[RD] Ask a Theologian V

[Arakhor]

I would hope that if he does, you don't take the opportunity to have a quote war arguing over the precise nature of those contradictions, so that they aren't "actually" contradictions.

 

[Plotinus]

But if evil is thought to be the absence of good, isn't an evil intention merely the absence of good intentions?

So, how could the evil intentions be removed?

Ha, very good. All right, I suppose it's the lack of good intentions that would be removed, i.e. Satan would have only good intentions.

Care to give any contradictions?

The classic one would be Passover. Like Christmas, Passover can occur on any day of the week. The Gospels all agree that Jesus held the Last Supper with his disciples on a Thursday evening, was arrested later that night, and was tried and executed on the Friday. The Synoptics specify that the Thursday was the "first day of Unleavened Bread", meaning that Passover itself began that evening (as we all know, Jewish days last from sundown to sundown). The Passover meal would therefore have been prepared on Thursday afternoon (including the sacrificing of the lambs for it), and it would have been eaten in the evening (Matthew 26: 17-18). The Last Supper is therefore the Passover meal (Luke 22:13), and Jesus dies on Passover itself.

In John, however, Passover begins on the Friday evening, not the Thursday evening. This means that the Last Supper is not a Passover meal at all, but an ordinary meal held before Passover (John 13:1) (note that, unlike the Synoptics, no special preparations for this meal are mentioned; the events during it just happen "during supper", John 13:2). John tells us that, at the Last Supper, some disciples thought that Jesus was instructing Judas to go and pay for the preparations for the feast, i.e. for the Passover meal the following evening (John 13:29). John specifically states that the Friday, when Jesus was tried, was the day of preparation for the Passover, i.e. the day when the Passover meal was prepared to be eaten that evening (John 19:14, 31). He also mentions that on that morning the priests avoided entering the governor's house, to avoid defiling themselves ahead of the Passover meal that evening (John 18:28). So for John, Jesus dies shortly before Passover begins. In fact, although John does not say so explicitly, he dies at around the time when the lambs would have been sacrificed as part of the preparations for the Passover meal. This is why John, but not the Synoptics, presents Jesus as the "lamb of God" (John 1:29).

This may be why the Synoptics portray Jesus as performing the ritual with the bread and the wine at the Last Supper, whereas John says nothing about it. The significant event at John's Last Supper is Jesus washing his disciples' feet, which doesn't happen in the Synoptics.

One might also add that the Eucharistic element varies surprisingly even between the Synoptics. In Matthew 26:26-29, Jesus blesses the bread and hands it out; then he gives thanks over the cup and hands it out, in both cases using the familiar Eucharistic words of institution. They then sing a psalm and leave. This all happens at the end of the meal. In Luke 22:14-20 Jesus hands out the cup first and then the bread, both before the meal; then after the meal he hands out the cup a second time. Here, he utters the words of institution over the bread (but not the cup) at the start of the meal, and waits until the end of the meal to utter the words of institution over the cup - compared to Matthew, where both sets of words come together.

While that's a clear and particular inconsistency between the Gospels, the more important ones are more general. Here again the obvious example is the teaching of Jesus. In the Synoptics, Jesus' teaching is mainly about the kingdom of God; he rarely talks about himself, and when he does, he refers to himself as "Son of Man"; and he teaches in parables. In John, Jesus' teaching is mainly about himself, referring to himself as "the Son", and instead of parables he teaches in long, repetitive discourses. There's no incontrovertible inconsistency here - maybe Jesus did have two wildly different styles and content of teaching, and one tradition has recorded one of them and the other has recorded the other - but that's obviously quite implausible.

There are also less important inconsistencies associated with particular emphases of the individual Gospel authors. For example, Matthew seems to have a thing about doubles. He takes a lot of stories from Mark and doubles characters or objects in them. E.g. in Mark 5:1-20 Jesus heals a demoniac; in Matthew 8:28-9:1 there are now two demoniacs. In Mark 10:46-52, Jesus heals a blind man; in Matthew 9:27-31 he heals two blind men. In Mark 11:1-11, Jesus enters Jerusalem riding on a donkey; in Matthew 21:1-11 he rides two donkeys (somehow). Now one can of course say that these aren't really contradictions, because Mark doesn't state that there was only one demoniac etc. - perhaps he just mentions only one of the two demoniacs who were actually there! That's technically possible but flies in the face of the text itself: I defy anyone to read Mark 5:1-20 (a much longer version of the story than Matthew's) and maintain that a plausible reading of this tale is that there was another demoniac as well who is inexplicably not mentioned here. There are all sorts of possible ways to explain the discrepancy between Matthew and the other two Synoptics here, of varying plausibility, but I don't think that any make sense that don't begin by acknowledging that there is a discrepancy.

