Currently Reading Angels By Billy Graham see related

Amazing.

"The LORD is slow to anger, and great in power, and will not at all acquit the wicked: the LORD hath his way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet." -Nahum 1:3

More thoughts on divine sovereignty.

"Hear, O Israel: Thou art to pass over Jordan this day, to go in to possess nations greater and mightier than thyself, cities great and fenced up to heaven, A people great and tall, the children of the Anakims, whom thou knowest, and of whom thou hast heard say, Who can stand before the children of Anak!  Understand therefore this day, that the LORD thy God is he which goeth over before thee; as a consuming fire he shall destroy them, and he shall bring them down before thy face: so shalt thou drive them out, and destroy them quickly, as the LORD hath said unto thee.  Speak not thou in thine heart, after that the LORD thy God hath cast them out from before thee, saying, For my righteousness the LORD hath brought me in to possess this land: but for the wickedness of these nations the LORD doth drive them out from before thee.  Not for thy righteousness, or for the uprightness of thine heart, dost thou go to possess their land: but for the wickedness of these nations the LORD thy God doth drive them out from before thee, and that he may perform the word which the LORD sware unto thy fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  Understand therefore, that the LORD thy God giveth thee not this good land to possess it for thy righteousness; for thou art a stiffnecked people." -Deuteronomy 9:1-6

The fact that God drove the inhabitants of Canaan out from before Israel because of the wickedness of these nations is reiterated in Deuteronomy 18, where God cautions Israel, "When thou art come into the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not learn to do after the abominations of those nations" (verse 9) and, after citing the various forms of sorcery and witchcraft practiced by these people, explains: "For all that do these things are an abomination unto the LORD: and because of these abominations the LORD thy God doth drive them out from before thee" (verse 13).  But let's consider for a moment God's prophecy to Abraham when the covenant so frequently referred to in the Pentateuch was ritually confirmed: "And he said unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years; And also that nation, whom they shall serve, will I judge: and afterward shall they come out with great substance.  And thou shalt go to thy fathers in peace; thou shalt be buried in a good old age.  But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again: for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full."  (Genesis 15:13-16)

Now what exactly is meant by the expression, "their iniquity is not yet full"?  When Jesus Christ mourned over the city of Jerusalem, He referred to its consistent persecution of God's messengers, before declaring, "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous, And say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.  Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets.  Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers." (Matthew 23:29-32)  He then goes on to say something peculiar and fascinating.  "Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city: That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar.  Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation.  O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!  Behold, your house is left unto you desolate." (verses 34-38)  Notice His language: In order that the Jews will "fill up the measure of [their] fathers", Jesus will send messengers, which they will persecute, so that they will be punished- that is to say, so that all the blood shed by their ancestors (spiritual and geneological) will come upon them- that is to say, so the cup of their iniquity, so to speak, will be topped off by the persecution of Christ's servants, and the punishment they have warranted will come upon their heads.  (As the next chapter indicates, this was fulfilled in the destruction of Jerusalem by Rome in 70 A.D.)  Notice, Jesus does not say that He will send prophets, wise men, and scribes in an attempt to woo Jerusalem to Himself; He sends them with the express purpose of causing them to fill up their iniquities to the point that they must be devestatingly punished.  It's fascinating, isn't it, that a particular verse (ripped from its context) in this passage is so frequently cited by Arminians against the doctrine of the sovereignty of God?  The Apostle Paul indicates that Jesus' prophecy was in the process of fulfillment years later: "For ye, brethren, became followers of the churches of God which in Judaea are in Christ Jesus: for ye also have suffered like things of your own countrymen, even as they have of the Jews: Who both killed the Lord Jesus, and their own prophets, and have persecuted us; and they please not God, and are contrary to all men: Forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved, to fill up their sins alway: for the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost." (1 Thessalonians 2:14-16)

Similarly, it appears that the nations of Canaan, at the time of Israel's conquest, had reached the fill of their iniquities.  "Defile not ye yourselves in any of these things: for in all these the nations are defiled which I cast out before you: And the land is defiled: therefore I do visit the iniquity thereof upon it, and the land itself vomiteth out her inhabitants.  Ye shall therefore keep my statutes and my judgments, and shall not commit any of these abominations; neither any of your own nation, nor any stranger that sojourneth among you: (For all these abominations have the men of the land done, which were before you, and the land is defiled;) That the land spue not you out also, when ye defile it, as it spued out the nations that were before you.  For whosoever shall commit any of these abominations, even the souls that commit them shall be cut off from among their people.  Therefore shall ye keep mine ordinance, that ye commit not any one of these abominable customs, which were committed before you, and that ye defile not yourselves therein: I am the LORD your God." (Leviticus 18:24-30)  As in the familiar metaphor from Revelation 3 of the Laodicean church, we may consider when analyzing this metaphor that vomiting is a very natural reaction to eating or tasting something unhealthy or sickly-tasting; the land is not bulimic.  It vomits out the nations because of how bad they have gotten.  This is something to consider the next time the Bible critic points to the conquest stories of Joshua and Judges as an example of the brutality committed by the Israelites in the name of the covenant.  Yet notice that, at the time of Abraham, the people of Canaan were not at the point where they needed to be vomited out.  Indeed, God pinpoints exactly how many years it will take before the nations reach this state of depravity wherein they must, for the sake of the land itself, be removed. 

