The Inerrancy Debate Continues

"I think we need to be careful about discussing inerrancy, which has an important place in magisterial texts prior to VCII, but is curiously absent from Dei Verbum. DV says that ”he books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation,” but it does not teach that the texts are inerrant in faith and morals." - Joshua B, Evangelical Catholicism

We must be careful when discussing inerrancy? I second that, third that with the other hand and bang both on the table for emphasis!

During the Second Vatican Council, one Council Father, namely Franz Cardinal Koenig, read a list of Biblical “errors” and declared that scripture is not inerrant. That his argument had the impact that it did on the Council Fathers – preventing them from being able to unanimously approve of language that would affirm Biblical inerrancy in the same strong language that it had been affirmed in prior Church documents shows that those men had not, individually, in the course of their lives, their study, their walk of faith, come to terms with passages such as those. They did what almost everyone else does with them – they intellectually shelved them and ignored the collection on that shelf. It only took someone drawing their attention to its contents in detail, forcing them to examine item after item, to really shake the faith of some of these men.

I had an experience like that when I was in my first year of college. I wasn’t a Cardinal, ensconced in wealth, power and position, so I lacked some of the motivation that those men had to continue to act like a believer after my faith was shaken. From the data of apparent errors, I assumed the presence of actual error, rejected inerrancy, and with it, the only authority that I at that time accepted for the essentials of my faith. I no longer had any reason to consider myself a Christian. Those men could not have considered themselves at similar liberty, so they must have struggled to hold on to as much of their faith as they could, or at least act like it.

What I find remarkable is this – even though many of the Council Fathers were at that point convinced that the doctrine of inerrancy was a false, that conviction did not find its way into the Conciliar documents. The weak way that inerrancy is affirmed in Dei Verbum is still an affirmation, and not a denial of anything affirmed by Popes and Councils prior to Vatican II.

Here is how things stand now – the Church has always affirmed inerrancy and has done so infallibly. In the past it did so in the strongest terms. When it did so in those terms, it did it infallibly. In the most recent council, the faith of many of the Fathers was shakem but the Holy Spirit did not allow that to result in a statement in Dei Verbum that would contradict any of the strongly worded prior affirmations of biblical inerrancy.

Logically, if a strongly worded proposition P1 is affirmed as true, and then a later proposition, p2, a weaker version of P1, is put forward, we can confirm p2 in light of the truth of P1. But the weakness of p2 does not weaken P1. P1 is still just as true in its entirety as it ever was. Logically, it is just not the case that p2 implies P1 Light (which, strictly logically, is Not-P1).

The weak statement in Dei Verbum does not blunt the atrong affirmations declared by previous councils and encyclicals in which the Pope was teaching under the charism of infallibility. Catholics are not permitted to re-examine and weaken the force of the doctrine of inerrancy taught for millennia based on a weak affirmation in a recent council. To do so would not only be a lapse of faith, but a lapse of logic.

We should be careful when discussing inerrancy, because we do not have all the answers to all the questions and all the solutions to all the problems. A list of apparent errors can get very long, especially if one is inclined to read scripture with a hermeneutic of suspicion, in which anything that looks even remotely questionable is assumed to be error, instead of with a hermeneutic of charity in which the author of ancient text is given the benefit of the doubt whenever possible (which is necessary, but not sufficient, for the greater hermeneutic of faith). As the list of problems grows in length, a conviction emerges and begins to grow - there must be something to this…these can’t all be misreadings or copy errors of scribes absent from the autographa, can they? Lists of what look for all the world to be contradictions in scripture can be very persuasive, and very dangerous.

