Dr. Curley's Post-debate Comments
At this stage I will limit my comments to Craig's
First Rebuttal.
1–3. The day after the debate a Christian friend
of mine who had been in the audience complimented me on my "generosity"
in "not using to skewer him Craig's really foolish gesture in excluding
Calvinists – of which not a few were in his audience, and thought themselves
on his side – from the ranks of bona fide Christians." (email correspondence,
identity of the correspondent concealed to preserve confidentiality)
I wish I could claim credit for generosity, but
to be honest, the real explanation for my not raising this issue in the way
my friend suggested is that in my first rebuttal I was concentrating exclusively
on what Craig had said in his opening statement, and by the time I got to my
second rebuttal there was so much to object to, and my notes on, and recollection
of, what Craig had actually said in his two rebuttals were so sketchy that I
could not have done it.
More importantly, though, I'm not sure it would
have been quite fair. Craig says he denies the equation of Calvinism
with Christianity, and says he is a Christian, but not a Calvinist. The 'good
news' of 14 is that "You don't have to be a Calvinist to be a Christian."
(my emphasis) This leaves it open that you can be both a Calvinist and
a Christian.
Craig could say that Calvinism is not the same
thing as Christianity, and still admit, consistently, that Calvinism is a
legitimate interpretation of the Christian scriptures – by which I mean,
not necessarily a correct interpretation, but one which a careful,
unbiased and intelligent reader of those scriptures might well come to.
And the real question, I think, is whether Craig would admit this. If
he says "no," then he does say something at which Calvinists might
properly take offense. If he says "yes," then he concedes that my
first line of objection might well apply to Christianity, and not merely to
an eccentric misunderstanding of Christianity.
Calvin certainly thought his doctrine of predestination
was firmly based in Scripture. (For his arguments, see the Institutes of
the Christian Religion, Bk. III, Ch. xxi–xxiv.) And he was able to persuade
a great many people that he was right: not only the members of the church in
Geneva, but the Huguenots in France, the members of the Reformed Church in the
Netherlands, the Presbyterians in Scotland, and, of course, those unfortunate
Anglicans in England. Many Christians nowadays seem to think that the doctrine
of predestination is a Calvinist aberration, not realizing how common it has
been in the Christian tradition. Craig's reply encourages that misconception.
In my first rebuttal I referred the curious to
Luther's On the Bondage of the Will (tr. & ed. by Philip Watson &
B. Drewery, in Luther and Erasmus: Free Will and Salvation, Library of
Christian Classics, Westminster Press, 1969). I also mentioned that St. Thomas
Aquinas held the doctrine of predestination. See Summa theologiae, Part
I, Qu. 23. Thomas clearly embraces double predestination, i.e., the predestination
of both the elect and the reprobate, a position which would seem to have been
condemned in advance by the Council of Orange in 529. See Henry Denzinger's
The Sources of Catholic Dogma (tr. by Roy Deferrari, from the 30th ed.,
Herder, 1957, p. 81).
I should have mentioned St. Augustine. See, for
example, his treatise On the Predestination of the Saints. Augustine's
position is complex, and some have suggested that he thought that only the elect
were predestined – this in spite of several passages apparently endorsing double
predestination (e.g., in ch. 100 of his Enchiridion, or in the City
of God Bk. XV, ch. 1, Bk. XXI, ch. 24). For helpful discussion of these
issues, see Christopher Kirwan's Augustine (Routledge, 1989, ch. 7) and
John Rist's Augustine (Cambridge, 1994, ch. 7).
So there's quite a tradition in favor of (some
form of) predestination among the major Christian theologians up to the Reformation.
And this should not be surprising, given the support for predestination in the
Christian scriptures. The primary text is Paul's epistle to the Romans. See
ch. 8–9, esp. the following passage:
Something similar happened to Rebecca when she had conceived children by one
husband, our ancestor, Isaac. Even before they had been born or had done anything
good or bad (so that God's purpose of election might continue, not by works
but by his call), she was told, "The elder shall serve the younger."
