Christianity Archives
May 1, 2007
A Tolerant Tyranny
(I've already supplied these links to WWWTW's contributors, but want them available to readers as well. Gotten via friend Jeff Culbreath.)
This one's to an NCR piece about a recently passed law in England making it "illegal for a teacher in any school, including a Catholic school, to state that homosexual activity is morally wrong..."
The other concerns an effort of the Oregon legislature to "eliminate attitudes opposing homosexuality," although the scope of the measure is not clear to me.
There is also a move underway in California to repeal Prop 22, which defines marriage as between a man and a woman.
And now we have news of a video making the rounds of public schools and television stations.
The Interminable Dialectic of Modernity: Theoconservatism
The April issue of First Things features an adapted version of a lecture Fr. Neuhaus delivered at Beeson Divinity School, entitled Christ Without Culture. Neuhaus, suggestively modifying the famous Niebuhrian taxonomy of the ways in which the relationship of Christ and culture has been understood, adds to the list - Christ against culture, Christ of culture, Christ above culture, Christ and culture in paradox, and Christ transforming culture - the formulation Christ without culture. Noting that there is, in point of fact, a distinctive American culture, and more specifically, an American culture as it pertains to religious affirmations, Neuhaus elaborates:
Now, as a matter of historical and sociological fact, Christianity is never to be found apart from a cultural matrix; Christianity in all its forms is, as it is said, “enculturated.” In relation to a culture, the Church is both acting and being acted on, both shaping and being shaped. What then do I mean by suggesting this sixth type, Christ without culture? I mean that the Church—and here Church is broadly defined as the Christian movement through time—can at times adopt a way of being in the world that is deliberately indifferent to the culture of which it is part. In the “Christ without culture” model, that indifference results in the Church unconsciously adopting and thereby reinforcing, in the name of the gospel, patterns of culture that are incompatible with her gospel.
Continue reading "The Interminable Dialectic of Modernity: Theoconservatism" »
May 2, 2007
A Primer on Neoconservatism
Much ink and many pixels have been spilled in disputations over the nature and significance of neoconservatism, particularly as this tendency appears to be the dominant political motif of the present administration. Much of the discussion has been, well, not so much a discussion as an exchange of incandescent invective, and, when it has not been so intemperate, it has tended towards the obfuscatory, as in the attempt to deny that there actually exists a definable tendency corresponding to the term "neoconservatism". Fortunately, prominent neoconservative Michael Novak has obliged those pining for a succinct exposition of neoconservatism. That interview, however, requires some interpretation; for, like a scriptural text, the story of neoconservatism is not a fit one for private interpretation, particularly the self-interpretations of those who authored it. Unlike a scriptural text, which is best interpreted from within the tradition out of which it arose, neoconservatism is best interpreted by outsiders. After all, is it not the case that we are often understood best by those who are, well, not us?
To this end, I propose to provide an interpretation of select passages from the linked Novak interview, refraining from emotionally-freighted language; imagine the deadpan delivery of Bob Dole, and you will have in mind the intended tone.
May 3, 2007
American Religion: Mammon
Via the eccentric and interesting blogger Reihan, of The American Scene, comes this fascinating piece of Wikipediana related to Anton Szandor LaVey, the founder of the so-called Church of Satan:
Blanche Barton, author of an autobiography of Satanist Anton LaVey, not speaking disparagingly, has suggested that the Neo-Tech "system of thought...offers Satanism in a grey flannel suit, promises overnight wealth, and never mentions the dreaded `S' word."
May 9, 2007
Archbishop speaks on freedom and history.
“Modern man must be convinced again that he is free.” So declares Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver in a vigorous little talk delivered some weeks ago in Philadelphia. I do not believe I have heard the modern crisis ever put so succinctly and powerfully. The word freedom is nearer to our lips than perhaps any other society of men; and yet we do not believe in it. With every new calamity — every school-shooting or horrific murder, every affront to our honor as a nation, every cynicism, every petty betrayal, every sordid plunder — our instinct is to interpret events in light of material forces, against which man has no power of resistance. “Things are in the saddle,” as a great American wordsmith put it, “and ride mankind.”
Continue reading "Archbishop speaks on freedom and history." »
May 11, 2007
The University: Reform if you would preserve.
Cardinal Newman wrote very astutely, if a bit acidly, that it is a misfortune to be self-educated. It may be a misfortune; often it is a joy and a calling. But even where joyous it must always be an exception, unless barbarism is ascendant. In that sense we might almost say of a society which, by lassitude, heresy or avarice, forces many men to become autodidacts: “there is a society oppressed by barbarism.” Upon reading a devastating essay by Larry P. Arnn in the Fall 2006 issue of The Claremont Review of Books, one is left with that distinct impression. Ours is a society oppressed by barbarism. Misfortune will be the lot of Americans for some time to come — at least for those Americans who believe that “education” contains a notion of diligent immersion in, and exploration and veneration of one’s own civilization.
What Arnn — President of Hillsdale College — lays out in some detail is an arraignment of education in America so shattering as to induce the reader to a kind of despondency, followed by, it is to be hoped, a very solid kind of defiance. As Arnn tells it, with subtlety and incision, the agents of barbarism are in the driver’s seat; and the would-be defenders of civilization are reduced by bafflement, misconception, and disarray. Deriving from work by a committee of the President’s Advisory Council, the verdict is grim: “our kindergarten students rank with the best in the world in their knowledge of science and math. For each year that they are subjected to the capable attentions of our public education system, they fall a step behind. By the time they graduate from high school, they rank at the 10th percentile in math internationally, struggling to keep ahead of the unschooled goatherds of the Third World.” It might be added, of course, that a goatherd at age eighteen is probably the master of quite a variety of useful skills, such that his education is, in its own way, quite adequate.
Continue reading "The University: Reform if you would preserve." »
May 17, 2007
Bound by Disagreement?
On another thread, I had attempted to flush from hiding the Social Pathologist's moral conviction regarding the Church's teaching on artificial contraception, since he is a Catholic and a physician. So as not to fall in danger of going too far off that thread's topic, he has responded by email, and kindly granted me permission to post those remarks here. As follows:
* * * You wanted to know where I stood in regard to artificial birth control. I don't wish to give anyone the impression I'm something that I am not, but I'll briefly outline my position as follows.
1.) Sexual relationships should only occur in the context of marriage as traditionally understood: period.
2.) Directly intended abortion is wrong.
3.) Sterilization is wrong.
4.) While I am unsympathetic to the Church's position on contraception, I see that it is logically consistent and I am bound to support it.
5.) On the matter of non destructive IVF--That is, sperm fertilizing one egg outside the married couple and then transferring it to the uterus-- I disagree with the Church but am bound to support its position. Otherwise, I broadly support the Church's opposition to IVF.
6.) In the same way that charging at fair interest was once considered by the Church as usury, I believe that Pius VI prudentially erred in classifying ovulatory regulants, i.e., The Pill, as contraceptives. Therefore I feel I can prescribe these agents in some form of good conscience, though I have my moments.
7.) Saying that, I do not prescribe the low dose pill. I believe its inherent "sloppiness" in its suppression of ovulation leads to a reliance on its secondary methods of contraception--barrier to sperm and possible inhibition of implantation--and it is therefore morally unjustifiable. I rarely prescribe it for medical reasons as well.
8.) I'm not a big fan of NFP for the same reason that Zippy isn't; It makes you unhappy.
If you judge a tree by its fruit, Humanae Vitae was a dreadful document, the faithful left in droves after it and a general culture of disobedience was instituted. As I see it, there are two possible reasons:
a) The faithful were flawed: the traditionalist interpretation.
b) The Document and its reasoning were flawed. Error is just as likely to be seen in moral rigidity as it is in moral laxity. I'm generally inclined to think that the Church repeated the mistake of Galileo, confusing metaphysical truth with practical matter. The document was right in affirming contraception wrong, but it was wrong in its classification of what was contraceptive.
Anyway those are my thoughts on the matter.* * * *
[By "the mistake of Galileo" I assume he means the Church's mistake in the reasons brought to bear for its disciplining of that man.]
My initial reaction is that there is much here I ought to take strong issue with, but I'd rather hear others' reactions first. There is also much to unravel, that is, to draw him out on. But he's offering a summary of his thoughts, not a treatise, so perhaps that can happen in comments. Since we have a happy diversity (never thought I'd hear myself say that) of contributors here (and readers too), I thought their various perspectives might be of interest.
Most importantly, the Social P. is a valued commenter here, as at other places, and while rigor and some measure of passion are welcome, courtesy and respect for another's honesty are required.
May 20, 2007
Times Change (cont.)
For this Sunday, we continue with Bertrand Bronson, circa 1952:
* * * The assumption that men are basically alike in all times and places, and that the sum total of scientific information already available or yet to be discovered is unlikely to make any radical alteration in human nature, obviously puts a premium on the way in which the old truths are restated. This is not...to reduce the importance of the old truths, which are old because they are fundamental and therefore discovered early, and which, only because they are familiar, are likely to be rejected unless continually re-presented in fresh and agreeable forms.
