Silly infidelity

JL: Silly silly man. You just don't get it, do you. What if I responded by saying this: "so do I? I too opt for truth over warrant."

Saying so makes no difference if we still have disagreements about the truth.

SH: Silly silly Loftus. I was responding to your hypothetical. I was answering you on your own grounds.

According to your hypothetical, we don’t disagree over the truth. For your hypothetical stipulated to the truth of Calvinism.

So the issue, as you chose to draw the lines, was precisely one of prioritizing warrant over truth.

If, according to your arbitrary dichotomy, it’s a choice between being right despite all the illusory evidence to the contrary, and following the deceptive evidence, then it’s better to be right rather than wrong.

The only value of evidence is if it points you in the right direction. If you are going to postulate a hypothetical scenario in which the evidence is systematically misleading, so that it’s a choice between a true belief in the teeth of the evidence, and going with the evidence even when the evidence is bound to lead me astray, then, yes, I opt for truth over warrant. That would be the only rational option given the way you have rigged the alternatives.

You just don’t get it, do you? Even when it’s your own hypothetical!

JL: For you to respond that you have an inner witness of the Spirit doesn't help your case since that witness may be to mislead you due to God's secret will for you to believe against the total evidence (i.e. even your distinction between truth and warrent and what you've concluded about it, silly).

SH: The decretive will of God is a Calvinistic category. And according to Calvinism, the witness of the Spirit does not cause a man to believe against the totality of the evidence. The witness of the Spirit is not a deceptive witness.

You are evoking categories from Reformed theology, radically redefining them, and then attempting to generate a point of tension.

But if you redefine the key terms, then it ceases to be an internal critique. The tension is not generated by the inner logic of Calvinism, but by your semantic subterfuge.

JL: All I'm doing is asking you what justification you have for believing if you cannot know the secretive will of God? And the answer must be that you have none.

SH:

1.If you’re asking about the assurance of salvation, then I’ve already blogged on that subject on several different occasions.

2.If, on the other hand, this is one of those imaginary scenarios like the Cartesian demon, Matrix, brain-in-a-vat, butterfly dreaming he’s a man or vice versa, then I’ve already blogged on that subject on several occasions as well.

JL: Now do you see my point?

SH: I see your point better than you do.

What Loftus has done, in his blundering, inchoate way, is to graft a counterfactual onto a factual state of affairs.

He’s affirming and denying Calvinism at the same time. He transplants Calvinism into his counterfactual scenario, modifies some key ingredients, acts as if he can keep everything else in place, then throws this ad hoc reconstruction back in my lap to resuscitate.

But, needless to say, you cannot arbitrarily redefine some elements without making a number of corollary adjustments.

There’s really nothing left for me to respond to. It isn’t Calvinism anymore. Rather, it’s a makeshift hypothetical that doesn’t hang together.

JL: Yes or know, and I could care less what one could call such a theology, whether it be Reformed or Catholic, or even atheist. I'm asking you to go deeper into your theology than you are willing to go. And the bottom line is that you don't know that what you believe is true nor that you please the God who truly exists, nor that you will be with this God in heaven for all eternity, based upon your present theology.

What I'm asking you is why you think you believe correctly, why you think you please this God you beieve in, and why you think you will be in heaven, based upon YOUR OWN THEOLOGY, and elucidated by me in this so-called hypothetical.

Okay? Ready to try again. Because if you sidetrack the question again then it's obvious you cannot answer it at all.

SH:

1.It’s funny to see the way he accuses me of “sidetracking” the question when I’ve been answering his question in exactly the way he chose to pose his question.

2.Then you have his utterly incoherent challenge, according to which, on the one hand:

“I could care less what one could call such a theology, whether it be Reformed or Catholic, or even atheist.”

While on the other hand:

“I'm asking you to go deeper into your theology… based upon your present theology… based upon YOUR OWN THEOLOGY.”

At the risk of stating the obvious, if Loftus is trying to mount an internal critique of “my own theology,” by generating an inner tension based on “my own theology,” then it does make a wee bit of difference whether the theology is question is “my own theology” or Catholic theology or “even atheism.”