The Hard Questions
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That's interesting;
i saw the same hint in Proverbs , labeled ''common sense''/LOL
Socialism promises heaven,, but delivers hell........................................................
I don't have to watch the video to know the answer...You, expiated, are new to life's mysteries and philosophies.
Enjoy your journey!
Does the Bible Oppose the Pro-Life Movement?
The following article is taken from the transcript of an October 20, 2021 R. Albert Mohler, Jr. podcast.
Is the Pro-Life Argument Based on a Mistranslation of Scripture?
Of Course Not, But the Washington Post Runs the Argument
Oddly enough, almost bizarrely enough, an article about the Scriptures and abortion found its way into the opinion section of The Washington Post. That's right. Before we turn to the article, let's just turn to the fact that the article exists. There's a lot to think about there. The Washington Post, one of the nation's most influential daily newspapers, and one of the most liberal newspapers as well, has published an opinion piece. And here's the headline, "An ancient mistranslation is now helping to threaten abortion rights." The subhead is this, "The Hebrew Bible didn't urge special penalties for causing a miscarriage."
The article was written by Danya Ruttenberg and Katey Zeh. And they're writing from the perspective of American Judaism, presumably a rather liberal American Judaism. The article begins, "Is it possible that more than 150 million people in the United States might lose some of their critical rights as enshrined in the Constitution at least in part due to a single word being mistranslated more than 2,000 years ago? It is." Now, even before we consider the bizarre biblical argument that presumably is being made here, let's look at the language used in that lead paragraph. We are told that constitutional rights are at stake for 150 million people. That means the half of the population who are women, but nonetheless, the next phrase is their critical rights, "as enshrined in the Constitution."
Now, if you're going to use a phrase like as enshrined in the Constitution, wouldn't you think that would require some reference in the Constitution to this supposed right? You and I both know it's not there. It has never been there, but that shows you at least what is presented as the constitutional logic of the pro-abortion movement and, beyond that, of the left wing of American public life. We know that so much public attention, thankfully, is being directed to abortion right now. And we know that the attention of the United States Supreme Court is being directed to abortion. The authors of this article go on to say that heartbeat bills, rather than being medically accurate, speak about embryonic cardiac activity, "attempting to equate an embryo with a fully formed baby."
That, by the way, is not what the pro-life movement is trying to do. We're not trying to say that a fetus at an early stage of development is exactly the same biologically as a fully formed baby. We understand exactly how pregnancy works. We understand how gestation works. We understand how human development works. The point of the pro-life movement, the absolutely mandatory point, is that an unborn baby is a baby and is a person and has a life worthy of our defense. Indeed, it demands it by its dignity and sanctity at every single point of development. We understand there are different points of development. We are not saying that at the beginning and the end, there is no change. We are saying that what doesn't change is personhood, worth of life, dignity and sanctity of life. But trying to explain the bigger issue behind the pro-life movement, these authors write, quote, "But. There are cultural and theological roots underpinning these anti-scientific attitudes and they are relevant, especially if part of that approach is based on an error," end quote. Well, here's their point. The entire pro-life movement is driven by theological roots.
Well, there's something to that argument, but of course, they oppose it. And they think that by exposing those theological roots, they can weaken the pro-life movement. But then they go on to say that the approach is based on an error. Remember, the headline said an ancient mistranslation. Well, we love the scripture. We love life. We understand that the scripture is the word of God. We understand that human beings are made in God's image. We had better take a closer look at this argument. These two writers tell us, "To understand what this translation mistake is and why it matters today, we must first go way back to the Hebrew Bible. The key verses are found in the book of Exodus." Now, the reference here to the Hebrew Bible is what we, as Christians, would refer to as the Old Testament. The reference to the Hebrew Bible is common now in Jewish experience.
