Category: Theology

God Can Neither Deceive Nor Be Deceived

Does the Bible indicate God is a deceiver?

Recently I was contacted by a reader who was looking for a response to claims made by a Muslim apologist concerning instances in Scripture where God appears to use deception.

Let’s talk about that.

 

What the Muslim apologist was doing

The Muslim apologist was responding to Christian apologists who have argued that in the Qur’an, God is depicted as using deception and thus the “God of the Qur’an” isn’t worth worshipping.

The Muslim apologist asserted, in essence, that if that argument works then it would equally well disqualify the God of the Bible from worship as well.

In other words, the argument would prove too much.

Frankly, the Muslim apologist has a point. Too often, Christian apologists make apples-to-oranges comparisons with Islam, where they criticize something in Islam without stopping to ask themselves if there is parallel in Christianity.

The same thing can also happen in reverse. Muslim apologists can do the same thing.

If there is a parallel to the thing an apologist wants to critique then he needs to stop and ask himself, “Am I handling the evidence in a fair or an unfair manner?”

This is a question every apologist needs to ask himself, regardless of his position—whether he is Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, atheist, or anything else.

We all need to be fair, even when debating people of another perspective.

We shouldn’t use double standards.

As someone once said, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

 

Not All About Deception

Not all of the passages the Muslim apologist brought up involved deception.

For example, he cited John 16:25, where Jesus acknowledges that he has said some things in a figurative manner.

He then cited Mark 4:10-12, where Jesus says that he uses parables so that certain people might not understand and repent.

Neither one of these passages involves deception.

Speaking figuratively isn’t deception, and while the Mark passage is puzzling, it also doesn’t involve deception. Not understanding what Jesus says when he uses a parable is not the same thing as being deceived.

For a discussion of what the passage does mean, see Benedict XVI’s Jesus of Nazareth, volume 1 or my own Mark: A Commentary.

Similarly, the apologist cites two passages from Isaiah that also do not involve deception.

The first—Isaiah 19:14—says that God has made the Egyptians confused or dizzy, not that he has deceived them.

And the second—Isaiah 37:6-7—says that God will give the Assyrian king Sennacherib a disposition such that, when he hears a certain report, he will return home, which will lead to his death, which is what then happened (see Isaiah 37:37-38).

There are some interesting questions one can ask about these passages, but they do not portray God as deceiving people.

 

Verses Involving Deception

The Muslim apologist does cite some verses, though, where the issue of deception is on the table, such as where Jeremiah says:

Then I said, “Ah, Lord GOD, surely thou hast utterly deceived this people and Jerusalem, saying, ‘It shall be well with you’; whereas the sword has reached their very life” (Jeremiah 4:10).

Or when the prophet Micaiah sees a vision of heaven in which:

[T]he Lord said, ‘Who will entice Ahab, that he may go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead?’

And one [spirit] said one thing, and another said another. Then a spirit came forward and stood before the Lord, saying, ‘I will entice him.’

And the Lord said to him, ‘By what means?’

And he said, ‘I will go forth, and will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.’

And he said, ‘You are to entice him, and you shall succeed; go forth and do so’ (1 Kings 22:20-22).

Or when Ezekiel reports an oracle, saying:

And if the prophet be deceived and speak a word, I, the Lord, have deceived that prophet, and I will stretch out my hand against him, and will destroy him from the midst of my people Israel (Ezekiel 14:9).

Or when Paul says:

Therefore God sends upon them [i.e., those who “refused to love the truth”] a strong delusion, to make them believe what is false, so that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness (2 Thessalonians 2:11).

These verses do make it sound like God uses deception.

So how do we explain them?

 

The Christian View of God

The Christian Faith holds that God is an all-perfect Being. As a result, he is all-holy and is not capable of sinning, which I have written about before.

This has implications for God’s truthfulness. As early as the book of Numbers, we read:

God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should repent. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfil it? (Num. 23:19).

The same view is expressed in multiple other passages (e.g., 1 Sam. 15:29, 2 Tim. 2:13, Tit. 1:2). Jesus even declares himself to be “the Way, the Truth, and the Life” (John 14:6).

Passages like these express the fundamental conviction that God is always truthful, and they reveal that passages which appear to suggest otherwise must be taken in a different sense.

This is not surprising. Scripture often uses non-literal language when discussing God.

Thus we sometimes read about God sheltering people with his wings (Ps. 17:8, 36:7, 57:1, 64:1, 63:7) or we read about “the arm of the Lord” (Is. 53:1) or “the hand of God” (1 Sam. 5:11, 2 Chron. 30:12, Job 2:10) or “the finger of God” (Ex. 8:19, 31:18, Deut. 9:10).

These are not literal, for “God is spirit” (John 4:24) and “a spirit has not flesh and bones” (Luke 24:39).

We thus have to sort between literal statements—like God is a spirit and God does not lie—and figurative ones which portray him as having body parts or using deception.

 

Direct Attribution

One of the things you discover when you study the modes of language used in the Bible is that the ancient authors frequently attribute things directly to God, although their causation is actually less direct.

We may call this mode of speech “direct attribution.”

The Catechism of the Catholic Church comments on it:

[W]e see the Holy Spirit, the principal author of Sacred Scripture, often attributing actions to God without mentioning any secondary causes.

This is not a “primitive mode of speech,” but a profound way of recalling God’s primacy and absolute Lordship over history and the world, and so of educating his people to trust in him [CCC 304].

A consequence of this mode of speech is that the authors of Scripture sometimes speak as if God actively caused things that he merely allowed as part of his providence.

This was, as the Catechism explains, their way of emphasizing God’s absolute Lordship, even though the figure of speech is not to be understood to mean that God literally caused something.

The literal truth is that he allowed it to happen, but this is expressed in figurative language that speaks as if he caused it.

 

The Key to the Deception Passages

This is the key to understanding the passages involving deception.

The literal truth is the one expressed in Numbers 23:19—“God is not man, that he should lie.”

But since God allows deception to take place on some occasions, the direct attribution mode of speech can be used in Scripture to speak as if God caused the deception.

Thus in Jeremiah’s day the people had become convinced that they would have peace when this was not the case. God allowed this to happen, but—per direct attribution—Jeremiah speaks as if God deceived them.

In 2 Kings, Ahab was deceived by false prophecies which God allowed to occur, and in Micaiah’s vision this is depicted—per direct attribution—as if God himself sent a lying spirit.

Ezekiel discusses the well-known phenomenon of false prophets, which God has allowed to appear, and—per direct attribution—speaks as if God himself deceived these prophets.

And Paul comments on those who “refused to love the truth” (2 Thess. 2:10), who God allowed to “not believe the truth but [have] pleasure in unrighteousness” (2 Thess. 2:11). God then allows them to embrace “a strong delusion,” but—per direct attribution—Paul speaks as if God sent this delusion.

 

The “Why” Question

A natural question is why God would allow these things, and here we are confronted by what philosophers and theologians refer to as “the problem of evil.”

If you’d like to learn more about it, check out my video on The Problem of Evil. (It’s also covered in brief in my book A Daily Defense).

In some cases, we can see why God allows evil.

For example, Ezekiel 14:10-11 indicates that God allows false prophets as part of a long-term process of purifying his people, so “that the house of Israel may go no more astray from me, nor defile themselves any more with all their transgressions, but that they may be my people and I may be their God.”

In other cases, we can’t know in this life why God allows a specific evil.

However, the Catechism, quoting St. Augustine, explains:

[A]lmighty God. . . because he is supremely good, would never allow any evil whatsoever to exist in his works if he were not so all-powerful and good as to cause good to emerge from evil itself (CCC 311).

We can thus have confidence that, no matter what evil happens he allows to occur in the world—whether it is deception or anything else—God will ultimately bring good out of it.

The Last Days of Jesus

lenten-2In this episode of Catholic Answers Live (April 14, 2017, 1st hour), Jimmy answers the following questions:

1:10 What was happening at the Triumphal Entry?

4:50 What is happening with the mysterious incident where the disciples get the animal for Jesus to ride?

8:30 When was the cleansing of the Temple?

9:50 What is a “Markan sandwich”?

10:40 Why did Jesus curse the fig tree?

12:00 Why is Jesus angry in the temple? Why did he cleanse it?

13:55 Why does John have the cleansing of the temple at a whole different point in Jesus’ ministry?

15:00 How did Jesus’ opponents challenge him and try to get him in trouble with the authorities?

19:00 How did Jesus respond to the challenge of the Sadducees?

