A Defence of Two Basic Principles (Part II)

Sorry that it's been so long, you can partly blame health and partly my lack of focus.

Last time I blogged, I made an introductory post on the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) and Principle of Causality (PC) and outlined where I intended to go. I said that my approach would be to start by considering the nature of axioms and then to attempt to establish that the PSR and PC should be considered axioms. For this post, I will attempt the first of these tasks (explaining what axioms are); my next post will attempt to make the case that the PSR and PC are axiomatic.

What are Axioms?

The basic function of logic and argument is to get from premises to conclusions. For example, if we start with the premises "All men are mortal" and "Socrates is a man" we can reach the conclusion "Socrates is mortal." Often, in a complex argument, our premises will be the conclusions from an earlier set premises. This process raises the question of where our first and original set of premises comes from.

These first premises are, in logic and maths, commonly called 'axioms'. Some philosophers use the term 'properly basic beliefs'. Axioms can't be proven in the ordinary way because, as I said, they are the original premises which all subsequent arguments depend on.

Common examples of what are often considered axioms, certainly things treated as axioms by Thomists, include the three laws of logic famously formulated by Aristotle ie. The laws of Identity, Non-Contradiction and the Excluded Middle.

Are Axioms Reliable?

Since axioms can't, in the ordinary sense, be proven, it might appear that they are arbitrary and that we can't have good reason for believing them true. I disagree. My position (I claim no originality here) is that there are axioms which we can know are true.

Thomists and other Aristotelians have traditionally argued that certain axioms are self evident. However, since many people have asserted that all sorts of things are self evident, there is an argument that helps establish the reliability of genuine axioms.  Put simply a principle can be regarded as axiomatic and true if that principle is such that it needs to be presumed for any knowledge to be possible and/or if the principle must be invoked to argue against it.

An example will illustrate my point. I once got into an argument with someone who argued that the basic laws of logic have no objective basis. His argument went as follows: "If the laws of logic had objective basis the development that we have seen in the sciences would not have happened. The development that we have seen in the sciences has, however, obviously happened, therefore the laws of logic have no objective basis."

Obviously his opening premise is highly debatable, but his argument has a more serious flaw than that. In making his argument, he was himself invoking the Law of Non-Contradiction. This is a basic point commonly found with Aristotle's basic laws, any attempt to argue against them necessarily invokes these laws, thus assuming their validity. This, for Thomists, helps to underscore the self evidence truth of these laws.

Some, of course, will object that while this demonstrates the necessity of such axioms for human thought, it proves nothing about their objective validity. The argument may go that, yes, for human thinking to work, we must assume these axioms are true, but that gives no reason to think they correspond to any objective reality.

On this view, mathematics, logic, and the like, which all depend on these basic laws, are not necessarily connected to anything objectively verifiable but simply the working out of what follows necessarily from these axioms which are, as it happens, necessary for human thought.

I would point out, in response, that if these laws have no objective validity, then we can't even know what follows from them. We might say that "If the Law of Non Contradiction is True then it follows that 2+2 = 4 can't be both true and false." But in saying this we assume the validity of that Law. If these basic axioms are not true, then the whole edifice must collapse, being built on sand.

If these axioms are not reliable, we can't even know that we have no good reason to believe them because that conclusion is it's self based on reasoning based on these axioms; the argument "We only have good reason to believe the things for which evidence can be put forward, but no evidence can be put forward for these axioms" is based on the laws of identity and non-contradiction.

Put simply, these axioms are self evidently true and ought to be believed.

A Defence of Two Basic Principles (Part I)

Last year, I had the honour of debating Travis McKenna of the University of Sydney Atheist Society on the question of whether God exists. I had nothing particularly original to offer, I defended the argument, which St. Thomas calls the most evident, namely the argument from motion. Travis responded in a way which, I'll admit, caught me somewhat by surprise, in that he directed most of his criticism on a single point, namely the Principle of Causality. Since then, I've been intending to write a series of blog posts on Causality, and it's related principle, the Principle of Sufficient Reason.

The Principle of Causality (PC) and Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) were once generally accepted as basic rules of metaphysics. Since the time of the Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-1776) however, they've been highly controversial. I shall be arguing, however, that they are reliable principles from which knowledge can be derived.

Definitions

St. Thomas defined the PC: "nothing can be reduced from potentiality to actuality, except by something in a state of actuality." While I like this definition, it has a certain amount of baggage in that it's tied to some Aristotelian views on potentiality and actuality. Since I want to keep the discussion here relatively focused, for the purposes of this series, my definition of the PC shall be "Whatever is changed in any way is changed by something other than its self."

