Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

Arranging Debates with James White

In a recent video, James White responds at some length (about 49 minutes) to my interest in debating him on the topic of sola scriptura.

In the course of his response, he makes a number of factually inaccurate statements (including about me), but to keep matters focused, I will let those pass.

 

Sola Scriptura

White says he is not reluctant to debate me on sola scriptura.

Good! I take him at his word, and I look forward to arranging a debate on this topic, which Matt Fradd has offered to host (in fact, he made the initial request of both of us).

White refers to his desire to wait until he has configured a new studio that will allow debating at a distance with high sound and video quality.

That’s fine with me, and Matt has indicated it’s fine with him also. We’ve got the holidays coming up, and it’s no problem to wait until it’s convenient for all three of our schedules.

White is skeptical regarding my claim to have anything new to offer in this debate.

I would never claim to have thought of something that no one has thought of in the last 2,000 years of Catholic history.

What I can—and do—say is that I have developed arguments that I have not seen used by the current generation of Catholic apologists or tested in debate with the current generation of Protestant apologists.

White invites me to identify where I have published these arguments and wonders if I might be holding them back until the time of the debate.

I have no interest in setting up “gotcha” moments that surprise a debate opponent. For a quality debate to occur, both parties should be able to think about their opponent’s key points ahead of time.

I have presented my arguments numerous times, including on Catholic Answers Live, and they are found, in summary form, in my book The Bible Is a Catholic Book.

If White will privately send me his current mailing address, I will send him this book, as well as my book Teaching With Authority, which is a theological manual on how the Magisterium works. If he prefers electronic copies, I’ll send them to him if he lets me know his preferred email address.

In fact, if he will do the same for me, I will send him an advanced copy of my entire opening statement (and any other planned statements), so he’ll know exactly what I plan to say.

 

The Canon of Scripture

White says that the topic of the canon of Scripture would be a good subject to debate, and I’d be happy to debate that with him as well.

I’ve checked with Matt, and he would be happy to have us do several debates, as long as they’re scheduled a month or more apart, which is fine with me.

White objects to the use of the canon that other apologists have made in debates on sola scriptura.

I agree with him that the subject should not be sprung on an opponent who has no time to respond. In fact, no subject should be brought up without the opponent having time to respond to it.

The canon of Scripture is relevant to the issue of sola scriptura, but it is not essential to making the case against the latter.

Consequently, I’d be happy to avoid this subject in a debate on sola scriptura and do a second debate on the canon, instead.

The principal arguments I’d use are covered in my book The Bible Is a Catholic Book, and I’d be happy to exchange advance copies of planned statements with him.

 

The Catholic View of Authority

White says that Catholics need to step up and defend the positive epistemological claims that they make.

In other words, they should be willing to mount a positive defense of the model they propose for doctrinal authority, which is Scripture + Tradition + the Magisterium.

Fine! That’s quite fair. If Protestants need to mount a positive case for their view of authority (sola scriptura), then Catholics should be as well. And I am.

I’m not interested in a debate focused on irrelevant issues such as actions by Pope Francis that don’t even attempt to engage the Church’s infallibility—for reasons explained here and here.

But I am quite willing to debate the overall Scripture + Tradition + Magisterium paradigm.

 

A Slate of Debates?

I therefore propose a slate of three debates: one on the Protestant view of authority (sola scriptura), one on the canon of Scripture, and one on the Catholic view of authority (Scripture + Tradition + the Magisterium).

I have no interest in “gotcha” moments. Both presenters should know and be able to think about what arguments they will need to respond to.

I therefore propose that we exchange advance copies of opening statements (and any other planned statements, depending on the format Matt wants us to use).

There’s no hurry on these. The debates would be scheduled at the convenience of all three of us, with at least one month between them, per Matt’s request.

Sound good?

The Straw Pope Fallacy


What I call the Straw Pope Fallacy is a variation of the famous Straw Man Fallacy that is applied to the pope.

The Straw Man Fallacy occurs when a person critiques an inaccurate version of someone’s position.

The name of the fallacy is based on the fact that it’s easier to knock down a straw man than a real man.

Thus, critics of a position are often tempted to try to knock down a false version of a position (a “straw man”) rather than tackling the position itself (the “real man” in the metaphor).

When a critic proposes an inaccurate version of the position he wants to disprove, it’s referred to as “setting up a straw man.”

 

An Example: Baptism & Salvation

Most Christians (e.g., people in the Catholic, Orthodox, Coptic, Assyrian, Lutheran, Anglican, Methodist, Presbyterian, and Church of Christ communities) hold that God uses water baptism as a means of communicating his saving grace to people by the power of Christ’s resurrection.

A critic might respond, “That’s clearly untrue. The physical action of water only removes dirt from the body. It doesn’t do anything with respect to salvation.”

The critic has just committed the Straw Man Fallacy, because the claim wasn’t that the physical action of water brings about salvation.

Instead, the claim is that God uses water baptism as a means by which he gives salvation through the power of Christ’s resurrection.

If you want to disprove belief in baptismal salvation, that’s the claim you need to knock down—not a parallel claim that the physical action of the water itself saves us.

The first pope—St. Peter—warned against this misunderstanding.

So did Martin Luther. In his Short Catechism, he writes:

How can water do such great things?

Answer: It is not the water indeed that does them, but the word of God which is in and with the water, and faith, which trusts such word of God in the water. For without the word of God the water is simple water and no baptism. But with the word of God it is a baptism, that is, a gracious water of life and a washing of regeneration in the Holy Ghost.

 

Setting Up a Straw Pope

It’s common—and understandable—for non-Catholics to misunderstand what the Catholic Church does and doesn’t claim about the pope.

As a result, it’s easy for them to set up straw popes—i.e., to propose inaccurate versions of Catholic teaching about the role and function of the pope.

This also can happen because some Catholics aren’t as educated in their faith as they should be, don’t fully grasp Church teaching, and make exaggerated claims.

For whatever cause, straw popes are common in apologetic discussions.

 

Infallibility vs. Sinful Popes

A classic example involves a confusion about the pope’s ability to teach infallibly.

This is often misunderstood as implying that popes can’t sin.

Critics will then point to examples of popes who have done things they regard as sinful and conclude that Catholic teaching about the pope can’t be true.

This is an example of the Straw Pope Fallacy because the Church does not claim that popes can’t sin.

The inability to sin is a gift known as impeccability, and it’s not the same thing as the ability to engage the Church’s gift of infallibility when teaching.

The latter will result in teaching that does not contain error, but it doesn’t mean that a pope will never sin.

In fact, the Church freely acknowledges that popes can sin. They have since the very beginning! St. Peter denied Christ three times!

Yet that didn’t stop Jesus from reaffirming him in his pastoral office with respect to the other disciples. Neither did it stop Peter from writing two inspired—and thus infallible—encyclical letters. (You can read the first here; and the second here.)

It’s thus knocking down a straw pope to point to individual popes who’ve done things you regard as sinful and claim this disproves Catholic teaching.

It doesn’t. The Church doesn’t teach that popes are sinless.

 

Perfect Prudence?

Sometimes the Straw Pope Fallacy involves an even more expansive idea than popes being impeccable.

Some critics cite what they take to be examples of doing things that are merely ill advised or imprudent as somehow violating Catholic teaching regarding the papacy.

That would be the case if the Church taught that popes are perfectly prudent and can’t make mistakes of a prudential nature.

However, the Church claims no such thing. There is nothing in Church teaching that says this won’t happen.

It thus would be erecting a straw pope to claim that it does.

 

Divine Guidance?

But perhaps we can find a way to improve this argument, for the Church does claim that the Holy Spirit provides guidance to the pope and the bishops as members of the Magisterium.

That God gives people divine guidance of some form—even to Christians that are not members of the Magisterium—is certainly true. St. James says so (Jas. 1:5).

Calvinists would presumably see John Calvin as a person to whom God gave special guidance, resulting in him having a particularly insightful theology. Lutherans would presumably do the same for Martin Luther, and Wesleyans for John Wesley.

And the Church acknowledges that God gives this guidance to bishops, including the pope, in a special way.

But this guidance is separate from the gift of infallibility. If infallibility is engaged, the resulting teaching is guaranteed to be free from error.

However, the more general guidance God gives is not guaranteed to have this result—whether it’s the general guidance he gives to individual Christians, to gifted theologians, or to representatives of the Magisterium, like the bishops and popes.

The Church does not teach that, when operating under general guidance, the members of the Magisterium can’t make mistakes—and certainly not in the prudential order. In fact, it teaches:

When it comes to the question of interventions in the prudential order, it could happen that some magisterial documents might not be free from all deficiencies. Bishops and their advisors have not always taken into immediate consideration every aspect or the entire complexity of a question.

