Forgiving those who haven't wronged you

I've often wondered about the problem of forgiving those who haven't wronged you.

Suppose, just for example, that I have a dear woman friend whose husband, whom I knew only somewhat, leaves her for another woman, betraying both her and their children.

It's not my business to forgive him, right? He hasn't done anything to me. But as I watch her heartbreak and that of the children and see all the harm he has caused, I become angrier and angrier. I may even fantasize about getting a chance to tell him off someday, to bring him to his senses, of course. Of course. Well, no, actually, just to tell him off.

Is it even meaningful to speak of my forgiving him? The notion of a debt, connected repeatedly in Scripture (both in Christ's parables and in the Lord's Prayer) with forgiveness, doesn't seem to apply in such a case. He doesn't owe me a debt, and it would be presumptuous in the extreme for me to forgive him for what he's done to others, as if I could tell him, "You're free of the debt you owe for all the harm you've done to your wife and children."

This question has bothered me for a long time, because psychologically, I think one can get so resentful on others' behalf that one really needs to forgive. It's often said that holding a grudge is a problem chiefly for the harm it does to the soul of one holding the grudge. But how to go about forgiving in such a case?

As I've been reading Marilynne Robinson's novel Gilead and thinking about it for a review, it has seemed to me that I get a little glimpse of the answer. In a sense, the husband in my example has wronged his wife's friends as well as his wife and children. In a sense, he's wronged a whole bunch of people, because he has, we might say, messed up the world by his sin. That sin causes a ripple effect of pain and suffering both in the people he has wronged directly and also in the vicarious suffering taken on by those who love them. In that way, he has wronged me. But this fact, which hardly seems like good news, actually is good news, because, since he has wronged me, I also can have my own small share in forgiving him and in laying aside my resentment--which really can be hatred--and my grudge. That doesn't, of course, mean that he is clean of his sin before God, if he hasn't repented it and turned back, done what he can to make amends, and so forth. But that is between him and God. And if there are costs to be paid with the civil authorities (for example, if we are talking about a crime for which they are to execute justice), that, too, is between him and them. My own forgiveness, however, is made possible both by the grace of God and by the fact of the indirect wrong done to me.

Thoughts?

Few thoughts and a few songs

Tomorrow I'll see if I can rustle up something more profound and serious to say. No promises.

For now, here is some more music with a few thoughts.

These are all obviously meant to be fun, but this first one does make me think of a passage in the novel Gilead. The down-and-out character Jack Boughton tells of going to a tent meeting. At that meeting, a man next to him "went down" as if he had been shot. Jack says he thought that if he'd been standing a couple of feet to the left, it would have been him, which is funny and sad all at once. The other man gets up and says that he is clean and that he was the worst of sinners. Jack is just embarrassed at the time, but when he tells the story, he tells it wistfully. He says that if God had saved him there, he could have looked people in the eyes. I can't help thinking of that every time the GVB sings, "Jesus' blood can make the vilest sinner clean."



This next one is related, though even less serious and more rousing. I'm told that despite the slight bluegrass sound of the piano (Gordon Mote is incredible) and the guitar, it is really Gospel and not bluegrass. "Child Forgiven"



And last of all, for pure fun, without a stitch of serious content, here is "Swing Down Chariot," combining the talents of the GVB and Signature Sound Quartet. But y'know what this one made me think of? Some of what Anthony Esolen (see his bio at Mere Comments from the sidebar--no independent link available) has written about male bonding and masculine activities. One of the neatest things about Bill Gaither is the way that he has acted as a mentor for younger singers over a period of many years. The "men doing something hard and skilled together" feeling comes across very strongly to me in this video. Notice Marsh Hall and Wes Hampton practically high-fiving each other at the end. (Advertising note: The Youtube videos of SSQ and GVB have motivated Eldest Daughter to buy their DVD, Together.)

"Lead the Way"

By one of those happy liturgical coincidences, Valentine's Day this year falls on the Sunday right before Ash Wednesday, for which I Corinthians 13 is the reading and for which this is the collect:

O Lord, who hast taught us that all our doings without charity are nothing worth; Send thy Holy Ghost, and pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of charity, the very bond of peace and of all virtues, without which whosoever liveth is counted dead before thee. Grant this for thine only Son Jesus Christ’s sake. Amen.

Blind singer Ken Medema has a song called "Lead the Way," unfortunately not available anywhere on-line that I can find. It begins, "There's no way in this world that I can do everything that love means for me to do. But as long as morning breaks another day, Lord, I'm yours, I'll follow, lead the way." I remember thirty years ago or so having an earnest conversation with a young friend about that song. He opined that it implied that God is asking us to do something strictly impossible, which makes God unjust. If there's no way in this world that I can do everything that love means for me to do, he argued, how can I be blamed for not doing it?

In strict logic and taking the song with undue literalness, he was right. But anyone who has ever read I Corinthians 13 knows quite well what Medema means. There's certainly no way in this world that I will do and be everything that love means for me to do and to be. The only solution is the grace of God and our own willingness to keep on receiving it. The only sin that cannot be forgiven, because by definition it involves the rejection of forgiveness, is despair. C. S. Lewis says,

No amount of falls will really undo us if we keep on picking ourselves up each time. We shall of course be very muddy and tattered children by the time we reach home, but the bathrooms are all ready, the towels put out, and the clean clothes in the airing cupboard. The only fatal thing is to lose one's temper and give it up.

