Book Write-Up: The Path of Faith, by Brandon D. Crowe

Brandon D. Crowe. The Path of Faith: A Biblical Theology of Covenant and Law. IVP Academic, 2021. Go here to purchase the book.

Brandon D. Crowe has a Ph.D. from Edinburgh and teaches New Testament at Westminster Theological Seminary. This book, The Path of Faith, is part of IVP’s Essential Studies in Biblical Theology series. This particular book traces the concept of God’s law and the importance of obeying it through the Old and New Testaments.

My post here will not be a comprehensive summary and analysis of the book but rather will identify points that stood out to me and intersected with what I have been thinking about lately.

A. Crowe talks about the Reformed concept of the “covenant of works.” Adam and Eve were under a “covenant of works” in the Garden of Eden: obey God and they will live, disobey God and they will die. Well, they disobeyed God and, under the “covenant of works,” they deserved death. That is why God inaugurated another covenant, one of grace, which would allow Adam and Eve to live and have a relationship with God, even though they had sinned. When I first looked up this concept, it somewhat baffled me, as it appeared to limit a significant concept, a covenant of works, to Adam and Eve, and that covenant did not even last that long, at that. But Crowe highlights that the “covenant of works” has continued relevance. Those who are saved are under the covenant of grace, whereas the unsaved are under the covenant of works: as with Adam and Eve, God judges the unsaved according to their obedience and, of course, they fail, which is why they need a savior.

B. But Crowe says more about the covenant of works, as he addresses Christian critiques of the concept. Crowe rejects the idea that, under the “covenant of works,” Adam and Eve needed to earn eternal life in the Garden. Rather, they, too, were the recipients of God’s freely imparted gifts in the Garden. In my daily devotions, I read Scripture and ask what the passage I am reading says about God’s love, grace, sovereignty, presence, and hope (by which I mean eschatology and New Testament application of Old Testament passages). Often, it is difficult to identify how a passage relates to God’s grace because it appears to reflect God’s law: God judges a sinner for sin or God stresses the importance of obedience. But a thought occurred to me: God’s grace is still present even in passages about law. God established the covenant with people by grace: God took the initiative, and they did not qualify for it through any merit on their part. They may have had to obey rules under the covenant, and consistent violation of those rules could bring peril, but their relationship with God existed because God chose to establish it, before they had done anything good or bad. Moreover, God’s law was itself a gift of grace, something that God freely gave people and that they did not earn. Crowe makes similar points in his book. Where this idea gets thorny is that Paul in Romans and Galatians seems to distinguish grace from law.

C. Crowe engages the question of what exactly makes the new covenant new. That is a question that I have long had. Christians make a big deal about how Jesus gave people access to God and brought them divine forgiveness, but people, particularly Israelites, had that under the Old Covenant, too. I can think of ways that the New Covenant is an advancement on the Old Covenant. Under the Old Covenant, God related primarily to Israel; under the New Covenant, God relates to Gentiles as well, through Christ and the church. In the Old Testament, God’s Spirit empowered people for great works in specific circumstances: kings, judges, prophets. In the New Testament, that is the case, too, as occurs in Acts and in the spiritual gifts given to believers, but the Spirit also plays a role in the spiritual regeneration and practical sanctification of Christians. The New Covenant also lacks many rituals of the Old Covenant, as the New Covenant is a more spiritual covenant. Moreover, while people under the Old Covenant had a relationship with God, in which they could pray to God and receive divine forgiveness, Jesus eventually had to come and do his work for those things to exist in both the Old Covenant (in that case, retroactively) and the New Covenant. The access that people had to God under the Old Covenant, in short, was due to Jesus. Those are the results of my grappling with the question, which nevertheless lingers. How does Crowe address the question of what the New Covenant brought that was new? Essentially, he says that the New Covenant brings people a greater level of access to God and experience of the Holy Spirit than existed under the Old Covenant. I will need a separate item to address the topic of access to God. On the topic of the Holy Spirit, what is interesting is that Crowe believes that spiritual regeneration existed under the Old Covenant. Many Old Testament Israelites were unregenerate, according to him, but some were regenerate.

D. Before I get into the topic of access to God, I want to say that Crowe’s chapter on Hebrews is very good. It is largely in that chapter that Crowe addresses the question of what makes the New Covenant new. Crowe focuses on the text of Hebrews to identify where the author believed the Gospel was present under the Old Covenant, and what the New Covenant brought that was new. Crowe in that chapter also engages Hebrews interaction (8:10; 10:16) with Jeremiah 31:33, where God promises a new covenant in which God will write God’s laws on the hearts and minds of the Israelites. Crowe quotes someone who looks at Hebrews itself and concludes that this does not mean the author expected Christians to observe the entire Torah literally. Some laws, primarily moral ones, are still binding, whereas ritual ones centered on the sanctuary are null and void, as far as God is concerned.

