Jimmy Akin – Page 647

Erroneous Assumptions

A reader writes:

Here is my question: How do we square the divine inspiration with the fact that in Genesis (and through all the Bible) the Earth is assumed to be flat?

You just said the key word: "assumed." If you had said "asserted," and if you were right that the Bible asserted this, then we would indeed have a problem. But it didn’t, and you didn’t, and so we don’t.

Lemme ‘splain:

First, though, lemme lodge an objection that I will raise anew at the end: I don’t see any compelling evidence from the text (in Genesis or elsewhere) that indicates that the biblical authors literally thought that the earth is flat. Since you don’t name any specific texts, I can’t interact with what you may be thinking of (I invite you to e-mail me again on this point), but I am unaware of any texts that unambiguously indicate an assumption that the earth is literally flat.

That being said, let’s assume that you are right and that the biblical authors did assume this in a way detectable in the pages of Scripture. How would one regard that?

The doctrine of divine inspiration does not mean that everything the biblical authors assumed is protected from error. It means that everything they asserted is protected from error. Here is what the Vatican II decree on divine revelation had to say on the matter:

In composing the sacred books, God chose men and while employed by Him they made use of their powers and abilities, so that with Him acting in them and through them, they, as true authors, consigned to writing everything and only those things which He wanted.

Therefore, since everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit, it follows that the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation [Dei verbum 11].

The operative word here is, again, "asserted." An assertion is a statement that, taken in its literal sense (not in a literalistic sense), is intended to declare a particular fact.

Now, many things that we say are not assertions. "Hello" is not an assertion. Neither is "Goodbye" or "Look out!" or "Help me bring in the groceries from the car" or "Was it his refusal t write more stories and consequent poverty and poor nutrition that caused H. P. Lovecraft to get stomach cancer at an abnormally young age?"

None of these things is intended to declare a particular fact.

Even when we do have an assertion, we have to be careful about what we infer from the statement. For a start, we have to distinguish between the literal sense of the assertion (what it is intended to mean by the one who makes it) and the literalistic sense one might give it.

For example, the statement "They really rolled out the red carpet for the new pope when he visited America" is definitely an assertion. It states a fact. But one is not to take this statement literalistically and so infer that the U.S. has a single red carpet that was physically unrolled for the new pope. "To roll out the red carpet" is a figure of speech that means that great efforts were made to honor a visiting individual. (I’m told that the equivalent idiom in Spanish is "Throw the house out the window.")

The literal sense of the statement is that great efforts were made to honor the new pope when he visited, not that a carpet of a particular color was unrolled. Thus, despite the statement’s reference to a red carpet, it is not being asserted that a red carpet was unrolled.

Now, another distinction that has to be carefully parsed is the difference between assertion and assumption. Whenever we talk, we operate using a large number of assumptions. (Which is the only way we manage to ever get anything said. If we had to spell out all our assumptions and do a full brain dump every time we wanted to say something, we’d never say anything.)

Often it is possible to tell what a person’s assumptions are based on what he says. For example, if you read a newspaper column and it says that the new pope is "a 78-year-old hidebound archconservative who ran the office that used to be called the Inquisition and who once belonged to Hitler Youth" then you know ~~that Maureen Dowd is throwing another tantrum~~something about the author’s views of the pope–namely that she despises him. She isn’t asserting that, though. She doesn’t come out and say "I despise the pope."

Instead, what she’s doing is asserting (what she perceives to be) facts in hopes that you will come to share her view of the pope. Her assertions are all about details regarding the pope: his age, his theological outlook, his resume, and his boyhood affiliations. None of these is an assertion offering a bottom-line assessment of the personal character of the pope. None of them says "The pope is a despicable individual." That’s a view that Mizz Dowd holds and that she wants us to adopt, but it’s an assumption that she’s making as she describes the pope, not something she asserts. It’s assumed. Not asserted.

It is possible in a text for everything that is asserted to be true even though the author’s assumptions are not true.

Suppose, for example, that Tantrum Queen had instead written that the pope is "a 78-year-old I regard as a hidebound archconservative and who ran the office that used to be called the Universal Inquisition and who once belonged to the Hitler Youth."

