Did God Really Command Genocide? Summary of Chapter 6: “Thrusting Out, Driving Out, and Dispossessing the Canaanites – Not Annihilating Them”

Did God Really Command Genocide? 

A legend is told of a wealthy Texas rancher who owned a sprawling expanse of land in western Texas.  It was hundreds of acres is size and stretched out far beyond the horizon.  On this land he raised cattle that would annually be driven north to Abilene where it would be sold and shipped off to market.  This rancher had a son whom he loved much and, when the son came of age, he managed the ranch for his father knowing one day it would be handed down to him.

One year, taking the ranch hands along, the son led the drive to Abilene.  However, along the way they were ambushed by cattle rustlers who killed everyone and stole the herd.  However, the son did not die, but was severely wounded.  In his attempt to return to his father he incurred several set-backs and at one point was kidnapped and sent off to work on the railroads in China. His grieving father, believing him to be dead, died never seeing his son again.

Over time the ranch was abandoned and fell into disrepair.  Soon scavengers, freeloaders, and squatters began to move on the ranch.  They built homes and developed small communities scattered through the once sprawling land.  After several decades the son was able to escape his fate and began to return to his father’s ranch.  Along the way he gathered together a band of men to whom he promised work if they would follow him to his home.

Upon returning home he discovered the squatters and sent men around to announce that they were on land that legally belonged to him and needed to leave as he was returning to reclaim his father’s ranch.  They could leave peaceably, but, if they did not, they would be forced off the land.  Many, fearing the son and his band, left and moved on to other lands.  However, some decided to stay and fight it out.  The son was able to move back into his father’s ranch house and, over time, was able to clear off most of the squatters and encroachers on his ranch.  The son always attempted a peaceful resolution by allowing the encroachers to just pack up and leave.  However, at times many of these confrontations turned violent and men were killed.

The legend related above is analogous to the Hebrews’ return to Palestine during the Canaanite occupation.  God had promised the land to Abraham and his descendants.  His descendants, Jacob and his sons, sojourned down to Egypt where they were kept in slavery for 400 years.  During that time, different tribes moved on to the Promised Land.  When the Hebrews returned under the leadership of Joshua, they were given the task, commanded by God through Moses, to drive out the encroachers and squatters and retake the land promised to them.

In this chapter F&C wish to clarify and emphasize an important and often neglected aspect of that task:  it was not God’s intention nor command “to exterminate every single Canaanite man, woman and child in the Promised Land.  The dominant language used in Scripture is not of extermination but of ‘driving out’ and ‘thrusting out’ the Canaanites.” (76) They quote and exegete several passages from the books of Moses to argue this point, such as Ex 23:27-31:

I will send my terror ahead of you and throw into confusion every nation you encounter. I will make all your enemies turn their backs and run. I will send the hornet ahead of you to drive the Hivites, Canaanites, and Hittites out of your way. But I will not drive them out in a single year, because the land would become desolate and the wild animals too numerous for you. Little by little I will drive them out before you, until you have increased enough to take possession of the land.  I will establish your borders from the Red Sea[a] to the Mediterranean Sea, and from the desert to the Euphrates River.  I will give into your hands the people who live in the land, and you will drive them out before you.

F&C note how the scriptures make clear that this is a gradual process.  The Canaanites will be driven out over a period of time, gradually as the Hebrew nation retakes the land.  In fact this is what we see when we read the stories of the conquest and in Judges.  Many Canaanites did not leave at first and so they had to be driven out over time.  Many other passages repeat this basic idea of driving the Canaanites from the land (Lev 18: 24-28; Num. 33: 51-56; Dt 4:37-38, 6:18-19, 7:1-5, 17-23).  F&C make a point of showing how this last passage is misunderstood because v. 2 is often divorced from the context.  It reads, “When the Lord your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy.”  By itself it may seem to teach annihilation of the Canaanites, but when placed in the fuller context the meaning becomes clear:

When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations—the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you— and when the Lord your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy. Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, for they will turn your children away from following me to serve other gods, and the Lord’s anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you.  This is what you are to do to them: Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones, cut down their Asherah poles and burn their idols in the fire. . . . You may say to yourselves, “These nations are stronger than we are. How can we drive them out?” But do not be afraid of them; remember well what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt.  You saw with your own eyes the great trials, the signs and wonders, the mighty hand and outstretched arm, with which the Lord your God brought you out. The Lord your God will do the same to all the peoples you now fear.  Moreover, the Lord your God will send the hornet among them until even the survivors who hide from you have perished. Do not be terrified by them, for the Lord your God, who is among you, is a great and awesome God. The Lord your God will drive out those nations before you, little by little. You will not be allowed to eliminate them all at once, or the wild animals will multiply around you. But the Lord your God will deliver them over to you, throwing them into great confusion until they are destroyed.

The context makes it clear that the original intent of God is for the Hebrews to drive the Canaanites out of the land.  Only those who refused to leave are left to be “destroyed” and even then the emphasis is on destroying what has been left: their idols and altars.  One might wonder why it is important to God for the Canaanites to be gone.  One reason can be seen above:  “Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, for they will turn your children away from following me to serve other gods.”  God foresaw what would, and did happen.  The Canaanites eventually led many Hebrews astray.  But another reason is given in v. 8: “it was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath he swore to your ancestors.” God promised this land to Abraham and his descendants and he is keeping his oath.

F&C go on to show that when you look at all the passages concerning the Hebrew treatment of the Canaanites, the language of “dispossession” and “driving out” outnumbers that of “destruction” by 3 to 1.  Quoting from a study by Glenn Miller they state, “This would indicate the dominant ‘intended effect’ was for the peoples in the [Promised] Land to migrate somewhere else.  So consider Deut. 12.29[-30]: “The LORD your God will cut off before you the nations you are about to invade and dispossess.  But when you have driven them out and settled in their land, and after they have been destroyed before you, be careful not to be ensnared by inquiring about their gods, saying, ‘How do these nations serve their gods? We will do the same.’” (81, see footnote.)

However, this does raise the question of the conquest narratives in the book of Joshua where we are told that Joshua “utterly destroyed everything in the city, both man and woman, young and old.”  This is the subject of the next chapter.

Image: 

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Benedict of Nursia: Intentional Christian Community

Photo by Natalia Y on Unsplash

I dislike reactionary politics. The idea of withdrawal or throwing in the towel in a long conflict just does not sit well with me. So over the past three months, as I continued to run into references to Rob Dreher’s “Benedict Option,” I mistakenly thought Dreher was advocating intellectual, cultural, and moral retreat from an increasingly post-Christian world. When I read his argument more closely, however, I realized that my mental picture of his construct (Christians huddling in a commune somewhere in Idaho) was wrong.

Far from urging Christians to cease engaging the world, Dreher contends that the Christian life was always meant to be lived communally, a model of community hampered by the current cultural moment. Rather than give up cultural engagement, Dreher argues this conflict should force Christians to be more intentional about living near each other and seeking intellectual, spiritual, emotional Christian fellowship, thus bearing out the “one another” commands of Christian love sprinkled liberally throughout the New Testament.

Dreher’s inspiration is Benedict of Nursia, with the “Benedict Option” label evoking visions of the fifth-century father of Western monasticism. Born in the later days of the fifth century anno Domini, Benedict grew to maturity in a chaotic world. The Pax Romana had collapsed, replaced by shifting geographies, marauding barbarians, and unstable economies. Augustine had already written The City of God in response to the barbarians’ attack on Rome, wrestling with the question of Christian identity in a world where the Eternal City proved temporary. Benedict, facing the decadence of Rome, retreated to the hills.

The Benedictine Rule established the way of life for the monks. It demanded three vows: poverty, chastity, and obedience. It called for a life mixing work with prayer, and oriented the brethren towards gospel service.

He was not unique in that response; the third century witnessed a movement of monastic retreat in the deserts of Egypt. Called anchorites, the Desert Fathers were notable for their solitary lifestyle. Depending on which sources one reads, these first hermits performed mighty miracles, wrestled with demons, and eventually discovered that they needed other Christian brethren with whom to live the Christian life. Pachomius is often credited as the earliest of cenobitic monks, those who sought to work out their faith in community.

Benedict himself did not remain alone long. In his cave just north of Rome, disciples found him and requested that he teach them the way of holy living. Legend says that Benedict first established a strict rule, so rigorous that his first disciples tried to poison him. When Benedict miraculously escaped death by poison, his disciples repented, and Benedict reworked the community’s rulebook, known today as The Rule of St. Benedict. The historical narrative picks up with Benedict’s founding of the monastery at Monte Cassino in 529 AD and instituting the first edition of his Rule.

The Benedictine Rule established the way of life for the monks. It demanded three vows: poverty, chastity, and obedience. It called for a life mixing work with prayer, and oriented the brethren towards gospel service.  The Rule describes the monastery as a “school of the Lord’s service.” These places were originally intended as locations of intense discipleship, with the Rule defining the process by which a brother might grow to spiritual maturity.

The three vows bound all brothers together in their common pursuit. Poverty insured that they would not be distracted by worldly wealth, but would instead pursue a treasure “where moth and rust do not destroy.” The vow of obedience taught the monks first to submit in humility to a superior, recognizing the truth of Romans 13 that all authority is from God. As the brothers obeyed, they learned to submit to the divine will. The vow of chastity kept all brothers oriented towards an eternal community. Rather than the concerns of wife and child, the monastic brother found his hope in the heavenly Jerusalem and communion of the saints ruled over by King Jesus.

Benedict concludes his Rule explaining that he intended these steps to be only a foundation leading to maturity, much like Paul’s exasperating voice reminding the Corinthians that he should be able to give them meat, but they can only drink milk! The Benedictine Rule is a carefully planned route to practical discipleship lived together in community.

In that sense, Dreher’s “Benedict Option” is unoriginal. He joins a host of recent authors who see American Christianity as anemic and in need of discipleship. David Platt argues that Evangelical Christianity is distracted by wealth, and his book Radical describes a group of church members in Birmingham, Alabama, who sold their homes to move into the inner city and bring the gospel to the poorest inhabitants. Jamie Smith’s Desiring the Kingdom concludes with an examination of the oddly unchristian notion of college students separated from Christian community, and he proposes instead a Christian understanding of college where students and professors live in the town, seeking to live the gospel together in the midst of a watching secular community. Willow Creek Community Church sparked a small group movement across Evangelical churches with their phrase “Doing Life Together.”

Dreher himself proposes an ancient model of discipleship writ large across American Christianity in which Christians live near each other and provide solidarity as biblical convictions become less and less popular. These communities would not be monastic houses, severed from wife and child, but neighborhoods where church members live near the church. Oddly enough, this solution would also address many of the criticisms of disconnected modernity (Wendell Berry, Neil Postman, et al). It does not, as I once thought, call for Christians to ignore culture or try to escape from it. Instead, both Benedict and Dreher recognize that Christianity cannot be lived alone, and they call Christians to value the kingdom of Christ in exile (the church) more than material success.

What might this look like in practice? I think it could be very simple. Perhaps instead of taking a new job far away, one family determines to remain in a town and faithfully worship at their church. As financial opportunity permits, church members seek to live closer together. Geographic proximity to church community becomes a primary factor rather than house value, school location, commute time, and other practical concerns.

St. Benedict worked out a discipleship model which changed the course of western civilization. By calling men to live out their faith corporately inside a structured framework, education, literacy, and the Christian tradition survived the collapse of Rome and growth of European nations. As American culture becomes increasingly hostile to Christian values, Benedict provides a model for considering the essentials of our faith and the importance of living it out together.

Did God Really Command Genocide? Summary of Chapter 5: “Does the Bible Portray the Canaanites as Innocent?”

The command to exterminate the Canaanites was an occasional command, not an application of a general rule relevant to all people throughout history. What should be quite clear is that God does not command us to violate the Crucial Moral Principle, even if the killing of Canaanites did.

But even this more limited thesis is not as clear as it seems. Merciless slaughter is not how the biblical text portrays the situation. While some Canaanites may have been innocent (like the children), the Bible does not portray the Canaanites in general as innocent of any serious wrongdoing. Three features of the narrative make this plain.

Feature 1: Israel’s Legal Ownership of Canaan

First, the text indicates that the Canaanites are occupying land of which Israel has legal ownership, and without the consent of the owner. The command of destruction only applied to those cities that had been given the Israelites as an inheritance. They were prohibited from conquering neighboring nations such as Moab, Ammon, and Edom. The Canaanites are squatters on Israel’s land, so Israel had a right to drive them out or dispossess them in a way in which they do not have a right to drive out others. God had promised Abraham and his descendants the land, telling him he would be a blessing and his name great. The land was given as a means to bless the whole world and reverse the curse of Babel. God would use the land to call all nations to himself. This is repeated six times in Genesis and is clearly a central dimension of Israel’s election. Abram would even give Lot the most valuable acreage. The making of a great name is predicated on an act of generosity rather than legal entitlement. Because of his generosity and willingness to share the land with others, Abram (later Abraham) and his offspring were given eternal title to the land.