May 27, 2007
Some Things Never Change
Our last Sunday with Samuel Johnson, for the time being, though the first to offer an actual excerpt of his own writing, wherein he declares upon the "works of fiction" gaining fashion in his day, the difficulties (and virtues) of which are equally, if not more keenly, felt in our own time, now that the feeding of fantasy to the populace has become an industry. Most important for our puposes, though, is the fact that, however varied his subjects may be, the same force and foundation of character impresses itself upon them all:
...But the fear of not being approved as just copyers of human manners, is not the most important concern that an author of this sort ought to have before him. These books are written chiefly to the young, the ignorant, and the idle, to whom they serve as lectures of conduct, and introduction to life. They are the entertainment of minds unfurnished with ideas, and therefore easily susceptible of impressions; not fixed by priniciples, and therefore easily following the current of fancy; not informed by experience, and consequently open to every false suggestion and partial account.
May 28, 2007
Civilization without Religion?
Here at What’s Wrong with the World, we have recently endured the spectacle, not without its amusements, of conventional freethinking arguments. We have not neglected to laugh at the absurdities into which these poor men have cast their minds. But we have sometimes neglected, perhaps, to pray that they would be freed from this bondage. And we should not make light of the oppression of this bondage, yoked upon both the minds of individual men, and through them upon the public life of the Republic. As our won Daniel Larison sharply puts it, Freethinking ruins all things.
Old Russell Kirk was a man who bent is supple and penetrating mind over this oppression, especially in the latter part of his career, after he returned to the Church of Rome.
* * * *
So it has come to pass, here in the closing years of the twentieth century. With the weakening of the moral order, “Things fall apart; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. . . .” The Hellenic and the Roman cultures went down to dusty death after this fashion. What may be done to achieve reinvigoration?
June 3, 2007
The Consolations of Nihilism
I'd thought I was done with him for the present, but I'm afraid I must resurrect the spirit of Samuel Johnson one more time. It is not the consequence of an obsession, but an obligation imposed by coincidence. He has been the victim of an insult and needs defending. I'm here to return the vituperation in kind, to heap calumny, shall we say, on the calumniators. It's dirty work, but somebody's got to do it. To make a short story long, here's how it happened.
June 4, 2007
Nietzsche and Conservatism
Red State editor and blogger Pejman Yousefzadeh is currently on board at Right Reason as a guest-blogger, contributing a series of pieces sketching the lineaments of a rapproachment between conservatism and the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche's philosophy, long tarred by association with the horrors of German National Socialism, and rejected by most conservatives on account of its advocacy of militant irreligion and its status as a resource for postmodernists and nihilists, such as this fool, may, he argues, contain rich potentialities for conservative thought.
June 5, 2007
Why I Read Nietzsche
The suggestion that conservatives, and even religious conservatives, might find something of value in the writings of that prophet of the death of God, Nietzsche, seems to have been poorly received. It may not be possible to help this, but it might be of some value to explain why one conservative, even reactionary, soul found some berries amidst the briers of Nietzsche.
If I had to offer a one-sentence explanation of why I ever bothered to read Nietzsche, it would be the following: I read Nietzsche because I was raised as a low-church evangelical Protestant.
June 11, 2007
What Does It For You?
Back on May 9, Michael of the 2 Blowhards kindly linked to this site. I happened to notice that his post from the previous day was entitled "Chesterton's Orthodoxy", about his experience of reading that wonderful book. Mr. Blowhard is not a Christian, so the review seemed far more generous, and even insightful in places, than I would have expected. If he also got some things wrong, that's not my concern here. What interested me was his claim that he delves into Judeo-Christian stuff every so often, not out of a desire to be convinced of its truth, but out of sheer curiosity.
June 22, 2007
American Religiousity - A Fragment
In a brief post commenting on a discussion of trends in religious affiliation that began with this post by Razib of Gene Expression, and was picked up by Brink Lindsey, Ross Douthat writes:
My own preferred explanation - which is doubtless a small part of the pantomime - is theological rather than sociological: Christianity has thrived in the United States by adapting its theology to the habits and mores of the American people, in a way that religion in Europe hasn't managed to do. America is an Emersonian country, and its religious innovators have invented an Emersonian form of Christianity - which some might suggest isn't Christianity at all, of course - that's nicely tailored to the broader culture in which it swims. Call it gnosticism, or Moral Therapeutic Deism, or just plain Americanism - it means Elaine Pagels and Karen Armstrong for highbrow audiences and T.D. Jakes and Joyce Meyer for the masses, and it works.
August 14, 2007
Augustine on Infancy
I have recently begun a rereading of Augustine's Confessions, a fine work when considered purely as literature, but finer still when read as high theology, and yes, even as philosophy. Theologically, the work is structured in accordance with one of the great motifs of Patristic thought - man as microcosmos, a recapitulation in miniature of the cosmic drama of redemption.
But one must begin at the beginning:
Andrew Sullivan's Incomprehension, Chapter MMXVI
Daniel Larison on Sullivan's ridiculous Christianist conspiracy theory:
If they existed, Christianists would be interesting people. They would have to believe at one and the same time that they must make God’s will into the law of the land and enforce Christian doctrine throughout society and be convinced that the best instrument for this goal was the utterly secular, Mammon-serving Republican Party. They would have to be completely fanatical and at the same time completely indifferent that their chosen vehicle of political power was basically hostile to everything they sought to achieve (which is one of the reasons why, despite decades of trying, they have achieved next to nothing). They would have to be able to turn their fanaticism on and off with a readily available switch, which makes them rather less worrisome as the founders of the future theocratic nightmare to come.
Growing up, the harder sort of Protestant fundamentalists were wont to argue that the alliance of the Religious Right with the GOP would end in failure, futility having been its lot. Setting aside the question of what, precisely, Christians should have done when the nation slipped into the cultural centrifuge in the Sixties and Seventies, it is remarkable that what began with a mixture of noble aims and low, political farce should now end in tragedy, as the Christian right fragments, and finds itself increasingly marginalized (or perhaps this marginality is being revealed). The only play left is that of refusal - of the role of GOP 'automatics'. This, at least, would be a beginning.
August 25, 2007
Not Of This World, And Certainly Not Globalist
In the course of giving his devastating reply to Derbyshire's review of his book Religion of Peace?, Robert Spencer reminds us once again of a crucial point regarding Christianity and immigration:
In reality, Christianity has no inherent connection at all with open-borders insanity and globalization. No less prominent a Christian than St. Thomas Aquinas expressed the mainstream Christian view when he said that “after his duties towards God, man owes most to his parents and his country. One’s duties towards one’s parents include one’s obligations towards one’s relatives, because these latter have sprung from [or are connected by ties of blood with] one’s parents…and the services due to one’s country have for their object all one’s fellow-countrymen and all the friends of one’s fatherland.” An open-borders globalist? Not quite.
Continue reading "Not Of This World, And Certainly Not Globalist" »
September 11, 2007
The Victory of September 11.
In 1565 the Grand Master of the Knights was a Frenchmen of Gascony, Jean Parisot de la Valette by name, who was by then (like Sultan Suleiman himself) in his seventies, but still vigorous. Piety and military acumen were his leading virtues: he was the very model of the warrior-priest, a kind of throwback to a dying medieval age. The religious fervor of the Knights had of late diminished, much as the chivalric piety of the medieval age itself was dying, and many of them had become worldly, sensuous, and arrogant. But La Valette, when he became Grand Master, aimed to check this corruption. Ernle Bradford calls him, “that rarest of human beings, a completely single-minded man.” His lieutenant was an Englishman, in exile from his homeland where Catholicism was proscribed; and it was this latter who decoded the reports from spies in Constantinople that the Turks were again massing against the Knights. The Order was the last vestige of that great Christian counterattack known as the Crusades, and the Sultan was now determined to stamp it out forever. Communiqués were sent all over Europe, calling the Knights to the defense of their last island home.
For the strategists of the Turks, including an old Algerian corsair called Dragut, Malta was more than just the remnant of an antique military order: it was the key to a proposed offensive in the western Mediterranean, an offensive that was to cow the Spanish and if possible carry the jihad to the very doors of St. Peter’s. And in any case, since Sicily, Sardinia, Majorca, and southern Spain itself had once been Islamic lands, it was a duty imposed upon the Sultan, by the iron principles of jihad, as duly constituted ruler, the successor to the caliph, to recover them from the infidel. Lands where the banners of the Crescent had once flown proudly must be returned to the Dar al-Islam (the House of Islam). The presence of the Maltese Knights barred such a project; and therefore the reduction of the island would be a prelude to a wider war. Said Dragut: “Unless you have smoked out this nest of vipers, you can do no good anywhere.” In March of 1565, a fleet of nearly 200 vessels, bearing some 40,000 soldiers (including 6,500 elite shock troops known as the Janissaries), assembled in the Golden Horn for the Sultan's inspection. Dragut made two astute recommendations: move against the isle early in the season, and detach a significant flotilla to menace the Spanish mainland, thereby preventing aid from the Emperor. Once the invasion began, the more confident among the Sultan's advisers anticipated the victory to come — in a matter of days.
