I'm Sorry to Play Grinch, But...

Today is the seventh day of Christmas, the day on which my true love gave me seven swans a-swimming. Did you know, however, that those swans represent the seven sacraments?

If you are Catholic, you may well have heard this story before. From the reign of Elizabeth I until the passage of the Catholic Emancipation Act in 1829, Catholicism was supressed in England. During this time Catholics couldn't practice the faith openly so they couldn't openly teach the faith to their children. As a result of this they developed various coded ways of passing on the faith. This is where "The Twelve Days of Christmas" comes from, a coded way of passing on certain Catholic beliefs. So the true love represents God the Father and His gifts are various gifts of God to humanity, eg. the partridge represents Jesus, the two turtle doves represent and Old and New Testaments, all the way through to the twelve lords a-leapin' who represent the twelve articles of the Apostles' Creed.

So, what you may have thought was just a pretty childrens' song is both a source of rich theological symbolism and a link to our brave brothers and sister in Christ. It is, I think you will agree, a lovely story. There is, I fear, only one small problem; it isn't true.

Perhaps I should modify that last statement. I can't prove the story isn't true any more than I can prove for certain that there are no fairies at the bottom of my garden. What I can say is that the truth of the story and the existence of the fairies have about as much evidence in their favour.

The theory was first put forward in 1979 by Canadian hymnologist Hugh McKellar. McKellar later admitted that he had no evidence for his theory and that it was based on pure conjecture. Consider the following facts that stand against the theory:

* While we have evidence for the popularity of the song going back as far as 1870, almost 50 years prior to Catholic emancipation, we have no evidence of the song ever being more popular among English Catholics than among Protestants.

* There is no mention of the link in any of the many writing by, for, and/or about English Catholics in the decades following Catholic Emancipation. Indeed, nothing to suggest the link in any Catholic literature prior to McKellar putting forward the theory a century and a half afterwards.

* Of the supposed symbolic meaning, eleven of the twelve refer to beliefs which Catholics and Protestants share. The sole exception is the seven swans, which supposedly represent the sacraments. Aside from these, all eleven 'codes' refer to things that there would be no need for Catholics to teach secretly because the Anglican Church agreed with them. There is, for example, no mention of purgatory, Mary, the saints or the Papacy.

Now, I know some will say, as I've already had it said to me, that, even if this is right, I shouldn't be a spoil sport, if people get joy or comfort for believing this, what harm does it do? Well, I think it does do some harm. Don't misunderstand me, no, I don't think the sky is going to fall because people have a mistaken belief about the history of a Christmas carol. I do see, however, two bits of harm being done:

First, we Christians protest, rightly in my view, when myths about history are promoted by our opponents. When atheists, for example, promote rubbish about Jesus being only one of a long line of pagan deities whose mother was a virgin and who was born on December 25th, we object. Well, if we are going to object when our opponents do it, we need to not do it ourselves.

Second, God gave us intellects to follow the evidence and to know the truth. Believing something which goes against the evidence because that something sounds nice or makes us feel good helps to build the bad habit of misusing the intellect. It is a vice. It is, I will grant, a very small vice in the grand scheme of things, but still a vice.
 

A Reply to Eight Myths

This past September, Richard Hagenston, an ordained minister in the United Methodist Church wrote an article entitled "8 Things Your Pastor Will Never Tell You About the Bible". I've since seen the article cited by critics of the Christianity ranging from atheists to Muslims, so I thought it worth a response. I should add that Rev. Hagenston insists that he is "still a Christian" although I'll leave it to the individual reader to determine how compatible his beliefs are with Christianity.

1) "The Apostles of Jesus Seem to Have Known Nothing About a Virgin Birth."

His main piece of evidence for this claim is that St. Paul's letters make no mention of the virgin birth. While this is certainly true, to conclude from this that St. Paul knew nothing of the virgin birth seems a bit of a stretch. St. Paul never sat down and wrote out his beliefs in a systematic way. His letters are directed to churches or individuals either answering specific questions or dealing with specific problems in those bodies. The fact that no mention of Christ's virgin birth is made seems to me to be adequately explained by the assumption that it wasn't relevant to any of the questions he needed to deal with.

2) "Jesus Said He Wanted to Offer Nothing to Gentiles"

True, up to a point. Jesus was the Jewish Messiah, sent originally to the House of Israel. Therefore, during his earthly mission Jesus  focused his attention on His fellow Jews and only occasionally (and reluctantly cf. Matt 15:21-28) helped gentiles. After His death and resurrection, however, Jesus commands His apostles to go and baptise all nations (Matt 28:16-20).

I imagine Rev. Hagenston would reply that this is something the historical Jesus never said, and we can know this because it contradicts his earlier stance. I see no reason to assume this however. During Jesus' lifetime, the Old Covenant was still in effect and the Jewish priesthood was still God's means for the sanctification of His people. It is entirely consistent that Jesus' earthly mission would be to His own people while, after His death and resurrection, and thus the inauguration of the New Covenant, the command would be given to preach to all nations.

3) "Jesus Tells Everyone Not to Think of Him as God in the First Three Gospels"

This claim is based on Mark 10:18, Matt 19:17 and Luke 18:19. The context is this: a rich young man comes to Jesus, addresses him as 'good teacher' and asks what he must do to be saved. Jesus replies "why do you call me good, only God is good."

Critics of Christianity like to point to this story as Jesus denying His divinity. It seems to me, however, that the story can be equally well read as Jesus attempting to open the young man's eyes to who He really is. The young is coming to Jesus with the mindset that He is a rabbi and nothing more. Jesus attempts to challenge this by asking, in effect, "when you call me good, don't you realise what that implies?"

4) "The Resurrection Appearances in the Gospel Have Irreconcilable Contradictions"

The four resurrection accounts certainly differ. The fact that they different, however, does not mean that they are irreconcilable. Several attempts have been made to harmonise them and some, like this one, seem to me to be at least plausible.

5) "Jesus Was Against Public Prayer"

The justification for this statement is Matt 6:1-5. Read in context, this passage is a condemnation, not of public prayer its self, but of those who publicly pray with the aim of showing off in front of others how pious they are. To read this as per. se. opposing public prayer one would need to assume that, on all the occasions Jesus is depicted as praying in the synagogues or the temple, or in front of a crowd, that He was engaging in some fairly rank hypocrisy.

As a side note, Rev. Hagenston has told us that his article is about things "your pastor won't tell you." Does he really think that pastors the world over are not regularly preaching and teaching the Sermon on the Mount?

6) "Some Books of the Bible are Forgeries"

Rev. Hagenston writes: "My seminary professors mentioned that some books of the Bible, notably some letters attributed to Paul, were probably written by people who lied about who they were to gain Paul’s authority for their own ideas. But they never put it that bluntly."

I don't know where he went to seminary so I don't know his teachers and can't say for sure, but I suspect they never "put it that bluntly" because they don't believe that.

Now, lets be clear, most New Testament scholars don't believe that St. Paul wrote some of the letters attributed to him. For the record, I never found the arguments for the majority view very convincing and am inclined to side with the minority who think St. Paul wrote all thirteen of the letters that bear his name. For the sake of argument, however, let's accept the majority view, St. Paul did not write, for example, the Pastoral Epistles.

It is unwarranted, however, to go from "not written by Paul" to "written by people who lied about who they were." In the ancient world, there was a common custom of writing letters in the name of some revered leader, normally a dead one saying, in effect "this is what the great teacher would have said if he'd been alive." The recipients of such letters would have been well aware that the letter was not actually written by the person writing it. This is the understanding most scholars hold of the Pastoral Epistles.

7) "Parts of the Bible Were Intentionally Written to Contradict Other Parts"

The primary example here is Psalm 51 vv 18 & 19, which, we are told, were written to contradict vv 16 & 17. The earlier verses tell us that God does not need burnt offerings but that the sacrifice but that the sacrifice acceptable to Him is a humble and contrite heart. The later verses call on God to restore Jerusalem so that sacrifice, which God will be pleased with, may be offered in the temple.

Rev. Hagenston sees this as evidence that a later scribe, disagreeing with the theology of the original author, added these verses to contradict him. Why, if this scribe had the power to alter the text, he didn't simply remove the offending lines is not explained. Perhaps because, so far from being written to contradict one another, the verses actually form a whole, making the point that sacrifice is something God commands but is only truly pleasing to God if done in a proper spirit.

8) "Apostles Who Had Been Taught By Jesus Himself Insisted that Paul Was Wrong About the Gospel"

The only piece of evidence provided for this claim is 2 Corinthians 11:5 where St. Paul labels his critics "Super Apostles". Even though, Rev. Hagenston acknowledges that the label is 'sarcastic' he none the less asserts that: "In that time, “super-apostles” could have meant only one thing: the original apostles."

An alternative meaning is suggested by context where Paul, contrasting himself to the "Super Apostles" (which makes me think of the Avengers) says that he may not be as eloquent as them although he does have knowledge. With this in mind "Super Apostles" may well refer to individuals who consider themselves super because of their education and debating skills.

 

Happy Feast of St. John

Today, in addition to being the third day of Christmas, is the feast of St. John the Apostle, the disciple whom Jesus loved. There is so much we could learn from this humble man, the importance of personal friendship with Christ, the need to be faithful under the most difficult of circumstances, charity and patience. I was most struck, however, by a point which occurred to me as a I meditated on the prologue to St. John's Gospel, the importance of revelation.