The commands occur in the context of the Canaanites living on land that Israel’s ancestors had lived on, owned property in, and to which they had legal title for the purpose of establishing a community through which salvation would be brought to the world. The Canaanites are, strictly speaking, trespassers. Rahab admitted she knew the Lord had given the Israelites the land and that a great fear of the Israelites had fallen on the Canaanites, so that “all who live in this country are melting in fear of you. We have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea for you when you came out of Egypt” (Gen. 2:9-10). Similarly the men of Gibeon tell Joshua they were “clearly told how the Lord your God had commanded his servant Moses to give [Israel] the whole land” (9:24).

So the Israelites weren’t conquering or attacking an innocent nation and stealing their land; rather, Israel is repossessing land that already belongs to them and evicting people who are trespassing on it and refusing to leave.

But what of the charge that history is written by the winners, who rationalize their own behavior? First off, this appeal is circular. The very claim being considered is whether the Bible is trustworthy because it commands extermination. To assume unreliability is there while interpreting the text and using that interpretation against its reliability is to assume what one wants to prove. Moreover, it also fails to address the issue being discussed: whether one who accepts the Bible as the Word of God, and hence authoritative, is committed to holding that God commands the killing of innocent people.

What if the Israelites were in the land, and another group attacked them claiming divine justification for doing so? Problems with this scenario are at least twofold: first, they implicitly deny the historicity of authoritative, though challenging and perplexing, divinely mandated events. Second, such questions ignore the entirety of the biblical narrative. To remove a fully wise, good, and just God from the Canaanite warfare accounts in scriptures and then attack that narrative would be to gut and destabilize it.

Feature 2: Israelite Refugees and the Sins of the Amorites

Despite being given the land, Abram and his descendants couldn’t take immediate occupation. 400 years of captivity would come first. Two things are noteworthy here. First, the nation of Israel will gain possession of the land only after they have been oppressed in Egypt for several generations. The Israelites were refugees who had experienced hundreds of years of oppression in a foreign land and needed a place to live; they were attempting to gain a homeland.

Second, in spite of having a legal title and a divinely approved claim on the land, Abram and his descendants could not take immediate and total occupation of the land. They had to wait until the “sin of the Amorites” had “reached its full measure.”

So during the days of the patriarchs, Abraham’s offspring were forbidden to engage in violence against the Canaanite nations occupying the land. It’s only when certain immoral practices had been culturally entrenched in the Canaanites for centuries without repentance that Israel would be permitted to drive them out.

Centuries later, we read in the Pentateuch, Israel is divinely authorized to take the land because the Amorite iniquity was finally complete. Deuteronomy states that Israel could drive out the nations on account of their wickedness, including incest, adultery, bestiality, ritual prostitution, and homosexual acts; and, most significantly, Deut. 12:29-31 singles out child sacrifice as particularly abhorrent, against which the Prophets, Psalms, and historical book had inveighed.

Feature 3: Corrupting Influences and the Risk of Assimilation

The text also repeatedly warns of the corrupting influence of the practices of Israel’s neighbors on the embryonic Israelite nation in the land of Canaan. Ex. 23:33 is explicit: “To not let them live in your land or they will cause you to sin against me, because the worship of their gods will certainly be a snare to you.” The Hebrew scriptures take seriously this life-and-death struggle for Israel’s own national and spiritual integrity. We could rightly argue that anything threatening to tear apart the moral and spiritual fabric of Israel could be compared to acts of treason in our own day.

So, contrary to Bradley, the Bible does not portray the Canaanites in general as innocent of any serious wrongdoing. If the Israelites lived in their midst and freely intermingled among the Canaanites, Israel’s own identity, integrity, calling, and destiny would be undermined—a scenario comparable to treason.

Finally, there are also hints in the text that Canaanites who rejected these kinds of practices were to be spared and could live in the land among the Israelite community. Three examples:

Rahab

The tavern-keeper who was exempted from death at the hands of the Israelites. Contrary to Morriston’s claim that Rahab was just trying to save her own skin, the evidence suggests otherwise. The wording of her confession is found in only two other places in the OT: Moses’s confession in Deut. 4:39 and Solomon’s confession in I Kings 8:23. Rahab states that she and the whole country of Canaan had heard of God’s miraculous signs and wonders in the exodus and knew that God had given the land to the Israelites. As the story unfolds, Rahab shows strong faith in God and is saved from destruction. The contrast with Achan is also telling. The juxtaposing of these episodes with their similar language and linguistic parallels leads many commentators to conclude that the author here is making an explicit point: it is faithfulness to God’s commands (or lack thereof)—not one’s ethnicity—that makes one a true Israelite, or makes one subject to destruction. Hebrews 11 interprets Rahab’s story this way—that she was saved by her response of faith.

Caleb

Though part of one of the nations marked for destruction, Caleb too was saved after following the Lord wholeheartedly.

Shechemites

At Shechem, those who heard the Law being read included not only the assembly of Israel but also the strangers who were living among them.

So the Canaanites are not in general portrayed as innocent. They are trespassers. Their dominance meant Israel couldn’t live in the land alongside them without being absorbed into a culture engaging in abhorrent practices. Yet the text suggests that Canaanites who turned from these practices could be spared. So Bradley’s picture is misleading.

Israel too is told that if they themselves act in the same way as did their enemies, they too would be vomited from the land. Indeed, as the narrative continues, God tolerated Israel’s continual and repeated violations of the covenant in their engaging in these practices for several centuries before sending both Israel and later Judah into exile.

Did God Really Command Genocide? Summary of Chapter 4: “Does the Bible Command Us to Kill Innocent Human Beings?”

This chapter is titled with a simple question: Does the Bible command us to kill innocent human beings? And we can summarize the entire chapter with a simple answer: no.

I could easily stop there, but like many simple questions and answers, there is more beneath the surface. And a certain amount of explanation is necessary to fully understand both question and answer. First, as to the question. We have seen that F&C have used the argument of Raymond Bradley as typical of those who see the OT commands concerning the treatment of the Canaanites as problematic for the believer who wishes to ascribe authority to scripture. Bradley affirms that the Bible commands us, as in contemporary Bible believers, to fulfill the commands found in the OT to kill innocent human beings and that such action would be contrary to the Crucial Moral Principle (F&C will take up the questions of (a) the actual commend to kill and (b) innocence in subsequent chapters).

As to the answer, F&C are quick to point out that it simply does not follow that, just because God commands Joshua to carry out the commands he has given for treatment of the Canaanites, we are required to do the same actions towards other innocent human beings. This seems patently obvious. Jesus told Judas, “Do quickly what you have to do,” in his act of betraying Jesus. Certainly that command should not be taken that all believers are to betray Christ (and to do so quickly). Yet this answer does need some explanation, for believers are encouraged that “All scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training for righteousness that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim 3: 16-17). The idea of application of scripture is an important part of the believer’s life. It is certainly possible that some believers might take the actions of Joshua as archetypal for how we should treat those outside the faith.

F&C point out that there are two distinctions one must consider when it comes to application of these commands in Joshua. The first concerns the distinction between those commands given for all mankind and those given specifically to the nation of Israel, God’s chosen people. Jewish rabbis made this distinction themselves when they distinguished between Noahide Laws, those that apply to all men, and Mosaic Laws which were meant specifically for the chosen people. All people are to follow commands concerning basic moral treatment of other men, such as those regarding rape and murder for example. Before one considers the application of a particular command, it is important to note for whom the command is meant.

So what of the command to destroy the Caananites? Citing Dt. 7, F&C state, “An examination of the command to ‘destroy’ or ‘drive out the Canaanites’ in their [sic] historical and literary context makes it clear that this is a command specifically given to Israel in virtue of the special covenant God made with that nation as his chosen people” (p. 57). Hence it is inappropriate to apply these commands towards any people group outside of ancient Israel, including modern believers.

[su_dropcap style="light" size="4"]T[/su_dropcap]he second distinction is also important in understanding to whom these specific commands apply. This is the distinction between occasional commands and universal commands. Occasional commands are those given to a particular person or group of person for a specific occasion at a specific time. Universal commands are meant either for all persons at all times, or perhaps, for a specific group of persons for all occasions. An example of an occasional command would be the command to Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. An example of the first type of universal command would be general commands, such as commands against murder that apply to all persons in all situations. An example of the latter type of universal command would be the law of circumcision which was given to a specific group of persons, the Jewish people, but were to be maintained for all time.

F&C make clear that the command to destroy the Canaanites was not a universal command, which means, not only would it not apply universally to all persons, but it would not even apply universally to the nation of Israel. Citing Dt. 20:10-18, they show that these commands are occasional commands. These command were for a specific time, the return of the nation to Palestine after the Exodus, and were to be carried out in a very specific way. Dt. 20:17 lists the specific nations that were to be utterly destroyed (Hittites, Amorites, Caananites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites). So this was not to be interpreted nor applied as a command to destroy anyone that Israel felt was in their way. And it certainly is not a command for modern believers to kill innocent persons.

F&C summarize the results of their study succinctly: “. . . a careful examination of the commands to which Bradley refers suggests two things: First, these commands were given specifically to Israel in a particular historical context and not to all peoples everywhere; second, even when occasional commands were given to Israel in specific circumstances, we should understand that these are not general rules to be applied in future situations. In this respect they are like God’s commands to Abram to leave Ur. Such are commands to specific persons to carry out specific actions in the founding of Israel as a nation, not a command to all people for all times” (p. 56-57).

Find the other chapter summaries here.

Image: "Moses" by Froberg. CC license. 

Irenaeus of Lyons: A Guide for Staying the Course

Early Christian thinkers carved out the contours of the faith—formulating doctrine, countering heresy, navigating differences between Eastern and Western traditions. For this, the church will ever be in their debt, owing much to their courage of conviction, fortitude of character, clarity of mind, and passion for truth. Irenaeus of Lyons, whose feast day is today, is one such figure.

Known as the “first great Catholic theologian,” Irenaeus traced his spiritual lineage directly back to the Apostle John, through Polycarp of Smyrna, under whose tutelage he sat as a child. This heritage uniquely poised Irenaeus for combatting the Gnosticism of his day, in that he could draw from both scripture and apostolic authority to delineate the essentials of the Christian faith. Irenaeus’ seminal work in this vein is Against Heresies, a masterful text consisting of five books that articulate Christianity’s basic doctrines, a proto-Mere Christianity if you will.

Gnosticism, the predominant heresy of the 2nd century church, promoted dualism, a doctrine wherein the material world was created and governed by the demiurge—a lesser creative being whom the Gnostics equated with Yahweh of the Old Testament—and Christ, as a representative from the spirit world governed by the supreme deity, offers human beings secret knowledge (gnosis) that makes possible man’s redemption. Contra Christian teaching, the Gnostics looked less to salvation from sin than to deliverance from the ignorance of which sin is a consequence. Against the Gnostics’ claim of exclusive knowledge about spiritual matters, Irenaeus proclaimed the universal availability of the gospel message; the good news is for all, and this good news runs throughout the whole of God’s special revelation.

In addition to Against Heresies, only one other of Irenaeus’ writings survives: The Proof of the Apostolic Preaching, a short work addressed to his friend Marcianus which serves as a primer to and an apologetic for the baptismal confession and Rule of Faith, forerunners to the Apostles’ Creed. The essay also establishes an important link between the Old Testament (OT) and the work of Christ, enumerating the many OT prophecies fulfilled by Christ and offering a holistic interpretation of both the Old and soon-to-be-established New Testament. For Irenaeus, God’s redemptive plan governs the entirety of scripture, a dominant theme in both of his extant works.

As J. Armitage Robinson has noted, “The wonder of Irenaeus is the largeness of his outlook. No theologian had arisen since St. Paul and St. John who had grasped so much of the purpose of God for His world.” In explaining and defending the Apostolic message, Irenaeus traces God’s salvific purpose through scripture—revealing the organic connections between Christianity and its Jewish heritage, the fall of Adam and the resurrection of Jesus, the giving of the Law and the offer of grace, creation and the eschaton, along the way fitting key biblical figures within that story.

For two millennia the creed has been an anchor keeping us moored to the word and the Word.

The aforementioned Rule of Faith, which functioned so centrally in The Proof of the Apostolic Preaching, affirms belief “in one God, the Father Almighty, who made the heaven and the earth and the seas and all the things that are in them; and in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who was made flesh for our salvation; and in the Holy Spirit, who made known through the prophets the plan of salvation, and the coming, and the birth from a virgin, and the passion, and the resurrection from the dead, and the bodily ascension into heaven of the beloved Christ Jesus, our Lord, and his future appearing from heaven in the glory of the Father to sum up all things and to raise anew all flesh of the whole human race.”

A slightly different version, the Old Roman Creed, reads as follows:

I believe in God the Father almighty; and in Christ Jesus His only Son, our Lord, Who was born from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, Who under Pontius Pilate was crucified and buried, on the third day rose again from the dead, ascended to heaven, sits at the right hand of the Father, whence He will come to judge the living and the dead; and in the Holy Spirit, the holy Church, the remission of sins, the resurrection of the flesh (the life everlasting).

