Stephen T. Asma fellates religion

In a post of several years ago, I saluted Asma for saying universal disinterested love was impossible. He was focused on secular philosophers like Peter Singer, but I said his reasoning extended to Buddhism (and didn't think that it extended to Christianity's call to sanctified humans, too.)

Well, maybe there's a reason he didn't extend that to religions.

That's because he's an idiot about religion as a class. And, there's a whole book of his idiocy, with a puff review here by a theist and a piece by him.

His idiocy?

Asma, who claims to be an agnostic himself, says that religion has therapeutic value in emotional regulation. Reality?

It only does that as an occasional or sometime spandrel of what it really does.

The history of religion bloody red in tooth and claw, to riff on Matthew Arnold, is that religion often stimulates, even excites, emotions. The long legacy of crusades, jihads, other conversions at swordpoint by even the allegedly non-evangelist Jews, heresy trials, witch hunts, the persecution of Muslims in Burma by allegedly peaceful Buddhists and more all show that emotional stimulation, excitement or worse is what religion usually does. Emotion-laden visionary trances, speaking in tongues and more are other examples.

Also contra the puff reviewer, Asma's arguments for believing in religion are wholly utilitarian. And, since the evidentiary warrants for the argument are false, the argument is as fallacious of a utilitarian argument for religious belief as Pascal's Wager.

I'm not a Gnu Atheist, so contra Dawkins and others, I don't believe religion poisons everything it touches. But, since it is an "-ism," like other "-isms," it can damage a fair amount of what it contacts.

Finally, I reject No True Scotsman arguments for what constitutes "true religion," whether from Judeo-Christian scriptures or elsewhere.

Anyway, Asma sure doesn't seem like an agnostic. Massimo said that his peers have commented on this. Massimo also says he's touted pseudoscience before.

This shows that being a philosopher doesnt' guarantee intellectual acuity, despite the word's etymology.

Antichrist vs the man of lawlessness vs the beast and the mark of 666 or whatever

Christian fundamentalists (that includes you standoffish, smug conservative Lutherans), non-fundamentalist conservative evangelicals (and I suppose, more literalist types among the Catholics and Orthodox) generally get all three of these critters confused.

(Per the first paragraph, the term "funadgelicals," which I've seen on some Patheos blogs, might be better than using "fundamentalist" for all conservative Protestants. On the other hand, politically and theologically moderate to liberal Protestants in mainline denominations refer to themselves as "liberal evangelicals," among other things, and are represented in thought by magazines like Sojourners, so, it's actually not such an ideal alternative. But I digress.)

Well, not confused as much as claiming they're the same.

They're not.

First, there is NO "theology of the New Testament." There's theologies of different authors. And, one might even distinguish early from late Paul, and I'm not even counting the "Pauline" pseudepigraphal works.

Second, they're simply not the same.

First, Paul's man of lawlessness in 2 Thessalonians:

2 Thessalonians 2:3-10 New International Version (NIV) 

3 Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way, for that day will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness[a] is revealed, the man doomed to destruction. 4 He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God.
5 Don’t you remember that when I was with you I used to tell you these things? 6 And now you know what is holding him back, so that he may be revealed at the proper time. 7 For the secret power of lawlessness is already at work; but the one who now holds it back will continue to do so till he is taken out of the way. 8 And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will overthrow with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the splendor of his coming. 9 The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with how Satan works. He will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie, 10 and all the ways that wickedness deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.

Actually, "Paul" should probably be in scare quotes; the majority of modern scholarship considers this pseudepigraphal, albeit with lack of consensus on when it actually was written, per the intro to this quote. In addition, the "don't you remember" of verse 5 reads exactly how I would expect a pseudo-Paul to read.

Anyway, this appears to be almost like an evil version of the intertestamental Metatron. And arising from within the faithful.

 

BUT! He's not currently present in this realm. He's being held back. And, this seems to be part of "Paul" explaining that the eschaton will come — when the man of lawlessness is revealed. In other words, part of 2 Thessalonians explaining away the immanent eschaton that pervades 1 Thessalonians.