In this case, all of the assertions would be true. Some of them would be grossly unfair. (What does it matter what the CDF used to be called for purposes of evaluating the person of Benedict XVI? And why no mention of the fact that membership in the Hitler Youth was compulsory at the time and that the young Ratzinger went to great lengths to avoid attending its meetings?) But they at least would all be true.

The author’s assumption that the pope is a despicable man would still, however, be false.

So it’s possible for an author’s assertions to be true even though her assumptions may be false.

Now let’s flip this into the biblical sphere.

God has vouched for certain things regarding Scripture. Among these is that everything asserted by the sacred author is true. He has not, however, vounched for everything believed by the biblical author.

For example. Suppose that St. Paul believed that Julius Caesar was a bad man.

God doesn’t vouch for that.

St. Paul never in his writings asserts that Julius Caesar was a bad man. Indeed, he never even mentions Julius Caesar. The divine inspiration of Sacred Scripture thus in no way means that God vouches for St. Paul’s personal assessment of Julius Caesar.

This is a case where the belief of the sacred author is remote from the text of Scripture since Julius Caesar is never even mentioned in St. Paul’s writings. (Jules died years before Christ was even born.) But the same would be true of assumptions of St. Paul that are much closer to the text.

F’rinstance: There are a number of passages that make it look like the apostle Paul may have assumed (at certain phases of his career) that the world would be ending in (his) near future. God eventually revealed that this was not the case (Revelation 20 provides for at least a thousand year period before the end of the world), but one can look at certain passages in Paul and think that he may have assumed it.

That’s okay.

God doesn’t vouch for the assumptions of the biblical author, only his assertions. (Though I would point out that the same passages have alternative interpretations that do not require a nearby end for the world.)

S’ppose that I had the ability to magically make someone always tell the truth when he makes an assertion (sorta like in thet thar film Liar, Liar). S’ppose that this individual also happened to harbor the belief that the next time it rains it means that the pope is about to issue an encyclical. One day the individual rushes in and tells me, "It’s raining! It’s raining!"

Since he’s under a truth spell, I’m quite confident that it is, indeed, raining.

But since the truth spell only protects his assertions, not his assumptions, I’m not at all persuaded that the pope is about to issue an encyclical (however much he may be persuaded of this).

This is how it is with Scripture: God protects and vouches for the assertions of the sacred authors, but not their assumptions.

To bring this full circle (pun intended!) to flat earthism, there are three things to note regarding the verses in the Bible that one might take as suggesting this:

These verses may have been using figures of speech (like "roll out the red carpet"). Specifically: They may have been using a figure of speech known as "phenomenological language," which involves describing things according to their appearances (e.g., "The sun rises in the morning and sets in the evening"). Since the earth appears flat from the perspective of a normal person standing on its surface, one can speak using phenomenological language as if it is flat, even though one knows it is really (largely) spherical.
The ancients were more sophisticated than we tend to think today. Many people in the ancient world knew that the earth was round. Other at least suspected it. In view of this, we shouldn’t be too quick to read their statements that might suggest a flat shape for the earth as being meant as assertions. Even if they were not personally convinced of a spherical shape for the earth, they may well have heard of the idea or at least have had doubts in their minds regarding flatness. They may, thus, have meant their statements as going along with a conventional mode of speech even though they did not meant to assert it literalistically (the way that we go along with speaking of "sunrise" and "sunset" without meaning that the sun literalistically moves around the earth).
Some (or all) of the biblical authors may have assumed that the earth is flat. Fine! God doesn’t vouch for their assumptions, only their assertions. One has to draw the line somewhere, and that is where God drew it.

I’d also add one other point: To my knowledge, the argument that the biblical authors assumed a flat earth view is remarkably weak. As I mentioned above, I can’t think of any texts that clearly assume this. There are certain texts that could be construed that way, but quite implausibly as far as I can tell. I therefore would encourage you to e-mail me with specific references.

Thanks, and God bless!

Tidbits From Allen & George

John Allen, the Rome correspondent for <anathema>National Catholic Reporter</anathema>, is a surprisingly good journalist given the publication he writes for. He recently published a column with a number of insightful things to say and a number of interesting stories derived from Cardinal George.