The one Kyle brings up is one of my favorites, because of how contradictory it looks, and how easily that appearance of error is dispelled. For me, it is a perfect paradigmatic example of a biblical “error” or “contradiction” – I wish they were all so easily resolved. Here is what I do with that one:

I start with a hermeneutic of charity. Before the issue of inspiration even comes into it, I assume that the human author at least was not a moron or a lunatic. If two statements are in the same passage, and we can know with as much certainty as we know anything about the text, that the two apparent contraries were penned by the same hand, probably within minutes of each other, it is unlikely that he is both affirming and denying the same thing simultaneously in the same sense. If any other reading is possible, I accept that one. If several are possible but only one is plausible, I take the plausible one. So what is the human author trying to affirm when he writes that God “regrets” making Saul king? If we assume, charitably, that he is not affirming that which he denies later in the same passage, namely, that God literally changes His mind, then he must be affirming something else. Is he using anthropomorphic language to indicate Saul has lost the favor of God, that by sinning Saul’s reign no longer enjoys the blessing of God and that without God’s support, his days as king are numbered? I think that is a plausible reading of the statement in the text about divine regret over Saul, and perfectly consistent with the later literally-intended theological negation.

Because the loss of my faith was largely due to the examination of apparent errors and contradictions in scripture, I knew when I returned to the faith that one day I would have to face that list again. Eventually I did. I was aware of a great many more problems the second time (I had a book length list of them, far longer than the one recited by Cardinal Koenig) and I no longer approached this challenge with the faithful assumption of inerrancy, but when I went down the list and read the text in context with a hermeneutic of charity that I was taught to apply to philosophical texts (but had not heard of the first time I dealt with these problems), the problems began to disappear. I found reasonable interpretations that did not support charges of error or contradiction, and, one-by-one, I was able to scratch off the items. Soon it got to be a game – I was positively hunting for the ONE indisputable error, the one pair of outright contradictories, that would settle the issue. But, when playing by the rules of a hermeneutic of charity, I could not find even one that fit the bill. I did not get more than halfway through my list before I threw it out, satisfied, and now as fully convinced of Biblical inerrancy as ever (but in a more doctrinally and theologically informed way). Today it strikes me as ironic that the first time I dealt with the issue of problems with inerrancy, I assumed inerrancy (in a naïve, fundamentalist way), but it did not take the presentation of very many scriptural difficulties to shake that assumption of faith, and I wound up losing my faith, but the second time, with renewed faith in Christ and a reasonable scholarly hermeneutic of charity, but no meaningful belief in inerrancy, I not only kept my faith, but became convinced of the truth of the Catholic doctrine of inerrancy!

When I argued for the Catholic doctrine of inerrancy at Vox Nova, I was repeatedly told by more than one poster that there was no such thing, that I was attributing my view to the Church, but there was no one official Catholic position on inerrancy. I was told that a view like mine was rejected at Vatican II. But such a “rejection” emerging in discussion and debate during the minutes of a council is not covered by the charism of infallibility. The final documents are, and nowhere in them is the Church’s traditional position on inerrancy retracted. Raymond Brown notwithstanding, the traditional doctrine of inerrancy stands. I close with a quote from Fr. William Most which confronts such Brown-inspired modernist heterodoxy head-on:

“Raymond E. Brown in many places, such as NJBC (p. 1169) , insists that Vatican II allows us to say that there are all kinds of errors in Scripture, in science, history and even in religion - only things needed for salvation are protected by inspiration. Hence he insists that Job 14. 13 ff raises the possibility of an after life, and then denies it. Brown said that if anyone tries to differ from this position of his, it is an "unmitigated disaster". He claims to found his view on a line in Vatican II, DV §11: "since all that the inspired authors or sacred writers assert should be regarded as asserted by the Holy Spirit, we must acknowledge that the books of Scripture firmly, faithfully and without error teach the truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to be confided to Sacred Scripture." Brown insists the underlined passage is restrictive, not descriptive, i.e., that it means to say only such things are inerrant. Brown points to the "prevoting debates", i.e., the day when Cardinal Koenig arose and gave a list of errors in Scripture. Sadly, a large number of bishops chimed in with him. Yet the Holy Spirit was at hand, and no trace of this idea is found in the final text of Vatican II. Most importantly, Brown ignores the fact that the Council itself gave several notes on the very passage, sending us to earlier pronouncements of the Church, including the statement of Vatican I that God Himself is the chief author of Scripture. Of course, Brown thinks he can get around it. He says there are two ways to look at Scripture. One is a priori, in which we say God is the author, and so no error is possible. But there is also, he asserts, the a posteriori way:look at the text, see all the errors, decide there are errors.