The victory never came. Across Europe news of the bravery of Knights — outnumbered five to one or more — rang like a great tocsin. All throughout that brutal summer on the sun-baked isle, the Turks had been repulsed, time after time, in their attempts to take the Christian fortresses of Malta. One such fortress had been reduced to rubble by Turkish artillery, and its garrison (almost every one of them already dead) desecrated by enraged Turks; but the other had held. Casualties among the Sultan’s army had been terrible, and disease ran rampant. The stiffness of the resistance, added to the depredations of pestilence and heatstroke, had won for Western Christians their first great victory over the Turk. La Valette’s final address to his men has come down to us:
A formidable army composed of audacious barbarians is descending on this island. These persons, my brothers, are the enemies of Jesus Christ. Today it is a question of the defense of our faith — as to whether the Gospels are to be superseded by the Koran. God on this occasion demands of us our lives, already vowed to his service. Happy will be those who first consummate this sacrifice.
The date of this victory has for us a certain resonance: it was September 11, 1565.
From that day we may date the decline of Turkish power on the Mediterranean. Six years later at Lepanto, a vast Ottoman fleet was decisively beaten by a comparable fleet of the Christian Holy League in one of the largest and bloodiest naval battles ever fought. The Knights were there on that day too. On another September 11, 1683, the Polish King John Sobieski led an army to relieve Vienna from a Turkish siege, in a battle that marks the end of the Turkish advance into Europe. These dates may strike us today as very ancient indeed; the reader may wonder what significance they have to us. The answer is that they form the conclusion to a very long story, a great tale of human drama, mostly forgotten now by a forgetful people k a drama that, on yet another September 11th, was renewed here in America. It is the story of the Jihad. [read more]
October 2, 2007
Made by the Cross of Christ
In a discussion sparked by this fine essay by James Pinkerton, a correspondent asks me to expound upon my notion of “Christendom,” which concept he is deeply skeptical of. I explained myself this way:
In a forthcoming magazine I have a long essay that ends in an emphatic call for Christian unity against the Jihad. It says nothing about the activity of the American state; but it says that we who profess Christ should strain toward unity against this menace. I believe that Christ opposes wickedness; I believe that the Jihad is wicked. Therefore I feel that it should be opposed. In my essay I make this call specifically in the context of all the Christian brothers oppressed by the Jihad. We should unite against this oppression.
October 9, 2007
Time and the Neighbor.
We are pleased to present an excerpt from Professor Anthony Esolen’s recent book Ironies of Faith: the Laughter at the Heart of Christian Literature, © 2007 ISI Books.
In this fine volume, Prof. Esolen, a professor of English at Providence College, and editor and translator of the Modern Library edition of Dante's Divine Comedy, gives the reader a survey of Christian literature with an eye toward the marvelous myriad ironies, both gentle and shattering, depicted by literary men in the Christian tradition. Esolen’s scholarly range is enormous, his intellect sensitive and humane, his pen elegant: the book is a tour de force. We are honored to excerpt it.
We pick up the narrative near the end of Esolen's rich section on the ironies of time in Christian literature. The Incarnation of Christ, that God dwelt in the flesh here on earth, has forever transformed time itself. Time is for us a particular blessing, and one of its profound ironies is that mortal men are oriented toward the eternal by means of the often oppressive (from our view) rigidities of temporal time. Earlier chapters dealt at length with St. Augustine, Dante and Shakespeare's The Tempest. But Esolen intriguing concludes the section with a searching analysis of a lesser-known work: J. R. R. Tolkien’s story “Leaf, by Niggle.”
[Warning: this is one long blog post. It is, however, emphatically worth your time. So grab another cup of coffee, steady your eyes for some serious screen-reading, and settle in for the long haul.]
November 3, 2007
Wow... Just Extraordinarily Disappointing
Via Rod Dreher, this John Whitehead interview with Frank Schaeffer. The entire interview is well worth reading, though this might not owe to its content so much as its text-for-the-times quality. Interested readers are invited to jump over to the interview, while I'll only offer a few observations here.
First, as one of Dreher's commenters remarks, Schaeffer's treatment of his father is startlingly unfilial. Things of the nature he discusses in his new book - the occasion for the interview - one might discuss with a confessor, confidant, or small circle of friends from whom one has sought counsel and prayer. To discuss them, however, in a book which will be read by tens of thousands, and to drop intimations of them in interviews which will, by the miracle of the internet, receive widespread attention - well, that strikes me as a failure to honour one's parents, and if that means that I've no real use for many memoirs, well, so much the worse for their authors.
There is also a spurious argument against the prohibition of abortion - abortion is a tragedy, and Roe established a terrible precedent, but abortion we have always had with us. Okaaayyy.
There is, additionally, much hand-wringing and finger-pointing over the stance of the Religious Right on homosexuality, some of which is apropos (Homosexuality need not be regarded as a special sin which exceeds in wickedness other, more comfortable sins, such as adultery and easy divorce.), some of which is deeply misguided (Perhaps the advocacy of the Religious Right is rooted in a perception that a defense of the ontology of marriage and sexual distinctions is now logically prior to what we do once we recognize those distinctions, and not in some irrational antipathy, as Schaeffer seems to want to have it. What, after all, is the point of attempting to shore up marriage if the institution no longer carries a public meaning?).
Finally, Schaeffer does recoil from the longing for apocalyptic vengeance that some strands of evangelicalism often manifest, not simply a magnetic attraction to the negative, but a presumptuous longing for judgment.
On the whole, however, I perceive a sort of trainwreck, where those things left unsaid in the memoir and interviews are the true keys to understanding. Something has been left out.
November 11, 2007
My participation in the upcoming ETS (Nov. 14-16) and AAR meetings (Nov. 17-20) in San Diego.
My wife and I will soon be in San Diego attending both the 59th annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society (Nov. 14-16) and the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion (Nov. 17-20). At ETS, on Friday Nov. 16, I will be participating in a panel discussion on my new book, Defending Life: A Moral and Legal Case Against Abortion Choice (Cambridge University Press, 2007) (You can download the meeting program here).
But what I won't be doing at the ETS meeting is delivering its presidential address. It will be replaced by several brief talks on the 50th anniversary of the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society. As many of you know, I resigned as ETS president on May 5, 2007, a week after I had been received into full communion with the Catholic Church, the church in which I had been baptized and confirmed as a youngster. (See here and here). Although my wife and I are more certain than ever that we have indeed arrived at home in the Catholic Church, we dearly love our many friends in the ETS and look forward to our time with them. I have attended, and participated in, every ETS meeting since 1988 (except for 2000 when I was in law school). I have no plans to break that habit. (My successor, Hassell Bullock, the ETS Acting President and President-Elect, was recently interviewed online by Christianity Today, in which he previews the annual meeting).
At AAR, on Saturday Nov. 17, I will participate in the first meeting of the Intra-Christian Conversion Study Group. I will join Paul J. Griffiths and Scott Hahn as we discuss our conversions to Catholicism with respondents Michael McClymond and A. Edward Siecienski.
Some friends have asked me whether I am sad to not be giving the ETS presidential address. It is a good question, and one for which I have an answer: I indeed wish I were giving the presidential address, but I am far from sad. For in order to give the address I would have had to disappoint my nephew (see here) and enter the Catholic Church after November 16. No, I am not sad. I am blessed beyond words. Soli Deo Gloria
November 17, 2007
"A Cumulative Case for the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth"--Now available in draft
I'm pleased to announce the completion and posting in draft of an article written by Tim McGrew and me that I hope will be of help and interest to a variety of readers. "A Cumulative Case for the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth" is available on my web site here. It has been commissioned for the Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, edited by William Lane Craig and J. P. Moreland. Blackwell has given us permission to post a draft version of our own, with none of their pagination or typesetting, to a personal web site. If you refer others to the on-line version, please make it clear that it is a draft and that the "real" final version will be published on paper with Blackwell.
The main thing missing from this version is the bibliography, which is presently being formated. The article is in MLA style, so if you should want full reference information for a given book, please feel free to e-mail me and ask.
Since the piece is very long, I'm giving here a few highlights and features, with some page numbers in the PDF, in case you want to zero in on particular sections rather than either browsing it or trying to read the whole thing.
Update The bibliography is now available here.
November 23, 2007
J.P. Moreland's ETS Paper and Extra-Biblical Theological Knowledge
Philosopher J. P. Moreland is a dear friend with whom I co-edited (with W. L. Craig) a book three years ago, To Everyone An Answer: A Case for the Christian Worldview (InterVarsity Press, 2004).
Last week at the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society (14-16 November 2007), Moreland delivered a paper that caused quite a stir, "How Evangelicals Became Over-Committed to the Bible and What can be Done about It." (You can find the paper on the web site for his book The Kingdom Triangle). It all began last Wednesday with a Christianity Today blog post in which his paper presentation at ETS was covered. (See Moreland's response here). Not only were there numerous comments posted in the combox of the CT post, scores of bloggers followed up with their own assessments of Moreland's paper and thesis.
