Forgiveness in the Face of Evil

The families of the dead black victims facing the racist young man alleged to have murdered them after being welcomed as their guests and having studied the Bible and prayed with them for an hour can easily be misinterpreted as the naivety of well-meaning, grieving folks who even in this extremity do not comprehend the reality of evil and its ability to take human form.

In fact, the forgiveness extended to the alleged killer by the victims' families is the only radical response that can be made.

In this world, the only true enemy is death and that enemy ultimately comes to and destroys every living thing.

In our fear of death, we use our power to inflict death - or tokens or anticipations of death such as physical pain, confinement, ostracism, poverty, etc. - to ward off or delay our own death.

In this case, the natural response of revenge merely ups the ante of the game by inflicting pain on one's enemy.

The families' act of forgiveness can also be misinterpreted as some fuzzy-headed, liberal weakness that fails its societal duty to protect its members from aggression and accepts such evil and may, in fact, even be complicit in it. [This charge has now been explicitly made by an NRA board member.]

In an interview Friday with The Associated Press, Charles Cotton confirmed writing that "innocent people died because of (Clementa Pinckney's) position on a political issue." The post appeared Thursday in an online discussion board about concealed handguns.

Charleston shooting the fault of slain pastor Clementa Pinckney, NRA board member writes (Associated Press in The Times-Picayune)

Forgiveness has no part in any of that. It recognizes the legitimacy of a representative government's monopoly on the use of force in the face of aggression from sources both foreign and domestic so long as that use is subject to checks and balances and so long as the rights of minority or unpopular people and groups are protected.

But true forgiveness is a radical act transcending violence.

In both revenge for evil or submission to evil or complicity in the evil done to others, the unstated premise is that death is the ultimate power in the universe, that death is humanity's true sovereign.

Forgiveness refuses this unstated premise and makes the explicit claim that humanity's true sovereign is a power beyond death: a power with authority over death.

In the Christian tradition, the foundation of that claim is the belief that God incarnate in the impoverished, despised, and ultimate crucified Jesus Christ suffered the full fury of death and, in so doing, disarmed death for us.

So biological death endures, but the terror of death, what the Apostle Paul calls the "sting of death," is unmasked as the impostor it is.

References

As the young white man charged with murdering nine people inside an historic black church in South Carolina stood silently and expressionless at a court hearing on Friday, relatives of the slain worshippers faced him one by one, offering tearful words of grief and forgiveness.

Families of South Carolina church massacre victims offer forgiveness (Reuters)

20 No, “if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.”

Romans 12:20 (NRSV)

thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head] This phrase has been explained (1) of burning shame produced by requital of good for evil; (2) of the melting of the evil-doer’s heart by such conduct, as of metal by fire; (3) of the result of a spirit of love as producing at length the “incense” of prayer and praise (as from censer-coals) from the conquered heart. (The last is suggested in the Speaker’s Commentary, on Proverbs 25) A simpler, yet more inclusive, explanation is Alford’s: “in thus doing, you will be taking the most effectual vengeance;” the idea of vengeance being, in the Christian’s view, transformed, so as to become in fact the victory of love. 

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

The Slaughtered Lamb

A poor farmer had a son and two lambs.

The son loved the white lamb but had no feelings toward the black lamb.

One day the farmer was desperate to feed his family and slaughtered the black lamb.

When his son came home from school he said, "Father, where is the little black lamb?"

The farmer said, "I had to slaughter it and preserve the meat so our family could survive."

And the son didn't care because he had no feelings toward the black lamb.

In a tweet, Charleston police wrote: "Suspect in shooting on Calhoun St is a w/m approx 21 slender small build wearing a grey sweat shirt blue jeans timberland boots clean shaven."
Speaking at a news briefing later, Mr Mullen said: "There were eight deceased individuals inside of the church. Two individuals were transported to [the hospital]. One of them has died.

"At this point, we have nine victims in this hideous crime that has been committed.


"It is unfathomable that somebody in today's society would walk into a church when people are having a prayer meeting and take their lives," Mr Mullen said.

