On the Minimal Facts Case for the Resurrection: Part 1--A statement of my central objections

This is part 1.

Part 2 is here.

Part 3 is here.

 

In light of some recent events, I've decided that it would be a good idea for me to do a new, three-part, written series on my objections to the minimal facts argument (hereafter the MFA) and related cases like the "core facts" case of William Lane Craig. I have written on this before. Here are several of my older posts. (Here, here, here.) Here is a longer treatment of the issues in the form of a webinar. Here is my Youtube playlist. If interested in more details beyond those in this post, please see these other resources.

The three parts currently planned will be as follows.. In this post, Part I, I will state what I take to be the most salient epistemological problems with minimalist approaches to arguing for the resurrection. These are approaches that attempt to rely only on a small number of facts widely granted by scholars and to eschew reliance on the proposition below labeled DT. I will also reply to some attempted responses to my criticisms that I've encountered over the last several years. 

In Part II, I plan to talk about another problem with minimalism, which is what I call the confusion between epistemology and sociology. I am deferring this to the second post, because the objections in this post stand on their own even if someone finds the concern in Part II to be offensive and/or thinks that the scholars in question are neither confused themselves about this nor fostering such confusion in others. 

In Part III, I plan to provide and discuss quotations from Dr. Gary Habermas and possibly from others and to explain how these caused confusion initially for Tim and me concerning what is or is not granted by the wide consensus of scholars. That confusion led to some incorrect statements in our 2009 Blackwell article about the scope of scholarly consensus (statements that we have since publicly repudiated). Some have now tried to use these earlier quotations against us, with the unsubtle implication that what we were doing there was at least quite close to or a lot like an MFA (in fact, it was not, despite our mistaken idea about the scope of consensus) and also that we should have known better than to be at all confused about how much scholars do and don't grant. I would contend instead that such a mix-up is at least somewhat understandable on the part of those who don't expect confusion on the part of prominent, admired apologists (which might seem uncharitable). I think that this is why so many other laymen and even philosophers and apologists have also been confused about the appearance experiences claim in the MFA. I'll be discussing this more in Part III.

Since there has been some surprising confusion in a recent social media exchange about the terms "use" and "rely on" in the context of argument, I want to state for the record at the outset that I intend those terms to be interchangeable in this series, and the same for "depend on."

Throughout this post I will be talking about a proposition that I will label DT (for "details of testimony").

DT: The Gospel accounts and the account in Acts 1 of Jesus' resurrection appearances and of the finding of the empty tomb reliably represent what the disciples/alleged witnesses (both male and female) claimed about their experiences at that time. This includes such matters as that Jesus ate with them more than once, that they were able to touch him, that he appeared to them multiple times and to varied groups, that he had lengthy conversations with them, and so forth.

Readers of our 2009 article on the resurrection will hopefully recognize that DT is included as an aspect of both what we call W there (the testimony of the women) and what we call D (the testimony of the [male] disciples). Our 2009 article crucially relied on DT in order to set the Bayes factor (a measure of the force of an item of evidence) for these facts, something we emphasize repeatedly in the article. I will not argue here for the claim that our 2009 article crucially relied on DT, though I could bring multiple quotations to show it. I believe that the article speaks for itself and that most people who read it can see this, despite some very surprising statements that I have recently encountered to the contrary. I also note that DT is not question-begging, since it is a statement about what the alleged witnesses claimed; their testimony, with this content, must then be explained. We argued that the resurrection was the best explanation.

When I speak of minimalist approaches to arguing for the resurrection in this post, I particularly have in mind those that try to avoid using DT, relying instead on more minimal claims about appearance experiences that are granted by a wide variety of scholars. Such approaches sometimes include the statement that the Gospel accounts "present Jesus' resurrection as physical," but this is different from relying on DT, since the premise instead is merely the very broad fact that the accounts present the resurrection as physical. This is meant to support the conclusion that the apostles claimed that Jesus' resurrection was physical. It does not amount to relying on the claim that the disciples actually testified to the specific experiences that are told in the Gospels. (This is an important distinction.)

A classic and fairly typical statement of the "minimal fact" about the appearance experience claims is found in Michael Licona's book, The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach. Licona, along with Gary Habermas, is one of the major proponents of the MFA. Here (with some surrounding context) is how Licona words that.

In a similar manner, historians may conclude that, subsequent to Jesus’ death by crucifixion, a number of his followers had experiences in individual and group settings that convinced them Jesus had risen from the dead and had appeared to them. We may affirm with great confidence that Peter had such an experience in an individual setting, and we will see that the same may be said of an adversary of the church named Paul. We may likewise affirm that there was at least one occasion when a group of Jesus’ followers including “the Twelve” had such an experience. Did other experiences reported by the Gospels occur as well, such as the appearances to the women, Thomas, the Emmaus disciples, and the multiple group appearances reported by the tradition in I Corinthians 15:3-7 and John? Where did these experiences occur? Historians may be going beyond what the data warrants in assigning a verdict with much confidence to these questions. I reiterate that historicans may conclude that subsequent to Jesus’ execution, a number of his followers had experiences, in individual and group settings, that convinced them Jesus had risen from the dead and had appeared to them in some manner. This conclusion is granted by a nearly unaniumous consensus of modern scholars and may therefore be added to our “historical bedrock.” The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach, p. 372

Similar quotations about the disciples having had experiences that "in some sense" seemed to them to be experiences of the risen Jesus can be documented from Habermas. This appearance fact definitely does not include DT. Indeed, I have recently been told that it is so obvious that the MFA doesn't rely on the details of the Gospel accounts, not even on taking them to be what the original witnesses claimed to have experienced (the premise we used in the 2009 article), that everyone should know this and that Tim and I should never have been confused about whether or not a wide consensus of scholars grants DT. (In other contexts, laymen who advocate the MFA have tried to tell me that the MFA and/or William Lane Craig's cousin "core facts" approach does include DT among its premises and that it is uncharitable for me to think otherwise. This understandably makes me feel that I'm in a no-win situation. When I try to clarify what the MFA doesn't include, I'm told by one set of MFA defenders that it does include that. When I admit openly that we were originally confused ourselves about what Habermas's research shows and the fact that DT is not included, I'm told that we should have known better all along.) I will not take the time here to argue further that the MFA and other minimalist approaches do not rely on DT. While I could bring multiple quotations to support this, I will take it that the prominent, scholarly advocates of those approaches are well aware that they are not relying on DT and are quite willing to admit it, so hopefully I won't be accused of misrepresentation for simply stating this: The MFA doesn't rely on DT as a premise. DT is not meant to be included in the MFA premise stating that the disciples had "experiences" that they believed were appearances of the risen Jesus. Moreover, the original advocate of the MFA (Habermas) apparently did not intend to say that a large consensus of scholars grants DT, even though DT merely states that this is what the alleged witnesses claimed.

Therein, I believe, lies a crucial problem with the MFA and other minimalist approaches. It is my firm contention that it is not possible to provide a strong argument for the bodily resurrection of Jesus without being prepared to defend the proposition that the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ resurrection are unembellished, reliable accounts of at least what the initial putative witnesses claimed. By “strong argument” I mean (roughly) an argument that would require a good bit of evidence to defeat it, an argument that is sufficient to overcome even a moderately low prior probability for the event and to leave one with a high posterior. (To put this in the terms of our Blackwell article, a "strong argument" here refers to an argument that provides a significantly top-heavy Bayes factor.) I'm reluctant to quantify these statements further, but for reasons of concreteness I will tentatively say that I do not think that evidential arguments for the resurrection that do not rely on DT can take a prior probability of, say, .1 or lower to a posterior probability of, say, .9 or higher.

A major reason for my contention about the need for DT is this: A strong argument for the resurrection needs to contain good evidence that the disciples were rational in believing that Jesus was physically raised (not merely that they did believe this). Many people irrationally believe religious propositions, and the skeptic is not going to grant (and perhaps shouldn’t grant) that, since the disciples believed Jesus was physically raised, they must have had very good reasons for believing this. Any skeptic quite reasonably wants to know more specifically what they said they experienced and whether or not that would have been good reason to accept that Jesus was physically alive. 

