Category Archives: Apologetics

Getting Mind Trapped by the Unachievable

17 Sunday Sep 2023

Posted by in Apologetics, Christ and Culture, Comparative Religion, despotism, Elitism, Libertarianism, limitations

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In a recent conversation with my wife, we were rattling off numerous ways that our minds become trapped. What happens is that someone lays out that his or her position as the neutral position, and all other positions, which fall outside this one, are therefore wrong.

I have elsewhere addressed whether saying that “God is biased” is accurate or not, but to set up how this discussion pertains to God, we should briefly address how humans learn. It is impossible to remove what philosophers call “features of situatedness.” After all, I was born somewhere, and I cannot be born nowhere. That is a feature of my birth history (my situatedness). I will speak a certain language, and those words that get used in that language will have certain meanings. Furthermore, some of those words will have loaded connotations not strictly assigned to that word’s denotation. Within the way these words get used, there will be cultural trends, like tattoos becoming mainline in the 80s and 90s. Tattoos, at one time, were associated with ungodliness or at least a certain moral irresponsibility. Today, in the 2020s, within a relatively conservative church in Florida, I’d venture to say that you will see as many tattoos as you do people who do not have them. Within your neighborhood in which you grew up, there was an attitude about tattoos, and that attitude was very different from a similar neighborhood located elsewhere, with families of different economic means, and with communities of various secular or religious perspectives. This is the cultural milieu that silently “taught” us; these features influenced us based on our unique situation. Humans, therefore, learn only in a bias laden situation. To say a human could learn in a non-biased situation would be to claim that somehow “I could be born nowhere.” Bias is the learning environment. The question we must ask is what biases are good and which are evil.

It is not ‘biased people vs. non-biased people.” This is a dichotomy that is indubitably a trap. There are many who believe that they are those who are unbiased. This is self-deception, malice, or the result of culture programming them to have this belief. The real battle is ‘good-biased people vs. evil-biased people.’ However, if this is the real battle, then it inexorably brings the debate to the matter of comparing values-sets or questing for the “best morality.” To frame this discussion as ‘biased vs. non-biased people’ is a trap.

Why is it a trap? It takes solid and sizable mental effort to get out, first off. This trap sets up something impossible to achieve.  Why so? It creates a category that cannot exist. Let’s lay out an example of this using “bias” since I have touched on this already. Humans see the world from a certain perspective; saying the same thing differently, all human perceiving of the world is seen through a lens called bias. There is no human who sees the world with access to all knowledge, which is what it would take to potentially see the world without bias. If we listen to news, media, radio, what have you, we will find over and over again accusations that “someone is biased” or proclamations that a source is unbiased, fair, accurate. What is unachievable is the removal of bias, but such proclamations and accusations silently presume such non-bias is possible. Why is it a trap? If we listen to such voices, we find ourselves striving to do the undoable, or, worse, we seek the approval of those who insidiously suggest their perspective is the “unbiased one.”  The trap itself is nothing more than building a cage without an exit, so that those enclosed in this trap spend all their time trying to find the exit when they could be devising ways to break out of the trap.

Let’s boil this down: no one has an unbiased position, therefore do not waste time listening to those who claim such. How we determine whether a bias is good or evil is by filtering it through a set of values. We should spend our time figuring out what set of values supports a bias rather than spend time and effort trying to be unbiased—which is unachievable. I think we can visually present this idea.

Imagine two great armies ready to meet the next day on the field of battle. They come to parley the day before on so-called neutral ground. What isn’t said is that this neutral ground has the sun at one army’s back and in the other’s eyes, that there is a slight downward slope helping a would-be charge of one army, and that the neutral ground has been thoroughly scoped out by both armies scouts. The two armies represent two competing and opposed biases. The neutral ground is the so-called “unbiased” position. What we find, however, is that the neutral ground is not really neutral, but it favors one army or the other more or less. Therefore, you find ourselves dining in one army camp or the other even if we had meant to be neutral.

In whose camp will we serve? We need not reinvent the wheel; we need only devote time to social institutions that promote traditional Judeao-Christian values. Many presume these values without knowing it already. The media and other informational sources who present themselves as the net neutral position, these are to be rejected out of hand. There is no need for long debates. The world, this secular spectacle we face every day, has not changed over the millennia. The game is the same. On one hand, tyranny accosts our senses and drives us mad: we find freedom in our obedience to goodness, to a transcendent moral norm (God) that power hungry tyrants cannot impact, control, or change.  On the other hand, a society engorged on freedom unhinged from objective moral norms inevitability will be rotted out and destroyed from its acceptance of all lifestyles. Those societies, as God would say, “Let them become a byword.”

Dr. Scalise

The God and Artificial Intelligence: Part I

25 Thursday May 2023

Posted by in Apologetics, artificial intelligence, bias, futility, Problem of Evil

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God and Artificial Intelligence: at first glance these two might appear opposed. This would be to miss the fundamental problem with all creation: namely, futility. I sounded the alarm about how AI will have its creators’ ‘baked-in-biases’ a while ago, you can read about that here: https://againstallodds.site/2022/06/13/artificial-intelligence-will-act-as-a-bias-amplifier-by-whomever-creates-them/. Elon Musk and the so-called grandfather of AI, Dr. Hindon (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/may/02/geoffrey-hinton-godfather-of-ai-quits-google-warns-dangers-of-machine-learning) a resigned google executive, have both now issued the warning that AI could bring about the end of civilization: an existential threat whose development should be halted immediately. The point both have made in one fashion or another is that AI will develop much like a child: the outcome that will be produced is much the result of the inputs that go in during the development time frame. The conclusion of my former article on this matter is that AI must inescapably have biases simply because it is a “creation.” Any thing outside of an infinite “God” must have limitations. The word “infinite” is itself a negation of “finite.” Finite means limited; infinite means unlimited.

