Category: Apologetics

When Were the Gospels Written?

Here is a brief post to draw together treatments I’ve written on the subject of when the four canonical Gospels were composed.

Determining the dates of Luke and Acts is a key first step in determining the dates of the others, so it is treated first.

I also treat these in my book The Bible Is a Catholic Book.

Posts in this series:

Related to the question of when the Gospels were composed is the order in which they were written–especially the order of Matthew, Mark, and Luke (i.e., the “Synoptic Gospels”). This is known as the Synoptic Problem.

I have written about the Synoptic Problem rather extensively here.

Some additional posts related to the dating of the Gospels and other New Testament books include:

What Does the Church Actually Say About “Praying to the Saints”?

Any informed, English-speaking Catholic will tell you that the Church says it’s both permissible and beneficial to pray to the saints.

But is he right? Is that what the Church actually says?

The answer is not what you might expect.

 

Discussions with Protestants

The topic of “praying to the saints” most commonly comes up in dialogue with Protestant Christians.

In the older branches of Christianity—Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and other forms of Eastern Christianity—it is common to ask the saints in heaven for their intercession.

However, in the 1500s, the emerging Protestant movement rejected this practice, and it is still widely rejected in Protestant circles today.

One key argument goes like this:

  1. Prayer should be directed only to God.
  2. The saints are not God.
  3. Therefore, one should not pray to the saints.

The key premise in the argument is the first—that prayer should be directed only to God.

How might one support this?

 

A Biblical Argument

One way of supporting the premise would be to mount a biblical case, which might go something like this:

  1. When we look in the Bible, we find that the word “pray” is used in connection with God rather than the saints.
  2. We should model our language on the way the Bible uses language.
  3. Therefore, we should use the word “pray” in connection with God rather than the saints.

One thing we need to be careful about when evaluating the first premise of this argument is what language we are talking about.

Just checking to see what an English translation for the word “pray” isn’t enough. All that will tell you is how the English translators thought the word should be used, not how the biblical authors used the equivalent vocabulary.

We need to check the original languages—Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek—to see what language the biblical authors used, and how.

To keep this post short(ish), we’ll focus on the Greek. In biblical Greek, the main verb for “pray” is proseukhomai, which appears 102 times in the Greek Bible, and the equivalent noun for “prayer”—proseukhê—appears 61 times.

It so happens that in Greek, these words are used exclusively to refer to communication with God or the gods. They even have that meaning in the secular Greek of the period.

In this, the Greek is like contemporary American English, which also associates prayer exclusively with God or the gods.

The initial premise of this argument thus looks good!

What about the second? In other words . . .

 

How Closely Must Our Language Follow the Bible’s?

In general, I think it’s a good thing to model our language after the usages found in the Bible—at least when it comes to concepts related to the Christian faith.

I don’t think we have any obligation to follow Greek usage on other terms.

For example, color terms often vary significantly from one language to another, and in dialects of ancient Greek, honey could be described as “green” (khlôros), but I don’t think that creates an obligation for English-speakers to call honey green rather than yellow or golden.

However, it is generally a good idea to model the use of faith-related words to their biblical counterparts. Thus, we’re fortunate that the English word “God/god” broadly corresponds to the Greek word theos (it corresponds less well to the Hebrew word elohim, which can refer to things we wouldn’t call gods).

Despite my sympathy for the second premise, it has limits.

The fact that languages change over time is an unstoppable phenomenon, and even when Christians try to conform their usage to what’s in the Bible, terms inevitably take on new usages over the centuries.

If we had to model our religious vocabulary strictly on biblical usage, one term we’d have to eliminate immediately is “Bible.” The Greek term this is based on is biblion, which originally referred to a sheet of papyrus and then came to mean things like “letter,” “document,” and “scroll.”

In no case did biblion mean what we refer to as “the Bible.” That’s a post-biblical usage.

Similarly, every theological community has developed religious vocabulary that differs from biblical usage in various ways.

Thus, in both Catholic and Protestant circles, the term “the elect” has taken on a theological meaning that refers to “those people who will be saved on the last day,” despite the fact that this is not how the term is used in Scripture.

