Alastair's words will be in green; "Josh"'s in blue:
You note that Luther believed in the Real Presence, but Calvin believed in it as well (though not in a presence that was physically enclosed within the elements): "Therefore, if the Lord truly represents the participation in his body throught the breaking of bread, there ought not to be doubt that he truly presents and shows his body. And the godly ought by all means to keep this rule: whenever they see symbols appointed by the Lord, to think and be persuaded that the truth of the thing signified is surely present there. For whys hould the Lord put in your hand the symbol of his body, except to assure you of a true participation in it? But if it is true that a visible sign is given us to seal the gift of a thing invisible, when we have received the symbol of the body, let us no surely trust that the body itself is also gives to us" (Institutes, 4.17.10; p.1371, McNeill/Battles trans.).
Would you agree that the biggest difference concerning the Eucharist between your church, the Lutherans, and the [classical] Reformed is not over the Real Presence, but rather the means or mode of that presence (i.e., the relation between the signum and the res)?
Yes. Calvin adheres to a "mystical presence." Luther and Catholics accept substantial presence (which is a more accurate term for our view than "real presence"). I think Calvin's view (with all due respect) is confused, and not able to be defended on solid philosophical (or for that matter, theological and exegetical) grounds. It seems incoherent and, frankly, strange, to me. He wants the presence of Christ to be real, yet he has to separate the consecrated elements by making them symbols. I don't see how this mose of "presence" is distinguishable from God's omnipresence. Of course, God is everywhere, and He is always everywhere. So of what additional use is a symbolic (or semi-symbolic) "reality" that is not substantial?
The whole miracle of the Eucharist is that it is an extension of the Incarnation: Jesus actually became a man: a physical person, and walked among us. Transubstantiation means that Jesus is actually present just as He was when He walked the earth. But the rub is that it always requires faith to believe this, because the accidents remain the same, and it seems nonsensical to a naturalistic mind that what looks like bread and wine really aren't. I think that causes disbelief in it: I would call it an excessive rationalism, and I say that Calvin (and Zwingli) succumbed in part to that. They can't accept the miracle that all the Fathers accepted.
Of course the comeback is that it is not a "rational" thing, but a mystery, but I reply that even mysteries don't have to be (indeed, should not be) contrary to reason; they can be reasonable as far as reason goes, and then require faith for those aspects which transcend (but do not contradict) reason.
This is the Catholic view: always reason and faith; not faith and reason some of the time, or reason and faith some of the time, or faith and unreason, or faith as inalterably opposed to reason, etc. We will not yield the mind or reason. The Bible doesn't require such a thing. So why does anyone go that route? I've never understood it.
I know this is yet another deep subject, and I am not trying to simplify Calvin's view. We can pursue the discussion further, time-permitting, if you like.
Hi Alastair,
I find many of your comments highly abstract and a bit difficult to follow (and you may take that as a compliment — it means I can learn a lot from you), but I will reply as best I know how:
>First, Calvin's doctrine of the Supper did develop over the course of his lifetime. He later regretted some of his compromises with the Zwinglian view.
That's fascinating. Could you briefly summarize and direct me to passages in the Institutes or the Commentaries or paste something to elaborate on this? The trouble with dealing with these great minds (people like Augustine and Calvin) is that they do develop their views, precisely because they are thinkers. And that is easy to overlook.
>Second, Calvin's doctrine stressed the work of the Holy Spirit. In this respect I feel that his approach can be seen as somewhat akin to the Eastern Orthodox view with its emphasis upon the epiklesis as the moment of transformation. Reading Schmemann, for instance, on the Real Presence in the Supper I see essentially the same doctrine that I as a Calvinist hold to. I would like to hear more on the RC view of the role of the Spirit in the Supper.
Nothing particular to say on that at the moment. Sounds like a heavy (therefore, good) topic. I have often noted, though, similarities between the Orthodox and the more presuppositional Reformed, in how they view the relation of faith and reason.
>Alongside this concern I would like to know more of the eschatological aspect of the RC celebration of the Eucharist. I feel that this element can easily be downplayed and where it is present (e.g. the transubstantiated elements as firstfruits of the new creation) it can be problematic.
I feel this is, again, over my head, but it makes a great deal of sense to me to tie in the Eucharist to the Resurrection, because it was precisely that, along with the Incarnation, which "prefigures" the Eucharist and makes it possible. As Jesus had a Glorified, Resurrection body which could do extraordinary things, so He supernaturally enters into the consecrated elements and is truly, substantially there — just in a different form: just as His post-Resurrection body had elements of physical and spiritual (or simply multi-dimensionality, if we follow a more "modern physics" model). I could see exploring this in light of 1 Corinthians 15, in great depth indeed.
>Third, Calvin stressed the instrumental efficacy of the elements, whilst many Reformed only held to occasionalism or even intermittent occasionalism. I feel that his doctrine was a bit higher, at in its developed form, than you suggest.
So this would be akin to our ex opere operato? I guess these differences in your group account for the relative stress on sacramentalism. You have on the continuum people like James White, whose extreme anti-sacramentalism would mean that even Luther and St. Augustine could not have been regenerate Christians (as I think I demonstrated from White's own words), and people like yourself, whose views are very close to ours on baptism and the Eucharist. So learning more about Calvin's actual "mature" views on this would be very interesting to me. I love discovering stuff like this. I knew that he accepted Catholic baptism as valid, which pretty much puts to rest the matter of whether Catholics are Christians or not. But tell that to your anti-Catholic brethren!
>Fourth, I feel that most of these debates hinge around certain presuppositions that are held concerning the 'body of Christ'. I feel that we need to establish a careful balance between the historical, ecclesial and sacramental body of Christ. I am not sure that this has been maintained in RC circles (it certainly hasn't in most Protestant circles), but I would be happy to be proved wrong. I sense that the sacramental body has tended to eclipse the ecclesial body.
This is heavy stuff; you would have to elaborate more fully. Would Col 1:24 and similar verses tie into this?
>I also feel that many of these debates fail to take seriously enough the fact that there is something that we simply don't understand about the resurrection body of Christ.
Oh, sure. Hard to deny that . . .
>I feel that, in general, RCs have been in danger of downplaying the significance of the resurrection in the shaping of different areas of theology (not least ecclesiology). The resurrection of Christ is the future invading the present in Christ. It is the source of the powers of the age to come and the Holy Spirit that raised Christ from the dead is always the eschatological Spirit (John Zizioulas' book Being As Communion is great on this).
I have no problem with that. I'm not sure we minimize it . . .
>When we celebrate the Supper we are tasting of the future that has become present in Christ.
Also the past (Calvary) that has been made supernaturally present to us. I say it transcends time, and that would include whjat is "future" to us.
>This occurs as we are raised up to be with Christ by the eschatological Spirit. We truly partake of Him and have communion with Him both in His divine and human nature. He is not merely our Host; He is also our food. However, the eschatological stress is crucially important, IMHO.
Fascinating line of thought . . . I hope you hang around!
>I fear that many have trepassed on the mystery by trying to fit the resurrection body of Christ into doctrinal boxes that it simply transcends.
I would like to hear more. Much of this needs more explanation (for me, anyway). It may be that you are talking in typically Reformed ways of expression that are more familiar to that group, but a bit strange and different for outsiders.
Thanks for the great post!
In Him,
Dave
Thanks for your comments. Here is a long response, which I trust will serve to clarify some points.
With regard to the development of Calvin’s Eucharistic thought I am thinking particularly of the movement from the compromise document of the Consensus Tigurinus to the later Defense of the Sane and Orthodox Doctrine of the Sacraments. Calvin expressed regret to Bucer concerning the compromise of the first document: “Let us therefore bear with a sigh that which cannot be corrected.” As Thomas Davis points out in The Clearest Promises of God: The Development of Calvin’s Eucharistic Teaching, in the later document Calvin “emphasizes that it is Christ himself the Christian enjoys, in his flesh and blood, and not simply a communion that results because of his receiving Christ’s benefits”. Calvin’s emphasis upon the instrumental power of the elements is seemingly absent in the early Calvin (e.g. 1536 edition of the Institutes). Thomas Davis writes again:
“What we see, then, in Calvin’s last eucharistic writings is the completion of a journey. At the beginning of his career, as he wrote on the Eucharist in his 1536 Institutes, Calvin flatly and unequivocally denied substantial partaking of Christ in the Eucharist. He claimed that the Eucharist could not, in fact, be thought of as an instrument of grace. Moreover, he delineated no clear eucharistic gift. As has been shown, over a period of twenty-three years, Calvin’s eucharistic theology matured. It developed in such a way that Calvin claimed as essential those very elements he had originally denied as part of his eucharistic doctrine.”
For a study of Calvin’s Eucharistic theology I have appreciated John Williamson Nevin’s The Mystical Presence and the records of the subsequent debate with Charles Hodge in such books as Given For You by Keith Mathison. Both of these books chronicle the demise of the high Reformed doctrine of the Supper, particularly in the Puritan era and the following period. For many the relationship between the sign and the reality became merely a subjective one created by the mind and faith of the participant.
The issue of the Spirit and the Supper is crucial in my estimation. It is interesting to notice that the elements have never become the objects of adoration, contemplation and worship in the Eastern Church as they have in the West.
Eastern Orthodox theologians differ with Roman Catholics regarding the place of the transformation of the elements within the liturgy. Orthodox theologians argue that this takes place at the epiklesis (the invocation of the Spirit) rather than at the words of institution. Schmemann maintains that this is not merely replacing one ‘causality’ with another:—
“It is to reveal the eschatological character of the sacrament. The Holy Spirit comes on the “last and great day” of Pentecost. He manifests the world to come. He inaugurates the Kingdom. He always takes us beyond. To be in the Spirit means to be in heaven, for the Kingdom of God is “joy and peace in the Holy Spirit.” And thus in the Eucharist it is He who seals and confirms our ascension into heaven, who transforms the Church into the body of Christ and—therefore—manifests the elements of our offering as communion in the Holy Spirit. This is the consecration.”
The transformation of the bread and wine cannot be explained in the categories of this world (time, essence, causality, etc.). The transformation of the bread and wine is revealed to faith by the Holy Spirit. However, the transformation is not something that takes place in “this world” but it occurs as the Church is made to participate in the “world to come” by the invocation of the Spirit. The manifestation of the bread and wine as the body and blood of Christ must be understood in terms of the action of the Eucharist. He is ‘made known through the breaking of bread’.
Schmemann argues in his book The Eucharist that the elements as the true Body and Blood of Christ are only revealed to faith by the Holy Spirit. He also stresses that the purpose of the Eucharist is the manifestation of the Church itself as the body of Christ. The Roman Catholic doctrine is frequently accused for downplaying this purpose of the Eucharist in my reading (of Reformed, Anglicans and Eastern Orthodox particularly). Perhaps this charge is a trifle unfair, I don’t know. Schmemann complains that trying to explain the cause of the change of the elements is unnecessary and harmful. It places the Supper within the categories of “this world” and loses the sense of a ‘temporal’ gift (for want of a better word).
In the Supper we taste of the powers of the age to come. The presence of Christ is probably best understood, not primarily in terms of ‘local’ presence, but in terms of ‘temporal’ presence. The essence of the Church lies in the future, finding its true existence in Christ Himself. Our relationship with the future is both ‘horizontal’ and ‘vertical’. By ‘horizontal’ I mean that we are still expecting a final consummation in the future. By ‘vertical’ I mean that we already taste of that realized consummation as we have union with the One in whom that future has already been realized. This union is effected by the work of the Holy Spirit.
Thinking of the Supper in terms of ‘local’ presence can mute the strong eschatological themes of the Supper. We truly eat of the Body and Blood of our Lord. However, we need to be careful of understanding this eating in terms belonging to this present age, as the liturgy of the Eucharist is a movement from this age to the age to come.
As I pointed out in my previous comments, this is closely related to the Eastern Orthodox charge that Roman Catholics have not paid sufficient attention to the Spirit’s constituting of the Church as the Body of Christ. To most outsiders Roman Catholic ecclesiology seems to take the Incarnation more than the Resurrection and Pentecost as its starting point. As I mentioned earlier, John Zizioulas criticizes RCs, and I believe rightly, on this area in his fantastic book Being As Communion. Christology has not, he claims, been significantly conditioned by pnuematology (and consequently by eschatology) in the West. He sees this deficiency manifest in the failure to recognize the equal ultimacy of the local and universal Church in RC ecclesiology. If you have not already done so, I would highly recommend that you read Zizioulas. He is always immensely stimulating, even when one would disagree with him.
Calvin, in his doctrine of the Supper treated the elements as instruments by which we truly partake of the theanthropic Christ. He argued that this occurs as we are raised into heaven by the Spirit. I think that Calvin is generally right on this. However, I would have liked to see him stress the eschatological nature of this movement. We are being raised ‘vertically’ to the heavenly city (cf. Hebrews 12:22) that we are still awaiting ‘horizontally’ (Hebrews 13:14). In Christ — the One who is the same yesterday, today and forever — expectation merges with remembrance and the future invades the present.
Once this approach to the Supper has been understood, the argument over ‘local’ presence will be seen to be unhelpful. Spatial categories tend to divert our attention from what is really happening.
On the issue of the Reformed attitude towards the language of ex opere operato I would suggest that you read the following article, which gives a helpful treatment of the subject.
The chief concern that I would have regarding the language of ex opere operato is not that it presents the elements as ‘instruments’ — I am agreed that the elements are instruments and not merely occasions of the grace that they signify. Admittedly my position is less common within Reformed circles than the lower forms of the doctrine that have developed. Nevertheless, my views on this certainly have a long history and were shared by such as Calvin and Nevin.
There is an inseparable connection between the symbol and the reality. This bond is no mere nominal, external bond. In the proper practice of the sacrament the reality is actually conveyed. If this is all that ex opere operato is taken to mean then I will readily say ‘Amen!’ to it. Reformed theologians have often reacted to a form of transubstantiation (which I am increasingly convinced is a caricature) which imprisons the reality in the symbol. The symbol is done away with rather than consummated by the presence of the reality. Opposed to this position I would stress that the symbol participates in the reality. [At this point I should express my dislike for the terminology of ‘symbol’ and ‘reality’ — reality itself is symbolic]. The reality remains a free and open mystery whilst being partially imparted through the sign. It can never be contained within the sign. To contain the reality within the sign is to bind the mystery.
Biblically the sign is not a substitute for the reality, but the ‘self-supplementing presence’ of the reality (as Catherine Pickstock terms it). Christ’s physical presence did not render His signs in the gospels superfluous. They were a means of manifesting and conveying the reality of His Person to people.
As regards the issue of the sacramental (the bread of the Eucharist), historical (the crucified, resurrected and ascended body of our Lord) and ecclesial (the Church) Body of Christ I think that it is imperative that we do not separate these. It is essential that we recognize that the Eucharist is fundamentally an action not the elements. For this reason it is probably unhelpful to operate in terms of sign / thing signified. This language tends to frame the Eucharist less as an action than as a static symbol. The Eucharist is a ritual whereby the Church fulfills itself as the Body of Christ. Christ Himself is present in our midst as our Host (historical Body). Christ Himself is present in us as His Church (ecclesial body). Christ Himself is present in the elements as our food (sacramental body).
The fact that the Eucharist is an action performed by the Church is crucially important. Were the Eucharist not performed by the ecclesial Body of Christ it would become an extrinsic miracle. I fear that many Roman Catholics have failed to stress the action of the Eucharist as essential to what it really is. Many forms of the doctrine of the transubstantiation seem to make the liturgy itself ‘accidental’ to the ‘essence’ of the sacrament. Little concentration is given to the Eucharist as a meal. The reality interrupts the liturgy, rather than fulfilling it. I would prefer to think of the reality as being made manifest through the liturgy, rather than breaking in from outside the liturgy. The symbol / reality dichotomy is 90% of our problem at this point.
From an outsider’s perspective, the three-fold nature of the Body of Christ appears to have been obscured by RC teaching. In passages like 1 Corinthians 11 they are beautifully jumbled up together. One moment Paul is talking about the bread of the sacrament as the Body of Christ, the next it is the historical Body of Christ that he speaks of; he then proceeds to speak of the Church as the Body of Christ. It is the relationship between these aspects of the one Body of Christ that make the Eucharist what it is, that make the Church what it is and, dare I say, fulfill what Christ Himself truly is — not just an individual but a corporate Personality.
In the light of this, any individualistic celebration of the Eucharist should be out of the question. This is one of the reasons why I believe such things as private masses to be distortions of the true nature of the sacrament. I might also add that even when most churches celebrate the Eucharist it is merely a collection of individuals that do so and not the Church as Church.
As for Colossians 1:24 and other such verses: yes, I would understand them within the conceptual matrix of the three-fold nature of the Body of Christ. Paul’s sufferings can never be seen as an addition to the sufferings of Christ Himself, suggesting that Christ’s sufferings were somehow deficient. Paul’s sufferings can never be opposed to Christ’s own sufferings because Paul is participating in the sufferings of Christ, not competing with them. Paul no longer lives but Christ lives in Him. Paul now will spend and be spent for the sake of the Church. His vocation is the fulfillment of the vocation of Christ Himself who is at work in Paul.
Wow, Alastair,
That was an extraordinary post, almost breathtaking in its depth and insight. Are you a theologian or something? Man! This is a very mystical view of the Eucharist that I have not yet had the pleasure to explore all that much. I am almost certain, however, that some of the more mystically-minded Catholics have dealt with this from basically the same standpoint.
I thought of Matthias Scheeben as a likely candidate right away, and went and looked up what he wrote about the Eucharist in his book, The Mysteries of Christianity (tr. by Cyril Vollert, S.J., St. Louis: B. Herder Book Co., 1952; from 1887 edition, pp. 485-486, 488):
"The Eucharistic presence of Christ is in itself a reflection and extension of His incarnation, as the Fathers so often observe. The changing of the bread into the body of Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit is a renewal of the wonderful act by which, in the power of the same Holy Spirit, He originally formed His body in the womb of the Virgin and took it to His person . . .
"But this presence is multiplied only that the body of Christ may grow and spread throughout the members which He attaches to Himself and fuses with Himself. For this reason alone the true body of Christ is reproduced at the Consecration, that He may unite Himself with individual men in Communion and become one body with them, so that the Logos may, as it were, become man anew in each man, by taking the human nature of each into union with His own . . .
"So completely do we bcome one with Christ that we can say with deep truth that we belong to the person of Christ, and in a sense are Christ Himself. "Christ is the Church," says St. Hilary, 'bearing it wholly within Himself by the sacrament of His body' . . .
"This participation in the divine nature is at the same time a replenishing of man with the Holy Spirit and a fellowship with Him. Since the Holy Spirit dwells in the body of Christ in a quite singular way by a very real union, He must also pour Himself out upon those who have been joined to Christ in one body. That we are filled with the Holy Spirit, that the Eucharist becomes a fellowship with the Holy Spirit for those who partake of it, and that we are all joined to one another in the fellowship of the one Holy Spirit, we find indicated in the ancient liturgies as the aim and effect of the Eucharist."
This is just a drop in the bucket of the riches in this 834-page book.
That was utterly fascinating information about John Calvin. I had never heard that. If you know of any Internet articles on this, please let me know. I'd like to do excerpts from them on this blog.
God bless, and thank you very much for this.
Dave
*****
"Josh" later offered related material to ponder:
. . . Keith Mathison's Given for You: Reclaiming Calvin's Doctrine of the Lord's Supper [Presbyterian and Reformed, 2002]. You might find interesting the following definition that Mathison offers to describe Calvin's view (this is from p.279):
"According to Calvin, Christ's body is present in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, but the mode of his presence is not specifically connected with the substance of the elements…Christ is present by virtue of the supernatural working of the Holy Spirit, not by the transformation or combination of the material substances". Calvin's view is that, whilst the historical body of Christ is located locally in heaven, the mystical work of the Holy Spirit makes Christ truly present in the Supper (present as the whole God-Man):
"Even though it seems unbelievable that Christ's flesh, separated from us by such great distance, penetrates to us, so that it becomes our food, let us remember that the secret power of the Holy Spirit towers above all our senses,and how foolish it is to measure this immeasurableness by our measure. What then, our mind does not comprehend, let faith conceive: that the Spirit truly unites things separated things separated in space" (*Institutes*, 4.17.10). Thus, we see two aspects that of Calvin's eucharistic theology that Al mentioned: the work of the Holy Spirit and eschatology (the latter being related to the former).
Calvin emphasizes the separation in space because He takes the Ascension seriously. All Christians confess, of course, that Christ has ascended bodily into heaven; but, on Calvin's view, the idea that Jesus was bodily present locally in the substance of the eucharistic elements (i.e.,enclosed in them as in transubstantiation), transgressed a clear article of faith proclaimed in the faith: that Christ's body is locally present in heaven alone. So Calvin's reasons for rejecting a local mode of presence as held by Rome and Luther was because of his theology of the Ascension (more on this later); but because of his stress on the Spirit and his eschatological focus of the Church ascendant into heaven for worship, he could still hold real presence:
"In His sacred supper he bids me to take, eat, and drink his body and blood under the symbols of bread and wine [remember: when Calvin means symbol, he doesn't mean what zwingli means]. I do no doubt that he himself truly presents them, and that I receive them" (Institutes, 4.17.32) and "I conclude, that Christ's body is really (italics in original) given to us in the Supper, to be wholesome food for our souls" (Commentaries, 20:379; quoted in Mathison, p.26).
Now for JC's theology of the sacramental union (the union between the signum and res). Calvin's theology here was based upon the Definition of Chalcedon (another evidence of his catholicity!), which defined Christ as full God and full Man, united in one Person without separation, admixture, or confusion. We may distinguish between the two natures of Our Lord, but we must never separate or confuse them.Calvin applies this to the sacramental union of the signum and the res (recalling Augustine's definition; and, according to Mathison [largely quoting Ronald Wallace's Calvin's Doctrine of the Word and Sacrament, which has been viewed as a magisterial work on Calvin's sacramentology by many], Calvin finds analogy to the sacramental union only in the Incarnation!) to the sacraments.
Ronald Wallace summarizes Calvin's doctrine of the sacramental union thusly[found in Mathison, p.22]:
"First, 'the union formed between the divine and human activity in the event of God's activity in the sacrament is so close as, practically speaking, to become one of identity' [Wallace, p.162]. As Calvin expresses it, 'The name of the thing, therefore, is transferred here to the sign-not as if it were strictly applicable, but figuratively on the ground of that connection which I have mentioned' [Calvin on I Cor. 10:4, in wallace, 147]. Second, thus sacramental union is 'so transcendant and freely personal that the thing signified must be regarded as distinct from the sign' [ibid.]. If the sign actually becomes the thing it signifies, it neccessarily ceases to be a sacrament. Third, 'there is no natural analogy for this union' [Wallace, 167]…The only possibly analogy for the sacramental union is the mystery of the Incarnation. Fourth, observes Wallace, 'There is no doubt that Calvin sees an analogy which at least serves to regulate his thinking on this mystery of sacramental union, in the mystery of the union between God and man in Jesus Christ' [Wallace, p.82]…(para) As Paul Rorem notes, calvin's sacramental theology was 'Chalcedonian balancing act' [Rorem, The Consensus Tigurinus 91549): Did Calvin Compromise, in Calvin Sacrae Scripturae Professor, ed.William H. Neuser, p.73]. Just as the divine and human natures of Christ must be distinguished without being separated, so too the sign and reality signified must be distinguished without beig separated…(para) It is important to note Calvin's view of the relationship between the signs and the things signified because for calvin the bread and wine of the Supper are signs representing something present, not signs representing something absent" (Mathison, pp.23-24).
Thus, when the Chalcedonian formula was applied to the Lutheran doctrine, Calvin found deficiencies because the Lutheran doctrine of ubiquity allowed Christ's body to be locally present in millions of churches throughout the world at the same time. While one could reply that the Resurrected Christ had a transformed body that could allow for such action [as you alluded to in one of your last responses], the fact remains that it is a human body (albeit a glorified one). As such, Christ's historical body can only be in one place at a time; and it is a article of faith amongst Christians that our Lord 'ascended into heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty'. The Lutheran (and thus RC) doctrine contradicts this fundamental Christological principle: it confuses the sign and the thing signified. Mathison again:
"Calvin believed that such a doctrine [the Lutheran doctrine of ubiquity] necessarily confused the properties of the divine and human natures of Christ, contrary to Chalcedonian orthodoxy. According to Calvin, it is a defining characteristic of flesh to 'subsist in one definite place, with its own size and form' (Institutes, 4.17.24). Ubiquitous flesh would, by definition, cease to be true flesh."(Mathison, p.28)
If Calvin viewed the Lutherans as nearing the mixture of natures, he saw Rome as doing the same thing. For Rome, as you state, believes in transubstantiation wherein the substance of the eucharistic elements are transformed into the Body and Blood of Christ. This too results in a confusion of the signum and res based upon the Chalcedonian principle, for (correct me if I'm wrong, please; I don't want to be setting up paper men!) acc. to Rome the visible sign becomes the thing signified. On my reading, Rome does this because she believes that this is the only way to preserve Real Presence; but, Calvin's theology of the Spirit makes this an unnecessary move. Mathison (quoting Calvin) again:
"Christ's physical body, according to Calvin, is locally present in heaven and will remain there until he returns again. he explains, 'Not Aristotle, but the Holy Spirit teaches that the body christ from the time of his resurrection was finite, and is contained in heaven until the Last Day' [Institutes, 4.17.26]. Christ's physical body is in heaven and does not have to descend to earth in order for us to truly partake of it. This is true, according to calvin, first of all because 'the minds of believers (this being an heavenly act) are raised by faith above the world' [*Second Defense of the Pious and Orhtodox faith Concerning the Sacraments*, 280]. Second, the Holy Spirit, 'removing the obstacle which distance of space might occasion, conjoins us with his [Christ's] members' (Ibid). The Holy Spirir is 'sufficient to break through all impediments and surmount any distance of place' [*The Best method of Obtaining Concord*, 577]" (Mathison, p.28). The Spirit makes Christ present at the Table though He is in heaven; I believe that this primarily happens by the Church ascending into heaven for her worship. Worship is a mystical meeting of heaven and earth; it is truly eschatological. I believe that Rome's Aristotelianly-influenced doctrine of the Eucharist, along with the rationalists (including many Presbyterians!!!) in some respects, neglects this focus and so gets off track.
Which leads me to the fact that the Anabaptists and Baptists (and really Zwinglians as well) violate the sacramental union in another direction: they rationalistically rip apart the signum and the res, and rent asunder what God has joined together. While I would say thta Rome messes up their sacramentology by confusing the signum and the res, the 'sacramentarians' err by leaving us with a naked and nominalistic (and inefficacious)sign (SINO, sacrament in name only? :) ). Given the reciprocal nature between sacramentology and christology, it should be no surprise that much of Anabaptist movement ending up in the shipwreck of Socianism (a point made by John Williamson Nevin, a 19th century Reformed theologian whose debate with the famous Charles Hodge is simply fascinating hsitorically; Mathison discusses it on pp.136-86 of Given for You; the preface to Nevin's work, the Mystical Presence, may be found online.
When we apply Chalcedon to the Sacraments (as should be natural for all of us who accept the ministerial and definitive authority of the ecumenical councils), I belive that we can draw several conclusions this is by no means exhaustive, and I'd love to hear your input and/or critique here):
First, the sacramental union must be seen as a real union, not a nominalistic construct (as many Presbyterians are wont to do); while we may distinguish between the signum and the res, we must never separate them. Practically, this means that we can never separate regeneration, remission of sins, and union with christ from Baptism, or the Body and Blood of Jesus from His Supper. This results in a real and objective offer of the substance of the sacraments (which is Jesus Himself) to every receiver; the real, efficaciousness of the sacraments, owing to the promised work of the Spirit (who also effected the hypostatic union of Christ) and; allows us to distinguish between how the substance of the reality is received by the eternally elect and over and against the covenantally elect but ultimately reprobate.
Second, we must with equal tenacity and faith confess our Lord's bodily and local presence in heaven and His presence in the sacraments. It takes faith to see this, to be sure; it is a profound mystery, and as Al said, we can't wrap all of this around in our finite heads (we have to rememeber the Creature/Creator distinction here as well). We must throw away some of our little Cartesian, Aristotelian, Van Tilian, or whatever boxes at some point at confess the mystery: Jesus is in heaven but the Spirit makes Him present in the Supper.
Now, you may object that saying that Jesus only being (acc. to His historic body) locally present in heaven is itself rationalistic; that transubstantiation is a mystery that confounds (but doesn't go against) our reason. Jesus can be locally present both in heaven and in the elements. But I would reply that our interpretation must be gaurded by the regula fidei, the rule of faith, which is summed up in the Ecumenical Creeds (which is incidentally a part of the classical Protestant doctrine of sola Scriptura, which I believe neccessitates a kind of catholic conciliarism; but that's for another discussion entirely!). And, as Calvin said, the rule of faith says that Christ's glorified body is in heaven at the Father's right hand until the consummation; and the attempts to say how He could be locally in two places simulataneously violate the Definition of Chalcedon. (This is where our debates must go, I believe: back to Scripture, and the interpretation thereof being regulated by the rule that we have in the Creeds.)
Eschatology, pneumatology, and Christology must inform our doctrine of the sacraments; I would agree with Al that Rome seems to neglect the eschatological and pneumatological framework that we must hand our hats on when discussing the sacraments. I would point to Hebrews 6:4-5 as an example of this eschatological nature, of the Church being taken into the age to come in the sacraments:
"For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come…" In this vein, I should note that union with Christ is a central motif in calvin's thought, and it is in union with christ (which takes place through the word and the sacrament), the Last Adam, the True Israel, the One in whom all thigns exist and will be consummated, that believers share in the age to come, by the Spirit. This is where our new life in the New Creation that God is making is derived from: from this eschatological reality, from the age to comem invading and transforming our present (and I believe that this allows us to believe in the victory of Christ on earth before His seocnd coming). Liturgy, sacraments, and worship must be placed in the context of the Triune God moving to re-unify heaven and middle earth; and we certainly have that in the Eucharist, where we ascend in a sacrifice of praise to the heavenlies.
I would agree with Al that given this eschatological focus, the RC and Lutheran emphasis on local presence seems to be taking us in the wrong direction; we should keep in mind that we are united to Christ in heaven, and that our worship takes place there. To be sure, our theology must be Incarnational; but it must be regulated by the Resurrection and Asecnsion as well.
To conclude, Mathison (one more time!):
"Wallace provides a helpful summary of the various aspects of calvin's thought. He reminds us, first of all, that Calvin agrees with the Lutherans and Roman Catholics 'that the flesh of Christ is given in the sacrament' [Wallace, 111]. This is repeatedly mentioned throughout Calvin's worlks. In fact, calvin asserts, 'the whole of Christ is given in the sacrament' [Wallace, 111, 200;cf.Institutes, 3.11.9]. This is necessary, according to Calvin, because the flesh of Christ is the channel of life that belongs inherently to the divine nature [cf. Calvin, commentary on John 6:51]. Wallace points out four basic points that must be kept in mind as we consider the mode of partaking of Christ's blood and blood:
'i)*The body of Christ *, in which he wrought our redemption and part from which we cannot be saved, in beign communcated to us in the sacrament [italics] remains, throughout the particpation, in heaven, beyond this world, and retains all its human properties…
ii) Communion with the body and blood of Christ is effected through the descent of the Holy Spirit, by whom our souls are lifted up into heaven, there to partake of the life tranfused into us from the Christ…
iii)Partaking of the flesh of Christ in the supper is thus a heavenly action, in which the flesh is eaten in a spiritual manner…
iv)The presence of the body of Christ in the Supper, though it may be called a*real presence* and a descent of Christ by the Spirit, is nevertheless also a "*celestial mode of presence*" and leads to no localisation of the body of Christ on earth, no inclusion of it in the elements, no attachment of it to the elements…[Wallace, 203-10] (Mathison, pp.28-29)".
Tuesday, September 06, 2005
Monday, September 05, 2005
Flood Geology, the (Global?) Flood, and Uniformitarianism, Part II (vs. Kevin Rice)
See initial post. (Catholic) Kevin's words will be in green. This discussion took place in May 2004.
Hi Kevin,
>Here's a question that I have held in abeyance for years concerning your views:
Years?! :-)
>Why do you reject a Universal Flood and Flood Geology in favor of uniformitarianism?
For my part, I am not committed to Flood Geology (though I find it interesting) nor do I believe in a young-earth scenario putting the age of the universe in the thousands of years rather than billions. But I am curious about your rejection of Flood Geology. I have enjoyed your papers on critiquing evolution immensely, but I have not seen any apologia for this rejection.
Flood geology or "catastrophism," usually goes hand-in-hand with the young earth hypothesis (if you're talking about the view that includes such scenarios as all the layers of the Grand Canyon being deposited as a result of the flood, etc.).
It is simply unable to be synthesized with the findings of geology. Uniformitarianism is fundamental to science. It has to assume that the processes we observe now have always been in operation. Otherwise it is difficult to build up a body of reliable, internally-consistent data.
I formed my view on this during the early 80s due largely to Bernard Ramm's book, The Christian View of Science and Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1954). He pointed out things like the 18 layers of forests on top of each other in Yellowstone Park, which blows away the young earth and flood geology alike.
As for a universal flood (if by that one means that the waters literally covered the entire earth), the Bible doesn't require this. The theory also suffers from several serious flaws having to do with what would happen with that much water around, even covering the mountains.
>DAVE!
KEVIN!
>DAVE DAVE DAVE!
KEVIN KEVIN KEVIN!
>Why did you do it?!! Why did you take down one of my favorite papers of yours from your site, "An Empirically-Minded Philosophical Critique of Evolutionary Claims for the Fossil Record"???!!
I took down almost all of my papers on evolution and creationism because I wanted my focus in such matters to be on refutations of scientific materialism, which is the real enemy of Christianity, not the theory of evolution (flawed though it is, in its most popular forms). For myself, I never thought evolution was an intrinsically immoral or wicked scheme. I simply thought it was false.
But my own views have been undergoing a slow transformation, I think (no pun intended). I've read a few books on the overall subject, including Michael Behe's Darwin's Black Box, and plan to read several more which I have already purchased. My view now might be described as an "agnostic" position somewhere between progressive creationism and theistic evolutionism.
Behe (a Catholic) is an evolutionist, in terms of common descent. But his point is that the natural laws as we know them cannot account for the evolution we see at the biochemical level; that there is irreducible complexity and therefore intelligent design is required to explain these origins. So he is not a Neo-Darwinist and he doesn't play the game of pretending that science, philosophy, and theology all exist in airtight compartments with no overlap.
That's what I believe at present. However organic development and diversity is explained, there must be a component beyond physical processes, because I don't think those can explain evolution all by themselves (i.e., scientific materialism: either philosophical or merely methodological). God has to either intervene to create new complexities or else he has put into natural scientific laws potentialities so extraordinary that we cannot at present explain them using simply the scientific knowledge that we have at present. I am leaning towards the latter position and suspect that that is where I'll end up after more study.
In other words, God can't be separated from science. Materialism has failed as a worldview, and the more we learn in science, the more this is established.
>I was going to re-read it in order to prepare for whatever answer you would have for my question about Flood Geology and your rejection of a worldwide flood,
I don't think that paper dealt much with this issue.
>and now I notice it isn't there! When did THAT happen??!
About 12-18 months ago, I think.
>You should know that there are (according to a Goodle search) two web pages that link to that paper whose links are now being sent to "Reflections on Judgment and Sufficient Knowledge for Salvation".
Yeah, I make too many links, then when I take papers down they don't fit any more.
>Why did you take it down?
Because of the above explanation. My fight (as a Christian apologist and armchair philosopher) is not with evolutionists, but with materialists.
>It was brilliant and filled with excellent stuff! I kept a print-out for years, but I felt free to discard it later for space reasons since you would always have it on your site, or so I mistakenly thought!
Well, thanks! You can always get old papers by consulting the Internet Archive: http://www.archiv……
>All I wanted was to get some feedback about a Universal Flood and Flood Geology vs. Uniformitarianism. As I recall, Dave, in that missing paper, says that he rejects the former in favor of the latter, "not a priori, but because of evidence." I just wanted to know what evidence tipped the scales in favor of uniformitarianism. For my part, I see the evidence as readily admitting to either interpretation, and I am totally agnostic on the subject. I have a vague subjective preference for Flood Geology, only because it makes Biblical hisotry so much more concrete and imaginable, which I enjoy. I would be captivated by that history even if I were not Christian, if I knew it as well as I do, only because it has the quality of grand, sweeping, epic myth. It reminds me of Tolkien, only Genesis is better!
Well, science isn't of the nature of a biblical or Tolkien "myth." It operates under the assumption that data exists sufficient enough to verify a given hypothesis or theory, and that theories should be falsifiable. Flood geology is filled with hundreds of holes. It is basically held anymore by fundamentalist Protestants. Bernard Ramm was a Baptist writing in 1954 and he said even then that most theological conservatives had rejected the universal flood, as contrary to science and not required by the biblical text.
Hope my answers have helped. I can't really get into a major discussion on geology right now, but maybe others would enjoy discussing it.
*****
First of all, "flood geology" and the question of universal vs. local flood are two different issues. You seem to be confusing them, but maybe not.
You say flood geology doesn't have to be tied to a young earth scenario. Very well, then: can you provide me with some links of reputable, credentialed scientists who adopt flood geology over against uniformitarianism and also accept the old earth? And also (if you can find it) a listing of their publications in respected scientific journals? Thanks!
Not a single one. And do you know how much that fact impresses me or persuades me that these self-evidently distinct ideas (young earth and a universal flood) are necessarily connected? Exactly this much: Not at all.
I am a lay philosopher (got my B.A. at Stony Brook), who stopped just short of his Master's degree at Franciscan University of Steubenville, having completed all the coursework, but having gotten bogged down by writing the thesis. Even after I reverted to my Catholic faith following nine years of agnosticism and paganism (during which I was actively hostile to Christianity) and returned to school to finish my B.A. in philosophy, I retain a strong streak of skepticism and agnosticism about a great many things which most people seem comfortable to accept without much questioning or critical reflection. The fact that a great many people with advanced degrees take one position or another, and each side is quite convinced that the other is dead wrong, is never in itself convincing to me that one side is right and the other is wrong. When it comes to the question about Flood Geology, I see two sides struggling to make ALL the data fit their theory, and neither side is succeeding in a way that I find compelling. I ask myself this question: suppose I have become convinced by independent (non-geological) evidence that the universe was not created 6,000 years ago, and thus it is quite thinkable that the earth is very old as well - does that mean that a Universal Flood never occurred, or could not have occurred? Just because young-earthers use the Flood to try (in vain, it seems to me) to explain ALL the evidence of an old earth, that does not mean that such an event as a worldwide flood never occured. I know that we are not required by our faith to believe in a Universal Flood. I just don't think that we are required by reason and the scientific evidence at hand to deny it. I feel free to accept or reject it.
BTW - You are right that I have been confusing Flood Geology with the idea of a Universal Flood. Do you know of anyone who rejects the former but accepts the latter?
To answer your question: no. I haven't really followed that particular discussion lately.
I am not deciding truth based on majority vote. And if you have read my papers on evolution, you would (or should) certainly know that. The two following propositions are distinct:
1. Truth is determined by a head count.
2. If the vast majority of experts and scholars in a given field believe something to be false, chances are that it is. It may still be true, but that is exceedingly unlikely.
Part of my reasoning for rejecting flood geology is #2, but it is not #1 at all, because that is clearly a falsehood. My understanding has been that flood geology and the young earth hypothesis have basically gone hand in hand. If I am wrong about that, I am happy to be corrected, but when I asked you to direct me to a flood geology advocate who accepted an old earth, you didn't have anything to give me. That's fine, but since you have said that you accept the old earth, I think this is an important consideration for you to ponder, since you remain agnostic on the flood geology question. There is such a thing as an eccentric opinion, no matter how much gadfly thinkers and intelectrual nonconformists like you and I might like to think we are totally independent of all schools of knowledge.
The bottom line is that if flood geology (or a 6000-year-old earth) is true, then both should have at least some advocates who have impeccable scientific credentials, whether or not they are shut out by the journals. If few can be found, then all that tells me is that it is lousy science, and can't even provide a paradigm for further research, exploration, explanatory value, and discovery, which is what science is about. It's just (IMO) Christian fundamentalism pretending to be "scientific" — neither good theology nor science.
The research I have seen is by people with those credentials, or at least who claim to have them - a claim that I cannot confirm but which I have no reaosn whatsoever to doubt. They have started their own journals.
There may be any number of scientifically credentialled people who have a clear enough grasp of these ideas to realize that the question of the age of the earth is distinct from whether there was a universal flood, and how the geological evidence is to be interpreted. I just have no idea how to find them, esp. of they are keeping certain doubts/questions/beliefs to themselves out of fear for their academic position. You must realize that such factors come into play on occasion. These questions become confused because they are not pursued in a dispassionate non-social, non-political, non-religious purely scientific vacuum. People dig in their heels based on their commitments to how Biblical text is to be interpreted, which is very close to their hearts. Atheists and believers alike have this tendency to take a position on Biblical exegesis. I am sure you ahve seen how committed atheists are to the least charitable interpretations available. Believers can be "charitable" in a way that doesn't help much - they can "rescue" Biblical text from the truths they are intended to affirm if they see those truths as incredible or inconsistent with the spirit of the age. Even orthodox believers can succumb to this. No one is totally immune to the seductive power of the zeitgesit.
I see that these questions (age of the earth and whether there was a Universal Flood) as distinct, and I see two sides of a debate being pursued in a way that indicates that everyone who is doing the research is completely blind to the distinction. Not that they have seen this as a possible apparent distinction and rejected it, but that they have never considered it for a moment. I am not impressed by that. Therefore I can't summon any confidence in the consensus of scientific and scholarly opinion concerning whether the distinction that I can plainly see has been considered reasonably and ruled out by a rational, scientific process. I see that even you, who have no apparent personal stake in this matter whatsoever, are reluctant to even re-examine the question or treat it as legitimate. Instead you are quite willing to defer to the opinions of others who have not even considered the question, who have never even done any research into it. For you, the fact that no research whatsoever has been done by those socially, politically and philosophically entrenched researchers on this question is ACTUALLY SUFFICIENT!!
That is not the same critical, questioning attitude that led you to seek and find the truth about how materialistic evolutionary science is pursued in the first place. This lack of intellectual curiousity on your part and your willingness to accept the same lack of curiousity in the scholarly and scientific community, is not consistent with that spirit of inquiry that you have demonstrated elsewhere at other times.
>I see that even you, who have no apparent personal stake in this matter whatsoever, are reluctant to even re-examine the question or treat it as legitimate.
Asking for links to articles about it by credentialed scientists is hardly doing that. But it is true that I have no time for the young earth worldview, so if flood geology is indeed inextricably tied to that (as I suspect), then it would go down with it.
>Instead you are quite willing to defer to the opinions of others who have not even considered the question, who have never even done any research into it.
I am? How do you know who I have read, or how much they have "considered the question"? You are arriving at quite a few unwarranted conclusions here.
>For you, the fact that no research whatsoever has been done by those socially, politically and philosophically entrenched researchers on this question is ACTUALLY SUFFICIENT!!
You are getting more and more wildly speculative. I made it clear that I didn't want to get unto a full discussion on geology at this time. I have also said that the Q & A Forums were mostly for short answers. I may or may not choose to go into topics at greater length. But if I don't do so, it doesn't therefore follow — in light of these stated factors —, that I have all these supposed opinions you are now attributing to me.
Why is this particular question so important to you? Generally, folks who take an agnostic position on something do not get all excited about it and argue with such zest and enthusiasm — precisely because they have no formed opinion yet.
>That is not the same critical, questioning attitude that led you to seek and find the truth about how materialistic evolutionary science is pursued in the first place. This lack of intellectual curiousity on your part and your willingness to accept the same lack of curiousity in the scholarly and scientific community, is not consistent with that spirit of inquiry that you have demonstrated elsewhere at other times.
Are you telling me that there are no opinions in the area of science which may be considered "fringe" or discounted or refuted? Would you include geocentrism and a non-rotating earth among those opinions? How about phrenology, or a flat earth, or racist eugenics theories? I want to see what theories you yourself have ruled out. If you have done so, then I am equally entitled to do the same, and shouldn't be subjected to criticism about my supposed lack of the "spirit of inquiry" based on that fact alone.
Everyone is entitled to regard some beliefs as unworthy of further attention (provided they do some study). For me, the young earth is one of those. I have not stated that flood geology was; only that in my experience, it was usually tied with the young earth view. You have not provided me with a single link to disabuse me of my present opinion. Perhaps someone can or will. The link between the two is where my "intellectual curiosity" lies at the moment.
Looks like this may be another paper of its own eventually . . .
Following my stated curiosity above, I have started to look for some material to resolve the question. Lo and behold, in two minutes on Google, I found the link to the "Science and the Bible Bibliography" by Christian Research Institute (CRI). It states:
"Secular evolutionism explains the origins of the world and man from a purely naturalistic perspective, seeing evolution as the only explanation required; God is left out of the picture (whether or not He is admitted to exist). Theistic evolutionism views God as the Creator of all through the process of evolution, perhaps conceding that the first man's soul was created directly by God. In both of these views, the earth is regarded as about 4.5 billion years old. Young-earth creationism regards the universe and the earth to have been created some six to ten thousand years ago within a six 24-hour-day period, with a global flood in Noah’s day producing major earth-wide geological effects (known as “flood geology”). Old-earth creationism accepts the time scale of billions of years, and regards many of God’s creative acts as taking place over long periods of time and involving natural processes as well as supernatural acts; while rejecting organic evolution as a mechanism in the creation of diverse kinds, as does young-earth creationism, the old-earth view also rejects flood geology."
DAVE! You Da MAN, dude!
Thank you so much for the generous time you put into helping me out on this. I am going to check every one of those links in detail, and that should keep me busy for some time.
In the meanwhile, the Hill Robert's quote and Jared's post (Jared, You da Otha Man!) are the most reasonable things I have read regarding this question. I am hopeful that this question will be resolved to my satisfaction. I feel better just for having it taken seriously! That alone might be enough, and I will probably cease in my flirtations with Flood Geology based on that alone!
Hi Kevin,
>Here's a question that I have held in abeyance for years concerning your views:
Years?! :-)
>Why do you reject a Universal Flood and Flood Geology in favor of uniformitarianism?
For my part, I am not committed to Flood Geology (though I find it interesting) nor do I believe in a young-earth scenario putting the age of the universe in the thousands of years rather than billions. But I am curious about your rejection of Flood Geology. I have enjoyed your papers on critiquing evolution immensely, but I have not seen any apologia for this rejection.
Flood geology or "catastrophism," usually goes hand-in-hand with the young earth hypothesis (if you're talking about the view that includes such scenarios as all the layers of the Grand Canyon being deposited as a result of the flood, etc.).
It is simply unable to be synthesized with the findings of geology. Uniformitarianism is fundamental to science. It has to assume that the processes we observe now have always been in operation. Otherwise it is difficult to build up a body of reliable, internally-consistent data.
I formed my view on this during the early 80s due largely to Bernard Ramm's book, The Christian View of Science and Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1954). He pointed out things like the 18 layers of forests on top of each other in Yellowstone Park, which blows away the young earth and flood geology alike.
As for a universal flood (if by that one means that the waters literally covered the entire earth), the Bible doesn't require this. The theory also suffers from several serious flaws having to do with what would happen with that much water around, even covering the mountains.
>DAVE!
KEVIN!
>DAVE DAVE DAVE!
KEVIN KEVIN KEVIN!
>Why did you do it?!! Why did you take down one of my favorite papers of yours from your site, "An Empirically-Minded Philosophical Critique of Evolutionary Claims for the Fossil Record"???!!
I took down almost all of my papers on evolution and creationism because I wanted my focus in such matters to be on refutations of scientific materialism, which is the real enemy of Christianity, not the theory of evolution (flawed though it is, in its most popular forms). For myself, I never thought evolution was an intrinsically immoral or wicked scheme. I simply thought it was false.
But my own views have been undergoing a slow transformation, I think (no pun intended). I've read a few books on the overall subject, including Michael Behe's Darwin's Black Box, and plan to read several more which I have already purchased. My view now might be described as an "agnostic" position somewhere between progressive creationism and theistic evolutionism.
Behe (a Catholic) is an evolutionist, in terms of common descent. But his point is that the natural laws as we know them cannot account for the evolution we see at the biochemical level; that there is irreducible complexity and therefore intelligent design is required to explain these origins. So he is not a Neo-Darwinist and he doesn't play the game of pretending that science, philosophy, and theology all exist in airtight compartments with no overlap.
That's what I believe at present. However organic development and diversity is explained, there must be a component beyond physical processes, because I don't think those can explain evolution all by themselves (i.e., scientific materialism: either philosophical or merely methodological). God has to either intervene to create new complexities or else he has put into natural scientific laws potentialities so extraordinary that we cannot at present explain them using simply the scientific knowledge that we have at present. I am leaning towards the latter position and suspect that that is where I'll end up after more study.
In other words, God can't be separated from science. Materialism has failed as a worldview, and the more we learn in science, the more this is established.
>I was going to re-read it in order to prepare for whatever answer you would have for my question about Flood Geology and your rejection of a worldwide flood,
I don't think that paper dealt much with this issue.
>and now I notice it isn't there! When did THAT happen??!
About 12-18 months ago, I think.
>You should know that there are (according to a Goodle search) two web pages that link to that paper whose links are now being sent to "Reflections on Judgment and Sufficient Knowledge for Salvation".
Yeah, I make too many links, then when I take papers down they don't fit any more.
>Why did you take it down?
Because of the above explanation. My fight (as a Christian apologist and armchair philosopher) is not with evolutionists, but with materialists.
>It was brilliant and filled with excellent stuff! I kept a print-out for years, but I felt free to discard it later for space reasons since you would always have it on your site, or so I mistakenly thought!
Well, thanks! You can always get old papers by consulting the Internet Archive: http://www.archiv……
>All I wanted was to get some feedback about a Universal Flood and Flood Geology vs. Uniformitarianism. As I recall, Dave, in that missing paper, says that he rejects the former in favor of the latter, "not a priori, but because of evidence." I just wanted to know what evidence tipped the scales in favor of uniformitarianism. For my part, I see the evidence as readily admitting to either interpretation, and I am totally agnostic on the subject. I have a vague subjective preference for Flood Geology, only because it makes Biblical hisotry so much more concrete and imaginable, which I enjoy. I would be captivated by that history even if I were not Christian, if I knew it as well as I do, only because it has the quality of grand, sweeping, epic myth. It reminds me of Tolkien, only Genesis is better!
Well, science isn't of the nature of a biblical or Tolkien "myth." It operates under the assumption that data exists sufficient enough to verify a given hypothesis or theory, and that theories should be falsifiable. Flood geology is filled with hundreds of holes. It is basically held anymore by fundamentalist Protestants. Bernard Ramm was a Baptist writing in 1954 and he said even then that most theological conservatives had rejected the universal flood, as contrary to science and not required by the biblical text.
Hope my answers have helped. I can't really get into a major discussion on geology right now, but maybe others would enjoy discussing it.
*****
First of all, "flood geology" and the question of universal vs. local flood are two different issues. You seem to be confusing them, but maybe not.
You say flood geology doesn't have to be tied to a young earth scenario. Very well, then: can you provide me with some links of reputable, credentialed scientists who adopt flood geology over against uniformitarianism and also accept the old earth? And also (if you can find it) a listing of their publications in respected scientific journals? Thanks!
Not a single one. And do you know how much that fact impresses me or persuades me that these self-evidently distinct ideas (young earth and a universal flood) are necessarily connected? Exactly this much: Not at all.
I am a lay philosopher (got my B.A. at Stony Brook), who stopped just short of his Master's degree at Franciscan University of Steubenville, having completed all the coursework, but having gotten bogged down by writing the thesis. Even after I reverted to my Catholic faith following nine years of agnosticism and paganism (during which I was actively hostile to Christianity) and returned to school to finish my B.A. in philosophy, I retain a strong streak of skepticism and agnosticism about a great many things which most people seem comfortable to accept without much questioning or critical reflection. The fact that a great many people with advanced degrees take one position or another, and each side is quite convinced that the other is dead wrong, is never in itself convincing to me that one side is right and the other is wrong. When it comes to the question about Flood Geology, I see two sides struggling to make ALL the data fit their theory, and neither side is succeeding in a way that I find compelling. I ask myself this question: suppose I have become convinced by independent (non-geological) evidence that the universe was not created 6,000 years ago, and thus it is quite thinkable that the earth is very old as well - does that mean that a Universal Flood never occurred, or could not have occurred? Just because young-earthers use the Flood to try (in vain, it seems to me) to explain ALL the evidence of an old earth, that does not mean that such an event as a worldwide flood never occured. I know that we are not required by our faith to believe in a Universal Flood. I just don't think that we are required by reason and the scientific evidence at hand to deny it. I feel free to accept or reject it.
BTW - You are right that I have been confusing Flood Geology with the idea of a Universal Flood. Do you know of anyone who rejects the former but accepts the latter?
To answer your question: no. I haven't really followed that particular discussion lately.
I am not deciding truth based on majority vote. And if you have read my papers on evolution, you would (or should) certainly know that. The two following propositions are distinct:
1. Truth is determined by a head count.
2. If the vast majority of experts and scholars in a given field believe something to be false, chances are that it is. It may still be true, but that is exceedingly unlikely.
Part of my reasoning for rejecting flood geology is #2, but it is not #1 at all, because that is clearly a falsehood. My understanding has been that flood geology and the young earth hypothesis have basically gone hand in hand. If I am wrong about that, I am happy to be corrected, but when I asked you to direct me to a flood geology advocate who accepted an old earth, you didn't have anything to give me. That's fine, but since you have said that you accept the old earth, I think this is an important consideration for you to ponder, since you remain agnostic on the flood geology question. There is such a thing as an eccentric opinion, no matter how much gadfly thinkers and intelectrual nonconformists like you and I might like to think we are totally independent of all schools of knowledge.
The bottom line is that if flood geology (or a 6000-year-old earth) is true, then both should have at least some advocates who have impeccable scientific credentials, whether or not they are shut out by the journals. If few can be found, then all that tells me is that it is lousy science, and can't even provide a paradigm for further research, exploration, explanatory value, and discovery, which is what science is about. It's just (IMO) Christian fundamentalism pretending to be "scientific" — neither good theology nor science.
The research I have seen is by people with those credentials, or at least who claim to have them - a claim that I cannot confirm but which I have no reaosn whatsoever to doubt. They have started their own journals.
There may be any number of scientifically credentialled people who have a clear enough grasp of these ideas to realize that the question of the age of the earth is distinct from whether there was a universal flood, and how the geological evidence is to be interpreted. I just have no idea how to find them, esp. of they are keeping certain doubts/questions/beliefs to themselves out of fear for their academic position. You must realize that such factors come into play on occasion. These questions become confused because they are not pursued in a dispassionate non-social, non-political, non-religious purely scientific vacuum. People dig in their heels based on their commitments to how Biblical text is to be interpreted, which is very close to their hearts. Atheists and believers alike have this tendency to take a position on Biblical exegesis. I am sure you ahve seen how committed atheists are to the least charitable interpretations available. Believers can be "charitable" in a way that doesn't help much - they can "rescue" Biblical text from the truths they are intended to affirm if they see those truths as incredible or inconsistent with the spirit of the age. Even orthodox believers can succumb to this. No one is totally immune to the seductive power of the zeitgesit.
I see that these questions (age of the earth and whether there was a Universal Flood) as distinct, and I see two sides of a debate being pursued in a way that indicates that everyone who is doing the research is completely blind to the distinction. Not that they have seen this as a possible apparent distinction and rejected it, but that they have never considered it for a moment. I am not impressed by that. Therefore I can't summon any confidence in the consensus of scientific and scholarly opinion concerning whether the distinction that I can plainly see has been considered reasonably and ruled out by a rational, scientific process. I see that even you, who have no apparent personal stake in this matter whatsoever, are reluctant to even re-examine the question or treat it as legitimate. Instead you are quite willing to defer to the opinions of others who have not even considered the question, who have never even done any research into it. For you, the fact that no research whatsoever has been done by those socially, politically and philosophically entrenched researchers on this question is ACTUALLY SUFFICIENT!!
That is not the same critical, questioning attitude that led you to seek and find the truth about how materialistic evolutionary science is pursued in the first place. This lack of intellectual curiousity on your part and your willingness to accept the same lack of curiousity in the scholarly and scientific community, is not consistent with that spirit of inquiry that you have demonstrated elsewhere at other times.
>I see that even you, who have no apparent personal stake in this matter whatsoever, are reluctant to even re-examine the question or treat it as legitimate.
Asking for links to articles about it by credentialed scientists is hardly doing that. But it is true that I have no time for the young earth worldview, so if flood geology is indeed inextricably tied to that (as I suspect), then it would go down with it.
>Instead you are quite willing to defer to the opinions of others who have not even considered the question, who have never even done any research into it.
I am? How do you know who I have read, or how much they have "considered the question"? You are arriving at quite a few unwarranted conclusions here.
>For you, the fact that no research whatsoever has been done by those socially, politically and philosophically entrenched researchers on this question is ACTUALLY SUFFICIENT!!
You are getting more and more wildly speculative. I made it clear that I didn't want to get unto a full discussion on geology at this time. I have also said that the Q & A Forums were mostly for short answers. I may or may not choose to go into topics at greater length. But if I don't do so, it doesn't therefore follow — in light of these stated factors —, that I have all these supposed opinions you are now attributing to me.
Why is this particular question so important to you? Generally, folks who take an agnostic position on something do not get all excited about it and argue with such zest and enthusiasm — precisely because they have no formed opinion yet.