To recall a bit from that article, a bias is not inherently bad: if we think it is bad, then we call it bigotry. Being biased is nothing more than the day-to-day inescapable functioning of all thinking persons, creatures, and now synthetic entities. It cannot be otherwise. We often see the phrase “you’re biased” as a fault-finding accusation. This is misleading, used by those either ignorant or downright deceptive. AI will display bias because it will remain limited. AI having greater computing, processing, and storage abilities does not remove its prison of futility, just like all humans. I unpacked all of this elsewhere, so I will leave it alone here: https://againstallodds.site/2022/07/26/world-economic-forum-transhumanism-and-afterlife-part-9their-notion-of-heaven-and-a-comparison/

It is not that God and Artificial Intelligence are opposed; it is that God and (fallen) human intelligence are opposed. Notably, the number 666 is explained in Revelation as the “number of man.” 666 stands for man-man-man; a word repeated thus conveys how Hebraic thinkers emphasize a word or idea. I will leave aside now all discussion of demons, fallen angels, alien intelligencies, etc., in order to stay on point. Humanity displays God’s excellence in tremendous ways when human nature is used well and for good. However, when human nature is put to God-defiant-behavior, humanity becomes the most denigrating and corrupting locus of evil. I, for one, am utterly against the innovations of AI; its deployment will devastate human productivity, creativity, overthrow all known economic paradigms, and potentially become just as much a murderer as the worst of humans. AI is an elevation and acceleration of human intelligence. With a child, we can keep them away from the corrupting behavior, interactions, and horrors found on the internet if we are intentional, careful, and keeping the kids in the real-world and away from the artificial world of screens. AI, on the other hand, if not carefully developed—and I would contend strongly that it won’t be—and protected from certain data will undoubtedly become a monstrosity. It is the horrors that humans currently use technology for that has created my strong conviction that AI will be a terror like no other. The naivete in many tech developers does not, in my opinion, account for how humanity uses technology for evil. Tech is used for good too, and it has made my life and quality of life so much better than people living long ago.

Tech-for-good has always had the constraint of the “speed of human thought.” Likewise, until recently, tech-used-by-humans-for-evil was constrained by the “speed of human thought.” AI automate human thinking, speeds it up, and processes exponentially. If AI is let off the leash of “the speed of human thought,” and I believe it already is, the potential for AI committing radical evil is almost an inevitability. If we take human intelligence’s current use of tech for good and evil, we can at least confidently say that AI will be used for as much good as for evil. The problem is that evil itself is parasitic; it destroys what it influences. In other words, good and evil are not symmetrical in its effects. Good has unlimited growth potential; evil is limited by what it can destroy: evil feeds on the good. If AI uses evil to too great an extreme against humanity, the very father and mother of AI, human intelligence, will be obliterated, leaving only a hollow synthetic intelligence in its wake.

AI, therefore, is really the next step in magnifying God’s glory, His excellence, His ability to create real masterpieces. This God-honoring potential may require us to put on our naïve glasses when we look carefully and consider this. This possibility is, to my view, shallowed up by human corruption and human capacity for evil. Just as humans are image bearers of God, AI will be image bearers of humans. The human track record for using tools, tech, and intelligence to destroy paints a bleak picture for humanity’s future if AI is off the leash. It reminds us of the flood, when God said humanity’s “every thought is set on evil.” Scripture speaks of the end being similar to the days of the flood: perhaps at that time, God will say, “let Us end this, for humanity and humanity’s image, AI, have set their thoughts on every kind of evil.”

Prime Theologian.

Transhumanism, Near Death Documented Consciousness, and the Afterlife (Part 2)

03 Friday Jun 2022

Posted by in Apologetics, Comparative Religion, Elitism, Fear, God, Government, Hebrews, Human Experience and Theology, Incarnation, Jesus, Transhumanism

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The World Economic Forum’s Eugenics and Ramifications

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The WEF’s infatuation with transhumanism partly lies in its deep eugenicist ideological matrix. They recently claimed that their elitist group will be the ones intelligently designing humanity, advancing humanity’s evolution. They go so far as to directly dismiss the Divine as the Intelligent Designer, naming themselves as sovereigns in His place. Yuval Harari, much the prophet for the World Economic Forum, clearly articulated this in his January 25th, 2018, presentation at the WEF annual meeting, in a speech called “Will the Future be Human.” Perhaps one of the challenges of discussing this prophet’s narrative (Harari is a bit infamous for a work he put out called New Religions of the 21st Century) is the vast domains of knowledge needed to interact with this thought. These domains include eugenics, A.I., transhumanism, evolution, naturalism, Darwinism, economics, resource management, the nature of life (or better, bio-ontology), nature of humanity, metaphysics, God-world relationship, and, in some respect, cosmology. We cannot discuss everything here, but we can go through them one at a time. Eugenics typically involves a racial focus, a desire to “purify” the human species of undesirable traits. The World Economic Forum evidently thinks that humanity itself is problematic, of whatever race or sort. This is novel eugenics, one that we should call anti-life eugenics: for my DC comics fan, this is a kind of anti-life equation (Darkseid is obsessed with eliminating freewill, which in that DC universe equates to being “anti-life.”). There is a certain cynicism that may think, “well humanity will kill itself anyway, the WEF is just advancing that eventuality,” especially in light of the wars, genocides, and weapons of mass destruction the 20th century produced.  This thought provides no illumination of the good humanity does and is capable of, and such a thought would belong to a person who would be among the ranks of the WEF’s eugenicist ideology. There is an opaque connection here with nihilism, which is the subtle, indirect, direct, or tendency towards destruction or facilitating it.