“The incredible thing is that today, now that we have new techniques for studying Scripture, not possessed by earlier scholars, even at the beginning of the 20th century, we have the means of answering countless claims of error, which earlier exegetes could not answer. Yet at this very point, those, like Brown, who are supposed to know these techniques, insist on saying the problems cannot be solved, that to try, e.g., to solve the problem of Job 14:23 - which is really easy -- is an "unmitigated disaster"!”

"WHAT DID YOU JUST CALL ME?!!?" - A friend's blog security measure passes computerized judgement

I have been in an ongoing debate with a friend of mine on the topic of Biblical inerrancy and the wars of extermination conducted by Israel in the Old Testament, apparently under the command of God. I dropped out of it for a little while but I have returned with a comment that seriously considers my friend's point of view without criticizing it. The blog's security demanded that I enter a word in order to insure that I wasn't some software spambot. I couldn't help but entertain the notion that the word was a criticism of the content of my post and an insult to me.






Was that a criticism of my overall point of view, or of my hypothetical concession?

What is Private Property? Reconciling The Universal Destination of Goods with Private Ownership.

Recently, while debating the merits of transferring the economic burden of health care from the private sector to the government, I revealed my personal struggle with social obligations, charity, and the role of government in making certain that we meet such obligations as well as the implications of the latter for private property rights. My friend Kyle Cupp invoked the Catholic doctrine of the Universal Destination of Goods - the principle that God created the world for all people, not just for some, and that the goods of the world are meant to be shared, not horded. I could not reconcile this principle with my intuitions about the right of individuals to own private property. But as a faithful Catholic, I know that when there is a conflict between my fallible intuitions and divinely revealed truth, there is no question about where the error must be.

I was left with my continued assent to Church teaching, but no understanding of what I was supposed to believe . My false intutions about ownership and private property were not immediately replaced with the truth. They were evacuated of meaning entirely. I had to re-examine them at their root and start over. I had been giving lip service to Christian stewardship but taking private property as properly basic, as an ethical and metaphysical first principle, and I should have known better.

I blame Ayn Rand. I had recently read Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, and Anthem, in that order, and sometimes her philosophical passion can very persuasive.

I thought about what property is, what it means to say that someone owns something. I have concluded that there are two very different conceptions of the origins of property ownership, one secular, one traditional and theistic. They are irreconcilable.

There has not always been human ownership of property, as there have not always been humans. The world existed before people were around. At some point, there was a first ownership, an original taking possession of something. There was a first piece of private property. What was that? What happened to make this thing property? Was it some man staking a claim on some piece of land - some expanse of earth on which to grow crops for food or raise livestock, or both? Was it some river for fishing? Whatever it was, it involved some person encountering something that already existed independently of people and making a first claim, saying of it “Mine!” What gave that person the right to do that? Is the right to private property derivative of our right to survive? From a secular point of view, what justifies the claim of ownership is its originality (no pre-existing competing claims) and the use of force to protect that claim. As far as I can see, that is it. From a secular point of view, all property taking amounts to, its whole metaphysical character, is force, and the threat thereof. Why is this land mine? Well, there was no one else around and it didn’t belong to anyone so I took it. Try to take it from me and see what happens. From the secular point of view, the right to possess property is ultimately justified by nothing more than my power to use force in order to keep it. But if that were the case, then it ultimately about Might, not Right, and if someone has the power to take something from me, he can not only take possession of it, but also ownership of it, as legitimate an ownership as the original owner had, and he will remain the owner for as long as he can keep it, until someone else takes it. At its deepest level, the secular view, lacking a divine guarantor of rights in general, has no way of founding a right to own property in anything more fundamental than the power to keep what one has taken, and thus he must rely on the self-interested agreement of others, not only for his ability to keep what he has, but for his right to do so. But if property posession is ultimately just an exercise of power, not a divinely guaranteed moral right, then there is no rational ground for a moral objection to the public seizing private property in its own best interest. That is where Rand is incoherent. She wants private property to be an absolute right, but she denies the existence of the God who is the source of rights. She wants the Self to be the source of rights and ethics to be nothing more than self-interest. But what justifies the interests of one self over another? Nothing that I can see other than the power of that self to defend his or her interests, by force if necessary.