St. John's prologue, the first 18 verses of his Gospel, is a literary masterpiece. More importantly, it is one of the great scriptural foundations of the central Christian doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation. As a philosophy student and budding apologist, I'm frequently drawn to study, write about and talk about those truths of the faith which can be demonstrated by reason. St. John reminds me, however, that the greatest and most important of truths about God, the truths that enable us to know Him as He truly is, the truths that enable us to be friends with God are truths that could not be proven by reason alone. I can know these truths because God, motivated solely by love, has taken the initiative to reveal them.

The collect for today's feast in the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite sums up this lesson beautifully:

O Lord, in Your goodness, shine upon Your Church, that, enlightened by the teachings of Blessed John, Your Apostle and Evangelist, she may attain to everlasting gifts.

Amen!

Call it What You Want, This is Murder.

As write this, the great State of Texas is making plans to murder a man named Scott Panetti. Of course, if this murder is accomplished, it won't officially be called that; legally it will be an execution. Legal niceties, however, don't effect moral realities and if Scott Panetti dies at the hands of the state, it will be murder, whatever the law calls it.

Lest there be any misunderstanding, I'm not of the view that every execution is murder. While I personally hold the opinion that capital punishment should be abolished, I recognise, as does the Catholic Church, that the state has the right to punish sufficiently heinous crimes with the death penalty. In the case of Scott Panetti, however, I fail to see how any person could regard the execution as morally justifiable.

Panetti has been sentenced to die for the 1992 murder of his in laws. There is no real doubt that Panetti did kill them. The reason his execution is so obviously unjust, however, is first, there is good reason to doubt his sanity at the time, and second, because his 1995 trial was a clear travesty.

Scott Panetti is a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic. In the years leading up to the 1992 killing he had no fewer than three compulsory admissions to mental hospitals, all on the same diagnosis. At his 1995 trial, he chose to represent himself, giving as his reason for doing so that he believed his appointed lawyer was part of a conspiracy against him. At the trial he dressed in a purple cowboy suit, called himself 'Sarge' and attempted to subpoena the then Pope, the late President John F. Kennedy and Jesus Christ.

So, this ought to be the end of the matter, there is good reason to doubt his sanity at the time of the killings and he clearly wasn't fit to defend himself at his trial, he should be locked up for his own and others' protection but should not be put to death. Some, however, don't see it that way. Texas' governor, Rick Perry, has repeatedly refused to intervene in the case. Perry was candidate for the Republican Party's presidential nomination in 2012 and has flagged the possibility of running again in 2016. He likes to put himself forward as pro-life and a defender of Christian moral values.

In similar manner, one of those defending Panetti's death sentence in the federal courts has been Ted Cruz. Cruz, who defended the sentence in his capacity as the state's attorney general, is now a US Senator and darling of the 'Tea Party'. He also presents himself as a champion of pro-life values.

For anyone with a basic understanding of Christian moral philosophy or even basic humanity, understanding this should not be difficult. For Christians, one of the great glories of humanity is our freedom of the will. Our moral responsibility grows out of that freedom. For this reason, while we generally want humans punished when they do something wrong, we don't demand to see the tools they used or the clothes they wore punished, because we recognise that these things don't have free will. For the same reasons, people are not generally held accountable for what they do accidentally because they did not freely will it. (They are punished for the results of their negligence, but the negligence was freely chosen, even if the consequence wasn't.)

In the case of the mentally ill, however, that free will is impaired. In the case of someone as clearly insane and delusional as Panetti, that freedom is impaired to such a great degree that he can reasonably be deemed no more morally responsible that one of the weapons he used. In such circumstances, the state has no moral right to execute him and, should it do so, his death will morally be a murder, whatever the great State of Texas shall call it.

Fighting Ignorance With More Ignorance

It seems to be an established tradition. Every Christmas and Easter, certain new outlets compete to outdo one another in making uninformed attacks on Christian belief. This year's winner has to be an article entitled "The Bible: So Misunderstood It's a Sin." The article appears in Newsweek Magazine and was written by one Kurt Eichenwald. Mr. Eichenwald sets out to explain how us Christian dummies don't know the real facts about the history and contents of the Bible. This is fair up to a point, there is a lot of ignorance, even among professing Christians about the book we hold sacred. If Mr. Eichenwald wants to correct this ignorance, however, it would be nice of him to get his own facts straight, something he clearly could not be bothered to do.

There are many gaping errors of fact in this article, more than I'm going to be able to cover in one blog post. The biggest errors, however, lie in the fact that Mr. Eichenwald is apparently unable to distinguish between three important but separate issues. These issues all need to be understood, so I'll spell them out separately:

1) The issue of the transmission of the text, that is to say, we don't have the original bits of paper that St. Matthew, St. Paul, etc. wrote. What we have is copies, of copies of copies, and so on. This creates a challenge for the science of textual criticism to work out exactly what the originals said.

2) The issue of translation, once we've worked out what the apostles wrote, it's another question to translate their writings from the Greek of the New Testament and the (mostly) Hebrew of the Old Testament into the various modern languages.

3) The issue of canonicity, the question of which of the various ancient documents actually make up the New Testament.

All three of these are important issues and all three have an interesting history which the average Christian ought to know more about. To understand them, however, we need to be aware that they are separate issues, Mr. Eichenwald seems determined to confuse them. Early on in the article, for example, he tells us that nobody alive has read the Bible, all anyone has read is translations of translations of translations. This is not true, plenty of scholars have read the Bible in its original languages and those of us who read it in English usually read it in direct translitions from the originals. Eventually, the light dawns, Mr. Eichenwald has confused translation, with transmission; when he says "translations of translations" he means "copies of copies". In the next paragraph, he talks about the fact that which books belong in the New Testament wasn't agreed until the fourth century (actually debate continued until the fifth) but somehow confuses this with the issue of transmission. To be clear, it is a fact that, for example, the position of the Book of Revelation in the New Testament was debated until the late fourth century however this has no impact on manuscripts of the book that predate that period and nothing much to do with the question of whether or not we can know what Revelations originally said.

Now, lest there be misunderstanding, let me be clear, it is a fact that we don't have the original manuscript of any New Testament book. It is also true that the copies of copies that we do have contain numerous errors. This is a real issue about which Christians should do more to educate ourselves. However this education won't be helped by repeating the sort of basic errors that Mr. Eichenwald makes.

Mr. Eichenwald tells us that "None of this mattered for centuries because Christians were certain God had guided that hand not only of the originals but of all the later copyists." This is rubbish, divine inspiration of the copyists has never been a Christian doctrine. It is also false to suggest that Christians have only recently become aware of these issues. Textual problems were, for example, discussed at length by the third century work, the Hexapola, by Origen of Alexandria.

For those wishing to get an idea of how, in spite of existing textual problems, we can still claim good confidence that our bibles say what the original authors wrote, I would recommend The King James Controversy, by James White (yes, the same James White I recently took aim at for his comments on Rick Warren). If you want to get both sides of the issue at once, the same James White has an excellent debate with agnostic critic Bart Erhman (whom Eichenwald references in his article) on the question "Does the Bible Misquote Jesus".

As I said, it would take far too long to mention all of Mr. Eichenwald's errors but let me list a few:
He claims that the famous incident of the woman taken in adultery from John Chapters 7&8 was added by scribes in the middles ages. While it is almost certainly true that this story was not part of the original Gospel, it is very early, dating back to at least the fourth century (and probably earlier).

He also claims that the King James Bible is considered the "gold standard" for translations into English (it isn't, at least not by any mainstream Christian scholar) he claims that the KJV translation was made not from the original Greek but from a Latin translation (indicating he knows nothing about the KJVs actual history) and he claims that, at the Council of Constantinople, Jesus was proclaimed to be Father, Son and Holy Spirit (no, that wasn't meant as a joke.)

In short, Mr. Eichenwald is correct; a lot of ignorance does exist about the Bible. Christians should make an effort to better educate ourselves about the history of the Bible, we should be better aware than we are about the many issues related to the transmission, translation and canon of our Sacred Scriptures. Mr. Eichenwald, however, is simply seeking to replace ignorance with more ignorance.
 

The Feast of the Immaculate Conception.

Today is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception when Catholics commemorate the spotless conception of the Mother of God and Thomists commemorate the fact that even the greatest of us make mistakes. Happy feast day to everyone.

For those unclear, the Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is not the belief that Mary was a virgin when she conceived Jesus but that she was, at the time of her own conception,  free from original sin. It had long been held in the Catholic Church that the Mother of Christ lived a sinless life. There was, however, debate over exactly when and how her sinlessness was accomplished. Since the high middle ages, the debate had largely been between those who held that Mary, like St. John the Baptist, had been born with original sin but sanctified in the womb and those who held the position which came to be known as the Immaculate Conception.