In Lutheran theology, the terms “Law” and “Gospel” have taken on technical meanings that differ significantly from the way these terms are used in Scripture. (To somewhat oversimplify, Law is conceived of as any divine command, while Gospel is understood as any divine promise; but in the New Testament the most prominent usage of “Law” is for the Mosaic Law or even the Old Testament more broadly, while “Gospel” is used for the message of what God has done through Jesus.)

One may regret that these usages have developed, but the fact is that they have—and that communities are using them.

Language change over time is inevitable. The question is what to do in response.

 

Avoiding Word Fights

On two occasions, St. Paul warns us against “quarreling about words”:

Remind them of these things, and charge them before God not to quarrel about words, which does no good, but only ruins the hearers (2 Tim. 2:14).

If anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness, he is puffed up with conceit and understands nothing. He has an unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels about words, which produce envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions, and constant friction among people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth, imagining that godliness is a means of gain (1 Tim. 6:3-5)

For St. Paul, the most important thing is what is true, not the language that is used to express it.

Therefore, when a community of Christians has developed a theological usage that differs from the biblical usage, one should not fight about the terminology itself.

Complaining about an established usage is not going to change that usage. It’s only going to generate heat rather than light.

Of course, it’s fair to point out that the usage differs from what’s in the Bible.

Pointing that out can actually be helpful! It can help people remember that they need to control for the fact their theological vocabulary is different and should not be read onto the biblical text.

But once the biblical text is correctly understood, we must allow each group of Christians to express that in the language that has become established in their community.

So what about English-speaking Catholics and “prayer to the saints”?

 

“Prayer” in English

Following the Norman conquest of England in 1066, numerous French words entered English, and one of them was what became “pray” in the early 1200s.

French is based on Latin, and so the term “pray” comes from Latin roots. Specifically, it comes from the verb precare.

Precare means things like “to ask,” “to beg,” “to implore,” “to entreat,” “to supplicate,” etc.

In Latin, it is used in religious contexts—like when you’re asking God or the gods for something—but it is also used when you’re asking human beings for something.

Both usages carried over into English. Prior to the Protestant Reformation, English-speaking Christians would use “pray” to refer to making requests of God and of other human beings—including the saints.

In the latter case, what they were doing was asking the saints to intercede with God on their behalf—to serve as their “prayer partners” in heaven.

When the Reformation occurred, English-speaking Protestants objected to asking the saints for their intercession, and so the verb “pray” came to be more associated with requests directed to God.

In colloquial American English among Protestants, “pray” came to refer exclusively to speech directed toward God.

Still, the other usage survived in British English. If you read Shakespeare or watch period dramas set as late as the early 20th century, you’ll see characters saying things to each other like, “I pray you,” and all they mean is “I ask you.”

So, if a young gentleman in a British drama says to a young lady, “I pray your hand in marriage,” what it means is that he’s asking her to marry him—not that he’s worshipping her as a deity.

This is also where the word “prithee” comes from. It’s a contraction of “I pray thee.”

The human-directed usage even survives in American English in at least two contexts.

One is in legal settings. If you have a lawyer file a motion with a court, the motion will contain language that says, “My client prays that the court will do thus-and-so.”

It doesn’t mean that the client is worshipping the court. It means that he’s asking the court to do something.

The other context in which the human-directed usage survives in American English is among Catholics.

They have simply retained a usage that was around before English-speaking Protestants started narrowing the verb to only God-directed communications.

Thus, it is natural for English-speaking Catholics to talk about “praying to the saints”—meaning asking for their intercession.

So, how should the two groups deal with this in conversation?

 

Back to the Word-Fight Issue

Per St. Paul’s dictum, we should not fight about the usage of the English word “pray” and whether it should be associated only with God-directed communications.

Words mean what communities use them to mean, and the English-speaking community originally used “pray” to mean “ask,” regardless of who was being asked.

Even though the Protestant influence on English has associated the verb exclusively with God-directed communication in many contexts, other established usages remain.

A Protestant might think it would be better for those to go away, but they remain for now, and spending time complaining about them will generate heat rather than light.

To generate light, we should recognize the different usages and what they mean and, having done that, talk about the underlying truths.

For example, a Protestant might say, “In my community, ‘prayer’ is a form of worship reserved to God. When you talk about praying to the saints, are you giving them more honor than they should have as human beings?”

Of course, an informed Catholic should say, “No, and here’s why . . .” The discussion might then turn to what kind of honor human beings—especially saintly ones—should have.

