Posted on 04/03/2010 9:50:37 AM PDT by betty boop
Review of Life After Death: The Evidence
by Stephen M. Barr
Life After Death: The Evidence
by Dinesh D’Souza
Regnery, 256 pages, $27.95
While much apologetic effort has been spent arguing for the existence of God, relatively little has been spent defending the reasonableness of belief in an afterlife and the resurrection of the body, despite the fact that these are among the hardest doctrines of biblical religion for many modern people to accept. D’Souza brings to the task his renowned forensic skills. (By all accounts, he has bested several of the top New Atheists in public debate.) He understands that persuasion is less a matter of proof and rigorous argument than of rendering ideas plausible and overcoming obstacles to belief.
One obstacle to belief in bodily resurrection is the difficulty of grasping that there could be places that are not located in the three-dimensional space we presently inhabit, or that there could be realms where our intuitions about time, space, and matter simply do not apply. D’Souza rightly points out that modern physics has broken the bounds of human imagination with ideas of other dimensions—and even other universes—and has required us to accept features of our own universe (at the subatomic level, for example.) that are entirely counterintuitive. He shows how blinkered, by contrast, is the thought of many who think themselves boldly modern, such as Bertrand Russell, who asserted that “all experience is likely to resemble the experience we know.” Another impediment to belief in life after death is our experience of the disorganization of thought as sleep approaches and the mental decline that often precedes death. While near-death experiences do not prove as much as D’Souza suggests in his interesting chapter on the subject, the discovery that many have a surge of intense and coherent experience near the very point of death does counteract to some extent the impression of death as mere dissolution.
D’Souza approaches his subject from many directions. In two chapters, he gives a very accessible account of recent thought on the mind-body problem and the reasons to reject materialism. In the chapter “Eternity and Cosmic Justice,” he bases an argument for an afterlife on our moral sense. Our recognition that this world is not what it objectively ought to be suggests not only that there is a cosmic purpose, but that this purpose is unfulfilled and unfulfillable within the confines of this world. Some of his philosophical arguments, however, are less happy. In particular, his use of Hume and Kant to undermine what he regards as the pretensions of science will provoke not only scientists, but all those who have a strongly “realist” epistemology. D’Souza can also be faulted for sometimes claiming to demonstrate what cannot be demonstrated. Nevertheless, even those who find loose ends in his arguments will be rewarded with many fresh perspectives on the only question that really is of ultimate importance.
In that case, I completely agree...
Actually it doesn't. CCC 105 says "have been written down under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit." Now, under the inspiration is not the same as "dictated" or written down directly by God.
Here is CCC 105 again, which explains what "inspiration" means:
105 God is the author of Sacred Scripture. "The divinely revealed realities, which are contained and presented in the text of Sacred Scripture, have been written down under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit."69
"For Holy Mother Church, relying on the faith of the apostolic age, accepts as sacred and canonical the books of the Old and the New Testaments, whole and entire, with all their parts, on the grounds that, written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author, and have been handed on as such to the Church herself."70
So, if it is inspired, then it has God as its author. Someone disagreeing would have to explain how something could be error that has God as its author.
But, then, the Catechism is a book written and translated by mortals and capable of incompletely expressing the faith, even gross errors.
I see your point. :)
....... So, why should I uncritically assume that everything in the Catechism is necessarily correct and error-free any more than another book written and rewritten, copied, and recopied, adulterated, added-to, "harmonized" and what not throughout the history such as the Bible, and still insist that is "the word of God?"
Except for the Bible part, I completely agree. The CCC should be treated as any other uninspired work should, including writings by Reformers. It should be compared against scripture for accuracy and judged on that basis. In many cases a work will be right on some things and wrong on others. Of course people of different Christian faiths might disagree about which things are right or wrong. That does not change that it is correct to judge literary works against scripture.
And while the Bible has been translated many times and some translations are surely better than others, we trust that God has preserved His own word to such a degree that it is just as "useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work" as it was when first assembled.
Everything in the Catechism you quoted form indicates that it was not God actually writing or dictating the Bible, but that he was "working in and through" (whatever that means) the human authors to express the truth.
It means that God allowed personalities and writing styles to come through, but that every word written served God's purpose. Nothing God wished was omitted and nothing extraneous to God's plan was included.
Jesus, being a pious Jew, would have believed, as all Jewish believers do, that only the Five Books of Moses are the very words of God (directly dictated to Moses), and that these books are set apart and above all the rest.
Jesus speaks of more than that:
In fact, just as the Christians stand only when the Gospels are read, the Jews stand only when the Five Books of Moses are read. Clearly, both Jews and Christians differentiate what are believed to be God's living words, from those written by human authors under God's (presumed) guidance.