Some of the anti-natural law (and anti-natural theology) commentators on the CT blog and elsewhere are deeply troubling to me, since they seem to not understand how difficult it is to extricate oneself from the force of natural law reasoning. Consider a brief argument I present in a small article I recently published in the Catholic Social Science Review XII (2007), "Doing What Comes Naturally and Not Knowing It: A Reflection on J. Budziszewski’s Work" (footnotes omitted):
Continue reading "J.P. Moreland's ETS Paper and Extra-Biblical Theological Knowledge" »
November 29, 2007
Are there any mere symbols?
To begin with, I'm going to answer the question in the title. Yes, there are mere symbols. One can make up arbitrary symbols and use them to stand for trivial things. So in the grand scheme of things, there can be mere symbols.
But here's the more interesting question: When people think it is important to say, "Such-and-such is a mere symbol," are the symbols in those cases really "mere"? Herewith, a few examples.
December 12, 2007
Baby Got Book
December 14, 2007
The Tale of the Ten Cossacks and the Brave Little Waiter
For those of you who think we, or at least I, never have a good word to say about Muslims, herewith a getting-close-to-Christmas story. (HT TROP)
Apparently a bunch of young men were aboard a New York subway and were randomly yelling "Merry Christmas." (This is a conjecture, but as it says it was "late," I think we may infer that they'd imbibed liquid refreshment and were becoming not only boisterous but also belligerent.) Also on the train were a group of young Jewish girls and guys, who began calling back "Happy Hannukah" to them.
What happened next is a bit unclear (to me, anyway), but evidently the Christmas-shouting thugs became angry and began behaving threateningly to at least one of the Jewish girls. Whereupon a bystander, a 5' 7", 140 lb. Muslim Bangladeshi waiter named Hassan Askari, pushed one of the young Cossacks away from the Jewish girl (why didn't her escort do this first?), and got himself a couple of black eyes and a swollen face for his pains.
There's no word here on what happened to the thugs, whether they ended up in custody, whether they will be charged, or exactly how the whole thing ended without more serious injuries. We learn only that one of the young Jewish men pulled the emergency cord and thus alerted the powers that be to trouble on the train, which presumably had something to do with the breakup of the whole thing.
Confoundment to those who take the name of Our Lord and the feast of His birth in vain. And honor where it's due. To Hassan Askari: May he someday come to know Jesus Christ and learn the true meaning of "Merry Christmas."
December 20, 2007
The Anglican Implosion, Part 894,897,345
According to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, one need not believe in the Virgin Birth in order to be accounted a Christian.
During the Divine Liturgy of the Orthodox Church, the Deacon intones solemnly, before the recitation of the Creed, the Symbol of Faith, "The doors, the doors! In wisdom let us attend." The significance of this is that is a reminder of a period of Church history in which the substance of the faith was not disclosed to just anyone, as a topic of ordinary conversation, but was disclosed to the catechumens, the initiates, only gradually; as such, one could not have the congregation loudly professing their common faith in such a manner as to lay its sacred mysteries before the unbelieving world. The Creed, therefore, was so integral to the identity of the Church that she was unthinkable without it, and one could not join her unless one professed the Creed without reservation.
This, Rowan Williams effectively considers as a sort of menu, from which one may select and reject according to one's preferences. Must one also pray to Christ? May one not also pray to Buddha, or the earth-mother? Oh, wait...
(HT: Auster.)
December 30, 2007
Some Sunday Reading
Touchstone Magazine has notified me (and certainly Paul, too) that its Jan/Feb 2006 issue is now available online, and has further offered encouragement to link to it. There's a bunch of good reading in it, including our own Paul Cella's review of Thomas Woods' How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization. Annually this number of the magazine puts a special focus on pro-life issues, and I am glad to have been a part of it twice, in this case offering a personal reflection called "A Stone for Shmuel." The title refers to this little fellow, who appeared in the magazine but is absent from the online version:
January 4, 2008
Happy New Year
I'll admit that I didn't (and don't) understand the article's first line: "For Christians--and many Muslims--the main reason to celebrate this Christmas is, of course, Jesus' birth." I wasn't aware that Muslims did that. If so, I feel confident that they're not celebrating the same Jesus as the rest of us, but I mention it only because it seems an odd preface to the persecution of Christians, which the adherents of Islam in certain places are eager to inflict.
The Weekly Standard can be a mixed bag of varying conservatisms, but in this season of Merry Christmas and happy New Year, of personal resolutions and of hope for increased prosperity, the reminder that Paul Marshall offers in the current issue - that Christmas is not, for everyone everywhere, an event of unblemished joy, but one fraught with peril - should for us be salutary.
...for probably hundreds of millions, Christmas is shadowed by pain and fear, since this is usually the peak season for anti-Christian attacks in Pakistan, India, Sudan, Nigeria, and beyond. It is also a time when the Chinese and Vietnamese governments are prone to arrest their unregistered believers.
January 17, 2008
Charity, Particularity, and Justice
One of the interesting dialectical pivot points in recent discussions we've had about employment discrimination is charity. At some point our Christian culture degenerated to the point where "charity" started to mean "acts which are nice to do but always optional". Another thing which seems to have come along for the ride is that charity has become more abstract: the notion seems to be that charity is a marketplace selection of opportunities from which we can arbitrarily choose what we want.
In the discussion on natural obligations employers have toward the men providing for families who work for them, this has manifested in two ways.
The first way has been to treat the contingent obligation an employer has to provide for the basic dignity and needs of employees, and in turn the loyalty and diligence that an employee owes to his employer, as optional: as things not required as a matter of reciprocal justice, but rather as gratuitous and completely optional gifts.
The second way this notion has manifested itself is in the idea that charity (and therefore justice) is fungible: that there is no particular charitable obligation of employer to employee in justice but rather that the employer's obligation is just to some abstract charity-in-general, an obligation (to the extent it is one at all: see the previous point) which can be discharged by giving to one of any number of charitable opportunities in a marketplace of opportunities.
January 28, 2008
January 28 - Feast Day of St. Thomas Aquinas
 |
Here is a prayer to St. Thomas that I have prayed several times since becoming Catholic: Angelic Doctor, St. Thomas, prince of theologians and model of philosophers, bright ornament of the Christian world, light of the Church and patron of all Catholic schools, who didst learn wisdom without guile and dost communicate it without envy, pray for us to the Son of God who is Wisdom itself, that, by the coming of the Spirit of Wisdom upon us, we may clearly understand that which thou didst teach, and, by imitating thee, may bring to completion that which thou didst do; that we may be made partakers both of thy doctrine and thy holiness, whereby thou didst shine on earth even as the sun; and finally that we may enjoy with thee in heaven for evermore the most delectable fruits of the same, praising together with thee divine Wisdom through endless ages. Amen |
March 1, 2008
E.R. Patient Meets the Emergent Chaplain
March 8, 2008
Annotated bibliography of historical apologetics on line
I'm pleased to announce that an annotated bibliography of apologetics works from the late 17th through the 19th centuries is now available here. It contains links to the works in question, available in the public domain.
It is entirely the work of my husband, Tim McGrew, in one of his areas of specialization. He has been working on it for some time before being satisfied that it's ready to be made public. But he is very interested in making these works more widely available. The men who answered the Deists in their own time get far too little credit nowadays and deserve to be more widely known and read than they are.
Pastors, youth leaders, and professors who work with Christian young people could do far worse than to familiarize themselves with some of the apologetic work that was done in the past. Those who have an interest in apologetics should acquaint themselves with the pre-20th-century material so as not to reinvent the wheel.
Feel free to pass this link on to others who might find it useful.
Cross-posted at Extra Thoughts
March 22, 2008
Happy Easter
Wishing my esteemed fellow bloggers here at WWWtW and all our readers a most joyous Easter feast and forty-day Easter season.
Alleluia, He is risen!
Seven Stanzas At EasterBy John Updike
Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells' dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His flesh: ours.The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that--pierced--died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping, transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck's quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.
April 4, 2008
In Heaven there is no Beer
Question: Whether irony[*] has a place in the Kingdom of God?
Objection 1: It would seem that irony has no place in the Kingdom of God. Irony is possible only when there is a history of privation. Furthermore, two of the purposes of irony are derision and mockery; clearly derision and mockery have no place in the Kingdom of God.
On the Contrary: "His blood be on us and on our children."
I answer that: In the Kingdom of God there is no imperfection; therefore that which was imperfect is remade into perfection for entry into the Kingdom of God. Existence in the Kingdom of God implies perfection, but does not imply a history of perfection alone.
Reply to Objection 1: We are not perfect, and yet we hope to enter the Kingdom of God. Therefore things which enter the Kingdom of God do not cease to be, but are perfected. Furthermore, life without jest and beer is less perfect than life with them. In Heaven there is no Milwaukee's Best.
[*] For the purposes of this post, we define irony as speaking in such a way as to imply the contrary of what one says, often for the purpose of derision, mockery, or jest.
(Cross-posted at Zippy Catholic)
April 10, 2008
Evangelical Philosophical Society Launches New Blog
The Evangelical Philosophical Society (EPS), a group of which I have been a member since 1989, has launched a new blog, which you can find here.
