vendredi 26 juillet 2013

Why I have a Personal Grudge against Kenotic Heresy

Series: 1) Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere 2) somewhere else : Bible and Church Questions 3) Creation vs. Evolution : Why I have a Personal Grudge against Kenotic Heresy 4) item : St Augustine gives an inch and some take an ell 5) Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : When St Augustine makes a fault, it is not all that faulty

I got mail, arrived Monday 29 of July, St Olaf of Norway, about how I put this:

Dear Mr Lundahl/Dear Hans-Georg

Thank you for forwarding your blog. I have no problem with you making critical comment on anything I/we write, but I found the way it was laid out a little confusing, to the point where it actually misled the reader.

I.e. it readily gave the impression that it was I who claimed that Jesus did not know as much science today as we do, whereas in fact that was a quote from a theistic evolutionary professor. Even though it was my article, I had to look it up to work out that the bit on mental illness was my response to a comment on the article. Perhaps it would both enhance your blog and alleviate my concerns if you were to add a few things to clarify things in that regard.

Sincerely,

Carl W.


Dear Carl,

I thought it was clear:

a) that you gave an answer that was perfectly satisfactory as to inerrancy of Gospel and of Christ's knowledge,
b) that my issue with it was only your assumption that Christ must have met mental illness properly so called as per modern definitions
c) that what I was citing was not your article (except I was giving a resumé of Jonathan Sarfati's part right at the start), but one comment response plus your answer to it
d) whereafter I added my thing.

If it was not, I hope putting your letter on top of the post and this answer of mine below it and only hereafter original article of mine with its citiations from your comment section will make it doubly clear!

Thank you for the encouraging words!

Hans-Georg Lundahl

original article as already previously published, but modified in order to clarify, as per request:

Basically, there is a passage of, I read online it was Philippians, where the Son is said to have "emptied himself", and the Church back in IVth Century already answered that this did not mean emptying Himself by becoming less God, less Divine or loosing even one single divine attribute, such as all knowledge.

Now, there is an article about this on Creation dot com. I am not citing it because they are Protestants, condemned by Trent, though they may incidentally be that too, but because they are not Arians condemned by Nicea I and Constantinople I. Since one of the writers was a former doctor, he got in the comment section under the online article another question about the Scientific Knowledge Our Lord could have had. He gave a sufficient answer to save inerrancy, but insufficient for our moral positions today. I cite relevant part of comment section:

Travis F., Australia, 8 May 2012

He said:

“Jesus didn’t know as much science as we do today.""

---

Given your unease around this comment, I am wondering on your views around mental/physical health issues and the likelihood that the ancient way for interpreting these was through a demonic lens.

  • Did Jesus only encounter demons?

  • Did mental illness not occur in Jesus' day?

  • Is mental illness always linked to demonic activity?

  • Did Jesus share the scientific/medical understanding of his day; an understanding that has developed over time?


These may be age-old questions for you, but I appreciate the space to be able to ask them here.


Carl Wieland responds

I will repeat your comments if I may, but firstly let me suggest that it is not just a question of any personal 'unease', what is at stake is the trustworthiness of the entire fabric of Christian doctrine, if one thinks it through carefully. And the extent to which the ancient world saw things through different lenses is not really relevant to the question of the Creator's own trustworthiness, because He has no such limitations. In short, it would not be an adequate 'excuse' for Him.

So here goes--and btw, I have in the past thought on such issues a bit, also because of having been a Christian medical doctor with a great interest in mental health issues- plus someone who has seen the reality of the demonic, as my book Beyond the Shadows documents in detail. You wrote:

  • Did Jesus only encounter demons?


CW: We have no way of knowing the totality of what Jesus encountered, we can only make comments on what the Bible describes Him as having encountered. I think it likely that He encountered mental illness as such, but I have no way of knowing that. The encounters with demon possession are clearly described as such and so the presupposition of biblical inerrancy (without which we have no epistemological basis for knowing anything from Scripture) forbids us from making the leap that this is merely a way of describing mental illness (which incidentally would have to in one case have involved mental illness in a whole herd of swine causing them to have the same suicidal impulse at the same time as each other).

  • Did mental illness not occur in Jesus' day?


CW: As indicated, I think it likely did, but that still has little to do with the issue here, because doubtless so did acne, and so did cancer, but there is no indication that Jesus encountered and dealt with either of these. He may have; we simply don't know. Had the Bible merely recorded the opinions of others that these were demonic possession, it would be a different story. But it clearly states the cause.

  • Is mental illness always linked to demonic activity?


