First Time as Tragedy; Second Time as Farce.

If 40% of Rape Accusations are False...

... how many accusations of child abuse or domestic violence in the context of divorce are false?

From Lefebvre v. Lefebvre, 2011 Cal. App. LEXIS 1236, 1-3 (Cal. App. 2d Dist. Sept. 28, 2011)

Jon and Alice married in August 1995; they have two minor children. Over a period of years prior to August 2005, Alice began reading books on the subjects of divorce and money, including at least one book which included information about using false criminal accusations against a spouse in a divorce proceeding. During the same time period, Alice and Toothman conspired to bring false criminal accusations against Jon. On August 17, 2005, in furtherance of the conspiracy, Alice reported to a sheriff deputy that Jon had recently threatened to kill her and their children, and Toothman confirmed Alice's criminal report to the deputy.


On August 26, 2005, authorities with the Sheriff's Department, acting in reliance upon the criminal reports from Alice and Toothman, filed a criminal case against Jon, charging him with a violation of Penal Code section 422, making a criminal threat. The charge was tried to a jury and Jon was found not guilty.

At the time of the verdict, the jurors, acting of their own volition, selected the jury foreperson to read the following statement into the record: “We, the jury, believe that the absence of any real investigation by law enforcement is shocking and we agree that this appears to follow a rule of guilty until proven innocent. There was no credible evidence supporting the indictment. We believe prosecuting this as a crime was not only a waste of time, money, and energy, for all involved, but is an affront to our justice system. This jury recommends restitution to the defendant for costs and fees of defending himself against these charges. This jury requests that our collective statement be made available in any [future] legal action relating to these parties. ….” The judge who presided over Jon's criminal trial granted Jon's motion for a finding of factual innocence pursuant to Penal Code section 851.8, subdivision (e).

Yowzah!  There's a book on one book on "using false criminal accusations against a spouse in a divorce proceeding"?

The trick is to ask the right question.

Like the one Frank J. Fleming is asking:

The Barack Obama presidency has been disastrous. The economy is in shambles, and Obama’s only response has been to try and waste as much of our money as he can. Jobs are a scarce commodity, and yet Obama is trying to raise taxes. And his Department of Justice is apparently selling guns to Mexican drug cartels. All of this raises the obvious question: What did we do to make Obama hate us and want to destroy us?


Obama was elected on the promise of hope and change; he was going to make everything better by fixing the economy, ending all wars, and making every rainbow a double rainbow. As smart and capable as we all knew he was, he should have succeeded beyond our wildest imaginations. But instead, we’re even worse off than before — I don’t remember the last time I even saw a single rainbow. The only explanation is that somehow we’ve angered Obama and caused him to turn against us. It’s just that I’m not sure how.

Now, we could go to a town hall and ask Obama, “What have we done to make you want to destroy this country?” I think that is a horrible idea, though, as Obama will only glare at us and become even angrier. Obviously what we’ve done is extremely bad based on the way Obama is treating us, and it would only be worse if he knew we were ignorant of our exact slight against him.

We just need to accept the fact that we’re a bad country, and that’s why Obama is not following through on the hope and change he promised. So now what we need to do is try to figure out how to become a better country so Obama will like us and decide that he doesn’t need to destroy us. So I’ve done my best to study Obama and figure out some ideas to make us a country he considers worth saving.

It is like Obama has entered his Jimmy-Carter-hectoring-the-nation-to-live-up-to-his-standards phase.

Good question, but is it true and ...

...does it suggest something malevolent.

Why is Rome keeping schtum about Pastor Nadarkhani?

The blogger Archbishop Cranmer has done some excellent work drawing attention to the case of Pastor Nadarkhani, who is to be executed in Iran because he refuses to recant his Christian faith. One doesn’t have to be a martyrologist, or even a Christian, to recognise the Pastor’s courage. Three times he has been asked by the Iranian Supreme Court to renounce Christ, and three times, on pain of death, he has refused. Reports today suggest that the Iranian authorities are on the verge of acquitting Nardakhani, but Cranmer says that “the ‘people who know’ are treating these reports with great caution.”


Cranmer also says he has alerted the Foreign office, Lambeth Palace, and the Vatican about Nadarkhani’s situation. William Hague replied within an hour and the Archbishop of Canterbury expressed “deep concern”, but the Vatican has kept schtum. Cranmer is cross, “Iran views Evangelical Protestants as ‘corrupt and deviant’,” he writes. “Does His Holiness agree?”

Steady on. It’s possible, I suppose, that the Holy See is reluctant to intervene for fear of endangering Catholics in Iran. Or perhaps they are working behind the scenes. But I suspect the Vatican’s silence is more to do with bureaucracy and incompetence. Cranmer tends to think the worst of Rome (the clue is in his name). But he is absolutely right to say that the churches really should be united, clear and loud in response to this outrage, and they should speak out now.

Anyone who has read Pope Benedict XVI's writings knows that Cranmer is nuts.  B16 has gone on record repeatedly to denounce the irrationality and oppression of Islamic extremists.  Likewise, it has been no secret that Catholics are the ones who tend to catch it in the necks in most of the Middle East.

On which point, where is the Protestant denunciation of the many, many attacks on Catholics in the Mid-East?  I assume there are some, and I further assume that all Protestants are opposed to such attacks.  Finally, I assume that they have many other worthwhile things that divert their attention such that they don't have to keep repeating things we know they stand for.

Should the Vatican denounce this situation, if it hasn't already? Absolutely. But notice that the White House got around to denouncing it only last night. 

Bureaucracy is undoubtedly the answer here.

America is moving toward energy independence...

...and it ain't green.

New Boom Reshapes Oil World, Rocks North Dakota

Two years ago, America was importing about two thirds of its oil. Today, according to the Energy Information Administration, it imports less than half. And by 2017, investment bank Goldman Sachs predicts the US could be poised to pass Saudi Arabia and overtake Russia as the world's largest oil producer.


Places like Williston are the reason why.

"For many years, they knew that there was oil in that area, but the technology wasn't available to get it out," the town's mayor, Ward Koeser, tells weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz.

But in the last few years, advances in such technologies as "fracking" and horizontal drilling have made, by some estimates, as much as 11 billion barrels of oil available in the Bakken formation under North Dakota and Montana.

"There's oil companies coming from all over the country now." Koeser says.

Williston has skipped the recession entirely. Unemployment there is less than 2 percent. The population, the mayor estimates, has grown from 12,000 to 20,000 in the last four years.

"We actually have probably between 2,000 and 3,000 job openings in Williston right now," Koeser says.

As Instapundit observes:

"The implications here are huge. If I were Russia and Saudi Arabia, I’d be subsidizing U.S. environmental groups in an effort to stop, or at least slow, the process."

Or re-elect an anti-business liberal.

Can you say "Projection"?...

...I knew you could.

Janeane Garafolo says that Republicans support Herman Cain because they want to be able to say that they aren't racist:

"Herman Cain is probably well liked by some of the Republicans because it hides the racist elements of the Republican party. Conservative movement and tea party movement, one in the same. "People like Karl Rove liked to keep the racism very covert. And so Herman Cain provides this great opportunity say you can say 'Look, this is not a racist, anti-immigrant, anti-female, anti-gay movement. Look we have a black man.'"

So, those Republicans support Herman Cain not because he is a succesful businessman who has endorsed the key principles of limited government, but because he's black. 

Unlike Democrats who supported a community organizer, state senator, college instructor and first term senator with absolutely no executive experience because he was, in the words of Joe Biden, “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.” A sentiment endorsed by Harry Reid, who opined that Obama could become the country’s first black president because he was “light-skinned” and had “no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.”

It all goes to prove the Undeniable Rules of Life, Rule Number 7 - "when someone is accusing you of something you ain't doing, you can bet the farm that they are doing it."

More on Epiphanies.

Prior exchanges are here and in the comments.

AJ writes:

Yes, the Holy Spirit took the form of a dove in Luke. My use of “incarnated” simply denotes “in the flesh”. I’m saying that the Holy Spirit never took the form of man.


St. Ambrose states:

“4. As John says that he saw, so, too, wrote Mark; Luke, however, added that the Holy Spirit descended in a bodily form as a dove; you must not think that this was an incarnation, but an appearance. He, then, brought the appearance before him, that by means of the appearance he might believe who did not see the Spirit, and that by the appearance He might manifest that He had a share of the one honour in authority, the one operation in the mystery, the one gift in the bath, together with the Father and the Son; unless perchance we consider Him in Whom the Lord was baptized too weak for the servant to be baptized in Him.” (On the Holy Spirit Book III, Ch.1)

St. Ambrose states that the Holy Spirit was never incarnated. Yes, the Holy Spirit took the form of a dove, but He was never incarnated. This parallels with Christ who took on different forms in the Old Testament (particularly, the Angel of the Lord) and was then incarnated in the New Testament.

Moreover, I hold that the Holy Spirit could not be the Angel of the Lord because a spirit is without bodily form, nor man-like (Luke 24:39). It is apparent in the OT that the Angel of the Lord did have a bodily form. As I stated earlier, Manoah first believed the Angel of the Lord to be a man in Judges 13.

The incarnation of Christ is imperative to the Christian faith. I hold that OT christophanies were not incarnations, but rather revelations of the pre-incarnate Christ.

8:17 PM

AJ said...

You are correct when you state that no man has seen God in the divine nature (in His glory). But it is a stretch to say that man has not seen God in any form. To say that seeing the form of God but not seeing Him in His glory is the same as not seeing God at all is not warranted by scripture or a major part of historical bible scholarship within Christianity.

Irenaeus puts this well.

