Ignorance allows certainty, but punishes with narrowness

By John Mark Reynolds
Scriptorium Daily

Ignorance allows certainty, but punishes with narrowness. Ignorance grants ease of mind, but produces costly errors.

No place is this more evident in American culture than in those ignorant of Christianity. They think they know what Christians believe, but do not. They cheerfully dismiss with almost no thought serious truth claims made by religious thinkers. They revel in the writings of religious know-nothings who reinforce a smug and complacent set of stereotypes.

Like racists in the Old South, they look for confirmation of their opinions and avoid anyone who would challenge them. They know the names of fallen or foolish television evangelists, but not the works of serious thinkers like USC philosopher Dallas Willard.

I have met college educated Americans who could not recognize the Biblical language or Christian arguments in Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address. They knew so little about the Faith of the vast majority of Americans who have ever lived, that when Abraham Lincoln spoke of a “house divided” in yet another speech, they did not recognize the Biblical reference.

I know students who are given copies of John Locke’s political writings that have most of the Biblical arguments or religious language carefully removed. They don’t know he was a Christian apologist. He was one of the chief intellectual sources used to defend the American Revolution and form our new government and so he must be secular. It is as if we hope that John Locke were really David Hume!

The recent tempest over Sarah Palin saying she felt God had called her to run for office and Britt Hume having the temerity to say that Christianity could help Tiger Woods is a great example. Most Americans are not disturbed, but more insular worlds such as education or mainstream media, are consumed with horror.

Like segregationists shocked to discover that not all their neighbors of color are happy being bearers of wood and carriers of water, the religiously ignorant man cries, “Who are these people?”

They are millions of your neighbors, some saints and some cads, some smart and some ignorant. They are Christians.

Sarah Palin and Britt Hume think Christianity is true, not just a cheerful private opinion. This may be wrong, quite wrong, but it is not obviously wrong. Alvin Plantinga, Notre Dame philosopher, agrees; along with Arizona Cardinal’s quarterback Kurt Warner, and a billion other people on the Earth.

The vast numbers don’t prove Christianity is right, but it shouldn’t strike us as odd when one member of the billion strong cohort believers happens to express their belief in public. It might be a good idea if more of non-Christians knew why philosophers, quarterbacks, plumbers, and priests all think that Jesus should run your life.

We separate church and state–not church and life. Christians think their belief system is correct and it would be weird if they didn’t make this obvious by their behavior and talk.

There are so many millions of believers in the United States that it is a sign of their manners that religion does not saturate even more of American life.

Religious education for those outside of a religion in this nation is a joke. Where it exists, it consists of dry descriptions and believers are treated as exotic objects of study. This is despite the fact the majority of Americans and human beings in the world have these beliefs.

Students aren’t taught why people (in fact as much as one out of every six living human beings), would choose to be Christian. They don’t even know most Christians are in the “third world,” and that the faith is booming in China.

This education should not be limited to Christianity, of course. I don’t think Islam is generally right, but at least I should know why some of my smart friends think it is. Any educated person should read the best advocates for the world’s great faiths. All of us should take a hard look at the writings of those who think we can live without faith.

When it comes to religion, I fear that a good-hearted ignorance prevails in many newsrooms. Reporters don’t know what they don’t know and so repeat errors.

Mistakes or stereotypes about Evangelical Christianity actually benefit a small group of Evangelicals. There are a few “house” Evangelicals who are known to the media who are interviewed often, partly because they fit the stereotypes. A small group of “post-Evangelicals” also find that the media stereotypes reinforce their personal decision to leave the subculture.

Every Evangelical intellectual knows many non-Evangelical intellectuals, but few non-Evangelicals in media know an Evangelical. It might be better to say that they don’t know they know any Evangelicals. Given their numbers in the population, they almost certainly do, but these devout Christians have learned to hide their views in order to blend into the background.

It is no fun to be in a room where everyone assumes a particular view and you do not hold it. Only the very brave, the very wise, or fools rush to expose their minority opinions. Few of us are brave or wise and fools simply confirm the stereotypes. The rest of the very religious keep quiet and so nobody learns.

This is particularly true when it comes to language. Every region and community has their own dialectic in the United States, but reporters who rightly would feel ashamed to make linguistic errors in a foreign land have no problem with not learning the “home language” of minority groups, especially religious minority groups in America. This is less true of groups that are thought “exotic” like the Amish or the Greek Orthodox, but Evangelicals look like regular Americans. Too often their way of speaking is thought of as just like everybody else, but with some religious jargon added.

This is quite wrong. Evangelicals are the product of a unique and interesting (though not perfect!) sub-culture that shapes the way they use words and phrases. They are steeped in particular books, music, art, and films and this sub-culture cannot rapidly be mastered. Nor are the minority who leave the sub-culture the best interpreters of it . . . anymore than the best way to know another land is to talk to the people who wanted to leave it.