Now notice that in order for God's promise to Abraham in Genesis 13:14-15 to be fulfilled, since, as verse 7 (and chapter 12:6) notes, "the Canaanite and the Perizzite dwelled then in the land", the inhabitants of Canaan had to be removed (for how else could Abraham's seed possess the land?).  Yet we also find that the people of the land were cast out because of their wickedness.  In other words, their increasing depravity was necessary in order for God's covenantal purposes to be accomplished.  Now someone might here protest that perhaps God simply foresaw the moral condition of these nations and planned the timing of the Israelite conquest accordingly.  But consider Deuteronomy 4:15-19: "Take ye therefore good heed unto yourselves; for ye saw no manner of similitude on the day that the LORD spake unto you in Horeb out of the midst of the fire: Lest ye corrupt yourselves, and make you a graven image, the similitude of any figure, the likeness of male or female, The likeness of any beast that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged fowl that flieth in the air, The likeness of any thing that creepeth on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the waters beneath the earth: And lest thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou seest the sun, and the moon, and the stars, even all the host of heaven, shouldest be driven to worship them, and serve them, which the LORD thy God hath divided unto all nations under the whole heaven." Now the Hebrew word translated "divided", châlaq, appears only one other time in the Book of Deuteronomy, in chapter 29, verses 24-26, in which God warns that if Israel serves other gods, He will bring all the curses of the covenant upon them, and "all nations shall say, Wherefore hath the LORD done thus unto this land? what meaneth the heat of this great anger? Then men shall say, Because they have forsaken the covenant of the LORD God of their fathers, which he made with them when he brought them forth out of the land of Egypt: For they went and served other gods, and worshipped them, gods whom they knew not, and whom he had not given unto them".  So we see that Israel was not "given" idols to worship- as opposed to the other nations, who have been given all these things to worship.  Is God the author of sin?  No, but by showing the stars, for example, to heathen nations, He is giving them something for their callous hearts to latch upon and worship and thus fill up their iniquities further, just as, in sending evangelists to Jerusalem, Jesus was (however directly) causing the Jews to fill up their iniquities to the point of the punishment demonstrated in 70 A.D.

In Christ, and for the gospel of the kingdom,
Brett

Currently Reading Great Expectations (Penguin Classics) By Charles Dickens see related

The text of my Philosophy Club presentation.

Greetings, fellow wannabe philosophers.

I would firstly like to remark that while I have tried to cram as much research and reasoning as possible into the last week, no doubt like the rest of you, I have had other commitments to attend to- work, friends, and the ever-looming spectre of final exams. I have also had to appreciate that I cannot possibly plumb all the depths of this subject in the time allotted to me. While I have done my best to track down every objection I could find to my thesis and attempt to respond to it, explicitly or otherwise, in this talk, I freely admit that this presentation will fall short in many, many respects, and I beg your indulgence, your forbearance, and your forgiveness.

For the last several months we have been arguing, debating, bickering, and agreeing, depending on the subject and the mood, regarding all manner of topics and controversies under the sun. Yet the question of how we know whether any one of us is correct, or, for that matter, whether we'd ever know, has only recently been raised. One thing we all seem to universally and implicitly agree on, however, is that logic has to be the governing factor in our discussions and thought processes. We are all too quick to jump upon and expose any point which we feel contradicts logic, or at least doesn't employ logical principles properly. Indeed, this club recently hosted a public debate on the existence of God, which consisted of arguments that were meant to convince the audience by being logically compelling. Yet the very presuppositions that go into the reasoning we all take for granted, I think, need to be clearly addressed, and it is my contention that the only way to account for logic and reasoning is to presuppose the existence of a God, that is to say, the deity of one of the three major monotheistic religions.

Allow me to explain myself further. Humans are naturally endued with the power of cognition, that is, as the dictionary defines the term, “[t]he mental process of knowing, including aspects such as awareness, perception, reasoning, and judgment.” We use our cognitive abilities to make decisions and determine what the realities of the world around us are. Indeed, these basic principles are the first tentative steps towards the greatest ideas and disciplines ever attempted by man. Albert Einstein wrote in his 1936 work Physics and Reality that “[t]he whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of every day thinking”. Now notice that right off the bat a certain subtle but powerful presupposition is controlling all this: The idea that our reasoning abilities in some sense correlate with reality. Now I would like to pose the question: On what grounds do we consider logic to be authoritative? In fact, let me put this rather more controversially: How do we know that the law of non-contradiction (that is to say, basically, that something cannot be both true and false) is true? We can't prove it, because any argument in its favour would beg the question, presupposing that it was already true and that any argument in favour of it could only be true and not false, rather than both. How do we know that the law of identity is true? How do we know that something is what it is? These seem self-evident, and, indeed, they are; these are axioms. The question then is: How do we account for these axioms?

Now do not misunderstand me here. I am not asking, how do we prove these axioms? The definition of the word “prove” is “to establish the truth or genuineness of, as by evidence or argument”. Naturally, if something is self-evident, it is its own proof. I am asking, how do we account for these axioms? I am using the word “account” here synonymously with the words “reason,” “basis,” and “grounds”. On what basis are these things axiomatic? On what grounds do we take something self-evident as being true? Allow me to attempt to explain. Our reason for assuming that self-evident propositions are true is because we operate on the assumption that the universe is governed by physical laws which, in turn, operate in collusion with the laws of logic. Galileo expressed this beautifully in his 1623 work The Assayer: “Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the characters in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometric figures without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it; without these one is wandering in a dark labyrinth.” But the question is: How do we know that the universe is governed by these laws? Well, we employ the Scientific Method, whereby we look at nature, observe facts, develop a hypothesis which potentially explains something we see and makes predictions about what we should observe, subject these hypotheses to experimentation, and based on the consequent data confirm or reject our original idea. But the question which inevitably arises is: How do we know these are laws? That is to say, how do you know I won't suddenly transform into a dinosaur and devour this room, which has turned into a candy house? Well, because all our experimentation and observation has indicated that this simply won't occur. In other words, we are taking specific examples (that is to say, every instance we've ever observed) and projecting that onto the general whole- that is to say, using inductive reasoning.