It is this critter that is fused with the 666 of Revelation, but given the name of Antichrist. It is this critter that, given his internal rise, Luther identified with the papacy. Note: The office, not any individual pope.

And THAT said, I just had a brain flash.

What if this is a vaticinium ex eventu, with the "coming" in verse 9 being Rome entering the Most Holy Place? As in, the Jewish War. Or, if this is allegedly from "inside the faith," or kind of like that, it would be the Zealot rebels, or the worst of them. That would probably mean that the early end of critical dating of 85-115 is correct. The Bar Kokhba War is too late a date, as Marcion had it in his canon, and much later than 85? The Temple Revolt might not be a good sign. Maybe we could date as late as 95 or so, the time of the Christian sections of Revelation.

 

Per what I said above, if connected to the Jewish War and the temple, it can't be Titus, as he doesn't arise from among the faithful.

And with that, on to "the number of the beast."

First, given that no word is intended, "616" is not the text-critical tougher read. The Greek for “666,” χξϛ, has a “triple sibilant” sound which the Greek for “616,” χιϛ, does not.

Second? "Nero Caesar" in the Hebrew alphabet is נרון קסר‎ NRON QSR, which when used as numbers represent 50 200 6 50 100 60 200, which add to 666. And one does not have to be a preterist to accept this. (If you drop the final "ן" [which has you at the nominative singular of the name Nero in Latin], you get "616." That might mean that a scribe familiar with Latin did an edit.)

J. Massingbyrde Ford, in her Anchor Bible volume on Revelation, had the interesting theory that the central sections were written by John the Baptist. My review is here.

Just one problem. Not only the Christian gospels but Josephus claim that Antipas killed John. And, I've never seen that Josephus passage credibly claimed to be a Christian interpolation.

BUT! As noted in my review, we know that disciples of John were running around during Nero's imperium. Says who? The author of Acts, in chapter 19.

So, say one of them wrote Revelation 4-11. (Some other scholars, like James Tabor, favor ideas along this line.) But the beast is in chapter 13. 

Can we extend Ford's thesis to see strands later on? It's tough. Unless one wants to claim that John's followers had a Messianic view of him by this time, and the Christian final writer of Revelation did a copy and rewrite even past chapter 11, it's tough. But, from what we've seen in the Dead Sea Scrolls, as well as, of course, what Paul promulgated about Jesus, not impossible. (Per some recent critical scholarship on the ante-Nicean era and its larger milieu, trying to find actual historical ties from Mandeanism to the Baptizer is a mug's game.)

In case you're wondering, some of the specifics from the first three chapters of the book date it to the time of Domitian, pretty strongly. (At Vridar, Neil Godfrey references Adela Yarbro Collins, among others, on this dating and the information that's a hinge.) So, traditional unitary authorship theories, or even Ford's idea if we can't extend the central area through chapter 13, throw Nero as the beast out the door.

At the same time, chapter 14 refers back to the mark. And chapter 16 refers back to this beast. Chapter 17 refers to another beast, based on Daniel imagery.

But the Babylon throughout could be Jerusalem, not Rome, with a Johannine follower saluting its overthrow. Certainly, if one rejects prophecy other than vaticinium ex eventu, Babylon can't be Rome. AND, the name of "Jesus" does not appear until Revelation 20, which can, on other grounds as well, be seen as starting something new.

Or, whether Johannine or Yeshuite, the core of Revelation could be dated later than the 60s. This, Revelation 13:14:

Because of the signs it was given power to perform on behalf of the first beast, it deceived the inhabitants of the earth. It ordered them to set up an image in honor of the beast who was wounded by the sword and yet lived.

Could be seen as reflecting Nero Redivivus legends that flourished years, even decades, after his death. Indeed, a pretender arose during Domitian's time. (Collins and others mention this, too.)

In any case, this beast is NOT the man of lawlessness. It arises from outside the congregation of the faithful, and operates by forceful, violent opposition, not deceit.