In our church we stand whenever ANY scripture is read since it is all God's word. But I would agree with you that this practice of standing might give clues as to what a particular faith really thinks of the Bible as a whole.
Child-like, as in—naïve, gullible and easily persuaded?
Not at all, the Bible teaches us against that. For example:
The point, I think, can be found here:
Childlike faith is humble at its core. Such a faith understands to a higher degree how much greater God is than us, and that we should unconditionally trust Him as a child unconditionally trusts his/her parents.
If I were creating a religion, I would want my followers to be child-like, naïve, gullible, uncritical, and capable of believing anything and everything, no matter how bizarre or unreal it may be. A child-like faith can also accept any lie and Ponzi scheme one can think of.
Sure, that makes perfect sense. But I don't think Jesus was talking about this kind of situation. Elsewhere in God's word we are told to beware of false teachers and to test against scripture, etc. So, having a childlike faith does not mean weakness, it means humility.
The names of the human authors are useful because at the beginning THEY alone were chosen and given authority to spread the word of God. They were not given the authority to make up their own stuff:
Otherwise, it would not be Christianity, it would be something else. Only God has the authority to say what the faith is and He chose some at the beginning to transmit it.
The insistence that God "wrote" the Bible simply doesn't reflect the reality that the books are credited not to God but to humans!
Well, I and other Bible believing Protestants sure credit God for the books of the Bible. :) We say they are a gift from Him to us His children.
Now come on. :) You know I didn't say that. Ezra would never talk over Jesus anyway. :) My point was that Jesus can and does speak to us through His own mouth and the mouths of others. This has been true going all the way back. How many times does a prophet say in the OT "This is what the Lord says:..."?
And, as we both know, the WCF was a political document more than a theological one, even more than the KJV was. I did a study which I presented to the good Dr. E. a couple of years ago in which I tallied up the proofs of the WCF to see which portions of the Bible they relied upon. The Gospels were almost unrepresented; the uses were more as secondary or tertiary references, rather than direct proofs, which were more relegated to Paul and the OT.
In essence, God's will IS His plan, and IS predestination. Providence is the means of implementing it.
Negative. God does not micromanage Creation. His perpetual offer of His Grace is to us so that we can accept it; if He programmed His Universe, then Grace would only be injected once and would be sufficient for salvation.
God can look into the future but He is seeing His own work, which has already been planned and carried out. Therefore, it would not make sense for Him to plan based on what He has already planned and completed. This is why God planning based on foreknowledge makes no sense. His foreknowledge includes His own actions which were already purposed. Instead, what God wills He predestinates and His foreknowledge is knowing that He will do (has done) as He wants.
But the evidence is not there that He creates men for hell and only creates some men for Heaven. Life for all men is like the two thieves crucified with the Lord:
Luke 23: 39 6 Now one of the criminals hanging there reviled Jesus, saying, "Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us." 40 The other, however, rebuking him, said in reply, "Have you no fear of God, for you are subject to the same condemnation? 41 And indeed, we have been condemned justly, for the sentence we received corresponds to our crimes, but this man has done nothing criminal." 42 Then he said, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." 43 He replied to him, "Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise."
One of the great lessons of mankind is whether we assume the role of the thief on one side or the other. God does not make us; he enables us to make the choice.
I don't think of it as one will dominating or competing with another. One will is God's Holy standard. The other is His plan within a time filled with sinful creatures. It was God's choice. He let sin happen by His choice, not because He was beaten by a greater power. So, He chose to interact with the sinful and His will was in control. Naturally, the sinful will not live up to God's standards, so there is a plan and will that are carried out. At some point God's dealing with the sinful will be over and that will (plan) will be completed. God's perfect will, OTOH, is infinite.
One thing that is evidence against this argument is God's repeated expressions of exasperation and despair over the Bible at His seeming inability to get the Jews to accept Him and His Commandments for longer than overnight. Is that simply playacting?
I have never been in a Protestant Church which stands during the reading of all scripture. May I ask the particulars?
Ummm, God does not speak through Ezra in the Book of Ezra. The point is that Ezra is a man and a man only. He may be inspired by God, but he is not God. Jesus is. The Gospel writers wrote what we understand to be quotations from the mouth of God. Quotations from the mouths of men are not quotations from God, however inspired.
The people who wrote biblical books were not God. If God took possession of their hands and moved them according to his will instead of theirs, then Moses, Isaiah, Mark, Paul, etc. deserve no credit any more than my Stanley hammer deserves credit for driving a nail into a piece of wood.