Very well, then God exists and He gives us a right to own property, to encounter the unowned and stake a claim, to make it “Mine!” What then? From there it depends on what God’s will is with regard to property ownership. What is the divine intention behind my right to take possession of something unowned object or territory of which I take possession,or to own the fruit of my labor, or the results of my creative and intellectual work? All of these endeavors involve staking some kind of claim on something that already existed, either in potency (inventions) or in act (divinely created goods, pre-existing material). What is God’s intention in justifying that as a right? That is where the doctrines of stewardship and universal destination of goods comes in. As stewards of God’s created world, property owners enjoy a great deal of discretion and divine sanction to share the goods of this world, primarily with the family that He, in His providential wisdom, has placed in their care, and, with the excess, for others. But the goods of this world are not intended by God to be just for some - they are for all. That does not mean that I have a right to your stuff. Your stuff is yours by God’s providence, and the justification of taking from one of God’s stewards that which He has placed in his care is no light matter, and cannot rightly be done in a way that does not respect God’s decision to place those goods in that steward’s hands. Nevertheless, it is now much clearer to me that private property is not an absolute right. I am still working on reconciling my mind to the doctrine that the state has a role in re-distributing goods by force in the interests of social justice, but the main barrier, my unreflected assumption of the right of private property as an absolute, is gone.

The California Verbal Morality Statute In Real Life - It's A Brave New World, Demolition Man!

You cannot caricaturize California. You can anticipate their absurdity, but you cannot surpass it. No spoof, no satire, no intended exaggeration can succeed - anything you come up with in your wildest imagination they will beat for ridiculousness in real life. If they haven't done it yet, just give them time - they'll catch up.

In the 1993 movie Demolition Man, Sylvester Stallone portrayed a 20th century cop, John Spartan, thawed out in the 21st century from the cryogenic freeze he was placed in as the penalty he had to pay for he murders with which he was framed by the villain Simon Phoenix (Wesley Snipes) who he captured. Phoenix is thawed out early, and the 21st century police are ill-equipped to deal with him, so they parole and reinstate Spartan to re-capture him. By this point, in California, everything is illegal, from alcohol and cigarrettes to caffiene and chocolate. "Abortion is illegal, but then again, so is pregnancy if you don't have a license." Cursing is against the law, a violation of the Verbal Morality Statute.

Now cursing is illegal in real life. In Pasadena - in fact, in Los Angeles, where Demolition Man was set - they have enacted a No Cussing Week. It's only a week, and there are no fines, so no tickets to use for toilet paper. The law is purely didactic, not punitive.

I am torn. It would be nice if people who curse in public would clean up their act, and such use of language out in the open is quite as offensive and polluting of the social air as playing a radio too loud. Furthermore, a week isn't a long time. Nevertheless, I get nervous when dystopian fantasies become fulfilled prophecies. I resent such encroachments of the Nanny State, and even when they have a good idea, I am inclined to forgo it. The price of such progressive reforms is the momentum it lends to progressivism. Give them an inch, they take a light year. Now that profanity is illegal, give them time, and public prayer, instead of being sacred, will be considered profane - too offensive to be allowed in decent society. Trust me - the Lord's Prayer will be classified as hate speech. We will live to see it.

A review of the Discovery Channel's new paranormal investigation-themed show GHOST LAB

I like all the paranormal investigation shows. I like this one, too. I haven't seen any that I judge to be so poorly done that I can't enjoy it at least somewhat. While I (so far) still prefer the original Ghost Hunters, this one is at least as engaging as GHI and appeals to me more than Most Haunted (which disappointed me for not detecting Derek Acorah as a fraud before putting him on the show in the first place).

The Klinge brothers have set themselves apart from the other shows and investigative bodies by having a particular "theory" that they wish to advance, which they call their "Era Cues" theory. It is good that they did that, and it is a reminder of the scientific mission that these men are on, which is emphasized by the show's title and the name of their group: Ghost "LAB".
But to me, they do not seem quite at home with the vocabulary of science. I could be getting the wrong impression of course, but I am the viewer, and they are the ones making the show. If I get the wrong impression, is that entirely my fault?