>That is not the same critical, questioning attitude that led you to seek and find the truth about how materialistic evolutionary science is pursued in the first place. This lack of intellectual curiousity on your part and your willingness to accept the same lack of curiousity in the scholarly and scientific community, is not consistent with that spirit of inquiry that you have demonstrated elsewhere at other times.
Are you telling me that there are no opinions in the area of science which may be considered "fringe" or discounted or refuted? Would you include geocentrism and a non-rotating earth among those opinions? How about phrenology, or a flat earth, or racist eugenics theories? I want to see what theories you yourself have ruled out. If you have done so, then I am equally entitled to do the same, and shouldn't be subjected to criticism about my supposed lack of the "spirit of inquiry" based on that fact alone.
Everyone is entitled to regard some beliefs as unworthy of further attention (provided they do some study). For me, the young earth is one of those. I have not stated that flood geology was; only that in my experience, it was usually tied with the young earth view. You have not provided me with a single link to disabuse me of my present opinion. Perhaps someone can or will. The link between the two is where my "intellectual curiosity" lies at the moment.
Looks like this may be another paper of its own eventually . . .
Following my stated curiosity above, I have started to look for some material to resolve the question. Lo and behold, in two minutes on Google, I found the link to the "Science and the Bible Bibliography" by Christian Research Institute (CRI). It states:
"Secular evolutionism explains the origins of the world and man from a purely naturalistic perspective, seeing evolution as the only explanation required; God is left out of the picture (whether or not He is admitted to exist). Theistic evolutionism views God as the Creator of all through the process of evolution, perhaps conceding that the first man's soul was created directly by God. In both of these views, the earth is regarded as about 4.5 billion years old. Young-earth creationism regards the universe and the earth to have been created some six to ten thousand years ago within a six 24-hour-day period, with a global flood in Noah’s day producing major earth-wide geological effects (known as “flood geology”). Old-earth creationism accepts the time scale of billions of years, and regards many of God’s creative acts as taking place over long periods of time and involving natural processes as well as supernatural acts; while rejecting organic evolution as a mechanism in the creation of diverse kinds, as does young-earth creationism, the old-earth view also rejects flood geology."
DAVE! You Da MAN, dude!
Thank you so much for the generous time you put into helping me out on this. I am going to check every one of those links in detail, and that should keep me busy for some time.
In the meanwhile, the Hill Robert's quote and Jared's post (Jared, You da Otha Man!) are the most reasonable things I have read regarding this question. I am hopeful that this question will be resolved to my satisfaction. I feel better just for having it taken seriously! That alone might be enough, and I will probably cease in my flirtations with Flood Geology based on that alone!
Dialogue on Hell & the "Conditional" Possibility of Universalism
Kevin's words will be in green; Geoffrey's in blue (this discussion is from May 2004):
What does the Roman Catholic Church teach regarding the theologoumenon that at the moment before death, each unsaved individual encounters Christ who offers him one last chance at salvation?
I believe we teach that our fate is sealed before we die, which is why it is so important to "die a good death." God can give much grace near the end, but once we die, the "chances" are done with. We are either saved or damned.
If that is a permissible doctrine for Catholics, then would it also be permissible to believe that no one ever rejects this last offer of salvation, thereby rendering Hell empty of human occupants?
That runs contrary to both Church teaching that we can accept or reject God, and biblical teaching concerning hell. Universalism is not possible under Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant assumptions and the Bible's teaching.
Hi Geoffrey,
I have no problem with Jesus appearing to someone right before they die. Whether it happens in every case, I don't know. Since God knows everything, He would know whether a person would reject Him if He appeared, so He wouldn't have to necessarily appear to everyone (as an act of mercy), since He knows if they would still reject Him anyway. And we know that some will, based on Luke 16:31, where we are told that some will not believe even if a person is raised from the dead. All I know is that God gives every human being sufficient chance and grace to be saved, and that they can reject or accept this grace.
As for a conditional hell and so forth, I don't buy it, based on Scripture, Tradition, and reason. The Athanasian Creed declares: "But those who have done evil will go into eternal fire." The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) stated: "Those (the rejected) will receive a perpetual punishment with the devil." The Councils of Lyons and Florence taught that the souls of the damned are punished with unequal punishment. The Catechism teaches the reality of an eternal hell for the reprobate who reject God (#1033-1037, 1861).
Catholics are, therefore, not at liberty to reject this doctrine. It's a dogma of the Church. If it weren't true, there wouldn't be so many warnings in the Bible to avoid this horrible destiny. What sense does it make for a governor to warn everyone about the horrors of prison, when he intends to pardon everyone and send them on a vacation in Hawaii from the beginning?
There are many unmistakable biblical teachings concerning hell. See my paper:
Biblical Evidence for an Eternal Hell
To give one example that is sufficient in and of itself, consider the judgment scene of Matthew 25:31-46. Jesus Himself says to the damned:
"Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels." (25:411, RSV).
Matthew 25:46 summarizes:
"And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."
Now, if someone wants to do away with an eternal hell, the problem here is that the same word is used to describe the duration of both heaven and hell: aionios ("eternal," "everlasting"). It is used in several places to describe eternal punishment (Mt 18:8, 25:41,46, Mk 3:29, 2 Thess 1:9, Heb 6:2, Jude 7).
Case closed. One has to either accept this, or deny that Scripture is inspired and infallible revelation. What need is there for further discussion? If you reject the Scripture, and don't believe thatGod presented and preserved it, then that is another discussion, which has to take place before tackling any individual doctrine taught in the Bible (because selecting what we like in Scripture and rejecting the rest will simply be applied to any given doctrine). And I have rarely seen someone who is a higher critic of Scripture be convinced by traditional Christian arguments in favor of that doctrine. One believes these things in faith, but they are not contrary to reason at all.
Philosophical and moral objections to hell are another thing entirely, too. It may be highly difficult to comprehend, like many things of God, but it is clearly taught in revelation, so the Christian must accept it, and have faith that God knows what He is doing, and is merciful and just (as we see in the life of Jesus, the Passion, and His death for us on the cross). That all took place so no one has to GO to hell in the first place. It ain't God's fault that hell exists, but the fault of rebellious men and angels who have too much pride to acknowledge God as their Creator and Lord, and submit to Him.
Dave, thank you for taking so much time to discuss this issue.
You're welcome. Thanks for participating in amiable discussion.
I fear I might not be getting my questions across clearly.
Or we simply disagree. I don't think I have misunderstood you in the main, but I may have on particulars, certainly, which is always possible in complex discussions.
In your latest response you seem to suppose that I am asking if a Catholic is at liberty to deny the very existence of Hell. Clearly the existence of Hell is a dogmatic teaching of the Church. It is also a teaching of the Church that Satan and all the fallen angels are there. So Hell isn't empty. The question I'm asking is this: Is it a truth of the Faith that some men will go to Hell? Is it CERTAIN that some men will go to Hell?
Yes. I don't see much of a distinction between believing in a hell that the reprobate and damned go to and then turning around and saying that it is quite possible that no men go there and that the Church or the Bible has not pronounced otherwise. I find it a bit odd. As I said before: if no men go to hell, then why is so much of the NT devoted to warning men to not end up there by virtue of their rejection of God? Why would the Church tell us that all mortal sins place us in potential danger of hellfire, when in fact, that never occurs because no men end actually up in hell?
That makes no sense to me. It seems to me that if universalism were in fact the true state of affairs and that all men end up in heaven, then we would be informed of this in the Bible, as it is a wonderful truth. Instead, God plays a sort of game by scaring us half to death with all this business about hell and fire and torture and all, and then no one goes there anyway except the devil and his demons.
I find that as silly and implausible as a parent who constantly scares his children with threats of punishment, but never follows through with any of it. Just as the child would not believe the parent when they make such claims, after a few years of that, I wouldn't trust God's word, either, if He acted in such a weird, arbitrary fashion with us, involving virtual deception.
Lateran Council IV (1215) stated:
"[Jesus will] come at the end of time, to judge the living and the dead, and to render to each according to his works, to the wicked as well as to the elect . . . the latter everlasting punishment with the devil, and the former everlasting glory with Christ."
(Denzinger 429)
Now if universalism were true, this would be a deceptive statement, as no one would go to hell. It is senseless to talk of everlasting punishment for men if in fact this is never to occur. If all men were given the grace to freely choose God, then the Bible would simply tell us so and be done with it. But it does no such thing. Or, you could claim that there are no "wicked" and "evil" people; it is all just an illusion, and we are all equally righteous (and perhaps original sin is a falsehood). None of this is able to be harmonized with Scripture.
The Council of Lyons I (1245) proclaimed:
"Moreover, if anyone without repentance dies in mortal sin, without a doubt he is tortured forever by the flames of eternal hell."
(Denzinger 457)
There are only so many things you can do with such a clear statement, granting the universalistic possibilities you envision:
1. Deny that such councils are authoritative or binding.
2. Deny that anyone ever dies in a state of mortal sin.
3. Deny the plain meaning of the words and posit that everyone is given a last second chance, etc., and therefore might all be saved.
4. Deny that this rules out the possibility of all being saved, evn though it doesn't read that way at all.
The Council of Florence (1445):
"Moreover, the souls of those who depart in actual mortal sin or in original sin only, descend immediately into hell but to undergo punishments of different kinds."
(Denzinger 693)
I have indeed read your paper on Hell. It establishes clearly the existence of Hell. It doesn't address the occupancy of Hell, however.
It does, as I will show shortly.
The quotations you give from several of the Ecumenical Councils (as well as from the Athanasian Creed and from the Catechism) do not seem to address this particular issue. They indeed dogmatically pronounce that Hell exists, that any who go there will not be subjected to equal punishments, and that it is a possibility for each and every man that he might end up in Hell. But I am not seeing anything that says something to this effect: "It is a truth handed down by our Savior and His holy Apostles that some among mankind will be eternally consigned to Hell. If anyone denies this, or if anyone thinks that Hell will be empty of human souls, then let him be anathema." The closest I've seen to anything like this is the pronouncement of the Fifth Ecumenical Council. That pronouncement anathematized Origin's doctrine of apokatastasis, which taught that there was a divine guarantee that every man would escape Hell. I recognize that this doctrine is clearly condemned by the Church.
This proposition is inherently, implicitly included already in the first, lest the language become nonsensical, as I have tried to demonstrate, through various logical analyses and analogies. But in the Bible (which Catholics are clearly bound to accept as authoritative and inspired), it is stated outright.
I am not asking about a guarantee. I'm asking about a hope and an opinion. Recognizing the Church's teaching that Hell is a radical possibility for each and every one of us, would it not therefore be possible for no one to choose Hell?
Philosophically, yes. But those of us who accept inspired revelation and infallible councils and popes cannot take such a view.
The Catechism condemns the teaching that God predestines anyone to Hell. Therefore there can be no certainty that some are in Hell, unless I am missing something.
It follows from the fact of original sin and mortal sin. There are people who fall into the latter, and we are all (except the Blessed Virgin) subject to the former. Therefore, there will be people in hell, because there are people in original sin and mortal sin, and we are taught that they both can cause eternal damnation. Only God's mercy spares anyone.
Dave, I don't understand the relevancy in this context of your quotation from Matthew 25. Clearly, if anyone chooses Hell, he will be there for all eternity. Perhaps you have misinterpreted my use of the word "conditional"? I'm not using it in the sense of "conditional immortality", which teaches that the damned are simply annihilated. I'm using the word in a completely different context. I'm asking if it is possible to interpret what the Lord is saying in this chapter in this sense: "IF anyone chooses Hell, then he will be consigned there forever. Of course, all those who repent will escape Hell." Yes, the teaching of the Church declares that Matthew 25 teaches the eternity of Hell. But does this passage say how many men will go to Hell? If any at all will go to Hell?
I haven't misunderstood you. I have seen the Balthasar stuff discussed many times. If you want to get into Matthew 25, it again spells doom to your position, due to the simple fact that it is clearly not an instance of a conditional prophecy (such as Nineveh or Sodom and Gomorrah, or many such prophecies given to the Israelites, contingent upon their obedience to the Law). It is a description, by Jesus Himself, of what WILL happen at the judgment, not what "may" happen, or only one scenario, or in terms of "IF you do this, you'll be saved; if not, you'll be damned." Nope. Jesus describes a scene that will actually happen. He WILL come again (25:31). He WILL sit and judge all the nations and separate them as sheep and goats (25:32). He WILL say to the damned: "Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels" (25:41). This is a fact of history that God already knows, even though it is future to us. Therefore, there WILL be people in hell. It is undeniable; unarguable (if one accepts Scripture). The only "conditional" here is whether you will accept the plain teaching of Scripture here or not.
You ask how many will go to hell. Indications are that there will be a lot, from verses such as "when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on earth?" and speaking of the "few" who walk in the narrow way, etc.
You asked, "What sense does it make for a governor to warn everyone about the horrors of prison, when he intends to pardon everyone and send them on a vacation in Hawaii from the beginning?" In this scenario the horrors of prison are not a real possibility. In this scenario, it's like the governor predestined everyone to Hawaii. That is the doctrine of apokatastasis condemned by the Fifth Ecumenical Council. Consider it this way: The governor warns everyone about the horrors of prison. Why? Because everyone who chooses a course of action that results in going to prison will experience the very real horrors of prison. Does this therefore mean that it is CERTAIN that some men will choose that course of action? Is it not possible that EVERYONE, precisely because of the horrendous warnings, avoids the path that ends in prison? In your scenario the governor sends everyone to Hawaii no matter what. In my scenario, the governor sends everyone to Hawaii based upon each person's own actions.
Revelation doesn't allow this scenario as an actuality, because it describes the judgment as definitely involving some being damned. Therefore, we know that not all freely chose to follow God and be saved. It's a wonderful pipe-dream, but it can't be harmonized with the Bible.
In short, I'm asking a question similar (but not identical) to Hans von Balthasar's question, "Dare we hope that all men be saved?" He answered that question in the affirmative.
We may be able to hope it, but that doesn't mean it will happen in fact. I can hope that I will convince all atheists, or anti-Catholic Protestants, or Mormons of the errors of their ways and that they will change their minds. But will it happen for all of them? No.
I'm asking, "Is the following a permissible opinion for a Catholic to hold: No man will ever choose Hell. Everyone will exercise his free will and choose Christ."
I don't think so.
If you say that the answer is no because we can't possibly know that, then how can someone know the contrary opinion: that some men are in Hell?
By the fact that Jesus foretold that He will send some there.
It seems to me that the Church clearly teaches the existence of Hell and each man's possibility of going there. The following two positions seem to be theologoumena:
1. No man will ever choose Hell.
2. Some men will choose Hell.
Why would the second theolohoumenon be acceptable for a Catholic to hold, but not the first? They each seem dogmatically permissible.
Because inspired Scripture does not permit them. The following passage explicitly states that certain people are damned and undergoing eternal punishment:
"just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise acted immorally and indulged in unnatural lust, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire."
(Jude 7; RSV, as throughout)
By direct implication (Jude 5, considered in context), God also sent to hell the disobedient Hebrews in the wilderness (see Exodus 32:15-35). Exodus 15:33 refers to God blotting people out of His "book" (cf. Revelation 3:5). These people are damned! Nothing anywhere in the Bible suggests that they are given some chance to avoid their fate. In fact, in Revelation 13:8 we learn that some people's names have "not been written before the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb that was slain" (cf. Rev 17:8). Again, by cross-referencing in this manner, the conclusion is unavoidable:
1. There is such a thing as a "book of life" which lists the elect and the saved.
2. Some people's names are not listed there, or can be "blotted out." Rev 21:27 informs us that no one who is not written in this book can enter heaven.
3. Therefore, those people are damned (and this is directly, expressly, explicitly stated in Rev 20:11-15).
4. Therefore, there are people in hell (these same people), because hell is described as the place of eternal punishment and separation from God (and you admit that the Bible teaches this).
5. The people of "Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities" are literally described as "undergoing a punishment of eternal fire."
6. The disobedient Hebrews in the wilderness are placed in the same category, and by cross-referencing to Exodus we again encounter the concept of the "book of life." So are those described in Rev 20:11-15.
7. Ergo, the proposition: "people are definitely in hell" is undeniably affirmed in Scripture in general terms (the above and Matthew 25) and in specific terms (Jude 5-7)
Forgive my prolixity. This question interests me more than any other. Thank you once again for all your consideration.
No problem. This question seems to keep coming up, so it was good to deal with it, and I do believe it has been decisively refuted from Holy Scripture. I can't imagine how it could possibly be overcome, short of denying biblical inspiration, or denying that the Bible we have can be trusted as entirely infallible and inspired. If the Catholic Church teaches that Catholics must accept biblical teaching (as it does) and it can be shown that the Bible clearly teaches something, then it follows that the Catholic Church accepts that teaching as true. Therefore the Church teaches that there are people in hell, because it accepts the Scripture which undeniably teaches this.
Kevin,
There are many levels of authority (even infallibility) in the Church; de fide being the highest. But just because something hasn't been defined at the very highest level doesn't mean we aren't bound to believe it. The authority of ecumenical councils and the ordinary magisterium is of this nature. The Bible has spoken clearly on this, and individual examples of men being damned have been demonstrated. I await counter-analysis of those passages.
I thoght of another fairly direct proof of people being in hell: all those folks of whom it is said that they will not inherit the kingdom of God, or heaven:
1) Many Jews who have ceased to believe, sufficient unto salvation (it is specifically stated that they "will be thrown into the outer darkness"): Matthew 8:11-12.
2) The evil who are compared to bad fish in a catch. The angels "WILL" (not "may") "throw them into the furnace of fire": Matthew 13:47-50.
3) Jesus said it was "hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven": Matt 19:23-24. Thus it stands to reason that many will NOT inherit heaven.
4) In the parable of the wedding feast, the man "who had no wedding garment" is "cast into the outer darkness." Jesus ends by saying, "many are called, but few are chosen" (Matt 22:1-14)
5) Those who aren't "born anew" cannot see the kingdom: John 3:3.
6) Various categories of unrepentant sinners "will NOT inherit the kingdom of God": 1 Cor 6:9-10 and Gal 5:19-21, Eph 5:5.
7) "Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God" (i.e., unregenerate natural man without supernatural assistance and God's grace): 1 Cor 15:49-50.
I shall now respond to some other comments of yours:
I was puzzled by Dave's response to Geoffrey's question. As Geoffrey notices, it misses the point of his question.
I don't think so. We'll now see if Geoffrey can "miss the point" of the abundance of Scripture I have produced which directly refutes (beyond any doubt, if the English language is what it is) the possibilities he refers to.
One particular point provoked me:
"Since God knows everything, He would know whether a person would reject Him if He appeared, so He wouldn't have to necessarily appear to everyone (as an act of mercy), since He knows if they would still reject Him anyway."
I have noted in my study of the material on Dave's website that he subscribes to the Molinist side of the controversy about the relation between free will and grace. I have sympathized with the Molinist position, but, on further reflection, I find it doubtful. I am not sure in my own mind that Molinist Middle Knowledge, i.e., the kind of certainty of —scientia media— that Molina claimed God, being omniscient must have, is even theoretically possible.
We know that it is because in the Bible, Jesus says that certain ancient cities would have repented if they had heard the gospel. That is conditional knowledge: "x would have happened IF y." It is a function of omniscience bcause it is not logically impossible, and omniscience includes all logically possible knowledge.
The great Existential Thomist metaphysician Fr. W. Norris Clarke has a very cogent objection to it on metaphysical grounds. It seems quite plausible to me that, apart from real beings and their actual choices, in time and eternity, there is nothing else for God to know,
But this does involve real beings (it only incorporates conditional choices they MAY have made in other circumstances). If one denies that God can know anything except actual choices, then that entails denying that God knows the future, and that is clearly a denial of the biblical record and God's omniscience.
so even God cannot know with absolute certainty what any free agent "would" do in a particular situaiton or under specificed circumstances with exactly so much grace available, no more, and no less.
Than runs contrary to the biblical revelation and Church teaching:
Ludwig Ott writes in his Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma (Rockford, IL: TAN, 1974 {orig. 1952}, 40-43:
"While exhaustively knowing His creative causality He also knows therein all the operations which flow or can flow from this, and indeed, just as comprehensively as He knows Himself. 1 Jn 1:5: 'God is light and in Him there is no darkness.' . . .
GOD KNOWS ALL THAT IS MERELY POSSIBLE BY THE KNOWLEDGE OF SIMPLE INTELLIGENCE (_scientia simplicic intelligentiae_). (DE FIDE)
. . . Holy Writ teaches that God knows all things and hence also the merely possible [cites Est 14:14, 1 Cor 2:10, S. Th. I, 14,9] . . .
GOD ALSO KNOWS THE CONDITIONED FUTURE FREE ACTIONS WITH INFALLIBLE CERTAINTY (_Scientia futuribilium_). (SENT. COMMUNIS.)
By these are understood free actions of the future which indeed will never occur, but which would occur, if certain conditions were fulfilled. The Molinists call this Divine knowledge scientia media . . . The Thomists deny that this knowledge of the conditioned future is a special kind of Divine knowledge which precedes the decrees of the Divine Will.
That God possesses the certain knowledge of conditioned future free actions (futuribilia) may be positively proved from Scripture. Mt 11:21: 'Woe to thee, Corozain! Woe to thee, Bethsaida! For if in Tyre and Sidon had been wrought the miracles that have been wrought
in you, they had long ago done penance in sackcloth and ashes.' Cf. 1 Sam 23:1-13; Wis 4:11.
The Fathers assert Divine foresight of conditioned future things when they teach that God does not always hear our prayer for temporal goods, in order to prevent their misuse; or that God allows a man to die at an early age in order to save him from eternal damnation
[cites St. Gregory of Nyssa] . . .
Speculatively, the Divine foreknowing of conditioned future things is based on the infinite perfection of the Divine knowing, on the infallibility of the Divine providence, and on the practice of prayer in the Church . . .
Molinism, deriving from the Jesuit theologian Louis Molina (+ 1600) explains the infallible Divine prescience of future free actions by recourse to scientia media, which precedes the Divine decrees of will conceptually, not in time, and which is independent of them. Through scientia simplicis intelligentiae God knows from all eternity how every creature endowed with reason will act in all possible circumstances. Through scientia media He knows how it
would act in all possible conditions, in the case of new conditions being realised. In the light of scientia media He then resolves with the fullest freedom to realise certain determined conditions. Now He knows through scientia visionis with infallible certainty, how the person will, in fact, act in these conditions . . .
The mode of the scientia media, which is the basis of the whole system, remains unexplained."
Of course, one could also argue that if God had such knowledge, it would be redundant and even cruel for Him to create a being who He knew with absolute certainty of divine foreknowledge would choose eternal damnation. The Dominican Thomists would have no problem with such a notion, but I do, and I would argue that St. Thomas Aquinas would not agree with the Thomist position. St. Thomas says that God in eternity knows our choices and actions in time, not by simply foreknowing them, but by seeing them for Himself: All times and all decisions in time are perpetually present to God in His eternal Now.
Yes. The problem of evil is beyond our purview here. I have dealt with it (however inadequately) in a paper.
As I have admitted, I am not up to the task of arguing from Church teaching in support of the position that some souls are damned or shall be. I will take this opportunity to give an unsolicited opinion, though. I do not see how one can simultaenously hold both the position that damnation is radically possible for each and every soul before death, and that, as a matter of fact, none ever have or ever will be damned. It's not even quite clear to me that one can hold that damnation is radically possible for each and every soul, and that, it is also —possible— for none to ever have been damned nor ever will be, not a single one. I think one can hold the latter along with the proposition that damnation is remotely, or theoretically possible, but it does not seem consistent with damnation's radical possibility. If my memory is serving me well and not decieving me, the passage in the Catechism which affirms the radical possibility of damnation is specifically worded to deny the heretical position that damnation is radically difficult to fall into, because the conditions for committing mortal sin are very improbable and difficult to acheive.
Good.
I'm afraid that's the best I can add to this discussion. I have more thoughts about middle knowledge, free will, and grace, and what I like to think of as a glimmer of the beginnings of a solution to the Thomist-Molinist controversy. But I cannot add more to the question about whether any human souls in all of eternity will, in fact, be in hell.
Hopefully, my biblical argumentation can help you clarify your opinion on that.
I cannot provide the kind of argument that Geoffrey's very important and very thoughtful question deserves.
I await his reply with eagerness! This reminds me of the vegetarianism debates I engaged in on this blog. To really hold the "radical" position consistently, one has to deny the infallibility or textual accuracy of the Bible. I think that is the only "out" here, too, so let's wait and see if Geoffrey takes that route.
Dave, is knowledge of people who have never been born but WOULD have been under so-and-so circumstances, and all the possibilities of every choice that they would have made given any possible condition also known with infallible certainty by God's omniscience? Are there counterfactual persons who have never existed and never will, but God still knows whether they would have been saved or damned?
I don't know the answers to all those fascinating questions! That would be a great one for the staff apologists at Catholic Answers, or for the Catholic Answers Live radio show (that I was on once). You should call them (619-387-7200) and let us know what they tell you. :-) According to what I cited from Ludwig Ott, it seems that this might fall under the category of Church teaching but not de fide (the highest level of certainty. However one comes down on all this, it is cool to reflect upon the amazing, astonishing nature of what omniscience means.
I've exhausted my own arguments and don't know what else to say about this. Cardinal Dulles has an excellent article on it in First Things (May 2003): "The Population of Hell."
Dulles states:
"The constant teaching of the Magisterium has been that unrepentant sinners are sent to eternal punishment. Judas must be in hell unless he repented.
It is unfair and incorrect to accuse either Balthasar or Neuhaus of teaching that no one goes to hell. They grant that it is probable that some or even many do go there, but they assert, on the ground that God is capable of bringing any sinner to repentance, that we have a right to hope and pray that all will be saved. The fact that something is highly improbable need not prevent us from hoping and praying that it will happen. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “In hope, the Church prays for ‘all men to be saved’ (1 Timothy 2:4)” (CCC §1821). At another point the Catechism declares: “The Church prays that no one should be lost” (CCC §1058)."
I have no problem with the position if the above is the substance of it. But you go far beyond this and write:
"I think that the case is overwhelming that no man is or ever will be damned . . . So it is not in spite of free will that Hell is empty of human souls, but precisely because of human free will. The only person who would choose Hell over Purgatory is someone who is insane (i. e., someone who is unable to exercise his free will). Can I be certain of this? Of course not. But I think the case approaches certainty."
This is either universalism or something so close to it that it is scarcely distinguishable from it. So if Dulles is correct in his description of Neuhaus' and Balthasar's views, you hold to something quite different than they do.
Here are more articles on the subject:
"On hope, heaven and hell," Nick Healy, The University Concourse, Volume II, Issue 9. May 6, 1997.
Will All Be Saved?, Richard J. Neuhaus. First Things 115 (August/September 2001): 77-104.
The Inflated Reputation of Hans Urs von Balthasar, by Regis Scanlon, New Oxford Review March 2000.
Is Hell Closed Up & Boarded Over?, by David Watt. New Oxford Review Feb. 1999.
Von Balthasar and Salvation, by James T. O'Connor. Homiletic & Pastoral Review July 1989.
In the latter article. O'Connor states:
"It is undeniably true that the Church has never done the opposite of canonization and consigned any individual human to hell. This is a fact. Whether this fact has any significance in the present discussion, however, is doubtful. The Church's mission is to teach the truth, preach salvation, propose models for living the Christian life well, and warn against those actions and forms of living which will lead to eternal loss. It is to be questioned whether she has been given the knowledge of power to determine and proclaim the negative results of any individual human life. As a community, that knowledge is reserved for the final judgment. On the other hand, although she does not mention any individual as being among the damned, she, like her Master, does not use the conditional but the future indicative mode when speaking of the outcome of human history in respect to the damnation of some."
More (and more in-depth) discussion might be generated by folks here reading or scanning the above articles. There is certainly a lot of "meat" in them.
Lastly, the objection keeps coming up that Christ's words in the Gospels are future indicative rather than conditional. But how is this different from Jonah's words that in 40 days Nineveh would (not "might") be destroyed? Yet Ninevah was not destroyed on the appointed day. This indicates that a prophecy can be conditional even if it doesn't sound conditional.
This is an interesting argument, but I would say that there is an implied conditional insofar as this was an event in time, rather than at the end of the age at the final judgment, as in Matthew 25 and Rev 20:7-15. Described events in a prophetic mode which are literally dealing with the final judgment can hardly be conditional, because there is no further time left to repent. That's the difference between them and the Nineveh scenario, that goes beyond the form of language used. It doesn't say ". . . WILL be judged [with the further implication, I believe, of "IF they do not repent"]". They simply describe the horrible events.
At the great white throne judgment, people were judged on the basis of "the book of life" (which I have already discussed). It is obviously a matter of differential eternal destinies. "Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire" (Rev 20:14). This clearly means that those in Hades (who hadn't been taken to heaven with the advent of Jesus) were now sentenced to hell.
The same applies to Matthew 25. If it is not describing actual events of the end times, then it is a false prophecy (from Jesus Himself), trying to get across the notion that people will be damned by the express proclamation of our Lord, when in fact no such thing happens because all are saved. So I think this does violence to Scripture and the plain meaning of the English language.
I would like to see you counter-exegete the biblical data I have produced, rather than just pass it off as of no import or force. If you don't agree with my interpretation, then please show us a better one. We need to grapple with these texts.
Here are the texts that have been referred to in this thread as teaching that Hell will certainly have human occupants:
Exodus 32:32-33—This passage mentions nothing about the afterlife. It can be taken in a number of ways. For example, those written in God’s book can be seen as those who have his favor in this life (and vice versa). Of course, Dave referenced this passage with various passages in the Apocalypse, for which see below.
This "book" (in light of cross-referencing) clearly has a relationship to who is saved and who isn't.
Matthew 8:11-12—This passage I take to be conditional. I don’t think Christ says these sorts of things merely to satisfy our curiosity. To give a profane example, He’s not like a psychic at a fair foretelling your future for you. Instead, this passage is sharply existential. He is saying that before each of us lies Heaven and Hell. It’s that serious. Christ is not giving us statistics regarding the relative occupancy of Heaven and Hell. He’s saying, “Hey! Wake-up! You’re in danger of Hell!” Christ, in speaking of those being cast into outer darkness, is not saying, “Let me tell you what’s going to happen.” He’s saying, “I’m warning you lest this thing happen which must not happen!” Imagine a father telling his children right before he leaves for the day, “When I come home, those who have done their chores will get ice cream with their dinner. Those who have shirked their chores will get neither.” Is the father saying that there will in fact be shirkers? Obviously not. He’s not interested in predicting the future here. Instead, he’s describing rewards and punishments as motivations to correct behavior. Von Balthasar understood this sort of passage in this way. I’m comfortable resting on his authority.
Hell is only "serious" to the extent that there is a real possibility of going there. I continue to maintain that the language and the logical thrust of these passages do not allow an interpretation of near-universalism or universalism as you see it. Of course Jesus is warning of danger and not being frivolous. Who thinks otherwise? But if it weren't a real possibility (as opposed to a charade and a scare tactic, which I find unworthy of God), then the warnings would be literally meaningless. I don't think God plays games like this.
We know that there is such a thing as prophecy in Scripture. God tells us what will happen in the future (and also what may happen, if it is conditional). When events of the end times and judgment are being described, we can take them quite literally, just as something else eschatological, like the Second Coming will be a literal event. I read in these articles that Balthasar thought Scripture contradicted itself. So already he is denying infallibility and inspiration, because contradiction and error cannot exist under that faith-assumption.
Matthew 13:47-50—See my interpretation of Matthew 8:11-12.
What other way can He say this if indeed (for the sake of argument) He means it literally? It's like denying the Real Presence based on John 6 or Paul's reference to the Lord's Supper, which are as plain as can be. So you tell me: if the truth is that many lost souls will go to hell, how could Jesus and other Bible writers express this fact without falling prey to the charge that they are only trying to scare folks into being righteous, in order to avoid what will never happen? This passage couldn't be any more clear than it is:
13:48-50: "SO IT WILL BE AT THE CLOSE OF THE AGE. The angels WILL come out and separate the evil from the righteous, and throw them into the furnace of fire; there MEN WILL weep and gnash their teeth."
What could be more straightforward than that? If this can't be taken literally and at face value, then I say nothing in the Bible can, and it is a free-for-all of metaphorical and symbolic interpretation, with no guideline other than preexisting inclinations (in this instance, universalism and a philosophical objection to hell).
Matthew 19:23-24—It is indeed hard to enter Heaven. Most of us will have to pass through the Purgatorial fire, which many Saints have taught is more painful than any pains imaginable here on earth.
But you neglect the context, which is not talking about the difficulties of purgatory, but of being saved altogether (thus the disciples' query in 19:25: "Who then can be saved?"). All the souls in purgatory are saved. But a difficulty in being saved clearly means a distinct possibility
of being damned. One in purgatory is in the "kingdom of heaven" because he is redeemed and saved and of the elect. But Jesus is talking about the difficulty of entering that kingdom itself (the society of the elect or redeemed or regenerate), not only heaven itself.
Matthew 22:1-14—See my interpretation of Matthew 8:11-12.
Matthew 25:31-46— See my interpretation of Matthew 8:11-12.
I don't buy it. My challenge to you is to tell me how Jesus would speak if indeed many men went to hell. I contend that He could hardly be any more clear than He already is. People don't accept it because they have a prior objection to hell and the notion of eternal damnation that is present before they even approach the text, and so they eisegete: they read their own preferences into the text. If Balthasar himself was doing that, it wouldn't surprise me: he wouldn't be the first theologian to do so.
Matthew 26:24—Jesus does not say that it would be a good thing for Judas were Judas never conceived. He says it would be good for Judas were he never born. If Judas had died in the womb before being born, undoubtedly he would not have to suffer nearly as much in Purgatory.
I don't see how this overcomes the clear intent of the passage.
Matthew 26:28—The word “many” is sometimes used in the New Testament to denote “all”. See, for example, Romans 5:15 where it says that by Adam’s transgression “the many” died.
I agree. But this is no proof for universalism, because people still have to act upon the redemption that Jesus made possible for them, as they have a free will.
John 3:3—In my scenario (each unsaved dying man being granted a divine vision to which he favorably responds, resulting in his salvation),
First of all, do you have any proof of such a scenario in the Bible? If not, then it is very strange that there seems so much counter-evidence, yet you deny all that and accept the proposition which has little or no ostensible biblical evidence in favor of it. That is, again, putting philosophjy and personal opinions on what God should or shouldn't or would or wouldn't do, above revelation itself.
everybody entering Purgatory (and later Heaven) is indeed born from above.
Yes, but it is not at all clear that all men are born from above.
I Corinthians 6:9-10—This passage does not mean that anyone ever committing one of these sins is irrevocably doomed to Hell. It means that these sins can damn a man to Hell if he doesn’t repent of them. Again, in my scenario everyone entering Purgatory repented before he died.
If they remain in these sins, unrepentant, they will go to hell, because that is the only eternal alternative to the kingdom of heaven (and souls are eternal). You need to offer some proof for this universal redemption you believe in.
I Corinthians 15:49-50—Again, in my scenario everyone entering Purgatory accepted divine grace before he died. Nobody is escaping Hell without first freely accepting divine grace.
That's fine and dandy, but it is not exegeting the text.
Galatians 5:19-21—See my interpretation of I Corinthians 6:9-10.
See my answer for that passage! LOL
Ephesians 5:5—See my interpretation of I Corinthians 6:9-10.
Ditto! Why is it that in these sorts of passages we are never informed that all men will actually repent in the end? That would be a tremendous comfort to everyone. If all are to be saved, God would certainly make that known, precisely because the doctrine of hell is so troubling to many, even those who fully accept it (I myself — speaking as an apologist who deals with this stuff constantly — consider the problem of evil, including the hell which punishes evil, the most serious objection to Christianity and what we believe about God's nature).
If universalism were indeed true, I contend that it would be made crystal-clear, and these passages we are discussing would either be entirely absent or would read vastly differently. In other words, I am constructing piec-by-piece an argument for the implausibility of your position, vis-a-vis the biblical data that we have.
Jude 5-7—This is a puzzling passage. I would have to go to my betters to make sense of it. All I can say right now is that von Balthasar obviously was able to understand this passage in a sense that allowed for Hell being empty of human occupants.
Fair enough. Maybe that creates a little crack in your "near-certainty"? :-)
Apocalypse 3:5, 13:8, 17:8, 19:20, 20:11-15, and 21:27—I am not competent to enter into the exegesis of the Apocalypse. Many of the Church’s interpreters, men holier and more learned and intelligent than I’ll ever be, have given differing interpretations of this book. My personal favorite is Eugenio Corsini’s “The Apocalypse: The Perennial Revelation of Jesus Christ”. He interprets the Apocalypse in a non-eschatological manner. He holds that it is about Christ’s First Coming, not His Second Coming. He holds that its prophecies were fulfilled in Christ’s death and resurrection. (Parenthetically, let me note that it is not at all certain that the Beast and the False Prophet are human persons.) Perhaps Corsini is wrong. I don’t know. I’m not in a position to know. All I do know is that a number of Catholic interpreters have understood this book in a manner that allows for Hell being empty of human occupants.
I'd like to see how they do that. Whatever general take one has on this book, it is clear that the end refers to the actual final state of the elect in heaven. Otherwise, the notion of heaven itself would have to be spiritualized. Most of the rest of the book is amenable to different interpretations because of the symbolism. But other parts are clearly literal as well: such as Jesus' warnings to the seven churches in the early sections. These were real churches with real problems. Likewise, the heaven and the lake of fire in the ending portions are both real places.
I think it interesting that apparently no dogmatic statement of the Church has ever declared that some men will in fact be damned to Hell. After 2,000 years, this has never been stated?
Why does it have to be? It's quite clear in the Bible. But secondly, I think it is implicit anyway in statements that the Church has made.
Someone mentioned above that some wanted a statement to the effect that some men would certainly be in Hell included in the Vatican II documents, but such a statement was expressly excluded by the council fathers. If men really were in Hell right now, don’t you think that after two millennia there would be a dogmatic sentence affirming it? Doesn’t it seem that the absence of such a sentence is an indication that Hell is empty of human souls?
No, because of the many passages we have dealt with. In matters of such straightforward deduction, it is not necessary to state it explicitly in one place. The Holy Trinity itself works in much the same way, with regard to its explication in the Bible. Nothing remotely resembling the Athanasian Creed can be found in any given passage. But all of its contents can easily be deduced from much Scripture.
Secondly, Scripture IS part of Catholic dogma because it is not only infallible but also inspired. And Scripture includes Jude 5-7 and Revelation 20:7-15.
In all its pronouncements on Heaven, Hell, salvation, and damnation, the Church has been very careful to refrain from saying any men are in Hell.
The Church refrains from many proclamations. It doesn't follow that the things are not believed.
The import of its statements is that, without being joined to Jesus as members of His body, the Catholic Church, no man can escape Hell. This rigorously excludes as sort of relativism or pluralism. Outside the Church there is no salvation. The question is, “Do we know if anyone has ever died outside the Church?”
Another topic. Thanks for the discussion.
What does the Roman Catholic Church teach regarding the theologoumenon that at the moment before death, each unsaved individual encounters Christ who offers him one last chance at salvation?
I believe we teach that our fate is sealed before we die, which is why it is so important to "die a good death." God can give much grace near the end, but once we die, the "chances" are done with. We are either saved or damned.
If that is a permissible doctrine for Catholics, then would it also be permissible to believe that no one ever rejects this last offer of salvation, thereby rendering Hell empty of human occupants?
That runs contrary to both Church teaching that we can accept or reject God, and biblical teaching concerning hell. Universalism is not possible under Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant assumptions and the Bible's teaching.
Hi Geoffrey,
I have no problem with Jesus appearing to someone right before they die. Whether it happens in every case, I don't know. Since God knows everything, He would know whether a person would reject Him if He appeared, so He wouldn't have to necessarily appear to everyone (as an act of mercy), since He knows if they would still reject Him anyway. And we know that some will, based on Luke 16:31, where we are told that some will not believe even if a person is raised from the dead. All I know is that God gives every human being sufficient chance and grace to be saved, and that they can reject or accept this grace.
As for a conditional hell and so forth, I don't buy it, based on Scripture, Tradition, and reason. The Athanasian Creed declares: "But those who have done evil will go into eternal fire." The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) stated: "Those (the rejected) will receive a perpetual punishment with the devil." The Councils of Lyons and Florence taught that the souls of the damned are punished with unequal punishment. The Catechism teaches the reality of an eternal hell for the reprobate who reject God (#1033-1037, 1861).
Catholics are, therefore, not at liberty to reject this doctrine. It's a dogma of the Church. If it weren't true, there wouldn't be so many warnings in the Bible to avoid this horrible destiny. What sense does it make for a governor to warn everyone about the horrors of prison, when he intends to pardon everyone and send them on a vacation in Hawaii from the beginning?
There are many unmistakable biblical teachings concerning hell. See my paper:
Biblical Evidence for an Eternal Hell
To give one example that is sufficient in and of itself, consider the judgment scene of Matthew 25:31-46. Jesus Himself says to the damned:
"Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels." (25:411, RSV).
Matthew 25:46 summarizes:
"And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."
Now, if someone wants to do away with an eternal hell, the problem here is that the same word is used to describe the duration of both heaven and hell: aionios ("eternal," "everlasting"). It is used in several places to describe eternal punishment (Mt 18:8, 25:41,46, Mk 3:29, 2 Thess 1:9, Heb 6:2, Jude 7).
Case closed. One has to either accept this, or deny that Scripture is inspired and infallible revelation. What need is there for further discussion? If you reject the Scripture, and don't believe thatGod presented and preserved it, then that is another discussion, which has to take place before tackling any individual doctrine taught in the Bible (because selecting what we like in Scripture and rejecting the rest will simply be applied to any given doctrine). And I have rarely seen someone who is a higher critic of Scripture be convinced by traditional Christian arguments in favor of that doctrine. One believes these things in faith, but they are not contrary to reason at all.
Philosophical and moral objections to hell are another thing entirely, too. It may be highly difficult to comprehend, like many things of God, but it is clearly taught in revelation, so the Christian must accept it, and have faith that God knows what He is doing, and is merciful and just (as we see in the life of Jesus, the Passion, and His death for us on the cross). That all took place so no one has to GO to hell in the first place. It ain't God's fault that hell exists, but the fault of rebellious men and angels who have too much pride to acknowledge God as their Creator and Lord, and submit to Him.
Dave, thank you for taking so much time to discuss this issue.
You're welcome. Thanks for participating in amiable discussion.
I fear I might not be getting my questions across clearly.
Or we simply disagree. I don't think I have misunderstood you in the main, but I may have on particulars, certainly, which is always possible in complex discussions.
In your latest response you seem to suppose that I am asking if a Catholic is at liberty to deny the very existence of Hell. Clearly the existence of Hell is a dogmatic teaching of the Church. It is also a teaching of the Church that Satan and all the fallen angels are there. So Hell isn't empty. The question I'm asking is this: Is it a truth of the Faith that some men will go to Hell? Is it CERTAIN that some men will go to Hell?
Yes. I don't see much of a distinction between believing in a hell that the reprobate and damned go to and then turning around and saying that it is quite possible that no men go there and that the Church or the Bible has not pronounced otherwise. I find it a bit odd. As I said before: if no men go to hell, then why is so much of the NT devoted to warning men to not end up there by virtue of their rejection of God? Why would the Church tell us that all mortal sins place us in potential danger of hellfire, when in fact, that never occurs because no men end actually up in hell?
That makes no sense to me. It seems to me that if universalism were in fact the true state of affairs and that all men end up in heaven, then we would be informed of this in the Bible, as it is a wonderful truth. Instead, God plays a sort of game by scaring us half to death with all this business about hell and fire and torture and all, and then no one goes there anyway except the devil and his demons.
I find that as silly and implausible as a parent who constantly scares his children with threats of punishment, but never follows through with any of it. Just as the child would not believe the parent when they make such claims, after a few years of that, I wouldn't trust God's word, either, if He acted in such a weird, arbitrary fashion with us, involving virtual deception.
Lateran Council IV (1215) stated:
"[Jesus will] come at the end of time, to judge the living and the dead, and to render to each according to his works, to the wicked as well as to the elect . . . the latter everlasting punishment with the devil, and the former everlasting glory with Christ."
(Denzinger 429)
Now if universalism were true, this would be a deceptive statement, as no one would go to hell. It is senseless to talk of everlasting punishment for men if in fact this is never to occur. If all men were given the grace to freely choose God, then the Bible would simply tell us so and be done with it. But it does no such thing. Or, you could claim that there are no "wicked" and "evil" people; it is all just an illusion, and we are all equally righteous (and perhaps original sin is a falsehood). None of this is able to be harmonized with Scripture.
The Council of Lyons I (1245) proclaimed:
"Moreover, if anyone without repentance dies in mortal sin, without a doubt he is tortured forever by the flames of eternal hell."
(Denzinger 457)
There are only so many things you can do with such a clear statement, granting the universalistic possibilities you envision:
1. Deny that such councils are authoritative or binding.
2. Deny that anyone ever dies in a state of mortal sin.
3. Deny the plain meaning of the words and posit that everyone is given a last second chance, etc., and therefore might all be saved.
4. Deny that this rules out the possibility of all being saved, evn though it doesn't read that way at all.
The Council of Florence (1445):
"Moreover, the souls of those who depart in actual mortal sin or in original sin only, descend immediately into hell but to undergo punishments of different kinds."
(Denzinger 693)
I have indeed read your paper on Hell. It establishes clearly the existence of Hell. It doesn't address the occupancy of Hell, however.
It does, as I will show shortly.
The quotations you give from several of the Ecumenical Councils (as well as from the Athanasian Creed and from the Catechism) do not seem to address this particular issue. They indeed dogmatically pronounce that Hell exists, that any who go there will not be subjected to equal punishments, and that it is a possibility for each and every man that he might end up in Hell. But I am not seeing anything that says something to this effect: "It is a truth handed down by our Savior and His holy Apostles that some among mankind will be eternally consigned to Hell. If anyone denies this, or if anyone thinks that Hell will be empty of human souls, then let him be anathema." The closest I've seen to anything like this is the pronouncement of the Fifth Ecumenical Council. That pronouncement anathematized Origin's doctrine of apokatastasis, which taught that there was a divine guarantee that every man would escape Hell. I recognize that this doctrine is clearly condemned by the Church.
This proposition is inherently, implicitly included already in the first, lest the language become nonsensical, as I have tried to demonstrate, through various logical analyses and analogies. But in the Bible (which Catholics are clearly bound to accept as authoritative and inspired), it is stated outright.
I am not asking about a guarantee. I'm asking about a hope and an opinion. Recognizing the Church's teaching that Hell is a radical possibility for each and every one of us, would it not therefore be possible for no one to choose Hell?
Philosophically, yes. But those of us who accept inspired revelation and infallible councils and popes cannot take such a view.
The Catechism condemns the teaching that God predestines anyone to Hell. Therefore there can be no certainty that some are in Hell, unless I am missing something.
It follows from the fact of original sin and mortal sin. There are people who fall into the latter, and we are all (except the Blessed Virgin) subject to the former. Therefore, there will be people in hell, because there are people in original sin and mortal sin, and we are taught that they both can cause eternal damnation. Only God's mercy spares anyone.
Dave, I don't understand the relevancy in this context of your quotation from Matthew 25. Clearly, if anyone chooses Hell, he will be there for all eternity. Perhaps you have misinterpreted my use of the word "conditional"? I'm not using it in the sense of "conditional immortality", which teaches that the damned are simply annihilated. I'm using the word in a completely different context. I'm asking if it is possible to interpret what the Lord is saying in this chapter in this sense: "IF anyone chooses Hell, then he will be consigned there forever. Of course, all those who repent will escape Hell." Yes, the teaching of the Church declares that Matthew 25 teaches the eternity of Hell. But does this passage say how many men will go to Hell? If any at all will go to Hell?
I haven't misunderstood you. I have seen the Balthasar stuff discussed many times. If you want to get into Matthew 25, it again spells doom to your position, due to the simple fact that it is clearly not an instance of a conditional prophecy (such as Nineveh or Sodom and Gomorrah, or many such prophecies given to the Israelites, contingent upon their obedience to the Law). It is a description, by Jesus Himself, of what WILL happen at the judgment, not what "may" happen, or only one scenario, or in terms of "IF you do this, you'll be saved; if not, you'll be damned." Nope. Jesus describes a scene that will actually happen. He WILL come again (25:31). He WILL sit and judge all the nations and separate them as sheep and goats (25:32). He WILL say to the damned: "Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels" (25:41). This is a fact of history that God already knows, even though it is future to us. Therefore, there WILL be people in hell. It is undeniable; unarguable (if one accepts Scripture). The only "conditional" here is whether you will accept the plain teaching of Scripture here or not.
You ask how many will go to hell. Indications are that there will be a lot, from verses such as "when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on earth?" and speaking of the "few" who walk in the narrow way, etc.
You asked, "What sense does it make for a governor to warn everyone about the horrors of prison, when he intends to pardon everyone and send them on a vacation in Hawaii from the beginning?" In this scenario the horrors of prison are not a real possibility. In this scenario, it's like the governor predestined everyone to Hawaii. That is the doctrine of apokatastasis condemned by the Fifth Ecumenical Council. Consider it this way: The governor warns everyone about the horrors of prison. Why? Because everyone who chooses a course of action that results in going to prison will experience the very real horrors of prison. Does this therefore mean that it is CERTAIN that some men will choose that course of action? Is it not possible that EVERYONE, precisely because of the horrendous warnings, avoids the path that ends in prison? In your scenario the governor sends everyone to Hawaii no matter what. In my scenario, the governor sends everyone to Hawaii based upon each person's own actions.
Revelation doesn't allow this scenario as an actuality, because it describes the judgment as definitely involving some being damned. Therefore, we know that not all freely chose to follow God and be saved. It's a wonderful pipe-dream, but it can't be harmonized with the Bible.
In short, I'm asking a question similar (but not identical) to Hans von Balthasar's question, "Dare we hope that all men be saved?" He answered that question in the affirmative.
We may be able to hope it, but that doesn't mean it will happen in fact. I can hope that I will convince all atheists, or anti-Catholic Protestants, or Mormons of the errors of their ways and that they will change their minds. But will it happen for all of them? No.
I'm asking, "Is the following a permissible opinion for a Catholic to hold: No man will ever choose Hell. Everyone will exercise his free will and choose Christ."
I don't think so.
If you say that the answer is no because we can't possibly know that, then how can someone know the contrary opinion: that some men are in Hell?
By the fact that Jesus foretold that He will send some there.
It seems to me that the Church clearly teaches the existence of Hell and each man's possibility of going there. The following two positions seem to be theologoumena:
1. No man will ever choose Hell.
2. Some men will choose Hell.
Why would the second theolohoumenon be acceptable for a Catholic to hold, but not the first? They each seem dogmatically permissible.
Because inspired Scripture does not permit them. The following passage explicitly states that certain people are damned and undergoing eternal punishment:
"just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise acted immorally and indulged in unnatural lust, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire."
(Jude 7; RSV, as throughout)
By direct implication (Jude 5, considered in context), God also sent to hell the disobedient Hebrews in the wilderness (see Exodus 32:15-35). Exodus 15:33 refers to God blotting people out of His "book" (cf. Revelation 3:5). These people are damned! Nothing anywhere in the Bible suggests that they are given some chance to avoid their fate. In fact, in Revelation 13:8 we learn that some people's names have "not been written before the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb that was slain" (cf. Rev 17:8). Again, by cross-referencing in this manner, the conclusion is unavoidable:
1. There is such a thing as a "book of life" which lists the elect and the saved.
2. Some people's names are not listed there, or can be "blotted out." Rev 21:27 informs us that no one who is not written in this book can enter heaven.
3. Therefore, those people are damned (and this is directly, expressly, explicitly stated in Rev 20:11-15).
4. Therefore, there are people in hell (these same people), because hell is described as the place of eternal punishment and separation from God (and you admit that the Bible teaches this).
5. The people of "Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities" are literally described as "undergoing a punishment of eternal fire."
6. The disobedient Hebrews in the wilderness are placed in the same category, and by cross-referencing to Exodus we again encounter the concept of the "book of life." So are those described in Rev 20:11-15.
7. Ergo, the proposition: "people are definitely in hell" is undeniably affirmed in Scripture in general terms (the above and Matthew 25) and in specific terms (Jude 5-7)
Forgive my prolixity. This question interests me more than any other. Thank you once again for all your consideration.
No problem. This question seems to keep coming up, so it was good to deal with it, and I do believe it has been decisively refuted from Holy Scripture. I can't imagine how it could possibly be overcome, short of denying biblical inspiration, or denying that the Bible we have can be trusted as entirely infallible and inspired. If the Catholic Church teaches that Catholics must accept biblical teaching (as it does) and it can be shown that the Bible clearly teaches something, then it follows that the Catholic Church accepts that teaching as true. Therefore the Church teaches that there are people in hell, because it accepts the Scripture which undeniably teaches this.
Kevin,
There are many levels of authority (even infallibility) in the Church; de fide being the highest. But just because something hasn't been defined at the very highest level doesn't mean we aren't bound to believe it. The authority of ecumenical councils and the ordinary magisterium is of this nature. The Bible has spoken clearly on this, and individual examples of men being damned have been demonstrated. I await counter-analysis of those passages.
I thoght of another fairly direct proof of people being in hell: all those folks of whom it is said that they will not inherit the kingdom of God, or heaven:
1) Many Jews who have ceased to believe, sufficient unto salvation (it is specifically stated that they "will be thrown into the outer darkness"): Matthew 8:11-12.
2) The evil who are compared to bad fish in a catch. The angels "WILL" (not "may") "throw them into the furnace of fire": Matthew 13:47-50.
3) Jesus said it was "hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven": Matt 19:23-24. Thus it stands to reason that many will NOT inherit heaven.
4) In the parable of the wedding feast, the man "who had no wedding garment" is "cast into the outer darkness." Jesus ends by saying, "many are called, but few are chosen" (Matt 22:1-14)
5) Those who aren't "born anew" cannot see the kingdom: John 3:3.
6) Various categories of unrepentant sinners "will NOT inherit the kingdom of God": 1 Cor 6:9-10 and Gal 5:19-21, Eph 5:5.
7) "Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God" (i.e., unregenerate natural man without supernatural assistance and God's grace): 1 Cor 15:49-50.
I shall now respond to some other comments of yours:
I was puzzled by Dave's response to Geoffrey's question. As Geoffrey notices, it misses the point of his question.
I don't think so. We'll now see if Geoffrey can "miss the point" of the abundance of Scripture I have produced which directly refutes (beyond any doubt, if the English language is what it is) the possibilities he refers to.
One particular point provoked me:
"Since God knows everything, He would know whether a person would reject Him if He appeared, so He wouldn't have to necessarily appear to everyone (as an act of mercy), since He knows if they would still reject Him anyway."
I have noted in my study of the material on Dave's website that he subscribes to the Molinist side of the controversy about the relation between free will and grace. I have sympathized with the Molinist position, but, on further reflection, I find it doubtful. I am not sure in my own mind that Molinist Middle Knowledge, i.e., the kind of certainty of —scientia media— that Molina claimed God, being omniscient must have, is even theoretically possible.
We know that it is because in the Bible, Jesus says that certain ancient cities would have repented if they had heard the gospel. That is conditional knowledge: "x would have happened IF y." It is a function of omniscience bcause it is not logically impossible, and omniscience includes all logically possible knowledge.
The great Existential Thomist metaphysician Fr. W. Norris Clarke has a very cogent objection to it on metaphysical grounds. It seems quite plausible to me that, apart from real beings and their actual choices, in time and eternity, there is nothing else for God to know,
But this does involve real beings (it only incorporates conditional choices they MAY have made in other circumstances). If one denies that God can know anything except actual choices, then that entails denying that God knows the future, and that is clearly a denial of the biblical record and God's omniscience.
so even God cannot know with absolute certainty what any free agent "would" do in a particular situaiton or under specificed circumstances with exactly so much grace available, no more, and no less.
Than runs contrary to the biblical revelation and Church teaching:
Ludwig Ott writes in his Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma (Rockford, IL: TAN, 1974 {orig. 1952}, 40-43:
"While exhaustively knowing His creative causality He also knows therein all the operations which flow or can flow from this, and indeed, just as comprehensively as He knows Himself. 1 Jn 1:5: 'God is light and in Him there is no darkness.' . . .
GOD KNOWS ALL THAT IS MERELY POSSIBLE BY THE KNOWLEDGE OF SIMPLE INTELLIGENCE (_scientia simplicic intelligentiae_). (DE FIDE)
. . . Holy Writ teaches that God knows all things and hence also the merely possible [cites Est 14:14, 1 Cor 2:10, S. Th. I, 14,9] . . .
GOD ALSO KNOWS THE CONDITIONED FUTURE FREE ACTIONS WITH INFALLIBLE CERTAINTY (_Scientia futuribilium_). (SENT. COMMUNIS.)
By these are understood free actions of the future which indeed will never occur, but which would occur, if certain conditions were fulfilled. The Molinists call this Divine knowledge scientia media . . . The Thomists deny that this knowledge of the conditioned future is a special kind of Divine knowledge which precedes the decrees of the Divine Will.
That God possesses the certain knowledge of conditioned future free actions (futuribilia) may be positively proved from Scripture. Mt 11:21: 'Woe to thee, Corozain! Woe to thee, Bethsaida! For if in Tyre and Sidon had been wrought the miracles that have been wrought
in you, they had long ago done penance in sackcloth and ashes.' Cf. 1 Sam 23:1-13; Wis 4:11.