Yet honest philosophers have admitted that induction cannot be proven to be a valid barometer for reality in and of itself. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy deals in considerable depth with the way David Hume wrestled with the problem of induction, and concludes its summary with this statement: “Hume's simple argument for the impossibility of a justification of induction is a dilemma: Any justification must be either deductive or inductive. Whatever is established deductively is necessarily true, but inductions are never necessarily true, so no deductive justification of induction is possible. Inductive justification of induction, on the other hand would be circular, since it would presume the very justification that it pretends to provide. Induction is hence unjustifiable.” Bertrand Russell writes in his book The Problems of Philosophy: “The inductive principle, however, is equally incapable of being proved by an appeal to experience. Experience might conceivably confirm the inductive principle as regards the cases that have been already examined; but as regards unexamined cases, it is the inductive principle alone that can justify any inference from what has been examined to what has not been examined. All arguments which, on the basis of experience, argue as to the future or the unexperienced parts of the past or present, assume the inductive principle; hence we can never use experience to prove the inductive principle without begging the question. Thus we must either accept the inductive principle on the ground of its intrinsic evidence, or forgo all justification of our expectations about the future. If the principle is unsound, we have no reason to expect the sun to rise to-morrow, to expect bread to be more nourishing than a stone, or to expect that if we throw ourselves off the roof we shall fall. When we see what looks like our best friend approaching us, we shall have no reason to suppose that his body is not inhabited by the mind of our worst enemy or of some total stranger. All our conduct is based upon associations which have worked in the past, and which we therefore regard as likely to work in the future; and this likelihood is dependent for its validity upon the inductive principle.”

With this in mind, we must ask, on what grounds do we assume induction to be a valid principle of determining truth- that is, how do we account for induction? The following is taken from the Atheism/Agnosticism section of About.Com. (I have gone out of my way to quote skeptics and non-theists in this talk to demonstrate that what I'm saying is not simply religious contention, but philosophical concession.) “The principle of the uniformity of nature is used to justify both inductive reason generally and scientific research in particular. It can be understood as simply arguing that 'the future will look like the past.' Thus, however nature has acted in the past is pretty much how we can expect it to act in the future. Science relies heavily upon this premise of uniformity because, without it, it would not be possible to infer from past events what we can expect to happen in the future. Scientific prediction and scientific theorizing would simply not be possible without uniformity. More generally, induction itself relies upon uniformity because that is what allows us to take particular cases and infer from them general rules and principles. However, if induction relies upon the uniformity of nature, then the uniformity of nature cannot itself rely upon inductive reasoning.” So then how do we account for the uniformity of nature? On what grounds can we assume it to be true, since we cannot prove it without beginning the question by appealing to induction?

This is taken from Bernard Ramm's The Christian View of Science and Scripture, pages 85-86. “The Bible clearly teaches that the regularity of Nature is the constancy of God, and the laws of Nature are the laws of God. This is in keeping with the powerful, penetrating, direct creationism of the Bible. Of course we must translate the Biblical vocabulary into our vocabulary. Much of the wonderful Biblical view of Nature is lost to many readers because they fail to make this translation.

The uniformity of Nature is a Biblical notion and not the sole creation of modern science. Nature as a vast, orderly, law-abiding system was deeply imbedded in Hebrew thought. Only because the Hebrews used a different vocabulary is this idea lost to so many modern readers of the Bible. For example Robinson remarks:

The Hebrew vocabulary includes no word equivalent to our term 'Nature.' This is not surprising if by 'Nature' we mean 'The creation and regulative physical power which is conceived of as operating in the physical world as the immediate cause of all phenomena.' The only way to render this idea into Hebrew would be to say simply 'God.'

The concept of order or regularity of uniformity in Nature is a Biblical concept already before modern science, and it stems from the Bible's strong and frank creationism.” Ramm adds a fascinating footnote here. “Both John Ballie (Natural Science and Spiritual Life, 1952) and A.N. Whitehead (Science and the Modern World, 1925) admit that the idea of the uniformity of Nature is a notion propounded by the scholastics who in turn derived it from the notion of the constancy of the Biblical God as it expresses itself in Creation. In truth, Ballie strongly insists that without this undergirding modern science would not even have arisen. He says: 'It is quite clear to me, then, that modern science could not have come into being until the ancient pagan conception of the natural world had given place to the Christian,' p. 25.” The A.N. Whitehead referred to here is, indeed, Alfred North Whitehead, the intellectual patriarch of Process Theology, which, ironically, argues that God is not constant, but evolving. Nevertheless, when discussing the principle of the uniformity of nature on pages 109-110 of his book Miracles, C.S. Lewis also refers to Whitehead: “The sciences logically require a metaphysic of this sort. Our greatest natural philosopher thinks it is also the metaphysic out of which they originally grew. Professor Whitehead points out that centuries of belief in a God who combined 'the personal energy of Jehovah' with 'the rationality of a Greek philosopher' first produced the firm expectation of systematic order which rendered possible the birth of modern science. Men became scientific because they expected Law in Nature, and they expected Law in Nature because they believed in a Legislator. In most modern scientists this belief has died: it will be interesting to see how long their confidence in uniformity survives it.”