 

(Godfrey elsewhere discusses the whole book coming from Nero's time. This, and other updates, come from a subReddit post about a British academic claiming that the eruption of Vesuvius was the target, with VERY specific alleged terminus a quem/ad quo dates for the writing range. Color me skeptical. That's even more so since Alan Garrow also claims the first part of the Didache precedes even 1 Thessalonians. He gets there by saying this is the same as the "Jerusalem Council," which he claims actually happened and also claims that Acts 15 is paralleled by Galatians 2:1-10. Really? Pass. I get the feeling that some young bucks at r/AcademicBiblical are looking for young bucks in biblical scholarship who have one foot, at least, halfway in the Sokol hoax camp. And, Garrow's Sokol hoax is a Didache fetish. Side note: Now that I've been comment banned for calling a quasi-Nazi moderator just that and other things, I'll say there's a fair amount of nuttery in that subReddit.)

And neither the beast nor the man of lawlessness is the antichrist(s) of 1-2 John, specifically 1 John 4:2-3 and 2 John 1:7. Per the parentheses, more than one person is referred to.

My personal guess is that, the "denying that Jesus has come in the flesh" has the author (authors?) battling some sort of Docetism. This is neither a deceiver leading one to Satan (2 Thessalonians) nor a mighty emissary of Satan (Revelation). That said, that only encompasses two of the four references. A third would seem to be against Ebionism or similar, calling those who reject Jesus' full divinity antichrist. The final verse, but, the first in order, seems to anticipate one final antichrist, but without any further definition.

In any case, all the 1-2 John references are theological ones about what would later be called Christology. And, the battles already in these books are a pretty good support for a second-century date of writing. And, the different reference in 2 John might indicate that, within a "Johannine school," it and 3 John have a different author than 1 John.

No, the KGB didn't kill Camus

That's despite a new book, based on old journal gleanings from Czech poet and translator Jan Zábrana, claiming exactly that.

Giovanni Catelli claims the KGB rigged the car of Camus' publisher to crash in 1960 because of his comments after the Hungarian uprising.

This ignores MULTIPLE countervailing items.

Start at the tail end. The accident wasn't really regarded as suspicious at the time, contra a 1978 biographer.

Go to the front end. Camus was openly anti-Communist in the writing of "The Rebel" way back in 1951. So, why would the KGB not be pissed off until 1957?

Now, insert meat in between.

Why would it take three years to kill Camus if the KGB were that upset? (Or nine years, in my counterblast?) Why would it target his publisher's car rather than going for something more direct, as the KGB then already had the expertise at doing? Or, pre-KGB, note the ice ax in Trotsky's skull.

And, indeed, wouldn't the KGB want something that, while not pinnable on it, might have a hint more of connection to it than the fatal car crash did? (Maybe the KGB paid the other driver in the James Dean crash?)

The real Luther — in bits and pieces

I came to this book on a circuitous route. I had first read Eric Metaxas’ wholly wrong, politically driven bio of Luther, which tried to make him into a modern conservative evangelical. I rejected it as a former Lutheran AND a current secularist who knew it was wrong theologically and a leftist who knew it was wrong politically. Many conservative and liberal Lutherans did likewise.

Shortly after, I read a dual bio of Luther and Erasmus, reviewed here, which had some interesting tidbits but nothing huge.

Then, someone on Goodreads, asking in comment to my Metaxas review what I would recommend, and after I mentioned that book as an alternative, asked if I had read Lyndal Roper. I said I had not and I got it via interlibrary loan.

It was interesting and very good, but … not quite over thetop. Although not Erik Erickson’s “Young Man Luther,” and not Freudian (I think) in the basis for the psychoanalyzing, Roper does a lot of that. As a professor, she has some chops — but it’s a professor of history.

(Also, looking now at her bibliography, from what I know, I’d disagree that witch burning was concentrated in German-speaking Imperial lands.)

So, I continued to look. And via a string of Net searches, came across the reviews to Oberman.

What follows is the review itself.

Luther: Man Between God and the Devil by Heiko A. Oberman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


How I missed this when it came out, I don’t know. It’s a shame to it that my conservative Lutheran college didn’t discuss this in any religion classes I took there. Given that it was still just six years old when I entered my conservative Lutheran seminary, it’s even more a discredit to Concordia Seminary to not have this book discussed in any classes there.