Or, a Catholic might say, “In my community, ‘praying to the saints’ means asking them for their intercession. We teach that this is both permissible and beneficial.”

And, rather than getting hung up on the word “pray,” the discussion might then turn to whether it is permissible and beneficial to ask the saints for their intercession.

(As a side note, we also shouldn’t quarrel about the word “saints.” In various biblical and post-biblical usages, it can refer to the holy angels, to all Jews, to all Christians, to those Christians who are especially holy, to those Christians who are in heaven, and to those Christians who have been canonized as being in heaven. As before, we shouldn’t fight about the usage of the word but correctly note which usage is being employed and continue the discussion on that basis.)

 

Responding to Our Two Initial Arguments

With all this in mind, we can respond to the two initial arguments that were made—and do so in a way that generates light rather than heat.

Concerning the biblical argument, it’s true that the Greek term proseukhomai was used exclusively for God-directed communications, but that doesn’t finally determine the way “pray” is used in English.

As a result, if you want to say—as in the first argument—that “Prayer should be directed only to God,” you’ll need to clarify what you mean by “prayer.”

“Praying” to the saints is an established usage among English-speaking Catholics that means asking for their intercession.

The real question is not the term but whether it’s permissible and beneficial to ask the saints for their intercession.

So much for discussions about the English verb “pray.”

But there’s a noteworthy fact that will surprise English-speakers, both Catholic and Protestant alike.

 

The Language the Catholic Church Actually Uses

This is the kind of thing that you won’t notice unless you really live and breathe Church documents and think carefully about the language they do and don’t use.

It took me a while to notice and then confirm it, but if you read the documents of the Catholic Church’s Magisterium, they don’t actually talk about “praying” to the saints.

Ever.

At least not in the documents that come from Rome. (I can’t answer for every individual bishop and what he might write.)

To illustrate this, here’s a screen cap of what you find when searching the Vatican web site for “prayer to the saints”:

And here’s what we find for “praying to the saints”:

In both cases, we get no results. Zero.

It turns out that these expressions are used by English-speaking Catholics, but they are not used in official Church documents, and when those documents are translated into English, the translators are careful enough not to use colloquial English expressions like “prayer to the saints” or “praying to the saints.”

So, what do they say instead?

One thing they do is speak of “the intercession of the saints,” where the key Latin verb is intercedere (“to intercede”).

Thus, in the sections of the Catechism of the Catholic Church that an English-speaking Catholic would turn to for information about “praying to the saints,” you don’t find that phrase. Instead, you find “intercession of the saints” (cf. CCC 956, 2683).

However, “intercession” refers to what they do for us. What language does the Church use for what we do with respect to them?

It speaks of “the invocation of the saints,” where the key Latin verb is invocare (“to invoke,” “to call upon,” “to appeal to”).

So, we invoke (appeal to) the saints to intercede (pray for us) with God.

That’s the language the Church actually uses. “Praying to the saints” is just something we say colloquially in English.

A logical next question is: What term does the Church use in its official documents for when we talk to God?

There can be a number of them, but the key ones are the verb orare (“to speak,” “to plead,” “to supplicate,” “to pray”) and the noun oratio (“speech,” “oration,” “prayer”). These are the words you’ll find if you look in the Latin edition of the Catechism in its section on prayer.

Interestingly, in Latin these terms don’t have to be used just for communications directed to God, but they are often used that way—especially in ecclesiastical (i.e., church) Latin.

It’s thus interesting that ecclesiastical language has a preferred set of terms for God-directed communications and a different set of terms for saint-directed communications.

In that respect, it’s similar to Protestant American English.

 

One Last Thing About Word Fights

Given this, it could be tempting for some from the Protestant community to tell Catholics, “Hey! Your own Magisterium has a separate term for prayer that is directed to God and doesn’t use ‘prayer’ with respect to the saints! You should change your usage to fit official ecclesiastical-speak!”

Except . . . if the Magisterium was concerned that this needed to happen, it would mandate the change, and it hasn’t.

The Magisterium recognizes the organic way languages change over time, and—per St. Paul—it’s not concerned about quarrelling over every linguistic usage.

The English “praying to the saints” is a historical usage with a long pedigree—going back to when the term “pray” first came into the English language, and the Vatican isn’t concerned about it.

