One Bad Argument or Intuition in Favor of Torture

By John Mark Reynolds
Scriptorium Daily

One argument often used to support torture is that killing a combatant is worse than torturing them, so why not torture them?

It does seem straightforwardly true that being dead is as bad as it gets.

However, the argument (or intuition) fails on four counts.

Argument from Soul Liberty

First, killing a combatant actually honors his free will. He has chosen to take up arms and the minister of justice is honoring that choice by meeting him as he has chosen to be met.

Torture removes the internal free will of the combatant by forcing him to a mental submission that should not be in the power of humankind. We should allow his mental defiance, even if we cannot allow his physical defiance. In this way, we honor his reason (one aspect of the divine image), while also protecting the innocent.

Argument from the Impact on Soldiers

Second, killing a combatant in a fair fight is (I am told by those who serve) difficult enough psychologically. On the other hand, the debasing nature of torture (harming a powerless person intentionally) increases the harm to our troops doing the torture many times over.

Argument from Future Harms to Our Troops

Killing a foe may actually increase respect for us in some cultures. Torturing them rarely does.

Many cultures respect a foe who defeats them in a fair fight. They will honor a noble enemy as many Crusaders did with Saladin (who followed the rules of war as understood at the time).

Few have respect for the man who tortures. He is a boon to enemy propaganda. He stiffens the will of opposing soldiers not to surrender so as not to face torture. He becomes the face of the US to the civilians on the other side.

Torture may also increase the chances that our own soldiers will be tortured. It decreases our moral authority to prosecute a defeated foe for war crimes, if we committed war crimes intentionally as well.

Argument from Utility: Fighting Works, Torture Doesn’t

Finally, killing a combatant works. He is dead and can no longer fight.

However, over time the Church has been tempted by arguments that “torture works” and discovered (to its shame) that torture does not work. Information gained is worthless or nearly worthless. Arguments from utility for torture should balance the certain harm of doing a wicked act (torture) against the tenuous gain from committing an act of torture.

What Happened at Nicaea

By Fred Sanders
Scriptorium Daily

The Council of Nicaea opened on this day, May 20, 325. What happened at that first ecumenical council? What was at stake theologically? The narrative of events and players is available elsewhere, but here is an account of the doctrinal dynamics.

The council of Nicaea was a response to the challenge of Arianism. In the history books on Christian doctrine, Arianism has often been presented as a kind of outside force invading the Church. That was Athanasius’ view, for instance, and it is certainly true if you view things from the perspective of the eternal truth of the gospel. But in the last several decades, scholars have argued for a more sympathetic view of Arianism as a logical development of certain elements already contained in the Christian theological tradition. Modern scholars with their unshakable hermeneutic of suspicion are always keen to rehabilitate heretics, of course, but in this case they have rightly identified how it must have looked to the actual participants. The thinkers of the fourth century did not inherit an obvious and pristine doctrinal tradition. The stream had become muddied in various ways. Everybody was quoting the second-century theologian Origen, but Origen had left in his writings as many terrible errors as he had solid expositions of the faith. By the fourth century, there was a lot of cleaning up to do. The work of the Nicene theologians can be seen as a kind of Reformation.

Nicaea was therefore a conflict of Christian tradition with itself, or between diverse strands within the theologies available in the Christian tradition. The conflict itself clarified much that had been left ambiguous in previous theology, and in order to maintain the central claims of Christian doctrine, the Nicene theologians had to make two decisive changes in the tradition: on the one hand, they had to reject strands of theology that had previously had a good claim to being considered catholic and authoritative; and on the other hand they had to make decisive new statements in the realm of the metaphysical implications of doctrine.

Arianism was a fairly diverse and diffuse movement, whose adherents disagreed among themselves and whose ideas developed over the course of time. But many of its basic ideas were consistent from Arius (317) until at least Eunomius (died 393), and can be summarized in a few points: God the Father was not always Father, but became so when he created the Logos, his Son. There is a sense in which Logos is eternal and immanent to God as divine Reason; but the distinct being known as the Logos, with whom we have to do, is given this name in a derived sense. This Logos was created before time, and then time was created through him. The Logos came into being in order to make the creation of the world possible. The Son of God is changeable by nature, but stable by divine grace. Trinitarian language such as the baptismal formula in Matthew 28 is to be understood as describing three essentially dissimilar beings: the high God, the created Logos, and the divine Spirit at work among us.

