Annoyed Pinoy said...
Steve Said,
Why doesn’t God save everyone?
i) Either God is able to save everyone, but unwilling—in which case God is not omnibenevolent,
ii) Or else, God is willing to save everyone, but unable—in which case God is not omnipotent.
Those are the only logical alternatives: there is no third.
Absolutely no other logical alternatives?
What about (Calvinist) R. L. Dabney's view (http://www.spurgeon.org/~phil/dabney/mercy.htm) whereby God has a genuine "desire" (of sorts) for the salvation of the non-elect, but because of higher and more noble ends decrees the non-election of the reprobate. Similar to John Piper's view of there being two wills in God (http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/Articles/ByDate/1995/1580_Are_There_Two_Wills_in_God/).
When it comes to the Well-Meant offer, I can take it or leave it as a Calvinist. But, is there really no *logical* tertium quid whatsoever? Steve, I'm sure you've encountered these types of arguments before. I assume therefore that you must find them unconvincing. Otherwise you would not have been so dogmatic about there being *no* other options (not even one). Have you posted a blog where you've gone into why you reject these Dabneyian-like type positions? If so, can you give us a link?
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This is worth lifting out of the combox and addressing separately.
1.The mediating position of Piper or Dabney doesn’t escape my dilemma. Unless they equivocate, both of them must admit that God was unwilling to save the reprobate. He had the power to do so, but chose not to.
2.Dabney’s position is excessively anthropomorphic, both at the hermeneutical level and the theological level.
We need to remember that God is not a human being, and we also need to consider what that implies.
For example, suppose I’m reading about the downfall of king Saul. It’s a frightening story. He started out as a decent man, but one thing lead to another and he ended up in a moral freefall. Having done one wrong thing committed him to the next step in the downward spiral.
So Saul became an evil man. And we see the process spread before our eyes.
Because he became an evil man, we should disapprove of him. He did terrible things.
At the same time, when you read about him, it’s also hard not to feel sorry for the man. And that’s because the human reader will project himself into Saul’s situation.
We can imagine ourselves in that same situation. We understand how a man can make some wrong choices which cross a line of no return. He’s gone too far to back out. He’s trapped in the vicious momentum of evil.
It’s like a compulsive gambler who keeps playing and keeps losing in hopes of lucking out and recouping his losses. He can’t afford to lose, but he can’t afford to walk away from the table. Each time he falls further behind, but gambling is the only way to make enough fast money to repay his debts. The thing that’s getting him ever deeper into debt is his only hope of getting out of debt. It’s a tragic dilemma.
When we see things like that, it triggers a sense of empathy or compassion. Because we know that we could box ourselves into a similar predicament.
However, God is not a human being. As such, he doesn’t feel the same way. When God shows mercy to a sinner, it’s not because he identifies with the plight of the sinner in the way that you and I might identify with our fellow man.
God isn’t projecting himself into the situation of the sinner. God isn’t saying to himself, “That could happen to me! I could be that man! How would I feel if I were a compulsive gambler?”
There’s a disinterested quality to God’s mercy. Unlike human pity, it doesn’t involve an analogy between my situation and the situation of the next guy.
Up to a point, human sympathy is a good thing. It’s part of what makes us human. We have it because we’re human. We’re needy, vulnerable, and sinful. So we say to ourselves, “I could do the very same thing!”
But God is not a human being. And while I don’t deny that he has something analogous to certain human emotions, they don’t function in the same way.
3. As for Piper:
i) It’s true that, in a sense, God disapproves of some things he decreed. But that doesn’t involve a fundamental tension in the divine will. God didn’t have to ordain anything.
God doesn’t approve of everything that happens, considered in isolation, but he approves of the goal, and he approves of everything that happens insofar as it contributes to the goal—of the greater good.
So it’s very misleading to parse that in terms of two divine wills. For God wills the totality, and wills the individual elements with a view to the totality. Some events are individually evil, but instrumentally good.
ii) Piper’s position is also driven by his understanding of passages like Jn 3:16, 1 Tim 2:4, and 2 Pet 3:9, which he’s prepared to interpret in a fairly Arminian sense, but harmonizes with his overall commitment to Calvinism.
So his position on the bifurcated will of God is a hermeneutical harmonistic device. But I think that’s a solution to a pseudoproblem, since I don’t agree with his exegesis at this juncture.
The same hermeneutical pressures are driving Dabney’s position as well. Since I don’t share their hermeutical assumptions, I don’t need their harmonistic strategies.
iii) Piper proposes an answer to the question, what prevents God from saving everyone if he wants to. Piper says, “What restrains God’s will to save all people is his supreme commitment to hold and display the full range of his glory through the sovereign demonstration of his wrath and mercy for the enjoyment of his elect and believing people from every tribe and tongue and nation.”
To some extent that’s true, but we don’t have to cast that in terms of divine self-restraint, as though God wants something he can’t have because it conflicts with something else he wants even more.
Piper’s explanation makes sense if you grant the underlying tension, but that’s the very point at issue.