And God is ready to pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of charity, which leaves us no excuses whatsoever.

Now, for a bonus, though not directly related to the post topic, one of the quieter Gospel numbers on my list of songs to embed--"There is a River."

Privacy warning regarding Yahoo mail

Hey, all you Yahoo mail users out there. I just found out that Yahoo Mail (you know, the thing you thought you were using just for e-mail) is now pretending to be Facebook and being, if possible, even worse than Facebook about privacy. Suddenly, out of nowhere, Yahoo mail is making available to the public your birthday, including your age, and your location without your permission. Those under age 18 do not have their age displayed. You can get it to hide your age if you are over 18, but the location and the birthday day and month will continue to be publicly available information. Your only recourse is to put in a phony location and birthday, which I think is perfectly justified, considering that the information is no one else's business and certainly is not something Yahoo has the right unilaterally to publish.

Naturally, if you start using their posting option and posting "statuses" (see the Facebook envy coming out?), adding more information to your profile, and the like, you'll have to encounter a whole web of privacy settings and such, which I have no interest in mastering, so I just don't use those features.

It's particularly outrageous that minor children have their locations displayed as part of their public profile without their or their parents' consent now on Yahoo, and the only way to get around this is to discover it and enter something like "Undisclosed Locationville, AK," on your child's profile. I find this really angering.

So far, Google mail has not jumped on this bandwagon all the way. Gmail has added a "buzz" feature which is similar, but here's the difference: Thus far, gmail does not automatically generate a public profile for you without your consent, as Yahoo did. You have to create such a profile deliberately if you want to use the "buzz" feature, so if you just don't use that feature, you don't have a gmail profile. Of course, if you have a blogger account, such as the one I have for this blog, you already have a Google profile, but you made that one on purpose and can control its contents. So Yahoo gets my thumbs down and Gmail my thumbs up on the privacy front.

"No Other Name But Jesus" and "He Touched Me"

It had been so long since I heard this song that at first I told Eldest Daughter that I didn't know it. How could I have forgotten?

Steve Green praises the name of Jesus:



It led me to reflect on the phenomenon of hand-raising. In the churches in which I was raised, hand-raising was a no-no. Way too Pentecostal. (Though it has Scriptural warrant in 2 Timothy 2:8.) The hand-lifting you see in the Gaither band reunion represents what I might call the evangelical compromise. Nobody gets up and starts dancing around. It's not a "me" thing, but it is a way of using one's posture and body to express praise to God. The nearest Anglican or traditional Catholic equivalent, I suppose, is kneeling. But that is different, too. Just interesting to reflect on.

Next, a beloved oldie, with a group put together by Gaither only at the reunion:



I hear some guy named Elvis also covered this one once...

Judge sends an ultimatum to Lisa Miller--wherever she may be

A follow-up on this story:

A judge has said that if Lisa Miller does not turn over her child to her lesbian ex-lover Janet Jenkins (no relation to the child, Isabella) by February 23, he will "consider all possible sanctions under the law"--presumably a threat to issue an arrest warrant. So far Judge Cohen has not issued a warrant for Miller, who disappeared with daughter Isabella last month.

Alert reader Scott noticed that the Protect Isabella Coalition web site has disappeared. Life Site News also notes that Lisa Miller's Facebook page is gone.

Gaither vocal band reunion music I

Back to music. I hope my readers who aren't into the same kind of music I'm into don't mind the gospel and Christian contemp. too much. (But look below. There's a hymn in this post.) I've just discovered a bit of a treasure trove through Eldest Daughter in the form of a whole bunch of Youtube videos from a 2008 (I'm told) reunion of the Gaither vocal band. There are quite a few that I want to post here, just so those who do enjoy these kinds of things can have their attention drawn to them. I'll just start with a couple and put them up one or two at a time.

The reunion is star-studded--Larnelle Harris, Steve Green, Russ Taff, etc. I'm not as familiar with all these as Eldest Daughter, and she keeps having to tell me who's who. Guy Penrod I had never seen before. He looks, unfortunately, like a failed try-out for the part of Gandalf, but he can sing.

So first of all, fun--"He Came Down To My Level."



I love the spirit in these videos. You feel like you're really there. It's like getting together with friends and singing for fun. And there's kind of a neat masculine atmosphere, too. The band is a men's group. The wives are there, but in the background. The men are having a good time singing together.

Now here's an unlikely one. Neither gospel nor Christian contemporary. A hymn. Moreover, a hymn they even have in my 1940 Anglican hymnal. Even a "song to die for"--that is, a song about life and death and the meaning of all of life for a Christian. Done a capella--bit of a Glad sound. Very, very classy. Listen to it even if you don't like CCM.

"Oh Love That Will Not Let Me Go."



More in other posts.

Update: Singin' in the shower. Includes "Oh Love That Will Not Let Me Go" and also--even better, in this recording, IMO--"That Great Gettin' Up Morning" and "Good News, the Chariot's Comin'."

