Biblical Passages, Nice and Not-So-Nice: Romans 2: 6-16

⁶For he will repay according to each one’s deeds: ⁷to those who by patiently doing good seek for glory and honour and immortality, he will give eternal life; ⁸while for those who are self-seeking and who obey not the truth but wickedness, there will be wrath and fury. ⁹There will be anguish and distress for everyone who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, ¹⁰but glory and honour and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek. ¹¹For God shows no partiality.

12 All who have sinned apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. ¹³For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but the doers of the law who will be justified. ¹⁴When Gentiles, who do not possess the law, do instinctively what the law requires, these, though not having the law, are a law to themselves. ¹⁵They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, to which their own conscience also bears witness; and their conflicting thoughts will accuse or perhaps excuse them ¹⁶on the day when, according to my gospel, God, through Jesus Christ, will judge the secret thoughts of all.

--Romans 2: 6-16, NRSV http://bible.oremus.org/?passage=Romans+2

Biblical Passages, Nice and Not-So-Nice: Romans 9: 6-24 [and 11: 25-32]

6 It is not as though the word of God had failed. For not all Israelites truly belong to Israel, ⁷and not all of Abraham’s children are his true descendants; but ‘It is through Isaac that descendants shall be named after you.’ ⁸This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as descendants. ⁹For this is what the promise said, ‘About this time I will return and Sarah shall have a son.’ ¹⁰Nor is that all; something similar happened to Rebecca when she had conceived children by one husband, our ancestor Isaac. ¹¹Even before they had been born or had done anything good or bad (so that God’s purpose of election might continue, ¹²not by works but by his call) she was told, ‘The elder shall serve the younger.’ ¹³As it is written,
‘I have loved Jacob,
   but I have hated Esau.’

14 What then are we to say? Is there injustice on God’s part? By no means! ¹⁵For he says to Moses,
‘I will have mercy on whom I have mercy,
   and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.’
¹⁶So it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who shows mercy. ¹⁷For the scripture says to Pharaoh, ‘I have raised you up for the very purpose of showing my power in you, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth.’ ¹⁸So then he has mercy on whomsoever he chooses, and he hardens the heart of whomsoever he chooses.

God’s Wrath and Mercy

19 You will say to me then, ‘Why then does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?’ ²⁰But who indeed are you, a human being, to argue with God? Will what is moulded say to the one who moulds it, ‘Why have you made me like this?’ ²¹Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one object for special use and another for ordinary use? ²²What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience the objects of wrath that are made for destruction; ²³and what if he has done so in order to make known the riches of his glory for the objects of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory— ²⁴including us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles?

--Romans 9: 6-24 NRSV http://bible.oremus.org/?passage=Romans+9

EDIT: I should add that this passage does not necessarily entail that God predestines some people not to be saved. For a little later on Paul says:

25 So that you may not claim to be wiser than you are, brothers and sisters, I want you to understand this mystery: a hardening has come upon part of Israel, until the full number of the Gentiles has come in. ²⁶And so all Israel will be saved; as it is written,
‘Out of Zion will come the Deliverer;
   he will banish ungodliness from Jacob.’
²⁷ ‘And this is my covenant with them,
   when I take away their sins.’
²⁸As regards the gospel they are enemies of God for your sake; but as regards election they are beloved, for the sake of their ancestors; ²⁹for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. ³⁰Just as you were once disobedient to God but have now received mercy because of their disobedience, ³¹so they have now been disobedient in order that, by the mercy shown to you, they too may now receive mercy. ³²For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all.

--Romans 11: 25-32 NRSV [emphasis mine, and footnotes ommitted], http://bible.oremus.org/?passage=Romans+11

Note that the last sentence prima facie implies universalism; i.e., that all will be saved.

"...the greatest of these is love"...