 

[_random_]

When did Open Communion first become the norm among protestants?

 

[classical_hero]

Most contradictions that seem to occur are because of us not being fully aware of
http://www.increasinglearning.com/blog/bible-contradiction-did-jesus-die-before-or-after-the-passover

Thus the comparison of the crucifixion account with the instructions regarding the Passover that are found in the Old Testament reveals to us that both John and Mark are correct. Jesus died during the day of preparation which was after the evening of the Passover proper but before the first feast of the Passover week. There is no contradiction between the two accounts. They are simply describing an event which the average, gentile American knows practically nothing about

Here is an in depth analysis of the issue at hand. http://www.loriswebs.com/lorispoetry/crucifix.html It does take some research from our perspective because we are not familiar with all aspects of Jewish life back then.

 

[El_Machinae]

There are also less important inconsistencies associated with particular emphases of the individual Gospel authors. For example, Matthew seems to have a thing about doubles. He takes a lot of stories from Mark and doubles characters or objects in them. E.g. in Mark 5:1-20 Jesus heals a demoniac; in Matthew 8:28-9:1 there are now two demoniacs. In Mark 10:46-52, Jesus heals a blind man; in Matthew 9:27-31 he heals two blind men. In Mark 11:1-11, Jesus enters Jerusalem riding on a donkey; in Matthew 21:1-11 he rides two donkeys (somehow). Now one can of course say that these aren't really contradictions, because Mark doesn't state that there was only one demoniac etc. - perhaps he just mentions only one of the two demoniacs who were actually there! That's technically possible but flies in the face of the text itself: I defy anyone to read Mark 5:1-20 (a much longer version of the story than Matthew's) and maintain that a plausible reading of this tale is that there was another demoniac as well who is inexplicably not mentioned here. There are all sorts of possible ways to explain the discrepancy between Matthew and the other two Synoptics here, of varying plausibility, but I don't think that any make sense that don't begin by acknowledging that there is a discrepancy.

What's the motivation assumed here? Matthew seems to try to make Jesus's miracles more impressive than Mark. John apparently ups the ante, and just adds more impressive miracles.

Now, iirc, John was trying to make a stronger direct case that "Jesus was God", so the more impressive miracles (ha, 'impressive') make more sense. Why is Matthew upping the game?

 

[Agent327]

Here is an in depth analysis of the issue at hand. http://www.loriswebs.com/lorispoetry/crucifix.html It does take some research from our perspective because we are not familiar with all aspects of Jewish life back then.

As far as I know Passover is still being celebrated.

 

[_random_]

There was an episode of the show Rev. which featured an Evangelical vicar in the Church of England. His services didn't seem to follow the Book of Common Prayer or use any traditional hymns at all, and really seemed just about like a lot of contemporary Baptist and non-denominational services I've seen. Is that sort of thing common and/or acceptable within the modern CoE?

Also, I saw a report on Coptic Christians on the news, and it talked a bit about Charismatic Christianity becoming increasingly popular in Egypt. Do you know if these are Copts who have become Charismatic Protestants or if it's a Charismatic movement within the Coptic Orthodox Church (akin to the Charismatic Catholics) or something else altogether?

Also, do you like Rev? It's got a cheeky but sympathetic look at liberal Anglicanism and a bluesy soundtrack, seems like the sort of thing you'd dig.

 

[Plotinus]

When did Open Communion first become the norm among protestants?

Unfortunately I don't know much about this. It partly depends on what you mean by "open communion". If you mean the view that members of other churches considered sufficiently similar were allowed to receive communion, then this is an old practice. The Synod of Dort, in 1618-19, specified that members of any Reformed church could receive communion in the Dutch Reformed church. A series of agreements between Protestant churches throughout the twentieth century made this approach much more formal and general, e.g. the Bonn Agreement of 1931 between the Church of England and the Old Catholics. So in that form it's a much more recent development.

If you mean the view that anyone can receive communion, then that's a more radical and I think much less common view, which as far as I know goes back to the Socinians of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. I think that a practice of this kind today would be more common among evangelicals and others who regard the sacraments as purely human memorials, without any miraculous element, but I really don't know the details.

What's the motivation assumed here? Matthew seems to try to make Jesus's miracles more impressive than Mark. John apparently ups the ante, and just adds more impressive miracles.

Now, iirc, John was trying to make a stronger direct case that "Jesus was God", so the more impressive miracles (ha, 'impressive') make more sense. Why is Matthew upping the game?