Rifqa's parents refuse to give up

Rifqa Bary's parents and their CAIR lawyer are furious: Apparently Rifqa's keepers with Franklin County Children's Services lifted her isolation to some extent after she was declared a dependent of the State of Ohio. We now learn (from their furious reaction) that during these ten days she was even--I know this will shock you--allowed to go to church. Can't have that.

So they are "going back on" the deal for her to be a dependent of the State of Ohio until she turns 18. What does this mean? I don't know. Can they just throw the dependency into question like that by sheer fiat? Their demands now include a full-blown dependency trial, which they had previously waived, and the removal of her present guardian ad litem and court-appointed attorney. Y'know, it's a funny thing the way Rifqa's GALs and court-appointed attorneys, whatever their limitations and faults, are never willing to enforce what her parents want. I think she must be a very lovable girl.

This poor girl, in her senior year of high school, once again doesn't know what the future will bring. I thank God that her isolation was lifted for a short while. These things can be changed on a day-to-day basis, and who knows if the case goes to trial whether she will be returned to isolation.

Heageny has the story here.

Atlas Shrugged readers are asking questions of Atlas-friend lawyer John Jay to get his take on this latest development. That will make it worth reading the comments thread there, at least for me. I'll pass on what I glean for those who don't read Atlas.

Music from Memory Lane

Eldest Daughter has been foraging amongst my old cassette tapes and vinyl records. She found a Steve Green tape and promptly went on-line to find digital versions of his music. She found the performance below of "God and God Alone"--which sounds just like the tape version. She has, of course, researched what Steve is up to now, and she says that he doesn't try to hit as many high notes but is still singing well. She also informs me that for an awful period later on he did sport a mullet but mercifully not for very long.

It's hard to believe he was only about thirty when he recorded this. He has a wonderfully mature voice, while looking incredibly young.

Enjoy.

Good news for Rifqa Bary, though she remains isolated

I have finally managed to get on Pastor Jamal Jivanjee's mailing list for updates on Rifqa Bary, so I got this hot off the press. Pastor Jivanjee reports that today, Jan. 19, Rifqa was declared a dependent of the State of Ohio. According to him, this will insure that she stays in foster care until she turns 18. I have heard this conclusion disputed elsewhere, but it's definitely a big step forward for her and apparently creates some sort of prima facie case that she will not be immediately returned to her parents. It takes her out of a legal limbo.

Jamal reports that Rifqa had to agree "that she violated rules by fleeing her home." Well, um, yes, in one sense. I'm not sure exactly what this admission on her part amounts to, legally. Pamela Geller is completely caught up in the Scott Brown Senate race but will probably have some thoughts on the legal angle concerning this admission by Rifqa in "exchange" for dependency.

Pastor Jivanjee reports that Rifqa remains isolated from fellow Christians, so the conditions of her imprisonment (and that really is what it amounts to) within the foster system has not changed. She is not permitted visitors or phone or e-mail contact with any of her Christian friends, according to past reports by Pastor Jivanjee. She will not be eighteen until Aug. 10, which is a long time to remain in something akin to solitary confinement and, for a Christian, isolated in the flesh from the Body of Christ.

But now she has hope that she will not simply be abruptly returned to her parents and whisked off to Sri Lanka, and hope will help a great deal.

Also, we know that no Christian is truly isolated, for Our Lord is always with us, and the Body of Christ is with Rifqa in prayer. Continue in prayer for her. I will continue to give updates, especially if I can find out whether she is still being allowed to receive cards and notes of encouragement.

Pastor Jivanjee reports that her dependency hearing for January 28 has now been canceled.

What not to tell a young inquirer about the evidences of the Christian faith

This post by Professor (of a named chair at Princeton) George Hunsinger was recently drawn to my attention by a friend. It is Hunsinger's answer to a letter--either a real letter or an imaginary letter, he does not say, though I suspect it's real--from a young person inquiring about the reliability of the Gospels. Evidently Hunsinger's correspondent is inclined to disbelieve Christianity because he does not think the Gospels are reliable. Hunsinger gives only a couple of quotations from the inquiring letter, because the inquiring letter is just a launching point for Hunsinger's own (dreadful) views about evidence, faith, and Christianity.

To be fair, Hunsinger gives a somewhat grudging tip of the hat to some good books, including several I have recommended myself--Bauckham, Bruce, and N.T. Wright. (See my post here where I mention several of these.) In a sense, he recommends them to his correspondent. But his treatment of them is extremely tentative, and he repeatedly issues caveats to the effect that they overstate their case, that the reader shouldn't think from his recommending the books that evidence is really what it's all about, and so forth.

Hunsinger's statements about the strength of the historical evidence are strangely contradictory, leaving the reader with the impression that Hunsinger doesn't think much of the evidence, even though in one place he says that there is a "strong case." If the post really was written originally as a letter to a real person, I cannot understand why Hunsinger did not read it over, even once, after writing it and say to himself, "He's gonna wonder what in the world I'm even saying." Viz.:

I think the Christian faith has to meet a minimal standard, but only a minimal standard.