Arianism can be seen as an attempt to do justice to the full involvement of the Logos in the life and sufferings of Jesus Christ; its point of departure may be a soteriological vision of a redeemer who wins redemption for himself and thereby serves as our model in all things. Athanasius and the other Nicene theologians perceived it as a lethal threat to the Christian idea of revelation and salvation, however, because it offered an inadequate interpretation of the relationship between the Logos and God. It attempted to frame a theology by using the neoplatonic ideas of a graduated divinity, with an utterly transcendent One God and a series of ontological emanations descending therefrom. The creative (and in the background is the demiurge, the creator-craftsman from the platonic tradition) Logos, incarnate in Jesus Christ, is divine in a qualified, relative sense. Over against this, Athanasius and the Nicene theology insisted on an absolute distinction between the creator and creation, with no middle ground. The mediator could not be a metaphysical tertium quid, a “third thing” between God and man, but had to be fully God and fully human.

Nicene theology thus rejected certain “easy answers” offered by the hellenistic philosophical categories available at the time. In doing so, Nicene theology drew the metaphysical implications of its revelational and soteriological claims. Athanasius in particular perceived that if Christ truly reveals God and reconciles us to God, then Christ must be fully divine, must in fact be homoousios, of one essence, with God. Many theologians in the fourth century continued to be squeamish about applying this metaphysical “substance” language to God and Christ, but the strategy of Nicaea was to adopt it as a necessary implication of Christian commitments. Once Arius had raised the ontological question so forcefully, it could only be answered in ontological terms. Earlier theologians, even one as great as Irenaeus, did not use such explicitly ontological terms to describe the Son’s relationship to the Father; nor did they use explicitly ontological terms to deny the Son’s unity with the Father. Arius started it. When he innovated, Nicaea innovated right back. You might be able to do theology without the help of categories like substance, but once you invoke them, there are wrong answers and right answers.

In making this advance, Athanasius and the other Nicene theologians also rejected some important traditional elements of pre-Nicene theology. There had always been a kind of naive subordinationism in the more economic theologies of the first three centuries. Justin and the other apologists clearly saw the Logos as the God (or the part of God) who was able to condescend to creation and redemption by virtue of being lower on the scale of being. Even Irenaeus was not free of this suggestion. Parts of Origen’s many-sided systematic thought clearly limited the Son to created status, while at the same time affirming his eternal generation. Tertullian, by contrast, maintained the divinity of Christ not on the basis of eternal generation (which he rejected), but on the basis of shared substance (conceived in refined materialistic Stoic terms).

Subordinationism had a legitimate claim to being in some sense traditional catholic doctrine. Athanasius saw that it had to be rejected, and his theology was an attempt to retain the core of the theological tradition while stripping away any possibility of ontological subordinationism. Thus the Son is homoousios with the Father (later this same argument was applied to the Spirit), and was eternally generated rather than called forth for the events of creation and redemption. The Logos theology, which had from the start carried misleading ontological and cosmological suggestions, was redefined and domesticated by Athanasius. “Logos” was subordinated to “Son” as the interpretive key to the identity of Christ. All of this was carried out without explicit condemnation of the patristic authors who Athanasius wanted to retain as orthodox teachers; not even Origen was spoken poorly of by Athanasius, in spite of the obvious rejection of elements of his thought which the Arians championed.

In summary, what was at stake at Nicaea was, according to Athanasius, salvation. The Nicene strategy for defending the soteriological claim of Christian theology called for a new development of doctrine, a repudiation of certain contradictory elements of the tradition, a refining of terminological conventions, and a concentration of Christian doctrine.

Where You Go When You Die

By R. A. Torrey
Scriptorium Daily

Where are the saints of this dispensation while awaiting the return of their Lord and their resurrection body?

This question is answered very plainly and explicitly in 2 Corinthians 5:1-8,

For we know that if the earthly house of our tabernacle be dissolved, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For verily in this we groan, longing to be clothed upon with our habitation which is from heaven; if so be that being clothed we shall not be found naked, for indeed we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened, not for that we would be unclothed, but that we would be clothed upon, that what is mortal may be swallowed up of life. Now he that wrought us for this very thing is God, who gave unto us the earnest of the Spirit. Being therefore always of good courage, and knowing that whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord (for we walk by faith, not by sight:) We are of good courage, I say, and are willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be at home with the Lord.

According to the teaching of these verses, there are three states in which the believers exist:

First, our present state, i.e. before death, when we are in the “earthly house of our tabernacle,” i.e. in our present body. In this state we groan longing for our resurrection body, “longing to be clothed upon with our habitation which is from heaven,” i.e. longing for our perfect resurrection body (cf. Rom. 8:23).

Second, our state after death before the coming of the Lord: In this state we are “absent from the body,” “but at home with the Lord.” This is not our perfect state, or final state, but it is a happier state than our present state, so that the truly instructed believer as far as his own blessedness is concerned is “willing to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord.”

Third, our final and perfect state: When we are not merely unclothed from this present imperfect tabernacle with all its limitations and weaknesses and sufferings and pains, but when we are “clothed upon with our habitation which is from heaven,” i.e. with our resurrection body. This is that for which we long. The resurrection body we get at the return of our Lord (1 Thess. 4:15-17; 1 Cor. 15:51, 52).

