Trustees Continue to Rationalize Paterno Firing

The Penn State board of trustees are at it again, reverse-engineering excuses for firing Joe Paterno in the frenzied weeks following the Sandusky sex abuse scandal. Following the tried-and-true policy of shoot first, ask questions later, the powers that be chose to dismiss Paterno unceremoniously over the phone in the middle of the season rather than allowing him to retire a few months later (or even giving him the simple courtesy of firing him in person). When we last heard from the board of trustees, they explained to an expectant public that the firing had taken place because they did not feel that Paterno could effectively carry on as coach in the midst of the scandal. "Paterno could not be expected to continue to effectively perform his duties and that it was in the best interests of the University to make an immediate change in his status."

An outraged but reasonable public and an abysmal conclusion to the football season (8-1 before Paterno's dismissal; 1-3 after) combined to make that kind of rationalization insufficient. Now the board of trustees is taking a more aggressive tack, claiming that Paterno's fulfillment of his legal duties actually amounted to a failure on his part, demonstrating the remarkable ease with which the living are willing to speak ill of the dead. "We determined that his decision to do his minimum legal duty and not to do more to follow up constituted a failure of leadership by Coach Paterno." In other words, that Paterno did what was required of him and did not have the benefit of hindsight to indicate that he would be required to do more, represented the leadership deficiencies in a man who had been a leader in the entire State College community for decades.

According to trustee Keith Eckel, “Many people have indicated that they did not understand, and this is our last attempt to try to make it as clear as possible.” Curiously, many people still don't understand even this last attempt; if this is as clear as it is possible to make the motivation, that says something about the clarity of the trustees thinking, both at the time and as they try to reconstruct a viable excuse in retrospect. Paterno's lawyer, Wick Sollers, is among those who think that this newest explanation only makes clearer the true, rather than the professed, motivation for Paterno's firing: "to deflect criticism of their leadership by trying to focus the blame on Joe Paterno. This is not fair to Joe’s legacy; it is not consistent with the facts; and it does not serve the best interests of the University...The Board’s latest statement reaffirms that they did not conduct a thorough investigation of their own and engaged in a rush to judgment." Sollers is unsure why the board "believes it is necessary and appropriate to explain—for the fourth or fifth time—why they fired Joe Paterno so suddenly and unjustifiably on Nov. 9, 2011."

Maybe it would benefit everyone to return to the moment of Paterno's untimely demise (the one before his ultimate untimely demise) and consider what the board had to say about its motives then. "'I’m not sure I can tell you specifically,' board vice chair John Surma replied when asked at a packed news conference why Paterno had to be fired immediately. 'In our view, we thought change now was necessary.'" There you have it, the unvarnished truth. The board had no idea why they needed to dismiss Paterno without investigation, without cause, and without the coolness of reasoning that even a moment's delay may have prompted. They felt it needed to be done, because they felt the rising heat of controversy and felt compelled to make a burnt offering of the choicest calf. Everything that came after that has been an effort to self-justify in the cold light of hindsight.

The sick irony, sickest of all ironies, is that from the grave Paterno is proving a model of leadership for the board. When he looked back on his actions with the benefit of full knowledge and found them wanting, he admitted his shortcomings like a man and expressed regret. Would that the board could emulate that kind of leadership.

J. W. McGarvey: On Trust in God

The following is part of an ongoing commentary on J. W. McGarvey's Sermons Delivered in Louisville Kentucky. For an introduction to and table of contents for the series, see Happy Birthday, J. W.
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Members of the Stone-Campbell Movement are often accused, now and in times past, of gross overconfidence both with regard to humanity’s ability to know facts about God and our role in our own salvation. There is a degree to which both these accusations have merit, and J. W. McGarvey often does as much to confirm them as to refute them. In a pair of sermons preached on redemption and forgiveness, however, he goes a long way toward reaffirming not only the limits of human knowledge but the limits our redemptive powers. In the process he carves out a place in restorationist thought for both human ignorance and divine agency. Consider this abbreviation of his first sermon, “Redemption in Christ” where the dual theme shows through clearly:

As sins are acts performed in the past, they can not be undone. A man may as well attempt to snatch the sun out of the sky, as to undo a single act, good or bad, that he has ever done. And, inasmuch as suffering is the inevitable consequence of sin, it is a most serious question how it is possible for men ever to escape the penalty due to their sins. I presume that this is the most serious problem ever considered by the minds of created beings, and perhaps by the mind of God, if God stops to consider any question.