21:50 How did Jesus use one of the same techniques that modern apologists use?

22:55 What are we missing about the story of the widow’s mite?

24:55 What does Jesus teach in his prophetic discourse?

27:35 Who anoints Jesus and why is he anointed?

28:50 Why are the identities of some people kept secret in the Synoptic Gospels but then revealed in John’s Gospel?

30:05 How do we explain the mysterious way Jesus arranges a place to celebrate the Last Supper? How did Jesus secretly thwart what Judas might have done?

32:40 Where is the garden of Gethsemane? How do we know what Jesus prayed there if the disciples fell asleep?

34:10 Why is the identity of the disciple who used a sword kept secret–until John’s Gospel?

35:25 What’s happening with the young man who runs away naked in Mark’s Gospel? If it’s not Mark himself, who might that be?

37:15 Was Jesus’ trial legal? Why did the Jerusalem authorities have to take him to Pontius Pilate?

39:15 Why is Jesus said to rise “on the third day” when it was only two days later? Could he have been crucified earlier than Good Friday?

41:15 How do we reconcile the different descriptions of the angels at the tomb? What about the women?

44:10 Did Jesus bodily rise from the dead?

Click the link to watch the video on YouTube.

Are the Past and the Future Real?

Akin-ETERNITY3Some people think that only the present is real and that the past and the future don’t exist.

This view—known as “presentism”—encounters problems if God exists changelessly, outside of time in an “eternal now” alongside the changing “temporal now” that we exist in.

We looked at some of these problems recently. For example:

  1. God’s changeless knowledge of what is real would seem to change if only the present is real and the current time changes from one moment to another. Thus, at one point God would know that 12:01 a.m. is the only real moment, but later he would know that 12:02 a.m. is the only real moment, and so on.
  2. God’s changeless knowledge of what is real also seems to change as the contents of the universe assume different configurations over time. Thus, at a point shortly after creation, God would know that stars and planets are not yet real, but later he would know that stars and planets are
  3. God’s creative/conserving action seems to change in that he must stop conserving one configuration of things in the universe to allow another to come to pass. Thus, he must first create/conserve the universe in one condition (such as before stars and planets exist) and then stop conserving it in this state so that a new condition (when stars and planets do exist) can come about.

None of these would be problems if God were inside of time like we are and thus capable of changing in his actions and his knowledge of what is real.

But the Church teaches that God is outside of time and changeless.

These aren’t the only problems with the idea only that the present exists. Here are two more . . .

 

New Creations from Nothing

Not only does God conserve everything in existence, it seems that God engages in a form of ongoing creation from nothing. In 1950, Pius XII taught that:

[T]he Catholic Faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God (Humani Generis 36).

Our souls thus are not inherited from our parents the way our bodies are. They are “immediately created by God.”

Furthermore, this teaching is understood to exclude the idea that our souls exist before conception.

If that’s the case, then for the vast majority of the history of the universe, God had not created your soul, or mine.

Then, all of a sudden, he started creating/conserving us, beginning at the moments of our conceptions.

Bang! New creations—apparently ex nihilo—long after the initial creation of the world.

But if the only moment that exists is the present, that would mean God accomplished our creation at a different time than he created the world.

If God is outside of time then he must, in the eternal now, be simultaneously creating/conserving both the physical world and our souls.

But if presentism is true and only the present moment of time exists then when God created the world there would be no other place in time to put our souls except its first moment, and our souls would have had to exist at the beginning of the universe.

 

The Incarnation

Now let’s consider the Incarnation of God’s Son.

If God is outside of time then he must, in the eternal now, be incarnating as Jesus Christ.

But when in time is he incarnating?

If only the present is real then, when God created the universe, God would have had to incarnate at that moment. There was no other time in which the Son could incarnate.

The Incarnation of Christ in Mary’s womb would thus have taken place before the stars were formed, before life was created, and before Mary herself was created.

The only way around this would be to say either that God is not outside of time—so that he could create the universe and then, long ages later, change his mode of action so that he became incarnate—or that there is more than one real moment of time.

 

The Growing Block Theory

We’ve seen that problems arise if only the present moment of time is real, but that isn’t the only view of time.

Another is the “growing block” theory of time, according to which both the past and the present (but not the future) are real. Time is like a block that grows with the course of events, with the present at the leading edge of the block.

What if this theory is true? Would it encounter similar problems?

We’d need to rephrase some of them, but the same fundamental problems would arise. For example, consider the initial puzzle about God’s knowledge of what times are real.

If we asked this question at the first moment of creation, it would turn out that:

  • In the eternal now, God knows that at the first moment of creation that 12:01 a.m. is real and 12:02 a.m. is not

But if we waited a minute and asked the same question, it would turn out that:

  • In the eternal now, God knows that both 12:01 a.m. and 12:02 a.m. are real.

Again, we’ve got a problem with God possessing changeless knowledge of what is real, because that knowledge would need to continually change as new moments arrive and get added to the “growing block” of real moments.

The same is true of all the other puzzles, such as God changelessly incarnating in Mary’s womb from the eternal now when only the first moment of time was real, long before Mary even existed.

Positing the growing block theory thus does not get us around the difficulties.

 

Eternalism

What about eternalism?—the view that all moments of history are real and the present (the temporal now) is simply the moment we are presently experiencing?

This view solves all of the puzzles:

  1. In the eternal now, God changelessly knows all of the moments of time he is creating. Thus he knows that 12:01 a.m., 12:02 a.m., 12:03 a.m., and all subsequent moments are real.
  2. In the eternal now, God changelessly knows the configuration of all of the matter and energy in the universe at every moment of its history—and he knows that these configurations are real at the different points in time he is creating.
  3. In the eternal now, God simultaneously creates/conserves everything in creation, including all of the different configurations of what the universe contains at different moments.
  4. In the eternal now, God changelessly creates both the world and our individual souls, but because all times in history are real, he is able to put the creation of the world at one point and the creations of our souls at much later points.
  5. In the eternal now, God is changelessly incarnating as Jesus of Nazareth, but because all times in history are real, he is able to place the beginning of the world at one point and the moment of the Incarnation at a later point.

 

Conclusion

In view of the problems with presentism and the growing block theory, I find myself concluding that we have good theological reasons for saying that the past, present, and future are all real, and that God creates all of history all at once from his eternal perspective.

This view is also supported by modern physics and by various philosophical arguments.

I don’t agree with everything said by every eternalist. In particular, I reject the claim made by some—particularly among physicists and philosophers—that time is “an illusion” or that it doesn’t pass. Both of these claims are manifestly untrue, and eternalists shoot themselves in the foot when they say such things.

I also recognize that not all theologians, philosophers, and physicists agree with eternalism.

The Church doesn’t have an official teaching on this, and, as I’ve mentioned, orthodox Catholics have different positions on it.

However, I personally don’t see how to get around the puzzles I’ve mentioned here if only the present (or the present and the past) are real.

I thus conclude there are good theological reasons for eternalism.

(Go to Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3)

Does Only the Present Exist?

Akin-ETERNITY2What is the nature of time?

Three views have been proposed:

  • Presentism holds that only the present is real (so the past and future are not)
  • The growing block theory holds that the past and the present are real (but the future is not)
  • Eternalism holds that the past, the present, and the future are all real

The Church does not have an official teaching on this, and orthodox Catholics take different views.

However, the Church does teach (as we recently saw) that God is eternal—outside of time—and this seems to have implications for the nature of time.

Let’s suppose that presentism is true and that only the present exists.

What would that mean for God’s eternity?

 

The Eternal Now and Presentism

In this case, we could speak of two moments that are actually real:

  • Outside of time, there is God’s “eternal now”
  • Inside of time, there is the present, which we may think of as the “temporal now”

The former is, by definition, changeless, while the latter changes constantly.

At one moment in the temporal now, it’s 8:00 a.m., but a minute later it’s 8:01 a.m., and so forth. At one moment, you’re waking up, at another moment you’re getting out of bed, etc.

How would an eternal, changeless God relate to a constantly changing temporal now, if that is the only moment of time that exists?

Here we run into what strike me as problems. We’ll look at several of them.

 

Getting the Universe Started

If presentism is true then, in the eternal now, God would create time—a single moment (the “temporal now”) which constantly changes, alongside his changelessness.

One of the things that is constantly changing about time is what the current time actually is. Suppose that God created the universe at 12:01 a.m. In that case:

  • At the moment of creation, the temporal now is 12:01 a.m.
  • One minute after creation, the temporal now is 12:02 a.m.
  • Two minutes after creation, the temporal now is 12:03 a.m.
  • And so on.