Therefore, I submit to you that in order for logic to be regarded as trustworthy and authoritative, we must presuppose the existence of a God of order, of logic, and of consistency who has created the universe and is continually sustaining it by His power.

Thank you.

In Christ, and for the gospel of the kingdom,
Brett

Currently Reading Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects By Bertrand Russell see related

Christopher Hitchens Exposed

"Madame, madame, un bon mot ne prouve rien."
-Voltaire, Le dîner du comte de Boulainvilliers

Introduction

In the wake of the attacks of 9/11 and with the controversy over the respective threats, real or perceived, of fundamentalist Christianity in the West and fundamentalist Islam in the Middle East enflaming so much public policy discussion, an aggressive and narcissistic brand of atheism not seen since the philosophers of the 19th century has reared its ugly head upon the literary landscape and is now stampeding across the Internet, leaving in its wake mountains of bad arguments, overused quotations, inane discussions, and shockingly dimwitted YouTube comments.  Bravely leading the charge are the Four Horsemen of Atheism, who dominate the bestseller lists and, in my experience, the entire thinking processes of their disciples.  (Whether or not atheism qualifies as a religion in the technical sense of the word, it is, in my opinion, foolhardy to deny the existence of the cults of personality which follow these individuals.)  Out of all of them, the most popular is probably Christopher Hitchens, better known for his political views and who easily has the sharpest wit and most coolly in-your-face demeanour of all of them.  As an expert wordsmith and an eclectic commentator, Hitchens is very marketable, and is frequently featured on popular television and radio shows.

I have not titled this post "Christopher Hitchens Refuted" for a variety of reasons.  Firstly, there's really nothing Hitchens says to refute.  The man has practically made a career out of getting up behind a podium, expressing his opinion in the most sarcastic, edgy, clever way possible, and being labelled a well-nigh irrefutable intellectual for it.  Really, try it sometime.  Watch any debate of his, then after Hitchens says his piece, go back and try to find his argument.  I say "go back" because he really is a master at pulling you gently into his thoughts and wooing you into being so amused by him that you're left very impressed with his oratorial skills and, as intended, usually walk away impressed with what a great debator he is.  To be fair, showmanship is undoubtedly a part of public debate, and to that extent Hitchens, despite always maintaining the aura of a man having a casual conversation over a martini and a smoke, is one of the better speakers in the public arena.  But when it comes to actual substance, what little Hitchens has is nothing you won't find better expressed elsewhere.  Indeed, as Roy Abraham Varghese writes in the preface of Anthony Flew's memoir There is a God, "It would be fair to say that the 'new atheism' is nothing less than a regression to the logical positivist philosophy that was renounced by even its most ardent proponents."  However, in the last week I have watched or listened to a slew of debates on the topic of God and religion involving Christopher Hitchens, and I have been so struck by how unreliable, how inconsistent, and how frankly obnoxious he really is in every sense of the word that it baffles me that anyone continues to take him seriously in any capacity whatsoever, so I've decided to record just a few observations gleaned from all the hours I've spent listening to him and put them down here so that anyone who cares to find out can see why anyone who cites Hitchens' work doesn't know what they're talking about.  Much more could be said; there are other remarks Hitchens has made I'd like to examine, but either I couldn't remember (and therefore document) when and where he made these remarks, and in other instances (his hypocrisy in the way he attacked Jerry Falwell right after his death, for example) I frankly was so nauseated by the man that I simply chose not to write on those remarks for my own well-being.  With that, let's begin.

Hitchens' Unreliability

On page 18 of his assault against faith, god is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, Hitchens writes that "[a] week before the events of September 11, 2001, I was on a panel with Dennis Prager, who is one of America's better-known religious broadcasters.  He challenged me in public to answer what he called a 'straight yes/no question,' and I happily agreed.  Very well, he said.  I was to imagine myself in a strange city as the evening was coming on.  Toward me I was to imagine that I saw a large group of men approaching.  Now-would I feel safer, or less safe, if I was to learn that they were just coming from a prayer meeting?  As the reader will see, this is not a question to which a yes/no answer can be given.  But I was able to answer it as if it were not hypothetical.  'Just to stay within the letter "B," I have actually had that experience in Belfast, Beirut, Bombay, Belgrade, Bethlehem, and Baghdad.  In each case I can say absolutely, and can give my reasons, why I would feel immediately threatened if I thought that the group of men approaching me in the dusk were coming from a religious observance.'"  He goes on to recite the history of religiously-based violence in each country, often punctuating his lesson with the mantra of the book's subtitle: "Religion poisons everything."  However, while discussing the book on Dennis Prager's radio show, Mr. Prager corrected the way Hitchens had mis-remembered his question.  In fact, the way he has posed this inquiry hundreds of times is as follows: "If you were in a bad part of a city at night and ten strange men were walking towards you, would you or would you not be relieved to find out that they had just come from a Bible class?"  This qualification not only, Prager explains, not only implicitly restricts the theoretical location to the United States, but also places the religious meeting firmly within a Judeo-Christian context, thus ruling out many of the examples Hitchens alluded to.  Prager is clear that he is sure Hitchens didn't deliberately misquote him; this may be the case, but it is hardly the only time Hitchens' memory has failed him.