The MFA states that the disciples had experiences shortly after Jesus’ death that convinced them that Jesus had risen. But the “appearance experiences” referred to in the MFA have to be left vaguely specified in order to obtain the high consensus of scholarship required by the MFA method. Vaguely-defined appearance experiences are insufficient to show with a high degree of confidence that the disciples were rational in believing that Jesus was physically raised. The appearance experiences allowable could include everything from the kinds of empirical, polymodal, sustained, intersubjective group experiences described in the Gospels to some sort of experience of light and sound, a vision at a distance, or a spiritual ecstasy. 

Consider: Atheist scholar Gerd Ludemann is included in the "scholarly consensus" surrounding the experiences claim in the MFA. Habermas and William Lane Craig have quoted the following statement from Ludemann as showing how much support this minimal fact has, and one will often see lay apologists quote it on social media as though it's a big deal. (I just saw someone do this within the past week.)

It may be taken as historically certain that Peter and the disciples had experiences after Jesus' death in which Jesus appeared to them as the risen Christ. (What Really Happened to Jesus? p. 80)

But Habermas and Licona have elsewhere made it clear that Ludemann's concession here really doesn't amount to much. Indeed, in the same book, he says that the "objectification" of the Gospel resurrection accounts is the result of later embellishments. By objectifying he means the physical details such as Jesus' eating and being tangible. He insists that "the original seeing...was a seeing in the spirit" (p. 69)--some sort of religious ecstasy and, in some cases, an individual hallucination. One wonders very much in that case why we should quote Ludemann's statement with such enthusiasm, unless perhaps merely to argue (from Ludemann's authority) that that the disciples were not the merest fraudsters, making the whole thing up from literally nothing.

What is often not well-understood is that the details of evidence matter. It is a crucial principle of probabilistic reasoning that we must always use the most specific version of a piece of evidence that is relevant to the conclusion in question. Otherwise, merely by cherry-picking a  degree of "focus" for the evidence, we can make it sound like it supports a conclusion that, if fully understood, it either doesn't support at all, supports far less than we think, or even disconfirms!

Here is a well-known example in epistemology: Suppose that you are arguing that John is Roman Catholic. Suppose that you have as a piece of evidence the specific proposition that John is from a city in Ireland that is almost entirely Protestant. But instead of describing the evidence in that way, you describe it as, "John is from Ireland." You then argue that, since most Irishmen are Roman Catholic, probably John is Roman Catholic. This is obviously illicit. By deliberately giving the evidence in a "fuzzy" form and leaving something out, you make it sound like you have a strong premise for the desired conclusion, when in fact stating the evidence in the specific form in which you really have it would show that the evidence points in exactly the opposite direction.

Similarly, to say that Ludemann and others grant that the disciples had some sort of appearance experiences that led them to think that Jesus was risen, while including in that "consensus" widely different views about what kind of experiences we are talking about, we are basing our conclusion on supposed expert opinions that might or might not support the desired conclusion--that Jesus rose bodily from the dead. In fact, some such opinions might even tend to support the opposite conclusion. For example, if Ludemann is right that the disciples merely had a "seeing in the spirit" experience, it isn't at all clear that this proposition supports the proposition that Jesus was literally risen from the dead. Or suppose that a scholar thinks that the disciples had an experience as of Jesus up in the sky, seen at a distance--something that Bart Ehrman has suggested might be the most that a group of disciples experienced. (Ehrman doesn't grant even this, but he thinks at most this would have been the type of "group experience" that they had.) An experience like that might be well explained by the theory that Jesus did not physically rise from the dead but instead was dead while his spirit was in heaven, communicating with his disciples from there.

Here is another example of the "specificity of evidence" problem: Suppose that I for some reason want to argue that a number in a box is the number 99. I know ahead of time that it must be some number between 1 and 1000. Suppose that I have never looked in the box and that ten people come and look into the box briefly and then make statements to me about the number in the box. Two of them tell me that the number that they saw was 200. One of them tells me that the number was 99. Four of them tell me that the number was 42. And the remaining three state that the number was 800. It would be completely illegitimate for me to combine the four votes for 42, the one vote for 99, and the two votes for 200 and state, "70% of those surveyed agree that the number in the box is less than 250. Thus this survey supports the proposition that the number is 99, by reducing thee possibilities to numbers less than 250." In point of fact, 9 out of 10 of those surveyed stated a number other than 99! There is nothing about being "less than 250" that unifies all of these claims so as to make them all support the conclusion that the number is 99. It is obviously false to say that the survey supports the conclusion that the number is 99. The "consensus" is gerrymandered by combining specific claims, most of which point away from the desired conclusion, describing them in a vague fashion, and thus making it sound like seven of the speakers asserted something that supported the conclusion that the number is 99.

Similarly, Ludemann's belief that the disciples experienced a "seeing in the spirit" and Ehrman's suggestion that (at most) perhaps they experienced a "seeing at a distance" really have nothing much in common with the belief of an evangelical scholar included in Habermas's survey who thinks that the disciples really had experiences like those contained in the Gospel accounts. These do not form an epistemic "natural kind" supporting a literal resurrection, except in the very tenuous sense that they all involve some notion that the disciples were not mere religious frauds.

The issue of the disciples' rationality and trying to do without DT is exacerbated when one is arguing (as of course a Christian should be) for Jesus' true bodily resurrection and bodily appearances rather than a vision by the disciples. For it is the bodily details that are included in DT as elements of the disciples' testimony. These elements were crucial to Tim's and my argument in 2009 because they helped to rule out various religious, secular, or paranormal explanations of the disciples' testimony other than physical resurrection. As I often put it in presentations, whether or not you and your friends spent a lot of time in conversation with another mutual, well-known friend is not the kind of thing you can be easily mistaken about. All the less so if all of you agree that you had meals and long conversations with him in varying groups over a period of weeks. These are the kinds of robust details of testimony included in DT that make honest mistake, grief hallucination, ghostly apparition, and religious ecstasy non-starters as explanations of the testimony. And this is why trying to do without DT is such a problem.

I would say that a skeptic confronted with the MFA would have reason to think that something-or-other happened after Jesus' death that was odd and intriguing, but he need not have too much concern (on the basis of the MFA alone) that it was something supernatural, much less that it was specifically the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. If there is a lot of evidence for "the paranormal" (I'm not convinced that there is, but I bring this up for the sake of completeness), this would provide even more categories for some sort of odd "spiritual" event at that time, after the death of Jesus, sufficient to account for the minimal facts, without strongly supporting the Christian explanation. A non-Christian like Dale Allison will be inclined to give a lot of weight to this latter possibility.

Several responses have emerged over the years as I have laid out these problems. I'll deal first with the most recent--a new one on me, and quickly answered. In a recent presentation at the ETS, the audio of which I possess, one presenter attempted to say that Habermas has already addressed the kind of criticism I am leveling here. Here is the quote from Habermas that supposedly addresses it:

[I]t has been concluded that the resurrection can be historically demonstrated even when the minimum of historical facts are utilized. Neither can it be concluded merely that “something” occurred which is indescribable due to naturalistic premises or to the character of history or because of the “cloudiness” or legendary character of the New Testament texts. Neither can it be said that Jesus rose spiritually but not literally. These and other such views are refuted in that the facts admitted by virtually all scholars as knowable history are adequate to historically demonstrate the literal resurrection of Jesus according to probability. pp. 165-166 The Historical Jesus

I am rather astonished that anyone would think that that quote addresses my concern about the appearances. This is Habermas's assertion of what he believes his argument supports. Of course he believes that his argument supports a stronger conclusion than I think it supports! It is not surprising at all that Habermas asserts that we can indeed conclude something stronger than merely that "something" occurred or that a spiritual resurrection occurred. This is not addressing my arguments that the MFA doesn't provide enough grounds for thinking that the disciples were rational in their belief. I am well aware that Habermas and Licona and other MFA advocates think that they have a good argument for the bodily resurrection of Jesus. That is not news! I never claimed that those who use the MFA do not believe that Jesus rose bodily from the dead. The question is whether they do have a strong argument for that conclusion, using only premises granted by a wide consensus of living scholars. I've argued that they don't, as summarized here. It doesn't "address" that argument to quote Habermas asserting something about how strong his own argument is.