“5. These things did the prophets set forth in a prophetical manner; but they did not, as some allege, [proclaim] that He who was seen by the prophets was a different [God], the Father of all being invisible. Yet this is what those [heretics] declare, who are altogether ignorant of the nature of prophecy. For prophecy is a prediction of things future, that is, a setting forth beforehand of those things which shall be afterwards. The prophets, then, indicated beforehand that God should be seen by men; as the Lord also says, Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Matthew 5:8 But in respect to His greatness, and His wonderful glory, no man shall see God and live, Exodus 33:20 for the Father is incomprehensible; but in regard to His love, and kindness, and as to His infinite power, even this He grants to those who love Him, that is, to see God, which thing the prophets did also predict. For those things that are impossible with men, are possible with God. Luke 18:27 For man does not see God by his own powers; but when He pleases He is seen by men, by whom He wills, and when He wills, and as He wills. For God is powerful in all things, having been seen at that time indeed, prophetically through the Spirit, and seen, too, adoptively through the Son; and He shall also be seen paternally in the kingdom of heaven, the Spirit truly preparing man in the Son of God, and the Son leading him to the Father, while the Father, too, confers [upon him] incorruption for eternal life, which comes to every one from the fact of his seeing God. For as those who see the light are within the light, and partake of its brilliancy; even so, those who see God are in God, and receive of His splendour. But [His] splendour vivifies them; those, therefore, who see God, do receive life. And for this reason, He, [although] beyond comprehension, and boundless and invisible, rendered Himself visible, and comprehensible, and within the capacity of those who believe, that He might vivify those who receive and behold Him through faith. For as His greatness is past finding out, so also His goodness is beyond expression; by which having been seen, He bestows life upon those who see Him. It is not possible to live apart from life, and the means of life is found in fellowship with God; but fellowship with God is to know God, and to enjoy His goodness.”

Against Heresies (Book IV, Chapter 20)

Just to clarify, I am not a Mormon. I believe in one God. I hold that the form in which Christ appeared is irrelevant to the fact that the Son was seen in the OT.

Justin Martyr also holds this same conclusion. Even if Justin was a pre-nicene church father or held certain positions that were later further defined, it does not take away from the his positions that were correct and aligned with later developed doctrine. I can agree with Justin on some things and disagree with others, I do the same with Augustine.

"I shall give you another testimony, my friends," said I, "from the Scriptures, that God begat before all creatures a Beginning,[who was] a certain rational power[proceeding] from Himself, who is called by the Holy Spirit, now the Glory of the Lord, now the Son, again Wisdom, again an Angel, then God, and then Lord and Logos; and on another occasion He calls Himself Captain, when He appeared in human form to Joshua the son of Nave(Nun). For He can be called by all those names, since He ministers to the Father's will, and since He was begotten of the Father by an act of will…” DIALOGUE WITH TRYPHO CH.61

I will reply further to your post, as I haven’t addressed all your points yet.

8:17 PM

AJ said...

If you hold that the Son “is not totally present for His followers to see”, how then do you interpret the transfiguration or even Mark 16:14?

Yes, “Proskynesis” is the Greek word for worship used in many of the verses involving the Angel of the Lord and worship in the LXX. However it is important to focus attention on the original Hebrew “Shachah” and its original meaning in the Masoretic text.

It isn’t a question of persons worshipping the apparent ‘angel(s)”, but rather a question of why the Angel of the Lord accepted worship.

The situation in Genesis 19:1 is interesting. It is an example of “shachah” used in reference to making obeisance to persons other than God. It is important to remember that Lot mistook these angels for men (similar to Manoah in Judges 13). So in relation to Lot bowing himself to two perceived men, nothing is out of the ordinary as it was custom to bow in civil respect to men in biblical times. The difference between Genesis 19:1 and Revelation 19:10 & 22:8-9 is that, in Revelation, John knows very well that he is communicating with and angel an intends to worship him and not merely show respect while Lot did not know he was conversing with angels (he believed them to be men). And in Judges 13 we see an example of the Angel of the Lord accepting the burnt offering after which Manoah falls to the ground. There is a defining line between the use of “shachah” as referring to obeisance and worship. As you or I might show respect for a great man or judge, we would never worship him as we would God.

While “wonderful” and “abundant” are not exact literal names of God, they are attributes of Him. (Exodus 34:6 and Isaiah 9:6)

Manoah is not inerrant but we must still answer the question of why he first says “Angel of the Lord”, then “God”.

I merely point out that the presence of fire is significant in denoting the presence of God in the OT. No, fire does not always denote His presence. However, it is a major clue that can’t be overlooked. Coupled with the apparent “angelic messenger(s)” speaking with the voice of the Lord, holy ground, the tabernacle, etc., it is indeed a huge clue.

I respond:

AJ


First, let me be clear that I am not per se ruling out that the putative epiphanies in the Old Testament were epiphanies or Christophanies. Those are within the licit range of opinions, I believe. However, I don’t think that we are compelled to conclude that they were and I think that the better opinion is that they were not.

1. I am pleased that we are in agreement with Ambrose and Augustine that at the Baptism in Jordan the Holy Spirit took the bodily form of a dove in the New Testament.

I am also pleased that we are in agreement with Ambrose and Augustine that the Holy Spirit was never “incarnated.”

I didn’t know the Ambrose references and I appreciate your having supplied them. However, it does not surprise me that Ambrose agreed with Augustine because the uniqueness of the Incarnation was most definitely a key point of Christian doctrine.

It seems to me, though, that you may be missing some important points about the meaning of the true and undisputed epiphany of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove at the Baptism in the Jordan. Those points are:

A. The meaning of “incarnation” vis a vis “epiphany.” It is not clear to me that you understand what “incarnation” means. It does not mean “taking a human form.” Incarnation means taking the bodily form into the reality of the person so that the person becomes embodied, while remaining spiritual, such that it is the body that is taken up and becomes part of the hypostatic union with divinity. None of the prior epiphanies involved a “hypostatic union,” which is why Ambrose refers to them as “appearances.

B. Thus, based on the example of His appearance at the Baptism at the Jordan, the Holy Spirit could have appeared in any prior epiphany, particularly since the epiphanies often did not involve taking the form of a human being, and

C. You write that the “Holy Spirit could not be the Angel of the Lord because a spirit is without bodily form, nor man-like (Luke 24:39).” This seems to miss the point. Each person of the Trinity is a spirit and not “man-like” in their divine nature. Moreover, the point of Jesus disclaiming what you synopsize God being man-like isn’t to assert that God might manifest as a dog or a dove, but to hyperbolically drive the point home that God is Spirit. Hence, the problem with your analysis is that the Holy Spirit manifested bodily – as you now concede – in the form of a dove. But since being embodied as a dove is being in a bodily form, then clearly nothing clearly prevents earlier manifestations as fire or as angels from having been the Holy Spirit. (N.B. Angels are no more “men” than they are “doves.”)

D. Again, this leads in the direction of Mormonism, which as you may know posits that God and the Son have bodies of “flesh and bone,” while the Spirit has a spiritual body, which is really, really fine-grained matter. Now, again, there is nothing wrong with that, except that orthodox Christianity has always affirmed the immateriality and spirituality of God and the Trinity.

2. You write “The incarnation of Christ is imperative to the Christian faith. I hold that OT christophanies were not incarnations, but rather revelations of the pre-incarnate Christ.”

My prior arguments was to the effect that this conclusion is not compelled by the text. My further argument is the appeal to “fittingness.” To wit, why do you feel that this conclusion is more fitting – more consonant with what we know of the Gospel - than its competitor?

My argument against your position is also based on “fittingness.” I think that the Incarnation is so important and so unique that while angelic visitations prefigure the Incarnation, if we believe that Christ was actually making those appearances, that view threatens to undermine the uniqueness of the Incarnation. It’s as if Christ were making some off-Broadway appearance before hitting the big time.

Likewise, these prior epiphanies are all too easy to confuse with the Incarnation – which I think you’ve done twice, but even if it was just a problem with grammar, my point is made.

3. Irenaeus and the vision of God.

The point that I was making was that we do not and cannot see the divine nature of God with just our physical eyes.  When people saw Jesus, they certainly saw God, but they saw God in his human nature.

You do provide an interesting quote from Irenaeus, but it seems to miss the point of this discussion.

Irenaeus is talking about “seeing” God in various non-physical ways, e.g., “For God is powerful in all things, having been seen at that time indeed, prophetically through the Spirit, and seen, too, adoptively through the Son; and He shall also be seen paternally in the kingdom of heaven….”

It is clear that in the after-life the saved will see the divine nature of God directly by vision. Apparently, thought, the damned won’t according to, I believe, Augustine. So, if you show up at the Last Judgment and Jesus looks like just a guy, you know you are in some trouble.

Now that’s funny but the serious point is that without God’s assistance – his Grace - to see His Divine nature, we can’t do it with our natural senses. Similarly, Irenaeus talks about how we can see God in various ways that are analogous to seeing with our vision but are not, in fact, seeing by our eyes.

Epiphanies are quite to the contrary. Anyone can see them. That’s the point. That’s why Augustine talks about epiphanies being creatures that are observable by natural senses.

4. You write “Just to clarify, I am not a Mormon. I believe in one God. I hold that the form in which Christ appeared is irrelevant to the fact that the Son was seen in the OT.”

I don’t know what you mean by “I hold that the form in which Christ appeared is irrelevant to the fact that the Son was seen in the OT.” It seems that there are two buried assumptions here –

A. Christ was seen in Old Testament epiphanies. This is the question at issue. Assuming it is simply begging the question.

B. The appearance – Form? Shape? Incarnate? – is irrelevant to the fact that it was Christ who appeared.

Concerning this last, I submit that it does matter. If you are assuming an Incarnation, then you are outside the “rules” of the Christian game. If the form was human, then this may foreshadow the Incarnation, but if the appearance was Christ it seems to detract from the dignity of the Incarnation by, as I noted, making it look like Christ was trying on the costume before the big show.

If the form was not human, then what happened to your reading of Luke 24:39?

5. Justin Martyr.

I agree that Justin appears to be arguing for the epiphanies being Christophanies, just as Augustine argues against that position.

The issue is why should we prefer one over the other.

A reason for preferring Justin is that it might be the case that since Justin is substantially earlier than Augustine, he would have access to an earlier tradition. But in this case, that tradition goes back to Genesis, so it is hard to see how that is sufficiently early to give him an edge in that department.

On the other hand, coming earlier, Justin wasn’t exposed to the Christological and Trinitarian debates that unfolded later from working out the implications of Christianity. I’ve already pointed out that Justin had the unfortunate habit of referring to “two gods” in his writings, which suggests that he wasn’t entirely clear on the issue of the consubstantiality of God’s nature. As such, it would have been logical for him to think that Christ was subordinate to the Father and, so, there was nothing “unfitting” about Christ trying on his role before the big show.

Augustine – writing after Nicea – doesn’t have the luxury of that kind of understanding. His understanding – our understanding – is that the Father and the Son are consubstantial. As such, we have to re-think Justin’s understanding to make sure it accords with – or is the best explanation of – the data in light of our new understanding.

