Blog Break

Lent is here again. I shall return at Easter. Got to keep the main thing the main thing. Pray for me and I shall pray for you.

Sola/Solo Revisited

A while back there was a series of articles at Called to Communion responding to a book by Ken Mathison, The Shape of Sola Scriptura. There was a bunch of back and forth. Eventually Mathison responded. He even responded on this blog once.  But his main reply was in two parts. One was to note the bias of the authors. That is they all seemed to come from a Catholic point of view. The second was to make a more generic argument against the Catholic church.

Neal Judisch wrote a reply to that reply. There were a number of other replies but I want to reflect on Neal's which I don't think was ever really responded to. His response was basically to point out that the responses were not logical critiques of the logical argument presented. They were claims of bias but they don't matter when you are not making an argument from authority. If the trustworthiness of someone's judgement is not a premise of the argument then pointing out bias does not refute anything.

So that is where it was dropped as far as I can tell. With Neal challenging Mathison to refute the argument in logical terms. That is to state precisely which premise he rejected or why he didn't feel the conclusion followed from the premises. That was about a year ago. Nothing. Sure there were many comments on all of these posts but nothing I can remember as coming close to meeting this challenge.

So what does that mean? If you reject Catholic arguments because they are Catholic and not because they are logically unsound? What that ends up doing is pitting faith against reason. Reject this conclusion on faith despite the apparent rational basis for it. It is dangerous territory. It essentially says there are some truths that cannot be properly scrutinized by reason.

Protestantism is supposed to be based on scripture and plain reason. There is huge subjectivity in what counts as plain reason. But if defending it requires you to reject logical arguments without explaining what is unsound about them then you have taken that subjectivity to a new level. You end up undermining every logical argument you ever make. If you can simply ignore logical problems then why can't some else? 

Examining John Piper

Christian Piatt writes an article result reacting to what Piper said about Christianity and gender. 

I really want to give John Piper the benefit of the doubt. Given that he’s a minister in the Baptist tradition, it doesn’t surprise me when he only refers to God as “he” or when he talks about the man’s role as spiritual head of the household. I grew up Baptist, so I’ve heard it all before.

But he goes too far with it. Way too far. And given the breadth of his influence, his message serves to normalize the marginalization of half (slightly more than, in fact) the world’s population. While I expect he believes he is fulfilling a divine call in sharing his message, I believe I’m serving a similar call in holding him to account.

It is interesting that he starts with some comments about authority. He knows Piper has clout. That many evangelical pastors choose to give him teaching authority. He knows Piper feels called to speak for God but he feels the same call. So what has happened here? God is being taken out of the picture. We have a debate where both sides claim a divine call. But one of them must be wrong.

Piatt states this and moves on. He knows that if he can get people to see the divine authority question as a draw then he can win. He has the culture on his side on this. People living in modern society will find his ideas about the roles of men and women easier to accept that Piper's ideas. So it is a good debate tactic. Get the question of divine authority off the table. 

But if divine authority can be finessed then what chance do we have at arriving at truth? All we have is human opinion. Fallible leaders that have been immersed in our culture, immersed in sin, and immersed in human tradition. One of these leaders may have been given the grace to see God's truth clearly but how do we know which one? We don't.

We will come to agree with one and disagree with the other. Guess what? The vast majority of the time we will agree with the side that matches what we would have said anyway. Person A is telling us we are right. Person B is telling us we are wrong. It is human nature to be more sympathetic to person A because we like to be told we are right. So the process that was supposed to be us hear God's word and obeying it now becomes us convincing ourselves that God must agree with our opinion. 

Can the Holy Spirit intervene and make someone realize that he is wrong and person B is really speaking for God? Sure. Does it happen often? No. Most of the time people's thinking goes along predictable paths. We think we are above it. That our mind can set aside the influences of sin, society, and human tradition. It is spiritual pride. We don't really grasp the significance of our own fallibility.