April 13, 2008
Life Imitates Art
Update: Folks, I'm going to shut down this combox. People have been remarkably civil given the way the original topic has morphed into a redebating of the Reformation. But because the discussion has drifted so far from my original post, I'm ending it.
In May 2007, Alan Streett of Criswell College offered a humorous blog post about my return to the Catholic Church, Top Ten Reasons Frank Beckwith Became a Roman Catholic. Here's reason #3:
Altruism: In the spirit of brotherly love, Frank wanted to provide Norm Geisler with a subject for a new book project.
Believe it or not, I just saw this on Amazon.com last night:
It is set for release on October 31, 2008, just in time for the 60th annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society in Providence, Rhode Island (Nov. 19-21, 2008), at which the ETS membership will consider amending its statement of faith in order to make sure that any question about whether Catholics may join the ETS is permanently sequestered from serious and scholarly discussion.
June 15, 2008
All Hail the Irish!
In times such as these, I am honoured to trace my ancestry to two European signs of contradiction, Poland and Ireland; though my pride is these heritages cannot be delimited by purely political considerations, in an age dominated by malign political ideologies and their votaries, political considerations are bound to factor more highly than they would in healthier times. Poland catalyzed the resistance to Communist domination in Eastern Europe, and Ireland, in rejecting the Treaty of Lisbon, itself merely a treaty intended to bypass the popular opposition that felled the Euro-Constitution, have shown themselves unwilling to go into that long night without resistance. While I harbour a suspicion that Lawrence Auster is correct in predicting that the Eurocrats will decree that EU treaties cannot be subjected to referenda, this defiance must not go unrecognized. If those of us who purpose to defend the heritage of the West, and the separate heritages of her constituent nations, must walk toward defeat, let us at least do so with eyes open, commemorating each victory wrenched from between the teeth of defeat as a noble triumph. There is nobility in such defiance; there is but shame in submission.
Nonetheless, in an intemperate outburst worthy of a commissar whose prerogatives have been denied, Morning's Minion denounces the opposition to the European Union, insinuating in the process that such opposition is contrary to the Christian religion:
So what went wrong in Ireland? As I said , people didn’t understand it. As they have in the past, people used it to protest against the government in an environment of increasing economic uncertainty. And the “no” campaign was particularly effective with its scaremongering tactics. The Irish were told that the treaty would force them to raise their tax rates. They were told military neutrality would be jeopardized. They were told abortion would be introduced in Ireland. All lies. In the end, every single mainstream political party and social partner supported the treaty. Its opponents were a rag-tag group of Marxists, ex-terrorists, hard-care nationalists, the extreme Catholic right, and a shady unknown businessman with ties to the US defense industry. (Snip)Ah, but they have already spoken. Completely oblivious to the voice of the Irish church, some US Catholics (the usual suspects) laud the no vote, the the grounds that Ireland has given the finger to “Brussels elitists”. As always, they are reflecting their own political and ideological biases onto Europe. They see the debate through the eyes of the kind of Enlightenment-era liberalism that prizes the liberty of the individual over the common good and solidarity (notice the whole comment is about economics- when the Irish bishops say that is exactly the wrong way to look at it). They are also wedded to a form of nationalism that elevates the role of the nation state above any supranational cooperation. Clearly, the dream of Erasmus and Thomas More for a united, peaceful, Europe was misplaced then…
Well, yes. Erasmus was a self-promoting crank, and Thomas More's Utopia is just that: a work of utopian fiction. Besides, sainthood does not entail the infallibility of each of the saint's utterances. We are not bound to truck with universalist redemptive schemes on the grounds that St. Gregory of Nyssa's theological thought inclines in that direction.
June 16, 2008
The Nation-State Writ Large
Morning's Minion offers a spirited defense of the European Union project, characterizing it, essentially, as an attempt to rectify the historical mistake of the nation-state:
But let me raise a rather basic issue here: what attracts me most about the European project is what many Christian Democrats (such as the Bavarian CSU's Edmund Stoiber) dub the "Europe of the regions" -- a loose supranational federation with much power devolved to the regions. What gets taken out is the nation state, which I consider an ugly step-child of the Enlightenment. For the modern nation state usurps powers that rightly belong to subsidiary mediating institutions and wipes out a traditional network of overlapping loyalties in favor of a direct relationship between the individual and the state (how delightfully Protestant!). Now, there are tendencies in Europe that go against this conception of Europe, but these tendencies are highly influenced by nationalism. And here is the rub: so many American critics of the EU are themselves deeply wedded to a nationalist conception of the USA. After all, the idea of a pan-European army would repulse me, and yet we think of the existence of a US army as beyond question (even glorifying it)-- why?
Particular points in the discussion have hinged on the intervention of the Irish Catholic bishops. I intend to prescind from that discussion, inasmuch as I am Orthodox. Suffice it to state that, on my interpretation of what the European Union is, and will become, I regard the bishops as either profoundly misguided or treacherous. My view, which is fairly common, even prevalent among the Orthodox - though I do not think it contrary to Catholic doctrine, either, notwithstanding the disagreement surrounding it - is given expression in a famous parenthetical aside from Solzhenitsyn's Nobel lecture:
In recent times it has been fashionable to talk of the levelling of nations, of the disappearance of different races in the melting-pot of contemporary civilization. I do not agree with this opinion, but its discussion remains another question. Here it is merely fitting to say that the disappearance of nations would have impoverished us no less than if all men had become alike, with one personality and one face. Nations are the wealth of mankind, its collective personalities; the very least of them wears its own special colours and bears within itself a special facet of divine intention.
July 15, 2008
P.Z. Myers Thinks Like a Bronze-Age Pagan
Via Tom Piatak, writing at Taki's, it would appear that Myers has befouled a comment thread over at Rod Dreher's blog, averring that
The point of desecrating the host isn’t to make people angry--it’s to demystify and desanctify nonsense. It’s how we wake people up--by showing that their beliefs are powerless.
That's quite right. In this enlightened age, we do not settle religious and philosophical questions of inestimable importance by reasoning, examining the historical evidences, or any such recondite activity, but by subjecting the participants, or symbols dear to them, to the ordeal, to the end that Fate, the womb of possibility, the numinous power of whatever, might speak and deliver its verdict. We may as well bind the participants and cast them into a river, declaring the one, if any, who survives, the victor. Or, perhaps, we could emulate the Muslims, and associate the claimed veracity of the message with the world-conquering potency of its armies: it is true if it conquers. In fact, why don't we have a grand civilizational throwdown between the remnants of Christian reaction and the avatars of enlightened, secularist atheism - it's not as though we've not already had one of those, you'll recall, with the Evil Empire, the Poles, the Pope....
Yes, but such an appeal to history, even recent history, by way of demonstrating the incompatibility of militant atheism with human dignity, would lie beyond Myers comprehension, presumably, as he would prefer to have the 'truth' established by means of his contrivance: let a singular communion wafer represent the entirety of the Christian claim, and let his sacrilege represent the claims of enlightenment, and if no bolt of lightning or pillar of fire descends from the heavens to smite him, Christianity stands exploded as rank superstition. Let us be forthright about what such presumption is: it is not merely indicative of a mental imbalance, an obsession or mania, but expressive of mental primitivism. Truth is established, not by reasoned discourse upon evidences and arguments, but by what amount to tests of strength, defiance, and pride. Might makes right, by the infernal glow of impudence. And mankind undergoes a spiritual and intellectual regression of some score of millenia.
July 20, 2008
What is Evangelical Catholicism?
Begin here.
July 26, 2008
Science, Philosophy and Belief
Just saw this on the EPS (Evangelical Philosophical Society) blog, posted by Joe Gorra. These are quality thinkers who are worth a listen:
Calvin College just recently completed a four-week faculty development seminar for Chinese professors and postgraduate students, which featured lectures by Alvin Plantinga (Notre Dame, Philosophy), Owen Gingerich (Harvard, Astronomy), Richard Swinburne (Oxford, Philosophy), and John Polkinghorne (Cambridge, Physics).
Mp3 downloads of each talk are available here.
The seminar was directed by Del Ratzsch of Calvin College and Michael Murray of Franklin & Marshall College.
July 28, 2008
Alex Pruss on Faith, Works, and Pelagianism
My friend and Baylor colleague, Alexander Pruss, has a nice entry on his blog about faith, works, and Pelagianism, which you can find here.
(Cross-posted on Return to Rome blog)
July 31, 2008
Is "Jesus rose from the dead" a self-committing proposition?
In his massive and intensively researched book The Resurrection of the Son of God (pp. 714-717) N.T. Wright states that the proposition that Jesus rose from the dead is a self-involving proposition. If it's true, he says, it matters.*
While I agree heartily with Wright that if this proposition is true, it matters, I'm concerned about a confusion that could arise from calling it "self-involving," much less (as he does on p. 717) "self-committing." And I think it is a confusion to which we at the beginning of the 21st century are particularly prone.