On the other hand, it’s fair for Catholics—in discussing the overall issue with Protestants—to say, “You know, I understand why you might want to have a term for communications directed to God that’s different from those directed to others. Both biblical Greek and ecclesiastical Latin have similar usages. English is different. ‘To pray’ originally just meant ‘to ask,’ and English-speaking Catholics have preserved this usage when it comes to the saints. But rather than quibble about English terminology, let’s go to the real issue instead: Is it a good idea ask the saints in heaven to be our prayer partners? Let’s not quarrel about words, which does no good, but only ruins the hearers (2 Tim. 2:14).”

Why Would God Create People He Knows Will Go to Hell?

This is a common question, and many have tried to answer it online.

Most of the answers are unsatisfying. They tend to do one of two things:

  1. Say a lot of stuff that doesn’t really address the issue and instead just talk “around” the subject instead of tackling it head-on
  2. Say it’s a mystery

Many of the answers you’ll find spend a lot of words on these two things (frankly, a painfully large number of words), but the first is irrelevant and the second is not very informative.

It’s true that, since God’s mind is infinite and ours are finite, we often can’t give definitive answers about his decisions, so an element of mystery remains.

However, we can often give partial answers—or at least make informed proposals. In other words, we often can do better than saying, “We just don’t know; it’s a mystery.”

I think we can do better in this case.

 

Keeping the Issue Focused

To avoid going off on tangents, let’s make the issue as focused as possible. Suppose there is a person—we’ll call him Bob—and the following is true:

  • In his eternal perspective outside of time, God knows that—if he creates Bob—then Bob will freely choose to go to hell.

We’ll also assume that:

  • In his eternal perspective outside of time, God could freely choose not to create Bob (i.e., God has free will).
  • God is just.
  • God is loving and thus does not want anyone to go to hell.

Given these things: Why would God create Bob? Let’s look at some possibilities . . .

 

Possibility #1: There Is a Competing Good

Even if people don’t want something, they may tolerate it for the sake of a competing good.

I may not want the pain of having to get an injection, but I may tolerate it in order to avoid getting a disease.

In the same way, God may not want Bob to go to hell, but he may tolerate it for the sake of some other good or set of goods.

What might these be?

 

a) Free Will (and Love)

An answer that some propose is free will. In other words, God tolerates the decisions of some to go to hell because he wants to preserve their free will—which he does for the sake of genuine love.

Love is God’s most important priority (Matt. 22:37-40), and he wants people to be able to freely choose love. Programmed, robotic “love” would lack something and not be fully genuine. This means he must tolerate the possibility that they will misuse their freedom and reject love.

All that’s true, but it doesn’t really address our issue.

If our starting assumption is true—that God knows what Bob will freely choose if he creates him—then God could simply decide not to create him.

In that case, he could stop Bob from going to hell without seeming to violate his free will. Bob would simply never have existed.

The free will defense thus doesn’t seem to work if our starting assumption is true, so what other possibilities are there for a competing good that would lead God to tolerate Bob going to hell?

 

b) God’s Glory

Perhaps the most commonly proposed answer is God’s own glory. The idea here is that it brings glory to God to have illustrations of his character that actually exist.

Bob’s going to hell provides a concrete example of God’s justice in that God did give Bob the offer of salvation—and Bob freely rejected it. He’s thus an object lesson that illustrates certain aspects of God’s character and brings glory to God.

Many will find this answer unsatisfying. If a human being were willing to let someone go to hell simply for the sake of his own glory, we would say that human was a raging egomaniac.

Of course, God is not a human being. We have only finite value, but God has infinite value, so his glorification would be worth more—even infinitely more—than the glorification of a human.

This would make it more understandable how God might tolerate the loss of Bob’s soul.

 

c) Something Else

It’s also possible that there might be a different good for the sake of which God tolerates Bob’s loss.

The history of the world involves a complex tangle of the billions of interrelated choices people make, and you could propose that—in order to set up the free will decisions of some to go to heaven—God must tolerate the misuse of free will by others.

Thus, God might tolerate Bob’s misuse of free will for the sake of making it possible for others to use theirs properly.

Or, since the universe is vast and we know only a tiny part of it, there might be some other good—perhaps one that we haven’t even conceived of—that justifies God tolerating Bob’s misuse of free will.

