Cage stage anti-abolitionists

CR 6/13/2015 10:04 AM

The claim is also absurd on its face as it runs counter to all the (overwhelming!) evidence that AHA evinces a very strong "in-group / out-group" mentality in both speech and in writing.

AHA's proponents' rhetoric drips with contempt for its ideological foes both within the pro-abortion and pro-life spheres.

One wonders to what "overwhelming" evidence this CR individual refers. I've seen worse, personally, in Reformed circles like the Reformed Pub Facebook group, where in some ways if you don't homebrew your own beer you're not part of the cool kids crowd. But status as alcohol connoisseur aside, the term "cage stage Calvinist" exists for a reason, and quite a few people have gone years in that stage. Same with covenant theology, or one's preferred eschatological position, or cessationism, or pretty much anything. Does CR decry the same among the Reformed? Does that mean Reformed theology or covenant theology or amillennialism is an organisation?

Of course not. Those are ideologies. Like AHA is an ideology. There are people who adhere to amillennialism. There are people who adhere to Reformed theology. There are people who adhere to Abolish Human Abortion ideology. They're called "abolitionists (of human abortion)". This is only complex to the intentionally obtuse.

At any rate, if someone wants to show a very strong "in-group / out-group" mentality, it would be wonderful if they could

• prove it
• demonstrate it is relatively stronger than other comparable examples
• show how it is inordinately strong and not just a more or less average outflow of the natural human tendency to cohere among like-minded people

I bet CR would claim his own church has an in-group/out-group mentality. He would probably say it is justifiable. I would probably agree with him. So why does he object to the same among abolitionists?

As for "dripping with contempt", I simply say: May the Lord protect us from harboring contempt for other people. That would probably be sinful, though not always; Scriptural examples could certainly be forwarded of godly people and even the Lord Jesus treating especially false professors and false religionists with contempt. I mean, God straight up laughs at the wicked in the second Psalm.
But of course, each instance needs to be judged on its own merits. If CR loves abolitionists, he ought to call us on our sin. I pray he will do that, so that if we have indeed sinned, we may repent of it and be holy as our Father in heaven is holy.
(Side note: What are the chances he'll actually do that? Yep; I agree that they're probably pretty low. Snide swipes from afar as a barely-pseudonymous [mostly anonymous] commenter are much easier than actually laboring with brothers in love, as I tried to do with Steve via email.)

Intransigence and Steve Hays

So Steve Hays decided to post his side of our email correspondence. I wasn't going to do that, but I might as well give the full context. Notice the way Steve refuses to take correction, how he speaks so harshly, in such an unbrotherly manner. I tried to reason with the man. Sometimes he just can't be reasoned with. It's kind of sad, actually.

Also, this might help before we get into the correspondence:



I realise that I might have lacked some needed specificity in this interaction when I used the word "group" at times. In my mind, I was equating "group" with "organisation", and those are not exactly the same things, but they are close. Steve could have chosen to enter into a constructive conversation with me in an attempt to come to a common understanding that edifies everyone, but he chose not to.
Keep in mind that he and I have been acquainted via email and blogs for probably around 7 years, maybe more. I used to contribute to the Triablogue; I thought Steve was a friend. I was wrong; I don't know what he was looking for when he said I could contribute, but I guess he got what he wanted and then has dispensed with me.



ME:

It's really sad that you are doing this. Trying to point out actual flaws is one thing. You're just on a vendetta.

May the Lord help you, man.

"Be lukewarm and spewed"

Steve Hays renews his ill-advised critique of immediatism by... branching off into all sorts of issues that are not all that pertinent to immediatism.
\\It's revealing how abolitionists think their agitation gives them bragging rights\\

It's an uncharitable and in fact incorrect interpretation of my words to think that I/we have some sort of bragging rights.
Yet let the Lord protect us from such an attitude, to be sure!
Perhaps Steve thinks that the Apostle Paul was trying to claim bragging rights in Philippians 3 or 2 Corinthians 10-11.