E. Now to the topic of access to God. My struggle with this topic is twofold. First, what did the Tabernacle in the Old Testament bring that the Israelites did not already have? Israelites could already pray to God and receive answers to prayer, right? Abraham’s servant in Genesis 24 did so. What access to God, therefore, did the Tabernacle provide that the Israelites lacked? Second, what access to God did the new covenant bring that was lacking under the Old Covenant? Evangelicals sing the song “Take me into the Holy of Holies, take me in by the blood of the Lamb,” assuming that Christians have the kind of access to God that Old Testament priests had. Do Christians have that kind of access, or is their access—-the right to pray to God and receive answers to prayer—-something that all Israelites, not only priests, had under the Old Covenant? Something that the Tabernacle brought, of course, was God’s actual presence in the midst of the Israelite community, and that is why the ritual system and the restrictions were set up: to protect the Israelites from a pure and holy God, and to encourage the pure and holy God to continue to live in the midst of the Israelites and bring them physical blessings (i.e., agricultural abundance) rather than departing from them in response to their moral or ritual defilement. Does a similar concept exist under the New Covenant? Well, one can make a case that God is actually and physically present with people under the New Covenant: I Corinthians 6:19 affirms that the Christian’s body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, and more than one passage treats the church itself as a temple of God (e.g., I Corinthians 3:16-17; II Corinthians 6:16; Ephesians 2:19-22; I Peter 2:5). One can even argue that, in light of God’s presence with believers individually and communally, believers should seek purity, as the Old Testament Israelites were to purify themselves so that God’s presence would stay with them and would not destroy them. Paul in II Corinthians 7:1 exhorts Christians to purify themselves in body and spirit, and Paul also speaks of the inappropriateness of joining Christ’s body with a prostitute (I Corinthians 6:15). Death can even result from failure to treat God’s presence with respect, for Paul in I Corinthians 11 speaks about people who ate the Lord’s supper in an unworthy manner and became sick, died, and perhaps even brought on themselves damnation. I guess my problem here is this: it does not feel as if the situation today is similar to the Israelites’ experience of God’s presence in the Old Testament. God’s presence does not necessarily bring material blessings under the New Covenant, as it did under the Old, but, what is more, carnal Christians are not dead at higher rates due to their spiritual and moral impurity. Does Christ’s blood protect them from that?

F. Crowe highlights how God under the Torah was establishing a holy and righteous order, in which God was worshiped and honored and people respected their neighbors enough to avoid harming them and to give to them in time of need. A question occurred to me recently: was it really that difficult for Israelites to obey the Torah? Was God seriously asking that much of them? Many Christians would answer “Yes, it was difficult, even impossible, and that is why God sent Jesus to be the savior.” But how difficult was it for Israelites simply to participate in the righteous system that God established: to bring their sacrifices when they were supposed to bring them, to leave the corners of their field for the poor, to refrain from retaliatory vengeance? If God was requiring utter spiritual and moral perfection from them, that would be a different story, but what God required of them under the Torah seemed manageable and doable. Yet, the Israelites did not do it, and here Christians maintain that this was because their human nature was sinful.

G. Crowe in one place emphasizes the importance of finishing strongly. He contrasts David and Solomon, who started well but ended poorly, with Paul’s statements about running the race and persevering until the end (I Corinthians 9:23-25; Philippians 3:12-4:1). Two things come to mind. First, there is the Reformed concept of the perseverance of the saints: true saints will persevere in the faith until the very end. Yet, we have Solomon, who may not have. John MacArthur’s response to that is that Solomon may very well have persevered, however, for Ecclesiastes was probably written near the end of Solomon’s life, as Solomon reflected on the futility of his earlier years and recognized the importance of revering God. On a related note, some Christians present spiritual growth as inevitable for the true believer. Is it, though, if spiritual giants like David and Solomon regressed? Second, it is easy for Christians to lose the simplicity of their faith as they are battered by life, with its suffering, temptations, and betrayals. They can become jaded and their faith and love for God and others may weaken.

H. Crowe states on page 162 that “The cubic dimensions of the new Jerusalem (Rev 21:16) recall the dimensions of the holy of holies and Ezekiel’s temple (Ezek 40-48): the whole city is a temple where God will dwell with his people.” This interested me because I have been curious as to how the New Testament engages Old Testament eschatological expectations, which largely focus on Israel and assume Old Covenant institutions (i.e., temple, sacrifices, priesthood). According to Crowe, the New Testament embraces some of those expectations, while modifying them.

This book does not answer every question I have to my satisfaction, but it was refreshing to read someone at least asking those questions and trying to engage them.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher. My review is honest.

Book Write-Up: The Whole of Their Lives, by Benjamin Gitlow

Benjamin Gitlow. The Whole of Their Lives: Communism in America—-A Personal History and Intimate Portrayal of its Leaders. Western Islands, 1965.

This book was originally published in 1948. Benjamin Gitlow was a former member of the Communist Party in the United States.

Among the topics of interest in this book:

—-As the subtitle indicates, the book is a portrayal of the leaders of CPUSA. If you saw the 1981 movie Reds, starring Warren Beatty and Diane Keaton, you know about Jack Reed, an American journalist who supported the Soviet Union. He is featured in this book, as Gitlow had interactions with him. Reed was initially enthusiastic about the U.S.S.R. but became disillusioned with its authoritarianism and how its leaders enriched themselves and preserved the oligarchies. Gitlow presents some of Reed’s eccentricities, such as his delight in showing Marxist know-it-alls how better versed in Marx he was than them. Also discussed is how William Z. Foster rose to high position in the Party from obscurity and Earl Browder’s ultimate marginalization within the Party.

—-A key point that Gitlow makes is that the CPUSA takes its orders from the Soviet Union, with sometimes awkward results. The U.S.S.R. opposed Hitler, then sided with him, then sided with the United States against Hitler, then opposed the United States in the Cold War. The CPUSA tried to keep up with these trends and adjust its political strategies and message accordingly. Gitlow states that the CPUSA had so infiltrated U.S. military installations, that it could have significantly undermined the U.S. war effort in World War II had Russia not joined with the Allies.