In 1854, Bld. Pope Pius IX judged it prudent to end the debate and issued the Bull Ineffabillis Deus in which he infallibly defind that Mary, through a pre-emptive act of Christ's grace, was from her first conception, kept entirely free from all stain of original sin. Please note the words "by a pre-emptive act of Christ's grace". Mary, was a human and, like every other human, would, in the natural order of events, be subject to original sin, the same as everyone else. It was only by the application of Christ's merits that this was avoided. Christ is Mary's saviour just as much as He is anyone else's and she was as much in need of his grace as you or I.

A few days ago, responding to James White on the alleged 'worship' of Mary, I stressed that God is worshipped as the source of grace while Mary is honoured as the greatest and fullest recipient of that grace. In a fundamental sense, the Immaculate conception is not about Mary, it is about the grace of Christ. In summing up his belief in the doctrine, the great Franciscan theologian, Bld. Duns Scotus declared: "God was able to do it; it was fitting that God should do it; God did it." Note please that there is nothing here about Mary, the focus is on the act of God.

None of this, of course, is to take away from the love and veneration which Catholics ought to have for the mother of our Divine Saviour. We ought to love the one upon whom the God we worship has bestowed such amazing gifts; we ought to love the one whose 'yes' enabled our Saviour to be born; we ought to love she who provided such a good and loving home and family for the Incarnate Word. In all of this, however we must remember that we are loving and honouring what God made her to be.

St. Augustine of Hippo famously declared that when God crowns our merits He is only crowning His own gifts. This is particularly true in the case of the most gifted and most meritorious of all of God's creatures.

When Our Lady visited St. Elizabeth, she sang the song, the Magnificat, which has become so beloved of the Church and so central to her liturgy. In that song, Our Lady celebrates the wonderful things God has done for her. On this day, we should likewise celebrate the wonderful things the our Creator has done for our fellow creature, the woman He chose to be mother of His Son.

Review: First Episode of "The Flash"

This afternoon I watched the first episode of "The Flash", the latest Super-Hero show from the CW, T.V. network. The show apparently premiered over in the US in October and we are just now getting to see it Down Under.

For those who may not be up with the world of Super Heroes, The Flash is one of the most popular of DC Comics' Heroes, a man with the gift of super-human speed. The comics world has seen a total of four 'Flashes', the most famous being Barry Allen whose 1958 debut is seen by some as inaugurating the "Silver Age" of comic books. This version, has Barry Allen (played by Grant Gustin) as a young science nerd granted his super speed by a freak accident.

What did I think of it? All up, I'd give it a B, maybe a B+. I plan to watch future episodes, but I don't see it taking a spot on my list of favourite shows.

Mild Spoilers Follow:

Things I loved about the show: it was structured in a way that drew me in and made me relate to the main character. The opening shows The Flash running at super speeds, a red blur on a map, while Barry Allen, in voice over, talks about believing in the impossible. We then get a cut-back to Barry as a kid and are then shown the great tragedy of a young Barry, his mother killed and his father, wrongly convicted for the murder.

I also think this was really well cast. For my money, the two picks of the cast so far are Danielle Panabaker and Jesse L. Martin. Martin is probably best remembered for his role as Det. Ed Green on Law Order. Here he is, once again, playing a police Detective and frankly, the role suits him like a glove. In the show, however, he has the additional role as Barry's quasi-foster father, I liked the obvious warmth he brought to the role. Panabaker plays a scientist with a tragic backstory (more on this later) but does so with a real strength, but humanity too.

I was a lot less thrilled with Gustin's performance as Allen/the Flash; don't get me wrong, Gustin can definitely act and he brings a real likeability to the role, in those moments when we are meant to feel sympathy for Barry I was moved. I was less convinced, however, during times when our hero was supposed to be resolved or persuasive. Quite frankly, a super hero, even a science-nerd  super-hero needs, in my opinion, a certain level of gravitas and Gustin just never showed me that Gravitas.

Less Mild Spoilers

As much as I enjoyed the episode, there were a few things about it I disliked. Mostly, a few tired clichés that the show insisted in using. Pannabaker's scientist, who lost her fiancée to the same accident that gave Barry his powers, is a mild example of this. The female scientist who is brilliant at her work but is all business and shows little emotion, frequently as a result of some past tragedy. Seen it before, although this is mitigated by the fact that, as I said, Panbaker does a great job playing the role.

Far worse  is Candice Patton as Barry's best/friend love interest. How many times has this been done? The shy, awkward science nerd guy whose best friend is a girl. He's in love with her, she feels platonic affection for him. She's also completely oblivious to how he feels, even though it's blindingly obvious. Maybe they are going somewhere with this, maybe, as the series goes on, they'll rework the trope into something we haven't seen before, but so far, every time those two characters are on screen together I groaned. To make things worse, they've given her the most stereotypical pretty-boy of a boy friend possible. As soon as that character appeared I saw exactly where they were going with him. *Big Sigh*

All in all, however, I liked the show. Well written, interesting story, likeable hero. Well worth a watch.

P.S. If anyone who has seen further episodes of the show reads this and wants to comment, please begin your post with a spoiler warning.

A Reply to James White on Rick Warren (Part II)

This is the second part of my response to Protestant apologist, James White's video in which he accuses Pastor Rick Warren of compromising the gospel with his comments on the Catholic Church. Pastor White's video can be found here and part one of my response can be found here.

On the subject of Mary and the Saints, Pastor White is of the view that, whatever we officially may say, Roman Catholicism implies the worship of Mary. At about the 9:45, he rhetorically asks Pastor Warren if he is aware: "..[T]hat Calvin specifically dealt with the fraudulent, ridiculous kind of differentiation between lateria and dulia, within Roman Catholcism."

I don't know whether Pastor Warren has read Calvin on the subject, but I have. In Bk. I Chap. XII, section II of The Institutes of the Christian religion, he writes:

"The distinction of what is called dulia and latria was invented for the very purpose of permitting divine honours to be paid to angels and dead men with apparent impunity. For it is plain that the worship which Papists pay to saints differs in no respect from the worship of God: for this worship is paid without distinction; only when they are pressed they have recourse to the evasion, that what belongs to God is kept unimpaired, because they leave him latria."

First, for the benefit of those unfamiliar, Catholics use the term "latria" for that worship due to God alone, we use the term "dulia" to refer to the honour given to the angels and "hyper-dulia" for that unique honour given to Mary because of her unique position as the mother of God incarnate.

So, according to Calvin, this is a distinction without any real difference. But the difference is massive. Let's examine the most famous of Marian prayers, the "Hail Mary".

The prayer says "Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you. Blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners now and in the hour of our death, amen."

Perhaps the first key phrase is "full of grace". The point of this phrase is the Our Lady is the greatest recipient of God's grace. This alone ought to demonstrate the real difference between latria and hyperdulia; God is worshipped as the source of grace and salvation, Mary is honoured as the greatest recipient of that grace.

A second point should be noted in the way that the prayer repeatedly stresses Mary's relationship with God and Jesus. We honour her because "the Lord is with [here]" and because she is "mother of God".
That is the second great difference, God is worshipped for who He is, Mary is honoured because of her relationship to Him.

Finally, the prayer ends with the request that Mary "pray for us sinners". In other words, when we pray to God we petition Him, knowing that He has the power to directly grant what we ask of Him, our prayers, to Mary are radically different, addressing her as a fellow creature and asking her to pray for us.

There you have it, in that short prayer, three fundamental differences between the honour Catholics give to God and that we give to Mary: He is honoured for who He is, she is honoured for her relationship to Him, He is honoured as the source of all Grace, she is honoured for being the foremost recipient of his grace, He is petitioned because he can grant prayers, she is petitioned because, as a fellow creature, she can pray for us.

To these three, let me add a fourth distinction, Catholics believe that the mass is the highest form of prayer and we offer the mass to the Holy Trinity alone. Calvin may claim that the distinction between latria and hyperdulia is a distinction without a difference. In fact, the difference is as radical as that between creature and creator.

R.I.P. Mary Cebalo

A week ago today was the funeral of Mary Cebalo, my Grandmother. Grandma was born in 1921 in Kalgoolie, Western Australia. Her parents, my great parents, were from the island of Korcula, in what is now the Republic of Croatia, that said, Grandma would be quick to tell us that she was Yugoslav, not Croatian.

Grandma had, from an early age, a deep love of literature and history. The first stirrings of my love of poetry began around her dining room table where she would read of recite or read some of her favourite poems and then encourage me to recite one of my favourites.

My interest in history and my belief that the current state of the world can only be understood was likewise nurtured by her and my grandfather's long talks which would cover everything from Alexander the Great, to the Roman Empire, to the history of Balkan Region to 20th century Australian History.

Grandma loved school and hoped to become a teacher herself; I don't doubt that she would have been a good one. Unfortunately, economic necessity forced her to leave school at only 14. I suspect this was one of the things that formed another key aspect of who she was, her strong sense of social justice. Grandma talked a lot about what life was like before the war, how difficult things could be for people from poor families if they became sick. She also, in spite of growing up in the Australia of the 'the White Australia Policy' was always adamant that anyone, regardless of colour, was welcome in her home and around her table. I know some people wonder why, in spite of my relatively conservative views on a number of social and cultural issues, I continue to identify with the political left; I think a good part of the credit or blame, depending on how you view it, belongs to Grandma.