The Fathers assert Divine foresight of conditioned future things when they teach that God does not always hear our prayer for temporal goods, in order to prevent their misuse; or that God allows a man to die at an early age in order to save him from eternal damnation
[cites St. Gregory of Nyssa] . . .
Speculatively, the Divine foreknowing of conditioned future things is based on the infinite perfection of the Divine knowing, on the infallibility of the Divine providence, and on the practice of prayer in the Church . . .
Molinism, deriving from the Jesuit theologian Louis Molina (+ 1600) explains the infallible Divine prescience of future free actions by recourse to scientia media, which precedes the Divine decrees of will conceptually, not in time, and which is independent of them. Through scientia simplicis intelligentiae God knows from all eternity how every creature endowed with reason will act in all possible circumstances. Through scientia media He knows how it
would act in all possible conditions, in the case of new conditions being realised. In the light of scientia media He then resolves with the fullest freedom to realise certain determined conditions. Now He knows through scientia visionis with infallible certainty, how the person will, in fact, act in these conditions . . .
The mode of the scientia media, which is the basis of the whole system, remains unexplained."
Of course, one could also argue that if God had such knowledge, it would be redundant and even cruel for Him to create a being who He knew with absolute certainty of divine foreknowledge would choose eternal damnation. The Dominican Thomists would have no problem with such a notion, but I do, and I would argue that St. Thomas Aquinas would not agree with the Thomist position. St. Thomas says that God in eternity knows our choices and actions in time, not by simply foreknowing them, but by seeing them for Himself: All times and all decisions in time are perpetually present to God in His eternal Now.
Yes. The problem of evil is beyond our purview here. I have dealt with it (however inadequately) in a paper.
As I have admitted, I am not up to the task of arguing from Church teaching in support of the position that some souls are damned or shall be. I will take this opportunity to give an unsolicited opinion, though. I do not see how one can simultaenously hold both the position that damnation is radically possible for each and every soul before death, and that, as a matter of fact, none ever have or ever will be damned. It's not even quite clear to me that one can hold that damnation is radically possible for each and every soul, and that, it is also —possible— for none to ever have been damned nor ever will be, not a single one. I think one can hold the latter along with the proposition that damnation is remotely, or theoretically possible, but it does not seem consistent with damnation's radical possibility. If my memory is serving me well and not decieving me, the passage in the Catechism which affirms the radical possibility of damnation is specifically worded to deny the heretical position that damnation is radically difficult to fall into, because the conditions for committing mortal sin are very improbable and difficult to acheive.
Good.
I'm afraid that's the best I can add to this discussion. I have more thoughts about middle knowledge, free will, and grace, and what I like to think of as a glimmer of the beginnings of a solution to the Thomist-Molinist controversy. But I cannot add more to the question about whether any human souls in all of eternity will, in fact, be in hell.
Hopefully, my biblical argumentation can help you clarify your opinion on that.
I cannot provide the kind of argument that Geoffrey's very important and very thoughtful question deserves.
I await his reply with eagerness! This reminds me of the vegetarianism debates I engaged in on this blog. To really hold the "radical" position consistently, one has to deny the infallibility or textual accuracy of the Bible. I think that is the only "out" here, too, so let's wait and see if Geoffrey takes that route.
Dave, is knowledge of people who have never been born but WOULD have been under so-and-so circumstances, and all the possibilities of every choice that they would have made given any possible condition also known with infallible certainty by God's omniscience? Are there counterfactual persons who have never existed and never will, but God still knows whether they would have been saved or damned?
I don't know the answers to all those fascinating questions! That would be a great one for the staff apologists at Catholic Answers, or for the Catholic Answers Live radio show (that I was on once). You should call them (619-387-7200) and let us know what they tell you. :-) According to what I cited from Ludwig Ott, it seems that this might fall under the category of Church teaching but not de fide (the highest level of certainty. However one comes down on all this, it is cool to reflect upon the amazing, astonishing nature of what omniscience means.
I've exhausted my own arguments and don't know what else to say about this. Cardinal Dulles has an excellent article on it in First Things (May 2003): "The Population of Hell."
Dulles states:
"The constant teaching of the Magisterium has been that unrepentant sinners are sent to eternal punishment. Judas must be in hell unless he repented.
It is unfair and incorrect to accuse either Balthasar or Neuhaus of teaching that no one goes to hell. They grant that it is probable that some or even many do go there, but they assert, on the ground that God is capable of bringing any sinner to repentance, that we have a right to hope and pray that all will be saved. The fact that something is highly improbable need not prevent us from hoping and praying that it will happen. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “In hope, the Church prays for ‘all men to be saved’ (1 Timothy 2:4)” (CCC §1821). At another point the Catechism declares: “The Church prays that no one should be lost” (CCC §1058)."
I have no problem with the position if the above is the substance of it. But you go far beyond this and write:
"I think that the case is overwhelming that no man is or ever will be damned . . . So it is not in spite of free will that Hell is empty of human souls, but precisely because of human free will. The only person who would choose Hell over Purgatory is someone who is insane (i. e., someone who is unable to exercise his free will). Can I be certain of this? Of course not. But I think the case approaches certainty."
This is either universalism or something so close to it that it is scarcely distinguishable from it. So if Dulles is correct in his description of Neuhaus' and Balthasar's views, you hold to something quite different than they do.
Here are more articles on the subject:
"On hope, heaven and hell," Nick Healy, The University Concourse, Volume II, Issue 9. May 6, 1997.
Will All Be Saved?, Richard J. Neuhaus. First Things 115 (August/September 2001): 77-104.
The Inflated Reputation of Hans Urs von Balthasar, by Regis Scanlon, New Oxford Review March 2000.
Is Hell Closed Up & Boarded Over?, by David Watt. New Oxford Review Feb. 1999.
Von Balthasar and Salvation, by James T. O'Connor. Homiletic & Pastoral Review July 1989.
In the latter article. O'Connor states:
"It is undeniably true that the Church has never done the opposite of canonization and consigned any individual human to hell. This is a fact. Whether this fact has any significance in the present discussion, however, is doubtful. The Church's mission is to teach the truth, preach salvation, propose models for living the Christian life well, and warn against those actions and forms of living which will lead to eternal loss. It is to be questioned whether she has been given the knowledge of power to determine and proclaim the negative results of any individual human life. As a community, that knowledge is reserved for the final judgment. On the other hand, although she does not mention any individual as being among the damned, she, like her Master, does not use the conditional but the future indicative mode when speaking of the outcome of human history in respect to the damnation of some."
More (and more in-depth) discussion might be generated by folks here reading or scanning the above articles. There is certainly a lot of "meat" in them.
Lastly, the objection keeps coming up that Christ's words in the Gospels are future indicative rather than conditional. But how is this different from Jonah's words that in 40 days Nineveh would (not "might") be destroyed? Yet Ninevah was not destroyed on the appointed day. This indicates that a prophecy can be conditional even if it doesn't sound conditional.
This is an interesting argument, but I would say that there is an implied conditional insofar as this was an event in time, rather than at the end of the age at the final judgment, as in Matthew 25 and Rev 20:7-15. Described events in a prophetic mode which are literally dealing with the final judgment can hardly be conditional, because there is no further time left to repent. That's the difference between them and the Nineveh scenario, that goes beyond the form of language used. It doesn't say ". . . WILL be judged [with the further implication, I believe, of "IF they do not repent"]". They simply describe the horrible events.
At the great white throne judgment, people were judged on the basis of "the book of life" (which I have already discussed). It is obviously a matter of differential eternal destinies. "Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire" (Rev 20:14). This clearly means that those in Hades (who hadn't been taken to heaven with the advent of Jesus) were now sentenced to hell.
The same applies to Matthew 25. If it is not describing actual events of the end times, then it is a false prophecy (from Jesus Himself), trying to get across the notion that people will be damned by the express proclamation of our Lord, when in fact no such thing happens because all are saved. So I think this does violence to Scripture and the plain meaning of the English language.
I would like to see you counter-exegete the biblical data I have produced, rather than just pass it off as of no import or force. If you don't agree with my interpretation, then please show us a better one. We need to grapple with these texts.
Here are the texts that have been referred to in this thread as teaching that Hell will certainly have human occupants:
Exodus 32:32-33—This passage mentions nothing about the afterlife. It can be taken in a number of ways. For example, those written in God’s book can be seen as those who have his favor in this life (and vice versa). Of course, Dave referenced this passage with various passages in the Apocalypse, for which see below.
This "book" (in light of cross-referencing) clearly has a relationship to who is saved and who isn't.
Matthew 8:11-12—This passage I take to be conditional. I don’t think Christ says these sorts of things merely to satisfy our curiosity. To give a profane example, He’s not like a psychic at a fair foretelling your future for you. Instead, this passage is sharply existential. He is saying that before each of us lies Heaven and Hell. It’s that serious. Christ is not giving us statistics regarding the relative occupancy of Heaven and Hell. He’s saying, “Hey! Wake-up! You’re in danger of Hell!” Christ, in speaking of those being cast into outer darkness, is not saying, “Let me tell you what’s going to happen.” He’s saying, “I’m warning you lest this thing happen which must not happen!” Imagine a father telling his children right before he leaves for the day, “When I come home, those who have done their chores will get ice cream with their dinner. Those who have shirked their chores will get neither.” Is the father saying that there will in fact be shirkers? Obviously not. He’s not interested in predicting the future here. Instead, he’s describing rewards and punishments as motivations to correct behavior. Von Balthasar understood this sort of passage in this way. I’m comfortable resting on his authority.
Hell is only "serious" to the extent that there is a real possibility of going there. I continue to maintain that the language and the logical thrust of these passages do not allow an interpretation of near-universalism or universalism as you see it. Of course Jesus is warning of danger and not being frivolous. Who thinks otherwise? But if it weren't a real possibility (as opposed to a charade and a scare tactic, which I find unworthy of God), then the warnings would be literally meaningless. I don't think God plays games like this.
We know that there is such a thing as prophecy in Scripture. God tells us what will happen in the future (and also what may happen, if it is conditional). When events of the end times and judgment are being described, we can take them quite literally, just as something else eschatological, like the Second Coming will be a literal event. I read in these articles that Balthasar thought Scripture contradicted itself. So already he is denying infallibility and inspiration, because contradiction and error cannot exist under that faith-assumption.
Matthew 13:47-50—See my interpretation of Matthew 8:11-12.
What other way can He say this if indeed (for the sake of argument) He means it literally? It's like denying the Real Presence based on John 6 or Paul's reference to the Lord's Supper, which are as plain as can be. So you tell me: if the truth is that many lost souls will go to hell, how could Jesus and other Bible writers express this fact without falling prey to the charge that they are only trying to scare folks into being righteous, in order to avoid what will never happen? This passage couldn't be any more clear than it is:
13:48-50: "SO IT WILL BE AT THE CLOSE OF THE AGE. The angels WILL come out and separate the evil from the righteous, and throw them into the furnace of fire; there MEN WILL weep and gnash their teeth."
What could be more straightforward than that? If this can't be taken literally and at face value, then I say nothing in the Bible can, and it is a free-for-all of metaphorical and symbolic interpretation, with no guideline other than preexisting inclinations (in this instance, universalism and a philosophical objection to hell).
Matthew 19:23-24—It is indeed hard to enter Heaven. Most of us will have to pass through the Purgatorial fire, which many Saints have taught is more painful than any pains imaginable here on earth.
But you neglect the context, which is not talking about the difficulties of purgatory, but of being saved altogether (thus the disciples' query in 19:25: "Who then can be saved?"). All the souls in purgatory are saved. But a difficulty in being saved clearly means a distinct possibility
of being damned. One in purgatory is in the "kingdom of heaven" because he is redeemed and saved and of the elect. But Jesus is talking about the difficulty of entering that kingdom itself (the society of the elect or redeemed or regenerate), not only heaven itself.
Matthew 22:1-14—See my interpretation of Matthew 8:11-12.
Matthew 25:31-46— See my interpretation of Matthew 8:11-12.
I don't buy it. My challenge to you is to tell me how Jesus would speak if indeed many men went to hell. I contend that He could hardly be any more clear than He already is. People don't accept it because they have a prior objection to hell and the notion of eternal damnation that is present before they even approach the text, and so they eisegete: they read their own preferences into the text. If Balthasar himself was doing that, it wouldn't surprise me: he wouldn't be the first theologian to do so.
Matthew 26:24—Jesus does not say that it would be a good thing for Judas were Judas never conceived. He says it would be good for Judas were he never born. If Judas had died in the womb before being born, undoubtedly he would not have to suffer nearly as much in Purgatory.
I don't see how this overcomes the clear intent of the passage.
Matthew 26:28—The word “many” is sometimes used in the New Testament to denote “all”. See, for example, Romans 5:15 where it says that by Adam’s transgression “the many” died.
I agree. But this is no proof for universalism, because people still have to act upon the redemption that Jesus made possible for them, as they have a free will.
John 3:3—In my scenario (each unsaved dying man being granted a divine vision to which he favorably responds, resulting in his salvation),
First of all, do you have any proof of such a scenario in the Bible? If not, then it is very strange that there seems so much counter-evidence, yet you deny all that and accept the proposition which has little or no ostensible biblical evidence in favor of it. That is, again, putting philosophjy and personal opinions on what God should or shouldn't or would or wouldn't do, above revelation itself.
everybody entering Purgatory (and later Heaven) is indeed born from above.
Yes, but it is not at all clear that all men are born from above.
I Corinthians 6:9-10—This passage does not mean that anyone ever committing one of these sins is irrevocably doomed to Hell. It means that these sins can damn a man to Hell if he doesn’t repent of them. Again, in my scenario everyone entering Purgatory repented before he died.
If they remain in these sins, unrepentant, they will go to hell, because that is the only eternal alternative to the kingdom of heaven (and souls are eternal). You need to offer some proof for this universal redemption you believe in.
I Corinthians 15:49-50—Again, in my scenario everyone entering Purgatory accepted divine grace before he died. Nobody is escaping Hell without first freely accepting divine grace.
That's fine and dandy, but it is not exegeting the text.
Galatians 5:19-21—See my interpretation of I Corinthians 6:9-10.
See my answer for that passage! LOL
Ephesians 5:5—See my interpretation of I Corinthians 6:9-10.
Ditto! Why is it that in these sorts of passages we are never informed that all men will actually repent in the end? That would be a tremendous comfort to everyone. If all are to be saved, God would certainly make that known, precisely because the doctrine of hell is so troubling to many, even those who fully accept it (I myself — speaking as an apologist who deals with this stuff constantly — consider the problem of evil, including the hell which punishes evil, the most serious objection to Christianity and what we believe about God's nature).
If universalism were indeed true, I contend that it would be made crystal-clear, and these passages we are discussing would either be entirely absent or would read vastly differently. In other words, I am constructing piec-by-piece an argument for the implausibility of your position, vis-a-vis the biblical data that we have.
Jude 5-7—This is a puzzling passage. I would have to go to my betters to make sense of it. All I can say right now is that von Balthasar obviously was able to understand this passage in a sense that allowed for Hell being empty of human occupants.
Fair enough. Maybe that creates a little crack in your "near-certainty"? :-)
Apocalypse 3:5, 13:8, 17:8, 19:20, 20:11-15, and 21:27—I am not competent to enter into the exegesis of the Apocalypse. Many of the Church’s interpreters, men holier and more learned and intelligent than I’ll ever be, have given differing interpretations of this book. My personal favorite is Eugenio Corsini’s “The Apocalypse: The Perennial Revelation of Jesus Christ”. He interprets the Apocalypse in a non-eschatological manner. He holds that it is about Christ’s First Coming, not His Second Coming. He holds that its prophecies were fulfilled in Christ’s death and resurrection. (Parenthetically, let me note that it is not at all certain that the Beast and the False Prophet are human persons.) Perhaps Corsini is wrong. I don’t know. I’m not in a position to know. All I do know is that a number of Catholic interpreters have understood this book in a manner that allows for Hell being empty of human occupants.
I'd like to see how they do that. Whatever general take one has on this book, it is clear that the end refers to the actual final state of the elect in heaven. Otherwise, the notion of heaven itself would have to be spiritualized. Most of the rest of the book is amenable to different interpretations because of the symbolism. But other parts are clearly literal as well: such as Jesus' warnings to the seven churches in the early sections. These were real churches with real problems. Likewise, the heaven and the lake of fire in the ending portions are both real places.
I think it interesting that apparently no dogmatic statement of the Church has ever declared that some men will in fact be damned to Hell. After 2,000 years, this has never been stated?
Why does it have to be? It's quite clear in the Bible. But secondly, I think it is implicit anyway in statements that the Church has made.
Someone mentioned above that some wanted a statement to the effect that some men would certainly be in Hell included in the Vatican II documents, but such a statement was expressly excluded by the council fathers. If men really were in Hell right now, don’t you think that after two millennia there would be a dogmatic sentence affirming it? Doesn’t it seem that the absence of such a sentence is an indication that Hell is empty of human souls?
No, because of the many passages we have dealt with. In matters of such straightforward deduction, it is not necessary to state it explicitly in one place. The Holy Trinity itself works in much the same way, with regard to its explication in the Bible. Nothing remotely resembling the Athanasian Creed can be found in any given passage. But all of its contents can easily be deduced from much Scripture.
Secondly, Scripture IS part of Catholic dogma because it is not only infallible but also inspired. And Scripture includes Jude 5-7 and Revelation 20:7-15.
In all its pronouncements on Heaven, Hell, salvation, and damnation, the Church has been very careful to refrain from saying any men are in Hell.
The Church refrains from many proclamations. It doesn't follow that the things are not believed.
The import of its statements is that, without being joined to Jesus as members of His body, the Catholic Church, no man can escape Hell. This rigorously excludes as sort of relativism or pluralism. Outside the Church there is no salvation. The question is, “Do we know if anyone has ever died outside the Church?”
Another topic. Thanks for the discussion.
Short Dialogue on Binding Conciliar Authority (vs. "Josh")
"Josh" is a Reformed Protestant. His words will be in green. This exchange took place in May 2004 on my blog.
I'd just like to comment upon the concept of binding councils and Church authority. Classical Protestants, with the Reformers (and, I believe, the early Church), assert that Scripture is our only inherently infallible authority and thus our final authority in faith and praxis. This Scripture is to be interpreted in and by the Church according to the regula fidei.
Three questions:
1. What do you mean by "binding"?
2. What is the Church?
3. How do you determine what the rule of faith (regula fidei) is?
On this view, the Church functions as a ministerial Supreme Court, whose interpretive decisions have binding ecclesiastical authority.
How does this work in Presbyterianism? Who is the Chief Justice of this Supreme Court? The President of PCUSA or PCA?
The Church exercises this power in submission to Christ her Husband and Head (Eph 1:22). Her decisions are thus accountable to the Word of Her Husband: Holy Scripture.
Of course they are.
Thus, while we recognize the God-ordained authorities of Church and the Spirit-led tradition of faithful interpretation, we believe that these authorities are co-joined with the Word of God, receive their authority from Christ speaking in Scripture. Scripture is the covenantal charter of the Church, being built upon the foundation of the prophets and the apostles. Thus, the Church exercises her authority in submission to Scripture, which judges her.
How does one determine when Scripture has "judged" the Church (however you define that term)? By what process does this take place? On what grounds do the folks who make this judgment have authority?
I believe that this concept of an authoritative Church who may be err is taught in Scripture. For example, the OT scribes and Church officials had teaching authority over the people of Israel (Neh. 8:8). The scribes and priests were entrusted with the guardianship of interpretation of Scripture (though their was a communal element as well; cf. Neh. 8:13), yet we also see in the OT the scribes and priests misuing their God-given authority and teaching error. Indeed, in Matthew 23:1, our Lord said that these very teachers sat in Moses' seat! He told the disciples to listen to them, but not follow their works. But the Pharisees had bad doctrine as well; they rejected the Messiah, and so they apostisized from the covenant. The teachers of Israel did not exercise their authority in submission to the Word of God incarnate.
But they did not have the Holy Spirit, nor the promise of indefectibility (Mt 16:18), nor the Spirit's guidance "into all the truth" (Jn 16:13), and overseeing function at councils (Acts 15:28). These were all new developments of the New Covenant. So it is not proper to compare the Church in all respects to the Jews in the OT, because we have been given much greater gifts and promises, and possess a fuller revelation, after the Incarnation.
The pastors and councils of the new covenant Church (which is the new Israel) have ministerial authority over the Church (Heb. 13:17).
Why do Protestants keep splitting, then? Whoever heard of a pan-Protestant council that had any authority at all, let alone binding nature on the faithful?
Through their ministry, the Triune God is moving to build up the Church into a prefect Man in Christ (Eph. 4:12-16). Church councils authoritatively decide issues of faith and praxis (Ac.15). But these councils, these bishops can err
You miss the point. Where was the error in the Jerusalem council? That decision was absolutely binding, and true. This is our model of a Church gathering that made a decision, to which all believers were bound. Protestants simply don't believe this: they have moved away from the biblical model. And you demonstrate that above. You mention the council in one sentence and then say that it can err. Of course some councils do err, and the task is to determine which ones are legitimate and which are illegitimate. In Catholicism, the pope has that role. Who has it in Protestantism? We believe that the legitimate councils are infallible insofar as they bind the faithful and proclaim dogmas which all must believe and adhere to.
(witness St. Peter in Galatians,
Peter was acting hypocritically. This is crystal clear (2:11 ff.), since Paul accuses him of insincerity and speaks of his behavior: eating with the Gentiles in one instance and not doing so in another. It has nothing to do with doctrine. Peter was contradicting his own beliefs, for fear of men.
the warnings of false teachers in the epistles to Timothy), as did the scribes and priests in the OT.
The existence of false teachers does not prove that no council can be infallible in its authoritative decrees.
The promises of the Spirit to the new covenant Church only strengthens the penalities for apostasy and error; it does not establish perfection.
The fallacy here is the one I mentioned in my last comment.
That this applies to the Church of Rome is taught in Romans 11:16-24. The Apostle Paul tells the Church of Rome that they, if they fall into haughtiness and unbelief, may be cut off (v.21).
This is an interesting and clever argument, but I think it fails because Paul is not really addressing the Roman church as an institutional church (which is what indefectibility applies to); rather, he is addressing the individuals who make up the church (1:7: "all God's beloved in Rome, who are called to be saints"). Any given individual can fall away if he is not vigilant, just as Paul stated about himself. This nature of the book is made clear in verses such as 12:1: ". . . present your bodies as a living sacrifice . . . " or 12:3: ". . . every one among you . . . " or 13:8: "Owe no one anything, except to love one another . . . " or 15:7: "Welcome one another . . . ", etc.
Our Lord warns the churches of Revelation 2 that their lampstands may be removed.
From those particular regional churches, yes.
Yes, the Church as a whole will not fall away; yes, she will grow up into fulness of truth as the Spirit sheds new light on the Word of God.
But according to you, she can fall into error and bind believers to error from the pit of hell. That doesn't sound like the Holy Spirit or the power of God the Father and God the Son to me. If they can preserve the Bible from error, they can do the same with the Church, in terms of binding teaching. I don't find the second scenario any less plausible than the first (in fact, MORE plausible).
But the Church is to walk by faith, and that faith includes submitting herself to Holy Scripture in fear, not haughtily asserting some charism of infallibility.
What is haughty about simply believing God's promises, and having faith that correct teaching can be passed down and received? I don't find that the slight bit "haughty." But one might make a good argument that it is "haughty" to assume that God is not able to do such a thing, and that we are all at the mercy of the usual follies and errors of men, since we can't trust any particular "church" to give us undiluted truth in matters of the apostolic deposit.
But of course, how can a Protestant conceivably accept such a doctrine, given the state of affairs in their own ranks, with hundreds of competing denominations? To accept it is to cease to be Protestant because it only makes sense within an Orthodox or Catholic framework. It's ridiculous to assert such a thing within Protestantism where rampant contradiction absolutely proves that millions of Protestants are adhering to error and falsehood no matter WHAT the full truth is (by the very presence of contradiction).
And I would add that this goes as well for all the individual 'popes' of modern evangelicalism and modern Presbyterianism or Lutheranism.
And I would add that this includes Luther and Calvin. So why should we accept their word when they contradict received doctrine?
We must submit to Church authority in faith
That's ultimately meaningless and absurd unless such authority is binding and infallible.
while both we and faithful pastors and councils submit to the Word of Christ our King as found in Holy Scripture and interpreted according to the Creed.
Amen to that . . .
I'd just like to comment upon the concept of binding councils and Church authority. Classical Protestants, with the Reformers (and, I believe, the early Church), assert that Scripture is our only inherently infallible authority and thus our final authority in faith and praxis. This Scripture is to be interpreted in and by the Church according to the regula fidei.
Three questions:
1. What do you mean by "binding"?
2. What is the Church?
3. How do you determine what the rule of faith (regula fidei) is?
On this view, the Church functions as a ministerial Supreme Court, whose interpretive decisions have binding ecclesiastical authority.
How does this work in Presbyterianism? Who is the Chief Justice of this Supreme Court? The President of PCUSA or PCA?
The Church exercises this power in submission to Christ her Husband and Head (Eph 1:22). Her decisions are thus accountable to the Word of Her Husband: Holy Scripture.
Of course they are.
Thus, while we recognize the God-ordained authorities of Church and the Spirit-led tradition of faithful interpretation, we believe that these authorities are co-joined with the Word of God, receive their authority from Christ speaking in Scripture. Scripture is the covenantal charter of the Church, being built upon the foundation of the prophets and the apostles. Thus, the Church exercises her authority in submission to Scripture, which judges her.
How does one determine when Scripture has "judged" the Church (however you define that term)? By what process does this take place? On what grounds do the folks who make this judgment have authority?
I believe that this concept of an authoritative Church who may be err is taught in Scripture. For example, the OT scribes and Church officials had teaching authority over the people of Israel (Neh. 8:8). The scribes and priests were entrusted with the guardianship of interpretation of Scripture (though their was a communal element as well; cf. Neh. 8:13), yet we also see in the OT the scribes and priests misuing their God-given authority and teaching error. Indeed, in Matthew 23:1, our Lord said that these very teachers sat in Moses' seat! He told the disciples to listen to them, but not follow their works. But the Pharisees had bad doctrine as well; they rejected the Messiah, and so they apostisized from the covenant. The teachers of Israel did not exercise their authority in submission to the Word of God incarnate.
But they did not have the Holy Spirit, nor the promise of indefectibility (Mt 16:18), nor the Spirit's guidance "into all the truth" (Jn 16:13), and overseeing function at councils (Acts 15:28). These were all new developments of the New Covenant. So it is not proper to compare the Church in all respects to the Jews in the OT, because we have been given much greater gifts and promises, and possess a fuller revelation, after the Incarnation.
The pastors and councils of the new covenant Church (which is the new Israel) have ministerial authority over the Church (Heb. 13:17).
Why do Protestants keep splitting, then? Whoever heard of a pan-Protestant council that had any authority at all, let alone binding nature on the faithful?
Through their ministry, the Triune God is moving to build up the Church into a prefect Man in Christ (Eph. 4:12-16). Church councils authoritatively decide issues of faith and praxis (Ac.15). But these councils, these bishops can err
You miss the point. Where was the error in the Jerusalem council? That decision was absolutely binding, and true. This is our model of a Church gathering that made a decision, to which all believers were bound. Protestants simply don't believe this: they have moved away from the biblical model. And you demonstrate that above. You mention the council in one sentence and then say that it can err. Of course some councils do err, and the task is to determine which ones are legitimate and which are illegitimate. In Catholicism, the pope has that role. Who has it in Protestantism? We believe that the legitimate councils are infallible insofar as they bind the faithful and proclaim dogmas which all must believe and adhere to.
(witness St. Peter in Galatians,
Peter was acting hypocritically. This is crystal clear (2:11 ff.), since Paul accuses him of insincerity and speaks of his behavior: eating with the Gentiles in one instance and not doing so in another. It has nothing to do with doctrine. Peter was contradicting his own beliefs, for fear of men.
the warnings of false teachers in the epistles to Timothy), as did the scribes and priests in the OT.
The existence of false teachers does not prove that no council can be infallible in its authoritative decrees.
The promises of the Spirit to the new covenant Church only strengthens the penalities for apostasy and error; it does not establish perfection.
The fallacy here is the one I mentioned in my last comment.
That this applies to the Church of Rome is taught in Romans 11:16-24. The Apostle Paul tells the Church of Rome that they, if they fall into haughtiness and unbelief, may be cut off (v.21).
This is an interesting and clever argument, but I think it fails because Paul is not really addressing the Roman church as an institutional church (which is what indefectibility applies to); rather, he is addressing the individuals who make up the church (1:7: "all God's beloved in Rome, who are called to be saints"). Any given individual can fall away if he is not vigilant, just as Paul stated about himself. This nature of the book is made clear in verses such as 12:1: ". . . present your bodies as a living sacrifice . . . " or 12:3: ". . . every one among you . . . " or 13:8: "Owe no one anything, except to love one another . . . " or 15:7: "Welcome one another . . . ", etc.
Our Lord warns the churches of Revelation 2 that their lampstands may be removed.
From those particular regional churches, yes.
Yes, the Church as a whole will not fall away; yes, she will grow up into fulness of truth as the Spirit sheds new light on the Word of God.
But according to you, she can fall into error and bind believers to error from the pit of hell. That doesn't sound like the Holy Spirit or the power of God the Father and God the Son to me. If they can preserve the Bible from error, they can do the same with the Church, in terms of binding teaching. I don't find the second scenario any less plausible than the first (in fact, MORE plausible).
But the Church is to walk by faith, and that faith includes submitting herself to Holy Scripture in fear, not haughtily asserting some charism of infallibility.
What is haughty about simply believing God's promises, and having faith that correct teaching can be passed down and received? I don't find that the slight bit "haughty." But one might make a good argument that it is "haughty" to assume that God is not able to do such a thing, and that we are all at the mercy of the usual follies and errors of men, since we can't trust any particular "church" to give us undiluted truth in matters of the apostolic deposit.
But of course, how can a Protestant conceivably accept such a doctrine, given the state of affairs in their own ranks, with hundreds of competing denominations? To accept it is to cease to be Protestant because it only makes sense within an Orthodox or Catholic framework. It's ridiculous to assert such a thing within Protestantism where rampant contradiction absolutely proves that millions of Protestants are adhering to error and falsehood no matter WHAT the full truth is (by the very presence of contradiction).
And I would add that this goes as well for all the individual 'popes' of modern evangelicalism and modern Presbyterianism or Lutheranism.
And I would add that this includes Luther and Calvin. So why should we accept their word when they contradict received doctrine?
We must submit to Church authority in faith
That's ultimately meaningless and absurd unless such authority is binding and infallible.
while both we and faithful pastors and councils submit to the Word of Christ our King as found in Holy Scripture and interpreted according to the Creed.
Amen to that . . .
The Problem of Authority: Luther, Calvin, & Protestantism, Part II (vs. Kevin Johnson)
See Part One. Kevin's words will be in green.
Hi Kevin,
Nice to see you.
Interesting post. One question that lingers in my mind regarding what you have written is this…How does Roman Catholicism escape from the same dilemma you pose for the Reformers (that "obvious causal connection between their new principles and the rapidly growing number of Protestant sects") when it is quite clear that the Reformers (and all their "children") were birthed out of Roman Catholicism? After all, both Calvin and Luther were baptized and ordained as Roman Catholic priests.
It depends on how you are defining historical or theological "causation" and "birthing." There is a consistent and an inconsistent way to do that. If you take the view that one group which simply comes out of a milieu of another, following it chronologically, is related to the former group ideologically, or (particularly) consistent with it in principle, you run into all sorts of absurdities. You would have to say that the Gnostics (whom scholars believe even St. John may have been partially responding to in his Gospel) can be explained by early apostolic Christianity, which somehow must "take the blame" for their arising.
Notice that I made my distinction based on "principles" (in the words of mine you cite above). Your argument fails because the "Reformers" clearly changed the principles of authority. That is the bottom line underneath all Protestant-Catholic discussion. We believe in apostolic succession (with emphasis on patristic views), episcopacy, conciliarism, sacredotalism, the papacy, and the binding nature of sacred Tradition, in harmony with Sacred Scripture.
Protestants changed the rule of faith to sola Scriptura and private judgment, with the corollaries of perspicuity of Scripture and the primacy of the individual conscience over ecclesiastical binding authority, which meant that the highest authority was Scripture as interpreted by the individual (hopefully illumined by the Holy Spirit, etc., but still the primacy of the individual over against ecclesial bodies, when push comes to shove).
You'd have to say that the Monophysites were "caused" (in the sense of "blame") by the Chalcedonian Christology from the Council of 451, which decisively rejected the false theology, or the Sabellians in the same fashion, or the Arians as a result of the Council of Nicaea. This is illogical. Those groups clearly departed from orthodox Christianity, and therefore, cannot be considered as part of it. They either rejected the Trinity or crucial platforms of Christology.
Protestantism is a different case insofar as it remains Christian (Niecene Creed, trinitarianism, Chalcedonianism). But because it changed the principle of authority (I see Luther's statement at Worms in 1521 as the decisive break), it is something fundamentally different, institutionally and authority-wise. This is what my above "dialogue" with Luther is driving at.
We see clearly that sectarianism is directly a result of the new Protestant principles, because every new sect that arises can consistently appeal to the same principles, and no one can say that they are not "allowed" to do so. Protestants have no internally coherent way to resolve these divisions and splits, because they flow from the Protestant rule of faith, and to deny the "right" to split would be to deny the very rule of faith which distinguishes Protestantism from Catholicism. That's the heart of the dilemma, and why it cannot ever be resolved unless the principles underneath are greatly modified or discarded (which in turn would precipitate a Protestant crisis of self-identity).
Martin Luther could oppose Zwingli and Carlstadt and the Anabaptists, but he could not do so on the basis of sola Scriptura and private judgment. He had to do so on autocratic, "I am God's prophet; how dare you disagree with me, you damned blind heretic!" grounds, or else he had to (somewhat inconsistently, as indeed fellow "Reformer" Bullinger pointed out) appeal to Sacred Tradition, in cases where he agreed with it (such as, largely, the Eucharist, and baptism).
The Anglican, "Pontificator" recognizes the same problem, from his perspective, and courageously faces it head on:
Hi Kevin,
Nice to see you.
Interesting post. One question that lingers in my mind regarding what you have written is this…How does Roman Catholicism escape from the same dilemma you pose for the Reformers (that "obvious causal connection between their new principles and the rapidly growing number of Protestant sects") when it is quite clear that the Reformers (and all their "children") were birthed out of Roman Catholicism? After all, both Calvin and Luther were baptized and ordained as Roman Catholic priests.
It depends on how you are defining historical or theological "causation" and "birthing." There is a consistent and an inconsistent way to do that. If you take the view that one group which simply comes out of a milieu of another, following it chronologically, is related to the former group ideologically, or (particularly) consistent with it in principle, you run into all sorts of absurdities. You would have to say that the Gnostics (whom scholars believe even St. John may have been partially responding to in his Gospel) can be explained by early apostolic Christianity, which somehow must "take the blame" for their arising.
Notice that I made my distinction based on "principles" (in the words of mine you cite above). Your argument fails because the "Reformers" clearly changed the principles of authority. That is the bottom line underneath all Protestant-Catholic discussion. We believe in apostolic succession (with emphasis on patristic views), episcopacy, conciliarism, sacredotalism, the papacy, and the binding nature of sacred Tradition, in harmony with Sacred Scripture.
Protestants changed the rule of faith to sola Scriptura and private judgment, with the corollaries of perspicuity of Scripture and the primacy of the individual conscience over ecclesiastical binding authority, which meant that the highest authority was Scripture as interpreted by the individual (hopefully illumined by the Holy Spirit, etc., but still the primacy of the individual over against ecclesial bodies, when push comes to shove).
You'd have to say that the Monophysites were "caused" (in the sense of "blame") by the Chalcedonian Christology from the Council of 451, which decisively rejected the false theology, or the Sabellians in the same fashion, or the Arians as a result of the Council of Nicaea. This is illogical. Those groups clearly departed from orthodox Christianity, and therefore, cannot be considered as part of it. They either rejected the Trinity or crucial platforms of Christology.
Protestantism is a different case insofar as it remains Christian (Niecene Creed, trinitarianism, Chalcedonianism). But because it changed the principle of authority (I see Luther's statement at Worms in 1521 as the decisive break), it is something fundamentally different, institutionally and authority-wise. This is what my above "dialogue" with Luther is driving at.
We see clearly that sectarianism is directly a result of the new Protestant principles, because every new sect that arises can consistently appeal to the same principles, and no one can say that they are not "allowed" to do so. Protestants have no internally coherent way to resolve these divisions and splits, because they flow from the Protestant rule of faith, and to deny the "right" to split would be to deny the very rule of faith which distinguishes Protestantism from Catholicism. That's the heart of the dilemma, and why it cannot ever be resolved unless the principles underneath are greatly modified or discarded (which in turn would precipitate a Protestant crisis of self-identity).
Martin Luther could oppose Zwingli and Carlstadt and the Anabaptists, but he could not do so on the basis of sola Scriptura and private judgment. He had to do so on autocratic, "I am God's prophet; how dare you disagree with me, you damned blind heretic!" grounds, or else he had to (somewhat inconsistently, as indeed fellow "Reformer" Bullinger pointed out) appeal to Sacred Tradition, in cases where he agreed with it (such as, largely, the Eucharist, and baptism).
The Anglican, "Pontificator" recognizes the same problem, from his perspective, and courageously faces it head on:
Thus the evangelical and Anglo-Catholic share in common the elevation of private judgment over against the authoritative Church.
And this, of course, is precisely what every orthodox Episcopalian shares with every revisionist Episcopalian–the elevation of private judgment over the Tradition and Magisterial teaching of the Church. This is, I am now convinced, the source of our present crisis. Our fatal problem is not the rejection of biblical authority. Our problem is the dual Protestant assertion of sola scriptura and private judgment. This is why the churches of the Reformation have been unable to maintain the catholic faith in the confrontation with modernity. The private individual will always be able to justify to himself and others a new interpretation of the Scriptures. Where did the revisionist learn to pick and choose his doctrines? From the Reformation, of course.
Thus, Protestantism, in terms of its authority structure (not ALL its theology, by any means), is a corruption of Catholicism and historic Christianity (if we include also Orthodoxy), as opposed to a consistent development. Reversal of what came before is not development; it is revolution or rejection. Protestantism is a different animal. And because it is, we see a vastly different history than we have seen in post-16th century Catholicism.
You guys keep splitting and cannot resolve your differences. You can't even do so in denominational sub-groups such as Presbyterianism. It is impossible because your first principles won't allow it. At some point there has to be a final say; a final court of appeal, where an authoritative decision is made. We have such a method. You do not. It is, then, nonsensical to blame us for the new principles developed by Protestantism, which we never accepted in the first place. It would be as irrational as blaming the Council of Nicaea for Arianism or the Council of Chalcedon for Monophysitism.
It would seem fair at least to admit that if we grant the legitimacy of the primacy of the bishopric of Rome that the other side must be prepared to lay blame for the division present in modern-day and historical Christianity squarely on the feet of those who claim that ultimate authority for themselves—namely, on the historical Roman Catholic Church.
Precipitating causes for the division, based on corruption, etc. are entirely distinct factors from the change of principle which is entailed by Protestantism. We readily accept blame for the historical circumstances which helped bring about the tragic division. But we accept no blame for the new principles which Luther adopted; throwing the baby out with the bath water. We are blamed for not interacting with Luther at all at the Diet of Worms, but whatever one thinks of the Catholic "performance" there, one thing that is very clear and indisputable is that we didn't agree with his new notions of private judgment and sola scriptura at all. We rejected them so strongly that we wouldn't even discuss them. So one can blame the Catholic Church for being "overly-dogmatic" or "stubborn" (from their perspective; I don't agree with that), but not for the introduction of the novel rule of faith that was previously-unknown in Christian history.
Yves Congar admitted as much in his work entitled "The Mystery of the Church"—noting the Reformation as a "terrible catastrophe" (see page 92 ff. of that work).
Of course it was, but that is an entirely different discussion from the one at hand.
I'm just wondering if you are willing to come to similar conclusions by carrying your argument out to its logical conclusions.
My argument entails no such conclusions, as explained. It is not (IMHO) affected in the least by your counter-reply. But you have offered no response whatsoever to your own internal dilemma. I have never seen a Protestant do so. At best, they can only honestly acknowledge that it is a serious difficulty indeed (as Pontificator did). You can't solve it by immediately switching the topic back to the Catholic Church (which is almost invariably what Protestants try to do, because they really have no answer to this). That only suggests a desperation of one who has no conceivable answer to a difficulty in his own position, as seen by an outsider.
The subject at the moment is Protestant internal incoherence. Whether the Catholic Church is the most inconsistent, absurd, nonsensical, ridiculous institution in world history has nothing to do with whether or not Protestantism can resolve this particular internal difficulty. To paraphrase a common saying, "if your dad is ugly, he remains so no matter how ugly mine is. And if mine is uglier than yours, that doesn't make yours any more handsome. He is what he is."
I would also be very interested to learn if you have interacted at all with Keith Matheson's book, The Shape of Sola Scriptura,
I haven't personally, but I've probably written more on this topic than any other. I have heard that it is a good book. I'm sure I would essentially agree with Greg Krehbiel's comments on it.
[Later, I did a critique of some of it: Part I / Part II ]
which presents a decidedly more balanced view of the Reformation doctrine than what is currently touted by some of the more virulent anti-catholic apologists out there. If so, I would love to review and/or hear your comments on the work.
Again, this is another topic. It's a good one, and should be discussed (and I would be happy to in due course), but it is different, because no matter how fine-tuned one's notion of sola Scriptura is (it can include all sorts of respectful nods to Tradition and precedent and the Fathers, etc.), it is still a fundamentally different system of authority from Catholicism and Orthodoxy. I understand that many current-day Protestants adopt a radical solo Scriptura position that is a corruption of Luther's and Calvin's views. I was noting that back in 1991, by citing Bernard Ramm and R.C. Sproul's criticisms of extreme "Bible Only" views (originally part of my first book in its much-larger version). But that doesn't overcome the difficulties I pose above. If you think otherwise, then by all means present your case as to how you believe my objections can be overcome.
Thank you, also, for the comments you left regarding the paper I wrote on the Passion. It was very encouraging to read your response.
You're welcome. I was delighted to read your opinions also. I replied to your piece on "Para-church" groups, too, shortly after you took your break for Lent.
I hope we can have many more good discussions. I spent years on the Internet trying in vain to find Reformed Christians who weren't anti-Catholic, to have some intelligent discussions with. I almost despaired of ever meeting any (though I believed there must be persons like that out there somewhere, because I had read books by Reformed folks whom I greatly respected). Now (to my great delight) I have finally found many ecumenical Calvinists with whom I have had some wonderful, edifying dialogues.
The blog world is obviously on a much-higher level than the "Reformed discussion boards" world, where I was always generally approached like a slug under a slimy rock. :-) On one such board, I was atrociously treated in the worst manner that I have ever experienced from fellow Christians in my 27 years of being a committed disciple of Jesus — even to the extent that one Pharisee stated that I was damned and urged people there to not even pray for my salvation (!!!). It's weird being literally hated (or at least highly detested and despised) by fellow Christians. One has to experience it to believe it.
God bless,
Dave
*****
Whether or not Luther wanted a council is a separate question from how he would regard the authority of such a council. Would it be binding and final? If so, then he has to explain why Trent and all the earlier councils were not so, while this one was, and why he stated otherwise about councils in his passionate rant at Worms. If it wasn't binding, then it doesn't contradict the existing rule of faith of sola Scriptura. It is simply a gathering of respectable worthies whose opinions are to be highly respected and spoken of in hushed, reverential terms, but not binding.
It becomes merely a meeting somewhat akin to the Anglican Lambeth Conferences, or whatever conventions or gatherings the Presbyterians (but which ones?) have every year or every ten years. This does not overcome my objection at all. So Protestants have some notion of corporate doctrine. So what? Good for them. But it's still not the traditional ecclesiological structure of historic Christianity (Catholicism or Orthodoxy).
Secondly, if I remember correctly, Luther's council would not be presided over by the pope, whereas in the Tradition before that was the norm. So Luther's council would entail a different conception of the council. As with his other innovations, this has to be defined and defended on some grounds. That lands us right back in the difficulty of my original post. If the papacy is to now be ditched, why? Why should Luther's ecclesiology be deemed superior to Catholic ecclesiology? On what grounds? On what basis would all the various Protestants be represented in such a "council"? Many gave up the notion of bishops and/or apostolic succession. Councils traditionally consisted of bishops because they preserved the line of apostolic succession. That's why they were there. They represented the personification of Tradition. But lacking that, what do we do: vote for the most eloquent preachers? How many groups are represented? What is the pecking order? Etc., etc. This only creates many more problems.
Thirdly, Luther showed little willingness to compromise or reason with anyone who differed from him in the few little gatherings and attempts at "unity" that he did attend (such as Marburg, etc.). I see little reason that he would be much different in an actual "council" (either real or akin to the "Robber Council" of 449).
Fourthly, we observe the behavior of Protestants in the quasi-conciliar gatherings sich as the Diet of Augsburg in 1530, where the Emperor asked them to give back the property they stole from Catholics (ostensibly a most reasonable request, and a basis for good will and a conciliar outlook) and they refused, on the basis of "conscience." Moreover, they refused to allow the Mass to continue in their territories. This is some "conciliarism," Tim, when the Catholics' end of the "deal" is to have Protestants refuse to return plundered properties and to refuse the very right of Catholics to worship as they please.
*****
[responding to Tim Enloe]
Are you contending that the Westminster Confession overturns the system of sola Scriptura as the rule of faith? Of course, this is not the case, so your very objection is a non sequitur in the context of my particular argument. You can make your own case as you wish, but when you purport to be offering some sort of "answer" to mine, then you are obligated (by the usual rules of scholarly and quasi-scholarly discourse) to stay on topic. WC expressly denies the traditional rule of faith (in the same exact sense that Luther did at Worms) in the same chapter you cite:
"IV. All synods or councils since the apostles' times, whether general or particular, may err, and many have erred; therefore they are not to be made the rule of faith or practice, but to be used as a help in both."
Catholics and Orthodox do NOT believe this. We believe that ecumenical councils are infallible and binding upon the faithful, as the Holy Spirit supernaturally protects them from error. The Protestant rejection of that notion is precisely what is at issue.
WC makes its anti-traditionalist standpoint clear in its first chapter, on Scripture:
"IV. The authority of the holy Scripture, for which it ought to be believed and obeyed, dependeth not upon the testimony of any man or Church, but wholly upon God (who is truth itself), the Author thereof; and therefore it is to be received, because it is the Word of God."
"VII. All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all; yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed, for salvation, are so clearly propounded and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them."
"X. The Supreme Judge, by which all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decress of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, and private spirits, are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture."
WC throws out the infallible church along with infallible councils, in its chapter 25 on the Church:
"V. The purest Churches under heaven are subject both to mixture and error: and some have so degenerated as to become apparently no Churches of Christ. Nevertheless, there shall be always a Church on earth, to worship God according to his will.
VI. There is no other head of the Church but the Lord Jesus Christ: nor can the Pope of Rome in any sense be head thereof; but is that Antichrist, that man of sin and son of perdition, that exalteth himself in the Church against Christ, and all that is called God."
If no council (and no official Church doctrine) is absolutely binding, because no council or Church is guaranteed to be free from error, then the responsibility for determination of true doctrine must necessarily fall back on the individual (or at least a smaller body than a council). The same problems again arise:
1) Who decides whether the council or church has "erred" or not?
2) On what basis is this decided?
3) If it is based on tradition, why we should we accept the word of the few, judging truths in tradition, rather than the many?
4) From whence derives these "critics"' authority to make such a decision in the first place?
5) If disagreement is based on biblical interpretation, how to we resolve the problem based on Protestant principles (take, for example, baptism)?
6) If there are, say, three parties of different opinion, how do you suggest that the "man on the street" decides who has enough "authority" to side with?
7) Now, multiply that confusion by hundreds of Protestant denominations today.
In the end, it will always reduce to Protestants disagreeing amongst themselves endlessly, and Catholics and Orthodox proceeding as they always have, accepting the wisdom and truthfulness of the received Tradition.
. . . The principles were corrupted right after Calvin died (as if he were some sort of latter-day apostle)? You still haven't shown how any given Protestant group is fundamentally contradicting the principles of authority of Protestantism when they go the way they do. So you appeal to Calvin and a more sophisticated "medieval Protestant conciliarism" or what-not. One immediately asks (as I did, above):
"Why is it that I must trust Calvin's understanding to be the de facto infallible, superior one?"
"What makes him the expert in cases where he overthrows the accumulated wisdom of 1500 years, and the witness of the Fathers and the medievals?"
"Why should he be trusted over Luther, where they disagree, and vice versa?"
These problems cannot be solved, because they go to the roots. You can squeal and scream and protest all you like, but your task remains: how do you overcome this difficulty without reverting back to some form of Catholic ecclesiology? Even your scenario you have been developing for a year now is rejected by probably 99% of Protestants. Of what practical use is a system that is practically non-existent among those whom you are sure ought to adopt it? It is absurd because authority by its very nature needs to be exercised; to be real. It's foolish to simply tal about it in an idealistic, pipe-dream fashion. We have it (whatever you think of our system); you do not, except on the local (and thus, culturally insignificant) level.
*****
I seem to be having the greatest difficulty getting people to INTERACT with my actual arguments rather than describing them (or mere caricatures of them in some instances) and talking about my supposed thought in the broadest possible terms (what might be termed "meta-discussion" rather than "discussion"). I'm sure you understand this distinction, as you are a sharp guy.
This is why I am an advocate of dialogue: you carefully read your opponents' sentences, paragraphs, and arguments so as to get inside of their mind and then try to answer them directly. When conversationalists simply write "competing essays" with only passing reference to the other guy, this keeps them each within their own little thought-worlds, and no particular progress is made, because there is little contact between them. I ask tons of hard questions but they are ignored. You haven't cited a single word of mine in your response.
I was hoping you would try to answer some of my hard questions directly. Perhaps you will. But I express my frustration. In these cases, I fall back by necessity to an even more blatantly "socratic" method: asking of very short questions, in hopes that they will be replied to, so that the discussion can move forward and hopefully obtain some increased understanding on both sides.
This is no great novelty. I shouldn't think it is controversial, nor that it even needs to be argued. When, for example, two persons are talking face to face, if one asks a question, the other will attempt to give some answer, if only in common courtesy. They don't just ignore it and go right on talking about their own concernss, as if the other hadn't said anything. That's the nature of conversation. Unless one is a super-talker, who has the greatest difficulty listening (my wife's younger sister immediately comes to mind!), the usual process in discussion is not for one person to talk for a half hour, followed by the other's half-hour lecture. Yet this is, in effect, what so many Internet "conversations" amount to. It's what I call "mutual monologue."
That said, I barge ahead where angels fear to tread, and try once again to get some simple answers to my questions, and clarify where I myself have been misunderstood.
I think what Tim is trying to say (and what I was attempting to infer by directing you back to the Roman Catholic Church and her own dilemma) is that you are not necessarily describing the tenets of the Reformation fairly—or at the very least satisfactorily enough for your friends on the other side of the fence over here where we are.
I hope you will show me specifically how you believe I have done this.
While your technique and arguments may work with sola-slogan-TULIP-carrying-fundamentalist-anti-catholics, the job is much harder with those of us who do see some commonality between communions.
Okay. What you need to do right off the bat is give me a succinct, short-as-possible-without-lacking substance definition of 1) the Protestant rule of faith, and 2) the Catholic rule of faith. Since you think I have misrepresented your view, then by all means, give me the definition that we can work with. You do agree there is a difference, right?
If "y" (Roman Catholicism) has the same problem as "x" (Protestantism) in regards to authority—after all, both arguments are ultimately circular
How so? I, of course, think your view is, but I deny that ours is. I gave a number of arguments explaining why I think that, but you have chosen to "overlook" them.
—then the dilemma is either something that both systems must face together or we must recast the arguments to better handle the specifics of each situation.
I don't see the circularity in my system. I see, however, a system that Protestants find difficult to accept in faith. requiring relatively more faith is not the equivalent of logical circularity or contradiction.
Your creative conversation in the blog entry details a conversation I could see you having (you have probably had many similar ones) with fundamentalists like the ones mentioned above. I think you are right in noting that their argument falls short.
Okay; how, then, does "non-fundamentalist" Reformed Christianity overcome the difficulties I outlined? You need to demonstrate this with argument; not merely assert it.
It is not enough to say that individuals alone are able to interpret the Bible. That is a popular understanding of sola scriptura in fundamentalist (particularly Baptist) circles.
I agree with that, so no need to clash on that one. But there is still a sense in which the individual has a supremacy in Protestantism that he doesn't have in Catholicism, because of the different rules of faith.
But, the problem is that I don't think your caricature accurately reflects the actual Reformed view of authority regarding Scripture and the Church.
Please give it to me. I quoted some six paragraphs of the WC. I don't see that I have misrepresnted anything at all. If you disagree, then by all means, demonstrate it.
The Reformers clearly argued that there was a teaching office inherent in the Church, that ministers were responsible to teach the Scriptures and the Gospel it contained to the Church, and that individuals were responsible to submit to their leaders within the Church.
I agree with that, but that is not our present issue, which is the difference between the two rules of faith. We don not accept sola Scriptura, no matter how it is defined, all along thew spectrum from "fundamentalism" to the most sophisticated Calvinist who makes a thousand fine-tuned distinctions..
After all, it's quite clear historically that the Reformers accepted the canon of the Bible, the creeds, the ecumenical councils, and even worked to preserve an ecclesiastical unity that would make your caricature of sola scriptura impossible for them to maintain were it what they truly believed. In addition, Calvin and others were students of the early Fathers and stood with them in what they felt was the catholic faith of the fathers of the first six centuries or so of the Church (however right or wrong you feel they may have been in that estimation, it is still historically accurate regarding how they viewed the fathers—whether they were accurate in that opinion is another question).
I have no problem with any of this and it is not in question. But it does not address my questions. I presuppose all this. The difficulties still remain in your position.
Even as late as 1561 (i.e. post Trent) Reformation scholars sat down with Roman Catholic scholars to try to work toward an ecumenical outlook at the Colloquy of Poissy regarding the presence of Christ in the Supper.
What happened?
I mention all of this to point to the fact that the magisterial Reformers recognized the authority of the Church when it came to interpreting and applying Scripture. The Reformers, though, rightly recognized that Scripture is the final authority and that its authority is based upon God Himself since He is the author. But the Reformers never viewed the Scriptures as separate from the Church.
I agree. This is, again, beside the point. We can make more progress, when I get your definitions of where the two rules of faith agree and disagree. One must always define one's terms.
In other words, the dilemma you have posed for your Protestant brethren is false (though I will grant it perhaps applies to certain fundamentalist sectors of Protestant world),
You haven't shown that it doesn't apply to non-fundamentalists because you simply haven't interacted with my reasoning. You may think it is atrocious, groundless reasoning, but please, PLEASE, interact with it. Do I have to beg on my knees?
especially when we examine the quote you provide of Calvin in its context where he actually in the next paragraph (which you did not quote) expounds on his actual view of the text of 2 Peter 1:20 rather than the mere critique of his historical opponents:
"However, another sense seems to me more simple, that Peter says that Scripture came not from man, or through the suggestions of man. For thou wilt never come well prepared to read it, except thou bringest reverence, obedience, and docility; but a just reverence then only exists when we are convinced that God speaks to us, and not mortal men. Then Peter especially bids us to believe the prophecies as the indubitable oracles of God, because they have not emanated from men's own private suggestions."
In other words, Calvin is saying that one cannot use 2 Peter 1:20 to support the idea that the Scriptures are not to be interpreted by individuals or that the passage somehow gives authority to church councils in the place of individuals. Noting this negative in no way impinges on the proper role of the authority of the Church as the Reformers cast it in their writings. He is here merely denying that this passage speaks to these matters and instead takes the passage to mean that the prophecies of old didn't come from the private thought of man.
I have no problem with that. I want to know, however, the prior question of why Calvin felt he had authority to set up a new ecclesiastical institution? All of that has been completely ignored by you and Tim. I need to know HOW and WHY you think my reasoning fails.
So, I applaud you for combatting the misunderstood caricature of sola scriptura that is prevalent in certain circles
Than you. . . . when I was on Catholic Answers Live, discussing sola Scriptura, I specifically made it a point to state that Protestants do NOT deny any role to Tradition, and that it was a caricature to believe so.
but even Roman Catholic scholars of our own day are beginning to move toward understanding the authority of the Scriptures in a way that recognizes the value of the Reformers' actual take on the issue. I take great courage in this fact.
You'd have to be more specific what you mean.
I am hopeful our own fundamentalist Reformed brethren avoid their own 'monophysite' look at the issue of sola scriptura as well and do not avoid including the role of the Church in protecting and proclaiming the Scriptures to the faithful.
Amen.
Pelikan called the Reformation a "tragic necessity"—and in some cases many of the differences that both sides discussed can seem like minor points to us today. Both sides must work harder in understanding each other better—even after five hundred years I am not certain that we are listening to one another as we should.
I couldn't agree more.
However, I look forward to continued discussions. Thank you for your efforts.
You too! Thanks.
In Him,
Dave
Critique of Dr. Thomas Sowell's Article: "Trashing our History; Hiroshima"
I shall now examine Dr. Thomas Sowell's opinion on the issue of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. First, let me begin by saying that I have immense admiration for Dr. Sowell, and have cherished his opinion on social and political and economic matters for many years. I have several of his books. I would even say that he is a sort of "hero" of mine in some respects.
