Revbledsoe’s Weblog

 

The Uniformity of Nature and Biblical Authority

 

“So oddly, Biblical miracles (as opposed to pagan magic) and science are twin brothers with the same patrimony, and they came from the same household. Originally they were not enemies or rivals of one another, but actually implied each other.”

 

I.

 

I recently listened to three lectures by the great philosopher of science, Michael Polanyi (“Science, Faith and Society”). A point stuck out at me that was NOT a point he had set out to make, but that struck me as most interesting and compelling.

 

Polanyi, a chemist himself, while making the point about the necessary hallmark of “tradition” and remaining within the tradition, in science itself (showing that science itself is as dependent upon a “tradition,” just as much as say, Talmudic studies), was discussing what experimental evidence ought to be accepted and what ought not be accepted. It is simply not the case that all experimental evidence is found to be “acceptable.” A good deal of it is too far outside of the parameters of “the tradition” and is therefore simply ignored, or “put on hold” or re-interpreted, or regarded as being the result of faulty experimental technique and therefore, simply mistaken. Occasionally and very significantly, data that is apparently contradictory leads to a new, larger way of interpreting data that brings a reconciliation from larger parameters. But, it is impossible to accept all experimental data at face value. If all the data were accepted, science would end. (1)

 

Some of the data (and he gives fascinating examples) demonstrate startling things, and if simply believed and taken into the corpus, would lead us to no longer believe in the uniformity of nature, or that it is possible to give a rational account of how the universe functions. Face acceptance would lead us back to a pagan belief that “magic” and irrationality are supreme. It would lead us to believe that in fact as Ovid believed and wrote about in his METAMORPHOSIS: anything can turn into anything else.

 

But these conclusions are banished from the outset, because the uniformity of nature and the idea that the universe is rationally penetrable are axioms that are a-priorily believed and whatever violates those axioms is automatically thrown out. Nature’s uniformity and universal rationality are not provable dogmas, but are assumptions that all of science depends upon.

 

Where did these axioms come from?

 

Polanyi is himself Hungarian, and to understand where these axioms came from, one can turn to one of the other great Hungarian minds of the 20th century, Stanley Jaki. (The three great Hungarian thinkers of the 20th century were Polanyi, Jaki, and Aurthur Koestler. All three knew and influenced each other, and all three dealt extensively with the philosophy and history of science.) Jaki is the great historian of science in our time. Jaki demonstrates that science is the step child of Christian Church and the Hebrew and Christian scriptures.

 

In something I had written elsewhere, I offer a very short synopsis of what I have learned from the great Jaki (and also notably, from Cornelius Van Til, the great Reformed thinker). Here it is:

 

“Greek metaphysics by themselves, could not support the modern scientific enterprise. The Greeks did not believe in the pervasive rationality of the universe. Ultimately form could not encapsulate matter, and there was always an excrescence of the irrational.

 

“Modernity would never have happened had it not been for Christianity and the church in the western world. The old ancient world was ruled by various forms of pantheism (the idea that the cosmos itself is in some sense divine) and the many gods that emerged out of the forms and chaos of the cosmos. It was a world of polytheism, and a world in which anything could in some mysterious sense become a concentration point for the demonic powers that the world was filled with. So rocks, trees, animals, men, could rise up and become divine powers themselves. Then, Christianity declared that the world and the cosmos were the creation of the One Triune God who was exhaustively in control of all that there was, even in spite of the Fall into sin and the consequent rebellion that now characterized all things. Christ, through whom all things were created, came to redeem all things from the rebellion that now marked us, and his church was the center point of his presence and of his work in the world in the new era inaugurated by his death, resurrection, and ascension into heaven where He sat down at the right hand of the Father. One of the names of Christ is the Logos, which has many shades of meaning, which include both word or speech, and logic (logos is the root of our English word logic). If the world was created through the one who was both the reality of language and logic, it meant that the cosmos itself was reasonable , and could be spoken of. It was not ineffable. In other words, the world could be studied and understood. This great theological reality was what swept away the old pagan cosmos that was irrational, unpredictable, and controlled by demonic and magical powers. The one true God was Himself a God of both reason and speech, and His creation mirrored that. Hence, while the existence of God is what makes miracles possible, it is also the foundation of what came to be termed the uniformity of nature which means that the world is a place of constant causality and stable and rational construction. The Christian doctrine of the Trinity and of creation were in fact, the foundation of modern science. So oddly, Biblical miracles (as opposed to pagan magic) and science are twin brothers with the same patrimony, and they came from the same household. Originally they were not enemies or rivals of one another, but actually implied each other.”