CW: I don't believe that for a minute, except in the most general sense of the effects of the Fall and the resultant Curse. I do believe that in today's world, much mental illness is misinterpreted as demonic. But the demonic variety (which is real, as i can testify, but extremely rare) can be clearly overcome by the Christian wielding the sword of the Spirit and the blood of Jesus, without any long incantations/rituals, etc. - and responds to it dramatically and not just by way of some shorterm improvement. Importantly, it does not respond to psychotropic medication, which true mental illness does, even if not as a total healing.

But there is a further important point to make, namely that the types of mental illness today that are most likely to be confused with demonic activity are psychoses, in particular schizophrenia. I read an important paper a few decades ago in which a secular Melbourne Prof of Psychiatry argued that one can identify schizophrenia fairly well from descriptions in early documents and from this it is reasonable to conclude that whatever the causes of this disease, it seems as if it was unknown prior to a few hundred years ago, at which time there was a virtual epidemic. And those psychoses known to be caused by genetic mutation would be subject to the accumulation of such mutations in time - all of which suggests that the types of mental illness most likely to be confused with demonic possession (because they involve hearing voices, etc.) were likely either unknown or exceedingly rare in Jesus' day.

  • Did Jesus share the scientific/medical understanding of his day; an understanding that has developed over time?


CW: There is no evidence of this, and thus no reason to assume that He was merely misinterpreting things due to His limited understanding. The accounts of his demonic encounters make sense in their own right, without the 'mental illness' understanding.

I appreciate the opportunity to comment.


Comments section (closed) on
CMI article : Jesus on the age of the earth
(a passage in the article itself gives exact reference about Philippians)
http://creation.com/jesus-age-earth


Now, I have another take.

There are certainly mental troubles that occur due to lesion of brain. In Jesus' day there was less industrialism and thus less car accidents and similar (none car accidents properly speaking). The war like things going on left people with brain lesions acquired in battle lots less likely to survive.

There are mental troubles linked to an extra chromosome in some of the chromosome pairs, notably pair 21. In Jesus' day girls married early, and women giving birth in forties had not lost so many good ovulations by menstruating every month up to that event in their forties. Down's syndrom was much rarer than now, not because of abortion, but because the women who get Down's syndrom babies do so pretty often by not having given birth previously. I forgot if the statistics I read were about births or first births, but for a woman 20 years old it is one in ten thousand, for a woman 40 years old, one in hundred that is a birth of a Down's syndrome child.

There is depression. I think in Jesus' day the social tolerance of depression was less likely to stamp depressed peoples as "mentally ill".

Now, the diagnosis most usually associated with troubles such as of the demonically possessed is schizophrenia, but it is a mysterious diagnosis, and it is also used for things hardly worth calling mental troubles at all, such as absentmindedness or as being "still a boy at forty".

Now, there is a thing about real demoniacs, the one at Gadara had severe problems with hygiene until the legion of demons was thrown out. They - the onlookers - saw he was washed and combed and clothed ... and realised that the demons were cast out.

There is also a thing about Pharisees: they said Jesus was a demoniac because he did not wash his hands before the meals.

Do you get it? Verbally same criterion - say "dirty" - can be applied in so totally different ways.

I think modern psychiatry applies criteria for demonic possession on people most certainly not possessed (thereby giving reasons, so to speak, to discredit demonic possession and validate schizophrenia, though no one can explain what it is). They are doing so by Pharisaically misapplying criteria.

If you go by the real criteria - those used by Jesus and His disciples, not by the Pharisees - mental illness is far less common today than mental diagnoses. Psychiatry is so often repeating Pharisees' saying "he has an unclean spirit" when any Christian would disagree completely, but disguising it as something else ("schizophrenia") so as not to provoke a reaction from the Christians.

If Christians admitted that Christ knew all there was to know about science that was relevant for living correctly and could transmit it, it is not just Evolutionism which must go, but also so much of modern Psychiatry.

It is a sham science, flattering Pharisaism, making it socially dominant in countries previously Christian, it is also by the use of Neuroleptics a real case of slave hunt with torture. If you have never had a week with a restless body and mind due to Neuroleptics ... I have had it, some close to me have had it as well.

I could have accepted Benedict XVI as the Pope, if, acting on behalf of God, seeing how "mental issues" were differently dealt with by Jesus and by Pharisees, hearing the complaints of Psychiatry's victim's, he had condemned psychiatry.

I thought Susanna Maiolo was such a victim, and that her flooring the Pope or apparent Pope or Cardinal so and so instead of the Pope (apparent) was a misguided but understandable protest against Catholic priests endorsing her captivity among Psychiatrists.