It reminds me of the typical atheist argument. If God exists He would make His presence obvious and would make obedience easy. Here we have a similar assumption. God exists so He will make His will obvious and not let me embrace serious error unknowingly. The trouble is you are telling God how things should work. He has chosen to be hidden in plain sight so He is obvious to some and invisible to others. It gives us a choice whether to believe and obey or deny there is anything there. But if He gives us the bible and allows us to choose whether to believe it or not then why would He not give us leadership with divine authority and let us choose whether to believe it or not?

As a protestant I could see the atheist was pursuing his own version of good and blaming any God that might exist for not making the right thing clear enough. I didn't see that I was pursuing my own version of good as well. Sure it was formed by scripture. Still the pressure was on God to make things clear to me. I was not going to go out and find a more complete source of His word. Something that could guide me on issues like the role of women in the church that seem to have no strong consensus of what is biblical. Just like I would tell the atheist that if you honestly looked for God you would find Him in the person of Jesus. I can now tell protestants that if you honestly look for an answer to the divine authority stalemate you will find God working powerfully through the Catholic Church.

Anyway, this is getting long so I won't comment on the rest of the article.

Sucked In By Religion

One big fear people have when it comes to religion is being sucked in. Why not? There are many false religions. There are many smart people in those religions. So it happens. But smart people get trapped in bad sexual relationships. They get taken in by greed. They get addicted to alcohol and drugs. Yet people don't respond by avoiding sex, money, parties, etc. They realize there are dangers but you have to live your life. So you exercise due caution and proceed. With religion it is different. People think the most reasonable course is to avoid it altogether.

Of course you can't. Religion is just about answering the big questions in life. GK Chesterton talked about philosophy as thinking that is thought all the way through. It is a pain to do this but the alternative is to not think things through. With religion you can do that. You can refuse to think about the really big questions in life. It is cowardly and irrational but you can do it.

The trouble is those questions do force their way onto the stage at some point. Often you are not ready for them because it happens at the moment of great crisis. A loved one has just died. You have just seen your life's dream crash. Whatever it is. That is when you notice your world and life view is missing in action. That is precisely when you are most likely to get sucked into bad religion. You are emotionally needy and you are not going to be able to think straight. It is really not the best time to be making big life choices but that is often when they get made.

The good news is that most people who make religious commitments under such circumstances end up in a pretty good religion. Some end up in cults or radical groups but most are picked up by an aggressively-evangelizing protestant church. Theology won't be their strong suit but they likely get a lot of things right.

What happens next? Not a lot. They typically either stay where they are at and embrace the tradition that brought them to the faith or they stop going to church entirely.  Very few of them do any serious reading and try and find which Christian church has doctrine that makes more sense than the others. Even if they are in a church that makes up a very small fraction of Christendom.

Suppose you are sick and look for a doctor. But the first doctor you run into is a Sioux Indian medicine man. Would it make sense to judge all medicine by this one medicine man and other medicine men he introduces you to? That would be nuts. You need to go to a mainstream doctor. Even if the medicine man tells you main steam doctors are no good. But this is what people do with Christianity. They judge Christianity based on one particular tradition. They either embrace that tradition or reject all of Christendom. Even when that tradition might be just a few decades old and amount to a trivial fraction of all Christians.

For someone to reject Christianity without seriously investigating Catholicism should be quite strange. Like writing off all smart phones without investigating the iPhone. One could do it but you would not expect many to do it. Somehow it is common for protestant Christians. As a protestant I didn't know anyone who ever read anything serious by a Catholic on why he is Catholic. It is just never seriously addressed.

The bottom line is if people took a more rational approach to religion there would be more Catholics. We could avoid this scenario that starts with fear and later is driven by despair. Instead one could read the best representatives of all the major religious schools of thought. It is not really obvious who that would be but to make a serious attempt at it is not that hard. You can start by asking a member of that faith who you respect for something that describes his religion well. It is exceedingly rare. Most people only consider religious arguments they happen to stumble into.

I wish I could say I had been more rational in my faith journey. I really wasn't. That is why I didn't become Catholic until I was 40. For a long time I just accepted the reformed tradition I was raised with. I thought I was being perfectly rational. I wasn't. I trusted the people I knew because I knew them. Even after I discovered other Christian traditions had impressive Christians in them as well it still took a long time for me to really question whether the reformed tradition was even close to the truth.