But it would be contrary to the truth, if, proceeding from some particular cases, one were to conclude that the Church’s Magisterium can be habitually mistaken in its prudential judgments, or that it does not enjoy divine assistance in the integral [i.e., overall] exercise of its mission (CDF, Donum Veritatis 24).

Here the topic is magisterial interventions of a prudential nature—that is, when the Church teaches on a prudential matter. This is not the same thing as the prudence of policy and administrative decisions, like whether to sign a treaty or who to appoint to a particular office.

On the level of decisions about what to teach on prudential matters, the Church acknowledges that the Holy Spirit guides the Magisterium so that it is not “habitually mistaken,” but that doesn’t mean this guidance prevents all mistakes, for “it could happen that some magisterial documents might not be free from all deficiencies.”

If that’s the case even when the Church is exercising its teaching authority, it’s even more the case when it comes to non-doctrinal decisions, such as international relations or personnel matters.

To truly engage with what the Church teaches regarding the guidance of the Magisterium, one would need to demonstrate that the Church is “habitually mistaken” in its prudential judgments (at least on doctrinal matters) and thus that it doesn’t enjoy the kind of divine guidance it claims.

That will be difficult to do since the Catholic Church is the world’s largest religious body—a fact that suggests they’ve been doing something right.

 

What About the Pope Himself?

The above discussion involves the guidance that the Holy Spirit gives to the Magisterium as a whole—that is, the bishops teaching in union with the pope—but could we configure a version of the argument that would be more specific to the pope himself?

We could, if the Church taught that the guidance that God gives the pope is sufficiently strong that it prevents him from making mistakes in the prudential order.

However, the Church does not teach this. Although the Holy Spirit offers guidance to the Church in selecting a new pope, this guidance doesn’t guarantee that the choice of pope will be a good one!

In a 1997 interview, Joseph Ratzinger (the future Pope Benedict XVI) was asked whether the Holy Spirit is responsible for the election of a pope. He replied:

I would not say so, in the sense that the Holy Spirit picks out the pope. . . . I would say that the Spirit does not exactly take control of the affair, but rather like a good educator, as it were, leaves us much space, much freedom, without entirely abandoning us.

Thus the Spirit’s role should be understood in a much more elastic sense, not that he dictates the candidate for whom one must vote. Probably the only assurance he offers is that the thing cannot be totally ruined (John Allen, The Rise of Benedict XVI, 6).

He continued:

There are too many contrary instances of popes the Holy Spirit obviously would not have picked!

It’s thus quite possible for there to be bad popes, as history has illustrated.

Protestant apologist James White has recently been proposing the idea of a debate on the merits of recent statements or actions by Pope Francis and what implications they may have for Catholic teachings about the pope.

But even if one were to conclude that Francis was a bad or unsuitable pope, that would not disprove Catholic teaching, because Catholic teaching allows there to be bad popes.

It would be erecting a straw pope to suppose otherwise.

You could infer from the conclusion that Francis is a bad pope that he’s an outlier.

But you wouldn’t be showing from this single data point that the Holy Spirit doesn’t guide the overall institution of the papacy or that he doesn’t work through bad popes.

After all, the Holy Spirit provided guidance to the overall institution of the Jewish high priesthood, but that didn’t stop there from being bad high priests—like Caiaphas—who plotted Jesus’ death.

Nor did it mean that God wouldn’t work through bad high priests once they had assumed their divinely instituted office. In fact, the Holy Spirit gave a genuine prophecy through Caiaphas even when he was in the act of plotting the death of the Messiah (John 11:47-53)!

Once again, you’d need to argue against the whole line of popes and show that they—as a body—lack the guidance that the Church holds they receive by virtue of their office.

You could do that by arguing that they systematically teach false doctrine—in which case you need to debate the doctrines.

However, if you want to do it by pointing to poor prudential decisions, you’ll have a hard row to hoe, because—once again—the Catholic Church is the largest religious body in the world, making it difficult to hold that popes are “habitually mistaken” in their prudential decisions. They’re obviously doing something right!

 

Appointing Officials?

As part of his argument for debating recent actions by Pope Francis, White says:

I think I’ve made a very strong case that we live at a point in time, right now, where there needs to be a clear discussion of the positive claims that Rome makes concerning the necessity of the papacy—and not just the papacy as some nebulous, unidentifiable, foggy chimera.

But you have a pope, and that pope has a worldview. And he is using that worldview to choose cardinals and bishops, scholars on the Pontifical Biblical Commission, that will influence the teaching in Roman Catholic schools for decades.

You know this to be true. This needs to be debated.

And if you’re going to debate sola scriptura, then both ultimate claims of an epistemological authority must be on the table. It is time for Roman Catholic apologists to stand up to their own claims.

White thus sees the pope’s appointment of cardinals, bishops, and biblical scholars as relevant to the question of whether Catholic teaching on the papacy is true.

Why would these be relevant?

Further light is shed on this question at another point in the video, where he says:

The worldview that allows Francis to look at the tradition, primarily delivered to him in the South American church, and interpret it the way he’s interpreting it, and then acting upon that—in putting people in positions of authority—results in the papacy teaching something differently now than it did in the past.

The concept of infallible teaching authority has to have meaning. Or your claims, and my claims, are empty.

White here relates the appointment of various individuals as somehow affecting “the concept of infallible teaching authority.”

His argument seems to be that Pope Francis has a worldview that leads him to appoint officials that will have an influence on Catholic teaching that will result in it changing in some way. He also said:

I remember very, very clearly pointing out a contradiction—this is back during John Paul II—a contradiction between what John Paul II had said, and [what] a previous bishop of Rome had said.

White thus takes differences in Church teaching over time—such as the one he remembers finding between John Paul II and a prior pope, or the ones he thinks Francis’s appointees might one day produce—as contradicting “the concept of infallible teaching authority.”

 

No Doctrinal Development?

I have to have some sympathy for White, because there are a large number of Catholics who say things like “[Catholic] Doctrine can’t change.”

As I point out in my book Teaching With Authority, the Church does not use this language.

Instead, it acknowledges that doctrinal development happens over time:

In order to serve the People of God as well as possible, in particular, by warning them of dangerous opinions which could lead to error, the Magisterium can intervene in questions under discussion which involve, in addition to solid principles, certain contingent and conjectural elements. It often only becomes possible with the passage of time to distinguish between what is necessary and what is contingent.

The willingness to submit loyally to the teaching of the Magisterium on matters per se not [infallible] must be the rule. It can happen, however, that a theologian may, according to the case, raise questions regarding the timeliness, the form, or even the contents of magisterial interventions. Here the theologian will need, first of all, to assess accurately the authoritativeness of the interventions which becomes clear from the nature of the documents, the insistence with which a teaching is repeated, and the very way in which it is expressed. . . .

In fact, the theologian, who cannot pursue his discipline well without a certain competence in history, is aware of the filtering which occurs with the passage of time. This is not to be understood in the sense of a relativization of the tenets of the faith. The theologian knows that some judgments of the Magisterium could be justified at the time in which they were made, because while the pronouncements contained true assertions and others which were not sure, both types were inextricably connected. Only time has permitted discernment and, after deeper study, the attainment of true doctrinal progress (CDF, Donum Veritatis 24).

The Church thus acknowledges that, as it seeks to articulate Christian doctrine, its statements have varying levels of authority.

As long as these are not on the infallible level, they can contain both “solid principles” that are “necessary,” as well as “certain contingent and conjectural elements,” and that “it often only becomes possible with the passage of time to distinguish” between them.

This process, which occurs under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, is referred to as doctrinal development.

Therefore, it is possible in particular situations to consider non-infallible teachings and “raise questions regarding the timeliness, the form, or even the contents of magisterial interventions.”

Which is to say: Non-infallible teachings are not infallible.

They have differing levels of authority, from the tentative to the very firm, and their overall reliability is found in the guidance that the Holy Spirit gives the Church even when infallibility isn’t being invoked. But they can contain “contingent and conjectural elements” that will be removed over the course of time as the Holy Spirit guides the Church “into all the truth” (John 16:13).

Therefore, one erects a straw pope if one proposes that no imperfections and no doctrinal development can occur.

This seems to be what James White is doing, because merely finding a difference between what John Paul II said and what a prior pope said does not engage “the concept of infallible teaching authority”—with one possible exception.

 

The Real Issue

The one exception occurs if you can find:

  1. A papal teaching that is infallible,
  2. A Church teaching that is infallible (whether by a pope or the Magisterium in general), and
  3. Both of these teachings contradict each other.

If you could find such a situation, then you would have a disproof of papal infallibility by counter-example, which is one of two strategies one could employ (the other would be a disproof of the doctrine on the level of principle rather than by example).

Consequently, this is the real issue for example-based disproofs of papal infallibility. Everything else is a distraction that involves setting up a straw pope.