In the end I think the historical evidence remains ambiguous and inconclusive, taken as a whole. There is not a lot of data to go on, which allows the evidence to be read either positively or negatively. Positively, certain lines of plausibility can be established for the "factual" claims of the gospel on historical grounds, but negatively, on the other hand, these lines of reasoning are always open to challenge and doubt. There is, again, not enough evidence to work with one way or the other that would allow us to come to unshakable historical conclusions.

Nevertheless, a strong historical case can indeed be made in favor of Christ's resurrection, for example, but not one that I think is beyond "reasonable" doubt. Reason, in any case, reaches its categorical limit here.

In his very intriguing book Jesus and the Eyewitnesses (2008, 540 pp.), Bauckham makes a strong case for the general reliability of the gospels. I don't think the case is as iron-clad as he does, but I do regard it as impressive. Bauckham presents a very strong and learned argument that, contrary to much modern scholarship, the gospels did not arise very long after the fact.

The point is rather that the historical claims of the gospel are susceptible to a respectable defense.

A more popular but still scholarly work would be Fabricating Jesus: How Modern Scholars Distort the Gospels (2008) by Craig A. Evans (290 pp.). I again have the same kinds of reservations. In other words, I don't reject his arguments out of hand but I take them with a grain of salt. [ME: Does he even know what the idiom "take something with a grain of salt" means?] They are impressive but inconclusive, though they show why the minimal standard that I set forth earlier has actually been met, and more than met.

It is finally not we who read the NT, but the NT that reads us. It calls us and our detached role as would-be authoritative, evidence-weighing spectators radically into question.

(Clarification: The above paragraphs are all separate block quotations, not a single long quotation. They do not come immediately after one another in Hunsinger's piece.)

What a mish-mash. It's pretty safe to say, though (and if you have any doubt, I encourage you to read the entire post), that Hunsinger doesn't think all that much of the strength of the historical evidence for Christianity.

Moreover, it's safe to say that he thinks that's a good thing. Because it's when he gets up on his semi-Barthian high horse that Hunsinger really gets going and that we really find out where he's coming from. In brief, he likes what he takes to be the "inconclusive" and "ambiguous" nature of the historical evidence for Christianity, because the weakness of the case makes it possible for us to take a leap of faith, and that's really, in his view, what it's all about. For example,

The Christian faith is far more a matter of radical conversion than it is of rational persuasion. The claim that a marginal Jew who was put to death on a cross should have been raised from the dead so that he now reigns as Lord and Savior is never going to be plausible to rational or evidential considerations. It is always going to be foolishness...

The NT cannot be read intelligently unless it is read as a spiritual book, as opposed to a merely historical document. The truth to which it bears witness necessarily transcends every ordinary rational mode of perception. Unless the doors of perception are opened, and we begin thinking in a whole new framework, it will never make any sense.

This is all standard modernist fare, and God knows, it's been around poisoning seminaries, Protestant and Catholic alike, for far too long. But I ask you to think: When we say this sort of thing to our young people, I will tell you what we are saying to them. "The God I believe in asks of you that you show yourself truly abject by being willing to give up normal standards of evidence, being willing to believe the claims of Christianity on evidence that is not really all that good, evidence that is shaky and questionable. He asks, to at least some extent, that you check your mind at the door. That's a really radical commitment, and it's what God glories in and hence what we Christians glory in." Which is a recipe for driving away every thinking person who hears you.

A centerpiece of Hunsinger's position is the downplaying of the historical nature of the Gospels. For example,

What I am trying to suggest is that everything finally depends on what kind of documents the gospels and other NT writings are. They are not really historical reports. They do not fall into the category of report but rather into the category of witness. They all present themselves, in various ways, as witnesses to the Risen Christ. The picture of Jesus in the gospels, for example, represents an overlay of the Risen Christ upon the "historical" Jesus, because the point is that the historical Jesus and the Risen Christ are finally one and the same.

This is weaseling. Hunsinger carefully doesn't actually say that the Gospel writers inserted accounts of things that didn't really happen, in the prosaic sense of, you know, really happening, in order to show us the Risen Christ (note the heavy capital letter on "risen"). He doesn't, in fact, make himself very clear at all. What the dickens does it even mean to say that "the picture of Jesus in the gospels, for example, represents an overlay of the Risen Christ upon the 'historical' Jesus"? Why the quotation marks around the word 'historical'? Why, for that matter, does he put quotation marks around the word 'factual' in one of the quotations I gave above? What does this stuff about the capital-R Risen Christ have to do with the claim that the Gospels aren't really historical? That claim is, in any event, absolute balderdash, and dangerous balderdash at that. The Gospels most certainly are historical in genre, that specific sub-genre known as memoirs. They focus, to be sure, on a particular person. They are not meant to be chronicles of the general events of their time. But they are, indeed, meant to be reports of things that really happened in that boring, prosaic sense to which Hunsinger seems to have an allergy.

In contrast to Hunsinger's piece, and to show you by contrast just what feeble, confusing, and unsatisfactory fare Hunsinger is offering, I present you with two far more manly pieces of prose. The first is from C. S. Lewis, precisely on the question of whether the Gospels are historical reports (which Hunsinger expressly denies) or instead are "spiritual."