 

Now, just as the world is the “book” of the scientist, so the Bible is the “world” of the Christian. The uniformity of nature, and the rationality of cosmos are axioms (ultimately derived from the Bible) that cannot be ultimately empirically established, or contradicted. Rather, they are assumptions that make science possible in the first place.

 

Likewise, inerrancy and infallibility are axioms that are also derived from the Bible (I can only refer the reader to B. B. Warfield’s INSPIRATION AND AUTHORITY OF THE BIBLE for the biblical data demonstrating this) and it is also the case that inerrancy can neither be empirically demonstrated or contradicted. It is an axiom, a doctrine, that makes the very doing of theology possible in the first place. (2)

 

Scientific progress is almost always a result of dealing with “evidence” that appears to undo science, evidence that if taken at face value, would in fact undo the rationality of the universe, or the uniformity of nature. Science, in other words, progresses, as a result of finding a coherent and consistent explanation of a “problem.”

 

Likewise, theology is only possible if revelation is a coherent and consistent whole. I.e. the inerrancy and infallibility of the whole of the Bible is the basis of knowing what we know about God and His dealing with His world. Problems, or elements or facts that appear to contradict the coherence and consistency of the Bible are, if taken in the proper spirit, the very foundation of progress and the forward movement of theology and of our knowledge of God and His action in His world. But oddly, theologians over the last two hundred years, often in the name of science, have surrendered the integrity of the Bible because of “problems.” In fact, especially with “higher textual critics,” the default position is almost always to claim a contradiction. Multiple editors, conflation of texts and anachronistic “reading back into” earlier texts by later editors are almost automatically assumed at the first hint of any apparent difficulty. This is the practice, even when the results are obviously silly and very easy and less contorted explanations are immediately obvious. There is almost a compulsive addiction to declaring contradiction.

 

This is the end of theology, just as a similar loss of courage in the face of strange and difficult data for the scientist would be the end of science. The scientists would immediately release us back to a world of myth, superstition and magic. The theologians have certainly done so.

 

“Fun” is a strange reality and perhaps difficult to define. But, whatever it is, it is wonderful. The “fun” of science is when a “contradiction” is given larger and better coherent explanation. It is the outcome when that which contradicts Newtonian mechanics, and the contradictory results of Michelson-Morley experiments lead to the Theory of Relativity. The sense of crystalline beauty, aesthetic pleasure felt in the coherence of Relativity has been expressed by many as the theory gave a new and deeper coherence to what appeared previously to be a tatters. At the very least, Einstein’s insight was immense fun.

 

Theologians have often been kill-joys. They need to learn something new about “fun,” and have the courage to experience it.

 

II.

 

 

My interest here is less apologetical, in the sense of trying to make the Bible and its doctrines somehow palatable to modern rationality, and is more along the lines of giving a check on our unbounded, and stifling egotism, which also destroys all creativity.

 

The scientist is able to be truly “creative” in large measure because he is disciplined by the cosmos that is really “out there.” He might have all kinds of opinions that he would like to be true, that he would even like to impose on the world and the cosmos. If he were a magician, he could do exactly that. He could say the magic words, and the cosmos would obey him and do his bidding. But reality is intransigent, and will not just bend to our wishes. It is also true that reality, since it is the creation of the Real and Living God, is far more interesting than anything we could make up. So, reality opposes my petty little wishes with real experimental data that opposes my petty little wishes. It is frustrating at first, but if I allow myself to be disciplined, what is discovered in the end is far more interesting than my small and petty imagination could have possibly invented. So, Newtonian mechanics appear to be violated again and again with Michelson-Morley so I become increasingly sure that I am not dealing with flawed data, and the final outcome in a great new coherence is The General Theory of Relativity. Relativity is far more interesting than what my petty, magic desiring imagination could have conceived of in the first place. I have been disciplined by reality.