In fact, if anything, providing this quotation saves me the trouble of searching to document the fact that Habermas has claimed that he has a really strong argument for the resurrection! Suppose that someone wants to retreat to saying merely that the MFA provides some reason (not a strong reason) for the resurrection, or that it's better than nothing or "might get someone thinking," etc. The above quotation from Habermas shows that he thinks he can "historically demonstrate the literal resurrection of Jesus by probability," using only propositions granted by "virtually all" scholars! So any such retrenchment by MFA advocates would amount to a very significant retreat from the founder's ambitions.

A more popular attempted answer to my concerns has been to supplement the barest minimal facts with a slightly larger set of facts, including those designated by Habermas as "known facts" and by Licona as "second-order facts." The most salient of these for purposes of trying to answer my concerns is the proposition that the disciples themselves believed that Jesus was raised bodily. Note that this is somewhat stronger than the fact that they had some sort of experiences that convinced them that Jesus was risen, since it includes more specifically that they really believed that he was risen bodily. (By the way, DT doesn't even make it into this larger list of facts used by Habermas.)

This response to my criticisms--slightly supplementing the barest MFA with the disciples' belief in bodily resurrection--usually involves saying that they would not have believed so firmly in bodily resurrection if they did not have experiences like those contained in the Gospels. It thus reverses the order of dependence from that which I am suggesting. Instead of arguing that the disciples did claim the things found in the Gospels, and hence that (if they were not lying) their belief that Jesus was raised from the dead in bodily form was rational (since such experiences would provide good reason to think Jesus was raised bodily), this proposal is to argue that they probably experienced something-or-other like what is found in the Gospels, since they probably believed rationally.

This, however, is a gravely inferior way to argue. For it requires us to assume without the support of DT that the disciples were rational and then to argue that something akin to DT is true as a conclusion. To use DT both as a premise and as a conclusion would be circular. So the apologist trying to do without DT as a premise is forced to use only evidence that the disciples really believed in Jesus' bodily resurrection, hoping that the skeptic will grant him that they were probably rational in doing so. But that "something akin to DT" is not independently supported by documentary evidence (namely, the Gospel accounts). Rather, it is simply supported by the reasoning that they must have experienced something like that or else they wouldn't have believed and therefore, probably, that their corporate belief was not only rational but true. This is much weaker than arguing for the bodily resurrection of Jesus as an inference to the best explanation, using the records in the Gospels as unembellished, varied testimony from different individuals and groups who were in a position to know. (See this post on the conspiracy hypothesis, which also is relevant to hypotheses of hallucination. Note, too, that the approach I am criticizing here does not allow us to multiply Bayes factors at all, since it treats "the disciples" merely as a group with a particular bare belief, without looking at even partially independent, varied, unembellished, specific accounts.)

Now, I am not going to say that the disciples' sincere belief that Jesus was raised bodily would not be some evidence that they had good reason for believing this, and thereby some evidence that Jesus was really raised, but if I really know very little independently about why they believed this, the argument is quite weak.

Compare: Suppose that I don't know Alice very well. She doesn't seem wildly irrational to me, but I don't have much to go on. I then find out that Alice believes that she has seen a ghost, due to some experience or other that she had last week. But I'm unable to find out about the details of her claims in any way that I am confident is not embellished. So I don't really know in detail what she claims happened to her. Does the bare fact that a person who isn't certifiably insane thinks that she saw a ghost provide some reason for believing 1) that she believed this for good reason and hence 2) that there are really ghosts? Yes, some. But not much. It is not a strong argument.

It makes a big difference which of the following I am saying:

1) Alice does firmly believe that she has seen a ghost. Therefore, she probably experienced detailed interactions with a person she knows to be dead (though I have no access to her actual accounts which I can trust to be unembellished by others). Therefore, probably, she really did see a ghost.

2) Alice has described in detail a series of interactions with a person she knows to be dead, and I have access to these descriptions and reason to think that they are her own, actual claims, unembellished by others. I can see for myself that these would be good reason to believe in ghosts. Since I have other reasons to think that Alice is not a liar, it is probable that she has really seen a ghost.

I can't help thinking that people who make the argument, "They sincerely believed it, so they must have had experiences like those in the Gospels, so Jesus was probably really physically risen" do not appreciate the magnitude of the difference between these. But structurally they are completely different.

This is also why it is not enough simply to argue that the Gospels portray Jesus' resurrection as physical, while carefully saying that we don't know if those portrayals are embellished, not (specifically) what the putative witnesses claimed. There one is using the general fact of the portrayal only to argue that the disciples preached a message of Jesus' physical resurrection, while not using the claim that these stories are what the witnesses claimed. (Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus, pp. 329-330, 338-339)

Arguing from the disciples' belief in Jesus' bodily resurrection (while eschewing reliance on DT) only postpones the need to press the skeptic to accept something he is highly unlikely to accept--i.e., that if the disciples sincerely thought Jesus was physically raised, they were probably rational in thinking so. Worse, the deliberate attempt to do without DT as independently supported (due to a desire not to confront squarely skeptical claims that the Gospel resurrection accounts are embellished) leaves the claim that they believed rationally as a bare posit. That is, it leaves one without the resources to say why we should think that they believed rationally. Surely we cannot rely on a generalization to the effect that most people who firmly believe that they have witnessed supernatural or paranormal events are rational in drawing that conclusion!

Here we are up against what I have called elsewhere the problem of the bottleneck. The capacity of evidence for "the disciples firmly believed that Jesus rose bodily" to support "Jesus rose bodily" has a hard upper limit: That upper limit is the probability of "Jesus rose bodily" given that "The disciples firmly believed that Jesus rose bodily"--given it, that is, at probability 1. I am saying here that even if the skeptic fully grants that the disciples firmly believed this, that has fairly limited force to support the conclusion that it really happened, absent more information about why they believed it. You cannot make up the deficiency there simply by providing more and more and more evidence that they believed it. For some reason it is difficult to get people to understand this, but it's very important. (Erik Manning of the Youtube channel Testify has done a nice job here of restating this issue.)

Bringing the Apostle Paul into the picture really does nothing to alleviate the bottleneck problem about whether or not the disciples were rational. Suppose that we argue that Paul believed and taught that Jesus was raised bodily. This is certainly true, and arguments to that effect (e.g., from N.T. Wright) serve to rebut the rather silly (but previously popular) skeptical attempt to pit Paul against the Gospels' physical accounts, based on his use of the phrase "spiritual body" in I Cor. 15. It's good to rebut that skeptical move, but in itself that is not positive evidence that the disciples rationally believed that Jesus was raised. 

All the talk one hears about the disciples offering Paul the right hand of fellowship (Gal. 2:9), hence he was teaching the same Gospel they were teaching, hence the disciples were teaching Jesus' bodily resurrection, runs smack into the same bottleneck problem that I just discussed. When all is said and done, what does this support? Once again, that the disciples sincerely believed and taught that Jesus was physically raised! And how, again, does more and more support just for that proposition independently support the proposition that they believed this reasonably, on the basis of good and sufficient evidence? It doesn't, at all.

Finally, it is of very limited value to argue (again, using Wright) that Jewish expectations of resurrection pointed to a large, apocalyptic resurrection of the righteous rather than individual resurrections in the disciples' own time. While this is no doubt true, it provides only a little evidence that the disciples "would have" required some overwhelming evidence before accepting that Jesus was individually risen. We should remember that this Jewish theology did not prevent the superstitious belief both by Herod and by some unspecified number of Jewish people in the surrounding population that Jesus was John the Baptist risen from the dead (Mark 6:14-16). So generally accepted theology did not preclude human superstition in particular cases, causing a false belief in an individual resurrection.

Compare: Suppose that we argued that members of Alice's religious group tend not to believe in ghosts. Just how far would that go in the absence of more specific evidence about Alice and Alice's claims to convince us that her belief in ghosts must have been rational? Not very far. All the less so if we have a specific record of other people who are part of Alice's religious group, in the same time period, who did believe (falsely) in a ghost.