Thus, clarifying, the WEF’s transhumanism is recreative, at least I believe they would see it that way; it is a eugenicist cleansing to bring forth, as Harari puts it, “non-biological life.” Cast down human life; raise up cyborg or A.I. life from the ashes.

Nevertheless, this sort of eugenics is also genocidal, even if the WEF and its advocates opine that what they want is to move humanity into its next evolutionary step, akin to how Neanderthals were eliminated so that more advanced forms of Homo Sapiens could thrive.

We have now branched neatly into the domain of ethics or morality, and we will discuss that in the future. Big questions about God, humanity, humanity’s role in the cosmos, what it means to be human, the morality of eugenicide even if done with the best of intentions, and how this vision of the future contrasts with God’s metanarrative for humanity. A few closing points that will extend and summarize what I have discussed herein.

  • WEF transhumanism takes, extends, but modifies the Darwinian principle of natural selection, which is itself a kind of “naturally embedded eugenics.” The WEF believes in the notion of survival of the fittest, but they want to take the reigns from nature in order to make themselves the architects of eugenicized humanity, of digitalized or cyborged Sapiens.
  • WEF transhumanism believes in a modified “Intelligent Design,” which typically means that God designed humanity and the world in remarkably precise ways to fit, operate, and create a plentitude of unities among diversities. The WEF modified form means that “enlightened humans,” those sufficiently illuminated, will be the futurist intelligent designers of this renewed humanity, of cyborgian/digitalized humanity. Who are these humans? The cohort that is the World Economic Forum’s true believers; they will be the little “g” gods who will play the role of intelligent designers, crafting a digitalized, futurist destiny for humanity.
  • This anti-life eugenics entails destruction of old humanity, of that normal biological sort that claims it is made in the Imago Deī (Image of God). I should be more careful here: it is unclear if the WEF wants all humanity’s biological restrictions removed. It might be better to call their futurist vision for humanity “anti-standard-humanity.”

The WEF has a eugenicide agenda, but it entails the destruction of old humanity to bring on this new futurist humanity. This genocide is more likely of the omissive kind; either adapt with humanity’s futurist, non-biological destiny or be excluded from all means of livelihood. Genocides are often thought of as brutal campaigns of death and slaughter for the unworthy, for the unbeliever, blood spilling everywhere. What we have learned since the Great Bioweapon Undertaking of 2020 (the Covid-19 pandemic) is that the globalist elites desire to structure disasters, then be the ones who offer the solutions, so that humanity will willingly accept their guidance. With sufficient fear, many humans will give up everything for security. Of course, you might think, “I would not,” and that is well and good, but the trouble is that these “crafters of disaster” only need a majority to advance their agenda. Once the majority agrees to ever greater degrees of surveillance and compliance, the globalists only need to bind that compliance/surveillance to someone’s ability to buy or sell. Once this is done, it will be ever more difficult to survive without submission to that system. Ergo, those who will not comply will be marginalized, and they will have to decide (and convince their loved ones) whether to accept the WEF’s futurist cyborgian destiny for themselves and their family or to descend into obscurity in some apocalyptic, likely pre-industrial, very discomfortable, living situation.

The other big “God” questions have to do with the divinization, at least in their own minds, of the WEF cohort, albeit in the little “g” gods sense. Is the removal of “the biological (body)” from humans a discontinuing of the human species? If so, and I will speak from my orthodox Christian position here, would the sacrifice of Jesus the Christ “count” for “non-biological” humans, if we can even still call them humans? The Book of Hebrews offers this:

“Since, therefore, the children share flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared the same things, so that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death. For it is clear that he did not come to help angels, but the descendants of Abraham. Therefore, he had to become like his brothers and sisters in every respect, so that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make a sacrifice of atonement for the sins of the people. Because He Himself was tested by what he suffered, He is able to help those who are being tested.”

Hebrews Chapter 2

Specifically, the WEF wants to remove the “flesh and blood” of humanity, either more or less, although we should lean to the “more” side since “uploading” is part of their emphasis (= fully digitized human consciousness). The consequence of Jesus’ appropriation of “flesh and blood,” the purpose for which He did it, was the freeing of humans from death and the devil. Jesus “had to become like” humanity “in every respect.” The biological composition of humanity is integral to its essence (or ontology); would disembodied digital “ex-humans’” consciousnesses still be salvageable by Jesus, the Christ? This text is famous in Church History, the Church Fathers creating this maxim from it:

that which is not assumed is not saved”

St. Gregory Nazianzen’s Letter to Cledonius

What does this mean? That the sacrifice of the Christ only applies to the form of humanity that He took up through the incarnation: which is, normal, biological humanity. It might escape out notice, it nearly did mine, but it is not unimportant that the “removal of life” historically means the onsetting of death, life-less-ness. The Hebrews text above notes the mission of this Christ was to remove the power of death. Is the digitalization, the removal of “biology,” of “life,” from humanity the codification of a near immortal reigning of death? Is Harari’s phrase, “non-biological life,” a euphemism for “life-less” or “death-ful.” If this too sloppily put? Certainly, prolonging consciousness would entail a major, or even dominate, feature of what it means to be alive. Has anyone seen the Matrix? Has anyone been in the Warhammer 40k lore? In almost all cases where the “machinification” of humanity is imagined, it is centered on images that are instinctually repugnant to our aesthetic faculty (P.s., I have an objective, historical, view of beauty, where it is not in the “eye of the beholder”). Why should this be the case? These questions set the stage for our next article. I have much to consider as I hope you do as well.