 

So it is with the Bible as my infallable guide. I am naturally as a fallen creature, overwhelmingly egotistical, and I want to be a magician who “invents” all realities. But, in fact what my fallen and petty imagination constantly “invents” is boring, oppressive, stupid, and “uncreative.” I believe I will create a utopia. Instead, I create a “dystopia” like Orwell saw (1984) or like Huxley foresaw (Brave New World). The real Kingdom of God disciplines me. But apart from a text that I am subject to, I just constantly cave in on myself, and I am back to my own oppressive boredom.

 

So, as examples, both big and small.

 

Big: After the NT was completed, what we were left with were a mass of strange and seemingly contradictory texts about who God is. The real adventurers are the ones who submit themselves to the text and find the really big coherence (Athanasius, Augustine). Nicene Orthodoxy by the 4th or 5th century has hammered out the doctrines of Trinity and Incarnation. Really big, really interesting–like Relativity. The small and petty making myself the boundaries are Arianism and Tri-Theism or Modalism, all of which leave us with all of the unresolved dilemmas of the paganism that has gone before,

 

Here is a small example. Deuteronomy 21:18-21, the law of the rebellious son. The modern progressive or liberal looks at it and says: “See what a barbaric book the Bible is? And how wonderful that we now have the freedom and liberty to say that this ancient book , which in our own way, we of course revere– is WRONG and MISTAKEN. It is filled with culture bound patriarcal privilege, along with some interesting mythologies and some helpful things. But, the Old Testament is in favor of killing your own children. How evil. How terrible. How wonderful that we have arrived and are now superior to so much that went before us. How wonderful that we have risen above our forbearers and and have arrived!”

 

But what if there is a deeper coherence that is far more interesting than declaring our own superior progressive insight?

 

This passage is in fact, to my knowledge (I owe this to Dennis Prager, by the way) the first and only place in the ancient world that contradicts the doctrine of pater familias, the doctrine that the father “owns” his family and can carry out discipline all the way up to putting his family members to death with no legal consequence. In this law, the rebellious son is taken outside the family to the elders. Clan and family power is limited. This is to be done by the father AND THE MOTHER, and this is absolutely unique as well. She is as empowered as the father to take him to state courts. And finally, there is not a single known instance of a son being so put to death in all of Jewish history (Except oddly and interestingly, in the case of Jesus. The charge against him was that he was “a glutton and a wine bibber” and he WAS put to death as a rebellious son, Matthew 11:19. A most fascinating fulfillment.)
It is radically different from ancient law all the way up through Roman law, which  upheld pater familias.

 

And here is the other irony, which I see happening again and again. The liberal, who assumes his / her moral superiority in assuming the superior moral insight of their own autonomous moral conscience (which “heroically” defies the Bible) is itself wholly dependent on what the Bible created in the first place. We live in a world where parents and fathers do not kill their own offspring. This did not pop into place the moment we declared our own Cartesian independence, but was created by the Old Testament Law in the first place.

 

Hence, so often what strikes us as odd, strange, incoherent, in the text of the Bible, is really, when more deeply understood, the very foundation of wonderful, new insight.

 

 

(1) “The process of explaining away deviations is in fact quite indispensable to the daily routine of research. In my laboratory I find the laws of nature formally contradicted at every hour, but I explain this away by the assumption of experimental error. I know that this may cause me one day to explain away a fundamentally new phenomenon and to miss a great discovery. Such things have often happened in the history of science, Yet I shall continue to explain away my odd results, for if every anomaly observed in my laboratory were taken at its face value, research would instantly degenerate into a wild-goose chase after imaginary fundamental novelties.” (lecture III of Science Faith and Society)

 

(2) What one observes in both science and theology is a non-vicious circle of demonstration. In science, uniformity of nature and the rationality of the cosmos, and in theology, inerrancy and infallibility are not empirically demonstrable. However, “subordinate” demonstration is possible. With every fresh triumph of science in giving a new rational explanation to what appears to be contradictory, greater confidence is gained in believing the a-priori axioms. The same is true with the Bible. The more one finds the Bible giving coherent explanation to what previously had appeared an irrational world, or as deeper coherence is demonstrated in what previously appeared odd and contradictory, the more ones confidence in the truth of the doctrines of inerrancy and infallibility is strengthened. Some reconciliations are so wonderful and remarkable that they constitute veritable “ah haaa” moments. They are the very foundation of “fun.”