... so said Paul in 1 Corinthians 13 (verse13); elevating love above faith and hope. A similar thought was expressed by Henry Drummond in the following passage of his essay "Love, the Greatest Thing In the World", from his book, The Greatest Thing In the World And Other Addresses:

In the Book of Matthew, where the Judgment Day is depicted for us in the imagery of One seated upon a throne and dividing the sheep from the goats, the test of a man then is not, "How have I believed?" but "How have I loved?" The test of religion, the final test of religion, is not religiousness, but Love. I say the final test of religion at that great Day is not religiousness, but Love; not what I have done, not what I have believed, not what I have achieved, but how I have discharged the common charities of life. Sins of commission in that awful indictment are not even referred to. By what we have not done, by sins of omission, we are judged. It could not be otherwise. For the withholding of love is the negation of the spirit of Christ, the proof that we never knew Him, that for us He lived in vain. It means that He suggested nothing in all our thoughts, that He inspired nothing in all our lives, that we were not once near enough to Him, to be seized with the spell of His compassion for the world. It means that—

"I lived for myself, I thought for myself, For myself, and none beside— Just as if Jesus had never lived, As if He had never died."

You can find the book online here. For Christians, I think this is a good reminder that loving one another is what really matters; as opposed, say, to disputes about fine points of doctrine. And whether Christian or not, I think you can be inspired by the idea that the most important thing in life is love. Thanks to Robin Parry for quoting from this passage in his post What is "a good Christian"? over at Theological Scribbles.

On Free Will and Heavenly Sins

Let us suppose that some form of Christianity is true (or very true, or very nearly true…); in particular, let us suppose that there is such a place (or state) as heaven, where those who are good go after they die to enjoy eternal bliss. Could there be sin and/or evil in heaven? If there could, it is hard to see what could guarantee that heaven will remain heavenly. If the world is as—shall we say—imperfect as it is, with all of its miseries, cruelties, and injustices; and if this is so primarily because God has granted people libertarian free will—that is, a variety of free will that involves the ability to do otherwise than what one actually does—what reason do we have to think that heaven will be much better? Sure enough, there won’t be any really bad people there—no Hitlers, no Maos, no Stalins—but even relatively good people do bad things from time to time. So long as it is possible for saints (those in heaven) to sin, given enough time it becomes almost certain that they will do so. So if God wants to prevent the occurrence of “heavenly sins”, He will have to restrict saints’ libertarian free will. This does not imply theistic determinism: God could still allow people to choose one good act in preference to another, but He would render them incapable of choosing any bad ones. This is, as far as I know, the Catholic view (see here, section IV), and I am not sure which other Christian denominations would accept it.

Supposing it is correct, the question arises of why God doesn’t do the same for us. Why does God allow people on Earth to sin if He could prevent it? Is the answer that if He did so we would be His marionettes; that God does not want to “force us” to love Him or to do the right thing? If so, aren’t saints God’s marionettes? Is the significance of their love diminished because they cannot choose not to love God?

At this point I think a Christian who agrees with the Catholic view can make the following reply: Free will is valuable, but only in certain contexts and for certain purposes. Granted, the free will of saints is restricted, but this is not a bad thing because they did have the ability to sin during their lives. However, in choosing to accept God’s grace and do the right thing they have rejected sin. (What if you believe in “irresistible grace”? In that case you shouldn’t be concerned about libertarian free will in the first place, and you also face the problem of having to explain why a loving God wouldn’t grant His irresistible grace to everyone.) God wanted people to choose to love Him, align their will with His and reject evil freely over the course of their lives. Once they have done so, it is no longer necessary for their wills to be so free. They have proven their worth and there is no need for further testing.

One could think of it this way: Would saints want to be able to sin? If their love for God is strong, I think they wouldn’t. They might recognize that this ability is necessary for one stage of their existence, for without it they could not really choose to love God, and forced love would not really be love. Yet if they have made and confirmed that choice throughout their lives, they have no reason to want to retain this ability forever, because if they did retain it there would be a chance they could do something to damage their relationship with God, and presumably they don’t want that. In effect, saints have chosen to restrict their free will.  Given that their lives involved accepting God’s grace, doing good and choosing to love God, why wouldn’t God honor their choice? Even if they don’t consciously make that choice, we may suppose that God will restrict their free will just in case He sees that that is what they would choose if they explicitly considered the matter.

Thus the reason why people have unrestricted libertarian free will on Earth is that God wants our love of Him to be genuine, and thus for us to be free to accept or reject Him—for a time. Such, at any rate, runs one possible Christian reply. I leave it now to my readers to see if they think it succeeds.

A response to "Where I stand on Christianity"

A friend of mine has posted a reply to my post "Where I stand on Christianity". You can check it out here.
My apologies for not linking to it sooner.

