Time Immortal

SegaGenesisfan writes in with some rather heated commentary. You know, O Reader, I’ve been a blogger for…well, I’ve been posting stuff online since about the summer of 2004 (so I guess that makes it four years now), and I’ve been blogging about issues related to the Church for around three years.

And now — finally, now! — I have attracted my first anti-Catholic fundamentalist detractor. I think. At least as far as my memory is willing to recall, this is the first.

http://www.guidedbiblestudies.com/40_015.htm

“1 ¶ Then came to Jesus scribes and Pharisees, which were of Jerusalem, saying, 2 Why do thy disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? for they wash not their hands when they eat bread. 3 But he answered and said unto them, Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition? 4 For God commanded, saying, Honour thy father and mother: and, He that curseth father or mother, let him die the death. 5 But ye say, Whosoever shall say to [his] father or [his] mother, [It is] a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me; 6 And honour not his father or his mother, [he shall be free]. Thus have ye made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition. 7 [Ye] hypocrites, well did Esaias prophesy of you, saying, 8 This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with [their] lips; but their heart is far from me. 9 But in vain they do worship me, teaching [for] doctrines the commandments of men.”

What your failing to realize that it is jesus talking against tradition in general Thus have ye made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition. Plain and simple, I tell ye not to replyeth by the way, because all you do is minipulate the words of god to fit your own interpretation. You dont really believe in the living god, just your own version of him. In catholic tradition they say they believe in jesus, but inside they really dont believe because of their traditions make the commandment of god of non effect. Try to spew that towards me? I aint got no traditions, so you completely fail in this.

I love how people who have never met me can deduce the innermost thoughts of my heart better than I can for myself. SegaGenesisfan is very confidently sure that I don’t really believe in God, this despite the fact that I’m on the record as being willing to have the Nicene Creed be my death warrant, in the event of a renewed persecution of Christians. I’ve never thanked God that the issue of who is worthy of salvation has not been left in the hands of internet Christians who are also fans of dead gaming systems, but perhaps I should start.

That first bit is from Matthew 15, by the way, and in it Jesus berates the Pharisees for practicing traditions hypocritically, and thus in vain. Notably, Christ is not attacking tradition itself, for He practiced the traditions of the Jewish faith during His life and ministry, and bestowed upon His disciples at least one major tradition, which He commanded be done in remembrance of Him.

But there SegaGenesisfan goes, rejecting any and all tradition as, apparently, unbiblical and against Christianity.

I’m going to go out on a limb and hazard a guess that this is the sort of thing one might expect to be said by a person who harbours a deep-seated animosity toward Catholics, but it is also what one might expect to be argued by a person who believes that only Scripture can interpret Scripture (a common trope). It’s also something one might expect to be told by a person who greatly fears that giving any authority to Church tradition will only result in the message and content of Scripture becoming tainted and perverted. The explicit rejection of tradition is…well…striking.

I ain’t got no traditions. Ignoring the double-negative, this apparently Biblical Christian makes one critical error: he assumes that giving authority to tradition is against the Bible. While I might be tempted to speculate that this is a result of a sola scriptura way of thinking, I will note that the rejection of tradition is itself actually an anti-Biblical concept.

For example, consider 2 Thes. 2:

[13]But we are bound to give thanks to God always for you, brethren beloved by the Lord, because God chose you from the beginning to be saved, through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth.
[14] To this he called you through our gospel, so that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.
[15] So then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter.
[16] Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God our Father, who loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace,
[17] comfort your hearts and establish them in every good work and word.

We can see here that St. Paul actually places great importance on the Church holding fast to the traditions which the apostles taught to them. The traditions themselves go unspecified here, but the point is nevertheless that tradition forms an integral, necessary part of the practice of the Christian faith, and is itself a mode of teaching which the Church should strive to consider and convey.

Right here, we see the rejection of all tradition as a mode of Christian practice to be unbiblical. Moreover, we also begin to see the seeds of something else emerging — Scripture is not the only teaching authority which Paul himself recognizes or suggests the use of. Turning, briefly, to Ephesians 3, we can also observe that Paul taught thusly:

[7] Of this gospel I was made a minister according to the gift of God’s grace which was given me by the working of his power.
[8] To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ,
[9] and to make all men see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things;
[10] that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places.
[11] This was according to the eternal purpose which he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord,
[12] in whom we have boldness and confidence of access through our faith in him.

