Debunking the claim of "development" in the crucifixion narratives

I have recently been discussing with a friend the hypothesis, put forward by some skeptics of Christianity, that the gospels show evidence of legendary accretion in the form of the development of Jesus as a character in the crucifixion narratives. The general idea is supposed to be that we can see that Jesus changes from one crucifixion story to another in ways that are best explained by the hypothesis that the gospel writers were massaging or manipulating the portrayal of Jesus, putting words into his mouth, and so forth, rather than simply attempting to record historical events that lay within their knowledge or within the knowledge of their immediate sources. In particular, the claim is that the initial crucifixion stories in the earlier gospels Matthew and Mark portray a despairing Jesus and a prima facie meaningless crucifixion and that Jesus grows "nobler," more controlled, more martyr-like or even godlike, and the crucifixion more meaningful as the "line of development" proceeds through the gospels. This, in turn, is supposed to cast doubt on the idea that the gospels are simply memoirs of Jesus from people in the know. Rather, we are supposed to see them as having, at least to some degree, the characteristics of fictional portrayals which are therefore less than reliable concerning the actual details of what Jesus did and said.

In particular, the data used for this developmental hypothesis concerning the crucifixion narratives are

a) That Jesus says only, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" from the cross in Matthew and Mark.

b) That in Luke Jesus says, "Into thy hands I commend my spirit" when he dies, that he offers the thief on the cross a place in Paradise, and that he asks his father to forgive those who are crucifying him.

c) That Luke does not contain, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"

Although the following was not presented to me as a datum when I was informed of the details of this hypothesis, I can continue spinning this alleged pattern myself (momentarily, before debunking it) by pointing out

d) That Jesus commits his mother to the care of John in the gospel of John, which may be regarded as a noble, controlled, and meaningful act.

Dear reader, let me make some suggestions. When anybody claims that Jesus "develops" in the gospels, do the following: First, get a handle on what sort of trajectory of development is being claimed. Then, sit down, pick up your Bible, open it up, and read swathes of relevant text to see whether they in fact display such a pattern. Do not allow cherry-picked, even uber-cherry-picked data points to be treated as evidential in themselves. After all, your Bible is sitting right there, is it not? And there is likely to be more evidence in the Bible one way or another concerning this alleged pattern, is there not? And the facts thus far mentioned, even if correct as far as they go, are a pretty meager basis on which to build such an hypothesis, are they not?

Let me also suggest that you bear in mind all the other data we have that argue that the gospels were not massaged, fictional accounts but rather are memoirs coming from truthful eyewitnesses--data such as undesigned coincidences among the gospels (including in Jesus' trial before Pilate), unexplained allusions, pointless but truth-like details, the clearly unretouched and strongly Jewish account of Jesus' conception and birth in Luke, etc. With all this in mind, a couple of points like a-d above should be treated with grave skepticism when it is claimed that they establish a pattern of development. But in any event, the matter is quite easy to test. Which I did.  I widened my focus to the passion narratives conceived slightly more broadly than the words on the cross alone. There are probably even more points than what I am going to give, but here are the ones I found even just in a brief re-reading:

1) In all of the synoptic gospels, including Mark, Jesus says to the Sanhedrin, when asked if he is the Christ, the Son of God, "Ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power." In fact, the wording in Mark (which skeptics themselves generally take to be the earliest gospel) is one of the strongest: "I am, and ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven." Note that Jesus says this despite the fact that he has predicted his crucifixion (Mark 8:31). Therefore, not only does Mark not portray Jesus as surprised by his death or as seeing his death as a terrible and meaningless tragedy; Mark portrays Jesus as defying the Jewish leaders on the very eve of his death and predicting his own ultimate vindication and power!

2) These statements to the Sanhedrin are not found in John, the latest gospel! So in this area, there is exactly the opposite of any "development" of Jesus into a stronger, more godlike, or more in-charge person in the passion narratives.

3) All the synoptics record a) the darkness from the 6th to the 9th hour at Jesus' crucifixion, b) the rending of the veil of the temple, and c) the statement (attributed in Mark to the centurion), "Surely this was the Son of God." This is far from portraying the crucifixion as meaningless. These indications in the synoptics strongly imply a deep theological meaning in Jesus' death. The rending of the veil in the temple implies that his death had some sort of heavy theological effect concerning the Old Covenant. We can be sure that if these events occurred in John, they would be used to argue for "development" of Jesus, of Christology, and of the gospel writers' view of the meaning of the crucifixion. Yet they are in the earliest gospels, and...

4) John, the latest gospel, does not record the darkness, the rending of the veil, or the statement, "Surely this was the Son of God."

5) Of all the gospels, only Matthew states that the dead came forth after Jesus' crucifixion. Regardless of whether one thinks that this really happened or not, the point is that it is a counterexample to an alleged pattern of gradual development of significance from the earlier to the later gospels. Even Luke does not include this claim, and John certainly doesn't, though both are later than Matthew, but Matthew includes it along with the rending of the veil of the temple. Again, we can be sure that if Matthew were independently known to be the latest gospel, this would be used as evidence of the alleged pattern of development.

6) Of all of the gospels, only John, the latest, records the most human admission of physical pain and weakness in the words from the cross: "I thirst."

7) The three "noble" words from which, apparently, the skeptics are attempting to build their developmental thesis are, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do," "This day thou shalt be with me in Paradise," and "Into thy hands I commit my spirit." But in fact, these are recorded only in Luke and not in John! John has the more ambiguous, "It is finished" just before Jesus breathes his last. In John, Jesus is not shown asking his Father to forgive those who crucify him and is not shown offering a place in paradise to the thief on the cross. So what is the developmental thesis? That Jesus got "nobler" abruptly in Luke's portrayal, for some unknown reason, and then less "noble" and more pathetic and human in John's later portrayal?

All of this is in addition to,

8) The words, "My God, why hast thou forsaken me?" should by no means be taken to be simply an expression of despair on Jesus' part. While they may express deep suffering on his part, they are a direct allusion to Psalm 22, which contains rather amazingly coincidental phrases seeming to foretell crucifixion and which ends with the vindication of the speaker by God. While the precise reasons for which Jesus cried out this phrase from the cross are not revealed directly in Scripture, taking it to be merely a portrayal of a man in despair is an extremely shallow, uninformed, and tendentious interpretation.

I would emphasize 1-7 even more right here, however, because they do not even require a knowledge of the Psalms. Of course, anyone investigating the claims of Christianity should know that about Psalm 22, but even more than that, anyone investigating the claims of Christianity should have a sufficient modicum of skepticism about the skeptics to take up and read and see the other points, which completely destroy the idea of a linear progression from sad, despairing, human Jesus dying a meaningless death to controlled, godlike figure. It's just a completely bogus claim. There is no such progression. In Luke we have three sayings not contained in John or any of the other gospels. In John we have three sayings from the cross not contained in any of the other gospels, in the synoptics we have some things not in John, and there just is no pattern of development. At all. What we have instead is exactly what we would expect to see if the various gospels had, at least to some extent, independent access to the events in question from witnesses who noticed different things, remembered different things, and recorded different things. That hodge-podge of detail is exactly what we get with human testimony to real events. 

In fact, an interesting conjecture (though only a conjecture) arises from John 19:35, where Jesus commits his mother to the beloved disciple. If that disciple was indeed the author of the gospel, it may be that John does not record the words given by Luke because he left the cross immediately and took Mary away from the grisly scene to his own home, returning thereafter alone and witnessing Jesus' last moments. It is, again, only a conjecture, and I do not wish to place too much weight on it, but it is certainly one kind of thing that happens and causes witness testimony to vary.

Skeptics, and unfortunately some Christians, are easily captivated by a kind of phony evolutionary hypothesis about the gospels. I call it the "eohippus model." Mark is the shortest, so it is like the little eohippus horse ancestor, and all the other gospels evolved by chance processes of accretion (not anything like truthful alternative witnesses!) from a Markan original.

All the evidence of the actual contents of the gospels tells against this, and there is nothing in the sheer shortness of Mark to support this hypothesis.

I submit that we need to get over, well over, and forever over, the entire picture of the gospel writers as "making Jesus say" things he never said, portraying different "Jesuses" in a literary fashion, and "developing" Jesus for their own agendas. That is not the way the evidence points. It is a mere construct of airy and unsubstantiated literary critical approaches. If anyone tells you that Jesus "develops" in the gospels, let your antennae twitch good and hard. Then, if you are interested, go and see for yourself that it isn't so.

I will not let thee go except thou bless me

Dorothy Sayers has her character Lord Peter Wimsey say that the personality of Jacob irritates him. I have been recently re-reading Genesis and am tempted to agree with Lord Peter. The personality of Jacob is both very distinctive and highly irritating.

The Anglican divine John James Blunt, who wrote an excellent work on undesigned coincidences in Scripture, argues persuasively that the vividness and consistency of Jacob's personality is evidence for the veracity of the sections of Genesis that tell his story. I think Blunt is right. Jacob is always the same--calculating, tricky, greedy, nervous to the point of cowardice, a master of self-pitying drama, pessimistic. In Laban he meets his match--a trickster and dodger after his own pattern. But after putting up with it for fourteen years, Jacob takes the opportunity to make a gigantic, Middle Eastern family scene about it.