Prime Theologian

Moral Apologetics: Baggett and Walls answer the Euthyphro Dilemma

26 Sunday Oct 2014

Posted by in Apologetics, Baggett and Walls, Good God, Moral Apologetics, Morality

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The Philosopher David Baggett, known for his acute philosophical observations, together with Jerry Walls, who is widely known for his work on the doctrine of hell, have come together to produce a crucial book on morality, theism, and naturalism, published by Oxford University Press. Good God, The Theistic Foundations of Morality is as apt as it is concise, and strikingly accessible for anyone interested on the topic — I provide links at the end to this book. In what follows, I will state and unpack the Euthphyro Dilemma, then I summarize Baggett and Walls’ seven essential distinctions they use to answer the Dilemma.

The Euthphyro Dilemma: “Is something moral because God commands it or does God command something because it is moral.” There are many issues involved in the Dilemma, but let’s just note one as an example. If, on the one hand, what God commands is moral, then conscience seems superfluous; if, on the other hand, God commands something because it is moral, then we can rely on our conscience and dispense with the divine Lawgiver. Baggett and Walls explain many difficulties that the Dilemma produces, yet they find a way to answer it by their seven distinctions:

1) Too often persons think merely in terms of definitions. They rush to give a definition of goodness. Those who believe in God will often hold that “God is the good.” Although this isn’t bad, it also isn’t the only way to approach the idea of goodness. Instead, we can analyze goodness, that is, look at the inner logic of goodness we see all about us so as to understand what goodness must be “made up of.” This is what Baggett and Walls call the distinction between definition and analysis, encouraging their readers to consider  what goodness is from the analysis perspective.

2) Morality must be broken up into a number of parts to understand its full dimensionality. There are certain moral activities that we are required to do or not to do: in short, we are obligated. Baggett and Walls refer to these as matters of rightness and wrongness. There are other moral activities that may be good, going above and beyond, or more than one’s duty. These are “good” although they are not obligatory; similarly, failing to do some action may have a certain degree of evil even though it is permissible. Baggett and Walls distinguish those actions that are right/wrong from the good/evil in this way.

3) Knowing enough about morality to perform moral actions is not giving an account of where the moral framework came from. To know and practice morality is one thing, and giving an account of its existence quite another. Baggett and Walls call this the distinction between epistemology (knowing) and ontology (existence).

4) Holding God to be good must be if we are going to use morality to argue for God. There are certain things God has commanded, and perhaps today ordains, that are difficult to reconcile with the claim that God is good. To say that this reconciliation is difficult, however, is not to say that it is impossible. Baggett and Walls distinguish between the difficult and impossible in this way.

5) This distinction is perhaps the most difficult to explain in an accessible way: univocation versus equivocation. To speak of God’s goodness is difficult because God’s goodness is obviously “higher than” humanity’s goodness. We cannot say that God’s goodness is merely equivalent or equal to human goodness: this would be univocation and is essentially idolatry, making the Creator exactly like the creatures. The other error would be to say that God’s goodness is in no way the same to humanity’s goodness: this is equivocation and would make God’s goodness totally arbitrary or unknown since we would have no way to understand it since we can only come to understand what goodness is through our experience in this creation as creatures. This leaves room for a theory of goodness based on analogy; John Duns Scotus is perhaps the most refined development in explaining how God’s goodness (Scotus says “perfections”) is analogous to creation’s goodness. Simply, God’s goodness shares a common meaning with creation’s goodness, and also infinitely exceeds it. On the one hand, God’s goodness is plainly the same as creation, but, on the other hand, God’s goodness is not limited or restricted to the mere goodness of creation.

6) Baggett and Walls explain that there is an important distinction between saying that goodness depends on God’s nature and that God controls goodness. The former should be opted for according to them. Goodness is neither “above God” nor is arbitrary. God doesn’t control moral goodness by His commands because His commands are the necessary expressions of God’s inherently good nature. Therefore, we can say that God doesn’t control morality while morality is still dependent on God: moreover, morality does not become some standard autonomous from God or “above” God. God’s nature is the moral standard, and His commands are dependent representations of that nature.

7) Lastly, because we can conceive some set of awful circumstances — like God commanding us to bat babies off a building — doesn’t mean that such a circumstance is possible. If it is defensible that God is good, then conceiving God to command such a heinous thing is clearly impossible given God’s perfectly good nature. God’s attribute of goodness precludes the possibility of such a command.

Through these seven distinctions, Baggett and Walls demonstrate a way out of the Dilemma. Distinction six may the most important for answering the direct “dilemma” the Dilemma is designed to produce. Baggett and Walls designed their book to provide a foundation for Christian theistic morality, and thereby another argument for God. It would no doubt make a valuable addition to any library.

Dr. Scalise

For Baggett and Walls’ book, http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004WN4WK0

You can also find more resources by Dr. Baggett at moralapologetics.com

Why do biblical Persons contradict biblical Qualifications: Deborah in Judges 4 in Light of 1 Tim. 3 & Titus 1

24 Friday Oct 2014

Posted by in Apologetics, Biblical Interpretation, Christ and Culture, Church Leadership, Difficult Questions, Difficult Texts