No-one really knows. I don't think that Matthew is trying to make the miracles more impressive - the doubling up occurs in non-miraculous contexts too, such as the entry into Jerusalem. I would suspect that it's meant to symbolise something else. Perhaps the two blind men/demoniacs/donkeys etc. represent the Jewish and the Gentile wings of the church, or something like that. Perhaps Matthew is trying to insist that Jesus meant his message to be taken to the Gentiles as well as the Jews; this might fit in with his fierce denunciations of the "Pharisees", who stand in for the emerging rabbinical movement of Matthew's own day which was evidently coming into conflict with Christianity. But that's pure guesswork on my part!

There was an episode of the show Rev. which featured an Evangelical vicar in the Church of England. His services didn't seem to follow the Book of Common Prayer or use any traditional hymns at all, and really seemed just about like a lot of contemporary Baptist and non-denominational services I've seen. Is that sort of thing common and/or acceptable within the modern CoE?

Most Church of England churches today don't use the Book of Common Prayer. They're more likely to use Common Worship, which was introduced in 2000 as a replacement for the Alternative Service Book, which itself had been introduced in 1980 as an alternative to the BCP. So an evangelical Anglican church today would certainly use Common Worship, possibly with additional non-standard elements. Someone familiar with Baptist churches or other non-Anglican evangelical churches would probably feel quite at home in such a service, though they would be surprised by the occasional more formal elements such as the confession and the creed.

As for traditional hymns, Anglican churches can use whatever hymns they like. (An Anglican service doesn't have to have hymns at all; it's common practice for early Sunday morning communion services to have none - though the notion of a church service with no singing would be anathema to most evangelical churches!) The usual "modern" hymnbook in the Church of England is Mission Praise, which originated in a mission of Billy Graham in 1984. It contains a lot of traditional hymns but also a huge number of modern evangelical choruses of the kind that evangelical churches sing interminably. You see it in churches absolutely everywhere, including quite traditional ones, because it covers pretty much everything. But many evangelical churches, especially the larger ones, don't use hymnbooks at all, instead preferring to project the words on a big screen. If they do this then they can use pretty much any songs they like.

Also, I saw a report on Coptic Christians on the news, and it talked a bit about Charismatic Christianity becoming increasingly popular in Egypt. Do you know if these are Copts who have become Charismatic Protestants or if it's a Charismatic movement within the Coptic Orthodox Church (akin to the Charismatic Catholics) or something else altogether?

I'm afraid I don't know the answer to this. But this research project suggests that it's a charismatic movement within the Coptic church, perhaps partly fuelled by a reaction to attacks from Islamists.

Also, do you like Rev? It's got a cheeky but sympathetic look at liberal Anglicanism and a bluesy soundtrack, seems like the sort of thing you'd dig.

It does sound like my kind of thing but I'm afraid I've never seen it. We just never seem to watch current TV these days but instead do Netflix binges on things we ought to have watched before. Only just finished Battlestar Galactica...

 

[Mouthwash]

Isn't it tautological to say that God is omniscient and omnibenevolent? Moral imperatives (if you accept any theory of ethics in which "benevolence" can be meaningful) are as real as atoms or gravity. So being omniscient would automatically make you omnibenevolent, because you know for a fact what ought to be. God wouldn't, or couldn't simply defy them, any more than I could cancel out the laws of physics by refusing to acknowledge them.

 

[Plotinus]

Assuming that there really are objective moral facts, certainly an omniscient being would know what it ought to do; but it wouldn't follow that the omniscient being would be disposed to do what it ought to do. There's nothing inherently contradictory about an omniscient psychopath. Such a being wouldn't be "defying" the moral law, it would simply be choosing not to do what the moral law prescribes, which is something that we all do all the time.

That assumes that it's possible to know what the right thing is and yet to choose not to do it, which seems a commonsensical assumption. Not everyone has held this. Socrates is famously supposed to have thought that no-one deliberately does what is wrong; the thief, for example, is simply mistaken in thinking that it's all right for him to steal. If he could really understand the situation he would see that he shouldn't do it, and he wouldn't. This very intellectualist view of motive was influential - Aristotle spends a lot of time in the Nicomachean Ethics trying to explain how it's true and yet we do clearly often do things that we know we shouldn't - but it seems ultimately rather implausible. As I say, there seems to me to be nothing inherently inconsistent about a situation in which a person understands perfectly that a given action is wrong and yet chooses to do it.

