What’s Wrong with the World

In case it seems that I'm not being Christmasy enough, in actual fact I've gotten pulled into quite a bit of conversation about the Virgin Birth. I've just started a Youtube series about the Virgin Birth, and the first video of that is out, here. Please consider subscribing to my Youtube channel and hitting the bell so that you get notifications.

Recording on it may be somewhat slow, though, because I've agreed to a debate on the Virgin Birth and infancy narratives (I usually refuse debates), which will be recorded on December 11. Plus I'm indexing The Eye of the Beholder--a huge and rather boring task. I did an interview yesterday about some objections to the birth narratives. That link is here.

Triablogue has a roundup of some great resources on the veracity of the infancy accounts and the Virgin Birth. See that link roundup here. Jason Engwer has done some stalwart work there. Theological blogger Steve Hays of Triablogue passed away from cancer during 2020. He was a great soldier for the faith.

So a blessed Advent to everyone, and if you don't hear from me again for a while, a Merry Christmas.

By the way, I heard a new Gospel Christmas song on the radio yesterday that Mr. Google does not seem to know about. It was mostly about the lost sheep. Here, from memory, are a few fragments of the words:

"Mary gave birth to light." "...the darkness we mistook for the light."

Chorus

O what love the Good Shepherd has shown
To leave the ninety and nine
To go back for that one sheep, lost and alone.
I'm the one he came back to find.

With very little eloquence, here is a Rockwell painting whose title mentions "freedom" and that shows family members gathering to celebrate a holiday--neither of these a thing that one would have thought either political or controversial exactly one year ago.

Blessings for Thanksgiving to anyone who reads this, especially faithful readers. May God grant us all strength today and in the coming months and years, both to do His will and to remain thankful for what we have.

Here's one small piece of "worldly" good news today.

Herewith more scarcely-edited musings:

It should go without saying that election fraud is a bad thing and should be prosecuted, even if it doesn't change the result of the election. Suppose (which doesn't seem unreasonable) that the election fraud that has occurred this time around hasn't changed the outcome. Nonetheless, if it goes unprosecuted it may change the result in another year with a closer contest. Emboldened, bad actors will do even more.

The enablement by the media has been absolutely appalling and blatantly partisan. Bullying whistleblowers (such as the postal worker) and demonizing everyone who takes allegations seriously, together with an unspoken but all-too-real political double standard, sends a message.

Continue reading "Wackadoodle theories, the election, and the death of the republic" »

Here (verbatim) is what I just posted on Facebook:

It is a surreal experience re-reading Whittaker Chambers's book Witness in 2020 while watching, by sign after sign, the loss of our free republic. Chambers, after his break with Communism, was a true and intense American patriot. Though a painfully shy and intensely private man, Chambers believed that it was God's purpose that he subject himself to ridicule, calumny, and hatred, not to mention the public exposure of his own sins, both personal and national, in an attempt to waken the nation from its complacent slumber and save the republic for future generations. Witness testifies to the overwhelming pain that his testimony in late 1948 and early 1949 cost him. When one knows more of the story, not mentioned in the book, one sees this even more clearly--namely, that Chambers had to confess in his testimony to having been bisexual during his time as a Communist spy and to having had homosexual trysts, which (he said) he completely turned away from after his religious conversion and break with Communism. This moral admission was ruthlessly used against him as part of a campaign to portray him as mentally unstable in order to discredit his testimony to the Communist conspiracy of which he had been a part.

All of this he endured, to the breaking point of pressure (he attempted suicide once during the case) and beyond, because of his love for our country and his desire that it should continue to exist in peace and freedom.

Continue reading "Witness and the crisis of the American Republic" »

In an odd way, it would be delightful and refreshing if, at this juncture, it had become necessary to unqualifiedly defend Pope Francis from some unqualifiedly unwarranted attack by liberals / leftists / revolutionaries / heretics. Delightful because it would imply that the pope had said something that unqualifiedly upset them. What actually happened, though, requires a great deal of qualification.

Apparently a documentary is being released in which the pope gave the following comments:

“Homosexuals have a right to be a part of the family. They’re children of God and have a right to a family. Nobody should be thrown out, or be made miserable because of it,” Pope Francis said in the film, of his approach to pastoral care. After those remarks, and in comments likely to spark controversy among Catholics, Pope Francis weighed in directly on the issue of civil unions for same-sex couples. “What we have to create is a civil union law. That way they are legally covered,” the pope said. “I stood up for that.”