For 2,000 years Christians have joined this refrain, week after week adding their voices, reaffirming its life-giving truths. For two millennia the creed has been an anchor keeping us moored to the word and the Word.

In this world of change and flux, and amidst the vicissitudes, variables, and vagaries of life, so invariant a creed has remained a constant, a stable shore at the edge of a sea’s worth of maelstroms featuring the howling winds and shifting sands of unsound doctrines. Such seems Irenaeus’ motivation for explaining and defending it so many years ago, as he admonishes Marcianus: “Wherefore it is needful for you and for all who care for their own salvation to make your course unswerving, firm and sure by means of faith, that you falter not, nor be retarded and detained in material desires, nor turn aside and wander from the right.”

Perhaps at such a time as this, in the hour in which we find ourselves, when the church feels under siege from multiple directions, various of its classical commitments disparaged and impugned by some, castigated as outdated and archaic by others, Irenaeus serves as a powerful reminder to walk in the way of righteousness, stand on the bedrock of orthodoxy, keeping our eyes on the Author and Finisher of our faith, focusing on what can draw us together as believers rather than on what so easily divides, and, most importantly of all, encouraging fidelity to Christ and faithfulness to His mission amidst the deafening din of a cacophony of voices as we serve the God who is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

 

Did God Really Command Genocide? Summary of Chapter 3: The God of the Old Testament versus the God of the New?

Marcion (born ca. 100) took troubling Old Testament passages and rejected them along with the “lesser” Creator God of the Jews, the God of justice and wrath. Marcion considered the God of the New Testament quite different from that of the Old, but was he right? Did Jesus attempt to distance himself from the God portrayed in the Old Testament? Is there a wide gap between the worldview of ancient Israelites and the teaching of Jesus?

Peter Enns doesn’t think the Gospel permits, condones, or supports the rhetoric of tribal violence in the OT, but he denies being a Marcionite. Eric Seibert, too, writes that not everything in the “good book” is either good, or good for us, while still repudiating Marcionism. They reject the notion that there are two distinct Gods in view; they claim that the testaments portray God differently.

Both Enns and Seibert claim that their interpretive frame of reference is Jesus of Nazareth. F&C say this is praiseworthy, but that we are presented with a limited picture of Jesus and one that ignores authoritative affirmations by NT writers and speakers about Yahweh and his actions in the OT.

Seibert argues that the OT is part of the reason the Bible has been used by some to justify violence, colonialism, and the abuse of women. The OT writers, he thinks, often appropriated the values and beliefs of their own ancient Near Eastern context, including its ethnocentrism and patriarchy, which don’t reflect the character of a compassionate, merciful God.

Seibert distinguishes between the textual God (the author’s literary representation) and the actual God (the living reality), especially in the OT, where the gap between them is sometimes wide. The OT authors made assumptions we should reject, looking to Christ instead and construing God’s judgment as eschatological and not temporal, and that end-time judgment need not be violent.

Seibert urges us to read the Bible carefully, conversantly, and critically—not compliantly. For example, carefully follow the rule of love, a commitment to justice and valuing people. Remember some OT voices challenge “virtuous violence.” It can be read as subverting a picture of pitting bad Canaanites against good Israelites. Another strategy is to read with the victims and their families. Read the Bible from the margins, from the outsider’s point of view. Seibert also thinks we should name the killing of the Canaanites “genocide.”

The God of Jesus Is the God of Moses

F&C make a few replies. First, it is true that we should think more deeply about difficult, ethically troubling OT passages rather than gloss over them. And notable scholars have been doing just that. F&C also agree we should be distressed by professing Christians’ abuse of scripture, using such texts to justify the subjugation of women, the horrors of the slave trade, and the oppression of people groups. At the same time, they would note all the moral gains brought about by Bible-reading Christians—moral reforms, protection of indigenous peoples from colonial powers, literacy, human rights, women’s rights, civil rights, abolition of slavery, etc.

Second, Seibert’s negative comment that the church “grandly proclaims” the Bible to be God’s Word is rather unfair. Jesus himself does so! Likewise Paul. Ironically, while Seibert claims that Jesus is the hermeneutical key to his ethic, he does not actually adopt Jesus’s own attitude toward scripture.

Third, we must be careful not to appeal to Jesus’s authority selectively. Jesus regularly engaged in denouncements and threats of judgment, both temporal and final. And Jesus takes for granted the general theological outlook of the OT.

Fourth, we must not pit Jesus’s teaching (or a certain understanding of it) against the affirmations elsewhere in the NT. The problem for both Enns and Seibert is that Jesus and the NT writers don’t actually read the OT in a nonviolent way. None of them shrink from the God of the OT, or from an assumption that the relevant OT texts were historical.

To impose a nonviolent or pacifistic grid on the words and actions of God/Jesus requires significant hermeneutical gymnastics—an approach that creates an interpretive straitjacket. To proclaim an absolute pacifism and a rejection of any association between God and violent action requires dismissing or ignoring Jesus’s own authoritative statements, vast tracts of scripture pertaining to divine judgment, like the prophetic books and the book of Revelation. It’s also to ignore God’s ordaining of the state to bear the sword.

Note that the NT is filled with words about divine justice. Paul said those who refuse to love the Lord are “accursed”; he even wished that those troubling Judaizers would go the whole way and mutilate themselves. He called them “dogs,” and Jesus used similar language about those who despise the sacred things of God, calling them “dogs” and “swine,” and did so in the context of the Sermon on the Mount, in which he speaks of loving enemies! Even expressions of satisfaction at divine wrath and judgment can be justified (Rev. 16:6), and this does not oppose Jesus’s call to love and pray for our enemies, indeed to desire their salvation.

“Behold then the kindness and the severity of God” (Rom. 11:22). Reading the scriptures with discernment shouldn’t mean an undiscerning selectivity that ignores the very stance of the NT and Jesus himself. Even the chief OT text describing the God of Israel as “compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in loving kindness and truth” (Ex. 34:6) immediately is followed by, “He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished.”

Jesus and his earliest followers took for granted the same unchanging character of the God of the Hebrew scriptures. F&C finish this chapter with a flourish: “To assume that Jesus rejected divine temporal judgment in the Old Testament Scriptures runs contrary to Jesus’s own assumption of the historicity of these events, his own wrathful pronouncements, and his strong identification with the Old Testament worldview. So we should carefully study and qualify the nature of violence in Scripture, but we must not do violence to Scripture in the process.”

Invoking Truth: Lev Grossman’s Magicians Trilogy

“Sing Muse, Achilles’ Rage, black and murderous” (The Iliad, line 1). “Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns” (The Odyssey, line 1). “I begin my song with the Heliconian Muses” (Theogony, line 1).

Homer and Hesiod both began their greatest works invoking a higher power beyond themselves. Rather than seeking to portray something new, the ancients followed the convention that their stories were inspired by Muses and as such partook of the mythic truth overseen by the goddesses. While modern authors rarely invoke deities to begin their novels, the best authors infuse their stories with truth transcending time and space. Lev Grossman is such an author.

Defying genre boundaries in his Magicians trilogy, Grossman’s writing reflects a clear knowledge of literary structure, devices, and intertextuality. It meets all of Tolkien’s criteria for a true work of fantasy: magic is taken seriously, it is set within a believable non-technological secondary world, and it has the “consolation of a happy ending.” The Magicians trilogy could also be taken as a coming-of-age story portraying the journey of a Millennial (Quentin Coldwater) as he grapples with dreams smashed against the harsh post-collegiate world.

While Grossman told a fan that he did not spend much time concerned with religious questions, his novels reflect several key components of Christian theology: the Imago Dei separating man from the rest of creation, the necessity of divine death to resurrect life, and the fallen nature of the world. Just as Homer and Hesiod may not have believed in the Muses yet by invoking them raised a mythos on which their narratives rested, so Grossman invites the possibility of his novels fitting in the Lewis, Tolkien, and Waugh tradition of infusing his fictional world with Christian truth.

Grossman’s magic system corresponds with the Christian concept of the Imago Dei, man created in the image of God. Magic in this world is an endlessly inventive capacity possessed by some who spend a lifetime exploring its potential. As an inherent quality, magic must be developed, and it reaches its fullest expression in new creation. Magic is that part of humanity which aspires to divinity, and livens up a seemingly meaningless world. For those characters who have this quality but have not yet discovered it, reality is a drab, dull place.

These novels are excellently written, and unwittingly provide illustrations of profound truths. The world is a painful place, forcing the innocent to grow wise. Redemption does not come from personal righteousness, but requires the death of God.

Magic endows the world with meaning, and gives magicians a role as stewards of this great power. In Genesis YHWH creates man and gifts him with kingly authority, lordship over all creation. The world is his to work because he alone has the breath of life, the divine spark God breathed into Adam. Longing for beauty, truth, and goodness are all components of this Imago Dei, and Grossman illustrates the necessity of cultivating humanity through the use of magic. Through magic, his protagonist temporarily rises to the divine in the final book.

The Magician’s Land chronicles Quentin’s discovery of a spell of world creation, and concludes in his successfully creating his own land. Before this scene (which functions as an epilogue), Quentin participates in the cruciform conclusion of the trilogy. Michael Gorman coined the term “cruciform” to describe the cross-shaped, sacrifice-oriented way of life Christians should have as they await the eschaton. Cruciform seems the best way to describe the end of The Magicians’ Land. Fillory has a single god who inhabits two rams—Ember and Umber (a di-unity?)—and to save Fillory from self-destruction, the god must die. Only in divine blood can resurrection occur for the dying land.

Thus far, Grossman draws on Christian and Norse tradition, but he pulls from C. S. Lewis’ Perelandra for the finale. In Perelandra the Edenic temptation is reenacted, but Ransom kills the devil-figure, removing the temptation before another Fall can occur. In The Magician’s Land, Grossman explores what might have happened if Jesus (the sacrificial Lamb) had reached the Garden of Gethsemane and been too cowardly to die.

Ember the Ram-God waits for Quentin to arrive, knowing his death is necessary that Fillory must live. At the last moment, however, Ember struggles seeking to prolong His life. In contrast, Umber meekly submits to the sword. In the death of two rams, Fillory is given rebirth. The divine nature and power pass to Quentin, and he recreates the world resembling the Genesis creation account (even concluding in rest).

In Christian theology, rebirth and resurrection are possible only through the death of God. In Christ’s death, sinful humanity’s debt is paid. Grossman does not continue in this vein; he does not have a resurrected savior-figure. He does, however, have a quasi-Trinitarian correspondence.

Where Christianity maintains that God is one and three (Father, Son, and Holy Ghost), Grossman concludes the recreation of Fillory with a conversation between three characters each of whom have held some portion of divinity throughout the story. Julia appears, now three-quarters divine and queen of the Dryads. She corresponds to God the Father, explaining the overall story. Alice, the recently restored human who had been a demon for the previous book, corresponds to the Holy Spirit. Quentin corresponds to God the Son, who created and sustained all things. These correspondences are not exact, but they form an interesting parallel at the end of a creation scene. Fillory, however, is done with gods. The power of the gods leaves Quentin and will remain dormant for an age. In essence, Quentin remade the world in a Deistic fashion, winding it up and calibrating Fillory to run without divine supervision.

The final element Grossman illustrates is the Christian understanding of the world as fallen. These novels trace the development of Quentin as an adult, moving from naïveté to disenchantment to finding joy in an evil world. As a child, Quentin longed for the purity and goodness he found in the Fillory books. He thought his magic training would lead him to the place of happiness; as he grows in the first two books, he learns that both Earth and Fillory are complex, evil realms inhabited by broken people. Fillory has a dark side, composed of monsters, villains, and laws which reject Quentin. Earth has disappointments.

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n a way, Quentin resembles Odysseus, the “man of twists and turns” whose name translates as “son of suffering.” Out of suffering grows wisdom. From no other path can men grow to understanding, according to the Greeks. By the end of this trilogy, Quentin comes to believe that the world will always be fallen. His joy cannot come from escaping to a perfect, imaginary world like the Fillory of his eight-year-old imagination. Joy comes from struggling in the world, from human interactions. Joy is found in good food, excellent wine, and love worked out across years.

These novels are excellently written, and unwittingly provide illustrations of profound truths. The world is a painful place, forcing the innocent to grow wise. Redemption does not come from personal righteousness, but requires the death of God. Man is made bursting with potential, in the very image of God, yet few realize their potential.

While The Magicians trilogy highlights elements of Christian theology, it operates like half of a syllogism. Internally consistent, it neglects the hope Christianity offers. This broken world will be redeemed, recreated by the resurrected God who died for its sake. God died, but is not dead. The bodily resurrection of Jesus is the proof of redemption. Fulfillment of the Imago Dei is found not in becoming God, but in submitting to God.

