2009-01-28

White makes a few post-debate comments on Ehrman: 1) He said he knew nothing about Islam or the Qur'an - though he is head of the religious studies department at a university! - and would not even admit - even hypothetically - that if there were variants in the Qur'an it would mean that Mohammed has been misquoted. Naturally, he is a good politically correct postmodern liberal. The following manuscripts have been dated to the second century by credible papyrologists and paleographers: P4/P64/P67 (all one manuscript), P32 (which I mentioned), P46, P52, P66, P75, P77, P87, P90, P98, P104, P108, P109. Before We Head to Sea

Pulpit Magazine points to this sad quote by Ted Haggard: “And I call it my sin,” he says. “That’s my sin. I’m not saying everybody is a sinner that does it. I’m just saying with my standards and my values, it was a sin against me and God. For me.” Points of Interest. JT writes, "the most important thing that stands out [in the interview] is the absence of the holiness of God, the cross of Christ, the nature of sin, and the necessity of repentance." One thing seems clear - Haggard views himself as a victim, even of his own brain, as he never sinned 'willingly'. Haggard Interview

That, and there is this: Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi commented on Sunday that family planning, which includes abortion, will act as a “stimulus” and help the economy. Points of Interest

Pulpit Magazine is doing a series to address the question, why pray if God is sovereign? In Isaiah 46:9-11, God indicates that He both purposes what He desires to happen and then actually brings those purposes to pass. As W. Bingham Hunter writes, “From a biblical perspective, your world-history book should be prefaced with 2 Kings 19:25: ‘Have you not heard? Long ago I ordained it. In the days of old I planned it; now I have brought it to pass’” Why Pray if God Is Sovereign-

Joe Carter writes an open letter to fetal humans explaining four reasons they might be aborted. Four Reasons You Might Be Aborted. HT: Challies.

"In 2009, Desiring God International Outreach will be launching new resource strategies to serve the Church in China. This will include a book project and an online effort, because Chinese-speakers now outnumber English-speakers on the internet." Reaching Chinese Netizens

Piper points to the Scriptures' presupposition that a baby in a womb is a person. John the Baptist was filled with the Spirit in the womb, Luke uses the term baby to refer to both the pre-born John and post-born Jesus, and so on. The Baby in My Womb Leaped for Joy

Hays responds to a brand of 'theological noncognativism', the idea "that theological terms (such as ‘God’ and ‘the supernatural’) are non-sensical, and cannot even be entertained as concepts." 1) With respect to the nature of the human mind, it confuses the difference between an abstract object and a manifestation of that object in space and time. 2) The human mind - not God's - is temporal because successive mental states are a feature of human cognition. 3) With respect to God's interaction with reality, that God effects a conversation with Job doesn’t mean the divine agent must enter into time to cause a temporal effect. 4) To the charge that the concept of a timeless God would be unable to cause a temporal event, that an effect is temporal doesn't entail the temporality of the cause. A cause isn't necessarily an event.  5) secular philosopher and physicist Quentin Smith has argued that time itself is the temporal effect of a timeless cause. 6) There was never a time when the timeless God did not love the elect - but this isn't the same as saying that God loves the elect at all times or all the time, for God's love is timeless. Theological noncognitivism

David Boonin has written the standard academic defence of abortion, A Defense of Abortion. It demonstrates how much moral capital one must throw away to justify it. The work is an extended defence of Judith Jarvis Thomson’s illustration of a person being forcibly attached to a master violinist so as to share kidney's - as if that has any parallel to the massive number of babies conceived by promiscuous individuals who willingly sleep around. The comparison is prejudicial, and it isn't intuitive that they are relevantly parallel. 1) While, say, a kidnapper has an obligation to provide for a kidnapped child, it doesn't follow that he has a right to the child. And if a founding were left on your doorstep, you have an obligation to care for the child rather than let him freeze - whether you consented or not. 2) Boonin blurs the difference between letting one die and killing someone. In the former case, while there are scenarios in which the two are equivalent, this isn't necessarily true. 3) Boonin just takes for granted the right to let your child die if the alternative violates personal autonomy. Hays, for example, says that a parent de facto has an obligation to save his or her child, whether he just found out that the person was his child or not. 4) Boonin uses extreme cases to challenge moral intuitions - but the fact that I might do something different in an extreme situation doesn’t mean I should do something different in a normal situation. He cannot simply extrapolate from extreme to norm. "case. On the face of it, all a borderline case would prove is that if the actual situation happens to be a borderline case, then different rules may apply. That doesn’t begin to show that different rules apply in a normal case." 5) Boonin doesn't think that a parent has any obligation to care for a child unless he consents to it. And if we don't have a social obligation without consent, why should we be obligated to respect a woman's right to abort? 6) He assumes that duties aren't really obligatory - they're voluntary! thus denying the moral force of the moral obligation. 7) Boonin doesn't seem to think we're obligated to do anything that entails personal sacrifice or hardship, but this is the test of morality - doing the right thing even when it hurts. 8) Would you want Boonin as your friend? 9) Boonin has it exactly backwards. A parent is a guardian because he’s a parent. Parental duties imply guardianship, not vice versa. 10) That some duties are voluntary doesn't mean that all are voluntary. 11) Consider a child in need. If it were Boonin's child, the prospects would be dim: "to take the child in might prevent Boonin from having the free time to write a long book on abortion rights. We mustn’t let mere human beings get in the way of human rights." 12) Don’t you love the way unbelievers treat pregnancy as if it that were an unnatural consequence of sex? 13) That Beckwith concedes that sperm donors have no obligation to the child doesn't mean that they don't - that begs the question at hand, for one of the stock objections to anonymous sperm donation is that men don’t have a right to donate their sperm in this no-strings-attached fashion. 14) He has a double standard where the law is concerned. If the law implicitly supports the prolife argument, then he discounts the relevance of the law by distinguishing between morality and legality. But if the law implicitly supports his own position, the state of the law suddenly becomes relevant to the discussion. When life begins and ends with a woman's decision

