There is no Canon of Historians

Last night I caught up with the debate between James R. White and Chris Pinto on Fighting for the Faith. The subject was the date and provenance of Codex Sinaiticus, whether it is a genuine 3rd century manuscript, or was produced in the 1840s by Constantin Simonides. As one cannot prove a point by a series of speculations, I remain unconvinced by Pinto's arguments, which amount to "Well, it might have been." But the debate speaks for itself.

More worrying for me, as a student of 19th century church history, was the fact that is rather swiftly became apparent that Pinto elevated certain Victorian speculations about Jesuits, and certain Victorian historians, to a status of practical infallibility.

A friend directed me to Mr. Pinto's post-debate analysis/declaration of victory, in which I was disturbed, but not overly surprised, to read this phrase:
" The historic oracles of the 19^th century were rejected in favor of White’s revisionist ideas of Church history."
Now that worries me for this reason: who decided that Wylie et al were "oracles"? Who made them a sort of "canon". I do not use the term to indicate inspiration, but in its strict sense of a rule by which all else is to be tested, because make no mistake, that is what Pinto has made them. And that is the undoing of all of his theories. No historian, however orthodox his theology, however good his research, is to be set up as an "oracle". No church historian speaks that way. All history is to be subject to revision if more data emerges on the issues at stake. The reality is that while J.A. Wylie was a very able man, he died in 1890, and many documents that were unavailable to him and his contemporaries are now freely available.

Now, I do not know which historian(s) Pinto relies upon for his statement concerning the Oxford Movement, "...the Oxford Movement which was the aggressive effort of Rome to reclaim England for the Pope" I suspect that he is relying on works such as Walter Walsh's The Secret History of the Oxford Movement, first published in 1898. It was suggested in some of these works that whilst Newman openly converted to Rome in 1845, in fact he had secretly become a Roman Catholic over ten years earlier on a visit to Rome in 1833, and that from 1833 until 1845 he had been a secret Jesuit agent working in the University of Oxford. It is important to remember that in the 1830s Roman Catholicism in the United Kingdom was still subject to certain restrictions, and many people regarded it as a foreign aggressor that wanted to take control of the state and bring back the execution of Protestants.

It is also however vital to point out that since Newman's death in 1890 no evidence has been discovered that would indicate a secret allegiance to the Papacy dating back to 1833, much less secret membership of the Jesuit order. Newman, after crossing the Tiber, joined the Oratorians, an entirely different religious order, and for much of his career in the Roman church was sidelined. There is in fact no reason to doubt that Newman's own account of his religious opinions and their changes given in the Apologia Pro Vita Sua is generally accurate, and any errors in it are lapses of the writer's memory rather than deliberate deception.

Brought up an evangelical Anglican, at Oxford Newman first came into contact, not with men pointing back to Rome, but with liberals who denied that the Bible was intended to teach the fundamentals of Christianity. Accepting this position, he sought authority elsewhere and found it in the Church. At first he adopted a position that can be called historic High Anglicanism, but found that logically untenable, and eventually ended up at Rome, the logical end of his position. Despite speculation by certain Protestant writers in the Victorian era, there has never come to light any evidence to suggest that the Oxford Movement was anything other than what it appeared to be, a group of Anglicans, influenced on the one hand by Romanticism and its visions of Medieval England and on the other hand by a liberalism that was questioning the authority of the Bible and thus led men like John Henry Newman to seek an infallible authority elsewhere.

And there is the great irony of all this; Pinto has erected Wylie and other Protestant writers into just such an infallible authority in the matter of history, not only its telling but also its interpretation. He does not mean to do this, does not even apparently see that he has done it, but he has.

[Illustration: The interior of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, where John Henry Newman was ordained]


Addendum: I missed the point where Pinto links the Revised Version of 1881 with the Jesuits, a truly remarkable feat given that the Roman Catholics invited to participate in the work (including, interestingly, John Henry Newman) refused to do so. And this is where I must accuse Pinto of being a conspiracy theorist. One mark of the conspiracy theorist is the tendency to connect everything to the conspiracy, which tends to assume the most enormous dimensions. The conspiracy theorist can become unable to understand that there are forces at work apart from his conspiracy, and sadly that seems to have happened with Pinto.