“Fun” is given up when one surrenders and loses ones courage. One is then thrown back to myth, superstition and magic.

 

Rich

How odd the world is. Pharisees gave the pretence of caring about the justice and righteousness given witness to in the Torah. But instead, God’s righteousness was subverted by giving priority to the “traditions of the elders,” and the Word of God was buried under a mass of habits, traditions, and precepts inherited from past fathers. In doing so, they actually “became like the nations around them,” because such traditions were the whole fabric of all of the ancient world outside of Israel. The Word of God is startling, suprising, and its reception, application, and result, could never be foreseen or predicted.

Revelation created something unheard of and impossible outside of Revelation. It created a future. There could be no future for ancient pagans, because all of life was a repetition of the traditions of the elders. Such repetition simply meant nothing new could ever happen. But, the Prophets, in particular, gave new promises of new life, of redemption, of renewal of all things in ways never dreamt of, never thought of before. God promised over and over, to “do a new thing.”

Jesus was the future. He was the startling New Man who would renew all things. He therefore opposed the Pharisees adherence to “the traditions of the elders” which buried the Torah under a mass of dead human precepts. He did so over and over, and in every instance of opposing “the traditions of the elders,” he does so by quoting the Hebrew revelation, what we now term The Old Testament.

As the Gospel has taken hold through history, we see a gradual overcoming of the habits of the ancient world. The Reformation was a re-affirmation of the text of Scripture (Old and New Testament) over against a whole lot of new “traditions of the elders” that had come to cling to the church over the centuries. The very heart of Martin Chemnitz’s EXAMINATION OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT (published a generation after Luther) was the greatest of all defenses of Reformation Doctrine by showing that the very structure of Roman Catholic and Trentine theology, was that its structure was a virtual repetition of Rabbinical Theology. The Rabbis had a secret oral tradition that supposedly came down from Sinai, and Trent claimed an oral tradition that came down from the time of the Apostles. In both cases, the secret oral tradition (known only to the highest clergy in both cases) took practical precident over the written text. But, Jesus who was the future, always forced the priority of the written text to all secret oral traditions. The Reformation forced the same issue. And, it must be said that Rome has been extensively forced back to the written text as it has tried to do war with the children of the French Revolution. The traditions of the elders were substantially what gave fuel to the Revolution in the first place.

Phariseeism has been disappearing. So is the world now, in an untramaled way, becoming righteous?

I am skeptical.There may be forward movement, but in hardly an untramaled way.There is a great new set-back. The devil is clever. If you can’t beat them, join them…

If the traditions of the elders have been the way of blocking the new future that will be created by the New Man in concert with His Word, then let us (says the Evil One) do the opposite.

What we care about now, what we will make the new public opinion (say the Principalities and the Powers) is youth and the future. All things (including the Word of God) can now be subordinated to Youth and a Utopian Future. But this utopian future created by the Planners of the Omnipotent State, is a world of perfect stagnation. It is remarkably like the static cyclical world of the traditions of the elders.

It is the novelists who have seen this. The “dystopias,” the brilliant satirazations of the coming leftist utopias, those great novels of Orwell (1984), Huxley (BRAVE NEW WORLD) and most insightfully, CS Lewis (THAT HIDEOUS STRENGTH)

The new Phariseeism is established by lifting up youth and the future. And, the engine that propels it is the very concept of Righteousness and Justice that is derived from the Bible, from Christianity. In this way, a new hypocrisy is ensconsed. The text of the Word of God is effectively subordinated to The Up To Date Opinion, the New York Times Editorial Page.

If you are interested in being young, thinking young, and having progressive, up-to-date opinions on all subjects, and if you are particularly interested in establishing “social justice,” beware. You might be in the neighborhood of the new Pharisees. You might be party to creating a stagnant, unchanging world of perfect oppression. And it is all in the name of superior righteousness.