While “unclothed,” “absent from the body,” we are “with the Lord,” “at home with the Lord.” The moment we leave our present earthly body, “the earthly house of our tabernacle,” we depart to be with Christ (Phil. 1:23) and, though this is not a perfect state until we get our resurrection body, it is “very far better” than our present state (Phil. 1:23 R.V.). The day that the penitent and forgiven thief departed from his body that hung upon the cross he was with Christ in Paradise (Luke 23: 40-43).

Seemingly Paradise was then in the subterranean world, but our Lord Jesus at His resurrection led a captivity captive (Eph. 4:8), i.e. emptied Hades of the redeemed and took Paradise up with Him on High into the eternal glory. So the man whom Paul mentions as entering Paradise did not go down into that part of Hades which before our Lord’s ascension was reserved for the righteous dead, i.e. Paradise but was “caught up into Paradise” (2 Cor. 12:4).

Originally from The King’s Business, “Questions and Answers” by R.A. Torrey, April 1914, pp. 228

When we die, do we not go immediately to be with the Lord? If so, how is it that when He comes those who have fallen asleep in Him shall rise? Won’t we be already with Him? Where are we in the meantime?

When the believer dies, the body is laid in the ground and crumbles into dust, the spirit departs to be with Christ in conscious blessedness, absent from the body but at home with the Lord (2 Cor. 5:8, R.V.). To thus be with the Lord in conscious blessedness is far better than our present state in our present mortal body (Phil. 1:23). At His return, the bodies which “sleep in the dust of the earth” (Dan. 12:2) are raised and transformed into the likeness of His glorious body (Phil. 3:21) and the redeemed spirit now clothed upon with the redeemed body will forever be with Christ.

If He is to be and reign on earth for a thousand years, we will be here, too, but I thought we were going to the place that He has prepared for us?

We are going to the place which He has prepared for us, but during the thousand years we have access to both that heavenly place which He has prepared for us and to earth where He has set up His earthly throne. At the end of the thousand years there will be a new heaven and a new earth and the new Jerusalem our home will descend out of heaven (see Rev. 21: 10-27).

Originally from The King’s Business “Questions and Answers” by R.A. Torrey, May 1914, pp. 297

Butler’s Analogy

By Fred Sanders
Scriptorium Daily

Joseph Butler (born this day, May 18, 1692; died in 1752) was the Bishop of Durham and a celebrated public intellectual.

In fact, his greatest work, the Analogy of Religion (1736) was so famous in its own time and so influential for the next 150 years, that it is hard to explain how it could have dropped off of everybody’s reading lists so completely in the past century. It is one of the great curiosities of the great books canon. Butler’s Analogy didn’t just live out the normal lifespan of all those Darn Good Books that don’t quite make it into the perpetual Great Books canon. Butler’s book went from the top to the bottom in a remarkably short time. The people who published abridgments of the Analogy, who wrote commentaries on the Analogy, who cast the arguments of the Analogy into dialogue form for a more leisurely reading experience, and who referred to the great accomplishment of Bishop Butler, all talked about the Analogy as a book of lasting and permanent value. But who reads it now?

What was in the Analogy? It was a work of Christian apologetics, aimed at dismantling the popular skeptical deism of the intellectual class. Butler’s argument was based on an inherited body of scholarship which took as its axiom that the one true God was the author of the book of Scripture as well as the book of nature. But where earlier apologists had used this idea to argue directly for the reasonableness of the faith, or at least to assert that there could be no final conflict between faith and empirical reason, Butler’s main use of it was one step more nuanced. He was not struck so much by the guarantee of divine authorship behind the book of God’s words and the book of God’s works; he was more struck by how difficult both books are to read. He pointed out that natural scientists have to put up with a lot of ambiguity in their investigations, and have to make judgments based on probability as they ration the amount of their consent to the strength of the evidence. The full title of his work was “The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature.” As Butler read that Constitution and Course of Nature, he saw it as a system filled with unpredictable puzzles and apparent incongruities. Good scientists keep open minds and are well aware that nature is likely to surprise them. The analogy Butler drew is that religion is just as surprising, and requires a similarly scientific mindset.

The argument itself, sketched out briefly, is still helpful today. I have used some version of it (which I think I swiped from C. S. Lewis) in establishing the plausibility of the doctrine of the Trinity. When people ask, “Why did God have to make it difficult with this weird Trinity stuff? Wouldn’t a unipersonal God be easier?” I reply that a made-up religion would of course be easier than a revealed one. But revealed truth has the same edge and texture to it that empirical truth has: You have to attend to its particularity rather than generalizing about how you think it ought to work out. And when speaking to non-theologians about the Trinity or the incarnation, I often find that scientists and engineers have less trouble approaching the subject than people in the humanities. The scientists are habituated to taking unexpected bits of information, even bits that seem contradictory, and giving them the status of data to be reckoned with: “Okay, he’s God and he’s man, that’s the data. Now let’s move on to how we should think about that.” Humanities people (I speak as one myself) are more susceptible to the temptation to suppress one side of the evidence in a premature attempt to smooth it out: “Well, he’s human, so whatever it means to call him divine, it can’t contradict that.”