The PSR, like the PC has been formulated in a variety of different ways. For  the purposes of this series, however, we can define the PSR as this: "Whatever exists has an explanation for its existence either in its own necessity or in some external cause."

For some these two principles may seem simple common sense after all, in our common experience, things don't generally pop into existence without explanation.  Philosophically, however, simple common sense  is not enough. Even if we could, simply accept these principles as matters of common sense in describing interactions between things in our world, that would be insufficient to  justify the use of such principles in arguments for God's existence. After all, the fact of these principles holding good in this universe wouldn't prove that they hold in relation to something outside of the universe.

This Series

What I hope to show with this series, however, is that the PC and PSR have more than just common sense and empirical data behind them but are necessary truths about all possible existence. My plan is to start by looking at the nature of an  axiom, then by examining why the PC and PSR should be considered axioms, then by looking at some common objection.

 

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.

 

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.
 

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.

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.

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 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.
 

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."

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.


 

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.

Answers for an Atheist (Part IV)

I'm continuing my response to Hemant "The Friendly Atheist" Mehta's "78 Questions for Christians." This, is the original post and this is the most recent.

The first seven of Mr. Mehta's questions were on salvation. With question eight he begins a new series of questions on prayer.

#8 If you son or daughter were dying (and I hope that never happens) would you just pray for them or would you take them to the Doctor?
#9 And, if you say you'd do both, which one do you think has more of an impact?
#10 Whose prayers does God answer?
#11 And if it's ultimately God's will what happens, why even both praying?
#12 If you have cancer right now, what's going to help you more, drugs or prayer?

First, a brief aside, for Catholics, prayer has four essential purposes. In descending order of importance: adoration (praising God for His intrinsic glory), thanksgiving (of which the meaning, I hope, is obvious),  reparation (apologising and seeking to make up for our sins) and supplication (asking God for things) .

I note this because some evangelical protestants (I'm not suggesting this is true of all or even most, but those who do speak this way tend to be rather prominent) speak of prayer as if prayer simply referred to asking God for things. On Catholic belief (and, I should add, on the views of many protestants) this sort of prayers, prayers in which we make requests of God, are the least important kind. I realise that this doesn't answer Mr. Mehta's questions but it does, perhaps, put them in the proper context.

To answer these, it's important, once again, to state some basics of Catholic beliefs.

Catholics believe that God is both the ultimate cause of the existence of all things other than Himself and that He is also the ultimate source of all change that occurs in the world (This is the essence of St. Thomas' first two proofs of God's existence). So if I, or some hypothetical loved one of mine had a potentially fatal illness, it would be important for me to remember that God is the ultimate source of everything.

The upshot of this is that, if my hypothetical loved one does recover from his or her hypothetical illness, God is responsible, not in the sense that He will necessarily suspend the laws of biology with a miraculous cure but that God is the source of the natural laws  under which a cure will happen and is also the source of the intelligence of the men and women who will make the cure possible.

So, the answer to question #8 is that I would do both.

To answer #9 and # 12, I don't know and I don't believe it's quantifiable. God is all knowing. When God first laid down the laws of nature under which my hypothetical relative got sick and under which he or she will, deo volente, be cured, He knew I would one day be praying for my loved one's recovery. When He gave Louis Pasteur, Marie Curie and all the other genii of history who made modern medicine possible, their prodigious intellects, He knew I would one day be praying for the recovery of my loved one. So, Jason, are you really saying that your prayers were a factor in making Louis Pasteur as smart as he was? I don't know, as I said, I don't see how it could be quantified, but I don't see any a priori reason to reject the notion as impossible.

Having said all of that, even if I knew for certain that my prayers would have no effect on whether I or my hypothetical loved one recovered, I'd still pray. I'd do this because prayer is ultimately essential not as some means of changing God's mind but because of its effect on the one praying. In petitionary prayer I confess and remind myself of my status as a creature and my dependence upon my creator. This would be of value even if I were to be convinced that my prayers would make my desired outcome no more probable.

To answer #10, it depends what you mean by answer. God certainly hears and responds to the prayers of everybody. However I suspect that Mr. Mehta is asking whose prayers God grants. The simple answer is that God, who is, as I said, all-knowing, knows which prayers it will ultimately produce the greatest good to grant and He will grant those prayers which it will lead to the greatest good.