When Jacob returns from Laban to Canaan and sends messages to Esau, whom he tricked out of his birthright, Esau decides to give little brother a good scaring. One can just see Esau chuckling into his beard when he sends the message, "Tell your master that his brother Esau is coming with four hundred men." As it turns out, Esau never meant Jacob any harm, but he knew quite well that Jacob would not have changed in twenty years and that the message would send him into a veritable frenzy of worry and fret.

So Jacob sends elaborate gifts ahead to Esau and, finally, sends everyone else on ahead, including his wives and children. But when he stays behind alone, he encounters Someone a good deal more formidable than Esau.

And he rose up that night, and took his two wives, and his two womenservants, and his eleven sons, and passed over the ford Jabbok. And he took them, and sent them over the brook, and sent over that he had. And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day. And when he saw that he prevailed not against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh; and the hollow of Jacob's thigh was out of joint, as he wrestled with him. And he said, Let me go, for the day breaketh. And he said, I will not let thee go, except thou bless me. And he said unto him, What is thy name? And he said, Jacob. And he said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed. And Jacob asked him, and said, Tell me, I pray thee, thy name. And he said, Wherefore is it that thou dost ask after my name? And he blessed him there. And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved. And as he passed over Penuel the sun rose upon him, and he halted upon his thigh. (Genesis 32:22-31)

I submit that this is a truly great passage of Western literature. Try reading it aloud sometime. We move almost seamlessly from the all-too-real cowardly Jacob, staying behind the women and children, to a vision scene fraught with a depth of meaning impossible to pin down.

What does it all mean? Why does the angel (or God in a theophany) call Jacob a prince with God? Jacob, of all people! Merely because he is persistent in a wrestling match?

One can just imagine what a film version of this scene would be like--the mysterious man who shows up, barely visible in the night, and falls into a wrestling position, the match, the dramatic dialogue. The attempt to "pin" each other, not only in wrestling but in the telling of names, as though knowing your adversary's name gives you power. But it is God who obtains Jacob's name, and gives him a new one.

And then the last verse: "And as he passed over Penuel the sun rose upon him, and he halted on his thigh." The sun rises on a Jacob permanently changed by something that could not have been only a vision, for it left behind an undeniable physical mark.

Yet in the text, Jacob is not changed in personality. He continues to be just as cautious, just as pessimistic, just as full of worry. He doesn't act any more like a prince with God after he receives the name Israel than before that all-night wrestling match.

What does it all mean?

To which I answer: I don't know. I think it happened, mind you. At the risk of trivializing its depth, I will say that one obvious application is that we ourselves are, or can be, God's instruments, even God's crucial instruments in sacred history, despite our absurdities.

If such a scene could come to Jacob, and such a name, then any of us may hope to see the face of God, and live.

So, what's Eve Tushnet been up to lately?

In this post at What's Wrong With the World, I criticized the ideas of the group some have called the New Homophiles. I dubbed them CHIs--Christian Homosexual Identifiers.

One of the most prominent of the CHIs is Eve Tushnet. In her explicit statements, Tushnet affirms that homosexual acts are morally wrong. She is therefore said to affirm the Roman Catholic Church's position on sexuality. However, she insists that homosexual "eros" ("eros" is the term she uses) is not wrong and that it can be channeled to good ends.

Recently, Tushnet has, to my mind, made it clear that, if she regards homosexual acts as wrong at all (as she claims), she doesn't regard them as all that wrong. Here are the two new items that have come to light:

First, Tushnet has unequivocally stated that she would attend a lesbian "wedding" in order to celebrate the positive aspects of the relationship. Here is the quote:

This decision about attendance is easier for me, because I believe God calls some people to devoted, sacrificial love of another person of the same sex. Let me be clear: I don’t think that that love should be expressed sexually. But some people who marry a same-sex partner are doing so out of a call to love, even though they misinterpret the nature of that love. We should support as much as we can. When a woman forgives offenses and humbly apologizes for her own wrongdoing, cares for children, listens, comforts, and learns to put others’ needs above her own preferences, those are acts of love—which do not become worthless or loveless when they take place within a lesbian relationship.

This is an absurd argument. Why should we "support as much as we can" the celebration of the sexual aspect of their relationship? And why should we tell ourselves lies that a wedding isn't, inter alia, a celebration of a sexual relationship? Answer to both: We shouldn't.

If you've ever attended a wedding in your life, you know quite well that the sexual nature of the relationship is made clear, even though this needn't be and often isn't done in crude ways. The glasses are clinked at the reception so that the couple will kiss. The couple kisses at the altar. There is not the slightest doubt that the people are there to celebrate this couple qua sexual-romantic pair. Is Eve Tushnet going to clap at the reception when the lesbians kiss? Because after all, I'm sure they're doing lots of selfless things, and those don't become worthless, blah, blah.

No one who thinks that homosexual sexual intercourse is all that wrong is going to make this kind of lame excuse for attending a homosexual "wedding" and celebrating lesbianism's alleged "positive aspects."

But it gets worse. If you have the stomach for it, watch this video. (It's about fourteen minutes long.) The video is openly celebrating homosexual sex from beginning to end. One of the men interviewed states in so many words that it is "inherently discriminatory" for the church to call upon homosexuals to be celibate. It also endorses homosexual "marriage" and transgender transitions. It is completely heretical. It makes not the slightest pretense to be anything but a celebration of homosexual sex.

Eve Tushnet is featured in the video. She sits about smiling with other participants. She makes various comments about what it feels like to be a lesbian in the Catholic Church. And she even informs us that she was very pleased to learn that the Bible uses "same-sex love" along with heterosexual love as "models and mirrors of God and the human soul" (minute 3:34).

That is a disgustingly false statement. At no point, anywhere, in the Bible is homoerotic emotion (even aside from actions) used as a metaphor for the love of God and the soul. Men are, of course, called upon to love God, and God is portrayed as masculine. But there is no place whatsoever where "same-sex love" is used as a "model and mirror of God and the human soul." That is some sort of Queer Theory perversion of Scripture and deserves to be anathematized. I don't, frankly, even want to know what passages Tushnet thinks she is talking about.

It is quite impossible that Tushnet does not know what this video is about and what it is promoting. On her blog she promoted the video herself just four days ago. The only thing she distances herself from is the title--"Owning our Faith." I don't even know why. She says, "I did not name this." But she in no way indicates any distance between herself and the pro-sex content of the video or the blatantly, openly pro-sex agenda of the group who has made it. She just makes a joke about how she needs a haircut. Ha ha.

It would be impossible for anyone who takes with any real degree of intellectual seriousness the immorality of homosexual acts to lend the slightest appearance of approval to this video. The video is utterly rebellious against traditional moral teaching on homosexual acts.

I therefore conclude that, her protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, Eve Tushnet does not take with any real degree of intellectual seriousness the immorality of homosexual acts.

At this point, anyone who wants to point to Eve Tushnet as an example of homosexual orthodoxy within the Roman Catholic Church needs to do some serious reevaluation.

Ravenswood Baptist Christian School

On the off chance that anyone reads this blog who is not also my Facebook friend and has not already seen my plug there, I want to take this week to do a little fund-raising. (Very unusual activity for me.)

Ravenswood Baptist Christian School, the educational arm of Ravenswood Baptist Church, was my high school. I went there at the age of 13 1/2 as a grumpy, funny-looking, social outcast. My parents had decided to transfer me to Ravenswood from the Christian school where I had gone for K-8, hoping that a change to a different atmosphere would give me a chance to start over and make friends. I was not only a nerd, I was also sarcastic, unkind, and argumentative. Peers and teachers alike were justifiably annoyed by me, and most other teenagers just couldn't be bothered.

The thing about Ravenswood, though, was that it excelled at dealing with misfits. It was, and I believe still is, the Island of Misfit Toys School. We had plenty of odd birds of all sorts. I was by no means the only one. (Details suppressed to protect the innocent.) The teachers were firm but kind. They referred to all of the students as "Mr." and "Miss." Strangely enough, the students picked up somehow from the teachers the message that bullying was not acceptable. "Anti-bullying programs" were completely unnecessary. The love of Christ was manifested in the love for the students.

It was at Ravenswood that I started on the road to becoming a person whom anyone would want to be friends with, to be close to, to work or to live with. I had been simultaneously spoiled at home and rejected at school before going there; my friends and teachers at Ravenswood began to correct both of those imbalances. There I made dear friends in my own generation whom I've been privileged to reconnect with now that the Internet makes that possible. Until I went off to college three years later, Ravenwood Baptist Church also became my church.

I have been back to Chicago and visited Ravenswood several times in the last few years in connection with deaths in my family. No church could have been kinder or more supportive at those times.

Now the school is struggling financially. My understanding is that they fell behind in the slump that began in '08, as did most everyone. They have yet to catch up with the financial losses of those years. Ravenswood is an inner-city school, and its families are by no means well off. Sometimes even now parents are unable to pay tuition.

Here is a GoFundMe page for Ravenswood Baptist Christian School. If you're looking for somewhere to make a donation, consider donating there. Or you can send a check directly to the school's address at 4437 N. Seeley, Chicago , IL 60625.