Political Sloth

Sloth is an indifference or lack of energy in matters of faith. For example, when people don't attend mass. They can't work up enough energy to go every Sunday. People who are slothful tend to be double-minded. They will affirm their faith but not in a really strong and definitive way. Sometimes the lack of faith comes from the lack of energy. Sometimes it is the other way around. If someone believes the Eucharist is the source and summit of the faith and that regularly partaking of it is essential to their spiritual health and personal happiness then why don't they go? Faith leads to action so if you are unwilling to act you must manufacture doubt.

But it is not only individuals that have trouble with sloth. Societies do as well. We seem to have all sorts of truth issues when it comes to pornography, torture, abortion, etc. Are they really truth issues or are they political sloth? We don't want to do the right thing so we convince ourselves that these moral questions are so hard we could not possible get agreement on them. We blame politicians for trying to run away from the issue. But running away is what society wants. Abraham Lincoln talked about doing right as God gives us grace to see what is right. Today's politicians are much happier being blind and the public does not want them any other way.

So what is the solution? At a personal level the solution to sloth is joy. If our Christian walk is a source of joy to us then we won't lack any energy or enthusiasm in pursuing it. If it isn't then sloth will be a constant struggle. The same goes for countries. If a nation does not see joy in respecting life then it is going to be very hard to get people to change their votes based on issues like torture and abortion. If they don't see joy in building a culture where chastity is supported and not ridiculed then those initiatives are going to have very limited success. It is not enough for people to feel they should do this or that. For them to get active enough in large enough numbers they are going to have to see how this will change their neighborhoods for the better. 

So how do we get there? That is harder. It is easy to point out when rules are broken. It is a lot harder to point out why breaking that rule is a bad thing. Why it will interfere with your joy. You can do it with philosophical reasoning but many people don't find that very compelling. You can try it with art. That has some real potential but art about sex or violence is tricky. We have experienced so much art that handles sex and violence so badly that it is hard to imagine it being done well and being received well.

But that is what is needed. To try and get someone to imagine a modern society where life is respected and sex is respected and how each person's dignity would be affirmed. How people would flourish and become the beautiful men and women God intended. How these strong, healthy people would benefit their friends and family rather than taking advantage of them. That would make the net effect on society much greater than the sum of the parts.

If you think about the Christian takeover of Rome. They didn't just imagine it. They built it. As Roman society became more and more dysfunctional Christians stepped in and  picked up the pieces. Sexual perversions went from being widely accepted everywhere to being recognized as gravely evil. They had seen where the Christian way led and where the pagan way led. But we have trouble even telling that story. When we do we end up making the pagan way of life looking pretty appealing.

Racism

Thinking about growth of secularism, I wrote a bit about the role of abortion yesterday. Really the sexual revolution was huge. But I think racism also played a role. Not that one side or the other was racist but the issue of racism and the way it has been discussed in the culture has made people more secular. It is an inflammatory issue. The topic of race is almost never discussed rationally. People have strong opinions and they don't want to have them questioned. It is one of the few true evils in society. Racists are given no respect and they are offered no forgiveness. Oddly enough even a small incidence of racism is enough to trigger this. You must be pure of all stain of racism.

Despite the fact that race is still such a sore spot with so many people it is still seen as an area where modern man has made some great strides forward. Slavery has been ended. Segregation in many forms is a thing of the past. The thought of excluding a person based on race just seems crazy to us now. So there has been great progress made. How did we make it? What was the process by which we arrived at the consensus that discriminating based on race is wrong? In particular, what role did religion play?

On the positive side the role of religion was more behind the scenes. Many of the major players were Christians and their opposition to racism flowed from  their Christian world and life view. But there was no explicit doctrine that this idea was connected with. In fact, there were a lot of intellectuals involved who were not very religious at all. Some black leaders were Muslim. In Africa and India you had a wide variety of religions on side. So it is very hard to draw a clear line between one religion and the emerging consensus that racial discrimination is a morally wrong.