But nonetheless, they go on to cite the book of Exodus. This is how these two writers translate this passage from Exodus: "When men fight, and one of them pushes a pregnant woman and a miscarriage results, but no other harm ensues, the one responsible shall be fined when the woman's husband demands compensation. The payment will be determined by judges, but if other harm ensues, the penalty shall be life for life." Now, they don't identify the verse, but if you know the Scriptures, you can quickly figure out we're looking here at Exodus 21 and especially at verse 22, but even as they offer what they suggest is the correction of a translation mistake, it is clear that ideology is driving their own offered translation. That shows up especially in the fact that they point to the translation as implying a miscarriage, two men who fight. One of them pushes a pregnant woman. And a miscarriage results.
Now, they go on to argue. And we're going to come back to that translation, but they go on to argue, "In other words, if a miscarriage is caused, the offender is fined for damages, but there is no other punishment as the fetus is not, in the Hebrew Bible, regarded as a person. If there is other harm, that is, if the pregnant person dies, the offender is seen as having committed manslaughter and punished accordingly." This, say these two writers, is how these verses are understood in Judaism from the rabbinic era of the Mishnah and Talmud through Jewish law today, where abortion is permitted and, if needed to save the life of the pregnant person, sometimes required. They then write, "The Torah," that means the first five books of the Bible, "does not indicate at what stage of gestation the fetus is when this miscarriage happens. As a result, in Jewish law traditionally, and today, personhood is regarded as beginning during birth with the first breath."
Now, there's a whole lot in that one paragraph, but they're telling us that according to the Jewish understanding, personhood comes at birth, but they also state that's not based upon any particular scripture. It's based upon rabbinical reasoning. Well, we are not as Christians bound by any kind of rabbinical reasoning. We are bound by the text. That takes us back to what they claim is a mistranslation there in Exodus 21, they claim. And remember, we're talking about this in this particular case because this is an article in The Washington Post. This was injected into our national conversation. It was intended to have the effect of telling people, perhaps even justices of the Supreme Court who tend, of course, to live in Washington, it's intended to tell them, look, the entire pro-life movement is based upon a Bible mistranslation. You can just ignore it.
Without going into textual complexities, it's very important to understand that their argument is that when the Hebrew Scriptures, that would be what we call the Old Testament, rightly so, when they are translated into Greek in what we know as the Septuagint and after that translated into Latin and other languages, we are told that there's a mistranslation because the implication here should clearly be they are arguing from the Hebrew texts that this is a baby who has died an unborn child but not considered a person because there is no penalty of murder that is assessed by the law of God in this context. Thus, they say, the rabbis have gone on with their reasoning in terms of their Jewish rationale that abortion is permitted. But the argument here is that evangelical Christians and Roman Catholics have gone with a mistranslation and based upon this text to come to the conclusion that we are talking about an unborn person, but then again, what they give they take away in their own argument because they recognize that most evangelicals and Roman Catholics aren't really thinking of this text at all.
For example, later in the article, they write this, which contradicts their entire point, "In discussions regarding scripture and abortion among conservative Christian theologians and ethicists, this particular verse is rarely cited or explored." So why are we talking about it? Well, we're talking about it because these authors are arguing that the Roman Catholic and evangelical argument in defense of human life is based upon what they claim is a mistranslation of the Hebrew text and then theological logic applied by Christians, including Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas and later pro-life Christian thinkers and theologians. The argument is they have all been based upon this verse, whether they know it or not. And the verse was mistranslated. The pro-life movement is a theological mistake based upon a misreading of the Hebrew text of the Bible.
But then they just have to go on and acknowledge, you know, Roman Catholic theologians and evangelicals don't cite this verse and may not even be thinking of it in reference to their pro-life positions, but it's back there. In other words, they're making a political point, but they're also making a translation point. They're making a textual point about this verse of scripture. Now, here is where I have to draw upon some Hebrew experts to make the issue clear. As you look at the Hebrew word that is translated by these two authors as miscarriage, it's been translated that way before, it actually means in the Hebrew "and the baby comes out," or "the child comes out." That is to say that when two men fight, and one of them pushes down a pregnant woman and the child comes out, well, then it says the penalty. But as these Hebrew scholars have pointed out, when it says the child then comes out, it doesn't say that the child does not come out alive.
