Geoff's Miscellany

Miscellaneous Musings

Contemporary Trends

John Wesley on Foreknowledge and Election

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Below, you’ll find 1 Peter 1:1-2 and John Wesley’s comments on vs 2. Over all, I find what he says to be convincing. The idea that the descriptions of God’s fore or after knowledge in the Bible are metaphorical is perfectly reasonable. It is just as much true that predestination is a metaphor as it is true that God’s being surprised or ignorant is as well.

Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to the strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace unto you, and peace, be multiplied.
(1 Peter 1:1-2 KJV)

[Quote] According to the foreknowledge of God – Speaking after the manner of men. Strictly speaking, there is no foreknowledge, no more than afterknowledge, with God: but all things are known to him as present from eternity to eternity. This is therefore no other than an instance of the divine condescension to our low capacities. Elect – By the free love and almighty power of God taken out of, separated from, the world. Election, in the scripture sense, is God’s doing anything that our merit or power have no part in. The true predestination, or fore – appointment of God is:

1.  He that believeth shall be saved from the guilt and power of sin.

2. He that endureth to the end shall be saved eternally.

3. They who receive the precious gift of faith, thereby become the sons of God; and, being sons, they shall receive the Spirit of holiness to walk as Christ also walked.

Throughout every part of this appointment of God, promise and duty go hand in hand. All is free gift; and yet such is the gift, that the final issue depends on our future obedience to the heavenly call. But other predestination than this, either to life or death eternal, the scripture knows not of. Moreover, it is:

1. Cruel respect of persons; an unjust regard of one, and an unjust disregard of another.

2. It is mere creature partiality, and not infinite justice.

3. It is not plain scripture doctrine, if true; but rather, inconsistent with the express written word, that speaks of God’s universal offers of grace; his invitations, promises, threatenings, being all general.

We are bid to choose life, and reprehended for not doing it. It is inconsistent with a state of probation in those that must be saved or must be lost. It is of fatal consequence; all men being ready, on very slight grounds, to fancy themselves of the elect number. But the doctrine of predestination is entirely changed from what it formerly was. Now it implies neither faith, peace, nor purity. It is something that will do without them all. Faith is no longer, according to the modern predestinarian scheme, a divine “evidence of things not seen,” wrought in the soul by the immediate power of the Holy Ghost; not an evidence at all; but a mere notion. Neither is faith made any longer a means of holiness; but something that will do without it. Christ is no more a Saviour from sin; but a defence, a countenancer of it. He is no more a fountain of spiritual life in the soul of believers, but leaves his elect inwardly dry, and outwardly unfruitful; and is made little more than a refuge from the image of the heavenly; even from righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. Through sanctification of the Spirit – Through the renewing and purifying influences of his Spirit on their souls.
Unto obedience – To engage and enable them to yield themselves up to all holy obedience, the foundation of all which is, the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ – The atoning blood of Christ, which was typified by the sprinkling of the blood of sacrifices under the law; in allusion to which it is called “the blood of sprinkling.” [End Quote]

Hopefully Wesley’s point of view is helpful to you.

Sanctification, Repentance, and the Habit Loop

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Introduction to Concept:

In his book The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg explains something advertisers have known for quite some time: human beings can be trained to respond to cues with routines as long as there is a reward. He calls this the habit loop. It looks like this:

The idea is that when we have a cue, we usually will follow a certain routine that leads to a reward and if this cue occurs enough times it becomes a habit and is very difficult to break. Many habits have no particular reward but are still hard to break. Think about things Americans do not eat (cartilage, fat, and animal skin) that are good for you and if you do not eat these things, think about how gross it feels to try eating them.

Duhigg’s model of habit formation is especially interesting Christians who wish to use spiritual disciplines, obtain some virtue, or overcome some particular sin.

Keep in mind this paragraph from Jesus’ brother:

Jas 1:13-15 ESV  Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. (14) But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. (15) Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.

James’ answers the question, “Who is the go-to guy for blame when we sin?” Who is it? The person who sins. Or, to put it more personally, we are responsible for the temptations to sin that come our way. Desire is the cue, this or that sinful action or constellation of thoughts and actions is the routine, and desire fulfillment is the reward.

