This short post appeals implicitly to the arguments of earlier posts, here and here.
Recent protests around the country reveal something interesting about homosexual values—homosexual axiology. The pronounced premise of the homosexual agenda is a desire for equality. But the concept of equality is far too vague to be valued in and of itself. No one, for instance, believes a victim of rape and a rapist should receive equal consequences for the event which defines them in this example. Such equality would be repugnant to every appreciable set of values. That kind of distinction is what makes equality of opportunity different from equality of distribution, by the way.
But for this point, the equality proposed by those pushing the homosexual agenda is supposed to be about civil rights. But such a claim can only be defended meaningfully if Read the rest of this entry »
This post concludes the first difficulty of denying the reality of free will. That first difficulty is that it underestimates the nature and power of God. 2.1.2.2 Even explaining God’s foreknowledge while accepting free will is too great a limit on God. Using God’s foreknowledge of possibilities as a means of explaining freedom while maintaining God’s control of events misses the significance of freedom (Molinism’s failure regarding the significance of human freedom is not the point of this paper, but it can be mentioned briefly. Creating layers between God’s knowledge and the actions of his creatures in the future does not eliminate the apparent problem for freedom foreknowledge forces. That is, if God knowing the activity of a person means she does not have an option, then God knowing what she will do in every possible circumstance still does not leave her a genuine option since God knows which world [and therefore which circumstances] He will actualize. That is, God actualizing only the circumstances which will produce a certain choice makes her choice no freer than the compatiblist’s subject, although her determination is buried one layer deeper) and inappropriately attempts to explain the knowledge of God. The question is how God could Read the rest of this entry »
A listener sent me the following story the day after I interacted with a caller about how abortion could be wrong even in cases of rape. There are many issues to be covered under that heading, but this letter touches on the key ones:
…
I just wanted to say that I am so pleased to read your stance on abortion in the case of rape. My mother was a 14-year-old girl who was raped, and she tried to have an abortion. The only reason I am alive today is because the doctor miscalculated her due date and thought she was too far in the pregnancy to have the abortion, when in reality he was a month off (this actually happened twice). It pains me every time I hear even die hard pro-lifers say “except in the case of rape”. I know it is traumatizing for a girl or woman that is raped to have to carry a child, but it is no more traumatizing than someone who gets shot during a violent attack and has to deal with those wounds. Counseling and therapy can help heal the trauma, but the trauma will be there whether she has the abortion or not, and the abortion could even make it worse. It has caused me so much anxiety over the years to think that many pro-lifers would have approved of my mother’s abortion. By the way, she gave me up for adoption, and my adoptive parents were never able to have children. Thank you so much for this wonderful view against abortion even in the case of rape.
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The letter was from Christopher __________ from Vernon, who found the story and shared it with us from the website, abort73.com. Warning: It’s a pretty graphic site.
Penna Dexter interviewed Jill Stanek on Live from Criswell today. She held living little babies discarded after abortion procedures–some for more than eight hours. She said she could not bear the thought of those little babies being left alone for hours while they were dying. Unconscionably, Barak Obama’s consistent support of the pro-choice movement leads him to believe that requiring life-giving care for such infants would endanger the standing of Roe v Wade. He is right. And he is oh so contemptibly wrong.
If thou forbear to deliver them that are drawn unto death, and those that are ready to be slain;
If thou sayest, Behold, we knew it not; doth not he that pondereth the heart consider it? and he that keepeth thy soul, doth not he know it? and shall not he render to every man according to his works?
In the Fall 2008 CTR, Stanley Hauerwas defends his pacifism. The following is simply a section-by-section and sometimes paragraph-by-paragraph response as I read the work. His sections are on the idealism of realism, the nation (or war) as church, and pacifism as realism.
“The Idealism of Realism”
Paragraph 1: Hauerwas claims that critics of pacifism rely on realism to make their claim. But actually, what’s wrong with pacifism is not that it is not realistic, even though I agree that it is not. The fact that something doesn’t work means only that it doesn’t work, not that it is wrong. What’s wrong with Pacifism is Read the rest of this entry »