Their use of the term "theory" for their proposed "Era Cues"methodology is a case in point. Until their idea is rigorously and repeatedly tested under conditions that could disconfirm it, what they technically have is more like a hypothesis. Moreover, the term "theory" tends to be used to designate an explanation of some thing or event that places it in a broader conceptual relation to the natural world. It is supposed to present us with a testable vision how this phenomenon might fit in with our "Big Picture" of how the world works. It does not seem to me that the "Era Cues" notion does this. If it does, the first episode fails to make it clear. In fact, in this premiere episode they did something worse than merely ignoring and neglecting this point -- they vaguely and inexplicably relate "era cues" to a notion of "parallel universes" that they attribute to "quantum physics" without giving us any idea how these ideas are related.

How would the evidence of paranormal activity instigated by the use of "era cues" lend any support whatsoever to Hugh Everett's Relative State Formulation of Quantum Mechanics, known more popularly as the Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Physics or the Everett-Wheeler-Graham Model of wave collapse? Is the idea here that ghosts are not spirits of dead people, but actually living denizens of "parallel worlds" where "eras" that are part of our past are still present? If that is the case, why is this show called "Ghost Lab"? Shouldn't it be "Advanced Quantum Physics Lab"?

Ghosts are spirits of dead people. The "Parallel Worlds" of quantum physics as conceived in the EWG model are not spiritual worlds. They are all physical worlds, quantifiable in the wave collapse equation. Actually, to be more strictly accurate, they are all mathematically distinct physical aspects of one world that is merely much vaster than we perceive, in which all physical possibilities are instantiated, even though only one coherent possible scenario is ever available to our senses, scientific instruments and consciousness. (NOTE: In case you didn't catch it, I said only one world is available to our "scientific instruments" - that is, to our digital recorders, our camcorders, our thermal imaging cameras, our cold-spot-detecting air thermometers, etc. That means there is no way to use these instruments to test the theory that there are "parallel worlds"). The inhabitants of these "parallel worlds" are all alive, and most of them are alternate versions of us. There is no reason why they would be "era-specific". The "universe next door" has a slightly different me, and yes, I might be rock-and-roll singer in a world where the cultural events that we remember as having occurred in the 50's didn't happen until the turn of the millennium, or I might be dead in one of these "parallel worlds". But how would either of those possibilities enable me to leave EVP evidence in THIS perceivable version of events, in which I am both alive and not a 50's-type crooner in 2009?

The suggestion that these ideas are related is baffling, and while I don't want prematurely draw with certainty and finality the conclusion that it is definitely as absurd as it seems and a sign of more absurdities to come, I don't know how long I will be able to hold out open mind for this show. I will absolutely try to catch the next episode, and I expect I will still be trying to judge it as charitably as I can. But this talk of an "Era Cues Theory" is at least as likely to distract and annoy me as it is to draw me in to the drama of the show.

Don't get me wrong, it is not that I mind that the "Era Cues" idea is unoriginal (Ryan Buell's use of a civil war re-enactment to provoke paranormal activity at the Tillie Pierce House in the 17th episode of Paranormal State season three, "Ghosts of Gettysburgh" certainly fits the Klinges' description of what would qualify as "era cues"). Good ideas deserve to propagated widely and tested independently. That's not my problem. My problem is that the insistence on calling this notion a "theory" without explaining how it qualifies as one that is likely to get on my nerves.
I will keep watching and try to keep an open mind, and, despite my criticism here (which might, I admit, seem harsh), I applaud the Klinge brothers for what they do. I admire all competent paranormal investigators. You are all at the cutting edge of science, ahead of the curve, gathering the data that will eventually topple the dominant materialist paradigm, which I liken to Bernie Lomax, the dead guy in the movie "Weekend At Bernies". He may look hale, hardy and healthy, but that's the con. When materialism is finally revealed to be as dead as Descartes, I have no doubt in my mind that you who gathered the evidence for a spiritual aspect to the universe will be the ones whose work will have been responsible for blowing the gaffe.

