My Response to Moriel Ministries
I recently wrote a post in which I characterised Jacob Prasch and Moriel Ministries as unreliable. This caused a member of Moriel Ministries to respond in the post’s comment box. Their response has also been published on their website as an “Open Letter to Tysen Woodlock.” I appreciate the time and effort they have taken to set out their objections to my earlier post.
Hypocrisy and the Clergy Abuse Scandal
An antidote to the stupidity displayed by Jacob Prasch and Moriel Ministries is an article on the Lex Communis blog. It talks of the hypocrisy of those using the Clergy Abuse Scandal to criticise the Catholic Church.
Jacob Prasch and Moriel Ministries
Moriel Ministries is a fundamentalist Christian ministry headed by Jacob Prasch. I first heard of the ministry when a friend of mine gave me some of Prasch’s works in an attempt to convert me to fundamentalist Protestantism. The ministry targets historically and scientifically illiterate Christians who lack the intelligence to critically assess its claims.
A quick look through the website shows a number of articles on a range of subjects. It would require considerable effort to go through them all, so instead I’ll use a recent posting to illustrate the standards of the ministry.
Faith and God
I suppose I’ve never really properly understood the concept of faith as it is used within Christianity. I’m sure there are sophisticated definitions of the term but here I’m focusing on what I understand some to be saying. This may or may not be representative of the ‘correct’ understanding.
I’ll describe a scenario. A person goes before a preacher and says that they want their broken toe healed. The preacher claims that if they have ‘faith’ that God will work a miracle then their toe could be healed. Others in the room are encouraged to have faith as well. The problem I have is determining who exactly these individuals have ‘faith’ in. Is it faith in themselves that they have properly determined the prescriptions for a miracle and satisfied those prescriptions? If so then that appears to me to be nothing but false confidence. They are essentially saying “I don’t know if a miracle will occur but I will chose to conclude with confidence (‘great faith’) that one will occur.”
Figure One
I’ve summarised this in Figure One. I’ve diagrammed the other possibility in Figure Two.
Figure Two
In Figure Two I’ve shown another understanding of the term ‘faith’, faith that God’s will will be done. It seems unusual to suggest that people require faith that a perfectly powerful being has the power to achieve it’s desired end. Another possibility is that faith is being used to mean faith that God has chosen to desire a given outcome, and outcome you also desire, but then it’s not at all clear how that could affect the outcome. If God desires it, it will be done regardless of the faith that humans have in it.
I am not saying that I have thought of all the possibilities, rather that I cannot see how some people who claim to have faith in God for a given miracle are not simply having faith that they’ve determined what they need to do in order for God to make a miracle and faith that they’ve done it or that they greatly desire an outcome and are to remain confident of it occurring in spite of the fact that they are really not sure.
I believe that some elements of Roman Catholicism (Thomism) have a different concept of faith and I’m sure that within Orthodoxy and Protestantism there are similarly sophisticated definitions that may make more sense.
John Shelby Spong
I mistakenly concluded that John Shelby Spong might be worth a read. But after reading this I’ve concluded that the man barely makes the grade as an ‘angry crank’ let alone a scholar.
Secular and Ecclesiastical Conceptions of Authority
I’ve long been interested in the concept of authority. Why do we obey one command but ignore another? Where does legitimate authority begin and end? What forms can authority take? I have found that this article from the The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2004 Edition) gives an excellent account of secular authority.
I recently attempted to interact with Tim Enloe, an intelligent guy with an academic background in religion, by posting a response to this post. My comment can be found here. Unfortunately he appears to have ignored my comment and claims to be too busy to respond to the various comments his post produced. I believe that much needless frustration occurs when participants in a discussion fail to define their terms. It is senseless to bring up a discussion then refuse to explain what you mean when you use key terms.
I reproduce my comment in full here:
“Tim, like you I’m interested in political theory and in particular the concept of ‘authority’. Unlike you, though, I no longer believe in God (I’m agnostic, not atheist; at this point I find the arguments for and against God’s existence equally plausible).
I have read a number of your posts and several of your articles and I note that you often use the word ‘authority’ in them. You also criticise your Roman Catholic opponents for failing to give a coherent account of the concept. In particular I note these examples:
- “To be honest, I find it nearly universally true that the louder modern Catholics shout about papal authority vs. Protestant rebellion, the less they’ve done much meaningful study on what authority is and within what sorts of limitations it is constrained.”
- “”Luther was a rebel against authority.” Highly debatable, depending on definitions of rebel and authority which have to be rationally justified, not merely assumed.”
- “Again, highly debatable depending on definitions of authority which have to be rationally justified, not merely assumed.”
My question is this. How do you define authority? Give a specific definition of the word itself. In particular, what is it’s source, scope and nature? How do you distinguish secular from ecclesiastical authority, especially in regard to their sources? What is the nature of the duty that each imposes, or indeed are any duties imposed at all? How are disputes in jurisdiction to be resolved? More practically (and if you only answer one question, please let it be this one), what is the ‘test’ that a given subject must apply in order to determine if an authority is legitimate or if a particular command from a legitimate authority is binding?
There is more that I’d like to know about your idea of authority but I’ll leave it there for the moment.”
Addition:
I’ve given up with this guy. Here is my last comment:
“I’ll probably get banned for this, but who cares. I’ve removed this site from my reader because it has become a joke.
Tim, I really don’t think you know what you are talking about. You frequently use the word ‘authority’ but you seem unwilling, or incapable, of actually defining the term. This makes you look particularly hypocritical when you viciously criticise Roman Catholics for failing to do the very same thing.
Have you noticed that your comments sections have become nothing but cheer squads? Jonathan Bronomo, Mary Louise, St Worm, Josh S, and a man that appears to have lost all grip on reality, the hate filled Kevin Johnson?
Sound scholarship has as much to do with the temperament of an author as it does his qualifications. If you are incapable of keeping your emotions in check you will remain the very thing you criticise – a cheap Internet polemicist.”
His reply:
”Bye Tysen. Don’t let the door hit you on your way out.”
This guy has some potential but I doubt he will ever reach it. Most humans, and scholars in particular, are intolerant of hypocrisy. Tim paints a picture of the sixteenth century that is so bleak that it is not possible to account for the thousands of people that remained Roman Catholic, let alone some dying for it, without turning them into Jack Chick-esque caricatures of human beings. All this and he chastises others for simplifying history. There is a strange pride that some Protestants feel when they buy into the rhetoric of sixteenth century polemicists, rhetoric that even some illiterate peasants of the day could see through. And by keeping company with people like Kevin Johnson, someone I see as nothing more than a hate filled bigot, he and his co-authors do their reputations among fair minded observers serious harm.