John Polkinghorne, trained as a physicist and then ordained as an Anglican priest, has made much of this general approach in his books like The Faith of a Physicist. He often describes the sort of rationality we ought to expect of theology by analogy with empirical thought: “Significant scientific advances often begin with the illuminating simplicity of a basic insight … but they persist and persuade through the detailed and complex explanatory power of subsequent technical development.”

As for Butler, his Analogy of Religion developed the idea at great length, with considerable subtlety, and an open attitude to the scientific and philosophical thought of his day. Most people who try to account for the book’s precipitous fall from fame point to the revolution in scientific and religious sensibilities associated with the thought of Darwin. That has some plausibility, after all, for any book of Christian apologetics which suddenly stopped mattering to most people around 1890 (like Paley’s Evidences). But the parts of the book that I’ve read are not so strongly stated that they would have collided with Darwinism very directly. In fact, Butler rarely states anything directly: his style is famously circuitous and circumlocutive. His conspicuously erudite eighteenth-century style is certainly a contributing factor in his book’s decline in popularity. Some of Butler’s sentences are actually essays stretched out across two pages of semi-colons, dependent clauses depending on dependent clauses, and eight-point balanced parallelisms developed at length. But this was the kind of prose the educated classes of two centuries wanted in their English essayists, and there are good reasons to develop a taste for it to counteract the opposite tendency, in an age like ours that knows how to think about communication in terms of character limits (including the spaces between characters). Butler’s book encountered some other difficulties as it grew older, including the fact that it came to seem far too tame after the Great Awakening on the one hand and the increased skepticism of the enlightenment on the other. But as for its place on great books lists, the decline of Butler’s Analogy may be ultimately a matter of taste.

APA revises 'gay gene' theory

By Charlie Butts
OneNewsNow

The attempt to prove that homosexuality is determined biologically has been dealt a knockout punch. An American Psychological Association publication includes an admission that there's no homosexual "gene" -- meaning it's not likely that homosexuals are born that way.

For decades, the APA has not considered homosexuality a psychological disorder, while other professionals in the field consider it to be a "gender-identity" problem. But the new statement, which appears in a brochure called "Answers to Your Questions for a Better Understanding of Sexual Orientation & Homosexuality," states the following:

"There is no consensus among scientists about the exact reasons that an individual develops a heterosexual, bisexual, gay or lesbian orientation. Although much research has examined the possible genetic, hormonal, developmental, social, and cultural influences on sexual orientation, no findings have emerged that permit scientists to conclude that sexual orientation is determined by any particular factor or factors. Many think that nature and nurture both play complex roles...."

That contrasts with the APA's statement in 1998: "There is considerable recent evidence to suggest that biology, including genetic or inborn hormonal factors, play a significant role in a person's sexuality."

Peter LaBarbera, who heads Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, believes the more recent statement is an important admission because it undermines a popular theory.

"People need to understand that the 'gay gene' theory has been one of the biggest propaganda boons of the homosexual movement over the last 10 [or] 15 years," he points out. "Studies show that if people think that people are born homosexual they're much less likely to resist the gay agenda."

Matt Barber with Liberty Counsel feels the pronouncement may have something to do with saving face. "Well, I think here the American Psychological Association is finally trying to restore some credibility that they've lost over the years by having become a clearly political organization as opposed to an objective, scientific organization," he states. (Hear audio report)

With the new information from the APA, Barber wonders if the organization will admit that homosexuals who want to change can change.

"It's irrefutable from a medical standpoint that people can leave the homosexual lifestyle," he argues. "Homosexuality is defined by behavior. Untold thousands of people have found freedom from that lifestyle through either reparative therapy or through -- frankly, most effectively -- a relationship with Jesus Christ."

LaBarbera agrees. "Change through Christ is possible -- and it's one of the most heartwarming aspects of the whole gay debate," he shares. "Many men and women have come out of homosexuality, mostly through a relationship with Jesus Christ. The fact that these professional organizations will not study that, will not acknowledge that, shows how 'in the tank' they are for the homosexual movement."

LaBarbera stresses that even though elites will not recognize the change, that does not mean the change does not exist. In fact, both Barber and LaBarbera believe that God changes people through Christ -- regardless of the sin.

