Greg Bahnsen vs. Michael Martin: The Debate That Never Was

Greg Bahnsen vs. Michael Martin: The Debate That Never Was (1/2)
Greg L. Bahnsen was scheduled to debate the existence of God with Boston University Philosophy Professor, Michael Martin, at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tenessee on October 26, 1994. However, Michael Martin dropped out of the debate less than two weeks before the scheduled debate, because he did not want the debate recorded by Covenant Tape Ministry and sold for profit. Nevertheless, Greg Bahnsen traveled to Memphis, Tennessee anyways to deliver a lecture, which he humorously entitled, The Debate That Never Was, refuting Michael Martin’s arguments against Christianity as expounded in his book, Atheism: A Philosophical Justification. I have made a loose transcription of his opening remarks of his lecture below.

Well thank you very much and welcome to The Debate That Never Was. Sorry about that, I come to Memphis where sightings of Elvis is more common than sightings of my debate opponent apparently. So what do you do when you show up to a debate and there is only one side talking? I’m going to try to do my best tonight to expand on the remarks that I would have been using in my presentation in the debate, and then in the place of answering my opponent, Dr. Michael Martin, I will take his book, Atheism: A Philosophical Justification and try to cross-examine it. I think when someone takes a public and published position on an issue as momentous as its consequences as the existence or non-existence of God, it is expected that he will stand up and given an account of his reasoning. The truth regarding an omnipotent and personal Creator is an objective and public matter. Those who disagree over it, theists and atheists, should be willing and able to answer for the views for which they are commited. They should expect vigorous cross-examination to see if their views will withstand scrutiny. Thus as a Christian theist, I appreciate the opportunity to make a public case in favor of the truth of my faith. I regret that my opponent did not share these commitments or confidence in the public defensibility of his atheistic position, but more on that later.

You know what I would think would be a really interesting debate topic? I’d love to see two scholars come out here and debate on the existence of air. That would be downright fascinating. Just think of it, profound and articulate argumentation, cross-examination over whether air was real, all the while the two disputants breathing air in and out as they huff and puff their arguments at each other. This would be rather silly wouldn’t it? We are debating on the existence of air while breathing air as a precondition of our ability to debate. I think it would be a scholarly exercise for a person who offers erudite arguments against the existence of air to pursue that project as though air didn’t exist, when in fact contrary to his conclusions, he is using air all along. He would in that case, be a living contradiction. His argument would be possible only if his argument were wrong. He could argue against the existence of air all the while breathing air only if his argument proved to be wrong. I believe that that is something of an illustration of what is so wrong with the scholar trying to debate and show that God does not exist. He may argue this way and that way; he may enlist profound lines of erudite reasoning, but because of the validity of what is assumed and utilized in debate–the cogency of logic, language, objective knowledge and a number of other things– only make sense in the theistic worldview, the atheist debater is like the man who is continuing to breath all the while arguing that air does not exist. The existence of God is rationally necessary to rationality, science and ethics. In which case, the atheist must secretely take for granted the very thing he hopes to refute in order to engage in the debate at all. By participating in the debate, he has in principle, already lost the debate. By coming to the debate, Michael Martin would have lost, the debate itself presupposes things which are only intelligible within a Christian theistic worldview.

It is my conviction that atheism as a philosophy makes it impossible to achieve this goal of knowing anything. Human beings seek to understand themselves and the world in which they live to make their experience intelligible. With knowledge people gain control over their environment which makes their live more comfortable and safe. As a person becomes more intellectually more mature, he brings discipline to the area of study that interests him. He seeks greater precision, coherence and clarity in his thought. This scientific level of thinking to these various aspects of experience is never an end for human inquiry. Such questions will inevitably arise about the nature, extent and assumptions of science, especially about the relationship between the different sciences. This brings us to the consideration of philosophy. Philosophy is concerned with the presuppositions that arise is any and all fields of study. It seeks a world and lifeview in terms of which all of the elements of human experience can be unified into a coherent outlook. Philosophy has a critical function and a constructive function on the other. It seeks to cross-examine claims to the truth and create a unified picture of reality. Philosophy forces us to think about questions about the nature of reality, how we know what we know and how man ought to behave.

Philosophy asks:
1. What are the ultimate principles by which we answer philosophical question about reality, know and ethics?
-What are the principles that render experience intelligible? Are the principles logically consistent? Are the expicable in languge? Are they justifiable or arbitrary?
2. How should we understand nature?
-Is there an underlying unity through change and the way things appear in this world?
-Is there an objective order in this world? Is it a purposeful order?
3. What is man’s place and function in the world?
-Does man have dignity? What is the meaning of life? How do values fit into the realm of nature?
4. Is man’s mind self-sufficient?
-Is reason an instrument for painting objective knowledge about reality?
-Should man follow his observations or rational conceptions?
-How do senses and reasoning relate to each other?

Everyone utilizes some network of presuppositions regarding these matters. Philosophy forces a critical investigation of differing worldviews. Why is it that philosophers don’t come to agreement on these basic issues? There are profound differences between the worldviews of those who are disputing. Those worldviews will control with way in which factual evidence is accepted and interpreted, thus these disputes are not resolvable by simply observing the world. Conflicting presuppositions about reality, knowledge and ethics determine what a person takes to be problematic, what can be taken for granted about experience and what kind of method to follow. Adherence to different worldviews argue past each other and come to radically different conclusions. Any fruitful debate over the philosophical question of the existence of God will come down to an assessment of conflicting worldviews. In the end, the issue is whether the underlying philosophy regarding reality, knowledge and ethics is cogent, consistent and warranted. In particular, we must ask whether atheism or Christian theism can provide the preconditions for making human experience intelligible, or whether they leave science, ethics and logic to be arbitrary and/or incoherent. It is just because the atheist worldview of Michael Martin undermines rationality and morality that it is philosophically unacceptable. What we all take for granted in terms of objective knowledge, linguistic meaningfulness, logical standards, scientific procedures, human freedom and dignity and moral absolutes, because what we take for granted in terms of these things, would be utterly unintelligible within the context of the atheist worldview. These things do not comport with atheistic presuppositions. When the atheist tells us that there is no God and that all there is is matter and motion, it becomes impossible to give a rational account of objectivity, human freedom, moral absolutes, science, laws of logic etc. On the otherhand, the worldview of Christian theism is the philosophical perspective in which all of these things are intelligible. The atheist who attempts to use these things to refute Christianity, is assuming the very thing he is attempting to refute. Anti-theism presupposes theism. The proof of Christian theism is that without it, you cannot prove anything. The atheist worldview of Michael Martin does not comport with the concepts and principles of logic, science, language, human freedom etc. It cannot prove or give an account of knowing anything. Atheism fails as a worldview and profoundly refutes itself. The atheist cannot know anything whatsoever.

You will find that in response to their inability to give an account for human experience, they will dismiss the questions of worldviews and consider it un-important. The one thing the atheist knows for certain to begin with is that God is not going to be allowed to exist. If the atheist needs the existence of God to have a credible worldview, then it would be better to say that they don’t need worldviews. It is just because the atheist worldview cannot provide the preconditions for intelligiblity that the atheist worldview makes it impossible to argue for the atheist worldview. It’s not just that the atheist cannot prove that God does not exist, the atheist cannot account for anything. God has made his existence and character clear to all men, the evidence of God’s existence is pervasive and inescapable, because God’s existence is the precondition for the intelligiblity of man’s experience. Those who deny God render their thinking foolish.

I’d like to illustrate this point with some philosophers from the past. They were commited to a rigorously empirical theory of knowledge. The attempt to develop this kind of outlook has always proved unsuccessful and self-refuting.

Epicurus
He was born in 341BC and was a materialistic atomist in his metaphysic. He was a qualitative hedonist in his ethics. He held that philosophical method should begin with the plain facts of sense perception and shape all opinions in terms of sense perception augmented by the demand for non-contradiction. Following Democratus, there is no such thing as spiritual reality, for reality is composed on a infinite number of qualitatively identical and self-propelling atoms whose arrangement and motion explains the qualities of things and their behaviors. Everything that exists, even the gods and human soul, are explained materially and naturalistically.