Near the end of his debate with Dinesh D'Souza, Hitchens recites this anecdote as an example of the sort of doublethink of which he believes Christians to be capable: "I had a debate on Hugh Hewitt's program- very fair minded, very intelligent Christian- he got me on with his favourite Presbyterian.  He said, 'this is the man you have to beat', I said, 'alright', we went at it.  One of the questions I asked him was about the Resurrection: 'Do you agree with the verses in Matthew that says [sic] at the time of the Crucifixion all the graveyards in Jerusalem opened and the dead came out and walked and greeted their old friends and so forth?'  I was going to go on to ask him, 'because if you do, it seems to me to cheapen the idea of resurrection if it was so commonplace'.  That's where I was going with it, but he thought I was asking whether [it was] literally true or not, and he said, 'Well, as a Christian, yes, I absolutely do believe it, but I'm not so sure I believe it as a historian.'"  He went on to call this a "nonsensical remark", which indeed it is, but is it a fair one?  (Incidentally, Hitchens also relates his version of this story in his discussion with Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Sam Harris.)  But is this what actually occured?  The Presbyterian to which Hitchens refers is Pastor Mark D. Roberts, author of Can We Trust the Gospels?: Investigating the Reliability of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.  In their debate on "The Hugh Hewitt Show", Christopher Hitchens does indeed pose this question to Roberts, who hesitantly replies, "It's in Matthew's Gospel.  As a believer, I think it happened. If I put on my historian hat, I say, this is one account, one Gospel, one witness to this, this makes it-again, now, speaking as a historian, historically unlikely.   As a believer, I believe it.  What I'm talking about..."  At this point, Hitchens interrupts and goes on to voice his thought to the effect that this seems to cheapen the Resurrection, but Hewitt brings the issue back to the question of the historicity of Matthew 27:52-53.  Richards explains,  "All I'm saying is, when there's one testimony to something that otherwise we would consider to be unlikely, if you simply look at that from a historical point of view, you'd say, 'that's unlikely'.  Now, I happen to believe that it happened, but I believe that it happened because as I have studied the Gospel of Matthew, I find Matthew to be a reliable historical witness to what happened in that time, so, on that ground, I'd argue for it."  All Roberts is saying is that the only record we have of this event is in Matthew, so to an objective historian the story would seem unlikely, but as a believer he would argue that Matthew's Gospel is a reliable source, and therefore that it did occur.  To be fair, it wasn't the best way of framing his answer and one could raise issues regarding his epistemology, but the point is that Hitchens' interpretation of what Roberts said did utter injustice to his reputation and to his intelligence.  (I can't help but wonder whether this wasn't, perhaps unconsciously, an attempt at a sort of revenge; if you listen to the whole debate, Roberts rather thoroughily, and with due Christian charity and politeness, crushes Hitchens' arguments into the dust.)

Hitchens' Malleable History

Hitchens' flexibility with the facts does not limit itself to his own personal experiences; nor does the ambiguity over to what extent he is mistaken and to what extent he is dishonest.  In his debate with Dennis Prager, we see a textbook case of how difficult it is to discern to what extent Hitchens is ignorant of historical fact, to what extent he is deliberately twisting the facts, and to what extent he is simply not using very basic logic to interpret the facts he has before him.  In response to Prager's assertion that "the abolitionist movement in the United States against slavery was overwhelmingly religious Christians", Hitchens replies, among other things, that "the founders of the American Antislavery Society, by the way, for the most part, were not believers".  Now, who were the founders of the American Antislavery Society?  As Ohio History Central records, "In 1833, abolitionists Theodore Weld, Arthur Tappan, and Lewis Tappan founded the American Anti-Slavery Society."  Who were these gentlemen?  This is what the Columbia Encyclopedia tells us in its entry on Weld:  "While in college he became a disciple of the evangelist Charles G. Finney and was influenced by Charles Stuart, a retired British army officer who urged Weld to enlist in the cause of black emancipation. While studying for the ministry at Oneida Institute he traveled about lecturing on the virtues of manual labor, temperance, and moral reform. After 1830 he became one of the leaders of the antislavery movement working with Arthur Tappan and Lewis Tappan."  Yes, that's right, Weld was a Christian minister and author of the book The Bible Against Slavery.  What about the Tappan brothers?  None other than Charles Finney himself discusses them in his memoirs: "At this point of my narrative, in order to render intelligible many things that I shall have to say hereafter, I must give a little account of the circumstances connected with the conversion of Mr. Lewis Tappan, and his connection afterward with my own labors. This account I received from himself. His conversion occurred before I was personally acquainted with him, under the following circumstances: He was a Unitarian, and lived in Boston. His brother Arthur, then a very extensive dry goods merchant in New York, was orthodox, and an earnest Christian man...his prejudices against the revivals and orthodox people became softened. He was led to review the theological writings of the Orthodox and the Unitarians with great seriousness, and the result was that he embraced orthodox views. The mother of the Tappans was a very godly, praying woman. She had never had any sympathy with Unitarianism. She had lived a very praying life, and had left a strong impression upon her children."  So much for the American Antislavery Society being secular "for the most part".  But just because those three founded the Society doesn't mean it was predominantly Christian, does it?  This is where it gets really rich.  The Columbia Encyclopedia continues, "Weld chose Lane Seminary at Cincinnati, Ohio, for the ministerial training of other Finney converts and studied there until the famous antislavery debates he organized (1834) among the students led to his dismissal. Almost the entire student body then requested dismissal, and it was from these theological students that Weld and Henry B. Stanton selected agents for the American Anti-Slavery Society. The 'Seventy,' as the agents were called, gave character and direction to the antislavery movement and successfully spread the abolitionist gospel throughout the North."  Hitchens is flat-out wrong or completely lying.