We need to remember that mercy for the wicked is quite counterintuitive. We wouldn’t expect a just judge to show mercy to the wicked. Ordinarily, it would be wicked to show mercy to the wicked.
To take a current example, many Americans are indignant at the sight of corporate executives who drive their companies into the ground, then walk away with a multimillion-dollar severance package while their former employees line up at the soup kitchen and the taxpayer is stuck with the tab.
There’s no reason to think that God feels conflicted when he damns a sinner for his iniquities. We sometimes feel conflicted at that prospect because we ourselves are sinners. Because we can put ourselves in the situation of a condemned man.
But that’s a very human tension. God isn’t subject to that kind of emotional turmoil. God’s judgment isn’t torn by human emotions.
There are divine and human goods. What’s good in God may not be good in man. What’s good in man may not be good in God.
This is an excellent post and should be useful for referring to some people I am currently having this conversation with. Thank you!
ReplyDeleteDear Steve or others - Question:
ReplyDeleteCould you comment on Romans 2:4 with respect to the well-meant offer?
"Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?"
I have been wrestling with this verse.
Concerning one other verse that is often brought up in this debate, I have found this article by Herman Hoeksema to be useful:
http://www.hopeprc.org/pamphlets/ezekiel_33_11.htm
Steve,
ReplyDeleteI believe this post and the previous address the issue that caused David Allen and others to call James White a hyper-calvinist.
Curt Daniel's position on hyper-calvinism has been used as a reference point on this issue.
Mark
TBXI SAID:
ReplyDelete“Dear Steve or others - Question: __Could you comment on Romans 2:4 with respect to the well-meant offer?”
In context, it has no specific bearing on the offer of the gospel.
We need to understand v4 in combination with v5, along with Paul’s theology of the remnant in Romans 9-11.
In context, it has specific reference to God’s patience/kindness/forbearance towards the Jewish people. And it does lead the Jewish remnant to repentance.
However, it’s a double-edged sword, having the opposite effect on the reprobate (v5).
There’s something paradoxical about the idea that God’s patience/kindness/forbearance would have a hardening effect on anyone. All other things being equal, it ought to soften rather than harden. But applied to the reprobate, it simply makes them presumptuous.
It’s like feeding lobster to someone with a shellfish allergy. The seafood is good, but it triggers anaphylactic shock in someone with a shellfish allergy.
The problem is not with the seafood, but with the consumer. His defective immune system. The seafood is good, but bad for him in his sickly condition.
Just as food is designed to do good, and does what it’s designed to do for healthy people, but can also do harm to unhealthy people—the blessings of God are designed to do good, and do, in fact, benefit who are well-disposed, but inculpate and aggravate the guilt of the reprobate, who abuse their blessings.
Steve said...
ReplyDeleteAnd while I don’t deny that he has something analogous to certain human emotions, they don’t function in the same way.
And...
It’s true that, in a sense, God disapproves of some things he decreed. But that doesn’t involve a fundamental tension in the divine will. God didn’t have to ordain anything.
It seems to me that you've let into the back door what you've kicked out of the front door. You said there's a sense in which "God disapproves of some things he decreed." If that's the case, why can't God, *in some sense* desire the salvation of the non-elect prior to their death? Just as, *in some sense*, God is genuinely wrathful toward the elect prior to their conversion. And I suspect you don't hold to Eternal Justification (as Gill, Brine et al. did/do). Maybe John Frame's "perspectivalism" can account for some of this. Nevertheless, we all know what it's like to have various desires and goals that logically conflict.
A woman can desire another bowl of ice cream, but chooses not to because she has a higher desire and goal to fit into the dress she's going to wear at her daughter's wedding. Since to choose is to forego, it's sometimes logically necessary for a person to choose one desire or goal over another/others. If God, being Holy and Just, can *in some sense* desire the destruction of ALL sinners (they being guilty and justice requiring punishment); why can't it be the case that since God is naturally benevolent and beneficent that *in some sense* He desires the salvation of all those made in His Image?
It seems to me that there is a distinction between 1. desires, 2. goals and 3. choices. I've read your main blog on God's impassibility, and there (as here) you admit that there is something analogous in God with regard to our affections. You don't hold to absolute impassibility or another extreme (the other extreme on the spectrum?) where God nominalistically is TOTALLY pleased with all things He decrees. Such that, while from our perspective, some things brought about by providence are good and evil, to (this) God, all things are all and only good (having no disapprobation over anything).
Why can't God desire things which He doesn't desire as a goal, or choose as that which will come to pass? What is it about the doctrine of divine simplicity that requires that God cannot have multi-valent desires? I know you can't get too in depth or lengthy on a blog about foundational doctrines. I guess I'll need to read more systematics to understand this well entrenched position in classical (and particularly *Western*) theology on the doctrine of God.
Our perception is limited by the lens of temporal logic. That is to say that we require bivalence to provide contrast for understanding. God, however, is univalent. There is no false value from the eternal perspective. It works this way: I have a dog. I can say that my dog is a cat. This would be bivalently false. It is univalently true that it is bivalently false.
