Miracles And My Father's Death

I haven't posted for several weeks. In early August, my father was diagnosed with cancer and was given weeks to live. The diagnosis and prognosis were startling. The symptoms leading up to his diagnosis didn't suggest cancer, much less cancer in such an advanced stage. Earlier this year, I had thought my father could easily live another decade, maybe two decades or more. He was only in his sixties, and he hadn't even retired yet. He died on September 19.

When I left in August, I was in the middle of a series of posts about Craig Keener's recent book on miracles. (For those not familiar with the series, you can read my introduction to it here.) I'm continuing with that series, and I've decided to include this post about my father as part of it. I'm doing so for a few reasons. For one thing, healings often don't occur when we want them to, and that subject is worth considering in a discussion of miracles. Secondly, my father's case does involve some miracles, even though he wasn't healed of his cancer. Third, I still intend to post an index to this series when I'm finished with it. If this post is included in that index, then the post should get more readers than it would in isolation. I love my father. I want his story to get a wider audience.

Shortly after my Dad's death, a cousin (who's significantly older than me) wrote the following to me in an email about my father:

Newsweek Misrepresents Homosexuality And Polygamy In Judaism And Christianity

Lisa Miller of Newsweek has written a misleading article on religion and homosexual marriage. There are many false or misleading claims in the article, and a lot of relevant evidence is ignored. I don't intend to respond to the article in depth, but I do want to recommend some resources to consult. Here are some examples of how she argues her case:

Let's try for a minute to take the religious conservatives at their word and define marriage as the Bible does. Shall we look to Abraham, the great patriarch, who slept with his servant when he discovered his beloved wife Sarah was infertile? Or to Jacob, who fathered children with four different women (two sisters and their servants)? Abraham, Jacob, David, Solomon and the kings of Judah and Israel—all these fathers and heroes were polygamists. The New Testament model of marriage is hardly better. Jesus himself was single and preached an indifference to earthly attachments—especially family. The apostle Paul (also single) regarded marriage as an act of last resort for those unable to contain their animal lust. "It is better to marry than to burn with passion," says the apostle, in one of the most lukewarm endorsements of a treasured institution ever uttered. Would any contemporary heterosexual married couple—who likely woke up on their wedding day harboring some optimistic and newfangled ideas about gender equality and romantic love—turn to the Bible as a how-to script?

Of course not, yet the religious opponents of gay marriage would have it be so....

First, while the Bible and Jesus say many important things about love and family, neither explicitly defines marriage as between one man and one woman. And second, as the examples above illustrate, no sensible modern person wants marriage—theirs or anyone else's —to look in its particulars anything like what the Bible describes....Biblical literalists will disagree, but the Bible is a living document, powerful for more than 2,000 years because its truths speak to us even as we change through history. In that light, Scripture gives us no good reason why gays and lesbians should not be (civilly and religiously) married—and a number of excellent reasons why they should.

In the Old Testament, the concept of family is fundamental, but examples of what social conservatives would call "the traditional family" are scarcely to be found. Marriage was critical to the passing along of tradition and history, as well as to maintaining the Jews' precious and fragile monotheism. But as the Barnard University Bible scholar Alan Segal puts it, the arrangement was between "one man and as many women as he could pay for." Social conservatives point to Adam and Eve as evidence for their one man, one woman argument—in particular, this verse from Genesis: "Therefore shall a man leave his mother and father, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh." But as Segal says, if you believe that the Bible was written by men and not handed down in its leather bindings by God, then that verse was written by people for whom polygamy was the way of the world....

Ozzie and Harriet are nowhere in the New Testament either. The biblical Jesus was—in spite of recent efforts of novelists to paint him otherwise—emphatically unmarried. He preached a radical kind of family, a caring community of believers, whose bond in God superseded all blood ties. Leave your families and follow me, Jesus says in the gospels. There will be no marriage in heaven, he says in Matthew....

If the bible doesn't give abundant examples of traditional marriage, then what are the gay-marriage opponents really exercised about? Well, homosexuality, of course—specifically sex between men. Sex between women has never, even in biblical times, raised as much ire. In its entry on "Homosexual Practices," the Anchor Bible Dictionary notes that nowhere in the Bible do its authors refer to sex between women, "possibly because it did not result in true physical 'union' (by male entry)."...Most of us no longer heed Leviticus on haircuts or blood sacrifices; our modern understanding of the world has surpassed its prescriptions. Why would we regard its condemnation of homosexuality with more seriousness than we regard its advice, which is far lengthier, on the best price to pay for a slave?...

In his book "The Arrogance of Nations," the scholar Neil Elliott argues that Paul is referring in this famous passage to the depravity of the Roman emperors, the craven habits of Nero and Caligula, a reference his audience would have grasped instantly. "Paul is not talking about what we call homosexuality at all," Elliott says. "He's talking about a certain group of people who have done everything in this list. We're not dealing with anything like gay love or gay marriage. We're talking about really, really violent people who meet their end and are judged by God." In any case, one might add, Paul argued more strenuously against divorce—and at least half of the Christians in America disregard that teaching.