The Kennedy-Lincoln Parallels

I have just finished listening to Chris Rosebrough's conversation with Joseph Atwill, not an easy thing to do given Atwill's stream of logical fallacies. His final argument is one that I took particular notice of, not because it was any good, but because it is such a wonderful example of a logical fallacy. The argument was basically, "look at the parallels between Josephus' account of his three crucified friends and the Gospel accounts of the crucifixion of Christ." 

It happens that tomorrow is the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and that reminds me that there are startling similarities between the assassinations of Presidents Lincoln and Kennedy. John F. Kennedy was elected to Congress in 1946, Abraham Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846, Lincoln was elected President in 1860, Kennedy was elected President in 1960. Both men were shot on a Friday, both men were shot in the head. Both Lincoln and Kennedy were succeeded by Southerners called Johnson. Andrew Johnson was born in 1808, Lyndon B. Johnson was born in 1908. These are far more compelling parallels than those between the Josephus account and the Gospel crucifixion accounts, which basically come down to "both feature three blokes getting crucified, and one of them lives afterwards while the other two die." Now I have checked, and all of these are facts.

Other parallels between Lincoln and Kennedy have been made, often becoming more and more strained as one or other President's history is shoehorned into the other's to make the parallelism more complete, e.g. "Booth shot the President in a theatre and fled to a warehouse, Oswald shot the President in a warehouse and fled to a theatre", this fails because equivocation is required on a number of words, yes Oswald was in a warehouse when he shot Kennedy, but he did the shooting with a rifle at long range, while Booth shot Lincoln at close range with a pistol while both men were in the theatre. Lincoln was shot in a theatre of the type where they put on plays, Oswald fled to a movie theatre. But even the genuine parallels are completely without meaning, merely interesting coincidences. Some are less surprising than they appear, for example a man first elected to Congress a century after another is, if he is later elected President, very likely to be elected President about a century after the other fellow. there are only seven days in the week, so the probability of a President being assassinated on a Friday is one in seven, and perhaps given that Sunday was a day of rest the true probability is closer to one in six. Johnson is a very common name. Then a sitting man is more likely to be shot in the head than anywhere else by a man trying to kill him - it's the most obvious lethal target.

Of course the list above is a list of similarities, carefully chosen for that reason, and therefore it would be erroneous to base any argument whatsoever on the list. It would be especially foolish to base an argument on any sort of probability of such a chain of coincidences having happened, irrespective of eyewitness testimony. But that's what Atwill does with the New Testament and Josephus. Any list of parallels may be factually interesting, but is probably factually meaningless. To attempt to subject the whole to a sort of statistical analysis and present the resulting analysis as something meaningful is quite simply an abuse of mathematics, for maths was never intended to be a tool through which we analyse history, discarding what we find mathematically incredible.

The very real, often surprising, similarities between the lives of these two Presidents are merely accidents of history, and the very slight similarities between two accounts of crucifixions are the same thing.

'Covert Messiah' and conspiracy thinking.

I have deliberately given no free publicity to the 'Covert Messiah' non-event that happened in London's Secularist cathedral, Conway Hall (our picture is the back door, and does not do justice to the building, but is the only one I have on file), on Saturday, quite simply because the "evidence" presented was nothing more than an alleged code "discovered" in a correspondence between the writings of Josephus and the Gospels, a code that, like Lowell's "canals on Mars", exists solely in the eyes of the beholder. But what interested me, particularly as I had been reading The United States of Paranoia recently, was the use of the language of the Conspiracy Theory.