Commenting on this sort of statement, "The prognosis is grim. Between 2000 & 2050, world population will grow to over 9 billion people, but this 50% increase in global population will come entirely in Asia, Africa, & Latin America, as 100 million people of European stock vanish from the Earth. But the immigration tsunami rolling over America is not coming from ‘all the races of Europe.’ The largest population transfer in history is coming from all the races of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and they are not ‘melting and reforming'." Hays points out: There’s nothing wrong with the US becoming more racially or culturally diverse. There is a problem with the US becoming more secular or religiously diverse. We need a Christian common denominator. Christian diversity

Manata continues to discuss Arminian concepts of libertarian free will. "[1] Top libertarian theorists do not define choice as necessiating libertarianism. [2] Top libertarians have noted counter-intuitive aspects of their theory, things the ordinary, man on the street thinks about indeterminate or uncaused happenings. [3] Therefore, choice doesn't necessitate a libertarian understanding and libertarianism has its own elements that run contrary to "common sense." For example, libertarians like Kane accept 'will-setting choices' where a choice determines future choices down the chain. An Underwhelming Response

Here's an interesting set of comments from a Roman Catholic commentator, who thinks Vatican I was rigged and illegitimate, that papal infallibility isn't the case, that the modern pop-catholic apologists don't represent historical Roman Catholicism, nor even the majority of lay-catholics, that the magisterium is the whole people of God, and so on. The great silent majority

Manata shows that dictionary definitions of choice do not undermine determinism at all. There is no claim made here that the alternatives are things to which one has genuine access. Eisogeting the Dictionary

To Obama's obtuse comments on the Mexico City policy, Manata says, "if the conceptus, fetus, etc., is fully human, you don't get to "make a decision" to kill it unless you support this premise: Sometimes we can take the lives of innocent, fully human people, for the convenience of other people." Obama wants to empower women to be able to kill their offspring, yet he says that he doesn't have an opinion on whether those offspring are human - and if he doesn't think women should be empowered to kill people, then he should have an opinion. Obama's like the redneck hick who shoots at the sound in the leaves because taking the time to come to a settled position is "beyond his pay grade." And, Guantanamo will be closed in a year, Americans will withdraw from Iraq when they can do so "responsibly" - Obama is sounding a lot like a republican now - and they will be fighting and killing in Afghanistan. So Democrat voters didn't help stop "senseless" killing - now they are funding even the killing of newborns. People have been seduced and duped by rhetoric and oration. Rebels without a clue following a leader without a clue. Given his comments on abortion, us, can anyone imagine a president who said we need to revoke the right of blacks to vote because that was "dividing us?" Indeed, now any racist can just treat a black man as sub-human and say the question of his humanity is above his 'pay-grade.' Ethical questions on anti-intellectual premises without the attendant hard thinking. Yep- that's who is in the White House. Scary. Rebels Without a Clue

In his debate over the Resurrection with Michael Bird, Crossley brought up the common objection regarding Matthew 27:52-53 that the raising of the dead referred to in that passage is historically unlikely, since the other gospels don't mention it and Josephus doesn't mention it, for example. Engwer briefly critiques Bird's response as poor, and then goes on to explain a number of points. Here's the gist of it: 1) The passage doesn't tell us whether resuscitation or resurrection is involved; 2) We can't interpret the account through the grid of 20th century horror movies, for in a Jewish context, being raised would not mean walking around nude and decomposing; 3) "Many" is contextually defined; 4) Historians accept many historical accounts that come from only one source; 5) Even Matthew mentions it only briefly, early Christians writing after didn't mention it, so critics may be thinking that it deserves more thought than even the author did; 6) The claim that no other early Christian sources mention the event depends on the assumption that some passages referring to the raising of the dead don't have this event in; 7) Non-Christian sources wrote in particular genres with particular interests in particular areas. Roman political writers would hardly be talking about Christian miracles. 8) A non-Christian source wouldn't exactly have a compelling reason or desire to report such an event so favorable to Christianity. 9) Josephus and other early non-Christian sources refer to Jesus' performance of apparent miracles. Sometimes they discuss specific miracles, and sometimes they don't. They'll often suggest he was empowered by Satan, etc. but how do we know that Matthew 27 wasn't in view when Jesus was called a sorcerer, etc? 10) The testimony and evidence of this event compared to the resurrection isn't even close. Even if we were to conclude that this passage in Matthew 27 undermines the testimony of that gospel, its testimony can be diminished without being eliminated. And we still have other sources that give us information relevant to the resurrection of Christ. A Bad Argument Against The Resurrection That's Often Repeated