It follows that God knows all of these things in the eternal now. Thus:

  • In the eternal now, God knows that at the first moment of creation it is 12:01 a.m.
  • He also knows that a minute after creation it is 12:02 a.m.
  • And he knows that two minutes after creation is 12:03 a.m.
  • And so on.

By virtue of his omniscience, in the eternal now, God knows what time it will be at all moments after creation—even if those moments haven’t occurred yet.

Now let’s ask a question: Supposing that presentism is true and only the present moment is real, what does God know about what exists?

Notice that we’re not asking about what will exist or what did exist. We’re asking about what exists.

If we ask this question at the moment of creation then we will find the following:

  • God knows that he is real, and that he exists changelessly, outside of time.
  • God knows that the universe is real, and that in time it is currently 12:01 a.m.

But if we ask the same question a minute later, we will find these things:

  • God knows that he is real, and that he exists changelessly, outside of time.
  • God knows that the universe is real, and that in time it is currently 12:02 a.m.

We have a problem.

When we first asked the question, God eternally and changelessly knew that the moment 12:01 a.m. exists.

The second time we asked the question, God eternally and changelessly knew that the moment 12:02 a.m. exists.

We have a contradiction.

If only a single moment of time exists then 12:01 a.m. and 12:02 a.m. cannot simultaneously be real. Consequently, God can’t simultaneously know that they are real.

For God to first know that 12:01 a.m. is real and later know that 12:02 a.m. is real, God’s knowledge would have to be changeable, and God would have to be experiencing time.

He would not be timeless.

The same problem appears if we ask about what times God knows are not real. For example:

  • At the first moment of creation, 12:02 a.m. is not real because it is in the (unreal) future.
  • A minute after creation, 12:01 a.m. is not real because it is in the (unreal) past.

If we asked what God knows about the times that are not real then, when we first ask the question, God would know that 12:02 a.m. is not real (and that 12:01 a.m. is real), but when we next ask the question, he would know that 12:01 a.m. is not real (and that 12:02 a.m. is).

Again, God’s knowledge would be changing with time.

 

The Underlying Logical Problem

This contradiction happens because we are entertaining the following propositions:

  1. God is real.
  2. Time is real.
  3. God knows what is real.
  4. God is changeless.
  5. Time consists only of a single, changing moment.

These propositions are not all consistent with each other. Up to four of them can be true, but not all five.

If God knows what is real and what is real changes, then so must God’s knowledge, so God is not changeless.

If you want to accept propositions 1-3 then you must sacrifice either proposition 4 or proposition 5.

 

Ongoing Change

The same problem reappears when we consider other things God knows.

For example, the way the things in the universe are arranged constantly changes with time.

Even if the total amount of physical energy and mass in the universe stays the same, as modern physics holds, that matter and energy is constantly being rearranged.

Thus there was a time before matter and energy was arranged into stars, a time before it was arranged into living beings, a time before it was arranged into our bodies, etc.

We thus might consider the following:

  • At the first moment in time, the matter and energy in the universe was arranged in Configuration 1.
  • At the second moment in time, it was arranged in Configuration 2.
  • At the third moment in time, it was arranged in Configuration 3.
  • And so on.

If we ask our previous question about what God knows is real, it will turn out that—the first time we ask the question—he knows that Configuration 1 is real. But if we ask the same question again, he will know that Configuration 2 is real, etc.

This generates the same kind of problems that we saw above.

 

God’s Conserving Action

The problem is even worse, because it doesn’t apply just to God’s knowledge. It also applies to his actions.

The Church teaches that the world would not continue to exist unless God sustained it in existence. Thus John Paul II stated:

By creating, God called into being from nothing all that began to exist outside himself. But God’s creative act does not end here. What comes forth from nothing would return to nothing if it were left to itself and not conserved in being by the Creator. Having created the cosmos, God continues to create it, by maintaining it in existence. Conservation is a continuous creation (conservatio est continua creatio) (Audience, May 7, 1986).

This means that, at the first moment of creation, God would generate the universe , with all of the matter and energy in it in Configuration 1.

But then God would have to stop conserving Configuration 1 so that Configuration 2 could come about.

He would then have to stop conserving Configuration 2 so that Configuration 3 could arise.

This would also place God inside of time, since if he were simultaneously conserving all three configurations from outside of time, all three would exist simultaneously from the perspective of the eternal now.

That means all three would be real at once—three different moments of time would exist, contradicting the idea that only a single moment (the present, the “temporal now”) exists.

God would have to be in time if he were to initially create/conserve the moment containing Configuration 1 and then stop doing that to allow Configuration 1 to be replaced by Configuration 2 in the temporal now.

But the Church teaches that God is not in time, so we have another problem.

These aren’t the only problems with the idea that only the present exists. We’ll look at more next time.

(Go to Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3)

3 Views of Time and Eternity

Akin-ETERNITY1The fact that we live in time and God lives in eternity leads to all kinds of questions. For example:

  • If God is eternal and outside of time, does he create all of history all at once?
  • Does the fact that what is true in time changes mean that God’s knowledge changes?
  • How can God be eternal and yet incarnate as Jesus Christ at a specific moment in time?

To answer questions like this, we need to think about the nature of both time and eternity.

 

Three Views of Time

Philosophers sometimes talk about three views of time:

  1. The view that only the present is real (so the past and the future are not real)
  2. The view that the past and the present are real (but the future is not real)
  3. The view that the past, present, and future are all real.

The first view is sometimes called “presentism,” since it believes that there is only one moment that truly exists: right now, the present. On this view, the past and the future don’t exist. The moments in the past once existed, and the moments in the future will exist later on, but right now, the only thing that is real is the present.

The second view is sometimes called the “growing block” theory, since it presents time as a block that grows with the course of events. The events that are in the past are real, as are events occurring in the present, at the leading edge of the block, but future events do not yet exist.

The third view is sometimes called “eternalism.” On this view, the past, present, and future are all equally real. The present is the moment of time that we are experiencing right now. We no longer have access to moments in the past, and we do not yet have access to moments in the future, but they still exist.

Which of these theories is true?

 

Arguments from Physics

A hundred years ago, Albert Einstein proposed that time is essentially another dimension—a fourth dimension, alongside the three spatial dimensions we experience: height, width, and length.

He proposed that, together, these dimensions make up a reality physicists now call “spacetime.”

This concept has served physics extremely well. It makes it easy to describe physical phenomena using equations, and it has proved enormously useful to scientists.

Consequently, modern physicists lean heavily toward eternalism.

The idea of time as a dimension has proved so useful, in fact, that even physicists like Lee Smolin—who wants to revisit the idea—acknowledge it is very hard to imagine an alternative that would make sense. (Smolin talks about this in his book Time Reborn).

It thus seems safe to say that, to the extent contemporary physics is a guide, there is significant support for eternalism.

However, the findings of science are always provisional—never final—so they are not definitive for the question.

 

Arguments from Philosophy

If the results of physics are not definitive, neither are the results of philosophy.

The debate about the nature of time has been going on since the ancient Greeks began wrestling with the question, and no definitive solution has emerged.

An individual philosopher may find the arguments mounted for one position or another to be the most compelling, but—as on most subjects—there is no definitive consensus among philosophers.

 

Theology

What I’d like to do, rather than proposing an argument from physics or philosophy, is mount a theological case.

I want to point out right up front that the Church does not have an official teaching on the nature of time, and I know orthodox Catholics who take different positions on the matter.

However, I think that what the Church teaches about God has implications for the nature of time.

So let’s look at that.

 

God’s Eternity

The Church teaches that God is eternal. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states:

We firmly believe and confess without reservation that there is only one true God, eternal, infinite (immensus), and unchangeable, incomprehensible, almighty and ineffable, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit; three persons indeed, but one essence, substance or nature entirely simple (CCC 202).

In popular speech, saying that something is eternal means that it lasts for an unlimited amount of time. However, when applied to God, the term “eternal” means something else: It means he is outside of time altogether.

The classic theological explanation of eternity was provided in the sixth century by the Roman philosopher Boethius, who wrote:

Eternity . . . is the simultaneously-whole and perfect possession of interminable life (On the Consolation of Philosophy 5:6).

This means that God’s life has no end (it’s interminable), and that he possesses all of that life all at once (in a simultaneously-whole manner). He does not experience it moment-by-moment, the way we do. God’s life thus is not spread out over time the way ours is, meaning that he is outside of time.