Men commit crimes against human law, and escape the punishment by outrunning the sheriff, by bribing the jury, by breaking jail; by a great variety of corrupt methods which they employ. But there is no similar way of escaping the penalties that are assessed against our sins by God. We can not run away from Him. A part of that penalty is within our souls, and we can not run away from ourselves. We can not deceive anybody in this matter, because the eye of Him against whom we have sinned searches us through and through. Death is a very swift messenger when he starts after us, and when God calls on the Great Day we shall all appear before Him in judgment. How then can we escape that eternal penalty for our sins, which was the subject of the two discourses last Lord's day…

What is, then, the explanation? Well, I don't know. I don't know. I don't believe any other man knows what the reasoning of God was on this subject, by which he felt compelled, according to His own infinite nature, to refuse to pardon a single sin except through the blood of His Son. I don't know. I don't know how many sermons I have heard, trying to explain it. I don't know how many pages--heavy pages--in many books, I have read, from some of the ablest men in the world, trying to set it forth; but I have never yet been able to see it; and if any of you have, I congratulate you.

God's thoughts are not as our thoughts on many things. His ways are far above our ways, as heaven above the earth, and we may not expect to understand the reasons in His mind for the wondrous works of His prudence and mercy. I think, on all such themes, we are prone to look at the subject from the wrong point of view. We try to get at God's ideas about it. It is enough for us to see the part which addresses itself to man. There are multitudes of things that God does in nature, and in the providence that He exercises over the world, the divine reasons for which it is utterly impossible for any human mind to penetrate; but it is not difficult, generally, when we look at these same inscrutable workings and ways of providence, to see their effects, and to know by their effects that there is wisdom and prudence, as the apostle says in my text, behind them all.

Note that when it comes to our own means of redemption, McGarvey is not so much confident in human nature as he is confident that we can neither understand nor accomplish on our own the great plan of redemption which has been worked out mysteriously by God. He summarizes in his following sermon: “He it is who forgives. He it is who blots the record out of the book that He keeps. He it is that throws [our sins] away. It is He who will remember them no more forever.” Human efforts to escape the consequences of sin are themselves as sinful as they are futile. It is in the hands of God alone to redeem his people and forgive their sins; it is for us to be the delighted, unworthy recipients of that gift, for which we will never understand in this life fully divine means or motivations.

Now, so as to avoid the accusation that I am remaking McGarvey in my own image, it is important to recognize that his appeals to human ignorance are incomplete, and he gradually moves from his own profession of ignorance into declarations of confidence in the Christian’s ability to fully grasp the promises of God, thus allowing each to be assured of forgiveness. Moreover, he offers such a confident view of humanity’s cooperative role in their redemption that he all but does away with any divine role in the process of sanctification. Yet, both of these impulses need to be understood historically as reactionary statements, rhetorical flourishes against the “very doleful life…that low ground of doubt, and gloom, and hopelessness” that is Reformed thought on conversion. Whatever his anti-Calvinist polemics, he still supposes that “Paul was no more able to look in and see how God's mind worked out the problem, than you or I” and begs Christians to “to come and cast yourselves into the deep flood of the Saviour's dying love.”

Neither his endorsement of human ignorance nor his confidence in the ability to interpret and understand divine promises, neither his appeal to divine agency nor his exhortation for Christians to take hold of their own salvation are ends in themselves. They are all impulses toward a common theme to him which is foundational for his soteriology: the trustworthiness of God. This theme finds its culmination in the latter sermon "Faith," in which McGarvey tries to define the causes and consequences of our "confidence as to things hoped for; conviction as to things not seen." He launches from this scriptural definition into an examination of the so-called Heroes of Faith and discovers therein a common thread. Faith in God comes "not by reasoning about it; not by dreaming; not in answer to prayer" but through divine self-revelation. It is on these grounds alone that Christians can be confident in their faith. In fact, he scoffs at the idea that we would need any assurance beyond God's own testimony of the objects of faith. "Why, my friends, if God's word will not do it, what power is there in heaven or earth that you can conceive of, that could?"