The confused reasoning runs approximately like this:
If Jesus rose from the dead, then the Christian God exists. If the Christian God exists, we have to love and obey him. Therefore, to believe that Jesus rose from the dead is to believe that we have to love and obey God. Therefore, to believe that Jesus rose from the dead is to be something very much like a Christian. So belief in the proposition that Jesus rose from the dead already involves being committed to God. So how is it possible to be led to believe that Jesus rose from the dead by anything like neutral evidence? The conclusion is itself not "neutral" but rather self-committing, so one can come to believe it only through self-commitment, not through an objective evaluation of evidence.
In this way, the idea that this proposition is "self-involving" or "self-committing" comes to seem like a challenge to an evidentialist approach to Christian belief.
Continue reading "Is "Jesus rose from the dead" a self-committing proposition?" »
August 3, 2008
Cathleen Falsani: Irony-challenged
I had never heard of Cathleen Falsani until this evening while surfing the internet. I came across her forthcoming book on the Zondervan website. She seemed like a nice enough lady, the sort of person with which I could have easily imagined myself becoming friends. But then I read these comments of hers, published on the Huffington Post, on the occasion of Jerry Falwell's death:
August 6, 2008
Bob Dylan singing Rock of Ages (1999) and Gotta Serve Somebody (2000)
October 3, 2008
Endorsements for Return to Rome
Brazos Press recently published on its website several endorsements for my forthcoming book, Return to Rome: Confessions of an Evangelical Catholic, which is set for release on December 1, 2008.
I am humbled and honored to have received these endorsements from such an august group of Christian thinkers and writers, including my dear friend and frequent WWWtW commentator, Michael Bauman. You can read the endorsements here.
October 9, 2008
Craig Hazen's review of Bill Maher's film, Religulous
My good friend, Craig J. Hazen (Professor of Comparative Religion and Apologetics, Biola University), just published a nice review of Bill Maher's mocumentary, Religulous. Here's an excerpt:
Continue reading "Craig Hazen's review of Bill Maher's film, Religulous" »
October 28, 2008
My return to Biola University: October 30, 2008
It has been several years since I have given a talk at Biola University in La Mirada, California. It is an institution that has a number of my friends on the faculty including Craig Hazen, John Mark Reynolds, J. P. Moreland, and Scott B. Rae. So I am very much looking forward to this Thursday, when I return to Biola as a speaker in its Distinguished Speaker Lecture Series for Christianity and Culture.
Scheduled for October 30 at 6 pm in Biola's Calvary Chapel, I will be delivering a lecture on the topic of abortion and American politics. After the lecture I'll be meeting for an informal Q & A at the Philosophy House of Talbot School of Theology (Biola's seminary) with some students in the school's M.A. program in philosophy of religion and ethics.
If you are in southern California, feel free to attend. The lecture is open to the public.
November 12, 2008
Fighting for their faith?
I've been hearing lately by word of mouth about a study, which I haven't been able to track down yet on-line, that shows that more than 75% of Christian young people lose their faith within a year of going away to college. I haven't been able to hear of any breakdown of these as between those who go to Christian colleges and those who go to secular colleges. Perhaps they all went to secular colleges. The claim is that the #1 reason cited for the loss of faith was "intellectual doubts."
I'd like to gather some anecdotal evidence, here. For those of our readers and my co-bloggers who work with college students, does it seem to you that Christian young people who come to have doubts about their faith tend to seek help to resolve these--perhaps from a parent, a Christian professor, a pastor, or a priest--and don't find help that satisfies them? Or are they losing their faith under the influence of (say) their secular peers and professors without putting up any fight? Or are they trying a little to find answers to questions but not trying very hard? I realize that these things are going to fall along a whole spectrum. I can't help wondering to what extent the failure here is on the part of the young people to look, or perhaps to listen well to and heed good answers they are given, and to what extent the failure is on the part of their Christian guides and mentors to give them good answers.
November 14, 2008
Dembski: "Frank Beckwith Finally Disowns ID"
I just returned home from a speaking engagement at the University of St. Thomas and found this headline on Bill Dembski's blog: "Frank Beckwith Finally Disowns ID."
It's an odd way to characterize a disagreement between critics of philosophical materialism over how best to approach the relationship between science, theology, and philosophy. I was under the impression that this was an open question over which Christians of good will could disagree.
I have no idea what it means to "disown ID," as if it were a prodigal son or unfaithful spouse. Since I never "owned" ID, I'm not sure how I can "disown" it.
Also on Dembski's blog are these ugly comments by Denyse O'Leary:
Honestly, Beckwith disowning ID reminds me of a guy divorcing his wife ten years after she’s run off with the plumber. The question isn’t “Why, Frankie, why?” but “Why, frankly, why?”.Last I heard from Beckwith, he was defending John Lilley’s scorched earth campaign against the academic deans at Baylor (deans 1, scorched earth 0, as I recall - even at dysfunctional Baylor, there is some stuff you just can’t do).
My take is that some philosophy types will always hate ID because it asserts the priority of evidence over theory.
Ignoring the tasteless infidelity illustration, Denyse is simply mistaken that I defended injustice in the case of the unprincipled actions of Dr. Lilley. What I actually did suggest to Bill and Denyse is modesty and restraint prior to the acquisition of all the facts. To get a feel for my comments at the time, read Densye's blog entry which is followed by comments by me, Bill, Denyse, and my Baylor colleague Alexander Pruss.
Frankly, it is just plain weird to think of questioning ID and its relationship to the Christian worldview as some kind of flirtation with apostacy, as Bill and Denyse seem to be doing.
When the Santa Clara Law Review article is available, I will post a link to it.
November 16, 2008
Soul-Losing Risk-Taking
And when he had called the people unto him with his disciples also, he said unto them, "Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel's, the same shall save it. For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels." (Mark 8:34-38)
In my post below on the subject of young people who lose their faith in college, I have been struck by many things in the excellent and informative reader responses. The one I will focus on here is the theme that comes up repeatedly of the total atmosphere at a secular college. Here's how commentator Paul put it:
It takes a lot of personal fortitude to hold onto what you believe in when everyone around you operates entirely on the presumption that it doesn't even exist. You have to be able to go home at night and think about it, you have to be able to drag yourself out early in the morning and go to church, you have to be able to say "eh, not this time" when good clean fun goes bad. Not everyone can do that. It's sort of a divide and conquer technique on the part of the devil---cut Catholics off from one another through social contexts that isolate them and leave little room for displays of faith, then pry each one open like a tin can.
November 17, 2008
Evangelical and Catholic
That is the title of the essay I published this morning in the online magazine, Inside Catholic. Here is how it begins:
November 19, 2008
Horton: Only a subset of Calvinists and Lutherans can be Evangelicals
Reformation Online just re-published this 1992 article authored by Michael Scott Horton of Westminster Seminary in California. Here's the money quote:
Nevertheless, if we are going to still use "evangelical" as a noun to define a body of Christians holding to a certain set of convictions, it is high time we got clear on these matters. An evangelical cannot be an Arminian any more than an evangelical can be a Roman Catholic. The distinctives of evangelicalism were denied by Rome at the Council of Trent, by the Remonstrants in 1610, were confused and challenged by John Wesley in the eighteenth century, and have become either ignored or denied in contemporary "evangelicalism."
(HT: Classical Arminianism)
November 21, 2008
CT: Evangelical Theological Society Votes Not to Amend
This just appeared on the Christianity Today blog: "The effort failed at today's ETS business meeting, I'm told, by at least a 2-to-1 margin, with the executive committee unanimously opposing the amendment." Read the whole entry here.
You can learn more about the amendment here.
November 24, 2008
Did C. S. Lewis Go to Heaven?
Not if John W. Robbins has anything to say about it.
December 4, 2008
The Christendom Review
Bill Luse, formerly a contributor here at What’s Wrong with the World, has launched a new project with some old friends: an online journal called The Christendom Review. High polemics, philosophy, literature, poetry, art — no aspect of the life of the mind will be forgotten on this site. The first number, for instance, features two wonderful short stories, and plenty of good poetry, including one of Bill’s own compositions. Here is a portion of the note he sent me:
A section of the first issue is devoted to Smith Kirkpatrick, the man who taught [editor Richard Barnett] and me how to write. Though he will be unfamiliar to many W4 readers, I still think they might enjoy some of the essays. Or, as I say in the editors’ note: “Many, perhaps most, readers did not know him, but we believe that if you give the reminiscences here collected a fair chance, you might wish that you had.” Mention should be made of the fact that you and Lydia have articles therein, and that there is also fiction, poetry and art to accomplish our desired goal, that “...all readers...find somewhere in these pages a place of rest, a point of insight or exhilaration, a sign of hope and grace, some encouragement that the life of letters, and of all art, still has a message to bear in the bloodstream of our society; and that, in the hands of good men and women, it might yet remain one of the higher gestures of love for our fellows.” And lastly, offer our deepest thanks to our webmaster, Todd McKimmey.
The Christendom Review. Long may it prosper.
December 11, 2008
Christianity Today takes on Newsweek
The editorial board of Christianity Today goes after the editor of Newsweek, Jon Meacham as well as its religion editor, Lisa Miller for the magazine's "biblical" defense of same-sex marriage. Here's an excerpt from the CT editorial:
December 24, 2008
Lunar Christmas.