But on this one he is simply wrong, and exhibits many of the same non-Catholic and ethically tenuous tendencies that I have been critiquing. I don't know what his religious persuasion is. Whatever it is (probably not Catholic, I would guess), he is not arguing like a Catholic in this instance. My interjections will be in green; otherwise, all words are his:
"Trashing our history; Hiroshima"
August 9, 2005
Every August, there are some Americans who insist on wringing their hands over the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945,
I'm sure there are; as one of the persons I cited in my original paper noted: the guilt does not devolve upon Americans today, as we did not make the decision; therefore we can simply analyze it without the liberal-type guilt complexes and melodramatic displays of ersatz "compassion." This is a real, super-serious issue that must not be besmirched by liberal nonsense. If, on the other hand, it so happens that liberals, for whatever reason, are more likely to have the correct opinion on the matter than conservatives, then so be it. Truth is truth. I follow it wherever it leads, no matter what is fashionable among the circles I happen to move in (one of which happens to be American political conservatism of a certain stripe. I'm not "wringing my hands"; I am dealing with the relevant ethical issues at hand.
so it was perhaps inevitable that such people would have an orgy of wallowing in guilt on the 60th anniversary of that tragic day.
Again, many will do so. What I, on the other hand, am doing (cool as a cucumber over here) is simply pointing out that my country was wrong when it did this: terribly wrong, and that it cannot be justified by Catholic ethical principle and moral theology; nor by just war criteria that were once widely accepted in Western Civilization: in its Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, and secular manifestations alike. I don't personally feel any individual guilt at all. How could I? But there is a proper biblical sense of national shame and a need for "repentance" in terms of simply admitting we were wrong, rather than playing games about it and pretending that evil was justified because our enemy was acting in extraordinarily evil ways. I have often stated similarly about our abominable, wicked treatment and massacres of blacks and Indians (aka African-Americans and Native Americans). Those things constituted America's "original sin" (as many have noted); the bombings (and the abortion holocaust) are our present unrepented-of "national sins".
Time magazine has page after page of photographs of people scarred by the radiation, as if General Sherman had not already said long ago that war is hell.
It certainly is; that doesn't make it wrong or less newsworthy to point out evil acts within wars which may themselves be justified overall (as WWII certainly was). It is no more wrong to show these pictures than to show pictures of the victims of abortion (which I have done in public, to the great distress of pro-aborts passing by): both show innocent victims of objectively, intrinsically evil acts. Nevertheless, anticipating this objection, I will not post such pictures here. I want my argument to depend solely on its reasoning and factuality, not on the emotionalism (however justified) of photographs of the atrocities.
Winston Churchill once spoke of the secrets of the atom, "hitherto mercifully withheld from man." We can all lament that this terrible power of mass destruction has been revealed to the world and fear its ominous consequences for us all, including our children and grandchildren.
Good.
But that is wholly different from saying that a great moral evil was committed when the first atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
It is (and "high" Catholic statements on the subject are often of the former sort, for various reasons). For my part, I assert both things.
What was new about these bombs was the technology, not the morality. More people were killed with ordinary bombs in German cities or in Tokyo. Vastly more people were killed with ordinary bullets and cannon on the Russian front. Morality is about what you do to people, not the technology you use.
This illustrates exactly one thing I have repeatedly pointed out: even many of those who defend Hiroshima and Nagasaki will decry Dresden, or will admit that the former, or the air raids on Tokyo were just as devastating and troublesome as the nuclear bombs. But that's just the point, isn't it? If you condemn one, you must condemn them all (and if you accept one, you consistently must accept them all), as they are all equally immoral on the just war grounds that noncombatants must not be deliberately targeted by military strikes. The amazing thing is thast Sowell passes right over this crucial moral consideration. Rather than condemn all these attacks, he would rather simply point out that the earlier, non-nuclear ones were just as bad, and then casually adopt utilitarian ethical reasoning, rather than traditional Christian morality, in judging the atomic bombings. It never ceases to amaze me. It seems that utilitarianism, along with a secular libertarianism, has often infected conservative thought. I have long noted the latter, but I wasn't aware till now that the former had also made such inroads.
The guilt-mongers have twisted the facts of history beyond recognition in order to say that it was unnecessary to drop those atomic bombs.
Note the gratuitous equation of all who oppose these bombings with "the guilt-mongers" (not to mention twisters of history and dishonest revisionists). Nice ad-hominem rhetorical touch there. All who disagree with Sowell are guilt-ridden extremists . . .
Japan was going to lose the war anyway, they say.
And so did many many other high-ranking military figures, including MacArthur, Eisenhower, Nimitz, etc. say . . .
What they don't say is — at what price in American lives? Or even in Japanese lives?
Tthey do say that. But that doesn't justify doing evil!!! This is again purely utilitarian, "good ends justify evil means" reasoning.
Much of the self-righteous nonsense
Now Dr. Sowell can read the hearts of all who dissent from Americanist orthodoxy and determine that they are self-righteous? That's interesting . . .
that abounds on so many subjects cannot stand up to three questions: (1) Compared to what? (2) At what cost? and (3) What are the hard facts?
None of this treats the question of the morality of killing 200,000 civilians under the guise of a "military strike." It's an end run around it, ultimately ending in (ironically) considerable emotionalism (lamenting possible deaths rather than actual ones) and utilitarianism, just as revolting as that which it decries.
The alternative to the atomic bombs was an invasion of Japan, which was already being planned for 1946, and those plans included casualty estimates even more staggering than the deaths that have left a sea of crosses in American cemeteries at Normandy and elsewhere.
That's assuming it would have occurred. With several analyses predicting a probable Japanese surrender by the ened of 1945, and with the Russian declaration of war against Japan, this is not a slam-dunk certainty, fact-wise.
"Revisionist" historians
Is the use of quotations here a concession to fairness on Sowell's part?
have come up with casualty estimates a small fraction of what the American and British military leaders responsible for planning the invasion of Japan had come up with.
These things can be reasonably discussed as probabilities and projections, and good men can differ, but in the end, the morality of an act in Catholic thinking is not dependent on its results (which is pragmatism or utilitarianism or situation ethics), but rather, upon its intrinsic moral qualities and secondarily upon the intentions of the doer of the act.
Who are we to believe, those who had personally experienced the horrors of the war in the Pacific, and who had a lifetime of military experience, or leftist historians hot to find something else to blame America for?
I believe MacArthur, Eisenhower, and Nimitz, who "had a lifetime of military experience," and were not particualry "leftist" as far as I know. They all opposed it, and thought that surrender was soon to come.
During the island-hopping war in the Pacific, it was not uncommon for thousands of Japanese troops to fight to the death on an island, while the number captured were a few dozen. Even some Japanese soldiers too badly wounded to stand would lie where they fell until an American medical corpsman approached to treat their wounds — and then they would set off a grenade to kill them both.
I agree that this is horrible and that we need to understand this in order to understand American sentiment and action at the time. But it is no justifying rationale.
In the air the same spirit led the kamikaze pilots to deliberately crash their planes into American ships and bombers.
Indeed. We dropped bombs instead, from great heights, which killed 100,000 in one fell swoop. I dare say that that is more (objectively) evil than one kamikaze pilot, who was at least brave, if not moral in what he did.
Japan's plans for defense against invasion involved mobilizing the civilian population, including women and children, for the same suicidal battle tactics. That invasion could have been the greatest bloodbath in history.
I see. So we should avoid the horrible spectre and "bloodbath" of killing the women and children on the ground in such a scenario, by killing thousands of women and children from the air. Compelling reasoning, isn't it? Again, there is something wonderfully delusional about committing atrocities from the air without seeing them firsthand, versus doing them eye-to-eye and hand-to-hand. One is a lot less "messy" than the other, but no less immoral, I'm afraid.
No mass killing, especially of civilians, can leave any humane person happy.
Ah, good; so we can be unhappy about it, but alas, not enough to cease doing it. This smacks of the same "moral reasoning" used by pro-aborts, who inevitably appeal to the "unhappiness" and "tragedy" and "unpleasantness" of the choice they always want to make legal and in effect, moral.
But compared to what? Compared to killing many times more Japanese and seeing many times more American die?
Right back to utilitarianism . . .
We might have gotten a negotiated peace if we had dropped the "unconditional surrender" demand.
Good; a rare, refreshing concession to the "hand wringers" and "revisionists," etc.
But at what cost? Seeing a militaristic Japan arise again in a few years, this time armed with nuclear weapons that they would not have hesitated for one minute to drop on Americans.
Far afield from the present inquiry . . . Germany didn't develop nuclear weapons after the war, and they weren't nuked.
As it was, the unconditional surrender of Japan enabled General Douglas MacArthur to engineer one of the great historic transformations of a nation from militarism to pacifism, to the relief of hundreds of millions of their neighbors, who had suffered horribly at the hands of their Japanese conquerors.
It wasn't absolutely unconditional because they were allowed to retain their Emperor, to save face. This begs the question, anyway, by assuming that an "unconditional" surrender was necessary for these things to occur.
The facts may deprive the revisionists
What? no quotation marks now?!
of their platform for lashing out at America
Just like a drunken boxer "lashes" out against his opponent, without reason or scruple . . .? One must be anti-American to be against carpet bombing of civilians?
and for the ego trip of moral preening
Now the otherwise great scholar is reduced to psychobabble too! How the mighty have fallen. In condemning "self righteous . . . moral preening, he falls prey to exactly the same thing, far as I can tell, by patronizingly lecturing his opponents like a schoolmaster would his student underlings.
but, fear not, they will find or manufacture other occasions for that.
Oh yes! Flaming liberal that I am, no doubt I shall prepare for further devious anti-American diversions as soon as I depart this critique . . .
The rest of us need to understand what irresponsible frauds they are —
Ooooh! Dr. Sowell! Now I and my ilk are "fraud[s]" too? Why the necessity to name-call? Is no dissent whatsoever allowed on this point?
and how the stakes are too high to let the 4th estate succeed as a 5th column undermining the society on which our children and grandchildren's security will depend.
Fine, emotional-type, purely polemical, non sequitur ending; this piece went from bad to worse to almost a self-parody by the end . . .
But on this one he is simply wrong, and exhibits many of the same non-Catholic and ethically tenuous tendencies that I have been critiquing. I don't know what his religious persuasion is. Whatever it is (probably not Catholic, I would guess), he is not arguing like a Catholic in this instance. My interjections will be in green; otherwise, all words are his:
"Trashing our history; Hiroshima"
August 9, 2005
Every August, there are some Americans who insist on wringing their hands over the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945,
I'm sure there are; as one of the persons I cited in my original paper noted: the guilt does not devolve upon Americans today, as we did not make the decision; therefore we can simply analyze it without the liberal-type guilt complexes and melodramatic displays of ersatz "compassion." This is a real, super-serious issue that must not be besmirched by liberal nonsense. If, on the other hand, it so happens that liberals, for whatever reason, are more likely to have the correct opinion on the matter than conservatives, then so be it. Truth is truth. I follow it wherever it leads, no matter what is fashionable among the circles I happen to move in (one of which happens to be American political conservatism of a certain stripe. I'm not "wringing my hands"; I am dealing with the relevant ethical issues at hand.
so it was perhaps inevitable that such people would have an orgy of wallowing in guilt on the 60th anniversary of that tragic day.
Again, many will do so. What I, on the other hand, am doing (cool as a cucumber over here) is simply pointing out that my country was wrong when it did this: terribly wrong, and that it cannot be justified by Catholic ethical principle and moral theology; nor by just war criteria that were once widely accepted in Western Civilization: in its Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, and secular manifestations alike. I don't personally feel any individual guilt at all. How could I? But there is a proper biblical sense of national shame and a need for "repentance" in terms of simply admitting we were wrong, rather than playing games about it and pretending that evil was justified because our enemy was acting in extraordinarily evil ways. I have often stated similarly about our abominable, wicked treatment and massacres of blacks and Indians (aka African-Americans and Native Americans). Those things constituted America's "original sin" (as many have noted); the bombings (and the abortion holocaust) are our present unrepented-of "national sins".
Time magazine has page after page of photographs of people scarred by the radiation, as if General Sherman had not already said long ago that war is hell.
It certainly is; that doesn't make it wrong or less newsworthy to point out evil acts within wars which may themselves be justified overall (as WWII certainly was). It is no more wrong to show these pictures than to show pictures of the victims of abortion (which I have done in public, to the great distress of pro-aborts passing by): both show innocent victims of objectively, intrinsically evil acts. Nevertheless, anticipating this objection, I will not post such pictures here. I want my argument to depend solely on its reasoning and factuality, not on the emotionalism (however justified) of photographs of the atrocities.
Winston Churchill once spoke of the secrets of the atom, "hitherto mercifully withheld from man." We can all lament that this terrible power of mass destruction has been revealed to the world and fear its ominous consequences for us all, including our children and grandchildren.
Good.
But that is wholly different from saying that a great moral evil was committed when the first atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
It is (and "high" Catholic statements on the subject are often of the former sort, for various reasons). For my part, I assert both things.
What was new about these bombs was the technology, not the morality. More people were killed with ordinary bombs in German cities or in Tokyo. Vastly more people were killed with ordinary bullets and cannon on the Russian front. Morality is about what you do to people, not the technology you use.
This illustrates exactly one thing I have repeatedly pointed out: even many of those who defend Hiroshima and Nagasaki will decry Dresden, or will admit that the former, or the air raids on Tokyo were just as devastating and troublesome as the nuclear bombs. But that's just the point, isn't it? If you condemn one, you must condemn them all (and if you accept one, you consistently must accept them all), as they are all equally immoral on the just war grounds that noncombatants must not be deliberately targeted by military strikes. The amazing thing is thast Sowell passes right over this crucial moral consideration. Rather than condemn all these attacks, he would rather simply point out that the earlier, non-nuclear ones were just as bad, and then casually adopt utilitarian ethical reasoning, rather than traditional Christian morality, in judging the atomic bombings. It never ceases to amaze me. It seems that utilitarianism, along with a secular libertarianism, has often infected conservative thought. I have long noted the latter, but I wasn't aware till now that the former had also made such inroads.
The guilt-mongers have twisted the facts of history beyond recognition in order to say that it was unnecessary to drop those atomic bombs.
Note the gratuitous equation of all who oppose these bombings with "the guilt-mongers" (not to mention twisters of history and dishonest revisionists). Nice ad-hominem rhetorical touch there. All who disagree with Sowell are guilt-ridden extremists . . .
Japan was going to lose the war anyway, they say.
And so did many many other high-ranking military figures, including MacArthur, Eisenhower, Nimitz, etc. say . . .
What they don't say is — at what price in American lives? Or even in Japanese lives?
Tthey do say that. But that doesn't justify doing evil!!! This is again purely utilitarian, "good ends justify evil means" reasoning.
Much of the self-righteous nonsense
Now Dr. Sowell can read the hearts of all who dissent from Americanist orthodoxy and determine that they are self-righteous? That's interesting . . .
that abounds on so many subjects cannot stand up to three questions: (1) Compared to what? (2) At what cost? and (3) What are the hard facts?
None of this treats the question of the morality of killing 200,000 civilians under the guise of a "military strike." It's an end run around it, ultimately ending in (ironically) considerable emotionalism (lamenting possible deaths rather than actual ones) and utilitarianism, just as revolting as that which it decries.
The alternative to the atomic bombs was an invasion of Japan, which was already being planned for 1946, and those plans included casualty estimates even more staggering than the deaths that have left a sea of crosses in American cemeteries at Normandy and elsewhere.
That's assuming it would have occurred. With several analyses predicting a probable Japanese surrender by the ened of 1945, and with the Russian declaration of war against Japan, this is not a slam-dunk certainty, fact-wise.
"Revisionist" historians
Is the use of quotations here a concession to fairness on Sowell's part?
have come up with casualty estimates a small fraction of what the American and British military leaders responsible for planning the invasion of Japan had come up with.
These things can be reasonably discussed as probabilities and projections, and good men can differ, but in the end, the morality of an act in Catholic thinking is not dependent on its results (which is pragmatism or utilitarianism or situation ethics), but rather, upon its intrinsic moral qualities and secondarily upon the intentions of the doer of the act.
Who are we to believe, those who had personally experienced the horrors of the war in the Pacific, and who had a lifetime of military experience, or leftist historians hot to find something else to blame America for?
I believe MacArthur, Eisenhower, and Nimitz, who "had a lifetime of military experience," and were not particualry "leftist" as far as I know. They all opposed it, and thought that surrender was soon to come.
During the island-hopping war in the Pacific, it was not uncommon for thousands of Japanese troops to fight to the death on an island, while the number captured were a few dozen. Even some Japanese soldiers too badly wounded to stand would lie where they fell until an American medical corpsman approached to treat their wounds — and then they would set off a grenade to kill them both.
I agree that this is horrible and that we need to understand this in order to understand American sentiment and action at the time. But it is no justifying rationale.
In the air the same spirit led the kamikaze pilots to deliberately crash their planes into American ships and bombers.
Indeed. We dropped bombs instead, from great heights, which killed 100,000 in one fell swoop. I dare say that that is more (objectively) evil than one kamikaze pilot, who was at least brave, if not moral in what he did.
Japan's plans for defense against invasion involved mobilizing the civilian population, including women and children, for the same suicidal battle tactics. That invasion could have been the greatest bloodbath in history.
I see. So we should avoid the horrible spectre and "bloodbath" of killing the women and children on the ground in such a scenario, by killing thousands of women and children from the air. Compelling reasoning, isn't it? Again, there is something wonderfully delusional about committing atrocities from the air without seeing them firsthand, versus doing them eye-to-eye and hand-to-hand. One is a lot less "messy" than the other, but no less immoral, I'm afraid.
No mass killing, especially of civilians, can leave any humane person happy.
Ah, good; so we can be unhappy about it, but alas, not enough to cease doing it. This smacks of the same "moral reasoning" used by pro-aborts, who inevitably appeal to the "unhappiness" and "tragedy" and "unpleasantness" of the choice they always want to make legal and in effect, moral.
But compared to what? Compared to killing many times more Japanese and seeing many times more American die?
Right back to utilitarianism . . .
We might have gotten a negotiated peace if we had dropped the "unconditional surrender" demand.
Good; a rare, refreshing concession to the "hand wringers" and "revisionists," etc.
But at what cost? Seeing a militaristic Japan arise again in a few years, this time armed with nuclear weapons that they would not have hesitated for one minute to drop on Americans.
Far afield from the present inquiry . . . Germany didn't develop nuclear weapons after the war, and they weren't nuked.
As it was, the unconditional surrender of Japan enabled General Douglas MacArthur to engineer one of the great historic transformations of a nation from militarism to pacifism, to the relief of hundreds of millions of their neighbors, who had suffered horribly at the hands of their Japanese conquerors.
It wasn't absolutely unconditional because they were allowed to retain their Emperor, to save face. This begs the question, anyway, by assuming that an "unconditional" surrender was necessary for these things to occur.
The facts may deprive the revisionists
What? no quotation marks now?!
of their platform for lashing out at America
Just like a drunken boxer "lashes" out against his opponent, without reason or scruple . . .? One must be anti-American to be against carpet bombing of civilians?
and for the ego trip of moral preening
Now the otherwise great scholar is reduced to psychobabble too! How the mighty have fallen. In condemning "self righteous . . . moral preening, he falls prey to exactly the same thing, far as I can tell, by patronizingly lecturing his opponents like a schoolmaster would his student underlings.
but, fear not, they will find or manufacture other occasions for that.
Oh yes! Flaming liberal that I am, no doubt I shall prepare for further devious anti-American diversions as soon as I depart this critique . . .
The rest of us need to understand what irresponsible frauds they are —
Ooooh! Dr. Sowell! Now I and my ilk are "fraud[s]" too? Why the necessity to name-call? Is no dissent whatsoever allowed on this point?
and how the stakes are too high to let the 4th estate succeed as a 5th column undermining the society on which our children and grandchildren's security will depend.
Fine, emotional-type, purely polemical, non sequitur ending; this piece went from bad to worse to almost a self-parody by the end . . .
The Nuclear Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Do They Meet Catholic Just War Standards of Morality? (Part IV)
Wikipedia: "Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki," is a great resource to further study this issue.
Some more important resources:
"Hiroshima: Was it Necessary?" (opposed to the bombings)
*****
NuclearFiles.org (opposed)
2005-08-27 01:33
*****
The latter includes a page on correspondence concerning the decision
Quotes:
In a private letter written just before he left the White House, Truman referred to the use of the atomic bomb as "murder," stating that the bomb "is far worse than gas and biological warfare because it affects the civilian population and murders them wholesale." Barton J. Bernstein, "Origins of the U.S. Biological Warfare Program," Preventing a Biological Arms Race, Susan Wright, ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990), p. 9.
- Footnote 97 on the following page -
*****
[The official Bombing Survey Report stated: "Hiroshima and Nagasaki were chosen as targets because of their concentration of activities and population." More than 95 percent of those killed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were civilians.]
- on August 9th entry of Chronology page
Another informative article:
"THE DECISION TO USE THE ATOMIC BOMB," Gar Alperovitz
Part I:
Part II:
Excerpts:
(B) A full-scale review of the modern literature concerning the central issues was published in DIPLOMATIC HISTORY in early 1990. Here is its conclusion:
"Careful scholarly treatment of the records and manuscripts opened over the past few years has greatly enhanced our understanding of why the Truman administration used atomic weapons against Japan. Experts continue to disagree on some issues, but critical questions have been answered. The consensus among scholars is that the bomb was not needed to avoid an invasion of Japan and to end the war within a relatively short time. IT IS CLEAR THAT ALTERNATIVES TO THE BOMB EXISTED AND THAT TRUMAN AND HIS ADVISERS KNEW IT." [Emphasis added; DIPLOMATIC HISTORY, Vol. 14, No. 1, p. 110.]
The writer is not a revisionist; he is J. Samuel Walker, Chief Historian of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Again, one may challenge Walker's reading of the literature as of that date, but the notion that to argue the bomb was not needed and that this was understood at the time is somehow outrageous—as some of the postings angrily suggest—is simply not in keeping with the conclusions of many, many studies.
*****
* Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet, in a public address at the Washington Monument two months after the bombings stated:
The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace before the atomic age was announced to the world with the destruction of Hiroshima and before the Russian entry into the war. . . .The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military standpoint, in the defeat of Japan. . . . [THE DECISION, p. 329; see additionally THE NEW YORK TIMES, October 6, 1945.]
* Admiral William F. Halsey, Jr., Commander U.S. Third Fleet, stated publicly in 1946:
The first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment. . . . It was a mistake to ever drop it. . . . [the scientists] had this toy and they wanted to try it out, so they dropped it. . . . It killed a lot of Japs, but the Japs had put out a lot of peace feelers through Russia long before. [THE DECISION, p. 331.]
* In his "third person" autobiography (co-authored with Walter Muir Whitehill) the commander in chief of the U.S. Fleet and chief of Naval Operations, Ernest J. King, stated:
The President in giving his approval for these [atomic] attacks appeared to believe that many thousands of American troops would be killed in invading Japan, and in this he was entirely correct; but King felt, as he had pointed out many times, that the dilemma was an unnecessary one, for had we been willing to wait, the effective naval blockade would, in the course of time, have starved the Japanese into submission through lack of oil, rice, medicines, and other essential materials. [THE DECISION, p. 327.]
* Private interview notes taken by Walter Whitehill summarize King's feelings quite simply as: "I didn't like the atom bomb or any part of it." [THE DECISION, p. 329; see also pp. 327-329. See below for more on King's view.]
* In a 1985 letter recalling the views of Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall, former Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy elaborated on an incident that was
very vivid in my mind. . . . I can recall as if it were yesterday, [Marshall's] insistence to me that whether we should drop an atomic bomb on Japan was a matter for the President to decide, not the Chief of Staff since it was not a military question . . . the question of whether we should drop this new bomb on Japan, in his judgment, involved such imponderable considerations as to remove it from the field of a military decision. [THE DECISION, p. 364.]
* In a separate memorandum written the same year McCloy recalled: "General Marshall was right when he said you must not ask me to declare that a surprise nuclear attack on Japan is a military necessity. It is not a military problem." [THE DECISION, p. 364.]
*****
GAR ALPEROVITZ AND THE H-NET DEBATE
2005-08-27 01:47
Founder of Christendom College and renowned orthodox Catholic historian Warren Carroll can be added to the list of those who oppose the nuclear bombings in Japan:
Cardinal James Francis Stafford casually assumed that these bombings were indiscriminate, and hardly examples of a legitimate "double effect" morality:
One who truly loves their country will criticize it when it is wrong, as well as extoll it when it is right and just. That's what the prophet Jeremiah did in ancient Israel, and I daresay that no one loved his own country or suffered more for the sake of it than that holy man did.
The Pope Paul VI quote: "'butchery of untold magnitude," is from a Day of Peace Statement of 1 January 1976 (actually written on 18 October 1975), entitled "The Real Weapons of Peace." Here is the quotation in context (the entire paragraph):
I have condemned the bombing of Dresden, too, in my comments, and also the firebombings of Tokyo. None of these things can be justified, and in 1937 all of the Allies would have thought such acts unthinkable and immoral. They were right then, but the horrors and stresses of war made them get down into the gutter with evil enemies. That's unfortunate because WWII was a just cause to fight if ever there was one in history. We were dealing with spectacularly evil, genocidal, maniacal opponents bent on world conquest and the destruction of civilization and national sovereignty.
Matthew (words in purple) asked some questions:
The question though is were they were intended to be killed or an unfortunate side effect? It doesn't mean the people who dropped the bomb didn't know civilians would be killed but whether they intended it. That would still be the question.
I don't see how they could NOT know it. I think that to even ask the question itself is absurd. They knew what the bomb was capable of, and they deliberately dropped it on the center of the cities. So if they didn't "intend" this; then it is awful hard to figure out what they did intend. It's as if we think they had no idea what would happen. Since that makes no sense, we must conclude that they intended such a result.
The other thing I can think off is an invasion would have killed a lot of civilians as well just one by one. So we would have to condemn that as well. End result - we don't fight Japan cause it's just so darn hard to avoid killing the innocent. But then we can't defeat them :-(.
This is a whole other discussion, but if we had invaded, and the Japanese had starved themselves or committed mass suicides or something (while we were fighting the armies and soldiers), then at least that would not be our direct causation or will, whereas the bomb leaves no doubt whatsoever as to result and causation. We willed it; we did it, as the agents; we are responsible. But if they wanted to be crazy and starve themselves or whatever, we can't be blamed for that, anymore than we can be blamed for suicide bombers in Iraq, who might do what they do (in their own crazed minds) because of "us." They made the immoral choice. We aren't culpable for that choice. We're trying to fight terrorists precisely because they are evil and murder innocent bystanders. Yet we turn around and rationalize that our killing of 200,000 civilians is somehow "moral." It's moral insanity and special pleading.
This has nothing to do with whether it was moral or not but I thought I would mention that the Nagasakians accepted it as a holocaust that they had to pay for what their nation had done.
That would be a normal human reaction, after having come to one's senses, but it has no relation to whether the action was morally right or not.
What do you think of this idea of what they SHOULD have done Dave? What they should have done is blown the top off Mt Fuji to demonstrate the power of the bomb. And then landed one in a similar place to cow them into complete submission. A kind off "if you don't well drop more of them and this time right on top of you …" Something they knew they wouldn't do (and would not be able to do having run out of bombs).
Something along those lines would have been morally neutral. It certainly could have been tried. But we went right to mass murder because we had gotten very used to it and comfortable with it by then.
Can I quickly bring up something else? Do you think that the first Gulf War was a just war? I do. In fact is one the most blatantly just of all time.
Absolutely. The causes were just and the promulgation was, because of smart bombs, etc.
Here we have an evil nation with an unbending dictator attacking a smaller innocent nation that can't defend itself. So clearly we have a case of self defence (albeit by proxy in this case which was necessary as Kuwait couldn't defend itself). Seeing authorities have often been cited in this whole discussion (and that is legitimate) could I ask why JPII opposed this war? I've never worked that one out. I think he was wrong (sorry - couldn't think of a pc way to put it). Do you want Kuwait ruled by an evil dictator? Would you have been able to "convince" Saddam Hussein back in 1991 to kindly move off please without military intervention?
This gets very complex, but essentially, the popes feel themselves to be figures of peace, so they routinely condemn wars, because they are striving for the ideal world situation. They talk about the need for peace among nations. Often, this is done in a very general way, so as not to condemn particulars, which is why I had to look hard for a citation from Pope John Paul II which specifically condemned the bombings in Japan as immoral actions. Popes know that the ultimate authority for declaring war (or capital punishment) rests on nations, as God gives them that right (in Romans 13). But someone needs to talk about the ideal of world peace. Likewise, Jesus didn't engage in military actions, because it wasn't His purpose, but He did not forbid the same.
Now, if JPII was very specific in his condemnation of the Gulf War as immoral, I would have to look more closely to see the grounds, and that would be an interesting discussion itself.
* * *
See this page for a chilling, fact-filled scientific-type sumary of what the bombings in Japan actually caused to happen to people and things:
Pope John Paul II condemned the bombings, and strongly implied by comparison that they were genocidal, as shown in Catholic World Report, Nov. 1999 (vol. 9, No. 10): "World Watch"
But in a nuclear strike, all the noncombatants have no choice: they are incinerated or irradiated, and this is an evil act. PERIOD. Why is this so difficult for some to grasp? It was wrong for the Germans to bomb London, and so it was wrong for us to bomb Dresden, Tokyo, and Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And that is because these are intrinsically immoral acts, regardless of the circumstances they occur in.
Two-year-old girls and senile old men and the mentally ill or terminally ill are part of the military?
**********
Some more important resources:
"Hiroshima: Was it Necessary?" (opposed to the bombings)
*****
NuclearFiles.org (opposed)
2005-08-27 01:33
*****
The latter includes a page on correspondence concerning the decision
Quotes:
In a private letter written just before he left the White House, Truman referred to the use of the atomic bomb as "murder," stating that the bomb "is far worse than gas and biological warfare because it affects the civilian population and murders them wholesale." Barton J. Bernstein, "Origins of the U.S. Biological Warfare Program," Preventing a Biological Arms Race, Susan Wright, ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990), p. 9.
- Footnote 97 on the following page -
*****
[The official Bombing Survey Report stated: "Hiroshima and Nagasaki were chosen as targets because of their concentration of activities and population." More than 95 percent of those killed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were civilians.]
- on August 9th entry of Chronology page
Another informative article:
"THE DECISION TO USE THE ATOMIC BOMB," Gar Alperovitz
Part I:
Part II:
Excerpts:
(B) A full-scale review of the modern literature concerning the central issues was published in DIPLOMATIC HISTORY in early 1990. Here is its conclusion:
"Careful scholarly treatment of the records and manuscripts opened over the past few years has greatly enhanced our understanding of why the Truman administration used atomic weapons against Japan. Experts continue to disagree on some issues, but critical questions have been answered. The consensus among scholars is that the bomb was not needed to avoid an invasion of Japan and to end the war within a relatively short time. IT IS CLEAR THAT ALTERNATIVES TO THE BOMB EXISTED AND THAT TRUMAN AND HIS ADVISERS KNEW IT." [Emphasis added; DIPLOMATIC HISTORY, Vol. 14, No. 1, p. 110.]
The writer is not a revisionist; he is J. Samuel Walker, Chief Historian of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Again, one may challenge Walker's reading of the literature as of that date, but the notion that to argue the bomb was not needed and that this was understood at the time is somehow outrageous—as some of the postings angrily suggest—is simply not in keeping with the conclusions of many, many studies.
*****
* Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet, in a public address at the Washington Monument two months after the bombings stated:
The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace before the atomic age was announced to the world with the destruction of Hiroshima and before the Russian entry into the war. . . .The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military standpoint, in the defeat of Japan. . . . [THE DECISION, p. 329; see additionally THE NEW YORK TIMES, October 6, 1945.]
* Admiral William F. Halsey, Jr., Commander U.S. Third Fleet, stated publicly in 1946:
The first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment. . . . It was a mistake to ever drop it. . . . [the scientists] had this toy and they wanted to try it out, so they dropped it. . . . It killed a lot of Japs, but the Japs had put out a lot of peace feelers through Russia long before. [THE DECISION, p. 331.]
* In his "third person" autobiography (co-authored with Walter Muir Whitehill) the commander in chief of the U.S. Fleet and chief of Naval Operations, Ernest J. King, stated:
The President in giving his approval for these [atomic] attacks appeared to believe that many thousands of American troops would be killed in invading Japan, and in this he was entirely correct; but King felt, as he had pointed out many times, that the dilemma was an unnecessary one, for had we been willing to wait, the effective naval blockade would, in the course of time, have starved the Japanese into submission through lack of oil, rice, medicines, and other essential materials. [THE DECISION, p. 327.]
* Private interview notes taken by Walter Whitehill summarize King's feelings quite simply as: "I didn't like the atom bomb or any part of it." [THE DECISION, p. 329; see also pp. 327-329. See below for more on King's view.]
* In a 1985 letter recalling the views of Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall, former Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy elaborated on an incident that was
very vivid in my mind. . . . I can recall as if it were yesterday, [Marshall's] insistence to me that whether we should drop an atomic bomb on Japan was a matter for the President to decide, not the Chief of Staff since it was not a military question . . . the question of whether we should drop this new bomb on Japan, in his judgment, involved such imponderable considerations as to remove it from the field of a military decision. [THE DECISION, p. 364.]
* In a separate memorandum written the same year McCloy recalled: "General Marshall was right when he said you must not ask me to declare that a surprise nuclear attack on Japan is a military necessity. It is not a military problem." [THE DECISION, p. 364.]
*****
GAR ALPEROVITZ AND THE H-NET DEBATE
2005-08-27 01:47
Founder of Christendom College and renowned orthodox Catholic historian Warren Carroll can be added to the list of those who oppose the nuclear bombings in Japan:
I believe the demand for unconditional surrender was wrong; it made it much*****
more difficult to end the war. And unlike most conservatives, I don't agree with
the use of the atom bomb against Hiroshima and Nagasaki. You don't use a weapon
in a way that you know is going to kill primarily women and children. It's a basic principle of moral philosophy that the end does not justify the means. So you just don't do it. We carried it too far.
(in "Battling by the Book: Just War Makes a Comeback," Joe Woodard, National Catholic Register, 10-27-01)
Cardinal James Francis Stafford casually assumed that these bombings were indiscriminate, and hardly examples of a legitimate "double effect" morality:
I think there is an evolution in light not only of John Paul II but Benedict XV, his 1917 proposal for the peace plan, which was rejected by the Allies, and in John XXIII in 1963 against the backdrop of the total warfare that was seen in Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Dresden … that is the wholesale disregard for the civilian populations.The editorial, "After Hiroshima," in National Catholic Register, August 21- 27, 2005, noted that Pope Paul VI "called America’s use of the atomic bomb 'butchery of untold magnitude.' ” It also cites Archbishop Fulton Sheen:
("Cardinal Stafford on War and the Church's Thinking," Delia Gallagher, Zenit, 5-22-04)
[I]n his series of talks titled What Now America? [Sheen] said that, by our tacitSometimes there is a troubling tendency in American politically conservative circles to be more "American" than "Catholic." This I vigorously oppose. My view isn't, "America Right or Wrong," but rather, "When America is Wrong [by higher, transcendent Catholic standards] It's Wrong [and not above criticism for fear of silly accusations of a lack of patriotism]."
refusal to recognize the evil of the atomic bomb, Americans became susceptible
to a new notion of freedom — one divorced from morality.
'When, I wonder, did we in America ever get into this idea that freedom means having no boundaries and no limits?' he asked. 'I think it began on the 6th of August 1945 at 8:15 am when we dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. … Somehow or other, from that day on in our American life, we say we want no limits and no boundaries.'
One who truly loves their country will criticize it when it is wrong, as well as extoll it when it is right and just. That's what the prophet Jeremiah did in ancient Israel, and I daresay that no one loved his own country or suffered more for the sake of it than that holy man did.
The Pope Paul VI quote: "'butchery of untold magnitude," is from a Day of Peace Statement of 1 January 1976 (actually written on 18 October 1975), entitled "The Real Weapons of Peace." Here is the quotation in context (the entire paragraph):
It is no longer a simple, ingenuous and dangerous utopia. It is the new Law of
mankind which goes forward, and which arms Peace with a formidable principle:
'You are all brethren' (Mt 23:8). If the consciousness of universal brotherhood
truly penetrates into the hearts of men, will they still need to arm themselves
to the point of becoming blind and fanatic killers of their brethren who in
themselves are innocent, and of perpetrating, as a contribution to Peace,
butchery of untold magnitude, as at Hiroshima on 6 August 1945? And in fact has
not our own time had an example of what can be done by a weak man, Gandhi -
armed only with the principle of non-violence - to vindicate for a Nation of
hundreds of millions of human beings the freedom and dignity of a new People?"
It's valid to make such tactical and strategic military calculations. What is not valid, however, is to commit intrinsically immoral acts in order to achieve a good outcome. One can't do something evil in order to accomplish ultimate good. This is central to Catholic moral theology.
Yet the mentality of many seems to be, "well yeah, it can't be justified by just war criteria, but it was a difficult situation, and many lives were saved . . . " [etc., etc., etc.]. So they use that as their basis for condoning what otherwise might be frowned upon even by the same people who advocate doing the immoral act for a good purpose. But unfortunately, that is (I submit) either purely utilitarianism, pragmatism, and situation ethics (which are not Catholic philosophies but Enlightenment and pagan and secular ones), or at least adversely influenced by those outlooks.
I think one ought to take the position of George Weigel, a leading Catholic ethicist and writer on war and peace issues (also biographer of Pope JPII): that it can't be justified, but nevertheless can be compassionately understood in the context of the extremely difficult situation. I agree with him on this, and also with his position that the Iraqi War is just and that pre-emption is a legitimate development of classic just war theory.
*****
Here's another good source: "Atromic Bomb Decision: Documents on the Decision to use Atomic Bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki"
Among the documents is Official Bombing Order of July 25, 1945,"drafted by General Groves. President Truman and Secretary of War Stimson approved the order at Potsdam.
"The order made no mention of targeting military objectives or sparing civilians. The cities themselves were the targets. The order was also open-ended. 'Additional bombs' could be dropped 'as soon as made ready by the project staff.' "
2005-08-27 05:30
Dorothy Day's position on this issue is quite predictable, but perhaps not John Courtney Murray's (note how he favored nuclear use in Korea)?:
By most estimates, Murray was a moderate, a Rockefeller Republican who hungMore from Catholic apologist Jimmy Akin:
around with Henry and Clare Booth Luce. Day, the radical, associated with, even
lived with, the poorest of our poor in Catholic Worker houses. In the early 1940s, Day nearly buried the Worker movement with her insistence that Christianity demanded non-violence in the face of Hitler’s atrocities, while Murray was arguing, from papal sources, that no Catholic could be a pacifist. Both characterized the bombing of Dresden, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, in Murray’s terms, as "atrocities," as "savage … paroxysms of violence." In the early 1950s, though, Day was jailed for actively demonstrating against nuclear bomb shelter drills, while Murray was arguing that we should use strategic nuclear weapons along the Chinese/Korean border. And in the mid-1950s, in his defense of a moral core at the heart of America, Murray argued from the premise that, in principle, we had solved the problem of poverty. With the Catholic Worker, Day was letting us know what our economy was doing to the poor, to blacks, and to farm-workers.
(emphasis added)
IgnatiusInsight.com: What are the five non-negotiables? How were they selected?
Akin: The [Catholic Answers Voter's] guide identifies five issues on which Church teaching has been adamant: No Catholic can in principle support abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, human cloning, or homosexual "marriage." These issues were selected because there are currently under discussion in American politics and there are clear Magisterial statements indicating that Catholics can never support these issues.
IgnatiusInsight.com: Are these the only such issues?
Akin: Those are the issues in American politics in our day that the Holy See has indicated are non-negotiable. Had the guide been written in a different age, when
different issues were under discussion or different Magisterial statements were
available, a different set of non-negotiables would emerge. For example, if U.S. leaders were presently advocating the targeting of innocent civilians—as happened at places like Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Dresden—then the guide would cover the fact that you can never deliberately target civilians and must seek to minimize civilian casualties. But government leaders today aren't advocating the targeting of civilians.
IgnatiusInsight.com: What if there is no candidate who is "right" on all the issues?
Akin: The guide covers this. It points out that there are situations where one must seek to limit the damage done to society by voting for "the lesser of two evils" when there is no perfect candidate.
IgnatiusInsight.com: You're a Catholic apologist and the author of articles and books on apologetics. Catholic Answers is an apologetics apostolate. How would you respond to claims that publishing a Voter's Guide is outside the purview of your organization's mission?
Akin: I would say someone making such a claim does not understand what Catholic apologetics is: It is the defense of Catholic teaching and practice. To make a defense of these, you have to explain clearly what they are. I can't defend the doctrine of the Trinity against Mormon misrepresentation if I don't clearly articulate the doctrine of the Trinity. Today Catholic moral teaching has come under attack, both by individuals outside the Church and even by some within it, who want to confuse and mislead Catholics about what their faith requires. It is my job as an apologist to defend the Church's teaching, including its moral teachings regarding political involvement, by clearly articulating what those teachings are and by answering challenges to them.
(emphasis added)
Amen, Jimmy!
Ronald Knox:
After the two cities were destroyed, Knox was about to propose a public declaration that the weapon would not be used again, when he heard the news of
the Japanese surrender. Instead he sat down and wrote God and the Atom, an
astonishing book, neglected at the time and since, but as important for sceptics
as for Christians.
An outrage had been committed in human and divine terms, Knox thought. Hiroshima was an assault on faith, because the splitting of the atom itself meant "an indeterminate element in the heart of things"; on hope, because "the possibilities of evil are increased by an increase in the possibilities of destruction"; and on charity, because - this answers those who still defend the bombing of Hiroshima - "men fighting for a good case have taken, at one particular moment of decision, the easier, not the nobler path".
*****
Evelyn Waugh:
. . . as Evelyn Waugh put it when writing about Knox's book in 1948: "To the
practical warrior the atom bomb presented no particular moral or spiritual problem. We were engaged in destroying the enemy, civilians and combatants alike. We always assumed that destruction was roughly proportionate to the labour and material expended. Whether it was more convenient to destroy a city with one bomb or a hundred thousand depended on the relative costs of production."
C.S. Lewis:
The victory of vivisection marks a great advance in the triumph of ruthless, non-moral utilitarianism over the old world of ethical law; a triumph in which we, as well as animals, are already the victims, and of which Dachau and Hiroshima mark the more recent achievements…
('Vivisection', God in the Dock, ed. Walter Hooper, Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1970, pp. 224,225,228)
The inimitable Catholic conservative (and lately, "traditionalist") Joseph Sobran (whom I once met, and who came from my native Michigan) weighs in also:
I think that one can't kill civilians. You can carry out a war if it is against combatants. Then you are allowed to kill, and kill many if needs be. But when it comes to deliberately killing non-combatants then it is in clear violation of Catholic just war teaching, whether this "saves lives" in the long run or not. And that is why I cannot sanction what we did.Actually, the situation seems simple enough to me: mass murder is not an option. A few years earlier, Japanese mass murder in China, including the aerial bombing of cities, had revolted the civilized world and fed the calls for U.S. intervention. But soon the Allies themselves were bombing German and Japanese cities with a deliberate cruelty far surpassing Axis bombing. It was part of the strategy of demanding unconditional surrender - and it didn't "work."
But even if it had worked, it was a complete violation of all principles of civilized warfare. And the development of the atomic bomb was only a cold-blooded
extension of this monstrous policy. The whole idea of rules of warfare is to rule out certain atrocities, whether or not they achieve their goals. If they didn't sometimes "work," it wouldn't be necessary to ban them.The rule against attacking civilians means that it is forbidden even if it's the only way to win a war. Why is this so hard to grasp? At any rate, the United States had long
since won the war by August 1945, even without a formal Japanese admission of defeat. Pearl Harbor had been avenged many times over; it couldn't be repeated.
The Japanese had lost their conquests in Asia and the United States ruled the South Pacific. They no longer posed any threat to the United States.
All that remained was a total U.S. conquest of the Japanese mainland itself. This was a long step beyond conventional military victory, but it was the way the U.S. Government had chosen to define victory in this war. The war would not be considered "won" until the enemy surrendered without conditions, throwing itself entirely on the mercy of the victors. Its reluctance to do this was quite understandable, given the devastation of its cities already. But the United States would settle for nothing short of enslaving Japan, no matter what the cost to
both sides. Such mercy as it did show after the war must have come as a
pleasant surprise to the Japanese.All this casts a strange light on recent American talk of "moral clarity." World War II is still called "the good war," one in which good and evil were clearly defined. But the
continuing debate about whether mass murder was warranted for the sake of
total conquest, as distinct from mere victory and defense, shows that Americans are still far from achieving moral clarity about themselves.
SOBRAN'S — The Real News of the Month
September 2003
Volume 10, Number 9
I have condemned the bombing of Dresden, too, in my comments, and also the firebombings of Tokyo. None of these things can be justified, and in 1937 all of the Allies would have thought such acts unthinkable and immoral. They were right then, but the horrors and stresses of war made them get down into the gutter with evil enemies. That's unfortunate because WWII was a just cause to fight if ever there was one in history. We were dealing with spectacularly evil, genocidal, maniacal opponents bent on world conquest and the destruction of civilization and national sovereignty.
Matthew (words in purple) asked some questions:
The question though is were they were intended to be killed or an unfortunate side effect? It doesn't mean the people who dropped the bomb didn't know civilians would be killed but whether they intended it. That would still be the question.
I don't see how they could NOT know it. I think that to even ask the question itself is absurd. They knew what the bomb was capable of, and they deliberately dropped it on the center of the cities. So if they didn't "intend" this; then it is awful hard to figure out what they did intend. It's as if we think they had no idea what would happen. Since that makes no sense, we must conclude that they intended such a result.
The other thing I can think off is an invasion would have killed a lot of civilians as well just one by one. So we would have to condemn that as well. End result - we don't fight Japan cause it's just so darn hard to avoid killing the innocent. But then we can't defeat them :-(.
This is a whole other discussion, but if we had invaded, and the Japanese had starved themselves or committed mass suicides or something (while we were fighting the armies and soldiers), then at least that would not be our direct causation or will, whereas the bomb leaves no doubt whatsoever as to result and causation. We willed it; we did it, as the agents; we are responsible. But if they wanted to be crazy and starve themselves or whatever, we can't be blamed for that, anymore than we can be blamed for suicide bombers in Iraq, who might do what they do (in their own crazed minds) because of "us." They made the immoral choice. We aren't culpable for that choice. We're trying to fight terrorists precisely because they are evil and murder innocent bystanders. Yet we turn around and rationalize that our killing of 200,000 civilians is somehow "moral." It's moral insanity and special pleading.
This has nothing to do with whether it was moral or not but I thought I would mention that the Nagasakians accepted it as a holocaust that they had to pay for what their nation had done.
That would be a normal human reaction, after having come to one's senses, but it has no relation to whether the action was morally right or not.
What do you think of this idea of what they SHOULD have done Dave? What they should have done is blown the top off Mt Fuji to demonstrate the power of the bomb. And then landed one in a similar place to cow them into complete submission. A kind off "if you don't well drop more of them and this time right on top of you …" Something they knew they wouldn't do (and would not be able to do having run out of bombs).
Something along those lines would have been morally neutral. It certainly could have been tried. But we went right to mass murder because we had gotten very used to it and comfortable with it by then.
Can I quickly bring up something else? Do you think that the first Gulf War was a just war? I do. In fact is one the most blatantly just of all time.
Absolutely. The causes were just and the promulgation was, because of smart bombs, etc.
Here we have an evil nation with an unbending dictator attacking a smaller innocent nation that can't defend itself. So clearly we have a case of self defence (albeit by proxy in this case which was necessary as Kuwait couldn't defend itself). Seeing authorities have often been cited in this whole discussion (and that is legitimate) could I ask why JPII opposed this war? I've never worked that one out. I think he was wrong (sorry - couldn't think of a pc way to put it). Do you want Kuwait ruled by an evil dictator? Would you have been able to "convince" Saddam Hussein back in 1991 to kindly move off please without military intervention?
This gets very complex, but essentially, the popes feel themselves to be figures of peace, so they routinely condemn wars, because they are striving for the ideal world situation. They talk about the need for peace among nations. Often, this is done in a very general way, so as not to condemn particulars, which is why I had to look hard for a citation from Pope John Paul II which specifically condemned the bombings in Japan as immoral actions. Popes know that the ultimate authority for declaring war (or capital punishment) rests on nations, as God gives them that right (in Romans 13). But someone needs to talk about the ideal of world peace. Likewise, Jesus didn't engage in military actions, because it wasn't His purpose, but He did not forbid the same.
Now, if JPII was very specific in his condemnation of the Gulf War as immoral, I would have to look more closely to see the grounds, and that would be an interesting discussion itself.
* * *
See this page for a chilling, fact-filled scientific-type sumary of what the bombings in Japan actually caused to happen to people and things:
Pope John Paul II condemned the bombings, and strongly implied by comparison that they were genocidal, as shown in Catholic World Report, Nov. 1999 (vol. 9, No. 10): "World Watch"
JAPANFr. Michael Scanlan (formerly head of the Franciscan University of Steubenville) has written (emphasis added):
Lessons of Hiroshima, Nagasaki Pope sees "crimes" in atomic bombing
As he greeted a new ambassador from Japan, Pope John Paul II said that Hiroshima and Nagasaki should stand as "symbols of peace" and should remind the world of "the crimes committed against civilian populations during World War II."
Receiving the new ambassador, Toru Iwanami, on September 11, the Pontiff lamented that "true genocides" are "still being committed in several parts of the world" today. He expressed his regret that the “culture of peace is still far from being spread throughout the world.”
The Pope also invoked the 450th anniversary of the arrival of St. Francis Xavier in
Japan, which is being celebrated this year. He said that the life of St. Francis should point to "the importance of spiritual freedom and religious liberty," and he saluted "the attitude of tolerance" toward religion which now prevails in Japan.
In addition to dealing with the internal reality of sin and the need for conversion, the call to be penitents enables one to deal effectively with the sin in the world around us. Men and women frequently experience depression when they allow themselves to experience the sinful atrocities of the contemporary world. Whether it be the ovens of Auschwitz and Dachau, the charred bodies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the ravages of saturation bombing, the starvation of Bangladesh and Calcutta, the destruction of family life and morals, the prevalence of abortion and pornography, the teenage drug addicts and alcoholics, the crime waves, the imminence of a nuclear holocaust, the practical atheism of pagans and nominal Christian peoples, or the individual tragedies that touch all our lives, the sin around us is real and must be faced. Who does not experience powerlessness in the face of all this?
If the "evidence" that civilians were not targeted is so good, then why did Truman himself call the act (he is the guy who decided to drop the bombs, after all) "murder" (and I had already previously posted this)?
*****
In a private letter written just before he left the White House, Truman referred to the use of the atomic bomb as "murder," stating that the bomb "is far worse than gas and biological warfare because it affects the civilian population and murders them wholesale." Barton J. Bernstein, "Origins of the U.S. Biological Warfare Program," Preventing a Biological Arms Race, Susan Wright, ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990), p. 9.
- Footnote 97 on the following page
*****
[The official Bombing Survey Report stated: "Hiroshima and Nagasaki were chosen as targets because of their concentration of activities and population." More than 95 percent of those killed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were civilians.]
- on August 9th entry of Chronology page -
Thus the bombings clearly violate the Catholic prohibition of indiscriminate bombing of large areas, and populated areas, which is expressed at Vatican II and in the CCC (which are magisterial).
We should simply have conducted ourselves in WWII according to the just war rules and generally accepted norms of combat situations. We opted to lower ourselves to the unethical level of our enemies because the road to victory was easier that way. But that doesn't make it moral. If we avoid deliberately killing civilians, apply proportionality and double effect, etc., we can conduct a just war without any necessity of pacifism, which is required neither by Catholicism, Christianity in general, nor the Bible.
We would have still had a practical problem of how to defeat such a fanatical army through moral means, but neither a logical nor a moral problem.
I ran across another interesting and germane article:
Bomb Shelter: The enduring morality of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the end of World War II, by Duncan Currie
. . . WHETHER OR NOT Hiroshima and Nagasaki were legitimate military targets - and there's a raft of evidence suggesting they were - U.S. policymakers clearly knew the bombing would produce tens of thousands of civilian fatalities. In that sense, and for argument's sake, let's concede that the bombing represented a deliberate massacre of Japanese civilians. How does that affect its morality, if at all?
A great deal, argues Ramesh Ponnuru ["NR Senior Editor"] of National Review, himself an eloquent critic of Truman's decision to nuke Japan. "The conservative error," Ponnuru writes, "is to assume that the intentional killing of civilians is justified in order to avert a greater number of deaths." It would be a most unfortunate "change," he adds, "if we were to intentionally target civilians whenever we thought that doing so would hold our military casualties down (or even hold the total number of civilian and military casualties down)."
*****
To continue citing this article:
. . . it is not necessary to make a definitive judgment that Truman made the wrong choice in order to be troubled by the justifications that have been made for that choice - and to wonder about their implications for the war on terrorism. (Most of those justifications stipulate that neither Hiroshima nor Nagasaki were conventional military targets: that the point was to break Japan's will by showing how much we could destroy. And they do not treat our warning leaflets as strong evidence that the civilian deaths were unintended. I will make these assumptions my own, both because the balance of evidence suggests that they are true and because I am trying to analyze the arguments proffered for intentionally killing civilians.)
. . . the question would remain whether this type of military practice is (and was) justified. To the extent that the intentional killing of civilians had become a routine military technique - and Churchill's qualms about it are among the reasons for refusing to endorse that view completely - that might mitigate Truman's culpability for making the wrong choice (if it was the wrong choice). But it would not yield the conclusion that his choice was right. We might well conclude that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were part of a class of immoral, though understandable, acts committed by the good guys during World War II.
Some commentators . . . have cited atrocities committed by the Japanese by way of justifying the bombings. But that can't be right, at least as the point is generally made. The war crimes of Japanese soldiers are not a good reason to kill a child in Nagasaki. The barbarism of an enemy is an added reason to stop him, but whether any means of stopping him are acceptable is precisely what is at issue.
. . . To proponents of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the opposition looks absurdly unrealistic. For them, it has a whiff of pacifism about it. But even though most Americans would, if asked, say that they think it was right to drop the atomic bombs, it is not obvious that the proponents' arguments really do track well with our ordinary moral intuitions about war. (I am not implying here, by the way, that our moral intuitions are always justified.) At least, they do not track with our normal military practices.
. . . National Review has had shifting views on the morality of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: sympathetic to the moral objections in the late 1950s, glibly dismissive of them in the late 1980s.
Craig M. Kind writes ("Hiroshima as military target"):
It is true that there was a Japanese army base on the outskirts of Hiroshima—it was a major staging area for the invasion and occupation of Southeast Asia. But historians have questioned the claim that the existence of the military base made Hiroshima a "military target." The only text I have on the bombing handy is Lifton and Mitchell, Hiroshima in America: Fifty Years of Denial - not the most objective source - but the two most prominent historians who have written on the development and use of atomic weapons, Richard Rhoades and Gar Alperovitz, agree on many of the basic facts.
On the military nature of the bombing: It is doubtful that the bomb dropped on Hiroshima was intended for any of the military bases. The bomb was dropped in the center of the city, miles from either the army or navy base. Given that the destructive capability of the bomb was not fully known, it is doubtful that the air force would have targeted the center of town if the bases were the intended targets. But few historians have ever argued that the bombing of Hiroshima was intended as a strategic, tactical strike on a particular target.
. . . Hiroshima was almost untouched during the war, primarily because of its limited military significance but also because of its religious and cultural significance. Bombing the city, it was thought, would send the message that no city would be safe if the Japanese forced the Americans to continue the fight.
* * *
The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Description of the Cities Before the Bombings
. . . Of a city area of over 26 square miles, only 7 square miles were completely built-up. There was no marked separation of commercial, industrial, and residential zones. 75% of the population was concentrated in the densely built-up area in the center of the city.
Hiroshima was a city of considerable military importance. It contained the 2nd Army Headquarters, which commanded the defense of all of southern Japan. The city was a communications center, a storage point, and an assembly area for troops.
. . . The center of the city contained a number of reinforced concrete buildings as well as lighter structures. Outside the center, the area was congested by a dense collection of small wooden workshops set among Japanese houses; a few larger industrial plants lay near the outskirts of the city. The houses were of wooden construction with tile roofs. Many of the industrial buildings also were of wood frame construction. The city as a whole was highly susceptible to fire damage.
. . . At the time of the attack the population was approximately 255,000 . . . [75% of that - population in the center - would be 191, 250]
. . . Nagasaki [the article later gives its population as 195,000]
. . . The bomb exploded high over the industrial valley of Nagasaki, almost midway between the Mitsubishi Steel and Arms Works, in the south, and the Mitsubishi-Urakami Ordnance Works (Torpedo Works), in the north, the two principal targets of the city.
. . . At Nagasaki there were no buildings just underneath the center of explosion. The damage to the Mitsubishi Arms Works and the Torpedo Works was spectacular, but not overwhelming. There was something left to see, and the main contours of some of the buildings were still normal.
. . . In Hiroshima over 60,000 of 90,000 buildings were destroyed or severely damaged by the atomic bomb; this figure represents over 67% of the city's structures.
. . . As intended, the bomb was exploded at an almost ideal location over Nagasaki to do the maximum damage to industry, including the Mitsubishi Steel and Arms Works, the Mitsubishi-Urakami Ordnance Works (Torpedo Works), and numerous factories, factory training schools, and other industrial establishments, with a minimum destruction of dwellings and consequently, a minimum amount of casualties. Had the bomb been dropped farther south, the Mitsubishi-Urakami Ordnance Works would not have been so severely damaged, but the main business and residential districts of Nagasaki would have sustained much greater damage casualties.