Imagine trusting a travel book written by someone who said, “I really hated China and loath Chinese folk ways and here are what they are all about!”

The uproar over Palin recently is a good example.

Sarah Palin has said unfortunate things, but saying she thinks God wanted her to run for vice-president likely isn’t one. In the context of her culture, it is most likely an expression of humility and not of weird pride.

Palin might possibly have meant that she knew God wanted her to be vice-president. If so, then she was not only factually wrong (she lost), but also theologically wrong. As Saint Augustine points out in his City of God, we cannot know such things for sure and people who say so are fools.

Instead, Palin was probably using Evangelical shorthand for having spiritual peace about her decision. She did not think it wrong to run and felt God’s hand on her life. It is an expression of humility (”vice-presidential candidate only by the grace of God”) and not of pride. How do I know this is probably what she meant? I know because I have hundreds of Evangelical friends and this is how they talk and what they mean.

To give another example, I know in certain parts of the country that if an older woman begins a sentence, “Bless his heart, but . . . ” she is about to personally criticize this man’s behavior, but wants to be charitable about it. She thinks he may mean well, but has done something that makes him a jerk.

Americans should know about all the world’s faiths, but should focus great care on Christianity. Why should Americans know more about Christianity than any faith?

First, Christianity is the dominant religious idea in America. It would be shame if we didn’t understand it.

Second, Christianity has always been the dominant religious idea in America. You cannot understand historical documents, art, or culture without it. Good luck reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin with comprehension if you don’t understand Christian forms of abolitionism.

Third, Christianity is the largest religion in the world and one of the fastest growing. Modern South Korea is impossible to understand without reference to Christianity. South Africa, for good and bad, makes no sense without reference to the faith either in the past or in the future.

No person now alive will see a time where ignorance of Christianity will be desirable or possible.

Finally, as a Christian myself I must be honest and say what I have found.

People should know about Christianity because it is true. Only Christianity can unite a thoughtful, but popular culture. Only Christianity can provide a basis for high art, science, and philosophy simultaneously. Only Christianity can produce liberty for the individual and an ordered society.

Ignorance of the truth may make a man happy for a bit, but will lead to cultural stagnation and personal damnation. Many of us can testify that we have failed Jesus, but that He has never failed us.

If we are wrong, we hope to see it, but Christians, after centuries of thought, still think Jesus should rule our lives. To deny this knowledge or to hide it would be intellectually dishonest, cowardly, and wrong.

Does God Hate Haiti?

By Albert Mohler
AlbertMohler.com

The images streaming in from Haiti look like scenes from Dante's Inferno. The scale of the calamity is unprecedented. In many ways, Haiti has almost ceased to exist.

The earthquake that will forever change that nation came as subterranean plates shifted about six miles under the surface of the earth, along a fault line that had threatened trouble for centuries. But no one saw a quake of this magnitude coming. The 7.0 quake came like a nightmare, with the city of Port-au-Prince crumbling, entire villages collapsing, bodies flying in the air and crushed under mountains of debris. Orphanages, churches, markets, homes, and government buildings all collapsed. Civil government has virtually ceased to function. Without power, communication has been cut off and rescue efforts are seriously hampered. Bodies are piling up, hope is running out, and help, though on the way, will not arrive in time for many victims.

Even as boots are finally hitting the ground and relief efforts are reaching the island, estimates of the death toll range as high as 500,000. Given the mountainous terrain and dense villages that had been hanging along the fault line, entire villages may have disappeared. The Western Hemisphere's most impoverished nation has experienced a catastrophe that appears almost apocalyptic.

In truth, it is hard not to describe the earthquake as a disaster of biblical proportions. It certainly looks as if the wrath of God has fallen upon the Caribbean nation. Add to this the fact that Haiti is well known for its history of religious syncretism -- mixing elements of various faiths, including occult practices. The nation is known for voodoo, sorcery, and a Catholic tradition that has been greatly influenced by the occult.

Haiti's history is a catalog of political disasters, one after the other. In one account of the nation's fight for independence from the French in the late 18th century, representatives of the nation are said to have made a pact with the Devil to throw off the French. According to this account, the Haitians considered the French as Catholics and wanted to side with whomever would oppose the French. Thus, some would use that tradition to explain all that has marked the tragedy of Haitian history -- including now the earthquake of January 12, 2010.

Does God hate Haiti? That is the conclusion reached by many, who point to the earthquake as a sign of God's direct and observable judgment.

God does judge the nations -- all of them -- and God will judge the nations. His judgment is perfect and his justice is sure. He rules over all the nations and his sovereign will is demonstrated in the rising and falling of nations and empires and peoples. Every molecule of matter obeys his command, and the earthquakes reveal his reign -- as do the tides of relief and assistance flowing into Haiti right now.