Religious objections to gay marriage are rooted not in the Bible at all, then, but in custom and tradition (and, to talk turkey for a minute, a personal discomfort with gay sex that transcends theological argument)....The Bible endorses slavery, a practice that Americans now universally consider shameful and barbaric. It recommends the death penalty for adulterers (and in Leviticus, for men who have sex with men, for that matter). It provides conceptual shelter for anti-Semites....

Monogamy became the norm in the Christian world in the sixth century; husbands' frequent enjoyment of mistresses and prostitutes became taboo by the beginning of the 20th.

In contrast to such critical comments on the traditional Christian view of homosexuality, Miller is much less critical of the weak Biblical case for homosexuality:

Here [in David's tribute to Jonathan], the Bible praises enduring love between men. What Jonathan and David did or did not do in privacy is perhaps best left to history and our own imaginations....

In the Christian story, the message of acceptance for all is codified. Jesus reaches out to everyone, especially those on the margins, and brings the whole Christian community into his embrace....The great Bible scholar Walter Brueggemann, emeritus professor at Columbia Theological Seminary, quotes the apostle Paul when he looks for biblical support of gay marriage: "There is neither Greek nor Jew, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Jesus Christ." The religious argument for gay marriage, he adds, "is not generally made with reference to particular texts, but with the general conviction that the Bible is bent toward inclusiveness."

The practice of inclusion, even in defiance of social convention, the reaching out to outcasts, the emphasis on togetherness and community over and against chaos, depravity, indifference—all these biblical values argue for gay marriage....

We want our children to grow up in stable homes. What happens in the bedroom, really, has nothing to do with any of this. My friend the priest James Martin says his favorite Scripture relating to the question of homosexuality is Psalm 139, a song that praises the beauty and imperfection in all of us and that glorifies God's knowledge of our most secret selves: "I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made." And then he adds that in his heart he believes that if Jesus were alive today, he would reach out especially to the gays and lesbians among us, for "Jesus does not want people to be lonely and sad."

Miller's reasoning could also be applied, in part or in whole, to polygamy, incestuous marriage, marriage between adults and children, marriage between humans and animals, etc. As I said above, though, I don't want to analyze all of Miller's arguments or respond to her line-by-line. These issues have already been addressed in the archives of this blog and elsewhere.

What I primarily want to do in this post is recommend a couple of resources in particular from our archives. Miller doesn't say much about early Jewish and early post-apostolic Christian tradition regarding homosexuality and polygamy, even though that early tradition is much more significant than the more recent tradition she discusses. A source like Aristides or Justin Martyr is more likely to reflect an apostolic view of homosexuality or polygamy than a pastor or theologian of the nineteenth or twentieth century. Remember, Miller makes claims such as that "Monogamy became the norm in the Christian world in the sixth century; husbands' frequent enjoyment of mistresses and prostitutes became taboo by the beginning of the 20th."

The evidence we have from ancient Jewish and Christian sources suggests that polygamy was much less accepted than Miller claims and that there was widespread agreement on the unacceptability of homosexuality. When Jesus discussed marriage, He used language that suggests that He sided with the anti-polygamists of His day, and there was widespread early post-apostolic agreement among Christians that both homosexuality and polygamy are unacceptable. See my article on early Jewish and Christian views of homosexuality here and my article on polygamy here. Both articles address the Biblical data to some extent, not just extra-Biblical sources.

Messianic monkeys

Jason Engwer recently did a post on the possible afterlife of our pets. John Loftus then did a post attacking Jason’s:

http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2008/08/do-all-dogs-go-to-heaven.html

Before I respond to Loftus and his commenters, let’s keep in mind the scope of Jason’s post. In context, he was dealing with Christians who mourn the loss of a pet animal. And he was discussing the possibility or probability that God will restore their pets to them in the world to come.

He wasn’t dealing with animals in general, and he wasn’t dealing with pet-owners in general. Although Christians are not the only pet-owners who grieve over the loss of a pet, when Jason talks about the restoration of a pet to its owner, that has reference to Christians in particular, not pet-owners in general.

Loftus’ post was just a pretext to ride some of his hobbyhorses. Much of what he said wasn’t even related to anything Jason said. And where he did respond to Jason, he spent his time burning straw men.

I’ll take this occasion to reply to his irrelevancies. Loftus begins with some tendentious bragging about how Evan and Avalos won a recent debate with Tblog. Of course, we wouldn’t expect Loftus to admit they lost they debate, even if they did. So his claims have all the credibility of Mafia don who professes his innocence. If Loftus wants to make good on his idle boasting, then let him personally rebut my material on the Legend of Sargon, and see how well he fares at my hands.

