Why Descartes Is Wrong: "Our Mind Is Under Our Complete Control"

"The heart [is] deceitful above all [things], And desperately wicked; Who can know it?"

 -- Jeremiah 17:9

Quite apart from that, is the mind under our complete control when we are dead? The fact that we cannot control the fact that we cannot avoid death suggests otherwise. The ancients would say that our mind could not possibly be under our complete control, dead or alive, since it, like the rest of our selves, depends utterly on God for its existence. Human being is contingent being, and therefore is not autonomous.

William Lane Craig is much too sanguine about Descartes, here.

Rod Dreher Can't Pass Up The Chance To Slam Protestantism

Rod Dreher blows a gasket because some Catholic parish educators actually resigned! resigned! rather than sign a loyalty oath, here:

Of course this being the Washington Post, the story is written with a liberal bias that distorts the story. Note that “to all the teachings of church leaders” above. That is simply not a factual statement of how the Roman Catholic Church understands itself, or has ever understood itself. For Catholics, the Church has the right to teach authoritatively on faith and morals — an authority that is exercised through its leadership. This is what the Protestant Reformation was about! It is beyond embarrassing that this has to be explained to a reporter for The Washington Post. Then again, it has to be explained to liberal Catholics that they can’t pick and choose what to believe, and remain as Catholics in good standing. This is something I will never understand about modern Catholics. They want to have their church, but only on their own terms. Which is not Catholic.

Oh for the days when the heretics went quietly to the gallows, eh?

Note to Rod Dreher: The educators who resigned aren't Protestants. Protestants don't resign. They stand on their principles until they get excommunicated by Catholics. These teachers, whatever else they are, decided it was more important to back down than do that, however petulantly they may plead their case now in the pages of The Washington Post.

It is beyond embarrassing that this has to be explained to Rod Dreher.

Get a grip buddy.

Is The Absence Of Human Transformation The Best Argument Against Christianity?

A certain fellow named Robin Schumacher, featured at Real Clear Religion, goes on at some length, here, to acknowledge that the best argument that is made these days against Christianity is the one made by ever larger numbers of contemporaries who point out that Christianity must be untrue because Christians behave so badly, and concludes:

"[T]he fact is that an authentic Christian life is the only thing that defeats the best argument against Christianity."

This is a very unsatisfactory conclusion to what really isn't a very helpful discussion about arguments for or against Christianity.

What it amounts to instead is a demonstration of what passes for the accepted understanding of what is true conversion in some circles. In other words, it's not really about Christianity per se, it's about human actors and their experiences relative to that subject. In short, it's about us, not about Christianity or its object, God.

Key for the author is the notion that conversion is a form of human transformation, which can be authenticated on the evidence of human experience. "If you were truly converted you wouldn't do x."

What is it about Christianity, contemporary or otherwise, that it so quickly veers off into a kind of narcissism where adherents and opponents alike wind up agreeing that man is the measure of all things? The authentic Christian life is the only thing that defeats the enemies of Christ? I'm sure that comes as quite a surprise to God. Last I checked, God needed or depended upon no one for anything. There is sophistry. And then there is philosophy.

I think one answer for this narcissism may have something to do with what Krister Stendahl once called the introspective conscience of the West. The tortured conversion of Muhammad comes to mind in W. Montgomery Watt's biography of the prophet. Or the Jesus of The Fourth Gospel, at war with the Jews over his paternity. Or the ever autobiographical 13th apostle, Paul of Tarsus, who happens to be the most interesting because he is so immediately, candidly available in his letters as he plies the waters between his sectarianisms and his Roman citizenship. It shouldn't come as a surprise that these models would attract adherents in whom the same tendencies operate. In truth, however, thoughtful people would probably agree that narcissism is a broadly human phenomenon, not simply a characteristic of the West.

But there are counter trends in some of our literature which bear thinking about. Consider, for example, that conversion in Luke's Acts of the Apostles is occasionally portrayed as conversion of a whole household, based on the personal experience of a single person in it. For those household members personal human transformation, being born again, is hardly in sight. Even in the cases of the personal salvation of the individual head of the household who leads the rest into the fold, notions of human transformation seem wholly absent. Far from the world of altar calls involving personal crises, repentance and emotional decisions for Christ, what we find instead is concrete deliverance from temporal calamities, infirmities, threats and dangers. Like Paul's own conversion, these amount to almost unwilled experiences submitted to and accepted in the face of an overwhelming, sovereignly acting, Providence.

Some of these stories in Acts are reminiscent of nothing so much as stories of God's deliverance of his people Israel from Egyptian slavery, the plagues, the angel of death and the Red Sea waters. It is more about God continuing to act in history than it is about what happens in the hearts of men.

One might also mention the apocalyptic ethics of Jesus in The Synoptic Tradition, where personal conversion amounts to a renunciation of all the traditional contours, roles and behaviors of human existence in a desperate attempt to escape the destruction which Jesus said was coming on the world forthwith. This is not some comfortable religion of personal fulfillment, but a (crazy?) rejection of it which depends utterly on God to establish his kingdom quite apart from any human agency, even Jesus'. 

Anyone with a little honest experience of the world knows that there are many what we call very fine people who are not Christians, and many Christians who are just plain drek. If one gets bogged down in this navel-gazing cul-de-sac, however, what gets distorted about our thinking about conversion is that conversion becomes too much about how we act, and not enough about how God does.

"We also are men of like passions with you, and preach unto you that ye should turn from these vanities unto the living God, which made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are therein: Who in times past suffered all nations to walk in their own ways. Nevertheless he left not himself without witness, in that he did good, and gave us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness."

-- Acts 14:15ff.

Jesus Never Imagined Such A Thing As "The Christian Family"

"For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.

"And a man's foes [shall be] they of his own household."

-- Matthew 10:35f.

Storm gods punish America for ObamaCare with rare derecho

Reuters notes the rarity, here:

More than 1 million homes and businesses in a swath from Indiana to Virginia remained without power on Wednesday, five days after deadly storms tore through the region. ...

Much of the damage to the power grid was blamed on last weekend's rare "derecho," a big, powerful and long-lasting wind storm that blew from the Midwest to the Atlantic Ocean.

 

Is "Catastrophic Damage" God's Judgment For ObamaCare Ruling?

Catastrophic damage to power grids occurred hot on the heels of the ObamaCare ruling last week, centered on Washington, DC, as reported here:

Almost 2.4 million people from Illinois to Virginia were still without power Monday morning, with the biggest concentration of outages in the Washington, D.C. area. ...

Power crews worked on Monday to restore service to homes and businesses, and officials in some areas said the job could take up to a week. Utilities in Ohio, Virginia and Maryland described damage to their power grids as catastrophic.

I believe the technical legal phrase for such catastrophes for insurance purposes is "acts of God."

Religious people sometimes find theological significance to such acts. Secular people do too: God is very useful to them when it comes to not having to pay for the damage He is supposed to have caused.

Is God Expressing His Displeasure Over ObamaCare Ruling?

Millions without power after storms on Friday, after ruling on Thursday.

Hm.