For the truth be not dismayed

Last evening was a hymn sing at our home. One of the children chose the hymn "The Banner of the Cross," which I don't believe we've sung very often. Here are the words to the first two verses and the chorus:

1. There’s a royal banner given for display
To the soldiers of the King;
As an ensign fair we lift it up today,
While as ransomed ones we sing.

Refrain

Marching on, marching on,
For Christ count everything but loss!
And to crown Him king, we’ll toil and sing,
’Neath the banner of the cross!

2. Though the foe may rage and gather as the flood,
Let the standard be displayed;
And beneath its folds, as soldiers of the Lord,
For the truth be not dismayed!

Refrain

The lyrics were written in 1884 by Daniel W. Whittle. They are timely today. When we were singing I immediately thought of Barronelle Stutzman . I also thought of her when we sang "Dare to Be a Daniel."

Why did people write those songs? They wrote them because they realized that Christians need encouragement, and the hymns were supposed to offer that encouragement, that spine stiffening.

What struck me was that in our own time it is less likely that such lyrics would be written because too many Christians are afraid of sounding too sure that we know what God wants us to do. To apply a song like "The Banner of the Cross" to a concrete situation like that of Barronelle Stutzman requires confidence that she is displaying the banner of the cross, that she is fighting the good fight, and, most controversial of all, that her opponents represent "the foe." In short, such songs come from an era when we were not worried about identifying the foe and the fight. I really don't imagine that anybody wrote to Daniel W. Whittle and told him that he was being presumptuous and "demonizing" his opponents. Yet that's exactly the sort of advice Christians give Christians now--don't think in us-them terms, don't think of those who are on the other side (of the abortion issue, of the homosexual rights issue, of any issue) as "the Other."

It is a breath of fresh air to open a hymnal and sing a song that tells us that all will be well, that heartens us, that says, "Though the foe may rage, display the standard! Wave the banner! For the truth be not dismayed! We are fighting the good fight, and the Lord is with us. Stand up for what is right."

And in the meanwhile, for Christ count everything but loss. That line is in there too. Barronelle Stutzman may lose all her worldly goods. She counts it all but loss, as the Apostle Paul wrote,

But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ.Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ, And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith: That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death; Philippians 3:7-10

Stutzman wrote the following to Bob Ferguson, the State Attorney General who has tried to induce her to promise "not to discriminate" in the future in return for his dropping the case in return for a small fine:

You are asking me to walk in the way of a well-known betrayer, one who sold something of infinite worth for 30 pieces of silver. That is something I will not do.

She knew when the moment came, she heard the call, she has answered the call. May God grant us grace to follow her example and not to be dismayed for the truth.

Creation doesn't have to be different

In discussing creationism, intelligent design theory, and related issues on blog threads and also in some of my scholarly reading (I think I caught a whiff of it in Paul Helm's otherwise very good book on God and time), I have come to the surprising conclusion that too many people think that anything that God does that goes by the name of "creation" has to be different from all other miracles. In particular, there seems to be a pervasive, though sometimes vague, idea that anything called "creation" is subject to some sort of special restrictions, that God always will do it in a certain way or a certain restricted set of ways. (This article, though I haven't read it all, looks like a pretty classic example of the problem.)

For example, sometimes creation is restricted to ex nihilo creation, with the implication being that God creates only ex nihilo and never uses pre-existing materials. Why? Call me naive, but I don't find anywhere in Scripture that this is asserted. To the contrary, Scripture expressly states that God formed Adam out of the dust of the ground and formed Eve from Adam's rib.

Maybe that isn't intended to be literal; maybe it is. But prima facie it would seem to argue against any hard and fast prohibition on God's making things in the physical world using pre-existing materials. Scripture, at least, is not at the slightest pains to guard against the alleged mistake of thinking that God would ever create something using pre-existing materials.

Sometimes "creation" is connected with Providence or the continual sustaining of the world plus ex nihilo creation. Nothing else. So, using this set, we can refer to God's making the cosmos out of nothing at the first moment as "creation," and we can refer to God's continual (but invisible), intimate providential connection with the world (whether we are concurrentists, occasionalists, preservationists, or what-not) as "creation."

But the one sort of thing we can't call "creation" is God's forming man out of the dust of the ground! In fact, we have to express a lot of puzzlement about what in the world Scripture could possibly mean by such expressions. Maybe they mean God's invisibly guiding evolution so it looks like man came into existence by natural processes from ape-like ancestors, and then God's silently "ensouling" a pair of ape-like ancestors. Maybe that's what the passage is referring to. But not a situation in which first there's no man there, and then suddenly a man there, sleeping on the ground. That would be so...crude. So the one thing, on this view, that we aren't supposed to think creation could ever look like is what all those Christians through all those centuries very likely thought creation looked like--creatures appearing suddenly on the earth that weren't there before, by miracle, by the word of the Lord.

The first Word is impressive, and we can write theological treatises about it. Light coming out of darkness has all sorts of symbolic meaning. Divine Providence is mysterious and theological. God's just making critters pop into existence is...something we don't want to be associated with anymore. Because reasons.

Funny. Jesus doesn't seem to have been bothered by that sort of worry. He made bread and fish pop into existence out of his hands to feed five thousand people. For real. He made wine (from pre-existing water, no less) where there was no wine before. Poof, voila! Bam! And God made manna appear all over the sands of the desert for His people, morning after morning. (But not on Saturdays.) How crude. Did God make the manna? Should we not even say that God created the manna in some important sense? Why not?

Do I know absolutely and for a fact that no species emerged on this earth by some kind of subtly God-guided semi-evolutionary process? No, I don't know that absolutely for a fact, though I have my layman's scientific doubts as to how widespread any such evolutionary origin of species was.

But there is a gigantic difference between saying that God could have brought species into existence by subtly guided processes and saying that God had to or definitely would have done so only by such subtle processes. Those pushing against Intelligent Design theory constantly conflate these two. One will get a little lecture on how theistic evolution is "compatible" with Christian doctrine, when the real question at issue is whether it is required by some theological considerations, as though all Christians should have believed in naturalistic-looking theistic evolution for almost two thousand years before Darwin was born!

There is absolutely no reason whatsoever, theologically speaking, to think that God wouldn't create creatures on this earth in a sudden way, at different times, miraculously, just like any other miracle, sometimes using some pre-existing matter, sometimes not. There is precisely zero theological restriction that militates against the "crudest" sort of creationism. God could have had this beautiful world all put together as a habitat, with fish in the sea, birds in the air, and other critters wandering about, and then a bunch of dust could have started agitating and bubbling and, when it settled, Adam could have been lying there, miraculously brought into being. And some of the very same atoms that were previously part of the dust could have been incorporated into Adam's physical body by this sudden miracle. And that might have been how God made man. Why not? Theologically speaking, no reason whatsoever. None.

Let me add that this has absolutely nothing to do with a belief in Divine timelessness. That doesn't constrain our options here. A Boethian (one who believes that God is timeless) nonetheless believes that. in terms of human history, there are miracles that happen at particular times. The parting of the Red Sea occurred long after the near-sacrifice of Isaac but long before David's reign, etc. Any view of Divine timelessness that can accommodate all the jillion miracles at different times in the Bible has no extra problem accommodating biological special creation!

The same is true of the doctrine of divine simplicity. If you believe in divine simplicity, this cannot exclude the performance of particular miracles at particular points in time, or you cannot be an orthodox Christian. But if the doctrine of divine simplicity can accommodate manna in the wilderness, water from the rock, and the burning bush (and it'd better be able to), then there is no reason in the world why it cannot accommodate God's making Adam, or hippos, or any other new species, suddenly and miraculously. It is also fairly ridiculous to refuse to call such making "creation," but if you have some sort of weird terminological scruples about calling anything "creation" after the Big Bang, then call it "making." So maybe God made hippos, Adam, and many other things subsequent to the Big Bang. If your doctrine of divine simplicity can't handle that possibility, then you have much bigger problems than intelligent design theory! Much, much bigger. In fact, you've locked yourself into a kind of deism.

I cannot help thinking that everything I have said here would have been perfectly obvious to any educated priest, orthodox clergyman, or layman in the year 1799. I think such Christians would have been completely puzzled at the suggestion that the appearance of the species had to be or had to appear non-miraculous. They would have been astonished at restrictions on divine methods of creation and by confusion over what it could or might mean for God to create man and animals.

So I submit that such confusion is self-evidently the product of a post-Darwinian sensibility. Because people think that Science has told us that all the creatures, including man, appeared to come into existence by natural processes, theology has tagged along and muddied the waters by setting "creation" aside from all the other special, powerful acts of God with which we are familiar from our Bible stories.

Now that neo-Darwinism is coming unraveled at the seams, scientifically speaking, it is sad to see Christians stranded on a theological island and unable to find their way back, finding it incredibly hard even to consider that the creation of creatures and man might just have looked like lots of other miracles look.

I submit that, ironically, we are going to close ourselves to scientific evidence if we take such a pointlessly restrictive theological approach. Christians should not be greeting evidence for God's direct working in creation in the past to bring new types of creatures into being with theological suspicion on the grounds that we wouldn't want to think of God as "a magician with a magic wand" (translation--a God who intervenes). You never know; maybe intervention is pretty much what it looked like. It's what a lot of other miracles looked like. So I suggest that we should eliminate any a priori theological dichotomy between creation and miracles more generally considered and then see, with an unbiased eye, what the evidence points to.