He then makes the claim that:

“They’re snarling their teeth because we also gained Touchstone recently as a new Blogger who used to be a Christian who discussed various issues with them, whom they now disown.”

Of course, as the record will bear out, I never owned T-stone as one of my own. I always pointed out that he acted like a nominal Christian. He always sided with the enemies of the faith. A “Christian” Quisling. He operated with a thoroughgoing methodological naturalism which was indistinguishable from metaphysical naturalism. I always pointed out that his profession of faith represented a highly unstable compromise and transitional position trending in the direction of outright atheism. Peter Pike made similar observations.

DC is more than welcome to have him. That’s where he belongs. He finally defected, like Kim Philby.

Moving along to what passes for the substantive aspects of his post:

“I have repeatedly talked about the problem of pain for sentient animals due to the law of predation in the world as animals prey on each other for food, including animal consumption by the top of the food chain, human beings.”

i) Loftus has repeated the same repeatedly-refuted argument from animal suffering. As I’ve pointed out on numerous occasions, Loftus is not entitled to attribute pain and suffering to animals until he is able to refute eliminative materialism. That position represents a rigorously and ruthlessly consistent version of naturalized epistemology.

Loftus is not entitled to assume the common sense view of animal sentience since that is in conflict with his materialistic ontology.

ii) Loftus also needs to make a case for animal rights. If secular ethics can’t even underwrite human rights, it can hardly underwrite animal rights.

“Due to predation in the natural world there has been a horrendous amount of animal pain for hundreds of thousands of years before the ascent of human beings.”

Notice what version of theism Loftus is attacking here: theistic evolution. Since I’m not a theistic evolutionist, he’s welcome to attack theistic evolution to his heart’s content. That leaves my own position untouched.

“There has been a great deal of slaughter due to our supposed need to eat animals down to today.”

I don’t know how many people eat steak and lobster because they need to. They eat steak and lobster because it’s tasty. It’s also a good food source. And there’s nothing wrong with eating steak and lobster.

“In some parts of the world, like China, they eat dogs.”

The only dogs I eat are hotdogs. But in a poor country like China, you can’t afford to be too finicky.

“We hunt them…”

Of course, animals are hunted in the wild regardless of whether we hunt them or not.

“Trap them for their furs.”

There are countries where a fur coat is more than a fashion statement. Some people wear fur coats to stay warm.

“Grow them for consumption in intensive farms.”

We eat chickens. Chickens eat worms. Big deal.

“And we experiment on them, sometimes in grotesque ways.”

Sometimes. And I think we should avoid cruel experiments where possible. However, humans are more important than animals. Medical experimentation on animals is morally licit. Indeed, it would be immoral not to experiment on animals for medical purposes.

BTW, is Loftus a vegan? Does Loftus disapprove of animal experimentation?

“In the Bible we see where God supposedly even required humans to sacrifice animals on altars to him.”

For reasons given in Scripture.

“The amount of pain among the animal world calls for an explanation for the reasons why a good God supposedly created them. I argued that there was no need for animals at all, and that there was no need for the law of predation in the natural world. God could’ve made every single creature a vegetarian (or vegan), and made vegetation as plenteous as weeds are today.”

i) What position does he think he’s attacking, exactly? In Christian theism, there’s no “need” for any creature. God is the only necessary being. I’m glad that God made a “needless” creature like myself. If Loftus disapproves of needless creatures, then why not commit suicide?

ii) To say that something isn’t necessary doesn’t mean it isn’t useful. Moreover, human beings create a lot of useless devices. How useful is a violin? Does that mean violinmakers are immoral? What about a florist? Does Loftus disapprove of cut flowers?

Christian piety is characterized by gratitude and thanksgiving. That makes it possible to rejoice in life even when times are tough. Loftus illustrates the way in which atheism embitters your outlook on life.

iv) Notice how Loftus presumes to speak for animals. For predators and prey alike.

But animal pain cuts both ways. If sentient animals can experience pain, they can also experience pleasure. Loftus is claiming that God was wrong to create predators. God should have restricting himself to making herbivores.

But while that might reflect the viewpoint of the herbivore, it doesn’t reflect the viewpoint of the carnivore. If you’re going to talk about animal sentience, then carnivores (or higher carnivorous animals) enjoy their carnivorous existence.

God isn’t wronging predators by creating predators. Indeed, if God followed Loftus’ advice, God would deprive predators of their predatory pleasures. Leopards enjoy their antelope steak. If Loftus were God, he would deny all the carnivores their opportunity to enjoy a carnivorous lifestyle. He is eliminating one species pain at the expense of another species pleasure.

v) But why should we assume that a pain free nonexistence is better than a sometimes painful and sometimes pleasant existence? Once again, if that is what Loftus’ really thinks, why not commit suicide?