Hence, Augustine is to be preferred.

I would very much be interested in your explaining to me why we should prefer Justin to Augustine on this issue.

6. “If you hold that the Son “is not totally present for His followers to see”, how then do you interpret the transfiguration or even Mark 16:14?”

That’s a good question, and a bit complicated.

Aquinas explains the Transfiguration as a moment when Christ assumed bodily the supernatural gift of clarity, which all resurrected bodies will have, along with subtlety, agility and impassibility.

Certain Orthodox theologians have viewed the Transfiguration in a different way that gets very mystical and may traipse off into heresy.

In any event, the light of the transfiguration was a visible light, not a metaphor or a spiritual experience.

7. “Worshipping” Angels.

Your exegesis of how Lot was just showing respect to some strangers ignores Augustine. Augustine described Lot as “worshipping” and specifically says that obviously Lot knew they were angels because he wouldn’t have “worshipped” them otherwise.

Even if we understand Lot’s actions as proskynesis short of the worship given to God – something I am perfectly comfortable with – Augustine’s point is that such exaggerated respect is something given to angels.

Similarly, when we see the same thing in Judges and Revelations, why should we assume that it isn’t the same kind of exaggerated respect that people gave to angels as a matter of routine? That’s the clear implication of Augustine’s observations.

Two additional points.

A. I think we go with Augustine on this one because he understood the customs of a non-democratic culture than you or I.

B. I’ve seen a bit of self-serving blindness on this one. People who would accuse a Catholic of “worshipping” a statue of Mary by praying before it seem to have no problem with claiming that Lot, Manue and John were not “worshipping” angels by dropping face-first before them. The problem is that we don’t understand the gradations of “worship” – which means showing reverence or respect – and we don’t have categories between “worship of God” and “respect for superiors.”

8. Manoah.

First, “abundant” may be a name of God, but I’m not comfortable with that conclusion.

The “pro” argument is from the following:

"On the contrary, Ambrose says (De Fide ii) that "Splendor" is among those things which are said of God metaphorically."

And

"On the contrary, It is written (Exodus 15:3): "The Lord is a man of war, Almighty is His name."

“Abundance” is not so dissimilar to “almighty” and “splendor.”

And, yet, when God speaks of Himself, he says “I am who am.”

Further, “almighty” and “splendor” are names of God that are ascribed by humans as metaphors for God. It’s hard to see God doing that. Did Ted Williams ever introduce himself by saying that he was the “Splendid Splinter.” I don’t see that happening.

Concerning the reference to God, I’ll note that Manue said it, but Manue also said “we will die because we have seen God.” Manue did not die. Why is it not the case that the reason he didn’t die is because he hadn’t seen God? It seems the better argument from the text is that this was not an epiphany.

Concerning fire and speaking as God, that’s where we started this discussion. Augustine offers an explanation for the latter.

So kicking it to you, I’m curious.

1. You have never interacted with Augustine’s explanation – as I have done with Irenaeus and Justin. What do you think is the problem is, if anything, with Augustine's explanation?

2. How is it that you think the proposition that the epiphanies were Christophanies is more consonant with the entirety of Christian doctrine than Augustine’s position?

Climbing the Ladder of Inference.

Michael Flynn explains how we move from facts to conclusions and back to facts again.

Murray Gell-Mann on Truth and Beauty.

More on Teleology, including the Final Cause of Beauty.

A lawyer - but not me - writes:

Jim and Peter,


Jim introduced the words vs. meaning discussion in response to my proposition that,

“First, the fact that we choose (some would say, are evolutionarily driven) to assign meaning to something, doesn’t prove that there’s any meaning there beyond our arbitrary assignment of meaning.”

My point was really pretty simple-minded, and I hope that it’s not necessary to get into the linguistic tall grass on this issue, because I haven’t given the linguistic aspects a great deal of thought, much less study.

When I refer to “objective” or “arbitrary/subjective” meaning, I am referring to the question of whether the meaning that was assigned represents a truth that should apply to everyone similarly situated, or just to the person who assigned the meaning. (N.B., I typically use “arbitrary” and “subjective” interchangeably, but am open to being persuaded that one should distinguish between them.)

In these terms, objective meaning exists when a proposition has falsifiability (a la Popper). Jim mentioned the proposition that “It is raining.” While it may or may not, in fact, be raining, the proposition that it is raining is a testable one, so regardless of whatever words are used to express that proposition, it is one that has an objective meaning.

I do not know whether he miswrote or I misread, but I interpret Peter’s second paragraph in his email below to define all meaning in terms that I would describe above as objective. Perhaps Peter does not include statements of values, opinions, etc. as being “propositions”.

However, we all know that there are statements that reflect meanings that are subjective. Just try answering a woman’s question, “Do these pants make my butt look fat?” Or, a more current example: “Millionaires and billionaires should pay their fair share of taxes!”

Statements or propositions of opinion, judgments, values are inherently subjective: reasonable, informed people can disagree. The exception would be where there is some external authority (logic, revelation) that converts them into universal truths.

Craig has raised an interesting point in this area, when he talks about elevating beauty to a status above truth (or, perhaps, knowledge). In my terms, in order to do that he must believe that there is an objective standard of beauty. I do not share such a belief in objective beauty – it really is in the eye of the beholder, and judgments on beauty differ among cultures, individuals within cultures, and over time. Nonetheless, I love the image that Craig poses of, “Dame Beauty stands there with a ferule smacking the knuckles of Truth.” My world is so much more prosaic! Alas.

In sum, I think that all of us in this discussion probably agree that materialists act as though there are propositions that are very important in their lives (such as moral judgments that others should live by), which they treat as objective, but which science cannot reach one way or the other. I also suspect (but cannot prove) that science never will be able to do so, because the nature of those propositions is not falsifiable in a Popperian sense.

Where Jim and I tend to disagree is the extent to which logic can suffice, or revelation is required, to deal with that sort of proposition, and that’s a different discussion entirely.

An English professor responds:

Let me say rather that Beauty raps our idea of Truth on the knuckles to push us in the direction of greater Truth. In describing reality, physicists are right to distrust ugly equations.

On the fat buttocks issue, it is much more politic to go with the idea that beauty and truth are subjective, but line up a panel of experts and they'll be at least as close in their assessments as olympics diving judges.

I don't think that beauty is merely subjective. Has anyone read Umberto Eco's The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas? That looks like a good place to start thinking.

My response:

Russ, all -

Subjective, objective and arbitrary -

The point I was making is that all propositions/meanings are discovered outside the person for who experiences the meaning or states the proposition. Things are meanings or propositions because they are about something, and that something is not arbitrary or pure subjectivity. Even the proposition contained in the statement like "I like ice cream" is about something - ice cream and my preference for it - and however much it may be about my subjective preference, it is not "arbitrary."

A point here is that propositions that are apparently "subjective" are still "objective" in the sense that propositions are truer or falser to the extent that they are a product of the mind and the mind seeks the truth, which means the conformance of the mind to reality. The reality in the statement "I like ice cream" is that I really do prefer this thing called ice cream.

Beauty -

Classical philosophy recognized that truth, beauty, goodness and being are fundamentally the same thing. Something cannot be good without actually existing. Something cannot be beautiful without existing. Something cannot be true without existing. Something cannot be beautiful without also being good. Something cannot be beautiful without also being true.

And something cannot be true without being beautiful.

As Gilson, and others. point out, an odd meta-principle used by scientists in deciding the truth of a theory is whether it is beautiful. In this sense "beauty" means simplicity, elegance, fruitfulness and the ability to explain facts without ugly epicycles.

This is one indication that beauty is not "arbitrary" and that it is an objective fact of reality.

Another indication is illustrated by the question of whether a beautiful sunset would be any less beautiful if no one was there to appreciate it?

A third indication is that there are things that are universally understood to transcend time and culture in their beauty.

I suspect that before the Modern era the assertion that beauty is purely a matter of taste would be incomprehensible. In the Modern era, it seems apparent that art has seen a departure away from the classical ideas of beauty that has sent it in search of idiosyncratic meanings.

There can be beauty in such art because there can be art and goodness in such art, but it may be more debatable because such art is not trying to ascend the ladder of existence to the highest place where beauty, truth, goodness and existence are unified.

Modernity denies the unity of truth, goodness, beauty and existence or that there can be an ordering of beauty or truth or goodness or existence. A casualty of this attitude is that Modernity denies people the virtues by which they can decide whether something is more beautiful than another thing.

This attitude leads us to our confusion about subjectivity and objectivity of beauty. Let's say there is a questionable bit of Modern Art. I say it is ugly; an art critic says it is beautiful. Who is right? The answer is not that we are both right. The answer is that there is beauty in the art - and there has to be because the art exists and therefore has being and therefore has goodness insofar, at least, as it exists - but neither one of us may be properly ordered with respect to our appreciation of beauty.

Let's consider the clear case of disorder and the good and the beautiful. In movies and books about serial killers, it is a cliche to have the killer describe their deeds as being works of art. This seems like nuts - and it is - but insofar as executing a plan efficiently and cleverly can be called beautiful, then the precise, meticulous murders of serial killers of fiction are beautiful.

The problem is that serial killings are not ordered toward the human good or to love. Because they aren't ordered to the human good and love, whatever "beauty" there is in such things is warped, distorted and disordered. Things that are warped, distorted and disordered are things that essentially lack existence or the good that is proper to them, and things that lack their proper good also lack their proper beauty. They are, in a word, ugly.

Similarly, because Modern Art denies the traditional ordering of beauty toward love or humanity it creates things that are distorted, warped and disordered. It seems obvious to any objective person that Modernity has been singularly responsible tor generating the most mediocre and ugly art ever created in the history of man.

In other words, the denial of telos leads to the belief that all things are subjective which leads to the loss of meaning and leads to ugliness.

An English Professor's additur:

Taking Yosemite Valley as a less fraught example than the human form, isn't the fact that so many people are astounded by it, and that they have to go to Yosemite Valley itself to be fully astounded, no matter how many memories they have, indicate that the beauty and sublimity of the place reside there, with at least a measure of independence from the minds that apprehend it? What Peter says makes sense to me. Beauty reveals an underlying order, which is itself intellectually beautiful, and also true. Keats got the right message from the Grecian Urn.

