Peter the Apostle – Anthony G. Flood

Do atheists have an excuse?

An edited version of this post, first published here five years ago today, forms the first half of Chapter 5 of Philosophy after Christ: Thinking God’s Thoughts after Him. The post linked in the first paragraph appeared on Bill Vallicella’s blog in 2018 (therefore, more than “a few months ago”).—A.G.F.

In a short post few months ago, Bill Vallicella argued that “If God exists, and one is an atheist, then one is ignorant of God, but it does not follow that one is culpably ignorant.” (Italics added.)

Bill takes his definition of “culpable ignorance” from a Catholic dictionary: ignorance is blameworthy if the ignorant one could have “cleared up” his ignorance, but chose not to. “One is said to be simply (but culpably) ignorant,” the dictionary says, “if one fails to make enough effort to learn what should be known.”

Bill applies this to the atheist this way:

I hold that there is vincible ignorance on various matters. But I deny that atheists are vincibly ignorant. Some might be, but not qua atheists. Whether or not God exists, one is not morally culpable for denying the existence of God. Nor do I think one is morally culpable if one doubts the existence of God.

Bill acknowledges that his exculpation of the professing atheist “puts me at odds with St. Paul, at least on one interpretation of what he is saying at Romans 1: 18-20.”

I’ll say! As Bill wrote in the post he linked to: “There are sincere and decent atheists, and they have plenty of excuse for their unbelief. The best of them, if wrong in the end, are excusably wrong.”

That position reveals a great deal about Bill’s idea of God. It’s not the idea one gets from the Bible, arguably the source of what Bill calls “the Judeo-Christian tradition.” I bring this up because Bill stipulates (in the post under discussion) that for “present purposes, it suffices to say that ‘God’ refers to the supreme being of the Judeo-Christian tradition.”

For Bill’s argument to work, that interpretation of Romans 1:18-20—God infallibly communicates His existence, power, and divinity to all people and they are all responsible for having received that communication—would have to fall outside that “tradition.”

God’s Word is the light that enlightens everyone who comes into the world (John 1:9). There are no exceptions for professing atheists.

Continue reading “Do atheists have an excuse?”

Sellers’s Baptismology, Part 3: Him, with Whom I Am Identified, I Confess

Part 1, Part 2

Otis Q. Sellers’s house in Fort Thomas, Newport, Kentucky 11.12.1928

For most Christians, baptism’s the ceremony performed in their churches, one involving being dipped into or sprinkled with water. That, however, puts a ritual on par with believing in Jesus Christ. This implication bothered Otis Q. Sellers, who claimed to be complete in Christ (Colossians 2:10) and therefore not in need of a water ceremony. He understood Mark 16:16 to mean “He that believeth and is identified shall be saved.” The Lord then said:

And these signs shall follow them that believe; in My name shall they cast our devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover (Mark 16:17-18).

These abilities were the result of being identified with Jesus in the Acts period, not of the ritual that may or may not accompany the identification. During the divine administration which the book of Acts chronicles, a believer was required to personally and publicly identify with Jesus.

Since God-commissioned men were speaking divinely inspired messages and their words were confirmed by signs following, those who heard and believed were expected to make it public. So, men believed, they identified themselves with Jesus Christ, and God identified Himself with them by causing certain signs to follow those that believed.

These signs came to an end with the dispensational change that Paul announced at Acts 28:28, but the divine imperative to identify has not changed. Today it is needed, not in order to be saved, but to develop the new life in Christ Jesus.