I've mentioned her table, without a doubt my fondest memories of her have to do with her cooking. Grandma made an amazing pasta, she cooked a traditional Croatian recipe, similar to what the Italians would call Bolognese, although it would have taken more courage than I've ever possessed to call her pasta Bolognese within her hearing. Likewise, she made an excellent rissott. Yes, that is the same thing most people call 'rissotto'; no, we're slavs, we spell it without the vowel on the end.

Grandma, like most Croatians, was baptised and confirmed a Catholic. She didn't practice the faith, at least not as far back as I can remember. She did however, retain a deep love for the sacred heart. A picture of the sacred heart, which belonged to her parents, hang over her bed through most of her life. When she was unable to stay at home anymore and had to move into a hospice, that picture came to me. I'm not generally one for sentiment but I do love to think about the fact that I know have a holy object which belonged to my great parents is something that touched me deeply.

I ask you all who read this, please pray for the soul of Mary Cebalo.

 

A Day in the Life of Jason

TW: Mental Health Stuff

I had plans today for writing two posts today, one on the Book of Isaiah and the other a continuation of my response to James White. However, stuff happened, so you get this post instead.

Most of those who know me know about my long term mental health problems. To be specific, my diagnosis (or one of them) is Borderline Personality Disorder. BPD is a complex animal, giving a full explanation of what it's like is difficult, but the worst part of it, is an extreme emotional instability. On a bad day my emptions can swing back and forth at a really scary speed.

This morning, when I started composing this post I was feeling like there was an incredible weight that had somehow been attached to my stomach. The pit of my stomach felt horribly heavy and I had no idea what to do about it.  There were a whole lot of things I wanted to do, instead I just lay on my bed thinking about what a horrible person I am. I was pretty certain that if I got up and did something productive, this would have make me feel less horrible, yet there I lay.

Why don't I get up? In large part the answer is because I was scared. Scared of what, I honestly can't tell you, but that's a big part of my condition, frequently, when I try to do something to help me snap out of the condition, I frequently have an awful panic attack, but I can't tell what I'm panicking about.

So, that's been my day, or at least a large part of it. Here's the weird thing, however, I'm not depressed. I've never been depressed, at least in the strict clinical sense, so, if you suffer from depression, I apologise if I get this wrong, I'm going by second hand accounts. If I understand depression correctly, one of the symptoms is anhedonia, or an inability to gain pleasure from the things one would normally enjoy. This isn't a problem for me. I can be in a state of really deep emotional pain and self loathing and still enjoy all the things I would normally enjoy.

So, this morning, after laying on my bed feeling like crap for a bit and writing a first draft of this post, I put some funny videos on YouTube. I enjoyed said videos, and I cheered up, but only to a point. So, for most of today, I've been doing fun things to distract myself, and it has mostly worked, but again, only to a point. For most of today I've been doing things that I've really enjoyed, and my main focus has been on those things. But, always, in the periphery of my attention, that feeling has been there, that feeling that I'm a horrible person, that I hate myself and that everyone would be better off if I killed myself. I've managed to keep those thoughts out of the centre of my consciousness, but I haven't been able to fully escape them.

And that, friends, has been my day.
 

Response to Pastor James White on Rick Warren (Part I)

As most will have heard, Pastor Rick Warren, of the famous Saddleback Church in California, recently made comments about the importance of Catholics and Protestants working together. He also, while noting the many differences which exist between Catholics and Protestants, argues that the great truths we believe in: the Trinity, the incarnation, salvation through the death and resurrection of Christ are far greater than what divides us.

Not everyone agrees. One noteworthy critique comes from Pastor James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries. In a video found here, White accuses Warren of "capitulating" on fundamental issues of the Gospel.

At approximately the 3:35 mark of his video, Pastor White declares:

"There is a reason why, at the reformation, the solas were promoted... it is Christ ALONE, it is by the Grace of God ALONE, it is by faith ALONE; those solas have a reason." (emphasis Pastor White's).

This is a constant theme in Dr. White's criticism of Roman Catholicism. I've heard him say many times, for example, that the issue of the Reformation was the sufficiency of grace, that both sides agreed that grace is necessary to salvation but that the reformers believed grace alone saves while Rome held that salvation is by grace plus something else.

This is completely wrong. Both sides of the Catholic/Protestant debate have always affirmed that salvation is by grace alone through Christ alone. The contrary heresy, that humans, unaided by grace, can do anything towards our own salvation, is called Semipelagianism (as opposed to Pelagiansim which affirms that we can be saved without grace.) Semipelagianism was solemnly condemned at the Council of Orange in 529. A reaffirmation of this condemnation is implicit in chapters 5, 6, 8 and 13 of the Council of Trent's Decree on justification.

Pastor White goes on to argue that, even where we agree, the agreement is superficial because of our reasons for agreeing. At approximately the 4:15 mark, he says.:

"Why does a Roman Catholic believe in the Trinity? Because the Church tells him so. Why do I believe in the Trinity? Because God has revealed it to be true in His Word. Why do I believe in the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ? Scriptural authority. Why does the Roman Catholic believe? Church Authority."

To say the least, it's quite a bit more complicated than that. While I'm certainly glad to have the many magisterial declarations on the Trinity, I affirm that the truth of the Trinity can be amply defended on the basis of the Bible alone and I'd be very happy to prove this in debate with any Jehovah's Witness, Mormon or 'Biblical Unitarian'. In fact, I've pretty much done it already, in my debate with Muslim apologist Abdullah Kunde, and I can recall Pastor White having some reasonably complimentary things to say about my performance.

As for the resurrection, no, my reason for believing in the resurrection is not Church authority, actually it's the other way around. I was first convinced of the historical fact of the resurrection, convinced from the this fact that Christ was who He claimed to be. I was then persuaded that Christ established the Catholic Church to teach in His name. So, far from me believing in the resurrection because of Church authority, it would be closer to the truth to say I believe in Church authority because of the resurrection.

I will, Deo volente, continue my response to Pastor White in the coming days.

YouTube posts on St. Thomas Aquinas

I've done two YouTube posts seeking to answer the question "Who was St. Thomas Aquinas and why is he so Important?"

The first post runs at just under twenty minutes and can be found here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzhtVyeni6g

The second post is just under three minutes in length and can be found here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvSqVn06yiA&feature=youtu.be

Obviously the first post is much more informative but the second will take up less of your valuable time. Have a watch, let me know what you think and, as I say in one of my posts, questions or suggestions for future videos are very welcome.

 

Answers for an Atheist (Part VII)

I'm continuing my series of posts responding to Hemant "The Friendly Atheist" Mehta. You can find his original video here, the most recent post in my series here and my first post here.

#29 Does God speak to you?

Good question and a tough one to answer. I believe He has spoken to me directly at least once although I admit I can't be sure.

Most protestants, from what I can see, fall into two camps on the "God speaking to people" question. On the one hand, there are those who believe that God stopped directly speaking to people when the last apostle died or when the last book of the New Testament was written. My problem with this view is that I see no real evidence for this position in the Bible.

On the other hand, there are those who seem to believe that a Christian should expect God to be constantly speaking and giving personal revelation to them. The objection to this is pretty obvious, God can't really be behind all the many contradictory messages that people think they are receiving from Him. I once had a conversation with a woman, a member of such a group, who told me that her boy friend had recently broken up with her because (he believed) that God had told him to that he wasn't ready to be in a relationship and wouldn't be for some time. Less then a fortnight later "God told" the same young man to start a relationship with another girl and, in less than a month "God told" him to propose to her. Now, I hope it's reasonably obvious that, unless we assume that God was either mistaken or deliberately giving bad advice, then God could not actually have been giving all of these messages.

Catholics take something of a middle ground here. We accept that God can and does continue to speak to His people, but we tend to be wary of the claims that expect such revelations to be constant. Fortunately for us, we believe that God has given us a reliable guide in the form of the Church hierarchy which Christ has established. Therefore a Catholic who believes that God is speaking to him or her is best advised to approach a reliable priest and ask his opinion.

Our example here should be St. Theresa of Avila. St. Theresa is one of the great mystics in history and believed herself to have been directly spoken to by God many times throughout her life. It is significant, however, that St. Theresa never directly acted on these messages without first consulting with her confessor/spiritual director.

I want to close by stressing what I am and am not saying here. Obviously I don't imagine any atheist, on reading this, is going to be convinced of the truth of Catholicism. I what I do hope I can show, however, is that a belief in a Church hierarchy, established by God and empowered to teach for Him, at least gives those who believe God has directly spoken to them a meaningful structure to evaluate whether it really comes from God.

A Good Summer Meal

Last night, I cooked chicken for my family.

The specific dish I cooked is called a Thai Pepper Chicken, although the name may not be entirely accurate; I'm not sure how authentically Thai it is and while the recipe does include pepper, the dish is not particularly peppery.

Anyway, the dish makes an excellent meal, particularly for spring/summer.

My recipe is as follows:

Ingredients

8 Chicken thighs
150 mls olive oil
100 mls soy sauce
6 cloves of garlic
a handful of coriander leaves (basil is an acceptable substitute)
1 teaspoon of black peppercorns

Cooking

Chop the garlic and coriander leaves reasonably finely. Put all the ingredients other than the chicken pieces into a bowl and stir until it all seems to sit together. Then add the chicken and allow it to sit. It can sit for as little as 20 minutes but I think 40 minutes is better, giving the marinade longer to sink in. I cooked the chicken on a BBQ, which I think gets the best results but, if a BBQ is unavailable, the pieces can be cooked in a fry pan or oven.