A faithful Christian cannot accept the claim that God is a bystander in world events. The Bible clearly claims the sovereign rule of God over all his creation, all of the time. We have no right to claim that God was surprised by the earthquake in Haiti, or to allow that God could not have prevented it from happening.

God's rule over creation involves both direct and indirect acts, but his rule is constant. The universe, even after the consequences of the Fall, still demonstrates the character of God in all its dimensions, objects, and occurrences. And yet, we have no right to claim that we know why a disaster like the earthquake in Haiti happened at just that place and at just that moment.

The arrogance of human presumption is a real and present danger. We can trace the effects of a drunk driver to a car accident, but we cannot trace the effects of voodoo to an earthquake -- at least not so directly. Will God judge Haiti for its spiritual darkness? Of course. Is the judgment of God something we can claim to understand in this sense -- in the present? No, we are not given that knowledge. Jesus himself warned his disciples against this kind of presumption.

Why did no earthquake shake Nazi Germany? Why did no tsunami swallow up the killing fields of Cambodia? Why did Hurricane Katrina destroy far more evangelical churches than casinos? Why do so many murderous dictators live to old age while many missionaries die young?

Does God hate Haiti? God hates sin, and will punish both individual sinners and nations. But that means that every individual and every nation will be found guilty when measured by the standard of God's perfect righteousness. God does hate sin, but if God merely hated Haiti, there would be no missionaries there; there would be no aid streaming to the nation; there would be no rescue efforts -- there would be no hope.

The earthquake in Haiti, like every other earthly disaster, reminds us that creation groans under the weight of sin and the judgment of God. This is true for every cell in our bodies, even as it is for the crust of the earth at every point on the globe. The entire cosmos awaits the revelation of the glory of the coming Lord. Creation cries out for the hope of the New Creation.

In other words, the earthquake reminds us that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the only real message of hope. The cross of Christ declares that Jesus loves Haiti -- and the Haitian people are the objects of his love. Christ would have us show the Haitian nation his love, and share his Gospel. In the midst of this unspeakable tragedy, Christ would have us rush to aid the suffering people of Haiti, and rush to tell the Haitian people of his love, his cross, and salvation in his name alone.

Everything about the tragedy in Haiti points to our need for redemption. This tragedy may lead to a new openness to the Gospel among the Haitian people. That will be to the glory of God. In the meantime, Christ's people must do everything we can to alleviate the suffering, bind up the wounded, and comfort the grieving. If Christ's people are called to do this, how can we say that God hates Haiti?

If you have any doubts about this, take your Bible and turn to John 3:16. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. That is God's message to Haiti.

One Bad Argument in Favor of Torture

By John Mark Reynolds
Scriptorium Daily

Traditional Christians oppose torture based on their understanding of Divine Revelation and centuries of experience learning the corrosive effects torture has on the society that justifies its use.

Traditional conservatives should oppose torture because giving the government power to torture is dangerous. War is a public act and can be judged by the public. There is some level of accountability.

Torture is done in secret and the agency empowered to torture will find itself bound by less accountability.

Only angels could be trusted with the power to torture men in secret, but angels would not do the job of devils.

It might seem odd at first glance, but combat can be moral (under certain circumstances), but torture is not. Killing a man honors his choice to be our foe. Torturing him strips him of his choices and denies him the right to be a man. The man shot in battle dies our foe, which is why we can kill him. The man broken by torture has become our slave and so becomes our concern and an object of a Christian man’s pity.

You can kill a foe, but must be gentle to the broken.

Recently some conservatives have made the argument that torture (including water boarding) can be moral, because in some cases the good that will come of the torture (”saving LA”) outweighs the harm. These conservatives suggest that those opposed to torture argue like pacifists, but such conservatives have missed a critical point.

One cannot torture morally, because civilized men know that torture is an inherently base act.

Aristotle frames this issue well. In his Ethics, he posits his famous “golden mean.” A man should act with moderation, acting neither excessively or defectively. Aristotle knows community living, or politics, is an art and not a science. You cannot be sure most of the time about what is right and so you make your best guess about the outcome of your actions and do the best you can.

Somethings, however, don’t get measure by the golden mean. This actions are so wicked that no man can even consider doing them.

Aristotle does not believe that there is a “moderate” amount of adultery that would be acceptable. With perhaps more faith in education than a modern man can have, the philosopher believes that civilized men will simply know that some actions are inherently base.

A moral man cannot do an inherently base or wicked action under any circumstance and remain moral.

Let me give an extreme example. Suppose intentionally massacring non-combatants would end a war. No moral government would propose such a policy, because intentionally massacring non-combatants would make the cause evil. One cannot save the nation’s soul by first damning it!

My point is simple: everyone (I hope) agrees that there are somethings that cannot be done regardless of the cost. We cannot commit genocide. We cannot condone brutalizing non-combatents.