So none of the popular attempts to use a minimalist account addresses the problem that is induced by trying to do without DT. I suggest instead that we should rely on DT and be prepared to defend it, if and when it is challenged, using the plethora of evidence for Gospel reliability.

I hope that this post is useful as a go-to for my current statement of my central objections to the MFA. Next up: Confusing epistemology with sociology.

The small vine: Life over death

Many-a year ago, I went on a sci-fi reading binge in my spare time. It was mostly a flop. Turns out I'm not really into reading sci-fi. One of the authors I tried unsuccessfully to enjoy was Fred Saberhagen. I read quite a number of short stories set in his Berserker universe. The Berserkers are demoniacally clever, life-destroying robots. They specialize in torture as a mode of forcing humans to do their will (they have no emotions) as they try to eradicate life from the galaxy. I'm a sensitive soul. This series wasn't for me. Plus, like so many sci-fi authors, Saberhagen just didn't seem to me to have the gift of making you see landscape or get really involved with characters. Everything was just plot sketches on board spaceships. 

There was one short story, the title of which I don't remember. I'll just let some enterprising reader do the googling to try to find its title and perhaps correct my memory of its plot. But the plot, and the ending (spoilers coming) have always stuck with me for conceptual reasons, even though I can scarcely remember if the protagonist was male or female, let alone his name. I'm pretty sure it was a man. The Berserkers had taken over the spaceship. The main character was being left alive for a while because they had some nefarious use for him. The Berserkers would sometimes force humans to act as spies or lures for other humans. I remember that from other stories. So maybe that was it. Anyway, they were going to make some bad use of the spaceship as well. Meanwhile, they had to let the few humans they were keeping continue to grow food, so there was a garden on the ship.

The climax (and ending) of the story came when the protagonist realized that one of the melons or gourds in the garden had sent its vines (roots?) down into the side of the ship and pried apart a seam of some kind. This meant that he was going to die pretty soon. It would also destroy the ship. Normally a disaster. But now that the ship was taken over by the Berserkers, he perceived it as a triumph. The story ends with him ready to die happy when the ship is depressurized, realizing that now it can't be used by the Berserkers to destroy more life.

The symbolism has always stuck with me. Saberhagen managed to make it vivid--the picture of the vine bursting through the metal. Life growing, springing forth, and sacrificing itself blindly, in the service of life, paradoxically overcoming death by destroying the ship and itself. Despite the fact that I have no desire ever again to enter the Berserker universe, I've never forgotten that image of the vine growing irrepressibly and thus quietly triumphing over the death monsters who seem so much more powerful.

Things are pretty bad in the West and in the whole world right now. In the West, it's the fact that things are getting worse that particularly draws the attention of anyone who loves the things being destroyed. Whether it's pastors being arrested in Canada for holding "illegal gatherings" (did you ever think you'd hear of that happening in the "free world"?), Christians suggesting we should use "pronoun hospitality" for mentally confused, reality-denying men who think they are women, people losing their livelihoods for stating that homosexual acts are wrong, two-year-olds being forced to wear masks to daycare, people dying alone in nursing homes, because their families aren't allowed to see them, Christians seriously arguing that "going to church" can be entirely a matter of "meeting" on-line, wicked destroyers rioting, and Christians defending rioting because of something-something to do with racism, or...Well, really, I'd run out of room if I tried to list everything. Sometimes in the last year I've just said, "The world is coming to an end." It really does seem like that.

Death seems to be winning. And I keep wanting to say something really encouraging to the many people who I know are going through it right now (for one reason or another) and facing darkness, many facing serious hardship and pain, and I keep feeling stymied. There are dangers in so many directions. To wit: If I just start talking about the beautiful flowers and the intensely green leaves I saw today on a walk in the woods, I could easily sound like those people on Facebook who say, "Here's a random puppy for your day to cheer you up." Shallow sentimentalism isn't terribly helpful. At best it's a drug that swiftly loses its effectiveness for countering existential angst. If I talk about the pastors standing up to tyranny in Canada (and that really is encouraging, I must say), I risk sounding like the people who say, "This persecution is really good for the church, because it will separate those who really believe in something from those who are merely nominal. It will strengthen us." Well, it ain't necessarily so. This persecution confuses and disheartens at least as many as it strengthens, it separates Christians physically from one another, and it creates ideological division. All opportunities for the Enemy. If I say, "Tighten your belts, folks, and grab your sword of the Spirit and your shield of faith, because it's gonna get worse before it gets better" I could just sound grim and not really encouraging. If I write an agonized elegy for all the things being destroyed, I'm likely to make depressed people, and maybe myself, more depressed. (Pro-tip: Catharsis doesn't always work, either for writers or for readers, unless you happen to be, or be reading, a genius writer on a roll.)

So let's try it this way. What does the Devil want? Yes, I mean the real Devil, Lucifer, the fallen angel. I really believe in him. And I think he's trying to have a field day, and to some extent having a field day, with the state of the world right now. What does he want to get out of this for my soul and yours?

Well, yes, ultimately, to take us to hell, which you might or might not think is possible if you believe in eternal security of the believer. But what about right now?

C.S. Lewis has a lot to say on this, and it's very insightful. The Devil wants us to believe that evil, meaninglessness, and death are the ultimate Reality in the universe. Here is something Screwtape has to say about the matter. (The whole passage is gold, but I'll only type out part of it. Go get your copy of The Screwtape Letters and read it all.) Speaking of the human "patient" who is an air raid warden during the Blitz, Uncle Screwtape advises,

Probably the scenes he is now witnessing will not provide material for an intellectual attack on his faith...But there is a sort of attack on the emotions which can still be tried. It turns on making him feel, when first he sees human remains plastered on a wall, that this is "what the world is really like" and that all his religion has been a fantasy. You will notice that we have got them completely fogged about the meaning of the world "real." They tell each other, of some great spiritual experience, "All that really happened was that you heard some music in a lighted building";...The general rule which we have now pretty well established among them is that in all experiences which can make them happier or better only the physical facts are "real," while the spiritual elements are "subjective". In all experiences which can discourage or corrupt them the spiritual elements are the main reality, and to ignore them is to be an escapist. Thus in birth the blood and pain are "real," the rejoicing a mere subjective point of view; in death, the terror and ugliness reveal what death "really means."...Wars and poverty are "really" horrible; peace and plenty are mere physical facts about which men happen to have certain sentiments....Your patient, properly handled, will have no difficulty in regarding his emotion at the sight of human entrails as a revelation of reality and his emotion at the sight of happy children or fair weather as mere sentiment. The Screwtape Letters, pp. 142-144 (from Letter XXX)

Precisely. Uncle Screwtape has nailed it. And so, if you see something beautiful and are in danger of being encouraged by it, your own personal Screwtape or Wormwood will be quick to remind you that all is just as wrong with the world as it was before and that you are merely experiencing a shot of dopamine occasioned by the nice weather. On the other hand, if you hear some tragic news of a friend of a friend who is dying alone, your personal Screwtape or Wormwood will tell you that that is what reality is really like and will ask you, pointedly, why God allows such things if He really exists. See how that works? It's a game the Devil delights to play.

Lewis made this devilish view of the world even more vivid in Perelandra. Ransom, the protagonist, has fought and (seemingly) defeated the demon-possessed Unman (formerly Dr. Weston) and has been cast up on the shores of an underground country where he wanders for some time. Unfortunately, the Unman is only partly dead. He follows Ransom through the underworld in a zombie-like state and has to be finally killed in one last fight and his body burned in a subterranean lake of fire before he stops pursuing Ransom. Just before the Unman emerges for the last time, he pours into Ransom's mind the demonic view of things:

Suddenly and irresistibly, like an attack by tanks, that whole view of the universe which Weston...had so lately preached to him took all but complete possession of his mind. He seemed to see that he had been living all his life in a world of illusions....The beauty of Perelandra, the innocence of the Lady, the sufferings of saints and the kindly affections of men, were all only an appearance and outward show. What he had called the worlds were but the skins of the worlds: a quarter of a mile beneath the surface, and from thence through thousands of miles of dark and silence and infernal fire, to the very heart of each, Reality lived--the meaningless, the un-made, the omnipotent idiocy to which all spirits were irrelevant and before which all efforts were vain. (Perelandra, p. 180)

That's what the Devil wants you to think. Frankly, shallow sentimentalism about a daily puppy picture would be truer. But better still the realization that the puppy, the friend, the green leaves, the sufferings of saints, and the kindly affections of men are the garment in which Reality clothes itself--that vast, meaningful, and ultimately powerful Reality that, at the last, will (for those who belong to the Lord, and hence are in touch with Reality) redeem all our losses. It will win because it must, because omnipotence and goodness are ultimately linked in some mysterious way that the Thomists claim to understand (and maybe they're right) and that I don't claim to understand. God's power and His goodness flow from his very being in two mighty streams. His creative acts flow from both, and one day He will make a new heaven and a new earth.