I'm really not going to give this article much more attention. I am going to give the issue attention. First of all, I just want to say, look, it's really, really interesting and informative that someone thought this article would be helpful. It's also interesting to note that at least some people are trying to say, if you're going to try to defeat the pro-life argument, you better try to nullify the voice of scripture, but here's where I want to speak to Christians. I want to speak to those who believe in the sanctity and dignity of human life. We need to keep in mind that our understanding of human dignity and the sanctity of life, the personhood of an unborn human child, that doesn't go back to just one particular verse that might or might not have been mistranslated at any particular time. In this case, the mistranslation is a false charge.
And beyond that, the fact that the pro-life movement is based upon some kind of weak theological logic falls apart, because we need to recognize that the Christian church reasoning from scripture has had to come to the conclusion that if indeed human life begins, it begins somewhere. And you're going to have to say, when personhood begins, it has to begin somewhere. The pro-abortion movement doesn't want to say when that happens. It's interesting that these two Jewish authors say it happens at birth, but we know that that doesn't fit the Scriptures. And that's where we take a larger picture than just any one word. We're looking at the totality of Scripture. We're looking at how the scripture begins in Genesis by stating that human beings are made in God's image. But we also look to a text that just testifies, as we see happens over and over in scripture, of the personhood of the unborn child, a personhood that is known by God and affirmed by him.
In Psalm 139:13–16, the psalmist writes, "For you formed my inward parts. You covered me in my mother's womb. I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvelous are your works. And that my soul knows very well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in secret and skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Your eyes saw my substance being yet unformed. And in your book, they were all written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them." The psalmist is saying here as a word of praise and humble acknowledgement before God, before anyone knew me, you knew me. You knew me from the very beginning when you knitted me together in my mother's womb. There is ample testimony, both in the explicit text of scripture and in the narrative of scripture, in the totality of Scripture, to understand the sanctity and dignity of unborn human life, the personhood of unborn human life.
Just consider the fetal John, that is, the man who would become known as John the Baptist, who at the point that he was inside his mother's womb leapt in that womb in the presence of Mary, who was carrying the unborn Lord Jesus Christ. Just put all that together. You understand why the Christian church faithfully has reasoned back to the very moment of fertilization to understand that it is then that God sovereignly says, "Let there be life." And from that point onward, we must treat every single human life as a life worthy of dignity, a life possessing sanctity by God's creative act, a life that demands our defense.
For backup on Hebrew, I want to thank Southern Seminary, Boyce College Old Testament professors Duane Garrett, Adam Howell, and T.J. Betts.
The following article is taken from the transcript of an October 20, 2021 R. Albert Mohler, Jr. podcast.
Is the Pro-Life Argument Based on a Mistranslation of Scripture?
Of Course Not, But the Washington Post Runs the Argument
Oddly enough, almost bizarrely enough, an article about the Scriptures and abortion found its way into the opinion section of The Washington Post. That's right. Before we turn to the article, let's just turn to the fact that the article exists. There's a lot to think about there. The Washington Post, one of the nation's most influential daily newspapers, and one of the most liberal newspapers as well, has published an opinion piece. And here's the headline, "An ancient mistranslation is now helping to threaten abortion rights." The subhead is this, "The Hebrew Bible didn't urge special penalties for causing a miscarriage."
The article was written by Danya Ruttenberg and Katey Zeh. And they're writing from the perspective of American Judaism, presumably a rather liberal American Judaism. The article begins, "Is it possible that more than 150 million people in the United States might lose some of their critical rights as enshrined in the Constitution at least in part due to a single word being mistranslated more than 2,000 years ago? It is." Now, even before we consider the bizarre biblical argument that presumably is being made here, let's look at the language used in that lead paragraph. We are told that constitutional rights are at stake for 150 million people. That means the half of the population who are women, but nonetheless, the next phrase is their critical rights, "as enshrined in the Constitution."