The readers (as I’m sure was the case with the listeners in 1893) leaves with a confidence that no matter what they can or cannot do, no matter they can or cannot know, they can trust the steadfast promises of God. McGarvey reminds his readers that when they put money in a bank, they trust, on the basis of the character of the bank, that the money will still be there when they come back. When they make a contract with a person, they trust it will be honored based on the character of the signatories. How much more is a supremely trustworthy God worthy of our trust? So when McGarvey asks how we can know that we are redeemed, how we can be confident in our salvation, he has his set up his answer well:

Now there is a way, and it is this--God has said, over and over again in his blessed written word, in the plainest possible language, what you and I shall do in order to forgiveness of our sins; what we shall think; what we shall feel; what we shall believe; what we shall do; and He pledges His own blessed word that when we do these He will forgive us. When a man knows these things, and complies with them to the very last point, he has God's pledged word that his sins are forgiven--the word of Him who can not lie. Here is something solid to build on, the pledged word of the living God. This makes it certain.

We can certainly quibble with the language here, about complying with everything “to the very last point,” but in doing so we miss the message. When we rely on our feelings, on a vague sense of forgiveness, to assure us that our sins are remitted we make the same gross error as those who believe they are forgiven because they have reasoned what they need to do in order to get God to do what they want Him to do, balancing a rationalistic salvation ledger as it were. In either case, assurance is located in the sinner, in the heart or in the mind. Insofar as both are susceptible to error and doubt, Christians set themselves up for failure. We can have confidence in our forgiveness and redemption not because we feel it or have reasoned it out but because God is faithful; He has told us that forgiveness is there and that, if we seek, we will find. Whatever else may be said, that is an optimism with a sure foundation.

J. W. McGarvey: Addendum on Sin

The following is part of an ongoing commentary on J. W. McGarvey's Sermons Delivered in Louisville Kentucky. For an introduction to and table of contents for the series, see Happy Birthday, J. W.
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Previously, J. W. McGarvey’s sermon on sin was examined, the main purpose of which was to employ hell as a vehicle through which we could begin to express the enormity of sin. McGarvey, of course, did not leave his congregants with nothing but the magnitude of sin to weigh on their hearts. In a series sermons focused on redemption, forgiveness, faith, and conversion (all of which will be addressed in time), he offers his listeners the path from death into life. At the conclusion of the following week’s sermon, entitled “Redemption in Christ,” McGarvey does offer at throwback to the theme of the magnitude of sin. Much as he suggested that sin could be better grasped by first grasping hell, he suggests that if we truly grasp the significance of the cross we can begin to grasp the atrociousness of sin:

If sin is of such a nature that God Himself, with all His infinite wisdom, and all His undying love toward our race, could find no way to redeem us from it, without the shedding of the blood of His own dear Son, the heart's blood of Him who came down from Heaven to endure the ignominious death of the cross for this great end, what an awful thing sin must be! Just think of it. And let me ask you another question in connection with this. Was the evil consequence which God foresaw that sin would bring upon us, some little thing, like a scratch upon your hand? Was sin a mere peccadillo? Was it a mere mistake that could bring but little pain upon us? Would the Almighty send His own Son to suffer the agonies of the cross in order to redeem us from a little thing like that? Ah! my dear friends, it is only when we know what we endeavored to show you last Lord's day, the darkness, the gloom, the gnashing of teeth, the awful agonies of the eternal world to which sin is bearing us, that we can realize why it should cost such a price, and why God should be willing to pay such a price, to redeem us from it. Are you living in sin? Oh! tremble before your God; get down on your knees; lift up your hands and your heart, and plead with Him to have mercy on you; smite your breast, and say, "God be merciful to me a sinner." Cast yourself into the arms of this Redeemer who is so ready and so anxious to redeem you--to blot out your transgressions, and to grant you everlasting life.

Mormons Grapple with Sacred History

All my life I have never heard of anything but progress in the growth of the Mormon faith. With Mormon friends in my youth, I accumulated scores of anecdotal evidence about the triumphs of Mormon missionaries (though I never became remotely convinced of the truth of their message). This perception was reinforced as an undergraduate studying under, and eventually working under, a specialist in religious statistics. Mormons are one of the largest religious groups in America, and however much my professor qualified the statistics with references to natural growth, no one denied that aggressive evangelism and a certain social appeal of the religion were major contributing factors. Some time ago, however, an article awoke me to the fact that whatever may be said about the continuing growth of Mormonism, there is also a substantial amount of disaffection. There has been a sharp rise in "apostasy" in the last ten years, and a recent survey suggests that 39% of those leaving cite church history as the primary reason for losing faith, 84% at least a strong or moderate factor.