As it is written, "I have loved Jacob, but I have hated Esau." What
then are we to say? Is there injustice on God's part? By no means! For he says
to Moses, "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion
on whom I have compassion." So it depends not on human will or exertion,
but on God who shows mercy. (Romans 9:10–16)
I am skeptical that a corporate interpretation of these and similar passages
can be made plausible. But even if it could, it would need to be explained how
God could have permitted such widespread misunderstanding of his revelation
on such a central point.
A more promising way of evading my first objection
might be to reject the authority of the letters of St. Paul. It is notable that,
for most of the theological doctrines which I object to, the strongest scriptural
support tends to be found in those letters, and not in the gospels themselves.
Christianity has changed in many ways over the course of its history. A few
centuries ago most of the major Christian denominations thought they were committed
by their scriptures to denying the Copernican doctrine that the Earth is in
motion on its axis and in an orbit around the sun. In the last century, and
even today, many Christians believe they are committed by their scriptures to
denying the theory of evolution. Some day Christianity may evolve to the point
where it is prepared to deny Paul canonical authority. There would be some loss
in that, but on the whole I think it would be a development which many non–Christians
might applaud. We are not there yet.
Craig says my position implies that many non–Calvinist
churches are "on the slippery slope to heresy." Perhaps they are.
Heresy is a tricky notion, now that there is no agreed central authority with
the power to determine what constitutes orthodox belief. But back in the days
when there was such a central authority, the aforementioned Council of Orange
defined the following as orthodox belief:
Man... inherits a nature corrupt in body and soul, and is unable to do anything
whatever towards salvation by his natural powers. He has lost all power to turn
to God, because sin has so weakened his free will that 'no one is able to love
God as he ought, or believe in God, or do anything for God which is good, except
the grace of divine mercy come first to him.' (David Christie–Murray, A History
of Heresy, Oxford UP, 1989, p. 94)
If the denominations to which Craig refers all agree with his doctrine
of free will, then I would judge that by the standards of that church council
they are guilty of Pelagianism.
My understanding of the agreement recently reached
between the Roman Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation is that
neither of those denominations is currently, in that sense, heretical, as may
be seen from the following excerpt from their joint declaration:
All persons depend completely on the saving grace
of God for their salvation. The freedom they possess in relation to persons
and the things of this world is no freedom in relation to salvation, for as
sinners they stand under God's judgment and are incapable of turning themselves
to God to seek deliverance, of meriting their justification before God, or of
attaining salvation by their own abilities. Justification takes place solely
by God's grace. (See the report in the New York Times for 26 June 1998,
pp. 1 & 12.)
It may be, of course, that many modern members of those denominations
are not in agreement with their leadership, and so would be heretical by the
standards which have operated throughout most of the history of Christianity.
I think this is very often the case on this and many other issues.
5. This oversimplifies my argument, since I contended
that there were both scriptural and philosophical reasons for believing in predestination.
Also, I think that in general, in dealing with
the theological objections, Craig represents my argument in a way which doesn't
bring out its full force. As a debater, of course, he's under no obligation
to present my arguments in the best possible light. But the moderator's opening
remarks had claimed that we were all there in pursuit of truth, and that might
impose somewhat different obligations.
The general form of the five theological objections
is as follows: 1) The Christian scriptures teach some doctrine (predestination,
hell, original sin, justification by faith, exclusivism). 2) The doctrine thus
taught is an appalling doctrine (either because manifestly false or morally
repugnant or both). 3) Therefore, the Christian scriptures are not worthy of
credence as a revelation from God. 4) Therefore, the Christian God does not
exist (i.e., if there is a god, he is not the God of the Christian scriptures).
The general form of Craig's reply is, not to defend
the doctrines, but to deny that the Christian scriptures teach those doctrines,
or that they teach them in the form in which I objected to them.
6. Note that the passages cited do not directly
contradict predestination by affirming free will. What they directly support
is the doctrine of universal salvation. (This is why, in my first rebuttal,
I was unclear whether Craig had denied the existence of Hell.) These passages
were, of course, perfectly familiar to the traditional theologians who defended
predestination.