Update: I almost forgot to include this. V.J. Torley has an extensive take-down of Tkacz (whose article I have linked in the first paragraph of this post). If you like take-downs so extensive that there is nothing left but dust at the end (out of which God could create a man), you will love this material by Torley. I couldn't possibly have read it all, but what I have read is devastating. Here is a link to part of it. My favorite part, though, so beautiful that it almost brought tears to my eyes (yes, I have written a fan note to Torley telling him this) was this section, where Torley shows fifteen (!!) places where Tkacz contradicts St. Thomas Aquinas while claiming to speak for Aquinas.

How can I fail when I am nothing?

She was indeed troubled just now. The blessing she had always wanted was to be herself a blessing, but [her patient] Joe Diggar had died. It was true he had died peacefully, with no distress,...but still he had died, and she was disturbed by her own failure to heal him. Was her power to bless leaving her? Parson Hawthyn, when she had sympathized with the failure of his [prayer] vigil in the church [for Joe], had replied tartly, "Failure? How can I fail when I am nothing? There is but one power that is our own, Froniga, the power to offer the emptiness that we are, and we make idols of ourselves if we think we are the only instruments of salvation ready to God's hand."

Elizabeth Goudge, The White Witch, pp. 160-161.

Occasionally Goudge makes, through her characters, the most astonishing pronouncements, all the more shocking because she means them literally. Here she is saying that the only way we can be used by God is if we offer ourselves to God as empty, to be filled and then used by God, This is very difficult to understand, because at the same time, if we are honest, we usually believe that we have at least some natural gifts. Given to us by God, to be sure, but still there, still real, part of ourselves. Are we not offering God those powers? Are not those powers, those talents, those gifts, our own to use in God's service? How then can it be true that the only power that is our own is to offer our emptiness?

I think both are true. It is true that God has given most of us some visible gifts and abilities that can be used for Him. To some He seems to have given more than to others. But the Bible repeatedly warns us of the danger of taking pride in these: "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass and tinkling symbol." "My speech...was not with enticing words of man's wisdom...that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men but in the power of God." "God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty." "God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of Christ."

So we must constantly be making a double movement. On the one hand, we are bound to hone our skills, whatever they might be, and thus to offer them as the best possible instruments to be used for God's glory. But on the other hand, we are bound constantly to turn away from selfish pride and to recognize that God can and often does use ministries that appear unworthy to accomplish His ends.

Is there someone for whose salvation you are praying? It may be that God will bring that person to Himself through someone else, someone whose arguments seem less than ideal, someone who has not striven in prayer for that soul's salvation as you have. But in the end, what matters is the soul's salvation.

"There is but one power that is our own,...the power to offer the emptiness that we are, and we make idols of ourselves if we think we are the only instruments of salvation ready to God's hand."

Remarkable comments from Christian-Jewish Holocaust survivor

Anita Dittman was born to a Jewish mother and a Gentile father in pre-Hitler Germany. It appears that her parents divorced when she was young. Her mother, sister, and she converted to Christianity when she was a child under the influence of a local (I surmise Lutheran) pastor. Her sister escaped Germany before the Holocaust, but when Anita was a teenager she and her mother were rounded up for their Jewish ethnicity and sent to the camps separately. Anita has a story which sounds quite remarkable (as Holocaust survivor stories tend to be) about how she and her mother survived and were eventually reunited.

For many years Anita Dittman has told her story in U.S. public schools, but recently the schools are refusing to let her speak because she insists on discussing her Christianity, which helped her through the horrors of what she experienced and helped her to forgive her captors.

One school administrator at a high school in northern Minnesota contacted her with an invitation to speak, saying she came highly recommended by some students who had heard her speak previously.

"I called him back and left a message and said I would be honored. Just let me know the date and time, and I will be there,” Dittman said.

"I said, I have to tell you, though, that Christ is in my message.”

“Well can’t you leave Christ out of it?” the man asked.

“He is the one who kept me safe. I can’t keep Him out,” Dittman responded.
“Well, I’m sorry then. You can’t come,” he said.

Many other doors have closed at the mention of the “C” word.

Says Dittman, “It’s getting worse, I tell you....It’s so dictating to the parents now. This is how it started in Russia and Germany.”

Dittman is concerned about the direction things are going in the West. She was asked

what, if anything, Christians should be doing to prepare for the day when the “soft” persecution becomes hard, like it did in Germany.

"The importance of faith in God would be the one thing, and the courage to speak up,” she said. “I tell some of my students I speak to, even in secular schools, keep the faith. You can lose your homes, your schools, everything, but if you have your faith, you have everything.”

“Pray to God that when the times come, He will be with you and will see you through. Also memorize scripture because you may not always have a Bible,” she said. “I lost my Bible during the Russian occupation, but God will remind you of the verses you need when you are in a situation where you are totally dependent on Him and your life is in danger.”

This is important to think about. It may seem unlikely that Christians will literally be herded into camps, but think about a child like Domenic Johannson, who was seized from his parents in Sweden and may well remain separated from them until he is an adult. (Will Sweden allow him to be reunited with his parents then?) Children in the West can be taken from their parents for ideological reasons and placed into the care of foster parents and other state social agents who are deliberately trying to counteract the worldview with which they were raised. In this context, having Scripture memorized could be extremely important.

I would like to read Dittman's whole story. For now, I am just digesting the sobering fact that America has changed so drastically that she cannot tell it in many schools because of the aggressive anti-Christianity of those schools. And people wonder why parents wouldn't want to send their children to public schools. Sometimes, it's hard to know where to start to answer the question.

Martyrdom--Angel Band

The audio of this recording of the song "Angel Band" is one of my favorite music tracks, probably one of my favorites of all time. (Lyrics here, though they are slightly different on the second verse. It looks to me like everybody does the second verse a little differently.)

If you know that you really, really hate southern gospel music and/or country music, and that your opinion will never change, don't even bother trying to appreciate this song, because it's pretty much "that" style. But if your musical tastes are somewhat more open, I suggest that you don't watch the video I just linked (minimize it or something) but that instead you crank the volume and just listen to the music.

I have had this track on a Gaither hymns CD for four years now and only just now watched the video, so I've always known it through the medium of hearing rather than sight.

To my mind this has the interesting effect of making the cheering and enthusiasm of the audience and of the homecoming group more a part of the song. When I hear all the cheering and clapping break out before the encore, what I don't primarily think is, "Okay, there are all those pretty homecoming folks cheering for Vestal Goodman and hugging on each other. How sweet." I mean, I know that's going on at some level, and that's not a bad thing in itself, but at another level it sounds more to me like rejoicing in heaven, like the saints and angels cheering someone on in the race as he crosses the finish line.

For some reason, every time I listen to this song I think of martyrdom, even though it's really about death more generally. I think of someone actually about to be martyred, even being martyred, and believing that he is beginning his "triumph." All the indecision is behind him. I think of someone like Thomas Cranmer who was so afraid of death and allowed his fear of the flames to warp his integrity, but who then repented of that and thrust his hand into the fire. Was his burning at the stake a horrible death? Certainly it was. But it seems that Cranmer had achieved a kind of mental equilibrium there and knew that what he was doing was right. What lay behind him were his "strongest trials," all the confusion and temptation.

I myself am a great coward about pain and don't even want to think of dying a painful death for the sake of Christ. But together with my vivid imagination for horror I have a vivid imagination for the varieties of human response. And I can, just barely, imagine a kind of saint who, through all the pain, feels that he is triumphing, that he has moved past the danger point and the fear, and that he now knows that the angels are coming for him. His spirit loudly sings. He cries out in his agony and his triumph, "Come, angel band. Come and around me stand. Bear me away on your snowy wings to my immortal home!" And his soul goes up, rises up to God, borne by the angels who have sustained him in his hour of trial and who now take him to where the cheering of those on the other side joins the singing of his spirit.

We certainly should not glorify horror and pain for their own sake. They are evils. Soberly speaking, many have been corrupted and led away by the mere possibility, the mere fear of suffering. Moreover, much persecution goes on and on rather than ending in death for the martyr. No doubt many who suffer for Christ do not experience any rush of confidence, any sense of joy, but must merely endure through it with no sensible consolation from God and no merciful death that takes them to His presence.

But this other possibility exists as well and is good to think of, and this song allows us to imagine it--the triumph over death by means of death. O death, where is thy victory? O grave, where is thy sting?

The light that lightens all men

This morning, it being a Sunday in the season of Epiphany, we sang a couple of hymns that should be more widely known by Christians of all denominations. One of these is "Brightest and Best of the Sons of the Morning," which has a lovely tune. Here is a choir singing it, and here are the words.

The hymn I am going to write about here is "From the Eastern Mountains." I'm sorry to say that I can't seem to find an on-line recording of the music. The tune is called "Valour." A view of the hymn page with the tune used in the 1940 hymnal is here.

