Redefining Always

Dr. Mohler (in his 2/24/17 Briefing) says it first: “the experts cited in his article say that secularism has always been prevalent in New Hampshire. Now that requires a redefinition of always, because it certainly wouldn’t have been the case if you go back to the founding era of New Hampshire, if you go back to the Revolutionary or even before that to the Colonial era. That’s where we get the very idea of the New England Town Church.”

I want to talk about “redefining always”, which is something I’ve heard Dr. Mohler do often, but first a little-known historical fact:

Dr. Mohler is right about the early colonial era being very religious. But as far back as the Revolutionary era secularism had some very lively advocates in Vermont and New Hampshire. Ethan Allen headed a militia, The Green Mountain Boys, which defended an area called The New Hampshire Grants against the colony of New York before the Revolution, and later fought in the Revolutionary War, famously capturing Fort Ticonderoga. Ethan Allen started writing a book with a friend as a young man, and completed it after the war. It was called “Reason: The Only Oracle of Man”. Its purpose was “reforming mankind from superstition and error,” the most prominent of those superstitions being Christianity. The book didn’t sell, so maybe you can’t say his point of view was “prevalent”, but secularism does have deep roots in New England soil. There have always been rebels against the authority of the church. Part of what makes the modern world modern -- and as secular as it is -- is that the church no longer has the power to crush that rebellion.

Dr. Mohler continued, “Every single village would’ve had a church, and the church would’ve been at the very center of the community. So when we’re told that New England has always been secular..., well, that redefines always as in, well, say, the modern age, or the last several decades, or since the beginning of the 20th century.”

You might think that’s silly, to speak of something as recent as the 20th century as the meaning of “always”. But later in the podcast, to Brandon Phinney’s statement that “Love, morality, justice, etc. are not strictly religious doctrines, but originate in our human nature to do good for ourselves and for others,” Dr. Mohler answers, “How does he know what justice is? By what standard would he even use this term? ... This very secular worldview has to borrow its terminology from, well, historic Christianity. That is to say that even the secularist vocabulary is bound to moral language that is the inheritance of Christianity. Where in the world would otherwise these terms make any sense?”

Dr. Mohler is saying that Christianity is the source of morality, and that all our moral language we owe to it. Nowhere in the world except within a Christian worldview, he claims, do words like ‘justice’ make any sense. Morality, in other words,  has always been, and is by its very nature, Christian.This is like saying  that “always” and “everywhere” mean the Christian era in the West.  This is a common theme of Dr. Mohler’s. When he says the world has “always” been some way, up until “the moral revolution”, he means in the Christian West, and he’s typically thinking of how things were about 50 years ago in America.

Christianity is about 2000 years old, which is a short time compared to the age of civilization, let alone humanity. Is Dr. Mohler saying no one used words meaning right or wrong, just or unjust, before Jesus? They were used in the Hebrew Bible, which did not inherit these concepts from Christianity.  The reverse is true. Pre-Christian Greeks and Romans certainly had moral teachings and judgments, and the concept of justice. Rome was famous for its legal system. In fact, virtually every human society has some shared sense of right and wrong. So if morality is a universal (meaning it is found wherever humans are), who is correct, Phinney, who attributes morality to human nature, or Mohler, who claims its origin is historical Christianity?

Christianity is one tradition among many. It claims to be able to ground morality in the authority of God, and that nobody else can explain why morality is true. But having morality is different from being able to explain it on the basis of something external to it. Can you do arithmetic? Do you know what two plus two makes? Now can you explain why arithmetic is true? There are some very thick books on the foundations of arithmetic which practically no one understands. But we don’t need to understand its foundations in order to have good reason to believe in its truth. You might say two plus two equals four because God said so, just as you can say murder is wrong because God said so. If that is a satisfying explanation for you, congratulations. Some of us are not so easily satisfied. And while we might like to understand more deeply the foundations of morality, we don’t yearn for that particular non-answer.