As St. John Paul II explained:

[H]is eternity . . . must be understood as the “indivisible, perfect, and simultaneous possession of an unending life,” and therefore as the attribute of being absolutely “beyond time” (John Paul II, Audience, Sept. 4, 1985).

He went on to teach:

God’s eternity does not go by with the time of the created world. “It does not coincide with the present.” It does not precede it or “prolong” it into infinity. . . .

He is eternal because he is the absolute fullness of being which cannot be understood as a sum of fragments or of “particles” of being which change with time. The texts quoted from the Bible clearly indicate this.

The absolute fullness of being can come to be understood only as eternity, which is, as the total and indivisible possession of that being, God’s own life.

In this sense God is eternal: a “Now,” a “Present,” subsisting and unchanging.

This mode of being is essentially distinguished from that of creatures, which are “contingent” beings (ibid.).

God therefore exists in what theologians refer to as an “eternal now” outside of time, a now where time does not pass from moment to moment. It is thus distinct from the “temporal now” we experience, where new moments arrive and then slip into the past.

A consequence of this is that there is no change in God. There is no progression from moment to moment in the eternal now, and so no change occurs in God.

This appears to have theological implications for the nature of time.

We’ll look at those next.

(Go to Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3)

What If Jesus Played Basketball?

BASKETBALLWould Jesus have been the all-time, all-history MVP if he played basketball?

Did he have to learn his craft of carpentry? Did he have to learn table manners?

There are all kinds of questions one can ask about the way Jesus’ divine and human natures related in his earthly life, and we can’t know the answers to all of them.

But looking at the principles involved can be instructive.

Let’s talk about that.

 

Carpentry and Table Manners

A reader writes:

We know that Jesus is completely divine and completely human, so did Joseph have to teach him how to cut stone? How to measure correctly?

Did the Blessed Mother ever say something like, “Chew with your mouth closed. Stay in your seat. Don’t interrupt when someone else is speaking”—like I have to do with my children?

 

What Jesus Knew and When He Knew It

Jesus had both a divine knowledge and a human knowledge.

His divine knowledge was unlimited, and therefore in his divine intellect, he knew everything. He was omniscient.

The question here pertains more directly to his human knowledge. Concerning that, the Catechism states:

[The] human soul that the Son of God assumed is endowed with a true human knowledge. As such, this knowledge could not in itself be unlimited: it was exercised in the historical conditions of his existence in space and time.

This is why the Son of God could, when he became man, “increase in wisdom and in stature, and in favor with God and man,” and would even have to inquire for himself about what one in the human condition can learn only from experience.

This corresponded to the reality of his voluntary emptying of himself, taking “the form of a slave” (CCC 472).

The statement about Jesus “increasing in wisdom” is taken from Luke 2:52, which discusses Jesus’ growth as a young person. Commenting on this passage, Pope Benedict wrote:

[I]t is also true that his wisdom grows. As a human being, he does not live in some abstract omniscience, but he is rooted in a concrete history, a place and a time, in the different phases of human life, and this is what gives concrete shape to his knowledge.

So it emerges clearly here that he thought and learned in human fashion.

It becomes quite apparent that he is true man and true God, as the Church’s faith expresses it. The interplay between the two is something that we cannot ultimately define (Jesus of Nazareth, vol. 3: The Infancy Narratives, “Epilogue”).

 

The Child Jesus

As Pope Benedict indicates, we can’t fully understand the interplay between Christ’s divine and human natures.

However, it would seem that, in terms of learning his craft as a carpenter in his human knowledge, Jesus would have been instructed by Joseph, like any boy being apprenticed in that trade.

What are considered appropriate table manners varies widely from one culture to another, so they are not built directly into human nature. Presumably Joseph and Mary would have taught him these things as well.

Having said that, Jesus would have been intelligent and obedient (cf. Luke 2:51), so it’s not like he would have been an unruly child.

Yet he could do things that were surprising, confusing, and even dismaying to his parents (cf. Luke 2:48), as illustrated by the incident in the Temple when he was twelve (Luke 2:41-50).

Jesus would have appeared to others as an unusual child—unusually intelligent, unusually holy, etc.—but not so otherworldly that people automatically recognized him as the Son of God.

After all, they didn’t automatically see him that way even when he was an adult (cf. 1 Cor. 2:8).

 

Basketball

The reader continues:

The theology teacher at the school where I work referenced Aquinas saying that Jesus being human and divine, had to learn as a human—but once he learned he never erred.

The example he gave was this: If Lebron James went back in time and taught Jesus how to play basketball then Jesus would then be the greatest basketball player ever. He would never miss a shot, never lose a game, never miss a free throw, etc.

It seems to me that there are pitfalls on both sides of this question. If Jesus is fully human, then he would HAVE to miss a shot, misbehave, miss cut a piece of wood from time to time—like we all do. And if he’s fully divine, then of course he would never miss a shot, misbehave as a child, miss cut wood or stone, etc.

The Christian Faith holds that Jesus was like us in all things but sin (cf. Heb. 4:15). It does not teach that he wouldn’t need to practice in order to build skills, whether they are skills used in carpentry or sports.

 

Practicing Skills

Any athlete, or athletics teacher, can tell you that practice is necessary to build skills even once the concepts involved are understood intellectually.

It takes repetition to build the neural pathways needed for a move to become second nature—part of one’s “muscle memory.” And it certainly takes repetition to build one’s muscles up and to develop fine motor control and hand-eye coordination.

It’s not simply a question of understanding the concepts involved. You have to do the work to train your body.

The same thing goes for a skill like touch typing. You can explain the concept in minutes, but becoming a proficient, ten-finger typist—so that you can hit the correct key without having to stop and think about where it is—takes lots of practice.

Playing the piano—or any instrument—is the same.

Also, your body has to be old enough to have the kind of muscles and neurology needed to learn a skill. Before that point, practicing it won’t work.

That’s why there aren’t any toddlers who are professional weight lifters or professional ballerinas, even if they try to imitate the moves of adults engaging in these activities.

 

Jesus’ Miracles

As the miracle-working Son of God, Jesus could have instantaneously given himself any skill, in any degree, and been the best in world history at anything.

However, in the Gospels Jesus performs miracles in service of his mission, not to show off or do things completely unrelated to his mission.

Except when his mission was involved, he chose to live like others in a non-glorified human condition.

This is what Scripture means when it says he “emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men” (Phil. 2:7).

 

Jesus’ Growth

As one born into a non-glorified human condition, Jesus did not start with all physical perfections. He grew and developed like we do.

He was not born with his adult height, an adult’s bodily agility, an adult’s fine motor skills, or an adult’s hand-eye coordination.

He was born as a baby, with a baby’s height, a baby’s agility, a baby’s motor skills, and a baby’s hand-eye coordination.

He also was not born with specialized skills in his human knowledge involving carpentry, basketball, playing the piano, or other activities.

 

All-Time MVP?

Even once Jesus did start working on a skill, the Faith does not oblige us to hold that he would automatically have been the best in human history at that skill.

Skills come in degrees, and the degree to which you have a skill depends on your natural aptitude for it and how much effort you have put into practicing it.

Jesus may have had a great deal of natural aptitude, but that wouldn’t mean he had every conceivable advantage.

In basketball, height is an advantage, but the Church does not hold that Jesus was the tallest man in history.

Similarly, the ability to run fast—which is dependent on factors like body weight, leg muscle mass, and how many fast-twitch nerve fibers you have in your legs—is also an advantage in basketball. But the Church does not teach that Jesus had the biggest leg muscles or the most fast-twitch nerve fibers in human history.

Jesus also didn’t eat a special sports nutrition diet, lift weights, or take performance-enhancers.

And—even on our imaginary scenario where Lebron James teaches him basketball—he wouldn’t have spent hours a day practicing on the court. It would have interfered with his mission.

Consequently, as one living in a non-glorified human condition, Jesus would not automatically have been the greatest basketball player in world history from the moment he learned, in his human knowledge, how the game is played.

Of course, as the omnipotent Son of God, he could have become the all-time MVP using his miraculous powers, but that wasn’t his mission.

 

Mr. Popular?

Finally, the reader writes:

In my mind I am struggling to envision a teenage Jesus who never ever makes a mistake. Nobody likes being around someone who is perfect—someone who never loses a game, never stubs his toe, never over sleeps, never hit his thumb with the hammer.

Jesus, we know, had to be charismatic. People followed Him; people liked him. I can’t seem to reconcile Jesus’ perfection and also being human like us.