It may seem to us now that only goodness is eternally being lost and that only evil and meaninglessness will remain, but when we see from the side of eternity, we will see that that was only what the Enemy wanted us to think.

Christians believe that I'm right about this. Thinking Christians know that I'm right. The problem is one of holding on, isn't it? 

Another thing that can sap our will to hold on is our own sense of ridiculousness. Who am I, pontificating about Meaning and Suffering when others are really suffering? We can be tempted to be harsh with ourselves in a way that is not good, ridiculing our own attempts to cling to the unchanging hand of God on the grounds that, after all, we are so privileged, so pampered, that we shouldn't need such reflections in the first place. The Devil wants you to think that, too. Better to be humble, to take your share of the Cross, however ludicrously small it might seem in comparison with others', with due seriousness but not with self-aggrandizement, to accept with gratitude the present grace, and to go on.

If there is one thing that 2020 and now 2021 have shown me, it is that the Devil is astoundingly quick to take advantage of anything and everything that he can turn to his own uses. Since these days I have an increasingly large electronic correspondence, I get a small chance to see that there are an awful lot of people out there going along quietly bearing an increasing sense of darkness and doom but not wanting to say much about it. It may be something concrete like the loss of a job or physical pain or illness, or it may be a sense of psychological or spiritual oppression, or both, but it's there, and I think it's there more and more now.

The vine in the Saberhagen story was just a symbol. It would mean nothing to say that life triumphs over death if we didn't have reason to believe that, really, life does triumph over death. Who cares if forests grow back over the ruins of human civilizations? Who cares if a gourd destroys a spaceship and messes up some wicked plans? No doubt the Berserkers will find another way to move forward. The glory of Christianity is that it tells us that the good message is true. We feel, when we see spring come after winter, that life springs up ever and anew and that death is not the final answer. Is that just a feeling? That's what we want to know. After all, when the deadly snows fall again and, in these northern latitudes, the long dark days come back, we feel the opposite--that darkness is the ultimate fate of man. Is that true? Both can seem like insights. 

This is why we need the propositional content and the empirical evidence to give stability to our feelings and to help us to distinguish the true from the false. Thank God, he has not left us to puzzle out that riddle alone.

The disjunctions of risk in an old-fashioned world

 In a recent Facebook post set to public, Bret Laird, a pastor here in the Kalamazoo area, makes an excellent point: All the talk about the alleged Christian duty to curtail our meetings due to Covid ignores the very nature of risk in the world in which Christianity was born and spread--the whole world, in fact, up to the early 1900s at least. Pastor Laird uses the discovery of penicillin and antibiotics early in the 20th century as a starting point for his discussion.

I would like to jump off from Pastor Laird's comments and make similar comments of my own, without using his specific numbers. Just to be "generous", let's take this piece's estimate from September of about 1% infection fatality rate for Covid, noting that this is in an article that is trying to debunk an overly rosy view of the virus's harmfulness. As the piece notes, some estimates of IFR have been lower, but let's take the higher one. Of course, that rate varies greatly from one group to another. Well and good. The case fatality ratio (which involves only detected cases and hence will be higher, since it involves more symptomatic people) has been wildly differently estimated from one country to another. The WHO more or less throws up its hands and suggests trying to avoid one's biases, noting that estimates of this ratio have ranged from .1 to 25%!

Now, let's consider a world with no antibiotics and no vaccines. The world, in fact, in which Christianity came into existence. The world in which the Jewish people came into existence. The world in which God commanded multiple feasts per year (in the Old Testament) and many sacrifices, which had to be carried out in Jerusalem once Solomon built the Temple. The world in which Christians were commanded not to forsake the assembling of themselves together. The world in which 3,000 people were baptized into the new Christian faith on the day of Pentecost. The world of pilgrimages, evangelistic meetings, huge numbers receiving Communion together, the world of "greet one another with a holy kiss."

And let's think about disjunctions. When you have no antibiotics, pneumonia (an infectious disease) is a real scourge. One estimate of its case fatality pre-antibiotics is a whopping 30%. That's case fatality rather than infection fatality, because it's very difficult to know who is technically infected with the pneumococcus, if they present no symptoms. But there's also smallpox, which was a separate real scourge, also with an estimate CFR (in an older world) around 30%.

You begin to get the picture. I'm not going to go look all of these up to get estimates of the probability of your dying of them, back when there was not very good medical care, no antibiotics (where relevant), and no vaccines to prevent them or make you have much milder symptoms. But let's just list a few more infectious diseases to keep the interest going--tuberculosis, typhoid fever, German measles (not very deadly in itself to the one showing symptoms but quite dangerous to the unborn child of a pregnant woman), etc. Oh, did you say something about long-term effects? Well, there was the scarring from smallpox, even if you recovered. There's the possibility of permanent sterility from mumps. Even seasonal influenza was deadlier in 1900 than it is in 2020, probably deadlier still in AD 100, and there were no flu shots to prevent it.

Now, consider: For any given church meeting, Israelite feast, or other religious gathering throughout the history of the people of God prior to the wonders of modern medicine, it is absolutely obvious that the probability that someone or other, as a result of that gathering, would catch one or the other of these infectious diseases and either die or have permanent, serious health consequences was far higher than the probability, in 2020, that that will happen from Covid as a result of a meeting of comparable size.

But (you might say), "they" didn't know that "back then." Well, actually, there have been plenty of centuries when people were able by sheer observation to get the idea that you could catch a disease by gathering together, even prior to knowing about germs. But waive that. God knew. God commanded that His people gather together, even en masse (pun intended), despite knowing, beyond all shadow of a doubt, with perfect foreknowledge, that people would die physically of infectious diseases as an indirect result of obeying those commands. Evidently God had other priorities. Whaddaya know?

If the church had ceased to gather or even had significantly curtailed gathering as a result of a danger of a death from infectious disease as a result of gathering, equal to that risk from Covid, now, then the church would scarcely have gathered throughout all those earlier centuries, and Christianity as we know it, and Judaism as it was before the Fall of Jerusalem, would never have existed. And, if you care about that kind of thing, a lot fewer people would ever have heard of the true God or known him, been discipled into his Church, and gone out to reach others. And also, while I'm at it, if everybody had tried to cover half of their faces in all of these gatherings for all that time, a lot of other good things would have been lost as well. But I'll leave that part as an "exercise for the reader" rather than saying more about it here.

This consideration about the multiplicity of infectious diseases that used to be stalking around this world should strike down at a single blow the idea that "this time it's different," that we are in some unprecedented and "temporary" situation (where the word "temporary," at a year and counting, with no clear end in sight, has become a kind of sickening joke) in which we should just submit "for now" to significant curtailment of normal life and religious practice, because we are "in a pandemic" and all the usual notions of normal life simply don't apply. And it should reveal for the utter falsehood that it is the claim that the Judeo-Christian God is pleased with us if we cease to meet in person, to evangelize, to gather, and disapproves of us if we, like Pastor Coates in Canada, carry on with such nefarious religious activities. Indeed, the more one thinks about it the more such a claim comes to seem like something nigh to blasphemy. Perhaps a well-intentioned blasphemy, but then, the Bible knows about well-intentioned blasphemy. Just ask Uzzah. I'd say that those fellow believers who are out there lecturing Pastor Coates and those who agree with GraceLife Church about their (alleged) duty to obey God by cutting way back on the services of Christ should think again.