Now, if you're going to use a phrase like as enshrined in the Constitution, wouldn't you think that would require some reference in the Constitution to this supposed right? You and I both know it's not there. It has never been there, but that shows you at least what is presented as the constitutional logic of the pro-abortion movement and, beyond that, of the left wing of American public life. We know that so much public attention, thankfully, is being directed to abortion right now. And we know that the attention of the United States Supreme Court is being directed to abortion. The authors of this article go on to say that heartbeat bills, rather than being medically accurate, speak about embryonic cardiac activity, "attempting to equate an embryo with a fully formed baby."
That, by the way, is not what the pro-life movement is trying to do. We're not trying to say that a fetus at an early stage of development is exactly the same biologically as a fully formed baby. We understand exactly how pregnancy works. We understand how gestation works. We understand how human development works. The point of the pro-life movement, the absolutely mandatory point, is that an unborn baby is a baby and is a person and has a life worthy of our defense. Indeed, it demands it by its dignity and sanctity at every single point of development. We understand there are different points of development. We are not saying that at the beginning and the end, there is no change. We are saying that what doesn't change is personhood, worth of life, dignity and sanctity of life. But trying to explain the bigger issue behind the pro-life movement, these authors write, quote, "But. There are cultural and theological roots underpinning these anti-scientific attitudes and they are relevant, especially if part of that approach is based on an error," end quote. Well, here's their point. The entire pro-life movement is driven by theological roots.
Well, there's something to that argument, but of course, they oppose it. And they think that by exposing those theological roots, they can weaken the pro-life movement. But then they go on to say that the approach is based on an error. Remember, the headline said an ancient mistranslation. Well, we love the scripture. We love life. We understand that the scripture is the word of God. We understand that human beings are made in God's image. We had better take a closer look at this argument. These two writers tell us, "To understand what this translation mistake is and why it matters today, we must first go way back to the Hebrew Bible. The key verses are found in the book of Exodus." Now, the reference here to the Hebrew Bible is what we, as Christians, would refer to as the Old Testament. The reference to the Hebrew Bible is common now in Jewish experience.
But nonetheless, they go on to cite the book of Exodus. This is how these two writers translate this passage from Exodus: "When men fight, and one of them pushes a pregnant woman and a miscarriage results, but no other harm ensues, the one responsible shall be fined when the woman's husband demands compensation. The payment will be determined by judges, but if other harm ensues, the penalty shall be life for life." Now, they don't identify the verse, but if you know the Scriptures, you can quickly figure out we're looking here at Exodus 21 and especially at verse 22, but even as they offer what they suggest is the correction of a translation mistake, it is clear that ideology is driving their own offered translation. That shows up especially in the fact that they point to the translation as implying a miscarriage, two men who fight. One of them pushes a pregnant woman. And a miscarriage results.
Now, they go on to argue. And we're going to come back to that translation, but they go on to argue, "In other words, if a miscarriage is caused, the offender is fined for damages, but there is no other punishment as the fetus is not, in the Hebrew Bible, regarded as a person. If there is other harm, that is, if the pregnant person dies, the offender is seen as having committed manslaughter and punished accordingly." This, say these two writers, is how these verses are understood in Judaism from the rabbinic era of the Mishnah and Talmud through Jewish law today, where abortion is permitted and, if needed to save the life of the pregnant person, sometimes required. They then write, "The Torah," that means the first five books of the Bible, "does not indicate at what stage of gestation the fetus is when this miscarriage happens. As a result, in Jewish law traditionally, and today, personhood is regarded as beginning during birth with the first breath."
Now, there's a whole lot in that one paragraph, but they're telling us that according to the Jewish understanding, personhood comes at birth, but they also state that's not based upon any particular scripture. It's based upon rabbinical reasoning. Well, we are not as Christians bound by any kind of rabbinical reasoning. We are bound by the text. That takes us back to what they claim is a mistranslation there in Exodus 21, they claim. And remember, we're talking about this in this particular case because this is an article in The Washington Post. This was injected into our national conversation. It was intended to have the effect of telling people, perhaps even justices of the Supreme Court who tend, of course, to live in Washington, it's intended to tell them, look, the entire pro-life movement is based upon a Bible mistranslation. You can just ignore it.