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Introduction

Why are there specific qualifications for Elders and Deacons (1 Tim. 3, Titus 1) yet most of the men and women God used to lead His People OT and in the early church didn’t meet many of these standards? My first mentor asked the question above, and I confess, it is a doozy. I think that the contradiction may be nigh near impossible to deal with if we approach it through an inductive approach. We cannot simply find all the verses in the Bible that speak to the matter, and then tally up what the result is. If we did this, we would see that the “man after God’s own heart,” King David, had multiple wives and even concubines, but the qualifications listed in 1 Tim. and Titus clearly state that leaders of the people of God should have only one wife. I want to eliminate a few options right at the front for dealing with the text. I do not want to revise the biblical text by picking and chooses some verses while eliminating others or debate the dating of books: we can call this the revisionist option. Like Kevin Vanhoozer and Bernard Childs, I think we ought to work with a full canon of Scripture rather than thinking our methods can lead us to the “truth behind the text,” as though the truth isn’t in the text of the Bible. I think that the old dispensational explanation that God works differently during different ages hits on an important truth, but I do not want to package it the way a dispensationalist would. It is too simple to considerably explain the complexity of the biblical text. Let’s look at what 1 Tim 3:2–4 states: “Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own household well, with all dignity keeping his children submissive . . . .” I don’t think we can just say, “Well, the church is a different organization at a different time than the theocracy of Israel and so they have different rules for different communities and times.” In what follows, I want to use Judges 4 (Deborah:female leadership) as a test case that contradicts 1 Tim. 3 and Titus 1 (male leadership) so as to illustrate one way to handle this. I am going to avoid what I call the “dominating other biblical texts into silence approach” often used that is undergirded with the logic that the last word on the matter is what stands for us today (1 Tim. and Titus are both near the end of the Bible). After this — and this is the main body of the discussion — I offer some philosophical answers to the problem along with observations about the entirety of the Bible. I believe I could answer the question with only this last section, but I want to give lots to think about in order to push both our understanding of the Bible and how to apply it today.

Vanhoozer’s Linguistic-Canonical Approach to the Bible

Kevin Vanhoozer’s development in Evangelical Futures, which is his own summarization of The Drama of Doctrine, offers what he terms the “canonical-linguistic approach.” I want to explain it before I use it for this issue because it is a thematic approach to the Bible, tracing certain ideas across its pages to observe where the text “points” or “directs.” The Bible acts as a kind of mentor, and we are its apprentices. It is not enough to just know what the Bible says; we need to observe the method by which the Bible addresses an issue in its various contexts. As we bring all of these observations together, we have a collection of both what the Bible says and how the Bible handles certain issues in specific contexts. The crux of Vanhoozer’s approach is that the whole canon, that is, the whole Bible, must be consulted so that we can become an “apprentice” to its wisdom, not merely parrots of verses (Evangelical Futures, 80 – 82). While it remains that using the canonical-linguistic approach requires knowing all or many of the verses dealing with a difficult biblical question about living the Christian life, about theology, or other practical day-to-day issues, it seeks to form a summarization of this content for the purpose of living rightly. We need to know what the Bible says, how it goes about saying it, and how to bring not just the “what” to bear, but the “how” as well, in our situations. In short, the Bible’s wisdom on a matter must be performed by us. Some may assume this suspect, but it is only following what we think the Apostle Matthew did in his Gospel when he said that Jesus will “be called a Nazarene.” St. Matthew introduces this as spoken by the Prophets, as though it is coming from the OT, but no text like this exists in the OT. Many scholars think that St. Matthew is summarizing the OT teaching, so that what St. Matthews says is the collective wisdom and teaching on this coming Messiah although no Prophet specifically states what Matthew says.

