A. In the sermon, the pastor talked about a professor he had in seminary. He had to meet with him but was reluctant to do so. The professor was an erudite intellect, and the pastor feared looking like a fool in his presence. But the professor sought the pastor out. That is how God is with us, the pastor said: God seeks us out.
B. The Bible study was about Romans 9. Last week and this week, the pastor speculated that Paul may have been responding to a particular argument. This argument was that, if Paul is right, then the Jews, and thereby God, are liars. Last week, the pastor said there is a second century witness to this argument at what became Constantinople, whereas, this week, he attributed it to Constantius in the fourth century. Paul addresses this argument by engaging the question of whether God is faithful to Israel, even though most of Israel has rejected Jesus Christ as the Messiah.
The pastor was offering a Lutheran alternative to the Calvinist view that Romans 9 promotes double predestination. According to the pastor, Paul in Romans 9 argues that God chose Israel, and more narrowly Judah, as the line from which the Messiah would come and bless the earth. God rejected other children of Abraham for that task. Israel is for God’s sacred use, whereas the other nations are common. God neither damns nor withdraws his care and provision from those other children of Abraham or nations, but God chose Israel to be children of the promise: the line of the Messiah. That promise is God’s objective—-not human effort, obedience, or physical rites. God chose Jacob to be the line of the Messiah before Esau and Jacob did good or bad, and even though Jacob was far from a saint. Circumcision is neither proof of membership in God’s covenant community, nor does it earn Jews the promise, but rather it is an affirmation of God’s promise to bless the earth through Abraham’s seed, who ultimately is the Messiah.
The hardening of Pharaoh is referenced by Paul as a warning to the Jews, that they might cease their rejection of Christ and avoid God hardening them in their unbelief, which leaves them as vessels to destruction. God offered Pharaoh opportunities to repent, but Pharaoh refused and placed himself outside of God’s grace. God thus sealed Pharaoh in his rebellion and made him a means by which God would display God’s power to the nations.
I leave that here as a record of what the pastor said. I am not entirely convinced, for Romans 9 still sounds to me like double predestination. But, like a lot of things, there is probably truth in the pastor’s comments somewhere. Romans 9, like much of Romans, emphasized God’s grace through Christ above the things on which humans wrongly rely for salvation: law, obedience, circumcision, or physical descent.
C. Samantha L. Miller. Chrysostom’s Devil: Demons, the Will, and Virtue in Patristic Soteriology. IVP Academic, 2020. See here to purchase the book.
Samantha L. Miller is associate professor of Christian history at Anderson University. John Chrysostom was a fourth century church father.
Miller documents that, according to Chrysostom, the devil and demons tempt people to sin. The devil does not make people sin but tempts them, and people are responsible for their own sins. Christians must continually resist and overcome sin to receive ultimate salvation. Chrysostom focused on the spiritual activity of the devil and demons, whereas people in his historical and cultural context tended to worry about physical problems that demons allegedly caused: attacks on health and wealth. Miller relates Chrysostom’s teachings on the devil to contemporary Christian debates about the prosperity Gospel.
The book is informative in its discussion of the historical origins of the Christian conception of the devil as God’s archenemy, as well as the different Christian ideas as to when exactly Lucifer became the devil (i.e., at creation, or before creation?). Where the book falls short is that it fails to rigorously explain what Chrysostom believed about fallen human nature. From what Miller occasionally presents, Chrysostom seemed to believe that the Fall led to some moral corruption of human nature. Yet, Chrysostom also appears to embrace libertarian free will: that humans can choose virtue and vice. But would not corrupt human nature undermine that libertarian free will? And, if humans can freely choose virtue and vice, why do humans need the Holy Spirit, the new nature, or the new heart to become virtuous? This is what Augustine and Pelagius debated.
I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher. My review is honest.
D. Jared Taylor. Paved with Good Intentions: The Failure of Race Relations in Contemporary America. 1992, 2014.
Jared Taylor publishes American Renaissance. He is considered to be a white nationalist, albeit without the anti-Jewish sentiments. In Paved with Good Intentions, Taylor disputes the idea that African-Americans’ problems are due to racial discrimination. Not only have some blacks and racial minorities succeeded, belying the notion that discrimination holds minorities back, but American society has also bent over backward, often unfairly and unfeasably, to provide African-Americans with opportunities. African-Americans’ problems are largely due to personal failing, particularly crime, promiscuity, and poor financial management. The welfare system also discourages them from working. Such measures as the Community Reinvestment Act, racial quotas in employment and voting, and welfare have resulted in disaster. According to Taylor, American society also has a double standard, as it tolerates black solidarity and prejudice against whites, while demonizing white solidarity. White guilt influences the media to present a distorted picture of reality: to amplify the rare white misdeeds against blacks while ignoring black misdeeds, and, even in docudramas, to change the race of heroes and villains to accord with politically-correct orthodoxy. The solution, for Taylor, is for society to encourage African-Americans to take responsibility for their lives and to incentivize welfare mothers to take birth control, and for whites to unite in solidarity against reverse discrimination and cancel culture.