For when one thinks of God's beloved servants, whose beautiful feet upon the mountains have for thousands of years brought glad tidings of peace, one should start suspecting that that is what God wants. Maybe we should be worried about displeasing him quite seriously by bringing all of that to a crashing stop. Maybe God has priorities other than avoiding a virus or an infectious bacterium. Any one of them, or all of them put together.

Updates on Lisa Miller and Philip Zodhiates

Philip Zodhiates' release date is supposed to be March 26, 2021. It looks like the civil suit against him and all the others will get going full-bore in June. I wonder whether Lisa Miller's criminal case will delay this at all.

I get updates on some of these things because I get e-mails from the 419 Fund. I'm not exactly sure how one gets on their e-mail list, though I'm happy that I got on it somehow, but here is their contact form. Otherwise it can be hard to learn much. Sometimes additional entries that (I think) should be posted on Philip's prison blog are posted to the 419 Fund blog. This happened recently. Check out the February 12 entry, here. (There doesn't seem to be a way to link individual entries.)

On Lisa Miller, besides on the 419 Fund, one can find updates on this blog that I found called Ain't Complicated, here. After voluntarily turning herself in, she has been arraigned on charges of conspiracy and international parental kidnapping. She is currently in Buffalo, New York.

Her daughter, Isabella (now going on 19 years old), apparently remains in Nicaragua and has emphatically stated that she has no intention of testifying against Lisa or any of those who helped them. As an adult Isabella is hopefully safe from being forcibly (at least legally forcibly) brought to the United States. She has apparently successfully petitioned to have her name removed from the lawsuit against her mother by stating emphatically that anyone purporting to represent her in that suit is acting against her wishes.

Meanwhile, Janet Jenkins has issued the following utterly creepy and ridiculous statement via her lawyer:

The Jenkins family wants Isabella to know that they have always kept prayer lists going for her, and she has never been out of their thoughts. The family longs for Isabella’s safe return and want her to know that they still celebrate her birthday and that her childhood bedroom is ready and waiting for her.

What? I mean, come on! The couple separated when Isabella was eighteen months old. She was only back there to visit Jenkins for occasional times thereafter until she was about seven years old and has lived in Nicaragua ever since. She is now eighteen years old. Why in the world would anyone mention her "childhood bedroom" in such a message? Even if one believes that Jenkins is in the right in this whole vendetta, you'd have to know that Isabella has not the remotest interest in her "childhood bedroom" back in Vermont. Such a sympathizer (with Jenkins) would doubtless say that Isabella has been brainwashed. But even on that premise, there can be no possible point to sending her a message that her childhood bedroom is waiting for her! That is bound to disgust her and make her feel stalked. What is wrong with you people? Obviously this statement was issued for the sympathizers who are so blindly partisan that they will think it is touching. Good grief.

But Lisa, sustained by God, appears to be keeping up her spirits. It's really quite incredible, and I myself have been encouraged in the Lord by seeing her courage and that of Philip and of Ken Miller (no relation) when in prison. Here are some excerpts from the most recent letter that I received via the 419 Fund e-mail list. The letter was written on February 16 while she was still in Miami.

Greetings from the Florida Detention Center in Miami in the name of our Savior WHO is able to do above and beyond all that we can even imagine! Thank you for all the letters, which I have received while in quarantine and thank you for your prayers. It is such a blessing to read your encouragements while in a place such as this. Thank you! As I’m writing this update, I am sitting on the top bunk amidst a stack of books (classics, biographies and “Christian” prison stories) and gifts from some of the inmates. I was released from quarantine with cheering from the ladies of the SHU (solitary), their smiling faces pressed against the small narrow windows of their locked doors. As soon as I arrived on the floor, I was snatched up as a roommate (later she told me that I looked “calm.” I felt that it was “the peace that passeth all understanding” – thanks be to God). Once I made my bed (w/two flat sheets 😊) my cell neighbor greeted me with a cup of hot coffee in a large clear plastic mug, which was her gift to me (we must buy our own eating and drinking implements as well as soap, shampoo and other daily hygiene items). Next a gaggle of women, masked and w/bright sparkling eyes, showed up at my door with not one, but three bags of supplies and goodies – from a pair of sweatpants (there are no dresses in here) to mac-n-cheese. Then they announced that there would be a Bible study starting on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I think I’ll check it out. It’s TRUE – “My God shall supply my every need.” As I am writing this, more ladies keep popping in to give me needed items, a brush, a toothbrush (I never thought I’d be excited to get a gift of a full-size toothbrush, but I am!) and other such items. One woman even gave me her in progress word search and a full-size pencil with eraser (goodbye 2” putt putt gold pencil and plastic shower “eraser” – try it, it really works). God’s provisions keep coming! I have a new appreciation for the little items in life – such as a hairbrush (it’s been 21 days since I either combed or brushed my hair)

[snip]

I’ll close with the words written on the two yellow stickies that were attached with the gifts received from those bright-eyed fellow inmates:

(Sticky 1): “God loves you SO MUCH. James 5:16: ‘The prayers of a righteous person has great power as it is working.’ Deuteronomy 30:29 [29:29]: ‘The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever that he may follow all the words of this law.’”

(Sticky 2): “Psalm 23, 91, 103, 110”

Please pray that I will be a worth servant of the Lord as “I travel through this Pilgrim land.”

Serving Him,
Lisa Miller

Next time I feel like complaining I think I'd better remember Lisa Miller, who is thankful for getting a way to comb her hair and has to buy her own soap and personal care items while in a U.S. federal prison.

By the way, it never ceases to amaze me how these harmless Christians who are unjustly imprisoned manage to find favor with the criminals with whom they are imprisoned. Of course, they wouldn't necessarily share it, but as far as I know neither Philip Zodhiates nor Kenneth Miller was subjected to violence from fellow prisoners during their imprisonments, and Philip's is nearly over. "He shall give his angels charge over thee" indeed. And now Lisa seems to be being treated well by the other prisoners also, some of whom at least must be imprisoned for actual crimes, some serious. It's quite astonishing, and I'm grateful to the Lord for His protection over them.

Lisa, we hear, appreciates and is encouraged by her mail, so even we respectable citizens might consider writing to her, even if that means our names are read by Those In Charge.

If this whole blog post seems to you mysterious, see my earlier-but-still-relatively-recent recall of the case here.

The Eye of the Beholder: Available now!

I've been working like a beaver recently on the release of The Eye of the Beholder: The Gospel of John as Historical Reportage. That is to say, I've been doing interviews and posting about it, checking to see if it's available in Australia and the UK (it wasn't for a couple of days when I expected it to be), sharing content about it to social media, making videos, and so forth, while keeping life going otherwise.

I owe a lot to What's Wrong With the World for the space to publish a lot of related material in an earlier form over the past few years. Here is the Gospel of John tag there, if you want to read some of this for free in its beta version, as it were. I believe that all of that material up through May of 2020 or so has also been copied over to this blog (Extra Thoughts), as part of the archiving project last year, but it hasn't always been tagged. At least it is archived here, though.

The Eye of the Beholder was released on March 1, 2021, just this past Monday. For those of you who get info. about this from one of my blogs and/or aren't on Facebook, here are some relevant links, with apologies for making this post mostly a link dump. But believe me: There's tons of content at the links. First, how can you get the book itself? Here's the link at Amazon and here it is at Barnes & Noble. It makes no difference to my royalties or to my publisher's profits which site you buy it from. If you are in the UK, you can search Amazon, UK, for it, and the same (now) in both Australia and Canada. This is fitting, since I have endorsements from prominent scholars in all of those countries!

Of course, high-profile endorsers don't have to mean that I'm right, but at least they should mean that the book is worth a place at the table. I'm really humbly grateful to the Lord, and the endorsers, and my publisher, Nathan Ward, for the star-studded roster we got this time, including Stanley Porter, Thomas Schreiner, philosopher Bob Larmer, Paul N. Anderson, Alan Thompson, and more. Here are the endorsements in PDF. This should lay to rest various claims to the effect that my work is unworthy of attention due to my lack of such-and-such specific credentials. Nathan went out and asked for endorsements from Johannine and New Testament scholars whom I did not think of, or whom I would have expected to ignore the request due to their eminence or busyness, and he got them. (I'm reminded of a collect about "those things which for our unworthiness we dare not and for our blindness we cannot ask.") Some scholars also contacted me spontaneously after the publication of The Mirror or the Mask expressing interest in supporting my work. And in a couple of cases scholars' names were suggested to me by their former students: "You should contact professor so-and-so. I think he might be interested in your work."