Again and again in the 'Covert Messiah' promotional material, we hear comments about "government control" and state conspiracies. This is no accident, it is the deliberate us of such language to appeal to the zeitgeist (no pun intended). Distrust of governments and police is high on both the left and the right, and the appeal of conspiracy theories in the west is undeniable. It is of course simply a fact that governments have in recent times conspired in a variety of ways to exercise control over what they deemed "undesirable" groups; there is no denying this. During World War II, for example, the British Intelligent agency MI5 secretly took control of the entire German intelligence network in the UK and used it to systematically feed false information to German military intelligence. In a less obviously benign example, the FBI used moles within organisations deemed to be "un-American" to disrupt the groups. Thus the idea of the Roman Emperors creating a fake religion to control the Jewish people is appealing to those with little knowledge of history and minds receptive to conspiratorial thinking, something that describes a large proportion of the Western population.

Conspiracy sells. The X-Files sold for that reason, The da Vinci Code sold at the bookstores (but not so much at the cinema), and an alarmingly large number of people believe that Barack Obama is a Kenyan-born Muslim plotting to make himself dictator of the United States (though admittedly any number of people believing that is alarming). Even holocaust denial sells. And in Christian circles, The Two Babylons sells, despite being not only arrant nonsense, but antiquated arrant nonsense at that. Which brings us to another point; conspiracies sell on left and right, though of course rarely the same conspiracies. Despite the best efforts of certain left-wingers to depict right-wingers as conspiracy nuts and themselves as the rational types, in fact belief in conspiracy theories is at least as common on the political left as the political right. For every right-wing conspiracy theory about Barack Obama, I can give you a leftist one about George W. Bush, and in many cases the same theory about Bush.

Of course conspiracies happen, and to suppose that governments are always above-board and honest with their people is naive. But at the same time we should always try the claims, not accept them because they happen to agree with out own particular political ideology, religious belief or our worldview. In particular we ought to be suspicious of claims of grand conspiracies, for such claims are usually disguised attacks against a disliked party that the claim's originator wishes to destroy. The claim that Barack Obama is seeking to enslave the US populace is far too similar to the claim eight years ago that George W. Bush was claiming to enslave the US populace for me NOT to think that the motivation is not so much evidence of Obama's evil plan as a simple dislike of the man's politics, and the claim that the Flavians created Christianity to control the Jews is far too similar to Jack Chick's claims that the Vatican created Islam to control the Arabs for me NOT to think that the motivation is in reality a mere dislike of Christianity. In all these cases the common element is a fear of the party at the centre of the conspiracy is going to destroy "our America", and since the normal methods have failed, extraordinary methods must be adopted against the foe. The danger of this train of thought should be instantly apparent.

The accusation of the vast conspiracy takes the place of actually engaging with the other side; it seeks to imitate the act of Alexander the Great with the Gordian Knot, rather than untying, it tries to cut. By painting Christianity (or Islam in the case of Jack Chick) as the deliberate fabrication of a cynical conspiracy, it says in effect, "I do not need to address the claims of the other, for the other is merely deceived by an ancient plot of which they are ignorant, but I know the truth". Convenient, but a dodge at best. The Conspiracy is a pseudo-history that takes the place of the actual history, and justifies unthinking hostility in the place of serious intellectual engagement. At worst it places the other in the position of a delusional mental patient who needs to be restrained for his own good, justifying in the mind of the one holding it the most oppressive measures.

What therefore we need to do is to challenge the conspiratorial mindset. Not the idea that there are such things as conspiracies (there are such things, and governments do engage in them), but rather the mindset that regards government conspiracy as the first port of call when there is a school shooting or a terrorist attack, as the default explanation, so to speak, for all troubling events (for example, when the Boston Marathon was bombed there were websites that declared it to be a "false flag attack" even before a "flag" was announced). And more than that, we must challenge the conspiracy narrative that looks to a grand conspiracy as the cause of these events, whether that grand conspiracy is the Roman Catholic Church, the Freemasons, the Illuminati, or the Knights Templar (and the Knights Templar are always involved somewhere in these things). Instead we must teach history, study history, respect history, and treat the grand conspiracy as pseudo-history. Why? Most notably because the Grand Conspiracy is historically unprovable, there is no evidence for it. And its advocates reply that if it existed we should expect to find no evidence. At which point my scientific side comes in and points out that a hypothesis that is unfalsifiable is to be regarded as false. Or in more historical terms, if all evidence against a theory is to be regarded as evidence for a theory, then the theory has become a presupposition, an axiom, and as such has passed from the realm of history to the realm of metaphysics. The conspiracy has become, to all intents and purposes, an article of faith. And that's not a good idea. For it makes those who claim to be sceptics entirely unsceptical of their own conspiracy theory.