It gets worse.  Dennis Prager, clearly a tad indignant, shoots back, "Even the New York Review of Books, which is left-of-centre and secular in its orientation, acknowledged in a recent article that it was overwhelmingly a religious movement, and that remains the case."  (The fact that this "remains the case" will be proven shortly.)  Hitchens claims in response, "By the end it was."  At this point, it's truly tempting to wonder whether Hitchens gets his information from some sort of depository from another dimension of reality.  In the General Introduction to Against Slavery: An Abolitionist Reader, Mason Lowance, Jr., writes on page xiv, "Americans began debating the slavery issue in the late seventeenth century, when the Quakers, who had opposed slavery in Great Britain, developed arguments against the expansion of chattel slavery in North America, but their voices were muted compared to the overwhelming economic development of the plantation system in the Southern colonies.  Early opponents of slavery were primarily religious figures, like the founder of Methodism, John Wesley, who wrote a treatise attacking the institution in the mid-eighteenth century."  But it gets more muddled yet.  Moments after making that unhistorical statement, he argues, "William Lloyd Garrison, until he became a much more secular person and read the writings of Thomas Paine and others against slavery, was the man who said, 'Yes, we must destroy the United States Constitution and the union', because that's what the Book of Isaiah says, 'we've made a covenant with death, we are in agreement with hell'.  He was the one who wanted to secede before the Confederates did.  He wanted to destroy the union on the proposition, because he was a religious fanatic.  It's just as well that Garrison changed his mind."  Now this is indeed peculiar.  Ohio History Central tells us, "Leadership of the American Anti-Slavery Society soon passed to William Lloyd Garrison. Garrison was perhaps the most vocal and best-known opponent of slavery before the Civil War. Under his leadership, the organization attracted more than 150,000 members."  It goes on to talk about how the Society split in 1839 due to Garrison's radical political views.  But this means that at the time Garrison was the leader and most vocal figure of a Society which Hitchens claims was predominantly secular, he was also a religious fanatic.  It takes on the slightest dip below the surface of Hitchens' arguments to realize that the average puddle possess more depth.  Incidentally, Hitchens makes substantially the same comments about Garrison on page 177 of god is Not Great and then adds, "It was the escaped slave Frederick Douglass, author of the stirring and mordant Autobiography, who eschewed apocalyptic language and demanded instead that the United States live up to the universalist promises contained in its Declaration and its Constitution."  Well, in its online series of articles "This Far By Faith: African American Spiritual Journeys", PBS includes Douglass as one of its "People of Faith" and mentions that he was "an ordained minister at the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church".  It also includes a quote from the appendix to his "stirring and mordant Autobiography" which reads: "I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity. I look upon it as the climax of all misnomers, the boldest of all frauds, and the grossest of all libels…"  When Hitchens mentions to Dennis Prager, "the imposition of slavery was overwhelmingly Christian," I can't help but wish he had read a different edition of the Autobiography- or, if he has, that he followed Douglass' lead in appreciating that the slavery-condoning Christianity of the time did not represent true Christianity.  (By the way, by limiting this to the American abolitionist movement, Hitchens and Prager don't even get into the nature of the abolition of the slave trade in England, as recently depicted in the excellent film Amazing Grace, perhaps the only failing of which was to not emphasize that many of William Wilberforce's comrades besides John Newton depicted in the movie, such as Henry Thornton and Thomas Clarkson, were just as devoutly Evangelical as he was.) 

But what about the civil rights movement, the mid-twentieth century heir of ninteenth-century abolitionism?  In his debate with the Reverend Al Sharpton, Hitchens, in what he probably deemed as modesty, replied to Mr. Sharpton's remark that the movement "was absolutely fueled by a belief in God and a belief in right or wrong, and had not there been this belief that there was a right and a wrong, [the] civil rights movement...would not have existed", that he couldn't comment on what Dr. Martin Luther King's personal beliefs were, but "I know he studied Hegel, I know he studied Marx, I know that among his very close entourage were a very large number of secular socialists and Communists- you know their names, too" (although he goes on to list them anyways, naming Stanley Levison, Bayard Rustin, Philip Randolph, and Victor Reuther).  Now, of all the people to argue with about the history of the civil rights movement, I can't imagine a worse rival to pick than Al Sharpton, who refutes Hitchens' thesis better than I could: "Dr. King's organization's...name was the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, so there's no question that he himself saw that the basis of the movement was God-based.  Did he have some socialists that did not believe in God that associated with the movement?  Absolutely, but they joined SCLC's endeavours after SCLC was formed.  In fact, SCLC was formed in 1957 in New Orleans, before many of them that organized the March on Washington.  When Bayard Rustin, who I knew, went down south, his problem was he debated a lot with the ministers there, who was [sic] the core of that group, so to try and secularize the civil rights movement is just totally inaccurate.  It was a church-based, faith-based movement.  There's no question about that, and Dr. King, way before he studied Hegel and the rest, he grew up in Ebenezer Baptist Church, was an ordained minister, first went to Morehouse, then Crozer Theological Seminary, then went to Boston to study those that you have referred to, so let's not re-invent Dr. King any more than we try to reduce God to some denominational convention."  Whatever you think of Rev. Sharpton (Hitchens has elsewhere identified him as a charlatan), you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone more qualified to speak on whether the civil rights movement was "faith-based", and given that Hitchens could only reiterate as if it proved something that nobody knows what was in Dr. King's heart, I think we can safely conclude that Hitchens' portrayl of the efforts to emancipate and enable the black population of America as primarily secular has been effectively destroyed.   