Torture is one of those actions.

One thing that separates a civilized man from a terrorist is that the cultured man will not do anything to win. Martyrdom would make no sense otherwise. A faith that would not condone a lie to the Romans (”Caesar is Lord!”) to save our mortal lives at the cost of our souls cannot tolerate easy morality that would save our nation at the cost of our innocence.

If torture is inherently base, then prudential arguments in its favor are useless. Unlike war, which can be moral under certain circumstances, torture cannot be moral.

Why?

Here is a simple argument for the inherent immorality of torture from a Christian perspective. First, men are created in the image of God. Second, the image of God entails that men must be allowed freedom in their own minds (”soul liberty”) from coercion from other men. Human civilization can control the actions of a man, but he must be allowed personal integrity.

Not for Christians, the Soviet experience of forcing the guilty to proclaim their guilt.

In a war we can honor our foes humanity and free choice by opposing him, but we cannot “break his will.” We can imprison him, but not fill him with drugs or torture him to destroy his mental integrity.

He has the right to defy us right to fire squad.

Torture takes away his human right to be our enemy by breaking his humanity. I believe waterboarding is torture, because it is designed to destroy the integrity of a man’s choice.

We can bribe a man, we can trick him, we can even kill him, but we must not breach the wall of his personal integrity. In his mind, we must let him remain free to serve his gods as he sees fit.

If this argument is correct, torture is an inherently base act and any “goods” that come of it are irrelevant.

Sadly, Christians learned this the hard way. We were tempted to think some great goods (salvation of souls, saving a kingdom) justified torture. It is blot on our history and a stink in our nostrils to this day. Men who meant well did more harm to the reputation of the church in the eyes of history than any good that might have come of their actions.

Thank God the Church has rejected torture and repented of its use.

Those of us who love America do not wish to see her lower herself to the same error. Patriots hope to see the flag wave for another hundred years and may we do nothing in our time to make future patriots ashamed of our actions.

Zhuangzi And That Bloody Butterfly

By Raymond Tallis
Philosophy Now

The story of Zhuangzi and the butterfly must be one of the best known anecdotes in the philosophical literature. It is also, for me at any rate, one of the most annoying: the kind of philosophical whimsy that irritates rather than illuminates. But as is so often the case, it is when we are walking away from philosophical problems that we realise that they point, however unsteadily, to something we cannot entirely dismiss.

According to the Chinese philosophical classic Zhuangzi, the great Daoist thinker of that name fell asleep one day and dreamed that he was a butterfly. When he woke up, he did not know whether he really was a man who had dreamed he was a butterfly or whether he was a butterfly now dreaming he was a man. The story is intended as more than a charming episode in the life of a sage: it is meant to make a philosophical point about what we take to be real. Our dreams are utterly compelling, and so long as we are dreaming, we think they are real: there are, as Descartes said in his Meditations “no certain indications by which we may clearly distinguish wakefulness from sleep.” If last night I dreamed that I was giving a lecture wearing no trousers and was so convinced of this that I woke up sweating, how do I now know for sure that I was dreaming then? Is it not possible that I am dreaming now: dreaming that the trouserless nightmare was a dream? The general question – do I wake or sleep? – seems both valid and ultimately unanswerable. There appears to be no a priori proof that I am now awake and that last night I was asleep; and any empirical data to which I might appeal are compromised. Their apparent authority could simply be testimony to the persuasiveness of my dream.

Let us go back to Zhuangzi. You will notice when you think about the story that it is written from the point of view of the philosopher, not the butterfly. It is the philosopher who wonders whether he might be a man who dreamed he was a butterfly or a butterfly who dreamed he was a man. If the question raised by Zhuangzi were being asked sincerely, we would expect to have heard a parallel story of a butterfly who fell asleep, dreamed that it was a philosopher, and then woke up wondering whether it is a butterfly who had dreamed of being a philosopher or a philosopher who dreams of being a butterfly. The radical uncertainty the tale invites us to entertain seems to be incomplete.

The lack of even-handedness in the treatment of Zhuangzi and the butterfly is replicated in the historical record. When we look the story up in encyclopaedias, we find it attributed to the philosopher, and that he lived about 400 BC – and not to the insect. History, in other words, is confident about which was reality and which a dream. We learn, what is more, that it was Zhuangzi and not some butterfly who had disciples who recorded his profound observation. If however there really was a question about the comparative ontological standing of, on the one hand, Zhuangzi dreaming he was a butterfly, and on the other, a butterfly dreaming that he was Zhuangzi, then there would be two separate audit trails linking the anecdote with the present: one the historical record we take for granted, and the other passed from butterfly to butterfly, perhaps communicated through a script made of pollen. (By the way, it’s no use arguing that the nervous system of a butterfly is not sufficiently developed to be able to generate the illusion of being a philosopher. If we do not know whether we are waking or dreaming, we cannot appeal to a body of knowledge belonging to the world of the waking.)