I know that Oberman was likely Dutch Reformed, not Lutheran, but, he clearly takes Luther at face value, including his man being like a mule ridden by either god or devil, and takes seriously what Luther intended by that.

And, he’s got the theological chops to know Luther’s history.

Even without him making connections, I now see that his reading Hutton’s edition of Valla exposing the Donation of Constantine as a forgery may well have upped not “just” Luther’s general antipathy to the papacy, but his seeing it as Antichrist. In turn, that meant to him that the end times were here.

I need to digress there for a moment. The “anticrhist,” or actually “antichrists” of I John are not the same as I Thessalonians’ “man of lawlessness,” but the term has become ascribed to that being. Rather, writing at least 40 years after Paul, and maybe 60, the author of I John seems to be referring to a king-sized “alligator” in a church or something like that, not a quasi-metaphysical entity. Digression done.

At the same time, Oberman’s book falls short in some ways.

Here’s one. If Luther wasn’t nearly as literalistic about “sola Scriptura” as the Scofield reference bible, then on what grounds was he right and the Schwärmerei wrong? On what basis were the Reformed (and Karlstadt) wrong and him right on the Eucharist, since Karlstadt had proven him wrong on the “this is” per Greek grammar?

None other than Luther being a cantankerous stubborn mule.

For that matter, since Master Melanchthon was the professor of Greek at Wittenberg, why didn’t HE challenge Luther like Karlstadt did? (Roper could have done some psychoanalysis with THAT in her book.)

Also, Oberman reports Luther myth as fact even as religious historians and theological scholars were challenging it by the time he wrote this book. I talk specifically of the nailing of the 95 Theses and the “here I stand” at Worms as fact, when almost certainly neither are.

Does it matter? In the second case, it’s more something of pietistic hagiography. But, Oberman cuts through that on other things.

On the Theses? Yes it matters. Goes to motive, or similar. If they were never nailed to a door, how did they become public so quickly, and what hand did Luther have in that, especially since his concerns about indulgences had been building a few years?

Otherwise, the book is spot on about aspects of Luther’s life Oberman covers. He is indeed an existentialist, but not Kierkegaard, let alone Sartre. He does have one foot in the medieval world and literalistic beliefs not even Kierkegaard did.

BUT … per the above, Oberman covers very little about Luther’s interactions with others. Much less than Roper on Karlstadt or the Reformed. Nothing on the Peasants Revolts or Muntzer et al.

So, five stars for what he covers. Three stars for what he doesn’t and for repeating Luther legend. We’re at a disappointing four stars, and yes, disappointing.

To get that fifth star?
1. A more complete explanation of Luther vis-a-vis the peasants, and within a larger framework of Luther's understanding of the post-1521 non-Catholic state.
2. Half a dozen pages, minimum, on the Marburg Colloquy, set within another half dozen pages on Luther vs the Reformed.
3. More on Luther's table talk.
4. Ideally, a bit on Luther's apparent glory-hogging at times, per Roper.

And with that, I have scratched my Luther bios itch more than enough.


View all my reviews

Walter Kaufman vs John Rawls: Without guilt and justice in Texas courtrooms

The title's second half, first part, should be in quotes, as I am referring to Walter Kaufman's "Without Guilt and Justice."

Without Guilt and Justice: From Decidophobia to Autonomy by Walter Kaufmann
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Kaufmann, Nietzsche's foremost expositor, and best English translator, brings his own considerable philosophical skills to play in this volume.

It is true that some of his specific references, such as the "alienation" of mid-20th century psychology, or his riffs on Solzhenitysn, may be dated.

But his core arguments certainly are not.

Kaufmann spends a fair amount of time turning a withering moral eye to retributive justice, and another withering logical and existential eye to the idea of proportional justice, and various related ideas.

Hence his title "Without Guilt and Justice." Kaufmann argues convincingly that neither idea can be logically generated within an overarching system of morals. One can almost see John Rawls being ground to grist between the millstones of Kaufmann's cogitating.