It appears from this that Craig understands the
notion of human freedom in such a way that humans, in virtue of their freedom,
have the power to frustrate the will of God. But an omnipotent being would seem
to be one whose will cannot be frustrated, one for whom it is true necessarily,
that "if he wills that p, then p." (NB: I make it explicit
here, lest there be any confusion, that for the purposes of this argument I
need only affirm the necessity of the whole conditional, and not of its consequent,
p.) So if God creates humans with freedom, he ceases to be omnipotent.
Omnipotence would then not be an essential characteristic of God, but one which
he has at some times and not others.
7. 'Corporate predestination' doesn't look like
predestination at all. At this point (4 August 1998) I have not yet had a chance
to look at the book he recommended, Robert Shank's Elect in the Sun.
But I am not optimistic that it will make Craig's interpretation of Paul plausible.
8. This is a caricature of my argument. I defined
a sinner as someone who has, at least once in his life, done something seriously
wrong. I pointed out that on that understanding of the term, there will still
be very significant differences of degree of guilt between different sinners.
Yet it appears that the doctrine of hell requires all these sinners to be treated
alike. This would follow from those texts which condemn the greater part of
mankind to hell, such as Matt. 7:13–14, 22:1–14.
Regarding the definition of a sinner: the Christian
has two choices, neither of them very attractive. Either he can say that
anyone who fails to be perfect is sufficiently sinful to merit eternal damnation,
in which case it will be plausible to hold that everyone is in fact a sinner
(since no one is perfect), but the doctrine will be much too rigorous from a
moral point of view (since any imperfection will be held to merit eternal punishment)
– or he can say that it requires more than minor imperfections to be
a sinner, in which case the doctrine does not seem too rigorous, though it now
becomes extremely implausible to hold that every human is a sinner in the relevant
sense. Call the first the perfectionist understanding of sin. I deliberately
did not assume that a Christian must embrace a perfectionist understanding of
sin, because that seemed to me uncharitable. From what Craig says in 9 it appears
that he would embrace perfectionism.
The proposition that the great majority of mankind
are condemned to hell is an implication, not only of the scriptural passages
cited, but also – so long as the majority of mankind do not have the necessary
faith in Christ – of the doctrine that faith in Christ is a necessary and sufficient
condition for salvation.
9. Astonishing! It was no part of my argument
to claim that "Minor sins do not deserve eternal punishment." Nevertheless,
Craig goes out of his way to reject that proposition. If he thinks minor sins
do deserve eternal punishment, I can understand why he would not want to defend
that view in a public forum. Perhaps he misspoke himself here. But there is
a strain of perfectionism in Christian thought, as illustrated by Jesus' injunction:
"Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect." (Matt. 5:48) Cf.
Matt. 19:16–30 (a story told also in Mark 10:17–27 and Luke 18:18–30).
10. The argument Craig attributes to me looks
like an obvious non sequitur. I think the argument I actually offered
was a better argument: 1) The doctrine of original sin holds that, since the
fall of Adam, all human beings come into the world tainted by his sin (where
this 'taint' is understood to be serious enough that, in the absence of grace,
the sinner would merit eternal damnation). 2) The Christian scriptures teach
the doctrine of original sin. 3) The doctrine of original sin, so understood,
is an appalling doctrine (the idea that one man's sin might be transmitted to
all his descendants is morally repugnant – the doctrine that all humans are
sinners in the requisite sense seems manifestly false). 4) Therefore, the Christian
scriptures are not worthy of credence as a revelation from God. 5) Therefore,
the Christian God does not exist (i.e., if there is a god, he is not the God
of the Christian scriptures).
11. Craig informs us that he does not believe
in infant damnation. I am gratified to learn that. But I wish he had
addressed the central issue I raised: whether someone who is committed to the
Christian scriptures as an authoritative revelation from God is obliged to accept
original sin?
I know of no passage in the Christian scriptures
which explicitly teaches infant damnation. Nevertheless, the principal
text which teaches original sin (Romans 3–5, esp. 5:12–21) is sufficiently explicit
about the universality of sin that most Christians, historically, have
taken it to imply that, in the absence of a special act of grace, infants
will be damned, just like any other sinner: "Just as sin came into the
world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all
because all have sinned..." (Romans 5:12)
That is one major reason, historically, for the
practice of infant baptism. See Alister McGrath, Christian Theology (Blackwell,
2nd ed., 1997, pp. 423–26, 514–18.) I can understand why a modern Christian
would prefer to forget these unpleasant aspects of the history of his religion.