Rich

Last night we watched an episode of WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE, the fascinating show that explores with some celebrity, their own ancestory and geneology. Last night, the actress, Helen Hunt was the subject of the program.

Helen Hunt had Jewish ancestory on one side, and gentile Christian on the other. On her mother’s side, she descended from Bavarian Jews who made their way from New York City to San Francisco during the gold rush of 1849, and they established a dry goods business and became exceedingly wealthy. Only a few years later they invested, along with other luminous and influential Jews (like Levi Strauss) in the Nevada Bank, which later became Wells Fargo.

As interesting as all of that is, for my purposes, her father’s side is even more interesting. Her great, great (at least some combination of greats) grandfather was a sugar farmer in Maine who raised sugar beets. Now that would be innocent enough, except that one begins here to uncover something of the hidden and secret Evangelical history of the 19th century.

It is tempting to think that somehow before our time, America was all innocence and light. But not so. The fallen flesh breaks out and expresses itself in every era, and is either overcome or destroys wherever it can. 19th century America was in many ways, in many places, a cesspool of depravity rivaling our own time. For example, abortion was nearly as common after the Civil War in America as it is today. There is already a history of it being overcome once by Evangelicals in this country then (it is an amazing story and a great triumph). It is also the case that it was a time of rampant alcoholism, wife beating, and sexual abuse of children. Alcohol consumption in America “topped out” in the 1850s and the contribution in Maine (Helen Hunt’s great grandfather’s home) was in the production of rum. He sold his sugar to the rum industry.

Now here is where the story becomes interesting. Helen Hunt’s great grandmother became the leading luminary in the WCTU (Women’s Christian Temperance Union). Hunt visited the headquarters of the Union (which now mainly preserves the history of the association) and did an interview with the historian and chronicler of the Union. She immeadiately expressed embarrassment and some dismay at this history. The Union lady fathomed this and drew her out about it, and then proceeded to educate her as to the real meaning of this history as opposed to the embarrassing reputation that Hunt was reacting to. The historian asked Hunt if she did not associate the Union with a failed and prudish association that was somehow against having a good time. Of course that was exactly Hunt’s impression. The truth is quite different. The then current rampant alcoholism was responcible for also rampant child sexual abuse and wife beating everywhere. Hunt discovered to her amazement, that her great grandmother was a pioneer not only against alcoholism, but also a pioneer for the suffragettes, and only days before her death in 1932, was the first woman in Maine to cast a ballot. It dawned on Hunt that this woman was a great heroine, and not an embarrassment at all.

Of course, what was kept quietly in the background was the fact that her great grandmother was an evangelical, and that these were largely the result of what were originally evangelical crusades. A group of the previously powerless became transformers, and probably saved American culture from complete rot.
But how quickly the tide turns. Evil is never quiet, and it is always seeking new venues of expression.
A fascinating study, and one that needs to be undertaken is just how quickly did all of the 19th century evangelical triumphs get transformed into secular Progressivism, ultimately finding expression in Woodrow Wilson, and the two Roosevelts? I suspect very fast, and that is dismaying. (Jonah Goldberg’s fascinating study LIBERAL FASCISM, shows the dismaying connections between that era’s utopian politics and European Fascism) Mark Levin’s current beselling AMERITOPIA takes up the same questions as Goldberg, but I think leaves some things out. Levin’s study is essentially secular, and is interested in the contrast historically between utopian statism and an Enlightenment vision of a limited state. But, I doubt Levin takes into account the tensions inside of Christianity.

Christianity on the one hand, believes that all power in all places should be limited because of original sin and its intoxicating effects on humans when given power. It also believes in a limited state because all divinity has been taken from rulers and states since Jesus Christ has come and is now recognized as the ONLY God-man (kings, emperors, presidents, chiefs, can no longer make claims to being divine or semi-divine). But, on the other hand, the dramatic leavening effects of the work of the Holy Spirit (which can be very dramatic–healing culture wide alcoholism, sweeping away child sexual abuse, stopping ramant wife beating, for example), a generation later is secularized and transferred to the state. Evangelicalism, can oddly enough, become the step father or step mother, to utopian politics. And utopian politics very rapidly become tyrannical and destructive.