It does not matter if:

  • A pope commits sins
  • A pope does imprudent things
  • A pope is a bad pope
  • A pope says something different than what has been said in the past

To disprove papal infallibility by counter-example you need an infallible papal teaching that contradicts another infallible teaching.

Nothing else will do the job.

I’ve already explained why I’m not interested in debating statements or actions by Pope Francis for various practical reasons.

However, the above explains why on the doctrinal level: Pope Francis has never attempted to teach infallibility on a matter of doctrine, and therefore the relevant issue is not on the table. Such a debate would, of necessity, be an exercise in irrelevance.

Which is what the Straw Pope and the Straw Man fallacies are—fallacies of relevance.

To actually do this kind of disproof, you’d need to comb through the list of papal documents that contain infallible definitions (and, as I point out in Teaching With Authority, the list is quite small) and then find a contradiction to another infallible teaching.

 

But . . . ! But . . . !

The above will not be satisfying to many critics of the Catholic Church, because it makes their job much harder than it otherwise would be.

It’s one thing to argue that a pope sins, does imprudent things, is bad at his job, or says something different than prior popes.

It’s another thing entirely to find contradictions between items in the relatively modest body of infallible teachings.

Some may argue that they ought to be able to appeal to these other things—that the papacy should work the way they want it to.

And one can have some sympathy for them, as individual Catholics sometimes make exaggerated claims that would support a more expansive view of how it works.

But the fact is that the Church does not teach such a view. The Church teaches that the Holy Spirit provides the Magisterium guidance that guarantees the reliability of its teachings in a general fashion, but he only guarantees the complete reliability of specific teachings when they are taught infallibly.

Consequently, if you want to disprove infallibility, it’s to that set of teachings you must appeal.

You can’t disprove infallibility by appealing to non-infallible teachings (or things that aren’t even teachings).

You can say that the Church should teach something else about the papacy—something that’s easier for you to knock down.

But that’s the definition of attacking a straw man—or, in this case, a straw pope.

The Kalaam Cosmological Argument and the First-and-Last Fallacy

The Kalaam cosmological argument for God’s existence has been around for centuries.

It hasn’t been that popular historically, with authors such as St. Thomas Aquinas pointing out problems with it. However, it has been popular in recent years, due principally to the advocacy of William Lane Craig.

I’ve written and spoken about it on a number of occasions, and I won’t review all that here, but I’d like to point out some problems with some recent defenses that involve a logical fallacy.

 

Stating the Argument Briefly

One way of putting the Kalaam argument is:

  1. Everything with a beginning has a cause.
  2. The universe has a beginning.
  3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.
  4. The cause of the universe, by definition, is God.
  5. Therefore, God exists.

In this article, the premise we’re interested in is line 2—that the universe has a beginning.

This has been argued both on scientific and philosophical grounds.

Modern Big Bang cosmology is consistent with the universe having a beginning, though—as Fr. George LeMaitre (the father of Big Bang cosmology) pointed out—it does not conclusively prove it.

The results of science are always provisional, so if you want a conclusive proof, you’ll need to demonstrate it philosophically and rely on logic rather than observation.

Consequently, defenders of the Kalaam argument have sought to prove by logic alone that the universe had a beginning.

 

Finding a Logical Contradiction?

From a Christian perspective, the question we need to ask is whether God could have created the world with an infinite history.

We know from Scripture that he did not. He created the universe at a specific point in the past, so it has a finite history.

The question is whether he could have created it with an infinite history if he chose. Is a universe with an infinite history something God would be able to bring about by his divine omnipotence?

Omnipotence allows God to create anything as long as it does not involve a logical contradiction—that is, as long as the terms involved do not contradict each other.

“Four-sided triangle” and “square circle” both involve logical contradictions (as does “stone too heavy for an omnipotent being to lift”), so God can’t create those as the terms involved are logical gibberish and don’t refer to conceptually possible entities. They’re just word salad.

This is St. Thomas’s point when he says that, “everything that does not imply a contradiction in terms, is numbered amongst those possible things, in respect of which God is called omnipotent: whereas whatever implies contradiction does not come within the scope of divine omnipotence, because it cannot have the aspect of possibility” (ST I:25:3; cf. SCG 2:25).

Therefore, if you want to say that God can’t create a universe with an infinite history, you’ll need to show that this concept involves a logical contradiction. If it doesn’t, then it’s something God can create.

The burden of proof thus falls to the Kalaam advocate to show that “universe with an infinite history” is self-contradictory.

 

Traversing the Infinite

A common strategy for doing this involves what is sometimes called “traversing an actual infinite.” The basic idea is this:

  1. Suppose that you start counting 1, 2, 3 . . .
  2. No matter how high you count, you will never arrive at infinity, because there is always a next number you can say.
  3. Therefore, the universe could not start infinitely far back in time, because you couldn’t start counting and cover an infinite series of moments to get up to the present. You thus can’t traverse an actually infinite series.

All of this is true.

It’s also irrelevant.

Notice what the argument says: “The universe could not start infinitely far back in time” and then traverse an infinity of time to the present.

The argument is assuming that the universe had a beginning—namely, one infinitely far back in time.

But that would not apply to a universe with an infinite history.

 

Understanding the Infinite

To see why, we need to remember the nature of the infinite. Derived from Latin roots, the word means “no” (in-) “limit” (finis). Something is infinite if it is lacking a limit or end.

For an ordered series, this can happen in one of three ways, as illustrated by the number line:

  1. The set of positive natural numbers has a limit at the beginning (i.e., the number 1) but no final limit. It just keeps going {1, 2, 3 . . .}.
  2. The set of negative natural numbers as a limit at the end (i.e., the number -1), but no starting limit, so it goes {. . . -3, -2, -1}.
  3. The set of all natural numbers (which also includes 0) has neither a beginning limit nor an ending limit, so it goes {. . . -3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3 . . .}.

Each of these three sets is infinite because they lack either a beginning limit, and ending limit, or both.

However, if an ordered series has both a beginning and an ending limit, then it isn’t infinite. Instead, it’s finite. Consider the sequence {6, 7, 8, 9}. This series is finite because it has both a beginning limit (6) and an ending limit (9). It is thus limited to the numbers between 6 and 9, making it finite (i.e., limited).

 

What’s Wrong with Traversing an Infinite?

With this in mind, we can see what’s wrong with the “Traversing an Infinite” argument, above.

It assumes that the universe had a beginning “infinitely far back in time” and then traversed an infinite series of moments to arrive at the present. In making these assumptions, it assumes both a beginning limit and a final limit. It therefore—by definition—describes a finite series.

If {H} is the set of moments in the universe’s history, then there can’t be both a first moment and a last (most recent) moment without {H} being a finite set.

The argument thus tells us nothing more than that a number can’t be both finite (limited) and infinite (unlimited).

We already knew that.

But it’s irrelevant to the issue of a universe with an infinite history.

We can agree that the universe’s history ends in the present, but if it had a beginning—however far back in time—then its history is, by definition, finite.

If a universe’s history ends in the present, it has a final limit. Therefore, for its history to be truly infinite, it must not have a beginning limit. Therefore, it has no beginning. It’s just always been there, with no first moment.

All this is pointed out by Aquinas, in summary form, when he writes that God could create a history containing an infinite number of previous revolutions of the sun, for “if the world had been always, there would be no first revolution. Wherefore there would be no passing through them, because this always requires two extremes” (SCG 2:38:11).

Therefore, you wouldn’t be traversing an infinity. When you traverse a distance, it must have both a starting and an ending point, making it finite. For it to be infinite into the past, it must have no beginning point. In that case, the universe would have always been approaching the present, without any moment that this trek began.

 

The First-and-Last Fallacy

It’s therefore a logical mistake—or fallacy—to apply a series with both a beginning and an end to the case of a universe with an infinite history.

Because this move involves there being both a first element and a last element in a supposedly infinite series, I will call it the “First-and-Last Fallacy.” Stated more formally:

The First-and-Last Fallacy occurs if and only if a person envisions a supposedly infinite series as having both a first and a last element.

A series can be infinite if it has only a first element, like the series {1, 2, 3 . . .}. Or it can be infinite if it has only a last element, like the series {. . . -3, -2, -1}. Or it can be infinite if it has neither a first and last element, like the series {. . . -3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3 . . .}.

But it can’t have both a first and last element and be infinite.

Unfortunately, the “Traversing an Infinite” argument isn’t the only one that commits the First-and-Last Fallacy.

Some recent philosophical defenses of the Kalaam argument also commit this fallacy. They are, in essence, alternate versions of the “Traversing an Infinite” argument presented in other guises.

