David Heddle
presents a Venn diagram of the demarcation that St. Augustine made between those who
identify as Christian, and those who are
really Christian. There are several problems with Heddle’s analysis.
The diagram names two overlapping sets, the “visible church” and the “invisible church,” but it doesn’t tell us anything about the universal set. Does the “invisible church” include people who aren’t Christian? Heddle defines “invisible church” as the set of people “who have been redeemed,” but he doesn’t specify what that means, nor does he say who decides. However, without providing a method for us to determine who is in each set, the demarcation becomes arbitrary, and thus the diagram isn’t very useful.
After presenting the diagram using Augustine's formulation, Heddle goes on to say:
We can extend this using some modern internet terminology. "Self-Identified Christians" and True Christians™. The little trademark symbol is used in a pejorative manner—atheists will tack it on to mock the notion that only some Christians are legitimate. It is used as a tiny symbolic form of the "No True Scotsman fallacy" charge.
But the introduction of atheists here is a
red herring, intended to deflect attention away from the fact that it is
Christians themselves who disagree about who is a True Christian. The problem is that, unlike science, religion doesn’t have a methodology for arbitrating among competing claims. Invoking theology or scriptural interpretation only defers the problem, because Christians do not agree about whose theology is correct. As
Grace Hopper said:
"The wonderful thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from."
So it hardly seems necessary to drag atheists into a debate about who is a Christian, since
Christians actively debate the issue, as Heddle himself admits. Those of us who aren’t Christian can only sit on the sidelines while the skirmish among Christians plays out. Instead of inserting ourselves into endless theological debates, the pragmatic course is to simply refer to as “Christian” anyone who identifies as such. Whether a person is a “legitimate” Christian is not a useful distinction (to those of us not steeped in
theological esoterica, anyway), since there’s no empirical way to decide the matter; a
golden crown this is not.
But this explanation of the pragmatic reasons why atheists don’t make a distinction among different Christian sects, each of which claims to be the only authentic one, most likely will not satisfy Heddle, who gives a different explanation:
That is, they self-righteously make no distinction between those who claim to be Christians and those who have a saving faith. Whether this is out of actual ignorance or feigned ignorance for convenience I can't say—but I suspect mostly the latter. For it allows them to say: Fred Phelps claims to be a Christian, who am I to say he is not? As far as I'm concerned he just as much a Christian as anyone else. But atheists read the bible, they know that a Christian is to be judged by his fruit—so neither we nor they are at the mercy of accepting someone's word.
But it’s not proper to single out atheists here, since the set of people who “make no distinction” about such claims could include just about anyone (including other Christians!). Distinctions are made by human observers, to serve human purposes. They do not exist in some Platonic realm, like ripe fruit ready to be plucked from the tree. If atheists don’t make the same distinctions about Christians that Heddle does, it’s because they don’t find those distinctions to be useful. There is nothing “self-righteous” about this.
Consider a different example. I’ve been reading
Physics as a Liberal Art, by James Trefil, about the history of science. Trefil notes that Aristotelians explained the motion of a projectile by making a distinction between “violent” motion that causes the object to go up, and “natural” motion, that makes the object go down, as the violent motion weakens. But with the birth of the scientific revolution, these categories of motion were swept aside by the work of Newton:
We have already discussed one of these resolutions -- the solution of the problem of natural versus violent motion. We saw that the "solution" to this problem found by Galileo didn't really "solve" the problem at all. We still can't say when a projectile motion stops being "violent" and starts being "natural." What we can say is that the categories "natural" and "violent" have nothing to do with the motion of real particles in the real world. The attempt to impose these categories on projectile motion resulted in an impossible problem. Instead of asking "How does a projectile move?" scientists have been trying to classify projectile motion and were making very little progress in doing so. What the scientific revolution did was to dispose of the old categories and to ask the correct questions.
It was impossible to determine when one kind of motion stops and the other kind of motion starts, so the distinction between violent and natural motion
was not useful. It did not provide any traction for solving the problem projectile motion, and so it was discarded.
Does this sound familiar? Atheists don’t make a distinction between “self-identified” Christians and “true” Christians, because it is impossible to determine to which category a putative Christian belongs. Trefil continues:
After all, we really aren't so much interested in developing philosophical categories for phenomena in the world as we are in trying to develop an understanding of the basic laws the govern them. The tremendous success of the scientific method in the time since Newton is a testimony to how far the human mind can go when it is freed from false categories.
Atheists aren’t “self-righteous” or “ignorant,” they’re just
freed from false categories. Heddle’s categories about who is a real Christian aren’t practical, because there’s no way to make such as distinction. “Those who have a saving faith” does not name an observable class of events. So, for atheists, that leaves only a single equivalence class, “those who claim to be Christians.”
Heddle uses
Fred Phelps as an example of someone who claims to be a Christian, but isn’t really one. Now Heddle knows that if he denies that Phelps is a Christian, he will be accused by atheists of committing the
"No true Scotsman" fallacy, but he doesn’t explain why the fallacy doesn’t apply. Why isn’t Phelps a Christian? Heddle does not say. All he does say is that atheists will accuse him of committing the fallacy (another
red herring). But again, atheists have no way to adjudicate between Phelps’ own claim that he is a true Christian and Heddle's claim that Phelps is not. This has nothing to with "actual or feigned ignorance" but with the simple fact that theistic claims
lack a methodology for arbitrating between competing claims.