But it is less than candid to pretend that a doctrine with such a long history
had no scriptural foundation.
12. Again, my usual complaint about the formulation
of the argument attributed to me. I would say that, if God arbitrarily chose
some for the gift of justifying faith, and arbitrarily excluded others, that
would be, not merely unfair, but grossly unfair. And the proper conclusion would
be that the Christian scriptures are not credible as a divine revelation (on
the presumption that any being who is worthy of the love and obedience the Christian
scriptures demand must be just).
13. This seems absolutely incoherent to me. Craig
denies that the faith is bestowed arbitrarily, and affirms that it is bestowed
as a free gift, which the person who receives the gift has done nothing to merit.
But if the person who receives the gift is not distinguished from the person
who doesn't by some difference of merit, then favoring the one over the other
seems to be exactly what I meant by an arbitrary action.
Suppose I, as a teacher, have two students whose
work is equal in merit. To preserve the theological parallel, we'll suppose
they both deserve to fail. I give one student an A, and fail the other. If that's
not acting arbitrarily, I don't know what is. I can understand the student who
gets the A being grateful for my mercy. But I would not like to defend my actions
to the student whom I failed.
I suggested above (in my comments on 1–3 of Craig's
first rebuttal) that most of the theological doctrines which I find most objectionable
in traditional Christianity tend to find their primary textual support in the
letters of St. Paul. The doctrine of justification by faith looks like an exception,
since it has support not only in Paul (Romans 3:21–4:25, 10:9–13), but also
in the gospels: notably in Mark (9:23, 16:15–16), Luke (8:9–15), and numerous
passages in John (3:16–18, 6:29–40, 11:25–26, 12:44–50).
Since there are also passages in the gospels which
suggest a doctrine of justification by works (e.g., the perfectionist passages
noted above, in comment on Craig's 9, or Matt. 16:27), I conjecture that Pauline
teaching may have influenced the way the gospel authors represented the teaching
of Jesus. If we accept Raymond Brown's chronology (in his Introduction to
the New Testament, Anchor Bible Reference Library, 1997), Paul wrote his
epistle to the Romans at least 10 years before the earliest of the gospels.
Perhaps even the doctrine of predestination is
an exception to that general statement. At any rate there does seem to be support
for predestination in passages like John 6:35–40 and 60–65.
15. Craig seems to have confused me with J. L.
Mackie here. He represents me as posing the problem of evil in what philosophers
of religion call its 'logical' form, i.e., as holding that the existence of
any evil at all is logically incompatible with the existence of a God having
the attributes Christians normally attribute to God (specifically, being all
powerful and all good). The classic article here is Mackie's "Evil and
Omnipotence" (Mind 1955, pp. 200–12, and widely reprinted, e.g.,
in the collection The Problem of Evil, ed. by Marilyn and Robert Adams,
Oxford, 1990). Many people believe that Alvin Plantinga effectively refuted
Mackie in his book God, Freedom & Evil (Eerdmans, 1974).
But I did not present Mackie's version of the argument.
I never asserted either of the premises Craig labels as crucial (2 & 3).
Nor does it seem to me that I assumed them without stating them. In fact, I
conceded the essential point in Plantinga's reply to Mackie, viz., that God's
existence is not logically incompatible with the existence of evil, since it
is logically possible that an omnipotent, omnibenevolent being might
have a morally satisfactory reason for permitting evil, might need to permit
evil in order to achieve some greater good. (See my discussion of the greater
goods defense.)
My version of the argument emphasized that the
good which Plantinga suggests might justify the occurrence of evil – human freedom
– does not look as though it can justify much of the evil which occurs. In particular,
it does not look as though it can justify the great suffering of animals before
the emergence of humans or the frequently inequitable ways good and evil are
distributed in the world after the emergence of humans. (This is all,
of course, on the assumption that human freedom really is consistent with the
existence of an omnipotent, omniscient being. At this stage I'm conceding that
for the sake of the argument, but I think it still remains to be shown.)
