I take it as undisputed that: if you tell someone the truth, you've been sincere or genuine with them.
What is the "offer of the Gospel?" Put simply: Romans 10:9 if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
The argument is frequently stated that "If you're a 5-point Calvinist then you believe in limited atonement, thus you cannot make a sincere offer of the Gospel."
Before an answer is given, let's note something about conditionals. A conditional statement is, "an “if p, then q” compound statement (ex. If I throw this ball into the air, it will come down); p is called the antecedent, and q is the consequent. A conditional asserts that if its antecedent is true, its consequent is also true; any conditional with a true antecedent and a false consequent must be false. For any other combination of true and false antecedents and consequents, the conditional statement is true."
So a conditional statement, taken as a whole statement, has a true truth value just in case the consequent is not false while the antecedent is true. To use the above example, if I say If I throw this ball into the air, it will come down, then I have made a true statement, irregardless of whether or not I in fact throw the ball into the air or not.
Therefore, going back to the issue at hand, since it is impossible for someone who believes to not be saved, then when we tell anyone that "if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved," then we have told that person the truth. As I said above, I take it as axiomatic that "if you tell someone the truth, you have been sincere with them." Thus we can make the argument:
1) If you tell someone the truth, you have been sincere with them.
2) When a Calvinist makes a Gospel offer to anyone he is telling that person the truth.
3) Therefore, when a Calvinist makes a Gospel offer to anyone, he has been sincere with them.
Thus Calvinism has no problem with "the sincere offer of the Gospel."
Agreed. But "sincerity," like "love," is a word that has come to imply a feeling, regardless of action. Culturally, it's how you feel that makes you sincere. So, when you give an if-then statement, you can't "really" be sincere if you don't have a strong emotional desire that the person in question should go on to accomplish the antecedent. Thus, the argument goes, the Calvinist evangelist may well be sincere, but if he's preaching to the reprobate, then the Gospel offer is not sincere on God's part.
ReplyDelete(I'm not saying I agree with this view, but it is what I've run into.)
Spurgeon said: ""If God would have painted a yellow stripe on the backs of the elect I would go around lifting shirts. But since He didn’t I must preach 'whosoever will' and when 'whosoever' believes I know he is one of the elect."
ReplyDeleteThat's the best way I've found to describe this paradoxical question of Calvinistic evangelism.
Gordon,
ReplyDeleteI don't know who the elect are and so I feel the same about everyone.
Anyway, with that answer we have "the problem of the pansy God." The God who "has a strong emotional desire" to save everyone, yet is bound by finite man. God intends to save everyone in the same way, yet fails.
Furthermore, we could distinguish between the two wills of God. In regards to one will, God does have a 'desire' that all would come to a saving knowledge of him.
So, we can answer this charge.
[p.s. I'll be at the hostpital for a few days (c-section) for the birth of our son. I won't be here to respond to anyone and probably won't, if at all, for a while.]
I've heard Arminians express the version that Gordan wrote about too.
ReplyDeleteI think the biggest problem is that Arminians do not recognize that the Gospel call isn't merely to save the elect, but to also take away all excuses from the non-elect.
God did the same thing in OT prophecies. In fact, the "status quo" was revealed in Jeremiah 18:7-8, where God says: "If at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, and if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I intended to do to it." (The reverse is also true, as shown in vs 9-10.)
Repentance has always been offered by God. He has always said, "If you repent I will relent." (Now that I write that, it sounds like it belongs in the OJ trial...).
The conditional statement is taken by Arminians to mean that God really wants repenetance; but it can also be seen as God drawing the line in the sand. He is saying, "If you repent, I'll overlook all you did as if it never happened; yet still you do not repent." The fact is, the offering of His relenting is itself an act of grace--He is not required to even bring forth the conditional in the first place! Instead, we see that even when God so severely limits when He will act in justice, frontloading it so much on the side of mercy, men are still so evil that they will spurn this.
So the Arminian view of the conditional gives us, to use the current word, a pansy God who cannot save people who really aren't that bad even though He really really wants to save them. The Calvinistic view of the conditional gives us an extremely gracious God interacting with an utterly wicked people.
And, I'd go so far as to say I disagree with the premise.
ReplyDeleteBy way of analogy, a D.A. can make a sincere/genuine offer to a particularly twisted murderer to the effect that, say, "If you give up some other details about your victims, then we'll take the death penalty off the table" because he knows that the families will like to have these details, it's his job, etc. But, as is often the case, the D.A. really hopes that the murderer doesn't give the details so he can fry in the chair after he gets some alone time in the cell with Bubba.
Now, I am *not* saying that this is what is going on withn God. It is simply a counter example to the claim that it is somehow *essential* to the idea of a "genuine offer" that the offerer has "a strong emotional desire that the person in question should go on to accomplish the antecedent" seems false.
In this case the offer is genuine, it is sincere. In fact, the first definition in the dictionary of "sincere" is: free of deceit, hypocrisy, or falseness. The D.A. woulkd most certainly give this giy the deal. He would take him off death row.
So, my point is simply that we have not been given necessary and sufficient conditions for what it is to "make a sincere offer" by the above Arminian out. Besides that, though, the Bible doesn't mention a "sincere offer of the gospel." It doesn;t say "you can't be sincere unless you really desire for X to be the case." (And, I have shown that Calvinists can accept that God does desire that non-elect would accept the Gospel call, he has just decreed that they wouldn't.) This is a problem the Arminian brings to the table. I believe we have met the challenge.
I'd like to ask an off-topic question if you will.
ReplyDeleteI am studying Van til stuff and I understand that he says we have to accept God otherwise we will be irrational. OK fine, but the problem here is that just because human reason has a need for God to have a working worldview doesn't mean there really is a God.
"We have to accept there is a God if we want to be rational" isnt the same thing as "there is a God."
How would you answer?
Thanks,
Mike
Mike,
ReplyDeleteI'll let the Triabloguers give their own answer, but mine is as follows:
You are correct. The maximum that the Transcendental Argument for God's Existence can prove is that the God of Christian theism is the necessary precondition for rationality. Of course, this means that if you are to believe in anything at all, you should believe in God. The logical conclusion of the denial of God's existence results in epistemic nihilism.
As Van Til would say, "If you don't believe in God, then you cannot logically believe in anything else."
Mike said:
ReplyDelete---
"We have to accept there is a God if we want to be rational" isnt the same thing as "there is a God."
---
True enough. And if an atheist really wants to use this tactic, I have no problem with him doing so. It is nothing less than the simple affirmation that the fool says in his heart, "There is no God."
If you (not specifically, but generally) wish to rid yourself of God by being irrational, I won't stand in your way. But I will point it out. :-)
I'm somewhat surprised, given the topic, that David Ponter and Tony Byrne haven't stopped by to defend Amyraldianism. They must not read this blog...
ReplyDelete[also, I can just picture Paul checking the comments here from his laptop in the hospital while the doctor states, "Mr. Manata, you have a baby boy. Congratulations!" To which Paul retorts, "Yeah, thanks doc, just let me finish this sentence"...]
Mike said:
ReplyDelete---
"We have to accept there is a God if we want to be rational" isnt the same thing as "there is a God."
---
Peter said:
True enough...
_________________________
So, Peter, it seems you are claiming that "truth" and "what is rational" aren't necessarily connected. Doesn't that scuttle your apologetic?
-----------------------------
The term "sincere offer" has come to have a non-Calvinistic connotation, namely (as others have pointed out), that God hopes each and every person will take Him up on the offer.
ReplyDeleteIt's good to see this blog putting up some resistance to the redefinition of "sincere" that has taken place in certain circles.
It's worth noting that in previous generations "free offer" encountered similar semantic difficulties. Some folks may still recall the Protestant Reformed Church's opposition to the use of that term based on its misuse by the non-Reformed.
-Turretinfan
Anonymous said:
ReplyDelete---
So, Peter, it seems you are claiming that "truth" and "what is rational" aren't necessarily connected. Doesn't that scuttle your apologetic?
---
Given that you've only quoted two words and none of the argumentation that followed: no.
But you could probably get a job at the NYT now.
Use "regardless" or "irrespective." Avoid "irregardless."
ReplyDeleteY'all are mistaking what the Arminian criticism is. The Arminian objection is that an offer of salvation to the non-elect (in a consistent Calvinist's understanding) is not "sincere" because (the Calvinist believes) God will not allow that man to have the *ability* to respond to the offer.
ReplyDeleteWhen critiquing the "sincerity" of God's offer of salvation, we're not concerned so much with God's *desire* that we be saved (though the Bible says He does desire it), but that He give us the ability to respond to it--even if simply by our not resisting His saving grace.
Let me put it all in context:
God makes an offer of salvation. There's a condition stated ("whosoever believeth," etc.). In a purely monergistic scheme, God saves the elect and damns the rest, with man having no role in the affair. All well and good for the elect. But what about the rest? If the Gospel is preached to them at all, was God's offer of salvation to them sincere? Was there any way they could have been saved? *Could* they have turned and repented?
If there's no way they could have been saved, then any offer of salvation made to them wasn't sincere.
Now, of course, we're not calling God insincere, because we don't believe God operates this way.
I'd also add that the Arminian understanding doesn't propose a "pansy God." He's omnipotent, but He's decided to limit his sovereignty over human wills freed by His prevenient grace, because (we believe) it makes the scheme of salvation meaningful...and sincere. ;)
He's no more a pansy in this view than Rhett Butler was at the beginning of _Gone With the Wind_. Remember when Charles Hamilton threatened Rhett to a duel, and Rhett decided not to fight him? Charles bragged that Rhett was obviously afraid. Ashley Wilkes explained to Charles that in fact, Rhett was one of the best shots around and had proven it many times. He walked away because he didn't want to kill Charles.
Rhett voluntarily limited his actions, there. He wasn't any pansy. Now, it's not a very deep analogy, but I just wanted to give a counter-example.
Tim,
ReplyDeleteSuppose a florist advertises a special on Valentine Day. A cut-rate for a dozen red roses.
Yet some men can’t bring themselves to take him up on the offer. And that’s because some men are misogynists. They can’t stand women. They will turn him down every time.
Is the offer of the florist insincere because Ted Bundy hates women? Is the offer insincere unless the florist gives Ted Bundy an antidote to cure him of his pathological loathing of women?
Who’s to blame for refusing the offer: the florist or the misogynist?
BTW, why isn’t the Arminian God equally “insincere”? After all, the Arminian God isn’t actually giving anyone the faith to accept the offer of the gospel. Indeed, he’s very concerned that everyone have the freedom to refuse the offer.
ReplyDeleteTim said:
ReplyDeleteY'all are mistaking what the Arminian criticism is. The Arminian objection is that an offer of salvation to the non-elect (in a consistent Calvinist's understanding) is not "sincere" because (the Calvinist believes) God will not allow that man to have the *ability* to respond to the offer.
Does any man have the ability to obey the entire Law of God?
If not, does that make God insincere for giving us the Law?
Simon
Steve Hays presents an analogy for His Calvinist conception of God:
ReplyDelete“Suppose a florist advertises a special on Valentine Day. A cut-rate for a dozen red roses.
Yet some men can’t bring themselves to take him up on the offer. And that’s because some men are misogynists. They can’t stand women. They will turn him down every time.”
Make sure we see this, in Hays little parable here, the florist is God sincerely offering the roses, while the human race is a bunch of misogynists who hate women and turn down the offer of the roses every time (unless God chooses one of these misogynists to be one of his elect). So of course the blame for this incredibly hostile behavior ought to go to the misogynists right? Wrong.
You see under Hays Calvinistic conception God predetermines all things. Every thing is predetermined and so everything that occurs is exactly what God wants to happen. So the florist here, who is presumably God, offers the roses to misogynists who are misogynists because that is exactly what the florist wanted them to be, predetermined for them to be. They cannot not be misogynists because they are living out the script which the florist completely predetermined for them to be and do. Their every choice is what the florist chooses for them to choose, every time. So the misogynists cannot do otherwise, they are only acting out the script that the florist predetermined for them. So who is really responsible for their misogynist nature, their every choice and action, their rejection of the offer every time? The florist/God.
“Is the offer of the florist insincere because Ted Bundy hates women? Is the offer insincere unless the florist gives Ted Bundy an antidote to cure him of his pathological loathing of women?”