—-The Soviet Union’s geopolitical strategy is discussed in this book. Stalin was shy about exerting power against other nations when Russia lacked sufficient military and economic resources. Yet, Stalin had a stake in the Spanish Civil War because of Spain’s strategic location and resources.

—-The alliance between the New Dealers and the CPUSA is another topic. The CPUSA was initially quite vocal in its criticism of the New Deal, believing that it upheld and benefited wealthy capitalist interests. But the two struck a secret alliance. The CPUSA came to see the New Deal as preferable to a lot of other alternatives, and the New Dealers thought that the CPUSA could be a valuable ally because it could mobilize grassroots support for the New Deal; this would be important because Southern Democrats were opposing the New Deal effort.

—-The ouster and execution of Trotsky is covered. Trotsky was an effective military strategist and public speaker, but he was politically naive. Stalin sought to eliminate Trotsky as a competitor. Trotsky fled to the West and sought to undermine Stalin from the outside. Stalin had him killed in Mexico, and the assassin, in prison, enjoyed a life of luxury. Trotsky reminds me, of course, of Snowball in Animal Farm: a rousing speaker who was accused of trying to sabotage the farm after his ouster. In Gitlow’s portrayal, Trostsky was much more vain than Snowball. Gitlow does not really talk about the supposed ideological differences between Trotsky and Stalin, i.e., Stalin being nationalistic and wanting to focus on industrial development of the Soviet Union, whereas Trotsky was cosmopolitan and sought to encourage world revolution. Perhaps that is because Gitlow thought that Stalin, too, supported world revolution.

—-Gitlow talks about CPUSA strategy. They may consider a strike a success, for example, even if it fails, and the reason is that the strike at least inspires workers to rebel.

Wikipedia’s article on Gitlow says that some doubt the accuracy of this book because it is juicier than Gitlow’s autobiography, written earlier. The book did not strike me as particularly juicy, though, and its presentation of Communist goals and strategies made sense: I can realistically picture people acting in such a manner.

Glenn Greenwald: Questions About the FBI’s Role in 1/6 Are Mocked Because the FBI Shapes Liberal Corporate Media

Glenn Greenwald’s take on Tucker’s claim that FBI infiltrators instigated the January 6 capitol invasion. Two passages in particular stood out to me.

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/questions-about-the-fbis-role-in

“This reaction is particularly confounding given how often the FBI did exactly this during the first War on Terror, and how commonplace discussions of this tactic were in mainstream liberal circles. Over the last decade, I reported on countless cases for The Guardian and The Intercept where the FBI targeted some young American Muslims they viewed as easily manipulated — due to financial distress, emotional problems, or both — and then deployed informants and undercover agents to dupe them into agreeing to join terrorist plots that had been created, designed and funded by the FBI itself, only to then congratulate themselves for breaking up the plot which they themselves initiated. As I asked in one headline about a particularly egregious entrapment case: ‘Why Does the FBI Have to Manufacture its Own Plots if Terrorism and ISIS Are Such Grave Threats?'”

“If the FBI had advanced knowledge of what was being plotted yet did nothing to stop the attack, it raises numerous possibilities about why that is. It could be that they just had yet another “intelligence failure” of the kind that they claimed caused them to miss the 9/11 attack and therefore need massive new surveillance authorities, budget increases, and new Patriot-Act-type laws to fix it. It could be that they allowed the riot to happen because they did not take it seriously enough or because some of them supported the cause behind it, or because they realized that there would be benefits to the security state if it happened. Or it could be that they were using those operatives under their control to plot with, direct, and drive the attack — as they have done so many times in the past — and allowed it to happen out of either negligence or intent.”

Books Write-Up: Worshiping with the Reformers; Understanding Gender Dysphoria

Here are some new book reviews. I received complimentary copies of these books from the publisher. My reviews are honest.

A. Karin Maag. Worshiping with the Reformers. IVP Academic, 2021. Go here to purchase the book.

Karin Maag has a Ph.D. from the University of St. Andrews and teaches Calvin Studies at Calvin University. This book is one, among other, companions to IVP’s excellent Reformation Commentary on Scripture series. As the title indicates, the book discusses and describes how the Protestant Reformers, including Anglicans and the Puritans, worshiped in church assembly. Among the topics addressed are preaching, prayer, baptism, communion, the visual arts and music, and worship outside of the church (i.e., pilgrimages, family devotion).

Many of its details are not salient in my mind right now, but here are some prominent things that I got out of this book:

—-Church attendance was mandatory throughout Europe. The rationale was that God would bless the region if people there attended church and possibly curse it if they did not. An Old Testamenty concept, for sure. Church affiliation was by region, so you could see, say, a Catholic attending a Protestant service, performing his Catholic rituals during them. The Reformers considered this to be a problem.

—-There were different views among the Reformers about whether Jesus Christ was physically present in the communion elements. Many already know this, but Maag’s description of a prominent Calvinist view stood out to me. Calvinists largely rejected the “real presence,” on the one hand, and treating communion primarily as a memorial, on the other. For Calvinists, the Holy Spirit was present at communion, so it was a spiritual experience, not a mere memorial of the past.

—-People wanted to be buried underneath the church. A question that occurs in my mind is whether the Reformers sought to reconcile this practice with the Levitical desire to strictly separate the holy from death. Reading this book in conjunction with the P-parts of the Torah generates those types of questions.