The Real Christ Has Stood Up

By Peter D. Anders
Modern Reformation

Popular Religious Pluralism and the Implications of Trinitarian Christianity

Just the other day I heard the song by George Harrison called "My Sweet Lord" on the radio. Beyond the simple delightfulness of the tune typical of a Beatle, there is something about this particular song that always makes me pause to focus and reflect. I think it has something to do with its honesty, and its almost desperate longing and desire. This is a song of worship, even as it identifies the object of worship as transcending the traditional expressions of praise in the religions of both East and West. (See sidebar on page 18 for lyrics.) In a general sense, the song is an invitation for us to see our particular religious traditions not as ends in themselves, but as serving the higher end of knowing a God who stands equally "behind" them all. It's interesting that George Harrison's close friend and fellow Beatle John Lennon wrote another immensely popular song along the same lines: "Imagine." This song expresses the same feelings of longing and desire; although here we are invited to envision a society of justice, peace, and freedom that transcends the oppressive and divisive institutions of government, ideology, and religion that are also mistaken as ends in themselves.

It seems to me that together these two songs have come to provide our culture with a simple yet significant and poetic expression of what might be called "popular religious pluralism." (For a good definition of religious pluralism, see Patrick Smith's sidebar on page 24.) When I say popular I don't mean superficial, I mean widely held. John Lennon may have apologized for his off-the-cuff statement - taken out of context in America at the time-that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus, but that doesn't change the fact that in defining the beliefs of our contemporary Western culture, he may have been close to right. This was impressed on me while watching the opening ceremony of the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy, when Peter Gabriel sang "Imagine" on a world stage to the response of thousands of affirming cheers. The fact is, and recent data supports this, the popular vision of religious pluralism as expressed in these songs is now the more widely held in our culture, even among professing Christians, and even among professing conservative or evangelical Christians. This is testimony to the power of this religious vision and to a hope that is deeply desired in our troubled world. The vision that the real Lord stands "behind" even our religious traditions and institutions, and that human society can therefore also progress beyond them is a profoundly resonating and hopeful vision indeed.

My point here is not to minimize the power of this popular vision. It ought not to be caricatured as merely a superficial self-contradicting slogan of postmodern culture. The popular religious pluralism that I'm talking about really can reflect a sincere longing for the divine and an appropriate dissatisfaction with the current state of world affairs. In fact, far from being easily dismissed, this popular religious pluralism has actually become entrenched in our culture as a higher expression of religious exclusivism. This religious vision unites all the particular religious visions. This religious narrative makes sense of all the particular competing religious narratives. All the hope expressed in the world's religions is fulfilled together in the ultimate hope of religious pluralism. It is left only for the sincere adherents to the particular religious traditions of the world to accept this one tradition as ultimately true and normative. This is the only way in which it will work, the only way in which the religious pluralist vision and hope can be realized. To focus on only one of these particular religious traditions as true and to make that one tradition normative is to impede the progress of humanity toward that ultimate goal as expressed by both Harrison and Lennon.

How should we respond to this popular religious pluralism now so pervasive in our culture and churches? As a Reformed and evangelical Christian, I see the basic theological task of the church as witness. Thus, the first and most important question for me is whether or not the church is being a faithful witness to the Word of God today. For this reason, I think the more critical issue to address is the widespread and growing affirmation of this position in our churches-in other words, the Christian acceptance of religious pluralism as the normative context for Christianity. Stated in a way more directly relevant to our present topic, the question is: Can a confessing, evangelical Christian affirm both the vision and hope of orthodox Christianity and the vision and hope of popular religious pluralism at the same time? Even more specifically: Are the positions of religious pluralism and orthodox trinitarian Christianity compatible or mutually exclusive? I will seek to answer this theological question with a brief outline of orthodox trinitarianism as that simple yet significant and poetic confession of what it means to be a Christian.

The Meaning of Christian Trinitarianism

Simply stated, trinitarianism is the truth that God is one, and that this one God is our Father revealed to us in God the Son our Savior and in the communion of God the Holy Spirit. Our Christian trinitarian confession of faith results from our saving encounter with this one living God in the message of the biblical gospel concerning Jesus Christ. In this most basic Christian truth and experience, we see at once our God in both unity and distinction. From the beginning of our engagement with Holy Scripture, heard and read within the community of faith, we learn of the one God and all his dealings with us in these terms. God's work of creation is understood in terms of God the Father who is the ultimate source of all creation, God the Son who executes the decree to create, and God the Holy Spirit who manifests the divine presence in the creation (Gen. 1:1-3ff; Ps. 104:30; John 1:3; 1 Cor. 8:6; Col. 1:16). God's work of redemption is understood as God the Father's electing plan to redeem the world through the sending of God the Son into the world to accomplish the redemption that God the Holy Spirit applies to you and me (John 3:5-8, 16; 6:38; Gal. 4:4; Eph. 1:9-10; Heb. 10:5-14; Titus 3:5). Our response has been to confess this knowledge of God in our own Christian lives as we think and talk about, pray to, worship, and serve the one true God in trinitarian terms. We know the Father in the self-revelation of the Son by the ministry of the Holy Spirit; we pray to our Father in the mediating name of the Son and with the testimony of the Holy Spirit; and we worship and serve the Almighty Father in the truth of the Son and in the empowerment of the Holy Spirit.