Personal Case Study

I have a tendency to struggle with acedia. It’s essentially a feeling of weird existential boredom that leads to sloth. The best cure for it, in the moment it attacks, is to pray, do something physically productive, and move on with life. The thing about acedia is that it never really happens at work, but it can happen after a really productive event or series of events at work. Now, coupled with acedia, I love information. My grandfather used to think it was weird how I always had “factoids” that seemed to have no practical use. He’s right. I remember, though I can’t place the story, when Holmes told Watson, “I am an omnivorous reader with a strangely retentive memory for trifles.” This love for knowledge coupled with a periodic lack of motivation to exert effort causes what the medieval scholars called “curiosity.” Not the good kind that leads to scientific discovery, but the waste of time kind wherein you simply search for novelty. I suppose that if I were less conscientious it would be the sort of feeling that makes one easily addicted to drugs (and I am susceptible to binge playing video games when I cannot sleep).

  1. Cue: Feelings of lack of motivation coupled with a constant desire to know things.
  2. Routine: The internet now exists: follow links, listen to music, and read pointless articles.
  3. Reward: Dozens of silly facts rather in the same time it would take me to read one sustained argument concerning an important truth, perform one satisfying repair to part of my home, or write one chapter of a commentary on the Sermon on the Mount I am trying to finish by the end of the year.

Duhigg prescribes two paths to change the habit loop:

  1. Keep the cue and reward the same, but change the routine. To change the routine, Duhigg notes that we must come to understand precisely what craving is set off by the cue. For instance, a shopping addict might have the desire to accomplish something, but the routine (buying something on credit) is so easy that it is the only option that comes to mind until the loop is further examined by the obsessive clothing buyer.
  2. Remove the cue. Removing the cue only goes so far, but it is better than nothing. For instance, one would no longer be able to binge-watch The Office and eat sweets if they canceled their internet service and only bought meat, eggs, and veggies at the store.

Two Necessary Things to Keep in Mind

There remain two other elements to changing the habit loop:

  1. The role of belief
  2. The education of desire

As to the first idea, Duhigg observes that belief plays a crucial role in long term habit transformation (82-86). In the case of athletes, they have to believe that the new habits will help them succeed. Similarly, AA members who commit to the steps and the whole program are more successful when they actually believe in the higher power (84). In the case of Christianity there is a cluster of beliefs that are important for manipulating the moral habit loop:

  1. Sin really is disgusting and bad for you
  2. The way of Christ is meant to give you joy (often now, but infinitely so in eternity)
  3. You are dead to sin (in other words, it is not your master and you always have a way out)
  4. God will help you

The second element, the education of desire, is implied by Duhigg but made explicit in Scripture and ancient philosophy.[1] This should not be news to us. Many people grow to love the routine of exercise no matter how grueling, people start to enjoy the taste of healthy food on a new diet. For instance, I can only drink one or two types of soda now since I went about four years without a sip of the stuff. Soda, even a sip, burns my mouth and is so sweet that it makes my teeth hurt. If Christianity is true, it stands to reason that the process of habit formation applies to the moral life we see in Scripture as well. And we do see this.

Paul speaks of being transformed by the renewing of the mind. This implies that one can change for the better over time. Similarly, Peter speaks of growing in grace and knowledge. It is also the case that John and James speak of love and faith being perfected in us, respectively. The author of Hebrews says that we should strengthen our weakened joints in our quest for holiness and so-on (Hebrews 12:12). In other words, God shapes our desires through the habits we develop.

References

[1] In order to fully change our character, eventually our choices and then habits, must result in an incremental change of desire toward the good. Jesus talks about this difference of orientation in several places. For instance, he observes that the Pharisees do their religious rituals in order to hide their sin from others rather than as acts of faith, hope, and love toward God (which obeying the Law was always meant to be, see Psalm 19:7). So, when one begins to put to death sinful habits and to put holy habits into practice in their place out of sincere trust and hope in God, ones desires start to change.