Mormons, like Christians, have a strong sense of sacred history. One of the peculiarities of the Mormon history, however, is that it includes a rejection of the standard Christian retelling of history in favor of a latter day reinterpretation. It is grounded in the belief that the initial revelation on which the church was founded was incomplete and open to misinterpretation by subsequent Christians. The result is a period of profane history between Christ and Joseph Smith before the narrative is once again picked up and purified. "Put another way," in the words of Hughes and Allen, "early Mormons, by rooting themselves int he primal past, simply removed themselves from history and the historical process and claimed instead that they had sprung full blown from the creative hands of God. In April of 1830, they said, their prophet had restored to earth the ancient church with all its gifts, miracles, and visions." The problem which arises from this is that, in the cold light of day, it is easy for Mormons to look at the supposedly restored, ancient church--born as it was directly form the mind of the divine--and to become disenchanted with what they see.

The article mentions the rather conspicuous blots of polygamy--which was undeniably abandoned not out of religious conviction but political expediency in the Utah statehood process--and racism--particularly the ban on people of "African descent" participating in sacred rites or ordination which was not lifted until the wake of the Civil Rights Movement. These deserve scrutiny, given that the Mormon faith is rooted in the more perfect revelation of God given to its leaders in the nineteenth century. If this revelation really was intended to correct and redeem Christianity out of its flawed state, why were so many of the special beneficiaries of God's revelation so utterly misguided? Why did Joseph Smith and Brigham Young endorse polygamy? Why did their racial attitudes seem to reflect the lowest common cultural denominator rather than an eternal God? Most importantly, why were both these issues reformed under the guise of "new revelation" at moments in history when it was most politically expedient to do so?

There are of course other issues from a historical perspective. Early apostates give an interesting alternate account of the beginnings of the faith, particularly those who were supposed eye witnesses to the first miraculous underpinnings of the movement. There is also, of course, the wealth of outlandish mythology which dominates Mormon narrative, made all the more difficult to accept because it lacks the antiquity and alien culture of traditional Jewish and Christian myth (whether they are factual or not). Consider also the driving belief among early Mormons that the absence of abundant charismatic gifts (e.g. healings, visions, prophecies)--now muted in the contemporary church--indicated the absence of divine approbation. The list could, obviously, go on.

Nevertheless, the purpose here is not to try to convert Mormons--mostly because I doubt many are reading this. Instead, it is to highlight the peculiar problem which history ought to (and apparently does) pose for Mormons. The strong root of the faith in corrective revelation makes the historical stumblings (which is a grossly inadequate euphemism for a century of institutional racism) of the religion that much harder to reconcile with. After all, it is easy for me to distance myself from the Crusades or the Inquisition (grossly misunderstood as both are by uninformed modern critics) or, more to the point, "Christian" defenses of slavery in the antebellum South. God did not inspire those events, and I can specifically point to the authoritative text which joins me in my condemnation of them. Mormon history is not so easily dispensed with. The gross errors are those of the authoritative actors themselves operating within a normative, sacred history. Their best defense has been to duck behind a progressive revelation which declares polygamy, for example, appropriate for one time and inappropriate for another. Except I think we all know intuitively that racism was never appropriate for any time. Apparently, there are Mormons coming face-to-face with their own history and finding that they know that intuitively as well.