I think I view this differently.

While people would notice if someone never loses a game, that would alternately be attractive or off-putting depending on whether you’re on the same team or the opposite one.

Also, whether a sports team wins generally doesn’t depend on the actions of just one person. That’s why they’re team sports. Even if Jesus were the greatest basketball player in history, his teammates (e.g., a ragtag bunch of Galilean fishermen) could lose the game.

In addition, few people would notice that another person doesn’t stub his toe or hit his thumb with a hammer.

And in the ancient world—before alarm clocks, watches, and tight schedules—oversleeping almost wasn’t even a thing.

A person who always got up when he intended wouldn’t be noticed, though people may have simply thought such a person was “an early riser” (cf. Mark 1:35).

What people don’t like are know-it-alls and show-offs: people who have high skill levels and are arrogant about it.

However, Jesus was meek and humble of heart (Matt. 11:29), and people do find it attractive when a person has high skill levels but is humble.

In fact, that’s very attractive, and Jesus’ humility no doubt played a significant role in his popularity.

Of course, even when a skilled person is humble, some will still be jealous. And some people were jealous of Jesus (Matt. 27:18, Mark 15:10).

But then he didn’t come to be Mr. Popular and win everybody over. He came to be “a sign of contradiction” who was set “for the fall and rising of many in Israel” (Luke 2:34).

Answering Arguments for Eternal Security

eternal securityThe vast majority of Christians recognize the possibility of losing one’s salvation. This is clearly taught in multiple Bible passages. However, in the 1500s, John Calvin proposed a teaching now known as eternal security. Today this teaching takes two forms.

The first version was proposed by Calvin himself. It holds that, although there are actions which theoretically would cause a person to lose salvation (e.g., apostasy), in practice God prevents true Christians from committing these. He preserves them and causes them to persevere in grace until the end.

This view is often called the perseverance of the saints. It is the last of the “five points of Calvinism” expressed by the acronym TULIP (Total Depravity, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistible Grace, Perseverance of the Saints).

The second version of eternal security, taught by some Baptists and Evangelicals, holds there are no actions which would cost a Christian salvation. A Christian could lose his faith, become an atheist, commit murder and adultery, die unrepentant, and still be saved. This view is often called “once saved, always saved.”

Here we will respond to arguments for eternal security—and particularly for perseverance of the saints.

 

Eternal Insecurity?

Advocates of eternal security sometimes use prejudicial language favoring their view. Perhaps the most obvious example is referring to the opposing view as “eternal insecurity.”

This makes the alternative sound frightening. But prejudicial language doesn’t address the substance of a topic. It doesn’t give us any reason to believe one way or another.

Further, prejudicial language is often reversible. One could refer to the view that you can’t lose salvation as “eternal presumption” and the view that you can as “eternal humility” or “eternal realism.”

“Eternal insecurity” also uses a straw man because the alternative does not propose we are eternally insecure. That would mean one could lose salvation even in heaven, which nobody holds.

Advocates of the alternative thus prefer terms like “conditional security” to describe their position, saying one’s salvation is secure as long as one meets the conditions God has set, such as continuing in faith and repentance.

 

God-Centered or Man-Centered?

Prejudicial language also occurs when advocates of eternal security characterize their position as offering a “God-centered gospel” and conditional salvation as offering a “man-centered gospel.”

The idea is that, if God prevents the believer from losing his salvation, that puts the emphasis on God, but if we can lose our salvation through our actions, that puts emphasis on man.

Making it sound like you are God-centered and those who disagree with you are man-centered is rhetorically slick, but it’s just more prejudicial language.

Ironically, the name “perseverance of the saints” is man-centered. It describes what the saints must do: persevere. That’s why some Calvinists prefer the name “preservation of the saints,” since it focuses on God’s preserving action.

However, both eternal and conditional security acknowledge that both God and man have a role in salvation. God gives us his grace, and man responds, at least by making an act of saving faith. Eternal security advocates thus don’t reject man’s role. They simply ignore it for rhetorical purposes when making the “God-centered vs. man-centered” claim.

Further, since all acknowledge that God’s grace is indispensible and must precede man’s response, both positions are fundamentally God-centered.

What happens after initial salvation, and whether it can be lost, must be decided by looking at the biblical evidence, not simply by which position sounds like it’s attributing more to God.

The prejudicial nature of the “God-centered” language can be seen by applying it in a different context—say, to the problem of evil. One could say it would be more “God-centered” to attribute evil directly to God, so that he would be the author of all evil, even moral evil. By contrast, it could sound “man-centered” to attribute moral evil not to God’s divine choices but to man’s creaturely choices.

On the rhetorical level this might sound like it’s glorifying God, but it would be charging the all-holy God with moral evil—with sin! Thus the fact something may superficially sound like it’s more glorifying to God is not a test of which position is true.

And, as before, the language is reversible. One could argue that if God can create free will in man, such that man may freely accept or reject salvation, then this brings more glory to God than the view God can’t create such free will. Conditional security thus can be framed as more God-glorifying because of what it says about God’s creative power.

 

God Glorifying Himself

Advocates of eternal security often argue that God saves people to bring himself glory and say a person losing salvation would not bring him glory. It would represent divine failure.

But what about the case of those who are never saved—people who lived and died without responding to God’s initiative of grace? If one too closely identifies the salvation of souls with God’s glory then those never saved would represent cases of divine failure as well.

The logical alternative is to say that the never-saved also bring glory to God, not by being examples of his mercy upon the repentant but of his justice upon the unrepentant.

However, if this is the case then it means God brings himself glory even in the case of someone who is not saved, and if that’s true then God also could bring himself glory through someone who is initially saved and who then loses salvation.

Such a case would serve to illustrate both God’s mercy and his justice—as well as his creative power by giving that person free will.

Ultimately, all of God’s actions bring him glory, and he seems to have chosen to glorify himself by creating and permitting a wide variety of things in the world. He thus may choose to glorify himself by saving some, by allowing some never to be saved, and by allowing some to switch between these states.

 

Divine Failure?

Sometimes advocates of eternal security argue that if God is the perfect savior, if he is omnipotent, then he should be able to save those he chooses. He cannot fail.

This begs the question of whether God intends to bring everyone who experiences initial salvation to final salvation.

If God intends to allow people who experience initial salvation to freely choose to change their mind, to return to sin, and to fall from grace then such people do not represent divine failure.

It is only if you presuppose that God intends to cause all believers to persevere to the end that their failure to do so would represent divine failure—but that is assuming the thing that needs to be proved.

 

Theological and Exegetical Arguments

None of the points we’ve discussed thus far have quoted Scripture. Two involve prejudicial language. The other two are arguments from theological premises, making them theological rather than exegetical arguments.

Of course, advocates of eternal security do appeal to Bible passages, but it is important to note the degree to which theological reasoning rather than simply exegetical reasoning plays a role in the discussion.

In fact, advocates of eternal security sometimes acknowledge that to prove eternal security you first need to establish certain theological points, like what God’s intention regarding salvation is.

This is a significant admission, because it means the passages they appeal to for eternal security are not clear enough on their own. They can be read other ways.

It’s only when read in light of certain theological premises that they acquire the meaning that eternal advocates want them to have. Without those premises, they are consistent with the view that one can lose salvation.

In particular, Calvinists sometimes acknowledge that the other points of TULIP are needed to prove P. Without T, U, L, and I constraining the way key Bible verses are taken, they are consistent with conditional security.

This reveals a significant weakness, because it means each of the other beliefs must be backed up by Scripture to prove P, and if there are exegetical reasons to doubt any of them then that doubt transfers to P. The Calvinist thus needs to prove his whole set of beliefs to prove perseverance of the saints. It can’t be proved on its own.

This is not the place to argue each point of TULIP, but let’s look at some of the verses used to support P and the ways they are consistent with conditional security. Here we will look at verses from the Gospel of John which are among those most commonly cited to support P.

 

“The One Hearing and Believing”

In John 5:24, Jesus says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears my word and believes him who sent me, has eternal life; he does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.”

A less elegant translation of the first part of this would be, “the one hearing my word and believing him who sent me” has eternal life. In this case, the Greek present participles for “hearing” and “believing” (akouōn, pisteuōn) indicate an ongoing action.

Thus if one were to stop hearing Jesus’ word and stop believing the one who sent him, one would lose eternal life and pass back from life to death.

 

“All That the Father Gives Me”

In John 6:37a, Jesus states: “All that the Father gives me will come to me.”