Beloved, Let us Love

"Beloved", says the Apostle John, "let us love one another, for love is of God." The Christian is called to love even, one might say especially, his or her enemies (Matthew 5:44). Now that means we pray for them, however unpleasant or persecuting they may be. And note that Jesus says, "Pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you." He does not encourage our sinful hearts by saying "Pray against those who spitefully use you..." We need no encouragement to add the imprecatory Psalms to our daily devotions or to pray that our foes may come to a bad end, but we emphatically need encouragement to pray that our foes may cease to be our foes and become our friends.

Now, if we wish to understand what love is, where better to turn than 1 Corinthians 13:

"Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things."

Note that love involves the opposite of suspicion. Rather than putting the worst possible construction on a person's words where there is an ambiguity, love puts the best possible construction. Love does not lightly make accusations, but shies away from such accusations unless it is forced to think otherwise. Love does not take any but the best arguments as evidence of a person's guilt. Malice should be one of those attitudes that the Christian "puts off", as Paul argues in Colossians 3.

Now, love does not mean being willfully blind to a real fault, for the sinner is to be reclaimed, and to overlook actual sin is not loving, for as long as sin is not confessed there can be no repentance, and to encourage a sinner to remain impenitent is to encourage sin. But no doubtful accusation, no mere argument of words, should be accepted by a Christian against a brother in Christ - or against a complete pagan and a persecutor, for that matter.

Let us be slow to speak in condemnation of another, and swift to examine the accusation carefully. Much harm has been done by those who, however well-meaning, have been too swift to share accusations that are either untrue or undetermined. Brethren, these things ought not to be so.

"Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God."

Series: 'The Craft of Dishonest Quotation'

Having tried to look up the series I did some years ago on Gail Riplinger's dishonest quotations in 'New Age Bible Versions', it occurred to me to link the whole thing in one post, hence this one.

The series, 'The Craft of Dishonest Quotation'. deals primarily with Mrs. Riplinger's lies about B.F. Westcott, and the word is not too strong, as documented below.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9
Conclusion
Was Westcott an Occultist? Appendix 1
Was Westcott a Communist? Appendix 2
Westcott and 1 John 2:2. Appendix 3
On the Use of Words. Appendix 4
Another Word on 'The Christ'. Appendix 5
'The Godhead's Gone' - Is that Bad? Appendix 6

Watch out for the comments on some of the posts, there is some serious mud-slinging going on.

The Right to be Wrong: Why Pop-Postmodernism leads to tyranny

To the unreflective, the slogan of postmodernism that "all views are equally right" sounds wonderful. The suggestion (quite false, I am quick to add) is that this means an end to persecution. Well, no, not really. For you see on a popular level, this idea that no-one is wrong and all are right reduces to the idea that no-one is allowed to be wrong. And that idea finally ends in tyranny. For we all understand that there is such a thing as truth and error, and in everyday life we use such categories. That's a good thing, for if I wish to put fuel in my car it is important for me to put the right fuel in, or the car will not run on it!

And the same thing applies with ideologies and philosophies; all of these work on the basis that they are true and the others are false, even Postmodernism does that! And people will keep on acting in such a way, whether they know it or not, whether they are honest about it or not.