While both of these suggestions are possible, they are both very speculative, which means many will find them unsatisfying.

So perhaps we can look at the issue from a different angle.

 

Possibility #2: God Isn’t Being Unjust

One of our starting assumptions is that God is just. In the present context, that means it isn’t unjust for God to tolerate Bob’s free decision to reject salvation.

(You could challenge the justness of anybody going to hell, but that’s a different discussion. Here, we’re assuming that it is just for God to allow people to go to hell.)

In this case, God has genuinely given Bob the offer of salvation, and he has freely chosen to reject it, so God is not being unjust by respecting his choice.

Bob cannot—and, if he’s thinking rationally, would not—accuse God of injustice. God has been fair with him.

Is this enough to resolve our dilemma?

It certainly helps to realize that God isn’t being unjust, but it doesn’t seem to fully resolve the matter.

Our starting assumptions didn’t simply involve God being just. They also involved God not wanting people to go to hell.

So, if we’re not appealing to a competing good that would lead God to tolerate Bob’s loss, why wouldn’t he act on his desire to keep Bob out of hell and simply not create him?

There doesn’t seem to be a good answer to this question. So, while realizing God isn’t being unjust helps, it provides an incomplete answer.

 

Possibility #3: God Is Actually Benefitting Bob

But perhaps God is being more than fair with Bob. Perhaps he is benefitting him by creating him, even though he will spend an infinite amount of time in hell.

Some have argued that it’s better to exist—even in hell—than not to exist at all.

If that’s the case, then God is actually being generous to Bob by creating him, despite his damnation.

And we would know what the competing good is that leads God to tolerate Bob’s misuse of free will: It’s Bob’s own existence.

If it’s better to exist in hell than not to exist at all then that’s why God chooses to create him. Bob will actually benefit!

Whether you find this solution plausible will depend on how bad you imagine hell to be and how great a good you suppose existence to be.

Based on some of the images in Scripture (e.g., hell as a lake of fire; Rev. 20:14-15), many have thought that it would be better not to exist than to go there.

However, the images that Scripture uses to describe the afterlife are accommodated to our present understanding, which is limited by our experience of this life, and they should be read with some caution.

It could turn out that, from the greater perspective the next life will offer, even the damned will see that it is better for them to exist in their current condition than not to exist at all.

Some, even in this life, have made this argument.

 

Possibility #4: God Doesn’t Create Bob

Suppose that it’s better not to exist than to spend eternity in hell. In that case, if there is no competing good that would lead God to create Bob, he might simply not create him.

However, Bob is only a representative of an entire class of people—those who misuse their free will and reject God’s offer of salvation.

In that case, it would seem that God would not create anybody that would reject his offer, in which case hell would be empty.

This idea has been explored by various figures down through Church history, including the recent theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905-1988), who discussed it in his book Dare We Hope That All Men Be Saved?

Von Balthasar frames his proposal carefully. Since the Church teaches that hell is a real possibility, he only proposes we may be able to hope (not assert) that hell is empty.

The difficulty for this view is found in various statements in the New Testament that appear to indicate some people actually are in hell (Matt. 7:13-14, 21-23, Luke 13:23-28).

(For a careful analysis of part of this issue, see Cardinal Avery Dulles’s insightful article The Population of Hell.)

 

Possibility #5: Reject the Starting Assumption

If the above possibilities are not fully satisfying, perhaps we should revisit our initial assumption concerning Bob, which was:

  • In his eternal perspective outside of time, God knows that—if he creates Bob—then Bob will freely choose to go to hell.

This assumption holds that God knows what Bob would freely choose to do if he existed.

Does God have that kind of knowledge?

Historically, theologians have recognized that God has two types of knowledge:

  1. Knowledge of all possible things
  2. Knowledge of all actual things

Both of these kinds of knowledge cover everything past, present, and future.

If God creates Bob and makes him an actual thing, then God also knows what Bob’s actual choice is, which is to reject salvation.

However, suppose that God doesn’t create Bob. What does God know in that case?

By his knowledge of all possible things, God knows from his eternal perspective that it is possible for Bob to accept his offer of salvation. He also knows that it is possible for Bob to reject salvation.

But that doesn’t reveal which Bob does choose because Bob doesn’t exist and never makes the choice.

 

Middle Knowledge?

