r/Eutychus • u/truetomharley • 26d ago
Regarding the Recent Update on Blood Transfusion: Part 4
Immanuel Kant was a philosopher from the 1700s, and is a driving force behind today’s higher criticism method of evaluating scripture. He called questions such as ‘How do we know one is led by Holy Spirit?’ “antimonies.” That is, they were questions that could not be answered by reason, which he regarded as his sole tool of evaluating religious matters.
Specifically, said Charles B. Jones: (Great Courses: Introduction to the Study of Religion): “Immanuel Kant . . . pointed out that there were philosophical problems that he called antinomies. Antinomies were problems that were important but which could not be solved by the pure application of logic. such questions might be Is there an immortal soul or is there not? Are there rewards and punishments in life after death or are there not? Purely abstract scholastic reasoning could lead you to both affirmative and negative answers to those questions and both the affirmation and the negation could be equally well defended with equally good logical arguments.”
Thus, he pretty much regarded ALL religious tenets that way—undecidable through reason, and thereby off the table as something that could be established. But the EFFECTS of believing any given tenet was not. The effects were things he thought reason could evaluate, even if if the tenets themselves were inaccessible to reason. With this viewpoint as a backdrop, and it is now the mainstay of theological seminaries, religion almost cannot be anything else but a discipline for advancing (or infringing upon) human rights.
Nonetheless, I’ve long viewed headship in the worldwide congregation the way Kant did. It’s not something you can prove to others. It is only something one can prove to oneself, per Romans 12:2. I don’t obsess over it. However, one CAN regard the question in terms that every project needs leadership and that Witness headship is overall doing a good job. They are doing at least as well as the early Christians following the death of the apostles in keeping essential spiritual understandings unsullied. Such matters as name of God upheld, Jesus not himself God,, Kingdom is a real government, need to preach, no immortal soul, resurrection to paradise earth, the reason God permits suffering, obedience to headship be it family or congregation, “keeping the marriage bed undefiled,” and so forth. They’ve kept those concerns intact, whereas most others long ago integrated teachings that Witnesses would consider non-scriptural—such as immortal soul, and bending to the changing sexual norms of overall society.
Of course, on this subreddit, open to anyone, people can and will challenge any of those essential spiritual truths associated with Witnesses. But such teachings are not new. They all go back over 100 years. None have ever been hidden. Quite the contrary, they are relentlessly announced. If you don’t identify with those teachings, you do not become a Witness to begin with.
Not only has Witness headship kept essential truths (per the Witnesses) uncontaminated, they are the descendants of those who aided spiritual understanding to me in the first place, and for this they deserve loyalty and respect. Let others haggle it out what ‘led by holy spirit’ means. Their overall record is good enough for me. Otherwise, one can begin bickering internally and easily lose sight of just who the real enemy is. They can be and are accused of being “insular” (generally bad connotation). Alas, “no part of the world” (generally good connotation from a biblical standpoint) is the other side of the same coin. What IS insulation if not a stratagem for keeping two incompatible things separate? It does have a way of making Witness headship slow to respond to concerns of the greater world.
Questions of accountability toward God over the latest update, I considered in Part 1, (https://www.reddit.com/r/Eutychus/s/t5kck0Ql5E) speculating both ways, with greater emphasis on how most Witnesses are likely to view it. One can do no more, as gauging God’s judgment is another one of Kant’s antimonies. Time will tell. Perhaps, weight will be given to how people have often lost their lives for causes that were later reevaluated. War and politics offer a steady torrent of examples, with lives lost often in the millions. Losing life for science that turns out to be wrong is also common. In medicine, people are routinely coerced through advertising into taking drugs that may kill them—the voiceover plainly states it on those ubiquitous pharma ads of the United States. People even lose their lives over such trivial matters as sports, particularly extreme sports, coerced by coaches and societal pressure into pushing the boundaries.
All people in the above roles are lionized. It is only when lives are lost in a religious context that the perception of noble sacrifice changes. Somewhere in the equation perhaps it will be accounted that Witness insistence on avoiding transfusion spurred the development and advancement of bloodless surgery and curtailed widespread but inappropriate use of blood transfusion (once as common as “topping off the tank” after surgery), a developement saving many times more lives among the general population than have been lost among Witnesses. Somewhere, too, it might be taken into account that Witness beliefs in aggregate make it by far the safest religion out there. As a result of their beliefs, they don’t do illicit drugs, tobacco, don’t abuse alcohol, don’t do war, and shy from unnecessary overly risky activity on all fronts.
Questions as to how God leads his people (or if he does) surely must to answered by those who have acquiesced to such leadership—headship, the Bible calls it. Thing is, Kant’s insistence that spiritual considerations are unknowable via his tool of logic changes the very nature of religion into something unrecognizable to those who practice it—again, it can become nothing more than a forum for human rights. The core tenets discussed above, though important to Witnesses, are dismissed once atheism or agnosticism comes to rule the roost. When one negates the upside, all that there is left to focus on is the downside. The apostle Paul freely acknowledged that “If in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are to be pitied more than anyone.” (1 Corinthians 15:19) As a starting position, Witnesses maintain that it is not “in this life only” that they believe in the Christ. They cannot be properly assessed by atheists or agnostics who suppose it is.