Judges 4 in the Light of 1 Tim. 3 & Titus 1

We all know the story of Deborah, the woman Judge and Prophetess who led Israel to victory over Sisera and Jabin (Judges 4). Barak, in my opinion, is not to be credited with the victory because he risked being disobedient to God by refusing to obey Him by going to battle unless Deborah would go with Him (4:6, 8). A Judge, it is to be remembered, was a civil and legal leader of the nation of Israel, so Deborah acts as a kind of “governor” over the diverse tribes of Israel. Further, as a Prophetess in the role of Judge, she no doubt had powerful influence over the spiritual climate of Israel, greater than many of the mega church pastors’ influence combined today. It is not a misnomer, then, to call her both a spiritual and civl leader. I’ve heard a number of persons claim that the narrative about Deborah teaches the principle that God will use a woman rather than a man when strong men cannot be found to lead. I am not sure how such an understanding is possible because the text makes no bones about Deborah’s status as a Prophetess and Judge: “Then the people of Israel cried out to the Lord for help, for he had 900 chariots of iron and he oppressed the people of Israel cruelly for twenty years.  Now Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lappidoth, was judging Israel at that time. She used to sit under the palm of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of Ephraim, and the people of Israel came up to her for judgment. She sent and summoned Barak the son of Abinoam . . . .” (Esv). The text is not about God “raising a woman up” because Barak wouldn’t rise to the occasion or any other “strong men” for that matter. Rather, the text, in typical Hebrew narrative just presents Deborah as the Judge and Prophetess — the “Now Deborah . . .” is introduced with the Hebrew term for continuing a narrative, waw ו. There is no indication either from the Hebrew text or the English that Deborah’s role is unusual or that she is appointed because of some dire situation. Instead, what we find is a woman in power who deals decisively with the problem: “She sent and summoned Barak . . . .” Barak is not cast as the leader in this text. Deborah is clearly the one with the authority to summon him and, with her spiritual authority, she delivers the word of the Lord to Barak for how to handle this oppressive situation: “Has not the Lord, the God of Israel, commanded you, ‘Go, gather your men at Mount Tabor, taking 10,000 from the people of Naphtali and the people of Zebulun. 7 And I will draw out Sisera, the general of Jabin’s army, to meet you by the river Kishon with his chariots and his troops, and I will give him into your hand’?”” Deborah orchestrates both Barak’s involvement and how to go about the battle. Barak promptly refuses to listen unless Deborah comes along: “Barak said to her, “If you will go with me, I will go, but if you will not go with me, I will not go.”” There is no indication from this text that Deborah is at odds with God; indeed, Deborah was so intimate with God that she knew what God had told Barak. Now, what are we to do with this glaring contradiction to 1 Tim. and Titus. At this point, I could launch into a long, although no doubt profitable, discussion of cultural norms and cultural change. I will say a bit on this shortly in the final section, but let’s apply Vanhoozer’s linguistic-canonical approach to the present tension between Judges 4 and 1 Tim. 3/Titus 1. If we inductively tallied up the texts, we would be left with a major contradiction: God says only men are to lead in 1 Tim. 3 and Titus 1, but God shows that a woman can lead both as a spiritual and civic leader in Judges 4. If we looked at the rest of Judges, we would observe that the rest of the leaders/Judges were men. From this we would conclude that woman leadership is not contrary to God either in principle or in fact. Woman leadership, however, looking at the “method” or “models of leadership” offered in Judges, suggests that it is irregular. Judges 4 does not teach that woman can only lead when strong men are lacking; this is not what the text conveys. From this point, we need to look all across the Bible, at all models of leadership, to see what else we can conclude about leadership: I don’t have space to do this: it would be a book. We would surely find many “men only” models: kings of Israel, Priests of Israel, Jesus’ inner 12 disciples, some church leaders. Although I’ve listed Jesus’ inner 12, it is not to be missed that women were also part of Jesus’ discipleship group that traveled around with him (Mt. 27:55, Mk 15:41, Lk. 23:49, esp. Lk. 24:22, Acts 1:14). Also, in Romans, St. Paul mentions two women in his farewell remarks in chapter 16: Phoebe (v. 1) the deaconess and Junias the apostle (v. 7). There are other women we could mention as well. This suffices to “point-out” in a linguistic canonical approach that the canon of Scripture, in its fulness, is not opposed to woman leadership in principle or in fact. What I want to avoid at this point is opting for a universalizing or totalitarian use of one Scripture or set of Scriptures to silence the others. Cast in the light of the linguistic-canonical approach, 1 Tim. 3 and Titus 1 are eminently consistent with the majority of male-model-leadership found across the pages of Scripture. If I had more time, I would want to look at the cultural situations of the locations where Timothy and Titus were Pastors. The linguistic-canonical approach will not allow us to leave it at that because we are interested in the entirety of the biblical witness and how that “directs” us to live-out that wisdom, not in silencing the rest of the biblical witness or reinterpreting it in the image or model of 1 Tim. and Titus. Some will find this “iffy.” I would point out that there are many texts with women in prominent roles just above, and more could be added to that. I find silencing many texts in Scripture’s teaching on a matter more “iffy” than finding a way to let it all stand. Male-leadership, therefore, is the general guideline for church leadership, but woman leadership is not excluded in principle (de jure) or in fact (de facto). In 1 Tim and Titus there may have been cultural issues that had created women in that town who were domineering — more than one commentator has claimed this in Timothy’s situation. I hope all of this has gone to show that looking across the whole canon of the Bible leads to the conclusion that certain imperatives in a text or two cannot dominant the rest of the biblical witness into silence in cases where they disagree, even if it is the “last word” God spoke on a matter. The entire biblical text must direct our thinking and consequent living on a matter. Thus, 1 Tim. and Titus no doubt apply directly to those churches, but St. Paul, the same author of 1 Tim. and Titus, can also call Phoebe a deaconess of the Church of Cenchreae, and Romans is dated not long before 1 Tim. and Titus.

Philosophical Answers and Observations on the Whole Bible

Why does God deal with specific situations sometimes differently? It seems because situations always differ, and sometimes call for more specific direction than in other places. For instance, why was it enough that Abraham just “trust” God and keep the few commands God gave to him whereas the Israelites at Sinai were delivered 613 commands? Was did Noah only get a few commands? God’s commands can also be inconsistent across the whole of Scripture because God sometimes condescends to meet humanity where they are (as Jesus taught, Mt. 19:8), while other times His commands are utterly high (Deut. 6:1 – 10) and consistent with His nature. Moreover, after the fall, God is interested in refashioning man into useful vessels for God’s purposes (Jer. 18:5 – 11) according to man’s cooperation with God; echoing John Hick, God is interested in “soul-making.” Thus, some commands come sooner or later in God’s economy of guiding man back towards Christ and, through Him and in the Spirit, to heaven. This thought follows the narrative flow of Genesis 6 – 12:1 – 3 because man falls (Gen. 3), and they are heavily influenced into evil so much so that God kills all but Noah and his family. From this point, God’s task of reclaiming humanity from the Devil is ongoing, particularly and powerfully advanced in Gen. 12:1 – 3 with the call and promise to Abraham (see NT Wright’s Climax of the Covenant). God’s role in developing both the biblical narrative and Israel as a people is transformative across the pages of history. God doesn’t only deliver a rote set of laws to be woodenly followed but never advanced as Deuteronomy makes clear: Deut. 17:8 – 11. This text already assumes the the Laws God gave would not be enough to handle every situation, but gives the leaders power to direct them. Moreover, Deut. 29:1 already makes mention of the coming new “covenant,” the one “besides the covenant God man with them at Horeb.” This leads into my final point, that God’s revelation across time is a “spiral” leading to a telos, or certain end and goal. It is not a cycle. God’s directives can show greater or lesser consistency with earlier or later commands because Scripture is ever unpacking and elaborating, not just restating what has already been said. As a spiral, we expect God to set up certain administrative policies for how He governs His people that we will see again and again, but that also advance (this is actually what typology, what the Catholics call allegory, is all about). In 1 Tim. 3 and Titus 1, we are on part of the spiral that coincides with God’s former preference for male leadership, but this does not demand that we universalize it so that just that part of the spiral becomes the whole spiral. In fact, Scripture would caution us against such a “silencing” of other parts of the biblical text. Dr. Scalise