From NASA:
Apollo 8, the first manned mission to the Moon, entered lunar orbit on Christmas Eve, December 24, 1968. That evening, the astronauts; Commander Frank Borman, Command Module Pilot Jim Lovell, and Lunar Module Pilot William Anders did a live television broadcast from lunar orbit, in which they showed pictures of the Earth and Moon seen from Apollo 8. Lovell said, "The vast loneliness is awe-inspiring and it makes you realize just what you have back there on Earth." They ended the broadcast with the crew taking turns reading from the book of Genesis.
William Anders:
"For all the people on Earth the crew of Apollo 8 has a message we would like to send you".
"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness."
Jim Lovell:
"And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day."
Frank Borman:
"And God said, Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good."
Borman then added, "And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you - all of you on the good Earth."
Video of this — it’s a bit grainy, but must have been astounding in its day, and anyway the audio is what matters — is below the fold. Merry Christmas to all.
(Hat tip on the NASA link to Sean Curnyn at Right Wing Bob.)
Merry Christmas
Any agnostic or atheist whose childhood has known a real Christmas has ever afterwards, whether he likes it or not, an association in his mind between two ideas that most of mankind must regard as remote from each other; the idea of a baby and the idea of the unknown strength that sustains the stars. His instincts and imagination can still connect them, when his reason can no longer see the need of the connection; for him there will always be some savour of religion about the mere picture of a mother and a baby; some hint of mercy and softening about the mere mention of the dreadful name of God.
G. K. Chesterton, from The Everlasting Man
Almighty God, who hast given us thy only-begotten Son to take our nature upon him, and as at this time to be born of a pure virgin; Grant that we being regenerate, and made thy children by adoption and grace, may daily be renewed by thy Holy Spirit; through the same our Lord Jeuss Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the same Spirit ever, one God, world without end. Amen.
To all our readers at What's Wrong with the World, we wish a blessed Feast of the Nativity of Our Lord. Merry Christmas!
(Interested readers can see also my personal blog Merry Christmas post with additional Christmas images here.)
January 7, 2009
Badeaux on Cormac McCarthy
My friend edits a fine little journal out of Houston Baptist University called The City. The Winter number includes some excellent essays indeed, not least this review of the novelist Cormac McCarthy by another friend of mine, Christopher Badeaux. He presents McCarthy's work as an examination of sin and disorder, which in contrast point to what earlier ages called Natural Law. Well worth a read. You can sign up to receive The City for free here.
January 23, 2009
Audio Version of Return to Rome is out
The audio version of the latest book, Return Rome: Confessions of An Evangelical Catholic (Brazos Press), can now be purchased through Amazon or Christian Audio. It is narrated by one of the great voices in audiobooks, Grover Gardner, who, ironically is a frequent commentator on Southern Appeal, another blog to which I contribute.
January 30, 2009
Praise Him, planet and moon!
When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him?
My colleague at another site, Skanderbeg, snapped this beauty of a photo last night up in Vermont. It is of Venus and the moon just after dark. But even a great photo does not do the heavenly spectacle justice. You gotta see it in person.
If the night is clear they will appear even closer together tonight. Look in the southern sky starting at dusk. I saw them at 5:30pm, well before it was dark. Venus is extremely high in the sky for an interior planet, and by far the brightest object in the sky (moon excluded of course). Well worth a look, even in bitter cold.
More images are available here.
February 4, 2009
Prayers
Please pray for Amy Welborn and her family, who have suffered a terrible loss.
February 14, 2009
Aquinas v. Intelligent Design
Just came across this interesting piece by Gonzaga University philosophy professor Michael W. Tkacz. Entitled "Aquinas v. Intelligent Design," it was published in the November 2008 issue of This Rock, the magazine of Catholic Answers. Here are Professor's Tkacz's concluding paragraphs:
February 16, 2009
Bob Dylan - "Trouble in Mind"
An outtake from Slow Train Coming (1979) that made it to the B-side of the single "Gotta Serve Somebody."
February 20, 2009
Aquinas vs. Intelligent Design II
St. Thomas 
William Paley
In a previous entry on Aquinas vs. Intelligent Design, in which I link to the work of Gonzaga philosophy professor Michael Tkacz, I end with this comment: "I do wish, however, that Professor Tkacz had addressed the question of how the Christian should think of God's interventions in those events we call miraculous." Apparently, I am not the only one who raised this query or one similar to it. I know this because an associate editor of the periodical in which Professor Tkacz's appeared, This Rock (published by Catholic Answers), Sophia A. Sproule, was kind enough to send me the following email message just yesterday afternoon. It includes a response from Professor Tkacz. I am grateful to both Ms. Sproule and Professor Tkacz for taking the time to address this query.
February 23, 2009
Giving Up Blogging and Reading Blogs for Lent
I have decided that for the Season of Lent that I will give up both blogging and reading blogs and bulletin boards (with one exception; see below). Both activities have become so much a part of my day that I need to reorient myself toward those things that are of eternal and lasting significance as well as to give something up that would really hurt. The only blog that I will read and contribute to is my Return to Rome blog. But if and when I write, it will just be on topics pertaining to my Christian faith and spirituality.
So, starting on Ash Wednesday, February 25, I will cease both blogging and reading blogs until Easter Monday, April 12. Consequently, I ask my friends and acquaintances to please not send me links to blogs or bulletin boards during the Season of Lent.
For the record, on Ash Wednesday I will also be dismantling my Facebook page, something I took back up after saying on Southern Appeal several months ago that I was through with it. (I caved to peer pressure on that one, if I may confess).
(cross-posted on Southern Appeal)
March 9, 2009
Aborting a Miscarried Argument
As far as we know, lots of babies die in natural miscarriages. This fact is often cited by pro-abortion apologists as evidence that pro-lifers don't themselves think that embryos are fully human, deserving of legal protection from murder. The sophistry often appended to this "argument" is the notion that since presumably aborted children and miscarried children go the the same eternal fate, Christian pro-lifers should be acting as though miscarriage were as high a priority as abortion.
I don't understand why anyone would take this so-called argument seriously.
Suppose two million Catholics in a state of grace die, and all presumably go to the same eternal fate.
Now suppose one million of those Catholics were murdered in a mass genocide. The other million died of old age or some other natural cause.
As a political matter, a matter of the exercise of temporal power to protect the common good, which of these two groups of "deaths" - we always have to use language scrubbed of moral implication when speaking to abortion apologists, you see - are a higher priority? Is the genocide of a million people inside our legitimate political jurisdiction a higher or lower political priority than the natural deaths of a million? When we ourselves face judgment, in part for our political actions, are we more likely to be judged harshly because a million people died of natural causes in our jurisdiction, or because a million people were murderd in our jurisdiction as a direct result of policies we supported?
To ask the questions is to answer them.
March 15, 2009
Why Traditional Christians are all Nazis Who Need to be Reprogrammed
Sean in the comments to Lydia's post below observed that, according to Richard Rorty:
... the fact that we just don't accept the triumph of the sexual revolution and last Thursday's discovery that a man's ability to marry another man is a most fundamental human right means that we are the moral equivalent of defeated ex-Nazis?One of the most delicious and horrifying ironies of our modern/postmodern condition is that the Nazi, who is a heretic from liberalism precisely because he makes the Low Man (and programs for his extermination) completely explicit, now counts as the paradigmatic Low Man himself. So any Low Man (e.g. someone who doesn't buy into last Thursday's discovery etc.) is, for all practical purposes, a Nazi or Nazi-in-gestation. A further irony is that the liberal and his close-cousin heretic the Nazi have much more in common with each other than the actual men that both see as the Low Man (other than each other), the actual politically subhuman roadblock in the way of the triumph of the will of the free and equal new man, self-created through reason and will, living under a value system created by man himself and not subject to natural or traditional hierarchies and authorities, politically subject only to himself and most especially not to God or other men. Man may be subject to God in his private life and by private choice, so long as this in no way interferes with the free choices of other men. But politics must be the instrument of man's free and equal will and only man's free and equal will: no God allowed.
I'm not sure this is fully conscious on the part of the liberal himself though, in this sense: the liberal himself is often (ironically) one of the most narrow-minded human beings to ever exist, and is generally incapable of seeing modes of thought farther away than the tip of his nose. Because the Nazi is no farther away from the liberal than the tip of his nose, he understands the Nazi and is rightly horrified by the Nazi's evil. Anyone even further away than the tip of his nose thus cannot be anything but a Nazi. The notion of a non-Nazi illiberal or anti-liberal is inconceivable, or is ruled out a priori.
Continue reading "Why Traditional Christians are all Nazis Who Need to be Reprogrammed" »
April 10, 2009
Good Friday--He Trusted in God that He Would deliver Him
For good Friday, a little Handel. Scripture from Psalm 22, of course, which we read last night at the stripping of the altar:
Related note: I have been told recently of a well-known New Testament scholar who attempts in a recent book to make a "conflict" between the gospels by saying that in one of the gospels Jesus suffered without knowing the reason for it. This astonishing statement supported by, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Reference to Psalm 22 is, apparently, missing in this shallow exposition of the Gospels.