 

[_random_]

Most Church of England churches today don't use the Book of Common Prayer. They're more likely to use Common Worship, which was introduced in 2000 as a replacement for the Alternative Service Book, which itself had been introduced in 1980 as an alternative to the BCP. So an evangelical Anglican church today would certainly use Common Worship, possibly with additional non-standard elements. Someone familiar with Baptist churches or other non-Anglican evangelical churches would probably feel quite at home in such a service, though they would be surprised by the occasional more formal elements such as the confession and the creed.

Thanks for clarifying. My experience with Anglicans comes from going to an ACNA high school that used a BCP primarily based on the 1662 edition, so I hadn't realized how unusual they were being there.

Also, speaking of the ACNA, are they thought of much at all within the Church of England? I suspect I have a rather skewed perspective on their significance within global Anglicanism since I've associated with them so closely.

Also, the evangelical vicar on the show didn't wear any vestments, doing the service dressed like this:

Would that be unusual?

I'm afraid I don't know the answer to this. But this research project suggests that it's a charismatic movement within the Coptic church, perhaps partly fuelled by a reaction to attacks from Islamists.

Interesting, thanks.

It does sound like my kind of thing but I'm afraid I've never seen it. We just never seem to watch current TV these days but instead do Netflix binges on things we ought to have watched before. Only just finished Battlestar Galactica...

What did you think of it? I personally thought the ending was flawed, but satisfying, but I know a lot of people really hated it.

 

[Cheetah]

I tried to look through the old threads and see if this had been addressed, but I couldn't find anything directly on it, so I hope I'm not making you repeat yourself again:

Was Constantine a pagan who usurped and combined Christianity and Mithraism for his own ends, and eventually making a personal cult and placing himself as the embodiment of Jesus and Mithras - and Apollo?

I've recently watched a documentary by Simcha Jacobovici which claims this (I have no idea why there is 'Osiris' in the Youtube title):


Link to video.

The argument goes that Constantine was simply being pragmatic and fused Mithraism and Christianity to assure his power base: Many of his officers were Mithraists, and many of his soldiers were Christians. With his power secured, the further evidence that he never was a Christian is that he then went on to build up a personal cult where he became a mix of Jesus, Mithras and Apollo. The result of all this was that he changed Christianity from a religion for the weak and oppressed into a religion that the state could use to cement its power.

All the evidence was rather circumstantial of course:

1. The Arch of Constantine in Rome contains no references to Christianity, even though Constantine is supposed to have had a vision of God and painted the Chi-Rho on his soldiers' shields before the Battle of the Milvian Bridge.

2. The documentary talks about how Eusebius of Caesarea's first draft of the account of the battle doesn't mention any vision, and that Constantine convinces Eusebius to rewrite the story during a banquet in 325. [Is it me, or is Jacobovici confusing Eusebius with Lactantius?]

3. The halo of light around Jesus' head first appears in Christian art around Constantine's later time, and is a result of Constantine's aim to fuse Mithras, Apollo and Jesus into his own person, so that the sun radiating from Apollo's - if not Mithra's - head is supplanted onto Jesus'.

4. In the middle of Constantinople there was apparently a huge Apollo statue with the face of Constantine on it.

5. Constantine was buried in the Church of the Holy Apostles surrounded by twelve coffins which was supposed to symbolise the Apostles, so as to give the impression that Constantine was Jesus.

 

[Masada]

Would that be unusual?

I've been to a lot of Anglican Church services... and I've never seen that.

1. The Arch of Constantine in Rome contains no references to Christianity, even though Constantine is supposed to have had a vision of God and painted the Chi-Rho on his soldiers' shields before the Battle of the Milvian Bridge.

That claim that the soldiers of Constantine painted their shields with something is repeated in one of Eusebius two accounts and by Lactantius in his account. Both were Christians and both disagree on what exactly Constantine is supposed to have painted on his men's shields: was it nothing like in Eusebius' Historia Ecclesiastica, was it the Chi-Rho like in Eusebius' Vita Constantini or was it the Staurogram per Lactantius' De Mortibus Persecutorum. Nobody can quite seem to agree. All of those accounts do mention the vision however. As to the other (non-Christian sources) we have, none of those mention shield painting or visions. Zosimus gives a long account of the battle, including a whole paragraph on the bridge, but doesn't mention any sort of divine vision or shield painting. We also have two surviving panegyrics, which are speeches given in honor of Constantine, that address his victory in the civil war but don't mention either event as having happened. Given that, I think it's fair to say that the shields probably weren't painted and that opinion on whether there was a vision was mostly confined to Christians (unsurprisingly).