Ted Bundy is simply living out the script that the florist wanted Him to be. In fact everybody under this scheme is no more no less than exactly what the florist wanted them to be. And this florist predetermines that Ted Bundy do and be exactly what he is, then the florist has a final judgment where he will judge Bundy for being exactly what the florist predetermined for him to be, and then eternally condemning this poor soul to an eternal hell for living out the predetermined actions which the florist had scripted for him. This florist is more cruel and sadistic then Bundy, who does some wrongful actions during a lifetime, because this florist does this same thing to billions of people with eternal harm for all who are chosen not to be chosen. So his actions are much worse than what Bundy did.
“Who’s to blame for refusing the offer: the florist or the misogynist??
I believe we should only assign blame if the person could have (and should have) done otherwise. If every action of the misogynist was prescripted and predetermined and controlled by the sadistic florist, so that it was impossible for the misogynist, or Ted Bundy or any other poor nonbeliever, to ever do otherwise, how can we then hold them responsible. The one who is responsible for all of it, because he prescripted it all, predetermined it all, wanted it all to go down exactly as it went down, is the florist.
Thank God he is not like this florist, that this is only a false conception of God originated by man.
Robert
PS -Hays also wrote another post in which he presents a false representation of the Arminian conception of God when he writes:
“BTW, why isn’t the Arminian God equally “insincere”? After all, the Arminian God isn’t actually giving anyone the faith to accept the offer of the gospel.”
Actually, the view of the Arminian is that the Spirit enables a person to have a faith response to the gospel, if that person chooses to do so, after the Spirit has worked in his heart. They cannot make that choice unless God first enabled them to do so. But this enabling does not force them to make that choice, it only puts them in the place where they can both choose to respond in faith or choose not to do so.
“ Indeed, he’s very concerned that everyone have the freedom to refuse the offer.”
Actually he is very concerned that if someone is going to choose to trust Him for salvation, they make that choice freely (and if a person has the ability to make one choice he will also have the ability to refrain from making that choice or making another choice). And if they choose to reject Him and the offer of salvation they make that choice freely as well. God wants people who freely choose to be in relationship with Him.
Those of us who desired to be in a loving marriage relationship and blessed to be in such a loving marriage know that experience very well, we wanted our spouses to freely choose to be in a lifetime relationship with us. Their choice to be in a lifetime relationship with us is meaningful precisely because it is freely chosen by them. If it was coerced, manipulated, constrained, or in some other way, not freely chosen, we would not have wanted that relationship because it would not have been love. Who really wants a Stepford wife? Of course if we were like Hays’ florist, we would not have been concerned with persons freely choosing to love us and we would be quite content with a Stepford wife.
Robert
I want to interact with what Tim says as he makes some good points.
ReplyDelete“Y'all are mistaking what the Arminian criticism is. The Arminian objection is that an offer of salvation to the non-elect (in a consistent Calvinist's understanding) is not "sincere" because (the Calvinist believes) God will not allow that man to have the *ability* to respond to the offer.”
Paul Manata provided a logical argument showing that calvinists are sincere when presenting the gospel to other people. The problem is that his argument completely evades the issue: for the non-calvinist the issue is not the sincerity of Calvinists offering the Gospel to people, the issue is the sincerity of God in offering the gospel to everyone if he has in fact predetermined all events including who will and will not believe.
“When critiquing the "sincerity" of God's offer of salvation, we're not concerned so much with God's *desire* that we be saved (though the Bible says He does desire it), but that He give us the ability to respond to it--even if simply by our not resisting His saving grace.”
The sincerity issue concerns a God who predetermines before hand who will be saved and lost, and then presents the gospel offer as if anyone could respond to it (when in fact it is impossible for the non-elect to respond and be saved and God ensures that they cannot respond by predetermining their every action and thought including their unbelief).
“Let me put it all in context:
God makes an offer of salvation. There's a condition stated ("whosoever believeth," etc.). In a purely monergistic scheme, God saves the elect and damns the rest, with man having no role in the affair. All well and good for the elect. But what about the rest? If the Gospel is preached to them at all, was God's offer of salvation to them sincere?”
Not under the Calvinist scheme.
“Was there any way they could have been saved?”
Not if they are not one of the predetermined elect according to the Calvinistic scheme.
“*Could* they have turned and repented?”
Impossible if they are non-elect. God predetermined their every action and thought which would include their unbelief. So if he predetermines that you will be an unbeliever and have unbelief, you have no chance to turn or repent. Turning and repenting would only be possible, if you were of the elect.
“If there's no way they could have been saved, then any offer of salvation made to them wasn't sincere.”
Right, and if God knew all this about them and yet presents the gospel to them it is not only insincere it is cruel and sadistic.
“Now, of course, we're not calling God insincere, because we don't believe God operates this way.”
The God of the bible is not insincere, the Calvinistic conception of God is an insincere person. He offers the gospel to them all knowing full well that most of them, the non elect have no chance to be saved because He predetermined that they would be damned.
“I'd also add that the Arminian understanding doesn't propose a "pansy God." He's omnipotent, but He's decided to limit his sovereignty over human wills freed by His prevenient grace, because (we believe) it makes the scheme of salvation meaningful...and sincere. ;)”
The Arminian God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, the creator of all things out of nothing, the doer of all of the miracles recorded in the bible, the one who will raise all people for judgment and sent goats to hell for eternal punishment. That is no pansy!
Tim I would modify one statement you make in this paragraph when you say that “He’s omnipotent, but He’s decided to limit his sovereignty over human wills.” God’s sovereignty may be defined biblically as the fact that He does as He pleases. In God’s sovereignty He decided to create Human persons capable of free will and their own actions. Thus he did not limit any of His attributes in making this decision and creating human persons in this way. Rather , as He is sovereign He could have created a world with no conscious beings, or a world where human beings had their every action predetermined. Those possibilities(as well as others) were in His power, and up to Him to actualize or not actualize. He decided to create Human persons in His own image, being similar to Himself in that we are conscious persons, with minds, wills, capable of performing our own actions. So in creating persons with genuine free will, God was not limiting Himself in any way. In fact it is because of His sovereignty that we are the way that we are, designed to be capable of making our own choices, including making the choice to reject or disobey Him. And if it is also God’s sovereign plan that salvation would involve people freely choosing or rejecting Him, then that is the way it is going to be, because the plan is His plan and pleases Him.
“He's no more a pansy in this view than Rhett Butler was at the beginning of _Gone With the Wind_. Remember when Charles Hamilton threatened Rhett to a duel, and Rhett decided not to fight him? Charles bragged that Rhett was obviously afraid. Ashley Wilkes explained to Charles that in fact, Rhett was one of the best shots around and had proven it many times. He walked away because he didn't want to kill Charles.
Rhett voluntarily limited his actions, there. He wasn't any pansy.”
Good analogy, but this even falls way short of what God is like. God is perfectly Holy and the penalty of even a single sin, is death, if God immediately acted in justice. And all human persons have sinned, so if it were a matter of strict justice we would all be dead and in hell. But God is merciful, allowing sinful persons to live after they have sinned, when strict justice would have led to eternal destruction of them all. And yet God goes even further, not only does he have mercy to even allow us to live after we have sinned against Him, he actually seeks a relationship with these sinners. And this desire for relationship not only led to Him communicating with these sinful persons, but also coming in the flesh and dying for these rebels. That is an incredible love, mercy, grace, kindness in action. And it involves no limitations of His nature or attributes at all. It is all His sovereign doing.
Robert
Robert, thanks for your posts. That was a great response to the florist analogy; much better than I would have come up with.
ReplyDeleteFollowing up on your critique of that one, I'll summarize: the problem of insincerity in the Calvinist scheme is inherent if God 1) makes an offer to Man and 2) God, alone and entirely, determines who will and will not respond to the offer.
If there's anything we can call an "offer," the one making it can't be rigging it to prevent some people from responding to it.
The florist's offer was sincere. But if the florist had made the offer and then, say, locked the shop doors and put out a "Closed" sign whenever an undesirable person showed up to accept it...that wouldn't be sincerely offered to that person.
“You see under Hays Calvinistic conception God predetermines all things. Every thing is predetermined and so everything that occurs is exactly what God wants to happen.”
ReplyDeleteYes, because God has told us that he predetermines everything.
“So the florist here, who is presumably God, offers the roses to misogynists who are misogynists because that is exactly what the florist wanted them to be, predetermined for them to be.”
i) That depends on how far you want to press the details of the analogy. Ordinarily, it is the preacher, rather than God, who presents the Gospel. So God would be the supplier rather than the florist himself.
ii) However, to play along with Robert’s scenario, suppose one of the florist’s objectives is to smoke out the misogynists and expose them for the evil, woman-hating miscreants that they are.
In Robert’s simpleminded theology, God can only have one objective for the gospel. But the florist may want to accomplish more than one thing. He’s sorting out the normal men who love women from the abnormal men who hate women. Indeed, we could develop the parable into a police sting operation.
“They cannot not be misogynists because they are living out the script which the florist completely predetermined for them to be and do.”
i) “Cannot” is a very ambiguous word, for there are various ways in which an agent may be unable to do something, and these are not morally interchangeable.
Ted Bundy “cannot” feel what a normal man feels for a woman because Bundy is a hardened woman-hater. Does this excuse his crimes? Can he appeal to his misogyny as an exculpatory condition?
ii) The decree, in and of itself, is not a cause. It doesn’t make anything happen. Rather, it renders a given outcome certain. But the decree is implemented by various means, usually in the form of providential second-causes.
“Their every choice is what the florist chooses for them to choose, every time. So the misogynists cannot do otherwise, they are only acting out the script that the florist predetermined for them. So who is really responsible for their misogynist nature, their every choice and action, their rejection of the offer every time? The florist/God.”
i)Robert fails to distinguish between responsibility and blame. He also fails to distinguish between sole responsibility and partial responsibility.
God is undoubtedly responsible for whatever happens in the world. It is, after all, his world. But he is not solely responsible, and he’s not blameworthy.
ii) BTW, actors recite a script that the screenwriter wrote for them. So what’s so bad about playing a part in someone else’s play? Does Robert think that drama is immoral? Does he boycott the movies?
“Ted Bundy is simply living out the script that the florist wanted Him to be. In fact everybody under this scheme is no more no less than exactly what the florist wanted them to be. And this florist predetermines that Ted Bundy do and be exactly what he is, then the florist has a final judgment where he will judge Bundy for being exactly what the florist predetermined for him to be, and then eternally condemning this poor soul to an eternal hell for living out the predetermined actions which the florist had scripted for him.”
Notice how blind the libertarian is to the implications of his alternative scheme. According to the Robert, God has empowered Ted Bundy to prey on his victims. God has given Bundy the freedom to torture and murder his victims.
According to Robert, God wouldn’t step in to prevent Bundy from torturing a woman to death because that would violate Bundy’s freedom of choice. Instead, God allows Bundy to violate the woman’s freedom of choice.
Did the woman choose to let Bundy rape her and murder her? No. But in Robert’s scheme, God honors Ted Bundy’s freedom rather than the woman’s freedom.
On Robert’s scheme, Ted Bundy is simply living out the scenario that God foresaw, but did nothing to prevent. Ted Bundy does exactly what God foresaw that he would do, yet Robert’s God does nothing to prevent the crime, since that would infringe on Bundy’s freedom of choice.
“This florist is more cruel and sadistic then Bundy, who does some wrongful actions during a lifetime, because this florist does this same thing to billions of people with eternal harm for all who are chosen not to be chosen. So his actions are much worse than what Bundy did.”
i) Notice how libertarian sthink we should treat them with utmost respect even though the blaspheme God.
Calvinism didn’t invent predestination or providence or original sin or divine hardening or any number of other local or global conditions that infringe on libertarian freewill. That’s all in the Bible.
Yet Robert says that such a God is worse than Ted Bundy. Robert has made blasphemy his creed.
ii) And observe how illogical he is. Unless Robert subscribes to annihilationism, he believes that “billions” of people will, indeed, suffer eternal harm. That God is doing them eternal harm.
Now, he may believe this on libertarian grounds, but they still suffer eternal harm. If that’s what makes you worse than Ted Bundy, then, on his own grounds, the “God” he believes in is worse than Ted Bundy.
Robert is using the very same argument that a militant atheist uses to besmirch the character of God. That God is doing billions of people eternal harm, which makes God worse than the worst psychopath on earth.
Robert is just another blasphemer, like Hitchens and Dawkins, Menken, Ingersoll, and Thomas Paine.
iii) Assuming that Robert does not subscribe to annihilationism, why do the damned suffer eternally? Don’t they have freewill? Why, from a libertarian perspective, shouldn’t the damned have the freedom to repent?
If Robert still believes in everlasting hell, it’s only because he believes in hell independent of his commitment to libertarian freedom, as a result of which he imposes ad hoc restrictions on libertarian freedom to harmonize it with hell.
