tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3891434218564545511.post3935299631089248595..comments2024-03-28T13:23:50.623-05:00Comments on Alexander Pruss's Blog: Epistemically otiose appeals to authorityAlexander R Prusshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05989277655934827117noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3891434218564545511.post-89018349336304559782011-04-27T11:54:13.398-05:002011-04-27T11:54:13.398-05:00A colleague in another Department notes that profe...A colleague in another Department notes that professors also do this in foisting their view on some historical figure.Alexander R Prusshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05989277655934827117noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3891434218564545511.post-65935614067486305122011-04-27T11:00:09.990-05:002011-04-27T11:00:09.990-05:00Right. And the Protestant idea that all sins deser...Right. And the Protestant idea that all sins deserve eternal damnation is also compatible with the idea that different sins deserve different sorts of eternal punishments.<br /><br />I do think that the idea that the every sin deserves eternal damnation--e.g., a few seconds of freely chosen and morally unjustified inattention to one's interlocutor in a morally significant conversation--presents a serious challenge for apologetics.<br /><br />By the way, actually, Catholics have a three-fold distinction: mortal sin / venial sin / mere imperfection. I find that occasionally Protestants consider to be sin what I would consider to be mere imperfection--say, attitudes that you are not morally culpable for having.Alexander R Prusshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05989277655934827117noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3891434218564545511.post-33138806875319972402011-04-27T10:58:55.405-05:002011-04-27T10:58:55.405-05:00My background is quasi-Baptist (I am now a member ...My background is quasi-Baptist (I am now a member of a Presbyterian church), and it has been my experience that Baptists and quasi-Baptist Evangelicals (which is what most non-denominational Evangelicals are) have a tendency to be quite confused, and even inconsistent, about the role of tradition in their belief system. (I'm talking here about the laity; of course there are theologians who have this worked out.) The problem is not just sola scriptura, it's sola scriptura combined with a pretty strong version of the doctrine of the perspicuity of Scripture (stronger than, say, the relatively weak formulation of that doctrine you will find in the Westminster Confession). Once you combine these, there is strong pressure to convince yourself that if something is an important Christian doctrine then you personally must be able to find it in Scripture. And of course you get to be convinced that something is an important Christian doctrine by being told that it is by your church community (i.e. by tradition and/or authority, which you purport not to be relying on). But try independently re-deriving the doctrine of the Trinity. It's not easy. It seems to me that this position is unstable. Certainly in my own case it turned out to be unstable. I got pushed to the traditionalist side rather than the Socinian side, but there are certainly people who go the other way (e.g. Oneness Pentecostals).Kenny Pearcehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05561248709234656660noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3891434218564545511.post-3316860955545509842011-04-27T09:48:15.138-05:002011-04-27T09:48:15.138-05:00On the substantive point: the theological functio...On the substantive point: the theological function of "all sins are equal in the eyes of God" is to claim that even small sins merit eternal damnation, and consequently every human being requires salvation by God's grace through the death of Christ. That is, it is to deny the mortal/venial distinction Catholics draw. <br /><br />I don't think it ought to follow that all sins are equal in the sense that they are equally poor imitations of Christ. (Though it would not surprise me if some undergraduates went there.)<br /><br />Or another way to put it: for evangelicals, sanctification (your degree of holiness) is progressive and comes in degrees, justification (your need for salvation) is all-or-nothing.Heath Whitehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13535886546816778688noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3891434218564545511.post-55633856549988024662011-04-27T07:46:27.990-05:002011-04-27T07:46:27.990-05:00I agree that this can happen with Church authority...I agree that this can happen with Church authority, and Heath's example shows that it not only can but does happen. :-(<br /><br />What prompted this post, however, was that this occurred with sola scriptura yesterday. We were talking about the problem of evil in our philosophy of religion class yesterday, and specifically about horrendous evil. And then someone brought up the idea that horrendous evils were really no worse than any other evils, because all sins are equal in the eyes of God. (I did point out that even if the equality hypothesis was true, horrendous evils can still be worse for the victim.) And a number of students were convinced that the idea that all sins are equal in the eyes of God must be found in Scripture--but the only texts they could cite was Jesus' remarks on anger and killing, which really didn't demonstrate the general point. (Surprisingly, no one even brought up James 2:10.) <br /><br />The doctrine that all sins are equal in the eyes of God is something the students were getting from their ecclesiastical tradition. So there is a way in which the problem can be manifested in the case of Scripture that doesn't quite apply in the case of Church authority: you get a doctrine from ecclesiastical tradition, and you conclude that it must be somewhere in Scripture. If you thought the tradition was authoritative, you would have presumably felt less compulsion to try to find it somewhere in Scripture.<br /><br />That said, I certainly wasn't offering this as an argument for sola scriptura, but simply as an observation of a particular danger. That a theological doctrine carries dangers of misuse is a very weak argument against a doctrine.<br /><br />(On the substantive point that all sins are equal, it is very hard to fit that with our intuitions about moral progress--yet all Christians think moral progress is a part of the Christian life. Let us say that justice requires that I pay my factory workers in some area of the country $12 per hour. I pay them $7. It is clearly moral progress if I raise their salaries to $10. But if all sins are equal, shortchanging them by $2 per hour is no less bad than shortchanging them by $5 per hour. If all sins are equal, the only real room for moral progress is quantitative--committing fewer sins per day. But that surely is a poor way to count moral progress. If Jones gives up committing gluttony every weekend and instead she gets herself dead drunk every second weekend, that's not progress.)Alexander R Prusshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05989277655934827117noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3891434218564545511.post-59465988276238926422011-04-27T07:16:27.750-05:002011-04-27T07:16:27.750-05:001. I agree with Kenny; in principle, church autho...1. I agree with Kenny; in principle, church authority has the same problem. One upside of church authority is that, again in principle, there is somebody to speak out and clarify if such a misunderstanding becomes rampant. (But see below.)<br /><br />2. There is another consequence too. If I am attached both to p, and to the reliability of some source S, I may not think S teaches/endorses/says p, but I might think S does not teach/endorse/say not-p. And this can be equally misguided.<br /><br />3. True story: I once had an interview at a Catholic university, and I was doing some background research by calling a friend of a friend. This person mentioned that there was some tension between the faculty and the administration. The implication was that they were a bunch of conservative old fogies, but "I teach what Vatican II teaches, that the church belongs to the people."Heath Whitehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13535886546816778688noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3891434218564545511.post-61885977636389018922011-04-26T23:16:59.963-05:002011-04-26T23:16:59.963-05:00As with many (though perhaps not all) difficulties...As with many (though perhaps not all) difficulties for sola scriptura, this one can be run just as well with Church authority: I have reason to believe that p is an important Christian doctrine, so I have reason to believe that the Church has authoritatively taught that p. I then go around affirming 'the Church teaches that p.'<br /><br />I think, given your explanation of the general phenomenon, the reason for the presumptuousness of 'God believes that p' is that one is suggesting that one is 'one of God's intimates' in a very particular way: namely, one implicates that one has privileged access to information about what God believes.Kenny Pearcehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05561248709234656660noreply@blogger.com