To accompany the chicken, last night I did some large mushrooms which I marinated in a mix of olive oil and soy and the sprinkled with granulated garlic and rosemary and then did on the BBQ along with the chicken.

To this, add a salad. I think the ideal salad to go with this chicken dish a Waldorf Salad. Fans of classic British Comedy will remember the Waldorf salad from Basil Fawlty's famous apology that the hotel was out of Waldorfs.

The Waldorf salad consists of walnuts, apple, celery and grapes in a mayonnaise sauce. Exact ratios vary. My recommendation: one apple for every two people who will be eating the salad (rounded up), enough grapes to roughly equal the volume of the apple and walnuts and celery to each make about half the volume of the apples.

I make the sauce from 500mls of mayo and the juice of a single lemon, stirred together until they are integrated.

Chop the apples and celery up into small pieces and simply mix everything together.

 

R.I.P. Wayne Goss

I've been meaning for a while to set up my own YouTube for a while. As providence would have it, I finally set that channel up on the day that Wayne Goss, a significant figure in Australian politics, and someone I once deeply admired, passed from this mortal life. So, my first video is my response to his passing. You can find the video here. Please watch and please pray for Mr. Goss' soul.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKehvSJPU24.

 

A Reply to John Fontain on the Gospel

The Deen Show is an Islamic show broadcast via YouTube. Credit where credit is due, the show is well made with high production values and the host, Eddie, is obviously well spoken and passionate about his faith. Having said that, I'm a lot less impressed with the content of the show. The typical episode will feature Eddie interviewing a convert to Islam, usually, though not always, a former Christian. Normally, these ex-Christians will be presented as being very active in their churches, well versed in scripture and knowledgeable about their former faith. When one listens to them, however, they will frequently show little of sign of having much knowledge of Christianity and they frequently give the impression that their grasp of Christian belief is very shallow.

As an example of what I'm talking about, I offer this recent episode in which Eddie interviews John Fontain. Mr. Fontain is the author of the book "Jesus and the Injeel." For those who are unclear 'Injeel' in the Arabic word for Gospel.

Mr. Fontain tells us that when Christians hear the word "Gospel" they think of the written documents by Matthew, Mark etc. He then tells us that these scriptures refer to the Gospel as something else, he notes, for example, that the Bible talks about Jesus, himself preaching 'the Gospel'. He seems to think that this fact will be surprising to Christians. Actually, this will not surprise any well instructed Christian in the slightest.

If one looks up any good dictionary, one will find that for most words, there are several definitions given: definition one, two, three, etc. In the same way, the word Gospel has two main meanings. Of these, the primary meaning is the message preached by Christ, and preached by the Church since His time. The secondary meaning of he word refers to written biographies of Christ. Practicing Christians are well used to hearing about "the preaching of the Gospel" or "what the Gospel calls us to" and we are well aware that this refers to more than just the written biographies in the New Testament.

Mr. Fontain then claims that in the original Greek, the term used for the Gospel is 'Injeelion'. The Greek letters are generally transliterated as 'Evangelion' but we need not split hairs here. The point is, the word comes from the Greek terms meaning good news. This is a simple fact that can be checked by anyone with Google. Mr. Fontain objects to this claim, saying that it must mean more than good news because the 'Injeelion' makes commands, for example Paul talks about people obeying the Gospel. This, Mr. Fontain tells us, proves that "good news" is not an accurate translation. This seems to me to miss the point of how language is used. The name, good news was the name Jesus gave to the message He preached, that it also contained more than news is besides the point. "Good news" is a perfectly good translation of the Greek word which Mr. Fontain pronounces 'Injeelion'. 'Gospel' which comes from the English "God Spel", literally "good news" is an equally good translation.

If this basic confusion were not bad enough, Mr. Fontain insists that the salvation message which Jesus preached was not recorded accurately in the New Testament or Church tradition, the Injeel preached by Jesus has, according to him, been lost. This claim, however, is contradicted by his own book. The Qran, 5:46 explicitly says that the 'Injeel' given to Jesus contains "guidance and light." Verse 47 then goes on to say "And let the People of the Gospel judge by what Allah has revealed therein. And whoever does not judge by what Allah has revealed - then it is those who are the defiantly disobedient."  In other words, Mohammed, clearly believed that the 'Injeel' was something which people in his own day could read and judge by. By the time of Muhammed, Jesus' earthly mission had been over for some seven centuries. Clearly, therefore, no person listening to Mohammed could have physically listened to Christ's preaching. Any reasonable person will realise that the Injeel is something that Mohammed believed that Christians in his day had access too.

Dr. Kreeft's Bad Case For God. (Part II)

A little while back I noted this video by well known Catholic philosopher and apologist Dr. Peter Kreeft. In the video, Dr. Kreeft puts forward what he claims to be St. Thomas' argument from motion, for God's existence. As I argued here, it isn't, the argument he is putting forward is very different from any argument the Angelic Doctor would have made.

This point irritated me; Thomists have enough trouble with atheists misrepresenting and misunderstanding St. Thomas' arguments, we don't need those who are on our side adding to the confusion. Having said that, I'm sure St. Thomas would say that whether the argument Prof. Kreefts put forward matches the Thomistic argument is less important than whether his argument for God's existence is a good one. Unfortunately, I don't think it is.

As I noted last time, Kreeft states, correctly, that things move and also notes, correctly, that motion requires a cause. He then tells us that causes cannot be traced back indefinitely and that there must be a 'first domino' in the sequence. Why must there be a first domino? The closest Kreeft comes to answering this question is when he raises the possibility of the universe being infinitely old (at the 2:04 second mark of the video). Prof. Kreeft's response is, the universe isn't infinitely old because there is a scientific consensus that the universe is began with the 'big bang.'

I must note here, that I am not a physicist, but then neither is Prof. Kreeft. Among those who are, few seem to find this argument convincing. It's worth noting that Mons. Georges Lemaitre SJ, the priest who first formulated the theory strongly cautioned against using the theory in the way Prof. Kreeft is using it and Fr. George Coyne, former Vatican Astronomer has expressed similar views.

It's also important to note that while scientific consensus exists that a 'big bang' began our current physical universe, there is a diversity of opinion among scientists about what might possibly have preceded this 'bang.' When Prof. Kreeft says "We now know that all matter came into existence some 13.7 billion years ago." that's at best an oversimplification. While we know the present universe started that way, a variety of hypotheses exist about possible preceding causes for the state which produced the 'bang'.

Prof. Kreeft comes close to acknowledging this when he talks about the possibility of our universe being part of a multiverse and declares that, even if such a multiverse existed, it would still need a beginning. Why? Why could a multiverse not exist eternally in the past with big bangs creating new universes being triggered somehow by events in existing universes? If Prof. Keeft has an answer for this, he doesn't give it.

Kreeft then remarks that "Yet some atheists find the existence of an infinite number of an infinite number of other universes more rational than the existence of a creator..." This misses the point. There is no good evidence that a multiverse exists. It is however a possible explanation for the 'big bang'. As long as there are other possible explanations for the 'big bang', God is not the only explanation and, therefore, the 'big bang' is not proof of the existence of God.


 

Answers For an Atheist (Part VI)

Hey everyone, sorry it's been so long. My hope is that I'll be able to get into better regular blogging habits and have more regular updates here. Anyway, I continue answering Hemant "The Friendly Atheist"  Mehta's "78 Questions for Christians." The original post in my series can be found here and my most recent post here. I should add that a lot of the questions I'll be addressing in this post deal with the same basic issues as questions I've already addressed, so my answers will be reasonably short and accompanied with links to previous posts.

#18 What matters to God more: The quantity of people praying or the quality of their prayers?

The love and sincerity with which they pray; I assume that's what you mean by 'quality'.

#19 If quantity matters, shouldn't the most popular team always win the Super Bowl?

This question is not applicable, given my answer to the last question.

#20 If quality matters, why do people you love sometimes die no matter what you do?

I don't know. I really wish I did, but I don't. I go into this in more detail here. This raises the question of why bother praying if it all comes down to God's will, which I discuss here.

#21 Is it possible that your prayers have no supernatural effect and only serve to make you feel better?

I believe God has promised to hear and respond to our prayers and I believe He keeps His promises. However, even without that promise, I believe prayer would still be worth while, see the last link I gave for my reasons.

#22 Would you ever admit it if that were true?

If I was presented with good reasons.

#23 Is there anything in your life that makes you doubt God's existence?

Nothing that causes rational doubts.

#24 How would your life change if you had serious doubts about God's existence?

Since my religion is the essential guiding principle of my life, it would change in more ways than I could count.

#25 Was Jesus white?

No, and I really have no idea what the point of this question is.

#26 Why does God seem more likely to answer the prayers of a talented athlete than a starving child overseas?

I don't believe He does, although if you are asking why He allows the prayers of a starving child for food to go unanswered, see above.

#27 Why does God seem to hate Africa?

He doesn't, although if you are asking why He allows evils like extreme poverty to be so much more prevalent in Africa than Western Europe of North America, again, I don't know, but see my previously linked to comments on why I don't think I need to know.