Hitchens' Questionable Authorities

But perhaps Hitchens' problem is that he just happens to have bad luck when it comes to chosing his sources.  Take, for example, his endorsement of Bart Ehrman.  In the aforementioned debate with Mark Roberts, Hitchens ascribes great authority to Ehrman (he quotes him approvingly in pages 120-22 of god is Not Great), and even remarks, "I've tried and failed to find someone who will take the book on from a Christian point of view, so perhaps I've now found one."  Now, indeed, as Roberts replies, the second chapter of his book does deal with Misquoting Jesus, but if Roberts is actually the first person Hitchens could find to respond to Dr. Ehrman, my most charitable guess is that he hasn't looked far at all.  At least two books that I'm aware of, Misquoting Truth by Timothy James and Misquotes in Misquoting Jesus by Dillon Burroughs, have already been written debunking Ehrman's work.  If you search for "misquoting jesus" on Amazon, these titles come up as results.  Furthermore, the Wikipedia entry under "Misquoting Jesus" links to this "critical review" by Dan Wallace, who is debating Ehrman in April, as is James White in January.  (White alludes to the Roberts debate and his appraisal of Ehrman's scholarship on Hugh Hewitt's program in this video.)  Frankly, if Hitchens can't find anyone to respond to Bart Ehrman, the most charitable guess I can hazard is that he has put very, very little effort into this quest.

But here's just one more example and then I'm going to bed.  I was going to deal with Hitchens' non-existent Biblical hermeneutic, but at this point, really, who cares?  Recently, Hitchens debated Rabbi Shmuley Boteach at the renowned 92nd Street Y in New York.  Now, you know how after you watch some debates you're not sure exactly who won, because one side seemed to make better arguments, but then again that could just be your prejudice because you agree with them, and on the other hand that side made a better performance, but to what extent does that matter, etc. etc.?  If you want a very clear example of a debate in which one side definitely wins, even if they're on the wrong side, watch this debate between Hitchens and Boteach.  It reminds me of what happens at 3:42-48 minutes into this video.  (Hint: Boteach is the glass.)  However, the good rabbi does get the last laugh: At one memorable point in the debate (it starts 64:00 into the video), Boteach gets very heated over Hitchens' claim on page 208 of his book that "many Israeli religious courts" affirm that Baruch Goldstein's decision not to treat Gentiles on the Sabbath was the fulfillment of rabbinic law.  He demands that Hitchens name a single mainstream rabbinic court which would rule in Dr. Goldstein's favour, to which Hitchens calmly supplies a reference to the book Jewish History, Jewish Religion by his "great mentor in Spinoza studies", Dr. Israel Shahak.  Now here is a textbook example of how easily the wool can be pulled over the eyes of even intelligent audience members.  Consider this blog entry by a "freethinker" who attended the debate:

"The highlight of the evening came when Boteach accused Hitchens of lying in his book 'God is Not Great' when he made the assertion that Rabbinical courts in Israel had sided with the fanatical Dr. Baruch Goldstein (murderer of 29 Arab Muslims praying at the Cave of the Patriarchs in 1994,) regarding his refusal to treat non-arabs while working as a physician in the Israeli Army. Boteach challenged Hitchens to name one court that sided with Goldstein and offered to buy a hundred copies of Hitchens’ book if he could. Hitchens promptly named a court, a living source for the information, and a book detailing this along with the name of the book’s publisher. Boteach then attempted to drown out the hoots of the crowd by rephrasing the terms of his challenge to show that he hadn’t, in fact, just been humiliated in front of the audience."

Read this carefully and you'll notice that the blogger claims Hitchens named a court.  He did no such thing.  He did name the late Israel Shahak (incidentally, not "a living source"- again, minor point, but notice the psychological effect of Hitchens' presentation on audience members, and how his arguments become stronger than they originally were upon going through their intellectual filters), his book, and its publisher (for some reason, naming the publisher makes your claims sound better-researched), and he did it all very dryly (at one point quipping "a second ago you mentioned the term 'character assassination'- be careful your character doesn't commit suicide in front of everyone in this room").  All this in contrast to Boteach, so flustered that at one point he was literally flailing his arms, which gives the impression that Hitchens had all the facts and Boteach is an ignorant fool.  However, if you listen carefully, Hitchens' entire claim is riding upon Israel Shahak's authority- and credibility.  After the debate, Rabbi Boteach wrote a column for the Jerusalem Post documenting that Shahak, as the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America calls him, was "one of the world's leading anti-Semites" who admitted to fabricating stories about religiously-based Jewish racism against Gentiles.  I have linked to the Huffington Post's edition of this column because it includes as a sort of appendix an e-mail Christopher Hitchens sent to the moderator of the debate, Dr. Neil Gillman, reiterating that Shahak was the source of his information about the Rabbinical Court of Jerusalem, followed by the text of an e-mail Rabbi Boteach sent to Hitchens politely repeating the facts in his column to the effect that Shahak is an unreliable and discredited source.  In other words, we know that Hitchens has been informed that Shahak is not a credible source, and so if he does not either provide another source of documentation for the claim about Goldstein in his book or publicly retract this claim, he is permitting a falsehood to be propagated to everyone who purchases god is Not Great.

That's all for now, folks.

In Christ, and for the gospel of the kingdom,
Brett

Some thoughts on divine sovereignty.