Recognizing that both this unity and this distinction in God is clearly revealed in Holy Scripture as the normative authority for our Christian faith, the ancient church bequeathed to us two very effective terms for aiding our articulation of this biblical trinitarianism with precision and beauty. The first term, homoousia, concerns our understanding of the oneness of God even as we reflect on the distinctions among the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. With this term we affirm that the divine being (ousia) of the Father, the divine being (ousia) of the Son, and the divine being (ousia) of the Holy Spirit are identical (homo). When we say that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are homoousia, we mean that they each possess the fullness of the divine being, and that they each possess the fullness of one and the same divine being! Many analogies have been offered throughout Christian history to try and help us conceptualize this truth, but they all fall short simply because no analogy of the created world can capture the reality of the divine being of God who is Uncreated Spirit.

The second term, hypostasis, concerns our understanding of the threeness of God even as we reflect on the unity of God's singular divine being. With this term we affirm that the person (hypostasis) of the Father, the person (hypostasis) of the Son, and the person (hypostasis) of the Holy Spirit are truly and eternally distinct. The reason why this term is helpful is because of the unique meaning it conveys in this context. Unlike how we might be inclined to think of what it means to be a person, this word as it was used in the ancient church tries to point us to an understanding of "person" as somewhere between totally separate components (such as the shell, white, and yoke of an egg), and merely alternating modes of something more basic (like the way H₂O alternates among the modes of solid, liquid, and gas). Thus the Godhead is not established through a mere aggregate of three totally separate persons, nor is the Godhead something more basic, or standing "behind" these three persons as mere modes of its historical manifestations. God is one in three, three in one; and the one infinite Godhead is always in all eternity distinguished as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit! Again, possible analogies have been offered, but the wholly other uniqueness of God breaks through them all.

So, as biblical Christians we initially come to know God and subsequently to learn of God as the one God who permits us to bear true witness to him as both unity and distinction. God is one divine community of being (homoousia) who eternally exists in three distinct and coequal persons (hypostasis). This understanding of the nature of God flows from our sacred text and our shared experience; and it is always properly marked by wonder and amazement. Even this very brief discussion of trinitarianism demonstrates just how remarkable our Christian confession is among the diverse teachings of the world's philosophies and religions. As faithful witnesses to God in this world, we must always resist the impulse either to dismiss this trinitarianism as too abstract or impractical, or to attempt to work out its mysteries speculatively as if it were a logic puzzle. For God has given us a revelation that is truly a self-revelation; and because it actually reveals who God is, it is really God's self-interpretation for us. Thus, when our Christian reflection and confession are guided by this divine self-interpretation, it is most properly (and reasonably!) guided by what God has told us concerning himself. But the question remains: How does this Christian trinitarianism address our concern about Christianity's compatibility with popular religious pluralism? We can now develop an answer by looking further at the term homoousia and at how it helps us to understand who our Lord actually is.

The Implications of Christian Trinitarianism

This concept of trinitarianism becomes intelligible only if understood in the context of the Christian confession of Jesus Christ as the self-revelation of God. Here we are especially following the apostle Paul, who bears witness to Jesus Christ with phrases such as "declared with power to be the Son of God" (Rom. 1:4), "the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" (2 Cor. 4:6), "who being in very nature God" (Phil. 2:6), "the image of the invisible God" (Col. 1:15), and "God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him" (Col. 1:19). This testimony to God's self-revelation contains the idea of an identity of essence (homoousia) between the Father, who is the author of the revelation, and the Son, who is the content of the revelation. When we confess that the Father and the Son are homoousia, we are affirming this identity. We are confessing that God in all the fullness of his divine being is as much the content of his self-revelation as he is its author; that God in this revelation actually discloses who he really is (Heb. 1:1-3; John 8:58).

Indeed, if this were not the case, if God in his revelation did not reveal himself in this way, we would not know who God actually is; and thus we would still have to look for the author of this revelation standing "behind" it. But this is not the case! In Jesus Christ we have met God the risen Son incarnate, and we do confess with all of Holy Scripture and orthodox Christian tradition that God the Son is homoousia with God the Father. We testify with the apostle John that "no one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father's side, has made him known" (John 1:18). In God's self-revelation in the Son we know in a strict sense that the medium through which the author of revelation makes himself known is not alien to himself. This would diminish a self-revelation and make the content of that revelation a mere pointer to something else. But Jesus Christ is the content of this true and ultimate self-revelation of God, in all the fullness of his divine being as God the Son incarnate. For this reason alone does Jesus Christ point us to God by pointing to himself: "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, 'Show us the Father'? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works" (John 14:9b-10). In light of all this, I think at least three clear implications can be drawn in response to our concerns about popular religious pluralism.