 

Now, is the time we do the dance of joy.

Amazon is releasing the entire Dumarest of Terra series  on Thursday - all 35 books of never-ending cliches involving the emotionless Cyclan, affinity twins and a stoic guy with amazing reflexes and a way with the ladies who just wants to find his lost birthplace, a planet shrouded in legend called Earth.

It's cheese-tastic!

Actually, it looks like Amazon is releasing a lot golden-oldies, such as the complete L. Sprague de Camp ouvre, including "Lest Darkness Fall," and the complete John Brunner collection.

Atheist Physicist says that what is missing from scientific explanation is the answer to "why"...

...or, more technically, the "final cause."

At Bloggingheads:



The physicist - David Deutsch - also asserts that information perpetuates itself, which sounds an awful lot like the "substantial form" of Aristotle and Aquinas.

Is "Meaning" the Ghost in the Machine?

Is it the case that while words can be arbitrary, meanings - or propositions - can never be arbitrary?


"Meanings", it seems to me, are developed, constructed or drawn from "truth" in the sense that "truth" is the "conformity of the mind" to what really is "the case." (Which is an Aquinas meets Wittgenstein mashup.)

So, meanings are "discovered" outside of the "meaning being," which means that they are not invented by the "meaning being" and so cannot be arbitrary.

But meanings - or propositions - are not material entities. They can't be measured, weighed, scanned, seen or tested by the methods of science in themselves. As Etienne Gilson notes in "From Aristotle to Darwin & Back Again: A Journey in Final Causality, Species and Evolution."

"Since he himself is a material being, the knowledge of the scientist is assuredly tied to matter, but it is not matter.We have seen the face of Einstein, but have we seen his knowledge (savoir), his thought ceaselessly moving between two or more possible physical universes? We have heard his voice, which was sensible, but how is it that we have perceived the sense of the words he pronounced? If there is that which is knowable, and that which is known, then there is that which is immaterial, and since it is tied to our body, which is sensible, the knowable then exists in the sensible. There is a fact which constitutes one of the oldest constants of philosophy. The inevitability of Platonism, in its own right or mediated through Aristotle, comes visibly to the surface here. Since only knowledge could have conceived these things, matter then has the immaterial in it. Centuries, millennia of philosophical speculation have puzzled over the source from whence this immaterial could come. Aristotle replied before them, "From without." Translated: scientifically speaking, we do not know." (Gilson, 149)"

Without meanings or propositions, we couldn't do science. But, it seems, that (a) the most important aspect of science as a human enterprise is immaterial and (b) that most important aspect is an immaterial, metaphysical - perhaps even, supernatural - element planted right in the heart of our material universe.

Which should be a weird thought for anyone who believes that they are pure materialists.

Autism, Atheism and the Psychological Need for Definite Rules.

Vox Day points to the recent study showing a link between atheism and autism and offers several insights:

First, he takes a much deserved victory lap for spotting the relationship before Science (TM) made the same connection:

The amusing thing about the vehement reaction by many atheists to my description of their observable tendency towards socially autistic behavior is that it was not only based on my personal observations over the years, but also by the Asperger's Quotient results proudly reported by dozens of the Internet's most militant atheists. But the link should have always been obvious because it is logically inevitable. Even if one believes that a god is nothing but a social construct, it should not be hard to grasp that a degree of social dysfunction would tend to inhibit one's understanding of those constructs.


Now, obviously god-blindness will take a variety of forms, just as color-blindness does. My belated discovery of my own very mild color-blindness has, in some ways, helped me understand what Brent Rasmussen once described as a missing sense more than my longtime agnosticism ever did. You can explain it to me all you like, you can walk me slowly and patiently through all the lines on the image, but I am still not going to see it. Even if I trust that it is there, I simply cannot see it and no amount of desire allows me to detect it. It is perhaps worth recalling that just as my color-blindness is totally undetectable by others whereas the total or red-green versions are readily observable to anyone paying attention to the individual's behavior, god-blindness is not going to automatically translate into full blown New Atheist social autism.

Next, he points out that atheists - let's say, to be more precise, the New Atheists - worship reason rather than use it as a tool:

What is slightly misleading about the article's description of these socially autistic individuals is that what is described as a "preference for logical beliefs" should actually be phrased as a "preference for beliefs that appear to be logical". For, as we have repeatedly seen, socially dysfunctional atheists tend to be extraordinarily illogical, to such an extent that they will deny the existence of straightforward dictionary definitions in use for hundreds of years in order to cling to their pseudo-logic.

It's not so much logic as static rules that appeal to them. Where the cognitive deficiency is revealed is in their inability to understand that the decision tree they have adopted with quasi-religious fervor is insufficiently dynamic. I suspect it is somehow related to their concomitant emotional immaturity, as I see a similar problem with static decision trees all the time in children's soccer.

For example, you might tell a young defender to closely mark #12 because he is the most dangerous striker on the other team. Then you will watch in disbelief as that defender obediently stays wide and out of the play at #12's side instead of moving into the center and attacking the other striker who has the ball and is heading for a shot on goal. What the young defender doesn't understand that the order to mark the one player is a conditional one and that the order should no longer be considered in effect once a greater danger to the goal presents itself. So, it's necessary to keep building more and more complex decision trees as the player develops until the light bulb goes off, the logical bases underlying all the various trees are finally understood, and the defender can begin thinking and analyzing the situations for himself rather than simply attempting to identify which branch of the decision tree applies to the present situation.

Vox is absolutely right, as any parent will tell you.  Children are uncomfortable with uncertainty and want definite rules, particularly if the rules work in their favor.  A sign of growing maturity is the ability to live with the uncertain, the vague and the ambiguous.

This mindset is probably what lies beneath the gibe, "scratch an atheist, find a fundamentalist."  Atheist interpretations of the bible are often more woodenly literal than the most woodenly literal fundamentalist.  While we might chalk this up as a polemical posture, the reality might well be that they just don't understand things like "metaphor" and "hyperbole."
Of course, this suggests that our response to these kinds of bad arguments should not be to accuse atheists of "bad faith," but to have sympathy for them as limited human beings.
 
Vox concludes:

An inability or dislike for processing dynamic if-then situations has nothing to do with logic per se, it is simply a need for clear-cut rules that remove any necessity for active thinking. To the socially autistic, both "Science" and "Reason" are perceived as The Legitimate Rulegivers and they represent far more than the simple tools they are to the neurotypical. Of course, it is more than a little ironic that those who claim to be freethinkers and paragons of logic are actually exhibiting illogical behavior that is fundamentally based on an aversion to thinking.

Hence the idea of "worshipping reason," not using it.

It is like Chesterton's insight into insanity:

Indeed, the common phrase for insanity is in this respect a misleading one. The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.


The madman's explanation of a thing is always complete, and often in a purely rational sense satisfactory. Or, to speak more strictly, the insane explanation, if not conclusive, is at least unanswerable; this may be observed specially in the two or three commonest kinds of madness. If a man says (for instance) that men have a conspiracy against him, you cannot dispute it except by saying that all the men deny that they are conspirators; which is exactly what conspirators would do. His explanation covers the facts as much as yours. Or if a man says that he is the rightful King of England, it is no complete answer to say that the existing authorities call him mad; for if he were King of England that might be the wisest thing for the existing authorities to do. Or if a man says that he is Jesus Christ, it is no answer to tell him that the world denies his divinity; for the world denied Christ's.

Nevertheless he is wrong. But if we attempt to trace his error in exact terms, we shall not find it quite so easy as we had supposed. Perhaps the nearest we can get to expressing it is to say this: that his mind moves in a perfect but narrow circle.

Chesterton, Orthodoxy, Chapter 2.

After same-sex marriage...

...the next step will be to bar the Catholic Church and other churches that refuse to perform same-sex marriages from performing any marriage.

The move is afoot in Britain.

So much for the lie that same-sex marriage is about freedom and equal respect for everyone.

Jew, janitor, whatever.

Shades of Clinton - Are we are at the point where people are deconstructing Obama's gaffes for deeper psychological significance?

New gaffe: Obama confuses Jews with janitors:

Here is what the president actually said, catching himself almost in time but not quite:

If asking a billionaire to pay the same tax rate as a Jew, uh, as a janitor makes me a warrior for the working class, I wear that with a badge of honor. I have no problem with that.

The president has been muffing lines all over the place recently. Last week, also peddling his jobs plan at a bridge that won't qualify, he hailed America's building of "the Intercontinental Railroad." You don't seem to hear much about these gaffes in the media for some reason.

Maybe in Saturday night's speech Obama was thinking about all those talks on Israel in New York.

At least when George Bush mangled a sentence, there was no deeper subtext.

Amazon Book Review - Etienne Gilson,  "From Aristotle to Darwin & Back Again: A Journey in Final Causality, Species and Evolution."

Go here and give me a "helpful" vote.

"Not for everyone, but useful for those with a deep interest in the project of  science," September 25, 2011


By Peter S. Bradley "Peter Sean Bradley"

Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)

This review is from: From Aristotle to Darwin & Back Again: A Journey in Final Causality, Species and Evolution (Paperback)

This book is a lot like physical exercise; difficult, occasionally enjoyable, often a slog, but worthwhile after the fact.

Gilson's book is not facially anti-Darwinian. Gilson's real concern is in defending the idea of final cause or teleology in biology from those who would say that such an idea has been disproven by science. Final cause, or teleology, is the idea that things are directed towards some end, either by something external to themselves or by their own internal existence. Gilson's argument is that Darwinism either doesn't disprove teleology because Darwin's method of science isn't interested in science or that Darwinism actually incorporates teleology by its incorporation of the idea of "evolution" itself.

Gilson is primarily writing as a historian of science and philosopher. Consequently, is method of analysis is historical. He reviews the history of ideas, rather than criticizing evolution or Darwin on a scientific basis. On the whole, Gilson appears to be quite sympathetic to Darwin as a person and a scientist.

Gilson's first chapter is on the "Aristotelian prologue." Gilson examines Aristotle's idea of final cause, and how Aristotle responded to those who would deny final cause. Gilson points out that Aristotle's interest in biology led him to conclude that there was clear and convincing evidence of final cause in the biological world. This evidence grew out of Aristotle's observations that natural things developed regularly and orderly in the direction of an end, e.g., calves grew up to be cows and seed grew up to be plants. Moreover, things in nature develop to a "limit." Calves grow up to be cows, and then develop no more, which implies a limit or an end toward their development. Aristotle's observations - based as they were on truth - carried the day, and from Aristotle onward, any person who sought to examine nature was compelled to include in their description some idea of final cause.