The fact that we don’t even entertain the second alternative says that there is something factitious about the radical uncertainty expressed by Zhuangzi. The viewpoint is decisively his, and there is an undeclared assumption that the story is being told from outside of the dream, and indeed outside both the sage’s waking and dream states so that they can be compared and the pretence of equivalence teasingly advanced. What’s more, there is another, larger outside-of-a-dream, which situates the dream of being a butterfly as a dream – namely, the public to whom the story was addressed, and those later publics to whom it has been passed on over all those hundreds of years. At any rate, the difference between dreaming and waking is upheld, and whatever Zhuangzi’s professed doubts about his own nature, we do not doubt that he was a philosopher who lived at a certain time, and that he told an anecdote intended to justify doubting his own nature. Irrespective of whether the philosopher could or could not adjudicate between the two views on his nature, we don’t hesitate to do so. We are confidently outside his dream and, in the space of shared history, outside of our own dreams too.

Nevertheless this story is important as well as a bit irritating, because it exemplifies what happens when philosophers put our most fundamental assumptions into question. They can do so publicly only by keeping those very assumptions in play, even as they question them. In his final notebooks, collected in the volume On Certainty, Wittgenstein returned for the last time to a theme that had preoccupied him since his earliest years as a philosopher. He pointed out that

“The argument ‘I may be dreaming’ is senseless for this reason: if I am dreaming, this remark is being dreamed as well – and it is also being dreamed that these words have any meaning.”

Whether or not this is true, it is certainly the case that I must doubt that there is any audience for the words. Dreams are by definition solitary: they permit only the illusion of ‘we’. As Heraclitus said, “Only the waking share a common cosmos; each sleeps alone.” If there is no way out of the notion that the world is entirely my dream, there cannot be any way into it either, if only because there is an implicit ‘we’ in all language use, and even more so in conversation. I cannot truly share a sincere suspicion that I am at present dreaming. Similarly, philosophy conferences devoted to Cartesian scepticism are implicitly sceptical about that scepticism.

In an earlier article, ‘George Moore’s Hands: Scepticism About Philosophy’ (Philosophy Now Issue 69), I criticised the 20th century British philosopher G.E. Moore for adopting an attitude of ‘robust’ (the adjective most frequently used) common sense towards questions about the reality of objects external to the mind. He mocked those who lamented the lack of a philosophically satisfactory proof of an external world by offering one of his own: he raised his hands, saying “Here is one hand” and “Here is another.” My own attitude towards Zhuangzi and other epistemological sceptics may seem to echo Moore’s dismissive ‘Come off it… you can’t be serious’ stance. I could therefore be accused of being inconsistent. I don’t, however, think I am. There seem to me fruitful and valid scepticisms, and less fruitful and less valid ones. The uncertainty about the status of external objects in an external world seems to fall into the former category, and the Zhuangzi anecdote to fall into the latter. As Moore himself discovered to his dismay, it is very difficult to determine the nature of objects; for example to what extent they are independent of our minds, given that our access to them is mediated through our experiences. The Zhuangzi story, however, is undermined by the very fact of our ascribing it to a particular philosopher and then discussing it.

Even so, it is not entirely without merit. It reminds us that when we engage in philosophical inquiries fuelled by radical doubt, we often overlook the very context that is necessary for the inquiry to take place, which has to be untouched by doubt. In the case of the Daoist story, the historical record is also left intact, in addition to the community of discourse to which we, the waking, assume we belong. And this shows that the doubt that is being raised – that we never know whether we are or are not dreaming – is not really being entertained. We only imagine that we are entertaining it; or, to put it another way, our language takes us to a place we cannot actually inhabit. This is in addition to the fact that we don’t give much house room to radical doubts when we are hungry or worried over a child with a temperature or feeling a chump or even just running for a bus.

Wittgenstein was aware that it was difficult to “distinguish between the cases in which I cannot and those in which I can hardly be mistaken.” Trying to find general criteria for making the distinction proves harder than one might expect. But it is important. After all, it is possible that we have got some things fundamentally wrong. History has continually demonstrated the fallibility of the most robust common sense. What is more, we do not have a clear idea of the kinds of creatures we are. Naturalistic – which ultimately means materialistic – explanations leave consciousness, self-consciousness, the self, free will, the community of minds and the most human features of the human world unexplained. Supernatural explanations simply parcel up our uncertainties in the notion of an entity – God – that is not only unexplained but usually contradictory. The foundations of knowledge elude us. So some kind of scepticism, justifying an inquiry that enables us to question the all-too-obvious, the glass wall of our everyday thinking about everyday life, seems entirely in order.

