Questionnaire continued

Brother Danny said:

I think that your answers to 10,11,12,14,15 were particularly unsatisfactory:
{10) Not every wrong choice is damnatory.]}

“Clearly, the question is about those choices "with eternal consequences" which are ambiguous [including, was a dude 2000 years ago crucified "for my sins"?]”

i) A choice can have eternal consequences without being damnatory. My fathering kids, whether in or out of wedlock, has eternal consequences since they will live forever, whether in heaven or hell.

ii) Of course, John’s question was predicated on libertarian freewill, which I deny. From a predestinarian standpoint, the elect do make the right choice.

{11)The children were in better hands with God than in the hands of pagan parents and priests and rulers.}

“In the hands of an angry God who killed them?”

You are assuming that God was angry with the children. Such a general assumption was no part of my reply.

“You are setting up a false dichotomy here -- God is able to harden the heart of a Pharoah, to soften the heart of the believer, but God can't keep little kids from growing up (from age 4? from SUCKLING age??) to "avenge" their parents "execution" if the executioners take them home and raise them and love them? ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous. A "suckling" will avenge its parents by growing up and slaying its adopted parents? Ridiculous. Some "god of mercy".”

a) For a former minister, you’re remarkably ignorant of Scripture, which is, I suppose, one reason you’re a former minister.

In Scripture, mercy presupposes guilt. Mercy is not obligatory, otherwise it would cease to be mercy.

b) There is also such a thing as a merciful death. If I shoot a man who cannot free himself from a burning car, that’s an act of mercy.

c) You’re also choosing to play dumb. If I learn that my adoptive parents killed my real parents (as well as my older brothers), then, yes, that will naturally turn me against my adoptive parents.

d) When God softens the heart of a believer, he restores the believer’s natural affections.

You, however, are postulating the very opposite: a scenario in which God would suppress their natural sense of affection and allegiance to their real parents.

Your scenario is wholly artificial.

{11) God’s command served its purpose at that juncture of redemptive history.}

“Classic ad hoc non-answer. Used at any point where logic breaks down.”

Far from being ad hoc, the fact that ancient Israel had a special role to play in redemptive history, with the command to execute the Canaanites temporally indexed to that particular role at that particular stage of redemptive history, is a fundamental feature of OT theology.

Once again you betray your ignorance of Scripture.

{12) God, out of his goodness, chose to share his goodness with rational creatures (men and angels) capable of enjoying the gift of life.}

“And chose to create a devil, and a hell, and a tree which would render some of those "rational creatures" to an eternal punishment, which, again, makes one wonder whether God created for the creatures or for Itself, which you never answered (and no one can)

If for Itself, then God was lacking something, or desiring something, ie discontent to continue in Its perfect existence without creating, even foreseeing the [explicative deleted] that would hit the fan?”

a) I didn’t answer your question because your question wasn’t on the table. I was responding to Loftus questionnaire. You are posing a different question. I’m not in the habit of answering questions before the question is posed. Forgive my lack of precognition.

b) The fact that you substitute a different question is a bank-handed admission that my original answer met the challenge of John’s original question.

c) By contrast, you chose to ignore my four questions, although these were on the table at the time you responded.

d) God is the summum bonum. Hence, knowing God is the summum bonum.

Knowledge by acquaintance is often better than knowledge by description.

For example, it is better to know a woman (as a wife), than to know about a woman from a movie or newspaper or fashion magazine.

In addition, Certain goods are second-order goods, contingent on first-order goods. Mercy and justice presuppose sin and evil.

Certain divine attributes, like mercy and justice, can only be known at an existential level if there are sinners to whom justice or mercy may be shown.

It is a greater good that the elect should know the goodness of God in redemption and judgment as well as creation and providence.

As to the reprobate, they are justly condemned.

{Creation does nothing to disrupt the divine mode of subsistence.
“Perfection” is adjectival to a given mode of existence. There is nothing inherently “imperfect” in creation. It can be perfect for what it is.}

“Um, sure. So, simply put, was the "fall" a "disruption" of what was before sinless (and therefore "perfect" in that sense)? and why would god want to go from a perfect stasis where nothing existed but perfection and bliss, to an imperfect creation, where there is torment, pain, and suffering? You still don't even see this?”

a) We’ve already been over the subject of “perfection.” Perfect relative to what?

A state of affairs in which God alone existed would be a perfect state of affairs.

Yet that is not the only possible state of perfection. And God, in his goodness, chose to communicate a measure of his goodness to rational creatures, so that they might share in his beatitude.

b) Retributive justice is a good. Intrinsically good, in and of itself.

c) You are judging a piece of music half way through the performance. Is the composition perfect half way through the performance?

No, the perfection lies in the whole. In the relation of means to ends. The means are imperfect apart from the end to which they are adapted.

“Did God or did god not see the fall before the "foundations of the world" were laid? And yet, lay away God did? Is it better to have no pain and suffering and hell and eternal damnation, or to have them, along with whatever "good" comes out of it? According to you, it must be better, but if God [existed] were all-good, no amount of good can outweigh or "cancel out" the pain, suffering, and eternal torture God initiated.”

Yes, it is better, for reasons I’ve already given. Your assertion to the contrary is just that—an assertion, not an argument.

You seem to be equating the common good with the greater good. But this is false.

There can be a lesser good for a greater number as well as a greater good for a lesser number.

For example, what makes marital love special is that it’s exclusive and possessive.

Instead of loving every woman alike, every woman a little, you love one woman with a particular intensity.