 

The Grim Reaper Paradox

Alexander Pruss and Robert Koons have proposed what is known as the Grim Reaper Paradox, which can be formulated different ways. One way goes like this:

  1. There is a man named Fred, who is alive at 12:00 noon.
  2. However, in the next hour, he must face an infinite series of Grim Reapers with orders to kill him if he is not already dead.
  3. The final Grim Reaper will kill him at 1:00 p.m. if he is still alive then.
  4. But half an hour earlier, at 12:30, another Grim Reaper would kill him if he was still alive then.
  5. And a quarter hour before that, at 12:15, another Grim Reaper would kill him if he was still alive then.
  6. The rest of the infinite series of Grim Reapers are set to strike in increasingly shorter intervals, as we work our way back to 12:00 noon, when Fred was alive.

The question is: Which Grim Reaper kills Fred?

  • He will definitely be dead by 1:00 p.m., because the final Grim Reaper will kill him.
  • But that one shouldn’t be the answer, because he should have been killed by the 12:30 p.m. Grim Reaper.
  • And that one shouldn’t have had to kill him, either, because of the 12:15 p.m. Grim Reaper, and so on.
  • It thus looks like we can’t identify which Grim Reaper kills him, because there’s always a prior Grim Reaper who should have done the job.

Framed this way, the problem is essentially the same as asking “What’s the first moment of time after 12:00 noon?”—because that’s when Fred will encounter the first Grim Reaper and get killed.

But if time is infinitely divisible, there is no “first” moment after noon, because you can always specify a prior moment. If you say “1 second” after noon, you then could say “1/2 second earlier,” then “1/4 second earlier,” then “1/8 second earlier,” and so on.

We encounter the same problem on the number line. If you consider all the decimal numbers between 0 and 1, there is no limit to them, and there is no “first number after 0.” If you propose 0.1, you’ll have to face 0.01, then 0.001, then 0.0001, and so on. There’s always a number closer to 0 and thus there is no “first” number after 0.

That’s what’s required by an infinite series.

This reveals what’s wrong with the Grim Reaper Paradox. If the number of Grim Reapers Fred will encounter really is infinite, with the final one striking at 1:00 p.m., then there is no first Reaper. There can’t be if the series is truly infinite, just like there can be no “first element in the infinite series {. . . -3, -2, -1}” or a “first number after negative infinity.”

These are logically impossible entities.

 

The New Grim Reaper Paradox

Some have reformulated the Grim Reaper Paradox so that it doesn’t involve time compression between noon and 1 p.m.

For example, you could have the Grim Reapers strike on New Year’s Day. If Fred is alive on New Year’s Day 2021, a Grim Reaper will kill him. But there also was a Grim Reaper set to strike on New Year’s Day in every prior year, going back an infinite number of years in history.

The same issue then results. There is no first Reaper that kills Fred.

And that’s the problem: The thought experiment is proposing an entity that can’t exist, because it involves a logical contradiction.

There can’t be a first Grim Reaper in an infinite series that has a final limit any more than there can be a first number in the series {. . . -3, -2, -1}. That’s a contradiction in terms.

It’s therefore a logical impossibility.

The terms involved in the thought experiment entail a logical contradiction. The question “Who is the first Grim Reaper that Fred encounters in an infinite series of Reapers that ends at 1:00 p.m. on New Year’s Day 2021?” is the logical equivalent of “What is the first decimal number after 0?” or “How many angles does a 4-sided triangle have?”

These are all just word salad.

And the particular form of word salad in the Grim Reaper Paradox involves there being a first and a last Grim Reaper in a supposedly infinite series of them. It thus commits the First-and-Last Fallacy.

 

The Eternal Society Paradox

A similar, more recent paradox is proposed by Wade Tisthammer. It can be framed like this:

  1. Suppose there is a society that stretches infinitely far into the past (i.e., an eternal society).
  2. Every year, this society flips a coin.
  3. If the coin comes up “heads” (H) and it’s the first time it’s ever come up heads, they do a special chant to commemorate it being the first time heads has come up.
  4. If the coin comes up “tails” (T), they do nothing.
  5. Every combination of heads and tails is possible.
  6. One possible combination is that in every prior year of their infinite history, the coin has come up tails, until the most recent year, in which it comes up heads, so the series looks like {. . . T, T, T, T, T, T, H}. In this case, they get together and do their special chant to commemorate it being the first time heads has come up.
  7. Another possibility is that it comes up heads every year in their infinite history, so the series looks like {. . . H, H, H, H, H, H, H}.
  8. In that case, when did they do the special chant to commemorate the first time heads came up? It can’t be in any of these years, because heads had occurred in every prior year.

It’s worth pointing out that an infinite series of heads is only possible. It’s not guaranteed, and so the paradox might not arise in actual history. If God has a rule that prevents logical contradictions from arising—a logical equivalent of the Chronology Protection Conjecture—then one could argue that the series {. . . H, H, H, H, H, H, H} will never arise.

However, we don’t need to go that route, because, after what we’ve seen, the solution is straightforward: The Eternal Society Paradox is presupposing a logical contradiction.

It’s asking “What is the first heads in an infinite series of head flips that has a final limit?”

If an infinite series has a final element, then it can’t have a first element—by definition.

Once again, we’re dealing with the equivalent of “What’s the first decimal number after 0?” or “How many angles does a four-sided triangle have?” The thought experiment presupposes an entity that involves a logical contradiction and thus cannot exist.

It presupposes a first and a last element to a supposedly infinite series, so the Eternal Society Paradox commits the First-and-Last Fallacy.

 

Physicalizing the Infinite

We’ve looked at three philosophical arguments that the universe must have a finite history:

  • Traversing an Infinite
  • The Grim Reaper Paradox
  • The Eternal Society Paradox

Each one involves the First-and-Last Fallacy, though they present it in different physical terms. They thus physicalize it in different ways and correspondingly ask different questions:

  • Traversing an Infinite asks us to envision a starting point to the universe’s infinite history and then asks how we could cross that by traversing an infinite number of moments to get to the present. The answer to this question is that we couldn’t. You can’t cross an infinite series by successive addition. However, this is irrelevant because—if the universe has an infinite history terminating in the present—then there was no first moment when the journey began. The universe has just always been there, getting progressively closer to the present.
  • The Grim Reaper Paradox asks us to envision an infinite series of Grim Reapers that end at a certain moment (say, 1:00 p.m. on New Year’s Day 2021) who are all ordered to kill Fred if he hasn’t already been killed. It then asks who is the first Grim Reaper to encounter Fred and kill him. Answer: None of them. There is no first Reaper in an infinite series that terminates at a certain moment. Such a Reaper is a logically impossible entity—as is “an infinite series of Reapers with a first and last element.” Such a self-contradictory series cannot exist, and thus cannot harm Fred. He’s either alive or not, regardless of the word salad entity that’s supposed to confront him.

If a series of Reapers is truly infinite into the past, then Fred has simply never lived, except for the window between his birth and when the next Reaper was timed to strike.

  • The Eternal Society Paradox invites us to consider an infinite series of coin tosses that all turn up heads and that ends in the present. It then asks us when the Eternal Society did its special chant to commemorate the first time the coin came up heads. Answer: Never. There was no “first time” the coin came up heads. “First heads flip in an infinite series of head flips ending in the present” is a logically impossible entity. Therefore, in physical terms, the Eternal Society would never have done their chant to commemorate the first heads flip, because there wasn’t one.

Each of these thought experiments presupposes an entity that involves a contradiction in terms—a series that has both a first element and a last element and yet is supposed to be infinite.

They may then go on to ask questions about an element in this series, which also involves a logical contradiction (e.g., “What’s the first element in an infinite series that has a final limit?”).

But this is a nonsensical question, just like “What’s the first number after negative infinity?”, “What’s the last number before positive infinity?” or “If there were a four-sided triangle, what size would it be?”

In view of how easy it is to fall into the First-and-Last Fallacy, advocates of the Kalaam argument who wish to support it with philosophical proofs need to carefully examine their arguments to see whether they are envisioning a scenario that presupposes both a first and a last element in a supposedly infinite series.

“Changing the Sabbath” and the Antichrist

Recently I was contacted by someone who seems quite openminded and who asked me some questions about why we worship on Sunday rather than the Sabbath.

In particular, this person was wondering why that should be the case if the only person in the Bible who seeks to change the Sabbath is the Antichrist.

I responded as follows . . .

When you refer to the Antichrist changing the Sabbath, I assume that you’re referring to Daniel 7:25, where a coming king will “think to change times and seasons.”

Concerning this prophecy specifically, I’d make several points:

1) It does not specifically mention the Sabbath, but this is almost certainly included in the meaning of changing times and seasons, for reasons we will see below.

2) Prophecy can refer to more than one thing (i.e., have more than one fulfillment). Thus in Revelation the Beast from the Sea’s seven heads are both seven mountains and seven kings (Rev. 17:9-10).