This leads, naturally enough, to question #11. Part of the answer is given above, even if I knew my prayers had no effect on what I was praying for, they would still be worthwhile. Having said that, I believe prayer does effect outcomes. How, a reasonable person may ask, is that possible if it all comes down to God's plan? A full answer to this would involve a lengthy discussion of providence, predestination and the exact ways in which Divine Sovereignty interacts with human freedom, a task beyond a simple blog post.

A short answer, however, is given by St. Thomas Aquinas. God, being all powerful, could, if He wished, have created a world in which He directly accomplished all His plans Himself. God, however, wanted to enable humans to be active participants in bringing about His will. Prayer is one of the ways in which we participate. As St. Thomas puts it, drawing upon St. Gregory the Great:

"For we pray not that we may change the Divine disposition, but that we may impetrate that which God has disposed to be fulfilled by our prayers in other words 'that by asking, men may deserve to receive what Almighty God from eternity has disposed to give,' as Gregory says " (S.T. II-II Q. 83. Art. 5. c.f. I Q.23. Art. 8)

I will, (Deo volente) continue with this at some point in the reasonably near future.

Answers for an Atheist (Part III)

I'm continuing my answers to Hemant "The Friendly Atheist" Mehta's video "78 Questions for Christians". The video I'm responding to can be found here and the previous parts of this series are here and here.

#5 Should a kind hearted atheist be forced to go burn in hell for all eternity?
#6 What about any non-Christian good person, should they be burning in hell?
#7 Could you be happy in heaven while someone you loved was burning in hell?

#5 and #6 have already been partially answered in my first part of this series. As a Catholic, I don't believe that non-Christians of whatever sort automatically go to hell. Having said that, there is no getting around the fact that Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular does call upon people to believe, and we do think that belief, or unbelief has at least the potential to impact where one might be spending forever and I can well understand why many people believe this is unjust.

To explain why I believe Catholic belief is, in fact, just, I need to explain a bit about what Catholics believe. Central to Catholicism is the belief that God is the source of all truth, goodness, beauty and love. I've read and heard a lot of atheist critiques of Christianity where the one making the critique seems under the impression that we regard hell as some arbitrary punishment and heaven some arbitrary reward that God has chosen to inflict or grant to those who break or follow His rules. That's not the Catholic view at all.

In Catholic belief, the essential nature of heaven lies in the possession of the "Beatific Vision". This means that we will directly see God as He, in His essential nature, is, enjoying perfect communion with that source of love, goodness and beauty.

By contrast, hell consists primarily in what is called the pain of loss. By this, the Church means that the damned will know, with clarity, that they were created for the purpose of enjoying the perfect happiness that comes from the beatific vision and that, through their own choices, they have eternally lost that chance.

With these definitions in mind, I think it can be seen what I meant about heaven and hell not being an arbitrary reward or punishment for following or not following certain rules. Heaven, the beatific vision, is the logically necessary consequence of a person embracing the sort of relationship that God wishes us to have with Him. Conversely, hell is an equally necessary consequence of consciously rejecting that relationship. On the subject of hell, let me add this, Satan and the other fallen angels are in hell, they are direct creations of God who rejected Him with a full knowledge of what they were doing. I do not claim to know how many humans might be there with them, nor who they are. I do not even know with certainty whether any humans are there; I fear there are, but I hope there may not be.

I think the above clarifications will help to show why it is just that belief will have some effect on where one spends eternity. Now, to be clear, I am not saying that all atheists, or non-Christians generally, are going to hell, that's more than I can judge. I am, however, saying that, the person who is given an opportunity to know that God exists but resists this opportunity out of pride or an unwillingness to give up some sin or for some other unworthy reason, is deliberately putting his or herself on the road to the same place as the fallen angels. (Please note! I am not saying that this is the case for all or even most atheists. Absent a supernatural window into my neighbours' hearts, I can't even say with certainty that it's the case for any atheist.)

This applies, not only for atheists but for those of other religions. In arguments I've gotten into and things I've seen written in various places, I frequently encounter the assumption that, if God cares about relationships, this means he won't care what specific beliefs people hold. This strikes me as pretty silly. Generally speaking, if a person is in, or wishes to be in, a relationship with another person, that person wants to know as much as possible about the other person. If Catholicism is true, then the things about God's nature which the Catholic Church teaches must also be true. If a person truly wants a relationship with God, he or she will want to know those things. Again, this is not to suggest that all non-Catholics, or non-Christians are on the road to hell. What it is to suggest is that if someone is given the opportunity to know that Christianity/Catholicism is true and rejects that opportunity out of pride or unwillingness to submit to some difficult Church teaching, that person is, in fact, rejecting a real relationship with God.