First, because revelation means that God assumes a form so that we humans can know who he is, we must understand that our true knowledge of God is only a result of divine self-accommodating grace. To know God in the way he has permitted us to know him is to know him in both unity and distinction. Jesus Christ as the incarnate Son is the visible revelation of the invisible God the Father, and therefore he must be distinguished from God the Father. Yet because he truly and ultimately reveals who God the Father is, there is a necessary unity or identity of essence between them. Therefore, we must confess with the Nicene Creed that the Father is known in the Son; that everything Jesus Christ made known about God and accomplishes "for us and our salvation" is affirmed by his deity; and that as the incarnate Son, Jesus Christ is worthy to be worshipped and adored.

Second, because this biblical trinitarianism assures us that everything Jesus Christ says and does on earth is God speaking and acting, it is only reasonable that our vision and hope should be grounded in his words and deeds. For this reason, the normative context for our Christian vision should be the message of the gospel concerning Jesus Christ; the normative context for our narrative should be God's redemptive plan culminating in Jesus Christ; and the normative context for our hope should be the promises of God made certain in Jesus Christ.

Third, and most directly related to popular religious pluralism, because Christian trinitarianism teaches that in the Incarnation of the Son there is a true and ultimate self-revelation of God, it is reasonable to take this self-revelation of God as definitive. This means that by definition Jesus Christ is the standard by which we determine the truthfulness of all other claims to divine revelation. To hold with religious pluralism that Jesus Christ is one of a number of different and even contrary revelations of a God who stands "behind" them all, is to hold that God has not revealed himself truly and ultimately in Jesus Christ, but at most only partially. This contradicts the concept of homoousia as the identity of essence that Christian trinitarianism affirms. God cannot be understood as having revealed himself in a different way in another self-revelation and still be the one who has revealed himself to us in Jesus Christ. As trinitarian Christians, we have been graciously permitted to make the same confession as that of Simon Peter: "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God" (Matt. 16:16). Therefore, because Jesus Christ the Son incarnate is God, all other claims of divine revelation are to be assessed according to him.

The Way Forward for Trinitarian Christians

So how should we respond to this? We began by asking the question: Are the positions of popular religious pluralism and orthodox trinitarian Christianity compatible or mutually exclusive? I think the above account of Christian trinitarianism shows that they are clearly not compatible on the grounds that divine revelation has been established once and for all in Jesus Christ alone. This leads us to two important applications.

First, since our basic theological task is faithful witness to the Word of God, the widespread and growing affirmation of popular religious pluralism as the normative context for Christianity ought to be reversed. There is no God standing "behind" God's self-revelation in Jesus Christ, and for this reason there is no God except the God who is with us in Jesus Christ, and there is no vision and hope that can lead us beyond the vision and hope that is established for us in Jesus Christ. Thus, Christians who are seeking to affirm both orthodox Christianity and popular religious pluralism together have an Elijah-on-Mount-Carmel type of decision to make (1 Kings 18:21).

Second, in affirming orthodox trinitarian Christianity, confessing evangelical Christians should not see themselves as having to bear some sort of heavy doctrinal burden. On the contrary, it is by grace that we have been gifted with this privilege and responsibility to speak and enact the liberating truth of our trinitarian Christianity in love. If our faithful witness to Jesus Christ is called to be prophetic over-against a culture that chooses to reject it, then our marginalization will be for the sake of righteousness. However, this isn't necessarily the case in an increasingly interconnected culture that is becoming more serious about interreligious dialogue. Because the new frameworks for this dialogue properly recognize the exclusivist nature of normative religious pluralism, they are careful not to stress adherence to this position as a prerequisite for participation. Examples of these new opportunities for our engagement in interreligious dialogue are developing every day: from Tony Blair's Faith Foundation and new university courses such as Yale's "Faith and Globalization" (co-taught by Blair and Miroslav Volf) to the call for a renewed interreligious dialogue in America by President Obama in his first address at the National Prayer Breakfast. Let's embrace these new opportunities for faithful witness with a winsome conviction that knows what we believe and why we believe it, and a sincere compassion that knows we are called to share all we have received.

Therefore, as we humbly, respectfully, and faithfully live out our Christian witness to the world, we should remember to focus and reflect on the fact that our faith and confession make no sense without this trinitarian theological context. In a world where a multitude of "christs" point us to a God who stands "behind" their philosophies, religious traditions, and revelatory claims, Jesus Christ has stood up to point us to himself as the definitive self-revelation of God. Jesus Christ is God, the light of the world, and therefore all other christs, visions, and hopes are assessed according to this light and the vision and hope that he has made sure.