Worms, Worldviews and the Principle of Charity

This entry is written in response to a piece in the 2/9/17 Briefing which Dr. Mohler titled “The chilling logic of abortionist Willie Parker: ‘A fetus is not a person; it’s a human entity.’ ” Dr. Mohler does seem to struggle – briefly – to make sense of this statement, but he can make no sense of it:

“What in the world is a human entity? That means absolutely nothing at all unless it’s just a stand-in for being a human being, for being a human person. But if it is a human person, then that person deserves the protection of life, not the destruction of life. That’s one of those statements that appears to say something but doesn’t actually, when you look further, say anything at all.”

Dr. Mohler cannot entertain the idea of a human entity that is not a person for more than a moment. So he presumes that when Dr. Parker said “A fetus is not a person; it’s a human entity,” he meant the expression “human entity” to stand for a person, which is exactly what he just said it was not! So, Mohler concludes, rather than expressing a view of the unborn different from Mohler’s, he was saying nothing at all. What is going on here? Dr. Mohler constantly emphasizes the importance of differences in worldview, but when confronted with one, he denies it exists! That is going to be the subject of this post.

But before I get into that subject, I need to correct a factual error. Dr. Mohler said, of the claim that a fetus is not a person,

Well just remember that a fetus is a fetus all the way to the very second of birth. At this point we need to recognize that this is a radical position, even in the pro-abortion movement. This goes far beyond Roe v. Wade. At least Roe v. Wade recognized that in the last trimester—that is in the final three months of pregnancy—there is every reason to believe that the inhabitant of the womb actually is a person. Of course that’s a very dangerous argument in and of itself, but at least Justice Blackmun in the Supreme Court back in 1973 recognized that in the last stage of pregnancy, the inhabitant of the womb is a person.

Putting aside what Dr. Parker thinks about late-term abortions (he does not say in the NY Times interview), it is simply not true that “Justice Blackmun [in Roe v Wade] ... recognized that in the last stage of pregnancy, the inhabitant of the womb is a person.”

In his ruling Blackmun noted that, if the unborn were a person within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment, then that amendment would guarantee it the right to life. But that is not what the decision held. Instead it said that, once the fetus is capable of life outside the womb, the state has a “compelling interest” in its “potential life", and may restrict abortions, or even prohibit them, after the point of viability, “except when it is necessary to preserve the life or health of the mother.”

Justice Blackmun also noted (in footnote 54) that even Texas’s law prohibiting abortions at all stages of pregnancy was not consistent with its claim that the unborn was a person, because if the fetus were legally a person, it could not be deprived of life without due process of law, and this is inconsistent with an exception to protect the life of the mother which the law recognized. The Texas law also did not punish the mother even as an accomplice, and the penalty for abortion was less than for murder, which were also features inconsistent with the claim that the unborn was a person, according to Blackmun. So not only was the Roe decision’s refusal to ban abortion after viability inconsistent with legal recognition of the late-term fetus as a person,  its required exception “to preserve the life or health of the mother” was also.

But the topic I actually want to focus on here is the apparent contradiction between, on the one hand, Dr. Mohler’s constant emphasis on the importance of differences in worldview, and on the other, his frequent failure to take those differences seriously, or even to acknowledge their reality. I think this apparent contradiction has deep Christian roots.

To foster thought, I want to turn the tables a bit. Consider this scenario. It is from the movie “Seven Years in Tibet” with Brad Pitt as the Austrian mountaineer and one-time Nazi, Heinrich Harrer, who, with a fellow climber, has escaped a British WWII internment camp in India and penetrated the isolated capital of Tibet. They are the only two Westerners in the country, and the boy-ruler, the Dalai Lama, having chosen Harrer for his tutor and friend, commissions him to build a movie theater within the palace.

The scene opens with workers digging a ditch for the theater’s foundation. They stop, perplexed. Harrer and workers:

– “What is the problem here?”
– “Worms! Worms! Please, no more hurting worms, please!”
– “Worms?”
– “In a past life, this innocent worm could have been your mother. Please, no more hurting. It’s impossible! Please, no more.”