We see the same thing in other prophecies, which can have more than one fulfillment. For example, Isaiah’s prophecy of Emmanuel had a near-term fulfillment in the birth of a child in the time of King Ahaz–something that is obvious because the sign was given to him as a sign that the alliance of kings against him would not succeed in toppling him from his throne (see Isaiah 7:1-16).

For Ahaz, the child Emmanuel would be a sign that God was with his people against this alliance of kings. But the prophecy also has a later fulfillment in Jesus Christ, who was God with us in an even more literal sense.

3) Because prophecies can have more than one fulfillment in history, it is important to identify the original historical fulfillment before exploring possible later fulfillments.

4) In the case of Daniel 7, scholars of multiple persuasions (Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, other) hold that the most likely original fulfillment of this vision is to be found in the kingdoms leading up to the triumph of Alexander the Great in the 300s B.C. (who is also clearly in focus in chapter 8 of the book) and the kingdoms that came about in the wake of his empire. This does not mean that it does not also have one or more later fulfillments, but this is what the original fulfillment involves.

5) In particular, Daniel 7:25–and other passages in Daniel–appear to be referring originally to the post-Alexander king Antiochus IV (i.e., Antiochus Epiphanes). He was king of the Seleucid Empire, which was one of the kingdoms that grew out of Alexander the Great’s conquests, and he persecuted the Jewish people in the 160s B.C.

Specifically, Antiochus tried to compel them to give up the Jewish faith and adopt the Hellenistic (Greek) religion. This meant compelling them to give up celebrating Jewish feasts, including the Sabbath, and this is what Daniel 7:25 apparently is referring to when it says this king will “think to change times and seasons.”

The “think” is important, because Antiochus did not succeed. The Jewish people resisted him, won their freedom, and retained their ancestral faith and its practices–as chronicled in the books 1 and 2 Maccabees.

6) It is possible that a future dictator may also try to compel the Jewish people to give up their faith–including its holy days–and this future dictator may be the same as the final Antichrist, but we must be careful about such speculation as the prophecy is not repeated in the New Testament and not every prophecy has a later fulfillment.

At least, I couldn’t prove that they all will have a fulfillment at the end of the world, so I have to leave this proposal as a possible speculation but only a speculation.

So, you may well be right that the final Antichrist will attempt to force the Jewish people to drop the Sabbath, but I can’t say this for certain, myself.

However, this is an independent issue of what liturgical calendar Christians, and especially Gentile Christians, should follow.

The Sabbath–along with the monthly New Moons and the annual feasts (e.g., Passover, Tabernacles)–was part of the liturgical calendar that God gave to the Jewish people before the time of Christ.

It was never binding and was never meant to be binding on Gentiles, as Jewish scholars have always held. (In fact, Gentiles were even positively prohibited by Jewish law from being able to do things like keep Passover, as circumcision was required for eating the Passover lamb.)

The uniqueness of the Sabbath to the Jewish people is due to the fact there is nothing in natural law/human nature that demands that one day in seven (as opposed to one day in five or one day in ten) be set aside for rest and worship or that it must be the seventh day in particular (rather than the first or the third). Since God did not build this into human nature/natural law, such a law could only come from a divine mandate, and God only mandated this for the Jewish people, not for all peoples.

When the early Church began making significant numbers of Gentile converts, one of the questions that arose was whether they needed to be circumcised and become Jews in order to be saved (cf. Acts 10-11, 15, Gal. 1-2). The answer was that they did not.

The Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15) ruled on this question, and even though it involved a few points to help Jewish and Gentile Christians live together (Acts 15:29), you’ll note that keeping the Sabbath was not one of these. The Jerusalem Council thus recognized that Gentile Christians did not need to be circumcised and adopt Jewish practices. Though a few points were asked of Gentiles for the sake of harmony with Jewish Christians, observing the Jewish ceremonial calendar was not among them.

St. Paul sheds even more light on the subject, indicating in his letters that–even though he is a Jew–he is not bound by the Jewish Law (1 Cor. 9:19-23), because Christ has fulfilled the Jewish Law and so put an end to it. He indicates this in various passages, such as Romans 14:1-6, where he writes:

As for the man who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not for disputes over opinions. One believes he may eat anything, while the weak man eats only vegetables. Let not him who eats despise him who abstains, and let not him who abstains pass judgment on him who eats; for God has welcomed him. Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Master is able to make him stand. One man esteems one day as better than another, while another man esteems all days alike. Let every one be fully convinced in his own mind. He who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord. He also who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God; while he who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God.

Here Paul takes up two examples of practices that could affect different groups of Christians: keeping kosher laws (not eating unclean foods) and observing the Jewish calendar (honoring certain days). He characterizes some–who believe that they cannot eat certain things and must observe certain days–as “weak in faith,” and others–who recognize they are not bound by these laws–as strong in faith, by implication (for they recognize Christ has eliminated the need for such things by his fulfillment of the Jewish Law).

Rather than trying to get people to abandon their positions, Paul urges peace among Christians by letting everyone do what their conscience says they need to do to honor God.

Paul could not argue in this way if the “weak in faith” position was correct and it was mandated that Christians keep kosher and observe Jewish holy days. It is only because we are not bound by these things that he can allow those who are “weak in faith”–i.e., who have scrupulous fears that Jesus might not have freed us from these things–to continue to practice them rather than violate their consciences.

If everybody was bound to avoid certain foods and keep certain days as a matter of divine law, Paul would have said so–as he does with other things that are matters of divine law. Thus, in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, he warns that people who practice a variety of sins will not inherit the kingdom. He doesn’t say, “You get to do these sins if your conscience tells you it’s okay.” He says “This is a sin; don’t do it!”

Therefore, in Romans 14 the allowance of both positions–eating and not eating certain foods, observing and not observing certain days–is because neither is a violation of divine law. We have the liberty of eating all foods and treating every day alike because God has not mandated that we do otherwise.

Paul is even more explicit in Colossians 2:14-17, where he writes that God has “canceled the bond which stood against us with its legal demands; this he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the principalities and powers and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in him. Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a sabbath. These are only a shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ.”

He thus indicates that the various regulations of the Mosaic Law concerning food and liturgical days (the annual feasts, monthly New Moons, and weekly Sabbaths being the three kinds of days on the Jewish liturgical calendar) were shadows that pointed forward to Christ, but now that Christ has come and fulfilled the Jewish Law, “nailing it to the Cross,” even Jewish Christians–such as himself–are no longer bound by these, for God has “cancelled the bond which stood against us with its legal demands.”

Consequently, he says “let no one pass judgment on you . . . with regard to a festival or a new moon or a sabbath.”

The Sabbath thus is not binding, even on Jewish Christians, because of what Christ did on the cross.

In the first century and for a time thereafter, many Jewish Christians did continue to observe the Sabbath, as Paul indicated was possible for them in Romans 14. However, this was not the day that Christians held their religious gatherings on.

Instead, they observed the first day of the week, because it was the day on which the Lord Jesus rose. Thus, we see Paul recommending that collections be taken up in the church of Corinth on this day:

Now concerning the contribution for the saints: as I directed the churches of Galatia, so you also are to do. On the first day of every week, each of you is to put something aside and store it up, as he may prosper, so that contributions need not be made when I come (1 Cor. 16:1-2).

This day soon came to be known as “the Lord’s Day,” because it was the day on which the Lord Jesus rose. Thus, we see St. John writing:

I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet (Rev. 1:10).

And from the first century forward we see the early Christians continuing to celebrate the first day of the week–the Lord’s Day–rather than the Sabbath, as illustrated by the quotations from early Church documents listed here:

https://www.catholic.com/tract/sabbath-or-sunday

In time, the Church used the power of the keys that Christ had given to Peter to “bind and loose” (Matt. 16:18) to institute a new Christian liturgical calendar, built around the weekly observance of the Lord’s Day.

It is this exercise of the keys that is the reasons Christians today are bound to observe the Lord’s Day–not because one day intrinsically requires observance compared to other days.

However, the Church did not “change” the Sabbath. The Sabbath is when it always was: the seventh day of the week. It’s just that Christians are not required to observe it, as it was something that pertained to the Jewish people prior to the time of Christ. Instead of celebrating the Sabbath, Christians celebrate the first day of the week in honor of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead.

For more on the Church’s official teaching, see here:

https://www.ncregister.com/blog/did-the-catholic-church-change-the-sabbath

I hope this helps, and God bless you!

How to Decode Mysterious Church Father Citations

A reader writes:

Hi Mr. Akin,

I am an Indian Catholic and a huge fan of yours and am addicted to Catholic Answers content. I want to ask you how to verify sources of quotes.

I am currently collecting quotes on the Papacy in the early Church. I’ve got lots of stuff (copy-pasted from internet forums), but I want to be careful before I use them and see if they are accurate. I’ve seen these quotes being used in apologetic books, but I would like to see the original sources to confirm for myself.