Here we see that Paul further expands the notion of where teaching authority, which would include interpretive authority over Scripture, is found: the Church itself is, in Paul’s desire, the means by which the wisdom of God should be made known to the world. This is confirmed in the first letter to Timothy, chapter 3:

[14] I hope to come to you soon, but I am writing these instructions to you so that,
[15] if I am delayed, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and bulwark of the truth.

The Church — not Scripture — is “the pillar and bulwark of the truth.” That is a Biblical teaching. So let’s tie this all back. We have the Church as the pillar and bulwark of truth, the means by which the wisdom of God (expressed in the Word of God) is to be made known to all nations and peoples. That means that the Church must be possessed of authority to interpret Scripture (the Word of God), and that it should do so while holding fast (and thus considering) the traditions which have been taught to it.

This does not mean that Christians lack the right of private judgement, of course — each person must work out his or her own salvation with fear and trembling, as Paul noted. But it does begin to suggest that each Christian should establish a relationship to the Church as that of a student to a teacher. Right of private judgement, again, exists, as does the right of each person to interpret out of Scripture for him or herself. But that interpretation must ultimately be in harmony with the teaching and interpretation of that which is the pillar and bulwark of God’s truth, as expressed through God’s Word: the Church.

And where private interpretation leads to a conclusion different than that of the Church that is disharmonious with the teaching of the Church, the Christian should, in humility, submit to the learned judgement of the Church and its interpretation of Scripture, rather than forging out in his or her own new direction. That is, again, beacause it is the Church — and not the individual — who is the bulwark of truth, and the means by which the wisdom of God is to be brought to the world.

And as to what my correspondent has said, it must be noted that no Christian can be both Christian and free of any tradition. The Bible itself is a tradition, in the sense that it was canonized in 390 AD. The very canon of Scripture is the tradition in this case; while there are differences concerning whether or not the Deuterocanonical books should be included in the canon or not, the point is that each Christian acknowledges a canon of Scripture that has been handed down by tradition, rather than elected by the individual, private judgement of each successive believer.

Moreover, things like sola fide and sola scriptura are traditions, and so anyone who adheres to such beliefs is following in a tradition handed down from Martin Luther. Indeed, such a person gives a great deal of authority to those traditions, as they form a part of the core of that person’s understanding of salvation in Christ, a key aspect of Christian faith.

I weep for Christians who are so deluded as to think that to be Christian means to be free of any form of tradition, for it is by tradition that we — the faithful alive today — are connected in spirit with those who have gone before us in Christ. If we eschew tradition and its authority, we cut ourselves off from those who went before us as believers in Christ. And in so doing, we are rather like the ship which burns the port it leaves, and then casts off its maps and compass as well.

We become, in essence, blinded by our own hand when we reject the traditions of the faith. And we likewise set ourselves against the Bible itself.

Slowly, scientists are beginning to piece together some of the details about what processes were involved in the emergence of life on Earth. Of course, that’s a far cry from actually understanding how non-living material — even complex proteins — somehow made the jump to being somehow “alive” — that’s something we’ll probably never really know how to explain fully. Well…not without consulting Scripture, at least. And even then.

The basic idea has been recognized for over a century, but the work of Stanley Miller was cited for triggering the modern era of scientific work on the topic. Since the classic Miller-Urey experiments, science has steadily expanded the range of essential molecules that can be produced under conditions that might reasonably expected to have been present on the early Earth.

Ellington emphasized that progress has been slow — we knew how cyanide could react to form the DNA component adenine in the 1960s, but it took over three decades to recognize that a few more reactions converted it to its relative, guanine. And the roadblocks continue to fall. After all attempts to produce sugars created a tar-like sludge, someone eventually found that a small amount of borate could help ethanol form large amounts of ribose, another component of RNA.

The first molecules that could replicate led directly to modern life

With the components of nucleic acids in place, Ellington traced a path through the RNA world to a molecule that could self-replicate. Past attempts to jump to a complex, self-replicating RNA molecule seem to have been on the wrong track. Short palindromic RNA sequences can apparently help catalyze the formation of complementary sequences, meaning what’s needed is actually an RNA that can link these short sequences into longer, more complex ones. A number of such sequences, termed RNA ligases, have been identified. Several labs have shown that these ligases can then be improved by an essentially Darwinian process of random mutation followed by selection for increased efficiency.

