In fact, since we resist attempts to interrogate that belief, and don’t take them seriously, are we acting in a poor or intellectually shoddy manner? It certainly doesn’t seem so. Thus, there look to be at least some beliefs we may hold quite rightly and properly as being basically unquestionable, without shirking our philosophical responsibilities. Why is it, then, that Christians should not take the divine inspiration of Scripture as such a belief? Damian needs to make a better case as regards the negative nature of dogmatism, spell out just when it does and does not apply, and why.

Similarly, what of beliefs which are held on good grounds? Damian presumably thinks he has good grounds for believing that I am a real person and not, say, an advanced computer program writing posts in a convincingly human way. Should he be condemned for resisting the compulsion to interrogate his belief in my existence as a real person on every possible occasion? Were someone to say to him: Your belief in that chap Bnonn Tennant is dogmatic because you refuse to interrogate it! should he jump up in dismay and hire a private detective to find me and stake out my home to verify that, indeed, I am a real person who makes real blog posts? In fact, is he not being entirely rational to refuse to interrogate this belief, in the absence of any good evidence that it is false? If so, why should a Christian be criticized for refusing to interrogate his belief in God, when he has no good reasons to think that it’s false?

Good reasons

And what, indeed, would constitute a good reason for thinking that God doesn’t exist? No doubt Damian believes there are many. But on the other hand, a delusional out-patient from the halfway house down the road might think that there are good reasons for believing I don’t exist and am in fact a complicated artificial intelligence. He could probably find all sorts of evidences which, if looked at the right way and with the right mindset, seem quite compelling; and he might produce all sorts of arguments showing that Damian really has the burden of proof. Should Damian be persuaded—should he even look at these evidences or accept this burden of proof—if he already knows that the fellow is a schizophrenic who reverts to believing that Christian bloggers are really internet-capable AIs whenever he’s off his meds? If not, why should a Christian act differently when he knows from Scripture that atheists are self-deceiving fools who deny the existence of God because of their sin?

The skeptic’s false humility

The last point I’d like to make is as regards Damian’s assertion that if we refuse to honestly put our beliefs to the test then we ought to show a little more humility when telling others what we ‘know’ to be true. As I’ve already suggested above, this is a perfectly silly attitude to knowledge—its implication being that a belief which is not tested cannot constitute knowledge in any proper sense.

Even ignoring his obvious imposition of a scientific method of knowledge-acquisition onto religious or philosophical matters, where it doesn’t belong, is this reasonable? Does Damian need to verify my existence, for example, before he can say that he knows I’m not an artificial intelligence? Is this the way he really operates in terms of making knowledge claims? Or take another example: say he sees an acquaintance, Roger, at the supermarket. He doesn’t speak to Roger for whatever reason, and no one else at the supermarket knows him, so Damian is the only one to recognize him. Say Roger is arrested the next day on some charge. Damian thinks Roger can’t be guilty, because he saw him at the supermarket at the time the crime was committed. Is Damian really going to say that he does not know Roger was there, since he did not (and no longer can) test that belief? Is it reasonable for me to get up before the jury when he is testifying in Roger’s defense, and say that he ought to show a little more humility when telling them that he ‘knows’ Roger is innocent? Or imagine the situation is reversed, and Damian ‘knows’ Roger is guilty on a similar basis. Is this sort of stringent view of things really sensible? How would it cash out in the real world?

Maybe Damian means to confine this constraint on knowledge to religious claims. This seems arbitrary, but it doesn’t get him anything in any case, since Christian beliefs enjoy far better attestation than the trivial amount of support in the example above. In fact, Christians have excellent grounds for saying that they know certain things—so why should they shuffle and slink and pretend false humility, as if they really aren’t certain when they are? A Christian grounds his beliefs in God’s word—does he then need to interrogate these beliefs, or find ways to test them, in order for them to constitute knowledge? Of course not. The plain fact that they are God’s own testimony is all the justification required. Thus, rather than being commendable, this “humility” of which Damian speaks is despicable. Imagine a Christian who knows the gospel witnessing to someone as follows:

I don’t presume to say I know this, but, well, I believe you’re under God’s wrath and liable to judgment if you don’t repent and trust in the work of Jesus. And…well, I don’t know that Jesus really existed…but I’m sure you should believe anyway!

This is certainly an ignoble way of witnessing. If we, in fact, have good reasons for believing the gospel—if we indeed know the gospel to be true—and then do not urgently entreat others to heed it, attempting to persuade them of its truth as well, we aren’t being “humble”. We are being cads. It doesn’t matter if we have tested our knowledge, or if we can defend it against attack. Speaking for myself, I can—but some Christians can’t for whatever reason. That doesn’t invalidate what they know. Christians don’t accept Damian’s views on epistemology, and neither should they.

So let’s not throw around the “dogmatism” charge too hastily. I am proud to be a dogmatic Christian, and I consider my dogmatism an intellectual virtue. Saying that I am dogmatic is essentially the same as saying that I am a presuppositionalist in my Christian philosophy—a position which I’ve defended on many occasions. If Damian or other atheists would like to dogmatically oppose that, let them start by showing that it even makes sense to do so.