Next scene with the Dalai Lama & Harrer: 

– [Lama laughing.] “But you see, Tibetans believe all living creatures were their mothers in a past life, so we must show them respect and repay their kindness, and never never harm anything that lives.  You can’t ask a devout people to disregard a precious teaching.”
– “Yes, but your holiness (chuckling), with due respect, we can’t possibly [laughs out loud]... I’m sorry, but we can’t possibly rescue all the worms, not if you want a theater finished in this lifetime.”
– “You have a clever mind. Think of a solution.”

The solution follows: workers dig while monks remove the worms from the dug-up dirt and carry them in bowls to a plot where they are lovingly returned to moistened soil.

This less-than-two-minute episode can be seen here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=7B1F2bZq16E.

That’s the scenario. Clearly, a clash of worldviews. Now let’s compare.

Dr. Mohler rejects Dr. Parker’s explanation for his “conversion” to being able to perform abortions, namely his belief that the fetus is a human entity but not a person. Mohler finds the use of “entity” here meaningless, and worse, a sham. Perhaps he should have focused on the word “person” instead. Maybe Dr. Mohler means by “person” merely a human individual – so any human entity is by definition a person – while Parker may have something both more specific and more general in mind – a particular kind of (not-necessarily human) individual. After all, Christianity itself recognizes several kinds of non-human persons, so “person” cannot merely be a synonym for “human being”. But Dr. Mohler goes in a different direction. In his view, the difference between Parker and him is not in what either believes is there – its true nature – but in how they value what everyone knows is there, or fail to value it:

What’s the distinction between a human person and a human entity? Well it actually comes down to something that can only be darker even than the question of abortion taken alone. This is exactly the kind of argument as we have seen that was common amongst the German doctors in the early 20th century and the Weimar Republic when they set the stage for the Third Reich when they discussed life unworthy of life. How else can you describe human entity? It is alive, but he says it’s not a person. It is life unworthy of life.

... The culture of death is rarely this candid, but it points to the power of this kind of short interview because there’s very little space for evasion or complication. Dr. Parker was asked some direct questions, and we have to respect the New York Times Magazine for asking these questions. They are the right questions, but chillingly Dr. Parker gives answers. And in these answers he does reveal the worldview behind the culture of death in terms that are rarely to be found so candid or so clear. But also, we need to note, in terms that devalue every single human life, not just the lives of the babies whose lives are extinguished in the womb.

Mohler finds Parker’s view “chilling”, and holds it devalues all human beings.

Now imagine that you are in the Potala, the Dalai Lama’s palace. You take a shovel, and you are ready to plunge it into the earth, in full knowledge that its blade may sever the bodies of several earth worms. What would the monks think of you? Wouldn't they find your disregard for life “chilling”?

On the other hand, if you were home, and your son, having been given the task of digging a ditch, stopped because he didn’t want to kill any more earth worms, you might say, “Don’t be so squeamish.”

(Squeamish. Chilling. Interesting... emotions, beliefs, beliefs evaluating emotions, emotions based on beliefs. This seems worthy of further thought I don’t have time for here.)

This is what a Buddhist monk could say to you: How brutally candid of you, to admit that you would intentionally kill a being who could have been your mother in a past life. Your lack of reverence for life is chilling. You belong to a culture of death. With your shocking attitude and behavior you devalue every single life.

Of course you would not accept that. You could answer that, as a Christian, you do revere human life, but you don’t believe in reincarnation, so a worm could never have been your mother. Although you (may) value all life to some extent, you value human life infinitely more. You believe there is a vast chasm between human and non-human life, so willfully killing a worm in no way implies that you would ever treat a human being with such disrespect.