Without going into textual complexities, it's very important to understand that their argument is that when the Hebrew Scriptures, that would be what we call the Old Testament, rightly so, when they are translated into Greek in what we know as the Septuagint and after that translated into Latin and other languages, we are told that there's a mistranslation because the implication here should clearly be they are arguing from the Hebrew texts that this is a baby who has died an unborn child but not considered a person because there is no penalty of murder that is assessed by the law of God in this context. Thus, they say, the rabbis have gone on with their reasoning in terms of their Jewish rationale that abortion is permitted. But the argument here is that evangelical Christians and Roman Catholics have gone with a mistranslation and based upon this text to come to the conclusion that we are talking about an unborn person, but then again, what they give they take away in their own argument because they recognize that most evangelicals and Roman Catholics aren't really thinking of this text at all.
For example, later in the article, they write this, which contradicts their entire point, "In discussions regarding scripture and abortion among conservative Christian theologians and ethicists, this particular verse is rarely cited or explored." So why are we talking about it? Well, we're talking about it because these authors are arguing that the Roman Catholic and evangelical argument in defense of human life is based upon what they claim is a mistranslation of the Hebrew text and then theological logic applied by Christians, including Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas and later pro-life Christian thinkers and theologians. The argument is they have all been based upon this verse, whether they know it or not. And the verse was mistranslated. The pro-life movement is a theological mistake based upon a misreading of the Hebrew text of the Bible.
But then they just have to go on and acknowledge, you know, Roman Catholic theologians and evangelicals don't cite this verse and may not even be thinking of it in reference to their pro-life positions, but it's back there. In other words, they're making a political point, but they're also making a translation point. They're making a textual point about this verse of scripture. Now, here is where I have to draw upon some Hebrew experts to make the issue clear. As you look at the Hebrew word that is translated by these two authors as miscarriage, it's been translated that way before, it actually means in the Hebrew "and the baby comes out," or "the child comes out." That is to say that when two men fight, and one of them pushes down a pregnant woman and the child comes out, well, then it says the penalty. But as these Hebrew scholars have pointed out, when it says the child then comes out, it doesn't say that the child does not come out alive.
I'm really not going to give this article much more attention. I am going to give the issue attention. First of all, I just want to say, look, it's really, really interesting and informative that someone thought this article would be helpful. It's also interesting to note that at least some people are trying to say, if you're going to try to defeat the pro-life argument, you better try to nullify the voice of scripture, but here's where I want to speak to Christians. I want to speak to those who believe in the sanctity and dignity of human life. We need to keep in mind that our understanding of human dignity and the sanctity of life, the personhood of an unborn human child, that doesn't go back to just one particular verse that might or might not have been mistranslated at any particular time. In this case, the mistranslation is a false charge.
And beyond that, the fact that the pro-life movement is based upon some kind of weak theological logic falls apart, because we need to recognize that the Christian church reasoning from scripture has had to come to the conclusion that if indeed human life begins, it begins somewhere. And you're going to have to say, when personhood begins, it has to begin somewhere. The pro-abortion movement doesn't want to say when that happens. It's interesting that these two Jewish authors say it happens at birth, but we know that that doesn't fit the Scriptures. And that's where we take a larger picture than just any one word. We're looking at the totality of Scripture. We're looking at how the scripture begins in Genesis by stating that human beings are made in God's image. But we also look to a text that just testifies, as we see happens over and over in scripture, of the personhood of the unborn child, a personhood that is known by God and affirmed by him.
In Psalm 139:13–16, the psalmist writes, "For you formed my inward parts. You covered me in my mother's womb. I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvelous are your works. And that my soul knows very well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in secret and skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Your eyes saw my substance being yet unformed. And in your book, they were all written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them." The psalmist is saying here as a word of praise and humble acknowledgement before God, before anyone knew me, you knew me. You knew me from the very beginning when you knitted me together in my mother's womb. There is ample testimony, both in the explicit text of scripture and in the narrative of scripture, in the totality of Scripture, to understand the sanctity and dignity of unborn human life, the personhood of unborn human life.