#28 If a group of people came from (say) Africa to your community with the intent to convert you to their tribal faith, would you listen to them and take them seriously, or would you just dismiss them because they don't believe what you already believe?

If it was my practice to simply dismiss anyone who doesn't believe what I already believe then I never would have become Catholic. I shifted from atheism to a sort of liberal Protestantism and from there to Catholicism in response to dialoguing and listening to other people's beliefs and reasons for believing.

Ok, so that's a lot of questions covered in one post but as I said, a lot of it was repetitive. His next group of questions deal with some different issues so, Deo volente, the next post will be more detailed.

 

Of Binding and Loosing

Does Matthew 18:18 contradict the Catholic interpretation of Matthew 16:18-19? That may be an obscure question, so let me explain. Anyone at all familiar with Catholic belief or interdenominational apologetics knows that Matthew 16:18-19 describes Christ making some specific promises to St. Peter. Of special relevance is Christ's promise that "I will give you the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven and whatever you bind on Earth shall be bound in heaven and whatever you lose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." (16:19 ESV). Catholics see this gift as giving special power to St. Peter for the governance of the Church.

One response from our separated brethren is to point to Matthew 18:18. Here, Christ is talking to a large group of His disciples and says "Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." This, it is argued, proves that St. Peter was nothing special, all believers receive the same powers to bind and loose that he received.

To answer the objection, and to understand what exactly these powers of binding and loosing are, we need to look at context. The immediate context of Matthew 18:18 is a discussion, by Christ, of how to deal with unrepentant sinners within the body of believers. The final remedy is that the sins of the unrepentant person be told to the church "And if he refuses to listen to the Church, let him be as a gentile or tax collector."

Two brief asides: first, I've heard a lot of people insist that because Jesus was so loving, He's never support anything like excommunication. Yes He would, and did; right here. Second, given that both of my parents were career employees of the Australian Taxation Office, the New Testament usage of "tax collectors" as a synonym for "worst sinners ever" always makes me smile.

 To return to my main point, however. First, it should be obvious from this context that the power to bind and loose refers to the power to discipline errant members of the church. I've heard protestants cite these verses as evidence that every believer has the power to 'bind' evil spirits. The truth, I'm afraid, is that it refers to a rather more prosaic matter, the power of the church to discipline its members. Second, given that verse 17 is talks about the authority of the church it makes no sense for the 'you' in verse 18 to be interpreted as "you - every individual" rather it should be seen as "you - the collective body of the church."

We are left then with Christ promising to His church collectively what He had previously promised individually to St. Peter. Does this contradict Catholic teaching? Not in the slightest. The Church does not see the Pope as some spiritual lone ranger exercising his powers out of the context of the wider body. Indeed, the fact that the same power should be given corporately to the church and individually to the church's head beautifully underlies what Vatican II called the collegiality of the Church. The fact still remains, that the power which Jesus collectively granted the Church He gave individually to St. Peter. That is the Petrine Primacy.

 

Answers For an Atheist (Part V)

Before I took my rather long break from blogging I had started on a series of posts responding to Hemant "The Friendly Atheist" Mehta's video "78 Questions For Christians." This is a (long overdue) continuation of said series. You can find the original post of the series here  and the most recent post here. This post will seek to build on previous posts in the series.

So, some more of Mr. Mehta's questions:

#13 Let's say you have an amputated limb, would prayer ever bring it back?
#14 If you've heard stories of amputated limbs ever growing back, how come there's never a camera around when that happens?
#15 How come no cameras are around when any miracle happens?
#16 If you had an exam coming up, which do you think would help more, prayer or studying for the test?
#17 If you prayed for me over YouTube right now, do you think I would know it somehow.

#16 is essentially the same issue as #9 and #12, my answer to those in my last post is my answer again here. As I said, I don't believe it's quantifiable.

My short answers to #13 and #17 are "Probably not, but it's possible" and my short answers to #14 and #15 are, "I don't know." Obviously, however, these demand longer answers.

This is, of course, all tied in with the problem of evil. If God loves us, why does He not automatically heal all illness and injury? If God wants all of us to know Him why does He not give us all the same undeniable experience He gave St. Paul on the road to Damascus or at least perform a few miraculous re-growths of amputated limbs on camera?

I hasten to add, I certainly believe in a God who has the power to regrow limbs in answer to prayer or to make Mr. Mehta (or anyone else) mystically aware that he is being prayed for, but, generally speaking, God does not do these things, why not?

As I said, I don't know, but how significant is my lack of knowledge?

In his Summa Theologica St. Thomas answers the question of how a perfectly good God can be reconciled with a universe in which evil exists by (quoting St. Augustine) arguing that God allows evil only in the knowledge that this will produce a greater good. (S.T. I Q 2. Art 3 rep. obj. 2). What good does God create that is great enough all these evils? What good does He create by allowing Mr. Mehta to not believe in Him when he could appear to him like He did to St. Paul?

As I said, I don't know, but I don't see that I should know. One of the obvious things about God is that, if He exists, He knows things I don't and is a lot smarter than me. Therefore, the fact that I don't understand some things He has or hasn't done is absolutely no reason to assume He has not good reason.

I understand why, on an emotional level, so many people find this unsatisfying, I do too. When I look at the world and see all the good people whose sincere prayers for life, health, an end to persecution go unanswered, I can't help crying out "God, WTF is going on!" I don't see anything wrong with this, indeed, the book of psalms as a number of what are called "problem psalms" whose main point is to demand an answer from God for why He allows such injustice.

While I understand, however, why the response is emotionally unsatisfying, I can't really see why it would be intellectually unsatisfying. If God exists He must be able to see factors, results, consequences of doing one thing and not another that are not obvious to us. There is surely, therefore, no reason not to believe that such a God could have perfectly good reasons for doing, not doing something, that are not at all obvious to us.
 

How Not to Read a Catholic Masterpiece

Every year a large number of people read J.R.R. Tolkien's great novel "The Fellowship of the Ring." but they read it in a rather odd way. They pay little, if any, attention to the character development, to the grand flow of the narrative or to the great themes of the work. They instead focus on certain specific episodes: Bilbo's party for example or the first meeting with Strider, and they treat these episodes almost as if they were short stories in their own right, giving little thought to how they fit into the novel as a whole. Having finished the book they consider that to be the end of the matter; some of them are aware that he wrote further books, but they've generally been assured that these are not worth reading. So, having finished 'Fellowship' they considered themselves to have read Tolkien, at least in any worthwhile sense.

Ok, confession time, the above is all false. To the best of my knowledge nobody has actually read Tolkien in this way. It is, however, a popular way of reading a Catholic writer comparable to Tolkien, namely Dante Alihegri. As I assume most readers realise, Dante wrote a great trilogy of narrative poems: The Inferno, The Purgatorio and The Paradisio, collectively known as The Divine Comedy (comedy here being used in a rather different sense than the modern one.) These days, however, Dante is normally thought of as the author of the Inferno, the number of people who have read or want to read the Inferno is far greater than those with any interest in the other two works. I've even heard well instructed Catholics argue that the Inferno is the part worth reading. This, to my mind, is a travesty. The comedy as a whole is not only a literary masterpiece but has a number of profound things to say about morality, free will, happiness, sin, redemption and a wide range of other topics and the Inferno is actually the least rich part of  the whole. As Dorothy Sayers notes, the Inferno necessarily has the least to say about these topics since the people whom Dante meets in hell have lost the good of the intellect.

It is also worth noting as Sayers does, that this preference of readers for the inferno is a product of modernity. There is no evidence of any general preference for the Inferno prior to the nineteenth century. Admittedly, the fact that a view is new does not prove it false, in this case, however, I think it highlights an important point; the preference for the Inferno is a symptom of a cultural inability to appreciate long narrative poems. Our general experience these days is with short poms, by short I don't necessarily mean haikus, for purposes of this discussion, a poem of a few pages length can still be considered short, but we generally do not read or write the epics, the grand narrative poems of lengths equal to a modern novel.

As C.S. Lewis notes in his Preface to Paradise Lost, a great many modern people now attempt to read great narrative poems as if they were short works. This, I think, is what a lot of us try to do with Dante, trying to read each episode as though it were it's own short poem. The Inferno can, in a sense, be read this way, the Paulo and Francesca part or the descriptions of various torturers being visited on various popes can be treated like a story in their own right. Even with the Inferno, however, a lot of what Dante is trying to say will be lost. You cannot, however, read the latter two works like this; the only way to enjoy the Purgatorio, or, still more, the Paradisio is with a focus on the themes of he work as a whole.

This is a pity because the Comedy, the whole thing, is a great work both of Catholic literature and of Catholic theology and philosophy, entirely worthy of comparison with Tolkien and I think a greater familiarity with the work would be an important part of a restored Catholic Culture.

This raises the question of how to get over our culture's bias against long poems. Here's my advice, first, if you are Catholic, read the Comedy, the whole thing. Second, read it in a version with a good commentary, I recommend the Sayers version, which should be available through Penguin. Third, on your first reading, almost try to forget that you are reading a poem, think of it as a novel which just happens to be written in rhyme. Obviously, the Comedy is not a work of prose and reading it as if it were will lose something, but I think a first reading will be more fruitful if done this way.