Here is the text as it appears in the 1940 Anglican hymnal:

From the eastern mountains
Pressing on they come,
Wise men in their wisdom,
To His humble home;
Stirred in deep devotion,
Hasting from afar,
Ever journeying onward,
Guided by a star.
Light of light that shineth
Ere the worlds began,
Draw Thou near, and lighten
Ev'ry heart of man.

There their Lord and Saviour
Meek and lowly lay,
Wondrous Light that led them
Onward on their way,
Ever now to lighten
Nations from afar,
As they journey homeward
By that guiding Star.
Light of light that shineth
Ere the worlds began,
Draw Thou near, and lighten
Ev'ry heart of man.

Thou Who in a manger
Once hast lowly lain,
Who dost now in glory
O'er all kingdoms reign,
Gather in the heathen,
Who in lands afar
Ne'er have seen the brightness
Of Thy guiding Star.
Light of light that shineth
Ere the worlds began,
Draw Thou near, and lighten
Ev'ry heart of man.

Gather in the outcasts,
All who've gone astray,
Throw Thy radiance o'er them,
Guide them on their way,
Those who never knew Thee,
Those who've wandered far,
Lead them by the brightness
Of Thy guiding Star.
Light of light that shineth
Ere the worlds began,
Draw Thou near, and lighten
Ev'ry heart of man.

Guide them through the darkness

Of the lonely night,

Shining still before them

With thy kindly light,

Until every nation,

Whether bond or free,

'Neath thy starlit banner,

Jesus, follows thee.

Light of light that shineth
Ere the worlds began,
Draw Thou near, and lighten
Ev'ry heart of man.

This hymn jumped out at me because I have recently been reading Marilynne Robinson's new novel Lila. As a novel, it is very fine, though not as great as Gilead. As a work of theology, it is completely wrongheaded.

Robinson's character Lila becomes very concerned after marrying John Ames when she hears about hell. She realizes that pretty much everyone she ever knew before coming to Gilead, particularly old Doll, the woman who acted as a mother to her and is now dead, may very well be in hell according to standard Christian doctrine. Lila agonizes over this, and the theological issue provides a focal point for the overwhelming discomfort she feels in her new, respectable life as the wife of a Congregationalist minister. There are plenty of other reasons for that discomfort. Lila is portrayed as having been almost completely ignorant due to the roughness of her past life, to the point that she has never even learned to use a knife and fork. The culture shock of living in Gilead as a middle-class matron is severe, and she feels that she has lost her privacy and is in danger of losing her identity. Robinson portrays all of this extremely well and believably, and she wraps the theological issue of hell into Lila's struggle with great psychological realism.

In the end, Lila is comforted by inventing her own version of universalism. Robinson, being Robinson, writes about this version of universalism beautifully, but it's seriously wrong. It involves no repentance, no new birth, and no desire for God. It does not involve these things even at the moment of death or even after death. In fact, God is very nearly absent from the heaven Lila envisages. Rather, heaven is treated as just a happy place to which God transports everyone because God is loving and because it "wouldn't be fair" to do otherwise.

Our soteriology needs to be deeper than that, and one might think that Robinson means for Lila's soteriology to be regarded as shallow because of her lack of theological knowledge. John Ames himself is something of a crypto-universalist, both in this novel and in Gilead, but he is never quite willing to become a universalist unequivocally, presumably because he really does know his Bible and has some actual understanding of sin, repentance, and grace. On the other hand, the very end of Lila seems to suggest that Lila will be able to comfort Ames by telling him what she now knows on this subject.

What the novel does do well, as does Gilead, is to portray the genuine anguish one feels at the thought that a loved one might be eternally lost. Some of us even feel that anguish regarding people we have never met. Missionaries feel that anguish for whole people groups.

The Bible and Christian tradition tell us that we should pray for the lost. The Apostle Paul says,

I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men; For kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour; Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.

I take Paul here to be implying that one of the things we are to pray for is that men be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. Since we are told that Jesus came to seek and to save those who are lost, we know we are praying in conformity with the will of God if we pray for someone's salvation.

But as C.S. Lewis pointed out in The Great Divorce, universalism simply erases the human will. God just sweeps people up into heaven (or "heaven") whether they want to be there or not and presumably changes them magically into eternally good people even if they wanted to go on being evil. I question whether this is even a coherent picture.

So when we pray for a man's salvation, we are not, I believe, praying for something that God can bring about by a mere act of power, for to do so would be to erase the person and to substitute a robot. We are praying, then, that God would reach out and woo the person, that God would bring before that person clearly the evidence of His existence, attributes, and requirements, would give that person every opportunity to accept Him. We are praying that God would shine His light upon them so that they can be guided to the knowledge of the truth.

All of which brings us back to "From the Eastern Mountains." I like the fact that the song connects the Wise Men with God's desire that all men should be saved and God's willingness to use even extraordinary means to that end. The God who could send a star to the Wise Men can send dreams to a Muslim, for example. He can bring a David Wood or a John C. Wright to recognize that He is God, at which point they have to decide what they are going to do about that. This song is a prayer for the salvation of those who know not God. Never give up praying that.

C. H. Spurgeon, on praying for the lost:

Until the gate of hell is shut upon a man we must not cease to pray for him. And if we see him hugging the very doorposts of damnation, we must go to the mercy seat and beseech the arm of grace to pluck him from his dangerous position. While there is life there is hope, and although the soul is almost smothered with despair, we must not despair for it, but rather arouse ourselves to awaken the Almighty arm.

On Marriage and Heaven

Now for something completely different. Several days ago I received some correspondence from a young pastor who has been sending his questions on this topic to a variety of Christian writers and speakers. He had seen my husband speak recently but was more readily able to find my e-mail address and wanted to know if either of us had some insights on his questions. I won't quote his questions here, but their general import was to wonder what Jesus meant when he said that we will neither marry nor be given in marriage in the resurrection. As a happily married man, he was distressed at the thought of being separated from his wife in heaven or "not married" to her anymore and wondered how Jesus' words should be taken.

He also wondered whether Jesus' death and resurrection would not be able to restore us to Adam's prelapsarian state, which clearly was meant to include marriage.

One commentary he had read had even conjectured that we might be completely a-gendered beings in heaven, while another person he had consulted was not entirely closed to the idea that there actually will be sexual intercourse in heaven, though that person nevertheless discouraged speculation along those lines.

What follows is my response, which I admitted up front would be rather a long treatise:

First of all, I want to set what I am going to say later into an overall context so that it won't be misunderstood. I think that the commentaries are wrong when they imply that, in the resurrection, we will not be male and female. Jesus says that we will be "like the angels" in that we will not be married but does not say that we will be like the angels in being neither male nor female. (In fact, we don't even know very much from Scripture about the gender of the angels beyond the fact that they are always portrayed as male when they appear on earth!) So the idea of our being recreated as, in essence, aliens rather than human beings, aliens who have no gender, is not in my opinion supported by that passage nor by any other. The prima facie case is that, if a human being dies and is resurrected, the resurrected being is also human, which means (according to God's plan) either male or female.

Moreover, I don't think that Jesus' words imply that we will not know one another or have close human relationships in heaven. Nor does he say or imply that all of our human relationships in heaven will be identical to one another and that we won't be any closer to any one person than to anyone else. Why should Jesus be taken to mean that? That the relationship we call "married" will not be represented in heaven, at least not as we presently know it, doesn't mean that no important and close human relationships, including presumably relationships with those to whom we were closest on earth, will be represented in heaven. I think C.S. Lewis says somewhere that, since heaven is portrayed as a feast, it would be very strange if the guests didn't know one another! St. Paul says to the Thessalonians that they should be "comforted" by the thought of their loved ones as going to heaven and that they should not sorrow as those who have no hope, and this would seem extremely strange if the true doctrine were that we will never see each other again after death or that we will be separated from those we love forever.

What we don't know is the positive nature of those relationships.

You can read the rest of this entry at What's Wrong With the World. Feel free to comment in either location.

No wonder Jews are leaving Paris

The situation for Jews in France and especially in Paris is dire. The recent terrorist murders at a kosher store come in a long line of daily abuse and beatings from Muslims. This interview has more. I was especially chilled by the picture of this man's mother getting beaten up, going to the police, and being told, "You're lucky to be alive." It's possible that the police were indicating that they take Muslim violence against Jews very seriously, but my impression from the way the story is told is that it indicates just the opposite. Plus, as he says, the atmosphere is so mafia-like that Jews abused by Muslims often don't go to the police because they will be found at their homes and punished if they do so.

This is what comes of Islamicization.

Divine sovereignty, David Wood, and me

If you haven't seen it yet, be sure to watch David Wood's video about his conversion. This post will be a bit of a spoiler if you haven't already seen it, so I suggest you watch it first.

I don't know to what extent I speak for others who have been Christians since early childhood, but I often feel a special kind of self-deprecating awe when I hear a story like David's. Far from feeling superior on the grounds that "I've always been a Christian," I feel rather as though I have no story to tell. All those songs out there about "the day I met Jesus" and "my life was changed that day" and so forth--That's David's story, but I sing them like dramatic monologues in which I'm pretending to be someone else.