One thing that we can't seem to get to work for love or money at Amazon is the "see inside" function. (At least not until it comes out in Kindle, perhaps in a year, at which point you will be able to see inside the Kindle version.) Perhaps one has to have a rich uncle who is good friends with Bezos to get See Inside The Book to work, but that's okay, because I anticipated that, and I have free samples, with publisher permission, available elsewhere. Here is Chapter I. Here is the Conclusion. Here is the Table of contents.

If you want to get a sense of the book in just three minutes, here is a trailer, for which I thank my eldest daughter, Bethel McGrew. Feel free to tweet or share that trailer everywhere, as it's the sort of thing that is intended for precisely that context.

If you want a meatier discussion of the contents of the book, here is a content tour of about twenty-five minutes.

And if you are really into long-form discussion, here is a two-hour interview I recorded with Thaddeus of the Youtube channel Reasoned Answers just a couple of days ago. This is the first long interview I have done on this book since its release, so thanks to Thaddeus for that opportunity.

I now have a separate author page on Facebook if you are on there and want to follow me that way. (And hey, if you're annoyed by my Covid posts and just want to see stuff about the New Testament and my books, this is a great way to separate those!) Note that Facebook is a little odd: Just clicking "like" or even "follow" on my Lydia McGrew, Author, page won't automatically make my new posts from that page pop up in your newsfeed unless you interact quite a bit. So if you really want to be sure to see everything, be sure to toggle your "follow" options to "subscribe" to get notifications when I post something new.

The Eye of the Beholder has something for everyone--pastor, layman, and scholar. So if you're interested in the question of the historicity of John, be sure to get a copy. I should also mention that my publisher is offering desk copies at a reduced rate (for physical, within the continental US) and free for e-copies (not to be promiscuously shared) to professors at Bible colleges and seminaries who teach relevant courses and are considering the book for a course. E-mail info@deward.com if you fall into that category.

In the words of the late Leon Morris, God has chosen to reveal himself in history, and it is there that we must find him. And that, I would add, is why these books needed to be written, and why St. John the evangelist wrote his book, too.

We must obey God rather than men

 I don't know who has or has not heard about this already, but Pastor James Coates of GraceLife Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, is in jail for holding church meetings contrary to the current Covid regulations there. Here is just one MSM story about it. Here is a story about the shocking fact that the church met again this morning in defiance of the orders and in support of its jailed pastor. Good for them!

Pastor Coates will not be released pending trial because he isn't willing to agree to the extreme restrictions. More on just how extreme in a moment. Also, because he has been "caught" (by Mounties attending his suspicious church to check up on them several Sundays in a row), he himself wouldn't be allowed to go to the church at all until his trial, even if he were to grovel and submit, which he won't do. I'm going to link several Tweets here showing screen-capped statements by his wife, Erin Coates, about the nature of the restrictions and the conditions put upon him for release. Here, here, here, here, and here.

One of the most distressing aspects for those of us who aren't actually in jail or related to anyone in jail (they have more distressing aspects to contend with) is hearing all the mealy-mouthed Christians talking about how now, now, this isn't really religious persecution, it's not really so bad. Some of these Twitter scolds appear to think that's the most important thing to say--It's not really persecution--while trying to pretend that they are sympathetic to Pastor Coates in jail. No you're not. Stop pretending while you race to distance yourself! If that's what you think is most important to say, you really think he's a pretty bad guy, risking blah-blah.

So here's the first point I want to make: Yes, this really is religious persecution. No, it absolutely is not necessary for the jailing of a pastor to result from a specifically anti-religious animus in order for it to be an instance of persecution.

This shouldn't be necessary to spell out. I would like to think that two years ago, pre-Covid, anyone would have understood this. But now it is necessary to spell out: When core religious activities such as meeting as the physical Body of Christ, talking to one another about deeply personal matters in person, in groups, and singing (and I could name more) are prohibited by the government, on pain of fines and/or jail, then that is religious persecution, regardless of the motive.

All we need to see this is to ask this: What if it were permanent? What if we had a government so germophobic that it banned all clubs as well as all church gatherings, all in-person group meetings where people talk to one another, all children's ministry, Sunday School, youth group, forever, but did this because of a fear of germs, not because of a hatred of religious meetings more than, say, knitting clubs? Then would we admit that the newly-jailed pastors who defy this are suffering from religious persecution?

I dunno. Maybe not. Having staked out the ridiculous, untenable position that the government can literally ban public gatherings to worship God and jail pastors but that this doesn't count as persecution as long as the powers that be are also banning public gatherings to worship Satan or football, perhaps these scolds would bite the bullet and say this even if the bans were made permanent--you know, just in case another virus that kills people should enter the world, or get passed around. Someone who holds such a position would not recognize religious persecution if it bit him in the posterior. And I hope that all the brave Baptists who went to the Gulags for holding Sunday School or meeting as church bodies in the Russian woods are rolling in their graves at such statements.

Oh, by the way, Russia bans churches from meeting as an anti-terrorist measure, if they don't have government sanction. That's a "secular" motive, so I guess that isn't religious persecution either. Also by the way, the recent ban on praying for people to help them change their sexual orientation, enacted in Victoria, Australia, is presumably motivated by a desire to curtail all activities designed to change a sexual orientation. The prayer ban is just an example of what is banned. Secular "conversion therapy" is also banned. So I guess if someone goes to jail there for trying to help someone spiritually with his unwanted same-sex desires, that won't be religious persecution either, right? I may write more about that law in another post if I have time, but we need to be aware that it's going on and that almost any ban on religious activities has some wider motive.

So the real question is whether these rules ban any truly essential religious activities, which of course takes us to the substantive question of what counts as the essence of Christianity and what activities are core. Those who think that all "church" can be "done on-line" will think that Pastor Coates is making a martyr of himself for nothing.

At this point I should probably discuss what the regulations in question actually are. All churches are required to limit attendance to 15% of fire capacity in the building, which Erin Coates says is about 1/5 to 1/6 of their congregation. She continues, "This would mean no visitors, no out-reach, no being a light to this city. Mandatory masks, social distancing, no singing…no conversing with anyone outside your home…Livestream is available but you are not allowed to have anyone into your home. These restrictions hinder James from being able to converse with the people on GLC on a Sunday as they immediately have to leave the service. We are prohibited from practising the one another’s in the gathering. Or in person at all. These have been in place since early December. Alberta has had 2 extreme lockdowns but has had restrictions on the gathering for almost [a] year. He could not sign these conditions."

No kidding. Pastor Coates has my full support.

What kind of a vision of church gathering does Alberta's government have? It's a vision in which the "gathering" part is pretty much nothing. Each little family unit arrives in the building (nobody knows why they are bothering to come into the same building at all, given what follows), just a few of them. They all sit apart. They all stare at the masked guy standing up front. He says some stuff. They pray and sing silently in their hearts. They act like a bunch of strangers coming to a movie. Maybe they wave at each other or say a few words at the outset, like, "Hi, so-and-so," but not for very long. We can't have any of that dangerous socializing or mutual support going around. They do some religious ritual-y stuff that doesn't involve touching anybody or getting within six feet of anybody for a while (not including singing), then they all must leave immediately, without stopping to converse, and go off to their separate homes, separately. If you want pastoral counsel, by golly, do it by Zoom or telephone. Same-same for if you need to talk with a friend. And above all, you can't see anybody else's face while you're in the same physical space.

In that type of "church," the entire enterprise is almost by definition members-only. How you're supposed to get new members is left unstated. You sign up for a place to make sure "too many" people don't show up. You certainly don't engage in anything like outreach or evangelistic services, sermons, or gatherings. Nobody comes spontaneously. Everything has to be carefully planned so that the people who were already, for some reason or other, members of these strange little clubs can be in the same room with each other a few at a time occasionally and exchange a wave or a few hastily-shouted words and sit and watch the same little lecture together.