Critique
1. The premise that all knowledge is perceptual in nature was not one that Epircurus knew on the basis of perception itself, thus his philosophy refutes itself. Everything is known by perception according to him. Does he know this on the basis of perception?
2. What Epicurus said about reality could not possibly have been known by means of perception. He believed in existence of imperceptible bits of matter, but he didn’t know this by perception. He believed these bits of matter to be infinite, but he doesn’t have infinite perception of everything. These infinite bits of matter were in ceaseless motion, but how could he know that? He would have to be watching them all the time. On the onehand, he wanted to be strictly empirical but that empiricism undermined what he wanted to say about reality.
3. His naturalistic atomistic theory of reality could not explain man as having free will, since man is nothing but the mechanical combinations of atoms falling through empty space. He offered a theory that there must have been a swerve in the fall of these atoms which account for man’s unpredictability which we call man’s will. For some reason one atoms swerved and caused a billiard ball effect and this is what brings human will. Even this deprives man of purposeful choice and leaves us with the conclusion that since what our brains devise is mechnically determined by the swerves of atoms. We have no basis for trusting our reasoning. If we cannot help but think what we do, why bother with philosophical investigation and debating?
4. How could Epicurus know that there was no after-life? Did he sense that?

David Hume
The Scottish skeptic was born in 1711. He had a strictly empirical method and anti-metaphysical prejudices. Hume advanced a strictly empirical criterion of meaning. He said, “When we entertain therefore, any suspicion that a philosophical term is employed without any meaning or idea (as is but too frequent), we need but enquire, from what impression is that supposed idea derived?” This kind of rigor would lead us to take into hand “If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.“ A cautious philosophy will note the outcome of a consistent application of Hume’s empirical method from which Hume did not flinch that our common philosophical notions for all their use and importance prove to be false and nonsensical. We have no empirical impression of any underlying identity through change, either in the supposed objects of the external world or in our selves as the subject of these impressions. There is nothing but temporal succession of one sensation after another. There is no meaningful basis then for speaking of continuous objects of experience nor any meaningful basis for speaking of a continuous “I” who experiences those illusory objects. Hume said, “I am nothing more than a loose bundle of perceptions.” Even here, he had no warrant for speaking of these loose perceptions being “bundles” since there was no empirical impression of such a bundle. According to Hume, there could be no evidence which would justify our practical belief in an external world whatsoever. He said, “the mind as never anything present to it but the perceptions and cannot possibly reach any experience of that connection with objects. The supposition of that connection is therefore without any foundation in reasoning.” Hume means that are a all caught in an ego-centric predicament, because we never see any connection between our impressions in our mind and objects outside in the world, and therefore we can’t even say that there is a rational foundation for believing in an external world. Furthermore, argued Hume, the idea that there is a causal connection between any two events, despite the fact that it embodies the underlying belief of all empirical science (induction), is likewise without any rational foundation. While you may experience a succession of events, you never perceive a necessary or causal connection between the events that you experience. Hume said, “we can never observe any tie between them.” In this case, science can only report past observations to us and every event to us is a brand new event about which nothing can be rationally said by way of induction inference or future prediction. Hume’s strict empiricism landed into utter skepticism by his own admission. Hume’s philosophy led to skepticism about God, the external world, the existence of the self and all scientific reasoning. Even Hume’s attempt to explain why humans engage in inductive reasoning he said “by force of natural instinct or habit, they do this regardless of rational justification.” Even this attempt rests on the validity of inductive inference, now about human nature and the alleged workings of the human mind and habits. Furthermore, any attempt to mitigate Hume’s skepticism by turning toward a pragmatic interest in action and problem solving rather than theoretical demands of a philosophy, is not only a philosophical cop-out but itself rests upon the premise of experience and regularities in the behavior of nature and man, from which generalizations we are allowed to make successful plans of action. Even the pragmatic attempt to deal with Hume’s skepticism rests upon the very regularity of nature which Hume’s philosophy rules out as intellectual illegitimate. Hume’s anti-metaphysical empiricism proved to destroy objectivity, rationality and science.

Bertrand Russell
He was born in 1872 and died in 1970. He believed that logical rigor can entangle the puzzles of philosophy. He recommended that philosophy adopt the methods of science, believing that the methods of sciences can yield truths about things which, contrary to pragmatism, resides in correspondence to atomic facts of experience and not merely to the workability of our beliefs. He said that we should look with skepticism and doubt upon anything that is not susceptible to scientific analysis and proof. Russell hoped that his logical analysis could surmount the problems of David Hume and make it possible to validate inferences from our momentary sense data to the world of physics or the objects of common sense realism that are known by description. He thought he could objectively save scientific knowledge about an object of an external world. He said, “I wanted, on the one hand, to find out whether anything could be known…“ According to him, the business of philosophy was to give a general description of the whole universe, an inventory of the kinds of entities that make up the world in which we live. Russell says, “There is only one constant preoccupation: I have throughout been anxious to discover how much we can be said to know and with what degree of certainty or doubtfulness.” He was forced to conclude that most of what passes for knowledge is “open to reasonable doubt.” He wanted to know how knowledge is possible and how do we know that anything exists. He wanted to use logical analysis to answer these questions. He said, “every philosophical problem, when it is subjected to the necessary analysis and purification, is found either to be not really philosophical at all, or else …logical.” Ordinary language is so incoherent that is despises the logical form of what we are trying to say and badly misleads philosophers. Russell wanted to develop a purified language which will picture the world so that every sentence will correspond to a fact or group of facts in the world, and every word would correspond to an element of a fact, every word will refer to a thing, property or relation. The perfect language will then consist of the report of momentary sense experiences. Only that which can be translated into this perfect language is knowable. He thought that the mind, material objects, universals, particulars,laws of logic and time belong in the inventory of what is real. He said, “As instances I might mention: mind, matter, consciousness, knowledge, experience, causality, will, time. I believe all these notions to be inexact and approximate, essentially infected with vagueness, incapable of forming part of any exact science…” Throughout is career, Russell changed his mind many times about the sorts of things that belong in the inventory of the universe. Subsequently he dropped material objects and mind; particulars were replaced by qualities, and the only universal he had sympathy for was the universal called “similarity.” Basic to Russell’s thinking was a distinction between what we know by aquaintance (direct experience) and the things we know by description. In other words, there is a distinction between hard data (we know directly) and soft data (generalizations and descriptions built up from the hard data). Russell said, “I still hold that any proposition other than a tautology, if it is true, is true in virtue of a relation to a fact, and that facts in general are independent of experience.” He said that there is a possibility of sensing something and that is independent of what is actually sensed, and everything that is real is made up of those possibilities of perception.

Critique
The key problem is “can we infer from our direct experience from our sense data or the possibilities of sense data those entities of common sense that we describe in the world?” He said, “Can the existence of anything other than our own hard data be inferred from the existence of those data?” He also said, “if we know what can only be experienced and verified then most of what passes for knowledge is not knowledge at all.” Russell had to admit to failure at the end of his career. The problem was to show that inferences from hard data to soft data can be warranted and that empiricism is compatible to claims to knowledge of general truths about nature itself. This is the outcome of the atheist development of a worldview to attempt to show that knowledge is possible. He said, “Although our postulates can . . . be fitted into a framework which has what may be called an empiricist “flavor,” it remains undeniable that our knowledge of them, in so far as we do know them, cannot be based upon experience. . . In this sense, it must be admitted, empiricism as a theory of knowledge has proved inadequate, though less so than any other previous theory of knowledge.” Russell pointed out science is at war with itself. He said, “Thus, science is “at war with itself: when it most means to be objective, it finds itself plunged into subjectivity against its will. Naive realism leads to physics, and physics, if true, shows that naive realism is false. Therefore naive realism, if true, is false; therefore it is false.” An objective knowledge of the external world that realism supposedly gives is destroyed by empiricism. Russell said, “In ontology, I start by accepting the truth of physics. . . . Philosophers may say: What justification have you for accepting the truth of physics? I reply: merely a common-sense basis. . . . I believe (though without good grounds) in the world of physics as well as in the world of psychology. . . . If we are to hold that we know anything of the external world, we must accept the canons of scientific knowledge. Whether . . . an individual decides to accept or reject these canons, is a purely personal affair, not susceptible to argument.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein
In Wittgenstein’s work, we see the culmination of Russell’s work to use logical analysis to solve philosophical problems. He held that since we can make assertions about the world if we examine the logic of our assertions, that will disclose the general features that the world must have for any assertion about it to be true. In other words, we can by logical analysis determine what can be said about the world. He said, “The correct method in philosophy would really be the following: to say nothing except what can be said, i.e. propositions of natural science – i.e. something that has nothing to do with philosophy – and then, whenever someone else wanted to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him that he had failed to give a meaning to certain signs in his propositions.” Wittgenstein said, “ Most of the propositions and questions to be found in philosophical works are not false but nonsensical. Consequently we cannot give any answer to questions of this kind, but can only point out that they are nonsensical. Most of the propositions and questions of philosophers arise from our failure to understand the logic of our language.” This approach had a major difficulty. If Wittgenstein’s purification of language was going to be as rigorous as he proposed, then it would turn at out that very language that he used in the Tractatus would be meaningless. At the end of the Tractatus, he said, “My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has used them — as steps * to climb out through them, on them, over them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.)”