My life has been changed only very gradually, and the spiritual process has often been phenomenologically indistinguishable from the mundane process of becoming a more mature human being over a period of decades. I was saved when I was four years old, and I remember the event quite well. But I was often a bad little girl thereafter, I was a positively nasty teen at times, and I remain a highly difficult adult. To add to all my other faults, I was the world's worst prig throughout much of my childhood and teen years. I can still remember arguing heatedly with my mother about whether I should go and buy a book at Moody Book Store, which she thought was in too dangerous a neighborhood. (There was no Amazon at the time.) We had no car; I went everywhere on the bus unless a friend gave me a ride. I got quite hoity-toity about the fact that I was planning to use this book to witness to someone. I argued that my mother had often let me take buses to highly dubious Chicago neighborhoods when doing temp agency work for the worldly purpose of earning money and that therefore I certainly ought to be allowed to take a bus to a dangerous neighborhood to buy a book for the purpose of trying to bring someone to Christ. Harrumph. As I recall, in the end I won the argument and went and bought the book without incident. (It was by Francis Schaeffer, though I don't recall which of Schaeffer's books it was.)

I'd like to think that the Holy Spirit has been working in me since then and that I've gradually improved with age, but the point is that it is nothing like David's dramatic conversion story. There is nothing at all in my life that corresponds, or so it seems to me, to that darkness to light reversal.

But as I was reflecting on this fact I came upon a more fundamental similarity between my own life story and David Wood's. I'm adopted. It may be that somewhere, at some time, I will tell that story as I've learned it more in full, but for now there are details that I will leave obscure. Suffice it to say that what I have learned about my biological father, in particular, has made me grateful beyond words for having been placed for adoption as an infant. It is nearly certain (to my mind) that I would not be a Christian believer today had I not been placed for adoption. As it was, my adoptive parents, though fallible human beings, of course, raised me "in the nurture and admonition of the Lord" at great cost to themselves. My father--that is to say, the only father I have ever known, my adopted father--was a good and gentle man who loved me and my brother. He could not have been more different from the man who biologically brought me into existence and who might have had influence over my life had I not been adopted.

All of that, the whole back-story of my whole life, happened when I was a tiny baby. It began even before I was born with my birth mother's difficult decision to get in touch with an adoption agency. My life, my whole life, is a gift from God.

The Bible says, "For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly." (Romans 5:6) Also,

And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins; Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience:... But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus. For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them. (Ephesians 2:1-10)

The point is that I, like David, was sovereignly cared for by God and brought to a place where I could come to know Him, and that God did this for both of us when we could do nothing for ourselves. David was trapped in his own twisted mind as a psychopath. I was a helpless infant and knew nothing about the decisions that were being made around me that would profoundly affect my future. To both of us, in very different ways, God came. Both of us, though for very different reasons, can say, "My whole life is a gift."

It is not in the phenomenology of my life since I have been old enough to be self-conscious that I should look for dramatic evidence of God's personal working. God does not deal in made-to-order dramatic, personal evidence. His gifts are far more personalized than that.

Nothing that I have said here actually means that I am a Calvinist, I hasten to add. In the end, I had to make a choice. Indeed, I'm afraid it's still true on a daily basis that I am making crucial choices all the time that influence who I am and what I am becoming. But God has poured out the riches of His grace upon me in innumerable ways, even farther back at the very beginning in making me alive and conscious at all.

In the end, when we get to heaven, Calvinist and Arminian alike, lifelong Christian and adult convert alike, will be able to agree and join in saying, "My whole life is a gift. For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To whom be glory for ever, world without end, Amen."

The light shineth in darkness

The Bible is not afraid of simple metaphors and images. In fact, the Bible is all about simple metaphors and images: The Father, the Son, the mother and child. The light and the darkness. The man and the woman.

It is for that very reason that those who hate reality hate the Bible. Sometimes their hatred takes a direct form, and sometimes it takes the form of twisting Scripture to their own ends.

This Christmas, I have very little to say in the blogosphere, except these ancient, simple truths, which are not mine but were given to all of us. We could not have created these truths ourselves, and we cannot make them come true, but God can, God did, and God will:

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it. The Child Christ was weak and helpless, but he was the king of all the world. One day he will come in his majesty and rule with truth and grace, and in his kingdom, there will be no more falsehood. God is light, and Jesus said that we are the light of the world. A very small light shines a long way on a dark night.

Merry Christmas to my readers.

The inestimable privilege of singing to Mrs. K.

Every year since 2001 my family has organized a Christmas caroling potluck at our house. Mostly attended by home schooling families (some quite large families), joined by Christian college students and various other friends, the caroling parties can get quite large. I believe our record is eighty, counting unborn children. I did not count this year so would only be guessing, but my guess would put the total this year somewhere around forty.

We eat first then go out into the neighborhood. This year we stopped at ten houses, most of whom were expecting us, but four of those families were not home, so we sang at only six. On a Saturday evening in December, many families are simply not at home. It's amazing how much energy it takes to sing at just six houses, but despite that, I would like to raise the number of houses we go to. I prefer to go where we have been previously announced and expected rather than knocking at random doors. Perhaps in future years I will put my caroling letter into the mailboxes of more neighbors. My voice was about shot by the end of this year's caroling, but then, my voice had been entirely gone just two days before the party, so I was grateful to be able to sing at all.

For all of those thirteen years and fourteen caroling parties we have sung to the elderly Mrs. K. She lives nearby in her own home, cared for by the frequent visits of her adult children, whose assiduous help has allowed her to continue to live on her own with her small dog. With each year she has grown more frail, and now she is, quite literally, bent double due to spinal problems. She is very much all there. She told me a story this last summer of going to the doctor and being asked what medications she was on. She said she listed all twenty-six from memory, with their doses.

This year she was careful to call me on the evening of the caroling party to remind me that we should come to the side door of the house to sing. Why this is easier for her is a mystery to me, since it requires her to come down a short flight of stairs to open the door, while the front door is level with the main floor. But I know there is a good logistical reason, whatever it may be, and I duly assured her that we would come to the side door, which is equipped with its own doorbell.

Having had several disappointments ringing bells where people were not home, our merry band was a little nervous when Mrs. K. took a while getting to the door. They wondered if this would be another house where no one answered. I wasn't worried; I knew she was home. When she appeared and slowly opened the door, looking down at the ground and unable to lift herself up, much like the woman in the Bible whom Jesus healed (Luke 13), everyone felt, I think, just as I did: Who are we that she should go to all this trouble to come to the door and listen to us sing?

We gave her our best. I can't remember which song we started out with. Perhaps it was "Hark the Herald." Then, as I always do with the people for whom we sing, I asked her if she had a favorite carol she would like us to sing. She said "O Holy Night."

It just so happens that I've never added "O Holy Night" to our repertoire. If I'd thought of it, I probably would have said it was too hard for us. But Eldest Daughter immediately struck up the tune (in an excellently accessible key, I might add), and off we went. Fortunately, we were all gathered rather close together by the side door. A first rule of caroling outside in front of houses is, "Thou shalt bunch close together so as to be able to hear one another." My beloved band tends to straggle, however often I ask them to come closer. I think they are afraid of making the goodman or good lady of the house feel crowded with a bunch of people around the front door. But this time, we could hear each other, and I was pleasantly surprised at how good we sounded.

When we tried it again, just for fun, at the house across the street, it was definitely a thinner sound. We had already given our all to Mrs. K., in honor of her gallantry and in honor of Our Lord.

It was a very great privilege. I hope we will have the privilege for many more years.

There are so many reasons to home school

From time to time I get drawn into a looong discussion of education with someone or other who just cannot fathom why I'm so against sending your kids to public school. One such was here. Another was here.

What will usually happen is that these discussions will start with some one thing--indoctrination into the insane transsexual agenda, sex education, an anti-Christian agenda, or some other issue. Interlocutors pretty much uniformly just do not understand how the education of the young works. Whether it is a Christian urging that we must send our kids into the schools to be "salt and light" or a non-Christian who thinks that there are a whole bunch of subjects in the normal school day into which worldview issues do not enter at all, there is a complete failure to comprehend the holism of education, especially education that takes place over a series of days, weeks, and months. Sure, there are a few subjects the content of which could in theory be taught in isolation from many other things, but so what? That's not what sending your kids to school is about.

But more: These people also don't understand that the reasons against sending your children to public school (and, I fear, increasingly not to many Christian schools) are so many and varied that whatever kicked off the discussion doesn't begin to represent the total strength of the case.

Often, even in those areas where a school might actually be able (if they wanted to) to leave out the worldview issues (math, say), the schools are messed up in some fundamental way related to teaching the subject. New fads come down the pike every other year, it seems, and now kids don't know their times tables, can't read, and are being taught basic operations like multiplication in such bizarre and counterintuitive ways that they come out mathematically illiterate.

Here is a link that gives us another of the umpteen gajillion reasons to home school: The insanity of the assessment culture, starting in early childhood. If interested, just read this carefully written, intelligently argued letter from two teachers (who are putting their names and presumably their jobs on the line) who are crying, "Enough!" It'll make you vow never to send your child to any school, public or private, that has jumped on the assessment bandwagon. I say "public or private" because it seems to me all too likely that even many of the bigger, more mainstream Christian schools have done so for reasons of keeping up with the Joneses educationally. After all, there's nothing inherently un-Christian about testing and assessing small children for hours on end until they go insane, is there? It's not a worldview issue, right?