Dr. Kreeft's Bad Case for God (Part I)

Hey, I know it's been a while. You can blame my lack of posting mostly on my health which has been up and down a lot (please pray.) I was inspired to jump back into blogging today when someone posted a video by prominent atheist 'AronRa' responding to this video by prominent Catholic philosopher and apologist Peter Kreeft. Now, I have to say, I wasn't impressed by AronRa's efforts and plan (Deo volente) to do a post explaining why, but I wasn't impressed by Dr. Kreeft either. Dr. Kreeft is, as I said, a fairly prominent Catholic figure and lectures in philosophy at a Catholic University, you'd therefore expect him to have a reasonable grasp of the positions of the Church's most famous philosopher, St. Thomas Aquians. Regrettably, he actually helps perpetuate a number of misconceptions about St. Thomas' position, misconceptions that other Thomists like Edward Feser have been working hard to dispel.

After some brief preliminaries, Kreeft tells us that "...a good place to start [in rationally proving God's existence] is with an argument by Thomas Aquinas..." Actually, as St. Thomas would be quick to point out, this argument actually comes from Aristotle, but that's a minor point. More seriously, Kreeft tells us that that the argument begins with the observation that things move (they do) and that motion must have a cause (it must). So far so good but Kreeft then goes on to speak of the need for a first mover being like a first domino, causing the other dominoes in a line to fall. When attempting to give an explanation of why this cannot go back indefinitely Kreeft gives the an arument that the material universe has been demonstrated by science to have a beginning.

That is not St. Thomas' argument. When St. Thomas speaks of God as "First Mover" or "First Cause" he is not speaking about being first in a temporal but in a hierarchical series of causes. To explain the difference, consider a series of dominos. The first domino knocks the second one over which knocks the third over and so on. If the line of dominoes is long enough, then further dominos could be knocking each other over long after the first domino has stopped doing anything. In fact, with a line sufficiently long, you could wait for the first domino to knock over the second, pick that first domino up and throw it in the fireplace to be burned, and the rest of the dominos in the sequence would keep on falling. This is an example of what Thomists call a "temporally ordered" or "accidentally ordered" sequence.

In contrast, imagine a book, laying on top of a table, which is laying on top of a second story floor. The table is holding up the book, the floor is folding up the table, the first story walls are holding up that floor and the building's foundation is holding up the whole thing. In this circumstance the foundation is the first cause of everything being held in place in a very different way to that first domino, if the basement were to be removed from its place, the whole edifice would collapse. This is what Thomists call a "hierarchically ordered" or "essentially ordered" sequence of causes.

For Aquinas, God is the first mover in the same way that the foundation of that hypothetical building is the first cause of everything in the building being where it is. Dr. Kreeft makes very clear that he is not using St. Thomas' argument when he rhetorically asks (a little bit after the two minute mark in his video) "But what if the universe was infinitely old?" St. Thomas' answer is that it makes no difference; even if the universe were infinitely old, at any given moment God would need to exist to underlie whatever motion  is happening in that moment. In the same way, even if, hypothetically, we imagine an infinitely old building, the foundation would still need to exist, moment to moment, to hold the whole thing up.

This is not, however, the answer Dr. Kreeft gives. He attempts to give a scientific argument for the impossibility of an infinitely old universe. I will (deo volente) explain in a future post why I find his argument unconvincing, but for now I will just note that, whether good or bad, his argument is not the argument of St. Thomas.

As a brief aside, at about the one minute, thirty second mark, Dr. Kreeft declares that "Science will never find the first cause, that's no knock on science it simply means that a first cause lies outside the realm of science." I happen to agree with this statement but my reason for thinking this lies in a fairly lengthy bit of reasoning which considers what qualities can be shown to be necessary for a first cause to have. Absent any explanation of this, Dr. Kreeft's claim sounds like a dogmatic assertion. I can well imagine an intelligent listener, unfamiliar with the theistic philosophical tradition hearing this and thinking something like "Why, when science has identified so many other causes, would we imagine that it can't find the first? This is simply God of the gaps reasoning."

Ramadan Mubarak!

So, yesterday began the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. I'm not sure if any Muslims will read this post, but, if any of you do, my sincere good wishes for the fast.

I can imagine some eyebrows being raised at a Catholic Apologist wishing Muslims well in something tied to their religion. So that there are no misunderstandings, let me be clear; I believe public revelation ended with Christ and His apostles. For this  reason (and a number of other reasons) I believe that my Islamic friends are mistaken in their belief that Muhammad was a prophet. Logically enough, I therefor believe that they are mistaken in thinking that the Ramadan fast is something God commanded. To get an idea of why I reject Islam, you can watch my debate with Abdullah Kunde.

For all that I disagree with my Muslim friends, however, there are many things they a right about. One of those things is the importance of fasting. Fasting is not a specifically Christian or Islamic thing, but is a spiritual practice common to a great many of the world religions. For the Christian fasting is something Christ commands us to do (cf. Matt 9:15) and recommended by many of the saints a spiritual masters throughout history. I find it a source of some sadness that many Catholics today fast so rarely and would be very happy if a growing familiarity with Islam would help to encourage Catholics to reconsider fasting within our own spiritual tradition. So, while I don't believe the Ramadan fast to be divinely inspired, I admire the dedication of my Muslim friends on this point. I also think it is reasonable to hope that those who observe the fast in a sincere (even if mistaken) belief that it is God's command will be blessed by Him for doing so.

What really inspired me to write, however, was this news story. Apparently Woolworths supermarkets have been putting up signs in some stores wishing people a "Happy Ramadan". I have to say, wishing someone a happy fast strikes me as odd, but I guess their hearts were in the right place.

Some people, however, are upset, labelling the wishes as offensive and "Unaustralian." This annoys me, although it also amuses me a little. If you are an Australia who is anything other than (a) an Indigenous Australian, or (b) of pure White Anglo-Saxon Protestant heritage, the odds are pretty good that you are descended from someone who was once labelled "Unaustralian." This is particularly the case if you are a Catholic who is inclined to join the "Islam is Unaustralian" chorus. If you are such a person, can I suggest that you have a look at what was being said about your own religion seventy or so years ago. Indeed, I'm occasionally tempted to write a FaceBook post that would go something like:

First, we need to kick out all the Muzzies. They are probably all terrorists, or at least terrorist supporters ,and this is a Christian country and if they don't like it they can all go back to Arabia where they came from.

Then, we need to kick out all the Catholics. They put loyalty to Vatican City above loyalty to Australia and most of them are probably IRA members and if they don't like the religion of our protestant majority and our protestant Queen then they are all free to got live in Italy.

If you think the second paragraph is not the sort of thing anyone would say, do a bit of reading. I've read some of what was being said about Australian Catholics back in 30s by some of our protestant neighbours (not all of them, of course) and the above is only a slight exaggeration.

In any event, Woolworths gets an A for effort at least, and I wish my Muslim friends a sincere Ramadan Mubarak.

A Response to "DawahIsEasy" on the Deity of Christ (Part II)

I continue my response to this video by YouTube Vlogger "DawhaIsEasy". The first part of my response is found here.

The historic Christian belief, shared by Catholic, Protestants and the Eastern Orthodox Churches is that Jesus Christ is the God-Man, both fully human and fully divine. Our Islamic friends, as this video makes clear, claim that this is impossible. The common Islamic argument is that being God necessarily requires certain properties (necessary existence, being unlimited, being immortal) while being human requires properties (being mortal, etc.) which are inconsistent with the properties of God. From this, it is argued that the very notion of a God-Man makes no more sense than the idea of a four sided triangle.

This point is well made at approximately the fifteen minute point of the video by the Islamic speaker. He declares that it makes no sense for one being to have two natures since the nature of God is to be almighty while the nature of a creature is to be limited and you can't have a being at once limited and unlimited.

To show why Christianity doesn't contradict itself, we need to unpack exactly what the Church teaches. The faith shared by Catholic, Protestants and the Eastern Orthodox holds that Jesus is one person with two natures. What exactly does this mean? Jesus posses a human body and a human soul. This body and soul forms the human nature of Jesus. At the Annunciation, when Christ was conceived in His mother's womb, this human nature was joined to the Eternal Logos, the Second Person of the Trinity. Two natures, joined together, thus formed a single person.

With this in mind, it is possible to understand how some of the questions asked in the video should be answered. When for example, the Muslim speaker asks if Jesus is all knowing or if his knowledge is limited and the Christian replies "both" the Christian position looks horribly contradictory. The proper response is as follows: Christ has a human soul, one power of which is a human intellect. Christ also has a Divine nature, one power of which is His Divine intellect. These two intellects are the means by which Christ knows something. Having said that, while His intellects are the means by which Christ knows things it is important to note that it is the person who knows things.

From this it follows that Christ knows some things but not others through His human nature while he knows all things through His divine nature, but, and this is the crucial point, the person knows all things and is, in no way, limited in His knowledge.

It follows, from what is said above, that while Jesus has both a human and a Divine nature, the person, who is the union of these two natures, is a Divine and not a human person. Incidentally, the fact that the two natures make one person and that that person is Divine is the reason that the Church declares Christ's mother to be "Mother of God."