[this, to me, suggests that the bombing of Nagasaki was relatively more justifiable, but not enough to overcome the objection of just war criteria]
. . . The Nagasaki Prefectural report describes vividly the effects of the bomb on the city and its inhabitants:
"Within a radius of 1 kilometer from X, men and animals died almost instantaneously and outside a radius of 1 kilometer and within a radius of 2 kilometers from X, some men and animals died instantly from the great blast and heat but the great majority were seriously or superficially injured. Houses and other structures were completely destroyed while fires broke out everywhere. Trees were uprooted and withered by the heat.
"Outside a radius of 2 kilometers and within a radius of 4 kilometers from X, men and animals suffered various degrees of injury from window glass and other fragments scattered about by the blast and many were burned by the intense heat. Dwellings and other structures were half damaged by blast.
. . . There has been great difficulty in estimating the total casualties in the Japanese cities as a result of the atomic bombing. The extensive destruction of civil installations (hospitals, fire and police department, and government agencies) the state of utter confusion immediately following the explosion, as well as the uncertainty regarding the actual population before the bombing, contribute to the difficulty of making estimates of casualties.
[the entire article contains just about anything anyone would want to know about the effect of the bombings]
2005-08-31 07:00
Dr. Stephen A. Rinehart wrote:
. . . The bombing order was against cities not specific military targets. The cities selected were Kyoto, Hiroshima, Yokohama, and Nagasaki.
The overriding conclusion from my review of the weapon effects at Hiroshima is that this weapon was intentionally designed and deployed to kill or maim as many humans as possible in residential housing (or unprotected outside) over the widest possible area for the weapon’s size (while minimizing radiation effects from contaminated debris being thrown up into atmosphere). Since much of the Hiroshima industrial capacity was also located in unreinforced brick structures this type of airblast would also destroy any unreinforced masonry or brick buildings. One of the most flammable items on a person is their hair and clothing.
Much of the clothing at this time was cotton (or blended cotton) which would be considered highly flammable. I suddenly came to the realization that the intent of propagating a fireball at this height was to be able to set fire to a person’s clothing (and all types of fabrics) at relatively long distances from the blast’s epicenter. The airblast would be felt for miles (blowing out windows and damaging most all structures by cracking the walls) and terrorize the remaining population. Hence, the description by those who survived of seeing burned bodies everywhere (or charred skeletons) and skin that was shredded into strips is consistent with the bombing order to hit a populated city in the center without specific regard to military objectives.
*****
From: Detroit News
Saturday, August 6, 2005
"60 years later, questions about Hiroshima still split U.S.and Japan"
By Joseph Coleman
Although Hiroshima is often portrayed as a purely civilian target, it had a long history as an army city and was home to tens of thousands of soldiers as well as the headquarters of the Fifth Division and the Second General Army.
But it had no munitions factories, and the fact that it had never been bombed with conventional weapons suggests it was low on the list of Allied military targets. Nagasaki, meanwhile, was only bombed after cloud cover made the preferred choice, Kokura, too difficult to hit accurately.
*****
And a blog entry:
Tokyo had been fire bombed March 9-10, 1945 and some 83,000 civilians burned to death and thousands homeless. US B29 bomber crews commented on the stench of burning bodies when they made low level passes over Tokyo. "Brigadier General Bonner Feller described the air raids as the most ruthless and barbaric killings of non-combatants in all history"
"It would be a mistake to suppose that the fate of Japan was settled by the atomic bomb. Her defeat was certain before the first bomb fell." (UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill.)
Field Marshal Montgomery ( Commander of all UK Forces in Europe) wrote in his History of Warfare: It was unnecessary to drop the two atom bombs on Japan in August 1945, and I cannot think it was right to do so …. the dropping of the bombs was a major political blunder and is a prime example of the declining standards of the conduct of modern war.
But in a nuclear strike, all the noncombatants have no choice: they are incinerated or irradiated, and this is an evil act. PERIOD. Why is this so difficult for some to grasp? It was wrong for the Germans to bomb London, and so it was wrong for us to bomb Dresden, Tokyo, and Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And that is because these are intrinsically immoral acts, regardless of the circumstances they occur in.
Two-year-old girls and senile old men and the mentally ill or terminally ill are part of the military?
**********
The Nuclear Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Do They Meet Catholic Just War Standards of Morality? (Part III)
See Part One and Part Two.
The credentials and reliability of Ralph Raico, whom I cited in Part I, were questioned. I shall present his scholarly credentials (readers can make up their own minds):
One can distinguish between:
We are talking about bombs detonated over the center of cities with multiple thousands of people. To say that this was not a deliberate targeting of civilians as well as military materials is absurd. By this reasoning we could explode a bomb over Baghdad or some other Iraqi city if a significant number of terrorists resided within, and simply say that we were targeting the terrorists, and had no intention of killing anyone else.
The credentials and reliability of Ralph Raico, whom I cited in Part I, were questioned. I shall present his scholarly credentials (readers can make up their own minds):
Ralph Raico is professor of European history at the State University of New YorkI'm not brash enough to think that my own bald opinion on such a momentous matter is enough to persuade or carry any weight with anyone. Therefore, I cite scholars and leading figures in the Church. There is nothing wrong in citing people who have more knowledge and expertise on a subject.
College at Buffalo. He received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Chicago,
Committee on Social Thought, where the head of his dissertation committee was
F.A. Hayek. Among Dr. Raico's articles and essays are: "Rethinking Churchill" in
The Costs of War, John V. Denson, ed.; "Austrian Economics and Classical
Liberalism," in Advances in Austrian Economics, vol. II; "The Theory of Economic
Development and the 'European Miracle,'" in The Collapse of Economic Planning,
Peter J. Boettke, ed.; "Classical Liberal Roots of the Marxist Doctrine of
Classes," in Requiem for Marx, Yuri N. Maltsev, ed.; and Classical Liberalism in
the Twentieth Century. Dr. Raico has also contributed to The Review of Austrian
Economics, the Zeitschrift fur Wirtschaftspolitik,the Cato Journal, and other
scholarly journals. He is the translator of Ludwig von Mises's Liberalism and of
essays by F.A. Hayek contained in Hayek's Collected Works. Dr. Raico was editor
of the New Individualist Review and senior editor of Inquiry. He has lectured
widely in Europe, the United States, and Canada, and is fellow in social thought
at the Cato Institute.
One can distinguish between:
1) Making a strong assertion about some Catholic teaching as a matter of one'sKarl Keating wrote:
own opinion.
And:
2) Making out that this opinion is dogmatic Catholic teaching with regard to the particular under consideration and that no one can possibly disagree.
The atomic bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, like the fire bombings ofI think this can easily be interpreted as an instance of #1 and not #2. Perhaps it could have been worded better (as is usually the case with almost all writing), but I don't think he was being "dogmatic". The same applies to the Catholic Answers Guide. To state one's opinion (even if strongly held) that a certain Catholic principle was violated in Instance X is not the same as asserting that one's opinion on the matter is itself magisterial and unable to be dissented against without being a lousy Catholic.
Dresden and other German cities, cannot be squared with Catholic moral
principles because the bombings deliberately targeted non-combatants.
We are talking about bombs detonated over the center of cities with multiple thousands of people. To say that this was not a deliberate targeting of civilians as well as military materials is absurd. By this reasoning we could explode a bomb over Baghdad or some other Iraqi city if a significant number of terrorists resided within, and simply say that we were targeting the terrorists, and had no intention of killing anyone else.
The Nuclear Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Do They Meet Catholic Just War Standards of Morality? (Part II)
Gar Alperovitz notes the following facts:
I have simply shown that many high-placed military figures at the time did not favor the bombings, and indeed felt that surrender would occur without it. They know a lot more about this than lay observers, sitting in armchairs, 60 years later, which is why I keep appealing to them.
On the other hand, ultimately, my judgment on this isn't based on utilitarian, pragmatic calculations as to whether Japan would surrender or not. I think the bombings were intrinsically immoral because of the numbers of civilian casualties involved. Therefore, they could have no ethical justification, period (not even on a secular absolutist basis), no matter how good the perceived or probable end might be.
No one could have not known this (the high casualties of noncombatants), and I have provided some strong evidence that indeed it was known at the time, and that even proponents of the bomb cannot get over that fact. Cities of multiple thousands of inhabitants are somehow thought to be "military targets" and the unintended civilian casualties as secondary to the destruction of some military plants (as if this justifies the wholesale slaughter). I find it absolutely outrageous. I understand the reasoning (as I used to hold it myself) and do not cast aspersions upon the motivations of proponents, but I cannot support the thing itself, because I don't find the rationales offered to be based on Catholic just war principles.
I find this position as outrageous as the following analogy (to use the example of my own city, which I know something about):
In the Detroit metro area is Willow Run Airport. In that area, many bombers were manufactured by Ford Motor Company, and played a key role in the air war (my father, incidentally, flew 24 missions over Germany as a top gunner in the Canadian / Royal Air Force, and I have always been very proud of that part of his life). We also have military bases (of what relative importance I know not).
But say for the sake of argument that these bases were very important, along with the Willow Run facilities which were undeniably very important. By the reasoning of some proponents of these bombings (and alas, Truman's), one could detonate an atomic bomb halfway between Willow Run and Selfridge Air Force Base, which location would be approximately in the very center of Detroit proper. By this incomprehensible reasoning, Detroit (a city of 2 million in the WWII era) is a "military base." Therefore, to strike at its center (as in the examples of Hiroshima and Nagasaki) is to strike military targets; therefore, not intending to kill civilians (who just happen to unfortunately be there). Their deaths are justifiable by the principle of double effect.
So say that, roughly a third of the inhabitants of metro Detroit (including my mother and her parents at that time, and possibly my father's parents) would be killed (approximately the ratio at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, without doing the exact math). This would amount to some 670,000 deaths. But these are all "collateral damage" because, after all, they were not the "targets": Willow Run and Selfridge were.
It's double effect, you see. If 200,000 can be killed by this absurd moralistic rationalization, why not 670,000? Just as if one abortion is legal (the intrinsically immoral taking of an innocent life), why not 1.5 million a year? Once that line is crossed there is no end. This is why the Catholic Church opposes it from the outset, on principle, and in accord with basic principles of justice inherent in the natural law, known to all conscientious men. I think the analogy above is quite apt and that it shows once again the moral absurdity of such a position.
As for Truman's subjective culpability, I make no judgment on that. I believe that he was in an extremely difficult situation, and that we must allow for that, and that God certainly will, in His infinite wisdom. I am not about condemning individual motivations in this discussion.
I understand quite well, I think, the honorable motivations and intentions of those who disagree with me on this (again, having once held the same position myself, as is so often the case). I simply disagree that the position can be harmonized with Catholic moral principles. America decided in its carpet bombing policies, to abandon just war criteria. The reasoning was that one must oppose total war by total war. This is immoral and indefensible. Understandable in those incredible circumstances, sure, but ethically indefensible . . .
Such an analogy as mine above is intended as a reductio ad absurdum (one of my favorite rhetorical techniques in dialogue). It is incumbent upon bomb proponents to reply to that, in order to show that what it suggests is false; viz., that the analogy does not prove the absurdity of that which it seeks to overcome in the reductio.
Furthermore (and this is a crucial point in understanding my approach) I cited many prominent Catholics (and at least one very prominent Anglican layman), in Part I, for the following reasons:
Brigadier Gen. Carter W. Clarke, the officer in charge of preparing MAGICPerhaps the Japanese would not have surrendered very soon after August 1945 without the bombs. Everyone must speculate and there can be no sure answer (as in all "what if?" historical inquiries).
intercepted cable summaries in 1945, stated in a 1959 interview:we brought them [the Japanese] down to an abject surrender through the accelerated sinking of their merchant marine and hunger alone, and when we didn't need to do it, and we knew we didn't need to do it, and they knew that we knew we didn't need to do it, we used them as an experiment for two atomic bombs." (See p. 359, Chapter 28)
I have simply shown that many high-placed military figures at the time did not favor the bombings, and indeed felt that surrender would occur without it. They know a lot more about this than lay observers, sitting in armchairs, 60 years later, which is why I keep appealing to them.
On the other hand, ultimately, my judgment on this isn't based on utilitarian, pragmatic calculations as to whether Japan would surrender or not. I think the bombings were intrinsically immoral because of the numbers of civilian casualties involved. Therefore, they could have no ethical justification, period (not even on a secular absolutist basis), no matter how good the perceived or probable end might be.
No one could have not known this (the high casualties of noncombatants), and I have provided some strong evidence that indeed it was known at the time, and that even proponents of the bomb cannot get over that fact. Cities of multiple thousands of inhabitants are somehow thought to be "military targets" and the unintended civilian casualties as secondary to the destruction of some military plants (as if this justifies the wholesale slaughter). I find it absolutely outrageous. I understand the reasoning (as I used to hold it myself) and do not cast aspersions upon the motivations of proponents, but I cannot support the thing itself, because I don't find the rationales offered to be based on Catholic just war principles.
I find this position as outrageous as the following analogy (to use the example of my own city, which I know something about):
In the Detroit metro area is Willow Run Airport. In that area, many bombers were manufactured by Ford Motor Company, and played a key role in the air war (my father, incidentally, flew 24 missions over Germany as a top gunner in the Canadian / Royal Air Force, and I have always been very proud of that part of his life). We also have military bases (of what relative importance I know not).
But say for the sake of argument that these bases were very important, along with the Willow Run facilities which were undeniably very important. By the reasoning of some proponents of these bombings (and alas, Truman's), one could detonate an atomic bomb halfway between Willow Run and Selfridge Air Force Base, which location would be approximately in the very center of Detroit proper. By this incomprehensible reasoning, Detroit (a city of 2 million in the WWII era) is a "military base." Therefore, to strike at its center (as in the examples of Hiroshima and Nagasaki) is to strike military targets; therefore, not intending to kill civilians (who just happen to unfortunately be there). Their deaths are justifiable by the principle of double effect.
So say that, roughly a third of the inhabitants of metro Detroit (including my mother and her parents at that time, and possibly my father's parents) would be killed (approximately the ratio at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, without doing the exact math). This would amount to some 670,000 deaths. But these are all "collateral damage" because, after all, they were not the "targets": Willow Run and Selfridge were.
It's double effect, you see. If 200,000 can be killed by this absurd moralistic rationalization, why not 670,000? Just as if one abortion is legal (the intrinsically immoral taking of an innocent life), why not 1.5 million a year? Once that line is crossed there is no end. This is why the Catholic Church opposes it from the outset, on principle, and in accord with basic principles of justice inherent in the natural law, known to all conscientious men. I think the analogy above is quite apt and that it shows once again the moral absurdity of such a position.
As for Truman's subjective culpability, I make no judgment on that. I believe that he was in an extremely difficult situation, and that we must allow for that, and that God certainly will, in His infinite wisdom. I am not about condemning individual motivations in this discussion.
I understand quite well, I think, the honorable motivations and intentions of those who disagree with me on this (again, having once held the same position myself, as is so often the case). I simply disagree that the position can be harmonized with Catholic moral principles. America decided in its carpet bombing policies, to abandon just war criteria. The reasoning was that one must oppose total war by total war. This is immoral and indefensible. Understandable in those incredible circumstances, sure, but ethically indefensible . . .
Such an analogy as mine above is intended as a reductio ad absurdum (one of my favorite rhetorical techniques in dialogue). It is incumbent upon bomb proponents to reply to that, in order to show that what it suggests is false; viz., that the analogy does not prove the absurdity of that which it seeks to overcome in the reductio.
Furthermore (and this is a crucial point in understanding my approach) I cited many prominent Catholics (and at least one very prominent Anglican layman), in Part I, for the following reasons:
1) Because they (in most cases) know more about the issue than I do.
2) To show that this position is indeed the Catholic mainstream one, not some fringe or "left-wing" or quasi-pacifist position.
3) To reiterate that a Catholic's opinions on such momentous ethical and socio-political issues are formed within the matrix and framework of Catholic community and the magisterium (as opposed to pure private judgment) , even if the issue is not technically one of dogma and non-negotiable. Catholics may differ, but they are still Catholics, who must form such opinions of conscience and ethical principle in light of the Church's teaching and guidance. If one, therefore, shows little outward sign of doing so, then one must be guided towards the proper sources that he has been overlooking in forming his opinions. And so I am presently providing that service.
Sunday, September 04, 2005
US Religious Affiliation by Region
I discovered (entirely by accident) this fascinating sociological / geographical data page on religious affiliation. I've always loved any kind of map. I've posted the one for Catholic population (be sure to click on the image to get the large size). Other religious maps are equally fascinating (see, e.g., the Baptists and Lutherans and Reformed).
OK Cupid! The Classic Leading Man test
| Jimmy Stewart You scored 16% Tough, 0% Roguish, 76% Friendly, and 9% Charming! |
| You are the fun and friendly boy next door, the classic nice guy who still manages to get the girl most of the time. You're every nice girl's dreamboat, open and kind, nutty and charming, even a little mischievous at times, but always a real stand up guy. You're dependable and forthright, and women are drawn to your reliability, even as they're dazzled by your sense of adventure and fun. You try to be tough when you need to be, and will gladly stand up for any damsel in distress, but you'd rather catch a girl with a little bit of flair. Your leading ladies include Jean Arthur and Donna Reed, those sweet girl-next-door types. Find out what kind of classic dame you'd make by taking the Classic Dames Test. |
 |
My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:
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| Link: The Classic Leading Man Test written by gidgetgoes on Ok Cupid |
Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855): Danish Lutheran philosopher and one of the keenest Christian minds and social commentators of all time.
Friday, September 02, 2005
Blaise Pascal, Peter Kreeft, & Soren Kierkegaard on Persuasion & Apologetic Method
From Peter Kreeeft's book: Christianity For Modern Pagans: Pascal's Pensees, San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993.
For cutting-and-pasting purposes, I will be using the online e-text of the Pensees, translated by W.F. Trotter, whereas Kreeft used the (Penguin) Krailsheimer translation. With that understood, otherwise, I'll be utilizing direct quotes from the Kreeft book, with pages indicated. Pascal citations will be in blue; Kierkegaard's words will be in green. Otherwise, the words are Kreeft's.
=============================================
111. Inconstancy. We think we are playing on ordinary organs when playing upon man. Men are organs, it is true, but, odd, changeable, variable with pipes not arranged in proper order. Those who only know how to play on ordinary organs will not produce barmonies on these. We must know where [the keys] are.
Unless the apologist creates internal silence in his reader, unless he produces somehow that precious moment of sudden, standstill shock, his apologetics is only chatter or scholarship, not power . . .
Knowing how to create this silence through words is like knowing how to touch a wild animal to quiet it . . .
You need to know and love both the student and the subject, both psychology and theology. Few know both as Pascal does.
(p. 36)
336. The reason of effects. We must keep our thought secret, and judge everything by it, while talking like the people.
[Krailsheimer, #91: One must have deeper motives and judge everything accordingly, but go on talking like an ordinary person.]
Kierkegaard defined his spy mission this way: to smuggle Christianity back into Christendom (that is, our nominally Christian but really post-Christian society).
Kierkegaard seems to have learned his method, which he calls "indiorect communication", from Pascal. Pascal uses the equivalent of Kierkegaard's pseudonyms for the same end, namely, to speak from within the opposite point of view, that of alienated, skeptical modern man, rather than speaking only from the passionate, committed point of view of the Christian believer. This is his "cover".
(p. 37)
420. If he exalt himself, I humble him; if he humble himself, I exalt him; and I always contradict him, till he understands that he is an incomprehensible monster.
This is exactly what Jesus did . . . Why did he do this? For Truth. To teach them who they really were: neither angels nor beasts, neither Heavenly nor Hellish, neither sages nor fools, but both . . .
Pascal . . . goes on contradicting us, bothering us, bugging us, until we understand the truth about ourselves. And the truth about ourselves is that we are a mystery, not a problem; a monster, not a puzzle; a living self-contradiction who needs to be contradicted if he is to understand himself.
Like Socrates and Jesus, Pascal does not leave us at rest . . .
(pp. 37-38)
9. When we wish to correct with advantage and to show another that he errs, we must notice from what side he views the matter, for on that side it is usually true, and admit that truth to him, but reveal to him the side on which it is false. He is satisfied with that, for he sees that he was not mistaken and that he only failed to see all sides. Now, no one is offended at not seeing everything; but one does not like to be mistaken, and that perhaps arises from the fact that man naturally cannot see everything, and that naturally he cannot err in the side he looks at, since the perceptions of our senses are always true.
Compare what Pascal says here with what Kierkegaard says in The Point of View:
An illusion can never be destroyed directly, and only by indirect means can it be radically removed . . . That is, one must approach from behind the person who is under an illusion . . .A direct attack only strengthens a person in his illusion and at the same time, embitters him. There is nothing that requires such gentle handling as an illusion, if one wishes to dispel it. If anything prompts the perspective captive to set his will in opposition, all is lost . . . This is what is achieved by the indirect method which, loving and serving the truth, arranges everything dialectically for the prospective captive, and then shyly withdraws (for love is always shy), so as not to witness the admission which he makes to himself alone before God -- that he has lived hitherto in an illusion.. . . If real success is to attend the effort to bring a man to a definite position, one must first of all take pains to find him where he is and begin there. This is the secret of the art of helping others. . . .
In order to help another effectively I must understand more than he -- yet first of all surely I must understand what he understands . . . all true effort to help begins with self-humiliation: the helper must first humble himself under him he would help, and therewith must understand that to help does not mean to be a sovereign but to be a servant, that to help does not mean to be ambitious but to be patient, that to help means to endure for the time being the imputation that one is in the wrong and does not understand what the other understands.
Your prospective captive's point of view, or world view, is of first importance because it is the hidden premise behind all his arguments.
It is of first importance not only logically but also psychologically, personally. it is more important to the person than what he explicitly says and argues about, because it is the conviction held so close to his heart that he feels he does not need to argue for it, only to assume it.
We find Jesus constantly responding to the other's point of view rather than to his words: for example, Matthew 19:3-9,16-22; 21:23-27; 22:15-46; John 8:2-11.
What Kiekegaard describes above is also exactly Socrates' method. Kiekegaard and Pascal apply it to Christianity.
A happy corollary of the last part of this pensee is that everyone sees some truth. Therefore we can learn some truth from every one and every philosophy, even those most disastrously in error . . .
St. Thomas is constantly applying this principle in the Summa. Nearly every answer to every objection takes the form of distinguishing two points of view, or two meanings of a term, and admitting that the objection is right from one point of view (a less adequate one) but wrong from another.
For Aquinas, this consisted mainly in distinguishing two meanings of a term, two logical points of view or horizons of meaning -- two different world views. . . .
The apologist must read between the lines and see his opponent's point of view, for the same reason a general must know the opposing army's camp and supply lines. In both cases I want to know "where you're coming from". For philosophy, unlike science, does not go forward to discover new empirical truths, but backward to illuminate where arguments come from. Science builds skyscrapers, philosophy inspects foundations.
(pp. 39-42)
10. People are generally better persuaded [Krailsheimer: "convinced more easily"] by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come into the mind of others.
Therefore it is a more effective apologetic strategy to get your opponent to discover the truth for himself than for you to give it to him . . . How is this to be done? We have just seen Pascal's answer: indirect communication, spying, looking at things from your opponent's point of view and drawing out the consequences of his premises. In other words, the Socratic method.
(p. 42)
For cutting-and-pasting purposes, I will be using the online e-text of the Pensees, translated by W.F. Trotter, whereas Kreeft used the (Penguin) Krailsheimer translation. With that understood, otherwise, I'll be utilizing direct quotes from the Kreeft book, with pages indicated. Pascal citations will be in blue; Kierkegaard's words will be in green. Otherwise, the words are Kreeft's.
=============================================
111. Inconstancy. We think we are playing on ordinary organs when playing upon man. Men are organs, it is true, but, odd, changeable, variable with pipes not arranged in proper order. Those who only know how to play on ordinary organs will not produce barmonies on these. We must know where [the keys] are.
Unless the apologist creates internal silence in his reader, unless he produces somehow that precious moment of sudden, standstill shock, his apologetics is only chatter or scholarship, not power . . .
Knowing how to create this silence through words is like knowing how to touch a wild animal to quiet it . . .
You need to know and love both the student and the subject, both psychology and theology. Few know both as Pascal does.
(p. 36)
336. The reason of effects. We must keep our thought secret, and judge everything by it, while talking like the people.
[Krailsheimer, #91: One must have deeper motives and judge everything accordingly, but go on talking like an ordinary person.]
Kierkegaard defined his spy mission this way: to smuggle Christianity back into Christendom (that is, our nominally Christian but really post-Christian society).
Kierkegaard seems to have learned his method, which he calls "indiorect communication", from Pascal. Pascal uses the equivalent of Kierkegaard's pseudonyms for the same end, namely, to speak from within the opposite point of view, that of alienated, skeptical modern man, rather than speaking only from the passionate, committed point of view of the Christian believer. This is his "cover".
(p. 37)
420. If he exalt himself, I humble him; if he humble himself, I exalt him; and I always contradict him, till he understands that he is an incomprehensible monster.
This is exactly what Jesus did . . . Why did he do this? For Truth. To teach them who they really were: neither angels nor beasts, neither Heavenly nor Hellish, neither sages nor fools, but both . . .
Pascal . . . goes on contradicting us, bothering us, bugging us, until we understand the truth about ourselves. And the truth about ourselves is that we are a mystery, not a problem; a monster, not a puzzle; a living self-contradiction who needs to be contradicted if he is to understand himself.
Like Socrates and Jesus, Pascal does not leave us at rest . . .
(pp. 37-38)
9. When we wish to correct with advantage and to show another that he errs, we must notice from what side he views the matter, for on that side it is usually true, and admit that truth to him, but reveal to him the side on which it is false. He is satisfied with that, for he sees that he was not mistaken and that he only failed to see all sides. Now, no one is offended at not seeing everything; but one does not like to be mistaken, and that perhaps arises from the fact that man naturally cannot see everything, and that naturally he cannot err in the side he looks at, since the perceptions of our senses are always true.
Compare what Pascal says here with what Kierkegaard says in The Point of View:
An illusion can never be destroyed directly, and only by indirect means can it be radically removed . . . That is, one must approach from behind the person who is under an illusion . . .A direct attack only strengthens a person in his illusion and at the same time, embitters him. There is nothing that requires such gentle handling as an illusion, if one wishes to dispel it. If anything prompts the perspective captive to set his will in opposition, all is lost . . . This is what is achieved by the indirect method which, loving and serving the truth, arranges everything dialectically for the prospective captive, and then shyly withdraws (for love is always shy), so as not to witness the admission which he makes to himself alone before God -- that he has lived hitherto in an illusion.. . . If real success is to attend the effort to bring a man to a definite position, one must first of all take pains to find him where he is and begin there. This is the secret of the art of helping others. . . .
In order to help another effectively I must understand more than he -- yet first of all surely I must understand what he understands . . . all true effort to help begins with self-humiliation: the helper must first humble himself under him he would help, and therewith must understand that to help does not mean to be a sovereign but to be a servant, that to help does not mean to be ambitious but to be patient, that to help means to endure for the time being the imputation that one is in the wrong and does not understand what the other understands.
Your prospective captive's point of view, or world view, is of first importance because it is the hidden premise behind all his arguments.
It is of first importance not only logically but also psychologically, personally. it is more important to the person than what he explicitly says and argues about, because it is the conviction held so close to his heart that he feels he does not need to argue for it, only to assume it.
We find Jesus constantly responding to the other's point of view rather than to his words: for example, Matthew 19:3-9,16-22; 21:23-27; 22:15-46; John 8:2-11.
What Kiekegaard describes above is also exactly Socrates' method. Kiekegaard and Pascal apply it to Christianity.
A happy corollary of the last part of this pensee is that everyone sees some truth. Therefore we can learn some truth from every one and every philosophy, even those most disastrously in error . . .
St. Thomas is constantly applying this principle in the Summa. Nearly every answer to every objection takes the form of distinguishing two points of view, or two meanings of a term, and admitting that the objection is right from one point of view (a less adequate one) but wrong from another.
For Aquinas, this consisted mainly in distinguishing two meanings of a term, two logical points of view or horizons of meaning -- two different world views. . . .
The apologist must read between the lines and see his opponent's point of view, for the same reason a general must know the opposing army's camp and supply lines. In both cases I want to know "where you're coming from". For philosophy, unlike science, does not go forward to discover new empirical truths, but backward to illuminate where arguments come from. Science builds skyscrapers, philosophy inspects foundations.
(pp. 39-42)
10. People are generally better persuaded [Krailsheimer: "convinced more easily"] by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come into the mind of others.
Therefore it is a more effective apologetic strategy to get your opponent to discover the truth for himself than for you to give it to him . . . How is this to be done? We have just seen Pascal's answer: indirect communication, spying, looking at things from your opponent's point of view and drawing out the consequences of his premises. In other words, the Socratic method.
(p. 42)
The New Orleans Tragedy
Amy Welborn has been providing many excellent links to articles, and commentary on this overwhelming catastrophe, especially from a Christian and specifically Catholic Christian perspective. Needless to say, we all should fervently pray for the people involved and the situation, and send as much financial assistance as possible.
Yours truly in September 1997, with my third son (then 10 months old). I didn't get to do this much at all with my four children, because mumma nursed them all. It's a very sweet moment. I love how his little hand is wrapped around my thumb.
Thursday, September 01, 2005
Neat Quotes, Blog Minutiae, & Gratuitous Disclaimers
Here are some of my favorite quotes for your pleasure and edification. Following them are some blog minutiae and various disclaimers.
Neat Quotes
So far as a man may be proud of a religion rooted in humility, I am very proud of my religion; I am especially proud of those parts of it that are most commonly called superstition. I am proud of being fettered by antiquated dogmas and enslaved by dead creeds (as my journalistic friends repeat with so much pertinacity), for I know very well that it is the heretical creeds that are dead, and that it is only the reasonable dogma that lives long enough to be called antiquated.
--- G.K. Chesterton
Day in and day out the daily press does nothing but delude men with the supreme axiom . . . that numbers are decisive. Christianity, on the other hand, is based on the thought that the truth lies in the single individual . . . . . Not until the single individual has established an ethical stance in despite of the whole world, not until then can there be any question of genuinely uniting. Otherwise it gets to be a union of people who separately are weak; a union as unbeautiful and depraved as a child marriage.
--- Soren Kierkegaard
Teach us, good Lord, to serve thee as thou deservest; to give and not to count the cost; to fight and not to heed the wounds; to toil and not to ask for rest; to labour and not to ask for any reward save knowing that we do thy will.
--- St. Ignatius of Loyola
The great argument used now against any theological proposition is not, that it is untrue, or unthinkable, or unedifying, or unscriptural, or unorthodox, but simply, that the modern mind cannot accept it.
--- Ronald Knox
Are you not ashamed that you give your attention to acquiring as much money as possible, and similarly with reputation and honour, and give no attention or thought to truth and understanding and the perfection of your soul?
--- Socrates
Thirty-seven years of teaching have taught me that convincing arguments will only carry the assent of those willing to accept the conclusion drawn. Numerous are those who will never be convinced because their will stands in the way: the conclusion is not to their taste. It is sadly true that false arguments will "convince" those who welcome their conclusion.
--- Alice von Hildebrand
Favorite Heroes, Saints, and Writers
Venerable John Henry Cardinal Newman, Pope John Paul II, Socrates, St. Thomas More, St. Athanasius, Mother Teresa, St. Paul, the prophets, my wife Judy, Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J., all martyrs, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Therese of Lisieux, St. Catherine of Siena, C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, Peter Kreeft, Thomas Howard, St. Augustine. John Wesley, Soren Kierkegaard, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Blaise Pascal
Sorry, Can't Promise Answers to E-Mails
If I tried to do that with the traffic that I get on my website and blog, I wouldn't be able to do anything else, or to produce any new apologetic writings. My website and blog are designed to comprehensively provide answers for theological and apologetic questions. I provide my e-mail mainly for important "contact purposes" (so that I am not "inaccessible").
Mindless and Blind Submission to Rome
To the best of my knowledge, all of my theological writing is "orthodox" and in harmony with the official dogmatic and magisterial teaching of the Catholic Church. In the event of any (unintentional) doctrinal or moral error on my part having been undeniably demonstrated to be contrary to the Sacred Tradition of the Catholic Church, I will gladly and wholeheartedly submit to the authority and wisdom of the Church (Matthew 28:18-20; 1 Timothy 3:15).
Beware of My Shameless Exploitation of Your Words!
All posts here (you are hereby forewarned) will be fair game to be posted on my website. As anyone familiar at all with my website knows, I love to put up dialogues with those who differ from my viewpoint. I am a Socratic, and I want people to see how two different viewpoints interact with each other, and to help them develop their critical thinking, and to make intelligent, informed choices.
Hopeless, Insufferable Bias (But Alas, Freely Confessed)
Do I have a bias? Of course (like everyone else). I'm an orthodox Catholic (i.e., one who actually believes all that the Catholic Church teaches. Having a bias, it should be noted, is different from being grossly unfair or some sort of propagandist (or flat-out dishonest). The honest man who wishes to act like a gentleman and a Christian, admits his inevitable bias upfront, and then proceeds to be as fair as he can to opposing positions, and as charitable as possible to the persons who hold them.
This Blog Moves
I have set my blog controls so that ten posts (including photographs) are on the front page at any given time. Some will be shortened for ease of viewing access. By clicking on the words Tolle, lege!, readers can view the entire paper. When they roll off the page they are still in the archives (accessed at the bottom of the sidebar), and (almost all) listed on my Super-Links Page, from my website. The speed at which the front page moves will be determined by the amount of participation. If it is relatively slow, I will keep adding material until I can achieve more participation. If there are a lot of comments, then I will make sure the post getting them stays on the front until the discussion dies down.
Neat Quotes
So far as a man may be proud of a religion rooted in humility, I am very proud of my religion; I am especially proud of those parts of it that are most commonly called superstition. I am proud of being fettered by antiquated dogmas and enslaved by dead creeds (as my journalistic friends repeat with so much pertinacity), for I know very well that it is the heretical creeds that are dead, and that it is only the reasonable dogma that lives long enough to be called antiquated.
--- G.K. Chesterton
Day in and day out the daily press does nothing but delude men with the supreme axiom . . . that numbers are decisive. Christianity, on the other hand, is based on the thought that the truth lies in the single individual . . . . . Not until the single individual has established an ethical stance in despite of the whole world, not until then can there be any question of genuinely uniting. Otherwise it gets to be a union of people who separately are weak; a union as unbeautiful and depraved as a child marriage.
--- Soren Kierkegaard
Teach us, good Lord, to serve thee as thou deservest; to give and not to count the cost; to fight and not to heed the wounds; to toil and not to ask for rest; to labour and not to ask for any reward save knowing that we do thy will.
--- St. Ignatius of Loyola
The great argument used now against any theological proposition is not, that it is untrue, or unthinkable, or unedifying, or unscriptural, or unorthodox, but simply, that the modern mind cannot accept it.
--- Ronald Knox
Are you not ashamed that you give your attention to acquiring as much money as possible, and similarly with reputation and honour, and give no attention or thought to truth and understanding and the perfection of your soul?
--- Socrates
Thirty-seven years of teaching have taught me that convincing arguments will only carry the assent of those willing to accept the conclusion drawn. Numerous are those who will never be convinced because their will stands in the way: the conclusion is not to their taste. It is sadly true that false arguments will "convince" those who welcome their conclusion.
--- Alice von Hildebrand
Favorite Heroes, Saints, and Writers
Venerable John Henry Cardinal Newman, Pope John Paul II, Socrates, St. Thomas More, St. Athanasius, Mother Teresa, St. Paul, the prophets, my wife Judy, Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J., all martyrs, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Therese of Lisieux, St. Catherine of Siena, C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, Peter Kreeft, Thomas Howard, St. Augustine. John Wesley, Soren Kierkegaard, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Blaise Pascal
Sorry, Can't Promise Answers to E-Mails
If I tried to do that with the traffic that I get on my website and blog, I wouldn't be able to do anything else, or to produce any new apologetic writings. My website and blog are designed to comprehensively provide answers for theological and apologetic questions. I provide my e-mail mainly for important "contact purposes" (so that I am not "inaccessible").
Mindless and Blind Submission to Rome
To the best of my knowledge, all of my theological writing is "orthodox" and in harmony with the official dogmatic and magisterial teaching of the Catholic Church. In the event of any (unintentional) doctrinal or moral error on my part having been undeniably demonstrated to be contrary to the Sacred Tradition of the Catholic Church, I will gladly and wholeheartedly submit to the authority and wisdom of the Church (Matthew 28:18-20; 1 Timothy 3:15).
Beware of My Shameless Exploitation of Your Words!
All posts here (you are hereby forewarned) will be fair game to be posted on my website. As anyone familiar at all with my website knows, I love to put up dialogues with those who differ from my viewpoint. I am a Socratic, and I want people to see how two different viewpoints interact with each other, and to help them develop their critical thinking, and to make intelligent, informed choices.
Hopeless, Insufferable Bias (But Alas, Freely Confessed)
Do I have a bias? Of course (like everyone else). I'm an orthodox Catholic (i.e., one who actually believes all that the Catholic Church teaches. Having a bias, it should be noted, is different from being grossly unfair or some sort of propagandist (or flat-out dishonest). The honest man who wishes to act like a gentleman and a Christian, admits his inevitable bias upfront, and then proceeds to be as fair as he can to opposing positions, and as charitable as possible to the persons who hold them.
This Blog Moves
I have set my blog controls so that ten posts (including photographs) are on the front page at any given time. Some will be shortened for ease of viewing access. By clicking on the words Tolle, lege!, readers can view the entire paper. When they roll off the page they are still in the archives (accessed at the bottom of the sidebar), and (almost all) listed on my Super-Links Page, from my website. The speed at which the front page moves will be determined by the amount of participation. If it is relatively slow, I will keep adding material until I can achieve more participation. If there are a lot of comments, then I will make sure the post getting them stays on the front until the discussion dies down.
Rah-Rahs and Humbling Feedback
Here are some of the wonder flattering things people have said about me and my work.
Thanks again for the great work you're doing for Christ and His Church.
--- Dr. Scott Hahn
I admire, as ever, your fantastic and penetrating work.
--- Patrick Madrid
I highly recommend his work, A Biblical Defense of Catholicism, which I find to be thoroughly orthodox, well-written, and effective for the purpose of making Catholic truth more understandable and accessible to the public at large. It is, I firmly believe, a fine book of popular Catholic apologetics.
--- Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J.
Apologist extraordinaire.
[T]here is someone out there who says what I have to say much better than I ever could -- the smartest Catholic apologist I know of -- Dave Armstrong.
--- Amy Welborn (Catholic author of many books)
Dave's fund of knowledge is astonishing, and his articles are well worth reading.
--- "Secret Agent Man" (Ian McLean)
You utterly amaze me! Such good stuff . . . Dave, keep up your effective and eternally valuable apologetic journalism!
--- Marcus Grodi (host of The Journey Home)
I think you have one of the best sites on the web. It's so amazingly thorough I'm dazzled at the incredible work you've put into it! Way to go!
--- Mark Shea
I always appreciate your work.
--- Fr. Peter M.J. Stravinskas
I truly appreciate your candor and your vast knowledge on these issues and am not at all ashamed to call you my brother in Christ . . . I am ashamed however of some who denounce YOUR faith as heretical and am consistently battling them in my own home church . . . This was meant just as a note of encouragement as I am sure your work goes either unnoticed or derided by many in "my" camp.
--- Reformed Presbyterian layman
Thanks for your honest struggling with the (inane and inconsistent) Calvinists. Even though I am a Calvinist myself, I know there are a lot of ignorant judgmental boobs out there.
--- Reformed Presbyterian layman
. . . readable, accurate, and accessible information about your beliefs. Fine work! Thank you again for being so conciliatory!
--- Reformed laywoman
May I say that your website is one of the finest I've ever visited, and I have visited often. I especially love your C.S. Lewis and John Henry Newman links. You have cleared up many misconceptions I had concerning Catholic theology and doctrine. Your page is in the spirit of true ecumenism and Christianity.
--- Anglican laywoman
I can testify to [Dave's] friendship with non-Catholic Christians personally; we built a good friendship when I was Anglican. He has always treated me with respect, never was he arrogant, triumphalistic or anything like that.
I can testify to anyone or in any court that you have a lot of respect for non-Catholic Christians! You showed great friendship and charity towards non-Catholic Christians on your old list serve [Apologetics / Ecumenism List, which still exists at cin.org] a few years ago when I was on it. I also know of your great love and respect for many Protestants, like C.S. Lewis. So don't let anyone tell you otherwise! :) Disagreeing with a Protestant does not mean a person is automatically anti-Protestant, anymore than disagreeing with a Catholic makes one automatically anti-Catholic.
--- Bret Bellamy (Anglican layman at the time of writing)
[T]hank you for being so detailed and deep. Many other apologists are too simplistic to get to the roots. You get to the root of error and axe it. Continue in your humble spirit and love for Christ and love for your separated brethren, it is so refreshing. I will support you by buying books and probably donations down the road.
--- Protestant layman (soon to be a Catholic)
I have always thought your website was the most outstanding one available, and of course you are my favorite Christian apologist. Keep up the good work you do for the Lord.
--- Fr. George Burns (Anglican priest)
As for the body of your work generically considered, I think that certainly there must be some things of great value in your work . . . I do like your stuff on Lewis and Tolkien and “mythopoeics”. No doubt your materials on Mormonism and other counter-cult issues are valuable, too. I’ve read a few of your blog posts about abortion, and yes, those have been truly outstanding. Clearly you’re not some fringe kook just blabbing on a blog; you have a serious purpose in God’s Kingdom, and I’m glad for it. I have erred, I suppose, in not telling you when I found things of yours to be good, and so for that I ask your forgiveness.
--- Tim Enloe (Reformed)
It seems like lots of people are doing lots of pondering on the Internet, but precious few are in the market for dialogue at the moment. But I genuinely appreciate those few, like Dave . . . who are interested in the discussion in terms of both explaining their own views well and thoroughly and pushing people to do the same with their own (and boy, that Ken [Commier] guy [a few comments above] couldn't have been farther off!). Based on my experience in this case, forming a dialogue successfully is like pulling teeth, no matter how sincere your motives. Of course, that just makes what Dave and others do (and the amount of effort it requires) look all the more impressive! To Dave and all those who are able to sustain these types of discussions between people of different religious beliefs, I have a bit more empathy for just how hard it can be, and you can number me among the people who are amazed by both your patience and your zeal in that regard.
--- Jonathan Prejean (Catholic)
When I was in a similar position -- i.e., when a lot of people thought the microwave had been going for long enough and I was about to pope any second -- a lot of Catholic e-pologists annoyed me to no end, badgering me about when I was going to take the plunge, etc., which only made my ornery nature want to stay away. Dave Armstrong was the Catholic who showed the most respect for my position. He asked questions, but he never badgered.
--- Greg Krehbiel (Catholic)
You are one of the most thoughtful and careful apologists out there.
I have my disagreements with Dave, but he's always treated me with kindness and courtesy, and when I criticize some aspect of his apologetics he's often quite responsive in nuancing his argument to address my concerns.
--- Edwin Tait (Anglican doctoral candidate in Church history)
I am reading your stuff since I think it is the most thorough and perhaps the best defense of Catholicism out there.
I have had many run-ins with Dave via email and he has been nothing but respectful and kind to me. He has shown me great respect despite knowing full well that I disagree with him on the essential issues.
--- Sam Shamoun (Reformed apologist, specializing in outreach to Muslims)
Dave Armstrong . . . is a staunch Catholic Apologist but he hosts exceptionally good discussions and postings of materials in what is to me a surprisingly open and fair manner. Be assured, it is of a high intellectual level / calibre.
--- "Teelow" ("biblicist" Christian)
Armstrong, a convert from Evangelical Protestantism, is a zealous defender of Roman claims but usually maintains a spirit of civility. He is a prolific writer who presents the "state of the art" in Roman Catholic apologetics.
--- Albert (Anglican, on Labarum blog: 3-8-04)
Thanks again for the great work you're doing for Christ and His Church.
--- Dr. Scott Hahn
I admire, as ever, your fantastic and penetrating work.
--- Patrick Madrid
I highly recommend his work, A Biblical Defense of Catholicism, which I find to be thoroughly orthodox, well-written, and effective for the purpose of making Catholic truth more understandable and accessible to the public at large. It is, I firmly believe, a fine book of popular Catholic apologetics.
--- Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J.
Apologist extraordinaire.
[T]here is someone out there who says what I have to say much better than I ever could -- the smartest Catholic apologist I know of -- Dave Armstrong.
--- Amy Welborn (Catholic author of many books)
Dave's fund of knowledge is astonishing, and his articles are well worth reading.
--- "Secret Agent Man" (Ian McLean)
You utterly amaze me! Such good stuff . . . Dave, keep up your effective and eternally valuable apologetic journalism!
--- Marcus Grodi (host of The Journey Home)
I think you have one of the best sites on the web. It's so amazingly thorough I'm dazzled at the incredible work you've put into it! Way to go!
--- Mark Shea
I always appreciate your work.
--- Fr. Peter M.J. Stravinskas
I truly appreciate your candor and your vast knowledge on these issues and am not at all ashamed to call you my brother in Christ . . . I am ashamed however of some who denounce YOUR faith as heretical and am consistently battling them in my own home church . . . This was meant just as a note of encouragement as I am sure your work goes either unnoticed or derided by many in "my" camp.
--- Reformed Presbyterian layman
Thanks for your honest struggling with the (inane and inconsistent) Calvinists. Even though I am a Calvinist myself, I know there are a lot of ignorant judgmental boobs out there.
--- Reformed Presbyterian layman
. . . readable, accurate, and accessible information about your beliefs. Fine work! Thank you again for being so conciliatory!
--- Reformed laywoman
May I say that your website is one of the finest I've ever visited, and I have visited often. I especially love your C.S. Lewis and John Henry Newman links. You have cleared up many misconceptions I had concerning Catholic theology and doctrine. Your page is in the spirit of true ecumenism and Christianity.
--- Anglican laywoman
I can testify to [Dave's] friendship with non-Catholic Christians personally; we built a good friendship when I was Anglican. He has always treated me with respect, never was he arrogant, triumphalistic or anything like that.
I can testify to anyone or in any court that you have a lot of respect for non-Catholic Christians! You showed great friendship and charity towards non-Catholic Christians on your old list serve [Apologetics / Ecumenism List, which still exists at cin.org] a few years ago when I was on it. I also know of your great love and respect for many Protestants, like C.S. Lewis. So don't let anyone tell you otherwise! :) Disagreeing with a Protestant does not mean a person is automatically anti-Protestant, anymore than disagreeing with a Catholic makes one automatically anti-Catholic.
--- Bret Bellamy (Anglican layman at the time of writing)
[T]hank you for being so detailed and deep. Many other apologists are too simplistic to get to the roots. You get to the root of error and axe it. Continue in your humble spirit and love for Christ and love for your separated brethren, it is so refreshing. I will support you by buying books and probably donations down the road.
--- Protestant layman (soon to be a Catholic)
I have always thought your website was the most outstanding one available, and of course you are my favorite Christian apologist. Keep up the good work you do for the Lord.
--- Fr. George Burns (Anglican priest)
As for the body of your work generically considered, I think that certainly there must be some things of great value in your work . . . I do like your stuff on Lewis and Tolkien and “mythopoeics”. No doubt your materials on Mormonism and other counter-cult issues are valuable, too. I’ve read a few of your blog posts about abortion, and yes, those have been truly outstanding. Clearly you’re not some fringe kook just blabbing on a blog; you have a serious purpose in God’s Kingdom, and I’m glad for it. I have erred, I suppose, in not telling you when I found things of yours to be good, and so for that I ask your forgiveness.
--- Tim Enloe (Reformed)
It seems like lots of people are doing lots of pondering on the Internet, but precious few are in the market for dialogue at the moment. But I genuinely appreciate those few, like Dave . . . who are interested in the discussion in terms of both explaining their own views well and thoroughly and pushing people to do the same with their own (and boy, that Ken [Commier] guy [a few comments above] couldn't have been farther off!). Based on my experience in this case, forming a dialogue successfully is like pulling teeth, no matter how sincere your motives. Of course, that just makes what Dave and others do (and the amount of effort it requires) look all the more impressive! To Dave and all those who are able to sustain these types of discussions between people of different religious beliefs, I have a bit more empathy for just how hard it can be, and you can number me among the people who are amazed by both your patience and your zeal in that regard.
--- Jonathan Prejean (Catholic)
When I was in a similar position -- i.e., when a lot of people thought the microwave had been going for long enough and I was about to pope any second -- a lot of Catholic e-pologists annoyed me to no end, badgering me about when I was going to take the plunge, etc., which only made my ornery nature want to stay away. Dave Armstrong was the Catholic who showed the most respect for my position. He asked questions, but he never badgered.
--- Greg Krehbiel (Catholic)
You are one of the most thoughtful and careful apologists out there.
I have my disagreements with Dave, but he's always treated me with kindness and courtesy, and when I criticize some aspect of his apologetics he's often quite responsive in nuancing his argument to address my concerns.
--- Edwin Tait (Anglican doctoral candidate in Church history)
I am reading your stuff since I think it is the most thorough and perhaps the best defense of Catholicism out there.
I have had many run-ins with Dave via email and he has been nothing but respectful and kind to me. He has shown me great respect despite knowing full well that I disagree with him on the essential issues.
--- Sam Shamoun (Reformed apologist, specializing in outreach to Muslims)
Dave Armstrong . . . is a staunch Catholic Apologist but he hosts exceptionally good discussions and postings of materials in what is to me a surprisingly open and fair manner. Be assured, it is of a high intellectual level / calibre.
--- "Teelow" ("biblicist" Christian)
Armstrong, a convert from Evangelical Protestantism, is a zealous defender of Roman claims but usually maintains a spirit of civility. He is a prolific writer who presents the "state of the art" in Roman Catholic apologetics.
--- Albert (Anglican, on Labarum blog: 3-8-04)
Tuesday, August 30, 2005
Jimi Hendrix: Discography and Catalogue of Recording Dates and Major Performances
Albums
(with Codes)
"Official"
Are You Experienced? (released September 1967) AYE
Axis: Bold as Love (released January 1968) AXIS
Electric Ladyland (released September 1968) LADY
Smash Hits (released June 1969) HITS
Band of Gypsies (live) (released 1970) BOG (12-31-69 / 1-1-70)
The Cry of Love (released January 1971) CRY
Live
BBC Sessions BBC (mostly Feb.-April / Oct.-Dec. 1967)
Jimi Plays Monterey MON (6-18-67)
Live at Winterland WIN (10-12 October 1968)
Live At Woodstock WOOD (8-18-69)
Live at the Fillmore East FILL (12-31-69 / 1-1-70)
Live at Berkeley BERK (5-30-70)
Blue Wild Angel: Live at the Isle of Wight ISLE (8-30-70)
Posthumous Studio Albums and Compilations
Rainbow Bridge RAIN
First Rays of the New Rising Sun RAYS
Experience Hendrix: the Best of Jimi Hendrix BEST
Voodoo Child: the Jimi Hendrix Collection VOO
The Jimi Hendrix Experience (box set) BOX
Nine to the Universe NINE
Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues: Jimi Hendrix SCOR
Blues BLUES
Recording Dates
(* = written by Jimi Hendrix)
(x = alternate studio or live version)
(+ = live performance)
(Mitch Mitchell played drums, except from November 1969 through February 1970 -- Buddy Miles)
(Noel Redding played bass up till around May 1969, then was succeeded by Billy Cox)
10-18-66 Hey Joe + BOX
10-18-66 Killing Floor + BOX
10-23-66 Hey Joe AYE / HITS / BEST / VOO
10-23-66 Hey Joe x BOX
11-2-66 *Stone Free AYE / HITS / BEST
11-24-66 *Love or Confusion AYE
12-13-66 *Foxy Lady AYE / HITS / BEST
12-13-66 *Foxy Lady x (alt mix) BOX
12-13-66 *Red House x BLUES
12-66 *Can You See Me AYE / HITS
1-11-67 *Purple Haze AYE / HITS / VOO / BEST
1-11-67 *Purple Haze x BOX
1-11-67 *The Wind Cries Mary AYE / HITS / VOO / BEST
1-11-67 *Fire AYE / VOO / HITS / BEST
1-11-67 *Third Stone From the Sun AYE / BOX / VOO (x?)