In what is already a very old commentary I read that the fourth Gospel is regarded by one school as a ‘spiritual romance’, ‘a poem not a history’, to be judged by the same canons as Nathan’s parable, the Book of Jonah, Paradise Lost ‘or, more exactly, Pilgrim’s Progress’. After a man has said that, why need one attend to anything else he says about any book in the world? Note that he regards Pilgrim’s Progress, a story which professes to be a dream and flaunts its allegorical nature by every single proper name it uses, as the closest parallel. Note that the whole epic panoply of Milton goes for nothing. But even if we leave our the grosser absurdities and keep to Jonah, the insensitiveness is crass–Jonah, a tale with as few even pretended historical attachments as Job, grotesque in incident and surely not without a distinct, though of course edifying, vein of typically Jewish humour. Then turn to John. Read the dialogues: that with the Samaritan woman at the well, or that which follows the healing of the man born blind. Look at its pictures: Jesus (if I may use the word) doodling with his finger in the dust; the unforgettable en de nux (xiii, 30). I have been reading poems, romances, vision-literature, legends, myths all my life. I know what they are like. I know that not one of them is like this. Of this text there are only two possible views. Either this is reportage–though it may no doubt contain errors–pretty close up to the facts; nearly as close as Boswell. Or else, some unknown writer in the second century, without known predecessors, or successors, suddenly anticipated the whole technique of modern, novelistic, realistic narrative. If it is untrue, it must be narrative of that kind. The reader who doesn’t see this has simply not learned to read.

C. S. Lewis, “Modern Theology and Biblical Criticism,” in Christian Reflections (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1967), pp. 154-55.

The other, older still (mid-1800's) is Simon Greenleaf:

All that Christianity asks of men on this subject, is, that they would be consistent with themselves; that they would treat its evidences as they treat the evidence of other things; and that they would try and judge its actors and witnesses, as they deal with their fellow men, when testifying to human affairs and actions, in human tribunals. Let the witnesses be compared with themselves, with each other, and with surrounding facts and circumstances; and let their testimony be sifted, as if it were given in a court of justice, on the side of the adverse party, the witness being subjected to a rigorous cross-examination. The result, it is confidently believed, will be an undoubting conviction of their integrity, ability, and truth. In the course of such an examination, the undesigned coincidences will multiply upon us at every step in our progress; the probability of the veracity of the witnesses and of the reality of the occurrences which they relate will increase, until it acquires, for all practical purposes, the value and force of demonstration.

Simon Greenleaf, The Testimony of the Evangelists

What is really radical--in the sense of being countercultural and shocking to many--is an evidentialism like Greenleaf's that insists that the Gospels not be treated with kid gloves. No contrast could be greater than that between Greenleaf's challenge to men to be "consistent with themselves" when they read and judge the Gospels and to judge them as they would judge the "evidences of other things" and Hunsinger's attempt prophylactically to ward off judgement from the NT by telling us that it "calls us and our detached role as would-be authoritative, evidence-weighing spectators radically into question," that it "transcends every ordinary rational mode of perception," that the claims of Christianity are "never going to be plausible to rational or evidential considerations." Whence comes the great difference between these writers? It comes from the fact that Greenleaf, unlike Hunsinger, has confidence in the historicity of the Gospels and therefore in their ability to bear such scrutiny. It comes, in short, from the fact that Hunsinger represents a theological establishment that has lost its nerve.

No less than a rigid fundamentalist who would be terribly shaken if he discovered the world to be more than 6,000 years old, Hunsinger wants the Bible to be protected from the possible buffeting of unyielding facts by being shut up in a locked box marked "Faith." The rigid fundamentalist locks up the Bible (and his interpretation of it) to protect it from possible refutation by not allowing its interpretation to be influenced in any respect by facts discovered independently. The fuzzy-headed modernist theologian locks the Bible up to keep it safe from refutation by insisting that it isn't really historical at all. Each of these asks for a double standard in his own favor, because he is not really confident that these sacred texts can meet the challenge of being treated like ordinary documents.

The reality (surprising to some) in New Testament studies is that the Christian can only benefit from a "no double standard" approach, for it is the secularists who prefer to remain ignorant of the normal standards of historiography and to treat the Gospels as unreliable if, for example, they do not coincide with one another in every detail (though of course if they did so coincide, the secularists would be the first to point out the evidence of entire collusion and copying).

As a bonus, here is Thomas Chalmers on the historicity of the Gospels. His point is that the evangelists were not afraid to submit their account to historical judgement, precisely because their story was historically true.

Had the evangelists been false historians, they would not have committed themselves upon so many particulars. They would not have furnished the vigilant inquirers of that period with such an effectual instrument for bringing them into discredit with the people; nor foolishly supplied, in every page of their narrative, so many materials for a cross-examination, which would infallibly have disgraced them.