That's right, it's not. It's just educational malpractice.

These teachers may, for all I know, be enthusiastic liberals. Maybe they are happy to be indoctrinating children into various left-wing ideas. Maybe they even believe in other wrong-headed educational methods, like look-say reading instruction. But they recognize this particular bit of blatant educational malpractice when they see it. Nor are they the only ones. (This one is about kindergarteners being tested to death.)

When you are considering how to educate your children, don't just look at one thing. There are so many things, and they all point in the same direction.

Catching up

My latest blog posts have been put up at What's Wrong With the World instead of here. I did start one here at Extra Thoughts on the subject of secondary separation from Catholics and co-belligerence between Catholics and Protestants, but I changed it fairly drastically and published it instead at W4. Cross-posting would be more time-consuming than linking it, so here is the link.

Far more important than that post is the second recent post at W4, which includes the video of David Wood's testimony. David has a ministry to Muslims and has featured in a lot of my posts four years ago or so concerning the attempts to squelch Christian missions in Dearborn, Michigan. This conversion testimony has nothing to do with Islam and is just...incredible. The important thing is that you watch the video, so I'm going to embed it here, though with a warning: It has some disturbing description of violence and of...weirdness, so you should not watch it with small children present. My relatively unimportant comments on it are available below the fold at W4 here.

Here is David Wood's story of his conversion:



Years I spent in vanity and pride,
Caring not my Lord was crucified,
Knowing not it was for me He died
At Calvary.

Mercy there was great and grace was free.
Pardon there was multiplied to me.
There my burdened soul found liberty,
At Calvary.

By God's grace at last my sin I learned.
Then I trembled at the law I'd spurned,
Till my guilty soul imploring turned
To Calvary.

Mercy there was great and grace was free.
Pardon there was multiplied to me.
There my burdened soul found liberty.
At Calvary.

This is an issue on which you shouldn't "settle"

Someone on Facebook linked to this article and set off a firestorm of controversy, which firestorm chiefly arose because I disagreed with the article. With one exception on the thread, the others who commented seemed to agree with the article.  I have to admit that I found that shocking. So, having already produced so many pixels on the subject, I decided to make it the subject of a public post. Note: I'll be using the initial p. on this thread for the word p--n because, since this is a public blog, I don't want the post to attract nasty spam bots or other undesirables doing google searches on that word.

The article is by Mark Regnerus, and for the record, yes, I do know who Mark Regnerus is. And yes, I am indeed sympathetic and grateful to him for the abuse he has taken from the gay mafia for a study in which he questioned the wonderfulness of homosexual parenting, which is an entirely different topic from the topic of this article of his or of my present post. So, no, I don't think that his background or any gratitude we conservatives feel toward him for what he has suffered is relevant to whether or not I should critique this article. I'd like to think that Regnerus, being an academic and presumably committed to vigorous, rigorous, non-personal debate, would agree with me that I shouldn't pull any punches because "he's one of us" or "the bad guys hate him" or anything of that kind, which is really just a reverse variant on the ad hominem fallacy--because of who this person is, you shouldn't criticize what he wrote. You will gather from that prelude that such an argument has been made to me already.

Regnerus's piece is oddly unclear. Time and again one wonders what, exactly, he is getting at, and that makes it difficult to pin down and reply to. But I begin with the disturbingly tepid language that he repeatedly uses to describe p.

Explanations provide only modest comfort to the many women, (and not a few men) who wrestle over the meaning of their spouse or beau’s pastime.

"Pastime"?

They feel hurt, if not cheated on.

No kidding. Wonder why.

Contrary to what is sometimes asserted, women have the right to be annoyed or upset by porn. It’s not a good thing. It’s spiritually draining.

As a ringing condemnation, that leaves a lot to be desired. "Women have a right to be annoyed or upset." Wow! Thanks very much for that permission to be "annoyed or upset." And it's not a good thing! Wow! Talk about an understatement. "Spiritually draining" is a little better, but still pretty weak. And if you think you hear a "but" coming up after that rather lame negative assessment, you're right, and I'll get back to the "but" in a moment. But first, some more examples of Regnerus's ways of describing p.

A crestfallen young woman discovered her boyfriend “struggled” with pornography. I’m never quite sure what “struggling” actually means, since it can be code for anything from shame at taking pleasure in women’s naked beauty all the way up to addiction to hardcore pornography. (There’s a difference.)

"Taking pleasure in women's naked beauty" is so sanitized and artsy a locution that it really gives the impression, perhaps unintentionally, that the man in question shouldn't feel shame! Such a phrase could describe an entirely platonic and appreciative viewing of a nude as painted by a great master. In fact, such a phrase could describe a heterosexual woman's entirely platonic appreciation of a great painting of another woman. The word "pleasure" is a nicely euphemistic way of referring to sexual arousal and lust, and frankly, no Christian should be describing p use of any kind with such a phrase.

There's more to say about that previous couple of sentences. Aside from the fact that the phrase "taking pleasure in women's naked beauty" sounds like it's downplaying the seriousness of the issue involved, what exactly does Regnerus mean by it, anyway? Since he obviously thinks it's not so bad, given the contrast he means to draw in the sentence, what is it? It's supposed to be something that a man could mean by "struggling with p," which makes its meaning rather mysterious. Perhaps it is a euphemism for watching sex videos but only relatively "normal" ones, instead of the ones with all the extra perversions. But that seems an uncharitable reading, given the fact that apparently we're supposed to think this first thing is waaaay on the mild end. So what could it be? Well, my best guess is that "taking pleasure in women's naked beauty" means only lusting, perhaps briefly, over still shots of women who have few or no clothes on and are posed rather provocatively. Light-weight girlie pictures. No videos or anything. No "actresses" actually having sex.

But now we have a further problem. Am I the only one to detect a hint of condescension in the parenthetical "There's a difference"? Since this is being brought up in the context of wondering what this girl's boyfriend meant when he said that he struggled with p, one has to wonder: Does Regnerus really believe that a significant proportion of men who, in this Internet age, say that they "use p," "struggle with p," or "view on-line p" mean only and solely drooling occasionally over a few soft-core, still-shot pictures of naked women? If that's what we're meant to think from this passage, does he have any statistics to back up such an anecdotally implausible insinuation about the meaning of such phrases? And if not, isn't the condescension a little misplaced, since he appears to be the one asking us to be willfully naive?

I would never dream of telling anyone—devoid as I am of information about particular situations—what they ought to do about their boyfriend’s roving eye.

Actually, the main statement of that sentence isn't true, because as we shall see the burden of Regnerus's article is to tell the church collectively what women shouldn't be doing about their boyfriends' "roving eyes."  And there's no point in telling that to the Christian community collectively if you don't actually intend it to influence real, individual people, so let's not pretend that this has nothing to do with what individuals should be doing about individual relationships. But leave that aside for the moment. Roving eye? Good grief, what a Victorian euphemism. No, a roving eye is a man's letting his gaze linger a little too long on the cleavage of an underdressed female colleague. Going to a p site and viewing p videos is not a roving eye.

Okay, I'll throw in one more:

Inside the Church, we still seem to have trouble admitting that men are attracted to naked women.

Not-so-subtle implication: If you are a Christian and think a problem with p use should be a deal-breaker in a relationship, you're a religious prude who doesn't want to admit the facts of life about male sexuality. And using p is sort of like "being attracted to naked women."

Nowhere in the article (go ahead, look for yourself) is there any genuine acknowledgement of the horrific and corrosive harm of p use--to the individual, to a marriage, and to society. Nowhere is there any further indication that Regnerus is aware either of its moral seriousness or of the harm it does to relationships by destroying healthy sexuality. Nowhere is there any acknowledgement of the extreme depth of evil of the p industry itself, with its unimaginably dark exploitation of women, in particular. This is it. These phrases are what we get in the way of an acknowledgement of what p really is.

So let's move on from form to substance. Where is Regnerus going with all of this? His thesis, insofar as one can discern what it is, is entirely in keeping with the soft-pedaled rhetoric.

But we often overlook another casualty of pornography (and the human reaction to it): relationships that fail to launch. Breaking off a relationship because of pornography use can be a rational, justifiable, and moral reaction to a problem—the predilection for peering at nudity online—but such actions contribute in ways not often noted to our broad retreat from marriage.

There's the "but" part of the paragraph I partially quoted up above. What precisely Regnerus means by a "rational, justifiable, and moral reaction to a problem" is a little unclear, seeing as he's about to suggest that one should actually do otherwise for the good of society. Is he suggesting that an individual woman should do something less rational and justifiable in her particular situation, sacrificing her life for the Greater Good? Maybe so.

Oh, and I forgot to mention that little bit between dashes in my list of downplaying phrases: Regnerus summarizes the problem of p use as "the predilection for peering at nudity on-line." Yeah, that shows a real understanding of what on-line p use is. It's "the predilection for peering at nudity on-line." That's one of the best of them all.

Moving on:

Not long before that, I sat around a campfire with a couple dozen enthusiastic young adults, listening to the women recount their list of relationship deal-breakers—porn was of course one of them—while the men sat by sheepishly.

