How to Do Apologetics Correctly
In his next podcast, Alejandro does not address the substance of the debate but instead offers an introduction in which he analyzes the method I have used throughout my interventions. On this occasion, then, I will dedicate my response to setting out precisely the apologetic method I have been employing.
Citations versus Theological Reasoning
It is no coincidence that Alejandro begins here, since one of the strongest points of my argument is precisely that I can support it with a hundred — and certainly many more — texts from the Bible, the early Church, the saints and Fathers of the Church, the Magisterium, the Popes, theology manuals, spiritual writings, and even the private revelations approved by the Church; while Alejandro has not been able to find a single magisterial text affirming what he holds — namely, that God never punishes. And since he has not been able to find one, he tries to discredit this methodology as a way of removing one of my strongest arguments, employing a few fallacious devices that some readers without debate experience may not notice. Let us proceed:
The Importance of Arguing from Scripture and the Magisterium of the Church
Arguing by citing the Bible and the Magisterium of the Church is not an incorrect method. One can verify this by examining the way in which the saints and Fathers of the Church have debated throughout Christian history. Some have cited Sacred Scripture so abundantly that it is said: if we had lost the entire Bible, we could recover it solely from the quotations found in their writings. Moreover, it is also important to cite the Magisterium, which is the authentic interpreter of Revelation. Unfortunately — and this must be acknowledged — a large part of the Catholic faithful lack the biblical knowledge needed to argue in this way, and when they encounter a Protestant with a thorough knowledge of the Bible who cites it fluently, they feel overwhelmed. It is only natural that this creates a certain antipathy toward those who argue in that manner.
The problem is that at this point Alejandro has not explained what he means by “punishment.” The only thing he has said, in very general terms, is that he understands “punishment” to imply that God acts out of hatred or vengeance — as if inflicting suffering were an end in itself. But that is not the Catholic understanding of punishment, and it is not the meaning the Church has used throughout the centuries.
In this regard, when a Protestant friend comes to me arguing from the Bible, I do not dismiss his texts on the grounds that he is merely citing, but I turn to the very same Bible that he already accepts as the word of God to show him how that text, interpreted in its context and in harmony with the totality of Revelation, must be understood differently.
The Importance of Theological Reasoning
And this is where Alejandro is right: it is also important to reason theologically — but without falling into the error of the dialectic of opposites, in which apparently contradictory extremes are set against each other and one is chosen at the expense of the other. It is not et-et but aut-aut. The question, then, is not about citing without reasoning, but neither is it about reasoning while dispensing with proper citation when necessary.
And if one reviews my interventions carefully, it will be evident that I did not limit myself to citing texts without reflecting and reasoning upon them. I therefore reiterate that I am quite willing to continue doing so as I proceed through these chapters. I will give one example that should still be fresh in the memory of those who have followed this debate: if you recall my first intervention, I began by citing Benedict XVI in a text in which he stated in his very own words that, because there have been inconsistent Christians in the world, God has had to resort to punishment frequently. Alejandro responded by claiming that this and other citations were taken out of context because the Pope was there referring to the God of the Old Testament, who in his own opinion had revealed himself as “punishing.” To this I proceeded to reason about the text and demonstrated that it was his theological reasoning that was mistaken, because it was obvious that the Pope was not referring to people of the Old Testament, since he was speaking of “Christians” and of “the peoples who had received the announcement of the Gospel.” I ask: who was it, in that exchange, who applied theological reasoning to those texts from the Pope?
The reader will find many more examples upon reviewing the interventions.
How Citations Should Not Be Used
But what is indeed an incorrect method of citation — and I say this with all respect and in a fraternal spirit — is the method Alejandro employs, both in his early interventions and in subsequent ones: he paraphrases and then attributes to the Popes words they never actually said, placing in their mouths specific quotations that are not their own.
I will give only two examples and leave the reader the task of finding more, since this is essentially Alejandro’s standard method. In his second podcast, Alejandro maintained:
“as Pope John Paul II says in Dives in Misericordia — that is, in Rich in Mercy — the passages in which God punishes and even puts to the test are not comprehensible in the light of the New Testament. That is what he says: they are not comprehensible.”