Now, we of this age can institute the same cross-examination. We can compare the evangelical writers with contemporary authors, and verify a number of circumstances in the history, and government, and peculiar economy of the Jewish people. We therefore have it in our power to institute a cross-examination upon the writers of the New Testament; and the freedom and frequency of their allusions to these circumstances supply us with ample materials for it. The fact, that they are borne out in their minute and incidental allusions by the testimony of other historians, gives a strong weight of what has been called circumstantial evidence in their favour. As a specimen of the argument, let us confine our observations to the history of our Saviour’s trial, and execution, and burial. They brought him to Pontius Pilate. We know both from Tacitus and Josephus, that he was at that time governor of Judea. A sentence from him was necesary before they could proceed to the execution of Jesus; and we know that the power of life and death was usually vested in the Roman governor. Our Saviour was treated with derision; and this we know to have been a customary practice at that time, previous to the execution of criminals, and during the time of it. Pilate scourged Jesus before he gave him up to be crucified. We know from ancient authors, that this was a very usual practice among the Romans. The account of an execution generally run in this form: He was stripped, whipped, and beheaded or executed. According to the evangelists, his accusation was written on the top of the cross; and we learn from Suetonius and others, that the crime of the person to be executed was affixed to the instrument of his punishment. According to the evangelist, this accusation was written in three different languages; and we know from Josephus, that it was quite common in Jerusalem to have all public advertisements written in this manner. According to the evangelists, Jesus had to bear his cross; and we know from other resources of information, that this was the constant practice of these times. According to the evangelists, the body of Jesus was given up to be buried at the request of friends. We know that, unless the criminal was infamous, this was the law, or the custom with all Roman governors.

These, and a few more particulars of the same kind, occur within the compass of a single page of the evangelical history.

Thomas Chalmers, The Evidence and Authority of the Christian Revelation, 6th ed. (Andover: Flagg & Gould, 1818), pp. 55-57.

I find that I see so little rip-roaring evidentialism being written these days that quotations like these have something of the invigorating quality of cold water splashed in the face. These men were not afraid of objective evidential judgement. Nor should we be. I encourage all of you who teach or who work in any pastoral capacity: Teach those under your care and influence that the Gospels don't need affirmative action. The Christ of history vs. Christ of faith shtick has run its course, and we will be much, much better off if we leave it behind, permanently.

(Another post that might be of interest is here. Don't forget the post already linked on "Evidential Ammo For the Christian Soldier," here.)

An annotated bibliography with more material, written by Esteemed Husband, is here.

HT to Esteemed Husband, Tim McGrew, for the quotations from Lewis, Greenleaf, and Chalmers and for the links to them.

Next Rifqa hearing--Updated

Rifqa's next actual hearing is January 28. There is a minor hearing on January 19, but according to Jamal Jivanjee, this will be only to hear motions. I'm not sure that's always "only," because some of the motions from the parents' attorneys have been outrageous, but Jamal's take is that the one on January 28 is the one to focus our prayers on.

I already reported in the post just below that Rifqa's isolation has tightened since the December 22 hearing. Pamela Geller has a typically hysterical and unclear post on something like the same topic here. (Warning: The new banner is very tacky, even worse than the previous one.) I'm becoming frustrated with Geller's style, chiefly because she reports things entirely uncited. She doesn't even say, "An anonymous source told me that X." She just says things, leaving one unclear as to whether she is inferring this from some other fact or was told it clearly by someone. It makes it difficult to know how to take some of her claims. For example, she says that the magistrate at the last hearing said that there were to be "no surprises" in the case and that everything was to be discussed between her (the judge) and the lawyers in chambers ahead of time. Well, first of all, why was this not reported at the time in Jamal's report on the hearing? Since Pamela wasn't at the hearing, whom did she get this from?

But Pamela goes on, "no Islam. You can not introduce Islam." Unclear: Is this supposed to mean that the magistrate told the lawyers they cannot introduce Islam in court? Was this supposedly said in open court? I cannot believe it would not have been reported until now--by Pamela or Jamal, if no one else--if this has been known since the December 22 hearing. So, what is Pamela saying? And if she is saying that the magistrate says they cannot introduce Islam, then why the dickens does she keep abusing Rifqa's lawyers for not introducing Islam, as though it is entirely up to them?

Don't misunderstand me: I suspect that when Pamela reports something definitely and specifically as fact, she has reasons for doing so. But it would be helpful if she would tell us her reasons and also helpful if she would organize her posts better so they aren't just confusing, hodge-podge rants.

In this most recent post, she also reports (without saying how she knows it or providing a link to a source) that Rifqa's foster home location is now known to her parents' (CAIR-connected) attorney. This could be a very serious thing and very dangerous to Rifqa. We should pray for her safety all the more. But I wish Pamela would give some idea how she knows this.

Let us keep Rifqa in prayer on the 28th and every day as well.

Update: Now confirmed: Rifqa's parents and their attorney received her present foster care address. I hold no brief for Meredith Heagny of the Columbus Dispatch. She is a dhimmi reporter and pretty clearly anti-Rifqa. But when somebody leaks something to Heagny (whether they should have or not), she tells you the background, so that you believe her. Rifqa's attorneys have asked that she be moved to a new foster home, because in the course of the discovery process leading up to her hearing, her current address was revealed by Franklin County Children's Services(!) to all parties, including her parents and their attorney.