These are the very defects that would prevent Michael Martin from making a philosophically cogent case for atheism and would leave him with no place to stand to refute Christianity. In the comparison of worldviews, Martin’s atheism would be refuted by its own internal flaws, particularly its inability to provide the preconditions for the intelligibility of any human experience or reasoning. Nietzsche said, “I am afraid we are not rid of God because we still have faith in grammar.” As long as we are still committed to universals, rules, standards and the possibility of communication, we are still holding onto God. Deconstructionism in our modern age is much closer to being sincere in following out atheism to its bitter end. There is no point to debate when there is no objective truth or meaning to communicate and defend. If Michael Martin’s atheistic presuppositions are correct, then man has no mental intellectual freedom to assess evidence and choose the truth. If Michael Martin’s atheistic presuppositions are correct, there would be no universals of logic or linguistic meaning. If his atheist presuppositions were correct, there is no rational basis for scientific inductive inference for the uniformity of nature. If his atheistic presuppositions are correct, there is no continuing identity in objects, no personal identity in time in the self, no basis for trusting memories, no similarity relation, no sets, numbers, concepts and laws. If atheistic presuppositions are correct, there is no such thing as an objective, moral obligation or even an obligation to be logical. He could not reason, communicate and prove his atheism. This is why I said at the beginning that Christian theism is proved from the impossibility of the contrary. It is only within the Christian worldview that the precondition of rationality in debate can be offered. Christian theism has a transcendental necessity. It alone provides a worldview that is the precondition for the intelligibility of man’s experience, his knowledge and conduct.

A Brief History of the Rabbinical Dictatorship

Why Orthodox Judaism Is a Cult: Eating With Non-Jews

When I used to attend an Orthodox synagogue, I learned a funny story from some of the congregants. A local pizza shop got in trouble with the city's kashrut commission, who threatened to pull the restaurant's kosher status. When asked why, the rabbis said that the problem is not with the pizza shop's practices. They followed all of the laws and did not dispute the food's kosher status.

The problem, in their opinion, was that Jews and non-Jews were meeting and co-mingling there. When I asked about what the problem was, they said there is a tradition, although not a strict law, that Jews and non-Jews should not fraternize, except in necessary business relationships. This basis is the same principle that produces laws such as Bishul Yisrael, which was summarized by Chabad in the following way:

By forbidding Jews from eating food cooked by non-Jews, our sages intended to create a social barrier between Jews and non-Jews in order to prevent intermarriage.

A reader on Stack Exchange summarizes this well:

There is a prohibition of food cooked by a gentile (bishul Akum) and bread of a gentile (Pas Akum) in order to prevent mingling that can lead to intermarriage. These laws are similar but have differences in the details. Similarly the [prohibition] of wine touched or moved by a gentile (stam yaynam) is similar to these [laws]. The [sages] stated that all of these [laws] are based on the idea that one must not socialize with gentiles in order to prevent the possibility of intermarriage or becoming close to them.

The rabbis long ago created prohibitions to keep Jews and non-Jews socially separated. This is a very clear mark of a cult, which seeks to isolate insiders from the potential influence of outsiders. This allows the cult leaders to better indoctrinate members without interference from the outside.

So what happened to the kosher pizza shop?

The shop decided to make a deal with the kashrut commission. They would make sure that all of their diary products are certified as "cholov yisrael" (milk of Israel), which is an additional stringency for milk (beyond just kosher status), just like Glatt Kosher is for meat.

With the additional restrictions in place, the cost of the pizza went up, and its quality went down. Gentiles stopped going there, and the problem was solved.

What is Cultural Marxism?

Transcript:

Let us begin with a very terse description. Cultural Marxism is a broad term which refers to the advocacy and application of Critical Theory, and more generally to the cultural, political, and academic influence of certain elements within the contemporary left.

The root of Cultural Marxism out to be found in what is commonly known as the Frankfurt School. The term arose informally to describe the thinkers affiliated or merely associated with the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research at the Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany during the interwar period.

Critical of both capitalism and Soviet socialism, they sought to address the perceived shortcomings of classical Marxism in the pursuit of societal change. Their work came to be referred to as Critical Theory. Defining or categorizing critical theory is exceptionally difficult. For it pertains to a broad, almost disparate set of ideas, individuals, and approaches. The underlying and enduring aspect of critical theory common to all its offshoots is the creation of interdisciplinary theories that might serve as instruments of social transformation.

During the 1960s, the Frankfurt School critical theory gained traction with some segments of the left-wing and leftist thought in both Europe and North America. Today, its influence is felt throughout western academia, dominating the social sciences and humanities; Gender Studies and Whiteness Studies being two such examples.

Herbert Marcuse

One of the most influential critical theorists and an original member of the Frankfurt School was Herbert Marcuse. A cursory glance at any paragraph written by Marcuse will send alarm bells ringing for anyone even remotely familiar with the current culture of intolerance on college and university campuses.

Consider the following passage from his 1965 essay Repressive Tolerance:

"The small and powerless minorities which struggle against the false consciousness and its beneficiaries must be helped: their continued existence is more important than the preservation of abused rights and liberties which grant constitutional powers to those who oppress these minorities."

Social Justice, Feminism, Neo-Progressivism, and Post-Colonialism are all movements inspired by or born out of Critical Theory and thus come under the umbrella of Cultural Marxism. Be it gender, sexual orientation, family, race, culture, or religion, every aspect of a person's identity is to be questioned, every norm or standard in society challenged, and ideally, altered in order to benefit supposedly oppressed groups.

Classical Marxism vs. Cultural Marxism

Classical Marxism saw class conflict as occurring between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat -- between the haves and the have-nots. Cultural Marxism views such a conflict as existing between the oppressed and the oppressors -- between those with privilege and those without it. The working class has been replaced by minorities. Majority groups are typically defined as privileged/oppressive with minority groups accordingly labeled under-privileged/oppressed.

Heterosexual couples are oppressive. Cis-gender people are oppressive. Whites are oppressive, especially white men. Christians are oppressive. Those who do not fit into these groups are considered oppressed. It stands to reason therefore that if heterosexuals are oppressors, the solution is to encourage other forms of sexuality. If whites are oppressors, the solution is racial diversity. If cisgender people are oppressors, the solution is to encourage transgenderism. If Christians are oppressors, the solution is to propagate Islam.

Theodor Adorno

Theodor Adorno, another original member of the Frankfurt School wrote a book entitled The Authoritarian Personality, in which he defines parenthood, pride in one's family, Christianity, adherence to traditional gender roles and attitudes towards sex, and the love of one's own country as pathological phenomena.

This tendency to pathologize opinions and other life patterns not in accordance with his own political ends is characteristic of Cultural Marxism. Differing views are thus described as irrational fears or phobias. For example, a person who feels uncomfortable living as a minority in an area dominated by Muslim migrants may be decried as an Islamophobe, since wishing to live among those ethnically and culturally similar to oneself is considered sick and phobic.

When Pakistani Muslims living in Britain by contrast, show in-group preference, converting entire sections of a town or city into a mini-Pakistan, there is no sickness or phobia, only multiculturalism.

Political Correctness

A popular and propagandist manifestation of Cultural Marxism is Political Correctness, in which media channels social scientists make it a mandatory exercise to do the following:

1. Question common language.

Illegal immigrants are to be referred to as undocumented migrants, while ethnic discrimination is referred to as affirmative action. Their ambition to define and redefine words can be seen as a means of controlling the discourse altering cultural norms. Racism and sexism have been redefined as a product of prejudice + power. This leads to such ridiculous statements as "There's no such thing as sexism agaisnt men" and "I, an ethnic minority woman, cannot be racist or sexist towards white men."

2. Maintain an unwaveringly favorable view of groups which have been marked as the oppressed.

Islam is a religion of peace.
Black Live Matter is a peaceful, legitimate protest movement.
Feminism is only about equality.
and so forth.

No deviation from the aforementioned narrative will be tolerated, nor will criticism of it.

End Goal

While Communism, as Marx envisioned it, offered the resolution of class conflict in a utopian social system, all that Cultural Marxism offers is a desolate form of eternal warfare between evermore offended groups of offended minorities. The only meaningful consequence that this wide application ever could have is the marginalization of traditional European culture.