Grossman writes a brilliant story, filled with vivid characters. While not himself a Christian, he reached for Christian truths which uphold his narrative. His story is like a tapestry woven on the loom of undergirding truth; because of the strength of the supporting truths, his story is that much stronger. His characters are real, with dark consequences that spiral beyond expectations. Their motivations run deep, pointing to desire for love and significance at the root of human nature.

Did God Really Command Genocide? Summary of Chapter 2: What Does It Mean to Say the Bible Is the Word of God?

The question of this chapter is succinctly put: “How exactly do [Plantinga and Craig] and many other biblical theists understand the relationship between the divine and human authorship [of the Bible]?” Or what is the most promising way of understanding that relationship? F&C suggest a starting place is the appropriation model (hereafter AM) as expounded by William Lane Craig.

Craig’s version of the AM is closely related to his Molinism. His view is that an omniscient God knows what humans will freely do when placed in certain circumstances. So God knows that under certain circumstances I will freely choose to eat White Castle cheeseburgers. Should he create such circumstances, God will have brought it about that I would eat White Castle cheeseburgers without violating my free will. In the same way, God knows under what circumstances Paul would freely choose to write the book of Romans. By placing Paul under those circumstances, Paul will freely choose to write Romans, including the content, order, style, and vocabulary, yet God can convey the message he desires. Hence both divine and human authorship is responsible for the finished product.

What makes the writings in the Bible to be the Word of God and not some other writing (like this summary)? Could not one argue that God has providentially allowed me to write this summary? Why isn’t it the Word of God? F&C make clear that it is not God providentially bringing it about that makes a specific writing his word, “Rather it is that God in his providence appropriated the biblical text as his own speech, and he delegated the biblical authors to speak on his behalf—which may have included the possibility that Paul was prompted by the Holy Spirit to write.”

F&C now combine Craig’s AM with the Speech Act Theory (hereafter SAT) of Nicholas Wolterstorff. SAT holds that “speech is an action one performs.” There are three types of action one performs in speaking:

1. Locutionary act: Merely the uttering of sounds or transcribing of words as in “Go to bed.”

2. Illocutionay act: The action one does by way of performing the locutionary act: commanding a child to go to bed by saying the words, “Go to bed.” One can do many illocutionary acts: asserting, warning, arguing, promising, and threatening are examples.

3. Perlocutionary act: The action associated with the intention to being about some effect by way of the illocutionary act. My intention is for the child to go to bed, so I command him to do so.

According to F&C, Wolterstorff suggests that this distinction helps us to understand how God speaks through scripture: “To say ‘God Speaks’ is simply to say that God performs a particular illocutionary act. . . the speech acts he performs are authoritative: what he asserts we are to believe; what he commands we are to obey; and his promises are completely trustworthy.”

So how does God perform illocutionary acts through the writings of human authors? This can be answered through an understanding of Double Agency Discourse (hereafter DAD). This occurs when one person performs an illocutionary act through either (1) the locutionary act or (2) the illocutionary act of another person. An example of (1) would be a secretary who drafts a letter from her boss commanding the staff to attend a meeting and then he signs it. The locutionary act is performed by the secretary, but the boss performs an illocutionary act. The secretary does not have the authority to command, but the boss does. An example of (2) might be when an ambassador speaks on behalf of his government. He has been delegated the authority to speak for his government. In this sense the government is performing an illocutionary act thorough the illocutionary act of the ambassador. The ambassador is much more than just a secretary. He has real authority.

It is this idea of “delegated” or “deputized” speech that Wolterstorff suggests best fits the model of the prophetic and apostolic writings. An individual was commissioned by God to speak on his behalf. However, when it comes to the entire Bible as the Word of God for us today, he believes it is best understood as God’s appropriating various illocutionary acts as his own: “All that is necessary for the whole [Bible] to be God’s book is that the human discourse it contains have been appropriated by God as one single book, for God’s discourse.” F&C affirm:

This is what Craig means when he claims that Paul had been commissioned by God to preach and teach on behalf of Jesus to largely gentile communities. Hence, his writing to Rome was a form of delegated speech on God’s behalf. Later when these writings were incorporated into a single biblical canon, God was appropriating this book alongside various others as his speech.

This explains how one can affirm the Bible as God’s Word with God as the primary author without affirming that God dictated every word. It also explains how one can accept the Bible as God’s Word without claiming that God necessarily affirms exactly what the human author affirms.

With this in mind, Wolterstorff offers a “fundamental principle” for interpreting scripture and distinguishing what is appropriated discourse from what is not: “the interpreter takes the stance and content of my appropriating discourse to be that of your appropriating discourse, unless there is good reason to do otherwise.” So if Bob appropriates Bill’s words is such a way that based on evidence it is unlikely that Bill’s intentions are expressed, then Bob has probably not appropriated Bill’s words appropriately. This involves two steps when it comes to determining what God has appropriated from the human authors of scripture: (1) to work out what illocutionary act the human author performed when he authored the text and (2) to ascertain whether God was saying something different from the author in appropriating the text. To perform the second step one needs to take the Bible as a single literary unit as well as assume certain theological beliefs (God does not utter falsehoods, is morally good, etc. . .).

Wolterstorff suggests five ways in which the illocutionary act of the divine author might differ from that of the human author:

1. The rhetorical-conceptual structure of Scripture texts. Example: When the human author refers to himself as in Paul’s opening statement, “Paul, an apostle called of God,” or David’s claim, “Against thee I have sinned.”

2. The distinction between the point the human author affirms within the text and the way he is making the point. Example: Jesus’s affirmation that the mustard seed is the smallest of seeds. He is not teaching a biology lesson, but a lesson about the kingdom of God. Inerrancy is about what the Bible intends to affirm.

3. If the human author is affirming something literally but the divine author is appropriating it in a nonliteral fashion. Example: Passages concerning marital love in Genesis 2:24 which Paul tells us (Eph. 5:21-23) refers to Christ and the church.

4. Transitive discourse: in performing one illocutionary action we are performing another. Human authors may be telling a story for one point, while God might intend it for a different point. Example: The parable of the Good Samaritan instructs how to love our neighbor.

5. Recognizing the difference between a general principle and its specific application. Old Testament command to place a parapet around roof (Deut. 22:8) is more than just about how to build safe roofs. There is a general principle of safety behind it that God intends to convey.

If biblical theists encounter a text in which the human author seems to attribute to God a command that they have good reason to think God would not command (given our background theological assumptions and taking the Bible as a whole unit), they have three choices:

1. Interpret the text to say that God is saying something other than the human author is saying

2. Conclude that they have misunderstood the text and don’t know what God is saying

3. Conclude that God has not appropriated the text in question

If a biblical theist concludes that the human author commanded some immoral action, it does not follow that God commanded it. However, if one rules out 1 & 2 by the evidence, then one must deny biblical inerrancy. While biblical inerrancy is an important doctrine, it is not on the level of the existence of God, the historicity of the Resurrection, and the atoning work of Christ. However, F&C do not believe that inerrancy need be rejected, for there are strong reasons one can hold 1 & 2.

Returning to Bradley’s four propositions, F&C have shown that the fourth proposition needs reformulating to more accurately convey what Bradley’s claim is. Hence it has been readjusted as follows:

4. The Bible tells us that God commands us to perform acts that violate the Crucial Moral Principle, to

4’. The author of the Bible commands us to perform acts that violate the Crucial Moral Principle, to

4’’. The secondary author of the Bible commands us to perform acts that violate the Crucial Moral Principle, to

4’’’. The divine author of the Bible uses the text to perform the speech act of commanding us to perform acts that violate the Crucial Moral Principle.

In section two of the book, F&C will go on to show that biblical theists are not committed to any of the formulations of Bradley’s fourth proposition and that other alternatives concerning those passages concerning genocide are both plausible and reasonable.

Image: "Bible" by Olga Caprotti. Flickr.com

Basil of Caesarea: Faith Enacted

Russian icon of Basil of Caesarea

“[E]very man is divided against himself who does not make his life conform to his words.” – Basil the Great, Address on Greek Literature

Church history is replete with exemplars of the Christian faith, people whose lives—as much as their words—have provided later generations precepts by which we live and inspiration for doing so. Basil of Caesarea, whose feast day is today, is such a figure. His writings range from dogmatic to exegetical, from homiletical to liturgical, and their significance positioned him as one of the Three Holy Hierarchs of the Eastern Church.

But the beauty of Basil’s life emanates from its marriage of orthodoxy and orthopraxy. By any definition, the man was a saint. Living during the fourth century, a period marked by theological conflicts and growing tensions between the eastern and western branches of Christianity, Basil was committed to truth, unity, and service. As the contemporary church faces its own doctrinal conflicts and political pressures, we would do well to reflect on how a luminary like Basil remained faithful while navigating the treacherous spiritual waters of his day.

Faith is obedient action; obedient action in turn builds faith. Such is the lesson of Basil’s life.

Basil’s father and mother were devout Christians. Both had come from families accustomed to martyrdom, and they ensured that their ten children were grounded in the church throughout their childhood. As he matured, Basil turned toward secular education, leaving his youthful faith behind him. Through his training in Constantinople and later in Athens, Basil became well-versed in rhetoric, grammar, philosophy, astronomy, geometry, and medicine. So well prepared in the education of the time was he that on returning home to Caesarea Basil was offered charge of the education of the youth there.

But returning home also resurrected for Basil the memories of his religious upbringing and brought him to a turning point in which he surrendered his life to God in service for others. This turning point determined the shape of the rest of his life and made possible the rich legacy he left for the church today.

In explaining his conversion, Basil credited a renewed relationship with the Bishop of Caesarea and the ministry of his sister Macrina who had organized a religious community devoted to serving the poor. Through their examples, Basil learned the dynamic relationship between faith and practice, that each informs the other. This truth was reinforced by the scriptures he read as a means to understand better the heart of the gospel. There he saw that “a great means of reaching perfection was the selling of one's goods, the sharing of them with the poor, the giving up of all care for this life, and the refusal to allow the soul to be turned by any sympathy towards things of earth” (Epistle 223, Against Eustathius of Sebasteia). Faith is obedient action; obedient action in turn builds faith. Such is the lesson of Basil’s life.

As his words testify, the bishop took literally Christ’s directions to the rich young ruler of Mark 10, that eternal, abundant life comes not merely through the law but through abnegation of one’s privilege, absolute submission to God and others: “One thing you lack,” [Jesus] said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” And so, following his sister’s lead and inspired by his travels throughout Egypt and Asia Minor, Basil founded a monastery in Cappadocia (modern-day central Turkey) and is known now as the father of eastern monasticism. Basil’s form of monasticism was an engaged one, as there, too, he transformed faith to practice—particularly as he developed in spiritual maturity.

Six years after his conversion, theological controversies and political challenges increased, and Basil took a more active role in the church, becoming ordained and participating in a number of highly public discussions and writing in defense of orthodoxy. He ascended to the bishopric of Caesarea in 370, and in this role, he became even more active resisting Arianism, tirelessly writing against it and rebuking the unorthodox face-to-face (including the Emperor Valens who was reportedly much annoyed with Basil’s indifference to his office and his opinions).

To firm in his convictions was Basil that, despite the many frays he entered, he remained unflappable—calmly, persistently, and confidently defending sound doctrine and, consequently, winning both arguments and people. The Catholic Encyclopedia, drawing on Gregory of Nazanzius’s description, offers him as a model for civil disagreement: “By years of tactful conduct, however, ‘blending his correction with consideration and his gentleness with firmness,’ he finally overcame most of his opponents.” Or, in the parlance of today, for Basil truth need not be sacrificed for love.

It seems that Basil could emerge from these contentious debates with his reputation as a servant unscathed because he did not envision those with whom he disagreed as enemies. Paul Schroeder, in overviewing Basil’s social vision, explains that his anthropology governed all his engagements with others—that we are social creatures who have obligations to one another and that living in proper relation with others is both virtuous and spiritually formative. This theologically robust social vision fully manifested itself in the Basiliad, the creation of which was one of Basil’s most notable achievements. An institution that embodied the Bishop’s philanthropic vision, at the Basiliad the poor and sick were housed and fed, orphans were cared for, and the unskilled were trained.

Reflection on Basil’s life and writings shows that this mission of justice was not at odds with his defense of orthodoxy but part and parcel of it. Truth, rightly understood, leads to love, rightly practiced. Basil reminds us of how deeply consistent and resonant the two in fact are. The matchless Christian life is one that seamlessly marries them.

Mailbag: The Devil Made Us Smarter?

Photo by Daria Nepriakhina on Unsplash

A reader of the site asked for help responding to this:

"The devil gave humans critical thinking which God didn’t want us to have. God wanted us to not eat from the tree of knowledge so we could be thought-slaves for eternity, but the devil did us a favor and turned the tables there with a single conversation. The devil killed a grand total of 10 people in the Bible, while God killed somewhere around 2.3 million. He understands human nature but doesn’t judge you for being human. He accepts god’s unwanted children unconditionally."

