I was thinking about the idea of original sin and total depravity the other day… I also started thinking about the foundations of my system of government, framed in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. Then I started wondering if maybe there could be a major disconnect between the basic foundational principles of my nation and its system of government and original sin or one of the basic tenets of Calvinism.
Original sin and total depravity seem to resonate with Hobbes when he spoke of the natural state of humanity. Obviously, Hobbes disagreed with Augustine and Calvin in that those men believed there was something called Goodness existing as a supreme moral objective measurement outside of and apart from humanity. However, there does seem to be a parallel in terms of the outworking of original sin, total depravity, and Hobbes’ conceptions. For just as natural humanity cannot or does not tend toward any good according to Hobbes, so the idea behind original sin or total depravity seems to be that humanity naturally cannot or does not tend toward goodness either.
The Founding Fathers, however, did not follow Hobbes. Their opposing position (after John Locke) was not only that human nature had an absolute moral authority, but this morality was part and parcel of the nature of humanity itself so that humanity naturally knew right from wrong apart from any kind of law or government and did, in fact, tend toward or attain goodness. And because moral goodness was something we can know and something we can put into place naturally, government therefore does not provide us with the methods or means to become good (goodness doesn’t begin with law).
This stood in contrast to Hobbes, who’s conception of humanity’s nature meant that government or law was the reason for morality, virtue, or goodness. The logical end of the two sides is that under Hobbes and so it seems under original sin or total depravity, one must give up their natural rights, their natural morals, or their natural human condition in exchange for that goodness, freedom, or right that are granted from a Sovereign, whereas for the Founders, the Sovereign made goodness inherent and inalienable
to the nature of humankind so that in forming government or law, humanity didn’t give up freedom or right in exchange for goodness, but rather to better protect, secure, and prosper the goodness already present.
I am therefore left to ponder whether or not those who hold to the dogmas of either original sin or total depravity are fundamentally opposed to the very principle on which the government of the United States is established.
It may be a surprise for some to learn that in ancient Hebraic texts, Yeshua was neither the first nor last to be called the Son of God (or even the first-born Son of God). It appears that the collected tribes of Jacob, Israel herself, was the first to gain this distinction.
Thus says YHWH, Israel is my Son, my first-born.
Exodus 4:22
Referring back to this event, a prophet says in the name of YHWH:
When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my Son.
Hosea 11:1
In Joseph and Aseneth, a Jewish romance and missionary novel dated sometime, perhaps, in the first century of the common era, Joseph is referred to three times as the Son of God—twice by his bride-to-be (Aseneth) and once by Pharaoh.
And how will Joseph, the Son of God, regard me, for I have spoken evil of him? …I spoke evil of him and did not know that Joseph is the Son of God.
Joseph and Aseneth 6:2, 6
And Pharaoh was astonished at her beauty and said, “The Lord will bless you [Aseneth], the God of Joseph, who has chosen you to be his bride, for he [Joseph] is the first-born Son of God…
Joseph and Aseneth 21:3
This is by no means a complete listing of such occurrences, but it serves to show that this term has been abused in some theological circles by injecting it with all sorts of meanings incompatible with its ancient usage. Son of God
no more refers to divinity or third person of the Trinity when speaking of Yeshua than it does when descriptive of the nation of Israel or Joseph. As it has been noted by many others, Son of God
is a functional title, not the ontological description of a person’s being.
The Date of the Tower of Babel and Some Theological Implications by Paul Seely.
Overall, it was a fun and stimulating read, especially since it veered off into areas that while outside my familiarity or expertise, are nevertheless interesting subject matters (such as Creationism and the Natural Sciences). I could have done without Seely’s repeated tendentious impulse to remain faithful to the historical interpretation of the church,
which is nothing more than an appeal to authority—a logical fallacy that should not appear in a critical, scientific analysis. But I did very much appreciate both the archaeological examination of the Tower of Babel according to narrative evidence as well as the discussion of accommodation of scriptural texts to the concepts, world-views, and thought-forms of their days. Apparently, Creationists are want to approach biblical texts as if they were trying to teach astronomy or some such anachronism and I appreciate Seely setting the matter straight.