Isaiah 53: Is Seed Always Literal?

http://answering-judaism.blogspot.com/2013/11/seed-of-isaiah-5310.html

http://answering-judaism.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/response-to-uri-yosef-on-isaiah-53-3.html

Maimonides Accidentally Argues that Jesus is Messiah

Maimonides is one of Judaism's greatest opponents of Christianity. He believed it unacceptable for a Jew to convert, and that Jews who do should be shunned. However, Maimonides gives an argument which actually supports the claim that Jesus is Messiah, an argument that I have not heard any Christian give.

In his Laws of Kings, Maimonides writes:

The thoughts of the Creator of the world are not within the power of man to reach them, ‘for our ways are not His ways, nor are our thoughts His thoughts.’ And all these matters of Jesus of Nazareth and that of the Ishmaelite who arose after him are only to straighten the way of the king Messiah and to fix the entire world, to serve God as one.

Maimonides argued that Christianity and Islam will help the world eventually submit to Israel as God's sovereign nation. What if Maimonides was right for the wrong reasons?

Let's assume that the rabbis are right and that some future Jewish ethnic and religious leader (let's call him David Goldstein) came to power and did what the rabbis said that Messiah would do. He will rebuild the temple, reinstitute the priesthood, be anointed king of Israel, and subdue the world to Israel's sovereignty.

How will the Christian and Islamic nations react to this new King David?

Since this person is not a Muslim, and not a recognized prophet of Islam, the Muslim world is not just going to obey his orders. If he tries to rebuild the temple on the Temple Mount, he will be chiseling Muslim territory, which is an act of war under Sharia. Islam also expects a Mahdi leader to subdue the world to Sharia Law in preparation for the last Day of Judgment.

So Islam will not accept such a leader, so David Goldstein will have to subdue the Muslim world by force, until the true believers in Islam are dead, and the moderates eventually submit to Goldstein's power, at the cost of considerable bloodshed.

Christianity will be even worse, since anyone other than Jesus who fulfills these prophecies will be labeled immediately as the Antichrist, and as a lying, trickster servant of the Devil. Such a person must be opposed to the last man. Therefore, in such a scenario, Goldstein will have to wage war against the Christian world until all resistance is stamped out as well.

So theoretically, there could be a future Jewish Messiah who brings the world in submission to Israel, but any such person will have to kill a half billion people or more in order to achieve these ends.

Now let's assume that Jesus is Messiah. In both Christianity and Islam, Jesus is a prophet, or even greater than a prophet. Both religions require that its adherents do whatever he says. If Jesus returned to Israel, and told the world that they must submit to Israel and allow the new temple to be built, the next thing you would hear is 3 billion people bending the knee in submission to Israel, without anyone having to fire a single shot.

Correcting Dovid Gottlieb: Christianity's Prediction of the Jewish Exile

I have been reading Dovid Gottlieb's Living Up to the Truth. It is a propaganda packet, about 100 pages long, and arguing that Rabbinic Judaism is uniquely confirmed by the facts of history. Gottlieb is not a historian. His expertise is in mathematical logic, a subject he taught for 10 years.

As a non-historian, he is not familiar with the conventions of history. For example, the practice of history is the practice of matching explanations to hard data. There is a certain amount of hard data, such as artifacts and ancient texts, and the goal of the historian is to evaluate rival explanations on criteria such as explanatory power, explanatory scope, plausibility, ad hoc-ness, accord with accepted beliefs, and superiority to rival hypotheses.

Like a magician, Gottlieb exploits the ignorance of his target audience. Because they are not practicing historians, Gottlieb can run a lot of tricks on his audience that he would not be able to run against experts in the field.

The "Prediction"
Gottlieb's first blunder is his strawman attack on Christian theology. Here is the relevant section from Chapter 2:

It is fine to make predictions, even unique predictions, but if they do not come true, then, of course, you are in serious trouble. Certain Christian sources assert that the reason the Jews are in exile is because they have not accepted the Christian Messiah. They predict that the Jews will remain in exile until they convert. Now, that is the right sort of prediction, that the Jews will be in exile until they accept the Christian messiah. Here, at least the logic was right because that is a prediction that no one else would credit. No Hindu would have any reason whatsoever to expect Jews will stay in exile until they accept the Christian Messiah. He would have no reason to believe that. Nor would a Buddhist, a Moslem, a Shintoist, a Taoist, a Confucianist, or an Atheist. Certainly Jews will not credit it. So that is the right sort of prediction to make: a prediction that no one else will credit.

But, since 1948 (the formation of the state of Israel), that prediction has been wearing a bit thin. All right, in 1948 we didn’t have Jerusalem. Since 1967 (Israel conquered Jerusalem in the Six Day War) it has been wearing even thinner. Still, there was always the Soviet Union holding on to its Jews making it impossible for those Jews to come. So there was a last ditch hold-out position. In the last few years even that has disappeared. (There has been massive Soviet Jewry immigration into Israel since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Jews in Russia are free to leave.) This prediction has simply come out false. The fact that there are Jews who refuse to leave their penthouses in Manhattan in order to come to a smaller dwelling in Tel Aviv could not exactly be regarded as a punishment. That is not what the Christian writings predict. They say that we will be punished in exile for not accepting the Christian Messiah, and that has not happened.

In conversation with Gottlieb, he has explained this passage.

Christian sources predict that the Jews will remain in exile until they convert to Christianity. Now this prediction, if it came true, would certainly be selective evidence in favor of Christianity. No alternative to Christianity would make such a prediction.

But does Christianity even make such a prediction?

The first part of the argument is correct. Early Christian sources do state that the Jews were exiled from the land for the crime of not believing in Jesus. Even Jesus himself predicted such an exile in his Parable of the Tenants (even the extreme-left Jesus Seminar considers this an authentic saying of the Historical Jesus). In this parable, a landowner goes on a long journey and leaves the land to be worked by tenants. He sends servants to collect the rent money, and the tenants kill the servants, one after another. The landowner then sends his own son, and the tenants kill him as well. What will the landowner do when he finally catches the tenants? He will throw them off the property and give it to someone else.

This parable is generally interpreted as the landowner being God The Father, the vineyard being Israel, the tenants being the Jewish leaders, the servants being God's prophets, and Jesus being the landowner's son. God will exile the Jewish nation and give the land to someone else.

That is where the similarity ends. There is no claim that the Jewish return is in any way dependent upon Jewish belief in Jesus. In fact, the book of Matthew implies the opposite. First, the Jews would receive the land back, and later on come to believe in Jesus.

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you desolate. For I tell you, you will not see me again, until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’” (Matthew 23:37-39)

Here, Jesus is saying that he would not return until Jerusalem accepts him. But Jerusalem has to be populated with Jews for this prophecy to make any sense, so the Jews will return to Jerusalem, and then later on will accept him, according to Matthew.

Where Gottlieb Gets it Wrong
Gottlieb's claim is about Christian tradition, rather than the Bible. And here, the evidence goes against him even more. The church fathers generally believed in replacement theology, which is to say that the church is now the legal entity "Israel" mentioned in the Mosaic Covenant. The Jewish people as a group, on this view, do not have any special status.

I asked where any of the church fathers predicted that the Jews would remain in exile unless they converted to Christianity. I got the following quote from a book by Edward H. Flannery called The Anguish of the Jews.

Augustine saw the Jews as living proof of the truth of Christianity, noting that their eternal wandering and permanent expulsion from the Land of Israel firmly proved that God had rejected them. Jews were not to be killed, said Augustine, because they had a role to play as the Church’s “slave-librarian.

This is a secondary source, so one would need to prove this from a primary source. The closest reference I could find in Augustine was from his City of God, book 4, chapter 34:

And if they had not sinned against Him with impious curiosity, which seduced them like magic arts, and drew them to strange gods and idols, and at last led them to kill Christ, their kingdom would have remained to them, and would have been, if not more spacious, yet more happy, than that of Rome. And now that they are dispersed through almost all lands and nations, it is through the providence of that one true God; that whereas the images, altars, groves, and temples of the false gods are everywhere overthrown, and their sacrifices prohibited, it may be shown from their books how this has been foretold by their prophets so long before; lest, perhaps, when they should be read in ours, they might seem to be invented by us. But now, reserving what is to follow for the following book, we must here set a bound to the prolixity of this one.

Augustine also has a passage in Book 18, chapter 46:

But the Jews who slew Him, and would not believe in Him, because it behooved Him to die and rise again, were yet more miserably wasted by the Romans, and utterly rooted out from their kingdom, where aliens had already ruled over them, and were dispersed through the lands (so that indeed there is no place where they are not), and are thus by their own Scriptures a testimony to us that we have not forged the prophecies about Christ.