Hence, in the reforms of the 19th century, the evangelicalism is forgotten, it is secularized, tied to the state, and quickly becomes the advocate of other statist and anti-Christian movements like Planned Parenthood.

Evil never sleeps…

I would like to beat a very old drum here, one that I beat a lot, but only because it has proven so illuminating to me. Back to Barfield’s “original to final participation”. Along with everything else, masculinity in its original natural form is dying. I don’t know about any of you, but when one is virtually anywhere in the “third world” it is amazing to me as an American, the extent and degree of masculine control over everything. As an American, and one who lives in a particularly liberal town,this kind of unthinking, effortless, control, which is as natural as a fish in water, is almost incomprehensible. I recently read an account of a missionary kid who was American by birth, but reared in Japan for most of his youth, being especially amazed upon returning to America at the degree of rudeness and”yelling” that went on here from women to their men in public. But he said what amazed him the most, was that the men “took it like whipped puppies”. Indeed.

I think the natural power of the male is over. He can rebell against it all he wants,but it is struggling in quick sand. The more struggle there is, the faster he sinks. The patriarcal head of household church movement is completely artificial and is NOT a return to something spiritual, but something natural, and it is nature that is dying.

The only way forward for masculinity is to die. Jesus was the first man to give up his natural masculine powers. The Kenotic poem of Philippians is the essential telling of this story. It has now caught up with the world. It is only in dying to what is natural that masculine authority and headship can be raised again and come back in a new “final” form that is shorn of nature.

Now, I know everyone will want details on what this means. All I know is that every man I have ever seen who tried to revive nature ends up being an ass. I have seen cases of the most macho masculine and by nature controlling men, with what are undoubtedly very high male hormone levels, just rendered helpless by the current culture. They thrive no better than an Apache warrior in modern Arizona. And in fact, the reality is exactly the same as for the warrior. He can only die, and be raised as a Christian, which looks very different and does not exist by humiliating and degrading women and children.

I think everything in the natural world exists by rivalry. In the natural world, the man is the man is the man by overpowering rivalry over against the female and the children. In God’s world, this is undone. In reality, it may well be that large elements of all of this death have only come to pass as late as the 20th century.

Here is what occured to me this morning. Western liberalism has become western narcissism and culminates everywhere in our worship of ourselves. The “search for the historical Jesus” is part and parcel of this great selfist quest,and must mute Jesus,who is the great challenge to me-ism by commanding that we worship Him. Hence, how amazing that every quest for Jesus by German universities only turns up…me. How convenient. To mute Jesus, he must be removed from the Old Testament text,which sets the whole stage for this God who is quite other than myself or from the whole of the pantheistic ancient world. So, every sort of source possible in the whole of the ancient world is ransacked so Jesus roots are anything but Old Testament. So, now the western liberal is cut off from everything that would keep him from caving in on himself.

The result is that now on three occasions,western liberalism in its embrace of selfism has been blinded to radical evil, and is sure that terrible and evil enemies are really, once again, only images of us, and therefore at heart–nice folks. Thus, Hitler is not really so bad, and can always be negotiated with. Stalin is not really so bad, and can be negotiated with. And,Islamo-fascism is not really so bad, and can be dealt with. In each case,the faults of the enemy are always a result of their having been victimized, and thus must be understood. In each case, “fellow travelers” become de-facto allies of all of the aims of those who expicitly state that they intend to destroy them.

In each of these cases, emasculated liberal churches are at the forefront. In each of these cases, one of the concommitants is radical and virulent anti-Jewish sentiment,which is not embraced by the western liberal, but to which they become de-facto allies.

The great boogie man is now the Fundamentalists “desire to impose a ‘theocracy’ on the nation”. This is the horror of horrors, and only need be hinted to bring terror. But oddly, defacto the alternative is support for a renewed Arab Caliphate by what will not be opposed. Surely the “real Islam” is moderate, like the western liberal.

In running from the “otherness”of the Jewish Jesus who is rooted in the revelation of Moses and the Prophets, we do not escape to dreamy world of comfortable selfism, but to Hitler’s destruction of Europe, Stalin’s gulags, and a renewed world of Sharia