It appears these lines come from Martin Ristov, although I’m unfamiliar with the person. It appears to be motivated by a fair bit of anger at the biblical God, similar in invective and spirit to the New Atheists. The idea seems to be that, in a moral comparison between God and Satan, the devil wins. Satan is responsible for giving us critical thinking, liberates us from being thought-slaves, has done comparatively little damage (killing just ten folks in the Bible), doesn’t judge people for being human, and accepts those God rejects. God, in contrast, wanted us to be thought-slaves, killed millions, judges us for being human, and is conditional in his acceptance.

The comparison with the New Atheists is ironic in a sense, since the New Atheists claim not to believe in God, whereas this person doesn’t seem to deny God’s existence, but rather his love and character. Still, certain adamant secularists seem mad at God at the same time as denying His existence. C. S. Lewis is well known for admitting, post-conversion, that as an atheist he both denied God’s existence and was very angry with God.

I think much of what’s going on here is attributable to looking at theology from the outside. Christians are inclined to believe God is loving; in fact, love isn’t just what God expresses, it’s who He is. God has expressed His love most clearly through Christ, and the whole of salvation history culminates in Him. Jesus went to the cross while we were sinners in order to save us. God’s love is His most important attribute, and every part of biblical revelation should be understood through this guiding hermeneutic. If, instead, one reads the Bible through a different lens, a very different conclusion can be drawn; but to read it in such a way is to wrongly divide the word of truth. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil isn’t denied the first people, on this skewed and exegetically deficient reading, because of the importance of avoiding defining good and evil for oneself in whatever subjective way one wanst, but rather because God wants to keep us from knowledge. Rather than Jesus being the Logos and the foundation for all clear thinking, critical thinking gets cast as a gift from the benevolent hand of Satan. We are thus furnished with a stark example of what incommensurable paradigms look like, and how far afield eisegetical, prooftexting mishandlings of the biblical text get us.

A comparison and contrast between God and Satan also sounds much more dualistic than Christianity actually is. Unlike, say, Zoroastrianism and certain other theologies, Christianity doesn’t put God and Satan into equal and opposite positions. Satan is a creation of God. There’s only one God, one locus of value, one Creator of the world, one Sustainer of all that exists, one Being who exists a se. Much of what often gets rejected is not classical theism, but some diminished demi-god, like the finite and morally impoverished gods of the Greek pantheon. The idea that Satan is really the good guy after all shows that the person speaking has some rather big misunderstandings, either inadvertent or intentional. The force behind systemic evils and gross injustices and all manner of cruelty and corruption is actually the good and benevolent force? The one animating the actions of Roman soldiers nailing Jesus to the cross was the good guy? This strains credulity to the breaking point, and raises a serious question about conversational cooperation.

The one who willingly suffered for the salvation of the world, who took our sin upon himself, who was willing to endure the shame and punishment that we rightly deserved—and to do so out of His great love for us—drinking death and shame to its dregs that He might effect ultimate victory over evil and set the world to rights—He’s the bad guy? The one who offers to each of us the experience of ultimate goodness that can make all the temporal sufferings of this fleeting life pale into insignificance in light of the eternal glory to come—He’s the real devil? I suspect this is a paradigmatic instance of what was prophesied: that the day would come when good would be called evil, and evil good.

Mailbag: A Question on Prior Obligations to Divine Command Theory

Photo by Siarhei Plashchynski on Unsplash

By David Baggett A reader of the site sent this question:

In reading a review on NDPR of C. Stephen Evans' book God and Moral Obligations (http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/41665-god-and-moral-obligation/), I found the author’s (Terrence Cuneo) argument to be strong ones against Evans’ proposed solutions to the "prior obligations" objection to DCT. It seems that even on a DCT, moral obligations still seem to have some unconditional "oughtness" about it.

I always thought that the strength of a DCT versus a non theistic robust ethic view (perhaps like Wielenberg's) was that a DCT was able to explain the unconditional "ought" of moral obligations. For if moral obligations were brute facts, then the question "why should I love my neighbor" is answered by "because it's simply the right thing to do," and then if someone were to ask, "why is it the right thing to do?", the final answer would be: "because it just is." I thought the advantage a theist has is that he can say that an action is right because God commands that it is right, which on the surface sounds like it provides a wider explanatory scope compared to the "it just is" answer. However, the prior obligation objection seems to ask the question "Why should I obey God's commands" and it would seem like we have a separate obligation (apart from the Will of God), to obey his commands (as the reviewer points out). Thus, it would seem like a theistic component to explain moral obligations might not be better off than the robust ethicist’s view.

What are your thoughts on this? I understand that you've been reviewing Evan's book on the website. I've found the site to be encouraging BTW, thank you so much for contributing to the body of Christ!

Great question, thanks for sending it along! You are not the first to point to this part of Cuneo’s review and to express concern about this aspect of divine command theory. Evans’ book is fantastic, and the prior obligations objection to DCT is indeed interesting, although it doesn’t, to my thinking, pose an intractable objection. I’ll try to explain why.

On the surface there’s certainly an issue to deal with. If DCT provides an exhaustive theory of moral obligations, and we have an obligation to obey God, then our obligation to obey God to obey God comes from our obligation to obey God. This is circular, so something has gone wrong. What should we say about this?

Two of this site’s contributors, friends Matt Flannagan and Paul Copan—who collaborated on a terrific book entitled Did God Really Command Genocide?—deal with this objection (pp. 165-67). They note the objection goes back to Mackie and, before him, Cudworth. They note a few problems with the argument. First, they note, it generalizes, and as such would apply “to every account of moral obligations within any given ethical theory, secular or theological.” One example they adduce is social contract theory. “According to a social contract view, moral obligations are those requirements that rational, impartial persons in a society would agree to. But Cudworth (and Mackie) could argue that one is morally obligated to such a contract only if there is already an obligation to follow such hypothetical agreements. So the hypothetical agreement can’t itself be the source of moral obligations.” See their point? I think this is an excellent insight. In this way we could say the objection, if it were to hold, would show too much.

What do they think has gone wrong with the argument? They think it equivocates between these two claims:

1 If God commands X, then we have an obligation to do X, and

2 There is an obligation to do what God commands.

Only the second proposition affirms an obligation to obey God. 1 makes the conditional claim: IF God commands X, THEN we have an obligation to do X. 1 is consistent with there being no obligations at all. But if God issues a command, what God commands is rendered obligatory. DCT only requires 1, whereas the prior obligations objection requires 2. As Matt and Paul put it, “[T]he divine command theorist need not hold that there is a prior obligation to obey God. All he needs is that God jointly possesses various characteristics or traits such that his act of commanding is sufficient to constitute moral obligations,” which is just the sort of thing that one like Robert Adams does in Finite and Infinite Goods and elsewhere. Jerry Walls and I similarly argued in Good God that, among God’s qualities that give him moral authority to issue binding commands, are his perfect knowledge, love, and power. (See pp. 122-23.)

Even if we don’t have a prior obligation to obey God’s commands, that wouldn’t mean we don’t have moral reasons to obey God. Not all moral reasons are duty-related. Something being morally good, for example, gives us moral reason, perhaps even compelling moral reason, to do it, even if we don’t have a moral obligation to do it. This is one among several other sorts of replies one can give. Among others Evans mentions include that God does actually command us to obey his commands, after he’s established his moral trustworthiness; or, even if the objection were to work, divine commands could still be sufficient to general moral obligations without being necessary; or that the prior obligation to obey God’s commands is a nonmoral ought.

It seems to me that the robust realists generally water the whole concept of moral obligations down, so in a face-to-face battle between theistic ethics and secular robust realism, what’s often getting discussed are two different conceptions of moral obligations. Wielenberg, for example, talks about moral obligations arising from enough compelling normative reasons to perform a particular action. To my thinking such a conception of moral duties is a watered-down, domesticated view of what a moral duty is, and insufficient to do justice to what Evans calls the Anscombe intuition—the notion that a moral obligation carries with it a binding prescriptive power and authority that can’t be reduced merely to compelling reasons to perform an action. Cuneo, the same fellow who pressed the prior reasons objection to Evans, also raises an objection against Wielenberg similar to what I’m suggesting here. He writes this:

Consider Wielenberg's own view concerning moral reasons. According to this view, when an agent has decisive moral reason to act in some way, then that agent is morally obligated to act in that way (7; cf. 52). In one place, Wielenberg claims that "to have an obligation just is to have decisive reasons to perform a certain action" (57).

There are two ways to understand this position. According to the first -- call it the unqualified view -- a limited range of normative facts, such as moral and prudential facts, favor or justify responses of certain kinds. If this view is correct, when a moral fact favors or justifies the performance of an action, then there is a moral reason to perform that action. However, under this view, the term "moral reason" does not designate a special type of favoring relation, namely, the moral favoring relation that a moral fact bears to a response of a certain type. Rather, it designates a state of affairs in which there is a moral fact that bears the favoring relation to a given type of response (or, alternatively, it designates a moral fact that bears the favoring relation to a given type of response).

Now distinguish two variants of the unqualified view. According to the first variant, moral obligations determine moral reasons. This variant, however, cannot be the view that Wielenberg accepts, since his position is not that moral obligations determine moral reasons but that moral reasons either determine or are identical with moral obligations. According to the second variant, moral obligations just are decisive moral reasons. This variant of the view avoids the problem just stated. … But it is not easy to understand. This view implies that the state of affairs that consists in some moral fact M decisively favoring a response is a moral obligation. But M cannot itself be a moral obligation, for no complex state of affairs could have M as a constituent and be identical with M. It is not apparent, however, what other sort of moral fact M could be.

Now consider the second understanding of Wielenberg's position. Under this position -- call it the qualified view -- the term "moral reason" designates a special type of favoring relation, namely, the moral favoring relation that something could bear to a response of a certain kind. This relation is just one of many such relations. In fact, according to this view, every system of norms generates and entails a correlative set of reasons: norms of etiquette generate etiquette reasons; norms of chess generate chess reasons; norms of the Mafia generate Mafioso reasons; norms of morality generate moral reasons, and so on.

If this view were correct, it trivially implies that if we are morally obligated to refrain from acting in a given way, then there is a moral reason for us to refrain from acting in that way. Unfortunately, this position also trivially implies that if we are "Mafioso required" to refrain from a given action, then there is a Mafioso reason to refrain from performing it. While this position might be able to explain how moral obligations are grounded in (or are identical with) moral reasons, it implies nothing regarding the normative weight of these reasons and the obligations they determine (or are identical with). Instead, it invites us to ask the higher-level question whether we have reason to act on the qualified reasons we have.

In brief, I see no compelling reason to think the prior obligations objection should be construed as evidence that (secular) robust realism provides as good an explanation of objective moral obligations as does classical theism and divine command theory.

Platonic Ethics and Classical Theism, Part I

Why bring Plato into a modern discussion of ethics and classical theism? While moderns might nostalgically refer to him in their works, his theological and ethical teachings, especially in the form he presented them, are usually not considered serious contenders in today’s theologies and texts on the metaphisics of morals.  There are of course some notable exceptions, like Robert Adams, but even Adams admits Plato gets relatively little attention. In light of this, several key reasons can be adduced to show that Plato is very important—especially for the Christian community. One important reason is that early theologians like Ambrose and Augustine saw value in his work and Platonic thought helped shape their theologies. Another reason—one that should be particularly interesting to Christians—is that Plato provides evidence of the power of general revelation. As you read through his works, you will notice many things that align nicely with Christian theology. Most importantly, Plato was an amazing philosopher and many of his philosophical insights still have value today. My hope is to mine some of these insights (e.g., the foundations of objective morals, levels of moral motivation, etc.) over a series of posts. Hopefully you will enjoy the ride.

In The Republic, Plato’s Socrates faces his most difficult—and most important—challenge: the battle for objective morality. In Book 1 of the dialogue, immediately after Socrates defeats Polemarchus and removes convention as a possible foundation for justice, Thrasymachus attacks Socrates like a beast with his wild opinion that “the just is nothing other than the advantage of the stronger” (338c). In other words, true justice (or morality) does not exist—powerful men create morality to ensure that others will do as they wish. Thrasymachus is brash, but he is not a trained philosopher, and Socrates quickly shows his assertion to be inconsistent.[1] However, Glaucon and Adeimantus come to Thrasymachus’s aid (or at least his argument’s aid), presenting a more philosophically sound version of his nihilism, and together they press Socrates to show what justice truly is and why it is good in and of itself. At this point Plato’s Socrates claims to be at a loss, for his dialog partners would not accept the “proof” he offered to Thrasymachus that justice was better than injustice. However, he is willing to investigate the matter with their assistance to see if he can save objective morality.

In his investigation, Socrates discovers defeating Thrasymachus requires four things: 1) a transcendent standard; 2) a standard that is recognizably good; 3) a standard people can know; and 4) a standard people are able to adhere to. Without any one of these items, nihilism wins.

1. The Transcendent Standard

The foundational insight that Plato provides in The Republic is that for objective value to exist it must have a foundation that is not merely an invention of some group—or even unanimously of all persons. An invention is merely convention, and Plato had forcefully removed that as a possible foundation for morality in Book 1 with his master’s discussion with Polemarchus. Any mere invention can always be reinvented and therefore cannot provide the unchanging foundation that true values require. For a standard to apply to all persons at all times, it must be transcendent.