Gilson's next chapter is on the "Mechanist Objection." In a nutshell, that objection, formulated by Rene Descarte and Francis Bacon, was that science ought to be useful, and that final cause was not useful. Gilson observes that the Aristotelian approach found its end in the "contemplation" of nature, and that "contemplation" was tied up with appreciating "final cause." Gilson notes that for scientists, the appreciation for the truth of a theory is often related to an appreciation of the beauty of a theory, which is itself tied up in the wonder of "final cause." However, a scientific approach that incorporates final cause may find that science is being "retarded" in its ability to produce practical results as scientists become "critics" of nature, rather than "mechanics."

So, for Bacon and Descarte, "final cause" had to go, not because it was wrong, but because it was either not useful, or it was retarding scientists from focusing on the useful.

After clearing the ground, Gilson then addresses the history of the idea of evolution. Gilson's argument here seems to be that neither "fixism" - the idea that species were fixed from the beginning - and "transformism" - the idea that species change over time - is conceptually opposed to the idea of final cause. In fact, it seems that Darwin was not opposed to the idea of final cause, but on one occasion accepted the congratulations of a friend that he had restored final cause to science.

The truth appears to be that Darwin simply wasn't concerned with final cause. Being nurtured in an understanding of science that had developed after Bacon, final cause simply wasn't a thing that Darwin was concerned about.

Darwin's big target was the idea of "special creation." Gilson argues that when Darwin felt that his observations disproved special creation, it meant that the Bible could not be trusted by itself as an accurate description of truth. From that point on, it seems, Darwin made common cause with those "partisans" who opposed "special creation," whether or not they accepted Darwin's notion of natural selection, or its chief competitor, Lamarckianism.

One of the partisans who came into Darwin's camp, even though Darwin did not like him personally, was Herbert Spencer. It was Spencer who popularized the notion of "evolution," not Darwin. According to Gilson, in his first editions of the Origin of the Species, Darwin did not use evolution, rather he spoke of "transformation." It was Spencer who spoke of "evolution," but in Spencer's usage evolution had a clear teleology in that their was an internal dynamic by which things progressed from the simple to the complex. Eventually, Darwin began to speak of his theory as "evolution," but by doing so he incorporated, sotto voce, Spencer's teleology.

Gilson discusses other contributors to Darwinism. His take-down of Parson Thomas Malthus is a must-read example of ironically damning someone with faint praise.

So, Darwinism, or "evolution", did not eliminate the notion of final cause, and how could it if final cause is true? Rather, Darwinism is either irrelevant to the notion of final cause, or it incorporates that notion without explicitly acknowledging that it does.

Gilson ends his book by explaining why we ought to continue to think that final cause is necessary for our understanding of truth. That reason primarily is that we see it all around us, even if we don't have a mechanistic explanation for it. Gilson notes, for example, that one of the things that we see in evolutionary development is a progress toward individuation: slime mold is less individual than plants which are less individual than bees which are less individual than cows which are less individual than lions which are less individual than human beings, who have a mind and self-awareness. Is this observation wrong? No. Can it be explained mechanistically? No. Does this teleology, showing a development toward limits, exist? Yes.

Is this science? Probaby not, but it seems to be "common sense" as that term was classically understood as meaning a first order inference from undisputed facts and ideas. To paraphrase a source quoted by Gilson, scientists need to be careful in ruling out "common sense" because where the results of a scientific inquiry conflict too strongly with common sense, it may not be common sense that it wrong.

Gilson concludes by pointing out that final cause may not be scientifically useful, but it is a necessary concept for understanding reality, and it is attested to by numerous real world examples. Its truth may not be scientifically verifiable, but many things we take for granted are not scientifically verifiable. The meaning of ideas, for example, is not scientifically verifiable. We hear words, but the meanings behind the sounds and symbols that are words cannot be measured. Meanings are sense independent, and, in fact, immaterial. Does that mean that meanings don't exist?

Likewise, science relies a variety of theoretical principles to reach its conclusions, including Occam's razor, the principle of least action, etc. Why are those things any more true and real than final cause? Gilson concludes with the following:

"Compared to generalizations such as the principle of least action, economy of thought, and other similar ones, the notion of natural teleology cuts a modest figure. It can be reproached for being anthropomorphic, but in a science which is the work of man, what is not? Furthermore, the important thing is to know whether or not it expresses a fact given in nature for if we object to final causality as an explanation, it remains as a fact to be explained."

Gilson's book is difficult, but I think that on reflection - and reflection is required to put together Gilson's arguments - it pays dividends.

The Christocentricity of Automobile Insurance...

...because, after all is said and done, who is The Good Neighbor?

With tongue planted in cheek, Msgr. Charles Pope exegetes a State Farm commercial:

Well, I’m at it again. I saw the State Farm commercial in the video below and something said to me, “Pay attention this is a parable about the Kingdom.” And upon further reflection, Indeed it is. You will call me crazy, but please add that I was crazy for Christ. I am also aware that I am reading into the commercial what the creators did not likely intend. But there’s just something about the way biblical archetypes still find their way into our culture. Let’s look more closely at this commercial.


Perhaps we do well to look at it by analyzing the dramatis personae (cast of characters) and weaving in the plot.

As the scene opens there are three women who come upon a car belonging to one of them. The car has been damaged. The three women may be likened to three different kinds of Christian and there is also a Christ figure who makes appearance:

There is the sensible Christian, the woman in the center. She owns the car and, upon seeing the damage, is unfazed. She knows exactly what to do. She summons her State Farm agent who appears as if out of nowhere. She trusts him to handle everything and even encourages her friends to call on him.

Her State Farm agent is a Christ figure. He wears a red tie, reminding us of theblood that was shed for us. He has a book in his hand, wherein everything is recorded. He arrives not only to bring help, but also to make a judgement, and thus he consults his book and goes to work (cf Rev 20:12ff). His name is “Rich” (cf 2 Cor 8:9). Later, in the ad, he will rebuke the darkness.

A second woman to the left is a worldly Christian. Though the Christ figure stands in her midst, she ignores him and wants to see if she can come up with her own State Farm agent, an agent of her own making. For, it would seem the one standing there does not please her. She wants one who is cute and more “warm and sensitive.” Creature comforts, and an unchallenging agent, is what she wants, one who will be more soothing and surely not one who is dressed in a business suit (as is the Christ figure with the red tie, for he means business).

A third woman to the right is a carnal Christian. She is lustful, impetuous, daring and wants a man who is the same. She hardly makes notice of the Christ figure, except to powerfully reject him with a sneer. She calls for her “agent” and he appears. He is rouge, a thug really, lustful, arrogant, irresponsible, and immature. He is the perfect projection of her carnal, lustful and fallen nature, and you can see it in the glint of her eye. She calls him “Darkside.”

In the background the Christ figure just keeps working as if to say, My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working (Jn 5:17).

But now the carnal thug is sitting on the car, sitting on the kingdom if you will. And so the Christ figure says to him: Hey Darkside! Get off the car! As if to say, Begone, Satan.

Yes, there it is, the Light rebuking the darkness, scattering it

Clever.

Here is the commercial.

By their fruits you will know them.....

...and if the results of a moral philosophy results in a policy that requires lies or ignorance, maybe the problem is in the first principles of the philosophy.

Vox Day writes:

Unsurprisingly, the advance of technology is rapidly forcing pro-abortion feminists into severe logical contortions:

The Council of Europe is due to consider a draft resolution in October which recommends that all its 47 member states - including Britain - instruct hospitals to "withold information about the sex of the foetus" from parents. The move is a bid to prevent the practice of selective abortion, which they say has reached worrying proportions in some former Soviet states.... Now, a survey of maternity units in England discloses that several are already refusing to share the information.

What a pity scientists never managed to find that gay gene. Then we would be presented with the spectacle where women only possessed "the right to choose" so long as she was carrying a normal male child. But how interesting that a woman's "right" to her own body doesn't appear to extend to the knowledge of what is in it.

Here is the linked article.

False Rape Statistics.

These facts are literally breathe-taking:

How would the Justice Department respond if 25% of all black murder suspects were falsely accused of the crime by white accusers? Eric Holder would call an immediate press conference and announce he was mobilizing the national guard, the Mexican Army, and everyone who works in law enforcement to end such blatant, hateful, racist discrimination. He would, with righteous indignation, say there is much work to be done to realize the most holy Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream. A 25% false black murderer accusation rate might even incline some to believe that white people had it in for black people.


Now what if I told you that studies over the last ten years have shown that false rape accusations are likely in the ballpark of 25%, and could even be as high as 40%? Aghast, you are? Would you be inclined to think that relations between the (American) sexes had deteriorated so much that women were virtually warring against men through legal channels? Can you guess the public’s reaction to this uncomfortable truth? That’s right….. crickets.

25% of the accused in rape cases are exonerated by DNA evidence. – U.S. Department of Justice:

I don't mean the widely-circulated '1-in-4 women will be raped in their lifetime' but a statistic that suggests '1-in-4 accusations of rape are false.'


For a long time, I have been bothered by the elusiveness of figures on the prevalence of false accusations of sexual assault. The crime of 'bearing false witness' is rarely tracked or punished, and the context in which it is usually raised is highly politicized.

Politically correct feminists claim false rape accusations are rare and account for only 2 percent of all reports. Men's rights sites point to research that places the rate as high as 41 percent. These are wildly disparate figures that cannot be reconciled.

This week I stumbled over a passage in a 1996 study published by the U.S. Department of Justice: Convicted by Juries, Exonerated by Science: Case Studies in the Use of DNA Evidence to Establish Innocence After Trial.

The study documents 28 cases which, "with the exception of one young man of limited mental capacity who pleaded guilty," consist of individuals who were convicted by juries and, then, later exonerated by DNA tests.

At the time of release, they had each served an average of 7 years in prison.

The passage that riveted my attention was a quote from Peter Neufeld and Barry C. Scheck, prominent criminal attorneys and co-founders of the Innocence Project that seeks to release those falsely imprisoned.