On William James and the "Science of Religions"

What follows is a paper I wrote for a class on religious experience back in Fall  2009. 

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According to William James, religious experience is explanatorily prior to rational accounts of religion, such as those of philosophy and theology. On p. 470[1] of his The Varieties of Religious Experience he says, “I do believe that feeling is the deeper source of religion, and that philosophic and theological formulas are secondary products, like translations of a text into another tongue.” James thought, for example, that theistic arguments cannot be the basis of belief in God (pp. 476-478). First, theistic arguments have been subjected to intense criticism, and there are a great many people who do not find them convincing (p. 476). This shows that theistic arguments are not likely to persuade those who do not believe in God. Second, the God whose existence theistic arguments attempt to establish is not the God who most people believe in (pp. 485-488). I am inclined to agree with these charges. I would wager that most people, for example, do not believe in a God who is a wholly simple and impassible being; a being who is pure Existence, who cannot be affected by anything creatures do and who is without any semblance of emotion. For most people God is a personal being, but the God of the theologians is not, despite their protestations to the contrary. 

However, although we must grant that reason comes second in religion, this does not mean that it has no role to play. In what follows I will try to vindicate James’s view that it plays a positive role by being a part of what he calls a "science of religions".

James thinks that reason can play a positive role in religion, in the form of a philosophically-based "science of religions" (p. 496). What James says, basically, is that philosophy can make religion more universal by eliminating those aspects of it which are peculiar to certain times and places (p. 496).  It can strip "historic incrustations" from religious doctrine and worship (p. 496). Finally, it can rid religion of those of its claims that are inconsistent with the results of scientific inquiry (p. 496).  Science can then take the remaining religious claims and test them just as they would any other claim (p. 496).  “As a result”, James says, “she can offer mediation between different believers, and help to bring about consensus of opinion” (p. 497).

            

What are we to think of this? Religious people might object that this science of religions does violence to religion itself. If science is the ultimate arbiter of religious truth, are not any potential conflicts between science and religion automatically resolved in favor of science? My answer is a qualified “yes”; but this is not as bad as it may sound. For we must keep in mind that religion can go beyond science without contradicting it. For example, it would seem unlikely that any scientific experiment could prove the existence of God, but it seems equally unlikely that any scientific experiment could refute it. The same could be said of moral claims.

Nevertheless, there are cases where science and religion genuinely conflict. Whether or not religion must give in such cases depends on the content of the scientific claim in question and the strength of the evidence supporting it. For in science claims can be accepted with various levels of confidence, and range from mere hypotheses to time-tested models to well established theories. While I do believe that science is our best means of coming to know the physical world, this does not commit me to thinking that it is perfect. It should not be assumed that a hypothesis ought to be believed simply because it has gained some acceptance in the scientific community. History provides us with examples of hypotheses, such as those that formed the basis of phrenology and eugenics, which were accepted not because they were empirically sound but because they were, for the most part, flattering to their adherents. Were non-scientists obliged to accept such theories simply because they were embraced by a sizeable portion of the scientific community? We must also consider that it is not always easy for non-scientists, who know next to nothing about a given issue, to evaluate studies which aim to test hypotheses concerning it. They may not even be able to understand the language in which the studies are framed, due to an excess of technical terms. For all these reasons, it is not incumbent on people to accept all scientific-sounding claims they encounter. (Of course, this is not to say that they should reject them either; the proper attitude may be one of agnosticism.)

It might be objected that those who lack the requisite knowledge to evaluate certain scientific claims ought to defer to the experts in the field. This is a good rule of thumb, provided that one knows enough to determine who is an expert and who is not. But even if one knows who the experts are, this may not be enough to solve one’s problem. Sometimes experts disagree with each other, and when they do it can be well-nigh impossible for a layperson to determine which of them, if any, is right. When this happens, I think one is not obliged to defer to any of them.

From the foregoing we may conclude that, if a scientific claim is not yet well established, people may have reasons that justify them in not accepting it; and I see no reason why these reasons cannot be religious beliefs, provided that they themselves are justified.