In Isaiah 10, God declares, "O Assyrian, the rod of mine anger, and the staff in their hand is mine indignation." (verse 5)  As per the covenantal conditions (Leviticus 26, Deuteronomy 28), Israel, having departed from the way of the LORD, was due to be punished by a heathen nation; in this case, the empire of Assyria.  Now we read something very fascinating: "I will send him against an hypocritical nation, and against the people of my wrath will I give him a charge, to take the spoil, and to take the prey, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets.  Howbeit he meaneth not so, neither doth his heart think so; but it is in his heart to destroy and cut off nations not a few.  For he saith, Are not my princes altogether kings?  Is not Calno as Carchemish? is not Hamath as Arpad? is not Samaria as Damascus?  As my hand hath found the kingdoms of the idols, and whose graven images did excel them of Jerusalem and of Samaria; Shall I not, as I have done unto Samaria and her idols, so do to Jerusalem and her idols?" (verses 6-11)  In other words, it is Assyria's imperialistic pride which is driving it to perform all this evil and devestation; yet God "sent" this nation.  The Hebrew word translated "give him a charge" is tsâvâh, often translated "commanded", indicates that all this was happening on God's prerogative.  It becomes even more intruiging as we read on: "Wherefore it shall come to pass, that when the Lord hath performed his whole work upon mount Zion and on Jerusalem, I will punish the fruit of the stout heart of the king of Assyria, and the glory of his high looks.  For he saith, By the strength of my hand I have done it, and by my wisdom; for I am prudent: and I have removed the bounds of the people, and have robbed their treasures, and I have put down the inhabitants like a valiant man: And my hand hath found as a nest the riches of the people: and as one gathereth eggs that are left, have I gathered all the earth; and there was none that moved the wing, or opened the mouth, or peeped." (verses 12-14)  Now God is going to punish Assyria for the pride which motivated it to do what God had ordained for it to do!  I'm really curious as to what an Open Theist does with this passage.

Now, the Bible, I believe, indirectly tells us how God went about "sending" Assyria for this task.  1 Chronicles 5 tells us that after Israel "transgressed against the God of their fathers, and went a whoring after the gods of the people of the land, whom God destroyed before them" (verse 25), "the God of Israel stirred up the spirit of Pul king of Assyria, and the spirit of Tilgathpilneser king of Assyria, and he carried them away, even the Reubenites, and the Gadites, and the half tribe of Manasseh, and brought them unto Halah, and Habor, and Hara, and to the river Gozan, unto this day" (verse 26).  Now how did God go about doing this?  We can see a parrallel to this verse in 2 Samuel 24:1: "And again the anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel, and he moved David against them to say, Go, number Israel and Judah."  This, in turn, must be cross-referenced with the account of this story in 1 Chronicles 21:1: "And Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel."  The old problem of how to resolve God stirring up David and Satan stirring up David is really a false one.  In Job 1-2, we see clearly that Satan approaches God for permission to assault Job and is granted it with clear restrictions- it is clear that Satan is not asking God to do anything, he is asking to be able to assault Job himself.  "Behold, all that he hath is in thy power; only upon himself put not forth thine hand." (ch. 1:12)  "Behold, he is in thine hand; but save his life." (ch. 2:6)  Yet Job 42:11 refers to "all the evil that the LORD had brought upon him".  In other words, by permitting the devil leeway enough to do something, God is, practically, the one causing it to happen.  Compare also this account:

"And he said, Hear thou therefore the word of the LORD: I saw the LORD sitting on his throne, and all the host of heaven standing by him on his right hand and on his left.  And the LORD said, Who shall persuade Ahab, that he may go up and fall at Ramothgilead? And one said on this manner, and another said on that manner.  And there came forth a spirit, and stood before the LORD, and said, I will persuade him.  And the LORD said unto him, Wherewith? And he said, I will go forth, and I will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. And he said, Thou shalt persuade him, and prevail also: go forth, and do so.  Now therefore, behold, the LORD hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these thy prophets, and the LORD hath spoken evil concerning thee." -1 Kings 22:19-23

Again we see that by granting the devil permission to do the evil he intends, God is the one "causing" it to happen while not being the author of evil Himself.  In this way, men can be led to evil by demons, and be wholly responsible for it (for it was them that yielded to temptation), and yet still be serving God's purposes.  Thus Joseph could tell his brothers, "But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive." (Genesis 50:20)  Thus Jesus can lament, "The Son of man goeth as it is written of him: but woe unto that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! it had been good for that man if he had not been born." (Matthew 26:24; see also Mark 14:21)  (Again, remember, Satan entered into Judas before he betrayed Christ, which ties in with Job, Ahab, etc.)

What inspired me to try to collect my scatterbrained thoughts and present them here was this thread I happened upon by accident, where the main objection, it seemed, to the idea that God has a prescriptive and a decretive will was epitomized in remarks like this: "You paint a picture of God saying 'don't do this'. Yet God wills that we do just that!"  To those who agree with this objection, may I ask: How exactly can the Psalmist write, "Surely the wrath of man shall praise thee" (Psalm 76:10) when "the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God" (James 1:20)?  Now this is hardly a neat little resolution to the whole sovereignty/responsibility conundrum, but I find it fascinating that right after the passage I've quoted, God through the Prophet Isaiah asks something with a remarkably familiar tone: "Shall the axe boast itself against him that heweth therewith? or shall the saw magnify itself against him that shaketh it? as if the rod should shake itself against them that lift it up, or as if the staff should lift up itself, as if it were no wood." (Isaiah 10:15)  We usually think that in Romans 9:20-21, the Apostle Paul was quoting Isaiah 45:9, which is doubtless true, but may I suggest he may have had this verse in mind as well?

I'll probably end up writing more later.

In Christ, and for the gospel of the kingdom,
Brett