Pain and pleasure are not mutually exclusive. Some pains make the alleviation of pain more pleasant.

It’s unpleasant to be hungry and thirsty. And the more hungry and thirsty you are, the more unpleasant that is. But by the same token, food and drink never taste better than when you’re parched or famished.

vi) Loftus is also assuming a hedonistic outlook, as if the only justifiable existence is a purely pleasant existence. But why should we regard pleasure as the greatest good?

vii) Moreover, there’s a tension internal to hedonism. What if someone takes pleasure in another person’s pain? You can’t attack sadism on hedonistic grounds, since sadism is a form of hedonism.

viii) So while he presumes to speak on behalf of the animals, Loftus isn’t doing the predators any favor. To tell a predator that you don’t have a right to exist because you inflict pain on prey species represents the viewpoint, not of the lions and tigers and bears, but of an effete monkey.

Loftus is imposing his simian values on the rest of the animal kingdom. But since Loftus is just another animal, shouldn’t the other animals get a vote? They didn’t elect him to speak for them or act as their representative.

If fact, Loftus is a simian bigot. An ape with delusions of grandeur. A monkey with a Messiah complex. He thinks the rest of the animal kingdom should submit to his simian value-system.

What’s worse, he doesn’t even speak for all simians. For example, baboons are quite predatory. Who does Loftus think he is? Who appointed this uppity primate to be the morals police for the animal kingdom?

“I have asked what animals did to deserve the pain they experience.”

i) Of course, this involves an anthropomorphic projection onto the prey. But how much pain do the prey actually feel? We know from men and women who have survived shark attacks and maulings by lions and tigers and bears that they don’t feel anything at the time. They go into a state of shock.

It may seem to an outside observer that being eaten alive would be very painful, but where’s the empirical evidence?

To take another example, when domestic animals are injected by a veterinarian, they take it in stride. It’s easy to exaggerate what animals supposedly suffer. Wild animals aren’t a bunch of wimps.

ii) Some animal notions of play involve biting and scratching. We’ve all seen lion cubs engage in leonine rough-and-tumble. It looks painful to the outside observer, but lion cubs seem to relish this activity. And that’s true of other predatory species.

Or consider how lions “make love.” Again, a lot of biting and scratching. Doesn’t seem very romantic to a human observer—unless you like to frequent S&M bars. But it works for lions and tigers. That’s their idea of foreplay. They prefer fangs and claws to roses and candles.

The more you think of it, Loftus is a big killjoy. A simian sissy. Why should he get to impose his simian inhibitions and culinary hang-ups on the rest of the animal kingdom?

Loftus is like one of those uptight prohibitionists who went around with a baseball bat, smashing speakeasies to rid the world of Demon Rum. You know the type: a sanctimonious spinster with granny glasses, hair in a bun, and a face like a Pekinese.

But the predators I know share a far more liberated outlook. They defend the right of consenting carnivores to scratch and bite.

“Would there also be a hell for animals that do wrong?”

Here Loftus is blurring the distinction between immoral behavior and dangerous behavior. Animals are amoral, not immoral.

“What about rabid dogs, or those trained by their masters to kill other dogs in those hideous dog fights we hear about? Will these dogs go to heaven too? Or do only the sweetie petite lap dogs get to go to heaven?”

This is irrelevant to the scope of Jason’s post. It does nothing to undercut his argument.

However, turning vicious dogs on their vicious owners would be poetic justice. I’ll take a wait-and-see attitude on that infernal possibility.

“Will the dogs of unbelievers get to go to heaven, or will they go to hell with their unbelieving masters?”

Once again, the cogency of Jason’s argument doesn’t rely on answering that extraneous question.

“Would we really want mosquitoes in heaven with us?”

Unless Loftus owns a swarm of pet mosquitoes, the example is irrelevant. Is Loftus another Renfield?

“Or would there be separate heavens for each distinct species; a dog heaven, a cat heaven, and so forth, since many species just don't get along with each other?”

Loftus is assuming the new earth has to be fundamentally different from the fallen world. He needs to justify that assumption. There are both continuities and discontinuities between the new earth and the fallen world.

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that my pet doesn’t get along with your pet? So what? How, exactly, would that undercut Jason’s thesis?

“Where would whales and dolphins live?”

Does Loftus own a pet whale? He must have a pretty big fish tank.

Why does Loftus even think this is a good question? Does he imagine that on the new earth, whales and dolphins can’t swim in the sea? Is he alluding to Rev 21:1? But that’s metaphorical.

“Would birds still be able to fly?”

Why not?

“Would a tamed cat still be a cat if it didn't hunt mice?”

Why not?

“These are ridiculous questions, if you ask me, but they are entailed by such a bizarre belief.”