Having said all this, I think I can give reasoned answers to the questions above.

#5 - No, I don't think a truly kind hearted atheist should go to hell. I do, however, think that such a  hypothetical atheist, in order to be truly kind hearted needs to want his or her fellow human beings to know the truth and needs to want to know the truth his/herself.

#6 - No, I don't think a good non-Christian person should go to hell. However, once again, to be truly good, this hypothetical person needs to be concerned about and open to the truth.

#7 - I found this the hardest question to answer. I have to admit, I feel the force of this objection and a big part of me wants to agree with Mr. Mehta and say no. I've said already, I want all of my fellow human beings to go to heaven and, obviously, this is a fortiori the case for my family and friends. I sincerely hope the none of the people I know and love will end up in hell. I have to say, though, that if it happens, yes, I could be happy. I don't believe any earthly happiness, however multiplied, could compensate for the knowledge that a person I loved was undergoing eternal torment. However, as I said, heaven is not just earthly happiness multiplied and then made eternal. Heaven is the direct vision of the source of all goodness. Given this, yes, I believe I could be happy knowing someone I loved was suffering in hell, given that I would also know that this was the result of his or her own choice.

I will, Deo Volente, have more answers to Mr. Mehta in the near future. I will also answer the question which Fr. John F. was kind enough to leave in the comments thread of my last post.

Of Infalability and Green Cheese

Brendan Burnett, a friend of mine, an Evangelical Protestant and a fellow blogger, has an argument which, he believes, disproves the authority claims of both the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches. The argument can be found here.

Brendan attempts to refute the claims of those Churches which claim infallible authority to interpret the Scriptures with a Reductio ad Absurdum. For those unfamiliar, this is a form of logical argument, sometimes called a "proof by contradiction". The essence of the argument consists in assuming, for argument's sake, that a given proposition is true, demonstrating that said assumption leads to a contradiction and, thereby showing that the initial assumption was false.

Brendan does a small thought experiment and asks us to imagine a possible scenario:

Imagine, then, that the Church says that John 3:16 means: “The moon is made of green cheese.” Imagine that all the respected, godly, knowledgeable church fathers and leaders forever since the first, second and third etc. centuries AD have always believed and interpreted John 3:16 as meaning “The moon is made of green cheese.” Church today holds it. Holy Tradition has always held it.

In such a circumstance, Brendan, argues, either Roman Catholic or Orthodox claims about the authority of the Church to interpret Scripture would lead to the conclusion that John 3:16 does teach that the moon is made out of green cheese. However, as Brendan quite correctly argues, John 3:16 is very clearly not saying anything about the composition of the moon but is, rather, a statement about God's love for humanity and His salvific purpose. From this, Brendan draws the conclusion that, Catholic and Orthodox beliefs about the infallibility of the Church logically lead to absurdity and are, therefore, proven false.

To clarify what he is and isn't arguing, Brendan writes:

Now for this argument to work, I don’t have to show that there is some real instance of it in the world. All I need to illustrate is that there exists some possible, logically consistent situation, which implies some absurd counterfactual (counter-to-fact proposition) from the premise, “Whatever the Church teaches about Scripture is true.” This proposition would be true if the facts turned out a certain way, This turns out quite easy to do.

The reason this argument may seem logical is because of an ambiguity in the term "possible" in the second sentence. Possible can mean a few different things in different contexts.

Some metaphysicians and logicians use possible simply to mean that given proposition has nothing that makes it logically absurd, it is true in some possible worlds. In this sense, it is possible that Julius Caesar died of old age and Brutus remained his faithful friend until death, since there is nothing about the essential nature of Caesar that logically required him to die of assassination at his former friend's hand.

On the other hand, the word "possible" may refer to real, concrete possibilities in the actual existing world. In this sense it is not possible that Julius Caesar died by any means other than assassination since, all the evidence clearly shows that that's the way he died.

Now, if, in the argument above, Brendan means "possible" in the first sense, true in some possible world, then I'll grant that his fathers and councils teaching John:316 is about moon cheese scenario is possible. I deny, however, that this proves what he thinks it does. To the best of my knowledge, no Catholic or Orthodox theologian has ever claimed that an infallible Church must exist in all possible worlds, as if God was somehow logically bound to operate in this way. If somebody ever did make such a claim, Brendan's argument might (I say might, I'd still have some issues) help to refute them. This, however, tells us nothing about what is and isn't the case in the world as it actually is.