And very many of them, considering this, even before His passion, but chiefly after His resurrection, believed on Him, of whom it was predicted, “Though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, the remnant shall be saved.” But the rest are blinded, of whom it was predicted, “Let their table be made before them a trap, and a retribution, and a stumbling-block. Let their eyes be darkened lest they see, and bow down their back always.” Therefore, when they do not believe our Scriptures, their own, which they blindly read, are fulfilled in them, lest perchance any one should say that the Christians have forged these prophecies about Christ which are quoted under the name of the sibyl, or of others, if such there be, who do not belong to the Jewish people.

 For us, indeed, those suffice which are quoted from the books of our enemies, to whom we make our acknowledgment, on account of this testimony which, in spite of themselves, they contribute by their possession of these books, while they themselves are dispersed among all nations, wherever the Church of Christ is spread abroad. For a prophecy about this thing was sent before in the Psalms, which they also read, where it is written, “My God, His mercy shall prevent me. My God hath shown me concerning mine enemies, that Thou shalt not slay them, lest they should at last forget Thy law: disperse them in Thy might.”

Therefore God has shown the Church in her enemies the Jews the grace of His compassion, since, as saith the apostle, “their offense is the salvation of the Gentiles.” And therefore He has not slain them, that is, He has not let the knowledge that they are Jews be lost in them, although they have been conquered by the Romans, lest they should forget the law of God, and their testimony should be of no avail in this matter of which we treat. But it was not enough that he should say, “Slay them not, lest they should at last forget Thy law,” unless he had also added, “Disperse them;” because if they had only been in their own land with that testimony of the Scriptures, and not every where, certainly the Church which is everywhere could not have had them as witnesses among all nations to the prophecies which were sent before concerning Christ.

Augustine describes the exile, but does not make any predictions about when or even if the Jews would return to the land. The claim that the Jews have been stripped of the Covenant is not a claim that the Jews will never return to the land.

It does not follow that if the reason for the exile exists, that the exile itself will also exist. This inference is based on a rehabilitation theory of justice, where the purpose of punishment is to reform the person. This theory is popular in modern times, but was not popular at all in the days of the early church.

I have asked several of my contacts who are experts in church history, and none of them can find anything in the church fathers making any predictions about whether or not the Jews would be able to return to the land, establish a sovereign state, build a temple, offer sacrifices, anoint a king, etc.

The church fathers weren't in the business of making predictions about whether the Jews would return to the homeland or not.

Where Gottlieb Gets it Right
Nobody but the Jews would have predicted that the Jews as a people group would one day return to the land and establish a sovereign nation-state. This should give us pause to think about replacement theology. If God has replaced the Jews with the church, then why has this group been preserved, and why did God allow the Jews to establish a sovereign nation state after nearly 2,000 years in exile?

I think the best solution is one that acknowledges the role of Jesus and the New Covenant, and also recognizes that Israel is still the Jews, and the church is a different entity, a sort of new Israel. Jews who believe in Jesus are dual citizens.

Update!
After a long conversation with Gottlieb himself, I found an actual counterexample to his claim in Justin Martyr's Dialogue with Trypho:

And what the people of the Jews shall say and do, when they see Him coming in glory, has been thus predicted by Zechariah the prophet: “I will command the four winds to gather the scattered children; I will command the north wind to bring them, and the south wind, that it keep not back. And then in Jerusalem there shall be great lamentation, not the lamentation of mouths or of lips, but the lamentation of the heart; and they shall rend not their garments, but their hearts. Tribe by tribe they shall mourn, and then they shall look on Him whom they have pierced; and they shall say, Why, O Lord, hast Thou made us to err from Thy way? The glory which our fathers blessed, has for us been turned into shame. 

 This passage says that the Jews will return to Jerusalem first, and then later come to belief in Jesus. This is the exact opposite of what Gottlieb asserts, that according to Christianity, the Jews will not return to the land until after believing in Jesus.

The Star Wars Canon

Not long ago, Disney bought out the Star Wars franchise from George Lucas for $4 billion. Since they wanted to make a sequel trilogy, they declared the entire Star Wars Expanded Universe to be non-canon so that they could have a fresh start. This radical new direction angered fans of the Expanded Universe, whose favorite characters like Thrawn and Mara Jade were considered non-canonical (and no, Mara Jade is not listed in the Return of the Jedi Special Edition credits, so the character is not in the movie).

But was this a radical new direction?

I started becoming involved in Star Wars message board discussions pretty heavily after the Phantom Menace was released. When discussing characters from the movies, it was inevitable that the controversy would surface as to whether we had to take into consideration the Expanded Universe in order to interpret the movies. In other words, was the Expanded Universe canon?

The debate raged on for years, with both sides adamant in their positions. At some point (this was in the year 2000), I decided to  write to Lucasfilm Ltd. and ask them what their official stance was on the matter.

After about two months, I received a letter from Howard Roffman, President of Lucas Licensing About a week after that, I received another letter from Sue Rostoni of Lucas Licensing. Both letters make it absolutely clear that the Expanded Universe was always considered non-canon, just as the Star Trek comic books are non-canon to that series.

I got excited and posted the letters verbatim on the forums. Can you guess how many people changed their minds after reading two letters directly from Lucas Licensing?

Zero.

Not one person changed their mind on the issue. The people who believed the Expanded Universe to be canon doubted the authenticity of the letters. I then challenged any of them to write to Lucas Licensing themselves, and they would have direct confirmation that the official position of Lucasfilm was that the Expanded Universe was non-canon.

Not one person took me up on that offer.

This is the problem with arguing over the Internet. Most of the people who are willing to argue with you have already make up their minds on the issue, and will not change them no matter what the evidence.

I was also surprised that no one had done this before. Why would two groups argue until they are blue in the face over an issue that can be verified directly?

So I think two lessons can be drawn from this experience. First, if you want to change people's minds, you need to go after people who are not fully committed on a certain issue. People who will argue with you over the Internet are rarely in that camp. You need to engage people in real life, and strike up what might be awkward conversations over these issues. Often it's the only way to reach this group.

Secondly, we all need to make sure that we are not this adamant on controversial issues. Theology is one issue where the stakes are too high for anyone to afford the luxury of denialism. If the evidence strongly supports one position, you've got to embrace it even if it is uncomfortable.

One rabbi that I met said that he wonders how someone like the Pope could be so educated and yet believe these things about Jesus. When I said that I also believe these things about Jesus, and can defend them against objections, he was not interested in hearing any explanation of my position, or a defense of it. His mind was made up, and he did not want to talk to me about it.

Many Christians ask "why don't Jews believe in Jesus?" This is an ignorant and stupid question, and I wish Christians would stop asking it. A better question is "why aren't Jews allowed to believe in Jesus?"

Many of the rabbis that I have encountered appear at first glance to love God and to want to serve him. But they are so hostile to the idea that God manifested himself in the person of Jesus, that no amount of evidence would ever convince them of that. Even if Jesus were to descend from heaven, glowing in white robes, surrounded by legions of angels worshiping him as God, they would still not bend the knee to him. Why would you ever trust such individuals with your spiritual future?

Cooking a Kid in its Mother's Milk

Exodus 23:19 states that "You shall not boil a young goat in its mother's milk."

The rabbis explain that this means that one cannot you cannot cook any milk and any meat together, you cannot eat milk and meat together, and you cannot derive benefit from milk and meat which have been cooked together.

However, there is a passage in the Shuhchan Aruch describing a situation in Jewish Law.

In Yoreh Deah, 87:9, it states: "Chalav found in the kaiva (stomach) of an animal 24) is not chalav and it is mutar to cook with basar even if it is tzalul (liquid)"

Translated into English, this states that milk found in the stomach of an animal is not considered milk, and therefore is allowed to be cooked and eaten with meat, even if this not digested.

This leads to an interesting hypothetical situation. According to the rabbis, it is permissible on a biblical level to feed a young goat its mother's milk, kill the goat, and then cook the goat's meat in the milk taken from the stomach of the goat.

While the Rama states that the rabbis have a custom not to allow this, they say that it is biblically permissible, in this situation, to literally boil a young goat in its mother's milk!

You'd think if there were one thing that this passage would not permit, it's boiling a young goat in its mother's milk. But rabbinic tradition does not really follow the original intent of the text. Archaeologists have discovered that an ancient Canaanite fertility ritual was to boil a young goat in it's mother's milk. The rabbis, not knowing the original context, not only reinterpreted the text so that it prohibited an entirely different kind of activity, but also in a way that allowed a Jew to do the very thing that the text is forbidding in the first place.