2. The documentary talks about how Eusebius of Caesarea's first draft of the account of the battle doesn't mention any vision, and that Constantine convinces Eusebius to rewrite the story during a banquet in 325. [Is it me, or is Jacobovici confusing Eusebius with Lactantius?]

No, he's not. Eusebius' Historia Ecclesiastica dates from 324 but could date from 323 or 325 while De Mortibus Persecutorum is usually dated to 314 at the earliest and 318 at the latest. So he probably is talking about Eusebius' even if I'm not sure what the basis of his claim of a rewrite is. Interestingly, if Constantine did relate to Eusebius about his vision, and that of his men, why didn't he relate to him at the time about painting the Chi-Rho on his shield, and those of his men, something that Eusebius would only relate some years afterwards. Moreover, Lactantius who wrote much closer to the Battle relates both the vision and the painting (albeit not of the Chi-Rho) which makes the whole thing even more difficult to sustain.

3. The halo of light around Jesus' head first appears in Christian art around Constantine's later time, and is a result of Constantine's aim to fuse Mithras, Apollo and Jesus into his own person, so that the sun radiating from Apollo's - if not Mithra's - head is supplanted onto Jesus'.

It's possible it was a borrowing. But I'd suggest it's adoption had little to do with Constantine himself or a willingness to incorporate wholesale whole Pagan cults.

4. In the middle of Constantinople there was apparently a huge Apollo statue with the face of Constantine on it.

Constantine did have a fondness for Apollo during his earlier life, so that doesn't surprise me.

5. Constantine was buried in the Church of the Holy Apostles surrounded by twelve coffins which was supposed to symbolise the Apostles, so as to give the impression that Constantine was Jesus.

Here's what Eusebius has to say about that:

All these edifices the emperor consecrated with the desire of perpetuating the memory of the apostles of our Saviour. He had, however, another object in erecting this building: an object at first unknown, but which afterwards became evident to all. He had in fact made choice of this spot in the prospect of his own death, anticipating with extraordinary fervor of faith that his body would share their title with the apostles themselves, and that he should thus even after death become the subject, with them, of the devotions which should be performed to their honor in this place. He accordingly caused twelve coffins to be set up in this church, like sacred pillars in honor and memory of the apostolic number, in the center of which his own was placed, having six of theirs on either side of it. Thus, as I said, he had provided with prudent foresight an honorable resting-place for his body after death, and, having long before secretly formed this resolution, he now consecrated this church to the apostles, believing that this tribute to their memory would be of no small advantage to his own soul. Nor did God disappoint him of that which he so ardently expected and desired. For after he had completed the first services of the feast of Easter, and had passed this sacred day of our Lord in a manner which made it an occasion of joy and gladness to himself and to all; the God through whose aid he performed all these acts, and whose zealous servant he continued to be even to the end of life, was pleased at a happy time to translate him to a better life.

Amusing, sure. But it's quite clear he didn't want to confused for Jesus. The name of the Church doesn't even mention Jesus which is another good indication of what Constantine intended per Eusebius.

 

[Mouthwash]

Assuming that there really are objective moral facts, certainly an omniscient being would know what it ought to do; but it wouldn't follow that the omniscient being would be disposed to do what it ought to do. There's nothing inherently contradictory about an omniscient psychopath. Such a being wouldn't be "defying" the moral law, it would simply be choosing not to do what the moral law prescribes, which is something that we all do all the time.

Yes, but I don't see how a moral disposition, which is something mundane and arbitrary, could supersede perfect rationality. Maybe I'm just biased towards the Maimonidean idea of a God without positive attributes, but it seems intuitively sound to me.

 

[Cheetah]

Thanks for the answers Masada.

So I guess the conclusion can be that nothing special happened outside Rome, that Constantine did not try to replace Jesus, and that he was more or less a Christian at the end of his life (though he still fancied Apollo)...

 

[timtofly]

Yes, but I don't see how a moral disposition, which is something mundane and arbitrary, could supersede perfect rationality. Maybe I'm just biased towards the Maimonidean idea of a God without positive attributes, but it seems intuitively sound to me.

Have you read the Genesis of Justice by Alan Dershowitz?

 

[Mouthwash]

Have you read the Genesis of Justice by Alan Dershowitz?

Alan Dershowitz seems like just a media hack to me, and I don't trust philosophy coming from lawyers on principle.

 

[timtofly]

Trusting lawyers and calling God omnibenevolent seems to be two opposite extremes. If God choses to show mercy on whom he will, that does not seem omnibenevolent. Wasn't Maimonides a lawyer (arbiter) also?

Most people in every generation since Moses has viewed God in the image they perceive him as. In other words according to humans, God could be anything. I tend to not trust any human philosophy. I just thought the book may shed a different perspective on the topic.

