Operation: Mop-Up

I’m performing a little mopping up operation on Arminian Perspectives. So watch your step—the floor is slippery:

“I would now like to issue a bit of a challenge for those who are so convinced that libertarian free will is a myth, and that determinism is the Biblical doctrine.”

Notice that Ben is the one who is issuing the challenge. His sidekick issued a challenge of his own:

http://www.indeathorlife.org/soteriology/calvinism/reformedchallenge.php

This is useful to keep in mind when Ben and DC whine about how Triablogue has been pestering the poor little dears. They initiated the challenge. We merely took them at their word.

“Until you answer the following questions, I would ask that you refrain from attacking the contrary position.”

http://arminianperspectives.blogspot.com/2007/11/got-free-will.html

Why should we submit to that request? If the bible teaches predestination, then LFW is, indeed a myth. In that event, we don’t need to answer his questionnaire before we’re allowed to point that out. We don’t need a special permit to reiterate the teaching of Scripture.

And we also don’t need to justify predestination over and beyond the revelation of Scripture. So Ben’s attempt to disqualify his critics is sophistical.

“To the determinist I ask: 1) How do you make sense of regrets if you do not have the power of contrary choice? Why does your conscience bother you when you sin, if you could not have avoided that sin?”

i) How does a libertarian make sense of the fact that a compulsive gambler may well regret placing his dependents in financial hardship because he can’t resist the urge to roll the dice? He feels guilty that he lacks the moral resolve to do the right thing.

ii) Even in a game of chance, the odds are that every once in a while a random outcome will be the same as a predetermined outcome (e.g. loaded dice, a stacked deck). In both cases the gambler would do exactly the same thing, even if in once case—unbeknownst to him—the game was rigged.

iii) As a practical matter, we can only make one choice at a time. So what’s the point of having choices we were never going to make? What difference does it make if you could have one otherwise unless you would have done otherwise?

iv) If Ben wants a philosophical answer, he should consult the literature on compatibilism (e.g. John Martin Fischer).

“2) If God causes all things, then how can you claim that God does not cause sin?”

i) That’s equivocal. God is not the sole cause of everything that happens.

ii) And while we’re at it, let’s keep in mind that, after all these centuries, philosophers still can’t agree on how to define causation.

“If God is the only true actor in the universe, then all creatures are but passive instruments.”

That’s a straw man argument. Monergism is concerned with soteriology, not metaphysics. At even at the level of soteriology, not everything is monergistic. For example, regeneration is monergistic, but sanctification is not.

“3) Where did the first impulse to sin come from in both Satan and Adam?”

i) Why should a Calvinist be expected to answer that question?

a) We have no personal experience of sinless agency.

b) Revelation doesn’t tell us where the first impulse to sin came from.

c) And it’s not a truth of reason that we can intuit, like math.

So any answer is sheer speculation.

ii) At one level, God decreed the fall. But that doesn’t implant a disobedient impulse in Adam.

I’m also not sure that I see a problem. Although Adam was sinless, he wasn’t impeccable, so there was nothing to prevent him from sinning.

And even in a morally pristine universe, there are alternate or incommensurable goods. You can’t experience every good simultaneously. So even in a world without evil, there’s a potential for temptation. You don’t need a predisposition to sin in order to sin.

Suppose Adam and Eve both wanted the same juicy peach. That’s a natural desire for a natural good. But they can’t both have it. A sinless, but peccable, agent would still need to resist the temptation to covet the peach. To envy the good fortune of another. And there’s nothing that hinders him from giving into temptation. Even though he’s sinless, he must exercise a measure of moral restraint to check his natural impulses.

Since resisting temptation is a virtue, that tension can exist apart from the fall. The tree of knowledge was good. Curiosity is good.

iii) What is Ben’s alternative? LFW? But Ben says, “Appeals to mystery are inadmissible.”

Yet the appeal to LFW is an appeal to mystery. As Peter van Inwagen put it:

“But if we know that we are free—indeed, if we are free and do not know it—, there is some defect in one or both of our two arguments. Either there is something wrong with our argument for the conclusion that metaphysical freedom is incompatible with determinism or there is something wrong with our argument for the conclusion that metaphysical freedom is incompatible with indeterminism—or there is something wrong with both arguments. But which argument is wrong, and why? (Or are they both wrong?) I do not know. I think no one knows. That is why my title is, ‘The Mystery of Metaphysical Freedom.’ I believe I know, as surely as I know anything, that at least one of the two arguments contains a mistake. And yet, having thought very hard about the two arguments for almost thirty years, I confess myself unable to identify even a possible candidate for such a mistake. My opinion is that the first argument (the argument for the incompatibility of freedom and determinism) is essentially sound, and that there is, therefore, something wrong with the second argument (the argument for the incompatibility of freedom and indeterminism). But if you ask me what it is, I have to say that I am, as current American slang has it, absolutely clueless. Indeed the problem seems to me to be so evidently impossible of solution that I find very attractive a suggestion that has been made by Noam Chomsky (and which was developed by Colin McGinn in his recent book The Problems of Philosophy) that there is something about our biology, something about the ways of thinking that are ‘hardwired’ into our brains, that renders it impossible for us human beings to dispel the mystery of metaphysical freedom. However this may be, I am certain that I cannot dispel the mystery, and I am certain that no one else has in fact done so.”

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctytho/dfwvanInwagen1.htm

Continuing with Ben:

“Calvinists contend that the elect believe due to the influence of irresistible grace. Arminius and the Remonstrants rejected this partly due to the fact that the Bible plainly says that some do indeed resist the Holy Spirit (Acts 7:51)…So my question is rather simple. When a reprobate resists the Holy Spirit just what exactly is he resisting? If the Holy Spirit has no intentions of regenerating the reprobate and has instead decided to ‘pass him by’, then what on earth is the reprobate resisting?”

http://arminianperspectives.blogspot.com/2007/08/quick-questions-for-my-calvinists.html

In the TULIP acronym, irresistible grace stands for regeneration. That’s irresistible, both because it’s a direct act of God, and because the object of regeneration is passive in the process.

In Context, Acts 7:51 has reference to the Word of God. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of prophecy. The agent of inspiration.

In the very next verse (52), Stephen indicts unbelieving Jews for persecuting the prophets of yore. And when they disbelieve him, they repeat the same pattern, for Stephen is a modern prophet, inspired by the Holy Spirit (6:3,5).

In fact, that’s the same interpretation as Witherington’s, in the standard Arminian commentary on Acts: “always opposing the Holy Spirit. The implication is that Stephen is speaking at the direction of the Spirit and to oppose his words is like opposing the words of Moses or others in previous generations” (274).

It’s a pity when I have to point Arminians like Ben to their own writers. Can’t they at least keep up their own end of the argument?

In Reformed theology, the reprobate can disobey God’s preceptive will. They are not resisting the immediate agency of God. Rather, they are resisting the end-product of inspiration: the spoken or written word of God.

“I also want to ask my Calvinist friends how they can harmonize their doctrine of irresistible grace with Isaiah 5:1-4…So according to the Lord Himself, He had done all He could do to His vineyard, and yet it still did not produce acceptable fruit. Shouldn't we be able to answer the Lord, ‘Sorry, but you obviously didn't do all that you could have done Lord. You could have irresistibly caused your vineyard to produce good grapes.’ The Calvinist, to be consistent with his doctrine, could object in such a way. So here are my last two questions for my Calvinist friends. Would you feel comfortable saying such a thing to the Lord? Would you contend that God did not give sufficient grace for the Israelites to produce acceptable fruit?”

i) Well, Ben, we could always begin by keeping in mind that this is a parable. So it’s a mistake to take the details literally.

ii) For example, Ben quotes the following statement: “then he expected it to produce good grapes… when I expected it to produce good grapes.”

If Ben takes that literally, then this would be a prooftext for open theism. God can’t be both foresighted and shortsighted. So did God, in fact, entertain a false expectation?

iii) This also follows from the detail of the watchtower, which would guard the produce on the assumption of a yield that’s worth stealing. Once again, does Ben think that God failed to foresee the outcome?

iv) Then, in the part he didn’t quote, what about the vintner’s punitive reaction (5-6). Does Ben think that God is a disappointed lover who lashes out in a vindictive fit of pique?

How much of this parable does he take literally? The whole thing? Or is he selectively literal and figurative by turns. Is his principle that anything which supports Arminian theology should be taken literally, while anything which opposes Arminian theology should be taken metaphorically?

v) He assumes that the key phrase ought be rendered in terms of what more God “could” have done, rather than “should” have done, although—as Motyer points out—the Hebrew “uses the infinitive to express obligation” (68n3). God did everything he should have done. Thus, the blame lies elsewhere. That’s the point. God did enough to leave Israel at fault.

vi) As I’ve also said, “irresistible grace” is a synonym for regeneration. It’s not interchangeable with all God’s dealings with Israel in general or the church in general. Both Israel and the church are a mixed multitude of elect and reprobate members.