To the contrary, Loftus is begging the question by presuming, without benefit of argument, that conditions on the new earth preclude these eventualities.

Speaking for myself, I don’t attribute predation to the fall. I don’t think the conditions inside Eden were replicated outside Eden. Eden was a garden. An enclosure. The surrounding countryside was wilderness.

Now, man has a capacity to tame and domesticate wild animals. Man has a capacity to cultivate the wilderness. To turn a briar patch into a town or garden. That was part of the cultural mandate. To extend Eden. To export Eden.

In the new earth, I assume that man will resume that aspect of the cultural mandate.

“The bottom line, according to philosopher C. E. M. Joad, is that ‘either animals have souls or they have no souls. If they have none, pain is felt for which there can be no moral responsibility, and for which no misuse of God’s gift of moral freedom can be invoked as an excuse’.”

Of course, pain is just a subset of sensation generally. You can’t have a capacity for physical pleasure without a corresponding capacity for physical pain. So there are tradeoffs.

For example, men find a kick in the crotch quite painful. The Loftusian solution would be to desensitize that part of the male anatomy. But normal men would resist that solution since there are compensatory benefits associated with the nerve endings of the genitalia. The benefits outweigh the occasional kick in the groin.

“If they have souls, we can give no plausible account (a) of their immortality, i.e., how to draw the line between animals with souls and men with souls?”

Jason isn’t making a case for animal immortality in general. So Joad’s objection is irrelevant.

“Or (b) of their moral corruption.” “Moral corruption” for Dr. Joad, is the fact that animals are purportedly no longer in a state of innocence and as such they prey upon one another.”

For reasons already stated, I reject the premise of Joad’s objection. Animals are neither innocent, nor guilty. They’re amoral. And I don’t attribute predation to the Fall.

“What I hear from them instead is that we cannot understand God’s ways; that we are ignorant; and all we can do is guess about this, and guess about that. This is simply not enough. Whether it comes to the beginningless existence of the trinity, divine prophetic foreknowledge, the incarnation, the virgin birth, the atonement, the general resurrection of our bodies, free will in heaven, the problem of evil, or a great many other beliefs, including animals in heaven, Christians retreat to this position far too many times for me to have enough reasons to believe. Period.”

Who does Loftus think he’s responding to? Not to T’blog. We constantly defend Christian doctrine. We don’t retreat into an all-purpose invocation of mystery.

“I also criticized the probability of having resurrected bodies too. How is it possible to resurrect any body, whether man or beast, if that body no longer exists due to being completely eaten or burned to dust?”

There are numerous problems with this objection:

i) One perennial problem is that, as a former Church of Christ minister, Loftus has never had a very sophisticated grasp of Biblical hermeneutics.

Resurrection terminology is idiomatic. The imagery of “raising” someone from the dead, or someone “rising” from the dead, is based on the fact that bodies were buried or entombed in a supine position. Likewise, sleep is a metaphor for death, and sleepers generally sleep in a supine position. It’s also based on the fact that human beings walk upright.

Consistent with this imagery, glorification would naturally be depicted in terms of sitting up and standing up. When you wake up, you usually sit up and then you stand up (although it’s possible to roll out of bed).

And there are cases in which the idiom is factual (e.g. Jesus, Lazarus). But the idiom itself is figurative. You can’t build a model of the resurrection from idiomatic usage. That gets carried away with metaphors and linguistic conventions.

We’re dealing with a picturesque way of describing the reembodiment of the soul. The figurative reanimation of the corpse is the metaphor for the literal reembodiment of the soul. In some cases, the two coincide.

ii) Bible writers were certainly aware of the fact that decomposition ranges along a very wide continuum. At one end of the spectrum you have bodies lost as sea (Rev 20:13), or bodies exposed to natural scavengers (Rev 19:17-19). At the other end of the spectrum you have people alive at the Parousia (1 Cor 15:51-52; 1 Thes 4:17).

In between you have skeletal remains (e.g. Gen 50:25; Exod 13:19) or an intact corpse (e.g. Jn 11:38-42).

Bible writers knew that in many or most cases there was no body lying in a tomb, waiting to be reanimated. The Biblical doctrine of the resurrection isn’t predicated on that condition.

Conversely, Christians alive at the Parousia are gloried, but they aren’t “resurrected,” since they never died in the first place. Yet resurrection terminology is applied to them all the same. That’s the conventional idiom.

iii) Loftus seems to be assuming that an immortal body must be continuous with its mortal counterpart at the level of atomic or bimolecular identity. But, of course, the Bible doesn’t specific any such criterion.

Even if you operate with a model predicated on identity, identity can operate on different levels. It isn’t necessary to reassemble all of the biomolecues which originally composed the body.