It could be said that God is good to those he choses. God is good to those who chose him. Or God is good to everyone, but humans just do not realize it. God would not be good, just on the basis that he allowed humans to experience evil. God could be good on the basis that humans themselves can be good with out being forced to be good, even if they experience evil. At the point where humans cease to be good, and evil is all there is, then God himself would cease to be Good, because evil has triumphed. If you can prove that a human can be good, even if they experienced evil continually then evil is not the determining factor of right and wrong. God would still be omnibenevolent, but humans would never realize that. You cannot force any one to be good, nor can you force them to be evil. It does not follow that letting a human make that choice is evil in itself. The lie is in both directions. God is not evil for keeping humans from such knowledge, nor is he evil for giving them a choice in the matter.

tl,dr I was half way through the book before I realized who he was. The title sounded interesting and I did not even pay attention to who wrote it.

 

[Plotinus]

Thanks for clarifying. My experience with Anglicans comes from going to an ACNA high school that used a BCP primarily based on the 1662 edition, so I hadn't realized how unusual they were being there.

Also, speaking of the ACNA, are they thought of much at all within the Church of England? I suspect I have a rather skewed perspective on their significance within global Anglicanism since I've associated with them so closely.

I have to admit I'd never heard of them before you mentioned them here, so I had to look them up! It seems they're not part of the Anglican communion, being a breakaway church formed in protest at too much liberalisation within Anglicanism, and are only in communion with the more insanely bigoted Anglican churches in Africa - though it seems there are moves to have them recognised and Justin Welby has been quite open to them. So evidently they're being thought about a lot at the higher levels, but whether they mean anything to the Anglican in the pew, I don't know.

Evidently, though, if they're a conservative church formed in reaction to what they perceive as overly liberal developments in Anglicanism (and the US Episcopalian Church is very liberal), you would expect them to be using traditionalist liturgies, vestments, etc.

Also, the evangelical vicar on the show didn't wear any vestments, doing the service dressed like this:

Would that be unusual?

Not for evangelicals. Ministers at an Anglican evangelical church would normally wear normal clothes, or - if they're particularly formal - clerical suits with dog collars. Evangelical churches would never use vestments. The only time you'd see an evangelical Anglican priest in vestments would be if he's working at a church that is not as evangelical as he is.

Remember that evangelicals of any denomination don't believe in priests. An evangelical Anglican priest would call himself a "vicar" (even if he's not strictly speaking a vicar) or, more generally, a "minister" - never a "priest", even though that's what he is. (And I say "he" advisedly, since hardcore evangelicals are opposed to the ministry of women.)

What did you think of it? I personally thought the ending was flawed, but satisfying, but I know a lot of people really hated it.

I liked it. It was a bit of a cop-out ending really, but they did it well.

Yet I can't actually imagine doing this. Whenever I've done something wrong, and I have, I've generally invariably thought of some justification for doing it. Before, during, or after the act. I can't recollect any time when I didn't - any time when I knew fully and completely that what I was doing was wrong in every aspect.

Placing emphasis on the words "understands perfectly" allows me to claim that my understanding was simply imperfect.

The thief, of course, does know that stealing is wrong. Or rather he knows that human society judges it to be wrong. But he can justify it to himself in a whole host of ways: he's responding to his, or his family's, need, which he thinks trumps society's ban on theft, for example. Or because he sees society as having maligned him in some way, then he's justified in taking a measure of revenge against it. Or because he thinks that he's not stealing from an individual but "the system". Or, like Robin Hood, he's involved in wealth distribution.

My point is that we all do precisely this sort of thing when we decide to do something "wrong".

If you truly and completely "know" that something is wrong, you simply don't do it.

edit: perhaps it's like suicide. The suicide, although he doesn't really want to die (he really wants relief from the pain of living), thinks his death will be preferable than continuing to live. To do something which you know is completely wrong would be a bit like a suicide who really does want to die, who thinks that death, in itself, really is preferable to life.

But maybe I'm getting muddled now.

Ah, but that's your experience, based on the fact that you're a basically decent person. I'm not so optimistic about humanity as a whole. Just to take a current example: Marion Zimmer Bradley certainly knew that emotional, physical, and sexual abuse of vulnerable people is wrong, as is clear from her books. Yet she systematically abused her daughter in all these ways over many years. Now perhaps she, and others who do what they know to be wrong, are suffering from some kind of temporary amnesia or blindness; they know it's wrong, yet somehow in the moment other factors in the mind block out that knowledge. (This is what Aristotle thought happens.) But even if that's true, they're still doing things that they generally know to be wrong. And I don't believe that every criminal or wrongdoer rationalises what they do to make it right in their own mind. Indeed, isn't the very wrongness of an action sometimes what makes it all the more alluring?