Also, it now appears that a person who has been named all along as Rifqa's guardian ad litem is in fact one of her own lawyers and that she has a different guardian ad litem (and has had all along) whose name I had not previously known. Angela Lloyd, whom I have believed was her G.A.L. and who at least appeared to be to some degree on her side, is not her G.A.L. but one of her own lawyers. The name of Rifqa's actual G.A.L. is Bonnie Vangeloff. This may shed some light on a deal Rifqa's parents' attorney struck with Rifqa's own attorneys after the December 22 hearing to have all Rifqa's mail screened by the guardian ad litem (discussed by Jamal Jivanjee here). At the time, I did not report this specific development, because I believed the screening was being done by Angela Lloyd, to whose c/o address all mail was being sent anyway. Now it emerges that this was indeed a change. I still believe that we should send notes of encouragement to Rifqa in the hopes that Vangeloff will let them through.

The third unpleasant thing that has emerged is that Rifqa's outgoing mail is at least sometimes being copied and given to FCCS, which is then moving to cut off her out-going mail to specific people. Rifqa's attorneys have agreed that she cannot send or receive any communication from the Lorenzes and Brian Williams, the people who helped her when she first ran away from home. This specified cut-off of outgoing mail was requested after Atty. Jim Zorn of FCCS (who has been a real mover in the "isolate Rifqa" push since the day she arrived in Ohio) found out that (horrors!) Rifqa "caused a birthday card to be sent" to Pastor Lorenz which "contained various statements that are of concern." This is all in the Heagny article linked above. Evidently Heagny doesn't know, so neither do we, what Rifqa could possibly have said that caused Zorn to try to forbid her to write to the Lorenzes. But who sent Zorn a copy of Rifqa's birthday card to Pastor Lorenz? Very creepy.

Two people to pray for

One of them, my readers are already praying for--Rifqa Bary. Jamal Jivanjee has another update on her situation here. He says that prior to the December 22 hearing, Rifqa was being allowed to talk with one friend on the phone but is now not permitted to do so. He also outlines the probable strategy of her parents' lawyer in trying to get her denied dependency status--to argue that there was no "conflict" in her home (which is legally significant in Ohio) until one was created by "brainwashing" from her outside Christian friends. Jamal urges writing to the head of Franklin County Children's Services, Eric Fenner, to protest Rifqa's increasing isolation.

The second, I just got an update about from the Pearcey Report. Some of you may have heard of the case of Lisa Miller. Lisa used to be a lesbian and entered into a civil union in Vermont. She was artificially inseminated and gave birth to a daughter, Isabella, now seven years old. Lisa renounced her lesbianism when Isabella was very little (my recollection is that she was about a year old), returned to her Christian faith, got a legal "divorce" (or whatever one calls it) from her civil union lover, and fled to Virginia, whose laws expressly do not recognize any form of same-sex union, including civil unions. However, Vermont declared custody over this as a child custody case after the model of a divorce case and ordered that Isabella be sent to spend days at a time with the former lover, who, of course, is no relation to the child at all, not even (for that matter) an adoptive parent. Lisa complied with some of these orders, but they were very traumatic for Isabella, who said both that she wanted to die after one such visit and that she was forced to bathe naked with the former lesbian lover. So Lisa disobeyed some of the court orders for visitation. The judge threatened her and eventually carried out his threat to punish her by ordering full custody of Isabella to the lesbian lover. This traumatic seizure of Isabella by the state of Vermont for a lesbian completely unrelated to Isabella, whom Isabella does not know and does not want to live with, was to be carried out by the first of the year, 2010.

Lisa and Isabella have disappeared. Their whereabouts are unknown; they are in hiding. The former lover, Janet Jenkins, is attempting to have the police trace them and turn Isabella over to her.

May God protect them.

By the way, the next time someone suggests to you that civil unions ain't so bad and it's just the word "marriage" we should be protecting, point them to this case.

Star gazing post at W4

I felt like I ought to write a post about health care, giving a link to a post that at least (and at last) tells us something about the differences between the House and Senate versions. (Though I wish they'd tell us about the similarities, instead.)

But it'll wait. It'll wait. Bad news always waits.

Instead, I irresponsibly wrote a post on star gazing and put it up at W4 just now. Here it is.

We've been doing quite a bit of star gazing here, at least as much as we can given the fact that it's cloudy nine days out of ten. But Youngest Daughter always notices a clear day and pipes up, "Can we go star gazing tonight?" Neither frost nor cold deters her. Which is cool. And it's well worth it when the weather does permit. We've had a clear day today, so we'll see about tonight, even if I have the hardihood for only a few minutes out. It's nice to be in touch with the constellations again. The early sunset helps a lot.

Happy New Year to all my readers!

The Imperials Live 1984--Bread Upon the Water

This is old, old Christian rock the way it should be. Rich, my friend, since you've posted some Christian rock at your site, this one's for you. Eldest Daughter found this performance for me on-line and included the audio track on my oldies Christmas present CD. It's a faster tempo than the studio version I already have, and of course the improvisation on the electric guitar is going to be different every time. Good old Armand Morales with his bass voice, beloved of all old Imperials fans.

Dig those haircuts! What were we thinking to wear our hair like that? I, of course, being a girl, never wore my hair like that. Enjoy. But don't bother listening if you hate old Christian country-rock.