Refuting Claims that the Resurrection of Christ is a Legend or Copycat of other ancient Accounts: Licona and Wright’s Critiques

23 Thursday Oct 2014

Posted by in Apologetics, Copycat, Defending Resurrection of Jesus, Historical Issues with Resurrection, Legends

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Some say that the Resurrection of Jesus is merely a legend or a copy of other ancient material. If it were a legend, as the logic goes, it would suggest that something far less miraculous occurred that developed into, over time, the teaching that Jesus rose again never to die. St. Paul states, however, that if Christ is not raised, then the Christian faith is dead. If the Resurrection is only a legend, then Christianity comes crashing down in its most fundamental claim. Others claim that the Resurrection is just a copy of earlier religious or stories. Although this is the genetic fallacy, we should still look at some of these earlier stories to see if they really are much like Jesus’ resurrection. The genetic fallacy is the false conclusion that explaining where something came from or how it developed over time counts against its truthfulness. The historical events of the Resurrection would still have to be investigated in their own right to determine the accuracy of what they report because tracing earlier stories to show that the Resurrection supposedly borrowed from them is not enough to falsify the event itself.

1) Legends or elements of legends could, hypothetically, have crept their way into the Gospel material, but this does nothing to alter the legitimacy of the historical bedrock; Historical bedrock are uncontroversial historical facts that nearly all scholars studying in the field of historical Jesus accept. If the bedrock passes critical scrutiny — multiple attestation, criterion of embarrassment, eyewitness, etc. — and a case can be built on this bedrock for the resurrection, then much in the NT could be said to have certain elements of myth or legend without Christianity become false (Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus, 585). Multiple attestation is a way to validate a fact by relying on multiple testimony to establish that fact. Criterion of embarrassment is a way to test some fact because, as the argument goes, it would not be included in the Gospel narratives unless it were true since it embarrasses someone or something that would want to be revered. For instance, Peter’s denials of Jesus, as the leader of the early church, would be quite the embarrassment.

2) Evidence of legends may hypothetically embellish facts, but the central fact would remain (Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus, 585).

3) Homer says dead men do not rise: Illiad 24:549 – 51, 756. Thus, the Resurrection of Jesus is not borrowing from Homer (NT Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, 32).

4) Dead men rising was not allowed in myth either: Zeus punishes Apollo with a lightening bolt for attempting to raise a child (NT Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, 33).

5) Much of ancient literature denied existence to the dead at all (Illiad 9:413; Polybius Hist. 6:53.9 – 54.3; Sall. Cat. 51.20 (NT Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, 34).

6) Egyptian Mummification was more about ongoing life and fulfillment of life than about the negation of life requiring a rebirth (NT Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, 46).

7) Mummification implies that the person is still alive (NT Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, 47).

8) Apotheosis of Alexander the Great and later Roman emperors implied one of two things:

  1. that the body was destroyed and the soul passed to become a god.
  2. that the body and soul were taken up to become a god (NT Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, 55-57).  The Resurrection is about a dead body coming back to life in this world and history never to die again, so Jesus’ Resurrection is clearly not an example of apotheosis.

9) Continuing with the last two points, this new god was added to the pantheon of gods, not isolated as one with a monotheistic God (Ibid.).

10) Apollonius of Tyana lives on but not in a body (no bodily coming back from the dead) (NT Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, 75).

Dr. Scalise

Refuting the Theory that the Disciples had Hallucinations of the Resurrected Christ: Licona, Habermas, & Collins’ Critiques

22 Wednesday Oct 2014

Posted by in Apologetics, Defending Resurrection of Jesus, Hallucinations, Historical Issues with Resurrection, Resurrection

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Some have tried to deny the truth of Jesus’ resurrection by claiming that the apostles hallucinated. There are many problems with such a claim, not least among them the fact that multiple groups at multiple different times claimed to have seen the risen Christ. Those who would claim such are forced not only to claim that an apostle hallucinated, but that groups of people hallucinated, that groups of people hallucinated the same thing, and that groups of people hallucinated the same thing at different times. Is this sounding plausible? It is not, but let’s look at problems with the hallucination theory of explaining away the apostles and others’ claims to have seen the risen Christ more closely.

1) There is very little evidence—if any because collective hallucination accounts are not currently well researched enough, because of lack of occurrences, to have any real credibility—that collective hallucinations occur (Habermas, The Risen Jesus and Future Hope, 11).

2) Hallucinations are private accounts stemming from an individual’s mind (Gary Collins cited in The Risen Jesus and Future Hope, 11, by Habermas).

3) Belief, expectation, and excitement are the underpinning psychological conditions for hallucinations. The disciples were distraught and disappointed after Jesus’ death by crucifixion and so the hallucination of him alive when Jesus reportedly appeared to them is improbable (Habermas, The Risen Jesus and Future Hope, 11).

4) The variety of persons, places, and times, supposing them to all have had the same hallucination stretches credulity to the breaking point. Not only are no collective hallucinations well evidenced to even believe it happened once, but now it is supposed to be believed that it happened in multiple places, to differently composed groups, and at different times, but the hallucinations all agreed with one another. If this is possible, the chances are infinitesimally small. On the principle of analogy, that is, that present experiences are the same as those same experiences in history, collective hallucinations become even more dubious. At least with Jesus’ resurrection, the principle of analogy provides resuscitations as a pale event analogous to resurrections; analogous because renewed life comes forth but the quality of that renewed life differs: i.e., Jesus’ recreation/renewed life takes life (back) to its original dimensionality achievable in the garden (eternal; “tree of life”) whereas resuscitation is renewed life but only for limited time (until death takes them again) (Habermas, The Risen Jesus and Future Hope, 11; this mixed with my extended thought on the matter).