Still, we're talking about human psychology here. Perhaps, as a matter of empirical fact, no-one ever does what they fully and genuinely know in that moment to be wrong. But that doesn't mean there couldn't be a person who does. We can imagine a Dr Evil character, for whom the evilness of an act is a motive to do it, even if he couldn't exist in reality. The question wasn't about actual human beings but about God, and whether benevolence follows necessarily from omniscience. And it still seems to me that motive is distinct from knowledge. An omniscient being may know all moral facts, but I don't see why this should necessarily mean that he is motivated only to do what is right.

I tried to look through the old threads and see if this had been addressed, but I couldn't find anything directly on it, so I hope I'm not making you repeat yourself again:

Was Constantine a pagan who usurped and combined Christianity and Mithraism for his own ends, and eventually making a personal cult and placing himself as the embodiment of Jesus and Mithras - and Apollo?

This idea that Constantine was really a pagan and never became a Christian was first suggested by Jacob Burckhardt in the 1850s and it's one of those ideas that seems never to die, despite the lack of good evidence for it. A fundamental problem with it is that Christianity would have been a terrible choice for an emperor in the 310s who wanted to unify the empire. This was a minority religion which was itself deeply divided.

An even more fundamental problem is that we have a text probably by Constantine himself, the Oration to the Saints, in which Constantine gives his theological views; they mainly revolve around monotheism and contain nothing objectionable from the point of view of mainstream Christianity. The documentary you link to goes on and on about Constantine's arch, insisting that it's the only direct evidence we have for his personal views - but it completely ignores what Constantine actually wrote!

The documentary makes out that Constantine legalised Christianity and then reinvented it. But both of these claims are over simplistic. Constantine and Licinius made official the legalisation of Christianity in 313, but Christianity had already been de facto legal in the western empire for nearly a decade - as the documentary itself acknowledges when it points out that Maxentius tolerated Christianity too.

The documentary focuses too much on the Eusebian story of the vision of the cross, and points out that the earliest evidence, such as Constantine's arch, doesn't support this story. But that doesn't show that Constantine didn't convert to Christianity. It only shows that the circumstances surrounding his conversion were probably a lot less dramatic, and probably less instantaneous, than later myth-making would suggest (including his own re-telling of the story, since Eusebius claims the emperor told it to him personally). And of course Lactantius gives a quite different and rather more believable version of the conversion before the Milvian Bridge. Of course the conversion didn't happen the way Eusebius describes, but so what? That doesn't mean it didn't happen.

Moreover, just becoming a Christian did not mean that someone immediately renounced everything to do with paganism and became conversant with Christian theology. You only have to read Arnobius of Sicca to know that. There's no reason at all to suppose that the moment Constantine became a Christian he started covering everything with crosses and getting rid of all pagan imagery. The absence of Christian imagery on his arch doesn't mean he wasn't a Christian; it just means that he didn't think being a Christian meant putting Christian imagery on his arch. The documentary's claim that this is "compelling evidence" that he just pretended to be a Christian to win over Christian soldiers is far too strong.

Christianity at that time was not necessarily what we assume it should have been. I don't see any reason to doubt that, at around the time of the Milvian Bridge, Constantine - a highly superstitious person - became convinced that the Christian God was providing him with supernatural help. And it would have been perfectly natural for him, as a devotee of Apollo, to start thinking of the Christian God in terms of his pre-existing devotion to Apollo. He might well have worshipped both of them equally for a time, seeing the Christian God as an addition to Apollo rather than a replacement, although his emphasis on monotheism in his Oration to the Saints would suggest that he wouldn't have kept that up for long. But still, of course Constantine used imagery from the cult of Apollo and presented himself decked out in that imagery. That is what Roman emperors did, and it's how he had always thought of God. The documentary assumes that Apollo imagery = paganism and Jesus imagery = Christianity and that you can identify the religion purely on the basis of the imagery, but it's just not that simple.

(Apart from anything else, the city of Rome was the heartland of devotion to the old gods, and remained so well beyond Constantine's reign. A canny emperor, no matter how great his devotion to Jesus, might have chosen to avoid using any Christian imagery, and to emphasise the traditional imagery, on an arch he built in the centre of that city.)