He believes that hellbound sinners have freedom of choice for the first 70 years of life, give or take, but lose their freedom of choice for the remainder of eternity.
“I believe we should only assign blame if the person could have (and should have) done otherwise.”
i) Yes, this is his axiomatic belief, which he superimposes on Christian theology. And if God doesn’t correspond to his axiomatic commitment to libertarian freedom, then God is worse, far worse, than Ted Bundy.
ii) Does he also believe that a man is only obligated to love his father and mother, wife, son, or daughter if he’s equally free to hate his father and mother, wife, son, and daughter?
iii) Even on its own grounds, why is freedom to do otherwise a precondition of blame unless I would have done otherwise?
We only make one choice at a time. If I was never going to do otherwise, why should I have the freedom to do otherwise?
iv) We ordinarily think that a stacked deck is cheating. That it’s unfair. Why?
Because the player, unbeknownst to himself, is doing whatever the dealer wants him to do. If the dealer is feeding him losing cards, he will play the cards he was dealt, and he will lose.
And yet the odds are that sooner or later a randomly shuffled deck will have the same sequence as a stacked deck. Suppose you happen to find yourself in such a game. The outcome is identical whether or not the dealer is a cardsharp. Same hands. Same bets. Same bluffs. Same outcome.
“If every action of the misogynist was prescripted and predetermined and controlled by the sadistic florist, so that it was impossible for the misogynist, or Ted Bundy or any other poor nonbeliever, to ever do otherwise, how can we then hold them responsible.”
i) First and foremost, we can hold them responsible because that is what God has told us, and God is wiser than we are.
ii) Secondly, we hold them responsible because the amateurish objections of someone like Robert don’t survive rational scrutiny.
***QUOTE***
PS -Hays also wrote another post in which he presents a false representation of the Arminian conception of God when he writes:
“BTW, why isn’t the Arminian God equally “insincere”? After all, the Arminian God isn’t actually giving anyone the faith to accept the offer of the gospel.”
Actually, the view of the Arminian is that the Spirit enables a person to have a faith response to the gospel, if that person chooses to do so, after the Spirit has worked in his heart. They cannot make that choice unless God first enabled them to do so. But this enabling does not force them to make that choice, it only puts them in the place where they can both choose to respond in faith or choose not to do so.
***END-QUOTE***
So how did I misrepresent Arminianism? I said that according to Arminianism, God isn’t actually giving anyone the faith to accept the offer of the gospel.
Does Robert show that my statement is wrong? No, he confirms my original statement.
He says that God merely “enables a person to have faith.” But that isn’t the same thing as actually giving them faith,” now is it?
Indeed, he goes on to contrast actually giving them faith with what, according to Arminianism, God, in fact, does: “this enabling does not force them to make that choice, it only puts them in the place where they can both choose to respond in faith or choose not to do so.”
So Robert has done nothing whatsoever to show that I misrepresented Arminianism. To the contrary, his explication corroborates my original statement.
It is Robert who is guilty of misrepresentation by leveling a false accusation against me. But we’ve come to expect that from Robert. He has no integrity.
“Actually he is very concerned that if someone is going to choose to trust Him for salvation, they make that choice freely (and if a person has the ability to make one choice he will also have the ability to refrain from making that choice or making another choice).”
i) Notice how Robert has done a 180. His original objection is that Reformed theology makes God insincere since everyone who hears the offer isn’t free to accept the offer.
But now, when you smoke him out, he admits that, for the offer to be sincere, everyone must be free to reject the offer.
ii) And while we’re on the subject, how is the Arminian God sincere in offering salvation to “billions” of people whom he foreknows will reject the offer? Indeed, he created them knowing all the while that when he offered them the gospel, they would spurn the offer and burn in hell forever, and yet he created them any way and evangelized them anyway.
“Those of us who desired to be in a loving marriage relationship and blessed to be in such a loving marriage know that experience very well, we wanted our spouses to freely choose to be in a lifetime relationship with us. Their choice to be in a lifetime relationship with us is meaningful precisely because it is freely chosen by them.”
Really? People choose to fall in love? Why is the divorce rate 50% if we can love people at will?
What kind of fantasy world does Robert live in for him to imagine for one moment that people have so much control over their feelings for one other?
“If it was coerced, manipulated, constrained, or in some other way, not freely chosen, we would not have wanted that relationship because it would not have been love.”
Of course, this is the standard caricature of Calvinism by chronic liars like Robert.
“Who really wants a Stepford wife? Of course if we were like Hays’ florist, we would not have been concerned with persons freely choosing to love us and we would be quite content with a Stepford wife.”
i) Robert uses a B-movie as the hermeneutical grid through which he filters the Bible. This is why he simply invents what he considers to be the preconditions of a well-meant offer.
In Scripture, by contrast, God often sends the prophets out on a lost cause. He commands them to call on backslidden Israel to repent, and yet he tells them in advance that Israel will not heed the call to repent. So their mission is doomed from the outset.
Yet that’s because God has more than one purpose in the message. But by Robert’s humanistic criteria, the prophetic message is “cruel,” “sadistic,” and “insincere.”
ii) From a Scriptural perspective, the primary target-audience for the gospel is the elect. And God not only enables them to believe, but ensures their positive response.
As for the reprobate, their disbelief serves to illustrate how evil sinners are when left to their own devices.
I'd add that Robert's marital analogy is flawed in another respect as well, for—in Bible times—marriages were arranged. Most folks didn't marry for love. That's what concubines were for. Rather, they married for economic security and legal lines of inheritance—as well as a sexual outlet.
ReplyDeleteIf the couple came to love each other, so much the better—but that wasn't the basis of marriage in Bible times.
ReplyDelete“Their every choice is what the florist chooses for them to choose, every time. So the misogynists cannot do otherwise, they are only acting out the script that the florist predetermined for them. So who is really responsible for their misogynist nature, their every choice and action, their rejection of the offer every time? The florist/God.”
But, Robert, you've not clearly said if you affirm libertarian freedom or not. Every appeal to indeterminism is an appeal to libertarian freedom, but if you deny libertarian freedom, you can't appeal to indeterminism.
I'll ask you again, within the constraints of libertarian freedom, why does one man believe and not the other when presented the gospel? Appealing to "different reasons" is non-responsive, and it would deny indeterminism, since "reasons" are not involved in indeterminate freedom. In indeterminism, choices are uncaused - by definition.
And notice that all the while crying about Owen's supposed lack of exegetical foundation and substitution of 'logical arguments' for exegetical ones, Robert has consistently offered ethical and philosophical arguments and analogies (for that's what libertarian freedom is - a philosophical argument) -not an exegetical argument.
Robert, please give us the exegetical foundation of your view of indeterminate freedom. I'd like to know, because Arminians freely admit this is not an exegetical argument.
Steve said:
ReplyDelete---
I'd add that Robert's marital analogy is flawed in another respect as well, for—in Bible times—marriages were arranged.
---
Not only that, but arranged marriages have been the norm throughout all history pretty much up until the Renaissance. Indeed, this is how most royal marriages came about. It's why as recently as 1936, King Edward VIII had to abdicate the throne of England because he wished to marry Wallis Warfield Simpson.
Thus, it is only our modern views that would enable Robert's marriage metaphor to work. They don't apply to 99% of history though.
Steve, in reverse order--
ReplyDeleteI had to read your "Why isn't the Arminian God equally insincere" comment about three times before I figured out how you could claim Robert *wasn't* answering your question. Your wording was subtle, but I think Robert did answer the substance: We believe God's prevenient grace frees men's wills and allows them to see the truth and make a free choice to accept God's work of salvation or to resist it. So there is no insincerity in God not *forcing* them to accept it ("giving [them] the faith"). He gives us the grace to open our eyes and lets us choose. That's what we need to be able to accept His salvation, and he gives us that. Perfectly sincere.
The florist, as we see it, does not go around and actually stick the flowers in every passing man's hands and duct-tape them there, whether they protest or not. He's made an offer and let men freely choose.
---
Next item:
It's really crossing the line to be calling "blasphemy" when a brother Christian critiques one's *view* of God. Robert obviously doesn't believe God is evil, cruel, and capricious. What he's saying is that the Calvinist view seems to make God out to be so, when God isn't.
We've got to get rid of this mindset that "God" is coextensive with "my understanding of God." If someone criticizes my view of God, he's not criticizing God Himself.
Crying, "Blasphemer!" for this is outside the bounds of reasonable Christian discourse. Robert clearly is *not* spouting blasphemy.
We believe God's prevenient grace frees men's wills and allows them to see the truth and make a free choice to accept God's work of salvation or to resist it. So there is no insincerity in God not *forcing* them to accept it ("giving [them] the faith"). He gives us the grace to open our eyes and lets us choose. That's what we need to be able to accept His salvation, and he gives us that. Perfectly sincere.
ReplyDeleteThe florist, as we see it, does not go around and actually stick the flowers in every passing man's hands and duct-tape them there, whether they protest or not. He's made an offer and let men freely choose.
_____
A. But does Henry believe in "universal prevenient grace?" He hasn't said. Elsewhere he has indicated that he affirms that God does not "internally" meddle with the will. In UPG, that's not the case. If UPG is in mind, your reply to Steve may have some merit, but it isn't clear.
B. But on either view, God does this, knowing full well that they will still turn down the offer. How is this at all "sincere?" God is still creating them knowing He will damn them. Why? Further, He does this knowing full well that rejection will increase their guilt and condemnation.
C. And why does one man believe and not the other within these constraints?
It's really crossing the line to be calling "blasphemy" when a brother Christian critiques one's *view* of God. Robert obviously doesn't believe God is evil, cruel, and capricious. What he's saying is that the Calvinist view seems to make God out to be so, when God isn't.
With all due respect, I would affirm that "the Calvinist conception of God" is precisely the God, as Robert Reymond once said, with which Robert must contend, and, regardless of that conception, to say that God - however conceived - is "worse than Bundy", a serial killer and sadist - strikes me as blasphemous. Steve's reply was pegged to Robert's claim, nothing more, nothing less.
Peter Pike said...
ReplyDelete****************************
Anonymous said:
---
So, Peter, it seems you are claiming that "truth" and "what is rational" aren't necessarily connected. Doesn't that scuttle your apologetic?
---
Given that you've only quoted two words and none of the argumentation that followed: no.
But you could probably get a job at the NYT now.
*****************************
So Peter, just what constitutes an “argument” in your original comment? You initially claim that true and rational are not the same, but then, later, chastise folks who claim the same. No argument from you that this is nonsense that I can see, just assertion—and, at that, one that flies in the face of your original concession that true and rational aren’t the same.
So just what connection do you believe there is between “true” and “rational”? Is there one or isn’t there?
TIM SAID:
ReplyDelete“Steve, in reverse order--__I had to read your ‘Why isn't the Arminian God equally insincere’ comment about three times before I figured out how you could claim Robert *wasn't* answering your question. Your wording was subtle, but I think Robert did answer the substance: We believe God's prevenient grace frees men's wills and allows them to see the truth and make a free choice to accept God's work of salvation or to resist it. So there is no insincerity in God not *forcing* them to accept it ("giving [them] the faith").”
Like Robert, you yourself continue to caricature the opposing position. The idea that God’s is *forcing* a sinner to accept the gospel simply leaves sin out of account—as if infidelity were the natural state of man, such that causing him to believe in the true God does violence to the integrity of his personhood.
To the contrary, infidelity is a result of sin. Causing someone to accept the gospel is a case of *restoring* him to his natural condition. And if you insist on using the word *force*, then it’s no different than *forcing* a mentally-ill patient to take his meds.
The way libertarians talk about Calvinism reminds me of ACLU lawyers who think it’s better for mental patients to freeze in the snow instead making them take their meds against their will.
“He gives us the grace to open our eyes and lets us choose. That's what we need to be able to accept His salvation, and he gives us that.”
According to your paper theory, for which you and he offer no exegetical support whatsoever. Where is Robert’s prooftext? Remember, Robert was demanding a prooftext from Manata. But when we ask him to prooftext his own position, he falls strangely silent.
“Perfectly sincere.”
Is it?
i) To begin with, it’s one thing to say the offer of the gospel would be insincere unless everyone could accept it, quite another to say the offer would be insincere unless everyone could reject it.
ii) If God foreknows that someone will reject the offer, then how, by libertarian logic, isn’t that equally insincere?
iii) And if God foreknows that someone will reject the offer, then the individual is not at liberty to do otherwise, for God’s knowledge of the future entails the certainty of the outcome.