For God to know what Bob would choose if he were created, God would need an additional kind of knowledge that lets him know what people would freely choose if they are placed in certain circumstances (such as being created).

In the last 500 years, theologians have begun to explore this idea and have named this third kind of knowledge “middle knowledge,” since it seems part way between God’s knowledge of the possible and the actual.

In his book Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, Ludwig Ott holds that the Church has definitively taught that God knows all possible things and all actual things, and they are matters “of the Faith” (de fide) (pp. 40-42).

However, he lists middle knowledge as only the “common opinion” (sent. communis.) of theologians (pp. 42-43).

There are a passages of Scripture that one can appeal to in support of God having middle knowledge (e.g., 1 Sam. 23:1-13, Wis. 4:11, Matt. 11:21).

However, there are only a few such passages, and they can be read in ways that don’t require middle knowledge.

There also is an argument to be made against middle knowledge.

 

Omnipotence and Omniscience

Because God is all-powerful and all-knowing, one always should be hesitant to say there are things he “can’t” do or know, but there are limits to omnipotence and omniscience.

Omnipotence means that God can do everything that can be done—in other words, anything that is logically possible. However, it does not mean that God could make something that involves a logical contradiction, where the terms themselves conflict.

For example, God could not make a square circle or a four-sided triangle, because these involve contradictions in terms. They are just nonsense—a kind of word salad that has no real meaning.

Similarly, omniscience means that God knows everything that can be known. However, it does not mean that he knows logically impossible things.

For example, God does not know the shape of a square circle or the shape of a four-sided triangle.

What about Bob’s choice to go to hell?

 

To Be or Not To Be?

If Bob exists, then he freely makes the choice, and God knows it.

But if Bob is never created, then he would never make this free will decision, and God would have to know the outcome of a free will decision that is never made.

“The outcome of a free will decision that is never made” sounds a lot like “square circle” or “four-sided triangle.”

The essence of a free will decision is that it is really possible for a person to make one choice or another when the moment comes. But if the moment never comes, then there simply is no outcome, because the choice is never made.

There is thus a case to be made that “the outcome of a free will choice that is never made” involves a contradiction in terms.

In that case, God would not know Bob’s decision—unless he creates Bob.

 

The Free Will Defense Returns

If middle knowledge involves a logical contradiction, then God wouldn’t have it, and so he would not be able to foresee what Bob will freely choose and refrain from creating him.

To know what Bob will actually choose, God would need to create him.

And in that case, the free will defense that we discussed in Possibility #1 would work!

God would create Bob, see his decision to reject salvation, and the counterbalancing good that explains why God tolerates this is his desire to let Bob have free will so that he can make an authentic choice between love and non-love.

 

Mystery Remains

While “It’s just a mystery” isn’t a satisfying answer, it is true that we can’t always propose a single, definite answer to matters involving God.

However, while his mind is infinite and ours are only finite, we often can at least sketch the outlines of possible reasons he makes the decisions he does.

In this case, I haven’t settled on a final answer to the question we began by posing, so mystery remains.

But we have fleshed out possible reasons that shed light on this question.

Which solution you find most likely will depend on your views of various matters, but at least we can have the assurance that there are solutions.

And that God is just. And that he really does offer us salvation.

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!

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.

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.

Jude 3 and Sola Scriptura: The Faith Once for All Delivered

Periodically, I’m asked to name a doctrine that is not found in Scripture.

This comes up in discussions about the Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura, which holds that we should use “Scripture alone” to form our doctrine.

Knowing that Catholics base their teachings not only on Scripture but also on apostolic Tradition, supporters of sola scriptura ask Catholics to name a doctrine that we know by Tradition rather than Scripture.

It certainly would be possible to name distinctively Catholic teachings, but since these aren’t accepted by Protestants, it’s more helpful to name some that Protestants do accept.

Typically, I name three:

  1. The fact that there are to be no more apostles (being an eyewitness of Jesus’ ministry was a requirement for membership in the Twelve—cf. Acts 1:21-26—not being an apostle; Jesus appeared to St. Paul and made him an apostle, and if he chose, he could have continued to appear down through the centuries and appoint people as apostles)
  2. The fact that there are to be no more books of Scripture (you didn’t have to be an apostle—Mark and Luke weren’t—and the Holy Spirit could have chosen to inspire new books of Scripture down through the centuries)
  3. There is to be no new publicly binding revelation before the Second Coming (God could have chosen to give this, as illustrated by the previous two examples)

Attempts have been made to prove these doctrines by Scripture alone, but none of the arguments are successful. The verses cited simply do not require any of these three doctrines to be true, though they are accepted by Protestants.