April 11, 2009
He is risen!
Now after the Sabbath, toward the dawn of the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. And behold, there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. And for fear of him the guards trembled and became like dead men. But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here, for he has risen, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead, and behold, he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him. See, I have told you.” So they departed quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples. And behold, Jesus met them and said, “Greetings!” And they came up and took hold of his feet and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee, and there they will see me.”
Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” -- Matt. 28: 1 - 10, 16-20
May 13, 2009
Busy dying?
My friend Hunter Baker of Houston Baptist University has a written a smart response to the latest End of Christian America fad.
(Was that a Dylan reference in there, Hunter?)
May 15, 2009
Proclaiming anew
Today at the distance of some 20 centuries, Peter's successor, the Bishop of Rome, stands before the same empty tomb and contemplates the mystery of the Resurrection. Following in the footsteps of the Apostle, I wish to proclaim anew to the men and women of our time the Church's firm faith that Jesus Christ was crucified, died, and was buried, and that on the third day He rose from the dead, exalted at the right hand of the Father. He sent us His Spirit for the forgiveness of sins. Apart from Him, whom God has made Lord and Christ, there is no other name under heaven given to men, by which we are to be saved.
Pope Benedict XVI, today, at the Holy Sepulcher
May 22, 2009
I'll be on Hugh Hewitt and the Bible Answer Man next week, May 26 and May 28
I will be a guest on the Hugh Hewitt and Bible Answer Man programs on May 26 and 28. On the former I will be talking about my new book, Return to Rome: Confessions of An Evangelical Catholic (Brazos Press, 2009). On the latter I will be discussing a chapter I contributed to the new book published by Christian Research Institute, What is Truth?: The Best of the Christian Research Journal (CRI, 2009). The chapter, "Deconstructing Liberal Tolerance" was originally published in 2000 in the Christian Research Journal.
(Cross posted on Southern Appeal and Return to Rome)
June 6, 2009
Virtual Library of Christian Philosophy
Just found this nice collection of papers by some well-known contemporary Christian philosophers. It can be found on the Calvin College website here. There is some great stuff on this site by Alvin Plantinga, Keith DeRose, Nicholas Wolterstorff , Peter Kreeft, Del Ratzsch, and many others.
June 26, 2009
Religion is Knowledge Too
A commercial from Macedonia. (HT: Inside Catholic)
June 27, 2009
Design, Theism, and Romans 1:20
Over at First Thoughts (a First Things blog), I posted an entry about the online discussion between Stephen Barr (on First Thoughts) and John West (on Evolution News). To find my posting, go here.
July 11, 2009
Jordan J. Ballor on Calvin, Conversions, and Catholicity
Published on the 500th birthday of John Calvin, Jordan J. Ballor has authored a thoughtful piece on some of the problems that arise in discussions between Protestants and Catholics about catholicity, the Early Church, and the reasons provided by converts from Protestantism to Catholicism. Appearing on First Thing's On the Square, here are some excerpts:
Continue reading "Jordan J. Ballor on Calvin, Conversions, and Catholicity" »
August 1, 2009
Can the Rhine pour into the Tiber 'neath the sweep of the Wittenburg door?
The Rev. Russell E. Saltzman has authored a remarkable essay published on First Things' On the Square (31 July 2009), "An Ecumenical Moment for One."
A Lutheran pastor in Kansas City, the Rev. Saltzman laments his denomination's (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) readiness to bless same-sex unions and to allow those in same-sex unions to be ordained to the pastorate. He anticipates that this will occur at the ELCA's forthcoming meeting in Minneapolis, 17-23 August 2009.
After entertaining several options for recalcitrant Lutheran congregations such as his own, he offers this possibility in his concluding three paragraphs:
Continue reading "Can the Rhine pour into the Tiber 'neath the sweep of the Wittenburg door?" »
August 2, 2009
Catholicism, Faith and Works: Excerpts from Return to Rome
In an entry below, there's an interesting discussion on faith and works and the parts they play in the theologies of Catholicism and Protestantism. Other than posting the original entry, I have said little in the combox. For this reason, I am posting here my understanding of the issue, as it appeared in sections of Return to Rome (notes and emphases omitted):
Continue reading "Catholicism, Faith and Works: Excerpts from Return to Rome" »
August 3, 2009
Houston Baptist's The City and "Evangelical Catholicity"
Houston Baptist University publishes this wonderful new periodical called The CIty. (Full disclosure: I am one of its advisory editors).
In the Winter 2008 issue, Matthew Lee Anderson, published an insightful essay, "The New Evangelical Scandal." My good friend, Professor John Mark Reynolds (of Biola University), and I were invited to write responses. They have just been published in the recently released Summer 2009 issue. My article, entitled "Evangelical Catholicity," is accessible online here. (You can find Professor Reynold's piece online here). The following is an excerpt from my article:
Continue reading "Houston Baptist's The City and "Evangelical Catholicity"" »
August 9, 2009
Why I Love Johnny Cash
August 14, 2009
InterVarsity's Doctrinal Basis and Justification
The Evangelical campus ministry, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, revised its doctrinal basis in 2000. As a Catholic, I do not see anything in its portion on justification with which I would disagree. Here it is the section in question:
[We believe in] justification by God's grace to all who repent and put their faith in Jesus Christ alone for salvation.[We believe in] the indwelling presence and transforming power of the Holy Spirit, who gives to all believers a new life and a new calling to obedient service.
Thoughts?
(Update: I corrected the ambiguity of the two statements. In the original, the entire doctrinal basis begins with "We believe in" with a series of statements underneath)
(Originally posted on Return to Rome blog)
August 21, 2009
Exploring Christian Identity: Can You Be Catholic and Evangelical?
(Update: Apparently, not everyone is thrilled about my article. See, for instance, this commentary. File this under: "More Catholic than the Pope.")
Chis Castaldo, Pastor of Outreach and Church Planting at College Church (Wheaton, Illinois), is moderating my public dialogue with Timothy George on September 3 at Wheaton College (Edman Chapel, 7 pm). Below is a video promo of the event. It is produced by Pastor Castaldo. (He plays all the characters).
Speaking of Evangelical Catholicism, I just published an article in the Josephinum Journal of Theology, "Evangelical and Catholic." You can find it on my website here. The article is adapted from portions of Return to Rome. You can find out more about the Wheaton College event here.
(Originally posted on Return to Rome blog)
November 7, 2009
The Greek atomists and the god of Paley
In recent posts, I have been defending classical theism and criticizing Paley-style “design arguments” as time wasters at best and theologically dangerous at worst because of their implicit anthropomorphic conception of God. Here’s another way to look at the problem.
As is well known, the ancient Greek atomists were forerunners of modern naturalism. They pioneered the mechanistic approach to the study of nature. They were critical of traditional religion. They denied that there is any Uncaused Cause sustaining the world in being. But they were not atheists as that term is understood today. They generally acknowledged that the gods existed. They just regarded them as one part of the natural order among others. Were they writing today, they might have expressed their position by comparing the gods to extraterrestrials or beings from another dimension.
If you are a Christian, suppose it turned out that there really was such a being as Yahweh, but he was an alien from Alpha Centauri who had decided for a few centuries to have a little fun with the ancient Israelites. In particular, suppose it turned out that something like the events recounted in the Old Testament really did happen, but only as interpreted by Erich von Däniken in Chariots of the Gods. Would you feel vindicated? Would you expect Richard Dawkins to repent and race over to the nearest revival meeting? No, because even Dawkins is not that foolish, and neither are you.
Certainly the atomists would have responded with a gigantic yawn. And rightly so, because if God were really a space alien, then He wouldn’t be God. He certainly wouldn’t be worthy of worship. Scary, maybe. Perhaps for that reason someone you might not want to tick off. But still merely a cosmic despot, or (if we’re lucky) a cosmic kindly old grandfather. It really doesn’t matter for religious purposes, because, again, he would not in that case be any more worthy of worship than Superman.
Thus, if contemporary naturalists were wise, they would stop getting so upset over the arguments of ID theorists, given that those theorists themselves keep insisting, quite rightly, that their arguments don’t (and, I’ve been arguing, can’t) strictly get you anything more grand than E.T. If the ancient atomists could happily accept that, why couldn’t the American Atheists? Perhaps someday they’ll wise up and realize they can. For with respect to the anthropomorphic god of Paley, you might as well say: “There probably is such a god, but stop worrying and enjoy your life anyway.”
You see, there is a reason why Athanasius, Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, and all the others among the very greatest thinkers of the Christian tradition insisted on classical theism. There is a reason why it is reflected in the creeds and councils, and why it is the infallible, irreformable doctrine of Holy Mother Church. Nothing less gets you beyond the naturalism of the ancient atomists. Which, if ID theory ever gained wide acceptance, would simply become the naturalism of the modern naturalists. Darwinism will have been defeated, but a redefined naturalism will bop along unscathed. The last laugh will belong to Democritus rather than Dembski. Then many will say bitterly, in the wake of their Pyrrhic victory: “Even the naturalists believe, and tremble not at all.”