“The florist, as we see it, does not go around and actually stick the flowers in every passing man's hands and duct-tape them there, whether they protest or not.”
i) Another caricature of Reformed theology. Are you going out of your way to misstate the opposing position? Why do so many libertarians think that common honesty is expendable in Christian ethics?
Needless to say, Calvinism doesn’t believe that God is sticking a bouquet in “every passing man’s hands.” Only the elect.
ii) And God isn’t using duct-tape. To drop the metaphor—saving faith isn’t stuck onto the elect. Rather, through saving grace, the one-time unregenerate becomes a believer. It’s not merely something he does, but something he is. A whole-souled identity.
“It's really crossing the line to be calling ‘blasphemy’ when a brother Christian critiques one's *view* of God. Robert obviously doesn't believe God is evil, cruel, and capricious. What he's saying is that the Calvinist view seems to make God out to be so, when God isn't.”
i) I would be more impressed if you were more concerned with God’s honor, and less with Robert’s. You’re reflecting your own priorities at this point, and it isn’t pretty.
ii) When Robert compares the God of Isaiah and John and Paul (to name a few) to Ted Bundy, then, yes, he’s committing blasphemy. When he does that, then *he* is the one who is crossing the line. At that point he ceases to present a credible profession of faith.
“We've got to get rid of this mindset that ‘God’ is coextensive with ‘my understanding of God.’ If someone criticizes my view of God, he's not criticizing God Himself.”
i) I’m sure that John Spong would appreciate your devotion to religious pluralism. However, the Bible doesn’t endorse your latitudinarian sentiments.
ii) And it’s quite clear that Robert is very absolutist in his own theological commitments as well.
“Crying, ‘Blasphemer!’ for this is outside the bounds of reasonable Christian discourse”
“Blasphemy” is a biblical category. I define Christian discourse in Biblical terms.
“Robert clearly is *not* spouting blasphemy.”
Except that he clearly is. He has said that unless the offer of the gospel is contingent on libertarian freedom, then the God who makes the offer is sadistic, cruel, and worse than Ted Bundy.
He has made no attempt to show that Scripture predicates the offer of the gospel on libertarian freedom, or that God would be worse than a psychopathic killer unless the offer of the gospel were contingent on libertarian freewill.
Instead, he quotes chapter and verse from the Stepford Wives.
A quick comment on the comments made by Tim and Steve Hays' response. Here is a snippet of their conversation:
ReplyDelete“It's really crossing the line to be calling ‘blasphemy’ when a brother Christian critiques one's *view* of God. Robert obviously doesn't believe God is evil, cruel, and capricious. What he's saying is that the Calvinist view seems to make God out to be so, when God isn't.”
i) I would be more impressed if you were more concerned with God’s honor, and less with Robert’s. You’re reflecting your own priorities at this point, and it isn’t pretty.
ii) When Robert compares the God of Isaiah and John and Paul (to name a few) to Ted Bundy, then, yes, he’s committing blasphemy. When he does that, then *he* is the one who is crossing the line. At that point he ceases to present a credible profession of faith.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Tim you are correct that I am not committing blasphemy. You are also correct that I do not believe the God of the bible to be evil, cruel and capricious. The God of the bible is good, righteous, loving, rational and always acting according to His own sovereign purposes. The problem is that the CALVINISIT GOD IS NOT like this at all. My problem is not the God of the bible, but the conception of God foisted on scripture by calvinists. The God of calvinism is not the God of the bible and he is much worse than any human sinner. It should be noted that I am only committing blasphemy if I were challenging the character of the true God of the bible, but I am not. Hays begs the question with his blasphemy accusation, because it is only valid if the god of calvinism is the God of the bible. And that is precisely what is being disputed. Calvinism has not been proved, so the charge sticks only if calvinism were true, but again it is not (and if the God of the bible is not the god of calvinism then who is really blaspheming the character of God here?). I have a lot more things to say in response to Steve Hays, but this is just an initial response.
Robert
robert said...
ReplyDelete"The God of calvinism is not the God of the bible and he is much worse than any human sinner."
The obvious implication of Robert's position is that Reformed theologians are false teachers, promoting a heretical view of God. If, however, a Calvinist says the same thing about an Arminian theologian, Robert will wax indignant. Tim would do well to observe the flagrant double standard.
"Hays begs the question with his blasphemy accusation, because it is only valid if the god of calvinism is the God of the bible."
Given the many arguments I've offered for my Reformed reading of Scripture, and abundant counterarguments against the opposing position, I'm hardly begging the question. Robert hasn't even begun to present the amount of detailed argumentation that I have offered over the years.
"I believe we should only assign blame if the person could have (and should have) done otherwise.”
ReplyDeleteTo jump back a bit and comment on what was previously said. It seems to me that the Arminian (and other libretarian free-will) view really does some down to the statement I quoted above.
I don't have acomplicated answer for it except to say that in Romans 9 Paul anticipated that very arguement and he answered with "Who are you to answer back to God, shall the clay say to the potter 'what have you done?'"
For all the high sounding arguements presented on the thorny issue of a God whose will is NEVER thwarted still holding people accountable for their sin, I've never yet heard a legitimate Arminian answer to those verses.
Steve--
ReplyDeleteFirst item:
The florist, as we see it, does not go around and actually stick the flowers in every passing man's hands and duct-tape them there, whether they protest or not.”
i) Another caricature of Reformed theology. Are you going out of your way to misstate the opposing position? Why do so many libertarians think that common honesty is expendable in Christian ethics?
I'm sorry, I was not intending this to be a description of the Calvinist position at all, much less a caricature. It was a response only to your asking why we don't see God as being insincere for not giving people the faith to be saved. (And you said that Robert's response about God giving prevenient grace isn't what you meant, nor, apparently, is giving an offer of the faith.) I was trying to describe only an unconditional giving of the "flowers" that didn't matter about the acceptance by the recipient (hence the tape-you can't refuse to hold them). I was trying to describe what you were saying the Arminian view didn't hold.
Sorry about saying "everybody," but again, I wasn't trying to describe the actual Calvinist position. No need to jump to the conclusion I was being dishonest, when there's simply a bit of misunderstanding on both sides. It's often difficult wording these things just right.
---
Second:
When someone critiques your view of God, disagreeing with how you characterize Him, that doesn't mean the guy is criticizing God. Robert doesn't think God acts the way you describe Him.
Robert says that your description of God has these bad attributes, and he says instead that God doesn't. That God actually has a different set of attributes. Robert sings God's praises more than once here.
This all might be more obviously true if we were dealing with, say, a Christian debating the nature of God with a Moslem. If the Christian says the Moslem view of God describes God in a way that is cruel (or whatever bad attribute you want to put here) from a Christian perspective, the Christian is not blaspheming God. The Christian disagrees that God has those attributes.
And I'm not falling into Spong's liberalism by pointing out that criticizing someone's view of God is different from criticizing God.
We've got to be careful in how we word this, of course, to avoid causing confusion. And we need to make it clear that the other side disagrees that these attributes put God in any bad light. Arminians don't see God as being weak. Calvinists don't see God as being cruel or as being the author of sin. Each side thinks these are the logical consequences of the other view, but the other side disagrees that it needs to go that way.
Similarly, Paul and Peter both refer to the Arminian view of God as being a "pansy." Are they blaspheming God? Of course not, because they don't believe God is that way at all. Yes, there is a double-standard here, and it doesn't rely on what you guess *Robert* might say *if* you said X. Paul and Peter already have said this, and you haven't called them blasphemers. Nor should you.
Tim,
ReplyDelete"Y'all are mistaking what the Arminian criticism is. The Arminian objection is that an offer of salvation to the non-elect (in a consistent Calvinist's understanding) is not "sincere" because (the Calvinist believes) God will not allow that man to have the *ability* to respond to the offer."
I'm sorry, I'm going with accepted usages of "sincere." You have to "put it in quotes," because you know that you're "adding" to the challenge. Prima facie, why is one "insincere" because one "does not allow man to have the ability to respond." In fact, doesn't this beg the question against my argument? The antecedant *need not* be instantiated for the conditional statement to have a true truth value, and if you;ve told someone the truth, you've been sincere with them. Do you to deny my premise? if not, then your counter begs the question. In fact, all the Bible tells us is that the "Gospel offer" is in the form of a conditional. Where do we ever read that "all men have to be given the ability to respond for the offer to be sincere?"
"When critiquing the "sincerity" of God's offer of salvation, we're not concerned so much with God's *desire* that we be saved (though the Bible says He does desire it), but that He give us the ability to respond to it--even if simply by our not resisting His saving grace."
Non-sequitur. It doesn't obviously follow that one is "insincere" with someone if one doesn't pre-determine that someone to accept the offer. Those are separate issues. If you have an argument for the connection, offer it.
"God makes an offer of salvation. There's a condition stated ("whosoever believeth," etc.). In a purely monergistic scheme, God saves the elect and damns the rest, with man having no role in the affair. All well and good for the elect. But what about the rest? If the Gospel is preached to them at all, was God's offer of salvation to them sincere? Was there any way they could have been saved? *Could* they have turned and repented?"
1) Man having "no role" could be ambiguous. And, "salvation" is ambiguous. "Salvation" could refer to "the whole process" - regeneration, justification, sanctification, glorification - and certainly man "has a role" in the sense that man, say, must have faith, must battle sin, etc.
2) What about the rest? Yes, God ws sincere with them. He told them the truth. They refuse to accept the offer. But, what about the "aborigene" in Australia 5 thousand years ago? Did Jewish missionaries travel there? Is it "sincere" that "if they trust in Christ, they willl be saved," even though they "can't" because they haven't heard of him? Or, are they saved by "the light." They "respond to the light given to them." So, you can either say that men are saved without faith in Christ, or you also have a "sincere offer problem."
3) "Could" is ambiguous. In one sense, yes, in another, no. Metaphysically, yes, morally, no. Their mouths work, their hearts don't. But, they "could have" if they "wanted to." They never wanted to, though. Determinism isn't fatalism.
"If there's no way they could have been saved, then any offer of salvation made to them wasn't sincere."
My post answers how there could be. Sure, if you want to "re-define" 'sincere,' then it doesn't. But anyone can do that.
"Now, of course, we're not calling God insincere, because we don't believe God operates this way."
To make this move you have to deny Scripture: John 6:44 "NO ONE *CAN* come to me, unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise that man up on the last day."
So, out of the one side of His mouth God says "all men" *can* come unequivocally, and then out of the other side of His mouth he says that they can only come if the Father draws them, and some will not be raised to eternal life, therefore some will not be drawn.
"I'd also add that the Arminian understanding doesn't propose a "pansy God."
Okay, then he's schitzo (see above) ;-)
[Anyway, we just got home from the hospital today, just wanted to fire off a quick answer to the first response. I don't know if/when I'll be able to interact again, but I just wanted to answer your challenges.]
Again I just cannot resist responding to what Hays says and I will provide a more extensive response. Hays says:
ReplyDelete"The obvious implication of Robert's position is that Reformed theologians are false teachers, promoting a heretical view of God. If, however, a Calvinist says the same thing about an Arminian theologian, Robert will wax indignant. Tim would do well to observe the flagrant double standard."
Actually Tim there is quite a flagrant double standard on this blog. If a noncalvinist challenges the calvinism espoused here arguing that it is false, he is charged with being a false teacher and it is claimed that he is going to hell. For proof of this, check out the archives and look at the postings and responses of Henry. Henry is an orthodox Christian who does not hold to calvinism and argued against it here. Check out how he was treated by the Triablogers. Hays in particular was very nasty towards him engaging in all sorts of unnecessary personal attacks and insults: all because Henry challenged their calvinism and Henry argued that calvinism is false.
Hays says here that I would charge the calvinist with being false teachers and teaching heretical doctrine. And this is precisely where the double standard lies. I believe calvinism is false, but I also believe that calvinists may be christians who are wrong about their calvinism and that they ought to be treated as christians. If they are saved individuals then they are mistaken about their calvinism, but they are not false teachers in the NT sense (in the NT the false teachers described are not believers and are hell bound). So I would not accuse them of being false teachers and going to hell as they did with Henry. But they have no hesitation in doing so with anyone who disagrees with calvinism. Those who disagree are false teachers, hell bound, blasphemers, to be insulted and mocked in every way imaginable. Christians are called to behave differently towards other believers than the way Triablogers deal with non-calvinists here. Double standard? Definitely, but it is the Triablogers who consistently and repeatedly behave in ways that violate what scripture says. Tim check out those discussions they had with Henry and see for yourself.