A quote looks like, for example: Cyprian of Carthage (c. A.D. 200 – 258):

“the Chief or Ruling Church [at Rome], whence the Unity of the priesthood has its source, and to which heretical perfidy cannot gain access” [Epist. lv. ad Cornel. ed. Baluz].

I am not an academic so I don’t know how to work with these. What is this Epist. lv. ad Cornel. ed. Baluz.? This seems like an abbreviated name, so how do I find the exact title? Also, do you think I’d be able to find the book (even as a translation) online?

Thank you very much for writing and for your kind words. Your desire to look up quotations and verify them in context is very commendable! I wish more people did that!

You may find that not all of the quotations out there (either pro- or anti-papacy) are being used correctly and in context.

The system of citations used for these documents can take a little while to learn, and it helps to know some Latin, because those abbreviations are in Latin.

The citation “Epist. lv. ad Cornel. ed. Baluz” has 3 parts.

 

The first and most important is “Epist. lv.”

“Epist.” is short for “Epistula,” which is the Latin word for “epistle” or “letter”–so you know you’re looking for one of Cyprian’s letters.

“lv” is the Latin number for 55, so you’re looking for Cyprian’s Letter #55.

But letters can be numbered differently in different editions, so what’s Letter #55 in one book might have a different number in another book.

That’s where the other two parts of the citation come in.

 

“Ad Cornel.” tells you something else to help you identify the correct letter.

“Ad” is the Latin word for “to,” and “Cornel.” is an abbreviation for the name “Cornelius,” so “ad Cornel.” means the letter you’re looking for is addressed “to Cornelius.” If it’s addressed to someone else, it’s the wrong letter.

For example, here is Letter 55 in one collection that is available online:

https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/050655.htm

Upon opening it, you might think, “Ah! This is Letter 55, so it must be the right one!” But it’s not. From the opening line, you can see it’s addressed “To the people abiding at Thibaris” not “To Cornelius.” Apparently, the editor of this collection gave the letters different numbers than the edition that was being cited.

 

So, who’s edition was that? This is where the last part of the citation comes in: “ed. Baluz”

“Ed.” is short for “editio”–the Latin word for “edition,” and “Baluz” is a proper name. So, somewhere out there, there was an edition of Cyprian’s letters by someone named Baluz, and in the edition of Baluz, Letter #55 was addressed to Cornelius, and that’s the letter you’re looking for.

Unfortunately, I don’t have Baluz’s edition. You might be able to find it, as it’s probably in the public domain. However, I went another route to find the letter you’re looking for.

I googled “cyprian chief or ruling church letter cornelius” and the first result was this one:

https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/050654.htm

Instead of being Letter 55, it’s Letter 54–one off–in the collection that they have at NewAdvent.org

 

To find the specific passage, I then hit Ctrl-F and searched the letter for one of the keywords from your quotation–“unity”–and in section 14 of the letter, I found this:

After such things as these, moreover, they still dare — a false bishop having been appointed for them by, heretics— to set sail and to bear letters from schismatic and profane persons to the throne of Peter, and to the chief church whence priestly unity takes its source; and not to consider that these were the Romans whose faith was praised in the preaching of the apostle, to whom faithlessness could have no access.

That’s clearly the passage that you’re looking for; it’s just a different translation of it.

Because translations render words differently (note that this one uses “priestly unity” instead of “the unity of the priesthood”), you often have to try searching on more than one key term to find the right passage. If you’d searched on “priesthood” you wouldn’t have found the right passage. But searching on “unity,” you would find it.

 

If I were going to cite this passage for other people, I would do it like this:

Cyprian, Epistle 54:14

or

Cyprian, Letter 54:14

The reason is that I don’t want other people to have the same trouble finding the passage that I did. They probably won’t know what “Epist. lv ad Cornel. ed. Baluz” means. Neither will they likely know how to find Baluz’s edition, which is likely out of print.

But–if I update the citation to read “Letter 54” instead of 55–and if I add the section number 14, I can tell them exactly where to go in an edition that is easy to find on the Internet. I can even give them a direct link along with the citation (as above).

 

This procedure is what I used here, and variations on it will work when trying to identify other hard-to-understand citations.

If nothing else works, you can always just google key words from the quotation until you find the passage in its original context.

You may be aware of this, but something that can help when googling is using the “site:” tag to restrict the searching to a specific web site.

For example, NewAdvent.org has a lot of documents by the Church Fathers, and so–in addition to your key words–you can add the tag “site:newadvent.org” to your search query, and it will search New Advent only for the key terms, making it more likely that you’ll find the quotation in a primary source document.

Years ago, when I first started researching in the Church Fathers it took me a while to figure all this out, so I hope it’s helpful to you!

God bless you in your studies!

Mysterious World Fan Art: Episode 116 (Amigurumi Jimmy)

Heather C. from Maryland writes by Email:

Our whole family enjoys the podcast and many of the others on SQPN. I enjoyed the recent submission of fan art and was inspired to make my own contribution in the only medium in which I excel, yarn.

Attached, please find pictures of Amigurumi Jimmy. I would love to send him in to you, but in the meantime he’ll hang out with some of my other amigurumi efforts, Panda with a Taco, and my favorite Pinewood Derby car from my tenure as a Cubmaster (My once little Cub is a Life Scout now!)

Please keep up the amazing shows and I’ll keep dividing my discretionary spending between being a Patron and feeding my yarn habit!

Thanks so much, Heather! I’ve now received Amigurumi Jimmy, and it’s awesome!

 

 

Predestination in the Bible

In the last 2,000 years, a lot of theological baggage has developed around the idea of predestination as theologians have discussed it.

Today, people associate the idea of predestination with being inexorably fated to either heaven or hell. To many people, if something is predestined, then it not only will happen, it will happen in an unstoppable way.

This leads to the idea that predestination is incompatible with free will. Further, many suppose that God predestines things arbitrarily—with no basis for his decisions. He simply picks some people to go to heaven and leaves the rest to go to hell.

Not surprisingly, many people are uncomfortable with the idea of predestination, and many don’t like it.

But the Bible uses the word predestination. It does talk about God predestining things.

The question is: Does the Bible mean that God predestines things the way people today understand the concept?

 

Language Changes

It’s easy for people familiar with one way a term is used to read their understanding of it back onto an older text.

For example, if someone today said, “That actor’s performance was awful,” they would mean that it was really bad, and if they read a theatre review from Shakespeare’s time and saw that statement, they likely would assume it meant the same thing: the actor put in a bad performance.

But the critic from Shakespeare’s time actually would have meant something very different. The word awful comes from the roots awe and full, and it originally meant something full of awe.

Back in Shakespeare’s day, to say an actor’s performance was awful would mean either that the performance itself was full of awe (i.e., the actor was very reverential when delivering his lines) or that it inspired awe in the audience.

Because language changes, we always have to check ourselves—when reading an older text—and ask whether a term had the meanings we attribute to it today.

So: Does the Bible understand predestination the way modern people tend to?

 

The Greek Word

The term that gets translated “predestine” in the New Testament is proorizô, and it is not very common—either in the New Testament or in Greek literature.

As Kittel’s Theological Dictionary of the New Testament notes, it is “a comparatively rare and late word.”

This is a sign that we need to be very careful. If we don’t have a lot of examples of how a word is used, we can’t build a good case that it must mean this rather than that. The fewer the examples we have, the less we can flesh out our understanding of the word and the more ambiguity and uncertainty there is.

That, of itself, should tell us to be very careful not to read modern assumptions about predestination into the term.

If you want to advocate a particular understanding of predestination, you’ll need to prove it from the biblical text, because you can’t simply rely on the word having the sense that developed later in theology. At this time, that development had not occurred.

 

Where It Comes From

The origin of a word is known as its etymology, and it often is not a particularly good guide for what words mean, because of the way language changes over time.

How a word is used—not where it came from—is what ultimately determines its meaning. Otherwise, the English word “nice” would mean foolish, because it came from the Latin word nescius (“not knowing”).

But there is an exception to this rule: To the extent a word is late or rare, it lacks much of an established usage, and its word origins are a better guide to how people were using it.

Proorizô comes from two Greek roots: pro and horizô. The first means before and the latter is a verb that means things like set limits to, define, explain, determine, appoint, fix, set, designate, or declare (see BDAG).

Based on its word origins, proorizô could mean a lot of things, and they don’t all indicate inexorable fate. It could simply mean “to set limits beforehand,” “to explain beforehand,” “to appoint or designate beforehand,” etc.

None of those things involve inexorable fate. If someone sets limits or lays down guidelines before a discussion starts, if he explains something ahead of time, or if he appoints someone to a position before an event happens, none of those things involve overriding free will or random choices.