Don't ever let a rabbi say to you: "We go with the Bible. We do what the Bible says." The rabbis do not care what the Bible says. They only care about what tradition says that the Bible says, turning the text into putty, which the rabbis can mold into whatever form they desire.

Maimonides 13 Principles of Faith: 4. God as Creator

4. I believe with perfect faith that the Creator, Blessed be His Name, is the first and the last.

This principle states that God is before all things, and that he created all that is not God, and not from anything.

Abraham Ibn Ezra said that the creation account only refers to the sublunar world, since the heavenly bodies are eternal in his commentary on Genesis, as well as in his commentary on Daniel. In the latter Ibn Ezra states that the heavenly bodies do not begin or end. Many of the rabbis interpret this as a denial of creation ex nihilo, such as Levi ben Abraham, R. Nissim ben Moses, R. Joseph ben Eliezer Bonfils, R. Ezra Gatigno, R. Isaac Abarbanel, R. David Arama, dn R. Joseph Solomon Delmedigo.

According to R. Samuel Ibn Tibbon, the four elements are eternal. Gersonides said that the world was made from formless pre-existing matter. Gersonides even said that cration ex nihilo is imposible.

R. Shem Tov Falaquera also believed taht creation was from pre-existing eternal matter.

R. Abraham Abulafia, R. Hasdai Crescas, and R. Joseph ibn Kaspi argued that God continually creates the world, holding it in existence, from eternity past.

Even Maimonides himself seemed to hold two different views on the matter. In Hilchot Yesodai Hatorah, Maimonides argued taht God is the First Existent, and is the being upon which all else depends. There is no mention of creation ex nihilo.

The Guide of the Perplexed discusses the Platonic position, and Maimonides concludes that both the creation ex nihilo, and the Platonic view of an eternal world are both viable. Maimonides states that there is no religious reason to reject the Platonic view.

According to the Maimonidean scholar Warren Zev Harvey, the Mishneh Torah reveals that the Aristotelian view that the world is eternal is required for the fulfillment of the divine commands to know God that that he is one, and that Abraham had come to know this view based on the premise that the world is eternal.

The Curse of Jeconiah

J.P. Holding has an excellent response to the accusation that Jesus cannot be Messiah because Jeconiah's line was cursed:

Maimonides 13 Principles of Faith: 3. Divine Incorporeality

3. I believe with perfect faith that the Creator, Blessed be His Name, has no body, and that He is free from all the properties of matter, and that there can be no (physical) comparison to Him whatsoever.

In Rabbinic Judaism
In hopes of securing dhimmi status for Jews in Muslim lands, Maimonides contradicted much of Talmudic tradition by insisting that God not only has no physical form, but that God is incapable of entering into his own creation in physical form.

Marc Shapiro writes that in the Bible, God is described as a corporeal being, with a back, head, and hands. Nowhere in Tanakh is God described as incorporeal or invisible. Even Isaiah 40 can be interpreted (and has been in Jewish tradition) as affirming that God does have a form, but that it is unlike anything else. Deuteronomy 4 also does not explicitly deny that God has a form, but only that his form was not seen.

Adam walked with God in the garden, and hid from him after Adam had sinned. God appeared to Abraham near the oaks of Mamre. Moses and the 70 elders saw God with white hair and sapphire under his feet. Moses hid his face from God. Isaiah said that he saw God sitting on the throne, and was undone, since no one can see God and live.

The targumim tried to shy away from athropomorphism, but still included some of it. The Talmudic and midrashic literature of the rabbis was filled with anthropomorphism.

Indeed, rabbinic scholars such as Alon Goshen-Gottstein and Yair Lorberbaum state that there is not a single statement in all of rabbinic literature that categorically denies that God has a body or form. The rabbinic literature has many examples of God being described as corporeal, which are very difficult to interpret as mere metaphor.

Meir Bar-Ilan said that "In the first centuries Jews in the Land of Israel and in Babylon believed in an anthropomorphic God."

In the Babylonian Talmud, Berachot 6a, God is described as wearing tefillin.

In Leviticus Rabbah 34:3, Hillel tells his students that just as gentiles are ordered to take care of the images of kings, from which they receive their livelihood, so too was Hillel required to bathe and take care of the image of God.

In Avot d'Rabbi Natan, a prooftext is brought forth for why Adam was born circumcised, "because he was born in the image of God."

In Rosh Hashannan 24b and Avodah Zara 43b, a prooftext is brought forth for why it is illegal to make a portrait of a human face, because to do so would be to make a portrait of God's face.

Even R. Ishmael, who was known for de-emphasizing divine corporeality, still taught that God had five fingers in his right hand, and each had a purpose. One showed Noah what to do, another smote the Egyptians, another wrote the tablets, another showed Moses what to do, and the whole hand God used to ruin the children of Esau.

Midrash tanchuma states that the appearance of God was like devouring fire, but God turned away and hid from them, and therefore the people of Israel saw no manner of form.

In Genesis Rabbah, Rabbi Hoshaya said: When the Holy One, blessed be he, created Adam, the ministering angels mistook him for God." God then resolves the event by causing sleep to fall upon Adam, showing the angels that he was a mere mortal.

In Pirkei d'Rabbi Eliezer, Rabbi Shimon said "When Isaac was bound to the altar, he lifted his eyes and saw the divine presence. But it is written that man may not see God and live. In lieu of death his eyes dimmed when he got older. From here you learn that blindness is considered as death."

R. Abraham ben David about Maimonides: "Why has he called such a person a heretic? There are many people greater and superior to him who adhere to such a belief on the basis of what they have seen in verses of Scripture, and even more in the words of those agadot which corrupt right opinion about religious matters."

R. Moses ben Hasdai Taku rejected Maimonides' third principle, and viewed God as being able to take on corporeal form at will. He stated that God sits on the throne literally, and that it is blasphemous to deny that this is the case. Taku interprets Isaiah 40:18 as stating nothing can be compared to God's greatness and splendor, not that nothing can be compared to God's physical form.

R. Solomon Simchah of Troyes said that God was described in human form in prophetic visions, and that this is not to be taken as metaphor. Rather, God actually assumed such a form.

There is good evidence that Rashi himself was a corporealist. He states that the heavenly Torah, measured to be 3,200 times the size of the universe, was measured by the tefach (or cubit) of God himself. Rashi interpret's God's hand in Exodus 7:5 as an actual, literal hand. He also states that for man to be created in God's image is to be created in God's physical form. Rashi then interprets likeness to be man's intellectual understanding. In other words, to be created in God's image and likeness is to be created in God's physical and non-physical aspects.

Rashi's grandson known as the Rashbam might also have been a corporealist. He argues that in Genesis 48:8, Israel both saw God and did not see God, because it is possible to see a person's shape without recognizing the features on his face.

R. Abraham ibn Daud says that masses of Jews believed God to be a material being.

Saadiah Gaon also said that many people beleived God to be a body. Even Maimonides himself said that the majority of the ignorant Jews held an anthropomorphic idea of God.

R. Yedaiah Bedershi writes that it is well-known that in previous generations that belief in God's corporeality was spread throughout virtually all of Israel.

Nachmanides wrote a famous letter to the French sages, who banned Maimonides' teachings on God's corporeality because they contradicted what the majority of French Torah scholars believed.

R. Samuel David Luzzatto openly rejected Maimonides on the issue of corporeality. He argued that the idea of an incorporeal God is what leads to heresy, and that Jews should return to the traditional belief that God is corporeal.

Maimonides is therefore forced to engage in hermeneutical waterboarding, which is to force the text to tell him what he wants to hear. He has to start with the dogma that God is incorporeal and read it into the text. He interprets the interaction with the 70 elders of Israel as the elders having a marred apprehension of God.

So what does one make of the corporealist passages in the Bible? Maimonides argues that the Bible does teach God's corporeality, since the masses need to be instructed in God's existence, and they could only do so on the idea that God is corporeal. The Torah has no choice but to compromise with reality in order to educate the people effectively.

On Maimonides' view, the Torah does not just mislead the people, it actually teaches a heretical doctrine because it is an improvement over the earlier state in which people did not believe in God.

This is absolutely fascinating. Maimonides is so desperate to defend his view, that he would accuse God of not being able to teach his people the truth in a way that they would believe it. Instead, God himself has to openly teach heresy, and one which denies people a share in the world to come because even that is better than atheism.