The main vehicle Plato posits for this type of standard is the Forms, and the Form of the Good is his metaphysical and epistemic foundation for all transcendent value. An early intimation of the Form as this transcendent moral standard was arguably explored by Plato in Euthyphro where Plato’s Socrates asserts that the gods love the pious because it is pious—both gods and men were subject to the standard, the Form.  Later, in The Republic, Plato establishes the Form of the Good as the foundational form:

Therefore, say that not only being known is present in the things known as a consequence of the good, but also existence and being are in them besides as a result of it, although the good isn’t being but is still beyond being, exceeding it in dignity and power. (509b)

An important aspect of Plato’s assertion is that, since the Good is the source of the knowability, existence, and being of the other Forms (and everything else), it is ontologically prior to them. This is a critical insight: if something else—call it X—were ontologically prior to the Good, then X would possibly be the foundation of values. When you descend to the bedrock foundation of some value, you come discover the essential nature of that value; the buck stops there. The Form of the Good defines goodness simply because it exists and because of its nature—it is the type of thing that can possibly ground goodness—not for any reason outside its nature.

1. The (Recognizable) Goodness of the Standard

Since (for Plato) the Form of the Good is the standard for goodness itself, it cannot be measured against anything to show that it is good; however, we need some way to know that it is in fact good. Plato provides for this by telling us that, if we could see the Good as it is, we would immediately recognize its goodness. When you eat chocolate peanut butter ice cream, no one needs to tell you it is delicious; you experience its deliciousness directly. Plato tells us that if we could also experience the Good directly, we would immediately know not only that it is good (like the ice cream being delicious), but that it is the foundation for—and source of—all goodness (unlike the ice cream which only partakes in deliciousness). He says,

In the knowable the last thing to be seen, and that with considerable effort, is the idea of the good; but once seen, it must be concluded that this in fact is the cause of all that is right and fair in everything…and that the man who is going to act prudently in private or in public must see it (517c).

There is no external way to judge the goodness of the standard; it must be experienced directly. Once this is done, it will be obvious that all of the terms we try to use to judge the goodness of things owe their existence to the Good itself—they have no other source.

1. Knowledge of the Standard

As you can see from the quote above, Plato tells us it is difficult to know the Good. His cave metaphor helps us to understand why. When an inhabitant of the cave, who is only used to seeing dim shadows cast on the inner wall of the cave, emerges into the brightness of the sun, he cannot perceive it directly.

At first, he’d most easily make out the shadows; and after that the phantom of human beings and the other things in water; and, later, the things themselves. And from there he could turn to beholding the things in heaven and heaven itself, more easily at night—looking at the light of the stars and the moon—then by day—looking at the sun and sunlight. (516a)

The difficulty of knowing the Good, and the training it will take to make true philosophers who can actually achieve this (through the use of the dialectic), occupies most of Plato’s time in Books 5, 6, and 7, detailing the education of the Guardians (and true philosophers). Although it is difficult, and perhaps no man has done it well so far, in Plato’s economy it is possible to come to know the Good. But knowledge of the Good is indispensable: if you cannot know it, you cannot intentionally do it.

1. Adherence to the Standard

The final piece of the Platonic puzzle is that of being able to live according to the standard once one knows it (what contemporary philosopher John Hare calls the “performative” question)—Plato’s view of the soul plays the key role here. For Plato, the soul has three components: the calculating part (the head), the spirited part (the chest), and the desiring part (the belly). By default, through nature and poor training, Thrasymachean order exists in the soul where the belly rules and the chest drives one to fulfill desires—the head is used only to calculate how best to get what one wants. Plato tells us, however, that if these three are in harmony—the head ruling the belly through the chest—then we can overcome our passions with knowledge (of the Good) and do the things that we should truly desire to do if we want justice. When properly cultivated, our knowledge of the Good can lead us to live just lives.

With these four items in place, Socrates was able to convince his friends that justice does exist and that it is worth pursuing independent of any practical benefits it might bring. While I believe Plato was wrong in many of the details of his stories describing the Good and how we can know it, I believe he was right philosophically on what is required to have objective morality. If any of the four items above is missing, the moral world risks becoming Thrasymachean. And these criteria have proven difficult for modern philosophers to find in their worldview. G. E. M. Anscombe highlights this in her influential paper Modern Moral Philosophy when she asserts that, while they may sound very different, modern ethical systems all struggle with such foundational issues:

Such discussions generate an appearance of significant diversity of views where what is really significant is an overall similarity. The overall similarity is made clear if you consider that every one of the best known English academic moral philosophers has put out a philosophy according to which, e.g., it is not possible to hold that it cannot be right to kill the innocent as a means to any end whatsoever and that someone who thinks otherwise is in error.

If your ethical system cannot confidently state that murder for fun is wrong, difficult work still lies ahead, work eminently worth the effort. Modern (naturalistic) moral philosophy is faced with the significant challenge of finding a stable foundation for ethics that does not produce unpalatable implications, yet still does justice to our pre-theoretical and nonnegotiable moral insights and apprehensions.

In my next post I’ll look at how classical theism generally and specifically Judeo-Christian ethics can meet Plato’s four requirements, thereby providing an adequate foundation for objective morality.

Notes:

[1] Thrasymachus makes the assertion that the unjust man, inventing morality to gain advantage, is virtuous and wise. However, in his nihilism, Thrasymachus does not realize that when he dispatched the foundation for justice he actually destroyed all value. Unfortunately for him, he still held to a conventional view of virtue (in particular, wisdom in the crafts) and Socrates used this to show an inconsistency in his view of justice. Socrates uses conventional ideas of wisdom to show that unjust men cannot be virtuous and wise, and uses this to defeat Thrasymachus.

Image: "Platon, painted portrait"  by thierry ehrmann. CC license. 

Did God Really Command Genocide? Summary of Chapter 1: The Problem Clarified: An Atheistic Philosophical Argument

In this chapter, Flannagan and Copan (henceforth “F&C”) begin to subject to scrutiny an argument by Raymond Bradley, which relies on the “Crucial Moral Principle” that “it is morally wrong to deliberately and mercilessly slaughter men, women, and children who are innocent of any serious wrongdoing.” Bradley asserts that the Bible-believing theist can’t without contradiction believe all four of the following affirmations:

1. Any act that God commands us to perform is morally permissible.

2. The Bible reveals to us many of the acts that God commands us to perform.

3. It is morally impermissible for anyone to commit acts that violate the Crucial Moral Principle.

4. The Bible tells us that God commands us to perform acts that violate the Crucial Moral Principle.

Bradley assumes the Old and New Testaments are the revealed Word of God—the position of biblical theism. This suggests his argument should be rephrased like this:

1. Any act that God commands us to perform is morally permissible.

2’. God is the author of the Bible.

3. It is morally impermissible for anyone to commit acts that violate the Crucial Moral Principle.

4’. The author of the Bible commands us to perform acts that violate the Crucial Moral Principle.

Bradley argues the four statements taken together are inconsistent, but the biblical theist must accept all four propositions.

F&C will argue against Bradley’s claim. They will argue, in fact, that the biblical theist can defensibly reject both 3 and 4’—that it is always morally impermissible to mercilessly slaughter innocent people and that the divine author of scripture commands us to do this.

Initial Clarifications: Human and Divine Authors of Scripture

First F&C iron out an ambiguity from 2’, which affirms that God is the author of the Bible. Traditional Christian teaching accepts that the Bible has multiple authors. Each book of the Bible has a human author; at the same time, biblical theists accept that the primary author of scripture is God. But this leads to an issue with 4’ (“The author of the Bible commands us to perform acts that violate the Crucial Moral Principle”), namely, does Bradley mean the human author(s) of the books in question, or the divine author?

Bradley’s argument is a reductio ad absurdum of biblical theism—an argument that attempts to reduce, in this case, biblical theism to absurdity. So, though Bradley doesn’t believe in God, he’s assuming the stance of the biblical theist to show the logical quandary that arises from the belief that the Bible is a reliable guide to what we should do.

But if we assume that the human author of scripture commands us to perform acts that violate the Crucial Moral Principle, then this undermines Bradley’s argument. F&C rework the argument to show why:

1. Any act that God commands us to perform is morally permissible.

2’. God is the (primary) author of the Bible.

3. It is morally impermissible for anyone to commit acts that violate the Crucial Moral Principle.

4’’. The secondary human author of the Bible commands us to perform acts that violate the Crucial Moral Principle.

In this case, a contradiction requires a further premise, namely, that God’s role as primary author entails that whatever the secondary human author of the Bible  affirms or commands, God likewise affirms or commands. But this is to presuppose a particular understanding of the relationships between divine and human authors of scripture, an understanding that is implausible.

Why is such a view implausible? F&C argue that it would be silly to say that whatever the human author says or affirms is identical to what God says or affirms. When, say, David repents, saying “Against you, you only, have I sinned,” surely the psalm is not affirming that God is a sinner. While the human author affirms the status of being a sinner, God is obviously not affirming this.

Indeed, God may intend to communicate things through the words of a human author of which the latter had no ideas. It would be unlikely, for example, that the author of Isaiah, though referring to Christ in various passages, intended to do so. What the original authors had in mind is important, but won’t necessarily settle the issue as to how to understand the text in question.

As William Lane Craig writes, “There are elements in Scripture that express the emotions and anxieties and the depression of the human authors, and it seems implausible to attribute those to God’s dictation. These seem rather to be genuine human emotions that are being expressed.” Psalm 137, an imprecatory psalm written during the exile in Babylon, ends with a startling statement: “Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.” Craig argues this runs contrary to what Jesus said about loving our enemies, concluding that it is “hard to think of this as something that is dictated by God rather than a genuine expression of the Psalmist’s anger and indignation of those who opposed God.”

God may even allow human authors of scripture to express unrestrained emotion, even though God, the divine author, would not approve. Such a psalm reminds us about honestly expressing our emotions, such as rage or despair, in our prayers about where we should look for justice. And while psalmists may utilize hyperbole and strong speech in the midst of their white-hot rage, they are expressing the very biblical desire for justice to be done—that God repay people according to their deeds, as the martyrs do in Revelation 6:9-10. This illustrates how God’s being the author of the Bible doesn’t mean he endorses everything the human author expresses.

The Trinity: Knowing the Loving God, an Essay for Trinity Sunday

The Adoration of the Trinity by Albrecht Dürer (1511)

Immutability is one of those technical theological words or attributes of God that some believe was contrived by theologians. Put simply, immutability means unchangeable or unalterable, and it is a classical attribute of God. This attribute, however, is not generated by theologians but directly derived from Scripture. Hebrews 6:17-18 states, “In the same way, God, wishing even more greatly to show to the heirs of promise the immutability of His intention, mediated it by an oath in order that through two immutability things — for God to lie is impossible by these immutable things — we refugees might have strong comfort in order to attain the hope which is set before us” (trans. mine, italicized words represent words implied by translation). Similarly, Malachi 3:6 records, “For I, Yahweh, do not change, and you, sons of Jacob, are not exterminated” (trans. mine from MT).

Perhaps more important is the belief that we can truly relate to God, which is the magnificent truth of the greatest commandment: “You shall love Yahweh your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” (Deut. 6:5). When God’s unchangeableness is paired with the mutual love shared between God and humanity (John 3:16), a tension presents itself. To love is to relate, but in all relating — it seems — is some measure of change.

If we were to relate to a rock, or a tree, we would be sorely disappointed since there is no mutual relating, and why is this so? We could change our attitude towards the rock, but the rock will never adjust itself — how could it? — to relate to us. This relationship is a one-way gig; we adjust to relate to the rock, but it never adjusts itself to relate to us. Love for a rock is bound to go unrequited. Few of us, I suppose, would believe this to be a good relationship; indeed, if my father were to relate to me in such a way — always expecting me to change, but never himself changing — I suspect that I would find the relationship malformed. At the least, we might not find him personable or relatable. Thus, the theory of Aristotle that the Divine (God) is the Unmoved Mover leaves us with a rather mechanical and non-relatable God.

Both God’s immutability and His relationality are equally important and non-negotiables, so we must find a way to uphold them together. To do this, we will employ the nature of the Trinity using Maximus the Confessor as our foundational thinker while deploying John Zizioulas’ commentary on Maximus. The key to success in this endeavor will be to discuss how God can be unchangeable while also showing how God adjusts (and in this sense is changeable) so as to relate to us.