Apparently Craig couldn't respond to the argument
I actually made, and so decided to retread Plantinga's response to Mackie.
18. If you want to summarize my argument in a
series of propositions that make it look like a syllogism, this would be a better
summary: 1) The doctrine (often advocated by Christians) that God's existence
is a necessary presupposition of morality apparently implies that the ultimate
basis for morality is a divine command. 2) If the ultimate basis for morality
is a divine command, then our fundamental moral obligation is to obey God, no
matter what he commands. 3) If our fundamental obligation is to obey God, no
matter what he commands, then anything whatever might turn out to be obligatory,
depending on what he chooses to command. 4) If anything whatever might turn
out to be obligatory, then the common view that there are some things (like
killing innocent children) which are simply wrong is false. 5) But that common
view is not false. 6) Therefore, God's existence is not a necessary presupposition
of morality. (And, we might add, the Christian scriptures, to the extent that
they teach that we have an unconditional duty to obey God, are not credible
as divine revelation).
19. The argument I've presented in the preceding
, as comment on Craig's 18, looks valid to me. Any valid argument can be made
to look invalid by giving an inadequate account of its structure.
20. The argument here seems to be: 1) God is essentially
morally perfect (loving, holy, compassionate, just, etc.). 2) A being who is
essentially morally perfect cannot command anything which is inherently
immoral (i.e., God necessarily commands acts which are at least consistent
with morality). 3) Therefore, God is not liable to command anything whatever.
One difficulty with this argument is that if you
assume that God's commands flow necessarily from his nature, then it looks as
though you may be compromising God's freedom. We need to have it explained how
God's actions can be both free and necessary.
Another difficulty: If certain actions are inherently
immoral (that being the reason why we can be confident that a morally perfect
being would not command them), then it does not look as though we need God's
prohibition to make them immoral.
21. I am quite mystified by this . What does
Craig mean when he says that the case of Abraham and Isaac is "the exception
that proves the rule"? Presumably (given the preceding ) the rule Craig
wants to prove is: God never commands anything immoral. He doesn't question
the truth of the Biblical story which says that God commanded Abraham to sacrifice
his son. But if he thinks God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son, and thinks
that God never commands anything wrong, then I would suppose he was committed
to holding that it would not have been wrong for Abraham to obey God's command
by sacrificing his son. That would be a consistent view, even if it leads to
a somewhat uncomfortable conclusion.
But I don't think he really wants to say that.
He seems to regard that command as an exception, by which I can only suppose
he means: normally God does not command us to do anything wrong; it's
only occasionally that he does that, as in the case of Abraham and Isaac;
so most of the time we'll be all right if we obey God's commands. And
I don't understand how this can be consistent with the contention of 20: that
God necessarily commands things which are consistent with his essentially moral
nature.
It's an interesting question, of course, how exceptional
the case of Abraham and Isaac is. For the most part I have no objection to the
Ten Commandments. But within two chapters of the pronouncement of those
commandments in Deuteronomy 5 come some others which are not so easy to accept.
I refer to those laying down the rules for what some commentators, with what
seems to be unintentional irony, call 'holy war,' and what we might more naturally
call 'genocide' – i.e., Deuteronomy 7 and its prescriptions as to how the people
of Israel are to treat the Canaanites when they succeed in conquering them:
"you must utterly destroy them. Make no covenant with them and show them
no mercy." (Deut. 7:1–2; see also the more detailed commandments in Deut.
20:1–20)
The subsequent history of the chosen people reveals
how they interpreted these commands, and with what diligence they obeyed them
(e.g., as requiring the slaughter of non–combatants, including women, the elderly
and children – see Joshua 6:15–21, 10:28, 11:10–11). Observe also what divine
penalties they suffered when they rebelled against the commandments (1 Samuel
15). There is a stimulating discussion of these matters in Gerd Lüdemann's The
Unholy in Holy Scripture (Westminster John Knox Press, 1997).