This reveals how our Protestant brethren are, at least in practice, willing to accept doctrines that are based on Tradition rather than Scripture alone.

Here I’d like to look at a verse sometimes cited as proof of the third teaching—that there is to be no more public revelation.

 

Jude’s Plan

The text is found in Jude 3, and for context, here are verses 3 and 4 of the book:

Beloved, being very eager to write to you of our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.

For admission has been secretly gained by some who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly persons who pervert the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ

Based on the Greek text, scholars have generally understood Jude to mean that although he had been eager to write his audience concerning “our common salvation,” he found it necessary to set that plan aside because they had been infiltrated by certain ungodly and immoral people.

Therefore, he is writing them a different letter, in which he warns them against the ungodly people.

 

The Faith Once for All Delivered

For our purposes, the key part is Jude’s exhortation “to content for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.”

This is the part that interests advocates of sola scriptura: If the Faith has been delivered once for all to the saints, does this mean that the whole of Christian teaching has been revealed, and so there is to be no new public revelation?

There are a number of problems with this idea.

 

Not the Last Book?

First off, if Jude were saying that all public revelation had ended, then—since Scripture is itself public revelation—the book of Jude itself would have to be the last book of Scripture to be penned.

But we don’t know that at all.

Scholars differ on when the book of Jude was written. My own estimate is that it was written around A.D. 64-65, though it could have been later.

The fact is, we don’t know its date with confidence. Neither can we establish the exact dates of many books of the New Testament, so we don’t know which was last.

For example, if—as often supposed—Revelation was the last book to be written, then Jude would require us to eject it from the canon (with all its newly revealed prophecies), as well as any other books written later than Jude.

 

Not the Last Part of the Book

There’s another problem with the idea that Jude 3 is saying that public revelation is closed, which is that it’s speaking of this as having happened in the past—as a completed act (“delivered once for all”).

As we’ll see below, this happened quite some time in the past, but even if we ignored that, the moment that Jude said that the faith had been delivered once for all, that would have been the last bit of public revelation—if he was speaking about the closing of public revelation.

In other words, not only would Jude need to be the last book of the Bible written, Jude 3 would need to be the last verse of Scripture written.

If Jude were talking about the closing of public revelation, you would need to delete the remainder of the book (vv. 4-25) from the canon.

 

“Delivered to the Saints”

It’s worth noting that when Jude speaks of the Faith being “delivered” to the saints, he uses a special term in Greek: paradidômi.

This is the verbal form of paradôsis, which means “tradition”—the term that Paul uses to refer to his own teachings when he commends and commands his audience to keep the traditions that he has given them (1 Cor. 11:2, 2 Thess. 2:15, 3:6).

The verb paradidômi (“deliver”), together with its companion verb paralambanô (“receive”), were used to communicate the giving and receiving of tradition, as in St. Paul’s famous statement:

I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures (1 Cor. 15:3-4).

Jude is thus conceiving of the Faith as having been given to the saints as a matter of Tradition.

But when was it given?

Here, as elsewhere in the New Testament, “the saints” refer to the Christian community, and of course “the Faith” refers to the Christian faith.

So, who gave the Christian faith to the Church? Depending on who Jude is thinking about, it would either be Christ himself or at least the apostles.

The latter is perhaps more likely, since later in the letter Jude tells the readers, “You must remember, beloved, the predictions of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ” (v. 17)—so we know he was thinking about the apostles as he wrote the letter.

Either way, when did Christ and his apostles deliver the Christian faith to the Church?

No later than A.D. 33. That’s when the Faith was delivered: Right at the beginning.

But even though the Faith had been delivered, that did not mean all public revelation had ceased. There would be many more items of public revelation given, as illustrated by all of the books of the New Testament that remained to be written.

And, as Jesus himself said at the Last Supper:

I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come (John 16:12-13).

So, even after Christ had made the first Christians—and thus delivered the Faith to them—there was more public revelation to come.