Sola Scriptura

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Edward Feser has three posts on the Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura (only the Bible) over at his blog.

Here is Feser’s summary of a summary of the Jesuit critique of sola scriptura:

You’ll recall that the early Jesuit critique of sola scriptura cited by Feyerabend maintains that (a) scripture alone can never tell you what counts as scripture, (b) scripture alone cannot tell you how to interpret scripture, and (c) scripture alone cannot give us a procedure for deriving consequences from scripture, applying it to new circumstances, etc.

In my mind this assumes too much (too little?) of the Protestant position. It would seem that the ideal expression of sola scriptura is not that only the Bible can speak authoritatively on faith and morals. Instead, sola scriptura says that of the deposit that the church has received (and Protestants and cult groups have received it as well…even if for now due to widespread ignorance we only receive it through publishing companies), the writings of the prophets and apostles are the only divinely-inspired norm concerning the content of the gospel message. The Bible is not the only norm, it is not the only guide to practice, it is not self-interpreting, it is not a magic talisman, and so-on. It is a norm within the tradition for checking the tradition.

The reason that this distinction is important is that Protestantism is not meant to be permanent. It was and is meant to critique the church of the western world on that church’s own terms (its accepted canon of Scripture). The rejection of the deuterocanonical books is incidental to the reformation because that debate had been ongoing within Christendom and had not led to division. For instance, the Eastern Orthodox church accepts a larger Old Testament than the Roman Catholic and this is not why they are divided.

If sola scriptura is seen in its polemical context first. To summarize, it sounds something like this:

“If we accept these documents as divinely-inspired (which we all do), then we must reject specific teachings current in the church, (which we do not all do).


Most historical Protestants accept, in some sense, that the church has a deposit of the gospel from the era of the apostles, the deposit includes the Bible which includes the Old Testament the apostles quoted and the New Testament which the apostles and their associates wrote. And I think that many Protestants would like to see the Reformation doctrine of sola scriptura as a stop-gap measure against novel accretions of anti-gospel teaching, not as a measure against tradition as such or against church authority or against hierarchichal leadership scructures.

I’m not a fan of the church being out of sync. But here’s the deal, people are obligated to obey the voice of reason and the voice of God. And if the church leadership requires practices of people who read their Bibles that apparently contradict the divine command, then the need for sola scriptura arises.

I do not deny that there are and have been times in the Bible when going against conscience was necessary due to direct divine command. This is because conscience can be wrong.

So, I get that there are times when the church (churches) might instruct people to do things that go against their immediate good sense, hopefully those things are justified by appeal to Christ and his teaching (like asking somebody to care for the poor). But let us take the case of asking the departed saints to pray for us. The Roman Catholic Church asks individuals to engage in a practice that is indistinguishable from prayer to idols to the average layperson. I know this because I know poorly catechized Catholics who think precisely this and pray, in their minds, to statues or pray to saints because they fear that Jesus will be too judgmental of their sins. And I know Protestants who don’t understand the doctrine or barely understand it and still feel that it contradicts the Ten Commandments.

I’m not saying that the Roman Catholic Chruch should outlaw praying to saints (others say that), I’m saying that requiring something of that sort of the faithful is the kind of concern that has not been dealt with since the reformation and is why we need sola scriptura. When catholic apologists defend the practice against those who oppose it actively, that is not the same thing as considering the consciences of those who would never reunite with the Roman Church because they are convinced that doing so puts them at odds with Christ due to the apparent idolatry in asking for post-mortem intercessions (I know some writers do, in fact do this).

There are several other doctrines like that. Thankfully for all of us, justification by faith is true, and we can be wrong about ideas of this sort and be justified by God.

But to be clear, sola scriptura does not state that the only way to know anything about God or faith or morals is Scripture. Sola scriptura says, “If we accept that the church has apostolic authority, then let us not contradict the apostles and what they considered inspired in our own actions and teachings.”

Is this position fraught with difficulty? Absolutely. Is the position of being a part of a church that actively asks you to pray to saints, accept a medieval merit system, and treat the pope not merely as a representative of Christ and a pastor of pastors but as a mystically infallible teacher a difficult position? You bet. But is sola scriptura, when seen in the terms set out above, really as unreasonable as Feser claims? Absolutely not.