South Carolina church shooting: Nine die in Charleston 'hate crime' (BBC)


12 In that day the Lord God of hosts
    called to weeping and mourning,
    to baldness and putting on sackcloth;
13 but instead there was joy and festivity,
    killing oxen and slaughtering sheep,
    eating meat and drinking wine.
“Let us eat and drink,
    for tomorrow we die.”
14 The Lord of hosts has revealed himself in my ears:
Surely this iniquity will not be forgiven you until you die,
    says the Lord God of hosts.

Isaiah 22:12-14 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

"The Apple Argument Against Abortion" By Dr. Peter Kreeft

I will try to prove the simple, common-sensical reasonableness of the pro-life case by a sort of Socratic logic. My conclusion is that Roe v. Wade must be overturned, and my fundamental reason for this is not only because of what abortion is but because we all know what abortion is.

This is obviously a controversial conclusion, and initially unacceptable to all pro-choicers. So, my starting point must be noncontroversial. It is this: We know what an apple is. I will try to persuade you that if we know what an apple is, Roe v. Wade must be overthrown, and that if you want to defend Roe, you will probably want to deny that we know what an apple is.

The Apple Argument Against Abortion

-Dr. Peter Kreeft 

PARAPHRASE OF DR. KREEFTS PRO-LIFE / ANTI-CHOICE ARGUMENT

DISCUSSION ON FACEBOOK

Mother Theresa quote: "If abortion isn’t wrong, what is wrong?”

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Note: This is the strongest argument I’ve heard against choice (though that’s not saying much considering the crap I hear from the ;protester wing-nuts at the Allentown Women’s Center. I will present it as accurately and sympathetically as possible because, in this as in other discussions, I believe in arguing against the STRONGEST possible argument, not a straw man. (At seminary, I learned that mode of argumentation from St. Aquinas of all people! I mean, through his books. I’m not quite THAT old. :-)

This does not mean I agree with Dr. Peter Kreeft but I want to give folks on both sides of the argument a chance to mull the argument over. AND for those who feel that here is yet another case of men arguing with men over what women should do with their bodies, the fact is that IS largely the case ANYWAY and the only way it will ever NOT be the case is if women participate in this “manly” discussion, AND get appointed as Supreme Court Justices, or elected as Congressmen, Senators, and President.

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Dr. Kreeft intends to take a  philosophical approach to abortion and will not look at other aspects of abortion (except from a legal and a scientific aspect on one point essential to his argument).

He has one pro-life argument and four different ways of expressing it.

Ethics is the part of philosophy most relevant to abortion.

He begins with two presuppositions.

1. We can argue about ethics. There is a role for reason and logic within ethics. There is no absolute division between truth and goodness, fact and value, logic and morality, reason and will.

2. This implies that there is something real about good and evil, right and wrong, rights and duties because we don't argue about our dreams, our fantasies, our creations, our purely personal likes and dislikes. If ethics is reduced to feelings it is not longer conducive to resolution by argument.

Dr. Kreeft talks about the fact / value distinction:  The distinction between facts and values is not total. It is a fact, though not a scientific fact, that there are values and that some things are valuable and some things are not. You can make meaningful statements about values. You can argue about values. We do argue about values, all the time. If we didn't believe, in fact, there was something objective about values we'd never have ethical arguments. We'd just fight.

The fact that there are objective values means that total moral relativism is false. There may be some things that are morally relative, but something must be morally objective or, again, you'd never have a moral argument.

[I am bracketing his Mussolini quote on relativism, which I will address in a separate post.]

He says there is a possible THIRD hidden supposition.

A certain theory in morality has to be implicitly rejected to make sense of the pro-life argument and that is pragmatism and utilitarianism (the end justifies the means).

That is, the idea that you can help some people by harming other people, and that might be okay. That happiness, etc., can be calculated and that people are to be judged by function. Accepting pragmatism or utilitarianism as a supposition means that nothing can be seen as a final end - everything is a means.

Applied to the value of a person, this means that what you are is not distinct from what you do.

Dr. Kreeft then deals with the preliminary issue of burden of proof.

Which side has the burden of proof: pro-life or pro-choice?

He says that within a community and a tradition (and here I'm presuming he means Roman Catholicism, the burden of proof is on pro-choice.

But within the larger society, the burden of proof is on pro-life as the pro-choice movement should be considered innocent until proven guilty.