—-Protestant sermons could last an hour-and-a-half.

The book has an engaging prose and draws on primary sources.

B. Mark A. Yarhouse. Understanding Gender Dysphoria: Navigating Transgender Issues in a Changing Culture. IVP Academic, 2015. Go here to purchase the book.

Mark A. Yarhouse has a PsyD from Wheaton and teaches psychology and mental health practice at Regent University in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Gender Dysphoria is a clinical term for people who feel alienated from their biological gender and identify more with the opposite gender, or who feel alienated from the gender spectrum, period.

Some thoughts and observations:

—-Yarhouse does not believe that transgender people choose to have the feelings that they have. He goes into various scientific attempts to root Gender Dysphoria in biology. Yarhouse promotes a compassionate approach on the part of the church and believes that, unfortunately, conservative churches have fallen dramatically short of this.

—-According to Yarhouse, there is diversity among people with Gender Dysphoria. Some may identify with the opposite gender, in areas, yet choose not to undergo surgery in an attempt to change their gender. Others have issues with the idea of gender distinctions, gravitating towards gender fluidity.

—-Another topic that Yarhouse engages is how people categorize Gender Dysphoria. He relates a case study about a transgender person whose sister sees the Gender Dysphoria as a disability deserving compassion, whereas the transgender person embraces a “diversity” and “identity” model that treats the Gender Dysphoria as part of the rich diversity of life.

—-Reading and listening to right-wing media (e.g., David Limbaugh, Ben Shapiro, etc.), one gets the impression that psychological and educational professionals rush to change a child’s gender at even a hint of gender confusion. They tell anecdotes and maybe this happens—-I do not know. Yarhouse denies, however, that “we”—-by which he probably means psychological professionals—-rush to do so. (UPDATE: This book was released in 2015, so the situation may have changed since then.) In terms of dealing with Gender Dysphoria, as far as Yarhouse is concerned, there is a spectrum between surgically changing one’s gender, on the one hand, and leaving the person with Gender Dysphoria to suffer in silence, on the other.

—-Some conservatives, or professionals conservatives interview, point out health risks that come from changing one’s gender. Yarhouse weighs in on this in an endnote, saying that taking the medication poses little risk but provides space and time for people to make a decision.

—-Yarhouse attempts to relate to the Bible with subtlety and nuance. He is hesitant, for example, to relate the “effeminate” in I Corinthians 6:9 to transgender people. At the same time, he also appears hesitant to render the Bible irrelevant to contemporary Gender Dysphoria. In discussing the Torah’s prohibition on cross-dressing, he acknowledges that the author may be criticizing pagan practices, yet says that the author may also find cross-dressing to be an insult to God’s created order.

—-Something that I wondered about in reading this book, and I do not know if I got this from Yarhouse or it was swimming in my mind in response to what Yarhouse was saying: there is talk about giving estrogen to biological boys who want to be girls, and testosterone to biological girls who want to be boys. Could not one use a similar approach to treating the Gender Dysphoria: give the testosterone to the boy who wants to be a girl, for example, and that may enhance his masculinity? On a side note, Yarouse, overall, appears optimistic that Gender Dysphoria can be treated.

—-In terms of where Yarhouse lands, he wants churches to welcome people with Gender Dysphoria while still upholding what he considers to be biblical standards on gender, and he distinguishes biblical standards from cultural standards. He is not overly specific about what this would look like. Presumably, the effectiveness of such a model would depend on how receptive the person with Gender Dysphoria is to conservative Christianity: does the person with Gender Dysphoria see it as a disability to be rejected or as an aspect of diversity to be embraced? If the latter is the case, then the person may not find conservative Christians’ “acceptance” (i.e., we accept you, but you must repent before you truly are part of us) to be that accepting. If the person is an adult, then that person can simply choose not to attend a conservative Christian church. If the person is a child with conservative Christian parents, or even an adult with long-standing conservative Christian connections, then the person will probably have more of a struggle.

—-In one of the anecdotes, Yarhouse refers to a conservative Christian who told a transgendered person that the person may find God in an unconventional way, and that encouraged the transgender person, who previously thought that the only option was to choose between transgenderism and God. This caught my eye. One may ask how the conservative Christian roots that view in conservative Christianity, however.

The book is informative, particularly about the scientific attempts to root Gender Dysphoria in biology. Yarhouse vacillates, somewhat, between being open and embracing a conservative Christian rejection of transgenderism.

Book Write-Up: The Trinitarian Ethics of Jonathan Edwards, by William J. Dahaner Jr.

William J. Dahaner Jr. The Trinitarian Ethics of Jonathan Edwards. Westminster John Knox Press, 2004.

This book is about the role of the Trinity in Jonathan Edwards’s thought.

Some items:

—-Jonathan Edwards employs a psychological analogy for the Trinity, likening it, like Augustine, to the different dimensions of the human soul (i.e., rationality, etc.), which are various, yet one. But Dahaner also seems to show that Edwards has another model for the Trinity: the Father and the Son love each other, and that generates the Holy Spirit, a product of their mutual love. Dahaner has a related discussion about the significance of the filioque in Christian ethics.

—-According to Edwards, the members of the Trinity derive pleasure from their love for one another. Similarly, believers’ love for God is like their taste for honey: they experience God’s sweetness and gain pleasure from that. This reminds me of John Piper’s Christian hedonism. Does this conflict, though, with Edwards’s emphasis on true virtue being disinterested?