On the other hand, if by, "possible" Brendan is talking about concrete possibilities in the actual world, then I'll agree, if you could prove the possibility of the Church teaching that John 3:16 is about moon cheese, then you would have disproven the Church's claims to authority. The problem here is that, a thought experiment is not, by any stretch of the imagination, enough to demonstrate such a real possibility.

Brendan then attempts to write his argument out formally. For those of you not familiar with philosophy and/or formal logic, what follows may be a little technical and difficult to follow. I'll simply say that I've already made clear my principle objections to his argument, what follows need only interest those concerned with the technicalities.

He writes:

P: Whatever the Church says about Scripture is true.
Q: The Church says that John 3:16 means ‘The moon is made of green cheese.’
R: John 3:16 means ‘The moon is made of green cheese.’

(1) If whatever the Church teaches about Scripture is true, then if the Church were to say that John 3:16 means ‘The moon is made of green cheese’, then John 3:16 really would mean ‘The moon is made of green cheese.’
(2) But the text of John 3:16 cannot possibly mean ‘The moon is made of green cheese.’
(3) Therefore, John 3:16 would not mean ‘The moon is made of green cheese’ even if the Church said that it did.
(4) Therefore, the proposition ‘Whatever the Church teaches about Scripture is true’ is false.

I assume (1) and (2) are premises, and I accept them both. (3) follows necessarily from (2). (4) However, does not directly follow from any combination of (1) (2) and/or (3). The only way it would do so is with the mediation of some premise along the lines of "There exists a real possibility that the Church would say the John 3:16 is about green moon cheese"

Finally, Brendan tries to write it out symbolically.

(1) If P, then if Q then R.
(2) Not-R.
(3) Therefore, not-Q. (Therefore not-’if Q then R’)
(4) Therefore, not-P.
QED. Modus tollens.

And at this point he's pretty much lost me. (1) and (2) obviously correspond to their counterparts in his non-symbolic argument. However, at (3) he gives two statements "Therefore, not-Q" and then, in brackets, "Therefore not -'If Q thenR'". These statements are not equivalent to one another, neither is equivalent to (3) in his non-symbolic argument and I don't see how either is derived from his premises. (4) Does follow as a Modus Tollens from (1) and from the brackets part of (3), but that only helps him if he can explain how he derives (3) from his premises.

In short, this argument will not work.

P.S. I don't believe it's possible to derive the conclusion "Not P" from Brendan's premises. It is, however, quite easily to derive the conclusion "If Q then not P". Absent, however, some proof of at least the real possibility of Q this doesn't help his case.

For anyone who cares, the relevant proof is as follows:

1. P > (Q > R)       (Premise)
2.  - R                    (Premise)
3.  Q                      (Assumption)
4.  P                       (Assumption)
5.  Q > R                (> E; 1,4)
6.  -Q                      (M.T.; 2,5)
7. Q & -Q               (&I; 3,6)
8. - P                       (-I; 4- 7)
9. Q > -P                 (> I; 3-8) Q.E.D.

Answers for an Atheist (Part II)

This is a continuation of my response to Hemant "The Friendly Atheist" Mehta's video "78 Questions for Christians." You can find the original video here and the first part of my response here.

Mr. Mehta's fourth question is "Should a killer who genuinely repents be able to go to heaven?" As with his third question, I find myself responding, "It depends what you mean."

First, I'll answer a question Mr. Mehta probably wasn't asking, but some might, does such a person deserve heaven? Does he or she have any right to go there? The answer to this, of course, is no. A murdered doesn't deserve heaven, but then, neither does anyone else. The Christian belief is that heaven is an eternity of happiness beyond what any person could deserve. (Actually, heaven is more than that, Deo volente, I'll go into more detail on what it is in a future post, but this will do for now.) The Christian belief is that everybody in heaven is there because God gave them a gift that they could never, of their own efforts, earn.

I suspect, however, that what I've written above doesn't really answer the question which Mr. Mehta intended to ask. I imagine the question would be something like "Is it morally acceptable for God to grant such a gift? Surely, for someone to commit such a crime and then go heaven forever is wrong." 