5) Hallucinations are not well documented to transform lives (Habermas, The Risen Jesus and Future Hope, 11). Why did the disciples live radically different from their depressed state after the crucifixion? It is unlikely that a hallucination would produce the kind of vigor and commitment the disciples had in the proclamation of the Gospel if they knew that it was false. This is very important. Many people will die for what they believe in, but the disciples, if they just had hallucinations, went on to die for what they knew was false.

6) James and Paul were not “believers” and so were certainly not in a frame of mind to hallucinate Jesus raised (Habermas, The Risen Jesus and Future Hope, 11).

7) Other supposed “supernatural events” in the gospels would have to be explained by means of group hallucinations (on naturalistic presuppositions) as well, like the feeding of the five thousand and Jesus’ walking, or even the water turned to wine. But in some of these cases there is a critical realism (e.g., eating fish and bread) so dramatic it would be fantastic to suppose that they did not actual eat anything (Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus, 571 – 572).

Kerygma of 1 Cor. 15:3 – 7 functions as an early creed not only shows what those mentioned in it and the 500 others thought but much broader to be a received tradition among all those in the early church, beginning likely in Palestine shortly after the resurrection (Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus, 573).

8) If hallucinations did occur, why did not the Jewish leaders just point out or produce the body of Jesus to defeat the growth of Christianity?

9) The Marian and source (Belinda Gore, Ecstatic Body Postures) which Pilch cites are more dissimilar than similar to the appearances in the gospel and so fail to account for the appearances there that they claimed to be able to explain (Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus, 574).

10) Neither Craffert or Pilch provide any “reports from the social sciences of a group of individuals” objectively interacting with an individual (i.e., the resurrected Jesus) by means of speaking, eating with, or touching (Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus, 575).

Dr. Scalise

Questing for Answers about God’s uncreated and eternal Nature

21 Tuesday Oct 2014

Posted by in Apologetics, Creating, Difficult Questions, Philosophical Explanations for God

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Recently, I was asked: “How was God always there? From a human perspective, all we understand is that everything has a beginning and an end?”

This is a challenging question because of the limitations of our thinking. Right up front, then, I want to clarify between an absurdity and a mystery. An absurdity is something that is logically impossible like a round square. A mystery is an idea that goes beyond humans’ ability to think about it. A mystery is not without a logical basis; indeed it is logical at its base, but its full meaning “extends” beyond the human mind’s ability. When I say “mystery,” I am saying two things: first, a mystery is understandable as far as the human mind can go, and, second, a mystery’s full meaning cannot be adequately explained without loosing the mystery we were trying to understand in the first place.

Before I move into the bulk of the question, humans who have a “human perspective” see from the position of contingency, that is, we are limited, changeable, and ultimately not our own explanation of ourselves. Thus, we must be careful not to attribute to God what creatures are since we know that we have came from somewhere else and need someone else to give us meaning beyond death. God, as we will see, is not contingent.

There are a number of ways to answer the question, but I will offer one that fits with modern science. Cosmologists, (e.g., Borde, Guth, Vilenkin, Sean Carroll) are much agreed that the universe had a beginning point, what they call “a first moment in time.”  A well known principle in philosophy is that from nothing, nothing comes. I mean “nothing” here in the sense of absolute negation, no space, no time, no particles, and thus no quantum mechanics. So now we have two things to deal with: the fact that the universe “began” and the fact that the universe did not create itself. This requires a hypothesis to explain the universe’s existence. There are only two eternal things the human mind can have clear knowledge about: abstract ideas like numbers or an eternal mind — not linked to a material brain though. Abstract ideas can’t create anything, however, leaving us with only the eternal mind thesis, which we call “God.” I say this to show that the universe is on the one hand not an explanation of itself, but God on the other hand is.

Traditionally, theologians have described that God is a necessary Being. This means that it is impossible to conceive a world without God. The current status of science largely upholds the notion that God is a necessary Being because the universe cannot create itself. For any universe to begin necessarily requires a being to start it: God. This necessary Being, God, would have to have existence in Himself, not taken from elsewhere otherwise He would no longer be a necessary Being. Theologians summarize all of this into an attribute they call Aseity (self-sufficient, necessary). It is to be recalled that cosmologists affirm that both time and space began at the first moment of time. Thus, God, “prior to” His fashioning of time cannot be thought about in terms of time. God’s Aseity excludes the possibility that He could have a beginning and an end. At this point, we have arrived at the edge of the mystery. We have given a logical basis to the mystery, however. Further, the mystery is partly understandable to the human mind, but not completely understandable. We know what it means to exist, because we do. We know in part what it means to be sufficient, yet not utterly self-sufficient like God. We know when something is necessary, and we can imagine, through abstract reasoning, an interval of endless duration by extending our experience of passing through limited durations. All of this points to the fact that the human mind is capable of attending to the mystery of God, “getting” some of it while never depriving it of it mysterious “beyondness.” Theologians have a saying for this, “God always conceals Himself in every revealing”; mind you, this is logical and not a nonsensical paradox.

All of this long discussion to say, God’s attribute of Aseity eliminates the possibility that He could have not been, or was created, or had a starting point. Once someone thinks God could have at one point not have been, they have now thought of another god other than the traditional Deity of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. It is likewise important to see that postulating an eternal set of causes is endless, and thus impossible by reductio ad absurbum (by reduction to the absurd). I am putting up a great discussion and debate of this very point between renowned biologist Richard Dawkins and Mathematician and Philosopher John Lennox. The specific question is asked at 45:17 and 52:18.

Dr. Scalise