In fact, they don’t even guarantee that the thing will happen or that it was accurate. People in a conversation can exceed the guidelines they were given. An early explanation can be botched. And an appointed official can die before he takes office.

 

An Objection

“Wait!” someone may say. “But what if it’s God doing those things? He’s infallible and omnipotent, so if he does one of those things, won’t it definitely happen?”

Maybe. However, one glance around the world—in any period after the Fall of Man—illustrates that not everything is happening the way God willed.

God doesn’t will that people commit adultery, but they commit it nonetheless.

God is “not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Pet. 3:9), yet some don’t repent.

So, if one used the Greek verb proorizô to say things like, “God determined beforehand that spouses should be faithful to each other” or “God appointed it ahead of time that men should repent” then we would be in a situation where God ordained something, but it doesn’t always come to pass.

Of course, there are particular situations where God has ordained something in such a way that it is guaranteed to happen, but this strong form of ordination can’t be presumed. It’s something that has to be argued in a given case.

In any event, it’s not the word proorizô that would tell you something is ordained in the strong sense—as illustrated by the fact one could use the same word to describe the action of an earthly king who made laws against adultery or failure to repent. Kings may preordain anything they want for their subjects, but it doesn’t mean the subjects will obey.

The word by itself thus is not enough to prove a strong sense of predestination. That’s something that will have to be argued from the biblical context, not the mere use of the word.

 

The Word in the Bible

The above understanding is based on interpreting proorizô in terms of its word origins. However, we noted that this isn’t always a reliable guide to what something means.

It’s perfectly possible to argue, based on later usage, that the meaning of a term drifted from its origins and should be taken in a different sense.

But here’s the thing: You have to argue that based on later usage. You can’t just assert it.

So what happens if we look at how proorizô is used in the Bible?

It turns out that it’s not found at all in the Septuagint—the Greek translation of the Old Testament—and it only appears 6 times in the New Testament.

That’s not much.

It’s certainly not enough to build a case that the meaning of the term has fundamentally shifted away from its origins (the way “nice” and “awful” have). You’d need a lot more examples than 6.

The most you could show is that, in particular cases, proorizô had acquired a new meaning. But you wouldn’t be able to rule out that it still had its prior, expected meaning in other cases.

But let’s look at the New Testament examples and see what we find.

 

Acts 4:28

In Acts 4, we find Peter and John making a speech to the Sanhedrin in which they say:

Truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place (4:27-28).

Here the text refers to the conspiracy against Jesus, which involved both Herod Antipas and Pontius Pilate, as well as various Gentiles and Jews. It says that these people conspired “to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.”

The verb “predestined” is singular in Greek, meaning that it was God’s plan that predestined what happened to Jesus—a rather interesting phrase, as it personifies God’s plan.

The association of God’s hand with his plan also suggests God was in some way involved in bringing these things about, though we are not given more detail about how.

What would this passage contribute to an overall doctrine of predestination?

The first thing to note is that the plan in this passage concerns Jesus. It’s true that God has plans for ordinary people, but those are not in focus in this passage, and we can’t simply generalize this passage to refer to things not under discussion.

Consequently, this passage would make a contribution to a doctrine of the predestination of Jesus and what happened to him, but it doesn’t tell us about God predestining people to heaven or hell.

Could what the plan predestined concerning Jesus have failed to happen? I’d be inclined to say no, but it’s primarily my theology that tells me that: God had determined to send his Son to die for us, and nothing was going to stop that. The reference to God’s hand in the passage also suggests this. But it is these factors—my theology and the reference to the hand—that tell me this, not the word for “predestined.”

Did God override anybody’s free will in the unfolding of these events? The passage does not tell us so. While the reference to the hand suggests God took some kind of role in bringing these things about, that doesn’t mean the parties involved didn’t have free will. God is active in the world in all kinds of ways, but that doesn’t mean people lack freedom.

Was the predestination in this passage arbitrary? The passage does not suggest this, and that holds true regardless of what one considers the subject of predestination:

  • If it’s Jesus, there was a reason God had his Son die for us and not some random individual.
  • If it’s Herod, Pilate, the Gentile soldiers or the Jewish leaders, there was a reason God used them (namely, because they were the ones with the ability and/or authority to put Jesus to death).
  • And if one takes the events of Jesus’ passion as the subject of predestination, there was a rational basis for those as well, as illustrated by all the Christian literature devoted to the question of why God chose to have his Son die on a cross.

 

1 Corinthians 2:7

In 1 Corinthians, Paul is discussing his ministry and says:

We impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed [proorizô] before the ages for our glorification. None of the rulers of this age understood this; for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory (2:7-8).

The secret wisdom he is discussing is the message of the gospel, as illustrated by the reference to Jesus’ crucifixion.

Paul says that God predestined the gospel before the ages, and he indicates one of the goals of the gospel: the glorification of those who accept it.

As before, we do not have the predestination of people to heaven or hell under discussion. Indeed, the subject of predestination here is not even a person. It’s a message: the gospel or “secret and hidden wisdom” that God preordained. Thus, this passage also has no direct relevance to the doctrine of predestination to heaven or hell.

Was it certain that the gospel would play the role God preordained for it? Again, I’d say yes, but it’s my theology that tells me that, not the Greek verb.

Also, this passage contains nothing about people lacking free will. Neither was the predestination of the gospel arbitrary. The fact Paul refers to it as “wisdom” indicates it had a rational basis.

 

Ephesians 1:5

In Ephesians, we find two references to predestination. First, Paul writes:

He destined [proorizô] us in love to be his sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will (1:5).

Here we do have a passage referring to the predestination of ordinary human beings (rather than Jesus or the gospel). However, the predestination in question is not to heaven or hell. Instead, it’s “to be his sons through Jesus Christ.”

Some might argue that whether you’re a son of God determines, infallibly, whether you will go to heaven or hell, but it would be their theology that tells them that—not the passage.

The passage does not say that a son of God cannot imitate the Prodigal Son, leave the Father, and be spiritually “dead” (cf. Luke 15:32). And Paul himself elsewhere warns that Christians must “continue in his [God’s] kindness; otherwise you too will be cut off” (Rom. 11:22).

The passage also does not require a strong, inescapable form of predestination. As we noted, the term proorizô can just mean to appoint something ahead of time. This passage is consistent with the idea of God appointing—in a general way—anyone who responds to the gospel to be a son through Christ. That does not mean that everyone who hears the gospel will respond to it.

Neither does it mean that free will was not involved in their response to the gospel.

Alternately, since proorizô can mean to declare something beforehand, the passage also is consistent with the idea of God declaring certain individual people to be his sons through Christ—based on their free will response to the gospel.

Would either of these be arbitrary? Some might think that the reference to God preordaining us his sons “according to the purpose of his will” might suggest this. But that would assume that the purpose of God’s will is arbitrary, and this would not be indicated if God predestined people to be sons based on their response to the gospel, as in the previous two possibilities.

Also, some translations render the last phrase “according to the kind intention of His will” (NASB), which would simply suggest God predestined us to be his sons out of kindness, without implying arbitrariness about who would become a son.

 

Ephesians 1:12

A bit further on, Paul writes:

We who first hoped in Christ have been destined [proorizô] and appointed to live for the praise of his glory (1:12).

Many commentators have taken “we who first hoped in Christ” as a reference to Jewish Christians, though it also could refer to simply a group of people who had been Christian longer than those Paul is envisioning as his primary audience.

Whichever is the case, the passage does not refer to predestination to heaven or hell.

Indeed! It speaks of being predestined to a task in this life—namely, “to live for the praise of his glory.”

This is very interesting, and it reveals just how much flexibility there can be in the New Testament’s understanding of predestination. While some things—like what happened to Jesus—might be unalterable parts of God’s plan that are guaranteed to happen, that is not the case here.

Did all of the people Paul is speaking of—whether Jewish Christians or not—always live for the praise of God’s glory?

It would seem not! This is something that sin would interfere with, and Paul himself speaks of the reality of Christians sinning:

Apart from other things, there is the daily pressure upon me of my anxiety for all the churches. Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is made to fall, and I am not indignant? (2 Cor. 11:28-29).

Or, as in other translations, “Who is led into sin without my intense concern?” (NASB), “Who is caused to sin, and I do not burn with indignation?” (LEB).

Later in Ephesians, Paul will warn the readers:

Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, in whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.  Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, with all malice (4:30-31).

It is thus quite clear that Christians do not always “live for the praise of [God’s] glory,” despite being predestined to do so. Predestination, at least under some New Testament conceptions, thus can fail.

And, of course, free will is involved when that happens.

Finally, is this kind of predestination arbitrary? No. If Christians are predestined to live in such a way as to promote God’s praise and glory, that is non-arbitrary. It is a calling rooted in basic morality and the natural outworking of God’s grace in a person’s life.