EXCERPTS:

Two days before the opening of the conclave that elected Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Francis George of Chicago had a conversation with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, then head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, about the American sex abuse norms, arguing that the norms should be maintained more or less as is.

George asked if Ratzinger, whose office is charged with processing sex abuse cases, had any questions. Ratzinger, according to George on April 20, showed “a good grasp of the situation.”

Forty-eight hours later, Ratzinger was the pope. As George kissed his hand, Pope Benedict XVI told him in English that he remembered the conversation the two men had, and would attend to it.

The story is a telling example for those seeking to discern the subtleties that could mark potential contrasts between the pontificate of John Paul II and that of Benedict XVI, who was the late pope’s most loyal lieutenant and yet still very much his own man.

That episode captures an important contrast between the two. In a similar situation, John Paul II, whose passion for travel and dialogue and acting as a global moral authority sometimes meant a certain neglect of internal administration, would likely have passed such a detailed matter to an aide. Benedict XVI, on the other hand, said he’d take care of it himself.

* * *

“In 1978, when Karol Wojtyla was elected as Pope John Paul II, the primary challenge to the church came from the East, in the form of Soviet Communism,” George said. “Today the most difficult challenges come from the West, and Benedict XVI is a man who comes from the West, who understands the history and the culture of the West.”

Ratzinger’s clarion call to resist a Western “dictatorship of relativism” could be likened to John Paul II’s struggle against the Marxist dictatorships of Eastern Europe. If resistance to the Soviets was the defining feature of at least the early stages of the Wojtyla papacy, perhaps resistance to relativism will be the lodestar of Ratzinger’s.

“There was a fault line in the Soviet empire that brought it down, that the concern for social justice was corrupted by the suppression of freedom,” George said. “In the West, there’s also a fault line between concern for personal freedom and the abandonment of objective truth.” George said that both contradictions “are not sustainable in the long run.”

* * *

George said the new pope offered a kind of exegesis of his choice [of the name Benedict] to the cardinals inside the conclave.

“Benedict,” George recalled Ratzinger explaining, is in the first place a reference to St. Benedict, who founded European monasticism at a time when the Roman empire was collapsing, and the church helped preserve human culture and thought. Second, however, the name is also a reference to Benedict XV, the last pope to hold it, who strove for peace in a time of war.

GET THE STORY.

Tidbits From Allen & George

EXCERPTS:

Two days before the opening of the conclave that elected Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Francis George of Chicago had a conversation with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, then head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, about the American sex abuse norms, arguing that the norms should be maintained more or less as is.

George asked if Ratzinger, whose office is charged with processing sex abuse cases, had any questions. Ratzinger, according to George on April 20, showed “a good grasp of the situation.”

Forty-eight hours later, Ratzinger was the pope. As George kissed his hand, Pope Benedict XVI told him in English that he remembered the conversation the two men had, and would attend to it.

The story is a telling example for those seeking to discern the subtleties that could mark potential contrasts between the pontificate of John Paul II and that of Benedict XVI, who was the late pope’s most loyal lieutenant and yet still very much his own man.

That episode captures an important contrast between the two. In a similar situation, John Paul II, whose passion for travel and dialogue and acting as a global moral authority sometimes meant a certain neglect of internal administration, would likely have passed such a detailed matter to an aide. Benedict XVI, on the other hand, said he’d take care of it himself.

* * *

“In 1978, when Karol Wojtyla was elected as Pope John Paul II, the primary challenge to the church came from the East, in the form of Soviet Communism,” George said. “Today the most difficult challenges come from the West, and Benedict XVI is a man who comes from the West, who understands the history and the culture of the West.”

Ratzinger’s clarion call to resist a Western “dictatorship of relativism” could be likened to John Paul II’s struggle against the Marxist dictatorships of Eastern Europe. If resistance to the Soviets was the defining feature of at least the early stages of the Wojtyla papacy, perhaps resistance to relativism will be the lodestar of Ratzinger’s.

“There was a fault line in the Soviet empire that brought it down, that the concern for social justice was corrupted by the suppression of freedom,” George said. “In the West, there’s also a fault line between concern for personal freedom and the abandonment of objective truth.” George said that both contradictions “are not sustainable in the long run.”