Related posts:

1. NY Times twists on horns of secular free will dilemma

The last objection I’ll interact with in this series is the one which tries to show that a universal atonement is really an impotent atonement. In the words of Scobie Smith, people such as myself

clearly cannot say that the satisfaction of Christ secures the salvation of all those for whom it was made [...] The atonement itself does not guarantee the salvation of those for whom it was made [...] All the satisfaction can do is make it possible for God then to choose whom to save and then to secure their salvation by some other means. Moreover, since there is no other satisfaction made to his justice, this other means (eg, irresistible grace) is simply an exercise of God’s sovereign will, not an act stemming from the justice of God (eg, to fulfill the obligation arising from the satisfaction of his justice).1

At first glance, this seems like a good objection. It certainly gave me pause for thought. But upon reflection, it begins to appear rather confused. I think there are at least three obvious difficulties with it:

I. Huh? And, so what?

Firstly, what does it mean to say that the atonement does not guarantee or secure the salvation of all those for whom it was made? These terms are ambiguous. I can, for instance, go to SkyCity Chartwell and secure tickets for myself to see a movie. This guarantees that I will have a seat if I show up and present my ticket. But it doesn’t guarantee that I will show up and present my ticket. So, with that analogy in mind (even if it is a rather pecuniary one), it doesn’t appear that the objection—as stated at least—gains much traction against the universal view, under which Christ purchased movie tickets for everyone, but only the elect bother to show up at the cinema.

In light of this, I think the objection needs to be rephrased. What actually seems to be at issue is whether or not the atonement is a sufficient cause of justification. Under the universal view, of course, it is only a necessary cause—it had to happen in order for anyone to be justified, because it provides the grounds for justification by providing satisfaction to God’s justice. But it does not itself effect that justification, since although the satisfaction was made on the cross, there are still other conditions which must be fulfilled in order for it to be applied to anyone. This seems to be what the particularist is objecting to—yet it’s hard to see why he considers it a problem. It looks rather like he is just begging the question again. There aren’t any clear reasons for rejecting the view that the atonement is a necessary-but-not-sufficient cause of justification—except that it it doesn’t fit into the framework of particular atonement.

II. The alternative is unscriptural…

Secondly, as I’ve covered already in this series, the view that the atonement is, in and of itself, the sufficient cause of justification is highly problematic. If it were the case that the atonement “secured” salvation for the elect in the sense which is apparently intended by this objection—namely, that it satisfied the demands of God’s justice against all the elect, and this satisfaction itself guarantees their salvation—then it follows inevitably that the elect are justified from the cross. Since God’s wrath toward all the elect was appeased in about 29 AD, no elect person after that time could be under his wrath. But we know from Scripture and from experience that, in fact, we are all “children of wrath” (Ephesians 2:3) until we are made a “new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17) by the rebirth in the Spirit. If the particularist is right in his objection, then he has some hard questions to answer regarding the purpose of the rebirth and the ordo salutis.

III. …while the view being objected to is scriptural

Thirdly, on the other side of that coin, the view which the particularist is objecting to is manifestly biblical. Indeed, it is the Reformed view—so he seems to be contradicting himself. Notice how the objection is that, under the universal view, the satisfaction of Christ only makes it possible for God to choose whom to save, and that he then has to secure their salvation by some other means. Well, maybe this is stating the obvious, but…“other means” such as faith? If, in fact, we are “justified by faith” (Romans 5:1), then plainly it is impossible that we are justified by the atonement as the particularist seems to want to say—that is, that the atonement itself is the sufficient cause of our justification. This is why we aren’t justified from the cross—because justification is by faith. (Unless the particularist is suggesting that we are justified twice—and it’s very hard to see what that even means.) Certainly, the atonement is a necessary cause of justification, since it provides the very grounds for satisfying the demands of God’s justice against us. And certainly, even, the work of Christ (whether in the atonement or not) is a necessary cause of our faith also, since Jesus is both its founder and perfecter (Hebrews 12:2). But just as certainly, the particularist cannot turn around and say that what he means is that the atonement must be the sufficient cause of faith, and by this relationship is then also the sufficient cause of justification. Clearly it is not. The atonement does not, in and of itself, bring about faith. Once more, without emotion: the atonement is the grounds for faith and for justification. It is what makes them possible—but it isn’t what makes them actual. It is the indwelling of the Spirit which makes faith actual; and it is faith which makes justification actual.

So this final objection once again highlights why it is so unreasonable to treat the atonement as a simple pecuniary transaction, as the particularist view is wont to do. Rather than gaining any real traction against universal atonement, it tends rather to discredit itself—as has been the case with all the rest of the objections I’ve handled.

To conclude, then, I can find no good reason to believe that the atonement is limited in the sense which most Calvinists today seem to mean. Rather, it is the historical alternative which is both reasonable and scriptural: namely, that Christ, in his death, represented all mankind, satisfying the demands of the law before God, and so made salvation possible for everyone without distinction who might appeal to that atonement—though it is apprehended only by the elect, through faith.

1. ↑ Quoted from an email to the Reformed Baptist Discussion List; for those with member access, see http://rblist.org/archive/msg56767.html.