Some items:
—-This passage on pages 105-106 gives a taste of Taylor’s thesis:
“But what are the facts? Differences in income between black and white men are said to prove racism, but the fact that black women earn just as much as white women is deliberately ignored. The preference of American blacks for white dolls is said to prove racism, but the same preference by blacks in Trinidad goes unexplained. The fact that killers of whites are more likely to get the death penalty proves racism, but the fact that white killers are more likely than black killers to get the death penalty is ignored. The South has the reputation of being more racist than the North, but no one seems to notice that Minnesota jails blacks at seven times the rate that Mississippi does. A researcher can find no evidence that white judges hand out longer sentences to black convicts, but concludes that sentencing is racist anyway. When blacks are denied mortgages more often than whites are, it is proof of racism; when whites are denied mortgages more often than Asians, there must be some reason other than race. The Bensonhurst killing proves that white people are racist, but the fact that blacks are far more likely to kill whites than vice versa means nothing. If black men committed suicide twice as often as white men, it would surely be attributed to despair over racism. In fact, white men commit suicide twice as often as black men, but scarcely anyone stops to wonder why. Sifting through the charges of racism may be a wearying task, but it is a necessary first step in understanding the assumptions that govern conventional thinking about race.”
—-Where does Taylor stand on black separatism? In some of his podcasts that I have heard, he has spoken in favor of it. He thinks that both communities can do better separately and lauds African-American schools that teach African-Americans to be good, upstanding people. In this book, Taylor is more critical of black separatism. Admittedly, his references in this book to black separatism serve to highlight white liberal hypocrisy: why does American society, under white liberal influence, champion or tolerate black separatism while demonizing white separatism? Yet, Taylor appears to have problems with black separatism itself. He is critical of black congressional districts because he applauds the black candidates who succeed by appealing to the broader population, whites included. African-American schools teach Afro-centrism, a distorted understanding of science and history. Black solidarity had led to ridiculous results, such as defending obviously guilty people like Marion Barry.
—-Is Taylor a racist, one who believes that whites are inherently and genetically superior to blacks in intelligence and disposition? This book makes the standard non-racist sorts of points that conservatives have made: that some blacks have succeeded through hard work and responsible living, that black immigrants from the West Indies do well, and that African-Americans prior to the Great Society had lower crime rates, solid families, and higher wages than African-Americans after the Great Society. At the same time, Taylor seems to argue that a lot of African-American economic success is due to racial quotas: African-Americans are even paid more than whites, in some cases, because the government pressures companies to hire them, and there are only so many qualified African-Americans to go around. When racial quotas and set-asides are removed and African-American companies have to compete on their own merits, Taylor maintains, they fail. Even when affirmative action lowers standards, and third-parties expunge any trace of bias from tests, there are many African-Americans who still fail.
—-The overall tone of the book, of course, is that institutional racism in America does not exist and is not holding minorities back. At the same time, Taylor briefly acknowledges that there are limited employment prospects in the inner city. Taylor speaks critically of enterprise zones, saying that they cost a lot. In terms of solutions, this book could have done better. What Taylor recommends is important: people should take personal responsibility, grab job and educational opportunities that are available to them, and refrain from making matters worse through criminal and promiscuous behavior. But is there a way for society to help disadvantaged people with limited economic prospects to better their situations? Taylor is critical of black solidarity, implying that it is as bad as white racism. But, in my mind, blacks helping blacks to succeed is something positive.
—-What is the purpose of white solidarity, according to Taylor? Taylor is a little thin on that in this book, but he has written another book on this topic entitled White Identity. In Paved, the role of white solidarity seems to be to challenge reverse discrimination and cancel culture. On reverse discrimination, I agree with Taylor that companies are wrong to lower standards, and I can see his point that racial quotas can become unrealistic: there are only so many African-Americans to go around, so to require all companies to meet a certain percentage is unfeasible. At the same time, where I have little sympathy with Taylor’s argument is that, even with racial quotas, whites still are predominant, since there are more of them. What is wrong with giving more to other racial groups? On cancel culture, Taylor asserts that, if whites can present a united front, they can prevent people like Paula Deen from being cancelled. If white CEOs will simply stop listening to African-American activists, then African-American activists will lack power. Here, white nationalists who believe in the Jewish Question would probably dismiss Taylor as naive. They would say that many of the CEOs are not simply white but are Jewish, with their own group solidarity and interest in amplifying their power and influence, using racial diversity as a means to that end. Taylor briefly dismisses that idea, and this highlights tension that exists within the white nationalist community.