We’re familiar with this KJV translation of Matthew 10:32: “Whosoever therefore shall confess (ὁμολογήσει, homologēsei) Me before men, him will I confess also before My Father which is in heaven.” As the Lutheran commentator R. C. H. Lenski paraphrased it: “Whoever thus confesses and identifies Himself with Christ, with him Christ will identify Himself, him Christ will confess.” Lenski rendered it that way, Sellers surmised, because “confess” doesn’t do justice to homologeo (ὁμολογέω) which literally

. . . means “to say the same thing as another” and it implies some sort of pressure that leads to so doing. Our word “avow” would be a much better rendering, since it implies an open or bold declaration, also assertion in the face of hostility. Continue reading “Sellers’s Baptismology, Part 3: Him, with Whom I Am Identified, I Confess”

Otis Q. Sellers on ἐκκλησία, Part 4: The Rock and His Substance

Otis Q. Sellers (1901-1992), in 1922 the year he studied at Moody Bible Institute

Previous installments: Introduction, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

When Jesus came to Cesarea Phillipi with His twelve disciples (μαθητaς, mathētas) (which included Judas), whom He named apostles (ἀποστόλου ὠνόμασεν, apostolous ōnomasen (Luke 6:13), He first asked them, “Whom do men say that I the Son of man am? (Matthew 16:13), and they gave various answers.

Then He narrowed His interest: “Whom do you (ὑμεῖς, humeis)[1] say I am?” (Matthew 16:15). In the next verse we have Peter’s answer:

You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.

Peter was an individual. For whom else did he speak? Sellers deduced from other places in Scripture that ten besides himself agreed, but

there was one, Judas Iscariot, who deep within himself did not agree. This was not his confession of faith. And in view of this, the reply of the Lord is made in an especially guarded manner. He speaks directly to Peter, but each man can include himself in or count himself out. He answers Peter by saying: “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father which is in heaven.” Matthew 16:17[2]

That is, the truth Peter spoke

did not come to them from any human source, previous learning, aptitude, or personal ability. Neither did it arise out of race or nationality. It had come to them from the Father in heaven, even as John later would say: “He that believeth that Jesus is the Christ is generated (γεγέννηται, gegennētai) of God. 1 John 5:1[3]

Continue reading “Otis Q. Sellers on ἐκκλησία, Part 4: The Rock and His Substance”

The Silence of God: Anderson’s book, Sellers’s turning point—Part 4

[See Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 of this series.]

In Part 2, I wrote: “Otis Q. Sellers’s reconsideration of the Acts period sprung from pastoral need, not theological speculation.”

Since receiving Christ in November of 1919, he had been an avid Bible student, spending eleven months of 1921 absorbing the details of the Darby-Scofield system of interpretation at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, settling down with Mildred in 1922, and being ordained a Baptist minister in 1923.

He was, however, no theoretician, or at least the conditions of the unleashing of his theoretical side would not be met until the mid-1930s.

The Sellers’s home, 1932, when he pastored Fifth Avenue Baptist Church in Newport, Kentucky

Public speaking came easily to him; writing did not. For five years he preached at every opportunity before being appointed pastor of the Fifth Avenue Baptist Church of Newport, Kentucky in 1928. (His writing wouldn’t begin in earnest for another seven years.) Early in his pastorate he found himself on the receiving end of questions from truth-hungry congregants, like:

Do Christians today have the ability to preach the Good News in languages in which they were neither raised nor trained?

What about the other gifts Christ promised to the apostles—like being sprung from jail by angels or being immune to poisoning (Mark 16:16-18). Peter even raised the dead! (Acts 9:36-42)

Is baptism a sufficient condition of being saved? If so, where does that leave faith in Jesus Christ? Continue reading “The Silence of God: Anderson’s book, Sellers’s turning point—Part 4”

“The Silence of God”: Anderson’s 1897 book, Otis Q. Sellers’s 1929 turning point—Part 1

Cover of 1932 edition, Sir Robert Anderson, “The Silence of God.” Hodder and Stoughton (London) published its first edition in 1897. I’m privileged to own a copy of the third edition (1898).

This blog’s subtitle is “Helping you navigate this dispensation’s last days (2 Timothy 3; Ephesians 3:2). In this and subsequent posts, I’ll elaborate on its meaning. (But see my “Helping you navigate this dispensation’s last days”: What do I mean?,” November 11, 2020.)