PRO-LIFE ARGUMENT, EXPRESSION ONE: The Three-Step Essential Pro-Life Argument

He begins the argument proper by stating that the Pro-Life argument has three premises:

1. A premise of FACT

2. A premise of NATURAL VALUE

3. and a premise of SOCIAL VALUE, CONVENTIONAL VALUE, or LEGAL VALUE.

1. PREMISE OF FACT: The life of each individual of a species, at least regarding mammals, begins at conception or fertilization. That's when a genetically new or genetically complete individual comes into existence.

This was a truism in every argument or biological text pre-Roe v Wade in 1972.

There was no scientific study to justify that change.

So Dr. Krefts Premise One of Fact is that ALL HUMANS ARE HUMAN AT ANY STAGE OF DEVELOPMENT.

2. PREMISE OF NATURAL VALUE.

Premise Two of Natural Value states that ALL HUMANS HAVE THE RIGHT TO LIFE BECAUSE THEY ARE ALL HUMAN PERSONS. We all share the "human essence."

(As a brief excurses he notes that philosophical nominalists do not believe in universals, only specific instances. So there is no essence to "chair," just individual instances of things we call "chairs" because we're too lazy to come up with individual names of each. They would also, by the same reasoning, deny the reality of "human nature," again, as just a sloppy way of referring to individuals that share a sort-of family resemblance. He says most people are not nominalists and therefore believe in the reality of human nature.

So, since all humans are human, and since we don't want other humans killing us, so too we ought not to kill them.

3. PREMISE OF SOCIAL VALUE (or CONVENTIONAL VALUE, LEGAL VALUE): The law must protect the basic human rights of all citizens. Self defense is not excluded: if my life is as valuable as yours and you're starting to attack me and you threaten to murder me I have a right to defend my life, if necessary, by taking yours.

Dr. Kreeft says there are three types of pro-choicers: those who deny the first premise, those who deny the second and those who deny the third.

1. DENIAL OF THE PREMISE OF FACT: This pro-choice argument states that which you abort is a fetus, or a bunch of cells, or a potential person, not an actual person.

DR. KREEFTS REBUTTAL: "From a scientific point of view, certainly from a genetic point of view, that little thing there is a very little human." It's not doing anything other than something only a human can do: it's growing a human brain, a human nervous system, etc. "It's not a potential human being, it's a potential adult."

2. DENIAL OF THE PREMISE OF NATURAL VALUE: A fetus may be a human but not a person with the value and rights of a person.

DR. KREEFTS REBUTTAL: Denying premise two to justify abortion is an extremely serious thing and can – and has – been used to justify genocide and euthanasia.

3. DENIAL OF THE LEGAL PREMISE: "I'm personally against it, but I don't want to stop someone who believes its okay." In other words, the decision to have an abortion is subjective or personal and presumably no business of society or government.

DR. KREEFTS REBUTTAL: Why personally against it? And why not impose your belief on society?

Would you say that you're personally against slavery but you wouldn't want to impose your belief on others?

The presumption is that abortion is a non-serious, subjective thing with no societal consequences.

Let's take the Roe v. Wade Argument

PRO-LIFE CLARIFICATION, EXPRESSION TWO: The Skeptical Argument

We don't know if a fetus is a person with human rights because we don't know when human life begins. We won't legislate when we don't know. There is a hidden premise that is kept in mind as well as the stated premise that if we don't know when human life begins, than we should not outlaw abortion.

Counter: 1. We DO know when human life begins.

Counter 2. The implied premise is that it is okay to kill what might be a human if you're not sure. We would not do that in any other area: we would not implode a building if we thought there MIGHT still be a person inside it, a hunter would not shoot a target that he THOUGHT was a bear but might actually be a person.

His catch phrase for the skeptical argument is, "IF YOU DON'T KNOW, DON'T SHOOT."

[As a former NRA-certified Rifle, Shotgun and Black Powder instructor, I will absolutely grant his point!]

The skeptical argument should work against pro-choice.

When Dr. Kreeft is asked, "Do you know that a human life begins at fertilization?" he replies, "Do you know that it doesn't?"

Odd that SCOTUS used a skeptical argument to justify abortion.