Unfortunately, the end was about as ironic and question-begging as it could get. Consider his own analysis of the situation:
One cannot date the tower of Babel early enough to fit all of the archaeological and anthropological data without implicitly espousing a methodology which favors bare possibility over probability; and such a methodology is antithetical to serious scholarship.
ibid, p. 28
And yet Seely’s way of dealing with the contradiction between the archaeological evidence and the biblical narrative is to propose a philosophy that could possibly explain the situation without giving us any historical or archaeological evidence to think there is a probability of his conclusion. Behold his summary statement:
In summary, in order to avoid obstacles to communication which might become stumbling blocks, and to respect the divine decision to delegate to humankind the responsibility for the discovery of natural knowledge, Scripture is accommodated in Gen 11:1-9 [the Babel narrative]…to the limited geographical and anthropological knowledge available at the time.
ibid, p. 38
Exactly what time
is Seely referring to? To what context is the tower of babel narrative being accommodated? Exactly what is the anthropological conception of the original hearers
of the Tower of Babel narrative and exactly who are they? Seely makes no mention of any of this in the entire essay. We are given no evidence and no reason whatsoever to believe that the original authors or hearers in whatever unmentioned historical period and geographical location believed all languages originated from a mother tongue in Babylon. The bare possibility of accommodation to such a context is all we are given. His essay is thus self-refuting, claiming to represent serious scholarship while utilizing the very method he says is antithetical to it.
See Premonitions And Extra-sensory Knowledge Part I.
The final example of my experiences combines the knowledge of what someone is going to say with what they are going to do AND secret things they’ve done that others wouldn’t know. It is so incredible that you might not believe it. I still have a hard time believing it myself except that as a man of science, I cannot deny the evidence even if I have no way of explaining it. Real knowledge about the future came to me from outside of me in exacting detail that puts psychics to shame. I’ve only told two or three people of this event. The anonymity of the internet provides an opportunity to be more open about the embarrassing situation.
My first car was cheap. It burned oil and overheated. Due to lack of trust in my own transportation, whenever I drove on long trips to visit my family, I would pull into rest stops and let it cool down. At one rest stop, I pulled in, inclined my seat, and prepared for a peaceful and uneventful half hour. As I scanned over the dozen or two people going about their business, my sight fell on a man in the far distance. He was an average adult male. Nothing at all should or would have marked him out from anyone else. But the instant my eyes fell on him, a bizarre and irrational bundle of thoughts flooded my mind in intimate and exacting detail. The man was a sexual predator. He liked to watch people and masturbate. And at this very moment, he was trying to do so. Never in my life had I ever looked at someone—whether a complete stranger or not—and had any such thoughts. Why on earth would I think such a thing? What possible reason was there to justify it? It was ridiculous. I shifted my position on the seat, turned on the radio, closed my eyes, and tried to forget it all.
After five or ten songs, I turned off the radio, opened my eyes, and looked about. The man was gone. And yet a thought in my head said he was still there–back behind a certain structured and shadowed area where he was trying to masturbate. It was too dark, far away, and protected by various structures for me to see much of anything, but the thought in my head said he was there. It then came to me that because the man was failing to get off on whatever subject he’d chosen, he was going to walk right up to my car and ask me if I would masturbate for him.
I brushed these fanatical thoughts away, turned the radio back on, and let time flow over me. About fifteen minutes passed before I noticed the man walking from the area where I thought he had hidden himself in a direction toward where my car and others were parked. I watched him out of the corner of my eye while pretending to have no notice of anything or anybody at the rest stop. When he was close, he beelined toward my car. I fiddled with the radio thinking that if I pretended not to notice him, he wouldn’t take notice of me and just continue on his way. Unfortunately, he stopped right outside my door, leaned down, and knocked on the glass.
Maybe it was all just coincidence. I had no reason to think he was doing or would do any such things as I had. Perhaps all he wanted was to ask for a smoke. I cracked my window and tried to be civil. I said hello and asked how I could help him. He looked around nervously and began to recount a short story about something or other he was looking for. He stumbled over his words and stuttered a bit. After a few moments, he must’ve realized I didn’t understand what he was trying to say. He then took a breath and said, You are very pretty.
I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to believe. All I managed to get out was, Thank you.
He then asked me whether I masturbated. How was I supposed to respond to something like that? I thought, well, if everything I thought is true, I could try to subvert his impulses with a check to his conscience. I told him that I believed there was a God and therefore there were morally right and morally wrong things to do and that masturbation was wrong in many situations. He paused, licked his lips, and then asked me if I would masturbate for him. He quickly followed up the request by saying he would pay me $25 or $35. I told him no. He tried to convince me it was okay by saying we could go someplace where no one could see, that he wouldn’t touch me, that he only wanted to watch, and then increased his offer to something like $55 or $65. I said no, rolled up my window, started the engine, and pulled out without looking back. As I drove, I could feel my heart trying to beat through my chest. My body was quivering. For awhile, my mind raced with images of the event. I felt violated, humiliated, angered, and then began wondering if maybe I should have done something to report the man. It wasn’t until long after the event that I was able to marvel at the foreknowledge instead of the circumstances of it.