1-11-67 *Third Stone From the Sun x (vocal overdub session) BOX
1-11-67 ?51st Anniversary (mono) AYE / HITS
2-8-67 *Remember AYE / HITS
2-13-67 Hey Joe + BBC
2-13-67 Hey Joe +x BBC
2-13-67 *Love or Confusion + BBC
2-13-67 *Foxy Lady + BBC
2-13-67 *Foxy Lady +x BBC
2-13-67 *Stone Free + BBC
2-20-67 *I Don't Live Today AYE
3-28-67 *Purple Haze + BBC
3-28-67 *Fire + BBC
3-28-67 Killing Floor + BBC
3-29-67 *Manic Depression AYE / HITS / BEST
3-29-67 *Red House AYE / HITS / SCOR / BEST
4-3-67 *May This Be Love AYE
4-3-67 ?Highway Chile AYE / HITS
4-3-67 ?Highway Chile x (stereo) BOX / VOO
4-3-67 *Are You Experienced? AYE / VOO
4-3-67 ?Instrumental Jam BOX
4-4-67 ?Lover Man (instrumental) BOX
4-4-67 ?Somewhere + BOX
4-5-67 ?Taking Care of No Business BOX
4-17-67 *Manic Depression + BBC
5-4-67 She's So Fine AXIS
5-5-67 *If 6 Was 9 AXIS / BEST
5-5-67 *If 6 Was 9 x BOX
5-9-67 *Burning of the Midnight Lamp (instrumental) BOX
5-9-67 *Gypsy Eyes BOX
6-18-67 Killing Floor + MON
6-18-67 *Foxy Lady + MON
6-18-67 Like a Rolling Stone + MON / BOX
6-18-67 Rock Me Baby + MON / BOX
6-18-67 Hey Joe + MON
6-18-67 *Can You See Me + MON
6-18-67 *The Wind Cries Mary + MON
6-18-67 *Purple Haze + MON
6-18-67 Wild Thing + MON / VOO
[Monterey performance complete and in order]
7-7-67 *Burning of the Midnight Lamp LADY / VOO
9-5-67 *Fire + BOX
9-5-67 Sgt. Pepper BOX
9-5-67 *Burning of the Midnight Lamp BOX
10-3-67 *You Got Me Floating AXIS
10-3-67 Little Miss Lover x BOX
10-5-67 *Bold as Love (instrumental) BOX
10-6-67 *Little Miss Lover + BBC
10-6-67 *Burning of the Midnight Lamp + BBC
10-6-67 Catfish Blues + BBC
10-6-67 Hound Dog + BBC
10-6-67 Driving South + BBC
10-6-67 Driving South +x BBC
10-6-67 *Jammin' (w/ Stevie Wonder: drums) + BBC
10-6-67 I Was Made to Love Her (w/ Stevie Wonder: drums) + BBC
10-9-67 *The Wind Cries Mary + BOX
10-9-67 Catfish Blues + BOX
10-67 *Castles Made of Sand AXIS / BEST
10-67 *One Rainy Wish AXIS
10-67 Little Miss Lover AXIS
10-17-67 Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window? + BBC
10-17-67 I'm Your Hoochie Coochie Man + BBC
10-17-67 Driving South + BBC
10-25-67 *Little Wing AXIS / BEST / VOO
10-25-67 *Little Wing x BOX
10-26-67 *Wait Until Tomorrow AXIS
10-26-67 *Ain't No Telling AXIS
10-28-67 *Spanish Castle Magic AXIS
10-29-67 *Up From the Skies AXIS
10-29-67 *Bold As Love AXIS / BEST
11-10-67 Catfish Blues BLUES
11-13-67 *Angel BOX
12-9-67 *Hear My Train A-Comin' (acoustic) BLUES
12-15-67 *Hear My Train A-Comin' + BBC
12-15-67 *Hear My Train A-Comin' +x BBC
12-15-67 *Spanish Castle Magic + BBC
12-15-67 *Radio One + BBC
12-15-67 *Wait Until Tomorrow + BBC
12-15-67 Day Tripper + BBC
12-21-67 *Crosstown Traffic LADY / BEST / VOO
1-21-68 All Along the Watchtower LADY / BEST / VOO (4-track)
3-13-68 *My Friend CRY / RAYS / SCOR
3-15-68 *Fire + BOX
4-18-68 *Long Hot Summer Night LADY
4-22-68 Little Miss Strange LADY
4-23?-68 *1983 (A Merman I Should Turn To Be) LADY
4-23?-68 *Moon, Turn the Tides...Gently, Gently Away LADY
5-68? *Gypsy Eyes LADY
5-1-68 *House Burning Down LADY
5-2-68 *Voodoo Chile LADY / SCOR
5-3-68 *Voodoo Child (Slight Return) LADY / BEST / VOO
5-3-68 *Voodoo Chile Blues BLUES
6-68? *(Have You Ever Been To) Electric Ladyland LADY
6-10-68 *Rainy Day, Dream Away LADY
6-10-68 *Still Raining, Still Dreaming LADY
6-14-68 *(Have You Ever Been To) Electric Ladyland x BOX
6-29?-68 *...And the Gods Made Love LADY
8-12-68 *Room Full of Mirrors x BOX
8-27-68 *Come On (Pt. 1) LADY
8-27-68 *Come On (Pt. 1) x SCOR
10-10-68 Killing Floor + WIN
10-10-68 Sunshine of Your Love + WIN
10-11-68 *Fire + WIN
10-11-68 *Foxy Lady + WIN
10-11-68 *Red House + WIN
10-11-68 Tax Free + WIN
10-12-68 *Purple Haze + WIN
10-12-68 *Fire + VOO
10-12-68 *Manic Depression + WIN
10-12-68 Hey Joe + WIN
10-12-68 Hey Joe + VOO
10-12-68 Wild Thing + WIN
10-12-68 *Spanish Castle Magic + WIN
10-22-68 *Look Over Yonder RAIN
10-29-68 *Electric Church Red House BLUES
1-4-69 *Voodoo Child + BBC
1-4-69 Hey Joe + BBC
1-4-69 Sunshine of Your Love + BBC
2-11-69 ?It's Too Bad BOX / SCOR
2-17-69 *Spanish Castle Magic x VOO / BOX
2-17-69 *Hear My Train A-Comin' x BOX / SCOR
2-17-69 ?Country Blues SCOR
2-24-69 *Little Wing + BOX
2-24-69 *Voodoo Child (Slight Return) + BOX
3-15-69 ?Blue Window Jam SCOR
3-18-69 Star Spangled Banner RAIN / BOX
3-19-69 ?Mother, Mother SCOR
3-25-69 *Jimi/Jimmy Jam NINE
4-7-69 *Stone Free x VOO / BOX
4-21-69 *Room Full of Mirrors x BOX
4-22-69 Mannish Boy BLUES
4-24-69 *Drone Blues NINE
4-26-69 *I Don't Live Today + VOO / BOX
5-14-69 *Young/Hendrix (Jam) NINE
5-14-69 ?Jelly 292 BLUES
5-21-69 ?Bleeding Heart BLUES
5-24-69 *I Don't Live Today + (from the record album Kiss the Sky)
5-24-69 *Purple Haze + VOO / BOX
5-24-69 *Red House + BOX
5-29-69 *Nine to the Universe NINE
6-25-69 *Easy Blues NINE
8-18-69 *Message to Love + WOOD
8-18-69 *Hear My Train A-Comin' + WOOD
8-18-69 *Spanish Castle Magic + WOOD
8-18-69 *Red House + WOOD
8-18-69 ?Lover Man + WOOD
8-18-69 *Foxy Lady + WOOD
8-18-69 *Jam Back at the House + WOOD
8-18-69 *Izabella + WOOD
8-18-69 *Fire + WOOD
8-18-69 *Voodoo Child (Slight Return) + WOOD
8-18-69 Star Spangled Banner + WOOD / BEST / VOO
8-18-69 *Purple Haze + WOOD
8-18-69 *Woodstock Improvisation + WOOD
8-18-69 ?Villanova Junction + WOOD
8-18-69 Hey Joe + WOOD
[Woodstock performance in order]
8-29-69 *Izabella (x; single mix) VOO
8-29-69 *Izabella x BOX
11-14-69 *Stepping Stone (single mix) VOO
11-17-69 *Room Full of Mirrors RAYS / RAIN
12-15-69 Born Under a Bad Sign BLUES
12-18-69 *Ezy Rider CRY / RAYS
12-31-69 *Hear My Train A-Comin' + FILL
12-31-69 *Izabella + FILL
12-31-69 Auld Lang Syne + FILL
12-31-69 *Machine Gun + FILL
1-1-70 *Machine Gun + FILL
1-1-70 *Machine Gun + BOG
1-1-70 *Machine Gun (x?) + VOO
1-1-70 Wild Thing + FILL
1-1-70 *Stone Free + FILL
1-1-70 *Power of Soul + FILL
1-1-70 *Power of Soul (aka Power to Love) + BOG
1-1-70 *Voodoo Child (Slight Return) + FILL
1-1-70 We Gotta Live Together + FILL
1-1-70 We Gotta Live Together + BOG
1-1-70 *Who Knows + BOG
1-1-70 *Who Knows + FILL
1-1-70 Changes + FILL
1-1-70 Changes + BOG
1-1-70 *Stepping Stone + FILL
1-1-70 ?Stop + FILL
1-1-70 *Earth Blues + FILL
1-1-70 ?Burning Desire + FILL
1-1-70 *Message of Love (aka Message to Love) + BOG
1-17-70 *Izabella RAYS
1-20-70 *Earth Blues RAIN
1-20-70 *Earth Blues x BOX
1-20-70 *Message to Love x BOX
1-23-70 *Astro Man x BOX
1-23-70 ?Country Blues x BOX
1-23-70 ?Once I Had a Woman BLUES
2-16-70 *Freedom x BOX
3-23-70 ?Midnight Lightning SCOR
5-30-70 ?Pass It On (Straight Ahead) + BERK
5-30-70 *Hey Baby (New Rising Sun) + BERK
5-30-70 ?Lover Man + BERK
5-30-70 *Stone Free + BERK
5-30-70 Hey Joe + BERK
5-30-70 *I Don't Live Today + BERK
5-30-70 *Machine Gun + BERK
5-30-70 *Foxy Lady + BERK
5-30-70 Star Spangled Banner + BERK
5-30-70 *Purple Haze + BERK
5-30-70 *Voodoo Child (Slight Return) + BERK
5-30-70 *Hear My Train A-Comin' + RAIN / VOO
5-30-70 Johnny B. Goode + VOO / BOX
5-30-70 Blue Suede Shoes (afternoon sound check) BOX
6-16-70 *Night Bird Flying CRY / RAYS / BEST
6-17-70 *Straight Ahead CRY / RAYS
6-24-70 ?Cherokee Mist / *In From the Storm x BOX
6-25-70 *Freedom CRY / RAYS / BEST
6-26-70 *Stepping Stone RAYS
7-1-70 *Dolly Dagger RAYS / RAIN / BEST / VOO
7-1-70 *Beginnings (aka Jam Back at the House) RAYS
7-1-70 *Hey Baby (New Rising Sun) RAYS / RAIN / VOO
7-1-70 *Pali Gap RAIN
7-15-70 ?Come Down Hard on Me Baby BOX
7-17-70 *Red House + VOO
7-20-70 ?Lover Man x BOX
7-23-70 *Angel CRY / RAYS / BEST / VOO
7-30-70 *Foxy Lady + VOO
7-30-70 *Hey Baby + BOX
7-30-70 *In From the Storm + BOX
8-20-70 *Drifting CRY / RAYS
8-20-70 ?Slow Blues BOX
8-22-70 *Astro Man CRY / RAYS
8-22-70 *Ezy Rider x BOX
8-22-70 *Night Bird Flying x BOX
8-24-70 *Belly Button Window CRY / RAYS
8-24-70 *In from the Storm CRY / RAYS
8-30-70 God Save the Queen + ISLE
8-30-70 Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band + ISLE
8-30-70 *Spanish Castle Magic + ISLE
8-30-70 All Along The Watchtower + ISLE / BOX
8-30-70 *Machine Gun + ISLE
8-30-70 ?Lover Man + ISLE
8-30-70 *Freedom + ISLE / VOO
8-30-70 *Red House + ISLE
8-30-70 *Dolly Dagger + ISLE
8-30-70 ?Midnight Lighting + ISLE
8-30-70 *Foxy Lady + ISLE
8-30-70 *Message to Love + ISLE
8-30-70 *Hey Baby (New Rising Sun) + ISLE
8-30-70 *Ezy Ryder + ISLE
8-30-70 Hey Joe + ISLE
8-30-70 *Purple Haze + ISLE
8-30-70 *Voodoo Child (Slight Return) + ISLE
8-30-70 *In From The Storm + ISLE / BOX
[Isle of Wight performance complete and in order]
Songs Most Performed in Concert
[judging from the seven major recorded concerts: BBC Sessions ('67) / Monterey ('67) / Winterland ('68) / Woodstock ('69) / Fillmore East (Band of Gypsies) ('70) / Berkeley ('70) / Isle of Wight ('70) ]
Hey Joe 8
Foxy Lady 7
Purple Haze 6
Voodoo Child (Slight Return) 5
Hear My Train A-Comin' 5
Spanish Castle Magic 4
Stone Free 3
Fire 3
Killing Floor 3
Wild Thing 3
Machine Gun 3
Red House 3
Driving South 3
Message to Love 3
Lover Man 3
Manic Depression 2
Sunshine of Your Love 2
Star Spangled Banner 2
Hey Baby (New Rising Sun) 2
[Jimi Hendrix died tragically from a drug overdose on 18 September 1970]
Most of the above information (particularly dates) was obtained from the informative web page: Jimi Hendrix: Discography, Track index, Set lists]
(with Codes)
"Official"
Are You Experienced? (released September 1967) AYE
Axis: Bold as Love (released January 1968) AXIS
Electric Ladyland (released September 1968) LADY
Smash Hits (released June 1969) HITS
Band of Gypsies (live) (released 1970) BOG (12-31-69 / 1-1-70)
The Cry of Love (released January 1971) CRY
Live
BBC Sessions BBC (mostly Feb.-April / Oct.-Dec. 1967)
Jimi Plays Monterey MON (6-18-67)
Live at Winterland WIN (10-12 October 1968)
Live At Woodstock WOOD (8-18-69)
Live at the Fillmore East FILL (12-31-69 / 1-1-70)
Live at Berkeley BERK (5-30-70)
Blue Wild Angel: Live at the Isle of Wight ISLE (8-30-70)
Posthumous Studio Albums and Compilations
Rainbow Bridge RAIN
First Rays of the New Rising Sun RAYS
Experience Hendrix: the Best of Jimi Hendrix BEST
Voodoo Child: the Jimi Hendrix Collection VOO
The Jimi Hendrix Experience (box set) BOX
Nine to the Universe NINE
Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues: Jimi Hendrix SCOR
Blues BLUES
Recording Dates
(* = written by Jimi Hendrix)
(x = alternate studio or live version)
(+ = live performance)
(Mitch Mitchell played drums, except from November 1969 through February 1970 -- Buddy Miles)
(Noel Redding played bass up till around May 1969, then was succeeded by Billy Cox)
10-18-66 Hey Joe + BOX
10-18-66 Killing Floor + BOX
10-23-66 Hey Joe AYE / HITS / BEST / VOO
10-23-66 Hey Joe x BOX
11-2-66 *Stone Free AYE / HITS / BEST
11-24-66 *Love or Confusion AYE
12-13-66 *Foxy Lady AYE / HITS / BEST
12-13-66 *Foxy Lady x (alt mix) BOX
12-13-66 *Red House x BLUES
12-66 *Can You See Me AYE / HITS
1-11-67 *Purple Haze AYE / HITS / VOO / BEST
1-11-67 *Purple Haze x BOX
1-11-67 *The Wind Cries Mary AYE / HITS / VOO / BEST
1-11-67 *Fire AYE / VOO / HITS / BEST
1-11-67 *Third Stone From the Sun AYE / BOX / VOO (x?)
1-11-67 *Third Stone From the Sun x (vocal overdub session) BOX
1-11-67 ?51st Anniversary (mono) AYE / HITS
2-8-67 *Remember AYE / HITS
2-13-67 Hey Joe + BBC
2-13-67 Hey Joe +x BBC
2-13-67 *Love or Confusion + BBC
2-13-67 *Foxy Lady + BBC
2-13-67 *Foxy Lady +x BBC
2-13-67 *Stone Free + BBC
2-20-67 *I Don't Live Today AYE
3-28-67 *Purple Haze + BBC
3-28-67 *Fire + BBC
3-28-67 Killing Floor + BBC
3-29-67 *Manic Depression AYE / HITS / BEST
3-29-67 *Red House AYE / HITS / SCOR / BEST
4-3-67 *May This Be Love AYE
4-3-67 ?Highway Chile AYE / HITS
4-3-67 ?Highway Chile x (stereo) BOX / VOO
4-3-67 *Are You Experienced? AYE / VOO
4-3-67 ?Instrumental Jam BOX
4-4-67 ?Lover Man (instrumental) BOX
4-4-67 ?Somewhere + BOX
4-5-67 ?Taking Care of No Business BOX
4-17-67 *Manic Depression + BBC
5-4-67 She's So Fine AXIS
5-5-67 *If 6 Was 9 AXIS / BEST
5-5-67 *If 6 Was 9 x BOX
5-9-67 *Burning of the Midnight Lamp (instrumental) BOX
5-9-67 *Gypsy Eyes BOX
6-18-67 Killing Floor + MON
6-18-67 *Foxy Lady + MON
6-18-67 Like a Rolling Stone + MON / BOX
6-18-67 Rock Me Baby + MON / BOX
6-18-67 Hey Joe + MON
6-18-67 *Can You See Me + MON
6-18-67 *The Wind Cries Mary + MON
6-18-67 *Purple Haze + MON
6-18-67 Wild Thing + MON / VOO
[Monterey performance complete and in order]
7-7-67 *Burning of the Midnight Lamp LADY / VOO
9-5-67 *Fire + BOX
9-5-67 Sgt. Pepper BOX
9-5-67 *Burning of the Midnight Lamp BOX
10-3-67 *You Got Me Floating AXIS
10-3-67 Little Miss Lover x BOX
10-5-67 *Bold as Love (instrumental) BOX
10-6-67 *Little Miss Lover + BBC
10-6-67 *Burning of the Midnight Lamp + BBC
10-6-67 Catfish Blues + BBC
10-6-67 Hound Dog + BBC
10-6-67 Driving South + BBC
10-6-67 Driving South +x BBC
10-6-67 *Jammin' (w/ Stevie Wonder: drums) + BBC
10-6-67 I Was Made to Love Her (w/ Stevie Wonder: drums) + BBC
10-9-67 *The Wind Cries Mary + BOX
10-9-67 Catfish Blues + BOX
10-67 *Castles Made of Sand AXIS / BEST
10-67 *One Rainy Wish AXIS
10-67 Little Miss Lover AXIS
10-17-67 Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window? + BBC
10-17-67 I'm Your Hoochie Coochie Man + BBC
10-17-67 Driving South + BBC
10-25-67 *Little Wing AXIS / BEST / VOO
10-25-67 *Little Wing x BOX
10-26-67 *Wait Until Tomorrow AXIS
10-26-67 *Ain't No Telling AXIS
10-28-67 *Spanish Castle Magic AXIS
10-29-67 *Up From the Skies AXIS
10-29-67 *Bold As Love AXIS / BEST
11-10-67 Catfish Blues BLUES
11-13-67 *Angel BOX
12-9-67 *Hear My Train A-Comin' (acoustic) BLUES
12-15-67 *Hear My Train A-Comin' + BBC
12-15-67 *Hear My Train A-Comin' +x BBC
12-15-67 *Spanish Castle Magic + BBC
12-15-67 *Radio One + BBC
12-15-67 *Wait Until Tomorrow + BBC
12-15-67 Day Tripper + BBC
12-21-67 *Crosstown Traffic LADY / BEST / VOO
1-21-68 All Along the Watchtower LADY / BEST / VOO (4-track)
3-13-68 *My Friend CRY / RAYS / SCOR
3-15-68 *Fire + BOX
4-18-68 *Long Hot Summer Night LADY
4-22-68 Little Miss Strange LADY
4-23?-68 *1983 (A Merman I Should Turn To Be) LADY
4-23?-68 *Moon, Turn the Tides...Gently, Gently Away LADY
5-68? *Gypsy Eyes LADY
5-1-68 *House Burning Down LADY
5-2-68 *Voodoo Chile LADY / SCOR
5-3-68 *Voodoo Child (Slight Return) LADY / BEST / VOO
5-3-68 *Voodoo Chile Blues BLUES
6-68? *(Have You Ever Been To) Electric Ladyland LADY
6-10-68 *Rainy Day, Dream Away LADY
6-10-68 *Still Raining, Still Dreaming LADY
6-14-68 *(Have You Ever Been To) Electric Ladyland x BOX
6-29?-68 *...And the Gods Made Love LADY
8-12-68 *Room Full of Mirrors x BOX
8-27-68 *Come On (Pt. 1) LADY
8-27-68 *Come On (Pt. 1) x SCOR
10-10-68 Killing Floor + WIN
10-10-68 Sunshine of Your Love + WIN
10-11-68 *Fire + WIN
10-11-68 *Foxy Lady + WIN
10-11-68 *Red House + WIN
10-11-68 Tax Free + WIN
10-12-68 *Purple Haze + WIN
10-12-68 *Fire + VOO
10-12-68 *Manic Depression + WIN
10-12-68 Hey Joe + WIN
10-12-68 Hey Joe + VOO
10-12-68 Wild Thing + WIN
10-12-68 *Spanish Castle Magic + WIN
10-22-68 *Look Over Yonder RAIN
10-29-68 *Electric Church Red House BLUES
1-4-69 *Voodoo Child + BBC
1-4-69 Hey Joe + BBC
1-4-69 Sunshine of Your Love + BBC
2-11-69 ?It's Too Bad BOX / SCOR
2-17-69 *Spanish Castle Magic x VOO / BOX
2-17-69 *Hear My Train A-Comin' x BOX / SCOR
2-17-69 ?Country Blues SCOR
2-24-69 *Little Wing + BOX
2-24-69 *Voodoo Child (Slight Return) + BOX
3-15-69 ?Blue Window Jam SCOR
3-18-69 Star Spangled Banner RAIN / BOX
3-19-69 ?Mother, Mother SCOR
3-25-69 *Jimi/Jimmy Jam NINE
4-7-69 *Stone Free x VOO / BOX
4-21-69 *Room Full of Mirrors x BOX
4-22-69 Mannish Boy BLUES
4-24-69 *Drone Blues NINE
4-26-69 *I Don't Live Today + VOO / BOX
5-14-69 *Young/Hendrix (Jam) NINE
5-14-69 ?Jelly 292 BLUES
5-21-69 ?Bleeding Heart BLUES
5-24-69 *I Don't Live Today + (from the record album Kiss the Sky)
5-24-69 *Purple Haze + VOO / BOX
5-24-69 *Red House + BOX
5-29-69 *Nine to the Universe NINE
6-25-69 *Easy Blues NINE
8-18-69 *Message to Love + WOOD
8-18-69 *Hear My Train A-Comin' + WOOD
8-18-69 *Spanish Castle Magic + WOOD
8-18-69 *Red House + WOOD
8-18-69 ?Lover Man + WOOD
8-18-69 *Foxy Lady + WOOD
8-18-69 *Jam Back at the House + WOOD
8-18-69 *Izabella + WOOD
8-18-69 *Fire + WOOD
8-18-69 *Voodoo Child (Slight Return) + WOOD
8-18-69 Star Spangled Banner + WOOD / BEST / VOO
8-18-69 *Purple Haze + WOOD
8-18-69 *Woodstock Improvisation + WOOD
8-18-69 ?Villanova Junction + WOOD
8-18-69 Hey Joe + WOOD
[Woodstock performance in order]
8-29-69 *Izabella (x; single mix) VOO
8-29-69 *Izabella x BOX
11-14-69 *Stepping Stone (single mix) VOO
11-17-69 *Room Full of Mirrors RAYS / RAIN
12-15-69 Born Under a Bad Sign BLUES
12-18-69 *Ezy Rider CRY / RAYS
12-31-69 *Hear My Train A-Comin' + FILL
12-31-69 *Izabella + FILL
12-31-69 Auld Lang Syne + FILL
12-31-69 *Machine Gun + FILL
1-1-70 *Machine Gun + FILL
1-1-70 *Machine Gun + BOG
1-1-70 *Machine Gun (x?) + VOO
1-1-70 Wild Thing + FILL
1-1-70 *Stone Free + FILL
1-1-70 *Power of Soul + FILL
1-1-70 *Power of Soul (aka Power to Love) + BOG
1-1-70 *Voodoo Child (Slight Return) + FILL
1-1-70 We Gotta Live Together + FILL
1-1-70 We Gotta Live Together + BOG
1-1-70 *Who Knows + BOG
1-1-70 *Who Knows + FILL
1-1-70 Changes + FILL
1-1-70 Changes + BOG
1-1-70 *Stepping Stone + FILL
1-1-70 ?Stop + FILL
1-1-70 *Earth Blues + FILL
1-1-70 ?Burning Desire + FILL
1-1-70 *Message of Love (aka Message to Love) + BOG
1-17-70 *Izabella RAYS
1-20-70 *Earth Blues RAIN
1-20-70 *Earth Blues x BOX
1-20-70 *Message to Love x BOX
1-23-70 *Astro Man x BOX
1-23-70 ?Country Blues x BOX
1-23-70 ?Once I Had a Woman BLUES
2-16-70 *Freedom x BOX
3-23-70 ?Midnight Lightning SCOR
5-30-70 ?Pass It On (Straight Ahead) + BERK
5-30-70 *Hey Baby (New Rising Sun) + BERK
5-30-70 ?Lover Man + BERK
5-30-70 *Stone Free + BERK
5-30-70 Hey Joe + BERK
5-30-70 *I Don't Live Today + BERK
5-30-70 *Machine Gun + BERK
5-30-70 *Foxy Lady + BERK
5-30-70 Star Spangled Banner + BERK
5-30-70 *Purple Haze + BERK
5-30-70 *Voodoo Child (Slight Return) + BERK
5-30-70 *Hear My Train A-Comin' + RAIN / VOO
5-30-70 Johnny B. Goode + VOO / BOX
5-30-70 Blue Suede Shoes (afternoon sound check) BOX
6-16-70 *Night Bird Flying CRY / RAYS / BEST
6-17-70 *Straight Ahead CRY / RAYS
6-24-70 ?Cherokee Mist / *In From the Storm x BOX
6-25-70 *Freedom CRY / RAYS / BEST
6-26-70 *Stepping Stone RAYS
7-1-70 *Dolly Dagger RAYS / RAIN / BEST / VOO
7-1-70 *Beginnings (aka Jam Back at the House) RAYS
7-1-70 *Hey Baby (New Rising Sun) RAYS / RAIN / VOO
7-1-70 *Pali Gap RAIN
7-15-70 ?Come Down Hard on Me Baby BOX
7-17-70 *Red House + VOO
7-20-70 ?Lover Man x BOX
7-23-70 *Angel CRY / RAYS / BEST / VOO
7-30-70 *Foxy Lady + VOO
7-30-70 *Hey Baby + BOX
7-30-70 *In From the Storm + BOX
8-20-70 *Drifting CRY / RAYS
8-20-70 ?Slow Blues BOX
8-22-70 *Astro Man CRY / RAYS
8-22-70 *Ezy Rider x BOX
8-22-70 *Night Bird Flying x BOX
8-24-70 *Belly Button Window CRY / RAYS
8-24-70 *In from the Storm CRY / RAYS
8-30-70 God Save the Queen + ISLE
8-30-70 Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band + ISLE
8-30-70 *Spanish Castle Magic + ISLE
8-30-70 All Along The Watchtower + ISLE / BOX
8-30-70 *Machine Gun + ISLE
8-30-70 ?Lover Man + ISLE
8-30-70 *Freedom + ISLE / VOO
8-30-70 *Red House + ISLE
8-30-70 *Dolly Dagger + ISLE
8-30-70 ?Midnight Lighting + ISLE
8-30-70 *Foxy Lady + ISLE
8-30-70 *Message to Love + ISLE
8-30-70 *Hey Baby (New Rising Sun) + ISLE
8-30-70 *Ezy Ryder + ISLE
8-30-70 Hey Joe + ISLE
8-30-70 *Purple Haze + ISLE
8-30-70 *Voodoo Child (Slight Return) + ISLE
8-30-70 *In From The Storm + ISLE / BOX
[Isle of Wight performance complete and in order]
Songs Most Performed in Concert
[judging from the seven major recorded concerts: BBC Sessions ('67) / Monterey ('67) / Winterland ('68) / Woodstock ('69) / Fillmore East (Band of Gypsies) ('70) / Berkeley ('70) / Isle of Wight ('70) ]
Hey Joe 8
Foxy Lady 7
Purple Haze 6
Voodoo Child (Slight Return) 5
Hear My Train A-Comin' 5
Spanish Castle Magic 4
Stone Free 3
Fire 3
Killing Floor 3
Wild Thing 3
Machine Gun 3
Red House 3
Driving South 3
Message to Love 3
Lover Man 3
Manic Depression 2
Sunshine of Your Love 2
Star Spangled Banner 2
Hey Baby (New Rising Sun) 2
[Jimi Hendrix died tragically from a drug overdose on 18 September 1970]
Most of the above information (particularly dates) was obtained from the informative web page: Jimi Hendrix: Discography, Track index, Set lists]
Monday, August 29, 2005
The mushroom cloud over Hiroshima: August 6, 1945. Later, President Harry Truman admitted that this was "murder", and a weapon "used to wipe out women and children and unarmed people, and not for military uses."
Declassified Top Secret Documents From Harry Truman and Others Reveal Discussions and Qualms Concerning the Morality of Nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki
The first collection of these documents on the Internet which I will cite is:
The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II: A Collection of Primary Sources:
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 162, Edited by William Burr
(posted on August 5, 2005)
The author states:
Document 11: Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy, "Memorandum of Conversation with General Marshall May 29, 1945 – 11:45 p.m.," Top Secret
Source: Record Group 107, Office of the Secretary of War, Formerly Top Secret Correspondence of Secretary of War Stimson (“Safe File”), July 1940-September 1945, box 12, S-1
Blurb (these will be in blue henceforth):
Apparently dissenting from the Targeting Committee’s recommendations, Army Chief of Staff George Marshall noted the “opprobrium which might follow from an ill considered employment of such force.” This document has played a role in arguments developed by Barton J. Bernstein that a few figures such as Marshall and Stimson were “caught between an older morality that opposed the intentional killing of noncombatants and a newer one that stressed virtually total war.”
Citation from another web page:
Document 12: "Notes of the Interim Committee Meeting Thursday, 31 May 1945, 10:00 A.M. to 1:15 P.M. – 2:15 P.M. to 4:15 P.M.," n.d., Top Secret
Source: RG 77, MED Records, H-B files, folder no. 100 (copy from microfilm)
. . . Interested in producing the “greatest psychological effect,” the Committee members agreed that the “most desirable target would be a vital war plant employing a large number of workers and closely surrounded by workers’ houses.” Bernstein argues that this target choice represented an uneasy endorsement of “terror bombing”--the target was not exclusively military or civilian; nevertheless, workers' housing would include noncombatant men, women, and children.
Document 15: Memorandum of Conference with the President, June 6, 1945, Top Secret Source: Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library, Henry Lewis Stimson Papers (microfilm at Library of Congress)
. . . At the end, Stimson shared his doubts about targeting cities and killing civilians through area bombing because of its impact on the U.S.’s reputation as well as on the problem of finding targets for the atomic bomb. Barton Bernstein has also pointed to this as additional evidence of the influence on Stimson of “an older morality.”
Document 38: Truman's Potsdam DiaryBarton J. Bernstein, "Truman At Potsdam: His Secret Diary," Foreign Service Journal, July/August 1980, excerpts, used with author’s permission
Some years after Truman died a hand-written diary that he kept during the Potsdam conference surfaced in his personal papers. For convenience Barton Bernstein’s rendition is provided here but linked here are the scanned versions of Truman’s handwriting on the Truman Library’s web site (for 16 July and 17-30 July respectively).
The diary entries cover July 16, 17, 18, 20, 25, 26, and 30 and include Truman’s thinking about a number of issues and developments, including his reactions to Churchill and Stalin, the atomic bomb and how it should be targeted, the possible impact of the bomb and a Soviet declaration of war on Japan, and his decision to tell Stalin about the bomb. Receptive to pressure from Secretary of War Stimson, Truman recorded his decision to take Japan’s “old capital” (Kyoto) off the atomic bomb target list. Barton Bernstein and Richard Frank, among others, have argued that Truman’s assertion that the atomic targets were “military objectives” suggested that either he did not understand the power of the new weapons or had simply deceived himself about the nature of the targets.
Document 58: Memorandum of Conference with the President, August 8, 1945 at 10:45 AM
Source: Henry Stimson Diary, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library, Henry Lewis Stimson Papers (microfilm at Library of Congress)
At their first meeting after the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima, Stimson briefed Truman on the scale of the destruction, with Truman recognizing the “terrible responsibility” that was on his shoulder.
Document 65: Diary Entry, Friday, August 10, 1945, Henry Wallace Diary
Source: Papers of Henry A. Wallace, Special Collections Department, University of Iowa Libraries, Iowa City, Iowa (copy courtesy of Special Collections Department)
Secretary of Commerce (and former Vice President) Henry Wallace provided a detailed report on the cabinet meeting where Truman and his advisers discussed the Japanese surrender offer, Russian moves into Manchuria, and public opinion on “hard” surrender terms. With Japan close to capitulation, Truman asserted presidential control and ordered a halt to the atomic bombings. Barton J. Bernstein has suggested that Truman’s comment about “all those kids” showed his belated recognition that the bomb caused mass casualties and that the target was not purely a military one.
Quote from the above: "Truman said he had given orders to stop atomic bombing. He said the thought of wiping out another 100,000 people was too horrible. He didn't like the idea of killing, as he said, "all those kids."
Footnote 48:
Truman's letter to Senator Richard B. Russell: August 9, 1945:
Russell had written to President Truman on August 7:
Next, from the Internet info-page: The Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb:
Smyth report on atomic bomb: August 6, 1951:
"Then," the President said Stimson and I began to discuss the use of the bomb. It was my suggestion that we pick out a place to drop it as near a war plant as possible so as not to injure any more people than necessary. He said he conferred not only with Stimson but with Byrnes and Admiral Leahy and the decision was reached to drop the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The President said that the military leaders beleived, up to that time, that it would require an army of at least a million Americans to defeat Japan and they told the President, in answer to his inquiries that they estimated there would be about 25% casualties. He said he asked what the population of Hiroshima was and his recollection was that they said about 60,000. He said that he felt and said it was far better to kill 60,000 Japanese than to have 250,000 Americans killed and he, therefore, ordered the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
[Note then, that Truman was not averse to wiping out the entire population of Hiroshima; yet we are told that he did not intend to target civilians, and that this was an unintended effect of a military strike]
President Truman to Samuel McCrea Cavert, August 11, 1945
Samuel McCrea Cavert to President Truman, August 9, 1945
[a plea from a Christian to reconsider the bombings; Truman was responding to this in the above letter]
ENCLOSURE "A"
THE EVALUATION of the ATOMIC BOMB as a MILITARY WEAPON
The Final Report of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Evaluation Board For Operation Crossroads
30 June 1947
Six--Consideration of Targets
1. The selection of targets for attack by atomic weapons must take account of the number of such weapons available in the predictable future. Thus selection and priority of targets become of prime importance in the employment of the weapon.
2. The correlation of the results of the explosions of atomic bombs over Japanese cities and against naval bessels, at Bikini, gives ample evidence that the bomb is pre-eminently a weapon for use against human life and activities in large urban and industrial areas, as well as seaports.
[ . . . ]
Seven--Effectiveness of the Bomb against Cities
1. However feasible passive means of defense may prove for small vital installations, such protection will be inadequate for a city. Its structures and inhabitants, except as interception measures at a distance are effective, are fully vulnerable to atomic bomb attack.
2. Conventional methods of fire control, emergency policing, care of the wounded and the restoration of essential services would certainly mitigate the results no matter how extensive. But the personnel for these services would have to be recruited from outside the area and where radioactive contamination existed could enter it only with extreme difficulty and after some lapse of time.
Letter from the President to Atomic Energy Commissioner Thomas E. Murray, January 19, 1953
From the web page: Hiroshima: Harry Truman's Diary and Papers:
See an additional collection of related documents, collected by historians Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin, and also Documents Relating to American Foreign Policy: Hiroshima.
In more than one letter, Truman justifies the use of nuclear bombs based on the fact that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor. For example, in a public statement of 8-6-45: "The Japanese began the war from the air at Pearl Harbor. They have been repaid many fold."
Doug Long, in his thoughtful, thought-provoking page, Hiroshima: Random Ramblings, provides appropriate closing thoughts:
The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II: A Collection of Primary Sources:
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 162, Edited by William Burr
(posted on August 5, 2005)
The author states:
These are photographs of the government documents in pdf form. I didn't (being naturally lazy about these things) figure out how to cut and paste (if it is possible with these documents), so I will cite the summarizing blurbs on this page and give the URLs so anyone can read the primary documents which are thus summarized in a particular fashion. In any event, these documents will demonstrate that the persons involved were well aware that civilian casualties were involved (which supports my contention that it is ludicrous to assert that they neither knew the consequences, or that it is justifiable by the Catholic principle of "double effect"). They knew full well what they were doing. And not all were pleased with it.With the material that follows, the National Security Archive publishes the most comprehensive on-line collection to date of declassified U.S. government documents on the atomic bomb and the end of the war in the Pacific. Besides material from the files of the Manhattan Project, this collection includes formerly "Top Secret Ultra" summaries and translations of Japanese diplomatic cable traffic intercepted under the "Magic" program. Moreover, the collection includes for the first time translations from Japanese sources of high level meetings and discussions in Tokyo, including the conferences when Emperor Hirohito authorized the final decision to surrender.
. . . This briefing book will not attempt to answer these questions [various points of controversy briefly noted] or use primary sources to stake out positions on any of them . . . Instead, by gaining access to a broad range of U.S. and Japanese documents from the spring and summer of 1945, interested readers can see for themselves the crucial source material that scholars have used to shape narrative accounts of the historical developments and to frame their arguments about the questions that have provoked controversy over the years. To help readers who are less familiar with the debates, commentary on some of the documents will point out, although far from comprehensively, some of the ways in which they have been interpreted. With direct access to the documents, readers may be able to develop their own answers to the questions raised above.
[my kind of approach! Bravo!]
Document 11: Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy, "Memorandum of Conversation with General Marshall May 29, 1945 – 11:45 p.m.," Top Secret
Source: Record Group 107, Office of the Secretary of War, Formerly Top Secret Correspondence of Secretary of War Stimson (“Safe File”), July 1940-September 1945, box 12, S-1
Blurb (these will be in blue henceforth):
Apparently dissenting from the Targeting Committee’s recommendations, Army Chief of Staff George Marshall noted the “opprobrium which might follow from an ill considered employment of such force.” This document has played a role in arguments developed by Barton J. Bernstein that a few figures such as Marshall and Stimson were “caught between an older morality that opposed the intentional killing of noncombatants and a newer one that stressed virtually total war.”
Citation from another web page:
General Marshall said he thought these weapons might first be used against straight military objectives such as a large naval installation and then if no complete result was derived from the effect of that, he thought we ought to designate a number of large manufacturing areas from which the people would be warned to leave-telling the Japanese that we intended to destroy such centers. There would be no individual designations so that the Japs would not know exactly where we were to hit-a number should be named and the hit should follow shortly after. Every effort should be made to keep our record of warning clear. We must offset by such warning methods the opprobrium which might followfrom an ill considered employment of such force.
Document 12: "Notes of the Interim Committee Meeting Thursday, 31 May 1945, 10:00 A.M. to 1:15 P.M. – 2:15 P.M. to 4:15 P.M.," n.d., Top Secret
Source: RG 77, MED Records, H-B files, folder no. 100 (copy from microfilm)
. . . Interested in producing the “greatest psychological effect,” the Committee members agreed that the “most desirable target would be a vital war plant employing a large number of workers and closely surrounded by workers’ houses.” Bernstein argues that this target choice represented an uneasy endorsement of “terror bombing”--the target was not exclusively military or civilian; nevertheless, workers' housing would include noncombatant men, women, and children.
Document 15: Memorandum of Conference with the President, June 6, 1945, Top Secret Source: Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library, Henry Lewis Stimson Papers (microfilm at Library of Congress)
. . . At the end, Stimson shared his doubts about targeting cities and killing civilians through area bombing because of its impact on the U.S.’s reputation as well as on the problem of finding targets for the atomic bomb. Barton Bernstein has also pointed to this as additional evidence of the influence on Stimson of “an older morality.”
Document 38: Truman's Potsdam DiaryBarton J. Bernstein, "Truman At Potsdam: His Secret Diary," Foreign Service Journal, July/August 1980, excerpts, used with author’s permission
Some years after Truman died a hand-written diary that he kept during the Potsdam conference surfaced in his personal papers. For convenience Barton Bernstein’s rendition is provided here but linked here are the scanned versions of Truman’s handwriting on the Truman Library’s web site (for 16 July and 17-30 July respectively).
The diary entries cover July 16, 17, 18, 20, 25, 26, and 30 and include Truman’s thinking about a number of issues and developments, including his reactions to Churchill and Stalin, the atomic bomb and how it should be targeted, the possible impact of the bomb and a Soviet declaration of war on Japan, and his decision to tell Stalin about the bomb. Receptive to pressure from Secretary of War Stimson, Truman recorded his decision to take Japan’s “old capital” (Kyoto) off the atomic bomb target list. Barton Bernstein and Richard Frank, among others, have argued that Truman’s assertion that the atomic targets were “military objectives” suggested that either he did not understand the power of the new weapons or had simply deceived himself about the nature of the targets.
Document 58: Memorandum of Conference with the President, August 8, 1945 at 10:45 AM
Source: Henry Stimson Diary, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library, Henry Lewis Stimson Papers (microfilm at Library of Congress)
At their first meeting after the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima, Stimson briefed Truman on the scale of the destruction, with Truman recognizing the “terrible responsibility” that was on his shoulder.
Document 65: Diary Entry, Friday, August 10, 1945, Henry Wallace Diary
Source: Papers of Henry A. Wallace, Special Collections Department, University of Iowa Libraries, Iowa City, Iowa (copy courtesy of Special Collections Department)
Secretary of Commerce (and former Vice President) Henry Wallace provided a detailed report on the cabinet meeting where Truman and his advisers discussed the Japanese surrender offer, Russian moves into Manchuria, and public opinion on “hard” surrender terms. With Japan close to capitulation, Truman asserted presidential control and ordered a halt to the atomic bombings. Barton J. Bernstein has suggested that Truman’s comment about “all those kids” showed his belated recognition that the bomb caused mass casualties and that the target was not purely a military one.
Quote from the above: "Truman said he had given orders to stop atomic bombing. He said the thought of wiping out another 100,000 people was too horrible. He didn't like the idea of killing, as he said, "all those kids."
Footnote 48:
Truman's letter to Senator Richard B. Russell: August 9, 1945:
Dear Dick:
I read your telegram of August seventh with a lot of interest.
I know that Japan is a terribly cruel and uncivilized nation in warfare but I can’t bring myself to believe that, because they are beasts, we should ourselves act in the same manner.
For myself, I certainly regret the necessity of wiping out whole populations because of the "pigheadedness’ of the leaders of a nation and for your information, I am not going to do it unless it is absolutely necessary. It is my opinion that after the Russians enter into war the Japanese will very shortly fold up.
My object is to save as many American lives as possible but I also have a humane feeling for the women and children in Japan.
Russell had written to President Truman on August 7:
This was a total war as long as our enemies hels all of the cards. Why should we change the rules now, after the blood, treasure and enterprise of the American people have given us the upper hand.
Next, from the Internet info-page: The Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb:
Smyth report on atomic bomb: August 6, 1951:
"Then," the President said Stimson and I began to discuss the use of the bomb. It was my suggestion that we pick out a place to drop it as near a war plant as possible so as not to injure any more people than necessary. He said he conferred not only with Stimson but with Byrnes and Admiral Leahy and the decision was reached to drop the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The President said that the military leaders beleived, up to that time, that it would require an army of at least a million Americans to defeat Japan and they told the President, in answer to his inquiries that they estimated there would be about 25% casualties. He said he asked what the population of Hiroshima was and his recollection was that they said about 60,000. He said that he felt and said it was far better to kill 60,000 Japanese than to have 250,000 Americans killed and he, therefore, ordered the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
[Note then, that Truman was not averse to wiping out the entire population of Hiroshima; yet we are told that he did not intend to target civilians, and that this was an unintended effect of a military strike]
President Truman to Samuel McCrea Cavert, August 11, 1945
Nobody is more disturbed over the use of Atomic bombs than I am but I was greatly disturbed over the unwarranted attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor and their murder of our prisoners of war. The only language they seem to understand is the one we have been using to bombard them.
When you have to deal with a beast you have to treat him as a beast. It is most regrettable but nevertheless true.
Samuel McCrea Cavert to President Truman, August 9, 1945
[a plea from a Christian to reconsider the bombings; Truman was responding to this in the above letter]
Many Christians deeply disturbed by use of atomic bombs against Japanese cities because of their necessarily indiscriminate destructive efforts . . .
Federal Council of the Churches of the Churches of Christ in America
Samuel McCrea Cavert, General Secretary
ENCLOSURE "A"
THE EVALUATION of the ATOMIC BOMB as a MILITARY WEAPON
The Final Report of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Evaluation Board For Operation Crossroads
30 June 1947
Six--Consideration of Targets
1. The selection of targets for attack by atomic weapons must take account of the number of such weapons available in the predictable future. Thus selection and priority of targets become of prime importance in the employment of the weapon.
2. The correlation of the results of the explosions of atomic bombs over Japanese cities and against naval bessels, at Bikini, gives ample evidence that the bomb is pre-eminently a weapon for use against human life and activities in large urban and industrial areas, as well as seaports.
[ . . . ]
Seven--Effectiveness of the Bomb against Cities
1. However feasible passive means of defense may prove for small vital installations, such protection will be inadequate for a city. Its structures and inhabitants, except as interception measures at a distance are effective, are fully vulnerable to atomic bomb attack.
2. Conventional methods of fire control, emergency policing, care of the wounded and the restoration of essential services would certainly mitigate the results no matter how extensive. But the personnel for these services would have to be recruited from outside the area and where radioactive contamination existed could enter it only with extreme difficulty and after some lapse of time.
Letter from the President to Atomic Energy Commissioner Thomas E. Murray, January 19, 1953
I rather think you have put a wrong construction on my approach to the use of the Atomic bomb. It is far worse than gas and biological warfare because it affects the civilian population and murders them by the wholesale.
From the web page: Hiroshima: Harry Truman's Diary and Papers:
7/25/45 Diary Entry:
We met at 11 A.M. today. That is Stalin, Churchill and the U.S. President. But I had a most important session with Lord Mountbattan & General Marshall before than. We have discovered the most terrible bomb in the history of the world. It may be the fire destruction prophesied in the Euphrates Valley Era, after Noah and his fabulous Ark.
Anyway we 'think' we have found the way to cause a disintegration of the atom. An experiment in the New Mexican desert was startling - to put it mildly. Thirteen pounds of the explosive caused the complete disintegration of a steel tower 60 feet high, created a crater 6 feet deep and 1,200 feet in diameter, knocked over a steel tower 1/2 mile away and knocked men down 10,000 yards away. The explosion was visible for more than 200 miles and audible for 40 miles and more.
The weapon is to be used against Japan between now and August 10th. I have told the Sec. of War, Mr. Stimson, to use it so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children. Even if the Japs are savages, ruthless, merciless and fanatic, we as the leader of the world for the common welfare cannot drop this terrible bomb on the old capital or the new [Kyoto or Tokyo].
He [Stimson] and I are in accord. The target will be a purely military one and we will issue a warning statement [known as the Potsdam Proclamation] asking the Japs to surrender and save lives. I'm sure they will not do that, but we will have given them the chance. It is certainly a good thing for the world that Hitler's crowd or Stalin's did not discover this atomic bomb. It seems to be the most terrible thing ever discovered, but it can be made the most useful.8-9-45 public statement:
The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base.
See an additional collection of related documents, collected by historians Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin, and also Documents Relating to American Foreign Policy: Hiroshima.
In more than one letter, Truman justifies the use of nuclear bombs based on the fact that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor. For example, in a public statement of 8-6-45: "The Japanese began the war from the air at Pearl Harbor. They have been repaid many fold."
Doug Long, in his thoughtful, thought-provoking page, Hiroshima: Random Ramblings, provides appropriate closing thoughts:
Was President Truman a Bad Guy?
I am not interested in "finding fault" with President Truman. From reading his diary, his letters to his wife, and accounts of private conversations he had with others, I've come to the conclusion that Truman believed dropping atomic bombs on Japan would save American lives. After studying Harry Truman and the awful cup that passed to him, my heart goes out to him. He was happy in the Senate and did not want to become Vice-President or President. When the presidency was thrust upon him, we were struggling through one of the most crucial and chaotic periods in our nation's history. To make matters worse, neither Roosevelt nor Truman had taken care to see that Truman was well-informed on the war situation. Not surprisingly, the new President, by his own admission, was overwhelmed by the tasks facing him. . . .Didn't the Japanese Deserve It?
Perhaps some did; many atrocities were committed by Japanese soldiers against American POWs and other people as well. But those who "deserved it" were not the primary targets of the atomic bombs. The primary targets were civilians who were much like us, who had no control over government policy, who feared the war and wished it would stop, and who were propagandized by their government into believing that God was on their side. Those whom the Allies decided "deserved it" were tried at the Tokyo War Crimes trials.
Altho he never publicly admitted it, President Truman had his misgivings about using a-bombs on cities. On Aug. 10, 1945 (the day after the Nagasaki bomb), having received reports and photographs of the effects of the Hiroshima bomb, Truman ordered a halt to further atomic bombings. . . .
On July 21, 1948 Truman confided some other private thoughts on the atomic bomb to his staff. Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission David Lilienthal recorded Truman's words in his diary that night, along with Lilienthal's own observations in parentheses:
"I don't think we ought to use this thing [the A-Bomb] unless we absolutely have to. It is a terrible thing to order the use of something that (here he looked down at his desk, rather reflectively) that is so terribly destructive, destructive beyond anything we have ever had. You have got to understand that this isn't a military weapon. (I shall never forget this particular expression). It is used to wipe out women and children and unarmed people, and not for military uses."
(David Lilienthal, The Journals of David E. Lilienthal, Vol. Two, pg. 391) [my -- i.e., Long's -- emphasis].
Truman's candid comments underscored the indiscriminate power of the atomic bomb that causes it to kill people we don't want to kill.
Sunday, August 28, 2005
On Whether the Catholic Ethical Principle of "Double Effect" Can Justify the Nuclear Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Hiroshima and Nagasaki fail the Catholic test of "double effect" because they involved the killing of over 200,000 civilian noncombatants. Such an act is condemned in traditional just war criteria which forbids deliberate targeting of such non-military populations. The exceedingly weak counter-argument given by proponents is that these cities had military installations (President Truman absurdly referred to the city of Hiroshima as a "military base"). These were the targets, so we are told, not the civilian population; therefore the dreadful result of killing them was not willed and is supposedly covered under the "protection" of the principle under consideration.
I have contended that such a justification is ludicrous and an example of rationalizing special pleading of the worst kind. It simply can't be sustained, given nuclear technology, even if relatively unknown at the time. If we grant this "lessening of culpability due to ignorance" for Hiroshima, we still could not do so for Nagasaki, since it was then known what would happen.
Furthermore, the target areas (the centers of both cities) and the knowledge that the effect of the bombs spread outwardly from ground zero to cover a known area of a particular estimated size, and the obvious fact that cities contain citizens and population (read: people, persons, human beings; read, "including many elderly men, women, and children"), make it quite implausible (I think, virtually impossible) to maintain that those who ordered such a strike were targeting only military installations and not also people.
Moreover, terror bombing or carpet bombing of cities with known effects had already occurred (particularly in Dresden, Germany and in Tokyo). It is equally absurd to argue that those strikes were not intended to target populations as well as military production facilities, bases, etc. This being the case, and the immediate precedent, it is difficult to make an argument that somehow Hiroshima and Nagasaki were instances of a strike wholly different in nature and intent from Dresden and Tokyo.
If indeed only the military targets were in mind, then why drop these horrific weapons on the center of the city? Was that the way to take out the most military targets? I have read that the bulk of these targets were on the outer peripheries of the city, not in the center. If the goal was to minimize civilian casualties, is not the center of the city the very worst selection for this end? The intent was clearly to kill as many people as possible along with taking out whatever military targets were there. Of course, those who do such an evil thing will maximize the military significance and minimize the human cost, but the facts remain what they are and cannot, in my opinion, be gotten over.
To sum up, then:
The second sentence is also quite applicable and damaging to the proponents' position, thought not fatal in and of itself, due to the nature of probabilistic or contingent or theoretical calculations of what would happen in the future. As many high military figures felt at the time (Eisenhower, MacArthur, Nimitz, Halsey, Carter Clarke: who was in charge of the radio intelligence summations; also former President Hoover, etc.), surrender could have been achieved by the end of 1945 without recourse to such horrible measures. There was certainly enough opinion and evidence along these lines for us to have at least more seriously considered such an option, in accord with this principle.
Or else, I suppose proponents could simply argue that all these military experts were ignorant, misguided, acting on emotions alone (as if the pro-bombing crowd did not have a large amount of emotions clouding their reasoning, too), or that they only reported their supposed feelings anachronistically, and after the fact (due to the Cold War, the second-guessing of hindsight, etc.). Some people seem to consider themselves able (as a non-military and non-academic persons), 60 years after the fact, to better make such judgments than folks like Eisenhower and MacArthur. Is that not exceptionally presumptuous?
If we grant that President Truman acted in good faith, with good motives (as I freely do), then we must also grant that those opposed to the decision at the time were equally in good faith, with roughly equal the information needed to make the decision one way or the other. This was not a unanimous consensus at the time, however one wishes to slant or spin it. In other words, many thought that we could achieve the good end without the bad effect of what the bomb in fact caused. it was a viable option; therefore it should have been seriously considered and (I say) chosen as the more moral option of the two.
The good end desired (the surrender and thus the end of the wanton slaughters of the Japanese army and suicides even of Japanese civilians) was promptly achieved. So far so good. The good effect was also produced by the action; yet it was also produced by the bad effect of the action (the mass killings convinced the Japanese of the futility of continuing). Thus, this would seem to suggest that Hiroshima and Nagasaki do not meet this particular just war criterion.
And thus we arrive at the crux of the matter: the previous state of affairs being true; therefore a good end was achieved by a bad means, and this is not allowed in Catholic moral theology. Therefore, the bombings are unjustifiable once again, on this separate and distinct ground. If, to speak theoretically, somehow we had had the technology then to wipe out 200,000 Japanese soldiers, and very few civilians as nonintended "collateral damage," then the act would have been quite acceptable by these standards. But since the dead were some 95% civilians, the rationale doesn't wash (as that is the very opposite ration of what should be for this to be a moral act). It was, therefore, an evil act. And one must not commit eveil, even for the achievement of a great good. Such is not Christian ethical thought. Period.
As in the previous example, it cannot be reasonably argued that the bombings were morally good or neutral acts themselves. The double effect principle itself rules out using a bad, evil, immoral act for the purpose of producing good effects, no matter how good the effects may be. A good effect indeed was produced (the surrender), but the means to achieve it were evil. Therefore, they are not justifiable. Evil effects were willed by means of inherently evil acts.
I freely grant the good intentions and good faith of those who disagree with me on this. But I cannot agree with their moral logic. In my opinion, it violates traditional just war criteria, the specific principle of double effect, and also the standards of the larger natural law, whereby it is instinctively known by virtually everyone that deliberate killing of women and children (in wartime as well as outside of it) is inherently wrong.
It's been argued that one might obliterate the civilian / soldier distinction in a militaristic society like wartime Japan, with its suicides and maniacal tendencies, etc. But how could a three-month-old baby be part of that, or a senile old woman, or a mentally ill man, etc.? Even if we were to grant that (which would take some doing), there would still be many exceptions to the rule. The bombings, therefore, would still have to be judged as immoral, since they involved the killing (and I am not averse to using the word "murder" after having established the ethical reasoning chain above) of many "innocents" in terms of the war.
This is a far different scenario from a smart bomb taking out a munitions factory (the intent), with part of the shell skidding off to a house a mile away and burning it and its inhabitants (not the intent at all). That is tragic but justifiable. Dropping a nuclear bomb into the center of a heavily-populated city is not.
I have contended that such a justification is ludicrous and an example of rationalizing special pleading of the worst kind. It simply can't be sustained, given nuclear technology, even if relatively unknown at the time. If we grant this "lessening of culpability due to ignorance" for Hiroshima, we still could not do so for Nagasaki, since it was then known what would happen.
Furthermore, the target areas (the centers of both cities) and the knowledge that the effect of the bombs spread outwardly from ground zero to cover a known area of a particular estimated size, and the obvious fact that cities contain citizens and population (read: people, persons, human beings; read, "including many elderly men, women, and children"), make it quite implausible (I think, virtually impossible) to maintain that those who ordered such a strike were targeting only military installations and not also people.
Moreover, terror bombing or carpet bombing of cities with known effects had already occurred (particularly in Dresden, Germany and in Tokyo). It is equally absurd to argue that those strikes were not intended to target populations as well as military production facilities, bases, etc. This being the case, and the immediate precedent, it is difficult to make an argument that somehow Hiroshima and Nagasaki were instances of a strike wholly different in nature and intent from Dresden and Tokyo.
If indeed only the military targets were in mind, then why drop these horrific weapons on the center of the city? Was that the way to take out the most military targets? I have read that the bulk of these targets were on the outer peripheries of the city, not in the center. If the goal was to minimize civilian casualties, is not the center of the city the very worst selection for this end? The intent was clearly to kill as many people as possible along with taking out whatever military targets were there. Of course, those who do such an evil thing will maximize the military significance and minimize the human cost, but the facts remain what they are and cannot, in my opinion, be gotten over.
To sum up, then:
1) Deliberately killing civilians in wartime is wrong.I think it is impossible and ludicrous to maintain that 200,000 deaths as a result of a bomb of mostly-known proportions and effects were not "willed," but merely "permitted". How can one drop such a weapon and claim to not know that such a result in human cost would happen? As I stated previously, one can't simply play word games and act as if the magic words "military target" wrap up all the difficulties of this cynical, downright malicious (from the standpoint of the victims) reasoning.
2) The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki did that (to the tune of 200,000 + casualties).
3) It cannot plausibly be maintained that this was a non-intended effect of a moral good (taking out military installations) because of the nature of the weapon, where it was targeted, and immediate historical precedent.
4) Therefore, it was an evil act, since contrary to Catholic just war criteria, and inability of justification by this criterion of double effect.
5) Conclusion: the bombings violate double effect by being morally bad and not at all indifferent.
The second sentence is also quite applicable and damaging to the proponents' position, thought not fatal in and of itself, due to the nature of probabilistic or contingent or theoretical calculations of what would happen in the future. As many high military figures felt at the time (Eisenhower, MacArthur, Nimitz, Halsey, Carter Clarke: who was in charge of the radio intelligence summations; also former President Hoover, etc.), surrender could have been achieved by the end of 1945 without recourse to such horrible measures. There was certainly enough opinion and evidence along these lines for us to have at least more seriously considered such an option, in accord with this principle.
Or else, I suppose proponents could simply argue that all these military experts were ignorant, misguided, acting on emotions alone (as if the pro-bombing crowd did not have a large amount of emotions clouding their reasoning, too), or that they only reported their supposed feelings anachronistically, and after the fact (due to the Cold War, the second-guessing of hindsight, etc.). Some people seem to consider themselves able (as a non-military and non-academic persons), 60 years after the fact, to better make such judgments than folks like Eisenhower and MacArthur. Is that not exceptionally presumptuous?
If we grant that President Truman acted in good faith, with good motives (as I freely do), then we must also grant that those opposed to the decision at the time were equally in good faith, with roughly equal the information needed to make the decision one way or the other. This was not a unanimous consensus at the time, however one wishes to slant or spin it. In other words, many thought that we could achieve the good end without the bad effect of what the bomb in fact caused. it was a viable option; therefore it should have been seriously considered and (I say) chosen as the more moral option of the two.
The good end desired (the surrender and thus the end of the wanton slaughters of the Japanese army and suicides even of Japanese civilians) was promptly achieved. So far so good. The good effect was also produced by the action; yet it was also produced by the bad effect of the action (the mass killings convinced the Japanese of the futility of continuing). Thus, this would seem to suggest that Hiroshima and Nagasaki do not meet this particular just war criterion.
And thus we arrive at the crux of the matter: the previous state of affairs being true; therefore a good end was achieved by a bad means, and this is not allowed in Catholic moral theology. Therefore, the bombings are unjustifiable once again, on this separate and distinct ground. If, to speak theoretically, somehow we had had the technology then to wipe out 200,000 Japanese soldiers, and very few civilians as nonintended "collateral damage," then the act would have been quite acceptable by these standards. But since the dead were some 95% civilians, the rationale doesn't wash (as that is the very opposite ration of what should be for this to be a moral act). It was, therefore, an evil act. And one must not commit eveil, even for the achievement of a great good. Such is not Christian ethical thought. Period.
As in the previous example, it cannot be reasonably argued that the bombings were morally good or neutral acts themselves. The double effect principle itself rules out using a bad, evil, immoral act for the purpose of producing good effects, no matter how good the effects may be. A good effect indeed was produced (the surrender), but the means to achieve it were evil. Therefore, they are not justifiable. Evil effects were willed by means of inherently evil acts.
I freely grant the good intentions and good faith of those who disagree with me on this. But I cannot agree with their moral logic. In my opinion, it violates traditional just war criteria, the specific principle of double effect, and also the standards of the larger natural law, whereby it is instinctively known by virtually everyone that deliberate killing of women and children (in wartime as well as outside of it) is inherently wrong.
It's been argued that one might obliterate the civilian / soldier distinction in a militaristic society like wartime Japan, with its suicides and maniacal tendencies, etc. But how could a three-month-old baby be part of that, or a senile old woman, or a mentally ill man, etc.? Even if we were to grant that (which would take some doing), there would still be many exceptions to the rule. The bombings, therefore, would still have to be judged as immoral, since they involved the killing (and I am not averse to using the word "murder" after having established the ethical reasoning chain above) of many "innocents" in terms of the war.
This is a far different scenario from a smart bomb taking out a munitions factory (the intent), with part of the shell skidding off to a house a mile away and burning it and its inhabitants (not the intent at all). That is tragic but justifiable. Dropping a nuclear bomb into the center of a heavily-populated city is not.