PRO-LIFE ARGUMENT, EXPRESSION THREE: The Pro-Life Quadralema Argument

Question 1: What is a fetus? (Objective Fact)

Question 2: How much certainty do we have in that knowledge? (Subjective Belief)

Two questions together form a quadralema similar to Pascals Wager.

Do I believe in God?    YES     NO

Does God exist?         YES     NO

This gives us four alternatives with four “happiness” outcomes

1 I believe in God and God DOES exist: temporary inconvenience in this life leads to eternal bliss in the next.

2. I don’t believe in God and God DOES exist: Temporary pleasure in this life leads to eternal agony in the next.

3. I don’t believe in God and God DOES NOT exist: Temporary pleasure in this life followed by oblivion so you’re right, but it doesn’t give you very much “payoff” for risking eternal damnation if you are wrong.

4 I believe in God and God DOES NOT exist: Temporary inconvenience in this life leads to oblvion after death.. and no one to tell me I’m wrong. :-)

(The preceding is not his endorsement of Pascal’s Wager but in aid of explaining his own "quadralemic" argument.)

1. Objective Fact: EITHER pro-lifers are right and it's murder because the

fetus is a person OR the pro-choicers are right and the fetus is not a

human life.

2. Subjective Knowledge ("Because it is knowledge, not belief, that makes one

morally responsible): EITHER you know what a fetus is OR you do not.

four possibilities.

As with Pascal's Wager, this gives us four possibilities.

1. IF a fetus is a person AND you know it, then abortion is murder

2. IF a fetus is not a person AND you know it, then you are ethically off the hook.

3. IF a fetus is a person AND those involved don't know it then the skeptical argument applies and, at the least, they've committed negligent homicide or manslaughter because the rule is, IF YOU DON'T KNOW, DON'T SHOOT.

4. IF you don't know AND it is not a person then those involved with abortion are STILL criminally negligent: they're just lucky.

To defeat this argument, someone who is pro-choice must defeat one of these four possible outcomes of fact and belief/knowledge.

The pro-choice philosopher tries to defeat #1 and says that a fetus is biologically and genetically a human being but not a person.

The argument against #2 is dark in that some human beings are defined as persons and some humans are not.

The issue comes down to whether all humans have rights or only some humans have rights.

Talks about a Nazi era book, "Life Unworthy of Life, " that inspired the Nazi Eugenics program.

Dr. Kreeft says that the "all humans have rights" escapes this outcome

Since rights come from persons (that is, only persons have rights), a pro-choice rebuttal is that a fetus is a human being but not a person.

That is, the class of "person" is SMALLER than the class of "human beings."

He says there are, logically, only two possibilities.

Either all humans are persons or some humans are persons.

Dr. Kreeft believes all humans are persons.

He believes the category of person is LARGER, not smaller, than the category of human being.

"I also believe that it's possible that there are extraterrestrial persons of other species, biological species, but they're rational, they have self consciousness, they have free choice and therefore moral responsibility."

Pro-choice: category of person smaller than humanity.

Two of the four arguments (the three step essential pro life argument and the quadralemma) are not just clarifications but arguments.

The other two are clarifications.

[NOTE: I tried to interpret that in my headings but may have misunderstood as he doesn't explicitly say what the other two clarifications are.]

PRO-LIFE CLARIFICATION, EXPRESSION FOUR: If we know what an apple is, we know what a fetus is.

[NOTE: I found a link to the Cut Apple Argument (or clarification)  and will discuss that separately.]

He concludes by saying that metaphysics (the part of philosophy that deals with the question of being) is the basis of all moral arguments because morality involves making the right response to reality

Metaphysically, does nature define a human being or can humans define it?

Dr. Kreeft says, "Human nature exists and We can know something about it and that grounds human values. Human beings have human values because they are human. And different kinds of people have different rights and different duties because they are differently human."

So a parent may forbid their 17 yr old son from driving the family car because they believe he lacks judgment, but some other person cannot – because they are not the boy's parent.

His final argument against the pro choice skeptical rebuttal that we don't know human nature is, first, you ACT like you know and, second, if you don't know, DON'T SHOOT."

Questions and Answers

[Note: I didn't listen to this but if anyone considers some material in there as adding to the discussion, please introduce it.]

Dr Peter Kreeft - Pro-Life Logic