Just consider the fetal John, that is, the man who would become known as John the Baptist, who at the point that he was inside his mother's womb leapt in that womb in the presence of Mary, who was carrying the unborn Lord Jesus Christ. Just put all that together. You understand why the Christian church faithfully has reasoned back to the very moment of fertilization to understand that it is then that God sovereignly says, "Let there be life." And from that point onward, we must treat every single human life as a life worthy of dignity, a life possessing sanctity by God's creative act, a life that demands our defense.
For backup on Hebrew, I want to thank Southern Seminary, Boyce College Old Testament professors Duane Garrett, Adam Howell, and T.J. Betts.
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What Should a Christian Make of Halloween?
...I recognize many Christians, Christian families, young people are trying to think through what Halloween means. I just want to give you some ammunition, some theological and historical ammunition for thinking this issue through. And by the way, Nicholas Rogers is helpful for this on the historical side. He's a professor of history, York University in Canada. He's written the book Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night. Now the issue of pagan roots just needs to be considered a bit... what pagan roots and what's the continuation of the influence of those roots. The main pagan route is the Celtic festival of Samhain. And that came at the end of summer, the beginning of fall. It was a harvest festival. As Rogers explains, "paired with the Feast of Beltane, which celebrated the life generating powers of the sun, Samhain belonged to winter and the dark nights ahead."
Now there are debates even now as to the extent to which that festival was a celebration of the dead, but nonetheless, even if that was not a part of the ancient Celtic paganism that produced the festival, it became such, relatively quickly. But at least the celebration or the commemoration of the dead was there. As Rogers writes, the idea of Samhain as a festival of the dead and as a time of supernatural intensity, heralding the onset of winter, it was there from the very beginning. Harold Myra, once with the magazine Christianity Today, years ago, argues that the pagan roots of Halloween were well known to the Christians of the past. He wrote this "more than a thousand years ago, Christians confronted pagan rights, appeasing the Lord of Death and evil spirits." "Halloween's unsavory beginnings," he writes, "preceded Christ's birth when the Druids in what is now Britain and France observed the end of summer with sacrifices to the gods."
It was the beginning of the Celtic year and they believe that Samhain, the Lord of Death, sent evil spirits abroad to attack humans who could escape only by assuming disguises and looking like evil spirits themselves. Well, if that looks like your street right now in suburban America or your downtown walk, the explanation is, there are continuities and Christians need to understand those continuities. Now, there are people who will say, well, what about Christmas? There were ancient winter festivals that at least have some influence. And there are those who've argued even with the evergreen tree or what came from the German tradition known as the Christmas tree. There are those who say, look to the celebration of the resurrection that Christians observe in the spring and you can look back to the fact that even the name Easter has some roots in ancient pagan practices.
Yes, but here's the point. Here's the point. You can make any number of debates about Christmas and the festival of the resurrection. And I'm speak as an unreconstructed Protestant here. But the point I'm going to make is, that both of those festivals during the time of the Christian year are filled with Christian content. The whole point of Christmas is to celebrate the incarnation of the Lord, Jesus Christ, the word become flesh. The whole point of the festival of the resurrection is to point to the historical truth that Jesus Christ is raised from the dead, bodily, physically, historically raised from the dead. But when you're looking at Halloween, there is no filling with any kind of Christian content. And the reason for that is actually symbol. Given the pagan roots, the specific pagan roots, and the attachment to the celebration of death and to the spirits of the dead, there is nothing that Christians can do to build upon this particular holiday.
Now, where does that leave us? Well, it leaves us by the way, looking for the next day. And again, Halloween, at least in its common expression now, even as the word has come into the English language, comes from a shortening of, or a corruption or mispronunciation of All Hallows' Eve. All Hallows means all souls. And at least on the old historic Christian calendar, All Souls Day was a Christian Day of celebrating the power of Christ over death, the power of the resurrection over death, the communion of the saints, All Souls Day. It was a declaration of Christian truth. The night before was All Hallows, or All Souls Eve and that became just conflated into Halloween. Again, the average person on your block with all the Halloween decorations has no idea that Halloween actually comes from All Hallows Eve and points to a Christian celebration.