If you think this is sufficient for carrying out the core mission of the Christian church for a year, or even for a couple of months, much less indefinitely (as is now the case), I cannot help you. You are beyond help. If you don't claim to be a Christian, perhaps I can suggest to you that you should permit Pastor Coates and the members of GraceLife Church to disagree with you on the embodied nature of their own religion. If you do claim to be a Christian, you are a living, breathing (through a mask) frustration to Christians like me. Just please know that. Because we have a pretty shrewd idea of what the Apostle Paul, the author of Hebrews, and a plethora of saints and martyrs through the centuries, right up through 2019, would have had to say to that. It probably starts with, "What the heck is the matter with you people?"

Mrs. Coates gets it. She's still living in a world that is so 2019, in which churches actually wanted people to come, wanted to evangelize, wanted to be there for people, wanted to be a light to their community, and believed that they met so that people could connect with each other and share their hearts.

The question of the Sacraments (or as Pastor Coates would probably call them, the Ordinances) is an interesting one. Here we have need of some harmonization. Erin Coates says that they have been forbidden to hold Communion. Wyatt Graham, the author of this notably tepid "support" (sort of?) post about Pastor Coates, says that they are allowed to carry out both Communion and baptism. I'll get to baptism in a minute.

Harmonization is my jam, so here goes: Anybody who has lived through the past year and paid attention knows that enforcement varies tremendously from case to case and locale to locale. Even from sheriff to sheriff, in the U.S. It's entirely possible that Wyatt Graham is privy to some situation where some sort of Communion is allowed, while Mrs. Coates knows full-well that it isn't being allowed at GraceLife Church. That is not even remotely implausible.

But there's also the possibility that the government is arrogating to itself the right to decide what does or doesn't count as Communion, and that Pastor Coates and GraceLife Church disagree on that. I can well imagine Roman Catholics who would not agree that the little individually-vacuum-sealed packets of juice or wine and wafers, which you pick up from some separate location rather than taking from a human being, and which you then carry away and consume when you're "socially distanced" from everybody else, count as valid Communion. While Pastor Coates doubtless wouldn't use either the term "valid" or the concept as Catholics do, I can remember plenty of Baptists from my youth who would probably have been dubious about this as well. Communion is a communal activity. So perhaps it's that GraceLife insists (gasp!) on carrying out Communion in the way they did before, which (if my Baptist background is any guide) would have involved passing around plates with broken cracker bits and plates with individual tiny cups of grape juice (already more hygienic than a common cup, for that matter) and then eating them all at the same time. Or who knows? Maybe they actually do come up to a rail. Either way, I fully believe Mrs. Coates that their Communion is not being allowed.

Mrs. Coates doesn't mention baptism one way or another, but here Wyatt Graham is on prima facie shaky ground. I seriously doubt that he or anyone else is literally carrying out baptism by using a long-distance water gun (super soaker?), and it literally is not possible to baptize another individual (adult or child, by sprinkling or immersion) from a distance of six feet. So I can only guess this: Perhaps churches that bow the neck to Caesar and agree to engage in all the other restrictions and security theater (see above) are graciously permitted to have the pastor come within six feet of one single individual, perhaps wearing some elaborate PPE, and sprinkle a little water on him very quickly, and then back off again. As long as everyone is made sufficiently uncomfortable and the operation is carried out in a way sufficiently different from the way it was done pre-pandemic, this will doubtless scare away the Covid germs. Or if it doesn't, the Government will have to rescind that permission, too.

It was, after all, the glorious health ministry of British Columbia that advised its citizens to make sexual contact with each other through holes in barriers, such as walls (yes, walls) that "allow for sexual contact but prevent close face-to-face contact" in order to have "safer sex" during Covid. (You think I'm making this up, don't you? Don't Google it to verify, you'll regret it. I believe health officials in New York City made the same suggestion.) So, as with sex-through-a-wall in British Columbia, perhaps the health ministers of Alberta are suggesting/allowing baptism-through-a-wall. You never know. Anyway, Graham assures us that baptism of some sort is allowed along with having 15% of your congregation come to church, so I guess we can all breathe a sigh of relief and allow ourselves to feel a tad impatient with Pastor Coates for being in jail.

This brings me to my second point: You can't avoid substantive issues here. Graham tries pretty hard to walk a tightrope of feeling or expressing some sort of sympathy toward Coates and some sort of alarm about his imprisonment, but I'm going to say right up front: It gives me a chill. The tone of the article is odd and constrained, and this is one of the more supportive pieces. I gather a lot more pastors aren't even willing to go this far. The letter to the premier of the province that he suggests that pastors sign is more strongly worded, thankfully.

But here's what I mean by saying that you cannot avoid substantive issues: There are cases where we all would not support a pastor for breaking some rule. It depends on the rule. (Compare freedom of speech. How many of us can get really enthusiastic about making sure that there is full freedom of speech for a group advocating the legalization of pedophilia? We're just not going to be that concerned, and understandably so.) So generally appeals to those who “disagree” with Coates to “support” him nonetheless require that the people hearing the appeals, who do disagree, see that disagreement as falling into a highly specific range--something like, "I disagree with Pastor Coates, but I don't disagree with him so far that I have lost sympathy for him. In general I think the authorities/cancelers/persecutors are overreacting because what he did fell into a range that should be allowed, even if I wouldn't have done it."

What we are finding in 2021 is that far fewer things fall into that highly specific range than we might have thought. Hence our appeals might as well be nakedly and openly to substance, stating outright in this case that what Pastor Coates did does not merit punishment, that it lies in the area where differences of action should be permitted. But most people who “disagree” with him are by no means sure of that. After all, the provincial officials gave him and his congregation lots of warnings, and the Mounties showed up again and again to see if they could induce him and his congregation to change their ways. The church was even fined. If you believe wholeheartedly in the wisdom of the regulations, at some point you are going to say, “What else could they do? They have to do something to try to enforce this.” In other words, if you support Pastor Coates at all, you should face it: In your heart you don't really think that these draconian, 15%, no-talking-after-the-service guidelines should be in place! Because you don't think they should be enforced. Without penalty there is no law. You think people should be allowed to flout them.

How many people who disagree with Pastor Coates sincerely think that? Admit it: Not a whole lot.

I was brought up against this rather sharply when a good friend of mine on social media, who fully supports Pastor Coates's actions, shared an open letter from a Canadian calling for people to support Pastor Coates even if they disagree with him. One of her friends then showed up in the thread and asked, all ingenuous curiosity, what is really being asked of him? How, he asked, can he go about supporting Pastor Coates while disagreeing with him? He asked, suavely, whether it would count as "support" if he were to suggest to the government that they fine Pastor Coates rather than imprisoning him.

Well, no. No, that wouldn't count. But it strikingly illustrates the point: At some point, pretty much all procedural disagreements, especially about matters of policy, end up being disagreements about substance. You can't avoid it, so we might as well not try. Pure neutrality is not possible in policy, and often not even desirable. (This looks like a really good article along these lines by Ryan Anderson, tho' unfortunately I'm able to read only the opening, because I'm not a subscriber.)

I'm really glad that GraceLife chose to meet today. That may show that the attempt to crack down and enforce these regulations is not entirely working out as intended. In fact, another church is also standing up. God bless Pastor Tim Stephens. We should admit the sobering fact, however, that probably the intent is to terrify others into complying, and that may be working to a large extent. Even if GraceLife isn't shut down, many other churches may be shutting down because their pastors, priests, or bishops don't have the courage of Pastor Coates.

(And where are the Catholics, by the way, in these locations? I don't mean to be un-ecumenical, and I love my Catholic friends, but it's a crying shame that the official non-sacramentalists are taking Catholic bishops to school on the importance of Incarnation and physical Presence in worship. From what I'm hearing, most Catholic bishops seem to be out there telling their flocks to stay at home, watch a livestream, and have "spiritual Communion" and forbidding their priests to visit even the dying, while Baptists are going to jail for the right to have Communion in person.)

May God richly bless Pastor Coates, his wife, and his children, Pastor Stephens, and all the other pastors, priests, and Christian ministers throughout the world who are keeping the flame of Christianity, which is by definition in-person Christianity, alive through this very dark time.

Cross-posted at W4