ReplyDeleteThe same applies to morality. This is why God could cause an event such as Joseph being sold into slavery and not sin while using the sin of Joseph's brothers to sell him into slavery. This single event was caused by God in His righteous eternal sovereignty within which was also temporally caused by Joseph's brothers in their sinful will.
We tend to see the will as being monolithic. We see choices as either/or. However, internal to a choice is often conflicting desires to follow conflicting paths, sometimes even for the same reason. For example, I may comfortably sit on the couch. The principle is that I desire to be comfortable. Eventually I will get hungry, thirsty or have to visit the cold, hard bathroom. As these needs become more apparent, a conflict arises between the decision to remain on the couch or to get up and take care of my needs. When the discomfort of my physical needs becomes relatively greater than my comfort on the couch, I must change my decision to remain seated, yet my principle behind both conflicting decisions is the same and has not changed.
All-in-all, although we wrestle with decisions, only one course of events will ever come to pass (despite what my fellow physics geeks would like to speculate). This course of events is alterable from a temporal perspective but not from an eternal perspective.
If our will is a bit more complex than we have considered, how much more is God's internal will difficult to discern to us from a temporal perspective. We know the facts. We know that:
a) God is sovereign.
b) We have some apparent will limited as it is by God's created order.
c) Sin is anything that is against God. Therefore, God cannot sin.
d) We sin.
e) Some are saved from their sin.
f) Some are not saved from their sin.
g) God uses sin to accomplish His purposes although He Himself cannot be guilty of it.
Therefore, it is clear that our understanding is limited although we have a capacity to be instructed in the certainly of God's revelation to us. Because of our temporal limitation, this capacity is almost certainly a result of God revealing Himself through imposed relationship with us rather than our efforts to reason our way through it.
ANNOYED PINOY SAID:
ReplyDelete“It seems to me that you've let into the back door what you've kicked out of the front door.”
It’s like one of those horror stories where, no matter how often you kill the monster, it returns from the dead.
“If that's the case, why can't God, *in some sense* desire the salvation of the non-elect prior to their death?”
I’m not interested in what can or can’t hypothetically be the case. I’m only concerned with what is the case.
“Just as, *in some sense*, God is genuinely wrathful toward the elect prior to their conversion.”
That’s ambiguous. It would be more accurate to say that God (timelessly) views the elect, both in terms what they deserve apart from union with Christ, and also in terms of their union with Christ. There’s no temporal shift.
“And I suspect you don't hold to Eternal Justification (as Gill, Brine et al. did/do).”
That’s a false dichotomy. Justification is a divine act. Since God is timeless, all divine acts, including justification, are timeless.
However, the decree to justify the elect is effected in time, and contingent on the human act of justifying faith. So justification is both eternal and temporal.
“Nevertheless, we all know what it's like to have various desires and goals that logically conflict.”
Naturally, since human beings must play the hand they are dealt. I’m not the dealer. I don’t get to stack the deck to own liking.
“A woman can desire another bowl of ice cream, but chooses not to because she has a higher desire and goal to fit into the dress she's going to wear at her daughter's wedding. Since to choose is to forego, it's sometimes logically necessary for a person to choose one desire or goal over another/others.”
At most, all your doing, if we even grant you’re argument from analogy, is to suggest that such-and-such could be the case if the right conditions were in place. You haven’t begun shown that such conditions are in place. It’s all raw speculation.
“If God, being Holy and Just, can *in some sense* desire the destruction of ALL sinners (they being guilty and justice requiring punishment).”
Since my position doesn’t require me to believe that God ever “desires” the destruction of the elect, your conclusion, even if valid, follows on a false premise.
“Why can't it be the case that since God is naturally benevolent and beneficent that *in some sense* He desires the salvation of all those made in His Image?”
It isn’t “natural” to be benevolent towards the wicked. Rather, it’s natural to be malevolent towards the wicked.
“It seems to me that there is a distinction between 1. desires, 2. goals and 3. choices. I've read your main blog on God's impassibility, and there (as here) you admit that there is something analogous in God with regard to our affections. You don't hold to absolute impassibility or another extreme (the other extreme on the spectrum?) where God nominalistically is TOTALLY pleased with all things He decrees.”
Impassibility never meant that God is apathetic. Rather, it means that God cannot be affected by anything outside himself.
“Why can't God desire things which He doesn't desire as a goal, or choose as that which will come to pass?”
I’m not interested in empty conjectures. The position of Piper and Dabney involves a solution to a pseudoproblem, generated by the tension between their commitment to Reformed theology, on the one hand, and their Arminian exegesis of passages like 1 Tim 2:4 & 2 Pet 3:9, on the other. Since I don’t construe these passages the way they do, I don’t need their harmonistic expedient to relieve any comparable friction in my own belief-system.
“What is it about the doctrine of divine simplicity that requires that God cannot have multi-valent desires?”
Since my argument was never predicated on divine simplicity, your question is beside the point.
this is a test
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