Commentators note that the Greek phrase translated “all that” (pan ho) is neuter rather than the expected masculine.

They have thus seen the first statement as not simply speaking of individuals but of the whole people that God gives Jesus—i.e., a Church.

Jesus is thus affirming that the whole Church will come to Jesus.

 

“The One Coming to Me”

But what about the individual? This is dealt with in the second half of John 6:37b: “and him who comes to me I will not cast out.”

Translated less elegantly, the statement would read “and the one coming to me I would certainly not cast out.”

Here “the one” (ton) is masculine, indicating the individual, and the present tense participle “coming” (erchomenon) indicates an ongoing action, not a one-time encounter. This is not controversial and is acknowledged by Calvinists.

The second part of the verse thus indicates Jesus will not cast out those who come and keep coming to him. But this does not establish eternal security.

Nobody would argue that Jesus would cast out those who, with repentance and faith, continue to follow him. But, by implication, if a person ceases to turn to Jesus in this way, he would cease to be part of the people that God gives to his Son, and he would be cast out.

 

“The Will of My Father”

Jesus tells us that he has not come to do his own will but that of his Father (John 6:38). He then says: “This is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up at the last day” (John 6:39).

Here the Greek again uses neuter rather than masculine pronouns, pointing to the collective people—the Church—that God gives to Jesus. It is not God’s will that Jesus lose any from the Church, and Jesus will raise up this body on the last day.

We now face the question of how God’s will works, which is more subtle than it may first appear.

God sometimes wills things in an irresistible, unfailing way. When he created the universe, the universe did not have a choice about being created. We might refer to this as God’s “efficacious will,” because when he wills something in this way, it is always effective.

But Scripture also tells us that it is not God’s will for people to commit murder or adultery, and sometimes they do. Creatures can make choices that don’t conform to God’s will. We might refer to this as God’s “conditional will,” because he has made what actually happens conditional on the choices of his creatures.

Which kind of will is involved in John 6:39? Does God will that those he has given Jesus remain with him in such a way that it is impossible for them to be lost? Or does he allow them to make choices which would cause them to be lost?

This is clarified in John 17, where Jesus prays concerning the disciples who accompanied him in his earthly ministry. He tells his Father, “you gave them to me” (17:6) and goes on to say that “While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me; I have guarded them, and none of them is lost but the son of perdition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled” (17:12).

Though Judas was one of the disciples God gave Jesus, and though Judas came to him and even became an apostle in his Church, God allowed Judas to make choices causing him to be lost.

God’s desire for none to be lost from the people he gives his Son is thus part of his conditional rather than his efficacious will.

 

“Everyone Seeing and Believing”

Once again, Jesus turns from the collective to the individual and says, “For this is the will of my Father, that every one who sees the Son and believes in him should have eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day” (John 6:40).

Less elegantly, what he says is that “anyone seeing the Son and believing in him” will have eternal life and be raised on the last day. Again, the text indicates an ongoing relationship with the Son, not a one-time encounter.

Thus, should one turn away from the Son (stop seeing him) and stop believing in him, one would forfeit eternal life.

 

“Unless the Father Draws Him”

In John 6:44, Jesus says, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day.”

The first part of this is an affirmation that salvation is always based on God’s initiative (CCC 2022).

For this to be a prooftext for perseverance of the saints, it would need to mean (1) that individuals who the Father draws to Jesus will always come to him and (2) that they will always remain with him. Only in that way would the person be guaranteed the resurrection of the blessed.

However, Jesus merely says that one can’t come to him unless the Father draws him, not that people are incapable of resisting the Father’s grace. And he says nothing at all about people being unable to leave once they come to him.

In fact, the verse entirely leaps over the mechanics of salvation. It doesn’t mention repentance, faith, baptism, or anything else. It treats all of these under the single heading of “coming” to Jesus, and as we’ve seen, the coming which saves is a continuous, ongoing one, not a one-time event.

From this passage we can infer that no one comes to Jesus without the Father’s action and that those who come and keep coming to Jesus will be raised on the last day. But, unless we press the passage beyond its limits, we cannot infer that all who come to Jesus remain with him.

 

“My Sheep”

In John 10:26-28, Jesus tells inquirers: “You do not believe, because you do not belong to my sheep. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me; and I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish, and no one shall snatch them out of my hand.”

He also explains why they can’t be snatched away: “My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand” (10:29).

Once again, the actions of the believer are ongoing. Sheep do not just hear the voice of their shepherd once, and they do not just follow him once. They do so on a continuing basis.

Consequently, to stop listening to Jesus and to stop following him would be to cease to be one of his sheep and to lose the eternal life that he gives.

Advocates of eternal security hold this inference is blocked by the statement that no one will snatch the sheep out of Jesus’ or the Father’s hand.

The metaphor Jesus is using envisions thieves, wolves, or other predators taking a shepherd’s sheep. However, to remain on the level of the metaphor, this is not the only way a shepherd can lose sheep. They also can leave on their own. They can stray, as Jesus himself noted (Matt. 18:12-14, Luke 15:3-7).

Because Jesus does not exclude this possibility in the passage—he does not say, “And I will never let them stray”—one cannot appeal to this passage as if it eliminated the possibility of Christians making choices that cost them salvation.

 

“You Are the Branches”

John’s Gospel also contains passages indicating the loss of salvation, and these can’t be ignored.

A notable one occurs when Jesus says, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. . . . I am the vine, you are the branches” (John 15:1, 5).

He states, “Every branch of mine that bears no fruit, he [the Father] takes away. . . . If a man does not abide in me, he is cast forth as a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire and burned” (15:2, 6).

Here the Father himself removes people from Christ, and their fate is to be burned—an obvious reference to hell.

Jesus thus commands the disciples, “Abide in me. . . . Abide in my love” (15:4, 9)—a theme he continues to stress (vv. 5, 7)—and he tells them how to abide: “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love” (v. 10).

Keeping God’s commandments thus is essential for remaining in Christ and avoiding the fate of the branches which the Father removes from Christ to be burned.

Why God Can’t Lie (Or Sin)

no-lies1Scripture repeatedly affirms the truthfulness of God. As early as the book of Numbers, we read:

God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should repent. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfil it? (Num. 23:19).

The same view is expressed in multiple other passages (e.g., 1 Sam. 15:29, 2 Tim. 2:13, Tit. 1:2). Jesus even declares himself to be “the Way, the Truth, and the Life” (John 14:6).

But Hebrews goes a step further, saying not only that God does not lie, but speaking of it being impossible for God to lie:

God, because he wanted to show even more to the heirs of the promise the unchangeableness of his resolve, guaranteed it with an oath, in order that through two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have taken refuge may have powerful encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us (Heb. 6:17-18, LEB)

How does this square with the fact God is omnipotent—that he can “do anything”?

If he can do anything, wouldn’t that mean he can lie?

No, and here’s why . . .

 

Talking Nonsense

In my latest book, A Daily Defense, I take up the question of whether God could make up a stone too heavy for him to lift, which poses the same kind of challenge to divine omnipotence that we are considering here.

In response, I point out that theologians do not understand omnipotence to mean that God can do anything you can say.

You can say all sorts of things that amount to gibberish. For example:

God can the helium the the an a five wooden the the the next.

That doesn’t mean anything. It’s just gibberish—nonsense. It doesn’t even obey the laws of English grammar.

And even if something obeys the laws of grammar, that doesn’t mean it makes sense, either.

Linguists have identified sentences like “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously,” which obeys the laws of English grammar but doesn’t mean anything—as long as you give the words their normal meanings.

Taking the terms in their normal senses, this sentence is also jibberish:

God can make colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

But you might not notice that it’s meaningless unless you stopped to carefully parse it. The same is true of sentences like:

God can make four-sided triangles.

God can make square circles.

At first glance, those might sound sensible, but if you think about them, these statements also fall apart.

By definition, a triangle has three sides, not four. And by definition, a circle is not square.

Same thing goes for married bachelors, two-horned unicorns, and colorless green ideas.

None of these things can exist because they all involve logical contradictions. That is, the terms used contradict each other. Philosophers thus classify these entities as logically impossible.

Of course, it is possible to play games with words by taking the terms in non-normal senses, like saying that a four-sided pyramid is a “four-sided triangle” or that a unicorn that later grows a second horn is a “two-horned unicorn,” but that’s not what we’re talking about.

These things are logically impossible if you take the terms in their intended, normal senses.

 

What Omnipotence Means

This gets us to the issue of omnipotence. It isn’t the ability to do anything you can say—because you can say a lot of things that amount to gibberish—it’s the ability to do anything that is logically possible.