Before we get too immersed in making waves about these sentiments, we need to introduce a whole cargo ship of distinctions, clarifications, and interjectory notes.

(1) First, although this is in a documentary about the pope, it is not a straight up interview OF the pope. Not everything in the documentary is simply Pope Francis speaking before the camera for this documentary. They pulled from other, pre-existing material. And although the pope did give them footage specifically for this documentary, not everything they put in is from that footage – in particular, these comments at issue.

This is significant, because it appears that they did some careful editing / carving to generate the 18 seconds in which those comments are made. According to long-time Catholic apologist Dave Armstrong the phrases we have are taken out of context, something not at all uncommon from the media dealing with this pope (and prior popes).

Continue reading "Defending Pope Francis from “Civil Unions” " »

I apologize for the unorganized nature of these posts, but it's the best way to get myself to do anything right now!

I've made a series of videos on the Temple cleansing in John and the Synoptic Gospels. This incident makes a good departure point for 1) understanding different ideas about reporting time, 2) understanding what these fact-changing "compositional devices" involve, 3) seeing how bad reasoning works in New Testament scholarship. I myself prefer to get my information from reading, but it seems like a lot of people like to get their info. from viewing. So here is a playlist for these videos. They begin with an introductory discussion of ways of reporting time and continue to a six-part discussion of evidence that Jesus cleansed the Temple twice.

Last evening I had a great, two-hour discussion with Youtube apologist Pastor Mike Winger. Pastor Winger has a large Youtube following, and I was really pleased to get to discuss The Mirror or the Mask in front of such a large audience. Winger "gets it." He understands the nature of the issues involved and sees through the equivocation that goes on.

And finally, on another topic...

Continue reading "Temple cleansing, new FB post, etc." »

Found dead of a suspected drug overdose on August 20th, the Nashville singer/song-writer Justin Townes Earle will be greatly missed, not least by me.

On stage he possessed a strange magnetism: striking in appearance but not really attractive, intense in manner but still shy, smoothly awkward might be the best (if slightly oxymoronic) rendering of how he performed.

In early life he had a rough go of it -- broken family, descent into hard drugs, trauma and pain. But by his late twenties he seemed to have at least partially surmounted those handicaps; and from there began recording a string of fantastic country-blues albums.

His was a unique Nashville sound. He didn’t get a lot of pop-country radio play, for reasons difficult to discern; but his talent was as evident as his musical heart was full. Check out this tune, with its upright bass and 1930s New Orleans swing feel: “What’s Goin’ Wrong.” The slow build to bring in the keyboard and sax just gets me. It includes this great line: “If there’s one thing you should never do, it’s put it past a man to be a fool.”

Conjecture on my part, but one wonders if JTE’s death counts as one of those euphemistically referred to as of “external cause.” Not CV-19, not heart attack, not diabetes: suicide and overdose. External.

What saved him from addiction and depression was the simple joy of playing good music for audiences. Most of us, I wager, can relate to the deep human warmth that flows from lively performances. That has been taken away from us, by a combination of biological pathogen and government tyranny.

When JTE played a show at Atlantic Station in ATL right after the Bulldogs lost to Alabama in the 2012 SEC Championship, there were plenty of folks with aching hearts. He warmed them.

And now we’re bereft. I’ll cling to his mournful lyrics from his 2009 song “Mama’s Eyes”:

Sure it hurts but it should hurt sometimes

__________
Photo credit: Jim Beckmann/KEXP

Here's a shortish but somewhat meaty Facebook post, referring to an old post of mine, on what evidentialism in apologetics is not and on how not to fall into the fallacy of objections. I'm testing this thing where people without FB accounts just click on the link. Here's the link.

Here are a few more posts (with links) that originally went up on Facebook. Most recent of these are on top. I'm putting the content in here, but sometimes there are comments, and I think those are visible if you click on the link, even if you don't have a FB account.