Thursday, August 25, 2005
The Nuclear Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Do They Meet Catholic Just War Standards of Morality? (Part I)
Introduction
In an e-mail, I wrote (more or less "off the cuff"):
I do not suggest in the least that anyone who disagrees with my own position on this matter (whatever it is, or turns out to be) is any less of a good or orthodox or moral Catholic, or any less concerned with the seriousness of the ethical question and the larger question of just war and the tragic necessity of war at times, or some kind of simplistic, sheeplike, unthinking fool.
Many prominent Catholics, and many in the apologetics movement (of which I am a part) oppose the bombings as immoral and unjustifiable. For what it's worth (I'm not appealing to the ad populum fallacy; simply stating what I believe to be a fact), the pro-bombing position is a minority view among orthodox Catholics. That doesn't make it automatically wrong; it has to be discussed on its merits or demerits. I'm no expert on this, which is why I will be citing many others who are much more so, and better placed to authoritatively comment on this issue.
The Horrors of World War II and the Dangers of the Benefit of Hindsight
Dr. Art Sippo, a Catholic apologist, and friend of mine, wrote (and I completely agree with what he states):
Dr. Art Sippo appears to at least partially affirm this (emphasis added):
Catholics Who Oppose the Bombings as Immoral
Karl Keating, in his e-letter of 3 August 2004, writes:
Ralph Raico, a scholar at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, provides some much-needed factual information:
(Link)
President Dwight D. Eisenhower
"...in [July] 1945... Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. ...the Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent.
"During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face'. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude..."
(Mandate For Change, p. 380)
"...the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing."
(Newsweek, 11/11/63)
Admiral William D. Leahy
(Chief of Staff to Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman)
"It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons.
"The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children."
(I Was There, p. 441)
President Herbert Hoover
On May 28, 1945, Hoover visited President Truman and suggested a way to end the Pacific war quickly: "I am convinced that if you, as President, will make a shortwave broadcast to the people of Japan - tell them they can have their Emperor if they surrender, that it will not mean unconditional surrender except for the militarists - you'll get a peace in Japan - you'll have both wars over."
(Richard Norton Smith, An Uncommon Man: The Triumph of Herbert Hoover, p. 347)
On August 8, 1945, after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Hoover wrote to Army and Navy Journal publisher Colonel John Callan O'Laughlin, "The use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul."
(in Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, p. 635)
"...the Japanese were prepared to negotiate all the way from February 1945...up to and before the time the atomic bombs were dropped; ...if such leads had been followed up, there would have been no occasion to drop the [atomic] bombs."
(cited by Barton Bernstein in Philip Nobile, ed., Judgment at the Smithsonian, p. 142)
In early May of 1946 Hoover met with General Douglas MacArthur. Hoover recorded in his diary, "I told MacArthur of my memorandum of mid-May 1945 to Truman, that peace could be had with Japan by which our major objectives would be accomplished. MacArthur said that was correct and that we would have avoided all of the losses, the Atomic bomb, and the entry of Russia into Manchuria."
(Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, pp. 350-351)
General Douglas MacArthur
MacArthur biographer William Manchester has described MacArthur's reaction to the issuance by the Allies of the Potsdam Proclamation to Japan: "...the Potsdam declaration in July, demand[ed] that Japan surrender unconditionally or face 'prompt and utter destruction.' MacArthur was appalled. He knew that the Japanese would never renounce their emperor, and that without him an orderly transition to peace would be impossible anyhow, because his people would never submit to Allied occupation unless he ordered it. Ironically, when the surrender did come, it was conditional, and the condition was a continuation of the imperial reign. Had the General's advice been followed, the resort to atomic weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki might have been unnecessary."
(William Manchester, American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880-1964, p. 512)
Norman Cousins was a consultant to General MacArthur during the American occupation of Japan. Cousins writes of his conversations with MacArthur, "MacArthur's views about the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were starkly different from what the general public supposed." He continues, "When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor."
(Norman Cousins, The Pathology of Power, pp. 65, 70-71)
Brigadier General Carter Clarke (The military intelligence officer in charge of preparing intercepted Japanese cables - the MAGIC summaries - for Truman and his advisors)
"...when we didn't need to do it, and we knew we didn't need to do it, and they knew that we knew we didn't need to do it, we used them as an experiment for two atomic bombs."
(quoted in Gar Alperovitz, The Decision To Use the Atomic Bomb, p. 359)
Other dissidents cited in this survey include:
Joseph Grew (Under Secretary of State)
John McCloy (Assistant Secretary of War)
Ralph Bard (Under Sec. of the Navy)
Lewis Strauss (Special Assistant to the Secretary of the Navy)
Paul Nitze (Vice Chairman, U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey)
Ellis Zacharias (Deputy Director of the Office of Naval Intelligence) "Zacharias, long a student of Japan's people and culture, believed the Japan would soon be ripe for surrender if the proper approach were taken. For him, that approach was not as simple as bludgeoning Japanese cities . . ."
General Carl "Tooey" Spaatz (In charge of Air Force operations in the Pacific)
Columnist Victor Davis Hanson has also mentioned General Hap Arnold, General Curtis LeMay, and Admiral William Halsey.
Summary of Further Catholic Condemnations of the Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as Immoral
Pope John Paul II (9-11-99, to the Japanese ambassador Toru Iwanami): [Hiroshima and Nagasaki should remind the world of] “the crimes committed against civilian populations during World War II . . . true genocides [are] still being committed in several parts of the world.”
Pope Paul VI (Peace Day: 1-1-76): ". . . butchery of untold magnitude, as at Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 . . ."
Cardinal James Francis Stafford: ". . . the total warfare that was seen in Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Dresden … that is the wholesale disregard for the civilian populations."
Archbishop Fulton Sheen: "When, I wonder, did we in America ever get into this idea that freedom means having no boundaries and no limits? I think it began on the 6th of August 1945 at 8:15 am when we dropped the bomb on Hiroshima."
Monsignor Ronald Knox: ". . . men fighting for a good case have taken, at one particular moment of decision, the easier, not the nobler path".
Dr. Warren Carroll (Founder of Christendom College and renowned orthodox Catholic historian): "I don't agree with the use of the atom bomb against Hiroshima and Nagasaki. You don't use a weapon in a way that you know is going to kill primarily women and children. It's a basic principle of moral philosophy that the end does not justify the means."
Fr. Michael Scanlan (formerly head of the Franciscan University of Steubenville , 1983): ". . . the sinful atrocities of the contemporary world. Whether it be the ovens of Auschwitz and Dachau, the charred bodies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the ravages of saturation bombing, . . .
John Courtney Murray (prominent thinker on church-state issues): "atrocities, . . . savage . . . paroxysms of violence."
Evelyn Waugh (famous convert and author): "To the practical warrior the atom bomb presented no particular moral or spiritual problem. We were engaged in destroying the enemy, civilians and combatants alike. We always assumed that destruction was roughly proportionate to the labour and material expended. Whether it was more convenient to destroy a city with one bomb or a hundred thousand depended on the relative costs of production."
Joseph Sobran (conservative columnist and author): ". . . mass murder is not an option . . . a complete violation of all principles of civilized warfare. And the development of the atomic bomb was only a cold-blooded extension of this monstrous policy. The whole idea of rules of warfare is to rule out certain atrocities, whether or not they achieve their goals . . . The rule against attacking civilians means that it is forbidden even if it's the only way to win a war. Why is this so hard to grasp?"
Also, note the immensely popular and influential Anglican apologist C.S. Lewis's opinion: "The victory of vivisection marks a great advance in the triumph of ruthless, non-moral utilitarianism over the old world of ethical law; a triumph in which we, as well as animals, are already the victims, and of which Dachau and Hiroshima mark the more recent achievements . . ."
Conclusion
I conclude that the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which are defended, as they often are, on mistaken utilitarian calculations which are contrary to both fact and probable fact (as exposited by the highest level military commanders), and with apparent ignorance regarding the facts concerning the nature of the target and the number of innocent civilians killed (which could scarcely have been otherwise, given the target of the center of the city, etc.), and without due regard for Catholic ethical principles, were immoral and unjustifiable.
That's not to say that this view is a settled dogma in the Catholic Church (I have approached this matter as an ethical one, not a dogmatic one, which is a different level of discussion altogether). Readers are urged to always remember the many qualifying statements from opponents of the bombings, that I have cited. I agree with all of them.
In particular, the justification of "double effect" cannot, I think, be reasonably, plausibly maintained with regard to these bombings. There were simply too many civilian casualties. The scale of death and destruction does not allow it. It is hopelessly naive and muddleheaded and a denial of concrete reality to suggest that these were only peripheral, and non-intentional, while military targets were primary intentions.
Moreover, given the informed opinions of so many that the bombings were not necessary to force surrender or save 500,000 (or whatever the figure) Allied lives (Eisenhower and MacArthur were militarily uninformed, we ought to believe???!!!!), and the nature of the targets, such a view cannot hold water, and must be rejected. From what I have learned, the facts do not justify it. I can certainly be more educated on the subject (time-permitting), but at this point, my prior far less informed opinion has not changed, and has only been greatly strengthened by what I have learned in my studies.
In an e-mail, I wrote (more or less "off the cuff"):
As for my $00.02 on this, I think the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was clearly immoral by just war standards, and cannot be morally justified. Pre-emption is a notion I have no trouble with, and I believe it can be synthesized with traditional just war standards, but killing 100,000 civilians, whether at Dresden or in Japan, cannot.
The decision may have been "complex" or "understandable" at the time, but with the benefit of hindsight we would fully expect to have a more informed, objective opinion on it 60 years later, than we did in the frenzy and passion of (justified) war.
In a second informal response, responding more directly to replies, I stated:
With all due respect, I think what you provided in that last letter doesn't even come close to justifying it or overcoming the weight of the Catholic just war criteria. I think it is a slam dunk. One can never deliberately do evil in order to prevent further evil. One must always use just means. I can understand "unintended consequences" and so forth, but when you are deliberately dropping a bomb like these were, you know what is going to happen, and many thousands of women and children who had nothing directly to do with the Japanese war effort were slaughtered. This is immoral and unjustifiable. Period. I think it is even in natural law, before you even get to Catholic moral theology, developed over 20 centuries.Is this blunt? Sure, as usually in my writings, for better or ill. I'm a straight shooter, and always will be. Overstated or "undiplomatic" or insufficiently nuanced and qualified? Perhaps; indeed quite possibly. All sides at least agree that it is tragic.
I do not suggest in the least that anyone who disagrees with my own position on this matter (whatever it is, or turns out to be) is any less of a good or orthodox or moral Catholic, or any less concerned with the seriousness of the ethical question and the larger question of just war and the tragic necessity of war at times, or some kind of simplistic, sheeplike, unthinking fool.
Many prominent Catholics, and many in the apologetics movement (of which I am a part) oppose the bombings as immoral and unjustifiable. For what it's worth (I'm not appealing to the ad populum fallacy; simply stating what I believe to be a fact), the pro-bombing position is a minority view among orthodox Catholics. That doesn't make it automatically wrong; it has to be discussed on its merits or demerits. I'm no expert on this, which is why I will be citing many others who are much more so, and better placed to authoritatively comment on this issue.
The Horrors of World War II and the Dangers of the Benefit of Hindsight
Dr. Art Sippo, a Catholic apologist, and friend of mine, wrote (and I completely agree with what he states):
Likewise, George Weigel describes some horrific details of Japanese resolve, citing William Manchester's book, Goodbye, Darkness:In some cases more than one moral option may present itself so that there is no one "right" or "wrong" answer. The most despicable people imaginable are those who vilify the man who made a choice in good faith under fire. It is one thing to say that they disagreed with his choice but another thing entirely to say that he was a bad person for choosing what he chose. That is not necessarily so. Sometimes a man can only do his best and hope that later generations will appreciate how hard his decision was.
. . . Truman made a choice based on the cards he was dealt and he did what he thought was right. In light of the horrors of this terrible war, I can not blame him for trying to end it swiftly and decisively by making the aggressors who started it bear the brunt of the final assault.
"After the great banzai obliterated their army, depriving them of their protectors, they decided that they, too, must die. Most of them gathered on two heights now called Banzai Cliff, an eighty-foot bluff overlooking the water, and, just inland from there. Suicide Cliff, which soars one thousand feet above clumps of jagged rocks.Was Use of the A-Bomb Understood as Indiscriminate Killing to More or Less Extent?
"... Saito [the Japanese commander] had left a last message to his civilian
countrymen, too: "As it says in the Senjinkum [Ethics], 'I will never suffer the
disgrace of being taken alive,' and I will offer up the courage of my soul and calmly rejoice in living by the eternal principle." In a final, cruel twist of the knife he reminded mothers of the oyaku-shinju (the parents-children death pact). Mothers,
fathers, daughters, sons— all had to die. Therefore children were encouraged to form circles and toss live grenades from hand to hand until they exploded. Their parents dashed babies' brains out on limestone slabs and then, clutching the tiny corpses, shouted "Tenno! Haiki! Banzai!" (Long live the Emperor!) as they jumped off the brinks of the cliffs and soared downward. Below Banzai Cliff U.S. destroyers trying to rescue those who had survived the plunge found they could not steer among so many bodies; human flesh was jamming their screws. .. . But Suicide Cliff was worse. A brief strip of jerky newsreel footage, preserved in an island museum, shows a distraught mother, her baby in her arms, darting back and forth along the edge
of the precipice, trying to make up her mind. Finally she leaps, she and her child joining the ghastly carnage below. There were no survivors at the base of
Suicide Cliff.
. . . These deliberately sanguinary tactics help explain the carnage that ensued in
February 1945 on Iwo Jima, an island only 5 miles by 2.5 miles in size. There, out of a Japanese garrison of 20,000, only 200 were captured alive, at the cost of 6,000 American deaths and 25,000 wounded Marines. Then there was the invasion of Okinawa in April 1945, the last stepping-stone before the Japanese home islands: 100,000 Japanese soldiers died there, as did 150,000 Okinawan civilians, while the U.S. Marines and Army suffered 75,000 casualties before the island was secured in mid-June.
Dr. Art Sippo appears to at least partially affirm this (emphasis added):
No one anticipated that there would be radiation casualties. It was thought that anyone close enough to be radiated would be killed outright by the physical effects of the blast. Had we known this beforehand, would we have used the bombs? I suspect that we would have. We might have modified the target selection or the altitude from which the bombs were dropped . . .Sippo also admits:
I think that we should not have fire-bombed Dresden or Tokyo as we did.In my opinion, much of the present argument will hinge upon the necessity for the proponents to prove that there is a crucial moral / tactical distinction between Hiroshima and Nagasaki vs. Dresden and Tokyo, which even many of the proponents of the former acts condemn, along with those of us who decry all four instances as objectively immoral and inconsistent with time-honored Catholic moral-ethical principles.
Catholics Who Oppose the Bombings as Immoral
Karl Keating, in his e-letter of 3 August 2004, writes:
Many justify the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima by saying the abrupt end to the war saved as many as a million American lives that would have been lost had Japan been invaded. I don't know where the figure of one million came from. My understanding is that the War Department estimated a maximum of 46,000 casualties in an invasion. That was a worst-case scenario, meaning the likely number of casualties would have been far lower.The Catholic Answer Guide, Just War Doctrine (presumably agreeable to Karl Keating), expands this reasoning a bit:
Some commentators have argued that no invasion was needed at all, since Japan no longer had an air force or navy and had no domestic source of oil for its industries. A blockade would have resulted in the Japanese war machine and economy grinding to a halt. The war thus could have ended without an invasion, though the end probably would have come long after the summer of 1945.
Be that as it may, what concerns me is the attitude, so prevalent among political conservatives (most of whom are religious conservatives), that there are no limits in defensive warfare: If the other guys started the fight, they deserve whatever they get. In a defensive war it is not a matter of "My country right or wrong" but of "My country can do no wrong," which is an odd thing coming from conservatives who, on domestic matters, can be highly critical of their government's moral failings (as regards abortion or homosexuality, say).
To achieve a good, you may not perform a sin. To provide your family financial security, you may not rob a bank. To protect your wife's health, you may not abort the child she is carrying. And to defeat an enemy in war, you may not violate just war principles. But we did--and more than once, sad to say.
The atomic bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, like the fire bombings of Dresden and other German cities, cannot be squared with Catholic moral principles because the bombings deliberately targeted non-combatants. The evil done by our enemies did not exonerate us from the moral law. Their evils did not provide us justification for evils of our own. Being a Christian in peacetime is difficult; it is more difficult, but even more necessary, in wartime.
Fat Man exploded directly above the Catholic cathedral in Nagasaki. The city was the historical center of Catholicism in Japan and contained about a tenth of the entire Catholic population. The cathedral was filled with worshipers who had gathered to pray for a speedy and just end to the war. It is said their prayers included a petition to offer themselves, if God so willed it, in reparation for the evils perpetrated by their country.
The treatment of non-hostile individuals in wartime is not the only consideration involved in the just prosecution of a war. The existence of weapons of mass destruction poses special moral challenges. In this regard the Catechism states:Catholic apologist Jimmy Akin also agrees:Every act of war directed to the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants is a crime against God and man, which merits firm and unequivocal condemnation. A danger of modern warfare is that it provides the opportunity to those who possess modern scientific weapons - especially atomic, biological, or chemical weapons - to commit such crimes (CCC 2314).The U.S. has not always been committed to this principle. In the Civil War, World War I, and World War II the United States violated it. Grave violations during World War II included the firebombing of Dresden and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
These were not attacks designed to destroy targets of military value while sparing civilian populations. They were deliberate attempts to put pressure on enemy governments by attacking non-combatants. As a result, they were grave violations of God's law, according to which, "the direct and voluntary killing of an innocent human being is always gravely immoral" (John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae 57).
It is important to recognize what this principle does and does not require. While it does require strenuous efforts to avoid harming innocents, it does not require the result of no innocents being harmed. Such a result is impossible to guarantee. Even
with the smartest of smart munitions, it is not possible to ensure that no
non-combatants will be harmed in wartime. As tragic as it is, collateral damage to innocents is an inescapable consequence of war. Catholic theology recognizes this. It applies to such situations a well-established principle known as the law of double-effect. According to this law it is permissible to undertake an action which has two effects, one good and one evil, provided that certain conditions are met.
Although these conditions can be formulated in different ways, they may be enumerated as follows: (1) the action itself must not be intrinsically evil; (2) the evil effect must not be an end in itself or a means to accomplishing the good effect (in other words, it must be a foreseen but undesired side-effect of the action); and
(3) the evil effect must not outweigh the good effect. If these three conditions are met, the action may be taken in spite of the foreseen damage it will do.
The law of double-effect would not have applied to the cases of Dresden, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki. In these situations though the act (dropping bombs) was not intrinsically evil and though it is arguable that in the long run more lives were saved than lost, the second condition was violated because the death of innocents was used as a means to achieve the good of the war's end.
Fortunately, despite these past, grave transgressions, the United States is now committed to the principle of sparing innocent life during military actions. It has repeatedly and sincerely expressed its intent to minimize civilian casualties and to serve as a liberator of captive populations in the War on Terrorism. The U.S. is
now committed to the principles of the just war.
. . . regardless of what one may think of particular instances in the U.S.'s record (which is not perfect; the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were wrong), it remains the case that the U.S. is (d) a stable nation (not likely to become a "failed state" like Somalia) that (c) has a large number of citizens today who will not tolerate leaders who use such weapons indiscriminately (as at Hiroshima and Nagasaki) and (b) will not pass them to terrorists or (a) proliferate them to unstable states.Fr. Jim Tucker provides further argumentation along these lines:
Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani wrote in 1947:Today is not only the feast of Edith Stein, it is also the 60th anniversary of the atom bombing of Nagasaki. We patriotic Americans aren't supposed to question the morality of what our government did in that war, but we're going to do it anyway. When the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, tens of thousands of lives of men, women, and children were snuffed out in a single instant, and over a quarter of a million would eventually die of the effects. For centuries, Catholic morality has taught us that it is intrinsically evil to target a civilian population and to resort to indiscriminate killing and destruction, which is exactly what happened in both the atom bombings.
It's important for us to consider this and come to terms with it -- not because we should feel guilty. We shouldn't feel guilty about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, any more than today's Germans should feel guilty about the Holocaust. We didn't do it, but we are under a moral obligation to form our consciences so that this sort of thing will never happen again. And it's not just about atom bombs: the moral structure of this issue touches all sorts of other cases that abound in today's world. Our bedrock principle is this: we may never commit an intrinsically evil act, for whatever reason, however good that reason might be. So, even though it's good that the war ended quickly after the bombings, and it's good that our soldiers were spared a bloody invasion of Japan, those good ends can never excuse using immoral means to achieve that end.Nagasaki is also connected to another of the saints of World War II, St Maximilian Kolbe, a Polish priest killed by the Nazis at Auschwitz. Most people don't realize that Nagasaki was the one place in Japan that had a strong Christian presence. Nagasaki was one of the chief places that the crucifixions of the Japanese martyrs had taken place centuries before. It was also at Nagasaki that St Maximilian Kolbe went to build one of his "Cities of the Immaculata." So, when Harry Truman's atom bomb fell on Nagasaki sixty years ago today, many of the victims burned to ashes and melted away were not just fellow human beings, but fellow Roman Catholics.
The extent of the damage done to national assets by aerial warfare, and the dreadful weapons that have been introduced of late, is so great that it leaves both vanquished and victor the poorer for years after.Pat Buchanan ("Hiroshima, Nagasaki & Christian Morality") notes how the decision to engage in immoral, indiscriminate bombing had already been deliberately, self-consciously adopted in the bombing of Dresden:
Innocent people, too, are liable to great injury from the weapons in current use: hatred is on that account excited above measure; extremely harsh reprisals are provoked; wars result which flaunt every provision of the jus gentium, and are marked by a savagery greater than ever. And what of the period immediately after a war? Does not it also provide an obvious pointer to the enormous and irreparable damage which war, the breeding place of hate and hurt, must do to the morals and manners of nations?
These considerations, and many others which might be adduced besides, show that modern wars can never fulfil those conditions which (as we stated earlier on in this essay) govern - theoretically - a just and lawful war. Moreover, no conceivable cause could ever be sufficient justification for the evils, the slaughter, the destruction, the moral and religious upheavals which war today entails.
[I would argue that current-day technology with non-nuclear precision, "surgical" strikes, smart bombs, etc. make just war conditions far easier to fulfill than 60 years ago (indeed I believe that the criteria are fully met in the Iraqi War); but one cannot anachronistically project today's weapons back to 1945; the atomic bombings as they were carried out remain unjustifiable by catholic moral standards]
But if terrorism is the massacre of innocents to break the will of rulers, were not Hiroshima and Nagasaki terrorism on a colossal scale?Maclin Horton emphasizes the ethical absolute, which remains valid, even within a concrete situation of extreme complexity:
Churchill did not deny what the Allied air war was about. Before departing for Yalta, he ordered Operation Thunderclap, a campaign to "de-house" civilians to clog roads so German soldiers could not move to stop the offensive of the Red Army. British Air Marshal "Bomber" Harris put Dresden, a jewel of a city and haven for hundreds of thousands of terrified refugees, on the target list.
On the first night, 770 Lancasters arrived around 10:00. In two waves, 650,000
incendiary bombs rained down, along with 1,474 tons of high explosives. The next
morning, 500 B-17s arrived in two waves, with 300 fighter escorts to strafe fleeing survivors.
Estimates of the dead in the Dresden firestorm range from 35,000 to 250,000. Wrote the Associated Press, "Allied war chiefs have made the long-awaited decision to adopt deliberate terror bombing of German populated centers as a ruthless expedient to hasten Hitler's doom."
In a memo to his air chiefs, Churchill revealed what Dresden had been about, "It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of bombing of German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, though under other pretexts, should be reviewed."
Yet, whatever the mindset of Japan's warlords in August 1945, the moral question remains. In a just war against an evil enemy, is the deliberate slaughter of his women and children in the thousands justified to break his will to fight? Traditionally, the Christian's answer has been no.
Truman's defenders argue that the number of U.S. dead in any invasion would have been not 46,000, as one military estimate predicted, but 500,000. Others contend the cities were military targets.
But with Japan naked to our B-29s, her surface navy at the bottom of the Pacific, the home islands blockaded, what was the need to invade at all? On his island-hopping campaign back to the Philippines, MacArthur routinely bypassed Japanese strongholds like Rabaul, cut them off and left them to "rot on the vine."
And if Truman considered Hiroshima and Nagasaki military targets, why, in the Cabinet meeting of Aug. 10, as historian Ralph Raico relates, did he explain his reluctance to drop a third bomb thus: "The thought of wiping out another 100,000 people was too horrible," he said. He didn't like the idea of killing "all those kids."
Of Truman's decision, his own chief of staff, Adm. William Leahy, wrote: "This use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make wars in that fashion ..."
We must face, and take responsibility for, the simple fact that what we did at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was wrong. I call this a "simple" fact fully aware that not everyone grants its status as fact, much less that it is simple. The simplicity to which I refer is not that of the historical decision, which was indeed complex, but of the abstract ethical principle: it is wrong to target noncombatants in war. It is wrong to incinerate non-combatants in their hundreds of thousands at a swoop. It is wrong, and, what perhaps most needs saying in our present ethical climate, even if you have powerful reasons for doing it, it is still wrong. And if it is not wrong, then our argument with, say, Osama bin-Laden becomes a question of who struck first and who had the greater provocation; that is, we have no principled argument against his methods.George Weigel readily concedes the objective immorality of the bombings, and their clash with just war theory, while noting the limitations of the options of that terrible time (as opposed to maintaining that the actions nwere just because of the complexities of the ethics and military strategy):
I am not saying that the circumstances surrounding the decision to use the atomic bomb were such that the right decision should have been easy.
In these circumstances, which were the real world circumstances of the time, the use of atomic weapons seems far less a deliberate atrocity than a tragic necessity.United States Conference of Catholic Bishops: Statement of 6 August 2004:
This is not to suggest that the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was, or is, easily justifiable under the moral criteria of the classic just war tradition. But the moral barrier had been breached long before August 6 and August 8, 1945. So-called strategic bombing, aimed at the destruction of civilian populations, had been going on for five years; none of it met the just war in bello criteria of proportionality and
discrimination. Indeed, if one measures the violation of non-combatant immunity
statistically, the fire-bombing of Tokyo, Osaka, Kobe, Nagoya, and other Japanese cities was a greater breach of the just war tradition than Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
That the Germans had destroyed Rotterdam, the British, Hamburg, and the British and Americans, Dresden, does not "justify" the American destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But certain moral distinctions can and should be drawn between the bombing of cities for purposes of sheer terror (Rotterdam) or revenge (Dresden), and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which, on the best available evidence, was undertaken with a legitimate strategic purpose in mind. That purpose was summarized succinctly by Truman biographer David McCullough: "If you want one explanation as to why Truman dropped the bomb: 'Okinawa.' It was done to stop the killing."
The greater legitimacy of an end does not, of course, justify any possible means.
But recognizing the legitimacy of the end does enable us to enter imaginatively and even sympathetically into the moral struggle over means faced by a responsible political leader confronting a brace of bad choices.
It sometimes happens, these days, that a parallel is drawn between Auschwitz and
Hiroshima, as two embodiments of the evil of the Second World War. But this seems wrong. What Harry Truman did in August 1945 was, strictly speaking, unjustifiable in classic moral terms. But it was understandable, and it was forgivable. What was done at Auschwitz was unjustifiable, maniacal, and, in this world's terms, unforgivable. That is a considerable moral difference.
At my parish church on the morning of August 6, 1995, we prayed God to grant "that no nuclear weapons will ever again be used." It was a petition to which all could respond with a heartfelt, "Lord, hear our prayer." Only by facing squarely the unavoidable moral dilemma confronted by President Truman will we gain a measure of the wisdom that might help us avoid similar dilemmas in the future. By reducing the decision to use atomic weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki to crudely political, even ideological, categories, the revisionists do a disservice not only to history but to the future, and to the cause of peace.
World War II, which liberated many and defeated tyranny but which left as a shameful legacy instances of combat, was conducted without distinction betweenWhat Actually Happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Who Died, and Who Was "Targeted"?
civilian and soldier. In the decades since the bombing, some have advanced the
argument that despite the horrendous magnitude of civilian suffering, these actions can be justified by the efficient end of combat it affected. But secular ethicists and moral theologians alike echo the words of the Second Vatican Council: ‘Every act of war directed to the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants is a crime against God and man, which merits firm and unequivocal condemnation.' The Church has a long tradition of condemning acts of war that bring ‘widespread, unspeakable suffering and destruction.' At a time when much of the world is gripped by fear of terrorism and a few voices hint that the time may again come when the U.S. should call upon its nuclear arsenal to make "quick work" of frightening threats, it is fitting to reassert our commitment to disarmament and the conduct of limited war only as a last resort.
Ralph Raico, a scholar at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, provides some much-needed factual information:
Lowell Ponte, after chronicling the Christian history of Nagasaki, describes the grim reality of the bombing:Probably around two hundred thousand persons were killed in the attacks and through radiation poisoning; the vast majority were civilians, including several thousand Korean workers. Twelve U.S. Navy fliers incarcerated in a Hiroshima
jail were also among the dead.
On August 9, 1945, he [Truman] stated: "The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians."
This, however, is absurd. Pearl Harbor was a military base. Hiroshima was a city, inhabited by some three hundred thousand people, which contained military elements. In any case, since the harbor was mined and the U.S. Navy and Air Force were in control of the waters around Japan, whatever troops were stationed in Hiroshima had been effectively neutralized.
On other occasions, Truman claimed that Hiroshima was bombed because it was
an industrial center. But, as noted in the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, "all
major factories in Hiroshima were on the periphery of the city – and escaped
serious damage." The target was the center of the city.
Moreover, the notion that Hiroshima was a major military or industrial center is implausible on the face of it. The city had remained untouched through years of devastating air attacks on the Japanese home islands, and never figured in Bomber Command’s list of the 33 primary targets.
Thus, the rationale for the atomic bombings has come to rest on a single colossal fabrication, which has gained surprising currency: that they were necessary in order to save a half-million or more American lives. These, supposedly, are the lives that would have been lost in the planned invasion of Kyushu in December, then in the all-out invasion of Honshu the next year, if that was needed. But the worst-case scenario for a full-scale invasion of the Japanese home islands was forty-six thousand American lives lost. The ridiculously inflated figure of a half-million for the potential death toll - nearly twice the total of U.S. dead in all theaters in the Second World War- is now routinely repeated in high-school and college textbooks and bandied about by ignorant commentators.
Those who may still be troubled by such a grisly exercise in cost-benefit analysis - innocent Japanese lives balanced against the lives of Allied servicemen - might reflect on the judgment of the Catholic philosopher G.E.M. Anscombe, who insisted on the supremacy of moral rules. When, in June 1956, Truman was awarded an honorary degree by her university, Oxford, Anscombe protested. Truman was a war criminal, she contended, for what is the difference between the U.S. government massacring civilians from the air, as at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Nazis wiping out the inhabitants of some Czech or Polish village?
Anscombe’s point is worth following up. Suppose that, when we invaded Germany in early 1945, our leaders had believed that executing all the inhabitants of Aachen, or Trier, or some other Rhineland city would finally break the will of the Germans and lead them to surrender. In this way, the war might have ended quickly, saving the lives of many Allied soldiers. Would that then have justified shooting tens of thousands of German civilians, including women and children? Yet how is that different from the atomic bombings?
By early summer 1945, the Japanese fully realized that they were beaten. Why did they nonetheless fight on? As Anscombe wrote: "It was the insistence on nconditional surrender that was the root of all evil."
. . . as Major General J.F.C. Fuller, one of the century’s great military historians, wrote in connection with the atomic bombings:
"Though to save life is laudable, it in no way justifies the employment of means which run counter to every precept of humanity and the customs of war. Should it do so, then, on the pretext of shortening a war and of saving lives, every imaginable atrocity can be justified."
While the mass media parroted the government line in praising the atomic incinerations, prominent conservatives denounced them as unspeakable war crimes.
Felix Morley, constitutional scholar and one of the founders of Human Events, drew attention to the horror of Hiroshima, including the "thousands of children trapped in the thirty-three schools that were destroyed." He called on his compatriots to atone for what had been done in their name, and proposed that groups of Americans be sent to Hiroshima, as Germans were sent to witness what had been done in the Nazi camps. The Paulist priest, Father James Gillis, editor of The Catholic World and another stalwart of the Old Right, castigated the bombings as "the most powerful blow ever delivered against Christian civilization and the moral law." David Lawrence, conservative owner of U.S. News and World Report, continued to denounce them for years. The distinguished conservative philosopher Richard Weaver was revolted by"the spectacle of young boys fresh out of Kansas and Texas turning nonmilitary Dresden into a holocaust . . . pulverizing ancient shrines like Monte Cassino and Nuremberg, and bringing atomic annihilation to Hiroshima and Nagasaki."
Weaver considered such atrocities as deeply "inimical to the foundations on which civilization is built."
Today, self-styled conservatives slander as "anti-American" anyone who is in the least troubled by Truman’s massacre of so many tens of thousands of Japanese innocents from the air. This shows as well as anything the difference between today’s "conservatives" and those who once deserved the name.
Leo Szilard was the world-renowned physicist who drafted the original letter to Roosevelt that Einstein signed, instigating the Manhattan Project. In 1960, shortly before his death, Szilard stated another obvious truth:
"If the Germans had dropped atomic bombs on cities instead of us, we would have defined the dropping of atomic bombs on cities as a war crime, and we would have sentenced the Germans who were guilty of this crime to death at Nuremberg and hanged them."
Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin, Co-chairs of the Historians' Committee for Open Debate on Hiroshima, wrote to the Smithsonian Institute concerning the Enola Gay Exhibit, in 1995:The plutonium bomb called "Fat Man" dropped from the B-29’s bomb bay at 11:02
A.M. . . .The man-made sun, brighter than a million Rising Sun Japanese flags, ignited about 1,600 feet above Ground Zero. Its wind shockwave moving at 1,400 miles per hour pulverized the crowded homes below like a giant fist. Its energy flash burned flesh from bone, then vaporized both before a scream could reach melting human lips.
Scarcely a fifth of a mile from Ground Zero, the Urakami Cathedral, its lovingly-crafted stained glass, and the worshippers inside were smashed into dust and goo and flash-broiled. Heavy carved statues of Jesus and Mary were scorched black in an instant.
The bomb, bigger than Hiroshima's, with the explosive force of 21,000 tons of TNT, destroyed essentially everything and everyone within 1.2 miles of Ground Zero. Thousands of close-clustered wooden homes and their residents vanished in the glow of a rising mushroom cloud.
In that moment, an estimated 73,884 people died - at least one in 10 of them Christians. Another 75,000 were blinded, had skin burned off, or were injured by the blast or engulfing firestorms or collapsing buildings for miles around. Thousands more would die from radiation or injury over days or months.
As one writer about the Cathedral put it, through this atom bomb blast the Truman Administration was "ironically killing more Christians than had ever been killed in Japan during centuries of persecution."
Military and Political Figures Who Dissented From the Terrible DecisionUnfortunately, the Enola Gay exhibit contains a text which goes far beyond the facts. The critical label at the heart of the exhibit makes the following assertions:
* The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki "destroyed much of the two cities and caused many tens of thousands of deaths." This substantially understates the widely accepted figure that at least 200,000 men, women and children were killed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (Official Japanese records calculate a figure of more than 200,000 deaths - the vast majority of victims being women, children and elderly men.)
* "However," claims the Smithsonian, "the use of the bombs led to the immediate surrender of Japan and made unnecessary the planned invasion of the Japanese home islands." Presented as fact, this sentence is actually a highly contentious interpretation. For example, an April 30, 1946 study by the War Department's Military Intelligence Division concluded, "The war would almost certainly have terminated when Russia entered the war against Japan." (The Soviet entry into the war on August 8th is not even mentioned in the exhibit as a major factor in the Japanese surrender.) And it is also a fact that even after Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed, the Japanese still insisted that Emperor Hirohito be allowed to remain emperor as a condition of surrender. Only when that assurance was given did the Japanese agree to surrender. This was precisely the clarification of surrender terms that many of Truman's own top advisors had urged on him in the months prior to Hiroshima. This, too, is a widely known fact.
* The Smithsonian's label also takes the highly partisan view that, "It was thought highly unlikely that Japan, while in a very weakened military condition, would have surrendered unconditionally without such an invasion." Nowhere in the exhibit is this interpretation balanced by other views. Visitors to the exhibit will not learn that many U.S. leaders--including Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Admiral William D. Leahy, War Secretary Henry L. Stimson, Acting Secretary of State Joseph C. Grew and Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy - thought it highly probable that the Japanese would surrender well before the earliest possible invasion, scheduled for November 1945. It is spurious to assert as fact that obliterating Hiroshima in August was needed to obviate an invasion in November. This is interpretation--the very thing you said would be banned from the exhibit.* In yet another label, the Smithsonian asserts as fact that "Special leaflets were then dropped on Japanese cities three days before a bombing raid to warn civilians to evacuate." The very next sentence refers to the bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, implying that the civilian inhabitants of Hiroshima were given a warning. In fact, no evidence has ever been uncovered that leaflets warning of atomic attack were dropped on Hiroshima. Indeed, the decision of the Interim Committee was "that we could not give the Japanese any warning."
* In a 16 minute video film in which the crew of the Enola Gay are allowed to speak at length about why they believe the atomic bombings were justified, pilot Col. Paul Tibbits asserts that Hiroshima was "definitely a military objective." Nowhere in the exhibit is this false assertion balanced by contrary information. Hiroshima was chosen as a target precisely because it had been very low on the previous spring's campaign of conventional bombing, and therefore was a pristine target on which to measure the destructive powers of the atomic bomb. Defining Hiroshima as a "military" target is analogous to calling San Francisco a "military" target because it has a port and contains the Presidio. James Conant, a member of the Interim Committee that advised President Truman, defined the target for the bomb as a "vital war plant employing a large number of workers and closely surrounded by workers' houses." There were indeed military factories in Hiroshima, but they lay on the outskirts of the city. Nevertheless, the Enola Gay bombardier's instructions were to target the bomb on the center of this civilian city.
The few words in the exhibit that attempt to provide some historical context for viewing the Enola Gay amount to a highly unbalanced and one-sided presentation of a largely discredited post-war justification of the atomic bombings.
Such errors of fact and such tendentious interpretation in the exhibit are no doubt partly the result of your decision earlier this year to take this exhibit out of the hands of professional curators and your own board of historical advisors. Accepting your stated concerns for accuracy, we trust that you will therefore adjust the exhibit, either to eliminate the highly contentious interpretations, or at the very least, balance them with other interpretations that can be easily drawn from the
attached footnotes.
(Link)
President Dwight D. Eisenhower
"...in [July] 1945... Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. ...the Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent.
"During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face'. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude..."
(Mandate For Change, p. 380)
"...the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing."
(Newsweek, 11/11/63)
Admiral William D. Leahy
(Chief of Staff to Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman)
"It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons.
"The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children."
(I Was There, p. 441)
President Herbert Hoover
On May 28, 1945, Hoover visited President Truman and suggested a way to end the Pacific war quickly: "I am convinced that if you, as President, will make a shortwave broadcast to the people of Japan - tell them they can have their Emperor if they surrender, that it will not mean unconditional surrender except for the militarists - you'll get a peace in Japan - you'll have both wars over."
(Richard Norton Smith, An Uncommon Man: The Triumph of Herbert Hoover, p. 347)
On August 8, 1945, after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Hoover wrote to Army and Navy Journal publisher Colonel John Callan O'Laughlin, "The use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul."
(in Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, p. 635)
"...the Japanese were prepared to negotiate all the way from February 1945...up to and before the time the atomic bombs were dropped; ...if such leads had been followed up, there would have been no occasion to drop the [atomic] bombs."
(cited by Barton Bernstein in Philip Nobile, ed., Judgment at the Smithsonian, p. 142)
In early May of 1946 Hoover met with General Douglas MacArthur. Hoover recorded in his diary, "I told MacArthur of my memorandum of mid-May 1945 to Truman, that peace could be had with Japan by which our major objectives would be accomplished. MacArthur said that was correct and that we would have avoided all of the losses, the Atomic bomb, and the entry of Russia into Manchuria."
(Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, pp. 350-351)
General Douglas MacArthur
MacArthur biographer William Manchester has described MacArthur's reaction to the issuance by the Allies of the Potsdam Proclamation to Japan: "...the Potsdam declaration in July, demand[ed] that Japan surrender unconditionally or face 'prompt and utter destruction.' MacArthur was appalled. He knew that the Japanese would never renounce their emperor, and that without him an orderly transition to peace would be impossible anyhow, because his people would never submit to Allied occupation unless he ordered it. Ironically, when the surrender did come, it was conditional, and the condition was a continuation of the imperial reign. Had the General's advice been followed, the resort to atomic weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki might have been unnecessary."
(William Manchester, American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880-1964, p. 512)
Norman Cousins was a consultant to General MacArthur during the American occupation of Japan. Cousins writes of his conversations with MacArthur, "MacArthur's views about the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were starkly different from what the general public supposed." He continues, "When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor."
(Norman Cousins, The Pathology of Power, pp. 65, 70-71)
Brigadier General Carter Clarke (The military intelligence officer in charge of preparing intercepted Japanese cables - the MAGIC summaries - for Truman and his advisors)
"...when we didn't need to do it, and we knew we didn't need to do it, and they knew that we knew we didn't need to do it, we used them as an experiment for two atomic bombs."
(quoted in Gar Alperovitz, The Decision To Use the Atomic Bomb, p. 359)
Other dissidents cited in this survey include:
Joseph Grew (Under Secretary of State)
John McCloy (Assistant Secretary of War)
Ralph Bard (Under Sec. of the Navy)
Lewis Strauss (Special Assistant to the Secretary of the Navy)
Paul Nitze (Vice Chairman, U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey)
Ellis Zacharias (Deputy Director of the Office of Naval Intelligence) "Zacharias, long a student of Japan's people and culture, believed the Japan would soon be ripe for surrender if the proper approach were taken. For him, that approach was not as simple as bludgeoning Japanese cities . . ."
General Carl "Tooey" Spaatz (In charge of Air Force operations in the Pacific)
Columnist Victor Davis Hanson has also mentioned General Hap Arnold, General Curtis LeMay, and Admiral William Halsey.
Summary of Further Catholic Condemnations of the Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as Immoral
Pope John Paul II (9-11-99, to the Japanese ambassador Toru Iwanami): [Hiroshima and Nagasaki should remind the world of] “the crimes committed against civilian populations during World War II . . . true genocides [are] still being committed in several parts of the world.”
Pope Paul VI (Peace Day: 1-1-76): ". . . butchery of untold magnitude, as at Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 . . ."
Cardinal James Francis Stafford: ". . . the total warfare that was seen in Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Dresden … that is the wholesale disregard for the civilian populations."
Archbishop Fulton Sheen: "When, I wonder, did we in America ever get into this idea that freedom means having no boundaries and no limits? I think it began on the 6th of August 1945 at 8:15 am when we dropped the bomb on Hiroshima."
Monsignor Ronald Knox: ". . . men fighting for a good case have taken, at one particular moment of decision, the easier, not the nobler path".
Dr. Warren Carroll (Founder of Christendom College and renowned orthodox Catholic historian): "I don't agree with the use of the atom bomb against Hiroshima and Nagasaki. You don't use a weapon in a way that you know is going to kill primarily women and children. It's a basic principle of moral philosophy that the end does not justify the means."
Fr. Michael Scanlan (formerly head of the Franciscan University of Steubenville , 1983): ". . . the sinful atrocities of the contemporary world. Whether it be the ovens of Auschwitz and Dachau, the charred bodies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the ravages of saturation bombing, . . .
John Courtney Murray (prominent thinker on church-state issues): "atrocities, . . . savage . . . paroxysms of violence."
Evelyn Waugh (famous convert and author): "To the practical warrior the atom bomb presented no particular moral or spiritual problem. We were engaged in destroying the enemy, civilians and combatants alike. We always assumed that destruction was roughly proportionate to the labour and material expended. Whether it was more convenient to destroy a city with one bomb or a hundred thousand depended on the relative costs of production."
Joseph Sobran (conservative columnist and author): ". . . mass murder is not an option . . . a complete violation of all principles of civilized warfare. And the development of the atomic bomb was only a cold-blooded extension of this monstrous policy. The whole idea of rules of warfare is to rule out certain atrocities, whether or not they achieve their goals . . . The rule against attacking civilians means that it is forbidden even if it's the only way to win a war. Why is this so hard to grasp?"
Also, note the immensely popular and influential Anglican apologist C.S. Lewis's opinion: "The victory of vivisection marks a great advance in the triumph of ruthless, non-moral utilitarianism over the old world of ethical law; a triumph in which we, as well as animals, are already the victims, and of which Dachau and Hiroshima mark the more recent achievements . . ."
Conclusion
I conclude that the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which are defended, as they often are, on mistaken utilitarian calculations which are contrary to both fact and probable fact (as exposited by the highest level military commanders), and with apparent ignorance regarding the facts concerning the nature of the target and the number of innocent civilians killed (which could scarcely have been otherwise, given the target of the center of the city, etc.), and without due regard for Catholic ethical principles, were immoral and unjustifiable.
That's not to say that this view is a settled dogma in the Catholic Church (I have approached this matter as an ethical one, not a dogmatic one, which is a different level of discussion altogether). Readers are urged to always remember the many qualifying statements from opponents of the bombings, that I have cited. I agree with all of them.
In particular, the justification of "double effect" cannot, I think, be reasonably, plausibly maintained with regard to these bombings. There were simply too many civilian casualties. The scale of death and destruction does not allow it. It is hopelessly naive and muddleheaded and a denial of concrete reality to suggest that these were only peripheral, and non-intentional, while military targets were primary intentions.
Moreover, given the informed opinions of so many that the bombings were not necessary to force surrender or save 500,000 (or whatever the figure) Allied lives (Eisenhower and MacArthur were militarily uninformed, we ought to believe???!!!!), and the nature of the targets, such a view cannot hold water, and must be rejected. From what I have learned, the facts do not justify it. I can certainly be more educated on the subject (time-permitting), but at this point, my prior far less informed opinion has not changed, and has only been greatly strengthened by what I have learned in my studies.
My interest all along has been concordance of the bombings with just war theory, not with calculations of projected future casualties, or how soon the Japanese might have surrendered without the Bomb. I haven't delved into those issues, by deliberate design, because I wanted to deal with prior premises and preliminary moral considerations first.
President Harry Truman stated:
. . . the Atomic Bomb. It is far worse than gas and biological warfare because it affects the civilian population and murders them by the wholesale.
This was written on January 19, 1953, just before Truman left the Presidency. I included a photograph of the original typewritten document in one of my other papers. So Truman himself thought it was "murder".
Saturday, August 13, 2005
Friday, August 12, 2005
Open Forum / See Ya on 25 August
I'm off on vacation with my family till August 25th. No computers, no e-mail, no TV (except for one night in a motel, if we don't get there too late), no work or writing. Just the Great Outdoors (hiking in virgin wilderness and admiring waterfalls and Lake Superior and campfires and meteor showers) and enjoying my family (a wonderful wife, three boys: 14, 12, 8, and a daughter: 3), and some reading. I won't be able to send book orders, etc.
Please be gracious and charitable to one another (especially to non-Catholics) and enjoy the discussion while I'm away. I'd like to take this opportunity to express my deep appreciation for all who spend time reading this blog and/or making comments. I'm honored to be of any service to you. May our Lord richly bless you.
Please be gracious and charitable to one another (especially to non-Catholics) and enjoy the discussion while I'm away. I'd like to take this opportunity to express my deep appreciation for all who spend time reading this blog and/or making comments. I'm honored to be of any service to you. May our Lord richly bless you.
A Day in the Life of an Anti-Catholic: Steve "Whopper" Hays
Check out this wonderfully insightful, charitable comment, made by Steve Hays on "Pedantic Protestant's" blog, on 8-12-05:
Does anyone still wonder why I have neither time nor patience any longer to try to seriously dialogue with people who express themselves in such an idiotic fashion? Yet Steve expects me to dialogue with him and to take him seriously. He's ticked off because of my policy of ceasing attempts at dialogue with anti-Catholics (oops! I forgot: there is no such category: only "anti-Protestants," as James White has once again reiterated on his blog. Sorry for the slip).
Since he's in that category, this policy includes (or should I say, excludes) him. I can't help it if he takes it personally and so has to lash out in a juvenile manner. That's his problem. He chose to be an anti-Catholic Protestant, which is his perfect right, and I chose to no longer try to dialogue with those holding a position which I consider ridiculous, self-defeating, utterly incoherent and indefensible, and intellectual suicide, which is my perfect right, especially given all the different topics I write about, and the usual time constraints (an 80-hour work week, a wife and four young children, etc.).
In any event, I haven't been able as of yet, to refrain from the urge of responding to such tripe with humor, so here I go again (heaven help me!):
A Day in the Life
(original lyrics by Lennon and McCartney, 1967)
I read the blogs today oh, boy
About the lying men who made the grade
And though the lies were rather sad
Well I just had to laugh
I saw the polygraph*
He blew his mind out; how bizarre!
He didn’t notice that the truth had changed
A crowd of groupies stood and stared
They’d heard his lies before,
Nobody was sure if he was from the house of the Lord.
I saw some bilge today oh, boy
The anti-Catholics had just lost the war
A crowd of papists turned away
But I just had to look
Having read White's book,
I’d love to turn your hearts...
Perhaps we've been wrong about this. Perhaps we should cut dear old Dave a little slack. After all, it's a high and lonely calling to be Dave Armstrong. Yes, the importance of being Dave. Imagine the sheer weight of responsibility--of living up to such exalted expectations. This is not a job everyone can do. Not just any Joe Six Pack can be Dave Armstrong. The job qualifications are just too daunting. So, by process of elimination, there is only one individual with the unique combination of unique abilities to aspire to the awesome and lonesome vocation of Davedom.
But remember, as he once explained to me on my own blog, that he's doing it for us, you know--for all the little people who would be like lost and straying sheep without the guidance of this sage and selfless shepherd. St. Dave, pray for us now, and at the hour of our death!
Does anyone still wonder why I have neither time nor patience any longer to try to seriously dialogue with people who express themselves in such an idiotic fashion? Yet Steve expects me to dialogue with him and to take him seriously. He's ticked off because of my policy of ceasing attempts at dialogue with anti-Catholics (oops! I forgot: there is no such category: only "anti-Protestants," as James White has once again reiterated on his blog. Sorry for the slip).
Since he's in that category, this policy includes (or should I say, excludes) him. I can't help it if he takes it personally and so has to lash out in a juvenile manner. That's his problem. He chose to be an anti-Catholic Protestant, which is his perfect right, and I chose to no longer try to dialogue with those holding a position which I consider ridiculous, self-defeating, utterly incoherent and indefensible, and intellectual suicide, which is my perfect right, especially given all the different topics I write about, and the usual time constraints (an 80-hour work week, a wife and four young children, etc.).
In any event, I haven't been able as of yet, to refrain from the urge of responding to such tripe with humor, so here I go again (heaven help me!):
A Day in the Life
(original lyrics by Lennon and McCartney, 1967)
I read the blogs today oh, boy
About the lying men who made the grade
And though the lies were rather sad
Well I just had to laugh
I saw the polygraph*
He blew his mind out; how bizarre!
He didn’t notice that the truth had changed
A crowd of groupies stood and stared
They’d heard his lies before,
Nobody was sure if he was from the house of the Lord.
I saw some bilge today oh, boy
The anti-Catholics had just lost the war
A crowd of papists turned away
But I just had to look
Having read White's book,
I’d love to turn your hearts...
--- The Hallucination ---
Woke up, got born again,
Ripped a Rosary to shreds
Found my way downstairs and read Steve Hays,
And looking up I knew that I was saved.
Found Bishop White and joined his chat
Started lyin' in seconds flat
Found my way back home to incense smoke,
Steve Hays spoke and he went into a scream
"Ah poor St. Dave, poor St. Dave, dear Old Dave.
We must get him saved, get him saved, get him saved."
I read the lies today oh boy
Four thousand holes in Steve Hays' reasoning
And though his facts were rather small
He tried to count them all,
Now they know how many lies it takes to make the papists fall.
I’d love to turn your hearts...
* Lie detector machine
Thursday, August 11, 2005
"How Does One Decide Which Church is True?"
BWL attends a Lutheran church. This was drawn (slightly-edited, with typos removed) from comments threads below. His words will be in blue. My old words will be in green.
-----------------------
The argument you are making is that sola Scriptura doesn't work because of the divisions among those who claim to adhere to it and the absence of any way (and especially any authority) to end said divisions. But churches who deny sola Scriptura and claim to adhere to Tradition are also in the same boat.
First of all, let everyone note what was done here (which is usually done): rather than deny the assertion and show that Protestantism does indeed have a way out of the dilemma, you immediately switch the matter back to Catholicism. That's fine in and of itself. Fire away! But it is no answer to an internal suggested problem of Protestantism to simply point out a possible internal problem of Catholicism. This is a variation of the old "your dad's uglier [or just as ugly] as mine" approach."
And that's part of what I mean when I say that Protestants never address the thorny problems of sola Scriptura head on. Almost always it is a diversionary tactic, or recourse to Honorius or the sexual scandal or some such ploy to avoid dealing with severe problems inherent in sola Scriptura. Just look at how the Protestants in this forum are acting when the topic comes up: they're all squirming: even outwardly so (don't get me wrong: I greatly appreciate the honesty of admitting that one is troubled by something). In any event, there is no doubt that it remains a huge problem for Protestants to resolve for themselves.
That said, I strongly deny that we are all "in the same boat" in this regard.
So the same question could be asked of you: how do non-Protestant Christians decide between Catholicism, Orthodoxy, the Coptic church, the Old Catholics, etc.?
The arguments are long, complex, and elaborate. There are no simple answers to be given that anyone should be convinced by. But I think that with proper study of all sides, one can be given enough information to make a good comparison of competing viewpoints and make the most plausible choice. I've shown, I believe, that the papacy is explicitly biblically-grounded, and that it developed in a consistent, sensible manner throughout Church history. It was part of Church policy and organization and the bulwark of orthodoxy. So to simply cut it out and separate from it doesn't make sense to me because it is not a consistent development of what was before. The same holds true of ecumenical councils. Orthodox and Protestants (to differing degrees) value the early Church councils. Everyone speaks of one Church in those days, yet later on it somehow gets split. Well, who is it that continues to have a pope and ecumenical councils, just as in the first millennium? It ain't the Orthodox or the Protestants! So, although it might still be argued that something fundamental changed so that Vatican II is a completely different species than Nicaea, at least we HAVE councils. A group that doesn't has to explained why they were normative before but not now (except in Catholicism).
I don't know much about the Copts, and so I can't speak about them. The Old Catholics refused to accept papal infallibility, which wasn't invented in 1870, but rather, was in place (practically-speaking) for a long time, and was a perfectly consistent development of papal supremacy. The Council decided that this was to be a de fide dogma (just like the early councils). The Church spoke. The Old Catholics didn't like it and split, just as all the heretics through the centuries had done: they knew better than the Church. It's rather obvious, then, that they are not the "mainstream" because (again) they changed what had been received Tradition. Continuity is the key. That's apostolic succession and development of doctrine. It's how we know what the Church and True Christian Tradition is. Thus taught St. Paul and the Fathers, and the Catholic Church today.
Etc., etc., etc.
And it's worth pointing out that at least for the RC, EO and Copts, they all were around before the Reformation (meaning divisions were not new before then) and all claim to be "the church" as well.
I think the Orthodox are certainly part of the Church. They don't have a correct view of the papacy, from our perspective, but they are part of us. There are other issues — many of which are highly abstract or merely cultural — but that is the basic difference.
In addition, if Protestantism is wrong, how is a Protestant suppose to decide between these churches who are all ancient and all claim Tradition?
I've given a "nutshell" answer. The long answer is found in many many of my papers. Like I said, it is too serious an issue to trivialize by trying to give short, pat answers to it.
I don't think that I would have the time to engage all of your arguments. I do have a job after all and this is just something I do on the side.
That's fine, but it remains true that in order to decide vexing, complex issues, we all have to devote considerable time, just as we went to school for thousands of hours to learn things. Theology, Bible study, and historical study are no different. It's irrelevant to me whether you work through all these things with me or not, but I contend that you must work through them in depth in some fashion if you hope to resolve these difficulties that you frankly admit exist in your viewpoint.
I really don't know how you write as much as you do sometimes. Honestly it's quite impressive. Maybe you just drink more coffee than I do:)
Actually no: it gives me a headache. I take bee pollen and eat naturally-sweetened stuff. I write very fast. Most subjects I've dealt with before, so the thoughts are already floating around in my head. I do this full-time (I do my second part-time job on top of the full-time hours). I can cut-and-paste many times. I love what I do, which makes it easier and faster. I get stimulated by opposing arguments, and that motivates me to write and brings up new thoughts and ideas.
That is the bottom-line issue that both sides need to address, but if one side refuses to engage the most serious critiques of its fundamental principle and rule of faith, then what does that tell us? To me, it indicates that it is an indefensible system, with false premises, and that is not something I would want to be a part of. I would either seek to defend and uphold it or get out and adopt a more feasible and plausible position.
Well, I'm not so sure about this. James White frequently goes around crowing about how Catholics haven't properly addressed his critiques, etc.