Dr. Parker could likewise reply to Dr. Mohler, as I would, that a vast moral chasm separates beings incapable of consciousness from ones that are conscious of their own existence, and that embryos and fetuses that are killed in most abortions belong to the former class, while persons belong to the latter. Therefore approving abortion in no way “devalues every single human life” as Dr. Mohler claims.

All three – the Tibetan Buddhist, the pro-life Christian, the pro-choice Christian or atheist – condemn murder. We just draw the lines around it differently. We all value people, but we include different beings in that category. We have reasons for drawing the lines as we do, reasons we believe in.

As a matter of fact, I don’t believe a Buddhist monk would accuse you as I’ve just described. I think instead he would realize that your attitude and behavior were a result of your beliefs, and your lack (as he saw it) of knowledge. He would see lamentable ignorance, not intentional evil.

This, however, is NOT how Christians like Dr. Mohler react. They do not attribute differences about morality to differences in beliefs. They attribute them to an evil, sinful, lying nature, which knows the truth but denies it. This is a core Christian belief, without which the whole edifice would fall to the ground. After all, if we commit wrongs out of innocent error and ignorance, how could a good God blame us for them? Just as, if you ran over a man because you didn't see him, you would not be guilty of murder. Or if you killed your mother because you thought she was just a worm.

This (I think despicable) Christian doctrine that brands non-believers as evil is stated in Romans 1:18-25, which begins,

"The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness,  since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.  For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse."

This doctrine, I believe, is an explanation for the laziness of Christians like Dr. Mohler when it comes to understanding those who disagree with them. There is no point in trying to understand the reason someone gives for disagreeing with you if you are assured of knowing the absolute truth and you know that your opponent does too, and that any reasons he gives to the contrary are the lying rationalizations of an evil heart. In the hands of Christian apologists, the concept of worldview does not, unfortunately, lead to a careful analysis of the sources of our disagreements and misunderstandings. It serves merely as a label and a warning against dangerous ideas that do not belong to “the biblical worldview.”

Not only does this lead to a lack of understanding of “the other”. It leads to a lack of self-understanding. What does Dr. Mohler believe about the nature of life, and what it is to be a person? Why is he convinced that an embryo is the moral equivalent of a baby? What new thing was learned by evangelicals when they suddenly adopted the extreme pro-life position in the late 70s, and what, if anything, did they forget that had appealed to them about their previous position? If Dr. Mohler took other points of view seriously, he would be forced to articulate his own. But as it is, he is content to brand all contrary beliefs as species of the worst known evils, and to characterize his own  as “biblical”, usually without any explicit reference to the bible, or at least none that proves his point, and without ever going beyond emphatic but vague slogans. If God has “made it plain” to you, thought is superfluous, or worse, a source of foolishness and error. Probing and questioning are low on your list of priorities, and self-doubt is out of the question.

This seems paradoxical, since Dr. Mohler is obviously intellectually curious, and his reading is wide-ranging. But his considerable energy goes into branding things Christian vs. non-Christian – good and true vs. nonsensically false and evil – not into trying to understand why anyone would sincerely believe that a different point of view on any subject is the correct one. To make this latter effort is to obey what is called, in philosophy and rhetoric, “the principle of charity”. That principle “requires interpreting a speaker's statements to be rational and, in the case of any argument, considering its best, strongest possible interpretation.” This requires you, in a sense, to argue for it yourself -- to put the best face on the argument that you know how. Charity is known as a Christian virtue. Unfortunately, not this kind.

***

Shortly after writing the above I discovered a video of a recent lecture given by Dr. Mohler called “A Consistent Pro-Life Worldview”. In it he says “We are looking at the necessity of identifying the worldview, the basic presuppositions that make the culture of death thinkable. And then we have to be certain that .... in our hearts is resonating a theology and a worldview for which the culture of death is unthinkable, because we are committed to life.” I think Dr. Mohler has succeeded in the second task he laid out – adopting a worldview in which the beliefs of his opponents are literally unthinkable. Ironically, that puts the first task he mentioned permanently out of his reach.