2.1.2.1.3 The significance of contingency and revelation are directly proportional.
This post does not argue that revelation would have to be unimportant if determinism were true, but rather that the more likely indeterminacy and contingency are, the more fundamentally important special revelation is. It is a point which emerges from the freedom of God and leads then inevitably to the responsibility of people to respond to submit to the revelation. The fact that the universe could be otherwise, its contingency, is what makes revelation so essential. There are a couple of different means by which humanity can discern truth: reason and revelation. By reason (which is really just an aspect of general revelation) people discern what is necessarily true. (At the conclusion of this post it is implicit that “necessarily” only means something is necessary subsequent to God’s choice to make it so.) But truth which cannot be known by reason alone—what is not necessarily so, but only contingently so—people can know only Read the rest of this entry »
The closer an election, the greater the shallow promises intended to convince a few more voters toward one side or the other. Since by definition the majority of people are not wealthy, many of those shallow promises are aimed at the middle class and lower. “We will not raise taxes (or we will lower taxes) for anyone making less than $xxxx.” But promises are not the only way to win a middle-class heart. There are also attacks on a minority, in this case the wicked people who make more money than they do. “Greedy corporate executives have abused the free market and they ought to be punished.” Never mind that it is not greed, but the success at acting on their greed which actually aggravates the critic’s audience. That is, there is no political bounty to be had by attacking those who are greedy but fail to gain wealth through it: only those whose greed brings them wealth face the criticism, revealing the hypocrisy of a criticism motivated more by its disdain for wealth (or even profit) than for greed.
But back to the point: even a cursory analysis of those attacks extrudes Read the rest of this entry »
This post continues the series begun here, the to-date-compilation of which is available here. 2.1.2.1.2 That God repents is evidence that God makes things the best, not that He must simply act within some externally defined best. Even accepting the mistaken idea that there are a finite number of possibilities (too great a limit on God) there is still no reason to believe that there cannot be a plurality of morally equivalent possibilities. The scriptural use of “repentance” in reference to God makes the point. Reducing repentance to relenting neither addresses the problem nor deals fairly with the vocabulary—no one has a problem using the same word to mean repentance when it concerns humans. Is it not the case that every time God has mercy it is because He has repented? His pronouncement of judgment is not false. His mercy is real because the condemnation of the guilty is real and that guilty soul’s future without God is as really condemned as any future can be real. His act of mercy then overturns His pronouncement of judgment—which is why it is mercy. It is not necessity. If it were necessity, then His mercy Read the rest of this entry »
What seems like a contradiction in terms is actually a handy tool for analyzing almost everything people do, whether in isolation, in relationships, in society in general, or as a political body. The mechanism which produces the “problem with solutions” can be described behaviorally and seen in action everywhere. A quick look at ethics will produce the realization that there is a problem with such behavioral solutions. And finally, it needs to be made clear that Christian teachings oppose such behavior. The mechanism which produces the problem:
Behaviorism is hardly a Christian enterprise. The doctrine Read the rest of this entry »
Using God’s foreknowledge of possibilities as a means of explaining freedom while maintaining God’s control of events misses the significance of freedom (Molinism’s failure regarding the significance of human freedom is not the point of this paper, but it can be mentioned briefly. Creating layers between God’s knowledge and the actions of his creatures in the future does not eliminate the apparent problem for freedom foreknowledge forces. That is, if God knowing the activity of a person means she does not have an option, then God knowing what she will do in every possible circumstance still does not leave her a genuine option since God knows which world [and therefore which circumstances] He will actualize. That is, God actualizing only the circumstances which will produce a certain choice makes her choice no freer than the compatiblist’s subject, although her determination is buried one layer deeper) and inappropriately attempts to explain the knowledge of God. The question is how God could 
A listener sent me the following story the day after I interacted with a caller about how abortion could be wrong even in cases of rape. There are many issues to be covered under that heading, but this letter touches on the key ones:
The closer an election, the greater the shallow promises intended to convince a few more voters toward one side or the other. Since by definition the majority of people are not wealthy, many of those shallow promises are aimed at the middle class and lower. “We will not raise taxes (or we will lower taxes) for anyone making less than $xxxx.” But promises are not the only way to win a middle-class heart. There are also attacks on a minority, in this case the wicked people who make more money than they do. “Greedy corporate executives have abused the free market and they ought to be punished.” Never mind that it is not greed, but the success at acting on their greed which actually aggravates the critic’s audience. That is, there is no political bounty to be had by attacking those who are greedy but fail to gain wealth through it: only those whose greed brings them wealth face the criticism, revealing the hypocrisy of a criticism motivated more by its disdain for wealth (or even profit) than for greed.
What seems like a contradiction in terms is actually a handy tool for analyzing almost everything people do, whether in isolation, in relationships, in society in general, or as a political body. The mechanism which produces the “problem with solutions” can be described behaviorally and seen in action everywhere. A quick look at ethics will produce the realization that there is a problem with such behavioral solutions. And finally, it needs to be made clear that Christian teachings oppose such behavior.