* * *

George said the new pope offered a kind of exegesis of his choice [of the name Benedict] to the cardinals inside the conclave.

“Benedict,” George recalled Ratzinger explaining, is in the first place a reference to St. Benedict, who founded European monasticism at a time when the Roman empire was collapsing, and the church helped preserve human culture and thought. Second, however, the name is also a reference to Benedict XV, the last pope to hold it, who strove for peace in a time of war.

GET THE STORY.

Inside The Conclave

Secrecy oaths, like rules in general, seem mean something different to Europeans than to Americans.

Take, f’rinstance the secrecy oaths taken by cardinals and others involved in the recent conclave.

Every time there’s a conclave, details invariably leak out afterwards. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the authentic from the bogus in the stories that are told, but this time I think we’re getting a pretty clear picture of what happened.

Time Magazine has a startlingly detailed account that appears to have multiple sources.

EXCERPTS:

[T]he second balloting saw Ratzinger reach 60 votes. By the third, he was just shy of the 77 required for the papacy. By the fourth, he had won 95 out of 115.

In the Sistine Chapel, as the tally went over the required two-thirds, "there was a gasp all around," Cormac Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor of Britain recalled in a press conference. Ratzinger, he said, "had his head down. He must have been saying a prayer." When Jorge Cardinal Arturo Medina Estevez—who would announce the election to the world from the balcony of St. Peter’s—asked Ratzinger what name he would assume, the Pontiff-elect did not hesitate. "In the past, there’s been a wait while the new Pope pondered the question for 10 minutes or so," says an informed source. "Not so this time. Ratzinger replied right away, ‘Benedict XVI.’ He was prepared."

GET THE STORY.

New Star Wars TV

For some time there has been talk that George Lucas was thinking about a live-action Star Wars program.

He is.

The series is still a ways off, but Lucas has confirmed that it’s being planned. The series would be set between episodes III and IV and, he says, be similar in tone to the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. Like the latter series, the scripts for the first season would all be written in advance. It also would focus on previously minor characters in the Star Wars universe, leaving the actions of the big dogs to the big screen. (Though we might get an occasional Darth Vader or emperor cameo, I s’ppose.)

Lucas is also planning an animated series, this time using computer-generated animation. It also would be set between Eps III and IV.

GET THE STORY.

(CHT to the reader who e-mailed!)

Righteous Non-Gentiles

Jewish tradition recognizes the category of "righteous gentiles"–that is, a person who are not Jewish but who nevertheless are doing good in the world.

Allow me to introduce you to a group of righteous non-gentiles. That is, they are Jewish and, while they do not share the Christian faith, they are definitely out to do good in the world.

The group is JAACD: Jews Against Anti-Christian Defamation.

EXCERPTS:

"Members span the spectrum from Orthodox to secular, but are united in their determination to support our beleaguered brothers and sisters in the Christian community," a statement from the organization said.

"What I consider an epidemic of anti-Christian bigotry and persecution is something that has concerned me for a long time," Feder told WND.

Feder says about a year ago he decided there should be a distinctly Jewish organization dealing with anti-Christian prejudice, which he considers a "political pogrom."

"If a Jewish organization complains about these things," he explained, "no one can accuse us of self-interest, because we’re not Christians; we’re Jews."

Added Feder: "The fate of America hinges on whether or not Christians – I mean authentic Christians – succeed in the political arena."

Others involved with the group include: David Horowitz (Center for the Study of Popular Culture), Morton Klein (Zionist Organization of America), Herb London (Hudson Institute), Bruce Herschensohn (professor, Pepperdine University), Rabbi Daniel Lapin (Toward Tradition), syndicated talk-show host Michael Medved, Rabbi Jacob Neusner (professor, Bard College) and comedian Jackie Mason.

Feder also makes a great point:

The organization’s founder ridiculed the notion that religious Americans want the nation ruled by a theocracy.

"It’s just absurd," Feder said. "If what the left is talking about constitutes a theocracy, then America was a theocracy in 1961.

"American had school prayer, in many states there was Bible reading in the schools, public display of religious symbols, abortion was outlawed except in rare instances, if anyone talked about same-sex marriage they would have been met with derisive laughter," he noted. "I was alive in 1961; if we were a theocracy then, somehow I missed it."