Addendum: While preparing the rough draft of these posts, I flew off to Chicago for vacation and family reunion. During dinner, out of nowhere and completely without suggestion or influence from me, an aunt on my father’s side raised the subject of having had premonitions. The conversation immediately caught my attention since I had decided to write on the subject of my premonitions two days earlier. I didn’t know that she had these experiences as well. She mentioned my dad’s premonition and jokingly suggested it ran in the family. Laughter faded as I recounted one of my own. Suddenly her suggestion didn’t seem so far-fetched.
Sometimes I see or know or dream things before they happen. When I was little, I called it deja vu. Since my youth, it’s happened often enough that I no longer take much notice and just shrug them off. The strange feeling of deja vu that accompanied the occurrences in the beginning is now long gone.
My premonition or dream experiences range all along the spectrum from small and insignificant to large and disturbing. Yet even the smaller ones have remained in the memories of my friends and loved ones. So far, I’ve had four different kinds of foreknowledge: dreams of future places or events, knowledge of what a person is going to say, knowledge of something that is going to happen, and knowledge of details in a person’s life that I have never met before and have no reason for knowing.
The premonition dreams are no different than any other dream. They come, go, and are instantly forgotten. They seem to have no correlation at all with reality. There’s never reason to single one out from another until I will suddenly realize that I have already been to the place I’m at or seen the event unfolding before me. The more recent the dream to the occurrence, the clearer my remembrance.
For instance, I once took a vacation with a girlfriend and her family to Lake Arrowhead. I had never been there before. When we arrived at the lake, we parked in front of a large lodge. As we walked the stretch of concrete between wooden pillars toward the doors of the building, I suddenly took notice of my surroundings. When we walked in and I looked around, I recognized the interior from a dream several months prior. The dream was fresh enough in my memory to recall significant details. I grabbed my girl’s hand and excitedly announced how I had dreamed of this place. I told her that in my dream there was a grand curving staircase that went one level up and one level down around the far corner where the building bent. We walked the length and when we turned the bend, there was the staircase. Of course, she couldn’t see that it was the same grand curving staircase from my dream—only A staircase. I then told her that in my dream, I had gone down the stairs and played on a pinball machine on the right across from the stairs. I was eager to see if what was down there. After all, it was a pretty decadent place–not one in which you would expect a pinball machine! What were the chances that a pinball machine was sitting in the exact place as I had seen it in my dream? My girlfriend didn’t seem as eager as I to find out. We approached the stairs, looked over the rim, and there was a pinball machine sitting up against the wall exactly where I described it. I wanted to go down and play, but my girl pulled me away and told me I was scaring her.
Other times, dreams are far removed from their real world counterpart. Recently, for instance, I attended an anniversary showing of a movie we’ll call 1968. Nothing about the place brought any recollection to mind like the lodge at Arrowhead. But after the film, circumstances changed. Several men who had worked on the film were sitting on stage being interviewed. I was sitting behind a man taller than myself. This was fine during the movie, since I had to look either up or straight ahead. But when people were sitting down on stage, this became a bit of a problem. Since I had an aisle seat, however, I merely leaned out to the side into the aisle. This gave me a somewhat distorted viewpoint, but an unobstructed one nonetheless. Suddenly I knew this was not a unique viewing. I had seen this same number of aged men men sitting in these exact same positions in that same kind of lighting before and from the same kind of skewed viewpoint. Unfortunately, the dream was too old to remember anything more than the sight of it. A similar occurrence happened when I was in Ireland with my brother last year. I was in a whole new world for two weeks (I had never been to Europe before that time). And yet in the middle of this grand adventure over the emerald isle, I suddenly stumbled upon a bit of the island that was more than familiar—I had been see it before in a dream. There was nothing about the place that would stand out to anybody except me. I told my brother I had seen that place before in a dream. I don’t think he paid it any mind and neither did I. We went about our adventure.
My father told me a story when I was young about how he had dreamed of an event before it occurred. In his dream, he was riding his bicycle down an incline not far from home. For one reason or another, he lost control of the bike and crashed. A lady who was driving down the hill saw the incident, pulled over, and helped him up. She opened the door to her car and ushered my father in. Although Dad doesn’t remember her face, he vividly remembers her car and the bottles of soda that were on the floor. He had to step over them to get inside the vehicle. The lady then drove him home. The events happened exactly as he had seen it. He was riding down the same hill in his dream. He lost control and crashed. A lady pulled up in the same car of the same color. And he had to step over the same bottles of soda on the same side of the car to get in as he had dreamed.