And that is why the spread of the leaven of pop-postmodernism is dangerous, because the application of the idea that all sincerely-held views are valid is quite simply that people assume views that dissent from theirs are not sincerely held. This conclusion is not based upon assessment of people, but upon an often unconscious misapplication of pop-postmodernism. Not that it is merely found in recent decades, for the forerunners of Postmodernism have often fallen into the same trap, as the early Unitarians who assumed that all Trinitarian clergymen and preachers had to be hypocrites because "no educated man could believe in the Trinity".

Now, I am not saying that the "right to be wrong" means I have a right not to be corrected, but it must mean I have a right not to have the state attempt to correct me by means of penal sanctions. That is the great basis of the 18th century idea of toleration, that the state gives us a right to be wrong within certain limits (I do not have the right to persecute), and within those limits a vigorous intellectual debate can take place. It means no state heresy trials, but preserves the rights of individual debate, and of churches and societies to hold their own views and enforce them internally (so the Communist Party has the right to eject members who cease to be Communists).

Deny the right to be sincerely mistaken, and you deny any meaningful sort of toleration, because you assume that intellectual dissent is always due to deliberate evil. Western culture is dangerously close to making such a denial a matter of statute law, and that should concern everyone. I want the right to be wrong.

Conspiracy Mania

As one who still recalls the frequent bomb attacks by the Provisional IRA that were so marked a  feature of my childhood (all the more so since we lived close to a military base, though mercifully one that was never targeted), I cannot help but be variously amused and disgusted by the fact that certain persons in the US seem incapable of hearing about a terrorist outrage without immediately declaring that it is a "false flag attack". This makes no sense, of course, when no "flag" has been shown at all! So why do it? Well, the cynic in me (whom I must be careful not to feed too often) suggests that this is in order to boost ratings, but the alternative suggestion arises that in fact it is because the people who make these suggestions have so entered into the conspiracy mindset that to them all things must be linked to their notional conspiracy, in other words that they presuppose the conspiracy. It cannot be that there are real terrorists setting off bombs, it must be the conspiracy, it cannot be that anyone really decides in a moment of mental derangement to go into a school with guns, but there must be the conspiracy there behind it all.

And so begins the search for anything at all to "verify" this, anything that (to a totally untrained eye, mind you!) seems "wrong". And here we hit another problem; the "reality" that is at the back of the mind in these cases is oftentimes not reality at all, but fiction. Based upon the way well-rehearsed actors backed with state of the art special effects portray a scene, the conspiracy theorist assesses what he sees. Now reality, it is important to say, does not look realistic by the standards of Hollywood, for effects in action movies are bigger and more spectacular than the real thing, explosions are less destructive (unless they are CGI) than the real thing, while they are at the same time flashier, and guns all too often have unlimited ammo, or at least clips with wildly varying numbers of rounds in them (which is odd, as even blanks have to be fired from real guns with real magazines).

And there is another point to consider; we must postulate, must we not, that the conspirators cannot at one and the same time be diabolical masterminds and total idiots, that doesn't even work in Get Smart, let alone real life. A conspiracy that manages to fool most of the world must be very, very good. That means they will not make stupid mistakes that any fool could spot; thus anything that appears unrealistic must be considered very carefully, for it may very well be, so far from a sign that something is fake, a sign that it is not.

Not that the conspiracy maniac ever considers that, of course, for he is looking for confirmation, not for anything that could destroy his theory. And that is why the most insane suggestions have been taken up enthusiastically by otherwise sensible human beings, as witness those who bought the Sandy Hook Actors Conspiracy theory, a theory that, if thought about only works if we assume that Sandy Hook Elementary School either never existed, or that at least for the last decade the school was being set up for the shooting. For you see, whilst the TV viewer in California (say), has never been there, New England exists, Sandy Hook exists - if it did not, people would have noticed, and we would have to question the reality of everything, which way leads to madness. That means that the fake families would have to be introduced to the school as real, and so on and so forth. In reality it would have to be done in such a way that the fake families resembled real ones in every way. The alternative is only credible to someone who has not actually thought about it, or who has let Conspiracy Mania addle the brain.

And that is the real tragedy of all this - people abandoning critical thinking in the name of critical thinking.