September 10

C. S. Lewis's Liar, Lunatic, or Lord trilemma argument is relevant to the prior probability of the resurrection. This is pretty cool, because it means that it is an independent reason to expect Jesus to rise from the dead. It depends upon an evaluation of Jesus' character as shown in the Gospels, not upon an evaluation of the specific claims by alleged witnesses that he rose from the dead. Of course, like the specific evidence for the resurrection, making the trilemma argument depends upon being willing to argue for the strong reliability of the Gospels. But that's something we can and should be doing.

Continue reading "Some posts from this summer, mostly on New Testament" »

Well, it's been a long nine-month year so far.

An e-mail I received yesterday tipped me off to the fact that (newflash) not everybody in the world uses Facebook, and for that reason alone it is possible that there are those who have been readers of W4 in the past who don't know where I've gone and who might be concerned. While W4 is a group blog, and while the last several posts here were actually not written by me, the fact is that I have written a lot of the content in the past. I therefore apologize for having waited so long to say anything here about why the long silence and also apologize in advance for what might seem like the rank egoism of this post on a group blog. (I did check the idea of such a post in general terms with the editor.) It's intended for those readers who might be interested in such an update.

So an update: I'm fine and healthy and among the lucky ones. I have much to give thanks for. The last six months have been psychologically difficult, though I have far less reason to be saying that than so many, many others.

It may well be that Western civilization is finally on its last legs. In fact, I fear that it is. Talk about what's wrong with the world! Here is one of the only recent posts I have written as a blog post (as opposed to posting on Facebook). In it I discuss my position on the Covid lockdowns. I also mention the horribly tragic death of pro-life warrior Mike Adams, which was a great shock and grief, though I had never been privileged to meet him, and I hint at fears that the world is more or less coming to an end.

The events of this year have to some extent had a paralyzing effect on me. I've been especially shocked and shaken by the divisions among conservatives and Christians in light of the pandemic and responses to it, just when we need to be most united. It seems imperative to me for those who serve Goodness, Truth, and Beauty, especially in their incarnate Christian form, to see the need to preserve what is good and beautiful and the extreme danger of destruction and irrecoverable harm (to individuals and groups) caused by shutting down normal life and giving up our freedoms.

I've been truly shocked by the unchecked rioting in our cities, by the wickedly supine and even pro-riot response of too many local and/or state governments, and perhaps most of all by Christians who have made excuses for the evil destruction. I knew the world was bad, but this bad? There was a feeling of impossibility about saying much of anything, especially in such a divided world, and especially on a blog called "What's Wrong With the World."

Yet if things are getting much, much darker in this world, that means it is all the more important, as the title of that post says, to "live right on." (A phrase borrowed from a novel by Wendell Berry.) It's good to be coming out of that feeling of paralysis and sensing that some good things are being accomplished. All the good will not be lost, and nothing that we do for the greatest Good, which is God, can ever finally be lost.

In the words of Our Lord: "Work, for the night cometh, when no man can work." And, "Be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world."

Despite everything, these months have been surprisingly productive for me in terms of writing and other work accomplished. The short version as to why you haven't seen me here more is that I've been working hard on various projects (such as a summer video series and my latest book manuscript) and that the majority of my posting is now being done either in the more ephemeral realm of Facebook (my profile is here) or on my erstwhile personal blog, Extra Thoughts, which has now become a repository for any "traditional" blogging that I do and also for an archive of a lot of past posts.

Continue reading "It's been a long year already: My blogging update" »

The virus came down like the wolf on the fold
And his proteins were gleaming in purple and gold

Having all made ourselves epidemiologists and biochemists, combined with virulogists and supply-chain experts, I propose that we undertake a retrospective of what has happened in the last 3 months.

Continue reading "91-Divoc" »

If we reflect upon the attributes of God, surely among the most astounding (though one trembles to undertake some hierarchy of the ineffable) must be the Incarnation. That God might don the flesh and dwell with us, truly as man and not some facsimile or intricate illusion, amounts to the kind of paradox that can only come to seem pedestrian precisely because it did happen. Even many who reject it are nevertheless resigned to it. We might almost say the triumph of Christianity lies in the persistent indifference to its central doctrine.

Ho hum, another Christmas. Ho hum, another Good Friday. Ho hum, another Easter.