A body is a particular organization of matter, and what individuates or differentiates one body from another is the unique, abstract pattern: the distinctive organization of matter—and not the constituent elements. That’s the level at which it’s a unique, individual body, and that’s the level at which it’s continuous with or identical with its former counterpart, even if there’s temporal dislocation or discontinuity when it no longer existed.

iv) But why should we insist on strict identity? Glorification is intended to reverse (and improve on) the physical effects of the fall. Suppose a Christian suffered from dwarfism. Must he be resurrected as a glorified midget?

No, because dwarfism is a disease. I’d expect a Christian dwarf to be resurrected, not with an immortal version of his mortal body, but with the body he would have had if his body had not been stricken with dwarfism.

If you still insist on strict identity, we could gloss this in terms of counterfactual identity. The template would ‘t be his mortal body, but his unfallen body in a possible world. Like the body of Adam had Adam never fallen, and had he—in his unfallen state—eaten from the tree of life.

v) One might also distinguish between the general resurrection and the resurrection of the just. Perhaps, in the case of the damned, God raises them with their medical disorders in tact. Immoral arthritis. Who’s to say?

Scott said...

“But if Jason is going to claim that animals go to heaven, he needs to create some kind of distinction between living things that are part of an ecosystem, such as plants and animals, and Fido. However, as John has clearly noted, he has made no such distinction. __For example, we eat animals for food and we need plants to generate oxygen from carbon-dioxide. Some of these animals need to eat plats and even other animals. Will this new earth have the same ecosystem?”

Jason can speak for himself, but as far as I’ve concerned I don’t see any reason why the ecosystem on the new earth would be radically different from the ecosystem on a fallen world.

Scott and Loftus are tacitly attacking a particular model of the new earth, a model popular in YEC circles. But Jason isn’t committed to YEC. Moreover, YEC is not all of a piece. You could be YEC in some respects and OEC in other respects.

Because many apostates are former fundamentalists, that’s the version of Christian theology they attack. And they continue to operate with the hermeutical method they were taught in their fundy days.

Apostates spend a lot of time shadowboxing with someone like Tim LaHaye. But not all, or even most, conservative Christians, operate with that paradigm.

Loftus is always debating with himself. It’s an argument between Loftus the apostate and Loftus the Church of Christ minister.

“What about the vast number of animals we've spent hundreds of years breeding as pets? Will Rover be "restored" to the form of his ancestors with the rest of the earth? Would his owners even recognize him?”

That’s not an objection to Jason’s position, although it was meant to be. That’s actually an objection to Loftus’ position. Loftus objected to animal resurrection on the grounds that such a resurrection would require strict identity between the mortal and immortal body.

Scott is raising the opposite objection. He’s insisting that animal resurrection would require a discontinuity between the mortal and immortal body. A dog would have to revert to its lupine ancestor.

Scott doesn’t bother to explain why Jason’s position would commit him to such a model. And Scott is contradicting Loftus in the process.

Speaking for myself, I see no reason why a domesticated pet would have to revert to its wild ancestor.

“But, again, Jason fails to indicate on what basis would such a distinction be made.”

To the contrary, Jason did indicate on what basis that would be made. Pet animals that Christians were attached to, or vice versa.

At the risk of stating the obvious, some pets are more equal than others. Lower animals like snakes, frogs, lizards, goldfish, birds, turtles, rabbits, gerbils don’t have much personality. They’re pretty interchangeable.

That’s different from cats, dogs, and horses. Take dogs. Because dogs are fairly intelligent social animals, they bond with human beings. And that’s reciprocated. We can “read” dogs. Dogs can “read” us. There’s even evidence of canine telepathy, viz. dogs that can sense when their owners are on the way home. By contrast, a frog doesn’t form an emotional bond with its owner.

On a related note, a child may cry over the death of a pet turtle or gerbil. Even hold a funeral. But we expect him to outgrow that. And we don’t expect a grown man to form an emotional bond with a lizard. If that happens, then something clearly went awry during his formative years.

By contrast, we don’t necessarily expect an adult to outgrow the loss of a pet dog (or cat or horse). It’s a different kind of relationship. You can’t really relate to a goldfish. Its social repertoire is decidedly limited.

“In addition, Jason has utterly failed to address is the gradation of sentiency we observe in all living things.”

i) Once again, that’s not an objection to Jason’s position, although it’s meant to be. It’s actually an objection to Loftus’ position. If Loftus is going to mount an argument from evil based on animal suffering, then it’s incumbent on Loftus to draw the line. To distinguish between higher and lower animals. A beetle is not a beagle.

What is the threshold of sentience at which point there is even such a think as animal suffering? And at what point up or down the scale does animal suffering become morally impermissible?

“This is the kind of narrow, human-centric view of reality I'd expect from theists. Animals do not make it to heaven not because they are living, sentient creatures, but by being valued possessions of God's favorite species.”

That’s a dismissive description rather than a counterargument.