Again, my whole problem is that I accept that the church does have apostolic authority and that the church defines/discovers Scripture (obviously the church does not define the Word of God…God the Father did that when he raised Jesus), but in accepting that the church is correct about Scripture certain things which the majority segment of western Christendom accepts instantly become untenable for me and a great many of God’s people.

Sola scriptura was never meant to be a claim that there was no authority in the church’s teaching offices, nor was it ever a claim that neither councils nor creeds are important. It was a claim that if Scripture is accepted along with the creeds and councils, then because of what the church claims Scripture to be in those very creeds, councils, and by those teachers, where contradictions arise, Scripture should be accepted over them.

All the challenges of interpretation, checks and balances within the tradition, and what to make of further divisions within the Protestant movement are not undone by this claim, but there it is.

Pornography is Cultural Subversion

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While at the most obvious level pornography exists as either an alleged celebration of the human form or as a transgressive method of making money by playing on a constellation of psychological issues and needs: insecurity, loneliness, depression, beauty, degradation, hatred, and our need for immortality, the genre is less obviously meant for something else. Nate Abrams (a Jewish author) wrote:

Extending the subversive thesis, Jewish involvement in the X-rated industry can be seen as a proverbial two fingers to the entire WASP establishment in America. Some porn stars viewed themselves as frontline fighters in the spiritual battle between Christian America and secular humanism. According to Ford, Jewish X-rated actors often brag about their ‘joy in being anarchic, sexual gadflies to the puritanical beast’. Jewish involvement in porn, by this argument, is the result of an atavistic hatred of Christian authority: they are trying to weaken the dominant culture in America by moral subversion. Astyr remembers having ‘to run or fight for it in grammar school because I was a Jew. It could very well be that part of my porn career is an “up yours” to these people’. Al Goldstein, the publisher of Screw, said (on lukeford.net), ‘The only reason that Jews are in pornography is that we think that Christ sucks. Catholicism sucks. We don’t believe in authoritarianism.’ Pornography thus becomes a way of defiling Christian culture and, as it penetrates to the very heart of the American mainstream (and is no doubt consumed by those very same WASPs), its subversive character becomes more charged. Porn is no longer of the ‘what the Butler saw’ voyeuristic type; instead, it is driven to new extremes of portrayal that stretch the boundaries of the porn aesthetic. As new sexual positions are portrayed, the desire to shock (as well as entertain) seems clear.

Abrams goes on to ask what reason if any, should anybody be ashamed of such a cultural influence.

It would appear that pornography is not just a nihilistic use of pleasure to cynically pursue profit from the chronically lonely and undersexed, but it is (for some) a mode of cultural subversion in a ‘spiritual battle.’ The problem with secularists who engage in spiritual battles is that their lack of belief in spiritual things does not nullify the negative effects of “winning” on the side of evil.

To win the spiritual battle against Christian-values/Christendom in their American iteration by using pornography has all of the measurably bad effects porn has. I think the one positive thing that porn has allegedly accomplished is that neighborhoods with higher porn consumption supposedly have less sexual assaults (it’s a study I’ve heard cited but have never found). All of its known effects and qualities: lower libido, social isolation, wrong sexual expectations, being generally disgusting, and requiring the enjoyment of the debasement of others are all observably bad for individuals and civilization.

Anyway, American Christians (and Christians generally) should think of porn this way: it’s an attack on your soul, it’s a mocking of the past that brought you into existence, and it’s an attempt to cancel your continued influence on the world after you die (by dissolving the structures meant to help you raise a family). It isn’t merely a matter of self-control, though it is that, it’s part of the struggle of civilization and flourishing.

Self-Esteem

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A former student sent me a link to a video about self-esteem last week. She asked for my comments. I finally made time to watch it today. Here’s the video:

 

Matt Walsh is certainly correct here. Confidence, defined essentially as known competence in the face of difficulty is superior to self-esteem (see note below). 