Perhaps I should end this review with an expression of appreciation for what I am glad the Klinges did NOT do in this first episode. We saw no mediums telling us what they see or feel, but which we cannot see or feel and have to take their word for it. I appreciate that because I tend to be skeptical psychics and when I hear them give their spiel I cannot forget for a moment that they could just be making it all up. We also did not see multiple pictures of "orbs", which are almost always just dust and lens flares. The Klinges seem focused on gathering only a few pieces of truly first rate scientific evidence rather than diluting that evidence by pooling it with all the crap in the kitchen sink. That commands my respect.

A Centrist Social Moderate? WTF?!? ---- 1 of 5

As a general rule, one should not take the quizzes you find offered on facebook seriously. Nevertheless, I found myself drawn to take a certain quiz again and again. Its aim was to pinpoint a person's political position on a graph with two axes - left/right and authoritarian/libertarian on the up and down axis. My sister-in-law got results that positioned her as slightly conservative. Having discussed politics with her more than once, I found that result dubious to say the least, so I took it myself, figuring that it would also miscategorize me. I tested as slightly liberal, which served to confirm my suspicion that the test was, to put it mildly, flawed. It would not publish those results, so I re-submitted the info and got pegged as a centrist moderate. That made it even more suspect in my eyes, and I found it insulting to boot. I'm no liberal, but I'd rather be labelled a liberal than a moderate. Garbage.

But then two of my other facebook friends took it, ignoring my warning to disregard it. Both claimed that its results, one liberal and libertarian, another slightly to the right and very libertarian, seemed accurate. And my sister-in-law took the quiz again and her results were that she was liberal. Hmmm. I had to try again, but first, I wanted to see if I could deliberately skew the results. I took the quiz and deliberately gave a wide variety of extreme kook answers all over the political map - I represented my viewpoint as a bizarre intellectual monstrosity with no consistency at all It put me in the middle between the left and right, and slightly in the authoritarian up axis. I still couldn't get out of the middle. I took it again, this time reflecting carefully on my answers. Right smack in the middle of the crosshairs again - a "centrist social moderate". Ughh. Disgusting. How the hell did that happen?

Maybe it's just that I am very suspicious of the pre-packaged kits of easy answers offered by both the right and the left. To me, they look like hodge-podges, crazy mix-and-match mish-mashes of positions on various issues, with little effort put into keeping them consistent with each other in line with a specific, coherent vision. Where they are philosophically intelligible, they seem naive. Liberals seem naive in their unshakable faith in the power of the government to create a just and happy society by re-distributing the fruit of the most productive people's labor to the least productive among the nation's citizenry. But those on the right seem equally naive in their dogmatic insistence that the free market, left to itself, will eventually solve all society's ills justly and fairly.

On the one hand, you have a segment of people who see any problem, no matter how slight and say, "Let's have the government fix it - we'll tax the rich to pay for it." On the other hand, you have another set of people who see any problem, no matter how severe, and say, "As long as it doesn't cost me money it's not my concern." One side won't be happy until all economic inequalities are eliminated, regardless of how fairly those who have more earned it. The other side won't be happy until the only people paying any taxes at all are those with the least financial capacity to bear that burden and all of those funds are spent on military, with everything else should be left to the free market.

On one side, you have people who never saw a proposed government regulation that they didn't like except for those that would have put fiscal oversight on Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac for high-risk mortgages, and on the other side you have people who never saw a government regulation that they liked, no matter how reasonable, until they started calling for aforementioned banking regulations. And then when credit collapsed, the same side that resisted those specific regulations started blaming the other side for the "de-regulation"!

On one side you have people who never think it is the wrong time to raise taxes, no matter how badly the economy needs a boost (heck, just raise taxes and spend the money, that'll get things going, we'll let our great-great-great-great grandchildren pay off that debt - screw that generation anyway, we don't know them and never will, 'cuz we'll be dead!!), and on other side you have people who never think it's the wrong time to cut taxes, no matter how high our deficits go, no matter what spending obligations the government has in the immediate future (like the Baby Boomers, the oldest of whom will turn 65 in 2011 and hit the Social Security rolls like an avalanche).