As the German poet Novalis said, we may be “close to waking when we dream that we are dreaming.” Or closer anyway. The problem then arises as to how we should pursue this intuition that we might be globally deceived as to the nature of things and of ourselves: how to pursue the sceptical agenda without unsceptically taking for granted the community of minds, the human and material world, that enables us to talk and discuss these things. The problem is to find an expressible level of scepticism that can be shared and debated without thereby being undermined.

© Prof. Raymond Tallis 2009

Raymond Tallis is a physician, philosopher, poet and novelist. His book The Kingdom of Infinite Space: A Fantastical Journey Round Your Head is published by Atlantic.

How an Ancient Act of Terror Brought Down a Republic

By Adrienne Mayor
History News Network

Mozart’s once-obscure opera “Mitridate” has been touring Europe since 2007. Instead of the 18th century French court costumes, the stage is an ultra-modern war room. Mithradates—ancient Rome’s deadliest foe—is now dressed in desert fatigues and an ammo belt, and portrayed as the insurgent commander of an unnamed Middle Eastern state.

That arresting new image invites comparisons to Osama bin Laden. After 9-11, international commentators of all stripes, from US conservatives to Italian leftists and Islamist militants, alluded to Mithradates, his terror attack on 80,000 Roman civilians in 88 BCE, and his ability to evade capture. Current events leap to mind. Mithradates’ revolt plunged the Romans, already reeling from internal violence and foreign conflicts, into financial chaos and lured them into costly wars in the Middle East.

For 2,000 years, Mithradates was a household name, alongside Hannibal, Spartacus, Cleopatra, and other illustrious figures. Then—except for a few literary souls who recalled the poem “Mithradates, he died old”—he faded from popular memory. He’s languished in obscurity for more than a century.

Now, just as President Obama undertakes the toughest decision of his Administration—ordering more US troops to Afghanistan—this ancient hero/anti-hero is making a comeback. As the rebel king swaggers out of the shadows, an intriguing question arises: Who IS Mithradates?

In 88 BCE, a shocking terror attack took place in Anatolia (western Turkey). In a single day, in more than a dozen cities, at least 80,000 men, women, and children were massacred, many as they huddled inside temples where they fled for refuge. The victims were Roman and Italian tax collectors, merchants, and slave traders who had planned to get rich from Rome’s latest acquisition in the Near East.

In each town, the slaughter was carried out by ordinary people. The victims were targeted by language. All who spoke Latin or Italian dialects were killed, while thousands of Roman slaves who spoke other languages were spared. The massacre of 88 BC has been neglected by modern historians, but it could serve as a case study for how leaders mobilize citizens to perpetrate what is today termed “eliminationist” genocide.

The massacre of the Romans was orchestrated by a charismatic, brilliant ruler of a small kingdom on the Black Sea. His followers saw him as the long-awaited savior who would liberate the East from an evil Western empire, as predicted in ancient oracles.

The king’s name was Mithradates Eupator (“good father”) of Pontus, descended from Persian kings and Macedonian royalty. He presented himself as the defender of the great Alexander’s Greco-Persian empire against the predatory Roman Republic. Hailed as a liberator throughout Persian-influenced Eurasia, Mithradates drew allies from Spain and Gaul, the Italian countryside, Greece and the Balkans, from the Black Sea to Armenia, ancient Iraq, and Iran.

Meanwhile, after the defeat of its dire enemy Hannibal, Rome had emerged as the world superpower, expanding its imperial reach in Europe, Africa, and Asia. Wealth was concentrated in the hands of the powerful. An army once manned by citizen soldiers was now staffed by Rome’s poorest, resulting in professional troops loyal to ambitious leaders seeking profit and glory.

Mithradates had protested Rome’s corrupt policies in Anatolia through diplomatic lines, but in vain. To teach this “minor king” a lesson, a Roman commander—without Senate authorization—invaded Mithradates’ kingdom with a reluctant coalition of neighboring states. Mithradates’ army routed the Roman-led invasion. He executed the Roman commander, but released the prisoners of war, who promptly joined his forces.

Mithradates’ victorious armies swept across Anatolia, liberating Greece from Roman rule and driving the Romans out of their former Province of Asia. To get rid of any who remained, he ordered the massacre of 88. That wiped out the Roman presence in the Near East and caused a catastrophic financial collapse in Rome, a crisis that today’s economic historians are finding eerily familiar.

In Rome, the reaction was fear and outrage. Mithradates’ timing was impeccable. The Romans were distracted by slave uprisings, rising domestic violence, and impending civil war. The Senate dispatched the ruthless general Sulla to avenge the massacre and destroy Mithradates. Sulla’s departure was delayed, because to finance their war on terror, Rome was forced to auction off its most sacred ancient treasure. Meanwhile, fleets of pirates—allied with Mithradates—cruised the Mediterranean, preying on Roman ships.