J. W. McGarvey: On the Enormity of Sin

The following is part of an ongoing commentary on J. W. McGarvey's Sermons Delivered in Louisville Kentucky. For an introduction to and table of contents for the series, see Happy Birthday, J. W.
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After the toil of reading through J. W. McGarvey’s apology for the special inspiration of Scripture, I was delighted to see that the next set of sermons was on “Sin and Its Punishment” (followed by “Objections Considered”). Well, delighted is perhaps not the best way to describe it, but as the Bible is not self-aware, it has very little to say about the question of the Bible. In contrast, Scripture is littered with rich (and ripe for exploration) references to sin, its origins, and its consequences. McGarvey unfortunately, but predictably, spends more time on the question of “Its Punishment” than on “Sin.” McGarvey spends the bulk of the first sermon in a Q&A session with himself. He has five objects for consideration: is there any punishment for the wicked after death, when does it begin, is there a final judgment, what punishment will follow said judgment, and how long will that punishment last? McGarvey believes, and I concur, that Scripture offers some very plain answers to these questions, and consequently I find myself agreeing very much with his five points (one for each finger as part of an exercise that would have sent Scott reaching for a Prozac). Though they appear clumsy in hindsight with a century of research and discovery at our disposal, even McGarvey’s second sermon on the objections to his first has valid refutations, considering such timeless alternate theories as annihilationism and apoktostasis. He draws deftly from Scripture and logic to support what seems more or less uncontroversial in the biblical narrative: some will go off into eternal life, some into eternal punishment.

Unlike with his treatment of the inspiration of Scripture, McGarvey’s homily on the wages of sin needs to contortion to make it conversant with contemporary readers. Though it may seem at first that McGarvey’s interest is in a dry, Baconian lecture enumerating biblical facts about eternal punishment, his focus truly is on the nature of sin and not the character of hell. His problem is not an academic one--“List five aspects of hell”--but a deeply personal one. Throughout both sermons he returns to his true focus: why do I keep sinning even though I know I shouldn’t? He knows the answer from the start:

I wonder if any of us has ever realized what it is to commit sin. I believe that I would esteem above every other gift that could be bestowed upon me as a preacher, the power to adequately conceive what sin is, and to adequately set it before the people. A number of times in my ministrations, I have prepared sermons designed to set forth the enormity of sin; but I have every time felt that I made a failure. I found, I thought, two causes of the failure: first, a want of realization in my own soul of the enormity of it; and second, inability to gather up such words and such figures of speech, as would, with anything like adequacy, set it forth before my hearers. The pleasures of sin have blinded our eyes to its enormity.

Knowing the answer doesn’t solve the problem, unsurprisingly, and McGarvey makes no claims in his sermon to have accurately grasped sin or to have adequately conveyed its magnitude to his audience. In fact, he insists during the course of his second lesson that “in order to have a fair and equitable” understanding of sin and its consequences, a person would need to be “totally separated from sin.” As there is no one truly without sin save God, McGarvey admits that the best we can do is learn what God has taught us about it and defer to His judgment regarding its consequences.

With this purpose thus expressed, McGarvey’s sermon is seen for what it truly is. Rather than simply musing about the nature of hell, McGarvey suggests that the “words and figures of speech” best suited to illuminating the enormity of sin are those teachings in Scripture about its consequences. In this way he reappropriates hell, and it becomes no longer simply a scare tactic to get the unconverted into the water or a cause for sadistic revelry on the part of those who are sure they’ll never go there. Instead, hell functions as a mirror reflecting back to us the enormity of sin, of which we are all willing participants. The language used to describe hell and the eternal torment of its inhabitants is among the most gruesome, some would say repugnant, in the New Testament (or even the Bible as a whole). So often we turn from this galling language and ask what it might say about God (often with less than pious answers), but only rarely do we take what we know about God and what we know about hell and ask what it might say about sin. At the conclusion of his initial presentation of the character of judgment for “the wicked,” McGarvey returns to this theme with gusto:

Are you horrified at that thought? I think you certainly must be. Well, if you are, then how should you feel towards the sin which compels a God of love and mercy and infinite compassion to inflict such a punishment as that upon the sinner? What must sin be in the sight of the only being in this universe who is capable of appreciating it at its real enormity? And if sin be the horrible, the detestable thing that extorts from an infinite, merciful and gracious God such punishment as that, Oh! why should you and I be guilty of it? Why should mortal man ever gain his own consent to commit one single sin? And how amazing it is that men and women, who know of this, can consent to live in sin from day to day!