The Death Of Pets And The Afterlife

I've experienced the death of some pets, and I've been speaking with some people who recently lost a pet. In order to be better prepared for any discussions that might arise with those individuals, and for the benefit of our readers, I want to discuss some issues related to the death of pets. I haven't studied these issues much, and the sources I've consulted seem to agree that there isn't much Biblical data available. But I want to discuss the evidence I'm aware of for the benefit of the readers, and perhaps some readers will be able to correct or expand upon my observations.

- Though animals are less valuable than humans, God is concerned about animals and expects humans to be concerned about them (Psalm 36:6, Proverbs 12:10, Jonah 4:11, Matthew 6:26).

- A strong relationship between a human and an animal is acceptable (2 Samuel 12:1-4), and the death of an animal in such a relationship is something that's expected to be perceived as a significant loss (2 Samuel 12:5-7). It seems that grieving the loss of such a pet is acceptable and to be expected. The desire to see a dead pet again is understandable and reasonable.

- There will be animals in Heaven (Heaven defined as the entirety of the afterlife of the righteous, including a restored earth), in a different condition than they experience in this life, and passages describing the afterlife sometimes either refer to animals there or use references to animals to convey a point (Isaiah 66:20, Romans 8:19-23, Revelation 19:11-14).

- There isn't any passage of scripture that directly refers to pets in Heaven, nor is there any passage that directly contradicts the concept.

- One of the strongest arguments for universal infant salvation is its widespread acceptance among the earliest patristic Christians. I'm not aware of anything comparable on the issue of the restoration of pets in the afterlife. Though I've seen passages addressing the future transformation of animals considered as a class of creatures (for example, Theophilus of Antioch, To Autolycus, 2:17), I don't remember ever seeing any patristic source address the subject of the restoration of pets. I suspect that it's addressed somewhere in the patristic sources, given how many thousands of pages and hundreds of years are covered by the patristic literature, but I don't remember seeing such passages myself. If anybody is aware of any, I'd be interested in knowing about them. Some more recent Christians, such as C.S. Lewis and John Piper, have referred to the restoration of pets as at least a reasonable possibility.

- There could be a restoration of some animals and pets without a restoration of all of them. As Joni Eareckson Tada puts it, "If God brings our pets back to life, it wouldn't surprise me. It would be just like him. It would be totally in keeping with his generous character…Exorbitant. Excessive. Extravagant in grace after grace. Of all the dazzling discoveries and ecstatic pleasures heaven will hold for us, the potential of seeing Scrappy would be pure whimsy—utterly, joyfully, surprisingly superfluous.…Heaven is going to be a place that will refract and reflect in as many ways as possible the goodness of joy of our great God, who delights in lavishing love on his children." Such a scenario wouldn't require that people in Hell have a similar blessing, nor does it require that every pet involved in the life of believers will be restored.

- There's much we don't know about Heaven, but the large majority of passages on the subject encourage us to think of it as something "far better" than this life (Philippians 1:23), even though some passages might seem disappointing to some people in a sense (Matthew 22:30). A lot of what people think about Heaven isn't directly stated by scripture. It's either an apparent implication of what scripture teaches or a possibility that scripture doesn't comment upon. People sometimes refer to humans ruling over and exploring the rest of the universe in the afterlife, for example. I'm not aware of any passage of scripture that directly discusses the subject, but it doesn't contradict scripture, it's a reasonable possibility, and it could be argued that it's an implication of what some passages teach. As long as people are responsibly distinguishing between certainties and probabilities, and are responsibly distinguishing between probabilities and possibilities, I think this sort of discussion of the afterlife is acceptable. The idea that we should think only in terms of certainties or only in terms of what scripture directly addresses doesn't make sense. To somebody grieving over the death of a pet, a reasonable possibility of seeing that pet again is preferable to no possibility.

Christianity's Influence On Friendship

Last year, I wrote a post about the moral standards of the earliest Christians. Christianity's positive effect on society in contexts such as charity and infanticide is often noted, but a less discussed contribution is Christianity's influence on friendship.

In her book Christian Friendship In The Fourth Century (New York, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), Carolinne White comments:

As far as the early development of a positive Christian attitude to friendship goes, it has also been suggested that the best elements in Classical friendship were in fact transformed and absorbed into Christianity...

But it must not be forgotten that, if any positive evaluation of friendship was to develop within early Christian thought, it had to be firmly based on Scripture....

It is true that there are several places in the Gospels where Jesus appears to condemn friendship, as at Luke 14:12 and Matt. 5:46 where it seems that friendships based on mutual benefit and exclusiveness are rejected, for are not Christians to imitate their God who loves freely and without partiality? Jesus breaks through the exclusivity of family and friends, contradicting forcibly the ancient values.