God is One in nature, Three in persons; this is the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity. When Scripture says that God does not change, the question we must ask is whether this should be taken as absolute immutability (Unmoved Mover) or qualified immutability. It also should not be missed that, if we look closely at the contexts of the Scriptures cited earlier, it is God’s intention for Israel (Malachi 3:6) or for the future of the church (Hebrews 6:17-18) and God’s complementing oath that are described as immutable, not God directly. These texts are cited frequently as metaphysical statements about God’s total being, but the contexts look less supportive of using them that way. Although this contextual fact is important, we will nevertheless assume that God is immutable (unchangeable) in some respect. For Maximus the Confessor, God is both changeable and unchangeable, which, prima facie, looks inherently contradictory. However, Maximus explains that God is unchangeable in regards to nature (what God is), but changeable with respect to the Persons (Father, Son, Spirit). John Zizioulas clarifies Maximus’ thought:

Maximus uses . . . a distinction between logos [what/nature] and tropos [how/Persons]: in every being there is a permanent and unchangeable aspect and an adjustable one. In the Incarnation, the logos physeos [nature] remains fixed [unchanging], but the tropos [Persons] adjusts being to an intention or purpose or manner of communion [changing]. In other words, the love of God bridges the gulf of otherness by affecting the changeable and adjustable aspect of being, and this applies equally to God and to the world: God bridges the gulf by adjusting his own tropos, that is, the how he is . . . . This amounts to a ‘tropic identity’, that is, to an ontology of tropos, of the ‘how’ things are. This is a matter of ontology, because the tropos of being is an inseparable aspect of being, as primary ontologically as substance or nature.[1]

This may be difficult to follow, but the point we want to draw from Zizioulas is that God must adjust or be changeable if we desire to speak meaningfully of God relating to us. If God does not adjust to have communion with us, that is, to relate to us, then all our talk of God desiring to have relationship with us is meaningless. What type of insight can we gather by returning to Hebrews 6:17-18 and Micah 3:6 with these points in view?

Hebrews 6:17-18 tells us that God gives us confidence based on two immutable (unchangeable) truths: 1) that God’s faithful intention is unchangeable, and 2) that oaths are unbreakable, especially ones taken by God. If we had to pick only one attribute that explains why this is the case, we might choose God’s goodness (or maybe veracity). It is God’s nature that is good, but it is the Persons (Father, Son, Spirit) that make this goodness communal with us. God’s nature is good, and that goodness becomes faithfulness to us by the Son’s (and Spirit’s) relating and sharing it with us. The Trinity’s communal faithfulness, that is, the love the Father, Son, and Spirit share, is adjusted outward when They create the world. The goodness/faithfulness remains the same; with whom the communion includes is extended. Namely, it is extended to us creatures; it is adjusted to embrace us. Persons are capable of adjusting themselves to embrace others; nature, like the rock example above, is not.

Micah 3:6 is discussing God’s continued faithfulness to Israel despite their failings (vv. 1-6): “I, Yahweh, do not change, and you, sons of Jacob, are not exterminated.” The implication is that God’s faithfulness to Jacob and God’s promises to him and his posterity is keeping the sons of Jacob from being exterminated. God’s nature is one of inherent goodness or faithfulness. God, through the promises made to the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, extends that faithfulness to Israel. Again, only persons are capable of adjusting themselves to have communion with others. It is the Persons, therefore, the Father, Son, and Spirit, who embrace others, and, in so doing, intimately relate to us.

A practical takeaway from this is that the more personal someone (even an animal) is or becomes, the more she or he will make room for deep, intimate relationships. God the Trinity is the Communion of the relationships mutually shared among the Father, Son, and Spirit. The Trinity makes room for relating to humans so that those who trust the Lord Jesus will have fellowship with the Father, Son, and Spirit (2 Cor. 13:14; 1 John 1:3). To be like God, then, we should make room for intimate relationships both with God and with others, but what more is this than fulfilling the two greatest commands: “ . . . love Yahweh your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind . . . [and] the second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Matt. 22:37-39). The Trinity makes room for relating to humans so that those who trust the Lord Jesus will have fellowship with the Father, Son, and Spirit (2 Cor. 13:14; 1 John 1:3). To be like God, then, we should make room for intimate relationships both with God and with others, but what more is this than fulfilling the two greatest commands: “ . . . love Yahweh your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind . . . [and] the second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Matt. 22:37-39).

It is correct to say God is immutable, but when we place this statement together with God loving and relating to us as Trinity, we need to consider this a qualified immutability. Again, the Trinity is immutable in His essentially loving nature and changeable regarding the Persons “making room” for others. Who and what God is does not change, but He does change to relate to new creatures who respond to His overtures of love and come into communion with Him.

Notes:

[1] John Zizioulas, Communion & Otherness: Further Studies in Personhood and the Church, ed. Paul McPartlan, rep. (2006; London: T & T Clark, 2009), 24 – 25; Maximus the Confessor, Ambigua 1, 5, and 67. Maximus uses the Greek phrasing of τροπος ὑπαξεως (tropos hypaxeōs: mode of existence) and πως εἰναι (pōs einai: how being exists) to explain. Grammatical brackets mine.

Image: By PJParkinson (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons

Equality, Human Value, and the Image of God

Photo by Ian Chen on Unsplash

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.”

These timeless words penned by the Founding Fathers declare a simple, yet profound moral maxim: All humans are equally valuable and ought to be treated as such. This has come to be known as the Principle of Equality (or Equal Treatment).

Almost all societies throughout history have accepted this truth and lived by it. Jeremy Bentham pointed out that any ethical system must begin with the presupposition that “Each to count for one and none for more than one.” We share a strong intuition that all human persons ought to be treated equally, prima facie. Interestingly enough, the pro-slavery South accepted and lived by the Principle of Equality. Even modern-day racists might accept the Principle of Equality as the most basic moral maxim.[1] A racist, however, will seek to redefine the term “human” or “person” to exclude a group of people that he deems unworthy of rights or value. Hence, the racist can happily affirm that all people are equal and ought to be treated equally, and yet disagree on who to include in the category of “people.”

Most rational people today will recognize that racism is wrong—it is evil. However, the problem arises when we seek to ground the Principle of Equality. Why is it that all people are equal? Why is it that all people are born with unalienable rights? Why is it that all people are inherently valuable as ends in and of themselves? In other words, what makes the Principle of Equality really true rather than merely a clever and effective tool to keep society in check?

As it turns out, answering this question is not as easy as it might seem. The French philosopher Jacques Maritain, who helped draft the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, said, “We agree on these rights, providing we are not asked why. With the ‘why,’ the dispute begins.”[2] Our task is to figure out some common property or set of properties that all human beings share that can bear the weight of substantiating the intrinsic value of the human person. Some potential candidates for grounding human worth and equality might be rationality, intellect, or our capacity for moral reflection and deliberation. Peter Singer argues that all three of these fail. With regard to rationality and intellect, “we can have no absolute guarantee that these abilities and capacities really are evenly distributed evenly, without regard to race or sex, among human beings.”[3] In other words, it's implausible that all humans have the same intellectual capacity; many people are born with severe mental handicaps. Does their diminished ability to function make them less human? Of course not. Does their inability make them less valuable? Of course not. Singer goes on to say, “it is quite clear that the claim to equality does not depend on intelligence, moral capacity, physical strength, or similar matters of facts.”[4] The facts of human intellectual ability, moral capacity, strength, and the like cannot serve as the basis for human value for two reasons:

1. These abilities are not evenly distributed among all people. Some people are strong, some are weak. Some people are bright, others are not.

2. It is not clear what it is about these properties that makes them the grounds for inherent human worth. There is nothing in the human capacity for rational reflection that explicitly bespeaks the intrinsic worth of every human being and can serve as its ontological grounds.

Singer finally concludes his argument with a profound point and a concession, “There is no compelling reason for assuming that a factual difference in ability between two people justifies any difference in the amount of consideration we give to satisfying their needs and interests. The principle of equality of human beings is not a description of an alleged equality among human beings: it is a prescription of how we should treat human beings.”[5] Singer looks at the different attempts to ground human worth and finds them all lacking. He concedes that there is no description of humanity that justifies or substantiates the principle of equality, and yet we still ought to treat humans as if we are all equal. For Singer, the Principle of Equality has no basis in reality, but it is a useful fiction and we should still aim to live by it.

The theist can argue that human persons all possess the Imago Dei—the Image of God. God has created all people in such a way that we all carry and reflect the image of the Creator of the cosmos.

Singer's candid concession is honest and laudable, for on his naturalistic position, there is no such property or set of properties that seems likely to bear the weight of Singer's challenge. What could serve as the foundation for intrinsic human value? It is at this point that the theist has the advantage. The theist can take any number of viable approaches in answering this question. The theist can argue that human persons all possess the Imago Dei—the Image of God. God has created all people in such a way that we all carry and reflect the image of the Creator of the cosmos. Every person from the weakest to the strongest—from the least-known to the best-known—has this property. We carry the Image of God. The theist can also ground human value in God's intentions for humanity. God has created human beings with certain ends in mind so that any disruption of those intentions is a disruption of the way God made humans and intended for us to interact. These two options, moreover, are not mutually exclusive by any means. Theists can happily affirm both of these options in answering Singer's challenge. God, as both our Source and End, having created us and imbued us with our telos, provides the robust ontological foundation for intrinsic human worth and moral standing. These approaches take the burden off various human capacities; even when human beings suffer handicaps or lack certain faculties, their ontological status has not diminished one iota. On this view, God has created all people as inherently valuable. All people regardless of race, sex, age, ability to function, sexual orientation, or location are ends in and of themselves—priceless, precious, and loved by God.

While the naturalist can see the need for grounding the Principle of Equality, the theist can offer a viable set of solutions. A Principle of Equality that hangs suspended in mid-air is both ineffective and dangerous. A robust understanding of what ties us all together and validates the notion that all humans are intrinsically valuable is vitally important, now more than ever. It would seem that theism offers a fuller account of the descriptive and prescriptive components of the Principle of Equality than does naturalism.

For further reading on this important issue, including a systematic critique of various secular efforts to ground moral standing and intrinsic human worth, see Mark Linville’s “Moral Argument” available online here: https://appearedtoblogly.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/linville-mark-22the-moral-argument22.pdf

Notes:

[1]    James Rachels, The Elements of Moral Philosophy (2015), p. 79-80

[2]    Jacques Maritain, Man and the State (1951), p. 77

[3]    Peter Singer, Animal Liberation (1975), p. 4

[4]    Singer, p. 4

[5]    Singer, p. 5

Image:"Scaffolding & First Amendment Of The Constitution Of The United States Of America, Pennsylvania Avenue, NW (Washington, DC)" by takomabibelot. CC License. 

Pentecost Sunday and the Power and Presence of God

Today is Pentecost, the ecclesiastical festival commemorating the establishment of the church itself. On this fiftieth day after Jesus’ resurrection, the Holy Spirit descended on Christ’s disciples as they prayed in one accord in the Upper Room, thereby launching their ministry, a dynamic outreach that would burst the confines of Jerusalem and Judea and would spread the Good News throughout the world.

Ten days before the events recounted in Acts 2, before the disciples of Christ had watched Jesus ascend to heaven, they had asked him when the restoration of Israel would come. He was the promised Messiah, they knew, but what did his departure portend for a restored kingdom? Instead of an answer, they heard Christ’s promise of the Spirit. So they waited. They obeyed Jesus’ command, remaining together in Jerusalem.

At this time, many pilgrims were in the city to celebrate the Feast of Weeks, the Jewish holy day recognizing God’s giving Moses the Law at Mount Sinai. This feast is known as Shavuʿoth in Hebrew and Pentecost (fiftieth day, after Passover) in Greek. As the disciples gathered together, the Holy Spirit fell upon them, setting them aflame by the transforming presence and power of God. The imagery of wind and fire of Acts 2 echoes that of Exodus 19, chronicling God’s presence on the mountain Moses ascended (as Kent Dobson notes in his commentary for the NIV First-Century Study Bible).

As God made abode with Moses and the Israelites, so too he was with these disciples, and now would take up residence within them. Far from abandoning or forsaking them, or leaving them desolate, he planned to animate and inspire them, write his law on their hearts, and fulfill his promise to pour out his Spirit (Joel 2); in fact, he planned to anoint them for a work whose breadth and profundity they could have scarcely imagined, of which the kingdom of Israel was just the beginning.

The Holy Spirit empowered these unsophisticated Galileans to preach the Gospel message with power both to Jews living in Jerusalem and to those on pilgrimage for the holy day. Despite sharing the same Jewish faith and religious tradition, the onlookers hailed from a wide range of geographical locations including Mesopotamia, Asia, and Egypt and spoke a number of different languages. They were culturally diverse as well—Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Cretans, and Arabians, and both ethnically Jewish and converts to the faith. Through the miraculous work of the Spirit, the Gospel message, relevant to all, was now heard by all, in their own native tongues.

God used the obedience of these disciples to begin reconciling the whole world to himself. The same power that raised Jesus from the dead was now at work within them, to effect nothing less than the complete restoration of his created order, a process still underway.

And that message, boldly proclaimed with divine unction, radically changed the lives of those who heard and heeded, responding to God’s gracious and glorious overture of love. Three thousand people, Acts 2 tells us, were baptized and welcomed into Christian fellowship that day, a fellowship depicted by Luke as nothing less than extraordinary.