I have often argued that self-deception and selective amnesia are at the root of persistent sin in the lives of Christians. After all, is it possible imagine any sinful behavior in which we engage that we would still do if we truly believed and were mindful of the fact that “the wages of sin is death?” It’s irrational (as, unfortunately, are all people). Even that argument, however, still focuses inappropriately on hell as a post-judgment boogeyman meant to keep Christians in line. Without totally discarding the value or truth of that application, it is critical to see that what McGarvey offers is richer understanding of the way hell can function in Christian spirituality. Rather than saying a truer belief in hell would stop sin, why not recognize that a truer belief in sin would be a far more effective means of stopping sin. If we genuinely believed that sin was as detestable, as deleterious as God has told us it is, would any of us really continue to engage in it? Hell, if we can reclaim it as a theological tool rather than a biblical third rail, can serve to throw into sharp relief just how serious God is in His condemnation of sin. Hell is death, eternal and inviolable, in an analogous way to the sense in which God is life, eternal and inviolable. If we believed that, if we enshrined in our hearts and kept in our minds a genuine longing for life and a realistic appreciation of the enormity of sin, would we not find ourselves living more nearly the kinds of lives we have been called to in Christ?

Science, Adolescence, and Legal Culpability

It is important to begin with the disclaimer that it is not here my intention to discuss moral culpability, particularly given that the focus will be on the possibility of a diminished culpability. I do not in any sense advocate acceptance of diminished moral culpability which would be inconsistent with a belief that morals operate in absolute categories. Moreover, with specific regard to adolescence, I have more or less entirely abandoned the self-serving and unbiblical doctrine of an age of accountability which had been taught me in my youth. As I get older (and hopefully wiser), I increasingly see the value in the historic Christian recognition of sinful impulses even in infancy. This is not, however, the place to argue either the absoluteness of morality or the moral culpability of children. Instead, I want to look at the possibility of a diminished legal culpability.

On this point, the recent Chardon High School shooting has caught my attention and specifically the recent indications that T. J. Lane will be tried as an adult. The legitimacy of trying minors as adults is, admittedly, difficult to navigate. The arbitrary nature with which American children are unceremoniously ushered into adulthood functions both to retard legitimate maturation in those still technically minors (consider the contentious age of consent laws) and to foist tremendous responsibility onto an unprepared, uninformed section of the populace (consider the rapidity with which teenagers are allowed to legally accrue massive student loan debt). There seems to be legitimate cultural argument both for treating the crimes of minors as intrinsically different and for occasionally ignoring that distinction when appropriate. The question is, and ought to be, how to distinguish between times when it is appropriate to recognize the unique legal status of minors and when it is necessary to ignore it. The state of Colorado offers three primary criteria for consideration:

• The age of the offender.
• The offender's previously criminal record.
• The severity of the crime.

At first glance, this seems like a relatively reasonable, objective rubric for determining the level of legal culpability for minors. Yet I wonder if perhaps the science which underlies our distinct treatment of minors might not reveal that one of these categories is

substantially weaker than the others. It is important to realize that the argument for a diminished legal capacity is not merely cultural but neurological. Studies on teenagers having shown that "impulse control, planning and decisionmaking are largely frontal cortex functions that are still maturing during adolescence...In sum, a large and compelling body of scientific research on the neurological development of teens confirms a long-held, common sense view: teenagers are not the same as adults in a variety of key areas such as the ability to make sound judgments when confronted by complex situations, the capacity to control impulses, and the ability to plan effectively. Such limitations reflect, in part, the fact that key areas of the adolescent brain, especially the prefrontal cortex that controls many higher order skills, are not fully mature until the third decade of life. Teens are full of promise, often energetic and caring, capable of making many contributions to their communities, and able to make remarkable spurts in intellectual development and learning. But neurologically, they are not adults."

With this in mind, it is easy to see why the age of the offender is a legitimate concern for determining legal culpability. After all, physical maturation is directly correlated to the ability of the brain to delay gratification. In lacking a fully functional ability to control impulses, positive and negative, adolescents cannot be held responsible for their actions at an equal level with adults who presumably have the ability to resist criminal urges. Certainly the case can be made that age is an inadequate indicator of physical and psychological development (hence the flaw in age of consent laws), but in the absence of a pragmatic alternative it makes sense to employ age as an important category. There is even logic to including the offender's previous criminal record, insofar as previous encounters with the judicial system ought to have acted as a catalyst for forming connections between criminal behavior and its consequences. Whatever may be said about the development of the frontal cortex in adolescents, even a dog can learn not to chew on your shoes after having been smacked with a rolled up newspaper a requisite number of times.