While I’m sympathetic to their concern, I can also promise you that widespread departures—given the dour numbers on porn use—will only accelerate the flight from marriage in the Church and is likely to backfire on women (as many things tend to do in the domain of relationships) who would leave for pastures that may well not be greener.

So tell us, Professor Regnerus, why were the men sitting by sheepishly? Oh, yes, because the men are right now using p. Got it. Well, golly, what a shame. We wouldn't want to make any poor, p-using men feel sheepish, now, would we?

And why is it going to "backfire on women" if they don't pursue a relationship with a man who is presently using p? Oh, wait, maybe because then they will die spinsters, because so many men are now using p. Apparently that's what he means, but why think that isn't a price they are willing to pay? Maybe they know that already. It's not that I think girls should be enthusiastic about not getting married. I'd love to see my world filled with wonderful, romantic weddings between loving brides and grooms. And that is not sarcasm, either. I really would love it, and I think parents should raise their children to want to get married. But there are worse things than not getting married. St. Paul says so. A woman might well be, what was the phrase?, "rational, justified, and moral" for thinking that one thing worse than not being married is being married to a p addict who can't shake the habit. Or even to a man who claims not to be an addict, not exactly, but is an on-going user. Perhaps if those were her only options, then spinsterhood, while hardly a greener pasture, would at least be better than a blasted heath.

Regnerus is somewhat unclear, but not entirely unclear, as to what he is urging.

However, I have no trouble or qualms in declaring that collectively a categorical call to leave spells doom. Young adults are waiting longer and longer to marry, and fewer are doing so.

To counsel further flight is like asserting that our Christian ancestors should have headed to the hills, as wealthy Romans did, to avoid the plague. You can’t flee far enough, and the Church grew by gutting it out, staying put, and caring for the sick. On the matter of men and pornography, the data suggest you cannot flee far enough. Lots of “prudent” decisions to leave will still lead us to the same place—a widespread marriage avoidance. There’s nothing wrong with being unmarried, but we fool ourselves if we think this is the obvious solution.

I gather that by "further flight" he means what those women around the campfire were doing: Refusing to date men who are using p. That "spells doom," girls, because you don't have all that many options, so better pull up your socks and rethink your dating priorities if you don't want to be responsible for the Doom of the West.

Isn't the solution to p use in the church getting people (men and women alike) to stop using p? Wouldn't that stop the "doom" by giving the non-negotiators more potential spouses to consider? Oh, yes, I know, how terribly naive. But perhaps the women around the campfire do not consider their refusal to be a solution to the collective problem of male p use at all. Maybe that isn't the point. Perhaps they just consider it better for them as individual women with valuable individual lives not to be married than to marry a man who continues to use p. Yes, even if he admits that it is wrong and wants to stop. I cannot possibly blame them for thinking that way. In fact, I would counsel them so.

Regnerus is not-so-subtly implying that "the church" is supposed to respond to the epidemic of p use among (especially) young men by somehow inducing women to marry the men anyway. (Though he would never counsel anyone about a particular relationship!) Presumably hoping to help them stop. The most charitable interpretation is that the women aren't exactly just supposed to put up with it and learn not to mind but that they are supposed to accept and assist prospective mates with this problem so long as they acknowledge it and are trying to work on it. This interpretation is confirmed by the last paragraph of the article.

But the gritty reality remains—the Church will have to learn how to navigate this, and press forward with grace and truth. Men and women have to forge relationships—marriage—with each other recognizing human weakness and fostering each other’s sanctification. While pornography is certainly a problem, we cannot collectively bail on marriage. It’s too important to the future of the Church. Without a marrying culture in the West, chastity will falter on a scale we have not yet seen.

Since when is that a good thing to counsel? Is that how you would counsel a beloved daughter who has saved herself for marriage? To forge a marriage with a man who is presently using p, hoping to "foster his sanctification"?

Let's be blunt: Nobody (I hope) would say this if the issue instead were beating women. Suppose that a man slaps his girlfriend only occasionally. He engages, in a manner of speaking, only in soft-core girl-beating. And suppose that somehow this had become endemic in American society so that even many Christian men were doing it. Suppose, even, that we had to tell our daughters, helping them to be realistic, that they might not get married at all if they made it a non-negotiable that they would not date a man who slapped them around in the course of the dating relationship. Should we then write articles urging the church not to "run away" from prospective wife-beaters, meaning by that that women should "navigate this" and "forge marriages" with such men so that there aren't too few marriages taking place?

What is astonishing about all of this is that there is a much more obvious and straightfoward approach: Tell the p users, just as you would tell women-beaters, to stop it. Stop it first! Then, when you've gotten rid of this terrible habit, which nobody should be negotiating with you about, seek someone with whom to forge a relationship and a marriage. Sure, there may well still be baggage, as there is for anyone with sin in their past (past sexual relationships, for one thing). And the baggage may, sad to say, scotch the relationship in itself. Such is the nature of sin that it leaves earthly consequences. But it should be a sine qua non, a bare minimum, that a person seeking to date and marry does not presently have a serious, on-going, destructive problem, especially not a problem that strikes at the very heart of the prospective couple's sexual relationship.

There is an interesting dilemma here for the downplayers who want to urge women to "foster the sanctification" of men presently practicing p use. On the one hand, they want to stress that there is a big range of what can be meant by "p use." (One sees this in the sentence analyzed above from Regnerus's article.) This means that they are sort of implying (without quite saying so) that they aren't really urging women to date and marry men who are really addicted, who have that bad of a problem. On the other hand, there is their odd reticence to address the problem via the Bob Newhart method. STOP IT!

Why? Why be reticent about telling the Christian men to stop first, before seeking mates, if you're only asking the women to date those who don't have such a bad problem?

See, here's the thing: Either the people you want them to date are at least somewhat addicted or they aren't. Suppose that they aren't. Then, apparently they don't think stopping is that important, or else they would stop. So then we have a very straightforward theological and moral problem, and this should be a non-negotiable. Nobody should be even considering marrying somebody who just doesn't want to stop using p, who doesn't think stopping is important. Suppose, on the other hand, that they can't stop so easily. Then they are addicted. Then all of the words Regnerus is saying about not "running for the hills" are in the service of suggesting that Christians should be considering marrying mates who are p addicts, at least to some extent, which is manifestly unreasonable. (Lest anyone wonder, yes, I would apply exactly the same recommendations and say exactly the same things if the p user were a woman.)

So which is it? I think this dilemma is unanswerable. Either they're addicts or they're not, and either way, no Christian should be dating them, much less marrying them, until they STOP IT.

Then, too, there is the element of deception. What about all those sheepish men sitting around the campfire? If they were p users, and they knew how the women felt about it, should they have been dating the women? There is an element of moral and emotional blackmail involved in deliberately leading someone to fall in love with you and only then revealing a dark, on-going behavior problem that you know will cause them great anguish, revealing it only after they feel at least somewhat committed to continuing the relationship and are loathe to hurt both of you by breaking it off. That sort of emotional blackmail is not right. That's why you should STOP IT first, and truly get past it, and be sure that you can love a normal woman and make a real, loving, physically consummated marriage, before seeking someone to fall in love with you. (Compare: If a woman already knows that she hates the very idea of sex and is going to be frigid and make her husband's life miserable in the bedroom, should she be dating? I say, absolutely not. And that isn't even a sin. Some people just shouldn't get married, cruel though that fact may be.)

Moral equivalence is going to be the bane of this debate. It's the whole pobody's nerfect thing. Nobody's perfect, we're all imperfect beings, we all have "human weakness," we all need to "foster each other's sanctification." Etc., etc. But moral equivalence is wrong. Wrong in the sense of wrong-headed, misleading, false, and inaccurate. It's especially wrong when it is applied to practical matters. Whether or not one maintains at some heady, theological level that all sins equally condemn us before God, it is dead obvious that all sins are not equal in their real-world consequences, and especially not in their real-world consequences for that most delicate of human relationships--marriage. Gluttony is not the same thing as a critical spirit is not the same thing as recklessness is not the same thing as violence is not the same thing as homosexuality is not the same thing as p use, and on and on and on. Each sin is different, and some are vastly more worthy, if "worthy" is the right word, to be regarded as deal-breakers in a prospective mate.

So, I disagree with Regnerus. Run for the hills, ladies. And gentlemen, for that matter. I'd give the same advice to a young man whose girlfriend has a present p problem. If the prospective spouse really gets over it later, perhaps the relationship can be resumed. But until then, a deal-breaker it is and should be.

And what can the church do? The church can help people to stop. (There are such things as church-sponsored anti-addiction programs. And for those who aren't actually addicts, clear counseling and catechesis should be more than sufficient.) Moreover, the church can teach that marriage is not therapy. Chastity should be a way of life, in or out of marriage. Nobody has a right to marriage. In particular, nobody has a right to marriage as therapy. Young people seeking marriage should not be continuing in destructive behaviors while waiting for a prospective spouse to come along and act as a savior girlfriend or savior boyfriend. The church, of all institutions, should not be encouraging them to do so. Rather than addressing solemn admonitions to the church to (somehow) encourage Christians to undertake marriage with people who have a p problem, let's strategize about dealing with the underlying p problem directly.

Whatever else we do, let's not settle, either individually or corporately.