I have to begin by saying that I feel the power of Mr. Mehta's point. I can understand the feeling that those who commit such crimes shouldn't be let into heaven. Indeed, it's harsher than that; my religion not merely offers the possibility of heaven to murderers, rapists, child molesters and others, but it tells the victims of such people that they should desire the repentance and salvation of the one who offended against them. I can well understand why so many people find this offensive.

I'll also say that I find the response of some evangelical protestants that justice is served because Jesus was punished in the place of such offenders unsatisfying. The idea of justice being satisfied by another person being punished in the culprit's place, however innocent and willing the other party might be, is not obviously reasonable.

So, what can I say in response to this? To begin with, I have to note one substantial difference between Catholicism and Protestantism. The Catholic Church teaches that there is a difference between eternal and temporal punishment and that, temporal penalties may remain to be paid even after eternal punishment is forgiven. Put simply, this means that, some form of punishment may (and usually will) remain to be undergone. This is why Catholics believe in Purgatory, a place where repentant sinners who die with some degree of temporal consequences for their sin unpaid will undergo a period of purification.

This is a substantial difference between the Catholic and Evangelical Protestant views. On the view held by most Evangelical Protestants, a person could commit any number of horrible crimes, evade capture for his entire life, sincerely repent on his death bed and go straight into paradise. On a Catholic view, such a person would very likely still have payment for his sins to undergo after death before he is admitted to heaven.

While some may find the above answers Mr. Mehta's objection, I can well imagine that others will reply that, no matter how much penance and purification, no matter how long someone spends in purgatory, there are some crimes so terrible that a person guilty of them should never be admitted to heaven. While I certainly sympathise with such a position, I can't agree with it. The reason I can't agree is this: I've done some pretty bad things in my time, nothing as bad as murder or rape, but I've hurt people, including people I care abut. As I said, I've never done anything like murder and I'm pretty sure that most of my fellow human beings, if they knew everything I've done, would agree that I've done nothing that can't be forgiven.

However, while most of my fellow human beings may agree that I've done nothing unforgivable, my entrance to heaven depends not on what my fellow human beings think, but on what a perfectly sinless and holy God thinks. Once that Holy God decides that some sins will be beyond His forgiveness, I have no confidence that He will draw the line where I'd like it to be drawn.

Update:  I have now written a response to the question asked by Fr. John F. in the comment thread below.

 

The Failures of Don Baker

The latest episode of The Atheist Experience TV show is on-line. Co-Host Don Baker had done yet another of his "Failures of Christianity" series. I've complained about Baker before and, in this episode, he has certainly gotten no better.

Baker devotes the beginning of the episode to talking about "The Dark Ages." I want to stress, Baker's rant was not an off the cuff response to a question, it was pre-prepared, so he had ample opportunity to fact check. To give a full list of his factual errors would take a long post indeed. Some of these claims are popular myths which have long been refuted , such as the claim that Christians burned the Great Library of Alexandria. Had Baker simply bothered to read the Wikipedia article on the destruction of said library he'd have recognised what rubbish he was talking.

Other claims are simply bizarre, Baker actually claims that Christians of the middle ages persecuted Zoroastrianism. Yes, you read the correctly. How Baker would get around the small problem of no Zoroastrian communities existing within Christian lands during the middle ages, I'm not certain of.

Even when describing real atrocities, Baker shows a horrific lack of attention to details. Take, for example, his discussion of the crusades. Now, there is no question, a lot of horrible things were done by Christians during the Crusades, and it's fair enough to criticise this. Baker, however, can't seem to wrap his head around the basic history of the Crusades. He notes. accurately enough, that there were six major crusades, but then says, eventually, they captured Jerusalem. Actually, the first Crusade captured Jerusalem, the second failed to hold it and the remaining four were failed attempts to retake it. In other words, even when describe an actually failure, Baker can't be bothered doing a simple Google search to get the details right.

I mention these three examples, those with more time and patient could list many more. My question, however, is this, how does Baker get away with this? This is by no means the first time, that he's made factual claims this wide of the mark. The show is sponsored by the Atheist Community of Austin, Texas, which I understand to be a reasonably large organisation. Surely there have to be people in the ACA who would know enough history to know that Baker is frequently wrong. Alternatively, there must be people who, hearing one of Baker's bits, will think it sounds interesting, doing a quick Google search and discover that Baker is wrong? Have none of these people tried to talk to him? If they have, does he care?

This matters because people on the show frequently call creationists and others to account for their failure to do basic research. If people want to be consistent however, they need to hold their own side to the same standards.