They stated, "Every year since 1989, in about 25 percent of the sexual assault cases referred to the FBI where results could be obtained, the primary suspect has been excluded by forensic DNA testing. Specifically, FBI officials report that out of roughly 10,000 sexual assault cases since 1989, about 2,000 tests have been inconclusive, about 2,000 tests have excluded the primary suspect, and about 6,000 have "matched" or included the primary suspect."

The picture both bloggers are painting is that these claims come out of "date rape" cases, but do they? I guess this kind of statistic could be a product of bad identification in stranger rape cases, but is that really the largest category of rape cases?  Don't know. It would be interesting to get more details.

Why does the President want to discriminate against charity?

You have to wonder if this isn't part of a general attitude that the government should be the center of all activity:

A little-noticed provision in President Obama’s new $447 billion jobs bill seeks to limit tax deduction for charitable giving at 28 cents for every dollar donated, causing big waves along the front lines of those serving in rescue missions and crisis shelters across the country.

The provision in the bill will not only limit the generosity of private donors who give to rescue missions, but it will also hamper the ability of rescue missions to raise private dollars that pay for badly needed services for the hungry, homeless, abused, and addicted, these mission groups fear.

“This is a time to increase incentives for all Americans to give; it’s not a time to experiment with disincentives,” John Ashmen, president of the Association of Gospel Rescue Missions (AGRM), told The Christian Post Friday.

“There are some who argue, based on history, that those with a heart for the poor will still give, despite not having the significant tax break. But that’s not a proven fact.”

Many mission directors agree with Ashmen, saying most Americans are barely making ends meet since the economy took a dive. The well-known phrase, “one paycheck away from homeless,” is not so far-fetched for many families living in the U.S.

Slouching to Gomorrah.

To those who think that conservatives are nuts - nuts! - for thinking that our cultural arc is leading to the legalization of pedophilia, consider this:

David Norris made late-night television history Friday, appearing on the RTÉ network's Late Late Show to address the personal allegations that have derailed his Irish presidential campaign. The Irish presidency is a largely ceremonial position, a national spokesman job really, with no legislative or executive power but a good deal of cultural clout. And for months David Norris -- the openly gay, avowedly intellectual writer, Trinity College Dublin literature professor and ceremonial Irish senator -- has been challenging and reshaping the Irish cultural zeitgeist like no public figure of his time. But is that a good thing?


The allegations against him are immense. In July, a rogue pro-Israel blogger in Dublin named John Connolly published a 1997 letter -- based on a tip from "someone in the trade union movement" -- that Norris had written, on Irish Senate letterhead, to an Israeli court seeking clemency for his then-partner Ezra Nawi. Nawi's crime: the statutory rape of a 15-year old Palestinian boy. Norris' justification for his partner's actions: an ideological defense of classical pederasty traditions, based on the example set by the ancient Greeks. "I had a training as an academic," Norris told Late Late Show presenter Ryan Tubridy when faced with a 2002 radio quote he had given defending classic pedophilia. "I would draw academic distinctions."

Norris means that from a historical and literary perspective, the ancient custom by which an older man assumes responsibility for a much younger man's sexual and intellectual education holds merit. "I was a criminal," Norris explained of being gay in Ireland for much of his youth. Only at seventeen, when he found an older partner who took him out of the outlaw "darkness and confusion," did he begin to come into his own as a man.

Somewhere near Fresno, North Africa, circa the Fall of Rome.

The Sage of Selma observes:

Twice I ran into the barnyard to see the truck, with its two gangbanger youths, peel off in clouds of dust. (And, yes, as a CSU ex-professor, I know the party line: the dominant culture neglects/exploits/oppresses/fill in the blanks the “other” to such a degree that he sometimes must lash out, or, on occasion, to find validation, might just do something illegal like steal buckets of antique nails, or illogical, like in poverty buying a new truck, and thus so disturbs/finally wins the attention of those with privilege and their self-constructed norms. Been there and heard that for thirty years).


The Toyota is always around when theft occurs, and always speeding off when anyone spots it. Rural California is also like North Africa circa 420 AD: the few family farms left are mostly fenced or walled, the dogs large, the owners armed — trying to survive against organized Vandal attacks. All we need are mosaics in the courtyard portraying happier times as a testament to future archeologists. Maybe a “Cave Canem!” on the doorstep.

But what makes the comparison to North Africa most apt is the settlement pattern.

In Roman North Africa, there were Latin-speaking cities surrounded by a population living in the hinterlands and in surrounding hamlets and towns that spoke the native language.  In Central California, we have a similar patterns where the larger population centers - Fresno, Visalia, Madera - are surrounded by smaller towns where the lingua franca is Spanish.

To anyone with a historical turn of mind, that is just a bit disturbing.

People who don't believe in God don't believe in nothing; they believe in anything and everything.

Fans of The Da Vinci Code - and other conspiracy nuts - use their view of conspiracy as a way of dealing with their fear of death.

Carl Olsen points to a recent study that connects belief in conspiracies with anxiety about dying:

Belief in 'Da Vinci Code' Conspiracy May Ease Fear of Death [LiveScience.com, Sept. 16, 2011]

What seems at first glance to perhaps be something a silly bit of pseudo-academic nonsense is actually quite the opposite. The article is about a study—"The functional nature of conspiracy beliefs: Examining the underpinnings of belief in the Da Vinci Code conspiracy"—conducted by Anna Newheiser, a doctoral student in social psychology at Yale University, that examines why people fall for the conspiracy theories presented by Dan Brown in his best-selling, worst-written novel. But why use Brown's novel?

"The Da Vinci Code" was a good starting point, Newheiser said, because unlike other conspiracy believers, Da Vinci conspiracy believers are not marginalized as tin-foil hat types.

The researchers gathered college students who had read the book and conducted two studies. In the first, they asked 144 students to rate their agreement with Da Vinci conspiracy beliefs, such as "The church has burned witches and other 'heretics' to keep the truth about Jesus hidden." The students also filled out questionnaires about their religiosity, biblical knowledge, enjoyment of "The Da Vinci Code" novel or movie, and their fear of death. They also answered questions about New Age beliefs, such as "The whole cosmos is an unbroken living whole that modern man has lost contact with."

The study (which can be purchased online) revealed some findings that are more than a little interesting:

The students most likely to believe the conspiracies in Brown's novel were those who enjoyed the book the most, expressed the most New Age beliefs, and felt the most anxiety about dying. People who were religious, knowledgeable about the Bible and desiring of social approval, on the other hand, tended not to buy into the Da Vinci conspiracy.

Next, the researchers called 50 of the original students back and presented them with historical evidence that the Da Vinci conspiracy is false. They found that among the most religious participants, this counterevidence lessened the belief in the conspiracy. Nonreligious participants, however, did not budge.

The study, published online Sept. 7 in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, is preliminary, Newheiser said. But the finding that people with death anxiety are more likely to believe in the Da Vinci conspiracy jibes with the theory that conspiracies, as wacky as they can be, provide a sense of comfort to adherents.

Which indicates, among others things, that contra the "wisdom" of the day, religious adherents are more open to logic, arguments, and facts than are non-religious folks. But many of us religious zealots already knew that. So why are people attracted to conspiracy theories? The (partial) answer is rather commonsensical, but also revealing:

Conspiracy theories "can alleviate people's sense of loss of control by giving them a reason that things happen," Newheiser said. "In this case, it's particularly interesting because it might help people who are nonreligious or non-Christian to understand the events related to early Christian history."

Religious people have their own understanding of those events, Newheiser said, which may be why they were more easily persuaded that the Da Vinci conspiracy was false.

And much of "their own understanding of those events", as Sandra Miesel and I explained in detail in The Da Vinci Hoax: Exposing the Errors in The Da Vinci Code (Ignatius, 2004)., is based, again, in historical fact and logic. Yes, many Catholic scholars disagree about the details and meaning and such of this or that event, but they at least use what is known rather than what they wish had been the case. I've often said that one of the beautiful things about conspiracy theories is that the lack of evidence is almost always used as evidence. "Well, of course there's no evidence that Jesus was married!", exclaims Captain Conspiracy to his faithful band of merry-challenged followers, "Why? Because the Catholic Church got rid of the evidence!" Or, as Newheiser says, "There is past research showing that conspiracy beliefs don't really respond to counterevidence very well, because they're not based on logical arguments to begin with. Showing logical arguments against them doesn't change people's minds."

If nothing else, the attention being paid to Newheiser's study answers at least one question that Sandra and I put forth in the conclusion of our book, where we wrote that

The Da Vinci Code is a perfect post-modern myth, pulp fiction style. Occasionally clever and hip, it is never wise or insightful. Often cheesy, it is never artful. Seriously contrived, it is never believable or engaging. As Amy Welborn, another Da Vinci Code debunker, acidly notes, the characters are one-dimensional and the novel "is neither learned nor challenging – except to the reader’s patience. Moreover, it’s not really suspenseful, and the writing is shockingly banal, even for genre fiction. It’s a pretentious, bigoted, tendentious mess."

So what is The Da Vinci Code. Is it just a fad? A one hit wonder? A novelty novel? Will people remember it in ten years? Will it matter? Is it worth writing an entire book in response to it? We think it is necessary, especially considering the impact and influence the novel has had and continues to have. Our hope is that readers will not only consider the truth about specific topics and issues, but will agree that Truth does exist and needs to be respected. "Truth, once it is rightly apprehended", wrote Ronald Knox, "has a compelling power over men’s hearts; they must needs assert and defend what they know to be the truth, or they would lose their birthright as men."

Here is the Live Science article.
 
Here is the link to the article, which has these highlights:
 

► We examined predictors of belief in the Da Vinci Code conspiracy theory. ► Conspiracy beliefs were positively associated with death-related anxiety. ► This relationship was mediated by religious and New Age beliefs. ► Exposure to counterevidence reduced conspiracy beliefs for religious individuals. ► Conspiracy beliefs may help individuals attain a sense of meaning and security.

That last point seems intuitively true.

Galileo got off easy.

At some times and in some places, calling the monarch an "idiot" will get you a trip to the executioner.  So, when Galileo referred to his former friend and patron Pope Urban VIII as "Simplicius" - the fool - in his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief Systems ofthe World, he was just looking for trouble.

According to Io9, Galileo got into trouble for being a pompous jerk.

Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief Systems of the World came out a decade later, and became a huge success in intellectual circles. It was exactly what it was promised to be, a dialog about the two ideas. Then someone noticed something. The advocate for Copernicanism was smart and well-spoken, while the one that espoused the Aristotelian geocentric view of the solar system came off as stupid and pigheaded. Well, authors always find a way to show their intentions, and it might have ended there if people hadn't noticed that the feeble-minded geocentrist used some of the same arguments that the Pope had made during his discussions with Galileo. In some cases, he even used direct quotes of what the Pope had said. And just to underline his authorial intentions, Galileo named the geocentrist 'Simplicio' - the Simpleton.

The friendship that Galileo had enjoyed was broken, with a vengeance. He was hauled into Rome and brought before Inquisition, this time not of his own accord. The private warning, and the official Injunction that had been given to him in 1616, were brought forward, and things were looking bleak. Galileo defended himself with technicalities. Although the Injunction had been issued, it had not been signed or properly processed (even in the 1600s, all court systems had bureaucracy). While it was true, he said, that he did discuss Copernicanism, his book was an examination of both sides and so he was technically not 'arguing in favor of it.' While these arguments were technically true, the Church would have been more inclined to come down in favor of technicalities in the case of someone who had refrained from publicly calling the Pope a dummy.

It was not technicalities that saved Galileo, but whatever powerful friends he had left and his own celebrity status. Galileo clung to technicalities, and insisted that he did not remember the earlier informal warnings not to 'hold or argue' heliocentrism. The counsel before which he appeared debated the possible punishments, before deciding that he should be "condemned to imprisonment at the pleasure of the Holy Congregation." The Pope, still smarting, resisted all efforts to end Galileo's house arrest, even towards the end of the man's life. He also demanded a public renunciation, during which he probably smiled and muttered, "Who's Simplicio now?"

Slouching toward the New Kulturkampf - Part II.

The Obama administration is cracking down on Catholic institutions through the bureaucracy:

The simple fact of the matter is that the Obama administration is threatening the religious liberty of even the most faithful of Catholic institutions. These threats come from not only from HHS; they come from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which claims Belmont Abbey College violated federal nondiscrimination laws by refusing insurance coverage for contraception. They come from the National Labor Relations Board, which has claimed jurisdiction over Catholic colleges’ union negotiations. They come through the Education Department, which issued new regulations forcing states to be more proactive in chartering colleges, thereby tying student aid to a potentially political process that threatens overtly religious colleges. And there is increasing state discrimination against religious institutions with regard to same-sex marriage and contraception.


Catholics nationwide need to stand up and demand that the Obama Administration repeal the new health-care regulations that blatantly violate our religious freedom. The bishops have made it simple at their website here.

Slouching toward the new Kulturkampf.

James V. Schall speculates about the future:

Catholics have little legal future in this country except as a narrow, strictly defined sect. Catholic law schools, lawyers, and politicians have proved mostly ineffective or indeed abettors in the process by which “human rights” are used, step by seemingly logical step, to eliminate Catholics from the public order. Much has already occurred. The “Catholics” who are the prime target are those who hold and live the central teachings of reason and faith. Those who do not, matter little.

Addressing a new Health and Human Services mandate concerning availability of abortions, contraceptives, and other such items, the Auxiliary Bishop of Washington, Barry Knestout, wrote:

In implementing the new health care reform law, HHS issued a rule that would require private health care plans nationwide to cover contraception and sterilization as “preventive services” for women. The mandate includes abortifacients, which have the capacity to terminate a pregnancy in early weeks. Never before has the federal government required private health plans to include such coverage.

The District of Columbia Human Rights Commission has interfered in the Catholic University of America’s policy of same-sex dorms for college students. This policy is “sex discrimination,” not permitted in the District. These and other governmental initiatives are only the beginning.

Almost everything is now in place for a full-scale legal persecution of the Church, all concocted under the aegis of government protection of “human rights.” The meaning of “rights” the government itself defines in the name of “freedom” and “equality.” It is noble-sounding, but as Plato said: “Entreaties of sovereigns are mixed with compulsion.” This admonition includes democratic sovereigns.

World News Daily (September 17) reports that PayPal investigates Christian Internet sources said to be involved in “hate language” because of their criticism of certain gay activities. Addressing this issue is not affirmation of a “right to speak,” but a subject of state investigation. Certain central teachings of Christianity will be legally prohibited as threats to “human rights.”

A situation analogous to that in China can be foreseen: an “official” break-away church that follows government decrees and an underground church that still maintains the central truths of reason and faith. One suspects that the degree of hatred for the Church is more widespread and deeper than we like to admit. The situation, however, is not so different from what Scripture would have us expect.

Things change almost too rapidly for us to appreciate their scope. With legalized same-sex “marriages,” as they are equivocally called, in which children are adopted, we will have mandates to educate them in Catholic schools as if no problem exists. The children, legally deprived of a mother or a father, will be presented as from “normal” families. Several writers have suggested that parents teaching children that problems exist with homosexual life or adoption will be investigated for “child abuse.”

The child-abuse cases themselves have shown how to undermine the financial stability of the Church. In addition to properly investigating malefactors, legal procedures have permitted lawyers to make enormous wealth from Church funds. Ironically, since most of these abuses were rooted in homosexuality, not pedophilia, the corporate Church on the one side is required to pay for the abuses and on the other is forbidden to say that anything is wrong with this form of life.

A dialogue about Theophanies.

["AJ" is in italics.]

“John 5:37 & John 6:46 make it clear that the only logical person in the trinity who could have been the Angel of the Lord is the Son. No man has seen the Father and the Scriptures never speak of the Holy Spirit being incarnated. 2 Corinthians 4:4 and Colossians 1:15 go on to state that Christ is the image of the invisible God. While the Father and the Holy Spirit are not seen, Christ is the expressed image of God meant to be seen. No, these verses do not rule out angel(s) but they do rule out the Father and the Holy Spirit as being the Angel of the Lord.”

I think with your first paragraph, you are starting to show why it is a good idea to consult the Fathers, because you are starting to make some theological missteps.

First, it is not necessarily the case that the Holy Spirit has never been “incarnated.” In the Baptism of the Jordan, the Holy Spirit descends upon Christ in the form of a dove. (Luke 3:22). That is certainly one time when the Holy Spirit took a visible form. Moreover, according to Aquinas, that was not a mere “vision”; rather, the Holy Spirit was embodied in the form of a dove.

I answer that, As stated above (Question 5, Article 1), it was unbecoming that the Son of God, who is the Truth of the Father, should make use of anything unreal; wherefore He took, not an imaginary, but a real body. And since the Holy Ghost is called the Spirit of Truth, as appears from John 16:13, therefore He too made a real dove in which to appear, though He did not assume it into unity of person. Wherefore, after the words quoted above, Augustine adds: "Just as it behooved the Son of God not to deceive men, so it behooved the Holy Ghost not to deceive. But it was easy for Almighty God, who created all creatures out of nothing, to frame the body of a real dove without the help of other doves, just as it was easy for Him to form a true body in Mary's womb without the seed of a man: since the corporeal creature obeys its Lord's command and will, both in the mother's womb in forming a man, and in the world itself in forming a dove."

And you should admit that that is a pretty surprising – and pretty cool – position to take. I know I was surprised by the bravado of this statement when I first read it. I believe that this position is intended to be anti-gnostic; namely, if the Holy Spirit was embodied in the form of a dove, how much stronger is the Christian claim that Christ was really incarnated.

Perhaps reasonable minds can differ on this point, but it’s going to be hard for you to argue for the idea that there is no dispute as to whether the Holy Spirit was ever embodied

Second, and I think more important, is that your argument devalues the Incarnation. Until the Incarnation, Jesus was never “incarnated.” If he was embodied or corporeal, that would seem to detract from the uniqueness of the Incarnation in salvation history in some, perhaps minor, way. A fortiori, according to your argument, the Holy Spirit was not embodied prior to the Incarnation.

Now, perhaps you can distinguish these prior “embodiments” from the Incarnation, but once you start down that road, you are beginning to whittle away at the most important of Christian doctrines, namely the Incarnation. We can see this in the fact that you describe the Old Testament epiphanies as “incarnations,” which shows that there is a tendency to confuse them with the Incarnation, and that can only detract from the exalted status of the Incarnation.

Third, you say that no man has seen the Father, which is absolutely true. No one, for that matter, has ever seen the Holy Spirit or the Son in their divine nature, because the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are all spiritual beings and human beingscannot see spiritual beings with our natural senses. Our eyes are able to perceive only corporeal reality; not spiritual essences. For us to see the Father, the Son or the Holy Spirit with our eyes would require that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit take on a material form. However, what we would be seeing would not be the Father, the Son or the Holy Spirit, but a form which is NOT the Father, the Son or the Holy Spirit because such material form – such as the dove – has parts and is changeable. Here is Augustine describing the issue:

It has been established by all rational probability as far as man—or rather as far as I—can work it out, and by firm authority as far as the divine words of scripture have declared it, that whenever God was said to appear to our ancestors before our savior’s incarnation, the voices heard and the physical manifestation seen were the work of angels. They either spoke and did things themselves, representing God’s person, just as we have shown that the prophets used to do, or they took created materials distinct from themselves and used them to present us with symbolic representations of God; and this too is a kind of communication which the prophets made use of, as many cases in scripture show. But now, when the Lord was born of the virgin, and when the Holy Spirit came down in bodily form like a dove, or in visible fiery tongues and a sound from heaven on the day of Pentecost after the Lord’s ascension, what appeared to the bodily senses of mortals was not the very substance of the Word of God in which he is equal to the Father and co-eternal, nor the very substance of the Spirit of the Father and the Son in which he is co-equal and co-eternal with them both, but something created which could be formed and come into being in those ways. So it remains for us to see what the difference is between those Old Testament demonstrations and these proper manifestations of the Son of God and the Holy Spirit, even though these too were achieved through the visible creation.

Saint Augustine of Hippo; John E. Rotelle; Edmund Hill (2011-01-23). The Trinity (The Works of Saint Augustine) (p. 146). New City Press. Kindle Edition.