—-Edwards seeks to distinguish natural human love from the supernaturally-generated love that believers possess. Natural human love is extended towards one’s friends, loved ones, and acquaintances. Divine love is extended towards the whole and is disinterested. Dahaner discusses Edwards’s thought on this within the context of his contemporaries and also subsequent Christian thinkers. Some, for example, do not see natural human love as necessarily in conflict with divine love but as part of it. Incidentally, Edwards, according to Dahaner, believed that divine grace transformed humans to who they were created to be, their original nature, rather than being something utterly foreign to human nature.

—-The question of whether there is a distinction between natural human love and supernaturally-generated love is of personal interest to me. Edwards does well to ask: if humans can generate acceptable love for others on their own, or if the love that humans naturally show to each other is adequate, then why would God give the believers the Holy Spirit? What does the Holy Spirit contribute, that humans do not already possess on their own? I wonder: How do I, as a Christian, process the love that non-Christians show to me and others, love that is sometimes sacrificial? I am not comfortable dismissing it as sub-standard. I think that such love is an indication of what God’s love is like: concern for other people and their well-being. Moreover, I question whether Christians truly possess the disinterested, holistic love that Edwards sees as a sign of grace: Christians, like everyone, have affection for some people more than others and may even have negative feelings towards certain people.

—-There is also the issue of people loving others in spots, inconsistently. Edwards talks about how the Holy Spirit creates a new ethical foundational principle in believers, one that is loving towards all. I think of Joab in I-II Samuel, though, who, on the one hand, could demonstrate concern towards David, and, on the other hand, could slaughter people (even on his own side) without thinking twice. We are inconsistent. Edwards would probably say that Joab had natural love: he was devoted to David because David was his friend yet lacked the disinterested supernatural love (however that existed in believers in the Old Testament) that is a mark of supernatural grace. At the same time, Edwards sometimes acknowledges that even believers are incomplete in their sanctification and are a mixture of good and bad.

—-There is a lot of emphasis in this book on interpersonal love: doing deeds of love for other people. One might think that this conflicts with Edwards’s reclusive, sometimes misanthropic, tendencies. Thinking back to George Marsden’s biography of Edwards, though, there were good things that Edwards did for people. He counseled people, and he even continued to preach at the church that expelled him, whenever it lacked a preacher. That takes a special kind of love: I would tell the church to kiss off.

—-One thinker Dahaner discusses argued that love for people is part of love for God. Edwards had a similar concept: when God loves the church, God loves the Son that he sees in the church. God marvels at the church’s likeness to his Son and appreciates her beauty. God’s love for the church, and for others, is related to God’s love for Godself. Edwards is known for his depictions of God as a wrathful deity, but Edwards also talked a lot about God’s kindness to all. God’s kindness to all is related to God’s kindness to Godself, among the members of the Trinity.

—-Love for people is part of love for God. Remember Jesus’s statement in Matthew 25 that helping the least of these is helping Jesus. But there are times in Scripture when love for God appears to supersede regard for the well-being of others. Abraham in Genesis 22 was commended for being willing to sacrifice his son out of piety towards God. The Israelites were to turn in idolatrous friends and relatives. God’s holiness supersedes regard for human life, as when Uzzah died for touching the Ark of the Covenant.

—-John Hick treated suffering as character-producing, yet he believed that such an explanation falls short when it comes to especially serious suffering. Dahaner thinks such a concession undermines Hick’s explanation, period. It is a difficult issue: there are incidents of suffering so heinous that one struggles to find any explanation or silver lining in them. How much suffering is truly necessary for humans to develop character?

This book is more involved than my post may imply. Dahaner, if he reads this, may respond that he addresses such-and-such a concern on page such-and-such, and that may be. Reading this book is somewhat like reading Barth: there is a lot of intricacy and complexity, but, overall, I have a general idea about what Edwards is saying and where he is going.

Book Write-Ups: Sacco-Vanzetti, The Red Web

Here are some notes on two books from the Americanist library, published by the John Birch Society.
A. Robert H. Montgomery. Sacco-Vanzetti: The Murder and the Myth. Western Islands, 1965.

Sacco and Vanzetti were Italian immigrants and anarchists, who were convicted of murder in the 1920’s and executed by the state of Massachusetts. Governor Michael Dukakis later pardoned them to clear their name.

I first learned about Sacco and Vanzetti as a junior in high school. We were learning about modern American history, and the spiel that we got was that Sacco and Vanzetti were wrongly convicted and were the victims of anti-immigrant and anti-radical prejudice.

I first learned of this book when I was browsing at my local public library. I noticed that this book was published by Devin-Adair, which published conservative books, including a compilation of Ronald Reagan’s speeches that I read in elementary school. I put this book on my mental shelf, recognizing it as a different perspective from the spiel that I got in my high school history class. This book would argue that Sacco and Vanzetti indeed were guilty of murder.

Over two decades later, I finally read this book! I doubt I would have stuck with it as a teenager, but, as an adult, I can read with more discipline and understanding.

The book’s author, Robert Montgomery, was an attorney. His book attempts to accomplish four tasks. First, Montgomery presents evidence that, in his mind, points to the guilt of Sacco and Vanzetti. There is the ballistics evidence: that the bullet was rare and matched the bullet in the gun. There were also witnesses, who saw Sacco and Vanzetti in the area of the murder, contrary to their stated alibi. And, according to Montgomery, Sacco and Vanzetti simply acted guilty, as if they were trying to cover up the murder. There is also evidence that they sought to return to Italy shortly after the murder occurred.