But the point is, Halloween has now been associated with Samhain, it has now been taken back to the Celtic roots and it has all of the dark elements, albeit highly commercialized and stylized these days, those roots are still there. Now, one thing for us to think about is that the custom of wearing costumes, particularly costumes imitating evil spirits is indeed tied to those ancient pagan practices of the Celtic culture. Harold Myra summarized it this way, "Most of our Halloween practices can be traced back to the old pagan rights and superstitions. But even as you're looking at, say the jump from an ancient Halloween to a more modern Halloween, one of the things we should note is that in recent years, Halloween has not grown tamer, it has grown darker. We have gone from 1966 and, "It's the great pumpkin Charlie Brown" to a succession of slasher movies. And to those that are even darker than the slasher movies of the 1980s and '90s.
As I've often argued, the fascination with the occult comes as America has been sliding into a post-Christian secular condition, while the courts are removing all theistic references in America's public square, the void is being filled with a pervasive fascination with evil paganism and new forms of occultism, that as we see, new forms of occultism basically have very long traditions and ties to old occultism.
Well for Christians, what does all this mean? Well, for one thing, Halloween is at least as a cultural occasion, an opportunity for us to remember that evil spirits are real, that the devil Satan is real and that the scripture says he will seize every opportunity to trumpet his own celebrity. Perhaps the best response to the devil at Halloween is that offered by the great reformer Martin Luther. He said, "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him for, he cannot bear scorn."
Well, what you're looking at these days in this cultural celebration is not a scorning of the devil and evil, but rather an attempt to try to commercialize it, to try to domesticate it and in some ways to try to celebrate it. So how does that come down to what Christian parents should and should not do? I want to state this emphatically, you should not, must not, allow your children nor yourselves to portray in any way the evil forces and the spirits of the dead as attractive or deserving of that kind of attention, much less celebration. There must be no hint of any kind of occultic complication or involvement. Now, what does that mean? If you have a little boy dressed up as a cowboy or dressed up as policeman, what do you have with a little girl who's dressed up as a princess? Well, I am not going to dictate what that means for individual Christians. I'm simply going to say there can be no confusion about the gospel and the dark side and the infinite eternal distinction between the two.
But that's Halloween. And you can find many resources. I've written about this at my website, albertmohler.com.
R. Albert Mohler, Jr.
...I recognize many Christians, Christian families, young people are trying to think through what Halloween means. I just want to give you some ammunition, some theological and historical ammunition for thinking this issue through. And by the way, Nicholas Rogers is helpful for this on the historical side. He's a professor of history, York University in Canada. He's written the book Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night. Now the issue of pagan roots just needs to be considered a bit... what pagan roots and what's the continuation of the influence of those roots. The main pagan route is the Celtic festival of Samhain. And that came at the end of summer, the beginning of fall. It was a harvest festival. As Rogers explains, "paired with the Feast of Beltane, which celebrated the life generating powers of the sun, Samhain belonged to winter and the dark nights ahead."
Now there are debates even now as to the extent to which that festival was a celebration of the dead, but nonetheless, even if that was not a part of the ancient Celtic paganism that produced the festival, it became such, relatively quickly. But at least the celebration or the commemoration of the dead was there. As Rogers writes, the idea of Samhain as a festival of the dead and as a time of supernatural intensity, heralding the onset of winter, it was there from the very beginning. Harold Myra, once with the magazine Christianity Today, years ago, argues that the pagan roots of Halloween were well known to the Christians of the past. He wrote this "more than a thousand years ago, Christians confronted pagan rights, appeasing the Lord of Death and evil spirits." "Halloween's unsavory beginnings," he writes, "preceded Christ's birth when the Druids in what is now Britain and France observed the end of summer with sacrifices to the gods."