In “Christ, our philosophical GPS,” I argued:

If Christ is the Wisdom as well as the Word of God, then He’s the cosmic GPS [global positioning system] that makes possible the intelligible relating of what is immanent within experience to what transcends it, the prerequisite to any sensible development of map-making and map-using.

Scripture’s data are “mappable.” Where are we denizens of the 21^st century located on the map of God’s prophetic timetable?

Presupposed in what follows is the conviction that history is neither an evolutionary outgrowth of natural history nor an absurd parade of “one damned thing after another,” but a process of divine-human interchange under His control and direction.

This process will culminate in the manifest Kingdom of God on earth, which will continue through millennium-long Parousia of Jesus Christ and, ultimately, the everlasting New Heavens and the New Earth.

Different Dispensational Strokes for Different Folks

God’s has not dealt with humanity in the same way at all times.

Continue reading ““The Silence of God”: Anderson’s 1897 book, Otis Q. Sellers’s 1929 turning point—Part 1”

“Why did you not give me better evidence?,” the atheist would ask God, as though his demand for evidence were not itself evidence.

A little over fifty years ago, when my interest in philosophy was budding, I encountered Bertrand Russell’s Why I Am Not a Christian. (My edition was the 1957 Simon & Schuster paperback, the one pictured below).

I was a recent Marxist convert; Russell was no Marxist, but this rebellious teenager welcomed his criticisms of theism in general and Christianity in particular.

Upon reading his obituary fifty years ago this past February, I marveled at the longevity some enjoy—he died age 97—and therefore how long ago a contemporary of mine might have lived. A Victorian, Russell grew up in the age of Gladstone and Disraeli. He had John Stuart Mill, whose On Liberty I was then reading, as his godfather.

Recently I stumbled upon words attributed to Russell, words I’ve read many times over the years, but could never find in his writings. An internet search turns up many reflections on these words, but their authors never source the quote. I was beginning to think them apocryphal until a more precise query yielded its source in, not an essay, but an interview.

The initial search string was <Russell not enough evidence>. It yielded, among many other hits, Emily Eakin’s imagined post-mortem exchange, in a 2002 essay for the Times’s arts section, between the sage and God, whose existence he says he could not affirm.

Asked what he would say if God appeared to him after his death and demanded to know why he had failed to believe, the British philosopher and staunch evidentialist Bertrand Russell replied that he would say, “Not enough evidence, God! Not enough evidence.”[1]

Philosopher of science Wesley C. Salmon (1925-2001) created this version for a footnote to a 1978 journal article:

If I recall correctly, Bertrand Russell was once asked if there were any conceivable evidence which could lead him to a belief in God. He offered something similar to Cleanthes’s suggestion. He was then asked what he would say if, after dying, he were transported to the presence of God; how would he justify his failure on earth to be a believer? “I’d say, ‘Not enough evidence, God, not enough evidence!’”[2]

This game of telephone has one final (for now) regression. It’s from an interview of Russell by humorist and Yiddish lexicographer Leo Rosten, conducted “many years” (Rosten says) before 1974, the year in which this memoir was published.

I asked, “Let us suppose, sir, that after you have left this sorry vale, you actually found yourself in heaven, standing before the Throne. There, in all his glory, sat the Lord—not Lord Russell, sir: God.” Russell winced. “What would you think?” “I would think I was dreaming.” “But suppose you realized you were not? Suppose that there, before your very eyes, beyond a shadow of a doubt, was God. What would you say?” The pixie wrinkled his nose. “I probably would ask, ‘Sir, why did you not give me better evidence?’[3]

With the origins of the story fairly nailed down, what do we make of Russell’s quip?

Continue reading ““Why did you not give me better evidence?,” the atheist would ask God, as though his demand for evidence were not itself evidence.”

Do atheists have an excuse?

Bill applies this to the atheist this way:

Bill acknowledges that his exculpation of the professing atheist “puts me at odds with St. Paul, at least on one interpretation of what he is saying at Romans 1: 18-20.”

Continue reading “Do atheists have an excuse?”