The amount a person is going to say does somehow relate to how early or late I know it. If someone is going to say a few words, it usually comes to me within a matter of seconds before they say it. If more is involved, it comes to me at an earlier time. For instance, I was visiting an aunt and uncle on my mother’s side in Fresno. I mentioned that I was thinking of going back to school for a Masters and was currently studying Hebrew. My aunt told me she attended seminary (where she met my uncle) and had taken Greek. She then said she couldn’t remember Greek anymore except for one thing… I couldn’t hold my tongue. I blurted out anthropos!
before she could take a breath. Her jaw dropped. She just stared at me, dumbfounded, then asked how I knew she was going to say that very word. I admitted that I sometimes just know what someone is going to say. She looked at me for a moment then asked me what she was thinking. I said it didn’t work like that. It came and went on its own. Over the course of the night and into the next morning, she continued to bring it up either to ask me again how I knew out of all the Greek words in the language which one she was going to say or to simply proclaim her amazement at the fact of it. It was no big deal to me. Just one instance of many.
See Premonitions And Extra-sensory Knowledge Part II.
When ancient Israel used the genre of a national history in order to provide the country with a national identity (Mullen 1993), rather than to recreate a past reality out of an interest in ‘history’, this is in accordance with a long tradition. It was only in ancient Israel, however, that this practice developed into a fully fledged national history-writing.
The History of Ancient Israel: What Directions Should We Take?, Barstad
I appreciate that this quotation tries to sever Israel’s history-writing from a positivistic historiography (as if anyone at any time in any place merely wrote the facts of history without being framed and guided by some kind of personal or cultural narrative, world-view, and sociological perspective). However, I find it problematic in a great many respects.
Firstly, writing, reading, and reception of Israel’s history-writings
would only matter to an elite and closed social group (the scribes) that couldn’t account for more than five percent of total population. While the scribes could influence the general populace in terms of religious devotion and such, the texts themselves could in no way redefine and substitute an ideal national vision for the realities of tribal identities, traditional blood ties, and folkloric culture.
Secondly, even if there was political motivation by the scribes to reconstruct Israelite history in order to give it a national identity it didn’t have, the idea that even a powerful political entity could cause an entire people to accept a history they never knew and which contradicted their own knowledge, experiences, stories, traditions, and cultural identities is absolutely ridiculous—especially among a people which was defined by its social structures and did not resemble our Modern and Post-Modern self-defining individualism.
Thirdly, this method of history-making which is claimed of ancient Israel is anachronistic, arising only in present times, and cannot therefore be applied to the ancient world.
Fourth and finally, any argument that seeks to say a nation-state or people operated and thought in such a way radically disassociated from the entire culture and world in which they exist so that they stand unique and alone not only betrays a complete lack of historical understanding, but smacks of Modern evolutionary triumphalism.
I find it interesting that the primary focus and thought in a great deal of Protestantism today is theology and that, for the most part, if the historical process is any concern at all, it only appears and disappears when called on by the processes and initiatives already worked out in the philosophical and theological realms of the mind. For instance, how often have you heard a Protestant ask what is historical study?
or what part does history play in my theology?
Chances are, you haven’t. Chances are, the only thing you’ll get when you bring up history and faith is a nice discussion of the history of other Christians’ theologies and philosophies. And woe be the one who thinks to veer away from this historical
faith. It’s as if history
has been removed from the sphere of the world and become only a sphere of the mind—and even, perhaps, only the sphere of the regenerate
mind. Why is that? I stumbled onto an eloquent description that seems to sum up the situation:
…the necessary truths of an aesthetically shaped reason were a more reliable path to true religion than the contingent truths of history.
Setting the Scene: A Brief Outline of Histories of Israel, Rogerson
Could it be Protestantism in general has so moved away from and lost the historical foundation of its faith that the only thing left to make sense of it is a philosophical/theological construction? Did people start thinking that history probably denied or refuted what they believed and that, therefore, they had to retreat into a faith that had nothing to do with it? What is this Christianity that takes the trinity, the hypostatic union, justification, atonement, original sin, predestination, free will, etc, and makes many or most of these mental concepts to be the highest and most essential thing of faith?
I believe history is the foundation of faith and that no amount of sophisticated theological theory will provide an answer about or a way to move forward in one’s faith as well as a good understanding of history. History is the realm in which YHWH works. And it is by history that he is known.
(I speak solely in terms of Protestantism since I belong to this grouping and not another.)