The documentary gets it wrong about Mithraism, asserting that the cult existed before Jesus (it didn't), that it was popular among the Roman elite (it wasn't), and that Mithras was supposed to have died and risen from the dead (he wasn't). Perhaps more importantly, the evidence it gives that Constantine took elements of Mithraism to change Christianity is weak. It mentions common features such as the belief in saving blood or the similarity of the rituals. But these similarities obviously preceded Constantine, so they have nothing to do with him. And they could equally well be explained by Mithraism taking ideas from Christianity rather than vice versa, or by both of them taking them from the common religious currency of the time. It also mentions the common claim that Mithras' birthday was 25 December, but this isn't true: that was the feast of Sol Invictus, not Mithras. Both are gods associated with the sun but they're distinct cults. If Christianity took the date of 25 December from paganism it didn't need to do so via Mithraism.

The bit about the hats of the magi is quite fun, but again goes well beyond the evidence. As the documentary correctly says, those hats were the standard way of depicting someone from Persia. So Mithras was typically represented as wearing one. It doesn't follow that the magi of the Gospels were Mithraists or considered to be Mithraists, either in that Gospel or in art based on it - only that they were regarded as Persian - as Matthew's Gospel states. Saying that the hats make them Mithraists is a bit like saying that anyone who wears black is pretending to be Johnny Cash.

The only evidence that the documentary gives for Constantine's interest in Mithraism is the Persian-hatted figures on his arch. The notion that he had a deliberate plan to introduce Mithraist ideas into Christianity is pure speculation. The documentary talks about the supposed similarities between Christianity and Mithraism and then just invents the idea that Constantine had anything to do with it, and pretends that it's presented evidence for this. But it hasn't.

The documentary also gets some other things wrong. It states that Constantine named his new capital after himself, but this isn't correct - he named it "New Rome", but it became colloquially known as "Constantinople". More importantly, it claims that Constantine put a piece of the True Cross inside the statue of himself as Apollo, but that is just a legend; the "True Cross" is first attested to in the 340s, after Constantine's death, and only in Jerusalem. The idea that a bit of the True Cross was incorporated into the statue is first reported by Socrates in the fifth century, i.e. over a century later, and is obviously a legend. But this documentary asserts it as if it's established fact and evidence that Constantine was trying to combine the cults of Apollo and Jesus in his own person.

I think though that the real weak point of the documentary is what it goes on to claim: that having created this cult of himself, merging those of Apollo, Mithras, and Jesus (which, even if there's not any real evidence for it, is at least intrinsically plausible), Constantine then somehow transformed Christianity itself in the light of this cult. This is intrinsically very implausible. How could Constantine have done this? The evidence that the documentary presents is in the artistic depiction of Jesus as a Roman emperor, but it's not helped by the fact that the image is discusses is from the sixth century, i.e. two hundred years after Constantine. The documentary gives no evidence at all that Constantine either tried to manipulate the image of Jesus or succeeded in doing so (it just makes vague guesses about the significance of halos). After all, it's worth noting that before Constantine, images of Jesus never showed him being crucified. It's only after Constantine - quite a long time after - that such images started to appear - first in the fifth century, and only with any frequency in the seventh. So the documentary's claim that Constantine changed the image of Jesus from that of a crucified victim of the Roman army into its triumphant leader is wrong - rather, both images date from long after Constantine's time, and there's no evidence that Constantine had anything to do with them.

And art is all very well, but the documentary discusses no texts at all other than Eusebius' hagiographies of Constantine (not even Constantine's own writings about religion). If Constantine had really transformed Christianity, you'd expect to see evidence of this in the subsequent writings of theologians and in how they portray Jesus. But you don't. You certainly see a lot of discussion about Jesus - this was the time of the Arian controversy - but where's the introduction of imagery and language from Apollo and Mithras that you'd expect to see if this documentary were correct?

Yes, but I don't see how a moral disposition, which is something mundane and arbitrary, could supersede perfect rationality. Maybe I'm just biased towards the Maimonidean idea of a God without positive attributes, but it seems intuitively sound to me.

We weren't talking about "rationality", though. We were talking about omniscience, and that's not the same thing. Omniscience is just about knowledge; rationality is about planning. A being could be perfectly omniscient but not very rational. If you're attributing to God perfect rationality then you're already smuggling in the notion that he does only what is right, because that is part of practical reason.

I don't know why you say that moral dispositions are "mundane and arbitrary". Surely the whole point of the belief that God is perfectly moral is that they are not mundane and arbitrary, but that morality is important and objective.

 

[Cheetah]

Awesome answer! Thanks Plotinus.

Though now with yours and Masada's answers I feel a bit stupid for not having reasoned this out a bit myself.

But don't worry, I'll come back with more dubious documentaries later!