{14. This is not a problem for Calvinism. The elect come to a saving knowledge of the Lord.}

“Would more people come to a "saving knowledge" if they knew that Jesus was a historical figure? That Jesus did miracles? Of course they would. Just like the people of Jesus' day, some of whom believed after seeing "signs and miracles" (meant to point that this was the Messiah). If Jesus had walked around picking His nose and making empty assertions, no one would've bought it. Raising the dead and such, though, are convincing. God does not bestow this same level of experiential, first-hand knowledge, or certainty, upon all men. In that way, 2 Peter is wrong when it says "God is not willing that any should perish", because if God felt like pulling his thumb from his divine orifice and sending even a single miracle my way, God knows I'd believe. Don't give me the "wicked and adulterous generation" BS, since:
1) that generation had a hell of a lot of supposed "signs"
2) Jesus did not refuse Thomas, but allowed him to touch his hands and sides, regardless of Thomas being less blessed than those who believe without seeing. Point is, Thomas wasn't cursed, just "less blessed", which is still a "saving faith"
3) All throughout the Bible, God did miracles to "confirm" things for people, and GOd is "no respecter of persons"? So while the disciples get to first-hand see Jesus resurrect, I have to take it on the authority of scripture and tradition and dogma? And this is "just" and "fair"? Romans 1 only says people know God exists, but no one can claim the knowledge of the Gospel (which produces "saving faith") is intrinsic to mankind (or else no need to "evangelize", eh?)”

a) Once again, you’re changing the subject. I was answering John’s question. The fact that you swap out your question for his is another tacit admission that my original answer met the challenge of his original question.

His question was predicated on the “hiddenness of God,” which, for those of us who are conversant with this objection, attempts to exploit the internal tension between God’s universal redemptive will and his local redemptive provision.

So this objection is internal to those theological systems which posit such a tension in the first place.

My Calvinism does not; hence, John’s objection is irrelevant to my own position.

You are free to mount a different objection, but let’s be clear on the fact that, in order to do so, you must relinquish John’s original objection.

As to your own objection, which withdraws the original question, and substitutes another, contrary objection:

b) Reformed theology freely admits that God could save more people if he wanted to.

But, according to Reformed theology, God is under no obligation to save sinners, and, indeed, sas good reasons not to save everyone, even though it lies within his power to do so.

So what you need is an argument to show that God ought to save more people than he has chosen to save.

c) Miracles, in and of themselves, do not generate saving faith. Unless there is a predisposition to believe the evidence, whether miraculous or not, no quality or quantity of evidence will overcome stubborn prejudice.

d) Not surprisingly, you misconstrue 2 Pet 3:9. But as Richard Bauckham, whose theological affinities lie with Moltmann rather than Calvin, has pointed out in his commentary on 2 Peter (the standard critical commentary on that epistle),

“God’s patience with his own people, delaying the final judgment to give them the opportunity of repentance, provides at least a partial answer to the problem of eschatological delay…The author remains close to his Jewish source, for in Jewish thought it was usually for the sake of the repentance of his own people that God delayed judgment” (312-313).

Given, once more, your ignorance of Scripture, it comes as no great surprise that you eventually left the faith.

e) As to your allusion to Acts 10:34, read in context, this has reference to the fact that membership is the New Covenant is not limited to Jews, but is open to Gentiles as well.

You have chosen to rip this verse out of its narrative and overgeneralize the immediate point in violence to original intent.

Yet again, you evince your ignorance of Scripture. You can quote it, but the meaning escapes you.

{15.This is not, in the first instance, a problem of ignorance, but ill-will. Culpable ignorance.}

“Wow. So, despite the fact that these people really believe they are seeking God, God just doesn't have the time to shift on his [expletive deleted] to a different butt cheek and whisper in their ear, "hey, stupid, I'm over here, not over there,"? Some loving and merciful God.”

The fact that idolaters are self-deluded is culpable rather than exculpatory. They worship false gods, not because the knowledge of the true God is inaccessible, but because they love sin more than they love the truth. So they worship gods that allow them to indulge in sin. Gods that give them permission to sin. License to sin.

{Giving men more and better information does no good, even hardens them against the truth, if they are hostile to the truth, if they are indisposed to be corrected.}

“And this is bald dogma. And contrary to common sense. And contrary to induction. And contrary, in many places, to Scripture.”

You haven’t offered a shred of concrete evidence to the contrary.

The fact that men will often believe whatever they want to in spite of evidence to the contrary is easily documented in history and Scripture alike.

Where Scripture is concerned, consider the Exodus generation, or the reaction of the Jewish establishment to the miracles of Christ, or even the scepticism of his own disciples.

As to history, the examples are endless. Where would you like to begin?

“You still never addressed the toughest point here:
knowing the truth is not the same thing as choosing the truth, but God chooses to let people remain ignorant (and even "sends delusions"), so that these people
1) worship the wrong god
2) have unbelief about the Gospel
3) have unbelief that God exists

Dispelling their doubts with certain knowledge is emphatically not the same thing as disrupting their ability to choose, unless you have no problem with Paul's conversion, or Moses', etc. How many people in the Bible were unbelieving, and God "apprehended" them (Phil 3)? And yet, you lose no sleep at night that God "apprehends" when He feels like it, how He feels like it, rather than uniformly and universally?

Some merciful, loving, and "no respecter of persons" you worship [eye roll]”

Again, you apparently assume that the phenomena you cite is someone inconsistent with my position. But I’m a Calvinist. I happily grant that God does not act uniformly or universally in matters of salvation.

If grace were uniform, it would cease to be gracious.

One final point, Triablogue is not a barnyard. I realize that you’re accustomed to using profanity and vulgarity over at Loftus’ blog, where you’re one of the team. John is more than welcome to turn his blog into a latrine. I expect no less.

And you’re welcome to come over here and post critical comments.

But remember where you are. Act like a good houseguest. If you’re going to pay a visit to my combox, wipe your feet on the doormat before you come inside. I don’t have time to take my rug to the dry cleaners every time you frequent my combox.