\\Abortion isn't the only important issue that Christians need to be involved with\\


Nobody has said it is. Yet we have made the case again and again why the murder of 60 million and counting humans over the course of 42 years and counting should take a very, very high priority over even something like whether the gaystapo gets to tell 501c3 organisations whom they should marry.
Euthanasia - get back to me when it's legal to shoot senior citizens in the head willy-nilly and the death rate surpasses a few thousand a year. I'm not trying to sound callous here, but I actually think Steve is the one who is being callous and turning a blind eye toward child sacrifice. Nobody is saying that we should do nothing about those other things - those ought to be combated with immediatist calls to repentance and the Gospel of Jesus Christ the same as abortion ought to be. The Word of God is the weapon.
Steve also misses the fact that all of these are intertwined in many ways. Attack the powers of darkness in one area and you diminish it elsewhere too. But you have to use godly weapons and wisdom, not the worldly kind.


\\We need to resist secular totalitarianism in its various manifestations.\\

Ironic that Steve says this in defense of the pro life movement, which "resists secular totalitarianism" while teaming up with atheists, papists, eastern conciliarists, and other pagans.


\\the church has different body parts. Different members have different gifts. All Christians don't have the same duties or calling\\

Have this kind of discussion long enough with people and you can see this coming a mile away.
Steve runs afoul of the Bible at this point.

"Calling" is not the same as "gifting". And Steve needs to prove, not assume, that
1) variously gifted people can't address abortion with the Gospel
2) variously gifted people shouldn't address abortion with the Gospel
3) certain giftings mean you don't have an obligation to love your preborn neighbor who is being murdered down the street.


\\There's a need for Bible scholars, ethicists, and apologists.\\

A few, sure. Most churchgoing people are not in position to be those things, and that majority is too busy watching movies, amusing themselves, and "attending services" to do much of anything about anything, let alone sacrifice for the good of their neighbors being taken away to death.


\\Anti-abortion activism isn't the only way of loving your neighbor. \\

What about your preborn neighbor, 1.2 million or more of whom will die this year alone?


\\Visiting shut-ins and nursing home residents is a godly activity. Or caring for enfeebled parents.\\

Is Steve assuming these are mutually exclusive?


\\Moreover, it's very time-consuming just to be a breadwinner, as well as a husband and father\\

1) What does this have to do with immediatism, again?
2) Don't I know it! I have three children, one a newborn with Down Syndrome, two jobs, a 35 mile commute to the main one, and all the worries and difficulties of anyone else. I make time to speak up for my preborn neighbors, and all around me I see armchair QBs like Steve who whine they don't have time.
3) And this:

Steve Hays and escaping from morality

Jill Stanek, of pro-life, lazy PR stunt, and compromise-with-evil fame, has interacted at some length on this here note on immediatism by Russell Hunter. She posted an article by Steve Hays at Triablogue.


Steve has a lot of good to him, but in questions of immediatism/incrementalism he has shown that he is a very poor commentator. Either he just plain doesn't get it or he has some emotional investment that leads him into mistake after mistake.
Interestingly, as far as I can tell, Steve blogs or talks (in his capacity as employed by a seminary) an amazingly high amount of time. It's not as if he's in the thick of the fight, actually loving his preborn neighbors who are being ripped apart in his own locality. Jill may do silly PR stunts like sit in Boehner's office for some worthless ban, but that's not all she does. I'm more inclined to listen to what she says than what Steve says.

Nevertheless, I'll deal with this low-quality article. Steve's errors are as follows:

\\Incrementalists aren't really saving babies here and now\\

I never said they aren't. I said this:
"You actually have no idea whether it does."


\\Since that counterfactual never played out, he has no idea how many babies his preferred alternative would have saved\\

The astute reader will note I never made that positive claim. I'm responding to Steve and other incrementalists on their own grounds - the claim that immediatists abandon babies and that they save more. I ask for evidence that this claim is true. They respond with "You can't show that YOUR way saves more EITHER!"
Thus proving my point.


\\Alan doesn't specify what he means by "from the beginning." Is that an allusion to Roe v. Wade? \\

Yes.


\\Even if abortion opponents had deployed abolitionist tactics from the start (i.e. 1973), that's utterly irrelevant to what should be done at present.\\

Hmmm, I don't see why it's "utterly irrelevant". It might not map automatically onto what we do now, but then again it might. Does God change His prescriptions for how people are to deal with individual or corporate sin based on how many years have passed? Isn't it the case that we see again and again the calls to repentance become MORE strident and urgent, not less, the longer the sin obtains?