It was the beginning of the Celtic year and they believe that Samhain, the Lord of Death, sent evil spirits abroad to attack humans who could escape only by assuming disguises and looking like evil spirits themselves. Well, if that looks like your street right now in suburban America or your downtown walk, the explanation is, there are continuities and Christians need to understand those continuities. Now, there are people who will say, well, what about Christmas? There were ancient winter festivals that at least have some influence. And there are those who've argued even with the evergreen tree or what came from the German tradition known as the Christmas tree. There are those who say, look to the celebration of the resurrection that Christians observe in the spring and you can look back to the fact that even the name Easter has some roots in ancient pagan practices.
Yes, but here's the point. Here's the point. You can make any number of debates about Christmas and the festival of the resurrection. And I'm speak as an unreconstructed Protestant here. But the point I'm going to make is, that both of those festivals during the time of the Christian year are filled with Christian content. The whole point of Christmas is to celebrate the incarnation of the Lord, Jesus Christ, the word become flesh. The whole point of the festival of the resurrection is to point to the historical truth that Jesus Christ is raised from the dead, bodily, physically, historically raised from the dead. But when you're looking at Halloween, there is no filling with any kind of Christian content. And the reason for that is actually symbol. Given the pagan roots, the specific pagan roots, and the attachment to the celebration of death and to the spirits of the dead, there is nothing that Christians can do to build upon this particular holiday.
Now, where does that leave us? Well, it leaves us by the way, looking for the next day. And again, Halloween, at least in its common expression now, even as the word has come into the English language, comes from a shortening of, or a corruption or mispronunciation of All Hallows' Eve. All Hallows means all souls. And at least on the old historic Christian calendar, All Souls Day was a Christian Day of celebrating the power of Christ over death, the power of the resurrection over death, the communion of the saints, All Souls Day. It was a declaration of Christian truth. The night before was All Hallows, or All Souls Eve and that became just conflated into Halloween. Again, the average person on your block with all the Halloween decorations has no idea that Halloween actually comes from All Hallows Eve and points to a Christian celebration.
But the point is, Halloween has now been associated with Samhain, it has now been taken back to the Celtic roots and it has all of the dark elements, albeit highly commercialized and stylized these days, those roots are still there. Now, one thing for us to think about is that the custom of wearing costumes, particularly costumes imitating evil spirits is indeed tied to those ancient pagan practices of the Celtic culture. Harold Myra summarized it this way, "Most of our Halloween practices can be traced back to the old pagan rights and superstitions. But even as you're looking at, say the jump from an ancient Halloween to a more modern Halloween, one of the things we should note is that in recent years, Halloween has not grown tamer, it has grown darker. We have gone from 1966 and, "It's the great pumpkin Charlie Brown" to a succession of slasher movies. And to those that are even darker than the slasher movies of the 1980s and '90s.
As I've often argued, the fascination with the occult comes as America has been sliding into a post-Christian secular condition, while the courts are removing all theistic references in America's public square, the void is being filled with a pervasive fascination with evil paganism and new forms of occultism, that as we see, new forms of occultism basically have very long traditions and ties to old occultism.
Well for Christians, what does all this mean? Well, for one thing, Halloween is at least as a cultural occasion, an opportunity for us to remember that evil spirits are real, that the devil Satan is real and that the scripture says he will seize every opportunity to trumpet his own celebrity. Perhaps the best response to the devil at Halloween is that offered by the great reformer Martin Luther. He said, "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him for, he cannot bear scorn."
Well, what you're looking at these days in this cultural celebration is not a scorning of the devil and evil, but rather an attempt to try to commercialize it, to try to domesticate it and in some ways to try to celebrate it. So how does that come down to what Christian parents should and should not do? I want to state this emphatically, you should not, must not, allow your children nor yourselves to portray in any way the evil forces and the spirits of the dead as attractive or deserving of that kind of attention, much less celebration. There must be no hint of any kind of occultic complication or involvement. Now, what does that mean? If you have a little boy dressed up as a cowboy or dressed up as policeman, what do you have with a little girl who's dressed up as a princess? Well, I am not going to dictate what that means for individual Christians. I'm simply going to say there can be no confusion about the gospel and the dark side and the infinite eternal distinction between the two.
But that's Halloween. And you can find many resources. I've written about this at my website, albertmohler.com.
R. Albert Mohler, Jr.