Second, Montgomery seeks to refute the criticisms of the trial. As far as Montgomery is concerned, the trial was fair and above board. The judge allowed considerations in the trial that would help Sacco and Vanzetti. The jurors, contrary to allegations, were not anti-immigrant bigots. Some were rather cosmopolitan and had even been to Italy, appreciating Italian customs and people. The allegations of salient impropriety and prejudice at the trial are false. They contradict what occurred in the case, according to records; they were impossible in Massachusetts, according to established legal protocol. The radicalism of Sacco and Vanzetti was not mentioned by the prosecution at the trial. And, if the people making the allegations of impropriety indeed saw what they did, why did they not report that to the authorities soon after it occurred, rather than waiting decades? Far from criticizing the conduct of the trial’s prosecutors and judge, Montgomery points to the flaws of the defense and the devotees of Sacco and Vanzetti. They intimidated witnesses, promised favors to influence testimony, and bullied and physically threatened those conducting the trial.

Third, Montgomery attempts to refute the argument that somebody else, particularly  members of a prominent gang, committed the murder. The gangsters  appeared to know nothing about it, and the gang itself was not murderous, in a mafia sense. And, fourth, on a lesser note, Montgomery comments on the attempts to manipulate the trial for political purposes. Montgomery sees this as part of a Communist plot, designed to treat Sacco and Vanzetti as poster-children for revolution.
Montgomery is somewhat nebulous about the motive behind the murder. He is open to the possibility that they committed the robbery to raise money for the revolution, but he is uncertain.

Just sharing with my impressions right now, I will say four things. First, just going with what Montgomery presents, there were aspects of the trial that strike me as fishy. When there finally was a line-up, the other people in the line did not remotely resemble Sacco and Vanzetti. Witnesses would pick the only one with a mustache, since the person they saw at the murder scene had a mustache. Second, Montgomery seems to downplay or massage details that run contrary to his position. For example, against the charge that there was massive anti-red hysteria, Montgomery notes that Sacco and Vanzetti were anarchists, not communists. Does that really matter, though? They were revolutionaries, and that would have been controversial in the 1920’s. Montgomery seeks to refute the idea that Sacco and Vanzetti appeared evasive because they were trying to conceal their radicalism from the police, as opposed to covering up a murder. Montgomery denies that the police asked them about their radicalism, even though, in the interview that he quotes, they briefly did. Third, I question whether Sacco and Vanzetti should have been executed, based on the evidence that was presented at the trial. The evidence strikes me as circumstantial. Some of Montgomery’s ballistics arguments are based on findings after the conviction. And, in critiquing witnesses who placed Sacco and Vanzetti away from the scene of the crime, Montgomery questions whether they would have remembered such details so long after the event. Why not, though, since the days they recalled were close to the holidays, meaning they could have stood out more in their memories? Fourth, on a positive note, Montgomery is effective in refuting the accusation that the jurors and the judge were irrational bigots.

The above are merely my impressions, and my summary above is far from comprehensive. Were I to reread the book, Montgomery’s arguments might make more sense to me, and I might remember details that are currently vague in my mind. The book, overall, is an engaging read. Montgomery is judicious in his presentation of considerations. Of particular interest were the political beliefs of Sacco and Vanzetti: they were anarchists—-like libertarians—-and they explained why they liked Italy more than the United States.

B. Blair Coan. The Red Web. Western Islands, 1969.

This book was originally published in 1925. Primarily, it is a defense of Harry Daugherty, who served as Attorney General under Presidents Harding and Coolidge. Daugherty left the post due to accusations of corruption. For Coan, Daugherty was framed. The Communists wanted to take Daugherty down because Daugherty went after them and their web. The Senators who conducted the investigation, particularly Burton Wheeler, had ties to radicals, along with corruption problems of their own. One of the key witnesses to Daugherty’s corruption, the wife of someone Daugherty mentored, had personal animus towards Daugherty, since Daugherty sought to deny her the money of her husband after the husband’s death. And there were people who claimed that they were approached by people who wanted to take down Daugherty.

Coan goes into the Red Web. The red web, according to Coan, was making advancements in Mexico, close to setting up a Communist dictatorship in America’s backyard. Communists and socialists are more allied with each other than is commonly thought. Their divisions are largely rooted in conflicts over power and prestige within the movement, not overall goals. The Red Web also sought to instigate a strike against the railroads so as to make the railroad into a paragon of collectivism, bringing America closer to Communism. In Coan’s telling, Woodrow Wilson was naive about Communism, trying to play nice with them and to win them over with kindness. By contrast, his Attorney General, A. Mitchell Palmer, was effective in combating the Communists, as was Harry Daugherty.

As a child, I read a book by James Draper and Forrest Watson, entitled If the Foundations Be Destroyed. The book was essentially a conservative revisionist history. It defended Cortez and the Puritans, while criticizing FDR. In criticizing Wilson, Draper and Watson depicted Wilson as an authoritarian, who undermined the First Amendment by putting socialist Eugene Debs in jail. Warren Harding, by contrast, released Debs from prison. That was a surprising aspect of the book: criticizing Wilson for being too tough on leftism. Coan defends Harding on this this by saying that the Red Web actually preferred for Debs to remain in jail, since that made Debs a martyr for the cause.