But, this is small confort to humanists who would argue that an enlightened system of morality exists without religion. Instead, Kaufmann is saying that ALL systems of morals, no matter their metaphysical base or antimetaphysical base, are existential in nature. As for particular moral terms like "guilt" and "justice," without specifically referencing Wittgenstein, or any philosopher of language, Kaufmann's argument appears to be that they are part of the language games we play.

Speaking of language, while Kaufman's "humbition" comes off as clunky, it seems to be his translation of the Greek ἀρετή, although he never expressly says so, as I recall.

View all my reviews

So, where does the Texas courtroom come in?

Last month, at my current newspaper location, a teacher pled guilty to two counts of "improper relationship with a student."

She got five years probation, a fine, and of course, loss of her teacher certification. No jail time.

Had it been a male teacher and female students? The book probably would have been thrown. Absolutely, if we had had a male-male or female-female situation. This is Texas. And rural Texas is still where the wingers fly high.

But, it's not just that.

Two newspapers back, five years ago, had a similar situation. Female teacher, male student. Complicated by the teacher's oldest son being at the same high school.

Case went to trial and the teacher got several years.

In the first case above, the later, current case? One of the hookups involved, in part, Snapchat. Now, "snaps" are supposed to disappear by default, but I think you can make them non-disappearing. You can also, of course, do screengrabs. Reportedly, parents just wanted the case to go away, too. But, maybe the DA was being a red ass. Until he was told, "Look, if this goes to trial ..."

The earlier case? The kid had a Twitter account. It was mentioned — not just that he had one, but WHAT the account was — during the trial. During lunch break, the first thing I did back at my office is look it up.

His feed looked like a wannabe "playa." And, no, not the Spanish word for a salt flat.

Did the hookup turn him into that?

Well, I had the approximate date for the start of the sexual part of the hookup, so I scrolled back that far in his Twitter feed.

It may have made him more of a playa wannabe than before, but, he was somewhat that way before that. 

Why the defense attorney didn't introduce this? Especially as said kid had just signed a college sports scholarship, and to a private college to boot?

If the judge ruled it inadmissible, just to make doubly sure my appeal was well grounded, I think I would have tried to introduce it anyway.

Besides that, that can't have been the case. After all, the assistant DA was the person who mentioned the Twitter account.

That said, this was a teacher, not some indigent. And, the lawyer wasn't from Shelby County. the family hired someone, I don't even think from Nacogdoches; I think they went to Tyler.

Just shows you that you can blow money on a lawyer and still get a bad one.

And, it goes to illustrate Kaufman's premise, too.

Is it "fair" for the one teacher to get only probation, the other not? Is it "fair" for the earlier teacher to have spent more money on a lawyer from a more "regional" community (Tyler, Texas, is about 100,000, and the "capital" of East Texas, and the communities themselves in both cases are under 2,000; the attorney in the latter teacher's case was from Denton, bigger, but with more local focus). Is it "fair" for the one student's parents to just want the case to go away, with "justice" being less exposure of their kids, and in the other case, wanting the teacher to "get justice served"?

Arguably not, in any of the cases. The recent case, in Muenster, involved TWO students, which arguably made it MORE heinous. The previous case, in Shelbyville, arguably had the teacher actually kind of interested in the student.

Let us also remember that "guilt and justice" theoretically exist outside of courts of law and the laws that said courts are supposed to uphold. The Shelbyville teacher? Besides married, to boot, her oldest kid at the same small high school where she taught and where her sex target also attended. The Muenster teacher also married and with kids, but none at the same school.

So, was it "justice" for the Shelbyville teacher to get the hammer, then? Why? Her family, her husband, and their oldest son had been gossiped about before the case went to trial, possibly before the event came to legal attention and she was arrested.

In other words, just in cases like this, we have the question of what's "just" changing if we ask what's just, or unjust, for the perpetrator, the victim, the victim's parents, and general society. And, setting aside age of consent laws, we haven't asked about guilt and whether it could be apportioned at all to the victim, or to the perpetrator's family or origin, or many other things.