I don't like how both sides play the same game, and whenever one side catches the other in some bit of hypocrisy, the latter's apologists respond by pointing to the last time the former was engaged in the same thing and whines "Where were you when so-and-so did/said the same thing?" In other words, it's ok if my side is hypocritical as long as our hypocrisy in doing what we objected to in the past when your side did it is no worse than your hypocrisy in pointing to what we're doing now after you all did the same damned thing! It's as if both liberal and conservative pundits both use the same playbook, and just shuffle the arguments around. You have a problem with the intrusive expansion of government under Obama into domestic matters (e.g. health care)? Well, where were you when Bush was pushing the Patriot Act and domestic wire-tapping? You have a problem with the tea party protestors making Obama look like the Joker? Well where were you when the New Yorker printed a cartoon of Bush as the Joker?

To Be Continued...

LA Fitness Shooter's Theology - The Consequences of An Idea

It has been nearly four hundred years since Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of his church, but the revolution that began with that simple act is still having real world consequences, and not all of them good. The ideas that Dr. Luther affirmed in his struggle against the Roman Catholic Church are still active in the world, and, as they buzzed around the disturbed mind of an evil man yesterday, they comforted him and contributed motive power to his madness.

Last night I was shocked when I saw the LA Fitness building on my TV in a local news story of a shooting. My wife and I had a joint membership to that gym last summer - they sold us one at a discounted rate while they were still building it. We paid the deposit but decided not to pay the monthly payments and gave up the membership. We got the deposit back, surprisingly enough. So we could have been there when the bullets were flying. Teresa could have been in that room last night if we had kept the membership. I've lost a lot of weight since then, so I know I would have made use of it, and if I went, she might well have come along.

We now know that a man named George Sodini walked in with a gun and started shooting, and saved the last bullet for himself. He had a blog, which has been taken down by the web host, but his blog posts were archived, so we have some insight into what he was trying to do. Apparently his main intention was to kill himself. Murdering other people helped give him the gumption to do it. And why did he want to kill himself? Because he wanted to skip over the rest of his lousy life and just cut to the happy ending with God and Jesus in heaven.

Here is an excerpt from his blog which reveals this:

"I took off today, Monday, and tomorrow to practice my routine and make sure it is well polished. I need to work out every detail, there is only one shot. Also I need to be completely immersed into something before I can be successful. I haven’t had a drink since Friday at about 2:30. Total effort needed. Tomorrow is the big day.
Unfortunately I talked to my neighbor today, who is very positive and upbeat. I need to remain focused and absorbed COMPLETELY. Last time I tried this, in January, I chickened out. Lets see how this new approach works.
Maybe soon, I will see God and Jesus. At least that is what I was told. Eternal life does NOT depend on works. If it did, we will all be in hell. Christ paid for EVERY sin, so how can I or you be judged BY GOD for a sin when the penalty was ALREADY paid. People judge but that does not matter. I was reading the Bible and The Integrity of God beginning yesterday, because soon I will see them.
I will try not to add anymore entries because this computer clicking distracts me.
Also, any of the “Practice Papers” left on my coffee table I used or the notes in my gym bag can be published freely. I will not be embarased, because, well, I will be dead. Some people like to study that stuff. Maybe all this will shed insight on why some people just cannot make things happen in their life, which can potentially benefit others."