GET THE STORY.

(CHT to the reader who e-mailed!)

A Pope By Any Other Name?

Pope Benedict XVI has now publicly explained why he took the name he did. As many anticipated, it includes a reference to St. Benedict. This was something that came home to me listening to Salt of the Earth because it contains a passage in which then-Cardinal Ratzinger refers to St. Benedict as having done something small that nobody noticed at the time that then proved to be the ark that saved western civilization.

I said to myself: "That’s what he’s hoping his papacy will do: Set the stage for the survival of western civilization and the faith in Europe against the dictatorship of relativism."

EXCERPT:

"I wish to speak of the name I chose on becoming bishop of Rome and pastor of the universal Church. I chose to call myself Benedict XVI ideally as a link to the venerated Pontiff, Benedict XV, who guided the Church through the turbulent times of the First World War. He was a true and courageous prophet of peace who struggled strenuously and bravely, first to avoid the drama of war and then to limit its terrible consequences. In his footsteps I place my ministry, in the service of reconciliation and harmony between peoples, profoundly convinced that the great good of peace is above all a gift of God, a fragile and precious gift to be invoked, safeguarded and constructed, day after day and with everyone’s contribution.

"The name Benedict also evokes the extraordinary figure of the great ‘patriarch of western monasticism,’ St. Benedict of Norcia, co-patron of Europe with Cyril and Methodius. The progressive expansion of the Benedictine Order which he founded exercised an enormous influence on the spread of Christianity throughout the European continent. For this reason, St. Benedict is much venerated in Germany, and especially in Bavaria, my own land of origin; he constitutes a fundamental point of reference for the unity of Europe and a powerful call to the irrefutable Christian roots of European culture and civilization."

GET THE STORY.

Download Bleg

Folks,

I’m looking for a download manager that has the following characteristics:

It works with Windows XP.
It ain’t got spyware,
It’s preferably free (or just cheap, if necessary),
It will download a page and all the pages linked from that page in the same domain.

F’rinstance:

Suppose I want to download a particular page and all 1,564 links found on that page (there is such a page at present). What would I use?

Advice appreciated!

Ad Simplicium Circa Scripturas

Ed Peters writes:

Jimmy, I’m a simple man, talk to me as you would to a simpleton, and tell me, A) the basic canon of Scripture is closed (pace finding better versions of accepted texts) or B) the canon is NOT closed, or C) we don’t know.

Following which, Quasimodo writes:

The Jimmy of Akin,
The Quasimodo asks the same question as the Ed Peters. Quasimodo thought Trent (and Florence?) closed the canon. Infallibly. No?

Following which, Adam D writes:

Um, Ed Peters is a simpleton? Okay, I’m a downright babbling idiot. Don’t even bother trying to explain anything to me, Jimmy. I won’t understand it.

(I mean seriously, Ed P? A simpleton? 🙂

RESPONSES:

To Ed:

Since Aquinas wrote the Summa Theologiae with simplicity in mind, and since he included many distinctions in it, let me begin with a distinction.

First, we must distinguish between whether the canon has been closed by God and whether it has been closed by the Church.

Regarding whether the canon has been closed by God, I answer that it has. This seems evident from what would be meant by a divine "closing" of the canon–that is, a cessation of the writing of new books of public revelation to be collected by the Church in her Bibles. Since the Church has established (see the Catechism on this point) that the era of public revelation is over until the Second Coming, it would seem that there are to be no new books of public revelation written and thus no new books can be composed for inclusion by the Church in her Bibles. The canon is thus closed from God’s perspective.

This does not, however, guarantee that we currently have in our possession all books of public revelation that God has previously inspired.

In regard to whether the canon has been closed by the Church, this question would seem to resolve to whether the Church has defined a particular list of books for inclusion in its Bibles that is incapable of further admission, even if new books of apostolic origin and/or divine inspiration were to be discovered.

To answer this question, we must introduce a second distinction: Whether the matter has been infallibly decided by the extraordinary Magisterium of the Church and whether it has been decided infallibly by the ordinary Magisterium of the Church.

To answer the first question, we must look at the texts where the Church has infallibly addressed the question of the canon.