Robert
TIM SAID:
ReplyDelete"Robert doesn't think God acts the way you describe Him. "
And why is that? Where does he get his understanding of God? From Scripture? No.
Rather, he *brings* to Scripture his axiomatic commitment to the following principle: "We should only assign blame if the person could have (and should have) done otherwise."
*That* is how he judges Reformed theism.
I don't know if someone else has already covered this, but...
ReplyDeletea.) The gospel "offer" is actually a *command* to repent (Acts 17). God commanding men to repent is part of God's character regardless of whom He gives the commands to.
b.) Frequently, the "offer" (i.e., command to repent) is given for the purpose of having the opposite effect, to harden the hearts of the unregenerate (Isaiah 6, John 12:47-50, I believe).
c.) Let us remember when talking about who's conception of God is nasty one that the Arminian God is the One who knew that if He created the world, then great many **purposeless** evils would result, and yet, He did it anyway. The Arminian conception of God is the God of Nihilism.
Hays says:
ReplyDelete“Yes, because God has told us that he predetermines everything.”
No, He hasn’t, that is the calvinistic invention, the assumption which they foist upon the biblical texts. An assumption not held, and rejected by most Christians throughout church history (prior to Augustine no one in the early church was espousing global determinism, Augustine and the reformers brought in this Trojan horse of an assumption). The Catholics, the Eastern Orthodox and most Protestants reject this assumption/invention that God predetermines everything. Scripture is clear that He does predetermine some events, most notably the crucifixion of Jesus Acts 2:23, 4:25-28), but not all events.
“God is undoubtedly responsible for whatever happens in the world. It is, after all, his world. But he is not solely responsible, and he’s not blameworthy.”
I hold the puppet master completely responsible for the actions of the puppet if he is the one pulling and controlling all the strings. It is a bit disingenuous to blame the puppet for actions which the puppet master completely dictated. The puppet is only doing the actions which are caused by the pulling of the strings by the puppet master. Again, if God predetermines everything and controls everything then he is pulling all of the strings.
“ii) BTW, actors recite a script that the screenwriter wrote for them. So what’s so bad about playing a part in someone else’s play? Does Robert think that drama is immoral? Does he boycott the movies?”
I enjoy drama and also like movies. Nothing wrong with choosing to play a part in someone else’s play, if you have the choice. But in the calvinistic scheme, God predetermines everything like an author who writes up a play. The author of his play does not consult his characters to see if they choose to be in the play or do what they do in the play. No, the characters do exactly what the author wants them to do and have no say in the matter whatsoever. So if the author in the calvinistic play wants you to be a serial killer or child molester or whatever that is exactly what you will be and do, no more and no less. Staying with the analogy of God writing the story in its every detail, imagine that the author also wrote Himself into the story as well. And further imagine that in some places in the book the author gets frustrated, angry, upset about something done by one of the other characters. Is that frustration and anger on the part of the author, real, or just inserted into the story? Since the author completely dictates every detail of his own story, whatever happens is exactly what He wants to happen. So why would he ever really get frustrated or angry by anything in his own story? He would not.
Yet in the bible the Lord does get angry, does get frustrated, about the behavior of say Israel. Why is he getting upset and frustrated if he predetermined every event to go down exactly as it does? It would make no sense to get frustrated or angry if you had in fact orchestrated, predetermined the whole thing. God’s evident frustration and anger in scripture is clear evidence that in fact He has not predetermined every event, He is not pleased by some events, some events are not what He wanted to happen. If the calvinist assumption of total predetermination is true, then God is acting frustrated, acting angry, about things that are going exactly as He had preplanned for them to go. That is schizophrenic and irrational.
“Notice how blind the libertarian is to the implications of his alternative scheme. According to the Robert, God has empowered Ted Bundy to prey on his victims. God has given Bundy the freedom to torture and murder his victims.”
God in His sovereignty creates people to be conscious persons who choose to do their own actions/have free will. Put in calvinist lingo, God decrees that human persons have free will (or put more technically they are created with the capacity for self-determination). But this capacity, this reality of human nature, to make our own choices can be a double edged sword because we can choose to do good things and also choose to do bad things. God is not going to constantly go against His own plan and eliminate free will every time it may cause a problem.
“According to Robert, God wouldn’t step in to prevent Bundy from torturing a woman to death because that would violate Bundy’s freedom of choice. Instead, God allows Bundy to violate the woman’s freedom of choice.”
God can and on occasion has prevented people from sinning, but that is not what usually happens. Most of the time He allows people to exercise their own choices, including the ability to sin.
“Did the woman choose to let Bundy rape her and murder her? No. But in Robert’s scheme, God honors Ted Bundy’s freedom rather than the woman’s freedom.”
It is not the case that God “honors” freedom, rather, it was His sovereign will that we have freedom in the first place. That is what He wanted us to have, that is the way that He wanted us to be, so that is what we have. If you have a problem with God creating us that way, take it up with Him, I didn’t create us with freedom He did.
“On Robert’s scheme, Ted Bundy is simply living out the scenario that God foresaw, but did nothing to prevent. Ted Bundy does exactly what God foresaw that he would do, yet Robert’s God does nothing to prevent the crime, since that would infringe on Bundy’s freedom of choice.”
Here is a key difference that Hays refuses to accept. The calvinist believes that God predetermines every event, so of course we cannot and do not have free will. And every evil we do under this scheme is exactly what God wants us to do with no exceptions (all part of the story the author wanted). The non-calvinist believes that God created us with freedom and allows us to mis-use this freedom/sin. If God allows us to make bad decisions and do bad actions, to sin, because we are making the choice ourselves, then we really are to blame for what we do. But if God predetermines everything and we can never ever do otherwise than what He wants us to do, and we are doing exactly what He wants us to do, when we sin, that is worse, and He really is to blame.
Analogy - imagine a guy named “Greg” who likes to play chess. And imagine a neurosurgeon named “Anderson” who has the ability to implant a device in a person’s head which dictates what the person wants to do or not do. The device then, can control what a person desires to do in any given situation and when implanted the person is unaware of its presence. The device can ensure whatever choice will be chosen by the person with the implant, will be chosen, according to the will of “Anderson”. Unbeknownst to Greg, Anderson has implanted the device in Greg’s head. So now Anderson can control the thoughts and desires of Greg at will. Anderson invites Greg to a friendly game of chess. The game is going along well and is pretty evenly played until about the thirtieth move. Greg has a move and he can choose to move a rook which will keep his queen or he can move a pawn which will immediately result in him losing his queen. Once he has lost the queen the game will be lost quickly by Greg. Anderson activates the device inside Greg so that Greg desires to move the pawn. Moving the pawn is really what Greg wants to do. In moving the pawn Greg is not being coerced, he is not being forced to move the pawn against his will as his will is to move the pawn. Greg thought about moving the rook instead of the pawn but then the device kicked in and so he had the desire to move the pawn. So Greg “freely” moves the pawn (it is freely done because he is doing exactly what he wants to do, he is not being coerced to make the move, or manipulated, he is acting on his own desire) and loses the game. Who was responsible for Greg moving the pawn? I mean Greg did make the move, it was his “choice”, it was what he wanted to do. While technically speaking Greg did the action, I would hold Anderson responsible for the bad chess move. Anderson set up the game and controlled Greg’s desire so that he could “win” the game. I do not call this coercion (because Greg was not forced to do it). I do not call it manipulation (because Greg was not tricked or conned into making the move). I do call it being constrained into doing the action by Anderson. I discussed this with John Martin Fischer and we agreed that constraining was the appropriate word for this phenomena. Well if God predetermines every event, then God constrains every person to do every action that they ever do. Now I believe that the God of the bible has the power to have set things up in this way if He had wanted to. But he wanted genuine persons who did their actions on their own, with these actions not all being constrained by God. The calvinist on the other hand would have no problem with what Anderson did with Greg, nor would he have any problem with God completely constraining every human action. I do not believe that God is the puppet master pulling all the strings, nor are we pre-programmed robots/stepford wives, nor is God like Anderson but on a global scale, nor are we completely constrained in our actions. The bible reveals that God created us with free will, that things do not always go the way that God wants them to go (so He really does get frustrated and angry at people and what they do which they did by their own free will)
“i) Notice how libertarian sthink we should treat them with utmost respect even though the blaspheme God.”
Christians should treat each other in the way instructed by the bible. I do not blaspheme God, I love the God of the bible. But I do not respect the calvinistic conception of god, as He is not the God of the bible, but something concocted by humans who assume global determinism of all events.
“Calvinism didn’t invent predestination or providence or original sin or divine hardening or any number of other local or global conditions that infringe on libertarian freewill. That’s all in the Bible.”
I have no problem with predestination or of providence or of original sin or divine hardening or any other realities presented in scripture. I do have a problem with global or exhaustive determinism as this is the calvinistic invention, the key error made by calvinists.
“ii) And observe how illogical he is. Unless Robert subscribes to annihilationism, he believes that “billions” of people will, indeed, suffer eternal harm. That God is doing them eternal harm.
Now, he may believe this on libertarian grounds, but they still suffer eternal harm. If that’s what makes you worse than Ted Bundy, then, on his own grounds, the “God” he believes in is worse than Ted Bundy.
Robert is using the very same argument that a militant atheist uses to besmirch the character of God. That God is doing billions of people eternal harm, which makes God worse than the worst psychopath on earth.”
I have no problem with God punishing people eternally in hell if they have continually rejected his gracious offer of salvation to them during this lifetime. Hays apparently thinks that my problem is with the orthodox and biblically revealed concept of hell. That is not my problem, I have been teaching that as a biblically revealed truth for a long time. No, my problem is with this calvinist conception of god who predetermines all events. So he sets up people to be hell bound before they ever exist on this earth. He predetermines their every thought and action (like Anderson with the device) so that they live a sinful lifestyle and can never do other than what He wants them to do. And then after setting them up/constraining them in this way, he puts them through a final judgment and then sends them to hell for doing exactly what He wanted them to do. That would be like Anderson punishing Greg for the bad chess move. That is sadistic and when you consider that that will happen to billions of people if the calvinist god were real, that is a real problem.
“Robert is just another blasphemer, like Hitchens and Dawkins, Menken, Ingersoll, and Thomas Paine.”
I do not hold to evolution, nor to atheism, nor am I skeptic of the bible and the miracles recorded in it in any way. I am skeptical of the calvinist assumption that God predetermines all events. Hays apparently does not care what he says about other christians, as he lumps in non-calvinists with atheists and others skeptical about Christianity. There is the double standard again.
“iii) Assuming that Robert does not subscribe to annihilationism, why do the damned suffer eternally?”
Because of the sins they freely committed and God’s perfect character, combined with the fact they repeatedly rejected God’s gracious offer of salvation.
“Don’t they have freewill?”
Yep, how do you think they were able to commit those sins?
“Why, from a libertarian perspective, shouldn’t the damned have the freedom to repent?”
They did have the freedom to repent on multiple occasions, during their lifetimes here on earth. Hays should read Ezekiel 18 more closely. Or OT passages where God keeps telling Israel to repent, over and over again.
I said:
I believe we should only assign blame if the person could have (and should have) done otherwise.
“i) Yes, this is his axiomatic belief, which he superimposes on Christian theology. And if God doesn’t correspond to his axiomatic commitment to libertarian freedom, then God is worse, far worse, than Ted Bundy.”
Actually, God operates by this same axiomatic belief, see Ezekiel 18 in particular but there are other passages as well where God holds people responsible for their actions and blames them because they could have and should have done otherwise.
It is amazing to see calvinists deny this principle. When we punish someone, we do so because we believe they did something blameworthy. And we believe them to be blameworthy if they did the action in question and should not have done the action. But should not have done it presupposes that they could not have done it. And if they could have chosen not to do it, but chose to do it anyway, then we blame them for it.
Consider the issue of homosexuality being a sin. We declare it to be a sin because it is a choice of an action that is blameworthy. It is blameworthy because they don’t have to engage in it, they choose to engage in the action. Those who question this type of thinking often come along and claim that it is not a choice, it is genetically determined, that it is not a choice. Just as you cannot choose the color of your eyes, but the eye color is genetically predetermined before you were born. Similarly, if a person is a homosexual then they had no choice in the matter, they can do no otherwise, they have to be homosexual, and some will even claim that is the way God made them. That is an interesting claim, because if God made you that way, then he predetermined for you to be that way, you had no choice and are simply living out God’s will for you. But calvinists would have us believe that this kind of reasoning applies to everything. In every instance no matter what we do, we are only doing what God made us to be and do. If Bundy is a serial killer and all things are predetermined by God, then God wanted him to be a serial killer and it was impossible for him to be anything else. Take anything, if global predeterminism by God is true, then our every move is completely constrained. So God constrains most folks into living lives of sin and rebellion and then punishes them eternally in hell for making the wrong moves. Moves they were predetermined to make, because that is exactly what God wanted them to do.