On the negative side you can see religion much more clearly. The white southerners who defended racism were all religious. Many used religious arguments. They found scriptures to back up their point of view like protestants tend to do. I grew up in a Dutch Reformed church. I remember being embarrassed by our sister churches in South Africa. Those churches were some of the most racist institutions in that society and they remained so for a very long time.

So the net effect of religion in the area of racism seemed quite negative. It seemed like man reasoned his way to moral progress rather than praying his way to moral progress. The underpinnings of that reasoning were often Christian but it was man that was largely credited with making the steps forward. Religious people were seen as in the way. They were obstacles to progress. Even when that progress was moral in nature.

So if you talk with a secularist today it won't take long before they compare gay marriage or abortion to racism. The implication is clear. Christian thinking is not infallible. You got the racism question wrong and eventually admitted that liberal intellectuals were right. That pattern is likely to happen with other moral questions as well.

Again the Catholics have a good answer and the protestants don't. Catholics believe in a very precisely defined doctrine of infallibility. So it is very easy to see that racism is old but it isn't magisterial. That is, it does not have the authority of popes, ecumenical councils and saints behind it. So we can label that as sinful because sin is old too. But our teachings on abortion, gay marriage, contraception, divorce, etc. are magisterial. That means Christians have not just believed them but God has led His church to teach them with her full authority. Christians can err. God cannot.

Protestants just don't believe in this distinction. Protestants believe in Sola Scriptura. The trouble is he cannot really say Sola Scriptura could not lead him into error. So how can he say his biblical source of truth is more reliable than secular sources? Even if the secularist accepts that the bible is trustworthy when interpreted right the protestant has to admit it is often not interpreted right. So why should we not believe those that say religious people are standing in the way of progress again?

Blasphemy

Peter Berger writes and interesting piece on blasphemy.

Barring an onset of collective amnesia in the Supreme Court, there is no chance of overt anti-blasphemy legislation. But it is important to point out that the concept of so-called “hate speech” offers a usable substitute, and it has achieved considerable judicial approval both in this country and in Europe. Here the insult is not deemed to be against God, but against the presumably tender “sentiments” of some believers. As far as I know, this concept has not played itself out in the federal courts.

I have written before on how secularism is becoming the state religion in the west. It is not seen as a religion so it escapes the non-establishment clause in the constitution. But it functions very much like a state religion. Hate speech laws are very similar to the "blaspheming the prophet" laws that we criticize in Islamic counties. There is some inflammatory speech that seems reasonable to get rid of. But where is the line? One person's unreasonable inflammatory speech is another person's honest attempt to embrace the truth. That is precisely why the American civil rights movement took as its basic principle that all religions were to be respected by the state.

It is interesting that we are seeing how hard it is to establish democracy in places where this freedom is not respected. When political movements can label their opponents blasphemers and justify the use of violence against them then true political debate ceases and democracy fails. Precisely at the time when we are trying to teach others how to do democracy we are forgetting how to do it ourselves. With all the influence the US had in Iraq and Afghanistan they never suggested simply allowing blasphemy as part of free speech. They were too afraid they would offend the Muslims. Then they wondered why democracy failed.

On the home front we have political correctness trumping freedom of religion in more and more court cases. There are certain dogmas of secularism that you cannot contradict. They are taught in public schools. They are assumed by the news media and the entertainment industry. Increasingly they are enforced by law.

If you think about it, Roe v Wade made the concept of an American Christian impossible. To be a good American you have to believe in the rights and freedoms of the constitution. Roe v Wade said that included abortion rights. So it says anyone who thinks abortion is intrinsically wrong is against the constitution and the bill of rights. That really defines the country in a way that rejects Christianity. Chesterton talked about America as a country founded on a creed. When you change the creed you change the country.

Once you enshrine one tenant of secularism into the constitution you are not going to stop there. The dogmas just keep coming. Eventually Christians get pushed to the fringes of society and the more extreme secularists are able to gain more power.  People who believe on faith that all faith-based beliefs are wrong. Who think it is immoral to declare something immoral. Who are radically intolerant of intolerance. Who bully people by calling them bullies. Anyone can believe anything as long as it has no real content but those who believe in an offensive gospel are going to have a tough time.