The first such text seems to be found in the Bull of Union with the Copts (Session 11) of the Council of Florence, which says:

It [the holy Roman church] professes that one and the same God is the author of the old and the new Testament — that is, the law and the prophets, and the gospel — since the saints of both testaments spoke under the inspiration of the same Spirit. It accepts and venerates their books, whose titles are as follows.

This establishes that certain books (the ones named) are accepted and venerated by the Church as Scripture at the books of the Old and New Testament. However, there are two difficulties with regarding this as an irreformably exclusive list:

The text is of debatable infallibility since it does not use terms like "define" or "anathema." (It is a decree of an ecumenical council imposed on a people as a condition for unity with the Roman church, but it does not use the language the Church has elsewhere used to trigger infallibility.)
Even granting that the text is infallibly, every infallible utterance must be interpreted strictly regarding what question is being decided, and in this case it would seem that the question would be "What books–of those currently known–belong to the Old Testament and the New Testament?" It does not appear that the questio was "What books–of those currently known or ever to be discovered in the future–belong to the Old and the New Testament?" Since the latter question was not addressed, it does not preclude a futurely-discovered book from belonging to the New Testament.

Thus this decree does not seem to represent a closing of the canon by the Church.

The second text is the Decree concerning the Canonical Scriptures by the Council of Trent, which states:

Following, then, the examples of the orthodox Fathers, it [the Council of Trent] receives and venerates with a feeling of piety and reverence all the books both of the Old and New Testaments, since one God is the author of both; . . .

It has thought it proper, moreover, to insert in this decree a list of the sacred books, lest a doubt might arise in the mind of someone as to which are the books received by this council.

They are the following:

<SNIP>

If anyone does not accept as sacred and canonical the aforesaid books in their entirety and with all their parts, as they have been accustomed to be read in the Catholic Church and as they are contained in the old Latin Vulgate Edition, and knowingly and deliberately rejects the aforesaid traditions, let him be anathema.

From this it is seen that the Council of Trent "accept[ed] as sacred and canonical" certain books without saying anything one way or the other regarding additional books. Thus it did not close the canon in the sense of excluding any future books from acceptance as sacred and canonical.

Since these seem to be the two instances on which one can argue (plausibly in the first case, certainly in the second case) the extraordinary Magisterium of the Church has dealt with the canon in an infallible manner, it would seem that the extraordianry Magisterium of the Church has not closed the canon.

This leaves us with the issue of whether the ordinary Magisterium of the Church has settled the question. In this regard, while it appears that there are enormous reasons why the Church would never add anything to the canon at this date, it nevertheless appears that the ordinary Magisterium of the Church has not entertained the question of what would happen if an unknown apostlic book were discovered.

Since no matters are infallibly defined that have not been entertained, it would seem that it has not been defined that a newly discovered apostolic book could not be included in the canon. Hypothetically, therefore, it could be included, despite the overwhelmingly unlikelihood of this.

It thus would seem that the canon remains theoretically open on the supposition of the discovery of an unknown apostolic book.

Since we do not have (and are overwhelmingly unlikely to ever have) a previously unknown book of demonstrably apostolic origin, we are unlikely to find ourselves in the above situation. In the absence of that circumstance, we must regard the canon as practically closed. The Church considered numerous works purporting apostolic origin and found them lacking. They are thus not to be considered canonical.

Thus all known extra-canonical works are to be regarded as non-canonical: Those that were known in antiquity are to be regarded as non-canonical on the grounds of rejection by the Magisterium, and those written after the apostolic age (e.g., Joseph Smith’s forgeries) are to be regarded as non-canonical on the grounds that public revelation is closed.

Works that were written in the first century (before the ban on public revelation) and that were lost before the Church began to pronounce on the canon could theoretically be included given what the Magisterium has thus far determined, but practically they could not.

To Quasimodo:

The Quadimodo has obviously been paying attention to the rules regarding the use of the definite article in the New Testament Greek. Therefore, the kudos to the Quasimodo regarding the use of "the"!

To Adam D:

We are all simpletons (Latin, simplicii) here. Now, if you can get the real Benedict XVI (and not a combox faker) to participate in the blog, we’ll have to revise that.

Till then, we’re all just folks.

Got it? ;-D

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