But when Pilate pronounced those two Latin words — “Ecce homo” — he shook the foundations of the world. Probably he meant it as a sneer, a last mean insult after appalling abuse and mockery. Or possibly his cynicism subsided for a moment, replaced by a weary remnant or fleeting flash of pity. (Do we see something similar when, as recorded by St. Matthew, Pilate tells the priests and Pharisees to detail their own blasted guard for the tomb — cynicism or conscience?)

In any case, this phrase in this context, “behold the man,” contemplated in full, discloses unplumbable depths. Pair it with Christ’s words in answer to the Incredulity of St. Thomas — “behold my hands” — and we encounter again the incarnate reality, the bodily fact, of the Son of Man; stricken, afflicted, accursed; and then risen, radiant, triumphant. We behold our Lord and Savior.

The word appears nearly thirty times in the Apocalypse of St. John. “Behold, I have set before you the open door.” “Behold, I stand at the door and knock.” “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man.” “Behold, I am making all things new.” “Behold, I am coming soon, bringing my recompense with me.”

+++++

But whatever this is, it is no ho hum Easter, is it? In obedience another prophetic text in Scripture — “seek the welfare of the city” — we are prevented this Easter from beholding one another, from beholding the Body of Christ gathered, except by means of attenuating technology. Mistake me not: we bless the Lord for that technology! Had this plague struck even a decade ago, how much greater and more trying would have been the isolation. Still, we celebrate today under an unnatural attenuation: the isolation is real and aching. The Lord’s Supper remains for most of us in abeyance. We wonder how long before the right hand of fellowship might be extended again without trepidation, how long before the voices of many families, rather than a single family, might join to sing our beloved hymns of praise.

But we may still behold our Lord. And the empty tomb He left behind.

Disinclined to suffer the cynical reassurance that the virus “only kills the elderly,” which so often manifests itself as “devil take the hindmost” -- even if the hindmost here include, for example, our dwindling numbers of Second World War veterans -- I’ll confine myself to lamenting the loss to the virus of one elderly and immunocompromised man, John Prine; and lamenting also that we have no means to visit “sweet revenge, sweet revenge, without fail,” on Covid-19.

Resqueiscat in pace.

One of the perennial questions – though considered somewhat lightweight – is whether, had there never been sin in the world, would money have come into existence as part of the world of commerce? I admit that it may seem of small moment, given that sin DID occur, and that for several thousand years now we have seen money as not only an item of temptation but even in some sense a core facet of the sin of greed. Yet I think that answering this question helps put economic principles into a clearer light, and for this reason it is not wholly trivial.

I will be working with the Catholic understanding of the state Adam and Even enjoyed in the Garden of Eden, which may have a few small differences from how most other Christians view the matter. In that understanding, Adam and Even enjoyed what we call “original justice”, which entails a special set of gifts over and above the basic and all-important one of sanctifying grace (which is the indwelling of God Himself in the soul as its enlivening principle of spiritual life). The most important gifts in original justice show up in the fact that with their human wills being conformed perfectly to love of God through grace, so also their other faculties – including the appetible faculties and emotions – were subject to reason and will so that they were obediential rather than disruptive: they would feel hunger when and to the extent it was reasonable to feel hunger. One consequence is the immortality they were endowed with: with the body subject to the will, and the will corresponding to God, they were not subject to illness or death. This freedom from illness was (so far as I understand the teaching) extended to the external world as also freedom from intrusive events that would have been gravely troublesome, such as fatal earthquakes, floods, fires, etc.

Continue reading "Money in the Garden of Eden?" »

Reprinted by permission from Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College.

American society today is divided by party and by ideology in a way it has perhaps not been since the Civil War. I have just published a book that, among other things, suggests why this is. It is called The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties. It runs from the assassination of John F. Kennedy to the election of Donald J. Trump. You can get a good idea of the drift of the narrative from its chapter titles: 1963, Race, Sex, War, Debt, Diversity, Winners, and Losers.

I can end part of the suspense right now—Democrats are the winners. Their party won the 1960s—they gained money, power, and prestige. The GOP is the party of the people who lost those things.

So starts one of the best articles I have seen so far on the divisions in America since the 60's, an article by Christopher Caldwell, a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute. It's remarkable for quite a number of things, particularly the vision necessary in identifying the divisions and their causes. The article appears as the banner article (for now) on the Imprimis site by Hillsdale College.

The central point of the article is introduced by this:

Continue reading "The Roots of Our Partisan Divide" »