A reader who has not read the document — and this will certainly be the case for the majority, since it is quite lengthy and runs to over fifty pages — will not notice that the Pope does not actually “say” that there; rather, it is Alejandro’s personal “interpretation.” At the time, I pointed out that not only is this not what the Pope says there, but that throughout the entire document the word “punishment” does not appear even once — neither to affirm positively that God punishes, nor to deny it. By this I do not mean to claim outright that the idea could not be implicit somewhere in the text; but I do require that one first cite verbatim and then proceed to interpret and reason from the actual text — not, as he has done, by citing after having already “reasoned,” leaving us with paraphrased and distorted quotations.
A similar incident occurred not in his podcast but on Alejandro’s own Facebook page, where he published an Angelus of Pope John Paul II in which God supposedly said He does not punish. When readers of that page read it, they found nothing of the sort:
Julio: “In which part of the message does he say it? I cannot find it anywhere.”
Claudia: “Julio, I share your same astonishment. Where does he say such a thing? They put words in the Holy Father’s mouth that he never said. It is terrible.”
Raúl: “Alejandro, excuse me — where does it say that God does not punish?”
Sulding: “…And in this Angelus I don’t see any reference to punishment.”
To this, Alejandro responded to one of them: “If you don’t see it, then you have no cause for doubt. Stick with Arráiz’s position if you prefer it.” In other words, he left his own readers confused, without resolving their questions.
I ask: Is this what is called applying “theological reasoning”? And if one reviews the history of his replies on Twitter, one will find the same approach: assertions without arguments, appeals to authority without demonstrating what those authorities actually said.
What Is Not Theological Reasoning
And here we come to another very important point: while it is indeed important to reason theologically, that does not mean that every theological reasoning is correct. In the case of Alejandro’s theological reasoning, what I have noticed is that he consistently employs what I identified as the “fallacy of the dialectic of opposites” — presenting as mutually exclusive concepts that are perfectly complementary.
Why It Is Also Important to Clarify What Is Meant by Punishment
Alejandro also objects that I have resorted to the Royal Spanish Academy Dictionary to clarify the meaning of the word “punishment,” taking this as an attempt to corner him and deny him the ability to define terms his own way. But recourse to the dictionary is not an attempt to corner anyone; it is simply an attempt to clarify what the word actually means.
The problem is that at this point Alejandro has not explained this. The only thing he has said in very general terms is that he understands punishment to create a commutative justice and therefore assumes that God cannot punish. He thus proceeds from a false premise, because although punishment does indeed involve the imposition of a penalty on someone who has committed a fault, it does not necessarily follow that this penalty must be “commutative.”
Commutative justice, which regulates the right order between one individual and another individual, cannot be applied in its full sense to God, because God is not subject to any law exterior to Himself. But this does not mean that God has no justice. It means that God’s justice operates on a higher plane than human justice, always ordered to the good of the sinner and to the restoration of the moral order.
Let us consider more examples taken from the New Testament to better understand temporal punishment as an act of God’s justice ordered to the good of man.
Let us analyze this event and apply the theological reasoning that Alejandro requires: Zechariah commits a fault (he doubts the angel’s word) — God imposes a punishment (He strikes him mute) — the punishment is temporary (it lasts until the birth of John the Baptist) — the punishment has a corrective and medicinal purpose (it invites Zechariah to reflect) — at the end of the punishment Zechariah recovers his speech and praises God (Lk 1:64). Could anyone seriously maintain that this is not a punishment? That it is merely a “neutral consequence”?
To these texts and other highly explicit ones in which it is stated that God punishes, Alejandro argues that what can be proven from them at most is that God corrects — not that He punishes in the full theological sense. But as we have seen, this objection rests on a false dichotomy: in the Catholic theological tradition, punishment includes correction as one of its essential dimensions. The two are not mutually exclusive.