By implication, this means that belief in Jesus as God, even on Maimonides' view, cannot be worse than atheism, and therefore a Jew is better off in being a Christian than an atheist.

In Christian Theology
John 4:24 says that God is spirit. The definition of spirit by New Testament writers excludes the possibility of God being corporeal. After Jesus was resurrected, the disciples wondered if he was a spirit, and Jesus said that a spirit does not have flesh and bones as he does. 1 Timothy 1:17 also describes God as invisible.

In Contra Brown, Yisroel Blumenthal takes a position which is more at home with Christian theology than with Orthodox Jewish theology.

"In order to establish His relationship with the Jewish people God introduced Himself to the nation as a whole with the words “I am the Lord your God” (Exodus 20:2). This revelation gave the people to understand that there is no power aside from God (Deuteronomy 4:35). This revelation was God’s way of teaching us whom to worship, and through the process of elimination – who we cannot worship. If the being in question was not present at Sinai, then it does not deserve our devotion (Exodus 20:19, Deuteronomy 4:15). Scripture consistently warns against worshipping - “gods that neither you nor your fathers have known” (Deuteronomy 11:28, 13:3,7,14, 28:65, 29:25, 32:17, Jeremiah 7:9, 19:4) – or “that which I have not commanded” (Deuteronomy 17:3). The clear message of scripture precludes worship of a being that was not revealed to us at Sinai. It is on this basis that the Jewish people cannot accept a teaching which deifies a human being."

It is true that if the being was not present on Sinai, it does not deserve our devotion. Since the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one being (but not the same person), then any time that one is present, all three are present. To say that the Son was not present at Sinai is just to beg the question against the Trinity.

Jews will often argue that God is not a man, therefore Jesus cannot be God. This is like arguing that blue is not made of metal, therefore my car cannot be blue. It's a fallacy of predication.

A better way to understand the Incarnation is to think of the Shekinah. This is the glory of God which filled the Holy of Holies. it was visible and located in space and time, and yet it was worthy of worship.

One could say that God created a human body, or even a body-soul composite, and then indwelt that body with the Shekinah. Since the Sheknah is part of that person, then that person would be worthy of worship, in the same way that the temple itself was not worthy of worship, but the temple-Shekinah composite was worthy of such worship.

This position is far less extreme than what has been accepted in Orthodox Rabbinic Judaism, and so it has no grounds to dismiss the traditional Christian understanding of the Incarnation as a violation of Maimonides' Third Principle.

For further reading

Maimonides 13 Principles of Faith: 2. Unity of God

2. I believe with perfect faith that the Creator, Blessed be His Name, is One, and that there is no unity in any manner like His, and that He alone is our God, who was, and is, and will be.

In Orthodox Judaism
No Jewish teacher has openly disputed that God is one and unified. The system of kabbalah, however, does speak of God as having a complex unity. At the heart is the Ein Sof, the divine essence which is unknown to us. Through the 10 sefirot, the Ein Sof is manifested to us.

R. Isaac ben Sheshet said that Christians believe in three, but kabbalists believe in ten, in the same sense. R. Abraham Abulafia said that the system of sefirot in kabbalah said that they multiply God into ten in exactly the same way that Trinitarianism multiplies God into three. Therefore if kabbalah is acceptable in Orthodox Jewish theology, then so must Trinitarian monotheism be as well.

Many of the kabbalists argued that the sefirot are part of God's essence. R. Moses Cordovero said that God "emanated ten Sefirot, which are from his essence, are one with him and are all one complete unity."

Kabbalists have never regarded the doctrine of the sefirot as a violation of divine unity, just as Christian theologians have never regarded the persons as a violation of divine unity.

R. Isaac Lopes of Aleppo believed that the God of Israel is not the First Cause, but the first created being, similar to the Demiurge of ancient Greek thought.

The anonymously written kabbalistic work Ma'arekhet ha'elohut, written in the vicinity of the 14th century, identifies the God of Scripture not with the Ein Sof, but with the first or second of the sefirot. Even if there are not two Gods in this view, there are two different supreme powers, which can at least be described as to persons.

In line with this, R. Isaac ibn Latif described the God of the Bible as the First Created Being and the creator of all else, very similar to the Arian view of Jesus.

R. Jacob the Nazirite directed the first three and last three benedictions of his amidah prayer to the sefirah called binah, and the others toward tiferet. In other words, he directed his prayers to specific sefirot, just as many Christians pray to the Father or to the Son or to the Holy Spirit.

R. Abraham ben David of Posquieres directed the first and last three benedictions to the Ein Sof, and the rest to the Creator, which he distinguises from the Ein Sof.

According to R. Joseph ben Shalom of Barcelona, the sefirot themselves pray to the Ein Sof. According to R. Azriel of Gerona, all sefirot except for the first one had a beginning in time, while the Ein Sof and the keter sefirah are eternal.

R. Isaac Pilitz argued that while the Ein Sof knows the future, the sefirot, which run the world, do not.

Some kabbalists, such as R. Abraham Epstein, also pray to the "unique cherub" which is an anthropomorphic entity which emanates from God.

In Christian Theology
In Christian theology, the Triune God is one, and there is no unity like his unity. This is why analogies break down.

Trinitarianism states that there is one God, and from this one God are manifest three divine persons. There are two main schools regarding this idea. Social trinitarianism emphasizes the distinction between the persons, and Latin trinitarianism, which emphasizes divine unity.

William Lane Craig has an excellent video series on the different views of the Trinity. His own view is that God is one mind with multiple centers of self-consciousness. After all, there are times when you are unconscious, and have no center of self-consciousness, and therefore the "self" is not identical to the mind.

Thomas Aquinas took a different view. On his view, God's oneness (echad) and unity (yachid), and immutability, are so extreme that God not only lacks parts, but also lacks properties. This view is called divine simplicity, and is a form of divine unity far more extreme than most Orthodox Jewish theologians held. Yet, he still had a fully developed view of both the Trinity and the Incarnation, which were compatible with this extreme view of both unity and immutability.

Again, the rabbis have no basis for rejecting a view like that of Aquinas, or even Craig, as heretical. Orthodox Jewish theologians have held to much more extreme views of God's multiplicity than has been held in Christian theology.

The Rabbis Come Around

Mesora magazine brought two videos and an article to my attention regarding the rabbinic view of Jesus and Christianity.



Orthodox Rabbinic Statement on Christianity

Here is an excerpt of the most imporant section:

3. As did Maimonides and Yehudah Halevi,[1] we acknowledge that Christianity is neither an accident nor an error, but the willed divine outcome and gift to the nations. In separating Judaism and Christianity, G-d willed a separation between partners with significant theological differences, not a separation between enemies. Rabbi Jacob Emden wrote that “Jesus brought a double goodness to the world. On the one hand he strengthened the Torah of Moses majestically… and not one of our Sages spoke out more emphatically concerning the immutability of the Torah. On the other hand he removed idols from the nations and obligated them in the seven commandments of Noah so that they would not behave like animals of the field, and instilled them firmly with moral traits…..Christians are congregations that work for the sake of heaven who are destined to endure, whose intent is for the sake of heaven and whose reward will not denied.”[2] Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch taught us that Christians “have accepted the Jewish Bible of the Old Testament as a book of Divine revelation. They profess their belief in the G-d of Heaven and Earth as proclaimed in the Bible and they acknowledge the sovereignty of Divine Providence.”[3] Now that the Catholic Church has acknowledged the eternal Covenant between G-d and Israel, we Jews can acknowledge the ongoing constructive validity of Christianity as our partner in world redemption, without any fear that this will be exploited for missionary purposes. As stated by the Chief Rabbinate of Israel’s Bilateral Commission with the Holy See under the leadership of Rabbi Shear Yashuv Cohen, “We are no longer enemies, but unequivocal partners in articulating the essential moral values for the survival and welfare of humanity”.[4] Neither of us can achieve G-d’s mission in this world alone.