See St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I:25:3-4.

This gives us the answer to whether God can make a stone too heavy for him to lift. The answer is no.

God’s omnipotence gives him unlimited—or infinite—lifting power, and a stone too heavy to be moved with infinite lifting power would have to have more than infinite weight.

And there is no such thing as “more than infinite.”

Even appealing to the different kinds of infinity proposed by mathematicians won’t help, because—as an All-Perfect Being—God’s power comprehends them all, and there is no such thing as a weight that transcends all possible infinities.

A stone too heavy for God to lift thus involves a logical contradiction, meaning it is not logically possible and thus not something an omnipotent Being could create.

But what about lying? Why can’t an omnipotent Being do that? After all, we can!

 

a-daily-defense_1Why We Can Lie (And God Can’t)

If you think about it a moment, the reason why we can lie becomes clear: It’s because we’re imperfect.

Lying is a sin. Sins are morally imperfect actions. And so a being capable of lying is a morally imperfect being.

That gives us the reason why God can’t sin: He’s All-Perfect, possessing all possible perfections. That means he possesses moral perfection. Moral perfection implies sinlessness. It therefore precludes lying.

To put this in terms of divine omnipotence, the reason God can’t lie—or commit any other sin—is because he’s All-Perfect. If he were able to lie, he would be imperfect, like we are.

The idea of an All-Perfect Being lying thus involves a logical contradiction, just like the idea of a square circle or a married bachelor.

God can’t bring about a situation in which he, an All-Perfect Being, lies any more than he can bring about a situation in which there is a four-sided triangle or a stone too heavy for him to lift.

Such situations are logically impossible because the terms involved contain logical contradictions.

The reason God can’t lie is thus because it’s inconsistent with his nature as an All-Perfect Being.

This idea is reflected in 2 Timothy 2:13, where Paul says that even “if we are faithless, he remains faithful—for he cannot deny himself.”

God’s own nature—his complete holiness—prevents him from sinning.

By the way, if you haven’t already gotten a copy, be sure to check out my book A Daily Defense, where I go into all kinds of interesting things like this!

Cardinal Muller on Amoris Laetitiae: 12 things to know and share

Gerhard-Ludwig-MüllerCardinal Gerhard Muller has made public comments on Pope Francis’s document Amoris Laetitiae and the controversy surrounding it.

Here are 12 things to know and share . . .

 

1) What is Amoris Laetitiae?

It’s a document issued by Pope Francis in April of 2016.

It deals with marriage and how the Church can help married couples.

The text of the document is online here, and a discussion of it is here.

More commentary, from a Catholic perspective, here.

 

2) Why has there been controversy around Amoris Laetitiae?

Certain passages in it have been taken to mean that couples who are divorced and civilly remarried can continue to have sex and receive the sacraments of confession and the Eucharist.

This would be at variance with the historic Catholic understanding because such couples would not be validly married to each other and thus sexual relations between them would be adulterous.

Because of different interpretations of the document, a group of four cardinals recently asked Pope Francis to answer several clarifying questions on the document and how it relates to Catholic teaching. Info on that here.

Thus far, Pope Francis has not publicly responded to these queries.

 

3) Who is Cardinal Muller?

He’s the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which is the department at the Vatican charged with correcting doctrinal errors.

This is the same department that Pope Benedict XVI was head of before he was elected pope.

Cardinal Muller is thus, in terms of his office, Pope Francis’s right hand man when it comes to doctrine.

 

4) Where did Cardinal Muller make his remarks?

Most recently he did so in an interview that was published in the Italian apologetics magazine Il Timone (“The Rudder”).

That issue is available for purchase online here.

Thus far, I haven’t found a complete English translation of the interview, but key sections of it are provided here.

 

5) What does Cardinal Muller say in this interview?

He addresses several issues, including:

  • Whether there can be a conflict between doctrine and personal conscience
  • How Amoris Laetitiae is to be interpreted
  • Whether the requirement that divorced and remarried couples who cannot separate for practical reasons must live as brother and sister to receive the sacraments
  • How to resolve the chaos surrounding the different interpretations of Amoris Laetitiae

 

6) What did Cardinal Muller say on the conflict between doctrine and personal conscience?

This was the exchange on that point:

Q: Can there be a contradiction between doctrine and personal conscience?

A: No, that is impossible. For example, it cannot be said that there are circumstances according to which an act of adultery does not constitute a mortal sin. For Catholic doctrine, it is impossible for mortal sin to coexist with sanctifying grace. In order to overcome this absurd contradiction, Christ has instituted for the faithful the Sacrament of penance and reconciliation with God and with the Church.

I find this response somewhat puzzling. There may be a problem with the transcription or translation of the question or answer.

First, it is obvious that sometimes people’s consciences contradict Church teaching. In this situation they have what is termed an erroneous conscience.

I assume that Cardinal Muller means that there cannot be a contradiction between a person’s conscience and the Church’s teaching unless their conscience is in error.

Second, the Church holds that three conditions must be met for a mortal sin to be committed: It must have (1) grave matter and be committed with both (2) full knowledge of its moral status and (3) deliberate consent in spite of this knowledge.

An adulterous act always has grave matter, but there are cases in which a person may lack full knowledge or deliberate consent, in which case the sin is objectively grave but not mortal.

I assume that the cardinal is speaking of an adulterous act in which these two conditions are also met.

 

7) What did Cardinal Muller say on how Amoris Laetitiae is to be interpreted?

The exchange on this point was:

Q: This [see the previous Q and A] is a question that is being extensively discussed with regard to the debate surrounding the post-synodal exhortation “Amoris Laetitia.”

A: “Amoris Laetitia” must clearly be interpreted in the light of the whole doctrine of the Church. […] I don’t like it, it is not right that so many bishops are interpreting “Amoris Laetitia” according to their way of understanding the pope’s teaching. This does not keep to the line of Catholic doctrine. The magisterium of the pope is interpreted only by him or through the congregation for the doctrine of the faith. The pope interprets the bishops, it is not the bishops who interpret the pope, this would constitute an inversion of the structure of the Catholic Church. To all these who are talking too much, I urge them to study first the doctrine [of the councils] on the papacy and the episcopate. The bishop, as teacher of the Word, must himself be the first to be well-formed so as not to fall into the risk of the blind leading the blind. […]

Again, Cardinal Muller’s response contains what might seem like puzzling elements that may be due to a problem with transcription or translation.

Obviously, anyone reading Amoris Laetitiae must seek to understand what the pope is saying and in that sense interpret it.

Therefore, I assume what the cardinal is referring to is what is known in ecclesiastical circles as an “authentic interpretation.”

“Authentic” is a term of art in ecclesiastical documents that means authoritative. An authentic interpretation is thus an authoritative declaration concerning the meaning of a text.

Cardinal Muller thus seems to be saying that bishops (and others) do not have the ability to make authoritative declarations about the meaning of the pope’s teachings. Only the pope himself and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (as authorized by the pope) are capable of doing so.

Authentic interpretations are periodically issued by the Holy See in official documents.

Thus an authoritative interpretation of Amoris Laetitiae would only be made in a new, public proclamation by the pope or the CDF.

Unless and until such a declaration is made, Amoris is to be interpreted “in the light of the whole doctrine of the Church,” including its historic understanding of the effects of divorce and civil remarriage.

 

8) What did Cardinal Muller say about the obligation of those who are divorced and civilly remarried to live continently if they are to receive the sacraments?

Here is the exchange on that point:

Q: The exhortation of Saint John Paul II, “Familiaris Consortio,” stipulates that divorced and remarried couples that cannot separate, in order to receive the sacraments must commit to live in continence. Is this requirement still valid?

A: Of course, it is not dispensable, because it is not only a positive law of John Paul II, but he expressed an essential element of Christian moral theology and the theology of the sacraments. The confusion on this point also concerns the failure to accept the encyclical “Veritatis Splendor,” with the clear doctrine of the “intrinsece malum.” [“intrinsically evil (act)”] […] For us marriage is the expression of participation in the unity between Christ the bridegroom and the Church his bride. This is not, as some said during the Synod, a simple vague analogy. No! This is the substance of the sacrament, and no power in heaven or on earth, neither an angel, nor the pope, nor a council, nor a law of the bishops, has the faculty to change it.

In this context, a “positive law” refers to a law that is made by humans (as opposed to “natural law,” which refers to the laws God built into human nature).