The ensuing Mithradatic Wars dragged on for decades, with some of the biggest battles and highest casualties in all antiquity. A pioneer in asymmetrical, unconventional tactics, Mithradates’ fighting style perplexed the experienced Roman troops, luring them deeper into barren landscapes, and leading to mutinies, fragging, and desertions. Rome’s top generals won battle after battle, but failed to lay their hands on Mithradates. His uncanny ability to elude capture unnerved the Romans. Despite crushing defeats, Mithradates easily recruited new armies and allies. Today, US military commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan dread this phenomenon, called the “Tet Offensive effect,” in which an enemy gains support and morale in spite of massive defeat. “Somehow,” exclaimed the Roman statesman Cicero, “Mithradates accomplished more by being defeated than if he had been victorious!”

After decimating Mithradates’ forces, the frustrated Romans saw their prey slip away, rescued by pirates, sheltered by his allies, hiding out in rugged terrain, escaping over secret mountain passes—and then surging back with new armies. Mithradates was never short of cash: even when losing battles he paid his soldiers in gold, in contrast to the Roman legionnaires who had to live on whatever they could loot.

In the First Mithradatic War, Sulla defeated Mithradates’ forces in Greece, then declared his mission accomplished, letting Mithradates off with a paltry fine. Taking advantage of his victory, Sulla rushed back to Rome, already in the throes of bloody civil war. Seizing power as Dictator, Sulla oversaw the dismantling of the Roman Republic.

Sulla’s failure to pursue Mithradates allowed Rome’s eastern Hannibal to come back even stronger. Mithradates’ smashing victory in the Second Mithradatic War gave him control of the seas, dominated by his pirate allies, who now manned a thousand swift ships.

Before he could take command of Rome’s Third Mithradatic War, Pompey had to carry out an expensive campaign to quash the pirate armada. Finally engaging with Mithradates, Pompey dealt the king a decisive defeat, but the wily rebel leader escaped yet again. He led Pompey on a wild goose chase across the rough country of Armenia and Azerbaijan, into what is now Georgia. Pompey, in pursuit, lost many men to ambush, toxic honey, poison arrows, and vipers. Utterly flummoxed as Mithradates went to ground, Pompey gave up the chase at the foot of the forbidding Caucasus. Assuming his foe was doomed to frozen death if he tried to cross the 10,000 foot mountain range, Pompey declared victory and marched off to Jerusalem, seeking more glory.

To everyone’s amazement, Mithradates popped up in the Crimea. When Pompey refused his request for peace negotiations, Mithradates raised a new army and prepared to invade Italy. Ultimately, betrayed by one of his sons, Mithradates, lost his kingdom and his life, in 63 BCE. But the Romans also lost something precious—government by “the Senate and the People (SPQR).” The Republic never recovered from the Mithradatic Wars.

Keeping in mind that “the past is a foreign country,” we can still find lessons in history. We are not Rome. Osama bin Laden is not Mithradates. Afghanistan is not our Mithradatic War. But our leaders must understand the value of historical mirrors in decision making. As the President and his advisors tackle the options for a positive outcome in Afghanistan, it is worth pondering what happened when a terror attack ignited interminable wars in the first century BCE.

TULIPs, DAISYs, and ROSES, oh my!

By Allen Yeh
Scriptorium Daily

Most people know that I am a Calvinist (see my blog here for explanation). In fact, my good friends who are not Calvinists tease me about it—but I think they just have election envy.
Calvinists use a handy acronym called TULIP to outline the points of our theology. These stand for:

-Total depravity (that everyone, without exception, is sinful).
-Unconditional election (that God sovereignly chooses people not based on any merit of them).
-Limited atonement (that Christ died for the elect).
-Irresistible grace (that if God calls you to Himself, you have no choice but to come).
-Perseverance of the saints (once saved, always saved—you can’t fall away from the faith).

Arminians, however, refute Calvinism. Instead of stressing God’s sovereignty, they stress human responsibility. So some Arminians have come up with a DAISY to counteract the TULIP! This stands for:

-Deliberate sin (it is humans who make the choice to sin, not because we have a sinful nature), e.g. Isaiah 53:6.
-All-encompassing call (salvation is available to everyone who seeks or desires it), e.g. Revelation 22:17.
-Infinite love (God desires for everyone to be saved, not just the “elect”), e.g. 2 Peter 3:9.
-Spontaneous faith (faith comes not from God but from within a person), e.g. Romans 10:10.
-Yieldedness of the Saints (assurance of salvation comes from constantly watching/checking oneself, not from an automatic “pass”), e.g. 2 Peter 1:10.

However, there have been people who have tried to navigate a middle path between Calvinism and Arminianism, between the TULIP and the DAISY, who think that there must be a happy medium between divine sovereignty and human responsibility.