Steve Hays notes that a move to a more exegetical theology in Reformed circles over the centuries is a good thing, and a natural consequence of sola scriptura. Now, Bible scholars must still use thematic categories to logically arrange their material, and in this way it is quite systematic. After noting that these newer works are more exegetically intensive, he goes on to recommend a few OT/NT introductions from Schreiner and Waltke. Exegetical theology

Manata points out that a libertarian commentator will, on the one hand, say "Incidentally Kane discusses the CNC concept and problems with this kind of control in his important work on free will titled: THE SIGNIFICANCE OF FREE WILL", and once it is shown from Kane that problems follow, he'll say "I would also add that any determinist who wants to prop up Kane’s view as representative of libertarian free will is presenting an intentional straw man and knows it." Special-Pleading Libertarianism

In this post, Manata shows how atheist Streitfeld has made a grotesque logical blunder (or is guilty of special pleading) in his attempt to show how (a straw man of) presup. thinking is self-contradictory. It's just worth reading on its own. Proof That Streitfeldian Apologetics Cannot Produce Valid Arguments

A key component of traditional Van Tillian presuppositionalism is the universal knowledge of God thesis. Going to Romans 1, there is diversity in the commentators, and there is some textual ambiguity in the Greek. The knowledge could either be taken to be manifest to them or in them. In the WCF, statement on natural revelation is vague. It's not clear they meant to argue for an ability or a possession of knowledge. "when interpreting Paul in Romans 1, we should beware of mapping the precisions of modern epistemology onto Paul's language in Romans 1." Bahnsen et. al. view this as actual knowledge that all men have and use it as a defeater against the suggestion that presup. means that people can't know anything. "For any human being S, S has actual knowledge of God." After some caveats for the disabled and infants, Manata opts to use this: "For any sane human being (cognizer) S, if S has propositional knowledge at t, then S knows at t that God exists." Based on whether one is an internalist or externalist as to justification and warrant for knowledge, either one sets the bar of knowledge too high - all men have access to the adequacy of the justifying grounds of the belief- such that all men do not know that God exists, or the no conscious believed defeater constraint is such that all men do not know that God exists. Therefore, not all men know that God exist. This is a problem for Van Tillians because the basis for all men’s guilt is now removed, and the rejoinder to the reductio about some unbelievers knowing nothing is back in play. Manata goes on to discuss some possible responses to this. A Dilemma For VanTillians-

JT exhorts people to be able to state the position of another in your own words accurately when you go to critique a book or lecture, etc. Apply the Golden Rule to critiques. Can You Say It in Your Own Words-

JT provides some advice on how to read a book analytically: "Adler suggests that there are three main stages for analytical reading, which can be seen in these three questions: (1) What is this book about as a whole? (2) What is being said in detail, and how? (3) Is it true? What of it?" Read it if you're interested in improving or comparing it to your own method. How to Read a Book- The Rules for Analytical Reading

Bird writes that he is becoming more skeptical of the existence of Q: 1) In Matthew 26:64 and Luke 22:69 both authors independently qualify the Marcan statement to the effect that 'from now on' you will see the Son of Man seated beside the power. 2) The distinctives in the narrative of the Centurion in Matt 8.5-10 and Luke 7.1-10. Getting More Sceptical on Q

Riddlebarger comments on Rick Warren's Connection: Saddleback's press release says: “The hollow hope of materialism has left us disappointed, empty and worried, and the economic collapse has created a hunger for a deeper spiritual connection to God and to each other."  Of course, Warren would never do anything to contribute to the hollow hope of materialism like recommend that we all buy his stuff to see us through the difficult times. Rick Warren to the Rescue

Here's a very brief discussion of the variant at Philippians 4:11. The more difficult reading is in the oldest manuscript - 'for the glory of God and approval for me.' The general thought would reflect Paul's conviction that his own eschatological reward is connected with the perseverance of his churches. So it isn't Pauline egotistical but eschatological. Phil 1.11- 'for the glory of God and approval for me'

Here's some info on the history of Roman citizenship as conferred to children from parents in Paul's time. Pay to Play- Discussing Paul's Roman Citizenship by Lynn Cohick