Before commenting on something Hays brings up it is worth noting a blast from the past. When Hays first began posting he gave an analogy in which he explicitly states that God has the character of a cardsharp. Here are Hays words and note what this says about God’s character (or lack of it):
“Suppose we compare predestination to a game of seven-card stud. God is the dealer. One of the players is a believer, the other an unbeliever who tries to cheat the believer at every turn. However, God has stacked the deck so that his chosen people will win over the long haul.
Now, God is securing the outcome by securing the deal. Yet he isn’t forcing the hand of a crooked player. Since a crooked player doesn’t know that the dealer is a cardsharp, he bets and bluffs just the same as if the deck were randomly shuffled. He can only play the hand he’s dealt, but that’s true in any poker game, and he enjoys the very same choices he’d have if the cards just happened to play out in that order.
God allows the unbeliever to cheat the believer, but feeds the believer enough winning cards to keep him in the game. God then lets the crooked player become overconfident and bet the whole jackpot on a weak hand, at which point the Christian calls his bluff and rakes in all the chips.
To me, there’s a delicious irony in this arrangement, for a crooked player constantly tries to cheat his fellow player, but all the while he’s being cheated by the dealer.”
Wow, according to Steve Hays his god has the character of a cardsharp who is cheating at cards. He allows the nonbelievers to cheat (actually it is not just allows as to allow means you are giving people the freedom to do so by their own choice rather than predetermining their every action, he constrains their cheating actions) and he cheats the nonbeliever so that the believer can “win”. This is not the God of the bible, this is the god of calvinism, just a sadistic cardsharp playing games with His creation.
“iv) We ordinarily think that a stacked deck is cheating. That it’s unfair. Why?”
A cardsharp intentionally breaks the rules in order to win. So they will lie, cheat, swindle, and do whatever it takes to “win”. They will have other associates in the game, they will mark the cards, deal from the center of the deck if they are really skillful cardsharps, do whatever it takes to gain a competitive advantage. The god of calvinism is a cardsharp on an infinite scale. He tells us in the bible not to lie, cheat or swindle and do whatever it takes to win (that’s his so-called moral will). But in his secret will, which predetermines everything so that everything occurs exactly as he wants it to occur, then lying, cheating, swindling, every form of evil is not only OK, it is precisely what He wants to happen! And the follower of this god, is quite glad that their god has the character of a cardsharp and is not above cheating to “win”.
“Because the player, unbeknownst to himself, is doing whatever the dealer wants him to do. If the dealer is feeding him losing cards, he will play the cards he was dealt, and he will lose.”
Hays is finally presenting real calvinism, “the player [that is every human person, every angel, every person] . . . is doing whatever the dealer [that is the god of calvinism] wants him to do. If the dealer [the cardsharp calvininst god] is feeding him losing cards [like being a serial killer like Bundy, or being a nazi like Hitler, or living a life of sin and rebellion and then going to hell ...], he will play the cards he was dealt [he will do exactly what this god predetermined for him to do, nothing less and nothing more], and he will lose [Yes, if he is one of the predetermined “losers” then his destiny, his losing, his cards were already decided before he was ever born, and he gets these losing cards then gets judged for playing these losing cards and sent to eternal hell for it, when he just played the cards the calvinist cardsharp god dealt him].
“And yet the odds are that sooner or later a randomly shuffled deck will have the same sequence as a stacked deck. Suppose you happen to find yourself in such a game. The outcome is identical whether or not the dealer is a cardsharp. Same hands. Same bets. Same bluffs. Same outcome.”
The random hand doesn’t matter, that is irrelevant to our discussion here. The calvinist god/cardsharp does his cheating intentionally there is no randomness to it at all.
“ii) Secondly, we hold them responsible because the amateurish objections of someone like Robert don’t survive rational scrutiny.”
This line is actually funny. The objections I raise against calvinism may be considered “amateurish” by Hays because Hays does not like them. But these objections have been presented by some very intelligent folks and these objections are some of the major reasons why so many bible believing Christians have rejected calvinism and its cardsharp conception of god.
In my line of work I have dealt with some real cardsharps. The ones that are skillful are often very intelligent and resourceful capable of any behavior if it gets them what they want (sociopaths really), not the kind of people that you want to fool around with. To claim that the true God of the bible is like these folks in His character and actions is to badly impugn the character of God.
“It is Robert who is guilty of misrepresentation by leveling a false accusation against me. But we’ve come to expect that from Robert. He has no integrity.”
Hays wants to challenge my integrity when He thinks his god has the character of a cardsharp?
“ii) And while we’re on the subject, how is the Arminian God sincere in offering salvation to “billions” of people whom he foreknows will reject the offer? Indeed, he created them knowing all the while that when he offered them the gospel, they would spurn the offer and burn in hell forever, and yet he created them any way and evangelized them anyway.”
God sincerely wants all men to be saved just like He says in His word. That is His will for people. But He also sovereignly created them with free will so they have the capacity to both enter into a relationship of love and trust with God and to reject God and keep rejecting God for a lifetime. God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked and calls them to repent. But they repeatedly choose not to, and reject His gracious offer of salvation. God’s nature is love (not a cheating immoral cardsharp) so He reaches out repeatedly even to people who keep spurning Him and His love (just look at the history of Israel his chosen nation to see that). So while God foreknows everything, His foreknowledge does not stop Him from being the loving and merciful and kind and gracious and forgiving and patient person that He is. Human persons are not worthy of a relationship with God especially in light of their sin against Him, and yet He seeks relationship with them anyway. And He makes it clear that He gave His Son Jesus in a redemptive sense for the world. And He calls believers out of that world, believers being those who have freely chosen to be in relationship with Him. So He makes the offer of salvation to people because of His nature (even those whom He knows will never repent), He then saves those who become His people through faith, just like their spiritual father Abraham did so. This God allows people to freely reject Him.
“Of course, this is the standard caricature of Calvinism by chronic liars like Robert.”
So according to Hays I am a blasphemer, have no integrity, and I am a chronic liar. But Hays’ god has the character of a cardsharp and that is OK.
“i) Robert uses a B-movie as the hermeneutical grid through which he filters the Bible. This is why he simply invents what he considers to be the preconditions of a well-meant offer.”
No, I used it as an illustration of the calvinist god: one who wants instead of genuine persons who freely choose to love Him and others, programmed robots who are constrained to do exactly what the men want them to do, with no choices on their part being involved at all. The calvinist god puts the carrot out in front of people and shows it to them, but he knows full well they will never get to it, have no chance to get to it, and he enjoys playing games with them. He is a cardsharp according to Hays remember???
“In Scripture, by contrast, God often sends the prophets out on a lost cause. He commands them to call on backslidden Israel to repent, and yet he tells them in advance that Israel will not heed the call to repent. So their mission is doomed from the outset.”
And why does He do that for his chosen people Steve? Because as He himself says He loves them. He taught this to Hosea real clearly. Gomer was prostituting herself (and she represented Israel) and yet the prophet still bought her back and loved her. Oh, and regarding “backslidden Israel” if the calvinist god existed then who predetermined for them to be “backslidden Israel” anyway? So why does God get frustrated with people when they are only doing exactly what He wants them to do anyway? Why are they a “lost cause”? If calvinism is true, it is because they were predestined and constrained to be. There is that sadistic streak again.
“Yet that’s because God has more than one purpose in the message. But by Robert’s humanistic criteria, the prophetic message is “cruel,” “sadistic,” and “insincere.””
No the message, the offer of forgiveness, the offer of salvation, is cruel, sadistic and insincere, only if you predetermined their every thought and action and made them that way and then have the gall to talk about offers to people who cannot respond because you made sure that they can’t respond. And that is cruel, sadistic, and insincere. But what should we expect from a god who has the character of a cardsharp?
“As for the reprobate, their disbelief serves to illustrate how evil sinners are when left to their own devices.”
The reprobate who are they? Why those are the losers in the eternal card game run by the calvinist cardsharp god. He has set them up to lose, and lose they will, big time.
And this line that they are “left to their own devices.” That would only be true if they were allowed to freely choose to do what they do. But the calvinist cardsharp god does not play the game that way, he rigs it all, every single detail of the game, so that whatever devices they get involved in is exactly what he wants them to do. He wants them to lose and ensures they will lose.
“I'd add that Robert's marital analogy is flawed in another respect as well, for—in Bible times—marriages were arranged. Most folks didn't marry for love. That's what concubines were for. Rather, they married for economic security and legal lines of inheritance—as well as a sexual outlet.
If the couple came to love each other, so much the better—but that wasn't the basis of marriage in Bible times.”
In my analogy I was speaking of myself and others fortunate enough to be blessed with loving marriages. So to what persons and what era was I speaking about? Modern times, me and the others who freely chose their marriage partners. Hays would probably prefer the era of arranged marriages because he likes having things set up, because he loves this god who has the character of a cardsharp who does set up everything and cheats so that he can “win.”
Robert
As an on-looker to this conversation, may I say that, while Robert's arguements sound "right" on a philosophical level, he fails to address those passages which point so clearly to the Calvinist view of God. Perhaps he has elswhere, but not here.
ReplyDeleteThat is typical, I find, of Arminian arguements. They are purely from the "fair" perspective and never from the clay/potter perspective.
Seems to me that fairness assumes equality. What's right for Donald Trump is right for me, we are both people. Trouble is, God is not people. He made me, he can destroy me and I have no valid arguement outside of Scripture. Jon had it right "Though he slay me, yet will I love Him." Robert's arguement sounds more like "If he slay me, it wouldn't be fair."
Address the texts, Robert, or is only so much hot air.
"God makes an offer of salvation. There's a condition stated ("whosoever believeth," etc.). In a purely monergistic scheme, God saves the elect and damns the rest, with man having no role in the affair.
ReplyDeleteAs Steve pointed out the decree itself does nothing but name the ends. The means are also decreed, and the means of condemnation is man's sin.
1. The Bible teaches us that men are to blame for their sins, for they comply with the decreed ends with motives all their own.
2. God "hardens" but frequently, his hardening has a judicial quality, and no man "hardened" is receiving anything that violates his freedom, for all men, left to their own devices would only ever disobey God.
3. You can argue that God decreeing the fall is at root fault, but that would equally apply to the Arminian scheme, since in the Arminian scheme the fall is also decreed, or have Arminians forgotten their own decretal scheme?
All well and good for the elect. But what about the rest? If the Gospel is preached to them at all, was God's offer of salvation to them sincere?
Yes, for what makes the offer "sincere" is the fact that God would in fact, forgive their sins, if they repented. They could *if they wanted to*. The reason they don't want to is their own love of their own evil. '
By the way, let's not get hung up on the "offer" vocabulary. Scripture variously characterizes it as an offer, invitation, and a command. We should never play up one at the expense of the others. Saint and Sinner is spot on! Kudos to him!
And this brings us to another observation. Hyper-Calvinism and Arminianism turn on the same sort of thinking.
Consider:
1. The Arminian says "ability limits responsibility."
2. The Hyper-Calvinist often does the same thing by asserting one needs to find a "warrant to believe" in election, such that each person who hears the gospel does not have to believe it (thereby hypers deny "duty faith") unless s/he can somehow peer into the divine decree. (By the way, this is precisly the same thinking that goes into the "traditional" view of finding God's will as in Henry Blackaby and others - it's subjective to the core).
3. Finding a "warrant to believe" in election is just another way of saying "ability limits responsibility," only the locus is not in contracausal freedom, it's in subjective knowledge of one's election.
4. Amyraldians and Arminians also do this with the atonement, for their view goes hand in hand with the scope of the atonement. The warrant is not only in contracausal freedom but in knowing "Jesus died for you in particular, by dying for everybody without exception."
I deny (as I believe does Steve) the scope and even the "sufficiency" of the atonement is necessary to underwrite the "free offer," for the commands of God are their own warrant to obey - period. Never does Scripture say otherwise. Repenting of sin and turning to Christ carry the force of a command. Scripture is explicit on this, "God is commanding men everywhere to repent (Acts 17); This is His commandment, that we believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as He commanded us."