4. Both Jews and Christians have a common covenantal mission to perfect the world under the sovereignty of the Almighty, so that all humanity will call on His name and abominations will be removed from the earth. We understand the hesitation of both sides to affirm this truth and we call on our communities to overcome these fears in order to establish a relationship of trust and respect. Rabbi Hirsch also taught that the Talmud puts Christians “with regard to the duties between man and man on exactly the same level as Jews. They have a claim to the benefit of all the duties not only of justice but also of active human brotherly love.” In the past relations between Christians and Jews were often seen through the adversarial relationship of Esau and Jacob, yet Rabbi Naftali Zvi Berliner (Netziv) already understood at the end of the 19th century that Jews and Christians are destined by G-d to be loving partners: “In the future when the children of Esau are moved by pure spirit to recognize the people of Israel and their virtues, then we will also be moved to recognize that Esau is our brother.”[5]

5. We Jews and Christians have more in common than what divides us: the ethical monotheism of Abraham; the relationship with the One Creator of Heaven and Earth, Who loves and cares for all of us; Jewish Sacred Scriptures; a belief in a binding tradition; and the values of life, family, compassionate righteousness, justice, inalienable freedom, universal love and ultimate world peace. Rabbi Moses Rivkis (Be’er Hagoleh) confirms this and wrote that “the Sages made reference only to the idolator of their day who did not believe in the creation of the world, the Exodus, G-d’s miraculous deeds and the divinely given law. In contrast, the people among whom we are scattered believe in all these essentials of religion.”[6]

 The article sounds like a good start. The rabbinic view of Christianity in this statement is more positive than it has been in the past. I appreciate how Rabbi Cohen says that he considers the church to be partners and not enemies.

One of the terms is a bit anachronistic. Rabbinic literature uses Esau as a symbol for the Roman Empire, and as a result as a symbol for Christianity. This term should have been updated to reflect the fact that Protestant Christianity, and even Eastern Orthodox Christianity, is not a product of the Roman Empire in the way that Roman Catholicism is.

Point 5 has a lot of theological weight, and it a bit misleading. According to this statement, the true crime of idolatry is to rob God of his supremacy in creating the world. This makes atheism a much worse crime than any sort of polytheism or henotheism. Trinitarianism, under this view, should be a much, much lesser crime for a Jew than atheism. You would think that this means it is more acceptable for a Jew to be a Christian than an atheist, but you would be wrong.

Rabbi Shlomo Riskin himself states that any Jew who believes in Jesus is automatically excommunicated as  a heretic. Worldwide, Jews who believe in Jesus are treated as worse outcasts than Jews who oppose Israel or even militant Jewish atheists.

This whole statement has one glaring, unstated assumption. That is; to be a Christian is to be a gentile. Not all Christians are gentiles. A few hundred thousand are Jews. What about Christians born to a Jewish mother? Are such people to be embraced, at least to the extent that secular Jews are? I doubt it.

This is a good start, but we are not finished until the rabbis of Israel come around the way Asher Meza did, and accept that Messianic Jews are not heretics, and are to be embraced as full-fledged Jews in every sense.

Maimonides 13 Principles of Faith: 1. Existence of God

1. I believe with perfect faith that the Creator, Blessed be His Name, is the Creator and Guide of everything that has been created; He alone has made, does make, and will make all things.

In Rabbinic Judaism
Orthodox Rabbinic Judaism has universally held to the existence of God. The question is not so much whether God exists as it is what God is like.

Many Orthodox Jewish thinkers believed that God is capable of doing the logically impossible. They argued that our idea of what is logically possible is a human limit, not a limit on God.

R. Moses Taku wrote "They are issuing a decree to the Creator as how he must be. By oding so they are degrading themselves."

R. Nachman of Bratslav also argued that God can do the logically impossible. On his view, God can make a triangular rectangle, or a square circle. Faith is to exist even in the face of logical absurdity.

The second part of this principle of faith is that God exists a se, or by himself, not being dependent upon anything.

In Christian Theology

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 any thing made that was made. (John 1:1-3)

The earliest creeds also affirm that God is the creator of all things, both visible and invisible. The audience of the book of John was well aware of Platonism and the theories of abstract objects. Therefore if abstract objects exist, then they too are the work of divine creation. Dr. Craig has a video on this:

Conclusions
If Orthodox Rabbinic Judaism allows for God to do the logically impossible, then there can be no grounds for rejecting any of the beliefs associated with Christianity. If God can do the logically impossible, then one can say that Christian theology fits completely within what Orthodox Judaism allows, because God can do the logically impossible. God can be tri-personal and also be not tri-personal. God can be essentially unembodied and be embodied. God can be a man and still not be a man.

In short, if God can do the impossible, one can affirm everything that Evangelical Christian theology teaches about God without denying anything that Orthodox Judaism teaches about God.

If this "universal possibilism" is an acceptable part of Orthodox Jewish theology, then it follows that one can hold to a full Christian theology and fit fully within Orthodox Judaism. I'm tempted to just mic drop right now, since this alone would prove that Christian theology isn't heretical by Orthodox Jewish standards.

So the rest of my posts will assume that this argument fails for some reason, and that even if it does, Christian theology still fits within the parameters of Orthodox Jewish theology.

Maimonides 13 Principles of Faith: Introduction

Maimonides' 13 Principles of Faith are often considered to be the official creed of Orthodox Judaism. Technically, no creed ever received such universal recognition in Judaism as the Nicene Creed did in Christianity. This series will explore the limits of Orthodox Jewish theology, and also show that none of Maimonides' 13 Principles of Faith ever received universal acceptance.

More interestingly, I will be comparing these 13 principles to what is taught in Evangelical Christian theology.

Maimonides' 13 Principles of Faith:

1. I believe with perfect faith that the Creator, Blessed be His Name, is the Creator and Guide of everything that has been created; He alone has made, does make, and will make all things.
2. I believe with perfect faith that the Creator, Blessed be His Name, is One, and that there is no unity in any manner like His, and that He alone is our God, who was, and is, and will be.
3. I believe with perfect faith that the Creator, Blessed be His Name, has no body, and that He is free from all the properties of matter, and that there can be no (physical) comparison to Him whatsoever.
4. I believe with perfect faith that the Creator, Blessed be His Name, is the first and the last.
5. I believe with perfect faith that to the Creator, Blessed be His Name, and to Him alone, it is right to pray, and that it is not right to pray to any being besides Him.
6. I believe with perfect faith that all the words of the prophets are true.
7. I believe with perfect faith that the prophecy of Moses our teacher, peace be upon him, was true, and that he was the chief of the prophets, both those who preceded him and those who followed him.
8. I believe with perfect faith that the entire Torah that is now in our possession is the same that was given to Moses our teacher, peace be upon him.
9. I believe with perfect faith that this Torah will not be exchanged, and that there will never be any other Torah from the Creator, Blessed be His Name.
10. I believe with perfect faith that the Creator, Blessed be His Name, knows all the deeds of human beings and all their thoughts, as it is written, "Who fashioned the hearts of them all, Who comprehends all their actions" (Psalms 33:15).
11. I believe with perfect faith that the Creator, Blessed be His Name, rewards those who keep His commandments and punishes those that transgress them.
12. I believe with perfect faith in the coming of the Messiah; and even though he may tarry, nonetheless, I wait every day for his coming.
13. I believe with perfect faith that there will be a revival of the dead at the time when it shall please the Creator, Blessed be His name, and His mention shall be exalted for ever and ever.

Compare this to the Nicene Creed:

We believe in one God,
      the Father almighty,
      maker of heaven and earth,
      of all things visible and invisible.
And in one Lord Jesus Christ,
      the only Son of God,
      begotten from the Father before all ages,
           God from God,
           Light from Light,
           true God from true God,
      begotten, not made;
      of the same essence as the Father.
      Through him all things were made.
      For us and for our salvation
           he came down from heaven;
           he became incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the virgin Mary,
           and was made human.
           He was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate;
           he suffered and was buried.
           The third day he rose again, according to the Scriptures.
           He ascended to heaven
           and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
           He will come again with glory
           to judge the living and the dead.
           His kingdom will never end.
And we believe in the Holy Spirit,
      the Lord, the giver of life.
      He proceeds from the Father and the Son,
      and with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified.
      He spoke through the prophets.
      We believe in one holy universal and apostolic church.
      We affirm one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
      We look forward to the resurrection of the dead,
      and to life in the world to come. Amen.

These two creeds have much in common. The Nicene Creed affirms most of what is in Maimonides' 13 Principles of Faith. What I intend to show is that the range of interpretation of these 13 Principles in Orthodox Jewish theology, is so wide that the entire system of Evangelical Christian theology fits neatly within it. My chief source will be Marc Shapiro's book The Limits of Orthodox Theology:



At the very least, Evangelical Christian theology affirms 11 out of 13 principles in almost the same sense that Maimonides intended, while Reform Judaism rejects some principles and takes such creative liberties with the rest that it is a stretch to say that it really affirms any of them.

This is another reason why it is the height of hypocrisy for Orthodox Jews to prefer that their fellow Jews be Reform Jews rather than Messianic Jews. Even Orthodox Jewish theology is broad enough to have room for Messianic Judaism, an expanded definition of Judaism even more so.