\\Suppose a ferry hits a sandbar and capsizes because the captain was drunk. I can swim, but many passengers can't. I can rescue some of them, but not all of them. \\

Disanalogous for the same reason the burning building analogy is.
http://blog.abolishhumanabortion.com/2013/03/immediatism-compromise-and-question-of.html


\\Suppose Raoul Wallenberg is about to issue passports to Jews and set up safe houses to protect them. \\

We have also already dealt with this.
http://blog.abolishhumanabortion.com/2015/02/would-aha-denounce-raoul-wallenberg.html
Steve rebutted our own article, here: http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2015/02/leaves-without-fruit.html
However, it was of such poor quality that we decided ignoring it would be a better use of our time. It breaks no new ground, responds substantively to none of our points, and trades on numerous strawmen, the likes of which Steve has repeated over and over in talking about AHA and immediatism, sadly.


\\We could just as well say that if only presidents nominated social conservatives to the court in the years leading up to Roe v. Wade, that would have saved far more lives than prolife efforts after the fact. But even if that's true, so what? How does that alternate history have any bearing on what prolifers should do right now? \\

IT DOESN'T BECAUSE IT'S PRAGMATISM.
That's what we keep saying! We should do what the Bible says instead!


\\How old were Scott Klusendorf and Jill Stanek in 1973? It's not as if they were in a position to do something different 42 years ago\\

The problem is not the people but the principles to which they adhere and according to which they act.



\\Even if some action might have been more successful had it been tried earlier, it doesn't follow that it would still be effective if attempted at a later date\\

"effective" - Pragmatism again, relying on human action and will rather than trusting in the providence of God.


\\incremental legislation is actually saving lives\\

PROVE that rather than asserting it.


\\Restrictions on abortion save real babies who'd otherwise die absent any restrictions whatsoever. That's not hypothetical. That's what's happening. Concrete results. The babies aren't "chimæræ."\\

I said the gains are. The gains in this case being what is gained in this fight by incrementalism vs by immediatism.
And again, Steve and Jill need to prove they're saving a significant number of babies, not just assert it.
Further, again, they need to show they're saving MORE by their preferred method than by immediatism, especially if they want to twist and torture the Bible to say that Jesus thinks that the right response to sin is to tell people to sin a little bit less, but only if they have the votes.


\\He doesn't know that AHA will succeed. In fact, he has no tangible evidence that it will probably succeed. It's all wishful thinking.\\

Duty belongs to us; results belong to God. That's what "reliant on the providence of God" means.
Jonah didn't know that Nineveh would repent. Might've been more advisable, humanly speaking, to go to Nineveh and tell them to stop killing each other; wounding, stealing from, and raping each other he'd get to later. Gotta make sure you have the votes.
If by "wishful thinking", Steve means that I believe I'm supposed to walk by faith and say what God says and let God make whatever He will out of that, I'm guilty.


\\The "gains" had reference to saving babies, but he redefines the "losses" as "compromise with evil."\\

Steve misunderstands what I meant by "gains", so his point here is moot.


\\saving the imaginary moral purity of abolitionists is the real priority\\

Here Steve says "imaginary moral purity"; what this means is that we will not compromise with evil and we will call all men to repent, right now, no matter what their sin is. Why is it bad to remain morally pure?


\\Not to be tainted by alleged moral compromise is their ultimate objective.\\

It's not "alleged". It's ACTUAL.
Also James 1:27Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.

I know Steve believes in God, but he forgets to believe Him in these questions.

"The End of Infidelity"

Last year, John Loftus and some colleagues published a book titled The End Of Christianity (Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 2011). The back cover and inside endorsements describe the book as "the sharpest set of intellectual criticisms [of Christianity] found under the cover of a single volume", "tremendously useful", "superb", and "exceedingly well-researched". One endorser claims, "This book should win the game: Christianity, it's strike three and you are out!" Another tells us, "No collection better demonstrates how taking Christianity seriously reveals its all-too-human origin." We're told that "Loftus and his friends annihilate the Christian Goliath".

Steve Hays and Jason Engwer have written an e-book in response, which you can read here, titled The End Of Infidelity, edited by Peter Pike.

Those who haven't read Loftus' book can find an overview of it here. Readers might want to read each chapter summary on the page linked before reading each of the chapter responses.