The connection between the severity of the crime and legal culpability seems less substantial. The scientific basis for trying minors as minors rests on what is tantamount to a mental defect on the part of teenagers. The adolescent mind lacks the necessary maturity--in an anatomical not a cultural sense--to entirely grasp the severity and repercussions of its actions in the moment. If not completely impotent, adolescents are at least severely disabled as they attempt to govern their baser impulses, maps out the consequences of their actions, and sympathize with a reality beyond their limited scope of contact and power. In other words, it is the very fact that a fourteen year old can shoot someone almost as easily as he or she could pat someone on the back which requires minors to be treated differently by the legal system. Given this psycho-physiological handicap, how can we include the severity of the crime in the calculation? It is the inability to conceive adequately of severity that constitutes the essence of the adolescent problem.

Which brings us full circle back to T. J. Lane. Admittedly, at seventeen, he is approaching the legal threshold for adulthood, and his ability to grasp the consequences of his actions in the moment may have been more developed than not. Certainly there is some question as to his background which may come to light as the judge debates whether or not to release his county social services record. Still, I cannot help but wonder if the push to have Lane tried as an adult has less to do with a reasoned philosophy of legal culpability and more to do with the blood lust of the community on behalf of the victims. After all, it is hardly overly cynical to suggest that Lane's crime warrants national attention and judicial rigor not because three people died but because they died in a white, suburban high school. (Based on CDC numbers, an average of eighty-four nameless, faceless people die every day in America from violence involving guns--some legal, most not.) Aside from race and affluence, what makes these deaths so heinous is that they were children, in a state of presumed innocence, whose lives did not deserve to be cut short when they had so much growing and developing left to do. I submit, that T. J. Lane, no less a child than his victims, deserves the same consideration.

J. W. McGarvey: On Scripture

The following is part of an ongoing commentary on J. W. McGarvey's Sermons Delivered in Louisville Kentucky. For an introduction to and table of contents for the series, see Happy Birthday, J. W.
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It is both ironic and unfortunate that J. W. McGarvey’s collection of sermons should begin with the address entitled “Inspiration of the Scriptures.” It is ironic because this opening salvo in his Sermons Delivered in Louisville, Kentucky was in fact given before the YMCA of the University of Missouri. It is unfortunate because, in spite of my admiration for McGarvey and the great deal of inspiration I draw from him, there could hardly be a subject on which we differ more completely or more profoundly than the inspiration of Scripture. With dry, scientific precision that has fallen out of favor in our contemporary culture of sensationalism, McGarvey seeks to demonstrate that Scripture is inspired, that this inspiration is self-evident, and that it grounds the authority of Scripture. I have no qualms, necessarily, with the first two purposes (though I imagine McGarvey and I would differ over precisely what all the relevant terms mean), but it has been my longstanding mission to correct the erroneous notion in American Christianity that scriptural authority is rooted in special inspiration. McGarvey specifically situates his claim in response to emerging documentary theories of Old Testament authorship and new historical assertions about the authors of the Gospels. With the benefit of hindsight, we know that many of the bloated claims of late nineteenth century scholars require extreme qualification if not outright rejection. For McGarvey, however, there can be only one reply: Scripture is the work of the traditional authors under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. While I think there is value to the sermon outside this main (but misguided) theme, in historical fairness to McGarvey it seems necessary to at least outline his argument.

McGarvey has little trouble establishing from Scripture that the Bible is inspired and passes over that task without fanfare. The main body of his message is dedicated to establishing the self-evident nature of biblical inspiration, a fact which, for him, is manifest in the peculiar nature of the Scriptures. Making his focus specifically the historical books of the New Testament, McGarvey endeavors to show that—deviations in personal style not withstanding—there is a common character to the biblical text which is entirely unprecedented “almost from time immemorial.” He notes the brevity with which the authors write and their calmness in treating extraordinary events. He marvels at their candor about facts which one would expect to be glossed over and their silence about the events and topics the reader most wants to know. Consistent with the spirit of his times, McGarvey even appeals to the quasi-miraculous ability of Scripture to affect good in the world, more or less independently of human agency. With gusto, he exhorts his young listeners to seize hold of the foundational truth of biblical inspiration and to carry their infallible text into battle, into “the field of debate with the ablest of its enemies.” Many of McGarvey’s arguments about a common and unique character can be countered in modern times by discoveries of ancient documents with similar features. To his audience, however, McGarvey was almost certainly convincing.