No condemnation of Psychiatry came. Possibly because that would have implied too many Jews and therefore disturbed the Jewish-Christian dialogue which the Vatican seems to prefer to Christian Orthodoxy since the Vatican II Council.

But that does not mean Evangelical Protestants are exactly helpful. You see, some of them think Hitler was worse than Trotski because Hitler fought against Jews and Trotski against non-Protestant Christians. You know where Evangelical prejudice places the title of "People of God". And calling Psychiatry Pharisaical would have involved calling Jews Pharisees.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
BU Nanterre, Paris X
St Anne's Feast
(the Grandmother of God)
26-VII-2013

I nearly forgot the matter of autism. A society more and more loth to listen to others will be more likely to shove that reproach on the others they won't listen to. And invent autisms that do not exist. Some that do seem to have possibly originated by use of quicksilver in connexion with vaccinations.

lundi 15 juillet 2013

Where do you find Dinosaurs over Trilobites?


Geology seriesFeedback to Tas Walker on Geological Columns
If Tas Walker is right, Pius XII was not wrong to canonise Steno!

Actually Steno was not canonised yet, only beatified, and by John Paul II, as stated in following:

Creationism and Catholicism go well together (second example)
Where do you find Dinosaurs over Trilobites?
Steno and "Vertical Barbecue" contra John Laurie


For example, the evolutionist asks us why a layer of rock containing trilobites is never found to contain dinosaurs, and why a layer with dinosaurs is always found above one with trilobites and never the reverse. Fossil succession can be viewed in terms of solitary fossils, commonly called index fossils. Otherwise, groups of fossils can be used. These are often called fossil assemblages or assemblage zones. The essence of fossil succession, however, remains the same whether individual fossils, of groups of them, are used.

...

For example, although trilobites and dinosaurs were contemporaries of each other, there is no basis for believing that trilobite-bearing and dinosaur-bearing rocks were necessarily deposited at the same time all over the world. During the Flood, trilobite-bearing beds at one point on earth were probably being deposited at the same time as dinosaur-bearing beds at another place on earth. Nor can it be said that, when dinosaur-bearing beds locally overlie trilobite-bearing beds, the former are significantly younger than the latter. This, of course, excepts the small amount of difference in time, within the Flood, that elapsed between the burial of the trilobites and the burial of the overlying dinosaurs.


From article by Woodmorappe:

The fossil record: becoming more random all the time/John Woodmorappe
http://aufiles.creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j14_1/j14_1_110-116.pdf


There is a place in Morocco where you find trilobites (and some will forge trilobites to sell to tourists). But there are no dinosaurs above them. There are places where you find dinosaurs, including in parts of Morocco, but I know none of these containing trilobites under them.

That is what I was writing to Tas Walker about, and he said he was patiently looking at local geological column after local geological column, like starting all over from zero.

Methodologically speaking, I think we can get as sure a conclusion even without that work. It suffices to look into the known find places of certain types of fossils or fossils from certain periods.

I know - after some wikisearch on Lagerstätten* - of no place on earth, possibly excepting Grand Canyon and one other, where you can find Dinosaurs on one level, Trilobites on a level below it and Sabre Toothed Tigers on a level above it.

I only know that places where you find Dinosaurs are considered to be younger in the fossile column than places where you find Trilobites and older than places where you find Sabre Toothed Tigers. At least as to the relevant level for the fossile diggers. They will consider the level below the Dinos they find there as contemporaneous to a Trilobite level somewhere else, even if they find no Trilobites there. They will consider a possibly missing level above it as contemporaneous to a Sabre Toothed Tiger level somewhere else, even if they find no Sabre Toothed Tigers in it, because the level is missing.

But I know of no place where this consideration of one fossile stratum of Dinos as younger than one fossile stratum of Trilos is actually demonstrated by finding one of them on top of the other. And if Trilos were buried in what was during or previous to the Flood sea, and if Dinos were buried in what was during or rather previous to the Flood land, this is what we expect from that scenario too.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
BU Nanterre, Paris X
St Vladimir of Kiev
and St James of Nisibis
Council Father of Nicea
July 15, YooL 2013

*Check this out yourself:

Wiki: Lagerstätte
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagerstätte


List of Fossile Sites
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fossil_sites

dimanche 7 juillet 2013

Creationism and Catholicism go well together (second example)


Geology seriesFeedback to Tas Walker on Geological Columns
If Tas Walker is right, Pius XII was not wrong to canonise Steno!