The SBC does have a
statement about Phelps, saying that:
We share concern over the unbiblical views and offensive tactics of Fred Phelps and his followers. His church is not in any way affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, and his extreme position not only stands in contrast to ours, more importantly they stand in contrast to God's Word. God has stated clearly in His Word that homosexual behavior is sinful, but He also clearly states His love for sinners, including homosexuals, and that He offers forgiveness through Jesus Christ for all who repent and place their faith in Him.
But even the SBC doesn't go so far as to say that Phelps is not a Christian. So which is it? Atheists (and other secularists) have concerns about the “offensive tactics” of Fred Phelps too, so why does Heddle single out atheists?
Does Heddle believe that homosexual behavior is sinful? Does he believe that homosexuals are sinners? Would he welcome homosexuals as members of his local church? Does he believe that homosexuals should have full equality under America law? Is there anything that Heddle thinks homosexuals should do differently from what they’re doing now? (One can easily imagine what Fred Phelps
would say, but I’d like know where Heddle himself stands on the issue of homosexuality.)
It would have been better if Heddle had simply said that he doesn’t agree with Phelps, or doesn’t think that Phelps’s behavior is very Christian, and then stopped there. But no, he has to use this as way to say bad things about atheists. Oh, well, turn the other cheek and all that. He does something nice about one atheist, however:
Not all internet atheists are so silly. Jason Rosenhouse once gave an example that I have used many times since. He argued something along the lines of this: if someone claims I am a Christian, I believe in Jesus. And I believe in Elvis. And I believe Elvis is Jesus then it would make no sense to accept his claim of legitimate Christianity. Bravo Jason.
But Heddle is knocking down a
straw man here. No one is arguing that people who claim to be Christian, but who also believe Elvis Presley is Jesus of Nazareth, are legitimate Christians. (We all agree they’re probably crazy.) What is being argued is whether people who merely claim to be Christian are actually Christian. Atheists argue, given no practical alternative for deciding otherwise (certainly none was given by Heddle), that they are.
Heddle now attempts to identify by example who is not a true Christian:
The fascinating groups are those who, on either side, fall outside the intersection. The Self-Identified Christians who are not True Christians™ come in at least two groups: the charlatans and the self-delusional. Where is Benny Hinn? My guess: in the charlatan category. Where is Fred Phelps? My guess: in the self-delusional category. Based on his fruit I judge him, as commanded, this way: that unless, someday, he is truly regenerated he'll one day hear those frightful words: I never knew you. Of course my judgment doesn't count for squat--it only means that I refuse to accept Fred Phelps as a Christian. The point is: I am supposed to judge--I am am supposed to withhold the holy from dogs.
Heddle hedges a bit: he
guesses that Benny Hinn is a charlatan, he
guesses that Phelps is self-delusional. But knowing what Heddle thinks doesn’t help us, as outside observers, since Hinn and Phelps would simply argue that they are Christian. Again, what does this internecine battle between different Calvinist sects have to do with atheists?
(Heddle judges a man by his fruits. But that argument could be turned against Heddle himself. He used the example of Fred Phelps as an opportunity to disparage atheists, who have nothing to do with theological debates among Southern Baptists. If we were to judge Heddle by his own fruits, one might conclude that he’s not Christian either. Memo to David:
God made atheists too.)
But the most bizarre category distinction Heddle makes is that there are people who don’t claim to be Christian, but who are Christian anyway. This is sort of like saying that, even if you don’t hold a French passport, don’t identify as French, or have never even heard of France, you really are French! He explains it this way:
On the other side are equally fascinating people: True Christians™ who are not Self-Identified Christians. We have reason to be hopeful that this includes dead infants and the mentally handicapped. I personally believe it also includes people who have not heard the gospel but who have been evangelized by creation. And people who have been mislead. In any event, the bottom line: it can include anyone God wants it to include.
Heddle says this (probably) includes infants and mentally handicapped, but how wide do you cast your net? What about Hindus or Buddhists? Judaists or Catholics? Atheists? He states no rules for deciding who are members of the equivalence class.
He also “personally believes” that the set of actual Christians includes “people who have not heard the gospel but have been evangelized by creation,” but he gives no reasons for
why he believes it. (What does “evangelized by creation” even mean?) The equivalence class also includes people who have been "misled.” Misled how, and by whom? Heddle does not say.
Heddle concludes by saying that the set of people who are Christian can include anyone whom God says. But what good does that do us? We have no way of knowing who God has named a Christian (all we are told is that he
can do so), so how is this putative fact useful?
This conclusion is very odd, however, because it undermines Heddle’s entire argument. The set of Christians could, in principle, include not only Fred Phelps and Benny Hinn, but anyone else, because God says so. The demarcation between self-identified Christians and true Christians would thus collapse. But not making this distinction is exactly what Heddle criticized atheists for. So which is it?
If we were to take Heddle’s conclusion seriously, then it would be meaningless to debate who is a “legitimate” Christian, because God will save that person anyway (well, he
can, but we aren’t told whether he
will). If God can just choose who’s a Christian willy-nilly, then why have theism at all? Who gets saved would just be something that happens in the background, outside of our knowledge or control. Presumably God will even save the atheists against whom Heddle spends so much time fulminating.
Surely we don’t need the imprimatur of religious belief to judge a person for his anti-social behavior. The gay community (and, I might add, the atheist community too) has been plenty vocal about pointing out Fred Phelps’ bigotry. In a secular democracy, here in the 21st century, hatred of gay people is simply not acceptable, and we don’t need religion to tell us this. Of course, if Heddle has religious reasons for believing that Phelps’ behavior is wrong, then he is free to enunciate them. Just leave atheists out of it, OK?
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