In Glimpses of Grace Madeleine L’Engle describes the life of the early church in these terms: “[O]n that first Pentecost the Holy Spirit truly called the people together in understanding and forgiveness and utter, wondrous joy. The early Christians, then, were known by how they loved one another.” She continues by challenging the contemporary church to live in such unity: “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if people could say that of us again? Not an exclusive love, shutting out the rest of the world, but a love so powerful, so brilliant, so aflame that it lights the entire planet — nay the entire universe!”

These early Christians held property in common, submitted themselves to one another, studied scripture and learned from the apostles, praised God, lived in gratitude and generosity. And their numbers continued to increase. God used their obedience to begin reconciling the whole world to himself. The same power that raised Jesus from the dead was now at work within them, to effect nothing less than the complete restoration of his created order, a process still underway.

For Pentecost not only reminds us of Mount Sinai by way of the Feast of Weeks; it also harkens back to the Tower of Babel from Genesis 11—except, where language divided those at Babel, it united those at Pentecost. While scripture contains many instances of the devastation wrought by human sin, few stories capture the imagination as fully as that of Babel. As the population grew after the flood, people settled in Shinar, later deciding to build a city with a tower “reach[ing] to the heavens,” motivated by a two-fold purpose: to “make a name for [them]selves” and to avoid being “scattered over the face of the whole earth.” Seeing their plans, God thwarted them, confusing their languages and dispersing them throughout the world, the very thing they hoped their building project would prevent.

Although the precise sin of the people is not named in Genesis 11, historical context suggests that pride was at its root. (Dobson says that “[t]owers in the Bible usually are associated with human arrogance,” pointing to Isaiah 2:12-17 and Ezekiel 26:4-9 as examples.) Fear, too, perhaps motivated them (as Brent A. Strawn explains); they may have craved self-protection, isolation, and stability—all of which would have come, they supposed, from a city. Even so, such self-protection came at the expense of obeying God’s command to Noah (and Adam and Eve before that) to “[b]e fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth.” Rather than submit to God, the people of Babel relied on themselves, cutting themselves off from others and fulfilling their own desires, not God’s will.

Pentecost reminds us that God does not call us to live in our own strength, in the comfortable confines of our own devising. Rather, we are altogether dependent on the only true Source of our strength and victory. God’s plans for healing, hope, and restoration are far grander than our narrow terrestrial dreams forged in the finite minds of mortal men. Ours is a calling much too high for us to achieve with the resources of our own meager devices. God’s Spirit is still available to take up habitation in our hearts, to flood us with waves of liquid love, transforming us to be like Christ, empowering us to obey God’s call, with the same power that raised Jesus from the dead.

Video: Peter Williams on C.S. Lewis and Friendship

Photo by Kevin Gent on Unsplash

Peter Williams, hosted by the C.S. Lewis Foundation, shares some thoughts on C.S. Lewis' view of friendship. The lecture is entitled, "Surprised by Philia: The Virtue of Faithful Friendship" and includes a great discussion of the theme of friendship in Lewis' Narnia series. If you're interested in an exploration of friendship from a biblical, philosophical, and literary perspective, this lecture is well worth the time!  

Pornography: A Dangerous Deception

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

On April 26, the Wall Street Journal Business section offered a new prophecy: Robot Sex! Sex Therapist Laura Berman predicts that technology will enable cheap but fulfilling robotic sex, conception of children without physical touching, and chemical drugs to allow for the experience of more pleasure.

While on the one hand I am surprised the Wall Street Journal would print onanistic meanderings fit only for the trashiest of sci-fi novels, I think this article illustrates the dangerous deception of pornography and its ability to sever us from our own humanity. Pornography could be condemned on many grounds, but I want to consider the possibility that porn poses a subtle danger, causing us to value pleasure over love, solitude over community, and the present over a lifetime.

St. Augustine argued in his City of God that the quest for human happiness has everything to do with rightly ordered love. When we situate the love of God in its proper place, followed by love of neighbor and other subordinate categories, we find the best opportunity for human flourishing. When we displace our loves, perhaps elevating lust over relationships, Augustine argues that we will find our lives filled with dissatisfaction.

This understanding of life as a constant evaluation, or searching the heart for what it should value to the proper extent, goes against our 21st century eroticized culture. Media—including film, television, and music stars—upholds a certain vision of the good life consisting of ever-more exotic sexual experiences producing happiness. Pornography—by which I mean the print, internet, and video aspects displaying sexuality through a mediated form intended to stimulate lust—falls under a certain teleology of sexuality with devastating consequences.

With the advent of the birth control pill, it became possible to sever sexuality from children. Certain strands of Christianity, primarily Catholic, immediately objected to this severing, claiming that the purpose of sexual intercourse was the production of children. Most low-church denominations, such as Baptist and Methodist, either dodged the moral questions raised by birth control or formulated a different argument: the purpose of sex is pleasure between spouses. Married couples can then make the decision about whether or not to have children. American culture at large accepted the pill with excitement, rushing onward to the Sexual Revolution. For many people, concerns about the purpose of sex paled in comparison to the pleasure of consequence-free intercourse.

If the purpose of sex is pleasure alone, then pornography is an acceptable route to that goal, as it provides pleasurable mental and physical stimulation. Berman’s sex-bots are merely the next logical extension of this pursuit. If, however, the purpose of sex is something different, then it merits further consideration. Sexual intercourse brings together two human beings—male and female—and permits them to mingle, creating the opportunity for new life. This is a profoundly human moment, where two separate consciousnesses, two souls, mix physically and, in their unity, could produce another human soul. If this is the purpose of sexuality, then pornography becomes far more dangerous.

The ancient Greeks had a concept of sin drawn from an archery metaphor. Hamartia, translated as sin, originally described an archer who missed the target. He aimed at a bird, and hit the tree. If the goal of sexual intercourse is the mingling of two persons, then pornography causes one individual to miss the mark. In gazing at the sex act through a mediated lens, whether paper, ink, or a screen, the impulse that should move an isolated individual to form a micro-community causes him to dwell in solitude. The dangerous part, however, is that the deeper into a pornographic habit one goes, the further he is from the target of human community.

Pornography exacts a price; it changes the way a viewer sees the other sex, and it ingrains a habit of self-gratification within the heart. Where sexual intercourse calls for serving the partner in love, pornography produces the illusion that selfish viewing gives greater joy than actual intercourse. To maintain the illusion, the viewer continues in search of ever deeper, more depraved depictions of sexuality. Perhaps the saddest result comes when one who has spent years viewing pornography comes to the bed with a lover and expects sex to be what he has seen and imagined. Sex can be fantastic, but a real sexual relationship takes time, effort, love, commitment, and service. These capacities have been stripped from the pornography viewer’s expectations of sexuality.

Here then is the subtle lie of pornography. It promises satisfaction, but strips one’s ability to appreciate the real thing. It upholds a cheap pleasure as the highest good, removing one’s ability to recognize that children and a loving marriage are infinitely more valuable than orgasm alone.

It reminds me of the Prodigal Son. In Luke 15, Jesus tells a parable of a son who has it all, but takes his inheritance and parties it away in the city. After experiencing his epiphany in a pigsty, the most morally reprehensible place for a good Jewish boy, he poignantly recognizes his need for repentance. The danger of pornography is that it trains the one in the pigsty to mistake it for a grand mansion with capacious and ever expanding rooms. Uncovering the deception involves retraining the heart and the eyes to appreciate real love, and place that love in the proper order.

Stories of men and women who have reached the other side of a pornography addiction abound. One of the most well-written of these accounts comes from Erica Garza who tells her story in “Tales of a Female Sex Addict.” By the end of her article, Garza finds hope. Her story reveals the depths of pornographic depravity, but also the existence of the human soul.

As humans, we exist as body and soul. Sexuality is a point where our dual-nature combines in a mixture of desire and expression. The desire for intimacy and relationship reveals humans as more than just physical creatures. If we were only bodily creatures, then physical satisfaction of our physical longings would be sufficient. Pornography feeds this desire. Without the spiritual component of human relationship, however, we create a raging monster of lust within ourselves. Rooting sexuality within marriage, aimed at the teleology of children, satisfies our creational design as body-soul, mortal-eternal beings.

Sexual expression has always been an area of problematization, worthy of contemplation; this is an important question to get right. At stake is our ability to love other human beings, to see in them an image of the Creator worthy of love, sacrifice, respect, and honor.

The hope of joy in this life rides on recognizing pornography not as a harmless habit, something all guys will do, but as a deadly deception which retrains the heart to be nothing but an engine of lust. We are more than bodies with pleasure centers. We are embodied creatures with eternal souls, “designed to live in community,” to quote Aristotle. We live in a deceptive age, in which pornography is held out with the promise of joy but leaves us holding the ashes of our hope.

Image: "Unmasked" by JD Hancock. CC License. 

Podcast: Mark Foreman on Faith, Reason, and Natural Law

On this week's podcast, we hear from Dr. Mark Foreman. Dr. Foreman is a professional philosopher who specializes in both Christian apologetics and bioethics. The main topic of this episode is theism as a natural law ethic. Dr. Foreman will explain what a natural law ethic is, why we should prefer it, how it can be applied in moral dilemmas, and  how to use it in apologetics. But before we get to that, we'll also get to hear some thoughts from Dr. Foreman on the relation of faith and reason.  

Ascension Day, St. Athanasius, and Theosis

Christians celebrate throughout the year a number of holy days, each of which emphasizes the life and work of Jesus. Of notable importance are Christmas, the commemoration of the Son’s entrance into the world whereby he takes on our humanity through the incarnation, and Easter, a celebration of Christ’s death and resurrection. In liturgical traditions from both the East and West, Christians also celebrate Ascension Day, which commemorates Jesus’s ascension to heaven.

Ascension Day is one of the earliest Christian celebrations. Tradition states that it is apostolic in origin and dates back to as early as the first century. According to Scripture, after the events of his death and resurrection, Jesus appeared to his followers over a span of forty days (Acts 1:3) and then was taken up into heaven to sit at the right hand of the Father (Mk 16:20; Lk 24:53; Acts 1:9). Christians, therefore, celebrate Ascension Day on the fortieth day after Easter Sunday.

Jesus’s ascension remains an essential teaching of the Christian church. As with the incarnation, death, and resurrection of the Son of God, the ascension is intricately connected to our salvation. Each should be taken as part of the seamless and inseparable work of Christ, as demonstrated in the writings of the early church.

In his defense of the incarnation, Athanasius (c. 297 C.E. – 373 C.E.), the Bishop of Alexandria, remarked that “it was our sorry case that caused the Word to come down” (Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 1.4). Death had dominion over us because of sin, and it was only through the incarnation of the Word that God could put an end to death and corruption. The Word, who is immortal and who is also the Father’s Son, is incapable of dying. “For this reason,” claimed Athanasius, “He assumed a body capable of death, in order that it, through belonging to the Word Who is above all, might become in dying a sufficient exchange for all, and, . . . put an end to corruption for all others as well, by the grace of the resurrection” (Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 2.9). Toward the latter part of his work on the incarnation, Athanasius says something startling: the Word “assumed humanity that we might become God” (Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 8.54). This may sound strange to our modern ears, but Athanasius’s claim would have made perfect sense among his Greek hearers. It is not that humanity becomes God in an ontological sense, as one might find in pantheism. For Athanasius and the other Greek Fathers, a clear distinction remains between God and creation. God alone is eternal, immortal, uncreated, and incorruptible. Rather, his point was that through the work of the Son of God we become a “holy race” and “partakers of the Divine Nature” (Athanasius, Letter 60, to Adalphius, 4; cf. 2 Peter 1:4). God, by his grace, shares eternal and abundant life with his creatures.

By no means was Athanasius the only church Father to emphasize this teaching that we now call “theosis” (deification). It first appeared in the work of Irenaeus, who claimed that God became incarnate through the Son in order to “win back to God that human nature (hominem) which had departed from God” (Against Heresies, 3.10.2). The doctrine of theosis places emphasis on restoration. Not only was Christ’s work for the forgiveness of sin and for our reconciliation to God; it was also for the restoration of our fallen humanity, for our healing, and to bring us into union with God. Theosis, then, refers to the full saving work of God in our lives, which ultimately culminates in our glorification and immortality.

Jesus, who is our advocate and intercessor before the Father (1 Jn 2:1), and who sympathizes with us in our suffering (Heb 2:17-18), experienced the full weight of our humanity while on earth (Heb 2:10-18; 4:15; 5:7-10). Yet, he did so without sin (1 Pet 2:22; 2 Cor 5:21; Heb 4:15; 1 Jn 3:5). He went before us and is now present with the Father. Because of the completed work of Christ we too may share in the full restoration of our humanity and in our future glorification (Rom 8:18). Not only do we experience forgiveness and a relationship with God, our bodies also will be raised in the likeness of Jesus’s resurrected body—mortality has been clothed with immortality (1 Cor 15:54). Jesus’s resurrection and ascension gives us the ultimate hope and assurance that God has defeated death. One day, those who are in Christ will bask in the indwelling and glorious presence of God in the renewed heavens and earth (Rom 18:21; Rev 21:1-3).