Christmas presents and miscellaneous notes

I got an unexpected present yesterday. Eldest Daughter made me a CD with some oldies (by which she means, songs from the 1980's) on it. No playlist, which actually made it better, as every song is a surprise. She included "I Will Be Here," which I knew but didn't have on a CD. Just in case you aren't familiar with it, here it is.



A relative also sent us this CD, which I highly recommend. It's mostly settings of scripture and Psalms to music by Ortega himself with several wonderful hymn settings. I'm usually hidebound about new tunes to old hymns, and some of the hymns on this (like "All Creatures of Our God and King") are sung to their old tunes, but Ortega's new ones are beautiful as well.

It was a wonderful Christmas, very quiet, except when we were playing Mannheim Steamroller or Go Fish. (Go Fish has a great version of "White Christmas," but they should ditch the semi-rap version of "Little Drummer Boy"!) Faith's new Dover coloring book (from me) was a big hit with her older sisters and me as well. It has must-color pages, so I photocopied a page for all of us. (Ssshhh. Don't tell.) We sat around and colored last evening listening to music. I recommend it--if you have girls. I suppose boys wouldn't do it.

During the course of the day yesterday, probably inspired by Mannheim Steamroller's folk-type music, I got thinking about an instrument I lost about thirty years ago. It was a wonderful little thing. A man came to our high school, invited by our music teacher, and sold them to all the students for twenty dollars apiece. Twenty dollars was enough to pay, especially for my parents, that I shouldn't have lost it, but it was affordable if you tried. He called it a shepherd's pipe. It was the easiest thing to play in the world. When I'd been in grade school, I'd suffered trying to learn the recorder, which was all the rage with music teachers just then. Not only was the recorder hard to play--even for someone like me who can play the piano and read music--but to my ear it didn't sound all that good. The shepherd's pipe was wonderful. Mine was nickel plated and had a high, sweet sound a little like a piccolo. You simply played up the scale by covering the holes successively, and half-steps were played by half-holing. Nothing could be simpler. I left it lying in the ladies' bathroom at an evening school event, in the custom-made case my grandmother had sewn, and I never saw it again. It's bugged me ever since. When I've googled or asked music stores about a shepherd's pipe, I've gotten the proverbial blank stares. (Yes, Google can give you a blank stare.)

But, I've now made up my mind: It's a penny whistle. I don't know how many nickel-plated penny whistles there are out there, or if that's even important, but I'm convinced now that's what it is. Come better weather, when driving is once more simple and easy (along about May, I'm guessing), I'm going to try to find time to go to the big music store around here and ask if they have penny whistles or tin whistles. They're still only about twenty dollars. Could be fun.

Merry Christmas!

Though skeptics try at times, in the service of their own silly parallelisms, to imply that the December 25 date for Christmas is somehow essential to Christianity, most Christians know that this is not true. We don't actually know what time of year Our Lord was born.

But I think that those men who decided--whoever they were--to celebrate it in December were wise. Of course, they didn't foresee the spread of Christianity to the antipodes, where all is topsy-turvy and this time of year is warm, with long, sunny, days. Our brethren Down Under will have to forgive us for celebrating that whole, wonderful, awe-inspiring cultural structure that has grown up around the (probably deliberate) decision to celebrate the Feast of the Nativity at the time of the winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere, the time of darkness and cold.

Many beautiful carols have arisen out of this choice, but one of my favorites is "Lo, How a Rose," and in all of it, my favorite line in the English translation is

She bore to men a Savior, when half-spent was the night.

The allusion here is double. First, the line alludes to the quotation from the apocryphal Book of Wisdom which is used in the introit to the Mass for Christmas:

While all things were in quiet silence, and the night was in the midst of her course, Thine almighty Word, O Lord, leaped down from heaven from Thy royal throne.

But the phrase also alludes, probably, to Romans 13:12,

The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light.

By a happy accident, if it was an accident, of the translation, one can take the statement that the night was half-spent to mean either that the night was half over or that the night was half exhausted.

The time, in our world and in our country, is not bright. We may indeed feel that we are deep in the night, that the night is half-spent, and that our civilization, too, is half-spent, exhausted, its vital force and will to live running out.

The message of Christianity, embodied in the choice of the darkest time of the year for the celebration of the birth of the Light of the World, is that it is at just those times that God acts. Ever since Adam fell mankind has been in darkness. But St. John tells us that the light shone in the darkness, and the darkness was not able to overcome it. Into this, our dark world, God sent His Son, made of a woman, that we might receive the adoption of sons.

Thanks be to God.

Rifqa update

See longer version at W4 here. Short version--good news for now, but the hearings continue, and there is no clear end in sight or vindication of her right to be free of her family short of her 18th birthday.

"Break Forth O Beauteous Heavenly Light"--Glad

I'm Glad to have figured out how to embed this song. It might have been made for the group. I love this song. He is our peace!

Merry Christmas--Straight No Chaser

Enjoy.



I've never known what that song about Africa means--the one they turn into a Christmas song at the end. The SNC Christmas version is a lot better.

Fun, fun link. See also Bill Luse's post with a video of SNC in a Hardees restaurant here.

HT to my Facebook friend George.

And a blessed fourth Sundy in Advent. I hope to be able to write something more serious later this week!