 

Romans 8:29-30

I’ve saved this passage for last, because it is the one that people normally go to first. That makes it easy to unwittingly read modern conceptions of predestination into it, so it’s helpful to see what else the New Testament has to say on the subject before coming here.

In Romans 8, Paul writes:

Those whom he [God] foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified (8:29-30).

There is more to say about this passage than we can cover here (look for a future blog post), but here we’ll focus specifically on what this passage says about predestination.

One thing to note is that the second reference to predestination (“those whom he predestined he also called”) simply resumes the thought initiated at the first mention. It doesn’t add to it. Therefore, we need to focus on the first mention to understand how this passage is treating the concept.

Here the subjects of predestination are “those whom [God] foreknew.” We’ll cover their identity in more detail another time, but for now suffice it to say that they are a group of people with whom God has a special relationship. It’s not everybody.

The object of their predestination also is explicitly stated. He predestined them “to be conformed to the image of his Son” (thus generating the many brethren of whom Jesus is the firstborn).

When does that happen? When do Christians receive the image of God’s Son?

This can be understood different ways. If Christians are understood as being sons of God right now, as in some passages (e.g., 1 John 3:1), then we have already received the image of God’s Son and have joined his “many brethren.”

Paul speaks of this transformation when he writes:

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come (2 Cor. 5:17).

For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation (Gal. 6:15).

However, our transformation into being Christlike is still in process in this life and will not be complete until the next.

The text of Romans 8:29-30 does not give us the data needed to determine (though the rest of Romans might) whether Paul is envisioning the acquisition of Christ’s image as an accomplished fact or as a process that is still ongoing.

That means the passage itself is consistent both with the idea that the predestination in question has already been achieved or that it is still in progress.

Either way, this passage is not speaking about predestination to heaven or hell.

The most a strong predestinarian could hope for would be to mount a winning argument that the passage is conceptualizing predestination to the image of God’s Son is an ongoing process that will not be complete until we are in heaven, making it an implied predestination to heaven.

But that’s an argument that has to be made. It can’t simply be assumed.

Further, given what we saw with Ephesians 1:12, we’d have to take into account the possibility of human sin interfering with this pre-established goal on God’s part.

Even if the passage were speaking of a goal that awaits us in heaven, that wouldn’t mean those whom God foreknew couldn’t fall into sin and fail to achieve the goal—any more than “we who first hoped in Christ” couldn’t fall into sin and fail to live to God’s praise and glory.

The possibility of free will thus isn’t eliminated.

And neither does the passage speak of the predestination being arbitrary.

 

Conclusion

None of the passages where the New Testament uses the term predestination require the concepts that people today often associate with it:

  • None of them explicitly refer to predestination to heaven or hell
  • None of them say that such a predestination is inexorable
  • None of them say that such a predestination doesn’t involve free will
  • And none of them say that it is arbitrary

That’s not to say that one couldn’t argue for these ideas—either in passages that use proorizô or in other passages. But it is to say that they can’t simply be read into the texts.

Addendum: A while ago, I also did a similar study of the concept of election in Scripture and discovered that, the way the Bible uses language, “the elect”/”the chosen” are not simply those predestined to heaven, as so often assumed today. For information on that, see my Chosen by God: God’s Elect in the Bible and the Church Fathers.

Mysterious World Fan Art: Episode 116 (Sketch)

From Jaime Longa on Facebook:

Fantastic and informative episode as usual gentlemen! I figured since you mentioned that you love receiving fan art, here is a fun ballpoint pen sketch I made a few years back of Jimmy. I am a professional artist but used my remote viewing powers of course to make this one 😉

Great picture! Thanks so much, Jaime!

OCD, Therapy, and Promises

A reader writes:

Mr. Akin,

Thanks for the OCD articles you’ve posted. Your one on promises has been a site I’ve read and re-read many times as a comfort to know I’m not alone.

In your estimation, is it OK for one working through an exposure technique to purposely think, “No matter what I think, including ‘I promise,’ I’m going to ignore it and move on”?

In my case, when I thought “I promise”, I was thinking it as if directing it to God, as you would in prayer. I immediately regretted it . . . and in fact have replayed it in my head over and over to try to comfort myself, and worry I may have double-downed on my promise.

My worry being that it wasn’t a compulsion I could blame it on, but a conscious thought. I usually take a thought of “I promise” as meaning I need to give up things I enjoy for a day (coffee, etc.). And then the days compound.

Thanks for all the help; it really is comforting.

Thank you for writing. I believe I can be of help.

 

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and Its Treatment

For those who may not be aware, one of the most promising treatments for Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder involves cognitive behavior therapy and, specifically, exposure and response prevention therapy.

In this treatment, a person with OCD is exposed to situations that can trigger his obsessive thoughts and then refrain from engaging in the compulsive behavior ritual that he normally uses to relieve the stress they cause.

He thus learns by experience that he doesn’t need to perform the compulsive rituals in order to deal with the thoughts that flit across his mind, and the OCD condition lessens over time.

While this therapy involves some initial stress, it has proved effective for many patients and is considered one of the best therapies for this condition.

 

Promises to God

In this situation, the reader has OCD that is manifesting in thoughts about making promises to God and then being bound by them.

This is a common manifestation among religious OCD sufferers.

When this occurs, the person feels compelled to make promises to God that will inconvenience him to a greater or lesser degree, but which he feels obligated to keep.

The fact that these are inconvenient promises is the point: The OCD wants the person to be inconvenienced, since it is the inconvenience—and the fear of disobeying God—that is the cause of the anxiety that the condition wants.

But are such promises binding?

 

The Answer Is No

Such promises are not binding because they (1) are not rational, (2) are made under the duress of anxiety, (3) are not fully human acts, and (4) are the product of a disordered thought process and disease that needs to be fought.

For all these reasons, they do not bind.

However, OCD sufferers can have a fear that a particular promise might have been voluntary, and so it might bind. The same anxiety thus emerges in a new form: fear that a particular promise might bind, and the cycle starts again.

The solution is this: It doesn’t matter what degree of voluntariness a particular promise had. It’s still part of an overall disease process that needs to be thought. Ignore it anyway.

 

Promises to a Friend

To see why, suppose you live far away from any body of water and have no interest in boating.

Then, one day, a friend who you know has OCD comes to you and says, “Guess what! I’ve had an obsessive-compulsive impulse that I need to buy you a luxury yacht! I’m not sure how voluntary this thought was, so I’m afraid it might be binding. Therefore, I promise to sell my house, pull all the money out of my bank account, liquidate my retirement savings, and buy you a luxury yacht!”

What would your response be? Would you consider him bound to keep this possibly voluntary promise he has made to you?

Of course not! You would tell him, “Hey! Slow your roll! I have no need for a luxury yacht. I don’t care whether this thought was voluntary or not. You need to fight your OCD. I do not want you to hurt yourself by giving in to your OCD. Do not sell your house. Do not pull all the money out of your bank account. Do not liquidate your retirement savings. And do not consider yourself bound by this promise. In fact, do the opposite: Fight your OCD and ignore this promise for your own good. Don’t feed the OCD! The path to getting better involves ignoring promises like this!”

That’s what a good friend would say!

 

What a Friend We Have in Jesus

Well, Jesus is an even better friend than the human ones we have here on Earth, so he’s going to tell us exactly the same thing.

As Jesus himself said:

What man of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him! (Matt. 7:9-11)

God is better than any earthly father, and so this principle applies here. As in the case of the friend, no earthly father, knowing that his son had OCD, would want his son to honor obsessive-compulsive promises he had made to do things for him, even if the son thought a particular thought might have been voluntary. He would want his son to ignore them and so get relief from his OCD.

For a promise to bind, it not only has to be made, it also has to be accepted. No friend would accept such promises as binding. No earthly father would. And neither does God.

Just because a person has compulsively tried to promise something to God doesn’t mean God considers that promise binding.

God has no needs, which means that he doesn’t need anything we might promise him. Further, he loves us, which means that he’s not going to hold us to promises made due to the effects of a disordered medical condition that needs to be resisted.

God knows that, if OCD suffers allow themselves to play the “Maybe that thought was voluntary”-game, it will only keep them trapped in their OCD.

The Great Physician wants us to be healed, including of OCD, and the path to healing is to ignore such obsessive-compulsive promises, even if we think one might have been partly voluntary.

Therefore, whether it’s part of exposure and response prevention therapy—or not—God wants OCD sufferers to ignore such promises.

So that’s what they should do.

Cottingley Fairy Photos

For Episode 109 of Mysterious World

First photograph (Frances and dancing fairies)

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Original, unretouched print of first photo?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Second photo (Elsie with gnome)

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Third photo (Frances with leaping fairy)

Fourth photo (Fairy offering flower to Elsie)

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Fifth photo (Fairy sunbath/bower)

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Original illustrations compared to fairy photos