All men are responsible because sin generates its own warrant to repent, regardless of their ability or inability to do so, particularly since their inability stems from their love of their own sin and hatred toward God. Men instrinsically know the Law, whether explicitly revealed or on the heart (Romans 2). They therefore also know that they must repent of sin. Telling those in ignorance of the Law to repent only serves to more clearly reveal what they already know in their consciences. Ergo, the "warrant to believe" and thus the "sincerity" of the offer is found in the command itself - not outside the command in the moral ability or inability of men.
This means, of course, that Robert, while criticizing Calvinism stands hand in hand with hyper-Calvinists in this thinking.
Was there any way they could have been saved? *Could* they have turned and repented?"
Yes, *if they so desired.* The Arminian scheme is designed such that one of the highest values is, for all intents and purposes, giving men what they desire. Since men do not desire to be saved, and the reason is their own evil desire, why is this even an objection?
As to the decree, does not God have the right to create some for destruction and some not for it? By the way, if God creates those whom He knows He will condemn, wittering on about the decrees does not alleviate the problem for the Libertarian.
Libertarians seem forget that men have already made their choice, and they did so in Adam, for not one of us would have made a different one given the same conditions. Libertarians act as if God owes man the right to choose good or evil, to repent or not, to believe or not, always, all the time, with no restrictions - but let's grant men "free will" and forget about original sin and the Fall for just a moment. Let's suppose that we have "free will" from birth, like libertarians seem to think. Why, on these grounds, should my will not become bound to sin once I commit my first willful sin? Is God not free to begin exacting justice from that moment forward? If not, then what are we to make of this God, whose hands are seemingly tied until we die?
For libertarians, God does not have the right to exact justice for sin until we die. For them, God has no freedom; only man has freedom - even after he raises his hand in hatred of his God. This is the God of the atheist too.
If a noncalvinist challenges the calvinism espoused here arguing that it is false, he is charged with being a false teacher and it is claimed that he is going to hell.
Robert is bringing this up again, but it's already been refuted. He's just like Orthodox in that regard. Pity it doesn't match the historical record, for nowhere did anybody claim Henry was "going to hell."
By the way, Robert, I see you're doing a bang up job with "logical arguments," ethical, and philosophical objections, but you have yet to provide any exegetical foundation for what you say - all the while decrying this same alleged activity in the Reformed camp.
No, He hasn’t, that is the calvinistic invention, the assumption which they foist upon the biblical texts. An assumption not held, and rejected by most Christians throughout church history (prior to Augustine no one in the early church was espousing global determinism, Augustine and the reformers brought in this Trojan horse of an assumption). The Catholics, the Eastern Orthodox and most Protestants reject this assumption/invention that God predetermines everything. Scripture is clear that He does predetermine some events, most notably the crucifixion of Jesus Acts 2:23, 4:25-28), but not all events.
ReplyDeleteAh, so now we have "God works all things after the counsel of His will" (in Greek, literally "all, all things)" reduced to "some things." Here's Robert's schizophrenic logic: he'll take the "pantos" passages of Scripture regarding the atonement or God's desires (1 Tim 2:4 for example) to mean "everyone without exception" and then reduce "all things" to "some."
And notice that rather than appeal to Scripture, he appeals to tradition, but if he'd like to appeal to the Early Church, then by all means let's go there:
How about this one: "To believe is not ours, or in our power, but the Spirit's who is in us and abides in us." (Athanasius' Creed)
Or this one: The victory lies in the will of God, not thine own. To overcome is not in our power." (Lactantius)
" Who is this: When He says, "No man can come to Me," He breaks the proud liberty of free will; for man can desire nothing, and in vain he endeavors...Where is the proud boasting of free will?...We pray in vain if it is in our own will. Why should men pray for that from the Lord which they have in the power of their own free will? (Jerome)
"God has hath completed the number which He before determined with Himself, all those who are written, or ordained unto eternal life...being predestined indeed according to the love of the Father that we would belong to Him forever." (Iranaeus)
"If you died in unbelief, Christ did not die for you." (Anselm)
"Since only the elect are saved, it may be accepted that Christ did not come to save all and did not die on the cross for all." (Remigius)
By the way, why cut off at Augustine? Where's the supporting argument for that move?
Isaiah 46:10
ReplyDeleteDeclaring the end from the beginning,
And from ancient times things which have not been done,
Saying, 'My purpose will be established,
And I will accomplish all My good pleasure'
Ephesians 1:11
11also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will,
The author of Proverbs declares that, “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord” (Prov. 16:33).
“Our God is in heaven; he does whatever pleases him” (Ps. 115:3).
God said to Isaiah that “From the east I summon a bird of prey. . . to fulfill my purpose” (46:11) showing that even birds are controlled by him.
Jesus said that “not one [sparrow] will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father” (Mt. 10:29), meaning that something even as insignificant as the death of a sparrow is predetermined by God.
God is even the ultimate cause of calamity and disaster. He interrogated Moses from the burning bush, “Who makes [a man] deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I, the Lord?” (Ex. 4:11). As God shapes a child in its mother’s womb, he forms some with physical and mental disabilities, and others he makes healthy. He is free to do with us as he chooses, since we are merely clay in his hands (Rom. 9:21). And only the impious would dare challenge his authority by quipping, “why did you make me like this?” (Rom. 9:20). Earthquakes, famine, pestilence and storm all befall a city because of God. Amos asked the rhetorical question, “When disaster comes to a city, has not the Lord caused it?” (Am. 3:6).
Does an offer of choice imply the freedom and ability to choose contracausally, that is does command to do a thing prove the ability to do it? E.g. God would not command us to do what we cannot do? Frequently Arminians will appeal to Deuteronomy where Moses says, "choose life in order that you may live,..." to say that this proves men must have contracausal freedom, but Moses said that the reason the Israelites were a stiff-necked people who refused to stop sinning was because, “to this day the Lord has not given you a mind that understands or eyes that see or ears that hear” (Deut. 29:4). The answer is, "No," nothing can be deduced about ability from such statements.
“I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the Lord, do all these things” (Isa. 45:7). The darkness of night and plague is from God. And the wealth and peace of the nations is in his hands. It is easy to suppose that men are somehow exempt from the sphere of God’s sovereign control. But this is not the case. If Isaiah can say that God controls birds, it is just as certain that he controls men: “From the east I summon a bird of prey; from a far-off land, a man to fulfill my purpose” (Isa. 46:11).
Proverbs 21 declares, "The heart of the king is like channels of water in the hands of the Lord, He turns it wherever He wishes." God even causes a man to say every word that comes from his mouth: “from the Lord comes the reply of [a person’s] tongue” (Prov. 16:1). And the Lord ordains every course of action a man takes for Scripture says, “the Lord determines [a man’s] steps” (Prov. 16:9). David said, "All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be." (Ps. 139:16).
Proverbs declares, “The Lord works out everything for his own ends – even the wicked for a day of disaster” (Prov. 16:4). Paul asserts, like Isaiah, that, “God has bound all men over to disobedience” (Rom. 11:32). This teaching pervades all of Scripture. The Psalmist declared, “The Lord made his people very fruitful; he made them too numerous for their foes, whose hearts he turned to hate his people, to conspire against his servants” (Ps. 105:24-25).We could go on and on and on with these declarations in Scripture.
Robert believes that God only predetermines *some things* but when we look at Scripture, we find that the list is quite exhaustive, and Robert, while accusing us of emphasizing the particular over the general and claiming, I suppose, that "all means all," quickly reduces "all," as in Ephesians 1 to "some." Robert needs a supporting argument that these declarations above are all exceptions and that the salvation of men lies not in the predestination of God but in man's libertarian freedom. He needs an exegetical argument to that effect, but, as we have seen many times, he falls strangely silent when pressed on that matter - and if he wants to throw in his lot with Catholicism and Orthodoxy, well, that's just icing on the cake.
robert said...
ReplyDelete“No, He hasn’t, that is the calvinistic invention, the assumption which they foist upon the biblical texts.”
All assertion, no argument. Gene and I regularly present exegetical arguments for our position, and regularly interact with counterarguments. Manata has also devoted a lot of time to the compatibilist/incompatibilist debate.
Robert, by contrast, contents himself with question-begging assertions.
“An assumption not held, and rejected by most Christians throughout church history (prior to Augustine no one in the early church was espousing global determinism, Augustine and the reformers brought in this Trojan horse of an assumption). The Catholics, the Eastern Orthodox and most Protestants reject this assumption/invention that God predetermines everything.”
i) Once again, this is not an exegetical argument.
ii) Moreover, Robert apparently classifies himself as some sort of Evangelical, but Catholicism and Orthodoxy reject Evangelical theology. Take sola fide, for starters. Does Robert reject sola fide because the Catholic and Orthodox tradition rejects it? So Robert is being unprincipled, as usual.
“I hold the puppet master completely responsible for the actions of the puppet if he is the one pulling and controlling all the strings. It is a bit disingenuous to blame the puppet for actions which the puppet master completely dictated. The puppet is only doing the actions which are caused by the pulling of the strings by the puppet master. Again, if God predetermines everything and controls everything then he is pulling all of the strings.”
i) What’s the difference between a puppet/puppeteer metaphor and the pot/potter metaphor?
Would Robert also say, “I hold the potter completely responsible for the actions of the pot if he is the one shaping the clay. It is a bit disingenuous to blame the pot for actions which the potter completely dictated. The pot is only doing the actions which are caused by the shaping of the clay by the potter. Again, if God predetermines everything and controls everything then he is shaping the clay”?
Indeed, Scripture uses the pot/potter metaphor as an analogy for divine control.
ii) Who cares whether Robert “holds the puppet master completely responsible for the actions of the puppet.” That is not an argument, but an opinion.
iii) And analogy is not a substitute for an argument. And one also needs to show that the analogy is analogous at the relevant point of comparison. Puppets are fundamentally unlike people inasmuch as puppets are inanimate objects, not conscious agents.
“But in the calvinistic scheme, God predetermines everything like an author who writes up a play. The author of his play does not consult his characters to see if they choose to be in the play or do what they do in the play.”
Naturally, since they wouldn’t even exist apart from the author’s creative characterization. Would Robert rather not exist?
“No, the characters do exactly what the author wants them to do and have no say in the matter whatsoever. So if the author in the calvinistic play wants you to be a serial killer or child molester or whatever that is exactly what you will be and do, no more and no less.”
And they willingly play their part to the hilt.
“Yet in the bible the Lord does get angry, does get frustrated, about the behavior of say Israel. Why is he getting upset and frustrated if he predetermined every event to go down exactly as it does?”
Is Robert an open theist?
“God’s evident frustration and anger in scripture is clear evidence that in fact He has not predetermined every event, He is not pleased by some events, some events are not what He wanted to happen.”
i) If you’re going to take this literally, then it would be clear evidence that God didn’t even know the future. Why would God “get angry or upset or frustrated” if he saw all this coming? And if he foresaw this result, and didn’t like what he saw, then why didn’t he instantiate a different possible world with an outcome more to his liking?
ii) Incidentally, a God who “gets angry or upset or frustrated” at the way things turn out is a very dangerous God to be around. You can’t count on a moody God to be loving if you have the bad fortune to catch him in a bad mood.
Robert’s God sounds like an omnipotent preschooler who is throwing a temper tantrum. What’s the difference between Robert’s God and Damian?
“If the calvinist assumption of total predetermination is true, then God is acting frustrated, acting angry, about things that are going exactly as He had preplanned for them to go.”
If things are not going according to plan, then in what sense does God know the future? Why did he choose to instantiate a possible world with *that* future if it doesn’t go according to plan? Didn’t God *plan* to instantiate *that* possible world, with *that* future, rather than some other possible world with a different future?
Why would God choose to create a world if he had no plan for the world he was making? How could things not go according to plan if God foreknew the outcome, and chose to create a world in which that particular outcome would eventuate?
“That is schizophrenic and irrational.”
i) Only if you read the Bible the way a Mormon would. I don’t subscribe to Mormon hermeneutics, but Robert evidently does.
ii) And nothing sounds more irrational or schizophrenic than Robert’s description of the God he believes in.
“God is not going to constantly go against His own plan and eliminate free will every time it may cause a problem.”
i) His own plan? Robert just denied that God has a plan for the world.
ii) Moreover, for Robert to appeal to God’s plan (as he defines it) begs the question of whether the libertarian plan is any good. It’s like a bureaucrat who appeals to a stupid government policy to justify the policy. When you point out that the policy is illogical, the bureaucrat responds by saying, “Sorry, we can’t accommodate you because that’s against our policy!”
“Most of the time He allows people to exercise their own choices, including the ability to sin.”
Is he allowing the rape victim to exercise her own choices? Is he allowing the murder victim to exercise his own choices?