Here is what Augustine has to say about the appearance of God to Moses on Mt. Sinai, when God showed Moses his “back”:

However all this may be, some such interpretation of the story about Moses is required;57 for we must not allow ourselves to be so befogged by literal-minded materialism that we imagine the Lord’s face to be invisible and his back visible. Both of course were visible in the form of a servant; in the form of God—away with the possibility of such thoughts! Away with the idea that the Word of God and the Wisdom of God has a face on one side and a back on the other, like the human body, or that it undergoes any local movement or periodic change in appearance whatever!

Saint Augustine of Hippo; John E. Rotelle; Edmund Hill (2011-01-23). The Trinity (The Works of Saint Augustine) (pp. 123-124). New City Press. Kindle Edition.

This underscores a fundamental theological issue. For orthodox Christians – unlike Mormons – God is not embodied. God is a spirit. When people saw the epiphanies they were not seeing God; they were seeing a created being used by God.

If we start confusing that, we find ourselves heading, perhaps, in the direction of Mormonism. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that apart from the fact that we aren’t Mormons.)

I contend that Galatians 4:4 does not rule out OT christophanies. Colossians 1:16-17 makes it clear that Christ did have an active role in the world before being incarnated in the flesh. I would say that He was sent in the flesh at the fullness of time, which I believe is what Galatians 4:4 is getting at when stating that He was “made of a woman”, and not that it was his first appearance in the world.

Your interpretation is not implausible, but here is the counter:

How then before the fullness of time (Gal 4:4), which was the right time for him to be sent, how could he be seen by the fathers before he was sent, when various angelic demonstrations were shown them, especially considering that he could not even be seen, as he is in his equality with the Father, even after he had been sent? Why, otherwise, should he say to Philip, who of course saw him in the flesh just as those who crucified him did, Am I with you all this time and you do not know me? Philip, whoever has seen me has seen the Father (Jn 14:9).84 Does this not mean that he both could and could not be seen? He could be seen as made and sent; he could not be seen as the one through whom all things were made (Jn 1:3). Or what about his saying, He that has my commandments and keeps them is the one who loves me; and whoever loves me will be loved by my Father, and I shall love him and shall manifest myself to him (Jn 14:21)? But there he was, manifest before their eyes; surely then it can only mean that he was offering the flesh which the Word had been made85 in the fullness of time86 as the object to receive our faith; but that the Word itself, through whom all things had been made (Jn 1:3), was being kept for the contemplation in eternity of minds now purified through faith.

Saint Augustine of Hippo; John E. Rotelle; Edmund Hill (2011-01-23). The Trinity (The Works of Saint Augustine) (p. 179). New City Press. Kindle Edition.

Here is the point – even after the Incarnation, there is a sense in which the Son is not totally present for his followers to see. That missing part would be his divine nature. So, the Son was “sent” to the same extent that he was “made of woman,” which implies that he was not sent before he was made of woman. (Let me point out that I think Augustine eventually decides that the term “sent” actually means “procession,” but I’m not unraveling that right now.)

Hence, no Christophanies.

I believe Justin Martyr addresses this well in his First Apology (Ch.63)

“Now the Word of God is His Son, as we have before said. And He is called Angel and Apostle; for He declares whatever we ought to know, and is sent forth to declare whatever is revealed; as our Lord Himself says, He that hears Me, hears Him that sent Me. Luke 10:16 From the writings of Moses also this will be manifest; for thus it is written in them, And the Angel of God spoke to Moses, in a flame of fire out of the bush, and said, I am that I am, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, the God of your fathers; go down into Egypt, and bring forth My people. Exodus 3:6 And if you wish to learn what follows, you can do so from the same writings; for it is impossible to relate the whole here. But so much is written for the sake of proving that Jesus the Christ is the Son of God and His Apostle, being of old the Word, and appearing sometimes in the form of fire, and sometimes in the likeness of angels; but now, by the will of God, having become man for the human race, He endured all the sufferings which the devils instigated the senseless Jews to inflict upon Him; who, though they have it expressly affirmed in the writings of Moses, And the angel of God spoke to Moses in a flame of fire in a bush, and said, I am that I am, the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, yet maintain that He who said this was the Father and Creator of the universe”

Further…. “ For they who affirm that the Son is the Father, are proved neither to have become acquainted with the Father, nor to know that the Father of the universe has a Son; who also, being the first-begotten Word of God, is even God. And of old He appeared in the shape of fire and in the likeness of an angel to Moses and to the other prophets; but now in the times of your reign, having, as we before said, become Man by a virgin, according to the counsel of the Father, for the salvation of those who believe in Him, He endured both to be set at nought and to suffer, that by dying and rising again He might conquer death.”

Justin Martyr rules out the Father as being He that spoke to Moses. He also states the Christ appeared in the likeness of an angel in the OT. Justin goes on to state that Christ appeared in various forms (fire, likeness of angels, and finally as a man). In essence, the form in which He appeared is irrelevant to the fact that He appeared physically in the OT as well as the NT.

Here is my difficulty with giving Justin Martyr a greater persuasive authority than Augustine. Justin wrote before the Council of Nicea, i.e., before the time that the consubstantial nature of the Son and the Father was defined as de fide for orthodox faith. Justin had a confused understanding of the relationship of the Father and the Son, and even went so far as to describe the Father and the Son as different “gods.” This doesn’t mean that Justin was a polytheist or heretic, but it does mean that he didn’t think through the issue of the relationship of the Father and the Son and what it meant for the equality of the persons to have the Father sending the Son as if the Son were inferior.

The point is that if you jump on Justin’s point of view, you may run the risk of gradually lapsing into Arianism, adoptionism, Mormonism or subordinationism.

Also, did Justin deal with the objections raised by Augustine? I don’t know, but knowing that would be important in trying to come to some conclusion vis a vis Justin and Augustine’s views.

“Proskynesis” is the Greek word for worship used in many of the verses involving the Angel of the Lord and worship in the LXX. The original Hebrew is Shachah.

#7812, Shachah (Strong’s definition)
bow self down, crouch, fall down flat, humbly beseech, do reverence, worship A primitive root; to depress, i.e. Prostrate (especially reflexive, in homage to royalty or God) -- bow (self) down, crouch, fall down (flat), humbly beseech, do (make) obeisance, do reverence, make to stoop, worship.

"Shachah" is applied to the worship of God many times. Yes, “shachah” can also be applied in certain instances as making obeisance to person(s) other than God, but we still must answer the question of why the Angel of the Lord accepted worship. I would say that Judges 13 is an example of this.

Manoah assumed the Angel of the Lord was a man in Judges 13:16 (based on Judges 13:8-15). The Angel of the LORD equivocates in the same verse (Jesus makes a similar type of equivocation in Matthew 19:17). Later we see the Angel of the Lord ascending in the flame of the alter and then Manoah (and wife) falling on his face to the ground (Judges 13:20). Manoah then states that it was the Lord who accepted the offering (Judges 13:23). Fire is symbolic of the presence of God in many instances (example: Exodus 40:38). The fact that the Angel of the Lord ascended in this flame leads me to believe that He was accepting the offering and thus accepting worship.

Again, it depends on what we mean by “worship.” In various languages, “worship” covers both worship of the divine and humbling oneself before a social superior. Think of how some English judges are called “Your Worship” or how different cultures have people kneel or genuflect in the presence of royalty.

We also have the example of Lot “worshipping” what are clearly angels. If we say that Lot is showing deep reverence in that case, then it is inconsistent to say that Manoah and his wife were not showing a similar reverence to an angel in their case.

I also think it is significant that the angel tells them his name is “wonderful” or “abundant.” Is that a name of God? I don’t think so.

Also, I notice that it is Manue who says that they have seen God. The fact that Manue says it doesn’t make him inerrant. In fact, we know he is in error because he says that he and his wife will surely die, and she sensibly points out that that is not likely. She’s right; he’s not.

Various arguable OT epiphanies do involve fire – the burning bush, the pillar of fire – but this is getting the cart before the horse. It isn’t clear that those epiphanies definitely involve the appearance of God, rather than an angel. So, arguing from fire to God is begging the question.

Angels, however, do not accept worship. I base this assertion on Revelation 19:10 and Revelation 22:8-9.

Let’s look at Revelations 22:8-9

And I, John, who have heard and seen these things. And after I had heard and seen, I fell down to adore before the feet of the angel, who shewed me these things. ap.22.9 And he said to me: See thou do it not: for I am thy fellow servant, and of thy brethren the prophets, and of them that keep the words of the prophecy of this book. Adore God.

God-inspired (2010-01-10). Kindle Catholic Bible (D-R) (best navigation with Direct Verse Jump) (Kindle Locations 50006-50008). OSNOVA. Kindle Edition.

And Revelations 19:10:

And I fell down before his feet, to adore him. And he saith to me: See thou do it not: I am thy fellow servant, and of thy brethren, who have the testimony of Jesus. Adore God. For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.

God-inspired (2010-01-10). Kindle Catholic Bible (D-R) (best navigation with Direct Verse Jump) (Kindle Locations 49912-49913). OSNOVA. Kindle Edition.

I think that the significance in these passages is that the angels are telling John not to show “proskynesis” because he is their equal because he is a fellow servant of God through being baptized into the death and resurrection of Christ. The useful comparison is with the example of Lot in Genesis where the angels permit Lot to “worship” them. Here is Augustine on that passage:

22. There is the point, though, that Lot would not have worshiped with his face to the ground if he had not recognized them as angels of God. So why does he offer them board and lodging as though they were in need of such human treatment?

Saint Augustine of Hippo; John E. Rotelle; Edmund Hill (2011-01-23). The Trinity (The Works of Saint Augustine) (p. 116). New City Press. Kindle Edition.

Again, “worship” meaning showing the appropriate respect for a superior. Angels are ordinarily superior to men – they see God face to face, they are spiritual, they are of awesome power, etc. So, the significance of the John’s action is not that he starts to “worship” them – i.e., engage in proskynesis – but that the angel tells him that John is now an equal to the angel in Christ.

That, of course, is entirely consistent with the meaning of the Incarnation which redeemed the human body, will and soul.

On the whole, I think I find Augustine’s perspective more fitting because it exalts the importance and uniqueness of the Incarnation, which is the core Christian doctrine, and is more consistent with other Christian teachings, such as the spiritual nature of God. Augustine’s teachings are also consistent with scriptural passages, which are clearly ambiguous.

That is not to say that these "theophanies" were not Christophanies – that is within the permissible range of opinion – but if I had to choose, I think I’d go with Augustine’s opinion.