Let me say something to my Christian readers: I suspect many of you will find what I have just said rather technical and perhaps even difficult to follow. There is no getting around these facts, however. Anyone seeking to preach the Gospel in our current environment will increasingly find that we need to be able to answer the questions put to us by our Islamic friends. These are the questions they will be asking and, to answer them, we need to have a clear handle on exactly what the Church believes about the natures of Our Lord.

I will, deo volente, continue this response as time permits.


 

The Whiskey Sour (a la Jason)

I recently wrote this post  in which I discussed the six "basic cocktails" laid out in David Embury's classic work "the fine art of mixing drinks." In said post, I mentioned that the sidecar is my favourite among Embury's six "basics" and my all time second favourite before dinner drink.

My favourite before dinner drink is the Whiskey Sour. As with most cocktails, variations exist in how this is made. The most commonly cited recipe calls for a mix of Whiskey (preferably American), lemon (occasionally lime) juice and a sweetening agent of some kind. As previously noted, I'm more of a fan of sour in my before dinner drinks than most, so I dispense with the sweetener.

So, Jason's preferred recipe for the Whiskey Sour:

Let N represent the number of people having drinks mixed for them:

45mls x N of Whiskey, preferably Bourbon. Jim Beam is best.
30mls x N Lemon Juice, freshly squeezed if possible.
The white of (1/2) x N eggs.

Stir the egg whites until slightly fluffy then mix ingredients together and shake vigorously over ice.

Serve neat, preferably in chilled glasses with an orange slice and maraschino cherry for garnish.

In my experience, the drink is best enjoyed fifteen minutes or so before ones main meal.
 

Understanding Class, a Rejoinder

Timothy Scriven has written a blog post in which he lays out his understanding of the Marxist theory of class. Tim has declared that his post is written in the hopes of stimulating debate and discussion and I offer this response in that same spirit.

Tim begins by arguing, reasonably enough, that in order to understand something you need to know what it is for. He then explains that the Marxist theory (at least, in his interpretation) differs from most other understandings of class in that its aim is not primarily to analyse society as it now but to identify how the system can be overthrown. As Tim puts it "Marxism sees everything in actually existing society through the lens of revolution." He makes clear that this does not mean that Marxism cannot analyse the existing state of affairs but that, as he put it "...its primary concern is with the instabilities, tensions and lines of possible motion within the system."

While Tim doesn't explicitly quote Marx's famous Eleventh Thesis on Feurbach "Up until now, Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways, the point, however, is to change it." that quote would seem to me to undergird his whole article.

This would seem to raise the question of why overthrowing the system is so important. Tim will go on to tell us that he doesn't want to overthrow capitalism just for the fun of it. He writes:

Our objection is that capitalism in its hundreds of years of operation has killed and shortened the lives of billions and drained much joy from the lives of billions more. We are not rebels without a cause... we are instead desperate people.

A number of objections could be raised here, but the deepest objection seems to me to ask how Tim thinks he knows the system has these features which merit its overthrow. The obvious answer would be that this conclusion is drawn from his examination of the system as it currently exists. The problem is that Tim has told us that his analysis of the system takes the overthrow of the system as it's starting point.  If the starting point of your analysis is the overthrow of the system and you claim to derive your belief that the system should be overthrown from the same analysis, you would seem, at least prima facia, to lay yourself open to a charge of circularity.

Tim, none the less, thinks that he can make the case for why the system ought to be overthrown. He makes a number of points in support of this:

To mention just two: we destroy vast quantities of food because the starving who need them who need them can't afford them and we seem to find it inordinately difficult to prevent our species from roasting itself to death since trying to do so would interfere with profit.

I can't deny that Tim has a point. The fact that wealthy nations destroy food because that's the profitable thing to do with it while famine continues to exist in the third world is a blight upon the present system and upon humanity. In wanting to end this, Tim stands shoulder to shoulder with Catholic Social Teaching.

Having said that and having declared that I'm a long way from being any kind of friend of unregulated capitalism, some of what Tim has to say strikes me as more than a little overblown. When I read Tim's comment which I quoted earlier, about capitalism killing billions and draining the joy from the lives of billions more I really wasn't convinced. Are there injustices which Capitalism (especially in its untrammelled forms) creates? Yes, I believe there are plenty. But compare the lives of many who, by today's standards are considered 'working class', 'struggling' or even 'poor' to their counterparts a hundred years ago let alone at the dawn of the industrial revolution. Is it not plain that the worker of today is better fed, better housed, has a wider range of educational opportunities and travel available?

Having established his starting point, Tim goes on to declare that aim of his analysis of class is to determine which force has both the interest in and the power to overthrow capitalism. Tim likens this to the plot of a classic detective novel.

We seek to identify a group with means and motive. We call the hypothetical group who have both the means and motive the 'proletarians'; after a Latin word meaning that the group of people who had nothing to give but their own bodies and wombs.

Now, it's a very long time since I studied Marx's sociology in any serious way and I don't have a direct quote to mind, but Tim's definition here seems to me to stand Marx on his head. When I first read The Communist Manifesto (longer ago than I now care to admit) it seemed pretty clear to me that Marx and Engels started with the fact of the Proletariat's existence and saw it as their task to demonstrate that it was in the Proletariat's interest to overthrow the existing system. On Tim's view, it is analytically true (ie. true by definition) that, if any proletarians exist, overthrowing capitalism is in their interest, it is then the Marxists task to show that anyone fitting this definition of a proletarian actually exists. I have to say, I'm not at all clear why Tim's variation should be considered any kind of advance.

Those are my initial thought's on Tim's post. Obviously, I'm not a sociologist and I'd be interested in Tim's, or anyone else's response to my thoughts.

 

A Response to "DawahIsEasy" on the Deity of Christ (Part I)

I recently found this video, published by Islamic vlogger "DawahIsEasy". For those unclear, "dawah" is an Arabic word meaning roughly "preaching". The video shows a discussion on the deity of Jesus between a Muslim and a Christian. The video is well worth watching by any Christian interested in apologetics and evangelism.  I originally intended to write only a single post in response but realised that, some of the issues raised here, required a series. This first post, therefore, will cover a few minor and introductory points, the next post will (deo volente) delve into some deeper waters.

Let me first make a couple of minor points: The Muslim gentleman makes a couple of factual claims that are simple nonsense. For example, he claims that the English words "evangelise" and "evangelical" come from the Arabic word "Injil", the Arabic name for the Gospel. In fact he goes so far as to claim that "you can't disagree" that the Arabic name is the source of those English words. I'm sorry, but I can disagree. While I take it to be uncontroversial that the words are linked, the reason is not because  the English words are derived from the Arabic but because the Arabic and English words share a common root in the Greek "Evangelion."

Second he claims that "according to scholars" the gospels (he especially mentions St. John's Gospel) were originally in Aramaic and later translated into Greek. If he'd bother to do a simple Google search he'd learn what rubbish he was talking. In fact, while some scholars hold the St. Matthew's gospel was originally in Aramaic, they are a small minority. A majority of scholars agree St. Matthew was originally written in Greek and an effective consensus exists that the other three were written in Greek. The gentleman's claim that scholars generally believe St. John's Gospel to have originally been written in Aramaic is just ignorance.

Also, the Muslim claims that, on St. Paul the Apostle's tombstone, one will find the name "Saul", not Paul and that this calls into question whether Saul of Tarsus was ever really converted. Again, simply false. As this article notes, the sarcophagus commonly believed to have held the body of St. Paul clearly bears the words: Paulo Apostolo Matr". Paul Apostle and Martyr.

These are all minor points and I'm not suggesting that any of them, in and of themselves, invalidate his arguments. The fact of him repeatedly making errors like this is, in my mind, significant, however. The reason is that he frequently makes claims about "what I have read" or, more significantly, what scholars say and goes on to make a very basic error. These are not the sort of errors which it would require any deep research to discover, a quick Google search would have shown any of the three claims I noted above to be baseless. Given this, I think we must say that the gentleman making these claims is, at best, showing serious incompetence in his research and, at worst, simply dishonest.

Having said that, while the Muslim certainly asserted a great many factual errors, I don't think the Christian did a very good job of explaining Christianity. As a minor aside, our Christian friend declares that "there was discussion about the two natures of Jesus in the second century." Well, I'm not exactly certain what he means and I'm sure there has been discussion of Christ's nature in every century since His coming, but the major debates in which the Church's beliefs about Christ natures were defined were in the fifth and sixth century. Much more seriously, our Christian declares that Jesus "is not a man" but "He was both human and divine." No, this is not orthodox Christianity. The Declaration of Chalcedon, accepted by Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and the vast majority of Protestant Churches describes Our Lord as subsisting (present tense) in two natures.

More importantly, however, the Christian in the video is clearly not prepared to answer questions about the dual natures of Our Lord. He identifies himself as a theology student and street preacher. If you are going to be a street preacher in our contemporary situation you need to prepare yourself to answer the questions our Muslim friends will have. Generally speaking, these questions will involve the divine and human nature of Christ.

I will, (deo volente) in the next post of this series, lay out, in more detail what we believe and how Muslim criticisms misunderstand this belief.

P.S. A small point, but, as I philosopher, I can't let this go. The Christian in the video makes a couple of statements about Philosophy that show he has not the faintest clue what Philosophy is.