Cardinal Muller thus means that the principle in question is not simply a law John Paul II made up and that therefore would be capable of being changed. It belongs to divine law and cannot be changed by man.

He comments that confusion on this area is rooted in the refusal of some to accept the teaching John Paul II articulated in Veritatis Splendor that some acts are intrinsically evil and can never be done—such as an act of adultery.

He says that marriage “for us” (meaning either “from a Catholic point of view” or “marriage between the baptized”) has a sacramental nature that participates in the unity between Christ and the Church.

Such unity requires fidelity and thus absolutely excludes adultery—something he indicates nobody, including the pope, can change.

 

9) What did Cardinal Muller say regarding how to deal with the confusion surrounding Amoris Laetitiae?

Here is the exchange on this point:

Q: How can one resolve the chaos that is being generated on account of the different interpretations that are given of this passage of Amoris Laetitia?

A: I urge everyone to reflect, studying the doctrine of the Church first, starting from the Word of God in Sacred Scripture, which is very clear on marriage. I would also advise not entering into any casuistry that can easily generate misunderstandings, above all that according to which if love dies, then the marriage bond is dead. These are sophistries: the Word of God is very clear and the Church does not accept the secularization of marriage. The task of priests and bishops is not that of creating confusion, but of bringing clarity. One cannot refer only to little passages present in “Amoris Laetitia,” but it has to be read as a whole, with the purpose of making the Gospel of marriage and the family more attractive for persons. It is not “Amoris Laetitia” that has provoked a confused interpretation, but some confused interpreters of it. All of us must understand and accept the doctrine of Christ and of his Church, and at the same time be ready to help others to understand it and put it into practice even in difficult situations.

 

10) Since Cardinal Muller is the head of the CDF, does this mean his remarks can be taken as an authentic (authoritative) interpretation of Amoris Laetitiae?

No. Authentic interpretations by the CDF are issued in documents published by the Congregation and approved by the pope.

They are not made in interviews with apologetics magazines.

 

11) Could we see Cardinal Muller’s remarks as an unofficial response to the questions submitted by the four cardinals? I.e., that the pope doesn’t want to respond officially at this time, so he asked Cardinal Muller to give an unofficial response?

This is not likely. If we knew nothing else about Pope Francis’s views on the interpretation of Amoris Laetitiae, this would be a reasonable conjecture. However, we do know more.

We have significant evidence that Pope Francis has a different view (as acknowledged even in this piece by Fr. Raymond de Sousa, which is perhaps the most optimistic I have read).

However, thus far Pope Francis has not issued an authentic interpretation of the disputed points in Amoris Laetitiae, nor has he authorized the CDF to publish one.

It therefore appears that Cardinal Muller is giving his own views about how the document should be interpreted and that these views differ from the way Pope Francis would like to see the document interpreted.

 

12) For the pope and the head of the CDF to disagree on a point like this seems very serious. What should we do?

Pray for them both—and for the Church as a whole.

Mass Distractions: The Less Is More Principle

question-markThis week at St. Anonymous the Ambiguous, there was a priest I hadn’t seen before.

He was a younger priest who struck me as sincere, earnest, and orthodox, so I was favorably disposed to him.

I was also grateful that he wasn’t the emotionally insecure, narcissistic priest who sometimes fills in and makes himself the center of attention by pacing up and down the aisle and into the transepts, sometimes going as far back as fourteen rows down the main aisle, so that he’s standing behind most of the congregation (and directly behind many of them) as he yells his scoldy, overwrought sermons into the wireless mic.

That guy drives me nuts.

So I was really glad it wasn’t him, and that automatically made me like the new guy.

This didn’t stop there from being some distractions, though.

 

Heart Trouble

Early in his homily, the new priest said the following (quoting from memory):

The heart of the gospel is the Sermon on the Mount
And the heart of the Sermon on the Mount is the Beatitudes
And the Beatitudes show us the heart of God.

I get what the priest was trying to do here. He wanted to say that the Beatitudes show us the heart of God.

But this is a case of less is more, because he should have just said that.

By introducing the statement the way he did, it popped me right out of the sermon, causing me to become distracted as I tried to figure out what he meant.

The heart of the gospel is the Sermon on the Mount? Really? Not Jesus? Not his death and resurrection? Not God’s love for man? Not something like that?

Also, the Sermon on the Mount is in Matthew 5-7, so it’s right near the front of Matthew’s Gospel, not at its heart.

And the Beatitudes are right at the beginning of Matthew 5, so they aren’t “geographically” at the heart of the Sermon on the Mount, either.

One wouldn’t even want to say that the Sermon on the Mount is the heart of Jesus’ ethical teachings, because that would be the first and second great commandments, which aren’t discussed until Matthew 22.

So I was distracted by trying to figure out what kind of “heart” language the priest was using when the priest finally got where he was going: The Beatitudes show us the heart of God.

Homilists take note: Getting rhetorically fancy like this can severely distract your audience, so apply the K.I.S.S. principle (Keep It Simple, Sir).

 

Ex Cathedra

A little later in the homily, the priest started to explain the term ex cathedra. (I’m not sure why.)

He explained (correctly) that it means “from the chair,” the chair being a symbol of a pope’s or bishop’s authority.

He explained (incorrectly) that the pope sits in a special chair when he proclaims a dogma.

At least, that’s what I thought I heard him say.

I may have missed a verb tense, and he may have said that the pope used to sit in a special chair when proclaiming a dogma.

But I have no evidence that that’s true, either. As far as I’m aware, the use of the phrase ex cathedra in connection with dogmas didn’t come about until the Middle Ages, when the term cathedra had already begun to be used metaphorically for a bishop’s magisterium or teaching authority.

I certainly can’t think of any dogmas that were ever proclaimed by a pope while sitting in his cathedra.

In reality, popes proclaim dogmas via special documents.

Since I’m not really sure what this had to do with the Beatitudes (the subject of the Gospel reading), I’m inclined to say this is another case of less is more. Omitting the digression about the meaning of ex cathedra would have let him make his point more clearly.

 

Becoming a Christian

Toward the end of the homily, the priest said something along the lines of:

When we become a Christian, we lose all fear.
When we become a Christian, we gain great confidence (or maybe he said “perfect love”).

Bang! Again I’m popped right out of the sermon.

The distraction in this case is that all of the baptized already are Christians, and it’s plain that they don’t lose all fear.

So I’m off thinking about 1 John 4:18, where John says:

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and he who fears is not perfected in love.

But John is talking about being perfected in love–something that happens later in the Christian life, if it happens in this life at all, not when we first become Christians.

This forced me to wonder, “What is the priest is going for?” Does he realize he may cause scrupulosity among some who are present if they infer from their fears that they aren’t truly Christians yet? Doesn’t he realizes that he’s in a building full of people who were baptized as babies and therefore have no memory of a time when they were not Christians? Why is he saying something that would (at best) apply only to adult converts?

I could only conclude that he was trying to employ some kind of rhetorical flourish by stating things in hyperbolically absolute terms.

So once again, his rhetoric was getting in the way of his message.

So once again, less is more.

 

The End of Christmas

At the end of Mass, during the announcements, the priest said that we’re coming up on Candlemas, “which is the end of the Christmas season,” that it “comes back for a day” and then goes away.

This is false. According to the Universal Norms for the Liturgical Year and the Calendar:

Christmas Time runs from First Vespers (Evening Prayer I) of the Nativity of the Lord up to and including the Sunday after Epiphany or after 6 January.

That means the Christmas season ends no later than January 13, which is weeks before Candlemas occurs on February 2.

It isn’t clear to me whether the priest thought that the Christmas season literally ends on Candlemas or whether he thought it “kinda-sorta” ends on Candlemas, since that day commemorates events in the Infancy Narratives.

If the former, he was simply wrong and does not know the details of the liturgical calendar.

If the latter, he knowingly misled the congregation, who is not familiar enough with the details of the liturgical calendar to be able to detect the “kinda-sorta” aspect of what he was saying.

Either way, people in the congregation will end up thinking that the Christmas season literally ends on Candlemas, and that’s false.

I have some sympathy here. I’ve been in situations where I’m pressed in public to give an answer I’m not 100% sure of, and I’ve made mistakes. (I’ve afterwards made scrupulous efforts to check myself and to avoid making similar mistakes in the future.)

However, this was not a situation where he was being pressed. It was a situation where he was volunteering something.

Bottom line: If you aren’t sure of a claim, don’t make it.

Less is more.

If nothing else, it helps avoid distractions and makes your message clearer.