What hits me the hardest about this is that this man believed he was going to heaven! He had applied logic to a very typical evangelical Protestant belief rooted in the Reformation. When Martin Luther enunciated it he used the Latin, Sola Fide, Faith Alone. What this meant at the time was that good works (like buying indulgences from your local corrupt bishop) do not contribute to your salvation, at least not in such a way that they can make up for a lack of saving faith. A saving faith was one from which good works would emerge as a consequence because that faith, as a gift of God, would bring about another gift - Grace. Not much argue with there, but the idea began to morph and mutate even as Dr. Luther was propounding it. In a letter to Melancthon, Luther infamously wrote:

“If you are a preacher of grace, then preach a true and not a fictitious grace; if grace is true, you must bear a true and not a fictitious sin. God does not save people who are only fictitious sinners. Be a sinner and sin boldly,  but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly, for he is victorious over sin, death, and the world. As long as we are here [in this world]  we have to sin. This life is not the dwelling place of righteousness,  but, as Peter says,  we look for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. It is enough that by the riches of God’s glory we have come to know the Lamb that takes away the sin of the world.  No sin will separate us from the Lamb, even though we commit fornication and murder a thousand times a day. Do you think that the purchase price that was paid for the redemption of our sins by so great a Lamb is too small? Pray boldly—you too are a mighty sinner.” (font and bold emphasis my own).

Before anyone decides to argue about my bringing up this statement, I grant that it was not contextualized by an overall discussion about mass murder. It concerned ecclesiastical and theological issues. But the context does not redeem this statement, either. The text of the statement stands as it is, not mitigated or softened by its context. It's meaning is plain, as plain as he wrongly claimed Biblical text always is as a rule. Luther was propounding a heretical antinomianism - a belief that no moral law applies to those saved by the grace of God purchased by the sacrificial death of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The antinomian heresy is alive today, promoted as the "assurance of salvation". It is expessed when a believer who goes around saying that he has beeen "born again" asks you "If you were to die tonight, do you know whether you would go to heaven?" He then testifies that he, at least, knows that he will go to heaven and be with Jesus because he has been saved, and nothing can separate him from his salvation. And don't you want that assurance, too?

I first encountered this belief system in my teens, when I was reading a book by Hal Lindsey, The Liberation of Planet Earth. He had a diagram of the cross on a page and it showed how the death of Christ on the cross paid for ALL your sins, past, present and future. The left arm of the cross had over it, "all the sins of the past" or something like that, and the right arm of the cross had something like "all future sins". It made sense - that death had to pay for all sin, so of course it would apply to future sins as well as those committed prior to the crucifixion. It couldn't only apply to those sins committed by an individual before he was saved and/or baptized, because then that would leave the sins he commits thereafter unpaid for - requiring, what, another crucifixion? I remember that Lindsey claimed that once you are saved, all your sins, those of your past, and those you commit after you are born again, are paid for "once and for all".

Over time I struggled with my faith, abandoned it, and eventually returned to it. During that time I have come to terms with how much truth there is in Sola Fide, and it is not a worthless doctrine. But all the truth it contains can all be affirmed without denying anything that the Catholic Church has consistently taught and affirmed from that Christ taught the apostles and the apostes taught the early Church Fathers, until the time of Martin Luther, all the way to the present day. It definitely should not be used by people like George Sodini to justify or excuse or encourage themselves in despicable acts of multiple murder and suicide. That is an abuse of the doctrine, and abusus non tollit usus.

Certainly people like Sodini are the exception, not the rule, both for believers in Sola Fide, and among psycho killer suicides. Certainly there is no temptation among any typical Protestant Christian believer who accepts Sola Fide to test his assurance of salvation in this way, and I have never seen any indication that other crazy random shooter murder-suicides, like Seung-Hui Cho at Viriginia Tech in 2007, or the Charles Carl Roberts, the gunman of the terrible massare at an Amish schoolhouse in Lancaster six months before, or the perpatrators of the Columbine tragedy, ever drew any dark, terrible strength from a belief in the assurance of their salvation in Christ. The latter, insofar as the believed in anything, drew their inspiration from Darwinian natural selection, and saw themselves as culling the herd. Cho was a hate-filled racist scumbag. Roberts was insane and claimed that he was overcome with the desire to molest one of these girls, and claimed ot have done so 20 years before - but the person who he claims he molested denies that. So it is clear that whatever is true about Roberts, he was batshit crazy.

Nevertheless I am not surprised that the antinomian Assurance-of-Salvation doctrine has had a death toll in a psychic atmosphere that brings forth people like Cho and Roberts and Sodini. The idea is mainly false to begin with, and bad ideas eventually bear their fruit - bad consequences...evil actions.