 

“The Faith”

It’s worth discussing what Jude means by “the Faith” a little further. When we read a text in the New Testament, we cannot simply assume that it means what we want it to.

We must first ask what the possible range of meanings a term or text has—and then look at the evidence to see which it best supports.

While it is possible to use the phrase “the Faith” to refer to the entirety of the Christian faith—every single doctrine that Christians are expected to believe—this is far from the only meaning of the term.

It also can be used to refer to the substance or core of the Faith—what is often called “the gospel.”

This is the sense in which “the Faith” can be said to have been delivered by Christ and the apostles, since there had been Christians—and thus members of “the Faith”—ever since the first converts accepted the message of Jesus.

If we knew nothing else, we would have to say that Jude 3 could be referring to either of these meanings and, not having decided between them based on evidence, we could only safely assert that Jude was making the more modest claim—i.e., that he at least meant that the gospel had been delivered to the saints.

However, we could not, without evidence, claim—and we certainly could not claim to have proved—that he had the more expansive meaning in mind, which is what the advocate of sola scriptura would need to show.

But, in fact, the evidence points in the other direction: We have already seen, based on the context, that Jude is talking about the Christian Faith having been given to the saints at some point in the past. In fact, decades in the past, by Christ and/or his apostles.

That points us to the more modest understanding of “the Faith” as simply the gospel. The same is indicated by the fact that—as Jesus himself indicated—there would be ongoing public revelation even after he taught the gospel to his disciples

Jude himself would have acknowledged that public revelation was still being given in his day. Certainly he would have acknowledged this if he recognized his own letter as inspired Scripture (cf. 2 Pet. 1:21).

And even if he didn’t automatically recognize his own letter as Scripture, as some have suggested, we do. Therefore, we must acknowledge that public revelation was still being given when Jude wrote.

All of this points to Jude 3 simply meaning that the substance of the Faith—the gospel—had been definitively delivered to the saints, not every item of public revelation that God would eventually give.

As the (Protestant) British scholar Richard Bauckham notes in his volume on Jude in the Word Biblical Commentary:

[T]here is no reason to suppose that Jude means by pistis [“faith”] anything other than “the gospel.” It need not refer to confessional formulae, though such formulae were already known in Paul’s time, nor does it imply the idea of a defined body of orthodox doctrines. . . . Jude’s readers are to contend, not for some particular formulation of Christian belief, but for the central Christian message of salvation through Jesus Christ (at v. 3).

Further, Jude is thinking in particular of the moral demands of the gospel, since he is warning his readers against immoral people. As Bauckham also notes:

Jude’s concern is especially with the moral implications of the gospel (not with doctrinal orthodoxy; hence the idea that “the faith” means a set of doctrinal formulae is quite inappropriate). No doubt he has in mind particularly the instruction in Christian conduct which accompanied the gospel in the initial teaching given by the apostles, but he refers to the gospel itself, hê pistis [“the faith”], because it is the gospel itself for which his readers will be fighting when they remain faithful to its moral demand and resist the antinomianism of the false teachers.

 

Implications for Sola Scriptura

Jude 3 thus does not prove what advocates of sola scriptura need it to prove. For all the reasons covered above, it does not show that Jude thought public revelation had ceased.

And once we recognize that Jude is simply talking about the substance of the Christian faith—the gospel—it becomes clear that, when he says the faith has been delivered “once for all,” Jude is simply saying that the gospel itself cannot change (cf. Gal. 1:8-9), not that new public revelation cannot be given.

In fact, public revelation—including additional Scripture—was given, as illustrated by the fact Jude does not stop at verse 3. It’s also quite likely that other whole books of Scripture—including, especially, Revelation—remained to be written.

This verse thus does not support sola scriptura.

In fact, even if Jude had meant that public revelation was closed, he doesn’t say anything about all of public revelation being written down. One would thus have to take seriously the possibility that some public revelation continued to be passed on—and preserved by God’s protective guidance—in the form of oral Tradition.

Catholics forthrightly acknowledge that this is what happened—and the fact there is to be no new public revelation before the Second Coming is one of those items of authoritative, apostolic Tradition.

Protestants have, historically, also accepted this teaching, but without an awareness that it is based on Tradition rather than Scripture.

If we were to go by Scripture alone, we would not be able to prove that public revelation has ceased, and thus we could not show that no new Scriptures are to be written and that the canon is closed.