If Torture, Then Evil

By John Mark Reynolds
Scriptorium Daily

A government decided to execute a prisoner who threatened its control of a region. It did not just kill the man, but selected, as usual, a means calculated to do the most pain and prolong the suffering. His torturous death is recorded in the Gospels and should give every Christian pause in supporting any form of torture. Torturing any man, even the most base, may not elevate the victim, as it did with the Son of God, but it almost certainly debases the torturer to the level of the Romans who killed Him.

Torture of any human being is incompatible with the Christian faith.

This should have been obvious, but like many hard and inconvenient moral lessons it was not. Christianity grew in cultures that used torture frequently and so had cultural assumptions inconsistent with their faith. Like most evil things, torture is justified by the good that can come of it. Most bad things are tempting because of alleged goods, but Christian experience shows that any gains from torture are not worth the cost to the souls of men and cultures.

Because there are times when torture seems like a good idea, Christians followed the practice of most ancient cultures and sometimes used it when they gained power. However, it was always a difficult decision for Christian civilizations to make and always had critics amongst Christian theologians and philosophers. The practice was modified and prisoners were given greater rights. The longer Christians thought about the practice and experienced the results, the broader the disdain and condemnation for it.

Eventually, a consensus developed in the traditional Churches that torture was a temptation to do evil, a snare of devils to corrupt souls, and a delusion that promised good, but only certainly did evil.

The condemnation of torture is part of the culture of life so central to the Faith. It is sad to see some Christians use arguments and lines of reasoning to justify torture that are similar to those used to justify abortion.

Traditional Christians disdain those who mutilate the corpses of enemies, because it dishonors the Image of God. How much worse is it to mutilate the living body or the immortal soul of a man?

Most Christians are not pacifists. They will honor the choices of a man who declares himself their enemy by fighting him in fair combat. Once he is a prisoner, they will honor his God-given free will by allowing him to preserve his conscience. Christian nations developed rules regarding interrogation that allowed prisoners to preserve their dignity and God-given choices. A Christian can kill a man who is asking for it, but he will not warp and twist his body and soul when the fight is done.

Sadly, Christian history reveals that the “good reasons” for torture tempted many Christian leaders to torture in order to do some hoped for good. We don’t have to guess at the bad results or the later condemnation of history for our short-sighted pursuit of immediate gain over our deepest principles.

Men have always been tempted to torture to get information to “save the city.” However, experience showed that saving the physical city by destroying its values was never a good bargain. At the very least, a nation that ordered torture had to turn some of its own sons into torturers. There has proven no way to compartmentalize such men after the alleged good they did was done.

A nation that turns its bravest and best into torturers instead of warriors has dishonored itself. There are worse things than losing a war and that is one of them.

A general condemnation of torture does not mean that we already know that what the Bush administration did was torture. Reasonable people can disagree about exactly what torture is and some believe that what the Bush administration ordered in prosecuting the War on Terror was not torture. They should be heard and not ignored, but so far the arguments advanced have not been persuasive.

Many of the practices used by the Bush administration have been widely condemned as torture prior to their use. However modified by the administration, in the laudable attempt to keep them from being torture, the actions ordered do not pass an immediate “smell test” as exemplified by the fact that they were condemned by the candidates of both political parties in the last election.

For those of us who are not experts, there is the practical “John McCain Test.” Everyone agrees that Senator John McCain is a brave American hero for the way he endured torture at the hands of the Communists. When John McCain condemns our actions as torture, most of us should have a presumption that there is a serious problem with the actions.

Of course, there is no comparison regarding the degree of horror he experienced and the amount of suffering ordered against the terrorists. John McCain experienced far worse at the hands of the Communist government than anything that has been revealed so far about American interrogation techniques. However, John McCain looked at what was being done and saw too many similarities to what was done by our government to condone the actions.

If the United States did not torture prisoners, it gave a reasonable imitation of doing so. The fact that a torture is not horrific does not mean it is not bad.

On first review, it appears that what the Bush administration did to terrorists was torture and so morally wrong. If a calm and full disclosure of the facts sustains this judgment, then the Bush administration will have done permanent damage to its reputation. That such a wrong may have been done with the authority of an American President who professes an Evangelical faith would be shameful.

Of course, the men and women in government in both parties were sorely tempted after the events of 9/11. Fear and a desire to protect the innocent often drives good men to do very bad things. Congress was aware of the administration’s policy and authorized it. No party has clean hands in this situation, but the President is ultimately responsible for pressing for authority to take the actions he took after 9/11.

If a bipartisan and judicious examination finds that men and women were ordered to torture, then those who gave the orders should be condemned, if not legally then in the court of public opinion. Torture is incompatible with a great nation and with the beliefs of the Christian majority of that nation.

We must act as the Prince of Peace would act and not as Caesar did.