Except with me (and several others I know of). In my case, he flees for the hills and tries to pretend that I haven't refuted him time and again. It remains a simple, indisputable, easily-documented fact that no Protestant has sustained a defense of sola Scriptura in the face of one of my critiques. This includes at least two people who wrote master's theses on the topic, one who was the editor of the New Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (brother of a good Baptist friend of mine), folks like Keith Mathison (who has a doctorate), and others of like education (though that was recent; frankly, I don't expect him to be any different; maybe he'll pleasantly surprise me. I hope so).
They were in the position to give the best answer. But even they couldn't do so. That's not because they are ill-equipped. It's because you can only get so much mileage out of something that isn't TRUE. When you have to make a case out of something so incoherent, it is extremely hard work. I don't blame anyone for not wanting to do so. But I eventually blame them if they refuse to acknowledge the problem and don't try to rectify it in their own spiritual life and theological outlook.
Granted, he is a real blowhard, but this is what a lot of people on both sides say.
Yes, they do. I can document everything I say. Many people have learned this the hard way. :-) Like Dizzy Dean used to say, "it ain't braggin' if you can DO it!"
My case, however, is a bit more complicated. My wife and family aren't too thrilled with Lutheranism, much less Catholicism. So part of the reason I'm Protestant is not simply because of certain doubts about Catholicism (which are much fewer than about Baptistic Evangelicalism), but because of worries about maritial/family problems that would ensue if I ever left Protestantism.
That's between you and God, and your family. Speaking for myself only, I would always maintain that an individual must follow his conscience, no matter what, and should convince others that he or she ought to be allowed to do so, but there are many situations, and wisdom and prudence dictate different responses or speeds of certain "moves" in different circumstances (also I didn't have to face these difficulties in my conversion, and so don't feel that it is my place to "lecture" others about it). May God bless you as you seek God in deciding what is best for your family. Only God knows all the variables and factors. No one else does. I'm just an apologist making my defense of what I believe. Conversion is the work of the Holy Spirit and cannot be coerced or forced or made to happen "before its time," so to speak.
-----------------------
The argument you are making is that sola Scriptura doesn't work because of the divisions among those who claim to adhere to it and the absence of any way (and especially any authority) to end said divisions. But churches who deny sola Scriptura and claim to adhere to Tradition are also in the same boat.
First of all, let everyone note what was done here (which is usually done): rather than deny the assertion and show that Protestantism does indeed have a way out of the dilemma, you immediately switch the matter back to Catholicism. That's fine in and of itself. Fire away! But it is no answer to an internal suggested problem of Protestantism to simply point out a possible internal problem of Catholicism. This is a variation of the old "your dad's uglier [or just as ugly] as mine" approach."
And that's part of what I mean when I say that Protestants never address the thorny problems of sola Scriptura head on. Almost always it is a diversionary tactic, or recourse to Honorius or the sexual scandal or some such ploy to avoid dealing with severe problems inherent in sola Scriptura. Just look at how the Protestants in this forum are acting when the topic comes up: they're all squirming: even outwardly so (don't get me wrong: I greatly appreciate the honesty of admitting that one is troubled by something). In any event, there is no doubt that it remains a huge problem for Protestants to resolve for themselves.
That said, I strongly deny that we are all "in the same boat" in this regard.
So the same question could be asked of you: how do non-Protestant Christians decide between Catholicism, Orthodoxy, the Coptic church, the Old Catholics, etc.?
The arguments are long, complex, and elaborate. There are no simple answers to be given that anyone should be convinced by. But I think that with proper study of all sides, one can be given enough information to make a good comparison of competing viewpoints and make the most plausible choice. I've shown, I believe, that the papacy is explicitly biblically-grounded, and that it developed in a consistent, sensible manner throughout Church history. It was part of Church policy and organization and the bulwark of orthodoxy. So to simply cut it out and separate from it doesn't make sense to me because it is not a consistent development of what was before. The same holds true of ecumenical councils. Orthodox and Protestants (to differing degrees) value the early Church councils. Everyone speaks of one Church in those days, yet later on it somehow gets split. Well, who is it that continues to have a pope and ecumenical councils, just as in the first millennium? It ain't the Orthodox or the Protestants! So, although it might still be argued that something fundamental changed so that Vatican II is a completely different species than Nicaea, at least we HAVE councils. A group that doesn't has to explained why they were normative before but not now (except in Catholicism).
I don't know much about the Copts, and so I can't speak about them. The Old Catholics refused to accept papal infallibility, which wasn't invented in 1870, but rather, was in place (practically-speaking) for a long time, and was a perfectly consistent development of papal supremacy. The Council decided that this was to be a de fide dogma (just like the early councils). The Church spoke. The Old Catholics didn't like it and split, just as all the heretics through the centuries had done: they knew better than the Church. It's rather obvious, then, that they are not the "mainstream" because (again) they changed what had been received Tradition. Continuity is the key. That's apostolic succession and development of doctrine. It's how we know what the Church and True Christian Tradition is. Thus taught St. Paul and the Fathers, and the Catholic Church today.
Etc., etc., etc.
And it's worth pointing out that at least for the RC, EO and Copts, they all were around before the Reformation (meaning divisions were not new before then) and all claim to be "the church" as well.
I think the Orthodox are certainly part of the Church. They don't have a correct view of the papacy, from our perspective, but they are part of us. There are other issues — many of which are highly abstract or merely cultural — but that is the basic difference.
In addition, if Protestantism is wrong, how is a Protestant suppose to decide between these churches who are all ancient and all claim Tradition?
I've given a "nutshell" answer. The long answer is found in many many of my papers. Like I said, it is too serious an issue to trivialize by trying to give short, pat answers to it.
I don't think that I would have the time to engage all of your arguments. I do have a job after all and this is just something I do on the side.
That's fine, but it remains true that in order to decide vexing, complex issues, we all have to devote considerable time, just as we went to school for thousands of hours to learn things. Theology, Bible study, and historical study are no different. It's irrelevant to me whether you work through all these things with me or not, but I contend that you must work through them in depth in some fashion if you hope to resolve these difficulties that you frankly admit exist in your viewpoint.
I really don't know how you write as much as you do sometimes. Honestly it's quite impressive. Maybe you just drink more coffee than I do:)
Actually no: it gives me a headache. I take bee pollen and eat naturally-sweetened stuff. I write very fast. Most subjects I've dealt with before, so the thoughts are already floating around in my head. I do this full-time (I do my second part-time job on top of the full-time hours). I can cut-and-paste many times. I love what I do, which makes it easier and faster. I get stimulated by opposing arguments, and that motivates me to write and brings up new thoughts and ideas.
That is the bottom-line issue that both sides need to address, but if one side refuses to engage the most serious critiques of its fundamental principle and rule of faith, then what does that tell us? To me, it indicates that it is an indefensible system, with false premises, and that is not something I would want to be a part of. I would either seek to defend and uphold it or get out and adopt a more feasible and plausible position.
Well, I'm not so sure about this. James White frequently goes around crowing about how Catholics haven't properly addressed his critiques, etc.
Except with me (and several others I know of). In my case, he flees for the hills and tries to pretend that I haven't refuted him time and again. It remains a simple, indisputable, easily-documented fact that no Protestant has sustained a defense of sola Scriptura in the face of one of my critiques. This includes at least two people who wrote master's theses on the topic, one who was the editor of the New Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (brother of a good Baptist friend of mine), folks like Keith Mathison (who has a doctorate), and others of like education (though that was recent; frankly, I don't expect him to be any different; maybe he'll pleasantly surprise me. I hope so).
They were in the position to give the best answer. But even they couldn't do so. That's not because they are ill-equipped. It's because you can only get so much mileage out of something that isn't TRUE. When you have to make a case out of something so incoherent, it is extremely hard work. I don't blame anyone for not wanting to do so. But I eventually blame them if they refuse to acknowledge the problem and don't try to rectify it in their own spiritual life and theological outlook.
Granted, he is a real blowhard, but this is what a lot of people on both sides say.
Yes, they do. I can document everything I say. Many people have learned this the hard way. :-) Like Dizzy Dean used to say, "it ain't braggin' if you can DO it!"
My case, however, is a bit more complicated. My wife and family aren't too thrilled with Lutheranism, much less Catholicism. So part of the reason I'm Protestant is not simply because of certain doubts about Catholicism (which are much fewer than about Baptistic Evangelicalism), but because of worries about maritial/family problems that would ensue if I ever left Protestantism.
That's between you and God, and your family. Speaking for myself only, I would always maintain that an individual must follow his conscience, no matter what, and should convince others that he or she ought to be allowed to do so, but there are many situations, and wisdom and prudence dictate different responses or speeds of certain "moves" in different circumstances (also I didn't have to face these difficulties in my conversion, and so don't feel that it is my place to "lecture" others about it). May God bless you as you seek God in deciding what is best for your family. Only God knows all the variables and factors. No one else does. I'm just an apologist making my defense of what I believe. Conversion is the work of the Holy Spirit and cannot be coerced or forced or made to happen "before its time," so to speak.
Wednesday, August 10, 2005
If we Christians would labor one-hundredth as much to understand the Bible and apply it in our lives, as the monks did in creating gorgeous illuminated manuscripts like this one, then we'd be in great shape!
Possible References to the Deuterocanon (aka "Apocrypha") in the New Testament (RSV)
Here are the links to the complete, eight-part series:
Matthew
Mark and Luke
John and Acts
Romans
1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, and Ephesians
Philippians Through Titus
Hebrews and James
1 Peter Through Revelation
-------------------------------------------------------------
Derived from pp. 800-804 of the Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament, 27th edition (Novum Testamentum: Graece et Latine), published by Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft; see the web page from Catholic apologist Jimmy Akin, which reproduced the list. NT passages listed in Nestle-Aland will be in blue, and Deuterocanonical passages in red.
Possible references listed by verse only at the end were deemed (by myself) dissimilar and questionable or non-convincing enough to not reproduce.
[Bible passages were retrieved from the RSV Bible, with Apocrypha, from the University of Virginia Electronic Text Center]
Recently, a Reformed Protestant wondered aloud what the purpose of collecting these possible references would be (if not apologetic in nature, as some sort of "proof" of the canonicity of the Deuterocanonical or so-called "Apocryphal" books). I agree with Jimmy Akin's comments in the above-cited web page:
It is true that discovering all of these cross-references provides the Bible student with a fuller sense of the background of biblical texts, including the Deuterocanon (so neglected in Protestant circles because of the denial of the canonicity of these books). This is valuable whether one accepts the Deuterocanon as part of inspired, infallible Holy Scripture or not (just as cultural or linguistic background factors also are), but for those who do, it will provide a greater sense of the interrelatedness of the Deuterocanonical books with the other biblical books, and a better understanding of the Hebrew background of the thoughts and doctrines of the New Testament; perhaps even some measure of evidence for the canonicity of these disputed books (however indirect).
Matthew
Mark and Luke
John and Acts
Romans
1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, and Ephesians
Philippians Through Titus
Hebrews and James
1 Peter Through Revelation
-------------------------------------------------------------
Derived from pp. 800-804 of the Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament, 27th edition (Novum Testamentum: Graece et Latine), published by Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft; see the web page from Catholic apologist Jimmy Akin, which reproduced the list. NT passages listed in Nestle-Aland will be in blue, and Deuterocanonical passages in red.
Possible references listed by verse only at the end were deemed (by myself) dissimilar and questionable or non-convincing enough to not reproduce.
[Bible passages were retrieved from the RSV Bible, with Apocrypha, from the University of Virginia Electronic Text Center]
Recently, a Reformed Protestant wondered aloud what the purpose of collecting these possible references would be (if not apologetic in nature, as some sort of "proof" of the canonicity of the Deuterocanonical or so-called "Apocryphal" books). I agree with Jimmy Akin's comments in the above-cited web page:
I get a lot of requests for a list of the references the New Testament makes to the deuterocanonical books of the Old Testament. Unfortunately, giving a list is not such a simple affair since it is not always obvious whether something is a genuine reference.So will I. This project is not, strictly-speaking, an exercise in apologetics, but rather, an aid in Bible study or a Bible "reference" tool, as I explained in my reply to this "critic" (Part One / Part Two / Part Three). Furthermore, it is obvious (and crucial to understand) that many (if not most) of these proposed or real "references" are not literally citations, but rather parallels or strong similarities in language of a word or a phrase (or in thought, expressed with different terminology). Thus, this listing more often than not provides cross-referencing to such words and phrases in Deuterocanonical passages, just as most reference Bibles do: providing a cross-reference to similar words and phrases in other biblical books, or like a Biblical Concordance does with words, or a reference work like The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge does with phrases.
Hebrews 11:35 is an indisputable reference to 2 Maccabees 7, but many are not so clear as there may be only a single phrase that echoes one in a deuterocanonical book (and this may not be obvious in the translation, but only the original languages).
This is the same with New Testament references to the protocanonical books of the Old Testament. How many New Testament references there are to the Old Testament depends in large measure on what you are going to count as a reference.
As a result, many scholarly works simply give an enormous catalogue of all proposed references and leave it to the individual interpreter to decide whether a given reference is actual or not.
I will follow the same procedure . . .
It is true that discovering all of these cross-references provides the Bible student with a fuller sense of the background of biblical texts, including the Deuterocanon (so neglected in Protestant circles because of the denial of the canonicity of these books). This is valuable whether one accepts the Deuterocanon as part of inspired, infallible Holy Scripture or not (just as cultural or linguistic background factors also are), but for those who do, it will provide a greater sense of the interrelatedness of the Deuterocanonical books with the other biblical books, and a better understanding of the Hebrew background of the thoughts and doctrines of the New Testament; perhaps even some measure of evidence for the canonicity of these disputed books (however indirect).
Possible References to the Deuterocanon (aka "Apocrypha"): 1 Peter Through Revelation (RSV)
Derived from pp. 800-804 of the Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament, 27th edition (Novum Testamentum: Graece et Latine), published by Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft; see the web page from Catholic apologist Jimmy Akin, which reproduced the list. NT passages listed in Nestle-Aland will be in blue, and Deuterocanonical passages in red. Alleged references listed by verse only at the end were deemed (by myself) dissimilar and questionable or non-convincing enough to not reproduce.
[Bible passages were retrieved from the RSV Bible, with Apocrypha, from the University of Virginia Electronic Text Center]
--------------
1 PETER
1a) 1 Peter 1:3
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy we have been born anew to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
1b) Sirach 16:12
As great as his mercy, so great is also his reproof; he judges a man according to his deeds.
2a) 1 Peter 1:7
so that the genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold which though perishable is tested by fire, may redound to praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
2b) Sirach 2:5
For gold is tested in the fire, and acceptable men in the furnace of humiliation.
2 PETER
1a) 2 Peter 2:7
and if he rescued righteous Lot, greatly distressed by the licentiousness of the wicked
1b) Wisdom 10:6
Wisdom rescued a righteous man when the ungodly were perishing; he escaped the fire that descended on the Five Cities.
2a) 2 Peter 3:9
The Lord is not slow about his promise as some count slowness, but is forbearing toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.
2b) Sirach 35:19
till he repays the man according to his deeds, and the works of men according to their devices; till he judges the case of his people and makes them rejoice in his mercy.
REVELATION
1a) Revelation 1:18
and the living one; I died, and behold I am alive for evermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades.
1b) Sirach 18:1
He who lives for ever created the whole universe;
2a) Revelation 2:12
"And to the angel of the church in Per'gamum write: `The words of him who has the sharp two-edged sword.
2b) Wisdom 18:16
carrying the sharp sword of thy authentic command, and stood and filled all things with death, and touched heaven while standing on the earth.
3a) Revelation 7:9
After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no man could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands,
3b) 2 Maccabees 10:7
Therefore bearing ivy-wreathed wands and beautiful branches and also fronds of palm, they offered hymns of thanksgiving to him who had given success to the purifying of his own holy place.
4a) Revelation 8:2
Then I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and seven trumpets were given to them.
4b) Tobit 12:15
I am Raphael, one of the seven holy angels who present the prayers of the saints and enter into the presence of the glory of the Holy One."
5a) Revelation 8:3
And another angel came and stood at the altar with a golden censer; and he was given much incense to mingle with the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar before the throne;
5b) Tobit 12:12
And so, when you and your daughter-in-law Sarah prayed, I brought a reminder of your prayer before the Holy One; and when you buried the dead, I was likewise present with you.
6a) Revelation 8:7
The first angel blew his trumpet, and there followed hail and fire, mixed with blood, which fell on the earth; and a third of the earth was burnt up, and a third of the trees were burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up.
6b) Sirach 39:29
Fire and hail and famine and pestilence, all these have been created for vengeance;
6c) Wisdom 16:22
Snow and ice withstood fire without melting, so that they might know that the crops of their enemies were being destroyed by the fire that blazed in the hail and flashed in the showers of rain;
7a) Revelation 9:3
Then from the smoke came locusts on the earth, and they were given power like the power of scorpions of the earth;
7b) Wisdom 16:9
For they were killed by the bites of locusts and flies, and no healing was found for them, because they deserved to be punished by such things;
8a) Revelation 9:4
they were told not to harm the grass of the earth or any green growth or any tree, but only those of mankind who have not the seal of God upon their foreheads;
8b) Sirach 44:18 etc.
Everlasting covenants were made with him that all flesh should not be blotted out by a flood.
9a) Revelation 11:19
Then God's temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant was seen within his temple; and there were flashes of lightning, voices, peals of thunder, an earthquake, and heavy hail.
9b) 2 Maccabees 2:4-8
It was also in the writing that the prophet, having received an oracle, ordered that the tent and the ark should follow with him, and that he went out to the mountain where Moses had gone up and had seen the inheritance of God. 5: And Jeremiah came and found a cave, and he brought there the tent and the ark and the altar of incense, and he sealed up the entrance. 6: Some of those who followed him came up to mark the way, but could not find it. 7: When Jeremiah learned of it, he rebuked them and declared: "The place shall be unknown until God gathers his people together again and shows his mercy. 8: And then the Lord will disclose these things, and the glory of the Lord and the cloud will appear, as they were shown in the case of Moses, and as Solomon asked that the place should be specially consecrated."
10a) Revelation 18:2
And he called out with a mighty voice, "Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great! It has become a dwelling place of demons, a haunt of every foul spirit, a haunt of every foul and hateful bird;
10b) Baruch 4:35
For fire will come upon her from the Everlasting for many days, and for a long time she will be inhabited by demons.
11a) Revelation 19:1
After this I heard what seemed to be the loud voice of a great multitude in heaven, crying, "Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God,
11b) Tobit 13:18
all her lanes will cry `Hallelujah!' and will give praise, saying, `Blessed is God, who has exalted you for ever.'"
12a) Revelation 19:11
Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! He who sat upon it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war.
12b) 2 Maccabees 3:25
For there appeared to them a magnificently caparisoned horse, with a rider of frightening mien, and it rushed furiously at Heliodorus and struck at him with its front hoofs. Its rider was seen to have armor and weapons of gold.
12c) 2 Maccabees 11:8
And there, while they were still near Jerusalem, a horseman appeared at their head, clothed in white and brandishing weapons of gold.
13a) Revelation 20:12-13
And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Also another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, by what they had done. 13: And the sea gave up the dead in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead in them, and all were judged by what they had done.
13b) Sirach 16:12
As great as his mercy, so great is also his reproof; he judges a man according to his deeds.
14a) Revelation 21:19-20
The foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with every jewel; the first was jasper, the second sapphire, the third agate, the fourth emerald, 20: the fifth onyx, the sixth carnelian, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth chrysoprase, the eleventh jacinth, the twelfth amethyst.
14b) Tobit 13:17
The streets of Jerusalem will be paved with beryl and ruby and stones of Ophir;
See also:
1 Peter 2:25 and Wisdom 1:6
1 Peter 4:19 and 2 Maccabees 1:24 etc.
1 Peter 5:7 and Wisdom 12:13
2 Peter 2:2 and Wisdom 5:6
2 Peter 3:18 and Sirach 18:10
1 John 5:21 and Baruch 6:72
Jude 13 and Wisdom 14:1
Revelation 2:10 and 2 Maccabees 13:14
Revelation 2:17 and 2 Maccabees 2:4-8
Revelation 4:11 and Sirach 18:1 and Wisdom 1:14
Revelation 5:7 and Sirach 1:8-9
Revelation 8:1 and Wisdom 18:14
Revelation 17:14 and 2 Maccabees 13:4
Revelation 19:16 and 2 Maccabees 13:4
[Bible passages were retrieved from the RSV Bible, with Apocrypha, from the University of Virginia Electronic Text Center]
--------------
1 PETER
1a) 1 Peter 1:3
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy we have been born anew to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
1b) Sirach 16:12
As great as his mercy, so great is also his reproof; he judges a man according to his deeds.
2a) 1 Peter 1:7
so that the genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold which though perishable is tested by fire, may redound to praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
2b) Sirach 2:5
For gold is tested in the fire, and acceptable men in the furnace of humiliation.
2 PETER
1a) 2 Peter 2:7
and if he rescued righteous Lot, greatly distressed by the licentiousness of the wicked
1b) Wisdom 10:6
Wisdom rescued a righteous man when the ungodly were perishing; he escaped the fire that descended on the Five Cities.
2a) 2 Peter 3:9
The Lord is not slow about his promise as some count slowness, but is forbearing toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.
2b) Sirach 35:19
till he repays the man according to his deeds, and the works of men according to their devices; till he judges the case of his people and makes them rejoice in his mercy.
REVELATION
1a) Revelation 1:18
and the living one; I died, and behold I am alive for evermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades.
1b) Sirach 18:1
He who lives for ever created the whole universe;
2a) Revelation 2:12
"And to the angel of the church in Per'gamum write: `The words of him who has the sharp two-edged sword.
2b) Wisdom 18:16
carrying the sharp sword of thy authentic command, and stood and filled all things with death, and touched heaven while standing on the earth.
3a) Revelation 7:9
After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no man could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands,
3b) 2 Maccabees 10:7
Therefore bearing ivy-wreathed wands and beautiful branches and also fronds of palm, they offered hymns of thanksgiving to him who had given success to the purifying of his own holy place.
4a) Revelation 8:2
Then I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and seven trumpets were given to them.
4b) Tobit 12:15
I am Raphael, one of the seven holy angels who present the prayers of the saints and enter into the presence of the glory of the Holy One."
5a) Revelation 8:3
And another angel came and stood at the altar with a golden censer; and he was given much incense to mingle with the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar before the throne;
5b) Tobit 12:12
And so, when you and your daughter-in-law Sarah prayed, I brought a reminder of your prayer before the Holy One; and when you buried the dead, I was likewise present with you.
6a) Revelation 8:7
The first angel blew his trumpet, and there followed hail and fire, mixed with blood, which fell on the earth; and a third of the earth was burnt up, and a third of the trees were burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up.
6b) Sirach 39:29
Fire and hail and famine and pestilence, all these have been created for vengeance;
6c) Wisdom 16:22
Snow and ice withstood fire without melting, so that they might know that the crops of their enemies were being destroyed by the fire that blazed in the hail and flashed in the showers of rain;
7a) Revelation 9:3
Then from the smoke came locusts on the earth, and they were given power like the power of scorpions of the earth;
7b) Wisdom 16:9
For they were killed by the bites of locusts and flies, and no healing was found for them, because they deserved to be punished by such things;
8a) Revelation 9:4
they were told not to harm the grass of the earth or any green growth or any tree, but only those of mankind who have not the seal of God upon their foreheads;
8b) Sirach 44:18 etc.
Everlasting covenants were made with him that all flesh should not be blotted out by a flood.
9a) Revelation 11:19
Then God's temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant was seen within his temple; and there were flashes of lightning, voices, peals of thunder, an earthquake, and heavy hail.
9b) 2 Maccabees 2:4-8
It was also in the writing that the prophet, having received an oracle, ordered that the tent and the ark should follow with him, and that he went out to the mountain where Moses had gone up and had seen the inheritance of God. 5: And Jeremiah came and found a cave, and he brought there the tent and the ark and the altar of incense, and he sealed up the entrance. 6: Some of those who followed him came up to mark the way, but could not find it. 7: When Jeremiah learned of it, he rebuked them and declared: "The place shall be unknown until God gathers his people together again and shows his mercy. 8: And then the Lord will disclose these things, and the glory of the Lord and the cloud will appear, as they were shown in the case of Moses, and as Solomon asked that the place should be specially consecrated."
10a) Revelation 18:2
And he called out with a mighty voice, "Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great! It has become a dwelling place of demons, a haunt of every foul spirit, a haunt of every foul and hateful bird;
10b) Baruch 4:35
For fire will come upon her from the Everlasting for many days, and for a long time she will be inhabited by demons.
11a) Revelation 19:1
After this I heard what seemed to be the loud voice of a great multitude in heaven, crying, "Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God,
11b) Tobit 13:18
all her lanes will cry `Hallelujah!' and will give praise, saying, `Blessed is God, who has exalted you for ever.'"
12a) Revelation 19:11
Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! He who sat upon it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war.
12b) 2 Maccabees 3:25
For there appeared to them a magnificently caparisoned horse, with a rider of frightening mien, and it rushed furiously at Heliodorus and struck at him with its front hoofs. Its rider was seen to have armor and weapons of gold.
12c) 2 Maccabees 11:8
And there, while they were still near Jerusalem, a horseman appeared at their head, clothed in white and brandishing weapons of gold.
13a) Revelation 20:12-13
And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Also another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, by what they had done. 13: And the sea gave up the dead in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead in them, and all were judged by what they had done.
13b) Sirach 16:12
As great as his mercy, so great is also his reproof; he judges a man according to his deeds.
14a) Revelation 21:19-20
The foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with every jewel; the first was jasper, the second sapphire, the third agate, the fourth emerald, 20: the fifth onyx, the sixth carnelian, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth chrysoprase, the eleventh jacinth, the twelfth amethyst.
14b) Tobit 13:17
The streets of Jerusalem will be paved with beryl and ruby and stones of Ophir;
See also:
1 Peter 2:25 and Wisdom 1:6
1 Peter 4:19 and 2 Maccabees 1:24 etc.
1 Peter 5:7 and Wisdom 12:13
2 Peter 2:2 and Wisdom 5:6
2 Peter 3:18 and Sirach 18:10
1 John 5:21 and Baruch 6:72
Jude 13 and Wisdom 14:1
Revelation 2:10 and 2 Maccabees 13:14
Revelation 2:17 and 2 Maccabees 2:4-8
Revelation 4:11 and Sirach 18:1 and Wisdom 1:14
Revelation 5:7 and Sirach 1:8-9
Revelation 8:1 and Wisdom 18:14
Revelation 17:14 and 2 Maccabees 13:4
Revelation 19:16 and 2 Maccabees 13:4
Open Forum
Keep the great discussions going! I'm very pleased at the tone and tenor of the dialogue, and more proud than I can express, that it is occurring here. Let's keep demonstrating that constructive yet civil, meaty conversation, without rancor, is entirely possible between Christians of different persuasions. My hat is off especially to the Protestants and Orthodox who have hung around in a majority Catholic setting, to discuss important issues. If we do it right, I think we can all become closer to each other, and friends, whether or not someone changes their mind on some doctrinal issue. I've always said that persuasion was not the only positive outcome of discourse: more understanding and friendship and respect are also very worthy, God-honoring goals. This fosters Christian unity, and cooperation on, e.g., social issues where we agree.
Tuesday, August 09, 2005
"NeoCaths" and Old Liberal Nonsense: Challenges to Fr. Joseph O'Leary's Trashing of Orthodox Catholic Apologetics
Once again we have witnessed the spectacle of a liberal Catholic (this time, sadly, a priest: Fr. Joseph O'Leary) trashing the apologetics movement ("The Rise of the Neocaths"), complete with the obligatory use of the term fundamentalist ("They argue by proof texts, in complete contempt of biblical scholarship and hermeneutics. Their ingenuity in defending their fundamentalist stances is extreme"), mocking of established Catholic sexual morality ("They insist that masturbation is mortally sinful, and have an especial enthusiasm for the teaching that homosexuality is intrinsically disordered and that homosexual acts can never be countenanced"), and use of a semi-novel pejorative descriptive: Neocaths.
The term Neo-Catholic is (somewhat ironically) normally used by "traditionalists" (equally improperly, as I have written about). This disdain for orthodox Catholicism and the sort of condescending, patronizing attitude shown, is a disturbingly frequent occurrence. One paper of mine along these lines was Apologia for Apologists and Apologetics. It was my meager addition to the response of several Catholic writers and apologists, including Mark Shea, Patrick Madrid, and Amy Welborn, to the article, "Do We Need a New(er) Apologetics?," by Richard A. Gaillardetz, Professor of Catholic Studies at the University of Toledo, Ohio. Note his similar charge of "fundamentalism":
In 1997, Karl Keating firmly dealt with similar criticisms from Fr. Thomas P. Rausch, S.J. (see his book, Reconciling Faith and Reason: Apologists, Evangelists, and Theologians in a Divided Church, and also his 2002 article, "Another Generation Gap") in his "No Apology From the New Apologists" (see also his related paper, "No Apology Necessary: Vatican II and the New Apologetics"). Fr. Rausch, to his credit, had softened a bit through the years:
Related to this general outlook is the fashionable false antithesis between scholars and apologists, which I dealt with in my paper: A Defense of Amateur Apologetics a la C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton. So this mentality is alive and well, and shows up every now and then. It needs to be vigorously opposed.
My friend Pedro Vega has done that in his six-part series, in response to Fr. O'Leary: A Neocatholic Strikes Back (Parts two / three / four / five / six). Kudos, Pedro!
My friend Christopher Blosser also has provided a penetrating critique: "The Perplexing Sayings of Fr. O'Leary."
His father, Dr. Phillip Blosser (what a powerhouse father and son Internet team, huh?), has written several papers documenting and opposing Fr. O'Leary's theological liberalism and heterodoxy:
Fr. O'Leary's unorthodox "hot tub" Christology (Part I)
O'Leary in the dock ...
Fr. O'Leary on the Resurrection
Recent convert to the Church and former Anglican priest Al Kimel has also chimed in with "Is the “spirit of Vatican II” Christian?"
Last but not least, fellow apologist Apolonio Latar III has issued "Response to Fr. Joseph O’Leary’s “Dogma and Religious Pluralism” Part 1 (+ Part II).
The term Neo-Catholic is (somewhat ironically) normally used by "traditionalists" (equally improperly, as I have written about). This disdain for orthodox Catholicism and the sort of condescending, patronizing attitude shown, is a disturbingly frequent occurrence. One paper of mine along these lines was Apologia for Apologists and Apologetics. It was my meager addition to the response of several Catholic writers and apologists, including Mark Shea, Patrick Madrid, and Amy Welborn, to the article, "Do We Need a New(er) Apologetics?," by Richard A. Gaillardetz, Professor of Catholic Studies at the University of Toledo, Ohio. Note his similar charge of "fundamentalism":
The apologetical refutations of fundamentalist assaults on Catholicism often mirror the very methodology they condemn in their opponents. Many of the new apologists enter too willingly into “Bible wars,” in which Protestant biblical proof-texts are simply parried with a Catholic proof-text in support of a particular Catholic teaching or practice.But this overlooks crucial, fundamental distinctions (pun intended) between the Protestant methodology of sola Scriptura, and the Catholic apologetic and/or exegetical use of Scripture within the overall framework of Sacred Tradition and the Church's teaching. I explained how engaging a Protestant's proof texts and offering counter-textual evidence, is not merely or necessarily a descent into that which we oppose (sola Scriptura and Protestant hyper-proof-texting), in my paper: Dialogue on Whether Extensive Use of Biblical Arguments Reduces to a Quasi-Sola Scriptura Position?
In 1997, Karl Keating firmly dealt with similar criticisms from Fr. Thomas P. Rausch, S.J. (see his book, Reconciling Faith and Reason: Apologists, Evangelists, and Theologians in a Divided Church, and also his 2002 article, "Another Generation Gap") in his "No Apology From the New Apologists" (see also his related paper, "No Apology Necessary: Vatican II and the New Apologetics"). Fr. Rausch, to his credit, had softened a bit through the years:
I have come to be more sympathetic to some of the new apologists’ concerns. There is no question that they are addressing some real needs for a considerable number of contemporary Catholics, for example evangelization and religious illiteracy. I too have become increasingly interested in evangelization, partly as a result of my involvement over the last 15 years with Evangelical Protestants and partly because I have long had a sense that Catholics are not very evangelical as a church—in spite of the great efforts of Pope John Paul II since the beginning of his pontificate to call the church to a greater sense of its evangelical mission. And after almost 30 years of teaching in a Catholic university, I have become increasingly concerned about the enormous religious and theological illiteracy of so many young Catholics today, something many of us experience even in our own families . . . The great popularity of the new apologists among conservative Catholics is evidence that they are addressing some very real needs. Many people have come back to the church through their influence.And let's not forget Fr. Andrew Greeley's February 2004 article for The Atlantic Monthly: "Young Fogeys: Young reactionaries, aging radicals-U.S. Church's unusual clerical divide" (Fr. O'Leary makes reference to this article in his).
Related to this general outlook is the fashionable false antithesis between scholars and apologists, which I dealt with in my paper: A Defense of Amateur Apologetics a la C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton. So this mentality is alive and well, and shows up every now and then. It needs to be vigorously opposed.
My friend Pedro Vega has done that in his six-part series, in response to Fr. O'Leary: A Neocatholic Strikes Back (Parts two / three / four / five / six). Kudos, Pedro!
My friend Christopher Blosser also has provided a penetrating critique: "The Perplexing Sayings of Fr. O'Leary."
His father, Dr. Phillip Blosser (what a powerhouse father and son Internet team, huh?), has written several papers documenting and opposing Fr. O'Leary's theological liberalism and heterodoxy:
Fr. O'Leary's unorthodox "hot tub" Christology (Part I)
O'Leary in the dock ...
Fr. O'Leary on the Resurrection
Recent convert to the Church and former Anglican priest Al Kimel has also chimed in with "Is the “spirit of Vatican II” Christian?"
Last but not least, fellow apologist Apolonio Latar III has issued "Response to Fr. Joseph O’Leary’s “Dogma and Religious Pluralism” Part 1 (+ Part II).
The Colloquy at Marburg in 1529 took place in this castle. Blogger Jim West (link one / link two) sets the scene: "The Colloquy opened on October 1 with a meeting between Zwingli and Melancthon and another between Luther and Oecolampadius. On October 2 Luther and Zwingli would meet at 6 am for a very long day of discussions. This meeting at Marburg is tremendously significant for the history of Protestantism . . . The talks failed, as everyone knows, much to the dismay of Zwingli and the delight of Luther. The entire debate floundered on the little phrase hoc est corpus meum." And so the tone was set for the entire future history of Protestantism. The divisions would keep getting worse and worse, and the sects would proliferate into the multiple thousands. It'll never end, because Protestantism has no workable unifying principle. Simplistic appeals to "the clear teaching of the Bible" obviously haven't served as this unifying force.
Protestant Civil Wars Are Alive and Well (Can a Leopard Change Its Spots?)
John Calvin (Reformed) wrote to his friend Philip Melanchthon (Lutheran), on 28 November 1552:
That being the case, readers can then reasonably expect that the examples would all fall into this specific subset of disagreements (i.e., acrimonious, name-calling types of affairs). Upon re-reading PP's posts (very carefully, with his protest in mind, and trying to be as fair to him as I could be), I have concluded that he is right: indeed his posts do not fall into this category. Sometimes (even perhaps often) it's a very fine line, or borderline, but I would prefer to exercise charity and so therefore I have removed those papers of his from my post.
Ironically, though he convinced me that his papers were not of this type (which I think is great: I love constructive, thought-through criticism), he couldn't refrain from plain condescending, personal attacks upon yours truly. After all, I am only a "Romanist," not a fellow Protestant (no matter how flawed), and so I don't deserve any such rudimentary respect from his pen. Ridicule and disdain are apparently completely acceptable if directed towards "Romanist" targets, in PP's mind (which is, after all, par for the course in anti-Catholic polemics, even among clearly intelligent, thoughtful, articulate, academic men like PP).
So, then, while I greatly appreciate the fact that he was able to avoid such shortcomings even in the midst of strong, withering critiques of his fellow Protestants, it is both comical and sad that such ethical constraints go right out the window when dealing with the likes of me! Here is what he wrote (complete with the rather silly use of "Dear Old Dave" [seven times] and no link whatsoever to my post, so it can be read in its entirety, and in context):
. . . But it greatly concerns us to cherish faithfully and constantly to the end the friendship which God has sanctified by the authority of his own name, seeing that herein is involved either great advantage or great loss even to the whole Church. For you see how the eyes of many are turned upon us, so that the wicked take occasion from our dissensions to speak evil, and the weak are only perplexed by our unintelligible disputations. Nor in truth, is it of little importance to prevent the suspicion of any difference having arisen between us from being handed down in any way to posterity; for it is worse than absurd that parties should be found disagreeing on the very principles, after we have been compelled to make our departure from the world. [very well said!] I know and confess, moreover, that we occupy widely different positions; still, because I am not ignorant of the place in his theatre to which God has elevated me [Calvin was not known for his humility and modesty], there is no reason for my concealing that our friendship could not be interrupted without great injury to the Church . . .
And surely it is indicative of a marvellous and monstrous insensibility, that we so readily set at nought that sacred unanimity, by which we ought to be bringing back into the world the angels of heaven. Meanwhile, Satan is busy scattering here and there the seeds of discord, and our folly is made to supply much material. At length he has discovered fans of his own, for fanning into a flame the fires of discord. I shall refer to what happened to us in this Church, causing extreme pain to all the godly; and now a whole year has elapsed since we were engaged in these conflicts [that's nothing compared to the 488 years it has now gone on . . . ] . . .
(Selected Works of John Calvin: Tracts and Letters: Letters, Part 2, 1545-1553, vol. 5 of 7; edited by Jules Bonnet, translated by David Constable; Grand Rapids: BakerBook House (a Protestant publisher), 1983, 454 pages; reproduction of Letters of John Calvin, vol. 2 (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1858; citation from pp. 376-377).[see larger article about this]
Let's briefly note a few of these "worse than absurd" disagreements between fellow Protestants currently taking place on the Internet (obviously nothing has changed in 488 years: Protestants fought each other then and they continue to do so, and split and form new denominations). The following are not mere examples of gentlemanly disagreement: they are uncivil, acrimonious exchanges characterized by personal remarks at the expense of the other's honesty, sincerity, intelligence, basic knowledge, etc.
1) Tim Enloe ("William of Malmesbury") vs. Ronnie Brown ("Ronaldus Maximus")
Ronnie: "You have been corrected on this many times yet you continue to make these charges without any hesitation. One will notice that Jason has corrected you down below. He has also pointed out to you that it is not the view of two other gentlemen. You didn't respond to Jason's point when he corrected you, but I hope you will put this caricature to bed. If you believe it is true contrary to the protestations of those you accuse of this, then will you please present the evidence the next time you make the accusation?"
-----
"The issue is not about who you have fought against, but instead the constant caricatures and misrepresentations that you present after you have been corrected . . . All I asked was that you would discontinue the blatant misrepresentations of those you disagree with . . . You make assertions without ever providing any evidence."
Tim: "There's nothing uglier than a fight between guys who used to be friends. I think I'll skip this invitation to a new iteration of "we used to be friends but now we're mortal enemies" warfare. I don't care what you think about me--you've easily got as many caricatures of me as you say I've got of you and your friends. Maybe one day you'll see fit to examine yourself instead of just others. "
-----
"It's a crock, plain and simple. Maybe you don't pay attention to the larger conversations over long periods of time, or maybe you just literally don't comprehend the issues at work in them, I don't know. But I do know that I have defended everything I've said, many times in many ways."
-----
". . . you and I can't have any kind of intelligible converstation, because you're simply repeating the ignorance and slanders of your intellectually-insulated friends--or as David King likes to put it, you're simply repeating what you've been spoonfed . . . Stop chanting slogans and go do some work for a change, and demonstrate that you've actually obtained a decent understanding of the issues at work. Then maybe we can have an intelligible conversation."
2) Tim Enloe vs. Jaime ("Faith of Job 777")
Tim: "I will not engage it or your extremely pietistic notions of faith. Been there, done that, ain't gonna do it no more."
Jaime: "Thank you for your response, Tim, and for diagnosing my own spiritual problem. "
3) James White (Reformed Baptist) vs. BaptistFire (Free Will Baptist)
4) James White vs. Dave Hunt
James: "Incorrigible. That's the only term I can come up with. It does not matter how many times Dave Hunt does the theological and scholarly equivalent of a face-plant as he is refuted and shown to be in simple error over and over and over again. He just refuses to learn . . . Hunt simply refuses to accept correction or learn from his previous widely publicized mistakes. He refuses to admit a mistake." [talk about the all-time greatest instance of the pot calling the kettle black!]
5) James White vs. Kevin Johnson (Reformed)
6) Tim Enloe vs. James White
Tim: ". . . men such as James White are not to be trusted."
-----
". . . White, Svendsen and other theological and cultural philistines like them . . ."
-----
"White is entirely philosophically incompetent and willfully ignorant of most or all of the most important foundational issues at stake in questions of exegesis and truth."
-----
"He's an unstable and untaught man . . . "
James: ". . . a man I once would have identified as a friend . . . The term "fixation" comes to mind. Ad-hominem is hardly adequate . . . I could wish that someone in his circle of influence might come to his rescue, for one thing is clear: he has abandoned all sense of decorum and truth in his crusade, and the comments he makes about exegesis and the gospel are quite simply frightening."
7) Tim Enloe vs. Eric Svendsen
Tim: "I now believe that you were right on target in your original analysis of Svendsen as a 'baptized humanist.'"
-----
"Svendsen is essentially a Christian who thinks like a pagan humanist, who baptizes autonomous rationalism as the definition of "faith," and reduces Christian truth to mere mentalisms and mechanistic formulae which explain everything without remainder . . ."
8) Jason Engwer vs. Tim Enloe and Kevin Johnson
Jason: "Are we to believe that the sort of arguments put forward by somebody like Kevin Johnson, or the lack of arguments put forward by Tim, is a more reasonable approach?"
9) Eric Svendsen vs. Tim Enloe (+ Example #2 / Example #3 / Example #4)
Tim: "I want to see constructive conversations take place, want to see the level of consciousness in Internet Protestantdom raised--which is one reason I think it's so important to take a stand against the obscurantizing portrayals of many issues done by men like Svendsen. Dr. McGrew is probably unaware of the extremism which his friend Svendsen's blog entries very often demonstrate . . ."
Eric: "Enloe feels free to slander, but won't offer specifics. Why? Because (1) he doesn't have any specifics, or (2) once he reproduces the actual written dialogue of the things of which he is here charging me, it will be clear to all that his wild characterization are nothing more than the rabid ditortions of his own mind . . . FALSE (I'm tempted to say "LIES," but I think Enloe actually believes his own clap-trap)."
10) Steve Hays vs. Tim Enloe
11) "Jus Divinum" (Jonathan Felt) vs. Phillip Johnson
12) Phillip Johnson vs. "Jus Divinum" (Jonathan Felt)
13) Steve Hays vs. Steve Camp
Steve H: "I hate to keep harping on Steve Camp, but he seems to have a following and a facility for churning out a remarkable amount of unscriptural and self-contradictory nonsense.
14) Steve Hays vs. J.P. Holding
15) Richard Abanes and Rick Warren vs. John MacArthur
16) Greg Koukl vs. Richard Abanes
Looks a lot like the early Protestants!:
Martin Luther: "There are nowadays almost as many sects and creeds as there are heads."
Philip Melanchthon: "I am extremely afflicted by the universal trouble of the Church. Had Christ not promised to be with us until the end of the world, I should fear lest religion be totally destroyed by these dissensions."
Matthew Blochinger (Lutheran professor at Wittenberg, writing around 1560): " Nowadays we hear voices in all directions praising up the enemy . . . The papists, at any rate, it is said, agree among themselves, and so do even the Turks. We Protestant Christians, on the contrary, are at ceaseless war together, fighting one another with frenzied, implacable hatred, while every breath of new opinion scatters us about like a whirlwind."
Luther on Zwingli and His Followers: "Zwinglians . . . are fighting against God and the sacraments as the most inveterate enemies of the Divine Word."
Luther on Martin Bucer: "A gossip . . . a miscreant through and through . . . I trust him not at all, for Paul says [Titus 3:10] 'A man that is a heretic, after the first and second admonition, avoid.'"
John Calvin on Luther: "What to think of Luther I know not . . . with his firmness there is mixed up a good deal of obstinacy . . . Nothing can be safe as long as that rage for contention shall agitate us . . . Luther . . . will never be able to join along with us in . . . the pure truth of God. For he has sinned against it not only from vainglory . . . but also from ignorance and the grossest extravagance. For what absurdities he pawned upon us . . . when he said the bread is the very body! . . . a very foul error. What can I say of the partisans of that cause? Do they not romance more wildly than Marcion respecting the body of Christ? . . . Wherefore if you have an influence or authority over Martin, use it . . . that he himself submit to the truth which he is now manifestly attacking . . . Contrive that Luther . . . cease to bear himself so imperiously."
John Calvin on Lutheranism: "I am carefully on the watch that Lutheranism gain no ground, nor be introduced into France. The best means . . . for checking the evil would be that the confession written by me . . . should be published."
Melanchthon on Zwingli: "Zwingli says almost nothing about Christian sanctity. He simply follows the Pelagians, the Papists and the philosophers."
For documentation of these citations, see:
The Protestant Inquisition
The Protestant Revolt: Its Tragic Initial Impact
ADDENDUM
1) Tim Enloe ("William of Malmesbury") vs. Ronnie Brown ("Ronaldus Maximus")
Ronnie: "You have been corrected on this many times yet you continue to make these charges without any hesitation. One will notice that Jason has corrected you down below. He has also pointed out to you that it is not the view of two other gentlemen. You didn't respond to Jason's point when he corrected you, but I hope you will put this caricature to bed. If you believe it is true contrary to the protestations of those you accuse of this, then will you please present the evidence the next time you make the accusation?"
-----
"The issue is not about who you have fought against, but instead the constant caricatures and misrepresentations that you present after you have been corrected . . . All I asked was that you would discontinue the blatant misrepresentations of those you disagree with . . . You make assertions without ever providing any evidence."
Tim: "There's nothing uglier than a fight between guys who used to be friends. I think I'll skip this invitation to a new iteration of "we used to be friends but now we're mortal enemies" warfare. I don't care what you think about me--you've easily got as many caricatures of me as you say I've got of you and your friends. Maybe one day you'll see fit to examine yourself instead of just others. "
-----
"It's a crock, plain and simple. Maybe you don't pay attention to the larger conversations over long periods of time, or maybe you just literally don't comprehend the issues at work in them, I don't know. But I do know that I have defended everything I've said, many times in many ways."
-----
". . . you and I can't have any kind of intelligible converstation, because you're simply repeating the ignorance and slanders of your intellectually-insulated friends--or as David King likes to put it, you're simply repeating what you've been spoonfed . . . Stop chanting slogans and go do some work for a change, and demonstrate that you've actually obtained a decent understanding of the issues at work. Then maybe we can have an intelligible conversation."
2) Tim Enloe vs. Jaime ("Faith of Job 777")
Tim: "I will not engage it or your extremely pietistic notions of faith. Been there, done that, ain't gonna do it no more."
Jaime: "Thank you for your response, Tim, and for diagnosing my own spiritual problem. "
3) James White (Reformed Baptist) vs. BaptistFire (Free Will Baptist)
4) James White vs. Dave Hunt
James: "Incorrigible. That's the only term I can come up with. It does not matter how many times Dave Hunt does the theological and scholarly equivalent of a face-plant as he is refuted and shown to be in simple error over and over and over again. He just refuses to learn . . . Hunt simply refuses to accept correction or learn from his previous widely publicized mistakes. He refuses to admit a mistake." [talk about the all-time greatest instance of the pot calling the kettle black!]
5) James White vs. Kevin Johnson (Reformed)
6) Tim Enloe vs. James White
Tim: ". . . men such as James White are not to be trusted."
-----
". . . White, Svendsen and other theological and cultural philistines like them . . ."
-----
"White is entirely philosophically incompetent and willfully ignorant of most or all of the most important foundational issues at stake in questions of exegesis and truth."
-----
"He's an unstable and untaught man . . . "
James: ". . . a man I once would have identified as a friend . . . The term "fixation" comes to mind. Ad-hominem is hardly adequate . . . I could wish that someone in his circle of influence might come to his rescue, for one thing is clear: he has abandoned all sense of decorum and truth in his crusade, and the comments he makes about exegesis and the gospel are quite simply frightening."
7) Tim Enloe vs. Eric Svendsen
Tim: "I now believe that you were right on target in your original analysis of Svendsen as a 'baptized humanist.'"
-----
"Svendsen is essentially a Christian who thinks like a pagan humanist, who baptizes autonomous rationalism as the definition of "faith," and reduces Christian truth to mere mentalisms and mechanistic formulae which explain everything without remainder . . ."
8) Jason Engwer vs. Tim Enloe and Kevin Johnson
Jason: "Are we to believe that the sort of arguments put forward by somebody like Kevin Johnson, or the lack of arguments put forward by Tim, is a more reasonable approach?"
9) Eric Svendsen vs. Tim Enloe (+ Example #2 / Example #3 / Example #4)
Tim: "I want to see constructive conversations take place, want to see the level of consciousness in Internet Protestantdom raised--which is one reason I think it's so important to take a stand against the obscurantizing portrayals of many issues done by men like Svendsen. Dr. McGrew is probably unaware of the extremism which his friend Svendsen's blog entries very often demonstrate . . ."
Eric: "Enloe feels free to slander, but won't offer specifics. Why? Because (1) he doesn't have any specifics, or (2) once he reproduces the actual written dialogue of the things of which he is here charging me, it will be clear to all that his wild characterization are nothing more than the rabid ditortions of his own mind . . . FALSE (I'm tempted to say "LIES," but I think Enloe actually believes his own clap-trap)."
10) Steve Hays vs. Tim Enloe
11) "Jus Divinum" (Jonathan Felt) vs. Phillip Johnson
12) Phillip Johnson vs. "Jus Divinum" (Jonathan Felt)
13) Steve Hays vs. Steve Camp
Steve H: "I hate to keep harping on Steve Camp, but he seems to have a following and a facility for churning out a remarkable amount of unscriptural and self-contradictory nonsense.
14) Steve Hays vs. J.P. Holding
15) Richard Abanes and Rick Warren vs. John MacArthur
16) Greg Koukl vs. Richard Abanes
Looks a lot like the early Protestants!:
Martin Luther: "There are nowadays almost as many sects and creeds as there are heads."
Philip Melanchthon: "I am extremely afflicted by the universal trouble of the Church. Had Christ not promised to be with us until the end of the world, I should fear lest religion be totally destroyed by these dissensions."
Matthew Blochinger (Lutheran professor at Wittenberg, writing around 1560): " Nowadays we hear voices in all directions praising up the enemy . . . The papists, at any rate, it is said, agree among themselves, and so do even the Turks. We Protestant Christians, on the contrary, are at ceaseless war together, fighting one another with frenzied, implacable hatred, while every breath of new opinion scatters us about like a whirlwind."
Luther on Zwingli and His Followers: "Zwinglians . . . are fighting against God and the sacraments as the most inveterate enemies of the Divine Word."
Luther on Martin Bucer: "A gossip . . . a miscreant through and through . . . I trust him not at all, for Paul says [Titus 3:10] 'A man that is a heretic, after the first and second admonition, avoid.'"
John Calvin on Luther: "What to think of Luther I know not . . . with his firmness there is mixed up a good deal of obstinacy . . . Nothing can be safe as long as that rage for contention shall agitate us . . . Luther . . . will never be able to join along with us in . . . the pure truth of God. For he has sinned against it not only from vainglory . . . but also from ignorance and the grossest extravagance. For what absurdities he pawned upon us . . . when he said the bread is the very body! . . . a very foul error. What can I say of the partisans of that cause? Do they not romance more wildly than Marcion respecting the body of Christ? . . . Wherefore if you have an influence or authority over Martin, use it . . . that he himself submit to the truth which he is now manifestly attacking . . . Contrive that Luther . . . cease to bear himself so imperiously."
John Calvin on Lutheranism: "I am carefully on the watch that Lutheranism gain no ground, nor be introduced into France. The best means . . . for checking the evil would be that the confession written by me . . . should be published."
Melanchthon on Zwingli: "Zwingli says almost nothing about Christian sanctity. He simply follows the Pelagians, the Papists and the philosophers."
For documentation of these citations, see:
The Protestant Inquisition
The Protestant Revolt: Its Tragic Initial Impact
ADDENDUM
(Retraction of the Use of Pedantic Protestant's Posts and Subsequent "Interaction")
"Pedantic Protestant" has responded on his blog to my inclusion of five of his papers, opposing Tim Enloe thrice and Kevin Johnson twice. He wrote:
"Pedantic Protestant" has responded on his blog to my inclusion of five of his papers, opposing Tim Enloe thrice and Kevin Johnson twice. He wrote:
I try to run a reasonably civil blog here at PP while having some playful fun and whimsy in the process. And, as this is a semi-pseudonymous affair for employment reasons, I try not to make gratuitously derogatory comments about people while being a semi-anonymous blogger.By the way, there's nothing wrong, uncivil, or uncharitable in pointing out and supporting the claim that somebody doesn't know what they're talking about and/or doesn't provide any evidence to their assertions, especially when their assertions are directed at a position of yours. The key in my making this claim is that I provide argumentation for it. And that's all that matters . . .
From reading those posts, nothing false has been stated. No gratuitous personal attacks exist, unless pointing out what is obvious and observed is somehow gratuitious. Dear Old Dave wasn't being particularly careful, it seems.
. . . In summary, I don't know where the Davemeister considers my posts uncharitable. My contention has been nothing other than the fact that Enloe and Johnson are pseudointellectuals who speak authoritatively regarding things that presently for them are not things on which they should speak with their lecturing or hectoring tone.
And, I presently stand by that claim without the slightest abashedness or desire to retract. If that makes me an example-par-excellence of Protestant disunity to both Dave and other internet Romanists who bask in the warm embrace of the great epistemic, practical, and organizational unity provided by the One True Holy Mother Church, so be it.
PP has a point. Readers will note that my initial "thesis" for this post came from a letter by John Calvin, in which he decried inter-Protestant"unintelligible disputation," "difference," "disagreeing on the very principles," "set[ting] at nought that sacred unanimity," "seeds of discord," "our folly," "fires of discord," and "conflicts." Under that umbrella description, strong, important disagreements even without personal attacks would and should be included as examples of what Calvin condemned (and which I would condemn in the same sense that he -- and Luther -- did).
The catch, however, is that I specifically made reference to over-the-top personal attacks, in describing the exchanges that I would document in the paper above:
The following are not mere examples of gentlemanly disagreement: they are uncivil, acrimonious exchanges characterized by personal remarks at the expense of the other's honesty, sincerity, intelligence, basic knowledge, etc.
That being the case, readers can then reasonably expect that the examples would all fall into this specific subset of disagreements (i.e., acrimonious, name-calling types of affairs). Upon re-reading PP's posts (very carefully, with his protest in mind, and trying to be as fair to him as I could be), I have concluded that he is right: indeed his posts do not fall into this category. Sometimes (even perhaps often) it's a very fine line, or borderline, but I would prefer to exercise charity and so therefore I have removed those papers of his from my post.
Ironically, though he convinced me that his papers were not of this type (which I think is great: I love constructive, thought-through criticism), he couldn't refrain from plain condescending, personal attacks upon yours truly. After all, I am only a "Romanist," not a fellow Protestant (no matter how flawed), and so I don't deserve any such rudimentary respect from his pen. Ridicule and disdain are apparently completely acceptable if directed towards "Romanist" targets, in PP's mind (which is, after all, par for the course in anti-Catholic polemics, even among clearly intelligent, thoughtful, articulate, academic men like PP).
So, then, while I greatly appreciate the fact that he was able to avoid such shortcomings even in the midst of strong, withering critiques of his fellow Protestants, it is both comical and sad that such ethical constraints go right out the window when dealing with the likes of me! Here is what he wrote (complete with the rather silly use of "Dear Old Dave" [seven times] and no link whatsoever to my post, so it can be read in its entirety, and in context):
Unlike Dear Old Dave, you won't find me requiring posters here to stipulate to my state of grace for me to respond to them. My points hold or fail regardless of whether I'm saved or damned. Nor will you find any sort of drama queen narcissism [shades of the notorious, short-lived fake blog {LINK} done in my name -- with its theme of my overwhelming supposed "narcissism" --, which may have been made by PP for all we know] here where my mere outrage at something causes me to hit my anti-anti-catholic panic button, absolving me from dealing with somebody. [I have many dozens of debates with anti-Catholics posted -- LINK -- ; my decision to refrain from debating self-defeating folks who "reason" like this is entirely consistent and has nothing whatsoever to do with inability or fear, much as my "fan club" would love to believe]
But let's take Dave's charge seriously.
. . . As for the charged absurdity of the arguments, since the arguments deal with epistemic issues, the nature of revelation, and the centrality of scripture, it follows that Dave considers these issues absurd matters to argue [of course not; following upon the distinction made above, I think, like Calvin, that it is "worse than absurd" for Protestants to be bitterly disagreeing on such "central" things. PP merely proves Calvin's and my point in that regard]. We know that Dave never discusses nor argues these points in a meaningful fashion [really now!!!?? Obviously, PP is quite unfamiliar with my website and writings, since I've written more on Bible and Tradition than anything else, and a great deal on epistemology also -- but alas, of course never in what any reasonable person could ever consider any "meaningful fashion" ] so --- and I trust fellow Evangelicals will forgive me for saying this --- I'm glad that Dave, that lovable self-proclaimed apologist for Rome, doing what the magisterium cannot do for itself, is my exemplar. Such a blessing from God! [I'm delighted to be of whatever assistance I can be to get PP up to speed as t