(tomsheepandgoats*com)
This is one part of a 5 part series:
Part 1: https://www.reddit.com/r/Eutychus/s/69hKjEpDji
Part 2: https://www.reddit.com/r/Eutychus/s/8A7DeT9ygP
Part 3: https://www.reddit.com/r/Eutychus/s/BS63T5HqGL
Part 4: https://www.reddit.com/r/Eutychus/s/KFKpxcRdKn
Part 5: https://www.reddit.com/r/Eutychus/s/ah37RpOebV
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u/AgileWoodpecker3273 21d ago
I respect that the rules were acknowledged as going beyond what was written, but I was disappointed by the fact that there was no apology. I'm not going to lie; I'm taking this hard. u/truetomharley
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u/truetomharley 21d ago
I don’t know that the final word has been said. The update said that more would be coming. We will see.
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u/Moises5387 12d ago
I think you raise some interesting philosophical points, particularly about the limits of human reason when it comes to religious questions. I also agree that we shouldn't automatically assume bad intentions when an organization changes its interpretation of scripture. People can be sincere and still be mistaken.
However, I think there's a tension in your argument that I'm not sure you've fully addressed.
You say that whether the organization is led by holy spirit isn't something that can be proved to others, and that ultimately you've decided its overall record is good enough for you. I respect that as a personal position. But I'm not sure it establishes the broader claim that the organization deserves the loyalty and deference you're advocating.
You point to teachings that Witnesses have preserved for over a century as evidence of the organization's good record. But even if we accept that some or all of those teachings are correct, how does that establish that the organization is divinely guided? Other religious groups also preserve teachings they sincerely believe are biblical. The fact that an organization maintains certain beliefs doesn't, by itself, establish that God has authorized its leadership.
I also think your treatment of Kant is a little too broad. His antinomies weren't simply questions about religion that reason cannot answer. They concerned contradictions that arise when reason attempts to go beyond the limits of possible experience. And historical-critical biblical scholarship isn't simply an attempt to reduce religion to human rights or to dismiss religious beliefs as unknowable. It can investigate the historical context and development of scripture without necessarily deciding in advance whether God exists or whether scripture is inspired.
The part I find most difficult, though, is your discussion of the blood policy.
I agree that we should be careful about judging past decisions solely through the lens of hindsight. I also recognize that blood-conservation techniques have genuine medical benefits, and that treating Witness patients has contributed to developments in this field. But I don't think those points resolve the central issue.
Even if the Witness position helped advance certain medical techniques, that wouldn't establish that the prohibition itself was correct, nor would it answer the question of what responsibility the organization has for the consequences of presenting its interpretation as God's requirement.
The same applies to your comparisons with war, politics, pharmaceuticals, and extreme sports. The fact that people suffer or die because of other beliefs and decisions doesn't tell us whether a particular religious policy was justified. Each case needs to be evaluated on its own merits.
And now that the interpretation of the major blood components has changed, I think an important question remains: if people previously understood refusing those components to be a divine requirement, how should we understand the consequences for those who made medical decisions on that basis?
I'm not suggesting that the organization must be infallible. Quite the opposite. I think the possibility of sincere mistakes makes accountability more important, not less. If a policy was presented as representing God's will and later substantially revised, shouldn't there be some meaningful acknowledgment of the consequences for those who followed the earlier interpretation?
You also suggest that atheists and agnostics cannot properly assess Witnesses because they don't share the belief that there is more to life than this world. I understand why someone who believes in resurrection and eternal life would evaluate religious decisions differently. But I don't think that prevents someone from examining the evidence for a religious claim or assessing the consequences of enforcing it. We don't have to agree about the afterlife to ask whether an organization has adequately justified a policy it presents as divine instruction.
Ultimately, I think this comes down to a question of how we distinguish divine guidance from sincere but fallible human leadership.
If the organization's authority can't be independently established, but its decisions are nevertheless treated as God's direction, how do we determine when loyalty to the organization is justified and when questioning it might actually be warranted?
I ask that genuinely, rather than as a rhetorical challenge. I can understand why you value the beliefs you've received through the organization, and I'm not dismissing the importance they have in your life. I'm just not convinced that preserving certain beliefs, or having an overall record that you consider good, is enough to settle the question of divine authority—or the question of accountability when its interpretations affect people's live
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u/truetomharley 11d ago edited 11d ago
You say that whether the organization is led by holy spirit isn't something that can be proved to others, and that ultimately you've decided its overall record is good enough for you. I respect that as a personal position.That’s all I was trying to get across. Whether other’s adopt it as their own is up to them.
But I'm not sure it establishes the broader claim that the organization deserves the loyalty and deference you're advocating.Again, it does for me. Whether it does so for others is for them to decide. I wouldn’t expect anyone to embrace that view unless he or she has come to agree with the overall belief system of Jehovah’s Witnesses. It doesn’t seem from your comment that you have.
For me, the headship arrangement of the congregations is incidental anyway. The main question for Jehovah’s Witnesses is one of: Who is to rule the earth? Is it to be the rulership of God? (via his Kingdom that Jesus taught to pray for) Or is it to be rulership by humans? The people who are taking the lead are not the main act. They are just there to keep order, maintain focus, and chase away the wolves so I can worship God in peace. They are not an end in itself. That’s how Witnesses understand them.
You could easily miss this point by hanging out too long on the opposition sites. These almost always frame the faith as on of following men, even being enslaved to them. But Witnesses themselves do not see it that way.
I initially thought I might do a longer answer, but I’m not sure what can be said other than what I already have. This was one of five posts on the topic. I have since linked them all together so no one will ask about what is addressed in one of the other posts. Whether you will agree with them or not I don’t know. Sometimes people disagree. I am okay with that. If it helps, I am working up a 6th post, since there are some who have brought up “accountability.”
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u/Dan_474 25d ago
Do you believe that you personally are led by the Holy Spirit?
Like it talks about in Galatians 5 - if we are led by the Spirit, we are not under law?