Actually Steno was not canonised yet, only beatified, and by John Paul II, as stated in following:

Creationism and Catholicism go well together (second example)
Where do you find Dinosaurs over Trilobites?
Steno and "Vertical Barbecue" contra John Laurie


I already noted as to Wilberforce, Wilberforce and Wilberforce, that the father was the abolitionist, the one son, as creation.com notes, the man who debated the creationist side against evolutionist Huxley, and the other son, as they failed to note, a convert to Catholicism.

Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : Wilberforce, Wilberforce and Wilberforce
http://filolohika.blogspot.com/2012/12/wilberforce-wilberforce-and-wilberforce.html


Now, Saint Niels Steensen (or Nicolaus Steno) is another example.

Nicolas Steno in Catholic Encyclopedia
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14286a.htm


The Christian Science Monitor : Nicolas Steno: The saint who undermined creationism
http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/Horizons/2012/0111/Nicolas-Steno-The-saint-who-undermined-creationism


Quote:

Steno never publicly renounced this Biblical time frame, but his geological investigations clearly challenged it. How could an honest person looking at, say, the Alps, explain the immense movement of rock, the folding, faulting, and erosion of land, the depositing of sedimentary strata, in the span of just 56 centuries? Alternatively if God created the earth's surface in its present form and then created plants and animals, how, exactly, did their remains wind up embedded inside solid rock?


He was not a believer in uniformatarianism and thus he believed that mountains had formed quickly after the flood.

Other quote:

Gregor Mendel, an Augustinian friar, developed a model of inheritance that made Darwin's theory of evolution intelligible.


Mendel's laws implied existence of chromosomes, which are an major stumbling block for Darwinism. It is well prepared to deal with locus mutations, but not with changing numbers of chromosomes.

Great Creation Scientists: Nicolaus Steno
Founder of modern geology and young–Earth creationist
by Ann Lamont, B.Sc., M.Ed.St.
http://creation.com/great-creation-scientists-nicolas-steno


She mentions he was brought up as a Lutheran, but does not mention his Catholic Conversion. There is nothing controversial about the evidence for it, though.

I was wrongly under the same false impression as Asimov (see Ann Lamont's article), that his geological views were at variance with the Bible. Now I have evidence this is not true. He was as true to the word of Genesis in his Geology, as he was to the word of the Gospel ... in his Roman Catholic conversion.

You see, what made him decide for Catholicism was mainly the discovery that the Catholic Church took literally the words of Our Lord "for this is my body" and "for this is my blood".

He died making "geological observations" of another kind than his more famous ones, namely looking at the earth while freezing to death. How so? Why? He was a bishop "in partibus infidelium", a Missionary Bishop among the Lutheran infidels, who did not hold to the literal truth of the Gospel. He lived as a beggar and died as a vagabond, because of Lutheran inhospitality towards a Roman Catholic correcting their errors and bringing the Salvation that their own "Church" was cheating them of.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
BpI, Georges Pompidou
Sunday after St Maria Goretti
7-VII-2013

PS, in previous post I wrongly ascribed canonisation of Steno to Pope Pius XII, it was John Paul II who only beatified him. Now that I know this beatified man was not a founder of uniformitarian Genesis-denial, there is one less thing to raise against John Paul II (rather than, as I thought, against Pius XII).

vendredi 5 juillet 2013

If Tas Walker is right, Pius XII was not wrong to canonise Steno!


Geology seriesFeedback to Tas Walker on Geological Columns
If Tas Walker is right, Pius XII was not wrong to canonise Steno!

Actually Steno was not canonised yet, only beatified, and by John Paul II, as stated in following:

Creationism and Catholicism go well together (second example)
Where do you find Dinosaurs over Trilobites?
Steno and "Vertical Barbecue" contra John Laurie


You see, Steno is kind of a countryman of mine. He was Danish, I am Swedish but we are both from Scania* - a region then in Denmark, now in Sweden. He was also on my list on possible accusations against Pius XII for not supporting Creationism enough. I had read some text to the effect that Steno, while founding Geology, came to something like Old Earth conclusions. Of course, 6800 years back in his days is pretty old too, and he may have used the word "old" for that reason. Here is however what one Bible believing Geologists (unfortunately not Catholic) says about the founder of Geology, a Bible believer and a Catholic:

Geological pioneer Nicolaus Steno was a biblical creationist
by Tas Walker
http://creation.com/geological-pioneer-nicolaus-steno-was-a-biblical-creationist


I thank Jonathan Sarfati for linking to this article./HGL

*Steno was from Copenhagen, Zealand, not from Scania, but it is right opposite. It's been years since I studied Steno's life. Decades even.