One such way is called Molinism, named for a Renaissance Jesuit theologian, Luis de Molina, from Spain. He advocated something called “middle knowledge” in which he maintained that predestination and free will are not incompatible. Biola professor William Lane Craig is a modern-day proponent of this theology. Basically, “middle knowledge” maintains that though some truths are necessary (such as definitions of things), and other truths are contingent (God is the cause of certain things), there lies a third category in between these which says that some things are true without God being the primary cause of them. This gives validity to human responsibility without taking God entirely out of the picture. It keeps God’s omniscience intact by recognizing that He knows what we will do in any given situation, so all He has to do is create the circumstances in which we will act in the way He wants us to do without forcing our hand.

A new book just came out last month by Kenneth Keathley called Salvation and Sovereignty: A Molinist Approach. Keathley came up with this handy acronym for Molinism called ROSES which stands for:
-Radical depravity
-Overcoming grace
-Sovereign election
-Eternal life
-Singular redemption

Cute. But isn’t Molinism, at the end of the day, just a modified form of Calvinism?

Where Does the Story of Christmas Begin?

By Albert Mohler
AlbertMohler.com


As the celebration of Christmas fast approaches, our attention quickly goes to the familiar words of the infancy narratives found in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. This is a healthy reflex. After all, the Gospel of Jesus Christ rests upon the historicity of the events that took place in Bethlehem as Christ was born. Our understanding of the identity of Jesus Christ is directly rooted in these narratives and our confidence is in the fact that Matthew and Luke give us historically credible and completely truthful accounts of the events surrounding the birth of Christ.

A closer look at the narratives in both Matthew and Luke reveals a richness that familiarity may hide from us. Matthew begins with the genealogy of Christ, demonstrating the sequence of generations as Israel anticipated the birth of David's Son -- the Messiah. Luke, intending to set forth "an orderly account" of the events concerning Jesus, begins with the anticipation of the birth of John the Baptist and then moves to tell of the virgin conception of Jesus.

A careful reading of Matthew and Luke reveals both the elegance of detail and the grand expanse of the story of Christ's birth. Matthew gives particular attention to the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. The virgin birth, the birth of Christ in Bethlehem of Judea, the Herodian massacre of the innocents, the flight to Egypt, and the role of John the Baptist as forerunner are all presented as the fulfillment of specific Old Testament prophecies.

Every word of the Old Testament points to Christ. He is not only the fulfillment of all the Old Testament prophecies concerning him, he is the perfect fulfillment of the law and the prophets -- the entirety of the Old Testament Scriptures. The Christmas story does not begin in Bethlehem, for Israel had been promised the Messiah. As Luke reveals, Simeon beheld the baby Jesus in the temple and understood this infant to be "the Lord's Christ" -- the Davidic Messiah. Simeon understood this clearly -- the Christmas story did not begin in Bethlehem, or even in Jerusalem.

So, where does the Christmas story begin? In the Gospel of John we read: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made." [John 1:1-3]

The prologue to John's Gospel points to creation and to Christ, the divine Logos, as the agent of creation. Yet, with language drawn directly from Genesis, John begins his gospel "in the beginning."

In other words, the Christmas story begins before the creation of the world. As we celebrate Christmas and contemplate the Christmas story, we must be very careful not to begin the story in Bethlehem, or even in Nazareth, where Mary was confronted by Gabriel with the message that she would be the mother of the Messiah.

We must not even begin with Moses and the prophets, and with the expectation of the coming Son of Man, the promised Suffering Servant, and the heralded Davidic Messiah. We must begin before the world was created and before humanity was formed, much less fallen.

Why is this so important? Put simply, if we get the Christmas story wrong, we get the Gospel wrong. Told carelessly, the Christmas story sounds like God's "Plan B." In other words, we can make the Christmas story sound like God turning to a new plan, rather than fulfilling all that he had promised. We must be very careful to tell the Christmas story in such a way that we make the gospel clear.

Christmas is not God's second plan. Before he created the world, God determined to save sinners through the blood of his own Son. The grand narrative of the Bible points to this essential truth -- God determined to bring glory to himself through the salvation of a people redeemed and purchased by his own Son, the Christ. Bethlehem and Calvary were essential parts of God's plan from the beginning, before the cosmos was brought into being as the Son obeyed the will of the Father in creation.

The Christmas story does not begin in Bethlehem, but we appropriately look to Bethlehem as the scene of the most decisive event in human history -- the incarnation of the Son of God. Even as we turn our attention to Bethlehem, we must remember that the story of our salvation does not begin there. That story begins in the eternal purpose of God.

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God." That is where the Christmas story begins, and John takes us right to the essence of what happened in Bethlehem: "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth." [John 1:14]

Let's be sure to get the Christmas story right, start to finish.