The hammer did nothing to deserve the credit as the originator of my work. It is nothing but my dumb tool. Get rid of all the names of alleged human "authors" of the Bible then. They are misleading; people might think they actually wrote these books!
Someone disagreeing would have to explain how something could be error that has God as its author.
No, first those purporting that it was God who authored the Bible would have to prove that it was God who authored the Bible. Next, we would have to produce the original text for all biblical books, and only then could we ask how is it possible that something in the Bible could be in error?
And while the Bible has been translated many times and some translations are surely better than others, we trust that God has preserved His own word...as it was when first assembled.
I understand that this is a matter of faith (i.e. trust), and that I fully accept. But that does not make it a matter of fact.
Nothing God wished was omitted and nothing extraneous to God's plan was included.
Then why do we have so many different canons?
Jesus speaks of more than that: Luke 24:44-45 : 44 He said to them, “This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.” 45 Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures.
Luke's verse has no credibility as something Jesus would have uttered for several reasons:
In our church we stand whenever ANY scripture is read since it is all God's word. But I would agree with you that this practice of standing might give clues as to what a particular faith really thinks of the Bible as a whole.
Yes, that's certainly consistent with your beliefs. But so are the practices of other churches and religions with their beliefs.
There is nothing humble about children. However, they are naïve and gullible. Children couldn't possibly "understand" how much greater God is than the adults. Why should we unconditionally trust him? Why gives us reason only so we can blindly accept things? Only humans could come up with such a scheme, David Koresh or Jim Jones...
and that we should unconditionally trust Him as a child unconditionally trusts his/her parents
I am not sure kids unconditionally trust their parents. Abused children don't trust their parents; they are scared to death of them. And I wouldn't put it past a child not to trust a stranger who offers him candy.
Elsewhere in God's word we are told to beware of false teachers and to test against scripture, etc. So, having a childlike faith does not mean weakness, it means humility.
Children cannot be aware of false teachers; they are naïve, and therefore subject to be misled. Once you are distrustful, you are no longer child-like, so there goes that argument.
So, having a childlike faith does not mean weakness, it means humility
Again, children are not humble, but boastful, and self-absorbed. Besides, they are fallen humans bound for hell according to St. Augustine and his followers.
Who cares. The scribes who penned the NT Gospels did not identify themsleves by name. A lot of Orthodox copyists did the same thing thinking themeslves unworthy. Doing otherwise would be considered arrogant and vain.
Besides, if you believe there is nothing in the Bible that was not according ot God's will, then leaving thier names unknown was God's will that was violated when the Church added their names.
If your premise is correct about the contents of the Bible, then God didn't want them known, but the Church added them at the end of the 2nd century (against God's will accoridng to your suppositions).
So why does your Church then continue to violate God's will by identifying the books by the names of those God allegedly wanted to be anonymous?
Only God has the authority to say what the faith is and He chose some at the beginning to transmit it.
But the Church decided which books to include and who the scribes were.
So, that means that the Lord really did say it? Gees...That sounds like "it must be true, I saw it written in the New York Times!" or much better, as one of our Russian assistants once observed "It must be troo, it's in the kopyutor." :)
Precisely Mark. The Jews differentiate this when it comes to the Torah versus the rest of the Bible. The Prophets and the Writings are considered "only" inspired.
The Torah, on the other hand, is not inspired because the words in the Torah are the words of God that have been written by God from all eternity and given, not "revealed" to Moses (big difference!).
Likewise, in the Church the words of the Gospel are not "revealed" but are given to the disciples by God in person, as compared to the words of Paul, which were revealed.
That's why the congregation sits when the Epistles are read, but stand when the Gospels are read, and why Paul's words do not appear in red.
The point is that we don't know and we will never know this side of Heaven. There was a reason for the anonymity, FK.
So why does your Church then continue to violate God's will by identifying the books by the names of those God allegedly wanted to be anonymous?
The Catholic Church is bad, evil, the antiChrist, the whore of Babylon according to a great many who self identify as Christian. Yet, they accept the entire NT, and most of the OT selected by the Church. They accept Christmas and Easter. They accept Sunday worship (well, most of them). They accept the Trinity (well, most of them). Yet they reject the Church. Worse than cafeteria Catholics, in my estimation.
But the Church decided which books to include and who the scribes were.
The Church had and has the authority. The Protestants tacitly acknowledge it, yet publically repudiate it. Else, the aforementioned rulings of the Church would have been long rejected by these same folks.
There is nothing explicit that says the Church had the authority to change the scripture, Mark, by adding the names.