But I was asked, why I do not know, for my thoughts. William James defined self-esteem with this equation:

Self-esteem, in this sense, is inevitable. It is impossible to be void of self-reflection to the point that you never compare your level of success to your pretensions. For James self-esteem is your pretension (an ideal vision of yourself) compared to your attainment. Spiritually speaking, this is most fully explained in Romans 7, but Galatians 6:4 puts it most concisely (and more positively):

For if anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself. But let each one test his own work, and then his reason to boast will be in himself alone and not in his neighbor. (Galatians 6:3-4)

For the Christian there are two challenges when it comes to self-esteem:

  1. Determining whether our ideal self is a realistic portrayal of our potential based on our understanding of Jesus Christ and our personality, circumstances, and calling.
  2. Making the wise choices necessary to make progress toward our ideal self.

If you confront those challenges and always recall your admiration of Christ and your confidence in his ability to accomplish what he says he will, then I suspect you’ll be in good shape:

For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority. (Colossians 2:9-10)

So, “do good things, and you’ll have all the esteem you need.”

Note: What I don’t like about Walsh’s video is that Walsh criticizes a theoretical construct (self-esteem) with a colloquial one (confidence). Note Albert Bandura’s distinction between confidence as a general term (the word Matt uses) with self-efficacy, the definition of which, Matt uses for confidence:

Jung and God

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In Man and His Symbols, Jung attempts to tackle the topic of religious experience:

Christians often ask why God does not speak to them, as he is believed to have done in former days. When I hear such questions, it always makes me think of the rabbi who was asked how it could be that God often showed himself to people in the olden days while nowadays nobody ever sees him. The rabbi replied: “Nowadays there is no longer anybody who can bow low enough.”

This answer hits the nail on the head. We are so captivated by and entangled in our subjective consciousness that we have forgotten the age-old fact that God speaks chiefly through dreams and visions. The Buddhist discards the world of unconscious fantasies as useless illusions; the Christian puts his Church and his Bible between himself and his unconscious; and the rational intellectual does not yet know that his consciousness is not his total psyche. This ignorance persists today in spite of the fact that for more than 70 years the unconscious has been a basic scientific concept that is indispensable to any serious psychological investigation. (92) 

As interesting as Jung’s interpretation of the rabbi’s quote is, I find the quote itself more interesting. Why don’t we have direct experiences of God? There is no longer anybody who can bow low enough. 

The New Testament says this:

“God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” (James 4:6b)

And, interestingly, so does the Old:

And he said, “Hear my words: If there is a prophet among you, I the LORD make myself known to him in a vision; I speak with him in a dream. Not so with my servant Moses. He is faithful in all my house. With him I speak mouth to mouth, clearly, and not in riddles, and he beholds the form of the LORD. Why then were you not afraid to speak against my servant Moses?”
(Numbers 12:6-8)

But Moses’ experiences with God are not even mediated through dreams and riddles, but through a direct conversational experience that the Bible says is unparalleled (Exodus 33:11). 

But the nature of our experience of God is not what concerns me (we cannot decide how God will communicate with us). What concerns me is the mode by which we receive communication from God, and the rabbi said to humble ourselves. And over all, I think that this is right.

Now, of course, we’ve got to humble ourselves before God in the way in which God has revealed himself, but the facts of God’s revelation (Scripture, the resurrection of Jesus, the church in history, etc) are not self-evident to all. But I would suggest that whether you’re a Christian or just somebody who really wants to understand the core of reality, the first personal step is to humble yourself. 

Note

Jung is right. Christians can use the Bible as a barrier between themselves and God. Jesus warned the Pharisees of this exact danger:

You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.
(John 5:39-40)

You can rely so thoroughly on the faith experience of the characters and writers of Scripture that you never place your faith in God or practice the teachings of Christ. 

But he’s not totally right. Scripture does provide truths about God which register on the moral, logical, and mythological levels and it is meant to do this. The Bible itself is clear that God doesn’t need the Bible to communicate to us. But history has shown that when the Bible is interpreted as a witness to Jesus Christ, it provides a sure guide to God.