But what about cases which are not like the above? What if one is reasonably well-informed about an entrenched theory, accepted by all the experts in the field, which has passed all experimental tests with flying colors, but which contradicts some tenets of one’s religion? In such cases I think religion must give, but doing so is probably beneficial for it in the long term. For science is an empirical discipline, and whenever any theory becomes entrenched it is because there is a very large amount of evidence to back it up. If religion were to dig in its heels in such a case, it would pit itself against this evidence, and would either have to deny its existence or explain it away. I think such a gambit is unlikely to succeed, as I know of no cases in which a scientific theory has been overturned by an apologist defending their religion. When it becomes obvious that the apologists have failed, they will have achieved nothing besides making themselves and their religion look bad in the eyes of the public. If those who practice that religion had instead chosen to modify some of their beliefs to accommodate the scientific evidence, they would have spared themselves some embarrassment, and may have even gained new adherents by showing that they are not closed-minded.

Neither should the faithful be troubled by having to admit that their religious beliefs can be overturned. After all, no one takes science to be infallible. Many previously accepted theories have eventually been falsified, and some of our most well-confirmed theories, namely general relativity and quantum mechanics, are inconsistent with each other. In spite of that, science is the most successful knowledge-gaining enterprise that people have ever devised. If this fallibility is not enough to cause us to lose faith in science, why should it be enough to cause us to lose faith in religion?

In conclusion, the relations between reason—whether in the form of philosophy, science, or some hybrid—and religion are complex, and the question of which of them makes a stronger claim on our belief is delicate. James's view is that in the end science wins out. I have argued that this is true, but just barely. Thus science may have the upper hand when it comes to determining the truth of factual claims, but if religion is to give us guidance as to how we should live in the real world it should have nothing to fear from the facts. At the end of the day it may turn out that neither science nor religion gives us a complete or infallible picture of reality, but if we combine them we might get a better picture of it than we would have if we had to work with either alone.

References

            James, William. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature. The Modern Library, New York 2002.

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[1] All subsequent page references are to The Varieties of Religious Experience.

Biblical Passages, Nice and Not-So-Nice: Ezekiel 18

I think it would be a huge understatement to say that the Bible is a controversial book, especially as regards its significance for how we should live our lives.  Believers are, for the most part, committed to thinking that biblical passages which concern moral issues, or at any rate a great deal of them, contain sound moral teaching, while unbelievers are, for the most part, committed to thinking the opposite. When discussing this issue, it is tempting to quote only those passages which support your own views. In an attempt to treat both sides fairly and (hopefully) provoke some thoughtful discussion about this issue, I have decided to start a series of posts containing some of the nice biblical passages and some of the not-so-nice ones—but in the interest of having a good discussion I’ll leave it to my readers to decide for themselves which are which.

To start things off, here’s an excerpt from Ezekiel 18: 

21 But if the wicked turn away from all their sins that they have committed and keep all my statutes and do what is lawful and right, they shall surely live; they shall not die. ²²None of the transgressions that they have committed shall be remembered against them; for the righteousness that they have done they shall live. ²³Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, says the Lord God, and not rather that they should turn from their ways and live? ²⁴But when the righteous turn away from their righteousness and commit iniquity and do the same abominable things that the wicked do, shall they live? None of the righteous deeds that they have done shall be remembered; for the treachery of which they are guilty and the sin they have committed, they shall die.

25 Yet you say, ‘The way of the Lord is unfair.’ Hear now, O house of Israel: Is my way unfair? Is it not your ways that are unfair? ²⁶When the righteous turn away from their righteousness and commit iniquity, they shall die for it; for the iniquity that they have committed they shall die. ²⁷Again, when the wicked turn away from the wickedness they have committed and do what is lawful and right, they shall save their life. ²⁸Because they considered and turned away from all the transgressions that they had committed, they shall surely live; they shall not die. ²⁹Yet the house of Israel says, ‘The way of the Lord is unfair.’ O house of Israel, are my ways unfair? Is it not your ways that are unfair?

30 Therefore I will judge you, O house of Israel, all of you according to your ways, says the Lord God. Repent and turn from all your transgressions; otherwise iniquity will be your ruin. ³¹Cast away from you all the transgressions that you have committed against me, and get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit! Why will you die, O house of Israel? ³²For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, says the Lord God. Turn, then, and live.

--Ezekiel 18: 21-32, NRSV,  http://bible.oremus.org/?passage=Ezekiel+18