I’ll stop here.

Book Write-Up: France, the Tragic Years, by Sisley Huddleston

Sisley Huddleston. France, the Tragic Years (1939-1947): An Eyewitness Account of War, Occupation and Liberation. Western Islands, 1965.

This is another book from the John Birch Society’s Americanist Library. Originally, it was published in 1955 by Devin-Adair, a conservative publishing house. Sisley Huddleston was a British journalist, who later became a citizen of France. As the title indicates, the book talks about France from 1939 to 1947, which includes the years leading up to World War II, the war itself, and the aftermath of the war.

I glazed over much of this book. There were many technicalities about French politics, both internal and also external. (“External” refers to France’s relationship with other nations.)

But the book still has many gems. Huddleston, at times in the book, takes a moment to talk about French culture or political theory, to respond to critics, or to offer historical insights that may be classified as historically revisionist. Some items:

—-France traditionally was not a warlike nation. Overall, Huddleston sympathizes and roots for France.

—-Franco was not eager to side with Hitler and stalled in doing so.

—-Mussolini invaded Ethiopia as revenge for what Ethiopia did to Italy in the late nineteenth century.

—-Russia instigated Hitler to invade Russia by making outlandish demands. Russia’s goal was to get that invasion over and done with, before Hitler had the time to make Germany even stronger such that it could defeat Russia.

—-The U.S. sided with China over Japan prior to World War II because FDR previously had successful business dealings in China. Consequently, FDR sought to contain Japanese imperialism, leading to the sanctions that provoked Japan’s attacks on Pearl Harbor. Huddleston thinks that the U.S. should have been friendlier to Japan.

—-Huddleston speaks highly of WWII historical revisionists William Henry Chamberlin and Harry Elmer Barnes. In many respects, he overlaps with World War II revisionism. He believes that peace could have been accomplished with Hitler in the years leading up to World War II, making World War II unnecessary. Huddleston criticizes the Allies for attacking France, including French civilians, in an attempt to weaken Germany. The aftermath of the war, in which the Allies sought to decimate Germany and prevent it from becoming a significant power ever again, was not only cruel but also prevented a counterweight against Bolshevism in Europe from emerging, resulting in the fall of Eastern Europe to the Soviets. For Huddleston, the atomic bomb was utterly unnecessary to end World War II. The Allies were wrong to demand unconditional surrender from Germany and Japan, who were already willing to surrender. Where Huddleston diverges from WWII historical revisionism is that he is not entirely pro-German, anti-French, and anti-Churchill. Huddleston narrates that Hitler attacked civilians in other countries, was cruel to France, and lacked any right to Vichy France.

—-Huddleston defends Philippe Petain, a leader of Vichy France, against charges that he was a dictator and a traitor. This can get tedious, but there are times when the defense comes alive, as Huddleston depicts Petain as a republican.

—-Huddleston’s political philosophy is difficult to pin down. On the one hand, he laments that the Cold War undermined the cultural distinctiveness of European countries by pressuring them to conform to either Soviet or American political culture. In light of this, he does not seem to think that certain European authoritarian system are necessarily bad. On the other hand, Huddleston is a bit of a libertarian, so he prefers democratic capitalism to authoritarian and collectivist systems. Huddleston’s stance towards war is also difficult to pin down. He laments that the U.S. permitted the Soviets to gain a foothold in Europe by failing to be tough, yet he also seems to oppose American participation in the Cold War.

—-The John Birch Society published this book because Huddleston, in significant areas, agrees with its ideology. Huddleston is anti-Communist. He bemoans that FDR gave ground to Russia during and after World War II, along with the Communist influence in the French Resistance and de-Gaulle’s government. In contrast with the Birchers, Huddleston does not come across as a conspiracy theorist. He acknowledges that industrialists supported Hitler and the Bolsheviks, but he does not see that so much as a conspiracy as an understandable attempt on the part of industrialists to protect themselves: German industrialists sought protection from the Bolsheviks and thus supported Hitler, and some industrialists wanted protection from Hitler and thus supported the Bolsheviks.

Book Write-Up: Postmortem Opportunity, by James Beilby

James Beilby. Postmortem Opportunity: A Biblical and Theological Assessment of Salvation After Death. IVP Academic, 2021. Go here to purchase the book.

James Beilby is professor of systematic and philosophical theology at Bethel University in St. Paul, Minnesota. He was written books and articles about Christian apologetics, epistemology, philosophy, and theology.

This book addresses the question of whether God will provide people with an opportunity to be saved after they die, particularly if in this life they failed to hear the Gospel, lacked the mental capacity to respond to the Gospel, or heard it in a distorted fashion. Those who heard the Gospel in a distorted fashion includes African-American slaves who heard a Gospel that promoted their oppression or people raised in abusive religious environments. Will God offer them a postmortem opportunity to hear the Gospel and be saved or simply damn them to hell because they failed to believe in the Gospel in this life?

Beilby affirms that, yes, God will provide people with a postmortem opportunity to be saved. He contends that God in Scripture loves all people and desires their salvation. Within the New Testament and ancient Jewish and Christian tradition is a concept of postmortem opportunity; in the case of Christianity, Jesus went to the realm of the dead between his death and resurrection and preached the Gospel, and ancient Christians sought to account for people who lived in pre-Christian times who failed to explicitly hear the Gospel.