“If you have a problem with God creating us that way, take it up with Him, I didn’t create us with freedom He did.”
Another tendentious assertion in search of a supporting argument.
“If God allows us to make bad decisions and do bad actions, to sin, because we are making the choice ourselves, then we really are to blame for what we do.”
Given a choice—and this is all about choice, right?—which scenario would the victim prefer?
a) To be tortured to death by Ted Bundy, but be able to say to himself while he’s being tortured to death that Bundy is to blame?
b) Not to be tortured to death by Bundy in the first place?
Care to put it up for a vote, Robert?
“But if God predetermines everything and we can never ever do otherwise than what He wants us to do, and we are doing exactly what He wants us to do, when we sin, that is worse, and He really is to blame.”
This is another assertion in lieu of an argument. It is neither an exegetical argument nor a philosophical argument. It enjoys a knee-jerk, emotional appeal, but as soon as you introduce Frankfurt-style cases, it quickly loses its superficial plausibility.
“Analogy - imagine a guy named ‘Greg’ who likes to play chess. And imagine a neurosurgeon named ‘Anderson’ who has the ability to implant a device in a person’s head which dictates what the person wants to do or not do.”
Robert is repeating a mistake which I already corrected him on. He is, once more, confusing *causality* with *certainty*.
The decree doesn’t “make” anything happen. Rather, it ensures a particular outcome. Providence is what “makes” things happen. And providence uses second causes, including human agents.
“I do not believe that God is the puppet master pulling all the strings, nor are we pre-programmed robots/stepford wives.”
Since robots are unconscious machines, the analogy falls apart. And if AI ever succeeded, the analogy would fall apart in a different respect.
“The bible reveals that God created us with free will.”
Where does the Bible reveal that?”
“That things do not always go the way that God wants them to go (so He really does get frustrated and angry at people and what they do which they did by their own free will)”
Even if, for the sake of argument, we grant Robert’s commitment to Mormon hermeneutics, his conclusion doesn’t follow from his premise. I know a lot of folks who get “angry,” “upset,” and “frustrated” when machines malfunction. Vending machines that eat your money, but don’t give you the candy bar. Outboard motors that don’t restart when you’re in the middle of lake where it’s too far away to swim to shore. Fun things like that. I’ve heard a lot of choice language directed at malfunctioning equipment.
Does this mean that machines are acting of their own freewill? To be sure, there are SF movies in which appliances take revenge on homeowners. Does Robert think that a homicidal elevator has freewill?
If so, then I’d suggest that he take the staircase. And avoid traffic lights. Not to mention killer garbage disposals.
“I love the God of the bible.”
Actually, Robert’s “God” has a lot more in common with Homer than with Isaiah or Peter, Paul, or John (to name a few).
“I have no problem with God punishing people eternally in hell if they have continually rejected his gracious offer of salvation to them during this lifetime.”
Why would a libertarian draw the line on this side of the grave?
“Hays apparently thinks that my problem is with the orthodox and biblically revealed concept of hell.”
No, as I already explained, the problem is with Robert’s ad hoc restriction on libertarian freedom. He only believes in libertarian freewill when he’s attacking the doctrines of grace.
“So he sets up people to be hell bound before they ever exist on this earth.”
Why not? If he knows where they’re going to end up before he makes them, didn’t he make them with that destination in mind?
“Hays apparently does not care what he says about other Christians.”
I do care what I say about other *Christians. * But what I say about *blasphemers* who forfeit a credible profession of faith is quite a different matter.
“As he lumps in non-calvinists with atheists and others skeptical about Christianity.”
No, I was far more specific. It’s when someone like Robert or Olson begins to compare the true God with the devil or Ted Bundy that I lump them in with the militant atheist.
“There is the double standard again.”
What double standard would that be? I’m on record as having said on several occasions that I don’t treat everyone the same way—because everyone is not the same.
“They did have the freedom to repent on multiple occasions, during their lifetimes here on earth.”
Once again, this doesn’t follow from Robert’s commitment to libertarian freedom. Do the damned become “robots” or “puppets” when they pass into hell?
“Actually, God operates by this same axiomatic belief, see Ezekiel 18 in particular but there are other passages as well where God holds people responsible for their actions and blames them because they could have and should have done otherwise.”
Ezk 18 is a statement about personal responsibility. In particular, it repudiates a mechanistic view of dynastic guilt and retribution. It says nothing about libertarian freedom. Robert is simply reading that into the text because he regards libertarian freedom as a precondition of personal responsibility. That’s an extrascriptural axiom which he brings to the text of Ezk 18—and not one which he can exegete from the text.
“It is amazing to see calvinists deny this principle.”
Yes, it’s terrible when Calvinists take God at his word.
“When we punish someone, we do so because we believe they did something blameworthy. And we believe them to be blameworthy if they did the action in question and should not have done the action. But should not have done it presupposes that they could not have done it.”
Even on its own grounds, this is simple-minded. Some criminals are compulsively evil. They have an irrepressible urge to harm and to kill. They cannot stop themselves. They can only be stopped—preferably by a bullet between the eyes.
“Consider the issue of homosexuality being a sin. We declare it to be a sin because it is a choice of an action that is blameworthy. It is blameworthy because they don’t have to engage in it, they choose to engage in the action.”
Robert is simply assuming what he needs to prove:
i) Homosexuality isn’t sinful simply in action. It’s a sinful desire that motivates the action. The desire would be sinful even if the homosexual didn’t act on his desire.
BTW, this is true of sin in general.
ii) Homosexuality can become quite addictive.
iii) Robert is also burning a straw man. Calvinism doesn’t deny that people make choices. It denies that anyone has the freedom to override God’s decree. It also denies that unregenerate sinners have the freedom to override original sin.
“If Bundy is a serial killer and all things are predetermined by God, then God wanted him to be a serial killer and it was impossible for him to be anything else.”
i) This is simpleminded because it fails to distinguish between means and ends.
ii) And let’s consider Robert’s alternative. He believes that God didn’t want Ted Bundy to be a serial killer, yet God created Ted Bundy anyway—in full knowledge that Bundy would do what God didn’t want him to do.
Robert keeps raising his moralistic objections to Calvinism as if this is his trump card, while his own position is immune to moralistic objections. But any atheist or open theist or universalist could raise moralistic objections to Robert’s position.
“Before commenting on something Hays brings up it is worth noting a blast from the past. When Hays first began posting he gave an analogy in which he explicitly states that God has the character of a cardsharp.”
Is that what I *explicitly* said? No. It’s not even what I *implicitly* said. Did I ever compare God to a cardsharp at the level of *character*? No. Rather, I compared the two at the level of the *outcome*. *That*, and only that, was the *explicit* comparison.
I pointed out that a cardsharp controls the outcome of the game. Then I also noted that there are times when a randomly shuffled deck will have the same sequence as a stacked deck. The outcome is the same.
After that I made the final point that if determinism/predeterminism and indeterminism can have the same outcome, then indeterminism enjoys no moral advantage over determinism or predeterminism.
“Wow, according to Steve Hays his god has the character of a cardsharp who is cheating at cards.”
Which is not what I said. This is what I actually said. Indeed, Robert quotes this portion of what I actually said:
“God allows the unbeliever to cheat the believer.”
Did I say that God is cheating at cards? No, I said the unbeliever is cheating at cards. And God allows him to cheat in the short-term, although he will suffer the consequences in the long-term.
So Robert deliberately rewords what I actually said, changing the original meaning to suit his own agenda.
“This is not the God of the bible, this is the god of calvinism, just a sadistic cardsharp playing games with His creation.”
To the contrary, it’s a regular refrain of Scripture that God ensnares the unbeliever in his own trap. But Robert is like a bleeding heart liberal who weeps for the cop-killer.
“A cardsharp intentionally breaks the rules in order to win. So they will lie, cheat, swindle, and do whatever it takes to ‘win’. They will have other associates in the game, they will mark the cards, deal from the center of the deck if they are really skillful cardsharps, do whatever it takes to gain a competitive advantage.”
Notice that Robert is not addressing himself to my actual argument. I used the gambling analogy to illustrate the potential equivalence between a deterministic or predetermined outcome and an indeterministic outcome.
Robert then gets swept away with the analogy, and proceeds attacks his own embellishment of the analogy as if he were attacking my own development of the analogy.
He does this so that he can then put on a theatrical show of indignation. It’s like watching a high school talent show in which a cheerleader or homecoming queen—like the kind in Carrie—does a heart-felt rendition of Scarlet O’Hara’s campy speech: “As God is mah witness, they're not gonna to lick me. I'm gonna live through this and when it's all over, I'll never be hungry again. No, nor any of mah kinfolk. If I have to lie, steal, cheat or kill. As God is mah witness, I'll never be hungry again!”
Break out the hankies, everyone! And in this liberated age, I guess we can now crown Robert as our homecoming queen for his thespian exploits.
The fact is that Scripture itself uses a gambling analogy when it refers—on several occasions—to God’s overruling providence in relation to the casting of lots (e.g. Prov 16:33; Est. 3:7; 9:1; Jon 1:7; Acts 1:26). So, as usual, the word of God is the object of Robert’s rage.
“But in his secret will, which predetermines everything so that everything occurs exactly as he wants it to occur, then lying, cheating, swindling, every form of evil is not only OK, it is precisely what He wants to happen!”
i) No, it doesn’t follow that every form of evil is “OK.” This fails to distinguish between God’s own motives and the motives of the sinner. It also assumes, again erroneously, that God’s attitude towards the individual means can be treated in isolation to his higher ends.
ii) And there are Scriptures that specifically distinguish between God’s preceptive and decretive will (e.g. Exod 4:21-22; 7:3-4; Isa 10:5-11). So, yes, God has a game plan—which he doesn’t share with everyone. Moses knows, but Pharaoh doesn’t. Isaiah knows, but Tiglath-pileser doesn’t. They are pawns on God’s chessboard.
“The random hand doesn’t matter, that is irrelevant to our discussion here. The calvinist god/cardsharp does his cheating intentionally there is no randomness to it at all.”
Either Robert is genuinely obtuse or else he’s playing dumb because the illustration is fatal to his position. A gambler can only play the hand he’s dealt. So he lacks the freedom to do otherwise. He doesn’t control the order of the cards.
And there are times when, as a matter of chance, a randomly shuffled deck with have the same sequence as a stacked deck. The sequence of the cards predetermines the outcome, even if the sequence itself is not predetermined. Hence, the distinction between determinism and indeterminism is morally insignificant.
“No, I used it as an illustration of the calvinist god: one who wants instead of genuine persons who freely choose to love Him and others, programmed robots who are constrained to do exactly what the men want them to do, with no choices on their part being involved at all.”
Once again, where’s the argument? It’s just the same hackneyed metaphors that lowbrow libertarians always use. Puppets and robots. Robots and puppets. Robotic puppets and puppety robots.
“And why does He do that for his chosen people Steve? Because as He himself says He loves them.”
Robert is disregarding the doctrine of the remnant. Who does God love? The remnant.
“So why does God get frustrated with people when they are only doing exactly what He wants them to do anyway?”
Short answer: he doesn’t.
Backsliders are instrumental in the furtherance of his plan for the world.
“But the calvinist cardsharp god does not play the game that way, he rigs it all, every single detail of the game, so that whatever devices they get involved in is exactly what he wants them to do.”
Yes, God has “rigged” the world the way a novelist has rigged his novel. Every novelistic detail happens exactly as the novelist intended it to happen. There would be no novel apart from the novelist. No storybook characters.
Did God know what he was going to make before he made it? I say, yes. What does Robert say?
A Creator puts his creative idea into effect. Shocking, I know!
“Hays would probably prefer the era of arranged marriages because he likes having things set up.”
Does Robert think that Biblical marriages were invalid?
Actually, God’s relationship to his people is the paradigmatic example of an arranged marriage. Cf. Ezk 16.
“An assumption not held, and rejected by most Christians throughout church history (prior to Augustine no one in the early church was espousing global determinism, Augustine and the reformers brought in this Trojan horse of an assumption). The Catholics, the Eastern Orthodox and most Protestants reject this assumption/invention that God predetermines everything."
ReplyDeleteNotice that Robert is very selective in his appeal to tradition. If he were serious about Christian tradition, he would adhere to the venerable tradition of classical Christian theism, according to which God is immutable and impassible, as a result of which we should construe certain Scriptural depictions of God as anthropomorphic or anthropopathetic.
But Robert bucks that tradition in favor of open theist hermeneutics when dealing with such passages. So Robert talks out of both sides of his mouth—as usual.