It’s all very interesting, although one cannot help but notice that what is basically being described here is a whole lot of dominos very necessarily falling into a very definite pattern. It’s becoming increasingly hard to accept that a truly random process could have led to the emergence of even something as simple as the first single-celled organism, let alone something as complex as a human being and the capability for reason thereof.

Reason…discussions thereof always become so much more interesting when one looks at human origins, and more so again when one looks at life’s origins. If in fact we emerged via a few random interactions in some early chemical soup, and if in fact we persist today and are primarily governed by random or hormonally influenced chemical reactions in our brains, it is a supreme act of faith to assume that we are even capable of true reasoning — what we call our ability to be rational may, in fact, just be one more opportunistic chemical reaction that has no purpose, no meaning, and which we have no ability to control.

In other words, if the atheists are right, there is no reason. To have reason, one necessarily needs faith…which shouldn’t really come as that much of a surprise. We need something external to us to lift us up from the mud, after all. That a human being is capable of reason is, I think, yet another compelling argument in favour of the existence of a rational God.

Dr. Helen links to, and reviews in brief, a very interesting-sounding book:

I spent part of the day reading Vox Day’s new book, The Irrational Atheist: Dissecting the Unholy Trinity of Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens. You might know Vox Day from his blog and interesting take on feminist issues — he always has something provocative to add to that particular conversation and his book proves to be just as stimulating in regards to religion and faith. The Irrational Atheistis described as follows (from the inside cover):

The Irrational Atheist is not a theological work nor is it a conventional religious defense of faith. It contains no arguments for the existence of God and the supernatural, nor is it concerned with evolution, creationism, the age of Earth, or intelligent design. This book contains no arguments from Scripture. In attacking the arguments, assertions, and conclusions of the New Atheists, Vox Day’s only weapons are the secular tools of reason, logic and historically documented, independently verifiable fact. The Irrational Atheist is not a book about God, but about those who seek to replace Him….

Day takes on the likes of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens and seeks to demonstrate that they and other “New Atheists” are no champions of reason.

Sounds like I might just have to pick this book up. In particular, I’m left tantalized by the small sample Dr. Helen provides of Vox Day’s analysis:

For example, Day discusses one argument made by Harris where Harris questions the correlation between Christian conservatism and social health:

If there was a strong correlation between Christian conservatism and social health, we might expect to see some sign of it in red-state America. We don’t. Of the 25 cities with the lowest rates of violent crime, 62 percent are in “blue” [Democrat] states and 38% are in “red” [Republican] states. Of the twenty-five most dangerous cities, 76 percent are in red states, and 24 percent are in blue states. In fact, three of the five most dangerous cities in the US are in the pious state of Texas.

Interestingly, though, Day found that “red-state” crime is primarily committed by “blue counties” within those states and has a nice chart to show the stats on this. It seems that Harris was looking at states such as Texas that had more crime and called the states “red” but conveniently omitted the part where the counties where the crimes were committed tended to be “blue.”

Other myth busters include the notion that religion causes the majority of war as some atheists profess, Day provides evidence to the contrary–he found that more than 93% of all the wars in human history had no relation to Religion. In the twentieth century, in fact, he states that atheistic regimes killed three times more people in peacetime than those killed in all the wars and individual crimes combined.

I admit I’ve never been particularly troubled by the atheistic assertion that the falsity of religion can be demonstrated in part by the way that more secular nations seem to have lower crime rates than more religious nations do. As has been articulated many times (most recently, and eloquently, by Mark Shea), the validity of the teachings of the Church are in no way dependent on the actions of members of the Church. But neither have I had the time to really delve into the finer points of the statement, and it’s nice to see that Day has taken the time.

In the end, the numbers don’t really surprise all that much, do they? It turns out that the religious are, in fact, less to blame.

And in a more general sense, the notion that the crime rate is lower in more ardently secular nations does necessarily imply that the people of those nations are more moral than in nations where religion still has some value, and that is the more important distinction. That is to say: the murder rates in Sweden and Norway might be lower than in the U.S. or the Phillipenes, but where do the abortion rates sit? The rates of property crime might also be lower, but what about the rates of marital infidelity and/or pre-marital sex and serial monogamy?

In the end, legality is a less important metric than morality, because the laws of most free nations are designed (in theory) to enforce a minimum standard…but of course, there is more to being a moral person than just following the laws of the land to the letter, because laws are a human construct and subject to change at the will of humanity. Morality is external to human willfulness and weakness. How, I wonder, do all these secular nations measure up by that standard?