Else, the aforementioned rulings of the Church would have been long rejected by these same [Protestant] folks
That is clearly so. But since their whole existence is justified by the rejection of the Church, they would vote themselves out of existence if they were to admit that, on the basic level, they recognize the ecclesial authority of the Catholic Church.
Yet the Church did. At some point, in a locked room somewhere, a decision was made, presumably in the same fashion and with the same authority and by the same process that the canon of Scripture was selected in the first place. As you have noted, Scripture has been changed. The selected Scripture has been harmonized to the extent that it has.
But since their whole existence is justified by the rejection of the Church, they would vote themselves out of existence if they were to admit that, on the basic level, they recognize the ecclesial authority of the Catholic Church.
They are already voting themselves out of existence. The Episcopagans are finished. The remainder of their people are trying to figure out if they will turn Orthodox, Latin, LCMS, or simply go agnostic and give up. ELCA is in a race with the Methodists to see who comes in second place. The Presbyterians are hardly even recognizable as Christian and 90% - 95% are not Calvinist anymore either. Many of the Baptists remain Christian, but I don't think that many Pentecostals are anymore, as more and more people leave and head out to the more esoteric and some of the mainstream gets wackier to try to keep their congregation.
We saw the largest attack on the Church this Easter that I ever remember seeing. There is no coincidence. You're a military man. You understand strategy and tactics. This was a concentrated attack from many quarters. We have some very good leaders now. I see the Slavic wing becoming very ascendant. I don't know about the Greeks. And Constantinople...
I would agree with you with the possible exception of the Baptists who seem to stay put. They are also somewhat different from your run of the mill Protestant variety. Among them only about 10% are Calvinist, so that ought to tell you something too.
We saw the largest attack on the Church this Easter that I ever remember seeing.
Well timed and not very surprising. Just as the Arabs attacked Israel back in 1973 on Yom Kippur, the Great Lent/Pascha is a great time to attack the Church.
The evil that caused the abuses is not celibacy or what the Church teaches, but homosexuality. These priests did not just abuse little children; they abused male children. But the very people who accuse the Church are at the same time oblivious, and excessively tolerant of the perverse nature of homosexuality which is being peddled as the "other normal."
But, don't worry, I don't see throngs of Catholics leaving the Church.
the Slavic side is strong because the Russian Church is 80% of the world Orthodoxy. In addition to that Serbs, Ukrainians and Bulgarians add at least another 5%. Greeks are good people, but the situating in Greece is precarious. They are administratively crippled by Constaintiople which controls a good portion of the diocese in Greece in addition to the Church of Greece which is not part of the Patriarchy. Constantinople is a mere symbol.
The Patriarch's jurisdiction is mainly the diaspora (Church in America, Korea, etc) and the next Patriarch may not even be Greek, but Turkish. The Moscow Patriarchy will slowly take on the lead as the new New Rome in the Orthodox world and the Old Rome will find itself dealing with the the Moscow Patriarch more and more.
Thanks for the passages from the Jewish Encyclopedia. You're right that there is a distinct parallel. It is unmistakable that Apostolic Christianity treats the entire Bible similarly to the way Jews treat the entire OT. The problem is that Jesus Himself never made this distinction. He referred to the Torah, the writings, and the prophets and said that they all spoke of Him. There was no mention that one was any "higher" than any other.
That's because the NT was written for the Greeks who knew nothing of Judaism or of the OT. Again, as I stated earlier, Jesus, a pious Jew, would never place the Torah, the Prophets and the Psalms on the same footing.
The interesting thing is that the Calvinist denominations of Revolutionary Age times persecuted the Baptists unmercifully and drove them into the deep South, because of their Baptist beliefs, and now a greater percentage of Baptists are Calvinists than are Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Anglicans and the others who drove the Baptists south.
the Slavic side is strong because the Russian Church is 80% of the world Orthodoxy. In addition to that Serbs, Ukrainians and Bulgarians add at least another 5%. Greeks are good people, but the situating in Greece is precarious. They are administratively crippled by Constaintiople which controls a good portion of the diocese in Greece in addition to the Church of Greece which is not part of the Patriarchy. Constantinople is a mere symbol.
This confirms my general understanding of the situation.
The Patriarch's jurisdiction is mainly the diaspora (Church in America, Korea, etc) and the next Patriarch may not even be Greek, but Turkish. The Moscow Patriarchy will slowly take on the lead as the new New Rome in the Orthodox world and the Old Rome will find itself dealing with the the Moscow Patriarch more and more.
Turkish? Well, well, well. Dealing with Russia? I am not surprised in the least. Probably centuries overdue.
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