Furthermore, Christian emphasis on the eschatological element in its theology and the belief that the end of the world was at hand deprived friendship of much of its importance by undermining the value accorded to the traditionally accepted benefits of this life and radically altering the perspective on life. And yet Jesus' disciples are referred to as friends as well as brothers, possibly indicating that they have a share in the eternal life brought by Christ, and Lazarus is said by Jesus to be 'our friend' for whom he shows his love by weeping at his death (John 11:35-6). And did not Jesus regard John as his favourite disciple whom he loved more than the others? In fact, the passage in which Jesus speaks of the disciples as his friends, in the fifteenth chapter of John, is crucial for our understanding of the love which is the essence of the life of God's people and which, it is clear, is as much a love between men as between man and God; that Jesus should here refer to his disciples as friends is significant. His words here could provide some model for a view of friendship which is created by Christ and which involves both love for our fellow men and an intimate relationship with Christ himself, a friendship in which the participants strive to attain that love with which Christ sacrificed his life for his friends....

Another important element in Christian love, which appeared in the writings of certain writers, was the eschatological perspective lacking in the Classical [pre-Christian Gentile] view. Not only is all love closely related to God, it is also related to the future fulfilment of God's kingdom where the love will be perfected and man will attain knowledge of God - this characteristic was to be of central importance in Augustine's development of a Christian ideal of friendship....

Thus the best in Classical friendship was transformed and found a secure purpose in Christianity, which offered many favourable conditions for the development of friendship. Not only could the Christians' common faith and devotion to God provide a similar basis for friendship as shared interests and a devotion to virtue or truth had done for the men of antiquity, but also, for example, the belief that all men are equal in the sight of God meant that Christian friends could feel free in some sense from the problems which were traditionally regarded as arising if the friends were unequal, socially or morally. The emphasis placed on unity in Christ among all Christians encouraged men to come together in a high degree of spiritual intimacy resembling, even surpassing, the intimacy held to be the prerogative of perfect friendships in antiquity. Furthermore, the fact that friendships were believed to spring from the love of Christ meant that they were, at least in theory, divinely endowed with a stability and permanence which would have made the pagans of antiquity envious....

The focus of the virtuous man [in the view of the Christian bishop Gregory Nazianzen] must be God: this is on the whole a view which is foreign to the Classical idea of the relation between virtue and friendship....

He [Ambrose of Milan] explains that grace can produce just as strong a force for love as nature and indeed we ought to love more strongly those who we believe will be with us forever than those who are with us only in this life. Natural sons fail to live up to their parents' expectations but spiritual sons are chosen with a view to loving; the former are loved out of necessity while the latter are loved as a result of an act of judgement which creates a far stronger bond....Here again we are reminded of the fundamental contrast between the pagan and Christian outlook, with the Christian emphasis on the future life and on grace opposed to the pagan attachment to natural, family ties....

[quoting Paulinus of Nola] "For the friendship not built on Christ is not founded on a rock. So from time to time it is troubled by a slight breeze and is loosened; it bears a short-lived bloom produced by some transient attraction but then it quickly withers away like grass and like the flower of the field quickly falls. But the Lord's love abides for ever. It binds us to each other both for life and death because the love of Christ is as strong as death."

Related to this belief is the startling idea that Christian friendships, in such circumstances, are perfect from the start and do not need time to mature and conversely, that those Christians who have devoted themselves to a life of imitation of Christ are close friends whether they have yet come into contact or not....

In adding a creative element to his view of friendship, Augustine makes it a more dynamic relationship than in the traditional picture. This element is of course paralleled by the creative force of God's love for man for we love him because he first loved us despite our sins. Although we may love someone because he is virtuous, as in the Ciceronian view of friendship, we may also love him in order that he might become just, i.e. in order that the love of God may be kindled in his heart and he may respond to our love with mutual feelings. In this way men may attain that love which is the true fulfilment of Christ's commandment whereby they love one another because they all belong to God, so that they may be brothers to His only Son, as Augustine writes in his commentary on the Gospel of John. 'They love one another with the same love with which He loved them when he intended to lead them to that final place where all their needs and desires would be satisfied and where God would be all in all.' (pp. 46, 48-49, 55-57, 73, 123, 153-154, 207-208)

Orthodox Must Be Losing The Debate

In previous discussions, Orthodox has claimed that when people like Steve Hays criticize his character or behavior, it means that he (Orthodox) must be winning the debate. We don't accept that reasoning, but let's apply Orthodox's own standards to one of his latest posts. In a recent reply to Gene Bridges, Orthodox writes:

"Are you deaf?"

And:

"Jason asked for a list. I could have cut and paste the list here, but I didn't want to fill up the blog just because Jason is too lazy to look it up himself."

And:

"You've got a severe comprehension problem as you cannot distinguish between the present and past tenses."

And:

"Go back to junior high school English."

Judging by his own standards, Orthodox must be losing the debate.