Beilby engages questions about postmortem opportunity. If God will save people in the afterlife, why preach the Gospel in this life? After all, God will do it better than we possibly can, since we will present the Gospel in a flawed manner! And, if God offers people an opportunity to be saved in the afterlife, will not everyone be saved? If God presents them with such an opportunity, they will know that God exists and that Christianity is true and, naturally, they would rather not go to hell. Does postmortem opportunity render our decisions in this life and the warnings in Scripture irrelevant?

Beilby, in part, responds to these questions by restricting the range of postmortem opportunity, treating it as an exception to the rule: God will offer it only to people who failed to receive a sufficient chance at salvation in this life. Beilby still believes in missionary work because God commands it and it allows believers to be part of God’s work in redeeming people and saving them from the power of the devil. Beilby is still open to inclusivism: the idea that God can save people in other cultures who may lack explicit knowledge of the Gospel but recognize their need for grace or respond in faith to whatever light of divine revelation that they have. What Beilby rejects is universalism and annihilationism as defined as God killing sinners in the afterlife. For Beilby, sinners in hell exist but with their humanity destroyed.

Regarding the question of whether anyone would say “no” if God offered them a postmortem opportunity to be saved, Beilby replies that, just because people will know God is real in the afterlife, that does not automatically mean that they will reject sin and self and embrace God, especially if they have been hardened in this life from a lifetime of sinful decisions. Beilby rejects the idea that beholding the “beatific vision” of God will result in the salvation of those offered a postmortem opportunity. Beholding God did not help Satan when he rebelled in heaven, plus Beilby disputes that what people see of God at the judgment is the full “beatific vision.”

Reading this book brought to my mind discussions I have had with people about this topic, from those in favor and those opposed. There are people in my family who take a belief in postmortem opportunity in almost universalist directions, asserting that no one can be lost in this life because they lack a genuine opportunity to be saved here and now. One argument they make is that God in the New Testament attested to the truth of the Gospel with miracles, but God does not do so today, so Christianity looks merely like one philosophy among many. Why would God damn them on the basis of that? The response I hear to that from restrictivist Christians, of course, is “Why, then, does this life matter? Why preach the Gospel to others? Where is the sense of urgency to accept the Gospel or to live it out?” Then I recall a conversation I had with a Calvinist about the topic. For him, the issue of “those who never heard” is a moot point, since, if God chose people not to be saved, what does it matter if they heard or not? This is the conclusion at which Beilby essentially arrives when he discusses whether postmortem opportunity is more compatible with monergism or synergism.

This book is a careful and judicious examination of the topic of postmortem opportunity. It is informative when it comes to ancient Christian conceptions of this, as Beilby discusses voices in favor and against. Beilby’s discussion of the beatific vision and eternal torment is enlightening as well. Regarding eternal torment, Beilby questions that God would torment people in hell, seeing the eternal torment as flowing from people’s postmortem sin and rebellion against God. As Beilby astutely asks, even if God were justified to torment sinners, why would God choose to do so?

The book falls short, in my opinion, in its treatment of Romans 1:18-20, where Paul states that God wrath is on the Gentiles because they have rejected the light of God’s general revelation. Does that not imply that all people, even those who have not heard the Gospel, are guilty before God and deserving of hell because they have rejected whatever light they have been given? Perhaps a way to get around this is to say that, even if God would be just to damn them, God in God’s mercy might offer them a postmortem opportunity to be saved.

In addition, I think that a lot of emphasis has been placed in these discussions on “those who never heard.” There are plenty of people who are familiar with the teachings and doctrines of Christianity, yet they reject them, while still living rather moral lives. Why should they be damned? I can somewhat sympathize with my quasi-universalist family members who assert that God in Scripture often confirmed God’s message with a visible demonstration of its truth before holding people responsible for accepting it. At the same time, I find problematic a notion of Christianity that renders this life, or this day and age, irrelevant. One way a family member gets around this is to suggest that this life is “ground preparation”: God, in this life, can be preparing all people to learn lessons that can make them more receptive to God in the next life. That makes some sense, and yet the continual warnings in Scripture give me the impression that the decisions we make in this life, for or against God, matter in terms of the last judgment and eternity.

Beilby’s synergism and belief in libertarian free will somewhat troubles me, since I have become rather jaded and hardened over the course of my life to conservative Christianity, towards God, and towards my neighbor. I find myself saying in response to the biblical God and his commands (as I conceive them): “Even if that God is real, why would I want anything to do with him? There are a lot of assholes who are real: them being real does not make me accept them!” I still have enough faith to continue reading my Bible, but I would hope that God would soften my heart in the afterlife. Unfortunately, the way Beilby presents the matter, me in my hardened state can easily say “no” to God in the afterlife, and that would be that!

The topic of evangelism was in my mind this week. A fellow employee asked me, “Why are you so positive?” Of course, Christians are trained to see that as an opportunity to evangelize, and perhaps the employee, who knows I have degrees in religion, hoped for something substantive and spiritual. But I chose to answer honestly: “because this is a positive place to work.” Believe me, I have had the opposite, and I was not so positive in those situations!

Beilby may have added to my repertoire on these issues, and, for that, the book was worth the read.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher. My review is honest.

"The New War on Terror"

 https://counter-currents.com/2021/06/new-war-on-terror/

“The Tulsa Libel”

Controversial site, but a different take on what happened in Tulsa, 1921.

“The Tulsa Libel”

UPDATE: Here is another article, from another controversial site:

“The Tulsa Myth”