Wow. I have received a lot of spam in my time. But I have never received a wantonly illegal phishing scam dressed in the name of God. And the interesting thing is that whoever is perpetuating this was specifically looking for people with a Christian faith who might be taken in by the false spiritual declaration and, naively, respond. Someone actually took the time to conjure all this up. If I ever meet the person who did this, I will kick them in the nuts so hard that they will have their first vision of God.
From Sister(Mrs).Mary Saleh
Abidjan Cote d Ivoire West Africa.
Dearest in the lord,
I am Mrs Mary A.Saleh ,from Kuwait.I am married to late Mr Jacob Saleh, who worked with Kuwait Embassy in Ivory Coast for Twenty-Six years before he died in the year 2003,after a brief illness that lasted for only five days…[more bullshit]…When my late husband was alive he deposited the sum of (US$2.5M )Two Million,Five hundred Thousand United States Dollars) in a General Trust Account with a prime bank in Abidjan Cote d Ivoire. Presently,this money is still with the bank. Following my ill health, being a victim to cancer , I have decided to donate this fund to a Christain organizations (Church) that will utilize this fund the way I am going to instruct herein,according to the desire of my late husband. I want this fund to be used in Christain Activities like,Orphanages, Christain schools, and Churches for propagating the word of God and to endeavour that the house of God is maintained…[even more bullshit]…Please always be prayerful all through your life as well commit me into your daily prayers. Contact me on this e-mail address (DELETED), any delay in your reply will give me room in sourcing another Church for this same purpose. Please assure me that you will act accordingly as I stated herein. Hoping to receive your reply immediately .
Remain blessed in the Lord.
Yours in Christ,
Sister Mary Saleh.
-some spammer/computer fraud
In a previous post, Water-boarding and U.S. Government, I encapsulated the fundamental premise of U.S. government in order to show its relation to the allowance and support of or lawful entitlement against and protection from torture. Here, I will show how this premise relates to governmental welfare.
In the conception of the government and law by which this nation was established, natural human right and liberty is antecedent. Government or law does not give us rights or liberties, but is instead created and bounded by our natural, pre-societal rights and liberties. Basic human needs cannot, therefore, be Constitutional entitlements, for the Constitution does not entitle us to anything. Rather, it acknowledges what we were already entitled by nature before government or law so that government and law do not trespass. Prior to law and government, we each had a right to our life. We were not entitled to someone else’s. Prior to law and government, we each had a right to property. Our property was not entitled to someone else. Prior to law and government, we each were entitled to the pursuit of our fortune of being or welfare. We were not entitled to pursue someone else’s. This is why the notion that legislation of welfare is either a right or even a lawful choice is directly antithetical to our government.
To suggest or even demand that someone either has a right to legislated welfare or that government can or should engage in welfare steals from the very people their natural and inalienable condition set in place by nature and the Creator, gives it to government, and enables government to arbitrarily decide thereafter both what is acceptable and what is not acceptable for humanity. Humans not longer allow government to exist, but government allows (or disallows when and where it decides) humans to exist. Humans no longer allow government to protect and help them maintain their well-being, but government decides for us what our well-being means and what it wants to do or not do about it. Should humans dislike what government decides, not only do they no longer have a right to do something to rebel against that decision, but they no longer have a right to well-being at all, for that has become the government’s. In the end, therefore, the pursuit of a right to legislative or governmental welfare is the loss of welfare itself.
Our system of government is not at all perfect. And if this system alone were the end of the matter, we might have good reason to think something essential was missing. But it is my belief that the faults in the best structure the Modern Age provided can be corrected by something the Pre-Modern Age gave us…
[to be continued]
The United States is a federal government founded on a single basic principle: that there are natural laws and natural rights inherent and inalienable to all humanity. Those who would be citizens of this country (and most certainly those who would hold any office in it) must consent to this principle. And it goes without need of qualification that one of these natural rights is the right to be free from torture. Government, therefore, exists to uphold and protect such a natural right from perversion.
Those who would support the use of waterboarding against humanity know that such an agenda cannot find favor in this institution or by those who establish it so long as water-boarding is known as torture. And so instead of attempting to change the rule of law, supporters have attended to an absurd and impious scheme to change the name by which it is justly called.
Such tactic is not foreign to history or our experience of government. But we are too literate to be taken in by such moral relativism. We acknowledge not only natural right but the knowledge of that right. And so we know when natural right has been trespassed. Waterboarding is torture and by no re-definition of the name can it be accepted or supported by this government.
So do I, slaveofone, declare fraudulent and unlawful any purpose of government to support or accept waterboarding. May those who do be cut off from this land of respect for the nature and dignity of humanity.