There is no surprise there; as almost always the case, it is easiest to persuade those who already agree with your position. There is a more essential truth about the Gospel as it is presented in Scriptures that underlies McGarvey’s message and which, I would suggest, is fruitful for ongoing consideration. Regardless of our moment in history and regardless of the culture we inhabit, there is a strong sense when reading Scripture that it refuses to conform to our expectations. Of course, this sense would undoubtedly have been less pronounced to the original audience, but I suspect there are common features of the human condition which come to Scripture with a set of expectations to which the text refuses to conform. McGarvey hits on at least two which possibly have universal application: the reticence of Scripture and the absence of speculation.

With regard to the first, McGarvey marvels at the great omissions in Scripture, its refusal to answer the questions which seem naturally foremost in the mind. He offers, as one example, the extensive treatment given to the martyrdom of Stephen and the equally brief report of the martyrdom of James. Without in any way trying to diminish Stephen, McGarvey rightly observes that the death of James ought naturally to assume a higher priority in the Christian narrative. After all, James was not only one of the twelve but one of three members of Jesus’ “inner circle” (if it is meaningful to talk about such a thing). His death certainly meant more to the Jerusalem community and to the church at large than Stephen’s who is, in narrative terms, merely a flash in the pan. It could be that the original audience had already heard the story of James and needed to be told of the trials of Stephen. More likely, the martyrdom of Stephen functions in the Lukan scheme in important ways that the death of James does not. In either case, there is a longing on the part of any interested reader for a fairer treatment of the material. The lust is always for just a little more information where something is suspiciously lacking, in spite of the knowledge that a comprehensive story would fill the earth. Whether it is glaring omissions, such as the entire adolescence of Jesus, or more subtle silences, the Bible by design or by necessity firmly declares: “You will know this much and no more.”

Similarly, there is a marked rejection on the part of the biblical authors to engage in the kind of speculation that has characterized most great religious thought since. McGarvey speaks of it as the infallibility of the biblical authors, but, when the baggage that term carries is removed, what he is really interested in highlighting is how more-than-human the biblical authors sound. “On all subjects and on all occasions they speak with a confidence which knows no hesitation, and which admits no possibility of a mistake.” With none of the characteristic tentativeness with which all authors subsequent (and many parabiblical authors previous) write, the biblical authors do not invite us to question whether they are right or wrong. They leave no space for disagreement (even in Paul’s insistence that Christians should have space for disagreement), no wiggle room where often times we would want it most. “Was this the result of stupidity and of overweening self-conciousness?” McGarvey thinks not, and I am inclined to agree. He suggests it was inspiration; I suppose it was confidence in the messiah being proclaimed. In either case, people in every time—and increasingly in our age of customization—have always demanded room to maneuver and, if they are wise, have always been proportionally qualified in their assertions as they become increasingly grandiose. (A statement, perhaps, on the wisdom or folly of American politicians.) The biblical authors never offer speculations, however; they offer declarations “on some themes which have baffled the powers of all thinkers, such as the nature of God, his eternal purposes, his present will, angels, disembodied human spirits…”

McGarvey’s list goes on, as could a list of the ways Scripture refuses to bow to our expectations of it. Like Pharisees bring questions to Christ, we find our own demands of Scripture paradoxically and simultaneously met and rebuffed. It answers us in riddles or on questions we had never thought to ask; it answers us with stories we cannot shake and commands we cannot meet (or help but meet because they are commanded of us). Given what it purports to be, the Bible is spectacularly troublesome book. It lacks the fluidity and vagueness of a loosely defined religious philosophy such as many found in the East or manifesting now in the West. It lacks the clarity and exhaustiveness of legal codes, past or present. It demands that we balance its spirit with its letter and recognize that the two are inseparable. Ultimately, it is an icon which directs us to a God who is at once fundamentally inaccessible and lovingly beckoning us to Himself. Of course, this was the not the message McGarvey primarily aimed at conveying, but I would like to think that his image of a Scripture which pointed to the Holy Spirit as its ultimate author would admit an understanding of the text whose unusual nature served as a vehicle for encountering an unusual Father.